#i don't really have any good reasons to live right now and everything is making me depressed | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lymtw · 3 months ago

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Ex Bf Toji

Yes, you and Toji used to live together, but falling out, splitting up, breaking up, and any other phrase used to signify the separation of two lovers, typically means no contact, for however long. Toji did the moving and you stayed where you were for however long it took to feel okay with not seeing him every day.

He didn't cheat. Toji is many things, but he is not a cheater. He saw no reason to, just like he sees no reason to forget you.

He snuck three things of yours into his luggage, to really keep you with him, because you'll get them back at some point, anyway. He took one of your used shirts, an old photo of you and him, and a pair of your underwear. It'll take three days to get you back—he's sure of it. He won't give all of these things back to you in one go, nor will the three days be consecutive. He's smarter than that. They'll be spaced out as he sees fit. When you least expect it, he'll call or text you to let you know about something that he "accidentally" brought with him.

Truthfully, he felt like an old, abandoned dog, the first few weeks that he spent apart from you. He constantly checked his phone, hoping to receive messages from you. He knew it was delusional for him to expect you to text and call, yet he still waited. He moped around his motel room, unsure of what to do, because you were the one who usually planned everything. You were the one who pulled him along with you everywhere, hand in hand. He never lacked excitement or interest around you and he felt safe, but two months later, as he sits on the bed in the same room with the most unnecessary and foul patterns, there's a gross feeling in his gut. Things are too quiet and he absolutely hates it. The silence gives him headaches sometimes and he devastatingly misses your chaos in those moments. He's stuck thinking about you, alone. He doesn't even feel like leaving his room to buy beer to make him feel less or enhance his emotions—whichever comes first.

You know he got it bad for you, when he preferred to use your underwear over and over to get himself off then let some other girl touch him. A third month passed and he still longed for your touch so damn much. He felt like a horny teenager with the way he treasured the garment he stole from you and touched himself to pictures and videos on his phone. Pictures and videos of you. Dirty ones that you would send him through messages, followed by innocent hearts and winky faces, as well as his own personal collection of ones he took.

He misses your smell, your taste—god, you were everything. How could things get so bad that you ended up apart from each other? He could really use your attention right about now. You don't even need to touch him, your company would suffice.

Your voice comes through the speaker of Toji's phone, his name moaned out shamelessly loud as you cum, your phone's camera capturing the whole thing for him. His heart drops to the depths of his stomach at the sound and he ruins the fabric of your pretty, blue panties, deep moans of your name flowing freely.

Toji is just as shameless as you in that video. He swipes off the old video of you and scrolls back down to the bottom of your conversation. It's a good thing you haven't blocked his number.

Hey, I accidentally brought these with me.

[Images Attached: 1]

I'm in my room if you wanna come get them.

He's the devil for keeping his cum stain out of the picture, because had it been in there... He's not sure you would have accepted to come get your missing pair of underwear.

I'm off in 20. Room 723, right?

You got it, doll.

You hate that you know where he's staying. You hate that you don't tell him to stop calling you doll, but most of all, you hate that temptation got the better of you. This will be the second time you go see him because he has something of yours.

The first time was a month ago, and it was about a shirt. One that you didn't even know you were missing until he texted you about it getting mixed with his stuff. You didn't reply because two months into your break up still felt too soon to be in contact with him, but he called. He called and kept calling until you answered, and every time he called, your heart would start racing at the sight of his name displayed on your screen.

Your first mistake was answering. His voice made you nervous, in a first date kind of way, the way it was so calm and steady while talking. It was like he was calling on his way home to you from a job. You did your best to be mature about it, but your nervousness shone through with every 'uh...' and 'sure, that should be fine' instead of 'yes'.

When you went to go see him, your stomach swarmed with butterflies at the sight of those dark, fern-colored eyes. You were so nervous and Toji picked up on it because of how you made it your job to speed up the process of retrieving your shirt.

He invited you into his room and your second mistake was accepting his invite. You felt strange being alone with him again. Anxious? No. Uncomfortable? Not that, either. More like homesick.

Toji didn't make it any easier with the gaze he had set on you. He observed your face—your eyes, your nose, your lips. He couldn't stop himself from continuing down the path to your body. Your neck, your chest, your waist, your hips—all things he wanted to put his hands on. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears and he could feel his heart thrashing in his chest. Having you so close was a rush. His adrenaline skyrocketed every time you looked into his eyes. He couldn't focus. He felt jittery. At some point, he couldn't take it anymore. With a final stuttered breath, he reached for you, and pulled you into him for a kiss. An aggressive one, that left you breathless and conveyed just how badly he needed you.

You didn't know what was going on, but the feeling was far from unfamiliar. The feelings brought on by this spontaneous gesture, you've felt them more times than you can remember, each time so special. It's the reason for why you struggled to push him away. You struggled to maintain the boundaries that worked to prevent this very thing from happening. You were long gone the moment he put his hands on you— the moment he spun you towards his bed and laid you down. It was selfish on both ends. You were both lonely and touch deprived. It shouldn't have gone further than kissing and some over the clothes wandering of hands, but there was a clear deficit of self control, and because of it, your bodies familiarized themselves with one another, again.

You're now standing outside his door, there to pick up an old pair of underwear that you could have just asked him to throw out. You couldn't lie, part of you wanted to see him, just to make sure he's doing alright since the last time you were there. It's been a little over a month since then. Maybe he has a new girlfriend. Even if he doesn't, you don't want the situation to be misread. You're not together anymore and there's no chance of a reconciliation any time soon. It's just not meant to be, for now.

Toji opens the door and the butterflies start their fluttering in your guts all over again. You don't want to listen to them or your racing heart or the sudden throb you feel between your legs, but he's shirtless.

You clench your jaw to prevent yourself from drooling and remember that you're there for one thing only, and it's not for another fuck with your ex.

"You sure you still want them?" Toji asks, when the silence gets to be too much. He unfolds the blue material to reveal the creamy substance that litters the gusset.

"Uh... yeah, sure." You feel your face grow warm. "They'll be good again after a wash." You take them out of his hands and fold them back up before putting them in your bag.

He leans against the doorframe, eyeing you up and down. He's not being subtle, if he's even trying to be.

"I was thinking of you," he says, once again breaking the loud silence. "You know, when I got them dirty." He nods towards your bag.

"Oh. That's..." you stop mid sentence, unable to find a way to end it. "It's fine."

"Wanna come in? You hungry? Thirsty? Tired?"

"None of that. I should get going anyway. Still need to get groceries for the week." You do your best to avoid letting your eyes trail down his body and hope that he doesn't insist. It'll be so hard not to give in.

"I'm sure you have enough to last until tomorrow. One more day without a fully stocked fridge couldn't hurt."

You sigh. Why does he always have to make it so difficult to turn him down?

"A glass of water would be nice."

He hums, satisfied by your response. He takes a few steps into his room, allowing you to walk in. The second you shut the door, he's right behind you, his front flush against your back, pinning you to the door. He bombards you with his touch.

"Knew you'd come, mama. Fuck, I missed you." He's kissing your neck, pulling up your shirt to feel your soft skin beneath his rough palms.

"T-Toji, what are you doing? I'm not here for this." He ignores you and keeps kissing your skin. "We can't do this, again. Last time was..." He's stretching the collar of your shirt to expose your shoulder, where he presses more kisses. "I-It was the last time. We can't."

"We can," he counters, sliding his hand down the front of your pants and into your underwear. "I miss you, baby. Don't you miss me?" He purrs into your cheek.

A sharp gasp leaves you with a brush of his fingertips against your clit. Your hands go to the door to keep you stable.

"I'm not fucking anyone else. Are you?" He asks, watching your reactions to the languid motion of his fingers against your clit.

"Mm-mm," you hum, eyes shut as you shake your head against the door.

"Say it," he mutters, into your ear, pressing his lips against the spot beneath it. His free hand rides up your torso, going up towards your chest. It goes beneath your bra to grope at your breasts.

"Fuck, Toji... No, I'm not sleeping around."

"Yeah? That's good. I'm glad."

"You were an asshole," you say, your voice low. "I shouldn't even be l-letting you touch me." You feel like you're crumbling. You're trapped between him and the door, as well as stuck between pleasure and rationality.

"You know i'm sorry, and you're an angel for letting me touch you after so long. Don't run off so fast like you did last time." His lips go back to devouring the skin of your neck, littering it with marks that will make you think of this moment when you look in a mirror.

"F-Fuck, i'm gonna cum. Gonna-"

Your legs go wobbly and you press your hands more firmly against the door to try and hold yourself up. Toji's arm tightens around you, supporting you as he works you through the intensity of your orgasm. Your whimpers and moans are heaven sent. So sweet and entirely dedicated to him.

"Come on," he mumbles, pulling you up straight, onto your unsteady legs. He turns you around so that he can hoist you up by the backs of your thighs, and as if on instinct, you wrap around him. Your arms are wrapped around his neck, your legs around his waist. It's so strange to feel his warm, bare skin against you, again. Your face is buried into the crook of his neck, like when he would pick your sleeping body up from the couch and carry you to bed.

He sets you down and pulls your shoes off, throwing them somewhere in the room, carelessly. With impatient breaths, he's back on you again, kissing you, and feeling up the body he grew accustomed to holding, but was now deprived of.

"Fuck." He pauses. "Take it all off, baby." He presses chaste kisses onto your lips as he pushes your shirt up, further directing you to undress yourself.

You feel ridiculous for having followed his directions so unquestioningly, but there you are, naked for his eyes, hands, and mouth.

"What are you doing?" Toji asks, confused at the sight of you on your stomach, your face buried in the pillow.

You turn your head to the side, to not muffle your words. "I don't wanna look at you."

"Why's that?" He traces your spine with his fingers, lidded eyes following the invisible trail. "Don't tell me you're still feeling guilty over last time."

You shake your head, wordlessly. You have nothing simple and quick to respond with.

"I wanna look at your pretty face."

You shake your head, again, and he knows he's going to have to melt away your stubbornness. You're not like this. You know he doesn't fuck you like this, ever. It's the first unfamiliar thing to occur since you started talking and since you agreed to meet up and it doesn't sit well with him.

His hands start at your hips and ride up your waist, merging onto your back, going up towards your shoulder blades. He knows of your weakness for when he says things straight into your ear. He has confirmation of this from just a couple minutes ago, when he had you against the door. It brings out a range of emotions from you, but ultimately, it gets you to mellow down a little.

"Let me love on you properly, mama," he starts. Your heart races at the feeling of his breath against your ear. You're throbbing with every deep-voiced mumble and his weight on you again. "Wanna take care of you, pretty girl. Must be so tired after a long day, huh?"

You sigh, releasing some of the built up tension in your body and nod.

"Yeah... I know, doll. Let me make it better."

Just like old times. You miss those days when your schedules aligned and you got to meet at home once you both finished work. It was always a race to see who got there first, but there was never an actual winner when the first thing you would do was shower together. Toji went in before you every time to rinse off the nastier splotches that littered his skin and you joined in on his mark. All the weariness and tension melted away when the water ran down your bodies. These were moments where you were so in love with him. Time slowed down through pressurized squeezes of his rough hands on your weary, smaller muscles, and your softer hands on his more defined and prominent, yet, still aching ones. There were also those delirious, casual conversations that bounced between being so tired that you could sleep together through the rest of the day, but also being so hungry that you could eat a family pack dinner, together in one sitting.

That is why you don't want to look at him. All those memories will come back, again, at the sight of his handsome face. You miss him, too. Your love for him hasn't been completely disposed of, but there's a reason for why you're in his room and not your shared home. Your schedules were unaligned for too long. You barely ever saw each other. You only saw him for brief periods of time in the morning and at night and your days off didn't coincide with his. Date nights became a rarity. Maybe once every couple weeks, you would go out to a place with a peaceful and quiet atmosphere, so that you could get a few hours to remember that you still love each other. Suddenly, he has spare time and it's so hard to deny him when he wants to spend it with you.

"Baby, please," he says, following his words with a kiss to your temple. You let out a deep breath and take a second before you start wiggling under his weight. He scoots off of you and allows you to do what you need to do. Once you're on your back, he wastes no time crawling onto you, again, to begin his worshipping of you.

That warm feeling you used to get around him is slowly seeping back in with every kiss he plants on your face and your neck. The way his hands smoothly glide over your body strangely makes you think of more aggressive times, when he would be so impatient, handling you so swiftly, just wanting to mold his body into yours. The scratches and crescent indentations his blunt nails would leave on your skin from the intensity of it all—you can't forget them.

He nears your soft, warm, blank chest. It's not like he didn't trust your word, but now he has visual evidence of how you weren't lying about not sleeping around. If things hadn't fallen apart between you and him, your chest would be littered with his fading marks on it. You're long due for a round of semi-permanent kisses.

His lips mouth at your chest, wet kisses being spread all over it. You instinctively let one of your hands come up to the back of his head, your fingers coursing through the dark locks of hair. He tries not to react so desperately to the feeling, but your touch is addicting. He doesn't want you to stop. No one has touched him like this since you and it really shows. Between the endless contact of his lips on your skin, layered with soft sighs and the constant caressing of your body, you can tell he's just grateful for being able to have you like this, again.

"You miss my chest?" You ask, acknowledging the amount of time he's spent on the area. He's been leaving marks left and right, between your breasts, on them and beneath them, too.

"All of you, not just your chest," Toji responds, before latching his lips onto one of your nipples. Your other one is handled by his fingers until he gives it a turn in his mouth, his fingers going to the one he just released. He loves being able to feel how your chest puffs and dips with every breath, and how it stutters with the swirling of his tongue over your buds.

"Toji," you call, breathily. Your hand lowers to the nape of his neck, meeting the tips of his hair that graze it.

He releases your breast with a quiet pop, pressing one more kiss to the glistening peak before tending to your call of his name.

"I know, doll. Feeling sensitive?" You nod, in response and he cracks a grin. "It has been a while... and I don't blame you, but you don't answer the phone enough." His kisses start, again, down your body—starting between your breasts and traveling down your abdomen. His lips paint your stomach, unintentional heart resembling marks formed through short-lived stinging sensations. "Can't do this for you if you don't pick up the phone. Just for a few minutes," he purrs, kissing above your navel. His hands cup around your hips, his thumbs massaging the area while he trails his mouth even lower down your body. "And if you don't wanna hear my voice, just answer my messages, mama. It's so fucking simple to get me next to you."

You shudder when his breath fans over your pelvis. Goosebumps rise over your skin all over again and your heart drops when green, lust filled eyes hold your gaze, pinning you down. You squirm beneath his unwavering attention, losing the eye contact battle when his hand goes to your thigh. You see the faintest sign of a smug grin once his eyes refocus on your body.

"How'd you get this gnarly bruise?" He asks, lightly running his fingers over a purplish yellow splotch on the lower part of your outer thigh.

"I ran into the corner of a table. I was in a rush."

He hums, disapproving of your reason, but nonetheless leans forward to kiss it. It brings him back to when he would walk into a room right on time to catch you groaning in pain and flipping off the coffee table while muttering curses, after ramming your knee into the corner of it, or when you would open your mouth in a silent scream after knocking your elbow into something and hitting your funny bone. He really considered putting guards on all the corners in the house, because of the constant bruises he found on your pretty skin.

"You gotta be more careful, doll," he says, kissing the blemish once more before continuing up towards your inner thighs. "Can't have you wearing this pretty body down with so many bumps." His breath grazes the space between your thighs, again. His attention goes from your glistening cunt, to your unsteady chest, before landing on that needy expression on your face that makes his cock twitch.

"You look so pretty." He drags his fingertips through the wetness of your slit, watching the adorable way your stomach quivers at the contact. "So wet over the way I kiss you up," he says, hypnotized by the way your slick connects his fingers to you with every up and down gliding motion. "You're precious, ma. Look at that... You're drooling so much, already." He drags a knuckle through your slit.

"F-Fuck." You shudder beneath his teasing touch. "Please. Toji-" you cut yourself off with a moan when his mouth attaches itself to your throbbing clit and his middle finger slowly sinks into your slick hole. Your thighs twitch in Toji's hold, the pleasure intense with all the fresh stimulation offered by him.

"Sweet as ever," he murmurs, pulling his finger out of your now twitching hole, to suck your juices off. He watches your face contort as two fingers stretch you out, now. Whimpers and moans are released with every curl of his fingers and with his tongue going back to your clit, you can't help all the squirming you're doing. Toji knows your body as well as he knows his own. Those hips rolling against the mattress and your back arching is a sign of your quickly approaching release. The fact that it's happening so fast is endearing to him. You really haven't been touched in a while and he loves being the only one you've allowed to replenish your level of physical intimacy.

You don't even warn him when you cum. Your notice is a sharp gasp, followed by the sweetest moans he's ever heard. Your overload of wetness coated his fingers and dripped onto his palm. Toji watched through dark, lidded eyes, as your chest heaved and your brows pinched with pleasure. Your bitten up lips parted to release heavy breaths and whines of satisfaction. He stopped before the overstimulation could make its way to you, pulling his cum coated fingers out of you and lifting his mouth from your clit.

While he did enjoy being a little mean and overstimulating you back when you were a couple, he knew this was not a moment for that. He said he was going to love on you and he planned to follow through with that.

"Fuck." You sigh, extending your arms above your head, before stretching your body. You groan as your chest rises and your back arches before releasing the tension, a giggle homing into Toji's ears once you settle again. Within seconds, he's face to face with you again, his body invading the vacant space between your legs. His hands go to your wrists, crossing them above your head.

"What are you giggling about?" His nose is centimeters from bumping into yours.

You giggle even more at his proximity and the sly smirk that plays on his lips. "Mm... just came all over your fingers within like two minutes," you mumble.

"You did, huh?" He says, squeezing your wrists affectionately.

"Mhm," you hum.

"That still doesn't break the record," he adds.

"No... It doesn't." You say, through a laugh.

A tension-riddled silence follows, longing looks exchanged during the stillness of the moment. Toji uses his control to lean forward the rest of the way to kiss you. The kiss is soft and slow, despite the way he keeps your wrists pinned, a visual that shows your surrender to him.

He hums against your lips, breaking the lip lock with a quiet smack. "Can I put it in?" He asks, leaning back to see your response.

"Yeah, okay," you say, blushing, but nodding to double confirm.

He releases you so he can remove his boxers and finally release his aching cock from its confines. He's been hard this entire time, but your needs were put ahead of his because, like the last time, he initiated this.

Toji sighs, feeling his cock throb and twitch at the thought of being in your incomparably soft and warm walls, in just a few seconds. As he drags his tip along your slit, he can't help but think about how this would be the first time he has sex since you last let him touch you, a month ago. He might cum as quickly as you did, maybe even quicker.

He keeps a hand on your stomach, rubbing as an act of comfort, as his other hand guides his tip into your hole. He pushes in, keeping his focus on you as he slowly feeds his length into you.

"Fuck, doll. Doing so well. Almost there."

You never get used to the initial stretch. It's not unbearable and you know it's worth it, so you deal with the short amount of discomfort.

"Oh fuck, it's in," he says, mentally relieved that he didn't cum early. You both let out sighs.

After a couple minutes of getting comfortable and picking up a gentle pace, things were good. Quiet sounds of pleasure took over the room. This time isn't as aggressive as the time before. Last time, things happened in a flash. One moment you were just talking, the next you were being fucked incoherent, and before you knew it, you were getting dressed and leaving Toji's room with the most guilty feelings.

This wasn't that, at all. He wasn't slamming his hips into yours or pinching your waist between his hands. His thrusts were paced, like he wanted this to last a while, and he touched you with the gentleness of someone who, wholeheartedly, isn't over you. Someone who still holds an immense amount of love for you.

You're not faring any better, than him. You find yourself wanting to bring him closer. You truly want him all over you. The second you extend your arms towards Toji, he's leaning closer towards you so you can touch him. Your hands make contact with his shoulders and he gets immediate goosebumps. He's working to suppress the groan that's paired with the chills that run down his spine, when he looks at you from this proximity. You let your hands glide up to the nape of his neck and you pull him into you for a kiss. Your cunt flutters around him when his lips move against yours in synchrony, his hips continuing their languid pace. His kisses always leave you breathless, so you end up having to be the first to bail, when you can't compete with his lung capacity. He continues kissing your face, groans released into your cheek and jaw, while you gasp and whimper over his gentle precision.

"T-Toji... Toji- Fuck."

He hums into your neck, his lips brushing against it immediately after. "Miss you... so... fucking much," he pants. "Please..." his voice lowers, and his lips move towards your ear. "Please, baby."

His arms cage you in and you feel smothered by him, like you're drowning in him. He's all you know in this moment. His body, his voice, his touch, his smell. All you can do is feel as he thrusts into you, repeatedly reaching that part within you that renders you the most perfectly behaved angel for him. He can feel the way your chest jolts with every hitch of your breath. He can hear your stifled hiccups up close, as he murmurs needy words into your ear.

"You..." he pants, a subtle groan caught by your ears. "You heard me, right, pretty girl?" He presses a kiss to your earlobe, awaiting your response. You nod, a sultry hum being the only sound you manage to let out. You clench around him, briefly, but long enough for his hips to stutter. "Fuck..." he sighs, burying his face into your neck, again. His hips pick up their pace a little, luring a sharp gasp and a moan out of you. "I-I need you back with me. Miss you lots," he says, muffled by the delicate skin he nibbles on.

"I-I know. I know, Toji. You're not the only one."

"So fucking come back to me, already. What are you doing?"

"Gonna cum. I'm gonna cum," you blurt, writhing beneath him.

"Keep squeezing me like that and you're gonna make me cum," he grunts.

"T-Toji, please," you whimper, the sensation of your nearing orgasm growing stronger. "Toji," you cry out once more, before your wetness gushes out, coating his unrelenting cock.

"Shit," he hisses. He barely has time to watch you when he's on the verge of spewing into you with every clench of your velvety walls. A few seconds pass, and with stuttering hips, a tensed abdomen, and gritted out, breathy curses, he fills you up with his cum. Ragged breaths are released into the air, his chest rapidly rising and falling with every inhale and exhale. He pulls away from you, his eyes glued to you as you work on recomposing yourself.

You're lucent in his eyes. The layer of sweat that coats your neck brings attention to the harsh marks he left on your previously untraced skin. The prettiest blush remains on your face, and those slightly parted lips look so appetizing. The sight is hauntingly beautiful.

"Take a picture, it'll last longer," you tease, feeling him still silently watching you.

He snickers. "You're gonna let me take a picture of you like this?"

"Nope. I was kidding," you say, smiling as you sit up. Toji catches you eyeing your pile of clothes and speaks up before you start reaching for it.

"Can you not get dressed, yet? Stay a little while, yeah?"

Your heart drops at the question. You tell yourself over and over that you won't be spending the night with him, in an attempt to convince yourself that after the worst that can be done with an ex has already been done, this is nothing to worry about. What's another hour spent lying next to him in his bed?

You thought that's all you would be doing together, but then you ended up showering together. His attempt to help you get cleaned up made you crave another round, which he happily indulged in. After that was when you finally lied in bed together and you really didn't want to leave by the end of it all. It was already nighttime and you had gotten so comfortable, almost forgetting that you weren't home with him. Everything smelled like Toji, even you. He kept you in his arms as you discussed the future of things between you two. A weight was lifted off his shoulders when you implied that there's still a chance.

You did decide to drive home that night and when you got there, you sat in your car, just thinking about what happened, for way too long.

The third and final day came some weeks later. You got better at responding to Toji's messages and his phone calls. Things seemed like they were rekindling between you two.

Hey, can you come see me today?

I'm not in the mood for sex, if that's what you want me there for.

You know that's not the only reason I want you. Come over.

I won't touch you if you don't want me to.

Say something.

Respond.

Oh so you don't want me to get there safe? I'm. DRIVING.

Fuck, doll. Scaring me for nothing. Drive safe.

On the drive to his room, you thought about the conversations you've had with Toji on the phone, these past weeks. Some were short and straight to the point, while others didn't allow you to put your phone down for more than three minutes. His indirectness was usually the cause of longer conversations. He didn't want to seem overbearing, so instead of saying he missed you, he would ask if you had eaten. Instead of saying he missed spending leisurely time with you, he would let you know that that one cheesy movie you like is playing on one of the TV channels.

It was sweet until nighttime came and the messages started straying from innocent longing. Conversations where he was telling you about how much he missed sleeping next to you, turned into him saying that he couldn't sleep because he wasn't holding your chest and smelling your hair. Minutes later when your phone rang, you panicked. You wanted to hear his voice, but you knew better than to try and hold an innocent conversation with him when the messages that preceded the call weren't innocent. You let the phone ring for a few seconds, but the second you heard him, you felt so many things. His voice was so deep and he sounded tired and your heart was beating way too fast. You were feeling things that contradicted everything that made you hesitant to answer his call. With every word he spoke, your mind flooded with sinful thoughts that made the space between your legs viciously throb. Maybe you were glad he was feeling this way from the start, because his voice, his words, and the sounds he made alike, all ended up getting you there.

Muscle memory got you to Toji. You were zoned out the entire time, remembering those texts between you and him, that had you giggling to yourself like when you first started dating. You were in shock when you turned into the parking lot, realizing that your mind was so occupied with Toji, that the drive seemed shorter. You walked right up to the door with the, now familiar, bold 723 on it. A few seconds went by before the door opened. Toji held the door open for you shutting it when you made it into his room.

The first thing you noticed was that he had tidied up quite a bit. It almost seemed like he had just arrived to the room, no clothes on the floor or empty food containers on the counters, but his bed wasn't made and his drawers had unfolded clothes hanging out of them. He's been like this since you lived together. It's just a habit that refuses to die.

"You made a copy of this photo?" You ask, picking up the picture frame that rests on his nightstand. You both looked annoyed in the picture. The photographer kept pestering you to get your picture taken on your date and you had politely declined so many times, but he kept insisting, so you and Toji decided to just get it over with. The photographer said 'smile', and he laughed nervously when you both kept a straight face. He gave up and snapped the picture like that.

"Nah, that's the original. It followed me here, like your clothes."

You snicker, eyes still focused on the way Toji put his arm around you in the picture. "Clothes seem a little more reasonable to haul along by accident, but this was in a box I keep hidden on the top shelf of the closet."

"It's not really hidden if I found it so easily."

"People who don't snoop around wouldn't find it as quickly."

His hands go to his pockets. The urge he feels to hug you from behind to look at the picture with you, is heavy. "It's not snooping if we used to share the closet. When I was packing my stuff, I tried not to leave anything behind, so of course I was gonna check every crevice of the house."

You put the picture down and turned to look at him.

"That was pretty selfish of you. Taking my things, but not leaving a scrap of yours behind."

"Yeah? That was selfish of me?" He grins. "You wanted me to leave something behind?"

"At least a button or... I don't know, one of your sweaters."

"A button or a sweater." He hums like he's in thought. "That's a big jump, doll." He sits down on the edge of his bed with a sigh, a small lump of his blanket flattened by his weight.

"We made a big jump, Toji. One minute we were doing stupid shit like that." Your hand aims towards the picture of you and him. "The next..." you take a deep breath and your brows pinch slightly. You don't want to get emotional. Just thinking about crying in front of him makes you anxious.

His eyes soften, slightly. The mood has shifted and you're tense. It's not how he thought this would go, but he's going to try and make it better anyway. This is it. You have to reconcile by the end of the day.

He pats the spot next to him on the bed, successfully bringing you closer, even if you were off from where he wanted you.

