#eventually I'll put this on ao3

[sapphic-circles]

For Love

Pairing: Elphaba/Glinda Word count: 3056 Summary: A few months after Elphaba fakes her death, she sets off to reunite with Glinda.

~~~

“I know what you’re thinking about.”

Elphaba stiffened for a moment. She’d thought Fiyero would be in bed by now—and she should have been, too.

“You can’t sleep, either?” she asked, forcing her tense shoulders to relax. She didn’t turn away from her spot at the window, where she looked out over the rolling hills dimly lit by moonlight.

“No.” Fiyero sat at the window seat beside her and joined her in watching the landscape.

“So,” Elphaba said. “What am I thinking about, then? I’m dying to know.”

“You want to see her,” Fiyero answered. He didn’t have to say the name for Elphaba to know he was right.

She sighed and leaned her cheek onto her hand. She could see the sparkling lights of the city in the distance, so close that she could easily make it there within a night. She’d fantasized about it too often lately: how she’d go, how she’d disguise herself to do it.

“We left her alone,” she murmured. “And you’ve heard word as well as I have. She’s not well, Fiyero. I’m worried about her.”

“She’s not alone,” Fiyero said. “She has all of Oz at her beck and call. She’s absolutely adored by them. They’ll take care of her.”

“You know that’s not what she needs.”

“I know.”

Elphaba shook her head, her eyes still glued to the distant city lights. Yes, there were reports that the Good Witch had been under the weather lately, but not so unwell that she couldn’t perform her duties. She was still taking the country by the reins and leading it back toward the right path, just as she’d promised she would.

But Elphaba couldn’t help but worry. And, if she was being totally honest, she’d been looking for an excuse to see Glinda again. A good reason to reveal her secret to her old friend, a reason to risk everything for one more conversation. Because all of Oz thought she, the Wicked Witch of the West, was dead—which had been the plan, and it was a good thing. A necessary thing.

And yet, Elphaba couldn’t stop wishing Glinda knew the truth.

“You can’t go,” Fiyero said gently. “It’s too dangerous.”

“I know that,” Elphaba said. “But…”

“You’re gonna go anyway, aren’t you?”

Elphaba swallowed and looked down at her hands in her lap. She always kept her nails long, but she’d recently painted them a sleek black color using techniques she’d learned from Glinda, and all she could think was that she wanted to see the contrast of pale hands and powder-pink nails twined in hers again.

“I think I have to,” she said eventually.

She looked up at Fiyero, expecting him to fight her on it. They both knew she didn’t have to do anything, and that they would all be safer if she kept her nose where it belonged and continued to live with her head down…but keeping her head down had never been her strong suit.

Fiyero, rather than buckling down, offered her a sad smile. “Just be careful,” he said.

The canvas of his skin crinkled with the curve of his mouth, and Elphaba reached out to tuck in a spray of straw threatening to fall from his seams. What a dear friend he was to have stayed by her side for so long through the things they’d endured, and to still be willing to let her risk ruining it all for her own desires.

“Thank you,” she said. “I may be back by morning, or maybe tomorrow night if I’m able to stay longer. You’ll hear about it if things go wrong, I’m sure.”

“Good luck,” Fiyero said. “And tell her I said hello.”

~~~

Elphaba rode as far as the edge of the city, then continued on foot. It gave her time to think—as if she hadn’t already thought about every possible scenario a hundred times before.

She was fairly certain of which room in the tower Glinda would have picked. The window faced the side of the building, so she wouldn’t need to worry about guards at the doors seeing her sneak in, at least as long as they didn’t glimpse her skirting around to the side.

She’d retired her broom, knowing it would be too dangerous to use, so flying up wasn’t an option. She could throw rocks at the window, but that wouldn’t give her the opportunity to make sure she had the right room before waking the wrong person. Her only option was to climb.

There was a trellis, of course, but it only reached so high. There was plenty to use as a foothold on the way up, too, but the tower was much more intimidating knowing she couldn’t catch herself with her broom. And then, there was always the possibility that someone could notice a figure moving up from floor to floor.

Elphaba would never admit it, but she was scared. Months living peacefully in hiding had left her unused to the stunts she used to pull, and this climb couldn’t be described as anything less than daunting. Not to mention, she wasn’t sure how Glinda would react to her showing up out of the blue in the middle of the night. What if she wasn’t receptive? What if she’d be so angry for being tricked that she’d send Elphaba away, and they wouldn’t even get to talk?

The thought turned Elphaba’s stomach, and she forced it out of her mind. This would all be fine. Glinda would be happy to see her, and she wouldn’t be caught sneaking in. She didn’t come all this way just to turn around and go home.

So, she climbed.

By the time she reached the balcony she aimed for, her muscles ached and she wheezed to catch her breath, arms shaking as she hauled herself over the railing. She’d better be right about the room, or she’d be caught before she could manage to climb back down.

She took a deep breath and peered through the balcony door, her heart pounding with more than just exhaustion. Her pulse buzzed through her as her eyes roved the room: a bedroom cloaked in nighttime darkness, but lit well enough by a small pink lamp that Elphaba could conclude with certainty that this was Glinda’s room—even if the blonde woman herself hadn’t already been sitting awake at her desk, scrawling away at some parchment in front of her.

Elphaba’s chest tightened. It felt like it had been so long since she’d seen Glinda, and she found herself taken aback by the degree to which just the sight of her affected her emotions. Tears welled in her eyes as she drank in the blonde curls, the pink dress, the dark eyes cast down at her work.

Darker than usual.

Even from outside, Elphaba could see the circles under Glinda’s eyes. Even the light in them, usually so bright and full of spirit, seemed dim. And was it the shadows, or did she look thinner? Her hair flatter?

Glinda looked up from her writing as if on instinct, and Elphaba froze as they locked eyes.

And then the eye contact broke as Glinda looked away quickly, bringing her hand to her face as if to bite down on her knuckles. Elphaba couldn’t see much of her face anymore, but she could make out a string of tears running down Glinda’s cheek. Maybe Glinda hadn’t seen her after all?

She forgot any sense of stealth she had and surged forward to knock on the window, desperate to wipe the tears away and ask what was wrong. Maybe Glinda just had a rough day; maybe Elphaba could lend some comfort.

Glinda looked up again with the knock on the glass, and this time she didn’t look away. This time, she stared for longer than Elphaba could tell, her tears running dry. But she didn’t make any move to answer the door.

Elphaba hesitated, then knocked again before offering a nervous wave. Please let me in, she thought. Please don’t send me away. I miss you. I love you.

Glinda stood up this time and faltered as she stepped toward the door. She patted her eyes, a habit Elphaba knew she had to preserve her carefully made-up face, and crept closer. Wary, like a wild animal.

She reached the door and turned the handle slowly, letting the door drift open just a few inches before stepping back.

Elphaba caught the door and stepped inside, eyes glued to the woman she’d thought she would never see again. What was she supposed to say now? This was the part she could never quite imagine in her daydreams.

“Elphie?”

Glinda’s voice came out small and cracked, and new tears welled in her eyes as she stared back.

“Yeah,” Elphaba said. “It’s me. I’m here.”

“How?”

“A trap door,” Elphaba said simply. “I’m sorry, Glinda. I wish it didn’t have to be like that, and I understand if you’re angry, but I just—”

Elphaba’s breath caught as Glinda rushed the last few steps toward her, enveloping her in a tight embrace.

Elphaba hugged her back, burying her face in Glinda’s hair and breathing deep the scent of her familiar perfume. Her hands clutched at the frilly pink dress in an attempt to hold her even closer, her heart thundering so strongly that she was sure Glinda must be able to feel it.

“I can’t believe it,” Glinda breathed. “I can’t believe you’re here. You’re alive.” She shook her head. “I thought I was seeing things.”

“I’ve missed you,” Elphaba said. “It’s been so hard staying away. But—” She pulled out of the embrace and ran a gentle hand down Glinda’s cheek, feeling the sharp angles under her skin. “I came because there’s been word around Oz that you’re unwell. What’s wrong, darling? Are you ill?”

Glinda stared at Elphaba and shook her head. “I thought you were dead.”

“I—I know,” Elphaba said. “But if you’re sick, I can find a way to help.”

“I thought you were dead, Elphie,” Glinda repeated, and Elphaba’s heart clenched as she realized the meaning of those words.

“Oh, Glinda…”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Glinda looked deep into Elphaba’s eyes, her own so tired and sad that Elphaba didn’t even know how to respond. “I would have played along. You know I wouldn’t have put you in danger. Why didn’t you trust me?”

“It’s not that I didn’t trust you,” Elphaba insisted. “I just—I thought it would better for you. Safer. If you believed it, you could just…live the life you were meant to, without worrying about where I was and what I was doing. I thought you could be happy that way.”

“Happy?” Glinda frowned. “Happy that my best friend was gone? That she wouldn’t get to live the life she deserved?” She shook her head. “I know we said goodbye. That doesn’t mean I could live with your…your death.”

“I’m sorry,” Elphaba said again. “I thought it was the right thing to do. I was wrong.”

“Yeah,” Glinda said shortly. “You were.”

Her expression softened, and she hugged Elphaba again—not as tightly this time, but gentle and so fervent that all Elphaba could do was melt into her arms.

“I’m so glad you’re not dead, though,” Glinda said with a tearful laugh. “I’ve dreamed every day that you would somehow come back, and now…”

“Me, too,” Elphaba murmured. She pressed a long kiss to the side of Glinda’s head and closed her eyed. She could stay like this forever, wrapped in her friend’s embrace. Never mind that she wanted more—this was still more than she thought she’d ever have again. “I wish I could stay,” she breathed.

Glinda’s hands tightened on her cloak. “Please don’t go yet.”

“If anyone catches me here…”

“I’ll make them mind their own business,” Glinda said. “Please, Elphie.”

“Okay,” Elphaba said. After all these years, she still couldn’t say no to Glinda. She hoped that wouldn’t bite her in the ass. “All right. I’ll stay a while longer.”

“Yes!” Glinda perked up and ran her hand down Elphaba’s arm to take her by the hand and pull her toward the bed. “Tell me everything. Where are you living? Are you doing all right?”

Elphaba sat across from Glinda on the plush mattress, close enough that they could keep holding hands. “Yes,” Elphaba said, “I’m doing fine. It’s been very…quiet.” She glanced out the window to the rolling hills that lay between the city and her little cottage. “There’s a tiny village just a little bit east of the city. Fiyero and I have a cottage at the edge of the woods beyond it.”

Glinda smiled fondly, but there was something else under it, like a hint of sadness tinting her gaze. “You’re still with Fiyero, then?”

“It’s nice having familiar company,” Elphaba said. “So, yes, we live together. But it’s not like that. It never has been.”

Glinda tilted her head. “What do you mean? He ran away to be with you.”

“To help me,” Elphaba said. “With the cause. He did feel something for me, but…” She shook her head. “I couldn’t reciprocate. I love him, but not that way.”

Glinda leaned forward, her fingers closing tighter around Elphaba’s. They were so close that Elphaba could see the patterns in Glinda’s irises, the gleam of her glossy pink lips. Her face flushed as she tried not to look at them for too long.

“You’re not seeing anyone, then?”

“No,” Elphaba said. I’ve only ever had eyes for you, she thought, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud. What if she was misreading the situation? Glinda had always been physically clingy. The contact and the proximity could mean nothing. Or...

“You know I’m in love with you, right?” Glinda said quietly, and Elphaba’s heart nearly stopped.

Glinda was leaving this decision in her hands. Elphaba was the one who had to leave, the one who had to hide. She was certain now that Glinda knew exactly how she felt, and now she knew Glinda felt the same.

But if she were to deny it…if she lied and said she only saw Glinda as a friend…she could leave with no strings attached. No possibility of such a forbidden romance lingering in the back of her mind as she returned to her simple village life.

Glinda would know the truth, of course, but it was about plausible deniability. One route was safe for Elphaba, and it wasn’t the one that included Glinda.

Even so, there was no way she could go back now.

Elphaba tucked a stray lock of blonde hair behind Glinda’s ear, then leaned in to kiss her.

Glinda’s hands instantly moved to the sides of Elphaba’s face, where her thumbs gently caressed the freckled green skin. Her lip gloss tasted like strawberries, a scent Elphaba had occasionally picked up but couldn’t place among Glinda’s shampoo and perfume. And as Elphaba’s hands settled on Glinda’s hips, she found herself so overcome with emotion that her tears wet Glinda’s face, too.

Glinda drew back a moment to wipe Elphaba’s cheek. “Are you okay?”

Elphaba laughed and rubbed her eyes to dry them. “I’ve never been better.”

“Good.” Glinda smiled, a playful glint in her eyes. Elphaba could tell what was coming just a moment before Glinda tackled her down onto the bed, straddling her to pepper her face with kisses.

“Hey!” Elphaba complained. She reached up to tickle Glinda’s sides, and with a squeal, Glinda fell to the other side of the bed just long enough for Elphaba to lean over her, sprawled out and tangled the way they used to lie after long study sessions at Shiz.

“No fair,” Glinda said. “You’re stronger than me!” She reached up to twine her fingers through Elphaba’s hair, pulling her head down for another kiss.

They lay like that for a long moment, kissing and giggling like schoolgirls, before Elphaba sighed and lay back, allowing Glinda to curl against her and lay her head on her chest.

“I can visit you at your cottage, right?” Glinda asked. She lazily traced shapes onto Elphaba’s collarbone with her finger. “You’re always welcome here, of course, if you can make it. But…”

“Of course you can come,” Elphaba said. “For as long as Her Goodness’s work will allow,” she joked. She ran a hand over Glinda’s silky hair. “I’m proud of you, you know. For the work you’ve done. We’re already seeing change, and it’s all thanks to you.”

“Oh, no,” Glinda said. “No, Elphie. You and I both know I would have been useless if it weren’t for you.” She laughed. “Turns out popularity isn’t everything, huh?”

“It certainly doesn’t hurt,” Elphaba said.

“Maybe one day I can use it to make Oz safe for you again.”

Elphaba laughed. “I don’t know about all that,” she said. “But in the meantime, we still have tonight.”

“And many more nights to come.” Glinda smiled and tapped the tip of Elphaba’s nose with her finger.

“Many more,” Elphaba agreed before planting another kiss on Glinda’s lips. “Let’s make the most of it, my love."

[redwinterroses]

(part one)

Oakville was, according to Tango, not the closest sign of civilization—which was fantastic, because by Jimmy’s reckoning it would have taken them weeks to cover what the train had in a few hours. Such was the wonder of modern technology.

“We’re only a few hours—maybe five? Maybe five hours out from Eureka.” Tango said, pulling a compass out of his pocket and checking their heading. “Not much of a place, but they’ve got a communicator station and horses. And whiskey.” He sighed. “What I wouldn’t give for a drink right now.”

A drink. Jimmy was suddenly aware of the cottony dryness of his mouth—and they’d barely been walking an hour. The sun was down, the night air was cool, but he was already thirsty.

“We, ah—” he half-tripped over a rock. “It’s really dark. Are we going to stop for the night?”

Tango waggled the compass at him, the silver rim catching the starlight. “Moonrise in less than an hour, it’ll be plenty light.” He slipped the compass back into his vest pocket and shrugged. “Anyway, it won’t stop the Greysides boys. They’ll bring lanterns though, we’ll see ‘em coming.”

Somehow, that wasn’t comforting. In the distance, a wolf howled, and Jimmy shivered.

“Normally,” he said, trying to shape his voice in a conversational tone. “Normally, this would be the point where I’d build a dirt hut and wait out the night.”

Tango flashed him a grin that Jimmy could hardly see. “What, you afraid of a little mob action?”

“Considering I’m being tracked, can’t risk my gun, and don’t have so much as an iron sword?” Jimmy grimaced, thinking wistfully of the two shulkers of gear in his carpetbag. Abandoned on the traincar, loot for pillagers. “Yeah, I’d say I’m not exactly looking forward to running into anything.”

Tango gave a little chuff of a laugh, and there was a rustling sound as he dug into the side pocket of his satchel. Because of course he had his satchel.

“There ya go, greenhorn,” he said, and held out a faintly-glowing diamond sword, hilt-first for Jimmy to take.

“What?” Reflexively, Jimmy reached for the weapon, his fingers closing around the hilt before he could consider it. Tango let go of the blade and shrugged, slinging his satchel back to rest on his hip. 

“Can’t have my traveling buddy unarmed,” he said. “Bad look, for an experienced trail boss like myself.”

There was something in the way he said “experienced,” some note of sarcastic self-mockery, that Jimmy did not care for.

“When you say experienced,” he said, holding the gifted sword low to the ground and letting the gleam of enchantment dimly light his way. “Exactly how many—”

“Hey, will you look at that?” Tango interrupted him. He pointed into the distance, and Jimmy squinted.

“Lights?” he ventured, though if that was torchlight it looked almost indistinguishable from yellow-tinted stars.

“That’ll be Eureka,” Tango said. “We’ll get there well before dawn, if we don’t run into too much trouble on the way.”

Jimmy opened his mouth to go back to the question about Tango’s trail experience, but stopped himself. No reason to push for the fellow’s backstory—it wasn’t as if he was eager to share his own.

“Right,” he said. “Right, then. What trouble is out here? Creepers? Zombies?”

“Not too many undead,” Tango said. He rested his hand on the hilt of his own sword as they walked. “Husks, mainly, with this heat, unless you go underground, which I don’t advise. But yeah—creepers are a big nuisance in these parts. Them and the endermen—frontier mob griefing is the worst. I keep tellin’ folks we need to lobby to get an anti-griefing patch out here, but—” he shrugged. “You know how frontier people are. Obsessed with keeping things vanilla. You want luxury mods, go back to spawn.”

Jimmy made a noncommittal sound. 

“I’m not talkin’ like, full-on spawn blacklists or anything,” Tango continued, tromping along. “People want that, they can do things the hard way. I’m just sayin’—”

“Look out!” Jimmy saw the creeper just before it rose up out of the scrub, its eyes flashing a warning.

Tango swore and leaped nearly a block in the air, dodging away from the creature. 

It settled back, glaring at them balefully from its nest of brush and grass, and Jimmy eyed it with wary caution.

“It’s smaller than the ones back home,” he said doubtfully.

“Ehhh—” Tango’s voice was tight with concern, and Jimmy looked away from the creeper to find the man staring over his shoulder. “That’s… that’s cuz that one’s a baby.”

Jimmy froze.

“The… there’s a big one behind me, isn’t there.” He swallowed, and a hint of burning gunpowder drifted past his nose.

Tango nodded. 

Something hissed lowly behind him. A warning—the only one he was likely to get. 

He bolted. Behind him, he heard Tango’s startled yelp, and then following feet. 

“Is it chasing us?” Jimmy shouted.

“Keep running!”

Jimmy chanced a look over his shoulder.

It was a bull creeper���easily twice as big as the feral creatures he was used to back spawnward, its pelt dun-colored and mottled with green to camouflage it in the scrubby grasses. It charged after them, its eyes flickering with anger, hissing as it ran.

“Holy—” Jimmy tripped, caught himself, and kept running, eyes back on the ground in front of him.

“Get to that rock pillar!” 

In front of them, one of the strange, spiky landforms jutted up out of the dark landscape. They were at the base of it in a moment, ducking around the back, momentarily out of the creeper’s line of sight.

“Climb!” Tango ordered. 

Scrabbling up the steep side of the rock, they managed to drag themselves onto the top just as the creeper reached the base. It hissed furiously, but they were out of its reach—and blast radius—and it could do nothing but pace below them, its stubby legs not made for climbing. Thank void.

Jimmy flopped on his back on the narrow ledge, feeling his gun digging into his hip and not caring enough to move. His chest heaved as he panted for air, and cold sweat trickled down his ribs.

He closed his eyes against the stars, hating everything in that moment. Hating the stupid night sky, hating the ridiculously huge creeper below—seriously, since when did they get that big?—and most of all: hating that once again he’d managed to pull someone else into his mess.

“Alright,” he managed, swallowing hard. “Alright—look. You gotta get out of here.”

Tango, crouched on the edge of the rock, making faces at the creeper as he caught his breath, waved a dismissive hand. “It’ll lose interest and wander off eventually,” he said.

Jimmy pushed himself up with one arm. “No, seriously,” he said. “I mean it. I’ll keep its attention—you sneak off the back and head for Eureka. I’ll be fine.”

“I’m not leaving you on a rock in the middle of the wasteland, pal,” Tango said, with a baffled laugh. “Like—I mean, no offense. But you’re greener than beans, and I’m at least half the reason you’re not on a train right now anyway.”

The creeper was snuffling around the base of the tower, and Jimmy had the sudden horrible notion that it might figure out how to climb. Or Tango would fall off the edge. Or Jimmy would trip and knock him right into the creeper’s paws.

He glanced down at the sword. “Sharpness?” he asked, squinting at the runes carved into the blade.

“Obviously.” Tango turned away from the creeper and gave him an evaluating look that was far too sharp for Jimmy’s liking. “It’s just a creeper, James, it’s not like it’s gonna—” his foot slipped on a pebble and he flailed his arms for balance.

In an instant, Jimmy shot forward and snatched at Tango’s arm, yanking him down toward the middle of the stone platform. Tango fell to one knee, yelping in surprise and pain. 

“Hey!” he exclaimed, yanking his arm out of Jimmy’s grasp. “What was that—”

Before Jimmy could second-guess himself, or even stop for half a heartbeat to consider why he actually cared—why he still cared, after all this time—he rolled off the rock toward the creeper.

He landed with a thud on its sloping back, and the thing gave a startled HISS that buzzed in his bones, the smell of sulfur flooding the air. With a shout, Jimmy gripped the sword in both hands and drove the blade into the back of the creeper’s head, exactly where the spine met the skull. The point of the sword—enchanted as it was—met little resistance, driving straight into the creature’s brain.

The hiss turned to a crackling gurgle, and the monster went limp underneath him.

Jimmy staggered away, catching himself against the base of the stone pillar, letting the sword fall to the ground with a flat clang. 

He heard scrabbling above him, and looked up to see Tango half-climbing, half-falling down the cliff. 

“What kind of damn heroics are you trying to pull?” the other man demanded, his derby knocked askew and a look of baffled fury on his face. “That thing would have detonated in your face! You’re lucky you—”

“Not lucky,” Jimmy cut him off, exhausted. 

“—didn’t hit… what?”

The adrenaline jitter in Jimmy’s arms—what, the third rush of the night? I’m going to sleep for a week—felt like it was going to shake his skin right off his bones. 

“Not lucky,” he repeated, spitting out the word.

He stared past Tango at the dead creeper. Already, it was starting to curl in on itself, desiccating in the wasteland heat. By tomorrow night, it would be nothing but a pile of super-flammable ash. 

Tango paused. “Not… not lucky?” He tilted back his derby and peered down at Jimmy's face, rant kicked off its rails. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Jimmy cursed every unlucky star he’d been born under, and double that for Sausage. For a long moment, he considered not answering. Nothing, nevermind, he could say. Let's just get to town.

In for a penny...

“I can’t die,” he said, meeting Tango’s eye. “And I don’t expect you to believe that, but the fact is: people around me die. Constantly. Never me, though.” 

A bitter laugh crept out of his throat. “If I hadn’t got that creeper…” He shook his head. “I dunno. It would have got you somehow. Or you’d have fallen and broken your neck. Or the pillagers would have appeared before we got down. Any number of things. You’re not safe until you’re away from me.”

Tango took this in. Jimmy could see him weighing the words—and probably dismissing them—but all he said was:

“Why?”

With a shrug, Jimmy pushed himself up, and retrieved the sword from the dirt. He wiped the point on a knob of scrub brush. “You saved my bacon on that train, I think,” he said. “That’s enough to tie us.”

He held out the sword to Tango. “Look—you go ahead. I’ll just… I dunno. Camp here for the night, I guess. You get far enough away, for long enough, the curse seems to… disengage. You’ll be fine.”

Tango didn’t take the sword. He looked at it, then looked at Jimmy.

“You know I don’t believe a word of this, right?” he said.

Jimmy’s heart sank, but he wasn’t surprised. “Yeah,” he said. “I figured.”

“Great.” Tango glanced over his shoulder toward where the lights of Eureka flickered in the distance. “Let’s… let’s just get you to town,” he said. “Get some water in you.”

Get a horse, Jimmy added internally. Hit the road. Put a thousand blocks between me and here.

“Right,” was all he said aloud. “Water.”

Tango kicked the creeper’s shriveling carcass and started toward Eureka, and Jimmy followed behind, still holding the enchanted sword. 

I should have just chanced the train.

[thatartiststudios]

01.

Ficlet requested by @tategaminu! Yes, I'm well aware this is probably longer than a ficlet. Don't ask where all the extra words came from, even I don't know

The night was quiet, save for the soft rustling of the sheets as Callum shifted slightly to get comfortable. Rayla lay beside him, her head resting on his shoulder, a contented sigh escaping her lips as his fingers gently traced circles on her stomach. She was sitting up slightly, the glow of the moon filtering through the window, casting a gentle light on them.

Little Rian, their unborn son, was being quite active that night. Rayla could feel the tiny movements, the little kicks and nudges that made her smile. Callum’s hand followed each movement, his touch soothing and tender.

“He’s really active tonight,” Callum murmured, his voice filled with wonder.

Rayla smiled, her eyes fluttering shut as she relaxed into his embrace. “Yeah, he’s giving me quite the workout,” she teased softly, her words laced with warmth.

Callum chuckled, his gaze fixed on her stomach, watching in awe as Rian moved. “I still can’t believe this is real,” he whispered, his voice thick with emotion.

Rayla opened her eyes, tilting her head to look up at him. “It is,” she assured him gently, her hand covering his, pressing his palm more firmly against her. “He’s our son, Callum. And he’s perfect.”

Callum’s eyes softened as he looked down at her, his heart swelling with love and gratitude. “You’re perfect, too,” he said, leaning down to press a kiss to her forehead.

Rayla laughed softly, her breath tickling his neck. “You’re such a sap,” she teased, but her voice was filled with affection.

Callum grinned, his lips brushing against her temple. “Only for you,” he murmured, his voice full of love.

