#in fact that date is coming up soon
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onthearrow · 23 days ago
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royai royai royai come back to us please
heard, anon! I am so glad you're still thinking of me and will be back; I have not forgotten last year's nsfw royai week fic that I STILL haven't delivered--I will return to it after I finish diving through some of the other rabbit holes currently preoccupying me (legend of zelda, also did I happen to mention that i'm writing an original novel??)
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mad-hunts · 3 months ago
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i like how barton went from being like... a hippie in terms of how he viewed sex in his early twenties, then kind of abstained from it for a few years / became sexually repressed, which... definitely isn't such a good thing. BUT then he became even more of a freak (and i do mean that in the good way this time LOL) around the time he started residency because WOW is that shit stressful. though that was also unfortunately around the time when he really started to spiral as well 😬 but we don't need to talk about that ahahhh
like the way this man learned how to express his sexuality REALLY came full circle in the end considering he was like 'yeah, back in the early days that i was in college, i was a freak. but now i'm not anymore... though do you want to see me do it again anyway?' like 💀 JSJSJ if he weren't so demented, i'd almost be inclined to say good for him, y'all LMAO feeling comfortable with your sexuality and perhaps even having a bit of fun with it (though maybe too much in barton's case, because he literally weaponizes it in order to lure in his victims. BUT once again, we don't need to talk about that right now psshhh. i actually fully intend on talking about that in the tags NGL) is more often than not a good thing after all
#OF MONSTERS AND MEN: musings.#nah but although i haven't really mentioned this before... when i first developed barton he had ALWAYS been kind of sexually repressed-#because he was sort of brought up by wesley to believe that it was one of those 'taboo' topics to the point where he had to get the talk-#from winslow and i'm not gonna lie i kind of find that WILD now LMAO because i mean like i said here a big part of how barton lures-#people in to eventually become his victims is through flirting with them and going on dates with them.#so like whenever i think about it now it didn't really make sense for barton to view sex as this 'hush-hush' topic bc he quite literally-#uses his sexuality to his advantage as i said here / weaponizes it. though expressing your sexuality isn't bad in and of itself OFC#the way in which he goes about doing it personally is just. Wellll not so good for lack of better words JSJSJ because barton is-#a serial killer whom has actually been sensationalized in the news (bc y'all know how terrible the news is when it comes to this stuff)-#into being called the 'heartbreak killer' because barton manipulates people and basically says exactly what they want to hear as well-#as makes himself as physically attractive as possible to voluntarily get his victims to come with him which is. yeahhh YIKES#but i can imagine that as soon as the news found out for the first time that his victim had last been reported to be going on a date-#with someone that they latched onto that and made it into a story that lacks the seriousness that something like that should-#always be treated with TBH because although they are just characters whenever it comes to the scope of their world they aren't and-#are living people so??? it's TOTALLY wack to be exploiting people like that to get views especially in a place like gotham where-#there's already enough craziness as it is without giving a serial killer a name that basically equates the murders to 'heartbreaks'-#which are definitely not on the same level at ALL but anyhow. i'm rambling now SKSKS#this isn't to say that barton always uses his sexuality to fulfill bad objectives bc like i said it isn't bad in and of itself -#though the fact that he does says something about him as a person since it's a rather sensitive thing for a lot of people you know?#and making people feel like they're wanted? when in actuality you just?? want to kill them??? it is severely messed up so yeahhh#tw: manipulation#tw: sex mention#tw: barton just being an asshole tbh
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bonsaibudz · 4 months ago
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second date went very very well (with maybe the exception that he's starting to be a little *too* frat boy for her..) with a teeny tiny surprise below the cut that explains pic 2
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um so a little secret random genuinely unexpected hookup maybe occurred while she was out on the date.. don't look at me i didn't do anything i absolutely made all the decisions :)
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eskawrites · 1 year ago
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I was struggling to sleep and just thought about cfdau Nancy pov. How's the writing process been? Find any hurdles? Discover any new favorite moments?
Also, Tenlark continues to live rent-free in my head. I miss them ✨
your timing is a little scary because i got this ask as soon as i sat down to work on the nancy pov, and just earlier today i opened my erathia notes and wrote a lil tenlark scene for the first time in months. can you read minds rae? you have to tell me if you can 👀
anyway nancy pov is a fickle mistress as always. i love it a lot, but i don't like it as much as i want to--especially now that i'm writing the actual ronance relationship parts, because that means i'm re-reading those same parts from the cfdau, and those are some of my favorite scenes!
i'm very excited to write nancy's side of the affair though, as well as her side of the, well, everything that happens after. and i think i understand a little more about why this fic feels like it's dragging more than the cfdau ever did. which doesn't really tell me how to make it better, but it does make it easier to talk myself out of negative spirals about my work, which is always good
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finnslay · 6 months ago
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(Little ramble/vent)
From the POV of a persecutor, what the FUCK was that ATLAS!?!?
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filmnamtans · 1 year ago
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hirookouji · 2 years ago
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u can tell a lot abt a person by finding out their headcanons of kuroo n daishou's relationships in middle school, high school, n college
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r4di0h3ad · 1 month ago
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just practice
paring! bsf!jj x reader
in which! you have a date coming up and you still haven’t lost your virginity, so you go to your best friend in the hopes he will help you out and save you from embarrassment
warnings! smut. loss of virginity. oral sex (f. receiving) pnv sex. unprotected sex.
part 2
you find jj at the chateau, laying in a hammock on the porch with his shirt off and a joint between his fingers. you could smell the scent of weed before you even made it to the door and jj gave you a smile when he noticed you.
“hey, j.” you greeted, now standing in front of the bench. “you busy?”
“what’s it look like?” he took a long drag from the joint and exhaled. you couldn’t help but grin at his glazed over eyes and his genuine, high smile.
you glanced into the screen door, looking for john b, or anyone else, but couldn’t see well from the smoky haze.
“anyone home?”
he shakes his head no.
“kie and pope are working, think john b’s out with sarah.” he says. “why? you okay?” his eyes soften and you notice his look of concern.
“yeah,” you smile, “everything’s fine, just need to uh- talk to you.” you had no idea how you were gonna go through with this without making it incredibly awkward. you already felt sick to your stomach at the thought of him rejecting you and never seeing you the same way after this.
jj nods and stubs out his joint. he stands up and opens the screen door, motioning for you to enter first.
“after you.”
you smile and step inside, but you soon begin to feel ill at the fact that you were really going to ask him this. you wanted this to happen, but you were terribly nervous.
you lead him to his room and close the door behind you. he sits on the edge of the bed and you follow, sitting crisss cross, facing him.
“you sure everything’s fine?” he asks, obviously questioning the fact that you wanted to speak to him in his room, and that you were silent.
“i told you about that guy i’ve been talking to for a few weeks, yeah?” you start, not wanting to make eye contact with the boy.
“yeah.” he nods.
you try not to pick at the skin of your fingernails.
“okay, well, he asked me out.” you say. “the date’s tomorrow.”
he furrows his eyebrows in question, noticing that you sounded kind of disappointed about something that was supposed to be good.
“well that’s a good thing, right?” he scoffed. “i mean, i cant remember the last time you went on a date.”
“shut up.” you nudge him. “yeah, it’s a good thing… i like him- i think.”
“alright, well, that’s all you wanted to tell me?” he asks. “you don’t need dating advice right? because i can’t help you in that department.”
you fight a smile at his remark and shake your head no.
“okay, here’s the thing.” you sigh before you force out your next words, absolutely dreading his reaction. “i don’t know if he’ll wanna sleep with me eventually, and, well he’s kind of experienced with girls and all that, and i’m kind of…. not.” you cringe at your choice of words, already regretting coming to jj out of embarrassment. you glance at him momentarily and he seems to be studying you, waiting for you to keep talking. “what i mean is, like-“ you sighed. you knew you sounded like a complete idiot, but you didn’t want to back out now.
“you know i’m a virgin, right?” you didn’t even want to look at him after the words came out of your mouth.
he smiled a little.
“i, uh, i figured.” he scratched the back of his head awkwardly and cleared his throat.
“don’t be a dick.” you shove him once again and he chuckles, which allows you to lighten up just slightly. “i’m saying that i don’t know what i’m doing - y’know, with guys and all that. i don’t want to embarrass myself in front of him.”
“so you want… sex advice? from me?” he asks, raising his eyebrows with suspicion.
you nervously bite the inside of your cheek and your face grows hot.
“well, i thought maybe a little more hands on.” you said before you could even stop yourself. you knew you had to just come out and say it or you would’ve backed out and nothing would ever come of this situation. you searched his face for a reaction.
he looked confused, but he didn’t seem whole heartedly against the idea. the silence between you both was becoming awkward and you felt the need to explain yourself, hopefully making the situation sound less like you were coming on to him and more like a friend just asking for help.
“i mean like, because you’re a guy and all, you would know what guys like best, i guess?” you said, as you watched him cross his arms over his chest and lean against the headboard of the bed. “and i was thinking about the fact that i’m going on a date for the first time since freshman year and now there’s a very high chance that i’ll sleep with him in the coming weeks, and it just- i don’t know, the idea of losing my virginity to someone i’ve known for a month didn’t really sound good to me.” you we’re rambling at this point to try and defend your case. “i would rather do it with someone i know, and trust.”
“you want me to take your virginity?” he asked, blatantly. “that’s what you came here for?”
you nod, probably chewing a hole into your cheek now.
“if it’s too weird for you, you don’t have to do it at all, it’s okay.” you said. “you were just the only person i felt like i could ask without it being awkward.”
“no, no,” his expression softens and he shakes his head, pulling his arms from his chest and taking his back off the headboard. “i’ll do it.”
“really?” your eyes light up because you expected this to go far south.
“yeah, no big deal.” he shrugs, even though in his head he knew it was a huge deal. he was going to be your first time and if he screwed it up, there was no telling what would happen between you two. “but, this won’t change anything between us right?” he asked. “like i just don’t want it to be awkward afterwards.”
“i swear.” you said, although you didn’t entirely know if that was the truth. “you’re just helping me out, right?”
“alright.” he responds. “you, uh, you wanna do this now or..?” he clears his throat again, visibly getting nervous, but your fears seemed to be disappearing now that you knew he wasn’t against the idea.
“the sooner, the better.” you said.
jj gets up from the bed and flips the lock on the door on the off chance someone were to come home.
“just a warning though,” you start, “i’ll definitely be really bad at this compared to the other girls you’ve been with.”
“that’s all right, you gotta learn somewhere.” he says, walking back to you and stopping right in front of where you were sitting on the bed. your heart started to race as the reality of what you were about to do started setting in. he sits down next to you and you could smell salt water and weed on his skin. “i’m gonna start with kissing you, is that okay?” you searches your face for confirmation and you nod, giving him the okay. “and you’ll tell me if i’m taking things too fast or if you wanna stop, right?”
you giggle a little at his attention to the matter.
“yes jj.”
you see a very slight smile appear on his lips before he slowly leaned in and connected them with yours. he tasted like weed but in the most perfect way as he skillfully moved his lips in sync with yours. his tongue softly swiped your bottom lip at the same time his hands found their way to the sides of your face and he held you there gently. you took him touching you as a sign to occupy your own hands with his body as you brought your hands around his back, feeling his bare skin.
his kisses started leading down your chin, and further down onto your neck where he connected his lips with your skin. you shivered at the new feeling of someone kissing your neck as he went lower still, reaching your collarbone. he pulled away and tugged at the him of your shirt, asking for more access to your body and he helped you out of the fabric.
“you doin okay?” he asks.
“totally fine.”
he connects his lips to your collar again as he carefully lays you down onto your back. he fights the urge not to leave any hickeys on you, knowing you had a date tomorrow.
you scoot your body up until you’re in the middle of the bed so that he can easily get on top of you. he continues kissing your body, getting lower and lower and with each passing second, you could feel yourself getting hotter and your arousal getting stronger. his mouth reached the waistband of your jean shorts and he looked up your for permission to take them off. you nodded and he unbuttoned them before sliding them down your legs and tossing them somewhere on the floor.
jj kissed the curve of your hipbone and you mindlessly rolled your core up towards his mouth, to which you could feel him smirk against your skin at your neediness.
“i’ll get there princess.” he said against the space under your bellybutton. you practically lost your breath at his words and your cheeks flushed out of embarrassment.
he continued kissing you even lower, placing his lips over clothed core and hooking a finger underneath the hem of your bikini bottoms.
“can i take these off?” he asked.
“please.” you nod, almost sounding too desperate.
he pulls your bottoms down your legs, leaving you exposed to him. the first time anyone had seen you like this, and you were thankful it was jj and not some random boy who didn’t know the first thing about you.
“you still alright?”
“jj,” you giggle. “i’ll tell you if somethings wrong, okay?”
“just being courteous.” he joked.
he brought his hand to your now bare core and used his thumb to swipe a line from your entrance up to your clit, making you whine from just one touch. he spreads your wetness around your clit, his pants growing tighter at the sight of your arousal. as he rubs painfully slow circles, he searches your face for signs of enjoyment, but your eyes were shut tight and your lips were parted, quiet whimpers leaving your mouth.
“just relax, okay?” he said, to which you nod eagerly. you were totally not relaxed at all. in fact you were amped on adrenaline from the way he kissed you.
and then before you could register what was happening, you felt something new touching you. you opened your eyes and looked down at jj’s face in between your thighs, seeing his tongue swirling over your clit. it felt better than any time you had ever touched yourself. his eyes met yours for a second and you wondered why you never asked him to do this any sooner even though you pictured him going down on you many times before
your hands found their way to his blonde locks, your fingers tangling into his hair as you threw your head back on the pillow.
“oh my god, jj” you moaned, to which he picked up the pace a little. he gripped your thighs firmly, holding them apart, occasionally rubbing circles into your skin with his thumbs to relax you.
his lips wrapped around your clit and he sucked, making you jolt your hips up in pleasure at the new sensation. your legs were trembling under his grip and jj didn’t think he could get any harder, but he was, in fact, getting harder by the minute.
“jj,” you moaned his name, “please don’t stop!” you were pulling his hair tighter, trying not to be too loud in case anyone were to come home, but it was impossible to keep your mouth shut with the way he was eating your pussy. “feels so good” you cried.
your hips were rocking back and forth, rolling in the same rhythm as his tongue, practically riding his face. he knew you were close based on the fact that your moans were getting closer together and your legs were shaking harder. he suddenly switched the direction of his tongue, now going side to side and occasionally sucking on your clit, swallowing your juices.
your back was arched off the bed, your hands flying to the sheets for something to hold on to as your high approached in small waves. you moved one hand to cover your mouth, trying to stifle your moans, but jj immediately reached up to your arm and pulled it from your face, not stopping his movements.
“need to hear you cum” he said against your clit before harshly sucking on it.
“fuck” you moaned, his words alone almost leading you over the edge.
he snuck two fingers into your entrance and slowly moved them against the sweet spot inside you. the mixture of his mouth expertly lapping at your clit and his fingers pushing into you had you coming undone.
“fuck- don’t stop- please- don’t st-“ you couldn’t even get the last words out as you felt yourself completely lose control. you didn’t know how loud you were moaning because all of your senses had faltered as the tidal wave of ecstasy crashed over you.
he kept licking until you had fully ridden out your orgasm, and even then, he continued, his grip still tight on your legs as they trembled. you pushed his head away from the overstimulation and then lay limp, your chest rising and falling as you came down, your eyes still closed.
“need a second?” he asked, mockingly, his hands running up your torso and to your still covered breasts. he felt your nipples harden under your bikini top and he desperately wanted to get you out of it.
you wrap your arms around his back and pull him on top of you, connecting your lips with his again. he immediately kisses you back and reaches behind you to undo your top, which quickly comes off and jj’s eyes land on your breasts. he takes them both in his hands and leans over you to suck your nipple, making you shiver.
you occupy your own hands with his belt, fumbling with the clasp until it’s undone and pulling it through the loops.
he pulls himself away from your tits and starts undoing the zipper before his eyes meet yours.
“you sure you’re okay with this?” he asks.
“i wouldn’t be fully naked in front of you right now if i wasn’t.” you joke.
he gets up from the bed to take his shorts off and look around the room, presumably for a condom.
“john b’s gotta have some around here, hold on.” he says, opening up the top drawer of the dresser and rummaging through the pairs of socks and underwear.
“you don’t have to, jay.” you say, but he doesn’t listen, still looking inside the dresser for any small, silver packages. “i’m on birth control.”
he turns around cocks his head at you.
“what?” you question. “makes my periods lighter.” you shrug.
“i’m still pulling out though.” he says before he walks back to the edge of the bed and slides his boxers off, revealing his achingly hard cock. you visibly got nervous at his length, swallowing the saliva in your mouth. jj notices the redness in your face and gets into the bed, pushing hair out of your face with his fingers. “i’ll stop if it’s too much, just tell me.” you nod, anxiously and he positions himself on top of you, stroking his cock a few times before you feel his tip at your entrance. his eyes meet yours for confirmation and you give him a nod.
his cock slowly pushes into you, not even an inch as he doesn’t want to hurt you. you shut your eyes hard, preparing for it to hurt, but you feel barely any pain. he kisses your neck and pushes himself in a little farther.
“this feel okay?” he asks against your skin.
“feels good, j.” your hands find their way to his back again.
once he bottoms out, you feel a slight pressure at your cervix before he slowly starts moving, giving you time to adjust to the feeling.
you hear jj moan in your ear from the painfully slow strokes he was taking, trying to keep himself from going too fast for you. his cock rubbed against your g-spot and you kiss the area in between his collar and neck.
“i’m okay jj.” you reassure him. “faster, please.”
he picks up the pace and continues kissing your neck. your nails dig into the skin of his back.
“you feel so good” he moans. “doin’ so good for me- fuck.” he didn’t even realize what he was saying, but you enjoyed the hell out of it. his praises added to the pleasure of him inside you.
he was going fast enough now that you could hear your skin hitting against each others as your hips connected. every thrust was stroking your sweet spot and you were pretty sure you were leaving scratches on his back, but jj felt too good to even notice.
he leaned back a little so that all his weight was on his knees and his back was straight as he grabbed one of your legs for support and used his other hand to rub your clit at the same time he was fucking you. the double stimulation illicited a loud moan from you that encouraged jj to keep going, almost nearing his end.
his thrusts were getting sloppier and his breathing was heavier but he wanted to make you finish before him. your chest heaved, feeling the new sensation of him filling you up at the same time as his fingers worked on your clit. the pressure was building up and you knew you were close. you suddenly pulled him against you so that your chests were pressed against each others.
“fuck- jj” you moaned. “m’so close.”
his heavy breathing sounded like heaven to you as he started to fuck you even harder, his cock sliding perfectly in and out of you.
“sweetheart” he moaned into your neck. “m’not gonna last much longer.”
almost immediately after he said those words, you felt the band in your stomach snap as you came around his cock, squeezing and pulling him deeper inside you. you cried out his name as he fucked you through your second orgasm.
“fuck, baby-“ he pulled out of you and stroked his cock that was slick with your wetness. you watched his face contort in pleasure, his eyes barely open and his lips parted, his eyebrows furrowed. his cum shot onto your stomach and tits.
he tried not to stare too long at the mess he made of you, realizing almost as soon as he finished that this was a one time thing he may never get you like this again.
he got out of the bed and grabbed a shirt of the floor, which he cleaned you up with and tossed it.
“you okay?” he asked again.
you rolled your eyes.
“how many times are you gonna ask that?” you scoffed. “i liked it, j. don’t know how my date’s gonna top that.” you joked.
then, jj remembered that this was all practice for you to go and have sex with another guy and he suddenly felt sick. he pulled his boxers back on and picked up your articles of clothing from the floor and tossed them to you.
the truth is, you didn’t even want to go on that date anymore. not after the way jj took care of you.
“hey, jj!” a voice, john b’s, ripped through the chateau and both of your eyes widened, looking at each other with panic. “you home?”
you swiftly put your bottoms and shorts back on in under 30 seconds and shrugged yourself into your flimsy shirt while jj was putting his belt back on. you quickly exited john b’s room before he could see where you both came from and you nervously greeted him in the living room to see that sarah and kie were home as well.
“heyy, jb.” jj said, awkwardly.
“what have you two been doing all day?” john b asks.
kiara walked over to the kitchen to grab a beer and when she turned around, she noticed the marks on jj’s back. she paused in her steps.
“jj, what’s with all the scratches on your ba-“ and then she realized. her face contorted in disgust. “ewwww, are you guys fucking serious?”
your face grows hot with embarrassment and you wanted to dig a whole to die in, but john b seems barely faced as he walked past you, saying something near you.
“at least you made that boy’s dreams come true.”
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caelivir · 3 months ago
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“are ya sure yer not dating (y/n)?” osamu suddenly asks his brother during a quiet lunch between the two of them.
atsumu chokes on the grains of rice in his mouth, coughing violently and punching his chest. when he finally settles down, he throws a glare at his brother. “what the hell, ‘samu?”
“that’s not an answer.” osamu continues to press.
“we’re not!” atsumu answers, picking up a piece of chicken katsu with his chopsticks. “i don’t like them like that. they don’t like me like that. we’re just friends.”
the bright red-pink of his ears speak otherwise. you see, osamu knows his twin better than he knows himself. he knows that whatever comes out of atsumu’s mouth is a load of crap. just friends? yeah fucking right.
osamu has never seen his brother look at anyone the way he looks at you, starlight and pure adoration swirling in his irises. he acts as if your every word were an earth-shaking prophecy sent by the heavens. his honey brown eyes stare, and he smiles so gently that it makes him sick.
friends aren’t touchy in the way you guys are. you hold each other’s hand like it’s nothing. with interlocked fingers, atsumu will trace his thumb down the back of your hand for no apparent reason. when you’re bored, you’ll take atsumu’s hand into your lap and play with it, bending his fingers, comparing hand sizes, and running a featherlight touch across the expanse of his palm to see if he’ll react.
osamu notices how you never miss the opportunity to find a seat on his brother’s lap. whether there are no seats of available or ten open ones, you will always choose atsumu. and it’s not like he’s complaining about it. in fact, osamu thinks that he waits for it because atsumu would never want to miss the chance to secure his arms around your waist and whisper into your ear amidst a loud conversation.
and you can’t forget the cuddles, and the hugs that linger longer than they should, and the way you’ll cup atsumu’s face, and the way you play with his piss blond hair.
you’re the one person atsumu lets wear his jersey to his game. he ensures you get the best seat to watch him play. osamu doesn’t miss the way his twin looks at you before every serve or the way you cheer the loudest when he scores an ace.
osamu doesn’t think that someone who “doesn’t like you” would be thinking about you every time they shop. “(y/n) likes this snack”. “(y/n) would love this shirt”. “oh hey, (y/n) showed me this”. “‘samu, should i buy this for (y/n)?”.
osamu has never seen two people so madly in love before. he doesn’t know how you guys haven’t realized it yet. and he can’t keep playing along because atsumu’s katsu looks really good right now.
“right…” osamu chooses to answer, dipping his chicken into the tonkatsu sauce. “i sure hope they’re gonna have fun on that date they have today.”
his brother’s chopsticks clatter onto the table before rolling onto the floor. the sight of atsumu’s open mouth filled with rice is unsightly, and osamu has to suppress his laugh.
“they didn’t tell you?” osamu raises an eyebrow.
“no?!” atsumu suddenly stands, slamming his palms into the table.
“yeah, i think they’re gonna leave soon.” osamu lies easily. there is no date. but of course, does ‘tsumu really need to know that?
the blond twin practically bolts away from the dining table and out of the house. when the door slams shut, osamu grins to himself, reaching for the unfinished plate in front of him.
“he can thank me later.”
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atsumu brainrot never ends. something short and sweet bc school is kicking my ass.
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meiieiri · 7 months ago
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when do we get to see megumi in your new series ^3^
𝐛𝐞𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐤𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐬 ! [toji fushiguro]
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synopsis: “you really are your mother’s son,” toji grumbles to megumi as the little brat yet again refuses another kiss from him.
pairing: toji fushiguro x f!reader | art: @/amulin67 on twt/ig | hidden inventory: the lost tapes series masterlist
warnings: n/a | a/n: finally welcoming megumi to this series, yay! 💓💞
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“I’m just gonna go nap for a bit. Promise me you’ll wake me up if something happens. But either way, his bottle is over there, just heat it up when he gets hungry and you know where his diapers are—“
You are interrupted by a sweet kiss that still manages to catch you off guard ‘till this day.
“I wasn’t done, you know.” You place your hands on your hips, shooting him a warning glance. “And don’t you go tossing him too high. Need I remind you, our apartment has a literal ceiling fan—“
“—You worry too much,” Toji cuts you off again with another kiss. “Not gonna lie though, seeing you all worked up like that is kinda turning me on.”
“You’re horrible,” you conclude. Honestly, at this point, almost anything and everything you do can be classified as a thirst trap for Toji. You blush when Toji inches closer, his hips pressed against yours, a smirk plastered on his face when he sneakily squeezes your ass causing you to yelp. “Ah! Toji!” you swat his hand away, burying your blushing face in his chest.
Chuckling at you, he plants a soft kiss on your temple as he pulls away. “Alright, mama, go get some rest. I’ll hold down the fort.”
“Thank you.”
No one ever told you that motherhood would be so stressful. Which is why you’re so blessed to have a supportive husband who may have started out a little awkward with caring for your newborn son but gradually became a natural with this whole fatherhood business as time went by. And that’s mostly because when Megumi arrived in this world at half past two in the afternoon of December 22 with nothing more but a small hiccup as he slipped into his papa’s waiting arms, Toji fell in love. And you don’t pretend to not know why. Because whenever you look at Megumi, your heart always just seems to melt at his pudgy rose-colored cheeks and his deep expressive green eyes that fill up with tears regardless if he’s crying or being overcome by a laughing fit whenever you pepper his tiny face with kisses.
Speaking of kisses, today’s latest fiasco is centered exactly on that: kisses.
You see, you have this habit that goes way back to when you and Toji first started dating. Toji remembers it well, you have certain moods when it comes to kisses. Sometimes, you’re the one initiating it which mostly results in Toji becoming an incoherent blushing mess, or most times, Toji gets the party started by slowly kissing up your neck, his breath hot on your earlobe as he presses his hips against yours while you slept fitfully, your hushed dulcet whines ringing in his ear as your lips instinctively find each other. Fun fact: that’s exactly how Megumi came to be.
But there are times too, when you were just not having it and you’d gently nudge Toji’s face away when he tries to kiss you.
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It was a typical afternoon. Toji didn’t have work that day which was a huge relief for him because you’ve been suffering from dizziness and lower back pain all day. And being the helicopter partner and soon-to-be papa that he is, Toji keeps a close eye on you as you nap the afternoon away on the couch. He smiles softly as he sees you instinctively put a protective hand over your belly whenever you’d feel the slightest movements from the baby.
“Shhh, you’re alright,” he’d whisper to you as you slept, combing his fingers through your hair, a permanent worried frown on his face when a whimper falling from your pursed lips as the baby kicks you again. “It’s just the overgrown parasite fidgeting around.”
“Don’t call him that.” You brush his hand away, your eyebrows knitting in discomfort.
Toji chuckles, going to press a kiss to your soft lips only for you to place your entire palm on his face, applying gentle force to pry him away. “I mean, what is he then? Other than this thing that competes for your nutrients? He’s—“
“—Our baby boy.”
“—An overgrown parasite.”
Fuming at his words, you decide to hit back with a quick retort of your own. “Yeah? It really does take one to know one, huh?”
“What a cute comeback but maybe not as cute as you,” Toji smirks, his hand gently removing your smaller one from his face, his lips puckered up as he leans in. Teasingly, you place a hand over your lips, still refusing to indulge him with his much-craved kisses. “Come on, I just want one sloppy one~”
“No!” Your laughter-filled voice comes out muffled against your palm.
“Mm, yes,” Toji teases. “Yes. Come on, baby, just one.”
“You and I both know it’s never just one.”
Of course. Why else would you be in this situation if Toji knew how to spell the words: self and control? Still, it’s not like the two of you were complaining. After all, the bond you and Toji share is an unbreakable one that’s only been strengthened by time and the many trials you’ve survived together. And now, the arrival of the very product of your love is only a hair’s breath away. Toji rests his chin on top of your head, plopping down next to you and spooning you from behind. “Guilty as charged.”
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And unfortunately, it seemed your son had inherited that troublesome quirk of yours and it’s beginning to break Toji’s infuriated heart because whenever he tries to give Megumi a kiss…
“Mmph—“
There it was.
Toji’s eyes shot open, grimacing as Megumi turns his head away, his eyes trained stubbornly on his dog plushie, and his chubby hands pushing his poor papa’s chin away with all the might a six-month-old like him could muster. And to top things off, he must be imagining things because newborns surely couldn’t scowl right? Their tiny little brains couldn’t possibly have enough electrical energy to charge a snow globe much less, learn how to hate certain people’s kisses.
“You little shit—“
Sure enough, the tiny little baby seems gravely unamused, his eyebrows are knitted, the corner of his lips curled into a disappointed frown as if to say: Go kiss someone else, you even bigger shit.
Toji mirrors the unfriendly scowl on his son’s face, noting how Megumi seems to be glaring at him. Oh, okay. The brat ain’t messing around, his eyes twitches but somehow, Toji is also a picture of a proud father. At least the little shit’s got spunk. And he wonders momentarily who he should blame for that.
Definitely not him, that’s for sure.
Toji doesn’t recall the last time he’s ever had the comforts of a peace like this one. Actually, this might just be the first time that Toji knew what that word meant: “peace”. A freedom from disturbance; tranquility, as per the Merriam Webster Dictionary. But Toji has a better definition for peace: you and Megumi.
But…
“I meant what I said to your mother though,” Toji engages in a one-way conversation with his son. He won’t recall any of this, but it didn’t hurt for Toji to be candid about his feelings every now and then especially when it came to this little one that came accidentally into your lives but brightened it up nonetheless. “The two of you would be better off — maybe even happier — with someone else.” He presses his thumb against Megumi’s cheek. “It’s what you two deserve.”
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He’s been gone close to a whole day now and you were probably beginning to worry. Out of all the shitty things Toji has done, this, by far, has to be the shittiest. Standing outside a pachinko den, his back pressed against the wall, and his hand absentmindedly playing with the tokens he just bought. When he left the apartment that day, you knew that could very well be the last time you ever see him. Types like him aren’t keen on the whole picket fence idea of settling down.
“I’m heading out today.”
Your blood runs cold when Toji steps into the kitchen to inform you of his plans. You don’t even bother to look at him, your gaze simply settled on the positive pregnancy test on the table. The right thing to do was to stay, he should have held you in his arms and tell you that everything’s going to be okay not plant seeds of doubt in your mind by taking off and running away like a coward.
But for once, Toji was scared.
He had no business becoming a father when he’s lived in a dysfunctional household for majority of his life. What good would he even impart to his child? His pathetic existence has been a picture of disorder that was only recently resolved when you came into the picture. Well, if he were being completely honest, he still hasn’t figured things out quite as well yet. And as a father, that could be catastrophic for a child that required stability if nothing else.
Frowning, Toji leaves the pachinko den, chucking the tokens in the trash. It was far too early in the day to be hanging around shady places like these anyway. He wanders the streets for a good while, his hands buried in his jacket’s pockets as his mind swirls with thoughts about the all too terrifying future.
A pang of guilt strikes his heart and he wonders what you’re doing now. You must still be in the kitchen, your face buried in your hands as you try to think of something. You were probably assuming he wasn’t coming back. After all, you did say: “I don’t wanna pressure you into staying, Toji. You deserve to live your life the way you want it.”
A life without you? Sounds pretty miserable.
Toji must have been walking on autopilot because for some reason, he unknowingly finds himself in front of a bank. Mizuho Bank, Toji reads the sign, his eyes flicking over to one of the posters plastered on the window about opening a savings account.
He looks at the promotional material, transfixed at the picture of a family of four donning on those typical wide stupid grins in ads, the father is holding a hundred yen bill and is seen dropping it into a piggy bank that was filled with both cash and words like: health insurance, family vacation, utility bills, rent, tax, school, and…happiness.
Toji returns to the apartment at around eight in the evening after making a quick stop at the supermarket and the pharmacy. He finds you asleep on the couch, your cheeks stained with dry tears. He crouches on the edge of the couch, worriedly taking in your appearance. You’ve been crying. “Hey…hey, wake up,” he gently shakes you awake and your tired eyes flutter open. “Got you something.”
He holds out a shopping bag, chock full of fresh produce, and from the pharmacy, some camphor oil to relieve your symptoms and those folate supplements the attending pharmacist kept yapping about.
“You didn’t leave,” you said, bewildered. “I thought you—“
“—You thought wrong,” Toji says firmly. He pulls out something from his back pocket and you stare at him, perplexed.
“A bank passbook?” You open it to see that Toji had just made his first deposit amounting to fifty thousand yen earlier today. “You opened a savings account?”
Toji nods, looking a little proud of himself. “Yeah,” he tries to play it off with a shrug of his shoulders. “Every week, we’ll be depositing fifteen thousand yen in that thing. Ten thousand for your maternity needs, and five for the little brat’s schooling one day.”
Tears spring to your eyes upon realizing that Toji was here to stay. “You mean you’re—?” You are cut off by a warm kiss on your lips, and you place a hand over Toji’s chest, your fingertips gripping the fabric of his shirt as his lips move against yours. He pulls away after a while.
“Gonna spite the hell out of the Zenin clan and send my brat to the most expensive preschool in Tokyo? Yes, I am.”
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Toji sighs, his thumb rubbing across Megumi’s chubby cheek. “But maybe — just maybe — hear me out and don’t you give me another glare.” Megumi’s not gonna remember any of this. After all, memories begin when the brain can fully register speech. But Toji felt the need to say this so, subconsciously, his son will understand just how much he’s done and he’s willing to do for the both of you.
“…Maybe I deserve the two of you too, you know.”
Megumi looks up at his father, curiosity gleaming in his eyes. Toji sticks his tongue out at the little one causing the latter to…hiccup? Nah, Toji was sure that was a giggle.
Smirking, Toji leans down to give his son a kiss, thinking he’s patched things up between them now only for Megumi to curl up again, his feet and hands resisting against Toji, his lip downturned in effort as he pushes him away yet again. Conceding, Toji grumbles, rubbing the spot where Megumi roughly pushed him away.
“You really are your mother’s son.”