"What we did was hard," you start, again. "You think I didn't miss you as soon as you left home? Or that I was living happily without you, when I didn't answer your messages or calls?" You shake your head. You're trying to hold back your more distracting emotions, but your eyes are starting to feel watery. "No. My head hurt for so long, I didn't want to see anybody, and the worst part was that I couldn't stop thinking of you. It was the epitome of a crushing break up... and I needed you, but I wasn't sure if you would be around. It's what tore us apart in the first place."

Silence fills the room. You feel dumb for spilling your heart out like that. You fold your hands in your lap and hope Toji has something to say in response to your word vomit. Anything, at this point, to slaughter the increasingly, discomforting stillness in the room that is making you want to cry even more.

"I didn't know you missed me, 'til you started meeting me here." He turns his head to look at you. You're still looking down at your lap, fidgeting with your folded hands.

"Yeah, that's not something you say to someone who just became your ex. It would have made things harder on us."

There's another gap of silence while Toji calculates his words. Watching you continue your anxious mannerisms always made him nervous before. It's no different now.

"What if I said I have time for you, now?" He keeps his eyes on you, hoping to see a glint of light in your expression. "Things can go back to the way they were before."

"That sounds good and all, but will things stay that way when we start getting comfortable again? Say... a month from now?" He immediately nods in response. "How about three months from now? My days off are always gonna be the same, and yours-"

"I'll mute Shiu on your days off. No jobs on those days."

You look at him, unfolding your hands. You're not as nervous anymore, now that the talking is back and forth. "You always make exceptions. You've done it before, Toji, and I just don't want to feel second to your work, again. It's the only thing I kept myself out of when it came to you, because I know how... abnormal it is, and look where that got us."

"Listen, i'm serious about making time for you. I've been doing pretty good so far, don't you think?"

He has been. Otherwise you'd be spending your day off cleaning your place and figuring out what to make for your dinner for one. You were off the day before, too, and he called you halfway through the day, on his way back to his room.

"Yeah. I guess you are doing a lot better," you admit.

"Good enough to give it another go?"

You're the one who goes quiet this time, uncertainty coursing through your mind. You really want things to work, but it's scary. Words and these little check ins are all you can go off of, for now. You don't know how it'll be if you officially get back together.

You nod. "I think so. It's been a few months, now. Things do seem better."

He slowly released the breath he held in after asking the question. "Really? You mean that?"

"I do." You give him a soft smile that he feels he hasn't seen in so long. He can feel his heart accelerating, like a kid being returned their favorite toy after being grounded.

"Can you show me you mean it?"

"How?"

"You're sitting so far from me. Come closer," he says, patting his thigh.

"What?" You laugh. He has to be joking. You're literally two feet away from him.

"Come on. Sit with me."

He doesn't seem to be letting go of this, so you scoot even closer to him. With the assistance of his hands on your hips, he uses them as leverage to lift you onto his lap, to bring you as close to him as he can. He looks you straight in the eyes, his green ones so brilliant and warm, you would think he's about to profess his love for you for the first time.

"You got me. What is it, Toji?" You're blushing due to the gesture, a reaction that makes him feel warm and fuzzy inside.

In one swift movement, his face is buried in your chest, his bulky arms lowered to wrap around your waist. Your eyes slightly widen at the spontaneity of the gesture, instantly softening when he starts talking.

"I felt like I was going insane, mama. I didn't wanna go." He pauses, the warm scent of your perfume working to calm him down. The back of your shirt is tightly wound around his hands. You can feel cool air against the slivers of exposed skin—a contrast to the warmth of his breath on your chest—but you hold him close. "Let me come home or stay here, just don't stray from me."

The mood shifted, again. He felt small and vulnerable, but he needed you to understand that he had feelings about leaving, too. Had things gone the way he planned them in his head, he wouldn't be uttering his sentiments into your chest. You would be watching a movie together, while cuddling and kissing, and overall, making up for the deep affection that was missed during this period of separation, but you have a strange way of making him want to be entirely honest with you.

You cover him up while he clears his mind. This is between you and him. Nothing else matters when it's Toji rambling on about how you've ruined solitary life for him. He can't do it anymore and you're entirely to blame, because you put him on to your hugs and kisses, and you tell him all the things he needs to hear and sleeping is entirely possible with you. He's addicted to you, and it's not hurting anyone, so he can't find a reason to give you up.

You sat in that position for a few minutes. Silence returned, but instead of it being awkward and uncomfortable, it was entirely welcomed. Toji was so comfortable. He could have fallen asleep like that, but you shifted in his lap and pulled him out of his idle state. He was entirely at ease when he lifted his gaze to look at you. Your expression was gentle on his eyes, unspoken forgiveness so clear.

"Come home, tomorrow. No, today. I was thinking about how you're not packed and you still have things scattered. I can help you get it all-"

He cuts off your rambling with a kiss, then another, and then one more. "Nah, i'll come back for my things, tomorrow. I just wanna go home with you, ma."

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inconveniently-discorporated · 1 year ago

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I think I have a potentially controversial opinion on Aziraphale and the ending.

So one of the things that made me smile so, SO much, was THIS:

That PURE ABSOLUTE UTTER JOY.

We have not seen ANYTHING like that from demon Crowley. We've seen him be drunk and silly, we've seen him be amused, but we've not seen this.

Now, let's consider what we know about Heaven:

It's never fully populated. ALL of the shots are completely devoid of angels, except for a few, who are almost always just getting somewhere and never really talking to each other.

Where I thought the archangels were a tight clan, it really looks like they're super catty and prone to jealousy. No doubt they would stab each other in the back happily if it came down to it. How much of Heaven is like that, if even the archangels all hate each other?

Aziraphale already has a nervous disposition when he meets Crowley. Is he perhaps an angel that NEVER fit in? Is he familiar with being ostracized by his peers? Just how lonely IS Heaven? Crowley seems to be a pretty powerful angel, and HE doesn't even know that it's all getting shut down in 6000 years -- it's like no one talks to anyone.

Aziraphale, during their whole meeting, looks absolutely smitten. At one point, Crowley goes, "Look at you! You're gorgeous!" and Aziraphale looks over with happy surprise, just before realizing he's not looking at him but rather at what he's created. And then, when Crowley starts going on about making suggestions and asking questions, Aziraphale is IMMEDIATELY concerned and doesn't want him to get into trouble.

Aziraphale is hooked on this angel, and I cannot help but think that this is perhaps the first angel who has ever WELCOMED Aziraphale into his company.

He is hooked on this angel, and the way Crowley smiles is with the light of all the stars he's just created, and it's infectious and it brings a smile to Aziraphale's face as well. And then this angel shields him from the oncoming falling stars.

He is hooked on this angel, and then this angel goes and joins the Great Rebellion, and becomes fallen himself.

"You were an angel once," Aziraphale said, softly, at the bandstand. He remembers.

I think it's reasonable to guess that Heaven has never felt so warm as it did in the presence of millions of exploding stars, next to the (arch?)angel that may perhaps be one of the few (only?) to pay him any positive attention.

I think it's reasonable to assume that Heaven was not the same after Crowley fell. I wouldn't be surprised to find out Aziraphale had wondered about the angel, wondered if he was okay. I would imagine that Aziraphale keeps that picture of pure, angelic, unbridled joy somewhere inside of him.

So, really, is it any surprise that threaded throughout EVERY interaction, Aziraphale has this deep-down feeling that Crowley is good? Would it be any surprise that Aziraphale, an angel who goes along with Heaven as far as he can (which isn't always), feels that if HE is still an angel, then what was done to Crowley was a great injustice?

I think it would make sense that we are shown "before the beginning" not just because it is fun, but because THIS is the foundational context for everything Aziraphale thinks Crowley is, everything Crowley enjoys. I think he remembers this moment and wishes he could live there forever. With Crowley. The two of them with this happiness, forever.

But nothing lasts forever, as much as he wishes it did.

I'm not saying Aziraphale was right with what he did to Crowley at the end of s2. There is a lot I think he did wrong. I think he held onto this picture so tightly, he didn't realize that Crowley had long since let it go, and painted a new one with Aziraphale with all the shades of grey he picked up as he sauntered (or plummeted) vaguely downward (into a pool of boiling sulfur).

I don't think he was right, but I do think he is understandable. I think there was a lot of selfishness, but also some misguided selflessness too. I watched that first scene with angelic Crowley and my heart actually broke a little, because I thought, "What a shame this joy was taken away from him."

I think Aziraphale is trying to right the injustice he feels has been done. But I also think Aziraphale doesn't realize that Crowley can never go back. The concept of falling never crossed Crowley's mind when he suggested that he ask a few questions, and he will NEVER get that kind of innocence back. And Aziraphale doesn't understand, because Heaven has clearly always just been that way for him (he is already aware of the danger of asking questions).

Crowley does not want to go back because he can never go back. He can never be the same angel he was when he thought he could build a universal machine that would crank out stars for eons and eons. He can never be the same angel he was when he thought he could make some suggestions and ask some questions and co-create with THE Creator.

Crowley understands that, and Aziraphale doesn't. But I can understand why Aziraphale would want to try. And I think it's all because of this:

#good omens #gos2 spoilers #good omens meta #aziraphale analysis

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roosterforme · 9 months ago

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Whole Lotta Love | Rooster x Reader

Summary: You and Bradley were just friends, and perhaps that was why you trusted him so much. It wasn't his fault that you were secretly harboring a crush a mile wide. When your noisy neighbor becomes too much and you decide you need to move, Bradley helps you brainstorm a solution. But when you set your plans into action, you're surprised to find that he seems almost jealous.

Warnings: Adult language, angst, fluff, drinking, mentions of masturbation

Length: 8600 words

Pairing: Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw x Female Reader

Check out my masterlist for more. Banner made by @mak-32

"I need to move."

Bradley looked up at your annoyed expression as you dropped your lunch tray a little violently onto the cafeteria table across from him with a clatter. The top piece of bread slid off your sandwich as you sat down with a pout.

"Like to a new apartment?" he asked, reaching over to straighten out your silverware and napkin. "Didn't we just help you move a few months ago, Sparrow?"

For some reason that set you off as your clenched fist bumped the edge of the tray, messing everything up again. "Yes, to a new apartment, Rooster! And yes, I just moved six months ago, but I can't take another day of this shit."

"What's wrong?" Jake asked where he was inhaling his food right next to you like he had a vendetta against it.

You sighed, and the sound was so soft and sweet compared to your frustrated expression, Bradley almost laughed. "The guy who lives above me is an aspiring wedding DJ. Do you have any idea what that means for my sleep schedule?"

"Oh shit," Javy groaned from your other side. "Are you getting Cupid Shuffle all night long?"

"Coyote," you whined, "he makes his own remixes! At four in the morning! When I asked him to stop, he said he was perfecting his artform, but that he'd turn the volume down a smidge. Meanwhile, I moved into my current apartment, because my old neighbors were hosting woodworking retreats in their living room!"

Now Bradley really was laughing. "You need a break? You can come sleep over at my place tonight."

You were finally smiling now as you said, "Thanks Rooster, but I've seen the wrong side of your couch before. I had a long, long night in your living room after the holiday party."

"So don't get drunk first this time," he replied easily, remembering that night vividly. You let him carry you into his house from his Bronco while you whispered the lyrics to Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin really slowly to him. It was funny and somehow a little hot at the same time. He liked it a little too much. "Or you can just sleep in my bed."

Your eyes went a little wide. "With you?"

"Of course not," he replied quickly, hoping he wasn't blushing. "We're just friends. I could take the couch for one night so you can have a break. If you want."

You and he really were just friends. You were friends with all the guys. They all loved you and your humor, and you were a hell of a good WSO. Bradley didn't even fly with a backseater, but he always liked getting paired with you and Omaha. You had an ease about you, and it even translated to the way you took a massive bite out of your sandwich after you said, "Maybe I'll just sneak in and break DJ Insomnia's turntables."

Then you smiled at Bradley while you chewed your food, and Javy and Jake started to make up a song about DJ Insomnia. You laughed when they tried to rhyme 'slumber' with 'nightmare', but you were still looking at Bradley as if he was in on some inside joke with you. Your eyes twinkled when he nudged your leg with his boot underneath the table.

"Hey, I'll be more than happy to help you move again, Sparrow, but I think you ought to at least consider having me over around three in the morning with my keyboard. I'll bring these two idiots with me as well, and we can all sing at the top of our lungs until your neighbor moves out."

You tipped your head back and laughed. "Oh, Rooster. You're the sweetest, but he'd probably actually enjoy that."

Now Bradley was definitely blushing as he looked down at his lunch, and he wasn't really sure why.

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

You gathered your things together for the night as soon as you heard your neighbor playing the Electric Slide. If he was already starting at seven o'clock, you needed to get out now. You shoved clean underwear and some random clothing into your backpack before you stopped in the bathroom and grabbed the essentials. Bradley's couch had never sounded better to you in your life, but if he felt like offering up his bed, then even better. Hell, you'd curl up in there with him at this point. What difference did it make? It wasn't like anything physical was ever going to happen.

He was one of the boys, and you loved them all. It wasn't Bradley's fault that his sun kissed skin and wavy hair were kind of your thing. If they were attached to another man, you'd probably have made a move, but he was your friend. Sure, you'd thought about it before, when you were alone in bed and it was very, very late. He was attractive and hilarious, and you were only human. But some things were sacred.

"Yeah, like peace and quiet," you growled as you stomped down your hallway. You grabbed your keys and headed out, zipping along to Bradley's house in record time. You were obsessed with his place which was complete with flower boxes underneath the front windows and a pink front door that he never seemed to get around to repainting even though he mentioned it all the time.

You hauled yourself up to his porch with your half zipped backpack and bad attitude and pounded on his door. You had a spare key somewhere in the bottom of your purse, but you didn't feel like digging for it. When he didn't answer, you pounded again, a little harder this time.

"Yeah?" he asked, his tone gruff as the door flew open. "Sparrow," he muttered, his voice much softer with your call sign attached to it. "Hey."

But you didn't register too much besides the fact that he was standing there in nothing but a pair of snug boxer briefs with damp hair and skin that smelled delicious just inches away from you. "Hi," you said, sounding as mesmerized as you felt. Golden tan. Sparse chest hair. Perfectly groomed mustache. You wanted to lick him. Where on earth did that urge come from? You never thought about dragging your tongue along his chest and neck and all the way up to his lips. Except that you had... very, very late at night.

Fuck.

It wouldn't be worth messing things up. You forced your gaze up to his brown eyes. "I'm here for our sleepover," you said with as much normalcy as you could muster, but the response you got was Bradley's cheeks turning pink as he leaned away from the doorway so you could step inside. Then you came to a stop and looked at him again. He smelled really good. Like maybe he was wearing cologne. "Oh. Were you heading out? Do you have a date?"

His cheeks grew redder. "Um, no. Not at all. Of course not."

His answer sent a little wave of relief through your body. "Good." You winced at your response as you continued to his couch and set your bag down. "I mean, do you want to order a pizza or something?"

He ran his fingers through his hair and nodded. "Yeah. Sure. Just let me get dressed. I'll be right back out."

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

You actually came over. With your backpack full of your stuff. Bradley wasn't expecting you to take him up on his offer, and now he was doubly flustered; he actually did plan a last minute date, and he just jerked off in the shower while thinking about you.

"Oh fuck," he groaned as he pulled on a pair of jeans. He didn't start off thinking about you. It just kind of happened. At first, he was thinking about a faceless girl sitting on his lap with her hand in his underwear, and then suddenly she did have a face. Your face. And then she had your voice. And then he pictured the two of you on his actual couch. And it was definitely you giving him a handjob in his shower fantasy, and he came all over the tile wall like it was your face. He was lucky you didn't let yourself in with your spare key in time to hear him moaning your name.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" he asked his reflection in the bedroom mirror. He looked wild. Slightly deranged. His pupils were huge, and his cheeks were hot pink. How the hell was he supposed to eat pizza with you while he was thinking about you on his lap?

But the fact that he wanted nothing more than to eat pizza and drink beers with you solidified the fact that he needed to cancel his date with Erin. He was so stupid for doing this. She was a viable option for someone to date. You were not. But he was apparently going to torture himself anyway as he texted her Hey, sorry this is last minute, but I need to reschedule.

He didn't wait for a response as he made his way back to his living room where you had already cracked open a can of beer from the refrigerator and made yourself at home on the couch. You were wearing what you always wore when you didn't have on a flight suit, just yoga pants and a baggy tee shirt. It shouldn't have been cute, but it was.

You smiled up at him as you nudged the unopened can of beer on the coffee table with your blue painted toenail. "I got you one."

He poked your foot with his finger and picked up the beer as he said, "Yeah, it's the least you could do since you helped yourself to my fridge."

When he dropped down onto the couch next to you, his weight on the cushions had you colliding into him. "Sorry," you murmured, your hand coming to rest on his abs as you pushed yourself back into place like it was nothing. Meanwhile, he broke out in a nervous sweat. "What do you want to watch?"

"Doesn't matter," he replied, handing you the remote. Then he grinned and said, "Or we could skip the TV, and I could get my keyboard out and play Cupid Shuffle for you. Maybe try my hand at a remix." You tipped your head back and pretended to cry before you started laughing. "What's the matter? I'm sure I'll sound better than your neighbor. Give it a chance, Sparrow," he teased.

You turned to face him on the couch, still laughing with your beer can resting against his bicep. "First of all, no. Please. No. Absolutely not. Second, has anyone ever told you how adorable it is that you have a keyboard that you actually play?"

"I tell myself that all the time," he replied, trying hard not to smile as you laughed. "I say, 'Bradley, you're adorable. I think it's so cool that you want to relive your piano lessons from middle school. Maybe you should get braces again, too.'"

You were cackling now as you gasped, "Stop it."

He sipped his beer and shook his head. "Of course nobody has ever said my keyboard is adorable. It's the nerdiest thing a guy in his thirties could possibly own, and only like five people in total know about it."

With tears in your eyes, you sucked in a deep breath. "I'm so happy I'm one of those five people."

"Yeah, well, keep it to yourself," he muttered with a smile as he took the remote back and turned on the Padres game. You were still giggling softly as you settled in next to him again. "You want pizza?" he asked.

"I've never said no to pizza," you replied easily, your thigh rubbing gently against his.

"My treat."

"You always say it's your treat. I'll get it this time."

"Nah, you've got to save up your money so you can move out of your apartment, remember?" he asked as he placed the order on his phone.

"How could I forget?" you moaned. "Your house is so nice, I wish I could evict you and move in here."

He set his phone aside and kicked his feet up onto his coffee table. He glanced at you out of the corner of his eye. "That would be a pretty rude thing to do to the guy who always buys your pizza."

Your side eye was impeccable as you said, "It's not like you'd be destitute. I'd let you live with DJ Insomnia. Now I just need a way to make money fast."

Bradley shook his head as the baseball game went to a commercial. "There's no such thing, Sparrow. Nothing legal anyway, and Uncle Sam pays your salary."

You were tapping your beer can with your finger and biting your lip gently, and Bradley's mind drifted back to his shower fantasy. You hummed softly, and he could practically feel the weight of your body settling onto his lap. That's what he wanted. You and he could finish this discussion with you straddling his thighs and his tongue in your mouth.

He should have gone out with Erin. He should have just admitted that he had a date and told you that you could hang out here while he was gone, because now he was getting his hopes up as your leg bumped his again. He knew he was blushing when he looked at you, so he turned back to the TV just in time for the beginning of a Hooters commercial.

"Wow," you mused with a little snicker as you gestured toward the parade of tits with your beer can. "That really got your attention."

Bradley rolled his eyes. "No, it didn't."

"Seriously? That's a lot of boobs, Rooster. You think we should contact the ad agency and tell them they should feature a few more?"

He turned and looked at you, and you started cracking up again. "I think it was actually just the right amount of boobs," he said, trying really hard not to look at your chest.

You forced your face into a neutral expression. "Do you like to go to Hooters?"

Bradley groaned and tried to stand up but you reached for his arm and tugged him closer to you instead. "Why do you think it's fun to pick on me?"

"I'm not really sure, but it's great," you replied. "Didn't all the guys go to Hooters for Jake's birthday?"

"Yeah," he replied with a laugh. "Jake got completely fucking wasted and proposed to our waitress. Then he tried to write his number on a napkin for her, but it looked like hieroglyphics. He even tried to follow her into the kitchen at one point, and Javy had to go get him. At least he left her a two hundred dollar tip for being so annoying."

You gaped at him and set your empty beer can on the coffee table. "Two hundred bucks? Oh my god, do you realize how fast I could buy my own place with guys like Jake around if I worked at Hooters?"

Bradley sat up a little straighter and watched as your eyes lit up while you watched the end of the commercial before the Padres game came on again. "You wouldn't want guys... fussing over you like that, would you?"

You kind of shrugged and said, "I can handle myself."

"That's not what I meant. I just-" He cut himself off. What was he supposed to say? Was he supposed to tell you he was already jealous just thinking about it? He definitely couldn't admit that. So instead he said, "Your boobs are too good for Hooters. You should keep them in your flight suit."

Now you were looking down at your body and running your hands up your belly to your chest, and Bradley was entranced as he watched you squeeze yourself through your tee shirt like it didn't even matter if he was there or not. You must have trusted him implicitly as you looked at him with sad eyes and said, "You're probably right. Guys know best about this kind of thing, and flight suits are a catch-all for making everyone's body look identical. Maybe it's better to just keep blending in."

He felt like a jerk, because that's not what he meant at all. He wanted to tell you that you were beautiful and that you'd probably make enough money in two weeks to buy the house of your dreams in those orange booty shorts and the tiny tops, but he couldn't. He wanted to kiss that little pout from your lips, but he wouldn't. Instead he said, "Let's keep brainstorming?"

"Yeah, thanks," you whispered, letting your lips brush against his cheek, and Bradley jumped about a mile into the air when there was a knock at the front door.

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

You and Bradley had given up on the Padres game. Now you were turned so you were facing each other with pizza and paper plates and more cans of beer. "Okay, you hear how quiet your house is? You hear how nobody is annoying the shit out of you right now? No turntables or amplifiers anywhere?"

"Yeah," he said with a laugh. His cheeks had been perpetually pink all night, and it was really distracting. You had to keep reminding yourself that he thought you'd look better in your shapeless flight suit than in a Hooters uniform, and it kind of broke your heart every single time. But that's what you needed.

You forced a smile as you said, "I want this kind of peace in my life. So give me your best brainstorming ideas for how I can make some more money. Go."

"What about cage fighting?" he asked before he took an enormous bite of pizza.

"Cage fighting?" you balked. "Maybe you don't think much of my face, but I happen to like it the way it is!"

His eyes went wide and his jaw dropped open. "I do like your face, Sparrow. I was just joking."

He still looked concerned as you waved him off and asked, "What if I started bartending again? Like I did in college?"

Bradley shrugged. "You'll get just as many guys creeping on you at a bar."

You nibbled on your pizza crust and thought about your options. "What if it's the right kind of bar though? One with bouncers and security guards and everything, and oh my god! I've got it!"

"What?"

You watched him fold another slice of pizza in half and devour it as you said, "The Beauty Bar."

He froze with his mouth full and started shaking his head. "No," he said as soon as he swallowed. "That's like Hooters, but the girls dance. On the bar."

"Exactly," you told him, letting your hand rest on his knee. "Bigger tips and buffer security guards. Just think about it, Rooster. I could play one of the characters and have my own unique outfit. It's mostly just bartending, but the breaks for dancing would be so fun."

He looked a little constipated, and you almost laughed when he asked, "What kind of outfit?"

You tried to remember the girls from the only time you'd been there. "I think there was a cowgirl and a schoolgirl? Or like a dirty librarian?"

Bradley leaned a little closer to you and said, "Maybe you should reconsider the cage fighting. I could get you like a hockey mask to wear?" He ran his fingertip gently down the side of your face. "You know, to keep you safe?"

"I wouldn't last one round," you told him with a grin. "Besides, The Beauty Bar is mostly filled with bachelorette parties and girls having a fun night out. I think I'll call them or stop by tomorrow and see what they say."

Bradley dropped his hand from your face and muttered, "I'll keep brainstorming. You feel like watching a movie?"

"Sure," you told him as you stretched. "You pick since you paid for the pizza."

A few seconds later, your favorite movie was queued up on the TV, and you tried to get him to look at you, but he was actively avoiding doing so as he tried not to smile. You were halfway on his lap with your hands on his cheeks when he finally met your eyes. "Thanks, Bradley. For the pizza and for the movie and the sleepover and everything."

"You're welcome," he whispered softly. You thought about how good it would feel to kiss him, but you ended up laying on a pillow that was propped against his thigh instead. Less than halfway into the movie, you were sound asleep.

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

Bradley didn't want to move. You were sound asleep with your cheek pressed to his thigh, and a tiny little spot of drool darkened the fabric of his jeans next to your lips. You had pushed the pillow to the floor, and you had reached for his hand while you dozed.

He'd had a full blown crush on you for a while now. It was useless to try to deny it. But you had him in the friend zone along with Javy and Jake and all the rest of the guys, and he was sure that if he tried to level up, you'd smash him right back down where he belonged.

You were so cute, finally getting the sleep you deserved. Clearly you trusted him, which made him feel important, but he wanted to be important to you in every way.

When he tried to slide off the couch, you snuggled against him harder. When he tried to wake you up, you moaned and snoozed on. He got himself awkwardly into position to pick you up, and he hoisted you into his arms. Your hand rested on his chest, and your lips met his neck as you mumbled, "I'm sleepy."

"I know you are, Honey." The pet name just slipped out, but you didn't complain as he stood there in his living room trying to stave off an erection as you snuggled against him. "I'm taking you to my bed. You'll be more comfortable."

"M'kay."

Then he was treated to your half asleep rendition of Whole Lotta Love where most of the lyrics were wrong and it was pretty much completely off key. But you were singing it right next to his ear, and once again, he liked it more than he should. When he set you down on his bed, you immediately burrowed under the blankets like you slept in his room all the time, and he watched you curl up on your side.

Your eyes were closed as you whispered, "Aren't you getting in?"

He wanted to. He knew the feel of your body well enough to know that he'd love snuggling with you all night. But this friendship meant something to him. "Nah, I'll be out on the couch if you need me."

You didn't respond verbally, but you did nod, and Bradley kissed your temple. Then he grabbed a blanket from his closet and left you alone. His thoughts were a complete mess as he stepped out of his jeans and tossed them on the coffee table. He stretched out on his couch as much as he could, but then he thought about you wearing a Hooters uniform.

"Don't do it," he warned himself, but it was too fucking late. The little orange shorts and the tiny white shirts had been nice on the other girls, sure. But on you'd, they would be lethal for him.

The idea of you dressed as a cowgirl doing a little dance routine on a sticky bartop wasn't much better. Guys would be throwing tip money at you and begging you to make their drinks. They would all want to chat you up and try to touch you. Bradley would go through the roof if one of them did. But if this is what you wanted to do and it was going to help you reach your goal, then he was going to have to be supportive, even if it killed him.

After barely sleeping most of the night, Bradley was finally dozing when you walked out into the living room the next morning. His blanket ended up on the floor at some point, but you came right over to him where he was overflowing from the couch in just his undershirt and boxer briefs.

"You could have slept in your bed, too," you whispered, brushing your fingers through his hair. "You're too big for the couch."

He noted that you were wearing your backpack as he melted into your touch. "Are you leaving? I thought we could grab breakfast."

Now you were smiling. "I'm gonna run. I'm planning to stop at The Beauty Bar later and see if they're hiring any new bartenders. Thanks for everything."

With that, you kissed his forehead, and Bradley's eyes closed as soon as you went prancing out his front door into the sunlight. "I'll keep brainstorming," he groaned.

