#how they all showed up just to hype this man up and make him the main character for a day

[gyeomsweetgyeom]

[7:19 pm]

(based on this TikTok)

"And I can't just sit around and keep waiting," You sigh, threading your fingers through your hair in frustration. "You told me you weren't ready for a relationship and for months I've been waiting and I've been patient. But Jeno, I'm starting to think I'm waiting for nothing and wasting my time. Am I right?"

Jeno doesn't say anything. He doesn't even have it in him to look you in the eye right now. His eyes remain focused on a single pulled thread on his sleeve. He can't find the words you want to hear or even the words to begin to explain how deeply he feels for you.

"I guess that's enough of an answer. Bye, Jeno." He hears your voice before the front door opens. The loud sound of the heavy rainfall meets his ears for just a second before he jumps up and follows you out. You're already soaked to the bone in the few moments you've been outside.

"Get back inside!" Jeno yells out.

You turn to look at him and it's then that Jeno notices your red eyes. Even with the rain he can tell you're crying and it makes him feel awful.

Jeno sighs to himself and hypes himself up before chasing after you. The cold water immediately makes him tense, makes him yearn for the warmth of his home, his comfortable couch with a movie on and you by his side.

He grabs your hand and pulls you closer. He loves the way your hand fits in his, loves the warmth and the softness that's always there. "I love you, alright?" Jeno yells over the pounding rain, "I love you and I'm the world's most stupid man to have kept someone like you waiting for me. I was nervous and I was scared that making us official would change everything for the worse. I couldn't stand the thought of losing you."

Your eyes widen at his confession, heart pounding in your ears even harder than the drops of water pounding against the floor. His hair is drenched and his oversized sweater hangs heavily on his lithe frame as the water weighs it down. You look into his eyes and see the fear, the apprehension, and the anxiety.

Jeno has always been the type to show you he cared for you as more than a friend with his actions. He'd get you small gifts, act affectionately, press kisses to your temples or hold your hand. He did all of this and refused to commit to you in an official relationship, not wanting to make things official for some fear he hadn't voiced until now.

"Why now?" You ask quietly.

"Because I lost you for less than a minute and it felt like someone ripped my heart right out of my chest. Because you make every day I'm with you a million times better. Because you mean more to me than anyone I've ever met or will meet. Because I can't organize all the words of every language in the world to express to you how deeply I feel for you. Because you mean everything to me and I am nothing without you," Jeno confesses more quietly, pressing his forehead against your own as his hands come up to cup your cheeks.

The sound of the rain seems to quiet around the two of you, it's just your breaths that fill this tiny space between you. The cold has faded as your blood pumps throughput your body with excitement and adrenaline.

His eyes look different now. The look in his eyes tells you he's being genuine, he's looking at you like you were made for him.

You can't find it in you to respond, there's no way you can top his confession. Instead, you press your lips against his. It's a perfect fit. His lips are cold and chapped but there's a a hunger in the way his lips move. It's searing and passionate as he tastes your mouth, expresses his love through his touch. Your arms wrap around his neck as you kiss him back with as much passion and love as he does.

You both pull away, chests heaving as you try to catch your breath. Jeno smiles at you, his cheeks rosy, "let's get inside. I'll give you some clothes and we can watch a movie."

You both get back inside, shivering for many minutes even after you're both bundled up under a blanket and cuddling, but there's no place else you'd rather be.

[httpvomitello]

Hi would it be okay to request a Rottmnt with a female reader who makes pastries or maybe works a some kind of pastry shop 🍰

Hello, hello! Hope you like a it ~ ♡♡♡♡

Pastry Shop *⁠.⁠✧

Shows up to your pastry shop all the time (not when people are inside, of course)

He’s not even subtle about it—he acts like it’s a casual visit, but everyone knows he’s there for you (and maybe for the pastries)

“Oh, hey, Y/N. Fancy meeting you here… at your workplace… again.” Cue his cheeky grin

Always “samples” whatever you’re baking

He’s the type to ask, “Do you need a taste-tester? Because I’m highly qualified.”

Pretends to have sophisticated taste in desserts. “Hmm, the balance of sweetness in this éclair is truly exquisite.”

But really, he’ll eat anything you make

“For me? Your favorite customer? C’mon, don’t act like I’m not your favorite.”

At first, he’s a little shy about coming by

But once he realizes how much you love baking, he’s all in

He always compliments your creations, even if it’s just a simple cupcake. “This is amazing, Y/N. You’re really talented.”

Buys way more pastries than he can eat, just to support you(he started saving money just for that)

His brothers constantly find random boxes of cookies and cakes in the lair

Always offers to help you carry heavy supplies, like bags of flour or crates of ingredients

“No way you’re lifting that on your own. Let me.”

You caught him sneaking one of your pastries into his pocket for later, and now he’s forever known as “the pastry thief.”

Doesn’t understand the appeal of pastries at first

He’s more of a “function over flavor” kind of guy, but he’s fascinated by the science behind baking

Spends a whole afternoon in your kitchen asking questions about how different ingredients work. “Wait, so gluten development affects the structure of bread? Fascinating.”

Invents gadgets to make your life easier, like a faster mixer or a temperature-controlled rolling pin

“With this, you’ll have the most consistent dough in the city!”

You catch him sneaking into your shop late at night to try and reverse-engineer your recipes

When you confront him, he denies everything. “I was… conducting research!”

His favorite thing to order is whatever you made just for him

He insists it’s purely because of your skill, but you know he loves the personal touch.

The biggest hype man for your baking

Every time he tries something you’ve made, it’s “THE BEST THING I’VE EVER TASTED.”

Wants to help in the kitchen but always makes a mess

Flour ends up everywhere, and you have to shoo him out before he burns something

Calls you “his personal pastry chef,” even if you’ve told him a million times that you bake for everyone, not just him

Has a massive sweet tooth and keeps begging you to make custom desserts based on his wild ideas

“Okay, hear me out—pizza-flavored cupcakes!”

Brings your pastries back to the lair and brags to his brothers about how talented you are. “Y/N’s the best baker in the world! You guys are missing out.”

[tuxedoferret]

Arcane finale was good....but

Spoilers for the finale of Arcane season 2, Arc 3 in general.

I'm probably screaming into the void but I wanted to get these thoughts out and see what other people think.

In general, I liked the endings for most of the characters. Their arcs make sense.

Vi, Caitlyn, Ekko, Jayce, Mel, Singed, and Viktor's story conclusions, I think were ended beautifully! (And Jinx too but I'll circle back to her in a second). Their endings made sense and were executed very well! I'm content with how their stories end!

And MOST of the deaths make sense... most of them.

Of course most of the minor characters are dead, no surprise since a majority of them we don't even know the NAMES of unless you scour the credits in the VA section.

Ambessa's death was well done, with Mel finally getting her mothers approval through breaking free of her control and finally being able to decide her own life and Caitlyn becoming a true leader.

The only thing that really bothers me, is the deaths of Heimerdinger and Warwick/Vander. Out of all of the champions in the game they're the only non-humanoid ones that made it into the show. They're also the only (game first) champions to actually die and they barely get to do anything. (I am one of the believers that Jinx is alive because there's no fucking way they would kill off one of their chief money makers, also based on evidence in the show).

With Heimerdinger in season 1 we see him serve as an oppositional force against Jayce, and then a mentor working with him. He gets kicked off of the council as a result of his conservative viewpoint. And he reflects on this, he leaves to go help the Zaunites however he can but gets shunned away. Then the goes and helps Ekko with repairing his board and getting home. In season 2 this continues with Heimerdinger helping Ekko get into Jayce's lab and them having the discussion about wild runes before getting sucked up into the anomaly. His last episode is him in the alternate universe with helping Ekko build the Z-Drive to return to his own universe. He puts it in the amplifier, is about to go with Ekko, then runs out and puts a few more things together and just... dies. Thats it for him. MAYBE he'll come back since he's a Yordle but this is new canon and the man had flesh and blood squished out of him. But in general his death feels cheap and unnecessary. What was the point of his death? How did it impact the narrative and what did the story gain from it as a result? Not fucking much really. He's never mentioned again afterwards. I feel like his death had no impact on the story whatsoever. I honestly think it would've been better if he had survived and returned with Ekko to fight in the battle against Noxus and Viktor. I would've liked to see him, either returning to the council or not, atoning for his mistakes by trying to make things better in Zaun with his inventions.

With Vander/Warwick there was so much hype around the theory that Vander would be returning as Warwick. And we were all super excited when that came true! We love it when the narrative rewards us for paying attention! But we get like... 3 episodes with him before he becomes a Viktor automaton. He was also still very much alive even after Singed drained his blood, so Viktor was wrong about how that would kill him. Warwick's role in the end felt very lackluster, and it felt redundant to just, kill him off AGAIN. Maybe I'm just a little mad because I have read up on Warwick and I feel like he had more potential for the narrative than just... make Vi watch her dad die all over again. The fight scene with Warwick could've been replaced with any big evil bruiser really (coughBlitzcrankcough). In general Warwick felt more like a Vi and Jinx accessory than his own potential character. Which kind of sucks. And maybe I'm a bit salty that we didn't get a full wolf Warwick. I think the whole his mind was reset/erased bit could've still been done if the explosion damaged his head and it healed back wrong/if singed replaced his head with one of the wolves' heads to make him fully Warwick in the end.

Isha's death kind of feels... not impactful at all to the story afterwards aside from Jinx's spiral. I would've liked it if her death did more than just that (Like I said, permanently damaging Warwick/Vander would've been nice)

This is about the league of LEGENDS and you'd think that Warwick and Heimerdinger would have bigger roles than just being killed off to further another characters story after barely impacting the narrative.

Also I feel like Sevika being on the council is like... stupid. I think she wasn't handled well at all after episode 4. She just completely disappears after running away with Isha. Why do we never see her hanging with Jinx and Isha again? I would have LOVED to see how Sevika reacted to Vander not being as dead as previously thought, the man she betrayed and ultimately ended up mirroring in the end with her refusing to give up Jinx to Piltover. I think it would've been fun if Sevika was the one to tell Vi when she woke up that Jinx gave herself up, despite all of Sevika's protests, an inversion of what happened with Vi and Vander. Putting Sevika on the council in the end is just kind of weird for her character. I understand it's like, the idea of Zaun finally getting representation on the council, Sevika getting a say in what happens in the undercity. But I feel like that could've just as easily been accomplished with finally letting Zaun have its own independence with Sevika being the "Baron" of Zaun, being the new leader. Because we've seen she's a genuinely good leader! She has a good head on her shoulders. It would've been fun to see how she'd struggle with being the new leader of Zaun, struggling against the Chem Barons if future series ever decided to look into Zaun again.

In general I'm fine with the ending of Arcane. But I feel like the endings could've been written a different way for those 3 characters. I honestly feel like it would've been better if the show ended off where the game picks up, and I don't even play League, I just like the lore from what little I've been reading.

[hetalia-club]

This may have been Alfred...

The collective gasps of horror when he ate a couple off the New York City sidewalk 😭

[ohmigoshiloveu]

Okay so like. I still haven't managed to get myself to finish episode 9, so I don't fully know how Theo's glow up finishes, but regardless I fucking love relistening to Emizel's section of episode 1 and like. Fuck man Theo does a lot of growing. Like he's a little bit pathetic at the beginning of the series. He's so, so brave during the alleyway fight, but he sounds shaky and scared and like a sopping wet pathetic baby the entire time. Charlie specifically describes him as not very alert, not a great fighter, and gives him this little moment where it takes him a second to manage to crush a soda can. He botches the check to beat Emizel in Smash Bros so there's a chance he sucks at the related skills (dexterity and computers I think?), but also after he loses Charlie specifically has him sound super frustrated and conclude that he should've 'stayed in his lane'. When Emizel says 'We'll do what we do best,' and Theo immediately responds with 'drink soda?' so fast that the other players notice it. Charlie might've had that as a predetermined character thing. Theo drinks soda. There's not much else to him.

Which creates this interesting dynamic between him and Emizel, because Emizel is so much better at him at all of these skills that the people around them (a FUCKING GANG) value. Emizel's perceptive, and agile, and strong, and a great fucking fighter irl and in videogames AND he always sounds badass. He's the top dog, the apex predator in their social circle. And I think that colors their relationship a lot? Like Theo has to look up to Emizel. I bet that Theo's looked up to Emizel since they first met, maybe Emizel came crashing into his life doing something epic and Theo thought it was the greatest shit ever.

On the flip side, I was getting a few hints of resentment? Hear me out! It's that 'should have just stayed in my lane' line. He's painfully aware how great Emizel is, compared to how much he's (from his perspective!) just a one trick pony. He's here to drink soda and say funny things, that's all most people want from him and he fucks up whenever he tries to do anything else!

And later in the segment Theo snarkily brings up a medicine check that Emizel had just fucked up in like this super backhanded, super passive aggressive way. That could be him wanting to rub Emizel's one singular fuck up in his face (especially because Theo was having a Moment about how he feels like people only see him as the soda guy, so any feelings of inadequacy would've been dialed up to eleven, so if there was any time for him to resent Emizel it'd be then), but it could also be that he was frustrated with Emizel being an ass (Emizel had just guessed that Theo's dream was to be a nurse, which was flat out wrong, and that's literally what set up the backhanded comment. Theo was saying something like 'thank fuck you don't wanna be a nurse cuz you sure fucked up with nursing that guy earlier.' It could also be that Emizel literally almost forgot Theo's name. Theo literally gave him the 'th' sound, it might've just been a bit Charlie was doing or it could've been Theo being AWARE that Emizel almost forgot his name. Or! It could be that in this moment, where Theo was confiding in Emizel about feeling like being the soda guy was all anyone ever saw in him, Emizel said something to the affect of 'well yeah Soda's the fun one.' Emizel doesn't think before he speaks and literally has a 1 in empathy. Just because he loves Theo doesn't mean he's not gonna blunder into being a complete and utter asshole to him. I'd hazard to say Emizel accidentally being an ass to people he cares about is a running theme).

But also all of that might come down to Charlie still getting the character down. Or, because I've theorized before that Theo might not've been supposed to survive the first Gabriel fight, the little hints of bitterness might've been intentional (even if they were completely improvved and Charlie didn't mean to add that to Theo's character) because Charlie was trying to shove as much character into this character before he was gone, but once it became clear that Theo was going to stick around longer he dropped it. As far as I remember, that bitterness is completely gone in all later interactions we see with Theo. OR! It could be that the bitterness drops because they've both got bigger fish to fry from that point onward, what with Theo's Shilo Incident TM, Emizel's vampirism, the Weylin twins. He doesn't have time to be bitter, he's too busy worrying about losing a cornerstone of his identity or helping his best friend adjust to being a fucking vampire now. And then after he learns to live without soda that basically negates his feelings of inadequacy- like, getting over the idea that he's nothing if he's not the soda guy would be required for him to give up on being the soda guy. And then Emizel would drift back into JUST being a guy to aspire to instead of also being a reminder of Theo's short comings, and then drift even further down into being 'guy who is actually going through it and has to overcome his own demons just like I had to overcome mine'. Like, I think we got to watch Theo slowly start to take Emizel off this pedestal in real time (he still definitely thinks Emizel's hot shit tho. Emizel's his boy, after all.)

Regardless, even if Theo did resent Emizel a little in the beginning, it's so fucking clearly overshadowed by how much he fucking loved him. And like, how could he not? Imagine you're Theo, critically low self esteem, and the literal coolest guy you know fucking LOVES you. Like, Emizel keeps consistently going out of his way to pull Theo up to his level and to treat him as an equal (mostly. Sometimes protectiveness bleeds through, like in his hypothetical fang scenario in ep 1 where he predicts there being five Fangs to fight and he says he can take three and Theo can take two (which in itself is still incredibly kind to Theo. Like, boy, you thought Theo was gonna be able to take out two whole guys? Hell no.) But that could also be chalked up to Emizel just being a cocky ass who wants to show off). Like dude, c'mon. Emizel might be a reminder of everything that Theo's not, but he's also probably Theo's biggest cheerleader. He wholeheartedly thought he was being supportive when he said he thought Theo'd make a great nurse! In all seriousness, though, even if it ultimately discourages him, Theo playing that Smash game against Emizel was at least a little bit of proof of him decidedly not 'staying in his lane,' and Emizel seems to inspire that! Later in that segment he challenges Theo to see which of them can break one of the Fangs kneecaps first! I bet Emizel challenged him to stupid competitions a lot, and that got Theo fired up and competitive in return!

And even when Emizel's not building Theo up, he's still giving Theo special attention, or readily receiving any attention Theo gives him. If nothing else, even at his lowest points that might've made Theo feel cool by association.

On Emizel's part, I think he's like, possibly completely oblivious to any turmoil Theo's going through? Like he thinks Theo's the shit and genuinely sees him as an equal. I'm 99% sure that Theo being his right hand man happened because Theo would've put himself into the role (in episode one before he gets all of his character development he's pretty much always looking to Emizel for what to do, and still more or less does whatever he says up to where I'm at in the series, with refusing to leave the alleyway being the only exception I remember). I think if Theo'd had higher self esteem or been less eager to defer to Emizel, Emizel would've happily gone about his business slotting Theo into more of a partner role. He tells Theo to run from that alleyway because Theo'd taken a fucking devastating hit and Emizel was sure he could handle himself, not because he knows Theo sucks at fighting. He tries to turn Theo into a cool vampire. He convinces Shilo that Theo'll be a valuable asset to raiding the Weylin warehouse and they take Theo with them instead of having him stay behind with the car like Grefgore, despite Theo being the one who actually knows how to drive. He tells Theo about being a vampire even though he keeps it a secret from everyone else, confides in Theo that 'yeah he might absolutely be susceptible to going into a frenzy like Shilo did.'

When you get down to it, Emizel pretty much tells Theo everything he would think is relevant, with two notable exceptions. Maybe three if you count him not telling Theo he has nine lives like a cat but tbh I think he might've just forgot. Or maybe he gets to it later, or maybe he did tell him and I forgot! idk man! But! Those other two things. First off, he like. Pointedly does not tell Theo that he's a prince. Like when they were doing the recap on the way to the Weylin warehouse, there's like. Charlie gives Condi an opening to say it, a little 'is there anything else?' and Emizel just. Doesn't. And the second one is that (at least where I'm at) Emizel never comes clean about bloodbonding Theo. Maybe it just hasn't come up yet, but still. It fits a pattern of Emizel not wanting to admit something that makes him, like, ABOVE Theo somehow. He sees Theo as an equal, and a precious one at that, he doesn't want things to get weird between them because he's literal royalty, and he doesn't want Theo's life to literally revolve around him like it would under a level three blood bond- and doesn't want to admit that he even considered it, even if he did it without really understanding what it was.

And Emizel backing off from ghoulifying Theo after Arthur explains what it actually entails kinda leads into a far more headcanon-y relationship analysis thing so um. Feel free to skip the next paragraph.

So! Like. Why the fuck was Emizel so attached to Theo being Soda. Like he gets over it decently quick, cuz that's his buddy and it's what Theo wants, so like. Whatever. But like, if I'm right about Theo always looking up to Emizel from the moment they met, there might've been some wiggle room between when they first became friends and when Theo became Soda. And like, before Theo became Soda, being Emizel's buddy would probably be the only thing he'd feel he had going for him? Which would've made it even harder for Emizel to get them both on equal footing, and I think that's just... really unappealing to him. Like! Don't get me wrong, I'm sure Emizel loves having people kiss up to him and respect him and blah blah blah, I just think Theo being his boy and Emizel treating him like a partner go hand in hand. Either they weren't best friends yet or Emizel was just. Kind of uncomfortable and eager to push Theo into growing into something more than a hypeman. And then the soda incident occurs, and it gives Theo SOMETHING to define himself by, something people like him and know him for that's got nothing to do with Emizel, and maybe the initial soda incident was bad, but having that sense of identity and falling into what kind've feels like a class clown kinda role might've helped get Theo over his self esteem issues long enough for Emizel to go 'oh you're actually super cool. sweet.' and then blah blah blah they get super close like they are in canon. And then whenever Theo seems like he's backsliding into what he was before the soda incident, Emizel tries to course correct not because he doesn't think Theo's any fun without soda, but because he's made the mental connection that Soda without soda turns into less of a best friend and more of a follower, which as stated before he probably really doesn't want from Theo specifically. but idk. pure conjecture here.

Anyways, above all else, Theo's important to Emizel. I really, really like the idea that Theo was supposed to be like a brother to him (which. Again pointing at my 'Theo was supposed to die in episode 1' theory, can you IMAGINE the angst Emizel could've had about that? Lose one brother and then someone else claiming to be your brother shows up? It would've felt like some hellish, not-worth-it trade. Like a betrayal, like accepting Shilo might mean replacing Theo, and how could he ever?)

And Emizel's important to Theo! But unlike Emizel (who I'm 99% sure is gonna have some kinda moment with Theo but I genuinely cannot see him loving Theo in any other way than the way he does now), Theo has the bonus of having his view of Emizel have a clear trajectory to evolve over the course of the campaign. Like I said, he seems to be getting more confidence in himself and like, not gonna get into the stuff I've had spoiled beyond episode 9 but it seems like Theo's gonna get a lot more comfortable being a proper leader and not just a number two. He's gonna have an easier time seeing Emizel as an equal, and I think that's fucking awesome!

I could be completely off base, but if I never watch another episode then I'll never be proven wrong. So. Ya know.

[the-froschamethyst4]

Young Gf and Older bf

————

Simon Ghost Riley Headcanons

SFW & NSFW

————

————

SFW

Older bf! Simon who didn’t know how he felt about having a younger girlfriend

Older bf! Simon who was getting called “old man” by his girlfriend

Older bf! Simon who learned the hard way that some girls have expensive taste

Older bf! Simon who doesn’t talk much about his girlfriend to his mates, he feels like they’ll get on his ass about dating a young girl

Older bf! Simon who did most of the chores around the house

Older bf! Simon who stopped caring what he wore in front of people because his girlfriend is his little hype-man

“Does this work?” Simon asks coming into his shared bedroom with his girlfriend, she rolls on her side to look at him.

“They don’t match your shoes, Si.”

“What?” He looks down. “I thought they did.”

“Here, go try this on and come back at out.”

Older bf! Simon who told his girlfriend about his time in the military

Older bf! Simon who forget how young his girlfriend is, so when he makes jokes or says a movie reference she doesn’t know what he is talking about

Older bf! Simon who was honestly scared to meet his girlfriend’s family. She told them about Simon being older but not how old he was

“And how old are you, Simon?” Her dad asked leaning forward.

“I’m…40”

“40!!”

“Y/N?!”

“What?! He treats me good, he respects me, guys my age want that trad wife, Simon doesn’t, I can do or say what I want around him and feel good about myself.”

Older bf! Simon who knows everything about you. How you like your coffee, what time you’re suppose to be up for work, and he even knows when you’re about to start your period, you know when he shows up at home with bags full of pads and tampons and her favorite foods and drinks

Older bf! Simon who starts watching shows with you but complains about them but deep down he actually likes to watch them with his girlfriend

NSFW

Older bf! Simon who woke up to you in t-shirts and no shorts or pants, he likes seeing you in a t shirt and panties

Older bf! Simon who has woken up to morning wood before and needed help to get rid of it

“Love,” he kisses the shell of her ear. “Love…wake up,” he coos.

