#honestly might call this the excess limbs AU

[music00lbumm]

He will be exploring sooo much about Davy’s curse it’s bound to happen that Ford will find his heart whether Davy likes it or not

[missinghan]

to my youth ⤖ lee felix

❖ genre : summer au; high school au; fluff

❖ word count : 11,6k.

❖ warning : explicit language, slow burn

❖ summary : it is official that life hates you because not only was your first few days of summer ruined by a stupid field trip, but things also got somewhat freaky… whatever kind of ‘freaky’ you’re thinking about.

❖ note : i know i said i’m ‘experimenting’ with new stuff but guess who’s back with another mediocre, not-that-well-written mess of a domestic au; please (kindly) yell at me to dabble into a new genre after bearing through this fic- happy reading!

one.

The echoes of your summer days remain as flowers immune to the winter chill, they say.

You’re not entirely sure who even fathomed their time and effort to come up with that statement but from your point of view, those flowers would most likely have either died out from the summer heat or withered horrendously because of the arbitrary showers of rain. Or you’re the only one who doesn’t have the luxury to see life through a rose-colored lens.

Because the first thing that comes to mind for you is the bucket of ice-cream and a YouTube OG that you’ve ceased to finish since finals started two weeks ago. The bell rings, pens down, everyone pours out of the classroom after handing in their exam papers. No one really bothers to check up on each other’s answers anymore; the last subject for today was AP Psych and you don’t know about them but you honestly can’t care any less thereafter cramming the entirety of five chapters. 

Sprinting down the staircase, you easily spot Felix amongst the midst of drowsy high school students for the bright color of his hair. He truly believes that if he slaps enough hair essence and coconut oil on his head four times a week, his hair won’t feel like straws when he changes it every other three weeks. But it’s only a matter of time before balding catches up to him, he’ll learn eventually.

“Please don’t tell me that you left your keys in class,” you sigh upon the sight of him fumbling with his folders and textbooks while trying to open his locker in vain. Just thinking about walking all the way back to the third floor makes you want to use your backpack as a pillow and take a nice nap in the middle of the hallway.

“Gee, Y/N,” Felix makes a face to not show the sense of relief washing over him when he locks eyes with you. “Who do you take me as? A clumsy person?”

“No, just a dumbass.” You coldly snatch a slipping book from his arms before turning to twist the disc in the combination of your birthday until the lock clicks, shaking the shackle off to swing his locker open. It’s a silent tradition that you both set each other’s birthday as your locker’s combination since elementary school; it started out as a stupid joke at first but neither of you really bothered to change it. 

“Why the hell would you put your keys in the locker?” you widen your eyes in disbelief as he grabs the bright yellow Spongebob plushie to collect his keys with a shit-eating grin

“My alarm didn’t go off today, so I was running a little late,” he defends himself while dumping everything out of his backpack, hugging an empty water bottle to his side. 

You throw a wave at a very tired Hyunjin walking side by side with Seungmin on his right and Jisung skipping happily towards your direction. Seungmin looks exceptionally moody today, you pray he didn’t mess up an easy question to take it out on all of you later in the car. “Bet you were staying up late to play Overwatch with Chan.” 

Felix manages to grin stiffly at your comment, turning on his heels and trudges onto the school’s parking lot. “Fine, walk home.” 

“Hey, you forgot to lock this!” you pull his steps into a halt by making a grab for his hand, utterly oblivious at how his cheeks flare up with a bright shade of red at your touch. Or out of embarrassment. Whatever, same thing. 

Felix might be a better driver than you, but he’d be fired ten seconds into the job of a babysitter.

With that being said, when Jeongin decides it’s a good idea to cheer a passive-aggressive, post-exams Seungmin up with a carton of strawberry milk and then proceeds to get lost in his own school, the very same school he’s been attending for who knows how long, you’re the one who manually pulls his ass back into Mrs. Lee’s Jeep within ten minutes. 

And Seungmin has already fallen asleep by the time Jeongin’s back, so now he’s the passive-aggressive one while sipping on the milk bitterly. Either way, this is why you headcount although there are only six of you after Changbin starts getting busy with his college applications. 

“What took you so long?” Jisung looks up from his phone the moment you climb into the passenger’s seat, clicking in your seatbelt (drive safe, kids). 

You immediately feel the need to snap a photo of Jeongin accidentally breaking the cafeteria’s door with the staff running towards him in a panic. They’re more scared for his life than the door itself and that’s… sweet to say the least but with the way that the embarrassed boy is glaring at you through the rear-view mirror, you decide to keep your lips sealed. 

“It’s getting dark so all hallways start to look the same, you genius.”

Jisung momentarily sticks his tongue out at you. “God, you’re so rude to me. You’d never talk to Felix like that.”

“Because,” you drawl. “Lix is a pure-hearted angel descended from the realms of Heaven. Whereas, even Lucifer would see you as an eyesore in hell.”

“See! You’re doing it again!” Jisung points a finger at you in accusation, jumping up and down in his seat but no one really cares. It’s not like you’re speaking any false facts. “Stop bullying me!”

Seungmin shifts his body a little, nose scrunched up at the noises that wake him right up. “Jisung,” he warns his friend without opening his eyes. “Sit the fuck down, you have five seconds.”

Felix smirks when Jisung immediately cowers, slumping and leaning himself against Hyunjin in utter defeat. He learned not to mess with Seungmin after throwing a wallet at him on impulse. “Jealous much, Han?” 

“Nah, she’s all yours bro,” Jisung waves it off tiredly; bickering and making fun of Felix’s gigantic crush on you is too much for his brain to process today. He can really use a long, solid twelve-hour summer hibernation after getting home. 

The statement prompts Felix to look over at you when there’s a red light—the same exact moment as you stop staring at the bakery from across the road to lock eyes with him. There’s a little spark igniting at the pit of his stomach, stirring up butterflies inside his rib cage. But he snaps out of it after seeing you raise a brow at him, implying a silent ‘what?’ before turning away again. Felix has always been the type to stare so you don’t bother to think about it too much. 

The problem is: he only stares at you that way. 

A shade of coral creeps its way up to his cheeks, his gaze averting back on the roads when the light turns green. As Felix tries to calm the erratic tempo of his heartbeat, he also thinks about how much time he’d have left to confess before high school is over and everyone takes their own different paths. Then again, the future is far too blurry for him to make out anything and the thought of changes petrifies him a bit too much. 

Felix wishes to hold your hand until the very end but he’s a little scared...because what if you never wanted to be with him in the first place?

two.

Your brother has one talent, and that’s his ability to irritate the living daylight out of you even when he’s practically on the other side of the planet.

Minho (un)fortunately finished his finals with flying colors, and inevitably, you’re the first victim to receive a series of texts that consisted of nothing but self-indulgent, excessive bragging. Basically, he’s allowed to do whatever slash go wherever for a good three weeks before his summer internship begins, dragging his dumb ass back to hell—where he rightfully belongs. 

He’s probably chomping on a terribly unhealthy amount of pizza, pretzels, and any type of New York street food that you can name from the top of your head. It’s not like he’s paying for them anyway since Chan doesn’t allow people to touch their wallets if they happen to eat out with him. 

Your phone vibrates obnoxiously on your desk, the judder slightly muffled because it’s lying on top of your wide-open psych textbook. You haven’t bothered with cleaning up yet; finals only ended yesterday and you decide that you won’t touch anything until the disarray starts to scrape against your nerves. 

Side note: you’ve specifically told everyone not to call you three consecutive days after finals because yes, you’re that much of a loner, and yes, your stamina level for tolerating human interaction is awfully low. 

Second side note: no one ever listens. 

“Good morning, this is Lee Minho’s personal bullshit pail,” you mumble after your thumb swipes against the screen to pick up, your limbs curled up on the floor. “How can I possibly help you today?” Your morning voice isn’t necessarily threatening but rather scary; according to what Minho claimed, it sounds identical to that creepy girl from The Grudge so he groans aloud, his voice suddenly going out of focus on the other line from pulling his phone away.

“Jesus Christ are you still in your hermit phase after finals?” he questions callously, sounding not at all pleased with the way you greeted him. “Where’s mom and dad? Usually, they would have slammed your ass by now for staying inside like a vampire.”

“Don’t be insufferable, it’s only like…” you trail off while bending forward to take a good look at the little Sumiko Gurashi alarm on your bookshelf that Felix gave you during middle school. “Nine thirty-something and they’re at the park to exercise, duh- why do you care?”

Your brother almost sings on the phone, “Because you’re my little baby sister-” And this prompts you to pull the device away for the sake of your poor ear. It doesn’t help when you’re already surrounded by a group full of obnoxiously loud individuals on a daily basis. Not trying to call anyone out but Han Jisung is at the top of the list, his name in bold, capital letters being circled and underlined multiple times with a red marker.

“Who do I gotta kill to sleep in on a dreadful Sunday morning as any normal, cranky, antisocial high school student would?” you deadpan and rub the bridge of your nose dreadfully. 

“I don’t know, go murder Jisung or something.” Honestly, that’s tempting… but no.

You can physically see the smug smile on his face right now, simpering in delight at your imminent misery. He knows goddamn well about your relationship with sleeping schedules and that’s the perfect excuse for him to ruin those little specks of time when your brain cells are getting an actual break. 

These are also the times when you wish phones don’t fucking exist. 

“By the way, are you gonna go on the field trip tomorrow?” 

This question wakes you up almost completely because your eyes are now wide as a fish’s out of water, your hand automatically putting him on speaker before digging through the folders inside your backpack. What field trip? No one said anything about a field trip. And who thought it’s a good idea to force some worn-out, post-exams, sleep-deprived students into a field trip right after finals?

Minho hums coyly when the only response he’s getting is the rustling sound from your backpack, “Hmm, see what I meant there, little sis? Oh, the downside of living under a rock at its finest.” He doesn’t have to be here for you to fully picture the way that his lips curl up, dark brows wiggling whenever he’s right about something. Your brother wins most of the time against other people but overtaking you is an entirely different story.

“Oh screw off and go buy yourself a sense of humor.”

“Don’t be so mopey, isn’t Felix gonna be there?”

“What does Felix have to do with this?” you grit after managing to pull out a piece of paper from the very back, buried under countless of your essays. And it reads ‘field trip’ in caps at the top with tomorrow’s date right beneath. The trip lasts for three days, you’re going camping with the grizzly bears for three days—a total nightmare, basically. 

“Pfft, you’re actually dense for someone with a sparkly report card,” he sneers. “That kid has been crushing on you since elementary school. Are the signals that fucked up?”

“You mean when I accidentally spilled orange juice over his head? Sure, bet that’s why he’s so head over heels for me,” you snicker, unfazed by these kinds of statements. Minho only knows Felix because he was the president of your school's dance club and you fully believe that your brother is simply trying to mess with your malfunctioning, cranky mindset. 

“I fucking beg to differ, he always stares at you like you’re the love of his life, even when you stupidly poked yourself with a needle,” Minho announces as if he’s a love expert, tsk, amateur. “He might just confess during the trip, who knows? Campfire flickering. Sharing the same s’mores. Surrounded by nature. That sounds romantically ideal to me for a confession.”

He’s visioning everything like a terrible cliché film where two high schoolers stubbornly deny their feelings for each other until they start noticing how cute the other person is while magically being forced to be alone together. The worst kind of high school movie—which is also almost every high school movie. And you best believe that you’d a hundred percent kick your brother’s ass off that director’s chair because people live and breathe for this kind of overused entertainment. Tragic. 

“Alright, fuck this, I’m out-“

“Wait!” Minho exclaims out of nowhere, almost blowing up your eardrums. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

You swear you’re rolling your eyes so hard, they’re about to fall out of their respective sockets. “Well, obviously,” you put the piece of paper down with a sigh, contemplating ways to minimize the amount of socializing in the upcoming three days. “Haven’t you bothered me enough? No?”

“You can’t leave me like this,” he whines in an annoyingly high-pitched voice that sends chills down your spine. 

“You need me, we’re connected.” 

He sounds like a whack version of Minnie Mouse for a second there, the kind of plushie that looks cute but with disturbingly creepy voice audio; no parents would let their children go near that aisle. 

You yawn as if there’s no tomorrow, stretching your limbs tiredly. “What I need is for you to shut the fuck up and leave me alone so I can go on my merry way to pick up snacks for this stupid field trip,” you utter lifelessly. 

“You hurt my feelings,” Minho pretends to clutch onto his chest and lets out a dramatic gasp, his voice doused in pure sarcasm. “What a heartbreaker, Y/N.” Said the one who always keeps his apathetic front up like a fortress’ wall and tosses every single love letter on Valentine’s Day into the recycling bin, handing the chocolate out to his classmates like he’s giving leftover vegetables to his least favorite relatives.

“Oh, I can tell,” you reply with fake enthusiasm and mock empathy. “You know how I can tell?”

“Do not finish th-”

“Cause we’re connected.” With that you hang up, slamming your phone harshly onto the surface of your textbook. 

three. 

You might love your room a little too much, it’s getting somewhat unhealthy.

It was furnished with a rather meager budget after your family moved out of your hometown when you stepped into elementary school. Things stay the same, well, most of it as time passes by you unknowingly. Your sad bookcase used to exist for one sole purpose—carrying countless books and plushies has now been upgraded with too many polaroids of your dumb group of friends, a neatly framed photo of Class of 2020 and two trophies that don’t even belong to you since Minho ran out of space as he kept participating in random dance competitions. 

The morning beams find their way through your white curtains and stain your walls with patches of yellow, eventually bugging your vision until you successfully convince yourself to either 1) wake up and get ready for school or 2) lazily stride across your room to shut the blinds completely so you can head back to bed. It’s summer… so option one is temporarily non-existent for a solid three months. 

Hey, you’re just simply making up for those all-nighters with a new cup of coffee every two hours.

Speaking of your bed, it’s soft but takes up so much space to the point that Hyunjin keeps complaining about not having enough room for his legs when he’s sprawled across the floor with Jisung, vigorously focusing on a presentation’s outline. Seungmin calls you lame for not throwing away your childhood plushies and letting them hog at least one-third of your bed, but Felix doesn’t mind since he always needs something to hug. All the more reasons why you can only trust Felix.

You might miss having those idiots being loud and invading your personal space...maybe.

Your phone rings for the second time that morning when you’re walking downstairs, shoving your keys into your pocket and grabbing a protein bar on the counter. “I’m not in the mood for your bullshit right now, Minho,” you bark into the device, chewing on your breakfast aggressively, not bothering to look at the caller’s ID.

The closest convenience store is only twenty minutes away from your house but there’s a sticky note on the fridge from your mom, reminding you that she needs eggs to bake cupcakes for her company’s twentieth anniversary while your dad is running low on his Red Bulls. Basically, you’re in distress. It’s not like your dad should be inhaling those sugary drinks on a daily basis and your mom can just buy premade goods from the bakery. But there are more options for snacks at the supermarket…

“Y/N, the fuck?” The response of a voice as deep as the Pacific ocean almost makes you choke on air. “Did I wake you up or something?” Felix sounds flabbergasted on the other line, slightly taken aback. You almost feel bad because he’s the only sweetheart in your chaotic squad (besides Chan, obvi) except when he stays up late gaming with Hyunjin, pleading for your notes the next morning with puppy eyes.

“No, Minho did,” you grumble before tossing the wrapping into a bin.

“You don’t say,” Felix replies flatly, but his voice soon grows merry again after pushing the topic of your brother aside. “Oh, and I’m coming over to return your earphones, wanna grab breakfast?”

He practically lives ten minutes away from you, sees you almost every day even if it’s the weekend since he can’t stay in the same house with his sisters for too long and puts you on FaceTime every night to prevent himself from slacking off on assignments. The only time he didn’t get to see you for a week straight was when he visited Australia and accidentally dropped his phone into the ocean. It was a rough week without you nagging him for doing something stupid. Fundamentally, he’s merely making up more excuses to spend time with you after finals.

Chuckling, “Only if you’re treating me, I’m about to go broke from buying snacks for our field trip tomorrow.” you say breezily. 

And you’re only telling him that because he might just pay for your snacks as well since Felix Lee eats freshly grilled steak and mashed potato for breakfast. Baffling, absolutely. Plus, he works at a boba shop every summer either way and he would never hesitate to spend the entirety of his paycheck on any of his close friends. Irrelevant but the point is: you kinda don’t wanna go out alone today.

Or you’re just in the mood to go with Felix. That’s a useless statement since you both see each other at least ten out of twenty-four hours per day. 

“By the way, you know what I just realized?” Felix smacks his palm on his forehead. “This is our last field trip, like ever.”

Walking over to the rack of shoes down the hallway, you let out a large exhale. “That’s unfortunate on your behalf. I, on the other hand, don’t have a problem with that,” you tell him with zero consideration, your brain cells too busy picking out a pair of shoes to process the five basic steps to empathize with another human being. 

“No,” he emphasizes helplessly. “I meant, it’s like our last high school field trip. We’re graduating next year, no time to sleep with the grizzly bears again.”

You can only manage to utter, “Oh.” Shit, college is right around the corners. 

“Jesus fucking Christ what the hell am I supposed to do after high school? Stay here? Go abroad? Wait, aren’t applications for going abroad supposed to be turned in a year beforehand? Why are you only telling me this now!?” 

Felix laughs wholeheartedly through the phone, amused at your sudden outburst. “Y/N, calm down. You’re going to college, not prison,” he brushes it off casually but in a way, college is technically prison. Slaving over a degree while working part-time jobs, chasing time relentlessly like you’re driving in the middle of a foggy night with one headlight out. And you’re forced to open up with more strangers. It’s terrifying, actually terrifying. And you’re not the type to be easily terrified. 

Now come to think about it, you don’t get why you were so pressed about it five seconds ago. It’s a good opportunity not to leech off your parents as much, like dabbling, taking one baby step at a time into adulthood. After that, you’ll graduate again, probably settle somewhere with an adequate job and find someone, starting to think about having ki-

Hold up, you’re going too far. You’re barely a senior. 

“I guess we’ll just have to make the most out of this summer,” Felix’s voice snaps you back to the surface of Earth faster than a tick of a clock. “We’re outside, by the way. Open up.”

That fast? Furrowing your brows, you hang up to slip into a pair of sneakers before sprinting to the front door. Wait, your hand freezes as it grazes the doorknob. We?

Not again. 

“Why the fuck..” you cracks a lifelessly crooked smile after pushing the door wide open. “..are you here?” It’s only ten in the morning, and you don’t think you should be screaming at the top of your lungs to be jumped on by the whole neighborhood.

Felix takes a step back, a little scared for his life. “Uhh, to return your earphones?”

“No, no,” you run a hand through your hair tiredly. Just when you thought this day was gonna be peaceful. “I’m not talking about you, I’m talking about them. Since when was this an agreement? How dare-“

“Why yes, I missed you too!” Jisung exclaims like the little shit he is, throwing an arm over your neck to ruffle your hair. No one ruffles your hair without getting their ass slammed- except for Minho. “Why the long face? Let me guess, until this exact second, you thought there’s a fucking squirrel, a lama, a dog, and a kitten standing at your front porch? No, it’s us, your Forever BFFs.” He’s one of the reasons why you refuse to understand the humans’ language sometimes.

With a harsh shove from you, Jisung staggers backward only for Hyunjin to prevent him from rolling like a ball in the middle of your neighborhood. “One more word and I’m telling the whole class who your crush is,” you threaten, earning an involuntary snort from Seungmin. 

“I hate to admit this, but she might actually say yes if he makes the first move.”

Hyunjin supplies unconstructively, “That’s why he didn’t ask.”

“You know what, Hwang,” Felix says with a smirk tugging at his lips, bumping his fist against Hyunjin’s without turning his head. 

“Oh screw all of you.” Jisung’s getting all the attention he wanted this early in the morning yet he still feels like a loser. Perhaps he should try shutting up once in a while. 

four.

“Thanks for giving me a ride, uncle, you really didn’t have to,” Felix says generously from your dad’s back seats, scratching the nape of his neck as though this is the first time he’s ever shared a ride with you. 

He’s too humble sometimes you just want to smack him across the face with a pillow to stop being so formal with your dad. Heck, Felix downright called him ‘dad’ by accident once during a Christmas dinner back in middle school and your dad even encouraged him to keep addressing him like that. 

Not to mention, Felix is chomping on a turkey sandwich that your mom made this morning specifically for him after finding out that his parents are currently out of town and there's nothing but ramen in the cabinet. God forbids her to starve the same kid who helped your dad fix his bumper. So really, he should be expecting these things by now. 

“Oh it’s not a big deal, you’re too nice,” your dad laughs as he pulls over to your school’s front gate, careful not to run into that one really tall, ugly tree. You’re lowkey paranoid that people might die if it collapses during a storm or something. “Perhaps you can return the favor by getting a drink with me sometimes.”

Felix blinks numerous times, slightly gobsmacked. “...but I’m not old enough to drink yet.”

“Correct answer.” And you snicker when your dad turns around to toss a wink at your friend’s direction. “Doesn’t mean that I’m forbidding you kids have fun,” he clarifies upon the baffled expression on Felix’s face. “But not too much fun, got it?”

“Okay, okay dad, I’ll see you in three days,” you shake your head before climbing out of the car. “Don’t starve the cats while I’m gone. Oh! And Soonie still needs his lactobacillus-“

Your dad brushes it off with a sheepish smile, “I’ll leave it to your mom, muffin, I can’t even remember which dry food is for which cat. I also don’t think they’ll be starving anytime soon, those little demons are getting quite fat actually since your brother spoils them all the time.” You can only give him a mere eye-roll because as much as he claims to hate having pets, there have been countless times when you caught your dad red-handed trying to tuck the cats into bed in the middle of the night. 

Felix soon catches up with your steps after bidding him farewell, crumpling the sandwich wrapper in his palm. “Wait up, muffin,” he says breathlessly with a few skips, starting to think about not skipping dance practice again this summer before his body gets out of shape. 

“Shut up,” you grumble, followed by a harsh elbow jabbed into his side. Felix grunts in pain, slowing down a little but still tries to walk side by side with you nonetheless. “You don’t deserve that complimentary breakfast, I’m telling mom to cut your portion off next time.” 

“Ah! Come on, muffin! You’re being mean.”

Your biggest fear has inevitably come true—after all those years of erratic mood swings and other weird things puberty puts you through, Felix still makes fun of you for the nickname that your parents came up with on your first day of school. It doesn’t help with the fact that he meets them quite often too. Like four out of seven days a week since your parents love coming over to each other’s house for dinner. 

“Flip that scowl upside down now, will you?” Felix cups your cheeks and squishes them together, attempting to make your smile by tugging at the corners of your lips. “Aren’t you excited about the trip?”

You scoff at him, “Are you even hearing yourself? My entire existence reeks off ‘excitement’ 24/7.” 

“That’s bullshit.”

“I’m not responsible for whatever happens next to your face.”

But when you reach up to peel his hands away, you’re bound to make a grave mistake by looking straight into his eyes. The morning light hits his face at the right angle and it makes him look like a puppy—which you wouldn't mind starting at all day. Although it’s not like you haven’t got a good look at him before, something’s different today. From the way his irises twinkle gently like thousands of celestial bodies to how his freckles scattered across his cheekbones like the remaining bits from a supernova, his full lips with a prominent Cupid’s bow and his cute crooked teeth. 

You know all of these things; perhaps you’ve never put too much thought into them before. Not when you’re constantly facepalming at him for doing stupid TikTok dances and trying to eat a banana with its peel on. But now when you actually acknowledge them, your heart momentarily skips a beat. Or two. 

Doesn’t matter, you hate this feeling either way. 

“Get a room, this is disgusting to watch.” 

