#i love how much u love him thank u for asking questions about him :)

[wonustars]

In Front of Me (1)

cause i was blind to see that you were right in front of me ₊˚

⊹ pairing: jeon wonwoo x f.reader ⊹ genre: bestfriends to (?), angst, smut (R: 18+ mdni) ⊹ wordcount: 40.6k (part 1) (part 2: here)

⊹ summary: jeon wonwoo has spent most of his adolesence and early adult hood unable to understand why he can't seem to stay in a relationship for more than a few months. as his best friend, you allowed him to vent about his worries without judgment. so what if you're in love with him? your friendship with wonwoo meant more to you than having your feelings reciprocated. that is until you hit your breaking point, while wonwoo finally realizes what has been in front of him this whole time.

⊹ tags: non-idol!au, uni!au, unrequited love (for the most part), pining, toxic!wonwoo, toxic!reader, both in wonwoo and readers pov, questionable protagonists, mentions of other svt members, happy ending (?), emotionally constipated characters (wonwoo), flashbacks, slight seokmin x reader, a lot of emotions thrown everywhere. (content warnings under the cut)

⊹ note: this story was meant to be posted for wonwoos bday, but if you know anything about me by now, i never really stick to my self made deadlines lol. thank you to my cutieful, big brained beta readers: ♡ @junkissed @chocosvt and @sunniques ♡ everyone in @svthub and @highvern and @gyuswhore who helped me w this fic as well ! if u look closely this is pretty much just a sugar coated version of real life events lol... anyways i hope u enjoy and lmk what u think thru the replies and reblogs :) !

⊹ masterlist, fic playlist.

⊹ smut tags: no smut in this part :p ⊹ warnings: alcohol, reader is downbad for wonwoo, stalking, slut-shaming, evasions of privacy, if i missed anything lmk! cuz ik i did i just can't think of what hehe :p

⊹ what i would like to note about this story before you read it: you're not meant to like these characters (for most of the story at least lol), they are flawed in many ways, thats the whole point of this story tbh. tmi--but this story is pretty much my free therapy lol. and i love a messy plot! wonwoo and reader are just two normal people in this story and i wanted to write something a little more raw than i'm used to. so just take what i say with a grain of salt before reading ♡ i still want you to enjoy this story because i poured my soul into it. so thank you for your support and kind asks and comments about the teaser!

prologue. 

Despite your age, you’ve never been in a serious relationship. There was always something holding you back, or rather, someone. 

In all the years you’ve known Wonwoo, you’ve always thought maybe one day, he would look at you in a different light. Hoping that he could reciprocate the feelings you’ve harboured for him since the eleventh grade. 

He was the one who constantly moved out of relationships. You couldn’t even count the amount of late-night calls where he asked you what his “next step” should be. The doting best friend that you are, you’d gladly stay up all night trying to help him fix his girl problems. 

“I just, I don’t have feelings for her anymore. Is that wrong?” he asked you over the phone. 

Tossing and turning in your bed you let out a deep sigh. One thing is always guaranteed with Wonwoo: in a relationship, he loses feelings quickly. No matter how much he likes the girl, no matter how obsessed or possessive he feels for them at the beginning of it all, it diminishes by the time the six-month mark hits. 

Although he may be a great friend to you, relationships were never his strong suit. 

“It’s not wrong to fall out of love, but how many times are you going to break up with someone before you decide to stay?” you ask him, and he pauses to think. 

“I don’t know, but I can’t stay, that would make things worse,” he sighs. “It’s better to just stop this whole thing now.” 

“I agree, but are you sure?” you continue to ask him the same questions you’ve been asking since you were sixteen. 

“I’m sure,” he replies with a heavy sigh. 

“Okay, then goodnight. It’s almost one in the morning,” you try to cut the call, but he continues to speak. 

“I’m not the bad guy, right?” he asks you for reassurance. 

“No, you’re just human Wonwoo. There’s nothing wrong with losing feelings for someone,” you affirmed. 

“Alright, thank you, good night and sweet dreams,” he whispers listlessly. 

“Good night, Wonwoo.” 

Your phone beeps indicating that he’s hung up and you can feel the heartstrings pull inside your chest. How many times will it take for Wonwoo to find someone he actually wants to be with? And why is it never you? 

act one, favorite crime.

chapter one. 

“Wait, what? You and Wonwoo aren’t dating?” Seungcheol asks you, forcing you into the hot seat. 

The rest of your friend group is boring holes into your face as they all sit around Jeonghan’s living room. The blood rises in your cheeks, but you shake your head anyway. 

It feels like every time you’re with your friends, they ask you the same set of questions. Constantly wondering why you and Wonwoo haven’t thought about dating, or why you two haven’t decided to take the chance and just be together. 

“You guys need to stop asking that. A guy can befriend someone of the opposite gender,” Wonwoo defends the two of you. 

“You’re telling me in all the years you’ve known her, you haven’t developed feelings for her once?” Cheol continues to instigate, and your eyes go wide. 

Looking over at Wonwoo, you anxiously wait for his answer, your chest blooming with hope, only for those buds to be washed away in a millisecond. 

“No, c’mon, we’re just friends. That’s it, right?” Wonwoo turns to you, trying to get you to back him up. 

Your mouth runs dry as he stares at you, his eyebrows rising in anticipation. 

“U-uh yeah, Wonwoo’s right, we’re just friends,” you blurt out, not being able to handle all the expectant eyes on you all at once. 

“See? Now can you all just get off our backs?” he chastises. 

The chatter starts up again, moving past the topic of you and Wonwoo’s friendship. But you sit there, with your heart crushed in your hands, lifeless and shrivelled. Like his words and actions had the power to tear the life out of you. The worst part was that he did all this without knowing. He’s completely oblivious to your feelings, and you only have yourself to blame.

You understand your relationship with Wonwoo is different from most people’s, but at the same time, it should be normal for a girl and a guy to just be friends. And at least you respect Wonwoo’s feelings, and you also respect that whenever he’s dating someone the dynamic between you two shifts. 

He becomes more detached when he’s in a relationship, and you’re okay with that. His priorities change and you’re okay with that. Despite your feelings for him, you know that you can’t force him to feel the same way. And you should be okay with that. 

You’ve never tried to get in the way of his love life, or purposefully give him bad advice to ruin what he has with someone else. Not since you were seventeen, and at that time in your life your frontal lobe was a measly speck of dust, but it's different now. Now, your morals don’t change just because you love him, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt any less to see the person you’re in love with, fall in love with someone else. 

two. 

“Hey, you okay?” Seokmin approaches you, and you turn your head, acknowledging his presence. 

“Huh? Yeah, I’m alright,” you mutter, but you know you don’t look that way. 

Seokmin has known you since high school and has seen you through everything, probably more than Wonwoo. He knows when you’re not feeling well. A sympathetic permanent on his lips as he continues to observe you play with the food on your plate, pushing around the food aimlessly but never taking a bite. 

The sounds of people conversing throughout the dining hall never die down. But luckily, the commotion keeps your thoughts of Wonwoo at bay, or at least that’s what you like to think. But your heart can’t seem to let go of that moment from the other day. Having Seungcheol confirm that Wonwoo has never felt anything romantically for you was like a stab in the stomach, and him getting you to back up his words was just him twisting the knife. 

“What’s the matter, sweetheart? You can tell me,” he sighs, pushing the hair covering your face and placing it behind your ear. 

You can feel the tears start to pool, but you try your damndest not to let them spill—not like this, not in front of so many people. 

“It was just something Wonwoo said when we were all at Hannie’s house,” you mumble, refusing to make eye contact with your friend. 

“What did he say?” 

“That he’s never liked me before,” you sigh, feeling a tear slip from your eye. 

Cursing yourself in your head, you hate how much your feelings for him affect you. You hate how he doesn’t have to even be in front of you, yet he can still cause your emotions to fluctuate. 

“It’s alright,” he coos, pulling you into his strong arms. 

It felt weird, to hug Seokmin so tightly in the middle of your university’s dining hall. But you’re thankful for how aware he is, how he actually cares about your feelings. You felt melodramatic sitting there crying in the fucking dining hall of all places, but you couldn’t help but let your tears flow as Seokmin comforts you with his soft voice. 

“You deserve more than this, I hope you know that,” he whispers in your ear.

three. 

Over the next few days, the words Seokmin had whispered to you kept replaying in your head. You did deserve better and looking at all of Wonwoo’s past relationships is the perfect example. He’s not exactly the ideal boyfriend, so why did you even have feelings for him in the first place?

You could feel a migraine coming on from how hard you were thinking, but Wonwoo still seems to be the only person you can’t let go of. No matter how many times you’ve tried. 

A knock on your door brings you out of your thoughts. It was late, and you don’t remember anyone messaging you saying that they were going to come over, but you open the door anyway. 

“Hey, sorry I didn’t text,” Wonwoo moves past you, takes his shoes off, and plops on your couch. 

“It’s okay, what’s up?” you move to sit beside him. 

“I broke up with her,” He says, shrugging. 

Taken aback by his nonchalance, your eyes widen. He seems calm for someone who has just broken up with his girlfriend. But you try not to think too hard about it, or you might just have to take another Advil to remedy your already growing headache. 

“Well, how did it go?” you ask with a bit of apprehension. 

Knowing Wonwoo, you knew that he probably just dumped her over the phone or something. He’s never been bothered to really break up with someone. 

You have all these examples of why he would probably be the worst boyfriend ever, yet your heart still belongs to him. It’s pitiful, to say the least, people probably would think that you’re a masochist because you subject yourself to staying by his side when he has feelings for another. 

“She was crying, but at least it’s over now,” Wonwoo informs you as he eats the snacks you had left on your coffee table. 

“Oh.” You could feel the guilt start to seep into your veins. 

It never felt good to hear Wonwoo talk about his breakups, but you’re not sure how to react. There’s a part of you that’s happy to know that he’s single again, but the majority of you pities the girl who had just gotten her heart broken. 

Wonwoo continues to munch on the snacks left on your table while your mind tries to process the information you’ve been given. Hearing him talk so casually about his breakup leaves a bitter taste in your mouth, but you decide to switch topics instead of asking any more questions. 

“Are you still going to Seokmin’s thing this weekend, though?” you ask him, trying to fill the air with something to drown out your rapid heartbeats. 

He shrugs his shoulders, “If I feel like it. Are you?” 

The bottom of your stomach tightens. You were hoping that he would go, even looking forward to it. Is that pathetic? To want to see him everywhere you go? Maybe you were pathetic to the point where you only felt like hanging out with your friends if he was there. 

“I mean, I don’t have a ride so…” you trail off, pretending to pay attention to whatever was playing on the T.V. screen. 

“I’ll go since you’re going, that way you have a ride,” he mumbles, adjusting his posture to lean back on your couch. 

He sighs as he sinks into the plush cushions, spreading his legs while he puts his arms up. You’re very aware of his proximity, and you try not to let it show. But the smell of his cologne invades your senses, knocking the breath out of your chest. 

Wonwoo’s arm circles your shoulder, pulling you closer to him and forcing your head to rest delicately on his broad shoulder. Exhaling, you let yourself enjoy his way of showing affection. Although to him it means nothing, and to you, quite literally everything. 

“Thank you for agreeing to go to Seokmin’s so I have a ride,” you whisper but still avoid eye contact so he doesn’t notice your flustered expression. 

“Thank you for letting me barge in here just so I can talk about my breakup,” he whispers back, kissing the top of your head. 

“Of course, what are best friends for?” 

four. 

Most people fall in love gradually, slowly growing feelings for the person before they can even call it love. Like the way the seasons steadily turned from winter to spring. Green grass peeking from underneath the melting snow, or flowers gently blooming and unravelling their new set of stems and petals. For you, it was different.

 Falling in love with Wonwoo wasn’t gradual at all. 

If anything, falling in love with Wonwoo felt like a snowstorm in the middle of a sunny day. Your affection for him grew rapidly, and before you knew it, your mind was clouded with him and him only. It became hard to stay rational as if you were driving down a snow-filled road without any control over the steering wheel. Swerving into different lanes, your brakes malfunction, making it hard to bring your car to a full stop. Falling in love with Wonwoo was not gradual or easy.

When you met him on the first day of your junior year of high school, your sixteen-year-old brain couldn’t fully comprehend your crush on him. He was the shy, scrawny new kid in your class, and no one paid mind to him except you. But that didn’t stop you from liking him. Despite his interest in collecting pokémon cards and his crooked glasses that were too big for his face, you were in love. 

You were like two peas in a pod that whole year, and the only time you and Wonwoo spent time apart was when he had to leave during summer break to visit family in Korea. 

When he returned for your senior year, you could barely recognize him. Suddenly the nerdy Wonwoo you knew was gone. His glasses complimented his face, his hair was styled differently, and most of all, he got hot. A lot of your classmates must’ve seemed to agree because now your best friend and the man you’re in love with gained attention from people who didn’t even bat an eyelash at him last year. 

It annoyed you to see all these people suddenly interested in him. You were angry that just because he grew a few inches and learned to do his hair didn’t mean he was that much different from how he was last year. 

Even though Wonwoo was in a relationship, he still stayed true to your friendship. He still hung out with you, ate lunch with you, you even came over on weekends to have dinner with his family. Day by day, your love for him strengthened, and you ignored that his attention had been divided between you and his girlfriend at the time. 

When their relationship hit three months, it seemed your friendship had come to an abrupt halt. He didn’t invite you for dinner as often, you two didn’t talk on the phone every other night. He started to invest more of his time into her until he decided she wasn’t worth his energy anymore. Then the calls would come, his contact name flashing across your phone screen to ask you for advice. 

“I feel like I need to break up with Haein,” his deep voice flowed through your phone speaker. A sigh left his lips as he faced the truth. 

Haein was Wonwoo’s first girlfriend. She was nice, almost too nice. Wonwoo definitely had a type for girls with a bubbly personality. Ones that were effortlessly beautiful, reminiscent of a freshly made porcelain doll. That was Haein to you, unblemished in every way possible. Everything that you weren’t.

You couldn’t bring yourself to hate her. She was too nice to hate, but your younger self was so angry at how much of Wonwoo's time she took up that you envied her. Seokmin once jokingly mentioned that you looked especially green when she was around, and you remember how quickly you checked your appearance on the nearest reflective surface because of what he had said in passing. You remember vividly how nervous his words made you, was it that obvious?

Wonwoo’s first time calling you about his breakup plans was a delightful surprise, and you were too in shock to sputter out a proper response.

“Oh. Why?” was all you could say, still stunned that after a week of no contact, this was the first thing he said. 

“‘Dunno, I just don’t like her anymore,” he admitted effortlessly. 

You didn’t know how to respond. Your heart was screaming at you to encourage him to break up with his girlfriend at the time, while your brain was telling you to think logically. 

“Well, if that’s what you think is right,” you mumbled, trying to hide the fact that you felt a sense of relief at Wonwoo potentially being single again. 

Others may have tried to rationalize with Wonwoo, but you didn’t care. You wanted your friendship with him to turn back to normal. Your adolescent brain ignored that it was wrong to encourage him, as long as he was fully yours again.

History repeated itself over and over, and the older you got, you learnt to not be so selfish with his attention. Mostly out of guilt for the person he was going to break up with, but also because you didn’t want Wonwoo to realize your true feelings. 

Although being in love with Wonwoo was brutal, you constantly wished that things were different between you two, but they weren’t. He’s never seen you as more than a friend, and as your friendship with him progressed, you had begun to learn to mask your romantic feelings for platonic ones. 

five. 

By the time you entered university, you had mastered the art of pretending. As if your feelings for Wonwoo didn’t exist. You are quite meticulous in ensuring that he never realizes that you are profoundly in love with him. The mere thought of him finding out how you truly felt frightened you. 

You’ve already envisioned countless scenarios on how it could go. The idea of being rejected by the one you love most. It would change everything about your friendship with him.  The look of pity in his eyes, the apologies that would spill out of his mouth. You can't bear even the thought of rejection. Not from him. 

Two voices are constantly at war inside your mind. Your brain, acting as the voice of reason, constantly reminds you that it’s better to preserve your friendship. To keep the dynamic you’ve always had with Wonwoo guarded where it could last, thrive. While your heart persuaded you with deluded, fake scenarios. 

‘What if he likes you back?’ 

‘You never know until you try.’ 

‘Take the risk or lose the chance.’ 

What if. 

Like a siren to a sailor, your heart sang with deep imagery. Filling your thoughts with illusions of you and Wonwoo finally together. But your mind doesn’t let you go without a fight. It knows that beyond the deep waters where your siren-voiced heart lies is nothing but a bottomless pit. 

The possibilities are endless, and you’d rather stay safely grounded in your boat of rationality. 

A notification brings you out of your thoughts. Although you already knew that it was Wonwoo, you scramble to pick up your phone. There’s excitement laced in your veins as you look down at the screen. 

7:06 p.m. [wons <3]: be there in 5. 

There was no reason for you to be so ecstatic but you couldn’t help it. He had already texted you prior, notifying you that he was leaving his place to come pick you up, and yet every time your phone buzzes, you still hope that it’s something completely different. But that was your heart talking; you knew that it wouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary. 

Everyone had planned to meet at Seokmin’s place today, just to have one last celebration before midterms began again. You had happily agreed, enthusiastic that you could spend more time with Wonwoo, although it wouldn’t be a one-on-one thing. You were more than elated to see him while also being able to hang out with the rest of your friends. 

Throwing your phone back on the bed, you change into an outfit that is both cute and comfortable. There wasn’t a reason to dress up when the vibe at Seokmin’s was just going to be sitting around his living room, drinking cocktails and eating pizza. 

Wonwoo texts you once more to let you know he’s outside, causing you to race down to meet him. A lump in your throat arises, as he comes into your field of vision, appreciating how breathtakingly handsome he is. 

The chilled breeze brushes through the strands of his hair, glasses perched on his tall nose. He looked amazing, just like he always had, but you never get bored of admiring him. Even if it’s just from afar. 

“Hi! Sorry if I kept you waiting,” your voice resounds into the night. 

“It's never a problem if it’s you,” he chuckles as you dawdle over to the passenger side of his car. 

Trying not to read too deep into his words, you snort at his cheesy line instead of giving a response. Watching Wonwoo move to the side as he opens the car door for you. His actions make you blush, and you know you’ll think about it for the rest of the night. 

“Are you ready to go?” he asks, smiling at you. 

The ride to Seokmin’s house is fairly quiet, the sounds of music filling the silence instead. Your thoughts are overflowing with scenarios once again, wondering how different the car ride would be if you and Wonwoo were in a relationship. His fingers would probably be laced with yours, or rubbing soothingly against your thigh while his other hand gripped the steering wheel. Planting kisses on your cheeks at every red light. It seemed like heaven on the other side. But you knew reality would crush your delusions soon enough. 

…

  The clock on Seokmin’s pale white wall is nearing midnight and you don’t want to be here anymore. Not when the only thing you could focus on was Wonwoo flirting with a girl whose name you didn’t catch. She’s Joshua’s childhood friend and he only brought her along because she’s visiting from out of town. Whoever she was, it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered to you was the fact that she was able to bring out Wonwoo’s deep laugh. The kind of laugh that only befalls upon your ears when he finds something genuinely funny.

The ugly swirl of jealousy sits in the pit of your stomach and you couldn't help but scoff at your wretched situation. It made you sick watching them, and you could throw up any minute now. At this point, you weren’t sure who to envy, Wonwoo or the girl he was flirting with. You find it unfair that he doesn’t realize how greatly he can impact your feelings. 

Just a few hours ago, you were in utter bliss. Sitting in the front seat of his car, listening to the music softly playing on the ride to Seokmin’s apartment. Making stupid jokes and pointing out the random sights that you had seen while driving down the bustling city streets. You envy how easy it is for Wonwoo to make all those feelings of delight vanish. And he doesn’t even know. He doesn’t know what he’s doing to you, and that’s what hurts the most. 

“You doing okay?” Seokmin comes up to you, placing a gentle hand on your shoulder, squeezing it affectionately. 

“Huh? Oh. Yeah I’m okay,” you chuckle, but there’s nothing humorous about your laugh at all. 

His eyes soften, he knows that you’re not okay. Seokmin always knew. After all these years, he can tell when you’re trying to save face. There’s a lump in your throat, and if you didn’t have a drink to sip on to distract you, you probably would’ve gone to the bathroom to cry. 

“You wanna talk in my room?” he offers, and you’re grateful. 

Seokmin knew he had to get you somewhere other than the living room. You were practically torturing yourself, sitting on the couch and watching Wonwoo talk to everyone but you. 

Instead of agreeing vocally, you nod your head before standing up to follow Seokmin to his room. The door shuts softly, muffling the sounds of laughter and allowing your uneasiness to finally subside. 

As you sit on Seokmin’s bed, you feel the tears starting to trickle down your cheeks. It feels pathetic, crying over something so trivial. Why does it have to be you who feels this way? Why can’t you just be a normal friend and see Wonwoo in a platonic light? The whole world could turn upside and he’d be the first person you search for. 

Everything just seemed so unfair, how could you possibly be happy if your feelings for Wonwoo were constantly in the way of it all? It’s tiring, worrying about him, yearning for him. You could do so many other things with your time, and when you look toward the future, you know that you’ll regret how much of your life you wasted loving someone who doesn’t love you back. 

“It’s okay, just let it out,” Seokmin whispers in your ear, embracing you in a tight hug. 

Crying felt good. You rarely cry over your situation despite how upsetting it is. For the first time in a while, you allowed yourself to finally indulge in your sadness and let go of everything you were too afraid to say or feel.  

“I know it sucks right now, but honestly, it might be time to get over him,” Seokmin continues to comfort you while trying to help you face the reality of your situation. “You’re so hurt, and it’s taking a toll on you. Please, I can’t bear to see you so sad.” 

His words hit you hard because you know it's true. But all you can do is apologize. Saying sorry for feeling this way, even though it’s not your fault, you cannot control your feelings, you still apologize. To Seokmin, to your friends, but also yourself. 

“I-I’m sorry,” you hiccup, tears staining Seokmin’s white shirt. 

“Why are you sorry? You did nothing wrong,” he mutters, his large hand patting your head, trying to soothe your fit of emotions. 

“Because, if I was normal, you wouldn’t have to worry about me, about why I’m always upset, you and the others, my feelings are burdening all of you,” you continue to weep softly in his arms, gripping onto his shoulders as his hands encircle your waist. 

“Hey, look at me–” he grabs your face, gentle as a mouse, rubbing away the tears from your cheeks. “You are not a burden. We care, that’s why we worry, and I just want to be there for you.” 

“Thank you, Seokmin. I’m so happy that I have someone like you in my life,” you pull him into a hug again, knocking the air out of his chest, but he’s still somehow able to hug you even tighter. 

Seokmin is like your favourite childhood blanket, keeping you warm and away from everything that could possibly hurt you. He’s always willing to hear you rant about things that you know you could never tell Wonwoo. 

“I’m so tired, I’m tired of feeling like this,” you admit to him. 

Running his hands through your hair, he gives you a reassuring smile. 

“Maybe it’s time to distance yourself from him a bit, you two have been glued to the hip for so long. Maybe that distance can help organize your feelings better,” he mutters, catching the stray tears that pool at your chin, and wiping them away for you. 

“I want to feel better,” you agree with him, still trying to recover from how hard you were sobbing into his chest. 

“I care about you, okay? We all do. Wonwoo cares about you, too, but there’s a point where you’ll have to be okay with whatever outcome happens if you decide to tell him how you feel. Or you just have to find a way to get over him,” he speaks softly, trying not to crush your heart with reality, but you know he’s right. “In the Future, you will thank yourself for making whatever decision you have to make, but trust me, holding all these feelings in won’t do you any good.” He ends his pep talk there, and you sigh, trying to process everything he said. 

“Thank you, Minnie, I’m so thankful I have you,” you sniffled. 

“And I you.” 

…

Seokmin explained to Soonyoung and Jihoon that you needed to go home after your talk in his bedroom. They were more than happy to take you along with them before heading back to their place, not wanting to force you into a car with Wonwoo at the end of the night. 

“Of course, it’s really no trouble at all,” Soonyoung reassures you after you had asked about a million times if it was okay to ride home with them. 

The car ride is drastically different from the one you had taken on the way to Seokmin’s, Soonyoung being the number one reason why. He’s not the best at reading the room, although Jihoon is constantly telling him to shut up. He knows you are upset over something, but Soonyoung’s way of cheering you up is getting you to laugh. While Jihoon believed that you may want a more peaceful environment after everything that happened. 

As Jihoon drove, Soonyoung sang along with the lyrics of the current song playing. Loud enough for anyone outside the car to hear him. You could tell he was a bit tipsy after the few beers he had earlier, but you didn’t mind the noise. Jihoon begged to differ. 

“Soon, can you tone it down? Please. People are looking at us,” Jihoon grumbles, trying to focus on the road ahead. 

“But you love it when I sing,” Soonyoung whines, and you can’t help but laugh. 

“I do, but our friend has had a long night,” Jihoon counters. 

Soonyoung turns to face you from the passenger seat. “If you want me to be quiet, I will.” 

“No, it’s okay, I’m actually enjoying it, thank you very much,” you giggle, and that was all the confirmation he needed, going back to his antics. 

Jihoon groans as Soonyoung practically breaks out into full song and dance, causing you to sing along with him. This distraction from all the conflicting thoughts gives you a refuge from the war inside your mind.  

The whole way back to your place was filled with singing and laughter, allowing you to finally feel at ease for once. Albeit Jihoon pretended to act annoyed the whole time, you knew he secretly loved how Soonyoung tried to bring the mood back up to help you. 

Once you got home, you thanked the two before bidding them farewell. Apprehension flowed throughout you, and you didn't want to be alone with your thoughts after being around someone as cheerful as Soonyoung. But you didn’t know where else to go or what else to do.

Laying in your bed, you think about how today went from beginning to end, and you’re scared of what will happen in the future. Sighing to yourself, you allow yourself to at least get some rest instead of staying up all night thinking about the possibilities of tomorrow. Turning your phone on "do not disturb," the stillness in your apartment lulls you to sleep. 

1:09 a.m. [wons <3]: seokmin said u went home early? u ok? 

ARE WE STILL FRIENDS?

chapter one. 

Wonwoo’s ride home was sombre, yet desolate. Your absence from his passenger seat irked him. Street lights whisk by his vision in a blur, but he’s too lost in his thoughts as he drives on autopilot, wondering why you went home so early. You didn’t even say goodbye. It’s the first time you went home from Seokmin’s place without him. 

By the time he got home, his curiosity had started to claw at him, but he didn’t want to be irrational and assume the worst. So he texted you, hoping that there would be an explanation awaiting him in the morning. 

Not a single notification from you came that very next morning. No matter how many times his phone went off, no matter how many notifications popped up from his screen. None of them were you. Morning turned to afternoon, and afternoon slowly turned into night. Still nothing. 

He feels dejected. Everything seemed to be going okay just last night. That was until you abruptly left without telling him you were going home. What changed? Why did it feel like there was a shift between you two? 

Rejection is foreign to Wonwoo. Most times, it’s him that’s doing the rejecting. He was the one to always initiate the breakup and lose feelings first; every decision he made was made by him. He has no control over whether you’re going to text him back or not, and to put it simply, he can’t stand that feeling. 

Wonwoo hates not being in control. Whether that be his future, his relationships, and especially his feelings. At least that’s what he forces himself to believe. That it’s not fair of you to ignore him when he’s worried about you, because he’s your best friend. You should answer him when he texts you. When he calls you, and especially when he shows up at your door, seeking your comfort. In his mind, that is what he believes the foundation of your friendship is. To comfort each other, just like it always has been. 

Sure, maybe Wonwoo is entitled, perhaps he’s conceited and selfish, but he doesn’t care. Because in his mind, you’re his best friend. There was no way in hell that you were ignoring him. His ego doesn’t even consider it a possibility. You were busy, that’s it. That has to be it. 

… 

Less than forty-eight hours in, Wonwoo couldn’t stop himself from texting you once more. Nimble fingers practically itching to open your contact to update you about the most mundane things. Maybe if he pretended that this moment of silence was perfectly normal, then maybe you would eventually end up answering him. 

12:36 p.m [wons <3]: class just finished. lunch at our usual place?

Nothing. Not even a thumb’s up reaction. Wonwoo had become antsy, guilt and slight annoyance gnawing at the pit of his stomach. Where the hell are you? What are you doing that’s so important that you couldn’t even open his message let alone read them? 

1:27 p.m.  [wons <3]: this random girl asked for my number after class lol. weird right? i didn’t give it to her though 😁

Cursing at himself, he regrets pressing the send button on that text. Double texting you is already out of the norm for him, but triple texting? He can’t believe how desperate he looks right now. He wishes he could bring himself to unsend it, but he just hopes it’ll be the text that finally gets you to respond. 

2:10 p.m. [wons <3]: saw a bunny running thru the oval today u should’ve seen it! reminded me of u.  [1 photo attachment] 

Absolute radio silence from your end. Wonwoo is starting to think that you had him blocked, but his messages are still delivering. Unsure of what’s worse, you ignoring him or blocking his number, Wonwoo still tries his best to remain calm.

4:00 p.m. [wons <3]: im about to head home soon. r u riding w me today? 

The sight of you getting into Seokmin’s car made Wonwoo scoff. Since when did you start getting rides home from Seokmin? And why was he the one opening the door for you? Buckling your seatbelt instead of his own? Wonwoo is completely dumbfounded at what he has witnessed. 

4:30 p.m.  [wons <3]: saw u get into seokmin’s car, lmk if u need a ride tmrw. 

Seeing you laugh and smile while walking to the student parking lot with Seokmin, of all people, solidified the fact that you are actively ignoring his texts. And he just can’t stand the thought of it. How dare he be ignored? Especially by his best friend, the one person who had always responded to him, no matter the time or how busy you were, you always texted him back. 

Wonwoo initially thought that even if the world ended, you would be there within arms reach, enough to hold you close, where he could keep you safe. You were predictable in that sense. But if the world decided to burst into flames, or swallow itself whole tomorrow, he’s unsure if you would be there right next to him by the time he woke up. 

two, wonwoo’s summer before senior year. 

The school year flew by with the speed of light. And before Wonwoo knew it, he was home back in Korea for the summer. The dreaded fifteen-hour plane ride over was excruciating. There was an ache in his lower back, and his knees felt like they were being struck by a hammer with every step he took. But at least the worst part was over. 

Sixteen-year-old Wonwoo was quite naive, thinking that he’d be welcomed into his home country with loving arms. That hadn’t been the case at all, and for the two months that he spent in Changwon, he couldn’t help but count the days till he could come back home. Where you had been patiently waiting for him. 

He despised being away from you, and he had yearned for you every moment he was gone. With you by his side, Wonwoo had finally understood the true meaning of solace, a peace of mind that couldn’t be replicated. Not even the fresh air that breezed through his fingers or the scent of the salty water misting its way onto the shore of his hometown could outweigh the feeling of tranquillity that he got when he was with you.

Every year that Wonwoo was dragged back to Korea by his parents was excruciating. Especially because he had a certain distaste for his relatives. Maybe it was disrespectful to loathe them the way he did, but he couldn’t care less. Their scathing comments would flow out of their mouths just to pierce daggers of judgement into his back. To insult Wonwoo was second nature to his aunts, and he couldn’t do much but sit back and listen.  

Much to his dismay, his parents hadn’t even bothered to book an Airbnb for their stay, informing him and his brother that they would be staying with his aunt. He couldn’t stand his aunt Seo-Ah in particular, and he swore the feeling was mutual. Unsure of why he had to withstand her crude remarks in front of his family without much protest, he forced himself not to dish out rude rebuttals to everything she had to say. 

There was a time when Wonwoo tried to reason with himself on why his aunt was filled with so much bitterness, but he gave up on that long ago. He was about to be seventeen now, and he couldn’t bring himself to empathize with the older lady anymore. 

“Wonwoo! You’re all grown up now, and I can’t believe it,” Seo-Ah forced him into a bone-crushing hug as he tried his best not to push her off of him. She pulled back to take a closer look at him and he could already see the scrutinizing gleam in her eyes, “You know, you’re still so skinny for your age. Do your parents not feed you enough?” 

Wonwoo wanted to scoff at her, but he kept a neutral expression. 

“No they do, I don’t know maybe it’s my fast metabolism or something,” he refuted her claims. He couldn’t wait to get out of her sight. 

“You know, maybe you should start going to the gym, get some muscle on you or something,” she patted his lanky arm and laughed that dreadful laugh. The ones that have no real humour behind it, just to cover up the obvious dig she took at his appearance. 

“Yeah maybe,” he dismisses her to head into the house. Setting his luggage down to check whether or not you’ve texted him yet. 

It was about five in the evening in Changwon, but he knew you wouldn’t be asleep. Faintly recalling how you were planning to stay up late every night to watch BuzzFeed unsolved videos, or until your mom yelled at you to go to bed. 

[4:15 p.m. kst]  [you: i stayed up all night watching buzzfeed unsolved]  [you: im going crazy i keep getting paranoid to the point i’ve turned all my mirrors backwards]  [you: hope ur flight was ok tho!!! 🫶]

He chuckled to himself, remembering your wide eyes and elaborate plan to sneak snacks into your room in the early hours of the morning behind your parents’ backs. Wonwoo missed you, and your stupid obsession with horror podcasts and YouTube shows. He missed the way your smile would shine so bright as you talked about all the haunted places the hosts would visit. 