“Hmm~ Simon, not now please.”

“I know, love, you don’t have to do anything,” Simon lines himself up at her entrance and pushes himself into her

Older bf! Simon who like after argument sex

“Fuck you!”

“Oh yeah? Fuck me?” Simon carries a smirk on his face.

“Back up, Simon,” Y/n says putting her hand up on his chest to keep distance.

“Fuck me right? Fuck me?”

“Wait, wait,” your legs didn’t work for a few weeks

Older bf! Simon who tries different things with you, like BDSM you both hated it because it’ll be painful for you and Simon didn’t like you hurt

DDLG, he knows the age gap between you two but he hates the word ‘daddy’ makes him cringe

Mask kink, you both loved it, giving the illusion you were being fucked by someone else and he liked feelings your hands in his face

Voice kink, you liked it because of his deep voice already, he was on the fence, not saying your voice is annoying or anything he just didn’t get it

Knife play, you got scared when he accidentally dropped the knife and it was very close to your hand, it was the same thing with gun play you were afraid something wrong might happen

He tried to be a sub but you could barely take it seriously

Older bf! Simon who has fucked you when you were doing your work, you worked in a private office and all he had to do was shut and lock the door and bend you over your own desk

Older bf! Simon who is handsy when he’s horny

“Simon what do you want?”

“I want nothing,” he says as one of his hands were on your waste and the other snacks up to your breasts giving you a gentle squeeze and you gave him a soft moan.

“Just do it already, Simon,” she moans

Older bf! Simon who has kept a pair of your panties in his pockets and has forgotten about them before, he remembers when he accidentally sticks his hand into his pocket and feels the lace

Older bf! Simon who bought a motorcycle and takes you with him as his backpack, he found a abandoned place were no one comes to and you two had a good fuck on his bike

[reveluving]

Ok, so Soap and shy wife. We all know he's the definition of sunshine/happy puppy and has the energy of an entire class of kindengarden. Imagine when they first meet the couple and he's all loud and jolly, and wife quietly shakes their hand and says "Nice to meet you" and he INSTANTLY quiets, because he's proud of his Darling to meet his friends/family, also because they're all wondering how she puts up with him🤣❤

LOSING MY MIND AT "they're all wondering how she puts up with him" BECAUSE THAT IS BASICALLY THEIR DYNAMIC 🤧💗💗

Includes: tooth-rotting fluff!

COD x shy!wife thots closed! Thank you, everyone, for your time & amazing minds! I sincerely hope I can do this again with y'all soon! 💌

Come & check out my COD m.list!

You just know this man does not shut up about you every time he meets up with his team for work. 

And then, one day, he surprises them with a “she’d love y’all to come over one day.”

“Didn’t you say she’s a lil’ shy?” Kyle voiced out everyone’s thoughts, so to be offered not by the man himself but the meek lady in question was a little surprising, to say the least.

“She is, yeah, but she’s open t’meeting a few pals o’mine.” Johnny meant it to sound casual, but with his mates knowing him for a long time, it wasn’t hard to catch the hint of care in his voice.

And, well, it would be rude to decline a lady’s generous offer, now, would it?

Johnny’s hyped, no doubt, his friends—no, brothers, and his other half finally meeting in person. They didn’t even have to ask, just by the way he was tapping his fingers on the steering wheel or the way he hummed to the radio, likely a playlist the two of you shared.

And with the boys holding some sort of gift for you, just as a thank you for the invite, you greet them by the door as soon as your husband announces his and his friends’ arrival. 

With Simon physically being the closest to you, you wiped your hands on your apron before holding your hand out. Simon nearly struggled with his strength, not expecting your lack of hesitation to greet him, out of all of them.

You introduced yourself, “It’s nice to finally meet you guys.”

Ah, such a sweet voice. So sweet that had Johnny not gone on and on about your shyness, they would’ve thought you were scared of them. But, you weren’t and the proud smile on Johnny’s face says it all. 

Why wouldn’t he? With your warm smile and even willingness to shake Kyle and John’s hands as well. Albeit, you had a habit of looking down every once in a while, especially if they tried to show their respect, i.e. complimenting your cooking, the decor or you in general, it was hard not to find you endearing.

But God knows how you, of all people, manage to put up with his nonsense. 

In the words of Johnny; “Opposites attract, after all.”

And seeing it now, to say Johnny was whipped…. Was putting it lightly.

It’s funny to see Johnny trying his best when it comes to lowering his gruff voice for you, even if you loved it just the way it is.

Though he has a lot of things to tell you, so much love to give you, you have his full attention the moment your lips part.

Each time you open your mouth, he closes his. As if fearing that one word from him would mean talking over you entirely, and he couldn’t bear the thought of that. The hearts in his eyes were tough to miss. He’s expressive, too, hanging on your every word like you were giving him a task when it was just you talking about how you learnt to make the lasagna you served for dinner.

‘SHUT UP, MY BABY HAS SOMETHING TO SAY’ type of beat, but it’s the man who’s saying it that has the loudest voice (and the gentlest heart).

But they’d be lying if they said they didn’t enjoy listening to the stories of how you met and how emo Johnny gets when the dates or outings don’t go his way, even though it all went well in the end.

Why wouldn’t they enjoy seeing his soul leave his body when you mentioned his baby pictures that his mother not only showed you but gave some to you as well?

“Johnny, c’mon, now, she’s a part of the family! She’ll need some photos o’you for when you move in together soon.” Says his mother, gifting you probably a stack of them, as if unfazed by the sight of you and Johnny covering your faces, the temperature of your body heat rising that even you feared you might pass out right then and there. He couldn’t even find the energy to stop his sisters from teasing him.

But besides allowing you to embarrass him a little, even if it wasn’t your intention, your home is another.

A small unit, located on the second floor. The candlelight colour, the cute indoor plants in each room, and the seats. 

Oh, the seats.

John nearly passed out just moments after he sat on it. 

Just by the way you maximized the apartment space, it’s no wonder Johnny always looked forward to returning home. Not necessarily the apartment, but to you. 

Dare they say, the visit felt like a ‘cultural reset’ (is that what the kids are saying these days?). Largely because one; they were able to finally confirm that Mrs MacTavish is a real person and two; one cannot simply ignore the dynamic you and Johnny have. It may be eye-roll-worthy to some, but Johnny learns it isn’t something worth fighting about. So long he has you, those people can yap and nag about it all they want. 

Bonus: John’s definitely the type of person to tell Laswell about it like it was some kind of a mission—like it was almost unbelievable to see you, well, you!

“M’tellin’ ya, Laswell. As soon as his wife had something t’say, he shuts up faster than when I tell him to.” He chuckled before taking a sip of his drink.

“Sounds like a keeper to me.”

˚ · . f i n . · ˚

[sleep-0-deprived]

can i ask for the yan!roommate's reaction to the reader finding the camera in the bathroom and purposefully jacking off in front of it?

just found out about this blog and i am already hyped we need more subby yans in the world

Yandere roommate imagines (sub Yandere oc) ~!

A/N so the Yandere is just a random Oc you can imagine it as whoever I just needed a name for the fic! And you’re totally right there aren’t nearly enough sub Yandere as I’d like <33

Imagine you just got home from the gyms and all you wanna do is get into your shower you don’t have many other thoughts in your brain, you would have used the shower at the game but you have a “problem”~ between your legs and you knew you had to get home.

Imagine, you’re stripping your clothes cutting the hot water on as the mirror begins to fog up, your cock pressing to your stomach with precum oozing from the slit as you step in the shower running your fingers through your hair letting out a quiet grunt. You notice something from the corner of your eye when you’re looking up at the shower head, confused you reach for it picking it up you realize it’s a camera.

Imagine you already know who put the camera there I mean how could you not? There was only one man you knew creepy enough to wanna watch you shower and that was you’re roommate, and you know you felt a little generous you thought since you were already hard why not give him a show.

Imagine you sit the camera on a bath shelf and start speaking “I know you’re watching me Lucas” you grin as you bend down a little making sure your face was in full view as you use one hand to run down giving your pec a firm squeeze before gripping at your shaft giving one long stroke. On the other end of the camera Lucas sat in his room in the shared apartment nearly going feral when he sees your hand on your cock.

Imagine his face all red laying originally across his bed he soon gets up hurriedly trapping his laptop making sure the door was locked as he shakily grips the device for dear life feeling himself already aroused by the sight of you touching yourself, wanting nothing more than for your cock to be stuffed inside him as he rubs himself up against his matress letting out a few whines of desperation.

Imagine your hand holding your cock pointed straight at the camera giving him the perfect shot of your veins pulsing beneath your fingers while you bite at your bottom lip “didn’t know u had a total creep of a roommate, Lucas?~” you coo hazily standing in the shower the water running down your body down past your thighs with a few heaves meanwhile Lucas on the other hand wasn’t nearly as calm.

Imagine his hands fumbling with his zipper sitting the laptop on his bed as he pulls his boxers down placing the laptop on his pillows in front of his face as he drools, two fingers shoved between his lips with him laying on his stomach removing his fingers with them all coated in spit as he presses them to his rim pressing one finger in moving it in sync with your hand imagining it was your cock inside him as adrenaline fills his head making his body numb to the pleasure only becoming more infatuated with you each second as he murmurs out “y-es~” over and over.

Imagine when you cum you make sure your cock head is pointed directly at the camera lens, wanting him to see your red, angry looking tip when you climax. Your body tensing up intentionally not letting him see the face you make when you orgasm, only attempting to further tease your roommate with what he can’t seem to fully grasp hold of, which is you. “Hope you enjoyed my little show Lucas”

Imagine when Lucas sees that he’s in a whole other world of need, if he was feral before it was like he was a rabbit in the middle of heat because he pulled his hands away from himself with a little gasp while getting up not even bothering to turn his computer off, pouncing on you as soon as you make it to your bedroom with his brain all fuzzy and fast from your menacing taunts pulling your towel off.

Imagine your night ending with your roommate on top of you his thighs straddling you with his hands gripping your shoulders tightly mewling his lips all parted wide and his eyes half lidded and rolled back glossed over while he erratically lifts himself over and over again riding you harshly even when he feels like his rim is on fire from being stretched so long, you give his ass cheek a slap punching the ref handprint grumbling in his ear “this was what you wanted right?” As you hold his hip tightly grounding yourself deeper inside him pressing to his prostate roughly “then take it Lucas”

[daechwitatamic]

cherrybomb || csc

(banner by @sailorrhansol)

cherrybomb seungcheol x afab reader || angst smut fluff || exes2lovers, pacific rim universe NSFW - minors DNI

Summary: Piloting a jaeger requires a rare ability called drifting - a neural connection with your co-pilot. You and Seungcheol are masters of the drift... until you have something in your head that you don't want him to see.

wc: 19.5k

warnings: language, heavy angst with happy ending, fight scenes, fight scenes written by an author with zero fighting or martial arts knowledge lmfao thus they are vague as possible, feelings heavy plot light and smut light, kissing and pretty generic (and brief) p in v smut

Author's note: thank you for @sailorrhansol for 1) accidentally sparking this idea, 2) agreeing to collab with me, 3) reading this along the way and hyping me up, and 4) beta-ing my mistakes, a million smooches for you ily

This fic takes place in the Pacific Rim universe but I honestly don't think you need to know the lore, everything you need to know should be explained. If you think something is unclear without prior pacific rim knowledge, shoot me a message privately and I'll make some edits and credit you for the insight!

Also in this universe: storm breaker by @/sailorhansol

Teaser:

“Marshall, with all due respect, I don’t know why you’re calling me,” you admit. “You were there. You saw what happened. Seungcheol and I can’t drift anymore.”

“You couldn’t then,” he points out. “That was three years ago. Things that were once too painful to carry into the drift… they’ve had time to mellow.”

He’s wrong, and you want to tell him so. Nothing has mellowed. You love Seungcheol just as much today as you did then.

“Have you talked to him about this?” You’re afraid of the answer. 

The Marshall’s voice hardens, and you can just picture his eyes narrowing. “Mr. Choi will follow orders,” he says evenly, “and so will you. Asking is really just a courtesy.”

“You can’t order us into being able to drift again,” you snap, pulse suddenly pounding in your arms, your hands, your face, your chest. 

“No,” the Marshall says, and any previous friendliness is gone from his voice now, “but I can - and will - order you to try.”

Playlist: you're the smoke in my gun, blowin' like cherry bombs...

The first time you ever saw Choi Seungcheol, he was flipping a man four years his senior over his shoulder and slamming him into the ground. Satisfied, he staggered backwards, chest heaving from exertion, eyes narrowed in preparation for the next move.

That’s what Seungcheol did - he leveled whatever was in front of him, and he started watching for what was coming next before the body could even hit the ground.

That’s what made him a great jaeger pilot. Not the brute strength - strong men are dime a dozen, always have been - but the watching.

You’d marked him as your first choice.

You were both nineteen. You’d grown up in the Shatterdome, the only child to a couple who piloted a neon green jaeger named Charron’s Revenge. You knew everything about how jaegers and their teams worked by the time you were nine. You started training to fight years before that. There was never a question that you would follow in your parents’ giant, mechanical footsteps one day. You just needed the right partner.

You needed Seungcheol.

The jaeger program didn’t turn away recruits - everyone could do something - but there was an organized process to match up compatible pilots. Applying recruits would fight before an audience of previously-accepted but currently-unmatched potential pilots. The pilots would rank the fighters, choosing their top five based on perceived potential for compatibility.

Then, the roles would switch. The applicants became the audience. The audience became the show.

When it was your turn to fight, you silently pleaded with the universe that Seungcheol would mark you high as well. This was the only guarantee that you’d get a chance to spar with him, to test it out before the Marshall, who would make the final call.

Let him see, you begged. Let him see how perfectly we’d work together.

And, by some miracle, he did. In fact, he rated you first, as well.

Your sparring match went exactly how you expected - he barreled at you, and you dodged every move. He could easily take you out with a single blow, but he couldn’t get his hands on you, not when you used his own inertia against him at every turn. What you didn’t expect was your own inability to land a shot. For the whole fight, you were unable to move out of the defensive - keeping out of his reach took all of your effort.

It was a draw - the first sign of strong compatibility.

You didn’t talk after the match - your father whisked you away to recover before your second-rated match, and you didn’t see Seungcheol for the rest of the day.

The second-rated match was a dud. But you already knew, even then, that it didn’t matter.

You’d met your co-pilot. You’d found your partner.

—

He found you in the mess hall that night, dropping into an empty spot on the other side of the table, his tray in his hands. His black hair was loose and wavy, and his right arm sported a sizeable bruise that he definitely didn’t get from you.

“I know who you are,” he said by way of greeting. You raised a brow at him, waiting. “Your parents piloted Charron’s Revenge.”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “That better not be why you picked me.”

He gave his head an annoyed little flick. “Of course not. I picked you because you’re fluid - and I’m not.”

Appeased, you felt your hackles settle back down. “That’s true,” you allowed. “You’re not fluid. But you’re purposeful, and-”

You were interrupted when Yoon Jeonghan dropped into the seat to your left, chuckling under his breath as he fixed his long, dark hair into a spiky ponytail at the back of his head.

“Cherry, did you hear?” he asked you, ignoring the new-comer. “The crew for Fatal Rapids got called back in for misconduct.”

“Choi Seungcheol, Yoon Jeonghan,” you said, introducing the two young men. “Hannie does more than gossip, I promise. He’s one of the pilots for Devil’s Advocates. Their drop stats are insane.”

“In practice only,” Jeonghan demurred. “For now.”

“Cherry?” Seungcheol parroted, raising a dark brow. “That’s not what I wrote on my paper earlier.”

“Just a nickname,” you explained. When you were very small, you’d struggled with the name of your parents’ jaeger, calling it Cherry’s Revenge instead of Charron’s, and the crew - who doted on you like their own - started the habit of calling you Cherry. Somehow, it had spread, and stuck. “Only my parents use my real name. But you can call me whatever you’re comfortable with.”

“No,” he said, frowning as if deeply considering his options. “I like it.”

You folded your arms on the table, leaning in to peer at Seungcheol. “So, what’s your story? You’ve heard of me. I haven’t heard of you.”

He shrugged, glanced around, then decided he could talk freely. There’s something about being in a room that’s positively teeming with people and conversation - it gives you privacy without feeling too intimate. You’re not alone.

“Not much of a story, not like you,” he admitted. “I grew up thinking I’d take over my dad’s business. We lost my dad… then, we lost the business. I have no marketable skillset, and university was out of the question. But…” He trailed off, then met your gaze firmly. Something in his look demanded you forgo any pity or sympathy, demanded you take him seriously. “I’m strong. So I came here. I came to fight.”

You sidestepped the bruises he’d bared. “Not like me,” you repeated with a bit of a scoff. “I hate to disappoint you, but my parents are the pilots - the story is theirs. I don’t have one, not yet.”

Something playful glinted in his eyes, the first true sign of personality you’d seen. “So all the rumors about the Princess of the Shatterdome aren’t true?”

Your jaw dropped. You’d heard the nickname before - it was never meant nicely. You tried to ignore it as best you could - people could think what they wanted. When you had a crew, when you had a jaeger, you’d be able to prove them wrong. “What rumors?”

“You’re spoiled,” Jeonghan supplied, having decided he was part of the conversation after all. “Entitled.”

You spluttered as Jeonghan stood, giving you a cheerful pat on the shoulder. “And bitchy! That’s just what I’ve heard. Of course I know better. Anyway, I’ve got to go. Love ya!”

You stared incredulously after him as he disappeared, your face burning with embarrassment and your heart hammering with adrenaline. Fight, your systems told you.

If only you could.

Seungcheol bit back a smile, reaching out to pat your arm placatingly.

“I don’t…” you started to say, but your voice caught in your throat. You cleared it, tried again. “I don’t think I really deserve all that.”

He nodded, lips pushed into a semblance of a thoughtful pout. “What I’d heard,” he said calmly, “is that you’re a hell of a fighter, scary smart, and that you take no shit. Unless it’s from your friends, apparently.”

This made a bitter little laugh bubble from you. You still simmered with humiliation, feared that maybe he’d decide he didn’t want to co-pilot with you after all.

“I think it’s up to you which story gets told,” he said finally.

“Yeah,” you said, nodding. “That’s what I always said. So… let’s get started.”

—

You and Seungcheol lucked out - the team that had been recalled for misconduct were terminated from their posts in the weeks following the sparring trials, and their jaeger Fatal Rapids had been disassembled, the parts up for grabs.

You and Seungcheol repurposed Rapids’s main frame, your crew working to individualize the bot to your needs as best they could. You splurged on quad-processors for her legs to allow your jaeger to keep up with how you move - quick and lithe. Seungcheol lobbied for (and won) some extra power in the top half, and you compromised and chose a mix of red and blue sections for her paintjob.

Duellona Fury, you named her. Duellona for you, the destroyer. Fury for Seungcheol, because that was where his fight came from.

You got to know Seungcheol’s fury very well. Especially when you started trying to drift.

None of it happened fast - not the building of your machine, nor your neural handshake. In fact, you didn’t pilot Duellona Fury together for a whole calendar year.

You started with physical compatibility - you sparred almost all day, every day. You fought - with each other and against each other - until all you could do was lay on the ground and pant, blinking to make the ceiling stay in focus.

Seungcheol may not have grown up training in the Shatterdome the way you did, but he kept up without complaint. You learned his way - force and strength - and he learned the way you favored - to weave and dodge.

The fighting was the easy part.

You had never drifted with someone you had true drift compatibility with. Seungcheol had never drifted at all. The Marshall wouldn’t even consider hooking the two of you up to the machine until you went through the proper training.

On the day you and Seungcheol were officially declared as co-pilots-in-training, you both stood below the half-built shell of your towering jaeger, sparks flying and drills screaming as the crew worked on her.

Your Marshall looked seriously at his new team-in-training. “Starting tomorrow, you’ll meditate together. Talk to each other. Get deep about it. If you’ve talked about it out here-” he swept an arm across the deck, “-it won’t take hold so strongly in there.” He’d jabbed a finger in the upward direction of Duellona Fury.

Seungcheol didn’t look at you, nor the Marshall. Instead, he kept his eyes on Duellona's unfinished frame, stories above you. “Yes, Sir,” he said steadily.

Your parents weren’t technically retired yet, the year you and Seungcheol started training together. Charron’s Revenge still sat in the well below the Shatterdome. They still lived on the base, still took part in daily training. They hadn’t been called into a fight in years, though; the assignments went to the younger crews.

You took dinner in their quarters instead of the mess hall, that night.

“Congratulations,” your father said warmly from across the table. “You worked hard to get here.”

“Thank you,” you said, feeling shy beneath the praise. “I hope the drift will work for me and Choi Seungcheol.”

“What do you think of him?” your mother had asked, her sharp eyes honing in on you, watching your reactions.

“I think he’s a great fighter,” you said. “The rest… I guess I’ll have to learn.”

“Do you trust him? Can you trust him out there, when the sea and the wind are trying to knock you down, and hell itself rises up from the depths?”

You swallowed. She’s right for her intensity - they will be putting their daughter’s life in her co-pilot’s hands, every time there’s a fight. You knew firsthand how terrifying it was to stand in the tech bay and wait, not knowing if your loved ones will make it back.

You thought about how you and Seungcheol fight together in the sparring rooms. You thought about how you weaved and your opponent followed your movement, only to be knocked sideways. You thought of how Seungcheol followed your motion backwards, ducked in tandem with you to avoid a hit, and how you followed his momentum forward and up to attack. Your bodies followed each other like they were magnetized. And Seungcheol was always watching for the next hit.

“Yes,” you said, so quietly that you cleared your throat and said it again. “Yes, I trust him.”

“Then we wish you luck,” your father said, and raised his glass. “To Duellona Fury.”

“To Duellona Fury,” you echoed.

On your way out of the quarters, later, you slowed as you passed the wall where they hung their accolades and awards, the newspaper clippings, photos, and medals. Before your eyes they aged - the photographs changing through the years, no longer showing a bright, fiery couple, instead displaying proof of passing time: a baby bump, then a toddler, then a child beaming alongside them as if she’d done what they had done; greying hairs, softening bodies, deepening of wrinkles. Then the pictures stopped.

You never asked them if they missed it.

—

You and Seungcheol started meditating together the next morning; it seemed logical to begin at the easiest step. In an empty sparring room, you sat facing each other, knees touching.

“Have you done this before?” you asked, as you both settled in, shifting weight and adjusting ankles.

“Not with someone else,” he admitted, lips protruding in a bit of a pout. “Only alone.”

You nodded. You’d grown up learning all of this - the right way to fight as a team member, how to be in tune for a neural connection. It led to you teaching Seungcheol often - yet when you fought together, any leadership fell away.

