#give him a friend.... take him places.......... they could have fun.... :(

[wearysparrows]

Chariot

ao3/masterlist

Summary: Caleb fingers you in his car, but you’re interrupted by a phone call. It doesn’t seem to deter him much, though.

cw: female reader, reader is mc, vaginal fingering, grinding, pseudo-incest, caleb referring to himself as your brother, porn with feelings, light spanking, caleb being talkative because he's caleb, sex while on the phone, Zayne gets caught in the crossfire, not beta read, 5K

“You still act frugal, but your Colonel’s salary must be pretty cushy if this is what you drive.”

You sat, arms crossed, in the passenger’s seat of Caleb’s car. It didn’t fit your childhood image of him at all – freckled skin and a bright smile, hands that were tanned and deft at breathing life back into long dead machinery. Caleb had turned more than one beater into something functional enough to drive you around in. He did it for fun. A friend's car that needed work was somehow always in the lot, or something Caleb had miraculously turned drivable in his precious free time. The black interior of the Lamborghini, with its blue backlighting, felt cold, sterile. This was Colonel Xia’s vehicle, not Caleb’s car. Caleb wouldn’t drive something like this. Not your Caleb. Together, you sat parked in an empty lot, one that overlooked the bustling nighttime lights of Skyhaven below. A dry summer wind buffeted the outside of the car, unable to touch you. Caleb turned his face toward you in the dark, eyes illuminated by the cool lights on the dash. It gave you the impression of light bouncing off the dark, untouched gems of a cave. Far away. A vein that couldn’t be mined.

“It’s not an act, baby. I still am frugal. Besides, my Colonel’s salary lets me spoil you –  just like I always wanted to. And the car lets me take you places. You hate it that much?”

His elbow was resting on the console, supporting his weight. His desire to hear the truth of your opinion was evident in his tone. Caleb never wanted you to lie to him, even if it hurt. You dragged the pad of your index finger over his knuckle bones – or rather, the plating that had replaced his knuckle bones – watching as it rose and fell over them. The paneling was scratched here and there, as if it had taken numerous beatings. Things we wouldn’t tell you of. His fingers twitched under your touch. You wondered if it was a reflex, a remnant of when the arm still boasted flesh on its outside. You knew he couldn’t feel the contact. Your heart ached dully for him, filling up the space between your diaphragm and lungs. You would have shared his pain, if you could. You wanted the same pain. The same everything. Two of everything. Always.

“You make it sound like everything you do is for me. It’s not that I hate it. It’s just not you. And there’s this huge divider between us,” you gestured to the console, which was stupidly large, and felt like a wall to keep Caleb out. Or maybe one to keep you in.

 “Besides, if I said I hated it, would you really get rid of it?”

Caleb reached for your hand that was playing with his fingers, and interlaced yours with his own. The metallic chill of his touch made gooseflesh rise along the skin of your forearm. The certainty of its steel had become something that grounded you.

“It doesn’t just sound that way. It is that way.”

Caleb was quiet for a moment before continuing, holding your hand, a peculiar stillness over him, as if considering the latter half of your statement. 

“If it’s the distance that bothers you,” his thumb stroked the top of your hand, tracing the valleys between your metacarpals.

“We can close it. You just have to give me the OK.”

With how Caleb had been acting after his return, you didn’t doubt the seriousness of his statement. When you came too close, he embraced you, but warned you he wouldn’t let you off the hook if you kept going – even if you claimed it was only on a whim. Your hands could only roam so far.

I can’t promise I’ll keep my cool whenever you do that. So don’t go any further.

You wanted to see Caleb lose his cool. You wanted to see it again. 

“OK, Colonel. Enlighten me. How will you close this big distance between us in your fancy car?”

You only had a moment to catch the wry smile that crossed over Caleb’s face before you were suddenly being lifted from your seat, weightless, the blue fractals of his evol reflecting in the lights from the dash. Its sound was all too familiar, a low hum, like the air was alive with its energy. An involuntary sound of surprise escaped you, and you were deposited neatly astride Caleb’s lap. While he had been commandeering the very gravity around your body, defying laws that everyone else had to adhere to, he had adjusted the back of his seat so he was leaning back, giving you more clearance to sit on top of him. Your skirt had hiked up around your thighs, and Caleb adjusted it back down your legs, eyes still on your face. His fingers against your skin sent hot energy skittering down your spine. You wanted them inside you, all over you.

“We’ve closed the distance. Physically speaking, anyway.” 

His tone was lighthearted, but laced with something else you couldn’t quite place. Not quite hope. Closer to resignation. His hands hovered around your calves, like he couldn’t decide on where to put them, before landing on the lower half of your thighs. Both big. One warm, one cold.

“I like the car a bit better from this angle. Though I’m still not wholly convinced.”

You looked into his face as you spoke, ignoring the interior of the car. He did look good from this angle, underneath you. He looked good from any angle. There was a reason he was unfathomably popular growing up. He seemed to have shed all of it, caging himself in his singular need for your affection. You reached out to his face, and pinched his nose between your index finger and thumb. He scrunched his face up in response, wiggling his nose, before you let him go. 

“What, you’re not satisfied with my nose, either? I’m not sure I can replace it as easily as the car, pipsqueak.”

His fingers played with the hem of your skirt, slipping underneath it. His thumbs stroked your bare skin. Forbidden heat clawed its way into your stomach. You gave him an excuse for wanting to touch his face, to make it yours.

“I’m not dissatisfied with it. I just own the air.”

Caleb paused, and a little smile replaced his curious look. His eyes crinkled up at the corners. His gaze on yours was full of a barely restrained burning intensity. 

“You own me, too.”

His casual admission of ownership left you unable to find words. Your skin prickled where the calloused pads of his fingers touched your bare skin. It was too much, not enough. He was always toeing the line, testing the waters, pulling away when he saw any hint of indecision on your face. You passed your hand over the dog tags that sat against his chest, and they clinked softly under your touch. Cold, like his right hand on your leg. You had insisted he wear it in its true form, without the false skin, and he had readily complied, despite his discomfort. You preferred his true self, even if he didn’t. Your Caleb was perfectly flawed. His eyes followed the movement of your fingers as you tangled them in his necklace. He spoke gently, in that tone colored with nostalgia he often used when he recalled memories of your shared childhood – both the good and the bad. 

“You know, when you were really little, you saw a drawing of Apollo driving his chariot of the sun across the sky in a picture book I was reading to you. You asked me if I’d be able to do the same one day, when I could fly. If I could pull the sun across the sky, led by white horses. I told you I’d do my best to live up to your image of me. So I’ve got all kinds of chariots for you. This is just one. If you don’t like it, I’ll get you another. Just tell me what kind you want.”

You heard the ring of your brother’s voice, the boy you had grown up with. The one who had taken you to the arcade, paid with his allowance. He cheated with his evol to win you toys when he couldn’t win by honest means.

Just tell me which one you want, and I’ll get it for you. I’ll get them all.

You studied Caleb’s earnest face in the dim light. The soft swoop of his hair over his brow, which cast dark shadows on his eyes that betrayed his depth of feeling, and kept it locked tight, all at once. The perfect slope of his nose, freckles given by the kiss of the sun. His full lips, chapped and bitten. Even in the heaviness of the night, he was still somehow radiant. The dark space of the car couldn’t contain him. You felt yourself soften towards him, your earlier irritation at his show of being the Colonel melting under his true light. 

“I guess being the Colonel of the Far Space Fleet is about as close as you can get to driving the sun across the sky. In the modern day, anyway.” 

Caleb chuckled, a soft, boyish exhale of air. He looked up at you with adoration so clear that it made something twist hotly in your chest. It was so different from the face he had worn the first time you had seen him again. That horrible mask of indifference. That damned uniform. So divorced from the image of your Caleb that you had doubted it was really him. But it was him. A side he had never shown to you. The two Calebs spread each other's gore across the sky, curling and reaching as blood did in water.

“That almost sounded like a compliment, pretty girl. Is the sun going to rise in the west tomorrow?”

Your mind conjured the image of Caleb lashing the sun across the sky in the west, forcing it to act the opposite of its nature. If anyone could do it – it was Caleb. Nothing seemed beyond him, even now. He had come back from the dead, after all. The cosmos no longer seemed such a tall order. Not even stars could return from the land of the departed. They only left black holes behind in their wake. You fanned one hand thoughtfully across his chest, feeling his heartbeat. It quickened, then stilled, then quickened again.

“I guess that’s up to you, isn’t it?”

Caleb grinned in response to your question, a real smile, showing you his rows of white teeth. He had canines that were just slightly longer than usual, one of which was just a little crooked. You had poked at them with your fingertips as a child, pressing them deeply into your skin, and watched the marks they left with unbridled curiosity. The pain was a kind you liked, because it had come from him. He had let you explore his mouth with your fingers, his tongue chasing behind them. He had done the same to you. Once, he had stroked the back of your tongue a little too hard, and you gagged on his fingers. His eyes had gone wide, and the game had ended when Caleb disappeared in his room for the rest of the day, leaving you wondering what you had done wrong.

You wanted to lick the inside of his mouth, to press your tongue against his. The direction of your gaze didn’t go unnoticed.

“Interested in my mouth?”

His hand rose to your face, thumb parting your lips, just like he used to. You licked at it with the flat of your tongue, and heard him inhale sharply through his nose in response.

“Yeah. It looks much better when you’re not talking so much, though.”

Caleb pulled you down to him, so that you were chest to chest. His voice was soft and sweet in your ear. He was hard underneath you. He had been for some time. You had both been ignoring it. It was the standard between you, something that was never discussed. It just was.

“Really? But I was gettin’ the impression you liked talking to me. You started calling me every day, again. You text me all the time, too. You even send me cute pictures of yourself. I especially liked the one where–”

You put a hand over his mouth, not wanting to hear him tell the truth of how you had teased him over text. Your elbow was resting on his chest in order to do so, and his dog tags dug painfully into the bones of your arm.

“Shut up, Caleb.”

His voice was muffled from behind your hand. You could feel the natural wetness of his breath against the skin of your palm as he spoke.

“Do you really want me to? Or are you just sayin’ that because you’re embarrassed? It’s just me. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

You heard the unspoken words behind his statement. Caleb had already seen every part of you. He had seen more of you than people who had been inside of you. He had wiped your tears, your snot, your vomit. Your blood. None of it fazed him. He wanted it. You sat back so that you were sitting on his thighs. Your hands hovered over his belt, tugging on it, but not undoing it. Caleb watched, gaze snapping between your hands and your face. Even in the low light, you could see the new flush that colored his ears and cheeks.

“You’re making me want to push my luck, baby. Is this a test of my self control?”

You stuck your thumb underneath the portion of his belt that was held down by the buckle.

“And if it is?”

Caleb took a breath through his mouth, and his words came out a strained rasp.

“Then I’d ask if you want me to pass with flying colors,”

His hand wrapped a firm grip around your wrist, one you couldn’t deny, and guided it to press against his cock through his cargos. Even through the layers of fabric, he felt so impossibly warm.

“Or fail miserably. ” 

You felt yourself warm from your chest, head becoming so hot so quickly that you felt a wave of lightheadedness. You had seen and felt Caleb hard under your eyes and ass many times – but he had never once made a move to acknowledge it. Seeing your hand against the outline of him sent a new kind thrill racing through you. You had imagined touching him like this more times than you could count. Putting him in your mouth. Responding to his interest. But you couldn’t, then. Not if he didn’t acknowledge his want. Now, things were different. Caleb wasn’t just a boy anymore. He wasn’t the king of the playground, the star of his highschool basketball team, nor the Valedictorian of his DAA class. He was a man. A man who wanted you. Openly.

“I’d like to see you fail at something, for once.” 

You removed your hand from his grip, prying his fingers from your wrist, and worked his belt buckle open. The jingle of the metal suddenly seemed ridiculously loud in the small space of the car’s interior to your ears. When it was free, you pulled his zipper down, down. Your fingers felt strange, weak. Like you couldn’t quite get enough power in them to do what you wanted to do. The zipper caught, more than once. You heard Caleb’s breaths coming quickly through his nose, and felt more than saw the heat of his gaze on you as you worked. He made no motion to assist you – either enjoying your struggle or holding himself back – you couldn’t be sure. Maybe it was both. 

Caleb’s hands were around your waist, then, and he lifted you back into his lap, setting you squarely over his cock. The only barrier between you was that of your underwear and his boxers. He had shucked his jeans further down his legs with his evol. His grip on your waist was so tight that it was nearly painful, pressing into your bones, and he used it as leverage to roll his hips up into yours. Being with him like this – it was surreal. So much familiar, and so much was so strange. Like a shared dream. There was no hiding how wet you were when you pressed up against him like this. His eyes looked so dark that they were nearly black, the deep lilac of them nearly erased by his pupils. His thumbs lifted the hem of your skirt, hiking it up over your hips, and he looked down between your legs for the first time, as if he was finally given permission.

“Fuck,” he breathed.

You felt him twitch underneath you. Once, twice.

“Are these the ones I bought for you?” 

Your mind, having been emptied of everything except for the feeling of his newfound closeness, took a moment to recall what he was talking about. You looked down at the place where he was touching you, thumbs digging pleasantly into the muscles of your hips. It was, in fact, not the usual article. Being a hunter, it wasn’t exactly comfortable to wear anything that was less than practical most of the time. But today was your day off – and you had opted to change into a pair that Caleb had supplied in the room he had given you at his house. (At the time, you had tried not to let your mind wander as to why he had supplied so many pairs in both your size and the brands you liked. But you knew Caleb. You had your suspicions – just more things you didn’t acknowledge.) You managed a nod. You hardly managed to feel embarrassed about it, though. He made it so easy to do as he wanted, so comfortable.  Even when you were still so angry with him – because everything he did benefitted you.

Caleb keened in response, a low whine in his throat, and the flat of his palm suddenly met your ass with a soft smack. The feeling went straight between your legs. It was something you hadn’t even known you wanted from him. Now, you suddenly wanted more.

“You’re so cute. Lift up. Hold yourself over me.”