Seungmin steps in between you two with his backpack slung over his shoulders, hands resting on his hip like he’s babysitting you and your biological parents don’t pay him enough for this tedious job. But Felix is too busy making sure that his eyes aren’t malfunctioning when he sees a pink tint on your cheeks to focus on whatever nonsense Seungmin is spewing at him. 

“Get on the bus, losers! Y’all are embarrassing me!” Hyunjin yells as he plants a foot onto the bus, trying his best not to be subtle about the fact that all of your classmates have already been seated. 

You can practically see Jisung making weird faces from the window and next to him is a very cranky-looking Jeongin with his earbuds plugged in, deciding not to tolerate any chit-chatting this morning. It’s a shame how the school’s always on a low budget when it comes to transportation; consequently, some random freshmen got squeezed in with your class. 

So you elect to ignore your friend’s questionable behaviors (sometimes you wonder what he’s on to be this zealous at six in the morning) and grabs Felix's hand to climb onto the vehicle before coach Kim kicks your ass for slowing the schedule down. 

As you shuffle down the narrow aisle, you quickly realize there are only two seats left at the very back—basically, you feel a little guilty for not getting a good spot for Felix but he doesn’t seem to mind because he taps you on the shoulder lightly, signaling for you to move.

“Ugh, I wanna go home,” you sigh, slumping into your seat after tucking your backpack neatly on the small compartment above. 

“You’re boring,” Felix comments flatly but he’s partially glad that he got to sit with you instead of some blabberer. “Need this?” Fishing his earphones out of his backpack, he wiggles the banana milk case in front of your face. 

You only nod lazily at the offer, causing him to huff in disbelief before slipping in a side of his AirPods into your ear. You both have pretty similar taste in music so you don’t mind when he puts one of his playlists on random and Fly Me to the Moon bleeds into your eardrums. The soft melody makes you yawn a little, eyelids getting droopy. 

“Tired.” Is the only warning Felix gets before you decide to drop your head onto his shoulders, slipping your arm around his torso comfortably like it’s a pillow. You personally don’t do cuddles but since he’s into those things and smells nice—very fruity, somewhat musky too, you might as well take advantage of that with the hope of sleeping throughout the entire ride. 

“What is wrong with you today?” he asks with glowing cheeks. 

“Shh shh, I’m recharging my battery.”

Felix is a little flustered, to say the least. But instead of complaining about your sudden clinginess, he rests his head on top of yours like second nature, allowing his childhood song to drown out some of the background chatters. 

You should really be clingy more often… though he’s not gonna risk his pearly white teeth by telling you that. 

five. 

Your school actually knows how to manage money in a smart way. Shocker, you know. 

You are thrown off upon hearing that no one needs to worry about the grizzly bears, or wolves (hey, one can never be too careful) because everyone gets to share a log cabin with a maximum of three other people. 

In fact, the camp counselors have confirmed that even though they’re throwing a bunch of inexperienced, dumb high schoolers smacked in the middle of the wilderness, there’s really nothing to do other than boring team-building exercises...and fishing. In other words, the only creature that can somewhat do harm to you is mosquitoes. 

It’s been pouring nonstop when your classmates tried to set up the campfire with coach Kim screaming into their eardrums last night, no wonder those little shit are thriving to make your life more miserable—they’re in their element, reproducing at a terrifying pace. 

“Jesus Christ, Y/N!” 

Hyunjin clutches a hand to his chest in both relief and terror after realizing the curled up figure sitting by the window is just you. He steps inside the cabin completely and flings his wet bangs away from his face, shoving the umbrella in his hand into a stand by the shoe rack. “You look like shit, are you okay?” he furrows his brows, slightly concerned about your eyebags and the way your lips crack from dehydration.

A soulless smile finds its way to your face. “I’m pretty sure ‘shit’ and ‘okay’ aren’t supposed to be in the same sentence but thank you for asking, I appreciate it.”

Here’s another downside to being a homebody: you can’t fucking sleep on any other beds that aren’t yours. And surprisingly that two-hour nap on the bus wasn’t enough to fuel you for the rest of the trip. But lucky you, it’s most likely going to keep raining cats and dogs and trash pandas for the rest of the day. Outdoor activities are no longer mandatory and you can almost hear your non-existent muscles crying in sheer joy. 

“Drink,” Hyunjin sighs at your pathetic state and decides to toss a water bottle in your direction. 

However, all you do is retrieve your limbs deeper into Felix’s fluffy blanket since he refused to use the grey one that’s draped over every bed beforehand. You’re far beyond grateful for that because those fading, questionable-looking stains just scare the crap out of you. And also because the fluffy blanket smells like him; you rest your case.

“You were knocked out for the entire bus ride, so why the hell can’t you fall asleep on a decent bed?” Shaking his head, Hyunjin plops himself onto Jisung’s bed like a potato, accidentally knocking over the neatly folded pile of clothes. He really doesn’t give two flying fucks about the fact that his friend spent an excessive ten minutes to organize his stuff so coach Kim won’t be barging into their cabin with a megaphone at five in the morning again. 

“She can only fall asleep on Felix, that’s why.” You roll your eyes in the bitchiest way possible, not bothering to chuck the abandoned water bottle at the unwanted guest of this terrific conversation. 

Hyunjin almost lets out a shriek when Seungmin jolts up from his bed, hair messy, a leg sticking out from his comforter. “You know, until this exact moment, I thought that you were dead or something.”

“What I’m trying to say is,” Seungmin elaborates as he bends over to reach for his glasses with squinted eyes. “There’s a 99,9% that Felix will make the first move but at the same time, it doesn’t mean the other 0,01% won’t happen so you,” he jabs his index finger towards you. “Better be doing something other than walking around camp like a zombie.”

Hyunjin tilts his head in confusion. “Since when was this even a thing?” You’re this close to have a permanent hand imprint on your forehead for facepalming every two seconds with your idiotic friends around. 

“Uhh, since forever?” Seungmin feels the need to voice out. “Listen, since the day Y/N spilled orange juice on Felix’s favorite shirt, the amount of times they’re forced to be together has risen tremendously. And when their parents found out their families live like ten minutes away from each other, they practically see each other every single day. Even outside of school. They tolerate each other, meaning the dynamic is long-lasting. Their bonding encouraged friendship.” 

“But we’re her friends too?”

A deep breath. “No, their friendship was incited to grow into something bigger, more profound because Felix has a special ‘click’ with Y/N that he doesn’t with us. God, Hyunjin, it’s been what, almost a decade! How could you not see it?” Seungmin says with expressive hands, almost yanking every strand of hair off of his head. It’s too early for this, his brain is about to implode. Hwang Hyunjin being dense just feels like a metaphoric chokehold to him. 

“Y/N,” Hyunjin simply ignores his frustrated friend to look over at you slipping into your sneakers. “You’re being uncharacteristically non-hyperverbal.”

“That’s because she’s about to either shut the door in my face then find Felix or kick my ass and then find Felix,” Seungmin informs with a yawn, and this prompts you to muster a fake smile. 

Oh, I’m fucking livid. 

“You know me too well.”

He questions with heavy irony, “I’m sorry did you just agree with me?”

“Oh no, no, I take that back,” you brush him off. “Is Felix still outside fishing?”

“I think so?” Hyunjin replies while running a hand through his hair in mere distress; Felix’s competitiveness goes a little mayhem sometimes when it comes to Jisung being better than him at something since they’re so close. That’s one of the sole reasons why Felix always manages to maintain his flying GPA because Han Jisung procrastinates like no other but still tops his class every single semester. 

“I didn’t find him at the lake, though, wonder where he went.”

You widen your eyes, somewhat alarmed since it’s almost lunchtime, and Felix Lee never, and you mean never, ever let himself skip a meal. He always gets a nice nap after stuffing his face with enough good food too, so that’s a bonus. But that’s not the point, the point is: you’re starting to get a little worried because he’s been fishing all morning, wandering alone in the wilderness without a camp counselor. 

You’d better not find him sleeping with the fishes. 

six.

Maybe you were right, maybe Felix is a dumbass.

Because listening to his ego and coming back to the lake after breakfast was a horrendous idea. 

It’s such a pity how those weird-looking vehicles have stopped driving around camp the moment it started pouring outside. Heck, he didn’t even bring an umbrella after asking the coach to check today's forecast. 

So tragically, he’s now stuck underneath the canopy of a cafe ensuing coursing his way through the water blizzard and seeking refuge but can’t walk back to his cabin where his cabin-mates are probably having the time of their life drinking hot chocolate and nibbling on hand-picked fruits.

Felix exhales in torment while gazing outside, everything’s completely white-out thanks to droplets of raining streaking the horizon. Perhaps dashing back might be his one solitary option, but shivers soon run up his spine again, reminding him that he’s probably looking like a wet rat—his black Converse sodden, water seeping through the thin fabric of his uniform, numbing his skin. 

Ruffling his wet fringe, Felix’s hand fishes inside his pocket to look for his phone only to realize that it’s not there. “Shit...great..just great, today is my lucky day.” Even if the camp counselors didn’t confiscate all the electronic devices, there wouldn’t be any service in the middle of the woods either. Splendid. 

“Ugh, Y/N,” he groans under his breath. “Why did you let me do this?”

“Shit.”

 “AHH!”

Felix shrieks upon the tiny voice squeaking out from behind him. And he sighs in pure relief to see a little girl standing mere inches away, looking no more than a seven-year-old dressed in a yellow raincoat. “Hey kid,” he chuckles and crouches down to her eye level. “Where are your parents? You’re not supposed to be out here alone when it’s pouring like crazy.” 

And to his dismay, “Shit,” the little girl giggles, finding a new profound interest in the curse word that he accidentally spewed out seconds ago. 

“Shh shh,” Felix frantically places an index finger on his lips while darting his eyes around in terror—he might be sued if her parents found out how their daughter picked up a bad word from some random high schooler. Suddenly he feels bad for his future kids. “No, no, we can’t say that. It’s forbidden. What’s your name?”

“Mina,” she answers cutely and fiddles with the ends of her braids. “Who’s Y/N? Is she your girlfriend?”

Felix chokes on his own saliva. “...no, why would you say that?”

“I don’t know, my dad always calls my mom’s name when he messes things up.”

“What does that have to do with- oh, shit,” he facepalms himself. This kid is going to give him a cardiac arrest any second now. “It doesn’t matter if she’s my girlfriend or not, what matters is I need to get you back to your parents. Do you know where they are right now?”

Mina simply shakes her head with a pout. “Okay, let’s go find them then,” he can’t help but cracks a smile, ruffling her hair endearingly. Most kids would be bawling their eyes out by now knowing that they’ve strayed from their parents; she’s a tough one. 

Felix gently grabs Mina’s hand, biting down on his lower lip as he prays that a cold doesn’t catch up to him tomorrow and ready to dash out of the canopy that’s been keeping him dry for the last hour or two. But then a figure comes into view from afar, holding an umbrella while squinting their eyes through the thick streaks of rain. 

“Y/N..?” he mutters to himself in disbelief when you quickly skip underneath the canopy, collapsing the red umbrella in your hands. Felix recognizes that umbrella anywhere—isn’t that Hyunjin’s? Have you been looking for him? And for how long too?

“Didn’t even think about bringing an umbrella, smartass,” you say with a raised eyebrow. “Oh dear, who do we have here?” Before Felix can defend himself in vain with lame excuses, you’ve already taken your attention off him to stare at the unfamiliar presence. Your intense gaze scares Mina a little, causing the little girl to squeeze Felix’s hand, hiding behind his leg. 

Your friend laughs, patting her little head in reassurance. “Mina, this is Y/N, my classmate. Don’t let her intimidate you.”

“Are you really going to bother with this little one?” you scrunch your nose a bit. “We’re having pork rib soup, by the way, better hurry if you don’t want Han to hog your portion all to himself.”

Felix rolls his eyes at how utterly apathetic you are towards children. If you can get a perfect A in calc then why is it so hard to simply comprehend that every twelve-year-old needs to be returned to their hypothetical parents safely? “What part of ‘a common sense of morality’ can’t you understand?” 

“I don’t want to, actually, sounds like a lot of work,” you hum sarcastically. 

“Your girlfriend is scary,” Mina ensconces herself further behind your friend, officially detecting you as a threat rather than someone who will potentially bring her back to the cabin where her parents are probably flipping the whole place upside down in a panic—which is exactly what you’re planning to do. 

In your defense, you don’t detest kids in general. Only the bratty ones. And Mina is borderline bratty. 

“You know, I can spare her some time, Lost and Found is like..ten minutes away from here.”

“Y/N-” Felix wants to scream at you, rubbing the side of his temple in distress. Imagining you babysitting your neighbor’s newborn last summer with nine bucks per hour, ten hours per day, and five out of seven days per week is one of the few things that constantly keeps him from having a good night's sleep. It baffles him how you haven’t accidentally drowned the infant while giving her a bath. 

Mina gives the side of his jeans a tug, round eyes staring up at him expectantly. “Or we can get juice pops!” she exclaims happily and looks over to you, mustering her best puppy eyes. “Please? I don’t want to be alone..” 

“Twenty seconds ago, you called me scary and now you’re guilt-tripping me?” you crouch down to get a good look at the kid. Bright, innocent brown eyes, cute button nose, and a chipped front tooth—perhaps she’s a little too cute to not get her juice pops. 

Then, “And juice pops too? You evil mad mind genius,” you say after standing up to unfold Hyunjin’s umbrella, swinging it over the top of your head. “That’s extortion, kid, you’re too young for that.”

Felix breaks into a fit of giggles upon seeing you failing at trying to keep a straight face and steps in beside you under the umbrella. His next problem just pops up right then and there—Mina can’t squeeze in considering the umbrella that Hyunjin gave you is solely used for one person. 

“Mina, hop on here,” he decides to get on his knees, permitting the little girl to clumsily climb on his back and eventually plopping herself onto his shoulders. 

“Oh, oh, oh, can you two hold hands?” Mina suggests with a shit-eating grin on her face. This causes Felix’s cheeks to burn with a bright shade of red while you’re too busy throwing daggers at her with your eyes to notice. “My family does this all the time, my dad would carry me on his shoulders and my mom would hold his hand as we walk home after going to the park.”

You and Felix yell simultaneously, “We’re not your parents!!” But that doesn’t seem to scare the little girl. You’re both just encouraging her. 

“Yip yip, horsey, don’t be disobedient now,” she giggles to herself and pulls at a solid patch of Felix’s hair, making you cringe because his hair and scalp have already had enough from his questionable obsession with bright hair colors. 

“Ow! Mina! Stop it! Ow!”

“Okay quit torturing my friend,” you tell her and decide to slip your hand in with Felix’s, intertwining your fingers to secure the grip before showing it to Mina so that she’ll stop before any blood is drawn. “There, we’re holding hands just like your mommy and daddy, you happy?” 

Felix doesn’t say anything even when Mina nods happily, releasing her monstrous grip off his poor scalp. He only lets you tug him away from the canopy of the cafe as he gazes downward, eyes glued to how your hand fits into his perfectly. The sound of rain tapping against the umbrella suddenly bugs him, suffocating him in a way. In other words, it’s really unnatural to think this way about his best friend but he doesn't want you to let go at all. 

Everything seems to move faster when you’re holding onto his hand so certainly. Felix thinks you’re fully aware but try to fight off the voices that are taunting you to just drop it. And truth is, you can care less because your head is now far too fuzzy to focus on anything but the road ahead. 

You pray he doesn’t feel the pounding rhythm from your veins. If your red ears haven’t given it away already. 

seven.

Jisung has weird friends, that’s a fact. And no, you’re not talking about the gang that saved his ass every time he got into trouble aka you plus JeongMinLixJin. You’re talking about those kids from Class 2C that are mutual friends with Changbin.

Because the moment Jisung barges into the cabin and starts babbling nonsense that you can’t comprehend (not that you can comprehend any of his shit on the daily), you know that he just came back from a get together with those sketchy dudes who managed to sneak some booze inside a shampoo bottle.

“Uhm okay, who gave Felix alcohol?” he squints his eyes hard. 

You are more than aware that Jisung is mildly smashed by the way that his cheeks are tinted with a light shade of coral, hiccupping every ten seconds and slightly more clumsy with his feet. He almost tripped over the rug at the front door if it weren’t for Hyunjin who caught him in time so that he wouldn’t break one of his precious teeth. Those painful years of constantly slurping on watery porridge after every dentist appointment to tighten his braces shouldn’t be going down the drain. 

Speaking of bland rice water, that’s all Felix has been fed with after returning to camp because he has no choice. The sickness finally caught up to him as a result of staying outside for too long while still dressed in his rain-soaked uniform. Even under the cotton comforter, he’s radiating heat on the outside but stoically shivering on the inside, his energy level is as diminished as his appetite. 

The nurse said there’s really nothing that can be done but give him some pills and let him ride it out so now Felix’s all curled up in a corner of his bed, cheeks burning flush of fever, coughing and sneezing occasionally. He refuses to be moved to a completely separate cabin because sleeping alone in a confined place knowing that the grizzly bears might be roaming outside your door is quite frightening for a junior in high school. 

“God, what makes you think I’m the batshit drunk one here?” Felix croaks, his voice more hoarse and gruff than usual because every word pains him, his vocal cords pulse in agony at each syllable. And that sentence was probably the longest thing you’ve heard from him since dinner. 

Jisung lets Hyunjin toss him onto his bed, face down, and props himself up on his forearms. “Uhh, have you checked yourself the mirror?” he hiccups, words a bit slurred, palms outstretched in a grabby motion. “Seungmin, water- ow! What the fuck was that!?” 

He rubs the side of his head while babbling incoherently like a fucking five-year-old because Seungmin decided to chuck a water bottle at him. Those years of playing baseball during retreats indeed paid off. 

“I went for the head,” Seungmin looks up from his book calmly, acting innocent. 

Jisung whines and turns to his side, watching as the water bottle rolls back towards him after coming in contact with the wall. “God, I miss Minho. You guys suck,” he takes it before sitting right up but flops himself back down when a pang of pain claws at his temple. Who even allowed him to drink?

“Didn’t he make your high school experience miserable?” Hyunjin laughs, sitting down on the corner of his bed, legs curled into his chest. 

“Hello? That was me,” Seungmin clarifies, he sounds a little offended. “He called me a nerd for studying late at the library for our finals! Our fucking finals! Do you know how insecure my freshman self was? I was so hurt!” 

You cross your arms and mumble, “He’s the same guy who treated you ice-cream after finding out you got a B in physics.”

Hyunjin hums, butting into the topic, “And he made me do fifty push-ups because I unintentionally skipped a day at practice. Our Dance Club really didn’t need a president who effortlessly snatches the Asshole of the Year Award like he’s stealing candies from a kid.”

“Please, you’re practically buddies now,” you scoff. “You always play Mario Kart and rewatch the Avatar series with him, even during midterms!”

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” Jisung suddenly gets on his feet, jumping up and down like a maniac. You’re highly concerned for the bed by the creaking sound that it’s making—sounds just like something straight out of a horror film. “He almost threw a knife at me!”

You’re running out of excuses to defend your stupid brother at this rate. What’s the point in trying anyway? “Han, it was a plastic knife, chill.”

Jisung crawls off his bed to approach you, pinching his thumb and index finger together before shoving them to your face. “I was this close to dying! You try having someone threaten to throw a knife at you during lunch break,” he complains like it’s the end of the world. Truth is, you’ve seen (and experienced) worse things. 

“Minho’s still my brother.”

Staring at you, Jisung looks unimpressed. “He wanted to kill me because I commented on his puffy cheeks that day.”

“He’s adopted.”

The conversation is pulled to a halt right there when Felix does a full-body groan, his head spinning and sweats starting to collect at his hairline. With his mind buzzed like he’s floating, the bickering only adds to the pressure that’s squeezing each of his functioning brain cells. In other words, it feels as though Han Jisung is a fucking hamster going on a marathon across his body, nibbling on his limbs and ears as he’s going through a hangover, his immune system going on a rampage. 

Felix doesn’t even drink. 

“That’s my call for a bedtime story.” You glare at Jisung when he clears his throat while you’re attempting to tuck Felix into bed, pressing your palm against his forehead to check his temperature. It’s not climbing anymore, he should be okay after sweating everything out. 

Hyunjin pulls his friend back onto his bed, locking his limbs in tight before he waddles around and potentially breaks one of those decorative pieces on the bookshelf. “Not to burst your ego, but I don’t think you’re sober enough to give us a good story,” he says unapologetically. 

“Puh-lease,” Jisung lets out the weirdest chuckle at that, wagging his forearm like those Japanese ceramic cat figures that are supposed to bring people good fortune; and Han Jisung is notorious for bringing people anything but good fortune. “They didn’t even have vodka, only Strongbow. That shit is too weak for me.”

You snort involuntarily, “Actually, I think you meant you’re too weak for those bottles of cider.”

“Wow, Y/N, what a snake.”

eight.

The bonfire crackles, flaring up to life when coach Kim tosses a lit matchstick into the pyramid pile of branches and woods. The flame projects long shadows of the trees all round along, swirling and curling in obscure shapes with the high schoolers that each hugs their own cup of hot cocoa, chomping on their marshmallows of choice. 

Glowing embers beneath are colored by the inferno that seems to be moving with the rhythm and melody of the song that they’re all singing along, drumming their feet and bobbing their heads simultaneously. 

“Are you guys sure you don’t want to join them?” Felix says apologetically after sneezing into a piece of tissue, his nose all red and swollen. “I can just… I don’t know, read a book or something.”

When he refers to those oddly colorful and rather bulky-looking books on the shelves, Seungmin immediately stops putting a cookie inside his mouth midway. “Those are called ‘aesthetically useless interior decoration’, Lix. Good luck trying to open those plastic blocks,” he expresses with his hands after stuffing the cookie into his mouth, chewing rather aggressively. 

Felix feels quite bad because, for all he knows, Hyunjin and Seungmin have been planning on going kayaking today and trying out volleyball tomorrow. You’re all going home in two days yet they’ve done nothing but pigging out in pure distress. “Still, it’s a summer camp, you all should be out there having fun, not stuck inside to look after me while tolerating...that,” he quietly looks over at Jisung who just exited the bathroom after splashing his face with some water. 

At least he doesn’t look crazy and homeless now. 

“How are they doing that again?” you join Hyunjin as he rests his head lazily on his forearms, staring outside from the cabin’s window like Rapunzel in an alternative universe where Flynn Rider managed to escape the tower with the crown, leaving her behind longing for civil human interactions in vain. 

“They sing..” he drawls. “And turn their heads to look at each other in the eye.”

You wave it off absentmindedly, falling on your back so now your head is hung upside down from the bed, your arms dangling midair. “Well, that sounds exhausting,” you mumble, ignoring the way that Seungmin is internally judging you. 

Hyunjin sighs, “Never one for sentiment, are you?”

“Easier to let it burn,” you answer flatly, sitting upright when blood starts rushing to your head. 

“Don’t feel bad,” Seungmin immediately forces a smile at Felix. “We’re not really into sitting with a bunch of idiots just to enjoy a mildly decent hot cocoa either way.”

Suddenly the lights go out, and Felix immediately curls himself further into the blanket, a little thrown off. Jisung’s face comes into view out of nowhere when he makes a grab for the oil lamp that no one seems to take notice of, lighting it up with a single match. “C’mon, kids, no bonfire is complete without a good ghost story,” he crosses his legs on the floor happily, still somewhat tipsy so his body is bouncing in excitement with occasional hiccups. 

Hyunjin and Seungmin exchange questionable looks before scrambling to the floor, settling themselves a few solid inches in front of the oil lamp with a sigh while you only shrug at Felix, propping your head onto your hands. Laziness is starting to hold you hostage on Hyunjin’s bed at this rate. 