“Normally,” you explained, “you focus on your breath, keeping your mind clear. But for our practice, you want to focus on our breath. We breathe together. And when your mind wanders, your awareness should be coming to peace with my presence there. Like, making a path for the neural connection - for later. So there’s no resistance.”

“Have you done this before?” Seungcheol asked.

You wobbled your head around - not yes, but not no. “I’ve practiced it - I’ve done the meditation with partners. But I’ve never moved forward to an actual drift with anyone.”

This seemed to appease him, and he settled his weight backwards, letting his hands rest near his knees.

You let your eyes float closed and inhaled, listening and feeling for Seungcheol’s inhale to end, letting your breath out when he did. It took no time to match your breaths, to let your mind go blissfully quiet. You focused on feeling open, readable - any thought that floated through your mind, you pretended he could hear, too. You tried to feel and release any defensiveness, any urge to close off.

When the timer went off, it surprised you. You opened your eyes, and the feeling that struck you was this -

It was surprising to see Seungcheol before you. It hadn’t felt like he was beside you. It had felt like he was you.

You meditated, you fought, and finally, you talked.

Laying on the sparring room floor, your head somewhere near Seungcheol’s shins, he asked you, “Where do you wish you were right now? If you weren’t here.”

You laughed at yourself before answering, knowing how silly you would sound. “In a tree.”

A disbelieving smile played on his lips, almost as if he wasn’t sure you weren’t making fun of him somehow. “A tree?”

“No, really,” you insisted, still smiling a little. “There’s not a lot of nature here, in case you didn’t notice. I grew up in the Dome - never got to leave, much.”

Seungcheol didn’t respond to this, just nodded like he understood, his small smile going a bit tight around the edges.

You frowned, reading him exactly. “You think I’m sheltered,” you observed. It wasn’t a question. He couldn’t say no.

He looked at you, then. “You were sheltered,” he said, voice low. “But when I say it, I don’t mean naive. I just think… there’s a lot of world out there. A lot of things to see. You won’t see any of it if you spend your entire life under the Dome.”

You nod, accepting this. “I won’t see any of it if it gets destroyed, either. There’s a lot of world out there - that we’re trying to keep safe.”

Seungcheol watched you intently for a moment, lips downturned and gaze heavy. Then, he asked, “Have you ever seen a kaiju? I mean - in person?”

“Sort of,” you mumbled.

He’d rolled from his back to his front, closer to you, putting you shoulder to shoulder. “Kind of seems like a yes-or-no question.”

Your lips twisted. “Then, no. But I’ve stood in the bay and listened to Mission Control talk my mom and dad through a fight dozens of times, watched Charron’s Revenge on the screens and prayed I wouldn’t see her get sawed in half.”

You stopped, trailed a finger through the thin layer of dirt on the floor. “I know it’s not the same as looking one in the face myself,” you whispered. “But the fear… shouldn’t that fear count, shouldn’t it feel the same?”

Seungcheol swallowed, trailed his own finger through the dirt until his fingertip just barely touched yours. It felt like energy sizzled in the centimeter between your pointer and his.

“When Menaceclaw attacked,” he said, “he missed my home by one block. We watched him go by from the sidewalk. I wasn’t even as tall as his foot. But even with him towering over the buildings, taking them down without even trying, I don’t think what I felt was afraid. I think I just felt resigned. Like I knew, at seven, that even though we survived this one… nothing was going to be… the same, or okay. I don’t know.”

“You knew what you lost,” you said quietly. “Part of you did.”

He looked up at you, nudged his finger into yours. “You never knew anything different. It wasn’t a loss. The fear was just always part of the deal.”

You rolled sideways, laying your head on your bicep for a pillow, regarding the dark-eyed, dark-haired young man across from you. His face scrunched in a laugh, brows furrowing and lips pouting.

“What?” he asked through the quiet laugh. “Why are you looking at me?”

“What else?” you mused. “What else am I going to find when we go tiptoeing through your memories?”

He smiled faintly and then mirrored you, laying his head on his arm, his eyes swimming as he thought.

“A lot of my family, probably,” he said. “A lot of fighting. Menaceclaw. Probably some very mid sex.”

You laughed without meaning to. “My condolences?”

He grinned at you, pleased. “Eh, what can you do? I try to treat everything like a learning experience.”

You laughed again, and his smile grew, gums showing. “What about you?” he asked off-handedly.

“Mid sex?” you asked, eyebrows raising. “I hate to inform you, Choi Seungcheol, but I don’t do anything mid.”

“No,” he protested, laughing, reaching out to gently shake your shoulder. “I meant - what will we see when it’s your turn?”

“The Dome,” you said, half-joking - but it was true. “Training. My parents. Their fights, their accomplishments.”

And, as a true drift partner should, he understood what you weren’t saying.

“We’ll have our turn,” he promised, pushing himself to sit up, then stand, reaching down to help you up. “We’re gonna be fucking unstoppable. Let’s go again.”

Fire sparking behind your ribs, you nodded seriously, then reached up to take his hand.

—

Weeks of sparring melded into months of meditation and talking. The next phase of training co-pilots was learning to drift in one of the simulators - but not in a jaeger. Not yet.

You and Seungcheol finished training in one of the sparring rooms shortly before dinner would be served in the mess hall.

“Meet you there?” you asked, still half-breathless, your body starting to ache as the adrenaline from a fight melted away.

“Sure,” he agreed, and you disappeared into the changing rooms, scrubbing the sweat and dirt away as quickly as you could. You changed into something clean and made your way to the mess hall.

You scanned for familiar faces, frowning when your normal table seemed to be occupied by a team of new recruits that you didn’t know.

Seungcheol appeared at your elbow, frowning dramatically. “Our table,” he whined.

“There’s Chan and Wylie,” you said, nodding to another corner where your friends sat practically on top of each other. Chan and Wylie had never understood personal space, not when it came to one another. They barely noticed when you and Seungcheol plopped onto the benches next to them, but Seungkwan did.

“You’re bleeding, Cherry,” he said, before inhaling an entire mouthful of rice.

You started to scan your arms - you didn’t feel pain anywhere - but Seungcheol found it first, gingerly swiping his thumb along your cheekbone.

“Sorry, Cherry,” he murmured. “I should’ve pulled that punch.”

“No you shouldn’t have,” you grumbled, swatting at his hand and wiping roughly at the spot, your hand coming away with a small smear of red - nothing to be alarmed about. It would stop on its own. “You pull shots in practice, you’ll hesitate in the field.”

“She’s right,” Chan said from his physical tangle with Wylie. “What you practice will show up in your muscle memory. You’ve got to mean it, every time.”

Wylie reached across his arms and took a bite from his plate, then asked, “Did you guys see the new jaeger?”

“I did,” Seungkwan said eagerly. “Chaser Supernova, or something like that? She’s smaller, but she’s supposed to be fast.”

“Is that her team at our normal table?” you asked dryly, shooting the rookies a dark look over your shoulder. Seungcheol jostled you playfully, sending you a smile that brought you back.

The bench dipped to your left, and you turned to see Soonyoung - one of Seungkwan’s two co-pilots - settle in.

“Talking about Supernova?” he asked, hands busy opening his drink. “They seem okay - they’re a trio, like us.”

“Where is Seokmin?” Seungkwan asked, scanning the room. “I haven’t seen him in like two hours.”

“Talking to Jihoon, I think,” Soonyoung answered absently, focused on his meal. “He lost another co-pilot today.”

“Not again,” you and Seungcheol both blurted, matching levels of exasperation.

“That was freaky,” Wylie said, just as Chan told you, “You two are acting like us, now.”

“We do not need another Chan-and-Wylie,” Seungkwan said seriously, shaking his head.

Seungcheol sent you a sideways, sheepish grin.

“We won’t be,” he promised the group, but his eyes were still on you.

—

The simulators were built to be exact replicas of the conn-pod, so that trainees could get used to the feeling of being strapped in, of moving with the gear. But the real purpose was to practice the neural handshake without risking damage - to the jaeger, to the tech bay, to each other.

“Don’t be nervous,” you told Seungcheol as the tech team worked around you both like a choreographed dance.

“I’m never nervous,” he said, suddenly cocky.

If you could reach his hand from where you were strapped in, you would have. If you understood anything about Seungcheol - if any part of him mirrored you - it was the way he showcased bravado, the way he used it as his most-familiar mask.

“It’s only practice,” you reminded him. “And it’s only me.”

He licked his lips quickly, eyes darting to the side and then back to you. Then, he gave you a small nod.

“Normally,” your chief tech - a beautiful woman with jet-black hair named Nainsi - told you, “right now, you would be ready for the drop. In the simulator, we skip that step because we aren’t dropping onto a jaeger. Instead, we’ll engage the pilot to pilot connection protocol sequence.”

You and Seungcheol nod in tandem.

“You’re all good?” Nainsi checks. “Then I’m going back into the tech bay - you’ll hear me through the intercom.”

Alone in the simulator, you met Seungcheol’s gaze and couldn’t help the excited grin that spread across your face. Finally, finally you were here. Once you could do this successfully, the next step was to fight in your own jaeger - to drop into Duellona Fury and walk into the sea.

He didn’t return your smile, instead giving you a tight nod, expression serious.

Over the intercom, you said clearly, “Ready and aligned.”

Nainsi answered, “Prepare for neural handshake.”

You took a deep breath and steeled yourself as the artificial voice of the simulator’s tech system spoke around you, 3… 2… 1… neural handshake initiating…

At first, you thought something went wrong. Everything went red behind your eyelids, and you blinked, instinctively trying to clear it away.

The red faded, and you found yourself in Seungcheol’s childhood home. You didn’t know how you knew that - you just knew. It was as familiar to you, inside the drift, as your own. You knew that to your left was a small kitchen with two broken floor tiles; you knew - without having ever seen it - that to your right was a narrow hallway that led to a bathroom and two small bedrooms.

Two small boys played on the carpet; rather, the smaller one played with some toy cars while the other watched the television with rapture. Behind them, at the kitchen table, a woman typed busily on an outdated laptop, bags heavy under her eyes.

Somewhere around you, a voice floated by, telling you, neural handshake strong and holding.

You could see Seungcheol in your periphery - the adult Seungcheol, the Seungcheol of now - as he looked at his mother, his brother, himself.

“It’s not real,” you reminded him gently. “It’s just a memory.”

“I know,” he said back, voice hushed, as if he might scare them away. “It’s just… good to see them.”

The house evaporated as gently as morning dew under a mid-morning sun; you stood in a schoolyard. Seungcheol, the small one, had a bloody lip and a mean swing.

You felt a rush of affection for him - him, the child, face contorting with misplaced anger, using strength as a bandage. You wanted to stand in front of him, between him and the anger, him and the other kids, and let him take a breath. You wanted to tell him to step with his punch to get more power. You wanted to put a hand on his shoulder and tell him, you’re going to be fine.

And he knew all of it, because he was in your mind.

Seungcheol - your Seungcheol - walked away from the swarm of children egging on the fight and opened a door. You followed.

Inside was not the school, but a hospital room. Your body jolted forward, distracting and alarming. You heard, faintly, a series of beeps, that robotic voice needling in your ears, saying, calibration failure… recalibrating in 3… 2… 1…

“It’s only a memory,” you said again, but the warning beeps were coming stronger, louder, more clearly. The hospital room looked opaque, and Seungcheol walked backwards towards you, away from it, herding you both out of the room. The room - a bed, a pulled curtain, a lot of white - flickered, like a glitch, and then vanished, leaving you standing in the simulator.

Neural handshake disengaged…

“Seungcheol!” you yelled, pulling your helmet off and wheeling on him as best you could with most of your body still strapped in. “What the hell was that? You pushed me out!”

He was breathing hard, eyes a little wild. “Not that,” he said, a little ragged. “I’ll let you in but - not that.”

“You don’t get to choose!” you snapped. Part of you knew this was just growing pains, he’d never drifted before, he was learning. But the rest of you smarted and stung - both from his rejection and from your failure to train, to succeed, to check off this final step before you could get inside your jaeger. “It’s kind of an all-or-nothing thing!”

He let out a billow of air, reaching a hand up to rub at his face. “Sorry. I’ll… let’s try again.”

You didn’t answer, fuming silently instead.

“I’m sorry, Cherry,” he said. “The stuff with my dad…”

“You can’t cherry-pick what we see and what we don’t,” you fired back. His eyes shot to yours and his mouth quirked and you read the joke all over his face. “Don’t you laugh, Seungcheol, it’s not funny!”

But you were laughing through the scolding.

“Stop,” you whined.

Your anger defused, he looked at you again, taking a bracing breath. “It’s not about you,” he tried to explain. “I’m not keeping you out. I’m keeping me out.”

“Don’t chase the rabbit,” you told him, shaking your head. “See what it wants you to see and move on. Find the next door. If you stand there and let your hurt - or your, I don’t know… grief - rise up… that’s when we’re going to have trouble.”

“Find the next door,” he repeated, eyes on the floor. “Got it.”

“You can’t push it away,” you reminded him, “but you don’t have to stay in it, either.”

He nodded, eyes already lighting up, ready to go again.

The second time, you saw him steel himself before opening that same door, watching carefully as he shuffled inside, only looking sideways at the hospital room that materialized around you.

“Seungcheol.”

He turned to look at you, wide-eyed, but you hadn’t called him. The voice, weak and hoarse, had come from the other side of the fluttering curtain.

The glitching started almost immediately - the image around you flickering like a bad wall projection. Something rocked beneath your feet, an earthquake only inside your minds.

You opened your mouth, started to tell him, you don’t have to stay, to remind him that he could move forward. Instead, you heard yourself say, “I’m here.”

The tremors under your feet quivered to a stop. You watched with trepidation and Seungcheol closed his eyes and took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. Then, he held his hand out, waiting.

You slipped your hand into his, and then he turned and continued walking, ignoring his father’s memory calling out to him. The flickering stopped, the picture you were part of brightening again as you found the next door, stepped through, left his pain behind.

—

It got easier quickly. Seungcheol’s ability to press on, to maintain focus, strengthened.

The strolls through your mind went easier - you’d had years to practice maintaining focus, waiting until after to let the emotions hit you.

Seungcheol learned to be ready for you, after. He’d sit with you, silent, and breathe in tandem as you worked to let go, to release the images of Charron’s Revenge on the tech bay screen, the sounds of your parents’ frantic communication as they fought together, the fear crawling its way up your legs every time until someone in the bay said, “Charron’s Revenge, cleared to return.” The loneliness of being the only kid in the Dome, having no outlet except fighting. Everything that threatened your mind while you piloted, everything that you had to save for later - save for him.

You were both freshly turned twenty when you got green-lit to drive.

“Seungcheol!” you called across the mess hall, practically racing to your table. He turned, eyebrows raised, as you crossed the large room.

“We’re approved to drop!” you told him excitedly. It churned in you - finally, finally you could fight, you could prove what you could do, you could help. “We’re on the drop schedule for tomorrow!”

His grin was unfettered, unfiltered, just for you. He reached up a fist and you bumped it enthusiastically. You were too excited to eat, too excited to sleep. You tossed and turned, imagining experiencing a drop for the first time, imagining striding through the mighty sea like it was nothing, imagining staring down hell itself and bringing it to its knees.

You were still awake when you heard the alarms down the hall. Yours didn’t go off, because you weren’t on duty, weren’t approved to fight.

Down the hall, there was a flurry of commotion - shouting, rushing, people pushing past you as they pulled on boots and jackets.

“Cat-3 in the west bay,” someone shouted.

“Deploying Devil’s Advocate!”

You reached the tech bay, trying to stay out of the way but not unseen. When the Marshall strode by, you stepped sideways.

“Let us drop,” you said quickly, knowing time was precious. “It’ll be like practice. We can be back-up. We’ll hang back.”

“Absolutely not,” the Marshall said, already moving to work past you. “You’re not approved yet. We don’t need a liability right now.”

“We’re scheduled for tomorrow!” you protested, and then you felt a hand on your shoulder.

“We’ll get our turn,” Seungcheol told you quietly. Of course he’d come out, of course he found you.

You deflated. “It could have been us. We are hours from approval.”

He gave your shoulder a tiny shake. “We’ll get our turn,” he repeated. “Don’t make trouble.”

You glowered, but you knew he was right. “Fine,” you grumbled as Joshua and Jeonghan slinked past you in matching jackets and matching shit-eating grins. You stayed out of the way as they prepared to drop.

You stayed through the fight, listened to the control room buzz and chatter, until you heard, “Devil’s Advocate, cleared to return.”

Only then did you try to go back to sleep. Seungcheol gave your shoulder one more squeeze.

“Tomorrow,” he promised.

“Tomorrow,” you repeated.

—

Some people feel God at church. The history of tradition and the sanctity of ritual speak to them, help them feel part of something, help them feel that unnameable swell of something spiritual.

Some people feel God in nature. The patterns of the universe, the way math exists without human touch, the harmonies and patterns that seem too intricate for coincidence help them believe in a planner’s touch. The beauty of the outdoors allows them to wonder, to feel like they belong as a piece of this clockwork.

But you - you felt God when you stood before your jaeger, marveling at the power, the beauty, how it feels like yours, how it feels like Seungcheol before you’re even inside it. Duellona Fury promises you power, promises you purpose.

That hand was on your shoulder again, and it slid down to the center of your back before removing itself.

Beside you, Seungcheol stared up at your glorious machine.

“She looks sick,” he said, the grin taking over his face.

“I can’t wait to fuck shit up,” you murmured, your reverent tone at odds with the flippancy of your words.

“Ready?” the Marshall asked you, coming up to your left. “We’ll get you calibrated and dropped, and then you’ll do a lap of the bay. We’re sending out Pretty Savage just in case you run into trouble.”

The defensiveness rose in you quick, like a snakebite.

“We don’t need a babysitter,” Seungcheol said, voice hard. You reached for his hand and gave it a squeeze - a reminder to watch it, just as his hand on your shoulder frequently did for you.

“It’s just safety protocol.” The Marshall was unphased by the outburst. “Have fun, you two. Enjoy your first joy-ride.”

You screamed when you dropped, the exhilaration rushing out of you as Duellona Fury fell story after story before slowing and attaching to your jaeger’s mainframe.

Goosebumps raised along your arms when the Shatterdome’s sea-doors slid open, shudders traveling your body as you and Seungcheol stepped together, Duellona Fury stepping with you, her gigantic, metal form following every movement.

For the first time in your whole, careful life, you felt powerful. Your jaeger cut through the ocean waves like they were nothing, making an easy perimeter of the bay. In your head, you could somehow both hear and feel Seungcheol’s delight, his low-simmering desire to fight, to do something a perfect mirror of your own.

“How is it?” Soonyoung’s voice crackled in your ears, reminding you that Pretty Savage wasn’t far behind you.

“Incredible,” Seungcheol answered him, at the same time that you said, “It’s everything.”

It didn’t matter that you came from a family of pilots. It didn’t matter that you were raised in the Dome, training since you were young. None of that mattered. You were born for this - born to fight for your planet, born for Duellona Fury, born for Choi Seungcheol.

—

The west bay became Duellona’s playground; you and Seungcheol were often assigned to patrol there.

It was only a few months in that you faced a kaiju for the first time.

“Come in, Duellona Fury,” Nainsi’s voice came through. “We have a reading just a few miles north of you. Cat-2. Approaching at -”

Duellona Fury was turning due north before the command was even given.

“Are you ready for this?” you shouted to Seungcheol as Duellona slid through the water, the adrenaline singing in your system already.

“You know I am,” he answered, something hard in it, and the thrill in your stomach sparked.

When the sea split in half, the kaiju rising from the depths with an unearthly roar, you sank into a defensive stance, feeling Seungcheol move beside you, doing the same.

“Let’s fucking go,” Seungcheol said darkly, and launched forward, your arms rearing back for momentum before the first swing. The punch landed solidly, your whole body shaking once as the kaiju faltered backwards a few steps.

It opened its mouth and you glimpsed three rows of teeth bigger than a cow before it was lunging at you; Duellona Fury lurched. You tried to duck sideways as Seungcheol tried to move towards your opponent.

The moment of indecision cost you - the kaiju got its teeth on Duellona’s shoulder, knocking you back several steps. Beside you, Seungcheol roared as sparks flew near the bite.

“Are we breached?” you yelled, trying to steady your balance again.

“Not yet!” he yelled back, and you swung again, a hit landing hard enough to knock the kaiju loose, spitting it back into the sea.

You tried to move into a defensive crouch again; again, the jaeger faltered.

“Cherry!” Seungcheol yelled, desperation laced in his voice. “Cherry, don’t fight me!”

“Move with me!” you answered, and he did, miraculously, Duellona dodging left before an incoming attack.

Don’t fight me.

You rocked forward with Seungcheol as soon as you were clear of the kaiju’s trajectory, just as you’d done in practice thousands of times. Back in sync, Duellona Fury landed a kick to the kaiju’s middle that sent it stumbling.

“We’ve got him,” you said, feeling a win.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Seungcheol warned you. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the kaiju exploded from the dark ocean, limbs flailing as it flew towards you.

Duellona’s arms came up and locked it in battle, the impact shaking you so hard that your teeth chattered against each other. You groaned with exertion as you tried to match its strength.

“I don’t think we can hold it,” you managed through grit teeth.

“We’ve got this,” your partner promised, and with a mighty shove, you managed to flip the beast over your shoulder and beneath the waves.

“Drop the bombs and head for the east side,” you said quickly, already moving. Duellona Fury followed your command, turning and starting an easy run through the bay’s churning waters, away from where the kaiju was struggling to its feet, furious and vengeful. As she ran, she dropped three small explosives, about sixty feet apart. The explosives slipped into the ocean depths.

“Ready?” Seungcheol asked, a little breathless. “Are we far enough away?”

“Light him up,” you replied. Seungcheol reached up and tapped the button; somewhere behind you, the ocean exploded.

—

“How’s your shoulder?” you asked, later, in the med bay.

“Not that bad,” Seungcheol said, but you could see the blood-stains on the bandaging.

“It won’t happen again,” you promised. “I think I just… practiced alone for so long. I forgot to listen. I’m sorry.”

Seungcheol shook his hand, eyes finding yours. “There’s nothing to forgive, Cherry. Forget about it.” Then, he brightened. “You know what I want to do?”

“What?” you asked, not entirely past feeling guilty.

His smile was devilish. “I want to go celebrate our first fucking kill.”

– 

You marked the passing of two years in statistics.

Three hundred and forty-six explosives detonated.

Two hundred and eighty-three drops. Two hundred and eight-three kills. 

Seventy-two mainframe repairs.

Twenty-eight achievement awards.

Nine television interviews.

Six upgrades.

One ill-informed “vacation” during which you both itched with anxiety, spending the whole time messaging your friends back in the Shatterdome desperately, praying you wouldn’t miss a fight in which you were needed.

Seven hundred and thirty days of living in and around Seungcheol’s mind and heart. But that stat should’ve gone first.

It was a good high. Your team had a good run.

It wasn’t a kaiju that reduced it to ash, not an attack that took your team out of the rotation of main fighters and sent your jaeger to gather rust and dust below the Dome. It was your own stupid heart.

