#if this really is the same person. GET A LIFE !!! my god

[acottonsocksims2]

ACottonSock's Sims 2 Mods Masterlist (Part 2)

The second part to my Sims 2 mod masterlist. NOTE: I use Ultimate Collection. Some mods may not work if you use Legacy Edition. Specifically, I know RPC and CJH Community Time DO NOT work (at the moment) on Legacy. Last Updated: 2/1/25 - Creation!

PART 1 | PART 2

Occult (Bigfoot, Werewolf) Mods

Bigfoot Romance: An edited version of the original Bigfoot romance mod that allows Bigfoot to fall in love with regular Sims, as well as have babies. You only need this mod, not the original as well.

Bigfoot Defaults - Eye Love: Default eye replacements for the legend, Bigfoot.

Bigfoot gets sewing/pottery badges: Makes spawned Bigfeet start with gold badges in pottery and sewing, just like naturally made ones.

Familial Bigfoot: Lets you have Bigfeet of all ages and both genders. MAKE SURE TO CHECK YOUR LOAD ORDER LISTED ON THE POST, AS THIS MOD HAS SEVERAL CONFLICTS.

Werewolf Personality: Rather than continuously changing personality forever, giving all werewolves the same personality, this mod changes personality only through the first 20 transformations.

Creature Fixes: Fixes for all of the supernatural and assorted creatures from the base game to AL.

Hereditary Supernaturalism: Occult status can now be inherited from parent to child.

No Alien Sexism: Allows both female and male abductees to get pregnant from alien probing.

New Pollination Technician: Changes what the alien pollination technician replacement looks like.

Bigfoot Semester Changes: Makes Semester Changes (under the 'College Mods' section) work with Bigfoot. MUST load after Cyjon’s mod AND after the Bigfoot mods.

Manipulator "Controller" Mods

Lamare LTW Chooser: Allows you to freely choose a Sim's lifetime wish without being restricted to the ones available just for their aspiration.

FFS Debugger: Provides options to fix several bugs, glitches, and other issues. Tons and tons of debugging options.

Auto Saver: Creates a dialog that pops up asking if you wish to save your game.

Bathroom Uses YOU!: Adds a toilet paper roll (with a hammer and sickle) that helps with bathroom door clogs. Has a nice feature that ejects a Sim immediately once they have done their business. Here's more recolors.

Cyjon's Debugger: A general purpose object, meant to compliment items like Pescado's batbox. Can be found in Buy Mode under Miscellaneous/Miscellaneous as the pizza box.

Sim Blender: The ultimate Sim management “God” mod.

Sim Manipulator: I use it for the ability to instantly change clothes to a different outfit or plan outfits by clicking on a Sim, and to make non-playable Sims easily selectable, but it has MANY more options.

Visitor Controller: Control which Sims are allowed to visit certain lots. Ban Sim from lots based on gender, aspiration, career, gender preference, and many other characteristics. Also allows you to ban Crumplebottom, Unsavory Charlatan and other annoying NPCs.

Sims 2 RPC: A custom Sims 2 Launcher with quality of life changes, firstborn syndrome fix, better graphics and more! INCOMPATIBLE AS OF RIGHT NOW WITH SIMS 2 LEGACY RE-RELEASE. CREATOR HAS STATED THEY WILL FIX.

College Mods

No College Time Progression On Community Lots: Prevents the college timer from progressing on community college lots and allows it to progress on all residential lots.

There Can Be Only One (Professor): Game will generate one rather than two professors for each major. Gender will be random.

Stinky Dormie Fix: Will stop dormies from doing an assignment when what they really need is a shower.

Young Adult Walk Fix: Fixes the Young Adult walk style so they walk normally. Fixes the Lazy sim idle animations to remove the gorilla slouch as well as the 'slow spin' clothes changing routine.

Later Classes: Moves all morning university classes later in the day so no class starts before noon.

Semester Changes: Substantially changes how the university works so it is more bearable and closer to being on the same schedule as the rest of the sims in your game.

Revised Majors: All the university majors have been revised so that they are actually relevant to careers.

Young Adults Can Enjoy Maternity (and all that): Umbrella category mod that includes: aging at university, pregnancy at university, alien pregnancy at university, adopting at university, school buses at university, and a fix for the University Greek houses. MUST HAVE MATERNITY CLOTHES FOR YA

Smarter choice of parent for entering college cinematic: Unmodded, the game always chooses the sim with the lowest neighbor ID to be in the cinematic. This fixes it so it's relationship based instead of Sim ID based.

Aging Mods

Custom Age Span: Links to PleasantSims' fantastic video on how to setup a custom agespan. My agespan goes as follows: Baby - 2 Days, Toddler - 4 Days, Child - 8 Days, Teen - 10 Days, Adult - 45 Days. Everything else is left at default.

Age Up at Midnight: Ages Sim up at midnight instead of 6pm. !! DO NOT USE THIS MOD IF YOU USE A CUSTOM AGE SPAN (ABOVE) !! Instead, you can edit the ijAgecons.package according to the description on this MTS post.

NPC Aging: NPC Sims on the active lot will age up one day at 6:00 PM, but only if they are ON the active lot. Does not impact playables.

Smart Age Correct: Corrects ages in 'hood to go along with your own custom agespan.

Career Mods

Jobs in Uni For All: Jobs on campus for Sims and pets.

Choose Career Type: Allows you to choose between part-time work or full-time work.

Young Adults Want and Fear Work: Young adults can have wishes and fears about work: find a job, go to work, get a promotion, etc.

Part & full time careers mutually satisfy wants: Getting a part-time job satisfies a want to get a full-time job in a corresponding career and vice versa.

Business Runs YOU!: Automates a lot of Sims 2 business processes, including: managing the employees, making them take breaks automatically, giving them reasonable wages automatically, so that your sims can spend time actually running their business instead of micromanaging the dumb employees so they don’t ragequit. Here's the invisible recolor for the hammer and sickle.

Professional Blogger: Sims can make money from blogging on the computer.

Job Level Labels: With this mod you can quickly see what level your Sim is in their career. In addition the number shows up when you are job searching.

Fixes

Anti-Redundancy: Eliminates spawning of unnecessary, redundant NPCs. Should only spawn one per type, more only if needed because the first is unavailable.

Child Computer Chat: The computer chat menu displays two submenus: Child (all the children online) and Adult (teens, adults and elders online). Access to the separate chat rooms is no longer restricted by the age of the user.

Coffee Cup Hack: Sims will no longer walk a mile to find a surface to place down their coffee cups. If no surface is nearby, they will just drop it.

Community Lot Parties: Allows you to throw parties on community lots.

Sims 2 Wants Tree Fix: Replaces the vanilla wants to allow Sims to roll for the broken EAxis divorce want. MAKE SURE TO PUT IN TSDATA/RES/WANTS FOLDER!!

Day Setter: Vase to change the day of the week it is. I use to sync rotations between households if something gets out of whack. Found under Misc/Misc.

Seasons and Weather Controller: Allows you to change the length of the seasons, but also has other season and weather-related uses.

Age Transition - Teens Keep Loves: Stops teens from losing their crushes/loves when age transitioning to adult/YA.

Apartment Life Fixes: Fixes a ton of Apartment Life related bugs.

Apartment Life UI Text Fonts Fix: Fixes UI text fonts issues brought on by AL.

Baby Wants Fix: Having a baby will also satisfy the Adopt a child want, if it is present. Vice versa, adopting a child (any age) will also satisfy the have a baby want.

Caged Pets Fixes: Fixed random bird death bug and other annoyances and bugs related to the birds and womrats.

Talk More, Eat Less: This hack will bypass the conversation if the Sim is in desperation for energy, hunger, fun or bladder, or is in a bad mood. Sims with maxed social will talk less.

Apology Fury Fix: Apology will reduce furiousness, as it was originally supposed to. Requires Smarter EP Check.

Call NPCs: Reverts a "fix" made in FreeTime that prevents sims from calling almost all NPCs.

Relationship Decay Fix:  Fixes bug which causes game to error out when calculating the 4 pm relationship decay on very large families.

More Sleep: Players can direct sims to sleep at night, even if the sim is not tired.

Townie Apartment Residents: Apartment neighbors and roommates will be chosen from the townie pool rather than social groups.

Trim Inaccessible Bushes: Allows sims to trim bushes even if they can't reach them.

Community Lot Skilling: Controlled sims, NPCs, and townies may gain skills while visiting community lots, including non-college community lots.

Creativity Gain Enabled For Blogging & Diary: This mod allows sims to gain creativity skill while blogging/writing in their diary.

No Pet Job Wants: Disables the pets job wants.

Water Incessible Flowers: Allows you to water all flowers regardless of their location on the lot, including completely inaccessible or blocked ones.

Don't Wave At Me: Stops the turn, face camera, wave at you obnoxious thing when things go wrong.

Engagement Memory Fix: Fixes a bug that can cause a sim to get the wrong (bad/good) type of engagement memory.

Find A Mate Crystal Ball: Summon the power of the Gypsy's crystal ball, without having to deal with the old bat. Tell the ball what type of sim you are looking for and get a choice of the 5 matching sims in the hood that have the highest chemistry.

Finicky Pet Fix: Fixes a bug which causes finicky pets to refuse to eat from a food bowl until they are near starving to death.

Front Door Hack: Delivery persons should no longer be drawn to the inaccessible door. Garage doors are not considered front doors regardless of level.

Met New Great-Grandchild Memory: Sims will get a custom memory when they have great-grandchildren, similar to the one they get when they have grandchildren

Random Stereo Station: A mod that makes newly bought stereos choose a random station when being turned on for the first time instead of always choosing salsa.

Secondary Aspiration Attraction: Adjusts the attraction score between two Sims by taking into account their secondary aspirations.

Business Having No Customers Fix: Fixes an error concerning Sims 2 businesses and customers not showing up. SCROLL DOWN TO POST #7 TO FIND DOWNLOAD.

Waiter NPC Outfit Fix: If a waiter/waitress has body type #2, their outfit will no longer glitch.

No Mr. Humble: Makes Humble Computer buyable. Gets rid of the actual Rod Humble visitation.

No Stray Respawn: Prevents strays from respawning. Stray animal population will only grow or shrink as a result of your actions.

Sim Shadow Fix: Fixes blocks under Sims feet from outdated graphics.

Watch TV from all chairs: Edits the angle and distance at which a Sim can watch TV.

Woohoo Count Fix: Fixes a problem with woohoo count. If a Sim has woohooed with the same sim multiple times in different types of woohoo, the game will now consider that as having woohooed with only one sim.

Woohoo LTW Fix: Stops the woohoo LTW from disappearing after being achieved.

Date/Outing Stood Up Fix: This mod fixes the broken timer behavior for standing dates/outings up.

Sim Transparency Fix: This mod will prevent Sims from randomly getting broken transparency.

Gardener Invasion Fix: Fixes a serious bug that occurred when a gardener couldn't get out of a car. The game will no longer create an infinite number of gardeners who will invade your house and bloating your game files.

Adult/Elder Tent Woohoo Fix: EAxis messed up and made it so adults could only woohoo with other adults in tents, and elders with other elders. Now adults and elders can woohoo each other in tents if the other requirements are met.

Same Sex Marriage: Replaces 'joined' to be 'married' for sex same couples.

No Corrupt Death: Suppresses the corrupt death memory.

No Sim Loaded: Removes the “Sim Loaded” token and others every time you load a lot, preventing lag, and also prevents and fixes the Super Duper Hug Bug. 

No Unlinkage On Urnstone Delete: Game no longer partially destroys sim file on deletion of tombstone. May resolve potential random tombstone losses when moving tombstones to community lots resulting from shredded character files produced by unlinkage.

Outdoor Lights All Night: Outdoor lights will stay on until 7 am rather than 2 am.

Smarter Chair Selection: Sims are smarter about choosing where to sit during activities like reading and eating pizza.

Smarter EP Check: Creates a new, more robust and accurate Expansion Pack and Stuff Pack check.

Smarter Privacy: Sims are smarter about bathroom and woohoo privacy, ignoring unshooable or irrelevant sims.

Fix subhood selection: These mods will allow you to select from a list of downtowns and shopping districts, by removing the large button which prevents the display of the entire list.

Townie Budget Mod: Townies can no longer buy items they can’t afford at businesses, eat at restaurants if they have no money, etc.

Walkbys Behave: Makes the Sims walking by stop being annoying (ie. stop stealing newspaper, kicking over trash, etc.).

[lamentationsofalonelypotato]

@zepskies

Okay I'm here and I am ready for the finale of this wonderful series!

“Was worried about you,” you whisper a confession against his lips. Dean briefly pauses, meeting your eyes. “Thanks for waiting up,” he says, with a hint of a smile.

I like this line, because it's what made Dean stop. In my head I feel like this version of Dean has pushed away so many people and the reader is the first person in a long time to genuinely say that she was "worried" about him, and it strikes something in his chest because he couldn't remember the last time it happened. That's the headcanon in my head anyway lol.

Also the spice was.... 😱🌶️🔥. I literally cannot write smut to save my life, but you always write it so well! I also liked that you didn't do it as intense as omegaverse usually is, because we both know how it can be 👀

“It’s too damn late,” he says, breaking the silence. “You realize that right?” You shoot him a frown. “Too late for what?” “For me to let you go,” he says. 

OH MY WORD DEAN SHUT UP! I promise it's okay! She loves you and she can see that you're not a bad person because you literally have been nursing her back to health with her broken ankle 😭 Not to mention you guys are fated! She's not going to let you go no matter what you do.

But again... on brand for Dean to hate himself and to think he's not good enough -sigh- just means that you get to spend more time wrapped up with him trying to convince him 😊😉. I also believe that Dean loves intimac, that he does crave that connection with someone, not to mention I still love what you do in your Midnight Espresso series with Dean being a little touch starved for non-sexual touch. I feel like you've also implied this here and it is marvelous!

His brotherly pride and his humor are tinged with something else though. You think you begin to understand. His losses have weighed him down, leaving him aimless and living in that in between, not unlike the ghosts he used to hunt. You know the feeling.  You thread your fingers with his, earning his attention.  “You can have that too, you know,” you say. “I mean, I don’t want to skip ahead, but I feel like things are going well here, despite the whole busted ankle thing.” 

“It’s beautiful, but my God, how old is this thing?” “She. She’s a she.” “Oh, pardon me,” you say in amusement. “Do I have some competition here?” Dean gives you a teasing smirk. “Well, technically, she’s been with me a lot longer than you.” 

I'm literally cackling. I can hear Dean saying this to his significant other. Meeting Baby for the first time holds the same place in his heart as meeting Sam for the first time 🤣 ALSO, I wasn't ready for the palm kiss. Palm kisses and forehead kisses DESTROY me.

I like that this was an alternate ending to the dumpster fire that was the end of Supernatural. That it's Dean and his girl out on the open road listening to a Led Zeppelin song holding hands in the front seat of Baby was just beautiful in the best way and a perfect ending to this mini-series my wonderful friend!! I am going to miss this couple so much, but it really was a fitting end for them 🥰

Against the Wind - Part 4

Pairing: Alpha!Dean Winchester x F. Omega!Reader 

Summary: You wake up in a strange alpha’s cabin in the middle of a snowstorm, all with a busted ankle. He holds shadows in his eyes, even though his hands are gentle. There are iron shutters around his heart, even though he saved you. You might just save him in return.

AN: The grand finale...

Song Inspo: “Against the Wind” by Bob Seger

Word Count: 3.4K

Tags/Warnings: 18+ only! Smut, knotting, claiming, fluff and feels.

Series Masterlist || Bingo Masterlist

Part 4: Running to Live

His cold hands are warming on your skin as he slides them underneath your sweater. They move smoothly up your back, bunching up the material. You break from his kiss only to help him get the sweater off you, followed closely by his pants.

Your sweatpants slide down your legs with just a sharp tug, baring most of your body to his gaze. His eyes drag over your exposed neck and shoulders, your breasts cupped in your bra, down to your panties and bare thighs.

A shiver runs through you, both from his heated gaze, and from being exposed to the cooler air. Even with the fire going and the heater running in the cabin, the frigid air outside is unforgiving.

You have no problem with the way Dean guides you down from the chaise to take advantage of your nest on the floor, right in front of the fire. He draws you into a sensuous kiss, sucking your lower lip into his mouth and grazing with teeth.

“Were you nesting, Omega?” he teases, between the sinful meetings of his lips with yours. You hum your affirmation before his tongue swipes across your lower lip, seeking entrance.

You open yourself to him in more ways than one; you slip your hands across his naked shoulders and explore the smooth planes of muscle, the dips and softness in between. You encourage him to lower down, to cover you with the length and broadness of his frame. His weight is a welcome one between your thighs and against the softness of your body.

“Was worried about you,” you whisper a confession against his lips. Dean briefly pauses, meeting your eyes.

“Thanks for waiting up,” he says, with a hint of a smile.

Your lips curve upwards in return. You reach up to caress his cheek, feeling the prickling of his stubble. Your fingers thread into his hair, and you pull him back down for a devouring kiss.

Dean’s brows furrow as he holds you to him, wanting to feel every part of your skin against his. His calloused fingers map their way down your side, and across your back to unhook your bra. His lips veer away from yours to burn a wet, heated trail along your neck. His teeth come out to graze your skin, down your throat, down the lovely valley between your breasts.

“Dean,” you gasp, encouraging him when his hand cups one of your breasts. He explores the other with his mouth, teasing a pebbled nipple with his tongue. Your fingers tighten in his hair, your thighs rubbing together between the cage of his knees in the mess of blankets. Already you feel slick forming at the apex of your thighs and slipping down in between.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs against your skin. “Fucking beautiful, you know that?”

You can’t help but smile. Your face warms either from the fire dancing shadows across your bodies, or from him, his attention, his warmth, and the heat in his eyes when they meet your again. His hand slides down your body, over your hip and squeezing your thigh as he opens you up further for him.

“Tell me what you want, Omega.” While I still have control, his tone implies. His voice is gravel and sin while his hand moves swiftly and smoothly up the inside of your thigh.

“Touch me,” you breathe.

Nodding, he hooks his fingers around the hem of your panties and slides them down. You help him kick them off. Afterward, his thumb brushes over your mound, making you sharply inhale and squeeze his shoulders encouragingly. His fingers dip inside your wet heat, his brows raising with a smirk, as he feels the sheer amount of your slick already coating his digits.

“Fuck. This all for me, baby?” he remarks.

You hold onto the back of his neck with both hands as you nod, biting your lip. Your hips begin to cant against his hand on reflex, urging him to touch you.

“Alpha, please…” you implore, in a ragged whisper. He swallows your plea with a ravaging kiss, but he still gives you what you want. His thumb circles your clit, earning a moan from you into his mouth.

Soon, two of his fingers plunge slowly inside you, working you open, drawing more gasps and shudders of pleasure from your body. His length continues to strain hard against your thigh, but for him, it’s worth it to draw every sound, every time your body writhes and arches against him, craving release.

With a few more purposeful strokes, your inner walls clamp tight on his hand, and a flood of slick coats his knuckles even more. You gasp his name, your hands squeezing his arms just as tight as your pussy around his fingers.

Your skin is beginning to get dewy with sweat, and he kisses some of it off you when he trails down your chest. You stroke down his arms, down his back, whatever you can reach as you catch your breath. But then, his name falls from your lips with a firmer tone.

Dean raises his head, and you gently push at his chest. His brows furrow in confusion, only for it to be replaced with a smile of surprise when you curl a thigh over his hip and guide him onto his back. His head just manages to fall on one of your pillows, but he still utters a small grunt. You giggle down at him, bowing to meet him for a kiss.

He smirks and holds onto your hips, playfully squeezing your ass. “My wily omega.”

“Thought I was your cheeky omega,” you tease.

He snorts. “That too.”

You giggle some more as you treat him to the same path of open-mouthed kisses down his neck. Except this time, you hook a hand behind his neck, and you trail your tongue around his mating gland. You feel his jolt of surprise, as well as his instinctive growl of pleasure in response to his mate. Or at least, not yet…

His heart pounds in his chest.

“Omega,” he says, a warning not to tease as his grip tightens on your hips.

The command in his voice makes you shiver, but you smile and nuzzle his cheek in affection. You kiss your way down his body, playing special attention to his nipples, his stomach, the soft V and the happy trail of light brown fuzz leading you down between his hips.

Your fingers slide down his hardened desire through his underwear, earning a grunt from him, along with a shifting of his body against the blankets. Your lips curve as you nuzzle him there as well, letting your lips drag across his impressive length.

His fingers tangle in your hair when you hook your nails around the waistband and free his cock from its confines. His boxers join the rest of your clothes somewhere, and finally you get to see all of him, as much as he takes in all of you. Your hand wraps around his girth, your thumb circling around the sensitive, weeping head of it. Dean groans, a sound from deep in his chest.

You don’t know this, but it’s been a while since anyone but his own hand has touched him. That’s not the only reason his body has been calling to yours, but it plays a part in how fucking good it feels, and how much more he wants you.

He feels your intentions when your hand moves down his shaft in a teasing caress, your fingers tracing around his knot. A shudder rattles down his spine, makes his desire burn hotter in the pit of his stomach.

He can’t fucking take it anymore. He needs you, needs to be inside you. Needs to take you the way his instincts demand.

He grasps your shoulder before you put your mouth on him. You blink up at him, with a question forming on your lips, but he hefts you up onto his chest by your arms. He cages you there with a kiss filled with abject need.

“I can’t. Can’t wait anymore,” he says. He drags his fingers through your folds and earns another moan from your when he finds your clit. “You ready for me, Omega? Need my knot?”

“Yeah,” you nod, agreeing against his lips. “Need you, Alpha—”

No sooner had the words escaped your lips, when Dean rolls you back underneath him. But this time, he guides you onto your stomach, then raises up your hips, until you’re on your hands and knees. You catch your breath as you regain your bearings, shooting an incredulous smile over your shoulder at Dean. He smirks back at you, but his gaze is intense, his pupils darkened with the alpha inside him. 

Still, he soothes a hand down your back and steadies you with a hold on your hip. You feel him slot himself behind you, guiding his cock at your entrance. His chest presses hotly against your back.

“Last chance, Omega,” he says, his voice tight with restraint.

You look back at him again over your shoulder, your mouth threatening to frown. You reach back and sink your fingers into his hair with a sharp tug. “Do it.”

He sinks into you with one smooth plunge. It’s a relief for both of you, your mingled moans echoing in the near silence. All that’s left is the sound of your quickening breaths, of skin against sweat-slick skin as you move together.

Dean brushes your hair away from your neck. He kisses and licks his way along your bare shoulder, and finally the back of your neck. You’re trembling by the time his lips find the sensitive flesh of your mating gland. It echoes with the pulsing from your core as he continues to drive into you.

“Alpha,” you gasp on reflex. You squeeze his arm; he has it wrapped tight around your middle. Your pleasure builds ever closer to that crescendo, especially as his thrusts become ragged, at an angle that zips delicious tingles through your core. “Close…just…I need…”

Dean isn’t so far gone. He hears you, and helps you, reaching his hand around to strum his fingers insistently on your clit, along with his final thrusts.

Finally, it tumbles you over. Your inner walls become impossibly tight around him as he draws out your second release—one that triggers his own. Dean groans into your ear; his knot swells and locks into place, and he spends himself deep inside you. He pants hot against your neck, but even though he fastens his lips there, he hesitates, once again making you shudder. 

“Do it,” you repeat, in a coarse whisper. You’re close to tears. “Please. Want you, Alpha. Need you…”

Once again, he hears you.

His teeth sink into the back of your neck, making you cry out. But your pain is quickly overshadowed by a deepest pleasure, thrumming along with his.

 Afterward, Dean holds you in his arms. The warm glow of the fire paints your skin in its light, despite the utter darkness in the rest of the house. 

While you both wait for his knot to subside, you revel in the fact that you know he’s content. You can feel it through the newly formed bond. He traces random shapes in your skin, which still glistens with a fine sheen of sweat. The fire he stoked doesn’t help to cool you down, but you don’t care.

Nothing else matters but this. You turn your head toward him over your shoulder. He meets you there with a gentle kiss, much more gentle than any other you’ve shared before. It feels right. 

When he parts from you, he presses another kiss to your forehead. Then he leans back a little and sighs. You feel his thumb trace the raw flesh around the claiming mark on your neck. A small shiver runs through your body. Maybe on another day, you’ll mark him in return.

“It’s too damn late,” he says, breaking the silence. “You realize that right?”

You shoot him a frown. “Too late for what?”

“For me to let you go,” he says. 

His words both warm you and make you sad. Just how little does he think of himself?

“Dean,” you say, endeavoring to be patient. “You’re my true mate. Do you know how rare it is that we’ve actually found each other?”

Dean remains quiet.

“And after everything you’ve done for me,” you add, “how can I not think you’re a good man? How can I not think this is right?”

He seems to consider your question. His gaze briefly falls, then meets your eyes again.

“You don’t know me that well,” is his answer, with a wry turn of his lips. 

You reach back to caress his cheek. “Then tell me. Tell me about, um…tell me about how you became a hunter. From your dad’s journal, I got the sense that it’s a family thing.”

A vendetta, you wanted to say, but you keep that thought inside.

Dean chuckles, dropping another kiss onto your shoulder. You feel the pleasurable rasp of his stubble.

“Yeah, more like a family business,” he says. 

He tells you why John Winchester started writing in that journal in the first place. Dean explains it in his own words, of what his family was before and after a demon broke into his brother’s nursery. Your heart continues to break for him, over and over, the more story he tells. Your shock can only reach new heights when he tells you about angels and demons and everything in between. 

There are moments where he pauses, needing the time to find his words. He’s talked for so long that his knot finally softens, allowing you to withdraw from him, just to turn in his arms and be able to see his face. He bundles you in the blankets to keep you warm, but he also keeps you close, with a loose arm around your waist as he continues. 

You sense that he’s not telling you everything. How could he? A lifetime of blood and wins and incredible losses; family gained, and family lost, endless saves, and so many near misses. You listen with rapt attention (and a lot of shock) to everything he can share, but your heart twinges when you see how he struggles to talk about his mother’s most recent death. Then his best friend Cas. 

You realize that this man, for all his self-deprecation, is a hero. More so than you already knew.

“After the whole Chuck thing was done, I thought we’d just…go back to status quo. Me and Sam against the world, you know?” Dean says. He gives a rueful smile. “Then Sammy tells me he knocked up his mate.”

You smile. “You’re happy for him though.”

“Course I am,” Dean nods. “He never thought he’d get to have all that. A badass chick who can keep him on his toes, a house, the kid, the whole damn thing. He’s downright respectable again.”

His brotherly pride and his humor are tinged with something else though. You think you begin to understand. His losses have weighed him down, leaving him aimless and living in that in between, not unlike the ghosts he used to hunt. You know the feeling. 

You thread your fingers with his, earning his attention. 

“You can have that too, you know,” you say. “I mean, I don’t want to skip ahead, but I feel like things are going well here, despite the whole busted ankle thing.” 

Dean slowly smiles, shaking his head. He brings your hand up to his lips. 

“Okay, enough about my Hallmark movie life. What about you?” he asks. 

So you tell him. 

You two continue to share and explore, both in words and with your bodies, until morning comes. 

It’s another week in the cabin before Dean insists on helping you down the mountain. Your ankle has gotten a little better, but at this point, you need to see a doctor. It takes a couple of days, going as slow as you need to. He ends up carrying you for most of the way anyway. You tell him over and over that he doesn’t have to, but your alpha is stubborn. 

Once he gets you back to the city, you two take a shuttle to the nearest hospital. X-rays are taken, and you get a new cast for your officially fractured ankle. At the very least, you don’t need surgery. You’re able to call your mom from there and let her know where you’ve been, that you’re all right, and best of all…that you’ve found your mate. 

You cry along with her on the phone, this time for a good reason. The best reason. 

When you’re eventually released from the hospital, Dean picks you up in a sleek, black Chevy that has your eyes wide. 

He grins at the look on your face. “Hey, sweetheart. Come meet my Baby.” 

He parks the car and keeps the heater running while he comes around to you in swift strides. He takes your crutches and slides them into the backseat, then helps you into the passenger seat. 

“It’s beautiful, but my God, how old is this thing?”

“She. She’s a she.”

“Oh, pardon me,” you say in amusement. “Do I have some competition here?”

Dean gives you a teasing smirk. “Well, technically, she’s been with me a lot longer than you.” 

You scoff incredulously. He laughs and takes your hand, pressing a kiss into your palm. You discreetly study him and marvel at how much lighter he seems. You don’t know how much is because of this, what your hand in his symbolizes, and how much is because he’s reunited with something important to him. 

“It’s okay, Omega mine,” he says, with a measure of desire in his eyes. “From now on, you’re my priority.”

Your spine prickles with the same arousal you can feel from him through the bond. You lean across the way and share a thorough kiss. 

Until a horn honks loudly from behind. You both jolt, but Dean’s face falls into annoyance. He shoots up a choice finger at the car behind him in the rearview mirror. You laugh as he begins to peel out of the curved pick-up and drop-off zone in front of the hospital. 

“Where are we going, Dean?” you ask, still smiling in amusement. 

“Wherever we damn well please.” He turns to you with a hint of a smile reforming on his lips. “Want me to take you back home? We can sort out the logistics on, uh…well, this.”

You think about it. He poses a good idea, but at the same time, you’re not quite ready for this part of the adventure to end. 

“How long has it been since you’ve seen Sam?” you ask.

Dean blinks at your question. He whistles lowly. “About a year. Jesus, since my nephew was born.”

You smile and reach over, resting your hand on his thigh. 