Wonwoo did not care for horror or anything scary, but if you were to ask him to stay up all night on Facetime binge-watching your little Buzzfeed videos, he would do so in a heartbeat. 

Two days down, about another 89 to go, Wonwoo thought to himself as he looked through your messages with him. You had already spammed the chat mercilessly about your first two days of summer break, and your intricate mission to stay up without accidentally falling asleep in the middle of it all. 

[6:00 p.m. kst] [1 photo attachment]  [you: currently trying to sneak snacks into my room without my mom knowing]  [you: u better not snitch 😾]  [you: its so boring w out u here btw SO COME BACK SOON PLSS]  [you: ok thats enuff…txt me when u land!]

Wonwoo really missed you. 

…

One more week and Wonwoo would finally get to see you again. The ability to talk to you in person, hug you, and spend time with you gave him something to look forward to, and thankfully, summer break went by fast because of it. 

He had spent most of his time in Korea eating at local food spots, going to the gym, and trying a lot of new things with his brother, Seongho, giving them time to bond before he went off to University again. Wonwoo had missed his brother dearly during the school year, but at least they were able to pass the time together during summer break. 

It was initially his brother’s convincing that got him to go to the gym for the very first time. The idea of going to a place with a lot of sweaty, adrenaline-filled people kind of frightened him, but the more he went, the more he started to like what he saw in the mirror. Wonwoo’s shoulders had broadened, and his lanky arms finally started to show signs of muscles. He was satisfied in knowing that all of his hard work, and Seongho’s encouragement had finally paid off. 

Seongho told him he looked a lot more carefree now that he wasn’t so worried about his appearance all the time. And it was then that Wonwoo realized that he wasn’t all that bad-looking, after all. 

Wonwoo had begun to take pride in his vanity. He searched for different ways to style his hair, bought glasses that better suited his face shape, and, most of all, did his best to act more confidently. The sudden change made him wonder how you would react. He had been anticipating your reaction, wanting to see the look on your face once he returned home. 

“You got it. Just one more rep, and we can switch,” Seongho encouraged Wonwoo as he tried to push the bar up from his chest. 

His muscles were aching in the most addictive and satisfying way. He almost wished he had started working out earlier because only good things seemed to have come ever since he stepped foot into the gym. 

“Okay! You’re done, that was good,” his older brother high-fived him, a proud smile dancing along his lips. 

“Thanks, but my arms feel like jelly now,” he huffed a chuckle before gulping down the contents of his water bottle. 

Seongho chuckled along with him before setting himself down on the workout bench. His actions faltered, and he slowly observed the mirror in front of him, raising his eyebrows in amusement. 

“Uh, don’t look now, but I think that girl is staring at you,” Seongho tilted his head in the girl’s direction and Wonwoo couldn’t be more confused. 

“Huh? Are you sure it's me they’re looking at and not you?” 

“I’m serious! You should go talk to her,” Seongho grinned, pushing his younger brother in the direction of the girl who was supposedly eyeing Wonwoo. 

“Hyung!” Wonwoo calls out but it falls on deaf ears as his older brother begins his bench presses. 

Wonwoo turns towards the girl in the most awkward way humanly possible. He was completely dumbfounded and not sure what to do in the situation he’d been put in. The girl who was staring at him waved flirtatiously, and before he could even think about his next move, his feet had begun to move on their own accord. 

“Hi, I saw you working out over there, are you new here?” she asked him, batting her eyelashes. 

“Uhm, I guess? I’m only here for the summer though,” he spoke with apprehension, because what the hell was he even supposed to say? 

“Oh! Me too. My name is Haein, by the way.” Haein’s smile reached her eyes as she giggled, and her hand extended to shake Wonwoo’s. 

Wonwoo’s actions were practically robotic, rubbing his sweaty palms on his gym shorts before taking her hand in his. He remembers thinking about how soft her hands were, and how pretty she looked with her hair tied up in a messy bun. 

“I’m Wonwoo.” 

“Wonwoo, hmm, that’s a cute name. But I think I would like it more in my contacts,” she flirted shamelessly, her fingers squeezing his sweaty bicep. 

Wonwoo’s mind short-circuited, and he took out his phone from his pocket so fast it almost slipped out of his grasp. Haein found it endearing though, and happily gave him her phone number. 

They talked for the rest of Wonwoo's time at the gym and promised to hang out more before they both went home at the end of the summer. 

To put it simply, Wonwoo was on cloud nine for the first time since he’s been here. Suddenly his aunt Seo-Ah’s words weren’t so hurtful, his confidence had skyrocketed, plus he had a beautiful girl to talk to for the rest of his vacation. 

By the end of summer, Wonwoo started to miss you less and less. Even though he still saw you as his best friend, he began to find peace in other things, like the fresh air that breezed through his fingers or the scent of the salty water misting its way onto the shore of his hometown. Finally, for the first time in his life, Wonwoo felt serene, and that made him a little more whole than he was when he first landed in Changwon. 

…

The after-effects of Wonwoo’s surprisingly pleasant summer vacation hadn’t worn off just yet. The gift of Haein appearing in his life seemed to just keep on giving. Not only did she live overseas, she had told him that she was actually from the same city as him. It was a little hard to believe at first as if he was the main character in a cheesy rom-com, but he couldn’t find it in him to complain. Haein made him feel wanted, excited, and cared for. 

Wonwoo wasn’t entirely devoid of those feelings, especially with you as his best friend, but it was different coming from Haein. Every time he saw her, he felt like he was going to throw up, in a good way of course, but she also boosted his confidence. He liked that she made him feel like he was a man worth depending on. 

Haein was his first real relationship, and although he was still young, he could see himself being with her for a long time. 

…

Quite like the seasons, Wonwoo’s feelings for Haein changed drastically by the time school was back in session. Although he and Haein lived in the same city, there was a lot more than just distance that separated them. 

Six months into their relationship, Wonwoo began to doubt himself. He was less eager to meet her or even text her. He could only blame himself for how things turned out with Haein. Despite his adolescence, he believed he loved her; he just got tired and disinterested. 

On a subconscious level, Wonwoo could not stop comparing Haein to you, and as fucked up as that was, it was completely out of his control. Why didn’t Haein ever want to talk about what Wonwoo was interested in? Why did she seem bored out of her mind when he would delve into his theories about his favourite shows? Or anything about himself and what he liked. As though she didn’t see him for the Wonwoo he was, the personality he had behind his looks. 

“It all makes sense now! Eren had Zeke fooled!” Wonwoo couldn’t contain his excitement about the newest episode, but Haein didn’t seem interested in hearing her boyfriend geek out. 

“I'm sorry babe, but I gave up after the first episode,” Haein sighed into the phone, and if Wonwoo could guess, she was probably picking at her cuticles out of boredom. “I just didn’t get anything that was happening.” 

“Wait, really?” He was a little offended, how could she not be obsessing over the beautiful intricacies of his favourite anime? Wonwoo didn’t understand. 

He didn’t understand because when he introduced you to the show, you texted him the next day saying you were caught up to where he had left off. It amazed Wonwoo how fast you were at binge-watching shows, especially because he had told you about it on a weekday. 

You came into school the morning after with dark circles under your eyes, but even with that tired look on your face, you ran up to him with so much eagerness while thanking him for urging you to watch his favourite show. You two were obsessed and never missed out on watching the weekly episodes together.  It had become you and Wonwoo’s thing, and even though he wanted Haein to join in on the fun, he found himself more entertained by your theories than by talking on the phone with his girlfriend. 

It dawned on him that he wished that Haein acted a little more like you. And it made him feel guilty. He knew he should’ve loved Haein no matter her interests, but he wanted someone who could understand his nerdy side. And that was only something that you were able to do. 

“Honestly, I’m really tired, I’m gonna go to bed now okay?” Haein’s voice brought Wonwoo out of his thoughts. 

“Oh okay. Night.” He said before ending the call so quickly that Haein’s ‘I love you’ was cut off mid-sentence. 

Haein probably had thought he had forgotten, but Wonwoo just didn’t want to say those words if he didn’t mean it. He had grown annoyed, and a little bored of practically talking to a wall all night.  

Comparable to the light switching off in his bedroom, he decided to do the same thing with Haein. He pushed his guilt aside and decided it was probably best to leave Haein and Changwon in the past. The memories of his last week of summer with her would become something he would look back on in the future and smile. But he didn’t want to pretend any longer, it would’ve just hurt her more if he stayed, he couldn’t help that he fell out of love with her. The least he could do was not lead her on. 

Wonwoo’s relationship with Haein was merely a catalyst and a peek into what the rest of his relationships were going to look like in adulthood. He was never able to comprehend why he couldn’t keep feelings for anyone after the six-month mark, and it almost frustrated him. Something was missing in every single relationship he had been in, and he wasn’t sure what that was. But he was determined to find an answer. 

three, present time.

The answer was you. But of course, Wonwoo didn’t know that. 

“Are you gonna keep checking your phone every five minutes or are you gonna do your homework?” Mingyu lectures him. 

The two were studying in the library before their stats midterm, but Wonwoo’s mind couldn’t help but wonder. He hasn’t been acting like himself since the night of Seokmin’s party. 

“Oh, right.” Wonwoo clears his throat, putting his phone face down on the table. 

Wonwoo drags his palms against his face, trying to not let sleep overtake him. It is not his fault that every time he tries to close his eyes, your face comes into his mind. The memory of you smiling with Seokmin made his insides twist. He hasn’t seen you smile that hard in a while, and he almost misses how your eyes crinkle whenever you do so. You were practically haunting him and he had no idea how to make it stop. 

“Not to be rude, but you’ve been looking like shit lately. What’s wrong?” Mingyu questions him with furrowed eyebrows. 

Wonwoo rolls his eyes at his friend, he didn’t have to be insulted to know how crappy he looked, but Mingyu seemed to only be telling the truth. Wonwoo did look and feel like shit. With the amount of near run-ins he’s had with you and Seokmin on campus, he’s begun to sense that it’s some sort of karma. Whatever that karma may be for, he fully believes that it’s completely unwarranted. 

Forcing a hand through his dark locks, Wonwoo contemplates whether or not he should just go up to you in person and demand answers. It’s uncommon for the two of you to fight, or ignore each other for that matter. But he can’t help but presume that if he were to confront you about your silence, there would be no rightful explanation. Or at least not the explanation that he wants from you. 

Every time he even fathoms the thought of barging into your apartment and asking what the hell is wrong, there’s a lingering nervousness that he wishes would dissipate, leading him to lay awake with his thoughts for hours on end. 

“Thanks for that, asshole, I just haven’t been getting much sleep,” Wonwoo huffs. 

“Okay, obviously. You practically look like a zombie with the way you’ve been moping around. What has been keeping you up?” Mingyu presses. 

It’s not every day that Wonwoo indulges in his problems with Mingyu, that’s what you were for. However, he can’t talk about his problems about you, to you, so he’ll have to settle for the next best thing.  

“Y/N has been ignoring me since the night we all hung out at Seokmin’s,” Wonwoo confesses, and it feels nice. 

For the past two weeks, he’s been keeping his frustrations to himself, and now that he can freely speak about it lifts the weight off his chest. 

Mingyu snorts, obviously finding his friend’s situation humorous. Wonwoo sneers at Mingyu’s reaction, clearly not finding anything about you ignoring him funny. 

“Serves you right, you’re a dick to her, man.” Mingyu shrugs without any remorse to spare. 

“What?” Wonwoo sputters, since when was he a dick to you? His best friend? 

“How blind are you? You have glasses and everything but you can’t see how mean you are to her sometimes? Really?” Mingyu almost sounds offended on your behalf as he stares at Wonwoo with an incredulous expression. 

“I am not a dick to her. She would definitely tell me if I’ve ever said something to hurt her feelings,” Wonwoo defends himself. 

Attempting to rack his brain of all your moments together, he can’t seem to pick out a memory where he has been especially rude to you. Of course, you two teased each other from time to time, but he wasn’t a complete asshole. He knew when to not take a joke too far or purposely try to upset you. 

“You’re a dumbass.” Mingyu lets out a frustrated sigh which only aggravates Wonwoo even more. 

“Could you stop with the insults for one second and just tell me what’s going on?” 

Shutting his laptop, Mingyu’s posture becomes serious, a deviation from his usual carefree and smiley self. He cares about you just as much as the next person, so if he had to reality-check his friend, then so be it. 

“She cares about you a lot. And you treat her like shit. It’s not about what you’ve said to her, it’s your actions. Ever since we were in high school all you’ve done is use her to solve your problems. I can’t even blame her for wanting to cut you off. I don’t know what happened at Seokmin’s place for her to realize that, but you don’t deserve her,” Mingyu confesses. 

Soaking up each word that left Mingyu’s mouth, Wonwoo sat in a pool of perplexity. There are so many questions flying through his mind, yet he can’t seem to utter a single word. Is that really how everyone perceives his friendship with you? 

Wonwoo is going to throw up. There's a tightness in his chest and a burning sensation behind his eyes. He wants nothing more than to hear all of this coming from you, not Mingyu. The frustration of wanting to talk to you about this is taking a toll on him, he doesn’t want to believe that Mingyu is telling the truth. 

It’s not fair. It’s not fair that Mingyu gets to know these things about you while Wonwoo is just left in the dark. Did he make you feel like you couldn’t tell him anything? 

Ever since Wonwoo met you, it was evident that he can be quite merciless when it comes to his relationships, but that’s romantic, not platonic. Wonwoo was convinced that he treated you equally because that’s how it's supposed to be. 

Hearing Mingyu talk about his friendship with you in that way caused Wonwoo’s whole world to crash down. And the only thing he can do in moments like these is seek out your comfort, except he can’t anymore. Not only has he been a terrible friend without realizing it, but he’s pushed you so far to the brink that you’d rather ignore him than attempt to hash out what’s been troubling you.

“I-I didn’t know that's how you guys saw our friendship,” Wonwoo falters, clearly taken aback, and still attempting to fully comprehend what’s been said to him. 

“It’s not that we see your friendship with her that way, it is that way. If I was her, I would’ve cut you off a long time ago.” 

“Well, thanks, Gyu. I feel like this could’ve been said before she started ignoring me,” Wonwoo huffs, trying to come up with the words to explain his side.

“It was kinda obvious, man,” Mingyu shrugs. 

“Was it, though? If I had known, I would’ve at least tried to be better,” Wonwoo attests, tired of feeling like the bad guy. 

“How about you just talk to her about it instead of sulking,” Mingyu suggests. 

Desperation hijacked his rational thinking, making Mingyu’s advice sound plausible. Talking to you seemed out of the equation since you started ignoring him; he feared you wouldn’t even answer if he tried to call or show up at your door. But he can’t go on like this, especially now that he knows there is more to your friendship than he had initially thought. 

four. 

For the first time in Wonwoo’s life, he’s unsure about what decision to make. Although he wants nothing more than to knock on your door, his feet stop him from even entering your building. So instead of mucking up the courage to talk to you face to face, he waits inside his car. Without a solid plan, he continues to sit there, biding his time. 

Never has he acted so pathetic in his life, not even for the sake of his relationships. He knows that nothing will come from sitting there, just watching, but before he can even comprehend what he is doing and where he is going, he is already across the street from your place. 

Gripping on the leather of his steering wheel, he just couldn’t help himself. He can’t help but watch your silhouette from your window. The curtains are drawn, but there are glimpses of you walking around. He’s such a fucking loser. What type of person has Wonwoo become that he resorts to stalking you from the front of your building? 

After all that Mingyu has enlightened him on, Wonwoo’s attitude has become less angry and more apologetic. There was a line he pondered crossing, and it practically mocked him. Stepping over that line would mean getting answers from you, demanding to be brought into the light that you had snuffed out from under him. But his uncertainty of the outcome outweighed his decision to do so.

That same apologetic attitude died a fiery death after watching Seokmin leave your apartment. There you were in all your glory, the tiny sleep set clinging onto your body as the wind forced its way into the door of your building. Then there was Seokmin, grinning like a fucking idiot as he waved goodbye. 

“Shit!” Wonwoo grunts as he ducks down, not wanting to blow his cover. His car was visible from where the two of you stood, hoping that you weren’t able to recognize it in the dead of night.  

Boring holes into the back of Seokmin’s head, Wonwoo's guilt diminished, floating away with the cold night breeze. You were fine, and he should’ve known that the root of all his problems started with the name Lee Seokmin. 

The shape of your figure had faded into the confines of your building. Yet Wonwoo can still make out your body through the glass window of your door. He can’t help but gawk at your skimpy attire, your ass practically on display for the whole world to see. The deathly twist in his gut intensifies the more he ponders on what may have happened during Seokmin’s visit. Wonwoo desperately wants to stop thinking about the possibilities, especially because your lack of clothing only fueled that inferno inside his mind. 

He’s never been more annoyed at Seokmin in his entire life, not until today. 

Wonwoo allowed himself to ignore the signs, but only for a moment. But this, this he can’t ignore. Not after what he witnessed. He allowed himself to stay ignorant when it came to your silence because he had been so naive to think that it was your decision. Now that he knows Seokmin had somehow weaselled his way closer to you, Wonwoo had to make sure this plan of his didn’t go on any longer. 

…

There is a heat inside Wonwoo that, for some reason, he cannot extinguish. The curve and outlines of your body burn in the back of his retinas. No matter how many times he’s tried to put himself to sleep, the image of you is clear as day in his mind.  Sparks crawl their way up his spine, and he desperately wishes that it would just go away. 

There’s a point where Wonwoo gave up on trying to sleep altogether. Thoughts of you, your body, and the oh-so-painful reminder that you’re still ignoring him. How can he sleep with everything going on? What made things worse, was the fact that the one person he wanted to call most likely wouldn’t pick up.

Wonwoo wasn’t the type of person to let his emotions get the better of him, but this abrupt rift that has been torn between you two has him acting out in ways he’s never acted before. 

The urge to grab his phone, to text you, to give it one more try, grows perpetually every second he lies awake. 

One more time. One more attempt. What does he have to lose? 

Wonwoo stands up, pacing around nonsensically, trying to think of what to say. For all he knows, you may not even answer, but there is the urge to hear your voice one more time and see your name pop up on his screen. Wonwoo yearns for you so much so that it supersedes any part of common sense he has left in him. 

[12:52 a.m.]  [wons <3: darling. can we talk? please?]  [not delivered] 

The silence within the four walls of Wonwoo’s bedroom is harrowing. Out of all the outcomes he had considered before he texted you, the outcome of you blocking him was not even on the list. 

Before jumping to some sort of conclusion, Wonwoo’s finger hovers over the call button with skepticism. If you don’t pick up, then that’s it. That would be the definitive answer to all his qualms. 

“The number you have called is not available, please leave a message at the tone,” an automated voice affirmed his suspicions. 

The notification is gut-wrenching, but he can’t just sit here and pretend like it’s okay for you to do this. To decide without any of his input. What kind of friend were you to just drop him like he was nothing but an old toy? How unfair did you have to be to not even try to talk it out before you completely cut him off? 

five. 

Pacing outside the door of your apartment, Wonwoo hasn’t been this nervous in years. He has always been so sure of himself, but it’s almost two in the morning and he’s still continuing to weigh his options. 

It’s either you’ll let him in, and talk for the first time in almost two weeks, or you’ll kick him out before he can step a foot past the door. Desperately, he desires that it be the first option. Losing you over this would break him, and not in the way you would expect. 

He’s already lost his mind. This shouldn’t be the way you two break it off. It won’t be the way you two break it off. Not if Wonwoo has a say in the situation. 

Sweaty palms and white knuckles rasp against the dark oak that barricades himself from you. There’s nothing that Wonwoo wants more than to see your face glowing in front of him. And before he can even get a word out to you, the door whips open. The person on the other side is someone Wonwoo is starting to get really sick of seeing. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” Both Wonwoo and Seokmin speak in unison. 

Scoffing, Wonwoo rolls his eyes at his so-called friend, “I think I should be asking you that. You clearly don’t live here.” 

“Minnie? Is someone at the door?” your voice is as sweet as a glass of lemonade on a hot summer’s day. 

Minnie. Wonwoo almost threw up in his mouth. 

Minnie. The nickname is parallel to nails scraping against a chalkboard. 

“Yeah! Your neighbour just needed to borrow something,” Seokmin goads through a sickly sweet smile, eyes never leaving Wonwoo’s. Without as much as a word of mockery, Seokmin’s expression had said more than his words ever could have. 

Despite his soft demeanour, Wonwoo knew there was something vile hiding under Seokmin’s thick skin. 

A rebuttal to his deception is on the tip of Wonwoo’s tongue, but your melodic voice echoes throughout your home once more. The refute dies within his throat, and he hopes you will come out and see what your “neighbour” is looking for. 

“Okay!” is the only response you give out. The reverberation of the water hitting the shower tiles causes Wonwoo’s stomach to practically lurch out his abdomen. 

“Whatever you’re doing, she’s not gonna fall for it,” Wonwoo jeered, staring at Seokmin with looks that should kill, if he could. 

Seokmin chuckles bitterly, “She already has.” 

There was no need for Wonwoo to put two and two together; he already knew what Seokmin was alluding to. It left a dreadful taste in his mouth. 

Puffing out his chest, Wonwoo takes a step closer towards the man he once considered a close friend. Sizing him up, he knew that Seokmin was the reason for the wedge in your friendship. And Wonwoo had no problem treating him as such. 

“You’re fucking sick, you know that?” Wonwoo practically spits in his face. 

“I could say the same thing for you,” Seokmin mutters, unperturbed, “I didn’t have to do anything you know? Just a little push and she fell into my lap, voluntarily.” 

“I’m not just going to let you get away with something like this. She’s my best friend.” 

“I think the correct tense is was. She was your best friend,” Seokmin taunted. 

He was wrong about Seokmin. Even though he had known about his friend's crush on you for years, Wonwoo didn’t expect the lengths Seokmin would go to in order to cut him out of the picture. 

Before a breath could even escape his lips, Seokmin cuts him off, “I think it’s time for you to leave. She doesn’t want to see you.”

The last few words that he heard come out of Seokmin’s mouth nearly fell on deaf ears. It was practically a whisper, laced with enough malice to almost kill the fighting spirit inside him. Almost. 

“By the way, don’t text her anymore. I’ve made sure she won’t get any more notifications from you.” 

The realization had struck Wonwoo hard. He knew you well enough that you wouldn’t just block him so carelessly, without a word no less. Yet he was no match for Seokmin, not after the fact that you allowed him into your home, your heart, so willingly. 

…

Lying in wait, Wonwoo observes the door of your building once more. The distinct difference this time was that Wonwoo had no guilt left in him to care. Whether you see him or his car across the street didn’t matter to him anymore. The only thing Wonwoo wanted to make sure of was whether or not Seokmin would be leaving your place. 

After what had felt like hours, he watched the same scene from last night unfold in front of him once more. The abhorrent hug goodbye that is exchanged between you and Seokmin is nothing but a cue for Wonwoo to make his move.

With as much grace as a bull in a china shop, he slams the car door shut, not even bothering to lock it before he stalks his way to your apartment. The anticipation caused the hairs on his neck to stand straight up. As he presses the button to your floor, he can only deliberate whether any of Seokmin’s words hold any truth behind them.

 Certainly not, right? Not after all the years you spent together. His friendship with you couldn’t end on this vague note. You were always the sentimental type, holding onto trinkets, memories, and even people for far too long. It should be the same with Wonwoo; he believed it would be the same. 

If there is a chance, you should allow him to talk and voice his opinion. No, Wonwoo will voice his opinion; there has never been a time when you haven’t let him speak. 

As the elevator ascends to your floor, anxiety begins to weigh down his shoulders. The feeling is atypical and Wonwoo hates how his throat constricts. He hates how his clothes feel too tight and stuffy despite his casual attire. Is this how it feels? To actually care about someone and whether their decisions might affect him later on? 

Footsteps echo within the hallway, and with each step he takes, the illusion steadily becomes more vivid. Your front door almost looks like it’ll take a mile before Wonwoo can reach it, rather than a few feet away. 

After what felt like years, Wonwoo stands before the entrance of your home once more. The foreboding tension won’t vanish and it’s starting to make him itch. Without another thought, Wonwoo forces himself to knock on the door knowing it’ll be you who answers this time, not Seokmin. 

“Minnie? Did you leave something agai—,” Abrupt silence engulfs your words, leaving nothing but an echo to resonate within the expanse of your long hallway.

“Wonwoo…” your voice falters, like you genuinely didn’t expect to see him, let alone have him standing outside your door. 

“Did you fuck him?” Wonwoo cuts to the chase, not leaving any room for you to ask questions. 

His blunt words caused a frown to grace your soft pink lips, and Wonwoo almost felt bad for being so frank. But he doesn’t have time to beg for your forgiveness, the anger surmounting to nothing but harsh words and a push past you and into your home. 

“Did you fuck him? Yes or no?”  Wonwoo continues to press you for answers, agitated that you have the audacity to stand there dumbfounded. As if you don’t know who he's talking about. “C’mon, you know who I’m talking about,” he can almost laugh at the situation in front of him. 

How is it that all the rage he built up for Seokmin is being taken out on you? Wonwoo had no clue, but the thought of his friend-now-enemy defiling you, tasting you, while Wonwoo desperately waited for your call caused him to direct all his anger to you. Perhaps it’s undeserving to do so, but Wonwoo’s frustration spoke for him before his brain could even register what he was saying. 

“The past two weeks you’ve been ignoring me, spending your time with him, do you know where his true intentions lie?” Wonwoo continues to rant with unpreparedness. 

He didn’t plan what he was going to say because there was a moment of doubt, he had expected you to open the door just to slam it right back in his face. The look you gave him almost brought him to his knees. Your doe-eyed expression could’ve broken down every wall he’s built if only he hadn’t let his anger proceed him. 

Wonwoo should’ve cried, to plead for you to take him back. To go back to the way things were. He knew he fucked up the moment he uttered a single word. The hurt flashed across your face as though Wonwoo turned your world upside down. 

“Seokmin doesn’t care about you, and I’ll tell you that now because you need to hear it. He just wants to fuck you! And you just gave that to him?” He can’t stop talking. 

“Stop. Just stop fucking talking Wonwoo. Do you hear yourself right now?” You cut off his rant. “Out of all people, who gave you the right to tell me who I can and cannot fuck? Especially knowing the type of person that you are. It doesn’t matter if Seokmin and I had sex. What matters is the fact that you think you can barge in here at two-thirty in the morning interrogating me over a situation that doesn’t involve you.” 

“No. I’m just trying to help you. Seokmin isn’t the person that you think he is,” Wonwoo seethes, annoyed at how you’re twisting his words. 

The bile in his throat rose further, as you stood before him like he had just kicked your dog. Wonwoo’s extremely aware of the hole he had dug for himself, but he couldn’t stop. His urge to self-sabotage overrides his common sense. 

“That is exactly what we’re not going to do right now. Seokmin has been a better friend to me than you have been in all the years we’ve known each other. I have been by your side for years, bending over backwards. I was at your beck and call and I’m tired. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and warn myself about you. I fell in love with my best friend, and the worst part was that you didn’t care enough to notice. 

“I gave up so much for you, Wonwoo. I lost myself trying to please you. But I give up. I was drowning in my love for you. It consumed every part of me to the point I couldn’t even come up for air. And I’m just sick of it. I know there’s a part of you that cares about me too, but it’ll never be equal. I’ll always love you more than you love me, and I don’t want to feel this way anymore.” 

“What hurts me the most, is that you thought it would be okay to accuse me of things I didn’t even do. I did not sleep with Seokmin, but why is that what you care about?  He respects me and just wants to be there for me. And that’s a lot more than I could ever say about you.” 

Your voice was terrifyingly calm, with neither a lilt nor a hiccup during your speech. The heft of your declaration crashed back down onto Wonwoo, leaving him at a loss for words. 

“I’m sorry,” is the first thing to come out of his mouth after a long pause. 

“Please. It’s late, you should go home,” you sigh, but Wonwoo couldn’t move an inch. He refused. 

“I’m sorry,” he repeats himself, looking into your eyes, searching for the look of endearment you had always given him. 

“Wonwoo…” there it is. Your voice had broken for the first time since Wonwoo stepped foot in the place. 

“Please. I’m so fucking sorry. For getting angry, for doubting you, for not realizing how badly you were hurting,” Wonwoo resorted to pleading. 

A look of desperation mixed with agony was the only thing you could exchange for his apologies.

The stare of grief you had given him caused a shooting pain to swell throughout his limbs. The one that begins at his fingertips, creeping up to tug at the strings that held his heart together. He wanted this nightmare to end, and he was sure you did too. 

“It’s time for you to go. I’m tired, Wonwoo.”  A single tear slips and trickles down your cheek. 

He regrets not wiping it away for you at that moment. It was the first time he had been so unsure of his actions. So, instead, he walked out of your apartment, leaving nothing but the lingering scent of his cologne and a piece of his heart. 

Wonwoo's world was crumbling underneath him, and there was only one person he refused to let go of. He should’ve known.

He should’ve known that you were in front of him this whole damn time.

end of act one.

⊹ a/n: if you liked this story pls dont be afraid to let me know thru a reblog, comment or ask! also a big ty to my beshies forever @vapidlynn and @bunnyjjongie who i've texted multiple times in the wee hours of the morning for reassurance abt this thing hehe.

[d0g-water]

lowkey weird request so u don’t have to do it if u want but reader who smokes/vapes and quackity wants them to stop/tries to get them to stop by hiding their stuff or taking it away and such!

lol this is fine don’t worry my love!! :3c

alex has been nagging you about vaping ever since you two started dating. he’s against it, and you didn’t really mind… everyone has their own opinions.

you’re going to continue buying and hitting carts, wether he likes it or not.

he doesn’t bother to try and understand how much it means to you.

so it all makes sense when it seems like he’s taking matters into his own hands…

“alex, have you seen my vape? i can’t find it anywhere.” you ask him, a bit concerned… you spent about thirty dollars on it, and you haven’t even gotten to use it.

it was fruit punch flavored, so it was going to taste amazing… after a long day of dealing with shitty customers at your job, and seeing everyone on social media fond over how pretty alex is when they aren’t even dating him like you are.

these emotions are pretty overwhelming, this substance was the only way to let it all out.

a lot of mechanisms never worked, so you had no choice but to try this one…

and it works perfectly.

your question silences the room for a few seconds, before your man quickly breaks it,

“no. why would i touch that thing? it’s gross!” he answers, but his body language is speaking differently.

seems like he’s hiding something…

“are you lying, alex?? because it’s not funny.”

you’re starting to feel a little pissed… how could he take something to expensive and hide it from you?? and to add, lie about it??

he’s your boyfriend. he’s not supposed to do that! if he wanted to settle your differences, he could’ve said so. not try doing it without passing a single word to your ear and expecting you to figure it out.

he guiltily sighs, reaching into his pocket and showing it to you, “…i have it.”

“why’d you take it, assh— alex?!”

you swore you weren’t that addicted, but you almost called your own beloved boyfriend an asshole for taking it away.

maybe this is a reason why he’s doing this.

“well, i want you to quit, y/n! it’s really bad for you, y’know?? it can kill you… and…” he shamefully gives you a lecture, “i don’t really want to lose you. even if it takes a long ass while for you to die from it.”

he’s so cute. you want to reassure him that you won’t die from stupid flavored air, but that wouldn’t really do anything…

poor baby. he loses everyone. he wants you here forever, and that can’t be possible unless you quit.

but are you really going to quit for some guy?

he hands you back the cart, refusing to look at you in the eye “here, i’m sorry for taking it..”

you feel bad now. you give it back to him, forcing his eyes on you. this was the love of your life right here…

if he’s going to do everything for you, then what can you do in return? if this is something he wants? you should give it to him, no?

“…i’ll try and quit for you, alex.” you tell him, almost cringing at your own words. it sounds like you’re in some fanfiction, where your famous streamer boyfriend that doesn’t even know the vape-addict reader in real life tries to stop them from substance abuse. it’s not middle school anymore …

“are you sure? i know it’s going to be hard, but i can help you.”

“yes, i’m sure, lex! don’t make me regret it—”

“naahh, you’ll thank me later… i threw away your entire cart drawer.”

“what?!”

[ghoulgeists]

Does Destreza have irises & pupils? Or are his eyes the yellow/orange/gold with the lighter part implying line of sight?

icb I never answered this im so sorry? letting his fans down...

Des doesnt have pupils, his eyes are just solid orange! They do glow faintly (hence the change in colour), and I don't really have a good way of implying line of sight for him lol

Just imagine he's looking at you and only you :)

[bangcakes]

.

[alittleemo]

man they rlly said we are going to make your grocery store experience so miserable and hangry bc the rest of your day will be so overwhelmingly good we need to balance it out brother. and wow it rlly was great what a 180

[mygnolia]

to weave my love ⭒ n. riki

⭒ SYNOPSIS -› Riki is good at many things- dancing, making fun of his friends, playing it cool (debatable.), Hell- he’s even good at saving people from falling buildings without getting whiplash. But the things he’s bad at? Well, it’s asking you out to prom, and trying to balance the shared assignment he has with you…while being Spider-man.

⭒ PAIR -› spiderman!nishimura riki x fem-pres!reader

⭒ GENRE -› fluff, banter, action ⭒ TROPES -› classmates to lovers, idiots to lovers ⭒ WC -› 17k (i’m sorry idk why either.)