Seungmin spares Jisung a slight glare, “Better not bullshit us with the same one that you heard at school-”

“No,” Jisung’s lips morph into something similar to a smirk, he looks concerningly confident for someone who’s utterly terrified after watching IT. And now he’s attempting to give his bros who are equally jumpy about everything and anything, you’re excited to see how this goes. “I heard this one from a camp counselor, true story.” You definitely don’t like the sound of that.

At first, the ghost was no more than a chill in the air, a shimmer of mist to the common eyes. Through the heavy rain and fog that seeps through people’s skin, chilling the core of their bones, it slowly came into focus. It wasn’t until the camper found refuge under a canopy of an abandoned café that it congealed into a form—a small child with brilliant round eyes, dressed in white clothing. 

For a moment, all was silent and still. It was as though the camper got hypnotized, feet planted to the ground. Then, he could hear a small lullaby in a cheerful voice. 

“Oranges and Lemons say the bells of St.Clements…” They know how that one ended. 

Suddenly someone blows out the candle, but Jisung’s voice still rings in your eardrums. “When the camper took a step back, the ghost spoke again, this time with the voice almost of a smoker and grin…” You can feel Hyunjin hop back to bed with you in a tick of a clock, holding onto you for dear life with the infrequent whimpers of fear. 

Jisung proceeds to continue, “The grin soon became a snarl, baring teeth like a wolf when it finished the lullaby…”

A muffled silence descends. And, “Have you come to play…?”

“AHHH!!” Felix lets out a petrified shriek, but what confuses you is the sound of Jisung grunting rather in pain. Seungmin sighs in disapproval, flickering the lights on while leaning back against the wall. 

And now before your eyes is a slightly traumatized, feverish Felix with clattering teeth, quivering inside his blanket. Whereas, Jisung is sprawled across the floor, hugging his poor stomach, hacking up lungs. Deserve.

“This is why you don’t give people who can high-kick jump scares, dumbass,” Seungmin comments and crouches down in front of Jisung like his knight in shiny armors, letting a bottle of ointment dangle between his fingers. “Put this on, bet it’s already bruising.”

Hyunjin releases his arms around you and walks towards the freckled boy who looks like he’s about to slip into a coma. “Lix, are you okay?” he knits his brows together, starting to feel somewhat concerned. 

Felix only waves it off with a raspy laugh, standing on wobbly legs with his blanket still wrapped around his figure. “I’m fine, I’ll just go wash my face.” Truth is, he’s anything but fine. And it doesn’t help when he accidentally has a glance of his own reflection in the body-length mirror from across the cabin—his hair is sticking to his forehead, his face is slightly more puffy than usual, and his eyebags look like he hasn’t slept in decades—he looks worse than a trash can, basically. 

“Hyunjin,” you raise a brow at your friend’s current state.

“What?”

“Catch him.”

“Huh-” Hyunjin snaps his head back when a loud thud is heard, eyes growing twice as big in sheer panic upon the sight of Felix laying on his stomach, mere inches away from his feet. “Felix!!” Your friends rush to his side while you’re too busy checking the thermometer by his nightstand. The temperature doesn’t seem to be too alarming, he should be fine after sleeping and sweating it out. But really, Felix looks more like he’s having the nap of a lifetime rather than passing out from the worst fever of the century. That doesn’t stop everyone from freaking out, unfortunately. 

Also, everyone can agree that this is the first and last storytime to ever happen.

nine.

Felix sits on the beach, eyes moving from sand to stone, from rock pools to breaking waves. He lets out a sigh, an exhale of relief when a breeze passes by him, tousling his hair as he buries his feet deeper into the primrose-colored grains. The briny aroma that exists in every fiber of air makes him feel at ease, as though unknotting all his angsty-teenager worries with grace. He feels a bit better, partially because his fever has already gone down when he shook you out of your half-asleep state at four in the morning. 

“Why?” you ask without turning your head after sensing his tense posture.

Felix looks confused, a little startled when you break the silence. “Why what?”

“Why the long face?” you unknowingly exhale too, stubbornly gazing forward. “Thinking about something?” For some reason, you’re too...scared to even spare him a small glance. This isn’t you, did his fever rub off on you or something?

To your dismay, his sudden inquiry catches you off guard. “High school is going to be over in a year, have you thought about what to do?” 

You open your mouth to protest with something along the line of he’s overthinking again and there’s still an entire year ahead to make new memories but when you’re about to utter the first word, your mouth automatically snaps itself close. It’s like you have an entire masterpiece planned out in your mind but when someone tosses you a blank canvas, you’re standing there in defeat like the biggest idiot. Felix is serious this time, you know it’s not because he’s lightheaded after riding out the fever. 

“Honestly?” you breathe out. “No, I haven’t. God, I don’t even want to think about it, the future scares me a little.”

Upon the mossed rock and vibrant horizon, comes the sun rays that are promised by the starlit sky. It makes you both a little breathless, not exchanging a single word nor moving a muscle for a while. 

Until, “Fine, it scares me a whole lot,” you confess, gaze cast downward as you hug your legs closer to your chest. “It sucks because everyone seems to have their lives together, Jisung is finally taking his interest in music seriously, Hyunjin is planning on being an actual theater kid, and Seungmin is...I don’t know, but he’s definitely onto something. Point is, everyone is already one too many steps ahead of me, I’m just..here, stuck. And I don’t feel like I have-”

“A lot of time left.” Felix finishes your sentence, prompting you to look at him this time. His delicate features shine under the cracking lights of dawn, starry eyes twinkling and lips outstretched into the smile that you absolutely adore. He has such a contagious type of smile that it makes you feel a little less dead inside whenever you see it. But your heartbeat also grows a little more ecstatic. 

A hearty chuckle. “You’re not alone, you know,” he says while not breaking away from the eye contact, this makes your throat grow dry. “I still have so much to do, so much to...say yet too little time. So yeah, don’t think about it too much, I’m never gonna leave you behind no matter what.”

You have to hold back a playful scoff at that; and to think he was the one who brought up this sappy topic. “If anything, you’re the overthinker in this relationship,” you tell him with a nudge on his rib. “But if you’ve already had my back, then you should know that I’ll always have yours too.”

Because what would you do without an overthinker like Felix? Drowning your sorrow by stress-eating in the middle of the night? Bottoming out on questionable drinks to end up like Han Jisung? Winging every single important choice that can potentially flip your life upside down in either a good or bad way? Not in a million years. He knows that you need him as much as he needs you, harsh truth but you still hate it either way.

You both don’t look forward to the future, like at all. 

You’re too apathetic and overall just a big ‘meh’ about it. You’re the type of person that goes with the flow, letting life toss you around like a ragdoll until you finally snap at some point to fight back because you know where the line between giving up and knowing that you’ve had enough is. Meanwhile, Felix is rather anxious about things. If a piece of paper with a pencil can draw out the map of his entire destiny ahead then he’ll have it finished in one night. But he’s grown out of his middle school self to know that things don’t always go as planned.

Guess if things turn out to be shit, you’ll still have him.

“Does that mean if we’re still single in our thirties, you’ll marry me like how our parents always joke about?” Felix cracks a shit-eating grin this time, one that makes your heart swell but for the most part, you wanna whack him unconscious with a pillow. 

You sneer in return, “Sure, but you’ll have to fall for me first.”

There’s a pang in Felix’s chest, it’s so loud and evident that he’s afraid you might hear it. You really didn’t have to slap him in the face with that seemingly harmless statement. “Hmm, who would even fall for a stubborn hermit crab like you?” he jokes to hide the nervousness that’s crawling upon his spine. His ears are probably bright red right now. “Although...that wouldn’t be a problem with me.” Because he’s already fallen for you, a little too hard actually.

“What does that even mean?” you only hum after questioning his statement, nothing makes sense right now since you’re getting a little sleepy because a certain someone wanted to watch the sunrise which simply lasted for about two minutes after two(ish) hours of waiting.

“I don’t know,” Felix laughs before standing up, dusting the sand off of his jeans. “You go figure it out, smartass.” With that, he runs off with his Converses dangling between his fingers, leaving you dumbfounded in the middle of the beach like a total dimwit. Slowly, within those five seconds of making eye contact with your best friend again, his words zero in on you like a wakeup call. 

Urgently grabbing your sneakers, you chase after him. “Hey- wait! GET BACK HERE!” By looks of it, you’ve probably figured it out now. It’s not like he’s trying to be subtle either.

Felix feels like he just gained strength from spewing out that indirect confession, and it gives him a tiny ray of hope that he still has his entire youth before his eyes to tell you how he really feels. Or his whole life if you don’t start resenting him for crossing the line that no one dares talk about when they have a thing for their best friend. 

Either way, as long as Felix sees your presence side by side with him at every ups and downs, he’s home. 

[curly-bangtan]

Heatwave Drabble #5: for the birthday boy (M)

[Heatwave // Godless // Heatwave Drabbles]

Pairing: Taehyung x reader

Summary: For Taehyung’s birthday, you’ve planned a special surprise-filled evening just for him as his best friend by day, fuck buddy by night. But especially after a few drinks, he finds it difficult keeping his hands off you, which isn’t a good thing in front of all your friends.

Genre: drabble, smut, fwb au, roommate au, f2l

Warnings: teacher/student roleplay (if you’re not into that, just skip to the next scene, it’s meant to be slightly sarcastic anyway), brief lap dance, oral (m&f), overstimulation (m&f), unprotected sex (your girl finally invested in the pill yay), cum dumpster, facial, cum play and consumption, squirting, basically filth, light BDSM like spanking, handcuffs, choking, the usual, daddy kink (you know HW!Tae)

Word count: 11.3k yikes

A/N: Happy early birthday to the best boy! Why do I call these drabbles when it’s basically a series at this point smh -_- Enjoy this filthy monster~

.

“Surprise! Happy Birthday!”

Taehyung jumps beside you as you switch on the lights to your flat, illuminating the room full of people leap out from their hiding place at his arrival. The last syllable of their celebratory chant hangs in the air for an awkward moment as he takes in everything you put together for his birthday surprise.

Shiny party streamers decorating the walls, black and gold balloons bobbing against the ceiling, printed photos of your best memories together hanging from shelf to shelf, all his and your closest friends gathered to greet him. And of course, the impeccable two-layered strawberry chocolate sponge cake sitting on a platter that you know would excite him the most.

A smile spreads his mouth wide and square as he turns to you, his cheeks bundling up like rising bread in sheer elation.

“No you didn’t, Y/N.”

Then you’re being suffocated in a bone-crushing hug, your ribs almost cracking under his snake-like squeeze. His chest rumbles in the most boyish giggle.

“Hap-pee-burf-day-” You manage to utter as you move your arms between two to create some space for you to breathe.

Seeing Taehyung this happy, especially knowing you’re the cause of it, is truly a feeling matched by no other. You don’t have a massive squadron of friends, you are more the type to carefully select those you actually like and get along with. To put it badly, you’re picky, judgy and quite a bitch when it comes to making friends. But the few you actually care about, you love ferociously and passionately, willing to cut off your own limb for them. And Taehyung is at the top of that list.

“You’re actually the best, I love you.” When he finally lets you go from his painful but appreciated embrace, his hands rest on your waist, lingering.

You had just treated him to a birthday dinner at his favourite steakhouse, roommate to roommate, in order to enable this surprise party. A few pints might have been downed for the occasion, which explains his excessive touching. Taehyung has never been able to hold his liquor, always a lightweight. The number of times you’ve had to half-carry half-drag him out of a club and stick your fingers down his throat in a dark alley is truly embarrassing for him.

“I am the best. You’re lucky I love you too, dork.” With his nostrils flaring from excitement, you can’t help but pinch his nose before turning to the guests and properly starting the party.

To be honest, you wouldn’t have been able to pull it off without the help of anyone else. His parents have come to town to visit him during the day, so off he went to show them around the food market, the park and his favourite vintage stores. Which gave you plenty of time to set up the house, prepare the refreshments, and buy the birthday cake. But keeping him from returning home was a feat that you had to enlist his parents’ aid in, and ever the obedient son, Taehyung of course did not argue when his folks disagreed with his suggestion to go back to the apartment. Then, it was a matter of taking him to dinner, deftly urging him to meet you there rather than going together from the flat so not to miss your reservation. The rounds of alcohol and your tiny bladder slyly masked the many bathroom runs you took in order to text Lotta to gather everyone to your place. And when everything was set, you headed back with the clueless Taehyung, giddy with a belly full of Michelin star food.

It was purely out of your headstrong resistance that you two didn’t stumble into the apartment making out, exposing your on-going debauchery to all your unaware friends. He had begun to feel you up on the way home, grabbing your ass one too many times for it to be merely playful. Honestly, it’s never easy rejecting his advances, not with your nymphomaniac track record anyway. But tonight was especially difficult, knowing what you have planned for him after the party…

From the corner of your eye you see Taehyung chattering away with friends from his class, and from the way he’s waving his hands around, you can tell it’s about the latest Christmas horror story of the two of you trying to stuff a turkey.

The memory of you yelling at each other to grab-this-grab-that warms your chest more than the white wine you’re sipping on. It’s always these stupid anecdotes that mean the most.

“Looks like he’s enjoying himself.”

Lotta’s voice startles you from your thoughts. Hands held behind her shyly, she smiles at the sight of the outburst of laughter from the guests at his story.

Aside from Taehyung, you would say she’s your best friend, having gone to the same highschool together and now the same university. You knew you would be close the moment she told you her star sign - there isn’t a more iconic duo than an Aries and a Leo. She puts up with a lot of your shit but also isn’t afraid to scream some sense into you whenever you pull something rogue, which you guess is very often.

“Yep. He should probably stop drinking though.” You say as you watch him tip the contents of his glass down his throat. “I swear to god if he throws up on the couch, I’ll chop his dick off.” Of course you wouldn’t, how could you ever bring yourself to hurt that godsent meatstick that fuck tears out of you? You both giggle nonetheless.

“You’re funny with him.” Lotta is wearing a smug expression that you distinctly dislike.

“What do you mean?”

“You act like he’s some annoying brother who you hate, but then you go and take him to this boujee-ass steakhouse, throw him a surprise party and splash out on his birthday gift. You beat him up when he uses your shampoo, kick him when he accidentally scrunches up your notes, and threaten to emasculate him if he spills alcohol on your favourite couch that you treat like your newborn child. But you secretly care so much about him that I know you’d give him your kidney if he needed one.”

You blink at her.

Not quite sure what to say.

“Well, yeah, of course I care about him. Like you said, he’s a brother to me.” Okay, but do you let someone who’s just a brother to you cum on your face? “You don’t live with him so you don’t know what a useless brat he is. He burns pasta, Lotta. Pasta. Seriously, he’s such a dipshit, but of course I care about him. What’s funny about that?” Lying straight through your teeth is a Y/N specialty. As long as you say it with enough confidence, you can sell any bullshit.

But maybe you’re sounding a little defensive.

Lotta is clever, it is why you’re friends. Where this observation of hers is headed, you’re unsure of. She could turn this into a lecture about your abrasive personality, or suspect that something else is going on between you and Taehyung other than sharing rent.

“Nothing, I just said it was funny. The way you are.” Her smile tells you that it’s probably the former of the two possibilities.

“What can I say, I’m a funny person.” Not entirely buying it though, you shrug and play along.

Another bout of laughter breaks out from Taehyung and his friends, catching both your attentions. He thrives in social situations like these, good at entertaining people with his odd humour. You watch the flash of his teeth, the crinkle of his amused eyes, tongue flicking out to wet his lips every other sentence.

“You know, he actually is really hot.” Now, that you didn’t expect at all. Your head whips to face your best friend, whose eyes fixes back on yours but not before you catch her checking him out.

“Um, what?”

“I’m just saying. You can’t deny that he’s gorgeous, charming too.” Brows raised, Lotta lifts both hands up in defense when she see the arrows your glare is shooting at her. “Definitely the best looking guy I’ve ever seen.”

“You’re drunk. Since when did you admit that Taehyung is ‘hot’?” In complete ridicule, you scoff at her. Though, her point is completely 100% valid and true.

“Do you see me with a drink? I’m sober tonight, got an early shift tomorrow.”

“Why are you suddenly saying this? Weren’t you the one who wouldn’t shut up when I went to Mykonos with him because you thought I was too blinded by his looks to even know if he’s a serial killer?” Never has Lotta expressed the slightest, most remote of interest in Taehyung, not once properly acknowledging his attractiveness.

“I’m just saying. It’s a shame that you can’t see him that way anymore after spending so much time together.” It’s her turn to shrug, again with the annoying cocky expression.

Yes, after spending so much time sleeping together, more like.

“Yeah, no. That’s gross. You won’t get it because you don’t have a guy best friend. But trust me, no way would I ever go there with him.” Go ahead and call you a pathological liar, you don’t care. You’d never hear the end of it if Lotta finds out you and your ‘guy best friend’ have been knocking boots for over half a year.

You catch Taehyung glancing over to you, eyes twinkling with amusement, signalling for you to come over and join his crowd. Telepathy is one of your secret talents nowadays, you just know each other so well that spoken words are not a necessity for communication.

Taehyung watches you manoeuvre past those chattering bodies from across the room, making your way towards him with Lotta trailing behind. He knows he is definitely drunk, so it might just be the alcohol getting to his head but something looks a little different about you tonight. By that, he doesn’t mean your curled hair, or that new red dress you’re wearing that introduces your cleavage to the entire world. You’re kind of… glowing. There is a permanent smile on your face, even while resting the corners of your lips are turned up. And when you’re in a good mood, you are so transparent about it that you basically radiate like a disco ball in the room.

His chest feels warm. Maybe it’s the wine.

“Fuck, she’s so fit.”

For a second, Taehyung is worried that he thought out loud, but then realised that the voice belonged to Seojoon. He turns to his friend to find him ogling at your figure.

He doesn’t know what to say. It’s weird if he agrees. But he also doesn’t trust his inebriated state to execute a flat out lie that convincingly.

“You don’t know how lucky you are to have Y/N as your roommate, man. If it were me, I would’ve tapped that on the first night.” Seojoon continues, taking a swig of his beer.

“As if you could.” Taehyung snorts, unable to help himself. “She’s out of your league, ass.”

“Fair point. I heard she is a freak in bed, too. Do you ever hear, like, sex noises?” A freak indeed.

“Sometimes…” It’s true, even now. Occasionally he will stumble home with a girl he picked up at the bar only to hear the bed creaking furiously or breathy moans sounding from your room. Walls are thin. Sometimes it turned him on, other times it pissed him off.

“Bet you wank to it, eh? Taehyungie?” Seojoon ruffles his hair just as you and Lotta come within earshot. Liquor-brazen, he is suddenly overcome with an urge to announce to the whole room: Y/N and I are fucking. Yeah, that’s right. She’s my fuck buddy, so you can stop trying to hit on her right now because I’m gonna be the one she’s riding tonight. Seojoon, fucking suck on that. I don’t need to wank to her sex noises when I’m the one coaxing them from her.

However, a small sober part of his conscience tells him that he really shouldn’t do that; if he does, he probably won’t get any riding tonight. So he clamps his mouth shut.

You arrive amidst them in that sinful dress that reduces Taehyung to a teenage boy, and you take your turn giving them brief hugs as formalities, your best friend beside you mirroring your action. When you reach Taehyung, he pulls you in roughly by the waist, wine sloshing in his hand. From his careless force and lazy grin, you can tell he is almost completely gone. Taehyung is a wine-killer, but wine is also a Taehyung-killer.

Highly conscious of the presence of all your mates while he clearly isn’t, you pretend to roll your eyes and pry his hand off the small of your back. It doesn’t budge. So, awkwardly, with your midriff locked in Taehyung’s arm, you lean over to hug his last friend Woosik who gives you a shy pat on your shoulder.

The conversation resumes, morphing into Lotta telling everyone the most embarrassing stories of you during high school - back when you had braces and had the biggest crush on the captain of the football team. You don’t even try to deny it, laughing along at your pathetic 14 year old self. Though, you’re only half paying attention, the other half is keenly aware of the way Taehyung’s thumb is rubbing gentle circles on your pelvic bone. When you peek up at him, you find him already staring at you with eyes you know too well.

The ‘I’m gonna eat you out until you squirt’ eyes.

Fuck.

Then you notice Lotta’s sharp eyes on Taehyung’s hand gripping your waist. The ‘hold up, what could be happening over here?’ eyes.

Double fuck.

Tipping your toes, you whisper into your roommate’s clueless ear. “Let go, people are watching.” You almost allow your lips to graze his skin because you know how much it turns him on, but you remember to behave. But this close, his warm familiar scent tingles your nose in a way that makes you want to hug him.

Taehyung pulls away to look at your face, clearly displeased, then regards everyone in the circle. When he notices Lotta’s focus on the two of you, he slowly withdraws his paw, but not without purposely brushing past your ass.

.

“Strawberry-flavoured lube?”

Taehyung audibly gasps in disbelief as he tears open his poorly wrapped present.

“Yeah, you like strawberries right?” Seojoon chuckles and claps his back so violently that he falls forwards. On the other side of him, you haul him back up onto the sofa.

Everyone is gathered around the pile of birthday gifts on the coffee table, but not before witnessing you scold Woosik for not leaving his drink on the kitchen island from which the couch is a safe distance to prevent any spillage. Lotta just laughed at your fixation.

So far, the array of presents Taehyung has received ranges from Amazon vouchers, to expensive whiskey, to a funky tie. Yours sit furthest away from him, which he practically leapt in excitement when he saw the size of, only to be forced to open it last because you insist it’s going to be the best one.

“You’re insufferable, Seojoon.” Taehyung rolls his eyes yet fails to suppress his grin. Oh, you’re definitely trying out the lube at some point.

After ripping into a couple more, he finally arrives at your present for him. It spans an entire arm’s length; you know every guest must be wondering to themselves what it could possibly be. Taehyung drops onto his knees before it and carefully peels away the tape this time, knowing it probably took you awhile to wrap it up this neatly. You watch his long cautious fingers reveal the gift you had spent weeks raking your head for.

“Stop…” His eyes light up at the polished cedar easel that he caresses over as gentle as he would your skin. But as he continues to unwrap the present, a box of oil paints, a wooden palette and a set of 16 expensive natural fibre brushes are unveiled. “Oh my god, there’s more?”

Ceasing in action, he looks up at you, jaw so slack you bet you can throw a pea into his mouth even with your bad aim. The surprise on his face, almost a replica of his expression when everyone jumped out at him and yelled ‘Happy Birthday’ an hour ago. Except this time there is something more tender about how his wide pupils bore into yours. It makes you squirm.

Then without warning, he dives onto you, crushing you in the most fatal of embraces; you swear something in your spine cracked as you fall back onto the cushions, suffocated. People let out a sound of amusement at your struggle, but with his warm breath fanning your neck, you don’t even hear them.

After allowing this sweet painful moment for a few seconds more, you shove Taehyung’s heavy body off you, harder than you need so he slumps onto Seojoon.

“You’re actually the best, I love you.” He squeals like a boy on Christmas day before examining the paintbrushes with the utmost careful touch, as if afraid he would bend the bristles the wrong way.

What is he so cute for?

You kind of really want to pat his head and kiss his cheek right now. But there’s an audience obstructing.

Looking up, you lock eyes with Lotta. She is smiling, endeared by the purity of his reaction as well. See, not even she is immune his stupid cuteness. How are you supposed to?

Taehyung’s heart is constricting as he strokes the fine wooden edge of the giant disassembled easel. Of course, you know him better than any of his other friends. He has recently expressed an interest in painting, though his love for art and sophistication has been harbouring for a while now. He has only ever made subtle comments about wanting to properly get into it but not having the proper equipment to and not knowing the best brand to purchase. Yet you had picked up on it nevertheless. Everything combined must have costed you a significant portion of your allowance. Even he would not have splashed out this much on himself.