They stayed like that for a while, just enjoying the quiet moments, the warmth of each other’s presence, and the tiny, miraculous life growing between them. Callum’s fingers continued their gentle dance on Rayla’s stomach, soothing both her and their little one until the movements slowed and Rian settled down.

“Thank you,” Rayla whispered after a while, her voice barely audible.

“For what?” Callum asked, his thumb brushing over her skin in slow, comforting strokes.

“For this,” she said, her hand still resting on his. “For being here. For loving me.”

Callum’s heart filled with the depth of his feelings for her. “I’ll always be here, Rayla,” he promised, his voice unwavering. “Always.”

—

The dim light of the nursery cast a soft glow as Rayla sat on the edge of Rian’s bed, her fingers gently brushing through his white hair, which was already showing signs of the tiny blue horns that would someday match hers. Stella, ever the loyal cuddlemonkey, was already curled up beside the little halfling, her eyes drooping as she nestled closer.

Rayla smiled down at the two of them, her heart full as she began to sing a lullaby, her voice soft and soothing. It was the same lullaby she had sung to Stella many times, the same one her parents had sung to her when she was little. But tonight, she sang in Elvish, the ancient language of her people, the words flowing from her lips like a gentle breeze.

“Ged tha ‘n t-adhar dorch’ an nochd,

Tha mi ‘n soills’ air do shon, a ghràidh.

Tha a’ ghealach nas motha na a solas,

tha mi faisg; tha mo ghaol an seo.”

The melody was soft and lilting, each note carrying a promise of comfort and love. As Rayla sang, she watched Rian’s eyelids grow heavy, his little hand clutching Stella’s fur as he drifted closer to sleep. Stella, too, was lulled by the gentle song, her small body relaxing fully against Rian’s side.

Unbeknownst to Rayla, Callum had quietly finished his task of blowing out the candles downstairs and had come to the nursery, drawn by the sound of her voice. He leaned against the doorway, his heart swelling with love as he watched her. Just when he thought he couldn’t fall any more in love with her, Rayla always managed to surprise him.

Rayla’s song tapered off into a soft hum, and when she was sure both Rian and Stella were asleep, she carefully laid them down, pulling the blanket up to their chins. She pressed a gentle kiss to Rian’s forehead, then to Stella’s, before standing up.

Callum moved towards her, wrapping his arm around her waist from behind. He pressed a kiss to her temple, his voice a soft murmur in her ear. “You sound like an angel, love.”

A coy smile tugged at Rayla’s lips as she leaned into his embrace. “You’re such a sap, you know that?”

Callum just chuckled, his breath warm against her skin. “It’s true,” he said softly, tightening his hold on her.

Rayla sighed contentedly, letting herself relax fully in his arms. “I suppose I can’t argue with that,” she teased, tilting her head back to look up at him.

He met her gaze with a playful smile, his eyes twinkling with affection. “And I don’t mind one bit,” he added, pressing a quick kiss to her lips.

Rayla rolled her eyes, but her smile never wavered. “You’re impossible.”

“Only because I love you so much,” Callum replied, his tone sincere as he brushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

Rayla’s expression softened, her heart swelling with love for the man she had chosen to spend her life with. “I love you too, Callum,” she whispered, turning in his arms so she could face him fully.

Callum’s hands slid to rest on her hips as he leaned in, capturing her lips in a gentle kiss. It was a kiss filled with all the love, all the gratitude he felt for the life they had built together. When they finally pulled apart, they stood there for a moment, foreheads touching, just breathing in each other’s presence.

“We’re so lucky,” Callum said softly, his voice full of emotion.

Rayla nodded, her eyes shining as she looked into his. “Yeah, we are.”

[amee-racle-ofmyown]

I've been unable to work on my longer WIPs for some reason but take this. for lack of a better title:

idiots locked in the world's most romantically charged staring contest

Heist Mark x Y/N (reader) | 628 words

You wait just around the corner, quiet and out of sight, and lightly smack Mark's arm with the back of your hand when he tries to peer around you, lest someone see and you have both your covers blown.

Your partner rolls his eyes exaggeratedly and you level him with a stare.

You understand the anticipation, but patience is crucial for jobs like this. You wait for the signal. One wrong move could cost you a lot more than just your loot.

The little nook of the building you're waiting in is, rather conveniently for means of slinking around unnoticed, out of the way, and quite narrow. Even with Mark leaning back against the opposite wall, you are mere inches apart.

He checks his watch. 'Should be any minute now,' he utters in a hushed voice.

You nod. Several seconds pass. Distant chatter echoes down the halls, muffled into a steady background ambience of rich party attendees blissfully unaware of the thieves in their midst.

You look at your partner, simply because you have nothing else to do. He's craning his neck again in a futile attempt to peek around the corner more subtly.

His suit for the night is crisp, and gives his silhouette a sharper outline than the more typical cosy sweaters and soft flannel shirts. His hair looks especially dark cast in shadow, but there's enough light from outside the enclosed space that you see it reflected in his eyes. Softly glowing white and orange and magenta specs, floating on deep brown. Pretty.

It's as he turns his head back to face you, that he notices you staring, and meets your gaze without missing a beat.

Mark smiles, faintly roguish, but gentle and just for you.

He holds your stare, and something to the way he does so makes you wonder if he sees the same lights sparkling in your own eyes, and if he finds the sight as oddly captivating as you do.

A minute passes.

Mark loosens his tie.

It's a simple, small thing, but it stirs something inside of you, and you don't know why, but your breath hitches a little and your eyes widen slightly and he definitely notices. But he doesn't say anything and neither do you. All he does is keep looking intensely into your eyes until he doesn't because his gaze is flickering elsewhere — trailing across your features, settling on your mouth for longer than can be dismissed and when you bite your lip subconsciously it's as if he's mesmerised. You can hardly recall where you are or what you're doing here, none of it matters as much as his head tilting ever so slightly and then—

A voice through your earpiece jolts you out of your stupor. You suddenly take stock of the warmth from Mark's breath on your face. Your noses almost bumping. When did he get so close?

You press a button on your earpiece to answer the call, and by the look on your partner's face, he hears it too. It's Wubba and Bubba, giving the signal as agreed, and the moment is gone and your friend clears his throat and straightens up, as a confusing mixture of disappointment and frustration and lingering excitement flutter and twist in your gut.

When he moves out of your immediate space, the inches feel like miles.

You push the feelings down. You have work to do.

Mark mumbles something over the voice channel before turning back to you once again.

'You ready, buddy?'

The corner of your mouth quirks up, matching his own eager grin.

'You know I am.'

His grin widens.

'Good,' he says, adjusting his sleeve and finally getting a better look around the corner, now that the coast is decidedly clear. 'Alright, partner. Showtime.'

[daisychainsandbowties]

bea - eviscerate + stitch

this dark is everywhere, we said (and called it light)

a percy jackson au

///

Lilith wakes to the latent heat of volcanic glass seeping up through the palms of her hands, lacing along the blade of her cheekbone, drinking down the tears that scatter out of her lashes as she lurches awake, gasping.

She’s lying spreadeagled on hard, garish black rock, glittering with the reflection of enormous stalactites – a ceiling of sharp ends diving down out of the gloom. Her hair, distinguishable only as a more greyish shade of black, is stuck in clumpy patches to the ground and it peels away as Lilith forces her leaden arms to move, pushing away from the ground that always seems like it wants to eat her.

A tremor of white pain travels from her breastbone to the hook of her floating ribs, and she groans as she glances down at blood-sticky rock. It is shiny, glassy like a dead black eye – and Lilith sees her sword lying in the manner of a crooked smile underneath her upraised body. The hilt is shaped like a fishhook, the blade concave near the hilt and pitching out into a broad convex near the tip.

There’s a chain of soft gold running from the hook of the handle to the blade, and it shines strangely in the wet reflective surface of the volcanic stone that runs up to the high walls of hell itself.

Lilith knows, without looking, that there is a very specifically-shaped bruise running from just underneath one of her breasts down the rungs of her ribs, terminating just above her hip. Others too, splashed across her jaw and the socket of her right eye. There is dried blood crusted in her hairline and on her lips, cuts beneath her clothes that have bled into the fabric.

The last thing she remembers is fighting, knee-deep in snow somewhere in the Himalayas. Red spotted in the drifts and an old oil lantern trying vainly to scoop the darkness up off the snow, throwing reflections onto white-capped stone. She was following a fresh trail of blood and gore up a switchback that couldn’t really be described as a path when a great shape came crashing out of the night.

She recalls being swept aside by a massive paw, or maybe a hand, and landing dazed in the snow. Rolling aside just in time to avoid a sharp-seeming downstroke. Might have been claws, or a blade, or a set of enormous teeth. Her lantern rolled away, and Lilith heard the ringing in her ears that announced death. She scrambled to her feet and saw where her light had been tossed away, where it came to rest by a shape lying limp in the snow, surrounded by a halo of blood.

Lilith didn’t need to roll the corpse over – didn’t have time, as snow swirled and a shape stalked her. There, with snow and ice muddling the feeling of stone beneath her feet, she felt powerless. She couldn’t reach out and rend the earth, couldn’t call fire up from the mantle of the planet. Too much interference, too much fear.

There was a crumpled polaroid in the back pocket of her jeans, showing a smiling woman in a puffy green jacket, pretending to blow on her hands for warmth, though she stood next to a bonfire and underneath a clear, starry sky.

There was no need to roll the corpse over because the jacket lay in pieces around the body, rent by claw or blade or teeth, and Lilith felt anger surge up inside her as she tore her sword out of its sheathe and turned in a wary circle, trying to pierce the blizzard with the tip.

But then she heard a flurry of movement behind her and something rammed into her back, tossing her forward and face-first into snow. A phantom voice in her head whispered through the wind as Lilith reached vainly, dizzily, for invisibility, for her god-given power over not being. Coming up, as usual, against the wall of her own scattered focus.

A voice in her head saying, shut the fuck up and fucking Travel, or so help me I’ll come back to life and murder you.

And so she Traveled. Reaching out to gather up the shadows into a soft blanket, into a blade she pressed willingly through her own body, carrying it away from the blood in the snow and the monster in the dark. And there was nothing and no one and nowhere to think of but home, wretched though it is.

Hades.

Lilith stands, dragging the sword with her so that it dangles with the tip almost touching the ground, resting the blade flush against the curve of her boot. It has a soft black glow, down here in such proximity to the waters where Lilith stood, stripped to the waist and running with cold sweat. Where she dipped the fresh-forged blade into the polluted waters of the Styx.

She’s wearing her black aviator jacket, sunglasses sticking out of the pocket, over a somewhat threadbare t-shirt with a weird, shadowy creature on the front. She keeps meaning to Google what it is, but a giant snake ate her phone last month.

And, anyway, there’s no one left to call.

As ever, a pall of ghoulish green light sits over the gateway to the underworld, seeping along the riverbank in both directions. It’s a little like dry ice, but this isn’t a stage or a theatre. It’s just where she lives.

Lilith frowns down at herself, at the spots where her jacket has frayed, where the black leather has cracked or been scraped away by claws, the chill sitting barely above her bones from weeks of sleeping rough up on the surface. The golden chain on her sword settles against her knuckles – a faint, weird warmth – and Lilith lets a small sigh escape from inside her mouth as the greenish mist rolls past her.

There’s something about the mist that feels animate, today. It almost seems to cup her cheek, to flow over her cheekbone like a cold thumb, taking a little heat out of the bruises. Though, there’s a pressure to it – almost a reprimand.

Lilith stares towards the gates and the looming canine shape that sits squarely inside, worrying the inside of her lip. Is it her imagination, the slightly-chiding care that runs through the green light, the cool river mist?

She doesn’t speak to her father – not more than a handful of times in her life. He didn’t save her mother from the bombs or her sister from starvation, and he tucked her away in a dreamless sleep until he had a use for her. So what does she owe him?

Nothing.

Certainly not conversation, or whatever paltry imitation of love he can scrimmage out of his rotten heart. Fuck you, she thinks. There’s no benefit in saying it aloud, but Lilith lifts her middle finger, pointing it towards the mammoth walls, toward Cerberus and the stupid, banal bureaucracy of death.

The ghost in her head chuckles, low, and Lilith feels the golden chain brush her fingers again though there is no wind here to move it.

A wave of dizziness wash over her – a wild urge to lift the hilt of the sword up to her mouth and kiss the chain, but all she does is stand there in the shadow of her father’s kingdom, aching down to the marrow of her bones.

Then, from behind, from down in the direction of the ferry, she hears the scrape of wood over stone. Here, on the parallel shore of the Styx where nothing moves or walks or breathes but Lilith.

She whirls, sweeping her sword around so that she stands – unsteadily – with her body held sidelong in a narrow target, blade parallel with her raised arm, tip pointed towards whatever foul thing has crawled up out of the river.

Then she freezes, blinks, feels all the moisture in her mouth turn coppery and sour, because it’s not a monster.

It’s a girl.

Shorter than Lilith, with a pair of dark eyes pooled above a grim little mouth. Lilith realises – with a sense of disquiet – that she is beautiful. There’s a dust of freckles sitting like an afterthought on her nose, her cheeks, drawing out the dark shadows beneath her eyes. Her mouth is pulled tight, grimacing, but it hardly upsets the softness of her jaw.

She’s wearing a dark blue shirt over what looks like a thermal base layer. It’s cold down here, though it has never truly bothered Lilith. She’s built for it, or just used to it. Despite the extra protection, there is still a faint tremor sweeping through the girl as she stands, black rock glittering underneath her.

It’s easy to see why.

She is drenched in blood, leaning heavily on a spear made of bronze, decorated with tiny winged shapes. Lilith can’t make out what flying creature it is, but she makes a guess. There is, indeed, an owlishness to the girl as she stands, blinking through the gloom at Lilith, making no move to defend herself as blood spills out from where her palm is pressed into her stomach. Lilith can see the pink glisten of unearthed viscera beneath it, can see that her fingers are pressed inside to the knuckles.

A half-blood, then.

Lilith’s fingers tighten around the hilt of her sword. It’s Stygian iron – a substance that can only be forged in the waters of the Styx, capable of absorbing the essence of monsters, ripping them even out of Tartarus. Monsters and mortals and gods fear it, but the girl only blinks down the curve of the sword as Lilith holds it aloft.

Her voice, when it drifts out of her mouth, rolling into the mist, is clipped and precise and soft. All by itself it makes a crack in Lilith’s resolve.

‘You’re the daughter of Hades?’

It is, Lilith thinks, mostly a statement. In her bruises and her battered black clothes, with the life-eating pall of a Stygian sword in her hand, Lilith looks like the bastard child of death.

The stranger is a hazy shadow, cut to the quick by the perpetual drain of this place; the sewer of the Styx washing by with a sound like a hundred thousand muttering voices.

Blood patters softly onto the stone at her feet, but it scarcely has a chance to pool before the stone swallows it. The girl, hair half-unbound around her shoulders, strands falling down around her face to complicate it with shadows, stares at her own boots for an instant, wobbling. Lilith understands what she is feeling; it took weeks for the rock of this place to feel solid, to stop warbling underneath her with the threat of turning to liquid, to blood, to ink.

Lilith has dreamed of the bottom of hell, and this is not it. This is only the threshold.

‘Who’s asking?’ she growls, taking a careful half-step forward. It’s more of a shuffle, really – a habit born from fencing lessons held deep inside the walls of the Underworld, in a garden full of soft fruits and the promise of spring. The place she learned to fight.

The girl straightens, stiffening under Lilith’s scrutiny. There’s a sort of raw-boned intensity to her, like she’s holding herself very precisely in check. Her fingers, too, have tightened around the haft of her spear.

She’s shaking, blood now flowing down to drip from the tip of her elbow where it’s clamped tight against her body. Lilith wonders what it took for Charon to ferry a dying girl across the river.

The tip of her sword is only a foot from the girl’s throat as it bobs, as she raises her chin to expose the bumpy layers of cartilage sitting in a line; the very slight bulge above her windpipe.

There’s no point in asking who sent her. If she’s a half-blood, there’s only one place she could have crawled from.

Softly, again, the girl speaks. Backlit as she is by the green glow on the shore, she carries the countenance of a ghost. Lilith might mistake her for one, if she didn’t know better.

‘My name is Beatrice,’ she says, in a voice like cold water and warm milk, ‘I am a daughter of Athena.’

There’s blood on her lips, Lilith realises, as they pull into a grimace. They shiver as Beatrice pulls her fingers out of the slit in her stomach, holding them out in wry invitation.

It’s utterly bizarre, but Lilith finds herself lowering her sword, leaving it to sit against the leg of her jeans. Beatrice has proffered her right hand, so Lilith is forced to juggle the sword into her left so that she can reach out, tentative, to wrap her fingers into the sticky, blood-stained cup of Beatrice’s hand.

‘Lilith,’ she says. Somehow, it feels like an admission, like giving something away.

The daughter of Athena smiles. Pink-tinted saliva dribbles down her chin. It’s ghastly, but Lilith finds that she is somewhere on the opposite end of disgusted, wherever that might be.

There are, after all, no destinations along the river Styx but one. Death.

Beatrice squeezes her hand. She takes a ragged breath, her dark eyes heavy-lidded and hazy, boring into Lilith’s. ‘Pleasure,’ she says, a little giddily. ‘I thought I would have to go deeper into hell to find you.’

‘Well, here I am.’

A tightening around her hand, not quite a squeeze. ‘Here you are,’ Beatrice says. She lists forward, catches herself, ‘I’m here-‘

She coughs, and the redness of it floats weirdly in the mist. Beatrice stares, shakes her head like she’s trying to banish a ghost.

Her voice is very faint. ‘We need your help… daughter of Hades.’

Then the daughter of Athena, her skin like dark gold even in the bad light of the Underworld, falls forward. It happens slowly, at first, like she’s just taking a step, but then Lilith sees her knees buckle, watches the spear slip through her fingers.

And without thinking she steps forward, capturing Beatrice’s warm body in her arms.

...

Ten minutes later Lilith crouches next to a limp figure she has propped up against the pitted, high stone wall, feeling like a thief as she unbuttons Beatrice’s blue shirt and peels her black base-layer away from the slice in her lower abdomen.

Her sword is on the ground next to her, at a right angle to her body, the hilt in easy reach. Beatrice’s spear is propped up against the wall. It is, indeed, covered in tiny filigreed owls.

Beatrice does not stir as Lilith raises her hand, ignoring the unhappy shiver of the mist against her back as she draws on the power in her blood, summoning up a sliver of bone from a tiny vial of bone dust she keeps tucked inside her boot. It forms in the air, turning from powder to liquid to solid bone in the span of a moment, before settling down into Lilith’s red-painted palm.

It’s not ideal, but she can hardly wash her hands in the river. It’s full of plastic and rot and blood. Instead, she makes do with the little wadge of bandage and thread she keeps in the pocket of her jacket.

Beatrice continues to breathe as Lilith carefully threads her bone needle. There’s a voice in the back of her head spouting stupid facts about the history of needles and sutures, but Lilith hisses at it to shut up before dipping the sharp end of the bone through Beatrice’s flesh. The thread turns red as it passes in and out, but it’s proper surgical suture, so it also tugs the flesh back towards itself. It makes whole.

Distracted by her work, it takes Lilith too long to notice the change in Beatrice’s breathing. She finishes her row of stitches – they’re thick and lumpy and as elegant as she can make them, but there is no ringing in Lilith’s ears to ordain death, so it must be enough.

At a loss for any other implement, Lilith picks up her sword and carefully cuts the thread, leaving a little curl of it to sit against the taut muscle of Beatrice’s stomach. She has, of course, attempted not to notice the ripple of honed, hard muscle that runs the whole length of what necessity has forced Lilith to unearth; the evidence of a life spent fighting.

She has attempted to ignore it.

When Lilith looks up, sword resting on her knees where she’s crouched, balancing effortlessly on her heels, she finds that Beatrice’s eyes are open. Hazy with pain, but alert underneath it all.

A tentative smile flutters across her lips, ‘You saved my life.’

She dumps the sentence at Lilith’s feet like it means something.

Lilith shrugs, ‘I’m a freak, not a monster.’

The freckled skin on Beatrice’s cheeks wrinkles in tandem with her frown, ‘Wh-‘

‘You said you needed my help?’ Lilith interrupts before the question can come out and make everything awkward.

Beatrice’s stomach is still laid bare, covered in fingerprint marks where Lilith has touched her – in every single place Lilith has touched her.

Mercifully, the daughter of Athena lets her question fall away. Her bronze spear shines off of some strange reflection in the volcanic rock.

‘Yes,’ Beatrice says. There’s some depth to the word that Lilith doesn’t look down into, in the same way she doesn’t peer into the waters of the Styx as the ferry glides over it. Some mysteries are not fit for consumption.

‘Alright.’ Lilith nods, ignoring the way that the gold chain on her sword tightens against her hand, like a warm tongue, ‘Tell me what you need.’

[sastielsfandom]

Sam's aware his emotions get the best of him sometimes, like when him and Dean were teenagers and he jumped out of the car in the middle of an argument. Raising a finger up to Dean as he landed in a patch of dirt.

Dean stopped the car, rushing out to check on his little brother, but Sam was stubborn and Dean had to pick him up and carry him in. Sam fought the entire way and didn't speak to Dean for three days.

The fight wasn't anything special. Dean was given an order to get them out of town, John had already left and would meet them some towns over. Already on a different hunt.

Sam wasn't ready to go, begged Dean to let them stay, but Dean never failed an order. Not from their Dad. Sam begged Dean to do something for himself just for once instead of playing good solider, and Dean begged Sam to be a good son for once and not go against their Dad.

Sam didn't think about it, he simply opened the door and jumped out, thinking he was going to die. Dean thought he killed Sam as he tumbled out of the car, but the kid raised his middle finger up, and Dean circled back around.

It became a thing unfortunately, but Dean wouldn't circle back around, he'd go ahead, speeding up, trying to discourage Sam from jumping, it only egged him on. Dean would try locking the door, but Sam always had it open before he could.

Dean didn't stop the way he did the first time, iantead driving a bit, forcing Sam to walk to the car. It allowed them both to calm down a bit, Sam would walk off his anger, Dean would turn up the radio, not letting any thoughts move further into hatred.

But times changed. The two weren't teens arguing about their Dad, and Dean's foot pressed on the gas, his anger getting the best of him.

They both kept cutting deep into old wounds, and Dean wouldn't stop. Sam was willing to let everything go, until Dean spat out, "My biggest regret was every saving someone like you."

Sam didn't even know what happened until he was picking himself off the side of the road with a bloodied knuckle, it wasn't his. He didn't bother to raise a middle finger, just walked off the opposite direction of the Impala. Dean didn't stop for Sam, he left him for the first time like this on the side of the road.

Sam didn't want to go back, in fact he didn't, he found a town the opposite way, but Castiel was ordered to bring them back together for a hunt. Usually after walking away Sam was able to let go of whatever Dean said or did, but this time, it was seared into his heart.

No matter how many times Dean tried to take it back or say something to change it, all Sam could hear was the genuineness in Dean's voice when he told Sam his biggest regret. But Sam's anger wasn't at Dean, it was at himself.

He couldn't be a good son, can't be a good brother, can't even save people right, what good was he? He wished he died when he jumped out, part of him did. But not nearly enough as he woke up and tried to pretend he didn't remember those words and repeat them in the silence over and over. It was an unwelcomed mantra that didn't shut up.

But Sam lived with it, unable to get it to shut up. Maybe the real problem was how much Dean sounded like John or how much Sam hated himself then. It didn't really matter. It was the last time Sam jumped out of the car, but it didn't feel like an achievement to either of them.

[becauseplot]

human!dagger rewrite of Hunting Lessons is officially complete letsgo. technically i did it last night but i wanted to proofread today once i had ykno. slept. which is a good thing bc i actually found a couple details i missed. only one part of a scene had to have substantial changes made to them but even then it's just flipping some of the dialogue and character actions. 99% of the original plot is still intact ^-^

[killer-dream]

i’ll share my murder cats sideblog later.  for now, please consider:  cerulis tits.  that’s it.  that’s the post.

[collegeboysam]

I need u to stop playing with me fr saying u need others to cook assad rpf because i have read all ur 10+ j2 rpf fics for supernatural so what's the holdup for iwtv? YOU do the cooking chef

ADASFSDFSDGDHDHFGFHFGHFG 😭😭😭😭

I'm sorry my liege! I'll get to it!

[syoish-aot]

look guys, I'm working on the eren x reader reverse isekai fic. the validation of strangers on the internet is powerful

[cosmic-kinglet]

I'm literally so bad at coming up with chapter titles. Why am I doing this?

[awrkive]

NEIGHBOR BLUNDER, pt. 1 — JJK

in hindsight, you should have seen it coming. had always known your luck – or lack of it, thereof – and the universe's meticulous plan of your downfall made it easy for you to get tangled up in a series of unfortunate events, which presents itself as the neighbor that lives across from you, jeon jungkook.

PAIRING jungkook x (fem) reader

GENRE r18+ (fluff, angst, (eventual) smut) MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!

CHAPTER WORD COUNT 18.2k

CHAPTER WARNINGS/MISC neighbor!jk, bsf!jimin, accountant!oc software engineer!jk, jk and jimin are chaebols lol, minjoon boyfriends <<<<3 mature language, this chapter's pretty tame (for now) but theres a lot of FLIRTING, if u squint this story is a mosaic of every shows i love lmfao, for the apartment complex just imagine the namil villa from the kdrama fight for my way NB!JK VISUALS

NOTES hello im back!!!!! remember the jk in tech xmas fic i told you about last year? this is it except its not a xmas fic anymore lmfao. had an idea to make it a full blown story and im just sooo excited to share it with u guys on this platform!!!!! if ur from wattpad, the chapter system is gonna be a little different here but the content is not <3 anyway let me know what u guys think!

READ ON WATTPAD | AO3

PART ONE | TWO

You never settled your relationship with the summer season. To put it simply, it was a love and hate sort of thing; you liked that it was dry, and the air always felt like it was filtered and healthy even though you were well-aware of the current shit-state of the Earth's ozone layer. There were beams and sunlights and street vendors and people lying on the park's ground. Summer felt nostalgic, like the first time you bought a vinyl in highschool and listened to Fleetwood Mac in secret because your mom was certain they peddled cocaine and all sorts of illegal drugs, and with a highschool friend you no longer talk to, not because of a friendship-breaking betrayal but something more melancholic than that like drifting apart as you got older — the ambience, generally, was what you loved the most about it.