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

Your interview at the bar consisted of making three drinks and picking out a 'uniform' to wear. Some of the clothing was so tiny, it made the Hooters girls look modest by comparison. But they assured you that you'd love working there, so you accepted the position and took your new clothing home.

The first time you put on the black leather skirt that zipped all the way up the front along with the cropped shirt, you took it back off immediately. Could you mix cocktails in the outfit? Sure. Could you dance on the top of the bar for three minutes straight three times per night? Maybe not. But then you remembered that they told you some girls made up to five hundred bucks per shift. And then DJ Insomnia started on a remix of the Macarena right above you.

So you put the outfit back on again and decided that yes, you could do this. And maybe it would help to get a guy's perspective on the way you looked and your dance moves. You wanted to ask Bradley, but you didn't think you could handle the way he'd laugh about this. But there was something about the way he'd been concerned about you when you slept over at his place on Friday night. You almost felt protected. Cared for. God, you were already jealous of the woman he would eventually fall for, because she would be on the receiving end of all of his warm attention. And she'd get to live in that house with him. And he'd actually sleep in his bed with her, unlike the couch when you were there.

You rolled your eyes in the mirror and added some makeup to your face. This was so unlike you, falling for one of your friends. But you were tired of trying to fight it. And you still trusted his opinions. So you called him.

"Sparrow," he crooned when he answered your call.

"Rooster," you replied in your most matter of fact tone. "I was wondering if you could stop by for a few minutes and help me with something?"

"Right now?" he asked immediately.

You bit your lip before swiping some lipstick on while you said, "Whenever you have a chance."

"I'll be there soon."

He didn't let you down. He never did. Twenty minutes later, there were three taps on your apartment door, and then he was letting himself inside with the spare key you gave him months ago.

"Sparrow, it's me," he called out over the remix of Footloose. "Jesus. You weren't kidding. Your neighbor plays music like this all the time?"

"Yes," you shouted from your bedroom. "Constantly."

"I'm going to go up and have a little chat with him."

You were putting the finishing touches on your makeup as you said, "Don't bother. I've tried so many times. All he's done is lower the volume the slightest bit."

Bradley's sarcastic laugh from your living room made you smile. "I'm sure I can get him to do whatever I say."

That was undoubtedly the truth. You also didn't want him to get arrested. When you ran out to see him, you had forgotten what you were wearing as you threw your arms around his neck and hugged him.

Bradley's eyes were wide, and as soon as his hands settled on your bare waist, he pulled them right off again. "Holy shit. What the fuck is this?"

"Oh," you gasped, taking a nervous step away from him. "It's kind of my uniform. For my new bartending gig?" His cheeks were pink, his lips were parted, and he was gaping at you as he dragged his gaze up and down your body. "Is it bad?"

"Holy shit," he repeated. And then he said it one more time before he met your eyes. "Do you think it's bad?"

You winced and groaned. "I wasn't sure. But you're a guy. If you think it's awful, then I certainly don't want to wear it to my second job." He let out a strangled sound, and you started to turn back to your bedroom. "I'll stick to my flight suits."

You felt his fingers lace with yours before you heard his strained voice. "It's not bad, Sparrow. It's really fucking hot." You turned and looked at him, annoyed that you were feeling so vulnerable. He swallowed hard before he added, "You always look good."

He tugged you a little closer to him, and a smile found your lips. "I think I get it. It's hard to be objective when you're friends with someone. You'd probably like the outfit better on someone else."

Somehow his eyes went wider. "I really don't think that's it at all, actually," he whispered. Then DJ Insomnia started playing a remix that actually sounded good for once, and you tugged Bradley toward your couch with your linked fingers.

"Here, watch me dance real quick, and then we can just hang out."

"Okay," he grunted, taking a seat.

"Just pretend I'm someone else," you told him as you ran one hand down your side until your palm settled on your hip. You started to turn in a slow circle as you moved your hips to the music that made its way to your living room.

"I don't really want to do that."

You looked back at Bradley over your shoulder and caught him staring at your butt. "You don't?"

He shook his head slowly as you turned to face him, still dancing. "Hell no," he whispered, watching your face now. He brought his hand up to cover his mouth, and his dark gaze looked almost greedy, but he sat there and watched you dance, barely moving a muscle until you stopped along with the music.

"Well? What do you think?" you asked, holding your hands out to your sides.

He cleared his throat. "I think it's a good thing you don't have a boyfriend, because he'd already be jealous as fuck."

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

You looked exhausted every single day now. Bradley started to bring you extra coffee from his own kitchen to try to combat your near constant yawning and fatigue each morning. You weren't just battling through sleepless nights at your apartment with DJ Insomnia, you were also working all day as a WSO and frequently working late into the night at the bar.

"I'm a little worried about you," he murmured one morning as you sipped the coffee he made. "You're working too hard, Sparrow." He didn't want to put voice to the way he felt about your bartending shifts. He made it a point not to stop by and see you there even though you'd asked him to. But he desperately wished you would quit. Every time he thought about you in your little costume with your red, pouty lips, he got more jealous inside. He could just imagine dozens, maybe hundreds of pairs of eyes on you, and he didn't like the way he wanted to be the only one treated to that sight.

"I'm fine," you replied softly. "I've already made thousands in tip money, and it's only been two weeks." You tried to smile up at him, but it didn't quite meet your eyes. "I mean, it's not the best scenario, because sometimes the patrons get a little rowdy. But it's not the worst thing. I'll just keep it up for a few months or until I get deployed."

Bradley grunted. "Explain to me exactly how rowdy they get."

Now you were sipping your coffee and staring at the patches on his flight suit instead of looking at his face. "Well, nobody is supposed to touch us. But sometimes guys do try it. Especially when we're dancing. The bouncers are great and all, but they can only get over there so quickly."

Bradley leaned down until you were looking him in the eye. He knew he was no better than some random asshole at the bar. He was probably worse since he thought about you dancing for him every time he took a shower. But he couldn't stand how apprehensive you looked when you talked about that place. You never looked like that when you were alone with him.

"I think you should quit," he told you blandly.

"It's not that bad," you replied. "Maybe I'm not doing a good job of explaining it. Come visit one night, and I'll buy you a drink."

"Sparrow, literally the last thing I want to do is witness every drunk asshole at the bar trying to look up your skirt."

You scoffed. "I wear little booty shorts underneath it!"

He closed his eyes and grunted, "I could have lived without that visual." It would just add to his shower time fodder.

"Oh! You should come on Friday night," you said, patting him on the chest. "I'll invite all the guys! There are drink specials. Hey, Javy!"

You wandered away, and soon Bradley's fate was sealed. Javy, Jake, Mickey, Reuben and Bob were all planning on going to The Beauty Bar for happy hour, and he was expected to be there, too. It wasn't like it was your fault he was falling for you, so he was just going to have to go and be supportive. He'd make sure all the guys left you massive tips, too.

You were still exhausted on Friday morning, and Bradley didn't like the way you were yawning as you loaded into your jet. You were quieter now at work than you usually were, and he was tempted to tell you to start sleeping at his place to try to cut out some of your stress. Having you close by sounded good to him as well.

Maybe he'd hang out at your bar all night and take you home with him. He could carry you to his bed before retiring to the couch and pretending he was also in his bed. Maybe you would even serenade him with the song. You'd get a good night's sleep and then this never ending friendship loop would start all over again.

If he could think of a way to break the loop and turn it into a straight line that led to a relationship with you, he'd take it. That was probably the type of brainstorming he should be working on at this point since you were already working at the bar now. He was still trying to think of a way to tell you how he really felt without destroying the friendship as he drove his Bronco across the city to the extremely popular Beauty Bar.

"You're kidding," he muttered. There was a line to get inside, and he told you he'd be here by eight o'clock when the dancing started.

"Holy shit," Jake said as he and Javy headed up the sidewalk and got in line with him. "I guess there's no shortage of guys who want to look at Sparrow."

Javy nodded in agreement. "I mean, I don't really want to look at Sparrow, but I'll gladly take all the other girls."

That was literally the exact opposite of Bradley's thinking. He couldn't give a shit who else was working, his eyes would find you and stay there all night. Whether you were serving drinks, chatting with patrons or dancing, he'd be focused on nothing but you.

The guys all got their driver's licenses out, and the bouncer muttered, "Don't want any trouble from the three of you," as he checked them.

Shit, what the hell kind of place was this if you got warned at the door on your way in? But when he walked inside and saw how crowded it was along with the two random girls doing a line dance along the bar, he could kind of understand. It was mostly packed with guys, and Reuben, Mickey and Bob were waving them over. Bradley moved slowly through the crowd, and then he found you in your cute little outfit handing someone a beer, and his heart stopped.

Your smile looked like it was pasted on, but once you saw Bradley, your whole face lit up. You waved to him as you bounced up and down behind the bar, clearly excited that he was here. He started throwing his elbows and shoulders around to get to you, passing all of the other guys in the process.

"Rooster!" you called out over the music when he got closer. The two girls danced across the bar between you and him, but his focus didn't waver at all as he matched your smile. "Do you want a drink?"

He shrugged and said, "I kind of just wanted to see you."

"Oh," you replied, looking pleased enough that Bradley decided to push the boundary just a little bit.

"I don't really like it here, actually. If at any time you feel like quitting your job, I'll take you right to my place and let you sleep in peace and quiet again."

You poured a beer and handed it to him. "You don't like the girls?" you asked, glancing at the boots as they went by again.

"Not those ones."

You looked him dead in the eye and asked, "Which ones then?"

His fingers flexed on his pint of beer as someone tried to jostle him out of the way to get closer, but he didn't look away from you as he said, "Come on, Sparrow." His voice was a little rough, and now you looked confused. He would do it. He'd ruin everything just so you knew. But he didn't want you to feel bad for him.

Then someone called your first name, and you and he both turned to see an older woman holding up both hands. "I'm on in ten," you told him, reaching out to touch his fingers where they rested on the bar. "Let me take a few more drink orders before I have to dance."

"Right," he said. It was better that you didn't know. You were trying to make some money here, and he was already messing it up by talking to you for too long. "I'll catch you later."

He wandered off in the direction of the rest of the guys. "Yo, that blonde is so hot, and she made my drink perfectly," Mickey was saying as he drank something that looked fruity and sweet.

"I'm an equal opportunity aviator tonight," Jake drawled. "I see a girl in a little outfit, she gets my phone number."

"You're delusional is what you are," Bradley told him as he sipped his beer. "All of you better leave Sparrow a massive tip. Seriously. I'm not kidding."

He listened to the guys chat as he turned back toward the bar to check on you. It was almost time for you to dance, and his stomach was churning with anticipation and anxiety. He'd been dying to see you move like that again, but he could do without the memory of everyone else knowing how you looked when you shook your hips.

Then you broke away from some guy who looked like a real tool who was reaching for you across the bar. You backed up and bumped into the mini fridge behind you and winced, and Bradley took a few steps in your direction. He memorized what that guy was wearing and what he looked like, just in case.

But now it was time for you to dance, so at least you were able to step away from him. One of the cowgirls was helping you up onto the bar, and the crowd started cheering. The opening notes to Whole Lotta Love started playing, and Bradley's arms prickled with goosebumps as you ran your hand down to your waist and shook your hips from side to side. You were moving just like you had in your living room, but all he could think about were the times you sang this song to him. He wanted all of it to be just for him. He wanted to touch you the way you were touching yourself. He wanted to taste the sweat that glistened on your neck.

His jealousy flared, burning bright inside of him as he watched everyone crowd the bar as you strutted along with a smile on your face. And once again your smile brightened when you found him, and then you mouthed the lyrics, 'Way down inside, honey you need it. I'm gonna give you my love. I'm gonna give you my love.' You mouthed the words to him.

Bradley grunted. His body felt like it was pulled taut like a rubber band, about to snap. You stopped at the end of the bar and did a little twirl as the crowd sang along to the song, but you kept your eyes on him. Your lips perfectly formed every word, and he'd never forget this feeling for the rest of his life.

Then you turned away from him, and he instantly missed the way you were subtly giving him your attention. He moved forward a little bit through the crowd, wanting to get closer to you. When you spun around again, he saw you looking for him, and your smile wavered.

"Sparrow!" he called out, and when you found him again, you laughed. And he laughed, too. But this must have been the breaking point in the evening, because Bradley got hit in the shoulder as a fight broke out to his right. Everyone got shoved forward, and a random glass of beer hit the bar. You tried to jump out of the way as your feet got soaked, and then your boss started yelling at you to keep dancing. Now when you looked at Bradley, you were no longer smiling.

He called your first name this time as you tried to step over the wet part of the bar and continue to the other end. Bradley saw him before you did. That asshole guy was back, and he smiled as he looked up your skirt. Bradley fleetingly remembered you told him you wore shorts under your skirt, and he really hoped you had them on tonight. But that wasn't the end of it, because now he was reaching out for your foot.

"What the fuck?" Bradley shouted, handing his glass to a stranger as he tried to get to you. With that asshole's hand firmly wrapped around your ankle, you started to waver. You were nine feet up in the air, surrounded by glass bottles, and he knew he was closer to you than any of the bouncers.

"Stop it!" you shouted above the music as you tried to pull yourself free, but that guy was unrelenting. You took one more awkward step before your body turned sideways. You were about to fall off the bar. Bradley fought his way forward as you tried to correct yourself, but it was too late, now it looked like you were going to land on your wrist on the bar, and probably break a bone.

Bradley lunged just in time, and thankfully you saw him. You trusted him, and right now he could see that fact in your eyes. You let yourself fall forward into the crowd. Into his open arms.

"Oh my god, Bradley!" you gasped as your arms wound around his neck and legs wrapped around his waist, clinging to him. You were shaking.

"I've got you," he promised as the song played on. He wanted to throw that guy up against the wall, but he was too content holding you to him as you buried your face against his neck. Letting go of you wasn't really an option. He wrapped one big hand around your thigh while the other squeezed your waist. "I have you, Sparrow."

Jake and Javy were there now, and Bradley nodded to the guy who grabbed you. He'd let them take care of it, because now your lips were brushing his ear. "That was terrifying," you whispered, and someone finally changed the song while another dancer climbed onto the bar.

Bradley made the decision to carry you outside into the cool night, walking slowly down the block where it was quieter as you caught your breath. "Are you okay now?" he asked softly.

You nodded against him, and when he adjusted you in his arms, you quickly whispered, "Please don't put me down yet."

"I won't," he promised before pressing his lips to your collarbone. You whimpered, and he couldn't help it. He said, "I don't ever want to put you down. And for the record, I don't want you to dance here anymore either. I never wanted you to."

You lifted your head away from him, and Bradley practically melted as your fingers tugged through the hair at the back of his head. Your lips were pouty, and your eyes were trusting as you asked, "You never wanted me to?"

"Absolutely not."

"Why not?"

He knew he had to say it and risk ruining everything, because pretending like this friendship with you was enough was actually hurting him now. He looked at your pretty face as he said, "Because I'm in love with you. And I'm selfish and jealous, and I don't want a bunch of other guys watching you dance around in this little outfit. Dancing around to my song."

"Bradley." You leaned closer, and you didn't stop until your lips were on his. This was better than he thought it could be, already so comfortable around you. Already addicted to your voice and the way you felt in his arms. Your fingers tightened in his hair as you kissed him, parting his lips with yours until you were tasting him. When you pulled away with a little moan, you whispered his name again while you ran your thumb along his mustache.

"Why did you dance to that song?" he demanded gently.

You pressed another kiss to his mouth before you said, "It made it less scary to get up on the bar when I was listening to a song that reminds me of you."

"Why?" he demanded again.

Then you very easily and simply said, "Because I'm in love with you, too."

"Honey," he sighed against your lips, smiling this time as you slowly unwrapped your legs and slid down the front of his body. Once you were standing on your own, Bradley let his hands fall to your hips, and you wiggled yourself snug against his body.

You felt just like his shower fantasies and all of his other fantasies, if he was being honest with himself. He thought about you all the time. You nibbled on his lips and dragged your fingers through his hair until he was frankly afraid he was going to get hard in his jeans right here on the sidewalk. He pried his lips from yours, making you pout, and he chuckled as he said, "Sparrow, you're killing me."

Your pout grew more pronounced as you said, "I want you to call me Honey again."

His smile must look ridiculous now as he said, "Honey."

"That's better," you said as your lips curled into a grin. "Let's get out of here."

"Do you think you should go back inside first?" he asked, hoping you'd just ditch the whole thing with him, but you nodded in response.

"Yeah, good idea. I'll go quit in person," you said, taking his hand in yours.

He stood his ground in response, and you weren't able to move him, but one tug on your hand and you were headed right back to his arms. "Excellent. As soon as you do that, we can talk about how we aren't friends anymore."

"We're not?" you asked, and as soon as that pout started returning, Bradley leaned down and kissed you.

"Hell no," he whispered against your lips. "You're gonna be my girlfriend. And I'll be your boyfriend. And I'm going to take you back to my house. And this time when I carry you to bed, I'm going to stay there with you all night. If that's cool."

"It's so cool," you promised him, and this time when you tugged on his hand, he followed you back up the sidewalk. "It's almost as cool as a man in his thirties who has a keyboard."

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

You were honestly impressed by the way the other guys weren't phased at all. Maybe it was obvious that you and Bradley belonged together, but none of them found it surprising that you were suddenly a couple. It really wasn't sudden at all in your mind though. There was a slow build of trust and appreciation over time that turned physical as soon as Bradley admitted he was in love with you. And four months later, none of it had let up. In fact, you couldn't get enough, and neither could he.

"That's it?" he asked, pointing to the single box left in your trunk.

"That's it," you told him as you picked it up. And then he picked you up and carried you toward his house while you laughed. You passed the planter boxes full of flowers and went through the pink door.

"Then it's official. You live here now. Welcome home, Honey."

"Oh please," you replied as he set you down. "I've been unofficially living here for months."

"All thanks to DJ Insomnia," he whispered, leaning down and placing an absolutely filthy kiss on your lips.

You moaned. "I owe him so much."

Bradley shrugged and said, "I think we would have eventually arrived at the same conclusion regardless."

"What conclusion would that be?"

"That you're in love with me."

You wanted to deny it, but you couldn't. "Help me unpack the rest of my clothes and shoes so we can explore another one of your shower fantasies."

Bradley moaned and said, "Absolutely. I'll meet you in the bedroom. I just need to get something first."

That's how you ended up putting your clothes on hangers while Bradley resurfaced a few minutes later with his keyboard. Instead of helping you in any way, he sat on the bed and started playing Whole Lotta Love.

"I asked you to help me," you told him with a laugh as you tossed a pair of your shorts at him while he played. "You're worse than DJ Insomnia."

"Just for that, you get a remix too."

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

I'm not exactly sure how "Sneak Peek: Bradley's Version" ended up happening, but I hope you enjoyed it. I might like it even better than the Jake fic! Thanks for reading, and please let me know what you think! Thanks @mak-32 and @beyondthesefourwalls

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auroreliis · 2 months ago

Note

what if reader had k*lled someone before and the batfam (yandere) dis not know like «I dont need your damn protection» reader said to the batfam «but the world is so dangerous out there and your just a baby» the batfam said to reader « B!TCH I have k*lled someone the f you mean im a baby?!?» the batfam with horrified expresion «WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!»

That last little part is a funny little over dramatic way it might go.

Oh, you are COOKED. (Do pardon my use of brainrot language...)

CW: mentions of murder...obviously

The first thing they do is isolate you in a room and keep you there for a while until they figure out what to do with you (and so you can think about what you've done).

What happens next? Therapy sessions, which they all agreed on.

Don't worry, you will tell them everything, specifically Bruce, since he's the one carrying out the therapy sessions.

"Why did you kill that person?"

"How do you feel about it now?"

"Do you regret it?"

"How do you feel after our conversation?"

He pities the person you ended up killing and feels a little disappointed. A life was taken by you, an innocent person's life. He didn't raise you like this, did he...?

However, he also pities you. Unless you are trained to kill someone, it breaks you. He's seen it so many times, people commiting murders and then panicking, breaking down, because they couldn't live with the consequences of their actions.

You're a mere civilian, how could you ever have been exposed to that kind of environment? How could he let this happen? No, it is his fault for waiting so long before saving you from the world. He will teach you why it's wrong. He will make sure you heal and never take another life again. After all, it is his job as your father to guide you in life.

That's right, the only reason you could've done it is because you didn't know any better. You are a mere child in this old, cruel world, after all.

In the end, he holds himself accountable. He should've done better. He should've protected you better from the cruel world you live in.

Dick would be shocked. His little birdie, his angel, killed someone? Impossible. You're so innocent, like a baby, so how could this be true? He would take some time off to come to terms with the fact that you're not the kind of person he expected. When he comes back, after a week, he seems slightly distant.

With time, following your therapy sessions, he will return to his normal, clingy, annoying self. However, you can't help but wonder why he was acting so weird that one week.

Despite the fact that he also kills people, Jason is incredibly suprised and disappointed after hearing that you killed someone. Unlike everyone else, he feels anger. You're so young, so innocent, you grew up in a place where murdering someone was not necessary, so why would you do it? He doesn't kill people because he wants to, he only does it because he needs to. But you didn't need to do it.

That's what upsets him most. You chose to do it. You willingly took a life.

Despite being so hurt, so broken, he still feels an ounce hesitation when killing people, so how come you, someone who didn't go through what he did, could kill someone in a situation that wasn't even self-defense? Nothing could possibly justify it! And here you are, proudly announcing it to them. You should be ashamed.

He kills murderers, so what should he do with you? Does that make you as bad as the criminals he kills? God, he doesn't even want to think about it.

Jason won't get over it for at least a month. He'll be very distant around you and won't be seen smiling for a long time. Towards you exclusively, his behaviour becomes incredibly bitter. In fact, he's the one who most strongly encourages Bruce to carry out the long, grueling therapy sessions. He really thinks it'll do you good...

Tim's reaction would be more mild than expected. He would certainly feel uncomfortable with the fact that you seemingly feel not an ounce of guilt or regret. However, he wouldn't change his behaviour too much for too long.

During the first week, he'd be a bit more careful with his affection towards you. No, it's not because he's scared. He simply wants to observe you and see how effective the therapy sessions are. If he feels that your attitude towards murder hasn't changed, he would encourage Bruce to be more intense during the therapy sessions.

He would be more careful with the activities he offers you, since Bruce called a meeting with everyone to establish more rules, those being directed at Tim mostly. Tim's "cool, lenient older brother"-act needs to change.

From now on, no crime films or shows (especially not any violent ones), no crime documentaries, no crime or detective books, no vular language, no threats towards anyone or anything and for at least 14 months, no leaving the manor.

This change will probably be permanent.

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a-kaash-me-outside · 9 months ago

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˚₊‧ ᴡɪʟʟ ɪᴛ ʙᴇ ᴄᴀsᴜᴀʟ ɴᴏᴡ? ‧₊˚

♡ ft. geto, toji, gojo, higuruma, nanami ♡ total wc: 10.9k // nsfw minors dni! // ♡ contents: ౨ৎ 𝑎 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑢𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 ౨ৎ, afab reader she/her pronouns, no smut in gojos or tojis im sorry, emotionally stunted men kinda but they grow isnt that nice (not talking abt higuruma and nanami god no), the aftermath of fwb caught feelings, consolation, emotional aftercare ig, lotta domestic fluff for higuruma and nanami's!!!! (everyone say ty @noosayog for nanami's bc she is the only reason i wrote his) ♡ listen along: casual by chappell roan ♡

- ᡣ𐭩 time passes and people change, and just because you fell first doesn't mean you don't get a happy ending + bonus continuation of higuruma's and nanami's ᡣ𐭩 -

ᯓᡣ𐭩 ɢᴇᴛᴏ [ 3 ʏᴇᴀʀs ]

on the list of people that you thought you’d see tonight, geto isn’t even in the top 100, not because of probability or likelihood, but solely based on the fact that you have not thought about this man in years. if you were asked the question from your future self, “holy shit, guess who we saw tonight?” you would’ve listed old friends, distant relatives, exes, minor celebrities, other flings, teachers from high school, people from stories you’ve only heard of, and then geto.

after that night, you really didn’t see barely any of him. a few posts on your feed: one 2 weeks after and another 2 months after that one when you remembered that you forgot to unfollow him. once on campus: him across a million tables getting lunch with some girl too long after your little thing for you to care about who she was to him at all. once at a mutual (though you didn’t know was mutual at the time) friend’s party close to graduation: you ran into him grabbing a drink from the cooler and neither of you said a single word to each other, just exchanged a very knowing glance.

fast forward a handful of years, with geto not on your mind during a single one of them, and you’re stunned, nearly speechless, as you recognize him across the bar. the track of which your mind is racing takes you stop after stop to thoughts and feelings you didn’t really ask to experience. they follow a curving roadmap in your mind of: why is he here? ↝ wow, he looks great ↝ does he live nearby still? ↝ that’s weird ↝ no, it isn’t weird, i still live here ↝ then what are the fucking chances that he’s here ↝ no, seriously he looks so good

he looks different though, you realize about 3 minutes into sneaking glances in his direction, in some way that you just can’t put your finger on right now. in your slightly tipsy state, you barely stop to ask yourself how you even clocked that it was him so quickly, how there was no hesitance in the recognition or questioning in the placing. he looks really fucking good.

in fact, now that all of the obligatory thoughts have come to a heed, that’s really the only thing that you can think about. how good he looks.

the events that happened that ended your situationship all of those years ago are nothing but outlines now; whatever you said or he said just sounds like underwater conversations. you can see the way that you left and you remember being dumbfounded, but everything else has lost its sting, like a story you’d recall to a friend of a friend in a setting much like the one you’re in. time has handled the memory the way that time does and as a result, when the two of you finally make eye contact after what feels like an hour of missed mutual glances, you offer a small wave. a wave that says, “i remember only knowing you in past tense. we are such different people now, i wonder what it would’ve been like if we met now instead.”

the wave was the first step, technically, sure, but he makes the literal first step. he departs from the conversation he’s been enthralled with for as long as you’ve been stealing glances and he weaves between people in the middle of their own stories before ending up in front of you.

when he does, he asks, as if he’s just randomly bumped into you rather than intentionally coming over, “shit… is that you?” he puts his hand on the back of your chair, thumb brushing your shoulder.

the friend that you’re with cocks their head, furrows their eyebrows, has no idea who this is or their connection to you, the timelines of their interactions with you spaced too far apart for one to know the other. geto notices this look, addresses it. “we used to…,” he pauses, “see each other? for a little bit.”

you can’t help the laugh that bubbles up from your chest at the way he describes it. “yes, yes we did,” you nod. “back in college,” you explain a little further, “been a while.”

the interaction quiets, the two of you exchanging soft smiles instead of words, and your friend knows where this thing is going before either of you even do, so they bow their head, offer their seat to geto, and take their leave in the name of some bullshit excuse. he takes it without a second thought, asking you how you’ve been, laughing about the time that you saw each other at that party, and after an hour of just talking he says, “yeah, i actually thought about you the other day.”

you nearly choke on the drink he’s bought you. you rush to put it down. “you did?” you ask.

he nods. “i don’t even remember what prompted it. i think, maybe, i saw a photo of myself from college and how different i looked and how different i feel now and then just, out of nowhere, remembered how shitty i was to you.”

you don’t say anything in return, running your finger around the lip of your glass as you stare at him. you don’t know how to say that you don’t care anymore, that you haven’t thought of those days in years, that the surprise that you displayed a few seconds ago was completely genuine, because you were so convinced that neither of you had. it comes out something like a shrug and, “we were practically kids.”

he answers so quickly, “well, kids or not, i’m sorry.”

you laugh, gently so he won’t think you’re laughing at his apology. really, you’re laughing at the notion of apologizing for an act that no longer warrants forgiveness. you laugh at the thought of giving it anyways. you place your hand on top of his on the edge of the bar. “thank you,” you nod. he nods back.

when you let him take you back to his place for old times sake, you’re half-expecting the same person from the ghosts of memories from years ago, like all of the things he said at the bar were just a last ditch effort to usher the night in the exact direction that it’s heading in.

but he’s different now, just like he said he was before he apologized, and you can feel it in his movements and his actions. more confident, more intentional. he kisses you first and it doesn’t taste selfish. it doesn’t feel rushed to get to the main event. he savors it, holds your head in his hands, and doesn’t touch a single other inch of your body until he’s found the right combination of fingertip pressure and tongue that has you melting into his palm.

your mind flickers to the notion that these actions might be pre planned because they feel so meticulous and thought out, but that impression quickly dissolves when he sinks inside of you, slowly, keeping his eyes locked on yours as he does, his hand reaching down to cup your cheek, fingers nearly trembling against your jaw when he presses his hips completely against the insides of your thighs.