You did as he asked, too caught in the heat of the moment to argue, bracing yourself by gripping the sides of the driver's seat, hovering over him with your knees on either side of his lap. You were dimly aware that he could have lifted you with his evol, but he was making you work for it, instead. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but any reservations you had were quickly forgotten when you felt Caleb’s hands drift up the back of your thighs. He squeezed your ass, and smacked it again, like he just couldn’t help himself. It was harder than the first time, and stung more with the impression from the first still smarting. Your body tensed up all over in reaction to the impact, your breath leaving you through slightly parted lips.

“That’s my good girl.”

Before you could voice any kind of response to his praise, he was pulling your underwear to the side, his fingers finding you slick and ready for him. One and then two were inside you, giving you hardly any time to prepare or adjust. He was so eager. It was hard to believe the wet sounds were coming from his fingers inside of you. You shifted your hips back against his hand. Caleb was breathing open-mouthed underneath you, eyes laser focused on your face, watching your responses, drinking them in. His fingers were so much longer than your own, and touched you in places you couldn’t feel without him. 

“I’m inside of you, baby. Holy shit. You’re so wet. I’m the only one you get like this for, right? No one else but me. C’mon, tell me.”

It was hard to formulate a coherent thought when he was giving his all to thoroughly fucking you open with his fingers. You opened your mouth, willing at least the admittance of the truth to come out. Yes, he was the only one. Even when you had been with other men, you had searched for Caleb in the downturn of their eyes, in the largeness in their build, in the freckles on their faces, in the softness of their hair. You had never wanted anyone else. No one else could get you this worked up with just a few words and a simple touch. Caleb was the only one who aroused such strong emotion in you – anger, hatred, arousal. Love.

Just as you found your voice in the depths of your throat, the sound of your phone ringing from the console where you had placed it rudely interrupted. It was the same ringtone Caleb had chosen for you years ago, when he had been fiddling with your phone without permission, messing with your settings. After he had died, you hadn’t the heart to change it. It would have been like erasing one of his last impacts on your life. Caleb’s fingers inside you hardly paused, and you watched, stupefied, as his evol brought your phone towards you. You both looked at the caller ID at the same time. 

Zayne’s name illuminated the screen.

You saw a strange expression flicker over Caleb’s face as you turned back to him, before he schooled it into an easy smile. He pressed his fingers inside of you, as deep as they would go.

“Answer it.”

You gawked at him. His fingers curled inside of you. There was no way you could answer the phone right now. Let alone to talk to your doctor, your childhood friend. Why did he have to choose now, of all times, to call? Zayne never called. Why now?

“Caleb–”

He shook his head, eyes firm.

“If you won’t, I will. Put it on speaker.”

His voice was hard. It was the same one he used on you when you were kids, when you knew you had no other choice but to obey him. Usually for your own good. You were still hovering over Caleb’s body, and your arms were beginning to ache with the effort of holding yourself up. You pressed answer, and Caleb’s evol oh-so-kindly held the phone up to your face. Zayne’s voice came from the other end of the line, distant but palpable with underlying concern, even in his singular word.

“Hello?”

You did your best to collect yourself, while Caleb seemed to pay your struggle no mind. He only worked to bring you closer to the edge. Your thighs began to shake, your muscles protesting the position. 

“Zayne? Is everything okay?”

Your voice wavered, but you managed. Caleb palmed himself with his right hand as you spoke, a loud shuffling of fabric.

“Everything’s alright. I saw you were in Skyhaven – and in a fairly isolated area. I…was concerned.”

He sounded like he was choosing his words carefully, not asking you to reveal too much, nor revealing much about his own intentions. You were mid-wondering how the fuck Zanye knew where you were and why he had to call now, of all times, when you were at your worst, when it came back to you. You had shared your location with him when you had commandeered his unique skill set for an investigation just some weeks prior, deep into the mountains. You must have forgotten to turn it off. You didn’t have time to wonder why he was checking it after the fact. Guilt threatened to creep behind your eyes. You swallowed it away before answering.

“I’m…okay. I’m with a friend.”

Caleb’s movements inside of you became punishing in response to your words, pushing in and out, his thumb working your sensitive nerves. He smacked your ass again, and it was loud. You knew by the way he was acting that he wanted Zayne to hear what was happening. They weren’t exactly rivals during childhood – but Caleb had certainly seemed to see it that way. He made no effort to dampen the sounds he was eliciting from your body, not the slap of your skin, nor the wetness between your legs. You corrected yourself, hoping to soothe his anxieties, and implore him to give your body reprieve while you were on the damn phone.  

“I mean – I’m with Caleb.”

He was smiling underneath you, looking all too pleased with himself at your amendment. He cupped your breast through your shirt, squeezing it, rolling his fingers over the soft flesh there. His scent was everywhere around you. Clean laundry. A new day. Summer sun on skin. Freshly trimmed wheatgrass. It stuck in your throat pleasantly.

Zayne was quiet for a long moment. 

“Caleb? Your brother, Caleb?”

The reminder of just whose fingers were inside you caused you to clench around Caleb’s fingers in response. There was a flurry of movement, and Caleb shoved his boxers down without warning. You heard his cock slap heavily against his stomach as it sprang free. His fingers came out from inside of you, and one hand forced your hips down so that you were sitting directly on his cock, your underwear still pushed to the side. He wasn’t inside of you – just slipping wetly in between your legs. The other hand forced your head close to his mouth, fisting in the back of your hair, tugging. Your scalp prickled with pinpoints of lovely pain. His voice just above a harsh whisper in your ear. 

“That’s right. I’m your fucking brother. Are you going to tell him what you’re doing with your brother right now?”

Caleb repeated the word 'brother' with such vitriol that it was practically a snarl, rather than a word. The phone was still held aloft next to your face. 

“Y-yeah. My brother, Caleb. I’ll explain later, Zayne. I gotta…gotta go.”

There was another excruciatingly long silence. You would apologize later. Profusely. With excuses.

“Alright. As long as you’re safe.”

Zayne sounded wholly unconvinced, and like he wanted to say something more, but stopped himself short.

“Yeah.”

The phone dropped back onto the console with a dull thud, and you prayed upon every star that would listen Zayne had hung up of his own accord. Caleb dragged your face to his by your hair, his lips and teeth clacking into yours. He licked at the roof of your mouth, sucked your tongue, bit at your lips. Zayne’s words had set Caleb off, and his unresolved energy was practically radiating off of him in droves. His hand was on you again, pleasuring you, while bracing you by the hips with his other, sliding you up and down the length of his cock with barely controlled ardor. Your orgasm was upon you only seconds later, the anxiety of the phone call, the intensity of the situation, and the stimulation from both his cock and fingers were enough to crest you over the edge with a shuddering breath, inhaling the air from Caleb’s mouth into yours, the sweet taste of his breath your new reality.

Your arms finally gave up their valiant effort of holding you above Caleb, and you collapsed on top of him. His arms were instantly around you, his face pressed into the crook of your neck, sucking and biting at the sensitive skin there. He came from rutting against you with a catch of his breath in his throat and a stuttering groan, and you felt the pulses of his orgasm between you, his spill hot against your skin. The heave of his chest lifted you up and down, up and down, in time with his breath. You braced yourself against his chest with the flat of your palm, lifting yourself to look him in the face. He was still just as hard underneath you, despite having just finished. Caleb’s head followed your upward movements, and he licked a stray bead of sweat from your cheek, up the side of your face like a dog. The wetness left behind from his tongue felt cool in its absence. You smacked a fist against his chest as he lay back.

“You are the worst. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you?”

You couldn’t muster any real malice to bolster your words. Being with Caleb set your heart on edge and at ease, and he was the only one who could make your body feel as it just had. Caleb put the fingers that had just been inside of you in his mouth before answering your question, licking them clean of you. His free hand – the mechanical one – carded through your hair, brushing sweaty strands from your forehead. His expression was back into one of sweetness.

“Yeah, angel. I told you I’m the worst version of Caleb, didn’t I? I want to do all kinds of terrible things to you. Make sure you have everything you need. Everything you want. Be by your side. Wake up to you in the morning. Be inside of you. Keep you where no one else can find you. A world that’s just you and me.”

Caleb’s soft emphasis on the word terrible made it sound like he meant something else entirely. Like he was telling you his innermost, fervent dream. One that he had tried so hard for so long to make a reality. His hand cupped your face now, and you placed your own over it, nuzzling into the cool assuredness of the metal. Your voice came out barely a whisper.

“I must be the worst version of me, too. Maybe I want to hurt you more than you realize. Maybe I want you to suffer before you can have those things. Before you can give them to me.”

Caleb blinked up at you, and warmth spilled onto his face, into the ripening plums of his irises. Everything was reduced to him in that moment, and he was the pinpoint of the cosmos center as he spoke.

“Sufferin’ and pleasure – if they’re from you, they’re the same to me. Anything you give me, I’ll take it. I want it. If it’s from you, it can only be good.”

[laura1633]

I had to write something after hearing Crane suggest Max wear a ball gag to the first press conference of the year. It's just something short and silly but here it is. (1281 words)

“Charles, quick here, help me with this!”

Charles makes a peculiar squeaking sound as he finds two hands on him dragging him away from the direction he was heading and down a corridor. The Monegasque is just about to start kicking and screaming when he realises that it is Max who is currently manhandling him. 

“We don’t have much time” Max holds something up in his hand. And Charles - , well Charles has to do a double take because -

“What the fuck is that?” Charles stares straight at the item. There’s no real need to ask what it is because it is quite clearly a ball gag. The real question is why Max is holding it up menacingly seconds before they head into a press conference. 

“I was talking to Seb,” Max appears a little frustrated at the delay Charles is causing by wanting an explanation, “and he said that if I really want to make a statement about these new rules then perhaps the best statement would be silence….”

“Seb said to wear a gag?” Charles raises an eyebrow as he gives Max a curious look. He supposes that does sound a little like something Seb would suggest.

“Well no not exactly,” Max’s lips curl upwards into a grin, “The gag was my idea. Good right?”

“You know you’ll probably end up in the stewards room for this?” Charles’ heart rate spikes as Max impatiently thrusts the ball gag into his hands. 

“I will end up in there anyway!” Max smirks, “May as well have some fun first.” 

Charles finds a lot of things fun. Hanging out with friends. Skiing. Hiking. Music. Something. Anything other than stepping out in front of the world’s media in bondage gear. Clearly him and Max have different ideas of what is considered fun. 

“Are you going to help me or am I going to have to do it myself?” Max huffs.

“I can help,” Charles tuts rather defensively. Of course he is capable of placing a gag into Max’s mouth and be completely normal about it.

Completely. Utterly. Normal. 

“Cool,” Max opens his mouth wide. Ready, waiting. 

And suddenly it doesn’t feel quite so funny because Charles’ hands are getting sweaty and his heart is about to break free from his ribcage. He doesn’t really have much choice though, he can’t exactly run away, so the Monegasque reaches out and tentatively places the ball gag directly into Max’s mouth and watches as the Dutchman wraps his lips around it.

It looks -, fuck it looks hotter than it has any right to. 

Max makes a soft humming sound of approval and turns around to let Charles fasten the back. 

This is absolutely not what Charles imagined he would be doing moments before the first press conference of what could be a pivotal season for him.  He has no idea how he is going to answer questions about Ferrari’s championship potential or the impact of the arrival of Lewis when he has Max sat next to him like this. 

Charles gets the gag properly fastened and is pretty pleased with his handiwork. It’s not too tight but it’s secure enough that it’s not going to fall out.

Max makes a muffled sound that goes immediately to Charles’ dick and the Monegasque tries his best to think unsexy thoughts. It’s bad enough Max is going in there with his mouth stuffed, Charles absolutely can not accompany him with a hard on.

“You ready to go?” Charles gets a gentle nod in return as Max rather dutifully follows him through to the room. 

And just as Charles had anticipated, the whole room erupts with noise. There’s raucous laughter and excitable chatter along with a few gasps and most significantly of all a blinding amount of flashing cameras. Within minutes there will be photos all over the internet of Max with his mouth held open and lips plush around the silicone ball.  

“Everything okay Max?”

Charles watches as Max gives the reporter a thumbs up and then slinks down on the couch casually. Like this is any other press conference. Like there isn’t the smallest amount of saliva already dripping from behind the gag. 

There is though. 

Charles is close enough to see it dripping around the sides. By the time they are done here Max will likely be drooling helplessly. Wet. Messy. Filthy. 

Fernando looks endlessly amused. Ollie looks shocked but then giggles along nervously. Charles is - , well in truth Charles is turned on.

“Max why don’t you tell us what you think your chances are of retaining your championship this year? 

Charles turns to his right and watches Max shrug and then make a ‘so-so’ action with his hand. It’s enough to earn him another round of laughter from everyone.  Everyone apart from Charles who has to force a smile on to his face. 

Max fidgets a little in his seat. Charles can’t help but wonder what the Dutchman is thinking, whether he is regretting it, whether he is enjoying it. 

The Dutchman tries to swallow down the spit that is clearly building in his mouth. Charles hears the wetness of it. Sees more drool starting to escape down the sides, glistening under the lights. Max doesn’t look embarrassed though, he is just staring out ahead. Charles isn’t sure he has ever seen someone look so submissive and dominant at the same time. Gagged but in control. 

“Max is this some kind of statement regarding the new rules and penalties?”

Charles tries not to groan as he hears Max make a murmured sound from behind his gag. It’s completely incomprehensible, obviously, but the helplessness of the sound makes Charles’ dick twitch.  Again everyone in the room chuckles. And once again Charles has to force a smile on his face whilst also discreetly trying to readjust himself so his semi is not quite so obvious. 

There must be other people finding this a turn on. Charles can’t be the only one. Except maybe its because Charles can hear Max trying to breath around the intrusion. Maybe its because he can hear the muffled sounds and the slurping of spit. Maybe it’s because he can see the stretch of the lips and the way Max’s throat muscles are contracting each time he swallows. Maybe its because Charles is the only one thinking about what else Max could be gagging around right now. 

Charles has no idea what answers he gives to any of the questions thrown his way. In fact Max is probably making a lot more sense than he is. The Monegasque jumps up the second he is allowed to leave and immediately turns his back to the audience of journalists so they can’t spot the rather obvious bulge in his pants. 

Max follows him closely out of the room and is quick to remove the gag. The Dutchman starts gently massaging lightly his own jaw and wiping the excess of drool up. His cheeks looked flush, red all along the cheekbones, his eyes are sparkling tough. Excitement. 