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endearng · 1 month ago
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Third time's the charm
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Pairing: virgin!Spencer Reid x fem!reader Summary: During one of your movie nights with Spencer, you decide to, once again, take the lead. Or, you got cockblocked so often that you almost thought it wouldn't happen. WC: 3.1k Warnings: smut (nipple play and dry humping); reader thinks spencer might be asexual but he's just a shy puppy; they are desperate for each other; "ruined" movie night; virgin!Spencer my beloved. (I guess that's it. If I forgot something, please let me know!) A/N: Aaaand here it is! I didn't think I'd write smut so soon, hehe. I hope you guys enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it - it's actually a sequel to Dearest friend, but can be read as a stand-alone. Feedbacks are highly welcomed and appreciated. <3 Masterlist
"It’s nice we finally have some time for each other," you hummed in agreement. "Thanks for coming over," Spencer said.
"You don't have to thank me," you said, sitting down on his couch after placing the drinks you chose from his fridge on the coffee table. "I wouldn't want to be anywhere else," you confessed. It got him blushing.
Spencer started one of your movies. It was your choice: you usually took turns picking out a movie to watch together whenever you had the chance, since neither of you were keen of going out that often and you didn't have much time outside of work. It was a fun opportunity to know more of each other through your personal taste, since he often chose foreign films about humanities and you, well, you made him watch Easy A, which got him talking about Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.
After the movies, you would talk to each other about it, maybe mentioning a personal experience that you remembered thanks to a particular scene or a character's arch. Maybe you would kiss.
Which was a problem. Well, not a problem, but, you see, you didn't have much time together other than going to each other's houses and out on a few dates, which were your favorite: Spencer often found the most beautiful, cozy places to take you, like coffee shops, museums, bookshops and libraries, followed by a nice dinner at a local restaurant. It was during one of those dates that something gave him the nerve to touch your hand. Holding hands quickly escalated to having his hands around you at all times possible, and it got to the point where you nearly had to peel off of him when he got too comfortable and you sadly had to leave to do something. These moments of physical touch were making you go insane, thinking about making a bolder move on him, but you thought that maybe he wasn't ready. Plus the fact that you seemed to be interrupted whenever things got too heated.
If you had a nickel for everytime you and Spencer had to stop right before you got intimate (in any way, really), you'd have two nickels, which isn't much, but it's weird that it happened twice. It was like the universe (more like Hotch and the gore that surrounded the team) were set on a mission for you to never have sex again. Besides that, more extreme thoughts plagued your mind and told you that maybe he wasn’t attracted to you like that. It often made you go home feeling a little bit insecure.
You knew that it was better to assume, but you were only human. After some pep talk with yourself on the way to his place, you convinced yourself that you would have to have this conversation with him, sooner or later. You thought so hard about this that you even came up with the possibility that he was asexual — you were fine with it if he was, obviously, because being with him made you feel whole. Still, you wanted, you needed to get this off your chest before you exploded with assumptions and unrequited feelings. Unrequited desire.
You decided to try to be subtle. Scratching the back of his head with your nails lovingly, you both watched the movie. "What are you doing?" He asked, looking at you. You could see the goosebumps on his arm, that must have been the trigger for the question coming out of his lips. You gave him a soft smile.
"It's called affection, pretty boy," you kissed the tip of his nose. "And I don't intend on stopping anytime soon."
You kissed his left cheek when he turned to look at the TV screen.
Then, you turned his head gently to kiss the right one. He glanced between your eyes and your lips, so of fucking course you were about to kiss him, but you decided to tease him a little and pecked the tip of his nose and gently kissed his forehead instead. He breathed out a laugh. Ticklish. It made you wonder where else he would be sensitive.
Stop, you slut of a brain.
When you were about to kiss his lips, you withdrew your face from his, smooching his cheek instead. He sighed, oblivious to your real intentions, impatient and utterly, stupidly in love with you.
Oops. There goes your heart. Out the window. Taking your judgment with it.
"Spence?"
"Yes?"
"Can I do something?"
"Yes," he answered. "You know can do anything, baby."
"This is a very dangerous thing to say to a girl who has the feelings I have for you," you said, grinning. His expression morphed into one that almost looked like sheer panick.
You slowly moved to straddle his lap, giving him plenty of time to stop you if he wanted to, his legs trapped between yours. You sat yourself on the top of his thighs. He watched every movement feeling like the world stopped and there were the both of you, moving in slow motion, movie long forgotten behind you. His breath hitched when he came to his senses and noticed the position you were in, now that you've done what you had. "Is this okay? It's more comfortable than kissing you like… well, that," you laughed softly.
"Yes. I-It's perfect," he breathed out, hands finding your waist.
You lips finally met his in a kiss that had both of you sighing. You found out that Spencer was a really good kisser — and you were proud to be the one with whom he practiced kissing to perfection —, your lips easily falling into a passionate rhythm. Gasping for air, you pecked him on those perfect lips that were red and puffy from all the assaulting you were doing, but he quickly pulled you in for another, this time, sloppier than ever, encouraged by your own boldness. He was french kissing you. Fairly used to it, but not with the intensity of it, you groaned in welcomed surprise, hands finding the nape of his neck and getting a grip on them, not so gently as you normally did. You pulled his hair down, breaking the kiss, lips tingling and lungs screaming for air. He smirked, feeling smug at the state he left you in.
You rose slightly from his lap, still holding his head and looking straight into his eyes. By holding yourself slightly above him, the pendant of your necklace grazed his chin, like he had imagined many times after watching you fiddle with it. God, it was finally coming true, having you in his arms and intending to let you do whatever you wanted to him and him only, the way that it should be ever since the day you met. You nearly made him go insane, pulling you closer to his body than you ever were, acting like a desperate madman. You smiled down at him and kissed him again, more feverishly than before, trying to tell him through that kiss that you were his. Biting his lower lip and earning a fucking moan, you sat yourself down on him again. You felt his bulge against your clothed core and the light contact made you feel lightheaded.
You were so caught up on him that it almost made you forget you needed to talk to him first. Unfortunately, as you tried to catch your breath and to find the right words to speak, Spencer felt his insecurities creeping up on him. Despite knowing it would be best to talk to you, he felt like voicing it out loud would push you away from him — which he didn't want. He was very comfortable with the indecent small distance between your bodies.
He was fidgety. You knew you needed to address this because your boyfriend wasn't the best at voicing his needs — you remember and giggled internally at how you had been the one to knock on Spencer's door asking him to put an end to your suffering by telling him how you felt. Heh. Kudos to you.
"I wanted to talk about this with you," you murmured, now feeling his kisses peppering the skin of your neck. You knew how much he was hiding from you because he wouldn't stop moving and it was very distracting, but if you didn't speak, it would be the end of you. "I'd ask if you were okay with me and you like this, about taking further steps, shit." You moaned when he fucking bit you and kissed you right after.
He pulled away from you, hands flying up to the back of your head. Foreheads touching, eyes locked in yours. "I want it. I want you, I mean. Been wanting you for some time now—a very long time, yes." He strongly shut his eyes closed, most likely working up the courage to say something. "But I don't want to... disappoint you," he finished, sounding insecure.
Not on your watch.
"Me too, Spence. God, I want you so bad," you answered, unable to look away from him, who now looked down, paying close attention to the rising and falling of your chest. "Hey, look at me, please," you pleaded. His eyes met yours. Oh, those maddening eyes... "Believe me when I tell you, baby, I want you. And if you don't want to do anything, you don't have to. I won't push you, of course. I just wanted to have a conversation with you before, because setting boundaries is important and consent is hot—" he laughed quietly. Making jokes was your go-to way of making situations lighter and he was glad for it then. You smiled when you noticed the sound he made. "And I'm also positively certain that you wouldn't like to have our first time on your couch."
"My first time," he revealed. softly. Eyes not meeting yours.
Oh.
You didn’t falter. "It doesn't change much, baby. I still stand for what I just told you," you assured him, "I want you to enjoy yourself, Spence."
Looking back into your eyes, he declared, "And I want you."
"You can have me," you answered, "You already have."
"You'd need to guide me. You know, hands-on activity. Because I’ve never done it before…" he trailed off.
"Lucky for you, I'm great at teaching."
His grip finds your waist, lips anxiously waiting for yours — and when they touched to mold perfectly in another breathtaking kiss, he felt complete. Like nothing bad could ever happen in the world just because you were in it. His past, his insecurities, the awful things you both saw on the field, nothing mattered. Looking at you, touching you, was a nearly an out of body experience. The things you got him thinking by just kissing him. And he thought his insecurities would get the best of him. Jokes on them, you exist.
You look at him through hooded eyes. "I've never felt like this before. I feel... tingly," he confessed, lovely smile on his face, eyes blinking.
"You're feeling good, handsome," you answered, glancing at his dazed eyes.
A beat of silence. Swallowing second thoughts. "Can you make it better?"
"Is that a request or a challenge?" You asked, grinning.
"A request." He answered shyly, hiding his face on your neck, peppering kisses on your skin. You were going to explode.
"Oh, don't talk to me like that," you shivered, feeling absolutely lost, "I might spoil you and give you everything you want," you sighed.
"Let me have it, then," he answered, voice muffled by your skin.
"I'm all yours, Spencer."
He had the audacity of blushing as his fingers played with the hem of your shirt. You smiled at him. In this state, if he asked for you to run naked around town, you probably would. It was dangerous, to say the least. Softly, yet desperate, the words left his lips. "Can I take this off?" He sucked in a breath. "Please?"
"Yes, pretty boy, you can," you answered. "You can have anything. I thought I already said that."
"Yes—You did. You did," he breathed out between needy kisses across your skin, getting rid of your shirt in no time.
At first, he was mesmerized by the sight in front of him. He hadn't seen many naked (or semi-naked) women in front of him, but you were something out of this world. The bra you were wearing matched your skin tone and pushed your breasts together and there was the fucking necklace, almost mocking him by being constantly so close, too close to the most beautiful sight he had ever seen. The view was almost overwhelming by itself. You looked at him, but he couldn't possibly come up with the words that would describe you in that moment. Words had failed him, nothing else in his mind but you. The tool he used to communicate, to access the world and how it shaped reality, to comprehend the mind of another person, to get to know others... He had nothing left. Except from the pulsing of his boner against your clothed pussy, that is.
Just like that, IQ of 187 slashed to 60, Emily Prentiss said, once. Funnily enough, when you passed by wearing a sundress.
Unable to talk but, oh, so able to use his hands, they traveled up to your breasts with a featherlight touch, which didn't stop him from feeling your heartbeat. He let his hands trail over the soft and sheer fabric of the bra you were wearing. Finding your nipples, his touch got more intense. He licked his lips. His actions made you shudder and sent a spark of excitement to your sex. "Pretty," he said. "So, so pretty, my girl."
"Do you like it?" You asked, breathless from a little touching. Pathetic. "I got these thinking of you. Wanna look pretty for you, Spence."
"You are," he said, looking into your eyes, his own foggy, hands reaching to touch your neck. "You're pretty all the time, it's so unfair to me," he murmured. "I really like them on you, but… can I take ‘em off?"
"Yes. You can do anything, Spence."
Spencer wanted to burn the sight of you, in that slightly disheveled state, in the back of his mind so he could remember it forever — not that he would have a hard time trying to remember anything. Nevertheless, he did everything so slowly, almost as if trying to tattoo on the tip of his fingers the softness and temperature of your skin. He inhaled deeply, consumed by your floral-scented perfume and lifted his hands to unclasp your bra. His fingers curiously, but unhurriedly, lowered each of the straps. Like opening a gift that had been so carefully wrapped he didn't want to ruin.
But did he wanted to be ruined by you.
The sight of your bare chest was marvelous, to say the least, and he timidly grazed his fingertips against the exposed area, eliciting goosebumps and a soft whine. His mouth watered, thoughts simply reduced to the need of having you in his mouth. The striped pattern on the soft skin of your breasts around your nipples were faint, barely there, unless if you took a close look at it. It goes without saying that he was blatantly gazing at your bosom at this point.
Pupils dilated, he looked up at you, hungrily, drawing his face closer to you, curls tickling the skin of your collarbone. He inhaled your scent, mind blanking. Tortuously dragging his lips on your skin (and unintentionally smearing some of his saliva on you, he was drooling, after all) as a silent request, the necklace brushing his forehead slightly. The grind of your hips against his answered his plead to taste you.
"Oh—you're so, so good to me, princess," you moaned when he finally wrapped his lips against the nub, playing with the other.
You felt almost overwhelmed with the attention you were getting and the reaction you were having to said attention. Your underwear was sticking almost uncomfortably against your core and you felt yourself aching for some relief, aching for him. So, as Spencer worked his hot tongue on your tits, licking, softly biting, sucking, making a mess on and of you, you busied yourself by chasing the relief you both desperately wanted. The solace it provided you both with was exhilarating and made you feel dazed.
Steadily rocking yourself against him, you earned a few grunts. "You're making a mess of me, pretty boy," you murmured as he switched his attention to the other boob.
"Give it t'me—I want it, I deserve it," he breathed out, body aching with lust, cock pulsing against your covered clit. His words only fueled the fire inside you, the coil in your lower stomach threatening to snap at anytime now.
"Yeah, you do, my boy," you breathed out, pulling the hair on the nape of his neck, nearly tasting your orgasm, "gonna look so pretty when you come for me, won't you, baby?" Both hands gripping your hips, mouth never leaving your skin. You sure would be bruised by tomorrow, but this, this was definitely worth it.
"Yes—Yes, I will," He whined. He fucking whined.
"Tell, me—ah—where do you want to cum, baby?"
"Shit—" until then, you were sure that was a word you'd never hear him saying, let alone that freely. "Gonna—Shitshitshit," moaning out your name.
That's when it hit you that he had cummed his pants. It was such a fat load that it had seeped through both his underwear and his slacks — which prompted you to reach your own high with a moan of his name directly into his ear.
Both of you feeling dizzy, you slump against him, feeling his arms wrapping your frame as you rested your head on his shoulder. You both took deep breaths, the only sound in the room. Well, besides the movie you both totally ignored.
"I can't get up right now... My legs feel wobbly," you chuckled. "Are you okay, Spence?" You asked, looking at him when you didn't get an answer.
"Yeah, 'm fine," he answered, "I mean, I'll be fine as soon as I recover from you."
You laughed sincerely, "From me? What have I done to you?"
"You gave me what I wanted, you spoiled me, you broke me," he said, a silly smile adorning his pretty face. You pushed him playfully. "I can't even explain what I'm feeling right now. My brain has stopped working ever since you straddled me. Are you trying to kill me?"
"No, babe."
"Wrong answer. You're so gonna keep doing that to me, so you'll definitely be trying to killing me from now on." He pressed a kiss to the top of your head.
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finnslay · 6 months ago
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(Little ramble/vent)
From the POV of a persecutor, what the FUCK was that ATLAS!?!?
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asahicore · 3 months ago
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cold hands - psh (m)
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this work contains smut - minors please do not interact
pairing. sunghoon x fem!reader
synopsis. plot plot plot what is a plot when you can just have vibes and a vague narrative direction... if you MUST know you go to your brother's hockey team back-to-uni party accidentally matching one of the members with your cowgirl barbie costume. hopelessly romantic sunghoon sees this as a sign that the two of you are meant to be together, but you're impossible to read and soon the two of you settle on an ambiguous secret friends with benefits relationship. unfortunately, conflict ensues.
genre. strangers to friends to fwb to lovers..?? its not an asahicore fic if it doesnt have fluff angst AND smut, brothers best friend, jock x nerd type vibe, slight miscommunication put your pitchforks away and hear me out pls it works out i promise, reader has ISSUES 💜 loser loverboy sunghoon, its mostly in his pov, i know nothing about ice hockey
word count. 39.5k 😂
a/n. inspired by @moonlighthoon's request for the 1k trope event! sorry it took ages to write but i hope you like it and that i met ur expectations!!!! hope everyone else enjoys it too, this is the longest fic ive ever written and im quite proud of it, pls pls pls let me know what u thought <333 shoutout to @zreamy .. good luck with your studies, thank u for beta reading and making this fic exponentially better as u always do ⭐️ credit to @/plutism for the dividers :)
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Some men never think of it. You did. You’d come along And say you’d nearly brought me flowers But something had gone wrong.
The shop was closed. Or you had doubts - The sort that minds like ours Dream up incessantly. You thought I might not want your flowers.
It made me smile and hug you then. Now I can only smile. But, look, the flowers you nearly brought Have lasted all this while. - Wendy Cope, Flowers
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When Sunghoon falls in love, it usually goes as quickly as it came.
Just to name a few:
There had been Ahn Yujin, whose family had moved next to his when he was twelve, and whose dog got on perfectly with his. His crush on the cute girl next door grew with every walk the four of them took but disappeared the second she ditched him to walk home from school with Na Jaemin. 
A few years later, there had been Bae Sumin, who sat in front of him and always had her hair up in a ponytail he found exceedingly pretty. An appointment at the hairdresser was enough for him to stop liking her, as if his interest in her had been laying in the ten centimeters of hair she had cut off. 
In his junior year of high school, there had been Kim Yerim, a college student that tutored him in Math and English. She was three years older, but that didn’t deter him—what did was the fact that she was dating a college graduate. She showed him a picture once, and the guy had biceps probably twice the size of Sunghoon’s. He thought it was safer to give up on her than to fight such a bulky guy five years his senior. 
The first time it stuck was during his first year of college. She was his coach’s daughter and he liked the way she would smile at him when she came to watch their practice. Sunghoon didn’t like to think about her, mainly because even after she broke his heart, for a while there, he continued to love her. 
So, when he first spots you from across the room at the Welcome Back costume party thrown by his hockey team, unintentionally the Cowboy Barbie to his Cowboy Ken, he tries not to read too much into it. Barbie was a hit this summer, it’s an easy and topical costume, of course there’s a pretty girl wearing the same bright pink cowboy hat he is. It doesn’t mean she’s the love of his life.
Right?
He knows you from the pictures that littered the walls of Minjeong, Yunjin and Chaewon’s apartment last year, from Instagram posts, both yours and your friends’, from your video calls with Jake, who dragged him into the camera’s view. Say hi to my sister, he’d insist, like Sunghoon was a child who didn’t want to greet his great-great-aunt. He’d dip in to say hi as requested, ask how you were, and mumble me too like a fool when you said you heard so much about him and were excited to meet him in real life. 
These are the things Sunghoon knows about you: Jake’s older sister by a year, currently on a year abroad in Rome, studies something fancy like Classics, which he hadn’t known people still did in the twenty-first century, deep attachment to Stardew Valley in first year, rarely seen with the same man twice, very pretty. Absurdly so. He’s also weirdly obsessed over the texts you’ve sent to the group chat he was added to at the beginning of last year—scarce, short, elusive. Never more than two sentences, and always long after the conversation was over. But sometimes you’d send photos and videos out of nowhere, of your adventures or of funny things you saw online, and he always hearted them. He even replied to it sometimes (brave hahas or that’s so cool!s), in hopes that it would make you like him, would make you think, he gets me. 
The two of you have never formally yet because you left for Italy the year he started university. He’s been nervous about meeting you since the first time the group told him about you. 
Now that he is about to, he can hear his heart thumping so loudly in his ears, it drowns out the bass of the music. He’s glad he gets to see you before having to talk to you—he’s not sure he could take in your presence and form coherent words at the same time. He watches you laugh with your friends, the smile lines that form like dimples around your mouth, the strands of hair you keep tucking behind your ear. Then someone joins your group—except it’s not just someone, it’s Minjeong, her denim jacket so often worn he recognises her from the back, and he realizes the people you’re with have been Chaewon and Yunjin this whole time. The three of them have been banging on about you all year, even more so due to the fact that their replacement flatmate was dreadful, a Spanish girl who only hung out with other Spanish exchange students and looked the girls up and down when they tried to invite her out somewhere.
You turn towards Minjeong, and before he knows it, he’s in your line of sight, and your eyes meet. Confusion, then a flash of recognition goes through your eyes. He had been resting his elbow on a countertop, cider bottle in hand and watching you, he realizes, not unlike a creep, but now he stands up straight and looks around him as if you hadn’t just caught him staring. Before he can find a way out, Jake appears by his side and throws an arm around his shoulders, guiding him into the throng of party-goers and, coincidentally, closer to you.
“Dude, you’ll never guess what.”
“What?” Sunghoon says, tone coming out more irritated than he means it to. He’s just had to give up on making a good first impression on you, and he doesn’t even have the time to think of a way to redeem himself. When he dares to look back at you, your eyes are already on him, a small smile on your lips. You probably hate him already.
“My sister is dressed just like you. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you guys came together or something. Hey, guys!” Jake calls out, and all of a sudden, it’s not just your eyes on him, it’s everyone’s. Well, to be fair, they’re also looking at Jake. But you’re only looking at Sunghoon, and he can’t look away from you either, can’t even manage the politeness to hug everyone in greeting like Jake is doing now. He watches as your eyes rake over his figure, taking him in, assessing him, and he suddenly feels awkward in his costume that matches yours, like he’s somehow overstepped a boundary, like you might think he’s asked around about your costume, found out you were going as Barbie and decided to match you so you’d think the two of you were meant together, like he had two minutes ago, and come to the fairly reasonable decision that he was the weirdest man on Earth. But then you meet his eyes, smile a kind, genuine smile, and his whole body relaxes. 
“Hey, Hoon!” Chaewon calls, arms open wide. He remembers himself and hugs everyone, even you, and he has to pretend like this is completely fine and normal, like his hands aren’t practically shaking as his arms circle your shoulders in a two-second embrace. 
You squeeze one of his shoulders, and keeping his countenance is a Herculean task. He feels like those people centuries ago who passed out at the sight of a lady’s ankle. “It’s so nice to finally meet you,” you say, peering at him over the rim of your red cup. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
Sunghoon feels the blush growing on his face; he wasn’t expecting so much of your attention so quickly. He takes a swig of his lukewarm cider, hoping if he seems drunk, it might explain his redness. “Good things, I hope,” he says, aware of the unoriginality but unable to come up with anything better.
“Oh, don’t worry, they’ve made you out to be a saint.” You’ve not once broken eye contact or stopped smiling—it should intimidate him, but instead, it makes Sunghoon feel like you’ve known each other for ages and that this isn’t your first conversation at all. He finds himself able to relax into a smile, and manages to meet your eyes for more than three seconds at a time.
“You don’t believe them?”
You pause, gaze zeroing in on him even more intensely than previously, smile turning smirk-like. Sunghoon’s heart skips a beat. Okay, maybe he’s not that relaxed. “I don’t know you well enough to make up my mind yet. But we’ll be seeing plenty of each other from now on, won’t we?”
This is exactly what Sunghoon has been warned about. You at parties, the way you look at guys, the way you talk to them. Sunghoon has been the audience of more than one recreation of such a scene, Yunjin pretending to be you, Chaewon pretending to be your “victim,” as the others liked to call them. Because once you had set your eyes on a man, he had little chance of making it out. Jay prides himself as being the only survivor, although he has to admit it’s only because Jake interrupted your conversation, telling him, “I see you’ve met my sister.” And Jay was not the kind of person that got off with their friends’ siblings, especially since his and Jake’s friendship was only a week long at that point, and he didn’t want to ruin the atmosphere in their dorm for the rest of the year just because his dick had gotten the best of him. His words. Whenever they were all hanging out together and they called you, one of the girls would inevitably ask if you had “turned any Italian boys into men” or if you had been “terrorizing the good men of Rome recently.” You would either roll your eyes or say this was not a conversation to be had in front of your brother.
Sunghoon had been sure they were exaggerating—it takes two to tango, as they say, and it wasn’t like you ensnared innocent men into your trap. They had to be willing, to want something from you just as much as you wanted something from them. He’d also gotten them to admit it wasn’t that frequent, that you weren’t looking for a new prey every party, just once in a while when you found someone you liked. (He’d been very quiet when Jay asked why he was trying so hard to defend you.)
But now that he is on the receiving end of your alluring smiles, he starts to understand how one could fall for you without meaning to. He knows he can’t — Jake probably wouldn’t take to it kindly, and he didn’t want to spoil the dynamic of his best group of friends at uni — but he has a feeling that ten minutes of talking to you would be enough to shake his resolve.
“Oh, yeah, I’m sure we will. Jake said you studied a lot, but I’m sure we’ll get to hang out. All of us, I mean,” he quickly adds, lest you think he’s already asking you to hang out one-on-one. Sunghoon would not be that forward.
“Of course. I have to see if you did a good enough job replacing me for a year.” Sunghoon’s eyes widen, and before he can blurt out something weirdly laudatory like “I could never replace you, I would never even try, I don’t know you but you’re clearly far superior to me in every aspect and I could never even claim to fill your spot,” you giggle and tell him it’s just a joke. “If anything, I’m happy Jake has managed to make a new friend that he didn’t meet through me, that loser,” you say, and together, you laugh at Jake’s loserness, a topic that will never fail to amuse Sunghoon, although he’s not faring much better in that department. 
“Like, look at him right now,” you say, jerking your head in Jake’s general direction, somewhere behind Sunghoon’s shoulder—and that’s when he realizes that it’s just the two of you standing there, the others gone without him even noticing. Sunghoon turns around, finding the girls, Jay, and a bunch of other people he vaguely recognizes huddled around Jake. They all start chanting his name as he gulps down a giant red cup of beer, then raises the empty cup over his head in victory and crumples it, beaming at the people around him. 
“What is he doing?” Sunghoon asks, laughing at his friend.
“Jay called him over for a beer-off,” you explain. After a beat, you ask, “You didn’t notice?”
The implications are clear in your tone and in your eyes. In the smile playing on your lips, just shy of being a smirk. You didn’t notice because of me, is what you’re really telling Sunghoon—at least, that’s the impression he’s getting. And you’d be right. He was too busy talking to you and trying his best not to make a fool of himself to notice his friends leaving, too engrossed with you to register the sudden disappearance of four people. Across the room, where people have shifted their attention to yet another hockey player downing a sizable amount of beer, he catches Chaewon’s eyes, and she winks at him. Of course—leave it to Chaewon, to whom Sunghoon once made the mistake of drunkenly rambling about how pretty you looked in your Instagram posts last year, to give you and Sunghoon some time alone, “to get to know each other properly,” she would probably say. Although he isn’t sure that small talk over 2000s music counts as getting to know someone. According to the others, she and Yunjin started dating a month into their second year, so Chaewon has proclaimed herself as the goddess of dating and is now always trying to set people up. Sunghoon thinks she’s just living vicariously through her friends now that she has a Mrs. at home.
Because the filter usually at work between the part of Sunghoon’s brain where sentences are formed and his mouth is apparently on leave today, he says, “I do have a pretty distracting sight in front of me.” He’s immediately both mortified and impressed by this sudden bout of confidence, but then you look down and giggle, actually giggle, the sweetest sound he’s ever heard, and only pride remains. 
“So, Ken?” you ask, a cute attempt to change the subject, taking the fabric of the pink bandana around his neck between your fingers. Sunghoon wonders if you’re going to yank him down to your level, and he thinks he wouldn’t have much of a problem with that. 
He realizes that even though you should technically know each other’s names, you haven’t actually exchanged them, so in a confused but correcting tone, he says, “Um, Sunghoon.” He only belatedly realizes that you hadn’t gotten his name wrong, you were just making a comment on his costume, which he had completely forgotten he was wearing in the first place. Just as he’s about to backtrack and salvage what he can of the situation, you burst into laughter, hand leaving his bandana to cover your mouth as he hides his face behind his own hands, laughing along with you despite himself. 
“I know your name is Sunghoon!” you exclaim. The gratification of hearing you say his name takes away some of his embarrassment. “I’m Y/N, by the way. Not Barbie.”
Sunghoon nods. “Good to know.”
The laughter gradually dies down, but your smile stays the same; wide, bright, a smile that exposes your teeth and turns your eyes into crescents. Sunghoon can’t look away. He’s awash with nerves, your gaze simultaneously planting his feet to the ground like they’re full of lead and making him light-headed. His heart is beating so fast, he can barely feel it anymore. 
The two of you stand there, looking and smiling at each other, like in a cliché movie scene where everyone else at the party seems to fade into the background. He has no idea how much time has passed when you break the silence. “It really is nice to finally meet you,” you say, repeating your statement from earlier, as though you mean it more now. 
“It is,” Sunghoon simply replies, because he doesn’t know how else to express the relief of seeing you in the flesh after hearing about you and looking at a digital version of you for a year. The relief, but also the anticipation of what is to come now that he knows he likes you even more now that he’s actually seen you. And improbable as it sounds, you might even feel the same.
Sunghoon can already feel it. The beginning of something.
You nod towards his now empty cup. “Want a refill?”
Together, you make your way through the crowd of increasingly drunk students until you reach the kitchen, where the countertops overflow with open bottles of liquor of all sorts and paper plates with half-eaten pizza slices on them. He watches your every move as you find a cold bottle of beer in the fridge, a bottle of strawberry syrup in a random cupboard that you had to know was there, and a half-empty discarded bottle of lemonade on the counter. You ask him to tell you about last year, everything you missed out on, and so he does. He knows you’ve probably heard it all from the others before, but you still laugh and gasp like it’s the first time you’re hearing about any of it, all the hockey games they won, Jay getting food poisoning from the sketchy pizzeria he kept eating at, Yunjin almost getting into a fistfight with a man twice her size who was flirting with Chaewon. 
You assemble two drinks and hand him one of them. When he takes a sip, his eyes widen at the refreshing and sweet taste. “Good, right?” you say. “I discovered it on a trip to France last summer.”
“Thank God for France. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever enjoyed drinking beer,” he says.
“That’s probably because you can’t taste the beer at all.”
Sunghoon smiles. “Probably, yeah.”
You turn around, lower back against the counter, and take in the current kitchen population. “We really weren’t very original with our costumes tonight.” Sunghoon, who had not taken his eyes off of you this entire time, follows your gaze. He counts five partygoers dressed in some version of Barbie or Ken, and that’s just the kitchen. He doesn’t blame them—the fact that so many people came dressed in costumes at all impresses him, especially for a party on the 10th of September and not the 31st of October. The social committee of the hockey team just seems to really love themed and dress-up parties.
He chuckles, then takes a sip of his drink. It’s really nice. “Yeah, but we look the best.”
Your head whips towards him, eyes glinting with something that makes Sunghoon smile, even though he doesn’t know what you’re thinking. “Should we enter the couple’s costume contest?” you ask.
At the mention of couple, his eyes widen, his brain tricking him into thinking you’ve asked him out for a second. But when what you actually meant dawns on him, the first thing to come out of his mouth is, “There’s a couple’s costume contest?!”
“Mh-hm. The sign-up sheet should be around here.” 
For what feels like the millionth time since he’s started talking to you, his face heats up. “Are non-couples allowed to enter?”
“We’re Barbie and Ken. I’d say that’s enough of a couple, don’t you think?” 
Right. Because he had been thinking of Sunghoon and Y/N, while you obviously meant Barbie and Ken. In the contest, it doesn’t actually matter whether the contestants are dating in real life—it matters that their costumes match. Sunghoon knows that. He just needed a second.
He grins, deep dimples punctuating his cheeks. “Okay, let’s do it.”
Armed with your drinks, you walk around the kitchen in search of the sign-up sheet. You find it on a wall next to the dining table, which has been turned into a beer pong table for tonight’s festivities, and the sheet is almost filled with names already. Sunghoon can only hope that by midnight, when the contest is set to take place, most participants will have had too much to drink to remember it. You write your names on the list, and Sunghoon likes seeing his name in your handwriting so much he almost wants to take a picture.
“There you guys are!”
You both turn around to find Jake stumbling towards you, clearly more intoxicated than when he had left you half-an-hour ago. He rests his arms on your shoulders, forcing Sunghoon down to his height and making you stumble forwards from the sudden added weight. “I’ve been looking all over for you- You’re entering the contest?!”
For a split second, Sunghoon is scared he’s going to get scolded by Jake for trying to hit on his sister, but surprisingly, it’s you he narrows his eyes at. “Y/N, what are you roping my little Hoonie into?”
Sunghoon groans, face perpetually red at this point. Leave it to Jake to make him seem like a total loser. 
You frown at your brother. “I’m not roping your little Hoonie into anything.” Sunghoon wants to bury himself alive. “We agreed on doing it together. Right?” you ask, turning towards Sunghoon and batting your eyelashes at him. It makes him feel a bit better.
He turns back to Jake. “Right. We’re just joining forces to crush the competition.”
Jake scoffs. “As if.” He snatches the pen from your hands and underlines his name as well as Kazuha’s, the girl he came with tonight, three thick black lines that almost erases the names underneath them. “You can’t beat the hockey player and cheerleader combo.”
“Those aren’t even costumes, you guys are a hockey player and a cheerleader,” you protest.
“So?” Jake simply retorts, more attitude in his tone than he would have were he sober.
“So, that defeats the whole purpose of a costume contest.”
Jake knocks on your cowboy hat, and you immediately put it back in place, glaring at him. “As if Barbie was the greatest costume ever. Whatever, let’s just play beer pong so I can defeat you guys twice in one night.”
“You’re on, Sim.”
“You’re going down, Sim.”
Sunghoon had just been watching your back-and-forth amusedly when you grab his hand, leading him to the side of the table opposite Jake. His fingers tingle under your touch, but just like that, it’s gone. He’d rather keep on holding your hand than play this stupid game, but he isn’t opposed to taking Jake’s ego down a notch, either. The boy can barely stand straight, anyway, so it probably won’t be a very tough match.
Some guy he doesn’t recognize in a striped black-and-white referee t-shirt fills most cups with beer and a couple on each side with shots of vodka—he’s so earnest, Sunghoon isn’t sure whether he’s just taking his costume-slash-role very seriously or if he has genuinely been hired to look over the beer pong matches of the night. Some order in the brutish world of college parties, Sunghoon guesses.
Minjeong, Yunjin, Chaewon and Jay appear then, exchanging a quick look at the sight of you and Sunghoon together. The two former join your team, while the two latter join Jake’s, as well as other people that Sunghoon vaguely recognizes from other parties. But by the simple action of getting behind him, they become his most trusted allies for at least this part of the night.
You’re a terrible shot, but Sunghoon makes up for it by scoring almost every round. In his defense, he only misses when you come up close to him and whisper in his ear which cup he should go for. Your breath tickles his (oddly sensitive) ears and the combined scents of the strawberry and lemonade on your tongue and your delicate perfume make his head spin. He can barely think straight, so his aim is naturally thrown off—other than that, he makes Jay drink a healthy amount of beer. He almost feels bad for his friend, but he’d arrived late at the party and needed to quickly catch up with everyone’s level of ebriety anyway.