⭒ INCLUDES -› SPOILERS FOR GREAT GATSBY, cursing, non-graphic injuries (reader discretion advised), yes i made the patching up with first aid kit trope SUE ME!! takes place in a busy city similar to new york never specified, reader is rich, jake and heeseung are seniors and riki’s a junior, is riki stupid? yes… jake reveals stuff because he is also a little silly, reader wears a red dress!

⭒ GREAT GATSBY -› basically jay gatsby has this weird amt of money but no one rlly knows how he got it (nefarious reasons) and hes been in love with this girl daisy for five years but then she got married to tom buchanan but he gets rich so he can get the house across from her and wistfully watch her and he pines after her like CRAZY but he dies at the end

⭒ REN SAYS...special huge fat kiss to thena @sensitively-taken you will be in the will when im a millionaire THANK YOU for helping me with so much of this I WUV U AND I WLL BE WAITING FOR UR HUENING FIC!!! | LIBRARY

NISHIMURA RIKI MIGHT DIE FROM PRE-ADULTHOOD STRESS, IF THAT’S EVEN A THING.

What exactly does Riki have to worry about as a seventeen-year-old junior in high school? Right now, his most daunting responsibility is catching up on the chapters of The Great Gatsby because the only thing Riki’s actually read from the novel is that the main character shares a name with his best friend and senior, Park Jay. His second most daunting responsibility is handling the fact that with the new seating chart in his Literature class, it means he’s sitting next to the object of his very subtle affections, you. 

See, the problem with having a crush on you is that Nishimura Riki’s committed to thinking that you’re way out of his league, and unfortunately, the boy believes that almost too well. Not only are you minted beyond his wildest dreams (having seen your posts on social media), but you’re hardworking, helpful, and dedicated to your role as student body treasurer. He’s already understood that you’d never go for a guy like him. Maybe someone more like Park Sunghoon, whose parents’ salary matches yours. If Riki lived in a rural estate with generational wealth, handling the whole ‘Spider-Man’ thing might be a bit easier for him, considering he wouldn’t have to try so hard in school. It might even change the fact that Riki dealt with some alleyway criminals last night and is currently catching up on lost sleep, as your English Literature teacher goes on and on about a project on the book you’re reading. 

In class, and even sometimes outside of the classroom, your small tendency to not pay attention to your surroundings has landed you in some awkward situations—like now. 

“I don’t really tell anyone this, but I hate Daisy.” And instead of getting a response, you glance over to see Nishimura Riki slumped on the desk. Without trying to make preconceptions about what could land him in a situation like this, you poke his arm, stifling a smile at how his eyes widen when you’ve caught him rubbing the very obvious sleep from his eye. 

“Sorry,” he whispers, still fighting the post-nap grogginess, “Did I miss anything?” 

(Nope.)

Shaking your head, you return your attention to your teacher as he continues to answer questions. The second Mr. Yoo assigned a report, you wanted to die even more considering the work you had to do on top of the impending due dates. But for it to be partnered? And for you to get seated and paired with the one boy who's known for not caring about school? Maybe things are a little stacked against you, but there has to be a reason why Riki’s somehow still passing all his classes…right?

Considering it’s the last assignment about the book, you’re glad that you already read it so many times to know what you want to put into words. And in retrospect, answering a few open-ended questions about it can’t be that hard—the hardest part would be getting your partner to stay awake in class. 

A small tap at your side makes you turn to face Riki, who you see has frantically written a page full of notes about the project in the past three minutes and how he can succeed. “Can you go over the first part? Sorry…I was…y’know.” 

“It’s a partner project. And we’re partners.” You wince at the awkward wording. 

Great! Riki was caught sleeping and that was your first impression of him for your paired assignment? Riki feels so stupid in front of you right now—in front of your meticulous notes with annotations and proper highlighting. He wants to curl up into a ball when he sees you glance over at his haphazard attempt to look like he was paying attention when, in truth, he was trying to remember the dream he had just ten minutes prior. When you offer him a small smile and nod, leaning over with your notebook in hand, he sighs in relief, thanking whoever it was that let him get away with his naps without the consequence of irritating you afterwards. 

The bell rings when Mr. Yoo stops talking, and you pause, startled by the sound. Instead of leaving, however, you pack your bag and shuffle to his side of his desk, continuing to parrot details about your report in hopes that it all makes sense. You need to make sure he knows what he’s doing. 

“I think one of the questions he mentioned was like ‘Is Gatsby a good person?’ and do you remember how in Chapter Eight…” The rest gets zoned out and forgotten in the boy’s head, because he in fact does not know what happened in Chapter Eight. He doesn’t know what happened…in any part of the book. But he agrees anyway, pretending like he understands what scene you’re trying to explain. What he notices is how thorough and dedicated you are towards ensuring he comprehends what you’re explaining, and although it could be because you don’t want him to fail you both, he chooses to believe you’re doing it because you tolerate him. 

You’re so engrossed in covering all the little details and telling him random tidbits regarding the book that you don’t realize your feet have made it all the way to the cafeteria. “But here, let me get your number. I’ll totally explain more over text.” 

Riki is definitely not freaking out when he silently grabs his phone and hands it to you with the contact page, staring a little longer than necessary at the cute smiley face you added to your name. “Thanks,” he mumbles, forcibly tearing his eyes away from the ten digits of your number, “For helping me with this, too.”

“Of course! The Great Gatsby is a fun read for me. A little hard to read sometimes because of some of the characters, but still easy to understand.” And Nishimura RIki realizes that he has to do well. He’ll read the book five times over if it means gaining your approval. 

Jake notices something a little different about the tuft of black and blonde hair when his friend walks in. The first thing is that he’s actually here, and that you’re next to him, smiling. The boy rubs his eye to make sure he’s not dreaming somehow, but when he looks up again, you’re waving goodbye and joining your friends across the room. 

“Did you get hit with something while fighting a villain that makes you more bold? I feel like I just saw you and ____ talking,” Jake starts when Riki finally joins him with his lunch. 

Riki laughs, shoving Jake’s head out of embarrassment and opening his chips. “It’s just school. Got some project in English and she says we’re partnered.” He looks over at his friend chuckling, rolling his eyes at how Jake pokes at his side and wiggles his eyebrows. 

“I better hear you two are dating by next week.” 

“Who’s dating by next week?” Heeseung places his bag of food in front of them and takes a seat, opening the fast food he got last period and stuffing a fry in his mouth. 

“Riki and ____. Let me have one,” Jake answers, reaching inside the bag. 

Heeseung looks over at his junior curiously. “You asked her out?” And the two older students hear a groan from the boy in question. 

“Me and ____ aren’t anything, for your information.” He prods at the vegetables on his tray and takes a bite before a look of displeasure washes over his face. “You’re both way too excited for two guys who do not have girlfriends.” 

“Hey! You know the girl I’m always fighting with is the reason why I’m single. I have to focus on studying to do well in school to do better than her.” Heeseung’s whining falls on deaf ears as Riki smiles victoriously, seeing how defensive the former got. 

Jake offers him a shrug of defeat. “I got nothing.”

The three of them fall into normal conversation and Riki finally explains everything that happened during English.  “So you’re telling me your plan to ask ____ out went down from 18 months to 6?” And with a nod from the younger, they both groan once more. Heeseung exclaims, “We’re both going to graduate, dumbass. Make the plan go down to like…two months? Please?” 

Jake cuts in before Riki has a chance to respond. “Make it one and a half, so we can see you with a prom date before leaving forever.” 

“You act as if you’re going to die after graduation. It’s like you’re begging to be a super senior.” 

And they’re silenced immediately. 

“Do you think the guy I was with earlier hates me?” you ask on the other side of the room. Minjeong stares at you blankly, waiting for your explanation. “I don’t know if you saw when I walked in but I was talking to this really tall guy with blonde hair and black tips. He seemed really out of it, like he kept staring at me and nodding. I think I scared him off by talking about the book too much.” 

Sunghoon, who is also listening in, opens his neatly packed lunchbox and begins mixing his noodles. “I think you did scare him off, ____.”

“Not helping,” Minjeong interjects, “Just talk to him more and maybe he’ll warm up to you. You two sit together in class anyways, so hopefully he’ll talk more?” 

“I know him,” Sunghoon comments, “Well, sort of. I’m friends with Jake who’s friends with Riki, and it seems like all that boy does is sleep.” 

“Maybe he’s really good at subconscious in-class comprehension?” you try, taking a bite of your sandwich. “I just hope it doesn’t interfere too much with treasurer stuff.” 

NISHIMURA RIKI MIGHT DIE IF HE SWINGS INTO ANOTHER WALL AT 100MPH LIKE HOW HE ALMOST DID TONIGHT.

All he’s had on his mind since school ended till now is how he should probably text you, if he really discarded the slimy acid monster from last week properly, and when the prom theme is going to be released, but there’s something amiss that confuses his spidey-senses and makes Riki much more alert. 

He snaps out of whatever train of thought he had before, focusing on the situation at hand and looking around to follow his instinct. Riki cautiously plants himself on the side of a random apartment building to get a sense of what's going on. A tingle of some sort of in the air permeates the material of his suit and leaves him shivering from the cold. 

He doesn't like it one bit. 

Moving to the side of the building to the top, the boy finally catches a glimpse of something when he gets a decent view of the city and highway systems. Riki knows something’s wrong with the bridge the closer he gets. He zips from one side of the tall, metal tower to the other, crawling down on all fours making sure he isn’t caught. He feels the electric feeling once more, only amplified. It runs up his spine and he wants to slap it, almost like a frantic, summertime bug. The air around him is charged with something he has never recognized before. With a puzzled expression under his mask, Riki continues to investigate the surrounding area. 

Riki finds a lone figure with some sort of attachment to his left arm, like a long glove made out of metal. The bulkiness of it seems to have no impact on his body as the man fiddles with the contraption, and the boy watches with bated breath as the machine fizzes and spurts with electricity. It begins to glow as power concentrates on his plated palm and the superhero sees it for the first time. It’s like a fizz, like a match striking at fire only to produce a quick burst of friction, but it almost feels liquid when he watches the person play with the flickering blue ball of electricity. It dances in the dark in a hauntingly beautiful way, with bolts jutting out from the metal as it spurts and buzzes with a life-like manner. 

A spark. 

“Hey, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” The sound of Riki’s voice from the end of the bridge causes the stranger to look up with wide eyes. Although Riki fully expects it to simply enhance strength or block damage, the immediate strike of blue that flies straight towards him is anything but defensive. With a yelp, he jumps away, this time refusing to show himself. 

What the hell was that?

He knows he should go back down there to change things and get the person and the metal pieces away before it escalates, but when he goes back down to watch, it's ten times worse. The bright blue illuminates the scarred face of the villain as he’s picked up the metal arm–but this time, it’s no longer clunky and sparking, but fused into his arm. 

Riki’s face pales at the sudden change before his body acts on its own and he shoots out a web to stop the man. 

The villain is shocked by the intrusion, but quickly yanks free from the webbing and flicks another bolt of electricity, one that flies much faster now that the metal flows into the arm instead of simply resting on the skin. It’s unlike something Riki has ever seen, something that is so controlled in motion and yet so erratic in nature, and it instills a deathly fear when it grazes his arm he hisses in pain. The sharp feeling springs Riki into action as he jumps away. He’s lucky another bolt isn’t sent his way, seeing how the villain’s too busy marveling at the power of his new gadget.

“You know that fucking hurts, right?” He yells out, cupping his wound. “Maybe leave the gadgets to the kids!”

The man scoffs. “It better have hurt. I sacrificed half my body for this to work.”

“But why?” All Riki wants is answers. Some sort of explanation.

The man charges up yet another bolt, almost like a laser gun is built into the machine. “Less talking, more running, Spiderman.” 

That scared the shit out of him. 

The boy doesn’t have time to think as he jumps out from the dark tunnel to the bridge and up the metal towers—he hates having to fight with people right below. The villain follows in pursuit, almost crumbling the metal with his engineered arm as he hoists himself quickly. Riki continues to jump between the structure to avoid the flashes, trying to get out and apprehend the man as quickly as possible. When he reaches the top, however, he feels death is near as he glances down at the villain below who’s quickly gaining on him. He shoots out webs to slow him temporarily, letting himself fall and swing from the side of the tower to escape. 

What he doesn’t see on the way across the bridge is the flash that misses his cheek and hits his thigh instead. It burns, and mid-air, Riki gives the wound a quick assessment before he lands on the metal, immediately forcing his body to climb. While dealing with his wound, he fails to notice the villain swinging from the bridge support lines to meet him. 

He needs to end this fast before he becomes burnt toast.

Riki doesn’t often rely on instinct to carry him, but he can tell that the villain he’s facing isn’t just a criminal. 

“Land another hit, would you?” he tries to say, his voice strained from the pain in his arm and leg. It doesn’t do much to deter the man in front of him as the arm continues to destroy and bend the metal on the way up. “What are you going to do now, Sparky?”

The man says nothing, charging energy into his metal glove again before aiming and focusing on the target: him. 

Riki jumps off, not able to properly land his web in the right spot as he goes from one section of the bridge to the other. The man behind him looks enraged at the boy’s attempt to escape—so much so that he reaches out with his normal hand to try to grasp the suit when Spider-Man swings past him. Instead of the feeling of fabric, the villain feels sticky spider fluid on his fingers. Riki shoots out a web, one that curls around the villain’s wrist and drags him off the tower. Instead of being able to launch him into the surrounding waters, the man slips from the poorly shot-out webs and falls from mid air into the sea of frantic cars, including one semi truck that collides directly with his arm. In the air, the boy winces when he hears honks and shouts from the impact, hoping it’s the last time he’ll have to witness it.

With his gaze trained on the falling figure, the weakly attached web breaks, and Riki all of a sudden starts falling down as well. He curls up defensively before bracing for impact, curling into himself when he feels the metal dent and the truck driver scream from outside of the parked vehicle, the body of the villain right in front of it. 

Riki staggers, holding onto his arm and thigh the best he can before getting up. With wobbly steps and a small jump, he lands near the unconscious man, whose metal arm is cracked and fizzling—something that Riki knows is bound to leave more scars. 

“Call the police. I’ll get rid of the pieces.” Although Riki wants to figure out who the criminal is and make sure he’s properly apprehended, the gashes in the boy's limbs leave him winded and exhausted. With hot metal scraps bound together by webbing in his hands, Riki swings out and dumps it somewhere rural, trying his best to cover the pieces with the pounding headache that 

Riki revisits the secluded spot under the bridge, looking for clues to the man’s identity, and his expression falls when he notices a lanyard dangling near a trash can. 

His name, his position, and the company. FLiGHT Corp. The company name caught the boy’s eye, and he pockets the item before leaving. 

It seemed like he was a normal research scientist, but Riki’s recollection of the scars and tattered skin leaves him retracting his last thought. He heard something about the failure of a time travel machine at FLiGHT, and if the mass of the incident was anything to go by, he was in the center of it. 

No matter how many times Riki tries to get it out of his head, on the way home, all he can think about is the inexperience he displayed and the lack of response he gave Riki during the whole time. But Riki can’t bring himself to really take away someone’s life—and maybe for that, he’s a horrible superhero. 

He knows he should stop the man before it's too late, and especially with how many self-proclaimed villains there have been, it's not easy to see so many innocent people ruin their lives chasing a power that inevitably consumes them. He knows it’ll only get worse if he lets them run free.

And while the superhero has never been fully honest with himself, there are many times where Riki hates his role as Spider-Man, and wishes that he was just some teenage boy who didn't have the lives of others in his palm. He wishes he didn't have to sacrifice so much to stay behind a mask—and he wonders deep down if there’s anyone else who felt the same. 

His swings lead him across the city above hundreds of lives he has to protect, and he tries to find some semblance of peace. He thinks about how he has his homework due despite having just risked his life, he thinks about how your project is going—and about you. 

In the night under the stars, Nishimura Riki wishes for something just a bit normal. He wishes a good night for himself, but also for you, wherever you could be.

NISHIMURA RIKI MIGHT DIE FROM TRYING TO READ THIS BOOK IN ONE NIGHT.

The Great Gatsby is exactly like how you described it; a little hard to get through but fun with the plot’s eccentric characters. He’s pretty sure he could’ve just used a detailed SparkNotes explanation for the book, but having a crush can make someone do weird things. And in Nishimura Riki’s case, his infatuation has got him reading a novel about morally-skewed characters and rich society to impress you. 

When you come into class barely on time, Riki gives you a confused look when you sit down, but doesn’t comment on it any further. Instead, he takes out his book and tries to act like his eyes weren’t closing shut from exhaustion by the time Daisy was finally confessing how she loved Gatsby. 

The moment Mr. Yoo stops talking, however, Riki isn’t asleep—much to your surprise. He has his book out, pages filled with sticky notes and a whole section of his notebook dedicated to characters (written in bright red to keep him awake) and their traits. 

“I got it.” It’s the first thing he says when you two are left to do in-class work. It’s ominous, and maybe a little too enthusiastic in a high school literature class for a boy who doesn’t even care that much for school, but you’ll accept it with open arms if it means you get a helping hand on your project. 

“Continue,” you tell him slowly, leaning back in your chair to listen to him. And you don’t know why, but a small part of you thinks that the boy who sleeps every period the book was discussed wouldn’t have much to say or contribute to such an open-ended prompt, but life is full of surprises. 

What you fail to notice is how Riki is nervous and his stomach does at least twenty flips before he swallows dryly and starts rambling in hopes to impress you and redeem himself from his embarrassing slumber a few days ago. 

“So you know how our prompt is based on one character and basically all their actions?” he asks, and you nod, absentmindedly thumbing a sheet in your journal. “I’m thinking we should talk about Jay Gatsby because so much is revealed to us about him that we might as well use it to our advantage. Y’know, talking about how the theme of exploitation and secrets is veiled under Gatsby’s desire for Daisy.”

“You don’t think Gatsby’s a good character?” Riki wants to tell you that Gatsby is more relatable than good or bad, but he shakes his head. 

“I mean, not really.” He feels like with those four words, he’s completely changed the trajectory of his relationship with you from a positive slope to completely downhill—and a wave of panic washes over him. “Should I? I mean, I could see him as more redeemable if you gave me examp-“

You wave your hand to quell his worries. “To be honest, I don’t like him either. But he’s an interesting main character to write about, so I think we should go with your idea.” 

To win your approval feels like he’s won at least three fights against a villain in a row without getting any bad injuries—it feels good. And for the rest of the period, you are able to finish a detailed outline of your work for the next few weeks, mapping out sections for each other, and he even gets to see a part of prom planning on a word document you had open. He considers your shared productivity a win when he packs up and bids you goodbye before leaving for lunch. 

One wave doesn’t catch Riki’s attention from across the room. Not even two, or three calls of his name could get Nishimura Riki out of his thoughts, and Jake frowns before moving up in the lunch line. 

“Something’s caught your eye again.” Jake feigns innocence and sighs dramatically as he places the food down next to Riki’s plate. “Could it possibly be our school treasurer?” Jake laughs, leaning over to catch a glimpse of what’s got his friend so entranced and non-responsive.

Riki scrunches his nose, annoyed, but never breaking his gaze from where you’re sitting. “We talked in class–like, a lot,” is all he says, paying his friend no mind. “She’s genuinely so understanding.”

“God, I don’t think you can be any more down bad for her than you are right now.” Jake picks at his food, and despite his concentration directed towards the olives on his pizza, he’s able to dodge the flying loaded nacho that goes his way, even if he wasn’t the one with superpowers.

“Can you shut up?” Riki grumbles, laying his head on his arms as he notices you smile and point to something. “I just got pummeled into a semi truck last week. Let me have this before I die tomorrow.” 

“Very grim,” his friend notes, ruffling the younger’s hair, “I think this is exactly what all of those mental health assemblies that we get are for.” And Riki basically tunes him out, too tired to fight and too used to the teasing remarks to come up with anything useful in response. 

Riki sits up a bit, letting his head rest on his propped elbow as he looks at the school food and touches another nacho gingerly. “Y’know, I read the book for English so she wouldn’t think I’m an idiot.” 

His friend snickers, successfully pulling out yet another sliced olive from the cheese, much to the disgust of Riki. “She probably already thinks you’re an idiot.” 

The superhero debates throwing another cheesy nacho in Jake's face, before deciding to eat it instead. “Don’t say that asshole! You make it seem like I have no chance with her.” 

Jake shoots him an exasperated look that makes Riki break eye contact. “That’s because you don’t.” 

“I’ll prove to her that I’m worth her time.” Riki says somewhat wistfully, still stealing glances from a few tables away. “Maybe I’ll ask her out to prom, show up in my suit. Do that cheesy upside down kiss shit people say Spiderman does.” When his friend raises an eyebrow at him, Riki shrugs. “I will! Well-maybe not the Spider-Man thing, but prom definitely.” 

Jake continues to look at him unconvinced as he takes a bite out of a slice of pizza with mangled cheese. “You barely talk to her in class and you think you can ask her out to prom as Nishimura Riki?” And the younger grins, eyes still stuck on how your eyes crinkle and how your shoulders shake with laughter. 

“Yup.” And his fate is sealed, just like that.

“What’s your project about, anyways? Didn’t you tell me last night that she gave you her number? Must be pretty serious if she wants to text you.” Riki furrows his eyebrows and shakes his head. 

“It’s just tying the theme of the book to one character and writing about how they show it. So we did the theme of money and Gatsby, because it’s easy and mentioned so many times.” 

Jake gawks. “You must really like her,”

“I was planning to read it regardless of who I was partnered with.” 

“Okay- that’s debatable.” There goes another one of Riki’s nachos.

“Gross.” 

He thinks things are going pretty well for you two. The report is being written and your quotes are basically finding themselves, so Riki should give himself a pat on the back for pitching the initial idea for how to go about your assignment. Maybe reading the whole book offered him a few useful pointers, and he goes to sleep that night satisfied with your progress. Maybe Heeseung and Jake were right—maybe he could finally ask you out by prom. 

NISHIMURA RIKI MIGHT DIE TRYING TO SAVE THE CITY FROM YET ANOTHER MONSTER TERRORIZING THE STREETS.

He wakes up the next morning, not expecting his alarm to alert his senses to danger. It rings in his head and makes him feel delirious, trying to shake sleep off as he looks out the window for any visible sign of what's wrong. If he could hear the danger in his head then that meant someone could be hurt, and he could go to school without a few hours of sleep if he worked fast enough, right? 

Riki slips into his suit without much thought and goes to crack his window open, only to look back at his clock and read the horrific time of 6:23AM. 

Who the hell picks a fight with a teenager at this ungodly time? 

Then, he shoots from his wrists, once, twice, and suddenly, he's off, covering more ground through the air in just three seconds than he ever could while walking or running for minutes on end.

The source of his tingling spidey-sense is some large metal centipede creature that was setting off car alarms in a neighborhood near the market. Thankfully, no one was really awake to be caught in the crossfire, but he has to figure out how the hell he's going to catch that thing in...he checks his watch…twenty minutes? 

Hopefully, his instinct will help him win this time—again. 

The web he shoots out does nothing to stop the monster, and considering how it connected them both, the threads only drag the superhero to the edge of the building he was initially watching from. With some yelling and pulling, he finally detaches, and realizes that the odd sizzling feeling in his bonds must be from the same source as a few days ago; Spark. 

He had this gut feeling that a villain as strong as him wouldn’t have been destroyed so easily, but his wounds were so deep and the blood loss so bad from a few nights ago that he couldn’t have truly dumped him in the ocean without fainting or suffering something permanent, and although Riki hoped things in the universe would work itself out, the presence of the giant fifty foot insect alone is proof that things were not in his favor. 

He jumps off the building onto another, working quickly as he strings up a few webs between the houses as a wall for the monster, watching it slide and knock over cars in its wild pursuit. The monster spends a few seconds breaking down the wall of webbing and climbing over it, the many legs easily breaking through. As the superhero jumps across buildings and keeps track of the centipede’s movement, he has no idea why it isn’t going for him, and that makes his job much harder without the attention of the monster. One glance at the direction the centipede is headed in sets off another ding in Riki’s head—but this time, it finally clicks why the centipede is headed away from the boy. 

It’s attracted to the power plant. 

Riki immediately jumps and swings off of a lamp post, using the momentum of gravity and the force of his swing to propel him faster than the slithering creature. Squinting, he holds out his fist and points his pointer and pinky out, following the movement of the centipede as he aims. 

Bam. 

He sends clusters of silky white threads down precisely at the first pair of legs to pin it down. The webs stop the creature momentarily, and Riki doesn’t have time to watch how the body shrinks up and fizzes out with blue shocks as it tries to wiggle loose and malfunctions. This fight would be over soon, and the boy smiles when he jumps down to shoot more webs to apprehend the centipede. It wiggles and sends electricity out through parts of its body, trying to pry itself out. He expects it to simply be a robot of sorts following a mission considering its avoidant behavior, but as he approaches the tail, the monster suddenly swings at Riki, and its mass and speed is incomparable to the boy’s reaction speed. 

Riki lands into a tree and someone’s garage, feeling the crumbling wall falling all over him and the sudden pain blooming in his lower back. 

This fight will, in fact, not be over soon. 

With his superhuman abilities, Riki grabs onto the metal of the car beside him to hoist himself up, coughing from the dust, and jumping over the rubble to see how quickly the centipede creature can get out, without regard for his current state. The sound and rumble of the giant monster is all he needs to know that the traps are effective, but not at the previous capacity. 

The plan is simple: apprehend the legs and crush the head, where Riki assumes the decision-making and programming is taking place. But the monster’s angry and erratic actions throw a wrench in his plan. Its legs move faster, digging into the cement and leaving ruin in its wake as it continues down the road. While both the villain and superhero are fast, the distance between the power plant is finite—and only grows smaller and smaller.  

Although Riki can feel the bruises coming, he runs and swings, hearing the wind in his ears as he catches up to the centipede in no time. He tries the same tactics again–aim, shoot, stick, all the while keeping his distance. Although the monster’s body spans incredibly long, and should carry an immense amount of weight, the way it snaps at Riki’s flying body and sends shockwaves through his core leaves him shivering as his body slams into the ground, coughing. It hurts all over, and it feels like there’s weight on his eyes when he tries to open them and get up. His head is spinning as he staggers onto his knees, clutching his chest as he watches the centipede shrivel and crackle. 

It seems like the voltage produced is a double-ended sword, one that burns up the centipede body as much as it deals damage, and with the way the mutant creeps towards the electricity of the plant, Riki gets the feeling there’s a magnetic pull that forces the mutant to continue to crawl even against its instinct to stop. 

Despite his waning strength, however, Riki knows better than to half finish the job like last time. He creates a net from experience, weaving together the thickest and most durable threads to trap the entirety of the slowly approaching creature. It seems to crawl slowly up the makeshift barrier, knocking its head against the white and spreading the bright blue waves of its energy throughout. The boy watches as the thin white mass absorbs all of it and clings to the creature. It works, finally, after his attempts to nullify its movements, and he knows that despite the ache in his every step, the almost mummified centipede that hangs between several roofs for all the neighbors to gawk at is his sure sign of victory. 

All he remembers is hearing a familiar call of his hero name before his legs give out and his head hits Jake’s chest. 

Holy fucking shit is the first thing Riki thinks when he wakes up. 

He’s not out of his tattered suit and he feels grimy all over, but his body has done wonders in reducing the otherwise fatal injuries he got. No human body should be able to withstand two energy-filled blasts, but his suit and superhuman healing are of greater help than ever in alleviating the damage from his wounds. 

He knows why he’s in his bed with bandages thrown over his open wounds. He knows that every time something like this happens, it’s Jake who shoos away the concerned civilians, telling them he’s a medic. Jake is not a medic—rather, he’s a seventeen year-old boy who knows about his friend’s double life and with all the times he’s saved Riki, someone might as well dub him the greatest medic of all time. 

The clock on his bedside table has only served as a bearer of bad news. He looks over to see how it’s practically midday, and he’s missed yet another day of school from fighting crime. He’s in no condition to get up or get his bag, seeing how his hair is frizzy and his cheek has a cut that would warrant questioning. It seems only fair that he stays absent, and before he falls back asleep, he only prays you aren’t too mad at him for leaving the seat next to you empty.

But you aren’t mad, just worried. The soreness in his muscles doesn’t go away though, and he groans when he sits up in his bed, with bandages around his arms and an ice pack discarded next to him. 

He’s most definitely not coming to school like this. 

While you bore holes into the clock hanging off the wall, that doesn’t speed up the time. Two minutes pass, then another minute. As your classmates find their partners and begin discussing, you notice how the room gets louder with the due date looming near. It’s the first time you’re alone without the familiar boy beside you, and something hangs low in your chest when you put in a pair of earphones and open your laptop. 

Riki’s absence should have no effect on you. After all, you’re both just high school students who’ve talked once or twice, and yet you still look over at the empty chair. Staring doesn’t make Riki appear, though, and you return to your edits. It feels empty without his insight, or without him asking you to help him with a passage. Riki was your solution to all things boring. If he wasn’t doing his work, then you two were laughing at something on his phone. And if you agreed to both do something other than the report, then you could ask for an extra opinion when deciding prom details. There was something freeing about working with him that attracted you. Riki knew how to lighten the mood on days that weren’t so good for you, but he also worked hard and let loose at the same time. There was a perfect balance in Riki’s life that you aspired to have; it was a good mix of playful, dedicated, and fun all in the same vein. 

The words blend together on your screen. Jay Gatsby this, Tom Buchanan that, it all looks monotonous the more you keep trying to read and comprehend what exactly you’re talking about. 

Before class is dismissed, Mr. Yoo steps to the front of the classroom to gather everyone’s attention. He introduces your new novel for the next month, explaining yet another large assignment associated with the text. 

Truth be told, you don’t pay attention to any of it. 

The only thing you remember to do is to grab extra copies of the printed graphic organizers, as you get out of your seat and rush out when class ends in pursuit of one specific boy. 

“Sim Jaeyun!” The call of his name diverts Jake’s attention from his phone to your waving arm as you weave through the students and finally reach him. 

“You can just call me Jake,” he explains, “what’s up?” 

You begin to reach into your backpack, trying to feel for your folder, and pull out a few sheets. “These are for Riki.” 

Jake cheers internally for his friend who’s busy recovering at home. “What, you got a crush on him or something?” 

He tries to play it cool by teasing you, but the smile you bite back leaves the boy questioning if there really is anything going on. Jake knows better than to tell you anything about Riki’s feelings, and opts to instead grab the papers and to thank you for looking out for his friend. 

“Is Riki okay?” You have to know, just to make sure he’ll be here tomorrow to cure your boredom. 

What Jake says is much different than the nonchalant wave and half grin he gives you. “He’s just bedridden.” 

“That’s pretty serious! Did he come down with anything?” He seemed fine yesterday, so what’s the catch?

He blurts, “He just got badly hurt.” 

Immediately, Jake knows he’s fucked up. 

Your confusion and silence answers him far more than words ever could–he basically hears the gears turning slowly in your head.

Jake weakly defends, “His parents had a fight with him because he hit his head or something. He’ll be fine by tomorrow. Just bedridden from sadness, y’know?” 

The look you give him is unconvinced, but when Heeseung pats him on the shoulder and waves to you, the boy realizes that maybe staying quiet would’ve been the better decision. 

“I’ll see you later, ____.” And he’s off, waving half-heartedly and dragging a very confused Heeseung out of the cafeteria. 

NISHIMURA RIKI MIGHT DIE TRYING TO WAKE YOU UP AS GENTLY AS HE CAN.

Ever since March started and flowers began to bloom, your energy seemed to do the opposite, dwindling until Riki catches you mirroring his frequent in-class action: sleeping. And it worries him beyond belief, because you’re not the type to fall asleep like… ever. However, Riki does not have the heart to wake you up, even if it’s with a little nudge that you probably barely feel with how light he taps. It breaks his heart to have to ask you to review what he has done, because the bell is about to ring and the teacher might just send you to detention if he catches you off-task. 

The allergies always make Mr. Yoo irritable, and Riki knows not to get on his nerves. 

Your eyes flutter open to the pokes and prodding from none other than Nishimura Riki, who gazes at you softly when you adjust to the bright classroom setting once more. 

Panic settles in. “Wait- how long was I sleeping for?” 

He shrugs and scrunches his nose, not giving you an answer as he finishes scribbling something in his notebook. 

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry.” Your hand squeezes into a fist at the frustration that you’ve let your partner down. 

And yet, Riki seems to be unfazed, frowning when he sees you stressing out. “Don’t ever sweat the little things, yeah? If there’s anything you ever need to talk about–trust me, I know what it’s like to have a lot of pressure on your shoulders.”

Smiling at him, you respond with, “Thank you, really.” 

Being treasurer is daunting in the spring. It’s full of requests, forms, and small tasks that leave you spent by the end of the day. “But,” you glance at the clock to see just how much time is left, “how’d you know?” 

He motions to your open computer with a now dark screen. “I saw your document pulled up. ____’s tasks or else she will be kicked out of student government,” he taunts, snickering when your eyes grow wide with embarrassment and you lightly nudge his shin with your foot in warning. 

“It’s not polite to snoop,” and although you say that, you catch something in your peripheral vision. It’s a few drawings of a figure and gadget drawn, shaded from rigid shapes with small descriptions pointing to different places. You weren’t sure what was more surprising; how good the drawings were, or the subject of his imagination. 