But regardless of those, summer got hot. Sure, you could forgo layers of clothing and it was always nice to lounge about in short bottoms and strapless tops and sandals, but at the end of the day, you needed to set your AC on the lowest temp, and it cranks up your monthly rent a greater percentage which causes a detrimental result to your monthly pay. (And you always had to reapply make-up every now and then whenever you went outside because if not, you'd be a sweating mess.)

In the grand scheme of things, though, there was nothing more than you disliked than Park Jimin, your best friend since college, asking you to be his plus-one on his mom's birthday dinner. For the second time.

“I told you, Jimin, I’m not doing that anymore. Your mom called me fat and recommended a bunch of expensive skin care products to treat one single zit on the side of my forehead the last time you brought me there. I hid that with my bangs and she still saw it, like what the hell? The baked lasagna might have tasted good but I’m not stepping one foot in your house ever again.” You spat out, rolling your eyes at your friend who just dramatically flopped himself on your bed.

“Okay, so I’m really sorry about my mom. She’s a…” He trailed off, looking at you with meaningful eyes that weighed words you knew he couldn't exactly say without feeling bad, and you sighed. Nodded in understanding. Jimin’s face contorted into a cringed expression at that. “... yeah. But! Please. I swear! This is the last time. I just really need you to be there. They’re setting me up with Heesu, okay? You know that snotty nepo baby of the Kang clan who owns Kang Tech?”

“Jimin, you’re a nepo baby.”

He hit you with a pillow. “I am but I can earn a hundred thousand won without my family’s money. They can cut my credit cards and I'll still be thriving.”

You broke the serious demeanor and laughed loudly at his seemingly confident claim.

“I’m sorry but you could not even get a job at a burger joint without some nepotism let alone have a hundred thousand without your dad’s credit cards. Bitch, you’re just lying.”

“Fuck you. I was employee of the week at Seventh Street Burger.” He backfired, referring to that point in time in your sophomore year where you picked up a part time job during the summer at a burger joint and Jimin just decided to come along randomly. He got it because the owner knew of his dad.

“Yeah, because Sowon had a crush on you?” You said, remembering the owner’s daughter, who was also helping out at the store at that time. She was so smitten by Jimin you almost felt bad for her.

“Okay, fair, point taken. No need to be such a bitch about it,” Your best friend said with a dismissive wave of his hand, telling he was over it. You only laughed at that, boisterously, might you add, just to piss him off for no reason. Jimin deadpanned. “But seriously. I think they’re planning to marry me off to Heesu.”

Your face fell out of genuine concern this time.

“Oh my god, really?”

Jimin once again cringed visibly. “Yeah. I mean from a business lense it makes sense. But me marrying at 33? That makes me – like – a child groom.”

“Oh… yeah…” you trailed off, sympathizing with him. Not that you've ever been in the situation where your parents forced you in a sham marriage for their own wealth because there was no wealth to begin with. But you felt bad for Jimin. You always have, when it came to this particular subject.

You knew how it was with rich people, having known Jimin for almost half your life. It was true that arranged marriages were still a thing, and while Jimin seemed that he could pretty much do everything he wanted because of his free-spirited nature, his parents could still most likely make him marry someone he barely knew. Solely for business.

“Ugh.” Jimin groaned. “Should I just come out at the dinner so they can stop linking me to women? I’m gay as fuck, man. My cousin Park Youngdam would have a field day given that homophobic fucktard has been calling me the f word ever since he learned it in seventh grade.”

You shook your head, visibly cringing at his words. You didn't have family yourself. It was your mom who raised you alone for all your life, until she died five years ago. Didn't know any extended family. But frankly, you thought it was better that way than to deal with a complicated family like Jimin's.

“Nah. I mean if you’re ready, well, do it. But like, your parents are…” You two shared a look together again, and Jimin just slapped his palms over his face, indicating his doom. Your face twisted with another shot of deeper sympathy for him.

“This is it for me. They’ll marry me off to Kang Heesu and we’ll fly to the US and live in Massachusetts to fulfill her white picket fence fantasy. I’ll be a miserable husband and she'll be an even more miserable wife because she’ll eventually find out I’m gay. The neighbors will start talking and the white republicans will shun me out of the town church. We’ll have a surrogate baby and—”

“Jimin, what the fuck!” You hit him hard on his arm as you couldn't keep a straight face anymore at his dramatic monologue. “You’re not gonna marry Heesu and you won't live in fuckass Massachusetts and no one’s gonna shun you out of the town church and you won't have a surrogate baby.”

“It’s a possibility.” Jimin shrugged.

“I feel like you're guilt-tripping me into agreeing to be your date again at your mom's birthday dinner and I think that's very evil of you.” You said, squinting your eyes at him.

“Well, duh? But also, I’m really kind of lowkey highkey scared they’ll marry me off to someone now that I’m pushing forty.”

"You're quite literally seven years away from forty." You countered.

He looked at you with an expression of I know right! And he told you so.

"That's what I said to mom and dad, but they're acting like my sperm will freeze next year. God, I can't stand them!" 

Jimin, for all his jokes and unserious and bitchy behavior, was someone extremely important to you. Yeah, sure, he was rich as hell and he annoys you when he says something that reeks of too much nepotism but he was never intentionally snotty, never thinks he was better than everyone else (Jokes about how he thinks he has the fattest and juiciest ass in the world, though), and he wasn't at all like the rich people you've had the misfortune of interacting with at his mom's birthday party last year. He might be a self-proclaimed bitch but if you put him together with those people, he might as well be one of God's disciples.

For all his crass language and rather strong personality, Jimin was a doting friend who was there for you every single time. You could call him up at 3 am and he’d be at your door bringing Chinese take out and two tubs of ice cream, ready to hear you vent about your stupid job or a guy that you fumbled by being weird and off-putting because you didn't know how to handle a relationship. He was the kind of friend who would defend you in front of anyone else but will mercilessly tell you off and list down all points of your stupidity once you were in closed doors. He was the kind of friend that would ask you to be his pretend partner at a birthday dinner party, but he was your best friend ultimately and even if you had a big problem with his family and their extremely traditional (read: toxic) ways, you didn't want him to be pressured into coming out just so he could avoid to be engaged off to another random heiress. Didn't want him to do something he wasn't ready for. Didn't want him hurt or anything of the sort.

The last dinner wasn't even that bad, if you were to be honest. His parents were shitty, yeah sure, and the other guys in there that consisted of politicians and businessmen and people in the showbiz industry were something taken out of the toilet bowl for how stinky their elitist, better-than-you personalities were, but you both just totally forgot all about it by getting wasted at the local bar right after leaving. Not that his mom’s words didn't sting a bit or didn't make you a little conscious, but at the end of the day, you weren't actually dating Jimin so you didn't care what his parents thought of you.

Additionally, you didn't have something planned for the next two weeks when the birthday would be happening. You were supposed to, but that ship has long sailed when you fumbled a date with the guy at the IT department. For the record, you didn't really like him that much and he talked too much about his job and while you didn't mind that, it was getting a little too tiring. If you wanted IT lessons you would’ve majored in it in college. Still, Shin Taemu was handsome. And he wore those rounded glasses. Was tall. Had nice arms. Too bad he wanted to be the next Mark Zuckerberg. Fuck that guy.

“Ugh, I don't know,” you groaned. “It's just so disgusting to be your girlfriend, okay?”

Jimin audibly gasped. “How dare you? A lot would jump on this ass.” He said with incredulity seeping through his voice, pointing to his bum.

You rolled your eyes. “Not me, obviously. Before you take offense—”

“Offense taken.”

“—it’s just that you're like my cousin and when you call me honey I want to crawl out of my own skin.”

Jimin laughed at that while you looked miserable, remembering those moments from last year. Seriously, how could you have fooled anyone in that party that you were banging? You swore you looked like Ariana Grande and Troye Sivan in that one music video? (Jimin was the one who showed that meme to you, by the way.)

“So I won't call you honey. Just babe.”

“Ew.” You quickly retaliated.

“Ohh, the homophobia is sho-wing.” Jimin sing-sang, ever the mature individual he was.

“Fuck off, seriously.”

Jimin just giggled and then scooted closer to you. “No but like, are you coming? ‘Cause jokes aside, I'm just gonna find someone else if you really don't wanna do it. But you know you're always my first choice.”

“First choice when you do some stupid shit.” you countered, rolling your eyes for the nth time that night. Jimin would be the cause of your eye surgery if ever they got dislocated or something.

“That’s my biggest act of love.”

“I don't want it.”

“I’ll double what I paid you last year.”

“Double it again and give it to the next person?”

Jimin flipped you off. “I’ll give you my nintendo and I’ll get you a card at that coffee shop you love so much.”

That caught your attention. You raised your brow. “On god?”

“When did I ever lie to you?”

You deadpanned. “We won't finish this conversation if I list all the times—”

“Okay, okay, point taken. But I'm really serious. Please, please, please, please be my pretend girlfriend on my mom's birthday party please, please—”

“Shut up. Ugh,” you could already feel the big smile creeping up Jimin’s face when you let out a big sigh. “Okay, I’ll do it. Buy me boba now.”

Jimin tackled you to the bed and hugged you and kissed your forehead.

“Thank you! Best best friend ever.” he delightfully said, grinning widely, eyes almost disappearing in his triumph.

Your face contorted into a disgusted expression while Jimin just laughed as you pushed him so hard he almost fell off the bed.

“You are a disgusting limpy sack of dicks! Also, I’m not your best best friend, you don't have a wide selection. I'm your best friend. Period.”

“Unfortunately.” He waved you off and when you were about to retort something his phone suddenly rang. You watched quietly as he put it over his ear. “Hey, you just landed?”

If it was a private conversation Jimin would've left the room but since he didn't, you decided to stay in bed, kind of listening in to the conversation, but also not, as you turned the volume down of the show you were watching earlier on your laptop.

“Nah, you want me to pick you up?” Jimin sat up on the edge of the bed and you looked at him curiously. “Sure, I’m free, Kook. You have a place to stay? Hotel suite or something?” He nodded to whatever the other person was saying on the other line. “Oh, you're here for three months? Thought you were just flying in for mom's birthday?”

It was moments after they said goodbye that Jimin turned to you to ask, “Well, my cousin’s apparently staying here for three months. Got this job thing going on.”

“Is that one of the non-problematic twenty percent cousin lineage of your very complicated family tree?" You asked, referring to him telling you one time that his family, including the extended ones, was eighty percent shitty and twenty percent decent.

Jimin chuckled at the inside joke. "Well, yeah, he's one of the good ones. Knows I'm gay."

"Oh, nice."

Jimin stood up from your bed. “I’ll get you your boba and head off. Gotta pick cousin up or he’ll start throwing tantrums at the airport.”

“Add extra pearls please.” You told him, watching as he clicked away on his phone to get you your drink.

“I spoil you too much.” Jimin said, clicking his tongue, eyes still on his phone.

“What are you here for if not my glorified sugar daddy?”

“I will kill myself in front of you.” Jimin deadpanned, getting a chuckle out of you.

You didn't know the psychology — or if there even was psychology — behind feeling embarrassed when you were about to cross a path while carrying huge boxes. It was a normal task, and yet, it always felt like a huge walk of shame when you did it.

It was probably because you had to carry it over a flight of stairs, and there was no way you wouldn't trip on yourself carrying two heavy boxes in your hands that were already disrupting your vision.

Maybe it was your fault for choosing the pick-up option when you were checking out these furniture online, all because there was a huge increase on the fee for door-to-door delivery. For the record, there was a huge gap and the boxes were not really that heavy to the point you could not carry them both. It's just a lamp and a portable desk, you thought a week ago when you opted for the pick-up option, I could carry it all the way to the unit just fine — and obviously, your delusion has resulted to this very moment.

As soon as you managed to walk over five steps, you felt as if your oxygen supply just got cut back, panting like someone fresh from a marathon. Damn. You definitely needed to work out a little. Maybe do some squats for your New Year’s resolution, commit to it for three days straight then forget about it for the next 362 days of the year.

You looked ahead of you and a string of curses let themselves out of your mouth automatically as you estimated the number of stairs you needed to get through to get to your apartment.

This day sucked! It was Sunday and you planned to wake up at five am to have a productive day but then you slept through your five alarms and woke up at eleven am instead. You ran out of eggs and you had to go to the convenience store to eat a sad meal of yogurt and kimbap. And now there were these boxes that you needed to carry over what seemed to look like six million of stairs. You weren't Sisyphus! And where were your goddamn neighbors when you needed them?

"You need help, ma'am?"

"Jesus Christ—" you turned to look to your right only to see a man who seemed to own the previous voice.

And Jesus Christ, indeed.

He was wearing a white shirt and some shorts, Nike sliders on his feet and a pair of headphones on. He was wearing glasses. And he had a tattoo sleeve.

What the fuck.

What the fuck!

It has been so long since you thought a man was crazily attractive. Okay, well sure, the guys from the IT department were something else (or you just had a weird eyeglasses fetish, Jimin once pointed out, that you still — to this day — vehemently try to deny) but you’ve never been this taken aback by someone’s face before.

The guy’s lips tilted a bit, some sort of greeting maybe, and you quickly looked away, embarrassed, fearing that he caught you looking at him longer than necessary.

Oh god. This was pathetic! He was a stranger! He was a man! He just had a cute face attached to a very good body with an arm full of tattoos and he was tall but you were sure he wasn’t six feet two. Also, he had hair that looked fluffy from where you stood and a pair of eyeglasses but Jimin was just bluffing when he said you had a fetish for them. Right?

You were performing mental gymnastics until you realized he was asking a question.

"Oh! Uh, no, thank you. It's fine." You said, embarrassed at the way you almost jumped in surprise earlier.

But the whole thing was ridiculous. What, because there was a very fine man across from you the universe suddenly decided to fuck up your fate by making you be seen by that very man struggling with boxes all the way up to your unit? Couldn't it just have been on a day when you did your make-up and dressed up in that overpriced dress you bought hundred bad choices ago?

You fumbled with the boxes a little bit before continuing your way up, nevermind the guy whose response you didn't wait for because you needed to get the fuck away from him before you say something weird and off-putting.

Truthfully, you could use the help. But at what cost? A fine man carrying them? Okay, that wasn’t so bad. But what were you supposed to do with... all of that?

As if the universe was indeed trying to prove to you that you were, in fact, not its favorite creation, you almost tripped. And the guy most definitely saw it.

Fuck.

You turned to the side to see him looking at you, concern etching his face. You wanted to convince yourself that it was genuine concern because you'd commit something that would totally change the trajectory of his life if he was to laugh.

But you thought his own unit must be way up as well, as he was going to the same path as you, and if that was the case, he must have been a new neighbor in the complex because you've never seen the man before.

“Well, it’s not that heavy but…” you trailed off, looking blankly at the cardboard boxes. And then at him. "I could use some help, if you don't mind."

The guy just chuckled. Oh wow, his laugh was very... low.

You didn’t even know what the fuck that meant.

“I’ll get them for you.” He said, crossing the small distance between you and taking over the pile, leaving you with nothing in your hands.

“Oh, no, I’ll have that one. It’s fine.” You said, stepping closer to take the other one but he was already securing it in his hold, with stability this time, ready to take off.

He let out a small laugh again and you bit your tongue to not think about how cute he looked. If he was a new tenant, you hoped you didn't cross paths with him ever again.

"It's okay, ma'am."

He's got to stop calling you that before you do something drastic.

“It’s quite far from here, I'm all the way up to three-three-six.” You uttered, pointing forward, a few steps behind the guy, who hummed at what you said.

You quickly caught up to him. "Really, thanks for doing this."

"No problem, it's nothing." He said, smiling at you. Warm and kind. All cute. "I'm all the way up to four-four-six as well."

Your eyes widened. "No way, that's just across mine."

The stranger, apparently your neighbor now, grinned.

"Nice coincidence, huh?"

A sheepish smile formed on your lips. You didn't dwell on that comment too much. Knew it was just small talk.

"If you don't mind me asking, are you a new tenant here?” You asked out of genuine curiosity. You had never seen someone come out of the unit across from you out of all the four years you'd been here.

He nodded, agreeing with what you presumed.

"Yeah. Just temporary, though.”

“Oh…” A surprised sound. Maybe it was a good thing he was only staying temporarily... “I hope I didn’t inconvenience you or anything. You really don’t need to bring the boxes over to my apartment.”

The man just chuckled, dismissing your worry. “You looked like you could use a hand, these boxes are big. Anyway, I was just out checking 'round town. Settling in.”

From the sound of it, you'd assume he was not only moving in in a new apartment complex, but new city as well. Perhaps country? But he most definitely looked Korean. But maybe he came from abroad. Who knows.

“Yeah, there's a really nice coffee shop three blocks away. You should check it out sometime. Ji—my friend and I are obsessed with their iced caramel macchiato. And the boba.”

His brows furrowed in pure interest. “That must've been the one I passed by this morning. I’ll make sure to try that one.”

“You really should. And the barista gives you a brownie on Sundays if he likes you.” You shared like it was gossip, mentally taking note to visit the cafe sometime this week.

“And I'm sure not everybody gets the privilege?” The guy looked at you funny, and that made you laugh.

"Of course, yes! You have to earn it, I think. I feel like I spent over a million there before he started giving me brownies."

"Hope my charm works on him as well," he said, and it caught you off guard.

What did he mean, "as well"? Like he was speaking from the basis that you had charm and so he hoped he had it as well to get the barista to like him?

"Well. He's strict." Was all you could say, before you spotted your apartment. "Hey, I'll take it over from here."

The guy looked over the plated number on the door, reading three-three-six just as you said earlier. Trudging forward, he set the boxes down on the side of the porch.

"Thank you, really. This was really nice of you."

You extended your gratitude once again as if you didn't spend the walk up to here thanking him non-stop, sounding like a broken record. Thank god the guy didn't seem to mind your over-the-top gratitude, only waving his hand.

"Told you, it's fine. You need help with a few boxes again and just ring me up across," He joked, turning around slightly and looking at the door across your unit, Unit 446. It earned a chuckle from you. His face turned serious now, but there was still a charming smile on his face. “Hey. I’m actually pretty new in this town. I was thinking about visiting a few restaurants downtown, maybe you could recommend me some?”

You didn't mean to, but you took note the way his doe eyes seemed to shimmer even behind the frame of his glasses.

“My favorites are just, like, a ten-minute walk away. There’s this restobar near that drugstore when you turn left from this building, right?” The guy nodded, and you were slightly delighted he knew right away. “Yeah, their ramen's great, you'd thank me forever.”

He chuckled at the way you said it and you smiled.

Your interactions with new people were always a range from pure silence to oversharing; talking to them like they were your long lost friend whom you’ve milked goats with in your father’s orchard. It was probably just a product of introversion; not knowing the right approach to socializing.

“Thanks for the recommendation.” He said, a genuine appreciative tone lacing his words.

“You’re welcome. If I can ring you up to help me with some boxes, you can ring me up for some restaurant recommendation.”

"It's an exchange, then. Deal."

"Why not?" You shrugged, laughing along with him when he did so.

You both stood there for a while until seconds passed. You didn’t know exactly how to end the conversation, not that you wanted to, but there was nothing that went to your head to talk about more. And besides, he was probably headed somewhere, so you began to speak.

“Hey, so I’m going in—”

“What about we—”

“Oh.” You stopped. “Sorry, what was that?”

The guy just shook his head. “Nah, you’re probably busy. Thanks for the recommendation again.”

“No, seriously, sorry I didn't hear it the first time...”

“I was just gonna ask about the name of the restaurant.”

“It’s Midday Miso.” You told him, smiling.

“Midday Miso,” The guy nodded, “Yeah. Got it. Thanks again.”

“You’re welcome, and, uh, thanks. For the help.”

You took your keys out from your shorts and you didn’t expect to still see him standing in front of you when you turned around. You jokingly squinted your eyes at him.

“Yeah, you first, get in.” He said with a low chuckle.

It was a little embarrassing and pretty stupid how your heart fluttered a bit at that.

“What a gentleman you are,” You respond with a snort, opening the door to your unit and pushing the boxes inside your apartment. When they were in, you turned to look at the guy again, saying, “Okay, bye for real. See you around. Hope you like Midday Miso if you try it. And the coffee shop. It's called Brown Coffee.”

“See you around.” He did a little wave that made you both laugh before you closed the door.

When the lock system clicked, you stood on your doorway for a little while.

And then fake-cried.

You quickly clicked on Jimin's pinned contact on your phone.

You [5:35pm]: JIMINNNNNNNNN You [5:35pm]: POP EMERGENCY You [5:35pm]: POP EMERGENCY BITCH IF U DONT RESPOND You [5:36pm]: I HAVE A DIABOLICAL CRUSH AND ITS GOING IN THE MEMOIRRRRRR

It wasn’t even one full minute when Jimin replied.

cuntress #1 [5:37pm]: oh my god SHUT UP!!! im at a training program for ghis stupid ass company my fathers been running fir 600 years cuntress #1 [5:37pm]: whats up cuntress #1 [5:38pm]: its always a crush and never a job 😒

You [5:39pm]: yeh so remember when i told u im oacking up my vagina last summer

cuntress #1 [5:39pm]: many such times

You [5:40pm]: 🖕 You [5:40pm]: SO raincheck!!! You [5:41pm]: COZ I just met a fine man at my apartment AND flirted with him You [5:41pm]: i think

cuntress #1 [5:42pm]: ohhhhh OK???? cuntress #1 [5:43pm]: cuntress #2 flirting???? now thats not uninteresting go on while i fake a restroom break 👀

You [5:45pm]: this story is not for the imessages baby get ur ass up and ICE CREAM WITH ME NOW.

cuntress #1 [5:46pm]: omg 😭😭😭😭 cuntress #1 [5:46pm]: i’ll be off 7:30pm wait for me 😭😭😭 cuntress #1 [5:47pm]: i also have #stories to tell

You [5:49pm]: 🤭

There must be a time where you finally grow up and learn to cook.

You were a twenty-eight-year-old woman and yet, your meals sadly ranged from instant noodles, canned goods, and food from the nearby twenty-four-hour provision shop. Sometimes, you had the gall to cook something from scratch—but with scratch you meant scratching off the labels from food take-outs and reheating them in your microwave.

Jimin had told you one time you would die at twenty-nine with your lifestyle. You told him he couldn't tell you shit because he didn't know how to cook either, he just worked out and ate healthy stuff, and you did, too! But Jimin knew you, and in an evil manner, clocked you with, "Buying fresh produce and not consuming them does not count as healthy living."

Anyway, you never understood why you were so bad at cooking. Your mother, as you remembered her, was decent at it but you guessed it was because she never really taught you and you never really bothered, either. In some immature way of thinking, you'd like to think it was a win for feminism as you were battling patriarchal standards by not conforming to stereotypical "female" qualities. But deep inside, you knew cooking should be a survival skill.

Well, maybe Jimin was right and you would indeed die at the ripe age of twenty-nine. On the bright side, at least you wouldn't have to pay off your student loans and your monthly rent.

In relation, not knowing how to cook meant impractical visits to the restaurant, and that was how you ended up at Midday Miso for dinner after your shift.

It was only a little over seven pm when you entered the restaurant, the ahjumma quickly greeting you and preparing your usual, a sign of familiarity that implied your countless visits ever since moving in at your current apartment building.

Regular visits meant usual sitting spot, and in your case, it was the high stools that faced the glass walls of the restaurant's facade where you could see the busy street making that little area of the town alive.

As minutes overlapped with one another, your food was served and you were hit with the waft of the restaurant's delightful signature beef ramen and bibimbap that the ahjumma made sure to add extra beef on.

Eating with a happy heart made you feel like nothing in the world mattered but you and the food before you, so, you didn't pay attention to the person who was coming to your direction and eventually sat beside you, but what caught you off guard was when said person suddenly said,

"Hi."

When you turned to the side to see who it was, your eyes widened as you said in both recognition and surprise, "Unit 446?"

"That's me." He, Unit 446—in the flesh—said with a low chuckle, twisting himself so that he was sat appropriately on the high stool. Still, his body leaned towards you when he continued to say, "Fancy seeing you here."

You grinned, flattered at the casualness of his approach.

"Same to you. I wonder who told you about this local gem."

He pursed his lips. "A nice neighbor across my place... whom I still don't know the name of."

"Oh, shoot!" You'd face-palm right now if he wasn't looking, but truthfully, you didn't even think about that! You've just been referring to him as the Staircase Guy slash Neighbor 446 in your head and when you told Jimin about him. You laughed at the thought. "That neighbor of yours is __."

Neighbor 446 nodded and extended his hand to you

"I'm Jungkook."

It was a little silly but you shook hands, anyway, and knowing it was, indeed, silly, you both laughed together at your joint connection.

Jungkook. Huh. Not exactly a common Korean name, but it wasn't rare either. The name does ring a bell though, felt like you've heard it somewhere before.

You brushed off the familiarity as inconsequential.

Unlike the completely casual attire he adorned the first time that you met him, he was now in some sleek slacks and a white polo which sleeves were ridden up half high, which exposed the vines of ink on his right arm once again. There's a coat that hung around the back of his chair, and he had forgone the glasses this time around, which was a bit of a shame on the part of your brain that might have a silly crush on him.

Jungkook's clothes seemed to mirror your own business casual ensemble, and that made you think about what he possibly did for a living. Maybe he worked a corporate job just like you, and the prospect might have made you down a little—only because as far as you were concerned, corporate people weren't the most pleasant people you could encounter—but it was not something you dwelled on too much because you couldn't care less. If Jungkook was corporate, he sure didn't seem to be one the way he was.

Besides, you wouldn't be the one to bring up the depressing and aggravating conversation about gross grown-up things like... jobs... Eurgh. You both could just talk about the weather or how insane the ahjumma's ramen tasted for eternity.

"Well, hello, Jungkook." You greeted him. All warm and soft, testing the syllables of his name on your tongue. Rolled off well enough. He had a nice name that sure fit his face for some reason.

