#it's just... somehow hard for me to part with them | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

tsuy4n · 1 day ago

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The Artist Who Lives for the Plot

Warning/s: Fem!Reader, Mild language/swearing, still chaotic, teasing but that's just another word for verbal bullying, petty drama, reader still very much suffering (comically)

[A/n]: Okay, so apparently my calculations were off (nothing new to me) with how things are going and how much fun I'm writing the boys + [Y/n], this will become a short series!

Part 1, >Part 2<

Day 3: Five Failures, Zero Progress

You're on your way to work, absolutely dreading what lies ahead. Not the chores, not the endless hours of running errands, but them: The five walking demonic migraines with unholy cheekbones.

They were chaotic yesterday. All sharp grins and cryptic words, eyes gleaming like they knew something you didn’t.

What changed? You didn’t do anything. That, you're sure of. So why the hell are they suddenly breathing down your neck like you owe them your soul? (Which, considering who they are, might actually be on the table.)

Are they acting like this because you saw something you shouldn't have?

Like that concept. Was it supposed to be a secret? They didn’t react like you expected. No panic. No anger. Then again, you didn’t exactly study their expressions too hard. Priorities.

Still, the sight’s fresh in your mind. The holograms. The glowing golden eyes. That haunting yet stunning transformation. Whoever came up with that deserves a raise. You want those contacts. Seriously.

Focus. So what exactly did you do to earn their torment?

...Maybe their whole demon concept isn’t even a concept. Maybe it’s just them being themselves. It wouldn’t surprise you if they casually peeled off their skin one day and revealed horns underneath.

You’d arm yourself with holy water and crosses. Even if it doesn't work, at least you tried.

You sigh. The regular chaos of your job is already exhausting. You didn’t sign up to be personally targeted by five beautiful men with bad attitudes and possible hellspawn origins.

Still, you can’t deny the silver lining. Your last three chapters? A hit with your readers/audience.

With the extra income, rent is looking less like a nightmare and more like a minor inconvenience. You might even treat yourself to a pastry.

So, the plan for today is simple: Avoid them at all costs. Have another staff member deliver their water and lunch. Easy. Professional. Peaceful.

Elsewhere…

"She could be with Huntrix." Jinu mutters, arms crossed and brows furrowed.

"Or maybe she’s just weird." Baby says with a raised brow before flopping lazily into a chair. He's so convinced that you are.

Abby crosses his arms. "Or she’s spying for someone else. A lone agent." (He’s been watching too many shows)

Romance taps his chin thoughtfully. "Or a real artist, like she says. She does draw well for a spy."

Mystery, from where he’s crouched on the couch upside down, simply says, "What if she just takes her job seriously?"

The silence that follows is long. Suspiciously long.

Jinu sighs. "I'm sure you've all memorized the choreography enough. Let's take turns watching her and while you're at it, try to get that book. That'll help us clear this whole situation up."

At first, the boys think he’s giving them a free day. A chance to sleep. Eat. Breathe without glitter(?)

But he just kept speaking.

"So who wants to go first?" Jinu smiles, his teeth showing.

They groan in unison.

Instead of practicing, they spent the entire morning arguing over who goes first, then next, and all the way to the last. They eye each other like enemies before throwing down their hands in a dramatic round of rock, paper, scissors.

Mystery wins by default because he doesn’t even participate and somehow still gets the slot he wanted. Classic.

By lunch, they’ve just finalized the schedule when the rehearsal room door swings open.

"Hello! Here’s your lunch." A voice calls cheerfully causing for heads to whip toward the unfamiliar staff member.

"Where’s the other noona? The one who’s been bringing our food these last two days?" Baby asks politely all while flashing a disarming smile.

The staff member nearly swoons. "She asked me to take over today. Said she had errands."

Suspicious. They all thought.

Suspicious enough that the unlucky member with the first shift, Romance, rises like a man sentenced.

It doesn’t take Romance long to find you. A few smooth questions to the right people and a tilt of his smile does the trick.

He spots you sweeping the floor backstage, earbuds in, completely immersed in your own world, just vibing and enjoying your well-deserved peace not knowing it'll be disturbed within a minute.

Romance watches for a beat. Then two. There’s something about your concentration that makes him pause but it was only for a moment.

He approaches, hands in his pockets, leaning slightly with a soft, teasing smile. "Need help with that, darling? Or should I stand here and give you moral support while you sweep?"

You don't notice him at first, too focused or immersed and he noticed that because he took one of your earbuds off.

You thought at first it was a fellow staff member or maybe the manager but what you saw immediately made you scowl.

Really? It hasn't even been an hour!

Romance laughed at the expression you gave him, though he was clearly confused as to why you weren’t already swooning at his smile.

You snatched your earbud from his hand, brows furrowed. "You can help by not shedding glitter everywhere. That’d save me a lot of time."

He chuckled under his breath, undeterred. "Feisty. I like that."

You glanced at him, eyes narrowing like you were debating whether to smack that annoyingly symmetrical face with a broom.

Okay, maybe not the face. It was too reference-coded. But still. You’d aim for the shoulder.

"If you’re not gonna help, move. I’m on a schedule." You glared at him. Stupid pretty boys.

"So serious." He mused, but stepped aside anyway... only to linger. Watching. Following. Breathing near you like some sparkly parasite.

At one point, you dropped the broom to pick up a fallen costume prop: a foam trident.

You didn’t even look at him, too wrapped in your own world as you twirled it absentmindedly like some battle-hardened warrior preparing to train.

Romance watches, both amused and... vaguely alarmed. That twirl was a little too natural that he forgot about getting something.

When he felt like he's been following her for hours, he returned to the others and he doesn’t even flinch when Abby asks, "So? How'd it go?"

"I couldn't get it." Romance's answer made them sigh. They did honestly think it’ll only take him to get that book (sketchbook).

He didn't tell them about forgetting the original agenda, only that, "She was practicing how she’ll strike us. With a trident."

"What?!" Jinu chokes on his drink as he immediately thought, What kind of a human owns a trident? What the hell are you.

"What kind of trident?" Mystery asks calmly with a little tilt of his head.

"Foam." Romance replied so seriously. "She spun it like she meant business. And also called me a walking arts-and-crafts hazard."

They exchanged glances. Why didn't he choose to say the 'foam' part first? And what was that him being a walking arts thing...?

Failure #1

Baby’s turn begins with him stuffing his pockets with snacks. If he was going to tail someone, he might as well do it on a full stomach.

He finds you in one of the dressing rooms, sorting wigs and costume pieces into bins. It's boring work, but you're doing it with focus, just enough for Baby to slip into the room quietly.

Too quietly.

He slinks around, crouched low like some stealth agent, until he accidentally knocks over a mannequin arm. It hits the floor with a loud clack.

You jump. So does he.

Your eyes narrow instantly when you see him. "Why are you crouching like that?"

Baby straightens up and shrugs, trying to play it cool. "Stretching. Back pain. Old injury."

You look him up and down, unconvinced because you should be the one saying that. He's acting like it wasn't just yesterday that he was messing with you by littering all the things you just cleaned up, like some fucking cat.

"Huh, this box? Woops! I’m so sorry, noona." That’s exactly what he’d say, eyes wide and fake-innocent, like some baby deer with unresolved mischief issues.

And every time he said it, it made your skin crawl.

Not because of the word itself. No, you could handle "noona." You weren’t even that much older.

Actually, you were pretty sure you were the same age as him, maybe even younger than some of the others. But Baby said it with that tone.

That smug, cheeky little lilt that made it feel less like respect and more like a personal attack.

You did find him cute. Objectively.

But his whole existence had the chaotic energy of someone who knew he was cute and used it for evil.

And unfortunately for him, charm loses its effectiveness when paired with the urge to throw him out a window.

And here he is, grinning mischievously. "You know, your work ethic is really inspiring. Sorting wigs with that kind of passion? Sexy."

You squint at him like you're debating whether to hit him with the mannequin arm or the whole stand. That sounds so good, so self-healing after what you went through.

You felt like an old woman trying to crack her back when walking.

You let out a sigh through your nose before continuing on with doing your task while Baby walks closer.

You glance at him. "You remind me of my friend’s cat. Always knocking things over and demanding attention."

Before he can respond, you pat his head, scratch gently under his chin, and walk past him like he’s just another prop to fix the mannequin's arm back in.

He’s frozen. Processing.

A full minute later, he’s still standing there, blinking and you're already done with the tasks here in the room.

"I’m not wasting precious brain cells on a live-action reminder that pretty doesn’t mean functional." You raise a brow at him while picking up a box. "Unlike you all, who have so much free time to pester me, I'm busy doing my actual job."

Baby finally snapped out of it when he saw you step out though before taking your leave completely, he heard you speak again in a demanding tone like you were a parent warning its 7 year old naughty kid.

"Go back to your little posse, alley cat." You said, eyes half-lidded as you smirked. "Don’t you have hair to flip and raccoons to fight behind a 7-Eleven?"

Back at the room, Baby slumps onto the couch with a huff. What happened repeated in his head like a player.

"She called me a cat. Not in a hot, aloof way, but a stray." He then adds, "Like the kind that gets into turf wars with raccoons behind a 7-Eleven.”

That was what all he reported to the others earning funny stares, plus a disappointed but intrigued Jinu.

Like Romance, he didn’t even get to ask about the damn book. He didn't actually had any chance to use half of his charms because one moment you're being playful then next you're roasting him like a bunch of coffee beans.

He may have forgot his original goal, at least he now has something new and that is swearing to make you swoon just like those other simple humans.

And that he agreed with his pink haired friend, who was the 1st victim.

Failure #2

You felt being watched. No, actually you 'are' being watched but by who?

You looked around, scanning the storage room. Empty. Still. Dusty. Dim. So either someone was lurking, or this place was haunted and your will to live had just expired on the spot.

You took one cautious step toward the door.

And then, Mystery appeared from behind a shelf like a summoned spirit. Just standing there. Silent.

"Shibal—!"

You jumped so hard you slipped, tripped over a box, and crashed to the floor in a glorious symphony of clatter and cardboard.

Mystery blinked then tilted his head slightly. "You startle easily."

You coughed once, sneezed from the dust, then squinted through a half-hearted glare. "You appeared like a ghost."

No apology. Not even a hand to help you up. Just that unreadable face and deadpan tone, like he wasn’t the reason you were now covered in packing peanuts and shame.

Though, his gaze didn’t seem malicious...just mildly unsettling. You were 85% sure he was judging you from under all that hair.

You pushed yourself up with a sigh, brushing off your pants like your pride hadn’t just taken a fatal blow.

But of course he didn’t. You’d already finished cleaning up. Again. You cleaned things up a lot these days, thanks to a certain someone and his espresso-fueled vendettas.

You turned your head to glare at Mister Human Equivalent of Dead Air, who blinked slowly. Unbothered. Possibly proud.

"You’re worse than the cockroach I found in the kitchen yesterday."

He hummed, completely unfazed. "Cockroaches don’t scream."

Unbelievable.

"Do you guys have a group chat where you plan this? Like, ‘let’s go bother the new hardworking staff girl’?" Your arms were crossed, your expression demanding answers.

"Book." Was all he said in return.

You blinked. Your brain lagged like bad Wi-Fi. What book?

And is that really all he had to say after standing there for a solid thirty minutes in monk-level silence?

"The one you always have your nose in." He added after a beat, still blank-faced. At least that's what you feel.

"...Is this whole bothering-me thing about that?"

He nodded once. You call bullshit—but also, maybe there’s hope?

"You mean my sketchbook?"

Another nod. You stared at him. Did this guy have a word quota? Was he conserving syllables for his vocal lines?

"If I gave you that, would all of you stop pestering me?"

He didn’t answer. At least not immediately. Just stood there, matching your stare, the silence stretching between you like a rope ready to snap.

You sighed, then gave him a smile. And for one brief, shimmering second, Mystery thought he’d won. Maybe you liked him best.

Maybe you had a thing for the quiet ones—the cryptic, brooding types who linger like ghost drafts in haunted castles.

Jinu did say people had different tastes in idols. Like food—

"No."

...Or not.

Silence dropped again, thick as concrete, before you squinted and spoke.

"What makes you think I’d entrust something of mine to you, or any of you?" you asked. "If you’re all worried I’m drawing you in ‘suspicious’ ways, don’t flatter yourselves. You’re just references."

You stomped past him with all the grace of a woman wronged, then spun back on your heel.

"Actually, scratch that. You should be worried." You jabbed a finger in his direction. "I will draw all of you in suspicious ways. And when you debut? I’ll post it."

You narrowed your eyes. As always, it was impossible to tell what Mystery was thinking, but that didn’t matter. You were confident.

You were an artist. You had the power to draw this stupid boyband making out with each other in watercolor and full shading without feeling an ounce of shame.

They, however, would never recover.

"You better think twice about bothering me now! Tell them that." Then you ran, like a child who knew they’d just poked a beehive and needed to disappear before the stingers caught up.

Back with the group, Mystery returned and stood in front of the others.

"So?" Jinu asked, arms crossed. Behind him, Romance and Baby leaned in, already bracing themselves. Whatever you’d said must’ve rewired something.

Maybe broke a few brain cells on the way out.

"She organizes her materials very efficiently." Mystery said, nodding like he was delivering critical intel to a war council.

Romance blinked. "That’s what you got?"

Baby, now sprawled across the couch with a juice box, snorted. "Told you."

Jinu pinched the bridge of his nose. "Did you at least get the sketchbook?"

Mystery shook his head.

Of course not.

Jinu sighed. At this point, he wasn’t sure if they were failing—or if you were simply immune to all known forms of charm, charisma, and supernatural bullshit.

Romance muttered something about foam weapons. Baby muttered something about alley cats.

And somewhere in the room, a collective ego quietly combusted.

Failure #3.

You volunteered to run an errand. A simple supply run. A chance to breathe.

Sure, you had your suspicions that the boys were taking turns tailing you. Mystery had confirmed it earlier with a thirty-minute silent staring contest that ended in zero answers.

Romance tried to flirt like he’d read one too many bad webtoons. Baby? You mistook him for a stray cat and nearly offered him tuna.

So today? You were ready. You had an escape. Or so you thought...

You regretted everything the second you stepped outside. Why? Because the universe sent you Abby.

Of course, it had to be him. The walking thirst trap of the group.

The one with annoyingly perfect hair, annoying abs, and the kind of face that probably got sculpted by the devil himself on a good day. Because of course.

He was walking beside you like it was nothing. Like he wasn’t single-handedly making people turn their heads from left to right.

And don’t even get started on his stupid shirt. Why the hell is it riding up every few minutes?

Is the universe trying to humble you?

Is nature in on this too? That one breeze that made his shirt lift just enough to show off those abs? It wasn’t a coincidence. That was a divine betrayal.

And of course, he saw you staring. He smirked.

"I saw that." He says, voice low and smug. "Like what you see, sweetheart?"

You groan. "I was looking at the crime against fashion you’re wearing."

He places a hand dramatically on his chest. "You wound me."

You roll your eyes so hard it nearly gives you vertigo. Still, this… wasn’t the worst. At least they weren’t swarming you like yesterday. With them taking turns now, it was more manageable.

"You know," Abby starts, hands behind his head as you walk down the street together, "I think I should be the one to keep you company more often. You seem calmer with me. Maybe even a little... interested."

You stop walking and give him the most deadpan look you can muster. "I was calm because I thought I was alone."

Ouch

But Abby, as always, doesn’t take the loss. He leans closer, lowering his sunglasses with a grin. "Come on, just give me the sketchbook. You like me the most, right?"

You tilt your head and pretend to consider it. "Let’s see..."

Then you dramatically slap a hand over your heart.

"Oh no." You gasp sarcastically. "My deepest secret! How did you know I fall for guys who flex their abs at me like it’s still 2012 Tumblr?"

That gets a crack in his confident grin. Inside, he's genuinely confused. What does that mean??

You pat his arm like you're speaking to someone tragically misguided. "Listen, I’ve drawn more abs than I’ve touched in real life. Yours aren’t special. They’re just... reference material."

Abby chokes on nothing. "Reference material?!"

You give him a cheeky smile. "Yeah. The kind I toss into the 'basic male idol' folder."

You start walking again, casually leaving him in the dust. He stands there, looking scandalized.

Back at the dorm, he slumps into the chair dramatically, hand over his heart.

"She called me basic, and made me carry everything." He mutters, defeated and tired just like the last 2 (Baby & Romance) who returned earlier.

"So she didn’t give you the sketchbook?" Jinu asks, already knowing the answer.

Abby sighs, deeply. "I think she drew a whole new character in her mind just to insult me."

Failure #4

That leaves Jinu, their last hope of getting that sketchbook before the day ends.

"We're counting on you, lead~!" Baby teased with a grin too smug for his own good. His voice dipped into mock aegyo as he winked.

The beef he had with Jinu wasn’t subtle; something about being 'the cute one' when he’d rather be anything else.

It didn’t help that Jinu never really fought back, just smiled like he had better things to do than argue with someone who collected Hello Kitty bandaids.

You, meanwhile, were clocking out. Finally.

Work was done. The sun was down. The universe had tested your patience in every possible way. A hot bath and unconsciousness were the only plans on your mind until he showed up.

"Happy that work’s over, huh?"

You didn’t even need to look to know who it was.

"Obviously." You huffed then rolled of your eyes. "Wouldn’t you be if a bunch of demon-spawn kept finding new ways to test your will to live?"

"…Is that a general insult or something more specific?"

His question made you gave him a look like you were hinting at the obvious.

"Fair." He said with a chuckle.

He walked beside you without asking. Just far enough not to be annoying. Just close enough to be impossible to ignore.

“Wanna grab dinner?”

You blinked then gave him a side-eye. "What makes you think I’d say yes? Is this another one of your weird group rituals where someone jumps out of a trash can to scare me?"

"I said dinner, not a prank war. It’s my treat." He said, hands up in mock surrender. "No one else will be there. Consider it… an apology. For the chaos they’ve put you through."

You raised a brow. "And you’re suddenly the nice one?"

"I never said that," He replied smoothly. "But I do know when to offer compensation."

You thought about it. He hadn’t stepped in earlier, sure, but maybe he wasn’t completely awful. And free food was free food.

You were broke, your fridge was empty, and a meal you didn’t have to cook yourself was a rare form of heaven.

So you said yes.

The place he brought you to wasn’t flashy. A quiet diner tucked away from the noise. Warm lights. Old booths. You ordered too much and pretended not to care.

"You know," Jinu said mid-meal. "I kind of expected you to throw your drink in my face."

"You still might deserve it," You said between bites. "Depends how this conversation goes."

He smiled, his chin resting on his hand as he watched you. You noticed, of course. But instead of reacting, you stayed calm, indifferent, even.

As if you weren’t being quietly studied by a man who looked like he'd walked off a runway.

"You always like this?" You asked with a raised brow. "Weirdly smooth one second, annoying the next?"

He smirked at you. "It’s a learned skill. Keeps people guessing."

"You’re not that hard to figure out." You deadpanned with a slight tilt of your head. "You’re probably the most normal one out of your group. Still a menace, though."

Jinu laughed. Just the short type. "That almost sounded like a compliment."

You stared at him then replied in a monotonous voice, "It wasn’t."

He chuckled, and the conversation settled into something surprisingly... normal.

Eventually, you talked about things you didn’t usually mention to strangers—about the pressure of pretending, of being exhausted all the time and not knowing how to admit it.

About how expectations from others wear you down until all you want to do is disappear.

At some point, maybe out of tired habit or plain honesty, you even muttered something about 'your demons whispering to you late at night.' You meant it figuratively, of course.

But the way Jinu blinked once, slow and calculating made you wonder if he thought otherwise. Like you’d just triggered something serious.

He didn’t ask. Just nodded and let it go. But you caught it: the subtle shift in his gaze, that flicker of recognition. Whatever he was thinking, it didn’t feel like nothing.

Still, he listened. Not with empty nods, but like he got it. Not everything, but enough.

And... that felt nice. It's been a while since you had someone to talk to about things you can relate. Your friends were busy and when they try to invite you to hangout, you're the one who has a pack sched instead.

When you got home later that night, sketchbook still tucked away where no one would ever find it, you let yourself sink into bed and stared at the ceiling.

Maybe Jinu wasn’t so bad. Not like the rest of his chaos crew. He's become 'just alright guy' to you.

Meanwhile, Jinu returned to the place they all stayed while living in the human world—a sleek apartment tucked above the city skyline, equal parts expensive and lived-in.

The others were scattered across the living room, feigning disinterest while clearly listening.

Abby was the first to ask. "So? How’d yours go?"

Jinu kicked off his shoes and shrugged, hands in his pockets. "No sketchbook. But I think she let her guard down."

That got their attention.

"She’s easier to talk to when you’re not pushing her buttons. Maybe try not teasing her to death next time." He added, giving Romance a pointed glance though his eyes definitely slid to Abby and Baby too.

Not that any of those three looked the least bit guilty.

Baby made a dramatic noise of betrayal when he realized something, his eyes squinting. "So you’re the favorite now?"

Jinu didn’t rise to it. Just smiled, smug even.

"If we earn even a little of her trust, that book’s as good as ours."

And judging by the way he looked quietly satisfied, it was clear their leader had a plan—and maybe, just maybe, it was already working.

Failure #5 (losers)

Day 4: Pretty Privilege Denied

At the rehearsal room...

"This is such a pain." Baby groaned as he dramatically flopped backwards onto the couch like he’d just carried the entire K-pop industry on his back. "Why can’t we just take the stupid sketchbook already?"

He tossed a bag of chips across the room. It missed the trash can by a full foot. No one corrected him.

"Right?" Abby stretched his arms behind his head, flashing abs like it was part of the punctuation. "We’re wasting time doing solo missions. What if we all just... I dunno, ask at once? Overwhelm her with our combined perfection."

Romance was already nodding, a smirk playing at his lips. "Like an idol intervention."

Mystery, curled on the floor beside the couch, mumbled faintly, "She’ll resist. She always resists."

"Because you just stood there and stared at her for thirty minutes." Baby snapped with a roll of his eyes. "That’s not a plan, that’s a horror movie."

"I was being... silent but effective." Mystery defended weakly, hugging a pillow with the dead-eyed conviction of a man who hadn’t blinked in an hour.

Baby didn’t bother looking at him. He just sighed and reached for his lip tint, applying it with a kind of weary elegance that suggested everyone else in the room was the problem.

"I don’t get why you all can’t just manipulate her like normal people." Baby muttered, popping a strawberry flavored lollipop in his mouth.

Like a fucking Bond villain in silk pajamas.

He next adds, "Look adorable, be sweet, and wait. She’ll fold eventually. Humans are weak to affection and eye contact."

Romance blinked. "You think this is adorable?"

"I think this is inefficient." Baby said flatly, glancing at his nails like he was bored of everyone's incompetence. "She clearly likes attention. She breathes like someone who wants to be perceived."

Abby froze mid-sip of his fruit shake. "You said that out loud."

"Good." Baby replied, unbothered, swiping through his front camera to check his angles. "I hope the wind carries it to her. Maybe it’ll reach her ego first."

There was a moment of stunned silence.

"…You scare me sometimes." Abby muttered, rubbing the back of his neck like he was rethinking his life choices.

Jinu, to no one’s surprise, wasn’t in the room for this beautifully misguided planning session. He was allegedly "doing leader things," which in practice meant "ignoring all of them for his own sanity."

Which meant the rest of them were unsupervised.

Because in the next five minutes, fueled by ego, caffeine, and deep, mutual frustration, they came up with the worst idea possible:

"We’ll confront her together," Romance declared, sparkles practically glinting in his eyes. Mischief, too.

"Like a sketchbook heist?" Abby grinned. They high-fived, because of course they did.

"No," Baby corrected, sitting upright like a cat that’d just heard a can opener. "Like a coordinated idol strike."

Mystery nodded solemnly. "A synchronized emotional ambush."

"…That’s literally just stalking in unison." Someone muttered upon realization but no one listened. Not that it even mattered to beings like them.

And with that, four immortals in idol skin decided to do what no sane being should ever attempt: gang up on one overworked staff girl who already hated their collective existence.

Because why not? What could possibly go wrong?

Somewhere...

Jinu had always known patience was the real game. You don’t survive four centuries being impulsive. So when his members started treating [Y/n] like a raid boss with a lootable sketchbook, he didn’t intervene.