When the opposite team is down to their last cup, a lightning bolt of luck strikes you, and your ball disappears straight into the vodka-filled cup that Jake now has the honor of downing. 
Sunghoon gives you no time to celebrate, to gloatingly pump your fists in the air and point a mocking finger at your brother, because as soon as you make the shot, he wraps his arms around your waist and lifts you off the ground. When you’re on your feet again, you spin around to find a proud-looking Sunghoon beaming down at you. You burst into giggles and high-five him, your palms perfectly clapping against each other, and he threads your fingers together. A current of electricity rushes through him, and for a second, he swears it’s just the two of you in this packed room.
The moment is cut short by the loud cheers of the others on your team as they shake your shoulders and raise their hands for you to high-five them too. Minjeong flips the other team off and Yunjin has to go hug Chaewon and reassure her it’s nothing personal. It’s really quite easy to make college students happy—or devastated. 
You raise your eyebrows at Jake, who’s busy glaring at you instead of accepting his defeat and taking his shot. With a begrudging sigh, he tips his head back and drinks the vodka in one gulp, the cheers doubling in volume when his face scrunches at the bitter taste of the liquor.
“Don’t act so proud,” he scolds you. “Sunghoon carried your team.”
“Maybe, but she made us win in the end,” Sunghoon retorts, putting an arm around your shoulder. 
Jake scoffs, frowning at Sunghoon’s hand placement before eye-rolling his gaze away. “Whatever.” He slides his phone out of his back pocket and smiles as he shows the two of you his screen. “Would you look at the time? The contest is starting soon.” Then, with an accusatory finger pointed at you, adds, “You may have won this battle, but I’m winning the war.”
He stomps away, presumably to find Kazuha before the contest starts, and it’s your turn to eye-roll at his dramatics. You grab Sunghoon’s hand that hangs off of your shoulders, and together, make your way through the crowd again to the garage, where the contest is taking place. All the alcohol he’s been drinking has definitely started kicking in by now, and he finds himself giggling at nothing with you.
When you reach the threshold, still hand in hand, Sunghoon stops so abruptly behind you that you almost stumble. You look back at him, then follow his gaze towards the garage and the sheer amount of people in there. Worriedly, his eyes take in every single one of the contenders. You let go of his hand and stand in front of him, placing your hands on his shoulders and putting on a determined expression. You’d almost look like a parent reassuring their kid before their first day of kindergarten if you weren’t so much shorter than him. “Don’t even worry about them, Sunghoon. We look better than anyone here.”
His eyebrows crease. “There’s like, three other Barbie-Ken couples here. Some of these costumes are so original. And do you see their makeup? Is that even possible?” he asks, staring at a couple in scarily realistic cosplay of Simon and Jeanette from Alvin and the Chipmunks, fur and all. He can’t look at them for too long without getting chills.
You shake your head. “Almost everyone here is either a hockey player or a… hockey-affiliated person. You’re the beloved and talented defenseman of the team and I’m the star player’s sister. They’ll love us,” you say with a smile, watching the worry dissipate from his features.
“We’re like nepo babies,” he whispers. His lips break into a grin when your eyebrows furrow in confusion. “I don’t know how nepotism works,” he admits, smiling wider when you burst into laughter. “How do you know if I’m talented, anyway? You haven’t seen me play yet.”
Your eyes rake him up and down appreciatively. “I took a wild guess.”
Not unlike a cartoon character, Sunghoon audibly gulps. As a hockey player since his most tender age, and dare he say, a pretty good-looking guy, he is used to girls flirting with him, and he is even hit sometimes by the occasional lightning strike of confidence that allows him to flirt back (he still can’t believe he managed to call you “a distracting sight” without spontaneously combusting). But there’s something in your eyes, in your smile, in the way you talk—something about you that has his breath hitching and his heart racing. He doesn’t know if he wants to run away and hide in a corner or kiss you right then and there.
Heeseung, the captain of the hockey team, announces into a microphone (which Sunghoon wonders where they got the money for) that the contest will start now, so he can neither kiss you nor run away. Instead, he follows you to the side of the room where all the contestants, including Jake and Kazuha, wait for their names to be called out. There are so many participants, it takes way longer than Sunghoon would like for the two of you to step onto the makeshift stage. Judging by the looks on the audience’s faces, everyone is surprised to see you and Sunghoon together—the hockey community at your university may be big, but everyone knows everyone, and gossip travels fast. No one had seen you and Sunghoon together before, for the obvious reason that you hadn’t even met before tonight. But you could be sure that by tomorrow, as silly as it sounds, word will have gone around that you and Sunghoon had participated in a couple costume contest together. 
At least, you give them something of substance to talk about—as you and Sunghoon pose on stage, wearing your brightest smiles to please the crowd, you stand on your toes and press a kiss to Sunghoon’s cheek. Sunghoon’s eyes burn a hole in the side of your face but you just watch as the audience of drunken 20-somethings goes wild over something as simple as a peck on the cheek. Jake is the only one booing. 
Sunghoon is still in shock when the next couple is called forward and you have to step off. His cheeks are redder than before and he can’t quite meet your eyes. Apparently, he also goes wild over something as simple as a peck on the cheek. You nudge his shoulder. “See, I told you they’d like us.” 
He feels like a fourteen-year-old for it, but Sunghoon can’t stop thinking about your soft lips against his cheek, so much so that he barely says a word as the three judges deliberate. If you notice the sudden change in his behavior, you don’t comment on it, perhaps chalking it up to nerves. He’s glad for it—he doesn’t know if he could handle being teased about it, especially from you. Although he’s not sure he wants you to think he’s the kind to stress over a last-minute Halloween costume contest. 
In the end, you don’t win. He suspects it was a rigged contest all along: the couple in the unimpressive Edward and Bella costume are friends with one of the judges, probably leading to their anticlimactic victory. At least it isn’t Simon and Jeannette who win, or Kazuha and Jake, even less original than the winners. Anyway, Sunghoon couldn’t care any less. With your hand in his as you walk back to the main room in search of your other friends, he feels like the biggest victor of the night. He doesn’t even mind it when his teammates tease him about his costume and how good the two of you look together—the smile you shoot him makes putting up with it worth it. He tries to think straight, but between the alcohol and your proximity, he feels like you’ve cast a spell on him.
Jake stumbles into your group, three drinks drunker than when Sunghoon last saw him, enthusiastically reporting that a game of spin the bottle is about to start in one of the rooms upstairs, because what every college party needs is a middle-school game to shake things up. None of the guys seem particularly interested until Jake reveals that the cheerleaders are playing. 
Sunghoon looks down at you, laughing when he sees your mildly disgusted moue. “Don’t feel like playing?”
“Not really, no.” Your eyes linger on his face. “There’s only one person here I want to kiss, anyway.”
All capacity for thought leaves Sunghoon’s brain. He just stares back at you blankly, lips slightly agape, willing himself to say something but also terrified that whatever leaves his mouth might make him seem like the biggest loser ever. 
You couldn’t possibly mean him—but did you? Was he the person you wanted to kiss?
As these questions resound through his head, your gaze drops to his lips. There’s his answer. 
His heart beating wildly in its cage, Sunghoon decides to do one smart thing tonight and leans in, slowly but surely closing the gap between the two of you. Then a sudden vibration in the back pocket of his jeans zaps through him like lightning and he jumps back, as if startled out of the trance you had put him in. Shame flooding his cheeks, he checks his phone; it’s the stupid alarm he set himself earlier to make sure he doesn’t get home too late. Midnight, Cinderella-style. 
You scratch the back of your neck as your eyes dart around the room. For the first time tonight, you look embarrassed—Sunghoon is in disbelief at how pretty you look even then. “I, um,” he starts, clears his throat. “I have this thing tomorrow morning, so I can’t stay too long…” he says guiltily.
He doesn’t want to get his hopes up, but he swears that what he sees on your face is disappointment. It makes him want to take it all back, to stay here with you for as long as you want and forget about tomorrow morning. 
“Oh, right,” you say, nodding. “That’s fine. What thing?”
“Oh.” Sunghoon turns an impossibly deeper shade of red, further resembling the strawberry syrup the more he gets himself in these embarrassing situations with you. “Just… choir. I go to choir on Saturday mornings.” He looks down at his feet like he’s just revealed a secret, shameful part of himself.
You burst into laughter, and Sunghoon is scared for a second that you’re making fun of him, and his feelings are a lot more hurt than they should be by someone he just met. Although, to be fair, you don’t feel like someone he just met.
“That’s so cool! It must be such a nice change from all the dudes on the hockey team,” you say, a sweet, curious smile on your lips. Like you mean what you say. Like you might want to know more.
Sunghoon thinks he just fell in love.
He chuckles. “Yeah. Definitely a nice change. As much as I love hockey, it’s nice to do something calmer, you know. And I like singing. And the cakes the local grandmas bring.”
“So that’s what it’s all about, really.”
“Yep, you caught me.” Sunghoon still feels the almost-kiss lingering, a tension between the two of you that has him on edge. He feels like he’s just missed his bus because it left a minute earlier than planned. The opportunity is gone, and he would definitely mess everything up, trying to kiss you now. So instead, he decides to leave. Whatever must happen, will happen, even if it’s not tonight. You have the same friends—this is definitely not the last time you will see each other. “Well, I should probably head. I have to be up at eight tomorrow.”
“Oh, wow. The choir grandmas don’t play around.”
“They really don’t.”
“Well, see you around then,” you say, a clumsy laugh falling from your lips as you wrap your arms around Sunghoon’s neck, bringing him into a tight but short hug. You also smell good, he notes to himself. Of course you do.
“See you, Y/N.” Just as he’s about to turn away, you wrap your hand around his wrist.
“Wait. Sunghoon?” He’s only half-surprised at the immense relief he feels to hear his name on your lips. Like you, too, didn’t want to part with him just yet.
“Yeah?” he says, wishing the hope and anticipation aren’t too obvious on his face.
“Where’s that choir of yours?”
--
When Sunghoon arrives at his neighborhood’s community center, ten minutes before nine a.m., you’re already there. Despite the seven hours of sleep under his belt, he feels like he could’ve done with three more, and the singular cup of instant black coffee he had for breakfast was both atrocious and useless. But your smile has the restorative effect of two Red Bulls and a power nap. You look surprisingly bright, like you either managed to get a very good night’s sleep or are just the biggest morning person to ever exist.
He hugs you when he reaches you on the sidewalk, tighter than he probably should, but you return it. You smell like fresh soap and sugar. The two of you exchange quick greetings before he leads you inside the center. 
“I made some cookies as well.” You point to your tote bag and Sunghoon’s jaw slackens.
“You had time to bake?” 
“Kazuha made me take Jägerbombs, so I felt crazy when I got home. I thought it wouldn’t be fair on the old ladies if they did all the work.”
Sunghoon laughs. “They’re going to love you.”
You follow Sunghoon up two flights of stairs and into a spacious room with a wooden stage. There’s a snacks table on one side of the room that is almost fully decked with plates and tupperwares of all sorts, and although their contents remain covered by tin foil or lids, the coffee and hot water pots are free to use. Most of the chairs are stacked on each side of the room but a few have been put in the middle, the grandmas sitting and chatting there waving at Sunghoon as the two of you walk in. There are about fifteen people in the room so far, most of them older ladies, but not only. There’s a dad that came with his daughter, a couple of teenagers, and a few other adults. It’s quite an eclectic mix, and Sunghoon loves it.
Minjeong is here, too, which Sunghoon realizes he forgot to say until he sees the sheer confusion of finding someone you know in an unexpected place on both of your faces. She walks towards you, suspicious eyes darting between you two.
“Hey,” she says only to Sunghoon before turning to you, arms crossed over her chest. “And what are you doing here?”
“Hi, Minjeong, so nice to see you too!”
“I invited Y/N,” Sunghoon says quickly, although you did technically invite yourself. For some reason, he feels the need to defend you, even though he knows you and Minjeong have been friends for years now, and Minjeong is just always this blunt.
“I didn’t know this was the choir you went to,” you say to Minjeong.
“Oh, this?” She looks around the room. “It’s only the choir I’ve been going to since I was a kid. You’d know that if today wasn’t the first day you showed interest in it, ever.”
“I came to your concerts!”
One of the old ladies calls Sunghoon’s name from the snack table, and he is glad for the diversion. “Right. I’ll let you guys talk this out.” A hand on your shoulder, he smiles down at you. “I’m gonna say hi to the ladies over there. Be back in a minute.” He shoots Minjeong a look as if to say, Be normal. 
As he approaches the small group, one of them asks very loudly if you’re his girlfriend. They all burst into giggles, blushing and eager-eyed like they’re sixteen rather than sixty. Sunghoon would be endeared if you didn’t look so alarmed and Minjeong so horrified, both of you looking at him before turning back to each other and getting into a very heated and secretive discussion. He is bombarded with a hundred questions: what your name is, where you’re from, how did the two of you meet, are you together? No? But you’re so pretty! And he’s such a nice boy! He answers all of their queries to the best of his ability while checking that your conversation with Minjeong hasn’t turned physical—your arms are now also crossed over your chest, and you look annoyed while she looks like she’s accusing you of something, but at least, punches aren’t being thrown. 
Thankfully, it’s only a couple more minutes until the conductor calls for everyone to gather on stage, and a weight is lifted off of Sunghoon’s shoulders once the ladies’ collective attention is no longer on him. He isn’t sure where they came from, or why they’ve decided to make the choir rehearsal their hang-out spot, but there is always a group of women who sit there and knit while chatting quietly or listening to the songs, and they are sometimes joined by children whose parents are part of the choir but don’t want to sing themselves and apparently have nowhere else to go. Sunghoon had been so excited at the prospect of having you come see him that he hadn’t thought of how boring this might be for you, sitting with sixty-year-olds for two hours, listening to an amateur choir go through scales and sing corny romance ballads—they’re rehearsing for a wedding they’ve been hired to sing at. But as the minutes go by, his worry dissipates when the delighted smile on your face hardly falters. He can’t imagine that his choir is that good, but you genuinely look like you’re having a nice time, and it makes Sunghoon stand a little taller, sing a little louder. Your eyes are on him for most of the time, and he blushes every time your gazes meet, but he still can’t keep himself from looking away from the conductor to check on you every few seconds.   
Once rehearsal is over, everyone gathers around the refreshments table. When you tell Sunghoon that he looked good out there, he stuffs his mouth with banana bread to stop himself from blurting out something stupid. Your cookies are a hit, and so is everything else—Sunghoon would be more than happy to watch you eat as many baked goods as you possibly can and chat with the grandmas, but he has something to ask you. Without thinking much, he wraps his fingers around your wrist, gently pulling you away from the table and towards him. The question that was at the tip of his tongue fades as soon as you meet his eyes, looking up at him like a deer caught in headlights, cheeks stuffed with brownie. You’re so cute that words fail him for a second, and when he notices the proximity between the two of you, takes a small, bashful step backwards. You glance at his hand still around your wrist, and he withdraws it like he’s suddenly been burned. 
A playful smile grows on your lips. “Everything alright?”
He scratches the back of his head. “Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine. I just, um, well. There’s a bus that takes us from right across the street directly to the beach, if you’re, um, if you’re interested. In going. With me. If you want.”
Your eyebrows cock in surprise, and Sunghoon thinks he’s messed it all up. You shoot Minjeong a quick, worried glance, then seem to think for a second. But when you look back to him, your smile is soft. “That sounds nice.”
An hour later, you’re running around together on the beach—or rather, Sunghoon is running around, and after five minutes of watching him with a smile on your face, he’s convinced you to run around with him. You’ve both long discarded your shoes and socks, jeans scrunched up to your mid-calves, grins so wide, your cheeks start to hurt. The wet sand is hard under your feet and the water cold against your skin. Sunghoon’s t-shirt sticks everywhere you sprayed water on him, and he knows putting his shoes on later will be a whole ordeal, but it doesn’t bother him. Even the gray September sky feels brighter because you’re standing with him underneath it. 
The water-splashing battle quickly has you both out of breath, and Sunghoon is ready to call a truce when you spot something behind him, gasping and running towards it. He turns around to find you picking up a bunch of sandcastle-building toys that must’ve been left behind by some kids. “I haven’t built a sandcastle in such a long time, this is so exciting,” you say, excitement written all over your face. 
As much as he loves seeing the glint of childish amusement in your eyes, Sunghoon keeps looking around in case the owners of these toys might appear out of thin air. “I feel like there’s something immoral about this,” he says, and you stop stacking sand into one of the toys to look at him with a confused frown. “Aren’t we technically stealing from some kids?”
“Sunghoon. If those kids really cared about these plastic toys, they wouldn’t have left them here.”
“What if they come back for them?”
“Then we’ll give them back. We’re not monsters.” That’s all it takes for Sunghoon to give in. He helps dig trenches around the towers you build, carving out small windows on them and apologizing profusely when he accidentally pokes too hard into one of them, destroying half of it. 
The second he notices you shivering, Sunghoon is on his feet, unwrapping the scarf around his neck and laying it like a blanket over your shoulders. “I’m going to get us something warm to drink. I’ll be back in a minute!” he announces before you can even protest, and practically runs to the nearest café. 
He only leaves you and the slightly pathetic-looking sandcastle alone for a minute, quickly coming back with two take-away cups of milky Earl Grey tea and a brownie that he couldn’t help himself from buying. The moan you let out when you bite into it, gooey, sweet chocolate sticking to your teeth, goes straight down Sunghoon’s spine, but he tries not to let his thoughts get too carried away.
“Good, right?” he asks, laughing when you nod fervently. When you laugh too, it’s a sound so sweet, it rivals the decadence of the brownie. “I sometimes make the trip all the way here just for this.”
“I thought I’d be done with sweets after this morning, but this is so good.”
“Better than Berta’s banana bread?”
“Oh, a hundred percent,” you say, covering your mouth with your hand as you speak. “Sorry, Berta. I’ll be thinking about this for the rest of my life.”
Sunghoon hopes you’ll remember him as the boy who’d introduced you to those brownies, if nothing else.
The two of you are silent for a little bit, but it’s a comfortable silence—something Sunghoon didn’t know was possible with someone he’d just met. This was something he loved about the sea: it allowed for some quiet. The crashing of the waves against the shore, the calls of the seagulls, the dogs barking after them—it all meant he didn’t need to fill the space with needless chatter. He could look out at the peaceful water, you by his side, and just enjoy the moment.
“I’m still so amazed whenever I come to the beach, no matter how many times it’s been.” Sunghoon’s voice is quiet when he speaks, lower than usual. It sounds a lot more intimate than he means it to be. You turn your head to look at him, silently asking him to go on. There’s a small smile playing on his lips, a twinkle in his eyes as he watches the water. “The town I grew up in is right in the middle of the country, so the sea is like, a five-hour drive. There was a lake nearby, but it was nothing compared to this. It might sound silly, but being from somewhere where everyone knows each other, I never realized just how big the world was until I came here and saw the sea for the first time.”
“You’d never been to the sea before coming here?” you ask, surprise clear in your voice. 
He shakes his head. “My hometown isn’t far from the mountains, so it’s a huge tourist spot both in the winter and in the summer, which meant my mom had to work even when my sister and I were out of school and could actually go on holiday. We’d go visit my grandparents and aunts when we found the time, but that was it.” He meets your gaze, a smile playing on his lips at the thought of his hometown and his family. “This is the furthest I’ve ever been from home.” 
The corners of your lips raise into a smile too, matching Sunghoon’s. “And how has that been going?”
He sighs. “It’s okay. I miss my mom and sister like crazy, of course, but they FaceTime me so much that I barely notice it. And anyways, it’s also nice to be on my own. Discover another part of myself, and all that.”
“For sure.” 
There’s a slight shift in your expression that Sunghoon catches onto, a falter in your smile and a hint of sadness in your eyes. He doesn’t want to force a topic that you don’t want to talk about, so he just gently eggs you on, in case all you need is a small push.
“What about you? I think Jake mentioned you guys growing up around here, only an hour or so away.”
At the mention of your brother, the smile returns to your eyes. You take a deep breath and think for a bit, but eventually, you start talking. Although Sunghoon’s eyes are on you, you keep yours trained on the sea. “Yeah, we did. We live just up the coast, so we were always hanging out at the beach. In a way, it’s nice having the sea here as well. It’s like-I don’t know.”
“Like having a piece of home even when you’re away?”
Your gazes meet for just a second, the surprise clear in your eyes, but as quickly as it came, it’s gone, and you turn away from Sunghoon once more. “Basically, yeah.” A sardonic smile appears on your lips. “Although the constant reminder isn’t always appreciated.” 
He tilts his head. When you don’t say anything further, he flicks some sand onto your hand and asks you what you mean by that. He looks at you with curiosity and kindness only, eager to know more about you, to let you know that you can open up to him, that he won’t judge you, but careful not to overstep any boundaries either. It seems to work.
“It might sound stupid, but back home, the beach was a place I could go to when it all was a bit too much, you know? Like an escape from everyday life. Where I could forget about all of the pressure on my shoulders.” Sunghoon hums, and you take another deep breath. “I don’t know if you and Jake talk about this sort of thing, but… our parents are barely nice when we do well, and pretty awful when we don’t reach their expectations. So we were like, constantly having to outdo ourselves just for them to say, ‘Keep it up’, or something like that. And if we did something wrong, well…”
You trail off, but Sunghoon knows what you mean. “Yeah, Jake said they barely spoke to him anymore because he decided to play hockey instead of becoming, like, a doctor or something.”
You smile, but it’s humorless. “Yep. They send him money, and he comes home for a bit over Christmas and summer break, but that’s it. I’ve gone home by myself sometimes and they won’t even mention him, it’s insane.”
“He also doesn’t talk about it a lot.”
“I know. I’m always the one to bring it up. I know it’s a sensitive topic for him, obviously, but I still find it amazing how well he deals with it. But me… despite everything, I still need their approval, you know?” you ask, and Sunghoon nods.
“That makes sense.”
You sigh. “I guess. And I’m obviously not becoming a doctor like them. Not a medical one, at least. It took a year of convincing them that doing the degree I’m doing was okay. ‘Cause at the end of the day, it’s still me filling in my university applications, and they can’t actually force me to go to medical school, but I still wanted them to be proud of me. Even if I study languages.” It’s quiet for a few seconds as you both look out at the waves crashing against the shore. When you start talking again, you look down at the sand, picking it up and letting it filter through your fingers. “So, yeah. Jake got a scholarship here, and I didn’t wanna be too far from home, so here we are. We’re so close to home, the sea I went to when I needed a break in high school and the sea I go to now are one and the same. And now it reminds me of my parents rather than making me forget about them.”
“I’m sorry for bringing you here,” Sunghoon says. “I didn’t think…”
You cut him off with a smile. “It’s okay. Now I’ve created new memories. Nice ones. And you know… wherever I am, it’ll be at the back of my mind. It’s up to me whether I let it affect my life or not.”
“Letting go of these things is never easy,” Sunghoon offers. “You also can’t blame yourself if it does affect you sometimes.”
When you look at Sunghoon, your eyes darting back-and-forth between his like they’re searching for something there, he feels himself tense up slightly. He can’t read you at all, has no idea what you’re thinking even as you smile and say, “You’re right.” Even as you silently link your pinky with his, gazing down at your hands with a small smile. He hadn’t realized how cold his hands were until this small touch, so small yet able to spread warmth throughout his entire body. When he speaks, he can’t bring himself to meet your eyes—he’s still so focused on where your hands touch, too aware of the skin of your finger right against his. Such a small, innocent touch. He can’t even begin to understand why it means so much to him.
“For what it’s worth, I think what you’re doing is super cool,” he says. “I’ve always been so shit at foreign languages, let alone dead languages. And packing your bags and going abroad for a year, not everybody can do that. Becoming a doctor might be hard, but it also takes a specific kind of person to do what you do. And what Jake does. It’s all valuable.”
“Now, if you could say that again while I record you to show my parents, please,” you say, making him laugh.
“It’d be my pleasure.”
“What about you?” you ask him after a small pause. “I can’t be the only one who trauma-dumps on the first date.”
Sunghoon’s breath hitches in his throat. He hadn’t even dared entertain the thought that this might be more than a platonic hang-out in case he was crossing a line—but you’ve just called it a date. With just a few casual words, you’ve changed the entire meaning of the hours you’ve spent together. He hopes you can’t tell how flustered it’s made him.
“Well, there’s not much trauma to dump, really. Sorry.” 
You giggle. “Don’t apologize. That’s a good thing.”
Now that you’ve just opened up about your parents, Sunghoon is scared that telling you about how good of a childhood he had might come off as insensitive—but you smile softly at him, holding his hand face-up in yours, tracing the lines of his palm with the tip of a finger, and he starts talking. “So, it was just me, my older sister and my mom growing up. My dad died when I was 2.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It is a bit sad that I don’t have any memories of him, but everyone who knew him said he was a great guy. And my mom’s had this boyfriend since I was like, 10? He’s the one who got me to start hockey. So it hasn’t been that bad.”
“Your mom must be really strong.”
Sunghoon smiles. “She is. She’s amazing. To raise two kids on your own while grieving and not royally fuck up is… well, amazing. She’s always been so supportive of us, no matter what we wanted to do. My sister did well at school, but I wasn’t so good. I never really enjoyed it, but she’s never made me feel bad about it. She didn’t mind that all I wanted to do was hit a puck around.” 
“And you’re pretty good at hitting that puck around, aren’t you?”
“I’m not so bad,” Sunghoon says, chuckling along with you. He’s about to go on, but he is cut off by a raindrop hitting his hand, then another one; before either of you know it, your clothes are soaked through. Sunghoon takes his denim jacket off, using it as a makeshift umbrella for the both of you as you run towards the nearest awning, shaking with giddy laughter until you forget about the chilly rain and the clothes sticking to your skin. When it doesn’t let up for another few minutes, Sunghoon suggests catching the bus back, and you agree. 
The heating on the bus is set on low, but it’s enough to warm Sunghoon up as soon as he steps onto it. You sit at the back in a corner of your own, multiple rows away from the other people onboard. The two of you are relatively quiet, lost in your own thoughts until Sunghoon, after much internal deliberating, takes one of your hands in his and interlaces your fingers together. You look up at him, but he doesn’t return your gaze, eyes fixed on the window to hide his shy smile and the blush slowly staining his cheeks. To his surprise, you squeeze his hand and rest your head on his shoulder. He freezes for a second, unsure how to react to your reciprocated affection, but he makes himself relax into your touch, and starts brushing his thumb back-and-forth on the back of your hand. The sudden storm has made day turn to night a little earlier today, and with the quiet hum of the bus, he finds himself on the edge of sleep for the whole ride—the only thing keeping him awake is his booming heart.
The bus is nearing his stop when the buzz of his phone in his back pocket jolts him awake. You lift your head from his shoulder, massaging your neck as you fish your phone out of your own pocket. Sunghoon, more intrigued by you than by whoever has texted him, watches as the brightness of your screen makes you wince. Once you’ve read the text, you turn towards him, sleepy eyes and sleepy voice as you ask him whether he’s seen “this,” referring to a text from Chaewon. dinner at our flat tonight!!! come whenever. bring drinks. 
“Oh, I forgot she was doing that tonight,” you say through a yawn.
Sunghoon chuckles. “Do you have enough energy for it?”
“I always have enough energy for Chaewon’s cooking.”
You and Sunghoon make a pit-stop at a grocery store to buy two bottles of white wine and the hummus Chaewon likes, then head to your flat. Naturally, questions are asked when you and Sunghoon arrive at the exact same time, but before Sunghoon can explain that you spent the day together, Minjeong’s head pops out of the kitchen door, and she asks whether you ran into each other downstairs. Chaewon is only looking at the both of you, waiting for an answer, so she doesn’t see the very pointed look Minjeong gives you, as if to say Agree with me or else. You quickly glance at Sunghoon then say, “Yeah, we just arrived at the same time.” When they’ve both turned away, you tell him in a hushed tone that you’ll ask her about it later. 
The girls are busy in the small kitchen and Chaewon insists that they don’t need any more help, so you and Sunghoon bring two chairs by the kitchen door and sit as Yunjin catches the four of you up on the most recent drama in her Law cohort. Jay arrives twenty minutes later, but it isn’t another hour before Jake shows up with the excuse that he was taking a nap.
“Someone would think you don’t sleep at night, with the amount of naps you take,” you say.
“Oh my God, I miss when you weren’t here,” Jake replies, flicking your forehead before promptly plopping himself down on the couch. “I was so hungover when I woke up. I had to sleep it off,” he explains as he grabs four cans of beer from his backpack. 
Chaewon always makes a point to ask how everyone’s spent their day, but today, she unfortunately starts with Sunghoon, so he doesn’t have any time to come up with anything believable other than the truth, which is exactly what he does—and when Jay asks, What, to the beach by yourself? under Minjeong’s heavy gaze, he has no choice but to say yes. He isn’t sure why it’s such a big deal that you spent the day with him, or why it needs to be kept a secret, but there must be a reason. He’ll find out later. When it’s your turn, you look straight into Sunghoon’s eyes as you say you spent the day at the library but didn’t get much work done. Everyone ignores Jake when he exclaims Boring! and Chaewon swiftly moves onto Jay.
But you don’t. 
Your eyes stay on Sunghoon, unflinchingly watching him, expression unreadable, and he finds himself unable to look away, even as he feels his face heat up and his stomach flip. Then you smile, a satisfied smirk like you got what you wanted, and shift your gaze to Jay, who’s going on and on about the first six episodes of Lost he binge-watched earlier and wondering why nobody had told him about this “masterpiece of a show” before. Sunghoon is too busy thinking about the way you’d looked at him and pondering all the reasons for it to listen carefully. He watched Lost when he was fourteen anyway.
All throughout the evening, as the seven of you eat Chaewon’s pasta dish (which she made entirely from scratch, and is probably one of the best things to have ever graced Sunghoon’s taste buds), drink, talk, and afterwards, play card games, every glance between you and Sunghoon feels like a secret conversation that only the two of you are privy to. No one except for Minjeong is aware that you spent the day just the two of you until now—and even she doesn’t know what it is you did. Within a day of knowing each other, you already share memories that are yours and no one else’s. Sunghoon is giddy with the knowledge, heart skipping every time your eyes meet, no matter how fleetingly. When you’re all saying goodbye, it takes everything in him not to hug you for an awkwardly long time and to tear himself away from you. 
He can hardly fall asleep that night.
--
For the entirety of the year you were gone, Sunghoon could only nod and smile while the others bemoaned your absence or commented on how much more fun it’d be if you were here (even Jake, after enough wine spritzers, would admit to missing you). He understood that the group dynamics might feel different to them without you around, but this particular set of people was all he knew, so he never minded it. It reminded him of people telling him how sad it must’ve been growing up without a father, trying to be empathetic, when he didn’t know how he could miss something he never had. 
But now that you’re here, he gets it. You add something to the group that he can’t quite put his finger on. It’s in your affectionate gestures towards Chaewon and Yunjin, in your shared sense of humor with Jay (which no one else seems to find funny, save for Sunghoon, sometimes), in your bickering with Minjeong and downright arguing with Jake. It’s a hackneyed expression, but you do light up a room—at least in Sunghoon’s opinion, you do. In your presence, everything feels not only more lively, but also more cohesive, like you were the missing piece of a puzzle. Like a historic work of art that has been returned to its rightful owner. 
Sunghoon just finds himself drawn to you, at times unable to keep his eyes off of you, and the only things keeping him from making a move are his inherent shyness and the eyes of your friends. He doesn’t want to mess up the friendship he has with anyone from the group, least of all Jake, just because he can’t keep it in his pants. He thought of Yunjin and Chaewon, how their relationship had gone smoothly from the beginning and posed no problem to the dynamic of the group, but he had no idea if this was replicable between you and him at all.
If he had to be honest, a big part of him was also just afraid you’d reject him.
Getting a read on you is hard, which doesn’t help. It’s been three weeks since the gang reunited, since that party where you met. The first semester of his second and your fourth year started a little bit over a week ago; Sunghoon sometimes worries that you think there is some big age gap between you and that you see him as a kid, even though, admittedly, two years is not such a huge difference. In those three weeks, there have been many encounters which could be seen as cases of flirting between the two of you—Sunghoon has noticed every single one of them and replayed each an embarrassing amount of times in his head. A hand carefully posited on his shoulder; prolonged eye contact; jokes whispered in his ear at a crowded house party; knees lightly touching at first, then pressed together during movie night. None of it ever fails to make Sunghoon’s heart flutter. You could breathe in his general direction and it’d make his heart beat fast enough to worry a cardiologist, so when you smile at him, it’s a small death every time.
And so he dares hope that his interest isn’t one-sided—although most of the time, he is so stuck between thinking none of it means anything and thinking every single thing you do is a sign that you like him, that he rarely knows what to think. And whenever you’ve paid him enough attention to make him believe it’s not all in his head, you do something that proves him wrong. Watching you interact with other people, he realizes that you keep good eye contact with everyone and that you’re just as touchy and playful with all of your friends. At parties, you hit it off with new people and catch up with old friends without so much as a hint of awkwardness. He watches as you talk to other guys, the same smile that has been making him weak for the past three weeks, directed towards them and not him. Sunghoon assumes you’re either really nice to everyone and oblivious to the fact that it could be seen as flirting, or you just flirt with everyone. 
In that sense, the two of you are complete opposites. Sunghoon, whose entire friend group hangs on the fact that he befriended Jay, who knew Jake, who knew you, Minjeong, Yunjin and Chaewon. Sunghoon who has spoken to maybe half of his hockey team outside of the locker rooms and the occasional party. Sunghoon who, outside of his usual friend group, has managed to make three other friends on his own in the year he’s been at university, because they had been put in a group project and magically hit it off enough to upgrade from classmates to friends. 
Then there’s you, who has to stop every thirty seconds at a party to say hi to someone you know. You, who still keeps in touch with the friends you made in a foreign country, even those who spoke broken English. You, who didn’t make Sunghoon feel like his crippling shyness was a problem when you first met. 
He doesn’t understand how everyone who meets you doesn’t instantly fall in love. 
Or maybe they do, and he’s just one of many vying for your heart. 
Tonight is one of the nights where all he can do is watch from afar as you interact with another man that he desperately wishes was him. With your lower back against the kitchen counter, drink in hand as you laugh with that other guy, eyes never leaving his face, it almost looks like someone has copied your time with Sunghoon at the costume party and pasted it onto this post-hockey game party. All you’re missing is a bright pink cowgirl hat and boots to match.