Weird. Inherently, there was nothing wrong with Riki drawing a villain, and you chalked it up to him being creative. Nothing more, nothing less. 

He puts his hands up in surrender at your last comment, his grin showing anything but. Just one look at the boy makes you realize that everything you’ve just thought about is foolish. 

There’s no way he’d have time to be a villain and a student. With one final thought, you let your raging thoughts rest and focus on the present; him. You’ve seen his hair messy, especially after his naps, but when Riki tries to style it like how he did today, you pay more attention to the streaks of blonde and how he often hides behind his bangs and scrunches his nose. It’s cute. He’s cute.

The truth is, you enjoy being around him like this, joking around and never worrying too much about your responsibilities and expectations. It’s refreshing. Being around Riki gives you the feeling that things will be okay in the end. 

You snap out of your thoughts to see that his desk is empty, while your’s hasn’t changed one bit.

“You’re going to sell prom tickets now, right?” He makes small talk before leaving for lunch, closing the notebook you were suspiciously eying before slipping it into his bag. 

“Yup,” you answer, popping the ‘p,’ “I’ll see you later,” and you two part ways.

All the long lines and constant distribution of change doesn’t allow much wiggle room for you to daydream. As time goes on, the ticket-selling line grows smaller and smaller, but the only thing you truly care about is eating the lunch your parents packed you. Your sandwich is probably sad and soggy now that there are only a few minutes of lunch left. When you finally sign off one last time after triple checking the forms are all correct, you let out a sigh, leaning back and finally getting a break. 

Then, it hits you that you’re not even sure if the boy you’re fawning over is attending the biggest event of the year, and you feel stupid for forgetting to ask. 

-

Yesterday was a rookie’s mistake–today, you’d make sure you get an answer from him.

“Are you going to prom, Riki?” is the first thing you ask when he sits down, grabbing his book and laptop with a little too much enthusiasm. 

“I’m thinking about it.” Yeah, whatever confidence he had when convincing himself he’d ask you out isn’t serving him well at this moment. Quite frankly, Riki feels lame as ever trying to be nonchalant around you. “You?” 

“I’d have to set up, so I would be there, yes. But whether or not I have a date is another story.” You smile to lighten the mood, but Riki watches you and nods, focusing back on signing into his laptop and getting his notes for the new book you’re reading. 

“Well, you’re not the only single one here.” And he wants to reprimand himself for saying something without thinking. “If someone asked, would you say yes?”

You think about it carefully, really because you don’t have anyone in mind when it comes to prom if Riki’s not planning on going. “It’d have to be someone I know—someone I talk to somewhat regularly. I’d be nice to be with someone who doesn’t make it awkward.”

Nishimura Riki might die from over-thinking if he keeps on wondering whether or not he fits that description to a tee.

RIKI'S TO-DO LIST BEFORE PROM

☐  talk to ____ regularly 

☐  don't make it awkward 

☐  be..cute? 

The boy decides that his superhuman responsibilities might be easier to complete than any of those three things. 

He switches the subject to stop his head from hurting too much. “Did you finish the report?” 

You still, and Riki’s question reminds you of the report looming over your head. In your defense, you two hadn’t brought it up much in the past week, and he didn’t seem to worry over how much of your time was spent emailing teachers or making spreadsheets. Although caught off guard, you’re quick to respond with, “What did we have to finish? I thought we were done since last week, but if there’s anything else-” 

“Sorry,” he rushes out, biting his lip, “I meant, if you finished reading it.” And the answer is no, you haven’t read it since your last edit on it three days ago. 

Within a few clicks, you find the document and scroll to the bottom, seeing the small note that Riki left that said ‘let me know how it looks.’ It’s sweet to know he thought about your input as much as you did his. 

“While some can agree that Gatsby’s rise into high society was sketchy, Gatsby still retains the same reserved character from years ago, and doesn’t manipulate others into success or use his money for nefarious purposes. It’s not like he changed after his wealth, and it could be argued Gatsby loved Daisy until his last breath and was willing to die as long as she was happy, emphasizing the theme of sacrifice. 

So, is Jay Gatsby a good person? The question targets the morality of a character who many can empathize with. Those who are charmed by his overwhelming love for Daisy would say that he’s committed textbook crimes, but focus more on the intent behind it. To pine after someone from a distance isn’t easy, but to pursue her after years of separation is even harder. It’s universally agreed, however, that love as a driving force doesn’t nullify what he’s done to others and the dirty schemes he’s enacted to gain the power he has. Therefore, Gatsby makes for an interesting main character, and highlights just how twisted a system around money can be.” 

The last page is–for the most part–his writing, and your admiration for him grows when you finish reading and scroll to hit your Works Cited page.

“It’s good,” you tell him wholeheartedly, “Didn’t think you had it in you.” 

Riki cracks a smile at your light teasing, soaking up your praise. 

“Now you know.” He shrugs. And he can only hope that you like him as much as you like his literary skills. 

NISHIMURA RIKI MIGHT DIE WHEN HE COMES TO THE REALIZATION THAT HE IS EXACTLY LIKE JAY GATSBY,JUST WITHOUT THE MONEY—DESPERATE FOR THE GIRL OF HIS DREAMS, DYING YOUNG, AND A FRAUD HIDING BEHIND SECRETS.

Nevermind the last one, he has to hide when he has an identity to protect as the city’s only superhero, but Riki feels his heart sink to his heels when he read a few weeks ago how much Gatsby simply adores Daisy. When Gatsby died, he scoffed, closing the book with a sudden disinterest. If he were the male lead, he wouldn’t have been laying in a pool for target practice. Maybe being a superhero teaches you how to avoid being easy bait for all your enemies, or maybe Gatsby was too carried away with love to think straight. 

Fighting crime gives you insurmountable experience with sneaking around, but it wasn’t something he could just teach to anyone. When he gets this horrible gut feeling that something’s happened to you, he just knew something was wrong. He might not be easy to catch, but for anyone else? Definitely.  

For everyone else, prom was a month away, but for you, it was three weeks of talking to your advisor and president, arguing with your other board members, and sitting behind that damn money box for another five days to sell tickets. For you, it was realizing that you were supposed to buy streamers and balloons yesterday on your way home from school. It was the thinly veiled disappointment in your board member’s texts when they told you they were at a loss for words. ‘I’m sorry, and I know you’re busy, but how could you forget? Prom is so important for all of us. What if they don’t have what you need anymore?’ It all repeated in your head as you bit your lip in frustration and slipped on the first pair of shoes you could find. Although it was dark and dangerous, you could care less if it meant avoiding the passive aggressive comments you’d get tomorrow during your meeting.

There it is again: that little tendency to not pay attention to your surroundings. 

You yelp when you feel someone grabbing your wrist and pulling you in, muffling your screams as he pulls you along. To see him on the news was worrying, but to see Spark in person with your life on the line is even worse. 

Tears spring to your eyes as you struggle against the metal to no avail, and you curse every previous moment you spent worrying about balloons rather than your safety.

Spark suddenly stops, shoving you against the wall before his hand grabs a brick with his metal arm, beginning to climb. “Don’t let go.” And you don’t think twice before holding on.

The city view would be beautiful if you weren’t hearing your heartbeat in your ears or if you weren’t dangling from the railing of some company building, trying to wiggle yourself free of the rope around your wrists. 

Spark speaks up, drumming his fingers on the railing next to you. “You wouldn’t happen to know where your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is, would you?” And you furrow your eyebrows, genuinely questioning for a moment if he really knew how the superhero operated. 

A voice from across the street puts a temporary hold on your thoughts, and you glance up to see a flash of blue and red soaring through the air, followed by a groan and a beam of light next to you. Seeing Spark’s powers right in front of you spurs you into action, yanking at the rope and trying to take tiny steps away from where they were fighting.

“From what I’m seeing, you wanted to hold someone hostage because you’re not feeling too good, huh?” Spider-Man shouts as he shoots out webs and blocks hits. You shake your head in partial disbelief of how unserious he is, but also how unbelievable all of this seems. “You tried to take a potion or something? I’m going to tell you this now, but these usually don’t work.” 

Riki’s assumption is right, and considering how Spark now has a leg and arm from metal instead of just the arm, the procedure for the additional limb couldn’t have been easy. The superhero still proceeds with caution, making sure to pay attention to anything new as he dodges and fights back. 

The villain immediately gets back up, stumbling for a moment before he regains his stance and runs towards the boy. You hear the clanging of fist hitting metal from their fight, and considering the difference in height and build, you’d expect Spider-Man to be easily flung to the side, but he holds his weight in battle. 

Riki aims for around the left shoulder, where an abundance of stitches cover the skin and fuse the metal into muscle. He lands a hit, and almost another one, before a punch to the side knocks him from his momentum. The boy wheezes when his back makes instant contact with the ground, rolling and getting up before Spark has time to shoot. 

He notices how quickly the gadget generates electricity now. Before, the beams took longer, and were easily predictable, but now, it glows bright for a moment before it fires directly in Riki’s path. The boy dodges the first, but the second one almost hits the top of his head before he ducks and creates distance. 

From the roof-top, Riki scans his surroundings before making the split-second decision to jump. 

He swings to the other side of the building, keeping you in his peripheral vision as he works on apprehending the villain in front of him. They spring into yet another fist fight, with Riki’s agility easily letting him avoid punches and land precise hits to make the previous injuries even worse. 

You think Spider-Man has the upper hand in this, seeing as how none of Spark’s punches seem to slow down the superhero, but you hear something loud before you can register it. 

You figure out what happened after Riki stumbles and suffers a blow to the stomach, sending him tumbling to the edge of the building. Spark knew that Spider-Man was avoiding his left arm—he knew that one wrong move paired with the tungsten material would have a lasting effect on the superhero’s fist. 

Riki coughs from the impact before his spidey-sense rings, pulling him back into battle as he runs as fast as his body can take him. 

You. He still needs to save you. 

With renewed vigor, he continues to avoid the flying sparks as he ducks between structures and uses the terrain to his advantage. He can tell, though, that the villain is slowing down. The shots are less accurate–a telltale sign that the enhancer Spark tried is working against him. 

Between all of the chaos, Riki finally lands a proper web, yanking as hard as he can to pull Spark to the ground. He stumbles, grasping at thin silk before Riki lets go on his side. The villain’s balance is off, giving the boy an advantage as he closes the distance, hopping over a thrown slab of metal and landing a solid kick into Spark’s ribcage. As he stays down, Riki continues to aim for muscle and flesh, his head spinning as he packs punch after punch to keep the villain apprehended. 

Spark’s body–curled into itself to absorb the hits the best that he can– hides the growing blue flash that he’s slowly charging up with his remaining power. The moment it escapes from under his abdomen, Riki directs his efforts towards avoiding the electric glimmer. The villain rolls over, his body tattered from the consistent injuries, and he fires what seems like an intense bullet of energy. It zips by the boy’s cheek, cutting the mask and leaving blood to run down in its wake. Time slows down as the superhero tries to process the unlocked speed of the burst, and Spark loses focus marveling at his new abilities. Never before had either of them seen power so concentrated, and it inflicts both fear and excitement. 

He lifts his arm, the other holding it up for support, and Spider-Man notices the fizzle of bright blue. Riki’s about to jump out of the way, preparing for yet another high-speed bullet, but before Spark fires, something clicks. The arm doesn’t directly point to Riki–but it skews off to the right.

Except, he’s no longer aiming for Riki in the split second that the boy blinks. He’s suddenly aiming at you, where your hands are tied to the railing and your feet are dangling from the bent metal that holds you precariously over the edge, leaving a fifty foot drop in its wake. When you see the blue energy in the villain’s palm growing slowly bigger, you pull at the rope desperately with zero regard to the tender rawness of your wrists. 

In your attempt to somehow break the rope, your cry of fear snaps Spider-Man into action. 

Riki pushes his sore body to jump as quick as he can, leaping across the rooftop to the building over. He easily avoids the metal railing, grabbing onto your arm as he yanks hard on the rope, the force of it separating a piece of metal from the railing. He immediately jumps, sending out a web to swing him back up. It all happens in a flash–first, you were bound to the edge about to fall to your death, and all of a sudden, you’re tightly pressed against Spider-Man’s chest with your bound wrists still attached to the metal. Shutting your eyes, you trust Spider-Man entirely, closing your eyes to avoid seeing just how far up you were. Wind rushes in your ears and leaves your stomach fluttering with butterflies until the superhero sets you down on a secluded rooftop. 

“Please,” he begs, “don’t leave. I’ll be right back.” 

You’d be a fool to do anything but wait. 

Riki checks on you one last time before diving down, springing himself back up with another web. The damage from the blasts is recognizable even from far away, and yet, he notices the reflective shine of a metal arm on the edge of the building before Spark lets go. 

To Riki, Spark is dead after dropping from a fall having taken that much damage, but he hears no impact. Making haste, the boy fails to find any figure no matter how hard he looks, but Spark’s laboratory has to be here somewhere. The badge from a week ago was stuck on Riki’s mind, and he could only imagine the reasons why he pursued this life. Was he recreating something? If he needs to power some sort of machine, then the heart of the city is a perfect place to harness the electricity for any large scale project. As much as he wants to dedicate the rest of the night to searching the city for some sort of clue, the fact that you’re still stranded on that rooftop after having just experienced a life-changing event blares like an alarm in his mind. 

He quickly leaves, returning to where you’re seated.

Without the fear of falling to your death from earlier, you were able to focus on undoing the knots from the rope. Red scratch marks and irritation bloom on your wrist, and the reality of it all happening still hasn’t settled in. Despite not being harmed once, the fear and incessant pounding of your heart overwhelms your senses, and it leaves you heaving with confusion. 

A pair of footsteps only become apparent as Riki walks closer, taking a seat beside you and letting out a large sigh. He stares at the stars silently as if he doesn’t have a cut on his cheek and bruises waiting to paint his skin purple–as if he isn’t hiding his true self under a facade. 

“You’re not hurt, are you?” You shake your head, grateful that Spider-Man was the reason you got away without a real injury.

“Thank you, really, for saving me. I don’t know how you manage to do it.” 

Riki chuckles under the mask. “Eh, you get used to it,” you hear Spider-Man say. “You fight a couple bad guys, get over a fear of heights and eventually you get the hang of things.” 

Scoffing, you gently rub at your wrists to ease the redness. “Easy for you to say. I haven’t been taught a crash course on how to avoid being supervillain bait just yet.” 

“Maybe you should learn it sometime,” Riki responds absentmindedly, “someone like you shouldn’t have been out so late doing whatever it could’ve been.” 

Sighing, your mind drifts off to think about the balloons and streamers that are not in your hand. “I had stuff for my upcoming events.” 

He knew about all of it when you’d explain your cryptic reminders and notes on your computer, but he still feigns curiosity. “What upcoming events?” 

“Just prom,” and he hears just how strained it makes you. 

Riki tilts his head in faux confusion. “What do you have to do for prom?” 

He notices how you immediately slump, as if the mere mention of prom deflates your happiness. “It’s only a few weeks away, and I was supposed to get decorations for our venue yesterday. I just wanted to slip out before my parents noticed.” 

Despite the fabric over his eyes, Riki’s expression shifts from surprise to pity when he understands your stakes. “You still need to be careful. Is your student council strict?” 

“Not strict necessarily, but judgemental–I ran for the position because I thought I could help my school raise funds and find more opportunities, but it just feels like no one truly wants to try anything new.” You wave it off as if it’s not that important, as if it isn’t the reason why you find yourself stressed so often. “I just don’t want to disappoint or give people something to talk about.” 

Despite not being involved with school the same way you are, the boy next to you resonates with the fear you currently face. The fear of letting people down was a large part of why Riki continued to put on that mask and step into the most dangerous situation of his life; he never wanted to sit down to hear the news that Spider-Man quit. 

So he keeps doing his job, even if some days are harder and some fights aren’t worth winning–just like what you do. 

“Yeah, I get that,” he tries to console, “You must be doing a lot for everyone around you, and I’m sure a lot of people appreciate what you’ve done. Don’t beat yourself up too much, yeah? You’ll always have me.” He smiles, but he knows you don’t see it. You’re looking at the stars, trying to calm your mind and return to your life before everything happened. 

You glance over at Spider-Man, wondering if he’ll truly be around for you when you need it. “If I need to talk to you, should I step out of my house past 8PM again?” 

Riki chuckles, watching clouds slowly dim the moon’s glow in their path. “If I’m not fighting crime, I’ll show up at a moment’s notice.” 

There’s no way he means it, but you grin, feeling a lot of the pressure and stress of earlier slowly wash away. After all, nothing happened to you–Spider-Man made sure of it. Maybe things really were going to be okay. 

“Let’s get you home, yeah? Don’t you have stuff to do anyways?” 

You shrug, nothing really coming to mind. As you get up, you remember having to run a plagiarism check on your work, and how Riki told you to text him when you got home after your student government meeting. 

Riki. Spark. Spider-Man. 

“Wait,” you tell Spider-Man, sitting back down on the cement, “I need to talk to you about something else, too.” 

“It’s not like my dinner’s getting cold,” the superhero mumbles quiet enough that you can’t hear. 

“There’s this guy,” you start, paying no mind to how dirty your clothes are getting when you cross your legs. 

Spider-Man scoffs, looking off into the distance, and it makes you believe he has to be your age or older. “You have a crush on him, or something?” And a whole tidal wave of deja vu hits you in the chest. 

��He must be badly hurt’ isn’t just something people say. People don’t just draw insanely detailed drawings of Spark’s arm and machines without notes to follow unless they knew. People wouldn't just randomly miss school without any impending signs. You’re sure of it–the tired naps in class, the random drawings of superheroes and superhumans alike, or how awkward he could act–it all makes sense.

Your classmate, aka Nishimura Riki, aka the guy who you’ve questioned if you had a crush on for the past few days, might be a villain. 

The swirling feeling of trepidation in your stomach leaves three words running around your head. 

What. The. Fuck. 

Although you tried so hard to stop thinking about it, Jake’s comment from before rubbed you the wrong way. It was sometime last week where you couldn't get your mind off of the implications of his words, but that feeling was brushed underneath your responsibilities. 

Until now. 

“Yeah, there’s this guy,” you breathe, feeling your chest constrict, “Nishimura Riki. I think he’s Spark.” 

His blood runs cold. 

“You think this…why?” 

You take a deep breath, trying to organize all your thoughts. “Well, first, it was his friend, Jake. He said that Riki was badly hurt, and I was really confused at first, but tried to let it go.” 

Riki was going to strangle his best friend. 

“And then, I was looking at him in class, right? And keep in mind, he’s pretty cute, and we sit next to each other, so I just noticed how good his hair looked that day, but his notebook was out, and I saw all these drawings of Spark. Like, the arms, the metal things, even the projectiles! Who would know the ins and outs of that thing if it wasn’t Spark himself?”

He didn’t know what to think about first; the fact that you gushed about him for the first time, or if he should even tell you that Spider-Man would know those things, too. 

“And sometimes, I notice he’s a little awkward around me. I can’t explain it. It’s like he’s paying attention to me. That must’ve been why he captured me.” He wants to laugh at how damn close you are to figuring it out, but in reality, nothing is funny about the situation. 

Nishimura Riki is actually listening to this, right now, as Spider-Man–not Spark. The awkwardness, though? It was his crush on you, and was not superhuman related in the slightest.  

“I don’t know,” he attempts to divert, pretending to focus, “I saw a badge for FLiGHT. You know the company that’s been making time traveling machines? I saw a glimpse of his name and face. It’s not that guy you mentioned.” 

You raise an eyebrow. “And you haven’t gotten him caught?” 

“Villains aren’t easy to find, y’know. It’s not like playground hide and seek,” Riki defends, crossing his arms. 

You shrink in your spot, feeling sheepish for questioning a superhero so bluntly. 

“Plus,” he continues, “Spark has never had a hostage. Wouldn’t it be pretty mean of that friend of yours to kidnap a girl from his class?” 

“Yeah—that makes sense. Thank god,” you breathe, closing your eyes momentarily. “Then what do you suspect all that evidence leads to? Maybe he’s a secret agent?” 

“I think,” Riki continues to keep up his clueless facade, “Your friend might just be clumsy. Or creative. I mean, maybe he went through a break-up?” Nice one, Riki. 

You shake your head. “No, there’s no way he has a girlfriend. You’d think I like guys who are taken?” Scoffing lightly, you then remembered that Spider-Man really would have no idea who any of you are. 

He shrugs and stands up stretching before motioning for you to follow him. “I have no idea what you high school kids do. Come on, let’s get you home.” 

As you hug him tight, the cold air whips around your body and leaves goosebumps in their wake. You barely open your eyes from the fear of seeing yourself inches from hitting a building or up in the air. Spider-Man only yells his confirmation after asking how to get you home, finally placing you on the ground outside of your large gate. 

“Thank you for saving me tonight.”

“Anytime. Figure things out with that friend of yours, and don’t go out late, okay?” You nod and take his words to heart. 

“Goodnight, Spiderman.” 

—-

Nishimura might die. One, because he has this horrible guilty feeling in his stomach, and two, because of a villain. 

Yesterday, he ignored the salmon and rice bowl that waited for him back at home, choosing to follow the coordinates he saved on his phone after he took you home. It led him to a seemingly harmless auto-shop, with an arrow on his GPS pointing to a garage that was shut down completely with nails and blocked with boxes. The exterior pointed to it being abandoned, but Riki suddenly saw some light coming from a makeshift above.

The boy scaled the wall as quietly as possible, glancing into the source of the whirring. He caught small glimpses of something–metal, glowing, blue. 

Or at least, for a few seconds it was on until the power went out. 

The voice that complained from inside the room sounded identical to the man Riki fought. Spark grumbled, turning on a flashlight and quickly waving it around. Riki ducked from the window and held his breath, waiting for the man to suspect something. 

Nothing. 

One lightbulb slowly flickered back on, and then the other dingy light followed. The space was cramped with the metal equipment in the middle, resembling what Riki had seen in the news. 

He was right–it was the same time travel portal that was ruined from a few months ago. 

Spider-Man continued to observe the man as he worked and drilled, plugging certain wires or pausing momentarily to read from a journal. To anyone, it’d seem peaceful, like some sort of renovation project. But in reality, it was so much more than that. 

Riki searched for any sort of information about the machine, trying to see what exactly was left to do until his gaze landed on something. 

There was some sort of date on a bright pink sticky-note, and Riki’s eyes widened when he finally comprehends it. 

The machine was scheduled to be completed tomorrow. 

-

A street lamp next to Riki dies out—which was a clear sign that something was powering up. From the dark, he hears the metal from the same place as last night moving again, and he knows that Spark has left. His presence sends anyone down the street and immediately running, leaving the area for only them two. 

Riki finally sees the completed metal build. Half of his body is wrapped in or replaced with metal parts as he sets down the metal portal, beginning to push it in the direction of the power plant. 

A truck or car would make things much easier, but whatever.

Riki wants to cry from fear and run away. He wants to leave and pretend he never saw anything from last night. 

He’s going to die fighting Spark and he will quite literally a) never finish highschool and get that stupid diploma, b) finish explaining how Gatsby is not a good person and is naturally selfish, and c) he’s never going to tell you how he’s had a small crush on you ever since he saw your cute campaign video as to why you should vote y/n l/n for student body treasurer last spring. 

“You sure that thing works?” Riki asks, jumping into action as he sends webs to immobilize the machine. 

“You’re annoying, you know that?” Spark sends a projectile in the superhero’s direction, hitting the wall behind him instead as Riki jumps out of the way.

With another duck mid-air and the roof of a flying car dangerously close to his nose, Riki thanks the dance practice he does for his flexibility as he shoots another web and swings away. 

Spark is uncontrollable by now, sucking the light from street lamps and fizzing wires in his wake. He has no idea how he’s supposed to get in contact with the villain like before. The body of his suit fizzes with bright electricity that sizzles and pops. It illuminates Spark’s figure, making him easy to spot, but not so easy to defeat. It’s an overload of power, causing the voltage to escape between the joints and gaps of the metal pieces in his suit. And Riki can feel it; the air is heightened and so are the stakes of this fight—and with how the man that stands in front of him looks upgraded and menacing, he knows only one person can make it out of this fight alive. 

“You injected the city’s ‘Gas and Electric’ into your system or what?” Riki calls out, making light of the situation. If he’s being honest with himself, he’s scared out of his wits seeing the six foot figure with blue and white shooting from every crack, looking like a nightmare to touch.

Riki avoids a few more angrily thrown objects, using the momentum of his jump from the side of the building to zip from the top of a yellow fire hydrant to go from one side of the street to the other. “You’re slow!” He taunts, tucking in his legs to avoid a shot of electricity directed at him. 

The screech of metal from the nearby hydrant can be heard as the top flings off, making Riki lose his anchor/ Before he can process it, instead of smoothly landing on the building, he crashes into it faster than expected, groaning when his back makes contact with the glass and he tumbles into the living room of someone’s apartment. 

“Fuck,” he curses, fighting his aching limbs to get up once more. 

And the solution hits him. Literally. 

When he steps out and quickly attaches a web to the top of the building, he’s met on the way up with a splash of water from the hydrant to his face, and Riki splutters as he wipes his mask, regaining focus as he lands on the concrete and hides behind the ledge. 

Water. If he can get it in contact with Spark and pour enough water on the right spot, the excess of electricity blazing from his mechanical body should work against him. 

“Too scared? You should know better than to run away.” The superhero rolls his eyes, crawling away silently to avoid being seen by Spark. Riki does his best to look around for something, and finds a black flower pot in the corner, using a web to grab it before he scales the side of the building and runs away while Spark is distracted as the villain also climbs the wall to face him there. But when Spark climbs the ledge and scans the premise, Riki is nowhere to be seen. 

Instead, Riki swings across the street and fills the pot with water, heaving the extra weight as he shouts out from the sudden pain in his side. He stumbles on the pavement, crying out from the injury as the pot falls with his whole plan. 

Maybe this is where Spider-Man dies. 

He sucks in a deep breath before rolling from his back onto his knees, ignoring the wound to pick up the flower pot. The hydrant still shoots out water, and the superhero rushes towards it, causing Spark to follow. He narrowly avoids another shot from behind him, reaching the yellow hydrant before dropping the pot on the ground. Spark is th 

While Spark has always been intelligent, Riki could tell that the man didn’t fear the water, believing he’d be invincible to the elements now that his suit was perfected. There was something off, Riki could tell, and he would make sure to use it to his advantage. Spark was uncontrolled, and his powers drastically decreased the more he used them. There’s no way his body isn’t in overdrive with how recklessly he’s been letting himself get hurt. 

Riki uses a web to get himself on higher ground instead of fighting, waiting for the supervillain to follow. If he could get Spark off the edge and fall into the growing puddle of water, it should slow him down. 

Spark scoffs. “Run away, then. Like you always have.” Riki hears the wall crumbling under the villain as he climbs within seconds, immediately preparing to fight when he makes it onto the rooftop. But Spider-Man was also prepared, jumping from his crouched hiding position and attempting to catch Spark off guard. 

All he can focus on now is pushing him off. There’s no way it’d be easy, considering he had to focus on his touching any of the electricity off of his suit. Riki delivers a kick to Spark in the ribcage near his heart, where he’s fused metal into flesh. The villain coughs before taking a step back, his metal arm reaching for Riki’s outstretched leg. He grabs it, twisting with anger before the boy meets the ground in a violent throw. Not only is the slam greater because of the enhanced strength, but the power seeps into Riki’s skin, leaving it hot from the energy radiating off of his palm. 

The boy groans, flipping to his side to avoid a fatal hit to the chest. He reaches for Spark’s normal arm, swinging the villain’s body away with as force as he could to create distance between them. 

Riki has been in enough fights to simply know when to run, even if he doesn’t know what’s coming. He could feel the tingle of the charge as it powered up, and with its energy so unrestrained and its user so unstable, the large attempt to hit Riki sends the villain stumbling back from the force. The more Spark uses his powers, the more likely he’s going to end up dead. 

“Your skin can handle that anymore!” he shouts, getting ready to swing himself closer as a plan manifests itself in his head. “You’ll die like this!” 

Spark seems to know that too as he wipes his mouth and recovers from Riki’s attacks. 

“You think I care?” He shouts, desperately pressing his wounds to stop the bleeding. “You think I have anything else for myself?” The vulnerability of his character shines through as he clutches his bleeding wound without regenerative powers to help. “You think I didn’t know that when I did it to myself--what they did to me?” 

Riki doesn’t respond, grimacing as he continues hand-to-hand combat. Although he takes a solid punch to his jaw that’s forming a deep purple bruise, he manages to trip Spark onto the ground.

The man stumbles back from the head injury, the pounding from earlier not letting him to think straight. Riki doesn’t try to injure him anymore, but he instead blocks an incoming punch and tries to force Spark towards the edge. 

The villain barely notices how much space there is left, and the boy lunges with full force. They tackle each other into the ground, and Riki gets off after apprehending him once more. 

The city's a mess, and Spider-Man’s eyes want to shut down so badly, but he takes a few steps in Spark’s direction, pushing him off the side of the building as quickly as he can. Riki hears the thud before he peeks over the edge, seeing the water erode all of the engineering from the machinery. He slowly descends from the rooftop. 

“You were in the accident, huh?” Riki shouts on top of the plethora of sounds. Pain, buzzing electricity, splashes of water as he lands next to Spark; it all echoes in his ears as he pours the water from the pot on Spark’s body. “Why did you try it? Why did you want to go back so bad?”

“If I could go back,” Spark coughs, trying to get away from the large pool of water, “I could’ve prevented the accident from taking the lives of the people around me. I could’ve saved them.” 

Spider-Man understands loss, and he understands the regret that comes with failure. He understands how the man in front of him feels after having everything taken away from him, but his emotions could never justify his actions. 

“You know you can’t change things,” Riki responds, “You tried your best, Spark.” It’s the last thing Riki tells the villain before his body slumps and police sirens grow louder and louder. It’s the last thing that he continues to think about, even if the medic quickly assesses the severity of his wounds. 

“I’m fine- really,” he pushes away the hands of a concerned woman as she holds a roll of bandages. “There’s something else I need to do.” 

Riki knew he had to tell you about this–he couldn’t just let you confide in him about..well, him, without your knowledge. And Riki wasn’t morally perfect, but he knew an explanation would be the only way to fix things.

Your house looks different when jumping over the fence instead of standing in front of it. When he realizes he has no idea what room belongs to you, he racks his brain, suddenly remembering how yours was the only one with a gray balcony over the pool. And so he climbs, slipping from the exhaustion creeping into his body. 

You’ll understand after he explains everything, right? 

“____, a little help?” And what the fuck is Nishmura Riki doing outside of your door? You go to investigate the muffled sound, inching towards the curtains and pulling them back to expect him there. When you hear a half yelp and a hissing sound that follows right after, without a person anywhere in sight, your heart drops to its stomach. 

Do not say it’s true. 

“Riki, where the fuck are you?” you ask, traversing out when you don’t see him anywhere across the glass. 

“Down here.” You run in the direction of the voice, and your eyes grow comically large and you gasp, staring down at the sight before you. 

“Holy shit.” 

There Nishimura Riki is, with his mask half burned off his face and his blonde and black hair messy and matted to his forehead with sweat. The suit is ripped in multiple locations with gashes and purple replacing the healthy skin underneath. His face is in more of a grimace, as he holds onto the web with both hands and one foot planted on the stone of your balcony—read; the bottom of your balcony. 

“A little help?” And you see his sheepish emotion through the tattered fabric, embarrassed after you had to find him in such a compromising situation. “I’m a little worn out and I think my webs are getting weaker.”

You’re a little frustrated with him for being out so publicly, but more scared and worried for his condition. Your gaze narrows on the mask, tattered and covered with scratches, but clearly visible. It was Spider-Man’s mask. The material gives way to a familiar face, and your mind almost blocks you from putting the pieces together. It’s impossible, almost horrifying to think of the implications of what it means to wear the blue and red suit. 

Instead of being the villain, Riki is, in fact, the savior.

The harsh truth is that your classmate, who you spent the last month working on a project with and suspected was a villain, is the same superhero that went out and risked his life every night fighting crime. It’s jarring to see him like this, breathing heavy and straining against the stone of the balcony, and his cough snaps you out of it. “What the fuck do I do?” 

Riki tries to put his hand up in surrender and shuts his eyes at your harsh tone. “Okay, okay, I get-“ and he cuts himself off with a yelp as his footing slips. 

He holds out his hand, and you immediately bend over the smooth railing to grab it, leaning back on the heels of your feet to help him up the most that you can. You’re filled with confusion when the boy hobbles over the cool surface of the balcony and lets his head rest on the stone, not saying much as he catches his breath. You watch the rise and fall of his chest and how his right arm goes to nurse the left side of his ribcage, wincing and sucking in a pained breath as he assesses the smear of red on his fingers. 

Sitting there with your mouth agape, you’re not really sure what to think about first; to check if RIki’s alright, to think about how your city’s greatest superhero is your English project partner, to yell at him for going to your house instead of his house to fix himself up, or to think about how good his side profile looks in the moonlight. Maybe you should’ve just been relieved that the boy you started to like wasn’t a fear-inducing villain.

“Okay, first of all, we need to have a huge talk. But I’m not a medic Riki- I’m going into accounting for fuck’s sake.” He hears the amount of curses flying from your lips as you ramble, and sees how stressed you look watching him sit against your railing. 