He watched. Waited. Calculated. And then last night happened.

Dinner wasn’t supposed to go that well. He figured she’d make it halfway through the meal, throw a napkin in his face, and storm out. But she didn’t. She talked.

And somewhere between the second plate and her muttering about "demons whispering at night," something in him stilled. That wasn’t normal small talk. And it sure as hell wasn’t nothing.

She either didn’t realize what she said, or she did, and didn’t care. Either way, Jinu recognized the weight of it. The strange, dangerous truth humming just beneath her words.

So yeah. He was interested now. Not just in the sketchbook. In her.

Which is why, this morning, he changed tactics.

She’d let her guard down. That meant it was time to keep her guessing. Balance the scale. Tip it, just enough to rattle her.

Cue: pettiness mode.

She thought last night was a truce? Fine. Let her believe that. Then let her walk face-first into his brand of passive-aggressive hell. Just enough to make her question herself. Her instincts. Him.

If they were going to win this sketchbook war, she needed to be off-balance. And Jinu was going to enjoy every second of it.

So when he saw her coming down the sidewalk with coffee in hand, face still half-asleep and blessedly peaceful, he held the door open.

Then let it close. Right as she reached it. Perfect.

...

You were already tired.

Not physically—not yet. Just spiritually. Which was impressive, given the day had barely started.

But then again, surviving a full shift surrounded by glitter-dusted demon boys could rattle anyone’s soul.

Still. Today would be different. It had to be.

You saw the studio door ahead, sweet salvation in view, and picked up your pace.

And then, of course. It was him.

Jinu. Holding the door like he was doing you a favor. Like he hadn’t spent last night pretending to be a decent person.

He let it shut before you even touched the handle.

It was official. The man had a switch, and you were done trying to figure out which position it was stuck on. You stopped. Stared, then narrowed your eyes as the door clicked shut with smug finality.

Why the hell was he acting like this now?

Maybe he’d decided to be just as unbearable as his idiot members. Or maybe he realized being nice wasn’t getting him your sketchbook.

Or maybe, just maybe, he woke up and chose violence. With iced coffee.

What happened last night? Too good to be true. You were stupid to think otherwise.

Jinu turned his head, smiling like a summer villain in a drama. "Oh? I thought you weren’t coming. My bad."

Your eye twitched as you smiled politely. Violence is a choice. "You saw me walking straight here."

"I see a lot of things." He said vaguely, stepping inside and letting the door stay closed behind him.

You yanked it open with more force than necessary after tapping your id and followed him in, already regretting clocking in today. If HR asked why the break room window was shattered later, this was why.

You tried to brush it off. Keep walking. You had your sketchbook in hand, a long list of things to prep, and exactly zero energy to spare on whatever weird game he was playing now.

And then—

"Good morning, hardworking staff member," Jinu said with the fakest earnestness you’d ever heard, falling into step beside you. "Did you sleep well on your commoner bed?"

You stopped in your tracks, your mouth agape while your brain buffered.

"…What," You said slowly, letting the words drag like a system error. "What did you just say to me?"

Was flabbergasted the right word? Because honestly, that didn’t even scratch the surface. You were spiritually winded. Like you’d just been slapped with a Gucci slipper made of pure ego.

Jinu, the absolute menace, took a delicate sip of his artisanal coffee and smiled. That same saintly, beatific smile that made you want to throw a chair.

"I heard those floor mattresses are terrible for your posture."

You blinked at him. Hard. "You think I sleep on the floor?"

He raised a brow, so effortlessly smug. "Don’t you?"

Oh, okay. So this was the level of unhinged we were on today.

You stared at him, soul leaving your body one judgmental breath at a time. What was wrong with him? What was wrong with all of them? Did they audition to be idols or audition to test your will to live?

Because right now, you were genuinely convinced the universe had assigned you to a group of sleep-paralysis demons with backup dancer skills.

He stared back, calm and composed, like the human embodiment of a rice paper screen: pretty, delicate, and annoyingly hard to punch without consequences.

The silence stretched long enough for you to seriously consider hitting him with your sketchbook.

You turned and walked faster. He followed. He wasn’t done.

"You know," He said, all airy and unbothered, "I heard stress causes wrinkles. You might want to be careful."

"Great." You deadpanned. "Can I borrow your skincare then? I assume it’s made from crushed angel wings and virgin moonlight."

He laughed softly. Like you were joking. You were not.

You reached your desk, set your things down with a sigh, and frowned. Your pencil bag wasn’t where you left it.

You squinted and searched. There it was, off to the right by a few inches. You didn’t leave it like that. You were sure.

"…Did someone move my stuff?"

Behind you, Jinu shrugged with the grace of a lying cat. "Maybe the ghosts like you."

You turned slowly, narrowed your eyes. He was already walking away, sipping his cursed latte like he hadn’t just kicked your entire sense of peace in the kneecaps.

And the worst part? You knew this wasn’t even the peak of his pettiness. This was the prelude. The overture. The trailer before the disaster film.

You swore if he did this one more time, you were going to draw him as a worm in a luxury bathrobe. And that was being generous.

Dear god.

You tried to hide.

Not from your work, that would be irresponsible, but from the boyband plague that had decided to infest every corner of your daily life like glitter-coated cockroaches with jawlines.

Storage room? Mystery was already inside when you flicked the light on, calmly leaning against a shelf like he was part of the cleaning supplies.

You screamed and that earned a few pair of eyes from fellow staff members to see what's happened while Mystery just blinked.

Just fucking that. Like he wouldn't be the reason for you having a heart attack at such a young age.

"I was just watching the broom." He said solemnly.

Deja vu.

Toilet break? You exited the staff restroom to find Romance waiting by the door with a smile so charming it should’ve been a crime.

"Did you miss me?" He asked with a little tilt of his head. How cute. Like that was supposed to work on you.

You stared back, deadpan. "Did you follow me to the bathroom?"

"No." He said too fast. Then added, "I was just… in the area."

You folded your arms, unimpressed. "Of the women’s restroom?"

"…Geographically."

You shook your head then walked past him. He followed. Damn it.

Lunch break? You were five feet from the vending machine when Abby materialized from nowhere, leaned casually against it, and held out a protein bar.

"Hungry?" He asked with a wink.

You stared, the same dead-eyed stare you gave Romance. At this point, you were immune. Beyond exhausted. Somewhere between "please stop" and "God, just smite me."

"Are you seriously trying to flirt with trail mix?"

He grinned. Handsome bastard #3. "It’s high in fiber."

You almost growled at him like a fucking wolf. "I hate you."

Coffee break? You escaped the building. You escaped the chaos. You made it to your favorite shop. You ordered your drink, basked in a moment of peace.

You shouldn't have turned around.

"Hi." Jinu said, already holding out a matching iced Americano.

You didn’t blink. Yeah, at this point you wouldn't even be surprised if you suddenly moved countries and their striking asses are 'suddenly' there, too.

Which leads you to a thought: Are they even after your sketchbook or other things? Did they fall for you and became obsessed with you like in those webtoons?

Pfft. Yeah, right. You must've lost it there for a second.

You blankly stared at Mister royalty-wannabe. What he said about your bed being a commoner's really got to you. It looks like you weren't the only one who can burn people like toast.

Jinu watches you space out. Poor you, not that he actually cares and that smile on his stupidly handsome face was enough to tell a tale.

"I’ll trade you this premium Americano for a peek at your sketchbook." He offered smoothly, breaking you out of your thoughts.

You stared him down then reached out, took the coffee from his hand, and said in a monotone voice: "Thanks."

He didn't see the smirk on your face as you walked away, simply enjoying your drink. Ah, it feels good to taste victory. An expensive one at that.

Meanwhile Jinu just stood there, betrayed.

"That was a limited roast." He muttered to which you heard as you raised the drink like a trophy.

No peace. No privacy. And definitely no sanity.

But if they thought this was going to make you fold, they were sorely mistaken.

You had pens, paper, and spite.

Let them try.

Later that day, the practice room was supposed to be empty.

Keyword: supposed.

You walked in with your sketchbook tucked under your arm and your emotional shields fully charged, only to freeze when you saw them. All of them.

Oh, god. The dread. The disgust. The divine urge to U-turn right back out the door. As much as you liked the sights of their faces, you could go one fucking day without seeing them.

There were other inspirations in the world, like sewer rats. Or tax documents.

You looked at them, judging, and they could tell. Your judgment wasn’t subtle. It had volume. Weight. A spiritual glare.

Romance on the window sill like a tragically bored novel character. Baby draped over the couch like a spoiled cat who owned the lease.

Abby standing behind the couch, peering over Baby’s shoulder and silently judging whatever cursed content he was watching.

Mystery sitting upside down in a chair like a sentient cryptid. And Jinu by the mirror, sipping coffee and watching like a smug, beautiful stage mom directing chaos.

You stared. They stared back.

"…What." You said flatly.

Baby was first to speak, tossing you his best faux-innocent smile. "We just wanted to hang out."

You squinted. "All five of you. In one room. Together. Unscheduled."

Baby was first to speak, tossing you his best faux-innocent smile. "We just wanted to hang out.”

You squinted. "All five of you. In one room. Together. With no cameras. No choreo. No staff instructions. Just… existing?"

They didn’t reply.

"Unscheduled." You repeated with narrowed eyes. "Yeah, see, that’s what’s throwing me off. You people only move in packs when someone tells you to."

"Team-building." Abby states with a charming grin. "Very healthy. Builds trust."

Romance stretched like he was auditioning for the villain role in a romance anime. "Or maybe we were hoping for a little sketchbook time."

"Denied." You answered immediately. Yeah, you saw that coming, even smelled it.

Mystery didn’t move from his bat-like perch. "I brought snacks."

You looked at him. "They’re pocket mints."

"They’re shareable."

Yep you turned toward the exit. You aren't gonna waste another energy, but Jinu stepped forward and casually leaned on the doorframe. Blocking it.

"Leaving so soon?" He said, calm and smug and, unfortunately, gorgeous. You don't know how many times you called them all those words inside your head. "We haven’t even started the icebreaker."

But of course no matter how good looking they are, they still continue to test your sanity. With that said, your eye twitched for the nth time.

"What is this, a hostage situation?" You looked him up and down, and he felt you judge him.

"That depends." Romance hummed with a grin. "Are you willing to negotiate?"

Baby pouted, still trying that method of acting cute. "We just want a peek."

"You’ve been studying us." Abby chimed in. "Seriously. We can feel it."

"We’d like to see your... interpretations." Romance added, clearly trying to sound seductive. You gave him a withering look. He faltered for half a second. "Strictly for performance critique purposes."

You let the silence stretch, then slowly opened your sketchbook... just an inch. It was cute but mostly funny on how their eyes lit up.

Then you snapped it shut.

"No." You said with a condescending smile like some typical villainess.

"Cruel." Jinu muttered with a huff.

Baby groaned dramatically, flopping back. "Why won’t you just let us see it?"

"Because it’s mine." You said, backing toward the wall. "And because I know you’ll cry."

Romance scoffed. "I don’t cry."

"You cried when your contact lens flipped inside out." Abby pointed out with a little laugh.

"Emotional trauma." Romance said with dignity. He was quick with his reply. Being on those little screens paid off.

Jinu tilted his head, still blocking the door. "This all could’ve been avoided, you know. Back when we were being nice."

You narrowed your eyes. "You smiled at me one time and then threw a door in my face."

"I smiled twice." He corrected. "That’s effort."

You sighed, dramatically and soulfully. "This is what I get for not calling in sick."

They inched closer, slowly closing in like a very attractive zombie horde.

Then you raised your sketchbook like a weapon and said, "Another step and I swear to God I’ll post the ‘Abby Cries at Pixar’ spread online."

Everyone froze.

"…You wouldn’t." Abby whispered.

"Try me." That wasn't a challenge. That was the truth. You'd do anything for this war.

Behind him, Mystery was already reaching for his phone. "I’d retweet it."

Abby narrowed his eyes at him. "You traitor."

Eventually, Jinu sighed and stepped aside. "You win this round."

You smiled and gave his shoulder a pat. "You mean all rounds."

And with that, you walked out like the final boss of their lives—sketchbook clutched tight, peace restored (for now), and your petty revenge arc stronger than ever.

Sketchbook Status: Untouched.

Artist Mood: Petty

#kpop demon hunters #kpdh #saja boys #female reader #reverse harem #saja boys x reader #reader insert

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thesituationship · 3 days ago

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OUGH I love slow burn Billford. Bitter exes constantly fucking is good too but there's something about neither of them confessing any feelings until the last possible moment that is *chefs kiss*.

Like, pre-portal, Ford assumes any strong feelings are just reverence for his muse, and Bill thinks his strong feelings are just sadism, the fun of using Ford, nothing more. Fucking during karaoke doesn't contradict this, I think Ford probably couldn't remember, or maybe his memory was erased. Bill was still in denial, fucking Ford was 'all part of his master plan' somehow (or maybe he just forgot too). Whatever happened that night, the next day, I think they both sensed something had changed, although they couldn't put their finger on what. All they know is that whenever they're apart now, they can only think about each other.

Bill doesn't figure out that he loves Ford until the break up, I think that's clear in Tbob. But I really like the idea that Ford doesn't figure it out till weirdmageddon, and that he refuses to believe that Bill loves him.

To me, it feels very in character for Ford to brush off Bill's very obvious flirting as just a humiliation tactic. Ford has very little self-worth. I don't think he believes anyone would love him for him. People only love what he can do for them. He's also autistic coded, aroace coded. I think he finds it hard to actually recognise romantic advances, even if they're laid on real thick (we see this with fiddleford too). And lastly, there's a lot of shame in being loved by a monster like Bill. It's probably easier to deny it, bury it deep down instead of dealing with the survivor's guilty. Pride and shame are big thematic throughlines in Ford's story.

I also think it's really in character for Bill too. Bill thinks love is weakness. I think he's embarrassed and afraid of how down bad he is. And so, all through the portal years, he's trying to tell ford that he loves him, without telling him. And it kinda comes off as bullying. You can't really blame ford for not picking up on it. However it's funny to think that all the henchmaniacs have.

Anyways, I like to imagine that it doesn't click for Ford until they're alone in the penthouse, and Bill has him pinned. He's finally showing Ford how genuinely frustrated he is with both Ford and himself. He really hates that he loves Ford. He's still really hurt that Ford abandoned him. He really does just want to rule the universe with him. And ford is somehow shocked by this revelation because he's a fucking idiot.

Then, and only then, does Ford finally realise that he loves Bill too. And it hurts so much because it doesn't matter. Everything's gone too far, love can't save them anymore.

I think about this all the time.

#this is the goat billford interpretation imo #i love others too but man #because it really makes ford quite a emotionally flawed and stunted character #i think fords poor understand of other people's emotions is a core part of his character that can sometimes be lost in #other billford interpretations #billford #gravity falls #stanford pines #bill cipher

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ccupcakqs · 3 days ago

Note

Charles Leclerc when he sees singer!reader’s bodysuit?(Like Sabrina Carpenter style) It can be smut or not !

— encore ౨ৎ✧˚

warnings: suggestive content, intense sexual tension, dressing room intimacy pairing: charles leclerc x female singer reader a/n: anon😅

you spot him the moment the lights go up.

charles sits front and center, elbow on his knee, rings catching the glow from the stage. his expression is unreadable at first glance, jaw tight, fingers curled slightly, eyes darker than you’re used to seeing them.

your heart stutters.

because you know what you’re wearing.

the bodysuit clings like a second skin. black velvet with rhinestone detailing, cut high on the thighs, cinched at the waist, and somehow more revealing under stage lights than you remembered during rehearsals. it’s bold. unapologetic. a little dangerous.

and completely intentional.

you had sent him photos earlier in the week while getting fitted. playful mirror selfies, partial angles, enough to tease but not show everything. you had asked if it was too much. if it was too short. if it would be a problem.

his only reply had been four words.

wear it regret it

you hadn’t stopped thinking about it since.

the first verse comes easy, your voice settling into rhythm as the music builds. you move across the stage with practiced ease, but your eyes keep drifting back to where he sits. still. quiet. watching.

by the second chorus, the temperature has climbed. the crowd is on fire, the beat pulsing beneath your feet, but your body feels warm for a different reason entirely.

you walk to the edge of the stage, drop into a crouch with the mic gripped loosely in one hand, and let your eyes find his.

he doesn’t smile. he doesn’t blink.

he just looks at you like he’s already imagining how he’s going to get you alone.

you let your lips part around the final note, soft and slow, then flash him a grin.

the dangerous kind.

he shifts in his seat.

you keep singing.

he doesn’t say anything as he follows you backstage. his hand rests at the small of your back, steady, possessive, guiding you through the crowd of crew and lingering fans with a quiet intensity that tells you everything you need to know.

the second the dressing room door clicks shut behind him, you feel the air shift.

he’s on you in an instant. his hands at your waist, his mouth brushing over your cheek before dragging down to your neck. his voice is low and rough when he speaks.

“you really wore that for me?”

your smile is wicked. “you told me i would regret it.”

his grip tightens.

“i do now,” he says, kissing just beneath your ear. “i had to sit there and watch you walk out in that tiny fucking thing, legs bare, tits pushed up, smiling like you didn’t know i was going insane.”

you let your head fall back against the door as his mouth moves lower, trailing heat across your skin. your fingers find the hem of his shirt and slip beneath it, skimming over the hard line of his stomach.

“and now?” you whisper.

he pulls back just enough to look at you.

“now i need to remind you who you were singing for.”

he lifts you easily, hands sliding beneath your thighs, and you wrap your legs around his waist. he carries you to the vanity, the bodysuit riding high on your hips, offering him more skin than it covers.

he sets you down on the table, scattering perfume bottles and open lipstick tubes, then drops to his knees.

his fingers trace the line of the velvet fabric. slow. reverent. his eyes never leave yours.

“you wore this knowing exactly what it would do to me.”

you tilt your head, voice barely above a breath. “and what does it do?”

he doesn’t answer.

instead, he presses a kiss to your knee. then the inside of your thigh. then higher.

you shiver.

his hands grip your hips as his mouth trails over the soft skin, licking, biting, teasing. you try to stay quiet but fail when his teeth scrape lightly against your inner thigh.

“don’t hold back,” he whispers. “not here. not with me.”

you moan softly, fingers tangling in his hair, and he groans in response. he’s hard in his jeans, pressed against the edge of the table, clearly losing control with every sound you make.

he murmurs things in french you can’t understand, and you don’t ask him to translate.

because his mouth is everywhere now.

he kisses up your stomach, along the neckline of your bodysuit, his hands tugging gently at the straps until they slip down your arms.

“this outfit should be a crime,” he says against your collarbone. “but i’m glad it isn’t. i want to ruin you in it.”

you arch into him.

“do it,” you whisper.

he growls something under his breath and kisses you like he’s trying to make up for every second he had to sit and watch instead of touch.

time blurs.

you don’t remember how the bodysuit came off. don’t remember how his shirt ended up on the floor. all you know is the way his hands never stop moving and the way he keeps murmuring your name like it’s a song he’s been waiting all night to sing.

he takes his time.

he makes sure you feel every second of it.

and when it’s over, you’re folded into his lap on the couch, legs bare, wrapped in the remains of his button-down. the room smells like perfume and sweat and something heady and warm.

his hand runs slowly up your thigh.

“you’re mine,” he says softly. “they can cheer and scream and watch you light the whole world on fire, but at the end of the night, you’re mine.”

you look up at him, smile lazy and full of heat. “guess i’ll wear the red one next time.”

his eyes flash.

“try it,” he whispers. “see what happens.”

#ccupcakqs #fleur's fics ⋆˚࿔#f1 x reader #f1 fanfic #f1 imagine #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc fic #charles leclerc imagine #charles leclerc fanfic #cl16 x reader #cl16 imagine #cl16 #f1 smut #f1 fic #f1 #f1 nerd ‧₊˚#f1 x female reader #f1 x you

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thecchiiiiiiii · 18 hours ago

Text

Senses by Mico – “You long for a feeling you'll never get back and I'm scared that you'll finally give up.I'm never enough. The one that you wanted, but never the one that you'll love and I know, you’ll come to your senses and leave me alone, with all of my questions ‘cause I don’t have the answer” (Daniela Avanzini x reader)

Synopsis: You’re a poet, she’s your muse, and unfortunately, you’re never going to be her groom.

Remember that this is FICTION only.

—☆

You’re a poet. Not by profession, but by compulsion. Words spill out of you like sweat; you catch them on receipts, in the margins of textbooks you never finished, on the backs of her hands when she lets you.

Her name’s Daniela Avanzini— Dani to you when it’s late enough. When she’s soft enough to let her hair brush against your collarbone as she leans over your laptop, reading what you’ve written about her but pretending it’s about someone else.

“You’re my muse, you know that, right?” you say once, mouth pressed to her temple like confession.

She laughs, tipping her head away so you lose your warmth.

“Then write me a happy ending” she teases.

But you can’t.

You were children when she found you. Or maybe you found her. It’s hard to say now who did the catching, who did the saving. Maybe you just built a net between you, soft enough to hold the parts you didn’t want anyone else to see.

You never realized because you were nine.

You met Dani when you were both small enough that the world felt taller than your heads. Her parents moved into the old house down the road. The one with the rusted gate and the tree out front that dropped yellow flowers every summer.

You remember the first time you saw her: shoes untied, hair a mess, cheeks smudged with the dirt of a dare. She was trying to climb the fence to your yard, tiny fingers hooked through the chain links, grinning at you like she’d found a secret.

"What are you doing?" you asked, peeking through the slats of your mother’s garden shed.

"Seeing what’s on your side, yours are better" she said, like it was obvious.

That’s how it always was with Dani. The world wasn’t enough until she’d poked a hole in it to see the other side. You, a careful child that you were, still followed her through every one.

—☆

You remember the first time she fell out of the tulip tree. She’d climbed too high, higher than you dared — her small sneakers slipping against the bark. She landed in the grass with a thud that knocked the wind out of both your lungs.

You ran to her, palms skidding across dirt and roots. Her lip was split, tiny blood beads on her chin.

"Does it hurt?" you asked, voice trembling. You were nine. She was almost ten, and she grinned like she was proud of the bruise already blooming on her elbow.

"Only a little," she lied. Then she pointed at your brother, standing by the fence with his bike helmet in his hands. "He didn’t even run over."

Your brother shrugged. “You always bounce,” he said, trying to sound older than he was. He looked at you when he said it. Like he’d already decided you would be the one to catch her every time she fell. Not him.

She pulled you into every dare. Climbing the roof of the abandoned shed behind her house, sneaking peaches from your neighbor’s tree, swimming in the cold creek that smelled like moss and sun-warmed stones. And you, breathless and trailing behind, always ended up being the one to tell what happened when the cuts were too deep or the tears too loud to hide.

"What happened to you two?" your mother would ask, wiping blood from Dani’s knee while you sat beside her, guilty and loyal in equal measure.

"It was my fault," you’d say, because it was true. You were there.

But sometimes your brother would step in, already taller, already more golden under the sun.

"It was me," he’d say, ruffling Dani’s hair. "I dared her. Don’t blame them."

And somehow that made him the hero and you the accomplice, though you were the one who stayed behind to hold her hand when the bandage was peeled away.

There were Saturday mornings, too. Your backyard turned kingdom: sticks for swords, flower crowns you’d braid for her out of dandelions and the weeds your mother hated.

"I’m the queen," she’d declare, twirling with her arms out. "You’re my knight. You have to protect me."

Your brother would cut in then, taller than both of you, swiping the stick sword from your hand and tapping her shoulder with it.

"I’m the knight," he’d say. "You can be the scribe."

The scribe. The poet. The one who’d write it all down while someone else got to hold her hand and slay her dragons.

Even then, you knew what that meant.

You knew better too.

Because when your brother was around, she was different. Still bright, but polished. She’d brush her hair smooth, say please and thank you, giggle when he lifted her onto his shoulders to reach the top shelf. The adults would watch, sipping coffee or cheap wine.

"Perfect together," they’d murmur. "Perfect match."

You’d sit on the steps, chin on your knees, knowing perfect was just another word for predictable.

—☆

The first time you saw her dancing was from your bedroom window. She was in her backyard on her bare feet, sun in her hair, spinning on the cracked patio stones like the world belonged to her alone.