And yet, it’s his team jacket over your shoulders, his name and number on your back. Sunghoon shouldn’t feel nearly as jealous as he does.
So he does what any good friend would do, and blames Jay for reasons completely unwarranted—even now, days after receiving his advice, and hours after taking it, Sunghoon still can’t help but regret involving him at all. 
Initially, Sunghoon hadn’t wanted to tell anyone about his growing feelings for you—he’d thought that if he pushed them away and kept them to himself, they’d go away on their own. But clearly, they didn’t, seeing as how his stomach always twisted in nervous excitement at the prospect of seeing you and how he could never get through a conversation with you without blushing. So, quicker than he’d like to admit, he’d given in and told Jay about the day you’d spent at the beach and how felt about you now, thinking it was some big shameful secret that would render his friend flabbergasted. 
That was his first mistake. 
Jay wasn’t impressed. “Yeah, it’s been pretty obvious, dude,” he’d said through a mouthful of cheeseburger. It was after hockey practice, and they were sitting in the burger joint near the ice rink that had some of the best student deals in town. Jake was going on a Hinge date, and Sunghoon had lured Jay in with the promise of free food (Jay wanted to go home and game, but all Sunghoon needed to do to convince him was to say “I’ll pay for it”). 
“Obvious? How obvious? Does everyone know? Does Jake know?” Sunghoon asked, growing more agitated by the second.
“Jake is possibly the worst room-reader that has ever lived, so no, I don’t think he’s caught on. But the rest of us know. I mean, you look at her like a twelve-year-old with a crush on his English teacher,” Jay said, unceremoniously cramming fries into his mouth.
Sunghoon ignored the slightly humiliating remark, still preoccupied by the fact that he hadn’t been as discreet as he thought he had. He leant in towards Jay and dropped his voice to a whisper, even though the restaurant was practically empty, save for them and a group of rowdy middle school boys who were definitely not paying attention to them. “Do you think… does she know?”
Jay dropped his fist on the table in sudden annoyance, causing Sunghoon to jump back in his seat. “Now you’re acting like a twelve-year-old.” Before Sunghoon could defend himself and argue that he’s being completely rational, Jay launches into a surprisingly moving monologue. “It’s fine if you like her, there’s nothing to be embarrassed of. Everybody feels attraction towards other people, everybody gets crushes, it’s no big deal. Just talk to her. Worst case scenario, she doesn’t feel the same way, and you both move on, because you’re adults.”
There’s nothing worse than a friend being right about something you absolutely don’t want to hear. Sunghoon did feel like he had been carrying a horrible secret around, but Jay was spot-on: crushes are a very common, very human experience. And yet Sunghoon managed to feel like he was the only one who had ever had to go through this torture. “You say that like it’s easy,” he said, sulking.
“It is easy. You’re making it hard.”
“So what, your advice is just to confess to her?”
Jay rolled his eyes. “See? You’re saying confess like it’s some sin you have to repent for. Yeah, just tell her.”
“Just tell her,” Sunghoon repeated, looking at his friend like he was crazy. Jay just took another bite of his burger.
“Yeah, dude. It’s not even like you’ve known each other for a long time, so there’s no risk of ruining a friendship, or anything.”
“But do you even know if she feels the same way at all?”
Jay shrugged. “She hasn’t mentioned anything,” he said, and Sunghoon’s heart dropped in disappointment. “But it’s Y/N, she’ll be cool about it. And who knows, she might actually see something in you, for some godforsaken reason.”
Jay laughed at his own joke, and Sunghoon afforded him a chuckle. They moved on to other topics, but later, as they waited for Jay’s bus to come, he couldn’t help himself. “Do you think Jake will mind? If something happens with Y/N and me?”
Jay thought for a second. “I think he’d be more upset with her than with you, what with everything that happened with Heeseung... But knowing him, he probably won’t care as long as you aren’t weird in front of him.” He puts a hand on Sunghoon’s shoulder and shakes it gently. “Don’t let that stop you from making a move, okay? You’ll cross that bridge when you get to it.” His bus came then, so Sunghoon couldn't ask for more details about this Heeseung situation—he knew that there had been something between you and him which hadn’t ended particularly well, but no one ever really talked about it so he didn’t dare bring it up. All he knew was that it had been significant enough for Jay to mention it now, and for Jake to seem bothered every time it was mentioned.
He put all of that out of his head for the time being. In a way, he had just received Jay’s blessing; even if it scared him shitless, he could make a move. Perhaps not something as straightforward as Jay was suggesting, but something, at the very least. 
The first major hockey game of the season was that coming Friday. Sunghoon had an idea.
The morning of, he shot you a text. He tried to make it sound as nonchalant as he can, so that you wouldn’t know he spent close to an hour deleting, writing and pouring over a singular sentence. Can you meet me in front of the locker rooms 30 mins before the game? 
That was his second mistake.
You replied twenty minutes later, twenty minutes that Sunghoon spent questioning everything that had led up to this moment.
yn.sim i’ll be there!!
You even got there five minutes early. He was waiting for you, all decked out in his hockey uniform, save for the gloves and protective headgear. He was anxiously chewing on gum, heart doing somersaults inside his ribcage—a grin found his lips as soon as you appeared around the corner, the sight of you alleviating his nerves for a second, then doubling them when you came close. “Hey,” he said, voice soft and slightly trembling.
“Hey,” you simply replied, a smile on your face to match his as he took you in his arms. It was a hug that lasted a second longer than it should, but that also ended too early for his liking.
“Um, I only have a second, Coach will be wanting to give one of his pep talks,” he said when you separated. One quick glance back at the locker room doors behind him, then back at you. The tips of his ears burnt, and he couldn’t stop his eyes from furtively darting between your face and the floor. But he’d come this far, so he couldn’t back out now. He just had to get it over with. “Here,” he blurted out, holding out the letterman jacket he had been hiding behind his back. You grabbed it, eyeing him with amused suspicion at first, but surprise spreaded over your features as you unfurled the jacket.
“Your team jacket?” 
He couldn’t tell whether you were amazed or horrified. You stared wide-eyed at the jacket, at its dark green sleeves, at the four letters of his last name and the huge number 8 embroidered onto the back. Your surprise faded back into what he thought — what he hoped — was excitement as you looked at him. He scratched the back of his neck, feeling his face flush red. “Yeah, I just, you know… It’s the first big game of the year, and I thought it’d bring me good luck if a pretty girl was wearing my name…” he explained, repeating the words he’d practiced over and over, voice turning into more and more of a mumble as he spoke. He had planned on speaking with more confidence, but now, the fact that he could speak at all felt like a miracle.
A light giggle spilled out of your mouth. Sunghoon immediately took it for mockery and regretted every decision that had led him here. “Sorry, it was a silly idea, you don’t have to wear it if you don’t like it,” he said, reaching for the jacket. But you were quicker than him, hugging the thick bundle of fabric to your chest as you now beamed at him.
“Are you kidding? I love it,” you said, shrugging off your jacket and replacing it with his.
First, relief flooded his body, then pride and excitement — as you spun around and showed the jacket off — at seeing his name on your back, and his attempt at making a move being successful. At least, he thought it was clear what he meant by giving you his jacket to wear at his game—he could only hope you understood. “Well… I’m glad.” Your eyes met, and you both chuckled softly, gazes holding each other’s for a second too long. 
Two weeks ago, Sunghoon still would’ve been able to convince himself this was a fluke; that this was just another one of his crushes that a gentle breeze could blow away. Because after all, when Sunghoon fell in love, it usually went as quickly as it came. But at that moment, in front of the locker rooms, his mind solely on you and not the opening game of the season, he realized this was something else entirely. And whatever it was, he hadn’t felt it in a good long while.
He was terrified—but infinitely excited, too.
“Okay, I should probably head back in now,” he forced himself to say, but made no move to go.
“Okay.”
He paused. “Will you be cheering me on?”
Your smile widened. “Of course.”
He nodded slowly, upper body starting to turn away but feet still firmly planted on the ground. “Okay.” 
Another second passed, and just as he was about to actually walk away, you grabbed his hand. Before he could compute what was happening, you lifted your head and pressed a small kiss to his cheek. His hand was still in yours when you took a step back, and for once, it was you who looked sheepishly at the floor. “For good luck,” you explained. He had no time to reply—you were already walking away, only looking back once to wave and shoo him in the direction of the locker room. He chuckled and nodded, but waited until you were out of sight to head back into the locker room.
Inside the locker room, everyone was too focused on getting their head in the game to notice his giddy smile. Your lips had been warm and soft against his cheeks, a welcome repeat of that time at the costume party, but the quickness of it all had only made him want more. From that very first night he’d met you, the question of how your lips would feel on his had scarcely left his mind. This brought him a step closer to getting an answer, but also made his curiosity grow tenfold.
Thankfully, by the time his coach gathered them around for a last minute pep talk, he’d managed to put the distracting thoughts of you out of his head, at least temporarily—he’d need to play well, for himself and his team mostly, but impressing you was also a priority. 
As the captain, Heeseung said a few words. He reminded the team of how important this match was and went over the main strategy points. For the time being, Sunghoon was able to forget about his arguably unfounded resentment against the older boy and whatever it was he had to do with you. This was not the time for jealousy over someone he had no right to feel jealous over. 
A few minutes later, his members and those of the opposing team poured out onto the rink for warm-up. Sunghoon searched the crowd for your face—when he found it, you were already smiling wide and waving at him. His heart did something funny, but Jay punched his shoulder pad and he remembered what he was there for. He could get lost in the eyes of a pretty girl later, specifically when he’d destroyed the other team and shown her how good of a hockey player he was.
Every now and then as he skirted around the rink and did his stretches, he stole glances at you. They didn't last long, because every single time, you’d already be looking, as if your eyes never strayed from him. Knowing you were watching made him nervous at first, but by the end of warm-up, mainly because he didn’t have much of a choice, he’d turned those nerves into an ever stronger will to do well.
The moment the referee blew the whistle, and for the hour that followed, Sunghoon was locked in on one thing and one thing only: winning. He was only competitive when it came to hockey—he didn’t care about dying in an online battle game or losing to Jake at beer pong, but once he was on the rink, he had to win. Pride surged through him and filled every crevice of his aching limbs whenever he or one of his team members scored, and the feeling that came with a victory, with hugging his teammates in celebration or hearing the crowd cheer for them, was like nothing else he’d ever known. The other side of that coin meant that any loss was a tremendous disappointment. Getting beat at an important game could put him in a week-long funk. His sister had once carefully hinted at his self-esteem relying too much on his hockey performance, and although his first reaction had been to dismiss her, he knew she had poked at some truth there. But what could he do—on particularly lonely nights, he truly thought hockey was all he had going for him. 
To his overthinking nature, becoming so single-minded the second the whistle blows was a relief, a break from the stress of daily life. He didn’t have to worry about his next deadline or about what the guys on the team thought of him or about the inevitable phone call to his mom asking for more money for groceries. It was respite from the thoughts surrounding you that plagued him: how you felt about him, how you might react knowing what he felt for you, how Jake might react. Why Minjeong hadn’t wanted you to say anything that evening, but why Jay had told him to just go for it. Heeseung, whom he had to respect as the captain and an undeniably talented player, but also as someone who had had something to do with you, whether good or bad. All of it had been wildly bustling around Sunghoon’s mind, but once on the rink, all he had to concern himself with was the puck and getting it in the opposing team’s goal. 
And Sunghoon did just that—he scored the first goal of the game, another one in the second period, then a third during the eleventh hour, breaking the tie between the two teams. He smiled right at you after each one, just to make sure you had seen everything. He couldn’t quite describe how it felt to see you clap and cheer for him, jumping up-and-down, forming a megaphone with your hands around your mouth and yelling, “Go Sunghoon!” all while you wore his jacket. It was a separate kind of pride and satisfaction from the sort he’d get seeing anyone else cheer him on, for sure. 
The other team put up a good fight, getting in a few goals of their own and protecting their side well, but in the end, thanks to Sunghoon’s goal, it was his team that won. He took his helmet off and got his hair ruffled by half of his team, then shook hands with the other team, trying to contain his boastful smile—some ice hockey players flew off the handle very quickly, and starting a fight was the last thing he wanted.
Kids and local fans huddled by the barriers on each side of the player’s tunnel to get an autograph or a picture. People around here were weirdly attached to their university sport teams, and the athletes on teams that did particularly well — namely football and rugby — were sort of local celebrities. Their ice hockey team wasn’t quite at that stage yet, but they were placing better nationally with every year, and so the local interest had grown. More kids had started signing up for lessons, and their parents often brought them to home games. As Sunghoon chatted with men twice his age and took selfies with ten-year-olds, he tried to find you in the crowd, to no avail. He’d been hoping for a thumbs-up from you for a game well played, or even a hug, but you were nowhere in sight.
It wasn’t until half-an-hour later, after saying bye to all the fans that had waited after the game for them, listening to Heeseung and their coach congratulate them (but also remind them to not take anything for granted), showering and changing, that he got to check his phone.
chaewon we going k-bbq! u guys played well see u later at da party!!!!
Disappointment only had a second to sink to the bottom of his stomach. He’d barely finished reading the text when he was hoisted up by the shoulders. Two of his senior teammates, Soobin and Beomgyu, marched him towards the exit. “We are getting you wasted tonight, Park,” Beomgyu announced, a wide grin on his lips.
“I have a good feeling about this season,” Soobin added. Sunghoon looked back to find Jay and Jake simply shrugging and laughing at him.
Indeed, the second they got to the dorm where tonight’s party would be taking place, a beer was thrusted in his hand. It was only 7 p.m., still light outside, but that didn’t stop the team nor their friends that had come to the game. They sipped beer like it was water, so much so that two hours later, when the party started to grow, Sunghoon was already quite inebriated. It didn’t help that his cup was never empty for too long, and that he had the reassurance of being in his own dorm—it was the closest student building to the ice rink, and so was one of the prime spots for hockey parties. He could get as drunk as he wanted — or as Beomgyu wanted — and still get home in less than a minute. 
He somehow ended up in the corridor, part of a nonsensical conversation about candle-making with two guys he had recognized from one of his Phys Ed classes but could not for the life of him remember the names of. One had shared that candle-making was a big hobby of his, and it had made Sunghoon and the other unknown man lose their minds—Sunghoon had never realized how curious about candle-making he was, but he couldn’t stop asking questions. It sounded great. Maybe he’d have to pick up candle-making, too. 
Eventually, he headed back to the kitchen for a new drink. For the nth time this evening, he thought of texting you, then immediately thought against it. He wanted to know when you’d get here, but he didn’t want you to know that he wanted to know—although as the night deepened and his intoxication rose, he could remember less and less why that would be such a bad thing. He stepped into the kitchen, and going from the brightly-lit corridor to the dark kitchen with flashing neon lights made him so dizzy that he made a beeline for the couch, needing to sit down for a second.
And that was when he saw you.
Lower back against the counter, talking with a guy he’s never seen in his life. You look like you’re having fun—smiling, laughing, keeping eye contact with that guy. You’re still wearing his jacket. It should probably reassure him—his name is literally on you, what does it matter that you’re speaking to someone else? But instead, all he can think is that wearing his jacket must mean nothing to you. What was basically a confession from him seems to have fallen on deaf ears.
His friends’ words over the past year come back to him—how much you flirt with people, how it wasn’t a rare occurrence for you to go home with a guy after a party and never speak of him ever again. Was this what was happening here?
He knows it’s unreasonable, but in his drunken state, he takes it as a betrayal. Like he can’t believe you haven’t read his mind, figured out how he felt about you, and decided to give special attention to him and him only. He’s only able to take it for so long—two minutes later, he trudges out of the room, walking right past you but not looking your way.
His new mission is to find his friends, but before he’s done much searching, he hears his name being called out. Of course, he recognizes your voice immediately, but he doesn’t quite believe it until he looks over his shoulder, and there you are, face glowing and smiling wide. You’ve clearly had a few drinks, but he likes to think you’d be just as happy to see him if you were sober. He turns around to face you, watching as you narrow the distance between the two of you. He’s not in a much better state—the simple thought that you had come after him makes him forget any sort of resentment he held against you a second ago. When you reach him, he holds on to one of your arms, as much an effort to stabilize his swaying body as an excuse to touch you.
“Hey,” he simply says. He’s always at a loss for words around you, so scared he’ll say the wrong thing that he ends up barely speaking at all. He’s only sober enough to know that with all the cheap beer and vodka running through his blood, his odds of making a fool of himself are even bigger. 
“Hey. I was wondering where you were.” 
“You’re the one who came late.”
“I know!” you exclaim. “I wanted to come right away, but Chaewon was hell-bent on getting her Korean barbecue.”
“She does get cranky when she hasn’t had pork belly in a while.” Sunghoon feels like he’s just won the Nobel Prize when you let out a laugh. “Was the food good at least?”
“It was amazing. So worth getting here late,” you joke.
He rolls his eyes playfully. “I see how it is.” Then, before he can stop himself, he adds, “Then we should go there together next time.” 
Your smile changes, turning from cheerful to surprised, but amused—almost mischievous. You take a step forward. Sunghoon gulps; the gap between the two of you was narrow to begin with. “Are you asking me out on a date?”
Usually, this type of straight-forwardness would have him stuttering, but drunk Sunghoon is a man sober Sunghoon barely recognizes in the morning. “Yeah. I am. Is that okay?”
You nod. “Mh-hm.”
“Nice. Okay.” For a second, you just look at each other. Another thing about drunk Sunghoon: he doesn’t feel like prolonged eye contact will make him spontaneously combust. He actually quite enjoys it. He also stumbles, even when all he’s doing is trying to stand straight. “You’re still wearing my jacket,” he eventually says, reaching out to take the end of your sleeve between his fingers.
You stretch out your arms and appraise the team jacket as if you only remembered you had it on. “Yeah. It’s comfy.”
“It looks good. You look good.”
“You’re not quite sober, are you?” you ask suddenly. 
“Is it that obvious?” When you nod, he giggles, lowering his head in defeat. “The guys made me drink so much.”
“You did score three goals after all. And you looked good doing it.”
At the praise, he stands up to his full height and places his palms behind his head in a victorious pose. “I did, didn’t I?” he says, looking off in the distance with a self-assured look that makes you burst into laughter. He drops the confident facade and laughs along with you, until somebody bumps into him and sends him stumbling forwards. If you weren’t standing there to catch him, he’d probably have fallen flat on his face. But even though he doesn’t fall, he feels all the alcohol catching up to him and threatening to come right back out where it came from. You hold him for a second, and just as you ask him if he’s okay, he says, “I think I’m gonna throw up.”
You sigh. “Okay. Where’s your room?” 
Arm under his shoulders, you let Sunghoon lean most of his weight on you as you guide him towards the elevator. It’s just one floor, but you said you didn’t want to risk the stairs with him. “Hey, who was that guy with you in the kitchen? That guy in the striped shirt? You guys seemed real chummy back there…” he mumbles as you help him out of the elevator. Even on the verge of sickness, Sunghoon is preoccupied by more important things.
“Oh, that was Jaemin.”
“Jaemin,” he echoes, more venom in his voice than needed.
You look at him, taking in his disgruntled expression, and chuckle. “Yeah, he’s having some problems with his boyfriend. He asked me for advice.”
Sunghoon almost freezes in his tracks, but you’re there to keep him walking towards his room. “Oh. He has a boyfriend.”
“Yeah…” He can tell you want to tease him about it, but thankfully, you say nothing. He’s made it clear he had gotten jealous of your gay friend—no need to spell it out in so many words. Once you reach his studio (which he’d stupidly left unlocked), he heads straight for the bathroom, locking himself in, half out of embarrassment, half because he really doesn’t want you to see him throw up. Talk about a turn-off. He leans over the toilet bowl, waiting for the vomit to rise, but nothing comes. He waits, and waits, mind completely empty, head spinning even though he’s sitting very still, when suddenly a knock on the door pulls him out of his stupor.
“Sunghoon? It’s been ten minutes. Everything okay?”
He doesn’t say anything, just unlocks the door for you. Without realizing, he fell asleep like a bored teenager in math class. “All right,” he hears you say.
He’s surprised you’re able to carry him out of the bathroom—if he was a deadweight before, by now, rigor mortis has practically set in. Despite his small student room, crossing it takes you an entire minute, and when you reach his bed, you all but let him flop on the mattress. He doesn’t mind. As soon as his body hits the bed, he feels quite snug, curling against his blanket. You start to unbutton his shirt, probably just thinking he’s already fallen asleep and wanting to make him more comfortable, but your fingers freeze when he starts giggling. Shoulders shaking with unbridled laughter, he feels as delighted as a five-year-old who just said a naughty word and made all his drunk relatives laugh at the family dinner. 
“I know I looked really hot tonight, but can we wait until I’m sober?” he asks, slurring his words slightly and keeping his eyes shut, despite the shit-eating smirk on his lips. You hit him on the chest but it just makes him laugh more.
“Bold of you to assume I’d still hit when I’ve just had to peel you off your toilet seat.” He lets you finish helping him out of his button-down. 
“Wouldn’t you?” he asks. He tries to look at you, but his eyes don’t quite open all the way, and they don’t focus properly, due to a strong mix of alcohol and inappropriate thoughts. Of you, specifically. His body feels suddenly very heavy, his want for you weighing him down into the mattress. The room is dark, your face illuminated only by the light in the bathroom and the glow of the street lights outside. You always look pretty, but your beauty is especially breath-taking right now, Sunghoon thinks. He wants to reach out and touch your face, wants to trace your jawline and know what your skin would feel like against his fingers. He doesn’t realize he’s actually doing it until he hears you inhale shakily.
The expression in your eyes is unreadable, and quickly gone, replaced by an annoyed squint. You grab his wrist gently, setting it back down next to him. “I’m gonna make you some ramen. You need to sober up, and you haven’t had dinner, have you?”
Sunghoon shakes his head. He feels rejected, and it makes him inordinately sad.
For five minutes, he watches as you rummage around his cupboards for a pack of ramen, fill a pot with water and bring it to a boil. His thoughts float back to your day at the beach, memories that he’s preciously held onto for the past few weeks. You running around on the sand, opening yourself up to him and letting him open himself up to you, holding his hand on the bus. That day, he’d really thought it would be the beginning of something new; but as time passed, he became less and less sure of himself. He’s scared it might’ve just been a fluke, and that he’d have to destroy the castle he’d built in his head. He’s seen you almost every day since, but it’s never been the same. And even if your eyes met unexpectedly sometimes, or if you went out of your way to sit next to him during movie nights, he can’t let himself go on with so few signs. Jay was right—he had to be clear about his feelings, otherwise this would go on forever. Even if it didn’t feel like it, the Earth would continue spinning on its axis if you didn’t reciprocate.
“I’ve missed you.”
You pause in your movements. “Missed me? But we’ve seen each other every day,” you say after a few seconds, still facing away from him. Your voice is softer than he’s heard it before, almost unsure of itself.
“No,” Sunghoon whines, frowning. He can barely keep his eyes open—he wishes you could read his mind so he wouldn’t have to explain, but alas. “I miss you—the you from the beach. When it was just me and you. It’s not the same with the others around.”
Silence falls over the room again. Sunghoon wonders if you’re just going to ignore what he said, until you take a deep breath, and walk back to his bed. You crouch in front of him and take both of his hands in yours. Electricity flows from where your hands touch to the rest of his body. He suddenly feels a lot more awake.
“It’s just the two of us now,” you whisper. 
Sunghoon nods. “I know. It’s nice.”
You smile. It might be the alcohol playing tricks on him, but Sunghoon swears there’s a hint of sadness in your eyes. One of your hands comes up to his hair. You thread your fingers gently through it, pushing it away from his forehead, then bring your hand down to the side of his face, your palm cupping it tenderly. Sunghoon lets himself lean into your warm touch. With his eyes closed, the darkness surrounding him makes this feel like a dream—he basks in the moment so as not to let a second of it go to waste.
“Do you wanna do something just us two this week?” you ask softly. His eyes shoot open—he needs to be sure this is really happening. He nods again, fervently this time, and it makes you chuckle. “Okay.”
“Just us two?” 
“Just us two.”
He relaxes once more. He guides your hand towards his mouth and presses his lips against your palm. Something shifts in your eyes—Sunghoon thinks the opportunity to finally kiss you has arisen, but as soon as his gaze drops to your lips, you’re back on your feet. “Let’s eat some ramen, shall we?” you ask as you head back towards the kitchen. Sunghoon tries his best (and probably fails) to not let his disappointment show.
There’s no dining table to speak of, only a low table near Sunghoon’s bed, on which you set down a wooden board and the steaming pot of spicy noodles. You hand him a pair of chopsticks and a spoon, and tell him to eat. Neither of you say much for a while, and Sunghoon grows redder and redder under your watchful gaze. He asks if you want any a few times, but you always turn him down. The silence quickly gets a little too unbearable for him, and he’s got a question burning the tip of his tongue anyway. Now’s as good a time as ever to ask it.
“Something’s been bugging me recently, actually…” You wait for him to go on. “So, at the costume party, right?” You nod. “You said there was only one person you wanted to kiss… Did you mean me?”
You tilt your head, looking at him like you’re trying to figure out whether he’s joking or not. “Yeah, Sunghoon… I meant you. Who else?”
He’s only half-relieved. “So why won’t you kiss me now?”
To his surprise, you smile. “Because you’re drunk.”
Confusion fogs Sunghoon’s brain. Is that all you’re worried about? Is his blood alcohol level the only thing stopping you from kissing him? “But I-I’m fine. I give you consent to kiss me, Y/N.” He’s dead serious, so when you laugh, it only frustrates him further.
“Finish your food, Sunghoon. We’ll see about kissing later.”
He sighs. Later he could deal with. “Fine. But I’ll hold you to it, okay?” he says, pointing a menacing chopstick at you.
“Okay.”
But Sunghoon can’t keep quiet for long—ten seconds later, he’s remembered another question he’s been dying to ask. He continues drinking his soup in an attempt to appear nonchalant. “So what happened between you and Heeseung?”
The question takes you so off-guard, you look like you would’ve done a spit-take had you been drinking water. “That’s-you know about that?”
“Well, not much, that’s why I’m asking.”
You scoff. “Why do you want to know? It’s boring.”
At those words, Sunghoon whips his head up to look at you. “It’s not boring!” he exclaims, perhaps a tad too vigorously. “Anything that has to do with you is interesting to me.”
Finally, the corners of your lips rise. Sunghoon hated the ten seconds in which you weren’t smiling. “Well, there isn’t much to say, anyway. We had a thing when we were in second year, I caught feelings and wanted more, and he didn’t. The end.”
Sunghoon freezes, staring at you with his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth agape. He then sets his cutlery down neatly next to the pot of ramen and clasps his hands together like he’s in a business meeting. “So you’re telling me that he had the opportunity to make you his girlfriend and he just… didn’t?”
You shrug. “Basically, yeah.”
He hits the bedsheets next to him, huffing out in annoyance. “What an idiot.”
“He sure is,” you say. You smile to yourself as you grab Sunghoon’s spoon and try some of the broth. He wonders whether anything lies behind that smile. “But it happened a while ago. Don’t be weird with him on my account. He’s still your captain.”
Sunghoon thinks for a second. “Can I side-eye him once in a while? Or not pass him the puck during practice?”
“Sure,” you reply, laughing. You swiftly move on to other topics as Sunghoon slurps the last of his noodles, asking him about the beginning of the party and just how much his teammates made him drink. He’s recounting the shot contest they held, which Mark won with an impressive seven shots of tequila in a row — Sunghoon hopes the boy is okay now — when your phones buzz at the same time. Minjeong’s name appears on your screen, Jay’s on his, both asking where you are.
“Should we head back now?” you offer, although Sunghoon, wishfully perhaps, detects a trace of reluctance in your voice. “You look like you’ve sobered up a bit, seeing as you’re able to string more than two sentences together.”
“I wasn’t that bad!”
“I should’ve filmed you.”
It’s one a.m. when you head back down, and the party is in full swing. Pop music blasts through someone’s JBL speaker in the shared kitchen, the hallways are more crowded than the subway at rush hour, just as full of hockey fans celebrating their team’s win as students who just wanted an excuse to party, and every window is open to alleviate some of the stuffiness. They probably have another hour left before the dorm residents who decided not to join in the festivities call campus police on them.
Sunghoon is relieved to find that Jake is off with other team members, reaching levels of drunkenness that will most definitely be regretted in the morning. Technically, he hasn’t done anything wrong—he simply let you nurse him back to sobriety after he almost regurgitated his pre-game protein bar and three beers all over your nice shirt. Chaewon and Yunjin are busy making out in a corner, their lack of decorum only increasing when they’ve been drinking, but Jay and Minjeong eye you suspiciously upon seeing the two of you arrive together. You explain what happened so casually that they don’t question it any further.
Chaewon and Yunjin only tear themselves off of each other when a Beyoncé song starts playing, and they drag all four of you to the makeshift dancefloor, which is really just three meters away in the middle of the kitchen. Sunghoon is practically all sobered up by now, but he’s loosened up enough not to feel self-conscious with every step he takes; the fact that you look so happy, dancing with him and laughing at his silly moves, is a considerable bonus. He won’t drink any more, not wanting to risk embarrassing himself further in front of you, and Jay, as the group’s self-proclaimed health guru, probably had his last beer around nine p.m., but the girls, each of them with a cup of suspicious transparent liquid in hand, are getting drunker by the minute—and so is Jake, who has now joined you all on the dancefloor, if his inability to stand straight is anything to go by. Sunghoon assumes you’re also done with alcohol for the night, until you turn to him in the middle of a song no one has heard since 2015 and tell him you’re going to get a drink.
“Okay!” he simply answers, and for a good thirty seconds, basks in the blissful satisfaction of knowing he was the one you informed of your whereabouts. That is, until he realizes a minute later that it was probably a covert invitation for him to come along, which he totally missed. But when he looks over at the counter where all the drinks are, his heart drops—Heeseung is standing in front of you, pouring gin and lemonade into your cup. A flurry of emotions course through Sunghoon, emotions he has no idea what to do with, because he’s not sure they’re entirely warranted. He’s angry that Heeseung is talking to you, after what he did, confused that you’d let him; but mostly, he’s jealous. But he knows it’s only because he has no guarantee that you like him, and that you won’t go off with Heeseung, despite having just talked about how you were over him.
Wait—is that really what you said? You told Sunghoon that what happened with Heeseung didn’t bother you anymore, which doesn’t necessarily mean you wouldn’t go back to him, given the chance. 
Before he can think it over a second time, Sunghoon heads over to where you and Heeseung stand. He places himself right behind you, reaching for a bottle of Coke on your side and pouring himself a drink.
“Oh, hey, Hoon,” his team captain says, clearly surprised to see him there and looking so discontented. Sunghoon can’t remember whether they’ve ever been close enough for Heeseung to call him by his nickname. “Having fun?”
“Yep,” he curtly replies, avoiding eye contact with either of you and looking out at the crowd of party-goers instead. He can feel your gaze, heavy on his face, can see the knowing smirk slowly rising on your lips. How was it that you could see right through him so easily?
“Too much dancing made you thirsty?” you ask, taking a drink from your cup and hiding your smile behind it.
He glares at you, more annoyed that his attempt at subtly sussing out what you and Heeseung were doing together was shut down so quickly than anything else. “Yep,” he repeats.
“You guys know each other?” the older boy asks, eyes darting between the two of you.
“Jake introduced us,” Sunghoon quickly answers. To his surprise, this makes Heeseung chuckle.
“Jay, Sunghoon, me… Wow, do you meet all your friends through your brother, Y/N?” he asks jokingly. Immediately, so many alarm bells ring in Sunghoon’s head—the implication that you and Heeseung are friends, the fact that he put himself and Sunghoon in the same bag, and above all, that teasing, almost flirtatious tone of his. 
He’s horrified to find you rolling your eyes playfully and saying, “I have other friends, thanks,” in a tone far too similar. At that moment, Minjeong starts yelling about how much she loves everyone in this room but particularly “you guys,” pointing to Jake, Jay, Minjeong and Chaewon, and “you guys, too!” screaming over the music as she points to you and Sunghoon.
“There’s one of them,” you say, half-amused, half-exasperated. “We should probably go check on her. See you around, Heeseung.”
“Right. See you, Y/N. Sunghoon.” 
Back to no-nickname basis, apparently.
Your group’s indicator of when it’s time to go home is when Minjeong starts one of her “I-love-my-friends-so-much” rants—if she’s that drunk, everyone else must be wasted. Indeed, Chaewon and Yunjin are holding onto each other to keep themselves from falling down, and Jake is unable to keep his head up. You, Sunghoon and Jay herd your friends outside and wait for Jake’s Uber, making sure to get him safely inside and to tip the driver generously for his pains. Jay lives nearby yours and the girls’ flat, and Sunghoon, ever the gentleman, walks you all home.
“Just ‘cause you and Jay might need a hand getting these three home,” he tells you. Yunjin, Chaewon and Minjeong are currently running around on the road, pointing and laughing at random shop names, and Jay is yelling at them to get back on the sidewalk.
“Mh-hm.”
“And it’ll be good to completely sober up before going to bed.”
“Right.”
There’s no use putting up a front with you—he’s an open book and you’re an avid reader. You don’t need to say anything to make it clear that you know it’s just an excuse to spend more time with you.
“You know, I told you not to be weird with Heeseung,” you say, gently punching him in the arm.
“Was I weird?” he asks, knowing fully well he hadn’t acted at all like he usually did around his captain. 
“You basically only spoke to let Heeseung know we’re friends. You were making yourself all tall and looking mysteriously out into the distance instead of at us.”
“But I am tall and mysterious,” he says, pride coursing through him as it always does when you laugh at one of his jokes.
“You’re probably the least mysterious person I know, Hoon.”
Hoon. How much sweeter that name sounds coming from you over anyone else.
“So you agree that I’m tall?”
You roll your eyes, but there’s a grin on your face. A win is a win. “That’s just a fact.”
Sunghoon smiles victoriously. “I’ll take a fact. But I’m sorry if I was acting weird… I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t bothering you.”
“Heeseung is always bothering me,” you say with a sigh. “He comes up to me like this at every party. He’s just asking how I’ve been, but it’s like he’s sussing out whether or not he’s still got a chance.”
“Do you need me to beat him up? Threaten him? Dox him?”
Even though Sunghoon was only half-joking, you burst out laughing, hard enough for Minjeong to whip around and shout, “What are you laughing about?” as if you had offended her personally. At least Jay is there to make her turn around and focus on walking straight.
“I appreciate the offer, but that won’t be needed. I just don’t like talking about it, ‘cause it’s really not that big a deal anymore. It feels like digging up old bones, you know?”