He turns back to you again from where he kneels in front of the coffee table. You are observing him with a thing he wishes to be adoration, a glimmer in your smile that wears more beautiful than any dress on you. For a second, there’s a flutter in his stomach and it confuses him because it feels an awful lot like butterflies.

But then you kick his back with the heel of your foot to get him to stand and Taehyung remembers that you are best friends. He’s not supposed to be thinking like that.

.

After cutting the cake, with food being a major satisfaction factor of any party, everyone sort of just hovers, huddled in their little groups with their plate of dessert in one hand, while they resume their conversation. The music is turned up loud so they all have to half-yell; some don’t even bother talking as they dig in, you included.

Being a quiet eater that you are, you stand by the island counter, sipping your wine in between bites of that chocolate decadence. Taehyung approaches you with his already empty plate; you haven’t even made it through half your slice yet. Judging by the lethargy in his step and that icing-slathered grin he has worn the entire night, you can tell he was the one who finished the second bottle of wine you opened.

“Hey.” Your fingers do a weird little wave that is so completely uncharacteristic, but tipsy-Y/N is sort of that friendly and laid back.

“Hey, pretty.” His hand trails around the corner of the counter surface and traps you between it and his body as he comes up behind you. Immediately you stiffen, looking around to see if anyone, especially Lotta, is looking. But when you find everyone preoccupied either with each other or the cake, your shoulders relax.

“What’s up? You having a good time?” Twisting to face him, you edge back until the counter digs into your back. Taehyung’s face is a dangerous proximity to yours.

The anticipation for the night you have planned for him in your bedroom thrums in your core. Patience has never been one of your strengths, and right now it is testing your very limit. You could kick everyone out right now if you really wanted to. But you won’t. You’ll wait.

You wipe the chocolate off the corner of his mouth with a swipe, the gesture you can’t tell if motherly or romantic. And just because Taehyung is peering down at you so longingly, you flick your tongue out and suck the sweetness on your thumb.

His breath hitches.

“Uh- I…” For a second, all thought is scattered in his brain, and you almost laugh aloud at how susceptible he is to your attacks. “Yeah, of course. I’m having the best time.”

“Am I the best roommate ever or what?” You watch his eyes trained on your mouth. From his alcohol scent, you don’t trust him to have enough restraint not to kiss you right now so you turn your back to him and rest your elbows upon the island top, leaning over to finish your cake.

In your peripheral vision, you spy his hands crawling towards your sides to cinch around your waist, his front pressing into you as he holds you from behind. The warmth of his body seeps into your back, and you swear you can feel the beating of his chest against your shoulder blades. A tingle shoots straight down your spine when he plants a soft, brief kiss on the shell of your ear.

Good thing you turned around then, your intuition was right. Taehyung has never been able to suppress his overt affection after a few drinks, and certainly not after this many. And no matter how much you want to just turn around and pull him into your lips, you fight it.

“Babe...” He groans into your ear and though it was barely audible even to you, you quickly glance up to see if anyone has heard. Of course, no one heard, they are all stood far enough that even without the music, they’d have to strain their ears to hear his whisper. Paranoia is eating your head away.

“Don’t ‘babe’ me, Taehyung.” Your heart is racing, which is weird because you swear you used to be completely immune to his charms. “You’re being too obvious, babe.”

“You don’t ‘babe’ me. I can’t control myself when you call me that.” The warmth of his breath fans all over the back of your neck, sending a convulsion of shivers down your spine.

One of his hands stretches for your wine glass, but knowing him well enough to predict it, you draw it away from his reach. “Stop drinking, you’re literally about to pass out.”

“No, you’re about to pass out. On my-” hiccup, “dick.” You keep your eyes locked on the crowd, ready to shove Taehyung away if anyone looks your way. But still, you can’t help but lean back into him.

“That made no sense.” You chuckle, fingers brushing over the smooth thin skin of this hand.

“Just one sip.”

“Taehyung. Stop. Drinking.” You grab his hand that tries to make a run for the wine again.

“But, Y/N…” He whines and slumps onto you, knowing that whining has gotten him what he wanted before.

You turn around, grab his face and pull him towards you until your mouth is brushing his earlobe. “Be a good boy and stop drinking if you want the best birthday sex of your life after this party. You better not get whiskey dick because a have a lot planned for you.”

At that, Taehyung stops breathing, stops resisting. Against your shoulder, you feel his chest jump. “Oh. Um. Okay, yup, no more drinking. Got it, ma’am.”

He sighs, completely at your disposal, as your touch trails from the sensitive side of his neck down to his torso. “Good.” After looking around again to check that no one is looking, you press your alcohol-infused lips onto his hastily, savouring his softness for no longer than a few seconds before pulling away. God, is it difficult to pull away. You’re aching for him. “Go entertain the guests while you sober up.”

Satisfied grin from the kiss stretched across his face, he nods obediently and scampers over to his friends.

.

“Are you ready yet?” Taehyung calls, impatient and giddy, the music that you’ve put on playing softly in the background.

“Give me one more second.” You reply from the bathroom, doing up your last button and regarding yourself in the mirror. Hm, not bad. You’re pleased with how this turned out, if you do say so yourself. Taehyung is going to lose his mind.

Sheer black stockings stretched thin over your legs, you strut into his room where he is seated on a chair in nothing but his boxers, wrists shackled to the back. When his eyes land on you, a strangled noise emits from his throat.

“Holy. Fuck. Holy fuck. Holyfuckholyfuckholyfuck.” He chokes out.

The checkered material of your school skirt flies up at your every step teasingly, not high enough for him to peek your panties, but enough for your thighs to be flaunted.The clip of your stockings sit cool and beguiling on your quads. First two buttons of your white blouse undone, the matching red tartan tie hangs loosely around your neck between your exposed, pushed up cleavage. Your hair is tied into two school-girl braids, decorated in ribbons.

You’re Taehyung’s walking talking fantasy.

Innocent, chaste, ready for him to defile.

“Sir.” You address him, committing to your character, as you bow your head in courtesy.

Taehyung doesn’t appear capable of words, Adam’s apple wobbling in awe. So you continue your approach, making sure to regard him with large, demure eyes. As you sink down onto your knees between his widespread trembling legs, you notice a prominence already erecting in his boxers. You try not to smirk.

“What can I do for you, sir?” You put on your sweetest, most virgin of voices and bat your lashes once at him.

Chest rising quickly, Taehyung gulps as he realises that he’s most definitely going about to have the best sex of his life. “Um. Uh. Um.”

Smiling at his malfunctioning cognition, no thanks to you, you decide to help him out a little. “I’ve been sent to you for being a bad girl, sir.”

Do you find this slightly humiliating and degrading? Yes, you’re a woman of pride and a feminist. But does Taehyung’s birthday outweigh your morals? Yes, if only just for this night.

“What… What did you do, baby girl?” Voice dangerously deep, Taehyung watches you from his handcuffed posture, watches you twirl your braids in your fingers before they move sensual down your front, curving over your breasts and travelling to your core.

“It’s embarrassing to say but…” You look down in feign shame. “I touched myself.”

His whole frame tenses, arms straining to be freed from the cuffs so he can throw you onto the bed and fuck you mercilessly. His lips are parted, breath unsteady, cheeks still slightly stained from the alcohol but you made sure that he’s mostly sober by now. “Why did you touch yourself?”

“I was thinking about you, sir, and I just couldn’t help myself. Something started tickling down there and it felt so good to touch it.” Biting your lip, your fingers reach your clit over your skirt and start rubbing. The other hand traces swirls slowly up his thighs, higher and higher, until he’s buckling his hips.

“Wait, pause.” He says, your touch ceasing at his command. “Fuck, Y/N, I’m not going to last if you do this to me. I might even cum my pants.”

Usual smugness returning as you smirk up at him, your teeth digs deeper into your lower lip, refusing to break character. “Well, it’s a good thing we have all night then, sir. A water hose doesn’t just fire once does it?”

“Fuck.” Shutting his eyes, his head falls back to reveal his gulping jugular. Already so malleable? Yeah, he’s definitely not going to last. The first round. “Okay, okay. Resume.”

Your fingers reach the hem of his boxers, skimming through his tan, lustrous inner thighs. He jerks, his hard member jabbing out the soft cotton, begging to be freed. “So I was wondering if there is any way I could get out of this punishment, sir. My parents can’t find out that I’ve been a bad girl. I’ll do anything you want me to do, sir.”

“I see, Miss Y/L/N… How about, you warm up my lap for me first? I’m feeling slightly cold.” He wets his lips and bounces on his toes, his hard length jolting along with his legs.

“Oh, of course, sir.” When you stand up, you make sure to do it slowly, curving your body towards him to give him a good look at your breasts. He doesn’t miss the chance to devour them with his eyes.

Your hips begin to sway in the rhythm of the slow sensual music while you turn until your back faces him. You feel his glare immediate follow your ass, skirt sloshing side to side to reveal your plush cheeks. But rather than falling onto his lap as he wants, you stride over his leg, hand trailing across his chest as you begin to walk around him.

Massaging up his bicep, your hand arrives at his collar as you lick a thin strip up his neck. Taehyung shudders, struggling against his handcuffs again, cursing. “I can do anything you want me to, sir.” He shivers as you whisper into his ear, teeth grazing his skin. Your own heart is racing from excitement. Maybe you should do this more often. It’s selfish of you to do so since it’s meant to be his birthday sex after all, but you enjoy having him helt under you, seconds away from whimpering, gone be his natural preference for dominance.

As you walk around him, his head turns with you, not wishing for his sight to miss a second of this private show. Patience isn’t something he’s born with, he is a man who’s used to ceasing everything he wants. You know what must be going through his head right now, the anticipation, the hunger. So finally, when you’ve done a full circle around, hands not once missing the opportunity to feather his chest, you decide to ease him a little.

Deliberately unrushed, you sit inch by inch down onto his lap until his dick is burrowed between your warm cheeks underneath your skirt.

“Baby…” Taehyung immediately sits up, mouth arriving at the back of your neck, exhaling his hot fervour. The feeling of his skin pressed on the strip of yours between your skirt and cropped blouse has you craving for him to pound into you right now. Nothing can describe the flash of desire you get when you feel the touch of his naked body.

Then you begin to roll your hips, drawing loops of infinity with your ass to the beat of the song. The groan you elicit makes your cunt pulse. Taehyung’s stiff length jerks between your wiggling ass. His head falls onto your shoulder in a huff, metallic sound of his chains ringing as his arms clench.

“Sir, is that warm enough?” Your hips are merciless, rock back and forth, providing him with the friction he so craves. Hell, maybe you should start doing this for a living.

“Y… Yeah.” There is defeat in his voice, a croak that tells you that you’re the only woman to ever put him in his place like this. The only he’d ever submit to.

Slowly, you peel yourself off his lap, delighting in the small stained spot on his boxers, evidence of his drooling dick. You sink onto your knees before him again, fingers crawling playfully up his thighs. “You seem a little stiff, sir. Do you want me to ease some tension in your muscles for you?”

“Please be a dear.” The fervour in his eyes as he gazes down at you is pure, undiluted. It stirs something beastly inside you.

You’ve sucked Taehyung off a hundred times before, but something about the fact that he’s handcuffed to a chair on his birthday, almost cumming his pants, makes you especially eager this time.

A string of precum greets you as you take his lividly throbbing cock out of its restraints. You spare it a few pumps before you enclose the warm wet cave of your mouth around it. It’s perhaps evil of you, but you cut to the chase and go straight to deep-throating. He lets out a yelp of surprise when his tip slides smoothly through and hits the back of your throat. He’s going to cum soon, might as well give him your all, right?

Your mouth has gotten used to resisting the gag reflexes by now, engulfing him like a strawberry ice lolly during the summer heat. The occasional scrape of your teeth, just the way he loves, has him shiver beneath you. If he likes it rough, he should be able to take it rough. And when your tongue begins its inexorable attack at the pinch of skin where his tip ties to his shaft, Taehyung lets out a throaty cry. Not even a moan, a cry.

“Fuck, I’m losing my mind. Y/N, oh my god, keep going.” Through your curled lashes, you gaze up at him. His brows furrowed, guzzling up his favourite view in the world, maybe second to you riding him. Jaw unscrewed, he heaves at your large feign-innocent eyes, wrists dying to be freed so he could fuck your mouth.

Two throbs at the base of his cock, and he’s cumming right down your throat. It’s a larger load that either of you’d expected, telling of his obscene concupiscence. There’s so much cum that you can’t swallow, so you have no choice but to let it flow down his cock. With you still staring at him, he watches his white hot fluid dribble out your mouth and onto him, his features screwed tight in pleasure.

“Lick it off, baby.” Taehyung rasps, half his mind completely gone, dilapidated.

You hum as you spread his liquid around his tip and along his shaft, lips now glossy, before you slowly lap it all up. You know he is particularly sensitive after cumming, so you wallow in teasing his head a bit more, watching him writhe on his seat, whining your name. “Sir, how was that?”

Taehyung’s head is tossed back, eyes shut to recover from that post-orgasm intensity. He doesn’t speak at first, still trying to piece back together his mind. “I… That was… You deserve a worse punishment for doing that to me.”

Your core twists in excitement.

Briskly, you fish out the key to his handcuffs and unlock him, thrumming from the molten fury in his eyes. “What did I do wrong, sir?”

As soon as his wrists are free from their shackles, Taehyung stands and throws you over his shoulders. Smack. He hits your ass, your skirt doing little to soften the blow. You never knew yourself to be a masochist until it comes to Taehyung; his are the only hands you’d allow to spank you.

Then he tosses you onto the bed, your skirt flying up to reveal your peachy ass as you land on your front. “You just love it when I’m under your control, don’t you? Even this innocent school-girl roleplay is just a disguise to get me to beg for you, isn’t it?”

Twisting your head back, a smirk plays at your lips as you regard his frustrated yet immensely pleased expression. His fingers glide up your silky stockings enticingly, sending shivers coursing up your legs. “Sir, I have no idea what you mean.”

“Look at your fucking ass in this skirt, holy fuck.” He begins to knead the supple flesh of your behind, pushing up the skirt until it sit on your lower back.

Another smack.

He’s such an ass man through and through.

“Do you like my uniform, sir?” You moan between his smacks. Nothing really is compelling you to continue with this roleplay, but something tells you that Taehyung is bursting from it.

“I fucking love it, baby girl.” Smack. You can practically hear him grinning in satisfaction. His palm massages the redness he inflicted like smearing paint, touch growing closer and closer to your core.

Then with one push at your inner thighs, he spreads your legs wide open.

“Fucking hell. Crotchless? You’re really spoiling me tonight.” Like a little boy on Christmas Day, he marvels at your glistening slit, gaping at him in anticipation. Another small surprise for him.

“Of course- ahh!” You break into a moan when he runs two fingers down your folds, all the way to your bulging clit. “For the birthday boy.”

“Okay, now you definitely deserve the best head.” He lies on his front and grips onto your thighs to pull himself up to face level with your cunt.

You won’t tell him to prevent further ego inflation but every head he gives is the best head.

“Wait, Taehyung, it’s your birthday. Just let me-” You squirm in his clutch, trying to flip around, but he holds you still.

“Exactly. My birthday. I get to eat you out if I want to. It’s what my baby girl deserves.” For some reason, you blush. Who are you to resist head, especially from Taehyung?

Heat of his breath tickling your entrance, you plant your face onto the pillow and clamp down on your lip, preparing for that mind-twisting sensation that has a way of robbing you of sanity. His mouth finds your thighs first, kissing, sucking, blooming roses of his affection. You let him mark you - you are completely his tonight. Then his breath arrives at the sensitive crevice where your folds begin, a slow seduction towards your tingling bud. When he finally latches onto your clit, your eyes roll to the back of your empty head, a whimper ensuing.

His tongue is a predatory serpent, ceaselessly rolling your bud in his mouth. He’s rough, generous with the waves of pleasure he sends. You wish you aren’t lying on your front right now, just so you can look down at his concentrated face and pull on his wavy mop of hair.

With every flick of his tongue, you swim closer to your orgasm. His fingers are digging to your thighs, his breath quickening with his face buried in you. When he adds his long slender digits, you know your demise is round the corner.

“Fuck, daddy.” You yell into the pillow, that name coming so naturally to you that it requires zero brain processing to leave you.

Taehyung hums in response, those baritone vibrations shaking into your core until your leg involuntarily kicks back. Gripping onto the sheets, a string of profanities expel from you as that euphoric current comes crashing onto you, drowning your surroundings so that all you feel is his face, his tongue, his teeth, still mercilessly going despite your state.

“Fuck!” A tear slips from the violent stimulation at your clit continuing past your orgasm. You guess it’s payback.

Not one minute later, a second climax hits you, this time stronger than the last as it rides on the residual pleasure. The orgasm disperses into tension down your thighs, dying for more friction to relieve your cunt of the blissful ache. Warm tears stain the pillowcase your face is buried in, your cries muffled.

His pace gradually decelerates into soft kisses on your flower, fingers withdrawing to massage your folds. You are motionless, completely depleted after the dopaminergic release. Delicately, his lips travel up to your ass, where he sucks more colours as he awaits your recovery.

“How was that, baby girl?” Taehyung slowly turns you over onto your back, a lazy grin on his glistening mouth, your wetness slathered all over his nose. It views in your eyes as a display of your possession. You don’t miss the triumph in his gaze; you wonder if he likes making you cum more than cumming himself.

“Your mouth is fucking incredible.” You bask in the post-orgasm high, pulling him atop you, hand locking in his curls. You taste yourself as you kiss him, slowly and lethargically, your energy ebbing back to you.

“Yeah?” He smiles against your lips. “You know what’s incredible? You in this fucking uniform.” Pulling away, he scans your body top to bottom. And as you follow his gaze, you notice his hardened cock, once again ready for another round. You surprise yourself with how ready you are to take him, exhaustion not yet settled in from his overstimulation.

“You like it that much?” You press your lips together, and as used to Taehyung’s constant flattery as you should be, you still feel proud.

Taehyung nestles his face onto your neck. “If we went to high school together, I would 100% have been your bitch. Not a single doubt. Whipped.”

Your heart squeezes. Whipped.

You kiss his hair, resisting the urge to make a comment about what he said. “Haha. I would not have noticed you, I was obsessed with the captain of the football team.”

Taehyung lifts his head up, frowning at you with a playful annoyance. “Are you sure you want to mention another man in front of me right now?” For emphasis of his possessive mood, he grinds his member into your thigh. You can’t help but push back to feel him digging into you. Possessive Taehyung toys with your strings.

“Yeah, what are you going to do about it?” You taunt further, pulling on his locks. Taehyung’s competitiveness is an easy target for manipulation; everytime he starts to go soft and sappy on you, all you have to do is tug on his jealousy and the bull will come charging back full force.

Surely enough, he growls into your ear. “Don’t forget who you’re speaking to, miss. You wouldn’t want your parents knowing the naughty things you’ve been up to, would you?” So he does love the roleplay. His tone slightly sarcastic, but also not really. But before you can hiss a witty response, he silences you with his teeth on your neck. As he sucks on your tender skin, your nails rake across his back in pleasure. He’s growing bolder with his territory.

“More hickeys?” You purr, not exactly in the complaining tone you’d wished it would come out in.

“Yeah, what are you going to do about it?” He mocks, leaving a wet purple trail across your throat.

You allow it for the sole reason that it’s his birthday. Otherwise, you’d be kicking off.

You’ve never liked the idea of hickeys, the notion that someone feels entitled to mark your skin as theirs. You don’t belong to anyone. This is your own skin, and no one else’s. Yet - right now, as Taehyung nips at your neck, hand yanking on your uniform’s tie to pull you closer to him, you feel like you do belong…

You don’t finish that thought.

Reaching down, you begin stroking his patiently awaiting cock. “You’re brave for someone who’s dick is in my hands.”

Taehyung breaks away from your neck and reviews his work of art. The wolfish grin an indication of his pride. “You’re going to kill me tomorrow.” He says without the fear that should come with such statement.

Yes, you’re definitely going to.

“Then fuck me until I forgive you.” You challenge, unbuttoning the first button of your shirt while your stroking quickens.

He doesn’t need to be told twice. Fingers scrambling to undo the rest of your shirt, his mouth finds yours again, sucking on your bottom lip until it’s sure to swell later. Your bra falls loose with a dexterous flick, a gesture he can do in his sleep. Yet, he makes no move to remove your checkered tie at all.

When you try to loosen it yourself, he grabs your hand and pins it against the pillow. “That stays on tonight, along with the skirt and the stockings.” Voice laced with carnality, there’s a feral glint in his glare.

“Yes, sir.” Smile unstifled, you fall back into obedience.

Taehyung dares to plant more bitemarks down your chest before taking your nipple in his mouth, tormenting the sensitive bud relentlessly. Patience wearing thin, you line his tip with your slit, dallying it around to coat it with your dampness.

“Wait, grab a condom.” He mutters.

“Don’t need one.”

He looks up, confused. “What? Why?”

“I started taking the pill. Surprise.”

The look of pure shock and delight that usurps his face, for the third? fourth? time tonight, sows a seed of joy in your core.

“Wait, seriously?” You swear you feel his cock twitch happily in your hand. That stupid boxy grin that makes him look like a kid again… You want to kiss him dizzy.

“Yes, seriously.” You would never admit that you started taking contraception solely for Taehyung, because that would be weird, you absolutely did not do it for Taehyung. You’d always wanted to start contraception anyway. This was your own decision, influenced by no one else.

Certainly. No one else. Of course.

“Holy fucking shit. Y/N, you’re amazing.” Taehyung cannot contain his glee despite its juxtaposition with his pulsating cock about to enter you any moment now. “All this for me?” He asks, still in disbelief, as if the answer isn’t already written in big bold black letters.

“For the birthday boy, and the birthday boy only.” Your nose grazes his. These are the very words you’d be embarrassed to be caught saying to any guy, yet you’re currently too fuelled by the desire to please him to berate yourself.

Without another second gone to waste, Taehyung pushes his girthy member into your heat. Though it glides in with ease, your walls are stretched so wide that your inside stir, a sore pressure squeezing around him with each thrust. You always seem to forget how well he fits into you, and so each time comes as an eye-rolling surprise - the way he fills you so completely and entirely with his hefty cock.

“Oh fuck, you feel so-” He doesn’t manage to finish his sentence, too caught up in the raw unobstructed sensation of your slick walls.

Lifting your leg over his shoulder, the cavernous angle allows him to jolt deeper into you, his tip violently punching through you. While one hand remains on your ankle, the other twists your tie around his wrist and pulls as if it were a leash. “Sir…” You choke out at the constriction around your throat.

“Are you going to bad girl again?” He grunts, sweat beading on his forehead while he continues to ram his hips.

“No, sir. I won’t touch myself again,” you moan under him, “unless you are watching.”

“Fuck, Y/N.” One eye shut, Taehyung sticks his thumb into your mouth to suckle on. Your tongue swirls around his finger, biting down every time you need to shriek in pleasure.

After a while, he flips your bodies over so that you are riding him, watching, mesmerised, as your breasts bounce freely each time you spring on his dick. Your body falls back at the rippling coil inside you, hands braced on the mattress to keep you upright.

Taehyung could watch you ride him for the rest of his life. Hell, if he has a heart attack and dies this very moment, he would die the happiest man.

Sometimes, while you’re fucking, Taehyung gets a sudden rush of jealousy. Jealous that he wasn’t the one to ruin your innocence. Jealous that someone else other than him got to, or still gets to, fuck you like this.

He pulls on your tie so that you fall over him, lips colliding to remind himself that he’s the one fucking you right now, the rest shouldn’t matter. The way you moan into him reassures that no one has ever, or can ever, fuck you the way he does.