“Let’s go see him, then,” you say. “I want to meet your family. Then you can meet mine.”

After that, you two can figure out the rest, like where to live, and how you’ll live. 

Dean raises a brow. “Really? That’s like, a thirteen-hour drive.”

You shrug. “I’ve always wanted to go on a real road trip. Can we get some food first though? I’m starving.” 

He laughs and nods as he stops the car at a red light.

“What do you know? A woman after my own heart,” he says. His amusement eases into a gentler smile the longer he stares at you. You smile back, and you give into the urge to lean in again, meeting your lips with his. He brushes your cheek tenderly with his thumb. 

“I know what this needs,” he says lowly. Your brows draw together in a silent question. 

He pulls away to reach into the side compartment along the driver door. He fishes out a cassette tape labelled Zeppelin IV. You bite your lip and try not to say anything smartassed.

Damn, this man is old school. 

He skips ahead until he finds Track 7, just as the light turns green. A melodious guitar riff fills the car as he turns onto the main road with your hand wrapped in his. 

Made up my mind to make a new start.

Going to California with an aching in my heart…

AN: And that's all, folks! 🥹 I truly hope you enjoyed Against the Wind!

Like I said in a recent update, I have more stories in store for you guys. January 3 will be Part 1 of Outlander -- sequel to The Honorable Choice -- a Western AU with Dean as our resident cowboy! I'll post a sneak peek on that one soon.~

But in the meantime, I hope you'll let me know what you thought of ATW! 💜💜

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[ziminy]

Coming back to you

How to get back with your ex

Tags: smut, minors and ageless blogs do not interact, f!reader, normal au (because we suffered enough), my bbg Caleb the manipulative king he is (break me in half and all I'll say is thank you), implied stalking (if you squint), creampie, oral (f! receiving), fingering, marking, dirty talk, praising, size difference, little bit of crying, not proofread

Author's note: almost lvl 60 affinity with him, it was hard work and a lot of dedication. Trust me when I say I won't be able to recover financially from this any time soon.

Masterlist

Life was good when you were together, and somehow it even better after breaking up. It's not like your split up was messy, because you two parted ways on mutual accord, deciding that this isn't going to work since both of you were so busy lately. Why dragging the other down when you have your futures set?

In fact, the break up wasn't even supposed to be a break up, you were supposed to take a little break from each other that turned into a break up some time later. You said that you'd still be friends, that it's alright to talk and greet each other if you somehow managed to meet again.

But it was all lies. Both of you knew that. Because you never texted each other after that, and somehow you tried to avoid all the places he might be at. You don't really know why you're doing that, if just.. you feel a little uncomfortable looking back at what you two used to have.

Perhaps it was the way he looked at you, how he leaned down to talk to you, or that dumb smile that made your heart skip a beat.

He was caring, attentive, maybe a bit obsessive, perhaps a bit insane too. And maybe that what scared you, kept you away from dating again. Finding another one like him. God, what if you had the misfortune to wake up with another one like him at your door? You'd rather jump out the window than have the luck of getting another Caleb.

But he was good, in his own ways.

Well.. you can't really name any of his good traits at the moment, but he was a great guy. If you put aside his manipulative side, that he doesn't even try to hide to begin with.

You promised yourself to not fall for another guy like him, that empty words mean nothing to you. Threats had no effect, and you don't feel guilty anymore over things that you shouldn't be to begin with.

So, why was he here? You were supposed to meet with the old friend group, to reconnect and talk about the old days and how college used to be. I mean, he was part of the group, but why exactly was he here? And why did nobody told you he was coming?

"It's so good to see you guys!" one of your friends said, instantly jumping from person to person to hug.

"I feel like we're young again." someone else said, making you shake your head and let out a soft laugh. You can't show that you're affected, you're all grown now, you matured. He had no effect on you anymore. Even if it only been a year, you're still a different person that you were a few months ago.

"We aren't old to begin with." you said with a smile on your face. "How haves everyone been?" you sounded so calm, like you forgot how much stress was put on you back then. Everybody looks in much better shape after graduation, perhaps that place was rough for everyone.

"Let's just skip greetings and drink." of course there was that one person. "Caleb, you pay." everybody's eyes were on the tall man.

"You brought your wallet, no? Why should I pay." your eyes made contact for a moment, and you felt your face getting hotter. This night better go quick, because you don't know for how much longer you can handle this.

Everything was how it was back then, the way you sit in groups at the bar. How you found yourself next to the same girls you used to, deciding that you don't want to be loud and take it easy, just like before.

"So, how have life been for you? Haven't heard anything from you after we graduate." one of the girls looked at you, reminding you of how you chose to go no contact with everybody after your breakup.

"You and Caleb broke up? I thought you'd last a life time." is there nothing better to talk about?

"I'm a career woman now." you decided to change the subject, rather chosing to talk about work that your failed relationship.

"Oh?" why everybody looked so surprised was a mystery. But somehow you understood their reactions, you're also surprised you went this path.

"Got any boyfriends?" they still want to get info on your personal life, huh? Well, guess you won't be able to dodge that question any time soon.

"Nothing at the moment. Just focusing on work."

"I guess it's hard to date again. Normal guys must be so bland, not comparing to that piece of meat over there." you looked displeased with your friends choice of words. Yes, your ex might look good, but looks isn't what matters right now. Your well being was your top priority, and you enjoyed the freedom you had way too much.

"I'd be like that too if I had your ex. Imagine recovering from that." you don't even have to imagine.

"Is it even humanly possible to find somebody who's better than him?" their questions doesn't affect you, because you already know that you're the best you'd find. You understand and give yourself more than enough space that it's needed. So the right questions was if he will be able to find someone as good as you, because he won't.

"He's looking in this direction." the girls started giggling, and somehow, this was nostalgic.

Didn't this happened already? Before you started dating, right before you two confessed your feelings. Because somehow, you managed to do that at the same time. It was funny, if you're thinking about it. How you two were so in sync, you had no idea.

"Go talk to him." the girl next to you tried to push you, to make you get up and walk to the dark haired man.

"Don't want to." you kept avoiding any eye contact ever since you got in that bar. If you don't acknowledge him then he doesn't even exist to you.

"But he's looking at you." you grabbed the drink in front of you and gulped everything down your throat, trying to ignore him.

"Are you shy?" the girls started giggling again.

It was annoying. Why can't they understand that it's over? He understands this, so why can't they do it as well?

"We don't have anything to talk about."

"But he seems to want to?" it doesn't matter even if they point it out. It's been a long time already, you both moved on.

"Isn't there anything you want to tell him? Like things you didn't got the chance to while you were together?"

"This is the time to clear any bad blood between the two of you." but that wasn't necessary.

Frustrated, you looked in his direction. Eyebrows furrowed and biting on your lip so you wouldn't let out any curses you wanted to say at the moment. That classical expression, looking like he's good, even if there was no smile on his face, but he kept nodding to what his friends were saying. His eyes were betraying him however, those sleepy eyes, looking at you like you were more interesting, like he had to or else you'd evaporate from there or who knows what worse. It wasn't often when you'd see him like that, so you can't even answer your own questions on why he seemed like that.

No, if you payed attention to his surroundings, his friends might be annoying him. Saying something that he doesn't like, or.. they were talking about you. Just the way your friends were talking about him.

Was he feeling like that because he didn't want to talk to you either? No, you doubt that. It's probably because you refuse to give him any attention.

You turned to face the girls around you, who still seemed to push you to him. Maybe you should in fact go for it?

But, was there really anything that needed to be said? You don't have any regrets, you can't think of anything you want to say. And he's the same, even if he looked like he was holding back from time to time. You doubt he ever did something he's regretting. After all, you matched each other's freaks. You managed to stay together for that long just because you completed the other, understood yourselfs on a level no one else around you could.

Was this why you were pushed to him? Because everyone knew how well you fit each other?

You looked at your friends one more time, sighing as you finally gave up. You're still afraid to approach him, because he was still intimidating in a way you can't explain.

Or you can, because whenever you look at him you feel a chill down your spine. Your head was filled with stuff you said to him in the past, memories coming back to embarrass you, to make you forget what you want to do so you'd fuck up in front of him.

You stopped in front of him, staring at him as he looked at you. He still had that expression on his face, like you're still his softest spot, his weakness that makes him weak in the knees when he's around you. You opened your mouth, trying to say something but then forgetting everything once you looked into his purple eyes.

You can't be like this forever, you had to step up your game. You really had to move on, and maybe that's what you have to talk with him. Because he seems to be stuck in the past too. "You have time?" you noticed the way he almost raised his hand, to grab onto you and drag you closer like he always did. But he held back, because he knew this wasn't the time.

"Yeah." he tried to keep it nonchalantly, but you could see past his poorly executed facade. Should you feel happy with how you still affect him? You feel like you could laugh.

"Wanna talk outside?" you don't even know why you said outside of all places. You wanted to stay inside, where everybody else was. You wanted to have a reason to keep it cool, to not lose yourself in your emotions, because you know you'll fuck up if you're alone with him.

He got up, standing much taller than you as he followed you quietly. Seriously, this was like a deja vu. You still remember how you used to follow him just the way he's doing now. Not questioning a thing, and trusting him a bit too much. But you also had no idea where you're going. All you know is that you want to go outside, take some fresh air, say a few words and then go back to your friends.

For a moment, he got in front of you, opening the door and letting you walk out first. He used to do this all the time, didn't he? You almost forgot about it.

You walked a little further from the bar, resting your back against a building's wall as you looked at the sunset. No one said a thing, and the distance between the two of you was colder than the night's breeze.

"So.." a few words and then go back, that's all. You can go to your friends after this and rest. "How have you been." avoid eye contact, because you don't know when you'll fuck up, look forward, don't let yourself be distracted.

"Busy." his voice still makes something in your head ring, like a little bell that seems to not calm down until he said so. "You?"

"Busy." you couldn't even think of what to say, just biting your lip in frustration.

It was quiet again, like both of you forgot how to communicate.

For a moment, you looked to your left, at where the bar was, and then at him, catching him staring at you with a expression you can't quite explain. Sadness? No, it was a mixture of sad and frustration. And you understood him. He had you this close, next to him, and yet he couldn't do anything.

"You're bigger than I remember." you don't even know why you said that. It's just.. he looks different and you can't exactly say what it was.

"I stopped growing a long time ago." he kept looking at you, at the way you were scanning him for anything that it might have changed. "Maybe you're the one who shrinked." he extended his hand, he doesn't really know why, but it seemed alright in that moment. Like he knew you wouldn't run anymore. "My hands are still the same."

You looked at his palm, at his long fingers and at the way he looks so familiar, yet new. Like you forgot how his body looked for a moment, like you were back in the past before you two started dating. Because you did this back then too, you were in this situation before.

How he was trying to tame you, let you touch him just the way you want, explore and discover more. All just to show you how inoffensive he is, that he's not a threat.

And you bite the bait every single time. Taking his hand in yours, slowly touching it just to see if it was indeed like what you remember.

You should put more effort if you don't want him back in your life. Just look at you, you look like you've missed him so so much. You shouldn't be this sweet or else you might not be able to break up again this time.

He tried his luck, interlocking his fingers with yours, and showing you more of that size difference you haven't seen in a while.

You don't reject him, his actions only made you be more curious. What else was he hiding? You looked up at him, only to see that expression again. You really didn't understand how his eyes can be just this dark, like there was absolutely no life in them, only a purple abyss that seems to drag you in towards him.

"It's getting dark." he said in a low voice, forgetting that he was supposed not to scare you for a moment. "Let me drive you home." he's the same as ever. Getting ahead of himself just because he was able to feel your perfume for once, the same scent that you had since back then. It suited you, and he missed it.

"Alright." he always knew how to calm you, let down your guard so he can get more under your skin. Or perhaps you were doing that voluntarily, because he doubts you'd be like this just for anybody.

The ride back to your place was quiet, only the radio on, playing some mainstream songs over and over again.

The silence was loud, but not uncomfortable. It was better this way because you had nothing to say. And he will not talk until you talk.

But once you got to your house, you somehow didn't wanted to get out the car just yet. It's just.. can't he stay? You don't know why you want him there, and you don't want answers to that.

"You're.." you played with your fingers. "You're not busy, right?" you avoided his eyes, or to look in his direction at all. This was all his doing, wearing that one fragrance that made your head spin, and the shirt that he knew was your favorite. "Want to come inside?" you're doing this on your own accord. Because he wouldn't push you over your limits like this, especially when you just met again after a long time.

You came to him, you talked to him, and you dragged him into your home on your own. He didn't do anything, this was all your doing.

You were brave enough to make the first move, so he might as well reward you for it, no?

You didn't looked surprised when you started kissing the moment the front door closed behind you, you also looked unfazed when he started taking off your clothes, now going towards your bedroom, looking for a bed so he could place you on it.

How could you forget this feeling? Or the way he used to take care of you. Always stopping you from lifting a single finger, not letting you do anything until you start begging him, or worse, do things without even warning him first.

"Tell me if it hurts." he placed a kiss on your cheek before going down, biting softly on your skin and leaving kisses all over the places he touched. He was going to mark all of your body, so people would see a part of him on you even if you're not together.

He stopped when he got to your pussy, leaving a kiss on your inner thigh, before placing his lips over your heat. He was going to scream, he missed this so much that he just couldn't help but let out a lustful moan deep from the bottom of his heart.

How could you left him? Take this away from him, leave him all alone to suffer. If he didn't craved so much for you he would have punished you for it.

"You're so tight." he said as he got two of his fingers inside.

"It's been a while since I did it." he looked up at you from between your legs, placing a kiss on your clit.

"Have you done it with someone else?" he was asking as if he didn't knew everything you did while he was gone. And yet, hes jealous.

"No." you shook your head. "What about you?" are you questioning his loyalty?

"Did you touched yourself?" if this was his way of changing the subject, then it wasn't working. Because it only made you want to ask the same thing, embarras him just the way he did to you.

"Did you?" he should feel embarrassed, ashamed or anything between those two, but no, it was just you who feeling that way.

"Every time I missed you." seriously, can he calm down for a moment. You can't take it. "You didn't do a good job." he said, licking on your clit as his fingers curled up. "But I guess you can't do much with those fingers of yours." you couldn't face him when he was saying such dirty words. "Did you had a hard time stuffing yourself? Don't worry, I'll do it for you from now on." you placed a hand over his face, to cover his eyes so he would stop looking at you.

"Don't look at me." you whimper. "It's embarrassing." you were always so easy to tease.

"Alright." he moved your hand away. "I'm sorry." he was in fact not, but if that's what you want to hear then he'll lie again and again, as long as you're happy.

Your pleasure was more important to him. So he focused on that, paying attention to the places that made you melt, on your soft voice and your touch. You're still so hesitant, like you don't really trust him, like you're still testing the waters.

What more do you want from him? What can he possible give that he haven't gave you already? You have his heart, you have his mind and soul, his well being is all yours, his body and everything he owns. So give him attention, touch him more and tell him that he's doing good because he's about to burst.

For a moment he looked up at you, just to see how you're doing, to check on you and make sure you're alright.

How did he lived for so long without looking at you was a mystery. Why he accepted you leaving him and trying to move on. Who else is going to make you feel like this? You need him, you needed his cock and his touch.

But he's not going to fuck up, since it's been a while since you last did it, he shouldn't push you. So, he placed a last kiss on your clit before taking his fingers out of you, leaving you panting and waiting for more. He didn't even let you cum, how mean of him.

Still, how dumb of him, to come here with nothing on him, not even a single condom. I mean, it wasn't really his fault because he never knew he'll end up like this.

"Take it off, your clothes." you were all naked while he was still fully dressed. He also looked like he wasn't planning on getting undressed any time soon and it was annoying you.

"I don't have any condoms." that was the problem?

"It don't matter." you took him by surprise. "Come here." you knew how rail him up. And you better not regret your decision later.

You looked at him taking off his shirt, his defined muscles jumping right into your face. You were right when you said he looked bigger, he must be working out a lot more lately. He took his pants off after, your eyes on his hard cock as he came back next to you.

"Relax." he said when he got between your legs. "Look at me." it would only be harder for you if you keep overthinking. Yeah, he was big, so what. He's going to give you all the time in the world until you adjust yourself to take him. It's gonna be hard at first, but it's going to be so much easier once he models your insides into the shape of his cock. And that's a promise, believe him.

He slowly pushed the head of his dick inside your wet core, making you move a little from how it was feeling, trying to find a better position. He lowered himself, now his chest pressed against yours, placing kisses all over your face as he kept pushing more of him inside your warm pussy. It's alright, take your time. He's not going anywhere, he'll wait until you're ready for him to move.

"You're doing good." he whispered in your ear, his hot breath tickling your skin. "I'm all the way inside, see? It doesn't hurt." it hurts a little, maybe more than just a little. But wasn't it normal when he was stretching you like that? But just as much as it hurts, it also felt good, in a way that left your mouth watering. He was going to be the end of you, really.

"Move." you ordered him, wanting to feel more. Just being stuffed to the brim wasn't enough, you needed much more than that.

He followed your orders, moving his hips slowly, paying attention to your next move.

You were so cute when you're sticking to him like that, holding onto his shoulders and trembling every time he touched that spot deep inside that he wasn't trying to touch to begin with, to not overwhelm yourself.

He's going to give you everything you want, there's no need to rush. If this was how much you can handle then that's how much he's going to give you. So why were you grabbing him like that, and asking for more? "Deeper." but you couldn't take it? You're going to say that he bullied you later, and he doesn't want to take the blame for something you made him do.

"You're sure?" you nodded, looking at him through your eyelashes with a pout on your face. Alright then, if that's what you want. How could he refuse you?

So he got deeper, hitting that spongy spot with long slow strokes that seems to work wanders on you.

He kissed you, again and again, to mark everything that missed his touch. To make sure you feel him, more than just inside.

"Is it good?" he asked as if he doesn't know your body like the back of his hand.

"Mm." you nodded, leaning in to feel more of his warmth.

"Then say my name. Let me know how good I make you feel." how could you forget he was like this. He always had to mark his territory as if you're not already his. But unfortunately for him, you're not in the mood to fulfill his desires. Screaming his name seemed nice, but at the moment all you wanted was to feel him, have him to yourself and let nobody know about your business.

Maybe his greedy side rubbed on you, or maybe it's the other way around. Or not, because at the end of the day you both knew that your unsolved issues can't be fixed that easy, and it can't be passed into the other when both of you are insane.

That's why you're trying to consume each other in other ways.

Kisses that seemed way too loving for someone who just got reunited after a long time. Touches that linger on the other's body even after moving away. Whispers and words that really makes it seems like you two were just a day apart, talking about moving with him, how you don't need anyone else but him. And at the moment you're too drunk on him to even realize that you're nodding, agreeing to every little degrading thing he's saying.

You want him, don't you? You missed him, you were such a mess without him. Right? Why did you permited him to leave when he's made for you. "I love you." that's the most normal thing he said tonight. "I love you, you heard me?" you heard him, but if you're giving him an answer that satisfies him, you'll never make him pay for the pain he caused you.

"You do?" you didn't sounded loving at all, even if your arms were wrapped around his neck, looking at him in the eyes with something only he saw before, your lust and obsession.

"I love you." he'll say it until you finally give up. Placing a kiss right next to your eye, he caged you in his arms, a hand under your ass and lifting up so he could go even deeper than before. Move in even more, since you said you wanted deeper. He'll show you places you didn't even know existed if you're asking for it.

He can't say that he's a brat tamer, because he's not. He likes everything about you, your sweet side, your mean and angry side. He likes it when you punish him, it shows him that you care. And if you believe that he's not doing enough to deserve your love just yet, then he'll do more.

He liked trying after all. And he'd be damed if he said that he doesn't want to show you just how far he can go. Because trust him, you can't handle it.

He's going to eat you, or even better, sacrifice him as you see fit. He wants to be inside you forever, be part of you. Because he feels like he's finally at home only when he's with you, in your arms. And when he's balls deep inside you? He's in heaven.

"Does it hurts?" he licked your tears away, wanting to taste them and claim them as his.

You nodded, feeling his cock twitching before moving in a way that got you throwing your head back. This fucker. He thinks that he can just do this to you and not pay a price? And perhaps sometimes he forgets how you can be so cruel, mean, and play with his feelings in a way only you could.

All he needs is a look from you, fluttering those eyelashes in a pretty way, and a sad expression that he can't resist.

You win, if you wanted him to fumble, then you win. He's all yours, do whatever you want with him because he doesn't have the ability to think anymore. "Cum with me?" what gives you the right to ask such a dumb question when you knew that's the only thing he wants. If you're not, the he's not doing it either. He knows he's asking for too much, but let the man dream.

"I'll fill you up nice and pretty, alright?" he made it sounded like a question, but you both knew he was just letting you know.

"Mm." you nodded, your lips smashing together the next moment. Eating each other out as you were both so so close. Touches becoming more and more desperate, his grip on so tight you won't be surprised if it leaves a bruise. But it's alright, because you feel like that's not quite enough.

More, you both needed more. And some heated sex after fucks knows how long won't be enough to satisfy the empty holes in you. You needed so much more.

Will you even be able to get out the bed tomorrow? Both of you. Because from the way you drag each other back, refusing to give up just yet was more than enough proof to show you won't step back any time soon.

But who knows, maybe you'll finally be happy by the time you both dry your energy out.

[minteagalaxea]

blood . line (p. two) | jy.u

jey uso . part two

genre: smut (minors dni) . a modicum of plot content warnings: oral sex (male receiving) . unprotected sex (please use protection) . daddy kink . dirty talk . afab reader (she/her pronouns) . mild manhandling/strength kink . panty ripping (and keeping) word count: 2.52k inspiration: the concept of a glucose guardian/sucrose supplier . the accountants in the john wick series . the concept of friends with benefits . songs: do i wanna know by the arctic monkeys (slowed and reverb instrumental) (x) . love scene by baekhyun (slowed and reverb) (x) read also: "hot . line" (x) notes: thank you again for everyone who has been supporting the first part! i hope you guys are able to enjoy this part, too! special shoutout (again) to @lov3rla03 and @spiicii for endorsing my insanity <3

she was starting to look forward to her weekly…meetings with jey. she really was.

the routine was simple: every friday, after she finished her work, handling everything she had to for her boss, she would go home, settle and get comfortable, call the bloodline, greet quynh, and then get redirected to have a hot and heavy conversation with jey for about an hour or so. and it wasn’t a routine she was too keen on deviating from, given that her entire work life revolved around schedules and rituals to keep her from losing it whenever changes happened.

hence why she took it strangely when after her call with jey, he asked her to stay on the line, and transferred her back to the main line, where she heard quynh’s steady contralto.

“quynh…what’s going on?” from what she had gathered, any interaction with quynh beyond their initial greeting wasn’t generally good. lex, who gave her the business card, did tell her some horror stories: quynh holding you after your session could be anything, and if you got redirected to roman of all people without requesting it, then it generally meant one was fucked.

fortunately for her, quynh wasn’t giving her a warning, at least not in the traditional sense. “so, it’s been a few sessions, and i trust they’ve been going well?”

“yeah, it has, thank you for asking.” she wasn’t sure about why she sounded so formal, though quynh took it as it came as they explained.

“anyways, i was hoping if you recalled our initial conversation, about in-person interactions.”

her breath hitched at the realization, humming an assent so that quynh could finish the sentiment with long-suffering affection, “this is a bit unprecedented for me, but jey has requested an in-person session with you.”

speechless. that was what jey reduced her to. and apparently, that’s what he reduced quynh to. okay, so she didn’t know quynh that well, but the fact that this was unprecedented was enough. and so, naturally, she accepted.

“excellent, sweetie. since these work a little differently than your usual sessions, you send the session payment as a sort of down payment. i’m sure you know that there’s a bit of an upcharge.”

as she worked through the payment process with quynh, she found herself excited for the upcoming week as she notated the details—the same time as her usual appointment, only this time with a high-end restaurant and luxury suite to match.

it didn’t take her too long to settle on an outfit when the appointment approached—a warm gold dress that hugged her just right and had her undertones glowing, and a smokey eyeshadow and dark nude lip to match the mood of the evening. she felt powerful, pretty, and perfectly excited as she took the taxi to the restaurant downtown, letting the waitress lead her to her table.

and then, naturally, her jaw dropped when she saw the man in front of her.

because there was no way that whatever higher beings decided to bless him with a voice of crushed sin also decided to give him the same blessings to his entire existence like he was some fucking sex god—or well, he probably was, given his line of work. the wolfish, cheerful grin, the messy charm of his hair, and his voice. holy fuck, his voice sounded even more heavenly and hellish now that there wasn’t a phone line separating them.

she felt the heat rise in her cheeks as she shook his hand, admiring the casual outfit that did wonders to the tattoos she saw along his arms with the rolled-up sleeves and the texture of his beard when he went to kiss her hand, his lips warm against the cool sensation of her rings as they took their seats across from one another.

“so…thank you for taking me out,” she started, nervous as she took a sip of her water, “from what it sounded like, this normally doesn’t happen.”

jey responded, voice dripping with silk and poisoned honey, “i thought it would be nice to meet the woman who’s caught my attention these past few months.”

oh, how her skin flared in heat with that comment, internally loathing how she was progressively getting more delusional, falling for his words that may or may not be a reflection of reality. yet, she played along, “it is nice…getting to meet the man i’ve been calling ‘daddy’ for the past month and a half.”

if he noticed her nerves, he made no point to acknowledge it as he requested a bottle of champagne to celebrate after they placed their orders. upon the waiter’s departure, jey started questioning, “so, mamas, what do you do to afford phone calls and fancy dates with me?”

she laughed, his candor refreshing as she explained her career to him, working in her high-running career as a personal assistant to one of the most demanding bosses in the world (in her completely biased opinion). though, he did make an empathetic jest about her struggles as he quipped, “mamas, i work for and with my cousin. who’s also kinda my uncle.” she had never laughed harder as he jested, made her laugh over wine and deconstructed meals that she didn’t understand the premise of.

“waffle house might be more fun next time, mami. i think you’d like it if we went at the right time,” jey remarked casually, and she raised an eyebrow. it wasn’t inherently a bad suggestion, but perhaps, in her view, that it was even a suggestion in the first place.

“daddy, we haven’t even finished this evening and you’re already planning for another one?” she teased, voice incredulous as she tried to mask it with a sip of her champagne.

his response was as smooth as the pen she used to sign off on the receipt when the check came, “well, mamas, you make good company. and now that i’ve seen your beautiful face, i don’t wanna stop seeing it.”

oh fuck, if he kept saying shit like that, she wasn’t going to keep herself (or her body) in control. “daddy, you’re gonna make me delusional thinking you’re like this with just me,” she whispered as they both rose to their feet, his hand on her waist and heated like an iron brand as they strolled towards the fancy hotel a couple blocks away.

and just for him to nail the point home? jey had the actual audacity to whisper in the elevator on the way to the suite, “i am just like this with you, mamas. nobody else.”

her heart fluttered in her bones at the admission; by the time they entered the suite of the evening, she took the man by the shoulders, shoving him down on the bed to straddle his waist. perhaps with the same audacious nature that seems to waft off of the man like his delightful cologne, she inquired, “really? does that mean you’ve been coming every time we talk?”

jey didn’t have to even say anything to confirm her curiosities—the smolder, the firm grip to her derrière was confirmation in droves when he tangled his lips and tongue in a kiss so dizzying that it made her head swim in hues of gold and his scent. she could taste the champagne on his lips and the raspberry on his tongue from his cheesecake as her hips swiveled atop him.

licking off the string of saliva connected their parted lips, she moved down, kneeling on the ottoman at the end of the bed, unbuttoning his trousers and yanking his briefs down in one fell swoop. “shit,” she marvelled at his length, “this is so unfair.”

it was unfair, because this man had to be blessed with a dick as beautiful as he was, pretty and leaking and hard as steel at this point. she couldn’t stop herself from running her lips up and down his cock, whiny and needy as she started to suckle on the tip, wanting to make this excursion worth their while. and as she worked, tongue swirling around the tip and with gentle pressure around the shaft, she got to coax those sounds she became so attuned to over the phone in real life.

she was definitely correct in her thinking that he was going to sound so much more beautiful without technological obstruction. his groans sounded of concentrated lust and voracity, his hand holding her hair firm but not yanking as she attenuated to his cues: how his hips would buck when she ran her tongue along the underside just right, how his sounds grew more pronounced each instance she took him all the way down her willing maw, throat flexing at his girth.

it wasn’t difficult to get him to burst, even though he continuously warned her. however, she knew it was an empty threat of his, with how his lips wove words of absolute filth, about he was right. “knew you were gonna look so pretty on my dick, mami. so fucking good to daddy.”

the praise made her pussy so much wetter, propelling her to work harder to earn those sounds, his praise, because he was—quite literally—fulfilling her fantasies with him. and she nearly came on the spot when jey did, spilling his seed into her mouth with a fervent, heady grunt as he kept her nose brushing his navel, “take it all, mamas. make daddy proud.” she swallowed with pleading eyes, melting into his deep and warm gaze as she milked him for everything he had; subsequently, she let him swallow all of her sounds when he tugged her off of his shaft and slammed his lips onto hers when he deposited her back on his lap.