Sunghoon shrugs. “I’d commit grave robbery with you.”
“You-what?”
“Nevermind. We obviously don’t have to talk about it, but I’m curious.”
You sigh. “I guess it’d make sense for you to know about this.” Sunghoon thinks he sees something like panic flash across your features, but it’s so quick and such a rare expression on you that he’s not sure whether he just imagined it. “You know-just ‘cause everyone else is aware of it, and everything,” you quickly explain.
“Sure.”
“I just… I’m sure Heeseung is a nice guy when it comes to other things, but what the girls and I have concluded is that he’s a bit of an attention whore, you know. When it comes to girls. We fooled around for a while, and he never made it official, even when I made it pretty clear that that was what I wanted. But every time we saw each other after that, he’d flirt with me like nothing had happened. I fell for it at first and flirted back, thinking he had changed his mind… but he really just wanted to make sure I was still into him.”
“Looking for validation,” Sunghoon says.
“Exactly. And when I realized that, I stopped giving it to him. I was getting tired of him anyway, saying the same thing every time. But now, I entertain him for a couple of minutes before I walk away. I shut him down before he gets a chance to do it to me.”
“That’s smart.”
“I know,” you say, smiling. “I understand the need for validation, but he won’t be getting any from me.”
Jay bravely handles the three drunkards the whole way home, letting you and Sunghoon hang behind and carry on talking. You reach the boy’s apartment first, and yours five minutes later. But when you reach your front door, Minjeong announces she needs to talk to Sunghoon. “Privately,” she emphasizes.
You give Sunghoon an amused look and shrug as if to say “She’s your problem now.” He doesn’t have time to protest before you’ve bid him goodnight and disappeared behind the door, Yunjin and Chaewon in tow, yelling good night at Sunghoon like they’re not going to see him for months. 
Minjeong places her palms flat onto Sunghoon’s torso and looks right at him—to the best of her ability, at least, considering she’s having a hard time focusing her eyes. “Sunghoon,” she says gravely.
“Minjeong?”
“Listen, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you,” she says, slurring her words. “You know I love Y/N, she’s amazing…”
“Yeah, she is,” Sunghoon says firmly—already, he can tell where this is going, and he doesn’t like it.
“But she’s not the best with relationships.”
“What do you mean?”
Minjeong’s hands drop by her sides and she exhales deeply. “I’ve just never seen her in a committed relationship in the-in the almost four years I’ve known her. She never lets things get serious. She’s just so afraid of being hurt, Hoon, and I-” 
A hiccup escapes Minjeong’s lips as tears start pooling in her eyes. Sunghoon has only ever seen Minjeong cry when drunk—even movies that had him sobbing barely made her eyes water. Even if she isn’t in her right state of mind, he knows it means this must be important to her. He holds her arms and tries to put on the most reassuring tone he can. “But I wouldn’t hurt her.”
“No, I know that. I’m scared you’d get hurt. I don’t want things to become weird between all of us.”
Sunghoon shakes his head. “Minjeong, what-that wouldn’t happen.”
“But it will!” she exclaimed. “If something happens with you and her, and it doesn’t work out the way you want it to, it’ll make things awkward-”
“If that happens,” he interrupts, “I’ll deal with it. I won’t make it your guys’ problem. Y/N and I are adults, okay?”
“You’re like, nineteen…”
“Yeah, whatever. Don’t worry about it, okay? It’ll be fine.” He takes a step back and opens the door for her to get in. 
She’s only on the first stair when she turns back around. “But, Hoon-” she tries, though he cuts her off.
“Minjeong, I promise-”
“Just don’t rush into anything, okay?”
“Okay.”
“And don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Go inside.” 
She complies, giving him one last look before climbing the stairs to her apartment. Sunghoon closes the door behind her, a heavy sigh leaving his lips.
--
Sunghoon is on his way home from hockey practice when his phone buzzes with a text from you.
yn are you still up for doing something this week?
He almost throws his phone in the air in celebration, as if it was a graduation cap. His Sunday was spent going back-and-forth between lapidating himself for his drunken stupidity, memories, rough as stones, hitting him in the face every time he thought of what he said and how he acted, and congratulating himself for having finally made his feelings for you somewhat clearer. Hopefully, you now know he isn’t just awkward and silent around new people—well, he is, but it’s worse with you.
She never lets things get serious.
Minjeong’s warnings echo in his head as he types a positive — although not over-enthusiastic, ‘cause that’d be uncool — answer, but he dismisses them easily. Perhaps he shouldn’t; Sunghoon is, after all, incredibly serious about any and all romantic encounters. The girl at the grocery store who reached for the same red bell pepper as him was the most serious thing to him in the world for a good ten minutes; all of his school crushes were of utmost importance to him, however long they had lasted.
So this? This is capital-s Serious. But therein lies the problem; he’s so serious about you that he’d let you not make it serious. If Minjeong is right, and you’re not planning on taking this nearly as far as he wishes for it to go, he can already tell he’ll just let you. He’ll probably be happy you wanted anything to do with him at all. 
He has ways of reassuring himself, of convincing himself he isn’t a totally lost cause. Because when Sunghoon falls in love — and he had an inkling this was what this was — it usually goes as quickly as it came. Who’s to say this time next week he won’t have completely moved on? Maybe this date that he’s agreed to will go horribly wrong, you’ll be rude to the waiter, you’ll spill tomato sauce all over your shirt, and the flame in his heart will be put out. Easy as that.
You decide to meet on Wednesday evening, two days from now. Sunghoon suggests a Japanese restaurant he likes, a place he had gone to with his mom and sister when they had dropped him off at university before his first year, and that he knows is nice enough for a date but won’t burn a hole through his wallet.
Seeing you at the library the day before is a real thrill. Nobody but you knows of your plans—at least not until he caves in and tells Jay about it, who congratulates him with a roll of his eyes and a pat on the head. All of your eye contact feels loaded with the kind of complicity that comes with sharing a secret. As much as he would love boasting about it to every soul who’d listen, this secrecy electrifies him—it binds the two of you with something much more real than before. At least, more real than Sunghoon’s imagination and one-sided feelings. He knows that your text wasn’t in any way a confession of your own feelings for him, but it’s a step in the right direction.
In the few hours before your reservation at seven p.m., Sunghoon spends so much time thinking about the date that he’s almost late for it. He thinks about his expectations, then tries to get rid of them; he comes up with ideas of what your expectations might be, remembers Minjeong’s words, dismisses them, remembers them again; he goes through scenarios upon scenarios of everything that might go wrong and everything that might go spectacularly well. He ends up with less than twenty minutes to get ready, but manages to arrive at the restaurant a minute before you.
When he sees you approaching, Sunghoon feels like one of those boys in Disney movies as they watch their girlfriend coming down the stairs in her prom dress. You’re not wearing an over-the-top poofy purple dress, but the effect is the same—his eyes are glued on you with every step you take towards him.
You grab him by the arm and lead him into the restaurant as soon as you reach him. He’s too busy taking in your appearance to be bothered by it. “Don’t look at me like that,” you chide as you wait for waiting staff to seat you. He’d actually think you were mad at him if it wasn’t for the small smile playing on your lips.
“Like what?”
“Like what you’re doing right now! You’re staring.”
Realization slowly dawns on him; your gazes have made him lose his composure too many times for him not to know what being flustered looks like. He’d be lying if the fact that it was you in this tight spot and not him didn’t heavily stroke his ego. 
“Why wouldn’t I? You look beautiful,” he says, dropping his voice to a whisper so that the approaching waitress can’t hear. Her presence saves you from responding verbally, but as she brings you to your table, you pinch his arm lightly as if to say Be on your best behavior—although Sunghoon would argue this was his best behavior.
You have trouble making up your mind about the food—you want to try everything on the menu. Sunghoon tentatively offers to order a bunch of dishes and share them. “It’s what my family always does at the restaurant, just try as much as you want and take the leftovers to go. We never ate out very often because my mom would spend so much money every time,” he recollects, smiling fondly.
“That actually sounds like a dream. My parents would never do that. It was always just eat what you got, but I’m unable to look at someone else’s food and not want to try it. It honestly should just be common practice to share dishes at the restaurant.”
Sunghoon thinks he could get down on one knee right then and there. Whenever they went out to eat, the boys would roll his eyes at him when he stole bites of their food. But you—you’re like him. He knows he’s prone to over-exaggeration, but he can’t help but feel like if you understand each other on this, you must understand each other at a molecular level.
He had expected a level of awkwardness to your date, at least at the beginning — God knows the moments in which he doesn’t feel like a mumbling fool in front of you are few and far between — but to his surprise, everything goes smoothly. There is no uncomfortable silence, all his jokes miraculously land, even the lousy ones, and you both laugh and talk and share sushi and pork cutlets like it’s the most natural thing in the world, which perhaps it is. His attempts at flirting are well-received and he only turns violently red twice when you compliment him and smile at him in a particularly pretty way.
It’s that day at the beach all over again. Always on the same page, you dip in and out of topics with a synergy he has rarely felt before. Sunghoon realizes it must be the presence of others, rather than you yourself, that makes him feel like he can’t act the way he wants to around you, makes him so nervous. Save for the moments where you make his heart flutter like a thousand butterflies’ wings, he actually feels quite at ease with you, all things considered. Of course, he still tries — and fails — to look cool for you, but he knows it comes from a place within himself rather than because you make him feel as though he has to meet a certain standard. Surprisingly, he can be totally himself, and it seems to be enough for you.
He loves his friends. He wouldn’t trade them for the world. But he’s not sure he won’t have moments where he’ll wish nothing more than for them all to go away and leave the two of you be.
You eat until you can’t anymore and are still left with enough food for another full meal. You only let him get the bill once he’s promised that next time will be on you. If it means there’ll be a next time, he’s more than happy with making that promise. The sun has set when you exit the restaurant. Sunghoon shivers as he steps outside, the temperature having gone down by at least four degrees in the last two hours.
You grab his hand; it warms him right up.
Your apartment is a thirty-minute bus ride away, but Sunghoon offers to walk you home. Anything to spend more time with you.
He spends the first few minutes of the walk worrying about his hand, whether it’s too clammy, whether it’s holding yours right, but he eventually relaxes into the touch. When a particularly chilly gust of wind blows, you drop his hand and hold onto his arm instead, inching closer to him for more warmth.  He only drank lemonade with his meal, but he feels blissfully light-headed.
Silence only arrives when you reach your doorstep. You stand in front of each other, Sunghoon looking down at his feet, you gazing out at the empty street. He knows this is the moment where he is supposed to kiss you. If there was a step-by-step guide on how to date — there probably is, but Sunghoon hasn’t resorted to such loser-like measures yet — this would probably be the moment where it would be written to just kiss her, you idiot. But nerves get the best of him.
At least, you’re there to save the day. You direct your gaze towards him, a bashful smile playing on your lips. “So… are you gonna kiss me now?” you ask, essentially reading his mind. 
He reacts immediately. “Y-yep. Yes. I am.” Heart racing, he takes a step towards you as he rests his hands on your waist. Then he changes his mind, and brings one hand up to your cheek. There’s an eyelash that has fallen below your eye; he brushes it out of the way with his thumb before leaning in and pressing his lips against yours.
In all of his late-night scenarios and daydreams of kissing you, he had never imagined something as good as this. You find your rhythm within seconds. It’s slow, almost hesitant, yet so tender, it makes Sunghoon’s heart ache. As your lips move against each other in perfect sync, as your hands find their way around Sunghoon’s neck, he realizes he should have known — this will not go away as quickly as it came.
Only when you grab a fistful of his hair, making him react viscerally and wrap his arm around your waist to bring you closer to him, does he remember where the two of you are. He leans back, then almost passes out when you chase his lips and press a shorter but just as sweet kiss there. He commits this view to memory—the smile on your lips, the glow on your face, the haziness in your eyes.
“Do you wanna come up?”
“Yes,” he replies immediately, and it makes you laugh. You grab his hand and lead him up the stairs and into your apartment.
“Are the girls in?” he asks as you lock the front door.
“Minjeong is at karaoke with her school friends, and Yunjin and Chaewon are at a dinner party somewhere.”
“Minjeong karaokes?”
“Get enough G&Ts in her and she’ll do anything.”
You turn on a small lamp in your room and take off your jacket. Sunghoon has been in your apartment before, but never in your room—at some point, he’ll spend an hour observing every photograph and trinket in detail, asking you about every backstory, but right now, he’s got more important things to tend to. His heart beats uncontrollably as you shut the door to your room and walk towards him, eyes gazing deeply into his. The corners of your lips rise when you tug at the bottom of his sweatshirt, a clear indicator that you want it off. He wastes no time in obliging.
The air is buzzing with electricity when your lips find each other again. You’re both more confident this time around, and so the kiss is deeper, your touches bolder. Everything happens quickly—one second, you’re standing in the middle of your room; the next, you’re laying on your bed, Sunghoon underneath you. 
“You know,” he says between kisses, “I’d really planned on being a gentleman and not going up to your room after the first date…”
Your lips move from his lips to his jawline, warm and soft against his skin. Sunghoon closes his eyes and lets out a low hum of approval. “I’m glad you changed your mind,” you whisper, lips brushing against his neck as you speak. “And since we’re onto confessions, I can finally say I’ve been wanting to do this since we met.”
This information sends his mind reeling. Not once had he been sure of how you felt about him — he even remembers you saying no to a kiss — and here you are, saying you’ve been wanting to kiss him since the beginning, just like he had. 
“You’re me,” he replies breathlessly.
“Hm?”
“I mean, me too.”
You pause your kisses to giggle, a sound so soft and intimate it has Sunghoon melting impossibly more. “You’re me?”
Unfortunately, he is too preoccupied by you to put a filter between the weird, half-formed thoughts in his brain and the words that leave his mouth. “Don’t question it,” he says, a smile audible in his voice, before moving his head and catching your lips. If he couldn’t stop himself from saying odd things, he could at least distract you from them.
Sunghoon thinks he’s doing a good job keeping himself together, until you roll your hips against his. It’s barely anything, but it sends waves of pleasure and anticipation through his body. His grip on your waist tightens, and when you repeat the motion, his hands sneakily find their way down your back and under your dress. Palms splayed against your ass, he brings you down closer to him. The second you moan into the kiss, he’s a goner. 
After that, it doesn’t take long for clothes to be discarded or for curious fingers to find the other’s waistbands. Your movements are hasty, messy—the tension that had built up over weeks of pining for you, after getting close to kissing you twice and thinking about it a hundred times more, it all comes crashing down in this moment, as his teeth sink into the flesh of your neck, as your hands pull at strands of his hair, as your bodies gently bump into each other. If someone asked Sunghoon right now how long he’d known you, he’d say years, not mere weeks. It couldn’t possibly be real that this much desire had accumulated inside of him — and inside of you, if your broken moans and rapid breathing are anything to go by — in just over a month. 
He only slows down when he has you naked and heaving underneath him, reminding himself to savor the moment instead of rushing it. His fingertips graze down your sides until they reach between your thighs, and he marvels at the way his touch makes you shiver. His eyes are so wide with amazement at the sight of you that he probably looks like he’s never seen a woman before, but he can’t help himself—he always thought you were beautiful, but this is something else entirely. 
His first touch is hesitant, a slow upward motion of his thumb between your folds as if quite literally testing the waters. But it has you arching your back and gripping his bicep, meeting his eyes to silently plead for more. Sunghoon takes that as his green light, thumb circling your clit as his lips continue their work on your neck, on your face, everywhere they can reach. He slips a finger inside of you, then a second one, and when he is satisfied with the state he’s gotten you in, all disheveled and gasping for air, he replaces his fingers with his dick, rock-hard just from seeing and hearing you.
He slowly inches forward until he’s bottomed out, letting you adjust around him. “All good?” he whispers, lips moving against the shell of your ear.
“Never better,” you whisper back, smiling. You kiss him, and the tenderness of your lips on his, mixed with the feeling of being inside you, has Sunghoon’s heart constricting inside his chest. He starts rocking his hips back-and-forth into you, the side of his face is pressed up against yours, head light from the little oxygen the two of you share. It all feels oddly intimate for a first time, feels more like the kind of sex two people would have after years of knowing each other’s bodies. He moves like it’s second nature, thrusts deep and slow, trying to reach those spots that have your hands clawing at his back. He wraps an arm around your waist, pulling you closer to him, using his free hand to push the hair that sticks to your face with sweat.
You wrap your legs higher around his hips, the shift in angle letting him go deeper. “Fuck, right there,” you say, voice strangled. Sunghoon doesn’t need to be told twice—he picks up his pace, and already within a minute, starts to feel himself reaching his limit. He tries to muffle his groans against your skin, but with the way your hold on him tightens and your moans go higher in pitch, you seem to be just as close as he is. When you do come undone around him, breath hitching in your throat before you release a heavy sigh, he has mere seconds left in him. A few thrusts later, his orgasm finally releases him from the tension that had been twisting his stomach into a knot for the past half-hour. You’re both spent, but he continues lazily rocking his hips against yours chasing the last remnants of pleasure, wanting to bask in it just a bit longer. He rolls onto his back after sliding out, wrapping his arms around you. You bury your face in the crook of his neck.
His chest rises and falls as his breathing takes its time returning to normal. In a way, he’s almost relieved it’s over, like any longer would’ve actually taken too much of a toll on him. He likes the comfort he gets from having you in his arms as much as the sex itself. “I didn’t know it could feel this good,” he says, the words spilling out of his mouth before he can stop them. He needs more than a few minutes to get his head back on straight and start thinking before he speaks again. You chuckle airily, he chuckles too, and within seconds, you’re both laughing for seemingly no reason. The bliss of such an intense orgasm and the lack of oxygen must have gone to your brain, too.
“Me either,” you say once the laughter dies down. When your lips find his once more, Sunghoon forgets entirely about his exhaustion and feels like he could go for a second round. “Shower?” you ask right when he realizes how sticky and smelly he is.
“Yes, please.”
He can’t keep his hands off of you in the shower, rubbing soap on every square inch of your skin when you could do it perfectly fine yourself, kissing you even when you’ve both got foaming cleanser on your faces. The taste of soap in his mouth is worth the giggles he gets out of you.
Sunghoon reaches heaven when you drop to your knees in front of him, water rushing down his back as you take him in your mouth. He’s eager to return the favor, of course, thumb flicking your clit with a speed and dexterity even he didn’t know he was capable of. If you weren’t already in the shower, you’d have needed another one.
As soon as your bodies hit the mattress, you both drift off to sleep, limbs wrapping around each other as though they had been separated for too long and finally found each other again—not to let go again.
--
When Sunghoon wakes up, it takes him a few seconds to realize that he hadn’t dreamt up last night’s events. He reaches a hand out hesitantly, still half-asleep and scared that you’ll disappear into thin air at the touch of his fingertips. But no—he feels your skin, warm and soft, and he knows this is real.
You’re laying on your side, facing away from him, so he has to strain his neck to peek at your face. You look so peaceful as you sleep—he doesn’t want to wake you up, but he can’t stop himself from wrapping an arm around your waist and pressing his torso against your back, humming contentedly to himself. He presses a soft, quiet kiss to the top of your head, just because he can.
Outside, clouds part, and a bright ray of sun shines through the window, landing right on your face. Sunghoon watches as you grumble and turn around, burying your face in his chest to avoid the blinding light, but the damage is done—you’re awake. He can tell from the drawled-out whine you let out and the way you grab tightly onto his waist, as if it was his fault the sun had decided to shine right on you. 
He lets you settle in a comfortable position. Stays still as you hike your leg over his legs, then slip it between them instead; as you press your cheek against his chest, then bury your nose in his neck; as you wrap your arm around his waist, then move it to thread your fingers through his hair, until you give up on falling back asleep altogether. “It’s so bright in here,” you mumble in lieu of a good-morning greeting.
You can’t see him, so Sunghoon smiles and tightens his grip around you—one arm circling your shoulders, the other, your waist. Skin to skin. “We forgot to close the blinds yesterday.”
“It’s okay,” you say, sighing. You press a kiss to the base of his neck, right between his collarbones, then lift your face to look at him. “How are you feeling?”
This is what it feels like to wake up next to her, Sunghoon thinks. He’d thought about it so many times: what you would look like first thing in the morning, what you’d say to him, what it’d feel like when your eyes met. If you’d be a slow sort of morning person, cuddling in bed with him until the very last possible second, or if you’d be up and about as soon as you woke up. If you’d be grumpy. If you’d want coffee. If you liked morning sex. 
It seems to be a recurring theme that Sunghoon’s imagination never quite lives up to reality. Your sleepy eyes boring into his, struggling to stay open, your fingers playing with the hair at the nape of his neck; your skin, so warm and so soft, your scent, so intoxicating he can barely think straight.
You’re better than a dream.
“I feel great. Do you feel great?”
“I feel amazing, thank you so much for asking,” you say, burrowing yourself impossibly closer to him.
The two of you stay like this for a while, talking about your plans for the day and begrudging how little you want to go about them. Sunghoon wishes this could go on forever, but then his stomach growls so loudly, his face turns red from embarrassment. He hadn’t even noticed how hungry he was. 
“You’re me,” you say, laughing, and Sunghoon can’t help but join in. “Is it crazy to have last night’s leftovers for breakfast?”
What Sunghoon hears is that you want him to stay; that you don’t want to part ways just yet.
“If by crazy you mean the best idea ever, then yes.”
“Amazing, because I’ve been thinking about that curry all night.”
“Really? I was thinking about something else,” he says, burrowing his face in your neck and leaving warm kisses there. 
You hum and lean into his touches, leaning into his touches. Chills run down his spine as your nails graze his sides. “There might’ve been other things occupying my mind, too.”
And just like that, breakfast is postponed to thirty minutes later.
--
After that night, Sunghoon forgets how to act right.
His mind has never been so singularly taken up by sex in all of his life. It was already preoccupied with you most of the time, but now that it has more material to gnaw on, it’s practically started to eat away at him. It doesn’t help that you’ve seen each other every day since, or that at every chance you get, you smile knowingly at him or try to get him to play footsies with you. Of course, he loves every bit of attention that he gets from you, but whenever he feels his heart get carried away, Minjeong’s words come back to him in a panic, and he remembers that he has no idea what it is that’s happening between you and him. You could be stringing him along, for all he knows, or you could be as into him as he is into you and just letting things happen. Unfortunately, just letting things happen was not something Sunghoon was good at—if things weren’t written black and white, he’d find a way to overthink even the littlest of details. Like how you’d kissed him for a good five minutes before letting him leave your apartment, otherwise known as the least platonic parting to exist, or conversely, like how you’d sometimes take hours to reply to texts.
If he was already a mumbling fool in front of you before, his condition has only worsened now. He tries his best to be normal and not make you or anyone in the group feel weird, but the fact is that you rocked his world and now he can’t look you in the eyes and not remember how it felt when you touched him or the sounds you made or the way you looked. It’s all playing in a loop in his mind and the only way he knows how to control it is by limiting his interactions with you, which doesn’t even work that well. 
The first couple days, you seem amused by his shyer-than-usual demeanor, but you quickly grow confused more than anything. Sunghoon won’t sit next to you, only speaks to you when necessary, doesn’t seek you out outside of a group setting. He tells himself he just needs some more time to be able to be around you casually again, but before that happens, one day at the library, you make a point to ask him if he’ll come help you get drinks for everyone from the dispenser machine. He knows it’d be too odd to say no, so he follows you.
He presses the buttons for everyone’s order (a Sprite for him, Diet Cokes for the girls, a Red Bull for Jake who has a midterm tomorrow and nothing for Jay who only swears by his disgusting herbal infusion) as you lean against the machine, arms crossed over your chest as you stare at him.
He has never felt so awkward in his life.
“So…” he starts although he has no idea what to say—he hopes something will just appear in his mind and that it’ll alleviate the tension. However, you seem to have other plans.
“What the hell, Sunghoon?” you say, taking him aback. When he glances at you, you don’t seem angry—just genuinely confused. “You’ve been avoiding me like the plague.”
“I haven’t!”
“Sunghoon,” you say sternly. He gives in right away.
“Okay, I’m sorry. I just-I didn’t know what to do. After we, you know…”
“After we had sex?” you say, then burst into laughter when he looks around the room to make sure no one’s heard. His cheeks heat up.
“Yes, after we had sex,” he whispers.
He pays for the drinks and picks them up. When he looks at you again, your smile has completely died down, and worry has settled into your features. “Do you regret it?” you ask, voice now as low as his. As if it hurts to say the words too loud.
Panic overcomes him, and he almost drops half of the drinks as he shakes his head. “No, of course not! I’m really sorry, Y/N, I never meant to be weird about it, I was just trying to wrap my head around everything, and I just… Well, I just didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry.”
You nod, taking his words in. “That’s fine. I get it. I just wanted to say, you know, it doesn’t have to change anything. We can still be friends and all. Like you said, it shouldn’t make things weird.”
Sunghoon’s stomach drops. He knows you’re trying to make him feel better, but you’ve inadvertently said the exact opposite of what he wanted to hear. He doesn’t want things to stay the same, or for you to stay friends. For him, things can’t go back to normal after that night — whatever normal means for the two of you — and he was foolishly hoping that you felt the same.
But clearly, you want to let the whole thing die and pretend like it never happened. And whether it’s a good thing or not, his feelings for you have grown so much, he’ll just let you lead him anywhere. Even if that turns out to be nowhere. 
So he conjures up the most convincing smile he can, hands you half of the drinks to carry, and says, “Yeah, sounds good.”
--
After that conversation, Sunghoon doesn’t think anything else will happen between the two of you. You had sex, you talked it out, and that’s the end of it. But then, it turns out that both of your last midterms are at the same time, in the same building, so you invite him to celebrate with pork belly and some drinks. Sunghoon is finishing his second beer when he starts to feel like he’s on that date again, laughing for no reason, butterflies in his stomach every time his gaze catches yours. You lean on your hand as you listen to him talk about a stupid memory from his childhood and he thinks he’s never seen anyone as pretty as you. 
The sun has long set when you say, “You know, it’s Wednesday today.”
He’s not sure what you’re trying to get at. “Yeah?”
“Minjeong’s out at karaoke tonight.”
With these simple words, all the images of you that Sunghoon had finally managed to banish from his mind come flooding back, and he is not even surprised to find himself half-naked in your bed thirty minutes later. So much for staying friends—one time is one thing, but Sunghoon knows he’ll never be normal again after a second time with you.
It’s not a long time before he finds himself in your room again. Every item of clothing between the two of you is gradually discarded while you kiss, lips growing more impatient with every inch of bare skin uncovered. He reluctantly lets you go when you suddenly giggle and say that you really need to pee, watching as you grab his t-shirt off the floor and put it on, just in case Minjeong comes home. You wear it like it’s yours, like it’s the most natural thing in the world that you’d be wearing his clothes. An indescribable feeling washes over Sunghoon at the sight, so intense he feels tears welling behind his eyes. Like something he’s been yearning for is finally at the grasp of his fingers; like it might slip away at any moment. 
His feelings must’ve transpired in the way he was looking at you—when you meet his eyes, your expression shifts slightly, and you quickly slip out of your room. He tells himself to reel it in. Get it together, he thinks. Or you’ll drive her away. 
A wave of tiredness hits him in the minute that you’re gone, probably due to all that soju and beer. “I’m back,” you whisper, but he doesn’t move, only opens his arms wide for you to get back into bed with him. It’s like a weight is lifted off his heart when he feels you against him again. You’re back. Your face is fresh, as if you’d splashed it with cold water, but when he slips one of his hands underneath your (his) t-shirt, your skin is still just as warm as before. Far from the fuzzy, tingly feeling he had gotten when you’d woken up together the other morning, now, he feels his desire for you deep in the pit of his stomach. The kind of hunger food couldn’t satisfy. “I missed you,” he whispers, voice low and gravelly. He reacts immediately when you squirm against him, tightening his grip around your waist and pulling you to him.
“I was gone two minutes.”
“I mean these past few days. I was starting to think I’d dreamt you up.” His hand on your lower back sneaks its way up between your bodies until it finds your breasts, cupping one of them with his palm before taking your nipple between his thumb and index, gently twisting. It pulls a half-gasp, half-moan from your throat, and the sound goes straight to his dick. “But you’re real, aren’t you?” 
“Very real,” you reply, a tremor in your voice. He’s barely touching you, and you’re already having trouble breathing. Sunghoon smiles at the idea of him having as much of a hold on you as you do on him.
“Good,” he says, voice so low it’s almost a growl. In one quick sweep, he pushes you down so your back is against the mattress, resting his palms on each side of your head.
He’s inside you within mere minutes. He’d wanted to hold back a bit, but you whispering Just put it in after thirty seconds of his fingers loosening you up was enough to convince him. His mind is already fuzzy with remnants of alcohol, and his overwhelming desire for you only makes matters worse. He barely has any control over his movements, rushed and sloppy, but as he drives himself deeper into you, your moans increase in volume. He only later realizes how tight his grip on your hips is when he sees two small bruises forming on the skin there. 
He comes quickly, probably embarrassingly so, but he can’t bring himself to care—he’s got other things on his mind. He’s not even bothered to discard the condom as he makes his way down your body, lips around your clit before you’ve even had the time to register what was happening. You cry out, a sound that Sunghoon works to pry out of you over and over again. Even when your thighs start shaking and you squirm away from him, he doesn’t relent. He’s just as desperate to make you feel good as he was desperate chasing his own pleasure earlier. He hooks his arms around your thighs, bringing you down to him and ensuring that you can’t get away. One hand still in his hair, the other clutching the bed sheets, you’ve turned your face sideways into the pillow so that your moans come out muffled. He is only satisfied when you’ve reached your second orgasm. 
As your breath slowly returns to normal, Sunghoon makes his way back up your body, leaving a trail of kisses in his wake. You clear your throat of its dryness and burst into soft, quiet laughter. “What’s funny?” Sunghoon murmurs, lips against your neck. 
“Nothing,” you say, still laughing. “That was just really, really nice.”
Sunghoon smiles. “I’m glad,” he says before kissing you, lips moving slowly against yours.
As he lays against you, the top of his head under your chin and your fingernails grazing along his back, a weird feeling overcomes him. Sunghoon is usually a pine-from-afar sort of guy, with at least five instances of hanging out that could or could not be a date before making things any sort of official. The pining has been a constant with all of his crushes. He’s gotten to the hanging out stage a couple of times, but the officialising has only happened once. Despite its low success rate, it’s a cycle Sunghoon feels comfortable with, and he’d imagined the rest of his romantic encounters would follow that pattern. 
But this is completely different. Of the three times you guys have met separately from your friend group, already two times have included sex. This isn’t a stage Sunghoon usually reaches before at least a few months and it disorientates him. What does it mean? That you like him so much, you decided to skip all of the steps and jump straight into the thick of it? He is reasonable enough not to delude himself into such a thought. He likes you a lot—that much he can be sure of. He’s liked you since the moment he laid eyes on you, even if the reason eludes him. Something in the way you smiled at him, the way you took him in stride as if you’d known him forever. When he thinks back to that party, he can’t believe it started out as the two of you being strangers. Even now, feeling your warm skin against his, it feels like a lie that just two months ago he hadn’t even met you. 
What he can’t say with total certainty is that you like him the same amount. Or that you like him any amount, really, although in his naivety he doesn’t understand how anyone could be this intimate with another person without liking them at least a little bit. And he doesn’t just mean the sex. He means this. The silently laying in each other’s arms, the soft kisses, the caresses wherever hands can reach. Eating post-sex snacks together, laughing as you watch the first episode of each other’s favorite sitcoms (Brooklyn Nine-Nine for him, Pen15, oddly enough, for you). Falling asleep together, cuddling the entire night then waking up and diving right back into each other’s embrace. 
After an entire day spent in rumination, Sunghoon’s still not sure what to make of it all.
All he knows is that when he DMs you that night, asking you how your day went, he goes through every emotion between anxiety, self-hatred and indifference in the five minutes that separate his text from your reply. He’s never been so happy to hear that someone couldn’t concentrate in class because of him.
--
Sunghoon has always been obsessed with the way couples stand together in public. 
Every time, it takes everything in him not to stare, because he wants to take in every little thing they do. He has that practically everywhere he goes, wanting to stare at people just to see what their deal is, but he is never quite as simultaneously fascinated and envious as when he spots a couple. But he knows staring isn’t the socially appropriate thing to do, so he either steals glances or watches for a little bit then pretends they aren’t there. He can’t help himself—even if they aren’t holding hands or obnoxiously making out in public, it’s still visible to anyone with eyes that there is something tying these people together. It’s in the way they stand near each other, their bodies turned inwardly, as though enveloped by a bubble containing just the two of them and no one else; in the way they look at each other, their eyes never straying from the other’s face as they talk, intimacy showing itself even in a loud, crowded room. Sunghoon craves to find that proximity, to be able to touch and be touched so softly, every graze of a hand purposeful and unconscious at the same time.
It’s the first of November already. The Weather app, as it tends to do, has deceived you; so instead of a walk on what was supposed to be a sunny day, you find yourselves in a busy café near the University, the air outside too chilly even with your scarves and gloves. You’re waiting for your order at the end of the counter — a mocha for him, an oat flat white for you — when he notices it. Your body is fully facing him, you’re distractedly playing with the hem of his sweatshirt, and you’re not looking at anything but him as you rant about that annoying classmate of yours that goes by a self-made nickname and always talks over the tutor. In this light, the two of you are like the couples he’s always longed to be—the simple thought makes him want to cry. As more and more often is the case these days, you have no idea what you’re doing to him.
It’s been around two months since you first met and in that time, although Sunghoon is lucky not to have enough fingers to count the number of times you have seen each other one-on-one, not much has happened. Minjeong, who had understood what was going on the first time she saw the two of you eating leftovers from the Japanese restaurant on the couch at 10 a.m., has grown accustomed to his presence in the apartment and even sometimes sits down to watch a movie with the two of you—a movie that Chaewon would usually have forced you to watch in the living room instead of the privacy of your bedroom, so that everyone could join. Sunghoon is just glad Minjeong has stopped silently scolding him with her eyes every time he comes out of your room. She never mentions that night when she essentially warned him against you after the party. 