"Hi, __." He mirrored the soft smile on your lips, and just as he said it, the ahjumma was heading towards your direction to give him his order.

In that usual way grandmas reacted, the ahjumma gasped audibly—and dramatically, might you add—upon seeing Jungkook, but what she said next made you want to dig a hole under your seat.

"__-dear! Is this young man your boyfriend?"

Good thing you weren't consuming anything as of that moment, because it would've entered the wrong track.

"Ahjumma!" You laughed, totally not authentic at all because your face didn't match it, looking at Jungkook who just sent a shy smile her way.

Ahjumma must have seen you both talking to each other and had completely jumped to a conclusion. An insane one at that! 

Shaking your head, you clarified, "This is Jungkook. A friend. He's new in town and checking out all the stuff around here. I recommended him this place."

You saw Jungkook nodding along with your words while he helped her set his table.

The ahjumma just shook her head. "I apologize, then," She looked at Jungkook and as if gossiping with him, whispered in a not very subtle way, "I keep on telling this girl to date already! Such young beauty shouldn't be wasted, you know."

A tsk-ing sound made its way through her mouth, and as much as you were starting to feel embarrassed that she was telling on you on Jungkook—who was literally a stranger to you a day ago and whom you may have a teeny tiny bit of crush on—you knew ahjumma did not have any malicious intent and just chose to laugh the whole thing off.

You heard Jungkook do the same.

This was ridiculous.

"Ahjumma, I told you, you're gonna be the first one to know when I date. For now I'm just a part-time accountant and a full-time promoter of Midday Miso." You pout at her, trying to dodge the topic of romance altogether.

Not in front of Jungkook.

"Ayee," She gave you a side-eye. "Fine. I'll bring over some extra beef."

You mouthed an enthusiastic "yes!" and raised your fist in the air with excitement, and Jungkook looked at the interaction with a smile on his face.

As the ahjumma walked away, you looked over at him.

"I'm glad you came by—" You identified his order to be the same one you used to be obsessed with the first few months you came to the restaurant. "—and ordered their best seller. You sure know how to be a tourist."

"Looked good on the menu. The ahjumma also seems to be nice. Seems like she's a close friend, huh?" Jungkook said.

"Totally."

And it was the truth. There was just something about ahjumma that made you feel reminiscent about the grandmother you've never had. Ever since you moved in and became a regular at this place, it felt like she's taken care of you and your relationship had been special since.

"This is really good." Jungkook commented after having his second bite, and you nodded in agreement. "She was serious about the beef thing?"

You chuckled at the mention. "Yeah, she always gives me extra."

"You just always get free stuff around these areas?" Jungkook joked which earned a hearty laugh from you. You remembered telling him about the free brownie on Sundays at Brown Coffee, a little bit surprised he recalled that.

"Now that you said that, I actually do." You proudly shared. You've been in this town for so long that the various faces just went from familiar to friends.

Jungkook nodded, his face showing amusement.

"I have to learn your ways, then."

"The secret to that is be incompetent at cooking. It means it's either take-out or eat out. Business owners around here have no choice but to see me every three days because I can't cook my own meal."

You could see Jungkook's amusement growing every second, and to add faux insult to injury, he joked, "Oh, bummer."

You decided to ride along with that.

"You mean you're a good cook? That's the real bummer! And here I thought we were bonding." You said, purposefully trying to sound scandalous at his implication of being a good cook.

He shook his head instantly, chuckling. "Okay, nah. I'm not that good. Just decent. But I'll have you know I can make a mean tangsuyuk. Any other complicated stuff is out the window, so there, we are bonding."

"I appreciate that you're under the assumption that I know where to begin with the non-complicated stuff. You're already putting way too much faith in me."

"I seriously doubt that." Jungkook laughed once again.

"You know what my friend tells me? That I'd die at twenty-nine because I don't know how to cook."

Jungkook almost keeled over hearing you say the words, and as much as you were amused at his own amusement, you decided to further add on the joke because you were enjoying this way too much.

"Wow. I wouldn't doubt you'd be an accessory to my murder the way you're laughing way too hard at my impending death. That's next year, you know."

Jungkook reached over for the glass of water and drank it. While he did so, the ahjumma had come over to give you the beef she promised. You did not forgot to thank her as soon as she went away. 

You did hope Jungkook didn't notice the malicious wink she sent your way.

"Fuck, sorry." Jungkook's laughter had gone down this time, but his eyes still showed a hint of mirth when he asked, "You're twenty-eight, then?"

You nodded. "Yep." Unfortunately, you thought.

"Oh, that's actually surprising."

A gasp left your mouth. Jungkook was quick to correct himself.

"I meant it's surprising because I thought you were way younger."

Oh.

"Don't flatter me. I won't share my extra beef with you."

"I thought—" He shrugged. "—Early twenties."

"I'm guessing you are in your early twenties." You joked back.

"Okay, now, don't flatter me. I know how old I look." Jungkook said with a dismissive tone, but nevertheless light-hearted. Just like how this whole thing was going.

God, you were so in awe of how good he was at talking to you that he was practically bringing out the extrovert in you you only ever show to exclusive people like Jimin.

"So, you're like, fifty, then?"

Incredulous, Jungkook burst into laughter. "Wow."

"Sorry, just that you sounded like you were five years from retirement! Anyway, you look like we're the same age?"

He shook his head. "Three years older. Turning thirty-one later this year."

Jaw dropped. Not physically, but mentally.

"Oh wow, you're basically—" a fucking DILF! What the hell!

Thankfully you managed to cut yourself off before Jungkook could think you were way off your rocks and embarrass yourself in front of him for eternity. You could just hear Jimin from miles away telling you off about calling thirty-year-old men DILFs even though you didn't know if they had a child.

What do you mean this guy was thirty and why did that just make him even hotter in your head... He's got to stop this madness before you do something completely incomprehensible.

"—A senior." Was the lame thing you came up with to finish your sentence.

"Ouch." Jungkook said, but his word was completely opposite to the expression he was wearing on his face the way he just couldn't suppress the grin that had been visible on his mouth since you started talking.

You brought your hands up.

"Totally didn't mean that in a negative way."

Which was the entire truth. So far, the things you knew about him was that he had tattoos, a nice body, a nice personality, good ass freaking conversationalist, and that he was thirty! Thirty! As in, the peak of male hotness. The evil psychological concept of most men only getting hotter as they age.

"I'm sure, I'm sure," Jungkok nodded. "By the way, are you heading out after this?"

"Oh, yeah. Don't have anywhere else to go. I have a nine A.M tomorrow so..." you shrugged, and he nodded in understanding.

"You work as an accountant, right, from what you told the ahjumma?" Jungkook asked you curiously.

"Yeah... it's a very tedious job." You grimaced a little bit. "What about you?"

He tilted his head a bit, picking up a dumpling on his plate. "I'm a software engineer."

"Oh, that's cool."

You nodded to yourself while you processed what he said.

Works in fucking tech; another thing you just learned about him. 

You weren't actively seeking out guys in tech, but why did they seem to come to you voluntarily? God forbid you saw someone who wasn't in there! Was every man working in tech now? Was Jimin really only being truthful when he said they were exactly your type?

"Have you made any software or is that, like, a wrong assumption about you guys?"

Jungkook merely chuckled at your retort.

"Not entirely, no. I've designed a few software in college—I'm still doing it. I'm just currently doing more business stuff now." He gave you a sheepish smile. "You?"

"Well, it's just... you know—I actually work at a tech company. I'm a junior accountant. And, uh, nothing interesting, really. You get to do cool math like programming, and I get to do boring math like calculating money I don't have. It's always a great day at work." You said, couldn't help the laugh that skipped your mouth at your own sarcasm.

Nothing like joking about hating your job to someone who you just met yesterday.

"Programming and coding are not all that, either. It's tedious and... it's just a really boring job. But... it all pays the bills."

You chuckled.

"Yeah. Totally."

Without minding it, you raised the small glass of soju, initiating a toast, one that Jungkook understood immediately and met you in the middle of it.

The night was still you when you walked out of Midday Miso, but unlike any other nights, it was with Jungkook this time walking beside you.

"So you just—what—hid him for three months?"

"Well, yes! I wasn't about to get a notice for that! And besides, he was really cute. But he's in good hands now, his owner still sends me pictures of him. He's very grown and big."

"That's insane."

You peered at Jungkook who watched you in awe as you told him about the story of Alfredo, the cat whom you rescued on your way home from work a year ago. The landlady obviously had her fair share of rules and regulations in her building, and keeping pets was an absolute no, which was a shame. Definitely wasn't a shame when you first just moved in the complex, but things got lonely sometimes when you were living alone and company was almost a luxury.

Anyway, as told, you managed to keep Alfredo out of the landlady's sight until you found a highly qualified parent on some online forum who you still kept in contact with to this day.

But as you watched Jungkook, you noticed the way his expression fell into something concerning. He looked worried, which made you feel the same way as a result.

"What are you thinking?" You asked him curiously.

"Oh, nah, I was just... thinking. See, I actually have a dog."

"Oh!" You looked at him wide-eyed.

He has a dog; another thing about Jungkook that would qualify him on the regular rounds of hot boy of the month on Twitter dot com. 

"Yeah."

"You didn't read the terms and conditions of the building?" Your eyebrows formed a concerned expression.

Jungkook chuckled and shook his head. "I did. I just—suddenly thought about him, is all. He's being taken care of some place. But, you know, I missed him, and I was thinking about getting him here and showing him around my new place and all that."

"Oh... that's a bummer, then. The landlady's strict, even with the small dogs, can you imagine? Is he small, by the way, your dog?

"He's a Doberman, so definitely a big one."

"He must be really cute. What's his name?"

"Bam." He smiled at you, and you could totally see the pride showing on his face at the mention of his dog. And with a tone that you could only identify as someone who's suppressing his enthusiasm a little bit, he added, "You wanna see a picture of him?"

"Sure!"

Jungkook took out his phone from his pocket and showed you images of a big, chocolate brown dog. Bam definitely wasn't like the other regular Dobermans you'd see around. His ears weren't cropped, and his tail wasn't docked either. You didn't know if the lack of surgery was intentional from his side, but you'd like to think he kept it that way because he knew it hurt the dog greatly. From how you've been knowing him, you were certain he just didn't want to put his dog under unnecessary pain, which was honestly heartwarming to think about.

Jungkook was becoming way too good to be true in you head little by little.

"Awe, he's adorable!" You cooed, especially when he swiped through the picture of his pet, Bam, as a pup in what seemed to be Jungkook's arms based on the familiar tattoos that peeked from the exposed arm as seen on the picture. The tattoos also seemed to be new at that time as well, considering that the skin was still yet to be fully covered like now.

"I'm flattered you think that."

"Where is he, by the way? If you don't mind me asking."

"He's at a... friend's place in New York. He's not very good at flying so I didn't bring him with me here, and I thought, I'll only be here for three months, anyway, so." Jungkook shrugged.

Three months. Well. He did say he was only staying here temporarily.

You nodded. "For business, right?"

"Yeah, yeah."

"You grew up there?" You kicked the stone that was caught at the tip of your shoe, putting your fists in the deeper part of your coat's pockets. Summer may be hot during daytime, but it sure as hell was cold on nights like these.

"Nah, I'm from Busan. Flew to California for college and have been there since. Until now, that is."

Jimin was also from Busan, you thought. Though he said they only lived there for a few years until his parents moved to Seoul, but he made sure to visit his hometown every now and then. Most of the time, he made you come with him which you never had complaints about. You lived in the city all your life so going there, especially in the more urbanized area where you and Jimin stayed. Felt like fresh air—which Busan had, quite literally.

"My best friend's from Busan too."

"Really? What about you?"

You chuckled before answering, "I, unfortunately, did not come from any interesting place. Born and raised in Seoul, through and through. Though my mom told me she lived in Daegu for many years prior to having me."

"Seoul is an interesting place, though."

"Eh. It's okay." You shrugged, and your nonchalance made you both laugh.

The walk to your apartment building from Midday Miso was not that far. Still, it was five blocks away and while you and Jungkook were currently sharing conversation together and seemingly walking the same path, you weren't sure if you were both walking together there.

As if he read your mind, he suddenly spoke after a few minutes of comfortable silence.

"You mind if we walk together to the building?"

You decided to joke to get the jittery feeling out of your system.

"Scared of the dark, Jungkook?"

"Sure... my five-eleven self is."

You squinted your eyes at him. He did not just go there!

"Is that a slight against my height because I'm five-seven, mind you."

Jungkook stopped in his tracks which made you do the same, and you watched as he put his hand on his waist while the other reach up to his face to place a finger over his chin, seemingly assessing you up and down. You looked at him incredulously.

"You're bumping your height to two inches." He seriously said.

You gasped audibly.

"Oh, shut up,"

You rolled your eyes and turned your back at him, continuing your walk as you heard him behind you bursting in laughter at your reaction.

"I'm kidding!"

You first met Jimin at a college party. He was five years older than you, supposedly out of college by the time you attended, but he always had a problem with rebellion–what with his ragged relationship with his parents, he would intentionally flunk his courses as a message to them that he'd always be a black sheep and a proud one at that, hoping it would be enough to convey that they could not force him to be the heir of their company. (Obviously, it had taken him nowhere, given that he was now currently attending a training program to work at said company).

But maybe it was a blessing in disguise that he was set back to five years for graduation. Because you got to know him, and he got to know you.

On the outside, you might look like the total opposite of each other–because Jimin was the definition of extroversion who wasn't afraid to put himself out there–while you, admittedly, were more reserved and usually shied away from any public attention.

As much as you were welcoming to a lot of people, you didn't have a lot of close friends growing up–at least not the kind of friends you'd see on TV shows–but when Jimin came to your life, you clicked so instantly you could not even figure out where you two exactly began.

The instant way you two clicked, you realized, was like your relationship with Jungkook nowadays.

Ever since that night at Midday Miso, you've been seeing a lot of each other. Granted that it was only in the same place, same time. You'd usually arrive past seven and he, a few minutes later. Jungkook, cladded in his slacks and long-sleeved polo, was becoming a usual sight after a shift, and your business casual clothes was turning as one for him as well.

Your usual seating spot became his as nights passed, and ahjumma, thank God, no longer asked you if he was your boyfriend. You were glad that she was slowly getting acquainted with him though, greeting him with a friendlier smile and tone reserved only for customers like you when he entered the restaurant, and Jungkook seemed to welcome the newfound friendship wholeheartedly.

On the consecutive nights you'd spent with him, it was almost as if you lived quite the same life. Though, you didn't know when he went to work. In fact, you didn't see him during the mornings even though in theory, it could be easy, granted that you both lived across each other. But strangely enough, you'd never caught him retiring to his flat to go to the bus station. You assumed he started earlier than you or way later.

You never asked, it never came up either.

Still, there was some sort of tranquility in the thought that you could spend some time with someone after your shift and just talk about whatever–and whatever meant a lot of things. Random at best. You once told him about the first raccoon you met in your life, and he told you all about the lioness he got to watch when he went to a South Saharan trip a few years ago.

Sometimes, the conversation went around what happened in the office that day. Jungkook noticed the little blot of ink on the cuff of your baby blue long sleeves, and you told him about the jammed printer in the accounting department. He'd told you later on about how he almost fucked up a report, said he was nervous because he was taking on a new role in the office.

Those moments were shared in long walks from Midday Miso to your apartment building, because naturally, you both established a small tradition of walking home together after a night of eating your hearts out at ahjumma's restaurant.

It was a rather sweet gesture, if you were honest to yourself. But you chose not to linger too much on the romantic thoughts that floated in your head, especially when you'd notice the way he made sure to walk on the outer side of the sidewalk, and when your fingers got too close the tips almost touched.

Because Jungkook, for how objectively good looking he was, was more than just his pretty face and physique.

He was kind and funny and genuine unlike any other straight men you've met in your life. Maybe the bar was low, but for all the times you've gotten to talk to him, he never showed any signs of ego most men would by the second hour of your meeting.

In the dating scene as an adult, a lot of men would come up to a date talking about how high they were placed at their company's hierarchy and how much they made in a month, and when they hear about yours, they'd always have a backhanded comment about how "you could only go up from there, right?" and those moments were always a bummer. Yawn-inducing, to be more accurate. Men and their predictability was boring and it was the reason why you'd declare to Jimin almost every time you got home from a date that you were retired from looking for them because most men just plainly fucking sucked.

But with Jungkook... was it different.

You found he didn't talk a lot, and one time you asked him if you were doing it–the talking–way too much, but he just chuckled and told you that he didn't mind.

Later on, you learned that he was just more of a listener rather than a talker, and that was not only a pure assumption of yours because he did listen attentively, alright. As for all the random things you've told him about, you never expected him to recall a single thing, not until one time when you passed by a food truck.

"Hey, didn't you say you like sundae?" Jungkook asked, and when you followed where his eyes were, it was at the food truck parked just a few steps ahead from where you both were.

"I do... wow. It's been so long since I saw a food truck around here." You said, following his steps towards the vehicle.

They had tables to dine in, and even if you were still full from eating at Midday Miso that night, the sundae was just too gratifying to decline. Jungkook was the same with the tteokbokki on his small plate, telling you he missed eating at one of these things, as they didn't exactly have anything like this abroad.

After he paid for the food (and of course not without a long, silly, light-hearted argument about it), he came back with two sticks of Melona ice pops which you looked at with widened eyes, animated expression written all over your face especially when he thrusted the purple yam flavor to you.

"Oh my god, how do they have these?"

"I was surprised as well... this is the first time in a while I'm eating this again." Jungkook said and then gestured to the ice pop in your hand, "You like the purple yam, right?"

"Yeah!"

You were about to ask him how he knew, but then you briefly remembered that one time you had a passionate rant about people hating on purple yam ice cream and why they weren't right.

And as you looked at Jungkook, he seemed to remember it all too well.

Jungkook showed genuine interest in the things you'd tell him about. He'd visit the cafes and restaurants you recommended to him as much as he could, and because you've come to exchange numbers with him eventually after almost two weeks of casually hanging out, they sometimes came during lunch break.

1 message received from Jungkook (Unit 446)

That day, you only exchanged contacts the other night, so seeing him on your phone so quickly like that caught you by surprise. It was welcomed though.

Jungkook (Unit 446) [12:36pm]: I went to Cafe Heaven for lunch and loved their ice americano

As soon as you read the first message, another one came.

Jungkook (Unit 446) [12:36pm]: This is Jungkook by the way :)

You laughed at his introduction. As if he didn't see you type his name on your phone last night–like he didn't jokingly complain about you putting the (Unit 446) in there but giving in eventually and also adding (Unit 336) to yours in his own contacts.

You [12:38pm]: Hi Jungkook! You [12:38pm]: im glad u went!!! u should also try their fettuccine alfredo

Seconds later, he sent a picture of the dish you just mentioned which put a smile on your face.

Jungkook (Unit 446) [12:39pm]: i'll get my refund from you if this doesnt taste good

You [12:40pm]: 1 week of friendship and ur already ripping me off 🤐

Jungkook (Unit 446) [12:40pm]: 😁 Jungkook (Unit 446) [12:40pm]: first bite Jungkook (Unit 446) [12:41pm]: second bite

What was he on, you didn't know. But you were glad that he was slowly coming around, his jokes getting more... how would you say it... less polite? He just stopped apologizing after he said them! He usually would in the first few days, but now in your newfound closeness, it was like you were out of that stage where you tiptoed around each other still, feeling the other one out, trying to figure them out, all that stuff.

Nowadays, it was just more natural. Smooth-sailing. Paradoxical, almost, because of how the relationship felt more defined as well as loose.

You found you liked it that way. 

Jungkook (Unit 446) [12:42pm]: I like it 👍🏻

And to your surprise, he sent you a picture of him, indeed, holding a thumbs up.

You'd like to think you were an expert on going along with the tide because even though you would be classified as introvert by most, you did pretty well in forming relationships with people–granted, most of them were fleeting, at best, hence the lack of bigger circles in most of your life–but you were great with making friends, regardless. 

And maybe it was how you ended up with this whole thing with Jungkook. Because you were friendly and open, although you wouldn't dare to take all credits because as you mentioned before, he was a great conversationalist.

He didn't talk much as you said, but he didn't ever make you feel like you were talking way too much because he made sure that you knew he was listening, and when he talked, it was always engaging; conversations with him transitioned to different subjects in perfect seugue you would never noticed how you jumped from Melona ice pops to the existential dread you fought every morning before going to work.   

When it came to humor, Jungkook's was different from Jimin's, of course, and your dynamic with your best friend could never be replicated with somebody else but Jungkook was close to truly becoming your friend, and for that, it was getting easier to ignore his handsome face.

You may have had an embarrassing moment of panicking mentally at seeing such a man in the first meeting, but nowadays, you could hold a conversation with him without thinking how hot he was.

Dare you say, you were starting to think more platonically about him rather than romantically. As you said, you were an expert on going along with the tide.

Or maybe that was too soon a declaration, because there were moments, like now, when you were certain juvenile flirting insisted on happening between you, steering you clear from completely feeling wholly platonic about Jungkook.

"I certainly have a bigger hand than you."

As if you didn't know that, Jungkook brought his hand up to show you it. Confused but not totally minding the whole thing, you proceeded to extend your own hand towards his, pressing them both together. Predictably, his hand could have engulfed the entirety of your own.

Jungkook laughed at the sight, and you didn't know exactly who broke the physical contact first but you were glad it was over as soon as it started.

But you couldn't have forgotten the electric zap along your spine when your hand got so close like that to his. Couldn't have ignored the hot feeling in your cheeks when you were made aware of what you just did.

Wow.

Were you guys flirting? Was he flirting? It was flirting, right? Juvenile, at best, because this was what kids did in high school! And Jungkook's hand was so...

You never imagined what it felt like–never even crossed your mind until now. Expectations about how his hand felt never formed in your head because you sure as hell never thought about that kind of thing happening in the first place, but Jungkook's hand was the right balance of soft and hard. Calloused in a way most men's hands naturally were, and soft like enough comfort when held and touched.

It wasn't clammy, thank god, but you also wouldn't have thought he had clammy hands, solely because he just looked like he didn't. But god, was it big.

And my goodness, did it make you feel things.

You drank your water fast and cleared your throat, subtly, so that he didn't think too much of it.

"O-okay, but that's just genetics. Doesn't mean you could throw stronger punches."

You said in retaliation to one of your useless debates which now covered the coin-operated boxing arcade machine across the bus station nearby.

Jungkook leaned back against the monobloc chair that was definitely way too flimsy for him.

You were currently hanging out at the dining area of the food truck you came across a few days ago, forgoing Midday Miso for the night. Lately, Jungkook and you have been exploring a few more places other than there. You've tried other restaurants nearby, but ultimately, Midday Miso was still the top favorite and the food truck was becoming a staple in lieu of its convenience and just the overall vibe of eating outside and feeling the breeze of summer night air.

"You got me curious about the boxing machine." Jungkook said, crossing his arms.

"I held the highest score there for like a week, you know? Only did it though to impress the kids who liked to watch."

At that, Jungkook's face lit up in interest.

"We should do that sometime."

"Oh... I see, I see. You wanna impress the kids, too?" You playfully accused, squinting your eyes at him.

He chuckled and waved you off.

"It can be a challenge." Jungkook shrugged and looked at you with a hint of mirth in his eyes.

You let out a puff of breath, amused at his obvious antics.

"What's the catch?"

"Well... free boba delivered to your door for a week if you get the higher score. How's that sound?" He looked at you expectantly.

You chuckled before saying, "I'm gonna rip you off so bad, Jungkook."

"Only if you win, though." He said with a mischievous smirk. 

"Oh, wow. When, you mean. When I win. So what's in it for you?" You leaned your elbow on the table and studied his face.

He looked at you for a while, then, the smirk from earlier was wiped off and exchanged with a much gentler smile.

"Home-cooked dinner at my place next week Friday."

Your eyebrows met.

"You want me to cook you something? Jungkook, do you have a death wish? I may either give you unintentional food poisoning or burn your house down, there's no in between."

"No," Jungkook laughed at your insane conclusion. "Sorry, I should've specified. I mean if you lose, I'll be cooking us a meal at my place."

"Oh."

You were left staring at him, a bit dumbfounded.

He just said he wanted to cook you guys a meal. At his place.

He was inviting you to his place. His personal space.

"It won't be better than Midday Miso but I think I can keep up." Jungkook added with a sheepish smile and scratched the back of his head in that seemingly boyish manner.

"Sure..." you responded, a bit delayed, much to your effort of not showing your big surprise at his offer. Before he noticed the way you were not believing what you heard, you chose to quip in a (hopefully) cheeky, "That is if you win, though."

Jungkook only hummed and then nodded.

"If I win."

He said, smiling at you.

This was dangerous.

The whole thing was teetering to something that was not very platonic, and just as you were starting to think this whole thing was!

Jimin always told you that you were bad at flirting, but in your defense, how were you supposed to know, exactly, if someone was flirting with you? A lot of people were friendly like that! Jungkook was maybe like that? Had you shown interest and he noticed so now he was playing into it? But that would be uncharacteristic of him. You didn't think he'd be the type to do something cruel like that...

But the tide was always rising and falling, they said, and the good thing was; you knew how to go along with the current.

So you did what you do best.

"Would you like to donate to the poor?"

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but there's a chance this card's gonna decline because I am the poor."

The cashier looked you in the eye with an even more impassive look than the one she had before you got your turn on the counter.

"Could've just said no." She said, punching your order away and you had to shamefully swipe your card and leave to go over where Jimin was.

"The cashier just snubbed me for being poor." You complained to Jimin, moving your coat to the next seat and settling in in yours.

Jimin took a sip from his latte and looked at you dead in the eye and said, "I'll call the manager if you want."

"Fuck off." You retaliated immediately. Jimin snorted at your way too predictable response.

See, this has happened way too many times more than what your fingers could count. You could not even pinpoint the exact time when Jimin started to joke about going full-on Karen-mode when you complained about a single little thing at the places you went to.