There were a lot of moments that could have been it. Each time you walked into a fight knowing the danger, each time he ended up in the med bay reeking of antibacterial ointment and resentment. Each time you slid into your place beside him - space he saved only for you. Each time his voice bidding you goodnight from the bottom bunk was the last thing you heard at the end of the day. Any of these moments might have been the one to make you stop, gasp, suddenly slammed with understanding. That you loved him, that he was everything you couldn’t bear to be without, that he was part of you. But they weren’t.

There was no moment of realization at all.

Instead, it slowly seeped into your consciousness, as gently and naturally as morning dew collecting on pre-dawn petals. The knowledge clung to you, as impossible to ignore as damp feet after running barefoot through the yard just after sunrise.

If you knew something, that meant your co-pilot would know it, too.

Unless you tucked it away, pushed it down deep and cast his attention elsewhere, a mental sleight-of-hand. Look here instead. 

You were twenty-three, on a routine patrol, when Mission Control radioed Duellona that there was a reading in the bay.

“Looks like it’s only a Cat-1,” Mission Control told you.

“On it,” you told them, feeling your body already mirroring Seungcheol’s as Duellona picked up her pace, striding through the waves. 

You glanced sideways at him, and immediately wished you hadn’t. He was already zoned in, eyes focused and jaw sharp as he concentrated. 

He caught your gaze for only a second. “Focus, Cherry,” he cautioned. “Don’t get cocky.”

“I would never,” you retorted, and he laughed. You were both cocky; you both knew it.

For a second, things felt better. 

The fight was almost easy, when the ocean seemed to split in two and the waves fell away like wrapping paper to reveal the kaiju you’d been sent for. 

You swung and ducked, dropping explosives strategically, Seungcheol moving in unison with you. There was something graceful about it - something beautiful in the sync, something holy in the way your muscles mimicked each other’s. 

This is what happens when sunlight hits morning dew: it warms, lifts, makes the air humid and sticky until it burns away. 

It rose up in you, your love for him, infusing the air around you, infusing the neural handshake that he was deeply imbedded in.

No. 

You panicked, tried to do several things at once - tried to shove the feeling down, tried to think of something else, tried to push Seungcheol’s consciousness out of yours.

Duellona Fury lurched around you, shuddering. 

“Cherry!” Seungcheol screamed to your left, and then the kaiju hit, its full weight slamming into Duellona’s mainframe.

You both staggered, trying to right yourselves, as the machines around you blinked and beeped and rebooted. 

Seungcheol grunted under the neural weight of driving alone as you gasped and closed your eyes, trying desperately to fix it. Around you, you heard the floating words - recalibrating.

“Recalibrate faster!” you shouted, glancing sideways to see your co-pilot struggling to hold the monster in place, his face contorting with effort, arms straining against the machinery. He bared his gritted teeth, exhaling in a hiss between them. 

You gave yourself a shake, bouncing on the balls of your feet, desperate for the connection to take again so you could pick up your half, take the literal weight from him. As soon as you felt the neural handshake, you gave a mighty shove and Duellona flipped the monster backwards, the ocean receding and then coming back to slam her shins, swallowing the monster whole.

You both sank into a defensive stance, ready for the beast to rise again.

“What was that?” Seungcheol demanded, later, as he sat in the med bay, waiting for his nosebleed to stop. The nosebleed you’d caused by letting him carry a neural load meant for two.

“I don’t know,” you lied, still panicked and desperate. 

“Bullshit,” Seungcheol countered, eyes narrowed. He reached up and pulled the cotton away from his face, examining it. “I’m fine now,” he announced, and tossed the wad into a nearby trash bin, standing.

You fought the urge to cower, knowing he’d never let it go if you did. You followed him silently out of the med bay and back towards your dormitories. Halfway there, he slowed, then stopped.

Then, more calmly this time, he asked, “What happened, Cherry? You pushed me out.”

There was a slight pout to it, a sliver of hurt, and it sliced through you like something tangible, like you were actually wounded from it, like it might actually bleed.

“I don’t know,” you repeated. Guilt poked at you until you relented, gave him something that was at least partly true.  “I got scared.” 

“That can’t happen, and you know it,” he said seriously, his large frame casting a long shadow to your left as he leaned into your space. “You can’t keep secrets - that’s piloting 101. We’ve got to handle it. You know what’s at stake here.”

You did; you did, and that was entirely the problem. It wasn’t just feelings, it wasn’t just your relationship with Seungcheol at stake. It was your relationship with your co-pilot - your ability to fight was at stake, your ability to keep others safe. Your legacy.

Your parents’ wall of pictures flashed in your mind.

“I’m going to my mom and dad’s for a while,” you said quietly. 

He nodded, let you run away - trusted you to come back to him when you were ready, trusted you to let him in.

You weren’t sure if he was right or wrong, as you walked away and left him behind.

You didn’t go to your parents’, though. Instead, you went to the tech bay and sat, watching Duellona undergo simple repairs from her fight. You stayed there, the metal cold beneath your thighs, watching the tech team buff over a scratch on your jaeger’s torso, until someone dropped into the spot next to you, bumping their shoulder roughly into yours.

“Where’s Seungcheol?” Wylie, who co-piloted Fury Striker with Chan, was your closest friend in the Dome besides Seungcheol. 

“He’s pissed at me,” you answered, looking sideways, because the question had really meant, why isn’t Seungcheol with you? 

You weren’t sure she’d understand what you were going through - she and Chan had been obsessed with each other since they were kids. Neither of them had ever had to fear that their love for each other would mess anything up. It had been part of their deal from the start.

“What’d you do?” Wylie demanded, turning her full, unfettered attention on you. You wanted to shrink from the intensity of it - but that was always how Wylie worked: full wattage, all the time.

“Almost got us killed by a fucking Cat-1 tonight,” you muttered, angry at yourself, angry at your heart.

Wylie smacked your arm hard enough to send you sideways. “Cherry!” she scolded. 

“There was something I didn’t want him to see.” You said it in your head first, weighed the words, then forced them through your teeth. You hoped she’d just know what it was, hoped you wouldn’t have to force those words past muscle and bone, too.

Wylie’s face dropped into irritation. “Cherry,” she repeated, disappointment dripping from the two syllables.

You looked up at Duellona Fury again. 

“You can’t do that,” she told you, giving your ankle a little kick for emphasis. “You know you can’t do that.”

You can’t love him? Or, you can’t keep secrets from him?

You didn’t ask. You didn’t want to know the answer.

Seungcheol was waiting up for you when you finally returned to the dorm. You opened the door to find the first room - an entryway and kitchen, both - dimly lit. Beyond it, in the small sitting space, Seungcheol sat facing the door, his chin in his hand.

You knew the look on his face. You knew it so well that you almost ran from it, almost turned right around and went back out to the hallway.

Brows slightly furrowed, mouth a straight line, jaw tight. Eyes focused, locked in. It was the face he made in training before he bodied someone. It was the face he made in the field before an offensive strike. It meant he had his sights on a target, a problem, and he was about to throw everything he had at it.

And right now, you were the problem.

“Hey?” you tried meekly.

He nodded. Licked his lips. Stood. 

He’s pissed at me, you’d told Wylie. The energy radiating from your co-pilot was much more complex than that, the air around you palpably tense and teetering.

“How was it at your parents’?” he asked, voice low. 

You took one tentative step closer. “I didn’t go,” you admitted. One lie between you was already more than you wanted. “I watched them patch up Duellona instead. Talked to Wylie a little.”

He nodded, eyes still on you. Nervousness coursed through you, but it would be a lie - another one - to say it wasn’t laced with a little excitement. He was stunning, always, but like this - it almost took your breath away.

If he was in your mind right now, there’d be no question. He’d know all of it. The attraction, the desire, the fear, the affection, the love, the need. All of it. 

His eyes caught on a bruise peeking out from the short sleeve of your top. “You should’ve had them look at that,” he said, reaching out like he wanted to run his fingers over the dark splotch, but he was just too far away, fingertips closing around the air just an inch or two away. 

You shook your head. “You needed attention first. You carried the neural load alone.” Because of me.

“Only for a minute.”

“A minute too long. I’m… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

It hung between you. You don’t know if you’d inched forward or he had, or both, but you were close enough to touch now when you hadn’t been just seconds ago.

He lifted his eyes, his gaze locking on yours. In the dim room, his eyes shone black. “You pushed me out.”

It was an accusation, but it was also a question.

“I’m sorry,” you repeated, barely able to say it, your voice coming out in a hoarse whisper. “Seungcheol, I was scared.”

Maybe he was in your head. Maybe he did know all of it.

“Don’t be,” he told you. “Don’t be scared.”

His arms were around you though you didn’t see him move. It wasn’t the first time you’d let him embrace you - after a fight, in relief, or in victorious delight, or sometimes just in sleepy affection at the end of a long day. It was far from the first time that you’d found comfort in the space between his arms, strong and capable around your frame, your forehead pressed against his sternum as his heart beat directly into your bones. 

But it was the first time that his fingers, confident and sure, tipped under your chin, guiding you to look up at him, guiding your mouth to meet his.

You don’t know if you melted or exploded - it was somehow both at once. You gripped his back, feeling the muscles move beneath his t-shirt, relaxing into his hold and focusing on the feel of his full lips firm and hungry against your own. This was everything - everything you’d wanted, everything you were afraid of, everything you needed, everything that could rip your life apart.

You didn’t mean to whine, but it slipped up your throat and into the gasped space between your lips and his as you tried to pull in a desperate breath. He responded with a grunt, walking you backwards until the edge of the kitchen counter jutted into your lower back. His hands traveled, up to the back of your neck, back down to the slight curve of your waist, around to the back of your ass. He tugged your hips against his roughly, and you let your head fall back, panting, head spinning.

“Cherry,” he breathed against the newly bared stretch of your neck, his lips close enough to drag against your skin as he spoke.

Your hands found the back of his neck, gave the slightest tug upwards, and he followed, bringing his mouth back to yours. His tongue pressed yours briefly, your moan muffled entirely by his mouth as you tried to press him closer, closer, as if you wanted your rib-cages to meld, to slip together like fitting puzzle pieces. 

His hand slipped lower from your ass and wrapped around your thighs, taking only a second to lift you onto the counter behind you. You wrapped yourself around him immediately, pulling him into the space between your legs, arms around his neck, pulling him in, wanting to feel every bit of him against you. 

His hands found the hem of your shirt and lifted; you raised your arms in compliance and felt the cotton slip over your head and your hands.

“Yours,” you murmured, but he had already reached back between his shoulder blades, his own top joining yours on the floor.

Your hands found him on their own, sliding over his skin, fingers dipping between muscles, thumbs sweeping over shadows.

You kissed until you turned liquid, molten, your fingers wrapped in his hair. His fingers mapped every inch of your skin, as if his job was to report back on every previously unknown dip, every rough circle, every beauty mark or blemish. His fingers traced them all, his hands passing over you reverently.

The brush of his bare chest against your own was torturous; delicious until you were full, until you couldn’t take it anymore, until the electric-sharp thrill became uncomfortable. You tilted backwards, creating more space between your torsos but pushing your hips firmly into his.

You both groaned at the contact. You could feel the heat and weight of him now, and everything instinctual within you urged you to shift further, to bring that heat and heaviness closer to the part of you that ached for it. 

He pressed his hips into you without reservation, your core clenching in response to the movement and the friction. 

Then he leaned back, his hands gripping the edge of the counter, his arms bracketing you on either side, his chest heaving as he struggled to control his breathing. He drank you in, his eyes as molten as you felt. You leaned back on your elbows and met his gaze.

The moment expanded; nothing existed but his eyes and the pant of his breath and the way he smelled like he’d just finished a fight and the way he felt between your thighs, unmovable and steady.

Neither of you was connected to jaeger machinery, but you may as well have been, because you knew without a shadow of a doubt that your minds were connected, the drift be damned. Your eyes locked, you knew he felt everything you felt - the gravity of what you were doing, the love that drove you, the fire coursing through you. If there was going to be hesitation or questioning, this was the moment, this was the pause. But you were one, your minds were one, and there was none of that. 

His unvoiced question definitively answered by the certainty that flowed between you, Seungcheol moved to lift you again, taking you easily from the countertop into the dark of the room you share, settling you on your back on his bottom bunk.

Above you, mostly shadowed, was your other half, the only person who knew and understood every cobwebbed corner of your consciousness, the only person who had walked through your mind and found himself mirrored in every way that mattered. He was beautiful in the fractured light, his expression serious and gaze intense. 

You reached up to slide your thumb along his jaw and his eyes fluttered closed, his breath leaving him as in relief, as if you’d made some kind of admission. 

Making love to Seungcheol felt like drifting. His eyes on you as his fingers pulled you apart felt the same as the careful way he’d watch you when your memories got emotional, like he was watching for any sign that you weren’t okay, that you needed more or less or him. 

The way his breath and shoulders shuddered when he pressed into you for the first time felt the same as when he faltered in face of his father’s memory; both times, his fingers laced through yours and held tight until you could both breathe again.

He felt how you’d always known he would. Perfect - a perfect fit for you, a physical compatibility you had never tested but had always trusted would be there. He took you apart without even trying, and all you could do was hold onto him, feel all of him, feel all of it, and try to remember to breathe.

You didn’t speak as you moved together in the dark; the only sounds in the tight room were muted gasps, tiny moans muffled against necks, skin on skin, the obscene squelching sounds that accompanied each snap of his hips. You didn’t say the words that your lips tried to form - it’s so much, go slow for a little, Seungcheol, I love you, more - please, don’t stop. Maybe he heard them. Maybe this was a different way to drift, one that didn’t need wires.

You did your best to hold his gaze, losing sight of him only when you strained up to kiss him, when you nuzzled your face into the warmth between his neck and shoulder and gasped against a wave of sensation, when you couldn’t help but close them as they rolled back, your toes curling. 

He pressed his forehead to yours when he finished, your name slipping out of him, as if it had been literally squeezed from his lungs. “Cherry… Cherry…”

You lay together in silence for a long time, feeling your hearts slow, your skin cool. Your thumb traced his jaw again and again, slow, worshipful. “Cheol,” you whispered. My Cheol. My everything. You didn’t say the rest as you lay together in the quiet, in the dark, your heartbeats competing. 

You didn’t know that you’d drifted together for the last time. You didn’t know that your ability to neural connect could be broken.

–

The wind whips around you, stinging your face. You barely flinch. When you’d first relocated here, three years ago, the cold had made you literally cry during your first month. Just from having to walk from the door of the dormitory across the yard to the mess hall dorm, the intensity of it had sent you spiraling into misery - damning the circumstances that had sent you here, away from everyone and everything you knew and loved, to a place where the air hurt. 

You were sure it would hurt, this intensely, forever.

But time eased the sting, and despite your doubts you did adjust. Now the early morning wind feels bracing and refreshing rather than painful. You’ve adjusted to a lot of things since relocating to a small training center in Alakanuk, Alaska: the climate, the food, the no-frills campus you lived and worked on. Being away from your parents, from Wylie and Chan and Seungkwan and Jeonghan and all the other pilots you were friends with at the Shatterdome.

Being away from Seungcheol. Being partnerless, a half instead of a whole. 

Being unable to pilot, unable to fight. 

Being brokenhearted.

Just like the cold, the pain of your losses was the same - the sting of heartbreak and loneliness and homesickness faded to something ignorable, something you could keep tucked tight in the back of your mind. 

You can hear the noise from inside the mess hall before you even cross the courtyard. There are short of fifty girls ranging from ages seven to eighteen being housed here, but from the noise you’d swear it was at least a hundred. 

The buildings are single-storied, painted with a heavily-chipping grey-blue that sometimes seems to belong to the mist you often get rolling in from the ocean. When you’d first come, you’d legitimately thought they were painted that way as camouflage, meant to blend in with the sea. The other trainers had a good laugh about that. 

As you cross the courtyard between the trainers’ dorms and the mess hall, you breathe deeply, eyes on the birds alight above you. After a lifetime in the Shatterdome, you don’t take for granted the fresh air you’re afforded as you pass between buildings, outside, the sky open and changing above. You don’t take for granted the rhythm of the ocean, the cries of the gulls, nor the distant treeline.

It was Seungcheol who had noted that you were sheltered, having never lived outside of the Dome. 

It was Seungcheol you could blame - at least halfway - for your relocation here, where there wasn’t a jaeger or even a city for hundreds of miles. 

When you pull open the flimsy door to the mess hall, the noise triples. Several of the girls call out to greet you, and you give them a quick wave as you head to the table where the staff eats.

“You’re later than normal,” one of the other instructors notes as you reach for a piece of bread.

You shrug lightly, unbothered. “Still have plenty of time before the first class. What day is today, Thursday? I’ve got the little ones first, right?”

The all-girls training center is meant to teach fighting and the groundworks for drifting, but no jaegers are housed here, no teams launch into the icy bay. The girls here will grow up to pilot - if they get selected, if they get paired with a partner. 

You’re mostly here to teach them to fight, the way you trained in the Dome, but you do plenty more. Help brush hair in the mornings, console tearful faces, teach games and sports, mediate arguments. You also got sucked into running one literacy class a week, though you still haven’t figured out how that happened. 

It would be a lie to say this wasn’t fulfilling, that you didn’t love the girls you cared for, that you weren’t happy here with the ocean and birds and trees and laughter. In many ways, the seclusion of this training center is exactly what you needed to get back on your feet, to find strength in yourself, to heal with distance and time.

But, god, what you would give for a real fight. What you would give to feel both loved and threatened by Wylie, to rib at the guys, to hug your mom. What you would give to hear Seungcheol’s teasing pout, to catch his gaze across the span of your jaeger and know what his body and yours will do, to feel his fingers just barely graze your back when he knows you need to be reminded to focus.

The final time you’d tried, the neural connection never took. It was like trying to connect with a stranger. It had simply been still, a thing that was never alive.

“Don’t do this,” Seungcheol had begged, and that had been the nail in the coffin.

Don’t do this, he’d said. It had landed like blame. Like everything was your fault, and only yours. Like you had broken the connection on purpose, were keeping him out, barricading your mind from his when you desperately wanted everything to go right back to normal.

After that failure, you didn’t tell him you were asking to be reassigned. You didn’t want to give him the chance to say don’t do this a second time.

You’ve just ended a class, the girls starting to filter out through the training room’s side door towards the mess hall for lunch, when the center’s Administrator calls your name from the door.

“There’s a call for you on my line. I have them holding.”

A call? 

Adrenaline races through you; it has to be an emergency. Your parents and friends can reach you on your own device, which is tucked into your back pocket. To call the mainline here at the center means this is a base-to-base call, not a personal one.

You’ve only been in this office a handful of times in your few years here, and you shuffle awkwardly around the desk and pick up the receiver that sits abandoned on the chipped, wooden desktop. 

You greet the person on the line with your real name. 

“Cherry?”

Your Marshall - your old Marshall, from the Dome - sounds unsure if he has the right person on the line. No one has called you Cherry in three years. Even your parents have used your given name the few times they’ve said it on your weekly calls home.

“It’s me,” you affirm. “Is everything okay? My parents?”

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says, and you heave a relieved breath. “Everyone is fine. This is official business. I want to call you in.”

You shake your head, frowning, well aware that he can’t see your reaction. Your body has said no, but you force yourself to ask, “Me? Why?”

“We’re down a few teams,” the Marshall says. “And -”

“You’ve got more recruits than places to put them,” you counter before he can finish. “Call one of the new teams up. Call three new teams up. You don’t need me.”

“We do - we need teams with experience, teams that are ready. Not rookies bumbling around looking for mistakes. We need precision. We need Duellona Fury.”

Your Marshall lays out the situation: the teams that are out, the problems they’re having at the breach - less time between attacks, more monsters at once. You’ve seen this before, you all have, and there’s protocol in place - protocol that starts with all hands on deck. 

You shake your head again. From the door, the Administrator of the center watches you seriously, like she knows you’re being taken away. 

“Marshall, with all due respect, I don’t know why you’re calling me,” you admit. “What can I give you? I can’t pilot Duellona.”

Not anymore. 

The Marshall sighs, like he knew this argument was coming and didn’t have a good response. 

“I think you can,” he says finally. “I’m not saying it will be easy, and I’m not saying it will happen quickly or without effort. But I think you can.”

“No,” you say, the first time you’ve voiced it. “You were there. You saw what happened. We can’t drift anymore.”

“You couldn’t then,” he points out. “That was three years ago. You’ve both had a lot of time to…. You’ve both had a lot of time since then. Things that were once too painful to carry into the drift… they’ve had time to mellow.”

This blow knocks you into silence. You sink your teeth into your bottom lip, eyes steadfastly on the warped wood of the desk, fingers toying absently with the Administrator’s pen. 

He’s wrong, and you want to tell him so. Nothing had mellowed. You love Seungcheol just as much today as you did three years ago. The splitting ache in your chest that you’ve felt every day since you became aware of loving him has only worked its way deeper with time. 

And Seungcheol’s anger? The anger and betrayal he’d leveled at you, when he was sure you were keeping him out of your head on purpose? You couldn’t speak for him, but if you had to guess, there weren’t enough years in a human life to let that hurt mellow into something safe enough to drift with.

“Have you talked to him about this?” You’re afraid of the answer. 

The Marshall hesitates. “Not yet.”

“You might want to do that first,” you point out. “Before flying me back only to have him refuse.” 

The Marshall’s voice hardens, and you can just picture his eyes narrowing. “Mr. Choi will follow orders,” he says evenly, “and so will you. Asking is really just a courtesy.”

“You can’t order us into being able to drift again,” you snap, pulse suddenly pounding in your arms, your hands, your face, your chest. 

“No,” the Marshall says, and any previous friendliness is gone from his voice now, “but I can - and will - order you to try.”

The girls cry when you tell them you’re leaving, and it makes you want to cry, too. You hold it together as you give them hugs, hold it together as you pack your single bag of belongings. You hold it together in the passenger seat of the center’s only beat-up van, waving out the back window as the training center fades away.

It’s standing on the deck of the ferry, the coast receding and the sea wind clawing at your face, that you let it go. You bury your face behind your hands and feel it release behind your ribs. You cry for all of it - for leaving the girls behind, for leaving a place that had sheltered you like a sanctuary. For the time you’d lost at the Dome, for the fights you’d sat out, for the years with your parents and friends that had slipped away like sand between your fingers. For your fear that Seungcheol will turn you away, just as hurt and angry as he was one thousand and ninety-five days ago. 

You’d been so determined to keep him from walking through the depths of your love for him, in the drift. You were so scared it would be too much, too intense, too much emotion for the drift. You’d been scared it would be too much for him - that the weight of it would inherently ask for more than he could give you in return. You’d been scared it would ruin your partnership, your compatibility, your capability to co-pilot.

But that had happened anyway. You almost have to laugh. 

As furiously as your tears begin, they peter out quickly. You take a few deep gulps of salty air, use the backs of your hands to wipe at your cheeks and beneath your nose. As you calm down, you keep your eyes on the horizon, your hands tight on the ship’s railing, and you let your mind wander back to Seungcheol. Here, thousands of miles away, you let yourself think back to those last weeks before you left the Shatterdome. You let yourself wonder, for the first time, what exactly caused everything to crumble.