Jake seems to be the only oblivious one in your group. Yunjin and Chaewon have eyes like hawks and horrifyingly vivid imaginations when they put their heads together, so they were probably already making plans for your wedding and fighting for the title of godmother when you and Sunghoon met at the beginning-of-semester party. They cornered him once at a party and forced him to spill the beans and spare no detail, because you apparently were “denying everything, but we know there’s something going on.” Jay is still Sunghoon’s go-to person when he needs advice concerning you, although the older boy doesn’t understand why it has to be so complicated and always tells him to “just tell her how you feel,” which Sunghoon will not do unless there is a gun to his head. But Jake just seems happy to see his friend and his sister get along this well—no matter how many times you wear his jacket at their games or disappear at the same time at the end of parties, he doesn’t grow suspicious. If he does, he doesn’t mention it to Sunghoon, at least.
Between the two of you, not a word is spoken about the nature of your relationship, which remains unbearingly undefined. For a while, he weakly convinces himself that he doesn’t need to have that conversation with you. He’s young, he’s free, he should be able to enjoy casual sex without putting a label on it. The main problem, though, was that the sex could not be further from casual, at the very least not to Sunghoon.
He has never known anything quite like it. In mere weeks, you’ve both mastered the art of pleasuring each other. He understands your body like it’s his, knows what each of the sounds and expressions you make means. He knows where to touch you to have a kiss go from light-hearted to dizzyingly intense, how to move his mouth to have you arching your back and holding onto him for dear life. And you—he thinks your skin must be laced with cocaine, the way he can never get enough of it. 
But it’s always the moments afterwards that get him in his head. To him, casual sex means getting dressed the minute it’s over and going off to do other things, which is the absolute opposite of what you do. Whether it’s falling asleep together or spending Sundays in bed, you always stay together afterwards, curled up in each other’s arms as you talk away the hours, conversations interspersed with slow, lazy kisses. He’ll say things like, “You’re so pretty,” or “Why do you smell so good?” because he’s so smitten with you that he can never stop himself from uttering every compliment that flashes through his brain, but the things he really wants to say are harder to speak out loud. Even just a What are we?—three simple words that he can’t bring himself to ask, too scared it’ll ruin everything. 
Arguably worse is that sex isn’t even a requirement for when you and Sunghoon see each other. He goes on walks with you whenever you’ve spent too much time in the library and need some fresh air. You go shopping with him when his department throws a fundraiser and he needs a formal outfit. He cooks you your favorite meal when your period is particularly nasty. You sneak into the ice rink after his practice and let him ‘teach’ you how to skate, even though you already learned how with Jake when you were kids. Even mundane moments become fun when spent with you, and you share so many hobbies and interests that you never run out of things to do or talk about.
And yet, it feels like one step forward, two steps back with you—if you let him close one night, you’ll run away the next. A week will pass without you seeing each other outside of the library or group hang-outs, and if Sunghoon asks you out, you’ll say no, usually blaming the amount of work you have. He gets it—due to the nature of your degree and your being a fourth-year student, your workload is much heavier than his, with essays, translations and oral presentations due every other week. And that’s not even including midterms and finals. But still, he doesn’t see why you would need to stay at the library for ten hours straight for days on end. He’d start worrying about your health if you didn’t at least relax on weekends. 
So while Sunghoon wants nothing more than to go all in with you, he senses you holding back. He notices you avoiding eye contact during particularly intimate moments, and when you look at him perhaps too fondly for your liking, you quickly catch yourself and resume your neutral, sometimes almost cold expression. When he tries to broach more personal, sensitive topics, you always find a way to change the subject or turn the conversation towards him before you get too deep. 
As time passes, and especially as exam season nears, he can tell there’s something that you’re not telling him about. His suspicions are confirmed when you come back from a weekend at your parents’ house. He’s also been away for an out-of-town hockey game, and because he hasn’t had much time to text you (and because their team won, so he wants to show off a little), he’s particularly looking forward to seeing you again that Monday. It’s only been three days since you’ve last seen each other, but he misses you like crazy. 
But the minute you’re back, you bury yourself in work like never before, often waking up at ungodly hours and staying at the library until midnight. More than once, he stays behind with you, long after the others have gone, reminding you gently every hour that it might be time to go home and get some rest. The moments you actually agree are few and far between, and although he sticks it out at first, sleeping with his head on the table until you tell him you’re ready to go, your stubbornness soon starts frustrating him, and he ends up leaving when he gets too tired. He knows this is important to you, but he doesn’t understand why you have to go to these lengths—you’d still easily be one of the best students in your class without all this exertion. And despite his many attempts, you won’t tell him what’s wrong, won’t even admit that something is wrong—you keep repeating that “it’s just what exam season is like.”
When he asks your friends about it, they seem just as confused as he is. One evening when you have plans to order some food and watch a movie at your apartment, he shows up at the agreed time, but you’re nowhere to be found. Thankfully, the girls are there to let him up and not leave him standing outside in the rain. You don’t pick up when he calls you and call him back a minute later, apologizing profusely but still saying that there’s something you really need to finish first. If it was only a one-time thing, it wouldn’t make him as angry as it does—but this has been going on for almost two weeks now, and Sunghoon is close to boiling point. 
The fact that it’s been months since your date at the Japanese restaurant, and the only thing that you’ve said about what was happening between you and Sunghoon “didn’t have to change anything.” The fact that you’re essentially each other’s boyfriend and girlfriend without the label or the reassurance that comes with it. The fact that there’s something clearly bothering you but that you won’t tell him about it. The fact that this something is effectively coming between the two of you. Sunghoon was originally more worried about you than anything—now that studying has taken obvious precedence over him in your list of priorities, he’d be lying if he said his ego wasn’t wounded. He isn’t asking to be the number one most important thing in your life, and he knew before even meeting you that high academic performance meant a lot to you, but he likes to think he deserves at least a little bit of your time and attention. 
Except, does he really? It’s not like you’re actually dating.
There’s a pang in his heart as he remembers this fact that he should never have forgotten in the first place. It hurts—and so perhaps, he’s less patient than he ought to be.
“Whatever, Y/N. Don’t worry about it, just let me know when you have time for something other than getting As.”
He hangs up and meets your flatmates’ worried eyes. 
“She still at the library?” Chaewon asks, tone delicate as if trying not to scare off a wounded animal. Sunghoon nods, a deep sigh escaping his mouth. 
“She always studies a lot,” Minjeong starts, “but this is something else.”
“Have you guys tried saying something?”
The girls nod. “Even Jake has talked to her, but she won’t listen. And he usually always gets to her,” Minjeong says. 
He goes home soon afterwards and spends the rest of his evening in rumination, torn between his worry and his anger towards you—emotions which only increase as more days pass, and he sees less and less of you. Your behavior was already concerning while preparing for your exams and final assignments, it gets even worse when exams actually do start. He doesn’t hear from you for an entire week, and the one time you miraculously agree to a short group hang-out in the form of getting coffee, you’re only half there, physically present but mind far, far away. You barely react when the guys tell you about their victory at the latest hockey game—which you didn’t attend, as well as any other game recently. 
No matter how much he tries to put it out of his mind, to focus on his own exams and hockey games, you stay at the forefront of his thoughts. The hockey team is away for another out-of-town game when he decides to broach the subject with Jake, with whom he’s sharing a room. The entire semester, he’s been careful not to raise Jake’s suspicions about the two of you, both out of consideration for you, who’d mentioned you didn’t want your brother to know what was going on, and for himself, who would also rather Jake not know, at least not until your relationship became official. Which it never did. But now that all he gets from you is radio silence at a time when you’d usually be an hour into a FaceTime call, he can’t help himself.
Jake is just coming out of the bathroom, drying his hair with a towel, when Sunghoon takes his shot in the dark. “Have you heard from Y/N recently?” he asks as nonchalantly as he can, pretending to not be avidly waiting for his friend’s reaction by keeping his eyes on his phone.
“Y/N?” Jake echoes. “No, not really. Why?”
“Just ‘cause I haven’t seen her around much. I’m wondering if everything’s okay.”
“You mean her staying at the library all day?” Sunghoon nods; Jake sighs. “Yeah, she’ll snap out of it soon enough. She gets somewhat like this every time exams come around, but even I have to admit it’s pretty tough this time around. The last time I saw her like this was way back in high school, and that’s because our parents were watching right over her shoulder. It’s been better in university thanks to the distance.”
“So this has to do with your parents?”
“Oh, one hundred percent. She’s always wanted to do well at school, but she only gets this obsessive when our parents are involved.”
“I guess this did start after that weekend when she went home…” Sunghoon muses absent-mindedly. It could’ve passed off as an off-hand remark, but Jake pauses in his movements and looks at him warily.
“Yeah, she did… You noticed that, huh?”
Sunghoon pauses. This whole time, he was sure Jake was oblivious to anything happening between you and him—but he might have underestimated his friend. Like brother, like sister; he can hardly read either of you when he really needs to. Jake might genuinely be surprised that Sunghoon remembered your whereabouts that weekend, or he’s onto him. “I guess I did,” he finally says, going for as noncommittal an answer as he can.
Jake says nothing for a bit, and Sunghoon thinks he’s managed to get through the conversation without raising too much suspicion—until a minute later, when Jake speaks again. “Do you… like Y/N?”
Sunghoon freezes, snapping his head towards Jake, who’s lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling. His first instinct is to deny, but there’s no point pretending anymore. It’s one thing keeping it from Jake—lying to him about it is something else entirely. It’s an uncomfortable conversation, but it must be had. “Yeah, I do,” Sunghoon replies, guilt clear in his voice, more because he’s only now admitting it to Jake than because of his feelings themselves.
A shaky breath comes out of Jake’s mouth, as if this was the exact answer he had dreaded. “Right, okay. Since when?”
“Since I met her, basically.”
Jake’s head whips towards Sunghoon, and their gazes meet awkwardly. “Since that party in September?” he asks, shock written all over his face. Sunghoon nods, and to his surprise, Jake bursts out laughing. “Don’t tell me it’s because you accidentally matched costumes?”
Sunghoon looks away, frowning. “That might’ve helped things along,” he mumbles, embarrassment washing over him as Jake’s laughter intensifies. At least he was taking it well—a bit too well, perhaps.
“You’re so predictable, man,” Jake says when he’s calmed down, wiping a tear from his eye. 
“How did you know, anyway?”
“You’ve been pretty obvious with it recently,” Jake replies after a few seconds. “I could tell you were a bit shy around her at first, and when it got better I just thought you’d become friends or something. But when she showed up with your jacket at every game and you never left her side at parties, I assumed something else was going on. You’ve always been staying behind at the library these days, and I know you don’t have that much work.”
Sunghoon chuckles. “I guess I haven’t been trying hard to hide it lately.”
“Yeah, why would you hide it in the first place? You could’ve just told me.”
“I didn’t want to make things weird.”
Jake frowns. “It wouldn’t have been weird. If anything, hiding it makes it weirder.”
“I just thought, if one of my friends had a crush on my sister, I’d probably rather they hid it. Like, I don’t need to know about that,” Sunghoon says, and it makes Jake laugh.
“Dude, Y/N and I are only a year apart. Do you know how many guys have come up to me asking me for her number or advice on how to ask her out? It’s been, like, one every few months since middle school. Guys here especially have no shame telling me how hot they find her.”
Sunghoon makes a face. He doesn’t disagree, but he’d never go out of his way to tell your brother how exquisite you looked in certain outfits. “That’s gross.”
“Yeah, it is. But you’re my friend, not some greasy rando, so I trust you. If anything, I’d probably have to tell her to be nice to you, and not the other way around.”
“Yeah, you could say that again,” Sunghoon grumbles, then realizes his mistake immediately, eyes widening.
“What do you mean?” Jake asks, sounding genuine at first, but when Sunghoon stays quiet for a couple seconds, debating whether he should just lay the truth bare, Jake sits up on the bed and repeats his question, his tone much warier this time around. Sunghoon glances at him then looks away guiltily.
“Well, to be completely honest… We’ve sort of been seeing each other, kind of. But it’s complicated.”
Jake flops back down on his mattress with a grunt. “Who else knows?” he asks, rubbing at his eyes with his hands as if suddenly very exhausted.
“Everyone…”
“Everyone?!”
“Well, Jay, Minjeong, Yunjin and Chaewon.”
“So everyone.”
“Basically, yeah.”
“Great.” Jake sighs. “Since when?”
“Since October,” Sunghoon mumbles, feeling guiltier than ever. He’s belatedly realizing that it would’ve been much easier to have everything out in the open from the get-go, both with you and with Jake; now he’s both stuck in situationship limbo and has to face the consequences of keeping something this important from one of his closest friends. “Are you upset?” Sunghoon asks, feeling a bit like a ten-year-old.
“Kinda, yeah, but more at her than at you. I’ve told her not to go after anyone from the hockey team.”
“‘Cause of Heeseung?”
“Yeah. God, that was messy. He gave her mixed signals for so long, I could barely talk to him without thinking of her crying for so long. And now he’s the one who can’t quite look me in the eye,” Jake says, shaking his head at the mere thought of his captain.
“Was it that bad? She made it seem like it wasn’t that big of a deal.”
Jake raises his eyebrows. “Really? It upset her for a while though,” he says, then turns his head to look at the ceiling again. “I guess that’s not so surprising of her. She sometimes likes pretending she doesn’t have any emotions, even though I’m pretty sure she has more than most people.”
“Huh.” That would explain some things, Sunghoon muses. Emotions are not a topic that comes up very often with you, and every time he’s gotten an inkling of them, you seem to shut it all down immediately.
“But you know, I’m more surprised than anything. About… about it all, really. Not just that you’re only telling me now, but that it’s lasted this long. She must really like you.”
“You think?” Sunghoon says, his face brightening with hope, the words slipping from him before he can stop them once again. He shrinks when Jake laughs at him.
“Look at you. Down bad, huh?”
“Shut up.”
“But yeah, dude. I’ve told you about this. I’ve never seen her in a relationship, ever. Says she doesn’t have the time,” Jake says, air-quoting you. “I’ve only had the displeasure of seeing her go home with one-night-stands. You know that since she started college, she’s had a rule that she’d only see someone three times and that was it?”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, so she wouldn’t catch feelings. I’m telling you, she’s crazy. So you must be special.”
Sunghoon can’t stop the smile from spreading on his lips—special. But it doesn’t make him feel that much better, either. “It’s not like we’re actually dating, so I’m not sure how special I can be…”
Jake’s head turns to look at Sunghoon again, but the younger boy keeps his eyes trained on the ceiling fan above him. “What’s happening between you guys?”
A blush creeps on Sunghoon’s cheeks. “Is this something you really want to talk about?”
“Well, spare me the gruesome details, please,” Jake says, chuckling, “but yeah, I would like to know what’s going on with my best friend and my sister.”
“I’m your best friend?” Sunghoon says, grinning as he meets Jake’s gaze, who rolls his eyes.
“Don’t change the subject.”
“Fine.” He sighs. “Well, I didn’t think it would happen more than once-”
“What would happen more than once?”
Sunghoon pauses. “Well, you know…” Jake gives him a look as if to say, Well, no, I don’t know, so Sunghoon is forced to go on: “Sleeping together.”
“You guys slept together?!” Jake exclaims, sitting up on his bed once again.
“Yeah, what did you think?”
“I don’t know, just that you were going on dates, hanging out one-on-one, or whatever…”
“Well, we were.”
“Ugh, whatever,” Jake says, waving his hand in front of his face like swatting a fly away. “So, not just once, then?”
“No. And I thought it’d be a one-time thing, ‘cause a few days afterwards she said something about it not having to change our friendship…”
“Damn.”
“Yeah. But then it did. Happen again, I mean. And it��s been happening frequently since. But we’re not… dating dating. We haven’t had that conversation.”
Jake frowns. “Why not?”
Sunghoon releases a shaky breath. Why not, indeed. “‘Cause she hasn’t mentioned it. And I’m too scared to do it.”
“What are you scared of?”
“The typical stuff. What we have now… it’s not what I want, but it’s managed to not disrupt the group, you know. I’m scared that if I tell her how I feel, it’ll make things awkward between the two of us, and between all of us by extension.”
“Well, it might,” Jake says after thinking for a few seconds. “I wish I could tell you with certainty that she’ll like you back, but I honestly can’t. As obvious as you were towards her, she was not giving anything away.” Sunghoon chuckles, more out of self-deprecation than anything. This was not the pep talk he had hoped for. “But, I can tell you that she won’t be the type to make things awkward. You have nothing to risk by telling her, because in the long run, you’ll be better off that way. I know you, Sunghoon. You’ll be miserable if you can’t be fully yourself with someone.”
Decidedly, Sunghoon’s friends had a way of telling him the exact opposite of the things he wanted to hear while being completely right. He wishes things with you could stay the same — minus the overworking yourself and ignoring him in the process — and that he wouldn’t have to do anything that might make them change. But just as Jake said, he’d also reach a point where he couldn’t take it anymore—a point he was already inching closer and closer to with every passing day. He likes you enough to let you not define the relationship, but he likes you too much to let it go on. He likes you too much to not be able to tell you, and show you, and remind you of it every day. He hated having to hold back, and he hated feeling you holding back. He wanted to give you his all and he wanted all of you, too, not just bite-sized portions of you.
“You’re right,” he finally says. “I haven’t been able to talk to her lately, but I’ll have to tell her soon enough. When her exams are over, I guess.”
Jake sighs. “Yeah. I don’t know if there’s any getting through to her right now.”
“She’s blown me off so many times! I don’t know what she’s doing, spending so many hours in that library. I’d go insane.”
“She’s a perfectionist,” Jake says, shaking his head. “I’ve talked to her about it. When it comes to school, she needs everything to be as flawless as can be. She spends hours re-reading and editing her work. It’s not good.”
“Not really, no.”
“But she’s only got a week left. I’ll try to convince her not to go home for too long, and it’ll be better after the holidays. Then we’ll make sure there’s not a repeat of this next exam season.”
He thinks of Christmas break and of not seeing you for two weeks; of next semester and going through all of this with you a second time. The uncertainty, the fooling around behind your friends’ backs — although that might not be needed now that Jake is in on it too — Sunghoon’s not sure if he can go through it all again. “Yeah, we will.”
--
They lose their game the following day. They had an amazing run, either winning or tying every game so far; this loss is not enough to make them drop significantly in the rankings, but it’s enough to demoralize Sunghoon. It couldn’t have come at a worse time—between you and this failed game, his self-esteem is taking a real hit.
He dared hope for some comfort from you once he was back, but in vain. He doesn’t know why he imagined your attitude might’ve changed overnight, and when he texts you asking to hang out, the same old sorry I can’t atm fills his phone screen. And just like that, as strong as his feelings for you have been all this time, so is his resentment—unwarranted, perhaps, but he thinks he deserves better than this, and he’s both angry at you for not giving him anything and at himself for letting it happen.
Now, he’s the one who spends hours working himself to the bone in the ice rink, who’s clearly preoccupied with other things when everyone gets together, and who doesn’t even show up to the party the whole group goes to when you’re all done with exams. The last game before winter break is in two days, and he doesn’t want to waste a day nursing a hangover when he could be practicing.
That night, he thinks everyone is out at some random club downtown, so he does a double-take when it’s past eleven p.m. and you show up at the rink. He’s skating laps, practicing his speed and his goal-shooting, only noticing you when you’re standing in the middle of the rink. He almost skates right into you.
“Y/N?” he asks, not completely sure you’re not just a figment of his imagination. He’s so exhausted, he wouldn’t be surprised if he were dreaming you up.
“Jay texted me.”
“Oh. Why?” He’s out of breath, and the words come out blunter than he intends them to.
“Because it’s almost midnight and you’re still here,” you reply, crossing your arms over your chest. There’s a hint of a smile on your lips, but your eyebrows are furrowed in what looks like worry. It’s the first time Sunghoon’s seeing you concerned over something other than an assignment. 
He shrugs and resumes his laps, slower this time, forcing you to keep turning on your feet. “I’m practicing. There’s a big game coming up.”
“Which is exactly why you should be resting, like everyone else on your team right now.”
He resists rolling his eyes. “Why would I rest when I could be getting better?”
“Because you need rest as much as you need practice. You won’t be any use on the rink if you’re too tired to play properly.”
“And I won’t be any use if I can’t shoot properly, either.”
“Sunghoon, you need a break. You’re clearly exhausted-Will you stop it?” you suddenly snap. “I’m trying to talk to you, and I’m getting dizzy.” 
Your small outburst only has him growing more agitated, and even though he does stop, it’s more so you can see the annoyance on his face than anything. “You know, this is a bit rich coming from you, Y/N.” He knows this is not the right time to bring this up—if he has grievances against you, he shouldn’t be bringing them up when he’s already frustrated. He’s well aware of this, but he can’t help himself.
You scoff. “Excuse me?”
“You’re the one who spends twelve hours a day in the library during exams and does not budge even if I tell you you should go home.”
“That’s different-”
“How is it any different?” he interrupts, voice rising. “You don’t listen to me when you overwork yourself. I don’t see why I should.”
“So you realize that you’re overworking yourself?”
“Of course I do! But I have to.”
“No, you don’t-”
“Y/N, please. I have to win as much as you have to get the top grades. Is it actually necessary? No, but you know how shit it feels not to.”
“And it’s exactly because I know that feeling that I’m telling you to stop. You’re just feeding into it.”
“So are you, staying until 2 a.m. in the library. You’ve never once gone home when I asked you to.”
“Again, that’s different-”
“How?! How is it different? Please enlighten me, ‘cause they’re the exact same thing to me.”
You sigh. A sudden sadness appears on your face. Sunghoon is torn between wanting to see this to its end and taking everything he’s said back. But he keeps quiet, and your eyes, when they meet his again, harden. “Are you really gonna make me say it?”
“Yes.”
As if you couldn’t say your next words while looking at him, you tear your gaze away from his face. “Because I’m actually concerned about you, here. The only reason you want me to stop and go home is so we can fuck.”
Sunghoon is so astounded that all words fail him—he stares at you, mouth wide open like you just shot him. After a few seconds, all he’s able to come up with is an incredulous, “What?” His voice is a mere whisper. 
“You heard me,” you say coldly.
He closes his mouth and swallows. “So… you’re the one who’s worried, and I’m only after sex?”
You glance at him. “Yeah.”
A chuckle escapes Sunghoon’s throat, then another, until laughter spills out of him uncontrollably. He feels like the world is upside down. How could you have lived the same thing and come out of it with such different perspectives? Your account of his intentions with you is so ridiculous and unfathomable to him that he can’t do anything but laugh.
You seem taken aback at first, but your surprise quickly turns into annoyance. “Something funny?”
“Hilarious, actually,” he says, holding his stomach. He takes a deep breath, trying to calm himself. All he finds at the end of his amusement is anger, bright red and hot. It’s not an emotion he feels often, its rarity only serving as an intensifier—he starts making his way out of the rink before it can explode and hit you in its wake. “Well, that’s convinced me to call it a day. So you got what you came for, I guess.”
His fingers tremble as he undoes the laces on his skates and puts his sneakers on again. You stand by the door of the rink, holding onto the frame as you look at him, that same sad look still on your face. “Hoon,” you say, voice weak. What would usually have him melting only has his anger flare harder.
“Don’t. For the first time ever, I actually really don’t want to talk to you right now.” He stands up, gives you one last harsh look, and turns away. He only halts right before exiting the bleacher area, and after a couple seconds of thinking, turns back around. “Oh, but don’t worry, I’ll let you know when I want to fuck again. Since that’s all this is, clearly.”
--
It seemed to you no one thought you were good enough for Sunghoon.
Only Yunjin and Chaewon seemed excited at the prospect of the two of you getting together, or at least getting to know each other, but they were also the type to coo at dogs in the street and tear up at the sight of old people holding hands; Minjeong was apprehensive from the start, and made it clear; Jay was indifferent; Jake was oblivious for a while. Sunghoon was…
What was Sunghoon?
Someone who had come out of nowhere, shaken up your routine and messed with your head. That’s what Sunghoon was. He didn’t seem apologetic in the slightest.
Maybe it was your fault for not opening up to the people closest to you and letting them think you were some kind of no-strings-attached one-night-stands-only emotionless maneater who had been single for as long as they had known her, who would be seen with someone new every few months, and never for long, who, as far as the eye could tell, only used men for sex. Maybe it was their fault for never trying to dig deeper.
No, okay, it was definitely your fault.
Based on your conversations with your friends, they thought Heeseung had broken your heart, and you had never bounced back properly. He’d hurt you so much, you couldn’t fathom a real relationship anymore—you could only be with someone casually. Which wasn’t so far from the truth, but what Heeseung had done was much worse than just breaking your heart. He’d confirmed what you already knew of yourself: you want too much. You want what you can’t have, what you don’t deserve.
From the moment you met Park Sunghoon, you knew you didn’t deserve someone like him. Minjeong seemed to agree, and when she saw you and him together at choir that Saturday in September, three months ago already, she made sure you knew her thoughts on the matter.
“This is so… unlike you,” was the first thing she’d said after she pulled you aside. 
“What is?”
“This,” she repeated, waving her arms around. “Being here. Coming with him.” She pointed at Sunghoon, whose hair was being ruffled by one grandma and his cheek pulled by another. He kept glancing back worriedly at you—you liked him so much already. “See? You’re smiling at him,” she said, making you realize a sappy smile had started growing on your lips at the sight of him. Your face dropped and you scoffed at the disgust in her voice.
“Yeah, some of us like to smile. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Y/N, you know what I’m trying to say.”
“I don’t think I do, actually.”
She sighed. “You don’t do this. You don’t meet a guy and show up to his choir practice the next morning. What’s happening?”
You crossed your arms over your chest. Had you known your presence would be questioned like that, you might’ve thought twice about coming. “Can’t a girl enjoy a choir without getting interrogated these days?”
“You’re avoiding my question! Listen, Y/N. Sunghoon is not the kind of guy you usually go for. He’s-Stop. Don’t smile at me like that.”
“If you like Sunghoon, you can just tell me. You know I wouldn’t stoop so low as to go after a guy my best friend likes.”
“So you are going after him?”
“So you do like him?”
Minjeong shook her head violently and put her hands on your shoulders, staring into your brain as if trying to make you see some sense. Calmly, she said, “No, I don’t. Sunghoon’s nice, but he is so far from my type. He’s too… nice.”
“You mean he doesn’t wear leather jackets or ride a motorcycle?”
“That was once. But no, he doesn’t do that. And what I’m trying to tell you is that he’s not your type either.”
“And how have you gathered that?”
“Because so far, you’ve only wisely chosen guys who are as detached and emotionally stunted as you.”
“I’m not-”
“But he’s not like that, Y/N. He’s the bring-home-to-your-parents-for-Christmas type. Not the hump-and-dump type.”
“I’m starting to get offended by this conversation.”
“All I’m saying is, don’t go breaking his heart. Or yours, for that matter. It pains me to say but I care about both of you very much and I don’t see this going anywhere good.”
You shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Was her opinion of your romantic tendencies — or lack thereof — that bad that she couldn’t even recommend you to her friend? You felt like a chastised child whose mom told you you couldn’t get the toy you wanted. Despite being well aware that you weren’t the most committed when it came to relationships, you still felt like she was going overboard. Just because nothing had stuck so far didn’t mean it wouldn’t now—she was acting like you went around playing with people’s feelings for fun.
“Jesus, this is my second time seeing him. I just wanna see what his deal is. I’m not breaking anyone’s heart, okay?” 
The choir conductor had called out for everyone to gather on stage then, and that was the end of that conversation. You still remember how funny of a thing it was, seeing Sunghoon in his nice shirt and trousers, his hair falling into his eyes, singing diligently with the choir, when just the night before he had been playing beer pong dressed as Cowboy Ken. In this new light, you understood why Minjeong was so adamant about him not being your usual type, and why the grandmas were fussing over him. You hadn’t known what had pushed you to invite yourself to this rehearsal, and even then as you sat there, you weren’t sure what you were doing or why you couldn’t stop smiling as you watched Sunghoon sing. 
Time made things clearer, starting with that afternoon at the beach. The salt in the air that day had clouded your thoughts, covered them with a thin layer so that your usual reluctance to share anything remotely personal had dimmed. Or maybe it had had nothing to do with the air and everything to do with the boy sitting next to you on the sand, the way words came tumbling out of your mouth before you could think about them and were only met with understanding and empathy on his part. For once, you didn’t feel the need to guard yourself, to adapt your words and actions to the person in front of you. It was something you didn’t know was possible with a near stranger—perhaps because Sunghoon felt nothing like one.
He made you feel things you hadn’t felt in a long time; things you had been craving to feel, needed almost as much as oxygen. Being with him felt like breathing again. But you had been underwater so long, being on land again felt foreign, scary, and you couldn’t help but dive back into safe waters, coming up for air once in a while.
Whether he had intended to or not, Sunghoon had started to scratch at your surface, until he’d burrowed a small hole—shallow, but enough for cracks to appear, cracks you were quick to put back together as best as you could.
So when his gaze was too tender, his touches too gentle, you bristled. You went away, because you were afraid of what might happen if you stayed. The more you wanted to give him, the less you gave him anything at all. Your own desire overwhelmed you. His letterman jacket was warm around your shoulders, you proudly walked around with the four letters of his last name on your back, but you couldn’t get out of your mind how cold it would be if it was one day ripped away from you. 
You thought of Heeseung, how disillusioned you had been when you thought you had finally met someone who would love you the way you had always yearned to be, only for him to toss you away when you started asking for too much. You thought of your friends in middle school, how it seemed that no friendship could be more wonderful until you overheard them talking about you at a sleepover, about how clingy you were. You thought of your parents, how they had only bestowed kind words upon you when you performed well in your role of perfect daughter, of academically gifted child. How they hadn’t even glanced at any of the drawings you’d done of the four of you, mother, father, son and daughter holding hands with a bright yellow sun in the corner of the sky. How they had pushed you away from their bed when you seeked some comfort after a terrible nightmare. How they had never bothered to hide their disappointment when you came home from school with anything less than an A. How they had shunned your brother for not going down the path they had envisioned for him, how hard you had to fight to make them accept yours was not a worthless one.
Even your best friend seemed to think you were unable to receive affection of the likes of Sunghoon’s—but what you were afraid of was that he wouldn’t handle the amount of affection you knew you were able to give. In a way, that was what had drawn you to Sunghoon in the first place—from the moment you’d met him, you had been able to tell there was something of you in him. It seemed to you he had a heart that was overflowing with love, love to give, love to spare on whoever would have it. In his words, you were him. Nevertheless, your fear of getting hurt overrode your desire to feel Sunghoon’s love, and you didn’t know whether you would be able to revert to your nature after having spent so much time perfecting your new facade.
You knew what it was like to be cold. And so you prematurely braced yourself for it by pushing away Sunghoon’s warmth. If it was going to happen at some point, like Minjeong had hinted it would, might as well get used to it, right?
Except the cold never came. Sunghoon kept on burning relentlessly, no matter how much wood you fed his fire with—you could cling to him for nights on end or ignore his texts for days, without fail, he’d welcome you with his usual, unwavering warmth. He allowed you to bask in it, to momentarily let down your defenses. But something always happened to make you raise them back up—Minjeong would eye the two of you suspiciously, Heeseung would post on Instagram (Is one of the girls on slide five his new fling? Are they serious and it wasn’t that he wasn’t ready for a relationship, it’s that he didn’t want one with me?), or your mom would text you to ask you whether everything was okay.
Yet increasingly, you suspected there was something behind Sunghoon’s warmth, something you had missed, something that was tricking you. He looked at you like you had hung the stars in the night sky, yes; in public, a knowing look from you was enough to have his face turn bright red, and in private, one simple touch had his chest heaving, yes; he expressed disappointment every time you turned him down for a hang-out. Your attachment to him grew, and it became harder to put what the two of you had into words.
It wasn’t just sex—it couldn’t be. It ran deeper than that. You knew what relationships that consisted of just sex were like, and this wasn’t that, it was too good, too intimate to be just that. But you weren’t a couple, that much was clear. Only four other people were aware something was even going on, your brother not included, and you acted as regular friends in front of everyone. Jake had insisted you didn’t fool around with another member of his hockey team because his relationship with Heeseung had already deteriorated enough, he didn’t need to be on weird terms with anyone else on your behalf, so you were not keen on letting him know about what you got up to with Sunghoon. Anyway, even if everyone on earth was in on your shenanigans, you and Sunghoon hadn’t convened on what it all meant. Who knew what was going on in his head? You were no stranger to how deceitful men could be when they were after certain bodily pleasures. Unless Sunghoon said it in so many words, multiple times, you would not be a hundred percent sure he wasn’t only looking to get laid, or wanted someone to act like his girlfriend without the label and the obligations that came with it.
Because you basically were acting like his girlfriend, and he like your boyfriend. You always went to each other. Always, only each other. Whether he needed a second opinion on an outfit, you needed a rant session about your dissertation, either of you a really good orgasm, it was each other you went to.
You waited for him to initiate a conversation about the status of your relationship like one waits for church bells to ring at the turn of the hour—you knew it was coming, but the sound might be too much to bear. And the longer you had to wait, the more you dreaded it. Because how would you react when the time came? You didn’t trust yourself not to run away; neither did Minjeong.
The cold hadn’t come yet. You couldn’t let yourself feel the warmth unreservedly. It was all unpleasantly lukewarm.
Then you went home for a weekend.
It was a good friend from school’s birthday, and despite having spent a lot of time with Sunghoon at the expense of studying, you had done well this semester and thought you deserved a break. After having been away for so long, you had started to underestimate the power of your need for your parents’ approval over you. One small instance that your brother and many other people would’ve brushed off easily was enough to set you off—that same cold look of disappointment when you decided to be honest and told them one of your courses was deadly boring all while being unnecessarily complicated and you had received a low B-grade in it. They barely spoke to you for the rest of the evening.
Exams were a mere few weeks away when you got back. You buried yourself in work, forgot everything and everyone else, even Sunghoon, even yourself.
The cold hadn’t come yet, so you sought it out for yourself.
At the same time, you hadn’t indulged in enough introspection to realize how frustrated you had been at Sunghoon for not trying to create defined boundaries around your relationship. You were unable to do it yourself, you unrealistically wanted him to do the work for the both of you, you got upset when he didn’t. What you were able to do was make up reasons why he wasn’t giving you the what are we talk—he doesn’t like you that much, he just wants sex, he’s settling for you until he finds the next best thing, the real thing. This wasn’t leading anywhere, so you cut it off before he could.
You set foot in the library at seven thirty a.m. on a Monday and every following day of that week, then the next, then the next. He managed to pull you out every now and then—you weren’t that strong against his big pleading eyes, his soft messy hair, his warm hands that entirely covered yours. 
