#its not my fault hes pretty and i want to blow him up
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m1d-45 · 2 months ago
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doctor's orders
summary: a mild cold in the hands of one used to life or death illnesses... he really worries too much.
word count: 1k
-> warnings: you're like.. very mildly sick.. +take one (1) pill for like .5 of one second. nothin serious
-> gn reader (you/yours)
taglist: @samarill || @thenyxsky || @valeriele3 || @shizunxie || @boba-is-a-soup || @yuus3n || @esthelily || @turningfrogsgay || @cupandtea24 || @genshin-impacts-me || @chaoticfivesworld || @raaawwwr || @ryuryuryuyurboat || @undrxtxd || @rainswept || @wanderersqt || @rozz-eokkk
< masterlist >
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“i don’t know why you’re taking this so seriously.”
“i don’t kow why you aren’t.”
you sniffle again, wiping at your nose with a napkin he’d insisted you take. “it’s not like i’ll die, baizhu.”
“dont joke about that.” he sat at his desk, counting qingxin petals as he plucked them off. “you’ll be perfectly fine, so long as you take your medicine.”
you wanted to roll your eyes, to push off his worry and deny the pills. yes, you were sick, but with barely a cold—more an annoyance than anything—that you didn’t think was worth even half the trouble.
but if nothing else, this was for his benefit. part of the curse of being a doctor, you supposed: knowing even the most severe of illnesses started with a cough. or, in your case, congestion.
“and you’re certain that’s it? no aches or pains?”
for his sake, you checked again. nothing out of the ordinary, just as it was five minutes ago, the last time he asked you.
“i’m fine, just as i have been and just as i will be. even if i wanted to hide something, you’d be able to tell.”
he’d known you were sick before you did. you went out with qiqi yesterday, returning to the pharmacy with a basket propped on your waist. you exchanged your greetings with gui, lingering to watch qiqi set herself up in her chair, carefully prying seeds out of lotus heads. you were sat beside her sorting the horsetail from the violet grass when he came out of the back door, eyes lingering on you strangely.
“are you feeling well?”
you looked up, hands stalling. “yeah, i feel fine. why, is something wrong?”
gui smiled like he knew something you didn’t, but you didn’t focus on that. baizhu came to you, taking your hands in his, inspecting your palms like you’d miraculously developed an allergy to horsetail overnight. “…are you sure?”
“positive.”
“no new aches, not unusually hot or short of breath, nothing stiff or-”
“baizhu.” you turned your hands to hold his instead, his gloves cool under your fingers. “i’m fine. you worry too much.”
but, of course, your karma swung around and you woke up with a headache and a pressure in your sinus. the light off the stone paths felt too bright, your predicament obvious from the moment you opened your mouth to say hello. just like that, you’d been whisked away to a back room, changsheng curling around your shoulders as he tried to find any and every reason to worry.
it was cute. or, would have been, if you didn’t know he was worried beneath the fuss. if you didn’t know any better, it would seem like he was finding any and all excuses to touch you. a loose grip on your wrist to check if your heart was irregular, the back of his hand against your cheek to see if you had a fever, worrying and worrying like you weren’t stuck with the common cold and he wasn’t the best doctor this side of inazuma.
“you worry too much.”
“you worry too little. drink your tea.”
you did, bearing the bitter taste as changsheng slipped from your shoulders to his. honestly, with the way he was treating you, one could easily think you were at death’s door.
you weren’t, though. you traced the rim of the ceramic mug, watching him fuss with your medicine, carefully crushing and mixing a variety of strong-smelling ingredients you couldn’t hope to identify off sight alone, characteristics lost in the mortar and pestle.
“so,” you start, his eyes flicking to you but not losing focus. “you come here often?”
he rolled his eyes, adding an ambiguously labeled syrup. whatever shorthand he and gui had mastered was a mystery to you no matter how hard you tried to decipher it. “this is serious.”
“it’s the flu.”
“you don’t know that.”
“you’re biased.”
“and you’re not getting out of taking your medicine. have you finished your tea?”
he took the empty mug, checking the stray leaves at the bottom like they would give him whatever answers he was looking for. it’s not like you’d lied to him—not like you could, either. between he and changsheng, it was impossible to so much as bring him flowers.
with the help of a few bits of hyperspecific equipment (that looked far too dangerous to just be for a doctor), a single pill was tucked into your palm, a muted green sphere with flecks of white dispersed across its surface. another cup of medicinal tea was poured and drank, a bitter aftertaste left in your mouth as expected. but you were rewarded for your troubles with a quiet sigh of relief, all of his nerves apparently washing away with that single action. he pushed his glasses up on his nose, eyes softening from ‘stern doctor’ to ‘worried partner.’
“…and you’re certain-”
“i’m fine.” you downed the rest of the tea, lip curling at the taste as you set it down, not missing how he checked to see if you’d drank it all. “i’m not in pain. i’m not hurt. i’ve taken my medicine and you have personally seen me do it. please, relax.”
another sigh, this one tired and well-worn. “you know i can’t. it’s not that easy.”