“shit, mamas, you’re so good to me, made me cum so hard,” he crooned against her swollen lips, one raking through her hair and cradling her close and the other already going down to hike up her dress and fucking yank her drenched panties off her frame. her gasp echoed in his ears, especially when he winked at her to shove them in his pocket before unzipping her dress, letting it pool at her hips before proper extrication. she could only gasp again when he lifted her up so effortlessly and deposited her on her back while he made haste to get all his clothes off, with the additional knowledge that her soaked panties now have a home in his pocket for perpetuity.

in the frantic, fervent pace of their fucking, jey offered a moment of respite, one desperately needed for them both to try and prolong their fun as he pressed his already-hardening length against her slick petals. she supposed there was a massive benefit of sleeping with a man with nearly no refractory period and all energy. “jey, daddy, you gotta fuck me, please,” her voice breathed into his mouth as he slicked himself with her wetness, “i’m clean, just put your dick in.” “i know, mamas—fuck, you’re so wet for me. all that from sucking my dick?” he teased, starting to nudge her opening with a finger, just to stretch her just so she could take him, though with how wet she was, she knew this would be easy.

her voice fell into gentle whines when he slipped in another finger, scissoring her walls, “it’s fine, i’m ready, i’ve been ready since forever.” and, she supposed, begging did give her everything, because when jey retracted his fingers from her heat, he brought them to his lips and licked her arousal off like it was the finest dessert on the planet—and to him, it was.

jey made that message clear as he slid that rock hard cock inside, sheathing himself into her receptive walls as he mused with no shortage of want, “shit, mamas, knew you were gonna look so pretty wrapped around my dick.” wrapped around him she did, hooking a leg over his shoulder as his cadence started deliberate, uncharacteristically slow in the grand scheme of how she’s always known him and his dirty talk.

“fuck, you’re in so deep,” she breathed, back arching into the hand he splayed there and the mouth he had on the junction of her neck to imprint marks and bruises onto for posterity. her hands latched into his hair, yanking and mussing up those soft strands with each powerful thrust of his, gasping with the perfect angle, the perfect amount of pressure from his mouth on her neck, the swipe of his tongue on her breasts when he ventured lower.

her cunt clenched around him with each of his strokes, her moans escalated into a wanton melody of his name, “daddy”, and begging in some combination, breathed against his lips when he swallowed her noises when he kissed her like he needed oxygen. it occurred whenever he ventured lower to deprive himself of said oxygen by burying himself in her chest and suckling and swirling that skilled tongue over her nipples until they prickled with sensitivity and perked with surrender.

“daddy, i’m so close,” she groaned hungrily, the recipient of his increasingly fervent thrusts and their sounds matching in passionate harmony as jey’s growls grew more guttural, becoming a symphony of carnal sex as he ramped up the filth in his words, “come inside.”

her walls clasped around him like a vice when he spewed out. “come for me, babygirl. you’re so fucking hot like this, gonna fill you up just right, mamas.” he punctuated each word with a stroke that felt like it was getting deeper and deeper inside of her, “gonna look so pretty gushing out my cream. so fucking tight ‘round me, gonna cum so hard for me, aren’t you?”

jey was right, as he generally had been throughout the night, when he rubbed her neglected clit and got her to fucking scream in what was supposed to be a respectable hotel room, staking his claim about how damn well he was making her feel as she came, lips parted and body arched into a tapestry of luxury and avarice as her pussy clamped around his cock without any opportunity for movement. that, in turn, triggered his own release, spilling inside with that long groan she had memorized from all their weeks of phone sex. yet, hearing it in person, with no barrier, just did something to her, had her walls squeezing around him like no tomorrow, prolonging their highs as long as possible, shattering them into new precipices of pleasure.

as she panted for air when his hips stilled and her eyes met his with utmost fondness as he pulled out, letting his essence trickle out of her core, she kissed jey again because she could. jey helped clean her with a damp towel, sparing no shortage of adoration in the form of kisses and sweet nothings of “mamas”, “mami”, and “babygirl” that left her floating on golden clouds of warmth and sugar. while she rested into his chest, their whirlwind excursion wearing them out in the best of ways before an undoubted next round, she allowed herself to savor how all those weeks of the phone crystallized into a night of explosive bliss

and another. and another.

taglist ⇢ @yana3sworld . @roseydoesypoesy . @fearlesschimera . @theusotwinzcom

[lyrenminth]

The best example

Fluff. Comforting Joe.

What you most feared was a reality, and you didn't know what to feel precisely.

You were numb, but something in the back of your mind was bothering you and if you closed your eyes, you could tell.

You weren't good enough.

You tried your best and failed in the process and now you couldn't stop overthinking every single thing you did in the past six months. What went wrong? Why it wasn't enough? Did you spent more time doing other things? Or you didn't have the same capacities as before?

You opened the chat with Joe, and read again the message he sent you in the morning.

"You're gonna get it, don't worry baby. I'm super proud"

You eyes started to fill with tears, and you couldn't read the message anymore. You let out a sob and sat on the couch, with your head between your hands, feeling the waves of pain and disappointment for yourself.

Why you weren't enough? What were going to do now? You thought about all the sleepless night that you spent studying, the games you missed and the events you skipped, and for what? The letter you received in the morning was simple and professional. Since you read the first words your stomach churned.

"We are sorry to inform you that..."

You weren't good enough. You weren't good enough and it hurt like hell.

You didn't want to call Joe or anyone. Instead you turn off your phone and stared at the wall until you eyelids were heavy.

"Love" you felt something brushing your cheeks. "Wake up"

You stirred awake, gentle blue eyes keep staring at you with curiosity and worry. The face of your husband was close to you, and for a moment you didn't thought about anything.

"Did you turn off your phone?" he asked, softly.

He knew. Oh, God he knew. Then, the rejection came back in full force, your chin quivered and you tried to hold back the tears.

"Joe" you whispered "I didn't..." you shook your head, insecure about what to say.

"Ssh, baby it's okay" he said, sitting down and pulling you across his lap, as if you were a child. His strong arms held your back, hugging you. "It's okay" he kissed your forehead and it was unusual for him to be this soft, but you needed it.

You cried, ugly crying. Nose dripping and sobbing uncontrollably type of crying. It made you feel ridiculous, but you couldn't stop.

"I really really want it, Joe" you spoke, "I try so hard and f-fell sh-short" you sobbed, hiding your face of the curve of his neck.

"I know, baby" his lips brushing your forehead once again. "It fucking sucks" you explained, the hiccup starting.

"I'm here, it's okay" he reassures once again. You soothe under his touch, suddenly aware where his hands were, over your thigh, gently rubbing, the other on your back making circles. Slowly, you breathing even out and you could feel the tension leaving your body. Joe's warm chest help you with that too. "You're the most intelligent woman I know, don't let a bad moment erase all you have done" he said.

"How do you do it?" you asked, your voice raspy and weak.

"What?"

"You're are a professional athlete, you try hard and sometimes you lose, I know you and I know that you dislike losing and makes you angry, but what do you think?" Joe fell silent for a few minutes, considering his answer. His voice more personal when he spoke again.

"You have the right to feel like shit" he replied his lips brushing your skin as he spoke. "But shouldn't be forever. Your life shouldn't be defined for a mistake or a fail, not if you didn't hurt anyone" he clarified. "I think that I will have the chances to make it right even if the first time didn't work as I wanted. I think about the things I can improve so next time it's less hard. My mistakes don't define every outcome of my life but sure help me to change the results"

You thought about it. Joe was always under pressure because of his profession, and he handled everything beautifully most of the times. You have seen his lows and highs, so you had a great example to follow.

"Thank you, Joe" you said, and gave him a peck.

"You're going to be fine, not now but soon" he told you, and you nodded. You believed it too.

There, in is his arms everything seemed easier.

[jensthwa]

mountebank chem pt. four (JYH x reader).

part of the love's an uncharted path universe ★.

SUMMARY:

* 𝐦𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐛𝐚𝐧𝐤: 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐛𝐲 𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐫𝐲. The first time you met Yunho, you knew he was going to be part of the biggest tragedy of your life: the loss of your freedom, of your free will. You didn't know why back then but what you did figure out is that you and Jeong Yunho were going to, eventually and very publicly, date each other at some point. Is that reason enough to hate his guts? Well, of course! Now, when the time comes to fulfill the prophecy, how the hell are you going to pull it off? And, most importantly, what do you need to do to not fall in love with him in the process?

PAIRING: rich!yunho x afab!rich!reader.

GENRE: enemies to friends to lovers.

WORD COUNT: 24.1k.

WARNINGS & TAGS: SMUT ☽ (MINORS DNI) attempt !!! at comedy, dual pov (both yunho's and reader's), use of fem pronouns sometimes, angsty angst that angsts in the form a verbal fight, tears, unresolved feelings and denial, tension, a heartfelt conversations with bro and lots of yearning!, a time jump (three months or so), mingi and love being unhelpful but helpful at the same time, yeosang being a cutie pie and a little bit of his story gets mentioned!, the L word, confessions, apologies, mentions of body dysmorphia and body related insecurities, soft!dom yunho (he's a little bossy), switch!reader (oc hates to let him win i guess), reader has breasts and a vagina, mirror play, teasing, light choking, messy kisses and makeouts, masturbation (f), just the tiniest bit of voyeurism, praise kink if you squint oh my god, fingering, multiple orgasms, love making (who else cried), the post-sex convo and more feelings and dreams are discussed.

NOTES: hi everyone! WE MADE IT!!!!! here's part four of this mini series that is PART OF THE LOVE'S AN UNCHARTED PATH. after this, there's an epilogue/little part five to let everyone know sort of what happens after this + to set up the next story in the universe. i also just want to adress that one of you kindly suggested to change up some of the terminology i use in the warnings and for some other things in the fic itself and i thank that person a lot! but i also want to encourage you, if you feel something's missing or if i can do anything to be more inclusive in my stories, to let me know! i hope you all enjoy it part four of mbc, we've come a looong way and i'm happy on how this turned out. this is 100% self indulgent, as all fics should be, and i think i've re-read it so many times that if you find a typo or something that just doesn't make sense, you can blame it on english not being my first language i guess lmao. i hope you enjoy it and if you do feel free to send to my askbox/reblog/type in any feedback or thoughts! <3

POSTED: february 2nd 2025.

taglist: @kyunlov, @tinyelfperson, @0115degrees, @daniela-f-uwu, @ultrapinkvoidbouquet, @kyeomooniee, @fairylover68, @sushiinmidnight, @qveenbunni, @calmoistorm, @potatomountain, @svintsandghosts, @lemonkait00, @blue5ummer, @fancypeacepersona, @hyukssunflower, @i-love-ateez, @alsomimi, @e3ellie, @st3ft0n3s, @hotteokkay, @xylatox

masterlist - part one - part two. part three.

You dream about him. Every night. 

His mouth on yours and his hands handling you with care fill the gray matter of your brain and rots it. It fits you. 

A rotten brain for a rotten person. 

The scenario repeats in a loop in your head even when you're awake, alone in your house office, accompanied by staff at the main office building. It doesn't really matter what you're doing, who you're with or if the task at hand requires your full attention, Yunho still invades your mind and makes you feel like you're leaping, flying through skies and then falling, falling, falling, before hitting the ground hard. 

Because at the end of the memory, it plays what you did. 

The way you pulled away, the way you left him there without a proper explanation. 

You didn't have dinner with your brother, it was over nine o'clock at night. You needed an escape goat, a plan, an excuse to flee from the happiness you grasped with your sticky, messy, disgusting fingers. 

Everything you touch seems to turn to shit. 

So you can't touch Jeong Yunho even if you want to. 

You shan't, you won’t, even when he’s so close to you it takes a lot for you to hold back. He’s a message away, a meeting away from you. And his messages on your phone kept piling up this week until they didn’t. 

And now, as you watch him enter the meeting in a suit and tie, you do your best to pretend nothing happened between you even though it's supposed to. To everyone else's eyes, you’re still a couple. 

You’re grateful for that. You don’t sit together, you can’t sit together. Of course you can't, that would be very unprofessional. You can't voice your opinion about any decisions made by his team (or rather, his brother's team) today because that would look like you're doing it to either spite him or to be on your boyfriend's side, it would look like corruption! 

God bless the stupid societal and corporate norms. You won't even have to speak to him today, if you're lucky. You know he's shadowing his brother today, learning his way through these meetings you've been attending for years or at least pretending to do so.

There's absolutely no reason to speak to him today. 

Yay. 

Soohyun sits at your left, at the head of the table, and Yunho sits with his brother at Soohyun’s left. Neither your father or his are here today so everyone’s shoulders are a little less tense and the meeting is a quarterly one, which means people are going to be explaining graphics and reading numbers you have to stay focused on. 

There's things you have to write down, there's statements you have to whisper in your brother's ear so he can say them out loud instead of you. 

But Yunho looks way too good in his suit and tie and it's a little distracting. 

And he's looking right at you, too. 

You can hear your co-workers immediately gossiping about it, you can see your brother turn to you, then to him, then to you and you can faintly see how he raises a brow. Faintly, because you're pretending to read over some papers in front of you by the time he bumps your leg to try and catch your attention. 

You step on his foot under the table, he mutters an offended ouch and pinches your arm in retaliation, which causes you to stop pretending to eye the documents and turn to him. 

“Stop it.” 

“You started it,” he says and then Soohyun gives you that look that lets you know he knows something you don't, although it can possibly be like that because he's a clueless little shit. “Did something happen between yo—” 

Well, maybe not as clueless. Good thing you wore great heels today, the face he makes as he's trying to pretend that the sharp end of your Louis Vuitton is not stabbing him in the leg feels like a victory. 

“Keep quiet, the meeting is starting.” 

Oh, how you love winning. 

The thing is, you can't even enjoy it now. Yunho’s face pops up on your mind again and it serves as a reminder of just how close he is. 

As someone from the sales team starts their presentation, your eyes drift to Yunho in a way that feels oddly familiar. 

There, trying to stay upright even though you know he's zoning everything out, there's this memory from your junior year in highschool that never tortured you the way it does now. 

Although he's always been very tall, Yunho used to sit near the window, in the second row of the classroom you both shared that year. Not his decision, certainly whoever made that decision was not the sharpest tool on the shed because all he did was look out of the window and close his eyes when the teachers were not paying enough attention to him. 

And you used to stare at him just like you're doing now. Through the corner of your eye, with your back straightened and ninety percent of your attention on the topic at hand. He held the other ten percent, tenderly, softly, without realizing what he was doing. 

Just like he held you that night. 

At the time, you wondered what went on in his head every time he drifted away from the class. New ways of making your life impossible? A new insult to your integrity, maybe? Highschool Yunho was everyone's dream but, for you, he meant nothing but nightmares and headaches. 

Nothing has changed much. 

But instead of wondering if he's thinking about new ways of pestering you with his presence, now your heart races at the possibility of him thinking about the kisses you two shared last week. 

You hope no one notices the sudden shift on the chair or the gulp you make to keep your emotions buried deep down inside of you, where no one can reach them. 

Trying to regain focus and ignore Yunho completely, you look at the projected graphics in front of you. The person doing the presentation turns to the next slide as soon as you're beginning to understand what the hell they're talking about. Surprisingly, your brother turns to whisper at you about it. 

“The new company sales are lower than expected.” 

When you turn fully to him, you can see he's biting his cheek in concerned concentration. You want to roll your eyes. 

“I told dad no one would care about this company and you were the one who approved for us to go forward with it.” 

“I know.” 

“Dumbass,” you whisper, scrunching your nose and turning to the presentation again but your brother nudges you slightly and you have to look at him again. 

Only for your eyes to completely bypass him and land in Yunho. 

God fucking damnit.

Is this what having a crush is like? Is tortuous and you hate this even more than when you couldn't stand seeing his face out of pure annoyance. 

This is why you probably never had a crush on anyone before. But it's strange, because it doesn't feel like something new. Yes, Yunho attending meetings is new but the feeling is familiar and grossly nostalgic of something you feel like you left behind.

And now has come back in full force. 

You never had a crush on Yunho, at least not that you know of. 

But this feeling is telling you otherwise and it's maddening and disgusting and— 

“Something definitely happened, hm?” 

Eyes flicking over your brother's sudden concerned expression, you push back on the seat and sink in it a little. This way, when you look up to him, Yunho is nowhere in sight. When you speak again, you make sure only Soohyun hears you. 

“We can save it, don't worry about it. I'll write up a proposal of how we can market the concept of the company in a way that it at least piques people's interest.” 

Your brother huffs, unsatisfied with your deflection and the way you visibly close up at the mere thought of telling him if something did happen between you and Yunho. 

But he says nothing. It stings that you know he's going to leave it at that, the support you're supposed to have slipping through your fingers as you do your best to keep your feelings to yourself. It's not his fault, not really. 

He doesn't know any better. 

You don't know any better, either. 

But your focus on the meeting comes back and you end it with thirteen pages of virtual notes and a list of things you need to do today to keep this shitshow of a company afloat. 

There's a split second when you get out of the room that you feel Yunho’s eyes on you. You're afraid he's going to take the opportunity to talk to you, so you look up and around trying to find something, someone you can use as a distraction, as a shield. 

But then there's like four pairs of hands dragging him away and you see that annoyed glint in his eye, usually reserved for you, as they turn him around and away from you. 

Yes, of course they wouldn't let him speak to you right now. He's shadowing his brother, he has important things to do! 

Yay. 

You ignore the beating of your heart as you move quickly through the halls. Soohyun and Gunho are already aiming for the elevator so you opt for the stairs, knowing you won't have to speak to anyone at all if you get to your office like this. 

Well, Soohyun's office. You have yours on a lower floor, not as unnecessary space-taking as his, but you usually work there because you enjoy the view. 

So when you finally close the door behind you and the view is blocked by thirty piled up boxes you start thinking that the universe is upset with you. Is this your karma? Everything and everyone against you just because you walked out of a kiss before making a mistake? 

Is not like Yunho cares that much about you anyway!

Huffing, you look around the room until your eyes land on that stupid tree you started painting when Soohyun told you he wanted to redecorate his office. Its branches extend just a little more than what you remember and there’s a part of it that was unfinished the last time you saw it. You can only assume either Seonghwa or your brother had something to do with it.

Which sucks. 

Because you’re so painting over the stupid tree one day. 

You stare at it while your mind wanders. Head slowly filling up with noise, you finally feel at ease when your thoughts are nothing but work: You need to write up a proposal to that stupid vintage-esque focused company to see if there’s some salvation for it. You need to speak with marketing, get one of them to go along the process with you. You need to sit down with your brother and kindly tell him to never allow something like this to ever happen again. 

Making a mental list to organize and prioritize everything you need to do, you barely register footsteps echoing in the long hall. You should’ve, because it’s lunchtime and there’s no one on the floor, but you don’t. 

And so when the person you least want to see comes through the door and lets out a heavy sigh, you turn to him like he grew a second nose over the course of the twenty minutes you last saw each other. 

“I hate it here, I truly do.” 

It almost makes you want to laugh, but you remain stoic as you move through the office. You take a few boxes and you put them down on the floor until there’s some light leaking through the window and illuminating the space enough for it not to give you a headache as you work. 

Sitting on your brother's chair, barely sparing him another glance before turning on the desk computer and pulling up an empty document. You click and tap a few meaningless things: You pick the font, you mess with the font size for a second before setting it back to its default. Anything to help you look busy and not like your heart is going a million miles per second. 

“Can I help you with anything, Yunho?” 

Blurry, in the background, you can see him look around the office, probably taking the mess in. He moves too, walks until his expensive shoes are tip to tip  with a literal mannequin resting against the wall. 

You stop paying attention as you write the date and the proposal title. Something simple, something that both your father and the CEO of the dumb not-approved-by-you company that has you in this predicament can understand. You hate to say that you assume they’re not very smart if they put out such a dated and non profitable idea for their company. 

Still, you try to address Yunho like nothing’s bothering you and like you’re not nervous you two are in a room alone after everything that went down. 

“You can ask Seonghwa what that means,” you start, sighing like his friend and your brother are hopeless. Because maybe that’s what they are. “They’re not running any ideas by me even though I’m the one that spends the most time in this office, so.” 

“Hm,” he starts and you can hear him walking around, but your focus is now on the first few words of the proposal. You realize there’s really nothing you can start before speaking with marketing and so you open the notes app, to have a list of ideas to run through them at least. “Thought you worked from home.” 

“I do. I have an office three floors down, too.” It’s easy sharing information with him now, especially if it means there’s something to talk about that’s not… Well, the kiss. “I hate it, it’s in a corner and people can see into it. It’s easier to work here.” 

“And Soohyun hyung doesn’t mind?”

“Considering he’s never here, I doubt it.” 

“Cool, cool.” 

There’s something in his tone that makes you want to look up, lump in your throat growing in size enough for you to cough it away. You don’t look up, you can’t look up even if you’ve misspelled the word rebrand like four times already. 

But then the light you managed to cast onto the space disappears completely. You feel something besides you, the soft material of an expensive suit blazer grazing your arm and cheek. You see veiny, masculine hands secure themselves around the arms of the chair before he’s turning you to face him. 

You gulp. 

He’s leaning down close, closer than he should be, closer than what he’s allowed to be considering anyone can walk in on you. You’re flushing, you can feel the redness creep up your neck and heating your ears and face before you gather the courage of raising a questioning brow. Yunho stays silent, his eyes scanning your face and briefly landing on your lips before returning your stare. 

“Can I help you with anything, Yunho?” You ask him again, quieter this time, voice trembling a little. 

“Princess,” he starts, the corner of his lip raising just a little, like it’s funny he has to say what he’s about to say, “are you ghosting me?” 

Shit. 

“Why would you— Why would I—,” a nervous chuckle abandons you and then you huff, trying to seem offended at his accusation, “W-what do you mean by that?” 

Leaning into your space a tiny bit more, he repeats “Are you ghosting me?” 

Creasing your brow, you straighten in the chair but do nothing to pull him away “No.”

“Then what about the ten messages I sent you and you left on delivered?” 

Faking a surprised gasp, you move to take your phone out of the pocket of your jacket and unlock it to swipe through your messages “You did? Oh, my God, I’ve been soooo busy.” 

“You’re shit at lying to me.” 

“I’m not lying to you—” 

“Are you okay?” 

Your eyes snap from the phone to his face, genuine annoyance creasing your eyebrows this time. 

“You don’t have to ask me that everytime you see me, Jeong.” 

“But are you?” He asks as you finally find his chat and open the messages you dreaded to see the entire time that passed. There’s a few of them practically begging you to speak to him, one apologizing for the kiss and the other ones you don’t even see because Yunho is taking the phone from your hand and placing it on the desk next to you. “I mean, what happened didn’t trigger anyth—” 

You hate he’s this considerate with you, even after you clearly walked out of the situation with a poorly formulated excuse.

“What happened was a mistake.” 

Yunho physically deflates and lets the chair go, the tension on your shoulders lifting a little now that he’s not as close. 

“What?” 

“It was a mistake, we shouldn’t have done that. We’re professionally obligated to work together, fake all of this together, so it shouldn’t…” You pause and consider for a bit before doing something you never do: take the blame “I shouldn’t have. I apologize.” 

Letting out a breath, you turn the chair and delete the misspelled rebrand to write it the correct way, heart too weak to even look at his reaction. It doesn’t matter anyway, you’re never doing anything like it again. 

You hear him shuffle with the boxes at both your feet and, from the corner of your eye, you see him turning away from you and then back, hands on his hips “I don't think it was a mistake.” 

“Well, it was.” 

“I liked it.” 

That brings out a genuine, short lived laugh out of you “Thank you, I’m a great kisser.” 

You open your brother’s email and pretend there’s an urgent matter inside the contents of one of them until Yunho’s hand closes over yours, over the mouse. 

“Y/N.” 

There’s a lot of things about Jeong Yunho you hate: The swoop of his hair when there’s no gel on it, the free aspect to his nature you’re never going to get even if you try to, that one time he called you an ugly giant after wearing platforms for the first time ever. 

And the sweetness of his voice when he says your name, the plea you hear on it and the shudder it brings to your spirit. It shakes you, it moves you to look at him again, to actually take his feelings into consideration. 

He’s staring at you with so much hurt, it makes your heart sink into an abyss of guilt. 

“Hm?” 

“I think I like you.” 

Oh. 

Oh, no. 

Your heart drowns deeper, your resentment towards the situation grows branches like the tree on the wall. They hug your pride and your ego, they poke you on your side for reciprocating Yunho’s feelings just a little. 

Well, a lot.

“You think?” You ask him and your voice sounds far away. He nods. You stand up from the chair, hand squeezing his before letting drop. “Stop thinking then.” 

His eyes closing shut and his jaw tensing is the last thing you see before you busy yourself with the boxes against the window. You pick up two at a time, heavy and the cardboard smelly as you walk to the other side of the office, away from him. 

“I’m being serious, Y/N.” 

You sigh “So am I, Yunho. You don’t like me, you liked that I kissed you.” 

“Oh, I forgot you know exactly what goes through my mind and my heart, thank you for the remainder!” 

Looking at him over your shoulder, you drop the boxes against the corner wall “Lower. Your. Voice.” 

“No, no. Because that’s not an appropriate response to what I just told you!” He walks towards you and you meet him halfway, heart beating with annoyance at the way he’s speaking to you. He towers over you again, jaw clenched and voice a mere murmur when he speaks again “You have no say in what I feel, how I feel it, when I feel it.” 

“I know I don’t, you idiot. I was just providing you with a bit of perspective.” 

“Perspective?”

“What do you like about me?” Chin up and nose scrunched in a way it only does when you’re really angry, you insist “Why now? Why do you suddenly care? Is it out of pity? Is it because it’s convenient, because we’re already pretending? Is it because you want to fuck me?!”

“Watch it, Y/N.” His tone is laced with clear offense at what you offered just a second ago. 

“You don’t like me,” you start, shaking your head, “you can’t like me.” 

“Why not?!” 

He’s breathing hard, walking backwards, offering up his palms to the sky and looking around the room like any of that is going to give him an answer to his questions. 

“Why not?” He repeats and there’s that hurt in his voice that, for some reason, makes your eyes water. Are you having a panic attack? A heart attack? Everything hurts. Liking Yunho hurts, wanting him hurts. He comes back, his eyes searching yours even though you can’t do anything but cast them down, to your shoes and his shoes and the boxes and the carpet “Why can’t I like you, princess? What’s not to like? What kind of self-deprecating ideas do 

you have in your head that makes you think I can’t care about you like that?”

Shaking your head again and closing your eyes, you are barely able to stifle a sob and force your tears back. You want to tell him that that’s not the reason but you would be lying to him if you did. 

That’s part of the reason. 

Behind the whole letting your mother’s win argument, there’s an undeniable amount of self hatred that can’t let you feel like there’s any truth behind his words. 

Why would he like you? Why would he care about you? 

Your hands are dirty and sticky and your being is way too clumsy, so everything you love drops and breaks and turns to dust before your eyes. The fact that there’s this whole fake relationship deal in the middle of it and you can place the blame on your mothers is a blessing in disguise. 

It’s a weapon you can use. 

Even if you don’t want to: His hands are cradling your face, his forehead dropping against yours and drawing a surprised gasp out of you because you didn’t even feel him get him close. 

“I like you, I care about you,” there’s certainty in his tone, like he made up his mind, like he’s confirming his feelings to both you and himself, “I… I—” He takes a breath when you open your eyes and beg him to not say what you think he’s about to say. He takes the hint. “Do you not like me back, Y/N? Are you trying to… Is that what’s happening?” 

You say nothing, but swallow back your feelings and brace yourself on his forearms, nose budging his as you move a little. 

He reads your silence wrong “Y-you do?” 

You think it matters if you do or not. Your heart is already breaking by the time the words are on the tip of your tongue. 

“We can’t,” you whisper to him, letting your tears wet your cheeks and squeezing his forearms when his thumbs start to move in trying to dry them, shaking your head to signal him to stop. As your eyes catch his, you prepare yourself for the gentleness you’re about to lose, with the care you’re about to push away for his own good. “Because if we do, they win.” 

You didn’t know your heart could break this way, as you watch his expression morph from confusion to pain to utter, genuine anger. It’s the same face he made last week, in your living room, as he yelled at his mother for even daring suggesting that you two should be together. 

There’s a time when hurting Yunho brought you some sense of vengeance, a time where you considered it payback for being that person literally planned and made for you. 

Now, you want to hit your head against the wall for even daring filling his eyes with tears, for being the reason frustration descends and wets his shoes as he looks down. 

“Oh.” 

He lets you go and you miss it. You immediately want to take your words back, push him closer to you, hug him, kiss him, whatever it may be to keep him next to you.

You start to mourn the loss of the bond you were able to form with him right away. 

And it hurts. 

He nods again. And it hurts. “Oh, that’s what this is about.” 

It fucking hurts. When he laughs, hands on his face as he wipes his tears away, you feel like you’re going to pass out. 

“And you don’t care about me enough to tell them to go fuck themselves.” He says, a resentful statement that leaves his lips before a breathy laugh does. 

Opening your mouth, you attempt to contradict his words. That’s not true at all, he has to understand, he understands you, he— He raises his hand to stop you from speaking, he shakes his head like he doesn’t want to hear it. 

Like your excuses, even if he hasn't listened to them at all, are not worth his time. 

“I get it.” No, you don’t. “I understand.” No, you really don’t. 

But you say nothing. As he’s slipping through your fingers like sand, at your own doing, you just stare at him with sorrowful eyes and an apology on your teeth. 

He looks at you like he’s expecting you to stop him as he reaches the door. You want to, you really do. 

You don’t. 

“Thanks for letting me know.”

When the door closes behind him and leaves you alone in an office that’s not really yours, feeling like you’re not yourself, you finally allow the reality of what you just did to hit you. 

Hand shaking, you cover your mouth and let out a sob as you let yourself cry what you just lost. But, as you do, you remind yourself that you don’t really deserve Yunho’s care. 

You don’t really deserve his love. 

Hurting him is probably the easiest way out he has of whatever he thinks he’s feeling for you. 