You’d been so afraid to let Seungcheol into your head once the loving him had taken over. Why had it scared you so badly? As you keep your eyes on the grey of the horizon, you puzzle it out in your mind.

Had it been the uncertainty? That had certainly played a part. Did Seungcheol love you, back then? If he didn’t, everything between you could have changed - your friendship, your partnership, your ability to drift. It hadn’t seemed worth the risk to lose it all - his presence in your life, your ability to fight together. 

But maybe he had. If he did love you, back then… that would have changed things, too. What if starting something romantic affected your drift? There were too many maybes, too many variables. It had seemed safe to push it all down, to try and keep him away from it. To try and keep things the same.

Of course, you’d lost it all anyway.

Even if he did love you three years ago, you think as the sea air whips around you, did he love you the way you loved him? What if it had been too much - the way you could breathe once he was with you, the way you kept each other in check - what if he had loved you, but not that much?

Had it been a mistake to keep him out? Maybe. But it could have been just as catastrophic to let him in. There was no way to know, now.

You turn away from the ship’s railing, away from the horizon and the sea, away from your mistakes. There’s no use looking back like this. You can’t change it. You aren’t even sure you can fix it.

You were hoping to sleep on the plane, but you’re woefully awake well after take-off. Determined not to keep ruminating on what had happened before you left, instead you wonder what awaits you now.

The most-likely scenario, you think, professional and polite - but cold. Like you, he takes duty and responsibility seriously. The airplane bumps, a pocket of air jostling the small craft, and your hands find the armrests and cling tight until it stops.

The best case scenario, of course, would be that enough time has passed that Seungcheol’s hurt has faded. Maybe, you think, maybe he’s moved on from harboring that anger. Maybe he’ll greet you warmly, maybe you’ll pick up right where you left off.

This hope, this day-dream, aches, so much that you blink it away and turn to watch the clouds through the window, a desperate distraction. You crave Seungcheol - you crave feeling safe with his arms around you, you crave the elation you’d feel when he entered the room you were in, you crave the peace that comes with two minds engaged in neural handshake - the peace of someone’s mind interlaced with your own, understanding you, operating with you, picking up half of your mental lift.

You crave his giggle when you say something stupid in the dark of the dorm before bed, his pout when he feels like he isn’t getting enough attention, you crave his voice echoing in your head long after he’s gone asleep because you heard him talk to you all day long. 

You crave his lips on yours, his teeth on your neck, his hands on your body, even if you only had it once. You’ve craved it ever since.

You crave closing your eyes and pressing your forehead to his sternum, feeling safe and quiet and like you belong. You miss the sanctuary of that space, chest to chest with him, something sacred in the way it exists only for you.

You know you can’t have it - any of it. The daydream isn’t real. Your curse will be to crave it forever, alone.

When you arrive at the Shatterdome, it’s your parents who greet you just inside. For a moment, you’re happy to be back, overcome with emotion as you hug them tight. They’ve aged in these three years. You’ve missed them awfully. You only tell them the latter. 

They walk with you to the Marshall’s office, where you’re meant to report upon arrival. 

You hesitate, covering the moment by tugging your duffle’s strap higher on your shoulder. Your mother reads you anyway, reaching out and giving your shoulder a squeeze. 

“It will be okay,” she whispers. 

Your father catches on. “You’ve faced down worse,” he reasons. 

You disagree. There’s no monster in the sea bigger than your love for Seungcheol, no wounding possible that could hurt more than losing him has. But you appreciate the sentiment, so you give them each a grateful nod, tell them you’ll visit after dinner, and turn to knock on the door.

“Come in,” the Marshall’s voice carries through the door, and you turn the knob and step inside. 

All you see is Seungcheol; the Marshall, the office furniture, the flickering screens on the walls all snap into nonexistence in the presence of your former lover. He’s the only thing in the room that comes into focus. Everything else is just fuzzy noise.

His face wavers for a moment when your eyes meet his, the muscles rippling as he fights to get them under control. 

You don’t know what reaction he’s fighting. You don’t know if he’s feeling happiness or hatred. You don’t know if he’s fighting a smile or a scowl.

You give him a quick bow in greeting, and he returns it. His face is stone, now, his mouth tight and eyes flat. 

He turns to face the Marshall, to receive orders, so you do the same.

“I trust your travel went well?” the Marshall begins.

You nod, not trusting yourself to speak. Even the single syllable of yes will come out of your mouth like gravel and dirt and sand, getting everywhere, leaving a trail.

“Your orders,” he says then, a bit of a sigh on his tone - as if he knows the uphill battle this will be, “are to reconnect as best you can. You’ll follow your old schedule. You’ll spar, you’ll meditate, and you’ll talk. After some time, we’ll try the drift again, see if the connection has recovered any.”

Seungcheol’s voice startles you when he speaks. “How long do you imagine it will be before we try?” he asks, just cold enough to have a sliver of sarcasm in it. 

The Marshall’s eyes narrow, just slightly, as if he’d caught it. “That’s entirely up to you two,” he says evenly. “When you were young and hungry to fight, you trained yourselves into exhaustion. You spent every waking second trying to cultivate the bond that would carry you into your jaeger. With the same intention and drive, I imagine you could be piloting Duellona within the week.”

You fight to keep your chin up, your eyes on the Marshall, instead of ducking your head and watching the floor. The Marshall lifts his arm and glances at his watch. 

“Your allotted time in Sparring Room 7 begins on the hour,” he says. This is his way of dismissing you.

In the hallway, you pause. “I’m just going to drop my bag in the dorm,” you say quietly, not looking at Seungcheol. 

He gives a tight nod. “Fine,” he says, and turns to go the other way, towards the sparring and training rooms. Clearly he intends to meet you there. You heave a deep breath, and turn back towards the wing with the dorms.

Stepping into the dorm you used to share with Seungcheol hits you harder than you thought it would. You’re not sure what you expected - to feel like coming home, maybe, or perhaps to be slapped with the memories of you and Seungcheol together, dancing around each other as you hurried to get dressed for a drop, lazing around in the sitting area after a full day of training. And, of course, the single night you’d spent together.

Neither thing happens. You aren’t overcome by a feeling of nostalgia and love, nor are you inundated by memories of what you’ve lost. Instead, the room feels exactly as it is: empty and still.

Your footsteps’ echoes taunt you as you walk through the kitchen, the sitting area, and into the bedroom. It’s pristine to the point of detriment; it feels like no one lives there. You set your bag on the floor near the foot of the bed - you can unpack later, after training - and turn to go.

Strangely, it’s stepping into the training room that slams you with memory and nostalgia. The wood cool beneath your feet, the vague smell of sweat and citrus-y cleaner, the sounds of punches landing and grunts of effort from the training rooms on either side - they all cocoon you in history, making goosebumps rise on your arms as the emotions surround you.

It makes sense, you think, as Seungcheol glances over his shoulder at the sound of your arrival. He doesn’t speak to you, just swaggers to the center of the room and takes a stance you recognize from Form One. Your body leads you opposite him, muscle memory guiding you into the first form you ever learned with him. It makes sense that this would be what felt like home - your minds going empty together, your bodies following the steps in unison. The sparring forms are the closest you can get to drifting without an actual neural connection.

Well, that and sleeping together, but you don’t see that on your agenda.

You stare at him across the invisible circle between you and try to read him. His face is cold and empty, but that already tells you so much about what he’s feeling. Seungcheol was never cold with you. When you fought together he slipped into that mode you loved so much - ready to level anything, chin lifted, eyes narrowed, confident and so very strong. But it was when you were together outside the fights that you had loved him best - often pouting, lips protruding, voice lifting into a whine. And the best of all - that smile, dimples creating shadows that beg for your thumb to press them, eyes squeezing shut with happiness or laughter.

Something must show on your face, because you watch the muscles in Seungcheol’s upper body untense, as if he’d been ready to fight and recognized that you weren’t.

“I’m good,” you mutter quickly, before he can ask. It feels better to lie to him before he actually asks you, like that’s somehow less dishonest. “Let’s go.”

Form One is basic - no hits, no fancy moves. At the training center, you’d teach it to the littlest ones until they had it memorized. It was really about control and communication - precision and alignment with your partner. You had to breathe together as your feet traced opposite circles across the knots in the wooden floor. You had to rise and bend in unison. It was about watching and listening.

You and Seungcheol could - literally, you’d tried more than once - do it blindfolded in perfect step with one another. Before. You don’t know if you still can. But, now, unblindfolded, it’s too easy.

You move through forms one through six without incident - both of you flowing as easily as water.

Form Seven is the first form that incorporates actual hits and blocks. You’ll have to touch for the first time, even if it’s forearm to forearm or ankle to shoulder. You move right as he moves left, crouch and circle as his right foot flies over your head, stand and punch where you know his open hand will be waiting to stop you.

It is, and you press your fist against it for just a second before spinning away to continue the form. You ache, even as your body continues following the steps, to have him entirely again - to meet his eyes and smile the way you both used to, because you were pleased with what your bodies could do. Because you had each other, completely.

After the tenth form, you bow, turn, and walk out of the ring. You drink some water, your back to him. Years ago you’d have used this break to chat, but you don’t know what to say to him. You’re scared that he’ll shut down anything you say, whether you choose small talk or go straight for the heart of the problem, and you honestly don’t think you can shoulder his rejection right now. So you stay quiet.

After a few short minutes of rest, you return to the center of the room. This is when you’ll spar for real.

You and Seungcheol had done this for years before things went wrong. You’d long ago adjusted to how hard you should hit, how to dodge his moves, how to make this a dance as much as a fight. Now, you feel like it’s your first time again.

Seungcheol attacks as you’d expect - all offensive, pushy, succeeding in herding you backwards even as you dodge each blow. You know his goal is to flip you, and normally you can avoid that by forcing him to go on the defensive as he avoids your own hits. Simply dodging won’t be enough - eventually he’ll cage you in unless you distract him.

You throw yourself into a summersault and manage to get behind him - an opportune moment to strike. You shift your weight to follow the blow as you twist your hips to send a kick towards his unprotected head. He turns just too late - the blow will land.

You can’t do it. You freeze, your core working to keep you upright as you fight your own momentum, halting the kick inches from his temple.

You know immediately that pulling the hit was a mistake. His eyes narrow, and he sweeps his foot at the ankle you’re balancing on. You crash to the ground, heaving a breath and taking quick inventory.

You aren’t hurt. Not this time.

“Get up, Cherry,” he says darkly, moving back to the center to start again. “And don’t do that shit again.”

He comes at you full force in the next match, too. You dodge and weave, but you don’t try to strike. You know he knows it; this isn’t how it used to work. You can almost feel him get angrier as you fight, but you can’t make yourself hit back. You want him to knock you down, you deserve to take some shots.

You take two blows to the back and one to a shoulder; you fall back unsteadily but manage to find your footing and roll away from his next kick.

The match continues - you taking a handful of blows, though none with the force to level you, and Seungcheol with his lip curled in fury.

“If you’re not going to fight, then leave,” he spits.

“Would if I could,” you retort without thinking. You mean that you don’t want to be here like this - not talking, cold, at odds. But you know it reads as not wanting to be here at all.

It seems like everything you say and do only hurts him more.

“I didn’t mean -” you start, and Seungcheol takes your arms and flips you over his shoulders.

“Don’t waste my fucking time,” he says, brushing his hands together and stepping back to give you room to pick yourself up.

“Don’t curse at me,” you answer, pushing yourself to your hands and knees, pausing to catch your breath before rising fully again.

He shakes his head, rolls his eyes a little.

You hate this side of him.

You know you deserve it. For pushing him out. For leaving him here. For loving him, messing everything up, when he never asked for that.

“Seungcheol,” you say, but he ignores you, pacing a few steps and then turning to face you, lowering himself into a defensive stance, ready to spar again.

“Cheol,” you try again. “Listen to me.”

“Marshall scheduled us time to talk later,” he says flatly. “Right now we’re scheduled to fight. So fight me, Cherry. Let’s go.”

The rest of the hour continues the same. By the time it’s over, Seungcheol storms out without speaking to you, furious over every single pulled punch.

You don’t know what to do to make it all better.

You shower quickly, dressing in dry linens, and then re-emerge for the hours you’re scheduled to meditate together. You hope that maybe this will help the situation - maybe not talking will be good for you, give you a chance to feel your connection without the chance to fuck it up with words.

You’re wrong; trying to meditate together is just as desperately fruitless as sparring had been.

You can’t focus at all - can’t shift your attention to your breath, to your body, to the earth beneath you, to the energy of your partner.

Your partner is the distraction, though he sits perfectly still, eyes closed. He might as well be yelling. His shoulders are tight, his jaw still clenched. Anger radiates off him so strongly that it makes your stomach hurt, makes you want to cower from it. You can’t stop watching him, hoping you’ll see him relax, hoping you’ll see the moment that he lets go.

He doesn’t.

“Your eyes are supposed to be closed,” he murmurs, and you feel your face heat, embarrassed that he knew you were watching him.

“I can’t,” you admit. Maybe, you think, you should just be brutally honest, starting now. It’s not like you could make this worse. “I can’t stop noticing how angry -”

“Then stop pissing me off,” he snaps, eyes opening. “Just a suggestion.”

“Don’t talk to me like that!” you cry, and push yourself to stand. You’re not sure why - maybe just to pace. “You never used to talk to me like this. Who are you?”

He looks at the floor, the first sign of guilt you’ve seen since you came home.

“Fine,” he finally bites back, and you know it’s as close to sorry as you’ll get. “I’ll reign it in. Sit back down.”

You shift your weight, arms crossed defensively across your chest, and close your eyes, deciding.

“Sit down, Cherry,” he repeats, and it’s gentler now. That’s what makes you cave, and you settle back across from him.

He’s less tense this time, so you eventually manage to close your eyes and count your breaths. But you’re still feeling for him, reaching for him in your mind, and coming up with nothing between you fingers. Touching him is as possible as touching the fog that used to blanket the training center, thick enough to blind you but impossible to grasp.

The pain feels like a cramp, except it’s behind your ribs instead of in your muscles. The pain grips and tightens, takes over. You want him, you want to be his again, you want to be inside these walls - where you used to fit comfortably. The fact that you’re out here, without him, aches so badly it makes you nauseated.

You want to beg him - let me in again, let me back in, let me be close to you again.

It won’t do any good, and you know it.

He was yours - you had him, you knew him, you could reach out to him and he’d pick you up. You’d taken it for granted, and you’d run away from it. You’d chosen to let it go, and now all you get is this: Seungcheol, cold and closed. Seungcheol, hating you for everything that happened.

—

Dinner is just as bad.

You go to the mess hall eager to see Wylie and Jeonghan and Seungkwan and all the other friends you haven’t seen in years. Wylie screeches like a banshee when she spots you, crossing the mess hall in a blur and hugging you so tightly that you both stagger, off balance, until Seungkwan joins the hug and rights you again.

“I missed you both so much,” you whisper, the only vulnerability anyone’s going to get out of you today.

“Then don’t leave again!” Wylie snaps, but you know the admonishment is full of love.

“I can’t promise,” you admit. Honestly, you’ve already made up your mind - you want to go back to Alaska. You’re not wanted here, not by the person who matters. What good are you, taking up a bed, if you can’t drift?

You’ve already given up hope that he’ll come around.

Seated at the table, you listen while your friends fill you in on what you’ve missed in three years - the fights in the bay, the new teams of pilots, the illnesses and injuries. You almost don’t notice Seungcheol silently takes a seat on Jeonghan’s other side, but something in you prickles, like you’ve sensed him.

The tension around the table heightens; the conversation goes a little stilted. When it’s apparent that he’s going to ignore you two seats down from him, Wylie slaps her hand flat on the tabletop.

“Come on, Seungcheol,” she scolds, and you’re sure no one wonders what she means.

His face goes dark so quickly it’s alarming. “Don’t,” he tells her darkly, one finger coming up to point at her in warning.

Her own eyes narrow and dart to her fork. Beside her, Chan’s eyes pingpong between them. He’s probably wondering if he should hold her back or join her.

“It’s fine,” you mutter, grabbing your tray and making to rise. “I’ll go.”

“Cherry, no,” Wylie protests, and then turns a glower onto your ex-co-pilot as if to say see what you did?

“It’s fine,” you repeat, standing. “I told my mom and dad I’d come by.”

You slink out before anyone else can argue.

You can’t even be mad at him - you did this by pushing him away. You hammered every last nail in the coffin by requesting to transfer. You pushed him out and you left him behind and now you have to face the reality that you can’t have him anymore. He isn’t yours, not anymore.

When you return to your dorm, he’s already in bed, the lights out. He’s facing the wall so you can only see his back, can only see the angry, tight shoulder poking out the top of the sheets. It tells you everything you need to know.

You don’t try to talk to him. You just go to bed.

—

You spend four days identically - fighting while sparring, not meditating, and avoiding Seungcheol’s ice-out. On the fifth day, your Marshall loses patience and changes your schedule. Your entire day is blocked to working on Duellona’s mainframe - buffing, repainting, greasing, and anything else you’re able to handle on your own.

“Since you can’t do anything else useful,” he adds, and you avoid Seungcheol’s eyes, ashamed.

Standing under Duellona’s unlit frame fills you with guilt. It feels like you’re letting her down, disappointing her by letting her rust here, failing your half of the bargain. You run your hands gently over the metal, finding the rough spots that need attention. Somewhere to your left, you can hear the telltale sounds of Seungcheol tightening bolts.

You work in silence for hours.

Eventually, you crack. You’re not sure if it’s the monotony of the task, the tension woven into the silence between you too, or being so close to your jaeger but unable to fight in it - maybe a combination. Something pushes at you from the inside, like a balloon trying to inflate under your skin and running out of room.

You flop backwards on the metal walkway, the grooves digging into your back. “What are we doing?” you ask, and you hear the tool Seungcheol had been using cling loudly as he sets it down.

“Following orders?” he says, stepping around Duellona’s side to look at you. “Fixing up the jaeger?”

“Fixing up the jaeger we don’t get to pilot?” you ask, sitting back up to look at him better.

“Is that what you’re here for?” he asks, the sudden ferocity of it surprising you. “To fight? Is that why you came back?”

You reach up to the walkway’s railing and pull yourself up. You feel yourself frowning at his question, at the heat behind it. 

“I’m back because the Marshall gave me an order,” you say slowly. 

“And that’s it?” he demands. 

You stare at him. You feel sure there’s more to the question, more that he’s asking. You feel sure, after knowing Choi Seungcheol down to the last molecule, that he’s really asking, you didn’t come back for me?

And it confuses you. You try to think about your split from his perspective: you’d shut him out, then slept with him, and then vanished. You’d made a lot of assumptions about his anger since then. You assumed he was angry at you for pushing him out of your head. You assumed he was angry at you for sleeping with him and then leaving. You assumed he was angry with you for ruining your drift, for ripping him away from the ability to fight. You assumed he was angry because he never knew why - never knew what it was that you were so desperate to hide, never knew why sleeping together had made things so much worse that the neural connection had fizzled into nothing altogether.

Is there more to it, his anger?

Should you call him on it, should you ask?

You take too long deciding. Seungcheol scoffs, like he’s disgusted with you. “I should have known,” he says coldly. “Princess of the Shatterdome, I should have known you only cared about piloting - about your legacy.”

This is something you’ve never said to him - that your desire to shine as brightly as your parents has weighed on you. This is something he’d pulled from the drift, something he only knew from tiptoeing around your mind before a fight. 

“That isn’t fair,” you say, your voice hard. “Is there another reason I should have come back? I’d love to hear it.”

He hears the challenge as it is - you didn’t ask me to come back, the Marshall did. You let me go.

He has nothing to say for himself, just stares back at you, eyes narrowed in anger, chest moving too quickly as he battles with his temper.

“Exactly,” you say curtly. The victory stings. It doesn’t feel like a win at all. “The bottom line is I’m here now, and we can pilot again if we can get our shit together.”

He shakes his head. “You left,” he says finally. “That’s the bottom line. You decided you were out, you decided you didn’t want me in your head, and then you left.”

He watches you, waits for you to say something. When you don’t, he lets out a derisive little laugh. “We’re both wasting our time here. The drift won’t work. We aren’t going to fix it.”

For the first time, fear slices through you like steel. “You can’t know that,” you say. You hear the fear in the way your voice comes out low and rounded, barely sounding like you at all.

“I can,” he retorts. “You know how I know? Because I don’t want to. You wanted me out of your head so badly? You got it. Can’t turn back now.”

He heads for the ladder, swings around and finds the third rung down with ease.

“So that’s it?” you ask his retreating form. Your heart is hammering and you’re starting to get tunnel vision. 

The only answer he gives you are his feet hitting each new rung with a clunk and a vibration that rattles up your legs.

—

You go to the training rooms alone and run through the forms just to do something; your mind turns the problem over and over as your body goes through the motions. After, you take a longer shower than normal, letting the water run hotter than you normally would.

After, you go to the Marshall’s office, determined. Or maybe resigned.

When he opens the door, he already looks irritated, like he knew exactly who would be on the other side.

“Requesting an audience,” you say flatly, fighting the instinct to cross your arms defensively.

He glances at his watch. “Five minutes.”

You step inside but leave the door open.

“I’m requesting transfer back to Alakanuk,” you tell him as evenly as you can manage. You’re sure he’s not surprised. “Seungcheol has made it very clear that we won’t be fighting together again. If that’s the case, then I can’t do anything useful here. But in Alakanuk I can.”

You pause, looking to see if you can read anything on the Marshall’s face - any hint that he’s considering what you’re saying, or that it’s a lost cause. He gives you nothing.

“Please,” you say. “Those girls need me. If I can’t help here, I can help them.”

The Marshall tilts his head just slightly. “Surely anyone can teach little girls the forms.”

You shake your head. “It’s more than that, and you know it. It’s not about the forms. I love those girls. I came back here to follow orders, and I tried. But if it isn’t going to happen… Please, don’t make me waste time here if I can be with them instead.”

The silence when you stop speaking seems to last for hours. Your heart pounds, and you work on keeping your breathing even. If he tells you no, you might just lose it, just give up entirely.

Finally, he takes a breath and seems to consider you. “If,” he says, and your eyes widen with hope, “your co-pilot agrees, then I will reassign you back to Alaska. But only if he will agree.”

“No problem,” you say quickly. Seungcheol was the one who said it was over. He should have no problem letting you leave.

When you step out of the Marshall’s office, Seungcheol steps out of the shadows. You should be surprised to see him, but in the Shatterdome it feels right that he just is wherever you are. That’s always how it was, before.

You look at him disdainfully. “I assume you heard that conversation?”

He nods, once.

“So?” you ask. “Will you tell him you approve, so I can go?”

For the first time since you returned, Seungcheol smiles, tight and sarcastic.

“No,” he says easily, like it’s kind of funny.

Fury erupts inside you; you can’t even pinpoint where in your body it stems from. “Why?” you demand. “Because you feel like I took something from you, so you want to take something from me?”

He doesn’t respond to this. You know you’re right. You know him. You know his mind.