Then a messy whimper leaves you like a symphony, and for the third time tonight, you come undone, unravelled.

“Fu-u-u-uckkk.” You cry, arms looping around Taehyung’s neck, holding on as if he’s your lifeline because you yourself are unsure how much of this you can take before you drown.

“Baby, you’re so good, cumming for me again.” He sings, knowing that words like these thrums something in your core. You lap up his praise, smiling against his teeth despite yourself. It’s honestly a miracle how your usual brusque controlling self is suddenly transformed into his docile little girl, especially after a round of orgasms. “I’m going to cum again too.”

“Daddy, fuck, please. Cum inside me.” You pant, hips bouncing as fast as your aching muscles allow. Truth be told, no one has ever finished inside you before. And you are dying to find out how it feels.

Taehyung seems to know this. He grabs onto your waist, holding you in place, and plunges unforgivingly into you, penetrating your walls so ardently that you are shoved near the brink of yet another orgasm.

A grumble rippling through the room, finally, you feel a hot jet shoot into you, squirt after squirt of his thick cum filling you up. He frowns, a hoarse cry from the immense pleasure arriving at his cock, taking over him. Fucking hell, this is hot.

And kind of really intimate.

However, you notice that his pace has yet to slacken.

“I’m not done with you yet.” His eyes open to reveal pupils glowing with vehemence. Your clit throbs.

Still inside you, he turns you over so that you are both on your sides spooning, one of your legs hoisted up by his rough grip. The slap of your skin rings crisp and clear as he continues to fuck you. You lean back into him, ignoring the sticky coat of sweat coalescing your skins. His cum lubricates each thrust as you feel some spill out of you. His fingers start to stimulate your clit to help you reach your ultimate climax, viciously rubbing your sensitive swollen bud so much that you begin to see stars.

For him to keep fucking you even after cumming despite his tremendous sensitivity… Taehyung is going wild tonight.

“Are you going to cum one last time for me, baby girl?” He pants heavily in your ear.

“Yes, daddy.” Your own cunt is leaking profusely its tears of joy; you don’t think you’ve ever been this wet before.

In a few more thrusts, Taehyung is cumming inside you again, this time naturally less than the last, yet from his loud coarse groan, you deduce is much more intense. He pounds slowly yet robustly, milking every last drop into you. Due to the sheer oversensitivity, he has no choice but to pull out of you immediately after, leaving a spurt of his cum surging out of you.

“Oh my god.” He moans into your neck, both your heads spinning from the vigour of your intercourse.

But he knows you’re still a minute away from your orgasm. And never one to disappoint, he quickly sits up and spreads your legs open.

“Holy fuck.” Taehyung freezes at the sight of his cum slowly trickling out of you. To him, it’s a sign of possession, ownership. Apart from his ex, he has never fucked without protection, certainly not those random one night stands. To him, it’s a sign of intimacy.

Catching his white liquid in two fingers, he inserts it into your already gaping mouth, smearing it all over your tongue. In your cute little braids, you swallow it willingly, and Taehyung swears that he could fuck you again right then and there.

“You like that?” He asks, sticky fingers entering your core, feeling how clenched you are due to the pent up pressure.

“Mhmm.” You nod, hips lifting off the bed so that he can reach deeper. His thumb massages your clit, long digits moving in a come hither motion, stretching your walls in cusps that his cock did not have the ductility to reach. “Ahh, shit.”

Determination worn on his face despite his tiring limbs, Taehyung fucks you with his finger as you thrash beneath him. Your clit is already exploding with sensitivity from the previous rounds, and on top of that, with his thick knuckles push into you again and again, you are clawing at him while your whole body convulses.

The coil within your finally snaps. The ecstatic sensation exploding within you, flooding your every fibre until tears spring out your eyes. A clear liquid shoots out of you to both your surprises, and sprays its droplets towards Taehyung. His eyes widen, marvelling at your beauty as you cum not only on his fingers but all over him.

“Jesus Christ!” Chuffed with himself evidently, he leans in to kiss you, deep and desperate, while his fingers slow their steady thrusts to let you ride out the remainder of your high. His mouth is warm, a familiar taste as you regain your sense of self and surrounding that you tend to lose during sex.

As your brain begins to function again, the first thought you register is how much you don’t want to stop kissing Taehyung, how much you don’t want to let go of him.

“Taehyung…” You whine, bottom lip in the possession of his teeth.

“Feeling good?” He lets go of his bite, but lips remain dearly magnetised to yours. Dragging out his fingers, the wet noises of your clenched walls ring. Taehyung sucks on his dripping digits as you push his sweat-dampened fringe out of his face to survey his eyes. Full of yearning. And the way he is sucking… appears almost as a last display of submission after completely ruining you. A last shred of I’m yours.

“So.” You peck him. “Fucking.” Another. “Good.” Peck. Your bodies naked, your skirt creased and skin claggy, you refuse to release each other from your embrace. “But Taehyung…”

“What it is, my baby?” From on top of you, he is looking down at you as if you’re some delicate little buttercup in a barren field, a ray of joy radiating from his smile.

You tense. My baby.

You two might be kind of screwed...

But you’ll think about that another time. Right now, you just want to be held and kissed and looked after.

“It’s not fair. This was meant for you, but you made it about me.” You don’t know what’s taken over you but you pout at him, the same way he would do to you when he wanted something. But why, of course, it’s just like Taehyung to make you come four times despite it being his birthday sex. You don’t even know what to expect for your own birthday.

His own hair dishevelled, he tucks your loose braids behind your ears, a gesture of affection. “Nothing gets me off more than making you feel good. This was about me. This was everything I wanted. Best sex I’ve ever had. But in what world would my best sex not include making you squirt?”

Your don’t know why but you feel incredibly vulnerable right now, your hard edges softening. It’s the after-sex glow that you’re seeing everything in. You feel warm, bubbly, tender.

And now your chest feels weird, like something itching to rupture out of your ribcage. You want it to stop, yet also don’t.

“Taehyung…” You whine his name again. “No fair… You can’t be like this.” Your brain offers no explanation as to why you’ve adopted his usual saccharine manner, other than the fact that he has fucked you completely senseless.

“Like what?” He asks, egging the rare words of sweetness out of you.

“Like… You know… So giving and nice and perf…” Your voice trails off when you notice his excited smirk. God, what the fuck are you saying? You flush in embarrassment.

“Perf…? His smug grin only grows at your shyness.

“Stop. You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Stop teasing me.” Taehyung chuckles at your frustration, taking the chance to kiss the tip of your nose before you try to squirm out of his arms like a cat.

“No, go on. You need to be better with your words. Tell me how you feel.”

Your entire face is heated.

“I… You’re just… You treat me so well. How am I supposed to sleep with anyone else anymore?” You immediately wish you didn’t say it out loud. Because your phrasing implies that you want monogamy, commitment. It’s not what you meant at all, you don’t think. You just meant… You don’t know what you just meant.

You search his eyes frantically, in fear that he’s thinking the same, only to find them calm, content. “I mean, I guess I’m pretty fucking awesome. Thanks.”

Rolling your eyes, you’re grateful for his childish humour obstructing any serious consideration of your words.

“Don’t make me take it back, moron.” You scoff, pinching his round cheek between your knuckles.

“Too bad, it’s my birthday, everything I say is the law.” Still hovering over you, he presses gentle kisses all over your face, delighting in the way you pretend to hate it even though you can’t suppress the smile. When he stops, his face is sincere, the playfulness gone. “Y/N.”

“What?”

“Thank you so much, honestly, from the bottom of my heart. This was… the best birthday I’ve ever had. Not just the sex, but the whole time with you, the dinner, the party, everything.” Your heartbeat quickens, unable to hold his gaze so you focus on the curve of his collarbone instead. “Even better than the pirate-themed birthday party my parents threw me when I turned eight.”

You laugh, shaking your head. “Honoured. It was my pleasure.”

“Seriously, I lov-”

Taehyung catches himself before he could finish that sentence. Those unspoken words hang over your heads like a puppet.

Because for some reason, although you’ve said ‘I love you’ to each other a plethora of times in the past, this time feels like a different connotation is implicated. The line between platonic love and romantic love feels blurred. And neither of you know which love is meant.

Taehyung is a sentimental guy, you tell yourself. Of course he means he loves you as his best friend. And that’s surely what you mean too when your eyes are pleading him to keep kissing you.

There’s a moment of silence, for you both to gather your scattered thoughts, staring at each other, unsure what to say.

You clear your throat, dispelling the tension in the air.

“Lets go clean up.”

“Yeah.” Taehyung rolls off you, avoiding your eye as much as you are avoiding his.

The clean up is wordless, both pretending to be too preoccupied to spare the unspoken words any thought.

Except they’re all that’s playing at your mind.

Taehyung didn’t mean it like that. Taehyung doesn’t love you like that. You’re just overthinking. And he’s overthinking about you overthinking. You two are fine, you’re normal.

Examining the purple clouds he had imprinted on you, a stream down your neck, a cluster around your breasts, then the large ones between your thighs, you’re surprised to find not one drip of annoyance. A scary thought dawns on you. What if you like them? What if you like being marked by Taehyung?

What the fuck is happening?

You wait for him to crack a joke to ease up the awkwardness, glancing up at him in the mirror as you dry your hands on the towel by the sink. He doesn’t. Instead, he’s perched on the edge of the bath tube. Zoned out.

Have you finally taken it too far? Finally overstepped that hazy nebulous line that you perhaps should have set more clear?

“Hey, Taehyung.” His head snaps up at you, eyes large with uncertainty. “You okay?”

You want to reach out to touch him, brush his cheek, kiss his forehead. But you hold back. Not wanting to fuel the fire of confusion. But then he tugs you towards him by the hem of your skirt, corner of his lips turning up, imbuing you with a gust of relief.

“Just thinking.” His fingers crawl up your legs, holding onto your hips like his hands belong to nowhere else. “Come here.”

Chest pounding, you walk towards him, let him sit you down on his lap. Though you wish not to look at him with his face so close to yours, your eyes cannot pull away from his striking beauty. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, but Taehyung’s feel more like the front door to your home. When you look into them, no matter how you’re feeling, whether you’d been fighting or kissing, you just feel embraced in a cloud of clarity, security.

You don’t want to think about the complication between you two at the moment. You just want to be looking at him, touching him, holding him.

You watch him glance at your lips, hesitancy playing at his mind. You know he’s thinking the same.

“We’re okay, right?” Throat tight, you ask, rather pointlessly.

“Of course. We’re great, same old us.” His arm around your waist feels warm and safe, and when your mirror his growing smile, you almost believe him.

But when your lips gently press against his, you know it’s a lie.

You’re not the same old you.

Taehyung feels different. Skin smoother, tastes sweeter, mouth softer. The roughness of his usual kisses is gone, replaced by an inexplicable tenderness that makes you feel things in your gut. You swat those feelings away.

Something is changing. And as much as you don’t want to acknowledge it, you don’t think you can ignore its booming presence.

You don’t dare make a sound as he carries you back to his room. You don’t protest when he throws one of his t-shirts over your head. Nor when he holds you into his chest, lips tracing your forehead with a soft sleepy smile.

Noting that you’re being uncharacteristically quiet, he pokes the nub of your nose. “Who stole your tongue?”

Act normal. Just be your loud annoying self.

“Uh… You.” You murmur, unable to meet his eye even with strenuous effort

Well, fuck.

“Okay, let me give it back to you.” Before you can protest, he is kissing you again. And you want to push him away because you feel your heart lurching to your throat, and you don’t think it is healthy. But your feeble hand that was meant to shove him off lands weakly on his pec, and somehow with a mind of its own, snakes up to his neck and pulls him in. His tongue unfurls onto yours, gently sweeping away any logic.

When his lips finally leave yours, you’re out of breath.

You don’t know what’s happened to you. Since when did you react like this to Taehyung?

Forcing your usual smirk, you try to wear a convincing facade that you feel nothing out of the ordinary. “I’m expecting great things for my birthday, though to be honest this is going to be hard to beat.” The underlying dishonesty tastes sour. You’ve never had to put on a front with Taehyung, and doing so now feels… alien.

“I’ll start planning it tomorrow, don’t you worry, your highness.” Taehyung pretends to roll his eyes at your demand, though the circles he’s rubbing down your back is telling of his genuinity. He isn’t an classically romantic guy, not one for flowers and chocolate, but more a sentimental gift that leaves a deep meaning. You know you’ll love whatever he plans. It worries you that you’ll perhaps love it too much. “But seriously, thank you for everything. The easel? How much did that cost you? I’ve looked at that brand before and there’s no way it was cheap.”

“It doesn’t matter how much it costed.” Warmth is creeping up on your cheeks again. You try to excuse it as Taehyung’s radiant body heat. “Let’s just say I had to resort to prostitution to pay for it, okay?”

Bodies shuddering in laughter, some tension in the air is thankfully alleviated by your humour, filling you with hope that things should and will return to normal in no time. You just need to stop overthinking.

“Hey, can you sleep here tonight?”

You freeze at his request. Because despite your constant fucking around with each other, one clear boundary has been that you don’t physically sleep with each other after sex. If you do sleep over, it is always just a completely platonic gesture. No kissing or fondling. Something about falling asleep in each other’s naked bodies is too mushy and couple-like. The type of thing that make you puke.

“Why?” You frown defiantly at him. “It’s not even your birthday anymore, it’s past midnight. So technically, I don’t have to treat you like royalty anymore.”

“Why not?” Taehyung rebuts, that cocky expression making you want to nipple-cripple him. This difficult son of a bitch, does he not know that the line is going hazy between you two?

“It’s weird, we just had sex.”

“So? What do you have against sleeping together after sex? Scared that you’ll fall in love with me?”

Your chest sinks to your stomach. You swear to god, Kim Taehyung is going to be the fucking death of you, stupid shit. How could he even say something like that so casually?

“In your fucking dreams, prick. If anything, you’d be the one to fall in love with me first, I just made you cum three times.” Taehyung chuckles at the flash of fury in your eyes, amused by how easy it is to strike a nerve in you.

“Do you want me to fall in love with you?” Though his tone is playful, and the wiggle of his brows suggests his mockery, you don’t know if he is completely joking anymore. And suddenly, everywhere that you’re touching - your entangled legs, his hands on the small of your back, your chests pressed on each other - everywhere starts to burn.

“Shut up, I’ll fucking sleep here, okay?”

And so this night, for the first time in the seven months you’ve been on-and-off fornicating alongside your unwavering friendship, you rest in Taehyung’s bed, your frame tucked snugly in his, his arm reposed on your waist. And despite your fatigue, it takes too long for sleep to find you as you watch his shoulders rise and fall in the dark, lips slightly parted, beckoning you to kiss them.

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26/12/19

© Copyright 2019

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@taexxxiiaa @shookpreme @taetaeobsessed @tangledsparkles @nonexistentfucks @evilkookie @nbiased95 @taehyungmakesmeoof @itscalledgayhoney @tahaing @deliciouslydisturbed365 @expensive-bangtan-girl @jwlmnbt @herakimkim @dnyad @kaepjjang365 @expensive-bangtan-girl@gingerpeachtae @spring2787 @askingtheimportantthingshere @casualminiaturetimemachine @xblackclover13x @vasysauce @deadinsidebitch2412 @emiyooa @i-dont-even-know-fck @chimycthulhu @gixanjos @hisunshiine @xtaeyi @softjellyjimin @bluemooncnblue @malfeitofeitto @bangtanfancamp @keopitae @out-of-jams

[periminkle]

Orphic | 02

After moving into your own place, it seems life is finally going your way; the path to independence leading you to a quaint suburban town where even the grass seems to grow a little greener. Although a shocking encounter leads you to believe that perhaps appearances can be quite deceiving.

pairing: hybrid!jk x reader (first person)

genre: hybrid au, angst, fluff

word count: 7.0k

rating: PG-15

warnings: animal cruelty, death, blood, swearing

author’s note: I cut this chapter into two parts bc it was turning into a monster :((( i did try to research DNA and genes and all that fancy stuff but it was too much for my small brain, so beware of inaccurate facts!!! also wanted to say that my heart hurt writing this </3

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The light breeze fluttering through the back door enveloped the bare skin of my legs, leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake. 

I couldn’t recall the last time I lounged around the house in the morning—not flurrying around like a chicken with its head cut off, in a rush to catch the bus. If it wasn’t work then it was grocery shopping, borrowing articles and studies from the library or filling my car’s empty gas. 

Consequently, I refused to change out of the oversized sweater and the lousy pair of bright yellow shorts that currently adorned my laden figure. With any luck, the comfort from the soft articles of cloth would somehow seep into my mental state as well.

Yet the optimistic notion wasn’t proving its validity thus far, becoming a more of a burden due to the lack of a proper barrier between my humble abode and the wilderness outside. 

For the most part, the structure of the door was left unharmed but the handle containing the lock that had been smashed into was another matter completely. Upon further examination, accompanied by an hour of fiddling around with the busted latch, it seemed to be a problem beyond my capabilities. I reluctantly admitted defeat and ordered a replacement. 

With nothing to secure the door to the adjacent wall, it remained slightly ajar.

Another hour whizzed by, scouring through the limited resources at my disposal to—at the very least—find a temporary fix. I tried taping it shut, propping a chair, a step stool and a table up against the remainder of the handle to no avail. 

A stroke of genius hit when I stuck a command hook on the wall nearby, fastening a broken hairband from the latch to the hook. However, the placement of the hook was a little too close and the hairband a little too loose to keep the occasional draft from finding its way inside. My fluffy pokémon shorts provided meager defence at best, but I could hardly spare a thought to the lower temperature when my mind was fully occupied with more urgent matters.

After the run-in yesterday night, I remained by the fridge, shaken from the events that had transpired for longer than I’d like to admit. I was unsure if the familiar sylvan scent that lingered was a result of the stranger or simply a waft from the forest, which wasn’t unlikely, considering my defective door.

Once I’d finally gotten a hold of myself, I dialled the police, doubting that my shaky limbs could safely carry me to the nearest station at such an hour. Other than an aching wrist and some medical supplies that could be restocked, my physical well-being and that of my house were surprisingly fine. 

Excluding my poor back door, of course.

I was rather fortunate that the robbery, if stealing bandages could even be labelled as such, was more mentally taxing than anything. The drops of blood were rather annoying to clean off my tiles too, I guess.

Trying to get any rest that night was fruitless, tossing and turning, worried that the man might return for something more valuable or another fiend finding his way inside to do worse. 

It struck me as more than a little odd that he would come to my tiny cottage, of all places, for first aid supplies. If he wasn’t looking for some extra coins to pocket, why wouldn’t he go to the hospital? Where had he gotten a wound that couldn’t be treated by a doctor? Maybe he had partaken in various illegal activities that couldn’t warrant the suspicion of a governmental figure? Ugh, my brain hurt the more I thought about it.

Along with my raging thoughts, the perpetual feeling of being watched disturbed my slumber as well. It was if another set of eyes were locked on my vulnerable form, peering past the closed blinds and under the protective layers of blankets I’d piled on. No matter how many times I peeked into the darkness though, I was only met with the sight of my backyard enshrouded in the night sky. 

When the rays of dawn broke through the tenebrosity, I abandoned any notion of sleep and hesitantly called Jin, unsure if the busy man was even conscious yet. His bright and cheery voice quelled my worries and I informed him of what had transpired within the past twelve hours. Relief flooded my lethargic frame as he delved into a crazed panic, which I greatly appreciated, accepting his offer to take a day off.

Jin was excessively sympathetic and compassionate, reminding me of a mother goose with how he squabbled over staying somewhere else for the time being and taking a week-long break. But I didn’t want to be a burden on any of my new friends and going back to the city wasn’t an option at this point. Reflecting on the matter for more than day wasn’t necessary either.

I haughtily believed that the criminal didn’t deserve any more free real estate in my mind than he’d already occupied.

In order to comprehend the situation, as well as the fact that I would be utterly useless if I went to work with my mind engrossed in other matters, I thought one day to digest everything and get it out of my system would suffice. Though I knew it would come more so with time, I also had to work on regaining an impression of security within my own walls. 

To take a rest from my turbulent concerns, I made a trip to one of the populated parks within the small town, figuring that I would feel more safety in the numbers that would surround me. Ridiculously, I found myself stumped when I got there, drowning in my own vulnerability, so I promptly headed back.

At nightfall, I skipped out on meeting with the cat yet again. Evidently, I lacked the mental capability to tend to my own needs the day before, never mind another being, thus I didn’t visit the little guy. I felt a wash of regret and worry that I hadn’t even set out some food. As a result of yesterday’s blunder, I put a heaping mass of tuna on the porch this time, hoping the animal would understand my apology. 

The hours flew by as I sat there, stirring in my own solitude. In order to bring the negativity of the day to an end, I invited the trio I’d gotten close to as of recent, although Jin adamantly refused due to his papers that, “wouldn’t write themselves.”

I took the steaming pot of ramen off the stovetop right as the clear ring of the doorbell resounded throughout the cramped place. Hastily, I placed the noodles onto the table with careful hands, grimacing as I realized it took up a bit more than a quarter of the surface.

With a brisk shuffle, I pulled open my front door to the sight of a disgruntled Yoongi, hidden behind the towering stature of a rosy-nosed Namjoon. I barely made out the mutterings of, “it’s freezing out here,” and “took you long enough,” before I was being shoved aside.

As they trudged over to the kitchen, following the scent of freshly cooked ramen wafting around the house, Yoongi scoffed at my tiny table. Since I only purchased two chairs for the space, I cracked open the step stool to act as another seat. I honestly wasn’t sure what I would have done if Jin had tagged along too. Maybe pulled out the ladder too?

The shorter man grabbed the handles of the pot, heading over to the direction of the living room as Namjoon and I trailed after him like baby ducks. “If we’re going to eat like poor college students then we might as well keep up the act and sit on the floor.”

Although Yoongi’s cold and distant facade perplexed me as I was getting to know him, eventually I picked up on the hints of affection he’d drop every once in a while. Mostly, I found that I was able to burn time fooling around with Taemin as he completed enough drudgery for the both of us or a piping hot mug of hot chocolate would be waiting for me in the break room after long hours. 

Even now, though he acted irritated, I knew Yoongi well enough to decipher his true intentions: that he was trying to be considerate of my humble living conditions and opted to play it off as a joke. At this point, I was even inclined to believe he harboured a soft spot for me.

In response, I pretended to be peeved by his actions as I ambled back to gather the bowls and utensils I placed at the table, carrying them to the spot we’d occupied on the floor. It was difficult to hide the growing smile on my face.

Once I’d gotten a few drinks down my throat, I finally felt the tense muscles between my brows and shoulder blades relax, forgetting about the worries that echoed in my head all day.

The TV screen flashed with the intense scenes of an action movie that Namjoon had picked out. I was only half paying attention to the redundant plot line, more interested in the outrageous story spewing from Namjoon’s lips.

“-and now he’s bragging about how one of his puns got milk spilling out of Yoongi’s nose!”

The tipsy state I was in got me laughing harder than I should have, but with both men around me in a relatively similar state of mind, no one seemed to care.

“That’s literal bullshit, Eunmi told me that I was drinking the milk meant for Taemin right when Jin finished telling his dumb joke,” Yoongi complained despite the gummy smile stretching across his features.

I clutched my chest at the mention of one of the creatures who had stolen my heart, “aw, my pretty little Taem, I miss him so much and it’s only been one day!” 

“You’re getting too attached to him Y/N, you know that he’s not gonna stay at the lab forever,” Namjoon lightly warned. I knew he was concerned for my emotional welfare, but even the mention of Taemin being taken away got me stewing in my own misery.

“Joon, why would you say—I don’t even want to think about that!” My inebriated state obviously enjoyed to spill more information than necessary when I stated, “I need to cuddle Taemin enough for the both of them.”