“I don’t know how to help you. And also,” you lower your voice and scoot closer, looking around at the large property to really make sure no one’s listening. “you’re Spider-Man?” 

The information all hitting you at once is worse than when your history teacher told you your essay was horrible. At least then, in her office, you could process everything. But here? You’re about to faint. 

“I’m pretty cool, huh?” And of course Nishimura Riki says such a thing, taking deep breaths as he shallowly presses on the blossoming bruises on his skin and wipes the sweat from his brow. 

“Pretty fucking stupid is what it is, Riki.” You cross your arms and try to take a look at where he’s been hurt, hoping that at least he has some sort of regeneration ability that helps him heal much quicker—because there’s no way he could deal with all of this on top of school. 

“I have my reasons,” he says, his voice quiet. 

You pause. “For being Spider-Man?” 

“No,” he shakes his head. “For coming here.”

“What could possibly make you want to come over to my house instead of the nearest hospital? What’s that important to you?”

“I really want to ask you to prom.” 

You simply stare at him, surprised. 

“You came to my house, even though you’re like, a punch away from passing out, to ask me out? And you couldn’t have, I don’t know, asked me anytime during the classes we have together?”

Riki somehow finds it in himself to frown and shrink from your angry piercing gaze. “I can’t because talking to you makes me nervous–so yeah, I’m sorry I’m half conscious on your balcony in my suit instead of at your door with a poster.” 

You’re conflicted, your mind still reeling from the recent discovery and your flood of emotions. Ever since you questioned his identity on top of your feelings for him, you had a hard time really knowing if you could like Riki if he turned out to be a villain, so to know that he proved both of your theories wrong leaves you quiet as you think. If possible, the color in the boy’s face drains even more when you go back inside, but the door stays open, and he thinks he hasn’t ruined things after all. You emerge with a bottle of isopropyl alcohol, a bowl of warm water, and a pristine white towel. 

“I’m not mad about that, you idiot,” you reprimand him, setting everything down as you examine the cuts on his face. You squeeze the towel and start to dab at his skin, avoiding the cuts as you clean it. “Who does this for you if not me?” 

“Jake.” 

“Seems like a pretty good friend.” Riki nods in response. 

 “I’m sorry,” he sighs, sitting up to properly address you, even if you weren’t able to meet his gaze. 

“For what?”

“For putting this on you–all of it. Not just the whole Spider-Man thing.” He knew he’d have to tell you at some point, or else it’d eat him up inside to know he kept all of it from you. 

“Look at you, saving me mid-air and talking to me as if you didn’t know who I was.”

You notice a flash of regret through his wince as you clean up a cut with antiseptic. “I meant it when I told you I knew what it was like to have a lot of pressure.”

“Guess I wasn’t so far off, then. If we never talked, would you have told me?” Riki shakes his head, and the simple motion leaves you somehow disappointed. 

“How do you ever tell anyone you’re…y’know, Spider-Man?” Even if it’s a hypothetical, you shrug, not being able to answer.

“How’d Jake find out?” 

Riki chuckles and hisses at the same time before trying to remember. “I think I just kicked his window in after a nasty poison got hold of me. He was a little too excited to have Spider-Man on his bedroom floor, and less excited to know it was me. I’m not really supposed to tell anyone, though.”

“Then why’d you tell me? You could’ve just gone back to your friends.” 

“I felt guilty–I know, I know, it sounds stupid. I’d definitely get my identity revealed at this rate.” You shake your head. 

“Not stupid. Keep going.” 

“I didn’t care that you suspected me, or if anyone else did, because I knew it was never true. But I felt so bad knowing you were sharing to me how you felt without even knowing it was me who was listening–like I was holding something from you.” 

You admire his honesty, and when you look at his furrowed brows and his lip that he’s been gnawing from worry, you can’t even imagine what he’s had to hide and do for this. In a way, you look up to him more, for trying his best even if he’s gotten all odds stacked against him. Riki’s commendable in your eyes–he always had been, ever since you woke him up in class. 

“I like those things about you, Riki. That you’re honest with yourself and the people around you as much as you can be, and you try to help others when you can. I’m glad we got to know each other more this past month.” Talking to him feels different than talking to Spider-Man from a few days ago; it feels raw, like you’re not just confessing something to a brick wall anymore. If none of this ever happened, you doubt you’d get the chance to tell Riki any of this properly. 

The boy stays silent, taking deep breaths while processing what you’ve told him. “I’m glad I could help you out.” 

You furrow your eyebrows. “I hope you know I don’t like you because you help me out. I like you because you’re attractive, and because you’re genuine,” you blurt. 

Riki laughs despite his ribcage hurting everytime he does so. Riki nods and mumbles a ‘thank you,’ also glad to truly get to know you. While his crush was more of an infatuation with your hard work and amiability, the past few weeks really opened his eyes to who you were. You never wanted to disappoint, and even if your recklessness left you in some dire situations, Riki could see how much effort you really put into things. 

There wasn’t anything else he needed to tell you–you were smart enough to see how much he cared about you.    

You’re so close, your lips glossy with lip balm as you watch him carefully. You hear and see it all; the heavy, labored breathing from his body healing itself rapidly, and the way his hand is full of rough cuts and calluses as his fingers intertwine with yours. But your eyes catch a glimpse of his mask tossed to the side, the blue shining in the corner of your eyes as you’re reminded of who he is right now, and what role you play. You are still ____ ____, but he’s a superhero.

It makes you momentarily forget whose suit you're peeling away, whose skin you're cleaning. It reminds you that he’s just the boy in your English class that you fell for. “What does that make us?”

“Prom-goers,” he answers with a slight nod. 

You smile, wiping a cut before placing the towel back into the bowl for the last time and getting up. “We can be prom-goers, yeah.” 

You’re not sure if you’re ready for anything, and you’re thankful that he understands that, too. As much as it warmed your heart to see him again and hear his confessions, the blaring truth still hangs over your head. You grab his mask, finally looking at him before handing it back and grabbing your things. His secret identity wasn’t something you could just ignore. 

“Go home, Spider-Man,” you turn your back on him, and time slows when you falter before sparing him one more look. “I want you as Riki, not like this.” 

MAYBE NISHIMURA RIKI DOESN'T NEED TO DIE–OR ALMOST DIE–ANYMORE. 

He went home that night with his scars somewhat cleaned and his bruises miraculous healing on their own, and even if slipping through the window left him clutching his side in pain, Riki silently jumped up to celebrate his multiple victories before slipping out of his suit and finally getting some rest. 

Riki’s scared of how he’s affected your relationship. He’s worried you’ll avoid him in the halls, and he’s worried you’d never want to see him again after putting you through all of it. As much as he'd understand how upset you'd be towards him, he hopes he did the right thing by telling you.

But you see him on your way to English, and you call his name. His eyes search for yours in the crowds, and you two see each other before you crush him in a hug. 

Riki isn’t sure how to feel at first, but eventually wraps his arms around you as relief settles in his stomach. 

“Thank you for saving me, Spider-Man,” you whisper, loud enough for only him to hear. 

He smiles at you, ruffling your hair as you go to English together. “Anytime, ____.” 

NEVERMIND, NISHIMURA RIKI MIGHT DIE WHEN HE SEES YOU IN YOUR RED PROM DRESS.

But first, he has to try something out. 

He curses to himself when silently zipping from a tree outside your family property to the top of your house, staring past the ledge two and luxurious stories to your well decorated porch light and door. He just prays that Google Maps is  right about how secluded the area is, so no one can see him pacing around your rooftop, with flowers elegantly wrapped in his hand (courtesy of your mother’s sleek envelope from a few days ago). 

“Fuck it,” he says to himself, shooting a web and dangling himself down. Riki’s upside down figure watches swirled window frames and meticulously designed accents as he descends, and he wonders what kind of shady business your parents could’ve done to afford something so grand. 

He faces your door—hanging down instead of rightside up, but he’s still here on time like he promised. 

The door opens at 6:00PM like he instructed you to, but what he didn’t tell you what to do was shriek and slam the door. On his nose. With a loud yelp, Riki clutches his nose, rubbing the spot you hit and trying to apply pressure to alleviate the pain. 

When the door slowly creaks open again, you face with the image of Nishimura Riki, aka your boyfriend, aka your English partner, aka Spider-Man, curled upside down in the fetal position as he cradles the sore spot on his face and swings slightly from the breeze. 

“You scared me, dumbass! How was I supposed to know it was you? It was so hard to see!” 

Although muffled, Riki’s able to mumble, “You have a porch light for this reason, _____,” and a jab at his stomach from you follows his sarcastic remark. Finally, his nose feels better, and he straightens out to finally look at you. 

Pretty, pretty, pretty, and the boy wonders how you look even more stunning with a glittering red dress and perfectly done make-up. “I like the red,” he says, trying not to freak out over your beauty. “Reminds me of a certain neighborhood superhero.” 

“I have some blue spider earrings to match.” With a beautiful smile, you turn to show him the little accent, and it melts his heart. “Are you okay, though?”

“I’m fine. I should’ve probably put more thought into that.” 

You snicker, sliding into your heels and closing the door behind you. 

“One of us is better at romantic gestures, it seems.” It warrants a scoff, and Riki brings a gloved hand to poke at your forehead teasingly.

“Let me have a do-over, then?” And the way your lips curl up into a bright smile leaves him quiet and in awe. 

“What, were you going to kiss me? Very original, Spider-Man.” With the way the fabric shifts over his features, you can tell he’s pouting. 

“I thought girls liked this.” 

You shrug, pretending you aren’t swept off his feet by the effort he’s put in. Taking a step in his direction, your hands reach up to gently pull the mask over his chin, ears, and then his nose. 

Whispering quietly, you ask, “You’ve kissed other girls upside down?” 

Riki’s quick to shake his head. “You’re the only girl I’d withstand a head rush for.” And god, you just can’t stop yourself from grinning at his sweet, genuine words.

You lean in, placing a small kiss on his nose as a silent apology. Then, you close your eyes and lean into him once more, feeling his hands carefully holding the side of your head and his lips on yours. Your kiss with Riki is saccharine and slow, making you pull away when the urge to beam at him is too much. Your cheeks definitely hurt by how romantic he’s being, and you can’t resist kissing him once more.

“I’m not gonna lie,” he starts, finally letting himself down, “It feels weird.” 

“You ruined the moment.” And he really didn’t, but you enjoy his subtle reactions to your light digs at him. 

“Whatever.” Riki laughs. “Stay here, I’ll be right back.” 

You nod, sitting down on the porch and dragging a manicured nail over your lips with the ghost of his affections, thinking about how you literally just kissed Spider-Man. 

Riki comes back, dusting off his suit and smoothing out the wrinkles, with a large bouquet of red roses and one blue one snuck in there. Your lips stretch into a grin and you accept the bouquet, keeping a mental note to read the card in there.

“You never cease to amaze me, Riki.” It’s the last thing you mutter to the air before you loop your arms around his neck, urging him to lean down as you kiss him once more—this time rightside up, but still as sickly saccharine as the one before it. Your heart is fuzzy with fondness and your eyes glitter with adoration. 

“So, which kiss was better?” he asks when you pull away, a little breathless and dizzy.

You swat his arm and walk past the gates, seeing the sleek limo waiting by the curb. “I don’t know, Spider-Man. Maybe show up in your suit and we’ll try it again.” 

REBLOGS AND FEEDBACK ARE ALWAYS APPRECIATED AND ALWAYS READ!

RIKI FIC DONE!!!! ngl y/n u were right there how did u not know riki was spiderman but whatever idc she's a hard worker not smart LMFOAOAO. my first ever action fic so i hope you enjoy! also i hate the ‘oh he pined after her for 4 years she liked him for 2 months’ bs because I WAS IN IT. and it sucks so i tried to deviate from it :)

꣑ৎ permanent fic taglist (TAGGED IN TEASERS, FICS, HEADCANNONS, DRABBLES, ETC.): @dimplewonie @minleeeknow @heeheesang @mintpjzroll @llvrhee @firstclassjaylee @in-somnias-world @rairaiblog @suneng @mavlogist @sensitively-taken @sumzysworld @simpjay @moons-v @riksaes @txtari @jungwonscatcus @tya0 @sasfransisco @woorcve @shypen @pinkriki @rikisluv @saranghaohoshi @lilifiedeans @wonmyheart @k1ttyluvr @nikisgfff @ramenoil @laurradoesloveu @lvcky-g1rl-syndr0me @ikeulims @missychiefs1404 @qwonyoung23 @yangjungwonnie @onementally-unstabel-kid @microwvdstrawb3rri3s @blooqz @anormieee hi permies hope u enjoy! kith

[sturnioloszn]

JEALOUS - C.S

summary; while your boyfriend is streaming, one specific girl keeps gifting, and you begin to feel jealous of all the attention she's receiving, so chris comes to show you some attention too...

warnings; smut, unprotected sex (wrap the willy), tit sucking, dirty talk, teasing, praising, leaving hickeys, spanking, i think that's it..?

a/n; i have more ideas for fics, but please feel free to leave suggestions/recommendations on what fics u want to see and ill provide like a fairy godmother (unless it's some crazy shit like a shit kink, get out).

★ ° . *　　°　.　°☆ 　. * ● ¸. 　　　★ 　° :. ★　 * •

It was currently 1am, and my boyfriend and I were cuddled up in his bed watching our favourite series. I loved nights where I was able to just lay in bed with Chris and relax, especially with the chaotic lives we both live.

However, this didn't last long.

"Yo, wanna stream late night fort duos?" Matt questions, walking into the room. Chris looks down at my face, which is currently resting on his chest.

"Would you mind if I streamed with Matt for a few hours, baby?" He asks. There's a look of hope in his eyes, and who am I to deny him having fun with his brother.

"Of course not, you don't have to ask me," I reply, giving a small smile. I love cuddling with Chris, but I don't mind letting him play fortnite with his brother. He'll probably hop off in a few hours and come back to bed anyway.

As he slowly stands up from his bed, he gives me a small thanks before moving to his desk. I watched him attentively as he placed his headphones on his fluffy hair and turned on his monitor, which illuminated a soft blue light onto his face.

I could watch him all day and night. He was the most beautiful man I've ever seen. The way his hair was slightly damp, from coming out the shower not long ago, and the way his facial hair looks without a few days of shaving. God, he was perfect.

"Hellooo people," he says, adjusting his mic. I didn't even realise that he had started the stream already.

I grabbed my phone from the nightstand so I could distract myself from all the screaming and shouting that was bound to happen.

~

It had been roughly an hour and a half since the stream first started, and Chris and Matt were still playing reload, and I was still scrolling on tiktok.

"HOLY SHIT, AVA WITH THE 100 BOMB!" Chris yells, making me turn my head to look at him. I loved how grateful Chris always is, whether people gift 1 or 100, Chris was always so thankful. I really did get lucky with him.

A few moments later Chris shrieks, "No fuckin' way, another 50 subs from Ava,". I turn to look at him again and he has the widest grin on his mouth.

"Everyone spam 'w Ava' in the chat," He says, focusing back in on his game.

I honestly don't know how some people are able to gift so much. I've seen the price of subs, and they are priceyyy. Yet, some people gift hundreds and hundreds.

"AVA WITH ANOTHER 50, HOLY SHIT, YOU'RE THE GOAT AVA," He yells again, shuffling in his chair.

What the fuck? This girl dropped a bag on subs in 5 minutes.

This continues for another half an hour, and to be honest, I'm getting sick of it. Don't get me wrong, I love that they're getting subs but it's the same fucking girl. Can she give it a rest? She's been spamming them with subs, and Chris is not letting it go unnoticed to anyone.

I look over to Chris, and he's smiling wider than ever. He must realise I'm staring at him, so he turns to look at me back.

As soon as we make eye contact, I shuffle on the bed and turn my back to him. From the corner of my eye, I can see his smile fade, and he turns back to his game.

I don't know why I'm feeling like this. I'm not upset about the subs. Is it jealousy? Am I feeling jealous of all the attention Chris is giving this random girl? I guess I am. It's hard not to when he left cuddling you to praise some random girl on the internet.

"Matt, I'm lowkey getting tired. After this round, I'm gonna hop off," Chris says, and through my peripheral vision, I can see him look at me.

He's lying. He's not tired at all, it's only 3am. He can sense something is wrong with me, and that's why he's hopping off the game.

But, as he said, he finished up the round and ended stream.

"Babe, what's wrong?" He asks, standing up from the chair and making his way over to me on the bed. I pretend not to hear him and shuffle slightly further away from him. He notices my actions and repeats his question.

"Why are you in a mood? Is it cause I streamed with Matt?" He continues to ask questions, but I continue to ignore him. I don't know why I'm doing this. Maybe I just want him to pay attention to me, too.

He realises the game I'm playing and decides to change the rules.

He leans down and begins to place soft kisses on my neck. I'm fighting to not close my eyes and keep looking at my screen, but the feeling is consuming me, and I let my eyes flutter close.

"Why are you ignoring me, baby? What can I do to hear your pretty voice, hm?" He says between kisses. Fuck, he knew exactly what he was doing.

He then grabs my phone out of my hand and throws it somewhere on the bed. He forcefully turns me to lay on my back and places himself between my legs, bringing his face up to mine.

"Are you gonna tell me what's wrong, or do you want to keep playing the silent game?" He challenges. I'm looking into his dark and tired eyes, enough to get lost in them.

"It's not fair," I mutter under my breath, but loud enough for him to hear.

"What's not fair, my love?" He asks, rewarding me with another kiss on my neck for answering him.

"All the attention you were showing that stupid girl," I say. My panties are already soaked by the few simple kisses that he had given me. If he continues like this, I'll have to wring out my thong.

A smirk subtly grows on his lips, and he dips his head back down to my neck for another reward. "Are you jealous, baby?" He whispers against my skin.

Fuck. He was driving me insane.

"Yeah, so what?" I ask, challenging him back. I then feel his lips attach to my neck. I gasp softly when he begins to lightly suck on my sweet spot.

"I'm so sorry baby, let me show you the attention you deserve," he says, moving back up to my face. His soft lips crash into mine, and his hands explore my body. My body feels like it's on fire, and I'm craving him more than ever.

"Chris, please," I beg. I'm begging him for something more, I need more.

"I know, baby," he coos. He then brings his hands to the hem of my shirt and lifts it over my head when he sees my nod of approval. He instantly wraps his warm mouth around my nipple and I shudder at the new sensation. He lifts his hand to my other nipple and begins to roll it between his fingertips.

By now, soft moans are escaping my mouth from the stimulation, but I'm still hungry for more. I buck my hips at him to indicate what I really want. He notices my desperate actions and separates himself from my chest.

He hooks his fingers over the band of my sweatpants and yanks them down, revealing my soaked thong.

"Fuck, look at you," He rasps, admiring the patch of wetness that seeped through my underwear. I whine at his comment, I need him so bad. He then peels his own clothes off, leaving himself in just his boxers.

As he pulls his last item of clothing off, his swollen cock sprung out. I sigh at the sight in front of me. I'll never get over this view.

"Be a good girl and get on your hands and knees," he says stroking his cock a few times and rubbing his pre-cum all over his head.

I swiftly move into the position he ordered, and I feel his hand on my lowerback, pushing me into a deeper arch. At this point, my ass is completely in the air, and I'm ready for him to use me.

I feel him pull my thong to the side, letting the cold air in the room hit my warm and wet pussy. With no hesitation, he slides his cock into me with ease, filling me up. We both moan at the contact.

He instantly starts ramming into me, showing no mercy whatsoever. My arms give out immediately, and my face is smushed into a pillow.

"Isn't this what you wanted? My attention," He grunts out from behind me, placing a firm slap on my right ass cheek. I let out a strangled moan, allowing myself to grip the bedsheets.

"Answer you attention whore," he repeats, placing another slap on my ass.

"Y-yes, fuck!" I yelp. He continues to ruthlessly fuck my pussy and I feel the heat in my lower stomach build. I was coming close to finishing. Between the dirty talk, the spanks, and of course the fucking, I wasn't going to last long at all.

"C-chris m'gonna...f-finish," I stutter out. My knuckles are turning white from how intensely I'm gripping the sheets.

"Yeah? Come on my cock like the good girl you are," he groans, placing another spank on my cheek. I bet that by now, my ass is glowing red.

His words push me over the edge, and I violently shake beneath him, allowing a flow of curse words to leave my mouth as he helps me ride out my high and bring himself to his own.

"Fuck. Your such a jealous whore and look how I have you, you think I'm fuckin' other girls like this? Hm?" He asks, pounding into me even harder. I'm starting to become oversensitive, but I know he's about to come any second.

I feel his hands grip my hips hard enough to leave bruises and his warm cum coats my insides. His movements begin to slow, and I let out a satisfied sigh. I feel him pull his limp cock out of my full pussy and he moves to lay beside me.

I crumble next to him and place my head on his chest. Our sweaty bodies are still for a moment as we attempt to catch our breath after the best cardio session ever.

"Jealousy cured?" He smiles, looking down at me.

"Definitely. I'm sorry for being a bitch earlier," I apoligise, giving a sincere smile. Before he can reply, his phone buzzes.

"Who the fuck is texting at almost 4am?" He questions, as he unlocks his phone. He opens his texts and sees a message from Matt:

'Tired my ass, u guys are disgusting'

He pans his phone over to me, and we both die from laughter. The rest of the night is spent cuddling and watching tv together, just the way I love it.

★ ° . *　　°　.　°☆ 　. * ● ¸. 　　　★ 　° :. ★　 * •

a/n; this is long as shitttt. anywhoo, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed another one of my 4am creations. love youu <33.

[wrioluvr]

『shhh, not so loud! make me. huh?』 slutty sub yandere x gentle himbo darling, male yandere x male reader

note: thank u all the support on pt 1 ♡♡ was thinking about a scenario where slutty yandere somehow manages to convince his darling to actually fuck him after a lot of begging... even tho reader is scared his large cock will break him apart <3 pt 1

cw: he/him pronouns for reader, mentions of reader's ex-boyfriends, loss of yandere's virginity, implied violence

nervous was the way you were feeling as you made your way to your boyfriend's house. the two of you had started dating a few weeks ago, when after you'd let him suck your dick, he broke down crying, admitted to how desperately he was in love with you, and pleaded on his knees for you to own him and treat him as your personal fucktoy. frantically, you quickly assured him you would treat him as an equal in the relationship, to his slight disappointment. of course, he was ecstatic that you'd agreed to be his boyfriend, but you were his god, how could he not worship such a kind being? in your eyes, despite his rather.... overly submissive behaviour, he was kinda cute, so why not give it a go? if only you knew how deep his obsession truly ran...

and with an progression in your relationship, came a progression in intimacy level as well. the previous day, he had gathered up the courage to ask you to top him, which is why you were making your way to his apartment now. the current fear you were feeling was not for yourself, but for him, you worried that he would hurt himself trying to bottom. you were aware you were bigger than most guys... you wondered how to tell him you weren't too sure about the whole anal thing after all.

but what you did not expect to see the moment you opened the door to his room, was him on his bed on all fours, ass up, using his index and middle finger to spread his tight pink hole towards you. he turned his head around at the sound of your arrival and looked back at you with lust-filled, half-lidded eyes, breathing heavily. "baby! thank god you're finally here... please fuck me already, i've been waiting for hourssss......." his words came out in a pitiful whine.

your eyes widen at his plea. "woah, okay, let's slow down." quickly, you make him sit up, much to his confusion. he was already ready, so why were you hesitant?

taking his hand and squeezing it gently, you tell him what's on your mind. "okay, uh... i'm not too sure if i want to fuck you right now..."

"wha- but- but why? you promised!"

"i know i did, but i'm worried for you. i know i'm kinda... big, so i don't want to make you bleed or anything..."

at your reasoning, he can't help but whine in frustration. don't you understand? he doesn't care about how much it hurts! he wants it to hurt! his one wish is for you to completely destroy him! usually he'd back down, since he doesn't want to make you uncomfortable with his desperation, but he decided to be a little selfish.

reaching over and fondling your crotch, he looked at you with a silent, horny plea in his eyes, then proceeded to sit in your lap and grind on your bulge sensually. he whimpered as your clothed dick got harder and prodded at his hole.

taken back by his sudden boldness, you let him straddle you. "hey... did you even listen to anything i said?"

"forgive me, darling. but i want this so bad. give it to me, pretty please?" he continues to roll his hips on your crotch, not sounding terribly sorry at all.

you sigh, realising you can't change his mind. "okay, just let me know if it hurts, and i'll stop immediately. alright?"

"mhm." but secretly, he'd moan in pleasure no matter how painful it was, relishing in it.

"at least let me prepare you first...?"

"i've been fingering myself for the past hour, you don't need to." he giggled, as he got back down on all fours on his bed, hoping you were proud of his forward thinking. "i want our first time to be special, so i'm fully prepared."

"wait... you're a virgin?" upon hearing your question, he turned his head back to look at you with an incredulous expression on his pretty face, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"but of course, i've been saving myself for you. i don't want anyone else using me." he bit his lip, making sure you knew how much he valued you taking his virginity. he suddenly realised how he'd completely forgotten to ask (or stalk to find out) about your past relationships. "what about you, darling? are you a virgin?" secretly, he was hoping the answer would be yes, but deep down he knew you were far too desirable for that to be true.

"nah. i dated a few guys before, but they broke up with me because they said i was too dumb." you'd never really thought about it deeply, but saying it out loud made you realise that it was rather embarrassing...

"how the fuck could they say that? you're so perfect and kind... forget about them, darling... just focus on me. you won't need to think about those ungrateful whores ever again." his change in tone caught you off guard, grip tightening around your arm. this was the first time he'd ever sounded genuinely pissed off. but this was quickly masked by his usual lovesick smile as he resolved to make you feel so good, your attention would forever be on him and him only.

eagerly, he helped you undress and tried not to blush at the sight of your naked body, even as he relished in the sight of the cock he had gotten on his knees for so many times before. you were confused at his reaction. "we're both guys, why are you embarrassed?" you were so silly sometimes. he was finally going to be made your bitch, of course he would be flustered!

with your cock teasing his entrance, he made his final invitation. "i want you to mess me up inside." he begged as he spread his virgin hole open, groaning in pain and pleasure as you pushed halfway into him. immediately, you looked up to his face in concern. "you okay? it's only halfway in..." "fuck, i said i can take it!" with that, he pushed himself onto your cock with a lewd determination, letting out an overly passionate moan as you fully entered him. instinctively, you shushed him, not wanting the neighbours to hear. "shhh! you're being too loud....." "make me." he retorts defiantly, trying to rile you up so you would be rougher. "huh?" fuck, he was really pushing it today. you really didn't want to, but he was making far too much noise. resorting to muting him forcefully, you reach for his mouth and clamp your hands over it, effectively gagging him. his eyes widen, not expecting you to take the bait, but he's in heaven. you can practically see the hearts in his eyes as he sluttily sucks on your fingers, all that's left is a series of muffled whimpers.

even though your mind was currently preoccupied with the way your boyfriend's squeezing your cock, you can't help but think about your exes after he brought the topic up. you knew you were a little dumber than most, but did all those guys really break up with you just because you were stupid? he seemed to sense your feelings and clenched harder, making you lose focus and grip his hips tightly. the thought of you thinking about your exes while you were inside him was horrible, he couldn't have that at all! "s-see, darling, my ass is much better than those sluts, isn't it- uuummfff." he could barely form words as he continued to ride you up and down, savouring the way your large length stretched his inner walls to their limit. it was quite the stark contrast - you were thrusting in and out of him at a tender pace, making sure you were never too rough (feeling a little guilty for muffling him so forcefully just now), but yet he was whimpering and writhing all over the bed, gripping the sheets whenever you hit his prostrate at regular intervals. he desperately tried to fuck himself on your cock when you slowed down, noticing his tears, begging you to start again. after a bit, you felt like you were about to reach your climax. "hey, i'm about to co-" "do it inside me." you didn't have time to argue as he pulled you closer into a hug, making you cum inside him, much to his delight. he adored the way you filled him up, feeling you pump load after load into his hole. he rubbed his stomach, wishing he could get pregnant with your child. but alas, he can't have everything. today was already a huge victory. exhausted, he collapsed into your arms as you stroked his hair, apologising for being a little rough and hoping his ass didn't hurt too much. he couldn't really focus on what you were saying as he just lay there and stared up at you affectionately. god, you were just perfect, weren't you?

˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗

in the middle of night, as you slept peacefully, the boy you fucked a few hours ago had just finished going through your phone, his one objective being obtaining the names of your exes. "don't worry, darling.... i'll take care of those unappreciative bastards myself. no one gets to make you feel stupid." he whispers to your ear lovingly before getting out of bed. he hoped you wouldn't be too mad when you found out he killed them when you woke up. or maybe he did, just so you could punish him. ♡

[briefinquiries]

Tyler Owens x Reader: I Choose You

Request: Anonymous said: "jealous tyler or jealous reader would be interesting to read 👀"

Word count: 3.8k

Warnings: none!

A/N: not sure how i feel about this one but I gave it a go and wanted to make sure I posted!

Tyler tells himself that he’s over thinking… maybe even reading too much into things. 

But God, he swears he isn’t imagining the way that you and the reporter he’d agreed to let tag along for the next week naturally interact with one another with such ease. 

Tyler is not a jealous person– he’s confident and secure and he trusts you. Jealousy is petty and it’s stupid. And Tyler’s been trying his whole life to prove to himself and everyone around him that he’s not stupid.

Tyler has a loose shock to repair before the storm they’ve been tracking rolls in later that day. He’s currently laying on the dirt at the rest stop they’ve pulled in, with a wrench in his hand. Dani’s shining their flashlight for him, and it’s important he stays focused. And he tries… really, he does. 

But Tyler looks up just as the reporter laughs at a joke you’ve made. And then, he reaches out to touch your arm for the added effect. Tyler nearly drops the wrench he’s holding on his face at the sight. 

“Easy, T,” Dani says, studying him closely. 

He takes a deep breath before looking back towards the truck. 

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Dani asks, kicking his shoulder gently with their boot. 

“Nothing,” Tyler grumbles in a tone that screams there is absolutely something wrong. Thankfully Dani doesn’t push. 

…

Throughout the rest of the week, Tyler tries to talk himself down whenever jealousy rears its ugly head. He keeps telling himself that he’s being irrational– you’re not flirting with the reporter everytime you walk with him into the gas stations they stop at, or offer to ride with him in the van instead of Tyler’s truck, where you normally sit. You’re just trying to be friendly… make him feel at ease. 

But did he really have to look at you that way while you studied the GPS monitoring system? Or share his fucking cookies with you when everyone ate lunch in the field? And did you have to laugh so loudly at every single joke he made?

Tyler finds out on the second night he’s tagging along that Henry’s a fucking Columbia grad on top of a stupid self-proclaimed comedian. The two of you are sitting around the fire talking about graduate degrees when Henry turns towards him. 

“Did you two meet at school then?” Henry asks.  

Tyler smiles, but instead of warmth it’s laced with sarcasm. “Nope, I don’t have one of those fancy degrees, Henry. In fact, none of us but her do.” 

Henry turns back towards you and proceeds to ask more questions about your time studying meteorology at the U of A. Meanwhile, Tyler is left to simmer in his own self pity, wondering if it bothered you that he isn’t educated like Henry. 

Tyler has to spend the rest of the week fighting the urge to make it known you’re his– he’s had thoughts of keeping a permanent hand planted on your waist right in front of Henry. Maybe if he pulled you in for a kiss a little more often, and really claimed you as his, this guy would back the hell off. 

But Tyler quickly shakes away the thought. 

Because claiming you like an object is stupid, and Tyler is not stupid. 

…

Tyler grabs you a coffee from the nearest gas station and brings it back to the motel because he’s really trying to move past all this shit. You’re sitting with Lilly and fiddling with the drone when he tries to hand it to you. 

You offer him an appreciative smile that warms his entire chest. Tyler’s definitely been overreacting, because you’re looking at him with such love and admiration in your eyes. 

“Thanks, but I’ve already had some today,” you say, crushing every hope inside of him in an instant. “Why don’t you give it to Dani?  They take their coffee the same as I do.”

“When did you have time to get coffee?” he asks, trying to play it cool. 

You reply so simply, like the words don’t slice right through his heart. “I didn’t, Henry brought me one.”

Tyler’s jaw tightens. It’s a gesture you don’t notice, because you’re too busy focusing on the drone half in your lap. 

What you do seem to notice, is the way he scoffs. It makes yours and Lilly’s heads both turn. 

But before you can reply, Tyler’s already walking away. He clutches the coffee firmly in his hand and without a word, drops the full cup in the trash can outside the motel. 

…

Tyler has to remind himself that he’s not angry.

At least not at you.  

You and him have a great relationship. He trusts you and that’s all there is to it. Whether it’s Henry or whoever else–  you never gave Tyler a reason to be worried. 

But Tyler doesn’t like the way seeing you with the reporter makes him feel. Because at any moment, you could leave him for someone with a more respectable career– someone with fair skin and button up polos who just looked like they had their shit together. Someone with a college degree… someone a hell of a lot smarter than him. 

Seeing you with him made Tyler feel vulnerable, like he had something to lose– because he had everything to lose. 

…

The crew spends another week chasing in Oklahoma. The season’s winding down, but they still managed to catch two EF0s and an EF1. 

Tyler’s been avoiding you for most of the week. He’d offer the truck space to Boone and Lilly, he’d sit next to Dexter around the fire at night… hell, he would hardly even look at you. 