Oftentimes, you were too tired at the end of a long library day to have sex. Sunghoon never held it against you—he seemed more than happy to cook you dinner, let you fall asleep halfway during a movie you had chosen, and cuddle all night long. But your body burned with resentment at his mere presence in your bed, in your home, in your text messages. Who was he to stop you from studying, from achieving your goals, to distract you from that top grade just so he could get off? Even your friends and brother weren’t trying so hard to make you take breaks. The worry that furrowed his eyebrows, which you used to want to see fade away with a caress of your thumb, now infuriated you to no end, it seemed — to you — put-on. He kissed your neck and you wanted to push him away instead of melt into him like you had before.
It was his turn to leave for a weekend for an out-of-town hockey game, and you convinced yourself his absence came as a relief. But on the Sunday evening they got back, as you came out of the library, you spotted your brother waiting right outside of the building.
“Why is it so hard to reach you?” he said when he saw you in lieu of a greeting. “What’s the point of having a phone if you don’t even use it? I called you, like, five times.” “It was on airplane mode.” He rolled his eyes so hard, you could almost hear them moving beneath their lids. “What have you done to Sunghoon?” You stopped dead in your tracks. “Sunghoon? What about him?” you asked, chest constricting at the mere thought of him and at the implication that something had happened to him, even if you were the cause. He hadn’t said it in so many words, but it was clear the truth had been revealed to Jake, and for some reason, it didn’t surprise you. You knew they roomed together and assumed Sunghoon must’ve told him. You tried your best to take it in stride. “I thought we said the hockey team was off-limits after Heeseung,” he said sternly. “Also, Sunghoon, of all people?” he adds before you can say anything. “That’s like, my bro. And he’s the nicest guy ever. Not the perfect pick for one of your victims, I must say-” “Oh, please, he’s not a victim. He’s a consenting adult.” “Then why is he so upset over you spending more time studying than with him?” “That’s the male ego for you, Jakey.” Your brother sighed deeply. “He’s really hurt, Y/N. If you were going to reject him, you could’ve done it nicely.”
You frowned. “Who said anything about rejecting him?”
“You’ve shut him out. You’ve shut all of us out.” Jake was staring at you, trying to get you to look at him, but you kept your gaze on the ground and kicked non-existent pebbles around, hands hiding in your coat pockets. “You might not have meant it as one, but he took it as a rejection.”
You scoff. “There was nothing to reject. It’s not like we’re actually together.”
“Yeah, thanks for telling me anything was going on, by the way.”
“It wasn’t any of your business.”
“It is, ‘cause it concerns my sister and my best friend.”
“He’s your best friend?” you echo, a teasing smile on your lips. He rolls his eyes again.
“God, maybe you guys aren’t so bad together after all. But Y/N—I’m serious. You need to do something.”
“Why can’t he?”
“Because you’re the one who’s been fucking around.”
Ouch. “You’ve known about this whole thing for what, two days, and you’re already blaming me for the fact that it’s not going perfectly? How little do you think of me?”
“I don’t think little of you, Y/N, I just know you have a track record of not being serious about relationships.”
Your body tensed up. Maybe it had been a particularly long day. Maybe it had been a long time coming. Tears well up in your eyes—a sight you’ve not let your brother see in many, many years.
“You know what, fuck this, Jake. I’m stressed enough as it is. I’ve done my best with what I have, and you don’t get to pin this on me. As if I was the only person in that relationship. If Sunghoon has a problem, he can take it up with me directly.”
You walked away. Jake called after you once, and when you didn’t come back, caught up with you. “I’m sorry, Y/N. I don’t wanna upset you. I just-I hate seeing him hurt, you know? And you too.”
“I’m glad my feelings are of some importance to you.”
“Of course they are,” Jake said, too concerned to detect the sarcasm in your words. “And you’re right, I’ve only heard Sunghoon’s side of the story. But it really sounded like-”
“Listen, Jakey, I really don’t wanna do this right now. Let’s talk about it when exams are over. I can’t have anything else taking up mental space. I mixed up my Greek third declension endings earlier.”
“God forbid.”
After some arguing, Jake let you off the hook—“Just for now,” he said. You’d get him to recount his and Sunghoon’s conversation in excruciating detail later.
You come out of an evening of contemplation resenting Sunghoon for bitching about you to your brother, of all people. As if he had been begging on his hands and knees for your devotion, as if you had been cool-headed and detached and not thinking he’ll ask me to be his girlfriend any second now every time you spent time together. You told yourself you were well and truly done with him for the time being. If there was anything to salvage, that was future you’s problem.
But late on Thursday evening, Jay sent you a voice message, something he only did when he was gravely drunk, shouting over loud chatter and rap music that Sunghoon hadn’t shown up to a party and was apparently still practicing. You’d caught wind of their loss at the game, and even though your heart had swollen with concern for Sunghoon, very well aware of how important winning was to him, you’d managed to squash it down. You had bigger fish to fry, namely, an Italian written exam that made up 75% of your overall grade for that course. But after ten minutes of re-reading the same three lines of an article from Republicca, you couldn’t get the image of Sunghoon skirting endlessly around the ice rink and potentially hurting himself out of your head. You told yourself you only had this one exam left and plenty of time to revise for it, packed up your things and headed for the rink.
It was past eleven p.m. when you got there. The rest is history. 
Your grievances came out in an ugly way, but Sunghoon’s refusal to listen to you got the best of your nerves, and although you really did feel that your worry was more genuine than his, you didn’t truly believe that all he wanted from you was sex—at least, you hoped it wasn’t. It was the first time you ever saw any sort of negative emotion on Sunghoon’s handsome features, be it anger, sadness or pain. It tugged at your heartstrings, made you want to wrap him in your arms and get him away from whatever it was that tugged his eyebrows into a frown—even if that was you.
Now, as if the water has inched up your ankles and frozen over, your feet stay planted on the ice for a while after he’s stormed off. You don’t even realize you’re crying until a hot, salty teardrop falls on your lips.
Your feet regain control of themselves, and they seem to move of their own accord as they guide you right in front of Sunghoon’s dorm room. You’re barely conscious as your knuckles rasp against the door, and the tears that had fallen back behind your eyes spill out once more as soon as your eyes meet his. He’s just come out of the shower, a white towel wrapped around his hips, another one that he uses to dry his hair. His movements stop when he realizes who’s standing at his door, mouth falling slightly agape, chest visibly rising and falling. He’s so beautiful, you feel your heart breaking all over again.
Sobs pour uncharacteristically out of you, so much so that you have to hide your face behind your eyes. He ushers you in, holds you tight as everything flows out, the stress, the resentment, the loneliness, the longing. How could he be so close yet so far away this whole time? Did he want those miles of distance between you, or had you forced them upon him?
Sunghoon smoothes your hair down and shushes you, telling you it’s okay and that he’s here, voice strangled as if he’s on the verge of crying, too. A part of you still feels angry towards him, but the bigger part of you knows only he can give you the comfort you need.
“I missed you,” you say when you’ve calmed down partly. You only realize how true those words are once you’ve spoken them. You’ve missed waking up next to him, watching trashy reality TV together, taking coffee breaks that lasted too long in-between study sessions. You’ve missed the scent of his hair, the scent of his skin, you’ve missed watching the way his back muscles shift at the slightest of movements, feeling the weight of his head as he lay on your chest. All for a bunch of As you would’ve gotten without exerting yourself so much anyway.
“I missed you too, baby. Where did you go?” Just like that, you break down again, and he dissolves into apologies. “You’re here now, it’s all that matters,” he whispers against your hair.
“You didn’t see them, Hoon. You didn’t see the way they looked at me,” you say, struggling to speak, unsure you’re even making any sense but unable to stop. “I got As in everything, I worked so hard. Just one B, one week where I had four things due at the same time. Their faces, Hoon, like they were thinking, what was the point of letting me do this degree if I wasn’t even going to excel in it?”
“But you do excel in it, Y/N. You’re amazing at what you do. And even if you weren’t, you love it, and that’s what matters the most.”
“Not to them, it doesn’t.”
“Then forget them.”
“I can’t, Hoon,” you say, voice trembling. “I just can’t. I need them to be proud of me.”
“Isn’t it enough to be proud of yourself?”
“I wish it was.”
“Does it help if I tell you how proud I am of you and of how hard you’ve worked?”
He doesn’t see it, your face is still hidden in the crook of his shoulder, but a small smile makes its way to your lips. “A bit.”
“Then I’ll tell you everyday until you don’t need their approval anymore. They don’t deserve you, Y/N. They don’t even see what an amazing, beautiful, smart daughter they have. Or her sort-of-okay brother.” You laugh, and so does he. Sunghoon’s words and soothing touch against your back already alleviate the weight on your heart. “But I see it.”
You lift your head to look at Sunghoon. His eyes are glassy. “You see how amazing, beautiful and smart Jake is?”
He laughs again as he tucks a stray strand of hair behind your ear. “Yeah, exactly.” The way he looks at you makes you wish you could go back to the day you met him and right all of your wrongs. No more hiding or running away. You only want to stay under that gaze of his. But sadness soon replaces the joy in his eyes. “You mean so much more to me than you give yourself credit for, Y/N. This has never been just about sex for me. Not even for a second.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Then what has it been about?” 
He frowns like a student in an advanced math class who’s just been asked what three plus three is—isn’t it obvious?
“I love you.”
Your eyes dart between his as if searching for any trace of deceit there. Of course, you don’t find any—because there hasn’t been any since the start. You’d let your own fears invent things that weren’t there. Your lips tremble and you find yourself bawling on his shoulder once more, your tears like a well that digs deeper and deeper so as to never run out of water.
“I hope these are good tears,” Sunghoon says light-heartedly, but you can detect the nervousness behind his words. You nod your head vigorously, willing yourself to say something back, but your tears overflow, make your breath hitch.
“Why didn’t you say anything earlier?” you manage in between sobs.
“I didn’t think it was the kind of thing you wanted to hear,” he explains.
“I was waiting for you to say something.”
“I didn’t know. I thought I was being obvious enough.”
“You probably were. I was the one who couldn’t see it,” you admit.
“I thought you didn’t want me like that.”
“I thought you didn’t want me like that.”
Sunghoon chuckles, a sound of relief. “I’ve wanted you like that since the start.”
“I think I have too.”
“You think?”
You lift your head again and when your eyes meet Sunghoon’s, it feels like coming out of your hiding place hours after the round of hide-and-seek was over. He hadn’t forgotten to come and find you. He was waiting for you to reveal yourself.
Which goes against the rules of hide-and-seek, but you don’t blame him.
You smile; he smiles, deep dimples carving crescents into his cheeks. “I love you, too.”
You hadn’t realized how cold your hands were until Sunghoon found them.
--
Everything after that was a blurry mess of tangled limbs, warm kisses, happy tears and relieved laughter.
Your touch had always been intoxicating, but Sunghoon was particularly sensitive to it that night. The mix of not having felt you close in weeks and the heightened emotions driven by your confessions made his skin tingle everywhere it came in contact with yours. He’d never slept so little without regretting it in the morning.
It goes without saying that most of the night was not spent talking, but you still had things you needed to discuss. The two of you laid out all of your fears, and Sunghoon was immensely relieved to finally get a glimpse into that mind of yours. He made you promise to always tell him what was going on, and he promised you you’d never be too much for him. Always just right.
Now, he gets to wait outside of your exam hall with your favorite flowers in hand, to put his arm around your shoulders during movie nights instead of holding your hand beneath the blanket, to kiss you over the barrier at the end of a hockey game he won. Heeseung’s narrowed eyes at the sight of the two of you is an added bonus.
You text him that you’ll hang around the locker rooms after the game so that you can head to the party together. The end of December is nearing and you can’t wait for the new year, for twelve whole months of not hiding your feelings for Sunghoon from anyone, not even from yourself, least of all from him. At least, that’s what you told him in a sappy, drunken voice message at two a.m. the previous night when the girls made you drink a bottle of prosecco to yourself—their way of congratulating you for an arduous but successful exam period.
He steps out of the locker rooms with Jake and Jay. You’ve never looked quite as pretty, face lighting up as you spot the three of them, his jersey on your shoulders. You’d worn it during your last exam—“I thought it might bring me luck to wear a pretty boy’s name on my back,” you’d told him, to which he’d replied that it was good practice for when you actually took his last name. You’d looked away, fighting a smile.
Now your smile is full-blown as you look at him, but the downside of being an official couple is that Jake has now more material to tease the both of you with.
“Oh my God, you waited for me, what a sweet sister I have been blessed with!” he exclaims, arms outstretched as he barrels towards you.
“Fuck off, Sim,” you say but accept his hug nonetheless. “Nice game.”
“I know.” He pulls away and ruffles your hair. Jay nods at you like you’re someone he shared a class with back in second year and not his friend of almost three years.
As if on cue, just as Sunghoon reaches you and envelops you in a hug, Jake turns around and yells loud enough for all the players spilling out of the locker rooms, “And don’t forget to wear protection! I’m not ready to be an uncle yet.”
“That’s disgusting, Jakey,” you yell back, and he smiles proudly. Sunghoon had never thought the day would come where you’d initiate a kiss in a room full of people—he’s on cloud nine when you take his head in your hands and press your lips to his, murmuring praises about how well he played.
“It was all for you, baby,” he says, trying to appear cool even though a blush is creeping up his ears. 
“Not for the recruiter of the national team?” you asked with a smirk.
He smiles, shrugging. “Maybe a bit for him too. You’re the one I want to impress.”
“Consider me impressed.” You stand on your tiptoes to kiss him a second time.
You head towards your friends, hands warm against each other.
--
In classic mysterious Jay fashion, he organizes a New Year’s Eve party that he can’t attend himself.
He’s on holiday in some exotic country halfway across the world with his family, but he’s offered up their house for a celebration and tasked Jake with making sure no one trashes anything.
The party started three hours ago, and you’re sure it’s in full swing by now—you’re sure everyone is having a jolly old time, getting drunk enough to welcome the new year with a hangover, searching the crowds of people for the person they’ll want to kiss at midnight. You’re sure that people are having so much fun that whoever notices your and Sunghoon’s absence might think you’re missing out.
And maybe you are—but there’s nowhere you’d rather be than where you are now, straddling your boyfriend’s lap in the backseat of his car. He’s a little bit tipsy, you’re a little bit tipsy, it’s obvious in the way you kiss each other, messy, impatient, interspersed with giggles and with perhaps too much tongue. Your hands are not much more polite, harshly grabbing at his hair just the way you know he likes it, and neither are his, having snuck their way underneath your black satin dress long ago already.
When Sunghoon pulled you away from the party, you’d appropriately exclaimed, “But the party?”, to which he replied, “Fuck the party.” It wasn’t like him to curse, or to have anything but a bashful smile on his lips, like a guilty dog who’d been caught doing something it knew it shouldn’t, even though he was just standing there, so when you see his stoney expression, you think something serious must’ve happened.
The something serious turned out to be “that guy who was touching your shoulder.”
Clearly, it’d take Sunghoon a little bit more time to be entirely secure in your relationship. In the meantime, you didn’t mind letting him fuck his jealousy away.
Although he’d been the one to whisk you away, you’re the one who finds yourself begging for him to speed things up. Your flimsy thong does absolutely nothing, so you’re basically grinding yourself bare against his clothed erection—and it’s not like the fabric of his suit trousers is very thick, either. A girl can only put up with so much dry humping before having her boyfriend’s dick inside of her goes from being a want to a need.
“Need you, Hoon,” you coo against the shell of his ear. A few words usually do the trick, but Sunghoon has other plans tonight.
“What do you need, baby?”
“You.”
“I’m right here,” he says, punctuating his words with a squeeze of your ass.
“You know what I mean,” you say, practically whining.
“I’m not sure I do, actually.”
You pull away and, looking at him directly, say, “God, Sunghoon. I want you to fuck me.” His shit-eating grin simultaneously makes you roll your eyes and goes straight to your core.
“That I can do.”
He keeps one hand on your ass as he loosens his tie first, then undoes his belt and trouser buttons. His slacks and underwear pool around his ankles, and all he needs to do is hike your dress up around your hips and push your thong to the side. You wrap a hand around his dick, but your mind is too hazy to do much with it—he’s started rubbing circles on your clit with his thumb, the pressure and speed as perfect as it always is. You let your forehead fall against his shoulders and moan unabashedly, thankful he decided to park the car far enough away from the house.
“You like it when I touch you like this, baby?”
“I love it, Hoon.”
He hums his approval. “You’re so perfect. So perfect and so wet for me, isn’t that right?”
You start to say “yes,” but you interrupt yourself with a gasp. You hold onto Sunghoon’s arm, feel his muscles move under your palm as he slips two fingers inside of you without warning. “Please,” you choke out, a tight knot already forming in your stomach.
“Please what?”
“Need you. Need your dick, baby.”
He smiles as if endeared, but his words couldn’t be more different. “Maybe you should’ve thought of that before going off with some random guy the one minute I was somewhere else.”
“He’s just-fuck, Hoon, he’s just a mutual friend of Jay and I. Fuck, right there, baby.” Forming coherent sentences when Sunghoon’s fingers flick against that perfect spot deep inside you again and again is no easy task, but you need to defend yourself.
“Right there?” he echoes, voice a whisper against your ear. When you nod, eyes shut tight, he slips his fingers out. You look at him, betrayed. “That’s too bad. Why don’t you ask him to touch you right there, hm?”
You don’t know how much of his jealousy is put-on to get you to beg and how much of it is real. You make a mental note to have a conversation with him about this later—right now, you don’t mind playing along if it means your boyfriend will deign to fuck you. You know he wants to, he’s just making you work harder.
You move your hand up and down along his dick, brush his reddening tip with your palm every now and then. “He couldn’t touch me like you, Hoon.” You lean in and trail kisses along his neck, his jawline, his ears. “Can’t fuck me like you, either.”
With exams, hockey matches and any other responsibilities out of the way for winter break, the two of you had had an obscene amount of sex in the past couple of weeks. You’d done other things, of course, namely having much-needed conversations with each other, your friends, your families. Sunghoon’s mother was overjoyed at the news, glad her “duckling had finally met someone” — her words — and his sister kept stealing his phone from him to talk to you when you were on FaceTime. You and Jake had gone home for two days for Christmas, and although Jake had needed to pep talk you into it for over an hour, you managed to tell them that you wouldn’t stand for being belittled for your life choices anymore.
But in-between these conversations, you couldn’t keep your hands off of each other. You’ve grown more comfortable with each passing day, both of you bolder in vocalizing what you want and how you feel. And so, you quickly found out that your Sunghoon, your shy, sweet Sunghoon, got off like nothing else on salacious words. In line with his possessiveness, he loved hearing about how he and only he could do these things to you; in line with your need for validation, you could practically come from hearing his praises alone.
“That’s right, baby.” Like the gentleman he is, he fishes out the condom wrapper he had gotten ready from his trouser pocket, tears it open with his mouth and rolls the condom on with one hand, his other one still preoccupied with you. “Come here, my love,” he whispers, his sweet tone worlds away from his previous teasing, almost cocky one. He grabs your hips, guides you closer to him and lines your entrance with the tip of his dick. He lets you go at your own pace, rubs your thighs soothingly as you sink down onto him slowly and adjust to his size. You throw your head back, mind hazy with pleasure as you move your hips back-and-forth against him.
“You feel so good, baby. You’re doing so well for me.” His words make you pick up your pace, and you wrap your arms around his neck, fingers grabbing at his hair and sides of your faces pressed against each other as you start lifting your hips and sinking back down. Sunghoon’s hands hold your ass tightly, guiding you up and down. It’s hot in the car; sweat runs down your hairline and your back, air is running low, the windows are fogging up, but it only adds to the dizzying bliss growing in you. Even the seatbelt receiver digging into your knee doesn’t bother you.
“Feels so good, Hoon,” you moan.
“I know, baby.”
Your hours of studying everyday means your thighs aren’t the strongest—good thing for you that your boyfriend has enough stamina and strength for the both of you. As soon as he feels you tiring, your rhythm becoming slower and more irregular, he picks up your slack. One hand on your back, one arm around your waist, he presses you close to him, his hold on you so tight you can barely move. He bucks his hips harshly into yours, faster and faster, making you cry out with every brush of his tip against that spot deep inside of you. Your whole body shakes with pleasure as your moans grow higher and louder, until the tension in your stomach hits its apex and unravels. A gasp leaves your throat as you come around him, but he’s unrelenting, the overstimulation quickly making tears form in your eyes. Strings of curses and praises of how perfect you are spill out of Sunghoon’s mouth disorderly as he reaches his own end.
Together, you take your time catching your breath, his fingers roaming your back while you trail soft kisses all over his face and neck. “My pretty baby,” he whispers, and it makes your heart swell with so much affection for him that you press your lips to his, shutting him up in case he says something that actually has you exploding.
You wish you could spend some more time just the two of you before returning to the party, but when you check your phone, it’s already five minutes to midnight—he puts his clothes back on as you fix your hair in a rush, Sunghoon helping you wipe away traces of mascara under your eyes, and together, run back to the living room where everyone has gathered. You find Minjeong, Yunjin, Chaewon and Jake, who has Jay on FaceTime. It’s only five p.m. where he is.
Everyone counts down from ten together. The first thing you do in the new year is kiss Park Sunghoon—and you’ll make sure it’s the last thing you do, too.
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estaticheart · 11 days ago
Text
ᥫ᭡. THAT’S MY SISTER YOU BITCH
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Summary: Despite Sarah and Rafe’s volatile relationship, that’s your sister.
Warnings: Violence, illusions to sex, swearing.
You had a great day so far. You'd woken up to Rafe in between your legs, waking you up in the best way possible before he made you both breakfast as you watched him from the island. Sometimes you just liked to ponder on how lucky you were to have a boyfriend like Rafe. To everyone else, you were far from lucky but you liked it that way- knowing only you got the real Rafe Cameron.
Now, you were on your way back from grocery shopping, planning to make Rafe a romantic meal when he arrived back from work. Blasting music from your car speakers, you were completely in the zone. Until you drove up to the City Hall, glancing ahead you saw Kelce's red truck, which you thought nothing of until you saw him and his idiotic friends surrounding John B and Sarah.
Alarmed, you pulled up next to the truck, gathering the attention of everyone. Despite being a kook yourself, you were far different from the rest of them. You didn't care about pogues, to you they were like anyone else, in fact often you preferred the pogues in the Outer Banks to the kooks. Rafe's circle exclusively consisted of kooks, meaning you often received a lot of respect from kooks even though you spent a lot of your time arguing with them. Rafe didn't mind it, you were his girlfriend and lover, so if you wanted to yell he wouldn't stop you.
"Problem?" You asked, slamming your car door shut behind you. Just as Sarah hit the ground. Immediately you rushed towards Sarah. Yeah, Rafe and Sarah had problems they needed to get past but to you, Sarah was still as important as she was 2 years ago. You were proud of her for finding her true love and true friends, and you always let her know that you would always be there for her. And this time was no exception. Putting two and two together, you saw Ruthie standing much closer to Sarah than the other kooks who looked at her in shock.
They all stood stunned at your arrival, to be honest, you were probably the worst possible person to show up at that exact moment. Everyone knew your opinions on the Pogues were far more empathetic than the other kooks. "No, no problem" Kelce muttered, beginning to pull Ruthie and the others back from Sarah and John B, to which they happily obliged. Not on your watch.
"Oh no, don't stop on my accord guys. Please whatever you were going to do next. Do it." Walking over to them, Ruthie stood stunned at your arrival. Since she started dating Topper, you got a lot of joy out of berating her, publically. For once, she didn't back down at your words. "She needs to watch herself. She pushed me first, it was self-defence." Ruthie said, glancing behind you to see John B pulling Sarah to her feet.
Snorting you replied, "Ruthie, I'm not Shoupe. Don't start pleading your case, I don't care." She stalled at your response, for a moment thinking that you were on her side for pushing Sarah before you pulled her back to reality. Walking closer to her, edgingly slow, you pressed, "You think you're all big and mighty for pushing Sarah? She's 19 Ruthie, you're what? 21? Don't you think you should play with someone your own size?"
Behind you, John B and Sarah smirked at the group. Unbeknownst to you, Sarah was pregnant and John B was far too occupied to make sure Sarah was okay than to pick a fight with Kelce and his goons today. But you happily would, and even better so because who was going to fight back against the kook princess? Definitely not these ones.
“Well?” You pushed, as you stood toe to toe with Ruthie. You were growing impatient, Rafe would have finished work by now meaning that soon he’d come looking for you- and you’d rather give Ruthie a good couple punches before Rafe showed up.
“Okay times up.” Before she could even think, your fist sent her backwards onto the floor, just how Sarah had been when when you arrived. Groaning, she lifted her hands to cover her nose, assumably bleeding- hopefully broken if Rafe’s self defence lessons had done some good. “Oh my god- I think you broke my nose. You bitch.” She shrieked, pulling her hands away to reveal blood beginning to pour from her nose.
Ruthie was nothing but a bully, a bully you’d had enough of tormenting the island. Your legs either side of her chest you crouched over her, “Don’t worry you still look just as bad as before.” You muttered as you flew your fist back into her face that she left unguarded. Idiot. Her screaming began again, as you moved off from her, deciding that your two punches had done enough damage. Wow, you’d really have to thank Rafe for those lessons.
“Just wait until Topper hears about this, he will deal with you.” One of the other kooks muttered from behind Kelce. “Yeah I’m sure Topper will be sure to deal with me.” You laughed, Topper wouldn’t touch a hair on your arm as long as you were dating Rafe- everyone knew that.
“You want to fuck with someone, not Sarah.” You spat at them, watching Ruthie sadly pull herself to her feet, with the help of no one. “That’s my sister you bitch. Now fuck off.” At your command, Kelce briskly walked back over to his truck, as the others followed just as fast, allowing you to turn back to John B and Sarah.
You were greeted to their smiling faces, both as grateful as each other. But you noticed, a twinge of emotion still lingering on Sarah’s face. Hearing you call her your sister in combination with her pregnancy hormones, was due to set her off to cry. Before she could get out any words, you spoke for her. “You are my sister regardless of whatever is going on between you and Rafe. You’re family.” Turning to John B, you continued, “That extends to you, hubby.” You winked looking down at the ring on his finger.
With a red blush covering their faces, they praised you in thank yous. “Don’t need to thank me for doing something I’ve been wanting to do for months.” Glancing back to see the red truck had disappeared.
“Now, you can thank me for warning you that Rafe will be here any minute and I’m not sure you want to see him.”
—————————
“Baby, please be more careful next time.” Rafe muttered, as he wrapped your knuckles in bandages. He was more than shocked to find you outside the city hall- alone- but with bloody knuckles. Only with the explanation, that you had an altercation with Ruthie, surprisingly over Sarah. He was confused to say the least, he wasn’t even aware that Ruthie had a problem with his little sister. But the more he thought about it, of course she did- Topper still hadn’t gotten over her.
“In fact, there will be no next time. Ever.” Kissing your knuckles, he pulled you onto his chest as he lied back on your shared king bed. Stroking your hair, he let his mind wonder. Should he have been there to protect Sarah? But they hadn’t had a good relationship in years, he couldn’t just suddenly start caring for her. He also couldn’t let you get into situations that could get you hurt over protecting Sarah.
You noticed his body still and you knew instantly his mind was wondering thinking about Sarah. Without moving your head from his chest you spoke, “Rafe. I love Sarah. I know you have a difficult relationship at the moment and whilst you can’t protect her I will.” Letting the silence sit between you for a moment, you decided to continue.
“She’s our only family, Rafe.” He didn’t move, but you both knew how right you were. She was all you had left. “I know baby, I know.” He whispered, laying a kiss on the top of your head, before he let his mind slip back into imagining how he can rectify this broken relationship with his sister.
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maybanksbaby · 18 days ago
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summary: oh, poor drew has to lose his big biceps while filming queer. and oh, poor drew, is victim of his girlfriend's teasing :(
warnings: none, pretty light and fluffy 👌
⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ ࣪
You’re lounging on the couch, scrolling idly through your phone, when the sound of a key turning in the lock catches your attention. Glancing up, you see Drew walk through the door, looking a bit slimmer but still smiling in that warm way that lights up his whole face. He came home only for a few days, and you still couldn't get over the fact that they didn't gave you a small copy of your boyfriend, it was actually Drew. Even if you were there in his whole process of weight losing, it felt weird.
You missed those pretty big things so much it was painful.
He’s wearing a loose T-shirt and faded jeans, his hair tousled from a long day on set, and something about him seems softer around the edges—almost like he’s let his guard down after weeks of intense filming.
You sit up, an exaggerated frown on your face. “Oh, no way.” Your tone is teasing, but you can’t resist it as you give him a once-over. “What happened to those big, strong biceps of yours, Starkey? Am I seeing things, or did you trade them in for some noodles?”
Drew raises an eyebrow, pausing mid-step as he gives you a look of mock offense. “Noodles? Seriously?”
You grin and shrug, crossing your arms. “I don’t know, babe. They’re looking a little… deflated.” You stretch out an arm, giving his bicep a playful poke as he comes closer. “Am I supposed to start lifting the groceries now?”
Drew lets out a chuckle and drops his bag on the floor before plopping down on the couch next to you. “I’ll have you know that my ‘noodle arms’ still work just fine,” he says, feigning indignation as he flexes, the bicep muscle tightening under his sleeve even if it’s smaller than you’re used to. “Had to lose some weight for Queer, remember? Luca didn’t want me looking like some action hero on this.”
You put on a look of exaggerated sympathy, patting his shoulder. “Aww, poor noodle-armed Drew. Must be so hard, not being the Hulk for once.”
He scoffs, but you can see the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “You’re really not gonna let this go, are you?”
“Oh, no way,” you tease, leaning in and poking his arm again. “If you lose even one more ounce of muscle, I’m buying out the protein aisle and bringing it to set.” You pretend to squeeze his arm, making a show of struggling as if it’s the weakest thing in the world. “Seriously, who’s gonna protect me now? Or open all the jars?”
Drew smirks, eyes twinkling with amusement. “Is that right?” he murmurs, leaning closer, his tone a playful challenge.
In one quick motion, he wraps an arm around your waist and effortlessly pulls you onto his lap, his fingers tightening around your hips as you let out a small squeal of surprise, laughing. “See? Noodles or not, I think I can still handle you just fine,” he says, a smug grin on his face as he holds you close.
You try to keep a straight face but can’t help the smile that’s tugging at your lips. “Hmm,” you say, tilting your head as if contemplating. “Maybe you’ve still got a little strength left in you. But I’m gonna keep a close watch. Just in case.”
Drew raises an eyebrow, feigning exasperation. “Oh, great. A personal bicep inspector. Exactly what I needed.”
You laugh, brushing a stray lock of hair from his face. “Someone has to make sure you stay up to code, Starkey. You’re still my big, strong boyfriend, right? Don’t want anyone thinking I’m dating some scrawny little noodle boy.”
He lets out a laugh, his arm still firmly around you as his hand traces slow, comforting circles along your back. “Would it make you feel better if I promised to go back to the gym as soon as filming’s done? Maybe even lift double just to prove I’m still ‘your big, strong boyfriend’?”
“Maybe,” you say, narrowing your eyes with a smile. “But in the meantime, don’t be surprised if I start calling you ‘spaghetti arms.’”
Drew groans, dramatically rolling his eyes, but he’s laughing too, unable to keep a straight face. “Fine, fine, make fun of me all you want. Just remember who’s still carrying you around all day if he has to.” With that, he shifts his grip and effortlessly hoists you up, standing and cradling you against his chest as he walks toward the kitchen.
You burst out laughing, arms looping around his neck. “Oh, okay, maybe there’s still a little muscle left!” you say, gasping between giggles as he gently sets you down on the counter, his hands resting on either side of you.
“Exactly,” he says, leaning in close, his face just inches from yours, his voice softer now, teasing but affectionate. “No matter what, you’re still stuck with me.”
Your laughter fades as you look up at him, a warm smile spreading across your face. “Good,” you whisper, fingers gently brushing his cheek. “Because I wouldn’t want anyone else, noodle arms and all.”
Drew’s expression softens, his gaze lingering on yours as he cups your face, leaning in to press a tender kiss to your lips. His hand trails down to your shoulder, pulling you closer until you’re wrapped up in his embrace, your laughter replaced by a comfortable, warm silence.
As he pulls back, his forehead resting against yours, he chuckles, fingers idly tracing your arm. “I’ll get my biceps back,” he promises, his voice barely a whisper. “But for now, I guess you’ll just have to deal with ‘scrawny’ me.”
You grin, sliding your hands up his chest. “I’ll manage,” you say softly. “But just know I’m keeping an eye on those biceps. And maybe—just maybe—I’ll even give you a few compliments along the way.”
Drew laughs, kissing you again, and for a moment, it’s just the two of you, wrapped up in each other’s warmth, with no need for words. Because no matter how many muscles he has—or doesn’t—you know there’s nowhere else you’d rather be than right here, with him.
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blkkizzat · 22 days ago
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🗂️—𝙲𝙰𝚂𝙴 𝟶𝟶𝟻........... THE BIG BROTHER ......filed under the that's not my jjk man series
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visitor log: crazed with quarantine boredom, you can't help but to tease your naive lil' roommate—choso kamo—but you'll know when to stop before it goes too far—or have you already let the real choso in?
classifications: huge mommy kinks, calls reader mommy, dommy mommy!reader, affectionate cruelty/cuteness aggression, manipulative reader, begging, teasing, virgin, creampies, masturbation, panty theft/sniffing/munching, cunalingus, pussy drunk choso, dumbification, slight mentions of menophilia, mentions of aged-up yuji and todo (they give choso “the talk” lmfao).
incidents: 6.9k
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You felt bad about this.
You really did. 
Although apparently not enough to actually keep you from teasing your half-cursed roommate, pushing him to the point where moisture shines in his wide, puppy-like eyes.
Standing behind the door of your apartment, you pretend you don’t know the Choso before you is not actually a doppelgänger—so convincingly, in fact, that Choso has even begun to question his own sense of self. 
“B-But, b-but—I t-think, ah no! I promise it’s really me. I can’t be the curse! I-I mean—wait, I am a curse—but only half! D-Don’t you recognize me??”
Worry edges Choso’s voice while his bottom lip quivers.
Damn, Choso just looks too cute, all forlorn and pouty. You can barely stand it.
“Nah, sounds like you’re copping pleas to me, doppelgänger.”
You nearly give yourself away too, stifling a small mewl from watching his adorable lil’ face crumble, blinking back tears. 
While you didn’t intend to make him cry, your pussy is now crying too. Moisture dampening your panties from finally releasing some of the twisted cuteness aggression you’ve been bottling up for so long.