“I hate to fuck up your narrative,” you spit at him, “but I’ve lost out here just as much as you have. You’re not the only one who lost the ability to fight. You’re not the only one who lost their partner.”

You wish you could tell him the rest - you’re not the one who spent three years with a broken heart on top of it. He had lost you as a partner and a friend - you had lost him in the same ways, and you’d had to harbor your broken heart.

He shakes his head. “Poor baby,” he bites sarcastically, and then takes off down the hallway, into the dark.

—

You stop sleeping at the dorm. Sometimes you sleep at your parents’, sometimes on Wylie and Chan’s tiny couch, sometimes in bed with Seungkwan, who kicks at you and whines that you take up too much space. Sometimes you sleep inside Duellona Fury, sitting up, your back against her metal frame.

The Marshall seems to have taken some pity on you. He schedules your mornings training the Dome’s recruits, and lets Seungcheol get back to what he was doing in your absence - which seems to be on track to move up in rank, to maybe become a Marshall himself, someday. It isn’t quite the same as being back with your girls, but training recruits feels at least somewhat fulfilling. And it keeps you and Seungcheol busy - separately - until afternoon.

Then, he schedules you to spar.

In your first week, you’d been unwilling to hit Seungcheol. You’d been feeling guilty for hurting him, sad for your time apart, hopeful that if you were soft to him, then he’d be soft back to you.

Now, you’re fucking furious.

For the first time, when the match begins, you hit him first. He’s surprised for only a second, eyebrows shooting up as he stumbles for balance, and then you watch something delighted and devilish fall over his face. Like he knows exactly what dance this is, and he’s been learning the steps in secret.

The match is brutal, reminiscent of your very first one, when you were both nineteen. You throw hit after hit his way; he blocks or dodges all of them. But he can’t get a hit on you either - you’re too quick, spurred on by fury. You’ve been angry in a fight before. But you’ve never been angry at him.

You spin and throw up a kick, expecting his forearm to rise and block it. Instead, you knock him in the jaw.

He grunts, hand flying up to cover his mouth, and you drop your stance with a gasp.

“Shit!” you cry, hurrying closer. “I’m so sorry! Are you bleeding? Let me look.”

“‘M fine,” he mutters thickly from behind his hand, but you ignore him. For a second, things are how they used to be between you. He lets you peel his hand away, lets you gingerly turn his head this way and that, even opens up so you can check his teeth.

“You’re gonna have a fat lip,” you tell him regretfully. “But nothing’s bleeding. Teeth look okay. Anything loose in there?”

He pokes around his teeth with his pinky. “Nope.”

You take a step back, cowed. “I’m really sorry.”

He laughs a little, wryly. “I bet you feel better, though.”

You bite back a smile. “Actually…” you say, and he laughs again. You both do.

Somehow, this seems to be the thing that cracks the anger you’ve both been encased in, unable to move forward or backward. You feel melted, and you wonder if he feels freer now, too.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” you say. You mean the kick, but the words land heavy.

He avoids your gaze. “I need some water,” he says, turning and heading to the side of the room.

You do the same, sitting heavily on the bench where your water waits for you.

“Hey,” he says, and you look over, brows raised in anticipation. “Tell me about Alaska.”

You can’t help but smile.

“It’s so beautiful,” you tell him. “God, Cheol, the ocean there. And the birds, and the snow…”

He’s watching you, listening, but while he listens he stands and heads to the center of the ring, settling into a starting form. With a small smile, you follow, standing opposite him. He starts an easy match that’s mostly just following the eighth form. It includes some hits and blocks, but you both do them gently, easily, circling each other slowly.

“So you liked it?” he asks. You can hear how hard he’s working to make it sound casual.

“It was so beautiful,” you admit before ducking below a kick. “But it was also… really hard.”

“What was the best part?” he asks.

You smile, block a hit. He almost gets his hands on you for a flip, but you dodge around behind him. He turns to follow you. “Weirdly, it was taking care of them outside of class. We - the instructors - we kind of their moms, away from home, you know? I’m the one who knew Yejin won’t sleep unless someone sits by her bed for a while. I’m the one that knew that Farrah and Salome only argue because they’re competitive. I’m the one that knew that Maria and Anjali don’t know their times-tables, that Ximena can’t brush her own hair, or that Iseul is allergic to fish. I loved them. I loved knowing them.”

He looks at you for a long time. “Maybe you should go back,” he says finally.

It feels like a trap. 

You look at the floor, at the wall, then finally back at him. “If you’ll do this for real,” you say carefully, “then I’d rather be here. If we’re actually trying, then I don’t want to go.”

He’s quiet for a long time. Finally, he swallows hard, not looking at you.

“What was the worst part?”

There’s only one answer.

“Missing you,” you say. “Losing you.”

He manages to get both of your arms and hauls you over his shoulders. You land on your back so hard that the air is knocked out of your lungs and your eyes close protectively. For a second, you lay there panting, waiting for the pain in your back to settle down, waiting for the stars behind your eyelids to calm.

When you open them again, the ceiling coming into focus above you, the room is empty.

–

You have a hunch on where you can find him, and you head to the jaeger bay. Sure enough, he’s sitting below Duellona, knees to his chest, staring up at her.

You sit next to him and he doesn’t get up and leave, which you take as a good sign.

“I can’t do this if you’re not all in,” he tells you without looking at you. “You walked away from me once. I can’t let you back in my head if there’s any possibility you’ll walk away again. If you’re with me, I need you to be with me.”

Something prickles in the back of your head. You feel like you’re starting to realize something - the seed of an understanding is pushing delicately through the dirt, but hasn’t yet spread out its leaves under the warmth of the sun yet.

Something about his hurt. Something about why.

“I think we should try to drift,” you tell him.

This seems to startle him - he forgets to be cold, turns to look at you, eyebrows raised in surprise.

“I can tell you how much I missed you,” you reason, “and tell you about how I spent every minute just… steeped in regret. Or we can walk through it - you can see for yourself.”

You know what you’re risking. If he gets into your head now, he’ll see it all - he’ll know everything, he’ll be able to feel for himself the depth of your loss, the height of your love. 

But what’s the harm, now? You can’t lose him twice. Maybe it’ll be enough for him to realize you hadn’t left him because you didn’t care about him. Maybe it’ll be enough for his forgiveness. 

Maybe then, he’ll tell the Marshall to let you go back to Alakanuk. 

It’s Seungkwan you bother, since he’d been in mission control before finding his team of co-pilots. The sideways look he gives you as he walks to your conn pod is withering, but you know better than to take it personally.

You buzz with nerves. The last time you’d tried this, the neural handshake hadn’t even connected. There had just been nothing.

The second you hear neural handshake initiating, you almost sob with relief. You can’t even pay attention to the memories - Seungcheol’s memories - floating around you; you want to collapse, to press your palms to the ground and thank the universe for letting you back in.

His first memories are a breeze - the ones you’ve jogged through together hundreds of times: his first home, his school, his father’s hospital room, the Dome. Then you slow your pace, because this is new.

You’re facing the landing dock on the Shatterdome’s roof. Seungcheol stands with his back to you, watching through the glass walls as a helicopter waits, the pilot talking into his headset.

You watch yourself walk towards the chopper’s open door. You watch yourself leave, remember how hard it was to not look back.

You hadn’t known that Seungcheol had been there, that he had seen you go.

The pain that accompanies the memory hits you like you’re drowning, like it’s too deep and you can’t feel the bottom, and you feel the machinery falter around you.

“Hey,” you say quietly. “I’m with you.”

He nods, still doesn’t look at you. But the beeping stops, the connection holding. 

There’s knowledge in this memory, knowledge in this pain. Seungcheol’s thoughts in this moment read in your head as clearly as if he said them aloud - I did this. I pushed her too far; I made her run.

You can’t stay here, can’t let him wallow in the memory of pain. You had to move forward - that’s how the drift works. Reluctantly you step towards the door, glancing over your shoulder to see if he’s following. 

He is. His jaw is tight and fists are clenched, but he is.

When the next memory - not in order of chronology, clearly - appears before you, you want to vanish into the floor. You’re watching yourselves in Seungcheol’s bed. Thankfully, you’re sleeping - this was after. But in the memory, Seungcheol is awake, laying on his side, his eyes drinking in your sleeping form.

The emotions and the knowledge come with it in an instant. The tenderness and the love he felt in that moment surround you now in the memory, unignorable, impossible to mistake. 

He had loved you. He had known you loved him, and he was showing you how he felt. The understanding slams you so hard that you think you stop breathing.

“Seungcheol,” you whisper. Around you, the scene begins to flicker, the connection starting to react to the oversaturation of emotion.

“We can talk about it after,” he says, voice hard. “Don’t stay in it. Find the next door.”

Your eyes find the door, but you feel frozen. You want the connection to drop, you want to unlock yourself from the stupid drive-suit and throw yourself into his arms, you want to apologize for leaving him thinking he’d pushed you away, thinking that he scared you into running.

“Cherry,” he warns. “The drift can’t -”

You know. 

And you owe him your side of the story.

You take a steeling breath and head for the door. You don’t take his hand. You don’t know if you deserve to, if he’d want you to.

When you step through the doors, you’re confused - you’re still in your dorm. Your bodies are both in the bed.

Now, though, Seungcheol sleeps, and you - the memory of you - sits on the edge of the bed, your head in your hands. 

You feel the emotion the memory holds, which means Seungcheol does, too.

Fear. It’s still fear - fear that he’ll know, fear that what you just did together will make it worse, make it harder to hide. 

Beside you, Seungcheol’s eyes go wide. 

“We have to move on,” you tell him. He looks at you, then back at the memory. 

“You -?” he starts to ask.

“After,” you tell him firmly. “We’ll talk after.”

You open the door, and you’re suddenly outside, surrounded by white.

Alaska.

The emotion knocks you over with the fury of an ocean wave - even though you know you’re not supposed to let it. This was how you had felt every day that you were gone, and it screams at you now, determined to be heart, determined to be felt. The loneliness, the regret, the despair and heartbreak all rise up in you, overtaking you, as snow falls gently and silently around you.

And the love. That never went away. That never mellowed, as the Marshall had put it.

If he didn’t know before, he has to know now. There’s no way he couldn’t.

Seungcheol squeezes your hand, and you almost jump. You look down at your linked fingers in shock, then up at him, eyes wide.

“We should go back and talk about this,” he tells you, but his grip on you is firm, assuring.

“Okay. It’s this way,” you tell him, trying to breathe, and you lead him by the hand through the snow. The fog strengthens as you walk, until you can’t see anything but grey, can’t see anything but Seungcheol’s hand in yours.

You continue on. You know where to go. When you step through, the fog vanishes as if it was never there, nothing gradual about it. With the fog gone, you can see clearly where you are - inside Duellona Fury’s conn-pod.

As you begin to work on the straps, you call through the intercom, “Kwan? We… need some privacy. We’ve got to talk - alone.”

His voice crackles back at you. “Yes, I’m leaving, I’m already gone. If you hear popcorn crunching, no you don’t.”

Seungcheol gives you a flat look. “Let’s go home and talk,” he suggests.

Home.

You are so afraid and so hopeful. You don’t know how to juggle both.

Back in your small living space, you sit like you’re meditating.

“Let’s figure this out,” he says. “No lies.”

“No lies,” you agree. Your knees touch, and you reach to take his hands. He lets you, giving your fingers a squeeze.

“You knew,” you say first, bordering on accusation. “I was trying so hard to hide how I felt about you… but you knew.”

He nods, his eyes on you. “And you,” he says slowly, “didn’t… know? That I knew?”

You shake your head, confirming. “I didn’t know. I thought I hid it.”

He smiles at you, a little placating. “Not as well as you would have liked.”

“And you…” You chicken out, swallow, force yourself to be brave. “You… loved me, too?”

He nods. “I did.” 

The air leaves your lungs so forcefully that you bend over, pressing your forehead to the tops of your hands. He pulls his hands from yours and you feel his touch, firm and reassuring, cupping your shoulders and rubbing his thumbs along them.

“We felt the same,” you echo into your shins. “You loved me.”

“Cherry,” he says above you, his voice like a plea. “I don’t understand why - when we… when I… I felt like once I forced you to look at it, it was too much. You ran.”

You sit with this for a minute, stunned and processing. His hands are back in yours, which you take as a good sign. 

“You thought… wait. You thought, after that night, that I knew how you felt, too?”

He nods. “I thought you knew,” he says, confusion still present in his tone. “I thought we both knew. I thought if it was out in the open, the glitch in the drift would be fixed.”

You wipe at your face, trying to breathe. “And instead,” you realize, “we couldn’t even connect, because I was still trying to hide it from you, and then you were hurt. I thought it was broken. I thought we really broke it forever.”

He looks at you in wonder. “That’s why you left,” he breathes, and you know he’s understanding this for the first time. “You thought we made the problem worse.”

It’s your turn to nod. “After we…I mean, I knew if I couldn’t hide it from you before that night, there was no chance I’d be able to hide it after. I kept you out in the first place because I… was afraid. I was afraid for you to see how much I loved you. It seemed… hopeless to keep trying.”

The words lay bloody between you, but his grip on your hands is strong, and you take another breath.

You push on, adding, “I was afraid it would be too much. I was afraid everything would change.”

Which it did, you think. He nods, like he hears this, like he agrees.

He releases you and leans back, blowing out a loud breath. “We’re so fucking stupid,” he says, and you splutter out a laugh.

“We really are.”

“I can’t believe we lost three years over that,” he says.

“I can’t believe you thought it was your fault that I left.”

“I can’t believe you left in the first place.”

This makes you smile, guilty. “That’s fair.”

You push yourself to stand; Seungcheol mirrors you, as if you’re already in the neural handshake, bodies working in tandem. 

“Cherry,” he says quietly, stepping closer. “It could never be too much. I love you. I’m crazy about you. I’m only me when I’m with you.”

You remember him, the night you’d slept together, telling you, don’t be afraid. He’d told you, after all, and you’d missed it entirely.

You close the distance between your bodies and kiss him hard. His arms circle your waist immediately, like they were waiting for you. He kisses you back hungrily. His mouth meets yours eagerly, his tongue stroking yours confidently before he shifts his attention to your jaw, your neck, then your mouth again. His hands don’t wander this time - instead he holds you so firmly it almost hurts, like he won’t let you move an inch, won’t let you out of his grasp ever again.

You cradle his face between your hands, let your teeth gently scrape along his bottom lip. “Cheol,” you whisper, then kiss him again. “You’re everything.” It’s what you should have said aloud the night you’d slept with him.

When the kiss breaks, he presses his lips to the top of your head and holds them there, melting around you a little. You give his middle a squeeze, revel in his heartbeat surrounding you like music.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry I didn’t just say it.”

“Me too,” you tell him, holding him just a little tighter. “I should never have tried to hide it from you in the first place.”

He kisses your temple, and you hold each other, silently, each grappling with the time you’d wasted apart. 

You’re interrupted by a knock. You break apart, puzzled. You’re even more puzzled to see your Marshall at the door, and Seungkwan literally bouncing on the balls of his feet in excitement.

“I’ve heard your drift is working again,” the Marshall says dryly. 

You look over your shoulder at Seungcheol, grinning. “Seems like it.”

“There’s a Cat-1 reading in the bay. I was about to alarm for Pretty Savage to drop, but Savage’s team insisted I give you the opportunity first. They can follow as backup. How do you feel?”

Seungcheol is at your side. He looks at you, his face open and raw. “Well?” he asks you. “Are you in, or are you out?”

“I’m in,” you tell him seriously. “I’m with you.”

You thrum with excitement as a tech team helps strap you into the drive-suits, and you can’t help but shoot Seungcheol a wild grin, your happiness alive and unbounded. 

You tell mission control - Nainsi, probably, just like the old days - “Ready and aligned.”

Mission Control - definitely Nainsi - responds, “Prepare for neural handshake.”

The artificial voice bounces around you - 3… 2… 1… neural handshake initiating…

Around you, the machines flicker busily. Neural handshake strong and holding. Now calibrating…

You’re crying, but you ignore it. You beam through tears, looking sideways at your co-pilot. His eyes dance as he smiles back at you. You want to unstrap yourself to the drivesuit and go kiss his dimples, the dimples you hadn’t seen in years. You resist the urge.

“Ready to drop?”  He looks sideways at you, sly. 

You scoff at him, your own grin cocky and sure, like you’re twenty again, like nothing had ever been broken between you. “Been ready. Let’s light ‘em up.”

– end

thank you so much for reading!!!!

stay tuned for more fics in this universe! Wylie and Chan will get their own fic written by @sailorrhansol, as will Woozi! I'm also planning a Vernon x Reader in this universe, too! Should be a fun time!!

[scottiexmariee]

Social Media Headcanons

How I think the boys would be with various social media!

Masterlist

★ let's be real

★ Xav would follow you on everything.

★ he doesn't have an account? he's making one just to follow you and maybe Jeremiah if he's lucky

★ he would absolutely have your post notifications on too, would never admit that out loud though

★ don't worry he's definitely not checking to see who else likes your posts

★ interacts with 99% of your posts

★ would definitely attempt to post a "cute" candid pic of you, but in reality it's blurry as hell and completely mid

★ ^ "but I like that picture..."

★ I do think Xav would have a tiktok, but I think he'd be more of an observer than a poster

❄ aside from the Moments posts, I don't really see Zayne keeping up with a bunch of social media

❄ man is BUSY. I can't realistically imagine him doom scrolling through tiktok or twitter after a torturously long day at the hospital

❄ I REALLY feel like he would think tiktok is overstimulating or something

❄ but he would definitely sit with you like a good boy and watch some if you really wanted to show him something (bro is a closet softie, be fr)

❄ would definitely make occasional posts of you, like he does with the moment posts.

❄ probably dedicates his instagram to scenery pictures

❄ is definitely in your comments with his dry ass humor

♥ most definitely has every single type of social media

♥ twitter, instagram, tiktok, etc. all of it

♥ whether or not he runs the accounts? probably not most of them (ily Thomas)

♥ Raf is funny af, if you've seen the "sound was crisp 10/10" moment post you know what I'm talking about. I just know there'd be a GOLDMINE of similar posts on his personal twitter

♥ can totally see him being dramatic and sending you tiktoks of things he wants to do

♥ for exanple

♥ he sends you a video of a couple at the beach, holding hands and walking by the water

♥ after sending the tiktok, he'd say something like "must be nice"

♥ ^ "Rafayel do you want to go for a walk on the beach?"

♥ ^ "well, I was gunna work on a painting... buuut since you asked so nicely, be here in 10 cutie,"

♦ okay listen

♦ this man would be gassing you up in your instagram comments (personal hype man? oh yes, absolutely)

♦ man also has no problem showing you off, you're def getting posted. bro adores you. immediate hard launch, zero shits given

♦ sometimes he posts vague ass shit on moments that only you (and maybe the twins) would understand, so I definitely see that carrying over to other platforms

♦ imagine him cryptic posting on twitter

♦ ^ "the sky is a little darker than normal today" and he's literally just being petty because you forgot to send a good morning text

♦ as for tiktok, I can absolutely see you having to explain to him wtf a tiktok even is

♦ "Why not just post it on Moments? I don't understand why it needs a whole different platform."

♦ ^ he'd definitely make an account though, simply because you asked

♦ if he posts anything on tiktok at all, it would probably be him using an alloy ammo box as a grill or something (iykyk), or reposting things that you posted

BONUS: Luke & Kieran

-Let's be fr, Luke & Kieran would most definitely be shitposters

-They are funny as HELL

-Brainrot fyp on tiktok = Luke and Kieran

-Their social media would absolutely be chaos but I'm here for it

[sillysowa]

As a big boob girlie you know I had to take y’all up on this offer!

TITTY LOVER HOBIE HCS!

NSFW UNDER THE CUT!

Hobie cannot contain himself around your boobs…like he’s literally in love with them.

Always copping little squeezes when you’re naked around him, coming up behind you and cupping them with his large hands.

You honestly don’t even have to be nude, he will still come up behind you, kiss you on your neck and stay there while reaching his hands up under your shirt just to feel them.

He is all about the no bra’s movement—like constantly telling you how you don’t need one. If you wear them because they make you more comfortable than he can respect it but if you wear them and you don’t like wearing them, Hobie’s gonna be your #1 hype-man about going braless,

“Y’know what babe, I say free the nip. Tits ain’t never hurt anyone.” He quips in the doorway as you get ready, contemplating if your outfit would be better without a bra.

lf they get sore at any point in your cycle, Hobie is more than happy to help ease the pain with a little massage!

Thoroughly enjoys sleeping with his head under your shirt, trapped in between your boobs. He says,

‘It’s a crucial part of a good nights rest!’

If you have small boobs, Hobie loves massaging them. He adores how small they look in his hands and how sexy you look when you’re shirtless under him.

‘You have the prettiest tits i’ve ever seen love, just can’t get enough.’ He’d whisper while kissing all over your chest.

If you have big boobs, he loves seeing the way they bounce when you fuck. His eyes are just entirely transfixed on the way they move,

‘Fuck yeah, love. Love the way your tits move f’me baby.’ He’d groan while cupping your boobs and lightly slapping one.

Hobie never forgets your boobs during foreplay. He always takes his sweet time kissing and sucking them, creating patterns of hickeys in his wake. You will never have sex without Hobie showing love to your boobs, which he says are,

‘the best rack i’ve ever laid my eyes on.’

—

@ohxx @luxxtuxx @fatenpara

[thebearer]

in your eyes, the man that i could be |carmen berzatto x reader| part two

prompt: after carmen finds out you're staying at pete and sugar's house, he goes to try and talk to you. he's faced with his furious sister and harsh truths instead.

or part two of the devastation fic lol that is based off this ask from the other day <3

contains: angst! angst! this one is very much so more carmen focused bc let's be real... he's the problem in this one lol. still hurt with no comfort but more this one than last one?? mentions to past trauma, family trauma. sugar clears carmen in this one. slight mean carmen still, slight angry carmen still. language. dad!carmen x mom!reader. no resolution but the make up is in the next and final part! still heavy so read at your own discretion! word count- 4.8k+

Fak twisted his hands, nervously watching Carmen pace back and forth furiously. One hand running through his hair, tangled and matted from the continued motion; the other lifting and pulling the cigarette to and from his lips. Fak wasn’t sure how Carmen wasn’t sick yet. He’d never seen him smoke so much, seen anyone smoke so much. 

“Neil, I’m not fuckin’ playin’ anymore, ok? You’re startin’ to really, really fuckin’ piss me off.” Carmen’s jaw ground tight, voice starting to growl with that gravelly warning shake that had Fak flinching. “You better tell me where you put my fuckin’ car keys, alright? I-I’m not sitting here, ok? I’m not gonna sit around wi-with my fuckin’ thumb up my ass like a jagoff while my wife and kid are a-at fuckin’ Sugar and Pete’s!” 

“Carmy,” Fak tried to keep his voice calm and firm, like Sugar and Richie had coached him to, hyping him up before he entered the house. “I can’t give you your keys right now, becaus-” 

“-Oh, fuck you! Fuck you! Who the fuck do you think you are, huh?” Carmen roared, teeth bared and eyes narrowed. 