“Both?” The younger man spared a questioning glance at his companion in before turning back to me, “do you have a cat?” The two of them began scoping out the area, trying to locate the nonexistent bundle of fur.

“Oh no, no, I wish I could afford a pet but I think taking care of myself is challenging enough for now.” At their probing eyes, I continued, “I was just talking about a little kitty that visits me every night in my backyard.”

Yoongi’s dark eyebrows scrunched together, a huff escaping him. “If you’re talking about a domestic cat, there’s no way it would be living out there,” he pointed to the forest outside with a tilt of his chin.

With the shake of my head, I felt myself sober up a bit as I explained, “I think it’s just one of my neighbours’ pets.”

Namjoon and Yoongi stared at each other, appearing baffled. “Well, it’s definitely not Eunhyuk, his son is allergic.”

“But you think mean old Sangmin would have a cat? We’re talking about the same guy who refused to have kids because he’s ‘not a bank’ right?”

Namjoon redirected his attention to me. “Are you sure it’s a cat? Maybe you just saw a rat or something.”

“No, it can’t be...” Their insistent refusal planted seeds of doubt that began to fester the longer I thought about it; they both lived here for longer than I had and obviously knew the area much better as well. It wasn’t like I had the best eyesight, anyway. But I remembered the piercing emerald green irises peering back at me, slit pupils honed in on my form with vibrant clarity. “It’s definitely a cat. It has to be a cat.”

A teasing snort came from Yoongi, who was leaning back on his palms with disbelief written all over his face. “You’re just seeing things, Y/N.”

I pouted at their lack of trust in me. An aggressive urge to prove them wrong began bubbling in the pit of my stomach and with a glimpse of the time from the clock above the stove, I noticed that it was well into midnight—around the hour in which I’d meet the kitty.

“Yeah, well, if you don’t believe me you can come see for yourself.”

“Is it outside?” I revelled in the satisfaction Namjoon’s widened eyes brought me and loftily smirked at him.

The plentiful amount of alcohol I’d indulged in forbade my legs from gracefully standing, wobbling like a newborn fawn instead as I fumbled over to the door, slipping the loose hair tie off and yanking the faulty mass open. Strangely, the night air was deathly silent, even the usually chirpy crickets seeming to have migrated to another yard.

“Hey, buddy. You out there?” I mumbled, scanning the bushes nearby, trying to pick up even the faintest flutter. “Bud?”

When I felt two pairs of curious eyes pierce my back, the pressure skyrocketed. I couldn’t let them believe I was spouting utter nonsense earlier, but the lack of response wasn’t proving my case very well.

After a few minutes passed with only the low whistle of the wind to keep us company, I felt a tinge of worry knot itself into my belly. “Okay, that’s enough Y/N. Let’s go back in.”

“No! It’s just scared because there’s a lot of people out now, you two go back in. I’ll call you when it’s out.” Desperately, I examined every inch of the stationary woodlands.

“We believe you, just get back in here! It’s cold and you’re not wearing a jacket, come on.” Namjoon’s long fingers wrapped around my forearm, tugging on my hesitant form.

As the dark-haired male dragged me back, I caught sight of the abundant helping of tuna I’d left on the last step of the porch yesterday. A pang resounded throughout my chest, disquiet settling into the recesses of my mind. Why didn’t the creature eat the offering, was it angry that I hadn’t shown up the last few nights? I couldn’t stop myself from imagining the worst; if it got lost somewhere, collapsed from starvation or was brutally killed by another animal.

If either one of the guys noticed the unusual pile of food, they didn’t comment on it.

Once back inside, tucked into Namjoon’s comforting shoulder and Yoongi’s warm side pressed against mine, I found myself unable to focus on anything of value. It was as if all my senses had dulled to an absolute minimum, barely processing what flashed on the bright TV screen and only picking up bits and pieces of the conversation between the two males. All I could think about was what could have possibly happened to my poor kitty. 

My eyelids began to droop, heavy from the weight of the last few days’ events. With my body molding itself into Namjoon’s sturdy torso, I welcomed the peaceful darkness.

Taemin’s entire body shook from the force of his tiny sneeze and I could have sworn that my heart ceased its endless beating right then and there, was I in heaven? 

Unaffected by my inner turmoil, the baby jaguar started bouncing around, weaving in and out of my legs as if he was participating in his own agility competition. I crouched down to his level to reach for his lithe body. The little guy always transformed into a flurry of excitement whenever I stopped by his cage, elated that he was free to play around without his constricting muzzle. 

Once I’d discovered what a sweet bean he was, I couldn’t help but comply to his wishes. It didn’t take a mind reader to see how he consistently pawed at the contraption, even clawing his face a couple times on accident. 

The reasoning behind all the safety measures wasn’t lost on me though, as I had witnessed the terror he instilled in most of the staff. About a week prior, I caught Minzi trying to lure Taemin out of his cage with some treats, but all her attempts proved unsuccessful when he didn’t even spare a glance her way.

With an annoyed sigh, she reached into the pocket within her lab coat, retrieving a syringe that I knew she had filled with telazol, a tranquilizing fluid for small animals. That prompted a reaction out of Taemin, his haunches tensing and lowering towards the ground, mouth peeling back in a snarl. The low growling sound vibrating from his small body instantly put me on edge; it was the first time I’d ever seen or heard the animal’s anger.

Before I could move a muscle, the irate woman stuck the needle into his hind leg. Taemin yowled in pain, but sunk his claws into her arm when he got the chance, only able to exact his revenge for a couple seconds before his body fell limp. Minzi detched his paw to find a stream of crimson red besmirching her white coat.

Now that I thought back to it, his growl eerily reminded me of the night of the break-in. Funnily enough, I thought the criminal had the more menacing vibration between the two—and Taemin was a jaguar for god’s sake.

What I found truly inhumane was the assistant assigned to handing Taemin his meals. The callous woman didn’t have half a mind to remove his muzzle before placing a handful of dog kibble in his cage. 

At a glance, Taemin appeared severely underweight for his size, but I could have never chalked it up to his nutrition being fed through the bars around his snout. He struggled to attain such inadequate portions that weren’t even created for his species in mind.

Nevertheless, the instant I’d seen his horrifying feeding conditions, I dismissed the careless assistant and took on the task of keeping Taemin alive, a job that I didn’t think someone could fail so terribly at.

Taemin blindly swiped the air, bringing me out of my reverie. I chuckled as I saw he was a just a couple centimetres off the sleeve of my coat and I brought my hand, palm turned upwards, to meet his paw.

His eyelids were shut closed as tightly as they had been the first day he’d arrived at the lab, a fact that Yoongi informed me of when I’d inquired about Taemin’s lack of sight. Neither him nor Namjoon knew why he refused to, or simply couldn’t, open his eyes and my chest ached thinking about the unfulfilling life he was leading.

The memory crushed the lighthearted atmosphere that had arisen from fooling around with the dark-coloured feline. I rubbed the fur covering his foreleg while stealing a glimpse of Yoongi, seemingly hard at work from his hunched form.

“Hey, Yoongs?”

“I thought I told you not to call me that.” The low murmur was slightly muffled from the microscope covering the entirety of his face.

Disregarding his previous statement, I voiced out my thoughts. “What if Taem can actually see? I mean, we could just check whether the PDE6C gene—”

A lengthy exhale interrupted my speech. “Wow, now I guess I know how Jin feels.”

“Listen, I know what you said before but—”

“Y/N, we have tons of gene sequences to analyze, we don’t have time to waste looking for a faulty PDE6C, okay?” He finally tore his gaze away from his work to peer into my pleading eyes, running his fingers through the strands marring his forehead. “You’re lucky I’m even letting you play around considering the amount of work we have to finish.”

At that, I shut my mouth and concentrated back on Taemin’s restless figure, a much better alternative to the DNA waiting to be analyzed at my desk. Since he was confined within his cage all day, I made it my goal to tire him out enough that he would be forced to rest until the next time I had the chance to abandon work, essentially getting paid to keep him amused.

I gently brought his paw to the floor and scurried away to collect his favourite toy; a fuzzy mouse I’d bought one day after discovering the building was devastatingly unequipped to entertain an extremely bored feline.

Although he whimpered at the loss of contact and the sound of my retreating footsteps, I swiftly grabbed the rodent at the bottom of the drawer, by Yoongi’s legs, and hurried back.

Another half hour passed as I tried to exhaust as much of Taemin’s boundless energy as I could, although my plan backfired when I found that my own strength was depleting just as quickly. His natural hunting instincts were definitely still intact, what with the torn up toy in the corner, held together by mere threads at this point. I made a mental note to go shopping for sturdier prey next time.

Presently, he laid on his side as a content, black loaf, purring from the belly rubs he was receiving. To tease the cub, I would pull away every once in a while only to have his long tail wrap around my wrist, tugging my limb back to action.

“Y/N.” My head turned to meet Namjoon who had wandered over from the assistant researcher’s lab where I’d last seen him. “I finished the sequence for his canines. Do you mind leaving it on Jin’s desk?”

I guiltily stood from my seated position, a sheepish grin plastered on as I gave one last pat to Taemin’s head. “Yeah, of course. Could you lock up Taem for me?”

With his affirmation, I took the papers from his grasp and gave a pat to the crown of Yoongi’s bleached head. He shifted towards me in feigned annoyance, but I was out of his reach before he could get back at me and I celebrated my victory with sticking my tongue out.

I began to make my way upstairs, but not before picking up on Joon’s exasperated remark to Taemin, “I hope you know that I could build you from scratch if I wanted to.”

Once in front of the familiar wood of Jin’s office door, I decided to knock in case he had guests. I restrained the awkward memory of walking in on the whole board of directors from resurfacing and distracted myself by rapping my knuckles with more force when there was no response from within. “Jin? It’s Y/N.” I pushed the handle down and pleasantly found it unlocked. “I’m coming in.”

I waited a couple more seconds before opening the door, meeting the chaos that was the assistant director’s office. As per usual, I winced at the mountain of papers piled upon his desk, astonished that it only seemed to grow since the last time I’d seen it. At this rate, I was just waiting for the day that I’d walk in here to see the towers reaching the ceiling. 

Striding over to Jin’s side of the desk, I laid the notes down in the dead centre, resting on top of three separate piles. Sympathy flooded my senses as my gaze roamed across the masses. How could such a hardworking individual accumulate so much work while he was working? 

Even staring at the copious amounts of print made me feel queasy, hence I hurried to get out of the nauseating area. But, as I scuttled by, my gaze caught on a file with thick, messy letters scrawled on the front.

Jaguar.

To say my curiosity was piqued whenever Taemin was involved was an understatement. After a glance back to ensure that I was able to safely snoop around until my heart’s content, I reached for the file, making sure to keep my posterior to the camera in the corner, concealing my actions.

Ultimately, I knew Taemin was brought in to make progress on their “top secret, strictly confidential experiment,” which meant that I wasn’t to touch any of his files. At least, according to the brusque Minzi I wasn’t. However, an underlying, devious part of me enjoyed rebelling against her words and I secretly rejoiced as I directly disobeyed her orders, opening the folder.

Basic information was scattered along the first page, his name, birthdate, birthplace, so on and so forth. I casually flipped through the rest, finding the documents we routinely handed off to Jin when we’d written down sequences that brought about certain genes concerning the jaguar. This was probably where Jin would store the note Namjoon had made me deliver.

Losing interest, I flipped the bulk of the papers back to the front and seamlessly slid them into the file. When I unintentionally skimmed the first page once again, my eyes caught on a baffling sentence.

Heightened sense of sight, especially keen night vision.

I wet my suddenly chapped lips in my state of bafflement, double and triple checking that the file was indeed for seemingly blind Taemin; the very same animal that was probably napping downstairs. The statistics even matched up with what little knowledge I had about the animal, sending me into a greater spiral of confusion. They must have accidentally written the observation down on the wrong paper.

Unless...? 

I shook my head, trying to dispel the outrageous thoughts swarming my mind.

Heading back down, I caught sight of Yoongi still wrapped around his microscope, jotting notes down with his other hand. My attention shifted to the unconscious feline next, muzzled and locked behind bars.

My fists clenched, fingernails engraving crescents into the palm of my hand as I resolved to finally clear out these murky waters.

An hour passed before I finally located it and then another few hours slipped by as I examined the sequence.

The PDE6C gene on chromosome ten. Perfectly intact and working exceptionally until the halfway point, around the thousandth base. Some of the letters got mixed up, binding with incorrect base pairs and bestowing Taemin with his current lack of vision. 

Of course, I was prepared to deal with the repercussions of wasting precious time, examining a sequence that did not correlate to any favourable gene. But after connecting some dots, I recognized the agent that brought about such errors.

Ethyl methanesulfonate, or EMS for short. A chemical mutagenic that induces base substitutions, mutating the DNA molecule as a result. I couldn’t imagine why they’d inject a carcinogenic compound into the mammal, but it obviously had something to do with trying to enhance his natural vision. 

Did they think the possibility of disabling him was worth the slim chance that his eyesight could improve? By the bases that were effected, I guessed that they were trying to sharpen his sight when submerged in darkness. If the guanine alkylation hadn’t spread so far, they might have succeeded in their experiment.

Nevertheless, their hypothesis was dreadfully incorrect and Taemin was blind as a result of their recklessness.

My grip on the pencil tightened in pure, white fury. In the fruitless hope that the EMS hadn’t affected his whole body, I took several samples of cells from various areas of his body. Albeit, samplings of his cheeks, ears and legs all provided the same conclusion that I’d reached earlier—deformed DNA from ill-fitting base pairs. 

All the blood drained from my face from the appalling notion of just how much EMS they must have injected into his blood stream for it to have tampered with every cell in his body. My jaw clenched as my mouth ran bone dry.

They mutilated him.

Digust washed over me, for the false claims that the lab protected their lab animals, for every ruthless employee that harboured such barbaric morals, for myself, who blindly assisted in the cruel methods of this place. My heart rate picked up at my own helplessness, adrenaline coursing through my veins as I scrambled out of the corner I had holed myself up in.

I didn’t know if it was the bruising despair or the fuming rage that had me stomping my way across the halls, headed for the director’s office. The rational part of me was aware of the fact that I couldn’t do anything, change their twisted morals or bring down that metaphorical sword of justice that I was so fixated on. But that didn’t mean I had to play along as a clueless, complaisant pawn in their gruesome experiments.

Keycard or not, I was determined to wreak havoc until I could properly screech obscenities at one of the incredibly asinine brains that ran this revolting laboratory. Storming past the Namjoon and Yoongi’s office, I picked up on a shrill cry that seemed to douse my whole body in ice water, stopping me in my tracks.

A turn to my right gave me a direct view of Minzi struggling to pull a semi-conscious Taemin out of his cage, arms which he desperately wriggled against, thrashing violently to escape her hold. Now knowing what malicious behaviour deserved such treatment from kind-hearted Taemin, I rushed at her. 

“How could you!” I roared, seeing red when she turned, glaring condescendingly.

Her calculated eyes examined my rapidly approaching, ruffled figure. “Oh, good, I needed a coffee. Could you fetch me a tranquilizer while you’re at it? I didn’t think he would wake up.”

I grit my teeth as my temper flared, resentment embedded into each of my features. Stopping a step away from her unbothered form, I seethed out, “you guys claim to look after the lab animals? Then why would you permanently damage his genes!”

“What have you been wasting time on instead of researching what we told you to?”

“Answer the question!”

She sneers. “I thought I warned you to stay out of anything that doesn’t concern you. That includes any testing subjects.”

“Testing subjects? How the hell do you think you can get away with—”

“Woah, what’s all the ruckus here?” Hyunho’s lazy form strolled in with a lax yet domineering countenance. The appearance of the other head researcher made my hair stand on end. “Do we need to put up a sign to remind some people that they’re to use indoor voices inside a laboratory?”

My eyes quickly narrowed at his patronizing remark. “I don’t know what kind of fucked up project you guys are conducting, but if you’re harming innocent animals, I don’t want any part of your imbecilic research.”

“Ooh, it seems that newbie is a feisty one, isn’t she?” He took a step towards me, the scent of a cigarette he probably smoked earlier invading my senses and invoking an appealing urge to regurgitate my dinner all over him. “Listen here girly, I don’t know what you’re trying to accuse us of here, but I’ll be sure to report your unruly behaviour to the director if you keep this shit up.”

“As if I give a flying fu—”

A hand wrapped around my mouth before I could unleash the rest of my resentful spew. “Ah, Dr. Lee.” I recognized the subtle undertone of panic in Namjoon’s deep voice as he addressed the burly man with respect that he didn’t deserve. “You see, Y/N had a pretty rough day, some family matters back home, y’know? I’m just going to take her outside to clear her head a little.”

“Yes, that would be a good idea.” Hyunho stepped back to Minzi’s side.

“If you would excuse us then...” I flailed about in Namjoon’s sturdy hold before he all but manhandled my to the back entrance. The refreshingly cool air grazing my overheated skin quelled some of my fury, although I felt its presence simmering beneath the surface. The tall man released my trembling limbs and I whipped my head over to examine Namjoon’s concerned countenance. 

Did he know?

I couldn’t bear the thought of any of the limited friends I’d made in this place willingly taking part in such horrid research. They couldn’t have known. My heavy head fell into my hands, thinking of innocent Taemin who didn’t merit the attention of these corrupt individuals, who had no one to protect him. 

If I quit my job here, would anyone care for him? Obviously his basic needs would be met, Namjoon and Yoongi would make sure of that, but were they aware of what exactly that experiment entailed? I’d only scratched the surface, but the prospect of finding out every gritty detail terrified me.

I felt an overwhelming weight crushed me, being helpless beneath it all. “Joon,” I managed to croak out, “I didn’t come here for this.”

With the low volume of my voice, I didn’t know how much he’d heard, but a tug on my wrist enveloped my body into his embrace. As he stroked my head reassuringly, I held onto his thin lab coat with clenched fists.

If it meant I could save Taemin, I would keep my mouth shut. If it meant I could act as some salvation to each animal that came into this wretched place, I would stay.

My disgust for the laboratory only multiplied.

“I didn’t come here for this.”

A pleasant tranquility took shape after a brief greeting had been exchanged, both Jin and I on a well-deserved break after too much time cooped up in our respective offices. Well, even though the assistant researchers’ office wasn’t technically mine in title, the majority of my belongings resided in that space. Namjoon didn’t mind much and Yoongi complained about everything under the sun, so I made myself comfortable there. 

The hum of electricity powering the building and the whirr of the coffee maker spurring into action intensified as I closed my eyes, resting my head against the back of the sofa. I stared up at the ceiling with a vacant expression and tried to clear my thoughts for a bit.

A ceramic mug clinked against the surface of the coffee table in front of me. “Drink.” I lifted my head to take in the reassuring crinkle in Jin’s eyes. “You look like you’ll need all the energy you can get right now.”

I scoffed at his statement, the end of my own lips flitting upwards. “Just tell me I look like shit.”

Gratefully accepting the cup of coffee, the bitter taste on my tongue already started to rejuvenate my aching muscles. Jin was aware of my deep-seated aversion to the drink, but I guess my appearance revealed too much of the chaos inside my head. “I was going to, but I had a feeling you might just break down if I did.”

Although the work itself was tedious and relatively tiring on its own, the fact that all my efforts were going to fuel that wretched project made me feel rotten to the core. The knowledge sapped my stamina at an exponential rate that I wasn’t accustomed to.

“How’s baby Yeri doing?” I placed the pungent beverage back down, stroking my chin in faux deliberation. “Or I guess I should ask how Chaeyoung is holding up instead, huh?”

Jin let out a hum of aggravation around his own glass, swallowing the liquid before slapping his unoccupied hand against his thigh. “Don’t even get me started. Chaeyoung keeps telling me to take some time off work to come help, but honestly I would take the peace and quiet of the office over Yeri’s nasty diapers any day.” He shook his head at the thought, repulsed by the dealing with another one of Yeri’s accidents.

I’d heard the story one too many times not to let a giggle slip at his misfortune.

Abruptly, an alarming shriek disturbed the placidity. As my head shot up to identify the source, the sound was muffled, then silence resumed. I scrambled to discern who the perpetrator was when my gaze met Jin’s static form. “Did you hear that?” When his weary eyes met mine, appearing confused, I clarified, “that scream.”

“Oh, they probably just dropped something. Don’t worry too much about it.” But I couldn’t find a trace of compassion in his words, especially with how gut-wrenching the shout sounded. Rather than shock, every note was filled with agony and something felt vaguely off about the whole ordeal.

The look of guilt that Jin sported stopped me from prodding. I refused to believe the stubborn man who was always drowning in papers to complete, shoving fried chicken down his throat like there was no tomorrow, who had the sweetest daughter back at home knew anything about the experiment. Not what was really happening.

That’s why the regret and shame written all over his countenance made me pause.

More shuffling, whimpers and yelps filled my limbs with apprehension, seeping deep into my bones and making me restless. Jin kept his gaze trained on the floor, unable to look me in the eye as he excused each sound with the fault of a clumsy, irresponsible researcher and other rationalizations that I wasn’t sure he, himself, believed. 

At this point, the raucous was becoming increasingly bestial and I couldn’t decipher the species that was belting out the miserable noises. I tried to grit my teeth and ignore them, distracting myself with Jin’s moronic cover-ups to keep me glued to my spot. Without a keycard, I had no access to the upstairs lab anyway, it was out of my hands for now.

When my thoughts strayed to Taemin though, I felt my heart drop to the pit of my stomach, recalling how I had been dragged away before I could stop Minzi from taking him. Suddenly, I lost the ability to think logically, fixated on Taemin’s well-being. I had to know if it was him.

Hastily, I jumped out of my seat, coffee long forgotten as I sprinted down the hall. Jin’s pounding footsteps followed after me, though I gave them no mind.

Once I reached the first floor, the sight of two unfamiliar men dressed in heavy gear greeted me. The bulkier of the two lifted the cage as if it were as light as a feather and I noticed how unusually clean it was. “No, you can’t take it upstairs!” I grabbed onto the bars, halting him in his tracks. “Where is he? Tell them to bring him back here!”

“Sorry, no can do miss,” he drawled out. “We were asked to—”

“I don’t care what you were asked to do! Tell them to bring him back!” He rolled his eyes at my accusatory tone and yanked the cage out of my grasp. As I reached out again in a frenzy, the other man blocked my path. The odds weren’t looking too great for me.

I saw Jin emerge from the staircase, following the ruckus I’d created. Relief flooded my veins as I sought his backup. “Jin, they want to take his cage.” Pursing my lips, I pointed to said object. “Could you tell them to leave it here?”

“No, Y/N. Get out of the way.” My breath hitched at Jin’s steely tone, locking onto his fatigued gaze. I tried to remind myself that he was oblivious to the horrors that they’d already inflicted upon Taemin, but the back of my eyes still burned at the betrayal I felt. “Come on, let them do their job.”

Though I refused to show how dismayed I’d become, I couldn’t bear the idea of Taemin residing upstairs, where they could inject anything without suspicion. “Please, Jin. Please. Believe me when I say that he won’t last a day up there.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, let’s go finish our coffee, hm?” I huffed out through my nostrils in frustration, wringing my fingers together as I debated whether or not to tell him the truth I discovered for myself not too long ago.

“Oh, my. What’s this? I believe I told you what would happen if you caused a commotion again, didn’t I?” Feeling defeated already, I didn’t even turn to meet Hyunho’s form as I heard him approach. “I’ll need you to get out of the way now, girly.”

“It’s Y/N.”

His fake grin put his crooked teeth on full display. “Yes, yes. Scurry along now.”

“No.” With a hardened resolve, I glared back at him. “Bring Taemin back. Let him stay on this floor.” Hesitant but desperate, I added a barely audible, “please.”