“shit,” he hisses, hands moving down to your waist, fingers light like feathers practically crawling against your skin, as if each print was so grateful it got to make contact with the softness below. when he grips into the fat of your hips, he’s careful, intentional or not, pressing his thumbs into the bone, but not letting his nails leave a single mark. it’s pressured, but comfortable.

he holds you in place, slowly pulling his hips back and he can’t help but look down between your legs, watching himself disappear inside of you, a creamy mess at the base, shallow breaths recycled in his chest.

“hey,” you say, eyes locked on the tenseness of his jaw and the way that he stops himself with sharp inhales. he finds your gaze in a second. “don’t hold out on me here.” you rest your arm on his bicep, fingers curling around wherever they can reach.

you can feel it under your palm, his muscle tensing as his pace picks up, rhythm consistent, but unrelenting. the breaths come out of you quickly and you’re unable to hold any sort of facade. “ah- shit, f-fuck,” you cry, “holy shit.” you squeeze your eyes shut, swallowing harshly as strangled noises leave you without vetting a single one.

“n-no,” you shake your head, regretting it instantly as he slows down in response. you shake your head harder, “no, don’t stop, but- ah,” you groan, “your- you were- i meant,” you exhale a laugh, “let me hear you.”

his eyes widen slightly as he processes what you want from him, and then he listens. he leans down to kiss your lips and then your cheek and then your jaw and then your ear. yes, he’s fucking you better than you’ve ever been fucked in your entire life, but that’s not what makes you crumble. no, it’s his grunts and pants and breathy groans pressed right up against your skin.

you thread your fingers into his hair, twirling the ends of the locks between the tips, raking your nails down the base of his neck to the front, and then smoothing them down his chest. “more,” you mumble against him, and you’re not sure exactly what you mean, but he gives it to you, whatever it is. you’re certain he’d give you anything in the world right now if you just asked for it.

there’s a moment after when you’re lying there with him, shoulder pressed up against his, chest heaving, barely recovered, that you find yourself back in that college dorm. you don’t know why the tightness is rising in the hollow below your sternum, but it is. you remind yourself that you weren’t expecting anything from this anyway, so it doesn’t matter, but it does. you’re not sure if you just don’t want to be treated like that again or if it has something to do with geto being the one lying beside you.

when you turn your head to face him, he’s already looking at you. he doesn’t shy away in embarrassment, like it’s wrong that he’d be gazing at you after all of that. his features are steady, confident, strong. he smiles softly, brings his hand up to cup your cheek. “should we get breakfast in the morning?”

in the morning, you repeat in your head. you wait a beat, trying to come up with something to say, to proceed with caution or to discern his intentions or to at least not sound desperate, but all that comes out is, “in the morning?”

he nods, turning on his side so he can stare at you without his neck getting sore. he inches closer to you, kissing the top of your shoulder and then your temple. he drapes his arm over your stomach. “if that’s okay with you,” he says and then kisses you again.

“okay,” you nod back, lazy smile on your lips, eyelids heavy at the warmth surrounding you now as he pulls you closer to him. “yeah, sure,” you affirm, voice so soft and airy that the tightness in your chest is lifted away with the words, all that’s left is a hope you feel comfortable letting stick around.

ᯓᡣ𐭩 ᴛᴏᴊɪ [ 3 ᴍᴏɴᴛʜs ]

you are not expecting anyone. you have resigned yourself to a nice pair of pajamas and comfy socks and a warm cup of tea and a spot in the living room that you will only leave for a refill and bathroom breaks. you are tucked into the corner of your couch, back pressed up against the sturdy arm, legs crossed, and a throw blanket over your lap.

you are not expecting anyone, so the sound at the door should have felt a lot more jarring. well, it is jarring for a second, a few seconds actually, the echoing disruption bouncing off of the walls of your living room and back to you, but then the noises repeat themselves, like they’re on a looping track, and you realize that-

you know that knock. heavy-handed with a tight fist, back of the knuckles, not the tops. almost pittering out by the end of the three successions, like the first one is direct and assured, but the second and third don’t really bother keeping up. that knock almost makes you run to the door. if it were 3 months ago, you’d be skipping to the door.

but you hesitate for a few reasons. firstly because when the connection hits that you know that knock very well, you remind yourself to proceed with caution. secondly because it sounds the same but with a difference as small as a hairline fracture. you heard that knock far too many times during the span of a year and a half, and this one sounds almost completely identical, but there’s a half second pause between the first knock and the second knock and the raps feel less impatient.

you don’t have to look through the peephole to know who’s standing on the other side of the door, but you’re glad you do anyway. if for nothing else, it gives you a slight edge, you’re convinced, like you’ve seen him first, you have the upperhand now. at least, that’s what you tell yourself.

toji hadn’t contacted you since he left that day. no texts. no calls. no showing up at your apartment at 3 am. nothing. you kept telling yourself that you’d hear from him. when that didn’t happen, you started telling yourself that you didn’t care if you heard from him. you’ve actually been waiting for this moment, replaying what it would look like if he came back, the things you’d say to him and how you’d say them.

now, looking out at him just standing there, you’re frozen. every scenario you’ve replayed in your head, all of the emotional venting and blow out screaming that you’ve rehearsed and you can’t recall a single scene. you think about leaving him out there, about telling him to go away through the door or just pretending like you’re not home.

“i can see the shadow of your feet under the door,” toji calls out, muffled by the barrier between you guys, and yet it still rings out through your entire body.

you slowly open the door. though, even if it took an entire hour to open the door, you’re not sure it would’ve mattered. you don’t think time is something that could’ve prepared you for seeing him. seeing him didn’t even prepare you for seeing him. you don’t know what to say, so you don’t say anything, folding your arms over your chest. you just wait.

“i-,” he starts, but then immediately stops, half sighs/half scoffs as he leans his chest forward, eyes scanning the inside of your apartment, for what exactly you’re not sure.

“what, toji?” you ask, voice stronger- and more annoyed- than you anticipate it being. you’re grateful for that. “why are you here?”

“shit, this is already hard enough for me t-,” he says, shaking his head, corner of his mouth tugging upward in frustration.

you narrow your eyes, cutting him off, “sorry, this is hard for you?” you feel like laughing or strangling him more than you do crying, which is a desired outcome in this situation, you suppose. “you know that you haven’t talked to me in three months, right? you haven’t talked to me?” you ask, and you can feel your pulse in your wrist and your chest now, because the lines are coming back to you slowly, one by one, circling your brain, fueling your confidence.

“yeah, no, of course i know that,” he combats, like you’re the one that’s being an asshole right now.

you smooth your fingertips against your eyes, blocking the sight of him out for just a second before gesturing with your hand as you ask, “are you going to answer my question or…?”

“look, i said that this is hard enough as it is for me to just be here,” he snaps, and if you were a little less annoyed, if he hadn’t come at this whole thing exactly how he was, you might’ve clocked the desperation in his voice or the uncertainty in his pupils.

“do you know how fucking stupid you sound right now?” you ask. it’s a rhetorical question.

one week after he left, you were certain he was going to come back. you and toji had gone a week without seeing each other or even speaking. you had even gone two weeks. sure, the conversation felt much more serious and, sure, really deep down you knew this time was different, but still, you held out dumb hope.

one month after he left and you realized this was not just him being weird and distant. this was something brand new that you had never had to deal with before. you were still trying to figure out how to navigate it when the two month realization hit: that maybe he wasn’t coming back at all, ever, maybe you had done something wrong. if he had shown back up on your doorstep during that time this conversation would’ve gone very differently you think.

but he didn’t. he showed up at month three when your reaction to random memories of toji were no longer tears and guilt, but laughter and bitterness. there weren’t many things that toji could say right now that would warrant anything more than you standing in your doorway for 4 minutes or less.

“i-,” he starts, but then sighs. he looks left, down the hallway of your building, eyes shifting from object to object out of your view.

“please don’t waste anymore of my time,” you reply and it’s softer than you intend. you thought it’d come out angrier. that seems like a theme for you tonight: everything sounding different in your head. when he doesn’t reply, you start a countdown, promising yourself that when you make it to 15, you’ll close the door in his face. you only make it to 13.

“i’m not here to waste your time,” he says, with no air of disgust or annoyance, the first halfway decent thing he’s said to you tonight. “i-,” he huffs again, “i’m here to say sorry. and-,” he hesitates.

you wait, just listening. the longer that he hesitates, the more time you have to think about what he might say and how you’re standing with your door open for the entire floor to hear your conversation. you’re not sure what’s worse, having this conversation in the confines of familiar grounds or the openness of neutrality.

“and ask… are you already seeing someone else?” he finishes.

you’re dumbfounded, blinking at him slowly before responding in the only way you can think of right now, “goodnight, toji.” you shake your head, cursing yourself for expecting anything more.

“no,” he rushes to say and then stumbles over the rest, “i- i tried to see somebody else, quite a bit of other people actually…”

you scoff, squinting at him, saying more sternly this time, with an added attestation of closing the door in his face, “goodnight, toji.”

he reaches out with a quick reflex, grabbing the door before you’ve barely even moved it. “wait, no, i- fuck,” he mutters, scrambling, “can i just come in?”

“so that was your plan then?” you drop your hand from the door. “to come back here unannounced, be shitty to me, ask if i’m sleeping with anyone, tell me that you’ve slept with lots of people, and then ask if you can come inside?” you ask.

“i didn’t have a plan-,” he replies.

“clearly,” you interject.

“but i’m trying,” he finishes, and you’re waiting for there to be more, to explain exactly how this constitutes as trying, because you don’t really see that here.

“fucking christ, toji, you’re going to have to try harder than whatever the fuck this is,” you sneer.

“we- we had a good thing,” he tries again. you don’t understand how every time he opens his mouth it gets worse and worse. why are you even entertaining this anymore?

“fuck you, man,” you scoff, and it feels like all of the anger has left your body, and in the void where it once was present is nothing but disinterest.

“no, not like that,” he backpedals. maybe if he would say more than four words at a time, or four better words at a time, then you wouldn’t have to keep filling in the blanks or being pissed off or- “for the last six months of our relationship, i didn’t sleep with anyone else,” he admits like it’s the answer to all of your problems. the word relationship burns at the forefront of your mind so hard that you don’t realize what he’s said for 10 whole seconds.

“i, so what?” your voice is unconvincing even to your own ears. you had slept with other people even 2 months before that last day. that wasn’t the issue. you guys were allowed to sleep with other people. you had an explicit conversation about the fact that you could sleep with other people, something along the lines of, hey, we can see other people right? yeah, we’re not fucking dating. okay, just checking.

the so what, you had already answered for yourself, inner voice replying to your own question, screaming, you guys were exclusive, unknowingly to each other, for 2 whole months before you confessed and he left.

his answer is much different. he says, “so nothing really. i just- i needed you to know that.”

“well, what the fuck do you want me to do with that?” you ask, and it comes out bitter and discouraged, but what you really mean is, please tell me what you want, please, can you just tell me that you missed me.

“whatever you want,” he answers instead.

you take a deep breath, a million emotions coursing through your veins and up your throat. “you know what?” you say, and it doesn’t sound angry, it sounds playful, “no, seriously,” you smile and then you laugh, “fuck you, toji.” you close your mouth like you’re done talking, like that’s all you needed to say, but your heart disagrees, forces more words out into the air no matter how hard your jaw is clenched shut.

“you show up here and you’re an asshole and then you’re decent and then you say shit like that and then- then i ask you what you fucking want from this, what you’re trying to play at here and you tell me whatever i want?” you say, exasperated.

“what i wanted was for you not to leave me three fucking months ago. that’s what i wanted,” you spit, “i wanted you to tell me this shit three fucking months ago before i sat alone, by myself, sad and then angry, and the entire time, fucking missing you, you fucking asshole. that’s what i wanted.”

and then it’s there, out in the open, airing for the two of you to witness and to face, and no matter what happens, you know you’ve done everything and said everything that you’ve needed to. he’s quiet for a few moments and you let him be, not tapping your foot or rolling your eyes or being pissed off, but just letting it play out. if this is the last time you ever see toji, why not just let it play out?

“okay,” he says, and it’s soft in a way you’ve only ever heard from him one time in your entire relationship. “i’m sorry.” he pauses. “i really don’t know how to do this,” he admits and you believe him. it feels different from when he told you something along those lines earlier, but you have a feeling that this is what he was trying to say all along.

“do what?” you push, because your mind is making assumptions, but if he’s going to prove anything to you, he needs to start now.

“ask for forgiveness?” he says, like he’s thinking out loud, “apologize? date someone?” you don’t say anything. you’re looking for something more concrete than that. it takes a handful of uncomfortable seconds before he says, “actually care about someone.”

“and do you?” you ask.

his lips press into a thin line, his eyes shift from left to right again. you can feel him getting antsy with the conversation and he’s barely said one vulnerable thing. you look at him, eyes soft and pleading, silently begging him that if he’s grown from this, you’ll let him back in, you swear, but you’ve been hurt before and you know what you’re worth, so you’re going to need some sort of evidence as collateral. “yeah,” he mumbles, but it’s audible. “you,” he says like it isn’t obvious, and it’s quiet and daunted, but you really appreciate the effort.

“okay,” you say, and that’s all you say.

“okay?” he questions, confused. “that’s it?”

“yup,” you say, but your small smile and the fact that you’re not slamming the door in his face again gives away a bit more than that.

“can i… come in?” he asks, hesitant, like he’s still being tested.

you shake your head, hand gripped onto the edge of the door. “no,” you say, scrunching up your nose and furrowing your eyebrows. “because if you come in here, we’re going to have sex,” you admit, half because it’s the truth and half just to see the look on his face. (it’s worth it.)

“wait,” he says, placing his palm flat against your door, but not moving it. his hand is now inside of your apartment, the only part of his body that’s made it past this invisible barrier of hallway and your place. “that sounds like a great thing. why am i not allowed in?”

“because this is me having self-control,” you explain, placing a hand on his shoulder and pushing the small portion of him that’s crossed the division back into the hallway. when you feel his skin against your pinky, soft fabric of that familiar shirt underneath your palm, you almost make a fool of yourself right after you say the word self-control, but you remind yourself what’s at stake here, what you really want.

“i came all the way out here to see you-,” he starts, but he doesn’t make a move to replace his hand on your door, letting his arm fall back to his side. it’s for the better, too, because you’re not sure how much more self-control you have already, no matter how much you tell yourself about longevity and whatever.

“if you really care,” you interrupt him, using his few vulnerable words against him, “and you weren't just trying to sleep with me tonight,” you pause, letting those words sink in, “you will go home and you will call me tomorrow morning and we will get breakfast- the least sexy meal of them all- and then maybe coffee if i enjoy hanging out with you outside of just having sex with you, and then we will go from there.”

“i-,” he starts to protest, but you cock your head. the truth is, if he said another word, reached out and touched your cheek or your hip or really anywhere on your body, if he kissed you, or just walked inside of your apartment and sat down on your couch, you wouldn’t have stopped him. you might even have gotten breakfast with him anyways. he doesn’t know that, you don’t think, but even if he does, he doesn’t act on it. he bows his head slightly, conceding, and says, “okay. i will just… talk to you… tomorrow… then.”

you nod. “goodnight, toji,” you say, hand on the door, closing it as slowly as you opened it.

“uh, yea, night,” he says back. you won’t tell anyone, and neither will he, about the stupidest small smile you see on his lips as he leaves your apartment that night or the fact that he wakes up extra early the next morning, muttering under his breath about how ridiculous dating is before he calls you at 9:30 on the dot.

ᯓᡣ𐭩 ɢᴏᴊᴏ [ 3 ᴡᴇᴇᴋs ]

being away from ɢᴏᴊᴏ feels like detoxing. not from like hard drugs or alcohol, but… coffee.

like you know it’s not necessarily good for you, drinking it every day, but it’s a habit you’ve had for a while now and you just can’t seem to break it. it’s not really hurting anything in your day-to-day and you’ve been doing it for so long that it’s probably fine to just keep doing it.

but out of nowhere it hits you that maybe drinking coffee as much as you do is a waste of money and even if you don’t feel the negative effects constantly in your daily routine, you remind yourself of the times where you could distinctly feel the thump of your heart and the unsteady of your hands. you recall the time that you stayed up all night for the promise of a cup of coffee to get you through the day. in every memory that you’ve ever had in your entire college career, you’re holding a cup of coffee.

so one day you make the choice to stop. you stop buying coffee from coffee shops and pods for your coffee maker and cups from diners and accepting free ones from friends. you don’t really need a good cup of coffee as badly as you think you do. and it’s stupid, you think, because it’s just coffee. it doesn’t mean anything. just because you’ve been drinking it consistently for quite awhile doesn’t mean it has any sort of hold over you. it’s just coffee.

but then the headaches come and the irritation sets in and nights are hard, but for some reason mornings are unbearable, and you feel antsy all the time and you haven’t left your room in the past three days and the only thing you want is a cup of fucking coffee and you can’t relapse with coffee; it’s fucking coffee.

yeah, being away from gojo feels a lot like detoxing from coffee.

you try to just not see him. it’ll be easier for you if you just don’t see him, you tell yourself. you go out of your way to avoid his walking path on campus and you refuse to leave your dorm when you don’t absolutely need to in fear of bumping into him or worse, just seeing him from afar, and god forbid you even come within three streets of the corner where his apartment resides. you block his number and you delete social media off of your phone for the time being, too many mutual friends to make casualties, and you do not let yourself think about him. not falling asleep, not when you wake up, not while you’re doing homework, not in your dreams or in the shower, not when something reminds you of him, not when you see his favorite show on your recently watched, not when you really need a good cup of coffee.

and it works for a while.

but not forever.

three weeks into your detox and you’re doing such a good job at not thinking about gojo that you mix up his monday schedule with his tuesday schedule and on your way back to your dorm, you see him. if you keep walking at the same pace that you’re walking, you will collide with him. if neither of you do anything, one of you will get hurt.

you look down at your phone, hoping, in the forefront of your mind, that he didn’t see it was you. (in the back of your mind, you’re hoping that he’s the one to break the longest bout of silence the two of you have had since you met.) when you sneak a glance, he’s already almost reached you, jogging to catch up with you. “hey,” he calls out, just in case you haven’t seen him.

“hi,” you say, stopping in place and letting him approach you.

“i’ve been trying to get ahold of you,” he offers, like you wouldn’t have known that.

“oh, sorry, haven’t been on my phone,” you lie. he knows that you’re lying. he can tell that you’re lying, so you don’t really know why you lie in the first place. maybe to prove a point. maybe to make him feel bad.

“look, about…,” he trails off, trying to remember how long he’s been without you, “about that… day…,” he opts for instead.

you put your hand up, waving the topic off. you mean to say something like, don’t worry about it, see you later, but it comes out like, “we don’t have to talk about that here.” here. fucking here. if you would’ve left those four letters out, it would’ve been a perfect line to walk away with, but you don’t. your stupid coffee-craving brain tacks it on, hopeful.

“right,” he says, nodding, “should we get coffee maybe, then, or?”

it’s not out of the ordinary, or it didn’t used to be, but now it feels taboo. you want to snap and ask him if he’s sure, because coffee sounds a bit too much like a date for people that aren’t together, but you realize very quickly that the irritation from your coffee detox is maybe a little bit too much to hold in without any closure. “sure,” you agree, “i just got done with class so we cou-.”

“i know,” he says, because three weeks hasn’t erased your schedule from his brain either.

you order an iced tea. you’re still convinced you’re done with coffee for good. he looks surprised at your choice, like he’s never seen you order an iced tea before, because he hasn’t, but he doesn’t say anything. you sip on it throughout unpleasant pleasantries and it’s refreshing, but it’s lacking something. in fact, the longer that you drink this stupid drink that has caffeine anyways and isn’t as good, the irritation bubbles higher and higher until- “can i start?” you ask, tapping your fingers against the table in rhythmic succession.

“yeah, sure,” he says, bringing his coffee to his lips and taking a sip.

“if at any point in this conversation your answer to anything i have to say is that we weren’t together, i don’t think we should have this conversation,” you reason, and you mean it, but his reaction takes you aback. you notice the smallest flinch when you say weren’t.

“i wasn’t-,” he shakes his head, sighing, “no, i wasn’t going to say that.”

“okay,” you say, dragging your fingertips along the condensation on the side of your glass. “then what were you going to say?”

he thinks for a minute, like he didn’t assume that he’d get this far when he brought up the idea of coffee. “i wanted to stop you from leaving,” he says.

“but you didn’t,” you rebuttal.

“i didn’t,” he affirms. it’s quiet again. you can hear the scrape of the cups against the table as they’re picked up, drank from, and put back down. the chatter in the coffee shop drones over the sounds of hesitance and nerves. “i’m sorry,” he says after a while.

“so, do you think we were together?” you ask, “and be honest. i’ll know if you lie.” you search his face as he answers, and the only thing that comes up is another flinch when you talk in past tense again.

“yeah,” he says, honest. “being apart from you these past three weeks has been one of the shittiest things i’ve ever been through.”

“ever?” you ask, quirking your eyebrow, as if it isn’t somewhat true for you too.

he nods in response, continuing, “it’s been hard.” he pauses. “i’m sorry i was so shitty.”

“pretty shitty, yeah,” you agree, but you can’t hide how nice it feels to just talk with him again, to call him shitty and to sit across from him at a coffee shop table. “i’m sorry i ghosted you these past few weeks,” because it deserves to be said too.

“i really missed you,” he says, and he doesn’t hide from it. he looks you directly in your eyes and you can tell that he wants to reach across the table and hold your hand. you want that too.

“me or just, like, sleeping with me?” you ask, somewhat terrified of the answer, scanning his face for the truth once again.

he laughs softly and, try as you might, you can’t stop the fluttering in your stomach or the warmth in your cheeks hearing that for the first time in too long. “please, i haven’t thought about sleeping with you once,” he jokes.

“oh, no? not at all?” you ask, scoffing lightly, a tiny smirk threatening to break.

he forces a thoughtful frown, shakes his head dramatically and says, “can’t say that i have.” you’re laughing now, but through smile-squinted eyes you can still tell that he’s actually being genuine. “not really,” he says.

“so just me then?” you ask to make sure.

“just you,” he affirms. “a lot of just you.” you hum, content with his answer, but he gives you even more than thought he ever could, “i don’t want to just go back to the way things were. i don’t think that’s enough for me anymore.”

even though you’re sure a response like this would’ve sent waves of shock through your entire body, it doesn’t. it just feels right. you reply quickly, “good. i don’t think it’s enough for me either.” you reach across the table. the back of your hand brushes against his, and then past it. you wrap your fingers around the handle of his coffee cup and bring it to your lips.

he doesn’t protest or snatch it away from you or make a snarky comment. he places his chin in the palm of his hand, elbow against the surface of the table, and smiles at you. you take a sip from his mug, warmth spreading through every bit of your body.

why would you deprive yourself of coffee when it brings you so much comfort?

ᯓᡣ𐭩 ʙᴏɴᴜs! ʜɪɢᴜʀᴜᴍᴀ [ ɴ/ᴀ ]

you’re not exactly sure how many times something has to happen before it becomes a theme.

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

“do you -huff- want to -huff- have kids someday?” higuruma asks from beneath you, palms resting on the tops of your knees, thumbs massaging up to the insides of your thighs.

you slow your bounces and then you stop them completely. you blink at him once and then twice. “that is a really wild thing to ask while you’re inside of someone,” you scoff, searching his face for any kind of tone indicator. is he being serious? is he just saying something to get a rise out of you? is this a kink thing?

he smirks, placing his hands on your hips, coaxing you to continue your movements, and you do. you lift yourself off of him, slowly at first, but then picking up speed as you chase the feeling you lost when he asked the question. you’re breathless when he asks again, the repeated question no longer stilling you. the second time around it feels almost normal. “do you?” he asks on his exhale.

you shake your head and then tilt it side to side, closing your eyes so all of the conflicting fast paced movements don’t dizzy you. “i- don’t- know-,” you huff, “maybe- conversation- for- a- different- setting.” each word is punctuated by the slap of your thighs against his hips. he nods, completely okay with that answer, and then just drops it.

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

“shit,” you say in realization, hips circling, fingers combing through his hair. you pull your head away from his shoulder, pushing yourself up to look him in the eyes. “wait, how did your meeting go today?” you ask, and this time neither of you miss a beat.

when he slows to think about it, you pick up his slack, rolling your hips, feeling the drag of him inside of you, a breathy moan floating up your chest. he answers over your noises, “really good actually.”

“everything as planned?” you ask further, genuinely just as invested in this as you are in the act.

he nods, smiling. “yeah, to a t,” he says, wrapping his arms around your lower back and pulling you against his chest. he kisses the side of your temple, holding you in place with a tight grip as he lifts his hips off of the bed, thrusting into you. “surprised you didn’t ask as soon as i came through the door.”

you shake your head against his shoulder, placing a soft kiss against his collarbone. “was thinking about it all day,” you explain. he fucks into you faster in response and it feels like a reward for caring about the things that are important to him. “but when- shit- when you got home…,” you grunt, “it completely- ah, fuck- completely slipped my- ah- mind, s-sorry.”

“ts alright, pretty.” he nudges his nose against your cheek, peeling your attention to his face. your cheek rests against his shoulder and you blink at him, focus dipping from the topic at hand as you feel that familiar tightening in your core. he can see it written all over your face, so he drops his head to kiss you, silently communicating that you don’t have to worry about finishing the conversation right now. he’ll bring it up again in a bit.

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

“should we get married?” he asks, back up against the headboard, looking you directly in your eyes, gaze following yours as you rise and fall.

“you are not proposing to me while i’m riding you,” you say, shaking your head, but you don’t still or slow. conversations like this in a setting like this just don’t phase you anymore. honestly, it wouldn’t surprise you if he did propose right now. you’re not even sure you’d say no.

the corner of his lip tugs upward and he exhales a laugh as he leans forward the smallest bit to kiss you. “i’m not, i’m not,” he assures, “why? would you say no?”

you’re quiet for a minute, not because you don’t know the answer, but to keep him on his toes. you won’t lie to him, you don’t think, but you don’t want to come right out and say it. his questions are rhetorical anyways, half-jokes that he’s not expecting serious answers to; you’ve known higuruma well enough and long enough to be confident of that. you could’ve replied with an eye roll and a scoff and nothing else and he would’ve dropped it. instead, however, you answer, “course not. i’d say yes in a second.”

he nearly comes inside of you right there.