Your half-curse roommate was just too baby-girl for his own damned good—how could you possibly resist toying with him a little?
With that, you decide to take things up a notch.
“Um, are you sure you’re who you say you are? Because my boyfriend, Choso, is already home!”
“B-B-BOY-F-F-FRIEND?!”
Choso’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull, blushing furiously and practically choking on the word itself.
EEEEE! Too precious! 
You quickly cup your hand over your mouth hoping he couldn’t hear your giggles through the door.
Truthfully, you and Choso were just roommates.
Neither of you had come close to crossing any lines in the 10 months you’ve lived together. Your cohabitation has been entirely platonic thus far—to your dismay. 
Choso was unbelievably sexy and it makes him even sexier knowing how oblivious he was to it. However, Choso’s obliviousness is a problem in itself. Every subtle hint you drop seems to go right over his head. He was still so new to the ways of living as an everyday human and thus he interpreted everything in the most innocently unaware way possible.
You had no idea if Choso actually had any romantic inclinations towards you, but watching him get all flustered at the thought of dating you then cheesin’ like a goof only encourages the game you’re playing to continue.
You’d end this charade soon—you promise—but you just needed to mess with him a bit more. He’d been gone for almost two weeks, temporarily staying with Yuji back in the Jujutsu High dorms. You’ve been so lonely at home without him, which of course you use to justify your teasing by saying how he owed you this tiny bit of entertainment.
And it's entertaining as hell.
“You mean you don’t even know that Choso and I have been dating for 3 months!? You’re a horrible doppelgänger, you know that? I thought you’d be more convincing than this.”
On the other side of the door Choso was close to losing his entire shit. He had no idea how to process any of this information—unequivocally not having the slightest clue you’re purely fucking with him.
“D-Dating!? 3 m-months!?!”
Choso chews on his lip, trying to churn his exhausted thoughts together. 
When did this happen!? 
He’d been away hunting doppelgänger curses with Yuji practically non-stop for 2 weeks, he’s exhausted from the sheer number of doppels they exterminated and can’t think straight. He didn’t expect to come home to you accusing him of being one—let alone calling him your boyfriend!
Boyfriend. 
That title continued to pinball in Choso’s mind. 
He wanted to get closer to you for such a long time too, but didn’t know how exactly to go about it, all the social aspects of humanity being brand new to him—especially dating.
Not like he’d ever thought about living a normal life or dating living as a curse. Not until he started working for Jujutsu Tech and Yuji suggested he try living a bit more independently. You, one of the many assistant managers and Yuji’s friend, just happened to be in need of a roommate at the time. Being familiar with the Jujutsu world, you weren’t put off by him being a half-curse, quite the opposite. You’d been so helpful, always cheerful and kind, guiding him through any rough patches and helping him in a way similar to how Yuji does.
Yet it didn’t take long for Choso to realize he felt things about you he’d never experienced with anyone else, not even his brothers. 
The desire to constantly be around you and protect you was similar to how he felt about Yuji but with you it just didn’t stop there. Choso wanted to touch you, he wanted to hold you and he desperately wanted to be held by you too. 
Simultaneous to his budding affections for you—Choso realized the persistent pattern of his cock stiffening terribly when you’d casually roam around the apartment in your pjs. PJs that consisted of curve-clinging bottoms and braless crop-tops that would show the exact outline of your pussyprint along with every slight jiggle of tiddy from your movements.
Confused, Choso immediately went to Yuji with his problem—divulging everything. 
It took about 10 minutes for Yuji and Todo (who happened to be with Yuji at the time) to stop laughing before Yuji finally explained that it was a perfectly normal reaction to seeing a pretty girl dressed in so little. 
“Ha! Damn, seeing that juicy ass in tiny shorts everyday? You are truly blessed brother.”
Choso frowned, going silent. 
He secretly hated when Todo referred to him as brother—only him and Yuji were brothers. 
Moreover, the sinister urge to release piercing blood right through Todo’s tiny peanut head had startled Choso. Choso wasn’t one quick to anger and Todo’s comment wasn’t a threat or an insult by any means—but Choso still didn’t like it, even if he agreed with the sentiment. The last thing he wanted you to do, even to his own torment, was to cover up.
Although admittedly, Choso had seen lots of beautiful women wearing even less on the social media apps Yuji had him download. However, the faint notions of attraction were never as intense as when he was around you.
Not even close.
He didn’t know what to do about that. 
Especially after Yuji had warned Choso that it would be inappropriate to let you see any of the many erections Choso got while in your presence. Continuing to say that unless you felt the same way, it would make you uncomfortable and the only reason you did dress that way around him in the first place is because you are comfortable with him.
Todo on the other hand had a different approach and suggested to Choso he “accidentally” drop his towel in front of you after getting out of the shower.
Face red with embarrassment, Choso pointedly ignored that advice.
Making you uncomfortable was the last thing Choso wanted to risk. 
Choso didn’t want to be any more of a burden to you after you had so graciously helped him over these past months, so he never made any of his affections for you known and certainly wouldn’t be able to recognize if you felt the same way. 
Consequently, he would always quickly excuse himself to the bathroom to take care of the issue, anytime it happened to ‘pop up’. 
Literally. 
He was only glad right now that he couldn’t see you in them calling him your boyfriend or he would surely get hard, hell he was starting to regardless.
Choso is thoroughly perplexed, yet his next question is so innocent you nearly moan out from the sheer cluelessness of it all.
“A-A—Are we really dating—y-you and I? I-I mean, you actually wanted to d-date someone like me?”
Okay, now.
Now would be the perfect time to come clean. 
You’d had your fun right?
You could tell he was starting to take this seriously and it wouldn’t be harmless for much longer if you kept this up. 
You honestly don’t even know what’s gotten into you. This sudden wave of aggression feels out of character for you. You’ve never had any inclination to be so pushy or dominant—in fact, you’ve been referred to as a pillow princess in past relationships.
Yet with Choso it was different and had been since the beginning. The urge to encourage him felt so natural—manifesting as a strange bubbling in your chest whenever he had a doleful look of wide-eyed wonderment, head tilted slightly to the side from processing new information. 
God, it was a mixture of pride, joy and endearment that intensified in such a way you just wanted to make him cry—and it’s the exact same look he has right now you note gazing out of the peephole. 
Your legs rub together, but the shifting of your thighs wasn’t near enough stimulation for your repressed lust. You resisted the compulsions that would sprout to tease or taunt him for far too long and it was all spilling out now.
“Of course, we are Cho! Well me and the real Choso—you’re clearly just a doppelgänger or you wouldn’t be asking your girlfriend that.”
You are the absolute worst. 
“Oh, r-right…”
Choso stops, trailing off mid-sentence when he is finally hit with a revelation. 
But if you two were in fact dating did that mean—
Choso swallows hard, recalling all the accounts Yuji and Todo sent him full of videos (twitter porn) of what two people do together when they ‘date’. Yuji also told him though, if he’d go out to bars with him and Todo he’d likely have no issue finding a girl who’d also do it with him—even if they weren’t dating.
But Choso declined. 
He wasn't interested in doing those things with anyone else—he only wanted to do those things with you.
—wait but….could he really *gulps* with you?
Choso breaks into a anxious sweat.
The problem in his pants had been getting worse lately. To the point he had been excusing himself twice a night to settle down his cock and would try to sit on the furthest end of the sofa during movie nights with a pillow over his crotch. 
Although to his torturous agony, somehow you always seemed to find your way over to his side. By the end of the movie you’d be curled up to him with your head on the pillow in his lap over his erection that would have been throbbing all the while. 
But dating?
Were you actually dating all this time and he’d been too clueless to recognize it? 
Choso didn’t know how it started or what all it entailed but he definitely felt like the worst boyfriend in the world for not realizing it sooner! 
He needed to talk to you about that and apologize—but first he needed to convince you it was actually him.
“B-But roomie—please, it’s really me!”
You smirk, getting another mischievous idea.
Roomie, eh? Heehee.
You and Choso call each other ‘roomie’ in the same affectionate way close friends would call each other ‘bestie’—but this too you would use against him as you’re too far on a roll to stop now.
“Roomie?! Nah, my boyfriend Choso only calls me Mommy.”
“MA-MA-MOMMY!?!”
Choso grabs his chest over his heart, and begins muttering something you can’t quiet here, prompting you to consider if a part of his brain has shut down. 
Well, a piece of yours surely did.
All your thoughts are now controlled by the growing ache between your thighs.
You wish you could tackle him to the ground and ride him until he can't cum anymore and his pleas for you to stop melt into submissive whimpers as your pussy would continue to milk him.
While you might not have confirmation if Choso has feelings for you, you can plainly see he’s not repulsed by it at least.
Even so, intrusive pessimistic thoughts creep in, making you wonder if you’re simply too much for him. He’s already been so jumpy around you lately—more than usual—to the point where you worry you might be making him uncomfortable.
Maybe you haven’t been as good with keeping your cruel urges suppressed as you think?
Choso has been keeping a bit more distance too whenever you try to get too close. You know he’s still so naive to the ways of the world, and even if you are teasing him now, the last thing you want is to make him feel taken advantage of.
After all, you genuinely consider both him and Yuji friends—especially since letting Choso stay with you was originally a favor to Yuji.
However, a part of you secretly thinks Yuji may have had some vendetta against you—because why else would he have gifted his older brother those gray sweatpants and black compression tees for xmas? 
Choso didn’t wear underwear often either, especially when around the house—and a person would have to be blind not to see how fat his cock was just flaccid against his thighs.
So yeah, you did start wearing less and less around him, the boy shorts you wore a few weeks ago might as well have been panties from how far they rode up your crack to let the bottom of your ass cheeks poke out of them.
But Choso, even with that, still wouldn’t look your way for too long. 
You sigh.
Alright you had your fun, you’d—
“I-I’m real, I know how to p-prove it!”
Seconds away from stepping back to open the door and barrier, you're speechless as your eyes widen with recognition. The solid blue and tan print cotton material Choso tearfully pulls from his sleeve definitely belong to you.
YOUR RILAKKUMA PERIOD PANTIES!?
“A f-fake Choso wouldn’t have t-these!”
The words spill out of his lips as he looks down at his feet in shame.
Your eyes haven’t dilated from the size of saucers as Choso reveals undeniable proof that he’s the real deal. How else would he have found those heavily soiled teddy bear granny panties you’d hidden so well at the bottom of the laundry basket? You’d stashed them there weeks ago, right before he came home earlier than expected—just before you could wash them. 
You hadn’t even realized they were missing!
*Sniff* “M’s-so s-sorry M-Mommy, I-I know i-tt’s wrong—j-just miss you s’much when *sniff* m’gone for so l-long… n’these smell s’much like you n’have your b-blood on ‘em a-and—”
Is this real life!?
Choso’s mournful apologies are blubbering out of him a mile a minute but your thoughts go to hell at the debauched truth. Taking shallow breaths, you’re mindlessly caressing the pads of your fingers over your clothed cunt, eager to relieve any of the ache.
“—Uh—um, C-Choso, baby…?”
Even though he’s still rambling, your voice quiets him.
“Y-yeah, Mommy?”
Fuck! 
The hand stroking over your pussy urgently fumbles under the waistband of your shorts and panties to rub on your clit directly now.
He couldn’t just call you Mommy like this and expect you not to be soaked! (Even if it’s your fault he is).
Silently praying that Choso couldn’t hear the soft clicking of your fingers sliding inside your drooling folds to play with your slippery lil’ bud.
Yeah, you were horrible alright—yet you were also horny as hell. 
An unexpected turn of events for sure, but there’s no way you couldn’t see this through now. Especially now that he was full on calling you ‘Mommy’ and had just admitted to stealing your panties! 
So he’d liked you all this time after all?! 
Finding out more was becoming an essential need akin to breathing air.
“T-Tell Mommy something, yeah Cho baby? W-What exactly do you do with Mommy’s panties?”
Looking at his feet, the embarrassment on Choso’s face speaks for itself as he turns his back to the door in shame.
Likewise, you peel yourself from behind the door, leaning against the adjacent wall for additional support as your other hand hurriedly pushes up your top to tweak at your nipples. 
Getting off on the mere mental image of his chagrin and the pitiful whimpers you can hear through the door as Choso starts explaining through his tearful sobs his filthy thieving actions.
Shit—he’s such a horney little freak about it too!
Choso reluctantly admits that due to his heightened senses of being a half-curse he can always smell when you’re bleeding (Yuji also had to assure him there was nothing wrong with you).
Once he’d discovered the pair you left in the basket, Choso couldn’t help himself. 
And they weren’t the first pair he’d taken either. 
Choso had pilfered many sets of your undies to sniff while he hurriedly jerked his cock. Admitting to you sometimes just being around you for too long causes him to get hard. He’d rush to the bathroom and dig through your laundry, scouring for a pair of your panties or thongs like a mad man before resting them directly over his lips and nose. Finally at ease, the bathroom was his refuge and Choso ultimately would bathe his senses in your scent more than he would use the bathroom to actually bathe his body. 
Never lasting too long, Choso would cum all over his trembling hands from perversely sniffing and tonguing down the dirtied gusset of your panties.
If there were times Choso thought he was being too noisy, he’d stuff them in his mouth entirely. Sucking out the sweet tang of your cunt from the fibers and imagining it was your actual pussy his mouth was full of instead. 
Being the considerate roomie he is though, Choso would always clean them. Your panties would be returned to you, washed and folded and placed in your drawer before you could notice them missing.
Near hyperventilating now, Choso’s face is saturated in tears. He's so scared of your reaction. Surely, even if you two were dating you’d still hate him for the huge violation of privacy.
But if he’d known you were dating before, he’d have at least asked you for permission! 
“...M-M-Mommy—are you mad?”
Mad? 
Well you were madly finger popping your pussy to his depraved as fuck confession, if that counted as mad.
By the end of his perverse admission of guilt, you had slid all the way down to the floor. Trying to bite back cries as you are two fingers deep into your cunt. Pumping your soaked digits in and out of your pussy. No longer able to hold back, you are moaning aloud. 
“AHH, FUHH!”
The steamy twisted visions in your mind replay over and over, imagining him in those stupidly sexy gray sweats stroking himself while munching your panties like a fiend. 
Truthfully, the fantasy is doing you in badly and trumped everything else for you.
You haven't been this wet in ages and if he was getting off to your panties, it’s only fair you got off to him owning up to it—right?
“Um, M-Mommy…are y-you okay?”
Choso’s brow furrows when you don’t respond. 
Turning back around, he listens intently for any reply. Head cocking to the side when Choso can only hear muffled cries and the messy sounds of something wet squelching behind the door.
Suddenly, a cold panic sets in for Choso—you said he was already home! 
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Choso had been so focused on the whole boyfriend and dating reveal he’d completely overlooked that very important detail. He'd been with Yuji for the past week, so it couldn’t have been him, it had to be—a doppel.
You had let in a doppelganger?
Was he in there with you now?
Were you hurt? Is that why you weren’t answering him?
You didn’t sound hurt before but you certainly do now…well maybe not hurt exactly, but extremely distressed at the very least.
“MOMMY, ANSWER ME!!!”
Choso’s anxious cry did capture your attention but unfortunately only fueled the sense of urgency in your fingers thrusting messily into your sopping cunt.
Holy shit—and the wretchedly pathetic way he just called you ‘Mommy?’ 
You know you’re so fucked up for getting off on tormenting poor Choso like this, but his confession was so fucking hot and pretty fucked all on its own. 
There’s no way in hell you could stop now!
How long has it been even since you last orgasm? You couldn’t even remember, your head floating in the haze of a thick pleasurable fog. Regardless the actual length of time the answer was still that it had been too fucking long. 
“AH-AH—SHIIIIIIIT!” 
So close!
Your hand pulling at your nipples joins your other down your pants. The fingers not plunging in your tight slippery core are scrawling urgent cursive patterns over your sensitive nub, unconsciously spelling out Choso’s name on your clit over and over.
Your toes curl as you chew on your lip, the rope in your belly pulls taunt ready to snap when—
BAMMMMMM!!!
Choso barrels through the door and barrier—flowing red scale activated. 
The door itself barely hangs on its hinges as it ricochets back into place (yeah that was def coming out of your deposit for sure).
Scaring you half to death, orgasm thwarted, you can only stare at Choso as rage you’d never seen before is etched all over his face. Yet still his concern for you is evident in rapid fire questions he shoots at you faster than you can even process with your mind still swimming in your lingering arousal.
“ARE YOU OKAY?!”
“WHERE IS HE?!”“DID HE HURT YOU?!”
“HE HURT YOU—I’LL KILL ‘EM!”
Pacing around your apartment frantically, Choso abruptly comes to a stop once he senses that you are the only two in the apartment. 
There’s no doppelganger terrorizing you.
The both of you are panting—Choso from his battle-ready stance, blood congealing off the edges of the vivid crimson barbed arrows on his flustered cheeks—and you, panting from the shock of him bursting through the door, making your core to clench and pulse to the beat of your skyrocketing heart rate.
Stuck like a deer in headlights, you swallow thickly. You’re not sure how much time passes—it feels like hours, though it’s likely only been a few minutes. 
Regaining enough of your wits to remember the compromising position you are in, you slowly begin to pull your hands out of your shorts. The movement catches Choso’s eye, his vision narrowing in on your hands and fixes on the glimpse he receives of the large moist spot leaking through your cute yellow sleep shorts.
“W-W-Wait!”
Breath stuttering in a bit of a tizzy, Choso drops to his knees before you the second it clicks what you were doing. All thoughts of your obvious lies gone, the arousing perfume wafting off your cunt slaps him upside the head and severely cripples his ability to process the entire situation. 
It smells so-so much more sweet and potent than the stale remnants he’d get from your used panties!
You remain all the while still against the wall, his bigger form towers over you, effectively trapping you between the surface and his massive erection. The hard-on Choso sports proudly pokes through his baggy hakama pants. Yet he's so transfixed on the moisture glimmering on your soft thighs, he doesn’t realize he’s even showing it off to you—you do notice, however, quite a lot.
Fuck, you’d never seen him hard before he was so big!  
“C-can I see?” 
Choso’s voice meekly squeaks out, his tone becoming pitchy as he chews on his bottom lip and wipes his slick clammy palms off on his pants.
Oh shit, he’s so fucking cute you could eat him right the fuck up.
And unknowingly Choso was thinking the same thing about you—wishing you’d let him in sooner.
Why were you doing this without him? 
He was your boyfriend right? He could have been helping you with this.
Did you think he’d not want to do this with you? 
Did you not want to do it with him?
Yet Choso doesn’t get the opportunity to voice any of these concerns as his mind turns to goo when your pink tongue darts out to wet your bottom lip. Nodding affirmatively, you gently shimmy your pj shorts down.
Your heart is beating so hard in your ears right now.
You know a conversation needs to be had and that you have to tell him the truth—fess up and come clean. 
Although all of that seemed so small and irrelevant compared to the very large cock thumping against Choso’s thigh and the pertinent fluttering of your pussy—she’s not letting you forget how badly you still want to cum for a second.
If anything you were just happy more than anything he was just as big, if not a bigger, sexually repressed degenerate as you are.  The fact that you both wanted each other would be good enough for now which was more than evident in Choso’s eyes—crazed with excitement and following your every move.
He most definitely keenly whines like an injured puppy. As if the sight of you spreading your thick thighs open to reveal the pretty pair of mesh and silk panties, with a sizable expanding wet spot over your core, pains him and he trembles. 
“Mmm, is it okay if I…?”
Neither you nor Choso is quite sure what he’s asking permission for but you give it to him regardless.
Your body jumps slightly when you feel his shaky grasp touch your warm skin just above your knees. Trying to calm himself proves futile the higher Choso’s palms stumble upwards to rest on your inner thighs. 
The audible puff Choso breathes out seeing with his own eyes the pretty shape and color of your glistening cunt through the wet mesh material.
Lowering his face closer to your core, Choso unabashedly takes the biggest whiff of your lewd aroma. His eyes roll back as he moans sensually. His warm breath and flicks of his drool gust over your quivering cunt which has your hips eagerly tipping forward to offer yourself up to him on a platter.
“Cho?”
The neediness is evident in your wanton tone and Choso’s eyes perk up toward you, expectantly, wide-eyed obedience like a hungry dog before it's rewarded with a tasty treat.
“What you said you did to my panties, Cho?—m’do it like that baby.”
ᡣ𐭩ᡣ𐭩ᡣ𐭩
“OHHH GAWD—F-FUCK!”
Choso’s iron hold spreads your doughy thighs apart as his face imposes itself deeper into the fabric covering your creamy cunt, not allowing you to wiggle yourself loose. 
When you told Choso to eat you like he did your panties you didn’t expect he’d actually keep them on you!
You’re discovering just how much Choso liked chewing on your panties—on or off you apparently. You’d tease him for the fetish if he’d ever pause to come up for air and give your poor lil’ puss a break from the carnal torrent of his feverish tongue. 
Head bobbing back and forth in a rhythm all of its own, Choso is quite literally crying into your pussy, deliriously whimpering unintelligible praises of her—with no sign of stopping. At his complete mercy, your hands hold on to pigtails like reigns, except no amount of pulling gets Choso to put heel to his rampage—in fact it does the opposite.
Choso is obsessed with the whole of you—every shiver, twitch or cry he elicits from you encourages him to draw out even more.
How could he not be? 
Especially with the delectable dish before him consisting of your translucent soggy panties gluing itself to the exact shape of your smooth inner folds and puffy clit. Completely saturated, a build up of slick, spit and tears suds atop the mesh creating sloppy spit bubbles in the wake of his mouth’s crazed motions. Bubbles which Choso eagerly slurps up again like a man who's been parched for days. 
And truly he is—not wanting to remove his head between your heavenly thighs for even a moment lest he wake and discover this all to be a hallucination. He didn’t want to ever go back to only imagining this kind of bliss.
“Soooo g-good..GOD—S-Such…AH—g-good boy, Cho.”
Lost in the sauce of your sweet pussy, Choso gleefully continues—languid in his exploration but purposeful, you feel every flex of his dexterous muscle quivering in your pussy as he licks you from your swollen outer lips and into the folds of your inner labia. 
Choso commits every groove of your cunt to his memory. 
Only once you tense enough, arching your back and digging your nails into his cranium to push him towards her will Choso finally pay attention to your clit— his thick spongy tongue flattens, ensuring its soft bump texture scrapes across each and every nerve in your sensitive fleshy bundle. He’s feverishly making out with your bud to the point of making your actual mouth jealous.
Fuck, he was eating you like a pro and you haven’t even properly kissed him yet!
His skills are a total 180 degree shift from how novice he was just an hour earlier.
Obviously inexperienced, Choso’s first inclination was to latch his entire mouth over your clothed cunt, sucking and licking aimlessly, which honestly tickled at first more than anything.
Yet being the fast-learning good boy he is, Choso takes your instructions as well as your nonverbal cues to heart. Checking in with you often, his eyes darted up to you with innocent coos of ‘How does it feel, Mommy?’ reverberating into your core. 
Not only does Choso take direction well, he proactively improvises. 
You weren’t expecting him to start humming on your clit when you instructed him to suck it directly. Playing you like a harmonica, shaking his head and alternating between sucking and blowing. The insane waves vibrated into your cunt to stimulate every single pleasure point. 
You’d never gotten eaten out so desperately before, let alone with your underwear still on!
More caring with your pleasure than his own, Choso has already pulled two mind-bending orgasms out of you. Dining on your savory cunt like it's his last meal, Choso’s greediness while drowning in your pussy is steadily taking you to number three. 
To say Choso is pussy-drunk at the moment would be a massive understatement. 
Choso is worshiping you like he had found God in your gooey lips and as far as he was concerned he has. Relentlessly grinding against the floor, shuddering and moaning into your cunt he’d gladly pray into your pussy as much as you’d let him, swirling his tongue as far as he could into your cute hole winking against your soggy panties. 
From the noises he makes you think he’s already found enough pleasure of his own to soil his pants.
And you’re absolutely right.
Frantically rubbing his dick against your shared apartment’s plush carpet, the absolute elation he feels to finally taste you after all this time combined with the scratchy friction of the fibers prove too much for his needy virgin cock to bear. 
Nevertheless, that doesn’t slow him, uncaring about the uncomfortable stickiness caking between his legs when his head is still very occupied between yours.
“Shiiiit, ah—fuh—W-waiiiit, baby…Chos—OH!”
Stomach clenching, eye rolling ecstasy takes over when his canine accidentally swiped over your overstimmed clit. The tension finally snaps and your legs jerk with the prickly pleasure of tingles running through them. Your lashes splash away the stream of tears filling your eyes from the third orgasm Choso has studiously pulled from you.  
Choso shows no sign of stopping and while you’d happily let your little eater go to town on you all night, your pussy is screaming at you—you needed him to fill her up.
It takes all your strength to pry Choso’s face out of your cunt. His flushed cheeks are drenched and he appears dazed, a dreamy gaze in his eyes before distress instantly etches his features upon realizing he wasn’t suffocating himself in your pussy any longer.
“Nooo, Mommy pleaaaasuh! She’s s’p-pretty n s’creamy—s’wet… l-let me go back, kay?”
His deranged affectionate whines spur you to tug on his hair harder, keeping his attention focused on your face as you pose to him the question that has him ready to cum in his pants all over again.
“I know Cho, your mouth is s’good at getting Mommy’s pussy messy. But baby, don’t you wanna wet your dick in your girlfriend’s pussy next?”
Dumbstruck, Choso never considered that an option. 
“Or are you just satisfied with stewing in your own cum filled pants?”
Truly, he would have been happy just setting up camp all night with his face lodged in your cunt. Yet you flipped the lights on in his mind again, reminding him of how much he’d wanted to feel you on his cock knowing it would be so much better than his calloused hands stroking him.
With a series of dopey headshakes, Choso is scrambling to remove his robes. 
“Sorry, m’sorry!”
You couldn’t laugh at Choso for nearly falling over himself enthusiastically trying to shed his clothes, not when you’re just as wound up. Buzzing with lust, you're openly drooling seeing the massive stain on Choso’s white hakama as he sits back on his knees. Pushing down his pants, Choso’s cock rebounds bobbing back towards his belly and leaving glimmering traces of the prior mess he’s made. 
You knew he was big but holy shit—he’s too fuckin baby girl to be carrying around such a deadly daddy weapon in his pants. It makes rock hard length all the more intimidating the way his mushroomy tip reddens as the pearly streams of his essence flow over the heavy vein swaying his cock forward.
“If you really mean it, then apologize to Mommy with your cock for wasting all her cum in those pants of yours.”
You’re way past the line of going too far already. 
You know you are playing with fire teasing him like this, especially since the thick lines of his ability still activated even if the barbs were no longer on his face. He’d literally split you in two if he went too fast—and yet?
A part of you wanted him to break you.
Hovering over your form, like you were a delicate object while helping you pull off your last remaining articles of clothing. There's a mixture of both of your fluids webbing to your cunt as your panties—now destroyed with little holes scattering them from Choso him furiously gnawing on them like a teething puppy— are gingerly peeled off your skin.
Seeing you completely naked, Choso is stunned stupid. 
Utterly stuck, he’s biting his inner cheek hard so he doesn’t cum just from the sight of you from your warmed cheeks, pert nipples, quivering belly and pussy glossy from leaking a steady stream of drool.
“Y-You’re perfect!”
Choso blurts out and you think you can feel the thumping in your pussy all the way up in your eardrums as you overload on his adorableness. 
Spreading your legs wider you allow him to settle between your thighs, your hips slightly strain from accommodating his large body that completely dwarfs yours as Choso presses ope your thighs again. 
His anticipation visible, Choso’s upper body is trembling, biting down on his lip as he cautiously runs his angry cockhead down your soaked slit.  
“Shiiiiiiit.”
Drawing back Choso hesitates, the feel of even your pearly gland against his tip is almost too much.
“Umm, Y-You know what you’re doing Cho? I can get on—”
“NO! Um, y-yeah… I mean, I’d want that it’s, uh—I-I wanna make you feel good first if that’s okay, Mommy?”
Choso mumbles shyly, a determined look behind his bashefulness—so fuckin cute!
Oh yeah, you couldn’t wait for your turn to eat him the fuck up.
You’d settle for his lips though, tasting yourself on them you share your first real kiss while Choso is sinking inside your gummy core. The kiss doesn’t last long, only faintly grazing your tongue against his own before Choso is choking into your mouth. Unable to savor the kiss as he can’t even control the movement of his lips, just sneaking the very tip inside you near paralyzes him with pleasure.
Too warm, too wet and the fit much too tight—so it’s no surprise that when his hips dare to venture only a tiniest bit forward he's immediately cumming inside you with broken wails and sobs. 
“M’sorry! M’sorry! M’sorry!”
Your mind is elsewhere, still delayed from your pussy getting stretched so wide from the mere girth of the cockhead just minutes after getting eaten like a last meal on death row—so you didn’t even consider how fast he would cum once he was inside you.
Telling him to pull out now would be pointless, especially considering how incredibly turned on you are by him shaking like a leaf from just putting his tip inside. Trying to thursy into you further has him collapsing down and crying nonsense into your neck. 
A small smile is on your lips as you soothe him, amused with your pussy being Choso’s personal kryptonite. Hooking your arms under his, you stroke his shoulder blades whispering assurances.
“Just breathe Cho”
You’re also relishing the break it also gave you time to adjust, you were so full just from taking half of him. Your walls are slowly learning to accommodate his girth and clench around him, sucking him further in causing him to keen pitchy little moans as the pool of slobber increases down your nape.
Shit. You’re craving more.
You didn’t want to rush him as you can tell how just the smallest crumb of pussy has him in shambles, but your insides might burn up entirely if he didn’t start moving soon. 
Your gentle touch slick with the sweat beading on his broad chiseled back, roams down until you reach his hips. Nails digging into the sides of his glutes for grip, you pull his pelvis forward and down. Teaching him just how to fuck you, you lead his twitching length deeper into your pussy before guiding his hips back up then down again. 
Frankly, you think Choso might bust again from the deep groan he sighs when his long cock knocks against your cervix, fully sheathed in you. But your good boy proves to be a quick study yet again and it only takes a few cycles of training his hips before Choso adapts to a steady consistent rhythm on his own.
His eyes are screwed shut though, knowing from the videos he watched you wouldn’t be satisfied unless he could last longer for you. Certainly Choso would nut if he caught a glimpse of how nicely the peaks of your stiff nipples were bouncing or the lewd splash of creamy fluids from your cunt edging up your churning tummy like a tide. 
It was almost too much on its own that Choso could still taste the sweet tang of your cunt on his lips knowing his cock was buried so deeply in her. Choso’s oral fixation getting the best of him, the desire to suck on all parts of you rose as he scoops you up slightly, arms wrapped around your back propping your chest up towards his mouth so he can suckle on your tiddies.
When Choso inevitably makes the mistake of opening his eyes. Your sweet face, twisted in rapture, eyes fluttering back in a way that nearly matches the fluttering of your cunt around him undoes him again.
Choso just loves you too much.
“G-Gonna cum, again—m’sorry Mommy! G-GUHHHHHHH. P-Pussy too good. Never wanna leave—never gonna leave your perfect pussy, Mommy. I’ll stay inside you like this.”
Deranged in ecstasy, head burrowed in the safe haven in your tits, Choso’s declarations feel more like threats. Mouth is still full of tiddy, Choso coos out more promises of loving you and your pretty pussy so good like you deserve and making up for the months he could have been doing this.
“C-Cho, baby, pull out if you’re g-gonna—”
Too late.
To his credit Choso, wasn't even doing it on purpose. His body is in auto mode. Your cunt crippling his brain too badly for him to have any real control and Choso fucking you more like a curse than a human in the moment.
You’d asked for it with your teasing though, you thought as another load of viscous warmth blooms into your guts. Initially you figured no harm since it was his first time, but you’re now  losing count of the many times Choso has battered your puffed pussy into another orgasm and in turn busted in you. 
Obscene sounds squelch out of your pretty pussy, his cum making it even easier for him to frantically buck his hips to slam against your g-spot with every thrust—growing wholly addicted to the feeling of sliding in and out of you. 
His desperation for you has Choso manhandling you into different positions, all which you have Yuji and Todo to thank for sending him all their fap material. You didn’t know that though and you didn’t have time to wonder either when Choso has zero regard for the flexibility some of these positions require, yet obediently it’s your body bends to his will. 
Your head is drowning in euphoria from getting fucked so savagely, it takes a while to realize that you’ve changed positions again. Now on your stomach, ass up and shoulder being held down as Choso is using your creamy pulverized cunt like his own personal fleshlight. 
Your limbs feel weak and you’re cumming so hard now it’s almost painful, Choso reaches around to strum your abused clit while biting into your neck.
“One more time, Mommy! Please let me fuck you, one more time!”
Unfortunately for your poor pummeled pussy, that one more time was 3 rounds ago and your new boyfriend hasn’t gone soft yet—likely thanks to his blood manipulating abilities.
But since you manipulated Choso and yourself into a 3 month relationship it’s only fair he manipulates his cock into staying hard—right?
Choso has to make up for an entire 3 months of not fucking you tonight.
Good luck with that!
......RESULT: INCONCLUSIVE. 𝚈𝚘𝚞 𝚜𝚞𝚌𝚌𝚎𝚜𝚜𝚏𝚞𝚕𝚕𝚢 𝚛𝚎𝚌𝚘𝚐𝚗𝚒𝚣𝚎𝚍 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚛𝚘𝚘𝚖𝚖𝚊𝚝𝚎, 𝚎𝚛 𝚠𝚎𝚕𝚕, 𝚗𝚘𝚠 𝚋𝚘𝚢𝚏𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚗𝚍. 𝙱𝚞𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚊𝚕𝚜𝚘 𝚝𝚎𝚊𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝚑𝚒𝚖 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚘 𝚊𝚗 𝚎𝚡𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚊𝚕 𝚌𝚛𝚒𝚜𝚒𝚜 𝚌𝚊𝚞𝚜𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚋𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚔 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚋𝚊𝚛𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚛 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚋𝚊𝚌𝚔 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚌𝚎𝚜𝚜—𝚜𝚘 𝚕𝚎𝚝’𝚜 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚌𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚒𝚝 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚗 '𝙼𝚘𝚖𝚖𝚢'.
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that's not my jjk man series (visit series page for full animation)
i did not mean for it to be this long but got carried away as this the first time ive written virgin!choso.
comment and reblog! next up nanami, reworking it bit thats why I delayed it.
©blkkizzat 2024. do not steal works or gfx, do not translate.
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