At my plea, he brightened up, utterly pleased with watching me grovel at his feet. “You should use that tone more often, newbie, it could really get you places.” The stealthy once-over of my chest didn’t go unnoticed by me and I wrapped the lab coat around me tighter. He pulled back a little, satisfied with my discomfort. "You didn’t hear? He died of natural causes, so we have to clean up this mess for the new tiger cub coming in. Don’t worry though, he’ll be staying on this floor when he gets here.”

I took a step back, skin stinging as if he’d slapped me across the face, feeling my blood run cold. Out of the corner of my eye, I noted the bewilderment reflected on Jin’s features, as well as the sudden appearance of Namjoon and Yoongi, both looking as distressed as I felt.

When my breaths came in heavier and burning droplets rolled down my cheeks, I knew the dam had broken. “Don’t feed me that bullshit... You monsters.” I felt my bottom lip quiver as my voice cracked. “Killed him.”

One of Hyunho’s thick eyebrows raised in amusement at my shattered state. “Haven’t you been taught not to mess with fire, girly?” He crossed his arms after giving a flick of dismissal to the man still carrying the cage. “You could get burned.” 

A pair of arms wrapped around my torso and dragged me away before I could wail anything out. Through the blurry mess of tears, I made out a discarded, mangled mouse toy by the corner.

tags: @aurorakingsley​ @bubbletae7​ @iamunrecognized @bangtanloverrrrr​ @walkingdeadfan25​

[cinnaminsvga]

forever fools | tddup!spinoff

→ summary: jieun learns that saying goodbye is a two-way street, and sometimes it's easy to forget to look both ways before crossing.

{or alternatively: here's some sad lesbian angst ft. sana from twice}

→ genre: angst, slight fluff/humor, tddup!au → word count: 5.8K → a/n: this was commissioned by my lovely patron haley, to whom i am forever grateful for. i don't know if this is what you were expecting, but hopefully you enjoy it!! thank you again for being such a great star in my life!! if anyone else is interested in commissioning me for works like this, head over to my patreon (link in description) for more details. without further ado, here’s some lesbian greek goddess angst lmao!!

There’s something strange about looking at an empty bedroom, Jieun thinks as she snaps her last suitcase closed with a note of finality reverberating in the still air. The normally cluttered closet stands forlornly against the wall like a shell, the floor looks pristinely white for the first time in a century, and the window sill is devoid of all the little succulents that Demeter had given her from the first day she had arrived at Olympus. Above all, what unsettles her the most is the fact that the room did not look like it has ever been lived in at all. Jieun shakes her head, a small smile of amusement gracing her face. The cleaning naiads truly do not hold any prisoners when it comes to dust and dirt.

As she looks around her room, it is hard for her to keep the nostalgia at bay. After all, for the longest time, Jieun has called this place home––an oasis away from the terrible migraines and playful chaos that happens on a regular basis while working as an Olympian. It is the one place where she can escape when Zeus’ antics would get a little bit too much. While she did sleep in the same bed as him on most nights (not quite out of her own desire, but rather, because of a sense of duty that compels her to stay faithful to Zeus), she always did like slinking away to her little haven whenever she had the time.

She does not know what this room will be used for, since Y/N has expressed her desire to stay by Zeus’ side. Jieun chuckles at the memory of a red-faced Y/N when she had explained her reasons, saying something along the lines of “I need to keep both eyes on that man-sized toddler” even though her rapidly beating heart and flushed cheeks said otherwise. Oh, the beauty of young love.

In the midst of her contemplations, she hears a knock outside her window pane despite her room being high up in the heavens. Normally, most mortals would be confused as to who would have the ability to climb thousands of meters up into the air, but since Jieun is a goddess (or soon to be an ex-goddess, to be exact), things like this are hardly ever out of the ordinary. Even more so, Jieun knows exactly who the intruder is, because no one else would be crazy enough to disturb her privacy and wear those gaudy winged Gucci slippers with a stupid grin on their handsome face.

“Someone called for the bellboy?” Hermes says in lieu of a greeting as Jieun opens the window for him to enter through. Hermes flops down from the window sill, his Gucci slides thumping loudly against the carpeted floor. He takes the suitcase away from Jieun’s hand, who almost seems reluctant to let go. Noticing her mournful face, Hermes steps closer to her, squeezing her shoulder comfortingly.

“Hey, you doing okay, Hera? I know it must be weird. Hell, I think it’s gonna be weird not hearing you nag me all the time,” Hermes jokes, but his voice drips with sadness. In truth, Jieun always did appreciate Hermes’ presence, especially since the two of them had become gods at around the same time period. Jieun has promised herself that she wouldn’t cry in front of the others, but somehow seeing the usually upbeat god looking so forlorn was making her tear ducts moisten against her will.

“Nah, I’m fine. We all knew this was coming, sooner or later. Besides,” Jieun huffs, pinching the younger’s cheek with a smirk. He whines, but doesn’t do anything to push her hand away. “Even when I die, something tells me that you’re going to be visiting me in the Underworld more often than you did when I was here on Olympus.”

At that, the trickster god laughs, his ears reddening at the accusation that the two of them knew was true. He shrugs his shoulders, the sadness abated for now. There is more than enough time to be sad in the future. “Perhaps. Don’t tell Yoongi though, because I’m going to be using the excuse that I miss you for the next millennia until he starts to get suspicious of my frequent visits.”

“Something tells me he wouldn’t mind either way,” Jieun smirks, ruffling the boy’s hair in endearment. Hermes gives her a wicked grin, neither agreeing nor denying the claim.

“This is the last of your belongings, right? No need to call the Anemoi to help bring your stuff down to your new home?” Hermes says, lifting the suitcase to check its weight. He whistles when he feels how light it is. “Damn. You really don’t have a lot of stuff on you, huh? You’ve been living here for the past 1000 years so I had expected at least a few more bags, if I’m being honest.”

Jieun shrugs, gesturing around her room. “This bedroom was honestly just as much as a storage space as it was a hiding spot, and there wasn’t a lot of room to keep things over the centuries. Plus, I was never into material things, so the things I have are mostly necessities rather than memorabilia.”

Hermes shakes his head, a fond smile on his lips. “Ah, the frugal Asian in you really hasn’t disappeared even after all these years, huh?”

“You can take the girl out of Asia, but you can’t take the Asian out of the girl,” Jieun laughs, pushing Hermes out of her room. “Now get out of my room––I have to start doing last minute preparations for the wedding and I can’t do that with an annoying twink in my room.”

“Who are you calling annoying? That’s no way to treat your bellboys! A tip would be very appreciated, by the way,” Hermes whines, but he slips out of the window regardless.

“I’ll give you the tip of my strap if you keep delaying! Now shoo!”

Hermes snorts, winking salaciously at her. “Oh, you know what this baby boy likes, huh?” he says, guffawing loudly when Jieun goes to grab his ankles from her window sill. Floating outside with her suitcase in tow, Hermes gives her one final goofy salute before he is off to deposit the last of her belongings in her new mortal abode.

Left to her own devices once more, Jieun walks over to her closet, where a single white dress hangs loosely like a ghost. She thumbs the fabric, an odd feeling rising up her chest at the sight of it. This is the dress that she would be wearing to the wedding, an heirloom that has been passed down for generations after each Hera has passed the torch to the next. She remembers the previous Hera wearing this exact dress during her union with the previous Zeus, remembers the way the dress had made her previous mentor look spectral in a way––as if she was already gone before she had even left.

The thought jars her, and she rips her hand away. She wipes her palms against her jeans, feeling sweat start to build for whatever reason.

Unwilling to stay in this empty room for much longer, Jieun is thinking of having some last minute checks with Y/N to see how she is holding up when two small bodies crash through the door in a flurry of limbs. Jieun hardly flinches when the two girls stand up in noisily, their giggles giving her the impression that they may not be as a sober as she hopes they would be. Demeter is the first one to straighten up long enough to shoot her a wide smile.

“Hera! What are you doing here being all mopey and sentimental? You’ve got a party to catch!” Demeter laughs, her potent intoxication causing sprouts to grow out of her head. Hestia smiles, more reserved than the younger (or was it elder? Demeter is certainly older when it came to human years) but clearly just as out of it, as she plucks the small plant and tucks it into her own ear.

“I’m not being mopey,” Jieun frowns, mopey. She gives the two other goddesses an appraising look. “And what party are you talking about? I’m assuming it’s my surprise farewell party from the Facebook event that our lovely Eos accidentally invited me to.”

Hestia gasps, slapping her head comically as she looks at Demeter in disbelief. “That stupid bitch! I told you that we should’ve used Eventbrite instead!”

“Either way,” Jieun interrupts, watching as the two continually sway on their feet. “That doesn’t explain why the two of you are already drunk out of your minds when the supposed party hasn’t even started.” She suspects they must have also gotten a hold of Dionysus’ secret stash of godly pot, because she knows the two girls aren’t exactly the lightest drinkers. Either that or the excessive amount of binge watching shitty Netflix shows has finally caused their limited brain cells to deplete.

“Who says the party hasn’t started?” Demeter grins, tugging Jieun by the wrist and out of her room. Before Jieun can turn to take one last look at her old bedroom, Hestia closes the door with a bang, and somehow Jieun knows that this might be one of the last times she’ll ever get to see it.

Hestia has the decency to shoot her a guilty look. “We weren’t purposefully gonna start the party before we brought you there, of course. But Wendy-unnie over here––” Demeter squawks at the use of her human name, slapping her shoulder playfully, but not appearing entirely as offended as Jieun had expected, “––saw that they were serving spiked nectar that Iris stole from Dionysus so really… Can you blame us?”

Jieun rolls her eyes playfully, a smirk gracing her lips. “Of course, that explains everything. How could I be so selfish?”

Demeter manhandles her until they reach the Chariot Room (which is basically just a garage with a mismatch of vehicles from every time period imaginable; they bypass the Hatsune Miku chariot with averted eyes.) They approach one of the more modern vehicles, parked near the exit of the garage. Jieun looks at the license plate and notices that its Artemis’ silver car that she uses when she does her nightly moon journey.

“Please tell me Artemis actually let you take her car and we’re definitely not going to hotwire it––aaaand of course you’re hotwiring it,” Jieun groans, watching helplessly as the two younger girls start doing who knows what to the poor car. If the car had been sentient, she is sure it would be filing a sexual harassment case with how much tinkering they were doing.

“It was her idea to host the party anyway, so sucks to be her!” Hestia says defensively, her brows furrowed in concentration as she conjures magical fire out of her hands to help… whatever it is that Demeter was doing. Jieun does not want to know where Demeter pulled out the tube of toothpaste from, and why it was needed to hotwire a car.

“I really don’t understand why we need to celebrate my departure anyway. It’s not like I’m leaving forever; in fact, I’m probably going to have to deadbolt my apartment to keep you vermin from breaching my privacy,” Jieun jokes, snickering when she sees the affronted look that Hestia shoots her. “What? You look at me as if I were lying.”

“Well, you look at me as if I haven’t been pestering you ever since I turned from drab ol’ human Yeri and into the banging goddess that I am today!” Hestia says, her eyes lighting up gleefully.

Jieun snorts. “You’re right. You’ve been a pain in my ass ever since you existed. How foolish of me to think otherwise.”

Seconds later, Hestia and Demeter make a noise of contentment when the car whirs to life, signalling that whatever they had done had miraculously worked. (Again, Jieun doesn’t want to know, and the less she knows, the easier it is for her to escape Artemis’ wrath later on.)

“But seriously,” Demeter begins, standing up and hopping into the driver’s seat. Before Jieun can even argue, Hestia takes the passenger seat, sticking her tongue out petulantly like the supposedly “banging” goddess that she was. “Artemis and Persephone planned this party mostly to get back on your good side after they got mad at you for making Y/N marry the thunder twerp. Which, I mean… Can you blame them? He’s a fucking loser and Y/N is… Well. Have you seen her ass?”

Jieun jumps into the backseat, a huff of air punched out of her lungs when she realizes she just sat on one of Artemis’ stray buttplugs, poking itself into the small of her back. Jieun gingerly picks it up, throwing it against the back of Hestia’s head. “Yes, I can blame them. At the end of the day, it’s my decision who succeeds me as Hera and I needed to choose quickly because my time was almost up. Y/N just so happened to make the perfect candidate, so they had no right to be angry at my decision.”

Demeter grumbles. “Yeah, I know you’re right. It’s just that we really thought you were on the lesbians’ sides... No wonder you never showed up to the blood compact, traitor,” Demeter says, no bite to her tone. The smirk on her face tells Jieun that she’s far from mad. “Still, I would’ve loved to have Y/N join our little dyke trysts. Do you think maybe she’s bi?”

“Who knows?” Jieun muses, staring out the window as Demeter clicks for the garage doors to open. The sunny open sky greets them as the three women start driving out of Olympus and to wherever it is that the party was located. If Jieun squints hard enough, she thinks she can see the mortals milling about on earth, where she’ll be in just a few more hours. A mortal, once more.

“And besides, there are other mortal girls that Artemis and Persephone can find,” Jieun says, looking away from the view to glance at Demeter’s reflection from the rear-view mirror. When the agricultural goddess notices, she gives her a knowing look.

Despite her inebriation, Demeter manages to safely drive them to the party, which happens to be the mansion where the nine Muses are known to live in.  Demeter parks the car haphazardly, uncaring for the rules of parallel parking and all codes of ethics as she takes up the entire driveway before turning off the ignition. Hestia is the first to jump out, stretching her legs and ready to race back towards the party.

“C’mon, slowpokes! The nectar is getting warm,” she calls out, rushing towards the door where the sounds of laughter and singing can be heard even from the garden.

“Remind me to keep her away from the alcohol during the wedding,” Jieun murmurs to Demeter. The other girl only grins wildly, and Jieun knows that there really isn’t any use depending on her when it comes to the topic of sobriety.

Jieun and Demeter follow after Hestia to find the party already in full swing. Demeter loudly announces over the din to tell everyone that the celebrant has arrived, and a chorus of welcome’s come from all around. Jieun flushes under the attention, never one to go to full out raging parties in the first place, least of all the ones dedicated to her. Regardless, she walks around to greet everyone, thanking them for coming despite their inebriation rendering most of them useless to anything other than them replying with raucous giggling and hugging.

Artemis and Persephone somehow find their way towards her, stumbling through the crowd and piling their drunken bodies onto her to capture her in the tightest bear hug imaginable. Jieun laughs under their assault, using up all her strength to pull away long enough to see that their faces are already decorated with lipstick smudges and other stains that Jieun has no desire to learn about.

“Jieeeeeeun, you came!” Artemis cries, rubbing her cheeks against Jieun’s. She already feels the lipstick rubbing itself uncomfortably against her skin, but she does not pull away out of politeness. “I thought you wouldn’t come!”

“And why is that?” Jieun asks, awkwardly patting the babbling younger as she starts to hiccup from both intoxication and excessive emotions. “Also, who told you that you’re allowed to call me by my human name, young lady? I’m still Hera to you until tomorrow evening.”

“Sorry, she’s a little tipsy,” Persephone giggles, prying herself and Artemis away from Jieun to let her take her first breath in over a minute. “But seriously Hera, we’re really sorry about how we acted with the whole Y/N thing. We shouldn’t have gone ballistic on you and called you a hetero on Twitter. That was definitely uncalled for and totally barbaric of us.”

“Don’t worry, kids. I was hardly phased by your insults,” Jieun smirks, giggling at the absolute sorrow and guilt contorting the archer goddess’ face. “Really.”

“But it’s so out of line! No one deserves to be called a het, not when you’re so fucking gorgeous and sexy and hey are you free tomorrow evening––” Artemis starts hiccuping incoherently, and Persephone has to wheel her away before she can embarrass herself further.

“We’ll talk later when I sober her up! Have fun tonight, okay? We’re willing to take our ‘punishment’ later for our terrible crimes, if you know what I mean.” Persephone winks, pushing her friend away to the kitchen, probably to get more drunk and grind against each other. Jieun stores away this scene away into her memory for blackmail later on.

After her encounter with the two hosts, Jieun decides to circle the rest of the room. She greets a few familiar faces, including the actual people who live in this mansion. The Muses that she greets are at various stages of drunk, but most of them welcome her warmly despite their incoherency. When Jieun enters the main dining hall, she can only watch worriedly as the Muse of comedy hangs precariously from the chandelier while wearing nothing but a silk black robe.

“Thalia, don’t make me fucking burn your clit off again! The chandelier is going break under your fat ass. Get down from there or else––SOMI!” Polymnia cries, almost missing a stray foot to the face. The crowd hoots at the display, egging the comedian on. “This is your last warning!”

Jieun chuckles at their antics, but she can’t help but notice that she has only seen eight of the sisters so far. Her palms begin to sweat, knowing full well who the missing Muse is and wonders if she might have chosen not to attend due to the argument that still lies fresh on both their minds. She feels the disappointment start to build up in her stomach, thinking that the Muse of tragedy truly wants to avoid her like she had feared.

After Jieun circles the whole living room to give her regards to all the other party-goers, she decides to head upstairs to one of the balconies to get some fresh air. She sees a few more straggling guests, most of them too preoccupied to properly respond to Jieun’s soft greetings since their faces are currently entrenched in other endeavors at the moment. Still, Jieun doesn’t mind as she passes by the bedrooms to the slide open the balcony door and allow the soft afternoon breeze to caress her face.

Since her eyes are closed when she welcomes the gentle wind to blow around her, she does not immediately notice two things.

One, there is a giant ice sculpture in Jieun’s perfect likeness, with all her curves and imperfections open to the world to see. The summer heat does not melt the sculpture, but this is not a surprise when it comes to the power of gods (plus, someone placed a small ice bath around it, though Jieun does not know why that would be of any help whatsoever.)

Two, she is not alone.

Melpomene stands idly by the edge of the balcony, her gaze trained away from Jieun. She knows that the Muse has noticed her presence, because her shoulders are hunched up in a way that only means that she is on guard and ready to flee at a moment’s notice. The Muse of tragedy stares up at the sky, neither of them saying a word as the two of them quietly listen to the muted music from the party downstairs and the sound of drunken naiads prancing wildly in the gardens.

The sun has begun to descend, but Jieun notices the way it slinks across the sky irregularly, almost as if a toddler were just slapping it across the sky like a tennis ball. Instead of the usual twilight transition that is familiar to most people, the sun appears to transform immediately into the moon, as if a light switch had been turned on and suddenly it was night time. The sky darkens immediately, and the world around them is bathed in stars.

Melpomene must have been sensed Jieun’s confusion because she offers up an explanation, voice scratchy from misuse. She sounds sober, unlike the rest of her sisters. “It’s Apollo. Artemis got him to take her shift as the moon for today,” she says, never once looking back at Jieun. She continues to stare at the random spirals that Jieun now knows is the work of Apollo’s disastrous driving skills. Poor kid.

“Well, he only did become the newest Apollo a few months ago. Although, I wouldn’t say that Artemis should have trusted him to do the night shift when he can hardly do his own day shift,” Jieun comments, pursing her lips as Apollo does a steep nosedive before thankfully going back on course.

Melpomene does not reply. The two of them stand in awkward silence, and Jieun has no idea how to break it. She wants desperately to speak to her, knowing that it wouldn’t sit well if she left Olympus knowing that one of her dearest friends stayed mad at her. She fidgets beside her, mouth opening and closing shut as she thinks of something to talk about.

“Hah, speaking of Apollo… Do you remember who came before him? I never even knew his human name,” Jieun starts, already beginning to spew out whatever nonsense comes to mind.

“Never really liked the sixth generation Apollo. He always gave off a lecherous vibe, and we were all so excited to see him leave. I remember how Hermes had gifted him a stink bomb disguised as a bath bomb for a goodbye gift… I could smell the stench all the way from Olympus. I’m lowkey worried that all of you are itching to kick me off as well and pull a stink bomb on me,” Jieun jokes, but her voice cracks imperceptibly, giving herself away.

Even though she tries to keep her voice lighthearted, deep down, she doesn’t even know if anyone will actually be sorry to see her gone. Sure, this party is dedicated to her, but that’s hardly a reason for her to believe that any of these people like her. Olympians are notorious for latching on to any reason to throw a party; hell, she solemnly remembers when Poseidon’s goldfish laid its first egg and they had partied for a whole week.

At the end of the day, she is just another mortal. Who is she to expect that anyone would remember her in a few thousand centuries?

There is something about her words and her tone that makes Melpomene snap out of her silence, eyes blazing with a fury so intense that it surprises Jieun. She gapes at the angry brunette, who corners her to the edge of the balcony until her butt bumps against the cool surface. When Jieun looks over her shoulder, she sees that the naiads from the garden have gone elsewhere, leaving the two of them alone.

Melpomene jabs her finger right into Jieun’s sternum, her hand shaking with emotion. “How fucking dare you insinuate that no one will miss you. How fucking dare you think that anyone would ever forget you!”

For a moment, Jieun is at a loss for words. Jieun splutters indignantly, wondering where Melpomene’s misplaced anger was coming from. She stares wide-eyed at the younger and wonders if her irritation stems from something more. “It was just a joke,” she says, lamely.

“A joke? Is that what you think everything is?” Melpomene laughs, and Jieun thinks the flower inside her heart wilts at the sound. It’s harsh, a sound wave that grates against her eardrums. The younger is never one to laugh without mirth, despite the nature of her role as the Muse of tragedy, but Jieun knows that the tormented tone in her voice is no longer because of the tragic tales she weaves in her stories––

It’s because of her.

“You betrayed us, didn’t you know? We all thought that we had more years to spend with you, and you just suddenly drop the bomb on us that your death day was coming,” she cries out, tears welling up in her eyes. Jieun’s hands itch to wipe them away. “Do you have any idea how terrible it is to find out that the person you love more than anyone in the world is going to leave you forever?”

Love. She loves her.

Somehow, the words don’t make sense to her.

“I’m not going to leave forever,” Jieun says instead, irises flitting about and unable to stay still. Her legs burn where they touch Melpomene’s own, and she wants to pull her closer and never let go. “I already told you last week that you’ll be able to visit me as a human until the Fates cut my string. I didn’t betray anyone.”

The tragedian’s nostrils flare, and she clutches Jieun’s shoulders tightly, as if she was afraid she would disappear if she didn’t hold on quick enough. When Jieun observes her closely, she notices the way her lips quiver with the effort of keeping it together. I did this to her, Jieun thinks sadly. Is this what love does?

“Did I mean nothing to you, then?” Melpomene murmurs, voice shaky as a leaf. She digs her nails into the back of Jieun’s shoulders, but she doesn’t mind the pain if it lets the younger steady herself. Anything. Take anything from me.

“If I truly meant something to you, you would’ve known that things like this matter to me. You should’ve cared, but you didn’t.”

Jieun exhales, tongue thick in her mouth. “Sana––”

“Don’t call me that!” She shouts, wrenching her hands away from her body as if she had been burned. Her absence hurt Jieun more than any of the scars from the wars she has fought––not even the agony of Zeus’ lightning bolt can compare to this pain. Melpomene stalks away from her, and it is only when she separates herself from Jieun that she allows the tears to fall.

Even when she was crying, Jieun can’t help but think that she is the most beautiful person that she has ever seen.

“Mel,” Jieun tries again. It hurts knowing that she has probably lost the precious gift of being able to call her by her true name, and it twists her heart painfully to realize that she will never get to experience the sweet taste of her name on her tongue ever again. “None of us are immortal, Mel. We’re all bound to pass, just like our predecessors. You should have known my time was limited. And besides, we’ll meet again in the Underworld––”

“Don’t you get it?” she seethes. She turns away from Jieun then, not allowing her the opportunity to watch helplessly as the only girl she’s ever cared for starts to openly weep for her, a living corpse. The weight of time has never felt so suffocating until then. “The Underworld is different. By then, it would have been centuries of us having to stay apart, and who is to say we’ll find each other again? Hades told me how difficult it is for lovers to reunite and how they often forget about each other by the time they do meet again. How can you be so nonchalant about this––?”