Walking slowly to the desk, you wipe your tears away and nod to yourself. Yes, this is exactly what needed to happen. Good. Yes. What were you doing before he came in? 

You grab the mouse. 

Ah, the proposal. Of course. 

The noise comes back, louder this time. Unbearable and ear-piercing, it forces you to close your eyes and listen to the beat of your heart before you push the sound away. You can’t afford to crash right now.

You skim through your tasks in your mind and, as you do, the reminder of a little notification you saw on your calendar this morning, with Yunho’s name on it, is what finally lets the panic break through your senses. 

“No.” 

And you spend the rest of the afternoon typing your escape plan away. 

By the time your brother remembers he has an office, it’s dark outside and the proposal is

printed and in a folder placed neatly in the middle of his desk. 

He closes the door, raising an eyebrow at the way you’re resting your shoulder against the window behind his chair, the boxes blocking them all piled up in the corner you initially started moving them to this afternoon. 

“You’re still here.” He muses and you turn to him, scoffing at the obvious. 

“Well, somebody has to work.” 

“I was working,” he sounds a little bit offended, but when he passes in front of you and pulls back his chair to sit on it, you faintly smell whisky and cigarettes. “I was at a meeting in the gentlemen's club with Gunho.” 

“That’s hardly working, Soohyun.” 

Looking over his shoulder, he’s face to face with your unimpressed expression. Of course he went to the stupid club with Gunho, of course he didn’t do shit today. 

“Let me remind you that I am, in fact, older than you.” 

“And?”

“I deserve respect and zero questioning.” 

You hum, slightly amused this time. You know he’s goofing around, you know he’s hardly mad at the implication that you do all the work he’s supposed to do plus yours but there’s this slight worry in his face that’s unusual.  

“Is Gunho oppa okay?” 

Your brother frowns “Of course he is.” 

“Are you okay?” 

“Yes, I’m— Why are you asking?” 

Shrugging, you turn away from him to look at the city through the window again. You can see the river and the buildings that encapsulate it perfectly and it brings you a strange sense of comfort everytime you zone out and just people watch those who feel free enough to walk along the bridge at this hour, with the cold and the rain and the mess that the leaves leave behind as they fall. 

“You look distraught.” 

“Well, you’ve been crying, of course I am.” 

Interesting. You didn’t think he could tell, which means your face is puffy and you look ugly. Great. 

“The mess in this office made me tear up when I got in this afternoon,” you say, swerving around the accusation with ease because there’s no way in hell you’re telling your brother what’s up with you. “I’m going to need your help when it comes to explaining that to dad.” And then you use your chin to point to the proposal sitting in front of him. 

“You didn’t have to do this today, I know sales are low but-” 

“Oh, that’s not it. That one is sitting on your email. This—” you take two steps, tap the front of the folder with your nails, “is a new thing. A thing he won’t understand nor approve unless you understand it and approve it.” 

And then you move back to your position by the window, staring at the lights and the buildings one more time without explaining anything else. When you hear the flick of the pages being turned, you know he understands how serious you’re about it. No space for debating, no time for complaining: you need him to get it done now, and so he will. 

Because your brother can be a lot of things but he’s not dumb. 

And he can read a room like no other except maybe you. 

Seconds turn into minutes and then the clock ticks and blends together as you wait, shoulder hurting by the time your brother lets out a heavy sigh. 

“No, I won’t approve this.” 

Definitely not what you wanted to hear. 

“Excuse me?” 

“You want to—” 

Defensiveness floats you, over-stimulates your senses and makes you see red at the rejection of your proposal “I want to expand our market, our clientele, our opportunities to keep this company on top. Can you relate?” 

“Y/N…” He scowls at your attack, at your tone “You’re running.” 

“I’m doing something for the company!” 

You think your roar is heard all the way to the first floor. Soohyun stares at you wide-eyed, mouth agape for a second before he closes it again. He has to fix his tie, his suit ironed for once as he takes the jacket off and discards it against the chair. 

Brat, princess, annoying little sister. You know that’s what he calls you, he has called you that ever since you were a child and in the most endearing way possible. You have yelled at him before, you have stomped your foot and cried and moaned until you got your way, until he agreed to let you do something. 

You have never screamed at him like this before, though. 

It shows in the way your chest rises and falls quickly, in the way he has to take a calming breath to not yell back at you. Your eyes are full with tears when he looks up and the crease of his brow disappears because, even though you both could be closer and understand each other better, he still is your brother. 

Your brother, who loves you and cares about you in his own way. 

It proves more difficult to let him see the real you, more difficult than what it felt with Yunho or with anyone else. 

So when the tears fall down your cheeks, you wipe them away quickly and pretend they were never there. 

“I don’t know what the hell happened,” he starts, calm, taking a step into your direction and raising his hand and you recoil a bit out of habit. He hesitates for a few seconds but then he’s squeezing your shoulder and pulling you into a tight hug that feels unfamiliar, unusual and weird until it doesn’t. You melt into the embrace because you need it, because it allows you to let go of your frustration and cry it out on your brother’s chest, “but you’re going to explain it to me whether you like it or not. And only then, I will consider saying yes to your proposal.” 

When you pull away to look at him, it’s with a pout and a scowl that draws a breathy laugh out of him. 

“Stupid.” He pushes you away a little before pulling you back in for a hug, “Always keeping things to yourself instead of letting me take the weight of it all. Stupid.” 

It takes a few minutes, but when the hug doesn’t seem necessary and your usual disgust for physical touch comes back into your system, he allows you to take two steps back and clean your face with the back of your hand. 

“Haven’t seen you cry since you were a child,” he whispers and you shrug, ignoring the fact that your heart stings at the comment. “What happened?” 

You tell him everything that night. 

Yunho hasn’t seen you in three months. 

Which, at first, came as relief. He didn’t want to see your face ever again after the things you confirmed to him back in your brother's office. Who needed you, right? He told himself his mother loved enough to understand the sudden change of heart, although she doesn’t exactly know what happened between you in the first place. 

Maybe he should’ve been honest when he got the chance, back in your house, the afternoon they told you both about the pr relationship. 

He was so close to telling the truth, too, when he walked out of the living room and into the hallway to clear his head and not scream at his mother in front of yours. It was there, at the tip of his tongue, and then his mother appeared in front of him with that spark behind her eye that could only mean one thing: it didn’t matter what the truth was, he was going to do this even if it killed him inside. 

Her words the next second confirmed it and he wondered right then if his freedom was worth the suffering:

“Either you do this or I’ll make sure you’re never able to dance again, Jeong Yunho. No more public university, no more friends, no more staying at the dorm, just your father’s company,” and he was about to refuse, yet again, she raised her finger as a warning. “I mean it. Y/N is perfect to clear the company’s image but if we can’t use her then we’ll have to work twice as hard as we do now to clear it.” 

And Yunho would rather fake an entire life with you than work for the man who single handedly ruined his life the second he was born. He didn’t hate his father, he thought about him like a concept he would never understand even when he desperately tried to, but he would never become part of his company.

Not in the way his mom suggested, anyway. 

He just needed to get through college, pretend to be interested in the family business and then land a freelancer job elsewhere, in a foreign company maybe, one who didn’t seem a threat to his father’s and then move on his own when he had enough money saved. 

Independence. He needed independence. Strangely enough, he needed you to gain that independence even though you meant the exact opposite to him, in his head. 

So he doesn’t know why he yelled at you that afternoon. To take it all out, maybe? He thought he hated you back then, too.

He had already agreed to it in the hallway, to his mom. 

He had already agreed to it the second he was born. 

Which is crazy because that’s not a normal experience to have. And if you were born a boy or him a girl, none of this would’ve happened in the first place. You’d be friends, like Gunho and Soohyun, and maybe he’d be forced to be with someone that wasn’t shoved down his throat for so long. 

Imagine his surprise when he kissed you back that night in his dorm. No, scratch that, imagine his surprise when he started liking you the second you showed your true colors to him. 

You’re not perfect by any means, but neither is he and it only took you allowing him to enter a little bit into your mind, into your heart, into your soul, for him to fall for you hard. Or maybe he always liked you? His mind didn’t allow him to sleep at all when you left, but it didn’t allow him to go and follow you that same night either, so the conundrum continued to torture him until it didn’t. 

After the fight in the office, he went home and sat in his childhood bedroom for a while. He had dinner with his brother when he came home to look for some documents in his father’s home office and then he went back to his dorm and stared at the ceiling until Yeosang came back from wherever he’s been disappearing to these days. 

He pretended everything was fine under Yeosang’s scrutinizing gaze but his friend and roommate knew him so much it only took less than a week for his sudden mood to reach the ears of the rest of the friend group. 

Not so subtle messages started entering his phone. He answered all of them and then used the excuse of being on the app to check your chat in case you sent a message and it didn’t notify him for some reason. He told them everything was okay, that he was feeling a bit under the weather. 

And he managed to convince them until he checked his calendar one day (the one he shared with you) and realized all foreseeable events had been cancelled. You had another meeting where you two needed to coexist, a company dinner with both your team and Gunho’s team that he needed to go to as your plus one and, surprisingly enough, a paparazzi session scheduled by your mother that you needed to first prepare to and then do. 

All of this was explained to him by his PR assistant. It surprised him to see that many postponed and canceled the app. It angered him to assume you canceled everything just because you didn’t want to see him. 

He didn’t want to see you either, but he had to. Weren’t you the one who more than once scolded him for not being professional enough? 

Ha! 

It was his opportunity to tease you about it. And so, when he was told to go to your brother’s office the next day, he had this whole speech ready to go. He would tell you to stop being so dumb, that a kiss and his feelings is something that can be ignored. That he needed you both to forgive and forget. 

Yunho needs to continue his plan, even if his own heart breaks in the process. And as he got down the elevator and walked the hall to reach the office, his heart desperately asked him to reconsider. Because there, while pushing the door handle to enter the space he dreaded to be a week prior, Yunho realized he wanted to ask you to be his again. 

When he found nothing but Soohyun on his chair, his conviction deflated and his ego sank to the ground. 

“Yunho!” Your brother sprung out of his chair, excitingly rounding his desk until he reached for him. Arm around his shoulders, Yunho raised a brow at the sudden animosity. “Were you expecting someone else?” 

“N-no.”

“Right.” 

He knew Soohyun could call his bullshit from a mile away. But it didn’t matter, he was already sitting down in front of him in the new couches facing each other. He wanted to point it out, but Soohyun beat him to it. 

“Your friend Park Seonghwa has amazing taste.” 

“Ah,” he breathed out a laugh, a nervous chuckle that made him gasp for air a second after, “yeah. He, um, was top of his class before he graduated.”

“I can tell,” Soohyun nodded and looked around, scrunching his nose in a way that reminded Yunho of you. “Y/N is not going to be available for the next few months.”

What? 

“W-what?” 

“I know you came here looking for her and we’ve known each other since you were born, Yunho, I think we can skip the shitty formalities.” 

“Hyung…”

Soohyun shaked his head, laughing with a relaxed sincerity that is such a Soohyun thing to do “There’s never not been a moment in my life where my sister doesn’t surprise me. I know you know her and I know you two have grown… Closer since this whole PR thing started but I don’t think you can grasp the full Y/N effect until you live with her, you know?”

He didn’t. Not at all. 

“She crafted in four, maybe five hours a project that would’ve taken me at least a month to sit down and write,” he explained and Yunho swallowed thickly, the lump on his throat going down. “And she wanted to get it done as soon as she got the approval from dad. So, I hope you understand that she couldn’t exactly give you a notice before postponing and cancelling your shared schedule.” 

Ah. So you didn’t want to speak to him at all. He scoffed, annoyed. “So she asked you to tell me?” 

“Nope. In fact, I’m pretty sure she would kill me if she knew I’m meeting with you at all.” 

Yunho blinked, confused. 

“Oh.”

“But I love you like a brother, Yunho. You’re my family, you’re her family even though she hates it and I realized recently that the four of us need to stick together. If everything else goes to shit, we’ll still have us.” 

The four of you. Including him and Gunho. 

“And as a family, we owe each other honesty. We owe each other loyalty and forgiveness and understanding. You see where I’m going with this?” 

“No,” he admitted, frowning a bit. “What does any of that have to do with me and Y/N? We don’t like each other, I know you and Gunho noticed at some point. It’s the way things are supposed to be.” The words had a bitter taste, but he pushed through them. 

He sounded like you.

Soohyun let out a sigh and he got up from his seat to squeeze Yunho’s shoulder “She comes back in three months, Yunho. She’s doing something from the company but she has to come back, right?” 

Yunho shrugged, pretending the information didn’t spark something close to hope inside of him. 

“Understanding. That’s what we owe each other: Love and understanding… And lunch. Your brother actually owns me lunch, feel free to join us.” 

Your brother is the weirdest guy ever. However, he realized that as Soohyun walked out of the office and left him to consider his words, that he was already planning on telling you when you came back. 

He missed you already, too. 

And yet, he didn’t find the courage to tell you at all. It tormented him, greatly, vastly. It consumed him through his classes, his dance rehearsals, his performances. It tugged on his heart the days he had to go to the office and pretend he cared about the company, and through his hang outs with his friends. 

They asked about you all the time. He had to remind them you were on a business trip, he had to make up a story, he had to tell them the details were apparently confidential when he didn’t even know where you were.

He could’ve just called you. He could’ve just asked you. 

His finger over your contact on his phone while he sits in Wooyoung's room during a house party, in the dark. 

He could just ask you. 

He–

“Okay, what the fuck is going on with you?” 

He drops his phone, the light of the screen going out as it lands down on the bed. 

“Holy shit, Mingi!” 

 A light turns on and he squints his eyes at the sudden intrusion. 

“You scared the shit out of me!”

“I walked in here like five minutes ago,” his best friend deadpans and Yunho pouts like a child. “You know, I’m starting to feel like I don’t mean that much to you anymore.”

That offends him deeply and he scowls before tossing a pillow in his direction  “What the hell are you even saying?” 

“I’m a patient person, Yunho,” he catches the pillow and tosses it back, “and I’ve been waiting for you to tell me what's been going on for the last month and half but you keep saying everything’s fine.” 

“Because everything’s f—” 

“No, it’s not!” 

Mingi is tired, he can tell. He’s been holding his worries inside since the day he told everyone about his relationship with you and Yunho feels awful. This is that part of his life that’s hard to talk about. He only explained to Mingi about the dreadful desire that his father has of making him work for him around a year ago and he’s known Mingi for so long at this point that it does feel a little like he doesn’t trust him enough. 

But it’s hard and he has kept his feelings and desires buried for so long he thinks he might’ve accidentally dragged his feelings for you along with it and now they’re all mixed up and scratching the walls of their enclosure, begging to come out of him. 

“I’m not used to push people around to tell them about their feelings but you’re my best friend and—” 

“I kissed Y/N.” 

Mingi stops mid sentence, blinking a few times before moving to sit beside him on the bed. Yunho hopes, as he faintly hears the music outside of the room getting louder and Wooyoung screaming something that he can’t exactly make up, that Mingi doesn’t think he’s suddenly confessing his afflictions out of pressure. 

Instead, the words came out of his mouth like he couldn’t resist telling them in the first place. After keeping it to himself for weeks, nearly three months, it finally feels like breathing a little. 

“O… kay.” He says as a response and it’s Yunho’s turn to blink at him in disbelief, Mingi laughs a little. “So you kissed the girl you like. Isn’t that something to be happy about?” Yunho gapes at the insinuation of Mingi knowing he likes you, except, it doesn’t come as a surprise. His friends are very observant, to his absolute horror they can’t be fooled. “Did she reject you? Is that what’s going on?” 

“No! I mean, yes. We… She kissed me first!” He defends himself, taking a quick inhale before cursing softly under it. “And then I kissed her. And then we kissed and she left and she ghosted me for a little, actually. And then I saw her in her office, that's not actually her office but her brother’s, and I… I kind of confronted her? And then she rejected me.” 

By the time he finishes his rambles, Mingi looks amused and a little worried. 

“You have to be in this… Fake relationship with her and that’s tormenting you, then? Because she rejected you?” 

“No, that’s not… We’re not— I am, we are still in the fake relationship, it’s just that she’s gone.” 

“She died?!” 

“What? No! No, she’s,” Yunho closes his eyes, laughing at the assumption because he knows Mingi said it to get that exact response in return, “she’s not dead. She, um, she’s on that business trip.” 

“Oh, that’s right! You told us—”

“I lied.”

“What?” 

His poor best friend looks confused beyond belief and that guilt of not telling him everything creeps in once more, threatening to shut him up until he reminds himself Mingi is trustworthy and deserves some clarity. 

“She is on a business trip, I just don’t know why or how or where she is,” he finishes softly, his lips in a line and revealing just how uneasy that makes him feel. “I don’t know where she is and I think that she left because I— Well, when she rejected me we didn’t end up on the best of terms.”

“So you think it’s your fault.” Mingi finishes with a nod, letting out a sigh a second after. “Well, it’s not.” 

“It kind of is, though.” 

“Yunho, it’s not. She’s a grown up, if she decides to run away from her feelings instead of facing them she’s kind of a dumbass.” 

“Mingi!” Yunho’s pushing him a bit with his hand on his shoulder before he can help it. 

“She is!” Laughing, his best friend takes no offense at the push and instead pushes him back, teasingly. “Remember that one party you had at your place, when your parents were gone on that business trip with your brother?” 

“Oh, that party?” 

“Yeah, that party,” Mingi nods, looking away for a second, something shining in his face Yunho realizes he’s longing for. He wants that to shine on him, too: the security that being with the right person brings you. “Love tried to run away from an argument that night, too. I just didn’t let her.” 

“Are you calling your girlfriend a dumbass?” 

“Yeah,” and instead of saying it with a grudge, the confirmation comes out of a place filled with, well, love. “She was a dumbass back then, at least.” 

“Y/N is not like that at all,” Yunho says after a bit, “she’s not a dumbass for running away from this. Our thing… It’s kind of different. We’ve been put in this situation since we were kids and we hated, like actually hated each other for a while. We treated each other so badly, Mingi, you have no idea the way she gets under my goddamn skin sometimes,” and despite saying it like it’s a bad thing, he can’t help but smile. Mingi notices this, too. “You know I don’t have the best relationship with my parents, right? Well, hers is way worse.” 

“Wait, you told us that this relationship was something to clear your company’s image?” Mingi recalls and Yunho feels another pang of guilt against his ribcage. 

“It is! It totally is, it’s just… Well, she was born a girl and I was born a boy and our parents have a very, um, old-fashioned concept of love and what it’s supposed to look like. It was decided a long time ago that we were going to end up together.” 

There’s a few seconds of silence before Mingi bursts out laughing so hard it drowns the noise from outside the room. 

“That’s funny to you?” Yunho asks, light-hearted and smiling at the sound of his best friend's laugh. 

“No, no, it’s just… Your parents are forcing you two together for some weird legacy, bloodline reason and you fell for the girl you’re in a fake relationship with and you’re supposed to hate?” 

Now that he hears it like that…

“Basically, yeah.” 

“Oh, San’s girl is about to have a field trip with this information.”

“Dude!” 

“What? It’s dumb! Y/N is a dumbass, you’re dumber for not just calling her and telling her you miss her and you’re both really fucking dumb for not telling your parents to fuck off. You’re grown!” 

Yunho sighs, shaking his head. “She doesn’t like me like that, Mingi.”

“Yes, she does!” He laughs again, covering his mouth with his hand once he realizes Yunho is getting annoyed with it. “Yunho… Ugh, is this how you all felt those few months where I was crying over Love?” 

“I didn’t feel anything.” 

“Because you’re a puppy,” Mingi’s shoulder brushes against his in a not so subtle way of teasing him and his eyes blank in pretend annoyance. “You are. And you’re a pretty great guy, Yunho. If she doesn’t like you back it’s not the end of the world.” 

Yunho nods, but he’s suddenly not as convinced as he should be. 

“And you’re also one of the strongest people I know, in here.” Mingi’s finger taps over his heart on his chest. “But you don’t have to carry your burdens on your own. This is all… It all seems pretty dumb to me but it must be really hard on you, hm? Especially since you want to live a life separate from your family, right?” 

That, Mingi knows. “Mhm.”

“And so does Y/N?”

“No, I’m not so sure about that,” he murmurs back and his heart aches when he thinks about you and the way you’re treated home, in the way your mother has treated you in front of him. “I think she thinks she’s nothing without her family but I also think she was raised to believe that. They… Well, even her brother has a hard time seeing how fucking amazing she is.” 

“Is she?” Mingi drops his head to the side, doubt and a little prejudice on his expression. “Is she fucking amazing, Yun?” 

“She’s… She’s such a good person. Which is really crazy for me to say, because I thought she was a spoiled brat for a long time. And she is! But she’s also… She cares so deeply and she’s enjoys painting and she’s so great with kids and—” 

“And you have it bad,” Mingi laughs again, shoving him against the mattress with a push and standing up from the bed. Yunho laughs, recognizing the amount of pushing as tipsy Mingi behavior and nothing else. “So bad. Were you about to call her?” 

He feels called out and a little shy about it. He blushes and all. 

“Maybe.”

When his focus goes back to his phone, it’s when he hears it. 

And his heart drops to his ass. 

A distant curse and the sound of a call ending is enough to send his mind into a new, different spiral. 

“Was that…?” 

Yunho picks up the phone, checks the last call he made and your name appears next to the nine minutes and a half his conversation with Mingi lasted. 

His mouth runs dry, his throat closes as he turns to screen to show it to Mingi.

“Holy fuck.” 

“What do I do?” 

“That’s insane. San’s girl is going to have the best night of her life.” 

“Mingi!” He blocks the phone, tosses it on the bed and gets up to shake his best friend's shoulders. “What. Do. I. Do. Now.” 

Your heart still beats like the day you not-so-accidentally listened to a conversion you shouldn’t have. 

There’s the distant memory of your phone vibrating under your pillow at the hotel you were staying at for the night. It happened only a few weeks ago, near the three month mark into your trip around the country, looking for businesses worth the investment in little towns. That far into your adventure, you had met at least a dozen small companies worth every penny inside your father’s pocket, more so than the one’s already signed. You had met wonderful people who didn’t exactly know who you were and you had been treated so kindly it made the ache in your chest go away. 

At least for a little bit. 

So when you sleepily read Yunho’s name on your screen at two am in the morning, the sting of the pain was unfamiliar and the first thing that crossed your mind was that something bad happened to your brother. Or his brother. Or him. 

What other reason did he have to call you when he left that office hating you all over again? 

“H-hello?” 

Nothing. Just silence and maybe a distant melody, the ruffling of the phone against something. 

“Yunho? If you called me to piss me off I swear to God—”

“Holy shit, Mingi! You scared the shit out of me!” 

Mingi? 

There’s a deeper voice you can hear on Yunho’s end and that’s when you realized he didn’t mean to call you in the first place.

And you should've hung up there. But you didn’t and so you listened to their entire conversation and realized one thing: 

Mingi was right. You are a dumbass. 

And Yunho is even dumber, but that’s something you would have to rub on his face when you gather the courage to see him again. That day is not today, you made sure of it. 

You see, you’ve changed just a tiny bit these past three months. It’s not like you went to a spiritual retreat but by crafting that proposal while fleeing your feelings and the mess that you made with just one kiss, you came around something you never experienced before. Not fully, at least: 

Freedom. 

You spent Christmas and New Years all alone, with no one dear to you around and you saw the fireworks from your hotel window and you felt and suddenly you understood what Yunho sees in in sleeping in that tiny dorm with a roommate and a pile of dirty clothes in a corner, with no pushing their way into the room to pick his messes up and no one making sure he eats at the correct time, the correct meals and the correct porcelain for the day.

No rules, no conditions, just a place where he can be free and himself. 

You did all of that while also making sure you didn’t abandon your priorities. You went to sleep late because you wanted to and then you went to bed early the next day because there were no rules, no events you needed to attend to, no photographers asking you to smile.

There was no one to tell you that you looked fat after eating one delicious, non dietetic meal. There was no devil (your mom) whispering in your ear how everyone would notice the carbs, the bloat and the tiny zits. 

There was no one there to stop you from cutting your hair. And so you did. What once was kept long and straight in order to keep a traditional, clean look, now rested in waves on your shoulders,

It makes it so much easier to walk out of the shower, in less time too! 

And although your heart yearned for Yunho everyday, especially after hearing his conversation with Mingi at two in the morning when you weren’t even supposed to, it was the first time in years you felt happy enough to drop the mask, the pretences, the good posture and even the makeup. 

Yup, you went out without makeup three times! That’s some information that would send your mother into cardiac arrest at the very least. 

So now, as you try to move fast through a college campus that’s not yours, with a box that contains something you call an apology and it might not even be, your heart is beating with the same amount of strength just at the thought of all this backfiring. 

Because you’re not ready to see Yunho, not yet. You want him to come and find you, to come and tell you if he wants to accept you back into his life, under his terms, after you so insistently kicked him out of yours. 

You sneakily checked his calendar. You bribed your assistant, who bribed his assistant, so now his schedule for the week is in a screenshot on your phone and you have checked it four times to confirm this is a good time to be here. 

He has dinner with his family and yours (who don’t even know you’re back yet) at his house, on the hill, which is forty minutes away from his campus. That’s exactly the window of opportunity you’ve been waiting for since coming back. 

And you came back a week ago. 

You may or may not have memorized the code for the door from that only time you came to his dorm and so it’s not really a surprise when you quickly enter it and hear a screech behind you when you are busy closing the door. 

When you turn around, Yeosang is shirtless and covering his chest with his hands “Y/N!”

“Yeosang.” You say with a small bow, struggling to not laugh and turning your face away, looking at the postered up wall. “So nice to see you here, in your room.” 

“W-what are you… I mean how do you… Should I call Yun—” 

“No!” When you turn to him again, eyes wide with worry, he has a shirt on and his phone in his hand. “Please don’t… Let me do something real quick and then you can speak to him, okay?” 

You start to fumble with the box, placing it at the end of the bed and opening it up fast. You throw the lid on top of Yeosang’s bed and then get to work, pulling everything out. 

“Oh, I don’t know. I hate lying to my friends, Y/N.”

“And you’re such a great friend for that but you won’t be lying to him because I’m not asking you to do that.” 

“I wouldn’t even if you did ask me to.” 

“Well, I don’t know about that…” 

Okay, so you changed a little bit. Not a lot. 

You sigh, struggling with the placement of your gift/apology because Yunho changed his sheets and so the color scheme it’s not perfect anymore. 

“What’s all of this?” 

“Yunho enjoys dancing,” you start and you see him nod from the corner of your eye, so you smile. “He told me he did it to have this dorm but I didn’t buy it at all, and so when I was on my trip I… Sort of thought of him a little bit, not a lot.” You clear your throat, a slight heat creeping up your cheeks. “But I didn’t want to wait another day without giving this to him. I just… I can’t exactly be here when he sees it.” 

You finish, turning back to Yeosang and you realize you’re out of breath, nervousness creasing your brows. 

“Would you please let me know how he reacts to it the next time we see each other?” You ask softly, almost shy and Yeosang visibly relaxes at the tone. It makes you feel understood somehow and so you relax a little bit, too. “If you’re here when he gets here I mean, um, you are all dressed up.” 

When you point to his outfit, he seems to remember that he was, in fact, getting ready to go out when you walked in. His hair is wet but styled and all. 

“Oh, I was… I was just going to the club.” He points to a camcorder on his beat and you raise a curious brow, but don’t really ask anything. “I’m making a dance documentary for one of my classes. Yunho is in it, too.” 

That peaks your interest and he laughs, possibly at the way you light up at the mention of your fake-boyfriend-possible-love-of-your-life name. “He is?” 

“Yes, he’s… A big part of it, actually, but I go to this club to get footage and… You should ask him to explain it to you.” 

Now, at that, your smile sure turns sour because there’s no actual way of knowing if he wants to see you again or not. 

After all, he didn’t attempt to contact you after that phone call. 

You don’t know if he noticed that he called you, either. 

It’s kind of killing you inside, all the space you need to fill with assumptions instead of facts. 

“Sure, um…” 

“I can stay until he comes back.” 

“Oh, I don’t want to ruin your plans for the night, Yeosang. You should go and—”

“I want to see it. I want to record it,” he explains, looking over your shoulder and into the gift in Yunho’s bed. “He says he’s not sure, but I think he wants to dedicate his life to it, you know?” 

“To dancing?” 

Yeosang nods. 

Your voice sounds very small when you ask him “Do you think he’s going to like it?” 

He smiles, softly, endeared almost.

“He’s going to love it,” he assures you, “And your haircut, too.” 

You chuckle at that, touching the ends of it that rest on your shoulder “You think?” 

“Yeah! It suits you, actually.”

“Thank you, Yeosang.” 

This time, and after making small talk with his roommate, you leave Yunho’s dorm with a smile on your face instead of tears running down your cheeks. 

There’s exhaustion pouring out of Yunho by the time he reaches his dorm door. He closes his eyes, rests his forehead against the cool wood of it and lets out a sigh to collect himself. He needs to have the energy to take a shower, after all. 

It’s not as late as he expected it to be, the digital clock on the wall glows blue and neon and lets him know it’s around nine thirty. Good, that’s great. 

He misses you. 

And it’s hard not to think of you when he’s surrounded with people who know you, who bring you up when it’s time to talk about positive results for the company, or the time you organized an event for you mother because your brother had no taste to pick the venue or catering or whatever the fuck they were going on about tonight. 

It didn’t escape him that Soohyun glanced at him every time your parents brought you up and he wonders if it shows in his face just how much he longs to see you again.