You were ten when you found out her house was too quiet. Her parents didn’t like noise, or mess, or questions they couldn’t answer neatly.

So she came to you. Every scraped knee, every broken bracelet, every bad grade tucked into her backpack like contraband she brought it to your room. You learned to keep secrets like breath.

You pressed your forehead to the glass, breath fogging the pane. She saw you, of course she did. Dani always saw you first.

Later she crawled through the gap in the fence and sat next to you in the grass.

"I’m a dancer," she whispered like she was telling you she’d grown wings overnight.

"Show me," you begged, so she did. Twirling until her skirt tangled around her knees.

She made you promise to come watch her first recital at the rec center. You sat in the front row, palms sweaty, heart hammering so loud you swore she could hear it from the stage.

"Don’t look away," she mouthed before the music started.

You didn’t.

And after that, you never missed one. She’d tug your sleeve after school, press a flyer into your palm. "You’ll be there, right?"

"Always."

And then she’d crawl into your bed long after your parents fell asleep, hair smelling like the lilac bush outside your window.

"Scoot over," she’d whisper, elbowing you in the ribs. "I’m cold."

You always moved. You always made space.

—☆

You were eleven when you stepped into her house for the first time, though you’d known its walls from the outside for years. All those nights sitting under her window, passing notes through the screen, catching her laughter like fireflies in your hands.

Inside, it felt colder. Too clean. Everything smelled like lemon polish and fresh laundry. No warmth, no clutter, not even the lazy chaos of your own home. Her mother hovered in the hall, a polite smile stitched onto her mouth.

"Dani’s room is upstairs," she said, voice clipped. "Shoes off at the door, please."

So you slipped your sneakers off. Mismatched socks on the polished floor, and padded up the stairs to the only space in the whole house that felt remotely alive.

Her room was the only messy thing in the whole house. Pink curtains half-drawn, books stacked crooked on her desk, clothes spilling from drawers she’d never shut properly.

But it was the trophies that caught your eye. A whole shelf of them. Gold and glass and plastic crowns that gleamed like proof she knew how to be good.

She sat cross-legged on her bed, waiting for you with that grin that could undo every bone in your chest.

"Finally," she said, arms wide. "You took forever."

"Your mom made me," you shrugged, but you crossed the room, letting her pull you down beside her, the mattress dipping under your combined weight.

You looked at the trophies first . The glint of gold plastic, the shiny plaques etched with her name. “Regional Champion,” “First Place Solo,” “Overall High Score.” Little proof of how much they expected of her.

"You never told me you had so many," you said, reaching up to touch one. It wobbled under your fingertips.

She shrugged, picking at a loose thread on your sleeve. "They don’t really matter. Not really."

"You win them every time," you pointed out, teasing a smile from her.

"Because you’re there," she said, so soft you almost missed it.

You turned to her. Your heart snagged in your ribs. "What?"

She chewed her lip. She hated saying it out loud. Hated that it made her sound like she needed something she couldn’t practice in a mirror.

"I dance better when you’re there," she mumbled. "I don’t get so scared. It’s like— if you’re watching, I can’t mess up. Because you’d love me anyway, even if I did."

You laughed. A breathless, stupid sound, as pressed your forehead to hers.

"You’d win even if I stayed home," you whispered.

"Maybe," she said, eyes closing. "But I don’t want to."

Later, her mother knocked, asking if you wanted juice, cookies, anything to keep you quiet and well-behaved. You said no, thank you in your nicest voice. Dani curled up beside you anyway, head on your shoulder, fingers tracing circles on the hem of your shirt.

Outside that room: trophies, pressure, the heavy hush of a family who wanted her perfect.

Inside: you. Her soft place to land. Her secret audience.

And every competition after that— she’d find you in the crowd, no matter how big the auditorium. A flash of your face. A tiny nod. Her own small permission to be real for three minutes at a time.

"Don’t look away," she’d mouth before the music started.

And you never did.

But your brother was always there too— only two years older, he was taller, steadier.

One afternoon, you were sprawled on her bedroom floor— your notebook open, her homework half-finished. She stood at her mirror, twisting her hair up in her hands, humming under her breath.

"Come here," she said suddenly, tugging you up by the wrist. She spun you in front of her mirror, pressed her hands to your shoulders.

"Dance with me."

"I don’t know how."

"I’ll teach you," she said, stepping on your toes so she could balance. She smelled like cheap shampoo and pencil shavings. She giggled when you stepped left instead of right, forehead knocking into yours.

Then, the floor creaked. Your brother leaning against the doorframe, grinning like he’d caught you in the middle of something he’d claim as his.

"You’re teaching them to dance?" he asked.

Dani pulled back, cheeks flushed. "They’re hopeless," she laughed. "You do it."

So he did. He took her hands like it was nothing, guided her around the room while you sat back down on the carpet, notebook wide open in your lap but no words coming out.

He dipped her once, dramatic, making her squeal— and when he set her upright again, she looked at you over his shoulder, smile small, as if to say I’m sorry, though you both knew she’d do it again.

He’d just lift her onto his shoulders at barbecues, spin her under the garden lights when the adults clapped, like how he does it every time you try to dance with her.

The elderly neighbors would watch, murmuring soft predictions over steaming coffee: What a handsome pair they’ll be.

Your parents, hers— same thing. What a good match.

It didn’t matter that she’d sneak away from his side to find you in the kitchen, press sticky fingers to your lips to hush your questions, beg you to run away with her to the garden so you could watch the lightning bugs blink their secrets into the dusk.

—☆

You were twelve when you first realized you’d never really have her, not the way you wanted. Twelve when you learned what it meant to stand next to someone you’d follow anywhere, and watch someone else hold out his hand and say come with me instead.

She was twelve too. All skinned knees and tangled hair, laughter like a dare. Your brother was fourteen, taller already, his shoulders broadening out into something the world seemed ready to say yes to before he even asked.

That summer, she convinced you both to build a fort behind the tulip tree. She said it’d be yours. Just you and her.

She brought old blankets, you found scrap wood behind the shed. She sketched a map in the dirt with a stick. “Here’s where we sleep, here’s where we keep snacks, here’s where we hide when the world’s too loud.”

You were twelve when she first kissed you. Behind the tulip tree fort that’s barely built. Your knees muddy, her palms sticky with cheap juice. It tasted like summer and panic and forever.

Your brother wasn’t around that day. But he found his way back. He always did.

Your brother found you there on the third day. Hammering in crooked nails, your thumb already bruised purple.

"What’s this?" he asked, voice all casual warmth.

"Nothing," you mumbled, but Dani beamed at him like he’d brought the sun with him.

"It’s ours!" she said, tugging him closer by the wrist. "You can help too, if you want."

You hated how easy he made it look. Holding the hammer the right way, showing her how to tie the blankets so they wouldn’t blow away in the wind.

He’d show up at the fort with new nails, new boards, new stories about high school girls and places you weren’t old enough to follow him into yet.

She called him smart, so smart, and when the fort was done, she wrote your names on the plank with a marker: Dani + You + Him.

You never told her you scraped his name off later with a rock until the wood splintered under your fingernails. Until your nails split and your knuckles bleed and your heart ached like it suddenly had a tear.

Then on her twelfth birthday, your mother invited your brother to help pass out the cake. You sat next to Dani on the back porch steps, paper plates balanced on your knees.

She leaned in, whispered through a mouthful of chocolate, "You’re staying over tonight, right? After everyone goes home?"

"Of course."

"Good. He doesn’t listen when I talk in the dark."

You didn’t ask who. You knew who.

—☆

By thirteen you finished building that fort, she’d stay over at your house, backyard sleepovers in sleeping bags that smelled like grass and cheap soap. You’d lie next to each other, shoulder to shoulder, your foreheads almost touching. She’d whisper about all the places she wanted to go— Paris, Tokyo, somewhere with snow.

"You’ll come with me, right?" she’d ask, her pinky hooking yours under the blanket.

"Always," you’d whisper back.

But sometimes he’d sneak out too — older, bolder, dropping himself down beside her with a grin. He’d tell stories about high school, things you didn’t understand yet: parties, older girls, jokes that made her giggle in the dark.

You’d watch them side by side, a secret sickness blooming in your chest.

It was easy then when you and Dani were both nine with scraped knees and stolen peaches, giggling in the attic of your house when the summer storms rolled in.

You were her guardian— the one who pulled the splinters from her palms, held her ankle when she twisted it hopping fences, lied to both sets of parents when she wasn’t where she was supposed to be.

"You’re my knight," she declared once, nine year old Dani with a plastic crown sliding off her hair.

"I’m not your knight," you corrected, fixing the crown so it sat straight.

"Knights save princesses. I’m just here to make sure you don’t break anything you can’t fix."

She liked that better. So did you.

You were thirteen when there was the first party your parents let you stay up for — a neighborhood celebration for the Fourth of July. Sparklers, sweet drinks you weren’t supposed to sip, Dani sitting too close on the curb, her shoulder pressed to yours.

Your mother called for your brother to come sit with her. “Look at them,” she said to Dani’s mother, who nodded knowingly. “Such good kids. Perfect together, aren’t they?”

You felt Dani stiffen beside you. She leaned into you then, stubborn, childish. “I don’t want your brother,” she whispered, loud enough for only you to hear. “I want you.”

You didn’t understand what that meant yet. Not really. But you knew enough to grab her pinky under the fireworks and hold it like a vow.

By thirteen, almost fourteen, the fort behind the tulip tree had more splinters than walls, but you still crawled inside it like a church.

Sometimes Dani would drag you there after dinner with a flashlight, a pack of cheap cookies stolen from her mom’s pantry, the hush of your small world closing around you. Your brother never came then. Too old now, too busy with his new friends, too sure you two were just kids with secrets that didn’t matter.

But they did. God, they did.

Because you remembered the first time you saw her room. When you saw her trophies for the first time.

"My mom keeps polishing them," she said. "Says they’re our family’s pride. She was a dancer too, you know."

"I know," you murmured. You’d heard the whispers at the PTA meetings. The perfect family, perfect girl, perfect match for a good boy like your brother.

Dani nudged your foot with hers. "But you’re the only one who shows up. Every time. Even when I mess up."

"You never mess up," you told her. A lie you’d believe for years.

Somewhere between twelve and forever, you learned your first terrible truth: you could catch her when she fell from the tulip tree, but your brother would be the one the grown-ups trusted to pull her back up and keep her there.

You were the soft landing. He was the safe choice.

You were the words. He was the action.

Even then, you knew how the story would end.

Action is always better, they say.

—☆

Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. trophies lined up in her hallway.

Her mom polished them like they were holy. A picture-perfect house with picture-perfect frames. A mother who’d danced before her.

A father who watched from the corner of his study, proud and cold.

They want me to be her," Dani whispered once, lying beside you in the fort’s leftover skeleton. "But I just want to be yours."

You believed her. God, you did.

It was so easy then with scraped knees, stolen peaches, sleepovers where she’d curl into you like the truth she’d never say out loud. But growing up makes everything sharper.

You were 14 when her parents pushed her to smile at your brother longer than she smiled at you. It was your birthday.

At fourteen, your brother got bored of the other girls. Bored of the ones who giggled too easily, who didn’t make him chase something deeper.

So he started hanging around the fort again. Pretending to check on you when your parents asked. Bringing extra sodas, flicking the flashlight off and on until Dani giggled, flicking it back when she squealed “Stop!” and pushed him away— but never too far.

You watched it all happen like you were standing outside a window that would never open.

And yet — the older you got, the more the adults turned that pinky promise into an inconvenience.

Your brother, always there with a smile, an arm to offer her at dances, a ride home when her parents asked him to. The older you grew, the more Dani learned to nod and smile back at him, to accept the coat over her shoulders, the polite hand on her lower back.

You tried to understand it. That good girls love good boys, that families are happier when everything looks the way it should. You really tried.

But sometimes, under the quiet of the covers at sleepovers that turned into secrets, she’d curl up behind you, breathing into your hair, whispering in that hushed, reckless voice:

"You know it’s always been you, right?"

You’d nod. You’d believe her.

Because back then, she was still just Dani— curious, wandering— and you were still her guardian.

She’d laugh, blush for show, but later she’d find you, tug you into the dark behind the church or your mother’s garden shed, press her mouth to yours like an apology and a dare at once. “You know it’s you,” she’d say, eyes wide and wild. “It’s always been you.”

And you’d believe her. Of course you did. Because of the night when she turned 14, the three of you lay on the grass, side by side, watching a meteor shower. Your brother pointed out constellations like he owned the sky.

She turned her head to you, whispered under the hush of falling stars, "If you could wish for anything, what would you ask for?"

You said, "For you to stay."

She didn’t answer. She just slipped her hand into yours, hidden in the grass where he couldn’t see. When he said, “Make a wish,” she squeezed your fingers once, twice — a promise or an apology, you never figured out which, you deluded yourself thinking she wished the same as yours.

So you wrote about her instead. Filled three notebooks by the time you turned fifteen. All of them hidden under your mattress where you’d flip them open in the middle of the night just to remind yourself it was real — this secret, this thing that belonged to you first.

—☆

Years later, nothing’s changed and everything has.

You are her scribe. The one who holds all her reckless pieces when the world wants her polished. Your brother is the knight. The one who gives her his coat, his keys, his last name soon enough.

You forgive her for letting him. You forgive her when she sits too close on the couch at family dinners, her knee pressed to yours under the table while your brother brags about his promotion. You forgive her when she crawls into your bed later that night, the hem of your brother’s shirt brushing your hip as she slides it off, mouth hot on your throat.

She learned how to live two lives.

She found other people. Shiny, noisy friends who loved the way she danced but didn’t know how her hands trembled when she got home.

They liked your brother too. He’d show up at the rink, at the corner store, slide into their circle like he belonged there more than you ever did.

"Come with us," she’d say, tugging your wrist. But there was never really space for you to stay. Not when they leaned closer when your brother showed up. Not when he’d ruffle her hair like a promise you weren’t allowed to keep.

You learned then how to stand outside her circle. You learned how your brother fit in places you didn’t — his voice loud enough to drown out your scribbled poems, his grin wide enough to split your secret fort in two.

You were then sixteen when your mother finally started saying it out loud. “Perfect match, aren’t they?” when Dani giggled at your brother’s jokes at the barbecue. “It just makes sense.” Like you were invisible in your own backyard.

Your brother, golden boy, two years older. Always taller, steadier, the version of you the world could understand.

He’d spin her under the string lights, her hair flying like a banner for a kingdom you’d never be welcome in.

You sat on the porch steps, notebook open on your knees, pretending you couldn’t see the way her eyes flicked to you— I’m sorry said in a single glance. Always an apology. Always forgiven.

You taught her how to lie to herself, and she taught you how to pretend you didn’t mind.

Sixteen, still promising that she danced better when you were there. She’d drag you to every show.

Drag you backstage after, hair pinned up, sweat shining on her collarbone. "You see me, right?"

"I see you"

But he’d show up too.

Drive her home when you couldn’t.

Buy her flowers when you could only afford words.

Stand next to her in every photo the parents framed in the living room.

Seventeen was the year you didn’t make it to her biggest competition.

You wanted to. God, you tried. You really did. Tickets crumpled in your back pocket, poem scribbled on the inside flap of your biology notebook. You’d planned to leave it in her bag when no one was looking— for luck, you’d say, pretending the words didn’t ache when you read them back to yourself at 2 a.m.

But you were broke, your boss wouldn’t let you off early. “Ask your brother to take her,” your mother said over her shoulder, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

“He’s got his license, doesn’t he? He’ll get her there safe.”

Safe. Always him for safe — you for soft.

You stood by the front window that afternoon, backpack slipping off your shoulder as you watched him pull up to her house. She ran out in a swirl of fabric and excitement— hair pinned up, shoes in hand, trophy dreams tucked under her tongue.

She opened the passenger door, paused, then looked at your window.

You didn’t wave. You didn’t smile. She didn’t see you there so you just stood there while your brother leaned over, popped the door wider for her.

She won first place that night. You found out from your mom, who found out from your brother, who told her over dinner while she passed him another serving.

"She was perfect," he said, voice warm. "Everyone stood up when she bowed. She was so happy I thought she’d cry."

You wanted to say, She only cries for me. But you bit your tongue until it bled instead.

When she came to you later, sneakers squeaking on your bedroom floor, hair still knotted with leftover pins, you were lying facedown on your bed. She didn’t say hi. She didn’t say I missed you.

She just climbed in after you, curled her arms around your back, pressed her mouth to the crook of your neck like a prayer.

"I looked for you in the dark," she whispered.

You didn’t turn. "Did you find me?"

"Always," she breathed. But her voice shook like a liar’s.

Yet there was once a night— no date to mark it, no photograph to frame it. Where she crawls into your bed wearing only the ghost of her perfume and a silk slip that slips off her shoulder when she laughs.

You are writing, as always. Words scatter when her arms wrap around you from behind, her bare skin pressed to your spine like punctuation.

"Women love women better than men can," you whisper into the soft dark, not really meaning for her to hear.

But Dani shifts, nose brushing the curve of your neck. "Say it again," she murmurs.

So you do.

This time you say it to her mouth, “I can love you better than he can” the words a vow you both pretend is not betrayal.

She tastes like borrowed time — sweet and ruinous.

—☆

Then it happened. She’s 18 when she sat next to you on your porch, knees touching, head on your shoulder. Her breath smelled like mint gum and bad secrets.

"He’s… he’s been asking me out," she said. She didn’t have to say who he was.

"What did you say?"

She looked at you, eyes wide, mouth trembling. "I didn’t say yes. Not yet. I just… I don’t know how to tell you things like this."

"Tell me the truth," you said. "Always."

But she didn’t. Not really.

He asked her out a week later. You didn’t hear it from her first.

You heard it from him. He was leaning in your doorway, grin smug like he’d found something in your pockets you didn’t know how to protect.

"I’m gonna take her out," he said, arms folded. "Officially. Been a long time coming, huh? Don’t look so grim— you know it makes sense."

He ruffled your hair like you were nine again. Like you were still the scribe in the grass crown, writing it all down while someone else swung the stick sword and kissed the queen.

She let you find out piece by piece — his arm around her shoulders at the fair, her head on his chest outside the gym, and the whispered “It just makes sense, doesn’t it?” that your mother liked to say when she thought you weren’t listening.

And when you asked her, “Why him?” she only pressed her forehead to yours, voice so small it nearly disappeared.

"Because it’s easier," she whispered. "You make me… complicated. I can’t explain you. But they can explain him."

So the secret stayed yours. Your sacred thing.

A hidden door you both crawled through when the lights went out. Her laugh muffled in your pillow, her hair tangled in your sheets, her mouth on your throat while your brother slept easy down the hall.

It should have been holy. But it turned you both cruel.

When he asked her to be his, it was under the tulip tree you both used to climb. You were hiding inside the fort you built when you were twelve, notebook balanced on your knees— half a poem about her laugh trapped between your teeth, and you barely fitting inside the fort.

"Wait, Dani — wait up," he called, jogging after her, boyish grin already shining like a medal.

"I was wondering if you’d… want to make this official? Me and you. A real thing."

You wanted her to laugh. To say no and run to you, burrs in her socks, barks in her hair. But she just stood there, twisting the hem of her sleeve, saying okay like it was an answer to every question you’d never dared ask.

"Do you hate me for this?" she asked, looking over your shoulder, hugging you behind your back, her arms around your neck, now in your room.

"No," you lied, smoking a cigarette.

"I hate you for leaving when it’s over." you inhaled the cigarette yet again, your chest never felt heavier.

"I always come back," she promised.

"I always come back to you."

And she did.

Through every lie.

Every photo of her perched on your brother’s lap at Thanksgiving.

Every time your mother asked, “Why don’t you ever bring someone home like Dani?” — as if she wasn’t already pressed between your ribs, raw, permanent, and written. You tattooed her name in an arrow heart on your chest near where your heart lies.

—☆

It got worse the older you got.

He took her to the movies while you sat on your roof, waiting for her light to flick on behind her curtains.

He gave her a necklace for her 19th birthday. Silver, simple, something your mother cooed over when she unwrapped it at the dinner table.

You gave her a poem— scrawled on notebook paper, folded so small she could hide it in her pocket. She read it once in the car, your breath on her neck, her nails leaving half-moons in your thigh.

"Say it again," she begged.

"I love you," you told her.

"No," she said, a laugh breaking at the edge of her mouth. "Say it like you mean it."

So you did. Over and over. In the backseat, in her bed, in the parking lot behind the rec center. Every place she’d let you. Love me like a secret, her hands said. Hate me like a prayer, her mouth begged.

And she would trace her name on your chest every time you do so as if her name wasn’t also engraved on your older brother’s.

She said it wasn’t the same though.

Yours were better.

—☆

You watched her life split in two like a bone that never healed right. One half of her shining at family dinners with your brother’s arm draped around her waist. The other half curled up in your bed, whispering “I wish you were him. I wish he were you. I wish I was brave.”

You turned twenty when you fought more. Quiet fights at first. Sharp words traded like knives under your breath when no one was looking.

"You can’t keep doing this," you told her once, your hand wrapped around her wrist so tight you felt her pulse thrum under your thumb.

"Doing what?" she spat, yanking free. "Loving you? Or lying about it?"

"Both."

She laughed then, cruel and tired all at once. "Then stop writing about me. Stop following me home. Stop waiting for me to pick you when you know I can’t."

You didn’t. You wouldn’t. You never learned how.

Still you remember the times when nights were almost gentle.

Spring rain against your window. Her hair damp from the run over, shoulders shaking with silent laughter as she shed her jacket, curled her knees into your side.

"I’m terrible," she whispered once, voice so small you could have mistaken it for a prayer.

"You’re not," you said.

"I am. I love you and I lie about you every day."

"I know."

"Does it hurt?"

"Only when you leave."

She kissed you then — soft, slow. A vow you both pretended was enough.

But the lie always circled back to truth. Your brother, golden boy, who never asked where she went when she slipped out of his bed. Who never wondered why she smelled like your shampoo, your cigarettes, your quiet ruin.

It wasn’t even Dani who told you. Of course not. She never says the hard thing herself because she just lets it bloom between you, poisonous and slow.

It was your brother. Your perfect brother, your family’s favorite son.

He found you in the kitchen, hands wrist-deep in soapy water, trying to scrub coffee stains from the same chipped mug Dani used every time she stayed over.

"Hey," he said, voice all warmth and casual sin. "Got a minute?"

You knew. The way you know when lightning is about to split the sky. The way you know when someone is about to say forever but they don’t mean you.

You didn’t turn. Didn’t dry your hands. Just braced yourself against the sink as if it might hold you up when he didn’t.

"So… I, uh —" He laughed, the way men do when they’re about to break something delicate. "Big news. I asked Dani to marry me."

Your hands stilled. The water turned cold. A small sound pressed itself out of your throat but you swallowed it back. A ghost of a name you didn’t have the right to say out loud.

"She said yes, obviously," he went on, beaming like a child with a new toy. "I mean — she’s always been part of us, hasn’t she? Since we were kids. Mom and Dad are over the moon. Her parents too. It just makes sense, you know?"

It just makes sense.

Of course it does.

You felt the bones in your chest twist. A quiet rage you had no name for. Or maybe it wasn’t rage. Maybe it was the final proof that loving someone doesn’t mean they’ll choose you when it counts.

You turned, finally— your fingers raw, dripping onto the tile. You made yourself smile. You’ve always been good at that. A poet knows how to lie with their mouth when their hands are too busy shaking.

"That’s great," you heard yourself say. Your voice sounded like it belonged to a stranger. "Congratulations."

He pulled you into a hug, his arms warm, his heartbeat steady. You wanted to bite down on your tongue and scream She was mine first. You wanted to rip his pretty future out of his chest and bury it with every secret she ever pressed into your mouth.

"You’ll stand up for us, right?" he asked. "You’ll write something for the wedding?"

Write something. He said it like it was easy. Like it wouldn’t be the sharpest thing you’d ever put on paper.

"Of course," you lied into his shoulder.

When he left, you stood in the kitchen for a long time, staring at the mug in the sink— her lipstick still on the rim, stubborn and soft pink. You wanted to smash it against the floor. Watch it splinter like your ribs. But you didn’t.

Instead, you washed it clean.

You dried it carefully.

You put it back in the cabinet where your mother could find it. Where he could find it. Where she could pretend it was never just yours to begin with.