Anyway, you were currently on a lunch break when Jimin texted to see if you were free. What better way to spend your lunch than with your best friend? The company's canteen food was getting tired and they hiked up their prices. Your office's kitchen also ran out of Solhee's – your coworker – biscuits and so you thought you had to make do of Jimin's money for that day. You told him your motives yourself and as a petty retort, he told you to pay for your own pasta — at a café that was way too expensive for its own good.

You stole a bite off his churros, and predictably, he rolled his eyes at you.

"Why'd you want to see me, by the way? What's up? You don't have training?" you glanced at your wristwatch, reading 12:40pm.

Soon, you were casually taking over his plate of churros. For how ridiculously priced it was, it sure tasted good as hell.

"I got the day off." Jimin shrugged.

You eyed him suspiciously almost immediately.

"Did you really...?"

It was a few seconds before Jimin gave in and took back his plate.

"Okay, no, I ditched the training today but for the record it's for a very important reason."

You put your hand over your chest and contorted your face in an awed, touched expression.

"The important reason being... meeting me?"

"Ew, no," Was Jimin's quick, disgusted, response – which earned a laugh from you as usual.

From your peripheral vision, you saw the waiter heading towards your direction and so you waited for him to come over and serve you your pasta and frappe. After thanking him, you huddled closer to your best friend and asked, "Okay, what is it then?"

Jimi pursed his lips, making your eyebrows meet.

"It's kinda... bummer news."

"You're pregnant?"

"No, you'd be way too happy and I can't be a single dad," He shook his head as if not even wanting to imagine that.

"Namjoon looks like he's gonna take care of it with you." You sing-sang, sipping on your coffee and winking at him indiscreetly – emphasis on indiscreetly because you never knew how to wink properly.

What you did not expect, was the look on Jimin's face when you mentioned Namjoon.

"Well..." He trailed off, and you waited for it curiously; anticipating his impending answer in return because your conversation was always quick-witted like that. But right now, Jimin's expression was devoid of any jokes. 

Not something you expected when you just mentioned his boyfriend.

"I— did something happen?" You quickly dropped the teasing tone and exchanged it with a concerned one, eyes looking at him with worry.

Jimin closed his eyes for a while and let out a deep breath. "See, that's the bummer news."

"Do you want to tell me? Or we can just—"

He cut you off before you could even finish your sentence. But he did it with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes – and this was Jimin. His eyes did not not reach his eyes when he smiled!

"He's going to Italy."

"Oh."

When the pause prolonged for over a minute, with you looking at him mouth agape, Jimin let out a heavy sigh once again and shook his head.

"I know. It's work... and I always understood that. He travels a lot and we're both okay with it. But it was usually just around the country, not another continent. I mean, what did he mean Italy? And that's not even the worst part. He knew a month ago he was going but he only told me two days ago and he's leaving Thursday," Jimin looked at you to take a pause, seemingly trying to look for a reaction.

You thought, that's tomorrow.

As if he read your mind, he nodded, sounding almost defeated.

"I know."

"Oh, Jimin..." You said, not exactly knowing what to say.

Jimin and Namjoon had been together for over a year. At least, officially, because they spent the last three years just casually hooking up on and off. You liked them together and had been more than glad when they finally put a label to it – exactly why you knew Namjoon enough to not badmouth him when you usually would men Jimin usually dated. You knew perfectly well that Namjoon genuinely cared about your best friend and he loved him. So if Jimin was at a loss for this obvious mistake on his boyfriend's part, even more so you were.

"He's been blowing up my phone ever since." Jimin added, glancing at his phone on the table. "Intentionally didn't charge my phone today so I don't receive his calls and texts."

That prompted you to remember the message you received from Namjoon last night.

"Oh, that's why he texted me yesterday. He asked about you, and I told you through text but you didn't answer." Things were starting to make sense now, and as you observed Jimin's face, they were getting clearer. "You never talked since?"

Jimin pursed his lips. He took his coffee back to his mouth and sipped while looking away. "Nope."

"Jimin." You tilted your head.

He looked at you again, and you knew exactly that he was thinking the same thing as you: It was within his right to feel off about what Namjoon did, but regardless; Jimin was being a little petty, and he needed to communicate with his boyfriend instead of giving him the cold shoulder.

There was a pout that formed on Jimin's lips right after.

"I know. I just..."

"He could've told you sooner?" He nodded at your words. You mirrored that. "He should have. Italy is not Busan – it's not just a train ride away."

Jimin sighed, looking exasperated now. "I told him that exactly. I'm not even mad he's going to Italy, I just think I deserve to know right after he was told about it."

You nodded. "You should really talk. It sounds like he wants to apologize, anyway, given that he's now trying to talk to me to get through you."

"Sorry you got caught up in this. I'm gonna talk to him about it."

"Eh, it's fine. Joon and I are also friends, you know?" You shrugged, genuinely not minding Namjoon coming to you. 

You liked Namjoon and thought that he was the perfect match for Jimin. They were cute together and just seemed to... take the best out of each other. You'd go to any lengths to keep them together, as long as Jimin wanted Namjoon and as his boyfriend. You've seen Jimin go from relationships to relationships, some just fleeting and simple dalliances, and most destructive and were just... not good for him. You've never seen your best friend truly happy and committed in a romantic relationship other than with Namjoon, and as someone who cared about him, you'd do a lot of things to make him happy.

"Here's another thing, his flight is tomorrow at 11:30pm in the evening. Mom's birthday dinner is at 10." Jimin usually had his composure everytime, and it was very rarely you'd see him show any worry because he liked everybody to think he was in control of every situation. You smiled. Classic Jimin. He'd only ever show his true nature to you though, and that was exactly why he looked at you with worried eyes and continued to say, "I really wanna be there to send him off."

The call time for his mother's party was at 10 and naturally people would start swarming in way past that time. If Jimin were to sneak out way too early, you knew his mother was not going to be happy about it and his father would give him an even bigger shit for it. Sure, he could cancel, but what would he say? That their supposed cishet son is sending off his boyfriend at the airport for the night? He couldn't reason work either because he didn't exactly have one.

After having his wrongful DUI accusation last spring– which was actually already settled, on the grounds that it was definitely not DUI and the owner of the other car just overreacted to a fender bender, the media was adamant on tactically using that to taint his family's image and it unfortunately succeeded – hence, why Jimin had been laying low these past few months; going to training programs, obeying his parents more than usual, doing what they wanted...

You sighed. Your best friend deserved so much better.

"Don't worry, I'll find a way to get us to leave early." You told him after awhile.

Jimin arched his brow, intrigued.

Waving him off, you said, "I can fake something."

As if hearing some magic words, Jimin suddenly perked up.

"No way you're using the diarrhea card?"

Giving him a dirty look, you shook your head. "Nah, not during a dinner party. It's gotta be something new and less... gross."

"Oh, oh!" Jimin put a finger over his lip. "What about a sprained ankle? Can you pull that off?"

You deadpanned. "Okay, you ought to pay me more if you want me to do that."

"I can, but I won't. Stop ripping me off, I'm your best friend."

"Jimin, I'll save you from your family. I'm great at this." You said jokingly, but you hoped that he knew you weren't just jesting and were serious about it.

With the appreciation masking your best friend's face, though, you knew he got the message right away, but as you looked at him longer, you realize that he was about to say something and you quickly pulled back, shaking your head.

Jimin quickly reacted. "No! You know what, I'm gonna say it—"

"Don't say it." You quickly cut him off, giggling while you shake your cup of coffee.

"You can't keep me from saying I lo—"

"Jimin, I will tell everybody in this place you watch dubbed anime, I'm serious."

He gasped, quite dramatically.

"You did not just go there!" Then, he lowered his voice a bit, arching his brow at you, vindicative when he said, "You wore skinny jeans a month ago."

"How dare you, you wore a fuckass poncho last week. I saw on your IG story."

"That was from Namjoon and he also gave you one, FYI."

You grimaced. "Tell him I love him but I'm not wearing a poncho, Jimin."

"I was gonna tell you I love you and that you're the best person ever but now I have to rethink all of that." He rolled his eyes, and when the banter ended with you having the last words, you laughed at his face.

"God, you're just never beating me at this."

"Please, we both know you write your mediocre insults on your diary every night trying to one-up me, __. But let's talk about something else."

"I'm not even gonna acknowledge the diary thing but, sure, shoot." You said, starting to eat your pasta.

Jimin looked at your food full of judgement and grimaced. "Is that shrimp? Your doctor is growing grey pubes as we speak," He commented, and you knew he was referring to your shrimp allergy so you shushed him.

"This is vegan shrimp. It's tofu."

He just shook his head, disagreement written on his face. But he let it pass, anyway.

"Anyway, how's Mr. 446?"

The pasta suddenly entered the wrong track.

"Girl," Jimin was quick to offer you the glass of water on his side and you were just as fast to drink it. "You okay?"

"I'm sure there are existing cases of people dying because food got on the wrong track while they're eating, but yeah, sure, I'm okay." When you finished the water, you looked at Jimin who was just doing the same thing.

Crossing his arms, he eyed you expectantly. "Well?"

"I mean... what do you want me to say?" you told him, and you could've sworn you did not want to show anything on your face but you were certain there was a huge smile on it and for some reason, you couldn't help it.

Jimin's jaw dropped, expressions of disbelief and amusement when he asked you curiously, "What do you mean by that?"

"Okay, look, Jimin—" You scratched the back of your head, feeling a little sheepish to tell him all about Jungkook. "He told me we'd get dinner at his place this Friday if he wins this... thing."

His mouth was agape by then and you couldn't help but laugh.

"You... slut."

You would absolutely be rolling off the floor if you weren't at a public place the moment he mouthed the word, but still, you couldn't help but retort back.

"Shut up, you can't be the only one whoring around in this friendship." Jimin snorted at that and you both had to stifle your laughter when you noticed a woman from across the room eyeing you both.

This was one of the reasons why Jimin and you didn't belong in public places other than bars or clubs – because you were way too rowdy together for civilization.

"So you're saying you're whoring around?" He eyed you suspiciously.

"Wrong information. It's actually kind of platonic."

Jimin quickly waved you off. "Babe, if a guy invites you to his place, nothing is ever platonic about it. What do you think you'll do together there? Stare at each other for two hours straight?"

God, you hated and loved that he enables your delusions.

"Okay, you're being insane about this. It's just dinner," Trying to fight off the not-so-very-platonic things that suddenly played in your head after hearing his previous remark. To show that you didn't care, you added for good measure, "—And anyway, we had some sort of deal about it so it's not definite."

Your best friend just shrugged. "I'm all for it. But you're sure he isn't a serial killer, right?"

"Jimin, god, no," you chuckled at that. "I mean, I don't really know for sure, but we're friends now and as far as I know, he's never shown signs of psychopathy."

Jimin and you hadn't hung out in a while, so you haven't really told him all about Jungkook yet and the things you got to know about him. He didn't even know his name. As far as he was concerned, Jungkook was still Mr. 446, and you were fine keeping it that way. He had a lot on his plate right now, anyway.

"Just being cautious." He sing-sang, putting both his hands in the air.

You shook your head.

"Anyway, we also need to talk about what we're gonna wear tomorrow," Jimin suddenly said. "You got the Pinterest board I sent you, right? For the inspo."

Grinning, you grabbed your iPad from your bag and got to the link immediately. Your phone died on the way to the café. Good thing you had another device and brought it with you.

"I also added a few things in here. Gold and black's the theme, right?" You clarified, scrolling through the board you and Jimin both contributed to. Your best friend took it upon himself to transfer seats so he could be beside you and look at your screen at the same time.

"You're gonna look so good in Schiaparelli, babe," Jimin said while checking out the pictures you added.

"It's just an inspo, I don't actually need to wear a Schiaparelli." You chuckled.

"Who do you think your best friend is?"

You both laughed at that but it stopped when a notification popped up on your computer. Recognizing the address as your work email, you were quick to hover over it. When you were about to open it to see the full message, your iPad suddenly died.

"Shoot." You looked at Jimin with a straight face. "I forgot to plug it in. Didn't notice the battery."

Jimin grimaced. "Didn't bring any power cable."

"We'll have to do with a phone. Mine died."

You were just about to ask him for his but then you remembered what he said about avoiding Namjoon, hence, his phone was of no use either. 

"We're gonna have to freestyle."

Last year, Mrs. Park's party was held at a theater hall – your first time at one, by the way.

Tonight, it was at their mansion.

You've only ever been to the Park's a total of one time, which was now. Stepping a foot inside here for the first time in your life, the house felt unreal. It was the epitome of money and wealth and everything regal in the world – like a palace of some sort. They had butlers and guards at the gates so maybe that wasn't an exaggeration, but damn, Jimin truly came from money.

Regardless of how shiny the whole building was in both literal and figurative senses though, there was an emptiness to it. It didn't look lived in – which was a fair assumption for a house this big. It definitely did not look like people liked staying here, and maybe that was not a stretch, because as soon as he turned 18, Jimin moved away and lived in his own place ever since. You asked him on your way here and he told you it was his first time this year to visit his own house.

The decoration was sick, though. Granted, they must have surely hired people to do it but at least they'd hired excellent ones. You wouldn't have expected anything less from Jimin's mom.

Jimin and you arrived at 10pm sharp, and thankfully, people were already starting to fill the place up. It was now past 15 minutes to 10pm since you arrived and there really was nothing different that went on from last year; you saw some familiar faces, politicians, and celebrities. Jimin introduced you to some people as his girlfriend, and you got to have quick chats with his model friends.

You knew it didn't actually matter if you thought about it carefully, but there was truly nothing compared to the feeling you get when you see someone in the flesh that you only see on TV all your life. You didn't feel lucky to see them in person, per se, you were just poured over the realization that these people were actually real and they weren't just some sort of simulation to keep the entertainment industry of your country afloat.

Although, you did meet Han Sol – an actress whose works you genuinely admired. Jimin just told you her husband was his second cousin.

It wasn't later that Jimin and you were invited to his family's table, where some of his cousins and immediate family were.

The greetings went pretty normal. Normal as in: Jimin's mom didn't say anything about your weight first thing first. Granted, she didn't try to hide the look of disappointment on her face when she saw you with his son. Probably reeling at the fact that you were still "dating" each other even after a year — she was probably under the impression that it wasn't serious between you two last year. His father, meanwhile, was... quiet. As usual. A man who obviously didn't really say much except ask Jimin about the training program and his siblings' jobs.

Mr. Park didn't really talk to you, just like last year. Like you were almost invisible to him – and you were glad that was the case. He probably didn't like to acknowledge your supposed relationship in the first place. Probably knew that you were working a middle-class job and didn't want to know any further. But at least, he wasn't saying anything. That was nice.

"Where's your cousin?" Asked Jimin's mom suddenly, looking at his son.

"He said he got caught up in traffic. Sent 20 minutes ago." Jimin shrugged. You would ask him about which cousin they were referring to but they had like millions of it at these events so you didn't bother.

Mrs. Park shook her head disapprovingly. "That kid. Always late to the family dinners. Did Junghyun ever teach—"

"Hey,"

Your attention was then focused to the man who just arrived. Black tie, tall... dashing. Jimin was a good-looking individual and his family, as evil as they may be as per his words, were blessed with good genes. If you were to look at the new man that arrived to the table very carefully, you'd say he almost looked familiar.

"Oh, Junghyun!"

Jimin glanced at you and discreetly mouthed, "Cousin."

"Aunt, happy birthday." He said after laughing at Jimin's mother coos. He looked across the table and continued, "Hi, uncle. Jaeyul, Sunghoon, Jimin." They all greeted him back and you could feel the hairs on your nape starting to stand up when his eyes landed on you once again. "And this is...?"

"Oh, that's Jimin's girlfriend, __." Jaeyul, Jimin's brother said.

"Hi." you greeted him, waving a bit.

"Oh?" Junghyun immediately looked at Jimin, eyes not hiding his shock. When you trained your eyes on Jimin, you felt his fake smile. "That's great, man. I didn't know you had a girlfriend. Hi, miss...?"

"It's __." you filled in.

"Nice to meet you, __." He said with a smile. The more you looked at him, the more you could almost pinpoint who he looked like – but that shouldn't really matter.

Junghyun looked over Jimin's parents once again, "Anyway, sorry I'm a bit late, got caught up in traffic."

Jimin cleared his throat.

"How about you, Junghyun? Got a girlfriend yet?" He asked as soon as Junghyun sat on the opposite side of the long table.

You could see Jimin's mother's curiosity peaking at that.

"Tell us, dear. Last time you were dating Kang Iseul, right? The actress. You're still with her?"

Everybody at the table nodded while you almost choked on the smoked quail you were eating. He was dating Kang Iseul? She was a popular actress who announced a hiatus three years ago. That actress Kang Iseul?

Junghyun chuckled and shook his head. "Nah, aunt, that was my brother, and uh, no, I'm not dating anybody currently."

"Oh well. I just wish your brother stops dating that woman. I never really liked that girl. She acts way too self-righteous! I mean, who cut ties with their billionaire father and live independently just so they can say they're self-made? It's ridiculous." Jimin's mother said in that usual snotty tone of hers, and you could not possibly process all of what was going on.

If it wasn't clear to you a moment ago, it was crystal now. Unfortunately, you were a bit chronically online and were there in real time when one random tweet blew up about Kang Iseul being a nepotism baby. But was this guy's brother really dating her? The most important and concerning thing, though, was that: why was Jimin's mom always so annoying about who her family members date? And this was not even her immediate family, mind you.

"Jina," Jimin's father had a warning tone when he called her but Jimin's mom just shrugged him off with a "tsk!"

"Kids are so ungrateful nowadays, don't you think? Anyway, Junghyun dear, you remember the Kang gala I told you about two months ago?" Jimin's mom looked pointedly at Jimin and you bit your lip.

Of course, here comes her passive aggressive disapproval of you. 

"Kang Heesu and her sister Kang Hani will be there. Heesu is a wonderful woman," she chuckled, looking over at Jimin's direction subtly. You had to physically restrain yourself from rolling your eyes. Couldn't she be more obvious about acting as a wingman for Jimin and Heesu? But she continued, just like she always did. "I also heard Kang Hani is going for senior partner at Yoon and Yang, you may be interested. Pretty lady."

Junghyun just awkwardly laughed. "I'll keep that in mind."

Jimiin's father suddenly spoke, making everyone look at him.

"Where is that kid?" He said, authority dripping through his voice. Jimin was obviously not close to his father, and who would be? Mr. Park was way too intimidating. You found it funny to think if he ever did anything remotely paternal towards his children.

"We were supposed to go together but he said he had something to finish. He'll be arriving later." Junghyun said, obviously not oblivious to the "kid" Mr. Park was referring to. You were way too uncaring to actually try to figure that out.

"I see." Jimin's father nodded. "How's Jeon and Min, Junghyun? I heard you were just appointed managing partner last week."

Junghyun responded with a "yes" and they started to talk about the law firm – you assumed – and other people they mutually knew related to the business.

You knew Jimin's complicated family tree was composed of all sorts of professionals, but damn, they had lawyers in here too. It was like out of a career day event at grade schools.

"Is it true Gukka's going to be CEO?" Jimin's mother said, joining the conversation.

You were glad they were doing all the talking. Last year, they talked to you like they were interrogating you and that was not nice.

"Well, dad's not giving up the company so soon. Gukka's going for interim CTO first." Junghyun said with a polite smile.

Gukka. That must be the brother of Junghyun, although it sounded more like a nickname than a real name.

"Your brother's a hard worker. He's looking at a CEO position, some are still at training programs." Jimin's father remarked with a pointed tone.

Oh, fuck me, you thought to yourself. You thought it was gonna take awhile for the comparison to start, but it seemed they were determined to beat their record of one hour from last year.

You tried subtly looking at Jimin to see if he was okay or anything, but you felt him squeezing your wrist under the table. His face was devoid of any emotion as he continued with his own food.

Junghyun, meanwhile, was obviously taken aback by the response and also looked over at Jimin. He was quick to recover, though – probably knew that was a jab at his cousin just like every other person in the room. Atmosphere grew tense, and you had to squirm in your seat a little bit.

"Training programs help a lot, though." Junghyun awkwardly laughed. You were starting to feel bad for him as well.

"Well, you're lawyering. Trainings are important. Mine's kinda stupid." Jimin said which made everybody look at him, including you.

"You're learning anything yet, son?" His father pointedly looked at him.

"We'll see."

Jimin's dismissive tone made you feel the eye roll he would've done after saying that.

Look, he rebelled for the most part of his life so him being passive-aggressive towards his family was not a new thing, but to witness it was both nerve-wracking and honestly... funny. His parents were such assholes so they probably deserved his attitude.

Mrs. Park smiled a fake one before looking at you.

"Well, what about you __ dear? You're a... what was that again? How is that going for you?"

Because you wanted to piss them off, you mirrored her fake smile and said, "I got fired six months ago at my accounting job."

"Pft—" you pinched Jimin's arm at his reaction.

Of course he'd laugh at that. You asked him how you could piss his parents off tonight just to get back at them from last year and he told you to pretend to be unemployed or you work a minimum wage job because that was their biggest ick. Jimin didn't know you were going to come through.

"Oh."

The look on Jimin's mom's face looked as if she heard the most scandalous thing ever, and if his father's frown was deep even before the dinner started, his face was now below the ground. It felt satisfying to get those looks on their faces. Good! They were such assholes. Imagine getting devastated at someone being unemployed? Okay – for the record, being unemployed was devastating but these people weren't sympathizing with that, they found it humiliating in an elitist way– criminal almost. 

You nodded, your lips almost getting tired from stretching them too far.

"Yeah. Anyway, I started working at a local burger joint. You should visit us sometime."

"I'm vegan." Jimin's mom said, her face now drained with the fake joy she's worn all night.

"We have vegan options." you quipped. Jimin once again made a sound beside you, hiding his laughter.

"Wait, really? They offer vegan options at a street burger joint?" Sunghoon, the youngest of the Park brothers, asked.

You almost laughed at the genuine curiosity in his voice. He was still in high school and from what Jimin told you, he was a nice kid. He wasn't very close to any of his brothers, though.

"Nah, it's the only one in town." You bullshit one more time, drinking the wine beside you. "Sorry, can I excuse myself for a minute?"

They nodded and you stood up, heading to the bathroom, brisking once you got out of their sight to get there more quickly.

It was now 10:30 pm – meaning, you had to do something to get Jimin out of here now if he wanted to be on time at the airport to send off Namjoon.

Once you got inside, you looked at yourself in the mirror and sighed. 

This whole thing was sucking the shit out of your soul, but you needed to get through it.

It took you awhile to finish your pep talk in the bathroom.

If only you could've have locked yourself in there to avoid socializing with anybody, you willingly would. But you were running out of time and unfortunately, you had something to do and that was to fake some illness to get both Jimin and you out of here.

When you got out to approach the family's table one more time, you suddenly stopped in your tracks.

The table was at least fifteen meters away from where you stood, but you could clearly see the side in which Jimin's cousin, Junghyun, sat, facing your direction. He wasn't the issue – no, far from it. It was the guy beside him who wore the same set of black tie as him; the face attached to the body who wore it though, was someone you did not expect to see.

Why the fuck was Jungkook, Unit 446, here?!

From where you were, you could see him engaging with Junghyun and Jimin's parents. You couldn't hear them, of course, but it was clear that they were acquainted – close – even from afar.

Why did he look so comfortable with the Parks? Why was he at the family table laughing and conversing with everybody, including Jimin? Why did he seem like he went to many of these, like this was just another Thursday for him?

There was a waiter who walked past you and you were grateful for it because had it not been the case, people would start to get weirded out about you standing on the same place longer than necessary, looking stoned. That was also an opportunity to run away from the situation without Jungkook possibly seeing and recognizing you.

"I'll take this," You told the waiter and grabbed the glass of champagne and quickly turned on your heels, heading to the opposite side of the family table where the Parks, and apparently, Jungkook were.

You found yourself heading to the bathroom again, your feet seemingly developing a mind of its own as it led you there unconsciously. You knew you'd be in trouble if they found out about you putting the champagne glass in the sink, but you needed to get inside the toilet and think over everything that was happening tonight.

What the fuck. What the fuck!  Again, why the hell was Jungkook here?

As far as you knew, he was just a regular man that happened to be living across from you. He was just supposed to be some guy you were regularly hanging out with nowadays. Your friend. Your crush – whatever! What he wasn't supposed to be is be here at your best friend's mother's birthday party and hanging out with his family!

Your phone dinged, a message notification from Jimin welcoming you.

cuntress #1 [10:32pm]: girl what happened I saw u going back to the bathroom?

You didn't know why it was suddenly too hot, but you felt the balls of sweat starting to form on the side of your forehead.

You [10:33pm]: im going with the diarrhea excuse

cuntress #1 [10:33pm]: tbh idc atp I just wanna go to joon 😔

"Shit!"

Right! Joon. Namjoon. Jimin needed to go to Nmajoon as soon as possible.

cuntress #1 [10:33pm]: also another cousin has arrived u rmr jeon jungkook he's junghyun's brother cuntress #1 [10:33pm]: love this guy but moms starting to compare me to him and I need out right NEOW im justt aking hits after hits jesusssssss

You could just feel the blood draining from your face as soon as you read Jungkook's name in the text.

Jeon Jungkook. Jungkook. Gukka. Kook-a.

That was why the Junghyun guy looked familiar. Because he had the same coloring of Jeon Jungkook. Because they were goddamn siblings.

You started to replay some memories in your head, trying to figure out if you've ever heard Jungkook talk about his family in one of your conversations. But as far as you remembered, he never did. All you knew about him was that he was from the States, and he only got here because of work and he had a dog and as far as you were concerned, his cousin was definitely not Park fucking Jimin, your best friend.

Pacing around the confined space of the toilet, you tried to wrack your brain if you've ever mentioned Jimin to him and in the event that you did, why he never told you that he was his cousin – but you came up blank. Blank because you never told him about your best friend's name... and in turn, Jimin didn't know what Mr. 446's name was, either. They were both genuinely oblivious about the whole thing and couldn't have made you a fool in the situation.

In short, you were the one who was stupid as hell for not connecting the dots sooner.

"Hey, you just landed?"

If it was a private conversation Jimin would've left the room but since he didn't, you decided to stay in bed, kind of listening in to the conversation, but also not, as you turned the volume down of the show you were watching earlier on your laptop.