“I think you shocked them,” Charles tries to look normal about the whole thing, “I don’t know whether you are a genius or an idiot.” 

“Perhaps both,” Max shrugs. 

“I can’t believe you bought a ball gag just to wind them up,” Charles’ gaze drops to the gag, it’s soaking wet, “What the hell are you going to do with that now?”

Max laughs and shakes his head. 

“I didn’t buy this for them,” Max smirks as he meets Charles’ gaze, “I had it at home. It’s going straight back into my collection.”

Charles stares blankly as Max winks and then saunters off swinging his ball gag in his hand. 

[mediocre-shark-tales]

End of the First Season

Masterlist

Trigger Warning- slow burn of increasing themes including sexism, SA, depression, and implied grooming

After the season wrapped up, I finally found a moment of calm. The chaos of F1 had slowed, and I was allowed a little breathing room. But even with the peace, I couldn't shake the constant ache in my body. I thought the bruising I had gotten from the Abu Dhabi crash would eventually subside, but it never did. Every day, it seemed to hurt a little more, so I finally caved and went to the doctor to get checked out.

I wasn’t prepared for the news. It wasn’t just bruising. My ribs had cracked, and so had a bone in my right forearm. The realization hit me like a ton of bricks—no wonder I’d been hurting so much. But, being me, I just shrugged it off. If there was one thing I’d learned over this crazy season, it was how to power through. And if I could make it through that wreck, I could handle a couple cracked bones, right?

I needed to break the news, of course, but I had a little fun with it. I posted on Instagram, sharing all the high points of my 2024 season—my wins, my podiums, the laughs, the frustrations. But as the last picture in the post, I slid in a photo collage of my X-rays. Just for the shock value, of course. 

The response was exactly what I expected. I saw the comments flood in—fans, media, and especially the drivers. They were all so concerned, immediately freaking out about me being in pain, even though I was smiling through it all. Some of the messages I got were hilarious, like Lando calling me crazy for not telling him sooner. “You’re seriously not a robot, right?” he texted me, complete with a couple of eye-roll emojis.

And then there was Max. Max Verstappen. He was texting me every five minutes, demanding I go see another doctor. "You should’ve told me. I would've taken care of it for you." Like he was going to fly out to Monaco just to be my personal healthcare assistant. I almost laughed at how protective he was being, but honestly, it was sweet.

Liam, of course, had the most dramatic reaction. "y/n, what the hell?! Why didn’t you tell me about this?" he practically screamed down the phone. "This could’ve been a big deal! You could’ve been seriously hurt!"

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Liam, calm down. I’m fine. I’ve been dealing with it. It’s just some cracked bones.”

But he wasn’t having it. "That’s not something you ‘just deal with.’ You need to get checked out, properly. I’m seriously getting worried now."

At that point, I had to assure him—no more freaking out. Everyone was so sweet, though. Even Carlos sent a message telling me to take it easy and that he was looking forward to seeing me next season. “Just don’t go crashing again, okay?”

I even caught a text from Fernando, who simply said: “You’re strong, but next time… maybe take it easy?”

The support from all the drivers was overwhelming, but honestly, it was what I needed. The kind words, the check-ins, it made me feel like I had a big family backing me up.

I had also made the decision recently to buy an apartment in Monaco. It wasn’t something I’d planned at first, but Lando convinced me it was the perfect move. He was all about the idea of having me live close by so we could hang out in the off-season when I wasn’t visiting family back in the U.S. Plus, Monaco seemed like the kind of place where I could really start fresh, living on my own but still be surrounded by people who understood the craziness of F1 life. Lando lives just above me, and we joke that I’m now not on "Lando’s level".

It’s been nice, honestly. I can walk around without the chaos of a race weekend looming over me, and sometimes, it feels like a different world entirely. Having drivers around gives me a sense of comfort, knowing I’m never too far from a friend, and I love that Lando is nearby for spontaneous hangouts. He’s been a solid support system, and having him in Monaco means I never really feel alone. It’s just nice, knowing that someone’s always nearby, especially after everything I’ve been through.

Franco and I were sitting in the lounge of my new Monaco apartment, just a couple of glasses of wine between us as we talked about the future. There was this quiet tension in the air—nothing too obvious, but we both knew what it felt like. He was leaning back on the couch, legs stretched out in front of him, eyes focused on the half-empty glass in his hand, but I could tell he wasn’t really looking at it.

He sighed, finally breaking the silence. “I don’t know what’s next for me, to be honest. Alpine offered me a reserve driver contract with them, but it's basically the same thing I have at Williams. The only real difference is that they are telling me they will take Jack out of his seat if he doesn’t do well. So I get paid more and have a more likely chance at racing again with them or I get loyalty points and probably never seat the steering wheel for another season with Williams.” His voice carried this layer of frustration I hadn’t heard from him before. He ran a hand through his hair, and I could see the weight of it all on him. He wasn’t the kind to complain, but I knew how badly he wanted that full-time seat. I could tell by how hard he fought to stay on the grid this season.

“Don’t let them make you feel like you have to settle,” I said softly, my words maybe a little more sincere than I meant them to be. He was one of the most talented drivers I knew, and he deserved to have a seat that would recognize that.

He let out a bitter laugh. “It’s not like I have much of a choice, is it? The grid’s stacked, and Alpine knows I’ll have to take what I can get. But I don’t know… maybe it’s not where I want to be.”

There was a pause between us, and I watched him carefully, sensing that this was more than just a conversation about racing for him. It felt like the moment he was letting himself be real, vulnerable in a way he rarely showed.

“Franco,” I started, but the words faltered in my mouth. I didn’t know how to make him feel better, not when I knew what was next for me. He had been my rock in so many ways this season, and now it was my turn to be there for him. But it felt like something more was hanging in the air, something unsaid.

He met my eyes, and for a moment, there was this quiet, unspoken connection. “I don’t want to leave, you know?” he whispered, almost as if he were saying it to himself more than to me. “But I don’t know if I have another option.”

I didn’t know what to say, so instead, I just leaned over and put a hand on his arm, my fingers gently brushing his sleeve. It wasn’t anything dramatic, just a small gesture, but it felt like the right thing to do. We stayed like that for a while, just sitting in silence, letting the quiet of the room fill in the gaps of our thoughts. When finally a thought came to me, “You know, I was in the same predicament before becoming Aston Martin’s Reserve driver?” 

He shook his head, not making eye contact yet. “Before Aston Martin I was driving only as a test driver for Redbull, no chance at racing only at being available when their own drivers reserve or not couldn’t be there. Then Aston Martin came to me with a contract, be their reserve driver. A team with a literal multi world champion driver and a driver who was the owner of the team’s son. So basically, my only chance at driving was someone getting sick or hurt. Or I could stay with my red bull contract and earn loyalty points but probably still never see the steering wheel during a real race.” I looked at him, seeing his expression change. “It was a tough decision but I listed out the pros and cons of each. In the end, Aston Martin gave me the most potential to grow into the F1 world.”

Then, he looked at me, and there was this flicker in his eyes, something I hadn’t seen before. Something that felt real, honest. And I knew in that moment that we were both feeling it—that subtle pull between us. But neither of us said anything about it. Instead, we just let it linger, both of us too scared to do anything about it. “So what I think you need to do is think about what would help you grow or just what you want to do for your future? Is your future still F1 with Williams? Or do you want to explore other options to see what happens?”

His expression changed to one almost deep in thought. I pulled my hand back, giving him a small smile. “You’ll figure it out. You always do,” I said, trying to lighten the mood, even though my heart was beating a little faster than usual.

He smiled back, a little half-hearted, but genuine. “Thanks. I don’t know what I’d do without you, Y/N.”

“Same here,” I replied, my voice softer than I meant it to be. And for a moment, it felt like we were more than just teammates, more than just friends. But neither of us made a move. We just stayed there, pretending it was enough to be in each other’s company, not acknowledging the unspoken feelings simmering beneath the surface.

The moment passed, and we both knew it. But neither of us could shake the feeling that things had changed, even if just a little.

Post-season testing was in full swing, and I found myself behind the wheel of a Red Bull. Well, technically, it was a VCARB test, but they had thrown me and Yuki into the main team’s car—basically the 2024 title-winning machine before it would be slightly modified for our ‘junior’ team.

The car felt incredible. The downforce, the grip, the way it responded to even the slightest inputs—I had driven a strong car before, but this? This was on another level. It was a taste of what could be possible with the right setup, and I couldn’t help but grin every time I pushed it through a turn.

“Oi, don’t get too comfortable in that seat,” Yuki’s voice came through the radio as we wrapped up a practice run. “You still have to share it next year.”

I laughed, pulling into the pits and hopping out, only to be immediately greeted by VCARB’s social media team. I had already been warned that their content crew was… a little too good at capturing moments. The internet had already fallen in love with the way Yuki and I had been interacting over the past few weeks, posting clips of our playful bickering, him teaching me random Japanese phrases, or me teasing him about his food choices.

Case in point—before I even had my helmet off, Yuki was standing beside me, pointing at my water bottle with an accusing glare. “You forgot to drink again, we never saw the water button activate”

I groaned. “I was driving.”

He snatched the bottle out of the table and unscrewed the lid. “Drink. Now.”

“Bossy,” I muttered, taking a sip just to get him off my back.

Of course, VCARB’s media team caught the whole thing, and I had no doubt it would be on their Instagram story in minutes.

Later that evening, while cooling down after the day’s sessions, I found myself sketching out ideas for my new helmet. My current design had meant so much to me, but with a new chapter starting, I felt like I needed something fresh. Something that still honored my journey but signified a step forward.

I sat in the VCARB lounge, my sketchbook open in front of me, absentmindedly doodling designs. Maybe something sleeker, sharper—still keeping the essence of my previous helmets, but with a modern touch. I knew I wanted to incorporate the sea turtle shadow again, but this time, maybe in a way that intertwined with something symbolic for myself.

Yuki plopped down beside me, peering over my shoulder. “You’re making it blue, right?”

I rolled my eyes. “Just because I drive for VCARB now doesn’t mean my entire identity is changing.”

He grinned. “Fine, fine. But if you don’t put at least a little VCARB energy into it, I’ll be offended.”

I smirked. “I’ll think about it.”

Truthfully, this whole transition was already feeling better than I had expected. The team was welcoming, the car felt strong, and Yuki had quickly become an easy person to be around. For the first time in a while, I felt like I had something solid to look forward to with my future in this sport.

Now, I just had to survive another season of teasing from Yuki and VCARB’s relentless social media team.

Netflix: Drive to Survive – Post-Season Interview

The cameras were rolling, the dim lighting of the Drive to Survive interview room setting the scene. I sat in the chair, legs crossed, hands fidgeting slightly in my lap as the producers got everything settled. It felt weird, really. Looking back on the season as if it was just a chapter in a book rather than something I had physically, emotionally, and mentally endured.

The interviewer gave me a reassuring smile before jumping straight into it.

“This was your rookie season—or, well, partial rookie season. And it wasn’t exactly an easy one. How do you even begin to reflect on everything that happened?”

I let out a breathy laugh, shaking my head. “Honestly? I don’t even know where to start. It was the highest of highs, the lowest of lows. I don’t think I ever imagined just how much this season would take out of me—physically, mentally. I came into it with so much to prove, knowing that I wasn’t even guaranteed a seat for next year. Then the Vegas crash happened, and suddenly everything shifted. I had to rebuild myself from the ground up—again.”

“You mentioned the Vegas crash—arguably one of the scariest moments of the season. How much did that affect you going forward?”

I swallowed, running my tongue along the inside of my cheek. “It’s weird because at the time, I was just focused on getting back in the car. I didn’t want to sit out, I didn’t want to give people a reason to doubt me. But looking back? I should’ve given myself more time. I was hiding injuries, pushing through pain I didn’t even fully understand. It wasn’t until after Abu Dhabi, when I finally went to a doctor, that I realized I had been racing with cracked ribs and a fractured forearm. That… that hit me hard. Not just because I knew I had been reckless with my own health, but because it made me realize just how much I feared losing my place here.”

“And now, even after proving yourself with a few Grand Prix wins, multiple podiums, and signing with Cadillac, you’re still facing uncertainty. How does that feel?”

I sighed, leaning back in my chair. “Yeah… it’s tough. I signed with Cadillac for 2026, which is exciting, but next year? I’m on loan with VCARB. It’s a temporary situation. There’s no telling how things will go, how I’ll fit into the team, how the car will perform. And then after that, I’m moving to a completely new team, a completely new project, which—don’t get me wrong—is an incredible opportunity, but also terrifying. I won’t have the stability that some of these other drivers have. I don’t get to settle in and build a team around me. I have to constantly prove myself, adapt, and just hope that everything works out.”

“Do you think about that often? The uncertainty of it all?”

I huffed out a laugh. “Every damn day. But that’s the sport, isn’t it? You never really know where you stand until half through the season. I just have to trust that I’m here for a reason.”

“You had a lot of support from fellow drivers this season, some of them clearly becoming very close to you. How much did that mean, especially in a year as chaotic as this one?”

I smiled at that, shaking my head slightly. “I don’t think I would’ve survived this season without them. Lando, Max, Lewis, Carlos, Franco—they all helped me in different ways. Max was like this overprotective older brother, always making sure I wasn’t pushing myself too hard, which—ironic, considering it’s Max Verstappen we’re talking about.” I laughed. “Lewis was there in a more subtle way, just letting me talk through things when I needed to. Carlos and Lando, well… they made sure I never took myself too seriously. And Franco… Franco understood in a way no one else could.”

“Speaking of Franco, He’s not on the grid next year, but you are. What is that like?”

I exhaled softly. “It is hard. Franco deserved a seat just as much as anyone else. He knows that. We have had a moment together where we both acknowledged that, no matter what happens, we’ll always support each other. But it’s bittersweet. I’m moving forward, but I don’t get to have him there with me next season. It’s just another reminder of how brutal this sport is.”

“Despite all of that, you still seem… excited.”

I let a small smirk tug at my lips. “I mean, yeah. It’s terrifying, but it’s also incredible. I get to drive a Formula 1 car for another season. I get to be part of the chaos. And, hey, if nothing else—at least Yuki and I are going to make VCARB’s social media team’s lives very entertaining next year.”