And when you went to bed that night, you dreamed of her. All white silk and soft mouth and a name you couldn’t write down without it tasting like a funeral.

You were 21.

She showed up that night— your window cracked open the way she’d taught you to keep it.

"Don’t hate me," she begged, standing there in the dark, shoes dangling from her fingers.

"I can’t hate you," you rasped. "You know that."

"It doesn’t change anything," she swore, slipping her hand under your shirt, her palm warm on your ribs. "You know it doesn’t change us."

"Doesn’t it?"

She kissed you before you could say more— swallowed your questions with her tongue, fingers fisting in your hair like maybe she could drag the truth out by the roots.

You wrote it all down. Every sin. Every lie. Until your notebooks turned into graveyards for confessions she’d never read.

Then you’re 22 when the invitations arrive.

Cream cardstock, gold foil lettering, your brother’s name etched beside hers like a brand. Mr. Perfect + Miss Perfect

Your mother leaves the envelope on your desk with a smile that says it’s happening, you should be happy. You slit it open with a penknife. You read it twice. You flip it over, half-expecting to find a note in her handwriting, something only for you— Run. Wait. Don’t let me do this.

But there’s nothing.

Just an RSVP card you never fill out.

A week later, she appears on your porch like she always does in a slip dress, a hoodie that’s yours, the sleeves too long, the zipper broken.

She doesn’t knock. She just sits beside you on the stoop where you used to count fireflies and imagine forever.

“I wish it was you,” she whispers, like an apology stuck in her teeth.

You want to scream. Want to grab her shoulders and shake out every soft lie you let bloom between your ribs.

Instead, you light a cigarette, pass it to her when your fingers tremble too hard to hold it.

“Does he know you’re here?” you ask, knowing he doesn’t, knowing he never does.

Her laugh is a soft thing that dies in her throat. “Does it matter?”

You don’t answer. You watch the ember burn down between her fingers.

She kisses you on your porch, knees knocking, teeth clashing— desperation pretending to be devotion.

And when she pulls back, eyes wet, mouth red, you say the only truth left in you:

“You were always going to choose safe.” She flinches like you hit her. Maybe you did.

“I was always going to choose you too,” she says, and it’s worse than a lie because she means it in some small, broken way.

—☆

The night before she says I do, you’re in your room again. Your sanctuary, your confessional, your prison. The notebooks are stacked by the window like headstones: every poem you wrote about her, for her, against her.

She comes to you barefoot, hair damp from a shower she took just to wash the scent of him off her skin. You don’t ask how she got past the creaky step in the hall. You’ve both learned to move like ghosts in the house that loves your brother more.

She stands there. The moonlight cutting her in half, one side soft and familiar, the other dressed in white that doesn’t belong to you.

"Take it off," you rasp. Not the dress yet but the lie. The safe. The simple.

She does. She crosses the room and crawls into your lap like she’s twelve again, tulip tree bark under your palms, dirt under your nails. But you’re older now. You know how to ruin her on purpose.

"Tell me not to marry him," she whispers, voice cracked open like a chest you both keep burying alive.

"Don’t marry him," you say.

She flinches. "You don’t mean that."

"I do," you grit, hands fisted in the hem of her shirt. "You’re mine. You’ve always been mine."

"I can’t be yours," she snaps, pulling back, eyes wild. "You don’t keep me. You hide me. You write me but you don’t hold me where people can see."

"You never wanted them to see!" You’re louder than you should be, your voice scraping your throat raw. "You made me promise—"

"I was a kid!" she cuts you off, tears slick in her lashes. "I was a kid when I said I’d run away with you. I’m not a kid anymore. I’m tired. I’m so tired of being the secret thing you only love when the lights are out."

"I loved you in every light," you spit, grabbing her chin, forcing her to look at you. "You don’t get to pretend I didn’t. You don’t get to stand there in white lace and say I didn’t love you loud enough."

She’s crying now— ugly, broken, too close to the girl you met at the fence with skinned knees and dirt in her hair.

"He loves me easy," she gasps out. "He loves me simple. You love me until it hurts you. Until it hurts me. And then you write about it like it fixes something, but it doesn’t—"

"It does fix something," you bite back, so close you taste her salt. "It makes me real. It makes you real. Without me you’re—"

"Without you I’m free," she sobs. "Without you I’m enough."

That word— enough. The word you fed her all these years, sweetened like poison.

You press your mouth to hers because you don’t know how else to shut her up. It’s teeth and salt and grief. It’s begging without the word please. It’s ruin.

When you pull back, she’s shaking. Her hands are pressed to your chest, like she’s trying to push you away but doesn’t have the strength.

"I’m sorry," she breathes.

"Choose me," you say. It’s a whisper now. Smaller than when you were twelve, clutching your chest after the kiss she gave you in that fort. Smaller than the ring on her finger.

She doesn’t say no. She just leans her forehead to yours, breath warm and ruinous.

"Write me a happy ending," she pleads one last time.

You laugh. It breaks something in your ribs.

"I can’t," you choke out.

There was never going to be one.

#daniela avanzini #jeong yoonchae #katseye x reader #lara raj #manon bannerman #megan skiendiel #sophia laforteza #daniela avanzini x reader #thecchi writes

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ishestillapunk · 3 days ago

Text

Crashing on the rocks

part: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

pairing: jackson!joel x f!reader

summary: You been writing letters and hiding them in places around the house in all the years you've been married to Joel. It was a matter of time until he found them.

tags: established relationship, age gap (30s-60s), pure fluff and fools in love.

w/c: 2.1 k

notes: I wrote this while listening to 'Sanctuary' by Tamino ft Mitski ♥

Joel’s not exactly a man who cleans the house. But on days off from patrol, he tries to fill the silence by doing things around it.

Ever since you started volunteering at the orphanage, the afternoons he spends alone feel... dull. Off. Used to be something he didn’t exactly enjoy, but it never bothered him. Now, your absence hangs in the air like a shadow. He waits for you like a damn pup waiting for its owner to come home.

Still, cleaning is ridiculous. He finds himself wiping down what’s already spotless. Spraying what already smells fresh. Sweeping the damn floor that’s already polished. You keep the house like it’s a goddamn trophy.

And in a way, it is. There’s folks out there who got nothing.

“This fuckin’ woman…” he mutters under his breath, trying to organize the drawers in the dresser. Your pajamas tangled with your underwear like pieces from the same threadbare quilt. He tries to separate them, unknot the fabrics. He barely even registers the lace and straps. He’s no teenage boy.

Then, his fingers hit something sharp at the bottom of the drawer. A quick sting. His jaw tightens slightly. He pulls his hand back, a tiny cut on his fingertip. Frowns. Reaches in again, slower this time, and pulls something out.

An envelope.

He turns it over in his hands, reads the writing on the back: “Newlyweds.”

And a date. Six years ago.

Their wedding date.

If you could even call it that.

Joel takes a step back, never taking his eyes off the envelope. Gravity does the rest. He ends up sitting at the edge of the bed, still holding it. After a long breath, he opens it. Two yellowed pages, handwriting neat and careful, like it was inked with reverence.

He feels it at the back of his neck.

Don’t do it.

Put it back where you found it.

She’ll be pissed.

But his eyes betray him.

And read

"If my past self could see what I did today, she’d probably smash a chair over my back. And I wouldn’t blame her. I get it. I know where she’s coming from.

Believe it or not, there’s someone who says he loves you. He doesn’t say it often, still struggles with it. Might never come out naturally. What a curse, huh? A woman who needs constant reassurance that everything’s real, marrying a man who barely says twenty words in a day.

There’s something in him I can’t run from. Don’t want to run from. I see it in his eyes—a whole world he's willing to show me. That pain that used to cloud his pupils melts when he looks at me.

I hated him. God, I hated him so much.

He was unbearable. But it doesn’t matter now, because now—strangely enough—I love him. I go to sleep wondering if he’ll still love me in the morning. And somehow, he always does. After all the push and pull that I swore would snap the rope in half, he pulled hard enough on his side to bring me all the way in.

And I don’t wanna fly away again.

I don’t wanna run.

That instinct I always had to leave once I got too attached to the place or the people, vanished. I don’t picture a day without him. I don’t picture a problem without his fix. I don’t picture a night without his arms.

He might be a jerk sometimes. But what can I do when my knees go weak every time he looks at me?

What can I do when I see his eyes fill with tears the second I walk through his door, like he spent the whole day terrified I wouldn’t come back?

What can I do when he wakes up from nightmares and asks me to kiss him just so he can come back to earth?

What can I do when his breathing is my lullaby?

We made it official in silence. In the old barn out near the north edge of town. No one ever goes there. Not in summer. Just the leftover hay, a horse at the entrance, his best shirt and jeans, and me—in the dress Maria gave me that spring as a ‘sister-in-law gift’.

Wooden rings. Wildflowers. Oh, girl. If only you knew what was waiting for you beyond that QZ…

No, not all men hurt. This one does—but never you. Never.

This one pulls your dress up over your thighs and fucks you on a bale of hay after sunset, when the wine runs dry and the vows are fresh on your tongue.

Hang in there.

It’s worth it."

He touches the pages like they’re made of your skin. Reads them again. And again. Then puts them back where he found them.

He never says a word about the letter. Doesn’t move it. Doesn’t act different. Doesn’t make you breakfast to speak in some quiet love language. But the thought lingers. The thought of the possibility of there being more of those letters hidden somewhere around the house.

It becomes a quiet obsession. He starts swapping day patrols for night ones just to have the afternoons free to look. In the process, he finds old photos from a time long gone. When Tommy brought back those old film cameras from a run, the whole family took a few pictures. Keepsakes.

It had been a while since Joel saw himself in a photo. The last one was with Sarah, back when she’d won another one of her soccer tournaments.

It’s almost unsettling. How much you and him resemble each other in the eyes.

His thumb grazes over the printed photo: you, in front of the fireplace. That calm, serious look on your face. Those eyes hold so much, he sometimes wonders if deep down, you hate him. Or if maybe you don’t even think about him at all.

He remembers Tommy asking you to smile and you just curled your lip slightly, like it cost you a whole life to do it. Or maybe it cost you nothing, and you just saved that expression for the rare times it was worth it.

After hours of rummaging, he finally finds another one.

Under the bed. In a shoebox. Sarah used to do the same. An old Converse box covered in glitter and colored feathers. She kept drawings, letters from friends, movie stubs, fair brochures. A normal teenage girl. In a normal world.

A world that died when she did.

Joel doesn’t let himself linger on those memories. They only ever end with him locked in the bathroom, crying until the sky outside turns black.

He opens the box carefully, trying not to disturb anything too much. You’d notice. Inside, there are more letters. Different names, occasions. A few photos. Trinkets. And among them, the wooden ring.

He holds it up to the light pouring through the open window.

He can’t remember when they stopped wearing them. It just… happened. One day, neither of them had theirs on. No one said a word. Not that it mattered, everyone in town already knew they were together.

But holding it now, he wonders. Was it time? Anger? Had he failed to take care of you?

He grabs one of the letters. Random. The title: 'First night.'

"I don’t know why I’m writing this, but I need to. Maybe just to remind myself it happened. That he let me touch him. That he let me be his. That it was real and I don’t regret it.

I cried after. I know why. And I’m a little embarrassed he saw me like that. He must think I’m a total mess. That my head’s all over the place. And yeah. It is. I’m not okay. None of us here are. That’s what you risk when you bare yourself, body and soul.

It wasn’t soft. Not even close. God, no one’s fucked me like that in years. Hell, it felt like he hadn’t fucked in years either. I was the one who shut the door. I was the one who undressed, just waiting for him to come at me like a starving dog.

He was hungry. For everything. Warmth, sex, skin. And love.

I want to believe.

I can’t stop hearing it. The headboard slamming the wall, the slap of his skin on mine, his groans, those breathless grunts. Is it even legal for a man to sound that good when he fucks?

He wouldn’t let me leave the bed. We lost a whole day in there. And I’m not complaining.

I think I really like him. And that scares me. He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who cares about waking up next to someone. Or the type to show affection easily. Am I really ready to throw myself into something I know is gonna end badly?

But he feels different. The days sound different beside him. Even the silence changes with him around. I’m scared I’ll never be what he needs, but maybe… maybe I can be. Maybe, to a man who’s been nothing but cruel in a world that’s punished him endlessly, maybe I’m the prize in all this mess.

Or maybe I’m just full of myself.

This whole thing’s got me spun around. And that’s why I cried.

What the hell am I doing? What was I supposed to do?

There’s nothing out there. Nothing worth it. And maybe this isn’t worth it either, but… what if this is all I’ve got?

Falling for the first broken man I hated with every ounce of blood in me and now crave inside me?

We all get what we deserve, right?

Maybe this is my karma."

His shoulders tremble. Shame blooming in his chest. Thoughts circling his head like wolves. Is all that still in your eyes? Is any of it still there?

After a long while, he pulls out another one: 'Third anniversary.'

"It’s 11 p.m. on our third anniversary.

He came back from patrol. We had dinner. He kissed me. We watched a movie. Now he’s asleep. He’s always asleep. He’s tired. I stay behind. He’s tired. Of work, of life... of me. I get it. And I don’t know what to do.

Why does he always look so… sad when he looks at me?

Why does it feel like I break his heart just by being here?

Have I really become this depressing?

Or maybe I’ve always been like this. I wonder when he’ll leave me.

I made his favorite. Meatloaf. He barely touched his plate.

What do I do?

Do I become the same background character my mom was in my father’s life? Just let it pass? Pretend I don’t feel how he pulls further away each day?

Mom…

What would you have done with a second chance?"

He doesn’t think he can read any more. Doesn’t think he can look you in the eye after this. Do you hate him? Are you with him out of habit? Joel feels something bitter rot inside him.

He adores you. Never looks at you with sadness. Only with a tenderness that cracks him open because yes, he’s a mess. Yes, he doesn’t deserve a damn thing. But somehow, you’re still his. And he’ll never feel worthy of your eyes.

Then he hears the front door shut.

You’re home.

“Why didn’t you do the dishes?” you call out, loud enough for him to hear you wherever he is. You hear his footsteps coming downstairs.

“You’ve been home all afternoon, Joel. You couldn’t even do the dishes?”

And then you see him.

Descending slowly, heavy-footed. Eyes dim, but holding a soft spark. In one hand, a dress. In the other, a ring.

“What’s this?” Your gaze moves between the items. “You’re wearin’ your ring again?” you ask, raising an eyebrow with a hint of a smirk.

He nods. A warmth settles in his expression. He doesn’t want to fight.

“I want you to wear this. Both of these.”

He extends his hands. The ring, and dress.

“The one from the wedding?” you ask, frowning. Your fingertips graze the slightly wrinkled fabric, still smelling of long storage. “It’s freezing…”

“I ain’t fuckin’ you on a bale of hay again, don’t worry” Joel says, glancing at the dress, then up at you mirroring your smile. It tickles something in your chest.

“…Alright.”

A few minutes later, you come down the stairs wearing it. It’s a bit tighter now, still too light for the weather, but it’s beautiful. Full of memory. You swear you can still feel that summer’s warmth against your skin. Joel’s eyes fix on you the second you cross into the living room. He stands, a flicker of nerves dancing in him. He remembers that teenage feeling—waiting for his prom date, drink in hand, nervous as hell under the girl's dad watch.

You make him feel young again. Like you’re about to become his all over again.

His chest burns like a bonfire in the dead of winter.

You,then and now. Still here. Everything floods back like a summer storm. He looks at you and it all makes sense.

This is what it’s about.

Life forgave me again,

and gave me something to care for.

Now I can do it right.

I want to do it right.

this one is a bit soft. hope you liked it. <3

#pedro pascal fandom #joel miller #pedro pascal #pedro pascal fanfiction #pedro pascal x reader #fanfic writing #fanfiction #jackson!joel #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel tlou #jackson joel #joel the last of us #joel smut

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all-my-love-for-harry · 1 day ago

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❧ Almost Eden (part three)

pairing; jake seresin x childhood friend!reader

summary; Jake comes face-to-face with the years he missed—and the version of you he was never there to protect.

word count; 3.4k

warnings; terrible mothers. it gets kinda dark at some point lol but nothing too bad

a/n; we finally get to know a little more about bambi and her life, as well as the long awaited reunion :') so far it has been a lot of inner dialogue but oh boy there is some drama coming!! also, this chapter is way longer than the past two, let me know if i should keep them short or would you like them a little longer?

series masterlist

Your mother didn’t like the way you dressed, said you looked sloppy, or like you were trying too hard. She didn’t like the way your hair fell messily over your shoulders, or how your nose wrinkled and your eyes disappeared when you smiled, like joy itself was somehow unflattering. She criticized the way you laughed too loudly, spoke too softly, and dreamed too big. And the older you got, the clearer it became: it wasn’t just your clothes or your choices she disapproved of. It was you. She didn’t like you very much at all.

When you were little, you used to curl up on your daddy’s lap, crying over the sharp words your mother threw like stones. He’d wipe your tears with the soft pad of his thumb and whisper that it was only because she loved you. That she saw so much of herself in you, and wanted you to be better than she ever was. And back then, you believed him. You believed that being compared to her was something to be proud of—that her harshness was just love in disguise.

But now, without your father’s hand on your back and his sweet, soothing words to bridge the space between you and her, it’s harder to believe that love is what’s behind her coldness. Harder to pretend that being like her was ever meant to be a gift.

You stopped chasing your mother’s approval the moment she sent you halfway across the world. Thirteen was far too young to be separated from your parents, but the distance brought a strange kind of freedom. You missed your father terribly, but being away also meant living without your mother’s cold, disapproving stare shadowing your every move. And that, in its own way, was a relief. Boarding school gave you space to breathe. You made friends from every corner of the world, studied hard, and slowly began to grow into someone who almost believed in themselves. But then your father died, and everything that had started to feel steady collapsed beneath you.

Sometimes, your life felt like the universe had a personal vendetta against you—like it had spent the last decade throwing every possible challenge your way just to see how much you'd take before breaking. The losses, the disappointments, the endless uphill climbs—it all began to feel less like coincidence and more like cruelty. But then again, the universe had nothing on your mother. Between the two of them, you were never sure who had it out for you more. All you knew was that you were tired of fighting battles you never asked for.

Anyone else in your shoes might have given up by now, raised the white flag and let it all fall apart. But you didn’t. You couldn’t. Somewhere deep down, you made a quiet promise to yourself: that no matter how hard things got, you’d stay the person your father believed you were. The girl he was proud of. The girl he loved. Holding on to her became your way of holding on to him.

So you did your part. You kept your clothes pristine, your hair perfectly styled, and your mouth shut. You attended the parties and the charity events; you smiled politely and kept your back straight, but that one came as a second nature after so many years of hearing her hiss, "Did I birth Quasimodo?"; you stayed in Texas and became the doll-like socialite as if you didn't attend the most prestigious boarding school in the world and then went and got your degree in Languages and Linguistics in one of the best universities in England. As if it didn’t hurt that your mother had cast you aside, only to come reaching back once she realized you were learning to be happy without her.

You told yourself it was fine, you were used to it, you had been living under your mother's thumb for twenty-eight years. The pills helped a lot, though.

Pills. Dozens of them. Antidepressants, antipsychotics, anti-anxiety meds, antihistamines—if it existed, she probably had you on it at some point. It was as if she'd made it her mission to convince every doctor that you were a danger to yourself if left unmedicated. And they believed her. They always did. That’s how it had been since you turned twenty—your life managed by prescriptions, as if survival depended more on chemistry than on choice.

You knew you weren’t crazy. Flawed, maybe. Angry, definitely. But never once, not even at your lowest, had you thought about ending your life. Not when you spent your first Christmas alone at thirteen. Not when your father died and the world went quiet. Not even when your mother had you committed after the funeral, convinced you were a danger to yourself. And certainly not during the years that followed, when she tore through every relationship you tried to build, hunting down anything that resembled love and burning it to the ground before it could grow.

God, your early twenties were bad.

Now, at twenty-eight, you’ve learned how to keep the peace. You follow the rules, offer quiet little “Yes, Mother”s, and bite your tongue when you want to scream. Because talking back comes with consequences, always has. Her favorite punishment? Cutting you off. Credit cards canceled without warning, allowances frozen mid-month. She didn’t just control the day-to-day—she held the keys to everything your father left behind. The trust, the inheritance, all tied up in paperwork with her name stamped at the bottom. And she never lets you forget it.

She removed people from your world the way one plucks petals from a flower: carefully, deliberately. You've found a friend in the people working in your home. Your driver, the chef, the housekeeper. Anyone who would talk to you, you couldn't really allow yourself to be picky, since a lot of the friends you once had now resided miles away from you, unaware of it all.

The friends you used to have in your hometown were also all gone. They moved out, grew out of the place they once called home. You thought of them often, wondering what would happen if you reached out. You weren't forbidden from it; you simply didn't know how to do it. One thing you forbade yourself from doing was thinking about Jake Seresin.

Although sometimes your brain betrayed you and made up fantasies about him coming back, reaching out, saving you. You'd wake up in a cold sweat the moment you saw his face in your dreams.

You were many things, but a masochist wasn’t supposed to be one of them—or at least, you hadn’t meant to be. You’d done your best to forget the boy who broke your heart before you even knew what heartbreak really was. Told yourself childhood friendships weren’t meant to last, and that it was foolish to think he’d wait for you to catch up. You were younger, smaller, always trailing behind. The crush you nursed had to be nothing more than proximity, the natural result of spending so many days in his shadow. You told yourself all of that. And some days, you even believed it.

But you still wondered.

Will you always wonder?

[…]

Jake wasn't supposed to be outside the house. He was supposed to be resting, healing the wounds from his accident. But a man could only take so many naps before losing his mind.

So, like a teenager, he sneaked off. He wasn't allowed to drive, so he walked under the Texan sun until he got downtown. Unlike his family's state, which appeared to have been frozen in time, the town he grew up in was nothing like he remembered. There were glimpses of his childhood hidden in the modern buildings that housed equally modern businesses. Long gone were the family-owned restaurants, the local boutiques, and the cozy cafes he once thought would stand there forever.

Jake was no stranger to unfamiliar places; he’d moved enough times to know how it felt to be the outsider, the drifter, the face that didn’t belong. But this was different. This was home. Or at least, it had been. He kept expecting to turn a corner and see someone he used to know. It didn’t even have to be you.

Still, that didn’t stop him from searching. Every crowd, every café window, every sidewalk held the quiet hope that your face might suddenly appear. He chased your shadow like it was the only thing left tying him to this place.

It pained him to admit it, but he was tired. Exhausted, even. No amount of painkillers could numb the ache he's been feeling in his heart since the moment he arrived back home. His mind has been spiraling, running a hundred different scenarios in his head on what on earth had happened to you.

What was so bad that it couldn't be spoken about at the dinner table? What happened after your father's funeral? Or was it before? Maybe it was during your time abroad. Was it about your mother? He wouldn't doubt it. Or perhaps you got married? No. Divorced? Maybe. Widowed? Perhaps.

Okay, he needed to calm down.

He's been here for less than a week, and he has already let his mind drift back to you more than he had allowed it to in the past ten years. Pull it together, man. He was a fucking naval aviator, goddammit. He wasn't the same seventeen-year-old asshat who was incapable of keep his emotions on check and tended to word-vomit things he later regretted.

He stopped being that person the moment he became the reason your eyes—your beautiful, hopeful, crystallized before him. He still remembered the way your bottom lip trembled and your hands dropped to your side. The way you stopped trying to chase after him and how he didn't dare to turn back around, leaving you alone on the sidewalk like everyone else in your life had.

Yeah, Jake has been thinking a lot. About what he would say if your paths dared to cross again. Would you remember him? Or could you pass right past him in this town and not even spare him a second glance? He wasn't sure which one would hurt more.

He always knew karma would catch up to him eventually, but it still landed like a punch to his already cracked ribs when his eyes happened to flick toward the window of a hipster-looking café, and there you were. Alone in a corner booth, head tilted down, hair falling across your face. But it was you. He knew it instantly. He could’ve picked you out in any crowd, in any city, on any day. Because no matter how many years had passed, his eyes still knew how to find you.

His feet moved before his consciousness reminded him he didn't deserve to approach her. Not after what he did.