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

maybe it becomes a theme when someone points it out.

you can’t tell if it’s intentional or not, the way that the two of you keep having these serious conversations during sex. you know that you don’t do it on purpose; things will just hit you during the repetitive motions and you worry you’ll forget them and you know that higuruma won’t judge you for just saying them, so you do. whether this is the case for him, you’re not sure.

but the interruptions just keep getting more casual. it starts with big conversations: weddings and promotions and thoughtful decisions, and then it’s like you just start remembering things in this position: work drama and mundane did you knows. it’s almost as if starting with big topics just made it seem so easy to talk about anything like this.

it didn’t help, you think, that it’s just always easy to talk about anything with higuruma. you guys have been together, officially together, for over four years now, and conversation, no matter the topic or severity or setting, is something you’ve never struggled with. you continue to not struggle with it, inside of the bedroom and out.

you’re not sure what about the position and the moment makes you so susceptible to remembering little things that you want to tell higuruma when he’s not around, and vice versa. in fact, you’re not even convinced that it’s something about the action that jogs your memory anyway, it’s probably just a really weird and common coincidence.

and then one night you can’t find your keys.

you’ve searched everywhere for them, in your car, in your bag, every nook of your room, the places where they normally are, higuruma’s coat pocket just in case, and then everywhere else in your guys’ apartment. they’re nowhere to be seen.

when higuruma walks through the front door, even from where you’re searching in the kitchen, you hear him let out an elongated, “woah.”

you pop your head into the doorway, “don’t say anything about the mess.” you can see his eyes resting on the overturned couch cushions and then on the various opened drawers. “hey,” you warn, pointing towards him as you walk quickly into the living room. you throw your arms around him tightly and give him a small greeting peck. it’s routine at this point; if you don’t do it your whole night feels off. “i said don’t say anything.”

he lets you hang off of his neck as he puts both hands up in surrender. “i didn’t say shit,” he says, pressing a kiss into the side of your neck, then moving his hands to your waist, “the fuck happened here though?” he laughs against your skin and you can feel the vibrations travel to your fingers and toes.

you pull away from him, shaking your head. now that you’re back in the living room, it’s like you have to start this room’s search over too. you start checking under the couch and in the hall closet. “lost my fucking keys,” you grumble, smoothing your palms over your face, “i swear i’ve looked everywhere. i just can’t remember where i left them when i got home.”

“did you check th-,” he asks, walking into the kitchen, grateful that you’re not in there with him or he knows you’d yell at him for the way his eyes go wide at the clutter and chaos everywhere.

you cut him off, “wherever you’re about to say, probably yes, ughhh. i’ve retraced my steps, i’ve looked in places that are fucking stupid to look in like every pair of shoes we own and in the fucking guest bedroom pillowcases. i’ve looked everywhere.”

from where he’s stood in the kitchen now, he can see you scrambling as you vent. he leans against the wall, “well, not everywhere or you would’ve found it by now.”

“i’ll kill you,” you say, eyes snapping up to meet his to show how serious you are.

he just laughs, “i’ve got a pretty good lawyer, you might not want to do that.”

“good legal can’t help you when you’re dead,” you snap, almost completely joking. he meets you back in the living room, helping you check all the places you’ve already checked.

15 minutes pass and then 35 and then he stops abruptly. “oh my god, i have an idea,” he says, and you look at him, hopeful. “you know when you usually remember things?”

your first reaction is joking annoyance, picking up a throw pillow and sending it his way. he catches it and sets it back down on the couch. “i’m serious!” he yell-laughs.

you throw another pillow at him as your second reaction sets in. “that’s not going to fucking work,” you say.

“how do you know?” he asks.

“because,” you say, trying to come up with a good answer other than just blind doubt, “because i don’t remember things while i’m riding you. it’s not a fucking superpower.”

“you don’t know that,” he jokes back and braces to be hit with another pillow. “okay, okay, but i’m being serious! besides, what’s the worst thing that can happen? you don’t remember and we’ve had sex, how horrible,” he reasons.

you let your arms fall, pillow in your hands resting against the tops of your thighs. you look at him, thinking, which, in hindsight, was a dumb thing to do, because higuruma can see the contemplation on your face.

eight minutes later and he’s inside of you and you’re the most embarrassed you’ve ever been.

“this is so stupid,” you mumble. you haven’t moved an inch after slowly lowering yourself onto him. you’re fully seated against his hips, hands smoothing over your face and then lingering there, covering.

he reaches up, fingers soft and kind as he wraps them around your wrists, pulling them away from your face. “ts not stupid,” he reassures, but you’re not convinced. you groan, turning to look away from him, but that just won’t do. he reaches up again, soft grip on your chin coaxing your gaze back to his. “hey,” he says softly, “just focus here, angel.”

you listen, somewhat, mind still flickering back to why you’re even riding him in the first place. “just enjoy yourself, okay,” he tries again, rolling his hips upwards, pressing himself inside of you as deep as he can. you close your eyes, and it’s quite easy to just focus on the feeling of being as full as you are right now. “good,” he whispers, “just like that.”

it doesn’t take long for you to lose yourself completely, moving on your own, letting the whimpers and whines take over any other thought you might think to say, chasing that feeling rather than worrying about whatever you’ve lost.

it all kinda clicks at once: where your keys are and why you always remember shit when you’re like this.

in the midst of everyday noise, so many things get lost: important and unimportant thoughts alike. but now you’re not worried about anything else. you don’t care about anything else right now. you don’t have to. you don’t want to. and in this state of letting everything go, mindless and blissful, some things slip back through the cracks.

you collapse onto higuruma’s chest, spent and happily aware of this new revelation that you have not, for once, shared in the middle of sex, but kept quiet as a come down surprise. you hum softly as he rubs up and down your back, hum again as he presses a kiss into your forehead. “m sorry it didn’t work, angel,” he murmurs.

you turn your head, ear pressed right against his heart as you gaze up at him. “i left them in the fridge,” you reveal, and he knits his eyebrows together.

you assume that he’s going to say something about how did you leave them in the fridge? or why are they there? but instead he questions, “what? and you didn’t tell me until now?” like you’ve harbored a life long secret. you laugh softly, snaking your hands up and scratching your nails against his scalp, playing with the ends of his hair. “don’t think this is going to get you out of it,” he says, “‘ts my favorite thing when you just blurt shit while you’re on me.”

you can feel the warmth in your cheeks and your chest as you breathe a laugh. “you’ve never told me that before,” you murmur.

“think it’s cute when you just can’t wait to tell me things,” he says, “feels more intimate than being inside of you.”

“ew,” you say, scrunching up your nose, even though you weirdly agree.

he just laughs in response. a few seconds of quiet comfort pass before he backtracks, “wait, why the fuck are your keys in the fridge?”

and you tell him all about it, about the day that you’ve had and how you remembered you hadn’t drank enough water so you were refilling your bottle from the pitcher in the fridge as soon as you got home from work, but your hands were full so you set your keys on top of the leftovers from yesterday, but then you had to go and set everything down and the fridge closed and by the time you left the kitchen you remembered you needed to do something else… and it just keeps going.

you tell him as you’re taking a shower and as you’re eating dinner together and as he’s brushing his teeth and you’re washing your face and laying in bed and setting your alarms. every room in the house is a mess, but you’ll deal with that later, you decide. you rest your chin on his shoulder. “and how was your day?” you ask, even though the clock reads much later than it should for how much sleep you both should get before you’re up early for work tomorrow.

nevermind that, he decides, and tells you all about it anyways.

ᯓᡣ𐭩 ʙᴏɴᴜs! ɴᴀɴᴀᴍɪ [ ɴ/ᴀ ]

“can i ask you something and when i ask you, you’ll know i don’t mean anything bad by it at all because i love you more than everything in the world?” you ask, putting down your phone only after you’ve finished your sentence.

you wait a few seconds for nanami to take in what you’ve asked. he reaches over to the night stand for his bookmark and sticks it between the pages. he shuts it with an audible shuffling of paper and a sharp thump.

nanami has been with you long enough to not typically be surprised by your out of the blue… questions. (dronings? is there a word like droning but the connotation is more positive? like you talk at him a lot and he loves to hear the ramblings in your brain, but sometimes he is just trying to read his book before bed. whatever that word is.)

he places the book on his lap and then turns his chest towards you completely. you now have his full attention. “is that a yes?” you ask.

he inhales deeply, “if i say no, will you still ask it?”

you think on the answer to that question, really mulling it over before shaking your head. “no, i don’t think so.”

“then yes,” he smirks, “i suppose i have to say yes then.”

“great,” you say, tossing your phone onto your bedside table with a clunk. you sit up straighter, rocking forward to fully adjust your position on your side of the bed. you put your hand on his thigh and cross your legs, letting your knee rest on the side of his comforter covered hip. “do you ever regret not dating more?”

it definitely takes him by surprise. he thought you might drop another weirdly specific hypothetical about would he love you if… or request a glass of water even though you already told him tonight when he was getting into bed and he asked if you wanted one, that you did not.

now he’s the one mulling over your question and despite how nerve wracking it could be to wait for an answer to a what if that involves not you, you’re not anxious in the slightest. you’re quiet, just waiting for his answer, and when he finally speaks, you know exactly why you weren’t scared in the first place, “i’ve honestly never thought about it since i met you.”

“really?” you ask, and you’re mostly feeling very lucky that nanami is yours and you are his, but there is an underlying feeling of guilt that he’s unintentionally caused with this statement.

he nods. “sounds like you have though,” he says, and it’s not even a little bit judgmental. it sounds like he’s imploring you to keep talking, like he wants to hear exactly what you’re thinking, why you brought it up in the first place.

“i wouldn’t trade this security, this love, exactly what we have, you for anything in the world,” you start to explain, and it’s nothing but the truth, “but sometimes i just think about that first night when we were in that bar. the flirting, the risks, that feeling of not knowing where the night is going to end up. sometimes i think about that a little bit.”

he hums, thinking about that night, and after a few seconds of silence, he speaks up again, “first date nerves,” he nods, “now that i think about it, i miss those.”

you cock your head at him. that’s a weird part of dating to miss, you think, but then he explains further, “like when we went out on our first date and i didn’t know what you were going to wear or if you liked the restaurant i picked or if you’d let me pay for your food.”

“or if i’d take you back to mine,” you joke, raising your eyebrows at him, but really you’re burning inside. your cheeks feel warm just hearing about these feelings he’s never mentioned to you before.

“yeah, that too,” he laughs, getting back on track, “like, i’m still finding out new things about you all the time, but back then i was discovering who you were every second we were together, and that- that felt like…”

“like finding out soulmates were real?” you ask, because that’s what it felt like to you, that same exact phenomenon he’s describing. he smiles at you warmly, like you’ve just put to words what he felt he could only experience. “i know what you mean,” you smile.

he leans forward, cupping your cheek with his hand and guiding you towards him. he kisses you softly, placing his other hand on your other cheek and kissing you harder. “should we go on a first date again?” he asks against your lips, barely pulling away to speak.

you laugh, but when you pull away, you can tell he’s not joking. “what?” you ask, “what do you mean?” you’re already blushing though, already feeling the exact first date nerves he was just talking about.

“let’s go on a first date,” he repeats himself. “i’ll pick you up at your front door and i’ll choose the restaurant and it’ll be a surprise and i’ll ask you questions that i’d ask you on a first date even if i know the answers to all of them and more at this point.”

you’re smiling so big that your cheeks are sore as you nod fervently at the concept. “okay, yeah,” you agree.

“right, so we probably shouldn’t kiss or make out or sleep with each other until then to really play into the whole thing?” he teases, and you roll your eyes in response.

“you’re very funny, kento,” you say, leaning in, brushing your nose against his. he doesn’t even last a second, closing the gap with a small peck and then another and then another and then a much longer one and then he’s putting the book on his nightstand so he can pull you into his lap.

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

you get a text 5 minutes before 7 that nanami is going to be 3 minutes late picking you up. the text looks a little weird underneath a thread of:

>> nami <3 >> how’s work baby

<< read << if you love me you’ll come and pull the fire alarm to get me out of here early :) :) :)

>> nami <3 >> fine but that’s a class four felony in some cases. will you be providing legal assistance or should i look elsewhere????

<< read << how do u know that?? nerd!!!

>> nami <3 >> google tbh.

<< read << wow. first i have to stay at work all day alone and sad and now i get to know my bf isn’t sexy and off the dome smart about everything. :(

>> nami <3 >> goodbye.

<< read << :(

>> nami <3 >> i love you

<< read << :)

you bite back the urge to reply with something you’d say to him after knowing him for years. rereading the text and thinking back to your first date, it makes you giggle. actually, it makes you kinda nervous. you text back a polite no worries! take your time! and he replies with a heart and you truly feel like you’re dating for the first time again. you feel honest to god giddy.

arriving to the restaurant, you are genuinely surprised. you thought after knowing him as long as you have and having gone to as many restaurants with him as you have, you’d go back to somewhere nice you’ve already been. but that isn’t the case.

he drives you to a pop-up restaurant 20 minutes out of town that you’ve never even heard of, but is the cutest place you’ve ever been, and the entire time he can’t stop sneaking respectful glances at you. he won’t stop telling you how nice you look. he even apologizes for it by the sixth time, pushing your chair in at the restaurant saying, “i know i keep mentioning it, and i’m sorry, but if i said it every time i thought it, it’d be a never ending string.”

if he keeps this up, you’re going to feel like you’re cheating. this seriously feels like a first date, like you’ve been in a relationship for over 5 years and you’re also going on a first date and it’s really messing with your head, but you never want it to stop.

he stays true to his word, asking you questions he already knows the answers to, but hearing them again, they sound brand new. he doesn’t know if he’s just forgotten some of them or if the testaments of time have weathered your answers just enough to sound unfamiliar, but either way, he’s hanging on to every word.

by the end of the night, you’ve truly convinced yourself that there are stakes to this date, like if you play your cards wrong, you won’t get to keep seeing this incredible guy. he pays the whole bill, even though you insist on getting your meal or at the very least dessert. he says, “you can try next time too.” and you can’t breathe, you feel so lucky.

“i’m sorry if this seems forward, but i’d really like to keep seeing you tonight,” you say as the waiter takes away the paid bill, and your heart is thumping so violently against your chest, you swear he can feel it too.

he shakes his head, “perfectly forward,” he smiles, “your place or mine?” you break character for the first time tonight, giggling at the reality of the question, hiding behind your hand as you do. “what’s so funny?” he asks, but he’s grinning just as big as you are.

“just thinking about how dreary my life would be if i hadn’t gone on this first date,” you say, and it’s a little too meta, but he’ll let it slide, because he’s a bit flustered at the sentiment. “mine is great,” you answer, placing your hand on his, rubbing the tips of your fingers against his knuckles.

everything about the rest of the night feels like a first too. it feels like your first kiss in front of your front door. it feels like he’s seeing “your” apartment for the first time. it feels like you’re making out on your couch for the first time.

it feels like the first time he’s ever been inside of you.

when he pushes deeper into you, eyes on yours shut tight, you tell yourself that you want to pretend you’re on a first date every single day of your life. you can’t stop whimpering, pleading for him to never stop fucking you ever, please don’t stop, please never fucking stop.

you break character for the second time when you’re right on the edge. he keeps looking down at you with so much love in his eyes and his hands all over you feel like they know every inch of you, and you can’t stop yourself. you grab his face in your hands, “kento, baby, please, ‘m gonna- ‘m sorry, i- fuck, please. i love you, fuck,” you whine, and he can’t stop himself either, hips stuttering, head falling against your shoulder as he feels you clenching around him as he empties himself inside of you, murmuring how much he loves you right back.

the way you’ve been feeling all night: blissful and coy, it’s not because it’s a first date, it’s because he’s nanami. it’s because he’s orchestrated the entire night and no matter how “new” everything feels, the underlying foundation of that newness, and the reason everything feels so good, is familiarity and safety.

“i’m sorry that i-,” you breathe, but he stops you, reaching his hand up to drag his fingertips against your lips, and you laugh, pressing a soft kiss into them. “okay, okay,” you say, and he places his hand back down by his side. “done with the first date stuff, just want to be yours again,” you murmur.

he scoffs, light, and you can hear his smile in it. he falls over onto his back, pulling you into his chest and kissing the top of your head. “never weren’t,” he mumbles against your hair. “always will be,” he mumbles again, holding you tighter.

“good,” you say back, settling into his arms like that’s the only thing you know to be true in the entire world. you wouldn’t trade that truth for a million first dates.

sure, holding your breath at quick witted flirts and stolen glances is nice, but it’s a lot nicer just knowing that you will never be loved better and you will never love harder.

♡ ʀᴇʙʟᴏɢs ᴀɴᴅ ɪɴᴛᴇʀᴀᴄᴛɪᴏɴs ᴍᴇᴀɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ ♡ no bc the yelling really worked very well idk yell at me more to write a continuation for toji (maybe also gojo bc hes the only one i havent written even an inkling of smut for) idk i'm just thinking of so many scenes idk throw hcs at me in my inbox IDK! toji dating for the first time? got me fucked UP

ᡣ𐭩 ᴛᴀɢs ᡣ𐭩 @igocrazyeveryday @vernasce-blogs @minty86 @abrielletargaryen @pompompompompompompom @mysticrays @lilolpotato @thisisew @pnkoo @optimisticsandwichgladiator @ryumurin @cisseadven @multi-fandom-fanfic @noosayog @anxious-chick @mintleafwrites @(tried to tag some other folks but couldnt!!)

#jjk x reader #jjk smut #toji x reader #gojo x reader #geto x reader #geto smut #toji smut #gojo smut #nanami x reader #nanami smut #higuruma x reader #higuruma x reader smut #higuruma smut #nanami x reader smut #jjk x reader smut #actually not really tbh theres no smut in tojis or gojos cant even lie #toriwritesshit

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riki-riks-chick · 5 months ago

Text

Netflix No Chill ︱N.RK

riki x reader

riki and yn are finally alone for once but it doesn't go as planned.

cw: no smut! slightly suggestive, make out session, kissing, slightly handsy riki, enhypen blocking, movie night, enha teasing riki and yn, riki likes short girls, he calls yn shortcake, yn is short as requested.

wdct: 978

request from @idontreallyknow-12 I'm finally posting ✊😝

this is in no way smut so i don't wanna hear no one talking.

┉┉┉┉┉┉┉┉┉┉┉┉┉

Third Person POV~

"Riki, stop." You laugh, punching him softly on his shoulder as he let out a low chuckle. "I'm serious.. That's the reason I fell for you.. I have a thing for cute little shortcakes like you..."

You shift in his lap at his words, crossing your arms over your chest. "So if another short girl hit on you, would you like them too?..." You ask playfully, but Riki shakes his head, hands moving upwards to rest on your waist. "I said like you... No other girl is like you."

You blush at his words, smiling widely. "Nice save," He rolls his eyes at your response, wrapping his arms around your waist. "So.. Your turn. What made you fall for me?.. Aside from me being tall and very handsome." He wiggles his eyebrows at you teasingly, and you fake a laugh. "Haha, very funny.. On a serious note, I just fell for your silly personality.. You're really fun to be around.. But what really sealed the deal was how good of a kisser you are."

He raises an eyebrow at the last part, smirking mischievously. "You think I'm a good kisser?..." You nod in response, already regretting telling him that. "Yeah, I do.."

"Well.. Do you wanna know how much better I ak now?..." He asks as you chuckle, wrapping your arms around his neck. "Sure.. Maybe you can make me fall in love with you all over again."

He smiles, leaning in to kiss you as he grips your hips gently. You melt into the kiss almost instantly, fingers raking through his hair as you deepen the kiss ever so slightly.

It's rare that you ever get time alone with Riki. One of his roommates are always home. And most times they even bring their friends or girlfriends over. It's just impossible for the two of you to be by yourselves unless he comes to your apartment. And even then, some of your friends have interrupted your cuddle and or makeout sessions.

Now you're sitting on his lap, in the dim lighting of the living room, and his lips feel velvety and warm against yours, a feeling you don't often get enough to time to enjoy.

His hands don't really wander, more so alternating between a comfortable brace on your hips and waist.

You sink restfully into his lap, both hands perched on his shoulders as you pull away slightly, trailing soft and light kisses down the milky white expanse of his neck.

He let's out a soft sigh in your ear, giving your hips a light squeeze in a plea for you to kiss him again. And you do, wanting everything but to deny him right now.

Your lips press against his again, lips parted to grant him a much needed access as he caressed your sides powerlessly, pulling you deeper into the trance created by his kiss.

You're long gone from your senses, focusing on Riki and Riki only. The kiss grows more intense and you find yourself cupping his jaw, tugging him impossibly closer. He also makes the effort to pull you further into his lap, pressing flush against him. Each knee situated on each side of him, straddling him comfortably.

He slides his hands down to your thighs, gripping the soft skin exposed by your shorts in a simple manner, not too touchy, but just enough to feel more connected with you.

Then, he's trailing his lips down your neck, pressing light kisses on your skin, not wanting to leave any marks. His hands choose their next location, hiking your shirt up to slide his hands up your back before resting on the small of your back.

You're both invested in the moment, but it all gets ruined when laughter errupts in the room, the lights turning on and ruining the mood.

Riki immediately sighs, resting his head on your shoulder as you roll your eyes.

You move off of his lap, sinking into the couch beside him as all of his roommates filed into the living room, as well as a few of his other friends.

"You guys said you were gonna be out all night." Riki finally speaks up as Jungwon snickers. "Sorry, didn't mean to crash your makeout sesh. We got bored so we decided to come back and watch a movie." Jungwon explains as Heeseung nods in agreement. "Yeah, we didn't mean to cock block you."

You and Riki both grow even redder at Heeseung's word choice, slumping further into the couch. "You weren't cock blocking.. It wasn't even like that." You try to deject, but Sunghoon scoffs. "Yeah, because it totally would've ended at making out."

Jake then interjects. "Okay, leave the love birds alone, let's check out this movie. It has that one hot actress in it." He turns on the movie, and everyone goes quiet for the time being, that is until an intimate scene plays on the screen.

Mocked kissing sounds almost immediately filled the room, stemming from Sunoo and Jay as they both laughed. "Does this bring back memories, Riki?" Jay asks as Riki groans. "Please shut up."

You and Riki both grow considerably uncomfortable as the scene plays out, Heeseung pointing out almost every detail possible. "This would definitely be them right now if we were still gone."

At that, Riki gets up, reaching out for your hand to pull you up with him. You follow instantly, obviously done with their playful teasing.

"Aw, leaving before the movie is over?" Sunoo teases as Jake cackles. "Just make sure to use a condom if you plan on recreating that scene."

At that, Riki throws a pillow at Jake's head, hitting him perfectly before pulling you down the hall and towards his room.

"Good night."

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joaniscruzing · 4 days ago

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reuniting with jinx <3

everyone... that was quite the rollercoaster. but, i choose to believe that jinx is alive. i'm not ready to let go of arcane for a good while, and I'll do my best to upload fics more often, especially with the holiday breaks coming up too, so reel in whatever arcane requests you have! i write for vi, caitlyn, and jinx. i do take smut requests for these characters too if you guys would like to request some...

obviously though, jinx wouldn't leave without finding her amazing gf though... right??

summary: jinx surprises you while you're grieving, and you both escape and go elsewhere.

warnings: angst at the beginning, season 2 act 3 spoilers, kissing, emotional, lots and lots of fluff, I PROMISED A HAPPY ENDING AND DELIVERED

you couldn't believe it. your whole body crumbled to the ground as vi told you the devastating news.

"I'll tell you one thing," vi tried to quip, a small smile on her face, "she went out with a bang."

vi explained that she heard an explosion sound when jinx fell down the vent, and how she guessed she had set off one more bomb. you take vi close to you, hugging her tightly.

"she really did love you, you know." vi admitted, "i think she's just had a lot come her way. and i can't say I'm the most innocent in that realm myself."

you left vi to continue staring at the fireplace, about to leave and go to jinx's workshop, hoping to take a few things to remember her by. you see caitlyn looking at the vent diagram, studying it closely. how could she possibly studying the place where your beloved girlfriend died? you knew that caitlyn had grown to not hate jinx anymore, so you decided to just leave it at that.

after leaving the kiramann mansion, you traversed back to zaun, thoughts racing through your head. had you not done enough? loved her enough? given her a reason to live? you wanted to scream as loudly as you could, and let whatever you were feeling out.

you finally made it to where jinx had her things, and you took a deep breath before entering. this was it.

the once lit-up place was darker and worn-out in her eyes. the once neon, bright-colored place seemed to be dark and empty now. like you without jinx. a tear rolled down your face as you picked up small tools and things, even parts of a flower she was making for you out of scraps. you sat on the floor, looking up at the ceiling, trying to make sense in your head of what you should do next.

"did you really think i was gone, hun?" jinx questions, right behind you. your entire body leaps at the sound of her voice. it can't be.

"jinx?" you ask, shooting your head up and turning around.

"did you really think i was gonna die that easily? now stop moping. we have to get on the hot air balloon."

shocked, you hug jinx quickly before shoving one thing you collected in your pocket. you both start running. hand in hand, you make a beeline in order to get on the next hot air balloon.

"you know what i realized? things aren't so great here, so why don't i just go somewhere else to do my thing? but, i knew i couldn't leave without you." jinx explains while running.

"how did you even get out?" is the only thing you manage to say.

"my shimmer, silly! i got the hell out and escaped through the air vents."

"and how did you get back to zaun?"

"simple hacking and tweaking of the hexgates. nothing special."

you both finally make it onto the airship, jinx holding your hand as you get on so you don't fall. she closes the door behind you.

"so. this is it. any last wishes before we leave forever?"

"my biggest one has been granted," you answer before pulling in jinx for a sweet kiss. you had missed her, as you hadn't seen her for a week or two with everything going on. jinx pulls away, explaining that you two had to go.

"you know, i've always wanted to drive one of these," jinx admits, steering the ship, "i have since i was very young." you notice a new sense of peace in her eyes as she drives the ship. she doesn't seem so... tortured anymore. in fact, she seems free of any past issues.

her newly cut hair blows in the wind, as you go up behind her and hug her waist, your head resting on her shoulder. no matter what the future held, you knew you were going to be happy. as long as jinx was there, you would be at peace.

"i love you," jinx says softly, taking one hand off the wheel to rest on top of yours.

"i love you too."

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jnnul · 1 year ago

Text

ric flair drip

a/n: oh my god. it's finished. i've finally written all of her. i genuinely don't know how to explain the relief i feel right now. it feels strange writing this after writing and healing myself through writing this. i hope that anyone in college who's feeling the way y/n or jaehyun did knows that you can and will grow from it. heartbreak is inevitable and so is growth. quick note: feedback, comments, etc. GREATLY encourage writers! if you felt any sort of way (in a good or bad way!) about this fic, pls leave feedback!

word count: 20k

tags: college au!, frat boy!jaehyun x girlboss!y/n, honestly it just a dissertation about modern love and how people nowadays love each other, there's a lot of soul searching in this one, i poured my heart and soul into this please love her the way i do warnings: mentions of sex, underage drinking, and general college shenanigans! also explicit mentions of oral sex, uhhh foreplay and sex

HONESTLY, NOTHING ABOUT JUNG JAEHYUN IS REMOTELY APPEALING TO YOU. you hate the perfect boy act he puts on, you hate his need to impress everyone and everything, and you really fucking hated his dick.

because if it wasn't for his dick, which you were sure is just as perfect as the rest of his stupid self, you wouldn't be awake at inhumane hours, listening to your friend recount their sexcapades.