The interviewer chuckled. “That’s for sure. Final question—if you could say one thing to the version of yourself that started this season, what would it be?”

I sat with that for a moment, thinking. Then, with a slow, deep breath, I met the interviewer’s gaze.

“I’d tell her she should allow herself to lean on her friends more, to allow her grid family to help her when situations go downhill. But even when they get terrifyingly bad, she’s gonna get through it, after all, mama didn’t raise no bitch” I smiled mischeviously knowing that was the last question and while I had done well the entire time not swearing, the last word would have to be beeped for tv.

Pre-Season testing

My first partial season had long ended. The whirlwind of emotions, the battles on and off track, the celebrations, the heartbreaks—it had all been wrapped up into one chaotic, unforgettable year. And yet, as I stood there now, staring at the package in front of me, I realized it was only the beginning.

The VCARB garage was quieter than I had ever heard it. No roaring engines, no frantic radio chatter, just the distant hum of mechanics working in the background as the pre-season test wound down. Yuki had already disappeared somewhere—probably off to grab snacks or cause some minor chaos—and the crew had mostly filtered out, leaving just a handful of us behind.

I ran my fingers along the edge of the box, my name printed in bold letters on the lid. This was it. A new chapter. A new beginning. A new identity.

I glanced up at the lead designer, who gave me a small nod, encouraging me to lift the lid.

My heart pounded as I peeled back the protective wrap, the first glimpse of my brand-new helmet catching the dim garage light. I inhaled sharply, my fingers brushing over the surface, tracing the details I had agonized over for weeks. This wasn’t just a helmet. It was a statement. A promise.

A warning.

Something is coming.

I smiled to myself, feeling that familiar rush of adrenaline, that unwavering hunger for what came next.

The season was over.

But the story was far from finished.

[energ00n]

D is just digging his grave even deeper. Seems like he does thing unconsciously but at the same time in a conscious way?? It's crazy enough(in a way) for Pax to borrow Jazz's vizor and wearing it and honestly good for them, they are best friends. But D over here is being such the hypocrite by GIVING- no not even giving, by literally putting it over him out of no where!

I feel bad for D cuz like, he's young and doesn't understand to the certain extent. He wants Pax to himself but doesn't understand that feeling. He is speaking about claims and how inappropriate it can be to wear another mech's garment when he himself claimed Pax. He has that greed because he won't fully tell Pax about the meaning of wearing another's garment and he is taking that to an advantage. A dangerous one. I fear the fall out when the truth comes to light. The grave D digged might just be too deep for him to try and get out.

But hopefully, Pax could pass him a rope to help him get out. But D needs to be careful or else Pax will simply stay in the edge of the grave, rope in hand but not passing it.

Also! When D offered his garment, Pax's optics are quite puffy, signaling he was crying, no? Would that crying result from the Insignificant incident or smth else? Cuz D must have noticed he has been crying and trying to investigate why cuz that his possisive self type?

Gosh also the art is beautiful. The comic was beautiful. The placing of the word bubbles was just chiefs kiss because the placement itself speaks so loudly.

Lovely analysis!!! You’re pretty much spot on on how confused and lost D is with his own feelings. He’s less experienced, he had a rough upbringing and now surrounded by good bots but none emotionally expressive. Struggling with emotions and desires are running themes I want to delve in further with D. Right now he’s all over the place with his actions and speech but I think that’s fitting, we get messy, things get messy

I’m happy to see people curious about the flashback! I’ll certain have an answer to that but that’s not for a while, have fun theorizing in the meantime!!

[skzdelf]

Dirtty Little Secret | Yang Jeongin

✧ PAIRING: Yang Jeongin x reader

✧ SYNOPSIS: Late at night, Jeongin and you share an intimate moment away from prying eyes, balancing on the edge of forbidden emotions. What begins as a simple agreement to keep things casual starts to unravel as Jeongin’s lingering touches and heartfelt gaze reveal feelings too strong to hide. (seconf part here)

✧ WARNING: Suggestive content, pet names, mention of alcohol

✧ WORDCONT: 1k (1060)

Our dirty little secret

Jeongin and you were on the sidewalk behind the bar. He was sitting on the curb, his head resting against the side of your thigh while hugging one of your bare legs with both arms.

He clung to it like a koala, as if he was scared you’d pull away and leave him there in the middle of the dark night.

The music from the bar was so loud it could be heard outside, where the two of you were.

You’d taken a small, secret escape to do something different—to have a little fun while keeping it your dirty little secret. Jeongin had drunk too much, and now he was begging you.

“Let me stay at your house, just for this night” he said in a soft, husky voice as he lightly rubbed his smooth face against your thigh, which was covered by a black skirt.

“You can’t stay the night, baby. I’ll call you a car” you replied, running your fingers through his hair as you grabbed your phone to open the Uber app.

You’d never intended for things to go this far. The longer you stayed out together, the more you risked being discovered.

Dirty little secret, can’t we keep it in the dark?

Jeongin pulled his face away from your skin, resting his chin on your skirt now and looking up at you.

His eyes, half-lidded from alcohol-induced sleepiness, were overflowing with emotion. They sparkled with affection and a silent plea to let him spend the night with you.

“Don’t look at me with those eyes, Innie,” you said softly, your hand now cupping his pale cheek, rubbing small circles with your thumb.

He closed his eyes, letting himself melt into your gentle touch. That was better for you—his eyes filled with emotions felt too real. It was easier when you didn’t know how he felt.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered in an even quieter voice. He knew you weren’t supposed to be “the one.” You weren’t supposed to fall for each other because none of this was real.

Let’s keep it discreet, sneaking out the backdoor

But the truth was, Innie had already fallen. He was so into you that you were the only thing on his mind during those lonely nights in his apartment.

No Uber seemed willing to take him home this late at night. You didn’t plan on leaving him stranded either—that would’ve been unethical.

“Let’s go to my car, Innie. Get up, sweetheart” you said calmly, though inside, you were frustrated. The risk of him being discovered and the two of you ending up in the spotlight wasn’t what either of you wanted.

Jeongin slowly stood, stumbling slightly in the process but always holding onto some part of your body—your waist, your arm, or your hand. Innie loved having his hands on you; physical touch was undoubtedly his love language.

But you didn’t want his attention right now. You liked it, but only when you were bored—just like he was supposed to want your attention when he was bored. That had been the agreement.

You were aware of how clingy Jeongin was. You didn’t know if it was the alcohol or some developed feelings, but you were sure he wanted you to be his.

But that’s not what those calls to each other were about.

You both walked toward the car, hurried and clumsy on Jeongin’s part, with small giggles escaping from him along the way.

You helped him into the car gently, walking around to settle into the driver’s seat. Once inside, you let out a sigh and turned on the car’s interior light.

You thought about where to take Jeongin. You didn’t know his friends, and you were certain he wouldn’t give you his address, hoping you’d take him to your place instead. Turning to look at him, you found his eyes already fixed on you.

His warm brown eyes wandered from your eyes to your lips. You’d never met someone who could express so many feelings with just their gaze. Those glossy eyes looked at you with longing, as if you were something completely forbidden to him.

Don’t look at me like that, It’s just too real

“I really want to kiss you right now” he admitted, leaning closer to your seat, his hand adorned with silver rings reaching for you, gently grazing your cheek.

“This feels better when I don’t know how you feel” you whispered in the narrow space of the car, the warm artificial light illuminating just the two of you.

You didn’t pull away from his touch. On the contrary, you leaned in closer to him, his hand fully cupping your cheek and part of your jawline, your noses brushing against each other.

We don’t have to be in love

“We have to keep this discreet, Innie,” you said, consumed by feelings that weren’t supposed to come to light. You were intoxicated by his warm touch and expressive eyes.

“You’re so into me, just like I’m into you, love” he murmured, closing the distance between your lips.

Those sweet lips now carried the bitter taste of the gin he’d been drinking all night. Soft lips you loved to kiss, no matter how they tasted.

The kiss deepened, his tongue asking for permission to meet yours—a permission you granted, making the kiss even more passionate.

Jeongin’s hand, previously on your cheek, now rested on the back of your neck, pulling you closer and deepening the kiss, while his other hand clung to your waist with need.

You could hear soft, raspy gasps escaping from between his lips—beautiful sounds that made you press your thighs together.

Your fingers tangled in his black and white strands, occasionally tugging, drawing low growls from Jeongin’s now swollen lips.

Jeongin momentarily pulled away from your lips to catch his breath, his hand, which had been on your waist, now trailing to the hem of your cropped top, caressing the area before slowly sliding his fingers beneath the fabric.

“My dirty little secret” he whispered against your lips, now red and glossy from the exchanged kisses, before devouring them again—this time with a hungrier, needier passion.

The air inside the car grew heavier, charged with a palpable desire. The windows began to fog up, drawing a veil that isolated the outside world, helping you keep your dirty little secret.

[straylightdream]

sweet monday afternoons

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: yoon jeonghan x afb.reader

Being with him was easy, and sharing a love of food and baking was the perfect match.

coming soon: feb 14th valentine’s day

𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞(𝐬): friends to lovers, coworkers to lovers, romance, fluff, smut

𝐚𝐮(𝐬): nonidol, linecook! jeonghan, waitress/baker!reader

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 9.1k

𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: cussing, angst kinda?, the mc has a hard time communicating sometimes

𝐬𝐦𝐮𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: unprotected sex, cumplay, creampie, soft dom jeonghan, big dick jeonghan, pussy stretching, size kink, praise kink, the reader has bigger boobs and jeonghan is obsessed, breeding kink, dirty talk, hand job, fingering, oral (both rec), anal play, use of a buttplug, cockwarming, spanking, nicknames: bunny, pretty, pretty girl, baby, sweet cheeks, princess good girl (hers) baby, hannie (his)

𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: 18+ nsfw

🎧: intentions - starfall | casual - chappell roan | talk to me - starfall | soft spot - keshi

if you would like to be tagged fill out this form.

~ PREVIEW ~

Jeonghan leans again at the bar and takes a drink of his beer. “Can I ask you a question?” Jeonghan asked.

“Sure.”

“Are you and Soonyoung together?” He asked so casually before taking a sip of his beer.

Trying your hardest not to let out a laugh you glance over at your roommate who is in the middle of flirting with a girl over at the pool table. “No we’re not together.”

“Okay I just wanted to know.”

Taking a sip of your beer you raise your eyebrow at him. “Why do you ask?”

A smile plays across his lips, “Well I wanted to make sure you weren’t together before I asked if you wanted to come over to my place tonight?” The room suddenly seems like it’s spinning at the mention of Jeonghan wanting you to come over.

“Like to have sex?” The moment the words leave your mouth you instantly feel embarrassed. Clearly that’s what he wants and you aren’t sure why you’re being so awkward.

“If you don’t want to, it's totally cool. I just thought I would shoot my shot.” You've seen Jeonghan flirt with other people before and you’ve seen him pull his fair share of women. You never thought he had any interest in you.

“I didn’t know you liked me like that.”

“I would have made a move earlier, but I thought Soonyoung was your boyfriend.” Leave it to Soonyoung to cock block you without even trying.

“Definitely not my boyfriend.” In all the years you’ve known Soonyoung you’ve never even had a crush on him. He’s always just been your best friend.

“Well if you’re still interested at the end of the night maybe you could come over to my apartment.”

“Okay.”

The rest of your time is spent hanging out at the pool table. Soonyoung and Joshua are each flirting with a girl and Jeonghan is whooping everyone's ass at pool. When it’s your turn Jeonghan stands next to you coaching you. There is something so sexy about how confident he is at this. If you weren’t already looking forward to going home with him you definitely are now.

Bending over the table, Jeonghan's hand is on your lower back. “You’re doing so good,” he says loud enough for only you to hear.

“You’re very charming Yoon Jeonghan.”

“Only when there is a pretty girl involved.”

As the night comes to a close Jeonghan is at the bar talking to Wonwoo right as you get up.

“Maybe we should call a cab instead of walking the short distance home,” your roommate says.

“Soonyoung I’m going to go to Jeonghan’s house.” Your voice is low, barely above a whisper.

Soonyoung’s eyes go wide as he processes what you just said. “Are you going to fuck Jeonghan?”

“Soonyoung!”

“Oh my god, well have fun getting laid,” he pats you on the back giving you a huge smile. He takes off running towards Joshua asking him to share a cab.

[brookediamonds]

I Love You, I'm Sorry (Part Two) | Axel Kovačević x Fem! Reader

Part 1

Summary: Axel has given you time and space after your break-up, waiting for the perfect time to get to know you all over again. But of course, there's push back.

Word Count: 3k Warnings: none, angst, fluff

gif is not mine

A few weeks have passed since you broke up with Ian, the disappointment outweighing the sadness you felt by the situation as a whole.

You were lucky you had your friends by your side when ever you did start to feel that ache in your chest.

Worried you might have overreacted, Sam and Tory reminded you that under no circumstance should someone place money on any situation with anyone. It was evil.

When you began to enter the room with your big smile and bubbly energy again, your friends knew you were okay. Axel knew you were okay.

As much as he didn't want to admit it, Axel had been keeping a close eye on you lately since your last interaction with Ian.

He was looking for the right time to approach you and see where things fell between you two. While things between still somewhat remained the same, he felt just a little bit of hope for a second chance with you.

And you felt the same.

You just sat down at the table with Tory and Robby, waiting for your other friends to join you for lunch.

All at once, Miguel, Sam, Hawk, Demetri, and their girlfriends trickled into the group, Axel sneakily coming in to sit next to you.

"I think I want to throw a party for my 18th birthday," Moon says catching everyone's attention.

"Oh my god, yes," Yazmin agrees with her best friend. "You need a theme."

"Oh, this should be good," Tory chuckles looking over at Robby.

"When would you do it?" You ask picking up your phone to check your calendar.

"Probably next Saturday, my birthday is that Thursday," Moon responds. You press the date she's referring to and smile when you see it's blank.

"We don't have practice that Saturday," you enlighten your team. They all let out a cheer, relived they could enjoy a day to relax and have fun.

You turn slightly to your right seeing Axel quietly munching on one of his mandarin oranges.

"Think you'll go?" You ask, bumping your shoulder lightly with his.

"Will you be there?" He questions back. You feel a turn in your stomach, your mind hoping he was interested in your attendance.

"Duh," you reply like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Probably not then," he gives you a small smirk popping another slice of orange into his mouth.