He entered the place and carefully moved to order something, anything, while still looking at her from his peripheral vision. She didn't notice him. Her head didn't move a single millimeter when the little bell on the door rang and announced his presence. He couldn't make up what she was looking down at, not from where he stood.

His heart pounded against his bruised ribs, each beat louder than the last as his thoughts scrambled in two directions—go to you, or turn and get as far away as possible. Charlotte hadn’t been lying. You looked good. No—you looked beautiful. Had you always been? He remembered you as a cute kid, always tagging along, all wide eyes and bright smiles. But this—this wasn’t a child standing in front of him. This was a woman. Grown. Composed. And for the first time, he realized he didn’t know when that change had happened… only that he’d missed it. Completely.

The barista calling your name snapped him out of his thoughts. He blinked, brows furrowed, turning to her in confusion. She leaned in slightly, lowering her voice like they were old friends sharing a secret. "The girl you’re staring at? That’s her name," she said, nodding toward you. "Comes in every day. Never talks to anyone. Her bodyguard freaks me out, though—total statue, never smiles."

She said it like gossip, soft and casual, but it landed heavy in his chest. So you were real. You were still here. And suddenly, he wasn’t sure what to do with that.

"Word is she’s a little unhinged, but when your family’s got that kind of money, people tend to look the other way."

His jaw clenched. The girl had no idea who she was talking to—didn’t know that he knew you, or at least, used to. Somehow, that made it worse. The way she spoke so casually, so carelessly about you to a complete stranger—it didn’t sit right with him. It felt practiced, like she’d said it before. Maybe more than once. And that thought twisted something in his gut.

Was this how people talked about you now?

Like you were a story. A warning. A punchline.

“You didn’t ask, but want my advice? Spare yourself the drama—her mother’s just as crazy as she is.” Why was she still talking?

“You’re right,” he said at last, voice calm but sharp. “I didn’t ask for your advice.” He tossed a bill onto the counter, grabbed his overpriced black coffee, and walked away—before the heat rising in his chest made him say something he’d really regret.

You're sitting alone in the booth, stirring a cup you've barely touched. A designer bag is slouched on the seat beside you, gaping open just enough to show a handful of pill bottles inside—amber plastic, white caps, names he doesn’t recognize.

He freezes mid-step. Then, breathes in. Out. And walks up.

He said your name carefully, like he was trying to approach a wounded animal, and he didn't know how it would react. He hated it.

You look up slowly, like she’s been underwater and just surfaced. Your expression flickers—confusion first, then disbelief. Your fingers tighten around the mug.

"Hey." He continued softly.

"...What are you doing here?" You finally said. Not hostile, not angry. Just flat. But the surprise in your eyes gave you away.

"Mind if I—?"

"I’d rather you didn’t."

The words aren’t cruel. Just tired. Flat.

"Right. It’s just been a long time." He looked down at his coffee, starting to lose the courage he once had when he approached you first. "Bambi, I'm—"

"Don't call me that." Suddenly, your words weren't so flat anymore, and your eyes darkened in a way he's never witnessed before. "Don't act like we're old friends catching up, Jake. If you’re here to dredge up old memories, save it. I’m not that girl anymore."

"I know it's been a long time," His throat felt dry. “I didn’t know how to come back.”

“Then maybe you should’ve stayed gone.”

The woman standing before him wasn’t his Bambi. She had the same golden hair, the same wide, doe-like eyes, the familiar curve of her nose and lips. It was you—yet not the you he remembered. This version was quieter, heavier, with shadows lingering beneath her gaze. Somber. Worn. Exhausted. What the hell had happened to you?

"Can I help you with anything else?" Your voice snapped him back to reality.

"I'm... No. Sorry for bothering you." With his tail between his legs, he walked away. His eyes met the barista's, and she gave him a knowing look, like she was telling him I told you so.

He threw his untouched cup in the trash can and left the place.

He wasn’t lying to himself—he’d run through a hundred scenarios in his mind about what seeing you again might be like. But this? This was never one of them. He knew all too well he didn’t deserve a grand, emotional reunion. Hell, he didn’t even deserve a simple glance in return. But the way you looked at him... it was ten times worse than any coldness he’d faced all those years ago.

The one thing that echoed that day was the silent scream in your eyes. Back then, he hadn’t recognized it—but now, it was as clear as daylight.

Question remained, was he going to do something about it, or was he going to leave you hanging again?

[…]

Seeing you again rattled him to his core—and that didn’t happen often. He was a highly trained, battle-tested fighter pilot, used to pressure, to danger, to keeping his emotions locked behind steel. But the moment your eyes met his, he wasn’t Lieutenant Jake Seresin anymore. He was seventeen again—reckless, uncertain, and entirely unprepared for the weight of you.

The feeling haunted him. He hated it.

And yet, deep down, he knew—he deserved every second of it.

Still, he felt like he was going crazy. It was hard to breathe, and he knew it wasn't because of his wounds. He felt numb, and it wasn't because of the sling on his left arm.

He wanted answers, needed them. But he couldn’t go straight to the source. It wouldn’t be fair to barge back into your life and demand explanations he had no right to. So instead, he went to the one person who’d kept him in the loop all these years, feeding him carefully curated versions of the girl he once knew and the woman he’d just seen in that café.

His mother.

"I saw her today." No explanations, no dancing around the subject. Jake knew she knew who he was referring to. "Why did you lead me to believe she was the same girl I used to know?" He didn't shout, he wasn't angry. He was desperate.

"Oh, Jake." Her tone was sad. Not condescending, but knowing. "I don't expect you to understand."

"Then try." He practically begged. The lump in his throat was killing him. He wasn't used to feeling this way, yet it seemed like all his emotional control went out the window ever since he came back.

Caroline let out a quiet sigh. “I know what happened between you two, sweetheart,” she said gently. “And no matter how hard you try, you’ve never been able to hide how you feel from me.” She paused, her eyes soft with something like guilt. “I knew you already carried enough regret for the things you said back then. I didn’t want to add to it. I wanted you to hold on to the version of her you remembered—the sweet, innocent girl you knew. I thought if I kept the truth from you… Maybe you’d stop punishing yourself for something you did when you were just a kid.”

"What happened to her, Mom?

She stared back at him for a moment. "I'll put the kettle on."

Jake sat at the kitchen table, hands clenched around his cup of tea, fighting the urge to rush his mother into speaking. His thoughts spun in relentless circles, moving faster than he could catch them. Every time he blinked, he saw your eyes staring back at him—dark, distant, and filled with a sadness he couldn’t unsee. And underneath it all, something worse.

Disappointment.

"Her life hasn’t been easy, darling," Caroline said gently. "Elizabeth was always difficult, but with her daughter… she was brutal."

Jake didn’t need to be told. He’d grown up watching it unfold—your mother’s sharp words, the cold disapproval, the way she seemed to chip away at you day after day.

"It got worse after William died," Caroline continued, her voice quieter now. "It was like something in her snapped, and instead of holding her daughter closer, she shoved her straight off the edge—then acted shocked when she broke." Jake’s jaw tightened, the muscle ticking as his mother went on. "Elizabeth never told me much, but not long after the funeral, she came to me rambling about how she was afraid Bambi might hurt herself. Next thing I knew, she had her committed."

He clenched his teeth so hard that it sent a sharp ache through his jaw.

"Six months," Caroline said softly. "She spent six months in that place. Came back with a pharmacy’s worth of prescriptions. She tried to leave again—not just the house, but the country. Finished her degree in London, tried to build something new. But Elizabeth never let her go. Not completely. I’m fairly certain she had the state appoint her as Bambi’s legal guardian. Which means…"

Jake swallowed hard, fury and disbelief burning in his chest.

"…she controls nearly every part of her life."

❧

taglist; @khouse712 @madsothree @xhazzz @daggersquaddoll @lomlbuckybarnes @pascalquinns @sydneejean @mrsevans90 @bodhiscurls @calirindo @kastlepage @samanddeaninatrenchcoat

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jakesimfromstatefarm · 10 hours ago

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──── IT'S US ↳ requested // part of the no doubt series !

✎ᝰ.ᐟ aka the one where jake & yn have a rule that whenever they fight, if one of them opens their arms, the other must go in for the hug. no matter what.

♡ જ⁀➴ based off of this request! ok this one was lowkey hard because i usually just write super fluffy & cutesy stuff for jakeyn that i just couldn't think of a reason for them to be arguing in the first place..but i think this suites them well :) hope you like itttt <3

The apartment is too quiet.

Too quiet in the way that you can hear your heart pounding.

Too quiet in the way that you can hear Jake’s breaking.

“I just—“ Jake’s voice is tight. Frustrated. His brows are furrowed, jaw clenched, but his eyes—they’re worried. Hurting. Like he’s trying to piece you together and getting it all wrong. “I’m trying so hard to help, but you never let me in when it matters the most!”

You’re still, standing across the room like your feet are glued to the floor beneath you. A lump swells in your throat, burns at the edges.

You swallow it down anyways.

“Because, Jake! God—you’re not listening to me!”

The words hang there. Sharp. A little too loud. A little too honest.

Jake exhales hard. Runs a hand through his hair. His jaw tightens all over again.

He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something back. Like he could. But instead—

He opens his arms.

And for a second, you just stare at him.

Because you’re mad. And tired. And everything is too loud and too much.

Because your chest is heavy and your throat is tight, and this wasn’t supposed to be a big deal, but somehow it became one.

You stare at him across the room, frozen in the middle of all the tension you built—brick by brick, built out of stress and missed signals and Jake always trying to solve things that weren’t his to fix.

He’d been going it again lately—trying so hard to hold you up. Trying to fix your bad days the second hinted at having one. Trying to be your solution when sometimes—sometimes all you needed was space to think. To feel. To figure it out on your own.

And you know he means well. You know he just cares—so deeply, cares so genuinely.

But sometimes—you didn’t want someone to catch you before you fell. You wanted someone to sit with you at the bottom and wait until you were ready to climb back out.

And sometimes, Jake cares so much that he didn’t get that.

Until now.

Until he says nothing. Moves nowhere.

His expression just softens. Cracks at the edges.

And his arms stay open.

Because a rule’s a rule.

And that’s all it takes.

Your own shoulders fall, heavy under the weight of all the things you couldn’t say.

Of all the ways you tried to protect your own peace by pushing away the person who is your peace.

So you take a step forward.

And another.

Until you fall into his chest—and it’s not graceful. Not cinematic. You crash into him like you needed him.

And he catches you. He always does.

His arms wrap around your waist so tight, like he’s trying to press you into himself, trying to hold all your pieces together in his own hands.

His nose buries into your shoulder. His hands runs up and down your spine. His other curls against your hair, his fingers shaking a little as they thread through the knots.

Neither of you say anything.

You just breathe.

You let yourself melt into him.

And then Jake whispers, voice breaking quietly against the curve of your neck, “I’m sorry. I’m listening. I promise I am.”

You close your eyes. Curl your fists into the front of his shirt. Breathe in the smell of him. The warmth. The ache and the comfort all at once.

“I know you have a lot on your plate,” you murmur into his chest, the words barely forming. “And I do too. And I know that you try your best to be there for me—and you have been. You’ve been there for me through everything and I’m so, so grateful for that.”

Jake listens as he holds you there—tight with no intention of letting you go, a hand still pressed to the small of your back.

“But some things…,” you go on, voice gentler, softer, your fingers now holding onto the hem of his shirt. “—some things I just want to tackle on my own. I just need to think. Figure it out by myself first. And it doesn’t mean I don’t need you. Because I do. So much.”

Jake stays silent, just nodding against you, his breath shaky. You can feel the weight of it on your shoulder.

“I want you by my side through it all. I just—I’m sorry I shut you out sometimes. I’ll try to be better. And—“

You swallow the lump in your throat. “—and I’m sorry I raised my voice too.”

Jake pulls back—just a little, just enough to look at you.

His hands move to cup your face like you’re something delicate, something irreplacable. His thumbs brush beneath your eyes like he’s checking for tears. Like he’s already blaming himself for every one.

“I’m sorry too,” he whispers, his voice cracking. “I love you. So much. And it scares me sometimes. I don’t want to sit back and watch you hurt—not if I can do something about it. But I know I need to learn when to be there and when to just be there.”

You nod. A hand comes up to hold one of his that’s still holding your face.

Jake leans in—forehead resting against yours. His breathing slows. Yours does too.

A long silence settles between you.

And then—he closes the gap and kisses you.

Not rushed. Not urgent. Just quiet and honest.

He kisses you once.

Then again.

Then again, slower. Softer.

When he finally pulls back—when the tension simmers down and all that's left is the warmth and comfort and love—his hands go down to your arms, subconsciously rubbing up and down as he smiles down at you, “I told you the hug thing would work. No matter what.”

You smile back at him—a real one, as you lean back into his chest, your arms wrapping around his back again as you murmur against him, “Of course it did—”

He kisses the top of your head.

“It's us.”

no doubt m. list

tag list pt 1!: @bluxjun @ki2rins @why-did-i-just-do-this @favoritten @lovialymisc @xylatox @vivimura @leehsngs @puma-riki @lezzleeferguson-120 @enhaprettystars @laurradoesloveu @sievenderz @somuchdard @kristynaah @hinryh @ltfirecracker @lov4hoon @taeheexx @niyzu @chunkzdeluluwife @jakeflvrz @fangirl125reader @0429jw @dreamy-carat @yuons @thestarinstarbucks @miszes @llearlert @ppeachyttae @hoomin10 @teddybeartaetae @tanisha2060 @therealmrsbahng @beomgyu-bears @ikeulove @jiyeons-closet @youngheejay @wxnderingthoughts @fuevrois @soobundle1009 @isoobie @enhypenova @zoemeltigloos @lizdevorak @deluluscenarios @bloomiize @hasuyv @ijustwannareadstuff20 @heekolazz @dreamiestay @jakeyyyjakexoxo

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authorddreamz · 3 days ago

Text

Protector - Deshon Dreamz

Protector – Deshon Dreamz

⚠️ cursing, mention of violence, guns

Word Count: 3K

Part 1: "I'd like to sleep in your bed..."

Her thighs burned. She'd been squatting behind this diesel bed for what felt like hours. Her heart banged loudly in her throat, overshadowing the elevated cadence of her pulse as it clouded her ears. The gravel beneath her feet pierced through her sandals, her body heavy with fear. The moon shifted in the sky, casting a darker cloud over the heated streets of Mississippi. Frantic breathes pushed through her lips as the sound of galloping grew closer to her. She felt confined, as if surrounded by an overwhelming force that seemed intent on disrupting her environment. She closed her eyes, sending a silent prayer before moving her body backwards. A stray cat jumped from a car, starling her. A quick yelp escaped her before she covered her mouth, eyes extended as wide as the Nile. Heat sparked from the tailpipe of a nearby car, the engine revving into the night, disturbing the cool air. Annie didn't know if her life would end tonight, it hadn't been in any of her visions or throws, but she couldn't stop the burst of terror settling in her gut.

More galloping, more shouting.

I saw her go that way!

She can't be far!

We must kill her tonight!

Her hope of making it back home was fading like color from a bleached t-shirt. The street was clear, outside of the men who were tracking her and the ambient light shining from a building nearby. She knew she was pushing it coming back into town so late, but the city had everything she needed for a protection spell she was brewing just for times like this. Her grandmother taught her root work, she also taught her how to fight, negotiate, and shoot a gun, but she couldn't go up against four men with sticks, ropes, guns and misplaced rage. She knew she couldn't withstand them alone; there was no way she'd survive. So, she planned to hide as long as she could.

The sight of an open sign flickering off across the street caught her attention. Before she could think too much about it, she heard her grandmothers voice loud in her ear, a rushed whisper that turned frantic. "Go, Annie. Run as fast as you can."

She listened. Her feet pushed into the ground as she lifted, running as fast as her body would allow until she made it to the door. She could barely see through the fiberglass door, but she could make out a figure moving on the other side.

She knocked, her fist heavy with panic and uncertainty as she waited. After a beat, she knocked again- somehow harder this time.

The door was snatched open and suddenly Annie found herself staring down the barrel of a gun. Her entire body felt slack as her hands shot into the nights air. "I'm sorry!" She whined, voice smaller than normal.

He lowered the gun- only slightly. Brown, untrusting eyes swung past her, then to the left and right. He took her in slowly, eyes scanning her from head to toe. A toothpick hung from his thick lips as he leaned to the side to get a better view of her, around his revolver. Silence hung in the air as Annie continued to hold her hands up.

Smoke took in the dirt decorating the bottom of her dress, the mud smudged into her beautiful brown skin and the cloth bag thrown across her body. She released hard, earned breaths as terror danced in the depths of her soft brown eyes. He wanted to lower his gun but he knew better. "Why you banging on the door this late?"

Annie swallowed. "Running."

Smoke brow arched. "From?"

The sound of horses neighing caught her attention. She urgently turned back to the cold man before her. "Please let me in."

Smoke craned his neck out the door, looking at the approaching horses ridden by men with pale skin carrying fire torches, wood planks and rope. "Get inside." He stepped outside the door, allowing the woman past him. "Go all the way to the back, up the stairs and into the apartment on the upper level. I'll let you know when it's clear."

Annie nodded before doing exactly what she was told.

Smoke tucked his gun into his jeans, grabbing a blunt from his ear to light it. He flicked the toothpick from his mouth, placing the blunt between his lips. Any other man would have fear dancing on their skin. Not him. He'd been in the Delta long enough to know that men like the ones approaching him on horseback existed. He'd went up against them, was familiar with their battle tactics. He was unreservedly unmoved. He reached behind him, pulling the door to his shop closed as the men on horses came to a stop before him. His frown remained as one man, who he assumed was the ringleader of this shit show, climbed off his horse.

He slowly released smoke from between his lips; his eyes trained on the ringleader. "Y'all boys far from the outskirts. A long way from home." Smoke's eyes shifted. "Looking for something?"

"A witch." The ringleader spat. "We don't want no trouble."

"Trouble is exactly what y'all gone get barking up this tree." Smoke's face didn't shift at all. "Best y'all get going before it's too late."

"You don't understand. She needs to be handled."

"Fuck that gotta do with me?" Smoke questioned.

"You telling me you ain't seen her?"

"I'm telling you I don't know who the fuck you talmbout. I'm also telling you to leave before shit get uglier than you round here."

The ringleader mugged Smoke for a while, weighing his options. The man before him had a reputation that proceeded him for miles. There wasn't a soul in the Delta who didn't know the Smoke/Stack twins. They were a line you didn't cross. He stepped back. "Guess we'll be going then."

Smoke tilted his head. "Get to gettin' then."

Without another word and a bruised ego, the man mounted his horse, turning to go in the opposite direction with his folks behind him. Smoke released a grunt as he pulled the door to his business open. He made sure to lock the door securely, pulling down the internal protective gate before locking it. He took the stairs to his loft two at a time. He found her sitting on his couch in the living room surrounded by warm hues and uncertainty. The air felt stiff, unmoving as he walked deeper into the living room. He caught the last of her mumbling, what he assumed was a prayer before she stood and turned to him. In this light, he could admire the softness of her features. Her skin was the color of Africa, deep and ritual. She was on the thicker side, thighs crafted by the ancestors of Mississippi herself. She was on the taller side, but he still had at least half a foot on her. Her lips were full and inviting. His eyes got stuck on them for too long.

"I... I’m sorry. I didn't have anywhere else to go." Her voice quaked, remnants of fear making it shaky. "I'll leave."

Smoke took a pull from his blunt. "Ain't too sure the coast clear yet."

Annie's shoulders went slack in defeat. "As long as they going one way and I'm going the other."

Smoke eyed her. "How you to know which way is which?"

That question stumped Annie.

Smoke walked over to his bar, pulling out a stool. "They say you a witch."

Annie's nostrils flared. "You look smart enough to know better."

Smoke smirked. "Say they need to kill you."

"People fear what they can't control."

Smoke nodded, looking at her through the cloud of smoke that curled between them. "Now you done found yourself in the apartment of a mad man."

Annie shook her head, standing. "You ain't a mad man. You're my protector."

Smoke's spine stiffened as she walked over to him, "You got the wrong man, sweetheart."

Annie pulled a stool, sitting down beside him. "My grandmother guided me here. She'd never put me in harms way. She sent me here because she knew you would take care of me."

Smoke thought the woman was losing it. "How am I supposed to do that?"

"By keeping me here til morning and loving me for the rest of my life, which will end before yours. Not for a long while though, Elijah."

He was out of his stool in a flash, reaching behind him to produce his gun as if it were attached to his hand. This time, Annie didn’t panic.

“How the fuck you know my name?”

“Wow, you’re a quick draw.”

“The quickest.” He spoke around the smoke floating from his lips like vowels.

She slowly held her hands up. “If you put the gun down, I can explain.”

Smoke gripped the gun tighter, keeping it in her face. “Gun ain’t movin’ til you explain.”

Annie stayed seated on the stool. “You won’t shoot me, Elijah.”

Smoke cocked the gun. “You don’t know me well, ma’am.”

Annie’s eyes held his as a slow, syrupy smile covered her face. “I’m slowly learning.”

“Fuck that mean?”

With hesitation, Annie slowly stood from the stool. Her eyes moved from Smoke to the gun. “Can...do you have to have this in my face.”

“I ain’t moving it until you tell me how you know my name.”

“If I tell you, you’re going to think those men downstairs were right about me.”

“Already thinkin’ that.” Smoke wasn’t bothered by the fact that though. If she was a witch, she was the finest one he’d ever seen. He didn’t mind whatever curse she was here to put on him. Death never scared him none, he’d faced it so many times they were kin. Lovers even. Walking hand in hand down the dark, historically dangerous streets of Mississippi. Nah, death didn’t bother him none.

“I’m a Hoodoo Priestess.”

Smoke’s brows danced. “Ummm hmmm…”

“Not a witch.”

“What’s the difference?”

Annie felt bold, feeling the strength of her spiritual guides surrounding her, encouraging her. Even with a gun to her face, she felt protected. She felt comforted by the man before her, knowing that he would go to unknown lengths to protect her, despite this moment.

“I’m a conjurer, Elijah. I hold my ancestors close for guidance and love. I keep the future close so it’s tied to the roots it needs to flourish. I heal, I complete and I evolve. I’m your connection to peace and everything pure about love, Elijah.

A warmth flowed from his face to his feet. His eyes held her soft, welcoming ones. He was well versed in women, he knew when they were flirting, trying to scam him. His years of training involving the species failed him at this moment. He couldn’t read her. His brain felt like it short circuited each time he tried. Mindlessly, he lowered the gun, dislodging the clip and throwing the safety on before he placed it on the bar.

Slowly, she stretched both her hands out to him, palms up as she waited. “I could show you what I see for us. Only a glimpse though.”

Smoke didn’t hesitate to place his hands inside her palms. He was immediately hit with a blanket of comfort, the weight in his shoulders evaporating as he exhaled. His eyes rolled closed as white noise filled his ears. He could feel her step closer to him, her softness engulfing him as she folded her thumbs over the top of his hands. For Smoke, the vision was blurry and warped, all he could make out was the sound of laughter coming from children as they ran across a field covered in autumn leaves with the scent of butterscotch floating through his nostrils. Then she came into view; a brown dress down to her ankles, soft peppered twist in her hair and the skin of a goddess glistening under the sun. Everything around her had aged, except the softness in her eyes. She was older, even more beautiful than the woman standing before him. He found himself wondering how that was possible.

“Let me know when you’re ready for dinner, Elijah. We can’t let it get cold.”

Smoke snatched his hands away from Annie, looking at her with wild, muddled eyes. He stepped back; his eyes filled with more questions than answers as he continued to look at her.

“What…”

“Us.” Annie answered with a soft smile. “Our children; a boy and a girl.”

He wanted to call her crazy and throw her out of his apartment and into the pit of clan he knew were still lingering around outside. Yet, all he could do was accept her words as if they were biblical.

“How?”

Annie hesitated. “I…don’t want to scare you.”

“Tell me.” Smoke demanded softly, wanting his brain to find comfort.

“Your guide, who I’m finding to be your mother and my guide, my grandmother has tied us to each other eternally. No matter how far you go, Elijah. We’ll be tied forever.”

Her words, which should have terrified him, gave him the comfort he was looking for.

He walked around the bar, looking back at her. “So, your my wife?”

Annie closed her eyes slowly. “Oh love, I am so much more than that.”