"oh my god, and then he did this thing with his tongue and i swear, i'm literally never going to be able to have oral again. he's fucking ruined me. i'm genuinely going to just make every guy i fuck put a jaehyun mask on from now onwards just to recreate it," sia yoo, unfortunately one of your best friends, quips dreamily. she yelps when roseanne park, your roommate and singular other voice of reason, throws a pillow at her.

"you sound like a fucking psycho. as in needs to be checked to a mental facility psycho. as in if i hadn't heard worse when you got with johnny suh, i'd be calling the cops right now psycho," roseanne says and easily ducks when sia winds up to throw the pillow back at her. fatima khan, sia's roommate and mother friend extraordinaire, pouts sympathetically with sia as the two of them turn to you as if you would fall on their side.

"sia, baby, honey, love and light of my life - i'm really sorry but i'm with rosie on this one," you say and sia puts on the most theatrical frown you she possibly could before she cocks her head curiously.

"rosie's got a reason for judging jaehyun since she doesn't even like men all that much. what's your excuse, y/n? you like men, judging by the way you were getting railed to next week by that freshie park seonghwa. you've never gotten dicked down by jaehyun."

you're half-tempted so tell sia that it's not fucking weird that you got with seonghwa, considering the fact that you're only a sophomore yourself but you're even more tempted to remind her that even though you were no stranger to a good time, you never recount your stories.

in fact, the only reason why the other three (well, you suppose rosie would know regardless given that you literally live with her) know about your sex life is because you choose to tell them whenever you felt like it. and usually, it was more than three days after the encounter.

you loved your friends, you really did - and sia was notorious for getting into one night stand rehash sessions at ungodly hours, so this was nothing new - but for some reason, every time jaehyun's name came up in the conversation, your skin would prickle with irritation.

maybe it was the fact that every single person around you seemed to be infatuated with him. or the fact that he was just so effortlessly good at capturing the attention of everyone in the room, no matter where he was.

or maybe, just maybe, it was the fact that you knew that if you looked too closely into the deep end, you'd fall right in with no life jacket. and jaehyun was an endless ocean.

+++

maybe you had given jaehyun too much credit, you lament. maybe jung jaehyun's as deep as a fucking kiddie pool. you know you're wrong because you were in the same english literature class and the man had been published because the professor liked his prose so much, she had submitted it to a literary journal.

and they had accepted it.

but as you stare at him across the lecture hall, burning holes into the poor guy's skull, you sure think he's stupid. because there was no way in fresh hell that jung jaehyun was in an introduction to east asia class. as a south korean.

people begin settling into their seats as you mull over the possibility that jaehyun had fucked so much, his brain had fallen out through his dick. from the stories of his more than above average size, it was definitely not out of the realm of possibility.

just as you're send a very judgmental text to fatima, who was supposed to be taking the class with you but had had to switch last minute when one of her major required classes opened up, jaehyun gets out of his seat to stand at the front of the room, next to the professor.

you realize belatedly that the people jaehyun had been so animatedly speaking to were none other than bambam and ten - two people who most definitely were in this class. and of course, they had chosen this class over all the others because oh my god, jung jaehyun is the uta for this class.

in hindsight, it makes sense, given that jaehyun is a east asian studies minor and a stellar fucking student. but it doesn't make the text you were about to send fatima any less humiliating as you realize your attempts to undermine his character were desperately failing. you try to backtrack on your phone, deleting the winding paragraph you were about to send her when your thumb slips, accidentally sending a half written message.

you: jaehyun is fucking

you're sure the statement will be true within the next couple hours (the jung bed at the nct frat never seemed to stay empty for too long - and that was just from orientation week last week) but it felt almost blasphemous that you would send a text so crude to your friend when you insisted that you couldn't stand his guts.

or what lay between them, really.

three gray dots appear on your screen as you half-heartedly listen to your professor drone on about how he went to china, became a changed man, and now taught about the wonders of east asia and its exoticism. his name was paul but the class could refer to him by his 'enlightened name' - lao ma. even jaehyun rolls his eyes behind the professor's back as all of the asian kids in the classroom begin to eye each other warily.

if this class wasn't so easy, you're sure the population would've shrunk to a quarter its size based on the weirdness of the professor on its own. or maybe not, if it meant that people got to stare at jaehyun's gorgeous face for an hour and a half every monday morning.

mommy tima 🤍: honey, i think whatever sia's got going is contagious. mommy tima 🤍: aren't you the one who hates him? mommy tima 🤍: he really lives in your mind rent free, huh.

you scoff under your breath as you type furiously, vaguely registering that you definitely need to check the syllabus for this class later because you have not been listening to a word the professor has said this whole time.

you: first sia's got cooties or a raging std that's what she's got going you: second he's my fucking uta you: as in i am going to be forced to see his face for an entire semester mommy tima 🤍: drop the class then, babe. you: can't this is too good for my gpa & the prof's a freak you: it's a gpa cushion and a circus in one go

you tuck your phone away when you see that jaehyun is coming up the aisle on your side with a packet while the professor is on the other aisle on the other side with the same packet to hand out. jaehyun probably wouldn't care that you had your phone out during lecture (syllabus week was just an excuse for college kids to get drunk during school days anyway) but it was the principle of the thing.

"here you go - oh, it's stuck together," jaehyun says as he stops at where you're sitting. his tongue slips out as he thumbs at the packet to give you one instead of three and suddenly, your treacherous brain takes you back to sia's rambling the night before.

and then he did this thing with his tongue...

you're shaken back to reality when you realize that you're staring at a blank wall, with a pink packet in front of you, and jaehyun has already reached the back of the classroom.

fuck. shit. bitch.

jaehyun had seen you stare at his stupidly handsome face and then some. he was your ta. oh my god, what if he docked points on some test because he thought you were the creepy stalker type.

damn you, sia yoo, you curse in your head.

+++

"damn you, sia yoo!" you yell over the blaring music that's so loud, you can feel the vibrations in your skull. there absolutely no reason you should be caught dead in a frat on the friday of syllabus week but sia had made it her mission to make sure you had a going out rate of at least 80% this school year, given that you were prone to trying to skip out on weekends out last year.

not that you didn't like going out - you actually really liked going out with your friends. you just took a little more inertia to get to the energy levels of actually going on.

sia just nods at you lazily as she bounces to the beat of another shitty remix of 'what you came for' by calvin harris and rihanna. you never understood why frats always found the worst remixes of classic party bangers but anything flew after you had enough alcohol in your system so the music would recede to the depths of your mind in a couple cups of whatever the fuck this drink was.

especially since you were a full sunshine drunk; whenever you were drunk, you became the life of the party and would always be found in the center of the room, regardless of the music. sia was a flirty drunk and you really couldn't remember the last time sia actually spent the entire weekend in her own bed. props to her stamina, honestly.

rosie was a mix of you and sia in that she would become so much more bubbly but the second she found someone she wanted to spend the night with, she went after them with no hesitation.

fatima usually played the role of sober mommy when you all went out. although she was never one to miss out on a good time, when she did get drunk, she much preferred it to be within the confines of the four walls that she shared with her roommate and the people she trusted the most - you, rosie, and sia.

which is why when rosie abandons you for her on again, off again fuck buddy (miyeon cho) and her fuck buddy (yugyeom kim), you're not surprised at all.

"that's going to be an interesting story in the morning," you say, nodding to where rosie, miyeon, and yugyeom are all heading upstairs together. fatima nudges you to look at sia, where she's pressed up against none other than johnny suh (or the love of her life, prior to jaehyun, apparently).

"that's going to be an interesting story in the afternoon," fatima counters. you turn to her with furrowed eyebrows, as if to question the timing. "i don't think i've ever heard of a girl leaving johnny's bed before 3 o'clock the next afternoon."

your jaw hangs in shock as you watch your friend wrap her arms around the tall man's neck, whispering something into his ear when he bends down to kiss her collarbone.

"are all of the nct boys secretly porn stars or something? how can they all be that good in bed?" you gape, waving at sia when she turns around to wink at you and fatima as her and johnny are bustling out of the door, undoubtedly to the nct frat house.

"they test us as part of rushing," says a low, velvety voice behind you. a hot rush of shame runs up your spine for two reasons: a) you were able to recognize jung jaehyun just from his voice and b) he heard you gossiping about his frat brothers' sexual prowess.

you exchange a look with fatima before whipping around to meet jaehyun eye to eye. he's wearing a plain black t-shirt and lightwash distressed jeans but he might as well be wearing designer trash bags for all you care. what you do care about, unfortunately, is the almost slutty way his v-neck dips to show off the beginnings of the planes of his chest.

you feel no better than a victorian man and it takes fatima a poorly concealed cough to break you out of your thoughts. fuck, you'd done it again. you really needed to stop getting caught up in jung jaehyun's pretty face. and body. and that stupid smile.

"haha. very funny. sounds like something straight out of a cheesy porno sponsored by viagra or something," you say, rolling your eyes. smooth. very smooth. normally, you like to think that you're proficient in the witty banter department but something about this boy made you almost feel dumb about your comebacks.

jaehyun cocks an eyebrow, and you're distinctly made aware that even with platform sneakers on, jaehyun is a good head taller than you when you have to look upwards to notice the motion. "you seem to be well versed, y/n. you make it a habit to stay up to date?"

you flush at the thinly veiled euphemism at your x-rated movie watching habits before clearing your throat. "i'm more of a fan of practical study, really. i am a scientist, after all."

you're aware that fatima has slipped away from you to talk to another friend, park jeonghwa, and also the fact that you are slowly beginning your descent into drunkenness but you can't seem to bring yourself to find the caution in it all. it's just jaehyun, after all.

jaehyun hums, bringing the solo cup in his hand to his lips to take a swig. "you're a biomedical engineering major, aren't you?"

you balk at that. "wait, wait. you know my name and my major?"

jaehyun nods slowly, seemingly stumbling for a moment before he gains his self-confidence once more. "you don't know mine?"

"you're literally my ta. i know you're an east asian studies minor and your name because you told the class," you say, recovering quickly. it was a really good thing you were a quick thinker because you were lying through your teeth.

you knew jaehyun's name, minor, and even major (computer science) because of his notorious reputation, not because he was your ta. but the last thing you wanted was to give him the satisfaction of asserting his popularity on campus.

"anyway. what was that you were saying about 'practical study'?" jaehyun's eyes twinkle in the dim lighting of the cramped basement you were in and you had a feeling that if you were any more inebriated, you'd be diving headfirst into jung jaehyun's bed as long as he looked at you like that.

but fortunately (unfortunately?) you're sober enough to make mostly intelligent decisions - which just means that you're not going to jump headfirst. maybe feet first but not headfirst.

"wouldn't you like to know," you sing-song, leaning into jaehyun's body enough to smell the mix of woody pine, fresh water, and vodka that seems to emanate from him. jaehyun watches you as you lean over him to grab another solo cup from the assortment that some lower ranked frat brother had been forced into bartending.

you down the entire drink in two swigs, patting away the stray stream of alcohol that had dripped down onto your chest. you don't notice the way jaehyun's eyes follow your hand down its descent to your chest. but you finally feel like your element, and in a moment of sheer idiocy and liquid courage, you enter the growing throng of bodies behind you, beckoning jaehyun to follow you.

you're not 100% sure what you want from him, honestly. you want to have a good time, and you're sure you'll have one with or without him. but something about the way jaehyun follows you like a puppy into the mess of people makes you feel like a zap of electricity has hit your body.

and if you're being completely honest with yourself (as you usually only are with ethanol in your system), you really didn't hate jaehyun. you had no qualms with him as a person, even if you hated the consequences that came with a night with him.

it's when you're in the middle of the crowd, with jaehyun looking at you with those hooded eyes and hands tucked into his pockets when you realize what you want from jaehyun jung.

you want him to desire you the way that his mere presence makes people desire him.

so you do what you do best and just let go. it's ric flair drip by metro boomin that's playing - a song that's definitely not the one to get down to. but the bass fills you up in a way that never hits the same outside of a sweaty frat basement so you can't even bring yourself to care.

"i'm tryna fuck you and your bestie," you sing along with the near hundred people surrounding you. jaehyun is still looking at you with an eyebrow sitting higher and an appraising expression; something that somehow manages to get under your skin.

in a moment of passion, you manage to hook your fingers into one of jaehyun's belt loops, pulling him closer to you. you're aware that you've painted yourself to be jaehyun's next conquest if the way that the girls next to you look upset means anything, but you couldn't care less.

especially when you're this close to the bane of your existence. the song switches to something a little more what you need (under the influence by chris brown) and you look up at jaehyun through your lashes and in that moment, jaehyun knows what you're offering him through your gaze.

a challenge.

+++

jaehyun never really meant to take on the role of nct's resident whore. in fact, jaehyun had been planning on doing the exact opposite when he came to college.

although it was unbelievable now, jaehyun jung had originally just been a very strange, nerdy, and sweet boy. he never got up to much trouble, kept to himself most of the time, and was known for...nothing, really. he was sweet and bubbly but he wasn't exactly running with the popular crowd.

in fact, jaehyun was kinda forgotten all throughout his schooling. it was easy to forget about jaehyun, as though he were some visage in a dream that everyone shared.

it hurt.

so when jaehyun finally hit his growth spurt in senior year, started going to the gym, and his voice no longer cracked every other sentence, he felt like a whole new person. like he was finally the main character in his own life.

it felt so fucking good to look at the same girls who had smiled at him pitifully and have them melting under a single wink. the summer between high school and college had been wild, with more stories than jaehyun could really even care to keep track of.

but when college began, jaehyun was fully intending to return to flying under the radar with his new upgrade in personality, appearance, and wardrobe. with a face like his, however, doing so was about as easy as trying to pass professor yoon's intro to bio class - nearly impossible.

slowly but surely, jaehyun morphed back into the personality he had adopted that summer and surprisingly, it wasn't as foreign as he thought. he was still a good student and wasn't a stranger to having to skip out on hanging out with his friends to study.

but having a new girl in his bed every other day? that was definitely new. a new revelation, but a welcome one nonetheless.

and in that, jaehyun was used to people using all sorts of tactics to get with him. playing hard to get, with coy smiles and flirtatious winks. or the bold ones, who told him straight up that they wanted to spend the night with him. even the downright horrifying ones who tried to pretend like they were blackout drunk in hopes that that would 'attract' him. spoiler alert? it didn't.

jaehyun originally thought you were of the 'hard to get' caliber. the type of girl to say that she wasn't like other girls and that's why he should get with her instead. so initially, when he approached you at the party after seeing you in his class, he was mentally preparing himself for the whole pick me speech.

but it was something about the way you looked at him.

it was like two halves of your mind were battling against each other. on one hand, you looked like you wanted to fax jaehyun straight into the fiery pits of hell with high speed shipping. on the other, it also seemed like you wanted nothing more than to ride him until the sun came up. mixed with a little bit of curiosity, confusion, and downright anger with yourself for all the emotions, you looked like the perfect cocktail of firebrand that jaehyun couldn't help but become intrigued by.

so when you were laughingly talking to your best friend (jaehyun's frat brother kun was half in love with fatima, which meant that jaehyun was more than well acquainted with her) about him and frat brothers, he took it to be the opportunity he needed.

and when you're looking at him like this, daring him to make a move, almost as if to make your mind fall one way or another about drawing a conclusion on him, what is jaehyun to do but to make good on the challenge you've offered?

he watches you for a moment more, trying to commit the memory of what you look like when you're this carefree and happy, before taking the micro-step it takes to get so close he can smell the citrus and apple cider that you seem to always smell like.

"i promise you i can fuck you better than johnny," jaehyun says, a corner of his lips tilted up as your eyes flutter the closer he draws.

"johnny's your 'bestie'?" you say, and jaehyun can tell that the last threads of your resolve are starting to snap by the way that your hand is now pressed against his chest.

"that's what you're curious about right now? the dynamics of the nct frat brothers?" jaehyun asks but he knows that this back and forth is exactly you need right now; the time to decide if you can take the plunge. or if jaehyun's worth your time tonight.

"as i mentioned, i'm a scientist," you say, and even as your voice stays stable, your fingers seem to leave burning trails against jaehyun's skin as they dip and feed into crevices of jaehyun's body that he didn't even know existed.

"hmm," jaehyun manages to eke out when your fingers lace into his hair. he's not sure how you manage to find every single sensitive spot he has but he's fairly impressed by the way you catch his breath hitching as you work your other hand up as well.

"hmm? cat got your tongue, jaehyun?" you say, making sure that jaehyun looks straight into your eyes as you lean impossibly closer. "you know that sia's with johnny right now, right? girls talk - especially with your best friends. which means that if you can't make good on your promise, i will find out."

jaehyun feels like he's sweating like a pig but thankfully, you don't notice, too busy making him sweat. he clears his throat once, and then twice to make sure that his voice doesn't give out.

"that right?" he says, and you roll your eyes, letting go of him and stepping back. you seem to appraise him for a moment (and jaehyun is unnaturally nervous about what you will decide) before grabbing his hand and leading him to the door. you only pause to flag down fatima, who takes one look at your intertwined hands, and waves the two of you away.

jaehyun blushes like a schoolgirl at the way fatima flashes him a catty smile.

"i swear to god, jaehyun, if you're all talk and no game - or if you're gonna sit still and look pretty the whole time - i will literally blue ball you. i don't do pillow princes," you throw over your shoulder as the two of you make your way to the nct frat. jaehyun knows for a fact that the nct frat will not be a quiet place tonight by the number of dresses and pants he sees in the foyer and leading the way up the stairs.

he says nothing, even as you're quite nearly storming up the stairs with a certain level of urgency, almost as though if you were to slow down and think about just exactly what you're doing, you'd turn around and leave right now.

jaehyun definitely can't let that happen.

so the second that he gets you into his bedroom (he had to rock, paper, scissors with doyoung to get the room tonight), he shuts the door and locks it behind him. he turns around to see you looking between the two beds, as if trying to guess which one was jaehyun's.

he mentally pats himself on the back when he sees the fresh sheets on the bed. reaching where you stand in less than a stride, jaehyun turns you so that you're facing his bed, and you squirm to turn to meet his eyes even as his hands are on your waist.

"what is with your hands?" you ask harshly and jaehyun blinks as he looks down.

"what do you mean? they're on your waist," jaehyun says softly, and once again, he's hit with a wave of citrus and apple cider. you simper at him, grabbing his wrist and moving it incriminatingly downwards.

"what am i? a virgin? put them somewhere useful." you whisper the last part and it's as though jaehyun has just woken up.

"you know," jaehyun begins, sliding his other hand downwards to sit comfortably on the curve of your ass. "if i didn't know any better, i'd think you were trying to rile me up. i wonder..."

he doesn't finish his thought, instead pulling you close so that your hips are pressed against his. he can hear the gasp that you're desperately trying to conceal, coughing uselessly to the side. a devilish smirk grows on jaehyun's lips and for the first time in a long time, you're sure you're going to be up all night.

+++

you were, in fact, trying to rile him up. you had heard all the rumors about jaehyun and johnny, about how one night with them was like one night in heaven. hell, you'd had first hand accounts from sia yoo about exactly what it's like to be in bed with either of them - multiple times.

so when jaehyun had fronted with such a cautious attitude when he realized what you wanted, you were almost offended. if you wanted to take control and fuck a man's brains out, you could do that with anyone. why would you fight against your own mind this much to get with him?

but seonghwa park. changkyun im. even kun qian, before you discovered he was head over heels for fatima. jung jaehyun.

these were all people who put you in your place. the way you wanted to be. it just seemed as though jaehyun might've needed a little more persuasion to get there.

so yes, you were riling him up. was that such a crime?

by the way jaehyun's looking at you right now, his breath hot and heavy on your neck and his eyes dark with a feeling that you can't describe but resonates with you on a deeper, more primal level.

"you know, after you got with kun, he wouldn't shut up about it for a week," jaehyun says, pressing kisses down your neck, pausing when he reaches your breastbone. he eyes your corset top with a discerning eye before reaching behind you to pull the lace strings that were precariously holding your top for a week.

"yeah?" you ask, threading your fingers through jaehyun's thick hair as he makes quick work of your top, leaving it pooled on the floor as his lips find your chest as though he couldn't be physically parted from it.

"yeah. even after he met fatima, he said that you were the best he's ever had - that's a big reputation to live up to when you're in nct," jaehyun says, his voice breathy and deep as he walks you backwards so that the back of your knees hit the frame of his bed.

"hmm. what can i say? i know what i want and what i want is usually lots of fun," you say, letting jaehyun unzip your jeans, pulling them down and kicking them off when jaehyun moves too slowly.

"i know. god, after knowing that you and kun were going at it, i swear everyone was jerking off in their room for an hour. even winwin wanted to go for you today. you're an unpredictable woman; no one knows where and when you're going to show up to one of the parties so everyone has to take their chances when they get them," jaehyun says, tugging his shirt off and throwing it somewhere behind him carelessly.

you nearly melt when you see jaehyun's uncovered top, eyeing each and every hard ridge of his body, reaching out to touch him. his chest is almost soothingly warm as your fingers memorize each and every aspect of the planes of his chest, almost worried that they might disappear if you let go.

jaehyun looks at you amusingly as he lets your fingers dance across his body, focusing on tugging your panties off to discard them where he's sure he's going to have to search for them later on.

you pout when you see the difference in clothing but jaehyun just gently pushes you backwards so that your back is against his bed, leaving your pussy exposed in away that makes you feel absolutely mortified. you move to gain some level of privacy back but jaehyun is too fast, gripping onto your thighs incriminatingly as he raises an eyebrow.

"don't think that i'm soft just because i'm being nice to you now, pretty girl. i know you don't like to listen but don't hide from me. i will not let you have any fun if you try to hide from me," jaehyun says, his voice dropping a full octave. you suppress the shiver that runs through your body (and that simultaneously delights jaehyun) as you nod softly.

he seems satisfied by the way your body melts and rewards you for your submission by licking a wet strip up your pussy, one hand snaking up to touch your nipple while the other one keeps your thighs open.

jaehyun is slow at first, exploring each and every hidden crevice of your body but as he feels you get wetter and wetter, he can't seem to stay soft for too long. he continues to press his lips against yours but the moment you try to grind your hips against his lips, he pulls away, his tongue darting out to taste your essence on him.

you almost whine at the loss of his hot mouth on your pussy, and you're embarrassed to realize that in front of jaehyun jung, you are no better than your best friend in falling in love with the way he moves.

"you're not going to cum from my tongue, baby," jaehyun says, practically ripping the belt out from where it was caging his jeans. "especially when i know that your pussy is magic."

"you say that, jaehyun, but you're being so fucking soft. if i didn't know any better, i'd think you're in love with me," you snort, trying to catch your breath. jaehyun freezes from where his boxers are hanging so low on his hips, you can see the muscles in his pelvis tense angrily as he looks at you dangerously.

"my fucking bad for making sure you're wet enough to take me," jaehyun whispers, pulling close to you. his eyes turn even darker than usual and a small spark of excitement ignites in your chest when you realize that you've finally reached it - jaehyun's breaking point.

"sounds like you're scared, jaehyun. you know what? you know why kun was so good? because he wasn't scared. he wasn't scared to fuck me like he was trying to break the bed," you retort, and saying kun's name is when jaehyun finally snaps. he tears his boxers off as he pushes you so that you're further up on his bed.

"y/n, i'm not fucking joking around. if you want me to stop, say it now. just say the word, and i'll pretend like this never happened. because i swear to every god in existence, if you let me, i'll ruin every other man for you," jaehyun says and his knuckles turn white from how hard his clenching his fingers to keep himself from pouncing. the thought is almost cute if you weren't desperate to be fucked into next week.

"if i wanted you to stop, i wouldn't have said kun's name, would i?"

that's all it takes. no sooner do the words leave your mouth, jaehyun's on top of you, every inch of his body fighting to claim yours. he's not sure what it is about being with a bratty girl but every time a girl tries to challenge him, jaehyun can feel his excitement grow as his mind runs wild with ways to prove you wrong.

and with a girl as beautiful and sexy as you? he was going to have the time of his life.

time of his life he does.

+++

when jaehyun wakes up, he's almost happy. almost because he has bruises on his hips from how hard he had pounded into you, a litter of hickeys across his chest, and freshly washed hair from when you had enticed him into taking a shower with you.

inevitably, it led to another hour in the shower that jaehyun had spent having his soul sucked out from his dick, eating you out under the shower, and seeing you cum twice just from his tongue.

if only he had woken up with you still in his bed, jaehyun would've actually been happy.

realistically, jaehyun had no clue what he was expecting. after taking a shower, it had taken you a total of five minutes to fall asleep in his arms, wearing nothing but jaehyun's oversized t-shirt and your panties.

there was no pillowtalk, no heart to hearts, nothing. no discussions of having whatever happened last night happening again. no trying to get to know each other better.

not that you had ever been obligated to do so. if anything, jaehyun was far more obligated to do so, after practically declaring that he had wanted to get with you since last semester - which he had been completely serious about.

but with his reputation, regardless of what he had said last night, jaehyun's almost 100% sure that you would've disappeared by the morning.

he's so caught up in his thoughts that he almost misses the bright pink post-it note on his neatly folded shirt on his desk in the corner of the room.

9.5/10. if you see sia, tell her she was right about your tongue. see you in intro to east asia on monday.

jaehyun's half disappointed and half happy. disappointed because you'd never left your number or anything and happy because at least he knew that you weren't going to completely avoid him whenever you ran into each other next.

he shakes his head as he folds the post-it note and throws it in the trash can next to his desk.

jaehyun jung may not have started college with the intention of becoming the resident fuckboy but he still had a reputation to maintain. he had fucked countless women over his time at sm university and he had no intention of falling for any of them.

he was not about to get soft-hearted or soft-dicked by a girl he was with once.

even if she was really good in bed. like really really good. like good enough to make him think about the other boys she's been with and if they'd made you feel as good as he did.

fuck. her. which jaehyun had already done. which meant that he needed to move onto the next step of the day before his head exploded with all of the implications flying around in his mind about their relation to each other (nonexistent) and if you were thinking about him like he was thinking of you (you weren't).

he pads out of his room, passing doyoung on the way out, who claps him on the back and says, "you finally got with y/n?" jaehyun doesn't know how doyoung knows but it strikes him that neither of you are very subtle people and you had caused quite the scene leaving with him last night.

similar reactions are offered to him by everyone he passes. he's not really sure how many of the boys you've been with but jaehyun can feel his street cred go up by at least a decameter with the way some of these pledges are looking at him.

in fact, everyone is looking at him with a new look of respect in their eyes until he reaches the kitchen, where yoo sia and johnny are sitting, practically eye-fucking.

jaehyun was very used to seeing johnny's friends in the kitchen the next day, neither of them ready to really say goodbye each other yet but for some reason, knowing that sia was your best friend and seeing her with johnny sets jaehyun's stomach into a series of knots that he was sure he was going to have to unravel when he had his head on straight.

"she already left?" sia says, finally breaking her stare from johnny's. jaehyun shrugs, digging around the fridge to see if they had any coffee. they didn't (none that wasn't expired anyway) so he has to settle for a caprisun.

"she had somewhere to be," jaehyun says. he wants to ask sia if it's normal for you to leave that early. it can't be if sia seems surprised that you'd left before the clock struck ten. what did that mean? what does that say about jaehyun? oh god. what if you hated it. what if you hated it so much that you didn't want to spend a second longer with jaehyun.

he cringes as he locks eyes with another shiny eyed pledge (jaehyun thinks his name is jungwoo) and tries to shake his head to clear any and all thoughts of you. he was pussydrunk. that was the only explanation. he just needed to dick down someone else and then he would get over whatever little infatuation thing he had going on.