"Ha ha," you mock him. He laughs at your response, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back in his seat.

"Yeah, I'll go," he shrugs nonchalantly. In the back of Axel's mind, he swore he saw a look of relief in your eyes when he confirms he would be going to the party.

And he would be right. You had spent the last few weeks working up the courage to mend things between you and Axel, now felt like the perfect time to burry the hatchet and start new.

The time's you had dissociate mid conversation with your friends, they had come to believe it was you becoming saddened by your recent break-up when it fact, it was you thinking about Axel.

You didn't care about Ian, or what he had done, he meant nothing to you. Unbeknownst to your friends and Axel, he was merely just a distraction from what, or whom you really wanted.

Which was the tall, moody boy sitting next to you.

"You should probably eat some of this," Axel places a piece of his Cutie mandarin on your plate. "You've been looking kind of tired at practice."

You narrowed your eyes at his accusation. "I do not!"

"Do too," he says cockily making you scoff and cross your arms over your chest defensively.

"Conversations with you are tiring," you shot back, taking the small piece of the orange fruit and tossing it into your mouth.

"No they're not, you love our conversations," he pesters placing another slice of the cutie in front of you. You roll your eyes taking the food.

"Oh yes, highlight of my day, honestly," you respond sarcastically, a smile tugging on your lips.

"I know," he grins finishing off his clementine, wiping his fingers off a napkin.

You pretend to focus back on Moon who was explain the details about her party, trying not focus on the soft blush sitting on Axel's face and the warmth enveloping in your chest.

------------------------------------------------------

The next few days were interesting to say the least, you and Axel found yourselves talking, not bickering, more than usual.

And even when you would have your normal banter, it always ended with both of you laughing light-heartedly. Your friends seemed to notice this too.

You're sitting against the wall inside the small dojo of Miyagi-Do, your melting latte perched next to you, with your eyes slumped shut.

"Tired, are we?" You hear, making you pop one eye open you see Axel smirking to himself as he shuts the door, walking into the small place.

"No!" You blink your eyes repeatedly trying to wake up from the nap you were almost achieving. Taking a long gulp of your coffee, you wipe your mouth as Axel moves to stand in front of you.

Axel raises an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed. "Uh-huh. That totally convinced me."

You huff, stretching your legs out in front of you. "I’m not tired."

Axel crouches down to your level, resting his arms on his knees. "Prove it."

You take another long sip of your drink, the ice falling to the lid as you finished your caffeine to give you some extra strength.

"Fine, move," you order him, slowly standing up from your spot. He chuckles, reaching his right hand out.

You stare at his outstretched hand for a second before taking it, letting him pull you up effortlessly. The moment lingers just a second too long, his grip firm, thumb barely grazing yours before he lets go.

You're not sure if it's the coffee, but your heart flips in your chest at the small moment, you let out a throat clearing cough to shake off the nerves.

"Don't go soft on me now, Kovačević" you tease him playfully. You both get into your starting positions across from each other.

"I wouldn't dream of it," he gives you an evil grin.

Without hesitation, you lunge at him, aiming a light jab at his side. Axel dodges easily, chuckling. "That’s it? Now i know you're really sleepy."

You scoff, feinting another punch before spinning to sweep his legs out from under him. But Axel being quick, hops back just in time, grabbing your wrist mid-movement and twisting you around effortlessly.

In seconds, your back is against his chest, his arm loosely wrapped around your middle.

"You were saying?" he murmurs near your ear, his voice smug.

Your heart stutters, but you refuse to let him win. Using his slight distraction to your advantage, use your free arm wrapping it around the back of neck, and jumping up to wrap your legs on either side of Axel's hips to throw you two forward and roll up back on your feet with Axel on the ground.

"Awake enough for you now?" You smirk looking back, down at him

Axel stares up at you breathless, still taken back by the way you fight with ease. It's one of things he admires about you.

"I think that nap really did the trick," he smiles up at you goofily. You laugh, lending him your hand so he could stand up, but stubborn like you, he didn't go down without a fight.

Axel pulls you down to fall on top of him, and rolls you on your back so he could be above you. The both of you erupt with laughter, knowing the take downs could go on for hours.

As you began to calm down, you notice Axel's expression slips into a serious one as he stared at you.

"I-I'm sorry," he stutters. You tilt your head in confusion.

"For what?"

His colorful eyes are unable to meet your own, he sits up in his place, wrapping his arms around his bent knees.

"I'm sorry for how I handled things after the partner skills competition," he looks back at you. "We lost because of me."

You sighed sitting up as well. "It was both of our fault's, you and I had opposite upbringings in karate and somehow it all got messy and we miscommunicated."

He nods in agreement. "Well, I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry, too," you give him a sincere smile. As the silence overcomes you, a tension lingers in the air as you both stare at one another.

Before either of you can say anything else, the doors slide open revealing Sam and Miguel staring back at you both amused.

"We've been looking all over for you guys!" Sam spoke first.

Miguel smirked, crossing his arms as he leaned against the doorway. "Should we give you two a moment?"

You rolled your eyes moving to stand up, Axel following suit.

"We were just talking," you chuckled wiping your hands off your leggings.

"You two? Talking?" Sam raises her eyebrows.

"Apparently it's something people do," Axel fakes a gasp as all four of you begin to trail out of the small home and into the backyard where everyone else was.

As you passed Sam, she reaches a hand out to grab your arm, holding you back.

"What is going on?" She whispers over for only you to hear.

"Nothing," you shrugged glancing back at the boy you were just talking to. "We...worked things out."

Sam gave you a skeptical look, her eyes flicking between you and Axel, who was now casually talking with Miguel near the sparring mats.

"Worked things out?" she repeated, her tone dripping with curiosity. "So does that mean—"

"It means," you cut in, shooting her a knowing look, "that we’re not at each other’s throats anymore. That’s all."

"Finally!" the brunette cheered. "I have been waiting for this."

"Waiting for what?" Tory approaches you and Sam.

"For her and Axel to finally realize they're meant to be together," Sam sing songs.

"Oh, that, right," Tory nods. "Took you guys long enough."

"Okay, I have no idea what you two are talking about," you interrupt. "We just started getting along."

"Right, right," your two friends share a knowing look with each other as you stayed in denial.

Before you could respond, Sensei Lawerence called everyone over to start warm-ups.

-----------------------------------------------------

After a successful Thursday practice, your team talked amongst themselves, packing up their stuff for the night.

You toss your gym bag onto the bench, pulling out your water bottle to take a sip when you see Axel walking towards you.

"Did you finish the history assignment Ms. Webber gave us earlier?" You asked as he placed his bag down next to yours.

"Nope," Axel sighed remembering the unfinished paper waited for him after this. "I have to finish it when I get home."

"Same, it was a lot of questions," you complained setting your water back down.

"FaceTime me later, maybe we can work through it together," the boy offers. You smile with a nod.

"Yeah, that'd be great," you agreed.

"You gonna head out?" He asks seeing you slip your shoes on.

Before you can respond, you realize you forgot something back on the sparring deck.

"In a little bit, I forgot my jacket outside," you say tossing your phone on to your bag. "Wait for me?"

Axel gives you a small smile reassuring you he'd still be there when you get back. As you stepped into the backyard, he sees your phone light up, a few texts popping up on the screen.

He's fast to ignore it, but when multiple messages start stacking he's curious to see who was trying to get your attention.

Axel's jaw clenches when he sees the name: Ian Matthews.

Ian Matthews: will you pls just hear me out?

Ian Matthews: i really, really like you

Ian Matthews: pls give me another chance,

His brows furrow, and something inside him twists uncomfortably. Why was Ian still texting you? And more importantly, were you answering him?

Axel hears you come back inside, oblivious to his change in demeanor.

"Okay, I'm ready," you say picking your stuff up.

His fists clenched as he quickly looked away, trying to act like he didn’t see anything. But the words were already burned into his mind.

Was that why you’d been in such a good mood lately? Had you forgiven Ian? Were you actually considering giving that idiot another shot?

Was everything happening between you two all in his head?

You walked to your cars in silence, thoughts and questions racing through Axel's mind while you pondered about Moon's party.

You had to dress cute, since things are finally heading in the right direction with Axel, you looked forward to what Saturday night could bring.

--------------------------------------------------------

"He's acting weird," you explain lowly to Sam and Tory as the three of you sat in the library during your free period.

"Like stalker weird?" Tory grimaces making you shake your head.

"No, like he's been really short with me and won't even look at me," you frown, strings beginning to pull at your heart.

"Something had to have happen," Sam spoke quietly. "Did you reject him on accident or insult him? You guys do play around a lot."

You think back to the last few days filled with the laughter and heart to heart conversations you hadn't had with him yet.

"We joke around, but I haven't said anything below the belt," you exhaled tapping your pen along your workbook.

"Well tomorrow is the party, maybe you can talk to him then," Tory suggests.

"I guess," you mumble unsurely. You didn't want to wait until the party, this whole day he's been ignoring you and you hated it.

The girls give you a sympathetic look before going back to work on their schoolwork. Just as you glanced up to the double doors, you see the familiar auburn haired boy saunter into the building.

Your heart sped up as you watched him walk into the psychology row of books, but began to ache as you remember how he looked away when you smiled at him this morning.

You had been looking forward to hanging out with Axel all week, especially since things between you two had finally started feeling easy again.

But instead, he was being cold. Distant. Like you had done something wrong. And you weren’t going to just let that slide.

Standing up from the table, you let Sam and Tory know you'll be right back, and head towards section Axel was in.

Quietly walking between the cases of books, you find the tall boy flipping through what you assume is the novel he's looking for.

"I didn't know you took psych," you spoke up, making Axel jump slightly. He gives you a sideways glance with a silent nod.

You furrowed your eyebrows at his silence, crossing your arms. "Okay… so we’re just not talking now?"

Axel sighed, closing the book and placing it back on the shelf. "Didn't say that."

"You kind of are saying that," you countered, stepping closer. "You've been weird all day. If I did something, just tell me."

Axel contemplated back and forth with what he wanted to say, his gaze still not meeting yours. "It’s nothing."

Your stomach twisted at the dismissal. He was never the most open person, but after the past few weeks, you thought you had broken down some of those walls. And now, here he was, shutting you out again.

"Fine, forget it," you scoffed turning to walk away, but before you can take another step, Axe's hand shot out, gently grabbing ahold of your wrist.

"I saw Ian's texts on your phone," he admits. You face him once again, glancing down where his fingers rested around your hand. "Last night after practice, I didn't mean to, but he was blowing up your phone."

"Yeah," you recall Ian's millions of texts before you finally blocked him.

Your words didn't help, while you waited for Axel to get to the anecdote, he thinks you don't see a problem with your ex propositioning a second chance.

Axel groaned, rubbing a hand over his face. "Look, I just, if you’re giving that guy another chance, then fine, whatever. It’s your life. I just thought—"

He cuts himself off releasing your hand making you frown.

"Thought what?" You inquire. Taking a step closer to him, Axel avoids your gaze. "Thought you and I have something?"

His natural blush had risen to his cheeks, a feature of his that you adored.

"We do," you confirm softly. Axel finally looked at you, his brows furrowed, as if trying to figure out if you were messing with him.

"You mean you—" he hesitates making you laugh.

"Blocked Ian the minute I got home," you finish for him. "Dude never stood a chance."

Axel blinked, clearly processing your words. "Oh."

"I don't think I've ever seen you jealous before," you tease him. "It's kinda hot."

Axel scoffed with slight eye roll. "I was not jealous."

"You were so jealous," you smirk up at him. "You like me."

He crosses his arms over his chest unable to hide his sly grin. "Shut up."

"You so do."

"Do not."

"Do too."

You stood toe to toe with him as he shook his head in defeat.

"So what if I do?" He taunts back at you. Biting back a smile, you gaze up into his sea foam blue eyes.

"Prove it," you dare him.

Axel leans down capturing your lips with his own, placing a soft hand on the side of your face.

Your breath caught in your throat, but you melted into the kiss almost instantly, your hands gripping the front of his hoodie to steady yourself.

Your lips are eager like his to finally touch, your chasing his mouth when he begins to pull away.

"That proof enough for you?" He murmurs, his thumb gently brushing against your cheek.

"I don't know..." you faked an innocent look.

Axel raised an eyebrow slipping his other free hand around your waist. "No?"

You grinned, tugging him down by his hoodie again. "Might need you to prove it a few more times."

He chuckled, shaking his head before leaning in once more. "I can manage that."

-----------------------------------------------------

(A/n: I'm sooo obsessed with Axel in the new trailer, like my mans is so distraught, cue the meme "STAY AWAY FROM HER. GET A JOB." @ Terry Silver and Wolf. Anyway, loved the trailer, it was a piece of art. Part 3 will soon be in the works.)