"Nah, you want me to pick you up?" Jimin sat up on the edge of the bed and you looked at him curiously. "Sure, I'm free, Kook. You have a place to stay? Hotel suite or something?" He nodded to whatever the other person was saying on the other line. "Oh, you're here for three months? Thought you were just flying in for mom's birthday?"

It was moments after they said goodbye that Jimin turned to you to ask, "Well, my cousin's apparently staying here for three months. Got this job thing going on."

"Fuck me." You hissed, remembering that time when Jimin told you about his cousin staying here for three months because of work.

cuntress #1 [10:35pm]: its either ur taking a guinness world record breaker piss there or u really do have diarrhea now and ur shitting cuntress #1 [10:36pm]: anyway get this, jungkook's gonna be interim cto at your company did u know that??????????????????

You almost dropped your phone upon reading the last message.

What the hell did he mean by that?

Heart beating fast as if it wanted to break out of your own ribcage, you closed your eyes and read Jimin's message once again. There was no way he would be shitting you about any of this. He knew where you worked at and you knew your current company was his uncle's, and now that you knew Jungkook was his cousin...

Shit. Was this what they were talking about at the table earlier? About Junghyun saying his brother was gonna be interim CTO? Did he mean Jeon Jungkook all along? Your freaking neighbor?

Suddenly, you remembered the email you received that afternoon that you never bothered to check again because you simply forgot about it. Who even actually checks their work email? Literally no one. You spend your weeks facing your computer while email flew in like porn ads on a shady website, you weren't about to willingly go to the app and check it on your leisure time.

But maybe you should have.

Fingers involuntarily shaking in their wake as you switched to your work email on your phone, you clicked on the recent unread message that was on top from the HR department.

Subject: Invitation to Ceremony: Announcement of Interim CTO Dear Blue Nexus Inc. employee, We hope this email finds you well. We would like to inform you that a ceremony has been scheduled on July 29, 2028, 10:00 am at the AVR Hall 5, 12th floor. The purpose of this meeting is to announce the appointment of our interim Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Mr. Jeon Jungkook. As you may be aware, our previous CTO, Mr. Shin Juman, is currently on medical leave recovering from a stroke. While he is recuperating and undergoing treatment, it has become necessary for us to appoint an interim CTO  for an indefinite period of time to ensure the continuity and effectiveness of our operations. Your presence at this ceremony is highly valued as we introduce the new leadership to the team and outline our strategic direction moving forward. Light refreshments will be served. Thank you for your attention to this matter. We look forward to seeing you at the ceremony. Best regards, HR Department

You knew that feeling when you were just taking hits and hits? This was it.

So not only was Jeon Jungkook Jimin's cousin, he was also gonna be the interim CTO of the company you were currently working at. He was technically going to be your boss, and you would be both working in the same place all the while living across each other where he would see you taking out your trash every Sunday morning in your worn-out highschool PE shirt and pants. He was going to be your boss working at the company you complained to him about on the nights you walked together to your shared apartment complex.

You flirted with Jungkook. You flirted with the guy who was the son of the owner of your whole company building – and not only that, he was your best friend's cousin, to add salt to injury.

You [10:38pm]: jimin we need to get out of here

cuntress #1 [10:38pm]: ive been saying

You [10:38pm]: but i cant go out there again. Just tell them i had a problem in the bathroom??

cuntress #1 [10:38pm]: ok on it  cuntress #1 [10:38pm]: im kind of convinced u shitted in there tho????????

You rolled your eyes, but at the same time found an opportunity in that. Jimin can't know the truth.

You [10:39pm]: u cant judge me for having a very human experience fuck u the cake i ate earlier was giving cake boss

cuntress #1 [10:39pm]: KJAHFKGSIDFHDSHASFHSKJBF

You [10:39pm]: im literally doing this for u and joon

cuntress #1 [10:39pm]: IKNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!thanks to ur stomach problems cuntress #1 [10:39pm]: im going there

You [10:40pm]: make sure they don't see us again to really sell the whole im-embarassed-thing

cuntress #1 [10:40pm]: ON IT! Were going out the back door I don't think they'll notice

You couldn't even find it in you to laugh a little bit at your silly exchange and scheme, because you were way too stressed about what you just found out.

You let out a controlled, heavy breath, leaning your back on the door and shut your eyes aggressively.

"What the hell am I gonna do after this?"

PART TWO | ....

all right reserved © awrkive, 2024. no reposts, modification, and copying allowed. if you enjoy my work/s and have the extra means, please consider supporting me on ko-fi <3

[leighsartworks216]

Damn Him

Father!Zayne x Mother!Reader

I NEVER write baby fics or anything with kids and shit EVER. So when I got this idea and felt something deep in my core about it, I simply had to get it out of my system. I'm sorry ;-;

Warnings: fluff, domestic fluff, angst (at the end), family fic, breasts, Dawnbreaker, swearing

Word Count: 1,275

Main Masterlist

Love and Deepspace Masterlist

AO3

Tag List Form

Crying broke through the still night air. They crackled slightly, muffled through the baby monitor on your bedside table. Nonetheless, you were awake.

The bed is already starting to shift when you're opening your eyes. You blindly reach out and grab onto the soft sleeve of Zayne's pajama shirt.

"I've got it..." you murmur. "She's prob’ly hungry."

He watches blearily as you slowly push yourself up into a sit. "Are you sure?"

You hum, nodding. You let go of him and pick up the monitor, waving it in the air with a playful, yet sleepy, grin. "It's on my side tonight, remember?" You turn down the volume, set it back down and get to your feet. "Go back to bed, lovey. I'll be back soon."

Zayne sighs, but he stays where he is as you pull a cardigan of his around your shoulders. He listens to the sounds of your shared home: the quiet shuffle of your slippers, the hiccuping cries of your daughter, the soothing lilt of your voice as you calm her down.

He glances at the digital clock beside him. It's only 2am; there's still plenty of time to get enough sleep for work tomorrow. As much as his body wants to fight the exhaustion and join you, he knows you'd scold him if he tried. He trusts you, anyway. There's nothing he can do right now to help.

So, he slips back under the blankets and turns onto his side. As the blankets fall into place, the rustling silences, and he tunes back into the lullaby you sing. It leads him down into the embrace of a peaceful slumber.

When next he wakes, he's disoriented. He blinks droopily at the emptiness of your side of the bed, then at the clock that reads 3:30am. There's no distinct sounds coming from the baby monitor. Down the hall is quiet. Why aren't you in bed?

He pushes the blankets off of himself and sits up, sliding on his slippers like it’s second nature. The cool air of the bedroom doesn't bother him as he crosses the room and out the door.

The door to the nursery is wide open. Blue moonlight pours though, spilling onto the floor and up the opposite wall. He squints slightly as he peeks inside. Any fears he could have vanish as he sees you.

You're sitting back in the armchair beside the window, head tilted back at an awkward angle and mouth open around quiet snores. Your shirt is pulled down to expose one of your breasts. Your daughter is using it as a pillow as your arms securely hold her, even as you are fast asleep.

Zayne drinks it all in. Your sleep-rumpled hair and dark eye bags, the shimmer of a drool trail along your chin, the uncomfortable way the collar of your shirt pulls against the underside of your breast. Your daughter, Jasmine, his beloved little flower, clinging with her tiny baby fists to his cardigan you stole, her chubby cheek resting against your skin and the other catching a stray moonbeam. He considers taking a photo of the moment, though he eventually decides against it. His two girls need to be put to bed and he doesn't wish to delay that any longer. Besides, if nothing else, this moment has been seared into his mind. That is enough for him.

He's as quiet as can be as he crosses the room to the chair. Carefully, he slowly pries Jasmine's hands from the cardigan. Her body is so small and warm in his hands as he lifts her into his arms. Oftentimes, he's overwhelmed with the desire to hold her forever, to feel her tiny little heartbeat alongside his own. Just like people save ultrasounds or ink-presses of their child's feet and hands, Zayne wonders if it would be strange to save an echocardiogram as a memento.

She doesn't stir as he lays her down in the crib. Her long, dark eyelashes curl over her round cheeks, picturesque. Her onesie is covered in little snowmen. He should make one for her with his Evol tomorrow. He can only imagine the bright-eyed stare she'd give him as he creates such cute things out of thin air.

Leaning down, he presses the lightest of kisses to her head, just barely starting to see hair growth. Now to take care of the other girl in his life.

Nimble fingers pull your shirt back over your breast, drawing the open sides of the cardigan together to keep you warm. He debates between waking you or not. And although he really should wake you, he ends up lifting you from the chair and into his arms. The moonlight caresses his back as he carries you down the hall, back to your bedroom. He tucks your feet in first as he lays you down before pulling the blankets up over you. Just as he did with Jasmine, he kisses your forehead, willing portions of his soul to transfer to you in hopes he can somehow get across how much he utterly and truly loves you.

He grabs the baby monitor before he rounds the bed back to his side. He turns the volume dial back up and sets it on his nightstand beside the clock. You'll get onto him about it being your turn to take care of the baby for the entire night, a system born out of his tendency to do everything himself due to his workaholic nature. He'll accept the scolding come daylight. You'll forgive him. You always do. Even if it's with an exaggerated sigh and a fond eye roll.

He lays on his side to face you, the love of his life. He couldn't dream of being anywhere but here, by your side, as he allows sleep to overcome him once again.

-

He wakes up.

Hollow.

He always feels hollow after dreams like that. And why shouldn't he feel the weight of what is missing in his life?

His bed is empty save for him. The room down the hall is full of random stuff he can't be bothered to worry about. It's a guest room; he's not having any guests over, so why bother?

The void within him cries to be filled. It opens like a yawning mouth, only an unfathomable depth waiting within, yearning for that life. The life that doctor has. A life he can never have.

Never will he be able to wake up to your face right beside him. Never will he be able to hold his daughter. Never will he be able to have that life with you.

It isn't fair. It's not-

He presses the balls of his hands into his eyes, biting back the shuddering breaths and the sting of tears. He’ll be forced to watch his daughter grow up through that doctor’s eyes. And it’s not even his. He has no rights to make a claim on her. He never will.

Relegated to watching you grow old through someone else’s eyes, instead of being there with you, to hold and help and love.

The sensor beeps nearby. He turns his head to look, blinking away the moisture in his eyes and meeting the breaking dawn that shines in through the window. A red dot blinks at him. It’s only a few blocks away.

He imagines for a brief second if the victim this time was you.

You, carrying a little baby in your arms, calling him a murderer. The idea of taking her life-

He closes his eyes and wills the thoughts away. Damn that doctor for having the life he can never have. Damn him.

---

Tag List:

@the-golden-jhope @deepzombieyouth @huen1ngk41 @armycaratlover @cheesemachine44 @nyx2021 @angel-jupiter @thelittlebutton @pikachuzhc @pomegranatepip

[wikiangela]

you're my happily ever after (so i'll take my chance now, risk it all somehow)

rating: G

words: 2.6k

8x06 fix-it, because I'm pissed - I or my fics aren't going anywhere tho <3

thank you to @evansboyfrend for beta reading, ily 🫶

[also on Ao3]

It feels like the whole world is crumbling down. It feels like the Earth should shake, burst on fire, open up and swallow everything around. As dramatic as it is, he kind of expects it to happen, and it’s weird that he’s still sitting here. His ears are ringing, panic rising in his chest with each of Tommy’s words. He watches Tommy get up and head for the door, and he’s frozen to his spot. It’s not- it can’t be. It fucking can’t be. “Wait,” he finally manages to say, trying to keep his voice from trembling, “did you just break up with me?” He asks, hoping to any entity that listens that he just misinterpreted it, that he got it wrong. Because- because he can’t lose Tommy. He’s falling for him so fast and so hard. He’s ready for the next step. He’s ready to move in together. He’s ready to talk about one day, eventually, maybe getting married. He knows he wants that. He knows what he wants, and he wants Tommy.  “Yeah, I guess I did.” Tommy answers, glancing back at him, his expression sad but firm. But Buck knows him. Knows that this mask will crumble into something devastated as soon as he leaves. That Tommy’s heart will shatter, just as Buck’s is right now. He can see through Tommy, he knows that he cares about Buck. It just- it doesn’t make sense. What was he even talking about… It was all so much, so fast, Buck’s brain is still scrambling trying to understand it all.  “Believe me, I didn’t see-” Tommy starts, but Buck shakes his head and interrupts him. “No.” He stands up, his legs feeling shaky. Tommy fully turns towards him, confusion in his face. “What do you mean, ‘no’?” He frowns.

“I mean, no, you’re not breaking up with me.” Buck says more confidently than he feels. Because this can’t be it. The last six months, the best six months of his fucking life, can’t end like this. Can’t end at all. He won’t have this. “I know you care about me. And I care about you. And I don’t want to break up.” He sees Tommy open his mouth to speak, his expression hardening – putting on a mask again, trying to hide the hurt. He speaks again before Tommy can. “If you truly, genuinely want this, not because you think it’s gonna be better for me or you, but because you don’t want to be with me, fine, I can respect that. But I won’t accept it without a fight. I- I wanna fight for us, Tommy.” Buck steps closer to him, hoping that Tommy doesn’t step back, that might just break him. He doesn’t, he’s stuck in place, sad eyes on Buck’s. “Let me fight for us. You-” he adds quickly, on a roll now, not wanting Tommy to interrupt until after he’s done, after he’s said his piece. He needs to say it all now, let Tommy know how he feels. He can’t watch him leave without trying to fix it first. Tommy’s looking at him intently, just listening, not even trying to speak. “You gave me a second chance once, when I fucked up our first date, and I- I want to believe it wasn’t for nothing. So- so you’re my first man, so what?” Buck throws his hands up in frustration, he thinks he’s starting to sound a little frantic, speaking faster and faster. He just can’t let Tommy leave without him knowing exactly how Buck feels. “It’s far from my first relationship ever. Why- why is it so different just because you’re a man? It shouldn’t be. I don’t need to date other people, experiment or whatever else. I’ve dated people, slept around, did it all. I know how that goes, how it feels, and I don’t want to do it again. I know what I want, Tommy. And I want you. And don’t you dare tell me how I feel.” He feels anger seep in, Tommy’s words ringing in his head. What the actual fuck was he thinking? “I’m a grown man, I know how I feel. Yeah, it’s new and exciting, but it’s also real. It’s real to me, and- and if there’s any chance of forever, I want to take it. And-” he takes a breath. He feels like he’s been speaking in one breath, feeling a little lightheaded now, his heart hammering. Or maybe that’s just the panic. “And don’t start with the whole ‘I’m not your last’ bullshit.” He shakes his head again, tears welling up in his eyes, anger still building. Really, what in the world? How could Tommy want to just throw away the most wonderful relationship that’s happened to Buck in years? Maybe ever? “You don’t know that. I don’t know that. Yeah, we could break up one day. But you could also be my forever, and I could be yours. I’d love a chance to find out, even if it hurts in the end. But maybe that’s just me. Maybe I’m the only one here brave enough to risk it. And- and what about my heart, huh?” Tears are threatening to spill, his voice shaking now, with sadness and anger, and desperation. He can’t let him go, he can’t. “You said I’d break your heart eventually. But this, right now? This is you breaking mine.” He finishes, almost panting now, his monologue taking the wind out of him, wanting to say everything on his mind, in his heart. He hopes he got his point across. 

“Evan.” Tommy just whispers, with a pained expression. There are tears in his eyes, too, one lone one slipping through, falling down his cheek. Buck’s hand itches to reach out and wipe it off, but he’s not sure if he’s allowed to anymore. 

“Give us a chance, Tommy. Let us fight for this. Fight for me, for us. Fight with me.” He’s aware he sounds like he’s begging at this point, but he doesn’t care. This is too important. “I thought it’s been so good between us lately-”

“It has!” Tommy rushes to say. “It’s been amazing. You make me so happy. That’s why I’m scared, I just- I’m sorry, Evan, but I can’t let myself get hurt like this again. Because I- I’ve been there before, and it was hard to get back up, and with you- I don’t think I’d be able to ever recover from this one.” He admits, his stone-faced facade crumbling, and Buck can see his own feelings reflected in Tommy’s expression. Sad, devastated, heartbroken. 

“We can- we can take some time apart.” Buck says around a lump in his throat. He feels like he can’t breathe. All he wants is to rewind until before he dropped the moving in bomb which must be what made Tommy freak out. He could say anything else, and take it slower, and maybe they’d be on their way out right now, a date night like they planned. “If that’s what you need. A break. But not for good. And then let’s come back to it clear-headed, knowing for sure what we want. And if you still want to break up, I- I’ll respect that. But I already know what I want,” he repeats firmly, decisively. “I want a future with you. I want to move in together, and one day down the line get married, and- and I want it all with you. We can slow down if I’m rushing this. I tend to do that, and if it’s scaring you, I’m sorry.” He adds, not wanting to backtrack any of this, but aware of how intense he’s coming off. He’s never been more serious about anything in his life. “But the past six months have been the best in my life. I’ve never felt so happy, so free, so comfortable, so safe. And I’m not giving up on you, Tommy. I will fight for you until I can’t anymore, until you tell me that you don’t care about me and I should just fuck off.”

“Evan. You know I’ll never say that.” Tommy responds quietly.

“I know. Because I’m confident in us, in the fact that you do care, and you do want me. I know that.” Buck emphasizes, and realizes, not for the first time, that he never felt like this before. This secure. This confident about someone wanting him. “I also know you’re just trying to protect yourself, your heart, and I get it. But I can’t let you go without a fight. I won’t. I messed up a lot in my life, and I won’t mess up this. I refuse to. Because I-” he takes a sharp breath, the words pressing on his lips. He doesn’t want to say it for the first time in a possible break up, a moment of such anger and devastation. But he needs to put it all out there. Needs Tommy to understand how much he’s trying to throw away right now. “I love you, Tommy.” He confesses, sees Tommy’s face melt into the saddest expression Buck’s ever seen on anyone, tears spilling freely now. Both of theirs, he realizes, feeling wetness on his cheeks. “I’ve been falling for you a little bit more with each day we spend together, with each minute. And I know- I hope you feel the same. But if you can look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t-” he swallows thickly, the thought alone is too much to bear. 

“I can’t do that.” Tommy interrupts quickly. “Of course I love you, Evan. It happened so quickly it kind of scared me a little.” 

“I noticed.” Buck says dryly, and Tommy lets out a humorless chuckle. “If you ask me, which you didn’t, by the way, you decided for both of us, which was an asshole move,” he points out, and Tommy looks away, as if ashamed. Good. Buck loves him, which means he’s gonna call out when he’s acting shitty. “I’d rather give us a real try and get my heart shattered if it comes to this, instead of always wondering what if, always wondering if you’re my one who got away. Which you would be.”

“I’m sorry.” He shakes his head, takes a step towards Buck, now just half a step away. “I’m sorry, maybe breaking up is too hasty. Impulsive,” he scoffs at himself, probably remembering how he called Buck that just a few minutes ago. Well, so maybe they’re both a little impulsive. Not a problem, in Buck’s opinion. “I don’t- I don’t want to break up. I never want to be away from you.” He says, his voice barely above a whisper. His hand flinches at his side, like he wants to reach out, grab Buck’s, touch him. Buck hopes he does. “It just- it seemed too fast. Like you got wrapped up in the moment. It’s still so new, I thought we were taking it one step at a time, and I didn’t-” he takes a deep breath, as if bracing himself, and Buck knows what he says is going to sting – and it does, it feels like a gut punch, actually, “I didn’t think you were as serious about this as I was getting. And I realize we should’ve done the mature thing and talked it out. I’m sorry. It’s just, we’ve barely talked about any future here. But I want it, of course I do. I’m just- I’m scared. My heart has never been in this much danger.” He looks into Buck’s eyes as he says it, more vulnerable than ever. This is everything Buck wants right now, for them to talk, to discuss this, to try fixing it, instead of one of them running away and the other giving up and not fighting for it. Buck’s been there, he doesn’t want a repeat.

“Tommy.” Buck is the one to close the distance between them, carefully brings his hands up to cup Tommy’s face, giving him a chance to back away, but he doesn’t. Instead, he breathes out a sigh of relief, like he craved Buck’s touch as much as Buck craves his. “You remember when I told you I wanted something with you? Even though I didn’t know what that something was yet?” he asks and Tommy nods slightly, Buck’s palms still resting on his cheeks. “I’ve been serious about you since that precise moment. About pursuing this, and wanting some kind of future with you. I know I tend to rush into things, it’s been a problem before.” He huffs a self-deprecating laugh. “I tried not to do that with you, but I failed, clearly. I just think from now on, we both should stay and talk and try to work it out if we have any issues with something. If you still want me.” He adds a little anxiously, but relaxed when he feels Tommy’s palms settle on his hips.

“Of course I want you, Evan. I always will.” Tommy says, that loving look in his eyes, that always makes Buck’s heart melt a little. That look that Buck loves so much, that made him think that Tommy might feel the same way.

“Good. Like I said, I’m not letting you go. Ever.” He says decisively, a huge weight that’s been there since the topic even started finally lifting off his chest. This might be the best thing that’s ever happened to him, and no matter the conclusion – which he’s pretty sure will be the happily ever after he’s always craved – it’s worth the risk, it’s worth everything.

“Good.” Tommy echoes, that gorgeous, scrunchy smile of his slowly spreading on his face, and it’s like sunshine came out from behind stormy clouds. “I don’t intend on letting you go, either. I love you, sweetheart. And I’m so sorry for… for this mess. For overreacting.”

“That’s fine, we’re past this- well, actually, we are gonna talk about it more, but at least we’re on the same page now, I hope.” Buck says, slowly leaning in. “I love you so much. I never want to lose you.”

“I’m sorry.” Tommy says again, and Buck just wants him to stop saying it. It’s fine, they’re fine now. “You won’t. You have me for as long as you want. I promise.”

“What if I want you forever?” Buck whispers, his face so close to Tommy's, their lips almost brush. It sends a shiver down his spine, like he hasn’t kissed him in days, when they just exchanged a quick kiss hello a few minutes ago.

“That works for me.” Tommy smiles again, and finally dives in for a kiss, but it lasts barely a second before he’s pulling away, Buck trying to follow. Tommy chuckles, running a comforting hand up and down Buck’s side. “But maybe let’s put a pause on the whole moving in together thing, huh? At least until we fully talk everything through.”

“Yeah, good idea.” Buck nods, his gaze flickering between Tommy’s eyes, now sparkling happily, and his pretty, kissable lips. It feels so good to be able to just have a mature conversation and resolve whatever issues arise. If they keep doing that, he thinks they’re going to be okay. He’ll make sure of that. “No need to be impulsive,” he adds, his lips twisting into a teasing smirk.

“Okay.” Tommy chuckles quietly, his cheeks reddening. “Just kiss me.” 

Buck doesn’t need to be told twice. He kisses Tommy like he means it, like he’s his person, like he’s the love of his life, trying to put all those emotions into a kiss. He knows for sure he’s getting the same intent back. And at this moment, in his kitchen, narrowly avoiding losing his love because of a stupid reason, he decides it. One day, not too quickly, but not too far into the future, he’s going to ask Tommy Kinard to marry him. And he’s more than sure of the response he’ll get.

[also on Ao3]

[ateliersss]

Oh, take me back to The Night we met

Pairing: Yautja x Fem!Reader Summary: 1936, eighty-eight years ago, you met him, the creature that changed your life in a way that goes beyond human imagination. Cross-posted on AO3: here Warnings: Attempted Rape, SA, Murder, English isn't my first language Word Count: 10.162 After the Blooming Family series

⇨ Surprise! I hope you are surprised because I was starting to doubt myself. I actually believed I wouldn't even finish it this year. Anyways, I wrote the finishing 6.800 words in the last seven hours and my brain is mush. I hope it didn't affect the pace or logic of the plot. If so, I will edit it in a few days. Comments are always appreciated.

⇨ Also, if you tell me I wrote an unrealistic reaction to seeing a Yautja's face for the first time, let me tell you, you and I wouldn't be here if I hadn't reacted the same.

1936, Earth

"Thank you, ma'am." The soldier in front of you returned your identity card, the national animal printed on it facing you.

You returned his bright smile with a tight one. You were already used to identifying yourself to patrolling soldiers after work. It was for "safety measures", according to the government.

While you were busy putting away your identity card, the boy looked nervously over his shoulder to his comrade who nodded back to him, encouraging him to finally man up and just tell you what he had rehearsed a dozen times already to eventually make a move on you and ask you out.

"A-And thank you for your service, ma'am!" He blurted out, louder than he intended to, with a soft blush covering his cheeks.

You closed your purse and looked up at him in confusion.

The boy, you now noticed, had to be at least five years younger, probably around the same age as your younger brother, Emil. And you recognized him now, too. He was patrolling around this area two to three times a week.

At your confused face, he gestured a little awkwardly to your uniform, the white dress and blue-grey blouse underneath it. "D-Doctors and nurses are in desperate need in times like these a-and saving lives is a remarkable job!"

"Oh." You looked down at yourself before you pulled your coat tighter around your body and smiled softly at him. "If that's all, I'll take my leave now. Have a good night, gentlemen."

He visibly deflated at your words and mumbled a quick "Have a nice evening, ma'am." but you barely got half of it when you turned around to continue your way back home. The second your back was facing them, your smile dropped.

You hated it, hated this, this so-called life you and everyone around you had to live. Horrible and disgusting things were happening, but no one dared to speak up. You were all trapped, too scared to act, too afraid to do something.

And the people could feel it, the tension that was stretched so tautly that was just waiting to snap. The whole world was holding its breath, deferring that one moment when the match would ignite and reduce everything and everyone to rubble and ash.

Meanwhile, your brother was beaming with pride as he was now considered old enough to join the army and could finally fight for his country. On the other hand, your father, the only other family you still had in this world, was far more reluctant when it came to the plans of the government and his son's naive blindness of patriotism.

No one was talking about the horrifying wrongs your home country was doing for years now, but everybody knew, everybody saw. And if someone even dared to utter a word about it, they disappeared.

That didn't stop your father from ranting about it behind the closed doors of your home. He did so, of course, in Emil's absence. He was family, yes, but nowadays blind obedience could manipulate even a brother and son to go against his own kin.