"really? hmm..." sia says finally. jaehyun turns to see her looking right at him and suddenly, he's transported back to the previous weekend, when sia had been wrapped up in his sheets.

+++

"why did you start fucking around like this?" sia had asked, her chest still heaving from their previous illicit activities as she wraps herself tighter in jaehyun's sheets. jaehyun pauses for a moment as he catches his breath, pulling on his boxers as he thinks. he throws the shirt that sia's grabbing at, still not sure how to piece together his thoughts.

or why he wants to tell sia the truth. maybe it's because no one's ever asked about it before, but jaehyun feels strangely vulnerable as sia watches as he clambers back into his bed, her expression pensive and uncharacteristically wise.

"i don't know," jaehyun says honestly, laying over the covers as he feels his face grow hotter under sia's unrelenting stare. "i think it's because i wanted to know what it felt like. to know what it felt like to be wanted for a night instead of just being in the sidelines as the guy with the potential. just the guy that people brought along as the friend of the hot guys that kept him around."

sia doesn't say anything, instead turning so that she was lying on her back. jaehyun turns to look at her, to see if he could decipher some level of understanding from her silence. really, he knows that he should feel embarrassed about confessing his insecurities to a girl that he's hooked up with two or three times but he can't bring himself to for some reason.

maybe it's because he knows that she wouldn't say anything about it to anyone. or because he knows that she's head over heels for johnny, whether she'd admit it or not. or maybe it's just because for the first time, someone had asked something about jaehyun just to get to know him as a person, rather than trying to get him in their bed.

not that he really minded that - it just made him feel like it was all a lot more transactional than he was used to. he had been a romantic once upon a time. when you grew up with the nickname of 'valentine boy', it would have been stranger if he didn't have some sense of romance.

but jaehyun's penchant for romance disappeared almost just as soon as he realized that no one else was yearning for a pure type of love like he was.

and yet, it didn't bother him as much as he thought it would. turns out that jaehyun's a very adaptable man. if he wouldn't find love in this decade, then perhaps it would be lust that he would have to settle for.

"then again," he begins, gaze darting over to where sia had slipped on his t-shirt as she tiredly begins to settle down in his bed once more. "isn't that what everyone is doing nowadays? looking for a warm body for the night, instead of a genuine connection?"

sia snorts at that, turning so that she was facing jaehyun now. "don't tell me that you're one of the boomer types. the ones who always go around peacocking about how they were born in the wrong generation and that they're one of the 'good guys'. i might actually leave right now if you are."

"no, no i'm not. well. maybe a little bit. but i don't know why that's so bad to be honest," jaehyun acquiesces finally. sia rolls her eyes, but even she goes quiet for a moment. once again, jaehyun's reminded that this is sia yoo - a girl who routinely wakes up in someone else's sheets every saturday (although it was johnny's more often than not) and as sexist as it was, someone who carried a reputation for it. even jaehyun was surprised to find that she was such a deep conversationalist.

of course, he mentally berates himself soon after but he can't help the thought. for him, sia was just the girl he would get with a couple times. a good time. the fact that that's the only role she fulfilled in his mind made him feel disgusting inside out as he waits for her response, vowing that he would work to change his mindset. or maybe just change personalities altogether. ick.

"you know one of my best friends? y/n? the one who got with kun before he decided to go clean for fatima?" sia says with a careful tone. jaehyun nods, not trusting that he wouldn't say something dumb after his sudden realization of his flawed thinking.

"this is something she always says but it's honestly pretty simple: love is however you want to define it. humans spend so much trying to find labels and definitions for things that just might not have or need them. for such an advanced species, we spend so much time concerned about how to put a feeling into a box or how to classify a thought instead of rejoicing in the fact that we had such a beautiful feeling in the first place."

"for people in this generation, the old school love is hard to find because they've got so many other types of love that weren't allowed back when old school love was big. it's a different type of freedom to love someone on the weekends but never to fall in love with them. maybe we're just romanticizing hookup culture but who's to say that we can't? maybe we're all more romantic than we want to admit. maybe when we fall into the sheets with someone we barely know, we're looking for a fragment of love to satiate our heart in ways we didn't know it needed."

jaehyun doesn't know what to say to that so he just pulls her closer to him and she lets him, throwing her leg over his as they fall asleep, closer to each other than they had ever been.

+++

you're not sure what had compelled you to leave so quickly that morning. you usually like to get the boys who sleep with to at least cook you breakfast before you left (for compensation of being terrible in bed, if the situation so called for it) but for some reason, every instinct in your body had pulled you to leave.

you had waken up at nearly 5 in the morning, a mere two and a half hours after the two of you had fallen asleep, gathered your clothes, and were about to leave when you turn to look at jaehyun, still snoring away peacefully, his arm crossing his body to rest on the empty space next to him that you had occupied previously.

you had a feeling that you're going to lament leaving this early after psychoanalyzing why you were leaving so early later in the day but for now, if your gut was telling you to leave, you were going to heed the precautions.

but even as you're about to leave, you find yourself turning to jaehyun's desk, sparse but somehow still a little messy as you rummage for a post-it note and a pen to write with. you grin to yourself when you find yourself successful (and endearing somehow that jaehyun has bright pink post-it notes).

you pass a brother on the way out (undoubtedly a freshman who had received the short stick of the duties tonight) but you wave him off when he offers to walk you home. dangerous? most definitely. but you really needed the time and space to yourself and the short, almost ten minute walk back to your apartment would offer some enlightenment.

spoiler alert: it didn't. no matter how hard you wracked your brain to come up with some version of a logical explanation, you realized that there was just simply no way to do so.

and something about that frustrated you. you knew it wasn't a big deal. jaehyun was just a hook-up. a one night stand. and yet...something wasn't fitting right in your mind. so you start to think in the only way you know how, collecting all of the pieces of information you did have.

a) you just had sex - mind-blowing sex with jaehyun. he was everything you expected and more when it came to a sexual partner. b) you didn't develop feelings for him. sex comes fifth on the list of things you subconsciously (or now consciously, since you've spoken it into existence) have when looking for a potential boyfriend. first comes personality, then intelligence, then ambition, then looks, and then sex. you didn't even have a conversation long enough to figure out if jaehyun had more than three brain cells to piece together. c) jaehyun jung had confessed that he had wanted to get with you since last semester. did he mean with you-r body or with you?

you shake your head as if to physically shake the irrational thoughts in your mind out and press your id against the scanner at the entrance of your apartment building, rubbing your fingers against your temples as you get into the elevator to reach your apartment.

unlocking the door to your (empty) apartment, you decide to shelf the thoughts for some time when your head wasn't pounding and collapse on your bed, thanking the lords you'd had the sense to take a shower at jaehyun's.

and the last thing you remember is the smell of jaehyun's shampoo in your hair as you drift into blissful, dreamless sleep.

+++

you're not surprised to feel a weight on your bed when you wake up the next morning. you blearily open your eyes to make out sia's general figure, rosie and fatima undoubtedly chatting quietly in the kitchen.

you vaguely piece together something about fatima having kun over but him sleeping on the couch and you try to push down the guilt that creeps up into your brain as you realize that you had left fatima alone at the party. a party where all of you knew a lot of people (and the outcome was just as everyone had thought it would be) but the principle of the matter stung nonetheless.

you push aside the thought - along with the idea that you should probably apologize to fatima when the cottony feeling in your mouth started to subside - in favor of looking at sia, who is strangely quiet as she watches you gather yourself. for her boisterous personality, sia yoo could see through anyone to the extent of theorized telepathy so you don't even bother trying to hide anything from her.

although, it really is hard to take her seriously when she's got hickey's littered across her neck. well. you suppose you don't look much better at the moment.

"you left before 10 o'clock," sia says simply. you don't pretend to not understand what she means as you nod, pushing yourself up on your bed as fatima and rosie also enter, rosie handing you a glass of water.

"i know," you say softly. "but i want to hear about everyone else's nights right now. i just don't know that i'm in the right headspace to think about why i left so early - i'm not even sure i know why i left so early."

sia says nothing for a moment, watching your face, almost as if she were trying to read your very essence. but she relents, reaching out to hold your hand briefly before completely switching up, speaking animatedly about her very adventurous night, leaving you to simmer in your thoughts.

had sia always been this smart? probably. who's to say that she wasn't, after all?

turns out that sia and johnny were actually going to go on a date on wednesday, after realizing that their chemistry extended further out of the bedroom than either of them had expected. sia was through the roof, obviously, given that she had been thirsting over johnny (although more in a sexual sense than anything else) for so long.

rosie, miyeon, and yugyeom also worked a lot better than any of them had thought so you were sure that you were going to lose your roommate to the other '97 liners more often for the foreseeable future.

fatima was the only one who had a pg night, with kun coming over to her apartment and just chilling together the whole night, eventually having him sleep over since he was too tired to walk back to the apartment that he lived out (it was on the other side of campus, given that he moved out of the nct house pretty late into the semester last year).

"speaking of kun, when are you guys gonna make it official? i mean after this year, you guys are going to only have one year together before you guys graduate," you say, bunching your comforter before letting go. it felt weird saying that. especially in regards to your friends. theoretically, you had all the time in the world together.

but all the time in the world wasn't enough when it came to these girls.

fatima sighs before getting up, wringing her hands together as she thinks. "i don't know. i mean kun's graduating a year early so i really only have this year left. i - i know how much he likes me. i know that he wants to do this right way. go the whole nine yards."

"but...?" rosie says, elongating the syllables as you and sia look at her patiently. fatima shakes her head, getting up to walk around the room, six paces enough to take her from one side of your room to the other.

"i just don't know. kun's great and honestly, i really think that's the one. or at least one of the ones for me. but i just don't know if my parents would be okay with it. i mean my parents are great! they give me so much freedom and honestly, i'm really thankful that my parents allowed me to find religious and spiritual freedom on my own, without ever trying to shove it down my throat."

"but at the same time...how can i betray their trust in me by dating someone who is so far from my religion? like. kun is a great guy but he's not muslim. and sure, i don't follow a lot of the stricter things in islam but i - i have god in my heart. and i don't know that god would want me to start a family that doesn't follow islam. especially since i can see that in my future with kun and kun - i don't know that i could ask kun to convert to another religion for me."

the room is silent for a little bit after fatima finishes, with her collapsing in your bed next to you. rosie and sia exchange a look with each other, and then you, as they both decide to leave the room, leaving you to console fatima.

you were always the most philosophical one out of the bunch anyway.

"look, fatima, i can't pretend to know what it's like to have that kind of mental burden and i really can't understand what it's like to think about the future and be concerned about the impact on the world you might create. i read about something the other day though - did you know that kun means 'manifesting' or 'believing' in arabic?" fatima looks at you with disbelief written all over her face, shaking her head.

"how did you know that?" she asks and you just shrug, nodding at the 'islam for dummies' book you had bought in hopes of understanding a little bit more about one of your closest friend's religion.

"that's not the point. but fatima, you are the single kindest, most beautiful person i know. and i have faith that you will choose what's right for you, not what's right for the people around you because you know better than everyone that the only person who can judge you is god. and no one - no one - on this earth has the right to take that peace away from you."

fatima is silent before wrapping you in her arms, the soft material of her hoodie comforting you and lulling you back into a sleep that's dreamless and calm.

+++

jaehyun doesn't know what to expect when he walks into intro to east asia on monday. should he say hi? wave? start a conversation? should he acknowledge that he spent the better part of his weekend wondering if he would lose his fuckboy status if someone realized just how down bad he was for you?

probably anything but the last one was a good idea.

jaehyun was not in a good state of mind. he was a hot 19 year old man with a near perfect gpa (a whopping 3.98 only because he got a singular a-), a not so terrible set of dimples, and a killer body. and yet he was walking around like how he had been prior to his enlightening summer.

it's almost freeing but also humiliating to think that one night in bed was enough to make him start an entire philosophy but that was where jaehyun was at so who was he to question anything, really?

in fact, jaehyun is so caught up in what he would name his new branch of philosophy (loserism, with a lot of inspiration from zeno) that he doesn't even realize that you've already walked past him and taken your seat.

third row, first seat. you're putting your bag down next to your chair, pulling out your laptop, tossing your hair over your shoulder when it falls in your face. jaehyun tears his eyes away, knowing that this was not a good look for him.

if jaehyun really wanted to pursue you, which he was sure was where all of his jumbled emotions were eventually going to lead him anyway, he knew for a fact that you weren't going to be interested in having to take the lead. especially if jaehyun wasn't even sure that you were interested in the possibility.

but that's a struggle for another day. what was it that stephanie laurens said? that all women want sometimes is a little old-fashioned loving?

that was, in fact, the opposite of what sia had said you were really into but jaehyun had a sneaking suspicion that you wouldn't mind handing the reigns over in the decision making process portion of a relationship, or the courtship, if your time together this weekend alluded to anything.

jaehyun almost misses the beginning of the lecture, where professor ma (no one actually calls him that besides himself) was going into some of his favorite places to stay during his time in china. and while missing any portion of professor ma's lecture was of no crime, he also almost misses the way that you're looking straight at him, faking a yawn when jaehyun finally locks eyes with you.

professor ma was known for giving stellar recommendation letters (which was why johnny had coerced jaehyun into ta'ing for his class in the first place) but he was such a pain in the ass.

jaehyun has to keep from laughing out loud when he sees your exaggerated gestures to show how boring you were finding the professor's lecture to be, pulling himself together in time for him to finally be able to take a seat in the back of the classroom, professor ma having asked him to take attendance for the some two hundred students in the classroom. by hand.

he almost drops the piece of paper that you slide into his hand, subtly slipping it into the pocket of his basketball shorts as makes his way up the flight of stairs to the tenth row, dropping his backpack on the floor next to him, in a rush to open the delicate piece of paper in his hands.

there's only three words on the piece of paper and a series of dashes and yet jaehyun knows that this is all he needs. this is all the signal he needs to know that he wasn't imagining the chemistry or the tension between the two of you. and fuck what anyone said about his 'reputation'; it was jaehyun's turn - the old jaehyun's turn - to get the chance to experience the relationship he had always been dreaming of.

he rereads the little piece of paper before smiling and tucking it into his pocket again.

earn the rest. 9__-___-____.

+++

johnny suh is getting whiplash from his best friend's actions.

one day, he's asking sia yoo if her best friend usually leaves her one night stands by the time they wake up. then he's throwing said one night stand's notes into the trash can before leaving for some frat meeting or another.

the next day, he's carrying another note from the same one night stand he can't seem to get out of his head.

jaehyun doesn't tell johnny anything. he really doesn't need to at this point. johnny suh is a senior in college and he's pretty much seen it all. he's also the vice president of a frat - which means that even if he didn't have all the experience that he did just because of his seniority, he definitely seen it because of the sheer number of stupid decisions frat brothers will find themselves making when they think they're going to either a) get drunk b) get high c) get their dick wet.

johnny knows it's all in good fun (fun that he's definitely not opposed to) but jaehyun's always been a little bit of an enigma when it came to all of it. he was good at the drinking and alright at the getting high and absolutely fan-fucking-tastic at the getting his dick wet.

it was the goddamn dimples. everyone always fell for the dimples.

and sure, while jaehyun had had crushes before (johnny could read his little like no other), they'd always been fueled by the hormonal rush of adrenaline and testosterone pumping through his veins. in fact, johnny's not sure that jaehyun had had a proper crush on anyone at college after getting fucked over in high school, where johnny had also gone to with jaehyun.

not that johnny had really known jaehyun. he was quieter and kept to himself more then. didn't really hang out in the same crowd as johnny.

he knows that's not necessarily true. johnny had, truthfully, just completely overlooked jaehyun. like a lot of girls had until jaehyun had finally started to grow into his features.

but johnny knows jaehyun now and he also knows that if jaehyun had never met gianna lee, jaehyun wouldn't have ever dove headfirst into the deep end of shitfuckery and sleeping around with every breathing body in sight.

cliché story of course. college boy becomes a fuckboy after having his heart broken by a girl in high school. johnny's almost 100% positive that sia's shoved at least two or three novels like those in johnny's face, with the same exact plot.

but what is life but a series of clichés after all. and honestly, did it even matter? it was real. it happened to jaehyun. that was all. end of story.

so johnny doesn't even say a word when he sees the post-it note in jaehyun's trash can. he's silent as he watches sia and jaehyun talk and jaehyun fall into a period of overthinking (and jaehyun knows he's overthinking too because johnny can see him shake his head even as he continues to stare at the 'people' tab of intro to east asia).

and johnny finally decides to break his silence when he sees jaehyun with a new post-it note, although this time it was a much more tame blue post-it, and a pensive look.

jaehyun slips it to johnny to read as they're sitting at the local starbucks, with johnny filling out some paperwork for the job he was signed on for as soon as the school year ended and jaehyun studying for the organic chemistry exam he had coming up the next week.

he doesn't say anything when he passes the note but johnny can see him sideye-ing him to catch his reaction and it's all he can do to keep from letting a little smile slip through.

he hands the piece of paper back, watching as jaehyun immediately stuffs it into his backpack, and for some reason, he's really not sure what to say. if sia were here, she would know exactly what to say, and how to say it. she had a way of saying things that were a little too straightforward to feel good but also obviously coming from a generally good place.

it was one of the reasons why johnny had thought it would be a good idea to make it official with her. sia yoo was nothing like what johnny had thought - and the thought simultaneously frightens him and comforts him.

"you plan on asking her out on a date?" johnny says lightly, sliding his laptop over to pretend to look at his phone casually. in actuality, he's typing furiously to sia (one of the few people that johnny trusted or consulted when it came to advice giving) about what was happening.

johnny is not very surprised when sia's gray bubble appears, disappears, and then appears again only to say, "yeah, i know."

he waits for a more elaborate response. or even a more sia-like response but the more that he talks to her, the more johnny is learning that sia is more unpredictable than she really seems to be.

and sia yoo seems to be completely out of the box.

johnny shakes his head, as if to physically get rid of the thoughts of her from his head, unsure why he was thinking of her when he was supposed to be helping out one of his boys.

"yeah. i think so? i don't know. i mean we had a good time and we definitely have chemistry. but we literally just had one night in bed and that's it." jaehyun furrows his eyebrows as he realizes that's not just it. "well, there is the fact that kun was walking around singing her praises. and i know that fatima wouldn't be friends with kun or y/n if she wasn't sure they're both good people. not to mention the fact that i've always thought she's kinda hot. but it's always been superficial. even us spending the night together was really nothing more than finding each other hot or trying to figure out if the talk around town was real or not."

johnny takes a sip of his americano as he lets jaehyun's words sink into his own mind. jaehyun rests his heads on his arms crossed in front of him and johnny knows exactly the set of thoughts that's running through jaehyun's mind because they were the same as johnny's when he had decided to ask sia out on a date.

is it worth it? is it worth possibly getting my heart strung up on someone again just to face the possibility of breaking it again?

so johnny offers the only advice that he really has.

"talk to roseanne. girls' fiercest protectors are their friends and something tells me that talking to her will make you fall on one side or the other."

+++

the next time that jaehyun sees roseanne is a complete coincidence. he really only meant to say hi to one of his homies, yugyeom, on the way out of the library and hadn't expected to run into roseanne or miyeon at all. especially not a singular day after johnny had suggested that he seek her out in the first place.

he watches as yugyeom thumbs the rip in miyeon's jeans as he continues to talk to jaehyun about something jeongguk had done the previous weekend. and then he sees miyeon press a kiss to roseanne's cheek as she gets up to fill up her water bottle.

jaehyun didn't think he would understand that dynamic at all but whatever floated their boat. who was he to judge? he had watched the barbie movie and was still having a crisis about his masculinity and was actively searching out his one night stand's (were you still just his one night stand?) roommate and best friend to fix it. to be fair, he didn't really fully understand the barbie movie, to the chagrin of doyoung's girlfriend nairobi but that was besides the point.

yeah. jaehyun was really in no position to speak. wow he had a lot of things to work on internally. the more he talked to the women in his life, the more he was realizing this. again. not the point.

roseanne takes one look at his face and then exchanges a look with miyeon and then yugyeom before standing up and walking towards the exit, looking at jaehyun questioningly when she realizes that jaehyun hasn't moved an inch. jaehyun hurriedly bids yugyeom and miyeon goodbye as he rushes after her.

the two of them linger outside of the library and roseanne just raises an eyebrow as she appraises jaehyun. and for some reason, jaehyun stands up straighter, and she just sighs, a small smile playing on her lips.

"let me guess. 'who makes people work for their number? what is this? sprinkle sprinkle type of stuff?' or maybe 'this is kinda cringey, isn't it?' or just a sweet and simple 'what the actual fuck?'" roseanne says nonchalantly, listing out each possible question jaehyun could have come to ask.

"would it make me a bad man if i said yes to all of the above?" jaehyun asks, shoving his hands into his pockets. roseanne shrugs, crossing her arms across her chest.

"not really. i don't think so at least. it's a fair set of questions that even i asked her the first time a guy came up to me asking who the fuck my roommate thought she was," roseanne says. she takes sees the look of confusion on jaehyun's face as she continues, "you're definitely not the first person to ask me that but you are of a selective few. y/n usually doesn't let people get this far in the first place. and secondly, she doesn't really tell us much about people she's interested in until much later."

"she's a strange person, if i'm being honest with you. there's just something about her that makes her so captivating and invisible at the same time. she'll capture the attention of everyone in the room but if you talk to her, she'll make you feel like her best friend. she seems like an open book, and an even more open friend. and you feel so close to her within a conversation and then you end the conversation, you realize that even as she spoke, she revealed nothing about herself."

"i'm her best friend and i could tell you very confidently that i didn't know a single thing about her truly until recently. it made me frustrated at first. like i was a shitty friend or something. but the closer to her i got, the more i realized that she's always been a great friend but no one's been a great friend to her. she's very selective with the people she associates with - not just people she lets herself be seen with but people she confides in."

"this whole thing is a defense mechanism. she'd be caught dead before she'd ever admit it but she just hasn't been loved in the way that she's loved and now she's more guarded for it. i'll tell you this jaehyun, but if you want to give up, do it now. she says she's just going to give you her number if you earn it but once you get all 10 digits, know that she's gonna give you her heart."

"it seems like i'm violating girl code by telling you all this but like i said, even if you were to ask y/n, she would say the same thing. not in so many words but still. like i said. she's an open book and a closed heart. she knows you're gonna ask me and so she only tells me something that she would be okay with you hearing."

jaehyun, who had been listening quietly and patiently the whole time, cuts in with a quiet voice. "isn't it exhausting to live like that?"

roseanne looks at him strangely, as though she was truly seeing him for the first time. jaehyun doesn't know if he's offended or relieved that she'd done what he'd done to sia - made assumptions based on his appearance. he lands on neutral. it's human nature, to try and make proper guesses about who's gonna act like what.

the ancient art of preventing heartbreak, jaehyun supposes.

"maybe. i don't think so though. it's gotta be a different level of relief knowing that no one's gonna talk shit about you because a) no one knows you well enough to do that or b) because you're so careful with who you trust that you know they'd never betray you or even c) they can only talk about what you put out into the world. it's why censorship is so effective. people can only talk about what they know. there's few people who will ignore what they see to find what they can't see tangibly."

"are all of y/n's friends secretly poets or something? why the hell are you guys all speaking cryptically like you're all freemasons or some shit like that. i can't tell if i find it cringey or cool," jaehyun says, cocking his head.

roseanne lets out a real, full bellied laugh at that, clutching her stomach as chuckles escape her. jaehyun's not sure what he's said that's so funny but he knows for a fact that she's not laughing with him, but at him.

"why is it cringey, jaehyun? why would it be cool? it's just what it is. we're just girls. you'll see us at the party next weekend, drinking our weight in alcohol. we'll have the conversations about makeup and dresses and having fun and our future and our past. there's nothing like freemasonry, i promise. it's just so amusing to see men get alarmed by the thoughts that girls have been wrestling with since they've been twelve. the duality of man, i guess," roseanne says finally, once she's caught her breath.

jaehyun doesn't know how to respond to that so he elects to save the remaining tatters of his dignity by just not responding at all. if there's one thing he's learned about you, it's that you surround yourself by women who are not hesitant about putting him in his place. and he's oddly thankful for it.

"i have one last question. well, two last questions, actually," jaehyun says when he sees roseanne turning around to head back inside, still wiping the tears from her eyes from laughing too hard.

roseanne turns, a knowing glint in her eyes even before jaehyun asks his question.

"how many guys have talked to you? and what's the highest number anyone's ever gotten to?"

roseanne is silent and just as the silence begins to turn awkward, she promptly turns on her heel and begins to walk away. she opens the door to the library before she seemingly changes her mind and looks back at jaehyun.

"two guys have talked to me. you're gonna have to ask fatima about the second question though. and jaehyun? the next number is 6."

96_-___-____.

+++

jaehyun finds fatima not soon after his conversation with roseanne. he's sitting in the nct house, watching johnny pace back and forth in his room, trying to figure out if what he was wearing was too casual for a date to a bowling alley.

it was way too formal, in jaehyun's opinion. but he was just going to wait for johnny to finish panicking (even if he would never admit that he was, in fact, panicking) to figure that out on his own. seriously though, who wore a button down and slacks to a bowling alley?

then again, he was going on a date with sia yoo so really, anything was fairplay when it came to that girl. she was a whirlwind of literally everything that could possibly go into a human being. she was a maximalist to the fullest, seizing every opportunity she could to make good memories, pressing forward with a sense of perfect clarity and sobriety that most people would be scared of.

the type of girl who was the main character of any story that she would feature in. sia was the type of person that people who trip and fall over themselves trying to have a good time with that she practically promised. she walked around with fairy dust in her fingers and a strange sense of wisdom that felt like she could read you like a book within a singular meeting with her.

jaehyun knows that she's the most intimidating out of all of the girls. out of you, roseanne, fatima, and sia, she was hands down the most frightening because even though she could read everyone else, no one could really read her.

then there was roseanne. she was the wet dream of every girl alive - the reason why straight girls lamented that they were straight and still falling a little bit in love with her. she was hot, flirtatious to the extent of making everyone wonder what they were when she gave them even a split second of attention, and so incredibly full of life. it doesn't surprise jaehyun that she had become exclusive with miyeon and yugyeom. for some reason, he feels like she just wouldn't have been able to settle for liking one person at once.

she was a little too much for just one person to be able to handle. she was like the human personification of a leather jacket wearing, motorcycle driving, woody cologne smelling wattpad trope. jaehyun understands her appeal all too well.

and then there was fatima. she was kind, sweet, kept to herself, and always offered a helping hand to those around her. jaehyun understood why kun had fallen so hard for her within two minutes of meeting her. she had an air about her that made you feel like she was someone who truly cared about you, even if you didn't know her and she didn't know you all that well. she was the type of girl who was always forgotten in the novels about warriors and princesses. the girl who was often reduced to nothing more than the main character's best friend.

until you met a girl like her in real life. fatima was still a little forgotten, and jaehyun knew that. guys often overlooked her in favor of her 'hotter' or 'wilder' friends, which is admittedly what jaehyun had thought at first. but she was just so genuine and clearheaded. she protected her peace in a way that was so unusual for young, college-going students. not to say that sia, roseanne, or you weren't genuine or anything like that. but fatima was the type of girl that jaehyun knew was perfect for kun. the girl that he could go home and know that no matter what he had done in his past, she would love him all the same.

and there was you. smart, strangely private, and a series of contradictions housed within one heart. jaehyun wracks his brain, trying to gather everything that he knew about you and yet, he comes up empty.

frustratingly empty.

jaehyun vaguely registers the fact that johnny has finally changed and is getting ready to go. he knows that he should say something about how johnny should just be himself and that sia liking him is completely up to her, regardless of what johnny were to do. but when he locks eyes with johnny, he realizes that johnny already knows.

so jaehyun just claps him on the back as he heads back to his room, his mind spinning as he tries to think of everything that he knows about you. and he draws a blank every fucking time.

he knows superficial things about you. maybe it's because he doesn't know you like he knows your friends. he hasn't talked to you as much as he's talked to them. but how does he not know you? he's been wanting to get with you for so long. he wanted more than just your body. he wanted your charm and your appeal.

was it just your body? is that all it was? is that all jaehyun wanted? somehow, jaehyun doesn't want to believe that. he doesn't want that for himself. logically, he knows that gianna's impact on his life shouldn't be extending this far. he knows that he shouldn't want or have to fight himself this hard but you're not making it much easier for him.

when was the last time jaehyun wanted to get to know such an enigma of a girl? gianna lee. and he wants nothing to do with a girl like that ever again.

and yet, here he is. falling into the same trap all over again.

jaehyun's so caught up in his own thoughts, feeling himself starting to spiral when he bumps in fatima and kun, who are equally caught up in a conversation with each other.