[illicitdream]

" probably ? nah, it's in your system now. " he nestled into them again, taking a moment to live in the scent they created. " i've been told it's terminal too, so. no choice but to live out your twilight years with me, what a horrible way to go. " this should feel strange, but it just doesn't. not even a little bit. two days ago they were in this same place, not the bedroom but not far from it talking about personal things, making little friend plans, figuring out what bar they should go to, talking about what he'd come to realize was a slowly failing relationship. and now they were cuddled up in their bed, idly talking like they always had. " okay, didn't think i came across as 'has a humiliation fetish' but really appreciate the shot. " it felt like the most natural thing in the world, laying there. even with flossie on top of him, breasts pressed against his skin, the two of them practically sticking together until they slowly began to dry off, it felt like they were right where they belonged. where they'd belonged this whole time. " yeah, actually. " energy spent for now, he went limp beneath her and focused on his breathing. " i could go anywhere with you and have a good time. i could take you to dinner or we could go out drinking and singing but. " moving his back, he made enough room for their arms to hook around him again, raising a hand to brush some of the hair out of their face so he could watch them kiss his chest. " it's kind of . . . i wanted it to be a little more personal, you know ? i mean i'm no gordon ramsay or anything but it'll be something i make with my effort. you can pick the movie though. " his head arched back as they started to crawl up his body, not wanting to deny them any space. " not gonna' scare you away by making you sit through the extended editions of the lord of the rings. yet, anyway. " by the time she'd reached his throat, and asked, he flexed his hands at his sides and rolled his ankles. " i don't know if i can fit in your bathtub, i couldn't fit in mine if i tried. just, " he leaned up, pecking at her lips only to start rolling over, offering them the chance to stand up. " give me a . . . " a few moments later, with both feet on the floor, he stood up. he wobbled briefly before catching himself with a laugh. " thought you made my legs go numb there. " he had been spent, physically. but there was no denying: the two of them stunk. it was a smell he'd commit to memory, but around their other friends ? now that they weren't clinging to each other still, and they could collectively stumble to flossie's bathroom, he took every opportunity to stretch his legs, watching as they started the water. " should be a fun reveal for everyone else. you think we should wait to say something and surprise everyone with christmas cards ? "

now that the sticky sheen of exertion was easing, the touch was nice. being pressed against him everywhere that she could possibly be felt right for flossie. they didn’t know how the pair of them had gone so long surviving off of friendly hugs or leaning in to one another. now she knew what it felt like to be touched by him everywhere, would be able to feel the warmth of his skin long after they untangled themselves from one another. “infectious? oh gross, i probably have it now,” she feigned a whine, though it hardly had any holding with how she encouraged him to nuzzle in closer. a soft hum fell from their lips as they contemplated his words, slow smile forming. “yeah — i can see you being into that.” though, she was now aware his perhaps otherwise rather meek personality didn’t translate everywhere. despite initial uncertainties, he’d certainly seemed confident handling them if you asked flossie. maybe it was instinctual to take what he needed but she had no issues with it. was always happy to be guided, urged, put exactly where her partner wanted her to be. the trust aspect helped. they knew that they could trust allen with anything before they’d taken this step together and now the trust could only grow. she hummed softly at his suggestions, quite happy to let him rattle off whatever he was thinking. after settling on top of him, they let their hands wiggle in between his body and the mattress underneath it so that they could hold him at least a bit. “would you like to do that instead, then?” tilted her head to rest her cheek on his chest, picking the side where she could surely hear the sound of his heart beneath the surface. it was so comforting. it was so sure that she couldn’t doubt for a moment that this was real and actually happening.“a nice, slow evening being curled up together sounds good to me, too.” their head levelled to be straight on, lips pressing between his pectorals and at his sternum. it was just a soft, gentle press over and over again. his heart was supposed to belong to her now. she’d have to treat it well. “would you like to shower with me?” they asked after a moment, lips still moving on his skin. wanted to offer him all the care and affection they’d both been starved from in all the time they’d been waiting for one of them to realise they could have what they wished for. “or a bath?” the peppering of lips continued until she reached the hollow of his throat, nose sliding up the column before she lifted her head to lock eyes with him.

[xviistrings]

you're just like me

[tenok]

.

[tojbnuy]

since you guys are asking sooo nicely here is a part 3 teehee. part 1 part 2 . art by @ _3aem on twt!!

bestfriend!satoru who’s always buying you new jewelry. esp with your initials on them, you’ve got bracelets and necklaces in golds and silvers because he knows you like both.

bestfriend!satoru who calls you at night and will always convince you to turn it into a facetime. he doesn’t think you realize just how appealing you look with your hair down, big glasses on and a thin strapped pyjama top. said straps falling down your shoulder as your busy talking and he’s trying so hard to listen but how can he when your tits just look so good and from this angle he’s got a clear view. ‘toru are you listening?’ ‘yeah pretty carry on’

bestfriend!satoru who hates it but finds himself feeling slightly insecure when you’re engaged in conversation with nanami. he knows nanami can actually converse with you about the books you read and some of the movies you watch, something satoru’s been meaning to catch up on so you could have these conversations with him instead. he’s complaining to suguru as nanami hugs you goodbye and everything just gets worse when you walk over with the most adorable smile only to tell him that nanami was taking you to the theatre. why the fuck do you want to go to the theatre?

bestfriend!satoru who knows how childish it is but the next time nanami is in the room satoru has you pressed up against his body, his hands firmly gripping your ass as he looks dead into nanamis eyes. ‘ouch toru too hard’ ‘so sorry pretty girl your ass is just too perfect’

bestfriend!satoru who asks you for lip balm but he always means he’s going to kiss it off of you. plenty of times he’s left with your lip combo pressed onto his lips and chin.

bestfriend!satoru who places a blanket over the two of you when your friends are over. his index finger playing with the hem of your tiny shorts. when he sees you listening too closely to nanamis boring ass stories he grabs a handful of your shorts and hikes it up until the crotch is pressed directly against your clit. he smirks at the hiss that leaves you . ‘y/n you okay?’ spoken aloud and now everyone’s staring at your flushed cheeks and the firm grip you have on his bicep.

bestfriend!satoru who is mean and he knows he is but he can’t stand it when you go all quiet with him. he noses at your cheek and presses little kisses all over your eyelids as you try to keep a stern face. ‘sorry baby it was an accident, let me kiss it better?’

bestfriend!satoru who has an obsession with your lips. yes he may be obsessed with many things about you but your lips are truly his kryptonite they are his downfall. he cuts you off mid sentence a lot just to give them a quick peck. sometimes he even licks them cos he’s a perv. ‘toru you can’t keep doing that’ ‘but why baby? i just find you too cute’

bestfriend!satoru who smiles like a loser when you include him in your monthly photo dumps.

bestfriend!satoru who adores when you seem equally as annoyed when he gets female attention. he’ll elongate it for the fun of it sometimes just so you’ll get mad and that means you’ll probably be sleeping at his house tonight. you know because everyone else is wasting his time.

bestfriend!satoru who bites random parts of your body. your tummy is a frequent victim. sometimes when you’re on the phone and his head is laying your lap he’ll turn over and bite your tummy. then your thighs. sometimes fingers too.

bestfriend!satoru who is a ‘where my hug at’ warrior. as soon as he enters the function he expects a big hug from you. and if he doesn’t get one he is at you in a heartbeat ‘baby where’s my hug?’ and his hands are roamingggg all over you, not an inch of you untouched.

bestfriend!satoru who knows sometimes all you need is a little reassurance. no one gets you like he does and sometimes you truly just need to hear His voice telling you you’re okay. sometimes you crave him just like he constantly craves you.

bestfriend!satoru who drags his index finger across your lips as you sleep. sometimes even sticks his thumb between your parted lips.

part 4 !!

tag list : @haruhatake @moncher-ire @startwithrecords @ranatherealestsigma @chjinua @whozeurdaddy @sukuxna0 @purp1eha1o @tibibibi123 @jjkysnk @missthatgirl @greensunflowerjuna @macchiatoast @suechii

[ame-to-ame]

love being nd and have the tism wolf Inside me be so drastically uncomfortable with uncertainty that i physically cannot think about school and having to deal w the unknown of that whole situation without losing 5lbs in 2 days

[mrchoppedslefthand]

Homicipher Random Headcanons/Scenarios [NSFW]

Edit:11/07/2024

I desperately needed to post the random head canons and scenarios of our husbands that my brain kept cooking up (+ some from discord friends), so the list is not organized. Also, since we shape shift, I'm going to assume we can choose whenever we have a cock or pussy (because I want to be fucked and do the fucking) Anyways...enjoy the food thought.

Characters: Mr. Crawling, Mr. Chopped Mr. Silvair, Mr. Hood, Mr. Gap, Mr. Machete, Mr. Scarletella

Warnings: mentions of NSFW, mentions of some canon-typical violence, implications of dubcon, mentions of somnophilia, implied cuckold

Mr. Crawling

He can be submissive top. Constantly asking you if you love him during intimacy. He would ask if you enjoy playing with him as you pound yourself onto him. He would be a moaning mess and probably wouldn't know what to do about it as he clumsily places his hands around your waist.

He would definitely eat you out without you asking once intimacy had been initiated.

Afraid of hurting you, he wouldn't be too rough, instead he would be more tender and gentler when it comes to intimacy.

He definitely would love it when you play with his hair, allowing you to braid it or do whatever as long it doesn't involve cutting his precious hair.

He actually gets jealous easily, but he doesn't verbalize it, instead he shows it through his actions.

He is better with his hands, than his cock. So sometimes you prefer that over his cock. His cock is more on the average/smaller side and it's cute.

He definitely has a praise kink.

Mr. Chopped

He lacks a body, so to make up for it he is extremely expressive and open with his feelings. Which makes him a little fun to bully, to see all those cute expressions he could make.

He probably would be very good with his mouth and tongue, let him be your personal rose toy/fleshlight if you will. He can't fight back and have no choice but to whimper about it.

Imagine getting sick and fainting with him nearby, he can't move or do anything but helplessly cry for you to wake up and starts crying out help for Mr. Silvair to come help him and you.

Maybe one day, for a day of tricks and pranks. Mr. Stitch will allow Mr. Chopped a day in his body, so they swap places, stitching Mr. Chopped in place of Mr. Stitch's head. It had been a very long time since Mr. Chopped felt sensations beyond his head, so he happens to be very sensitive and clumsy with his hands. Everywhere you touch overwhelms him, he melts and becomes a moaning mess, but Mr. Chopped isn't the only one feeling all these sensations. Mr. Stitch can still feel it too. He is intrigued by today's type of play.

He definitely would be more on the whiny and needy side when it comes to pleasure, he lacks a body, but he can still feel lust. He can't do anything about it, which makes him extremely needy and extra pouty.

Mr. Silvair

Definitely would have had intimacy with other ghosts/humans before to research the body and performance during mid transformation if it differed.

Imagine one day he finds a mysterious liquid that fell from the 'other world' and feeds it to you, himself and the other ghosts in your crew. Only to find out it was an aphrodisiac. It was the first time he felt such a strong sensation of lust. At first, he mistakes this strong desire to be violence, so he starts to self-inflict wounds onto himself. You attempt to stop him, but soon find yourself to be underneath him as he bites into your neck, drawing blood. Surprised at seeing the often-composed man, turning into a ravage beast. You somehow manage to find something to tie him up and have your way with him.

He probably likes overstimulation on you...but also himself. He would love to research on how much his body can go and handle.

He would actually be a switch, for research purposes. To take and give he'd do anything for research. It had been long long ago since his body used to be human, and he often forgets about his own experiences if he doesn't write them down, but no worries, he has you by his side now to keep remembering.

Mr. Hood

He is quiet but speaks whenever he finds it suited for. But if you need him, he would be happy to talk with you.

He is a bit insecure about his body, he doesn't have arms or hands or even legs, he is an entity of nothing. The clothes are what shape his form, and well maybe he not entirely a entity of nothing. You had a glimpse before, a small glimpse and sensation of a squishy and somewhat slimy part that had belonged to him. You never mentioned though, but if it was you'd love him still anyways.

He realized that some words had been a bit harder for you to keep in mind and remember and so he thought of a special way to get you learning. Learning with what humans call pleasure. He fucks you and asks you what certain things are, and if you get it wrong, he denies you from coming. You have become determined to learn your words properly even more so now. Because if you remember you get rewarded with the most absolute fulfilling fuck of your life.

Since most of his body is invisible or nothing. If you mouth fucked him you would be able to see that real good, it is strangely erotic watching your cock move inside his mouth.

Mr. Gap

When you're sleeping, sometimes he might just cuddle against your leg or lower half. He loves the feeling of warmth, compared to his hollow darkness.

He definitely seems like the type of person to eat you out while you're asleep. Playing around and waiting for you to wake up to watch your reaction. Of course, he would only do this though if he knew you'd allow it. He values consent.

Imagine taking your backpack to school and you have to take out a pencil for a test. When you open your backpack, you realize it is just an empty void and hear a voice asking for your heart in exchange for the pencil. Yeah... you accepted your fate. You just failed your exam...

When you become a moaning mess under him, he can't understand but he knows that from your sweet voice, and moans, that it's a good thing. He knows to keep continuing.

One day Mr. Gap gathers his usual newspapers that fall from the rubble or somehow manages to grab one from the human realm. He notices a magazine that discusses about marriage and giving rings on the fourth finger. Intrigued about this idea, he asks you for your all four of your fingers, but you misunderstand and refuse to give him your fingers. He's sad but soon you later find out that he was asking for your hand in marriage, literally but also figuratively.

Mr. Machete

We would wonder aimlessly for an eternity together searching for his/your home. But eventually our subconscious would recognize each other as home instead.

He would definitely mock and laugh at how fast you would falter/melt under his touch. Calling you "weak" for coming so fast but would give kisses here and there after the mocking.

He'd probably be into throat fucking and laugh at you looking pathetic, he loves reactions that aren't boring, so seeing you choke on his cock seems like a great idea.

He definitely would come inside most of the time.

When he fucks you, his cock would probably bulge out a little from your stomach, fascinated by it he'd roughly press his hand down near that area.

He is our beefy dumb macho, perfect.

If you mouth/fucked him he would tell you he feels nothing, but his eyes would already be red and tearing. He's a pathetic coward.

Mr. Scarletella

He belongs to you, and you belong to him, together forever, in a hellish world. He loves the destruction you bring into his life and does the same for you.

Oh boy, he would absolutely devour you, his queen, in pleasure. Fuck you stupid to the point you're just a blabbering mess, hands on waist, and long fingers in your mouth, as he pounds deeply into you.

He seems like the type of guy to fuck you during your period.

Definitely gets jealous easily and he makes it know when he gets that way.

Imagine your fucked/fucking another ghost and you hear static within the distance, the sound slowly starts to come closer and closer until you hear the static in the room. Your crimson servant arrives and witnesses your fantastic display of intimacy. Jealous, he kills them and becomes extra possessive and quite terrifying, but you love it so much. How he seems so lost and pathetic without you.

You don't know his name, but neither does he know yours. Despite this disconnect, you still manage to give him some sort of other named to be called. It's connected to your name, but he knows it's not all of it, he can't fully whisk you away, but he's okay with that. You are still bound to him for an eternity anyway.

If Mr. Scarletella went back to the human world with you instead, he would appear to be the one most suited for fitting in. Just slack some foundation on his face, make him wear gloves and he would blend in quite well. Well...except for his odd habit of asking every stranger for their name and laughing and giggling crazily each time.

He would have a praise and degradation kink, he's not a whore. He's YOUR whore. He likes being YOURS.

[totalswag]

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?"

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[asahicore]

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.”

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[gurugirl]

DILF | older!harry

MAIN MASTERLIST

Summary: Y/n meets an older man at a bar and she's not taking no for an answer. Harry likes her persistence.