You loved your brother dearly. He was a good guy and he only held a very strong pride for his home, his people, and his culture. But sadly that was the only thing he acknowledged around others. He denied the "rumors" of a genocide going on and overlooked unintentionally the more sinister motives of others in the world of politics and the military. He was truly and utterly blind, but you couldn't condemn him for that. Not really.

The Great War ended when Emil was three years old and you remembered him crying when your father told him he couldn't participate in it anymore. Ignorant of the horrors that happened at the Front, he and a few boys from around the neighborhood would play war and were disappointed when they were told it was over. The worst part was the elder men sitting on benches near their battlefield, telling them their people were the superior power since they had been able to hold their own against three opposing countries in the end.

You sighed and started to fumble around in your purse for your keys as you reached your destination. After a quick look into the mailbox — the usual evening newspaper and another flyer that encouraged men between the ages of twenty and forty-five to sign up for the military — you made your way up to the first floor and poked around in the lock with the key, a little distracted by the newspaper as you were searching the headlines for anything concerning. There was another report about a skinned man found hanging upside down from a church tower. Unbelievable. At times like this and there was a maniac running around, killing people in the most grotesque way for fun.

"I'm home!" You called into the dimly lit hallway, knowing your father was sitting in his usual spot in the living room.

After dropping your purse next to the wardrobe, toeing out of the white pumps, shrugging off the coat, and hanging it on the coat rack, you walked through the corridor and past five doors. The ones leading to the bathroom and the kitchen were open as always, just like the door of Emil's bedroom. Although it hadn't been inhabited for a few months now, you would always leave it open after cleaning. It was false reassurance, but that way it seemed as if he was still home.

"How was your day?" Your father asked gruffly from his spot on the wing chair, the morning newspaper still in his hand before it got replaced by the evening issue you handed to him with a kiss to his temple.

"It was…"

Screams.

Blood.

Wails of a newborn.

A cold body.

"…long."

"Mhm." Your father hummed, his eyes scanning the front page before turning it. "Hah! Sightings of another black cloud of smoke and the authorities tell the public another farmhouse burned down. Do they think we are stupid? Unbelievable these people! Think they will get away with it, hiding it from the public eye, and no one would notice!"

You weren't entirely sure if he had even listened to you, but you didn't care. You weren't very eager to start a conversation with him anyway.

"I'm in my room. Call me if you need anything, okay?"

Though you didn't expect a response, you waited a few seconds — maybe today he would ask if his son had finally sent a letter — before you turned around to retreat to your room.

Since your father had lost his legs in a bomb attack at a munitions factory where he had worked during the Great War, he had changed. A lot. Before, he was quite a gentle and jovial man who worked hard and never shied away from showing how much he loved his family. Nowadays, he was resentful and bitter towards everything happening around him.

It was exhausting, not only listening to his complaints day in and day out but also being nothing more than a maid and caregiver to him. You were the sole breadwinner in this house. You worked yourself to the bone in a business that was equally about life and death but gave you more grief than joy. At least it made the medical care of your father a little easier. The surgery, the medicine, and the wheelchair would have cost you a fortune.

When you would get off work, more would await you at home. Taking care of the household was your responsibility for nine years now since your father wasn't capable of doing it anymore. After the first week of dusting and sweeping, washing the dirty laundry and ironing the clean ones, going grocery shopping and cooking, as well as taking care of your father like washing him, helping him get to the toilet, and such, you cried yourself to sleep with the thought of quitting and running away.

But you didn't.

You were miserable, yes, but you stayed. You stayed with the hope of a better life in the future. Maybe you will be married to a nice man in a few years like your girlfriends already were. You had experience with men, sure, but none of them you would consider fit to be your husband.

In your bedroom, you quickly got rid of your uniform until you were only in your undergarments, a baby-blue silk panty that flowed around your mid-thighs and an uplift brassiere of the same fabric and color, both with a lacy hemstitched design. You were about to throw the white and grey-blue dress into your other dirty clothes when you noticed red speckles on the left sleeve.

Yes, the day had been long, too long for your taste, and when your shift did end, you felt hollow once more. You could still see her in that bed, screaming and crying.

Watching her, you had wondered if you would ever end up like her.

You shifted in your place, second-guessing before you finally turned and looked at your reflection in the mirror that occupied one corner of your bedroom. You hesitantly lifted your hands and placed them on your belly.

No. Your job showed you women struggle and in pain every day. You would never do that to yourself. Being a mother was not worth the probability of taking your last breath during labor, giving your own life while granting another to your child.

Today was another reminder of that.

The girl in the delivery room, Johanna, was sweet and lively. You met her occasionally on a monthly check-up when you assisted the doctor who took her into his care. She would tell you about her and her husband trying for this baby for years and how excited she was.

You bit the inside of your cheek when tears once again started to well up in your eyes when you thought of how helpless you had felt when you stood in that room. Your colleague, an older and more experienced woman, was holding the crying newborn in her arms. The doctor was doing his all to save the unsavable while Johanna's body got colder as the dark red spot grew bigger on the white linen of the bed.

Today had shown you once again that you would never let something like that happen to you.

"You have to incise into her abdomen."

Not ever.

"No!"

Not in a million years.

"No, Mi'ytiar… you have to, you have to."

You would never put someone else's life before yours, not even the one of your never-going-to-happen baby.

"Save our baby. Forget me… ju-just save our son… please."

Sighing, you got ready for bed. You were far too tired this evening to get anything done. The laundry had to wait until tomorrow and your father probably already had eaten, so there was no need to get to the store. For now, you needed to stop thinking.

A whole week passed and you had followed your everyday routine like every other day. Occasionally, when you walked past the room where Johanna had delivered her baby and made her husband a widower, you paused and stared. Instead of the freshly made bed and the stark white linen, you saw her dying as she bled out. You saw the doctor, yourself by his side and the nurse holding the baby at the foot of the bed.

You jumped when you felt a hand on your shoulder and you turned to see said nurse smiling pitifully at you.

"You are still there, right?" She asked softly, her eyes scanning your face.

You swallowed and nodded. "It's like that every time I come here. I don't know why. She's not the first I watched dying during childbirth."

The elderly woman patted your cheek and guided you away from the delivery room by the crook of your arm, pulling you away from the sorrowful abyss before you could drown any deeper in it.

"You liked her, that's why." She started, "I had a Johanna, too. A long, long time ago. Although she was a lot younger, she was just as excited to be a mother. Poor thing died just like her baby."

You gasped and now it was you who looked with pity at her. "Why?"

"The baby was stuck." The older nurse sighed, "She pushed and pushed and tore. By the time the doctor started to cut her open, she died of internal bleeding." She had to clear her throat before she continued, "The baby died with her. A little boy. He got himself tangled up in the umbilical cord."

You turned your gaze from her face down to the ground and watched your feet walk an unknown route. Swallowing down your tears, you forced yourself to concentrate on not stumbling over your own feet.

You did like Johanna. You had empathized with her, even though children would never be part of your life. She had just wanted a baby, a part of her and the man she loved united in one body, and all that she got was death. She hadn't deserved it. At least the thought that she might be together with her baby in heaven now, thanks to her belief in God, soothed your heart a little.

"Go home, (Y/N)." The elderly nurse interrupted your train of thought.

Looking up, you saw her holding up your purse and coat. Apparently, she had led you to the lounge where the doctors and nurses spent their lunchtime.

"But I still have six hours to go." You tried to argue but bit down your lower lip when she shook her head.

"If someone should ask for you, I will tell them you didn't feel well and that I sent you home. There are certain benefits as the head nurse." She winked at you, pushed your belongings into your hands, and shooed you in the direction of the exit.

"I promise I will feel better tomorrow." You called over your shoulder and waved at her, giving her one last smile before you shrugged on your coat and left.

Thirty-two minutes later, you got off the bus and turned around the corner into your street, your purse dangling back and forth on your wrist. With your extra five hours, maybe you could finally start that book on your bedside table if your dad wouldn't find any reason to turn your attention to him.

Feeling slightly more cheerful, you walked a little faster, already searching for the key. Like always, you checked the mailbox — nothing again — before you hopped up the one flight of stairs to your apartment, the sound of your heels on the wood filling the otherwise silent staircase.

The noise seemed to attract the woman living across from you because you barely reached the top of the stairs when she ripped her door open and stared at you with wide eyes.

You paused and looked at her in concern. "Mrs. Walter? Is everything okay?" You asked and carefully inched closer to her.

For several moments, you didn't get an answer. Only when you opened your mouth to ask her again did she slowly lift her trembling arm and point past you at something you could not see.

Strange. The only thing back there was your apartment door, so…

The slamming of Mrs. Walter's door barely reached your ears when you turned around. All you could hear was eerie silence, not Mrs. Walter quickly putting her distance between her and the door, not the dog barking from above you that got awakened by the slamming door, not the traffic noises outside.

The door that you diligently locked every morning before you got to work and unlocked every evening when you returned home hung on its hinges. In quick strides, you reached it and ripped off the note that was nailed into the wood under the peephole. Your eyes scanned over the words as you pushed the door open and entered the apartment.

A search was carried out here due to a tip-off of a conspiracy against the country and its people. All residents are requested to report immediately...

Tears clouded your view and made it impossible to make out the rest of the words. But there was no need to. You already knew what you needed to know. Your father was dead, no questions asked, no evidence to prove that he was innocent or guilty, no interference by the judiciary. He had dug his own grave since he started to badmouth and criticize the current sins committed by the government.

You slowly navigated your way through your destroyed home, your hands supporting yourself against the wall, careful not to get caught in something with your pumps. You had to duck under the big shelf close to the entrance of the living room. It was tilted to the side so that the upper part was now leaning against the other side of the wall. Everything that had ever been placed onto it — pictures, plants, certificates, and other little knick-knacks — was now scattered on the floor.

It got even worse in the living room. Everything had been turned upside down. Your father's chair was thrown to the side just like the couch and the coffee table. The books from the huge bookshelf that covered the length of the smallest wall in here were pulled out and tossed on the floor, pages ripped out and strewn on the floor. Pictures were taken from the walls and the glass crunched as you stepped over them. Dirt was covering the floor as if someone had been digging in the soil of the potted plants. The carpet was overturned, partly thrown onto the couch, and revealed the wooden floor it usually covered.

Your living room had been thoroughly searched and you doubted the rest of your home looked any different.

In a daze, you carelessly let your purse drop to the floor and shuffled to your bedroom. Opening the door, you were greeted with a view you had expected — your bed was tilted to the side, clothes from your closet were now scattered on the floor, and your mirror was lying face down on the floor.

When you saw the pictures of you and your family carelessly thrown into the corner, you couldn't hold the sob in any longer. You sank to your knees, curled into a ball, and cried to your heart's content with your eyes squeezed shut.

You lost your mother at a young age, lost your father for the first time after his accident, lost your brother to the country, and now lost your father for the second and final time. Now, you were wholly and utterly alone. Not for long, though. If you didn't come forward and turn yourself into a possible fair trial in the next sixteen hours, you would be taken just like your father and die the same way he did.

Your breakdown had been apparently so nerve-wracking and tiring that when you opened your eyes, it was dark inside your room and outside your window. Groggily, you propped yourself up and looked around, disappointedly ascertaining that you hadn't been dreaming at all. Your eyes scanned your room, still a little out of it, until you spotted your clock on the wall, surprisingly intact. 9:24 PM. Now you had less than ten hours left.

How would you spend your last ten hours in freedom? You didn't know, but you for sure wouldn't do it in here. You needed to leave.

As quick as you could you switched your nurse uniform to a skirt and your favorite blouse, fixed your make-up and your hair to look less like a mess and more like the respectable woman you usually were, and left the apartment after putting on your shoes, coat and grabbed your purse. At first, you strolled around with no real destination in mind, but the darker it got the higher the risk of being stopped by a patrolling soldier.

You had enough money with you to occupy yourself with a few drinks, so why not enjoy yourself, let a little loose? You never really got the chance to try it out. Your job unironically prevented you from unnecessarily damaging your liver and you had the responsibility to take care of your family. Your girlfriends always invited you on girl's night, but sadly, you had to decline almost every time, be it your father or another night shift forced upon you. They had another planned on the weekend in a few days, the first one in a very long time you would have had time for. Not anymore. When they would sit around a table and share the newest gossip, you had already started to rot away in a mass grave.

You entered the first, non-shady-looking bar and plopped down on one of the bar stools on the right. When the bartender finally took notice of you, all he needed to do was to take in your gloomy figure pitifully slumped in your seat to grab a glass and fill it with a brown liquid. No words were spoken — you didn't feel like it and he noticed that — as you grabbed the glass, tossed the liquor back, and placed the now empty glass back down. The alcohol, whatever it was, burned like hell and you couldn't help but cough, tears forming in the corner of your eyes. The bartender, meanwhile, wordlessly filled your glass again and without any hesitation, you emptied that one too.

You spend almost four hours like that. Losing count after your sixth shot, your head started to feel funny, like the world around you was spinning too fast. You mused what your life would have been like if your mother hadn't died when you were just nine years old, if your father hadn't lost his legs when you were seventeen, if your brother had chosen a normal job at your current age. You could have grown up like any normal girl, could have joined your friends more often to hang out, could have started going on dates again after your last boyfriend dumped you for neglecting him.

And what about your future? What about the man you wanted to marry in a few years? Every day, you daydreamed of someone who would just sweep you away in his arms and take you far, far away from here. There had to be a place somewhere where you could live your life in peace without a brewing war and the constant fear of death. You waited for someone who would make your life easier than it currently was, who would take the weight from your shoulders and not add some more on them every single day. Someone who loved you passionately and would spoil you after nine years of labor where you worked yourself to the bone. Someone who would take charge and let you rest when you needed it. Someone who was the other half of your soul that hopelessly awaited to be rejoined with its counterpart.

When you reached out to your glass for the nth time, a hand softly clasped your wrist. Looking up, you saw the bartender giving you the same pitiful look you had received for God knows how often today, from your colleague at the hospital to some of the other patrons who entered and left the bar during the last few hours.

"I think you should get home." He said firmly and pulled his hand away.

No longer being hindered, you lifted the glass up to your lips and emptied it in one go. "I no longer have a home." You dully answered, your speech a little slurred.

"We close in a few minutes." He tried another route, anything to get you to stop drinking.

He may not be interested in what personal business you have to drink yourself under the table, but even he wouldn't let a young woman like you do that to herself.

"Fine." You mumbled, grabbed your purse, and searched for the money that was stored somewhere in there. You hummed when you finally found it and without looking at it, you dropped it down on the counter. "Here."

You held onto the sleek surface of the bar to lift yourself up and from your seat, supporting your whole weight with one hand while you needed several attempts to grab your coat. Not bothering to put it on, you turned to leave and even you were surprised that you could still walk in a (more or less) straight line.

"Hey, you paid too much!" The bartender called from behind you.

Not bothering to stop or turn around, you simply proclaimed, "Keep it. Where I go I won't need it." and pushed the entrance door open.

Outside, you tilted your head up, closed your eyes, and took a deep breath of the cool night air. It instantly freshened you up and cleared your mind a little. Looking left and right along the sidewalk, you decided to take the left and began strolling wherever it was taking you, once again with no actual destination in mind. You had no idea what time it was, but you guessed you had around five or six hours left. If you're lucky and didn't get held up by some patrols, you could visit the park one last time where your parents, Emil and you would hold a picnic every summer when you were younger. It would only take you ten minutes on foot. It wouldn't hurt to visit the place that held so many good childhood memories and bask in them in your final hours.

You were walking for a mere two minutes when you heard a whistle from your right. Halting your steps, you turned your head to the side and looked over to the source. There, on the other side of the street, were two men sitting on a bench and two standing around them. One was holding a beer bottle while the others were smoking their cigarettes.

"Hey, pretty lady." The one with the beer bottle called over to you and lifted it to toast to you.

You quickly snapped your head back forward and continued on your way, your strides bigger and faster to create as much distance between you and them as possible.

When you thought you were safe, you felt a hand clasping your wrist whose owner pulled you back and against his strong chest.

"Hey, hey, hey." The voice of the man with the beer bottle breathed against your ear, sending an uncomfortable shiver down your spine. "Don't be shy. We were just celebrating my friend's promotion." To your horror, he put his hands on your hips and turned you both to his three companions who had seemingly followed him, all of them wearing leering grins. "Why don't you join us, hm? We could need a little entertainment." He murmured against your neck, his breath reeking of alcohol.

Before he could place his lips anywhere close to your skin, you struggled out of his grip and stumbled a few steps away from him. "I-I'm sorry, but I need to go home. I'm already late."

The man who seemed to be the leader of the bunch stepped closer to you, smirking when you accidentally walked right into one of his friends. The guy immediately held you against him, keeping you in place.

"I think you could spare a couple of minutes." The leader said firmly and reached for your blouse.

Fear seemed to be a great way to quickly sober one up because the next thing you did was stomp down on the foot of the man that was holding you, your heel hitting his toe perfectly, causing him to let you go with a cry in pain and a curse. Next, you rammed your knee into the crotch of the man in front of you and when his body doubled over, you pushed him to the side and bolted down the sidewalk.

Not daring to look back, you sprinted as fast as you could, but the alcohol made it hard to keep balance, not to mention the nausea that bubbled up in your stomach. But you ignored it and tried to keep it down when you heard their calls from behind you, coming closer and closer.

This was not how you wanted to spend your last night, this was not how you imagined it. Tears clouded your view and you narrowly escaped the grabby hand of whatever guy that was closest to you when you ducked down and sharply took a left turn into an alley.

Unbeknownst to you, you were being watched.

The next thing you felt was hard concrete as you fell forward when a heavyweight collided with your back. You cried out in pain when you hit your head, then hysterically screamed in panic when you felt hands on your skirt and you started kicking around, not caring if you hit something or not. You heard a grunt when your heel finally made contact with the shoulder of one of them, but you barely had time to bask in your little victory when a punch to your face almost knocked you out cold. Your body went instantly slack, a long-winded groan leaving your mouth.

"Move your ass and hold her down." The voice of the leader sounded from somewhere above you. "And turn her around. I like to watch their face when they give up."

Hands turned you on your back as your screams and cries accompanied your attempts to fight their hands off.

"No… please no." You begged as your wrists were pinned above your head by a pair of rough hands. "No!" You screamed louder, in a high-pitched, panicking voice when your blouse was ripped open, your brassiere following suit, and your chest got groped by a calloused hand.

You squeezed your eyes shut when you felt an eager mouth around your nipple, harshly sucking on it while your breasts were still in a painfully hard grasp. You tried to gather your last strength, the drinks earlier and then the hit to your head from the fall tempted you to just fall unconscious, but you bucked your body up in hopes you could throw whoever was above you off of you.

Only you couldn't move. Someone was straddling your thighs, hindering you from moving.

You finally forced yourself to open your eyes and the blurry image of the leader pushing up your skirt presented itself in front of you.

"Stop, please! Help!" You started screaming again, causing the leader to sigh in annoyance.

"Could you please shut her up, for fuck's sake? I'm trying to enjoy myself here." He growled at the guy who was holding your hands down, his patience growing thinner with every passing moment he wasn't able to force himself inside you. "When I'm done with her, you get what's left of her."

"No, no, no..." You wailed when you heard the clinking of his belt and a zipper being opened, but you soon got silenced when a palm pressed down on your mouth.

Rather than keep watching him, you closed your eyes in defeat, now only feeling how he moved closer to your crotch, his fingers pushing your underwear aside, and positioned himself against your entrance.

A dull thud behind your attackers stilled them for a moment, but a raging roar got them to whip around. You kept your eyes squeezed shut, not wanting to see whatever feral animal was going to maul you and those men.

A scream, something wet splashing on you and something, someone, heavy landing on top of you got you to finally open your eyes again. You stared right into a gaping hole where the head of a person normally should be. Maybe it was the shock of almost ending up left on the ground in this alley, covered in bruises, blood and bodily fluids after they were done with you, that kept you from screaming.

In a daze, you pushed the corpse off of you and looked down at your body. It was covered in blood, parts of a splattered brain, and white fragments that had been the skull of the leader of the group. His head had burst into pieces. No animal could have done that and no human either. There was no weapon on earth with that much destructive power, so what…

With slow eyes, you looked up from your soiled legs. The guy now lying dead next to you had been obscuring the view of a large creature standing no more than three meters across from you.

Whatever it was, it seemed livid. Its body was heaving with wrathful breaths and its long fingers were twitching, clenching into fists before relaxing them again. Its massive form was hidden by darkness and you could barely make out its silhouette.

It felt like an eternity with you just staring at the creature and it (probably) staring right back. The other assaulters, two of whom had fallen to the ground in shock with the sudden attack on their leader, hadn't dared to move a muscle. Maybe they were in a trance just as you were, not for the same reason, of course.

"H-Hey!" The fourth guy squeaked, breaking the tension that seemed to suffocate the whole alley. "Wha-"

In a practiced, seemingly effortless movement, the creature whipped out its arm, and something silvery shot out of the darkness. It wrapped around the throat of the man, choking him and sending him to his knees. He was clawing his neck and tried to remove what seemed to be a whip made out of sleek silver and grey material. 

You watched him as he desperately tried to free himself and blood started to flow from where the whip was wrapped around his neck down to his shirt, turning the light blue fabric deep red. Your eyes then traveled along the bladed chain, you now noticed, to the other end of it, and found the large creature moving towards you.

If you would have been able to make a sound, you would have, but you were still too out of it that no noise escaped your bloody lips when you were finally able to distinguish your savior. 

It was indeed huge, a massive body that was dwarfing any human being you could think of. Its appearance was bizarre. Its feet and calves up to its knees were in unusual boots made out of metal instead of leather with an interesting design. You wondered if it was the skin of the creature or if it was wearing a net-like cloth that was visible on every body part that wasn't hidden beneath armor like the chest plate that bled over into a full sleeve of its arm. It was covering the left side of its chest but not enough to conceal a rather fit upper body. You found yourself staring a lot longer at the well-defined, almost sculpted abs of it. It was no doubt a male.

As you were eyeing the creature up, he yanked on the whip. You were only aware of a dull thud when the bladed chain cut off the head of the man who had been in its hold. 

You didn't register when more blood sprinkled on you as you were too busy trying to imagine a face underneath that strange mask. With his green, brownish, and beige reptilian skin, the long black tendrils sprouting from the head, the long claws, and the animalistic posture, he was, without a doubt, not human. 

An arm wrapping around your throat from behind, preventing you from breathing evenly, brought you back to reality. You immediately put up a fight, scratching it and pulling on the arm in hopes he would let go.

It was one of the attackers that had fallen to the ground when the creature had appeared. He must have scrambled over to you when his last companion was foolishly enough to run up to the murderous beast, trying to do something quite laughable, only to be impaled by a spear and was now hanging on the wall to the right like he was a portrait above a chimney, the spear rammed through the brick of the apartment building.

The idiot behind you thought the creature would let him go if he was holding you hostage as if he wasn't going to kill the both of you just like his buddies. So foolish, you internally sighed.

"S-S-Stop! I'm warning you!" He screamed at the towering figure which was closing in on you. "I will… I will kill her!"

The creature stopped a few steps away from you and reached behind his back. Quicker than your eyes could keep up, his hand shot forward and he threw something of the size of an orange at the man.

Yelling, the man loosened his grip, his instincts kicking in to fight against whatever was sticking to his forehead. In his struggle, he fell on his back and started rolling around on the floor when the little device made a strange wiring noise. His body went stock still when he was engulfed in a net, restraining him. Then the man screamed bloody murder when the wiring noise grew louder and the device pulled the net tighter around him.

You turned to him, only to see the strings cutting into his skin, drawing blood, until only pieces of his body were left of him, leaving him unidentifiable to whoever would find him and his friends.

Now, it was only you in that alley. You, the beast that saved you and the bloody massacre, turning the place into an image of horror.

You were going to get sick if you stared at what had been a living and breathing human once any longer. Rather than wanting to face the creature when it was going to kill you, you turned back around and then startled back. Said beast was crouching in front of you, the head cocked to the side.

He reached out a clawed hand and you closed your eyes, preparing yourself for whatever gruesome death he had planned for you. You thought back to everything you had achieved in your life, every person that was still dear to you, said goodbye to every place you loved to visit, to the movie you had wanted to watch in a week with a friend, to the unread book on your bedside table and every dream you had wanted fulfill — you had actually planned to do that in a few hours. At least he was going to give you a quick death and not whatever the authorities had done to your father.

Something poked your cheek.

Your eyes snapped open and you were met with a closer view of the strange mask covering the creature's face. His hand was outstretched and a finger was prodding your skin. A strange noise was coming from behind the mask, something you could only describe as a rumbling purr. 

You stayed still, afraid if you would only move a muscle, it would set the creature off and let him drag his clawed finger up to your temple where a trail of blood had started to run from the wound you got from the fall. You hissed in pain when the pad of his thumb stroked — probably unintentionally hard — over your lower lip, the rough skin touching where it was busted. He pulled its thumb away only to replace it with the back of his pointer and middle finger to caress your jaw and down to your throat. The touch caused you to swallow which he most likely could feel. Only when you felt the scaly sensation on your skin dip too deep, too far beneath the ripped remains of your blouse, you gripped his wrist.

The creature's head snapped up where it had followed his exploration. You flinched back at the sudden movement and quickly loosened your hold on his wrist, pulling it away like you had burnt yourself.

"I'm sorry." You whispered, your voice hoarse.

What if you had just signed your death? What if you touching him like that had triggered him? What if he thought you were a threat now? What if he thought of it as highly offensive? What if he was going to kill you now? What if-

A low thump caused you to flinch when he hit the left side of his chest with his right fist. With parted lips, you looked from his fist up to his masked face and then back again, confused, both at the gesture and the lack of aggression towards you. Almost as if he could understand the look on your face, he repeated the action with a little more determination after he inched closer to you. You were more focused on his sudden closeness, daring not to move back, but you hastily turned your gaze down to his fist. It was a little hard to concentrate on what he was trying to tell you after the vast change of demeanor — from murdering in cold blood to trying to… communicate with you?

"You?" You tried hesitantly.

It really was your best guess on what he could mean.

