#future husbands right here | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lucidfairies · 1 month ago

Text

— mess around [sevika]

part two • part three • part four

synopsis: it wasn't everyday you moved to the south, surrounded by cowboys and their women, but here you were, and your new neighbor simply couldn't get any more enticing

pairing: rancher!sevika x married housewife!reader

warnings: cheating, dom!sev, sub!reader, inexperienced reader (with women), size kink, light domestic kink, cum kink, tribbing, cunniligus, fingering, PRAISE, pet names, finger sucking, aggressive husband, he threatens to shoot Sevika, drinking/r gets drunk, m/f sex mentioned very briefly, r has long enough hair to braid

a/n: hi! I don't condone cheating. this is only part one, there'll be several parts ;)

wc: 6.5k

The air was thick in the outskirts of the city on Saturday morning. You rose with the sun, ready for a long day of moving, especially without your husband. This was a rushed decision, moving into this house together. You believed that the house was too large, no single couples needed three bedrooms, but your husband insisted that it would be perfect when you two chose to begin a family in future. And, well, you listened to him. He was good at talking you into things you didn’t want to do.

The house bared down on you when you arrived hours later. The porch was long, stretching around the corners of the house, large double-doors beckoning to be opened. The jagged edge of the key in your hand dug into your palm the longer you looked at the home, and you decided to suck it up and go in.

Walking in, you were greeted by a large kitchen with expansive glass windows that looked over the fields that came with the house. It was truly a gorgeous house, you were simply unsure if it was the place for you. But it was too late, the house was already yours, and the keys jingled as you sat them on the counter top.

The moving trucks would arrive soon, but you allowed yourself a moment to breathe as you walked throughout the house, peaking in each room. The largest bedroom had windows that mimicked those in the kitchen, and against your best hopes, your husband had been right. The other bedrooms would make good nurseries. For now, one would be an office and the other would be a guest bedroom. But you could envision your future.

There was a loud whistle from outside, indicating that at least one of the trucks had arrived. You released a sigh and traveled back downstairs, opening the doors with a whoosh of warm air. A mover hopped out of the large truck and came over to greet you, shaking your hand and explaining what was going to happen.

As the movers began bringing things into the house, you observed the outside. Across the street was the only close house, which sat on miles of land just as your new home did. The other house was different, though. It had miles of fencing, caging in horses and sheep, and if you squinted, you swore you could see cows in a small barn far down on the edges of the land.

Because the movers didn’t need you yet, you decided to venture across the street and meet the new neighbors. You didn’t look your best, as you were dressed to move, and you didn’t have anything to give them when you greeted them, but it didn’t matter. You could always invite the family over for dinner in the future.

There was a pair of brown, ratty cowboy boots resting against one of the steps, which made sense for the area. You were against moving south, you didn’t enjoy the heat and you had never ridden a horse before, but your husband insisted. The boots were lined with what looked like generations worth of mud, caked into every crevice and line.

You knocked on the door, waiting a moment before it opened. What you weren’t expecting was to be met with the sternum of a woman in front of you. It took you a moment to look up, and up, and up, before you met her eyes. She had a sullen expression on her face, as if you had just ruined her entire day. You tried not to think much of it, and you barely could with the attractive nature of the woman.

It was just her height that made her large - no, the woman had muscle packed onto her more than anyone you believed to have seen in your life. She was in a white shirt and jeans that hugged her muscular thighs so tightly you worried the seam would rip. Her eyes were grey, and they contrasted against her darker skin. Her hair was short, pulled away from her face and her lips were downturned as she looked at you.

“Hi,” you chirped nervously. “I just moved in across the street, I figured I would come introduce myself,” you gave her your name, a dark blush of embarrassment gracing your cheeks. “You have a lovely home.” The woman’s lips quirked into a side smirk, and your face grew hotter.

“Sevika,” her hand reached out between you, and there was a beat between you before you realized that she was offering her hand to shake. You cleared your throat, enveloping her palm in your own. Her hand practically swallowed yours. “Seems like a pretty big house for one little lady, sugar.” She joked, glancing over at the house as she leaned her weight against the door frame.

“Oh, no, it’s my husband and I. He’s away with business until late tonight, so I’m moving what I can.” A disapproving look smeared against her face.

“He left you alone?” You nodded slowly, unsure of what she was getting to. She looked over her shoulder, as if to check if anything or anyone was in her house. “If you’d like some help, I ain't got any plans ‘til the evening.” Your heart lept in your chest. Everything about your body’s reaction felt wrong. You could’ve begged this woman for help.

“That would be lovely, actually.” You smiled, trying not to seem as nervous as you felt. Your heart was thumping loudly, you swore you were about to faint. Maybe it was from the heat, women never made you feel this way in the past.

“Let me get myself cleaned up and I'll meet you over there, darlin’.” Her accent was thick. You were going to die. You nodded, smiling, and turned back in the direction of your house. At least you wouldn't have to move alone.

Before you knew it, the clock was striking five, and the majority of your furniture had been moved where it needed to go. Sevika did all of it - most of the time you just stood there looking pretty and instructing her where to go. Sevika thoroughly enjoyed it. She noticed the gentle bite of your lip when she lifted something heavy, your eyes tracing down the lines of her arms. You hadn't initially noticed the prosthetic in place of where her left arm should be, but it only made her that much more interesting.

For lunch you made sandwiches and lemonade, forcing her to sit and take a break instead of continuing to work for you. “Y’r just sweet as cane, ain'tcha?” she had said, taking the plate of food. You chose to ignore the rush in your panties.

You both stood in the kitchen and Sevika was breathing heavily, catching her breath after moving a series of dining chairs into your new dining room for you. You came to her, gently tracing your fingertips over her bicep as you pushed up on your toes and kissed her cheek. “Thank you so much, Sevika. I greatly appreciate it,” you said with a soft smile, “and you’re so strong.” You squeezed her arm, taking in a sharp breath at how hard the muscle actually was.

“You’re very welcome, darlin’.” When she smiled, you noticed a gap in her teeth that you hadn’t seen before. It fit her face perfectly.

“Will you let me make you dinner for your trouble?” You turned around, reaching for the single cookbook that you had bothered unpacking, resting on the counter.

“You’ve worked far too hard to be bothered with cookin’ tonight, pretty girl. Why don’t you join me? I’m going to dinner with some friends. You’ll enjoy ‘em.” You pondered for a moment, but the answer was clear. You hadn’t actually wanted to cook, but you would’ve done anything she asked.

“That would be nice. How’s six sound? I should probably clean up.” You gestured down your body at your sweaty clothes. You could already picture what you were going to wear - there was a sundress in a box in your bedroom, maybe you could track down the pair of cowboy boots you wore to a concert once.

“Sounds good, sugarplum. Wear somethin’ pretty for me, yeah?” Heat rose from your chest and crept up your neck, finding home on your cheeks. Sevika didn’t fail to notice, she adored it. No matter what she said to you, you were blushing and stuttering.

You found yourself on Sevika’s front porch at six round, inevitably in the outfit you were thinking of earlier. Your hair was in a loose braid, with a bow at the end, and you believed that you looked cute, but it could be better. Nothing compared to the way Sevika looked at you when you knocked, though.

She was in the same thing she was already wearing, except with a jacket thrown over her white tee, a cowboy hat, and some matching boots. God, you could eat her up. “Did as told, I see.” She nodded towards you, hat dipping with her head. “We’re going to the best bar in town, you ain't got nothin’ to worry about.” She walked out of the house, locking the door behind her and leading you to her car.

“So, Sevika,” you began, once you were settled into your passenger seat. “Do you live alone?” you had wondered, since she gave up her day to assist you and offered to bring you to dinner.

“Yes ma'am,” she responded, small grin painting her face. “Got some livestock ‘nd a dog. ‘s all I need.” You nodded.

“Have you ever been married?” She didn't seem like the type to enjoy marriage, and she wore no ring. Maybe you just couldn't imagine her in a traditional marriage - what kind of man would a woman like her even be interested in?

She chuckled. “Nah, holdin’ out for the right one.” you smiled. Sometimes you wondered if you held out for the right one. You loved your husband, but your love often felt fabricated. Like you had to love him, like a requirement.

She pulled up to the bar, it was a ragly old place, with a crooked sign and some wood falling off, but it was pretty. It read, plainly, The Last Drop, and you wondered where the name came from, or how she came to find this place in the middle of nowhere.

She ushered you in with a large, warm hand on the small of your back, gently directing you towards a table full of people. They already had drinks, and you feared that somehow you made the woman late.

“Nice of you to finally join us, Sevy.” A woman quipped. She wasn't like anything you'd seen before - tall, long blue hair, and tattoos. She was gorgeous, quite a sight. “Who's your lady friend?” The woman looked over at you and winked with a smirk.

“Watch it, Jinx,” she retorted, taking a seat next to a woman with pink hair, and you took the one next to her. She introduced you to the group, and a small blush crept up your cheeks. In order, she introduced everyone around the table. “Jinx and I worked for the same guy a couple years back. He passed, but she still hangs around,” Jinx shot her a look and took a sip of her drink. “Ekko, her husband. Caitlyn and Vi, they're married.” You greeted each of them.

Being with Sevika was something you had never imagined possible. She ordered and paid for your meal and your drinks, and let you get as many as you wanted. You didn't exactly feel like you fit in with her crowd of people, they were a little rowdy and loud, but the company was enjoyable.

It was late when the first couple left - Jinx and Ekko, to go relieve their babysitter. Caitlyn and Vi left soon after, no particular reason. It left you a Sevika, and when she began talking to you, the amount of alcohol in your system finally hit you.

“Sevika,” you slurred, grabbing her arm as you looked up at her, “can I have your hat?”

Her cheeks warmed, dark blush finding home on them. “What’d’ya need my hat for, babygirl?” She chuckled, trying to play off her nervousness. Clearly, you didn't know how hats worked in bars.

“‘s pretty on you,” she was still laughing as she took it off and placed it on your head. And god, you looked good. Thoughts of filth coursed through her mind and she attempted to shut them down, with no luck. You were her married neighbor. She couldn't possibly be thinking of you in the way she was.

“Let's get you home, cowgirl.” She gently grabbed your upper arm, helping you off your stool. When you stumbled, she turned you around, your back facing her front as she grabbed your forearms and helped you walk.

You slumped against her in the car, head resting on her shoulder as sleep drew you in. You didn't get drunk often, but when you did, it always made you tired. Especially after a full day of work.

Your husband's car was in the driveway when you both returned to your neighborhood. Sevika pulled into your new, fancy driveway and quickly came to your side to assist your walk into your house. After a few steps, your husband threw open the front door, anger pouring off of him.

“What the fuck is this?” He yelled at Sevika, who simply looked at him. “What the fuck did you do to my wife?” He ripped you from her arms, making you hunch and your stomach twist. Sevika backed up, hands in the air like she was facing a cop.

“We went out for dinner and she had a couple drinks. I was just bringin’r home.” She insisted. Your husband didn't care - he was livid. In his mind, some woman that he had never seen before got his wife drunk and did god knows what to you.

“Get the fuck off my property and don't fucking come back or I'll shoot you dead.” He spat, dragging you inside. You looked over your shoulder, watching Sevika walk down the driveway, shaking her head. She got in her car and drove home, and that was the last you saw of her.

To your misfortune, you remembered none of what happened the previous night when you awoke. You remembered portions of dinner, some blurry faces, Sevika’s murmured ‘babygirl’, but nothing of the way your husband treated her. And he made no effort to enlighten you as to what happened -

So, for weeks afterward when Sevika avoided you, you had no idea why. You didn’t even know if she was avoiding you on purpose, maybe she was just a busy woman. Maybe the day she spent with you was a one time thing. But, your curiosity brewed every time you saw her at home.

You knew you had too much to drink that night, but you had never taken yourself for a sloppy drunk, or a mean one. That doesn’t mean you couldn’t have said or done something vulgar, but it was out of your character. Maybe she simply didn’t enjoy your company as much as you did hers. There were millions of options, millions of reasons as to why no words had been uttered since that day.

You were growing accustomed to your new life. Your husband went to work every day, occasionally went on a business trip, and you tended to the house. It wasn’t ever what you had thought your life would look like, or wanted your life to look like. But it wasn’t bad. It was relaxing, and allowed you freedoms that you didn’t previously have when you both worked and lived in a small city apartment.

And there was the other part. You were learning to tend to the house so that you were ready for when you were to bear children - something that your husband had insisted was coming soon, and therefore had suggested you begin trying. The night he suggested that was the night the pit in your stomach became unbearable. Trying for a baby? With him? You weren’t sure you were ready for that, or frankly wanted that.

It was a sunny, warm morning when you left to get the mail. Dew had settled in the grass, and the southern air was thick. You were in a nightgown, one of your favorites, that was outlined in lace, a nice pale yellow color. You had panties that matched, clung to your skin underneath the short gown.

Before you could turn to go back up the driveway and into the house, you noticed Sevika’s door opening, and there stood the one and only. She was in a pair of plaid pajama pants and a wifepleaser, slippers finishing the outfit nicely.

“Sevika!” You yelled from across the street, a wide smile as you raised a hand to wave. Her head snapped up from her mail, but before she could hide, you were making your way across the street. She wasn’t getting out of this one. “Sevika, hi! I haven’t seen you around, you must be one busy woman.” You joked. She smiled, demeanor softening.

“You could say that,” She responded awkwardly, knowing damn well she was not a busy woman, especially not if you needed something. “Was there anything else? Don’t need your husband gettin’ all pissy again, ma’am.” Your brows knit, confusion drawing itself on your pretty features.

Fuck. You didn’t know, you couldn’t have possibly known. You were so drunk that night that there was no way you remembered what happened, and now Sevika just dropped the bomb. “Whatever do you mean, Sevika?” God, you drew her in, sweet as honey.

“I best get goin’. Gotta feed the chickens.” She had already fed her chickens today, twice because she was so tired.

“No, Sevika. What do you mean? Did he do something to you?” Sevika sighed, throwing a quick glance towards your house to assure that your husband wasn’t home. His car was missing from the driveway, and that was all she needed to know.

“The night you came out with me you drank a lot, could hardly walk by y’rself. Brought ya home and he got angry, threatened to shoot me if I came near you again. ‘m not tryna get shot anytime soon, sweet thing.” Your lips parted, small gasp falling from them. Sevika prayed she never forgot the noise.

“Sev…” you paused, trying to formulate what you wanted to say to her. “I’m so sorry he did that. His temper can get the best of him sometimes, I promise he’s a good man. We don’t own any guns. How can I apologize?” Sevika envisioned a few ways. “How about dinner? Tomorrow? He’ll be out of town for a couple days, he’s taking the train up north. I’ll cook for you?”

Sevika was blushing. Sevika never blushed. “Miss, you ain’t gotta do all that for me.”

“No, you deserve it. You must come. Tomorrow, six, please?” Your eyes softened as you looked up at her, and she would’ve moved mountains to give you what you wanted in that moment. But luckily, it was a lot easier than that.

“If you insist,” she said with a small smile, “I’ll be there, sugar.” You grinned, clapping your hands twice. “I like steak, if you’re willing.” She swore she saw your smile widen.

“Perfect, I have just the recipe. I can’t wait, I’ll see you tomorrow, Sevika!” You said eagerly, as you began walking back to your house, tossing her a wave over your shoulder.

The longer you thought about it, the more the situation angered you. Sevika was doing you a favor, a noble one at that, just to be treated like shit by the person that was supposed to protect you. Everything she said made the idea of having a child with this man less and less appealing. You hardly acknowledged him when he returned home that night, and hardly bid him farewell when he left in the morning. It was tough to look at him.

It was late afternoon when you got the food in the oven and began getting ready. You didn’t know whether this was formal or not, so you chose something in the middle. You chose a simple half up, half down style, bringing the top of your hair into a pretty bun and leaving the rest down to curl. You did your makeup, then went through your closet, trying to find something that matched the appeal you were trying to convey.

Part of you wanted to put on something that your husband would hate; a pair of jeans and a top, or even something casual. But the other half, and the half that won, begged you to dress yourself in something attractive. Something that would draw her in, making her look at you, in the ways your husband never did.

The thought was terrible, obscene even. You had never even begun to think of someone in the way you were thinking of Sevika now, especially while married. It was awful. And then you remembered what he did to her, what he did to you. How he made you move hundreds of miles from your family and quit your job to play house.

You chose a dress that was shorter than anything you believed to have ever dressed yourself in. It hardly covered your ass, and it was slutty. So very slutty, so unlike you. And you liked it. You liked the way it hugged your figure, made your boobs look fuller and your hips wider.

The dress was strapless and white, coming in at the waist and flaring slightly until it ended. You added a white bow to your bun for good measure, and a pair of white kitten heels that opened at the toe. Confidence was a drug, and you were addicted.

The oven rang moments before Sevika knocked, right on time. You took out the food and set it on the counter, tossing your oven mitts to the side to get the door. When you opened it, Sevika drank you in like a tall glass of wine. Her eyes moved along you slowly, as if she was trying to memorize every dip and curve of your body. She followed the line of your dress, eyes falling on the over-exposure of your thighs, and they paused there for a moment.

And her mind was running wild.

“Hi Sevika,” you greeted, cheeks warmer than they had ever been. This was terrible, disgusting. And it was going the exact way you wanted it to. “You look nice.” She did. She was in black slacks and a white t-shirt with an unbuttoned, short sleeved button-down thrown overtop. It was cropped just the right amount, ending where her slacks began. It had a gorgeous pattern of red and black and white, and it was as if your minds had thought the same, and here you were matching.

“If I’m nice, you must be world-stopping.” She said, taking your hand and placing a gentle kiss to your knuckle. “The food smells great.” Her eyes were addicting. You simply couldn’t draw yourself away, even after it had been several beats since she spoke.

“Do come in,” you opened the door wider and she stepped in, engulfing the doorframe. “I just need to plate the food and we can eat. Feel free to sit.” She did as told, taking a seat at the small table while you plated the food. You placed her plate in front of her, but she was too busy watching the way you worked and moved around the kitchen to bother looking at the food.

“You didn’t have to do all this, sugar. Seems like a lot of work.” You chuckled.

“It’s truly not. If anything, it’s routine. My husband has me staying home now, tending to the house. I cook a lot. You’re the first person I’ve had over in quite some time.” You took your place, smoothing out your dress. Sevika looked surprised at your remark.

“If I had a woman as pretty as you I would take her everywhere. Show’r off to the world.” Your mouth was agape again. Your husband never said things like that to you. It made your skin warm and your stomach flutter.

Realizing that you had been staring at her for a moment, you averted your gaze, dropping it to your plate in embarrassment. “You’re very nice, Sevika. You know how to talk a woman up.” She grinned, leaning back in her chair and spreading her legs into a, somehow, sexy manspread. You never found the way of seating particularly attractive, but when she did it, you had several thoughts about it. Positive ones. Dirty ones.

“It’s working, then?” Your eyes widened, but before you could say anything, she was speaking again. “You should eat, sugar. Food’s gon’ get cold.” She was smirking, and when you looked down at her plate, she was all but finished. You wondered how long you had been entranced by her, if it meant that more than half her food was already gone and you had hardly started.

You ate quickly, almost choking at the rate at which you stuffed your face. She was finished before you, and wasted no time taking her dishes to the sink and beginning to clean them. When you were finished, you shot up, hurrying over to her and gently pushing her to the side. “You’re a guest, you don’t have to clean your own dishes, that’s rude.” You joked, taking her plate from her hands.

“I’m a capable woman, babygirl. I can clean my own plate, I do it every day.” You shooed her hands away as she reached for her plate, until she was grabbing your wrist and pinning you to the counter, human hand holding your wrist while her mechanical arm trapped you against her.

When you looked up at her, your clit started beating. She was looking down at you, low eyes painted with displeasure. “Let me help you, angel. It won’t kill ya.”

The feelings swirling within you were nothing you had ever felt before. Your body was on fire, you were surprised that your wrist wasn’t burning Sevika’s large palm. Her body heat was radiating into you, and you could feel the meat of her thighs against yours, and the curve of her hips as they kissed your own. Your panties were wet, your thighs were sticky, but you were sure it was sweat.

“Sevika…” You whispered, but any additional thoughts were cut off by the harsh press of her lips to yours, the force pushing you against the sink even harder. Your eyes widened for a second, but quickly fluttered closed as your body accepted what was happening and leaned into it. You pushed off the sink, pressing your front against hers. She let go of your wrist and your hands found purchase on her neck, pulling at her short hair.

She moaned softly into your mouth, grabbing your hip with her human hand and pushing your hips against the sink so your back arched a little further, tits pushed against hers. Her lips attacked yours, tongue dipping into your mouth and sucking, pulling noises out of you that you had never heard before.

You pulled away, admiring her flushed face and swollen lips. She was breathing heavily, and the look on her face dropped into terror as she realized what she had done. “I’m so sorry, ma’am.” She backed up, releasing you from your spot against the sink. “Gods,” she rubbed her hands over her face, “I just kissed a married woman in her husband’s home. I should leave.”

“Don’t.” You came to where she was standing, softly grabbing her wrists and pulling her hands away from her face. She was scared, looking at you. Scared of what could happen. Scared of how it would be if it didn’t happen.

Slowly, cautiously, you pressed up on your toes and pulled her in for another kiss. And she was lost. Gone, forever. There was no returning from this.

She grabbed your ass, lifting you easily onto the counter as she continued kissing you. Her body was hard and hot and calling you, and the way she dragged her hands up and down your waist, carefully flicking her thumb over your nipple made your panties drenched. “Do that again,” you whined, arching your tits towards her.

“Do what, sugar?” She played coy, letting her hands rest on your waist. “This?” She ran her human hand up your side and flicked her thumb over your nipple again, craving the moan that fell from your lips. “Tell me, sugar, was it this?” She pulled the top of your dress down slowly, giving you time to interject. But you didn’t, and she made quick work of removing your bra.

She left wet, hot kisses down your chest, lips latching around your nipple. She sucked hard, making you cry out and grind your hips in the air. She could’ve made a snarky comment about that, she desperately wanted to, but the way your body reacted to her mouth on your perky nipple was too compelling.

Once she had given both of your tits equal attention, she stood back up and met your eyes. “Y’r gonna have to tell me where this is goin’, baby. ‘m not goin’ any further until you tell me with words.” Your head fell against her chest, panting.

“Please, please fuck me, Sev.” With a soft ‘fuck’, she lifted you off the counter, your legs locking around her hips. She carried you down the hall with your instruction, kicking the door closed and locking it before placing you on the bed, gingerly.

“Let’s get you out of this dress, mama.” She pulled it down, waiting for you to lift your hips so she could finish the job. Before she could admire you, you were grabbing her by her t-shirt and pulling her on top of you, kissing her once again. Nothing in the world was better than this.

“Sevika,” you moaned as her mouth was reunited with your boobs. “Take off your shirt.” She did as instructed, losing her button down and t-shirt in a few short motions. It left her in her slacks and a sports bra, a great look for her. She stood at the end of the bed, and she grabbed your ankle to pull you down with her. Your ass was on the edge of the bed, and your legs were propped up, spread wide.

“Fuck,” she looked over your body, then threw her head back and shut her eyes. This was wrong. It was awful. You’re married. But the way your panties sat high on your hips and had a noticeable wet spot in the middle was enough to waiver her thoughts.

“Sevika,” you said, weakly. “What do we.. do? I’ve never done this with a woman.” She chuckled a little, sinking to her knees at the edge of the bed, so that her face was level with your cunt. You could feel her warm breath against you, and it made you shiver.

“I’m gonna eat your pussy, angel. What happens next is up to you. But I need my face in y’r pussy.” She looked up at you as she painted your thighs with kisses, occasionally stopping to suck on the skin. She was careful, she didn’t leave any marks, but she adored having your skin in her mouth. She adored having you in her mouth.

You weren’t prepared for her first lick against your cunt. She licked a fat strip from bottom to top over your panties, and you reeled, arching into it and bringing your legs together. She placed both of her hands on the insides of your thighs, forcing them apart. “You’re gonna keep these open for me, ain’tcha, sugar?” Weakly, you nodded, relaxing and allowing your legs to fall apart.

She continued eating you over your panties, sucking at your clit until you weren’t sure what was from you and what was her spit, everything was drenched. She sat up, reaching for the waistband of your panties. Instinctively, you lifted your hips, and she smirked as she pulled them down. “Good job, darlin’, knew exactly what I needed.” Your stomach flipped, and you were sure you were dripping.

Sevika was looking at you like you were prey and she hadn’t eaten in a month. Your cunt was glistening, and you were practically dripping onto the bed. And it was all for her. “Well, you have the prettiest pussy I’ve ever seen, mama.” You whimpered, entrance clenching at her words, and she could fucking see it. See the way your body reacted to her. She could’ve died a happy woman, right then and there.

She was on her knees again in an instant, tongue finding your clit and sucking. She did all sorts of magical things; twisted her tongue around the bud, flicked it with her tongue, sucked like something would come out if she did. You were practically crying at what she did, it was overwhelming.

Your husband had eaten you out before, several times. He claimed to like it, but it was never quite right. It was never like this. Not when Sevika placed a kiss on your clit and slipped her tongue in you, wasting no time fucking you with her tongue. Her mech hand came up and pinched your nipple, the cool metal feeling like heaven against your overheated skin.

“Sevika,” you cried, fingers winding in her hair as her tongue worked. You were getting close, she could tell. Your clit was twitching and you were clenching around her tongue, but she kissed her way back to your clit and pressed a cautionary finger against your entrance. “Sev, fuck, Sevika, please fill me up, please,” Sevika let out a deep moan into your cunt, her own clit begging for attention.

She kept her mech hand on your nipple while she slowly slid her middle finger into you, stretching you more than your husband’s fingers ever did. She took it slow, going knuckle by knuckle until you bottomed out on her finger. She didn’t rush you, letting you adjust to the feeling of her thick digit inside you before moving.

The feeling of her tongue on your clit and her finger against your g-spot had you crying and whining, begging her for more, more, more, until she gave it to you. She introduced another finger into the mix, letting her ring finger enter you at the same pace as the other.

Two fingers and her tongue must be heaven. She knew exactly what to do, and you were absolutely going to cum. Over and over, at that. She lifted up for a moment, not relenting with her pace. “Come for me, darlin’. Let me have it.”

The knot in your stomach released and all the tension in your muscles relaxed, letting your orgasm flow through your body. Your back arched off the bed and you gripped her hair tightly, the waves of pleasure more intense than any you’d felt before. She made sure she had you coming for as long as she could, unrelenting in her pace until she had milked every drop from you.

You were panting, and you let out a practically pornographic whine when she retracted her fingers from you and stood up, leaning over you. “Open y’r mouth, baby. Stick out your pretty tongue.” Her fingers were quick to breach your lips once your mouth was open, and you shut it around them, sucking your cum off her digits.

Her clit hurt. It was beating so hard, and watching you suck her fingers just made her go even more crazy. She pushed your limits, forcing her fingers further down her throat to see how much you could take. And to her surprise, you took them to the base with no problem, and it made her desperate to see her strap down your throat. “That’s my good girl, ain’t it? Suckin’ me so good.” You moaned, but it was muffled around her fingers.

The hat resting on your closet door handle caught her eye, and a malicious idea bloomed in her. “I want you to ride me, angel. Needa’ come on your pussy.” You sat up, watching her as she grabbed her hat from the closet handle. She tossed it to you and unbuckled her pants, pulling them from her body inch by inch until you got to see all of her. Her boxers came off next, and it was such a sight.

She plopped down on the bed, and you looked at her expectantly, waiting for further instruction. Her legs spread, and she lifted one of them to make space between them for you. You made assumptions, hovering between her legs and glancing over at her. “Ride me, cowgirl. Go until you feel good.”

It took some maneuvering for you to find an angle that worked for both you and Sevika, but when it did, it was earth shattering. Her clit against yours felt like you had been blessed by God, and her wetness seeping into yours felt like she could get you pregnant. She was groaning beneath you, humping you like some kind of fucking dog, and it was the best thing ever.

She reached over and grabbed her hat, placing it on your head. “That’s it, that’s my cowgirl, ain’t it? Fuck, you ride me so well, baby.” You came down harsher against her, the feeling too good to be slow or soft.

“Nnghh- vika,” that is what got Sevika over the edge. Hearing you moan that nickname like a fucking pornstar had her gripping your hips and holding you in place as she fucked up into you and came all over you, whimpering like a bitch in heat. A string of curses fell from her pretty lips before she released your hips and let you chase your second orgasm, one that had you falling onto her chest, unable to move from your fucked out muscles.

After a couple minutes she gently brushed your hair away from your face, admiring your beauty. You groaned softly, sitting up on your elbow to meet her eyes. “That was really good.” You said, softly. “What if you stay the night?” Sevika shook her head, crawling out of the bed.

“‘m sorry, sweet thing. I don’t feel right stayin’ here after fuckin’ you. ‘s not fair to y’r husband.” You pouted, remembering his existence, to your misfortune. Sudden emotions flooded you as you watched Sevika dress; you just cheated on your husband, and had sex with a woman. Not just any woman - your neighbor. That you would have to see, every day, for the rest of your time living in this neighborhood.

She pressed a tender kiss to your forehead and you let your eyes flutter shut, you let yourself enjoy it before it was wrong. “Bye, Sevika. I’ll see you at happy hour next week?” She smiled softly, knowing she would do anything and everything in her power to be there for you.

“Absolutely, babygirl.” And with that, she was gone.

lmk if you wanna be tagged in future parts!

#sevika #sevika x you #sevika x y/n #sevika x reader #sevika arcane #arcane sevika #arcane league of legends #arcane smut #arcane league of lesbians #league of legends #sevika smut

3K notes · View notes

theorphicangel · 2 months ago

Text

sukuna who swears he would never get married, making this statement even when he was a little kid to his dad and wanting to stay far far away from girls because they were 'gross'

growing into his teens he viewed anything romantic with disgust and couldn't sit through a film, sitcom or advert which displayed any type of romance.

attending college he had his hook ups here and there and it was more than obvious that sukuna ryomen didn't do relationships whatsoever, it was strictly sex and he kept it as that, distancing himself away from anyone who began to show even the littlest emotions towards him

any time people talked about their future around him such as what cars they wanted, what type of house they would like, how many kids and when they would get married, sukuna would always remain quiet never being able to picture that sort of life of him.

being domestic? creating a safe and loving home?

don't make him laugh.

the word husband and marriage barely appealed to him and he would have to try his hardest to even imagine himself making that type of commitment.

at least he used to imagine it until his world was changed upside down and it suddenly became real.

in almost a blink of an eye sukuna found himself in a relationship. long term and serious. suddenly all his thoughts and actions were occupied with nothing but you.

yes, it was scary at first and his coping mechanism was to push you away. but fortunately you know sukuna like the back of your hand and unlike everything else in his life, you stayed.

you stayed to the point where he enjoys coming home early to see you.

you stayed to the point where he likes to sleep in on the weekends, the warm sun rising to greet your bodies wrapped up in the sheets.

you stayed to the point where he tries his hardest to provide for you, making dinner, buying flowers just because or getting that necklace you were searching up in secret online.

you stayed to the point where he introduced you to his family and found out that you fit in perfectly, both his brother and his nephew warming up to you almost immediately.

you stayed to the point where he went out and bought an expensive ass ring, rare in its kind and hid it in the bottom storage cabinet, waiting for the right moment to pop the question.

would you stay with him for the rest of your life?

now he stands in the mirror, all dressed up in a suit. a flower poking out of his chest pocket - this is the smartest he has ever looked in his life. he's already dealt with torment from his father about the gel in his hair and keeping his shirt tucked in.

sukuna would never have anticipated that he would make it to his own wedding day.

he's nervous for some reason, mentally running over his own vows, the palms of his hands sweaty as he practices putting the ring on your finger.

'I'll be right there with you.' you promised a week ago after your rehearsal. you knew how much he hates the public eye on him much less when he's confessing his love out loud to you.

sukuna takes an inhale and judges his own appearance for the nth time, he's scrutinising himself, deep in his thoughts about whether he should have gone for a grey suit instead.

it's only when he feels a tap on his shoulder that he's stirred out of his thoughts.

'hey handsome.'

sukuna turns to find you behind him, dressed in your own wedding attire with a bouquet of your favourite flowers in hand.

'isn't it bad luck for a groom to see his bride?' he frowns.

you almost let out a snort, 'is this the sukuna ryomen believing in superstitions.'

'whatever brat.' he mumbles before his tone turns serious, meeting your eyes. 'you look...beautiful.'

'thank you future husband.'

sukuna's lips twitch into a grin at the name.

husband.

he guesses it has a nice ring to it.

a reminder that you chose to stay with him, wanting nothing more to spend the rest of your life with him.

yeah, maybe he was cut out for this married life after all.

4K notes · View notes

dilf-docs · 3 months ago

Text

Call It What You Want

husband!pedro pascal x younger!reader

summary: you and pedro are married, but you've kept it a secret up to the point you sometimes forget there's supposed to be a golden band on your finger. but then you both get cast in your first movie together. the chemistry is off the charts, and it starts to catch upon you: will the lines between shipping and reality finally blur?

warnings: 18+ (minors dni), age gap (ñom), smut, dry humping, oral (m. receiving) while pedro wears the skirt™️ (welcome to another episode of the writer's barely disguised fetish), p. in v., teeny bit of angst because i malfunction if i don't bring sad vibes to the function, the worst ever attempt of comedy witnessed by human kind, they're so down bad it hurts, jealous!reader, possesive!pedro, reader speaks spanish and may or may not have direct/indirect latino blood somewhere, use of spanglish but no translations ☹️ (boo go do your homework, citizens. that's what u get for making my dieter bravo fic flop BYE), i transcripted two real interviews for this so keep those likes, reblogs and comments up in the air where i can see 'em 🪓🪓

word count: 11,706 words

side note: hello! this is me, sliding my cv to become president of the pedro pascal fics. i'm kidding, just on duty to fulfill another request 🫡 believe it or not, i envisioned something like this but for myself IJBOL we have to keep the delusional levels UP!! i hope this meets ur expectations, it was fun to write :)

part: prev | masterlist | next

"Please welcome, the internet's newest darling, Y/n L/n!"

You walk into the set, cameras flashing bright and the band playing on the back. You hug Jimmy Fallon, and when he notices your body trembling he tells you everything will be alright. So did your manager before you stepped inside, but you can't help the nerves. You've never been this big before, and now it's all coming down together without letting you breath.

You take your seat and so does Jimmy.

"Hello, Y/n. This is your first time here, right?"

"Am I being too obvious?" you snort. The crowd laughs with you.

"Don't worry. It happens, especially when you're so young"

"Oh, please" you blush. "I can promise you there are kid actors who could handle this better than I am right now"

"Kid stars?" he lets out one of his famous cackles. "No need to be humble. You are great! Let's just talk about the year you've had: big breakout roles, ascend to fame, you're rocking it!" the crowd cheers, and you again turn into a flustered mess.

"Yeah, I suppose. It's hard to dimension when you've started as an extra for popular shows, to now being, you know, the main face of projects. But I could get used to it" you smile, "it's been a dream. I still can't believe it sometimes, look- I'm shaking"

The camera pans closer to the hand you're showing to Jimmy.

"Oh my God, even big stars like you get nervous"

"Big star? I wish I could feel like a constellation. I'm feeling more like a red dwarf star, baby"

The whole place bubbles in laughter. You feel better, your manager even giving you a thumbs up from behind the cameras.

"So, Y/n" Jimmy says once the laughter dies. "You just got casted in the upcoming Gladiator II movie, directed by Ridley Scott. How does it feel to be on your first big movie, alongside names like Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington and Pedro Pascal?"

You try to steady your heartbeat. "First of all, I have to say, it's such an honor to work with Scott. I grew up watching his movies. Like, Thelma and Louis is definitely my go-to movie. So, like, getting paired with such a talented cast is as awesome as terrifying" you answer with a laugh.

"Talking about that, you see" he leans closer, like he'll tell a secret. "I've heard things about you and a certain future co-star of yours"

You shift your position on the couch, your ring(less) finger itching. You have to avoid breathing in relief when Jimmy pulls out a picture.

"Oh. My. God"

He stiffles a laugh. No way. Has the room's temperature suddenly gotten hotter? Why is your face burning?

"Will you tell us the story behind this?" he asks, the camera focusing on the picture in question. The audience laughs, and you pray to God this is a nightmare, because it's too much embarrasment for a human to bear.