Fak didn’t think he’d ever say it, but he missed the sad Carmen from before. When he’d been sent to check on Carmen and Richie, to find out where the hell they were before Sydney had a meltdown in the kitchen, only to find a nearly hyperventilating Carmen and an unsure and frantic Richie trying to calm him. Fak had known Carmen a long time, his whole life, really, and never once had he seen him so… so sad. 

That sadness was long gone now. In its wake, an anger, worse than before, than he’d ever seen or could have imagined. Fak had just tried to comfort Carmen, offer up some encouragement that you and Teddy and Anchovy were all ok, taken care of- at Pete and Sugar’s. He didn’t realize how that would flip the switch, how it would infuriate Carmen. 

“I-I’m Fak.” Fak blinked, nervously. “You know me. I’m your friend, Carm, and I-I’m just trying to help you-” 

“-You’re trying to help me? You’re trying to fuckin’ help me by keepin’ me away from my wife?” Carmen’s voice boomed, shaking the walls of the house. 

Even in his loud rage, the house seemed too quiet, too still. There was no baby TV show on, no hum of the diffusers, or Anchovy’s small purrs and chirps. Carmen missed him, missed him jumping on the counters just to piss him off. He missed you defending him, missed how Anchovy would startle and run anytime Teddy would gurgle or whine. 

God, he missed Teddy. He spent the first night in the nursery, sitting in the rocking chair, staring blankly ahead, wishing he had the small screaming bundle to rock to sleep. 

Carmen couldn’t bring himself to go into the bedroom. Not again. Not after he found your ring laying there. He’d scared Richie so badly with his cries that Richie had enforced the ‘Mikey Prevention Plan’, his twisted humor of a way at keeping Carmen from being alone, from hurting himself in his misery. 

“Carm, I-I can’t.” Fak stuttered, looking at the door, begging Richie or anyone, really, to walk through the door. “You know I can’t.” 

“This is fucked up, Neil. You know that? You know how fucked up this is? Keepin’ me from-from Teddy? From my kid?” Carmen took a long drag of the cigarette, smoke blowing out of his nose with his panicked breathing. His hands still shook, everything was still shaky and rattling with uneasiness inside him. 

“Carm, I- Don’t say that.” Fak shook his head, he could feel himself caving. Carmen could too. 

“You’re keepin’ me from her, Fak. You know that? You know you-you’re keepin’ me from my daughter? My baby? Don’t you-you know how fucked up that is?” Carmen shook his head, lips pursing in disgust. “You’re lettin’ Richie boss you around like he always does, an-and you know, you know deep down that this is wrong. Keepin’ me from them is wrong.” 

Fak hesitated, a nervous sweat breaking out on the back of his neck. “Richie said-” 

“-Richie can get fucked. Ric-Richie doesn’t know shit! He doesn’t know shit, you know he doesn’t know shit, a-and you’re lettin’ him tell you what to do? Richie?” Carmen scoffed, throwing his hands out. “The fuck does Richie know, huh? H-He’s divorced, an-an-and barely sees his kid-” 

“-Hey!-” Fak’s eyes widened in shock. “Carmen, you don’t-” 

“-Is that what you want? You want me to end up alone?” Carmen’s eyes are wild, crazed, but he goes still. “Y-You want me to end up like-like Richie? Li-Li-Like that?” 

Fak swallows, both standing in the thick, tension filled silence. “Carmen, I-I can’t.” Fak shook his head slowly. “I don’t… I think you need to, I don’t know, I think you need to calm down before you go see them.” 

“Calm down, you’re tellin’ me to calm down.” Carmen snarled, bitterly scoffing at Fak. “Fuck you. Alright? Fuck you. I will never forgive you for this shit. You hear me? You-You doin’ this to me, keepin’ me from my family. I’ll never fuckin’ forgive you.” 

Fak flinched, Carmen’s words cutting brutally through him with a bitter sting. Carmen stormed off, the front door slamming with a force that sent vibrations through the house. Fak was surprised it didn’t split the wood in two. Walking towards the front window, he saw Carmen storming off, furiously lighting another cigarette, running a hand through his hair, again. Fak assumed he was out of Spirits, that he’d smoked through another pack, walking to the corner store to get more. After thirty minutes, he called Richie, frantic that he’d let Carmen loose. 

“What part of Mikey Prevention Plan don’t you fuckin’ understand?” Richie sneered over the phone, trying to keep his voice low so the new hires didn’t hear. As far as they were concerned, Carmen was on a vacation, only the OGs knew the truth. 

“I-I didn’t mean to! I swear!” Fak’s voice lilted high, a shrill of nerves that had Richie’s eyes pinching in annoyance. “I thought he was going to the corner store to get more cigarettes, an-and then he didn’t come back for a while-” 

“-What’s a while?” Richie muttered, catching Tina’s eye through the glass. She set her rag down quickly, walking towards him. 

“I dunno… Fifteen, thirty minutes?” Fak mumbled. “Maybe closer to an hour now. B-But then I went to look for him, and he wasn’t there, so I asked the guy working and he said he hadn’t seen him, and-and now I’m driving around trying to find him. I-I’m shouting his name out the window and everything!” 

“He’s not a dog, Neil, he won’t-” Richie huffed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I know where he’s at.” 

“You do?” Fak perked up. 

“Yeah, I mean, no, but I-I’m pretty sure I know where he’s at since you fuckin’ told him where they were stayin’.” Richie rolled his eyes bitterly. “Just- Come over here and get me, alright? Let me call Pete- God, you and this fuckin’ kid, got me callin’ Pete. You’re killin’ me Neil Jeff.” 

Richie hung up the phone with a huff, looking up at Tina. “What’s goin’ on? Jeff alright? What’s he doin’?” She pressed. 

“Yeah, Fak-Fak fuckin’ lost him.” Richie rubbed his forehead in exasperation. “But, I think I know where he’s at. Have a pretty good idea, anyways.” 

Tina eyed Richie carefully. “Richie, you know I love that kid, you know I do. But if he’s fuckin’ with Mama,” Tina shook her head, lips pursing in fury. It was no secret how taken she was to you, even before the affectionate nickname that came with the pregnancy. 

“He’s not,” Richie shook his head. “He’s stupid, hot headed, a fuckin’ baby- all that. But… C’mon, T, you and I both know he loves her. He wouldn’t do anything to them. Do somethin’ to himself before that.” 

Tina paused but nodded, face softening. “So, you know where he’s at then? You don’t… You don’t think he’s gonna…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it, looking at the picture of Mikey with Richie, Tina, Ebra, and Marcus only a few months before he passed. Carmen had placed it at the front, a reminder of the legacy that was there before him, of The Beef and his brother. 

“No, I hope not.” Richie muttered, looking at his phone’s screen with dread, Pete’s contact on the screen gleaming back at him nearly mockingly. “I think I know where he is.” He sighed, pressing the button. 

Pete could feel his phone buzzing in his pants, ignoring it as he held the front door in a white knuckled grip. He hadn’t expected to see Carmen there, on his Ring camera, knocking on the door softly, softer than he expected given his manic looking state. 

“H-Hey, Carm,” Pete closed the door as casually as he could, only leaving a sliver open. “What, uh, what’s up, man?” 

“Hey, Pete,” Carmen could barely meet his gaze, suddenly overly aware of how disheveled he must have looked. 

“Uh, what-what brings you by?” Pete stuttered, heart picking up when he heard the soft thump behind him, Anchovy lurking behind his legs curiously. He gripped the door, shuffling his legs together, trying to close it on his frame so Anchovy wouldn’t slip by. 

“C’mon,” Carmen sighed, a tired look in his eye, too exhausted to even be pleading. “You know why I’m here, alright. I-I know they’re here.” 

“W-Who is? Sugar? Yeah, she-she’s off today.” Pete stiffened at the claim, swallowing nervously, trying to play it cool. Anchovy meowed loudly behind him, cringing when he was  given away by the cat. 

“Pete, don’t-” Carmen pinched the bridge of his nose, breathing in slowly, trying to calm the tears that threatened to fall. He could hear Anchovy, hear the sounds of the house- the home. Soft child shows, the hum of the dryer, all the things that made the house feel alive. Carmen would give anything to have his home sound like that again, the silence was beginning to drive him crazy. 

“Where is she?” Carmen looks up, his gaze much harder than before, a frantic look beginning to take over his sadness. 

“I, uh, I-I don’t-” Pete stutters, fingers tapping on the wood of the door anxiously. 

“-Pete, I really don’t want you to fuck with me right now, alright?” Carmen takes a deep breath, trying to swallow back his emotions that were already beginning to climb in his throat again. “I need to- I-I need to see her, Pete.” Carmen couldn’t bring himself to say your name, sure even the first syllable would have him in tears, breaking down on the front porch. 

Another meow, louder than before, came before Pete could answer. The soft scratching of Anchovy’s paws on the door, a demanding meow that Carmen knew all too well. He’d learned to drown it out, or try to. It became nearly a soundtrack to your sex life when you’d first gotten the cat, locking him out of the room so you two could fuck, only for him to yowl and scratch and demand to be let in. Carmen could remember how you’d giggle, pouting at him exaggeratedly to let him in. His heart fell with an ache that was warm yet still made him feel sick. 

Pete looked down at the cat, then back at Carmen, a hesitant grimace on his face. “Carm… You-You know I would,” He started. Carmen’s heart soared with hope, eyes wide, a near adrenaline rush of excitement shooting through his system. “But…You know I can’t.” 

Carmen’s heart crashed, shattered with the hope he’d finally begun to find, to feel again. “What the fuc- Pete, that’s… Pete, c’mon. C’mon. Yo-You gotta let me in. Let me in.” Anger surged through Carmen’s chest. He closed his eyes tight and tried to swallow it down. All he’d been is angry. For weeks now, it had been a never ending cycle of anger and sickness and distraught, all amplified to new heights the second you left. 

Carmen could feel himself spiraling, ears starting to ring again, rushing and roaring flashbacks flooding into his mind. Your face when you left, Teddy’s cries, the critic’s pursed lips, Sydney’s disappointed face when he forgot something again, Tina’s eyes cutting. Carmen turned, shaking his hand lightly, trying to do a breathing exercise he saw on YouTube, years ago when he’d moved to New York. 

His breaths were deep, shaky, but deep enough that it cleared his head, dulled the ringing. His mind wandered back, Richie’s voice ringing in his head. “You wanna get her back? Quit actin’ like a goddam baby. Quit actin’ like this isn’t your own fuckin’ fault. Like you didn’t do this shit to yourself, Cousin. Take some fuckin’ accountability, grow the fuck up, and get your motherfuckin’ shit together, alright? And maybe-maybe you’ll get your family back.” Richie’s voice rang clear through his mind from a few nights ago, when Carmen was especially mean and awful. 

“Hey, uh, you alright?” Pete hesitated, leaning towards Carmen, his grip on the door loosening. 

Carmen took a deep breath, running a hand over his face before he turned back towards Pete, eyes shining with tears that threatened to fall. “Pete, please? Please?” Carmen begged, voice soft, cracking at the end. “Please, jus-just let me see her? L-Let me talk to her? Just- Let me tell her tha-that I’m sorry. Please… I need to tell her I-I’m sorry. Don’t-” 

��-Carmen?” Sugar gaped, her voice coming from behind Pete. She pulled the door open, shocked gaze dropping into furious, jaw setting in a near snarl. “What the fuck are you doing here?” She hissed. 

“Why do you think I’m here, Natalie? Huh?” Carmen snapped in anger, rolling his eyes in annoyance. 

“Oh, you’ve got a lot of fucking nerve showing up here.” Natalie snapped back, pulling the door open and stepping out on the porch. She stood in front of her younger brother, arms crossed in a standoff. 

“Pete, go inside.” Sugar sneered, her gaze not moving from Carmen’s. She felt like they were children again, having a staring contest to see who got the last piece of gum from Donna’s purse, only this time, it was for worse. 

“Nat, I-” 

“-I got it.” Natalie said firmly. Pete didn’t argue with her, simply nodding, shutting the door softly behind them. Her eyes held Carmen’s gaze, both of them intense, furious at the other for other reasons. 

“You should be ashamed of yourself-” 

“-I am-” 

“-Mortified.” Sugar sneered, giving him a disgusted shake of her head. Carmen shifted, biting his own tongue to keep it from lashing out at her. “Do you know what I came home to the other night? You want me to tell you?-” 

“-No, I know-” 

“-No, I’m going to tell you.” Natalie snapped. “I came home after a very long shift because our head chef decided to, oh, I don’t know- disappear and go on a psychotic rampage apparently.” Natalie scoffed sarcastically. 

“And I walk through the door, ready for bed. Maybe a glass of wine, maybe a bath, maybe to finally catch up on my shows with my husband; and you know what I found instead?” Sugar took a step towards Carmen, intimidating him with her harsh glare. “I find my husband taking care of your baby because your wife is sobbing-” 

“-Don’t-” 

“-No, no. I mean, sobbing. A total broken mess on my kitchen table, because she said you,” Sugar jabbed a finger at Carmen. “Decided to come home and scream at her. Not only scream, but say some of the most volatile, disgusting things I’ve ever fucking heard in my life to your wife, the mother of your very much so still a newborn baby.” 

Carmen felt the familiar wave of nausea wash over him, swallowing back spit that pooled in his mouth with a cry that threatened to fall from his chest. He couldn’t bring himself to speak, to look at her gaze anymore. It felt too judgemental, left him feeling too vulnerable and sick of himself under it. 

“So let me ask first; What the fuck is the matter with you?” Natalie sneered. 

“I don’t know.” Carmen’s voice was tight, jaw tighter, fighting a tremble that was threatening to break. “I-I don’t… I don’t fuckin’ know. I-I didn’t- I didn’t mean it-” A single tear fell, slipping out of the corner of his eyes, sliding down his cheek- the final crack in his demeanor. 

Carmen tried to fight it, deep breaths that burned his lungs and nose to control the tears, keep him from breaking here on his sister’s porch, but they wouldn’t stop. Carmen wasn’t sure how he had any tears left, after crying for days on end, how he hadn’t shriveled up his tear ducts. Yet here he was, broken sobs slipping out again. 

Sugar didn’t move. Arms still crossed over her chest, lips still fixed in a hard line, watching Carmen with intensity as he broke down, tears flowing in front of her. She didn’t comfort him, not that he expected her to. She didn’t try to give him words of encouragement, advice on how to right the wrongs like the others did. Instead, she kept a furious gaze on him, unmoved by the tears. 

“Please,” Carmen sniffed hard, running the back of his hand over his nose. “Please, Sugar, please. Ju-Just let me see Teddy. Let me se-ee her. Don’t-Don’t do this to me. Don’t ke-ep my kid away from me-” 

“-Me?” Sugar scoffed, pushing her hand into her chest. “Oh, no. No, no, no, no. Don’t you even start that shit, Carm. I’m not keeping your kid away from you, let’s make that clear.” 

Carmen’s breath hitched when she stepped towards him, toe to toe with him, teeth bared in a grit of anger. “I didn’t take your kid away. You know who did? Hm? You.” Natalie snapped, Carmen flinched at the cruelty of her words. “You did this, Carmen. You did every last bit of this. This is on you. No one else but you.” 

Carmen held in a cry that threatened to break out, face crumbling with tears. He rubbed his hand over his face, trying to soothe the burn and hide his distraught. “And you know something else? I know you don’t remember dad very well, but I do, ok? And lately, you’ve been acting just like him.” Sugar’s tone clipped, leaving a burning sting in Carmen’s chest at her words. 

“Yelling just because shit didn’t go your way? Do you know part of the reason mom’s so fucked up? Why everyone takes her side all the time and babies her? Uncle Jimmy and Uncle Lee? It’s because dad used to berate her, scream at her so badly- say some of the worst shit in the world because he was stressed out, that those guys would feel bad for her.” Sugar ranted. “And I promise you- promise you if I told Uncle Jimmy right now what you said, how I found your wife, he’d agree with me. Maybe even worse.” 

Carmen shifted, his heart squeezing in fear now. Jimmy loved you, always had. He held a special soft spot in his heart for you. Worse was probably right, and truthfully, Carmen would accept it- he deserved it. It wouldn’t be as bad as how he felt right now. 

Natalie held Carmen’s gaze, letting her words sink in. She lifted his hand when he started to talk. “I don’t-I really don’t want to hear it, ok?” Natalie shook her head. “And before you start trying to come up with some excuse-” 

“-I-I’m not-” 

“- I want you to know something. To hear it and really listen to it.” Natalie paused, waiting until his eyes met hers to continue. “I know you’ve been through a lot- We’ve been through a lot. But that doesn’t mean you get to just treat people like shit. That you can act like this and it’s ok.” 

“I know that.” Carmen’s jaw was tight, strangled words croaking out. 

“Then act like it.” Natalie snapped. “It’s not easy, none of this is easy, Carm. I mean… Do you know that every day- every single day, I wake up and something happens that’s shitty or rough, and I think about how easy it would be just to grab a bottle of wine or two. Drink myself unconscious like mom does. Just how easy that would be, how nice it would be just to drown myself out instead of face the issues.” 

“There’s days when MJ or Maggie or-or Pete just drive me fuckin’ nuts, and I want to pull my hair out, or scream, or Pete will do something that just pushes me right over the edge and I just want to rage.” Natalie continued, arms waving dramatically. “I want to throw in the towel, take the easy way out, rage, drink myself silly, scream at all of them until I feel better, but you know what? You know what I don’t do? I don’t do that.” 

Natalie crossed her arms, taking a breath to steady herself. “I don’t do that to them because I know how that feels.” Her voice cracked, just barely, enough to show the emotion that was hiding underneath. “I know how that felt. I know how that made me feel.” 

Carmen could feel his eyes brimming with tears again, too emotional to be embarrassed. Donna’s many red faced, slurred screaming tyrades came back to his mind. How he’d hide, try and stay quiet and invisible to avoid them. Even as he got older. 

“I know how that fucked me up. How it fucked them up. How it fucked you up, an-and Mikey up. I mean- how it…it fucked our whole life up!” Sugar laughed humorlessly, throwing her hands up in mock defeat. “I just… When I think about that, and about how it just ruined all of us. That’s the last thing, the very last thing, I’d ever want to do to my kids, to Pete, t-to anyone, really.” 

Carmen nodded, too overwhelmed with emotions to speak. His throat burned, scratchy and sore from screaming and crying. His chest was tight, constricting his lungs, stealing his breath. He was on the verge of an anxiety attack, maybe something worse, yet, he felt eerily calm in the moment. Still even under the shame and hurt her words brought. He sat on the porch, sure his knees would give out soon, head spinning and dizzy with this damning realization. 

 “You need to make up your mind. Make a decision, right here, right now.” Sugar continued behind him. Though he couldn’t see her, he knew her face was stoic to hide the hurt, hide the emotions. A classic Berzatto deflection trait. “You need to decide what you’re going to do to be better for your family. If you’re going to continue to be a selfish, piece of shit, or if you’re going to change; be better.” 

Carmen’s shoulders shuddered with his next breath, deep but not intentional; like he didn’t even know he did it. Too dazed and deep in thought, staring blankly ahead. “I can tell you,” Sugar stepped towards the door. “It’s not comfortable. It’s not easy. It is so hard some days. You have to fight for it every day, fight to break shit that was drilled into you, fight to recognize that some things you do, you don’t even mean to. It takes a lot of work, but… I’d rather fight every single day to be better, to be kinder and softer and more understanding for my family, than to not have them at all.” 

Carmen couldn’t stop thinking of you. How you were so naturally nurturing and sweet. You’d always been like that. You were loving and gentle freely. You’d always been so patient with him. It almost made him feel insecure, inferior, when he thought of it before, but now, he just wanted to return the favor. 

“You decide what you want to do, and then maybe- maybe you’ll get to see them again.” Sugar turned the door knob, pushing it open. “But today? Not a chance. Go get yourself together before you try and do this again.” Carmen flinched at the door slamming behind her, harder than he thought it would. Still, he didn’t move from his spot on the porch, head in his hands, deep in thought about his future, his past, everything. 

“There he is!” Fak’s voice was muffled through the car window, slowly pulling to a stop in Sugar and Pete’s driveway. 

Carmen looked up slowly, taking a slow, grounding exhale in, just as Richie and Fak climbed out of the car. “Cousin, thank fuckin’- You better be glad he’s here.” Richie glared at Fak. 

“I am!” Fak chirped defensively. 

Carmen stood slowly, turning one last time to look at the front door. He couldn’t see through the small privacy glass on the door, but he swore he could hear you- hear your voice. Soft and hushed, a little cautious mixing with Sugar’s reassuring one. It took everything in him not to turn and bust the door down, run inside and throw himself at your feet, begging for forgiveness. 

He knew that time would come. 

Instead, he walked to the car, sliding in the backseat, ignoring the confused looks Richie and Fak gave each other. “So, uh, did you-” 

“-Don’t ask that.” Richie cut off Fak with a bark of annoyance. “What’s the matter with you?” 

“Nothing! I just- I thought we all wanted to know-” 

“-Hey, Cousin,” Carmen muttered, staring blankly at the house. Richie hummed, turning to Carmen carefully. “What’s, uh… You-You said you had someone for me to talk to?” 

“Yeah,” Richie nodded slowly. “The therapist?” 

Carmen paused, swallowing slowly. “You…You think she’d see me now?” 

“Right now?” Richie lifted a brow. Carmen nodded slowly, still looking past him, eyes glued on the house. He swore he could see a figure move- your figure, peeking through the blinds before ducking back into the shadows. “Yeah, I’m sure she will. I can… I can call her. See what I can do.” 

“Thanks.” Carmen twisted his wedding band gently, the car jolting gently as Fak started to back out. 

Fak turned around, looking from the back window to Carmen with a hesitant grimace. “You ok?” He asked, his voice dropped to a low hush with Richie on the phone beside him. 

“No,” Carmen admitted, shoulders slumping in defeat. “No, I-I’m not, but… I wanna be.” Carmen looked at Fak, eyes glassy with emotion. “I gotta get my shit together. Gotta do better f-for my family.” 

Fak nodded slowly, pulling out onto the road, slowly shifting the gears back into place. The car began to roll, Carmen watching Sugar and Pete’s house disappear in the rearview. His heart tore, ripped right down the middle and split at the seams knowing he was leaving you, Teddy- his family behind. It took everything, every ounce of strength not to turn around, not to run back. It hurt, but he realized, this is what Sugar was talking about. 

So, Carmen went to the other side of town, to the small building where Richie’s therapist was. His counselor he’d started seeing a while back, when he was on his purpose journey. 

It was weird, weirder than Al-Anon. Carmen felt entirely too vulnerable sitting in that chair, having her stare at him and only him, nodding as he told his ‘story’- it felt weird to call it that. He didn’t want it to be his story, his defining qualities. No, Carmen wanted a new story, a better one with you and Teddy and his family. He’d told Dr. Mullins that. 

“I think that’s a great start, Carmen.” She nodded, giving him a soft smile. “So, tell me how you’d do that.” 