He’s thinking about your face when the room unexpectedly lights up and Yeosang is standing on his own bed, in the corner, smiling like a creep. Yunho almost falls as a curse slips past his lips and he stares at his friend like something is deeply wrong with him. 

Because it is. 

It’s almost comical how breathless he is as he asks him: “What the hell is wrong with you?” 

“Hey!” 

“—Standing in the corner like a serial killer.”

“Turn around, Yunho.” 

“What?” 

“Turn,” he repeats, slowly, as he climbs out of the bed, the camera pointed in his direction still. “Around.” 

So he does. 

And what he sees… Confuses him. Until it doesn’t. 

There’s a few things on his bed: There’s some polaroid pictures lined up, different people he doesn’t know in them, all in different traditional attire and Yunho can see there’s inscription in them, the dates all read from early november to two weeks ago. 

There’s tickets to a competition that’s supposed to be sold out. He knows, he tried to get a ticket the second they announced it but couldn’t. The top dance teams are going to battle for some bucks but, most importantly, they’re going to battle to keep the dying scene alive. 

A book titled Why Dance Matters next to a golden retriever plushie with a suit that makes him giggle out of the pure weirdness of it. 

There’s a copy of grease with some signatures in the front. He can make out something that reads as Barry Pearl in it, he thinks. His mind reels at what that means. 

A cd in a clear case with a beautiful sunset and a building he recognizes immediately as the orphanage you took him to. Six silhouettes he can only imagine symbolizes him, Jaemi, Hyunjoon, his brother, Soyi and you. 

But what confirms it’s something you did, it’s the envelope that sits in the middle of it all. It's waxed and sealed with something that looks regal, elegant and, when he picks it up to see the seal up close, he smells your perfume. 

He turns to Yeosang, eyes watery, in request of an explanation. 

“Open it! I’ve been dying to read it but I’m a great friend,” Yeosang almost wiggles with excitement and Yunho’s eyes water a little. “Or so she said.” 

“She was here?” 

“Y/N?” His friend asks in return, weirded out. “Well, yes.” 

“When?” 

“An… hour and something ago.” 

“Where did she go?” 

“Are you okay?” 

He’s speechless, envelope shaking a bit in his hand as he pushes the need to run to you away. He doesn’t know what this means, he doesn’t know what the letter says either. His heartbeats are thumping on his ears and muffling Yeosang’s words a little bit. 

He needs to calm down. 

He needs to read the letter. He’s–

“You’re crying,” Yeosang turns off the camcorder, closing the screen and tossing it softly on his bed before taking a few steps in his direction. Concern is written all over his face, a little bit of guilt too. “I shouldn’t have let her in, right? I knew something was off with you but I had no idea that you two had fought or—” 

“You didn’t do anything wrong.” Yunho quickly dries off his tears, shaking his head at his friend’s anxious apology. “I just… I missed her so much, Yeo.” 

“Oh.” 

“So fucking much.” 

“Yunho…” He closes his eyes and jumps a little a Yeosang’s sudden embrace, but he’s grateful for it. Envelope trap between his chest and Yeosang’s rib, he takes a bated breath filled with things he can’t quite burden his friend with. 

He remembers Mingi’s words loud and clear, but the only thing Yunho wants to do right now is find where you are so he can see you again. Hug you again. Kiss you again. 

That night, after he realized he had dialed your number by mistake, he had a full on breakdown in Wooyoung’s room and it took Mingi and Mingi’s girlfriend to talk him out of fleeing the country out of embarrassment, out of guilt. He thought back then he had definitely lost you, because the consensus the three of them came to was a ‘let her reach you if she wants to clear things out’ instead of a ‘call her and explain it yourself before she has the chance to reach out to you first’. 

Mingi said you had to at least prove you had any interest in making things right, in fighting to at least keep your friendship with him. 

As he opens up the letter, he immediately knows he should’ve just called you. 

He even forgets Yeosang is right beside him, looking away to give him some privacy to read your words without actually letting go of the embrace, just in case he needs it. Yunho knows this, he’s thankful, his legs shaking with need to go after wherever you are. 

And he’s about to ask again but, as he turns his head to regard his friend and explains the letter a little, he’s one step ahead of him. 

“She’s staying in a hotel, not her house.” Yunho opens and closes his mouth, about to ask him the name of the hotel when he shakes his head. “The luxury one in Itaewon. What? Did you think I would let her go without getting the information first?” 

Yunho shrugs, Yeosang clicks his tongue in disappointment, letting go of him and putting, at least, ten steps between the both of them. 

“She’s very talkative when she’s not with a big crowd, Yun. Now move.” 

“I think I—” He starts to say but stops midway, looking down at the letter and then at his friend again. 

Yeosang gives him a soft smile, the one he curves on his lips when he’s endeared with something, with someone. Yunho went clubbing with him once, he knows the smile very well. 

“I know,” he says in a murmur and then sighs like it’s a task to be around him. “Now, let’s go. We’re going to the same area anyway and I could use the ride. There’s the box.” 

In the car (one he ordered from an app, not his family car), his leg moves up and down and his hands tremble with anticipation and, as the imposing structure of the hotel comes into view while he stares at the window, he swears he feels at ease. 

For the first time in months, he feels like he’s home. 

And it’s all because he’s about to see you again. 

Yeosang is not a very discreet person. He’s soft spoken and he looks like he cares about his friend’s a great deal, but he has that clumsiness of a person who’s used to being transparent about things. 

He asked you if you just got home with a spark of hopefulness in his eye, like he couldn’t wait to clue in Yunho about it, like he knew what he was going to do when he read your letter and saw your gift. 

Yeosang asked you like Yunho had already forgiven you and that had filled you silly head with warmth and hope and expectations you shouldn’t have because, as far as you noticed, Yunho is not the most honest friend to have. 

So you asked yourself if Yeosang knew about the fight, if the rest of his friends knew. 

And you still told Yeosang where you are staying. 

There’s only one lamp helping with lighting up the bedroom, the city outside of it alive and busy like it always is. The amount of lights beyond the river bring you comfort, something familiar spreads on your chest when you take them in and you admit, for the first time in three months plus the week you’ve been staying here, that you love this stupid city even if it makes you feel trapped most of your days.

But here? In this space that you have made yours over the last seven days? You love it. 

Your hair is wet and your face is clean of any product. You told yourself to go about your night routine like you weren’t expecting something else to happen. That way, when it doesn’t because you feel that what you did is unforgivable as much as it is cruel, you won’t be as disappointed. 

So your face is moisturized and you have your nightgown underneath the silk bath this hotel provides and you’re totally not thinking about Yunho being in the same city as you, you are totally not freaking out over the reaction to your gift, you’re chill. 

You’re chilling, you’re cool. 

And the way your heart leaps when you hear a knock at the door means nothing, because you ordered room service like thirty minutes ago. It’s fine. 

He’s probably not showing up. 

So why the hell is he there when you open the door? And where’s your room service when you need it? 

“Yunho!” 

“Y/N…” 

The atmosphere turns weird and tense right away and you grab onto the frame of the door as he stares at you with indecipherable emotion in his eyes. Is he happy to see you? Is he here to curse you out? 

Is he mad? He’s totally upset at you. He is, he’s… Skinnier, just a little bit. His hair is lighter, too, like a brownish blond that suits him and his skin tone and he looks so good even if there’s dark circles under his eyes. 

You missed him so much. 

“Come in! Um…” You say after what feels like hours of silence, of you two just staring at each other with a little disbelief, opening up the room door wider and stepping aside so he can pass right by you. 

His cologne makes you a little dizzy, drives you a little crazier but there’s not enough time to focus on that because he has the box you left earlier in his dorm in one hand and your letter in the other. 

You close the door, taking in a little calming breath that does nothing to appease the erratic beat of your heart. 

The eighty two square meters of this room suddenly feel like ten and when he puts the box down on the coffee table of the immediate tiny living room space of this suite, you feel like it’s over. 

He turns around, a hand on his hip and the shade that the lamp casts on him doesn’t allow you to determine if he’s clenching his jaw or not, if he’s upset or not, if he’s—

Yunho raises his hand, the one holding your letter. 

“What’s this?” 

Oh, he’s so upset. Okay, good, you foresaw this the moment you decided to give him something. It’s okay, you tell yourself as you walk the steps separating you and take the letter from his hand, you can deal with this. 

And, although you have changed a little in the months you didn’t see him, there’s a long way to go before your defensiveness stops being the only way you know how to approach a situation targeting you and your ego. 

“If you didn’t like it, you could’ve just thrown it away or burned it, Yunho, you didn’t have to come all the way here—” 

“Read it to me.” 

You look up at him, blinking once and then twice at his request. 

“Didn’t you—” 

“Princess,” he says, letting out a tiny breath in between his words, “read it to me. Please.” 

Now that you’re physically closer to him, you can pick up this gentleness in his features that you know well. It’s the same expression he had back in the orphanage, when Jiwoo took Jaemi in her arms and he was left staring at you with his cheek pressed on his forearm while he rested on the table. You think about that exact moment a lot, late at night, when the only thing overwhelming your thoughts it’s him. 

You swallow the lump on your throat down as you take out the letter from the envelope. It’s a little dark but there’s really no need for you to read the words when you know them by heart. You wrote and rewrote them at least a hundred times before deciding the letter looked good and that it wasn’t too long, too obnoxious, too sweet, too cringy. Just the right amount of emotion in case it came to bite you in the ass, like now. 

“S-sure,” you let out a sigh, past caring if he sees you’re a little affected by the situation as a whole. “Yunho, I’m sure you’re reading this after seeing the gift layed out in front of you. Take it as an expression of gratitude for all the times the mere thought of you got me through a day, even in this time when we’re supposed to be upset at each other. I think about you a lot and I think about what I did, too. I’m— This all sounds to stupid and formal,” you criticize your own work without thinking it through, frowning and looking up at him. “This letter is supposed to be an apology and it reads like an email.” 

Yunho shakes his head, a tiny smile tugging on his lips. “Go on, please.” 

Sniffing because you feel uncomfy and vulnerable, you continue.  

“I’m sure you’re wondering why now and not three months ago. Well, it takes a lot for me to defy the expectations people put on my shoulders. As you know, my last name is laced with success I didn’t work on and letting go of things you’re used to is hard, but I did. I went away, I learned, I grew up a little bit and in my journey the only constant was you. Not the fight we had, not the way we have treated each other throughout the many years I’ve known you. I’ve always seen your life from the outside even if I was a part of it, I’ve seen your social media posts and wondered if I wasn’t deserving of the same kindness you display to your friends on them but, as you proved to me that I am deserving of it, I understood that it wasn’t your voice in my head telling me I didn’t, it was mine.

“Not my mother’s voice, not anyone else's, but mine. Accepting that was hard but I did it and I did it on my own but as a result of the impact you had on me the second you turned around and held me with the care I now think I deserve.” Something drops on the paper, wets it and blends the ink of the pen you used together and you realize there’s tears running down your cheeks. “I can’t ask you to forgive me for what I did. But just know that I kissed you because I wanted to, not because you were being kind to me. And I pushed you away because, out of everyone that has come and gone from my life, you’re the only person who has the possibility to break my heart and mend it the times you seem fit…” 

You look up and to the side to wipe your tears. You’d pat yourself on the back for how you read this to him, without any stutters or mistakes, but the truth it’s that melancholy swallows you as you reach the end of the letter. It’s more emotional than what you’d remembered, too, now that you’re reading it outloud and in front of the man you love. 

There’s no need for you to read what comes next because you want to say it looking at him. 

“And I’m sorry. I love you and I don’t love you just because we kissed or because we are forced to be together. I love you because you’re part of me, because you’ve always been. I love you and I can’t stand to lose you. Again, I’m sorry,” you repeat, looking down at the words again before finishing in a whisper: “Yours, Y/N.” 

There’s this pregnant silence that follows that makes you fidget on your feet. It takes a second for you to gather yourself together again, wipe your cheeks and look up at Yunho. There’s disbelief in his expression and you wince in preparation for what’s about to follow. 

“Like I said,” you start again, extending the letter to him so he can take it, “I don’t expect you to forgive me. I don’t expect you to do anything, really, a-and I understand if this is all too childish or too cringy for you to say something back. I don’t need you to say something back! Really, I don’t,” you laugh amidst the sudden verbal vomit and shrug, not even looking at him anymore. “I j-just wanted you to know. And I mean it: If you don’t want me that way, it’s completely fine, Jeong. I also settle for being your friend, i-if that’s easier for everyone— For you, if that’s easier for you,” you correct yourself, “because I don’t really care what anyone thinks anymore, including my mother, she can go fuck herself and she can win all she wants if that means keeping you in my life and—” 

He grabs the letter and in a second he uses the tight hold you have on it to push you closer, tearing the paper in the process. 

“Kim Y/N, you big dummy.” 

He lets go of the letter and you do too, hands resting on his chest as you stumble forward a little, the paper falling to your feet as his right hand settles on your cheek, the left one on the nape of your neck. 

“Excuse me?” 

Yunho laughs, breathy and pointed while his eyes scan your face. “You heard me.” 

“Are trying to piss me off, Jeong Yun—” 

This time, when Yunho kisses you, it doesn’t feel new. It doesn’t feel like defiance, it doesn’t feel like you’re breaking the rules or letting your mom win. 

It feels like coming come. 

The ache in your soul stops the second his lips move against yours, deliciously slow and firm while he holds you close. His hands shift, they move the satin robe as they descend and find their place on your back, on your hip. Your chest collides with his with a soft nudge forwards and you sigh against his mouth, welcoming the way his hands tighten on you, feeling finally at ease in his embrace. 

You thought, when preparing his gift, writing the apology letter and then earlier at his dorm, that your self control was something to be admired. Yeah, you love him deeply and all, but you had the restraint to give him the opportunity to decide what he wanted to do with all the things you told him. 

Now you think that there’s nothing in the world that could stop you from kissing his lips raw, from pulling his hair a bit when your fingers tangle in it, from drinking the sound you get in return. 

Fuck your self control. You want Yunho like you never wanted anyone or anything before. 

That’s why you’re grateful when he pumps the break, lips leaving yours and breath on your lips. When you open your eyes, he’s already staring at you. With the way he’s holding you, you barely have to get on your tippy toes to nuzzle his nose against yours with care and the action reminds you of that day at the office, before you fucked up, but the feeling is way different. 

This time, your gut tells you that whatever is about to happen with the two of you is something that’s going to linger, that he’s going to stay one way or another and your heart thumps loudly at the thought of having Yunho in your life forever. 

Four months ago, the thought would’ve given you a headache. 

Now, it heats up your cheeks as his hands return to your face. 

“I’m sorry, I had to kiss you. I also should’ve gone after you that night, in my dorm, I— I’m also sorry, Y/N,” he lets go of you softly, putting a step in between the two of you so he can take your hands in his. “I’m sorry I cornered you in the office and I’m sorry I expected you to just… Drop all of your beliefs and convictions for me. That’s the most delusional thing I’ve ever done.”

“It’s okay—”

“But I love you,” he breathes out and you feel like the air it’s been knocked out of your lungs. “I’m a big pretender, you know? I… I try to be as positive as someone can be, I try to be aloof and I ignore a bunch of things in order to let myself be distracted from what my family expects of me, so I couldn’t understand when you didn’t want to do the same. I do now.

“And I don’t let myself enjoy a bunch of things either, Y/N, but I do allow myself little moments of happiness. When I’m with my friends or when I dance, I tend to have those little moments and then I allowed myself to see you in a new light and I… If I thought those two things brought me some sort of respite from my sorrows, I had no idea you of all people could feel like… Like…”

“Home?” You offer, your voice a sweet whisper full of understanding. 

“Like home.”

He swallows tightly, averting his eyes to the floor for a second. 

“I’m sorry for not returning that call,” he says, his brows creasing a little bit, “I took advice from drunk people in love, so I thought I was doing the right thing by letting you come to me.” 

“I was doing the same,” you whisper back, shrugging his worries away. “Letting you come to me, that is. I couldn’t even— I mean, I should’ve given you all of this in person instead of dropping it off like a scaredy cat.” 

“You did hear the conversation though?” 

“Yeah. Mingi called me a dumbass and I’m not going to forgive him.” 

He laughs, shaking his head in disbelief. “He was right, a little bit.” 

“He called you dumber,” you return, frowning at his jab even though you know he didn’t intend any ill with it. “So yeah, you could say he was right.” 

There’s a few seconds where he just stares: at your hands, twined together with ease and familiarity. At your face, a loving smile lifts the corners of his mouth up before he steps closer again and lets his thumbs trace the curve of your mouth, your cheekbone, your nose. 

“I missed you so much, my love.” 

Oh.

Fuck. 

You warm to the pet name immediately, its significance running through you like a shudder and making you gasp softly, almost imperceptibly. You guess it shows on your expression, the smile on Yunho’s lips widening as his knuckle presses on your cheek gently. 

“You liked that I called you that?”

“Shut up.”

“My love,” he repeats, pecking your lips, “I love you. I’ve… I actually don’t know if I’ve loved you this way all this time, but I’m sure I loved you to some degree. I cared— I care about you.” 

You tear up again. 

That voice that tells you that you don’t deserve him comes back, a distant murmur of it this time, but it’s still there. 

For a good reason, too. 

“Forgive me for being so horrible to you all these years,” he makes a face, like he can’t believe you’re apologizing for that right now. “I wish I could say I did it because I was a vain, stupid child but it was all very much thought through.” 

“I know.”

“And I was horrible. I’ve been thinking about it for weeks now, I—”

His lips press softly against yours again. “Stop it. I was horrible to you too, we were both stupid and childish and we had our reasons.”

“Did we, though?” Your nose scrunches while you truly think about all the times you could’ve been nicer to each other and chose to be mean instead. 

His eyes water a little. You frown, fingers tightening around his wrists, you turn to kiss his palm. 

“What’s wrong?” 

“I just love you a lot,” he sniffs and you catch with your knuckle the tears that roll down his cheeks. He closes his eyes, letting out a breath and untensing his shoulders at the same time. “And it feels so good to be able to say it.” 

“When did you figure it out?” Curiosity takes over you for a second, you allow yourself to wonder about it without any guilt now. 

He hums, thinking about it with a pout on his lips “Like I said, I think I’ve always loved you to some degree. I just… Didn’t know it. I’ve never loved anyone like this before but I think that when I saw you with Jaemi and my heart felt like it was about to come out of my mouth, I kind of knew.” 

“So when I kissed you…”

“I knew,” he nods, “and I should’ve been more insistent when I was trying to talk to you. Go to your house, do something, but I’m… A little inexperienced in this type of stuff.” 

“Because you have no bitc—”

You’re already giggling before he interrupts. “And you love me like I am, so now what?” 

The smile on your lips is so wide you have to look to the side, focus on the shadow of the chair in the tiny living room space for a second to compose yourself. 

It doesn’t really work, because he’s smiling as hard when you turn back to him. 

And then, for the first time since he got here, he seems to notice the length of your hair. He brushes it back with his fingers, the strands barely damp now, and gasps when he reaches the tips at your shoulders. “You cut it!”

With a nod, you laugh at his sudden surprise. “I did, I’m about to get disowned.” 

“Oh, your mom is going to pass out at the very least.” He agrees right away and you laugh again before he joins, his teeth nipping at his lower lip for a second. “She’ll forgive you, though.”

“You think so?”

“You look too beautiful to stay mad at you for long.” 

Oh, your poor heart. You shake your head, diverting the attention from you by brushing the strands of his hair that rest on his forehead back. 

“Blond?” 

“Kind of, yeah. It’s this… Honey something that my hairdresser suggested.” 

Humming, you let your fingernails scratch his scalp gently as they go down, hands resting on his shoulder when you’re done. “They did a great job,” you say before you click your tongue, cocking your head to the side. “Are you sure they weren’t just calling you honey and you misunderstood?” 

His brow lifts, the corner of his lips does as well and he’s ducking his head so he can speak in that cocky tone of his you’re so used to. Only this time, there’s an edge to it that sends a shiver down your spine. 

“And If they did?” 

You know what he’s asking, you know why he’s asking. You find yourself curious about this type of teasing on his behalf, so you allow it to happen.

In your own terms.

“Did it happen?” You return, leaning even closer, hands grasping the lapel of his suit jacket and tugging on it, pretending to smooth it out with your palms afterwards. 

“Princess…” 

When you look at him, there’s this fiery energy that crosses his expression and it makes your imagination run wild with possibilities. 

Now that you both got through the emotional part of your reunion with tears, with overdue confessions and very necessary apologies, what’s left to resolve is this pent up tension that’s always been something more. With the way Yunho behaves sometimes, so proud and tough, you have a vague idea of what it could be like. 

And it makes you giddy with anticipation. 

You would like to turn your assumptions into facts. So you play dumb, fakely perking up when he calls you, blinking with pretend innocence a few times to sell the act. “Hm?” 

Catching the way his jaw ticks at your behavior, you realize that the rush that went through your body every time you got under his skin was not out of the pleasure of winning. 

It was because you liked it. 

Very much so, that the way his eyes scan over your body like he's deciding what to do with you and your attitude make you let out a tiny puff of air that he drinks right up when he crowds you again, hands on your hips and lips on yours once more. 

His mouth doesn't move with any trace of carefulness anymore. Before, you were able to tell he needed to kiss you, longingly, with all the things he couldn't say before on his lips against yours. Now, his tongue makes its way past your teeth and swipes against yours in a way that makes you stumble backwards, almost leaving the tight squeeze of his hands behind. 

Yunho catches you, walks with you until you feel the arm of the tiny couch supporting your weight as well. 

He leans in a little bit to help you up on it, his body immediately in between your legs, his palms making their way downwards. One is on your lower back, thumb absentmindedly caressing the area, and the other one is pressing right next to your leg on the couch so he can bite your lower lip and give both your lungs a bit of a break before diving into your mouth again. You wrap your arms around his neck and keep him close. 

Closer, closer, closer. You need his body pressing against yours as you try to keep up with the intensity of his kisses. You've never been kissed like this before, never with so much love and passion and want and need. 

You've been kissed while drunk and touched while high in the past, you've been fucked by people you don't remember the names of and you had dropped the sleeping around once you graduated college. 

There's so much of your youth you wish you've done sober. Because now, when his tongue catches a soft moan and his hand moves from your lower back to your leg, under your robe, you don't know why you freak out. 

No, you know exactly why. 

Breaking the kiss, you take two seconds to look at the plush of Yunho’s lips after being deliciously smothered with yours. You're both breathing hard, chests rising and falling in tandem and gasps for air filling the room. 

His hand moves higher, measuring your reaction and you know he's about to ask if it's okay to touch you when you grab his wrist and stop his movements. 

“We don't have to—” 

“Is not that,” you say right away but you're both speaking over each other. 

“I mean, there's a lot we need to talk about. I want you to tell me about your trip and—” 

“Sure, we can do that later,” you nod. “Right now, I'm— I mean, let me turn off the light and you can touch me all you want.” 

He frowns. 

“What?” 

Heart picking up for a different reason now, you clear your throat and try to cough the anxiety away. You can talk to him about these things, it's okay. It doesn't really matter how embarrassed you feel once the words come out of your mouth. 

“Um, I went up a few pounds while on the trip and— And that's a good thing!” You say when he looks at you like he's about to tell you that it's okay. “I ate whatever I wanted, it was great, really. I just…” 

“You did?” He asks in a soft, excited whisper.

“I don't know if you'll, um, i-if you're going to like it.” You finish, blinking the shame away. 

Yunho’s expression softens and you take it as an agreement. You've only been touched in the dark, anyways, so you push into his chest a little bit and off his embrace (even if you don't really want to) and start moving towards the only light casting shadows on the room. 

Only to be tugged right back by a firm hand on your arm.

With his chest against you and his lips grazing your ear, you can barely help the way you shudder. There's something hard poking your ass and the apparent size of it has you gulping, salivating even. 

But you have to turn off the light. 

“Come here,” he murmurs and softly moves the both of you to stand in front of the mirror that's next to the entrance. 

Even if you tried not to, it's something you've been avoiding the whole time you've stayed here. The mirror is huge, floor to ceiling and its position it's very elegant, very fitting for the purpose of this suit that's supposed to be reserved for people who need different outfits for different events. 

You haven't really used it other than quickly checking your clothes earlier today, before leaving to go to the dorm and, even then, it was only a quick ten seconds.

It stings a little that, although you've made progress, your body and the way you perceive it still have such a grip on you. When you add the man your heart desires to the mix? Well, there's little to nothing you can do to let go of your insecurities.

The heat of Yunho's body leaves you for a second and he's turning another light, the one closest to the entrance, adjusting its intensity so the ambiance is not broken by the bright glow of it. 

You gulp again when he returns, but melt into his chest when he presses his body against yours again. 

How can you feel so comfortable with him but so uncomfortable with yourself? It's weird, it's strangely very you but you can't even tell him that because the intensity of his gaze when you catch it in the mirror shuts you right up. 

You know he's telling you to listen to him, to notice how serious he is about this as his chin rests on your shoulder. 

“I've called you ugly before, right? I've have actively contributed to your insecurities in a way that I'm not going to forgive myself for, ever,” he starts and the direct approach to it makes you teary eyed all over again. He notices, lips finding your shoulder to comfort you. “The thing is, Y/N, that I never actually meant it. I think I was pissed off because you were— and are so fucking beautiful.” 

You close your eyes and let out a pleading sigh “Yunho…” 

“No,” he says and you feel how he shakes his head, his chin still on your shoulder. “Someone needs to tell you this. You live in your head way too much.” 

He understands. 

You love him so much. 

“Open your eyes, princess.” 

You do. 

“Look at yourself.” 

You don't. You look at him instead. 

He's staring at you through the mirror and he straightens his back to rest his cheek against your temple, the height difference at his advantage because, this way you have to look up at him and it will give away the pure rejection you have for your reflection. 

“I don't think I've ever found someone as beautiful as I found you. When I realized that, that was what pissed me off… Well, I think I somehow buried the thought away but you are so breathtakingly pretty, Y/N.” He takes in a breath and you lose yours, his hand resting on your hip going up and tracing the curve of your waist. “But it doesn't really matter what I think, it matters what you think, hm?” 

Turning his head, his nose presses against your skin now and he leans in, nuzzling softly, with care, until his lips peck your jaw. 

“I can assure you that you can go up a hundred pounds, go down, up again and I wouldn't care. It doesn't matter, I have found you beautiful in every version that you have presented yourself in and I will find you beautiful if you change your whole appearance everyday. I love you,” he reminds you, “and I love everything that you bring along with you. Insecurities, panic attacks and clever insults to my clothing included.” 

The chuckle that you let out makes him smile against your cheek and he gives you a little peck before putting some space between your face and his. He looks you up and down in the mirror again and you can see genuine want in the way his pupils dilate. You see it happening in real time but then you also see his self-restraint. 

You're at a loss for words, but manage to mumble out “Thank you, Yunho.” And then you turn your head, catching his lips in a soft closed mouth kiss that he returns right away. 

“Whenever you're ready to let me prove how beautiful I find you, I'll be here.” He says when you let his mouth move away from yours, your lips softly pecking his jaw instead and getting a sigh in return. “I can wait.” 

Then, the worst thing happens: His hands leave your body and he starts to step away. 

It's a little embarrassing how quickly your entire being protests and you realize that there's a clinginess to you that you're not so sure where it came from. You reach for him, barely turning, and tug him right where he was. 

Looking at him through the mirror again, you enjoy the genuine surprise on his expression and the way it turns into desire when you put his hands on you again: on your stomach, on your hip. 

When you turn your head to look at him directly, his eyes stay fixated on the reflection. His hand on your stomach turns, knuckles softly caressing you. You want to ask him what he likes about that but don't, instead, you tell him what goes on inside your head. 

“Yunho, I do want you. I want you… But I also want to make sure that you like me.” 

He looks at you then, mouth ready to reassure you again but you shake your head to shut him up. 

“I heard you,” you confirm, smiling a bit and then closing your eyes at the visage that accompanies the concept of your body in your mind. You know it's far from what it actually looks like but that also means that you don't know exactly what it looks like and that's terrifying. “I know you love me but would you like me?” 

“I do,” you hear the frown in his voice and take a deep breath before opening your eyes again. “Princess, do you trust me?” 

You nod without a second thought and he leans in, nose almost touching yours. 

“Would you let me show you how much I like you?”

It takes a second or two, but you nod again.

“And would you let me know if it's too much?” 

“Yes,” you breath out, too intoxicated by the closeness, by the way his lips softly trace yours without actually kissing them to think about the implication of his words. 

When he pulls away again, you let out a sound that gives away how much you want him. Yunho’s lips curve and when your eyes finally focus on his again, you can see the quick decision he makes as he looks at the mirror again, resolve and purpose in his expression as he takes off the jacket of his three piece, tossing it on the sofa. 

There's something magnetic in the way he rolls his sleeves up, securing them in his forearms and your eyes follow the motions and trace the veins that you're able to see before he turns away from you. 

He takes one of the chairs he's able to easily mov, placing it behind you both. You realize you've walked a few steps closer to the mirror, and so your back is pressed against it when his attention returns to you, when he takes your face with his hands and crushes his lips against yours without explaining what he just did. 

You brace himself on his forearms, nails pressing on his skin because somehow this kiss feels different. Its pace is not hard to keep up with but it feels like you are, the care he puts in his movements as his palms brush your hair back slowly and then go down, down until they're reaching the knot that keeps your robe closed. 

This time, instead of panic, you feel your stomach flutter. Butterflies all over, there's goosebumps on your skin when he tugs the robe open and feels the satin of your pajamas with his fingers. He makes a noise and, at first, you think it's out of protest because you're not already undressed for him.