"Okay" you clear your throat, coughing awkwardly. "For my 25th birthday, I uploaded a bunch of pictures on Instagram, including ones where I was a teenager" you begin to giggle, "So. Um, there was this one, you see, that's, me, in my childhood home's bedroom, and my fans were quick to notice the poster above my bed"

"You mean, this one?" and Jimmy points it out. You cover your face with your palms. "It's a... Narcos poster" the audience laughs as you get redder. "A Pedro Pascal's Narcos poster"

"I know" you groan. "Picture this: me 18, and while my friends had posters of their favorite bands and artists, I was so different because I had a whole ass poster of a crime drama show about the world's most famous drug dealer on my bedroom" you recall with a laugh. "It was hard to explain to my mom. I believe she thought I wanted to sign for the DEA or something. When I told her I was going to be an actress, she was so relieved! She said: Oh, well. You'll die, but of hunger! Not a bullet in your head, at least"

"Oh. I'm so sorry. You proved her wrong though!"

"I did! Don't worry, Jimmy. She's my biggest fan now" you look at a specific camera before saying, "Te amo mami!"

"I see you speak spanish. I sometimes forget" he comments. "You've got one thing in common with Pedro, it seems. Think that'll make working with him less awkward?"

"I just hope he forgives me or I'm capable of moving out of the country and changing names" you giggle. "Pedro, lo siento!"

"Well, that's Y/n L/n, everyone! Pedro Pascal's number one fan" you burst out laughing in shame. "More on her lastest movie after the break"

mandoshoney: tell me i'm not the only one who started shipping pedro pascal and y/n l/n PLEASE can't wait to get content of them interacting ㅤㅤann-gell: mandoshoney y/n's pedro pascal's controversially young gf era starts now! i wonder how the press tour for #gladiatorII will go 🤔 unhing3dprincess: i bet my grandma they are dating ㅤㅤstarlightt180: unhing3dprincess ptwt can never tweet like normal ppl…wdym you're betting your grandma?!!!?

You were never a fan of secrets.

But then Pedro waltzed into your life with his charming smile and iconic mustache, and before you knew it, you had married him off in some church in California one random sunday morning ("I love you so much, can't wait to marry you, cariño" "If you can't wait any longer, why not now?")

Flash forward, four years later, and you'd think such event would be plastered all over the internet. But there is a reason why only you, family, a selected number of friends and your agents knew: you kept it a secret.

To the world, he was Chile's most elegible bachelor and you were a young rising star. The public loved both of you for the same reasons: charming persona and acting skills. Yet inside the privacy of your home, he was Pedro and you were y/n, wife and husband; he was yours as you were his.

And of course, no marriage is perfect, and your first real challenge is rather funny: you both get casted in your first movie together.

It shouldn't be hard, but it is. Being inside the Gladiator II set during seven months, so far away yet so close at the same time, was torture. You were Rome's empress and he's Marcus Acacius, yet behind the scenes, the actual married couple were you both.

It was hard to pretend you didn't know what he looked like without clothes when he wore his bathing suit, or that you didn't know his favorite food when Paul asked, or acting like you weren't interested in dating when a local in Malta during your trip at the beach asked you out (he didn't know who you were. You were flattered when he called you pretty in such a hot European accent, but then Pedro appeared from seemingly "nowhere" and you remembered what your real favorite accent was. He immediately called you bonita after that)

It was so hard to keep hands to yourself when he walked by you, covered in fake blood. To not think about licking it all over and under his armour. So was to pretend the thought of dry humping him with his Roman skirt on wasn't tempting. Or that the urge to kiss him got harder and harder to fight each passing day, even getting to a point where you would envy Connie for being able to kiss your husband in the open more, a privilege you didn't have.

You were loosing your mental health here. But Pedro was no better.

It was so hard to see you, the Moroccan sun shining over your features like you were an angel. Otherworldly. That he'd see red when you'd finish filming a scene with Joseph, forcing himself to interrupt the small chat you'd engage in after. He too couldn't keep pretending he didn't want to tear off those silk dresses out of your body, and kiss you out in the open like Joseph did.

He almost failed once, cornering you in the hallway of the hotel you were staying. His hot breath lingered on your neck. I miss you, he had said. You felt his hard brush the inner of your thigh. We can't, you whispered in a dragged out voice.

It was hard.

So you gave him your used panties, and you swear you could hear him jacking off in the bathroom of his room, next to yours. He'd screamed your name, and your hand had found it's way to your dripping cunt, doing what he was supposed to do; touching you the way he did. And you came, drowned out moans against your pillow. But it wasn't like when he did it.

But God has heard your prayers.

For the first time in weeks, you're lucky. You find Pedro sitting alone in the cafeteria, his phone in hand. He's still wearing his armour and skirt, not bothering to change for the break. You aren't God's strongest soldier, but you're trying not to go down on him so badly right here and now.

"Hey" he raises his head when he hears your voice, smile adoringly. It only grows wider when he notices you alone. "Thought you'd never get rid of Paul. He's like, stitched to you"

"Same can be said about you and Joseph" you sit across him, and despite most of his tone being playful, there are still hints of jealousy behind. It arouses you deeply, and with this hot summer day above you, your skin isn't the only thing that's getting sticky.

"In case you haven't read the script, I'm his wife" you wink. "Sorry this is how you find out"

He laughs loudly, and God, how have you missed that laugh. Sure, it's been there when you've been out with the cast together, but it doesn't tingle your chest as when you're the cause of it; it feels like it's for you only, and that's what makes it special.

"I miss you so much" he whispers, his hand sliding across the table, finding yours. His thumb carresses your soft palm, and you melt under Pedro's tender touch.

"I do too" you sigh, but it's instantly replaced by what could only be described as a smug face. You lean closer, whispering on his ear, the warm meeting cold. He shivers. "Wanna know something?"

"I'm all ears"

"I just came back from walking. Guess what?No one is 'round here" you lean back against your chair, shit-eating grin on your face as all his body tenses up. "Made sure of it. The trailer zone is empty too"

Pedro gulps, his adam's apple bobbing as his eyes look at you.

"Y/n" calling your name as a warning.

"What? Can't a girl find ways to have her husband all for herself?" you snort. "Please say yes" you let go of his hand, but the free fingers now travel across his broad chest, taunting him. "C'mon, we both deserve a break"

He can't say deny you anything, can he? You know it, he knows it.

Before you register, his big hand engulfs yours as you run across the set. You giggle at his rushed steps, even more when you stand before his trailer and he's fumbling his slippery hands with the doorknob, sloppy movements erratic.

"But you told me to stop" you tease, and he doesn't even let you add more because he's pushing you inside, forcing you with rough calloused hands to a chair and then you to sit over his lap.

"Fuck, babygirl. I've spoiled you way too much" he groans against your lips. "Lo sabes, ¿verdad? Just can't say no to you"

Your eyes darken dangerously, the hunger on them mirroring his own.

"How could you ever say no to this?"

You press your chest against his broad one as your lip bites into his lower one, teasing. Pedro feels his underwear getting tighter when your tongue finds its way inside his mouth, even getting a glimpse of the taste of the strawberries you had earlier before.

He deepens the kiss, and when you pull away to catch your breath, he doesn't waste his lonely mouth and busies himself with the task of kissing your sun-kissed neck, licking and pressing his lips under your jaw. Pedro goes even lower, down until he's reached your collarbone, making you groan a bit under his wet sloppy needy mouth. He's enjoying how putty you are under his intense kissing, fingers in his curls, that have begun to damp under the ablaze of the small space and pleasure that fills the air.

"Kiss me again in my lips" you whine after a while of him teasing you with kisses that get only rougher. "Pretty please, papi"

You cup his face in your hands, and Pedro's back to kissing you in the mouth, tasting all of your insides as he hasn't had in what feels like a lifetime.

"Of course, baby. Missed this pretty mouth" he mumbles in between hot kisses, his now growing boner pressing into you.

"Baby" you giggle. The skirt he's got on may hide it, but your fingers refused to wait, pulling it up. His bulge presses against the shorts he's got under the skirt, and you can feel your pussy and mouth drool. "We have to do something about this big boy" your hands pull down the short, leaving just his underwear on. He's about to remove the skirt, but your demanding hands stops him. "This stays"

His brown concerned eyes make you laugh, but you don't give him time to think about it, rather grinding against his erection. Pedro's breath hitches when he feels your daring movements, bucking his hips against yours.

The friction is addicting, and he captures your lips once again to make you feel what he can't with words: how fucking good this feels.

You keep moving over his aching dick. Your husband throws his head back, groaning in pleasure at the way your hips move against him, knowingly. His hands find their way to your ass under the flowy almost translucent skirt you chose to change in, gripping the rosy skin tightly, hands almost covering all of it.

"You wore this for me, right, cariño? Knew I couldn't say no" he groans, firm hands on your cheeks, the grinding meeting his hips now harsher. "Less with you walking around with this slutty skirt of yours"

You make little sounds he's obssesed with, dripping out of your filthy mouth.

"Fuck" Pedro groans after a while, "I need to have you, mami. Missed you so much" eager fingers make it to your top. He growls, deep within him―guttural, ready to pull it off as he mumbles naughty wife when he realizes you got no bra on, chastising you for a "rushed" plan that seemed planned all along, when a sound cuts through the air.

You both stop.

The sound gets clearer.

It's a knock. A knock at his door.

A knock in Pedro's trailer.

And you are inside. Both.

While you're grinding him.

With his skirt on.

(It's time to build a bomb and kill yourselves off and whoever is stading behind that door)

"Pedro!" a familiar accent calls. Peudrou. It's Paul. "Hey, man. Just wondering if you are here"

He's debating on speaking up when he sees your red face and rising-falling chest before him.

"Answer" you whisper breathlessly. He tries not to groan when he fills you slip out of the spot in his middle while also trying not to think about murdering Paul as soon as he gets out.

Aside from the order, you're unexpectedly quiet, and Pedro quirks an eyebrow at you. He knows you better―you're his wife after all, and if there's something he's aware of, is your inability to loose.

"I'm here" tone clipped and annoyed. But no footsteps backtracking are heard: the Irish man is still there.

You bite your lip, watching the skirt with his legs spread, a sight too tempting. Also, he was still hard, as hard as the task to not go and keep doing your job.

Oh, fuck this shit.

Your devilish hand equals the grin in your face, fingers making their way toward his unattended bulge.

"What are you doing here?" Paul asks, but Pedro's attention has completely deviated, now focused on how they land right over his clothed dick, skirt pulled up by your other hand. "I thought you were at the cafeteria"

"Yeah?" but it comes out strained, yet the younger man doesn't notice or comment.

His hips raise when your fingers press his member, massaging it.

"Yeah" he uses a tone that equals a duh. "You texted me yourself"

Pedro rolls his eyes, wishing desperately he would go away, annoying him just as much as a fly hovering above fresh food. Talking about food, fuck, weren't you hungry? He tried to warn you, holding your wrist, but all resolve was lost the moment you looked in his eyes: he immediately pulled down his briefs, dick sprouting hard.

"Well, changed my mind" his tone falters in between words, member now free from the confines of his tight underwear.

"Are you tired, man? You sound tired" Paul comments on his tone. "Came to rest?"

You spit on your hand, and he gulps.

"Somethin' like that"

You start to jerk him off, leaving little wet kisses and licks just above his dick. Pedro's eyes are hypnotized, glued to every lick of yours across his girth, the spit making your movements smoother. Sexier. Fuck.

"Well, sorry to break it to you but rest time is over. They want us back on set now"

Your tight needy lips are wrapped around his his length and it's so hard to keep the talk normal when he justs wants to yell at Paul to fuck off. Your hand is there too; you are as of help as much as you aren't.

"I'll be there, Paul, just―Fuck!"

But his attempt to cover a moan doesn't go unnoticed.

"Are you alright in there?" he tries to enter, but Pedro locked the door. He's yelling he's fine, but Mescal doesn't sound convinced. "I can't go inside; it's locked. Are you sure you are okay, mate?"

"Didn't want you to take a picture of me drooling on my sleep" he manages to get out in a monotone voice. A real win if you take into account you've gotten to a point where you squeeze under his cock, massaging his balls.

"Smart move!" he chuckles from outside. "I guess I'll see you there"

Pedro covers a moan with his palm as he's throwing his head back in pleasure. He can feel his orgams looming over, minstrations growing sloppier around his pulsating cock, the need to fill your greedy evil mouth with his seed making him sick. He's a simple man: he just wants his pretty wife to fuck his cock silly and come in her mouth in peace. Is that so hard to get this days?

Paul seems to be finally gone as Pedro can't keep containing his grunts anymore, steps moving: until said steps sound closer again.

"Oh, I almost forgot, have you seen Y/n? I can't find her anywhere" it's coming. His orgasm is coming in the absolute worst moment. He can feel you gagging at his hard rock cock, hitting the back of your throat now. Still, your hands don't loose their grip on his cock and skirt, determination filling that sexy little body of yours. It was rather admirable the effort you were putting in this. "Think she went to the beach? She said she loved it. God, that little rebel. Anyway, if you see her, tell her-"

He leans his head back once again, seeing stars. No one knows him like his wife, truly.

The sight of you drooling from your chin, the wet sounds of him fucking himself onto your mouth as your spit-coated fingers pump his girth, you gulping down the precum from his tip, his fingers holding your face roughly by the cheeks...

"Yes, Paul, yes!" Pedro barks, barely hiding the moan that erupts from his ribcage, thick shots of his hot cum hitting your tongue and deep of the throath. "Fuck off and let me get ready"

"Jesus, mate, chill. I'm sorry. See you there"

And Paul Mescal's hovering fly ass is finally gone.

"Poor Paul" you say as soon as you pull off his length, voice raspy as you huff for air. Pedro lovingly cleans rests of your saliva and his cum from your chin as he chuckles at how much audacity, courage and horniness could fit in such a small young body. "You've ruined the friendship"

"You think?" he licks off some as you sit on his lap again, tongue directly on your face. You feel aroused again, but time's up. "It's your fault. That and this"

He points down.

"Just as you used that pretty head of yours to think of the trouble you just made, think of an excuse for Mr. Ridley about the skirt"

at0michips: wait wdym paul is sick??? ㅤㅤl-u-n-a-m: at0michips he's died vnightx: i'm wondering who'll do now the do you even know me interview with pedro now :( i was so excited!!! hope they don't cancel it :( ㅤㅤunhing3dprincess: vnightx i bet my grandma it's y/n ㅤㅤat0michips: unhing3dprincess why do u keep betting ur grandma omg 😭😭😭

"You know what I think would be fun?" Pedro comments while you wait for the interview's set to be prepared.

Tour press has finally begun. That meant you could go home for a while after the filming wrapped, just to be back for the promotion of the film. You were excited of course, the experience new and thrilling. After much needed battery recharging and husband/wife time, you were ready to take over the world.

But then Paul got sick.

Today's interview was scheduled to be him and Pedro, but since he was unavailable, they paired him with you, since you both spoke Spanish (which felt slightly racist in your opinion), and because Fred and Joseph were already paired up for the other.

You leave your coffee, knowing he's about to say something stupid or endearing, perhaps both, brown liquid probably spilling out of your mouth. Or worst, nostrils.

"Tell me"

"What if we left little hints that we're together?" his smile is one of mischief. "Like you could wear my cap, or I could wear a chain with your initial around my neck, like Ryan Gosling did at the Barbie premiere"

"Or as Taylor Swift sang" you counter. "But Pedro, dear, you're underestimating our fans. You don't think they'll match it sooner than we think?"

"Maybe" he agrees. That's just what I want. "What's funny is we're about to do a type of interview where we could blow our cover"

"Maybe" you repeat, "or maybe you don't know all about me as much as you think, Mr. Pascal"

He fake gasps, feigning hurt. "Is this a dare, Mrs. Pascal?"

"No" you try to be mature for once, cutting the banter as much as you'd like to go on and kiss him right there. "Also, remember to answer incorrectly sometimes, you know..."

"There's no way I'm letting you win though"

"Pedro, no seas necio!"

The producers arrive just in time to let you know it's ready.

"After M'lady" he's back to being charming as he is, not as husband charming but just Pedro Pascal charming. The nerve of this guy to do it in front of the LADbible crew.

"Whatever" you grumble, the nerves getting the best of you as you realize this interview may or may not give away more than you've been allowed before.

"Hello, I am Y/n L/n" you present yourself. Wow, the camera is really close. This isn't going to end well.

"And I'm Pedro Pascal"

Hearing his voice soothes you. It's okay, y/n, you got this. "And this is Do You Really Know Me- No wait, it's do you even know me. Okay, let's start again: Hello, I'm Y/n and this is-"

"I don't even know anymore" Pedro jokes, making you laugh. "Do you even know me?" he asks while looking forward, now making the crew laugh.

"This is Pedro Pascal, that'll do" you sigh.

"This is gonna be sad, she's not going to know any of these" he says, but in reality, he's mocking you, the mischief in his eyes glowing as he only looks at you tauntingly.

"Same can be said about you" you tease, "we're like a million years away"

"That's not true!" he gasps, "I watch your every move" punctuating each word. God, you try not to make a face. "I have Google alerts on you"

If he was gonna play, so were you.

"Glad to know I have you alerted" with the sweetest voice ever, seeing how his friendly façade falters for a bit at the tone you've used. You laugh, and Pedro takes the chance to laugh it off too.

After the introduction, they ask one of you to keep score, and you offer yourself because, well, you don't trust Pedro.

"I'll go first" you say. "Which was my first ever role in the industry? As an extra during an episode of Stranger Things, as a voice actor in A dog's purpose" you can't help but laugh, "or as a back-up dancer in Hustlers?"

"In Hustlers?" Pedro inquires in disbelief. "You're telling me you were in Hustlers?! I didn't even know you could dance!"

Lies. You and Pedro sometimes put some bachata and dance in the kitchen. God bless Juan Luis Guerra.

"Jennifer Lopez and I are practically besties" you answer nonchalant.

You know the answer. He does too. But he chooses the last one for comedic purposes.

"I'll go with Hustlers. Now that I'm looking at you, you do have a... dancer face"

"It's okay, you can say the forbidden word. I'll take it as a compliment" you laugh, "you're wrong, though. The answer is Stranger Things"

"No way!" and it sounds as if he genuinely didn't know. Good lying son of a bitch; Jim Carrey on Liar, Liar would've been proud.

"Yes. If you look in the background of season two, on this one episode where Nancy and Steve appear to have broken up during a halloween party, you can see me drinking from a cup on a corner"

"That's so crazy"

"Yeah, I was twenty already, yet playing a highschooler" you giggle. "Wow, time flies by. Anyway, we're both at zero. Your turn"

"What film did my dad not let me see at the cinema when I was, uh, ten years old?" Pedro reads from his card. "Rambo: first blood, The Breakfast Club, Day of The Dead"

"I'm going to base this in the year you were born. Okay, so 1975. Let's see" one of the things Pedro loves about you is that you're like a film encyclopedia, but right now, that'll cost him a point. "They all came out the same year, and they were also R rated. Hmmh, I'll choose The Breakfast Club"

Your analysis was just mindless bragging really. You knew the answer the moment he started reading the question, because the anecdote came during a time he heard you listening to the movie's soundtrack ("Did you know that my dad...")

"You complain about Paul all the time, but you're just the same" he comments. "She's a real competitor, people!"

You flush in embarrasment. "Okay, that's one for me. Next question" you read the card in your hands. "What pet do I own? An orange cat named Louis after my favorite singer, a fish, or a Shih Tzu named after my brother"

The orange cat lives with you both. You're curious as to how he'll answer.

"You aren't naming a Shih Tzu frickin' Fernando" he laughs, so loud, it ends up catching up to you and the crew. "I'll go with the cat"

"That's correct" you lament. "How would you know?"

As if the damn cat doesn't love him more than he loves you.

"I follow you on Instagram" he defends himself. Clever. "We are, um, what do you call it-"

"Oomfs"

"I'm not gonna try to pronounce your made up language. Okay, my turn. Which of these characters I've played in Saturday Night Live? Naughty daddy, protective mom, or weird uncle who has a creepy sneeze" he reads out loud in a confused tone.

This is easy. It was all over your timeline.

"Protective mom" you answer on a beat.

"This isn't fair, that was really popular!" he complains.

"It's still two for me and one for you" you mock. "Now, what is the nickname the internet has given me? I won't give you clues because it's an easy one"

"Easy? You said we were million of years apart and now I'm supposed to know?"

"Well, you seem to manage Instagram so I think you'll be just fine" you tease, and Pedro just wants to rip that smirk off of you. So he caves in first.

"It's people's princess"

"What?!" your eyes grow comically large, shimmering with betrayal as you shout with an incredulous tone. "I can't believe you know" more like can't believe you said it.

"You're royalty! How am I supposed to not know that, internet darling? Besides, told you: I keep my eye on you" and he winks.

This motherfucker. Oh, he's totally sleeping on the couch tonight.

"Talk about internet darlings" your snarky tone comes out, and Pedro knows he's pissed his competitive wife off. "I guess we have a tie. Your turn"

"What are the initials of my full name?" his brows furrow. "I forget. JBPP, JPBP, JBPP"

"José Pedro Balmaceda Pascal" you recite. "B, of course"

"But that's too easy, everyone with Google knows it!" but then he's leaning into your ear, whispering in a very low voice to make sure only you hear. "I'll let it pass, though. Love hearing you pronounce my name, mami"

Your face grows obscenely red. "I'm back ahead. Let's see if you can keep up. Okay, here it goes" you read the card, "what is the director I've stated I want to work with? Greta Gerwig, Pedro Almodóvar, or Quentin Tarantino"

"Pedro Almodóvar, no? You said you were jealous I had already worked with him" he playfully nudges you. Too much contact, face hot again. Maybe in group interviews you'll do better, because right now, you're doing a rather poor job at controlling yourself, even as an actor; you can already picture your agent pulling her hair behind the cameras.

"It's Greta Gerwig, actually"

"What?! No way, you told me this!" he grumbles. "This game is rigged"

"Don't get me wrong, I'm still jealous. I just think working with Greta Gerwig is peak womanhood, and I gotta live that. So, Greta, if for some reason this silly video gets to you, call me. I promise I'm not that childish"

"She is" Pedro slips in, "don't call her. So unprofessional" in a mocking exaggerated tone.

"Whatever, you sore looser. Me three, you two. Next!"

"Fine. Which of these songs would I have played at my funeral? My Heart Will Go On, Purple Rain, Nothing Compares To You"

He looks at you, silently pleading you to not answer correctly. Your competitive side screams in agony.

"I have no idea. Why do I feel you've already said it somewhere, though? I'll go with Nothing Compares To You, because the first its too corny for you and the second too epic"

He scoffs, amused at the fact that you did obey, but at what cost? Pedro's well aware his princess can get as competitive, if not worse, than Paul.

"You're saying I'm not epic enough for Purple Rain? Too bad, because that's the answer" you grunt, crossing your arms. "That's right, I am cool enough to have it played. I guess we're tied again!"

"No, you don't loose a point. It's still three to two. This just gives you the opportunity to tie"

"W-wait a minute"

"Settle down" you pat his thigh, "you can still try, handsome"

He gulps when your hand meets his skin, despite the layer of clothes. It's still something that gets him on edge, no matter the years you've known each other. And handsome? You came here for blood.

"Okay, here's your chance: what image of me became trending topic on twitter? An image of me eating a typical dish from my country, an image of me watching Deadpool and Wolverine with glasses while Hugh Jackman's shirtless scene reflects on them or C, me meeting Taylor Swift at the backstage of the Eras Tour"

"The typical dish is tempting" he muses out loud, "but I'll go with the Taylor Swift one because that sounds like something that'd trend"

"You're right" you throw your card. "I'm not complaining though. Best day of my life"

"Does this mean I'm winning?" he beams excitedly. "Oh, in your face Paul! I will finally win something!"

"Slow down, cowboy. There's still some left"

He purses his lips. "Let me have this one thing, would you? Guess not. Here it comes" he starts to read his card, "At school I competed in state competitions, in which sport? Soccer, lacrosse, swimming"

"Swimming" you answer hastily, trying not to think on Pedro wearing tight little swimsuits, as you've only seen him wearing swim trunks.

"Okay, that's dissapointing. Please continue"

"I participated in which play while I was in highschool? Hamlet, The Iliad or Much Ado About Nothing"

You doubt he remembers. The only time it ever came up, was when you visited your parent's house and a photography of you during said play was showed to him by your dad.

"The Iliad, right?" you laugh. The answer is wrong: It's Hamlet. "What? I swear it was that one! It's just you have very..." beautiful is at the tip of his tongue but he refrains himself, "...very greek features"

You can't help but laugh.

"Why of course! This is a face people go to war for"

"I agree" your heart skips a beat, "but I don't think I'll make it that far, if we talk about a war"

"You big fat liar!" you slap his arm playfully. "You've played all sort of characters, from soldiers of all nationalities and places, and like, superheroes, f*****g Joel Miller, even a DEA agent. You at least learned something!"

"Wow, slow down, this isn't a filmography recount" he jokes. Liar, you mouth to the cameras. "Okay, last one: I became a viral sensation for eating what type of sandwhich in LADbible's snack wars: BLT, PB&J, grilled cheese"

You remember the video fondly. Even your brother had sent it to you, along a text that said: Isn´t this your husband?

"PB&J, I win!" you cheer, instantly getting off the chair to do a celebratory dance. Pedro doesn't say anything, just throwing the cards away while the fondness of his eyes betrays him.

pyramiidsf: i want someone to look at me the way pedro looks at y/n mybritishstyle: guys they're just friends 😭 he's like that with all his female co-stars ㅤㅤann-gell: mybritishstyle me when i'm delusional af mandoshoney: where's that girl that's always betting her grandma??? SHE WAS RIGHTFLKRGJ

"Hello, I'm Paul Mescal. I'm here with my friends from the cast of Gladiator II" Connie and you both raise your palms to greet the camera, laughing when you realize you'd done it at the same time, "and we are going to play a game about how well we know each other for Vanity Fair" the irish man introduces the interview you're filming today.

"Did they prompt you?" Pedro speaks up, "or did you just make that up on the fly?"

You laugh a bit too loud, hoping they cut it off in the editing process.

Paul goes first, taking up a card with the first question written on it.

"Okay. Question: What's my least favorite day of the week?"

"Tuesday" answers Joseph once Paul is done reading. "Oh, you're writing it down?"

"Yeah" he answers.

"You just wrote Tuesday" Connie points out, Paul's card on his legs. You laugh along the rest.

"Yeah" he repeats laughing. "I actually, when you said Tuesday" Yeah, he said Tuesday Pedro adds on the background of laughter. "I was like...I'm gonna give everybody a point for that"

"I think I deserve a point for being observant" Connie complains.

Everyone gets a point and Paul moves towards the next question.

"What was the name of my character in Normal People?"

"Connell" both you and Joseph answer, looking at each other before squinting your eyes playfully.

"Callum" Pedro answers out loud at the same time, and you laugh. He clearly had slept when you played it for a re-watch last summer.

"No, you're out" Paul pokes Pedro next to him.

"Connel" Joseph repeats, and Fred agrees to the same answer.

Paul then asks Connie what's hers after he confirms you three.

"Connor?" she asks, confused.

"Incorrect. Three points" while pointing you three.

"You got wrong" he tells Pedro, "Callum's a different character"

"See? You just don't pay attention when you watch things" you blurt out, stopping yourself before adding the with me. It would be harder to come back from that, but so is this as everyone looks at you, even your husband, subtle panic in his eyes. Where the cameras this close? How long had you been silent?

"It's just, quick funny story" you improvise. "Pedro didn't know much about Paul's career, and as I am a fan, I took the time to show him and recommend him your stuff" Paul smiles. "Clearly, my fanatism didn't rub on Pedro but a girl can try"

He laughs, before saying "So the answer is Connell" and you try so hard to remain normal like the energy hasn't shifted.

"He only plays characters with the letter C in the name" Pedro jokes, chewing on a toothstick he seemingly pulled out of nowhere. More laughs follow, and you are so grateful for how he's handling your little metida de patada.

"What's number one on my bucket list?" he asks next, "and don't look at my answer"

The marker is the only sound to be heard, and then Pedro jokingly tries to take a peek.

"No peeking" Connie berates as Pedro laughs.

"You're not gonna be able to see that" Paul replies in an anyways tone.

You repeat the same joke, before Fred blocks you. "Not you too!"

Paul finishes after a while, Connie commenting it was long. Joseph raises his hand.

"Yes, Joseph"

"Is it to see the Great Wall of China?" he asks.

"No, but it's in that-"

"It's close, isn't it?" you interrupt.

"...family of thought" he finishes.

"It's to go and see something" Pedro points out.

"Okay. Rajasthan" tries Connie. "Go to Rajasthan, for a tour"

"Travel to South America" Paul interrupts with the correct answer, "I've never been to South America"

"I'm from South America" Pedro comments, never missing a chance to shout out his dear Chile.

Paul jokes about him getting three points while the rest of you laugh.

"I was born in South America. 17 points for Pedro"

"I want points too" you jump on the joke. "I know Spanish, so I can take you there and avoid you getting lost, mi querido amigo"

"But who was born there?" Pedro counters, "you get no points"

"I think Joseph is the only person who gets a point there" Paul adds, "because everybody just jumped on the bandwagon"

"He said to visit the Great Wall of China" Pedro protests, "which is nowhere near South America"

"It really is not" Connie agrees.

"Qué gente tan tramposa" you complain. "That's unfair. I remove my offer"

"Think about bucket list, and he came up with travel to bit" he tries to reason Joseph's point.

"And by the way, where in South America?" Pedro questions.

"Don't fight, don't fight" pleads Joseph, the calm one. Fred just sits there, enjoying the chaos.

"I want, any, I want to do a big tour of everywhere" Mescal defends himself.

Pedro doesn't back down. "'Cause it's very different"

Paul starts to get angry too. Jesus, men. Competitive men of it all.

"I know it's very different" making an annoyed face.

"Well, different is nice" you intervene, a hand placing in Pedro's left shoulder. "If you stop giving points for free, I'll come with you to the big everywhere tour"

"Alright" Paul agrees. "When's my birthday?" is the next question.

"February" all of you say.

Joseph struggles with the date first, saying seventh, then fourth. Fred tries with ninth, Pedro with eight, and then Joseph starts counting from one to two. Fred counts from eleven to twelve.

"Second" Mescal reveals. "Point to Joseph"

"Oh my God, you guys are good" Connie mentions.

"That's all my questions" and it's time to move on the next one: which happens to be your dear husband, Pedro.

"Paul is like" he brings up while the toothpick dances on his teeth, "Paul is motivated to catch up on points. He's coming for you" to pick on his competitive side as Mescal looks deep in thought.

"He's coming. He's coming" Joseph repeats as Fred laughs.

"What is my full name?"

"Oh! Pedro-" Paul tries in a blink. "Something, J? Jose? Juan?"

"Pedro Pascal, something, something" says Joseph.

"Nope"

"No?"

"Pedro Maria, Jose Maria Pascal" Paul struggles.

Pedro is about to answer when your voice cuts through the air.

"It's José Pedro Balmaceda Pascal" you recite.

"It indeed is!" he says, smiling a bit too much. "She gets a point"

"Jose Pedro Balmaceda Pascal" your husband repeats in a more english-friendly pronunciation, looking at the camera while toying with his toothpick.

"I said Jose, I said Jose" Paul protests.

Pedro shakes his head. "You said Jose, but then you put it-"

Connie takes Paul's side. "You did say Jose"

"But then you put it behind Pedro which eliminate- which disqualified you" he replies.

Paul gets angry. That sore looser.

"That's absolute bullshit"

"Don't worry mate, the game has just begun" you joke, making the man more irritated. "Think you can get ahead of me?"

"Joseph is still ahead, y/n" Paul counters, still irritated. "Besides, wouldn't it be cheating? You can speak Spanish!"

"So? Not like speaking a language allows you to know every person's name Paul" you mock. He just snorts, despite still being half angry. Pedro is allowed to continue, trying not to make a face at yours and Paul's banter.

"The question is, who is my favorite actor?" he reads. As the cast members laugh, he uncaps the marker with his mouth, and now you have to try not to make a face, thinking about those teeth sinking into your flesh.

Quinn raises his hand. "It's me"

"That you're my favorite actor?"

"Yeah. You said that to me once" the bald man sounds sure of it.

Paul tries to think in the background. So do you. How can you not know this? he must've brought it up at least once.

"Do you remember?" Joseph insists.

Pedro finally remembers. "I said you were- I said I thought you were special"

"Oh" he sounds rather dissapointed.

"And special can mean a lot of things" he jokes, laughing by himself. Fred laughs with you as Joseph makes a face, your laughter turning even louder when you notice Paul all moody, trying to get this point.

"Who's your favorite actor?" Paul asks, "I think we just have to shoot from the hip here guys"

"Marlon Brando?" Connie guesses.

"Is it Harrison Ford?" Fred guesses.

"Let's go with Harrison Ford just because he's my favorite actor..."

You can't believe you didn't know this. You've re-watched and watched so many Star Wars content together. He gives you a brief look, knowing you're embarrased at your lack of answer.

"As a kid?"

"He's most influent, yeah" Pedro agrees.

"What job did I have before I became a full-time actor?" is next.

"Dancer. You were a great dancer" Paul aswers. Both Fred and Joseph repeat it, adding he was specifically a go-go dancer.

"Oh, he is" you add. "Videos of you dancing are lovely. Ever thought of getting back in the bussiness?"

He laughs, what appears to be a light blush creeping up his cheeks.

"Sure, darling. When you ask me to dance, I'll be there"

Nobody comments on this, too busy waiting for Pedro to say yes or no to the answer they believe to be right. But he isn't saying it is. Now you remember why.

"Come on, come on, come on" Paul begs.

"Can any of you guys remember?" Pedro pleads.

They insist that he danced in Spain, then New York, then settle with Spain again, even Pedro confirming so. But it still isn't the answer written on the card, no matter how much the boys insist.

"Connie?" he tries. She just looks confused.

"The answer in the card is-"

"Waiter" you answer. "You were a waiter"

Now you have three points under your belt.

"Why do you always say the answer at last?!" Paul grumbles. "You are cheating!"

"I'm not" you laugh the accusation off. "You just can't accept I'm better"

"Si que lo eres" Pedro agrees. "Es divertido hacer que se enoje Paul"

"What did you say about me? It's not fair, you're probably sharing the answers!" he's still adamant on insisting with the supposed cheating issue, making you laugh.

Now it's Connie's turn, who starts with: "How many languages do I speak?"

You put a puzzled look.

"You speak seven, eight maybe" Joseph guesses. Pauls says she speaks french, "but most likely seven"

Pedro points his finger at him. "Once he gets going, he's on a roll"

"Joe's got it" Connie agrees.

"Paul, end this reign" Pedro jokes. He looks rather frustrated.

"And the bonus points" Connie offers. "Okay, bonus, what are they?"

"This is an emperor's reign" your husband adds.

Joseph answers: Italian. Danish. English. Swedish. French. Spanish. Norwegian.

Connie agrees she speaks Spanish, making you jump in excitement.

"Oh, I didn't know that!" you beam. "Wait, does that mean you did get what Pedro and I gossiped about you?"

"What?" Joseph asks.

"Nada" you quickly correct yourself. "Yo no dije nada"

"Not that much. I just speak a bit of Spanish. I mostly dominate my own language, German and English"

"You blew our cover!" Pedro nags, hitting your bare leg, yet its devoid of anger.

"He needs a bonus" comments Connie, surprised at Joseph.

"This is horrifying" Pedro says when Joseph gets another point and a fricking bonus on top of that. "This is a slaughter"

"Oh, for which film did I have a gym built in my garage?"

Both Joseph and Paul answer the question correctly, saying Wonder Woman. The latter is quick to state they both get that point.

"That's one for me" Paul says, then looks at you. "And none for you"

You stick out your tongue at him as Connie reads the next card.

"If I were to take this cast on a vacation where would I take you?"

"Ibiza" answers Joseph. Connie agrees in Spanish, with a cute and excited correcto.

Your husband feels the need to crack a joke at Quinn's expense.

"Somebody was paying attention to Connie Nielsen very closely during the shooting of this movie"

"Okay. What is my favorite curse word in Danish?"

"Fuck" Pedro tries.

"No"

"Nobody is going to get that, Connie" Paul bickers.

"Oh, I don't know any Danish" you lament.

"At least now you know how it feels" Mescal drops, making you snort. You playfully kick him on the ribs with your shoe.

"It's very simple" Connie gives as a clue. "It's the same word in every language"

"Shit" Paul tries.

"Satan" she reveals.

Everybody is laughing in confusion at that, saying there's no way you could use that.

"Vos Satan!" Connie curses.

Now it's Fred's turn.

"What is my weirdest on-set habit?"

"I haven't noticed you do anything weird on set" Paul tells.

"I have" Pedro interrupts.

They all get on a small briefing about what could it possibly be, that it was weird, and wasn't part of his character, as you ponder. It was funny before, but now Paul is behind you by a point. So think fast.

"Yeah. I would say being yourself" Pedro jokes, but surprisingly, it works.