You turned down his coffee earlier in the week. Only after the fact did you realize that you should have just taken the damn thing. You understand that rejecting him after he went out of his way to do something nice for you hurt his feelings… But you can’t understand how that turned into an entire week of the silent treatment. 

On numerous instances, you try to approach him. But he always has somewhere to run off to. 

“I gotta help Dani with the van’s oil change.”

“I gotta see if Boone got the footage we need.”

“I gotta give Dexter a hand with the radar.”

You’re getting sick of it. 

You try to distract yourself for the rest of the week– you ask Lilly to explain more about how to work her drone, you keep on top of the radar– looking for forming storm cells, and you try to make the reporter Tyler had invited along for the week feel welcome. 

Henry’s nice– he’s completely new to storm chasing and has loads of questions all the time. You find it slightly annoying that he’s so interested in Tyler… but you get it. And even though you’re a little irritated with Tyler for your week-long silent-treatment sentence, you still want him to sound as good as possible in the article, so you talk him up every chance you can. 

You know that this lack of communication can’t last. And the second Henry goes back to Boston to write his piece, you plan to corner Tyler and force him into telling you what the hell you’d done wrong. But until then, you don’t want to cause a scene. So, you sit back, spend more time talking with Henry about Tyler, and try like hell not to lose your mind.

…

It’s more for his own sanity than anything. It’s like seeing you with Henry has caused this sudden realization to pop into his head… You can do better– and honestly you deserve better than him. The thought is all consuming. It makes focusing on anything else incredibly difficult. 

“You gonna tell us what the hell is up?” Lilly asks one day. 

Tyler’s currently standing in the bed of his truck, tinkering things that didn’t really need to be fixed just to stay busy. 

“What do you mean?” he replies without looking up.

“I mean are you going to tell us why you two love birds haven’t spoken in like three days?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Tyler notices Boone glancing his way with an expression on his face that says he was wondering the same thing. 

“We’ve spoken,” Tyler says dismissively. 

“Telling her you don’t have room for her in the truck doesn’t count,” Lilly retorts. “C’mon, seriously, Ty. What’s wrong?”

Tyler sets his tool down and looks down at Lilly. “Nothing is wrong.”

Lilly rolled her eyes. “Okay, well are you sure she knows that? Cause Dani and I saw her crying in the bathroom.” 

Tyler lets out a long exhale– the thought of you upset instantly filling his insides with sorrow. But the thought that he was the one to make you upset is even worse. 

“I know it’s not my business,” Lilly adds. “But I’ve been watching you give her the silent treatment all week, and that’s not going to fix anything. I know Henry’s still here and it’s been a crazy week–”

Tyler can’t help the scoff that escapes his lips at the mention of Henry’s name.

Lilly pauses before a look of understanding washes over her. “You’re pissed that she’s been hanging with Henry.” She says it as a statement instead of a question. 

“I’m not–”

“I’ve known you for six years, don’t even try to deny it. You are– you’re jealous, aren’t you?” 

With his lips pursed in a thin line, Tyler raises an eyebrow at her. “Maybe I am. Does that make you happy? Is that what you want to hear?”

Now it was Lilly’s turn to scoff. “Of course it doesn’t make me happy. You’re being an idiot.”

“What?” 

“I said that you’re being an idiot,” Lilly says, annunciating each word insultingly. 

“Yeah,” Tyler nods. “I’m well aware that I’m an idiot, but thanks for reminding me.”

“I said you’re being an idiot, Tyler. Not that you are one. Now stop sulking and fucking listen for once in your goddamn life.”

It’s so out of the ordinary for Lilly to snap that Tyler actually does shut his mouth. 

“You invite a reporter on the road with us and then you don’t give him the time of day to answer any of the questions he has. You’re short and curt and to be honest, kind of fucking rude anytime he asks you anything. Y/N is being polite– and she’s hosting the guest you invited along. So don’t fucking blame her just because you’re insecure.” 

Tyler can feel the anger rising in his own chest, he wants to get defensive– to snap back at Lilly. But deep down, he knows she’s right, so he stifles any comebacks and instead hangs his head. 

Lilly sighs. “You’re not an idiot, Tyler. So stop acting like one.”

…

After letting Lilly’s words really sink in, Tyler decides that she’s right. For the first time all week, he’s motivated to actually talk with you and make things right. 

Or at least he is right until he sees Henry approaching you in the parking lot. He’s too far away to hear what Henry has to say. But he’s not so far away that he doesn't see the folded up piece of paper that he passes you. 

In an instant, everything Lilly had said– along with all the things he’s said to convince himself he’s been overreacting flies away with the wind. Because Henry just gave you his fucking phone number. 

Tyler turns– needing to get as much space from whatever exchange he just witnessed as he possibly can. In a few, long, angry strides, Tyler reaches his truck and climbs inside. In the distance, he hears Lilly call after him. But he pretends he doesn’t hear. Instead, he slams the door shut, starts the ignition and drives away. 

…

“Where’s he goin’?” Boone says just as you approach him and the rest of the crew. 

“Dunno. He didn’t say anything to you?” Dani asks, turning towards Lilly. 

She shakes her head, eyes squinting against the bright sun. 

“What the hell is his problem?” you say frustratedly, biting back tears. 

Stupidly, you’d let yourself get your hopes up earlier in the day when Tyler had offered you a small smile over breakfast. You had thought that maybe things were alright, and that he was finally over whatever had been bothering him so badly. 

But now you’re standing in the cloud of dust he just left behind after taking off in his truck without a word to anyone and you know that isn’t the case. 

“Here I was thinking I helped last night,” Lilly says under her breath. 

You snap your head in her direction. “You talked to him?”

She shrugs. “I tried to.” 

“Did he say why he’s been so upset?”

Lilly hesitates. And truthfully, you understand why. Everyone here was Tyler’s friend first. You were the last to join the crew– inducted into the group just by being Tyler’s girlfriend. They have no obligation to be loyal to you over Tyler. 

“Forget it,” you say defeatedly, turning away as soon as you feel the familiar burn of tears behind your eyes. “It doesn’t even matter.” With that, you make your way towards the RV, painfully aware of everyone’s eyes trained on you the entire way. 

…

Tyler drives to the nearest gas station, desperate for space to clear his head. 

He knows he’s being dramatic and irrational at this point, but if he stayed at that rest stop another second, he didn’t know what would come out of his mouth. He really really had to get it together. But he can’t escape the fear inside of him– the one saying that meeting Henry helped you recognize that you could do so much better than him.

And now you had his phone number, to reach out whenever that realization hit. 

Why wouldn’t you be interested in Henry? He’s got a goddamn master’s degree from Columbia, he writes articles for the Globe, works out every morning before they go chasing–  apparently makes hilarious jokes… 

Tyler rests his forehead against the steering wheel and groans.

…

Tyler’s gone for an hour. But when he finally parks the truck back at the rest stop, he hasn’t shaken the sinking feeling inside of him. 

In a preemptive attempt to avoid questions he had snagged a bunch of snacks from the nearest gas station. If you ask where he’s been, he can just say he had a hankering for potato chips and call it good. 

Except, you don’t even look at him when he gets out of the truck. Boone’s got corn hole set up in the dirt. It looks like Boone and Henry versus Dani and Dexter while you watch. He only watches for a moment before bringing the bag of snacks into the RV. 

Secretly, Tyler’s been simultaneously excited for and dreading the end of the week. He’s excited for Henry to leave and excited to sleep in his own bed. But he’s dreading being back in your shared house. It’ll be the first time the two of you are forced to be alone, and he knows he’ll have to find the words to describe what he’s been feeling. 

But apparently Tyler’s stupid, because he doesn’t even know what he’s feeling. 

All he knows is that he doesn’t want to lose you. And seeing you with Henry makes him feel like he’s about to lose you. Tyler doesn’t know how to say that to you without coming across as a total lunatic.  

…

You don’t want to cause a scene at the rest stop. But the minute you see Tyler head for the RV, you’re out of your seat and beelining it towards him while the rest of the team is distracted.

As soon as you hoist open the door, you find him hunched over the fridge, grabbing a water bottle. 

“What the hell?” is all you can manage to blurt out. You’re fuming and on the verge of tears. But you can’t help it– Tyler’s silent treatment has just about pushed you to the edge. 

Tyler whips around at the sound of your entrance… and maybe it was a little dramatic– but you need to get your point across. 

There’s a long pause while Tyler’s eyes study you. 

“Are you gonna tell me why you’ve been avoiding me all week?”

You’re met by more silence.  

“This is ridiculous, Tyler. Will you just talk to me?”

Finally, Tyler scoffs, “The reporter gave you his number, right?  Why don’t you talk to him?  I’m sure he’d love to talk.”

In an instant, a wave of understanding washes over you. But it isn’t overshadowed by the anger you feel. 

“Are you serious right now? You’re jealous of Henry?”

He shuts the fridge before cracking open his water bottle dismissively, ignoring your questions. 

“Tyler, are you forgetting that you’re the one who invited him with us this week? I mean, did you think he was just supposed to sit back and observe? He’s a reporter, of course he’s going to have questions… Questions that you were way more qualified to answer, but you were too busy being a jerk all week to answer any of them. So I did it for you–”

“I never asked for you to do that.”

“You didn’t have to– I did it for you!” you cry. “I did it so that he’d write you a good story– because you deserve that.” 

“Oh, how convenient. So you two just get along so well for my sake then?” he says. 

You exhale sharply. “Are you kidding me right now? We’ve spent the last week talking about you! I’ve been talking you up– telling him stories about what you do– how good you are at what you do– all the people you’ve helped–”

Tyler rolls his eyes. “Yeah right,” he scoffs. 

You pause, anger slowly melting away at the realization that he genuinely didn’t believe anything you were saying. 

“Tyler,” you say seriously. “There is absolutely nothing going on between me and Henry. I’ve been answering his questions and telling him how fucking brave and generous and smart you are–”

“Don’t patronize me,” he snaps, voice cracking just slightly. “Just forget it, it doesn’t matter.” He sets his water bottle on the counter before moving to step by you. 

“Tyler stop–” you say, reaching for him. But he’s too quick. He reaches the door before you’re able to stop him. 

“Will you please stop walking away from me!” you blurt out frustratedly, tears forming in your eyes. “You’ve been running from me all week– I just… I just want to talk about this. Please–”

Tyler doesn’t turn to face you, but to your relief, he stops before opening the door. 

“There is nothing happening between me and Henry, Tyler. I mean, I promise you, absolutely nothing– I… I don’t know how else to convince you. But there’s nothing going on. I’m not into Henry–”

“I know,” he says quickly, eyes squeezing shut. 

You let your mouth fall open, confusion washing over you. “What?” 

“I know there’s nothing happening between you and Henry– I trust you and I believe you.”

You shake your head in disbelief. “So why are you so mad at me?”

Tyler pauses and bites his lip before saying, “I’m not mad at you–” he tries to explain. “I just… I don’t understand.”

“Understand what?”

“I don’t understand why–”

You sigh. “Tyler, you’re not making any sense–”

Tyler’s face twists in anguish. “Why aren’t you into him?”

“What are you talking about?”

“He’s everything I’m not. And I mean– Seeing you with him– it just made me realize that you can do so much better than me,”  Tyler says desperately, the pain almost palpable in his voice. “He’s got the fancy degree– he’s obviously smart–”

You’re shaking your head before he even finishes his sentence, because the idea of anyone ever being better than Tyler was even more ludicrous than him being jealous in the first place. “Tyler, you’re smart–”

“I didn’t go to Columbia. I didn’t even finish my first year of undergrad.”

“I don’t care about any of that– you know I don’t–”

“Why?” he blurts out harshly, finally turning to look at you. “Why do you even want me when you can have someone like him?”

Tyler didn’t think he was good enough for you– and that admission broke your fucking heart. In an instant, all the reasons you loved Tyler flow through your head. There’s so many, you can’t even keep up. 

So instead, you reach into your pocket and pull out the note Henry had given you just hours earlier– the one Tyler apparently saw him give you. He watches as you unfold the piece of paper, quickly revealing that it’s not a phone number. 

“It’s his mom’s cookie recipe,” you explain. “The ones you refused to try. I talked to him about how you have a sweet tooth, and I said how much you love chocolate chip cookies, so he wrote it down for me. I thought I might be able to make them for you when we got home. Because I love you– and I love doing things that will make you happy. Because that’s what you do for me– you make me happy. All the time, just by existing.”

You watch as the realization washes over him.  

You sigh. “Did you ever stop and think about how I feel the same about you?”

He pauses before looking at you questioningly. 

“I mean, you’re you,” you say, gesturing towards him. “People adore you, Tyler. And rightfully so– but I’m always worried you’ll find someone better. But I don’t get hung up on it, because I trust you. I trust that you mean it when you tell me you love me and you choose me. And I need you to do the same for me, Tyler. I need you to trust me. Because I love you– and I always will.”

Tyler exhales, his eyes watery. 

“Can you do that?” you plead. 

To your relief, after a moment, he nods. 

You don’t hesitate before closing the gap between you and wrapping your arms around his middle. You lay your head on his chest just as his arms wind around your shoulders in an attempt to make up for all the hugs you’ve missed out on this week. Because as much as you love chasing in Oklahoma or Texas, your absolute favorite place to be is at home in his arms. 

“Cookie recipe, huh?” he muses above you, chin resting on top of your heads. 

You nod. “I’m a horrible baker, but I was going to give it a shot.”

Tyler tightens his grip around you. “Well horrible baker or not, I love you and I choose you.”

You let your eyes fall shut and inhale the familiar, comforting scent of him. “You have no idea how happy that makes me,” you say honestly. 

[parfaitblogs]

hii, can I please ask a blurb of post prison spencer and shy reader? And sometimes he teases her but not out of malice? Like when she talks about something and doesn't look at anyone in the eyes to focus on what she's saying (that's what I do) and he moves his head in her sight so their eyes meet?

spencer reid x shy!reader. fluff/comfort. 0.6k words. post prison reid. use of "sweet girl". 

a/n: i wrote this in like ten minutes tops because there is something sooo special to me about comfort spencer. i literally loved writing this. i was giggling and kicking MY OWN feet. i'm all for angsty!doesn't know how to accept love after prison spencer, but i also need us to start the movement of fluffy!literally worships the ground you walk on after prison because you show him so much love and support he doesn't know what else to do spencer. i love him and you for this request thank u

spencer reid who likes to listen to you talk when he gets out of prison, because talking sometimes seems like too much for him. who will sit down with you on the couch that is so perfectly moulded for your two bodies, and let you talk your entire way through whatever movie he agreed to watch for you because you always talk better when your eyes are fixated on a screen.

spencer reid who will wordlessly nod along when you start talking about your day when you're in bed together, using your rambling as a distraction from the things that keep him awake at night. whose hands will probably be running through your hair while you talk animatedly with your hands, eyes staring up at the ceiling.

spencer reid who will go into the bathroom with you because "showering alone is so boring" and "i need someone to talk to!" who will then sit outside the shower and listen to you talk some more, a shower curtain separating your two bodies as you stare at the tiled wall in front of you, hands preoccupied with shampooing your hair. spencer reid who will sit with you in his lap in the study, arms around your waist. who will answer your questions about prison because you say them with such a softness he learns he cannot keep secrets from you. and there are stars in your eyes that tugs at his heart strings every time something he says upsets you. whether it be the things he did to survive or something as mundane as his daily routine that was so vastly different to your own. and because you never look at him, but when he talks you do, and he would do anything to keep your eyes fixated on him for longer.

spencer reid who will then ask you a question about your own time alone whilst he was in prison, watching as you avert your eyes almost instantly from him, staring at whatever you could pretend was interesting behind him. who’d entangle a hand in your hair as you speak, you not thinking anything of it until he is tugging on it to pull your hair back – so, so gently, because you had learned that even after prison, he treats you with the care one would treat chinaware. spencer reid who will raise an eyebrow when you stare at him silently in confusion, convincing you to keep speaking, only to slide his hand from your hair on the back of your head to your jaw, fingers tilting your head towards him because "you keep looking away from me, sweet girl. stop it."

spencer reid who will be so confused when you stammer out a response, losing all ability to speak because he's looking at you like that and his eyes are boring holes into your own, and your heart is fluttering and you're flustered and he realises why you never look at him. and he thinks it is so funny because "i've been your boyfriend for how many years?" and you protest that he must be an awful profiler if he's never noticed this before. and so he will poke your sides until you're a laughing mess, and then he will get all serious and hold your face in place and tell you to continue, rewarding you with a kiss on some part of your face every time you manage to get a sentence out, until the reward is so nice you're rambling like you usually do, but this time you're looking at him and he is so, so in love with you and he has to actively fight the urge to kiss you every half a second. and screw prison and screw trauma, because for a brief moment he decides it was all worth it to get you right here, right now.

your reblogs and replies are always appreciated dearly ♡

[luveline]

hiiii if you’re still looking for remus centered requests, i rly liked your best friend steve giving reader a hickey and couldn’t help but think of Remus too! like him helping a shy reader not feel insecure about being the ‘inexperienced’ one of their friend group… by giving her some experience 👀💞? love ya lots!

love u thank u for requesting<3

—Remus gives you your first kiss, and then a little more than that. You know, between friends. fem, 1.2k

“Will anyone kiss me tonight, or shall I go unkissed, like some leper?” 

You laugh at Sirius’ drama. “It’s not so terrible,” you say, coming up the hallway behind him and James, your face bitten by the cold. 

“I know, my lovely little blueberry muffin,” Sirius croons, leaning back and prodding at your cheeks, the smell of cider stuck to him like a cloud, “how you remain unkissed is a mystery to me. Shall we fix that now?” 

Sirius is your friend, he doesn’t poke fun, but you flush nervously at his question. James grabs Sirius by the shoulders and yanks him away from you toward the kitchen, “Stop teasing!” 

“I’m not teasing! I would love to kiss you, sweetheart, just as soon as I can figure out which one of you is the real one,” Sirius says. 

Remus laughs and closes the front door, the last one in. He wraps his hand around your shoulders. “He’d be so lucky,” he says loudly, sending a sulking, pouting Sirius in the opposite direction, James on his tail in giggles promising to feed him some unbuttered toast if he doesn’t chill out. 

Remus’ arm falls behind your back. “Why does he act like that? Four drinks and he’s in love with everyone. He gets so urgent.” 

You confess slowly, “I can’t say I blame him. Sometimes… I wish someone would kiss me quite urgently, and I don’t even need to get drunk.”

“You do?” 

“Just because I’ve never had one doesn’t mean I don’t want one,” you say, “it’s really weird being the only one who doesn’t– who isn’t dating anyone.” You fluster at your confession, worried it’s too much to share, even while his thumb rubs affectionately into your shoulder. 

“I’m not dating anyone,” Remus says. 

“No, but, going for hookups and stuff–”

You falter as he laughs. “You want one night stands?” 

“No,” you say honestly, “but still. You’ve all done that stuff and I’m like, a twenty something loser.” 

“You listen to Sirius too much. You have an entire life to find someone to kiss you.” 

“I sort of want it now, though,” you say meekly. 

Remus laughs again, his arm wrapping tightly behind your back. You’ve both had a drink too, not tipsy like Sirius but the buzz of it perhaps the cause of your loosened tongue, and his easy touching, his teasing. He smiles down at you kindly, “You want a kiss, is that it?” he asks, “Sirius has upset you and a kiss will make it better?” 

You find you love the feeling of his chest pressed to yours, “I don’t know. It would be nice to have one just so he can stop talking about it.” 

He pulls you right into him and angles his face against yours like he’s going to kiss you, his laughing a soft warmth on the tip of your nose. “You want it right now?” he asks, his hand rubbing sweetly into your back. Layers of fabric feel useless; it’s like he’s caressing naked skin. 

“You can’t kiss me,” you say. 

“Why not?” 

“We’re friends.” 

“What’s a good kiss between friends?” He’s following your eyes, he knows all your tones, Remus wouldn’t play with you like this if he thought it wasn’t what you wanted.

“I won’t know how to do it,” you warn in a whisper, you’re reluctance clearly fading.  

“Well, you’re very pretty, so any bad kissing cancels out.” 

You bend into him as his arm pulls you up, your noses nearly touching, closing your eyes as he leans in. 

“You sure?” he asks. 

“Mm,” you hum, though he doesn’t kiss you until you nod. 

Your noses press together most of all, the strongest sensation, but then there’s heat as his lips part so slightly and press into yours. He kisses upward and you have the sense to keep pressing down, letting his soft kisses move you with him, like an ebbing wave. You take an instinctive step back and he pauses, until you attempt to kiss him again and prompt him into movement —he takes the lead. His hands grasp at your back like you’re water slipping through his fingers, letting a sound of pleasure filter from his lips into yours. 

It’s so peculiar. It’s like fireworks, like all the books and movies say, but it’s more. It’s so warm, and his lips are soft even as his kissing turns rougher, as he tilts his head to the side and his lips come apart against yours. Your hand climbs hesitantly against his side, then up, then stuck at the place just above his ribs. 

“Touch me,” he says gently, breaking the kiss as your breath comes fast, “wrap your arm around me, it’s alright.” 

“Am I hopeless?” you ask, placing your arm behind his shoulder and tipping back to see his face. 

He shakes his head, frowning, why is he frowning? “Hopeless?” he repeats. His hand comes up to your face, and that’s almost as bad as the kiss, the heat of his palm on your face and his thumb stroking over the slope of your cheek. He uses that movement to turn your head, and when he ducks in for another kiss, he murmurs, “No, I wouldn’t say hopeless,” the end of it lost on your lips. 

This kiss is rougher again. Your heart beats so loudly you can hear the thump of it in your ears as your eyes close and you attempt to fit a hundred wanted kisses into one. He just squeezes you close and returns your enthusiasm, until you can’t breathe, forced to hang your head over his shoulder as you pant for air. 

Remus kisses your neck. It’s a shock: you squirm at the sensation but let your head fall to the side as he does it again, not nearly as insistent as his lips had been on yours but something unsaid in the trail of his nose as it runs back up your neck and he kisses the skin below your ear. He slows, and slows, until he’s pulling away to stare at you. 

You lift yourself up, nonplussed. “I didn’t know it felt like that.” 

Remus shifts his hand from the side of your neck to the front, wiping at the marks of his kissing with his thumb where it wets your skin. “It doesn’t always.” He smiles at you with just a hint of smugness in his eyes. “I don’t suppose you want to know what a love bite feels like?” 

“Oi!” James calls from the kitchen. “What are you two doing?” 

You pull apart slowly from one another. You think he might’ve forgotten where you were, as did you. 

James catches the fall of Remus’ hand where it had been on your cheek and squints suspiciously. “What are you guys doing? I made toast.” 

You can’t look at him. Remus saves the day. “We’re looking for her earring.” 

“You won’t find it with the lights off.” He glares again with suspicion before turning back to the kitchen. “I didn’t even know she wore earrings,” he mutters. 

Remus gives you a sideways look. “Maybe I can show you what it feels like after?” he suggests, voice measured. 

“Between friends?” you ask. 

“No.” He puts his hand to the small of your back and gives you a gentle nudge down the hallway. “Not between friends.” 

[reidmania]

use somebody 2 | spencer reid

part one here

summary; spencer dreaded the day he would see you with anything other than a frown on your face, when that day comes, spencer would do anything to bring your sweet smile back.

warnings; some mean police man being sexist and mean to fem reader, protective spencer, fluff, a little angst but like barley any, will there be a love confession??? read and find out!

an; idk im dying. thank u. mgg hand mention

Spencer wasn’t the biggest fan of the jet before you joined the bau. He didn’t have any particular issue with it, there was nothing he could really fault or use as an explanation as to why he wasn’t a big fan of it but it was just boring, he would read and then reread books, then try and sleep.

Then you joined the team and suddenly the jet was one of his favourite places, because you would sit next to him. You would ramble about a new show you were watching or a flower you had seen on the side of the road, and lately you would tell him about your dog. He would get to listen to you talk and get to watch you smile and flap your arms around as you got increasingly more excited as your ramble went on.

On the way home if you were feeling too tired to excitedly ramble about something random you would just sit next to him and let him ramble, the same excited smile on your face nonetheless as you paid the at most attention to whatever it was he was talking about, listening intently and asking questions almost as if you just wanted to keep him talking.

He didn’t mind.

Your plans to watch the documentary he recommended at your house were quickly ruined by the notice that you had a case that would take over the span of your weekend.You had apologised profusely to Spencer as if he didn’t technically cancel on you just as much as you did him. He didn’t mind, he got to spend time with you either way.

In a sort of twisted way, he preferred working a case with you. At least this way you were around him rather than spending your weekends around anyone else. He wondered if that was creepy and controlling and if he said it aloud it would probably end in him over explaining how he just hated the idea of anything happening to you, or you meeting someone else.

You were too kind, for anyone. Especially him.

Thats why he was immensely annoyed when the Police Sheriff of the station they were at in Louisiana, decided to nit-pick every little thing you did. He wondered if the Sheriff was just insanely insecure or if maybe it was a gender issue.

He settled on the latter when the comments ended up going towards Emily, and JJ as well. Just a little bit more towards you, maybe because regardless you continue smiling at him or muttering out soft apologies for whatever minor thing you had done that the policeman had an issue with.

There were many times Spencer wanted to speak up, or shove the old mans faced into a wall — but then you’d smile sweetly at Spencer and he remembered you were a grown woman, you were perfectly capable of taking care and defending yourself. Regardless of this information, Spencer stayed a little closer to you throughout the day.

“Alright, giggle guts, whatcha got for me?” Penelope said over the phone after she had heard your mumble out a cheery hello once it went through. Spencer smiled fondly at the nickname, mostly because he saw your smile widen and a string of laughter leaving your lips, the sound melodic in his ears.

The sound of your laughter only made a small laugh puff out Spencer’s lips because it was so sweet and so beautiful that it was contagious and he couldn’t help it.

“Well, you gorgeous amazing girl. I need you to look up this guy’s medical history, please” the manner was added so sweetly and softly on the end. The compliments left your lips effortlessly, the sound of your voice and the evident smile in it made Spencer’s heart happy.

Penelope said something over the phone but it was inaudible over the sound of Sheriff standing in the corner of the room scoffing. Your eyes flickered upwards towards the sound, eyebrows pinching together in slightly confusion. Everyone’s expression mirroring your own.

Spencer felt dread fill his stomach and over every goosebump on his skin, dread to fear whatever spiteful unnecessary criticism the man would have to offer. The criticism absolutely no one asked for.

“Whats the issue?” Hotch spoke up, arms crossed over his chest as he stared down the sheriff. Was it in a protective manner? Nobody was sure really, the elder’s expression remaining unreadable.

The sheriff kicked off the wall to stand a little stranger, looking at hotch than back to you. “Unprofessional. This is why this is a man’s job. Sensitive squishy women who think life is all sunshine and rainbow are not fit for a job like this.”

Everyone went silent, your lips parted before closing, unsure of how to reply to something so unnecessarily mean. Spencer’s expression hardened. The room fell into an awkward tension, nobody moving or saying anything.

You pushed out a laugh, “Damn okay.. Tell me what you really think” You muttered under your breath, a joke.

Spencer would’ve laughed at your comment, your way to bring light to a room that had been made so dark but he could see the hurt in your eyes and he felt his heart strings pull against his chest, he wanted to reach out and grab your hand, reassure you that you were perfect for this job.

He was pissed. Actually. There wasn’t a lot that could make Spencer mad — this however was one of the few things that did. He shuffled uncomfortably, finding it difficult to hold his tongue. He could tell Emily and JJ was uncomfortable by the comment made.

Hotch opened his mouth to talk but Spencer had beat him to it. “You’re probably, what 65?” He said, his tone of voice curt and blunt it made your heart turn in Spencer’s direction.

The police officer furrowed his eyebrows, yet nodded anyways. Spencer hummed in response, sitting up a little bit straighter as he leant forward to rest his forearms against the conference table the team had been gathered around.

“Right, so by assumption and well — biology. You are actually probably the least reliable person in this room right now, despite age or gender. Your pace is significantly slower than anyone on your team, and i don’t think I even need to compare you to our team because I don’t wish to further embarrass you or hurt your fragile masculinity much more.” Spencer started.

Your head had fully turned towards his now, eyebrows quipped and eyes widened in shock because you weren’t expecting Spencer of all people to come to your defence. Not because you didn’t think he cared but because the boy could hardly defend himself, you just hadn’t expected him to defend you.

“And actually — we use psychology, which women are actually significantly more successful in because of their ability of understanding, gender plays little to no role in our field of work. Its also ironic since I know you heard Derek on the phone to Garcia, you had no issue with what he had said — so I’m very sure that whatever issue you have, is purely because your masculinity feels threatened by girls who are doing a job you couldn’t fathom. Either get your mind out of the 1800’s or get away from our team.”

“Spence” His head turned towards your voice, taking in your wide eyes and parted lips in shock. He had honestly lost himself in the midsts of his ramble, unable to help it because someone had made you upset. The sweetest, kindest, gentlest person was made to feel bad by a way too old male who was clearly unable to adjust to the way the world was evolving.

“Sorry” Spencer apologised for his ramble. The door slammed shut as the policeman left the room, and Spencer felt a strange sense of pride when he looked back up at you to see a gentle smile tugging at the corner of your lips as you pulled your eyes away from him back to the phone.

“Sorry about that pen.. Those medical records?”

Your smiled returned throughout the rest of the day, Hotch had gone out of his way to talk to the Sheriff and although nobody else had any idea what the conversation between the two included, it was clearly enough to make the Sheriff stay far far away from you and the rest of the team whenever possible.

Although your smile returned, Spencer could almost instantly notice the drastic difference. Maybe it was actually minor because no one else noticed, or maybe he just spent too much time admiring your pretty smile. Either way, he knew he didn’t like it.

“Spence” You said the nickname, a hint of curiosity lacing your tone. his head lifted towards yours with furrowed eyebrows and a small nod of acknowledgement. He repeated your name back to you in the same sort of curious tone.

He watched as you sat up a little bit straighter, meeting his eyes, offering him a smile before you head dipped down again and a gentle breath left your lips. “Do you think I’m unprofessional?” You asked, voice small and gentle and Spencer felt his heart ache so tensely it caused physical pain in his chest.

“No” He answered immediately. The rest of the team were out looking over the crime scenes while he opted for staying back with you while you looked for any connecting links between files. “I think you are very professional. You’re kind but that doesn’t make you unprofessional.” He added, quick to reassure any doubt that weighed down on your pretty mind.

You hummed gently, “But-“ He didn’t let you finish or come up with any sort of argument, he wouldn’t have it. He refused to let man who was balding make you feel any less about yourself.

“But nothing.” He said, his voice stern and final yet so gentle. “He was mean and sexist, if anyone is unprofessional it’s him. You are amazing at what you do, you are smart and kind and everyone who meets you loves you. You’re safe, for everyone. Victims especially. Not everyone has that about them” He said.

It was true, when working cases victims gravitated towards you and your comfort and kindness, if there was someone to trust it was you. Kids and witnesses were always more inclined to talk to you than anyone else on the team because there was something so sweet and welcoming and safe about you.

“You do” You said, tilting your head a little as you looked up at Spencer. His eyebrows furrowed slightly in confusion as to what you meant, but his heart skipped a beat anyways.

“You have that something safe about you.” You said, noticing the confusion that covered his features. His heart warmed and ached all at once. Spencer was glad, so so so glad that you found him safe, that he was able to make you feel that way — Honestly he was happy he had any effect on you whatsoever.

“You think so?” He asked, voice a little quieter as he held your gaze. He was scared that if he spoke any louder he may break the fragile moment. You nodded, a small smile on your face, a real smile.

“Mhm, I think thats why I got so comfortable with you so quickly. You’re so.. safe, and smart i think i trust anything you say so please don’t lie to me because that would end really badly for me, and probably give me trust issues and then i will never trust anyone again — and well thats just not good” You rambled out dramatically. Spencer’s smile widened for a series of reasons.

“I would never lie to you.” He said gently, voice carrying a hint of something more, honesty and truth and so much longing it was almost embarrassing, he hoped you missed the way his voice went up an octave.

“Okay good.” You smiled.

Your gaze lingered on Spencer’s for a moment before you turned your head away. He felt like the room had gotten too warm, he had to refrain from the urge to loosen his tie and rub the sweat away from his forehead.

“Did you like the book?” You asked, fingertips grazing over the folder of the case file you were supposed to be reading. Spencer’s eyes followed the movement of your hand before returning to the side of your face.

He nodded, mind going back to the words highlighted in blue and suddenly the room really was too warm, he could feel his palms growing disgustingly sweaty. “I loved it, actually.” Much less because of the context of the story and moreso because you had gifted it to him.

You shook your head as you lifted it to look at him, a smile playing on your lips. He was glad that was back, the sweet genuine smile on your face that could probably drown out any bad day.

“Im gonna be honest, I hate annotating books. I think pages should be left undrawn on, and crisp and beautiful but you like annotating books so i figured.. Um.. That it was a good way to tell you how I felt” You mumbled out, and Spencer was both insanely fond of you going out of your way to do something you disliked for him, and also immensely confused by what you meant.

“How you felt?” He furrowed his eyebrows and he watched as your face went through series of expressions before your eyes widened and your lips parted.

“Oh!” You huffed out, realising he had not understood what you were trying to do and you were now giving yourself away massively. “Oh thats— Really embarrassing actually.” You said as you smiled anyways, bringing your hands up to press against your flush cheeks to try and sooth the warmth.