But then his knuckles trace the hem of the nightgown and he makes the noise again, tongue flicking against yours harder, getting a moan out of you.

Yunho’s lips find your cheek, your jaw, nipping at the skin of your neck and over your pulse when he gets to it and you close your eyes, head falling against the mirror and head moving to the side so he can kiss every inch of skin if he wants. 

“You smell so fucking good.” 

That makes you smile, a droopy curve to your lips before you bite a sound back “I showered.” 

“You always do,” he whispers into your skin, lips finding your ear. “You always have. Do you know how many times I had to control myself around you?” 

“Hm,” you muse, pretending to think about it. “Do you know how many times you had to?” 

“Oh, trust me princess, I know.” 

He pulls back and you open your eyes. You wonder if yours are carrying the same intensity as his when they go down your body, taking your sleepwear in. 

It's a simple blue v-neck slip dress with some floral lace at the trim lines. It splits on the sides and falls mid-thigh. Something very basic in your opinion, but you don't miss the way his eyes are glued to the skin of your thigh. You're not wearing a bra and your nipples are painfully hard. 

“I didn't actually expect you to come to me tonight,” you lie a little, lips turning up into a shy smile. “So I didn't—” 

“Is this what you wear to sleep?” He interrupts and you watch him gulp. 

“Mhm.” 

“Every night?” 

“Something like this,” you tug at the fabric, softly, “yes.” 

“Fuck.” 

You giggle in return at how affected he seems, but the amusement dies when his eyes return to yours. Holding your hand, he takes a step back and then another and another until he's falling with a thump on the chair he brought close. 

He takes you in one more time before letting go of your hand and manspreading on the chair “Come here, princess.” 

The tone of his voice makes your entire being shake and you take in a breath before following his command. Which is crazy because you never, ever would've followed an order from him. 

But now you can't help yourself. 

Standing in between his legs, you can see when he holds the arms of it after attempting to touch you as soon as you get close enough for him to be able to reach you and, when you're about to straddle his lap, he shakes his head and clicks his tongue in response. 

You understand what he wants immediately and you turn around, watching your reflection in the mirror as you sit down on his legs that he managed to close again in the three seconds it took you to do so. 

You're breathing hard by the time he accommodates you both on the chair, his very clear erection pressing against your ass and lower back and making you dizzy at what you're looking at. 

The image on the mirror is clear, it allows you to see both your reaction and his reaction when you fidget without thinking about it on his lap and the friction it causes brings you a whisper of pleasure. 

“You're a dream, Y/N,” he says and you can tell it came out of his mouth without really thinking about it. Finally, he moves his hands and his nails press on the skin of your shoulders, goosebumps evident and tremor barely concealable when he drags them down the length of your arm and over your hands that rest on top of your knees. 

He covers them with his and you stop following his movements in the mirror to look at his face “Can I?” 

You swallow and then nod and he giggles, this hard facade he has on slipping as he presses a reassuring kiss to your shoulder “Can you say it, my love?” 

“Yes,” you say quickly, your voice betraying you “Please.” 

He closes his eyes, a curse under his breath. “Don't beg me, princess, I got you.” 

You can't help but be curious and, although this is something you can find out as the night goes on, you end up wondering out loud either way: “Why? You don't like it?” 

He shakes his head, that hardness in his expression returns when he opens his eyes to look at you and the curious glint of your expression through the mirror. 

“Do you enjoy it when I beg you, Yunho?” 

And then you slightly move on his lap, trying to pass it like an absentminded movement. 

He sees right through it and the realization shows on his face. 

“Ah,” he laughs, back falling against the chair and head lolling back, “are you going to be a brat, princess?” 

Your mouth quirks at the quick and accurate read he gives your attitude. 

“Of course you are.” 

Again, the bravery your amusement gives you is short lived. He uses his hands over yours to open your legs and his, fast, earning a surprised squeak out of you. Your first instinct is attempting to close them but he huffs and perches your legs on his. You loop your feet around them to avoid falling forward at the lack of things to hold on to. 

This way, your panties are on full display as well. They're simple cotton white panties and there's a wet patch in the middle of them that grows a little at the display, at the image you see in the mirror. 

Yunho curses under his breath again. 

“You're my dream,” he says, a little bit distracted again and then he remembers himself. “I don't like people begging me, I don't give them the time to.” 

Raising your eyebrows, you're about to protest because you don't want to hear about his encounters with anyone else, but he won't let you. 

“One time, I almost had a fight with a friend over teasing. You know her, Mingi's girlfriend,” he says and you don't know if he's smiling at the memory or at the way you squirm under his touch when his fingernails start dragging over the skin of your inner thighs slowly. “I told her the truth: I'm too impatient to tease. She said it's necessary, I said I never needed to tease anyone to get with them and it went on for almost an hour.” 

He reaches the plush that has formed on your inner thighs and you can physically feel your centre growing wetter. 

“I never got it,” he insists and, when he pretends that he's going to touch you where you need it the most only for his touch to go back down the expanse of your thighs, you let out dissatisfied huff. “Now I think I do.” 

“Yunho…”

“You wanted to beg?” He asks, mouth against your ear and hot breath on your cheek. “I can make you beg.” 

You give in almost immediately. 

“Please,” tongue wetting your lips, you attempt to move in order to get some sort of relief but he's quicker than you. Strong hands hold your hips steady and you puff out some air again. “Please touch me.” 

It's clear the whine on your voice affects him because he pants against your cheek, nudges your face with his nose and then dives with his lips to kiss your neck again. 

“Be still, princess.” He commands and you stop trying to wiggle against him, only to rest your back against his chest when he brings his hands down in a caress and holds you fully open for him again. “I got you, but do as I say.” 

He takes your nod as an answer this time and his lips travel down your neck, to the skin of your back and then your shoulder. You watch in the mirror as his teeth catch the strap of your nightgown and, when he speaks again, it's a little muffled because of it.

“Can I take this off you?” 

You take a breath before replying “Yes.” 

And then he slips the strap off your shoulder with his teeth and you swear you're ruined for everyone else entirely. 

There's no way anyone is going to make you tremble like he did just now.

He goes ahead and does the same to the other strap, hand quick in catching the gown from falling completely. 

“Should I?” 

“Yunho… Stop teasing me.” 

He chuckles and takes his time to redo what he just undone: he pulls the strap on your left shoulder up again, switches the hand that's holding your second to last piece of clothing up, and does the same to the other strap. 

“But you look so pretty in it.” 

Your skin heats up harder than ever before. 

“You look so pretty like this, all breathless and ready for me to touch you… Do you know how happy it makes me that I can touch you, princess? That you’re in my lap and not in my head?” 

You swallow back a whine “Y-you thought about me like this?” 

“I dreamed about you like this,” he kisses the nape of your neck and then focuses his attention on the shoulder he neglected before, “for months.” 

You hum in acknowledgement at his words, but your mind is elsewhere because his hands return to their ministrations on your inner thighs and it's hard to concentrate on anything else but the pad of his thumbs ghosting over your panties as they move. 

He finally concedes and lets his hands wander upwards until they get ahold of the hem of the nightgown and, in one swift movement, you're left in nothing but your underwear in front of him. 

Well, in front of the mirror. He's watching the reflection of your body carefully and you can barely spare a look at it, breath caught in your throat at his reaction. 

When he sees your naked torso, he fully lets out a moan. 

You feel slick rush out of you at the sound but don't turn to yourself to verify what exactly about you made him react that way, made him get even harder against your ass. 

“God, look at you.” 

Breathing hard, you turn your head slightly so that your nose touches his and you think he's about to drop it, give in and kiss you when you feel his thumb and index pressing against your cheek, turning your head to the reflection again. 

“Is this okay?” 

You know he's referring to the hold on your face and you mumble out a yes, still looking at him through the mirror. 

“I said, look at yourself.” 

You do. 

Legs open and still perched on top of his, white panties turning a little see through due to your arousement and nipples pebbled in full display, you allow yourself to enjoy the two seconds of clarity before your body starts to shape shift in your head, before your thoughts turn you undesirable and before you fall into your dysmorphia. 

Yunho is right there to catch you, though. 

“Do you know how lucky I am that you're even allowing me to see you like this, Y/N?” 

The hold on your face relaxes and you follow the movement of his hand, down until it settles on your throat, relaxed, not even putting any pressure. 

“Still okay?” 

You nod. 

He puts in slight pressure now and, when you moan, he chuckles but doesn't say anything to acknowledge what makes him laugh. Instead, his hand keeps descending until his fingers rests in between your breasts and then he softly cups one of them, thumb passing over your nipple and making you jump at the sudden contact before letting go. 

“So fucking pretty. You see this?” His fingers take hold of the skin of your tummy that connects with the curve of your waist and he pinches slightly, making you squirm and tickling you a bit. “Everything you are, everything you have makes my heart beat,” he kisses your shoulder again, “and my dick hard,” and again, “and makes me want to prove to you that there's no one in this world that can come close to you, not in my eyes, my love.” 

Oh, my God. 

He says it in a way that makes you want to believe him. And, deep down, you know you do. 

Even though it's complicated, even though it takes effort to make years and years of self-loathing disappear, you know you can try. 

Because you desperately yearn to see yourself from Yunho's point of view. 

This time, when you turn to kiss him, he doesn't put up any restraint. His dominant mask slips off of him for just a second when you grab his face, pliant mouth moving at the rhythm and pace yours is marking, a whine getting muffled with your tongue. 

He gives your legs rest, closing his legs (and, in consequence, yours as well) and, when you tug at his hair so you can mark his neck down at the weird position you're in, he groans and you want to smile but he's searching your lips before you can even leave a bruise on his skin. 

“I love you, I love the way you think about me, I love what you make me want to think about me,” you assure him when you pull back to look at him. His cheeks are red and his lips are swollen and you love the way they're parted as he recovers his breath. 

“Lesson learned?” 

“Mhm,” you kiss his lips again and take the hand resting your waist, bringing it down to your clothed sex so he can feel how wet you are “now please, would you touch me?” 

“Fuck, you really do love to beg, hm?” He says and it's breathy, like he can't actually believe, and he doesn't give you time to respond because he's already kissing you again. “Let's go to bed.” 

“W-wait.” 

“Yeah?” 

The way you glance at the mirror is a dead giveaway of what you truly want. It makes him take in a sharp breath and grab your face in between his hands, fascination written all over his expression. 

“Do you want to watch when I touch you?”

You breathe out a moan in response.

“You want to watch yourself while I make you come?” 

A little shy but with resolve, you nod. 

He curses. 

Next thing you know, your legs are perched over his again and they’re wide open. Your arms fly back to hold onto him, onto anything that helps you not fall on your face but then his perfect, veiny hand presses on your torso and you fall back comfortably into his embrace again. 

He wastes no time, lips marking a path from your shoulder to your neck and fingers ghosting your clit over your panties and you whimper, impatience making you move against his crotch and making him grunt at the friction. 

“I k-know you just s-said you just discovered the joy of t-teasing but can you please do somet— Fuck!” 

His thumb presses on your bundle of nerves over the cotton and you can’t help but shake. 

It has been a while since you’ve even touched yourself truly, with want and need behind. It’s been a while since someone else touched you there, period, so the sensation feels new and you kind of feel like an overly inexperienced woman with the way you can’t help the immediate build up when he starts moving his thumb.  

It’s electric and you notice that your eyes closed the second he touched you, so you remember yourself. You remember what you asked for, what you actually want to see. 

When you open them again and look at Yunho, you find him already looking at you. His parted lips turn into a proud smile when he catches your eye and he nods, kisses trailing up to your ear, teeth nipping at the skin. 

“Good girl.” 

Fuck. 

He stops his movements to let his index, middle and ring finger cup your sex entirely, press into the fabric and let it soak with your arousal. You see in the mirror and you watch, with fascination, how he manages to twist the cotton to the side and expose your pussy for you both to see with the same hand. 

“You’re so wet, princess, I bet you taste so good…” 

Your brain short circuits and malfunctions when he finally touches you without anything in between his skin and yours. His index reaches out and collects the evidence of how much 

you want him, of how much you want him and you moan when the fabric snaps against your pussy when he lets go of it. 

“Do you?”

He toys with the stickiness on with his fingers, rubs it in between them and then brings his hand up so you’re able to see it without the mirror’s help. 

“Look at me,” you do, obedient, “and open up.” 

You open your mouth and allow his fingers to get in and rest against your tongue. You suck out of instinct, eyes never leaving his, and he gulps as he watches you taste yourself until your arousal transfers from his fingers to your tongue. 

“Let me taste it now.” 

Licking into his mouth, the fingers that were previously on yours settle on your throat, not allowing you to fully lean in and kiss him like you want but, instead, letting him have control of it. 

You swear you see stars when he sucks his tongue into his mouth and he hums, pleased with the taste. 

“You taste so fucking good.” 

Letting you go, you’re breathing hard when he pushes you a bit to put some distance between the both of you. 

“Get up and take these off.” He snaps the elastic of your panties and the sting against your skin makes you whine. 

You can’t think, can’t speak, can’t do anything but wait for him to lead your actions and the consensual loss of control feels so freeing that it makes you dizzy. So you oblige, getting off his lap and allowing him to turn you around so that your ass faces the mirror. When you look at him, he’s looking at the reflection and not you, so you decide, with a boost of confidence because of the hunger in his eyes, to give him a little show. 

You bend over, forehead almost touching his chest and proceed to take off your underwear that way. You open your legs a little, giving him a clear view of it when the fabric falls from your legs and pools at your ankles and, when you twist your head to the side to look at his reaction, his tongue is out and licking his bottom lip like he’s starving for it. 

For the first time ever, you feel both sexy and desired at the same time. 

He reaches for your ass in a way you’re not so sure it’s calculated and you fall fully into his chest with a soft moan when he opens you up for him even more. 

“So hot,” he says, low, under his breath, like he’s not even thinking before he speaks and he lets his fingernails drag on your skin (something you’re learning he enjoys doing and that you also like, a lot) until his hands fall to his knees again. “Fuck.” 

He still hasn’t even touched you properly and you already feel drunk on his touch. You feel that way, at least, when you prop your hands against his chest and push yourself up. He turns you around quickly, sits you on his lap with your legs open again and sighs. 

“I’m not going to make you beg for it anymore when all I want to do is watch you come, princess.” 

Arm around your middle, he presses you flush against his chest and takes your right hand in his. It allows you to let go of the grasp you have on him a little and, when he guides your own fingers to your pussy, you get why. 

“Show me how you like it.”

You feel lewd, exposed and dirty in a way you never thought you would enjoy. But here you are, craving 

“Yunho…”

“Show me,” he insists, “so I can learn.” 

Isn’t it a little bit funny that he sounds like he’s the one begging you when he speaks? 

You show him. Starting with collecting a bit of your slick, you drag a finger upwards from your entrance to your clit and then, only when you can see it fully glistening in the mirror, is when you press down and caress it in circular motions that send electricity through you right away. 

As you do with everything, this is something that, although you don’t really have time to even think about doing most of the days, you have perfected. There’s a science to it, a method that you’ve discovered via need and lust and that has never been so thoroughly explored than right now. 

It’s like you have kept your needs like a nasty little secret inside of your heart, just like you did with your love for Yunho, and you’re letting it all out. 

You pick up the pace, alternating from circles to side to side motions and the pleasure quickly becomes overwhelming. Or have you been touching yourself for him for minutes now? Time disappears in every sound you unconsciously let out, it blends with the glint of passion in Yunho’s eyes and it dissolves in an orgasm that quickly takes over you and shakes you forward. 

“That’s it,” he mutters with his lips against your temple and his hands holding you steady. “Now’s my turn.” 

He replaces his hands with yours, bats your fingers away when you try to prolong your pleasure and takes over at a relentless pace, overstimulating you.

It goes on like that for a minute or so where you shake and you readjust in his lap and you shake again when he bucks your hips and you feel him firm against your ass. You desperately want to help him feel this way, too, but there’s only so much you can do when he teases your entrance with his index and finds you relaxed enough to put it in slowly. 

Slowly until it glides in and out smoothly and you hold onto your forearm, and whimper and his name spilling from your lips in bliss when his ring finger joins. You hope you don’t look too delirious, you wish you’re not making a fool of yourself for feeling the heat pool on your lower belly so quickly again. 

“Oh, yes, yes, I’m—” 

“Don’t look at me or what I’m doing, look at yourself.”

Huh?

“W-what?”

“Watch yourself come,” he reiterates, breathless and, when you disobey and look at him through the reflection, he’s already focused on your face, mouth hanging open and brows furrowed with determination. “I want you to see how beautiful you look coming all over my fingers, Y/N.” 

He curves them upwards and the sensation somehow intensifies “Shit.” 

“Come, Y/N.”

You’re not sure if you’re able to prove his words to be true. When you come undone, you’re looking at yourself and in the mirror is someone you don’t exactly recognize. Someone you don’t perceive as yourself because, yes, the person staring back at you is beautiful. And that person looks sexy and sensual and is glowing with pleasure written all over their face but they’re not someone you have categorized in your brain as you. 

And then you understand. This raw, pure, unfiltered state of you is something you hadn’t reached before. Naturally, you had never seen yourself come. And you hadn’t been handled with so much care through an orgasm before, so you lived it fully and then, only when you stop shaking and your legs fall from his and your feet are on the floor, holding your weight steady, is when you allow yourself to look away from your reflection and turn to the man responsible for the best orgasm of your life. 

His lips are quivering, his eyes are closed and his chest rises and falls against your shoulder as he holds you to him. 

“You… Jeong Yunho…” 

He smiles, probably at the way your voice trembles and gives away just how fucked out you already are, but he doesn’t open his eyes  “Yes?” 

“My turn.” 

When he opens his eyes, you’re already standing up in front of him, his hands shifting on your body, the fingers that just made you see stars leaving a wet trail on your skin before they settle on your stomach. 

And, although he seemed tough and dominant just a minute ago, he puts no resistance when you grab his arm and make him stand up as well. You get on your tippy toes to nuzzle his nose with yours and he holds onto you again as you stumble backwards, towards the bedroom. 

“You’re too dressed, Jeong.” 

“Don’t act like you didn’t enjoy me in a dress shirt,” he says, a smug smile in his lips when your back hits a wall and he presses his body to yours, “prepping you to take my coc— F-fuck, princess.”

Your hand teasing his erection over the fabric of his expensive pants is enough to shut him up. Good, you already let him have his fun (and yours, by consequence) and, even if you enjoyed the loss of control, there’s something equal parts rewarding and hot about winning it back with the simple press of your thumb where you believe his leaking tip is. 

“You’re too overconfident sometimes, Jeong,” you whisper against his lips and it may be your two amazing orgasms or the way you love to have something over him, a little bit of power at least, that make you overly confident right now as well. He puckers out to kiss you but you don’t budge. “Want to see if you prepped me right?” 

It’s a question for consent. You have to make sure he wants you this way, too. That this is fun for him, too. And when he pauses your heart feels like it stops for a second, just like time. 

But right after there’s this quiet agreement you both come to and his mouth devours yours as you move in tandem, in coordinated effort to undress him: You loosen his belt and work on the button of his pants while he unbuttons his shirt and both your feet move with synchronized steps until he’s falling on the bed and you’re getting on your knees in front of him. 

He, however, stops you with a hand caressing your face softly. 

“Later,” he mutters with a soft smile that’s laced with something passionate and lewd you feel you’re about to discover. He leans in, teeth catching your bottom lip and pulling until you’re whining and you taste a little blood on your mouth. “I need to fuck you right now.” 

He doesn’t need to tell you twice. You do however make sure to peel his underwear off him while you’re on your knees, the size of him making you wet and ready all over again.

When you stand up, he grabs your tired legs to pull you closer. It feels like a pause in the middle of passionate urgency, but when he takes his time to kiss under your belly button and the expanse of your hips, you feel like it only adds fuel to the fire. 

The fact that he’s even taking the time to explore you makes you want to combust.

“Oh.” He bites you right over your hip bone and you take his hair into your fingers, pulling him back. “Y-you said you needed to fuck me?” 

“I do,” he laughs against your skin and then leans back, taking him with you and you let him, falling on your side before he pushes you against the mattress, body covering yours and palms touching you all over. “I just enjoy taking my time with you.” 

“I can see that, Jeong.” 

He’s distracted again within the second, looking down your body and taking you in like it’s the first time he’s seeing you even though he had a clear view of you and your pussy in the mirror five minutes ago.

And there’s this urge that takes over you, you can’t even fight the words that come out your mouth next.

“Make love to me.” 

He pauses again and then your words register in his brain, you can see the exact moment they hit him and you think you see him tear up a little before he blinks the deep emotion away to focus on the moment. You have to do the same. 

“I will. Every day of my life, if you ask me to, if I’m so lucky to.”

The rest of the night, from the moment he says those words, kisses you and moves you so you’re in the middle of the bed, it all passes in slow motion. 

And it all passes really fast, too. 

Yunho makes love to you. He enters you while looking into your eyes and whispering how much he loves you against your lips and you say it back. He holds your hand as his hips move and his length drags deliciously inside of you. He marks your chest with his lips and your heart with his love and he closes his hands over yours when his pace picks up and he allows to lose himself in the moment too. 

You make love to him as you push him onto his back, his pretty face all flushed, the pink coloring his neck and his chest where you hand rest as you ride him and watch his control slip from him, as you memorize his moans and grunts and as your walls squeeze him in before coming again on his cock and it only takes to firm, hard strides for him to spill himself inside of you as well, the prove of your love making spilling out of you a little when he holds you to his chest and he pulls out of you, both of you sated, both of you in love. 

It feels like an hour has passed when someone speaks again, the silence in the room comfortable and accompanied by the beats of both your hearts. In reality, it’s only been around ten minutes where you’ve closed your eyes and breathed the remnants of Yunho’s cologne, cheek pressed against his chest and his fingers drawing random figures on your naked back. 

You decide to break the silence when you remember something. 

“I think they forgot my room service.” 

There’s a pause and then Yunho is laughing loudly and it makes you smile. His chest vibrates and you can see, on your peripheral, how he covers his eyes with his forearm. 

“I’m being serious, I ordered like three hours ago.” 

“Maybe they knocked and we didn’t hear them,” he mumbles tiredly and you finally look up, chin pressed where your cheek was a second ago. “We were pretty… Busy.” 

“That’s worse, Jeong!” 

“Why?” He asks, genuinely clueless and then it clicks for him. He brings down his arm and opens his eyes wide with shame. “Oh, my God.” 

“Mhm.” 

“How are you going to look the receptionist in the eye?” 

“She knows me, too. She asked me to take a picture with her  when I check out.”

Yunho sighs and says nothing. He looks at you, hand on your back moving until it reaches your face and he lets his knuckles trace your nose in a way that makes you scrunch it. 

“I forgot you were famous.” 

“We both are,” you w-hisper back, lips forming a thin line as you think. “I mean, if someone leaks that we’re both here, it won’t look weird because we’re supposed to be together.” 

“Supposed to?” He frowns. 

“Well, yes, to the public at least.” 

Yunho pouts. 

He pouts and your stomach twists and turns with nerves and butterflies. You’re joking, kind of. 

“Are you not my girlfriend, Y/N?” 

Oh, he’s adorable. It’s so easy to tease him when you’re both not at each other’s throat. 

You wonder if you’ll ever have a fight again, your heart weak for him even when you try to keep the joke going. 

“I haven’t been asked to be anyone’s girlfriend…” 

The deadpan expression that follows your quip breaks your resolve entirely and you laugh, hiding your face on his chest as he mumbles something you don’t catch. 

“What?” You look up at him again. 

“I said that you’re annoying and that you are my girlfriend.” 

“No, I think you said that you love me.”

There’s something so reassuring in the way the annoyance disappears from his expression and it’s replaced by something sweet and he looks like he can barely fight the words back when he replies with: “Yeah, I do.” 

You hum, happy with his response “I thought so.” 

Pressing your cheek against his skin again, there’s only two seconds of silence before his hand is on your shoulder and shaking your body. 

“Say it back, Y/N.” 

“So needy,” you tease and he shakes you again, groaning, so you sigh and pull away from his body to sit up a little. “I love you too.” 

He leans into your space, a blissful smile curving his lips before he pecks your mouth in a sweet, short kiss “Good,” he whispers, falling against the pillows and dragging your body with his so that you’re resting against the soft material as well. “When did you come back?” 

“A week ago.” 

“Hm,” his hands return to your body, fingernails dragging softly up and down your arm, “your family doesn’t know.” 

At the mention of them, you close your eyes and squeeze, reality washing over you. 

“I’m sure my mother does.” 

“She doesn’t,” he assures you, “she would’ve mentioned it by now and she only talks about the project you’re going to lead once you’re back.” 

You open your eyes “What project?” 

“I’m not sure,” he says softly, “I thought you were already leading one?” 

“Something like that,” you nod. “I, um… Was networking in a way, gathering new information on new companies to invest in and help their growth. Small business with original concepts that we can boost or help bring to the city and all of that.” 

“Did you have fun on the trip?” 

“Yeah,” you answer truthfully, “I did. I met a lot of people, I visited places I never even knew existed, I also learned a lot about myself and about what I want… And I got away from Satan for a while.” 

He knows you mean your mom, so he snorts out a laugh and shakes his head at the jab. 

“I missed you a lot, though.” 

His amusement dies slowly but happiness remains on his face. You’re sure yours is a reflection of his, as well. 

“I missed you too,” he answers in a murmur and you nuzzle the hand that reaches your cheek before giving it a kiss. “I’m glad you had fun and it sounds like being away helped but… Never do it again.” 

“Oh?” You try to tease but he insists. 

“Never leave without telling me again, please,” his whisper sounds like a plea and your heart beats louder. “I’ll miss you too much.” 

There’s an impulse, a need that soars through your blood. “I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get away again but, when I do, you can go with me.” 

“I will,” he answers right away and at the confirmation that you want him there with you, you see the tension slip away from his features, “my bags are already packed and all.” 

“I bet they are,” eyes rolling back in annoyance, you press a palm on his chest and push him a little. “Needy.” 

“Shut up.” 

There’s a lot of things to talk about. A lot of things you want to tell him, to mention, to bring up and discuss with him. Like what happens after you leave this bubble you’re floating in, if you tell your brother and his right away, if he’s going to tell his friends or wait until you’re a little far along in the friendship to do so. 

You have to ask him if he wants to tell your parents like… Ever. You’re not so sure you even want to. 

But he shuffles and moves until his naked chest is against yours and his hands are around your body, chin resting on the top of your head as he yawns. 

There’s this feeling of calmness that washes over you as you consider that, maybe, this can be the way you fall asleep from now on. No sleeping or sleepless nights, just Yunho’s embrace and his steady breathing above you, the beat of his heart, a lullaby that lulls you until your eyes are closing and tiredness takes over your senses. 

This time, you dream about a future together and nothing more. 

If you read all the way down here: THANK YOU SO MUCH. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated and please remember the next part it's much shorter and would be the end of this mini series!

© jensthwa, 2025.

[verstappenf1lecccc]

Hey p here!!! 👋🏻 Just as we talk, I want a fic about Toto Wolff x wife reader who always healthy/happy go lucky person and suddenly she's ill. You can't decide what it is. Include there drivers/anyone in the sports reaction. Like they're trying to help her, watching out for her. She's their friend/mother figure, of course they're worried. But being her, she just deals with humour even though she's sick. And can you include Jack? That boy has my heart. Even though this must be heartbreaking for him at such a young age, I think it's time for some angst, gut wrenching story that traumatize us all😃 And lastly how everyone cope with it. Add anything you want to. Thanks!!! :))) Appreciate it❤️❤️

With prompts:

1) "After all this time?” “Yes. I still do"

2) "My sweet and brave little munchkin."

3) "Tick tock, the clock is ticking"

4) "I thought we had more time"

Slipping through my fingers

there are moments in life that define everything, moments that still your world to a complete standstill people often assume that these moments are of joy or happiness. unfortunately for toto his moments caught a rotten streak and his world was never going to be the same ever again.

the day toto met her was a day full of surprises for both of them.

y/n had just recently made the decision to switch up her major from nursing towards mass media and journalism. it was a switch that raised a lot of eyebrows and concern from her family yet they supported her nonetheless, everyone knew how talented she was and knew she’d get a job eventually. What they didn’t know was along with the job she’d catch the attention of a rather tall man.

toto was having a rather eventful day, both of his star drivers had crashed into each other on lap one giving his arch nemesis horner his day in the sun with his prodigy max verstappen winning the race only to rub salt in his raw open wounds. he should have signed him instead of nico toto thought as he stomped through the media pen only to be bombared with around a hundred reporters eagerly waiting to see if the team principal was going to have another one of his infamous anger blowouts. alas to them a young female reporters questions had caught the interest of Toto.

Her question was clear cut no glazing no unnecessary flattery to grab his attention, all she’d ask him was if he’s going to fire someone on the pit wall for the strategies today. it was a bold question not one that reportes like to use since it ends up in court cases but she really didn’t care. It was her first few races and she wanted to make a name for herself and boy did she.

Toto’s response was curt and dismissive but she didn’t budge one bit, she was persistent and that caught Toto’s attention.

ladies and gentlemen this was the first moment in Toto’s life that had stopped the world for him.

the moment he looked into her eyes he felt everything was irrelevant. He didn’t care that both silver arrows were a pile of silver dust all that was captivating to him was the brown tinge in her hazel eyes. toto wanted to stare into them forever, and perhaps god was smiling straight down on them and decided to seal both their fates together.

and so it started.

their infamous courtship.