"Me! Five points for Pedro" he celebrates as you all laugh. "Love Fred. Oh, Fred"

"Oh, oh, okay" he moves to the next question. "What is my favorite reality TV show?"

Joseph tries with Survivor and Paul with Alone. Truth is, you don't watch any show of said kind, only vagely hearing about Love Island.

"You and I have talked about reality TV" Pedro reveals, "It's just that we never identified one"

They keep guessing shows that sound like a foreign language to you.

"You know what's offensive? That I'm the second youngest of this cast and I have no idea what are you all talking about"

"She's not to be trusted" Pascal quips, "can't trust someone who doesn't appreciate the art of reality TV"

You huff, annoyed.

"Is it A&E stuff?" Pedro asks.

"Yeah, it's the competitive cheapskates" Fred answers. "It's people that really save money on everything"

Pedro gets the point because he mentioned the A&E bit.

"There's like this amazing guy that made a stew out of fish bones, and I just thought it was incredible" he shares. Then, moves to the next question. "What is my go-to crafty snack?"

Nobody remembers eating snacks on set, and Fred gives the clue that it's a drink. Joseph says it's a smoothie, and he does remember it but it isn't the answser.

"I'm thinking of something specific. That Emerge-C that you put in the water"

"Oh, that's very good" you agree, so does the rest, even discussing the best colors

"Who in the cast would I ask to bail me out of jail?"

Everyone even Pedro agree its him. Everyone gets a point, yet Joseph remains ahead.

It's Joseph's turn. "What is my favorite sport?"

"Skateboarding" Paul is so quick to answer, earning him two points for both being correct and time.

"What celebrity do I get mistaken for?"

"Daisy Edgar-Jones sometimes" says Mescal. Of course he had to bring her up.

"No, she gets mistaken for me" Joseph jokes. "Yeah, poor Daisy. But I'm writing it down"

"That was the two letters?" Pedro notices. Still, no one gets it.

It's fucking Justin Timberlake. You'd never guess that.

"What is my favorite film franchise?"

You've probaly named all the existing franchises to no avail. You think fo your dad, a huge geek, trying to remember if there is one missing.

"Oh- Lord of the Rings!" you both answer with Paul at the same time.

"C'mon!" his celebration is short lived when he realizes you tied to him.

"What is my favorite British slang word?"

Pedro says it can't be said, but Quinn insists they can, even adding it's his favorite one too.

"We can say bad words? We can say-?" but the camera beeps over it.

The answer is Bellend. What even is that? Joseph feigns sadness and Pedro keeps apologizing, even as you sit on the chair.

"Okay. I'm last"you wiggle your eyebrows with interest. "Let's see. Okay, first question: what did I take from the Gladiator II set?"

"You took something?" Joseph asks on disbelief.

"Why wouldn't I take something?"

"Is it like an item or memorabilia?" asks Connie.

"It's an item" you uncap the marker, scribbling down the answer.

"It's a short word" Fred points out, but still can't provide a guess.

"You took the rings home" Pedro answers. You snap your had on his way, probably obvious. "What? You told me" he says.

Of course Paul complains. "Hey, that isn't fair! He knew the answer before!"

"Well, if you payed more attention to me, you'd know it"

Lies. Pedro knows because it's sitting in the jewelry box inside your house.

"See? I do pay attention" Pedro playfully hits Mescal.

"I could pay you more attention" he looks at you.

"Alright, then do. Ready? Next question: what is my go-to movie? Oh, this is a good one. I'm always changing it, but most of the time I end up choosing the same one"

They all give you a puzzled look as you scribble.

"C'mon, guys! I've said it on interviews before too. Paul?" the man shrugs. "Thought you said you'd pay me more attention. Heads up, you're doing a terrible job so far!"

"Hey!" he protests. "It's not fair if the answer's changing. Give us a clue"

"You didn't give any clues to yours!" you giggle. "Besides, I don't want you to win"

"Hey, that's against the rules!"

"I'd say it depends on the season" Pedro speaks up. You quirk an eyebrow. "Like, if it's changing, I don't think your Christmas go-to movie is the same as your summer one"

"Actually" you smile fondly, "that is true. On summer, it's Mamma Mia. So I suppose, if you can't guess the one, that'll do"

"No" he smiles, cheeky. "I know it too"

"Yeah?" you challenge, "what is it, then?"

"It's Thelma and Louise" he answers, and your heart beats fast.

"How do you know?" Paul inquires. "Somebody was paying attention to Y/n L/n very closely during the shooting of this movie"

Ah, his joke from earlier. Joseph giggles behind him. Karma, he supposes.

"She said it on an interview, guys. C'mon, learn your sources!"

"Okay" you clear your throat. "What movie got me into acting?"

"Thelma and Louise" Joseph tries.

"No" you laugh, "you're just recycling the answer"

"Is it an old or modern movie?" Connie asks.

"Hmh, old" you pause, "just not... I don't know if you'll ever guess it"

"Is it a Pedro Almodóvar film?" you shake your head. "What? You're always mentioning him!"

Pedro looks into your eyes amid the others' discussion, and you can tell he remembers the conversation.

"There isn't one"

You smile, chest pounding at his soft tone.

"That's correct"

"A trick question?!" Paul yells. "I quit"

"When there's just one left?" you tease.

"Yes, because you've been hiding it all the time but no more" he counters, pointing both you and Pedro. You feel the space getting smaller, breaths going from even to noticeable. "You are sharing answers"

You try to make your breath of relief pass as a chuckle.

"I'm not even gonna win, relax. And drop the charges, please. Loose like a man"

"You didn't explain it though" Connie speaks. "What did Pedro mean?"

"While I have many movies that are inspiration to me, they aren't the reason I chose this path. I did it because I saw an Oscar's ceremony when I was 11" you explain fondly, feeling warm at the memories. "I still remember when they handed the award to Diablo Cody for best original screenplay. I don't know, man, it moved me. What it meant for young artists who came from nothing. I guess I wanted, one day, to be the one standing there, for other dreamers to see it's possible"

"Wow, that's beautiful" Connie says.

"Thank you" you get flustered. "Suppose it was worth it, you know, to do interviews about not really knowing my cast mates" and laugh.

"How does Pedro know, though?" Joseph asks.

"We talk a lot" you clear your throat. "Last one: what indie horror movie did I make a small appearence in? I'm feeling generous because it's the last so I'll give you a clue. It's a Stephen King adaptation"

Paul is the first to speak. "You where in a-"

"Yeah but it wasn't such a huge role. Don't make yourself any ideas"

"I have no idea" Connie surrenders. "Other clue, as in how many words?"

"It doesn't even have any words" you laugh. "You give up? It's 1922. Was an extra as well. Made me think Netflix had my name highlighted in the extra call sheet, because I did so many minor and background roles during that year. Grateful, though, because now I get to be Rome's empress and not fortune teller or highschool #6"

The interview ends, and the camera may or may have not captured the last seconds, Pedro's gaze fixated with you the entire time.

elysyannemimi: we all saw that right? GET PEDRO AND Y/N IN A ROMCOM ❗THEIR CHEMISTRY IS INSANE❗ at0michips: love paul and y/n so much 😭😭 gimme enemies to lovers RN ㅤㅤbobgirllll: at0michips wait what if paul and y/n are secretly dating 😳 ㅤㅤann-gell: bobgirllll quick question are u dumb unhing3dprincess: i bet my grandma they're married. it has to be. trust me ㅤㅤstarlightt180: unhing3dprincess BESTIE U ARE BACK

You arrived in London today. The premiere will be in a few days, and things have been, well, hectic.

Lux couldn't stop talking all the plane ride, but your mind kept going back at the email your manager had sent you before you had boarded the plane.

It's catching upon you, read the haunting message. Attached below, a TMZ article that claimed a regular church attendee had seen you both getting married. It also used a lot of the noise fans had been making on social media, connecting dots or just hyping up the undeniable chemistry. It ended with a little paragraph saying it was obvios, and they're just hoping you'd confirmed it.

You came to realize you didn't care about it anymore. Sure, the pushing around annoyed you, but the thought of still keeping your marriage under wraps feels pointless now. Why wouldn't you shout to the world how in love with your husband you are?

Yet, when you arrive at the hotel, you keep the same protocol of arriving after Pedro, who has already checked in with two keys, claiming its for him and his sister, while you ask for the key to Lux's actual room. After you swipe cards with her, you head over the room you'd be sharing with your husband.

His face appears in your frame, everything happening quickly.

"Get inside. Now"

Your body is dragged inside the hotel room, not even giving you time to swipe the key for yourself.

"Pedro!" you exclaim, between surprised and confused. "What the hell is your problem?"

"Did you read it?"

"What? The article?" your tone is filled with annoyance. "Yes, I did. Why?"

"What do you mean why?" he snaps, voice raising higher. "Don't play dumb with me. You know fans have fuelled the rumors, and tabloids have started digging every corner in fucking California"

"So, what? You're acting as if people finding out is the worst thing in the world" you roll your eyes.

"It is, yes!" Pedro bursts out, caving in to the stress.

It feels like you've been hit across your face.

"Excuse me?" you seethe, hurt etched all across your features. "Would it be the worst thing in the world to admit you're married to the person you supposedly love the most?"

"I love you, y/n. It's just-"

His voice softens, trying to reach for you, yet you pull back, his hand falling to his side in an akward manner. He sighs in frustration, running a hand through his hair as he sits on the edge of the bed.

"I love you" he repeats, sounding much more sure this time.

Your frame seems smaller as your voice comes out hoarse, filled with emotion, appearing to be in the brink of tears:

"Then why do you act like you're embarrassed of me?"

He hates himself for making you feel this way, making you think things that aren't true.

"I don't. Never" he emphasizes. Then, tries to reach once again when you move a little bit closer to him, recognizing that's your way of letting him know you're ready. "You're the most precious thing in the world to me, don't ever think the opposite" then he sighs, heavy. "I'm just scared"

You silently ask him to explain, rubbing his thumb soothingly across his tattoo.

"You're so young, and I'm, well- I know we're aware of it, but people are cruel and the press is ruthless. I don't want to see your name dragged across the mud because you decided to marry me. Your career is starting, and I'd never forgive myself is something happened to you because of me. Not trying to make this about me, yeah? But this industry is fucked up. You've work hard to get to where you are, and it'll be unfair if you'd loose it. I'm scared because us..." he wavers, words trailing off. "I want us to be. I wouldn't want to live in a world without you, i-it would kill me not to have you be my wife"

You desperately want to kiss off the worry on his face, but let him finish.

"N-not saying our love is weak, or anything! That a couple of opinions or tabloids will- you know? Just, I-I don't want them to break us apart. Mi vida, you're the light of my life. Please, forgive me, I-"

He feels his throat closing up, words failing to come out. You sense the grip on your hand to be stronger, immediately letting loose of it.

"Hey. C'mere" your voice is tender, allowing him to bury his face in your stomach as you comb his messy curls with your fingers. "It's okay, I'm here. I'm not going anywhere"

He lets himself melt under your touch, his mind loosing itself in the soft of your digits and your perfume up his nostrils. He's again breathing normaly, hands now hugging your waist.

"There you go. Better?" Pedro nods, still not being able to talk. "That's okay, take all the time you need. We have all day"

"Do we?" he raises his view, his eyes soft yet there is something else to the brown shade.

You hum as to nod. "We agreed to join Lux for dinner. It's barely 1pm"

"Tell me you're thinking it too" his voice cuts throughout the air, boucing off the tapestry on the walls.

You laugh, nervously. "I don't think I do"

"Hmmh, I see" he stands up, towering over you. "You sure you don't?"

"You sure you want this?"

Before you know it, his lips capture yours in a passionate kiss, cutting off all words to be said. What a waste of air, anyway. You are quick to reciprocate, whimpering against his lips.

Pedro picks you up like you're as light as a feather, his arms flexing as he carries you and places you on the bed, frame hovering over yours. He breaks the kiss to breath, but you're pulling him back in, his hold on your hips tighter and the wet spot in your panties wetter.

"Look at you, pretty baby. So needy" he whispers against your face, hot breath lingering above your lips. "And mine. Mía. Only mine"

"I am, yes. Yours only. Need you so bad right now, papi" you answer in a rush. "Now shut up and fuck me"

"Con gusto" he chuckles darkly, "gotta keep the wife happy"

"Happy wife, happy life" you recite, stripping him off of his plain shirt, revealing his toned torso, bulging biceps defined by the movements. You gulp. "Fuck, papi. Gotta thank Marvel for this. I love all of your versions, but I can work with this too" you dreamily stare at him, your hands cupping his face.

He strips the rest of his clothing, but a cute blush adorns his cheeks.

"Yeah, well, it's Scott's fault too"

Your impatient fingers reach the middle of your panties to rub your clothed pussy, letting out a sound that darkens his hazel orbs.

"Fuck that guy" you mutter. Pedro laughs.

"Thought you said you loved the guy"

"Until I learned what he said about your body" you groan, still rubbing. "Connie told me"

His hands now travel to remove your clothes, almost ripping them off.

"Who cares? I just want to fuck you now" he breathes out, practically drooling at the sight of your damp panties. "Lemme take this off too"

He unhooks your bra, seeing the hard nipples. The urge to lick them is so bad, but his desire to fill you silly to the brim is stronger.

You see his hesitation, which is why you grab him by the neck to pull him in for a kiss. He kisses back fiercely, labored breaths as he struggles to focus on your lips, his wet mouth darting to your jaw, neck and collarbones. His hands roam all over your body, needy.

"Gotta be inside of you, mami. Can't wait any longer"

"Then stop waiting" you plead, tugging at his boxers with urgency.

Seeing you so cockhungry, lips parted and pupils blown wide makes his hard dick twitch with anticipation.

He mutters a labored fuck, aligning himself to enter your sticky folds. Pedro enters your tight pussy with a low groan, burying himself deep inside of you, used to his length by now. You're basically begging for it, nails digging and eyes supplicating.

He can't deny you anything, can he?

A messy whine leaves your widened mouth as you adjust, pleasure mixed with pain.

"Mhmm" you moan.

"Mhmm what?" he mocks. "You asked for it. Now take it, cariño"

He thrusts deeper into you, watching in awe how his dick enters your pussy; it was always perfectly, your pussy made for him.

"You're drippin' baby" his rough voice caresses your cheek. He kisses the are, giving a lick to the sweat starting to form. "S'fucking tight too"

You move your hips towards him, trying to augment the friction. The overstimulation starts to cloud your sense, reducing you to a whiny mess as you grip his steady arms.

"I can't think of anything but you, baby" he confesses between grunts, "filling up your pussy to the brim, you dripping with my seed for days"

You moan at the filthy words.

"Love how you take my dick, amor" stretching you as Pedro moves in and out. "S'made for me"

"Yes" you moan, skin slapping sounds bouncing off the walls. "Fuck, I love your dick..."

His pace picks up, and it comes to a point where he's just fucking you silly, his grip on your hips surely to leave a bruise as you keep spilling obscene sounds of pleasure from your lips.

"Your pussy's mine, yeah? No one else gets to have you like this"

"N-no, just you, Pedro. My h-husband" you manage to squeeze, more moans vocalizing the pleasure you felt with each thrust, his big dick inside of you moving in a a steady rhythm, making your eyes roll back further and orgasm closer.

Your breasts bounce with each thrust, and he finds impossible to resist the urge anymore, licking the sensible skin and hard nipples, your hands moving to his back, scratching him harshly, both chasing your release.

"Please!" you whine out loud, not caring how desperate you sound.

Harder. Faster. Rougher.

But your husband knows you, so he indeed starts to fuck you harder, heavy breaths and slippy kiss noises hanging in the spaces between each thrusts. He pants with every motion of his dick, a knot forming on his belly.

"Shit, baby. I think I'm gonna cum. Gonna come so hard"

"Do it. I'm on birth control, remember?" you groan, feeling your high approach as well. "Fill me up, please. Give me all your cum"

Your bodies move as one, precise thrusts hitting exactly that sweet spot of yours repeatedly, chasing your orgasm. For a brief moment, your eyes lock with his and then he's saying:

"I love you, y/n. So much"

Your heart skips a bit, his dick twitching inside as his gaze glimmers with adoration and possesiveness, teeth grazing your skin with marks for him to call you his.

"I love you too, Pedro. More than you know"

A final thrust is delivered. Fuck, feels so good you think you hear him say. Just like promised, he fills you with his release, shots of his thick, warm cum inside your sticky walls. You follow soon, back arching, toes curling, and both head and eyes rolling back. Pedro falls on top of you, his broad body collapsing over yours, as you both pant hard, trying to steady your pulse and breath. He then removes himself and positions you to be the one on top now, lazily throwing the covers over your bare bodies. We need to shower, you said, but he argued you'd do it later before going out.

"I needed that" and you happily hum in agreement at your husband's dragged out words.

Your head falls and rises, with the movement of his chest, silence settling on the previously filled with sex noises room. That until he speaks up:

"One day, I'm gonna fill you up so good until you have my babies, mami" he murmurs, just then realizing what he said. But you snuggle closer, hand and legs drapped over his bare body. You look at him closely, seeing nothing but certainty on his eyes.

I choose you. I'll always choose you.

"Whatever it is with you" your nose brushes his, a small sweet kiss on his lips, "I want"

His eyes shine, probably with tears or the glow of affection.

"Let's do it"

"What?" you look into his eyes for any sign of doubt, bull all you see is love. "Pedro, are you serious?"

He nods. "Wouldn't you want that?"

You feel the corner of your lips pull up.

"Never have I wanted anything more"

poppysplayground: Y/N AND PEDRO RED CARPET DEBUT AT THE LONDON PREMIER OF GLADIATOR II WTF I JUST WOKE UP ptwt is in SHAMBLES mostannoyingbillioner: UM HELLO pedro showing up with two hot women on his arms LUX GIMME A CHANCE pompeiianbollockr: WAIT WDYM THEY ARE MARRIED?!??! ALL THIS TIME?@?#? HOW???! NEED BIGGER CAPS TO SCREAM I'M GOING INSANE at0michips: that article better come out now or i'll burn the TMZ building ann-gell: not me thirsting for a married man 😭😭😭 how they kept this a secret for so long?? we should've noticed ㅤㅤunhing3dprincess: ann-gell i did. knew betting my grandma was the way all along ㅤㅤpyramiidsf: i'm gonna start betting my grandma too

cr: divider @kodaswrld / gif @trashcora

#dilfistwrites #gladiator II #gladiator ii #gladiator 2 #pedro pascal #pedro pascal x reader #pedro pascal fanfic #pedro pascal smut #pedro pascal x you #pedro x reader #pedro pascal fluff #taylor swift #reputation #call it what you want #paul mescal #call it what you want series

4K notes · View notes

fayes-fics · 1 year ago

Text

Eden

Pairing: Benedict Bridgerton x fem!reader

Summary: Seeing you with other Bridgerton offspring has an interesting effect on your new husband...

I couldn't resist using a Season 3 gif cos hello.

Warnings: 18+ smut, minors DNI, breeding kink, dirty talk, mutual masturbation, vaginal sex, creampie, ie filthy babymaking. Also, the smut is bookended by fluff; yeah, that probably needs a warning, lol.

Word Count: 4.2k

Authors Note: This is a very belated request fill for @victoriaholland (HERE) and Anon (HERE) about Benedict with a touch of baby fever. I decided to combine the asks as I saw a way to weave them together. Sorry for the delay, but well at least babymaking seems appropriate for spring hehe. Thank you to @colettebronte for being an awesome beta, as always. Err, Enjoy! <3

Daphne’s latest child is beautiful; you delight in his joy as he bounces on your lap, learning the strength of his sweetly chubby legs, little fists wrapped tight around your fingers.

Looking up, you catch your husband's eye from afar, his stare intense across the gardens of Bridgerton House as you sit under a tented shelter upon a picnic blanket. The rest of the family are scattered around, playing games or chatting, but you are quite content minding the little one while his nanny takes a few moments to eat lunch.

“Is everything alright, my love?” You inquire as Benedict draws closer.

“Yes… I….” He seems a little flustered.

“Are you sure?”

You pull a funny face for the infant, who breaks out into the most adorable infectious giggles that has you grinning from ear to ear and hugging him into your body, swaying with him.

“Are you alright? Minding the child?” He checks, his voice a touch odd.

“Oh yes. We are more than happy, are we not, my little prince?” You talk in a vaguely silly baby-talk voice, addressing the child in your arms as much as Benedict.

Again, the child peals with delighted noises and spit bubbles enthusiastically, looking up at Benedict eagerly as much as you do.

“Well, that is wonderful news,” he blusters, and you could swear he is out of sorts, breathless almost. “I shall… leave you to it,” he adds, giving you a bow and then withdrawing as the little one wiggles out of your arms.

“Ignore your Uncle Benedict; he is being a silly billy,” you whisper conspiratorially once the man in question is out of earshot.

The response is babbled nonsense as the child bashes one wooden brick against another.

“I quite agree,” you state sagely before breaking into a goofy grin.

——

“Please?” Hyacinth wheedles.

“No, Hy,” you sigh without even looking up.

“Ugh, you are no fun!” she scowls, crossing her arms defiantly.

“What is all this?” Anthony clips as he strides into the drawing room, Benedict on his heels, as Hyacinth flounces dramatically across the room.

“Your little sister is angry at me because I will not allow her to drink the punch; it has brandy in it,” you explain cooly.

“Quite right, too!” Anthony chimes as Hyacinth rolls her eyes.

“Listen to y/n, Hyacinth, and do as she says,” Anthony lectures, and you feel grateful for his support, effectively neutering her rebellion. “Despite a temporary lapse of judgment when choosing a spouse, she is otherwise one of the most sensible people in this family.”

“Hey…!” Benedict protests.

“Please…” Anthony withers, twisting towards him. “Brother, if there is one thing us Bridgerton men know how to do, ‘tis to marry a woman entirely too good for us. And well done on that, by the way.”

You smirk at Anthony’s hilarious way of putting his brother - your husband - in his place, catching Kate’s eye with a wink as she enters the room carrying her baby.

“Y/n, come and meet the future Viscount; he’s awake at last,” she calls to you.

You are immediately on your feet and grinning, taking the tiny bundle from her arms and cooing at the sweet little boy. The baby opens his enormous brown eyes and observes you for a second before breaking into a one-toothed grin and happily waving his fists at you.

“Oh, he really likes you!” Kate enthuses, delighted.

“As I do you, little one,” you smile, leaning over to kiss his forehead.

You look up to see Benedict with that same look on his face as earlier. A tempest, almost an energy over his being. It’s almost as if he is… aroused?! Which is most odd.

As you hand the baby back to Kate, giving him one final kiss, Benedict is suddenly by your side. Announcing to the family that there has been a change of plan and, regrettably, you will not be able to stay for dinner, his arm an insistent tug around your waist.

——

“Why did we not stay for family dinner as originally planned, my love?”

Your question is soft, only just audible over the noise of the carriage as you trundle over the cobbled streets of Mayfair a few minutes later.

“I decided that we should perhaps dine at ours this evening…” his voice adopting that deeper edge which always causes butterflies in your tummy. His hand lands on your knee, a heavy weight that feels portentous. He slides closer on the bench seat.

“Why might that be?” your ask turns breathy, entirely without you meaning it to.

“I want to be alone with you,” he murmurs, unmistakably pitched to arouse.

The carriage seems to notch up a few degrees as the rocking motion presses your side rhythmically into his. The sound of the wheels and hooves is so loud. He twists to wrap an arm around your shoulder and pulls your back against his flank.

“All day today, I have watched you,” he rumbles, hand warming the skin around your clavicle, fingertip brushing in circles. “You are so very good with children, darling. Seeing you so naturally with the babies and how you handled Hyacinth… you would be the perfect mother.”

You blush a little at his praise. “Thank you, my love. I would like children one day. Your children. Imagine a child with your eyes. They would be quite the most beautiful,” you sigh wistfully, leaning back into him, his hand feeling heavier on your skin.

Benedict chuckles modestly. “And what of your beauty? Would a child version of you not be the most fetching?”

You giggle and turn your head sideways to nuzzle against his jaw. “I think we would indeed make beautiful babies together, Benedict.”

“I agree,” his voice a tempting lilt, fingers skating downwards over the swell of your breast now, slipping inside the fabric and making you gasp as he tweaks your nipple. “And I think we should start as soon as we get home.”

“Did seeing me with babies suddenly make you want your own, Mr Bridgerton?” Your hand flexes on his knee as he toys with your breast.

“Oh yes darling, it made me want to take you right there…” he asserts, finally admitting those looks he gave you were indeed pure arousal.

You reach up and run your hand into his hair, fingers flexing on his warm scalp as you pull his face to yours. “And suddenly, it appears I am no longer hungry for dinner…” you whisper flirtatiously, your cupid's bow brushing his stubbled upper lip.

He groans, and his passionate kiss is plundering, a tingle running over your limbs, just as your carriage comes to a shuddering stop outside your townhome.

Uncaring of the neighbourhood or any prying eyes, Benedict sweeps you out of the carriage in his arms, carrying you bridal style over the pavement and through your front door.

“My wife and I are not to be disturbed,” he announces crisply and loudly to the staff as you enter the hallway.

Leaving no room for doubt about his plans by pulling you into a searing kiss for all to see before ascending the stairs rapidly. He practically growls as he kicks open the door to your master bedroom door and slams it shut again with his foot.

“Benedict…” you stammer, heart pounding at how overwrought he is.

You have never seen him like this. Commanding, crackling with an energy that has your body simmering. He is usually so sweet, affable, and kind. Every time you have been intimate since your wedding night a few weeks ago, he has been a complete gentleman: loving and so very tender. The grip he has had on you tonight feels different. This is something primal—like a switch has been flipped at a basal level in his being.

He places you down onto your feet before the roaring fire, his face intense.

“Wife…” The way he says it makes you feel a flush creep over your skin.

“Husband…” you respond in kind, belly fluttering with excitement.

“Take off your dress,” he orders, his dilated pupils shining in the firelight.

This is new. Usually, he is the one to remove it slowly and softly from your body.

“I cannot, the buttons…” you confess, signalling behind you. You would need your ladies' maid to unhook them from between your shoulder blades.

He moves closer, seeming so much taller; his ragged breaths dance in the tendrils of your hair as he reaches around behind your shoulders. With a rough tug that makes you startle, he tears the fabric asunder, the sound of tiny pearl buttons skittering across the polished wooden floor behind you as you gasp in surprise.

“There…” he smirks dangerously, “problem resolved.”

You are speechless as he withdraws a pace, looking at you expectantly. You follow his order, a slight quake in your hands as you push the frayed dress down your body, still a little shocked by his strength. Then you reach for the crisscross lacing of your stays, feeling the weight of his stare as each loop relents, his eyes hungry, his body heaving with deep breaths his fitted jacket taut with each inhale. You peel the item away, leaving just your thin white cotton chemise.

“Rip it too,” you plead before you realise it, enthralled by this assertive demeanour.

With a noise in the back of his throat, he takes a pace forward again, and you stare up at him, enchanted. He grasps the fabric above your breasts and then rips it loudly from your chest all the way to your ankles, the sound echoing up the walls. Again, his strength has your knees weak. As the torn pieces flutter from your body, you want to bathe in the hungry sound he makes as he realises you are clad only in white knee-high silk stockings, no underwear to be seen, the warmth from the fireplace swirling around your intimate area.

As you stand almost naked before your imposing husband, him still fully dressed, there is a knot low in your gut. But it’s not fear; it’s something else entirely—desire. Trembling, breathless and wanting. An elemental wish to be thoroughly taken.

He steps forward, eyes glittering, and his fingers plough roughly between your legs, making you gasp.

“Eden,” he proclaims, his fingers snagging over your swollen pearl of a clit with almost rough strokes, the callous where he holds his paintbrush abrading your folds. “A wonderful, lush, wet garden. Just waiting to be planted.” His words are hypnotic and low, questing fingers being coated with a dewiness that is entirely of his making.

“Please…” you whimper, squirming on his touch, captivated by this version of your husband, wanting to submit to him, a burning need low in your belly. His fingers slide faster, making a lewd, wet noise.

“Are you going to let me?” Benedict croons. “Plant my seed inside you?”

Until now, he has always been careful to complete outside your body. A slightly bereft feeling every time - the wonderful moment cut short as he leaves you suddenly empty, a warm splash upon your thighs, tummy or spine. The idea he will stay inside you is alluring in a way you don’t fully comprehend.

“Yes, please, husband,” your nipples puckering almost painfully against the wool of his lapels as he crowds into you.

“Good. Get on that bed right now,” Benedict orders roughly, pointing at your four-poster bed as he tugs off his jacket.

You scramble to obey. Feeling under a spell. Being naked save your stockings feels illicit as you lay back into the soft pillows and watch as he undresses, staring you down the whole time.

You slide a hand between your legs instinctively as more of his toned body is revealed. He growls at the sight, you biting your lip and watching him, his torso bare, his trousers clinging to his shapely legs, to his swollen cock. He bends to remove his shoes, and the sight of his broad shoulders flexing is enough to make you moan. As he stands back up and hooks his elegant fingers around the trouser buttons, a smug look on his handsome face that he is doing this to you.

“Husband…” you call out to him, writhing on your fingers shamelessly now, one hand shooting up to brace your movements against the headboard, flushing warm down to your toes.

With a few dextrous flicks, the buttons relent, and his trousers drop to the floor. His naked body is always a delicious sight, but tonight feels more, every sense heightened, moaning again as he takes a step towards you, thigh muscles flexing, his cock standing proud to attention.

Again, a soft plea falls from your lips, your eyes raking every plain of his tempting form, feeling yourself swell under your fingertips.

“Not yet,” he clucks, the arrogance somehow more beguiling as you bite your lip. “I think I want to watch you come, my darling. All by yourself. I hear female pleasure can aid with conception after all.”

“Will you not touch me?” you petition, reaching your other hand imploringly towards him.

“No darling, I shall watch,” his lopsided grin deadly.

He wraps a strong fist around his own cock, pumping slowly, a bead of moisture gathering at his tip, glistening in the candlelight as he does.

“Now, use both hands, please. Place your fingers inside yourself,” Benedict instructs as you blindly follow, a languid buzz in your brain—you would do anything he told you to right now.

Planting your feet squarely on the bed, you drag your ankles up higher towards your bottom, letting your legs fall open wider to give him a better view as your other hand slides down. You plunge two fingers into yourself, your hips canting off the mattress with a staccato breath at the sensation of yourself, so hot and tight.

“That's right,” he endorses, a leisurely movement of his hand up and down his cock as he watches you from a few feet away. “‘Feel yourself, darling. Tis paradise, is it not?” that trademark rumbling voice skittering over your skin, goosebumps raising down your arms just at the tone.

“Come closer,” you appeal breathily, wanting to smell him, feel his heat, his flesh—anything.

He shakes his head, smirking wider as his refusal spurs you on, desperate to come. Mewling as your fingers speed up, one circling your clit, the others buried as far as you can, wishing instead it were his long, graceful fingers reaching places you are unable. Watching him squeeze his own cock hurtles you fast, already aroused from the moment he slid a hand into your dress in the carriage.

Unable to fight the tide in your body, you screw your eyes shut and call out his name as your pussy starts to convulse around your own fingers, toes curling into the sheet, your muscles all going stiff, your hips again raised as you feel the tide break. A gush of wetness runs down your palm and your bottom cheeks as your mind floats away. Distantly, you can hear him speaking, but it’s fuzzy as you flop back down, sated, your legs going flat, too shaky to balance.

You startle as a warm hand circles the wrist of your fingers still inside yourself, bringing you abruptly back into the room. Benedict looms over you, his chest heaving, that power still there.

“What was that?” your query drowsy, lips dry.

He chuckles richly. “I said that was spectacular,” he repeats, bemused. “But also that I want you to paint your nipples with your arousal, my love, for me,” he commands, tugging your hand so your fingers slide out of yourself.

You do as bidden, still floating down from the high, smearing your own warm juices onto your puffed areolas.

“Perfect..” he intones.

In one swift, athletic move, he mounts the bed. You cry out as his warm mouth encloses your left nipple, groaning lewdly as he licks you clean of your arousal, his tongue a heavy, warm, wet weight curling around your sensitive bud, his lips tugging gently, reawakening those synapses only just recovering from your orgasm.

“Why do you always taste like heaven?” his dusky question is rhetorical, his breath gusting over your sternum as he swaps to your other breast to meter out the same treatment. He has you moving under him again as he settles his body over you more firmly, your hips tilting up to feel his hard cock graze your inner thigh. “I wonder if you will still taste like heaven when you are heavy with my child?” he hums thoughtfully as he teases your nipple with the tip of his nose, one hand cupping your empty belly. “I dare say even moreso, ripe like a vine, bearing fruit…” That sonorous voice teases over your skin as he moves slowly upwards to nuzzle your neck. “My fruit….” he adds, possessive as he sucks your earlobe into his mouth, so loud now right by your ear.

His hands wind around your thighs as he shuffles position so he is kneeling between your legs, his ropey thighs spread wide under yours…

“Are you ready for that, my love?” he pauses until you nod almost imperceptibly; you squeak as he suddenly hauls you down the bed, hips onto his lap, your pelvis now higher than your head upon the sheets. Your stockings unfurling down your legs where he quickly plucks at the ribbons holding them aloft.

“Good, because I am more than ready for you,” it almost sounds like a warning.

Then, with a solid thrust, he spears into your body, the invasion toe-curling, your fingers grasping his muscular forearms that are clamped around your waist. It is a primal position, and he begins to thrust with no mercy, his cock feeling huge and heavy, a strong weight that drags heavily over your walls as your pussy clings to him. Your eyes flutter closed as you whimper his name, powerless to do anything but take his thrusts, draped across his lap as you are.

“Look at me,” he demands raggedly. And you do, his handsome face contorted with effort as he slams into you, a little bead of sweat forming on his brow. “Look at me while I fuck a baby into you, wife.”

He’s never spoken to you like this before, clipped, harsh. It seems appropriate that he would be almost desperate in an act so elemental, so of the earth—to create life. Stoking a fire deep in your core that is a clarion call for him, a frisson running over your skin at the idea you are being impregnated. Bred.

You know neither of you will last long with this almost frenzied coupling, the tendrils of your arousal already swirling so soon after your last, his near-brutish handling precisely what you need, your swollen pearl slammed into his flat abdomen with every stroke he takes. The sheets roll under your shoulder blades as he keeps the same position, your hips high, a mounting that you cannot and do not want to escape, knowing he is leaving fingertip bruises around the dip of your waist, marks you will carry secretly with pride just for him.

You moan his name, so close again to that ephemeral bliss, thrashing your head from side to side as if willing the pleasure to break and wash over you.

“Come on, come for me, milk me, darling. Take what you need, take my seed,” his voice a deep wrecked purr, the lines of his body tense, craving release as much as you.

That command is what breaks the dam for you, an almost violent ricochet fanning out from where you clench around him, his cries muffled behind the rushing noise in your ears, every part of you convulsing in a pleasurable wave. And then, in a floating haze, for the very first time, you feel your husband come inside you, a warm bloom that coats your walls. It's an intoxicating feeling; you never want him to come anywhere else ever again.

“That's it, well done, my love,” he croons, eyes still shut as he shudders with little aftershocks, not leaving your body—as if he wants to stay inside you always.

——

As the embers in the fireplace glow white, you lay in post-coital bliss, bodies dewy from exertion. Benedict rests his head upon your stomach as you card your fingers leisurely through his hair.

“Do you believe we may have made a baby, darling?” he hums, pressing his ear to your belly button as if listening for a heartbeat.

“I am certain of it, husband; you were so very thorough with your attentions,” you assure as he takes your hand in his, lacing your fingers together. “I hope our baby has your face,” you opine.

“Even if it is a girl?!”

“Thou art as pretty as thou art handsome, Mr Bridgerton,” you quip.

He laughs, carefree, crawling behind you and pulling you into a spooned embrace. “Be careful with such provocation, wife; I may not be done with you after all,” he jests idly. “I, on the other hand, hope our child looks like you, even if it is a boy.” he posits, crowding into your back, his lips warm on the shell of your ear.

“Why?” you laugh, frowning, twisting to look back at him.

“So that I may love them as much as I do you,” he breezes nonchalantly as if what he says is not the sweetest thing you can imagine, causing a tart, sudden spike of want through your body, even as you lay sated.

“Be careful, husband,” you volley back, coquettish. “Or I may not yet be done with you.”

There is a sharp, approving intake of breath, and his hand slides low from your belly into the thatch of hair at the apex of your thighs.

“Is that a promise” he rumbles, your gasp loud as his fingers expertly drag against your clit.

“It is whatever you want. Just do not stop,” you rush out, your hand curling around his bicep, feeling a rigid mass slide hot against your bottom. “Again, husband,” you appeal breathily. “Impregnate me again.”

“With pleasure, wife,” he growls, surging into your body with a force that again steals the very breath from your lungs.