His eyebrows pinched together as he sat up a little straighter, “No- What? What do you mean?” He asked, he found it sweet what you had highlighted and he didn’t see at all how that was embarrassing, or something he should be making a big deal out of.

You huffed out a laugh, “You’re smart Spencer, and a profiler. Im sure you can figure it out.” You said sweetly before pushing your chair out from the table, standing up. He wanted to reach out but he was stuck trying to figure out what the heck you meant.

“Im going to go get coffee.. Do you want some?” You asked, obviously relishing in his current confusion and obliviousness in order to get yourself out of this all too embarrassing situation if it ended in some sort of rejection you were buying yourself time.

“Um- What? No, No thank you” He answered confused, obviously his mind fixated on what you meant, on what he was missing and trying to figure it out.

You let out a laugh, “You’re sweet.” Before you left the room to get yourself coffee. Spencer’s cheeks warmed instantly at your compliment and if you had stayed longer he might’ve built the courage to argue how insanely ironic it was coming from you.

Instead, he sat confused. His mind going over the two lines highlighted in blue in the book you had gifted him, trying to understand how they referenced how you felt. He made you smile, that was good, he understood that.

But you always smiled. It didn’t take a lot to make you smile so how was that the big confession? Was there some context he was missing. Then he remembered the part of the story the line came from, a love confession. The context of the sentences used.

And suddenly he realised despite his iq, and being a literal genius, he was the biggest idiot on earth.

[hiddenavenues]

hii !

i saw ur post about fluffy Logan oneshots so i have one :D if this is not what ur looking for, pls feel free to ignore !!

maybe touch starved reader who constantly clings to Logan and he asks about it and reader gets nervous that they pushed a boundary and stop only for Logan to be like “wtf no i love when u cling to me, pls keep doing it”

no pressure at all, have a nice evening / morning !!

A Soft Place to Land

a/n: Hi Anon! Thank you for your request. I am so sorry this has taken so long, life went kind of crazy for a second, but it's sorting itself out now! I hope you enjoy the drabble <3

Logan Howlett x TouchStarved!GN!Reader

CW: some mentions of jealousy, reader seems pretty anxious, just some good ole' fluff

Watching how Scott and Jean held each other, or even how the kids would comfort one another, you could feel jealousy curling around your mind at the absentminded tenderness in every touch. You’d spend countless nights awake, craving the touch of another while you wrapped your arms around yourself, fingers pressing into your skin just to feel something.

It gnawed at you, quiet and constant, slipping into the quiet spaces of your mind when you were alone. You’d close your eyes and imagine what it might feel like to rest your head on someone’s shoulder, to let the warmth of another’s touch seep into your skin and quiet the restlessness within you. It was always fleeting, a memory of something you've only had in fleeting moments.

Then there was Logan. The brooding, gruff exterior everyone seemed to shy away from became your refuge. It started as fleeting touches, knuckles grazing against his when you walked, shoulders bumping when you sat together. Before you knew it, you found yourself constantly lingering in his presence, your touch becoming more purposeful. Tracing shapes into the palm of his hand during long meetings or leaning on his shoulder after a mission, his head resting on top of yours. It was rare for you to be seen far apart, the school knew you were bound to be nearby if Logan was around.

You’re not sure when it started, the constant burn beneath your skin only satisfied by his touch. You started finding ways to get him to touch you, asking for help with your hair or applying bandaids. Now, you stood before Logan with a bracelet in hand, feigning an excuse of needing help to put it on. You didn’t miss the way Logan notched a brow at your request, eyeing the bracelet he knows you’ve put on yourself countless times. You fiddled with the jewelry in your palm, gaze nervously darting around his face as a familiar pit forms in your stomach at his hesitation. A heartbeat later, Logan opens the door wide for you to enter, knuckles grazing as you pass him. 

Logan’s fingers daftly inspect the jewelry before draping it over your wrist, each graze of his fingers deepening the blush on your cheeks. Your heartbeat pounded in your ears and from the smirk on Logan’s face, you had a feeling he could hear how it quickened. 

“Why you always around me, bub?” Logan asks nonchalantly as he clasps the bracelet, fingers still ghosting over your arm. 

You swallow, feeling the words catch in your throat as you search for a response. You hadn’t considered Logan noticing, much less him asking you outright. The question hangs in the air as his eyes search your face, something curious and unguarded in them. You struggle to find a response that doesn’t make you sound desperate and scare him off.

“I’m sorry I didn’t mean to,” You murmur, taking your arm away from his touch, clutching it to your chest as if to slow your racing heart. You look away, face burning beneath the weight of his gaze. “I’ll stop. Must be kinda creepy, constantly hovering around you.” You force a weak laugh.

A beat passes, the crushing silence presses against your chest, wrapping around you until each breath feels like a struggle. When you gather the courage to meet his eyes again, his expression has softened, the usual guarded look slipping. He shifts closer, bringing his face level with yours, and the intensity in his gaze holds you captive. 

“Don’t do that,” Logan’s breath fans your face with each word, mouth inches from yours. “Ain’t nobody said I didn’t like it.” His words are rough, each one lifting a weight from your chest. His eyes dart away to study the floor as his cheeks flush a deep crimson. “Ain’t used to people hanging around this much but… I don’t mind so much with you.” 

A pause before he shrugs as if trying to shake off the weight of his words. “Guess you don’t bother me as much as most folks do.” Logan straightens but doesn’t step back. His face remained aloof, but his cheeks were still rosy as vulnerability oozed from his gaze. “So quit worrying about ‘creeping me out.’ You’re good.” 

Logan’s kind words curled around your heart, a smile gracing your lips as you look at him. “So what I’m hearing is you're saying I can bug you even more now?” You joke, nudging his shoulder. 

He scoffs, dramatically rolling his eyes. “I wouldn’t push it, bub.”

---

Likes and reblogs are appreciated :)

[13lov]

tethered pt. 2 | jjk

✰ pairing. — emo!jk x reader

✰ genre. — early 2000s au, best friend's older brother, childhood friends to lovers, smut, light angst.

✰ word count. — 10k+

✰ warnings. — swearing, family issues, friendship betrayal, mention of drugs/alcohol, smut [ cunnilingus, rough sex, ...idk how else to describe it ] reader and jk are both 18+, minors dni.

✰ a/n. long awaited part 2! the amount of love i received from part one was overwhelming and it means to world to meet that so many people instantly fell in love with this couple. another part is already in the works!

✰ taglist. @ahgasegotarmy116 @hellbornsworld @kissyfacekoo @littlestarstinyseven @skzthinker @cuntessaiii @nikkiordonez12 @ilikekpop-c @busanbby-jjk @xjjk187 @aloverga @kookcobain @mzeji @bxcndd @hoseokteardrop @canyon-lwt @hopefulrascalstatesmantoad @jksteponme @parkinglot-nights @chromekingkong @jk97bam [ if i didn't tag u it's because tumblr didn't allow me to! ]

part one | masterlist | ao3 | buy me a coffee?

“Did you seriously think I wouldn’t find out?” Somi is glaring daggers at you upon opening the front door, arms crossed across her chest as she eyes you. Her lips are twisted into a disgusted snarl, you’ve never seen her this upset before.

You swallow the lump in your throat, “Find out about what?”

She cocks her head to the side, squinting her eyes at you. “Don’t act like you don’t know.”

Fuck, you’re screwed. If there were a list of all the reasons why you shouldn’t have had sex with Jeon Jungkook, the simple fact of  him being your best friend’s brother would be number one.

With closed eyes, you let out a relieved sigh. As much as you wanted to wait to tell Somi about hooking up with Jungkook, it’d be an enormous weight off your shoulders not having to hide it any longer. It’d only been a few days since it happened, but you really hate keeping secrets from her.

“How’d you find out?” You question, chewing on your bottom lip.

“My parents told me, duh.”

Holy crap, Jungkook told his parents the two of you had sex? Why the fuck would he do that?

“They did?” You ask, completely bewildered.

“Well, yeah!” Somi finally uncrosses her arms, demeanor completely changing as her gaze softens, “Why didn’t you tell me your sister got engaged?”

Thank God you didn’t elaborate any further.

“Oh! Because they probably aren’t gonna last.” You respond, stepping into the Jeon household once Somi allows you to enter. It’s been a few days since you’ve been here, mostly due to the fact that you were completely avoiding Jungkook.

The empty condom in his trash bin had been plaguing your mind nonstop, you could barely even sleep from how embarrassed you were. Why did he fake his orgasm? What if he didn't fake an orgasm and just shot a blank? Did you do something wrong? Was he not attracted to you? Why was the condom empty? 

Seeing him in person would’ve only intensified the thoughts roaming in your head, so you avoided him at all costs up until now. You’d promised the Jeon siblings that you’d finally see Twilight with them and their friends despite not being able to function correctly around either of them. 

Somi snickers, following you into the living room. “Ooh, that’s not nice.”

“It’s true, though,” you explain, “she’s still so young, only a few years older than your brother. I mean, can you picture Jungkook getting married in a few years?”

The regret from that question fills you almost immediately.

“Sure,” Somi responds, pausing to greet the eager doberman charging at her. “As long as he finds the right person. He’d get married in a heartbeat.”

You want to ask what Somi’s definition of “the perfect person” would be for Jungkook or the type of girl she’d be willing to set him up with. It’d probably be the unnamed, mysterious redhead you recently dreamed about curb stomping (yikes!).

You don’t respond to this, taking a seat on the sofa when the sudden shout of your name has you flinching. It’s Somi’s parents, excitedly greeting you with open arms as you politely stand to properly hug them. “I feel like it’s been so long since we’ve seen you! How’s your family? We just heard the news about your sister!” Mrs. Jeon ambushes you with questions, all while cradling your face.

“About how she’s making the biggest mistake of her life?” You half-joke.

Mrs. Jeon playfully waves a hand in your direction as she steps into the kitchen, her husband only a few feet behind. “Oh, don’t say that. I’m sure the two of them will be very happy together.” She turns to her husband, grabbing his hand, “I just can’t believe Imogen is getting married. I still remember when she first started high school.” 

Mr. Jeon sighs in disbelief. “I know,” he mumbles, nodding at you. “You’re up next soon, huh?”

“Maybe she can marry Jungkook,” Mrs. Jeon comments, opening her fridge, “set him straight.”

“Gross, Mom. Don’t wish that on her.” Somi groans in disgust as she plops down next to you.

Well, that answers your previous question.

“We should probably get going, right? To make it in time for the trailers?” You ask.

“Yeah, we should.” Somi responds, tilting her head up towards the staircase, “Jungkook! Hurry up and come downstairs! We’re ready to go!”

“Gimmie a minute!” He shouts back, and a chill runs down your spine. It’s been too long since you’ve heard his voice. The last time you saw him, he was lying naked in his bed; you’re not sure how you’ll survive being around him all night knowing what your last encounter was like.

As promised, Jungkook is sliding down the staircase a minute later and nails the landing. He’s wearing a black Twilight shirt featuring the leading couple, black cargo pants, and, of course, black sneakers. He looks like his usual self until you take a closer look and notice the reddish-black eyeshadow that decorated his eyes. It wasn’t much, just enough to make his eyes pop, and it complimented him perfectly. A second later, you see the black nail polish neatly coated on his nails. You have to blink a few times to ensure this is real life and you’re not trapped in a wet dream.

He strolls into the kitchen, ignoring the stares from his parents before digging through the fridge. His mom clears her throat, crossing her arms at him.

“What?” He asks, retrieving a two-liter Mountain Dew bottle. 

“Seriously, Jungkook? The makeup? The nail polish?” She questions, clearly frustrated.

Jungkook cocks his head, unscrewing the soda bottle’s lid. “What’s wrong with it? Somi’s wearing the same thing.”

“Son, you know that’s different.” His father interjects.

Jungkook takes a swig of the soda before responding. “Why? Because she’s a girl?”

“It’s not like that, hon. It’s just…we didn’t make a big deal of it when you first started the piercings, and the tattoos, and the hair dye, but this…it’s a little much. Don’t you think?” His mother asks.

You want to step in and remind his parents that Jungkook is old enough to make his own decisions and express himself as he pleases, but it’s not your place. Instead, you cheer silently when Somi surprisingly interrupts the discussion. “Did you guys seriously force him to come back home just to criticize how he presents himself, or would you rather have a peaceful summer?”

“We aren’t trying to criticize him, Somi. We’re just looking out for our child.” Mr. Jeon responds.

“It’s a special occasion, Dad. Is it bad that I wanted to look nice for—” Jungkook abruptly cuts himself short, quickly glancing in your direction before returning his attention to his parents. “...to go see Twilight with my friends?”

What was that about?

Silence passes, and the three stare at each other until Mrs. Jeon sighs defeatedly and says, “No, there’s nothing wrong with that, sweetheart. I hope you guys enjoy the movie.”

“We will,” Jungkook responds, closing the soda bottle lid and placing it back in the fridge. He heads for the front door, beckoning you and Somi to follow behind. He’s eager to leave the house, quickly swinging the front door open and jogging towards his car.

You and Somi say goodbye to her parents with a promise to be home by eleven before following in Jungkook’s footsteps, who already has the car running. As you wait for Somi to finish locking the front door, Jungkook rolls down his window and shouts, “Hurry up! Let’s go!”

“Will you calm down?!” Somi throws back, rolling her eyes as she finally removes the house key from the lock.

You follow her towards Jungkook’s car, sliding into the backseat as you pretend not to notice Jungkook watching you through the rearview mirror. He wants you to look at him, but you refuse, busying yourself by buckling your seatbelt and convincing Somi to do the same. Once Jungkook is convinced you’re not going to do so much as glance at him, he puts the car in drive and pulls into the road.

Somi talks your ear off in the backseat about whatever comes to mind while you keep your eyes on the window. It’s hard to not notice Jungkook glancing back at you through the mirror at every red light or stop sign, but you don’t dare meet his gaze.

The movie theater’s parking lot is crowded when you arrive; it takes Jungkook a few minutes to eventually locate a spot. A smile is plastered on his face as he parks the car, eager to see some of his closest friends after being separated for months. He informs you and Somi to disregard anything foolish he friends may say, claiming they arrived early to smoke behind the movie theater, so they’re more than likely too high to function properly.

Jungkook shrugs when Somi asks why people do that, shoving his hands into his pockets as the three of you approach the theater entrance. "Some people say it makes the movie experience better."

You want to ask Jungkook if he's ever been high, but you can barely even bring yourself to look in his direction, let alone ask him a question. So you're silent as the three of you enter the movie theater, instantly spotting Jungkook's bandmates in the far corner.

Well… Jungkook's bandmates and one other guest.

The bubbly redhead greets you guys first, running up to Jungkook with open arms as if they haven't seen each other in a million years. It makes you want to vomit.

You look away as they hug, directing your attention to the concession stand employee who had already been watching you. His name tag reads 'Beomgyu,' and he resembles a younger version of Jungkook, with the same dark hair and similar lip piercings. His eyes stay on you until a customer blocks your path, and you're back to watching Jungkook reunite with his friends.

"Hey, you were the one at that party, right? With Somi?" The redhead asks, squinting her eyes at you.

"Yeah." Is all you respond with, because why in God's name is this girl talking to you right now?

"It's nice to meet you. I'm Scar," she introduces herself, extending a hand for you to shake.

Somi interjects, grabbing ahold of your wrist while glaring at Scar. "Your name is Scarlett."

She drags you along to the ticket booth, mumbling about how she doesn't like nor trust Scar. When you ask for her reasoning, she responds with, "I don't need one. I just don't like her."

At least you're on the same page about that. 

Still, you can't help but wonder why Somi has a distaste for Scar. You have your petty reasoning for disliking her, but Somi (more than likely) has better knowledge of Scar's personality, so whatever reasons she dislikes her could be legitimate. 

You're thinking of this as Jungkook orders the tickets for everyone, asking the employee to give him a minute when the friend you recognize as Yugyeom starts tapping his shoulder. "We should go see Saw instead; it just came out."

Jungkook looks genuinely confused at the suggestion. "What? No, we came here to see Twilight."

"So?!" Jaebeom chimes in, eyes red as the devil, "Come on, dude, you've already seen Twilight. Don't you wanna see something new?"

"Fuck no, we're literally in the middle of buying the tickets." Jungkook reminds everyone.

"I kinda wanna see Saw, too."

"Same."

"Yeah, me too."

"I do, too."

Jungkook whips his head around at his sister, "What? Even you?"

Somi scoffs, "Well, yeah! Twilight just seems boring in comparison."

"Come on, guys," the employee interrupts, "you're holding up the line."

Jungkook turns towards you. "Do you still wanna see Twilight?"

Truthfully, you want to go home; but seeing how excited Jungkook was for the movie made you feel something, so you nod. He lets out a relieved sigh. 

He moves out of the way to allow his friends to buy their tickets first, slipping his sister cash to pay for hers, which she initially rejects. "I don't need your money," she claims.

"Just take it, Somi. I brought it for you." 

From what you can make out, it's enough to cover her ticket and grab something from the concession stand. The pair of siblings may bicker a lot, but it's nice to know Jungkook still looks out for his younger sister whenever he can.

Somi reluctantly accepts the money and purchases her ticket; you watch as Jungkook follows suit, ordering two tickets for Twilight and stopping you from opening your purse. "Don't worry about it."

"Oh, it's fine. I have enough." You reassure him.

Jungkook laughs to himself, "Why are the two of you like this?" He questions, fishing out crumpled dollar bills from his pocket and handing them to the cashier, who sighs in annoyance, straightening and inspecting each bill before placing it in his register.

You don't know why Jungkook insists on being so nice to you despite your persistence in not speaking to him. A part of you wonders if he thinks this is some kind of date now that the two of you will be separated from the group. It doesn't matter. You don't know why you're overthinking it.

Once all the tickets have been purchased, the seven of you head towards the concession stand. Somi debates pushing herself to the front of the long line, claiming that the theater should make accommodations for those whose movie is starting sooner. Or something like that, you can't really focus with the way Beomgyu is staring at you. You're used to guys always staring, but they tend to shyly look away upon making eye contact. 

Beomgyu is quite the opposite, staring you down every chance he gets. Your skin feels hot, and you're suddenly anxious under his gaze. 

When the group ahead of you has finished ordering and is heading off into their theater, you're sure to stick close to Jungkook as you approach the counter. Beomgyu eyes him over once before returning his gaze to you. "What can I get for you guys?"

Jungkook takes the liberty of ordering a large popcorn for the two of you to share and doesn't even get mad when you request a slushie instead of a fountain drink. He doesn't let you pay, swatting your hand away when you absentmindedly reach for your purse. "You seriously have to stop doing that." He mumbles, handing Beomgyu the cash.

Beomgyu quickly prepares the popcorn and Jungkook's drink but takes his time making your slushie. He's sure to fill it to the brim, and you're worried it may accidentally overflow and leave a sticky mess. "You didn't want candy or anything?" He questions, handing you your drink. 

You shrug, "Maybe Twizzlers, but—"

Before you can finish, Beomgyu is reaching under the counter and sliding you a pack of Twizzlers. "On me."

"Oh, are you sure?" You ask, hesitant to accept the free candy.

Beomgyu sends Jungkook a cocky smirk before he responds, "Yeah, enjoy the movie."

You thank Beomgyu and pretend to not notice the death glares the two boys are sending one another before walking with Jungkook to your theater. "That guy was weird." He comments.

"Yeah." You agree, but it's definitely not true. Beomgyu was friendly and clearly interested in you, unlike Jungkook, who sent you nonstop, draining mixed signals. If his definition of weird is someone straightforward, then you should start going after weirdos.

Once you're settled in your seats in the back of the theater — per Jungkook's request — he clears his throat and says, "So, I tried messaging you on Facebook. Didn't get anything back."

"Oh, sorry. I haven't been using Facebook that much." You reply, hoping your lame excuse is believable enough.

He nods, eyes bouncing between you and the movie trailers playing in the background. "Yeah, I figured." He says. When you don't respond, he continues, "I would've asked Somi for your number, but I didn't want her to get suspicious or anything."

"That's smart." You admit, nodding in agreement.

"Are you okay?" Jungkook asks suddenly, his full attention to you.

You finally make eye contact, and the expression on his face makes your heart sink. He looks genuinely concerned and confused by your sudden coldness. You hate being so mean to him, but you're too embarrassed to explain the real reason why you've been avoiding him. So you nod and say, "Just a little tired."

It's clear he doesn't believe this; the same expression is still on his face as he refocuses on the movie trailers. 

You hate how awkward it feels to be around him now. Never in a million years would you have guessed the two of you would end up like this. A week ago, you would've been overjoyed at the idea of being on a movie date with Jungkook, and now you're considering leaving early and catching a taxi home.

The two of you remain silent as the rest of the trailers play on, and Jungkook immediately sits up in his seat when the lights finally dim and the curtains are pulled back further. He's reticent throughout the movie, aside from a muffled chuckle occasionally; he even side-eyes anyone making too much noise.

You enjoy Twilight nonetheless, agreeing with Jungkook that you do, in fact, dress like Bella Swan from time to time. When he asks if you liked it as you're exiting the theater, you tell him it was very nice and that you hope there'll be another movie.

Jungkook smiles at this, tossing his empty cup in a nearby trash bin. "I'm sure there will be. Maybe they'll even cast you as Bella's stunt double since you already have the clothes."

"Shut up." You tease, and it feels nice to joke with him as usual. You may finally have the courage to tell Jungkook why you've been so distant these past few days.

Saw doesn't get out for another few minutes, so you're stuck waiting in the lobby for Somi and everyone else. Jungkook gestures towards the nearly empty slushie cup clutched in your hands, "You get free refills on that, I think."

You take his word, strolling over to the concession stand. Beomgyu spots you immediately and gestures for you to skip around the line. You shake your head, but he still beckons for you to come over. You feel bad, but the line has gotten longer since you were first here, and you really don't want to wait in a long line just for a refill. 

"What flavor?" He asks once you've slid him your cup.

You tell him anything is fine and he gets to work, combining the cherry and blue raspberry flavors. "How was the movie?"

"It was good. The vampire stuff was cool."

"Have you seen Saw yet? It just came out."

"No, I haven't."

"It's so good; if you wanna give me your number, maybe we can see it together sometime."

What is it with guys offering to take you out to a movie they've already seen? You're not complaining; it's just odd.

Beomgyu is clearly interested in you and has offered to take you out. You'd be silly to pass up on this guy just because your current relationship with your longtime crush is at a standstill. So you accept, scribbling your phone number down on a napkin with your name underneath. He promises to call you once his shift ends and that he looks forward to seeing you.

When you turn to meet up with Jungkook, he's gone. You catch him storming out of the theater, hauling ass to his car.

You run to catch up to him, calling out his name and begging him to slow down.

When he finally does stop, there's a look on his face that you've never seen before. He gets angry all the time, but this was something completely different. "So you were just using me, huh?"

What? What is he talking about?

"Using you for what?"

"To lose your virginity. You just wanted to get it over with, right?" His voice is slightly hushed now but still loud enough for you to feel embarrassed about anyone passing through the parking lot.

"Jungkook, what are you talking about?"

"You used me to lose your virginity, so when you date other guys you can tell them you've had sex before. Is that what this is?"

This accusation hurts, considering that Jungkook was the only guy you've ever been interested in romantically and sexually. You don't know where this theory originated, but you don't like it.

Jungkook continues before you respond, "I tried reaching out and talking to you, and you just blew me off! And yet, here you are, giving your number to random guys! Am I not good enough for you?!"

"It's not like that, Jungkook!" You don't mean to raise your voice at him, but you can't help it. Both of your emotions were at an all-time high.

"Then what is it like?!"

Here goes nothing.

There are already tears forming as you go to explain yourself. "I didn't reach out to you because…because I was embarrassed."

"You were embarrassed to have sex with me?"

"No!" You yell in reassurance, "No, no, no. Of course not. I was embarrassed because I know you didn't finish. I just thought maybe I did something wrong or didn't do enough."

Jungkook quirks a brow at you, "What makes you think I didn't finish?"

You really hate that he's making you explain this. "I saw the condom afterwards; it was empty."

"You went digging in my trash can to find the condom?" Now he looks more disgusted than confused; this is going so horribly.

"No! I saw it when I went to get my phone off the charger."

Jungkook takes a minute to process everything, scratching his chin in deep thought. You can't tell what he's feeling, but he does look hurt. It makes you regret avoiding him in the first place.

"So, you were prepared to never talk to me again over an empty condom?" Despite his stern demeanor, he's clearly shaking as he questions you.

You want to say no, that it wasn't a case, but you can't bring yourself to lie to him again. So you say nothing. Jungkook nods at your lack of response before turning around and walking towards his car. You remain still, frozen in place, watching as he sits on the hood of his car and smokes a cigarette.

If it weren't for Somi finishing her movie within the next few minutes, you would've walked the entire way home.

This bitch is driving you crazy.

Your older sister, Imogen, is home for a few days to start her wedding preparations. The fake bridezilla persona she's putting on bothers you the most, bursting out in tears at the most inconvenient times or having a breakdown about selecting a theme. Deep down, she doesn't care about any of this bullshit; she's like you about parties or big events.

"This is literally the biggest day of my life, and you're being so fucking difficult." Imogen snarls at you, pouring herself a cup of coffee. You're sitting a few feet away on the kitchen counter, staring out the kitchen window. Despite Imogen's occasional yelling and snarky comments, all you can think of is Jungkook.

It's been an entire week since the movie theater incident. You haven't stopped by the Jeon household not once, telling Somi you fell ill and don't want to get her sick. It's another lame excuse, but she buys it, opting to talk to you on the phone daily until you recover.

You have yet to speak to Jungkook; it's not like you've tried. The idea of messaging him on Facebook and not receiving a response makes you anxious. It's hard to believe you subjected him to the same torture not long ago. It doesn't help that Scarlett is suddenly all over his page, commenting on nearly every one of his posts, writing on his wall, or tagging him in pictures. Your recurring dream of curb-stomping her is back in full force.

You sigh at your sister, "Whatever you say, Imogen."

She waves dismissively at you, "Please, don't even talk to me right now."

You hop off the counter in annoyance and stomp off towards the staircase, mumbling, "Fucking drama queen."

"Language." Your mom warns you, flipping through one of the several bridal magazines your sister has stacked on the coffee table.

Imogen scoffs, setting her mug on the counter. "I'm the drama queen? Whenever I talk about my wedding, you throw a fucking fit!"

"Why are you pretending to care about this stupid wedding and that stupid boy you barely even know?!" You shout back from the staircase.

"If my wedding is so stupid, then don't come!"

"I don't even want to go to your stupid wedding, with your stupid fiancé and your stupid red velvet cake that no one's going to fucking eat!"

This is probably the dumbest fight you've ever had.

Imogen doesn't respond to this, advised by your mother not to and to let you stomp up the stairs in a furious rage. You make a beeline straight to your desktop, waking up the computer with a mouse shake and entering your password.

Facebook is already open once you've signed in, Jungkook's page staring right back at you. You're ashamed to admit you'd been cyberstalking him, but you had no choice. Seeing him in person would've been too much, but you still want to ensure he's doing okay.

There's a new post up when you refresh the page; you chew on your bottom lip as you anxiously wait for it to finish loading.

It's a picture of his dirty Chuck Taylor's perched upon a wooden stool. You recognize the background immediately; he's in the treehouse in his backyard. You and Somi would spend hours up there as kids, giving each other manicures and exchanging secrets; now, you can barely look her in the eye without bursting out in tears. You hate how complicated things have become.

A light tap against your door has you swiveling around in your chair. It's Imogen, leaning against your doorframe with her arms crossed. "Who's that?"

"Somi's brother." You respond, scrolling to a photo that actually shows his face.

Imogen steps further into your bedroom, squinting her eyes at the computer screen. "Oh, yeah. Hasn't changed much, has he?" When you remain silent, she asks, "Would it be wrong of me to assume he's the real reason why you're so upset?"

You sigh, letting your shoulders drop. "You'd be very correct, actually."

She nods in understanding, sitting on the edge of your bed. "So, what's going on? You like him?"

"We kind of like each other, I guess." You mumble. Honestly, you're not quite sure how Jungkook feels about you at the moment.

"And Somi doesn't approve of it?"

You snort, "Somi doesn't know. There was nothing to tell her at first, but things have changed."

"Are you guys dating?"

"No. We actually haven't talked in a week. I may have hurt his feelings."

Imogen nods towards your desktop, “Where is he now?”

You shrug, “Home, I guess.”

She stands, stretching out her limbs. She glances around your room, locates a jacket dangling lifelessly from your doorknob, and tosses it to you. “Let’s go.”

Taking an impromptu trip to the Jeon household had you sweating. What if Jungkook doesn’t even want to see you? What if Somi catches you talking and asks what’s going on?

Each concern you raise is instantly shot down by Imogen, claiming you’re creating excuses to avoid seeing him, how you’re only imagining the worst possible scenarios. You appreciate her overwhelming support but can’t help the nervousness creeping through your body as her car approaches the Jeon household.

“Remember, be apologetic but not desperate,” Imogen informs you, putting her car in park in front of the house.

“I am desperate.” You remind her.

“Well, don’t let him see it. You got this.”

You thank your sister one last time for the advice before stepping out of her car. You’re careful to avoid being seen from windows as you make your way into the backyard; not entirely sure what you’d say if Somi were to catch you.

You scale the tree quickly, silently praying the old wooden steps are stable enough to hold your weight. 

You sigh in relief once you’ve reached the top, only to groan at the sight of Scarlett sitting across from you. She looks up from her iPod with a bright smile, quickly pulling out her earbuds as you enter the treehouse. “Hey, stranger! Watcha doing here?”

Her enthusiasm really makes you sick. “Came to see Jungkook,” you pause to glance around the tiny, wooden deathtrap, “but he’s nowhere to be found.”

“He’ll be back soon; went to use the bathroom,” Scarlett informs you, running her hands through her hair. “So, you guys really like each other, huh?”

What? She knows about that?

“Jungkook told you?” You question, trying your best to appear unbothered. You’re unsure where she’s going with this, but you have no reason to trust her.

Scarlett nods, “We tell each other everything. So when he told me you guys weren’t talking, I may have devised a plan to help you come around. You do use Facebook, right?” She smirks

Holy shit, all the posts of them together were to make you feel jealous enough to have a conversation with him; and your sworn enemy was the mastermind behind it. It was all a ploy to get under your skin, and you fell right into the trap. 

“You’re a stubborn little thing, though. Didn’t think it’d take you so long.” She comments, slipping her jacket on.

You shrug, “I didn’t think he’d want to talk to me.”

“Jungkook always wants to talk to you. I don’t mind it, though. You seem good for him.”

Aside from Somi, Scarlett is probably the last person you would’ve expected to be supportive of your relationship with Jungkook. So, to hear she’d been secretly rooting for you behind the scenes nearly gives you whiplash. You almost feel wrong about your dreams of shoving her face into the pavement.

You tuck a loose strand of hair behind your ear, “So, nothing is going on between you guys?”

Scarlett grimaces as if you deeply offended her, “Of course not! Don’t get me wrong, he’s cute, but not my type. His sister is cute, though.”

Woah.

“Somi? Jeon Somi? You’re into her?” You ask, completely stunned.

“Hell, yes. Hey, do you think you could set us up? Jungkook would never.”

“You do know that Somi can’t stand you, right?”

Scarlett excitedly nods, “I know, it’s kind of a turn-on.”

You hold your hands out to stop her from elaborating any further. Scarlett has surprised you in more ways than one in less than five minutes. You’re sure any new information would’ve made your head explode.

“I’ll…try my best.” You promise; not quite sure how Somi would feel about the idea of Scarlett liking her.

“For what?” A voice interrupts, causing you and Scarlett to direct your attention to the treehouse’s entrance. And there he is, in all his gothic glory. 

“Girl talk, none of your business,” Scarlett responds, making room for Jungkook to crawl in. 

“Fine. You keep your secrets; I’ll keep mine.” Jungkook groans, sitting between the two of you.

“Will do. I’m outta here. Got a hot date with a box of hair dye. See you suckers later.” Scarlett waves goodbye as she exits the treehouse, reminding you of your promise before disappearing down the steps.

Jungkook clears his throat, sweeping his hair away from his eyes. "So—"

"I'm sorry," you cut him off, "I should've reached out and talked to you, but I was just too embarrassed and didn't know how to approach you about it. I really like you, and I wasn't using you to lose my virginity. I mean, you're the only person I've ever been interested in. So, again, I'm sorry."

He sighs, "I understand why you were embarrassed, but I promise it had nothing to do with you."

"Then what was it?"

Jungkook anxiously scratches the back of his head before he responds. "It's just that…sometimes…it takes me a little bit longer to, uh…to finish."

Oh.

"Is it because of your…size?" You can't help but wonder.

Jungkook snorts, "What, you think I'm big?"

"I'm out of here." You joke, faking as if you're about to leave.

"Wait, wait, wait." He stops you, "I was only kidding. I never really thought size played a factor in it, but every guy is different. But, still, that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy us having sex. I mean, you had already finished, and I didn't want to tire you out just for my sake."

Knowing he had a perfectly reasonable explanation makes you feel even worse about spending all that time avoiding him. You want to tell him you wouldn't mind him tiring you out, that the idea excites you, but you refrain.

A beat of silence passes, and you ask, "But, I'm sure if there's something that you're really into, then it wouldn't take as long for you to finish. Right?"