“The mother of my children.” He added through vulnerable cords.

“I am your protector, just as much as you are mine.”

Smoke pours a shot of Hennessy, needing it to clear his head. The moment he was away from her, his tiredness returned. “Look, it’s been a long day and I need to get some sleep. You’re more than welcome to stay, I’d actually like to talk to you more in the morning. I just…can’t be upright for much longer.”

“I’d like to sleep in your bed.” Annie spoke boldly.

Smoke’s eyes rounded as he slowly swallowed his liquor down, choking on the sting. “Huh?”

“We won’t have sex. I’m…we’re not there yet.”

“I don’t allow women to sleep in my bed, especially when we ain’t fucking.”

Annie’s eyes rolled. “I understand that but this is different.”

“Different, how?” Smoke walked back over to her. “You’re supposed to be my wife, seems like fucking comes with that.”

“Yeah…but not now. Not on the first night.”

Smoke could hear the nervousness in her voice; it bordered on fear. “Aye, I’m just fucking with you. I don’t want to have sex with you but I don’t understand why you gotta sleep in my bed.”

Annie bit into her bottom lip nervously before exhaling. “I can explain it once we’re in your bedroom.”

Once again, Smoke didn’t know how to receive the stranger who felt far too familiar, in his house. She was bold yet timid. She was demanding, yet soft-spoken and calm tempered. She felt like a new wind brushing over his skin after a long day. She was rejuvenating.

“Come on.” He extended his hand to her, pulling her down the hallway to his bedroom. He pushed the door open, bathing the hallway in soft light and the scent of sandalwood. His room matched his living room, soft brown, cream and off-white tones covered his bed, the décor and furniture. He released her hand after they stepped over the threshold.

“All I got that’s gone fit ya is a t-shirt.” He tossed over his shoulder as he walked to the dresser. “Maybe some shorts.”

“A t-shirt is fine.” Annie spoke softly, standing awkwardly by the door.

Smoke lifted, taking in her stiffened demeanor. “Why you standing in the doorway like that?”

Annie would never admit to being nervous, but she was. Even though her grandmother’s communication was clear, it was a lot for her to take in. She didn’t even think about what her future would look like. She was so busy fighting to survive each day. At twenty – six, she was still figuring out her life. Suddenly, she had the full map of how her future would go, just from one run in with a grumpy stranger.

“I didn’t know if you want me to walk any further in these dirty clothes.”

Smoke eyed her. “You got anything under the dress?”

“Of course.” Annie snapped instantly, feeling insulted.

“You gotta ask these days.” Smoke muttered. “Well, take the dress off and I’ll throw it in the washer for you.”

Annie toed off her shoes before lifting her dress up and over her head. She smooths the silk fabric of her slip down, pulling it down just right past her knees.

Smoke pulled towels and a shirt from his drawer before turning to her. His eyes took in the pearl-colored slip covering her mocha skin. All the fear and uncertainty gone from her features leaving just her blank expression which was arguably the most beautiful thing he’d ever laid eyes on.

He lifted the clothes and towels to her. “The shower is here.” He pointed.

Annie’s feet remained planted as he showed her the way to the bathroom. “Wait.”

Her voice was low, insecure as she spoke.

Smoke turned to her. “What?”

Annie swallowed the lump in her throat. “Ummm. I want you to understand why I said we couldn’t have sex.”

“I thought I told you I wasn’t trying to have sex with you.”

She nodded. “Yes, and I know that you were honest when you said that.”

Smoke remained silent.

“It’s just that I never…”

Still, Smoke just stood there looking at her.

“I grew up in a very strict household, so I never even had a boyfriend.”

“It’s the south, that’s not uncommon.”

Annie’s eyes lit up. “So, you understand?”

Smoke didn't understand why this conversation felt like it was looping. “Yeah, you ain’t never had a boyfriend.”

“Right so, you see why I can’t just have sex with you on the first night.”

“I just…I would like the first time to be special.” Annie was losing all the confidence she gained when she revealed herself to him. “I can’t just…do it the first day I meet you.”

“Wait…” Smoke’s eyes narrowed. “I know you ain’t tryna tell me what I think you tryna tell me.”

“What?” Annie snapped. “That I want my first time to be special?”

Smoke ran his hands down his face. “You’re a fucking virgin?”

#author #writing #art #filmmaking #poetry #annie sinners #annie x smoke #michael b jordan #sinners #love #wunmi mosaku #elijah x annie #annie moore #elijah smoke moore #smokestack twins #smoke x annie #smoke moore #ryan coogler

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moonchild9350 · 23 hours ago

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Relax

summary: hyunjin helps you relax after a long week.

pairing: est, relationship hyunjin x fab!reader

genre: fluff, smut-18+MDNI

wc: 1.1k

warnings: fingering, unprotected sex (don't)/lovemaking, creampie, teasing, mild dirty talk

notes: is this self indulgent? you bet lol

Masterlist

Finally, the week was done. A thought that lit a flame of hope deep within that you’d be able to get some rest after a chaotic few days at work.

You were excited to get home and to your boyfriend as you needed a little relaxation time with him. Entering your shared apartment, you were hit with a strong scent, one that filled your nostrils and wrapped it's hands around your body, causing you to instantly relax.

Soft music played in the background with the soothing tunes Hyunjin knows you like after a tough day. Kicking off your shoes, you make your way to the bedroom where the man in question resides, sitting cutely on the bed with a grin on his face.

“Welcome home love,” he coos and beckons you forward.

You don’t hesitate to walk into his arms, letting out a sigh as he wraps his strong limbs tightly around your body. A shiver runs down your spine as he buries his face into your belly and his fingers rub small circles into your back. You revel in the silence, focusing on your breathing as Hyunjin continues to cling to you.

After some time, Hyunjin slowly lifts his head to gaze up at you, love laced throughout his expression. He pulls back and takes your hands in his, “let me take care of you tonight love.”

Your breathing hitches as he stands up and gently pushes you onto the blankets, his gaze never leaving yours. You lay still as he slowly, teasingly undresses you, pulling one arm out at a time before slipping your legs out of your pants, his eyes flickering to your panties every now and then.

He takes a digit and drags it through your clothed folds, his eyes snapping up to yours as you let out a moan, high pitched and needy just how he likes it. Alternating between feather light touches to applying more pressure, he works you up quickly, your panties quickly turning sheer and glued to your skin from how wet you are.

“My love works so hard,” Hyunjin whispers as he lifts his shirt over his head, revealing his toned abs and dusky nipples. “It’s only fair I take care of you when you get home.”

Your eyes are barely able to focus as your lover continues to undress, quickly ridding himself of his sweats and boxers. Letting out a whimper, you grab at Hyunjin, wanting him to come closer. He chuckles as he hovers over you, his eyes roaming over your body.

“Will you let me help you relax?” He asks with raised eyebrows and you can’t help but nod just wanting to feel him, to become one with him.

He slowly parts your legs, letting them fall open and baring everything to him. You wait in anticipation as he lines himself up with your entrance and with one swift motion, he breaches your hole, stretching you wide.

“Ah, Hyunjin,” you moan as you clutch onto his arms, pulling him flush to your body.

Hyunjin gasps as his cock reaches deeper within you at the change in position and he closes his eyes briefly to ground himself at the feeling of your wet walls wrapped tightly around him.

You’re impatient however. You need him to move, do anything, and you need it now. You lift your hips slightly letting out a strangled whine at the small amount of friction you gained.

Hyunjin slowly pumps his hips, dragging his cock against your walls, reaching the spot that gets you weak beneath him, pliant and obedient.

Your fingers thread themselves in his hair and you pull at the short strands as Hyunjin buries his face in the crook of your neck, his lips pressing wet kisses to your skin. Your breath synchronizes with his and you clench around him as a deep groan he lets out and how he pushes himself somehow even deeper into you.

Hyunjin fucks you slow, steady, as if he’s not in a rush, but rather making sure you’re completely relaxed and mind empty as he pleasures your sweet body.

You're not sure how much time as passed, as you’re lost in the sensation of his cock massaging your walls, the feel of his pubic hair dragging against your pelvis, providing that sweet friction you crave against your clit. His pace never falters and you get lost in him, his moans, his scent, the sweat coating your body as he rocks up into you.

His chest presses ever closer into your body and provides ever the slightest pressure against your nipples and you whimper at the sensation, feeling that all familiar warmth build in your belly.

Slowly, ever so slowly, it builds, expands until it seems to want to overflow. You gasp at the little shocks you receive almost as if your body is teasing you for your release, just to clench hard around Hyunjin’s cock as it retreats, like a wave kissing the sand.

“Hyun, Hyun, please,” you whisper, as you wrap your legs around his waist and you give a slight tug at his hair.

“I got you love, let go for me hm?” Hyunjin’s lips are right at your ear, his words vibrating deeply in your war, his voice husky as he focuses on getting you to your high.

The pleasure builds, expands until it pops and you’re letting out a cry as your slick coats his cock, his pelvis, his thighs and your body shakes beneath his.

“That’s right, let it all out, please, please my love,” Hyunjin begs and as you let out a shudder he releases his seed, flooding your walls with his essence.

He moans as he comes and presses his lips to yours desperately. The kiss is sloppy, uncoordinated but filled with love and you grin against his lips.

You’re relaxed, more so than ever and it’s all thanks to your boyfriend. Lazily, you stroke his hair as he lays still on top of you, his face still buried in your neck. The music wraps around you two, soothing you into your hearts beat as one.

After some time, Hyunjin sits up and the slip of his cock from your sore core causes you to winch. He quickly scrambles into bed and pulls you close, wrapping his arms around you tightly

“I hope that helped,” he whispers as the last of the candles burn down to the quick and the last notes of the song that’s playing ring out.

“It did. I love you so much,” you mumble, your mind on the edge of sleep. And right before you completely slip under you hear Hyunjin whisper:

“And I love you.”

divider by @cafekitsune

taglist: @jehhskz @jeonginsleftcheek @armystay89 @palindrome969 @ivydoesit23 @slut4hee @amarecerasus @kaysungshine @fun-fanfics @baby-stay92 @velvetmoonlght @possum-playground @katsukis1wife @my-neurodivergent-world @hanniebaeee @channiesrightasscheek @skzdreamer133 @lezleeferguson-120 @hwangjoanna @hyunjincanraptoo

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currentloser · 1 day ago

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club classics

pairing: kwon ji-yong x reader wc: 8k summary: After trying to avoid Ji-yong at a party and failing, you what you're better at than anything else. A steamy night you'll both forget. tags: 18+ MDNI, asshole/toxic!ji-yong, semi-public flirting, smut, unprotected p in v, afab reader a/n: SORRY this one is so long it got away from me,,, this is for the BRAT SUMMER 2025 event!

ao3

The bass hits you before the door even opens.

It rattles the ground beneath you, sending a wave thrumming through your very bones and through your veins. It lands somewhere in your ribs, finding a home there and burying itself. The line outside had stretched well past the block when you first arrived, but a mystery stranger had pulled you in through the side, past the doorman. Pass the waiting, someone who owed you a favor, or maybe you owed him now. It didn’t matter.

Inside, the club is alive, practically breathing on its own. The air is humid from the shifting of bodies together, music loud and rattling your skull. It’s dark despite the flashing lights, and you can’t escape the thought that the sight of it is sickly beautiful. Everything around you drowns in red light and thigh smoke. It curls around you and clings to your skin.

You don’t see him right away, which is good.

You’re halfway into your second shot, your lips already shining from taking them and smeared from laughing too hard from laughing into someone’s shoulder. You told yourself that you weren’t here for anyone except for yourself. You even told your friends too, even if they didn’t believe you. You’re just here to dance and sweat the day off, to soak in something reckless.

But it’s when you tilt your head back and close your eyes with arms raised, hips lazy and swaying to some chopped, glittering remix of a song you once loved, that he finds you.

He doesn’t call your name, doesn’t tap your shoulder. You just feel him.

That weightless shift in the air. Like gravity reorienting itself. Like something warm pressed against the edges of your attention. You open your eyes, and he’s already there. A step away. Lit up by the seizure-bright strobe in intervals, Ji-yong watches you like he’s half-dreaming, smoke curling from between his fingers as he exhales.

He’s smoking. Indoors. Of course he is.

His cigarette glows at the tip every time he pulls from it, the light catching his rings and the edge of his smirk. His shirt is half-unbuttoned, chains peeking beneath. His hair’s a little messy, dark, maybe damp from sweat. He looks ruined in the best way, like he’s been partying for hours and still somehow makes exhaustion look curated. It’s unfair how he can make a place like this look designer, too.

He takes one more drag before letting the smoke trail from his lips: slow, deliberate— and then nods at the DJ booth.

“You’re early,” he mouths across the space between you. He doesn’t shout, the music swallows everything else.

You let your gaze drag over him before lifting your glass slightly in return. “You shouldn’t be expecting me. I came here for myself.”

His grin flashes, quick and feral, and it hooks in your stomach a little too fast.

He moves closer. Just enough that his presence brushes against yours without touching. His eyes drop to your mouth, your throat, the slick line of sweat catching light at your collarbone. He leans in, close enough to feel the heat of him against your ear. His voice is a low murmur, roughened by smoke and volume.

“I almost didn’t come, until I knew you’d be here.”

Your lips part, but you don’t speak, not yet. You know he did come, that he’s here now. He always finds you, whether he wants to or not. Under the lights, though, it’s hard to tell who’s chasing who.

You don't answer him.

Instead, you take a slow sip of your drink. Tilt the glass just enough to let him watch your throat move as you swallow. It’s petty, deliberate, and of course it works its charm on him.

Ji-yong's gaze flickers. Brief, but sharp. A new track pulses in. A warped synth layering over a deep, glittering beat. Something twisted and feminine. It vibrates in your ribs, thick as blood. You sway. Just slightly. A little off-time on purpose. He notices. Of course he does.

You don’t invite him closer. You don’t need to. The space between you is already shrinking, breath by breath, the way it always does. Some doomed orbit. The heat of him is right there, just there— and when he exhales, the smoke lingers over your skin. Ji-yong shifts his weight, rings glinting as he crushes the cigarette out against a sleek black ashtray on the high table beside him. He leans forward slowly into your space, and sets his hand against the small of your back.

It’s light. Barely there. But you feel it.

The music doesn’t stop. The crowd doesn’t stop. The world spins mad and fast all around you. Bodies colliding, lights splitting the air into gold and red and blue. The only thing that feels solid is him. His hand. His heat. The drag of his voice as it slips low, low, lower.

“Come dance,” he says, but it’s not a request.

You raise a brow, chin tilted up in mock defiance. “You never dance.”

“I do,” he murmurs, eyes locked on yours, “when it’s with you.”

And there it is.

That thing you pretend not to hear. That flicker of something heavier than lust threading through his voice. It's in the way he looks at you, like he wants to be good tonight, but already knows he won’t be. You hesitate, just long enough to make him wait. You set your glass down, slowly, and let your hand trail down his arm as you pass him. A promise.

You walk ahead, the press of his hand following you across the dance floor.

By the time you hit the floor, the lights have shifted. They’re colder now, harsh strobes of white and violet. A drop is building in the music, but you don’t care. Ji-yong moves behind you, and his hands find your hips like they belong there. His breath ghosts over the shell of your ear, and for a second it’s too loud, too close, and not close enough.

You move first. A slow roll of your body into his, a rhythm he catches like he never forgot it. His grip tightens. His voice brushes your neck, too low to catch completely.

But you think he says, “That’s it.”

And just like that, you’re not sure if the heat in your chest is from the bass, the liquor, or him. The crowd shifts, spills, flows around you, but Ji-yong doesn’t move. His hands stay at your hips, fingers spread wide, anchoring you in place. Not rough. Not yet. Just firm. Decided. You feel him exhale behind you. The ghost of smoke still clinging to his breath, warm against your cheek.

“You smell like trouble,” you murmur, not looking back.

“I am trouble,” he says, unapologetic. And then, quieter: “But so are you.”

Your breath stutters. A throb of bass passes through the soles of your feet and he sways with you, the motion subtle. Lazy. His hips align behind yours. You’re not dancing anymore so much as pressing, molding to the tempo in the spaces between beats and words.

You tilt your head back just slightly, and he uses that moment to lean in closer. His nose brushes along the edge of your jaw, soft and fleeting.

“Look at you,” he says, low enough that it’s just for you. “Lit up like neon.”

And God, he’s dangerous like this. Smooth voice. Sharp rings. Cigarette heat still on his fingertips where they graze the edge of your top, dragging slow down your side. Your hands reach back, unthinking, touching his waist to steady yourself. He pauses in his sway, his breath catching as your touch collides with him. You knew you hit a nerve.

He doesn't flinch, though. He just moves in closer, and when you bend your wrist to drag your knuckles lightly along the seam of his jeans, you hear him laugh under his breath, delighted and exasperated all at once. You can feel the way your bodies pressed together, lightly sprinkled in the humidity of the room and sweat of body heat. The way he presses into you, with much less shame than he should be having now.

There's a game here. There's always a game. Maybe that's why you've kept him so close, even when you both pretended you weren't circling each other anymore.

The room throbs and jumps but it's smaller now, tight as a confession booth. Every sense sharpens. You're aware, suddenly, of the beads of sweat forming along your lower back, the damp heat of bodies crowding against yours on either side. Of the citrus tang of someone else's drink being spilled near your feet. And most of all, of the voice threading the air beside your jaw, softer now:

"You missed me," he says, almost teasing, the ghost of lips barely brushing your cheek.

Your laugh is sharper than you meant it to be. "You're always so sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

He doesn’t hesitate to answer, “Of course I am.”

“When I first met you you were so sheepish I thought if I looked at you too long you’d run off,” you murmur, “You’re different now, but you still aren’t very good at dancing.”

You can’t help your own dry humor. You weren’t doing so much as practically rubbing against each other in the middle of the dance floor, anyway.

He grins at that, and the sharpness fades from his gaze for just a second. The strobe catches a glimmer of someone you almost recognize from before; the version of him that blushes easy, that tripped for months over his own wants and words around you. You used to love that version, how he’d stumble, how much you could bend him before he snapped.

But maybe you like this one better, the one who grabs you without asking, whose hands are confident now. Maybe you like that you helped make him.

“I got better,” he says, rolling his hips against you in time to the beat. “Or maybe you just stopped pretending to be unimpressed.”

You snort, but he’s right. You gave up pretending a long time ago.

He moves you, then a gentle but insistent tug, his palm flat at the base of your spine. He never loses step, not even when you maneuver a half-turn so you’re facing him. It feels like a ballroom dance for a moment instead of to whatever pulsing club classic blares over your heads.

Ji-yong grins, wicked, as you spin into him and find his eyes. In this light, with your faces close, he’s more beautiful than he should be. Ghostly with sweat-paneled skin and that hunger set somewhere in his gaze. You float your hands up, skim his jaw, and his mouth opens just barely.

“You’re going to owe me for this,” you say, not sure what ‘this’ you mean— the dance, the memory, this version of you that wakes up at 2AM demanding more. Ji-yong tilts his head, drags a finger along the curve of your shoulder to the hollow of your throat, follows it with his gaze.

“I already do,” he says, and you believe him.

For a while, you let the music have you. It’s easy, when each track runs into another, when the world outside might as well not exist. You let him crowd you at the edge of the floor, the two of you blurring into the pulse of everything alive and breathless. He’s talking into your ear again, voice rough and hungry, peeling off bits of himself in the hope that you’ll notice how open his hands really are.

He’s confiding useless little nothings: the name of the remix, how many cigarettes he’s had, a story about the last concert he’d crashed hard after performing. None of it matters except the rhythm it makes, the way he’s arching his neck to whisper, the way you lean into him so the words can't escape.

You close your eyes and lose count of how many songs go by, how many times his hand slips under the hem of your shirt or how often your hips slot perfectly into his. At some point you stop pretending there’s any real distance between you, that you came here alone, that you’re not both desperate for something that can’t quite be named.

The first time he tries to kiss you, you dodge, smiling like it’s all just a game you’re both in on. He exhales, a sharp huff that lifts the hair behind your ear, and you feel him grin against your hairline. He purrs like a damn cat, leaning into you yet again. The second time, you let it connect. It’s not careful. It’s not even a kiss.Your mouths collide, too eager, the taste of soju and smoke and all that laughing burned into your lips.

He’s breathing hard, so are you, and when you break apart the need coiled in your chest only tightens. You let your hand slip into his hair, tilting him up for a proper try. This time he’s ready: everything softens, slows, his mouth gentle. Less about taking and more about wanting. And somehow that’s the thing that makes you shiver, even though you’re already burning up.

It pulls you deeper. You want more. You want him to want more.

You bite at his lower lip, just enough for him to feel it, and his hands flex where they hold you. The edge of the dance floor is a blur, but you’re coldly aware of eyes on you. Of countless strangers setting their gaze on the couple recklessly connecting. You don’t care. Why should you? You want Ji-yong to see what happens when you stop playing coy and give in. When he tries to say something, you catch his mouth with yours and swallow the words down until only the heat is left.

You don’t remember when you backed him up against the far wall, but here you are, palm flat on his chest and heart pounding under your fingers. He tastes like sweat and Red Bull and something bitter you can’t name. It’s addictive. He pulls away first, breathless and too proud to show it, and the flash of his teeth is half warning, half invitation. The lights flicker. He’s so close that his next words feel like a secret pressed to your lips.

“Let’s get out of here,” he says, orders.

He means right now, you realize, now-now, and the look in his eyes tells you he might just shatter if you decline. It’s a look you haven’t seen on him in a long time, and it looks good on him. You nod, and neither of you say anything more. He laces his fingers through yours. It’s something he’s never done in public before, but maybe tonight is about new rules. He pulls you straight through the crowd. You barely register the darting glances and the ripple of awareness that follows in your wake. People always watched Ji-yong, but now they’re watching you, too.

You hit the air outside and it's freezing, the city’s summer night suddenly cool compared to the club. You breathe, but it’s still full of him. He steers you quick and decisive, around curbs and past cabs hawking for a fare. He walks like the street belongs to him, and maybe it does. For a moment your mind betrays you: you do, too. You glance at your joined hands, and you don’t even try to steal yours back.

He doesn’t say anything until you’re two blocks away and the music is gone, replaced by the greasy throb of traffic and neon flickering lights. “You could afford a cab,” You point out, “didn’t someone drive you here?” You’re still breathless, still heated from your shared dance. Ji-yong takes a moment, digging into his pocket and plucking out a face mask he hadn’t decided to bother with until now. He pulls it over his nose, a beanie appearing from his hand and pressing over his head. It’s a version of him you’re much more used to: G-Dragon trying to avoid the press, paparazzi.

He still hasn’t spoken, so you try again, “A little late for that.”

He steers you down an alley anyway, a shortcut behind the closed restaurants. He walks fast, pulling you side-by-side for a few yards, matching your pace without glancing over. When you do look at him, he’s already watching you again, the curve of his mouth hidden now, but you can see it in the way his eyes crinkle. He never could hide anything from you for long.

It’s quiet here, every footstep a little echo that multiplies your heart’s pounding. There’s no one around, just the hum of a tired city and the distant pulse of all those people pretending to be someone better for the night.

Halfway down the alley he stops, so suddenly you almost stumble. He’s still holding your hand, and he tugs again, harder this time, and you finally realize where you had been tugged along to. Just out of the corner of your eye you spot the gate to the back of his penthouse. You were so out of it you hadn’t recognized the streets that should’ve been familiar.

The side door clicks open with a practiced flick of his wrist, then you’re inside, out of the heat, into the sharp chill of the sharp contrast of his penthouse. It’s warm on the inside, more comfortable than it had any right to be. There was a pile of shoes by the entry way. Cozy, his. The hum of a refrigerator is the only thing reaching you for a moment, like the city itself had been put on mute.

Ji-yong’s mask comes off with a quick tug, his beanie thrown somewhere on the nearest ledge. The air inside the penthouse is both cooler and charged, as if the walls are holding their breath for what happens next.

“You’re reckless,” you finally tell him, letting your voice break the hush as you toe your shoes off by the door. “Dragging me here like some kind of prize.”

He ignores you for a moment, pulling his phone from his pocket and hitting a button you know triggers the privacy glass. He checks his reflection in the darkened marble, runs a hand through his damp hair, then turns to face you head-on.