The pinkish light dawn is streaking over the ceiling above when you both finally succumb to sleep after many more vigorous attempts at babymaking. The last one, perhaps the most desperate, you pinned against the headboard, him fucking into you so hard from behind that a jagged crack appears, spidering up the wall from where the bedframe slammed into it. A flaw which he steadfastly refuses to get fixed, claiming it to be the most profound art—a souvenir and ode to a momentous night.

——

9 months later

Benedict’s lips mash against your sweaty brow as he keeps lauding you with praise, excitement and pride evident in his every word. You flop back onto the bed, exhaustion deep in your bones, your body turned inside out, hurting in a way you have never known.

But it was all worth it.

What feels like only moments later, in your shattered, addled state, the doctor and nurses depart. Your husband perches on the bed next to you, his face a picture of wonderment. Holding not just one but two bundles of joy in the crooks of his arms. One girl, one boy—fraternal twins.

“My love, we have created the most beautiful creatures on all of this earth,” he attests partisanly, his voice profound with emotion, his eyes pinging from one swaddled face to the other as they sleep soundly.

You shoot him a watery but ironic smile. “I suppose, dear husband, that is what happens when you spend a whole night impregnating me. You succeed twice over.”

His brow raises pointedly, his tongue shooting out to pass over his bottom lip. “Are you suggesting next time around, wife, we keep going for three days straight? So that I may have a brood of eight by the time we are done?” Deploying his bedroom voice that he knows full well makes your knees weak.

“Do not say such things in front of the children!” you chide, swatting his knee where it touches your thigh. “And no, I am not carrying six of your progeny at once; that is simply preposterous!”

“Four?” he petitions with a wink.

You roll your eyes affectionately, settling back into the mound of pillows. “A maximum of two at a time is my final offer, Benedict Bridgerton,” you respond drolly.

“Entirely reasonable,” he chuckles contentedly, dropping a kiss onto each of their foreheads before handing both to you so delicately, as if they are the most precious bundles in the world.

Which to you both, they are.

Join my taglist HERE

Benedict taglist pt 1: @makaylan @foreverlonginguniverse @notanotheruniverse @iboopedyournose @aintnuthinbutahounddog @severewobblerlightdragon @writergirl-2001 @heeyyyou @enichole445 @enchantedbytomandhenry @ambitionspassionscoffee @chaoticcalzoneranchsports @nikaprincessofkattegat @baebee35 @crowleysqueenofhell @fiction-is-life @lilacbeesworld @broooookiecrisp @queen-of-the-misfit-toys @eleanor-bradstreet @divaanya @musicismyoxygen84 @miindfucked @sorryallonsy @cayt0123 @hottytoddyhistory @fictionalmenloversblog @zinzysstuff @malpalgalz @kinokomoonshine @causeimissu @delehosies @m-rae23 @last-sheep @panhoeofmanyfandoms @kmc1989 @desert-fern @corpseoftrees-queen @magical-spit @bunnyweasley23 @how-many-stars-in-the-sky @sya-skies

8K notes · View notes

tonycries · 1 year ago

Text

FIRST masterlist! This masterlist has all my writing from 06/02/24 up until 01/10/24 — for my recent works click on my SECOND MASTERLIST <3

Men In Uniform Do It Best!

Dirty Lil' Secrets

A Picture Lasts Long (But Not As Long As That D*ck)

I'm Addicted, I Admit It!

Give Me Tough Love

Never Ever Seen This Before!

We Don't Have No Babies!

Like A Fever

Bad Things (To You)

Prettier When Messy!

Care For You!

Green-eyed Monster

So Lonely In My Mansion!

Kiss Me More!

Girl, I Do This Often

Cause, I Love Freaks!

Sl*t Me Out!

Match My Freak!

WAP!

R U Mine?

Hot To Go!

Girl, You Earned It!

I'm A BIG Stepper!

BODY-ODY!

SOOO ANXIOUS

Long Overdue!

THIS P*SSY DEPRESSED!

The Family Matter?!

I-T G-I-R-L!

I Lasted Ten Rounds!

BRAT!

She's My Vitals!

Three's a Crowd (But Four...) — “So, are they like holograms? Or can you really touch them?” “Why? Trynna cop a feel, sweetheart?” In which you and your boyfriend find very unconventional uses for his powers.

Why Can't I Keep My Fingers Off You? [Part 1] [Part 2] — There were two things missing in the scene in front of you: 1. The aphrodisiac chocolate your friends had given as a gag gift last Christmas that had been hidden away in the back of your refrigerator. 2. Your dear fiancé.

Dream A Little Dream — For the strongest, it was a privilege to dream. Especially when his dream is you.

Initiation! — “Just a small initiation, nothing too serious.” Couldn’t be too hard, right? So why are you - the all-new frat sweetheart - being pinned to the bed and stuffed full from all ends by your frat brothers?

One More? Please? — A kiss always solves everything! But when a kiss turns into something more…well, it’s only a desperate attempt to unseal yourselves from this damned prison realm, right? Right?

Everybody Knows That I'm a Good Girl, Officers... — You don’t know what’s faster - how fast you were speeding down the highway, or how fast you’re on your knees for the hot officers that just so happen to pull you over.

Hope They Catch Us — When you’re on-screen, it’s always a rivalry to see who’s best - you just never thought that it would be the same struggle in bed.

Unmistakably Yours — In which the strongest bends space and time - literally - after coming back from deatḣ, to do what he’s always wanted to do - you.

Madam Gojo — Gojo Satoru, the strongest clan leader in all of Japan - and the most dangerous, too. You, rejected by the elders, and totally not his future bride, right? Right?

Can't Touch Me (Like Gojo) — In which intentionally making your fríend-with-benefíts jealous ends up with more benefits than you’d think.

The Heir — No, your clan leader husband won’t stop until he gives you an heir. No, you don’t think you’ll make it out alive.

The Call — After an explosive fight with your boyfriend, you really should feel sorry about being swept up by the blue-eyed stranger at the club - but it’s so hard when he kisses you like that.

Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy — He knows that you would be one of his favorite stories from his travels. And you know that you want nothing more than to stay by his side. After meeting an alluring cowboy at Ol’ Rustcliffe Saloon, both of you are sure of one thing - this must be fate.

Go For It, Gojo! [Part 1] [Part 2] — You wouldn’t fuck Gojo Satoru even if you were paid…is what you thought exactly five minutes before you were shoved against the wall of this cramped closet, his face stuffed in your soaked panties.

Unhoneymooners!? — The universe was surely playing a joke on you. Here you were, trapped on a luxury getaway with your - dangerously handsome, extremely obnoxious - ex. Either you were going to kill each other or end up pinned beneath him, split apart on his cóck. You just didn’t know what would come first.

AITA For F*cking My Sugar Daddy's Son?! — When your sugar daddy just isn’t paying attention to you, can you really be blamed for fúcking his son? Especially when his son is absolutely obsessed with you.

Bad Boys Bring Roses — You’ve never dealt with the yakuza - not once. So why is the future head of the Gojo clan suddenly coming up to you, demanding that you marry him for 30 days?

The Way You Kiss Me — The four times Satoru tries really hard not to kiss you - his best friend’s pretty younger sister. And the one time he doesn’t.

Isn't That Sweet? (I Guess So) — Oh no! Why do your pantíes keep disappearing? Well, maybe your hot roommate knows the answer…

Haunting You — A bIoody trail of vampire attácks, a political marriage, and four suitors you’re forced to choose from - all haunting you. But none as much as the mysterious stranger that makes everything in you scream that you might just be fated for the very thing your kingdom is trying to escape from.

You'll Taste Me Too! — How do you last three days on a work trip with the man you hate the most in the office? You don’t - you end up pinned underneath him, instead.

We Neva Play! — Turns out, the “r” in rivals stands for “really good séx” when a mission becomes a little too hot to handle.

Something Stupid — Five times the strongest would rather díe than tell you he loves you, and the one time he almost does. Almost.

Like An Animal — Of course Toji doesn’t want any more kids. Of course he’s lying as he stuffs your pretty cúnt full of his cúm for the third time tonight.

Whiskey, Neat, With a Side of You — When your date stands you up, you’re lucky that the hot bartender is more than happy to keep you company!

F*ck You! (Literally) — Of course, you hated your ex-husband. Of course, you found yourself in bed with him on your wedding anniversary.

Government Hooker — With the fame and glory of being an international popstar comes the inevitable threat of an overzealous stalker. You just didn’t think that it would also come with a very sexy, buff bodyguard behind your every move.

Madam Zenin — There’s nothing that rouses Toji, the infamous head of the Zenin clan, nothing that will make him lose control - until they take what’s most important to him. You.

Brooklyn Baby — Everybody wanted to fuck Suguru Geto, lead bassist of Tokyo Special Grades. Said Suguru doesn’t want to fuck anyone else but you. He couldn’t give less of a fuck if anyone walked in right now. In fact, a small part of him wishes someone would.

Golden Boy — Falling right back in love with the cult leader you’re supposed to kíll? Happens more often than you’d think.

Welcome To The Itadori's! — Three times Choso really, really wanted to hold you without his family barging in, and the one time he actually does.

FIVE! — Five hours - it’s all it takes for Choso’s baby fever to take over. After all, you’d look so pretty with his kid - five of them, in fact.

Great With Kids? (You Can Have Mine) — When your younger brother gets a new babysitter, only two questions linger on your mind: 1. How come your parents didn’t trust you in charge? 2. How dare the sexy babysitter be so perfect - it made you want some attention too.

Freak On The Cam! — Choso always loved watching you - his pretty lil’ camgírl - from behind the screen. Who knew he’d love being on-screen with you even more?

A Million Dollar Baby! — Turns out, rent can be paid in much more than one way.

Can't Touch Me (Like Gojo) — In which intentionally making your fríend-with-benefíts jealous ends up with more benefits than you’d think.

Exes who...

Love Is Blind

“She My Best Friend, Yeah We Not a Couple.”

Wanna Do Bad Things To You

I Wanna Get Freaky On Camera

Lemme Ride, Baby!

Can I Fill You Up, Baby?

"Pull On It. Harder."

Little Heaven

#masterlist #jjk masterlist #tonynavi

10K notes · View notes

chetter-holmgren · 7 months ago

Text

This man is sooo diabolically fine, I need him 😩

(Also, I’m loving him being so active on ig lately, I hope he keeps this up throughout the season 🙂‍↕️)

#chet holmgren #chet content!#chet being active on ig >>>>>#hope he keeps this up #(yes i know he’s about to be very busy with basketball about to start for real but i’m hoping)#ugh he is sooo fine #i need him so bad #future husband right here #🫠😍

3 notes · View notes

totalswag · 6 months ago

Note

hii, I’m not sure if you take request still but if so is there a possible way you can do a drew x singer!reader one shot take on how Sabrina “arrests” her fans before performing Juno for being too hot but the reader does it to Drew during her shows please 🫶🏼

arrested for being too hot — DREW STARKEY

authors note THANK YOU FOR REQUESTING THIS!! my request box is still open so feel free to send me any ideas regarding singer!reader or regular fic ideas you’d like me to write. this was so much writing too. thank for all the love on my last fic lovies <3

taglist ⤕ if you would like to be notified every time i post you will type in your username then be all set.

summary "arresting" drew, your boyfriend, during your show before performing your song from your new album.

warning(s) none!

You are on tour for your new album in-front of thousands of fans almost every night. You worked hard on this album and it turned out wonderfully. If it weren’t for the amazing fans of yours, you don’t know where you’d be in your career— they are the reason you are doing this.

Half way into the show— going amazing. The crowd tonight isn't disappointing you. Everything you've hoped for on this tour. You've performed eighteen songs and about to go onto your nineteenth. Played musical spin the bottle not long ago which was really fun.

Before Juno, you begin with a small "skit" where you call someone out in the crowd, arresting them for being too hot. This became a thing after your first show of the tour and doing it ever since. Plus, fans absolutely love it. Interacting with your fans has always been something you did and create those bonds.

Drew, your boyfriend, is attending the show with Madelyn Cline, a mutual friend and cast-mate of Drew's. You told him earlier today you wanted to arrest him in the middle of the show to get the audience excited and it would be fun.

Drew was all for it, and he didn't want you to tell him what you were going to say—he prefers surprises.

Your pink, glittering, dazzling clothing was sparkling in the lights. You pressed your free hand to your brow as though you were looking around for a call. With security, you could see Drew and Madelyn making their way to the front.

You begin by adjusting your earpiece while moving around the stage in your long skirt. "You guys know that moment when you are in a room filled with such beautiful looking people that you start to feel overwhelmed?" When fans applaud, you smile.

"Oh, girls, I think I just seen my future husband in the front row! Oh my god, girls, come here, come here," you say anxiously into the microphone, beckoning them over and waving your free hand.

You turn to face Drew as the girls approach you, asking, "Do you see that gorgeous looking man over in the front row with his arms crossed in the tan shirt?" You speak into the microphone aloud, pointing to Drew in the crowd.

Your girls joyfully waved at Drew while placing their hands on your shoulder. As Drew blushes on the big screen, the crowd reflexively turns up the volume in the arena.

"What's your name handsome?" With your head cocked slightly to the right toward your shoulder, you inquire in jest.

"Drew!" You can hear him when he places his hands on the side of his lips. He gives you a childlike smile and a flushed face.

You say, "I'm sorry I couldn't get that?" as though you couldn't hear him. Leaning forward more, you place your free hand behind your ear.

He shakes his head and utters "Drew!" a little louder.

"Oh my Drew, I must say that you must be a magnet because you drew me in" brings a smile to your face. Your tone indicated that you were trying quite hard not to laugh, yet you kept your calm brilliantly.

Fans had their phones out, capturing the entire interaction. Nobody would have expected Drew to be the person arrested at your gigs since the tour began.

"Drew, you are under arrest for being too hot," you say aloud, smiling and pointing at him— fanning yourself, moving your hips side to side as the sound of sirens going off with blue and red lights behind.

You put your left elbow against your girls shoulder, "guys do you ever just see someone so good looking that you just don't know what to do and all your clothes fall off in that moment" your long skirt slips off smoothy.

"Like your brain just like malfunctions and like I just wanna handcuffed to you now like," one of your girls puts the pink fluffy handcuffs into your hand, you kneel down, "do you know what I mean? Will you take these from me?"

Drew is overwhelmed in this very moment— it's very obvious how much you are affecting him. Drew gives you a gimme me gesture with his fingers, ready to catch the hand cuffs.

He takes them in his hands, looks down, and feels the smooth texture of the fuzzy. He tilts his head to the side before slowly glancing up at you with a smirk—keep in mind that he's still on the big screen.

"We're gonna sing this one to you, Drew."

Juno's song intro starts playing. You wave goodbye to Drew and Madelyn as you return to the center of the stage. You could hear the two begin speaking to fans in the distance.

Drew and Madelyn met you in the dressing room following the show. After giving Madelyn a hug and thanking her for attending the event, you moved to approach Drew and put your arms around his neck while grinning.

"That was insane," Madelyn exclaimed, pulling you into a hug. "What about the full call-out and the handcuffs? Iconic! "You're the talk of the night; everyone is crazy about it."

You giggled as your face heated up. "It seemed right." "You should have seen his face!"

She laughs, "I got the whole thing on video, I'll send it to you later."

"I'm going to give you two some alone time, but you did such an amazing job tonight and looked so hot doing it," Madelyn adds, taking your hands in her and wiggling her brows.

"Thank you, babe. I love you always," you say, hugging her before she leaves you and Drew alone.

When you close the door, Drew comes behind you, placing his arms around your waist and kissing you on the cheek, making you laugh with the tenderness of his lips.

"I'm so proud of you baby, you did such an amazing job on stage and looked unbelievable in your outfits made me feel like the luckiest guy in the entire world." He expresses emotionally, which uplifts you.

"Coming from you, it warms my heart baby. Forever grateful to have you in my life," you smile softly, leaning against his chest, feeling that sense of warmth you always feel whenever you are with him.

"And I'm forever grateful for you" he quietly responds, kissing the top of your head.

"So what are we gonna do with those pink fuzzy handcuffs?"

my taglist!

✰ if you would like to be added to my taglist and be notified whenever i post please let me know in the comments or in my ask box. if there's a line across your name that means i couldn't find your account.

@superlegend216 @skyslowalking @germcana @the1nonlyariana @mymultiveres @kiiyomei @chenslucy @rafeyslamb @rosezza @runningfrom2am @kneelarmhstrung

5K notes · View notes

lilianne-tarot · 15 days ago

Text

PICK A CARD: How will your future spouse pursue you ⋆˙⟡

✧˚. How to Pick Your Pile: Take a deep breath, clear your mind, and look at the images above. Which one pulls you in the most? Trust your gut! Once you choose the image, The number below your chosen image is your pile. If more than one catches your eye, that just means there’s extra tea for you, go ahead and read both!

✧˚. If you enjoyed this reading, get your own personalized paid reading here!😊🦋

✧˚. For personalized 18+ readings, click here!

✧˚. My Ko-fi link: here 🫶🏻

✧˚. My Masterlist🫶🏻

⋆˚𝜗𝜚˚⋆ PILE I

Cards Pulled: king of swords, knight of cups reversed, king of pentacles, the sun, the tower, 2 of swords

Right off the bat, you’re gonna think this person is cold. PERIOD. I’m sorry, but King of Swords as the first card, this ain’t some gushy softie sliding into your DMs with heart emojis and “wyd baby.” Nah, theyre giving emotionally disciplined, calculating, and “I only let three people see the real me and you’re not on the list… yet. YET” they might come across lowkey intimidating at first, like, the kind of person who’s quiet in group settings but throws out that one sarcastic comment that’s so sharp it makes everyone laugh and feel personally attacked. 😭💀

BUT TRUST ME, they’re watching you. Like… a hawk. They’re the type who is taking mental notes on your coffee order, your laugh patterns, the way you furrow your brows when you’re deep in thought, stuff even you don’t know you do. But honesty love….. they’re into you from day one, but they plays it off like he’s unbothered. Classic King of Swords move. Strategic af. Theyre lowkey fighting himself. Like, internally they got this soft, romantic, borderline poetic thing brewing, he fantasizes about running into you by “accident,” planning the most aesthetic dates, imagining you in his hoodie😭but he’s actively repressing it. Because vulnerability? He’d rather eat glass, thanks. He doesn’t want to be obvious. He’s convinced if he lets on how deep he’s feeling this, he’ll lose the upper hand or get hurt. So what does he do instead? Weird passive-aggressive things. Acts uninterested one minute, then gives you eyes across the room like he’s trying to telepathically undress your soul the next. Sir. Pick a lane. He doesn’t chase, he builds. He slowly starts showing up for you in the most tangible, grounded ways. Need help with something? He’s already on it. Mentioned your favorite snack in passing? It just “randomly” appears next time. The way this man provides?? You’ll be SHOOK. He’s not flashy about it either. He’s like, “I got you” and means it. That’s when you start going: “Wait… are they… serious?” Because once this person is IN, he is IN. Like, no games, no pullbacks. Suddenly it’s "have you eaten?" and "text me when you get home" and "do you want me to fix that thing?." Husband mode activated.

BUT THEN. Omg. THE TOWER. 😭 Baby this is where it goes OFF. Something will shift drastically. And honestly, You might be the one who triggers it, ofc we are talking about you here so. Like maybe you call him out for his hot-and-cold vibe, or you walk away ‘cause you’re done playing Guess Who: Feelings Edition. Whatever it is, it SHATTERS his cool-boy facade. The Tower is giving “omg I fumbled” realness. He suddenly realizes how much he could lose and spirals. Might even go quiet for a second, lick his wounds, have a whole emotional breakdown. But then… boom. THE SUN. This is where the magic happens. The pursuit becomes warm, honest, and loud. He stops hiding. He owns it. Like, “Yeah, I like you. Actually, I love you. Actually, I wanna grow old with you and argue about what brand of detergent we’re using.” You’ll feel seen, adored, and finally safe in this connection. It’s that post-breakdown glow-up. He starts expressing himself clearly, no longer scared to let you in.

But now. Girl. YOU are gonna be the one hesitating now 😭. That Tower moment hits you, too. You start overthinking: “Can I trust this sudden 180? Was he always this into me and just hiding it? Do I want someone who couldn’t be vulnerable from the start?” Like, your brain starts weighing everythings. And that’s valid! It’s hard to unsee someone’s walls once you’ve bumped into them. So how do you perceive him throughout this journey? At first, cold and confusing af. Then… weirdly magnetic. Then dependable and lowkey daddy-coded. Then chaotic and heartbreak-y. Then sunshine and deeply, deeply sincere. You’ll feel like you’re watching him peel back layer after layer, and each one gets softer, realer, and more him.

His hints would be subtle but intentional. He remembers small things. He lingers a bit longer in conversations than necessary. He suddenly shows interest in the things you love, even if they weren’t his vibe before. He gives you those “you’re the only person in this room I care about” eyes. He’ll NEVER say it first… until he breaks. And when he does? You’re done. Stick a fork in you. Soul snatched. Game over.

I am seeing like he might dream about you before things really pop off. He might tell you later like ,“I had this weird dream we were married lol” and laugh it off, but internall,y he’s BLUSHINGGG because the dream felt real. Also… idk why I’m seeing like… rain or some stormy weather being important??? Maybe the Tower moment literally happens during a stormy day and you both cry under the rain like a movie scene? (i mean…..idc… if i am getting me personal main character moment. It’s all part of the process, i guess💁🏻‍♀️).

Liked the reading? get your own personalized super in-depth paid reading here!

⋆˚𝜗𝜚˚⋆ PILE II

Cards Pulled: the tower, king of wands, 5 of pentacles, queen of cups, 8 of pentacles, 10 of pentacles

PILE 2, Okay but… why does this feel like a well written kdrama with 16 episodes??? I mean i could literally make a movie out of this pile 😭 my reaction to the cards were literally: oh, OH, ahh , TF, Oh. My. GOD.😭

The drama. The rawness. The "I didn’t see this coming, but now I literally can’t look away" energy is off the charts. And I’m already obsessed. So let’s talk about how this chaotic yet painfully magnetic future spouse of yours is about to come stomping into your world like they own the place, with all their trauma and broken broken parts and this weirdly hot charisma that shouldn’t be attractive but is. And somehow?? You fall for it. But like… respectfully 😭.

this person doesn’t approach you like your average person in love would do. No flowers and shy glances. Nope. It’s giving, "I just burnt my life down and now I’m rebuilding from scratch and oh look, you’re here too," vibes. Like you know when someone walks into a room and they don’t say much but their energy is SCREAMING "I’ve been through the trauma you couldn't even imagine"? That’s them. Tower card energy straight up. Something’s just collapsed in their life, could be a major breakup, a career flop, family drama, or literally an existential crisis. Honestly? Feels like all three, let’s not lie 💀. But instead of moping around, this person grabs that chaos and turns it into… ambition. Swagger. Power. This is someone who knows how to lead. They pursue you like they’re chasing their next purpose. With intention. With clarity. And this lowkey intimidating confidence that says “I know what I want, and it’s you.” But let’s not pretend it’s smooth sailing here. Bc 5 of Pentacles? Babe. This person has been abandoned, emotionally iced out, or felt major rejection in the past. Like it’s giving "I’ve loved and I’ve lost and now I trust NO ONE but my dog”. And because of that, Their way of pursuing you is… messy. Not in a manipulative way, but in that "I’m trying to be a lover while still patching up my own wounds" type of mess. So expect mixed signals. Hot and cold. Deep talks followed by withdrawal. And you’re gonna be like, “Sir?? Do you like me or do you need therapy??” honestly: it’s both 😭.

Queen of Cups as the next card is where things get interesting. You. Literally you. You're intuitive AF, emotionally intelligent, and probably catch onto their emotional damage in the first week and are like “Yup. You’re hurt. But I see the softie under all that wreckage.” And here's where it gets wild: they know you see it. That’s what makes them pursue harder. You’re the first person who doesn’t just want them for their outer confidence and King of Wands hotness, you want to know their soul. Their weird inner child. Their guilt. Their hidden sadness. And that?? That shakes them. In a good way. You start noticing little things. Like how they’ll work on themselves just to be better for you. They start showing up. Maybe it’s slow, but you’ll see them trying, healing their abandonment issues, learning to communicate, showing effort in tangible ways. Like planning little dates, asking how your day was (and ACTUALLY listening….woah rare, ngl), sharing parts of their past without you asking. They might even pick up new skills or hobbies because you like them. A little "if she likes books, I read books now" moment?? 😭😭 Despite how mature and scarred and big-boss they may appear, at their core, they’re a newbie when it comes to actual healthy love. Like yeah, they’ve loved before. But not YOU kind of love. Not “you see me even when I’m not performing” kind of love. And that humbles the hell out of them. They're awkward about it. Like, "I wanna give you the world but I also don’t know how to wrap a gift box correctly." 😭 It’s so endearing, you can’t help but melt. They pursue you like someone relearning love from scratch, and you become their soft place to land. They’ll stumble. They’ll overthink. But babe, they’ll try. And that’s what makes them fall harder. Because this ain’t about seduction. It’s about growth. They're not gonna outright confess their feels in the beginning. It’s gonna be hidden in acts of service. Like fixing your broken lamp. Or sending you a meme with a weird caption like, "reminds me of u" Or casually saying “I don’t talk to many people like I do with you,” and then acting like it wasn’t a full-on emotional proposal. Their love language is subtle till it’s not, okay?? But your intuitive self picks up on every damn sign, and you’ll know before they even open their mouth. That’s the connection here, psychic soulmate level. You’ll feel their love way before it’s said.

Liked the reading? get your own personalized super in-depth paid reading here!

⋆˚𝜗𝜚˚⋆ PILE III

Cards Pulled: king of wands, 3 of cups, knight of swords reversed, the devil, 8 of cups, the star

OKAY, PILE 3 is here and… GIRL this pile has such strong, “Dark romance” vibes and also that “enemies to lovers but we’re obsessed with each other” trope energy like NO OTHER 😮‍💨🔥. Your future spouse? It’s that person who shows up outta nowhere and instantly throws your life into disarray because the connection is too much, too fast, too real. They pursue you like they’ve waited lifetimes to find you and now that you’re finally here, they’re not gonna risk losing you, even if it means accidentally traumatizing you with their intensity first 😭.

So let’s start with the vibe of this person, okay? Immediately I’m seeing someone who is dominant AF in presence, the type of person where the second they walk into a room, your attention shifts without your permission. But they’re not all flash and no depth, this person has that charismatic, “traumatized but make it aesthetic” confidence LOL. Think: the guy who’s lowkey too cool for everyone but gets soft for you 🫠. But it’s not just charm. It's calculated. They choose to pursue you. Like, they spotted you from across the damn soul contract timeline and were like, “Yep. That one. Mine.” LMAO.

Here’s where it gets juicy though, this person doesn’t make their pursuit clean or safe. We’ve got the Knight of Swords reversed mixed with The Devil and 3 of Cups… BABY. I’m not gonna lie, their approach is gonna have you shook. This isn't some slow-burn "lemme get to know you" type of chase. Nah, it’s giving intoxicated obsession. Like they’re coming at you way too fast, might say things they haven’t thought through (hello chaotic confessions??), maybe even making moves when you’re like “Wait… tf is happening?!” . And I SWEAR this person gives off the vibe of someone who might try to "just be friends" first… but they absolutely fail at it. Like... you’re not slick, sir. The way they look at you? Not very "friendly." More like "I wanna pin you to the wall in a meaningful way." 😭 it’s like you look into their eyes once aand you are going inot their crib TONIGHT.

BUT. Their pursuit of you isn’t just lusty and impulsive, it’s coming from a place of deep yearning and soul ache. You’re literally the star they’ve been trying to find after walking away from a bunch of superficial crap. I’m getting that they’ve already been through a lot emotionally, they’ve had to let go of people, addictions (literal or emotional), maybe even success that wasn’t fulfilling. So while their approach is messy and extra (like “sir pls chill”), it’s coming from a place of craving real healing, real light, REAL connection. And guess what? That’s what you are to them. Their fkn North Star. And trust me, they don't even realize it at first, like they’re thinking they’re chasing a thrill, but gets, spiritual awakening outta nowhere. Bestie… you’re gonna think they’re too much. 😂 Straight up. You’ll be like “This person is hot, sure……but wtf is this energy??” It’ll feel like you’re constantly trying to decide between “should I kiss them or block them?” Energy chaotic AF. You’ll clock them trying to play it cool, but their eyes? Screaming "I'm feral for you." It’s also possible they’ll show up when you’re trying to move on from someone/something else, and you’ll be hesitant because you’re finally healing, vibing, living in peace, and here comes this walking temptation in human form, knocking on your aura like “hey 😏.” i mean really this emoji is the perfect example of how i am imagining this person. There’s definitely a karmic undertone here, like you two have danced this dance before in past lives but it was let uncompleted. So now, they're NOT playing around. And the way The Star closes the reading? OOF. After all the chaos, the push/pull, the temptation, and messy little love games… they want peace with you. You are the peace. The wish. The endgame. But it’s not gonna come pretty.

Okay so their hints are not actually hints. They’ll accidentally drop the biggest signs , forgetting they’re supposed to pretend. They’ll joke about being obsessed with you? Deadass. They’ll mention you in every convo “by accident.” They might post quotes on their stories or make weird comments like “If I ever fall in love, it’ll be someone like you” 🙄, SIR. STOP. WE SEE YOU. The 3 of Cups energy is also giving “I’ll use mutual friends to get close to you,” like casually showing up at a party where you just happen to be?? Please.And listen, not everything will be smooth sailing. That Devil energy is LOUD. There will be moments where you’ll wonder if you’re drawn to them because it’s fated… or because it’s toxic. But that’s part of the growth arc. They’re not here to ruin your life, they’re here to crack your heart open with messy hands. And once they realize that they can’t control you? That’s when the real magic starts. That’s when they fall so damn hard, they start building a whole new version of themselves just to be worthy of your light.

Liked the reading? get your own personalized super in-depth paid reading here!

Thank you so much for reading all the way through! I hope my reading resonated with you and that you had a lovely time going through it. If you enjoyed it, please like and reblog, it really means a lot! Let me know which pile you chose; I absolutely love hearing your thoughts and feedback on my readings! If my reading resonated you, you may consider buying my paid reading as it would really help me out financially♡

Note: tarot cards provide guidance and possible insights into what could happen based on current energies, thoughts, and actions. the cards can highlight potential paths or outcomes, but they do not fixedly predict the future. this is a general reading so take what resonates!

2K notes · View notes

areislol · 1 year ago

Text

twitter links w/ hsr men

pairings. blade, jing yuan, aventurine, sunday, gepard, sampo x afab/fem! reader

warnings. NSFW no minors! please read at your own discretion, explicit/18+ smut, established relationships for most, brat taming for blade, mention of being called a whore (teasing manner) for aventurine, mentions of puppy for gepard but there's no meaning about it. aggressive sex, passionate sex, masturbation (fem.) sub! gepard for 1 twt link, fingering

a/n. i don't think i've done one for hsr yet... or genshin so maybe that'll be in the future. sorry (not sorry) guys i'm ovulating (i need them all carnally). also i think for some you need to be logged in twitter for them to work! this only has a couple of characters cause i'm a bit lazy today

blade

✧ fucking you so good from behind, "you like that don't you?"

✧ eating you out in a room just beside his colleuges room, he likes the risk and it turns on him. you feel the same way, right?

✧ teasing you for being such a brat, spanking your tight pussy and rubbing soft languid on your sensitive clit. you'll learn your lesson sooner or later.

✧ the size difference never fails to amaze him. but that's fine, he'll take his time with you.

✧ making you cum just by his slender fingers

jing yuan

✧ riding your boyfriend jing yuan

✧ fucking you in his bathroom while you're wearing his shirt. how adorable of you ♡

✧ best friend! jing yuan who fucks you right and how you deserved to be fucked. "feels good doesn't it? i know baby but you need to keep your voice down.. your mom is here.." it's quite hard to stay quiet while being pounded relentlessly, isn't it?

✧ a 5 star meal in his opinion, nothing beats your pussy.

aventurine

✧ slowly and painstakingly teasing you with his cock, oh, and you're wearing that new blindfold he bought for you!

✧ bouncing up and down on his dick, "like the whore you are"

✧ morning sex (is this based off the artwork recently posted by hoyo? yes)

✧ fingering you from behind

✧ "fuck..." aventurine loves hearing you moan

sunday

✧ "ride my face, please."

✧ passionate sex with sunday

✧ giving your boyfriend an awaited tit job ♡

✧ restricting your movement by binding you. "stop moving or i won't put it in." he says while also rubbing his hardness on your entrance.

✧ fucking you 'till you're braindead

gepard

✧ your puppy boyfriend who loves eating you out. best meal ever.

✧ breeding you just like you asked, one peak down at the messy sight gets him 10x more hard. good luck with a horny gepard

✧ milking your beloved with a vibrator

✧ teasing your poor husband with a video of your wet pussy while he's at work.

sampo

✧ your boyfriend still continuing to finger you through your orgasm. overstimulated would be an understatement.

✧ making out in your room

✧ fucking you aggressively after seeing his rival, gepard, flirt with you (?? gepard flirting??)

✧ your pleasure is his pleasure//masturbating while eating you out

a/n: me after not writing anything for a couple of weeks (i think almost a month?) :) i haven't done this in SO long. no continue reading for this since it's short. (this is a shitpost)

taglist: @tomansimp @one-offmind @miitchiji @dainsleif-when-playable @momoewn @stygianoir @irethepotato @v4an @imetsk @fiannee @sunnyf4lls if im missing anyone please tell me because i have an inkling feeling i missed a few..

liking + following + reblogs are very much appreciated!!!

#hsr x reader #blade x reader #jing yuan x reader #aventurine x reader #sunday x reader #gepard x reader #sampo x reader #hsr smut #honkai star rail x reader #hsr x you

8K notes · View notes

asahicore · 6 months ago

Text

fast forward - pjs

pairing. jay x fem!reader

synopsis. After yet another romantic disappointment in the form of one Jake Sim, you go to the well you’ve always believed to grant wishes and ask for your one and true love to appear. That night, you go to sleep in your bed but wake up in a strange house. When you head downstairs, you find a man washing the dishes and telling you your favorite meal is waiting on the table for you. You’ve spent hours glaring at the back of that head, you could recognize it anywhere—it belongs to none other than Park Jongseong, your high school sworn enemy... and future husband, or so it seems.

genre+warnings. high school au, the type of e2l where they never really hated each other to begin with, they act like they're academic rivals even though they're not particularly academically gifted, jay has a thing about german the language, sunoo and kazuha besties, heeseung is a loser, jake and sunghoon are assholes sorry, ive liz is german, 02z get into a white-boy locker-room fight, attempts at banter etc, they're a little bit silly

word count. 26.6k

a/n. had the idea for this listening to fast forward by somi LAST SUMMER... and only wrote it this summer and only posting it now <3 i hope u guys enjoy reading this as much as i enjoyed writing it !!!!! jay is an absolute cutie here pls love him as much as i do.... as always let me know what u think and remember to vote for @zreamy president in the upcoming elections, shes the only one i trust to beta-read and hence to run a country <3 no it doesnt matter that shes scottish put this woman in the white house

There is only one thorn on the otherwise immaculate rose that is your life.

Every morning, you wake up feeling refreshed from eight hours of restful sleep. You go downstairs to the kitchen, a boiling cup of milky Earl Grey tea already waiting for you, and eat breakfast with your brother Jinwoo and father. Your mom dashes in, placing a kiss on your and Jinwoo’s foreheads, and on your dad’s lips, saying she’s late for work but will see you in the evening. “Have fun at school,” she bids every morning without fail. Your dad teaches Korean Literature at your school, so the three of you drive there together. He watches amusedly as you and Jinwoo bicker light-heartedly on the way there—even in the pits of his puberty, you and your brother get along like two peas in a pod. He still tells you about everything he learns at school and fills you in on the drama in his class, up-to-date with everything even though he pretends not to be interested.

You’re always one of the first to arrive at school, so you scroll through your feed or finish up some homework as you wait for your classmates to file in. Your friends circle your table and you chat about the last episode of the show you’ve been watching until the bell rings and they leave you for their assigned seat.

Class starts with your teacher handing out the math tests you took last week. “Jay and Y/N, great job, keep it up,” he says as he walks past you and the boy in front of you, and hands you your paper. Relief floods your body as you take in the bright red 82 in the top right-hand corner—not the best of the class, but enough for you to be satisfied.

Good friends, good grades—nothing extraordinary, but it’s a life you dare say any high school senior would want.

There’s just that one thing. The thorn in your side that won’t stop poking.

You glare at it as it whips around in its seat and takes a peek at the grade on your paper before you get to snatch it away from view. It only gives you three seconds to rejoice over your grade.