A soft growl reached your ears from underneath his mask, making you tense up but relaxed in relief the second his attention turned to his forearm. You watched in curiosity as his clawed pointer finger ghosted over the armor-like wristband that started flashing in a bright red and made strange beeping noises like when a caller on the other line hung up before you could. Your mouth opened without you even noticing. You had never seen something like it, probably no one ever had. How was it functioning without cables like your telephone and radio did?

"Are you telling me you are married?"

You jumped back a little when a male voice chimed from his wristband.

"To a cup of tea, I will never say no."

"I can't believe you put the jar in the oven!"

You looked at him in astonishment as more voices sounded from his forearm. Human voices.

He kept repeating the same three sentences, but they seemed to get shorter with every replay.

“-telling me you are… telling me… me.”

"-a cup of tea… tea."

“-you put the jar in the… you put the jar… the jar… jar.”

He seemed to be satisfied as he let out a deep, low-pitched chirp before he played the cut and put together word snippets to you, his head facing you now.

“Me-tea-jar.” He hit his chest once again before playing the word again. “Me-tea-jar.”

"Meetja?" You tried the word, tried how it felt on your tongue.

He let out a deep grumble before he played the same word again and leaned even closer to you.

“Me-tea-jar.”

"M-Meetiar. Mi'ytiar."

With his head slightly cocked to the side, he tilted it forward in a one-movement nod as if to say, "Now you got it." and his fist hit his chest one last time.

"You. Mi'ytiar. T-That's your name?" You asked and hoped you put the puzzle pieces together correctly.

Another nod before he pointed at you.

"Oh." You softly said, shifted your hips slightly, and nervously placed a hand on your own chest. “(Y/N). I'm (Y/N)."

“(Y/N).” Your voice sounded from his forearm when he touched his wristband. “(Y/N).”

You couldn't help the small smile and you nodded. "Yes. (Y/N)."

The creature — Mi'ytiar — lowly grumbled in appreciation and you breathed out the air you had been holding in your lungs with a laugh. You couldn't believe you talked, more or less, to something that undoubtedly didn't belong on earth while you were surrounded by death after being spared from something that would have scarred you for life just because you had been out drinking to have one last night in freedom until you would follow your father in an early grave. Your life really had taken a strange turn in just a few hours.

"What are you?" You asked him and tilted your head to the side.

"Hunter." He communicated with the help of his wristband.

"Where do you come from?"

"Sky."

"Sky." You repeated the child's voice and looked up.

So he came from the sky. You wondered if he meant the clouds or maybe the moon. It could be the stars for all you knew. Was he the only one living there, or were there more? Maybe one like him lived on each star the night sky had to offer.

As you were looking up in thought, Mi'ytiar took his time to admire you. You were, what you humans would use, adorable. He didn't hunt humans very often as they weren't much of a challenge, but sometimes he would visit earth out of curiosity. Your kind was interesting and his ancestors had been quite fond of them when they used them to breed their prey centuries ago. Humans have continuously developed from then to now, so it was fascinating to watch.

Like he watched you now. He admired your wide eyes, the curve of your nose, and your rosy cheeks that displayed the dried tear streaks of panic and fear. He admired the shape of your lips and the cut that had caused you pain when he touched it. He admired your shiny hair that had once been pulled up in a neat bun but was now hanging loosely and messily around your face, framing it like it was a piece of art. He admired your small, shaking hands that were desperately holding the ripped-open blouse together, protecting your modesty and the naked skin of your trembling shoulders when the fabric had slipped down to your biceps. You had been so incredibly warm and soft when he had touched what you were hiding now.

A quiet hiss got you to look back at him and you watched with uncertainty as his fingers first pulled on the one tube that was connected to his mask and then the other before he removed it anxiously slow. You mentally prepared yourself for the most horrific sight of your life, but when the top half of his face was laid bare, you sucked in a breath. It wasn't the foreign shape of his head, the texture of his skin, or the spiky triangle-shaped bumps that circled the sides and the back of his head like a crown, clearly dividing where the roots of his hair ended and his face started. It was his eyes, though an abnormal orange, that was salient and captivating you. They didn't look like what your wildest fantasies had to offer, but they somewhat seemed almost human — a black pupil surrounded by an orange iris. And not just any orange. It was the kind of orange that stretched across the sky at every sunrise and sunset. The only difference you spotted from your own eyes was that he had a black sclera instead of a white one.

You would have gotten lost in them if he hadn't removed the mask fully, so his lower face was showing too. You wouldn't exactly describe it as terrifying, but the sight of his mouth was, to say it simply, unnerving. It was hidden behind four tusks that represented his mandibles. You were fascinated when he suddenly made a clicking noise but were taken aback when he extended the fleshy texture to reveal two rows of teeth. It was like he had two jaws, one when the mandibles were retracted to his face and one when they were extended and showed his actual mouth. His upper jaw held three teeth with two larger fangs on each side, his lower jaw held the same amount only were they a little thinner, so his fangs wouldn't hinder his mouth from closing.

Even after the initial shock subsided, you wouldn't exactly use the word pretty, but there was something about him. Thrilling and particular, astounding and intriguing, but also alluring.

The longer you looked at him, at Mi'ytiar, the more accustomed you got to his appearance.

Another clicking sound reached your ears and you stopped mapping his features with your eyes, only now realizing how he looked down at you with his head tilted to the side. When you mumbled his name, almost as if it took all your courage, he straightened up and his eyes snapped to your hand that had loosened its grip on your blouse. He followed its movement, getting closer to his face, and when you turned your hand so your palm was facing him, his own hand reacted fast and grabbed your delicate wrist.

Bad idea, real bad idea, you thought. He wasn't exactly hurting you, but his grip wasn't exactly soft.

Instead of tugging against his hold in an attempt to free yourself that would obliviously fail, you let your arm go slack. Instead of panicking, you remained calm. Instead of screaming at him to let you go, you kept your mouth shut and waited for his next move. If you triggered him in any way, he would surely kill you.

Mi'ytiar, on the other hand, was amazed by you and in awe. He wouldn't be the first Yautja to be enthralled with a human in this kind of way, sure, but he hadn't expected to be one of them one day. You were extraordinary in the way you looked at him, didn't mind the proximity he had put you in, and apparently seemed to seek for it.

Contrary to what you believed, he pulled your hand closer to his face by the wrist, causing you to move from your side-sit on the floor to get on your knees. Your lips parted in surprise when he pulled his mandibles in and he himself brought your hand up to his cheek.

The sensation underneath your touch was unusual and new. His cheek wasn't like that of a human when you would press the fat until you could feel the jaw bone. It was springy, considering it was only a fleshy layer that covered his mouth. You moved your hand down to his outer jaw, which consisted of his mandible, and followed its length with your palm. You could feel the firm muscle and bone and gave it a gentle, experimental squeeze. Almost automatically, he made a soft purring noise like that one of a cat and you blushed at the possibility that he was enjoying the caress.

You, of course, had no idea that you were touching a highly sensitive part of his anatomy and would be alive to tell the tale afterward.

Just as you were curious about him, he was eager to explore you as well. Carefully, he reached out and through the ripped-open front of your blouse. Seconds later, his palm made contact with your stomach and he could feel how you tensed up. He looked up into your eyes, but when he found nothing that indicated that you despised his touch, his hand ran along to your waist and down to your hip, his thumb absentmindedly stroking your belly. It was strange how you could feel his thumb near your navel and, at the same time, his other fingers on your lower back, taking the width of your hip like it was nothing.

The both of you were too busy in your explorations that you had grown ignorant to your surroundings, so when a scream filled the previously quiet alley, you grabbed his extended arm, not to push it away but to hold onto it in panic, while Mi'ytiar whirled his head around to the two outlines standing near the street at the end of the alley. Your body was hidden by his massive one, so it looked like a monster was kneeling among his freshly killed victims, basking in the glory of his crime.

Mi'ytiar's mandibles flared and the guttural roar that left his lungs made you cling to him in fear. Not of him, but the consequences that you would have to face if those who had stumbled upon this scene without context would call for the patrolling soldiers. You heard more screams and hastily retreating footsteps as the couple ran as if their lives depended on it.

Large hands grabbed you by the waist and hoisted you up on his shoulder, causing you to squeal in surprise, and you had barely time to hold onto him before he started climbing up the metal scaffolding of the balconies of the apartment building, jumping up and landing on the roof. With an arm secure around your waist, he jumped and ran further and further away.

And you let him.

2024, Yautja Prime

"What you smiling for?"

And all of a sudden, those purred words were taking you from your past life to your current one. You hadn't even noticed you had stopped drawing random figures and forms on Mi'tyiar's naked chest. At some point, you had started daydreaming with that far-away look in your eyes and a smile slowly making its way on your lips as you were lying on him, between his legs.

"Just thought of the night we met." You drawled lazily and rubbed your cheek against his reptilian-like skin. "My hero in shining alien amour."

"My amour does not shine."

Now you had to laugh. Sometimes, you couldn't help yourself when he was so bluntly clueless. Humans and their analogies were oh-so confusing.

"It's a human saying, my love." You explained as you crossed your arms on his wide chest and rested your chin on them. "A male who saves a female from danger. A male who would sacrifice himself so the female can get away without harm."

Mi'ytiar reached towards your face and cupped your cheek, his thumb stroking your cheek before he dragged it over your lower lip. You were dreamingly looking up at him, basking in his loving touch. You were placing your hand on his and turned your head to the side so you could pepper his palm with light kisses.

He couldn't help his body's reaction, he just couldn't. He was starved of your touch.

You suddenly stopped your sweet kisses when you felt something big poking your stomach. You looked down, although you could only see how your breasts were pressed against him, before you looked back up at him with a raised eyebrow.

"You are insatiable." You smirked and hoisted yourself up after placing one last kiss between his pecs.

You straddled his midriff but left enough space between you and him so you could reach underneath your body and grab his semi-hard cock. Even at this size, you had a little trouble fully embracing it and getting your fingertips to touch.

You hissed when you felt the familiar sting of his sharp mandibles and teeth digging into your skin. You tilted your head to the side and offered him more access. Mi'ytiar let out a feral growl when your blood finally hit his tongue. He relished in it, tasting so sweet, just like the rest of you.

Grasping your hips with both of his hands, his claws scratching your delicate skin, he pushed them down to his crotch.

He needed you again, needed to be so deep inside you, so he could see the bulge of his cock forming in your tummy. Just the thought of it made his hips snap up, barely missing your entrance and dragging his cock through your sopping wet folds that were covered with your combined releases from your last mating moments ago. It elicited a whiny moan and a wiggle of your hips.

"Stop teasing, tanhì. Put it in." You groaned and started rubbing yourself up and down his rock-hard cock, coating it with your mixed cum that was still leaking from your hole.

Mi'ytiar wrapped a large arm around you and started to get up, his other arm supporting himself to manhandle you on your back to be on top. The second your hazy mind registered what he was doing, you placed both of your hands on his chest and pushed him back down. You preened when his body immediately went slack, allowing you to do as you pleased with him.

He was staring up at you with flashing eyes. You didn't take the lead very often, preferring it to be dominated by your mate, but when you did, he was gladly giving you the power you wanted.

The first time you had tried to be on top, it had gone from steamy to ugly pretty quickly. You had been on your back when you tried to push him and switch your position, but since he had been unmovable like a rock, you had untangled yourself from him and told him to lie back. You were straddling his hips, humping his hardening cock for exactly thirty seconds before he flipped you over and on your back again. You had then mewled and tried to push him back once more, causing him to growl. For your attitude, he bit roughly into your throat, hoping it would keep you submissive. You let out a cry and hit his chest with both of your fists. This time, Mi'ytiar showed you his displeasure more vocally when he slammed his flat hands next to both sides of your head and roared right into your face. Safe to say, it scared the living daylights out of you and caused you to escape his caging arms. He, of course, followed you quickly and tried to amend his outburst with purrs and snuggles rather than words.

The next time you were on top, he vehemently focused on staying seated on the edge of your nest with you on his lap as you rode him with his helping hands on your hips. His eyes strayed from the spot where his cock was disappearing inside of you, to the bulge in your stomach that grew and shrunk with every movement, to your bouncing breasts, to your pleasure-contorted face.

After that, he couldn't get enough of you being on top.

The same was the case now as you slowly inserted his throbbing cock into your-

A wail broke the sensual atmosphere, causing the both of you to jerk your heads to the doorway connecting the room to the rest of your home. With your maternal instincts kicking in, you practically jumped up from your mate, his half-inside cock slipping from your tight heat, and ran to the room where the sound was coming from.

Mi'ytiar slumped back with a displeased grunt. He loved his pup dearly, truly he did, but he hadn't been able to mate with you for an eternity — five months, double the time the healer had advised you to keep from being intimate with each other after the pregnancy because a certain someone had been overly cautious with you — and his cock throbbed painfully at that sorrowful thought.

He got up from the nest and followed the direction you had run off to. Your five-month-old pup was sleeping alone in his room for only a short part of his life. Before that, his crib had been standing next to the nest in your room, quickly accessible and in reach should he need any sort of attention. Now, he was sleeping in his big brother's former nursery, which you had lovingly prepared when you had been pregnant with Akail, your first pup.

Mi'ytiar watched you standing in front of the crib in the middle of the room, your back to him, as you rocked the whiny pup in your arms. The wholesome thoughts of his beautiful mate taking such good care of his youngling quickly turned into an animalistic need to breed you once more when his eyes trailed over your curves that had gotten bigger after bearing his second son. They fixed on your legs where trails of semen were running down your skin from between your inner thighs.

He was faster by your side than you would expect from a being of his size. He pressed his bare body against your own, hands on your hips pulling you closer, his cock digging into your back. Mi'ytiar bent down to snuggle his face into the crook of your neck, purring lowly.

"He was just hungry." You whispered as you watched your pup falling back to sleep.

Bending over, you placed your little one back into his crib, careful not to disturb him. You had to bite your lip when you felt Mi'ytiar pull you back against his crotch to rub himself against your ass. All you needed to do was push your ass back into him for him to grab you, throw you over his shoulder and turn to leave your son's nursery.

Giggling, you looked back to the pup's crib and whispered, "Dream of the stars, my little Toyah." before you got carried back to your nest.

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[moody-alcoholic]

Freaky Friday

+18 MDNI explicit content

Its Friday which means I try writing new things. This week ✨double penetration.✨ I really had a scene like this envisioned for the finale of missing piece but I couldn’t wrap my head round it. Anyway thought this week was the perfect opportunity to give it another go! I pulled what I had saved in my drafts folder and cleaned it up, it’s definitely something…

Summary: Ghoap x reader. 2.5k words. Johnny suggests some fun in the bedroom.

CW: +18 MDNI explicit content Smut, sex, threesome, double penetration (ass & vagina), oral (M&F receiving), overstimulation, PiV sex, anal, spanking (it’s like once), grinding/ dry humping, little bit of aftercare.

Masterlist - AO3

Enjoy ya filithy animals <3

“How ‘bout we try double penetration.” Johnny says over dinner one day. You almost choke on your carrot.

“Fitting conversation for the dinner table as ever Johnny.” Simon says shaking his head as he forks more food in his mouth. You chuckle as Johnny winks at you. 

“I’m serious though, if you want to of course?” He says tipping his head to the side looking at you. You look over at Simon who sips on his glass of wine.

“I don’t know maybe. It seems complicated.” You feel yourself blushing as reach for your wine glass.

“I’ve been doing some research and I think I've got it figured out.” Johnny say smiling and putting another fork of food in his mouth. 

“Watched an instructional video did you?” Simon asks raising an eyebrow.

“Many, and I think I've cracked it.” He says pointing his fork at Simon

“It would be easy, Si you can take the front I'll take the back. You wouldn't even have to do anything love, just sit there and take it.” Johnny explains bluntly. You think about it, it did sound interesting. Something you thought would come up eventually anyway given the situation of the relationship. You didn't expect it to be over Sunday dinner though. Maybe that’s why Johnny went to so much effort, to ease the blow of bringing it up.

“Okay, we could try. I have Tuesday off next week. How about then?” You look round the table. You feel like you could see a smile forming on Simon's lips. Maybe he was more up for it then he seemed to be.

“Its a date.” Johnny says raising his glass

—------------

When Tuesday rolls around you’re strangely nervous. You don’t want to be a disappointment, but if Johnny meant what he said that you would basically just have to hold onto Simon and they would do the rest. This is definitely the most adventurous thing you’d done with them so far. Also the thing that’s required the most ‘prep’ work.  

“You sure you’re okay with this?” Simon asks you quietly as you come out the bathroom.

“Yeah, are you?” You ask trying to hide the nervousness in your voice. 

“Yeah, just remember if you want to stop just say. You know how enthusiastic Johnny can get.” Simon says. You smile nodding and he wraps his arm round your shoulder as you walk with him into the bedroom. Johnny is stood in just his boxers patting down the sheets on the bed. This is the first time you’ve planned for sex. Most of the time its just spontaneous. 

“Okay Simon sit on the end of the bed.” Johnny says. 

“What no foreplay?” Simon asks pulling his shirt off. 

“Oh, they’ll be foreplay. I just need to see how this works.” Johnny says as Simon sits down on the end of the bed. You go over to him as Johnny instructs you to sit on his knees facing Simon. You follow the instructions Simon’s hands wrap round your back and he holds you in place. Its not the most comfortable position with Simon’s large thighs. He scoots back on the bed a bit and you straddle over his waist smiling at him as you feel his cock twitch between the layers of fabric.

Johnny comes up behind you standing between Simon’s legs his hands squeeze your ass. You hear Johnny hum as you look down at Simon laid back propped up on his elbows. You start grinding up against him, feeling his cock grow in his pants. You lean down to kiss him as Johnny runs his hands up your back under your shirt. You sit up letting Johnny take it off over your head and fling it to the side. Simon’s face lights up as your breasts fall free and you move off him so he can take his trousers off. You’re kneeling on the bed as Johnny strips his boxers off.  

“Why don’t you sit on his face?” Johnny asks. You look down at Simon who nods. Guess you’re trying two new things tonight. You pull your underwear off and straddling over Simon’s face. His hands reach up and grab your ass you look down as him smiling as you let him lower your body onto his mouth. His tongue licks from your entrance to your clit, you let out a moan reaching forward for something to grab. You don’t find anything instead digging your nails into your thighs. It feels weird, this new position. Simon’s strong his arms holding your legs securely in place. You move one of your hands to your breasts cupping one and squeezing the nipple, it sends waves of pleasure down to your already aching pussy.

You hear Johnny behind you, the guttural sounds coming from his throat as he pleasures Simon. It’s hot, the noises he’s making sending vibrations through your body, not helped by the fact Simon keeps moaning making your clit spasm with each suck. You wish you could turn and see, you stop trying to grind on Simon’s face as you moan feeling yourself getting closer to the edge. Your nails are dug deep in your legs as you tip your head back, thighs accidentally squeezing Simon’s head as you cum. You feel him groan under you as you loosen your legs hearing Johnny chuckle behind you. You’re still panting when you flop your body to the side hearing Simon suck in gasps of air. 

“Sorry.” You say between breaths. Simon smiles looking over at you laying next to him, the pulsating between your legs is fading but the ache is still there. You scoot yourself down the bed and roll over so you’re face to face with Simon, who’s propped himself back up on his elbows. You both look down at Johnny who has a smirk on his face, knelt between Simon’s legs watching you both with his hands still working Simon’s shaft. You give Simon a quick kiss then you sit up swinging your legs over his stomach.

You feel Johnny grip your waist pulling you down to meet Simon’s pelvis. You reach behind you feeling for his cock. Your thumb circles around the familiar tip, your hand thrusts down, already so wet with a mix of Johnny’s saliva and Simon’s precum. You kneel up and over him guiding the tip to your entrance. You look down at him he’s still up on his elbows as you ease yourself down on him. You watch his expression change as his eyes roll back and he lets his body flop down. You move up and down on him feeling Johnny come behind you, hands wrapping round to your breasts, squeezing your nipples. It makes you moan Johnny’s name and Simon’s hands find your thighs.

“Feel good?” Johnny asks breathing down your neck. You hum in response as he starts kissing your neck, tongue dancing over the sensitive spots. You don’t need anything else you don’t even need to play with your clit you could just ride Simon and let Johnny play with you until you cum. You said you would try this though and honestly how hard can it be.

Johnny gently angles your body forward a bit and Simon looks up feeling your change in pace. Your body now arched forward slightly means Simon’s cock is hitting a new spot that's making clench down on him, he can feel it too becoming more vocal his hands squeezing your thighs. Simon’s beautiful moans are making it harder to concentrate. You get distracted by the sound of a drawer opening behind you, and what sounds like a cap of something. 

“Lube,” Johnny says as he sees you trying to turn. You feel one of his hands on the bottom of your back as you hear the other rubbing lube over his cock. You stop bouncing when you feel Johnny’s hand run between your ass cheeks. You clench again you don’t mean to. Simon sits up one of his hands coming round your back. You don’t know how he can be comfortable but he presses his lips to yours as his tongue works in your mouth Johnny’s fingers press up against your hole. It feels strange but you're too distracted as you moan in Simon’s mouth. 

“So soft.” Johnny breaths his other hand running up your back. You pull away from Simon as you feel Johnny’s finger on your ass replaced with the tip of his cock. 

“You ready?” Johnny asks you look at Simon and feel him twitch inside you. You realise he's been doing all the work grinding his hips into you. 

“Yeah,” you reply. Your arms wrapping round Simon’s neck. Johnny presses his back up against you as he slowly pushes into you. You gasp, it feels like all the air is sucked out your lungs. Johnny pauses as you clench round them both. 

“Fuck love,” Simon says breathing into your neck. 

“Christ, you feel amazing.” Johnny says pushing in a little further. You let out a moan feeling shivers run up your body. Your hips start buck against Simon feeling his cock pulse against your dripping walls. You can feel yourself slipping round his hips. Johnny pushes up inside you with one last thrust. It feels good, you feel full like you’re almost too tight being able to feel each movement from them.

Johnny was right as soon as him and Simon got comfortable all you really has to do was sit there. It took a few seconds to get used to it but before you knew it you were a painting mess your head slumped in Simon’s neck. One of Johnny’s hands ran up your hair lightly gripping it as his fingers massaged your scalp. You feel each thrust they’re making as your bodies all become a hot sweaty mess.

Sometimes their thrusts are in sync and its like fucking fireworks as moan out. They’re getting faster and you’re being bounced around more. Hearing Simon and Johnny moaning while their both inside you is amazing, its almost too much you’re starting to feel overstimulated. You know Simon is close by his painting and tight grip on you. 

“Johnny..” you breath as you tip your head back. He turns his face to kiss your cheek. You try to move your head as you do his lips meet yours. Its hot and sloppy your lips trying to stay together while you’re bring moved around. You’re not going to last much longer. Johnny seems to be able to tell as he increases his speed as Simon struggles to match him. Now Johnny is almost picking you up in his arms and bouncing you on them both.  

“Christ, Johnny..” is the only warning you get from Simon before he cums, its a few thrusts later you feel yourself cuming too, the feeling of Simon’s cock throbbing inside you pushing you over the edge. You call Simon’s name as you cum feeling Johnny resting you down on him while he continues to fuck you from behind. Simon flops down on the bed. His hands still gripping your thighs, you watch his chest rising and falling as he takes deep breaths.  

“Did so fucking well taking us both.” Johnny says he's almost feral pushing down on your lower back bending you forward. You feel Simon’s spent cock slip out of you and he moans. Its a completely new feeling now having just Johnny inside you, you feel almost empty. You moan at the praise as your clit starts rocking against Simon’s half hard twitching member. He’s almost shaking from overstimulation maybe you should get off him. But it feels too good you’re still so sensitive if this keeps up you’re going to cum again.

You plant your hands on Simon’s chest, you can feel his heart racing as you try not to dig your nails into him. It just feels too good and you bend over completely your head resting on his chest. Simon’s arms rub round your back. You hear Johnny grunting behind you as you angle your hips to chase the pleasure building inside you. You’re incoherently moaning and calling names as Simon’s hands brush over you. You listen to Johnny’s moans, and praises telling you how good you’ve been.

The orgasm takes you by surprise you squeeze your eyes closed moaning into Simon’s chest. Johnny cums too as you’re clenched around him so tight he has to almost fight to keep inside you. You’re panting wet mess on Simon’s chest, Johnny bent over your back, you can feel his chest pressed up against you his heart racing. You both just lay there on top of Simon, Johnny feeling like a warm weighted blanket. 

“Move Johnny,” Simon says after a few seconds slapping Johnny’s thigh.

“In a second Si,” Johnny replies between breaths. You chuckle which makes him move you let out a yelp as he pulls out of you, your whole body tingling with overstimulation. Johnny slaps your ass which makes you jump and you go to sit up but Simon keeps his arms around you keeping you in place. 

“I’m going for a shower, there’s room for more.” Johnny says, you know he’s winking at Simon you can almost hear it. A shower does sound nice, you let out a long breath and Simon loosens his arms so you can sit up. You almost slip off him your thighs coated in your slick and cum.

You move to get off the bed Simon stands behind you. Your legs are wobbly as you both make your way to the bathroom. They have a big shower, maybe that was on purpose it means it’s perfectly comfortable for all three of you. You enjoy being pressed against their bodies as you wash each other. It’s a different kind of pleasure, feeling their hands run over you almost fighting each other for touch over your sensitive spots.

You let the steam make you sleepy your body always pressed against one of their chests, with the warm water splashing on your back you could nap right there. When you exit the shower your body feels heavy and you almost slip on the tiles. Someone grab's your arms pulling up up. It’s Simon he throws a towel over you and scoops you up in his arms. 

“Bedroom or sofa?” He asks.

“Bedroom.” You yawn. He puts you down and you dry yourself off as you pull on some underwear and a shirt. You crawl into bed as Simon grabs some clothes for him and Johnny.

“Don’t let me sleep too long, I have work tomorrow.” You say as your head hits the pillow. Simon chuckles.

“Okay, we’ll wake you up for dinner.” He says as he steps out the door. 

“I love you Simon.” You call. 

“I love you too.” He replies as he closes the door.  

——————————

I really don't know how I feel about this but I tried. XD