“Not a prize,” he says, voice suddenly softer than the club before. Then, he seems to catch himself in the middle of it.

“Just—” His gaze stutters, mid-leap, and he finishes: “You.”

The penthouse is a gallery of bad decisions and beautiful things, a soft-lit mausoleum for every unwise purchase and every night that should have ended earlier. He keeps it cold in here, so you’ll have to pull his hoodies off his bedroom floor and wear them when you sleep. When you offer a sarcastic “Nice place,” he shrugs like he doesn’t believe it, never did, and tosses his keys to the counter. The sound is precise, practiced.

You cross the laminate floor, breath slowing but hands still a little shaky. There is a geography to this space, the hallway you never quite got used to. The first time you stayed over, you swore you’d never make it a habit. The security guard in the lobby memorized your face anyway, always greeted you with that knowing smirk at four in the morning.

There’s a bottle already open on the kitchen island, sweating from the short walk from his fridge. Two glasses, one full. He pours you the other. “Sanity check,” he says, sliding it over, a soft wink. “In case you want out.”

You don’t, not even a little. His sharp edges soften again as his slicked-back hair falls forward into his face, taking a drink and nodding to you.

There's a gap left deliberate, a challenge. The city out the windows is wide and desperate, all glass and nighttime theater, but inside it's tendon-tight with anticipation. His cologne rises as he leans on the marble, or maybe that's just the way you remember things, his scent stitched into every memory where your hearts ever ran a fever.

You collect the glass, thumb smooth on the rim, and drink without blinking. It's not the first time you've played this part. The liquor is clean, clinical, a mouthful of ghosts. The cold of it drags all the way down, waking up something animal in you.

"Tell me," you say, barely above a hush, "what are we doing here, really?"

He smiles the way he always does when the mask comes off, and you see what a mess he is beneath the polish: knuckles bruised blue, the flush riding high on his cheekbones, all that boyish charm that doomed you to be tied to him for the inevitable future.

He leans against the counter, elbows propped up, face shadowed and strobing in the shimmer of city light. “Same thing we’ve always done,” he admits quietly, fingers fussing with one of his heavier chains. “Trying to see who wins before the next song runs out.”

You nod, slow, letting the words unspool. Maybe he’s right. Maybe you two are locked into this dance, always a push, always a pull. Sometimes you chase. Sometimes you want him to catch you. Most of the time you’re not sure which would be worse.

He stalks closer, a dragon in Chanel sweats, and you get the sense that all the bravado he wears in the clubs and concerts and crowded places was left outside with the echoing bass and the sweat of other people’s hands. Alone, it’s just this: a sharp-boned boy, the kind who leaves glittering bruises and never apologizes.

“I came to the club to avoid this same cycle,” You say it just so it feels less like a lie.

You knew damn well when you came dressed the way you did, pressed against him— exactly what you’d be getting. There’s nothing new under the sun except the way his mouth feels when he’s desperate.

Ji-yong tilts his empty glass and balances the rim against his bottom lip, his eyes never leaving yours. He’s a study in hunger and patience, all that ferocity boiled down to a single, waiting line. “You want me to say it?” he asks, eyes glimmering.

“I want you to mean it,” you correct, and he laughs, a real sound, slick and sharp and a little cracked. He walks you backwards until your hips hit the edge of his kitchen island, and the cold marble presses through your thin skirt like a dare. His hands land flat on either side of you, pinning you gently. He leans in until his lips just brush your jaw, and you feel yourself melting.

The same way you always did with him, every time. That damn cycle was working against you, and of course you let it.

Ji-yong slides a hand up, up, along your ribs, finding the edge of your jaw, thumb painting a slow line over your cheek. “You ruin me,” he says, simple as an exhale. “Every time.”

You could laugh, but you don’t. You feel something breaking behind your ribs. You want to say something soft for once. But what’s the point? He wouldn’t believe you, not really. So you tip your head, welcoming the touch.

He moves in as if it’s inevitable. Tilts your chin and brings your mouths together, this time slow, as if you’ve got all night, as if the world couldn’t possibly touch you here. His hands are careful, all the reckless charm drained from him for this one minute where you let him believe he’s the one in control. He bites your lower lip, gently and then claiming all over again.

It should startle you, this quiet hunger masquerading as tenderness, but it doesn’t. It just burrows into your chest and starts digging. You clutch at his shirt, twisting it in your fists, and you realize it’s not for drama but just to keep yourself tethered. He feels you waver and pulls you in tighter, like he’s capable of holding you together with just his arms.

“You should hate me,” he says, breath ghosting your lips when he finally lets up. He’s still so close it’s more a thought than a sound.

“Maybe I do,” you reply, and when he shivers you almost want to take it back.

He doesn’t release you, not even when it gets hard to breathe in the charged air between you. When you finally break away, you don’t go far. You just lean back against the counter, arms folded now to keep the shiver from traveling. He’s watching you with that artist’s gaze, dissecting every piece of you.

He doesn't move to fill the gap. He lets it stretch, slow as honey, until your pulse settles into something almost steady. “What are you thinking?” It’s a gentle demand. He wants the truth, or at least your best imitation of it.

You’re about to answer, but something in his eyes stops you. He’s waiting for the part of you that’s honest, the one you so rarely expose. It’s not fair, you think. He already knows how you’ll answer.

You break the spell with a shrug, lean into the cold of the counter. “You know I want to forget this night with you. You don’t want to hear anything else though, do you?” You don’t mean it to come across cold, but you hear it in the way your voice hisses.

You aren’t sure where this sudden shift in behavior came from. By now, you’d be muttering his name and pressing his wrists into the bed beneath. Depending on how badly he wanted to pretend like he was in charge.

Something changes in the little space between you. The air thickens, hungry and raw, all the more dangerous for how neither of you wants to name it. Ji-yong pushes off the counter, his hands dropping to his sides, jaw flexing as if fighting off a hundred things he could say. He fixes you with that slantwise gaze, the one that always knows how to dismantle you, how to peel you apart by degrees.

“You know I remember every time,” he says. Soft, sure, like pulling a trigger with his voice. “Every single fucking time. I don’t let go.” He tips his glass, drains it, and for a moment looks so tired, so utterly exposed, you want to step forward, pull the leather from his bones and let him just be warm for once.

But he’s never given you that. Never let you see him truly still. You don’t know if he can. He sets down his glass with an audible click, spins it so hard you think it might shatter, and then paces to the edge of the room. His steps are slick on the cold floor, and for a long moment you can’t see the expression on his face at all.

You watch his back. Watch the way his shoulders bunch, the way he rolls his neck like he’s trying to shake off the words before they stick. It doesn’t work. You see that in the tense set of his jaw, the way his breath fogs the window where he rests his palms, head bowed.

“Come here,” you say, almost gently. You almost wonder if you’ll have to repeat it. You don’t. Ji-yong is at your side in a heartbeat, pressure collapsing the space between you until your knees are bracketed by his thighs.

He’s not even touching you, not yet, but you can feel the heat from his hands at your hips, a field of tension so fierce you could slice it open and crawl inside. His eyes are all pupil, wild, but his voice is careful when he says, “You sure?” You don’t know if he means this, now, or everything that comes after.

“I’m sure,” you say. You’ll never stop being sure.

That’s all it takes. He folds into you with a crash, a surge of mouth and hands and bones. His lips find your throat, savage and patient, fingers pulling your shirt up, up, greedy for skin. You feel the chill of the marble and the heat of his palms, contradiction making you shiver more than the liquor ever did.

He lifts you onto the countertop in a single, blunt motion, knuckles ghosting the sensitive skin behind your knees, pushing your legs apart around him. Just like that, you’re forgetting the confession you were a breath away from speaking just a moment ago.

He kisses you harder. When he tries to talk you out of your top, you laugh, tilting your head so his mouth can find more of your throat, and then, because he never could resist a dare, you let him.

The marble props you up cold, the skin of your thighs slick with that electric sweat, and it should embarrass you how quickly you let him peel away your shirt, but you meet his gaze as he does it, daring him to blink first. He doesn’t, of course.

Instead: “You’re always so fucking beautiful when you wanna kill me,” he says, voice thick, hands already working up your hips, leaving thumb-shaped memories along your bones.

You could bite back something clever, but instead you reach for the hem of his shirt, nails grazing his ribs. He gives way just as easily, leaving him bare. You can’t help but trace your fingers over his side, pressing in until you could feel his ribs beneath.

He hisses through his teeth, his eyes flashing up to yours, a warning and a goad in the same breath. You push him back just enough to give yourself leverage, then hook your legs around his waist, dragging him close again. The collision is hard and too much, and not enough; the sound of it echoes in the glossy, empty room.

He kisses you like no one’s watching. That’s always been the trouble with Ji-yong—he loves privacy only as a stage. His hands skim up and down your back, all restless energy and careful fingers, and for one second you think about stopping. Putting a hand to his chest and telling him to slow down, to look at you the way he does when you’re both sobered up by morning.

Daring, you press your hand over his soft skin. The heartbeat under your palm is frantic, impossible, caged-bird desperate. He pulls back, only just, and his eyes snag yours in the freeze between beats. For a second you both just breathe, balanced on the knife-edge of wanting more and wanting to run. His hand is splayed hot over your thigh, one thumb absentmindedly rubbing circles where the skin is slick.

You wonder, as always, if this is the moment he’ll break first—if he’ll remember how to be careful, if he’ll stutter out some excuse and retreat into himself like in the old days. He doesn’t. This version of Ji-yong is dangerous and much braver than the last, and you’re the only one who knows the secret: he’s only brave when he’s with you.

When he speaks, his voice is sandpaper and sugar: “Look at me.”

You do. You always do.

The city is a reflection behind him, spectral and far away. His skin is slick, your own still tingling, your pulse a flickering strobe. You watch the way his damp hair falls forward, how he trembles with the restraint it takes not to just devour you whole, and you feel something cave in your chest, tender and sharp all at once.

This isn’t a war, not really. It’s an old, old ache that keeps finding new ways to bleed.

He draws your hands up to his neck, cupping them there as if they could ward off ghosts. The gesture is almost sweet, except he’s still grinding you harder against the edge of the marble. His lips graze your cheekbone, your brow, and his breath shudders as if it takes everything in him not to say the thing he’s always wanted to say.

You know, because it’s curling in your own throat, too.

His hands drop to your waist, rough and desperate now, dragging your heat forward, anchoring you even as your legs wrap tighter and your hips move in time with him. You’re slick where your bodies meet, throbbing at the edge of agony and pleasure in the way only he could make you.

His chain is cold in your hands, and you tug on it, pulling his mouth back to yours. He groans, deep and unguarded, and the sound vibrates through your teeth and all the way down. You kiss until you feel dizzy, until you’re not sure where you end and he begins, until the taste of him is all you remember how to want. Fingers, clever and sharp, slide up your thigh, slipping beneath the waistband of your skirt, and you feel him shudder as he finds nothing but skin. He stares at you, pupils blown, a hundred different hungers running wild in the wet heat between you.

“Fuck,” he says, reverent. “You’re killing me.”

“You always like when I look at you like I want you dead, don’t you?”

He laughs, not quite out loud, the sound stiffened into a gasp. His brow knots, his mouth in your hair. “You know I do,” he mouths wet to the side of your neck, and bites, not gently. Marking you. Claiming and repudiating all at once. His fingers flex tighter around your waist and you nearly buckle in his grip, the pulse of him strong between your legs.

He wants to ruin you, but he wants to be the only one allowed to tape you back together after. You know this, and you let it happen.

He drags your hips forward until there is nothing in the world but the press of him, the throb and slip of skin, the friction so hot it borders on violence. You claw for his face, his jaw, the chain around his neck. He lets you scratch, lets you take, lets you leave half-moons in the soft skin under his collarbone.

You wonder, not for the first time how long until one of you really does break the other. He sways into you, not quite gentle, and you both flinch at the sharp, animal stutter that happens when every bit of self-restraint gets scraped raw. His hands dig in, and your hips cant forward in open, easy invitation.

“You want it rough tonight?” he asks, voice a bare thread, but he’s already bruising up your thighs with his grip, already reading the answer written on your face. Your laugh is a dare and a refusal, but your body says yes, yes, god yes, and you show him with the hard clutch of your fingers into his bad shoulder.

You duel like this, always: push, pull, then duck and reappear somewhere feral. He rucks your skirt, the fabric bunched past your hips, and the skin-on-skin is sudden and electric. Every part of you that wants to be wanted lights up at the way he grinds between your

legs, the damp heat there making the rest of the world collapse inward. The veins in his arms stand out with the strain of holding himself steady, but he doesn’t falter.

He brings his mouth to your ear, voice shaking with the force of holding back. “Tell me you want this.” The way he says it, tonight he needs it to be true.

You thread your arms behind his neck, pull yourself up so the next words are tangled straight into his hair: “I want you to fuck me right here. I want you to remember it every time you walk through your kitchen.” You don’t recognize your own voice, but maybe that’s the point.

Ji-yong stops pretending. He lets out a sound. A half laugh, half plead, and then he’s flicking up the edge of your skirt, fingers dragging hard at your hips until the fabric is somewhere far away. You want him so badly it’s a kind of sickness, a fever rising off the skin, and his touch burns when he takes your panties away, flicking them somewhere behind him.

You don’t care if you find them in the morning.

He finds you wet, trembling, opens you with two sure fingers and watches you gasp. All his careful restraint is gone now, replaced by something reckless; you grab for his wrist, hungry to feel yourself pinwheeled raw and exposed through his hands. He moves slowly at first, as if time is elastic, as if he can make the memory of tonight last longer by measuring each motion, drawing each sound from you as deliberate as a note in music.

You buck into him, shameless. The cold of the countertop stings and the heat of his hands sears, and you grind against his palm, looking for more, needing so much it almost hurts.

“Desperate,” he murmurs, like a compliment and a confession.

He pulls his fingers free—not to leave you wanting, but to bring them up to his mouth, licking them clean while looking at you with a gaze so steady it dares you to look away. You don’t.

He gives you back your own taste like a promise, then uses both hands to pull you forward, the edge of the countertop biting into you. One palm splays over your lower stomach, holding you flush to the cold marble as he frees himself with the other, the zipper rasping quick and frantic over the thrum in your ears. You fumble at his waistband, teeth bared in a smile you can't even see, and the next thing you know he's pressing in, the hard length of him tight against you, and you are so unbelievably, humiliatingly ready.

Ji-yong takes his time lining up, the head of his cock sliding along your slick entrance, and the weight of his stare makes you impossibly more sensitive. He wants you to break, to beg, but you only bare your teeth at him, nails digging into his arms as you brace yourself. Only when you mutter, "Fucking hell, do it," does he actually push in.

Just enough to make you whine, then waits, gathering the air between you in a palm-size globe of want until you think you’ll claw right through his skin if he doesn’t move. He’s staring at your face, at the twist of your mouth and scrunching your nose, and in another life maybe that look would be soft. But here, in this city, with this boy, it’s about watching you fracture, counting the instruments in your scream.

“Look at me,” he says again, and you do, even as he splits you in half.

You hold his gaze all the way in. The pain is sharp at first, then molten, then nothing but heat and the sting of tears at the edges of your eyes. He sets a rhythm punishing and perfect, every thrust built for sensation, for claim. He paces you with the metronome in his chest, watching how each measured snap of his hips crumples you further, sets you vibrating on the marble like a live wire.

Your legs tremble, heels scraping at the cold surface for purchase, until you lock your ankles at the small of his back and drag him in deeper. He sucks in a breath hard enough to whistle and slams forward, and you break, clinging to his shoulders as your body shudders around him.

“Oh, fuck,” he says, reverent, like he’s praying. His voice cracks with it. You snap your teeth at him in a grin, and the sound you make is its own kind of worship.

The counter is slick with sweat and whatever’s leaking from you now, and he slides a hand beneath your ass to tip your hips up, opening you so wide you gasp. The kitchen is echoing with the sound of skin and your shared gasps.

You ride the shock together, hips finding a rhythm that is not quite the music and not quite each other, something wilder in the dissonance. He sets his jaw, holding back, wanting to make it last, but you’re not here to last. You’re here to burn.

He tucks his face into your neck, biting back the ragged edge of a scream. Nuzzling you in that cat-like way he favored so much when he edged on something softer. You feel it anyway, vibrating through your body as he fills you, as if every part of you was made for this moment. You reach back, raking fingers through his hair, gasping when he thrusts deeper, harder, as if he wants to carve the shape of himself into your body.

You break first, shuddering around him, a wave of heat and ache that crests and pulls you under. He holds you through it, teeth at your collarbone, hands bruising and then gentle when the shaking in your thighs gets too intense. You lose yourself in the aftershocks, letting his name slip out, over and over, until it’s just a syllable that means nothing but the rush of being seen.

He follows, a low growl muffled into your shoulder, hips stuttering as he comes. You feel it, the hot surge inside you, and the way he clings like he’s afraid of falling. For a second, there’s nothing but the high-pitched static of after, the two of you collapsed together and made softer by the tremble in his limbs. He holds your face with both hands, searching it, making sure you really are still here.

Somewhere between the shallow, shivering breaths and the slow return to gravity, you realize your skirt is still bunched around your hips, and the marble cold enough to start raising goosebumps. You lift your head, blinking him into view. He presses a gentle kiss to your temple, then chin, then the round of your cheek where you try to look away.

“Don’t hide from me now,” he says, and you want to protest, but he’s already sliding out, the sensation leaving you raw and open. Everything’s a mess: you can feel the mix of you leaking onto the marble, and you hate and love how soft he acts now.

He pulls you upright with both hands, steadying you on trembling legs, and for a moment neither of you say a word. The city’s lights blink on and off behind the blackout glass, casting what’s left of your dignity and his shame in cinematic glow. Ji-yong’s chest heaves, still open and vulnerable in the bare slant of his ribs. The cold bites your thighs; you turn into him, wanting to burrow down, but he shakes his head soft and leans away to grab a dish towel from the sink.

It’s almost funny how domestic he looks. He wets the towel under the tap, returns, and dabs at the mess on your skin with a kind of gentleness that you know is for him, not you. Still, you let him. You always do.

He doesn’t meet your eyes as he wipes the inside of your knees, and the trails all the way to your inner thighs. Careful, methodical. Not shy, he never had been since the first time you both stumbled into his place.

He puts the towel aside and leans his head against your shoulder, both of you wordless and emptied out, bodies pressed together cold and damp in the hush of his penthouse. He inhales hard, slow, as if he could memorize the shape of your scent.

You’re about to speak, something to break the spell—but he beats you to it. “Stay,” he says, voice muffled in the hollow above your collarbone. He’s never figured out how to ask for things in any other way.

The towel is still clutched in his hand, but now it’s just a piece of fabric, limp and useless. The illusion of him as caretaker lasts only until you see the goosebumps sprinting up his arms, the shake in his hands, the ragged edge in his voice. You hold him for a while, anchored to the kitchen island, brushing sweat-damp hair from his face. Your heart aches, traitorous.

“You’ll push me away in the morning,” You whisper, “So carry me to bed to make up for it.”

He doesn’t argue. He scoops you up, the muscle memory of it so practiced it makes you laugh, a barked sound in your own throat as your arms go automatically around his neck. He’s not tall enough to make it look effortless, but you like the way he staggers just a little, the honest flex in his jaw, the way he hitches your legs tighter as he walks the length of the penthouse.

He stumbles once on the way to the bedroom, nearly dropping you, and you bark out a laugh. He huffs, “Don’t bite me,” not meaning it.

He kicks the bedroom door open with his hip, and the small violence of it makes something in you jolt awake. The room is sparse, blackout curtains, the only point of color the heap of washed-out hoodies and the forest of sneakers along the far wall. He sets you down in the sheets like he can’t stand to keep you out of his space one second longer.

He goes to the bathroom first, and you hear the rattle of the medicine cabinet, the whir of the tap, and then he emerges with a glass of water and two ibuprofen. He sets them on the nightstand and then crawls onto the bed beside you, sheets still cold from the day’s inertia, but his body heat erases it fast.

Neither of you mention the night, or the mess in the kitchen, or the fact that you both know exactly how this will end. Maybe in the morning. Maybe with a phone call, or a quiet nothing texted at 2pm. For now, the city is nothing but the soundproof hush of his bedroom, the distant sirens a background pulse to your unsteady breathing.

You roll to your side, pushing your hair up off your forehead, watching the outline of his profile as he stares at the shadowed ceiling like a boy on the edge of a confession. You almost ask what he’s thinking, but you already know.

You inch closer, the distance shrinking until you could count every fluttering movement of his eyelids. "Do you ever wish it was different?" you ask, voice low.

You breathe in the space between you, catch the tobacco memory in his hair, the leftover sting of sweat, the salt of his body. You remember all the times you left before the light changed, before he could even try to keep you. You’ve tried to construct an answer for this question a hundred times, but it always collapses under the weight of your own design.

"Sometimes," he says. "But only when I let myself get soft."

“And you aren’t now?” You ask, as if speaking will make it any different.

You know, no matter what words you say, you’ll be politely pushed out tomorrow morning. It doesn’t lessen the sting, or stop the heavy sway of sleep tugging at the edge of your eyelids.

Ji-yong just smiles at the ceiling, one arm curled under his head, the other lazily tracing circles at your hip as if the whole history of you could be mapped there. He doesn’t answer right away, and the silence makes the question feel heavier, as if it might pull the whole bed through the floor if neither of you dare move.

You watch his profile, the way his tongue runs along the edge of his teeth in thought. You reach over, press your lips into his shoulder blade, and let the shape of his name form on your tongue for the thousandth time. You don’t say it. He doesn’t need you to.

“Good night,” He answers instead of any other handful of answers you could’ve asked for.

You think of all the ways you want to answer but don’t, and the city spins outside the blackout curtains, your bodies electric and drained, the room a quiet box of animal heat.

You fall asleep to the rhythm of his breath.

TAGLIST: @petersasteria, @sherrayyyyy, @loveesiren, @aizshallnotbefound, @breakmeoff

also i was too lazy to check ages in the event taglist so uhhh, just the regular taglist for today SOZ

#bigbang x reader #gdragon x reader #big bang x reader #kwon jiyong x reader #g-dragon x reader #kpop x reader #kwon ji-yong x reader #gd x reader #18+ mdni

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ash5monster01 · 3 days ago

Note

hiii :) can i please get the chicken wings extra hot for two and to dine in, with a side of onion rings and a water. thanks <3

Order #9

Now Serving!

Main Course: Steve Harrington x PlusSize!FemReader

Ingredients: 18+, MDNI, smut, angst, enemies to lovers, plus size reader, body image issues, mentions of anxiety, oral - fem receiving, language, minor dirty talk, reconciliation, fluff.

Meal: Steve smut/angst with plus sized reader, enemies to lovers, and one bed.

Total: $29.24 = 2.9k words

Menu - Masterlist

You knew you should’ve never agreed to this. Yeah, you wanted to see Robin, but was visiting her at college worth the predicament you were in now? Rain soaked through your clothes, arms wrapped tightly around yourself as you listened to the hot shower run through the motel wall. Only two hours into your journey, riding with the man you despised most, a storm hit and shut down the highway. Then the only motel nearby had just one room left, a single queen bed in the center, taunting you like some cruel joke.

You had hated Steve Harrington since High School, you held no sympathy for ego inflated assholes who looked down at everyone around them. Somehow though, he had befriended your best friend, which now put you in situations like this. Finally after what felt like centuries, the water cut off and the bathroom door swung open, leaving a dripping wet Steve and a towel wrapped tightly around his waist in your sight.

“Showers free,” he grumbles and you hate yourself for the way you swallow hard. Since when has Steve Harrington looked like that? Thick chest hair stuck to his skin with water, heavy and prominent as it dwindles down into the happy trail that disappeared beneath his towel. It should be a sin how good he looks.

“No thanks to you,” you remark, doing your best to keep your eyes away as you start for the bathroom. The truth was Steve needed the shower before you. He was the one who had gotten out of the car to ask the guy at the gas station for the nearest motel and then also got out to book the room. He had been shivering for the last hour, you were cold but not as bad as him.

Steve just shakes his head at you, already digging through his bag for some pajamas, while you disappear inside the bathroom. The shower feels heavenly against your skin, the searing hot water burning into you. It didn’t matter that the whole bathroom had fogged over from the two of you. It had been a long day already, and somewhat scary when neither of you could see through the windshield from how hard it was pouring. It didn’t even matter that you were here with Steve of all people, this was nice.