A/N: This was requested + this! Also, please think before you judge Y/n. She is very bold and confident in this. Maybe even a little pushy but Harry likes it (even if at first he doesn't give that impression). Also he's single so this isn't cheatrry!

Word Count: 6,580

Warning: age gap, smut, alcohol consumption (light)

. .

"That one. Total dilf. He looks grumpy. Bet you can't crack him."

Y/n laughed at her friend and looked down at her red-painted nails before narrowing her gaze on the attractive older man who was seated at the corner of the bar alone. He was nursing a whisky and he did look rather sullen. Unapproachable even.

"Why him?"

"Because he's hot. And I'm curious to see if you can get him to smile at least," Warren raised her brows, "I dare you."

Y/n tilted her head and assessed him. He was nice and big, taking up a decent amount of space at the bar, broad shoulders and back hunched as he leaned his muscular forearms on the wood of the bar top. Meaty hands placed on either side of his lowball glass. Thick brown waves on top of his head with a bit of silver coming in at the temples. But the handsome features on his face really set him apart. His granite jawline gave way to stubble that stretched over his skin and shaded in the spaces around his pink lips.

If she could "crack" him she wasn't sure she'd want just a smile. He looked yummy enough to eat.

Drinking down the last of her martini she pointed at Warren and then Tara, "Fine. Give me twenty minutes and I'll have him eating from the palm of my hand."

Tara laughed, "If you say so…"

She placed her heeled feet down on the floor and brushed her hands over her dress, "Oh, I do say so. Just watch and learn, ladies."

Y/n wasn't quite that confident, but she wasn't about to say no to dare. And she could hold her own when it came to flirting. She liked getting a little attention and if she could garner this one's interest it might be fun.

She sauntered up to the bar behind the man and noticed the way his t-shirt stretched over his lats and tapered loosely down at his waist. The guy was fit. And lucky her, there was an open stool next to him.

Sliding onto the seat she waved at the bartender to order another drink. She'd need all the courage she could get, in whatever form she could get it.

Tapping her long nails on the lacquered wood she felt nerves thrumming through veins before turning toward the man finally. He hadn't seemed to take note of her yet, which honestly was unusual in most cases. Maybe she thought too highly of herself but men tended to notice her right away. She appreciated the challenge, though.

Reaching her hand into his space to greet him, she pushed down her nerves to sound steady as she spoke, "I'm Y/n."

She watched his brow furrow as he turned to look at her hand and then up at her eyes, his expression, which she expected would soften once he looked at her, was unamused. A single light overhead lit the tops of their heads as a shadow cast over the side of his face and he didn't make a move to shake her hand, "And I'm old enough to be your dad."

A surprised scoff fell from her lips as she moved her hand away from him. She wiggled in her seat and crossed her leg over her thigh toward him, gulping down the initial rejection with as much grace as she could muster, "I think you're jumping to conclusions about my intentions. But so what if you're older than me? I don't mind. We're both adults, right?"

An unimpressed grunt rumbled from his throat before he took another sip of his whisky and he looked away from her toward the TV that hung not far away from where they sat.

The bartender placed her olive martini down on the bar in front of her, "It'll be on Y/n Y/l/n. I already have an open tab."

A sip of the salty drink felt warm down her throat. So he was going to be a bit tough to crack. She turned to look at her friends who were grinning in her direction.

Straightening her back to feel more confident she tried again, "So you're not gonna tell me your name even?"

Without looking at her, he licked his lips and ticked his jaw, "Y/n, I think it's past your bedtime."

She smiled at that. He'd said her name, which meant he'd been listening, "My bedtime is whenever I say it is, not when some grouchy stranger says."

He puffed out an amused laugh through his nose, "I am a stranger. Which means you should be cautious, little girl. Your dad didn't teach you about things like that?" He turned to look down at her again, and that time she saw the soft green color of his eyes as the light hit his face just right.

But now she was really determined. She smiled brightly at him and let her eyes coast over his tattooed arm and then back up to his face, "Are you telling me you're dangerous?"

He still didn't smile as he shook his head like he was surprised by her gall, "Do your parents know what you're up to tonight?"

"I'm 24. Graduated from college, live on my own, pay my bills, have a full-time job. You seem to be awfully worried about my parents. I can take care of myself just fine."

Just then another person sat down next to the man Y/n was trying to whittle away at. He poked his elbow at him, "Who's this?"

"Don't know. Someone who's about to go back to her table with her little girlfriends."

Biting her lip she traced the rim of her martini glass with her fingertip, keeping her eyes set on the handsome tattooed one, "Not even a smile. Just one? Please?"

"Like I already said, I'm way too old for you."

The other man leaned over and reached to tap Y/n's shoulder, "Hey. Forget about Harry, here. You can bring me home with you if you're looking for a daddy tonight."

She frowned and looked him up and down to asses. He was late 40s perhaps, wearing a local band t-shirt, ripped jeans, and a backward cap to make himself appear a little more youthful. "No thanks. You'd know if I was interested in you."

Harry bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from smiling at her retort. She was definitely too young but he liked her spunk.

"Now, Harry…" she said his name slowly as she leaned a little closer, "I've got your name thanks to your friend. Can I have a smile?"

"Why?" He stared down at her, the caress of his gaze felt infinite and she found her skin convecting in its wake. He might be hard to crack but this one would be worth it, she determined.

She sighed and slid her finger dangerously close to his wrist as he looked down at her nail and watched her trail it near his arm, "I just hoped to see you smile is all. Too handsome to have such a sour scowl on your face."

"And you're hardly old enough to be so confident to walk up to a strange man at a bar."

She laughed and tilted her head, "You planning on doing something bad to me, Harry?"

And that. That pulled a reaction out of him that spread over his features slowly as he shook his head in disbelief, "Darlin', you wouldn't be able to handle me."

Her eyes widened slightly. Now she was definitely not giving up. Y/n wasn't one to fail and Harry might be making her work hard for it but she couldn't imagine it wouldn't be worth it in the end.

"Is that a challenge or something?" She softly scraped her nail over his tattooed wrist and Harry watched her red nail work over his skin.

His resolve was fading fast. She could tell he wasn't going to keep denying her. And why should he? If he was single, which he appeared to be, what was the harm in having a little fun with someone younger? Y/n didn't mind. And he certainly shouldn't either.

"If it were a challenge you'd know it. Lots of other guys here, Y/n. Go enjoy your night with someone closer to your own age."

She sighed in annoyance. But he hadn't moved his arm away from her and she was going to take that as a sign.

Dragging the toe of her shoe into his shin she grinned, "I don't want to enjoy my night with someone my own age. Not tonight anyway. I think you've convinced me that I need to test out this theory of yours. That you think I can't handle you. Cause I bet I can."

With his eyes piercing into hers, he took another sip of his drink. She thought she might have just convinced him to give her a smile at the very least because it looked like he was weighing his options. And if she could get him to smile she might have luck with the rest.

He tilted his chin upward for a moment, eyes aimed at the ceiling like he was calling on a higher power for strength, "Go back to your friends, Y/n. Any other man here would love to have your company."

"But you wouldn't love to have my company?"

"I mean… I'm still here," the other man raised his hand and leaned into Harry, "Honey we could have so much fun. Any man who'd turn you down is either battin' for the other team or more likely," he chuckled and pushed his shoulder into Harry's teasingly, "He can't get it up anymore."

Y/n's mouth dropped open at that and Harry turned to look at the man. She wished she could see the look on his face, "Sit the fuck back down, John. She already told you she's not interested in you."

"Yeah, and you're not interested in her so what's it matter to you? Look at her, Harry. Practically begging you. Young and bubbly… Tight—"

Harry's hand covered John's throat as he pushed him away, nearly making his stool topple over, "Get the fuck outta here. You had too much whisky tonight."

"Aww… come on Harry… I was just jokin'!"

She watched as he stood from his stool and looked down at John, "And you thought that was funny? You like making jokes about women like that?"

The man put his hands up in surrender, "I'm out. Here…" he threw a wad of cash on the bar top before he moved past Harry and then looked at Y/n, "My apologies if I offended you."

They watched as John left the bar quickly and then Harry sat back down before he waved at the bartender and signaled for the check, "Just the one whisky neat."

"You're leaving already? Night's still young, Harry."

He sucked at his teeth as he scraped his gaze over her face and down to her cleavage. She smiled when she watched the path his eyes had taken.

The bartender handed him the bill and Harry leaned over to pull his wallet from his back pocket.

She scooted closer to him, "You headed home?"

He nodded, but not necessarily in answer to her question, it was more of an appraisal kind of nod. He was still silent as he pulled cash out of his wallet.

"Thanks for that, by the way. I'm sure John's a nice guy and all but he's not really my type. And I'm sure he was wrong about you."

That got his attention. Harry flicked his gaze back to hers, "Wrong about me?"

She smiled, "The part where he said you couldn't get it up. You're not that old. I'm sure you still can. Right?"

He clenched his jaw and breathed out of his nostrils like he couldn't believe she'd asked him such a thing. He handed the bartender his cash with a nod before he stood up from his stool.

"Huh. Since you're so quiet about it maybe he was right," she goaded, pressing her lips together to flatten her smile as she looked up at him through her lashes.

Harry placed a palm down on the bar top next to her hand and leaned over her, "You're out of your depth here, Y/n."

"Now, you don't really know that do you? Just because I'm younger than you doesn't mean I don't know what I'm doing."

"You're awfully pushy. Not used to hearing no, are you?"

Y/n watched as the edge of his mouth lifted in amusement and she widened her eyes and pointed, "You're almost smiling."

He shook his head and looked around the bar before pinning his gaze back to hers, "I hope you enjoy the rest of your night. But your luck has run out with me, princess."

Harry stood to his full height and Y/n decided to try one last time, "So it's true then. What he said."

He stopped and turned to look back at her, a slow burning heat behind his gaze, "Couldn't be further from the truth."

She smiled and slid off her stool to stand in front of him. His height was impressive, "Prove it."

The line of his jaw hardened, turning his cheekbones into slashes of tension. His eyes simmered as he weighed his options. Finally, a hint of a smile stretched over his mouth. A small one, but still.

"I don't need to prove anything to silly little girls."

"Good thing I'm not a silly little girl. I'm a grown woman, Harry."

Y/n knew she was pushing it. She'd never needed to throw herself at any man before. But because of that, she wasn't used to rejection either. Maybe it was a good lesson for her ego. She knew her big fault was how entitled she could act sometimes. But that was partly thanks to how she was raised. It's better to act like a man to get what you want in life, her dad told her. And so far, that had been true. Some women balked at her confidence and her bold attitude. She wasn't demure or sweet enough. And men would often refer to her as a bitch or say that she was trying too hard.

She'd work on her ego another time. But right now? She was focused on winning this battle.

"What do you want with someone like me anyway? Hm? I'm old, Y/n. What's in it for you?"

Blinking her eyes she shook her head, "You're not old, first of all. Secondly, you're really attractive. It doesn't need to go much deeper than that, does it? I just think you're handsome. And I do kind of like a challenge."

"I can see that you like a challenge. It's the only reason I haven't walked out that door yet. Kind of relentless."

She smiled, "So it's working?"

Another half-smile worked its way up his mouth as he laughed in disbelief, "Are you surprised that it is?"

His pupils coasted over her figure and then back up to her face. The warmth of his gaze singed her skin like an open flame.

"I guess I just didn't know how difficult it'd be with you."

He licked his lips, "Difficult. You have no idea. But looks like you're about to find out. Go tell your friends what's going on. Meet me out front."

Y/n watched him turn and walk away. She was shocked. For a minute she thought he wasn't going to go for it at all.

Shaking off the sudden surprise of having gotten to him she settled up with the bartender and then stopped at the table with her friends. They were just about to give her condolences for having oversold her ability but she interrupted. "He's waiting for me outside. Location is on. Don't wait up!"

Harry was leaning against a black car in the parking lot when she stepped out of the doors. The moment he saw her he pushed himself off the car and opened the passenger door for her.

It was going to be tricky to maintain the kind of confidence she'd been feigning with him up until then but there was no part of her that didn't want to find out what he could show her.

She watched as Harry sat down in the driver's seat and started up his car. He took up too much space in the seat. His big hand wrapped around the leather steering wheel while his other encased the shift stick. Even the way he drove was turning her on.

She was pleased that she'd wormed her way under his skin and that he'd given in. She'd try her best to make it worth his while. Reaching across the console she put her hand on his thigh and he glanced down quickly before setting his gaze back on the road.

Now, Harry had slept with younger women a couple of times. He generally preferred someone closer to his age because he liked the confidence and experience that came with age. Women in their 20s were often in a different stage of life and that was fine –normal even, but it just usually wasn't a match for him. Not sexually and not mentally.

But Y/n was unusually confident for being so young. Persistent. He liked it, he couldn't lie. Whether or not she really had much else going for her beyond confidence, he guessed he'd find out. Well, she was very cute too. She did have that in her favor.

And Y/n at least seemed like she knew what she wanted. It was flattering as well. Being approached by such a pretty young thing. He figured the moment he told her to go back to her friends she'd give up but she was just fiery enough that she wasn't deterred.

When she ran her nail over his wrist he knew he was screwed. She was just close enough that he could smell her perfume and then she nudged her shoe into his shin and all he could think about was that she really wanted to be shown a good time and if anyone could it was him.

Harry knew his way around a woman's body. They were all different and he liked finding all the buttons and things that made them purr. In his experience, though, the younger the woman, the less she knew her own body. He didn't know if Y/n was just talking a big game but he was about to find out.

He stayed quiet as she ran her hand down his thigh and he shifted as the car accelerated past the green light. He'd see if she'd do anything with her hand but maybe she'd just pet at him like a novelty toy. He didn't expect—

"This is okay?" She asked him, her tone sultry as she palmed at his crotch.

He licked his lips, "Have at it."

His cock fattened up nicely with not much effort on her part. Proof that he definitely could get it up. Plucking at his button she looked from his face to her fingers as she leaned further over the console to reach her hand into his open pants to help him with the awkward angle of his dick. He seemed to appreciate that as he shifted under her palm.