Carmen scoffed lightly, looking down at his hands. “I, uh, I don’t really know.” He admitted. “Kinda thought that��s what you were for.” 

“You’re right. I’m here to help you reach that goal, maintain it.” She nodded. “But in order to do that, I need to know a little more.” 

“Like what?” Carmen muttered. “I don’t really remember my dad and all the bad shi-stuff he’d do.” 

“You said you didn’t want that to define you, so let’s not talk about that.” She shook her head softly. “Let’s focus on what you want. What kind of life you’d want to live with your family.” 

Carmen’s knee bounced, taking a shaky breath. “I… I don’t want to lose control.” He admitted. “I don’t want t-to scream, and say shit I don’t mean, and-and to take it out on people who don’t deserve it.” He looked up at her. “I don’t want to do that again.” 

“Good.” Dr. Mullins nodded slowly. “Let’s start there.” 

[ssahotchnerr]

hi my love!! how are you?🩷

i saw your requests are open and i wanted to ask for more jealous!aaron if you’re up for it! maybe one of the girls (probably jj or penelope) set up reader on a date and they are talking about it on the jet ride home from a case. she’s not too sure about it but wants to give it a chance…rossi and derek are hyping her up too maybe! and our man aaron is just watching thinking he’s lost his chance but little does he know she’s only going to try and get him out of her mind.

wishful thinking

these kinda plots >>> 💓 cw; bau!reader, sooo much mutual pining (they're both idiots), a touch of jealous!aaron, slight angst wc; 1k

part two

You weren't being too subtle.

As the others were settling down, getting situated for the ride home, your priorities laid elsewhere; admiring Aaron and the handsome, beautiful, handsome features he possessed.

The way his cowlicks were tousled gently over his forehead, just begging to swept back. His chiseled jawline, one your hand yearned to span across. His enviously long eyelashes. His lips-

Penelope suddenly sitting next to you pulled you from your trance, causing you to jump. It had been one of those rare instances she was needed in the field, offering her specialities on sight rather than stationed back in Quantico.

The expression she bared was rather eager, complete with a pair of googly eyes.

You laughed shakily, a faint blush creeping onto your cheeks - hoping your longing stare hadn't actually gone noticed, "May I help you?"

"So," Her grin widened, "are you excited!?"

You grimaced slightly as your mood instantly deflated. You uneasily crossed a leg over the other, "I don't know."

"Excited for what?" Morgan inputted from above; headphones in hand, twirling the headband in a circle around his index finger.

You offered a sigh in response, so Penelope took the initiative to answer for you.

"You know James Cameron? From Homeland Security?"

"Yeah, what about him?"

"He's expressed quite the interest in our fellow crime fighter." Penelope's excited grin turned back towards yourself, also nudging you with an elbow. "And so I've honorably claimed the role of Cupid and someone," More wistful eyes pointed at you, "has a date Saturday night."

"He's a catch." JJ expressed enthusiastically, dramatizing a swoon as she sat across from the two of you. "Tall, dark, handsome."

"I can vouch I've heard nothing but good things about him." Morgan teasingly ruffled the hair on the top of your head, "Way to go kid."

You offered a meek smile, squirming ever so slightly in your seat. It took everything in you to not let your gaze drift back elsewhere. "Thanks but... I'm not so sure I want to go."

"What's not to be sure about? He's smokin', successful. It'll be good for you, too. When's the last time you put yourself out there?" JJ pointed out, arching an eyebrow in emphasis.

You shrugged, your chin landing in your palm.

Clearly you couldn't go into the specifics; the truth being you had your eyes on someone else. A particular boss you all shared, sitting just a few feet away.

The whole dating scene, you've been hesitant due to said feelings. The only reason you had truly considered going out - was to get Aaron out of your mind. You've spent countless, sleepless nights thinking about him, picking apart every little interaction; the way he looked at you after you had a breakthrough at a profile, admirable enough to make you want to burst at the seams. Walking alongside him, hands centimeters apart, softly grazing his skin. The concern he showed following an unfortunate brawl with an unsub - he had almost reached out to cradle your face. But, all of which could have been entirely figments of your imagination. Wishful thinking.

But regardless, they had given you the slightest amount of hope. Which is why you waited, but you couldn't do so forever; the probability of you and him - highly unlikely.

You had two choices; to continue holding out for the impossible, or to pursue the realistic.

You peered over at Aaron, consumed entirely by the file in his lap. It didn't appear he was paying attention, and that stung. All things considered.

The truth is, he was, and disliking every single bit of it. While it looked as if he were working, he was merely scribbling on a scrap piece of paper, enough to wear it down and produce a hole; silently brooding and anxiously waiting to hear where the conversation went. The more it carried on, however, the more jealousy burned in the middle of his chest. The two of you were close, you understood him like no one else, but that itself was the issue.

He feared if you got too close, if you really, really knew him, he would damage you somehow. Or worse, you'd end up similarly to Haley - unsatisfied and yearning to leave him behind. And so, he had refrained from being proactive.

In addition, right now, part of him didn't know what hurt more; the fact you were going on a date with someone who wasn't him, or the fact that you hadn't mentioned it.

"I say go for it." Dave offered, "Trust me. I am an expert, after all."

Emily bust out laughing, "Okay."

"What do you think?" You asked over their laughter, your voice detrimentally small. "Hotch?"

Aaron's head lifted, his eyes immediately latching onto yours. It kept circling in his head; You missed your chance. You're missing your chance.

Despite the ongoing internal conflict, one he could resolve in a few simple words, he panicked.

"I don't see a reason not to." He rushed out, your heart plummeting into your stomach at his words. "Of course, don't do anything you're not comfortable with. But there's no harm in seeing if there's a connection."

Even as he spoke, he didn't sound like himself - as if someone else were doing the talking. Extremely feigned, forced. Speaking from his mind rather than his heart.

"Okay," You bit your lip, looking directly at him as you spoke. "I will."

As the others switched topics, your eyes stayed with Aaron's. A silent exchange drifted between the two of you, Spencer's current tangent seemingly miles away. Hurt, betrayal, a touch of something else too.

You exhaled deeply, turning to look out your window.

Whatever it was, it didn't matter now. Did it?

[jeonginsleftcheek]

First kiss with Stray Kids

genre: fluff, suggestive

description: you and skz member went out on a few dates and it's time to share your first kiss. what's it like to kiss skz members for the first time?

a/n: gn!reader, okay i'm supposed to be asleep but i got this idea, enjoy?🤍

Chan:

Oh, Chan probably plans the kiss the night before your date. He'll lay in bed and flip through different scenarios of you two kissing. He keeps overthinking and he can't sleep(what's new tho?). He probably ends up imagining you two married with kids and starts giggling n shit. When you actually meet up, he's freaking nervous the whole time. You notice and if you ask him what's wrong he'll probably come up with an excuse cause he wants to wait till the end of the date for the kiss. Will ask you 'can i kiss you?' when that time comes and get shy when you say yes but there's no backing out now. Will kiss you gently like you're some sort of delicate flower and absolutely freak the f out on the inside because hello??? You're kissing??? That first kiss will be sweet and innocent, but get ready for the second one cause now that he broke the ice, it's gonna get heated.

Lee Know:

He wants to kiss you so badly every time you're together, but for some reason he just gets so nervous about it so he can't initiate it. When you're out on a date he will look at your lips the whole time while you talk and lick his lips unconsciously. You notice ofcourse, and since he loves teasing you, you're happy you finally have a chance to tease him a little. He catches himself staring at your lips and looks up at your eyes, his ears are red and he chuckles nervously. You say 'you wanna kiss me or something?' and he's mortified but he wont show that, he'll just say 'so what if i do?'. That's cue for you to smirk and lean in, then stop right before you actually touch just to see him panic once more because he's adorable when he's flustered, okay? He'll close the gap then and you'll get a sweet kiss, full of warmness and smiles.

Changbin:

Hypes himself up, actually thinks he'll initiate the kiss but when you look at him like that he gets all shy and melts and you have to lean in first. He'll lean in too then, with his cute half smirk, eyes trained on your lips. He's kinda stiff at first (because he's panicking and can't believe you're actually kissing him) but will relax after some time and put his hand on the back of your head to hold you in place so he can keep kissing you. Gets bolder as you reciprocate and slips a little tongue in. Gets shy again when you part and make eye contact. (He's giggling and kicking his feet fr). Will ask for kisses every second of the day from that moment on and if you deny him, he'll get all sulky and dramatic. (How dare you?)

Hyunjin:

I think he'd also be shy about it but he would muster up enough courage to lean in first and kiss you. He wants your first kiss to be extra romantic so he takes his time and kisses the corners of your lips, then your upper lip, then your bottom lip before he actually presses those pretty lips into yours. You melt because how are someone's lips that soft?! (Hyunjin thinks the same for you) And trust me he may look calm and collected in that moment but my man is freaking out on the inside. Gets more courageous and slips his tongue in and just massages yours gently at first. Then he tilts your head, his big hands holding your face and he just starts making out with you and boy oh boy it's a lot. By the time you part for air, you both look disheveled and flushed but can you help it? You both got really into it. Now that he tasted you, he wont ever hesitate to kiss you like that for hours.

Jisung:

He will wait for you to initiate it (he will throw not so subtle signs at you tho) and when you do, this man will explore your mouth with his tongue like he needs your air to breathe. Messy, sloppy, teeth clanking, hands roaming around, kisses you until you're literally heaving for a breath. Bite his bottom lip and he'll whimper into your mouth. I know, sounds like a hell of a first kiss but I feel like he just wants to go all in because he's literally infatuated with you. Now that you've kissed for the first time, you're obligated to give him kisses every 2 minutes. Cause like what are you doing if you're not kissing him, right? You don't really need air to breathe, right?

Felix:

I feel like he isn't shy about things like this in real life, especially if he knows you reciprocate his feelings so he'll just go for it. Puts his hand on your cheek and starts with gently pressing his lips with yours before moving them (will probably suck your bottom lip between his). Definitely looks like the type that will push his tongue in just a few moments later, leaving you kinda shocked that he's so bold but that's just Felix, I feel like he has no problem showing you he loves you in any form of physical love language (wink wink). He'll kiss you until your breathless, his tongue moving in all directions (preview for later?). Will probably ask 'was that good?' or 'did you like that?' with a smirk. He knows it was good, he just wants to hear you say it.

Seungmin:

His first kiss would be timid and gentle, he would lean in first but he'd let you lead and set the pace. He would look so calm and collected but he is freaking the hell out on the inside. He can't believe you're kissing him. Will put his arms around your waist or shoulders and hold you closer to his body because he feels so happy that you like him that much. If you throw in a little tongue you'll feel him clench his hands into fists because you'll literally be the death of him, why are you doing that? He reciprocates, still lets you lead (for now). Run your fingers through his hair and touch his neck while you kiss him, he will *burst*. When you part he smiles, the widest smile you've seen on his face (you fall in love again because hello beautiful??) and his ears are red and you want to scream and pinch his cheeks cause he's just too adorable.

Jeongin:

My man hypes himself up, believes he'll be fearless, he'll come in and swoop you off your feet. But when he's actually in front of you, his braveness will fade and be replaced with nervousness. He asks if he can kiss you and you both lean in at the same time resulting in either your head bumping or teeth clashing but it's fine if it's awkward the first time, it only gets better from there. So when you lean in again he kisses you so gently that you genuinely feel like you're in one of those cheesy tv scenes where time stops. Presses a few fast gentle kisses into your lips while smiling and when he leans back his face is as red as a tomato. Get ready for the future though, cause this boy is a fast learner and once he overcomes the shyness you're in for a hell of a treat.

[hoshifighting]

Hiiii! I was wondering if you could do a reaction of svt where the s/o gets in an argument with a man, and stands face to face proving their point to the guy ? And after svt just found it hot?

Thank you ! Take your time with everything, and just know I appreciate what you do!!🫶🏼

seungcheol: standing tall right next to you, arms crossed and glaring, he lets you do your thing, but he’s this close to stepping in, just in case. he’s practically pulsing, both from the need to protect you and from the heat of watching you hold your ground. honestly, he’s getting turned on by the fire in your eyes. he keeps his cool on the outside, but on the inside? he’s a mess, ready to handle things himself, but also ready to handle you right after.

jeonghan: oh, he’s got no time for this dude. he’s so mad at the guy that he just grabs your hand and walks away, mumbling something about “saving the poor guy from humiliation.” but once you’re alone, he’s practically begging you to use that fire on him next.

joshua: he steps in halfway, putting an arm between you and the guy with a calm look, body language all possessive. he tries to gently calm you down, but he’s clearly enjoying your stance, looking at you like you’re the hottest thing he’s ever seen. every word you say just turns him on more—for more degrading they are.

junhui: just watching in awe, the longer it goes on, the more he’s biting his lip, looking you up and down like he’s in heat. after the argument, he wraps an arm around you, muttering about hot it was, you can bet he’ll remind you of this later.

hoshi: probably started the fight in the first place, either from saying something too loud or getting a bit too hyped. but once you step in and take over, he’s standing behind you, practically leaking cum in his pants. he’s grinning from seeing you put the guy in his place. he’s the type to lean in after and mutter, “remind me not to get on your bad side.”

wonwoo: he won’t let you get too close to the guy, immediately trying to guide you away, even if you’re still talking smack at the guy as he’s pulling you off. every time you keep arguing while he’s pulling you away, his cheeks flush, and he’s smiling to himself, already feeling the cock growing inside his pants. he’s both entertained and turned on, sneaking little glances at you as he thinks, “damn, that’s my partner. should i be proud or scared?”

woozi: he’s standing right behind you, fists clenched just in case, ready to step in if the guy even flinches wrong. but he’s also secretly smiling because he’s so damn proud. every time you fire back at the guy, woozi bites back a grin, watching the force in your posture. cant keep his hands off you by the time you walk away.

minghao: casually stands behind you, hands on your arms, his body pressed close as you argue, with a little smirk because he’s totally enjoying the show. he loves how fierce you are, and your ass pressing on him, it’s not doing him any favors. he whispers a “we’ll talk about this later,” already planning to scold you and make out with you the second you’re alone.

mingyu: he’s watching you like he doesn’t know whether to be afraid or turned on. even though he’s towering over the guy, he’s so flustered, shifting nervously between shield you and euphoria of seeing you all fired up. he can’t help but ask later, all red-faced, “could you, uh, maybe be that mad at me… later?” definitely into the idea of you riding him while still a bit mad.

seokmin: is this really happening? he thinks. he just watches in awe, face redder by the second. after the argument, he’s pulling you close, trying to act calm but flustered. he’s stammering about how amazing you were, but also afraid to stress you more. “you know, babe… that was, um, really hot.”

seungkwan: he’s fighting with you, no doubt. he’s already arguing with the guy, and you jumping in just fuels him more. after the argument, he’s all horny, both from the confrontation and the way you backed him up. rage sex is basically guaranteed.

vernon: he’s standing there, jaw dropped, just watching you handle things. he’s too stunned to move, his face saying it all: his cock is about to explode alone, no touch. he doesn’t say much afterward, but he’ll definitely be pulling you aside later, needy, unable to stop thinking about how godly insane you lookwd

chan: he’s shocked, honestly, but also totally in awe. his eyes are wide as he watches you lay into the guy, he can’t help but give a proud little smile, he’s got a newfound respect (and a little crush) on you afterwards. would be teasing you about how scary you were but secretly blushing because he’s hot to trot.

[miupow]

Ok so I saw you answer the Soobin’s housewife ask and now I need headcannons about being all members of TXT’s housewife.

ʚ・ ceo!txt + their housewives ! ꒰ sfw +nsfw headcanons꒱

cw // nsfw content , mdni ! housewife!fem!reader , dom!txt , kind of sub!soobin, (kind of) sugar daddy/sugar baby dynamics, oral (f. rec) mention, spanking, oral (m.rec), semi-public sex, traditional gender roles, creampies, sex toys mention

♡ ⸝⸝ SOOBIN .ᐟ

-> first off, this man is beyond whipped for his wife. a complete simp. he lets her walk all over him and he likes it. he’s always liked a woman that’s a little more in charge <3

-> he gets her whatever she wants whenever she wants it, can never say no to her puppy eyes, so he always has to think hard on what to do for holidays… lavish overseas trips for her birthday, custom designer for their anniversary. only the best for his queen !!

-> he can’t even fathom how he got so lucky !! coming home from work to dinner and a kiss, getting to hold you close and wind down from all of the stress <3 dessert is your wet pussy sat on his face, you played with yourself all day so you’d be ready and eager for him by the time he came home !!

-> will talk anyones ear off about his wife if he gets the opportunity to lol, has your wedding photos on his desk and your boobs in his wallet <3

-> his wifey is a little bratty but he loves you like that !! thinks it’s so cute when you squirm in his lap and beg for whatever it is you saw online that day, loves when you get pouty and bitchy because he told you no! he wants you to convince him to say yes!!

-> riding his cock so good he starts crying out his credit card information lol

-> follows you around holding your bags while you shop, puppy love look on his face hehe >< always so enamored by you and your beauty, he just can’t believe you’re his !!

-> which makes him extremely possessive over you… he’ll get nasty over the smallest things, like a waiter being a little too friendly, one of his colleagues making glances at you he doesn’t like… will ruin you over it in a heartbeat, let them listen to you cry in pleasure as he fingerfucks you in the bathroom hehe

-> is definitely the most submissive to his wife but that’s just how he likes it!! maybe even submissive to the point he likes calling her mommy but you didn’t hear that from me being led by the tie wherever you want to take him, let’s you manhandle him however you want even tho he’s so much bigger than you.. he’s just so soft

♡ ⸝⸝ YEONJUN .ᐟ

-> second biggest simp for his wife. he can hide it a little bit better tho lol .. but still not well , he’s bullied for being a total lapdog

-> like you keep his credit card in your purse you’re so spoiled. you don’t even have to ask!!

-> unlike soobin tho he does not like his wifey bratty. you better behave yourself, especially around his colleagues!!! don’t make him punish you, now.

-> always has you sitting on his lap any chance he gets!! he just loves the intimacy of it so much esp when he’s working in his office!!

-> loves coming with you clothes shopping!! getting to watch you try on all these pretty expensive clothes and put on a show for him!! he hypes u up so much!!! and maybe fucks you nasty in the dressing room

-> always taking pictures of you on all of the vacations and dates he takes you on!! your personal paparazzi <3 a picture of the two of you on your honeymoon is his phone lockscreen <3

-> you didn’t hear this from me okay but ceo yeonjun who’s a big exhibitionist… make u get on ur knees and deepthroat him in front of all of his business partners!!

♡ ⸝⸝ BEOMGYU .ᐟ

-> his wife is a little shit and so is he lmao !! both of them always scheming .. you both love to tease eachother so much until neither of you can take it anymore!!

-> plays with ur pussy under the table during a company dinner… he does not gaf !! and equally you palming his cock thru his slacks when he’s trying to focus on work!! takes u on a date with a vibrator in ur panties !! ride his dick when he’s on the phone with someone important!! constant back and forth hehe

-> total switch vibes from him tbh him and his wifey always fighting for dominance over eachother!!! aughhshsh!!!

-> if you forget to give him a kiss before he leaves for work in the morning his day will be completely ruined actually. standing in the doorway like “you forgot something >:(“ and refusing to leave until you kiss him ><

-> letting you do his hair for a meeting,,, sitting on the edge of the bed adjusting his suit while you brush and style his shaggy mullet <3

-> the most thoughtful presents ever!! always coming home with something in a little box, taking you on day trips that are picture perfect and he’s planned to a tee (and maybe stressed out over a little bit) !! making you happy makes him happy :(

-> he’s always keeping your marriage fun and exciting, nothing will ever get boring with him <3 even after years and years together you still get butterflies <33

-> rich husband gyu who was a chaebol baby and grew up rich lol.. he doesn’t really grasp the depth of his privilege but you grew up poor and he’s dedicated his life to giving you anything you could ever want and spoiling you completely rotten <3

♡ ⸝⸝ TAEHYUN .ᐟ

-> tyun loves a good, traditional household.. and as the man of the house, his wife needs to listen to his rules. and unless you want to be put over his lap and spanked, you better follow them <3

-> always be respectful to your husband and his colleagues. keep everything nice and clean. no begging or whining, only good wives get rewards. no touching yourself without his permission. always ask if you can cum. it may be a little too traditional for some women… but you love it <3 tyunnie treats you so good <3

-> calls you a brat all of the time but he’ll turn around and buy you whatever you want lol, he just enables ur behavior . tries to be strong but he can’t help but give in to everything you ask! giving him pretty puppy eyes and asking him to stay home sometimes works a little too well ><

-> he’s the best at hiding how absolutely down horrendous he is lmao. but his hand always on your waist or thigh gives him away!!! he always ALWAYS needs to be touching you or he’ll die actually

-> loves going to the gym with his wifey so he can flex his strength to her hehe, also loves it when all of the other guys at the gym stare at you in your cute tiny workout wear!! he knows u look so sexy and he loves how the other men can look but can’t touch <3 and if he grabs on ur ass a little bit in the weight room he’ll swear he didn’t mean to.

-> hubby tyun putting you in a headlock in doggy!!!! your knees on the carpet between tyuns legs sucking his dick with him sitting back in his home office chair !! making him his favorite for dinner cos you know he’s been stressed at work and him rewarding you by bending you over the kitchen counter!!!

-> he goes away on work trips often and it makes u so lonely :( but he always leaves you sweet gifts and stays in touch over the phone… texting you when he knows ur needy to remember to be a good girl and not touch yourself until your husband gets home <3

♡ ⸝⸝ HUENING KAI .ᐟ

-> golden retriever boyfriend upgrades to golden retriever husband !! he literally worships the ground you walk on

-> you’re insane if you think kai is ever “punishing” or “putting you in your place.” you can do absolutely whatever you want and kai will just watch with big puppy dog eyes !!! you can be as needy and whiny and bratty as you want, kai loves it!! go ahead and whine about how much you want that new pair of shoes, he’ll get them for you asap!!

-> only the softest, sweetest, gentlest sex !! lots of manhandling but that’s cos he’s just so strong he can’t help it !! loves taking care of his tiny little wifey fucking her and filling her pussy up <3 covered entirely by his broad frame

-> often asks his older business partners (the other boys) for help picking out gifts and planning dates for his love <3 he just needs to make sure he’s giving you the absolute best!! he wants you to feel like a princess, a queen <3

-> kai who wifed up his secretary or assistant lmaoo !! he was told getting work and pleasure mixed up would be a bad idea but he just couldn’t help himself!!! and he def made u quit after you got married so you can just stay home and he can spoil you <3

-> he takes out all of his stress from work on ur cunt !! the angrier he is the more rounds he goes until your dripping his cum and too exhausted to stop him from going again and again and again—

-> kisses you awake every morning <3 rubbing ur noses together in a sickingly cute display of affection in front of all of his colleagues.. y’all make them sick lmao !! he’s always giving you hugs and cuddles and kisses, calling you honey, sweetie, baby, dear <3 hes just so in love :(