“Aw, Y/N. Good effort! Maybe you’ll do better next time!” Jongseong coos, holding up his test for you to see and glare even harder at. 85. Not that big of a difference, but it makes you want to punch the faux sympathetic pout off of his face.

You’re about to spit something just as petty back at him, but someone whispers your name, and you turn your head in their direction. Beside you, Jake is smiling at you as he asks what grade you got. Your attention is swiftly taken off of Jongseong, whom you don’t even notice dramatically rolling his eyes, huffing in annoyance, and turning around.

“82,” you whisper back, holding up your paper for Jake to see. His friendly, absurdly handsome smile makes your ears burn. “You?”

The corners of his lips fall down into a sad pout—the kind that makes your heart melt rather than gets on your nerves like someone else. “68,” he says. Leans in over the gap between your tables. Your heart jumps uncontrollably around your rib cage. “Do you wanna go over it together during the break? I think I need some help.”

One-on-one time with Jake Sim? You don’t need to be asked twice. You nod silently, almost mesmerized by Jake as his grin widens. He leans back in his chair. “Perfect. I’ll see you in the library, then.”

“Library, yeah,” you echo dumbly, but thankfully, your teacher tells you to all quiet down and starts the lesson.

You’re antsy all throughout the rest of your morning classes and lunch break, so nervous that you barely manage to finish your yogurt. Of course, your friends, Sunoo and Kazuha, have a field day with this, and even you can’t help but laugh along as they jump between reassuring you that it’ll be fine, slapping your shoulders with excitement and making fun of your uncharacteristic quietness.

Jake arrives at the library five minutes after you, looking around the room before he finds you at the big round table in the back of the library. Your brain is too riddled with anxiety for you to make more small talk than “Hey,” “Hey,” “How was your lunch?” “Good, yours?” “Good.” And so you just jump straight into it.

You’ve only had a couple minutes of quiet explanation on your part and heavy nodding on Jake’s when Jay appears at the entrance of the library. He spots you and Jake immediately, and without any hesitation whatsoever heads towards you and sits down at your table, right across from the two of you.

“Hey, Jay,” Jake greets in a friendly manner, but Jay only responds with a nod of his head.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” he says when he notices you glaring. “I won’t bother you.”

As if he could be anything other than a bother, you think, but courteously keep to yourself. The childish rivalry you and Jongseong have got going on has no business spoiling a rare hour of alone time you get with Jake. As you go over the exercises he had the most trouble with on the test with you, your eyes often drift over to Jongseong as if to check on him—you’re cautious like he’s a spider in the corner of the room that might spring on you at any moment.

And indeed, the moment your gaze leaves him for more than a minute as you explain an intricate theorem to Jake, he’s out of sight, and panic shoots through you. Where the hell has he suddenly gone off to? you wonder, but not for long.

“There’s a much easier way to do this, really,” says a voice from behind you, and of course, it’s none other than Jongseong himself, quite literally butting his way into your tutoring session. Right between you and Jake, he bends over and rests his elbows on the table, taking Jake’s pencil from him and describing the theorem in a way that isn’t that much simpler. Your eyes shoot bullets into the side of his face while he, unbothered, explains this and that to Jake, who glances at you a couple of times but otherwise does not seem so perturbed by the sudden change of tutor. Either Jongseong doesn’t notice your glare or doesn’t care, because he doesn’t budge.

Just when they’re done with the exercise and you think you’ll get Jake to yourself again, another voice appears from behind, a much higher, girlier one. You notice the hand on Jake’s shoulder first, until slowly, your eyes drift to the face—you recognize Yunjin, head of the cheerleading squad, and she’s smiling at you, a smile that at once tries to cover and betrays her surprise at seeing you and Jake together. She doesn’t acknowledge you any more than that, gaze going back to “Jakey,” asking him if he wants to head to class together. You check the time—five minutes before the first bell rings. What do they need so much time getting to class for? It’s not like any room in this school is more than a three-minute walk away.

But Jake doesn’t even look back at you, just says “Sure!” with far too much enthusiasm for your taste as he packs his stuff. “Thanks, you two,” he says, looking at Jay first, then at you. You think his eyes linger on you for a second, but just like that, he’s gone, him and Yunjin walking side-by-side.

You watch them leave—they look good together, the cheerleading captain and the soccer team’s star. The white Vans she’s wearing have a bunch of red love hearts on them that look drawn on, and you think, Of course, Jake is the type to date someone cute, someone fun, someone who would draw on their shoes. Not someone like you, whose idea of a good Friday night is lighting up a scented candle and reading your favorite novel for the nth time. When they’ve left the library, you slump in your seat, crumpling the sheet of paper you had drawn a bunch of graphs and formulae on to make things clearer for Jake. Jay awkwardly clears his throat and finally returns to his seat, looking at you with his lips pressed in a tight line.

“Y/N?” he asks tentatively, and the sound is too much to bear, so you pack your things and head to your next class early, too. Your mind is racing with a million thoughts a minute—who is that girl to Jake, how come you’ve never seen them together before, how come he was so eager to leave with her, what was that smile she gave you about? In the fifty-five minutes of your biology class, which you uncharacteristically don’t pay any attention to, you’ve convinced yourself that they are crazy in love and that none of Jake’s actions or words towards you had ever meant anything, that you’d liked him so much you’d dreamt up the possibility of his liking you back, too.

Your next lesson starts—the smile Jake gives you as he walks into History is so bright, it dissipates any clouds hanging over your head. You do believe in male-female friendships, but despite yourself, you can’t help but think that anyone in a relationship wouldn’t give someone else such a perfect, warm smile. It just wouldn’t be right. And so, you reason with yourself that simply walking to a class together didn’t mean two people were a couple.

For an hour, you stare at the back of Jake’s head, and although you do eventually come to the more sensible conclusion that a smile may just be a smile, you also think it's unlikely that he and Yunjin would be a thing. If they were, why would they hide it? Jake is so nice, you wouldn’t be surprised if he’d exaggerated his enthusiasm upon seeing her. You’re sure you still have your chances. He even says see you tomorrow when class is over and slips out of the room to go to soccer practice.

You feel like you’re walking on cloud 9 as you head from History to your next class—but when you remember that the next class is German, your mood drops significantly. Because the universe has it out for you, you and Jay are two of just ten students in your year taking German as your second foreign language option, everyone else having gone for either French, Japanese or Spanish. Your reasoning for it is that your dad has had an obsession with Germany since his year abroad in Bavaria, and twelve-year-old you had wanted to make him happy. Eighteen-year-old you regrets it slightly, but at least now your dad is ecstatic every time you tell him in German that the dinner he made was really tasty. Why Jongseong decided to take it beats you—he’s probably just insane.

But because you don’t really know anyone else in the class, and because it’s your last period of the day, you have no friends to run off with once the lesson is over, and he gets to bother you all the way from the classroom door to the staff parking lot.

You’ve barely finished bidding Auf Wiedersehen to your teacher and Jongseong is already harassing you. “So, I didn’t take you as the type to be into guys like Jake Sim.” He says Jake’s name with such disdain, like he thinks he’s so much better than him, or like he hates him. It confuses you just as much as it annoys you; Jongseong didn’t seem to have a problem with Jake earlier at the library.

“And that’s your business, because…?”

You don’t look at Jongseong, who’s quickened his pace to keep up with yours, but you can feel the smirk on his face. It’s insufferable. “Oh, it’s none of my business. I’m just surprised, is all. You guys are so… I don’t know, different.”

You scoff. “If you think I’m not good enough for someone like Jake, I’d rather you tell me straight up, Jongseong. Or actually,” you say, looking up at him with a dry smile. “Keep it to yourself and leave me alone.”

He looks offended by your words, and it only adds to your already immense annoyance—he’s the one who just insulted you, so why is he looking at you with those stupid furrowed eyebrows?

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t need to.”

“No, Y/N.” He grabs your wrist and makes you face him, your stomach flipping in surprise that you quickly cover up. When he releases you, you cross your arms over your chest and wait for him to speak, keeping your eyes trained on a spot behind him. “I don’t think he’s too good for you.”

This makes you look at him. You have to admit, your curiosity is piqued. Not like Jongseong to say anything even vaguely in your favor. “He’s just…” He sighs, searches for the right word. “Well, he’s just a bit of a dick, isn’t he?”

You freeze for a second. You’re so taken aback, your scoff comes out more as a laugh—Park Jongseong, king supreme of all dicks at this school, just called Jake Sim a dick?

“I’m sorry?”

He sighs again, as though you’re the unreasonable one. “He’s so… smug. A wannabe class clown and thinks he’s the shit because he’s on the soccer team. Have you seen the way he swaggers around school?”

You look at him with fake sympathy. “Jong, are you jealous?”

“Pfft. No way. I just think it’s a shame you keep going after these dudes who are not even worth your time, or whatever, so yeah…” he says, voice trailing off and looking down at his feet as he speaks. Hands in pockets and blank expression on his face, you can tell he’s trying to look cool, but the way he’s avoiding your gaze is a dead give-away. Even his ears have turned red. Jongseong is having one of those shy moments he has when he’s trying to be nice to you. Clearly, a simple act of kindness towards you is so hard for him that it radically changes the way he behaves.

Like when you were fifteen and you just couldn’t get this stupid art project right, so he stayed behind for three hours after school with you, helping you draw and paint and cut and glue.

Like when you were sixteen and your grandma just passed away, making you miss a week of school, and without a word, barely looking at you, he gave you a stack of handwritten notes of all the lessons you missed. To this day, you’re not sure how he did it—you weren’t in the same class that year.

Like when you were seventeen and Park Sunghoon rejected you in the middle of a crowded hallway. You’d run off to the girls’ bathroom to cry it out, but Jongseong quickly found you and spent the entire period cursing Sunghoon out instead of being in English, like you were both meant to be. He was uncharacteristically nice to you for a few days after that, never starting an argument for no reason or interrupting you when you spoke. When you snapped at him, telling him it only made you feel worse that he treated you differently, he smiled and told you how stupid you looked when you cried. It made you laugh more than it should’ve.

Like now, when he suddenly decides that Jake Sim is also a wrong choice for you. “Him and Sunghoon are good friends, you know that?” he says. “Birds of a feather, and all…”

So you know that Jongseong is not all bad. He has his redeeming qualities. He can even be nice sometimes, when he so wishes. But those moments are so few and far between that when he returns to his usual insufferable self, you wonder if you’d dreamt it all up. Which is why you can’t quite take him seriously right now. You roll your eyes and resume walking towards the parking lot, but of course, he continues to follow you. “Why do you even care who I go after?”

“I don’t-”

“You clearly do, otherwise you wouldn’t be bothering me like this.”

“Well, if all your attention is taken up by that douche, who am I going to go up against?”

“That’s what you’re worried about? That I stop arguing with you?” you say, disbelief clear in your voice.

“I’m offended, Y/N,” he starts, his sarcastic tone making you roll your eyes again. “That our little rivalry matters so little to you.”

“We’re not even the top students of our class, for God’s sake, we’re not fighting over anything.”

“I’ve actually got the best grades in German, thanks very much.”

“Whatever. I wouldn’t call it a rivalry so much as a mutual dislike of each other, because one of us woke up one day and decided to start going against everything the other said.”

“At least you’re self-aware.”

The exit to the parking lot now appears to you like the gates of heaven. You don’t even bother replying to him, thinking that he’ll just leave you alone now that you’re here. But as you step outside, he places himself in front of you and blocks your path, arms splayed out, eyes wide like he’s just seen a ghost.

“What are you-”

“Have you done the German homework for tomorrow?”

The sudden change of subject gives you whiplash. “What? No, Miss Schumacher assigned it just now-”

“Well, given your tendency for getting the word order all wrong, I can already tell you you’re not gonna have fun with it-”

You pinch the nose of your bridge, trying to calm yourself down before you lose what’s remaining of your mind. “Jongseong, were you actually dropped on the head as a baby? Go away. My dad’s gonna be here any second.” You try to walk around him, but he steps in front of you again. You peer up at him, undisguised annoyance in your eyes. Where are your dad and brother when you need them?

“I’m just saying, you’ll probably need help with it-”

“I won’t. And if I do, I’ll just use Google. Now get out of my way,” you say, and manage to duck under one of his arms.

Then you see it.

Well, actually, it takes you a second to understand what it is you’re seeing. At first, you think it’s one of those horny couples thinking they’re being really discreet by going to the staff parking lot to make out, when in reality they could be caught by any one at any time. They’re just far enough that when you do a double take, you realize that you do know the back of that head; that fluffy mop of brown hair. You sit behind it every History period, next to it every Maths and English period.

The girl is up against the wall, and you can’t really see her, what with her and Jake’s tongues being down each other’s throat and his body blocking her from your view, his hands on her hips, her arms around his shoulders. All the works. She’s wearing a cheerleader uniform, so she could be any of twenty girls—but you’re pretty sure only one of them wears a pair of white Vans with red love hearts on them.

Your heart sinks to your stomach.

You’re frozen in place when a whistle rings in the distance, and Jake and Yunjin separate, giggling to each other as they jog to wherever the sound came from. The sports field, probably. It’s Monday; the cheerleaders and the soccer team share the field for their practice.

Jake spots you and Jongseong staring at them. He waves quickly, awkwardly at you, still smiling even when surprise coats his features. Yunjin tugs on his hand and just like that, they’re gone.

“Y/N-”

Jay’s voice fades in the background. You want to get away from this situation as quickly as possible—it’s embarrassing enough seeing the guy you like and thought you had a chance with kissing a girl that is arguably much more on his level than you are, but having Jongseong of all people not only witness it, but try to protect you from it, God knows why, makes it impossibly mortifying. You speed-walk to your dad’s car, huffing as you plop in your seat and slamming the door behind you. Your brother is already sitting in the passenger seat, and you don’t even argue with him about it. When you only give single-word replies to his questions, he shrugs and returns to playing Clash of Clans on his phone.

The moment you get home, you fish a five cent coin from your purse, change into mud boots and grab your dog’s leash. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

After half-an-hour of trudging through leaves and soft ground, muddy from many a rainy November night, you and Pablo, your massive, fluffy airhead of a German Shepherd, find yourselves at the well in the middle of the forest. Ever since you were little, you have attributed magic powers to the well—not that anyone told you any sort of myth about it, but you remember reading a story about a magic well and decided that your well would be magical, too. You’ve never wanted to abuse its powers, so you’ve used your wishes conscientiously: things like getting a certain present at Christmas (when you were nine and the most important thing ever was getting the Monster High doll you wanted) or not stuttering during your presentation in class (when you really didn’t want to embarrass yourself in front of Park Sunghoon and his cool friends). Every wish you’ve made has come true. Whenever a faint voice of reason tells you that it’s because you always ask for very realistic things, you squash it and continue to believe in the well.

Because today, you’re not asking for something realistic.

Today, you’re asking the well to show you the way to love.

You’ve grown up watching The Notebook and Pride & Prejudice. Your parents are high school sweethearts who are still, twenty-five years later, happily married. You devour romance novels and binge-watch Asian dramas, the more unrealistic and romantic, the better. You are convinced that soulmates exist, that love always finds a way, that it is there for anyone to see. That it can take form in a childhood friend, an archnemesis, a total stranger.

But for some reason, it hasn’t shown itself to you yet, no matter how valiantly you’ve looked.

You’re absolutely sick and tired of it. It is Jake kissing another girl, it’s Sunghoon leading you on for months and then rejecting you in front of everyone, it’s your ex-boyfriend-who-shall-not-be-named, your first love and first heartbreak, dumping you after a year and getting with the girl he had told you not to worry about a week later. At a party a few months later, he’d said, word for word, “At least I didn’t cheat on you.”

Coin lodged between your hands, you interlace your fingers and press your palms closely together, eyes screwed shut in desperation. “Hey,” you start simply, because you and the well are good friends. “It’s been a while since I’ve asked for anything, so I hope you can indulge me… This is gonna sound so cliché, but I’m really tired of getting fucked over by boys — excuse my French — and I just wanna meet the person who’s right for me, you know? Mom’s always reminding me that I’m only eighteen, and that I’ve got plenty of time to meet someone, but I just feel like if I don’t find someone now, I never will. And if I get fucked over again — sorry — I’ll just lose hope and write off men for the rest of my life. So help a girl out, will you? I’ll leave it to you how you wanna go about it, but… just show me that there’s someone out there. Please.”

When you open your eyes, you need a few seconds to adjust to the darkness. You toss the coin in the well. It doesn’t make a sound as it hits the bottom, as if it has been absorbed within the old brick walls. You know better than to question it—the well works in mysterious ways.

You’re quiet that entire evening, making up an excuse of a tiring day at school when your parents ask. Really, you’re just thinking about your wish, whether it’ll work, what might happen. You half-ass your homework—Jay was right, the German exercises throw you into a bout of despair, so you quickly close your textbook and bury yourself in your sheets, falling asleep hours earlier than you usually would.

For some reason, the first thing you notice when you wake up is that it’s still dark outside. It must be the middle of the night, you think. It takes you a few seconds to realize that you’re in a completely strange room.

Instead of your floral-patterned sheets, you find yourself covered by delicate silk sheets that your parents would never agree to buy you, no matter how adamantly you argued for the benefits of silk for your skin. If skincare experts online had convinced you of one thing, it was that silk would do wonders for your obstinate acne. You slide out of bed and find a pair of slippers on the floor, as if waiting for you. Even the pajamas you’re wearing are fancier, more grown up than the ones you have at home, a set composed of a pinstriped button-up and shorts. You look around, for some reason more surprised and curious than panicked. You could’ve been kidnapped, for all you know, but all you care about right now is this room. Rather than the pink and white walls that have surrounded you since childhood, covered with pictures of you and your friends, postcards of artwork bought at museums, and posters of your favorite movies, the walls here are beige and mostly bare, except for a painting of Japanese cherry blossoms above the bed and a family portrait on the opposite wall, above a wooden chest of drawers.

The family portrait. A woman, a man, and what you can only assume are their children. They look like twins—two girls. Can’t be older than three years old. Out of the four faces, you recognize two of them. You recognize them far too well. One of them is yours, of course. You look slightly older, by a decade, maybe? You’re glad to know that you won’t fall off after twenty-five, like much of social media has led you to believe.

The other face you recognize immediately, too, but it takes you a few seconds to truly believe it.

It belongs to none other than Park Jongseong.

A dry chuckle falls from your throat, as if someone has just made a very insulting joke at your expense and you have to pretend you find it funny. The well has a very odd sense of humor, you think. It’s probably just a prank, a magic-induced nightmare before the real thing. Except this already feels real, disorientingly so. The fabric on your skin, the picture, the room. It all feels too real, more tangible than any dream you’ve ever had.

You take a step closer towards the picture, as if looking at it harder will make Jongseong’s face fade into that of another man, the real man that will become your husband and father of your children. But alas, his features remain the same, frozen in time by the photographer’s camera. He, too, looks older—and not only does he not fall off after twenty-five, he becomes all the more handsome for it.

Is this how you find out that Jongseong was handsome all along? You stare at it until the familiar face becomes practically unrecognizable, like repeating a word so much it stops feeling like one. The straight nose, the almond-shaped eyes that seem to have softened overtime, whereas his jaw has remained as sharp as ever. Have his eyebrows always framed his face so perfectly? Has that dimple always been there?

You look around again, and the bright numbers on the bedside alarm clock catches your attention. They read 9:57 p.m., but it’s the date that makes your stomach sink—today is still the 18th of November, but ten years later. You stare at the clock, at the unfamiliar number, a date so far into the future you can’t wrap your head around it. You could barely envision life after high school.

Downstairs, the sudden clang of pots and the sound of a tap running manage to rip your gaze away from the alarm clock. An overwhelming curiosity tells you to follow the noise. This is all a dream, so there are no consequences if you explore a bit more, right?

You’ve never been in this house before, and you have no idea where your feet are taking you until you find yourself in the kitchen. It’s the only lit room in the house, and you’re creepily standing in the dark under a wide archway that connects the kitchen to what looks like the dining room. A man has his back to you, washing dishes and putting them out to dry on a rack next to the sink. He’s wearing a white cotton sweater, one that you feel you recognise without ever having seen before, and a brown apron is tied around his neck and waist.

The first thing you think to yourself is Oh, his haircut hasn’t changed. In almost every class you share with him, Jongseong has made it a point to sit either next to you or right in front of you, so you’ve spent a lot of time glaring at the back of his head. You wouldn’t be surprised if he started developing two eye-shaped bald spots there. His hair is still short and spiky at the back and on the sides, longer on the top. When he lets it grow too long, it sometimes covers his eyes, and he obnoxiously keeps having to push it back like a heartthrob in an 80s movie.

Something like a memory flashes through your mind, blurry like those images you aren’t sure came from a dream or from real life. Your surroundings are unclear, but Jay’s face is nestled against your neck, your hand in his hair. You can feel the softness of the close shave against your palm as clearly as if you were touching it right now. You ask him why he’s always kept it that way, and he replies that it’s simple to maintain. Then in classic Jay fashion, he adds, “And it makes me look awesome.”

Another memory, a clearer one, this time—this definitely happened. It’s halfway through sophomore year, a random Tuesday, and Jay walks in, holding his head high and looking smugly around himself. The bastard got a new haircut. Long gone, his messy, unorganized flop of black hair that looked like it didn’t know what it was doing; hello, sleek undercut. It accentuates all of his best features, which is terrible news for you. You had never even thought of Jongseong as someone having “best” features, but now they’re being thrown in your face. His nose. His jawline. His smile.

It ruins your day, and a few after that. You can’t quite put it into words when your friends ask what’s wrong at lunch—or rather, you don’t wanna face the humiliation of uttering something along the lines of “Park Jongseong looks good with his new haircut, and it’s bothering me.”

Here, it’s a familiar sight in an unfamiliar environment, the back of his head. Without really thinking, you take a step forward. Jongseong starts at the sound of your slippers against the marble floor tiles, but his face relaxes into a smile when he sees you.

“Oh, it’s just you, honey. I thought you were sleeping.”

Just you. As if the two of you being in the same kitchen is normal. You guess it must be, to this version of Jongseong. To him, you’re not the annoying girl he strives to best in every class—you’re honey.

“I was,” you say, walking around the kitchen island to join him by the sink. Something in you needs to look at him, really look at him, maybe pinch yourself or pinch him to be sure you’re not going crazy. Maybe you caught wafts of some ancient algae that lives in the well and made you hallucinate?

“I left a plate out for you in case you woke up. Made your favorite. The girls weren’t so happy, seeing as it’s the third time this month,” he says with the special kind of smile reserved for parents talking about their children. The girls. A mention so casual, so obvious, your heart hurts. “But I think I got it really right this time,” he continues. “Honestly, it might even be better than the original.”

He goes back to washing the dishes and you watch the sponge in his hands as it scrubs away tomato sauce, the soap as it runs from the plates into the sink. A knot forms in your stomach, something like a deep sadness that overwhelms you all of a sudden, and tears form in your eyes, threatening to fall any second.

When you haven’t budged in almost a minute, Jongseong starts to say, in an intimate, almost worried voice, “Aren’t you going to eat, honey?” but when he sees your wet eyes, the tremble in your lower lip, he shuts the water immediately and dries his hands. With his thumbs, he wipes away the tears that have started falling from your eyes. “What’s wrong?” he whispers.

You can’t reconcile the man in front of you with the image you have of the boy that torments you in every class you share. You can’t reconcile the genuine concern in his voice with the snarky tone you’re met with every day. And yet, they respond to the same name, their features are identical, if not for the years that separate them, the stress of adulthood on one and the carefreeness of youth on the other.

Your body reacts automatically to the soft touch—never in a million years would you let the Jongseong you know come near you like this, but here, nothing feels more natural than his hands on your face, your shoulders, your hair, as though they’re just as much his as they are yours. You realize the emotion in your stomach is not sadness—tears fall, but you’re not sad. You’ve never felt as home as you do now, and if one thing romantic novels have taught you, is that this must be love.

You look up at the man in front of you, eyebrows furrowed as you search his face for confirmation or some sort of an answer. There’s a tremble in your voice when you speak next. “I just… I think I love you, Jongseong.”

He chuckles. “Well, we established that a while ago, didn’t we? What with getting married and having kids. But I’m glad you still feel that way.”

The mention of marriage and children doesn’t faze you nearly as much as it should. You’ve only got one thing on your mind. “Do you love me too?”

You expect him to laugh—not out of cruelty, but because the answer is so obvious, it almost doesn’t deserve to be answered seriously. Like when your brother asks if he can have one more of your cookies and you tell him you’ll cut his hand off. Sometimes you think it’s easier to be sarcastic than be unabashedly nice to someone. Especially with Jongseong, whom you don’t expect kindness or patience from, you wait for him to stay something like, “No, that’s why I’ve stayed with you these eight years.”

So when instead, he says, “More than anything on this Earth,” voice low and vulnerable, tears flow even harder.

“Sorry, it’s probably just my period,” you say through sobs, although you have no idea where in her menstrual cycle this version of you is.

Jongseong chuckles again, pressing a kiss to your forehead. “You do get emotional around this time.” And you cry more, because you can’t believe someone other than your mother knows you so well that they know what your period symptoms are.

Rubbing soothing circles against your back and whispering soft words in your ear, he holds you for as long as you need to calm down. When you finally do, he tells you to go sit on the couch, that he’ll finish up the dishes then heat and bring your food for you. You think you’ve got your emotions under control, but the moment you bite the pasta, cooked to perfection with the most succulent tomato sauce you’ve ever had, sweet with a little kick of spice and a generous amount of parmesan cheese, tears start to fall again as if you had an endless stock of water behind your eyes.

“This is so good,” you mumble.

Jongseong smiles, his gaze full of affection miraculously directed at you as he tucks away strands of your hair so they don’t get in your eyes or in your food. “I’m glad, baby.”

You react to the nickname viscerally, words tumbling out of your mouth before you can even understand them. “You haven’t called me that in ages.” You widen your eyes at yourself, wondering how this was something you even knew. But when you look at Jongseong, all he does is smile more.

“You’re right, I haven’t. I guess I was reminded of college. You cried all the time back then. As much as it pained me, I can’t say I wasn’t happy to be the one you always came to for comfort.”

You haven’t been through college yet, so you should be unable to tell whether this truly happened or not—and yet, the memories of the body you’re in all confirm what Jongseong just said. But it feels impossible—going to university with him, letting yourself be vulnerable enough with him to not only cry in front of him but let him comfort you. Whatever could have happened in the years between the present you know and your time at university for things to change so drastically?

But before you can make sense of any of it, Jongseong speaks again. “Why? Do you like it when I call you baby?”

Your stomach flips. Heat rises to your face at his words, the tone with which he said them, the things he was alluding to—you know that having children means you’d popped your cherry at some point, that you’d had sex with Jongseong specifically, but to be confronted with the fact was something else.

“Maybe,” you mumble, and proceed to stuff your mouth with pasta so that you can’t incriminate yourself further.

He puts on a recent movie, something you should arguably be paying attention to, since you’re literally getting a glimpse into the future of cinema—you could steal the idea, go back to your present and sell it for an outrageous price.

But Jongseong’s presence next to you makes it impossible to concentrate on anything but him. The warmth emanating from him, the scent of his perfume envelop you, give you a sense of just how real this all is—despite how comfortable being with him like this feels, you’re still not convinced you’re not just in an unsettlingly vivid dream. You take one of his hands in yours, examining each finger, turning his hand over, tracing the lines of his palm, smoothing your thumb over his nails—it’s an undeniably human hand. Warm against yours, slightly rough. He’s started using hand cream, you think, all these winters when his dry hands would crack because of the cold coming up to your mind, teenage Jongseong’s hard refusal to wear any sort of cream to protect himself. Memories bob up to the surface: fixing his cracked hands up with a plaster, your tear falling on his hand, the both of you in your school uniforms in what looks like the school infirmary; awkwardly gifting him some hand cream the Christmas of that year, not looking at him as you hand him the small package. Saying, “It’s a waste of plasters for something that could be fixed so easily.” Him treating you to warm, spicy tteokbokki because he felt bad for not having gotten you anything, even though this was the first time either of you had ever given the other one a present.

As your fingers trail up from his hand to his forearm, his shoulder, his jawline, more memories flood your mind. Clumsy first kisses; squabbles of the kind you were already used to; lazy mornings in bed; hours spent in your kitchen or his, before you shared one, cooking dinner together; the way you felt when he proposed, a feeling so intense remembering it is almost unbearable now. Your eyes and fingers examine his face in detail—even though you’ve seen him almost every day since the start of high school, this feels like the first time you really perceive him. The delicate bow of his lips, the strong nose, the softness in his eyes when he looks at you. Your heart beats uncontrollably as you hold each other’s gazes, but you feel inexplicably relaxed at the same time, two nearly opposing realities fighting each other inside of you—one in which you and Jongseong regarding each other with such affection is unthinkable, the other in which it is daily routine.

“Movie not to your taste?” he asks, voice gentle, breaking you out of your stupor.

“Hm?”

He nods towards the TV screen. “I see you’re not paying much attention.”

“No. I have… things on my mind.”

He raises an eyebrow, a smirk slowly growing on his lips. “Yeah?” You think your heart might actually flatline when he brings you in closer to his chest, and, face buried in your hair, says, “You know, I’ve been thinking that the twins might want a younger sibling to play with soon enough…”

You’re not sure whether he actually wants a third child or if this is weird dirty talk that apparently turns parents on—all you know is that this is something future you will deal with, not high school senior you.

You whip up your head at him, eyes wide in panic that he mirrors immediately. “Or—or not. Later. Later?” You nod fervently, and the worry dissipates from his handsome features. “Okay, later,” he whispers, kissing the top of your head before returning his attention to the movie.

A couple hours later, you’re laying in bed in the dark together—you can tell Jongseong is falling asleep by the regularity of his breathing and his stillness, but you’re wide awake. You don’t know how you’ve managed to spend all this time with him, acting like the wife he knows and loves, without imploding. But suddenly, the idea of waking up in your childhood bed, surrounded by your pink-and-white walls, going downstairs to be greeted by your brother and parents, sends a wave of panic through you. You haven’t felt this comfortable in a long time—Jongseong’s arm draped over your waist, the fact that you could reach over and feel his skin against your palm if you wanted. You don’t want to go back to a time where you hate him. In fact, you don’t know if you could hate him after this.

“Jongseong?” you say softly, the syllables unfamiliar on your tongue, even though the name rings brusquely through your head for the best part of every day.

It takes a few seconds, but he reacts eventually. “Hm? Did you just call me Jongseong?” he murmurs sleepily, as if you’d just called him Robert or Christopher and not the name his own parents gave him.

“Yeah.”

He chuckles. “Now that’s something you haven’t called me in ages. Makes me feel like you’re mad at me,” he says, turning over and burying his face in the crook of your neck. His hair tickles your skin, and one of your hands comes up reflexively to feel the softness of his close shave.

“...Jong?” you try.

“That’s a step up, but not quite what I want,” he mumbles.

You’re silent for a few moments. “Honey,” you say tentatively, voice a mere whisper.

“That’s better.” You can hear the smile in his voice.

“Will you be here in the morning?”

“Mh-hm. It’s Saturday tomorrow.”

“No,” you say, feeling out of breath. “I mean, will you be here?”

You’re aware you’re not making much sense—and yet, Jongseong needs no further explanation. “Of course, baby,” he starts, voice soothing. “I’ll be here tomorrow, and the day after that, and every day afterwards. ‘Til death do us part, remember?”

You let out a shaky breath. “Okay.”

“I love you, Y/N.”

“I love you, too,” you find yourself saying, and, more importantly, meaning. It’s the last thing either of you says before falling asleep.

Tears are streaming down your face when you wake up the next day. When you open your eyes, pink and white obnoxiously stare back at you. The clock reads 7:12, just three minutes before your alarm goes off, and unfortunately for high school you, the night hasn’t given in to Saturday morning—it’s Tuesday, and you have to go to school and act as if you hadn’t just had the weirdest, most realistic dream of your life. You don’t even get a weekend to shake this weird feeling in your stomach off, you’re going to have to face Park Jongseong full force. At least, this will become your friends’ favorite bit for the foreseeable future.

They’re already sitting in the classroom when you get there, animatedly chatting to each other. You plop down in your seat in front of them, and when they see the sullen look on your face, ask you what’s wrong.

“Did you wake up during the night to play Hay Day again?” Kazuha asks, eyebrows knotted with genuine worry.

“I’m not that person anymore,” you reply. “No, I just had a really weird dream. More like a nightmare, really. It feels like I didn’t get any sleep.”

“What was it about?” Sunoo asks.

Your eyes dart back-and-forth between the two of them as you brace yourself for their reactions. Not wanting anyone else to overhear, you lean in conspiratorially. They mirror you. “I was married to Park Jongseong,” you whisper. As expected, they burst into laughter immediately, and you lean back in your seat, crossing your arms in annoyance. “It’s not funny.”

“It’s very funny,” Kazuha retorts. “It’s ironic, even, considering how much you hate the guy.”

“Exactly!”

“But I guess even you know how ridiculous it is that you hate him, if your brain is able to imagine yourself being married to him,” Sunoo adds, shrugging. “It’s a good reminder that you’re literally the only person in this school with a vendetta against him.”

Kazuha nods energetically. “He picked up a pen for me, once. He’s a nice guy.”

You look around the room in panic. “Keep it down, will you?” you hush, despite the fact that no one is paying any attention to the three of you. You sigh, resolving yourself to telling them the entire truth. “But guys, I’m scared. I think this might be a sign.”

Their eyebrows perk up. “A sign that your hatred of him has actually been disguising a crush this entire time?” Sunoo asks, feigning innocence.

“No—what? Where did you get that idea?”

“Nowhere. Go on.”

“Whatever. Come here,” you say, gesturing for them to huddle again. “It’s the well.”

“Oh my God, Y/N, you’ve actually lost it,” Kazuha says, fascinated by your stupidity.

“I’m not going to tolerate any well slander, this is serious. I just wanted it to reassure me that there was someone out there for me. And then I had that stupid dream.”

Kazuha and Sunoo exchange a look like they’re parents trying to announce to their daughter that she’s adopted. “Y/N…” Sunoo starts.

“This is crazy. Like, love philters and writing Park Sunghoon’s name a hundred times are one thing, this is…”

“Crazy,” Sunoo said, nodding along. “This is crazy. There’s no other word for it. Your eighteen years of boyfriendlessness have finally caught up to you.”

“You guys don’t get it. What about that time I asked it to give me a good grade on our Literature exam and I literally came first out of our class? Or when I told it I missed Jung Hae-in and his military discharge announcement came the next day?” you say, aware that the look in your eyes is only confirming their suspicions—but you need someone to believe you, or at the very least understand you.

“One, you’re a good student. Two, that was pure coincidence,” Sunoo explains.

“But girl, if you want to marry Jay, that’s fine. You’ve got our blessing,” Kazuha says, shrugging.

“Yeah. He picked up her pen, once,” Sunoo adds.

“And you know, you guys clearly have some sort of chemistry.”

You scoff. “If you think that him refuting my every word and finding every opportunity to make fun of me, then yeah, I guess you could say we have chemistry.”

“You guys have banter,” Kazuha says as if it’s obvious.

“Oh, please. Banter is cute. I want to kill him every time he opens his mouth.”

Your friends both roll their eyes. “While I understand that most men are better off staying quiet—no offense, Sunoo—”

“None taken.”

“You have to admit Jay is not nearly as insufferable as you make him out to be,” Kazuha says.

“Are you kidding me? He’s always acting like a child. Rubbing it in my face when he gets a better grade, trying to start arguments for no reason, sucking up to teachers, stealing my erasers, for God’s sake, you’d think he’s twelve. I know that I’m not on the majority's side, but I seriously cannot understand how other people tolerate him at all.”

Sunoo sighs. “Because he’s nice to everyone. He never hesitates to help people, he’s even funny, sometimes, and—well, look at him.” He nods his head towards the door, and when you turn around, Jongseong is indeed walking in the classroom. “He’s not a bad-looking boy.”

“Gosh, Sunoo, maybe you should marry him,” Kazuha says, but since you laid your eyes on Jongseong, you’ve stopped listening.

You feel weird. You look at him, and you feel weird. It’s the same feeling you had during your sleep last night, a feeling that paralyzes you from head to toe, that starts in your stomach and spreads to your entire body, weighs you down in your chair.

“Hey, guys,” he greets simply, and his voice wraps itself around your heart and squeezes. You can’t do anything but watch him as he takes his seat next to you, plopping his bag on the table and taking his notebook out. He looks at you, watches you watching him, then swivels around in his chair.

“What’s wrong with her?” he asks your friends.

“She had a dream that she m—”

“Do not finish that sentence, Zuha, if you want to live to see another day.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she replies, a satisfied little smile on her lips.