Rubbing over his heather grey briefs she peeled down the elastic band the slightest to get a peek. The dark shade of pink on his tip matched the muted raspberry of his lips. She slid the pad of her middle finger over the slit and he softly inhaled through his teeth.

She wouldn't be able to give him roadhead like she wanted. It was impossible with the stick shift in the way. But she could wrap her fingers around his shaft and feel him under her palm until they got wherever they were going.

"Mmm… It's so big, Harry. Knew you would be. Might be the biggest I've seen in person. Can't tell yet, though. Have to wait to see when we've got these off."

Harry pushed a laughed breath through his nose. She was a bold thing. Her assertiveness was a turn-on. He didn't like meek and shy. Not when it came to sex.

When she spit into her palm and smeared it down his length, the best she could, he parted his lips and stepped on the gas. She was already exceeding any expectations he had for her. Maybe she'd prove him wrong.

Her nail scraped the underside of him and she moaned, "Really want it in my mouth."

He gulped harshly and ticked his jaw, "Just be patient. I'll let you put it in your mouth soon enough."

"And where are we going? Your place?"

He nodded, "Just a few minutes away."

She squeezed around him and pulled upward slowly. She knew already, he was well above average and she was going to have to work to give him a proper blowy.

His house was a one story, the driveway at the front with a garage attached. He lifted his hand and pushed on a device that was clinging to his sun visor and the garage door began to open. There was a covered motorcycle along the back wall and then the garage door closed after he shut off the engine.

She moved her hand away and unbuckled herself as he got out. When she reached down to pick up her little purse she realized her panties were already wet. She grinned as she stepped out, adjusting her dress before closing the door, and then followed behind him as he led her into a dark hallway.

When he turned on the lights she took it all in. Hardwood floors led into a dining area and then a kitchen. Hung on the walls were photos of himself with two children and then more framed photos with just the kids.

"Do you have kids?"

"I do. Boy and a girl. 7 and 10."

"You're not married are you?"

He laughed, "If I were you'd have known. Wouldn't have been out in the first place if I had a wife waiting for me at home."

She nodded as he turned on the kitchen light and pulled out two glasses before filling them with water.

"Divorced?"

Handing her a glass he squinted, "Yes."

She took a sip. He was a man of few words she'd gathered. She looked around the kitchen. Wood cabinets, an outdated laminate countertop, stainless steel appliances. The space could use some updating but it was large and he had a big pantry.

Sitting the glass down on the counter she watched him closely. His pants were still unbuttoned. She eyed the space at his crotch as he placed his own glass down next to hers.

"It's not gonna suck itself."

She laughed and looked up at him. He had a genuine smile on his face that time. The first real smile she'd seen from him all night. A healthy row of clean teeth, a dimple…

"Hmm… I think you're right. Let's see what we've got…"

She moved in front of him and placed her hands on his pants to push them away but before she could inch them down he wrapped his meaty hand around the back of her neck and drew her into his chest. His mouth was warm and soft. His tongue tasted like the whisky he'd been drinking.

Letting go of his pants she held onto his biceps as he used his free hand to push her hips against his. Still nice and hard. He ran his tongue over her lips and she moaned into his mouth. He worked his warm lips down to her jaw and then he licked upward on her neck, the wet patch was cool on her skin from the air in the kitchen. He did it again and her knees almost gave out. She hadn't been licked like that before.

He kissed over her clavicle and then drew his tongue over her flesh. Her heart was thrumming quickly and she squeezed his strong arms when he rutted against her.

"You good at sucking cock, Y/n?" He pushed his nose against her jawline and the hot breath from his words scattered over the skin on her neck.

"I want to be," she spoke breathlessly, eyes fluttering closed as he mawed at her throat.

He parted from her neck and looked down at her, half-lidded gaze and spit-slicked lips, "Go on."

Instantly she dropped to her knees as her fingers worked deftly at pulling his pants down and then his underwear. She'd sucked a handful of dicks so she knew a couple of moves.

Getting her hand around his thick shaft proved to be a small challenge. To say he was thick… understatement. Long too. His tip was smooth, mushroomed with ridges along the length that she hoped she'd get to feel later on. His was the kind of cock that women dreamed of.

Looking up at him she licked her palm and used her spit to pump him slowly. Another glob over his tip for good measure. Then she pressed a kiss to the base of him, just over his sac, and screwed her eyes upward to watch his expression as she licked his balls, one side at a time. She wound her tongue all around to wet him before sucking at one side, pulling it into her mouth and he let out a ragged breath, his dark pupils spreading inky until the soft green had almost vanished.

He liked it.

She worked around the other side, sucking him in again and swirling her tongue softly underneath the tender bits. He gripped the counter behind himself.

Pulling off she straightened her back and licked upward, feeling every delicious thick ridge along his shaft until her tongue met his smooth crown. Laving every crevice of his tip, she dipped her tongue into his slit and then ran it under the frenulum before she wetted every inch of his glans.

Her mouth was watering when she parted her lips around him and flitted her gaze upward. He was watching her with a slack jaw as she took him a little deeper. He cradled the back of her head and moaned.

"Just suck the tip…."

She blinked up at him and pulled her lips just over the lip, swirling and suckling around him like he wanted.

"Fuck. Just like that." His hand at the back of her head was easy. He didn't push or pull. It was more like a pleased gesture as his fingertips flexed around her skull gently.

Y/n would have liked to have gone deeper. Wanted to show him her best work. But he seemed rather happy with what she was doing.

She bobbed a couple of times, only to slide her lips back to his tip. Her pace was slow when she began to stroke his length with a little twisting motion.

He was big. She knew she could take more but in a way, she was grateful that that was all he was asking for.

A groan fell from his chest and he bucked forward, his cock slipping down her tongue and she sucked, drawing more of him in as she moved her hands away.

"Goddamnit, you're good."

She took that as permission to go deeper. Relaxing her jaw she closed her eyes and held her breath, pushing down to her limit. She filled her throat with his cock the best she could and gurgled around his tip.

He coughed out a moan and then thumbed at her cheek, "Alright, that's good."

She pulled off of him. His heavy cock aimed right at her face when she sat back on her knees and looked up at him, "I can do better than that."

He laughed and put his hand out for her to take, helping her stand up, "I bet you can. Come on."

Harry kept her hand in his as he led her to his bedroom. It was just past the dark living space and he turned on a floor lamp on the opposite side of the room from the bed. When he turned back toward her he cupped her face and kissed her again.

She pressed her hand into his warm, hard chest and he reached around the back of her dress to pull the zipper downward, his fingers dragging down her skin as he went. His touch sent a tremor down her spine as continued kissing her wetly.

He stepped back, helping her out of her dress until it fell to the floor. His eyes raked over her body and he smoothed his hands over her hips and up to her bra-covered breasts. He stepped in closer, walking her backward toward his bed. He put his hands back on her hips and nudged her to sit before he reached down to lift her leg up by her calf, removing her heels, one at a time.

Y/n's thong was drenched. She stared at him while he placed her shoes side by side at the foot of the bed and then he placed his big palms on her thighs, pushing her legs open, "Lie back."

She let her back hit the mattress as Harry got to his knees on the floor. An arm reached under her thigh as he spread her apart and then she felt her panties being pulled at until her her wet pusslips were right in his face. He groaned and felt a hand slide up the inside of her thigh. He pressed his mouth over her mons and looked up at her before he opened his mouth wide and drew his tongue through her crease making her gasp.

"Get your bra off."

She pushed herself up slightly and worked at the clasp of her bra between moans as Harry continued licking at her pussy. When she pulled her arm through the flimsy material he lifted his head and reached around her back, pulling her closer to the edge of the bed and he sucked a nipple into his mouth.

"Oh, fuck!"

Y/n's finger and her long nails pushed into Harry's hair and scraped at his scalp as he licked and pulled at each nipple. He buried his face between her tits and let out a low sound, like he was murmuring something to her but only her breasts were allowed to hear it.

When he sunk back down he pushed at her so she'd lie back and he started in on her clit, one hand holding her panties to the side as he devoured her glistening cunt.

She kept feeling like she was going to slide off the edge of the bed but Harry's grip on her kept her still. His tongue and his lips were magic as he drew her to her end. She yanked at his hair and babbled his name on repeat as her spine bowed off the bed when she came.

Her chest was still rising and falling heavy when she felt her body being pushed upward. She popped her eyes open and watched him roll a condom over his shaft before he kneed back up onto the bed next to her. He was stark naked. His body was insane. Thick muscle and masculine everything. Tattoos scatter over his arms and chest.

Fuck, she muttered under her breath.

"Flip over, for me," his deep voice was husky as he motioned toward her to move.

She rolled to her stomach and she felt his fingers slide between the band of her panties and her hips as he pulled them down her legs.

"Ass up a little. I want to see all of you, Y/n."

She grinned and turned to look at him over her shoulder as she lifted her hips and spread her thighs. His lips were parted as he grabbed her ass and squeezed, making her cheeks spread apart. He inhaled sharply through his teeth and then dipped in, kissing her pussy from behind before licking upward over her ass.

She squealed quietly and bit her lip, still watching him behind her as he lifted, a lopsided grin on his face. He gazed at her as he fisted the base of his cock and slid the head up and down her soaked folds before he tipped his hips to push in just the tip.

"Gorgeous. Gonna look even better wrapped around cock. You like anal?"

"Never tried it."

He licked his lips and pressed his lips together as he looked at the spot where his dick was pressed against her cunt, "Figured. S'alright. Pussy's my favorite anyway."

"We could try… if you want."

He looked back into her eyes, a cocky smile on his face, "Your little hole would need to be trained. And that takes time. So, there will be no anal tonight. Not gonna try and hurt you. But that's a cute thought."

He canted his hips inward, eyes on hers and her mouth dropped open when she felt her entrance splitting open for him. She was tight, but so slick, it only took a few slow thrusts until he was buried in with a low grunt. He pulled back and then pushed his entire length into the hilt.

"Fuck—fuck!" She cried and stuffed her face into the blankets.

"Too much?"

"No! It's so good. You're just so big…" She began to send her hips back against him and Harry slowly fucked in to match her pace. His eyes were everywhere. On her puss getting split open on his cock, the curve of her lower back, the swell of her ass.

He just knew she'd look so sweet with her ass stuffed too, but good things like that couldn't be rushed which was a shame.

Every thrust was gushy wet. Y/n bubbled out small moans every time his dick brushed deep into her guts. It was better than she imagined. The way he filled her to the brim was going to turn into an addiction. She'd never slept with any man that had her wanting seconds before they'd even finished.

"Oh my god…" she mewled into the comforter.

"Fuck, I know, baby…"

She fit him like a glove, it was perfect. He went in a little faster, balls thudding against her skin rhythmically making her bounce forward as she spread around his girth. When he ground in she arched her back deeply and let out a soft groan, her hands fisted at the blanket and Harry reached around and smeared his fingertips over her clit.

It had her panting and pushing into him feverishly. She'd needed the friction on her throbbing button and he'd found it easily, thick, rough fingerprints slicking back and forth as he rutted in and in. It sent electrical sparks over her limbs.

"Like that? Needs her clit touched? Shit baby, act like you've never been touched by a man right here before…" he plucked at her like he was playing the guitar and she began to fade, her moans getting caught in her chest.

He could feel her walls tightening around him as he drove in deep.

"Fuck, Harry— fuck!"

He grinned as he watched her shudder, "Give it up, Y/n. There you go…"

She began to pulse around him, a constant stream of nonsense falling from her lips as he stroked against her channel and pushed deep into her tummy, his fingers still working her clit with ease.

Just as her body had tipped and oxygen returned to her lungs he pulled out and she felt him taking her hips and turning her around to her back. Harry grabbed her ankles and lifted until each was settled over his shoulders and pushed back inside of her, cock drilling down to her core making her teeth chatter at the way he split her down the middle.

Harry leaned over her, cock buried deep as she watched her pretty face twist up with pleasure. Plapping into her, her tits wobbled as his balls tightened against his body. The harder he plunged in, the more her legs shook. Soon, her ankles had slipped down and her feet hit the mattress as he continued drilling into her. His face was flushed hot, lips parted, muscles tensed.

Reaching up to his neck she smoothed her fingers over his warm skin and he lowered his chest down to hers and kissed her. That filthy tongue ran over her lips and he sloppily sipped at her between sucking at her lips. Her brain had turned to jelly.

She felt his hand on her outer thigh squeezing and brushing as he fucked down into her. "Mmm… fuck, Y/n, m'gonna come…"

He trembled over her, thick thighs pressed down and flexed as he rutted in and in and in, and then… he stilled. A deep, guttural moan vibrated through his chest down into hers.

She sighed when she felt him throbbing, pumping into his condom. Her fingers caressed the muscles over his back and she gasped when he bucked in harshly, once more as he emptied the last of his come into the rubber wrapped around his cock.

He slowed his kisses until they were lazy little pecks and then he looked down at her, his chest heaving. She was already grinning up at him.

"What?"

She blinked her eyes, "That was fun."

He puffed out a breath, "I guess that's a good way to describe it."

Harry was a gentleman as he pulled out slowly and helped her off the bed and led her to his bathroom. He helped her clean up and listened to her tell him about her job —just reminding him that she was an adult after he commented on her being so young again.

When she picked her dress up off the floor and started to step into it, Harry frowned, "What are you doing?"

She stopped and raised her brows. "Getting dressed. Was gonna call an Uber. I'm sure you don't want a stranger in your house all night," she laughed.

Harry pulled at her hand, making her drop her dress, "What kind of men have you been hanging out with that let you leave in an Uber at 2 am? You'll stay here."

She opened her mouth and then closed it in surprise before tilting her head in confusion, "Really? I just assumed—"

"You'll stay the night here. There's no way in hell you're getting an Uber at this time of night. It's dangerous."

She grinned and shrugged, "Well then… can I have a shirt or something to sleep in?"

He placed his warm hands on her hips, "You can have a t-shirt if you like. I prefer to sleep naked myself."

"Oh yeah? I usually do too as a matter of fact."

He held her out in his arms and eyed her naked frame, "Looks like we're both good to go then. We'll get you sorted in the morning. I'll give you a ride home then."

"I think you just want to keep me here with you," she chuckled.

Harry shook his head and released her hips before he popped her on the bottom with his palm. She bleated out a laugh.

"Get your ass in bed before I change my mind."

"Yes, sir."

. .

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