Now for a team principal speaking to people was almost second nature but when it came to her toto was a blubbering mess always leaving the conversation wanting to speak more, it was rather funny towards the other team principals. he was acting like a teenager with his first crush.

things weren’t all that easy for her too, each interaction with toto outside of business had her craving him more and more, she chuckled at his faint attempts to woo her and get her lunches. she too had a crush on him and it was only getting stronger.

the turning point in their relationship was the after party at the Abu Dhabi Grabd Prix, the long season was finally over and the celebrations had started. Toto had eagerly invited her and was hoping praying dying to see her come, unfortunately he wasn’t the only one who was waiting to see her, amongst his infatuation toto was as blind to how interested zak brown had also become towards her. he wasn’t often caught staring at her in places no man’s eyes had entitlement to. things were starting to get creepy but none of our two lovebirds had figured that out.

the party was in full swing when she had decided to show up, wrapping up her tasks with sky sports made her rather late but the look in Toto’s eyes when he had saw her was everything she had hoped and wanted. The man looked starstruck it was insane how whipped he was for her and they weren’t even together.

a couple of drinks and close dances later when she had excused herself to go to the ladies room was when calamity hit.

zak had his dirty gazes set on her ever since she had shown up, he knew toto wasn’t on guard whenever she was there and knew it was his time to try and get handsy with her.

right after walking out of the ladies room she was dragged into a corner and that’s when she felt small fat and stubby fingers trying to touch her. it felt humiliating disgusting and frankly made her want to bleach her skin. right before zak could cover her mouth and start with his actual plan she screamed as hard as she could hoping to get anyone’s attention oh how she regretted not taking up Toto’s offer to walk her to the restroom.

toto had wondered where she had ended up disappearing, was he being too much did she need a break from him?? he was overthinking when he heard her cries for help and in a second all the alcohol in his system had vanished. He leaped towards her cries and the scene startled him to his core, in a second zak was off her and his disgusting touch was replaced with the warm calm caressing of toto a man she was familiar with someone she knew.

the entire night was ruined in a split second, it wasn’t until toto had zak in a head lock that she’d regained her senses, seeing him so worked up over protecting her name and honour made her do what she did next.

the second toto was close by she kissed him, full on kissed him. it wasn’t short or messy it was full of reassurance of promise and of new beginnings.

that’s how the two souls collided.

oh and zak was given not one but multiple fractures and a hefty legal case to fight, toto didn’t play when it came to the ones who he loved.

the new couple relationship caused frenzy all over the internet and the paddock, no one really expected them to be a couple it didn’t make sense, out of everyone why did toto choose a journalist? Didn’t he know if they break up his whole life would be plastered onto the news.

Headlines like these made both of them chuckle, neither of them seeming to care, they were just happy to be with each other against all odds.

throughout the course of their relationship there were times where y/n had become sick, it often worried toto seeing how easily the common cold for her could become much serious, she always brushed his concerns away. it wasn’t until much later into their relationship when toto started noticing more and more health concerns for his now fiancé.

the proposal had taken place in Iceland she’d always loved it there especially the black sand beach and how beautifully it contrasted against the bright white snow, often times she’d dreamed of going there and toto made it a reality for them. she later joked that the beach and the snow represented each of them perfectly, Toto being the dark black beach that only softens in appearance in front of the snow. he’d got down on one knee at that exact spot uttering words of love and honesty. they had their vows at the exact same place. some things don’t change.

it was now 3 years into their marriage, toto had settled down and wasn’t all angry and violent like he used to be (ask the poor abused headsets) he was much calmer and level headed, that’s what happens when you marry the love of your life. he knew not to piss his wife off or worry her after all she was carrying his baby.

the pregnancy test was taken after she had thrown up half her body weight, toto wasn’t around he infact was in austria for the Grand Prix, she had excused herself from it with dumb excuses, Toto ever the gentleman knew not to push it and let her have some space.

In a matter of seconds their world’s axis shifted.

the pregnancy test came as a positive surprise, neither of them had discussed having children but they weren’t against the idea, when toto came back to his wife pale and heaving beside the toilet he knew what was going on, he whisked her off her feet and kissed her so strongly that you might think the man was off to war.

her pregnancy came with a price thou, a huge price for her to pay. y/n was anaemic her body didn’t have enough red blood cells and that’s why she could faint at the drop of a hat.

the couple had been shopping during the off season for the arrival of their little baby, unfortunately fans and paparazzi got a hold of their location resulting in a rather ugly swarm of cameras and people. the noise alone alerted Toto that their quiet evening had come to an end, in a rush to protect his wife and unborn child Toto’s steps where hastened and elongated, unfortunately his wife simply couldn’t keep up and fell victim to one of her fainting spells the camera and the noises alongside the amount of people did nothing to help her and so she collapsed.

the faint thud would haunt Toto forever, his whole world crumbled when he heard it, instantly he rushed towards her only to find her knocked out cold, the rush to the hospital has been the longest wait of his life.

he swore then and there that he wouldn’t ever put her or their child in such a situation.

luckily both mother and baby were okay, when they got home later that night she had fallen asleep unknown to the storm that was brewing within her husband.

Toto wasn’t a very emotionally available man, he preferred to deal with his emotions privately or not at all if possible but ever since meeting her he’s been more open towards showing love and care but the one thing he won’t show is fear.

Torger Christian Wolff was afraid.

he’d been having these vivid dreams of his wife dying and leaving him and their six year old son alone forever, it’s been haunting him ever since her fall.

[nightmare-of-homophobes]

It's funny how I saw your post now bc the same question crossed my mind some weeks ago and my general answer still is: I don't fucking know.

My young sister pointed out that her being a divination witch already makes her gay, but she did not give strong enough arguments to support her point.

Now, welcome to my monologue (From now on I'll just pour a mix of my unfiltered thoughts, interpretations of characters and headcanons in an answer while hoping that it'll make some sense or switch a light on your brain):

There's a lot of characteristics that as a whole makes me believe Lilia is a woman lover, tho I don't think any of them screams it (and I think this is the reason why I see/saw people around the fandom labeling Lilia as straight or ace or any other sexuality - what is up to each person, since her sexuality is not confirmed). Like, she's artistic, sassy and effortlessly gains other women trust/appreciation, but does any of those things sign her as gay immediately? I don't think so.

Maybe it's the fact that Lilia kinda tickles the mommy issues of not only the other witches (aka Alice and Agatha) of her coven but also of a good part of her fandom. Or, as someone said in the comments, the way she holds herself - her confidence, body language, expressions. Or her care for her coven, which she can't hold back from developing? Maybe.

But as I wrote this and kept searching in my mind for something that I could point out as "yes, this is certainly what makes Lilia a woman lover", I ended up returning to her backstory and to what my sister said.

Since the first episodes Lilia gave me queer vibes that I couldn't pinpoint why. She kinda always gave me that "single aunt that has been living with her roommate for the latest twenty years" vibes, but episode seven only clarified why those vibes.

Lilia and Agatha may be opposites but they're equally perfect material for queer subtext. Agatha has all her past with her mother while Lilia has her own with her coven. And both their stories revolve around power - and now let's think about power and being a witch in the whole as an allusion to queerness and self acceptance.

Lilia has contact with her powers at a really young age under the help of someone she trusts and love, but with the loss of this someone and now alone and afraid of which consequences her powers could bring, she prefers to hide it in herself and take a place in society where even if spotted as a weirdo she could still make a living. Late in her life she finally finds this specific group of misfits where she feels accepted and comfortable enough to accept back her powers and stop hiding herself from what she is.

We don't have to look too deep in our society to find real Lilias. People who only felt safe to come out late in their lives after hiding under comphet. Maybe we were Lilia at some point in our lives.

So, I know I kinda missed the point of the initial question and dived into a character analysis, but maybe what makes Lilia so queer is her being tragic - oh, god, I'm again putting people in the tragic gay stereotype.

Being a witch - and my sister was somehow right from the start.

But, mostly, by sharing women's experience. And here I'm mostly projecting myself on Lilia because I can't help but relate to her in a lot of ways.

Though I do not see or label myself as a woman, I lived under this term since I was born and I like to joke that I love women as a lesbian.

Trying to point out what gives out Lilia as a woman lover for me is trying to point out why I love women. I don't know, but by sharing the same experiences with women, learning about their struggles and force and getting to know their care and love... How could I not love women?

And here is where I fully project myself on the character because Lilia certainly went through a lot and saw a lot. She saw not only her sisters in the craft but also common women die, but she also saw them resisting and, century by century, getting stronger. She saw the good and bad sides of men and women. And at the end of it all, how could she not love women?

I hope that something in this too-long reply makes sense to you because my answers seem great in my mind, but messy when I write them in English (and they just create more questions in my own mind).

I've been banging my head on the wall for some minutes, and I need all Lilia lovers' help because my gaydar is not working today:

What is something that Lilia does that screams "woman lover" from a mile away?

[projectjasper]

so here's the timeline according to me and my tunnel-vision jundylan agenda:

-> jun has a crush on dylan but doesn't know how to get closer to him because dylan has a very hiss black cat personality and is basically the only person on whom jun's typical antics don't work since he is really good at just ignoring people

-> thame starts spending more time with dylan, they celebrate new years just the two of them, and generally hang out a lot

-> dylan develops romantic feelings for thame, but thame only sees him as a platonic friend

-> jun starts disrupting their friendship in his classic chaos gremlin fashion because he can see that dylan's feelings aren't reciprocated and wants dylan to be in as little pain as possible

-> dylan misunderstands and thinks jun is possessive of thame

-> at the same time, it slowly becomes clear to dylan that thame does not reciprocate his feelings, and he slowly reshapes the way he feels about him into something more platonic, while being simultaneously annoyed by jun's behaviour and grateful for his interference because it does kind of help with getting over thame

-> dylan ends up developing a sort of "oh my gods, him? for real?" crush on jun because he is a constant and somehow endearingly annoying presence in his life

-> meanwhile, jun likes dylan but still cannot figure out how to approach him without being ignored and dismissed, so he is trying to get over his feelings

-> po steps into the picture and jun notices that thame pays some attention to him in the same way he paid attention to dylan, while po clearly has a crush on him, so he is once again trying to disrupt the dynamic so another person wouldn't end up heartbroken like dylan

-> while messing with po, jun develops a small crush on him, partly fueled by his belief that thame does not treat him right and this is now the second cool person thame is not appreciating in the way they deserve (so... literally develops a crush on who he thinks is dylan 2.0)

-> dylan is pissed at jun's crush on po because "who would want to date him anyway? he is so annoying and just ugh. he literally shouldn't be dating anyone. except me. who said that?"

-> as jun understands that po's feelings for thame are quite serious, he easily steps out of the picture as soon as thame proves that he actually likes po romantically and is trying his best

-> jun also acknowledges to himself that his own feelings for po are incomparable to what he's been feeling for dylan this whole time anyway and that the crush was kind of dylan-fueled in the first place

-> idk dylan and jun should make out

[writingdevil]

Hello! In honor of cheabroken being canon in Tongues and Teeth, I wanted to request their first kiss! Did it come naturally after being comfortable with each other for so long? Was it an awkward attempt after Stubborn interrupted them last time? Or maybe Contrarian was right and they really are worse than Smitten haha (considering how passionate they both are about their feelings, I can totally see it)

Either way, I wanted to thank you! I love how you write all the voices and the dynamics between them (even if I have very clear favorites), and I always get excited when you post a new story. I hope you have a great day and a wonderful life :)

(OH MY GOD THIS IS SUCH A SWEET ASK!Thank you and I hope that YOU have an amazing day and an even more amazing life!Thank you for your sweet words, I love hearing that people get excited whenever I post stuff.It's mad to think that two months ago, I was just reblogging stuff and not interacting THAT much with any fandom, and now I'm making you all happy with my writing!Anyways-Cheabroken!Yes!I love them and I'm so happy to write more of them!Enjoy!)

Cheated has never been more stressed in his fucking life.

The entire week, he's been wracked with anxiety and stress so bad, that he finally understood and sympathized with Paranoid.

Cheated worked nonstop just for this day-he went over everything that he would say, he made sure all the preparations were in order, and he did everything he could to make sure that nothing went wrong for him.It almost felt like he was asking for something bad to happen.

The reason why he was so stressed, was because today was the day that Cheated was going to ask Broken out.

He's known about his feelings for Broken for awhile. Ever since they were gifted their own bodies and they had that argument with Smitten and Skeptic all those months ago, Cheated had found himself getting more and more drawn to Broken.At first, it had just been the obligation to give Broken room to air his thoughts, without others either putting pressure on him or putting him down.

Cheated believed that they were all a part of the Long Quiet for a reason, and that every voice meant something to Him, so thinking that one voice was lesser than the others was an insane thought to Cheated.They were all shards of the same mirror.They had all been important to Him, once upon a time.

That kindness obviously extended to Broken as well, who had been so devastated and terrified at realising that his princess was no longer with him, leaving him feeling lost and worthless. It had been scarily easily for Smitten and Skeptic to pick him up, and practically whisk him away for their goal. Cheated had been too confused at the time to really understand what was going on, but he got there in the end.

At the start, Cheated believed that he needed to be the person that stuck up and talked for Broken, because otherwise Broken would just let everyone walk all over him. When they were arguing with Smitten and Skeptic, Cheated was surprised at how Broken actually stood up for himself pretty well, and then he was even more surprised at the screaming match he had with Stubborn, but he was surprised in such a positive way.

Broken was slowly but surely picking himself up and making himself move forward, even if he had very little belief in himself or his abilities-but Cheated couldn't help but admire everything about Broken.To be someone so lost in sorrow, but refusing to back down-that was exactly the type of strength and resolve that Cheated wished he had.

Cheated didn't need to defend Broken as much as he thought he did, but he still found himself being drawn in by his quiet brilliance and his kind and empathetic heart, and over the course of a few months, was spending all his free time with Broken.

He wasn't sure when he realised that he was falling in love with Broken. All he knew was that he was beginning to come to terms with how much he just stared at Broken, at his hypnotic eyes and his small, fluffy feathers that were finally growing back in. He would sit and stare and not even register what someone was saying because he was too busy thinking about how fucking pretty Broken was. Seriously, why wasn't Broken the one being worshipped?Cheated would've happily become a devoted follower.

Then it was thoughts like that-that made him think that maybe his feelings weren't quite platonic.

After that, it quickly dawned on him how flustered and nervous he got around Broken, or how his thoughts would be pulled back to thinking about Broken and what he was doing, or admiring how he smiled or laughed sometimes,or even daydreaming about what Broken would say to him in certain situations.

He believed that these thoughts were normal, until Stubborn managed to clock him in the face one day, all because he apparently looked 'worse than Smitten when talking about his darling.'

That was the smack in the face he needed.Literally.

He was in love with Broken.

With that realisation, came feelings of both horror and nerves, because Cheated wasn't sure if it was fair to Broken to pour his heart out to him, after how his last 'relationship' went.Would a relationship be something that Broken even wanted anymore?If Cheated asked and Broken said yes, would he only be saying that in the name of self preservation, to keep Cheated happy and himself safe?

Cheated hated the thought of doing that to Broken, of making him revert back to his old ways, and a part of him wanted to just keep these feelings to himself forever, for Broken's sake.

But then that other louder, and angrier side of him, smacked him upside the head, because assuming those things about Broken was ignoring all the growth and progress he had made in the last few months, and it was just making Cheated look like a dickhead.

Broken wasn't some sad and scared little creature that couldn't think for himself.He's proved Cheated wrong on that front many times, and each time made Cheated admire Broken more and more.Sure, he had moments where he didn't feel like getting out of bed and doing anything, or thoughts that made him believe that he didn't deserve to be here, but he had a whole flock to lean on.

Of course Cheated was there, and he was happy to take Broken on walks to help him clear his head and go outside more, and everyone else cared about him as well. Paranoid fretted over his wellbeing and if he was eating enough, Hero helped get his wings back to a much more healthy state, and even Smitten was doing his best to help, teaching him about gardening and caring for plants, and it all looked like it was helping Broken tremendously.

Broken was getting better, and Cheated would make sure to treat Broken with nothing less than pure love and respect, and he would make sure that Broken knew that every step of their relationship.

If he said yes.

That was the fear that had been clinging to Cheated all week-that Broken would say no, because getting fucked over at a time like this seemed to be exactly the type of thing to happen to Cheated.

Which was why he was so stressed, because he was doing everything in his power for this night to not go wrong, which-given who Cheated was, seemed like an impossible task.But he was nothing if not a fighter for what he believed in.

He had planned to take Broken out into a peaceful and secluded part of the woods, have a nice dinner, and at the end, Cheated would confess his feelings, and hope his heart didn't get crushed into a million pieces.

He had thought of and planned for everything that could potentially go wrong tonight.He asked Hunted to help him find the perfect spot to take Broken, trusting the other's judgement. He also needed to make sure nobody interrupted them or swooped Broken away at the last minute, so he pleaded to Oppy and Paranoid to make sure that nobody bothered them, and although they laughed at his desperation, they agreed.

Finally, the food.As much as Cheated wanted to make it, he knew that he would either somehow poison it or burn it to a crisp, so he enlisted someone else to do it.

He was extremely hesitant to ask Smitten, their resident chef, because once Smitten got a whiff of romance in the air, there would be no stopping his delusions and over the top ideas for the quiet date Cheated wanted, so he was pleasantly surprised to find that Hero could cook, and he happily agreed to do it for him, merely wishing him luck and that they find happiness together.

That did bring a tear to Cheated's eye, not that he'd ever admit it.

The one and only thing that Cheated couldn't account for was the weather.So he spent hours last night kneeling and praying to the Long Quiet or the Shifting Mound, or anyone that took pity on him, that a storm wouldn't be dropped on Cheated's head tomorrow.

He woke up to clear skies.

Cheated no longer cared if he lived with the worst luck imaginable for the rest of his life, so long as today went perfectly.

-

"Where are we going?"

"It's a secret."

Cheated giggled as he kept his hands placed firmly over Broken's eyes, carefully guiding them to their private area. Broken had been confused, but very curious, as Cheated asked to take him somewhere.

He could feel Broken's feathers tensing underneath his palms, and he leaned closer so that he could whisper,"It's okay, you're gonna like this."

Despite his words, he felt Broken freeze and tense up beneath him, feathers fluffing up and tickling his hands.Thankfully, he didn't have to dwell on it for long, as he said,"Here we are."

He stopped, and let his arms fall, hearing Broken gasp as he took in the display.

They were in the middle of an area that consisted of soft, tame grass, as if from a field, with no jagged rocks or twisting weeds in sight, surrounded by a protective wall of imposing trees.In the middle of the grass, was a tree stump, which Cheated had chopped down himself, with many splinters to show for it. He had then chopped the tree further, making logs to use as seats on either side of their tree stump table.

The scent of food wafted over to them, and Cheated's mouth salivated at the smell of the vegetables and cooked meat Hero had prepared for them.

Broken spun back around to face him, eyes wide in shock and wonder, but Cheated just grinned in anticipation, gently turning him back around by the shoulders to the table, pointing up at the sky as he said,"Wait for it."

Broken obeyed, silently looking up-just in time for a cloud to float past, and letting the light of the moon spill down directly onto the table, illuminating the whole area in moonlight.

Broken gasped, and Cheated leaned over to look at his face.He seemed shocked, but happy, and happy was what Cheated was going for right now.

"Do you like it?"Cheated asked, and once those awestruck eyes were on him, he was suddenly hit with a wave of embarrassment and anxiety.His face heated up and he started to stumble over his words."I-I really hope you like it.I-um-did this for you-to give you a good time.Is-is it okay?"

Broken stared at him for a few seconds, before looking back out at all that Cheated had prepared. He raised a hesitant hand towards his chest and said,"You did all this-for me?"

"Yeah, of course!"Cheated wrapped an arm around Broken and started to walk him over to the table."I wanted to do something nice for you."

"You didn't have to,"Broken muttered, looking down at the ground.

Cheated rolled his eyes."I didn't have to, but I wanted to."

Broken still seemed unsure as they sat down, but Cheated allowed him a few minutes to get comfortable, until he eventually saw the tension and apprehension leave his body.Broken casted a wary glance out in the distance, and Cheated casually waved a hand in the air and said,"Oh, don't worry, we're not in any danger."

That wary look was then directed at Cheated, who couldn't help but think it looked cute."How do you know?"

"I had Hunted scout this place out for me.There's not a monster in sight, and I've got Hunted guarding the perimeter tonight, just in case."

"Really?"Broken gave him a surprised look, then glanced around them, pinning his eyes on a random spot of the dark trees, and Cheated chuckled as Broken lifted a hand and waved into the distance, seemingly saying hello to Hunted. Cheated had no idea where Hunted was right, only that he hadn't needed much convincing to guard them tonight, and Cheated weirdly felt way more safe and secure with Hunted around, because that was one less thing that could go wrong.

"You've-"Broken said,a suspicious tone in his voice as he took in all of Cheated's work,"put a lot of thought into this.Why?"

Cheated gave him a soft smile, reaching over and placing a hand atop of his, his thumb brushing knuckles.Broken froze, and stared down at their hands, feathers shooting up in surprise.Cheated's voice was surprisingly calm as he said,"I just wanted to make sure you had a good time tonight."

Broken let a breath out, and Cheated hoped he hadn't done anything wrong yet, but the feeling of Broken's full attention on him was beginning to make the butterflies in his stomach turn into a raging stampede, so he quickly took his hand back, missing the disappointment on Broken's face, and motioned down at his food."Let's dig in, yeah?"

-

Dinner was great.

But spending a whole evening with Broken was even better.

The longer the night went on, the more fond and utterly in love Cheated was becoming with Broken. He loved the light yet strong tone he held in his voice, and the way his eyes shone and gave away everything he was feeling.He loved catching the moments where Broken would subconsciously trace invisible doodles with his finger along the tree stump table, and Cheated just longed to see what they could be like.

But eventually, their food had been eaten, the conversation was beginning to dim from energy, and Cheated knew that his moment had come.

He took a shaky breath in, briefly wondering if Paranoid's chant would work for him right now, and stared down as he softly took Broken's hands within his, prompting Broken to slowly stop what he was saying.

Cheated glanced up at him, his cheeks feeling on fire, as he took in Broken's soft confusion."Broken," Cheated began, desperately trying to keep his voice steady and calm and to not fuck this up.

"I really hope I made you happy tonight,"he said, and Broken stiffly nodded."Yeah, of course you did. I'm always happy when I'm with you."The words sent an addicting warmth through his bones, and he had to use all his control to stop his smile from spreading to one of those stupid and lovey dovey ones that Smitten was known to wear.

"That's such a relief to hear,"he said, squeezing their hands once for reassurance,"because there's something I've really wanted to tell you for awhile."

"What?"Broken quietly said, and Cheated found it easier to speak when he was just staring down at their hands, reminding him of the reason he was doing all this.

"Broken, I think you're one of the most beautiful and inspiring people I know.You're so empathetic and strong, whether you realise it or not.You've been through so much, but you're still here, fighting and proving your demons wrong-that you are worthy of love and happiness, and I'm so fucking honored to be a part of your life and to watch you slowly believe that, because I've always thought that way about you.I've always-cared about you, but for awhile, my feelings for you have grown stronger."

He gulped."Broken-I'm in love with you, and I wanted to show you that I can treat you the way you deserve to be treated-with nothing less than love and respect and complete care.So, I just wanted to tell you all this, because I'll go crazy if I don't tell you how you make me feel just by being around your beautiful self-and if you feel the same way, maybe we can-"

But Cheated never got the chance to finish his confession, as Broken gripped his face and pulled him into a passionate kiss.

He was stunned, but quickly melted into the kiss, not willing to turn down a golden opportunity like this.

God, even kissing Broken felt warm. But not in an intense, mind spinning way. No, this warmth felt safe, it felt like nothing but the two of them mattered in this moment, and all Cheated had to focus on was Broken.It felt happy.It felt right.

Home.The kiss felt like home.

Then suddenly, Broken pulled them apart, panting with a worried and frantic look on his face.Cheated could do nothing but stare in amazement as Broken began to ramble,"Sorry!Sorry!I-I didn't mean to ruin your moment!"Broken started to absent-mindedly grip his hands for comfort, whether he was aware of it or not, but Cheated still squeezed them to calm the other down.

Broken was looking everywhere that wasn't Cheated."I just-I just-I heard what you were saying, and with what you did tonight, I had a feeling that you were going to-and-and-"

"Broken,"Cheated calmly said, stopping the other in his panic.Broken looked up in surprise, and Cheated felt his hands bring gripped tightly, as he watched Broken take a deep and slow breath in. Cheated smiled at the now more relaxed state Broken was in.

Broken continued, much more calm this time,"I knew what you were going to say-and I felt like I needed to be the one to bridge that gap.I-I can't explain it, I'm sorry."

"Hey, it's okay,"Cheated said, tugging on their hands to get Broken's attention."I honestly didn't mind it-it was actually really nice."Broken giggled, and Cheated grinned wider at the sound."But that just means that I'm still waiting."

Broken looked up at him in confusion."Waiting?For what?"Cheated gave him a playful grin."For you to ask me out."Broken was surprised for a second, his wings flapping once in shock, before he smiled bashfully and asked,"Cheated, I'm in love with you. Do you want to be my partner?"

Cheated smiled so hard that it hurt, but he didn't care.He was the luckiest bastard in this shitty world."I would love to be your partner, Broken.I love you."

Then they both leaned in for another kiss, and Cheated's life was now perfect.

[ships-n-bats]

I’ve been mulling over all my thoughts on the topic for a while now, trying to type out all my thoughts and feelings on Inspekta and Capochin’s whole dynamic. Trying to come to an understanding of exactly why their dynamic bothered me so much and why I’m not fond of the Inspek//chin pairing in a romantic sense. And I think I’ve finally managed to put it all into a comprehensive set of words that isn’t just complete gibberish or the ramblings of some random hater.

So, before getting into the discussion, I should first preference this by stating that I've never been into the whole "toxic ship" dynamic fandoms seem to have latched onto in recent years. Not because of any “problematic” reasonings or anything like that. My main issue with toxic pairings isn’t whether or not their fictional situations are ethical or healthy when applied to real world similar situations. No, it has more to do with whether or not their relationship is beneficial and equally mutualistic for both parties involved. Specifically, I look for whether or not both characters are happy in the relationship they’re in and whether their overall relationship actually makes both feel fulfilled.

Most toxic pairings don’t fit this bill, typically relying on the core idea that one or both characters are unhappy in some way and will never become fully happy or fulfilled in the relationship (or, in some cases, one or both characters just settle because breaking up or cutting out each other seems like the “harder” choice, so they go for one that’s perceived as the “easier” choice). And while not all toxic pairings are outright abusive, they typically are unhealthy in some way, shape, or form and derive intrigue from shippers by utilizing certain “taboo” things to “spice up the dynamic.” All of which I completely understand and respect, even if it’s not my own personal cup of tea.

In the specific case of Inspek//chin, I find their overall dynamic to be intriguing, tragic, and just a tad bit sadistically funny. Platonically, I have no issue with their relationship and feel it opens the door to many possibilities for current and future fanworks. But to see their relationship become more romantic just leaves me feeling more dread, frustration, and even slight anger. Because Capochin and Inspekta’s relationship doesn’t feel fulfilling or beneficial from either side. If anything, canon has shown just how one-sided and self-destructive this pairing really was, specifically on Capochin’s end.

Capochin’s love towards Inspekta was an obsessive and passionate type of love. The kind of love that consumes and plants itself deep inside you. The kind where it wraps tightly around one’s heart, like a weed or vine, squeezing and tightening until nothing else in life matters except for that one single object of affection. And normally, I'm all for this brand of obsessive love in romance. I love it when two characters are so deeply loyal and absolutely devoted to each other that they become the most important thing in each other’s lives. That they become irreplaceable to the other as some form of soulmates.

But… The tragic thing with Capochin’s devotion was that it really was a one-sided affair that left him feeling more empty than fulfilled, both literally and figuratively.

He was literally carving out pieces of himself in a desperate attempt to gain acceptance and to “fit in” to his role. Slowly chipping away, bit by bit, just to feed a greedy, bottomless pit of a god who was never going to be satisfied with what Capochin was giving anyways.

It was never going to be enough, because Inspekta wanted to be appraised and remembered by everyone, not just by his most devoted follower. It was a fruitless endeavor from the get-go, where neither would have been happy just relying on the other.

And while there is debate over whether or not the burgers were actually made from Capochin’s own flesh, or if it really was just one big, artsy metaphor, the meaning behind it still remains the same. That the takeaway is supposed to be that Capochin is hurting himself repeatedly in an attempt to get recognition from his god who gave him purpose, even if that means erasing parts of yourself until you've stripped away your own identity almost entirely.

(Although, personally, I would argue that the symbolic route packs more of a punch than the cannibalism one, since I like to view the "pieces" he’s removing as direct parts of his personality and identity, rather than just his literal meat and flesh. Yeah, it'd be more fucked up if it was literal, but it's more tragic and universally relatable to me to think he'd destroy himself on a mental level rather than a physical level. More layers to consider with losing yourself as a person.)

But what makes this even worse is that Inspekta never seemed to actually reciprocate or return Capochin's same level of devotion back.

Just reading the dialogue Capochin says before, during, and after his fight reveals that the two really weren't on the same page with their end goals. Capochin talks as if the two were going to become partners and be together, like a couple would... He really believed he was special to Inspekta...

"I'll rule da humans while you rule da skies!"

"Even in da apocalypse… I'M da only one Inspekta will protect!"

"I thought that if I did what he told me, I could rule by his side!"