Stepping out of the shower you’re quick to wrap the towel around you before wiping away at the foggy mirror. You take your time brushing your hair and teeth, fixing yourself up, just to avoid being trapped alone with him in the room. Blissfully unaware of the pile of clothes you left on the end of the bed. As soon as you realize you begin searching frantically. You curse yourself for it, knowing you wouldn’t have forgotten them had you not been checking him out. Now it was having to accept the fact you were either walking out of here with a shitty motel towel that barely wraps around you or asking Steve Harrington of all people for help.

“Steve?” you crack open the door, the cold air from the room seeping into the steamy bathroom. You try not to shiver as you wait for his response.

“Yes?” he calls back and you’re able to picture his smirk just from the tone of his voice. He had definitely spotted your clothes and was more than likely going to tease you about it.

“Can you please bring me my clothes?” you ask as sweetly as possible, hoping he wouldn’t make some show out of this interaction. You were stark naked, hidden behind the door, and every part of you prayed he wouldn’t see. You may have disliked Steve but to see his disgust when seeing your size would kill you.

“Man I don’t know, I’m all nice and tucked into bed. Promise I’ll close my eyes,” he calls back and you instantly wince, slumping against the door as you try to calm your anxiety. It didn’t even matter that he was messing with you, that was normal. It was the crippling fear of being different from other girls that killed you.

“Please Steve, just— please,” you practically whisper, dizzy with nerves, and somehow he hears you. In the small crack of the door appears his hand, fisting the shorts and sleep shirt.

“Anything else while I’m up?” he asks, a genuine tone to his voice and you hold the clothes to your chest, thankful he was willing to drop it this one time.

“I’m okay, thank you,” you tell him and just like that his hand disappears and you click the door closed. You appear only a few minutes later, baggy clothes hanging off your form and wet hair flowing down your back. Steve is tucked into bed, still shirtless with the comforter up to his waist, lazily clicking through channels on the motel TV.

“Anything good?” you ask, trying to make it feel less awkward when you have to crawl in beside him. He grumbles, glancing over at you while you put away your toiletries and hang your wet clothes over the dresser drawer you’ve pulled out to act as a clothing rack.

“Just some reruns, news about the storm, and Footloose,” he tells you, leaving the channel with Kevin Bacon playing since it seemed better than any other choice. You nod, clicking off the lights and leaving only his bedside lamp and TV illuminating the room. You pad across the carpet, not making eye contact as you lift the sheets and slide in beside him. Careful to stay away as far as you can.

“Goodnight,” you mumble, adjusting your head against the pillow and making sure you have your back turned to him.

“Goodnight,” he mutters back, clicking off the lamp beside him, and you try to fall asleep. The sooner you were unconscious the quicker this awkward sleepover would pass. Yet nothing you do works, every part of your body hyper aware of the one it lays next to. The prospect of an accidental touch keeping you stiff as a board. At this rate, you were certain you wouldn’t get any sleep. Even if the TV was still playing.

“I’m sorry if I upset you earlier,” his voice makes you jump, not expecting him to say another word, at least until the morning when he claimed you snored or stole all the covers.

“It’s fine Steve, not a big deal,” you whisper back, determined to try and pretend to sleep again. You hated that the dark made it seem like the wall between you was drawn away, baring you to the other in a more intimate and softer way.

“Can I ask why? I was just joking like normal but you panicked. I’ve never heard you like that,” he mumbles and you squeeze your eyes shut, trying to avoid the inevitable conversation. You hated the idea of sharing your fears with the boy beside you but this was also a window to how Robin saw him. The guy everybody loved so much and the one you had been dying to meet.

“I’m a bigger girl Steve, clothes can somewhat hide it but that small towel…. I can handle you hating me but I can’t handle you being disgusted by me,” you admit in a whisper, thankful your back was towards him so you couldn’t see his face.

Steve’s quiet for a while, mulling over your words, and you mentally curse yourself for saying anything at all. You both had targeted some of the weakest parts of each other before and now you’ve just given him your number one. So far all his teasing and sharp comments had never been directed at your weight, but you’d loaded the gun. Ready to get out of the bed and leave the room entirely, what you don’t expect is a large hand sliding over the dip of your waist, your stomach jumping with the fear of him feeling your size.

“You’re beautiful. You may annoy me but you don’t disgust me. You never have,” he says, squeezing at the flesh of your waist. Surprisingly tears burn at the back of your eyes and you try to blink them away.

“You don’t have to lie,” you mumble, voice cracking and giving away your emotion. He definitely knows you're crying now and suddenly he is pressed tightly against your back, large arms wrapping you up in a hug. It’s weird to feel so comforted by a person you normally wouldn’t be but you find yourself accepting the embrace anyway.

You both lay there for a while, neither of you saying a word. Finally your cries calm and it’s then you accept this is the first time you’ve ever been held by a man like this. It almost makes your heart ache at the idea of never getting this feeling again. So you accept the way his strong arms and broad shoulders mold around you, relish in the feeling just in case you never get it again, and allow your body to relax and push back into his. Almost forgetting who it was of all people until suddenly the body behind you stiffens.

“Everything okay or did you suddenly remember who you are holding?” you try to joke but Steve doesn't laugh, staying as still as possible.

“No, it’s just your movement…” he trails off like he isn’t sure how to describe it to you. Deciding to finally face him, you roll just slightly and it’s then you feel it. Something long and hard pressed perfectly against the curve of your ass. Realization dawns on you quickly.

“Oh,” you deadpan, not sure how to respond. The worst part is that you like it, something sick and twisted in you has you clenching your thighs together at the idea. Discovering you of all people turned him on. You may have hated Steve Harrington but you couldn’t have been presented with a better opportunity. Trapped in a motel, far from home, and only one bed. Really it wouldn’t have mattered which guy was here with you.

“Sorry,” he winces, feeling awful for being in this position after you just cried. Yet you shock him when you roll over to face him, holding him close.

“Don’t be, I don't mind,” you blush and unable to stop himself he has his lips pressed to your own. It’s weird at first, the two of you unsure how to proceed as your lips move together. Finally after a while you find a rhythm and discover Steve is a great kisser.

The same time one of his knees wedges between your legs, his tongue dips into your mouth, drawing out a whine you didn’t know you were capable of. You want to feel embarrassed but all of him feels too good to really dwell. The closer he draws in your body, you worry about how he views your size, yet his hungry kisses will away your doubts in a way you’ve never felt before. It should be sickening how easily you become addicted to him but the way his hand slips under your shirt is enough to reason. Long fingers trailing over your flesh, feeling and exploring any part of you it can find. When he grazes the skin underneath your breast, fingers expanding over to collect a handful, your body naturally causes you to grind down onto the leg wedged between yours.

“You have no idea how badly I’ve wanted to touch you like this,” he mumbles against your lips, continuing to squeeze and memorizing the feel of you in his hands. His words only make you wetter and you are inebriated by how turned on you are. The part of your brain that tries to conjure a response only falls short and instead a moan leaves your lips when his fingers pinch at one of your nipples.

As if a switch is flipped, you relax into him, kissing back and allowing him to roll you on your back as he begins to hover over. When he pulls back, your eyes feel heavy as you look back at him, his mussed wet hair and swollen lips. Toned arms and wide hands gripping the hem of the T-shirt that not so long ago he hand delivered to you. You can see the silent question, the hope, and you nod because no words need to be shared. Even if this is just for this moment, a blip in time, and never discussed again. It was too important to the both of you.

He lifts the shirt slowly, revealing flesh, and curves, and every part of you that you’ve ever been insecure about before. You adjust where needed, making it easier to remove the clothing, and when the fabric gets pulled over your head you realize you’ll never be able to forget the look of adoration on Steve’s face as he stares at your bare form. Feeling daring and confident, you reach for him and the energy between you becomes charged, electric and buzzing with the need for the other. His body is pressed back to yours in a flash, bare skin pressed tightly as he tastes your mouth and sucks at skin you’d never revealed to him before.

“Are you okay with this?” he asks when his fingers dip into the hem of your shorts, and you nod quickly, more interested in kissing him again. It’s crazy how normally you’d be panicking over him discovering your plump stomach and thick thighs and instead every touch feels too good, good enough it wasn’t worth stopping. Your hips lift as the fabric slips over the curve of your ass, underwear following suit until you are finally naked in front of Steve of all people. If you went back in time to tell yourself this happened, you wouldn't believe it.

“You’re so beautiful,” he suddenly says and the words make you flush, not expecting them to leave his mouth so genuinely. You want to reply but no words feel good enough to convey how good he just made you feel. It doesn’t matter though, because his lips are back against yours, dragging down your neck, and sucking softly against your breasts. He keeps lowering, pressing wet kisses against the dough of your stomach until suddenly, his head is directly in front of your heat, arms hooking under each of your legs. He doesn’t move, like at any moment you’d flee.

“Please Steve,” you whine and he doesn’t need anymore confirmation, his tongue delving into your folds and lapping up until it nudges your clit in a soft circle. It’s a sensation you’ve never experienced before and you have to fight to keep your legs from squeezing his head. He continues to taste you, burying his face deeper and deeper, his nose nudging your bud as his tongue pushes into your entrance. You’re not even sure how he’s breathing and unexpectedly he pushes two fingers inside you, lips sucking harshly on your clit, and your fingers tangle into his hair.

“God, you taste so good,” he mutters, continuing to finger fuck you before pressing a gentle kiss to your swollen bundle of nerves. It’s erotic, paired with Steve’s red lips and dazed expression has you trembling. You can feel the coil in your stomach tighten and you try to fight it. A part of you never wants this to end.

“Steve,” your voice trembles, a heavy moan following behind and he nods at you, adding another finger and speeding up the process.

“It’s okay baby, cum for me,” he tells you before adding his mouth back to the sensation. His words shatter something inside you and your orgasm washes over like a wave. Your whole body pulsates as you clench down on his fingers. He grins widely as he continues to pump into you, riding out the orgasm he now holds as an achievement.

“Oh my,” you say when you return to your body. Your hands cover your eyes and the post orgasm clarity has you flushing with embarrassment over what you’d just done. You can feel Steve crawl back up your form, his smiling lips pressing gentle kisses into your skin, before snuggling into your side.

“Look at me,” he urges, pulling your hands away and against your better judgment, you do. Your heart practically stops beating when you see how softly he looks at you, how gentle he is despite the fact you hadn’t even gotten him off like he had you.

“You still think you disgust me?” he asks and you quickly roll your eyes, determined to roll away but he holds you tight. The look of a boy whose dreams had just come true painted across his face.

“I don’t know, ask me in the morning,” you suggest and he chuckles, snuggling into the bed and trying to memorize the feeling of you against him. The both of you were unsure where to go from here and how it would play out when you left the protection of this motel room.

“Okay beautiful, let’s get some sleep then,” he agrees, liking that response better than any sort of denial you could have given him.

“Goodnight Steve,” you mutter and he grins, pressing a soft kiss into your hair and tucking you into his arms, your cheek pressed to the same chest hair you had admired from before. Steve doesn’t ask for more, or push you into finishing him off, instead he holds you like that was exactly what he meant to do. Make you feel your worth.

“Goodnight.”

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luxcuriousao3 · 2 days ago

Text

Summary: John shows up at your place to return your pan. Somehow, this leads to him taking you on a "date." Word Count: 2763 Warnings: sfw, unrequited love (for Kyle) Notes: Part 3 my Price/Reader fic. (Masterlist)

A week later, you stomp back into your flat and throw your keys onto the front hall table hard enough to nearly make the little catch-all bowl crack. You can’t bring yourself to care, just stripping off your purse and roughly hanging it on the coat rack, grumbling curses under your breath.

“Stupid photographer,” you mutter. “Stupid client. Stupid bloody agent.”

You’re halfway to the loo to take off your carefully applied makeup—fuck, but you’d spent hours on it this morning, all for nothing—when your phone rings. You’re sorely tempted to ignore it, but when you glance down, you see it's Kyle. You haven’t spoken to him since the day after the pub fiasco, ignoring his texts, but you know you can’t avoid him forever. You’d told him you forgave him—it’s time to act like it.

“Stalking me now, Garrick?” You ask as you pick up the FaceTime call, only raising the phone to your face once you flop onto the couch. “This is, what? The third time you’ve called in as many days?”

“I wouldn’t have to stalk you if you’d answer the bloody phone,” Kyle answers, and you can tell he’s not just annoyed, but worried. “Look, luv, if you’re still pissed about the other night, I get it. I fucked up. You don’t have to act like everything’s okay because you’re afraid I’ll be ups— did you just get back from a gig?”

You blink, caught off guard by the sudden change in subject. But Kyle’s brought his face close to the screen now, peering at it carefully. Of course he recognizes your modelling makeup. It may have been years since he’s done a gig himself, but the makeup has a specific look that’s hard to forget. Mainly because it takes so bloody long to do. Kyle used to complain the whole time, it nearly made you tear your hair out from frustration.

“Yeah,” you say, your anger rearing its ugly head again. “But no. I traveled over an hour to get there, only for them to take one look at me and say I wasn’t the right fit for what they’re going for. More like I’m not fit enough.”

You scoff, but you can’t quite hide the hurt you feel, not entirely.

“I could kill ‘em,” Kyle offers, completely serious. Concerningly serious. You must not be able to hide your reaction to that, either, because he backtracks. “Or just cause serious bodily harm.” You can feel your face do something, though you’re not sure what. When he speaks again, it sounds like a plea. “Property damage?”

“No, Kyle,” you tell him, letting out a long suffering sigh. “Don’t do anything illegal for my sake, you idiot. I don’t want to have to bail your arse out of jail in the middle of the night. Again.”

“We agreed to never speak of that,” Kyle responds quickly, and he looks over his shoulder, like he’s afraid of someone overhearing about his teenage misadventures. You snort, holding up your hands in surrender.

“Secret’s safe with me,” you reassure him, but you make no effort to keep the mischievous smile off your face. He narrows his eyes at you for a long moment, before letting out a hmph and leaning back a bit, so you can no longer see up his nostril. Thank God. He really needs to blow his nose.

Sometimes, I can’t believe I’m in love with this man, you think despairingly to yourself.

“Speaking of secrets,” he says, jumping topics once again. You think about bringing the conversation back around to the original one—because honestly, yeah, you’re still kind of pissed at him, even if you’d not said as much the other day, too busy pretending you weren’t nursing a broken heart after finding out he’d hooked up with some other girl—but decide against it. How are you supposed to explain how badly it hurt without spilling truths that could very well ruin your friendship? “There’s a rumor going around base that Price has a wife. The lads at the gate were saying some pretty bird came by last week to drop off dinner for him. Soap thinks it's true, the pillock, even reckons Price’s got a little one stashed away somewhere. I told him that if he can find proof of that, I’ll buy him drinks for the next year.”

Kyle chuckles, clearly not putting any stock in the thought, but you pale, clearing your throat awkwardly.

“Er,” you say, tugging at your earlobe nervously. “That was me.”

Kyle stops laughing, looking at you in utter confusion.

“You’re the Captain’s secret wife?” He asks, lost.

“No, you twit,” you roll your eyes. “I’m the one that brought him dinner. I wanted to thank him for getting me home safely.”

“Hold on,” Kyle starts, his voice growing agitated. “You visited the base I’ve been stationed at for years, for the very first time, to see Price? Not me?”

You try to respond, but he cuts you off before you can get a single word out.

“You didn’t even tell me you were coming,” he continues, and oh, oh no. He doesn’t sound angry anymore, just hurt. That’s so much worse. “If you’re that mad at me for the other night, why did you act like everything was fine when I called? Why won’t you talk to me like an adu—?”

There’s a knock at your door, and you jump, before grabbing onto the opportunity to avoid the impending argument with both hands.

“Sorry, Kyle, I’ve got to go, maintenance is here,” you lie. You don’t give him a chance to say anything else before you hang up, and promptly put your phone on silent.

Fuck.

You groan loudly as you get up off the ouch, taking a deep breath and smoothing out nonexistent wrinkles from your tracksuit, just taking a moment to collect yourself and pack away as much of the stress and hurt that you can. You grimace when you catch sight of yourself in the mirror, the worried furrow between your brow and the hard set of your mouth that just won’t go away. Fuck it. Hopefully it will scare off whoever is at your door and you can wallow in peace.

Of course, the universe has other plans.

Standing outside your flat is Kyle’s Captain himself, holding a familiar glass pan in his hands. He’s wearing dark grey slacks and a black turtleneck, a silver, wide-faced watch on his left wrist, and he looks so good your heart skips a beat. You gape at him—unattractively, you’re sure—for a long moment, only snapping out of your shock when he clears his throat pointedly.

“‘Lo, love,” he greets you, amusement dancing in his squinted blue eyes. He holds up the pan. “Wanted ta bring this back to you, and thank you f’the meal. Was the best thing I’ve eaten in a long time.”

“Oh, erm, you’re welcome,” you stutter, completely caught off guard by his presence—and still distracted by how bloody handsome he looks. Good lord, he looks like he’s just walked straight off the cover of GQ. You step aside automatically, manners taking over, and gesture him into the flat. “Er, would you like to come in?”

John hums, looking around as he steps inside, following you down the short entrance hall into the living room. You belatedly take the pan from him with a muttered apology full of embarrassment, but he waves you off with an easy smile.

“Can’t say I’m not curious what your place looks like in the daylight,” he tells you as he leans against the counter and watches you put the clean pan away. You briefly wonder if he’s looking at your arse when you bend down to place it in the cabinet, but when you straighten up, he’s admiring the artwork on the wall over your couch. You refuse to acknowledge the hint of disappointment you feel. “All the lights were out when I brought you home, the other night. Was quite a struggle getting you through here into your room.”

You frown, confused and embarrassed.

“Why didn’t you just turn them on?” You ask, a little defensive. John just chuckles.

“I was going to, but you told me, and I quote, ‘If you wake my roommate up, I swear to God I’ll throw up all over you. I can’t handle her whinging right now.’” John’s laugh only grows louder at your mortified expression. “You’re quite a character, when you’ve had a few too many.”

“Oh my God,” you groan, covering your flaming face. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry, John. I can’t believe… well, I can, but—God. You should have just dumped me on the couch.”

His smile quickly drops, and he looks almost offended at the thought.

“That’s no way to treat a woman,” he says firmly. Your heart does a flip in your chest. You already knew he was a gentleman, but good lord, hearing him say it like that was nearly enough to make you swoon. Curse your stupid little crush. “Especially one who’s not feeling well.”

“Who’s sloshed, you mean,” you correct, peeking through your fingers, words muffled by your hands. John hums again, but he doesn’t otherwise acknowledge your words, drumming his fingers on your countertop as he looks at you, hiding behind your hands. The intense gaze makes you feel suddenly foolish, and you drop them quickly.

“Off to somewhere nice?” He asks after a moment of just staring at you, seemingly unbothered by the awkward silence. You tilt your head to the side, confused, and he gestures to his own face. “You’re all dolled up.”

“Oh!” You exclaim, having forgotten all about your failed gig between the call with Kyle and John’s surprise visit. You glance in the mirror to see if you’ve smudged your makeup, but it's still perfectly in place. Thank Christ for setting spray. “Oh, no, I’m not going anywhere. I had a gig today. Well, I was supposed to, but they canceled on me after I already got there.”

You spare John the details, not exactly wanting to get into the fact that both the client and the photographer had found you too plain to work with. You try not to take things like that to heart—you’re used to it, being in this business—but never have you been dismissed after booking, preparing for, and travelling to a shoot. Sure, being told you’re ugly hurts, but it’s the wasted time and effort that stings the most.

“That’s rotten luck, darlin’,” he agrees. You think that’ll be it, that he’ll thank you again for the food and leave, but instead, he continues. “How about you join me for dinner? I don’t leave base very much, figured I’d take advantage of the chance for another nice meal. Doubt it’ll be as good as yours, but certainly better than the slop they serve in the canteen.”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly,” you reply, eyes wide. “I wouldn’t want to intrude on your night out…”

“Not intruding if I invite you, is it?” John asks with a wink and a smile. It startles a tiny, flustered giggle out of you. “Come now, love. Keep an old man company so he doesn’t have to dine alone this evening, will you?”

And oh, that does something to you. John’s not old, probably late thirties to mid forties if you had to guess, but he is older than you. Far older than you would typically go for, by a decade at the very least. You don’t think he’s asking you on a date, not really, but… you wouldn’t be opposed if he was.

Maybe going on a date with someone as charming as John will help you start to get over Kyle.

It’s never worked before, but maybe the third hundredth time is the charm?

(And if the thought of Kyle hearing about what you get up to tonight after you hung up on him gives you a sense of petty satisfaction… well. No one else has to know.)

“Alright,” you find yourself agreeing, biting your lip at the smile John gives you. “I have to change first, though. I’ll look like a frump next to you.”

“You’d look pretty in a rubbish bag, darlin’,” he replies easily, and you roll your eyes, but you’re smiling now too. He chucks the underside of your chin, just a brief, light tap. “Cheeky. So long as you’ve got on that grin, it doesn’t matter what you’re wearin’.”

You blush brightly, unsure you can take much more of his teasing. You know he’s not really flirting with you, just like how this isn’t a real date. But there’s a certain thrill in pretending.

“Be that as it may, I’m still not going to wear a tracksuit to a nice restaurant,” you tell him, turning around to start heading to your room. “Make yourself at home. I won’t be long.”

As soon as the door closes behind you, you ruhs over to your closet, rooting through it for an outfit you can wear—one that’s classier than you’d wear to the club, but not too fancy. You settle on a knee-length black dress with wide, draped half sleeves, a small, modest window at the bust, and tiny gold piece that rests over the hollow of your throat and serves to pull the fabric back together into a rounded neckline. You pair it with black tights and black kitten heels, unsure if you’ll be walking or driving, but wanting to be prepared for either.

Your hair is already done, along with your makeup, so you just do a few touch ups before heading back out. John is glaring at the flickering light in your kitchen like it’s mortally offended him, and you huff a laugh. He looks down at you, and you don’t think you imagine the flicker of hungry appreciation in his eyes, but it's there and gone so quickly that you can’t be sure.

“Gorgeous,” he says lowly, and paired with his heavy stare, the reaction makes your belly swoop and your core throb. You clear your throat and ignore it, giving him a little smile in thanks. “All ready?”

“Ready,” you answer, accepting his arm when he offers it to you. He leads you to the door, opening it and letting you go so you can step through, before threading your arm through his again. “Where are we dining, then?”

“Haven’t decided,” he hums. “Do you have a favorite place around here?”

“Francesca’s is nice,” you offer after a moment of thought. “They do a good Italian. Bit pricey though.”

“Francesca it is,” he replies. “And it’s my treat. I did guilt you into coming, after all.”

“You didn’t guilt me, John,” you protest, even though he kind of did. But only a tiny bit. “And that’s not necessary. I can pay for my own dinner.”

John just squeezes your arm lightly, neither agreeing or disagreeing, and you narrow your eyes at him.

“I’m serious,” you continue. “I know how to order within my budget. You’re not paying for me.”

“Alright love,” he soothes you, then nods towards the black SUV on the corner, nice but a bit of an older model. “This is me.”

He opens the passenger side door for you and helps you step up into the car, making sure you’re buckled before he closes it and rounds the car to get behind the wheel. As the engine starts, he reaches out to turn on the radio. Classic rock pours from the speakers at a low volume, and John immediately starts to drum his fingers along the steering wheel to the beat as he puts the car in reverse and pulls out onto the street proper.

“Didn’t take you for a fan of the classics,” you tease, and you see his beard twitch with a smile even as he doesn’t look away from the road.

“Oh?” He asks curiously. “What did you think I’d listen to, then?”

You pretend to study him for a long moment, humming and stroking your non-existent facial hair. His own twitches further.

“Smooth jazz,” you finally say, nodding to yourself. John chuckles deeply, eyes sparkling with mirth.

“Can’t say I’ve ever really given it a try,” he admits. “Perhaps I should. Maybe you’re onto something.”

“Maybe,” you say, reaching out to turn up the volume. “Or maybe not. Classic rock is quite difficult to beat.”

“That it is,” John agrees, still laughing softly. Out of the corner of your eye, you see him glance at you for just a few seconds. “That it is.”

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