Despite yourself, you’re still staring at Jongseong, trying to figure out what the hell these emotions are that are raging up a storm inside of you. Instead of ignoring you, he turns to face you, resting his elbow on the table and his chin in his palm as he stares back at you, smirking. “What’s up, Y/N? Has it finally dawned on you how devastatingly handsome I am?” he asks, and you frown, because he’s not so far off from the truth.

“Please, kids, it’s 9 a.m., don’t flirt right in front of us,” Sunoo says, despair in his voice.

“She’s the one who started it,” Jongseong replies, still looking at you, his smirk growing.

For some reason, this startles you out of your trance, and you look away from him like you’ve been burned, preoccupying yourself instead with your notes for this class. “In your dreams, Jongseong,” you mumble.

“More like in yours,” Kazuha says, her and Sunoo giggling.

“Zuha!” you exclaim. Jongseong looks at you with raised eyebrows, and with his infuriating capacity to put two and two together, you’re scared he’s figured out what she meant, but you’re literally saved by your teacher who walks in at that moment and starts the class.

The second the bell rings to signify the end of the class, you hurriedly pack your things and mutter an excuse about needing the bathroom, trying to get as far away as possible from the boy whose all-too familiar scent had messed with your thoughts all class, whose every brush of his arm against yours had made your heart race uncontrollably.

It hadn’t just been a dream. It couldn’t have been.

Just like there was no doubt the 28-year-old Jongseong from last night had once been the annoying boy you knew, the 18-year-old Jongseong was sure to one day become the husband of your dreams. A devoted partner and father, his presence comforting, his good looks indeed devastating, unwavering.

There was no mistake to be made. The well had worked its magic.

Whether you liked it or not, you would end up marrying Park Jongseong. You, of all people; him, of all people.

Was there already something of your future husband in the boy that snickered when you mixed up your genders in German class, or would he one day spring out of nowhere? Apparently, you’d be around to find out.

But for now, how to act around him? It felt unfair that you were privy to this knowledge of your shared future while he was ignorant of it. Blissfully, perhaps. You couldn’t imagine that he would rejoice much at this news.

Your mind is somewhere else the entire day. At lunch, your other friends try to get the thing that’s obviously bothering you out of you, but Kazuha and Sunoo are there to tell them not to bother. You’d needed to tell someone about it, but you don’t want the entire school to know about your marital premonitions. The two knuckleheads you call your best friends are already doing a good enough job teasing you about it—”There’s your husband, Y/N,” when Jongseong walks past; “So have you thought of baby names? Kayleigh and Mackayleigh, perhaps?” unsolicited, during Physics. You turn around to check on the culprit — because yes, Jongseong is the culprit here, you, a mere a victim — and when he notices you staring, nods at you as if to say, What’s your problem?, trying to look threatening in his white lab coat that’s three sizes too big and protective goggles.

It doesn’t help that Jongseong has a way of hovering around you. Even in classes in which your teachers assigned the seats for you, he’s never far from your seat. The two of you sit next to each other in German, your last class every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. But today, the seat next to you is empty—what would’ve been a cause for celebration just yesterday is now a source of worry. You’d seen him just two hours ago in your previous class together, so where the hell was he now? He’s lucky that your teacher is an old German lady who always spends the first ten minutes of the lesson rambling about something in dialectal German no one understands but nods along to anyway. When he walks into the room, five minutes late, she just says, “Hallo, Jay,” and continues with her story. It’s about her first school trip to Berlin when she was fifteen and the country was still divided. You think.

He winks at you when he takes his seat and you roll your eyes. You pretend to listen to your teacher for thirty seconds, then hit him gently with your elbow. “Where were you?” you ask without looking at him.

He doesn’t answer immediately, probably surprised you initiated a non-hostile conversation with him for once. “I was just hanging out with my friends, something you clearly wouldn’t understand.”

And your friends wondered why you hated him?

“Still having imaginary friends at eighteen is really concerning, Jongseong. You should see someone about it.”

When you glance at him, he’s already looking right at you, smiling. You’ve never felt so conscious of your side profile.

“Why? Were you worried?” he whispers, kicking your foot with his.

You look at him, horrified—where the hell had he gotten that idea? How was he so spot-on? You scoff, trying to diffuse the tension inside yourself. “No.”

He kicks your foot again. “I was five minutes late and you started to worry?”

“No. Stop.”

“I didn’t know you cared about me so much, Y/N.”

This time, you give him a harsh look, one that lets him know you really mean your words—“Stop it.” Finally, he relents, getting the assigned homework out now that the teacher has actually started the lesson. Your face softens—he looks hurt. Guilt tugs at your heartstrings.

Despite what you might say, you like the way things are with Jongseong. If some people always need to be crushing on someone, you always need to have someone you perceive as an enemy—it was Na Jaemin in elementary school, because he’d once made fun of your incapability to climb the monkey bars; Shin Ryujin, in middle school, for kissing your crush during a game of spin-the-bottle at your own birthday party; Park Jongseong, since freshman year, for simply existing. Your reasons for disliking him are trivial, you’ll admit. You weren’t sure you could even place a finger on what had first triggered your disdain towards him—one too many awful jokes, one too many times raising his hand in class and rattling off a perfect answer, then looking around himself proudly, one too many roars of laughter heard throughout the entire cafeteria. The fact that no one else seemed to be bothered by him only added to your aggravation. He just got on your nerves, and it seemed that you openly showing your dislike of him — him, who was so used to being loved by everyone around him, pampered by his family, praised by his teachers, popular among his peers — was enough to make him dislike you, too. So, after a few failed attempts at trying to be your friend, because Jongseong was unable to not be friends with everyone he met, he didn’t simply give up.

If he couldn’t be your friend, then fine, he’d be your enemy.

At least, that’s how it appears to you, still now. It’s never gone dangerously far, but if there’s an opening to tease you or get on your nerves, he’ll do it. Not passing you the ball during soccer, or conversely, only aiming for you during dodgeball, not sharing his textbook with you when you forgot it unless you beg, loudly clearing his throat when you speak in class. And, lately, pouring salt on your wounds in the form of reminding you how impossible you and Jake Sim are. His motto must be if there’s a will, there’s a way. And when it comes to making your life hell, his will is infinite.

Everything is upside-down now. The question of how your relationship can possibly go from this to that obsesses you. It feels like you’re more capable of sharing a funeral, dying at each others’ hands, than a wedding.

“Jong, your textbook.”

He squints at you. “Funny how I’m Jongseong when you hate me, Jong when you need a textbook,” he says, sliding his book closer to himself.

“It’s not my fault your name is a mouthful,” you retort, trying to pull it back to the middle of the table, but he’s quicker than you.

“Then maybe you should call me Jay, like everyone else on Earth.”

“Where’s the fun in that? Now give it here. Please?” you ask, mustering your best smile. Any other teacher would’ve scolded the two of you by now, but Ms. Schumacher is peacefully going on about the importance of word order and punctuation in the German sentence, oblivious to her two students bickering in the back row. Jongseong usually never sits at the back of the classroom—only here.

He gives in, smiling back, but there’s something behind it, something that tells you nothing good is brewing in his brain. “Only because you’re so pretty.”

Normally, this kind of remark would’ve warranted a slap on the arm or an array of insults, but if today is anything, it is not normal. You look at him like you’ve been stung, visions of your not-dream coming to you in flashes like you’re the titular character on That’s So Raven—the affection in your husband’s eyes, the kindness in his words, the sincerity in his smile. Again, you’re left to wonder if this man is already taking root inside of the boy next to you, if Jongseong’s future capacity to love you presently exists in his heart.

Does your future capacity to love him already exist in your heart?

You watch as his smirk softens into a grin, your flusteredness and lack of a response clearly amusing him, then as he circles the exercises Ms. Schumacher is assigning for the lesson. She seems to have forgotten there was homework due—Jongseong will be sure to remind her of it quickly.

He kicks your foot again, tells you to focus. His ears have turned red.

You wonder if those capacities haven’t existed from the start.

As much as you love a good friends-to-lovers story, characters hiding their feelings out of fear of ruining the friendship have never failed to frustrate you — just tell her, you dummy, it’s obvious she likes you too — and yet, you’ve never related more than now.

Whatever it is that you and Jongseong have, you don’t want to lose it. It adds entertainment to your otherwise average life.

“Good thing she didn’t pick on you while we went over the homework, ‘cause you clearly put zero effort in. And I wouldn’t have helped you, even if you’d asked, by the way.”

You hum absent-mindedly as you put your notebook and pencil holder in your bag. Are you sure that these are even your feelings in the first place? Just because the well put a silly idea in your head doesn’t mean you have to believe it like it’s scripture. If what you saw is real, then it will happen in its own time. Things don’t have to start changing right this instant.

“Gosh, Y/N, what’s up with you today? You’re so boring,” Jongseong continues, following you out of the classroom.

“Just tired,” you reply. Wouldn’t it be unnatural if you were to radically alter the way you behave with Jongseong? Love should come about organically. Sure, his presence has always provoked some kind of reaction within you, but that’s usually been annoyance. Whether he’s stealing the fifth eraser you’ve bought that month or running on the soccer field, beads of sweat running down his temples, hair sticking out everywhere, victoriously smiling when his team scores—you’re annoyed. Whether he’s sticking up his hand higher than yours or going to the school dance with Ahn Yujin—you’re annoyed. When you learned that she’d been his neighbor since infancy and that she had a boyfriend, who went to another school and only trusted Jongseong to take her to the dance, you were still annoyed—this time at yourself for feeling even the tiniest bit relieved that nothing was going on between them.

And this — his quick steps trying to keep up with yours, his dumb story about yogurt coming out of Heeseung’s nose today at lunch when they were laughing too hard — yes, you’re still annoyed. But you realize you’re not annoyed at him.

You’re annoyed at how he makes you feel.

“Y/N?” he says, but you’re too deep in your thoughts, only vaguely registering the sound until he repeats it, louder this time, and grabs your hand, making you abruptly stop walking. “Are you sure everything’s okay?” he asks with genuine concern in his voice. “You’re barely listening to me. I mean, it’s not like you usually really do, but you’d have told me to get lost, like, five minutes ago now…”

He chuckles self-deprecatingly, but despite his words, you’re focusing on something else yet again. His hand on yours, his loose hold on your fingers. Your brain is yelling at you—hold his hand, hug him. It’s like there are still traces of the 28-year-old version of you you visited yesterday, urging you to behave like her and not 18-year-old you.

So, the well had let you know that you need not look much further to find what you wanted. Here it is, in the form of a boy you have convinced yourself you hated, and hated you, and yet, he’s holding your hand, asking you if you’re okay, worry knotting his eyebrows together.

Hold his hand. Hug him. Instead, you retract your hand, let it fall limply by your side. Jongseong’s eyebrows shoot up.

He’s so close, the supposed love of your life. You don’t know how to reach out to him.

For now, you smile. “Get lost, Jong.”

you guys how the hell do i act around jongseong now that i know our fates are romantically intertwined

kazuha i think not treating him like the number one public enemy would be a good start

you so what… be nice to him? how do i do that

sunoo oh my god y/n when she has to treat another person like a regular human being

you he’s not just another person!

sunoo okayyyyy i see you little miss repressed feelings

you i hate u

kazuha just don’t roll your eyes at everything he says anymore and don’t start arguments for no reason

you he’s the one who starts them… but okay i’ll try

“Let’s pair up for the reading analysis today. You can stay with your deskmate or pick a partner, I don’t mind as long as you get the work done. I’m talking about you, Chaewon and Yuri. This is English class, not a gossip session.”

The second your English teacher has finished speaking, Jongseong swivels in his chair. “Let’s partner up, Y/N?”

“What about me?” Jake asks, eyes darting back-and-forth between the two of you.

“You can partner up with Minju,” Jongseong replies, pointing to the girl he’s usually seated next to. “Look. You guys will be great together. Say hi, Minju.” Minju waves shyly at Jake, braces on display as she smiles ecstatically. It’s not everyday that she gets to talk to one of the most popular guys in school.

Jake reluctantly switches seats with him, glancing back at you and Jongseong who just grins at him, fake friendliness plastered on his lips, until he turns around again. Your new partner’s smile softens and reaches his eyes when he looks at you. “Hi.”

You have to look away—you feel your face burn under his gaze. “Hi, Jong.”

He tilts his head. “What? Do you hate me so much that you can’t even look at me now?” he asks, and you can’t tell whether he’s joking or genuine.

You frown. “I don’t hate you.”

“Oh? That’s a recent development.”

“I guess,” you mumble after a few seconds. Is it really? You suddenly can’t remember if you ever really hated him, or if you’d exaggerated your own feelings.

His smile widens. “Well, good. I mean, you were going to have to realize at some point that I really am funny, smart, endearing, handsome-”

“Back to hating.”

“Let’s start the assignment.”

You agree on reading the passage first, but you realize halfway through that not a single word has been absorbed. “Hey. Why did you switch seats with him?” you ask, whispering so as not to be overheard.

Jongseong shrugs. “I thought you wouldn’t want to work with him, considering…”

“Right.” You’re silent again, but only for a bit. “What’s it to you?” you mumble.

He scoffs. “Sorry for trying to be considerate.”

“That’s not—”

“Let’s just focus on this.”

His sudden coldness vexes you. You know you should let it go — don’t start arguments for no reason, and all that — and you know it’s childish, but you can’t help yourself. You have certain reflexes you’re not particularly proud of when it comes to one Park Jongseong. “Let’s just focus on this,” you repeat, mocking his grumbling tone of voice and shaking your head like a puppet.

He glares at you. “Can you not act like a toddler for once?”

“Can you not be a dick for once?” you bite back.

“Y/N, Jongseong, I’m sure you’re having a fascinating conversation on the use of chiaroscuro in the text?” your teacher asks, a look of warning on his face.

“Yes, sir,” you reply, embarrassed.

“Yes, so much chiaroscuro,” Jongseong mumbles, resting his cheek on his knuckles. When the teacher has turned away, he kicks your foot. “See, you’re getting us in trouble.”

“Do you even know what chiaroscuro is?”

He hesitates. “That’s not the problem here. You are.”

“Well, maybe if you didn’t-”

“Y/N, Jay, final warning.”

“Sorry,” you both say at the same time. With one last glare at each other, you finally get to work.

So your plan to start getting along with Jongseong isn’t in full-force yet. On the drive back home that afternoon, you reassure yourself that these things take time. When the moment is right, the two of you will grow closer.

But increasingly, it feels as though the right moment will never come.

Two months have passed since your visit to the well, and things between you and Jongseong have not changed. Not really, at least.

You still bicker like cat and dog — it goes without saying that you’re the cute puppy and he’s the heartless cat — and he gets as much on your nerves as ever, especially now that you know that the potential to be nice to you, to love you, even, exists somewhere inside him. Somewhere deeply hidden perhaps, but somewhere nonetheless. Of course, after telling yourself that what must come will come of its own accord, you haven’t done much to change the dynamic between the two of you. But if you used to see your retaliations against him as necessary to your survival, you now find some sort of enjoyment in them—some might call it Stockholm Syndrome, you perceive it as a step in the right direction. You’ve followed one of Kazuha’s pieces of advice: you don’t roll your eyes at him anymore, simply because you don’t feel the need to. You argue with him with a smile on your face, his attempts at insulting or annoying you have started to make you laugh.

He doesn’t say anything but seems to gladly welcome this change. If you get a lower grade than him on a test, he doesn’t try to stick the knife in further, but genuinely offers to go over it with you later. If you give in after two hours of tearing your hair out over a German exercise and text him for help, he doesn’t make fun of you. If he says something particularly arrogant or makes a really bad joke, all you need to do is give him a look, and he’ll mumble an apology.

Could it have been like this the entire time? you wonder, watching him across the schoolyard as he and Heeseung hunt for Pokémon. Just a couple months ago, you would’ve scrunched your nose at the sight, making fun of him for his childish interests. Now, you notice the way he laughs, audible all the way to where you sit with Kazuha and Sunoo, the way he jumps excitedly and points at things only he and his friend see, and all you feel is endearment.

“Look at you, look at that,” Sunoo says as he hits you on the forehead with his metal spoon, startling you. He tuts. “You’ve got love dripping from your eyes, sweetie.”

“Sunoo, that’s disgusting.”

“Love? I know.”

“No, your spoon. Your saliva’s all over that,” you say, and all he does is eat another mouthful of his yogurt while staring wide-eyed right at you. When you look back at Jongseong, he’s high-fiving Heeseung. You wonder which creature he’s caught now. In the library yesterday, he spent thirty minutes showing you every single one he had captured so far instead of revising for the upcoming Physics test.

“Yeah, we know you’d like someone else’s saliva more,” Kazuha chimes in, and the two of them snort.

“It’s not like that,” you say, biting into an apple slice.

“Oh yeah? What’s it like, then?” Kazuha asks.

“We’re… becoming friends,” you say, but you’re not sure who you’re trying to convince more.

“Y/N, I’ve had to watch the two of you giggling to yourselves in the library one too many times to believe you’re friends. I know your homework’s not that funny,” Sunoo argues.

“Friends can giggle with each other!” you exclaim, but your friends are inflexible.

“I would tell you to get yourself together if you giggled at me like that,” he says.

“I saw you twirl your hair the other day,” Kazuha adds.

“I never—When?!”

She shrugs. “The other day.”

You deflate, crushed under your friends’ accusations. “I wouldn’t twirl my hair…” you mumble. You decide to busy yourself with your apple slices, not even bothering to find out what Kazuha and Sunoo start snickering and elbowing each other about.

“Hey,” a familiar voice greets, making you look up. Jongseong smiles at you and steals an apple slice from your tupperware as he sits down next to you, Heeseung across from him.

“Hi, Jong,” you say, sitting up straighter. You offer a piece of fruit to Heeseung but he declines, saying he doesn’t like apples without peanut butter.

In front of you, your friends exchange a look, and you’re immediately terrified of what they’ll do next. Leaning in, they place their elbows on the table, and Kazuha starts them off. “Jay, you and Y/N know each other pretty well, right?”

Jongseong glances at you, eyes wide. “Uh, sure.”

“Have you ever noticed her, say, twirling her hair?” Sunoo asks, tilting his head innocently at the poor boy by your side.

You’ve never seen him look so confused. “Um, yeah, she does that when she’s concentrating on something, sometimes…”

They lean back. “Huh,” Kazuha says, studying Jongseong’s face.

“Interesting. Very interesting,” Sunoo says, slowly nodding.

You glare at your friends. “See, that’s different,” you tell them. “I was concentrating on something, not doing… whatever you guys had in mind.”

Jongseong looks at you. “What did they have in mind?”

You answer before either of them can dig your grave any deeper. “Nothing. It’s nothing. We were just having a stupid conversation.” You muster your most convincing smile, and the subject is finally dropped.

No one says anything for a few moments, until Heeseung decides to speak up: “You should’ve seen Jay earlier, Y/N. He caught this super rare version of Pikachu earlier, it was awesome.”

“Dude…” Jongseong murmurs.

“What?” Heeseung asks, his enthusiasm quickly dissolving into confusion. Jongseong just shakes his head. Thankfully for all of you, the bell rings then, and you head to class. The three of them walk in front of you while you and Jongseong fall back a step.

“Why were you guys sitting outside? It’s freezing today,” he asks you. Walking side-by-side like this, you can’t help but notice the inches he has over you, the broadness of his shoulders in comparison to yours.

“They turned the heat way too high in the cafeteria, so we came outside for some fresh air,” you explain. He’s right, the air is chilly today—it’s a few days into December, and the temperatures have been accordingly low.

“Aren’t you cold?”

Your heart skips a beat. One of the side effects of not being at each other’s throat anymore was that you got more and more often to be privy to this side of Jongseong—attentive, considerate, kind. What you once thought were his moral attempts at not being so mean to you all the time, you found out was actually his real nature. He wasn’t a prick who was sometimes nice, he was a nice person who turned into a prick with you. Whether the fault lay on him or you was another debate.

“No, I’m alright,” you say, but your body decides to betray you and makes you sneeze three times in a row.

“Bless you,” Jongseong says, laughing. “Here.” You try to stop him, pushing his hands away, but he takes his gloves off and forces them in your palms.

“I’m going to be inside for the next four hours, Jong, I’ll be fine. Keep them.”

“No, it’s okay. Just so you can warm up quicker.”

You eventually give in, putting the gloves over your hands, laughing at the extra fabric that hangs off the tip of your fingers. But when you look at Jongseong’s now-bare hands, something catches your attention. Stopping in the hallway, you grab one of them, examining the cuts on his knuckles. “You need to wear hand cream, Jong, your hands are too chapped.”

He lets you turn his hand over, smooth over his skin, do the same thing with his other hand. “Men don’t wear hand cream,” he says, a grin on his lips.

You burst out laughing. “I think that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

“Seriously, though, I don’t like the way it feels. Too sticky.”

“You just need to get a quick-absorption one.” Then, you make the terrible mistake of looking up from his hand and meeting his eyes—you gasp silently, his gaze and soft smile transporting you right back to that night, the images of 28-year-old and 18-year-old Jongseong mixing into each other, becoming indistinct from each other. Your gaze drifts down to his lips — chapped, too, when they’re usually plumper, rosier — and his hand, still in yours, balls into a fist. The second bell rings and you both take a step back, eyes meeting again for a brief moment before looking down at the floor. With uncharacteristically shy, embarrassed words of parting, you make your separate ways to your next classes.

“That was beautiful, Y/N,” Sunoo says, waiting for you by the door, and you walk past him without so much as a glance.

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

sunoo jay and y/n almost kissed earlier

kazuha WHAAAAT

you KIM SUNOO.

kazuha WHEN?????

sunoo right before class after the lunch break y/n was sooo embarrassed afterwards lol

you we did NOT almost kiss you’re talking out of your ass

kazuha i can’t believe i missed this fml

you YOU DIDNT MISS ANYTHING NOTHING HAPPENED

sunoo be serious u guys we’re standing inches apart

you were* and no we weren’t

sunoo oh stfu it was autocorrect i saw it w my own eyes y/n… you WERE literally holding his hand and staring into those beautiful eyes of his

kazuha sunoo…?

sunoo what can’t a man acknowledge another man’s objective attractiveness if i was y/n i would’ve folded the moment i saw him

you literally one of the first times he talked to me was to make fun of my handwriting

sunoo yeah he’s on his tsundere shit i fw it

you …

sunoo anyways zuha you shouldve seen it when the bell rang they practically leaped away from each other and u didnt know what to do w yourselves afterwards likeeee it was so obvi what you both were thinking of

kazuha cuuuute

you i resent these accusations.

sunoo istg if u dont kiss him next time i will

kazuha ???

you SUNOO?

sunoo WHAT

Something happens a few days before the start of winter break.

Ms. Schumacher is absent, gone off to Germany to visit her family there—she has enough seniority in the school that they let her abandon her responsibilities as a teacher once in a while. A week is too short a period of time for them to bother finding a substitute. It’s usually your last class of the day, but you have to wait around for your dad to be done working, so while most of your classmates have gone home early, you sit with about six other people in the unsupervised study room, absent-mindedly jotting down tid-bits of dialogue for your new story idea, too preoccupied with Jongseong’s absence to really pay attention to anything else. It’s fifteen minutes after the hour, but he’s nowhere to be found, although you know for a fact that he takes those weird Molecular Gastronomy cooking classes your Chemistry teacher offers for extra credit every Thursday after school, so he should be here. And anyways, if he’d gone home, he would’ve texted you something like, Have fun sitting around for an hour, I’m gonna go do awesome stuff with Heeseung, even if awesome stuff meant playing Mario Kart or drinking Sprite and holding a two-person burping contest.

You’re so engrossed in your own thoughts that you pay no mind to the sudden ding of a phone in the room, followed by some gasps and heated whispers. The exchanged words go through one ear and out the other—There was a fight? In the locker rooms? It must be bad if they were sent to the nurse before the principal… Huh? Over who? So he took both of them on? Damn, I didn’t know Jay got like that. He seems so well-behaved.

Your head whips up at the mention of your friend’s name. “Jay? Did something happen to him?” you ask out loud, the whispers dying down immediately as everybody stares at you.

Gaeul, who was in your class last year, is the only one who answers you. Holding up and waving her phone, she says, “They say he got into a fight.”

Jongseong? A fight? It sounds like a practical joke. He admitted to you he once started crying watching Heeseung playing Call of Duty, it was so violent. You shake your head. “He-he did? With who?”

Gaeul and the girl next to her exchange a concerned, almost guilty look. “Jake and Sunghoon.” The crease between your eyebrows deepened. You don’t need to ask anything else before she adds, “They’re at the nurse’s station. It sounds pretty bad…”

That’s enough for you to leap out of your chair and run to the nurse’s station. It seems the news has spread impossibly quickly among your year group—even Kazuha and Sunoo are already blowing your phone, asking you if you’ve heard, if you know how Jay is. You ignore them, reminding yourself to text them back later, until one message from Sunoo in particular catches your attention: It apparently started because Sunghoon said something about you, Y/N. They’re saying Jay got angry.

The nurse is busy on the phone when you get there, her back to the entrance, so you’re able to slip in unnoticed. You head to the adjoining room where the beds are, all three of them taken—you walk by Sunghoon first, his arms crossed over his chest and pointedly not looking at you, then by Jake, who calls out your name. You glare at him and pull on the white plastic curtain that separates his bed from Jongseong’s. They’re already going to hear you, you don’t need them seeing you on top of that.

Jongseong sits up with a grunt when you appear at the end of his bed. The sight of him makes your stomach flip, and not in a good way, for once—his left eye is swollen and circled by a deep purple bruise, shiny with ointment, there’s a cut on his cheek, his lower lip is busted, his right hand is wrapped in bandages. “Oh my God,” you whisper as you help him up, voice breaking. He stares at his hands, jaw locking when you gently place one palm on his good hand, the other on the side of his face, moving it this way and that so you can take a better look at his injuries. He winces, and you let go, resting your hand on his shoulder instead. “What the hell got into you?” you whisper vehemently, unable to decide if you’re worried or angry or both as tears form in your eyes.

He tries to shrug, but even that seems to hurt. “Don’t shrug, Jongseong, tell me what happened.”

“I’m Jongseong again now?” he says, attempting a smile, but only one corner of his lips rises.

You sigh. Even in this state, he has to be a smart-ass. “You’re Jong when I need a textbook, Jongseong when you get into stupid fights,” you reply, and he smiles wider but immediately winces, hand coming up to the cut on his lip. You notice that his hand is still riddled with cracks, and whether they’re due to their dryness or to this fight doesn’t matter—”Wait here,” you say, and go rummage through some drawers for plasters. “She forgot some spots.” You feel Jongseong’s eyes on your face as you patch him up to the best of your abilities.

“I don’t want to tell you what happened. I’ll do the job of hating these idiots for the both of us, so don’t concern yourself with them,” he says, apparently not caring that the idiots in question can hear his every word.

He keeps his promise—you never hear another word from him about the cause of the fight.

Later, you find out through other means, namely Sunoo’s questionably remarkable ability to unearth any and all gossip, that in the locker rooms after Phys Ed, someone had started Jake on the topic of Yunjin, who had been recently revealed as his girlfriend. They’d apparently kept it secret because it was just fooling around at first, and only later had gotten serious enough for them to parade around the school as the couple.

It had been an unremarkable conversation until Jake said, “You guys know Y/N from our class? She saw us in the staff parking lot once, and I was sure we’d be busted then. But she didn’t tell anyone.” And just like that, the conversation turned to you, someone who was usually never a topic among these boys, jocks, soccer players, “the kind of people who peak in high school and still have a superiority complex at forty,” as Sunoo describes them.

He has a harder time explaining what happened next, can’t quite look you in the eye as he recounts what was said. “So, this is what they say, apparently someone said that you used to be obsessed with Sunghoon, then with Jake, and Sunghoon said you… Well, he said you were pathetic, that asshole, and that you had been so easy to lead on, then Jake joined in, saying the same things, basically, how funny it was seeing you so obviously in love with him when he would never give you a chance…” He looks at you worriedly, but you tell him to go on. “And so that’s when Jay got up and just straight-up punched Jake in the face. And while Jake was trying to figure out what happened, Jay punched Sunghoon, and then they both got on him, pushing him, but when he wouldn’t stop throwing punches, they started fighting, too. I think they all got some good ones in before the other boys were able to break them apart and the P.E. teacher arrived…”

But that would be later. Now, sitting with Jongseong in the nurse’s station, tears falling onto the plasters you place on his hand, nothing matters but him. You don’t need the details—he’s hurt, he got hurt over you, you feel as though every cut on his body may well have been done by your own hand. You’ve never felt so guilty for something you didn’t do. Your voice trembles when you speak; you’re unable to look at him, at his busted eye. “I just don’t want you to get hurt for me.”

Without missing a beat, he says, “What else would I get hurt for?”

You can only meet his eyes for a split second. Even like this, he manages to look at you with the same softness that has haunted you since the night you met 28-year-old Jongseong, that has rendered all thoughts of anything other than him meaningless since the day your gaze drifted down to his lips just weeks ago. “Jong…” is all you can mutter as you look down at your hands holding each others’, your lips trembling.

He raises his bandaged hand, still not used to his dominant side being ineffective for now, then lowers it when he realizes. Clumsily, he pats your hair with his left hand. “Don’t cry, please…”

Jake’s head pops out from behind the curtain. “Y/N, I’m really sorry—”

“Not right now, man,” Jay quickly interrupts. Jake pathetically disappears behind the curtain again.

“Just promise me you won’t do this again.”

“Y/N…”

“Promise me,” you say, more demanding this time, sticking out your pinky finger. Jay, hesitant, looks between your outstretched finger and your face a few times, but eventually gives in.

The nurse, upon coming to check on the boys, catches you with Jongseong and chases you out immediately. You sulk back to study hall, where everyone’s head perks up the moment you walk in. “They’re okay,” you reassure vaguely, and unenthusiastically answer their many questions. It’s only a few minutes until the bell rings, and you’re free to go then.

jong so… guess who got a five-day suspension

you you idiot what did your parents say?

jong they’re not happy i have to do all the household chores for a month

you boo-hoo

jong not sure why i came here thinking i’d get some comfort…

you … are you feeling better?

jong a little bit the nurse gave us some really strong painkillers but i’m okay because there’s a pretty girl that’s going to drop off the homework for me after school every day :)

you oh did you ask chaewon to do that?

jong um no i was talking about you ..if that’s okay

you haha i know i just wanted you to say it straight up

jong ykw maybe i should just ask chaewon

you i’ll see you tomorrow jong!!

jong :) see you tomorrow pretty

The months that separate your return to school and graduation come and go in the blink of an eye. Jongseong can’t come to school the last day before the holidays or the first four days after, and he’s grounded in-between. Things change bit by bit with every day you visit him—To give him the homework, you tell his parents, although there isn’t much to do when the semester isn’t in full swing, and you could’ve easily sent him pictures. The first time, you spend more time scouring the pictures and trinkets in his room than actually talking to him, and awkwardly give him a half-hug when he tells you he won’t be able to hang out at all during the break before practically running out of his house, your heart beating a thousand miles a minute from the innocent contact. By the fourth time, you lie together on his bed and talk about your plans for college, your hands sitting centimeters apart on the navy sheets. You haven’t dared touch his hand since that day in the nurse’s station.

You’re window-shopping with Kazuha when you spot the hand cream you had seen yourself gifting Jongseong in your well-given vision. Buying it is one thing, actually giving it to him is another, an awkward, stuttery situation in which the wrapping done by the store employee suddenly seems over-the-top and out-of-place. But Jongseong seems to like it—it’s the last day of his suspension, his black eye is now a yellow-ish color, he can smile without risking splitting his lip in two. He applies it immediately, tells you he’ll make sure to wear it every day until the end of winter. You find yourself wishing there was something you could give him for every season so he wouldn’t go a day without thinking of you. When you leave, he bashfully thanks you for making sure he doesn’t fall behind and says he’s excited to see you at school the next day. You hardly know what to do with yourself, so you squeak out a “me too” and slip out the door.

His first day back is a Friday. It starts with Mathematics, a class in which you sit by each other. You remember the first week of classes when Kazuha and Sunoo had ran to sit with each other, expressly because they knew that if he saw you were sitting alone, he’d take the seat next to you, just to better torment you all year. You’d resented it then; it couldn’t make you happier now. Your body is humming with nervous energy, your foot tapping relentlessly against the tiled floor. When he appears in the doorframe, you wave at him as if he’d forgotten his seat in three weeks of absence. His elbow brushes against yours as he sits down.

Between the two of you, friendship blossoms over these months. To the detriment of everyone around you, you continue to bicker as you always have, but it’s now clearly done out of habit, out of affection, even, than out of actual dislike of each other. He and Heeseung slowly integrate your small group of three, and before you know it, it feels as though there have always been five of you. Together, you welcome spring.

In January, to thank you for helping him to pick out his mom’s birthday present, Jongseong treats you to some tteokbokki, which you said you’d been craving all week. He orders the spiciest one, then has to take a sip of water between every bite. You laugh at his teary eyes and red face while you devour the bright red rice cakes easily.

In February, he makes a show of giving you and Kazuha and Heeseung and Sunoo some homemade chocolates, saying it’s a friend thing. You find out that evening that the others each have five in their box—there are twenty in yours. It’s one of the things that makes you second guess what sort of feelings he has for you. For years, you’ve been convinced he harbored strong feelings of disdain for you; now, he seems to enjoy your friendship. You’re scared to read too much into anything, because if Jongseong is well-liked throughout school, it’s for a reason: he’s nice. To everyone. Even to you, too, nowadays. But if nice is giving five chocolates, what is giving twenty?

A sudden realization hits you in March—Jongseong appears at your door, drenched from the rain, a bag of your favorite snacks in hand. “You weren’t at school today. I had to find out you were sick from Kazuha,” he says as if she was a random classmate of yours and not your best friend, as if he should be the first to know about these kinds of things. Your mom rushes him in, finds him so charming in the five minutes they converse that she decides he should stay over for dinner, and as you watch him laughing with her, you think, I haven’t thought of 28-year-old Jongseong in ages. I’ve only thought of you. And although you can trace the start of your feelings to that dream-like experience you had, you can now say with confidence that it’s not the only reason for them.

College application results come out in April, right on his birthday. The five of you celebrate together at an American-style diner, gorging yourselves on crispy bacon and chocolate chip pancakes. Kazuha is going back to Japan, almost a decade after moving to South Korea—”I’m gonna miss you guys, but I miss takoyaki and my grandma more right now.” Heeseung has been accepted into the Engineering department at the country’s top university. You, Sunoo and Jongseong are all heading to the same place: you for Screenwriting, which you’ve known since you were one of the winners of the scholarship contest last October, Sunoo for Communications, whatever that is, and Jongseong for European History and Literature with a minor in German, that freak. It’s a good university, and it’s not far from home. The way Jongseong tells you about his acceptance sticks with you: he doesn’t say, They accepted me, too, or, I’m going to the same university as you. He says, We’ll be together.

May is filled with afternoons at the park when you should all be studying for exams. Your mom keeps asking when she’s going to see “that wonderful boy” again. Your friendship with Jongseong has given him new ways of teasing you—after four years of near-kleptomaniac tendencies, he’s finally stopped stealing your erasers and has instead started to let his gaze linger on your face, to call you pretty when you least expect it, to tuck your hair behind your ear. You hate it most when he asks you whether there’s something from your romance novels or movies that you want him to recreate. “Is there a field big enough nearby that I can walk through at the break of dawn, Mister Darcy-style?” he’ll say, or “I’ve always wanted to try that upside-down kiss from Spider-Man. It’s a classic, really.”

Summer comes early in June. You need to bring a two-liter water bottle and a hand fan to your exams, and you’ve never felt such relief as when it was all over. After endless pictures with your parents and siblings, just your parents, just your siblings, then Kazuha and Sunoo, together, then separately, then with Heeseung and Jongseong as well, Kazuha forces you and Jongseong together, watching with a smile as he shyly wraps an arm around your waist and you awkwardly throw up a peace sign. It’s your first picture of just the two of you.

In July, you and Jongseong unlock a new first: saying goodbye. He’s leaving to stay with his American family as he does every summer. You show up at his house the day before at four p.m. “to help him pack,” you say, but it’s Jongseong, and he finished packing two days ago. So instead, you sit on his desk chair, he on his bed, and you fight back tears. “You’re coming back, right?” you ask, like he’s leaving to go to war and not Seattle. Amusement and affection flicker in his eyes. “Of course I am. I wouldn’t throw four more years of being a pain in your ass away, would I?” he says, and you smile, because you know it’s going to be much more than four years.

But he doesn’t just leave you with a few nice words. Avoiding your gaze, he hands you an envelope. Inside is a single ticket, a two-month membership for your city’s arthouse cinema that you can only go to when they have student deals or when your parents have had enough of your begging. You can’t even begin to imagine how much this must’ve cost. “Jong…” you murmur, in awe at the thin slip of paper between your hands. “This is incredible. Thank you so much.”