There's no mutualism or give-and-take to their dynamic. Capochin was doing all the giving and never took, while all Inspekta did was take and take and take. We see that Capochin has romantic feelings for Inspekta but denies it to others and himself. Meanwhile, we aren't really given a clear indication of whether Inspekta has romantic feelings for Cappy, outside of a few lines of dialogue that shows he somewhat cares for him on some level (says he needs to take a nap and may have too much responsibility leading the other Bizzyboys).

Godpoke has to convince him that Inspekta doesn't really care for him and that his ultimate goal only involved himself as the sole god. That his boss was using him and taking advantage of his devotion to further his plan. Effectively, showing that Capochin wasn't important enough to Inspekta. His devotion wasn't enough. He wasn't enough.

To me, the pairing could have been salvageable had Inspekta actually planned to include Capochin by his side in his rule, as an equal. Had it been made clear that Inspekta did reciprocate Capochin's feelings and was just as devoted to him in return. That the relationship was equally obsessive and equally devoted.

Instead, it all feels hopelessly and worthlessly unrequited.

Neither seem to actually be gaining anything from the relationship in any significant way. And neither's life is improved or fulfilled by having the other be a part of it. Both desire similar things, to feel like they belong, to gain praise and attention, to be recognized for their efforts, but neither were really getting that from the other and both were self-destructing in their attempts to gain it. Inspekta didn't bring out the best in Capochin, he brought out the worst, and vice versa.

And Capochin finally realizes this fact at the end. That all that praise he was receiving from Inspekta were empty and didn't really mean anything. They lost their meaning once it was revealed that Inspekta only did so to gain loyalty so he'd get attention and praise.

“I supported him! Cause he made me feel like I’M IMPORTANT! …but I was never as important as him. Always praised by Inspekta but never respected.”

Which does also bring up the concern over exactly how long this whole Inspekta using and manipulating Capochin has been going on for. We do know that Capochin has known Inspekta for the longest and was his first and most devoted follower back when the Bizzyboys first formed. We also know that back when Inspekta was still Hector, he was shown to care for people and was a bit of a people pleaser (i.e. obsessed with being liked and seen as useful), and that it’s noted he’s changed during the events of the game. But that still doesn’t completely confirm whether or not Hector/Inspekta has been manipulating Capochin from the very beginning or not. I’m just left wondering how deep this manipulation goes in their dynamic.

Were these two ever really friends, let alone equals, or was it just all business on Hector's end?

Did Hector ever really, truly care for Capochin as a person, or as a devote follower?

I think the best way to put it is like this: Even if Hector and Capochin did manage to make amends and become better people, I can't really see them forming a long lasting, mutually beneficial romantic relationship. I don't see what these two have to offer each other specifically in a relationship. I can't see how these two dating would improve each other's lives after the events of the game. I don't see how the two are "good for each other" as it were.

It doesn’t help that both struggle to understand themselves as people after having wasted literal years emotionally rotting and losing themselves as individuals. I don’t think either really know who they are, what with Capochin removing parts of himself for Inspekta and Hector at the end even admitting he needs to work on himself because he felt lost and needed to make amends with others and himself. Having them be in a romantic relationship would only hinder any future growth they both need because they’d just continue with what they’ve been doing for years without changing or growing for the better (probably falsely believing they’re both finally getting what they wanted without realizing it’s not what they both need). They’d just fall back onto past bad habits and rot even further. i.e. They’d end up just settling into an unfulfilling, self-indulgent relationship.

*Not to mention that this type of outcome to their relationship would imply that cutting out toxic people from your life isn’t an option. And that you should just forgive the person who manipulated and used you for years, essentially wasting all that time you won’t ever get back. And that you should just date that very toxic person, and ignore all the red flags. Not saying Capochin should or must completely cut out Hector from his life, just that the implications with them becoming that fandom toxic old man yaoi pair comes with even more consequences the two probably should hold off on for now.*

Anyways, in conclusion, at the end of the day, Yugsy did say that fans could play dolls with the characters however they liked. That it's all for fun, so I respect how other fans choose to play with Inspekta/Hector and Capochin. But for me, personally, I just can't convince myself to come around to the two of them as anything other than strained friends with a history shared between them.

[mandalhoerian]

poison you literally said everything AHHHH !! it made me want to yap a little about this fish 😭

1- i want to say that with rafayel you get the ideal version of a man you can play with together with none of the real life downsides, which is immaturity & weaponized incompetence & irritating childishness! it's a healing factor honestly to be able to have fun & be silly together without having to hold back, he eggs you on and encourages you to come be silly with him and that it's okay to be like that. it's "let's unlearn shame together" meme LMFAO and there's a sense of safety bc it doesn't go too far since rafayel knows boundaries.

2- gap moe. he's only like this (whiny, bratty, entitled, flirty) with you, by the way. rafayel unexpectedly is the "i hate everyone but you" guy. he's literally colder than sylus to others, even with fellow lemurians he's distant (not unkind). like, outside of you, that's a completely different man. he's SCARY. i can't emphasize how his "waiter" at the nest made my stomach DROP. you have privileges with him. it's not that he's pretending to be a certain way with you, it's that only you get this loverboy side of him. one could say he's "tailored" this personality for you so you wouldn't be threatened by him or get scared/won't see the "real" him, but in my opinion it's become real the more he spent time with you/felt safe around you. much to be said on this topic but i digress. i am in love with shady man who becomes a clown with you trope (see: 707 from mysme being my obsession back then)

2.5- like, he's on a killing spree of ever researchers who were involved with experimentation and killings of lemurians over the years. he also may or may not have been held captive in the past like that. WE TEND TO FORGET THAT PART OF HIM..... dude infested his painting with metaflux so it would 1) make raymond hallucinate and deteriorate 2) attract wanderers that would kill him. he then went to his funeral and left flowers for the poor lemurian whose skeleton was being displayed as an art piece in his house. and also killed someone with his song. god knows what else he did. sylus does it outright but this man is an assassin. he's SCA-RY. it's such a whiplash to see him go "glub glub" to my face knowing all this 😭

3- the part about him being perfect for bi girls is SO REAL AGH not only is his design very unabashedly delicate (like, the tattoos, accessories and clothes of god of the tides as well) and he falls under the "pretty/beautiful man" umbrella, but the lemurian merfolk concept in itself is so romantic. he's the farthest thing from traditional masculinity. you could go shopping with this man, he would personally dress you up (fashion!) & help you be your best self, hell he'd do color analysis of you, he could do your makeup. he'd be into gossip and drama. and there'd be no insecurity involved. he's very safe for people like me who are in the skittles squad, into androgyny & are afraid of men in general.

4- lemurian bond. you can order him around. he won't ever do anything you don't want, and there's something very reassuring about that LMFAO. also, he can lowkey sense what you want and think through this bond. ever wanted a man to telepathically just know without saying anything? this is him. lemurians are partner-oriented. it's unbelievable when you think about it, but yeah. mating for life. live for love, die for love. he's a literal fairytale lover. insane concept, to be honest. back when he was a god mc wanted something in return for her worship and he literally went "TAKE MY HEART" and doomed his people -- insane.

5- in terms of "versions" of a character, he really takes the cake. imo, other love interests show the same character traits they have in their myths and they don't go through a lot of *core* changes like rafayel does. sea god rafayel, abysswalker rafayel and current rafayel are three different people. sea god is at times cruel, intimidating, awkward, and serious with potential to be sensitive. abysswalker is mysterious, a yearner and alluring. both outright show competence and power current rafayel is hiding away from sight. rafayel as a character is very versatile, and has gone through a lot of development and change. he has so much range.

6- softcore stalker... we tend to forget he i kinda love a man who's a little crooked in the head and is obsessed with me.

ANYWAY IM STOPPING. ENOUGH I KNOW. SORRY

genuine question because youre one of my favorite writers, you seem to really have a thorough grasp of the characters: what do you see in rafayel that makes him appealing? i try to get past his entitled brattiness because i really want to enjoy all of the guys, but i cant see anything else. please help me understand 🥲

Oh boy, baby, darling, sweetheart, you opened a can of worms. Come do a little bit of character analysis with me~

About Rafayel:

Rafayel is a brat, yes. But that means he wears his heart on his sleeve, outright when he needs your attention or sulking when something is bothering him or faking a dramatic accident to get your attention. There's no silent guessing or fake "I'm fine's," just his overdramatic, raw emotion that's easy to read. He's has anxious attachment stemming from hundreds of years of betrayal and loss.

Rafayel is a romantic, a yearner. And yes, while I also agree his attitude was annoying at first I am very unfortunately into people who get on my nerves, especially when they are flirty and funny as well. I folded during his hospital scene.

Entitled? He is a god. He has been trying and failing to save his entire civilization for over 800 years and still simply can't because he refuses to hurt the one he loves. While all the boys have been through pain there's something about Rafayel's story that really gets me. I think it’s because if I— as mc— knew the sacrifice he was making, I would give myself up. So to have someone selfish enough to place me first is heartbreaking, devoted, and cruel. 

Also there are plenty of scenes where Rafayel is serious, especially if you read between the lines. The brattiness and sass is a playful cover to someone who's been through pain and understands it. Someone who chooses to still see joy and happiness in his life while fully understanding how cruel the world is.

Simply, I'm a sucker for doomed character archetypes. There is no version of Rafayel's and mc's story where they both end happy. Millions of people will die or if mc kills herself Rafayel will live forever as a husk of his former self. Using a sassy, filirty, bratty attitude to cover up such a genuinely depressing story is so juicy to me.

About Me:

I'm a Zayne irl. Work is honestly the most important thing to me outside my family, I'm devoted to my hobbies and leadership positions, and I have a close circle of friends I would do anything for.

I'm the eldest sibling, the guard dog, the de-facto leader for almost everything. I'm the person who had to grow up fast, to parent my immigrant parents at times, who never made space for love, and who is by default independant and comfortable with it.

I prefer to listen-- I love my yapper friends. Don't get me wrong I can talk for hours about anything, but day to day I tend to get exhausted talking after a while so I surround myself with people who can do the easy talking for me.

My irl partner is a mix between Rafayel and Sylus I'd say. He's the one who pulls me out of my work spirals by nagging me until I give in, someone I'm comfortable yapping about my current hyperfixations too, someone who my inner child can come out to. But I also enjoy being a caregiver, that's always been my role and I relish in it, I like being relied upon as much as I appreciate having someone in my life that lets me take a step back. The only part that's Sylus is how his love language is bullying me and his vibe/looks lmao, but usually I am more into raf-stereotypical pretty boys.

So, overall, the appeal of Rafayel to those that choose him:

Rafayel is for the eldest daughters who needs their inner child to be free, who needs a little bit of ridiculousness and impulsiveness in their lives.

Rafayel is for those who never got praised for their effort or strength, for those who success was the only option, who had to be perfect, reliable and serious all the time. He makes it so clear how much simply being with you means to him, constantly complimenting, flirting, and reassuring you just how much he needs you. Showing you how obsessed with you he is.

Rafayel is for those who didn't think love had a place in their lives due to shit family or life circumstances. He proves time and time again that you're the only one he loves. Even though he's lived forever, you were worth the wait and that he would wait again for you, no matter how long it takes. He proves you can be loved, and that it comes easy.

Rafayel is for those who always placed others first. He's more than willing to show you again and again you will always be first in his mind. He needs you more than he does water. Sure, you can take care of him, but he wants to be with you and take care of you, too.

Rafayel is for those who need someone else to drag them out of work/school/spiralling even when they don't want to admit it, bringing in laughter, color, and a little bit of dramatics.

Rafayel is for creators who dedicate themselves to their craft, who are scared of losing this "spark," who want to get better but constantly feel that what they create isn't enough or must be more. 

Rafayel is for hopeless romantics, those that go out of their way to surprise their friends during their birthdays, those who plan platonic dates for those they care about, those who put out so much love into the world and suddenly break when they get that love back.

Rafayel is for those used to having little siblings or those to take care of in our lives. Only while Rafayel relishes in the attention, he's also ready to give it back five-fold.

Rafayel is a switch for switch (brat for brat) lmao. He's for those who like to start on top, teasing and pushing his buttons to get all those cute reactions out of him, just until he breaks. Then he can take control and finish us up. We love vocal men.

Maybe projecting, but Rafayel is the perfect bi-girl's boyfriend. He's a classic pretty boy, unafraid to be in touch with his feminine side, a little dramatic, a little artsy. But he's also super romantic, sensitive, loving, and intense. And gosh, who could say no to those big puppy eyes?

I could probably continue to talk about Rafayel for hours, but ya, hopefully this helps answer why I and others love this man. Just continue on with the main story and read between the lines with his dialogue and I'm sure you'll pick up on it too~

[umblrspectrum]

happy solvermas

[dykedvonte]

Can you talk about trans!Curly a little bit more? I'm curios if you have any headcanons and the like

-💀

It's just such a thing in my mind because it adds a truthful sadness and differing aspect to mouthwashing.

If Curly was trans it adds the horror of the horribly selfish thought he could have easily been in Anya's situation. It could've been him but it wasn't and he so conflicted on the pit it put in his stomach that brings and the shameful relief it wasn't. In this scenario he is friends with Jimmy for a long time still. Jimmy likely knew him pretransition. Maybe he gave Curly weird looks then, maybe they never stopped after, maybe they seemed meaner. They are guys now, bros, both of them are. He doesn't really have to worry what those looks mean anymore, Jimmy just has that face with him sometimes. It's recontextualizing a lot of things for him that he was in denial about or too ashamed to admit. How naive he was being and how he let that get another person hurt.

Specifically with Anya, it's he knows the dread and fear she's feeling. He can understand it because he had to live with it for a good portion of his life, he knows it cause he still does, just in a slightly different way. It makes him think of all the times he's been alone with Jimmy, all the times he's been way more drunk off his ass and not remember the night, Jimmy was always with him the next day. Makes him think of the comments he would laugh off both because that's what guys do but because that part of being a girl says to laugh so Jimmy doesn't do something. It's the selfish realization that he was never safe and he's uncertain now too. Mad at himself for forgeting that feeling, espcially since for a long time he would've been considered the only woman on a crew (with all that implies) for a long time.

He should've taken those blinders off, step back into that position for just a moment and it's so much more painful that Anya likely came to him because he should've gotten it. Those thoughts don't leave his mind after the crash when he's in an even more vulnerable position than she was...

[al-luviec]

juvie buddies

[sir-fenris]

Couldn't read much of anything today, but this alone fed me with all whumperflies I needed to be happy.

Commentary time :D (a bit shorter, tho :(, had little time)

Kitty stepped forwardly slightly. It did something to him then, to hear her slip back into sweetness. The words had the same gentle tone that she’d used for him when they’d first dredged him up out of the water. When he was scared.

Kitty caretaking mode <333 🥰

It was mostly adrenaline that moved him then;  his heart was beating too quickly for him to make sense of it. But in the next second, he’d zeroed in on the psychic.

Ooohh, I wondered what would make him step in. It feels so organic and smooth :DDD

Protective Delta :D 🥰

The pulse knocked her back into the wall. It didn’t hurt — he knew exactly how to make it hurt and he didn’t — but it had shocked her. He caught her wrist, pinning it there. The hands were conduits. Though it was still possible to use their powers without moving an inch, the immobility gave the impression of helplessness. That’d be enough for now.

✨️YEESS✨️ Love seeing Delta use his powers >ᴗ<

But...

His coldness and precision on how to do this is so... wow.

“You do not use your powers without permission.” His voice was low, more venomous than he meant it to be. “That is the first thing they teach you and there is no excuse for having forgotten it.”

OH MY GOD Delta using whumper mode I'm dying this is so cool

Delta is not a whumper <3, but he clocks the exact words so easily (of course, he's heard them his entire life). Love Delta being venomous :D, but poor girl :(

She shrank away from that. They were sensitive to scolding — every single one of them.

Whumperflies made me giggle.

“Listen to me. We are leaving. It doesn’t matter if you want to or not. You’re not going to fight them. And you’re going to do as they ask. Do you understand?”

I don't even know anymore if this is whumperflies, shock or fangirling. But whatever it is, I love it.

Delta speaking like Martino 😞 (🥰)

It was an acceptable surrender. He released her wrist, but not before wrenching it in the same direction that the others were waiting. He pointed.

“Go.”

AAAAAAAAJDJDJDJjfnfmgngR

There were little indentations in her skin where his claws had been.

DELTAAAAA 😨

He’d cowed her. Delta sat there for a second, alight in the afterglow of cruelty. It hadn’t felt good, but alarmingly enough, it had felt natural. Maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d learned from the best, after all. 

The thought made him sick.

He really did learn from the "best", makes sense he knows the words, the tone to use, the exact way to get another whumpee to do as needed.

But fuck, it's still incredible that he fills that role so naturally. Makes sense too that he feels sick from it.

“She’ll be fine,” he exhaled. “Believe me, she’s more than used to it.”

“They really talked to you like that?” Kitty frowned.

Ungrateful. Disrespectful. Brat. Don’t you ever-

Hey. HEY. Not fair with my heart.

It wasn’t sinking in all the way. He didn’t sigh, even though he wanted to. He couldn’t believe how patient Kitty and Apollo had been with him in those early days. He’d never be grateful enough. He’d never be good like them, not really. All he could do was try.

Try as they might not to, mentee caretakers will very often compare themselves to mentor caretakers. You want to be as good as them, but each person does the caretaking differently.

Things could very easily have gone really badly if Delta had not done as he had done.

And the patience necessary to be as Kitty and Apollo is a really hard work. It's an ability that needs to be fed on daily, even when you're naturally empathetic and kind.

“Thank you for being kind to me,” he said softly. It sounded almost childlike now. But it was far from the first time he’d said it. “Even when I was being difficult. You were always nice.”

“You were never difficult!” Kitty gasped. “What are you talking about? You’re my favorite.”

That alone would’ve been enough to make him cry last year. Even now, he got close.

<33333

-

I'm really, really tired, so words are not wording for me right now XD, hope I expressed myself well with the pictures.

About the color bugging, I get you :'), Tumblr is so annoying with formatting sometimes. Usually, when I do something like that, I do one line at a time and go saving each time, so if it bugs, I can fix it easily without worrying about other lines bugging. But it's still an annoyance, I know. It's fine, it's just a detail <3

Loved the chapter, really really did <333 it was what I needed to feel a little better before sleeping. Thank you for posting it for us :D

Rubies - Encounter

the thing i just said i would write >:)

set later into rubies

(Content: living weapon whumpee, whumpee-turned-caretaker?, bad caretaker, multiple whumpees, verbal abuse, conditioning, blood, past trauma, comfort)

LEVON: I wish you’d told me you were tagging along! I would have given you a heads-up. DELTA: thats okay DELTA: it doesnt really bother me DELTA: its nothing i havent seen before LEVON: Yes I’m sure. LEVON: Nevertheless I thought you would appreciate the warning. DELTA: eh

LEVON: I notice this is becoming a bit of a pet project of yours. LEVON: I would have passed more information along to you if I’d known you were interested. In fact I considered doing so in the beginning. LEVON: I was worried you would feel tokenized by it. LEVON: Also to be perfectly honest with you I would prefer that you stay out of imperial territory. DELTA: i think i actually would have felt a bit tokenized by it in the beginning tbh that was probably a good call DELTA: its different if im doing it on my own time DELTA: im sorry i hope you dont think im ignoring your orders by coming here LEVON: They weren’t formal orders. DELTA: i know but still i dont want to come off as disrespectful for it DELTA: i do value your advice i dont mean to blow you off LEVON: Delta, it’s fine. DELTA: okay cool LEVON: It’s going well, then? DELTA: yeah there was only one of them and no one was expecting her to be here clearly DELTA: im not with her right now though im with kitty we are in the server room LEVON: Okay. I’m getting word that there are a few patrollers already orbiting close by, so I’d suggest you wrap it up quick. DELTA: yeah we are finishing up now LEVON: Be careful. DELTA: yessir LEVON: Goodbye. DELTA: bye captain

Kitty looped up another loose cable, one more fire hazard. Delta slipped the phone back into the pocket of his pants. His other hand extended to her to help her up to her feet.

From below, another loud crash.

“Sounds like it’s working.” Kitty’s eyes lit up.

They walk down the bloodstained steps. Most of the place had already been cleared out by the time they arrived. The two of them are almost never at any active sight. Third wave, maybe second wave, if anything. Kitty was IT. Delta did a little bit of everything now, but was too valuable as a psychic to ever endanger with capture.

He was only the second psychic to enter the manor. The first was downstairs, doing everything she could to destroy what was around her. As they descended back to the first floor, they saw the mess she had made of things.

“Get away,” she said, “Get away. Get away.”

The silver collar glistened around her neck. The same light shone just by her eyes, reflected from the tears that were forming there.

Infantry was the one to deal with her — they were being surprisingly gentle about it.

“Easy. Easy, I know you’re scared,” a sniper of all people promised her, both hands raised in a placating surrender. “Let’s all slow down. We won’t hurt you.”

“No!” she shouted back. She was crying in earnest now. 

“We’re going to get you help, okay? But we need to go now.”

“I don’t want to go! I can’t!” 

In that exact instant, Delta noticed that her collar was broken in places. It was malfunctioning. Her powers were slipping through the cracks.

“Get away from me!” Her voice was shrill, pitched with panic. “Stay back or I’ll - I’ll-“

As she said it, a little halo of crystals was forming in a blaze right by her head. It was a crown of glass. In the space above her, the shards appeared out of thin air.

Kitty stepped forwardly slightly. It did something to him then, to hear her slip back into sweetness. The words had the same gentle tone that she’d used for him when they’d first dredged him up out of the water. When he was scared.

“It’s okay,” she promised. “You’re safe. No one is going to hurt you. We want to help, okay? Just wanna help.”

“Leave me alone!” the girl yelled back. In the same instant, her right hand cut an arc through the air.

The glass flew like shrapnel. They were small pieces, but hard and razor sharp. She managed to pierce quite a few of them. But what Delta saw most precisely was the shard that flew only inches from Kitty’s face. Just barely missing her.

It was mostly adrenaline that moved him then;  his heart was beating too quickly for him to make sense of it. But in the next second, he’d zeroed in on the psychic.

The pulse knocked her back into the wall. It didn’t hurt — he knew exactly how to make it hurt and he didn’t — but it had shocked her. He caught her wrist, pinning it there. The hands were conduits. Though it was still possible to use their powers without moving an inch, the immobility gave the impression of helplessness. That’d be enough for now.

“Stop.”

She went still, but there was tension rigged in every inch of her body.

“You do not use your powers without permission.” His voice was low, more venomous than he meant it to be. “That is the first thing they teach you and there is no excuse for having forgotten it.”

She shrank away from that. They were sensitive to scolding — every single one of them.

“Sorry,” she whispered. She flexed her fingers where they were held. Little shards of glass were still raining softly from the ceiling.

“Listen to me. We are leaving. It doesn’t matter if you want to or not. You’re not going to fight them. And you’re going to do as they ask. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You do? You’re going to behave yourself? Because you can just as easily leave here in chains if you don’t.”

“Yes, sir,” she swallowed. She refused to look at him.

It was an acceptable surrender. He released her wrist, but not before wrenching it in the same direction that the others were waiting. He pointed.

“Go.”

She went obediently. One of the medics hovered their hands by her shoulder, not quite touching, but guiding her over to the exit.

There were little indentations in her skin where his claws had been.

He’d cowed her. Delta sat there for a second, alight in the afterglow of cruelty. It hadn’t felt good, but alarmingly enough, it had felt natural. Maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d learned from the best, after all. 

The thought made him sick.

Kitty was staring at him. A couple of them were. He knew before he even turned around. 

Sorry you had to see that, he almost said. But that seemed a bit inadequate, all things considered. He said nothing instead. Already, he felt a blush rising to his cheeks.

He moved to her, side-stepping carefully around the littered glass. Kitty still looped her arm in through his own. She didn’t hate him for it, which would have been about the worst thing he could imagine. 

“That was kinda fucked up,” she whispered to him as soon as they’d climbed onto the carrier.

“Fucked up of me?” he asked.

“Yeah, a little fucked up of you!”

Delta nodded. He’d assumed that was what she meant.

“She’ll be fine,” he exhaled. “Believe me, she’s more than used to it.”

“They really talked to you like that?” Kitty frowned.

Ungrateful. Disrespectful. Brat. Don’t you ever-

Delta bit his lip, nodding. Used to it. He traced the skin around his collar with the tips of his fingers.

“I don’t care if she hates me,” he decided. “As long as she’s out. Of all the things she has to get over, she’ll barely remember this one.”

Something about that didn’t sit right, though. 

~

Worse than cruelty was unpredictability. He worried about playing the same games that Simon had — pulling rank one second and coddling the next. It was a mean thing to do. He thought it’d be better if he just never saw her again. The ones looking out for her now could teach her in their own time. He wouldn’t further disrupt their signals.

This resolution, once he came to it, barely lasted the length of an hour.

“Can I see her?” he peeked into the quarters where they kept her.

The girl sat idly on the edge of the bed, both hands folded in her lap just the way she’d been trained to. Her hair had come undone — and now furled into spirals at the base of her neck. She’d gone dead-eyed. That was exactly how they wanted them.

She still startled when he entered. 

“Sorry,” she said without hesitation, with no conscious effort. “I’m sorry, sir.”

He used to think he was good at apologizing, after a lifetime spent groveling for forgiveness. It had been such a difficult day when he first realized that that wasn’t what anyone wanted from him anymore.

“Easy. Hey.” He raised both hands up slightly in surrender. “Not gonna hurt you. No one’s going to hurt you. You’re okay.”

The look she gave him in return suggested she did not — could not — believe him. Fair. She was less than one day out, after all. He didn’t even bother to correct her on the honorific. If she was anything like him, it would take years to undo the habit.

Her chest rose and fell without her eyes ever leaving him, like an animal backed into a corner. He moved slowly for her sake, lowering himself until he sat cross-legged on the Persian carpet.

He thought he was good at apologies once, before he knew what they were supposed to be. By now, he was good in earnest. He’d been a fast learner all his life — and pride was something he’d never been afforded.

“I’m sorry for speaking to you like that. It won’t happen again. No one here will ever speak to you like that. I only did it because we were short on time and we wanted to get you somewhere safe. I’m sorry if I scared you.”

His hands moved nervously against his sleeves. He almost stopped them, before remembering he didn’t have to. When he looked up, she was still staring unblinking. Her jaw has loosened a bit.

No one had apologized to her in a very long time. She had no script to follow for it. So when she said something completely unrelated, it came as no real surprise:

“What are you going to do with me, sir?” 

There was something like betrayal in her voice. That hurt most of all.

“You’re like me,” she realized.

For some reason, this almost embarrassed him. In Galatea, his abilities are mostly rumors. Even the ones who knew for certain still assumed he was low-level. There were only a handful who knew the full extent of it. But for the most part, psychics recognized their own. 

“I came the same way,” he said softly. “This was a rescue. You haven’t been stolen. It’s okay if you don’t believe that right now. But you’re free. Only rule is that you can’t hurt anyone while you’re here — everyone follows that one, not just you.”

“I wouldn’t-“ she said hurriedly. “I wouldn’t, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, sir. Please.”

“It’s okay. You’re not going to be punished for it,” he said. “I’m not mad at you. No one is.”

Just scared, for a second. Scared of her, just like they’d been of him. The fear is what drove people crazy, what made them decide it was right to keep them in chains all his life. She was scared out of her mind, too. But no one ever cared about that.

“You’re safe,” he promised. “I know it doesn’t feel like it. I didn’t feel like it as first either — and I know I just made you feel unsafe. But it won’t happen again. No one will ever treat you like that again.”

“…Yes, sir,” she agreed, looking down at her own shoes. 

It wasn’t sinking in all the way. He didn’t sigh, even though he wanted to. He couldn’t believe how patient Kitty and Apollo had been with him in those early days. He’d never be grateful enough. He’d never be good like them, not really. All he could do was try.

“Tell them if you need anything,” he suggested. “It’s not a trick question. They’ll get it for you if they can. And they won’t punish you for asking.”

“Yes, sir.” She nodded.

Poor kid, he thought dimly. The thought surprised him. He’d never thought anything of it before, when he’d been in her position. It all just felt normal. The way he was meant to behave. It was only after years of living outside of it that he could see it for what it was.

He stood up wearily from his spot on the ground. She flinched a bit as he did, but he knew he shouldn’t take it personally.

“You can sleep too, by the way,” he reminded her. “You don’t need to ask permission.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said. There was actual relief in her voice when she answered that time. She’d been waiting to hear it.

~

The first thing he did after closing the door was go to find Kitty. She’d been curled up by the bay windows when he finally spotted her. He climbed onto the cushion next to her. She was peering at him from over the edge of her laptop screen.

“All good?” she purred.

“She’ll be fine.” He nodded. As fine as any of them could be. He really did think that his own cruelty towards her would only scrape the surface of all that she would have to recover from. But that wasn’t an excuse.

“Thank you for being kind to me,” he said softly. It sounded almost childlike now. But it was far from the first time he’d said it. “Even when I was being difficult. You were always nice.”

“You were never difficult!” Kitty gasped. “What are you talking about? You’re my favorite.”

That alone would’ve been enough to make him cry last year. Even now, he got close.

~~~

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@pumpkin-spice-whump @deluxewhump @fuckass1000 @fuckcapitalismasshole @defire

@micechomper @writereleaserepeat @aloafofbreadwithanxiety @floral-comet-whump @littlebookworm69

@lordcatwich @human-123-person @paperprinxe @whomeidontknowthem @chiswhumpcorner

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@jumpywhumpywriter @sir-fenris