"oh, my bad," jaehyun mumbles, ready for fatima to brush past him but she doesn't, looking at jaehyun and then kun.

"hey man, we're headed back to my place. why don't you come back with us?" kun offers, and jaehyun just nods blankly, as he starts to follow them out of the nct house. kun stops at the entrance where he picks up a textbook from yuta, who had been borrowing it for the last week, before the three of them make their way out.

"how are you, jaehyun?" fatima asks with a sweet smile as they pile into kun's car. somehow, jaehyun doesn't want to give her a generic, insincere answer.

"i'm...okay. i'm just okay. confused but okay," jaehyun says and fatima seems alright with this answer. kun pulls out of the 'driveway' of the frat house, exchanging in a quiet conversation with fatima about what they were planning on eating for the night, leaving jaehyun to simmer in his thoughts.

gianna lee. there was a name that he thought about almost every day and never all at the same time. the girl who had made him and broke him. the girl that jaehyun had trusted with his heart and made him regret ever doing that.

the girl who had been the first love of his life.

+++

gianna was a year younger than him. smart, so incredibly sweet, and yet someone that no one could confidently say that they knew. she was the type of girl who could slip under the radar as easily as her friends seemed to always stay on top of.

she ran in the same circle as jaehyun had in senior year, right when jaehyun was beginning to blossom into the man that he was today. she had always been kind to him, if not a little withdrawn, even when he was a skinny boy with proportions that absolutely did not seem to match each other.

jaehyun didn't even know her well enough for her to break his heart, honestly. jaehyun had liked her even before having a proper conversation with her. he knew how left out she felt in her own body. even though he couldn't imagine a more gorgeous girl, he knew that she didn't feel that way about herself.

he knew that she always compared herself to her friends. her well-accomplished, 'main character' best friends who were the talk of the school. and her. no matter how intelligent or kind or put together she was, no one really looked at her the way that jaehyun did. she knew it.

even jaehyun couldn't place why he liked her so much. maybe it was the fact that he was somehow comforted that a girl with so much beauty could feel the same way as him. maybe it was the fact that she had always held the same smile for him, regardless of what he looked like. or maybe it was even the fact that one time, she had held his hand as she pulled him across the street, running to catch up with their friends who had already crossed.

jaehyun just remembers looking at her dyed cherry red hair falling into her eyes as she laughs, pulling him forward to where the rest of their friends were standing. and as he breathes in the smoke in the air and the raspberry scent of her perfume, he just knows that he really, truly likes gianna lee.

gianna lee doesn't like him the way that he likes her. he knows that. logically, jaehyun knows that his feelings are truly unfounded. he really has no reason to like gianna the way that he does. and yet, there's a part of him that holds onto the hope that maybe, just maybe, she'll turn around with those big eyes and upturned lips and say that she likes him the way that he likes her.

so he continues to look at her first when he makes the friend group laugh. he always slips her a napkin when he's getting one for himself when they're out getting milkshakes. he offers to help her with apush when she's stressing about a test the next week.

the closer he gets to her, the more jaehyun realizes that really, she was nothing like the image of her he had conjured in his head. she was every bit sweet as he had thought but she was argumentative, competitive, and all too obsessed with perfection. she always needed to be right in an argument, always had to win, and always had to make sure that she looked flawless doing so.

jaehyun doesn't realize it, of course. he's so obsessed with his glazed over façade of her that he just continues to let her win the arguments even when he knows that she's wrong. and she lets him wrap his arms around her when she gets an 89% on her test.

he lets her walk all over him and she lets him act on his feelings.

it was a toxic, parasitic relationship that neither of them were truly happy in. when gianna asked him out, jaehyun hadn't felt like fireworks were going off in his stomach. he felt like he had won a prize at a marathon. like he'd won a medal.

gianna wasn't a medal. she was a flawed, beautiful human being - every bit gorgeous and horrible as jaehyun and every other human being was. but jaehyun had won, hadn't he?

he hadn't. and it took so long for him to realize that by the time he'd realized that gianna had really only taken to him out of pity, he was so far in his own head that he didn't know how to leave her.

eventually, the summer before college rolled around and gianna had taken it upon herself to do the nasty deed of breaking up with him. it had been an amicable split, as far as their friends were concerned.

but none of them had ever truly either of their friends. so what did they know?

what did they know about gianna finding comfort in her ex's arms? what did they know about her grades slipping at the end of the school year? what did they know about her having to excuse herself at a meeting for her internship to sob in the bathroom as she realized the true fallacy in the way she had acted? what did they know about the way she had to reconstruct herself bottom up? nothing.

what did they know about jaehyun spending every other night with a different girl, trying to ease the ache in his heart? what did they know about the obscene number of hours at the gym, not sure how to combat the sudden numbness after girl after girl? what did they know about the fact that jaehyun could not physically stand the smell of raspberries anymore? absolutely nothing.

no one knew anything until jaehyun had finally come to college. it was once he joined the frat and met guys who were so alike and different from him at the same time that he finally opened up about gianna.

only to doyoung, kun, and johnny but people nonetheless. everyone had gone through something similar - while for some it happened at college or back home, they all knew the pain. some of them were more in the fault than others but pain is pain and a paper cut bleeds the same red as a gunshot wound.

which is why when kun sits him down on the couch and fatima hands him a cup of iced tea to save them all from the sweltering heat as august makes a last stand against september's winds, jaehyun spills everything.

gianna. his past. his insecurities. everything. he knows he shouldn't. logically, fatima had nothing stopping her from going and telling everything that jaehyun had told her to you, but for some reason, jaehyun thinks that she won't.

she doesn't.

+++

fatima knows that jaehyun was going to talk to her about something like this. it seemed that all of the nct boys came with some level of trauma like this. she wasn't sure what it was about every single boy she had met in college (although, granted, they were either her friends' conquests or kun's friends - a very interesting group of very intertwined boys) having their hearts getting ripped to shreds. sometimes it was of their own volition but they all seemed to be some level of hurt either way.

so when jaehyun spills his heart out on kun's carpeted floors, she's ready with a well-rehearsed speech. he's one of six boys she'd already had this same exact conversation with (kun has a bad habit of picking up strays) but when he looks at her with such raw anguish in his eyes, she falters.

she looks to kun, who's looking at her with the same question that she knows jaehyun is asking.

"how do you know when to choose between your head and your heart? because my heart is so fucking scared of getting attached to someone again. but my head knows that i can't push everyone away because i'm scared."

fatima is quiet, searching for the right words. she's about to say something when kun speaks up, looking determinedly at fatima.

"you learn to choose you. instead of choosing between your head and your heart, just choose yourself. at the end of the day, you and y/n are good people who aren't trying to hurt each other. you're both trying not to get hurt. and honestly, maybe you'll realize that you both are better off as friends along the way. maybe you just realize that you don't want to be with someone right now. or maybe you find someone who makes you feel like you're safe and loved when you're around them, whether you're in love with them or not." fatima looks at kun with a soft smile, reaching out to hold his hand gently.

"you have to choose yourself, jaehyun. trust me. the more you start thinking about what is best for the people around you instead of thinking for yourself, you'll look back fifteen, twenty years down the road and see everyone but yourself in your life. don't do something because gianna and how she made you feel. don't let your past define your future," fatima says, and jaehyun can feel the tears prick his eyes. he blinks determinedly, trying to make them disappear but when kun sits on one side of him and fatima on the other, he starts losing his battle against his emotions, finally letting himself mourn the innocence he had once had.

he buries his head into fatima's shoulder and for some reason, he feels as though kun and fatima would be amazing parents. because jaehyun doesn't remember the last time that he had felt this safe in an embrace.

"and jaehyun? the furthest anyone has ever gotten is five numbers. you're at three. it's your call from here. do what you want, not what you think you need to do." fatima taps his shoulder gently and lets him cry for as long as he needs to.

963-___-____.

+++

jaehyun gets the next number from you. after his conversation with fatima, he's sure that if he wants to go any further than this, he needed to talk to you first.

it's strange. he's earning your number but it feels like jaehyun's somehow earning himself back. and when he finds you again, he knows that you can tell.

even johnny could tell. when he had come back from his (successful) date with sia, the first thing he had said was, "wow. you look so...light."

jaehyun hadn't said anything but 'thank you' but it was enough.

johnny had just smiled at him and recounted the date, stating that he was going to ask her to go on another date this saturday night. jaehyun doesn't mention the fact that nct is throwing that night because johnny already knows.

and honestly, sia is a junior and johnny is a senior. they've been to their fair share of parties. one party being missed wouldn't be life changing for them. but skipping a party as the vice president of a frat and a girl who was sought after as a sweetheart for six frats meant something nonetheless.

he hadn't expected that they were to get that serious that quickly but it was a refreshing change. even fatima and kun were starting about talking about talking to fatima's parents to get their blessing for their relationship. her dilemma was no secret and it seemed that the conversation between the three of them had served to help them through their own issues as well.

there was just something in the air, jaehyun had supposed. august turned to september in the week that jaehyun had wrestled with himself, eventually leading to seeking you out.

it had been at the nct party, actually. you were standing with some of your acquaintances, all of your friends having dispersed to do what they were going to do. jaehyun had been on the other side of the room, convincing bambam that it was most definitely not a good idea to try and pursue soyeon jeon if he wanted to make sure that he woke up with all his limbs intact the next morning.

you had met his eye, raising an eyebrow before continuing your conversation, all thoughts of him seemingly out of your mind. jaehyun looks between bambam (who has gone from trying to get with soyeon to jumping into the pool) (that pool had not been cleaned in a full six months) and you. he just finds jungwoo, one of the pledges, and hands him a very drunk bambam.

"do not let him do anything dumb. i'm counting on you pledge," jaehyun called out over his shoulder as he weaves through people to get to you.

"jaehyun! hey! long time no see," hailey whitfield says, throwing herself in jaehyun's arms. jaehyun looks at you, where you're staring straight at where hailey's body ends and his arms begin. jaehyun tries to push her off of him. once upon a time, jaehyun would've been behind happy about getting with her again - she was so good with her mouth. but now, he has no intentions of giving you the wrong impression.

at least until he has a proper conversation with you so that you knew where he stood with you. and where you stood with him.

"hey hailey, sorry i've gotta get to my friend," he says, not even looking at her as he pushes off of her, resuming his threading through the crowd to where you're standing. you look at him, unimpressed, but jaehyun knows you well enough to know that three numbers are enough to make you feel a certain way if jaehyun was fooling around with other girls.

which he hasn't been. not a single night. jaehyun jung's bed has been empty for an entire two weeks, something that doyoung and nairobi have been taking full advantage of.

even some of jaehyun's friends had started asking if he was having problems or something but he had brushed them off. he definitely wasn't having problems, if hailey whitfield was any indication. but he felt like it would be doing you dirty if he had someone in his bed while he was talking to your friends about you.

so he hadn't.

he knows you know. he knows that you know he's talked to sia, roseanne, and fatima. he'd figured that you'd find out either through them or just by him. he can tell by the look in your eyes that you've read him thoroughly.

so he really doesn't feel bad about pulling you away from your friends, taking you upstairs to his room. finally, doyoung had promised that they would go back to nairobi's place on the condition that jaehyun made sure that no one would try to fuck on his bed. he promised, knowing that the only person who'd be coming up here would be him. he needed to talk to you tonight. if he knew anything it was that.

but once you're sitting on his bed, watching him pace back and forward, he's lost everything he's been wanting to say. where does he even start? with gianna? with the questions he has for you? with the number? where does he begin?

jaehyun looks at you, where you're watching him with a small smile on your face and suddenly, it doesn't matter where he begins. you'll listen to it all. he knows that much.

"why do you want me to work for your number?" jaehyun asks. you look at him curiously, tilting your head as you piece together an answer.

"are you sure you don't know the answer to that question?" you say, folding your legs so that you're sitting criss cross on the navy covers.

"i do. but i want to hear it from you, y/n. you know what all your friends say about you? that they didn't properly know you until a full year of friendship with you. but they said that you never lie. so i want you to tell me," jaehyun says, chest heaving by the end of his ramble. his eyes turn soft as he watches you become more and more solemn and he steps forward, sitting down on his desk chair and swiveling it over so that he was sitting directly across from you.

you pause for a moment, searching for the words before saying anything. "i've never been in a relationship before. so i don't have the trauma that could come from something like that. but i know what it's like to lose your heart to someone. and i know that it hurts. i want to be loved in the way that i never thought i could be. so the number thing is just an excuse for me to get to the point where i won't feel guilty about liking someone."

you shrug, smiling but not allowing the smile to reach your eyes. "it's a good way to make sure that the guy knows what he's getting into either way."

jaehyun nods at that. he knew that much. it feels different hearing it from you though. when you're the one saying it, jaehyun knows that it's real. raw. not coming from people trying to protect you because they know that you're far too soft to truly come at him guns blazing.

somehow, he likes it. he likes that you're much softer than you seem. that you're a lot more vulnerable than you come off as. and for some reason, jaehyun hopes that you never perfect the art of becoming standoffish.

"hmm. you've never been in a relationship before?" jaehyun says finally and you nod, shrugging once more. a shadow of bittersweet nostalgia crosses your face before you're back to your soft smile and guarded yet curious eyes.

"nope. part of it was on me; i've got high standards, if you can't tell. and the other part was that i've always wanted someone who fascinates me. of course, i wasn't all that appealing to men because i spent so much time trying to beat them at the only thing they were good at - ego-boosting themselves but they weren't interesting. none of them were people i really wanted to get to know," you say, unfolding your legs.

jaehyun likes the fact that the tips of your toes are the only part of your feet that touch the ground from how far back you're sitting on the bed. in an act of boldness, jaehyun moves forward to sit next to you, right where you're sitting. his feet are flat on the floor, he realizes.

he doesn't know why he's noticing things like this but he is and something about that frustrates him, frightens him, and tugs at his heartstrings altogether.

"you're heartbroken, aren't you? boys like you always seem to be a little hurt," you say, tossing the words into the air like rose petals. they're recklessly thrown but they're somehow beautiful in the way that blackened roses are always beautiful.

"yeah. i was. i think i will always mourn who i was before that. i was so naïve. but i'm not him anymore. and i think i'm realizing that i'm actually okay with that." jaehyun says the words just as carelessly as you do but once they're out in the open, he realizes that he's being completely honest. he turns to you with a strange look though.

"boys like me?"

you smile and nod at him. "boys like you."

you stand up, walking to where jaehyun has a corkboard with a shitload of scraps and photos from the past two years. you don't mention the fact that none of the memories that he has on the board date from before senior year. you don't need to.

"boys like you who've never been loved completely. boys who think that they need to listen to what the world says about how they should be acting or thinking. boys who are hopeless romantics but what would the world say if they knew that these boys just wanted a little bit of love? what would they say if they were looking for warmth in an empty and cold bed?"

jaehyun hates that you're right. it's the college boy tragedy. condemned to never be able to completely heal from one bad experience and then always breaking hearts to collect enough pieces to build themselves a new one.

he didn't want to end like that. even if it wasn't with you, he was ready to grow past it. he didn't want to end as a heartbreaker.

"boys like me...and you like a boy like me?" jaehyun asks. he doesn't know why he does. this is the first proper conversation you've had with him when both of you are decidedly sober. you want to deflect the question but if he's being honest, that's a sign for you to be just as honest.

"i don't know. from what my friends say, and what i know about you as a person in class, i know you mean well. and honestly, i've always just been the type of person to like someone past things like the books they read or the way they dress," you say, still looking at the memories jaehyun's pieced together over the years on this board. "i feel something around you. and i don't know you well enough to know that i like you as someone more than a friend but i'd like to at least have the chance to get that far."

that's all jaehyun needs. he gets another number that night.

+++

jaehyun waits for you outside of intro to east asia, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet as he waits for you to make it out of the classroom. you're the last one to leave, knowing that technically, you and jaehyun weren't allowed to see each other while he was your ta.

jaehyun had never really pegged you as someone with so much respect for the rules but you had argued that it was mostly about the principle.

he'd learned a lot about you that last weekend. you and him had stayed up all night, talking about nothing and everything under the sun until the sun itself rose, eventually falling asleep in a tangled mess of limbs and conversations.

he learned that while you didn't like the rules, you often followed them as long as they followed your own moral code. that you would die for your friends and that had landed you in many bad friendships when people would use that to their advantage before you'd met your friends in college. he learned that you were super close with your family, and that they were quite literally the best friends that you could always rely on.

and he learned that you wanted to see him again. on a date. sometime soon. so with no real way of communicating with you outside of social media (and he somehow felt like sliding into your dm's was corny and somewhat of a copout), here he was. waiting outside of the classroom like he was ripped straight from a 1950's romance movie. he even had the letterman jacket on to boot.

"oh my god, you scared me," you say, pressing a hand to your chest as you quite nearly bump into jaehyun. he smiles, readjusting his backpack on his shoulders as the two of you start walking.

"you knew i was waiting for you outside, didn't you?" he says, pushing the side door open to walk towards the parking lot, where he's convinced kun to let him borrow his car for the day.

"yeah but i didn't think you would be literally outside the door," you murmur, checking your phone to see the rest of your day's schedule. you had purposefully blocked off three hours of your schedule to hang out with jaehyun, which you were sure to regret later on when your organic chemistry class kicked your ass. but that was a later issue.

"well, i couldn't text you where i was so i figured i'd wait in plain sight," jaehyun retorts, opening the passenger door for you without a word. huh. that was the first time a man has ever done that for you. and jaehyun did it as though it were second nature - like it was a given.

you don't know why something so small means so much to you but you're alright with it. you're alright with just appreciating it.

"that's fair," you say. another number's on the tip of your tongue as you watch him get into the driver's seat but jaehyun beats you to the punch.

"don't give me a number. not yet," jaehyun says. "not that i don't want one. but i just...me waiting outside your classroom or opening your door isn't enough for a number. even if i don't get all ten, you've got to up your standards."

you don't know what to say to that so you don't say anything, turning on the music and letting the melody of chemtrails under the country club by lana del ray fill the rainy september afternoon sky.

+++

when jaehyun pulls up to a run down diner, you're pleasantly surprised. although you're not much of a sucker for romantic places, the fact that jaehyun is somehow makes you happy. it makes you happy that he still sees the beauty in places like these. and when you look over at him, dimples threatening to show as he breathes in the air of misty fog and the smell of milkshakes and burgers, you're so tempted to kiss him.

so you lean over, looking at him with a twinkle in your eyes once jaehyun has parked.

"can i kiss you?" you ask, mere inches from his lips. jaehyun just looks at you, and from this close, you realize just how beautiful his eyes are. they're dark, darker than anyone else's that you know. and yet, it feels like you could fall in and never regret it.

"please."

it's all you need. and it's all he needs because as soon as word slips from his lips, he's pressing forward, his lips against yours. he's soft, you register vaguely. nothing like last time. nothing like how he'd kissed you like he could think of nothing but absolutely ruining you.

jaehyun is soft. like the feeling of slipping a cold hand into someone's warm jacket pocket. he kisses you like he's scared of ruining you. ruining this. and you're absolutely addicted to the feeling.

the feeling of knowing that he could just claim you instead of trying his best to claim your heart. no matter how fucked up it was that you were even thinking that someone could 'claim' you. he wasn't like that and you could work with that.

he pulls away from you, eyes still closed as he sits against the drivers seat, his head against the headrest. you watch him, a silly and childish smile on your face - although you're not really sure why it's there in the first place. but who are you to knock anything?

there aren't many words to exchange as the two of you make your way into the diner. jaehyun had opened your car door again. this time, you just offer him your hand and you're strangely alright with just how safe you feel with his hand locked in yours.

the diner seems as though time has frozen still here.

and everything about the date seems the same. it feels as though time has frozen still - almost as though the two of you are in a little bubble with no one but each other. it's a feeling you haven't experienced in a while. a feeling you don't think you've ever had because of a boy.

it feels...almost scarily comfortable. it doesn't feel as though there are fireworks exploding for every word that jaehyun says. but it does feel as though that there's a hot mug of cocoa that's been handed to you on a cold winter night. and that feeling, the feeling of warmth spreading through every corner of your body, is the feeling that you know is good for you.

so you listen to him, watch him speak animatedly about basketball or a book he read, chin resting in your palm as you find yourself falling deeper and deeper.

jaehyun gets two numbers that day.

+++

it doesn't take much longer for jaehyun to get the rest of the numbers. soon enough, you're more than happy just to spend time with him the way that you spend time with your friends. you feel as though you've made a good friend out of someone you'd thought that you wouldn't even be able to get along with.

"you know, when i first met you, even before i knew you, i really didn't like you," you say, taking a sip out of your latte. the seasons have changed, fall giving way to winter. the november air bites your skin every time someone opens the door to the tiny café the two of you were sitting in.

jaehyun smiles, nodding as he leans back in his chair. "i know. i could tell by the look in your eyes."

"the look in my eyes?"

"yeah. the one that said that you wanted to get to know me. to figure out my deal even if you didn't necessarily want to find out for sure. kind of like you wanted to be the one that said 'aha!' at the end of a movie, even though you weren't sure of the ending at all."

you look at jaehyun for a moment before laughing, shaking your head as you laugh. "you're even starting to talk like me now."

jaehyun pauses before he nods, smiling with you. "yeah, i know. you've rubbed off on me in a lot of ways."

"i've improved your music taste, that's for sure," you snort, taking another sip out of your latte. "i still can't believe you didn't like ric flair drip when we met."

"it's not that i didn't like it and it's still not that i like it now. but i guess i just have a good memory associated with it now so it's growing on me," jaehyun says. your eyebrows furrow as you try to recollect what good memory he could possibly be referring to.

"oh my god. the night that we met! i was trying to get in your pants with ric flair drip," you say incredulously, shivering when someone opens and closes the door once more. jaehyun hands you his hoodie, leaving his arm extended silently when you protest.

you don't know why you still bother trying to protest with him when you knew you were going to lose. you put the sweater on as jaehyun starts talking, letting the scent of clean water and pine trees swaddle you softly.

"honestly, i think i was more than you that night," jaehyun says, as he looks at you with an incriminating twinkle in his eyes. "that was around the time that even taeyong said that he wanted to see if kun's vivid descriptions were true or not. and i wasn't about to let him get the opportunity to get to you before i did. i don't know why. i felt almost protective over you. but not in a good way. in the type of way where i wanted to show you how good i could make you feel - more than anyone could even begin to think of making you feel."

the previously cold café begins to become a lot hotter than you were feeling before, clearing your throat as you try to let the moment pass.

"how did we even get here?" you say, fanning yourself delicately. the move only serves to work against you when you fan yourself so that the scent of his cologne on his hoodie only gets stronger in your mind.

jaehyun leans back, letting you switch the conversation. he'd bring it up to you later in the night, anyway. besides, for someone who puts on such a strong front, it's honestly a little fun to see you squirm at the slightest implications from jaehyun.

"but, uh, jaehyun. i've been meaning to ask you something for a while," you begin, fidgeting with the wrapper of the straw in front of you. jaehyun tilts his head as if to question what you have to say as he waits patiently.

"what are we?"

now jaehyun is truly confused. was the past month of going on dates not clear enough? jaehyun wasn't going on dates with anyone else. oh my god. were you going on dates with other men? is that why you're asking.

"i thought we were dating?" jaehyun says, phrasing his sentence more like a question than a statement. "i mean i'm not talking to anyone else and i kinda assumed that since i'd gotten all ten numbers, neither were you."

you hum, unable to stop the silly smile on your face.

"good. that's just what i was thinking too."

+++

honestly, everything about jaehyun jung is appealing to you. from the way that he engulfs you in a hug when you're up late studying. or the way that he convinces you that you have a virus on your laptop just so that he could spend more time with you 'fixing' your laptop for you. or the way that he sits with you and your friends, patiently listening and offering advice wherever he can (or honestly, is just allowed to speak).

you're so glad to see him like this. as your boyfriend of four and a half months (you hadn't let him make it official until he was no longer your ta), you've seen him grow in ways that you'd never thought. jaehyun was every inch the stupid, naïve fuckboy you'd thought him to be in the beginning. and he was also every inch the hopeless romantic with a little too much love to give for a scarred heart.

so you heal together. you help each other when you quite literally can't handle the pain and together, you grow. he's more confident. not just in the way that he looks - but the way that he speaks around people. the way that he educates himself. the way that he communicates how he feels.

and he helps you everyday. he shows you what it feels like to be loved the way you love others. he shows you that you are worth the princess treatment. and most importantly for you, he loves the people around you the way you love the people around you.

kun and fatima find their happy ending. fatima had spoken to her parents and while they took some time to warm up to kun, his soft demeanor and the way that he loved fatima so completely and sincerely eventually won them over. fatima even met kun's parents with equal success, although kun's mother kept asking when fatima and kun would get married.

(their wedding was already in the works by both fatima's mother and kun's mother. you were beyond elated to go to both the traditional muslim ceremony and the traditional chinese ceremonies.)

johnny and sia ended up going out on a couple more dates before realizing that they probably just weren't meant to be a couple. they loved each other as friends and were probably always going to hold a special place in each other's lives but it just wouldn't be as each other's significant others. johnny was already starting to retreat from the frat boy lifestyle after meeting a girl at the library one day. and sia had finally met someone who could handle her crazy personality with a sweet smile, bringing her back down to reality whenever she went a little...too lively. you're looking forward to meeting him over summer, where the four of you and your friends were going on a vacation together.

roseanne, yugyeom, and miyeon still haven't put a label on their relationship. but you've caught roseanne falling asleep in yugyeom's arms more than once (one too many times than rosie cares to admit) so you figure that it's a good thing that they've all found each other. as unconventional as their relationship might be, they all mesh together so well that you can't even find it in yourself to question it. all's fair in love and war.

jaehyun and you frequent the diner as a favorite date night spot to visit, although you're upset to hear that they're remodeling the entire establishment for favor of a new, more 'modern' atmosphere. although how modern a diner could get was a little bit of a strange notion. but as people change, so do the winds.

and when you walk into the diner the next semester, hand in hand with jaehyun, you're a little comforted to see that diner is now a speakeasy (in true 1970s fashion) with three words written in blinding rhinestones against the velvet background. of course.

ric flair drip.

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