Jongseong looks down at his feet, fighting a smile as he kicks the invisible rocks that obviously litter the floor of his bedroom. “I thought you’d get bored without me around, so, that way you can entertain yourself, I guess… And if you run into any film bros next year, you’ll have seen as many pretentious movies as them.”

You burst into laughter then, and, without thinking, wrap your arms around his neck, thanking him over and over again. It takes him a second, but he wraps his arms around your waist and says it’s no big deal.

As you walk down the path from your house, he calls out your name. “Don’t be a stranger,” he says.

You smile. “Never.”

So, he’s not here for summer. Kazuha is working in her parents’ ramen restaurant to make some money before leaving, even Heeseung leaves two weeks into July for Seoul to visit some relatives there and get accustomed to life in the big city. You only get to laze around with Sunoo, but even he eventually leaves for his grandparents’ house by the sea, making you promise you’ll come visit him at some point, otherwise he’ll “die of boredom.”

It’s August now, and your brain and body alike buzz with restlessness. You go to the cinema almost every day, making the best of your subscription. If you’re not going around your house looking for spider webs with your vacuum cleaner, you’re riding random bus lines and discovering parts of your town you’ve never set foot in before. If you’re not making your way through your never-ending pile of unread books, you’re creating your own stories, finally taking the time to properly outline and draft the one-line ideas you’ve had sitting in your Notes app, preparing yourself for the start of your degree. Your mind is taken up with love stories. From Romeo & Juliet to Dirty Dancing to Book Lovers, you can’t get enough of the genre. You become particularly obsessed with stories involving time travel, rewatching After Time and Lovely Runner like they contain some precious knowledge. By the end of the month, you’ve turned your life into an eight-episode TV series—a desperate girl makes a wish on a star only to discover she is fated to marry the one boy she hates most. You know you’d watch that. You send Sunoo and Kazuha the pilot, and after calling you insane numerous times but also heaping on praises, Sunoo says this: lol your going through jay withdrawals.

It shakes you so much you’re not even compelled to message back you’re*.

But he’s not wrong. The more you let yourself admit it, the more you realize how true it is: you miss Jongseong. You text once in a while, you’ve even stayed up late talking on the phone a couple of times, but you miss him, his corporeal form, having his gaze on you, having the possibility but never the courage to touch him. Every day, there’s something you want to tell him about. The cats huddling around a young neighborhood kid as he pours milk into a bowl, the clearance sale at your local library, most books for one buck only, the actor from an 90s Hong Kong film you swear has the exact same smile as him. You don’t want to bother him, so you write letters instead. Some you send, some you don’t—the ones you keep hidden in your drawer usually hint too obviously at your feelings for him. Some of them don’t just hint and contain lines of your declarations: I miss you, everything I see reminds me of you, I want to check that your bruises have healed completely even though the last trace of them faded months ago. You keep these letters a secret, even from Sunoo and Kazuha, who would never let you live down such woebegone, down bad behavior.

You do it because it feels good, getting all of your feelings out on paper. You’re a romantic at heart, so you’re prone to over-exaggeration when it comes to things like these—but everything that you write remains based in truth. You’d started with a postcard of your hometown, jokingly writing, Don’t forget where you came from. How is it over there? and he’d actually replied with a postcard of his own, filling it from top to bottom. You easily went from these small postcards to multiple pages of stream-of-consciousness-like writing. You think it’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever done—although you’re not sure he feels the same way, considering he still writes to the German pen pal Ms. Schumacher had assigned him in your first year of high school. No one else’s correspondence had lasted more than four months because she’d immediately forgotten to make sure you kept in touch regularly.

I ran into Jake Sim at the city library, you write one day. You’ve replied to everything in his latest letter, so you’re now catching him up on your recent adventures. He was checking out some books about Linguistics, of all things—he bought me bubble tea afterwards and told me that the injury he got last April was actually a relief. Did you know his father was a big name in soccer here? Apparently, he never wanted to be a soccer player that badly, and he wants to do Linguistics and Social Anthropology, who would’ve guessed it. He’s like Troy Bolton if High School Musical was about Humanities and not singing. Anyways, you probably don’t want me to go on and on about him, so I won’t, but we did talk about that fight you guys had back in December. He apologized for it, to you and me both, although he didn’t go into much detail — Sunoo is still the only one who’s had the balls to tell me exactly what happened, and he wasn’t even there! — and I was reticent at first, but he seemed genuine. He said he didn’t even hang out with Sunghoon or Yunjin or any of those people anymore, that it was only out of convenience really, and that he hopes starting university will be like turning over a new leaf. Well, he could be full of shit, who knows. As I sat there listening to him I wondered what it was I used to see in him. He’s nice enough, but we only spoke about him for the entire hour. He asked me no questions that weren’t “and you?” so it was a bit exhausting.

But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you.

You look at your words, smiling to yourself—this is one of the times where you find yourself erring from the topic at hand, instead indulging in sappiness and nostalgia. You write about how your opinion of Jongseong has changed over these months, how it wasn’t seeing him as your husband in all those years that had really shaken things up, but rather that day in the nurse’s station, the frightening colors around his eye, his attitude like it was natural that he would get hurt like this for you. You write, Have I been wrong about you this whole time? I thought you harbored the same negative feelings towards me as I had you since the moment you’d laid eyes on me, but all of a sudden, here you were, bloody, bandaged hand holding mine. Even with your busted eye, you looked like an angel next to all that white in the nurse’s station. I’ll never forget your words that day. Would you really not get hurt for anything else, Jong?

“I’m going to the Post Office for a package soon, Y/N. Are you done with your letter?” your mom calls from the staircase landing.

“Give me five minutes!” you call back.

You forage through your drawer for a new sheet of paper and re-write your letter, making sure to leave any compromising parts out and fold both letters into neat squares—one that will cross the seas and reach Jongseong, one that will live out its days in the darkness of your crowded drawer. You’ve run out of envelopes, so you go look for one in your parents’ office. Your mom calls out your name again, impatient to leave — if she sends her package off before twelve p.m., it will get to the receiver tomorrow, and she’s hell-bent on getting perfect five-star Vinted reviews — so you hurriedly put your letter in the envelope, close it, stamp it, and write Jongseong’s name and address on the back. The other letter you absent-mindedly throw in your drawer with the dozens of other letters in which you’d crossed the line.

A few weeks later, like an apparition, Jongseong stands before you again.

He’s tanner from months under the Washington sun, from afternoons spent at his family’s lake house, on their boat. His hair is slightly shorter and suits him even better; you don’t recognize any of the clothes he wears. He grumbles as his mother goes back-and-forth between hugging him, staring at him worriedly and reminding him to call at least twice a week while his father unpacks the trunk. “I’ll only be a thirty-minute train ride away, Mom,” he says.

He’s still Jong.

You moved in yesterday, and you’re now waiting for your new roommate, who, after five minutes of deliberating whether she should bring a jacket or not and finally decided against it, changed her mind the minute she stepped outside.

It’s been two months since you last saw him. Shortly after sending your letter, you’d gone to stay with Sunoo’s grandparents for a week, just a day before he was set to come back from Seattle. Amid packing and other preparations, you haven’t had time to see each other. Is it okay if I respond to your letter in person? I think I’ll be too busy these two coming weeks, he texted you. You replied that it wasn’t a problem, you told him which dorm you’d been assigned and found out his was the one next door.

When he notices you staring, he does a double-take. You wave at him, and even from this distance, you see the blush that creeps up his neck and takes over his face as he shyly waves back. You’ve never seen him like this—he’s always been either arrogant or friendly, never… flustered. He makes a motion as if to say, I’ll text you, and heads inside the building with his parents and all of his luggage.

Indeed, he texts you some hours later while you’re sharing a piece of strawberry and matcha cake with your roommate Liz, whom you find out is half-German—Jongseong and your dad would probably love her for that simple fact. Some of the first things she’d asked you were what your astrological signs were and whether you wanted her to pull tarot cards for you when she was all done setting up her side of the room. Between that and her dyed blonde hair, you’d felt comfortable telling her all about Jongseong, the well and your dream. Unlike your skeptical and sarcastic friends, she’d nodded along to your every word, a serious expression on her face. “A sign from the universe,” she’d called it, and she gasped in excitement when his name appeared on your screen.

He sends you a link to a freshers’ week event, some potted plant sale happening on the main campus square, and asks if you’re free to go with him tomorrow. I need something to liven up that depressing room, he writes.

So that’s how you find yourselves among green plants of all shapes and sizes, searching for one that’s both low-maintenance and appealing to the eye. You’re glad that you have something to actually do—if you were just sitting at a café and having a conversation, you’re not sure you’d be able to stand the awkwardness. You’d chalked up his behavior on the day of his move-in to nerves, or to surprise upon seeing you so unexpectedly. But apparently, it wasn’t a one-time thing. He keeps clearing his throat as if he were sick with some cold, won’t look into your eyes for more than split seconds at a time, and in complete opposition to his usual confident, deliberate speech, talks in a quick and disorderly manner. And he’s either really caught a cold, or his ears have just permanently turned red. You ask him if something’s wrong a couple times, but he violently shakes his head, says, “No, what could be wrong?” then looks at you as if you might tell him what’s wrong.

When you’re alone again, you wonder what on earth could have happened over the summer that could make him change his behavior with you so radically. Did something happen in Seattle? Maybe he met someone there and doesn’t know how to tell you. Maybe you went overboard with your letters, he doesn’t want to be friends anymore, he wants to let you down easy but doesn’t know how to tell you. Or maybe—maybe you got impossibly pretty during those two months, and absence does make the heart grow fonder, as they say, and every thought you have about him, he has about you, but he doesn’t know how to tell you.

In any case, he’s hiding something.

The theory that he might want to stop being friends soon falls flat—the invitations to other freshers’ events keep coming, be it free wine & pizza taster sessions from the Wine Society, karaoke nights with the Taylor Swift Society or a shark movie marathon with the Bad Film Society, and he never turns you down when you tell him there’s something you want to visit in this new city of yours, even when the thing you want to visit in question is a bakery you have to queue in front of at seven a.m. if you want to get a pain au chocolat. In your defense, they turn out to be the best ones you and Jongseong have ever tried—although, to be fair, neither of you has been to France.

Things progressively return to normal. He’s able to make eye contact for more than three seconds again, he listens carefully and laughs along when you tell him about your week by the sea with Sunoo, he fills you in on what Heeseung’s been up to. One thing remains different, however—when you throw quips at him, he usually would’ve delighted in coming up with a better, wittier response, but now, he’ll roll his eyes at best, look at you amusedly and stay silent at worst. “Won’t you even entertain me?” you ask him once, to which he replies that you’re doing a good job entertaining yourself as is.

Instead, he becomes more earnest. As per usual you badger him with questions like Aren’t I so pretty right now? or Isn’t my outfit so cute today? to get a reaction out of him, and if during your high school days he’d either fake a puking sound or look you up and down and grumble I guess, he now smiles and simply says Yes, you are, Yes, it is. It seems impossible to keep track of his attitude: one day, he’s one thing, the next, he’s another person entirely.

It annoys you. You take his changing demeanor to mean that now that he’s a college student, he won’t indulge in your childish squabbles anymore, as though he was above all of that now, when just three months ago he was stalking your parents’ Facebooks to find unfavorable photos of you from when you were thirteen and using them as reaction pictures in your friends’ group chat. You think of your graduation day, of the box he’d given you, all done up in wrapper paper and a bow—he had filled it with every eraser he’d stolen from you over the years, he’d even gone so far as to date every single one of them, from the second of October freshman year to the twenty-eighth of November of your senior year. You didn’t count them, but there had to be at least a hundred. At the time, you’d just thought it was funny—but what if the gesture had meant something deeper than you’d realized? What if he was marking the end of something with that box? No more playing around, we’re adults now. But classes have barely started, you don’t know your way to the off-campus library, you aren’t a different person to who you were just weeks or even months earlier. Why is he acting like he is? You look at him, and you see the boy whose fault it was you had to buy a new eraser every week—who knows how many books you could’ve bought with that money. But when he turns to look at you, too, and your eyes meet, you’re suddenly assailed with the memories of that night, the kind eyes, the soft smile.

Does his future capacity to love me already exist in his heart?

Your heartbeat speeds up and you have to look away.

From your letters, it seems to be much hotter back home than in Seattle—you talk of sunburns, of afternoons spent inside with the fan on maximum speed, of ice melting instantly and watering down your Coke Zeros, whereas Jay can walk around the city pleasantly and needs to bring a jacket if he’ll be out until late after sundown. And yet, as he reads your latest letter, his skin prickles feverishly, from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. He’d excitedly torn the envelope open the second it arrived in the mail, heart thumping as he counted the pages, at least three more than usual — he was always happy that you wanted to talk to him at all, so the fact that you had this much to tell him sent him over the moon — but he would have never expected what was awaiting him inside.

With a smile on his face, he read your replies to the questions he’d asked you last time, your reactions to everything he told you about, the live Mariners game, the lake house, the rides on the boat. He imagined you as you sat at your desk in your room he’d only seen once, when you’d held a small party for your birthday and he, having arrived first, was honored with a tour of your house. He imagined your smile, the way you played with your hair when you focused on something, wondered whether you pondered every word before you wrote it down as he did or whether you poured your thoughts out onto the page without hesitation. His smile faltered when Jake Sim’s name appeared in your neat handwriting, but he was relieved to find out your description of him now was miles away from the one at the start of the school year.

Then you start writing about him. Him, Park Jongseong, and your words startle him so much, it’s like he’d forgotten he was the recipient of this letter in the first place.

But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you.

He’s been lying comfortably in his bed, but he sits up the moment his eyes take in these words. If there is one topic the two of you have practically never broached, it’s this exactly: your relationship, the changes it’s gone through this past year. Except for a few mentions made in jest here and there, you’ve always conveniently ignored the fact that not so long ago, you were at each other’s throats. At least, you were at his throat, and Jay let you be, let you think the hatred went both ways, when in reality all he wanted was to keep you close one way or another. To him, anything was better than indifference.

But here you are, writing about how you feel about him, not in hints, not in jokes, but actually telling him black and white what goes through your head when you think of him—in other words, everything he’s been dying to know ever since he met you and especially ever since you started warming up to him a few months ago.

I have never told you about that night because I know it’ll just be more fodder for you to endlessly tease me, and I haven’t even mentioned it in these letters that I write and don’t send. Sometimes I debate the ethics of it—if I know something about our futures, isn’t it right that you know, too? But then again, I still hesitate whether what happened was real or not. As with anything, the more time passes, the more I forget about it. What kind of cheese you’d put on the pasta, the movie that played in the background, whether the stairs were carpeted or wooded—these details have evaded me by now. All I clearly remember is your face and how I felt, seeing it then, seeing it the next day at school, ten years younger, the same exact person in what felt like a different universe. As much as I tried to deny it, I know now that it was no coincidence—I was talking about it with Sunoo and he said that sometimes, we want something so badly, we conjure it up for ourselves. He’s not always a dimwit. And he’s right, the kind of love I felt from you in that dream — or not-dream — I’ve yearned for it ever since I first watched Pride & Prejudice, the 2005 film to be precise, when I was ten. But with you? That was what I couldn’t believe at first. I don’t think I need to explain why—you were there, I think you knew how I felt about you for over three years, it’s not like I tried to hide it.

Then you turned up and the sight of you was enough to bring back all the feelings from that dream. You must’ve wondered why my behavior with you switched so suddenly—well, a glimpse into marital bliss is sometimes enough for a girl to make some changes in her life. Yet I valiantly tried to convince myself that any flutter of my heart around you was due to this stupid dream, to a version of you my brain had conjured up because it was starved for affection, and you happened to be at the forefront of my mind, even if not for the right reasons. But it was no use. I had entertained the possibility that this future was really mine, and I couldn’t go back to seeing you as the boy who annoyed the living daylights out of me.

But Jong, if you weren’t you, I would’ve been confused for a week and then I would’ve gotten over it. I stayed confused for a while, and everything you did only served to confuse me further. I started to notice you more, to see you for who you were and not for the idea I had constructed of you in my head, I stopped taking note of only the things that reinforced this idea. And that changed everything.

Let’s get it out of the way: as much as I hate to admit it because it proves you right, I saw that you are indeed devastatingly handsome. It devastates me every time I have to look at that stupid, wonderful face of yours. And if aging is something you’re worried about, don’t be. I’ve seen you at 28, and let’s just say that your jaw somehow only gets more chiseled. I’ve realized that you don’t just participate in class to be a prick — except for when you contradict me in Literature, I know you only do that to piss me off, and yes, it works — but that you actually care about what we learn and that you don’t want the teacher to feel like they’re talking to a classroom full of students made out of bricks. I’ve also realized that you didn’t specifically pick German to be the one subject where you must beat me at all costs, you just actually really like German, even if I’m still undetermined as to why. And I can finally admit to myself—you are funny. Sometimes. There were so many times I had to stop myself from laughing at one of your idiotic puns because I could not bear to give you the satisfaction. That feeling when the worst person you know makes a funny joke, and all that. And as much as I’ve mocked you for it, I do actually like your laugh. I like that you’re only loud when you laugh, or sneeze, or get excited over something. You don’t scream, you don’t get angry, and I think that’s a lot for a boy fresh out of puberty. Or for any boy, really.

But above all, you’re kind, Jong. I think it’s the best thing about you. I think it’s the best thing anyone can be. I see it in your patience with Heeseung when he starts one of his rants better reserved for Reddit than real life, I see it in the way you took Sunoo and Kazuha in stride, even though they’re a bit rough around the edges sometimes, I see it in the way you guide the freshmen at the start of every year, when all anyone does is complain about them, I see it in the gentleness with which you let down the girls who confess to you, even the more persistent ones. I used to think they were crazy, but I understand them more than ever now. I also used to think that all those kindnesses meant that the ones you occasionally showed me meant nothing more than that—occasional kindnesses. You were just a nice guy, occasionally so to me. But you sort of ratted yourself out when you gave me those twenty chocolates for Valentine’s.

Or, really, what made things clearer was that fight in December. I guess I was wrong—you do get angry. I remember a thought I had at the time: just when I think I know you, you do something to shake it all up. You punched two of the star soccer players of our school in the face because they said some mean, unimportant things about me. Thinking about it now, I still don’t understand it. Was it another one of your acts of kindness?

And then I thought of those other times you helped me out. Do you remember them—the art project, the handwritten notes after my grandma passed away, you tearing Park Sunghoon a new one in the girls’ bathroom. I’m sure there are many more that I’ve dismissed simply because I did not want to see you in any other light than the one I’d decided to shine on you.

Maybe I’m rewriting the past here, but I’ve been thinking about something lately. The theme today seems to be honesty, so I’ll lay myself bare and tell you something I haven’t told anyone yet, not even myself. The more I write, the more I become aware of its truth. I like you, Jong. I think I have for a long time, longer than either of us thinks. Maybe that’s why I kept buying erasers.

I don’t have the best memory — I suspect iron deficiency, it runs in my mom’s side of the family — but I do remember this. The first time I saw you. I haven’t noticed your face changing in real time, but I’m sure I’d laugh at how much of a baby you looked back then. Although I didn’t fare much better, I’m sure. Well, you’re the one that has all these embarrassing pictures of me, you freak, so I’m sure you could tell me. Moving on…

I found you really cute. You were chatting to the person next to you, maybe it was Heeseung, I didn’t look properly—I only looked at you. Don’t laugh at me. It was the first day of high school, there was a nervous energy in the air, but you seemed happy to be there. You know I don’t have hordes of friends like you do, I don’t walk through life with people naturally gravitating towards me. I’m okay with it now, but it was something I struggled with back then. Kazuha, Sunoo and I have had each other since our elementary days, and I never needed more than that—but fifteen is the prime age for comparison, and as the weeks passed and we got used to being high schoolers, I listened to everyone sing your praises, I watched as you talked with all of our classmates, even our teachers, like you were old friends. But we sat next to each other in a couple of classes, and you wouldn't talk to me outside of partnered work. I, who wanted to be easily charmed by you like everyone else was, who thought maybe you’d help me come out of my shell. But it felt like sitting next to me was torture to you, like the boy whom I watched speak with ease to everyone else disappeared when I was around. And so — and I’m not proud of this — every smart remark in class, every joke that had the entire class roaring, every high five you gave out in the hallway, I started to despise them. And by association, I started to despise you. After that, it was easy to find fault in everything you did, my contempt was only enhanced by everyone’s admiration. But I’m not alone here. It went both ways, didn’t it? I don’t think you liked that I didn’t like you and openly showed it, so used to being everyone’s favorite person you were. I remember how you showily tried to be nice to me after that, maybe you just wanted another friend, but I didn’t let you. I don’t blame us for how we acted, only for taking so long to get our heads out of our asses.

(I have to say, I also have a thing for hating people. Remind me to tell you about Na Jaemin and Shin Ryujin one of these days.)

Anyways, I think it’s because I had liked you so much at first that I could then seemingly hate you so much. But I never hated you, Jong, not really. I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. Can I take it all back now?

Now that we’re entering university soon, I can’t help but look back on high school. This is what I want to know, but I’m not sure I’ll ever have the courage to ask you, because if your answer is the one I suspect, I don’t know how I’ll handle all the regret in my heart.

Have I been wrong about you this whole time? I thought you harbored the same negative feelings towards me as I had you since the moment you’d laid eyes on me, but all of a sudden, here you were, bloody, bandaged hand holding mine. Even with your busted eye, you looked like an angel next to all that white in the nurse’s station. I’ll never forget your words that day. Would you really not get hurt for anything else, Jong?

Your letter abruptly ends here, no concluding remarks, no wishing him a fun time in Seattle and looking forward to his next letter, no sign-off. It was as if someone cut you off before you could say everything you wanted, but then why send him this seemingly unfinished letter? It is all the more bizarre since your letters are usually meticulous: you write on every other line, it looks like you take your time with every single letter, the only disturbance in your otherwise perfect handwriting is your going back-and-forth between cursive and script s’s. But this particular letter looks rushed, your lines are sloppy, some words need to be read a few times over to be understood. What kind of state had you been in, writing these words? Jay’s heart swells, thinking that you were as moved writing as he was reading. He even looks through your letter again, wishing to find a tear stain somewhere, but there are none. Maybe he’s been watching too many of these romantic period dramas you always go on about.

He has to pace his room when he’s done reading your letter, but he feels trapped inside these four walls, so he dashes outside, saying that he’s getting some air when his relatives ask him where he’s off to in such a rush, and walks around the block five times. When he’s back in his room, he rereads your letter, eyes taking in each and every word slowly and carefully, making sure he doesn’t misread anything.

You like him. You, Y/N, like him, Jongseong, it’s a fact, it’s real, you said so yourself, you went into quite some detail about it, he can’t believe it, but it’s real, it’s written right there on the page, if anyone dares tell him he’s fooling himself, he can prove them wrong, you’re the one who said it.

The smile doesn’t leave his lips for the rest of the day, he can barely eat, he’s already full of happiness. He reads your words over and over before falling asleep, committing them to memory, dreaming about them, about you.

You. How should he respond to this? Are you even expecting a response? You seem to know he’s not impartial to you, either, although that’s an understatement.

In the following days, the thought that you hadn’t meant to send him this letter nags at him. The abrupt ending, the absence of your usual Love, Y/N. The fact that this had come out of left field—none of your previous letters had even a romantic undertone, no matter how he tried in his own to hint at his missing you, the most reference to seeing each other again you would give him was It’ll be better to show you this in real life. The act of sending letters itself didn’t feel very platonic, but you never went there, so he didn’t, either. He had secretly yearned to have you this close all these years, he would never forgive himself if he ended up chasing you away now with his over-eagerness.

You had landed on something very real in your letter: I don’t think you liked that I didn’t like you and openly showed it, so used to being everyone’s favorite person you were. I remember how you showily tried to be nice to me after that, maybe you just wanted another friend, but I didn’t let you. He cursed his fifteen-year-old self, that idiot who couldn’t even speak to a girl no matter how much he wanted to, just because she was so pretty, he was afraid of saying something stupid and messing it up before it even had a chance to start.

On days when you’d had particularly nasty or petty arguments — it could get pretty bad, at the start, before you both started maturing and realized how ridiculous you were, especially with your classmates telling you to keep it classy — he’d stay up all night, wondering why you hated him so much in the first place, what on Earth he could’ve done to warrant such vitriol. Now, finally, he knew, and he could only resent the fact that no one had invented time machines yet, so he could nip his useless ego in the bud; so he could tell younger Jay not to take it personally, that you had your reasons for disliking him, that even if you hadn’t, the world won’t end if someone doesn’t like him like everyone usually does.

Because, he hates to admit, that was what had done it for Jay. He couldn’t stand that someone — not just someone, but one of the prettiest girls he’d ever seen, a girl he’d been hyping himself up to talk to every day, but never found the courage to — didn’t immediately fall for his charms. And not just that, but even showed just how much she disliked him. You looked him up-and-down with disdain, made disgusted faces at his jokes, rolled your eyes when he spoke up in class. It made him burn with anger, but he also weirdly enjoyed it—at least, you were paying attention to him. So, he amped it up. Talked louder, laughed louder, hovered around you. He even stole your erasers, wrote the date on which he’d taken them, kept them in a box on his desk that he looked at every time he studied at home. He aimed to beat you in every class you shared, even though neither of you cared that much about grades—the annoyed look on your face when he boasted about the two points he’d gotten over you was enough satisfaction.

All in all, he behaved like a child, and you reciprocated in like.

Until you didn’t.

It was a random Tuesday when something in your attitude towards him shifted. It wasn’t a complete 180, but he noticed everything about you, so even a slight change of your tone was obvious to him. You started using your nickname for him more often than his full name—he never told you, but of course he loved that you didn’t call him Jay like everyone else, that you had your own way of addressing him. It was a sign to him that the two of you had something special, even if it was on the opposite end of the spectrum of what he wanted with you.

He again spent sleepless nights wondering what had caused this change: was it something he had done, or something within you? It was a welcome change, that much was sure, but he was initially too confused to take it in stride. He’d long made peace with the fact that he’d never have you the way he really wanted, so he was fine with whatever this was—but now, you were changing, your interactions were tinged with something like shyness, the distance between you felt greater than ever. He tried to keep up his smart-ass appearances around you, but you only indulged in your old habits once in a while, as though you had grown tired of arguing with him, even of giving him the time of day.

So he resolved himself to adapting his behavior to yours. If you stared at him intently like his face was a puzzle you were trying to solve, he let you, rested his head on his palm and smiled as he stared back at you. Finally, he had an excuse to look at you without you threatening to punch him or saying a picture would last longer. He knew they did, he’d had to resort to scrolling through Sunoo’s and Kazuha’s Instagrams to find any photos of you. Yours was private and at the time, you would’ve probably cursed him out if he’d sent a follow request. If you seemed too annoyed or upset over something, he’d leave you alone, he’d do something nice to let you know you didn’t need to have your guards up at all times around him. If you seemed to silently call for a truce of hostilities, he easily complied.

Then, after a few weeks, your petty arguments resumed, but those too were different—if before they felt filled with real disdain and irritation, they now seemed to be a comfortable habit to fall back on, almost like a fun hobby. Those, too, Jay readily welcomed.

And so things changed in a direction Jay had never thought would one day be possible. You gave him no explanations, nor did he ask for any, and soon he stopped losing sleep over the why’s and the how’s and simply let himself enjoy the fact that you now had the semblance of a friendship, that he could compliment you and pass it off as amical teasing, that he could learn things about you like what you spent your weekends doing, what your relationship with your family was like, whether you were a dog or cat person, whether you wanted to visit his farm in Stardew Valley.

Unsurprisingly, this only enhanced his already pathetically strong feelings for you. He worried over how to make sure this wasn’t some sort of 30-day friendship trial you had wanted to test out. He reveled in the fact that his top university of choice was the one you had already been accepted to. He now knew what it felt like to have you smile at him, smile because of him, and he never wanted again to live in a world where this was not a daily occurrence.

He now sort of has an answer—your letter doesn’t make it very clear, it makes him think again that you really had not meant to send it, but you seem to have had a dream. A dream of him, 28-year-old him, to be precise, of your life together—he’s not sure. At this point in time, he doesn’t care much, either. Whether it was a dream or a real vision of the future that you had, all that matters is that it allowed you to see him in a new light, a light which he had hoped for years would one day appear to you, and it had changed things. And now, you liked him.

You said so yourself.

He’s at a loss for words. He can’t concentrate for long enough to put all his thoughts in order, he can’t make himself calm down and write his feelings down. He has to pack to go home, once he’s home, he’ll have to pack for university. But it’s only two weeks from now to the day you meet again, and it’ll be better to say what he wants to say in person, anyway.

Is it okay if I respond to your letter in person? I think I’ll be too busy these two coming weeks, he texts you.

And then those two weeks pass like two seconds and you’re there, a few meters away from him. All the speeches he’d prepared in his head, from grand declarations of love to laid-back admittances of Yeah, I like you too, you’re cool, I guess, they all vanish from his head. For fourteen days he’s been going through scenarios upon scenarios of your reunion, what you’d look like, what he’d say, how you’d react. But now that he can actually see you, now that he would just have to walk a few steps if he wanted to touch you, hug you, kiss you — hoping that was something you wanted to do — he freezes. He forgets how his body works, the part in his brain that’s meant to manage language ability fails him. HIs mom calls him over, urging him into his new dorm building, and all he can do is wave back at you like an idiot.

When finally he musters the courage to text you, what he hopes will be the day that starts your romantic relationship turns into the day Park Jongseong realizes how much of a loser he is. For the first hour, he can’t look at you, he can’t get through a sentence without stuttering out half of his words, he runs out of things to say in record time. All he can think of is how easy it’d be to grab one of your hands, hold it in his and walk around this stupid potted plant sale as if the two of you were two halves of a whole. He doesn’t even want a potted plant, his roommate already has five, he just wanted an excuse to see you. He steals glances at you when you’re looking elsewhere, and he notices everything about you tenfold now that he can, now that caring about you doesn’t need to be in vain any longer. He tells himself that he just needs to calm down a bit, even when you have the confirmation that the person you’re about to confess to already likes you, revealing your feelings to someone is always nerve-wracking, the two of you haven’t seen in each other in a while, he’ll talk to you once his heart gets out of his throat.

But you’re acting normal. Suspiciously so. You’re acting like you never told him you liked him, like nothing has changed between you. He rereads your letter the second he gets back to his dorm. He’s not crazy, it’s written right there, I like you, Jong. I think I have for a long time, longer than either of us thinks. He knows the words by heart now, but he checks them anyway. So why are you acting like you never said anything? Had you really not meant to send that letter? Did Jay actually intrude on your private thoughts by reading words that had never meant to be seen by another soul?

You continue to behave as you usually would around him, but if he couldn’t go back to vicious bickering when things changed the first time, he can’t go back to friendly bickering now that things — for him — have changed a second time. He doesn’t even want friendly to be in your shared vocabulary anymore.

So he stops giving in. If you make fun of him, he just stands there with an unimpressed if amused look on his face. If you pedantically correct him on something, he just nods his head and accepts it. He can tell you’re bothered by it, but he needs to show you that he doesn’t want to go on being just friends with you—he wants to compliment you without having to pass it off as teasing, he wants to stare at you with hearts in his eyes without having to look away when you catch him, he wants to spend every waking second of every day with you, he wants to hold your hand, hold you.

He could wait for things to change slowly again, but why wait when he could help things along?

It’s nine p.m. on a Saturday and you’re sneaking Jongseong into your dorm. Liz is away for the weekend, gone back home to celebrate her aunt’s birthday, so you have the room to yourselves. It took some convincing to get him to come — What if we get caught coming in, What if your T.A. sees us, What if I get reported to campus police — and so when your verbal reassurances failed to work, you resorted to blinking up at him through your lashes and that did the trick.

Jongseong was in many ways unlike any other man you’d ever met; in some other ways, he was the exact same.

Plastic bag of the tteokbokki you’d asked for in hand, he looks around the deserted hallways like someone might jump out of nowhere and beat him to a pulp at any given moment. At this time of the week, everyone’s out partying or holed up in their dorms, presumably either to rest or because of a lack of friends so early on in the semester. You grab his free hand and hurry him along to the elevator—once inside, it takes you a few seconds before you realize you’re still holding it, and you retract your hand quickly while he just smiles.

You settle yourselves on the floor—comfort is not worth getting gochujang sauce on your white sheets. You sit criss-cross in front of each other, the food between the two of you, and catch up on your first week of class in-between bites of spicy, gooey rice cakes and fish cakes. You wonder, if one day you and Jongseong are no longer friends, how long you will keep associating tteokbokki with him.

When you tell him that you and Jake share a class, Introduction to Film Studies, he gives you a look. “What’s that face for?” you ask.

“Did you guys sit next to each other?”

You chuckle. “Of course. We only knew each other in that room, it would’ve been weird not to.”

He continues to stare at you. After a while, he muses, “You’re not…?”

You halt in your tracks, rice cake at the end of your plastic fork hanging in the air, halfway between the container and your mouth. “Whatever you’re thinking, the answer is no.” Still in love with him, interested in him again, you don’t know the exact details of Jongseong’s thought process, all you know is he has nothing to worry about—if it’s something he worries about.

When a smile slowly grows on his lips and he nods, saying, “Okay, good,” you let yourself think it might be.

Later, you’re ten minutes into a senseless blockbuster movie when he suddenly pauses it. It snaps you out of a trance—his hand was awfully close to yours, so is his shoulder, his thigh, his knee, everything, really, and you haven’t been able to concentrate on anything but the warmth radiating off his skin and the intensity with which you crave to feel it intentionally rather than accidentally. When he speaks, there’s something serious in his tone that makes you nervous. “Y/N,” he says as he turns to you, and now his face is awfully close, too. There’s still many centimeters separating you, but in this tiny, barely lit-up room, he feels closer than ever before. “Do you remember when I said I’d reply to your letter in real life?”

You tilt your head. “Yeah, that was ages ago.”

“Well, I thought I’d do it now.”

“Now?”

He takes a deep, shaky breath. “Now.”

And then those safe centimeters suddenly disappear, and Jongseong’s lips are on yours. It’s a brief, chaste kiss, so quick you wonder if it even happened when he leans back again.

“I like you, too,” he says, and your heart stops.

“W-what?” is all you can say back, eyes wide like he’s just admitted to killing someone rather than reciprocating your feelings.

His confident facade quickly crumbles. “God, this was so much cooler in my head, I-I’m sorry.” He pulls something out of his sweatpants pocket, pages folded over and over into a tiny square. As he unfolds them, you recognize your paper, your handwriting—but what do your letters have anything to do with him kissing you, of all things? “I don’t think you meant to send this. But I’m glad you did.”

He hands you the pages and your eyes skim over the words, not detecting anything out of the ordinary, until—But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you. You remember this line, because you had made sure to strike it and everything that came afterward out when you rewrote the letter that you would actually send Jongseong. So how was he giving you this?

“I-How do you have this?” you ask, voice trembling. You feel as though your heart overflows with all kinds of emotions, and so your eyes follow, tears staining your lower lashes.

But Jongseong is not one to let you hide things from him. “Hey, no, it’s okay,” he says, warm hands coming to cup your face. “Look at me.” You have no choice but to oblige—his gaze is somehow both soft and stern, a mix of concern and determination. “Did you mean what you wrote in here?” You nod. “Then everything’s okay. You don’t know how happy I was reading this.”

The tension in your body slowly starts to fade. “Really?”

“Really. I cherish every single word in there.”

“Really?” you repeat, and he chuckles.

“Really.”

Your heartbeat speeds up as you gaze into his eyes, as you let yourself bask in the affection and endearment you find there. You can’t quite comprehend what’s happening. The letter, the kiss, his confession, your inadvertent confession, it’s all a mess in your head; so sudden, but such a long time coming at the same time. You never imagined that things would change so quickly—less than a year ago, you thought Jongseong was the most irritating person on this planet. After meeting his 28-year-old self, you thought it’d take ages for the two of you to be on such good terms. But now, just a week into your first semester of university, belly full of tteokbokki and Sprite, you like each other enough not only to be in the same room without hurling insults at each other but to actually be smiling at each other, willingly at that.

Your eyes drift down to his lips, just like in the hallway all those months ago, and the words slip out before you can stop them. They’re a mere whisper—”Kiss me again.”

Jongseong doesn’t need to be told twice. Still cupping your face, he bridges the gap between the two of you again, and this time, when your lips meet, they don’t come apart so quickly. It’s your first kiss, and it’s nothing short of magical, better than any romance novel could’ve prepared you for. His lips are warm and soft against yours, moving slowly, gingerly; as if he’s scared to take any wrong step, he lets you control the pace, follows every tilt of your head this way and that. It’s a relief that he seems to know as little about this as you do—his hands haven’t moved from your face, yours are on his knees, all you can do is focus on the movement of your lips, to think of anything else at the same time would be overwhelming.