Jungkook nods, "I guess."

"Then, what is it? What are you into?"

He coughs, tips of his ears turning a light shade of pink. "Um…I guess I'm into…roughness?"

Ah. 

"That's not a big deal. A lot of people are probably into that."

"I mean, it's fine either way, but I mostly prefer when girls are kinda rough with me. Fuck, this is embarrassing."

"It's not!" You reassure him, placing a gentle hand on his knee, "It's nothing to be embarrassed about. I appreciate you trusting me enough to tell me."

Jungkook stares at your hand on his knee before placing his own on top. You twist yours upwards and interlock your fingers, not missing the smile that forms on his face. His bangs have swept into his eyes again, and you use your free hand to move them out of the way. "It was my first time, too, by the way."

You snort, "You don't need to say that just to make me feel better."

"I'm serious," he continues, "I mean, I've gotten pretty handsy in the past, but nothing like what we did."

You shake your head, "I don't buy it. You seemed so experienced like you knew what you were doing."

Jungkook shrugs, "I mean, I'm not completely innocent. I may occasionally watch certain videos and read certain stories from time to time."

Porn and smut. Beautiful combination.

He shakes his head, "You still don't believe me; how come?"

You sigh, memories of the night before he left for college flashing in your mind. How you ran home in tears, how he only responded to Scar's comment on Somi's Facebook post. It almost hurts to think about. "The night before you left for school, there was an opened condom wrapper on your floor. I just figured…you know."

Jungkook nods at the memory. "I wasn't gonna go to the dorms the next day. I was planning on running away, that's why I gave you that bandana. After my parents helped bring my stuff to the dorms, I was gonna put everything in my car then take off."

You're having a hard time processing this information. Why would Jungkook plan on running away? What does this story have to do with the empty condom?

He continues, clutching your hand even tighter. "I only told a few people I was leaving, and there was this one girl who came over to say goodbye. She'd been really into me for a while and was heartbroken that I was leaving. We were about to hook up, hence the condom wrapper, but I couldn't do it."

"Why?" You question.

"Didn't feel right. I wasn't into her the same way she was into me. Just couldn't do it." He explains, eyes staring deep into yours. You believe him; you know he's being truthful.

"What made you decide to stay?" You ask.

"For Somi," he answers, "I couldn't just leave her like that. And for you, too."

Though you've felt it for many years, telling Jungkook you love him is too soon. But you want to, so very badly.

"I'm glad you decided to stay." Your voice is barely a whisper now as you try to stop yourself from tearing up.

He nods, "Me too."

You sit in comfortable silence for a minute, clutching each other's hands. You wish you could stay like this forever. 

"I just realized you never told me if there's anything you're into." He points out.

You shrug, "Just you." And it's true: Jungkook is the only person you've ever been interested in. Everything he says and does is genuinely attractive to you.

He drops your hand gently, using it to tilt your head towards him, and he kisses you. 

You're quick to cradle the back of his head as his hands snake around your waist, deepening the kiss. You move to straddle his lap, slowly pushing him onto his back. He grunts in surprise, breaking away from the kiss. "You—"

"Stop talking." You demand before your lips intertwine with his once again. With one hand on his chest, you reach to grab a fistful of his hair and tug lightly, earning a satisfied moan from him. You're not used to being rough with guys, but you're sure Jungkook enjoys it with the way his erection is already pressing up against your thigh.

Reluctantly, you pull away from him and sit up, staring at him sprawled underneath you in complete awe. "Alright, I'll message you my number so we can text. See you later."

"No! No, no, no. Please don't go." He pleads, holding you in place when you go to stand, "Just stay a little longer, please."

You smile down at him, fighting the urge to stay in the treehouse. "I can't. Imogen is waiting out front. We'll see each other soon, okay?" You promise, planting a kiss on his forehead.

Jungkook nods, fingers drumming against the floor as he watches you crawl out of the treehouse. "Don't be too surprised if I seem extra excited to see you next time." He calls after you.

"Trust me, I won't."

Jungkook is the first boy to ever sneak in through your bedroom window.

He carelessly tosses his backpack in first, cringing when it lands on your carpeted floor with a loud thud. Though you’ve assured him your parents are heavy sleepers, he’s still worried you’ll get in trouble if he makes too much noise and accidentally reveals himself. “Sorry,” he apologizes, wrist gripping your forearm as you help pull him in.

“It’s fine,” you whisper back, “they’re not gonna wake up.”

“Still,” he grunts, using his upper body strength to pull him further into your room. “Don’t want you getting in trouble.”

It’s a day after the treehouse incident; as promised, you sent Jungkook your number and spent all day texting back and forth. Despite not being big on texting, you admire how Jungkook likes to keep you updated on what he’s doing and how he checks up on you to ensure you’re okay. 

“We’ll be fine, but just in case, I did make room for you in my closet in case you have to hide.” You inform him.

Jungkook stifles a laugh, “Good to know.” He settles himself on the edge of your bed, moving over once he realizes he’d sat on a pile of clothing. “Oh, were you about to shower?”

“I was,” you answer, moving the clothing over to your nightstand, “but I’ll wait until after you leave.”

He has to stop himself from making a joke about joining you in the shower. He nods, leaning down to drag his backpack towards him, “Guess what I got today.”

“What?” You question, legs folded underneath you as you sit beside him.

Jungkook slowly unzips his backpack, careful not to make too much noise before rummaging through it and clutching something in his hand. He momentarily turns his back towards you, clips something to his shirt, then turns back around.

There’s a name tag on his chest now with his name scribbled in black ink and a little star next to it. “A job?”

He nods, “At that music store, Spin City. Need to start saving up before classes start. Plus, I wanna take you out somewhere nice before summer’s over.”

You gulp, “Like, a date?”

“Yeah. I mean, unless… I don’t know. I just kinda figured…” He trails off, suddenly worried he may be scaring you off.

You grab ahold of his hand, “I know, and trust me, you’re perfect, and I want us to be together. But, the night we saw you at that party, I did ask Somi if she would be upset if I was into you. Surprisingly, she said she wouldn’t mind as long as I talked to her before making a move on you. And, well…”

“We made a move on each other without telling her,” Jungkook finishes for you.

You nod, “Exactly.”

He sighs, “So, I’m guessing that means you wanna wait before we make things official.”

“Yeah. No matter what, I still want to be with you. But it’d be best for all of us to get her on board with this first. Show her how much we truly care for each other, and make sure she’s okay with it. So she knows my relationship with you won’t affect our friendship, and vice versa.” You explain. Jungkook’s eyes never stray from yours, listening intently and nodding at everything you say.

“That’s fair,” he agrees, “It’s a good idea. Do you want me to talk to her? Or for us to talk to her together?”

You shake your head, “She’ll definitely freak out on you; it’s best if I do it alone first, then you talk to her afterward.”

Jungkook leans back against your bed, resting his head on your pillow. It’s funny how different your aesthetics are; he looks perfectly out of place, sprawled on your baby pink pillow surrounded by teddy bears. “When?”

“I dunno,” you respond, lowering yourself until your head rests comfortably on his bicep. “Doesn’t have to be right away. As long as it’s before we move into the dorms.”

“We shouldn’t wait too long, though. It’ll only make things worse.” Jungkook mumbles, pulling you closer to him.

“I know. I’ll have a talk with her soon, I promise.”

You interlock pinkies to solidify your promise and ease his nerves. You hadn’t realized how anxiety-inducing this was for Jungkook as well. The idea of Somi not approving of your relationship had him genuinely worried. 

“But, you should know that no matter what—” he starts.

You cut him off, “I know.”

The hands that once purposely dumped slime in your hair are now tugging your panties down your legs.

“Can we try something?” Jungkook asks with a mumble against your lips, your soft blue underwear now clutched in the palm of his hand.

“Like what? I actually make you come for once?” You joke, earning a laugh from Jungkook.

“Don’t worry about me.” He presses another kiss against your lips, “You trust me?”

“Of course.” You respond, sitting up in Jungkook’s bed as he moves backward, never breaking eye contact with you. He pushes your skirt up slightly but pats your hand away when you go to remove it altogether.

“Leave it on.” He commands, bringing himself at face level with your cunt.

You’ve never felt this shy in your life, grateful your bunched-up skirt created the tiniest barrier between having Jungkook see you all flustered. Never had you been this intimate with a guy, especially not a guy you technically weren’t even dating.

His thumb is circling your clit before you have the time to protest, to tell him he doesn’t have to do this just for your sake, but the feeling of his fingers pressed against you has you at a loss for words. 

“This okay?” He asks.

“Yeah.” You respond, tilting your head upwards to stare at the ceiling.

Before you know it, his middle and index fingers are pressed against your opening, eliciting a gasp from your lips. At your reaction, Jungkook slips his finger into your entrance, thumb still playing with your clit. He insists on being teasingly slow today, wanting to draw out every moment and observe your reaction.  

He pumps his fingers in and out of you in a slow, consistent motion, an amused smirk on his lips when he hears your breathing become ragged. Abruptly, he slips his fingers out of you, moving your thighs to rest them atop his shoulders. 

“Wait, you don’t have to—oh fuck.” You’re cut off by Jungkook pushing himself forward, placing a sudden kiss on your clit that has your hips jolting in the air. His hand grabs your waist and licks at your slit, keeping you in place as he gently returns your body to his mattress. 

His growing erection is the last of his worries, all too focused on dragging his tongue across your cunt. He flattens his tongue, pulling the wetness upward until he’s circling your clit again. In search of something to grab onto, your hands grip the bed sheets until Jungkook reaches forward, moving your hand over to grip his hair.

His eyes are closed when you look down at him, and you swear you can hear him moan as he eats you out. You try your best to keep the noise down out of fear someone will hear, but you can’t help but yell out when he’s back to fingering you, all while circling your clit with his tongue. 

Your grip on his hair tightens, pushing his face further into your pussy, and he lets out a satisfied groan. It’s embarrassing how quickly your orgasm approaches; everything with Jungkook is so intense. He knows this, eyes fluttering open to watch your expressions. Black eyeshadow is smeared across his eyelids as his eyes focus on your own, hands gripping your thighs as he tongue circles your clit.

His fingers are relentlessly pumping into your cunt now, contrasting against how teasingly slow his tongue is moving. He pulls his mouth away, lips glistening with your arousal, and asks, “You close?”

You don’t respond directly, but the grip you have on his hair gives him all the answers he needs before he’s diving back in. It doesn’t take much for you to come after that, a final kiss pressed on your clit, sending you over the edge and coating Jungkook’s fingers.

Jungkook doesn’t stop there, still continuing to lick and suck your clit until you’re begging him to stop from the overstimulation.

“Sorry.” He apologizes, planting a kiss on your inner thigh, “Was that good?”

“That was literally the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” You respond. Jungkook lets out a laugh as he crawls up next to you. “I should be upset with you, though.”

“What?” He questions, peppering your face with kisses, “Why’s that?”

“I came over to talk to your sister about us, and you distracted me.”

“How’d I do that?”

“Because! You came downstairs in your eyeshadow. Then you were all like, ‘Oh, hey. I cleaned my room; wanna check it out?’” You mimic a deep voice that sounds nothing like his. 

“I apologize for putting on eyeshadow, bringing you to my room, and eating you out. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?”

“I guess.”

You both laugh at this as you move to pull your skirt down. “Hey, how’d you realize you like it when girls are rough with you?”

Jungkook shakes his head as the memory returns to him, a shy smile on his face as he glances over at you. “A couple years ago, I was picking on Somi for something. I don’t even remember why, but it got to the point where my parents were telling me to stop, and I wouldn’t. Then, you just started yelling at me out of nowhere, and I don’t know why, but it was the hottest thing ever. I was in awe. I really thought you were gonna slap me. Since then, it’s just been a turn-on of mine.”

“Wow. That’s actually kind of pathetic.” You tease.

He groans, “Please don’t say that. You’re gonna make me hard again.”

Laughter is shared between you once again before you lean your head down to rest on his chest, the sound of his steady heartbeat making you feel calm. A comfortable minute of silence passes before you have to address the unfortunate inevitable, “Somi should be here soon, right?”

“Yeah,” Jungkook mumbles, “within the next ten minutes.”

You sigh, “Next time I come over, I’ll have to tell her about us.”

The next time you stop by the Jeon household, Jungkook has you bent over in the backseat of his car.

His finger digs into your waist as his cock is plunging into you at full force, emptying all the thoughts from your brain. You still haven’t fully adjusted to his size, but you don’t care; the pain of being split open makes you come faster. It feels better.

Jungkook insisted on taking things slow, telling you that you’d need to adjust to his size, but the moment you sunk your dripping cunt onto him, he was under your spell. 

Your body lunges forward with every rough stroke Jungkook gives you, hands buried in your hair as he pulls you up against his chest. His hand moves from your hair down to your neck, tilting your head back while applying the slightest bit of pressure against your throat. Your eyes close out of instinct as tears form in the corner of your eyes before trickling down your cheeks. He kisses them away one by one before settling his lips on your neck. You make a mental note to check yourself for hickeys afterward.

You’re coming around him before you realize it, body spasming as you grip the driver’s seat headrest. Jungkook shows no signs of stopping or slowing down; in fact, he’s sped up even faster since fucking you through your orgasm. He lets go of your neck to push down on your back, left hand gripping your waist while the right intertwines your fingers with his. 

A few strokes later, he’s finally coming and jokes about showing you the used condom as confirmation.

You shake your head, gesturing for him to pass you the shorts he’d tossed in the front seat. “I can’t believe I let you trick me again.”

“What?!” He exclaims in utter shock, reaching in the front seat to grab your discarded clothing, “How exactly did I trick you?”

“I came over to talk to Somi, but then you were all like, ‘Hey, come look at my car; I just got it washed.’” You playfully roll your eyes, searching around the backseat for your underwear.

“Can I keep these?” He asks suddenly, the most nonchalant expression on his face as your panties dangle from his middle finger.

You scoff, reaching to snatch them from him, confused when he retracts his hand. “I think I will keep them until you talk to Somi. Since it was you who wanted to talk to her first.”

“Then, I guess I’ll get them back tomorrow because I’m definitely talking to her today.”

Except you don’t.

You spent the entire summer sneaking around with Jungkook and procrastinating about having that talk with Somi. It was anxiety-inducing, to say the least, and you had no idea how she’d react. You tell yourself she won’t be upset as long as you assure her your friendship won’t be affected by you dating her brother. 

You’re scheduled to move into the dorms within a few weeks, so it’s best to sort things out now before you all live under the same roof, unable to avoid one another. Jungkook doesn’t seem nervous at all. In fact, he’d given you a pep-talk the day before you showed up at their home.

“She can’t stay mad forever.” He pointed out, eyes sealed shut as you do his eyeliner.

“I know,” you mumbled, adjusting yourself on his lap, “but that girl can hold a grudge.”

“Right, but this is you we’re talking about. You mean a lot to her, to both of us, actually.”

His words play in your mind as you enter the Jeon household, following Somi into the kitchen. “Baking something?” You ask, a sweet, decadent scent hitting your nose.

“Brownies for some stupid bake sale my parents are having. Help me clean up?” She asks, pouting her lips at you.

“Sure.” You agree, under the assumption that there wouldn’t be much to even clean up. 

Boy, you were wrong. It’s like Somi used every dish in the house to make one sheet of brownies. There’s no backing out now; you already agreed to help, and it’d be best to stay on her good side for now.

She gets to work rinsing each dish before handing them to you to load the dishwasher, moving quickly to get everything done faster.

“What a beautiful friendship.” A familiar voice comments; you fight back a smile as Somi groans at her brother.

“You wouldn’t know; you don’t have any friends,” Somi responds, laughing at her words.

“Neither will you, soon,” Jungkook whispers back, groaning when you swat him in the chest. “Any brownie batter left?”

“None for you. Shouldn’t you be at work?” Somi asks, handing you another dish.

Somi takes a break from rinsing off the dishes to bicker with Jungkook for a minute. You tune out from the conversation, dipping your fingers into the leftover batter bowl and gathering the chocolate on your fingers.

“I’m leaving, I’m leaving,” Jungkook says. When Somi finally directs her attention elsewhere, Jungkook takes the opportunity to grab your wrist, bringing your fingers up to his lips before sucking the chocolate off them. 

Your eyes practically bulged out of your head, nervously glancing behind you to ensure Somi hadn’t seen anything. You swat at Jungkook’s chest for the second time, and he laughs as if you’re being overly dramatic. It’s odd how surprisingly calm he is about everything. His demeanor would have worried you if you didn’t trust him so much. 

Jungkook wipes the renaming bit of chocolate around his lips before mouthing ‘Good luck.’ You give him a nervous smile, watching as he slips past Somi and leaves out the front door. You get back to work, making small talk with Somi as you help her load the dishwasher.

It’s now or never.

“So,” you start, “we’re gonna be living together soon.”

Somi smiles, “Finally! God, I can’t wait to have some freedom. My stupid curfew is a major cock-block. Right when things are finally getting good on a date, I have to go back home. So fucking frustrating. There’s literally cobwebs in my vagina.”

You snort, loading the final dish into the washer. “Well, you won’t have that problem anymore.”

“I know. And maybe you’ll even find someone worthy even to date you.” Somi jokes, hopping on the kitchen counter.

“Uh, what if I already have found someone…worthy enough?” You question, pressing a few buttons to get the dishwasher going.

“As if.”

“Somi, I’m serious.”

She sighs, still not buying your confession. “Alright then, who is it?”

“...Your brother.”

A beat of silence passes, and then Somi doubles over in laughter, nearly slipping off the counter several times in seconds. It takes her a minute to catch her breath, clutching her collar for support as she regulates her breathing; even tears are forming in her eyes. “Holy fuck, can you imagine? You and my brother? Jesus Christ.”

“Look, there really isn’t an easy way to say this, but we really do like each other. We’ve been…together this whole summer. Well, not officially; I didn’t want to put a label on anything without talking to you about it first.” You finally confess. The weight on your shoulders doesn’t immediately drop as you expected; it’s like the load has gotten heavier.

Somi has a blank expression as she stares at you, eyes darting around the kitchen as she processes the information. “You’re serious?”

You nod.

She shakes her head, “What kind of friend are you?”

Fuck.

“Somi, please, let me—”

She cuts you off, hopping off the counter and inching towards you. “So, what? All this time, you were using me to get close to Jungkook? Out of every fucking guy on the planet?!”

“No! Of course not! Somi, I never even imagined myself in a relationship with him until this summer, I swear!” Your voice trembles as Somi approaches you. The two of you have never been in a physical fight before, but the expression on her face tells you there’s a first time for everything.

“Oh, really? You expect me to believe that, huh? So it’s just a coincidence that you guys suddenly got together right before we’re all gonna be living in the same building?”

“I know it doesn’t sound great, but—”

“I think you should go.” Somi cuts you off calmly, her sudden change in demeanor shocking you. A moment ago, she looked angry enough to hit you, but now, she seems a few seconds away from breaking down in tears. 

You nod understandably, telling Somi to take all the time she needs and to call you when she’s ready to talk. 

She doesn’t say a word as you exit her house, and you wonder if you’ve just lost the best friend you’ve ever had. 

“I’ve never seen her this angry, Jungkook. I thought she was gonna hit me or something.” You groan, ear pressed up against your phone as you rant to Jungkook.

It’d been a few hours since you left Somi’s house; Jungkook had promised to call you during his break to hear how the conversation went. You’re still shaking as the memories flood you, how your best friend in the world accused you of using her. What a fucking joke. 

“She’ll get over it, trust me. Y’know, before I called you, she spent five minutes yelling at me over the phone. Five fucking minutes, and I just took it. She’ll be fine.” He says, following up with a loud slurping noise that suggests Jungkook has chosen to have ramen for lunch.

It’s astonishing how calm he’s managed to stay this entire time.

You flip over on the couch, head resting on the armrest as you stare at the ceiling. “I just don’t wanna lose her. She’s a fireball, for sure, but she’s my fireball. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

“I just told you you’re not gonna be without her, okay?”

“...Okay.”

There’s a knock at your front door, most likely from the pizza delivery Jungkook had sent to your house.

“I gotta go. The food is here. Are you still stopping by after your shift?”

“Of course. You gonna be alright?”

“Yeah,” you stand, making your way to the front door. “I’ll save you some pizza.”

He chuckles at that, “You better. I’ll see you later, okay? I love you.”

He what?

“You what?” You pause, hand on the doorknob.

“I love you, and I’ll see you later.” He hangs up.

You don’t have time to process his words; the knocking at your front door happens again.

Twisting the knob, you’re met with Somi staring back at you. “Somi? What’re you—”

“I don’t care if you date Jungkook.” She claims, storming through your front door, “If you guys want to be together, then I’m not standing in the way. But I will not be your friend if you date him, so it’s either him or me.”

You follow Somi into your living room, your pulse quickening upon hearing her ultimatum. “Somi, that’s not—”

“Before you choose…as a girl, and as your friend, I have to be completely honest with you.” She sighs, fingers nervously raking through her hair as she sits on your couch. “I called Jungkook after you left, and he talked to me about you guys.”

You nod, taking a seat next to her. “Okay, and…?”

She sighs again, taking your hand in her own. “Everything he���s ever told you was a lie.”

[shellxrls]

i need to be sarah’s cutesy sabrina carpenter espresso baby best friend who fucks her on the dl and also fucking her brother🤫

a/n: anon u ate with this ask cuz i love this song soo much, and i loveee the idea of rafe being beyond pussy whipped all for his gf to be more in love w his sister than him.

warnings: male receiving oral (mxf), cum swallowing, female receiving oral (fxf), cheating, NO INCEST at all they fuck at completely separate times.

🍒🍒 🍒

you’d often find yourself one of two places on the daily, ironically they were both situated in the same house: laying prey to the skilled fingers of sarah cameron in a fuzzy orgasm-drunk haze, or clinging all cutesy onto rafe cameron’s arm as he works away in his office — maybe sucking his dick under the desk if you were painfully eager.

at current moment, you were coddled next to rafe, pointing at an assortment of glittery bags on your phone screen and singling out the ones you wanted the most — or rather, the ones you didn’t want, considering the order you were about to place was essentially the bulk of the entire website.

“rafee, card please,” you tap him on the shoulder and urge him to rummage through his wallet, pulling out a black card before handing it to you and briefly glancing at your cart as you completed the transaction.

“gonna return the favour for me baby?” he mutters distractedly, eyeing some documents but letting his left hand wander to your thigh.

“course rafe, just wish you weren’t working all the time,” you pout, dragging his hand further into the crease of your thighs and rocking slightly on the chair, “otherwise i could return it now.”

he stills, dropping his pen and rubbing out a crease on his forehead with his free hand before turning to you, “mhm, under the desk princess, i can take a quick break.”

you beam, having successfully captured his attention, and crawl beneath him to begin unzipping his work slacks.

eager-mouthed you attempt to swallow him entirely on your first suck, lubing his entire shaft as tendrils of saliva dripped from your open mouth all the way down to his balls, stringing messily.

“fuck that’s good, now what do you say?”

“thank you rafe,” you force out through your stuffed mouth, eyes glimmering up at him in cat-like excitement while he looked down on you with nothing short of hypnotism, eyes glazed over with want.

it’s not long before he’s cumming down you’re throat in spurts, fisting your hair to force your head down further and making you swallow it so his office isn’t left messy.

he taps your cheek once he finishes, murmuring something about how good you did before quickly being reoccupied with his documents, sending you out with a firm slap on your ass lest you distract him any further.

you find yourself easily wondering into sarah’s bedroom, not bothering to knock and diving straight down onto her bed next to her, “was rafe boring you?” she questions with an edge of sarcasm.

you swallow, slightly guilty considering you did come in here to get release after sucking rafe off left you painfully wet, “something like that,” you trail off for a second before redirecting the conversation, “and anyways, i just missed you, haven’t seen my girl in a while.”

she smiles at that, leaning over you and pushing you into the bed frame with a kiss, her lips were always much sweeter than rafe’s, you’d always end up borderline inhaling off the flavoured chapstick she so regularly applies.

“missed you too,” she grins against your mouth, wasting no time in swiftly removing her shirt, then yours too.

kissing down your clavicle, she grabs the buckle of your jeans and pulls you onto her, humping you slightly against her leg.

you keen into the air, clinging onto one of her hands and bucking you body back into her, “shit sarah.”

she laughs lightly, the sound creating a hum against your pelvis while she works off your pants and leaves you naked underneath her, pussy glistening in her face

“you really did miss me huh?” she bites her lip almost awestruck and meets eyes with you before nudging her nose into your clit, cashing the nerves to twitch against her face.

she laps at your soaking entrance slowly, nose bumping your clit with every lick and making you squirm underneath her, your stomach pulsing in drawn out pleasure.

“mmh please sare — more,” you whimper, pushing your hips outward and forcing her face in deeper, tongue probing at your hole while she introduces two fingers to your clit in tight circles.

she tongue fucks you for a while before moving back onto your clit, sucking on the nerves and redirecting her two fingers inside of you, curling aggressively while you mewled and your whole body tensed up.

when you finally cum she eagerly mouths it all, rising from between your legs hot in the face with her mouth and chin all dampened due to slick.

you giggle looking down at her, pulling on the strap of her bra so she could meet you with a kiss, all the while thinking about how pissed rafe would be if he ever found out.

🍒🍒 🍒

[palskippah]

Hi! I give you this Stobotnik fankid I made a while ago :'y

She's Sofia --or Ivania or some other name ending in 'ia'-- Robotnik (coolest last name)

It's a compilation and also there's some Stone for practice bc I have no idea how to draw him pipipi Eggman is easier bc it's just his Sonic Boom design (I love it)

Some stuff about this universe under the cut!

(Btw if there's incongruencies is bc I can't make up my mind about the facts whwhw)

-Robotnik and Stone are married, very much married. Cartoon villains in love, I love that for them.

-["MARTHA I'M COMING HOME SWEETIE-"] Mixing up the movie things and the whatever's going on in the Sonic Boom, so Robotnik was gone for eight months and when he's back she's already born.

>Also the drawing is a reference to Icarly's "Whatcha got there?" "A smoothie" but she was clearly asking about the ostrich Spencer brought with him.

>Alternatively, Eggman's there and they go through the journey together yippiee. Choosing names, making evil parenting plans and whatever, being their idiot selves.

(After celebrating because they're good news actually) "I want a boy or a girl-" (Eggman) "Yeah me too." (Stone) "-and we should name them a single, worth of remembering name! Like... Eggette for a girl and Eggson for a boy." "I'm not letting you name them any of that, doctor..." "Okay, then how about Beyonce for a girl and-"

>They wouldn't have kids (?? maybe? I don't really know, I only know sonic boom and the movie :'U)- but she was probably the 1% the birth control warns you about. Also, Stobotnik got a very active seggsual life, and I'm imagining she came to be from a quickie over the desk, why not.

>Helpful diagram of Eggman + Stone kissing and then = baby. They were in work hours.

-In the one where he comes back and the baby's already there, Eggman does a terrible job as a father the few first months, but then he gets the hang of it and it's not so bad.

>He gets projectile vomited on and he's immediately asking to get an abortion (the baby's already born) (he didn't give birth to her), Stone says no anyways.

>"Surprisingly, I'm a good father" he thinks one day and it's because he's still very much an orphan here with no frame of comparation or example aside from researching the matter.

-In the one where they wait for her together, he does all the research necessary in all those months, absolutely refusing in doing an average job in that matter, he's the great Ivo Robotnik c'mon. He excels at anything and he'll be a great father (jk he's terrified of fucking up).

-The Stobotnik family is an evil but loving family, like the bears in Puss in Boots whwh criminal family✨

-For the funny of it, Sonic and Eggman got a sort of relationship like in Sonic Boom, so sometime maybe our favorite boy, Tails and Knuckles had to look after their child.

-Also since Knuckles broke Stone's and Robotnik's hands with their handshake, let's have him handle the baby with the most careful grip ever, just to demonstrate that he didn't have to grab their hands that hard aksdjask

-She's a big fan of Sonic and friends (Sonic the Hedgehog, not Sonic Wachowski, the second guy hadn't done even half the things she admires him for, but no one has the heart to tell her when she's a kid). Has a bunch of merch and all the comics of Sonic the Hedgehog.

>When she's a teenager she proudly uses her Sonic backpack in the same way Deadpool uses his Hello Kitty backpack.

-BTW Sonic, Knuckles and Tails are all brothers and Maddie and Tom's kids bc that's the best idea ever made.

-ALSO I'm definitely gonna draw that scene where Knuckles was about to put the baby in the blender and Sonic shouts THE CHILI DOG NOT THE BABY. Some day, you'll see pipipi.

-SAGE was created for various reasons, to be her sister (since she wouldn't stop asking for one but neither Stone nor Robotnik were willing in raising another human kid, thanks very much), to protect her, and also to answer the tedious "why?" questions that neither father had the patience for (A+ parenting right there). Maybe she was used for the original purpose too idk (I don't know that sonic game where she debuts).

>The child's delighted about having a sister, then she grows up and SAGE doesn't, so she has a little sister.

>METAL SONIC TOO MAYBE? Perfect lil american family, the two happily married parents and their three kids (one human girl, an IA and a robot clone of their alien enemy).

-On her early months she was called Pebble, because she really was a mini Stone, Robotnik went along with it (bc he also looked at her and only saw his husband whw) until she was a little older and they started calling her by her name.

>Alternatively, since Eggman was gone, Stone waited for him to return in hopes of choosing together a name for their child, and Pebble worked as a placeholder since she was just a bebi.

>Alternatively alternatively, Eggman came up with the nickname. ROCK-ONNAISSANCE 🗣️ also yeah I know he was going crazy from the mushroom stuff, but he's not above making silly puns, he's a dad now and also he's naturally silly.

(NGL I really gotta make up my mind about how it all happened ajsdkad)

-She's a spoiled kid and also a little menace, unintentionally evil, she can't help it.

>Good-hearted too sometimes, she loves Sage and does her best to protect her back (it's not necessary but it's appreciated anyways).

-Robotnik calls himself 'daddy' way too much in the live-action movies to ignore it, so he's daddy and Stone's dad (dada when she was younger).

>"These are my daddies!" (points to what's clearly two villains -but also good fathers-)

-She has Robotnik's eyes but as big as Stone's. They're the lethal-est sad puppy eyes ever (they work wonders on both parents and other people) (both men got beautiful dark brown eyes with visible eyelashes fight me).

>Look at Eggman's silly eyelashes:

>Also, you know that picture of Lee Majdoub with the beautiful everything? I think he was wearing eyeliner so my Stone wears eyeliner too in contrast to Eggman's dark circles under his eyes JDJS😭

-She's the five-year-old that made Sonic fear them because 'they can be so cruel when they sense weakness' (she was brutally honest as any young kid is).

-Stone and Robotnik got Gomez and Morticia Addams kinda parenting. They see their child beating up someone and they're like:

"What did we do wrong?" (Stone while shaking his head in disappointment) "I know... she lacks resourcefulness." (Eggman) "Exactly, there's her baseball bat right there, why doesn't she use it?"

-Remember that Shadow said in a game that he wouldn't mind taking a candy from a baby? (fandub I think but still) This comes in handy when neither Tails, Sonic or Knuckles want to upset the kid (so Shadow does it instead).

-She plays sports too because she got too much energy. In each of them she loses her patience. She grabs the football and hauls it at the nearest team member, she throws her baseball bat to the ground and starts beating up whoever threw the ball that she missed, she stomps in frustration if she loses, she's great at dodgeball (sends her classmates to the infirmary).

-Throws tantrums and stuff and overall's an annoying kid if she's upset. Eggman's like UGH WHY'S SHE LIKE THIS?? and Stone's like Because of you, doctor (terrible temperament runs in the family and also Robotnik just spoiled her too much).

-I'm kinda dressing her up in the clothes that existed in my mind that supposedly Eggman wore (the weird dress-like jacket with the big zipper in the middle). Under her jacket there's a dress in the same pattern as the original Eggman's clothes, also she wears a baby onesie like that too.

-When she's older she's definitely proud of her fathers, but she doesn't appreciate the rumors that she's prone to go power-crazy like Robotnik did. Especially because it may be true, but what do they know.

-For the irony, she can't stand drinking coffee, but loves the smell of it because it reminds her of home (omg).

-THEY HAVE A PET CAT like I read in some fics and her name is Robot and she's a lil shit and also grumpy like Robotnik.

>Maybe she brings her alive mice to experiment on all sort of stuff (like Pávlov and his dogs and the guy Skinner with his mice and cats (??))

-She gets to hang out with Sonic and friends under the condition of annoying him as much as possible. So, she complies. (She loves Sonic the Hedgehog, but she loves making her fathers happy more).

-Very smart kid but not to the level of Tails or Robotnik at that age, she's just got very good memory and learning skills and knows a lot of stuff ever since she was a little kid. More like a Matilda-kinda intelligence.

-She's a scientist when she grows up too but the kind that makes evil potions and serums and stuff aksjdk probably (chemistry things? biochem idk). She can make silly little robots for the fun of it but it's not her passion, unlike Robotnik and Stone's. PROBABLY. I'm still deciding.

-BTW LOOK (it says 'carefully crafted ploy to distract space porcupines')

>While Eggman's there with the baby and Sonic in front of him going AWWW BABY BOO and making her laugh, Stone is sneaking up on him holding a chair above his head to knock him out.

THAT'S IT THANKS FOR READING ✨✨