“Melpomene, my love,” Jieun whispers, and she takes a tentative step towards her. When she gingerly places a palm against her back, she feels the younger tense, but she does not move away. Jieun carefully slides her arms around her waist, embracing her loosely as she nuzzles her face into her back. She takes a shaky breath. “I’m still here, aren’t I? We lasted centuries before ever meeting, and I’m sure I’ll keep waiting for you for another more. Why worry so soon when we have time?”

At her words, Melpomene starts to shake violently, the sound of her sobs echoing into the night. Jieun refuses to let go, trying so hard to make the other girl understand she hasn’t died––not yet. She’s only ever felt alive whenever she’s around the tragedian, and that hasn’t changed even after centuries of stolen kisses in the meadows and whispered promises in the shadows.

Even in the light, those promises will hold true. Jieun will make sure of it.

“I’m scared,” Melpomene eventually says after a few minutes of sobbing, still faced away from her lover in fear of breaking more. But when Jieun gently cups her cheeks to face her, she can’t help but follow her touch like a moth to a flame. Jieun’s heart breaks at the sight of her swollen eyes, the look of pure devastation spilling the contents of her soul to anyone who can see. Melpomene continues, “I’m scared that we’ll forget.”

“I know,” Jieun whispers, and she suddenly notices the wetness on her own face––she’s been crying, too. Melpomene begins to brush them away, just as Jieun goes to brush them off as well. Melpomene lets out a watery giggle when their hands clumsily bump against each other.

Jieun grabs her hand before she can pull away. She squeezes tight. “It’s fine to be scared, you know? And I know it’s hard to see me go, but is it really harder to believe that I won’t leave you alone?”

“It’s not, but I can’t help but worry––”

“Mel, I have to tell you something,” Jieun interrupts, and she tries to sound firm to fully make her understand. She wants––no, needs her to understand that there is nothing to fear. “My time with you has meant so much to me, even more so than the time I spent with my own husband. You know this, don’t you?”

At the mention of the god of thunder, Melpomene lets out another bitter laugh like before, and a single fat tear rolls down her face. “Ah, Zeus. How could I forget? At the end of the day, how am I even sure that you felt the same way I did? I was only a mistress––a secret kept away from everyone because you had to keep your queenly status. Whereas for me? I was just someone you fancied when there was no one to hold, someone to keep your bed warm––”

“That’s not true,” Jieun says, staring wide-eyed at the girl’s accusation. “You know that’s not true. I cared for you more than I can even bare to handle.”

“Don’t lie. I’ve seen the way you look at Zeus,” Melpomene counters, head shaking in exhaustion. She’s no longer angry, only tired from all the worries and anxieties that have haunted her for years, perhaps even for centuries. “You might not know it, but you always did look sad when you looked at him, because you knew that he would never love you the way you loved him.”

“It’s true that I love him,” Jieun begins, taking a shuddering breath. She lets out a laugh of her own, as mirthless and weary as she felt. “But it’s not the same way I feel for you.”

At those words, Melpomene scoffs, pulling away from Jieun. She begins to walk away, gaze downcast as she goes to slide open the balcony door and rejoin the party. “Even now, you can’t say those three words back to me,” she murmurs, putting on the strongest smile she can muster. It disappears just as quickly as the wind.

Before Melpomene can walk away far enough, Jieun rushes towards her and grasps her hand in her own. It isn’t even strong enough to really stop her, and Jieun’s loose grip tells Melpomene that she can leave if she really wants to.

But she doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t.

She doesn’t because she can’t, and wouldn’t want to. Despite all the worries bubbling within her, all of them threatening to erupt and destroy everything that she has come to know and love, there is one thing that keeps Melpomene sane. It is just so unfortunate that the same person who used to make her heart flutter and her soul sing symphonies is the very same person who has the power to cause everything to fall apart.

At the end of the day, she is only mortal. She can pretend to be the Muse of tragedy, who is able to weave sorrow into words just as quickly as a seasoned archer is able to draw their bow. All the talent in the world can never erase the fact that she is just a girl, and she fears just as much as she loves.

When Jieun leans forward, her breath mingling with hers in a slow waltz, the stars reflect themselves off of her eyes. They were made for you, is the last thing thinks Melpomene before her lips are millimeters away from her lover’s, until the space between them is nothing more than something that happened once in a dream. Jieun’s gravity pulls her closer still, until there is nothing more to give.

I’m yours, I’m yours, I’m yours, her heart beat thunders against her eardrums, urging Jieun to hear. She wonders if she has doomed herself, like the protagonists in her tragedies.

Melpomene pulls away for a split second, enough to gather air into her lungs which she will inevitably waste as she presses against Jieun and she is left breathless and lightheaded. This. This is what I will remember during the nights we will spend away from another. I hope you don’t forget them, too.

The party downstairs continues to rage on. The two lovers kiss by the balcony, with an audience of stars to keep them company. Melpomene fools herself into thinking that time will wait for them, if she just prays hard enough.

But she knows how tragedies end, and so she weeps.

[kamino-ink]

Finifugal | Park Chanyeol [02]

✧ finifugal - hating endings; of someone who tries to avoid or prolong the final moment of a story, relationship, or some other journey.

✧ 01 | 02 | ???

✧ Genre: Bodyguard!au, angst, fluff, romance, probably smut at some point lets be honest

✧ Summary: After an ambush that leaves your left shoulder in stitches, your head bodyguard decides to scour the country in search for a new recruit to help up your safety - when Park Chanyeol shows up and his first request is to dye his hair, you can’t help but wonder who in the world Junmyeon just so happened to recruit.

✧ Word Count: 2k [ I swear I am trying to make these longer but my brain just refuses im v sorry friends :( ]

                                         ✧

 “I’m... I’m sorry?” Is the first thing that manages to escape your parted lips as you blink in confusion at the man - who called himself Park Chanyeol - and his rather unusual request.

 “I asked if I could dye my hair pink, boss lady,” Chanyeol snorts at your questioning stare, gesturing a bit crudely to Junmyeon, who is standing beside him and glaring at the new recruit with a stingy glare, “the other boss guy here said I can’t because its like, unprofessional or whatever.”

 You glance over at a fuming Junmyeon, who is vehemently glaring daggers at Chanyeol. Clearly this giant of a man had to be a phenomenal sort of bodyguard if his personality was shining so much that one of your calmest, most patient men was having a difficult time keeping his cool. “Honestly, I could care less. Just try to keep me breathing and you can turn your hair into a fucking rainbow for all I care.” You admit with a soft shrug, purposefully keeping your gaze locked on Chanyeol instead of your head guard who’s sharp glare was burning glares onto your skin.

 “Fuck yeah - okay so far, you are my favorite person here boss lady-”

 “Okay not to sound like a bitch, but I have a name, which is not boss lady,” you cut him off, “its Y/N. Please, no more boss lady.” It comes out as an exasperated plea, and you narrow your eyes at the tall man when he snickers and steps closer to you, now having to tilt his head down to properly look at you.

 “What, not kinky enough for you?”

 Your eyes turn into saucers. “Excuse me-?”

 “You are excused, boss,” Chanyeol takes a turn to interrupt you now, his tongue suddenly darting out to slick his slightly chapped lips, “I’m gonna go and, you know, dye my hair so if you need me, you know where I’ll be.” He finishes with a deep chuckle, running his fingers through his mess of brunette hair before he turns around once, twice, and finally a third time.

 “Hey boss, where can a guy find a bathroom around here?”

                                         ✧

 You really didn’t know how you ended up in one of the master bathrooms with Park Chanyeol. One minute you were being baffled by his bluntness and crude humor, then the next minute you were begrudgingly leading him into your bathroom upstairs and helping him dye his hair a pretty pink.

 Considering you had never dyed someone’s hair before, you had at first tried to convince the man to go to an actual salon where a professional could make sure his hair (which was incredibly soft and naturally curly) wasn’t completely destroyed by an amateur. Yet he had shrugged a bit too carelessly and dragged the stool from your vanity towards the sink, plopping down onto it with a grunt.

 “It’ll be just fine boss, promise. Make me pretty already for fuck’s sake.”

 And so you did - or so your pride said with a smug look once the dye had settled in, the pale but beautiful color coming through even more once you had blow-dried his hair, revealing the curls he had spoken of, curled into soft ringlets now painted pink. “Not bad, not bad.” He hums in content, staring at his reflection in the wide mirror hung onto the wall.

 You huffed in disbelief from where you stood by the tiny trashcan next to the sink, slipping off the blue latex gloves and letting them fall into trash along with the box the dye had come in. “Not bad? I think it looks great, coming from someone who has never dyed hair before.”

 Chanyeol stifles a laugh at your statement, going to rest his chin on the palm of his hand as he turns his attention to your offended gaze. “Ah, so you think I look hot, then? I knew the pink hair was going to be a hit with the ladies.”

 It is in that exact moment in time that you realize this guy is really, really going to get long with Byun Baekhyun.

 Gingerly you walk over to his slumped over posture, abandoning your façade of gentleness the second you smack his bare arm. “Fuck off, Chanyeol, you know what I meant.”

 “Uh huh, I know what you meant.” He hums with a sly, wolfish wink and grin. Before you can protest any further, he’s slid off from the stool and slung the spotted towel you had lent him onto the tiled floor. He lets out a loud groan and bends his back, a resounding ‘pop!’ erupting from his spine. Of course, you couldn’t exactly blame him, especially since you had really taken your time in dying his hair - paranoid that you were going to damage his hair beyond repair. That in itself would have been a loss to all naturally curly haired men in the world.

 Maybe two hours was a bit much. Maybe.

 But he hadn’t complained - not once, oddly enough. That also surprised you, especially since he had muttered complete and utter nonsense about the “fucking enormous” mansion and its “stupid ass three floors and shitty amount of staircases, like, boss, no one needs this much.”

 And you thought you had a potty mouth.

 “Thanks for the assistance boss,” he says casually, straightening out his back and running his fingers through his newly dyed pink hair for just about the hundredth time, “now if you’ll excuse me, I am going to go explore for a bit. See you.” Chanyeol does a mock salute that you just nearly laugh at, watching as he retreats from your bathroom and goes about his business elsewhere in the mansion.

 You turn back to the mess that had been made in your bathroom, a disgruntled sigh passing through your lips.

 “Fuck, I really need to hire a maid.” Is the first thing you utter when he leaves, now left to your own devices in the muggy bathroom. The sink had water droplets splashed onto the counter it was dug into, with vivid pink splotches still on the gray steel of the sink itself (and a bit on the marble countertops as well.) Not wanting to leave your own bathroom too messy, you decide to get to work, first picking up a washcloth hung onto the neck of the sink so you could wet it and begin to wash away the leftover dye and excess water.

 For the next few minutes you simply wash away at the sink and counter, humming an old tune under your breath to entertain yourself. In your head, you wonder why you don’t just ask FRIDAY, the intelligence system constructed throughout the mansion, to page one of the boys and ask them to clean up. It wasn’t like they could necessarily refuse - but then again it would be a dick move to have your bodyguards clean up such a small mess.

 Its because you need to take your mind off of things - off of everything.

 You remind yourself of this almost unwillingly, your bottom lip jutting out into a silent grunt of reminiscent pain when you scrub away at a particularly jarring speck of god-knows-what on the marble counter, the damaged nerves in your left shoulder sending prickles up to your head. You are thankful that you didn't change into a tank top after Chanyeol had left, like you normally would have before cleaning, because then you would be able to see the nasty stitches embedded deeply into your still healing skin.

 Whenever you even caught a glimpse of them out of your peripheral vision you were struck with flashbacks. Flashbacks that gnawed at your conscious mind, screaming and pleading with you to just forget everything that had happened that night.

 You shake your head in a desperate attempt to rid yourself of those horrifying memories and go back to scrubbing at the dirty countertops, the throbbing of your shoulder starting to become all too familiar.

                                         ✧

 Once the sun has set over the horizon, you can see the distant dots of the city lights glowing and flickering in the background, a long ways away from the window you had been gazing through. If you were to bother yourself with concentrating hard enough, you might even be able to picture yourself back in the heart of Busan; exploring the bustling nightlife with your friends, tipping a talented group of buskers as you pause to watch how their limbs glide through the air almost flawlessly while they dance to the music.

 You miss Busan, no matter how much it doesn’t miss you.

 Luckily though, the boys have all seemed to welcome Chanyeol with open arms; albeit Junmyeon, Minseok, and Sehun were still cautious around him - which was expected of the trio, as they usually took time to warm up to just about anyone who wasn't you. While you probably would have pushed for the three men to not be so cold and rigid to the generally warm, bubbly newcomer, you knew now it was best to leave them be and hopefully develop a bond with him themselves. You were far past making the mistake of putting your full-hearted trust into someone so soon.

 Yes, Park Chanyeol was relatively kind and incredibly outgoing, a trait that became obvious when he willingly started to drag the ever stoic and quiet Kyungsoo into a debate about whether snakes had feelings or not with Baekhyun and Jongin. Even now you jumped a little whenever you could hear the four of them throwing themselves into a fit of loud, booming laughter - a pleasant sound you had come to miss for some time now. You were tempted by their laughter and joy, wishing to join in their carefree fun, but you were distracted by something else.

 “Is FRIDAY still down?” The man merely a few feet away questions you, to which you turn your longing gaze away from the shadows of Busan and to him, watching as he swiftly chops another onion without shedding a single tear. “Ah, so she is.” He concludes after not hearing an instant reply, noting the hesitation in your silent answer.

 “I don’t understand why she suddenly shut down, Dae. I’m the only one who can deactivate her system besides Yixing, and he’s still in Europe with Taeyong and Doyoung.” You express your growing concern over the intelligence system, pinching the bridge of your nose. It wasn’t normal for your systems to just, crash - in fact it had never happened before, not including the time Yixing shut her down so you would get out of bed and stop telling her to ‘bug off.’ Junmyeon and Minseok were the only other two of the boys who knew FRIDAY was currently out of commission, since you knew it might start a panic if the others figured out the biggest chunk of the security system was down.

 A panic was the last thing you needed on your plate, that much was for sure.

 Jongdae, who had moved the chopped pile of onions into a glass bowl to the side and was getting started on chopping a few peppers, opened his mouth to speak once more when the house shook a bit, causing him to pause abruptly.

 Your eyebrows furrowed in confusion as you looked outside the window once again, the lack of rain or even murky clouds merely fueling your wariness. In the background you could still hear the four boys laughing and chatting to their heart’s content, Baekhyun letting out a high pitched squeal in the midst of their fun.

 “Dae, it isn’t supposed to storm tonight, is it?” You ask him, still gazing outside the window.

 He makes a noise of confusion. “No, it’s supposed to be a dry week until Thursday. Why do you ask?”

 “Because there is no way that could’ve been thunder-”

 And suddenly you were being thrown backwards, your body going limp as the back of your head smacks the wooden floor with a sickening thud.

 There is no alarm, only the surprised shouting of the others and the sounds of shoes scuffling against the floor in a rush.

 And then, there is nothing.

                                          ✧

[thelionshoarde]

???????

because i am actually 100% an idiot, i’ve managed to fail at finishing ANYTHING for obiyukimadness because i started writing four fics for it plus got distracted writing other nonchallenge fic and everyone should know by now how crap i am at deadlines and focusing so while i have like 12k+ of prose by this point and copious amounts of delirious notes NOTHING TO ACTUALLY PUT UP FOR REALS.

so like here have these possible opening scenes instead???

FEATURING: that werewolf one, aka, wherein Hymn has been in the Teen Wolf fandom too long and it was only a matter of time before she attempted some fucked up loosely based version of that for FOUND FAMILY (warning, some violence and kidnapping and vulgar language, o my)

and ALSO FEATURING: what happens when Hymn reads a stupidly excellent YoI pokemon!au and CANNOT RESIST the siren call because she is a nerd, okay, a nerd, but also doesn’t actually care a lick about the one bed trope and got carried away instead with RIVALRY AS COURTSHIP (warning, excess of capitalization, o no)

and yes, you may expect excerpts from me tomorrow for the accidental soulbond and for undercover as lovers (which, as it so happens, will also include the “shut up kiss” if i ever finish writing it HAHAHAHA)

There was, of course, a fucking knife sticking out of his side.

Steel ground against the bone of his lowest rib, and with every breath the paper-thin edge slit his skin open anew. His flesh tried to heal as quickly as it was damaged, going sore and tender and almost puckered around it, as though his flesh would just grow up around the blade if only it could. (That had happened, once, sort of. A bullet had lodged itself just below his shoulder blade where he couldn’t quite reach to claw it out, and his body had decided to heal over the entrance wound before it had finished expelling it, and hadn’t that been a bloody wonderful Wednesday morning.)

“I feel like this is a little uncalled for,” Obi tried, keeping the strain out of his voice with practice, if not ease.

At the top of the spell -- taped onto the cement floor of the emptied warehouse with blue painter’s tape, which, really, Obi kind of appreciated that sort of forethought; easy enough to peel back off if the angle wasn’t quite right -- the witch narrowed his eyes at Obi, tilting his head in thought.

“No,” he decided, returning back to his spell book. “The unicorn hair rope might be a little overkill, I admit, but safety is very important. Uh. My safety, I mean. No reason to risk it, right?”

“Right,” breathed Obi. “Which, I mean: sure, I can see your point. But also: fuck you.”

The witch just shrugged his shoulders.

A little dizzy from blood loss, Obi swayed where he stood, the unicorn hair rope tight about his wrists and ankles, hobbling him. A thin line of mountain ash within the spell array surrounded him, and, honestly, Obi was tired enough that he just sort of leaned against it with his shoulder. The buzzing, invisible barrier rattled his teeth a little, but it was better than having to keep his knees locked for even a second longer.

“Is that a pizza stain on your stupid sweat pants?” Obi asked, blinking sweat from his lashes.

“College is rough, my man. Don’t judge.”

Obi wouldn’t know. He hadn’t actually finished high school, after all, before he’d fled his pack and gone on the run, and the world was not the most pleasant place for omegas to stand still in. Standing still got you caught.

Then again, he hadn’t been standing still when he ran right into this asshole’s trap.

“Hey,” Obi said, eventually. “Got any more pizza? I’m starving.”

As if he’d planned it, his stomach growled. The knife in his side quivered in punctuation.

*

Obi woke up when a window shattered.

No, correction: Obi jolted awake, sending fresh stabs of pain through his side and joints and fevered head, when all of the windows shattered simultaneously. The sudden racket hurt his ears, like the shards were pressing right on inside, sharp and jagged and piercing.

“Wha --” slurred the witch, jerking his head up from where he’d had his cheek plastered against the open pages of his book at the folding table he’d set up a few yards away. Looked like Obi wasn’t the only one who had gone in for a cat nap.

“-- the hell?”

“Oh, good! You’re still alive,” said a beautiful brunette in half-shift from where she’d dropped down directly behind the still-seated witch, her words mangled just slightly by the lethal fangs protruding from behind her plush red lips. “We’d taken bets, you know.”

“No,” Obi managed to garble out helpfully, “I didn’t know. Thank you for clearing that up for me though. Miss...?”

Within his chest Obi’s heart was pounding so loudly it was nearly all he could discern. Were those additional heartbeats? How many? How many wolves? Exactly how fucked was Obi, now, and was it the frying pan and into the fire, or backwards?

Shit, he really wished weren’t naked.

“Huh,” said a light baritone from the shadows to Obi’s left. “Pretty talkative for someone ripe for virgin sacrifice."

“Excuse you," Obi protested, tilting against the mountain ash barrier a little to get an angle to see --

Jesus wept, why were these wolves so fucking attractive?

and now: POKEMONS

Flopped out in the meadows of Floaroma Town, Shirayuki thought she might grow roots, like the flowers, if she stayed lazing about any longer.

But her feet had only just stopped hurting all the time, and she was tired of being hungry, and sore, and lost. Tired of being tired all the time. And Floaroma was the most beautiful place she had ever seen. After her fifth defeat at Pastoria Gym Shirayuki honestly had not been able to handle the embarrassment of another failed attempt, all right, and Floaroma Town seemed a perfect place to go and lick her wounds in peace.

Three weeks later, with a part time job at Pick a Peck of Colors and a cheap room at a nearby Hotel, Shirayuki didn’t mind if she grew roots, became a flower, and just drifted beneath the sun and the sky, watching the clouds. Really, it seemed a better plan than her current one: three badges in four years was more than just a little embarrassing, after all.

Groaning, her stomach twisting itself into knots of anxiety and frustration, Shirayuki groped about for the pastry bag of Spicy Poffins.

Sure, she’d technically bought them for her Pokémon, but stress eating was a real thing, and she’d already eaten all of her lunch and still had another half-hour to kill before she had to be back a the flower shop. Besides, no one was here to judge. Except Staravia, who fluttered onto her knee and cocked her head in inquiry.

“No, no,” Shirayuki explained between bites of spicy, overly-seasoned pastry. “You don’t like these. We’ve tried, remember? These are for --”

She nearly bit her own tongue in her sudden reluctance to mention Turtwig. As her starter Pokémon, he had been with her for all four, agonizing years. It was the worst kind of betrayal that his pokéball remained in her room, shoved into a pocket of her bag. But he was too sharp a reminder of all her failures. The Poffins had been an apology -- one she was apparently too much a coward to actually give.

The Poffin went down her throat in a sticky, uncomfortable slide.

“You’re gonna break my knee cap,” Shirayuki muttered, looking back to the sky before shutting her eyes. “You’re too heavy, Staravia.”

With a gentle chirrup, Staravia side-stepped further up Shriayuki’s leg, all 30lbs of her. Shirayuki winced, and reached for another Poffin as she felt Staravia’s talons dig momentarily into her leggings before releasing, apparently content to watch her Trainer eat food meant for Pokémon. Shirayuki wished she was a Pokémon. Surely it would be easier than being who she was; than dealing with who she was supposed to be.

She was so involved with her own internal pity party, that Shirayuki missed the sound of footsteps through the flowers, didn’t notice how the orangey-red glow of the sun through her eyelids disappeared as someone leaned over her head. Didn’t notice anything at all until she felt a smooth, hard surface press gently against her forehead.

Eyes fluttering open, startled, Shirayuki nearly choked on her Poffin.

Above her, instead of a sunny, cloud-strewn sky, was the face of a dark-haired, teenage boy. Tan and lanky, with too-long limbs and dirty, travel-stained clothes, he was maybe older than Shirayuki’s fifteen years, but maybe not. The lop-sided grin made it hard to tell, and so did the fact that Shirayuki was looking at him upside down.

He was bent over her, arm outstretched to press a -- a pokéball -- against her forehead. Shirayuki could feel the faint grooves of the locking mechanism against the skin of her forehead. Halfway down his jacket sleeve was a Pachirisu, wriggling its little nose hopefully at the now-squashed Poffin clutched in Shirayuki’s hand.

“Ahh!” said Shirayuki, crumbs flying.

“Sorry,” the stranger laughed, leaning back and taking the pokéball with him. The Pachirisu ran down his arm, twining about his knobby wrist, chittering at Shirayuki. The boy waved the pokéball and Pachirisu at her as though in explanation. “I had to check. You are eating Poffins, after all. A thing usually reserved for pokémon.”

Shirayuki spluttered. “You thought I was a pokémon?!”

“Well, no. Not really. But it was pretty funny, don’t you think?”

Now would be a good time for Palkia to take pity on her, rip open a hole in space, and let her crawl through it to any where else.

nothing is sacred, i have ruined it all \o/