“I’ve liked you from the start,” he suddenly says, face still so close you can feel his breath on your lips as he speaks.

“Hm?” you hum, body reeling from the kiss.

“I’ve liked you from the start,” he repeats, grinning—he looks relieved, like he’s been waiting to say these words for a long time. “I can’t believe this is happening after all these years. Or at all, really.”

“I think I did, too.”

“Yeah, you mentioned that in your letter.”

Your eyes widen and you bury your face in your hands as Jongseong laughs. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?” you mumble.

He smooths over your hair with one hand, brings your face back up with the other. “Don’t worry. I won’t ever make you regret this.”

Your brain and heart are too all over the place for you to come up with a coherent answer, so you lean in and reconnect your lips to his. It’s already becoming your favorite sensation, feeling him smile into the kiss, threading your fingers in his soft hair.

Time passes delicately like this, the two of you on your single bed, in the sheets that you bought three weeks ago. A lot of it is spent kissing and learning how to fall into each other’s rhythm, but you also spend hours talking, comparing situations and how you’d experienced them. You thought his occasional acts of kindness were done out of guilt, evidence that he did have some morals; he was trying to show he cared about you. He thought you’d despised him from the moment you saw him; you reiterate in more detail than your letter what really happened, you say you wish you knew then what you know now.

“But I never hated you, Jong. I think I wanted to believe that I did, but I never actually did.”

“You glared at me everytime I walked past like I killed a member of your family.”

You groan, ashamed of yourself. “I did, didn’t I?”

“You did,” he says, chuckling, placing a kiss on your forehead. His arms are around you, your head rests atop his heart—you’ve never felt more comfortable in your life. “But it’s okay. We’re here now, and I don’t want us to have any regrets about high school. We had a good time, didn’t we?”

You tilt your head up to look at him. “I’m sure you did, stealing all my erasers.”

He lets out a hearty laugh. Clearly, he’s very proud of his feat. “Hey, I gave all of them back.”

“And what am I going to do with a hundred erasers, Jong?” you ask, laughing too, pecking his cheek aggressively—your way of punishing him for a grave deed.

“Keep them as a token of my love for you,” he says, and your breath falters at the mention of that word. “In fifty years, it’ll be a sign that I’ve liked you since the beginning, I just had a funny way of showing it.”

“Fifty years, huh?”

He grins. “Fifty, a hundred, whatever. You’re not getting rid of me.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

You’re both smiling so wide, you can barely manage a kiss. He trails kisses from your lips to your ear. Holding you close, he whispers, “It’s always been you, Y/N. Always and only you.”

There may be thorns on the otherwise immaculate rose that is your life, but Park Jongseong was never one of them—all along, he was a bud waiting to bloom.

The more time passes, the more you wonder whether that night you had seen in your vision will ever come. There’s been evenings similar to it—crashing the minute you came home from a long day on set, telling yourself you’d take a fifteen-minute power nap only to wake up three hours later and coming downstairs to find your husband cooking dinner, cleaning the kitchen, taking care of your son or simply watching TV, but waiting for you, always waiting for you. He seems as happy now watching you come down the stairs as he was then finding your face among all the students flocking out of lecture halls.

The details are blurry now, but many small things seem to be different from what you’d seen. He still tries to recreate your favorite meal, but it’s not pasta all'arrabbiata, it’s laksa, because your first date as an official couple was to a Malaysian restaurant, not an Italian one. He’s still the best father you know, but you have one son, not twin girls—although that offer to “give him a younger sibling to play with” is always on the table. Even the house you live in is different from the one in your dream, which has now become nothing more than a funny anecdote you share with people when they ask you the story of how you and Jongseong met.

You think of Sunoo’s words from all those years ago: Sometimes, we want something so badly, we conjure it up for ourselves. Had 18-year-old you been in such denial over her feelings for Jongseong that she’d had to convince herself a magical well had bestowed a crazy dream upon her to admit that, yes, there was something there, something other than childish hatred?

It doesn’t matter anymore. Months pass without you thinking about that well, anyway.

Tonight, you come home late from work after having had to do last-minute changes to the script for your current project, a movie that starts shooting in a few days. Jongseong texted you that he was going to bed an hour or so again, so you’re greeted by a plate of japchae covered in film paper. The post-it note stuck to it reads, I’m afraid of the repercussions of too much curry consumption on our son, so no laksa tonight my love. Hope you like it. Come to bed quick. You were starving a second ago, but you decide food can wait—other things can’t.

You tiptoe up the stairs and into your son’s room, breathing in the scent of his hair and placing a kiss there. His hair is still worryingly sparse, but if he’s anything like his dad, it’ll come in a bit later than the other kids. You always thought babies with a full head of hair were freaky, anyway. He doesn’t budge a bit, sleeping like a log—his dad is another story, shuffling in bed the moment you step into your shared bedroom. He opens his arms wide, a silent invitation.

“You’re home,” he says as you attach yourself to his body, your leg hiked up over his, your face buried in the crook of his neck, your thumb caressing the start of stubble on his cheeks.

You smile. “I am.”

permanent taglist: @zreamy @sunghoonmybeloved @lalalalawon @sd211 @w3bqrl @raikea10 @wntrnghts @moonlighthoon @4imhry @rikisly @loves0ft @iamliacamila @theboingsuckerasseater9000 @chaechae-23 @baekhyuns-lipchain @hyuckslvr @vernonburger @amorbonbon @fluerz @jakeflvrz @enhastolemyheart (ask to be removed/added!)

#enhypen x reader #jay x reader #jongseong x reader #enhypen fluff #jay fluff #enhypen fanfiction #jay fanfiction #enhypen au #enhypen imagines #enhypen scenarios

3K notes · View notes

marvelstoriesepic · 2 months ago

Text

Change your mind

Pairing: College!Athlete!Bucky x College!Reader

Summary: Natasha drags you to an NYU baseball game. And despite yourself, one player catches your attention.

Word Count: 6.5k

Warnings: Bucky’s charm; Bucky being flirty; Bucky showing off; Reader checking out baseball players lol; Reader not being interested in baseball (at first)

Author’s Note: I've been craving some flirty college Bucky after all the angst I've been writing. So that’s what I came up with. It is also meant as a little celebration fic because I've got over 1500 followers and that’s so amazing! Thank you so much!! Hope you enjoy! ♡

Divider by @thecutestgrotto ♡

Masterlist

You haven’t been to a single game since the semester started - since any semester started, to be real. And honestly, you have been content with that. Satisfyingly so.

Your time is better spent attending to assignments, slogging through your part-time job at the library, or doing literally anything else besides sitting in the stands and watching a bunch of guys chase a ball around a field, or whatever the hell this sport even is about.

Baseball isn’t your thing, it never has been and it never will be.

You’ve been complaining about it the whole way here. Dramatically so, but you didn’t care. Your best friend can handle you and your antics.

“You know, I can think of at least a dozen things I should be doing right now instead of this,” you grumble, trailing behind her as she weaves through the crowd in search of seats.

Natasha sighs sharply and throws you a glare over her shoulder. “God, would you quit whining? This is good for you.”

“I fail to see how,” you shoot back, adjusting the strap of your bag as you begrudgingly follow her.

But Natasha just smirks. That dangerous little smirk that means she’s about to say something you won’t have a comeback for. “You know,” she muses, eyes darting playfully in your direction. “I didn’t think I’d have to twist your arm to come watch a bunch of hot guys running around out there.”

A brow of yours lifts. “Alright, hold on-” you jab a finger in her direction “-I never said I was against that part.”

She scoffs, clearly pleased with herself, and you grin, nudging her with your elbow as the two of you settle into your seats.

“Besides,” you continue, voice dripping with amusement. “I don’t think you should be making comments like that when we both know you’re here for one guy in particular.”

Natasha only shrugs, all nonchalant, but the corner of her mouth tugs lightly upward. “So what if I am?”

You snicker. “I mean, nothing. I just think it’s cute how whipped you are.”

She rolls her eyes, but her lip is still twitching. Natasha and Steve have only been dating for a few weeks, but you see the way she looks at him. And as much as you complain about being dragged here, you suppose watching your best friend fall stupidly in love is kind of entertaining.

Even if you have to suffer through a baseball game to witness it.

You lean back against the hard metal bleachers, arms crossed as your gaze falls across the field.

It’s a decent night, warm with just enough of a breeze to keep the air from feeling stifling. And even though you’d rather be anywhere else right now, you can’t deny that seeing Natasha like this - light in her eyes, a weird softness in her expression - makes the whole ordeal slightly less painful.

Steve is out on the field, stretching with his team, and Natasha is watching him with this reserved kind of smile. The kind that sneaks up on a person when they don’t realize they’re doing it. You smirk to yourself. Yeah, she’s got it bad. But honestly, you are happy for her. They look good together, and she certainly deserves someone who looks at her the way Steve does.

Natasha must catch you watching her because she suddenly turns, an all-too-knowing glint in her eye. You don’t like that look.

“And who knows,” she says, spreading her legs out in front of her, voice hinting at humor, “maybe your future husband’s down there right now.”

You snort, rolling your eyes so hard they might get stuck. “Oh, yeah, sure. He’s just waiting for me to sweep him off his feet in the middle of a stretch.”

She smirks. “Could happen.”

You shake your head. “Yeah, no thanks. I'm all for watching a bunch of hot guys get all sweaty and run around in tight pants, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” You gesture vaguely toward the field. “That’s just spectating. Everything else is a hard pass.”

Natasha quirks a brow, tilting her head at you. “Oh, come on, Y/n. It’s not that bad.”

You shoot her a look. “Nat, the last guy I went out with, Peter Quill, you remember?-” You don’t wait for her nod “-he told me, verbatim, that he doesn’t believe in seasoning his food. And the guy before that showed up to our date in cargo shorts and a fedora and spent two hours explaining why The Wolf of Wall Street is the peak of cinema.”

She winces. “Oof.”

“Yeah. So forgive me if I’m not that eager to throw myself back into the trenches.” You pause. “Also, I’m super busy.”

Natasha laughs, shaking her head as she turns back toward the field. “Well, if you ever change your mind, I’ll be sure to put in a good word with one of Steve’s teammates.”

You scoff. “Wow, generous and delusional. I’m so lucky to have you as a friend.”

She nudges you with her shoulder, smirking. “The luckiest.”

Huffing, you sink deeper into your seat. Well, at least there is one upside to all of this. If nothing else, you can at least appreciate the view.

Your eyes wander over the team as they move across the field, warming up, adjusting their gloves, casually tossing a ball back and forth.

And yeah, you can admit it - objectively speaking, they look good. Athletic builds, toned arms, legs that fill out those pants just right. It’s a nice view, even if you’re not about to go throwing yourself into the dating pool again, so soon.

Your gaze drifts back to Steve, mostly because he’s the only one you actually know - if only a little. But before you can really focus on him, someone steps into your line of sight, half-blocking the blonde from view.

The number 17 fills out your vision.

Your head tilts instinctively, curiosity sparking before you know it. The guy in front of Steve is tall, broad-shouldered, with an easy stance that suggests he’s completely at home out there on the field.

His uniform fits him in a way that makes you annoyingly aware of just how well built he is - jersey stretched firm across his upper back, the sleeves tight around his biceps, pants snug in all the right places. His chestnut hair curls slightly at the nape of his neck underneath the baseball cap he is wearing, and he stands so casually confident that it makes it impossible to not look at him.

Have you maybe seen him around campus before? You should have, right? Someone like him doesn’t just blend into the background. Maybe in the halls, in one of those massive lecture rooms, passing by in the library, maybe when you're on shift. But you are sure, that if you saw that guy, you would have remembered him.

“See something you like?”

Natasha’s smug voice snaps you out of your thoughts and you catch the smirk she is throwing your way.

Scoffing, you tighten your arms around yourself and glance back at the field. Number 17 is still standing there, talking with Steve, completely unaware of the fact that you’ve just spent the past minute analyzing every inch of his backside.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” you deny, keeping your tone even.

Natasha snorts, bumping her knee against yours. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“For what?”

She nods her head to the field. “For dragging you here. For the eye candy. For giving you the opportunity to meet your future ex-husband.”

You huff out a laugh. “Yeah, yeah. We’ll see.”

Inevitably, your eyes move back to number 17, and you can’t help but think that if you haven’t seen him before, why it feels like you should have.

He’s turning.

Wait, he’s turning.

Your breath hitches and stays stuck in your throat uncomfortably, and suddenly he’s looking at you. Did he feel your eyes on him? Does he somehow know that you eyed him up like a complete creep? But just as the heat of panic can spark in your chest, you realize he’s not even looking at you.

He’s looking at Natasha.

Your shoulders loosen slightly. Steve also has turned his gaze toward the stands, his affective smile directed at your friend as well. He probably told the brunette that she’s here.

Number 17 lifts a hand in a casual wave, movement smooth, and even that simple gesture kind of looks way hotter than you want to feel right now.

Natasha only gives a small, lazy nod in return.

You expect the brunette to turn back around after that, to go back to whatever pre-game thing they were doing. But he doesn’t.

His attention shifts. To you.

Your stomach makes a flip before your brain can decide how to handle it.

His eyes are sharp, the exact color lost to the distance, but it seems to be something blueish. His expression is unreadable, his head tilting slightly as if assessing you. The stadium lights cast a glow over his features, highlighting the sharpness of his jaw, and the way his mouth seems to settle into something just shy of a smirk.

Immediately, you whip your head around to Natasha, eyes wide.

“Do you know that guy?” you ask, trying to sound more casual than you feel.

Natasha doesn’t even bother looking at you. She’s still watching Steve, her lips curving higher as if knowing what she’s doing.

“He’s Steve’s best friend.”

You blink. “Steve’s best friend?”

Your gaze falls back to the field against your better judgment but Number 17 has already turned back to Steve, talking to the blonde who now is sporting a smirk just like Natasha’s.

“You never mentioned him before,” you comment, though it comes out a little too measured.

Natasha of course picks up on it immediately.

“Should I have?” she counters, dragging the words out just a little.

You narrow your eyes at her but she only continues smirking.

And again, your gaze falls back to Number 17. God, why can’t you stop checking him out. The white baseball pants of his do absolutely nothing to hide the strength in his legs. His hair at his nape is slightly messy from running around and you wonder if it would feel soft if you put your hands on it.

You shake that thought right off again.

It’s not like it matters.

Still, you shift in your seat, arms tightening. “I just think it’s interesting that you never brought him up before when he’s his best friend.”

Natasha exhales a laugh through her nose, finally glancing over at you, her eyes glinting with something mischievous. “I mean, I could have.”

“And you didn’t because…?”

“Because,” she says sultry, shrugging one shoulder. “I figured you’d meet him eventually.”

There is something pointed in the way she says it, something deliberate, and you don’t like that it sends a small tingle of anticipation through you.

“So, what’s his deal, then?” you keep going, not even knowing why.

Natasha hums, stretching her limbs languidly. Her voice is sly. “His deal?”

“You know,” you press, trying not to sound too interested, although, fucking hell, you are. “Like, what’s his major? Have you seen him around before?”

She turns to you again, and oh, that look on her face is entirely too smug. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

You huff. “Nat.”

Her smirk only deepens. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

Before you can answer, she looks past you, over your shoulder, down the steps.

Her expression doesn’t change but her smirk gets a little too satisfied, a little too wicked.

You quickly follow her gaze and, oh shit.

A heavy beat thuds against your ribs before your heart remembers how to move properly as your eyes follow the unmistakable figure making his way up the stairs.

Number 17.

And he is coming right toward you.

You inhale sharply, sitting up a little straighter, trying to act like this isn’t throwing you off balance. His steps are easy and unhurried as if giving you the time to check him out some more. And even though you should know better, you do.

His uniform is wrinkled from warm-ups, the fabric clinging in ways that are frankly unfair, and his dark hair curls enough to look annoyingly good.

He reaches your row. And despite the fact that Natasha should logically be the person he came up for, he isn’t looking at her when he speaks.

His eyes land directly on you.

“Steve sent me up,” he says, voice low and smooth, a pleased drawl rolling through his words. “Said he forgot his water bottle or somethin’.”

You blink and try to shake off what his voice does to your body. Crossing one leg over the other, you feign indifference.

“Yeah,” Natasha says, sounding way too delighted. “She’s got it.” She slaps your arm lightly with her hand.

You turn to her confused. “Huh?”

“I asked you to put it in your bag since mine’s smaller.” She raises an eyebrow.

“Didn’t know it’s Steve’s,” you mutter, then glare at her for a second before reaching down to retrieve the damn thing.

Natasha looks triumphant.

When you pull the bottle free and hold it out to the guy standing in front of you, he takes it with his fingers brushing against yours in a way that feels very intentional.

“Thanks, doll.”

His tone is silk spun into sound and hell, it glides over your skin, making it prickle underneath your sweater.

He has the bottle now but doesn’t step away yet. His eyes linger on you.

“Never seen you ‘round here before,” he remarks, studying you with open interest. His lips tug a little as if he is holding back a full grin. As if he is pleased.

You meet his gaze and swallow, keeping your expression open but neutral even as something sparks under your skin. “Yeah, it’s my first game.”

His lips press together like he’s trying not to fully smirk. “No kiddin’.” There is something about the way he says it that you can’t place.

You lift a brow and tilt your head slightly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He shrugs, feigning innocence. “Just figured I woulda noticed you before, is all.”

Oh.

Oh, damn.

You know flirting when you hear it. And that was flirting.

You clear your throat, but a smile is trying to makes its way over your mouth. “Do you say that to all the girls in the stands?”

He doesn’t hesitate. “Nah. Just you.”

Heat winds through your stomach. Because there is an easy, matter-of-fact kind of confidence in his voice.

Biting his lip, he studies you some more. Eyes intensely on you. “So you ain’t much of a baseball fan, then,” he hums. His voice is a low timbre.

You scoff, but can’t help the amused smile lifting your lips. “Not quite my thing.”

“Maybe I can change that.”

You almost choke on your next breath, because oh. He’s good. And hell, that came fast.

Natasha cackles. You ignore her.

Your fingers play with the fabric of your jeans. “Smooth,” you assess, unable to help the wry lilt in your voice.

He grins. Lopsided. Charming. Devastatingly handsome, oh god so help me. “Yeah? That workin’ for me?”

You roll your eyes, but it’s all for show. “Debatable.”

Natasha snorts.

His smirk is deep. There is a twinkle in his blue eyes. He stares at you like that for a second.

“I’m Bucky.” His voice is softened a fraction. His tone is genuine.

“Nice to meet you, Bucky.”

His head moves to the side a little, the corner of his mouth twitching. “And you are?”

You tell him your name and his gaze lingers, his smirk edging into something thoughtful.

“Huh,” he muses.

You frown slightly. “What?”

He shrugs, still watching you, maybe even looking a little bashful. “Dunno. Just- I like it. Suits you.”

That somehow feels worse than the flirting.

You feel your face heat and you hate that Natasha can probably see it.

There is a shout coming from the dugout. “Barnes, get your ass down here, now!”

That must be their trainer Fury.

But Bucky stays standing there, looking at you for a beat longer, biting his lip and scratching the back of his neck. Then he takes a step back, spinning the water bottle once in his hand. “Guess I’ll see ya next game, doll,” he charms.

You blink, eyebrows up. “That’s a bold assumption.”

He just grins, throwing you a wink. “Nah. I got a feelin’.”

And just like that, he turns, heading back down toward the field, leaving you sitting there slightly dazed.

It takes a moment for your brain to start working again.

You feel Natasha leaning in but are not ready to meet that sly expression.

“We both know you’ll be here next time.”

Infuriatingly, you know she is right.

“I hate you.”

“You’re welcome.”

The game kicks off, but you are not watching it the way you thought you would.

Because he’s on the field.

And, well damn.

You tell yourself you’re just curious. That’s all it is. You’re not actually watching him. You’re just keeping an eye on him. Casual observation. A purely academic interest in how the game works.

Except, the longer you watch, the more you have to admit that he is good.

Really good.

His movements are seamless. It’s like an unbroken flow of precision and control as if the game is merely responding to him, not the other way around. He’s so natural, seems so at ease, and yet he moves so fast and sharp.

You can see the innate understanding he has, of how the game breathes. It’s impressive.

When he’s at bat, his stance is balanced to perfection, knees bent just enough, shoulders loose but poised. The pitcher winds up, releases, and before you can even register it fully, Bucky crushes that ball.

The sound of it is sharp, a crack that echoes through the field.

You track the ball as it soars high, way over the outfield. And then he’s running. He’s a cloud of white and navy as he rounds first base, feet hitting the dirt hard.

Natasha whistles low beside you. “Not bad, huh?” She doesn’t hide her smirk.

You press your lips together, determined to be neutral. “Yeah, well. Maybe I was just expecting less.”

Your best friend lets out a half-amused, half-exaggerated breath through her nose. “You weren’t.”

You want to throw her a glare but that would mean you’d have to take your eyes off Bucky and somehow you can’t manage that.

So you only huff and lean further into your seat.

But even as he plays, you can’t shake the feeling that perhaps he somehow tries a little more than necessary.

There are subtle indications. The way he lingers just a bit longer when he looks up toward the stands, the slight, extra flourish in the way he moves. The exaggerated ease of it all.

Oh, hell.

As he rounds third base, his gaze snaps up.

Right at you.

And he winks.

Your stomach plummets. Heat boils along your spine, and you freeze for half a second, caught completely fucking off guard.

The grin he shoots you is smug and holds a knowing edge, seeing the way your eyes are already on him, seeing your reaction, and thriving on it.

Natasha grasps your arm, gasping. “Oh my God.”

She is overly dramatic on purpose and you hate it.

You tear your gaze away from him and glare at her. “Don’t start.”

“Oh, I'm starting,” she laughs, delighted. “That guy’s showing off for you.”

“He is not,” you hiss, trying and failing to ignore the warmth along your neck. Spreading and spreading up to your cheeks.

“That was textbook showing off, babe.”

You bite your lip, refusing to give her the satisfaction of the reaction she wants to see.

But maybe she’s not wrong.

The game continues, and despite your best efforts, your eyes keep finding him.

The more you watch, the more obvious it becomes.

The smooth way he catches the ball in the outfield, hardly needing to look before launching it straight to second base. The way he moves just a little bit slower after a play like he knows there are eyes on him. The way his grin sharpens when he hears the cheers, the teasing comments from his teammates.

And apparently, Steve notices, too.

Because after a particularly showy throw - one that was definitely more dramatic than necessary - Steve jogs past him and smacks him on the back of the head.

You faintly hear Bucky’s startled grunt from the bleachers.

Natasha snickers beside you.

Steve is muttering something to him, but the brunette only grins, backing away with his arms outstretched and shoulders pulled up in an unbothered shrug. And his eyes immediately find you. You look away hastily.

Your best friend leans in, voice low and teasing. “Change your mind about dating yet?”

Sinking lower in your seat, you move your hand through your hair. “This is ridiculous.”

But even as you say it, you glance back at Bucky.

And he’s still looking at you.

This time, you don’t look away.

Another smack lands across the back of his head and he is forced to drag his eyes away from you to grumble at the guy who is grinning from ear to ear, enjoying whatever the hell this is between Bucky and you.

“You’re actin’ real thirsty right now, Barnes,” the voice of the other player sounds out, loud enough for you to make out some words. “Hey, I mean, I get it. She’s cute. But can you focus, man?”

Flustered, you shove your hands between your thighs and curl a little bit inward.

“Shut up, Sam,” Bucky warns, rolling his shoulders and throwing a hard look at his teammate before jogging back to his position.

You don’t miss the way he shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair after lifting the cap for a moment as if he is trying to gather himself.

Your heart is beating in a weird rhythm. Your hands are a little sweaty and you hate that Natasha notices.

“Well, well,” she teases, watching Bucky get into position. “Looks like you’re a motivator.”

“Do you ever stop?”

“Not when it’s this much fun,” she grins, eyes swimming in mischief. “And clearly not when my best friend’s about to have my boyfriend's buddy ask for her number.”

It’s your time to smirk. “Boyfriend?” you chirp. “I'm sure Steve would like to know you calling him that behind his ba-”

“There’s no turning this around, babe. I’m the one with the power here,” she chides, but she is suppressing a smile. “No go ahead and continue to watch your future boyfriend.” She turns your shoulder forward to the field.

“He’s not-”

“Watch.”

You do.

And the longer the game goes on, you try to keep telling yourself that you’re going to stop watching him. But no matter how much you try to focus on anything else - the scoreboard, the crowd, even the actual game - your eyes don’t listen.

They keep wandering back to him. To the way he moves, his effortless command of the field.

It’s the way he seems to own every second he’s out there like he is meant to be on the field. And he seems to love it. His body moves with an instinctive kind of grace, muscles shifting under the snug fit of his uniform, every motion thought through but natural.

When he takes his spot at shortstop, you admire the confidence of his stance. He’s completely at home. He stands relaxed but his eyes are sharp and focused, scanning the field.

And when the ball comes his way, his gloved hand snatches it mid-air before his arm whips it across the diamond in a clean throw.

It’s irritatingly impressive.

You try to convince yourself that he plays like this all the time - that this isn’t for you at all - but there is something nagging at the back of your mind. Something in the way he carries himself, the extra little flair in the way he moves.

He really seems to be putting on a small show and you can’t shake the feeling that you might be the only one in the audience that actually matters to him. You don’t know how to feel about that.

Natasha catches you watching again. “Mhm,” she hums, knowingly. Not at all subtle about it.

You throw her a burning look. “Shut up, Nat.”

She smirks and tilts her head. “You want to be the one he’s showing off for.”

You release a sharp breath, looking at the darkened sky faintly lit by the stadium lights. “If I did, I’d be enjoying it, wouldn’t I? I just think he’s- trying a little hard. Like he’s-”

You don’t get to finish that sentence because the crowd erupts again. The score is tied. This is the final inning.

Your throat constricts as Bucky walks up to plate, adjusting his cap like he’s been waiting for this moment. He taps the bat against the plate once, twice, and tilts his head at the pitcher. You watch the way Bucky’s muscles coil, the readiness, the concentration.

The pitcher winds up. The stadium is silent.

The ball is pitched.

Bucky swings.

Crack.

The sound echoes across the field as Bucky swings and connects perfectly, the entire stadium staring with bated breath. The ball rockets up into the night sky, impossibly high, soaring straight over the center field fence.

It’s gone. A home run.

The crowd erupts, students leaping to their feet, fists pumping, voices carrying through the air. Natasha is already up, grabbing your wrist and yanking you up beside her.

“That’s your man,” Natasha yells over the noise, pointing at the field. “That’s your home run, babe!”

“Oh my god, Nat, he’s not-” you start, but you are cut off by the thunder of feet around you, students leaping onto the bleachers, fists raised, chanting his name.

Just like the others, you are watching Bucky jog around the bases at a confident pace, brushing a hand through his sweaty hair again.

You’re honestly a little overwhelmed with this whole thing. Trying to catch up to the way Bucky moves as if it’s the easiest thing in the world for him, like sending a ball out of the park is just something he does on a casual Tuesday.

And then, just as he crosses home plate, the team swarming him, he turns his head up.

Right to you.

The whole world seems to slow for just a second. Your breath is lost in your throat when your eyes lock. There is a heat in his gaze, but it shifts from exhilaration to something softer. He beams up at you for that special moment, blue eyes shining under the stadium lights, his grin wide.

Your pulse hammers in a way you really don’t want to acknowledge.

You are clapping, like all the others.

And there is something changing in his expression. The corner of his mouth curls in a way as if he can’t believe what he is seeing. His confidence falters for a brief second, replaced by something almost sheepish. His hand scrubs over his face, attention caught by his teammates, but there definitely is a hint of pink dusting his cheeks at your small cheers.

The other players pull him into a rough embrace and for a moment you don’t see him at all, the rest jumps around him in celebration.

“Alright, come on, let’s get down there,” Natasha says, grabbing your wrist again.

“Wait, what?” you sputter as she pulls you toward the railing, making her way down the steps, dragging you with her.

“You are not going to be the only one still sitting while your boyfriend-”

“Stop that-”

“-just won the damn game,” she finishes, waving you off as you scowl at her.

Before you know it, you’re at the very front of the stands, your hands coming together as the roar of the crowd vibrates through your bones.

You see Bucky looking over the chaos, his arms slung around his teammates, his chest rising and falling from exertion, when suddenly, his gaze catches you again.

That bright, wide grin now definitely softens. In a shit, you really were watching kind of way. His blue eyes scan your face as though he is trying to read every single thought rushing through your head right now.

Natasha is practically jumping beside you, cheering happily, so you don’t want to be a bummer and start clapping again. Looking at him.

His smile tries to widen, but Bucky bites his lip. And then, he actually looks bashful.

He dips his head just slightly, running another hand down his face, and this time it’s him looking away first.

But not before you catch that tiny flicker of something almost shy. For all his confidence, for all the easy charm he’s been throwing at you, all the flirtatious lines, something about your reaction to him is what makes him falter that little bit.

And oh how it does something to you. You don’t even fight the little smile on your lips as Natasha bumps her shoulder into yours.

“Shut up,” you murmur, but it sounds too light.

Natasha smirks. “I didn’t say anything.”

You roll your eyes and fold your arms over your chest to hide the way your hands are still itching to continue clapping.

The roar of the crowd slowly begins to settle, the energy of the game remaining charged in the air. The bleachers empty languidly, students pouring onto the field or shuffling toward the exits, their excitement buzzing in hurried conversations and triumphant chants.

The players begin filtering off the field, disappearing into the tunnel leading to the locker rooms. Some of them are still exchanging shoves and laughs, adrenaline still pumping through their veins.

Bucky walks alongside Steve, his uniform tightly handing off his frame.

But before he disappears with the rest of them he glances behind one last time. And, of course, it’s at you again. You shiver.

His glance is just a flicker of blue under the harsh stadium lights but it’s just a beat longer than you would expect. As if he is making sure you’re still here. As if he is worried you won’t be when he comes back out.

Then he’s gone.

“You see that?” Natasha assesses, leaning her weight into one hip, arms crossed.

“See what?” you ask, obviously annoyed.

She’s unbothered. “That boy just looked at you like a man checking to see if his car’s still parked outside.”

You groan. “God, shut up.”

“That never worked on me. You should know better.”

With an impish grin, she tugs at your wrist and guides you away from the bleachers.

“Come on, we’re waiting for them,” she says, already pulling you toward the tunnel exit.

“What? Nat-”

“Well, I’m waiting for Steve,” she says, “and you, my dear, have been eyefucking his best friend all night, so don’t even try to act like you don’t want to see him again.”

“Okay, come on,” you defend. “I have not-”

“-been staring at him, sure,” she interrupts, her smirk widening. “But only every time he wasn’t looking. Which, by the way, wasn’t often.”

You groan again but follow her anyway, because, at this point, you’re not even sure if you’re protesting for show or out of actual resistance.

Minutes go by as more people slowly tickle away, leaving only a few clusters of them lingering around, chatting under the lights.

The air is still warm, but the breeze carries enough of a chill to make you shift on your feet, arms folding over your chest as you wait.

And then, Steve and Bucky emerge from the locker room, side by side.

Steve’s blond hair is still damp from the shower, his team jacket slung over one shoulder. The moment he spots Natasha, his whole face softens. His stride quickens as he reaches her and he pulls her in for a kiss that is far sweeter than you expected from someone fresh out of a game.

Your best friend, for all her teasing confidence tonight, melts against him, fingers gripping the fabric of his jacket.

You feel happiness for her but you look away, feeling like you’re intruding on something intimate.

And before you can prepare yourself, Bucky is standing right in front of you.

“Didn’t think you’d still be here,” he says, voice lower, less playful than before.

His hair is damp too, looking darker like that. He doesn’t wear his cap anymore, short brown tendrils resting on his forehead. His uniform is gone, replaced by a dark hoodie and jeans. And yet, he still looks every bit like the man who just stole the game with a home run. He looks handsome. You can even admit that.

“Uh, yeah, I’ll leave with Nat,” you answer, voice a little quieter than you would have liked it to be.

Bucky smiles. He shifts his weight, hands slipping into his pockets.

“Well, had to make sure you actually enjoyed yourself,” he says, tipping his head to the side, smirk slowly appearing. “Didn’t want you to suffer through it since you’ve already been dragged out here.”

You huff out a small laugh, looking at the ground before up at him again. “It wasn’t terrible.”

“Not terrible?” he echoes, feigning offense. “Sweetheart, I won the damn game. You were cheerin’ for me.”

It’s as if he needed to say it out loud. As if he’s been telling that to himself the whole time.

You bite your lip. Those nicknames will send you tumbling to the floor if you’re not careful. “Yes, well. You put on a good show.”

He grins something slow and smug. “And here I was thinkin’ you weren’t much of a baseball fan.”

You shift, laughing softly. “Still not, really.”

He hums, studying you so deeply. In a gentle way. But he takes his sweet time and it’s making you nervous. “I’ll change your mind.”

Your stomach does something weird - something that has everything to do with the way his voice dips slightly, the way it rumbles out so smoothly.

You narrow your eyes, trying to keep your cool. “I’d like to see you try.”

Bucky chuckles softly, rocking on the balls of his feet. He can’t stop watching you, moving his eyes around your features, your whole frame, as if wondering where you have been the whole time. He looks like he is trying to read every little thing written across your face.

Your chest feels a little too tight, and your pulse picks up the longer you look at him, the longer he looks at you.

The air is cooler now that the game is over, the heat from the crowd dissipating into the open night, and although you feel plenty heated up by his gaze and presence, you instinctively rub your arms, shifting on your feet.

“You cold?” Bucky’s voice is lower, and there is a soft gentleness to his tone, that sounds so sincere, you feel your knees grow weak.

You shake your head. “I’m fine.”

“I’ve got an extra jersey in my bag,” he offers as if he didn’t even hear you, already moving. “Or you can take this one-” He seems about to shrug off his hoodie instead.

You quickly hold up a hand to stop him. “No, really. I’m okay.”

Bucky pauses, squinting at you, mouth quirking as he eyes you a second longer. Then, as if he’s figured something out, his lips form a real smirk again.

“Alright,” he concedes easily, his weight tipping slightly to one side, then back again. “Guess I’ll just give it to you next time, then.”

You freeze just slightly, blinking up at him.

Next time.

You don’t quite know what to do with that.

You clear your throat, forcing words out. “Yeah. Next time.”

Bucky beams.

It’s a full-on, dazzling grin, cheeks high and rosy, eyes bright in a way that makes something overturn in your stomach.

He looks way too pleased with himself now. And you are way too aware of how warm your face feels.

You try to push yourself past the sudden rush of flustered energy. “Well, I guess I will see you around campus, then.”

Bucky hums, considering, still not taking his eyes off you. “Maybe,” his head turns to the side, making a pause. “Or I could just make sure.”

“Make sure?”

He pulls his hands from his hoodie pocket, adjusting his footing and running a hand through his hair, messing with the damp strands a little. He might just seem the slightest bit nervous.

Flipping his palm up expectantly, he looks at you with a glint of hope in his eyes. “Your phone.”

Your stomach does that turning-over thing again as you realize what he’s going on about. “Oh.”

You are fumbling to grab your phone out of your bag, fingers perhaps wavering a little and you are glad that Natasha is preoccupied at the moment to see this. Unlocking it, you hand it over to him.

Bucky takes it gently, fingers brushing yours. Again, it feels intentional.

The glow of the screen illuminates his face as he punches in his number, and presses to call himself so he’ll have your number as well before handing your phone back to you.

You glance down.

A new contact. Bucky Barnes.

Bucky watches you with a soft smile.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve calls, still standing with Natasha. You don’t see the triumphant smile those lovebirds share, busy trying not to show your disappointment of the night coming to an end. “We heading out?”

Bucky sighs, but he doesn’t break eye contact with you just yet.

“Guess that’s my cue,” he murmurs.

“Guess so.”

His feet shuffle against the floor. He seems not quite ready to end this conversation, taking a slow step backward, not turning away from you.

“See you next game, doll,” he says, words landing softer, quieter in a way. He speaks as if it matters.

You fidget with the sleeve of your sweater and let out an almost shy laugh. “Sure.”

Bucky smirks, holding up his phone and waving with it when walking further backward to Steve. “I’ll remind you.”

You watch him walk off with his best friend, watch him throw another grin over his shoulder at you, still feeling the heat that won’t stop tingling along your skin.

Your own best friend throws her arm around your shoulders.

This time, she keeps her mouth shut. She knows she doesn’t have to say anything anymore. There is no denying it any longer and you are well aware.

Because yeah, you might not be into baseball.

But you might be into Number 17.

“Flirting is a promise of something more.”

- Milan Kundera

2K notes · View notes