“it was worth a shot,” you shrug.
he does all of the work that he can in your room that day, strictly confining you to the bed, but letting you sit with him in the lobby once noon passes and there’s less people bustling through. you politely ignore the subtle glow to his fingertips whenever he walks by you, just like you pretend not to notice his repeated, worried glances.
it was almost sweet, that he worried so much. and besides, who were you to tell him what to do with his time? a day spent with your doctor was a day well worth every second.
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ev-enhotterthanyou · 19 days ago
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'yeah its np, I don't care!'
fifteen minutes of quietly sobbing into my pillow later: 'okay. so I decidedly do care'
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leclarifies · 2 months ago
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strawberries & cigarettes (MV33)
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✰ max verstappen x driver!reader ✰
summary: you had a bad habit that you never told anyone. it was smoking cigarettes when you had a particularly bad day. max was nothing more than your co-worker, but when he catches you during a particularly hard night, he offers some comfort in the form of strawberries.
genre: fluff-ish me thinks, drabble
wc: 880
a/n: congrats to max who had an absolutely fantastic drive in brazil! here's a little gift for everyone in tribute to max's win last night <3 inspired from troye sivan's song, 'strawberries & cigarettes'. also if you want to be added to my taglist, please do let me know! i've been wanting to start one for a bit now :3
MASTERLIST ✰ ASK ME ANYTHING ✰ REQUEST A FIC!
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smoking was a bad habit of yours you'd like to keep a secret. you knew it was bad for your health and you knew you should stop because it might affect your performance on the track but you didn't care once you lit one up and let your worries fade away.
it was a particularly hard night and you just wanted to be left alone.
the sunset was off in the distance as you watched silently, with a cigarette in hand and lighter in the other, leaning against the railing.
italy was beautiful, but you hated today.
smacked with another dnf. driving for alpine had its ups and downs— more downs than you would like and today was no different. especially if it was no fault of your own.
"retire the car," your race engineer had told you through the radio.
you felt like you could cry.
it was your 100th race start and the fucking car couldn't even drive right.
but you did so anyway and off into the garage you went.
dragging a deep breath, you let the smoke in. breathing out only when you felt dizzy enough.
"i didn't know you smoked," a familiar voice sounded from behind you. you knew better to smoke in public but you needed it.
you didn't have to turn around to see who it was, you knew.
"not a lot of people do," you tell him as he leans against the railing next to you.
you glance and you see a pretty dutchman in casual clothing, looking off into the distance as well.
you sat in comfortable silence, the both of you not wanting to say anything.
it was nice hanging out with max, it was always calm, peaceful and quiet. he gave you your space and you always gave him his. tonight was no different.
"do you do it when you're stressed? or is it a thing you do behind the scenes when no one is looking?" max was the first to break the silence as you take a drag of your cigarette, remembering to blow it away from max.
"i do it when i have too many thoughts in my head, cigarettes make me dizzy. in a good way," you tell him, then he glanced at you.
"aren't you scared it's gonna affect your performance?" he asked and you shrugged.
"i came a long way from karting, if cigarettes take me out then it is what it is," you laugh almost bitterly before standing up right and look down on the ground before looking back up again.
the oranges and purples in the sky made it look breathtaking.
"is it hard?"
"what is?"
"being a female driver?"
you only glance at max as an answer, he knew the answer and you knew the answer too.
"that was a stupid question, wasn't it?" max chuckled before looking back at the sunset, the darkening of the sky was apparent, you could only laugh.
"it is hard, max," you could feel him shuffling next to you and you didn't know what he was doing, only realizing he took out strawberries out of his pocket.
"strawberries are better for your health," max tells you gently as he puts one on your palm and pops in his mouth, "they taste better too. i think it'll help you in the long run if i can help you wean off the cigarettes."
"thank you max," you tell him softly, dropping the cigarette bud and step on it once it reaches the ground, also popping it in your mouth in a similar fashion as him but you laugh at the absurdity of the entire situation.
who carries around calyx-less strawberries in their pockets?
"do you usually carry around strawberries without their leaves in your pocket?" you ask as you took another one from his palm which was stretched out to hold a couple more strawberries.
max laughed at the thought but he shook his head, "no, i just came from the store and saw you here, i thought you might need some comfort from today..."
"i should be mad at you for winning so consistently," you laugh, it was annoying seeing him win every single race but you didn't care at this point. there was no reason for you to be mad, only proud of him.
"you shouldn't. you don't have the best car this season, give yourself some grace," max said before you chewed on the strawberries carefully. you cringe as the sour taste of the strawberries mixed with the aftertaste of the cigarettes.
"the taste of cigarettes and strawberries don't go well together," you snort as you continued eating on the strawberries.
"this is a sign for you to stop smoking when you're stressed."
"as long as i get an excuse to finally hang out more with my rival, i'm not complaining."
"are you flirting with me right now, y/n?" max looked at you, almost as if the idea was ridiculous.
"no i want to know your strategies, please hand me some," you gave him and max laughed even more at your pitiful face.
"you'll get a seat next to me next year."
"what do you mean by that verstappen?"
max didn't answer.
"hello? this is not a sign for you to ignore me!"
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short drabble, i just wanted to write max without having to deal with off the grid :( hope u guys like it :3
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asahicore · 1 year ago
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bad news first - sjy (m)
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this work contains smut - minors please do not interact pairing. jake x fem!reader synopsis. From the moment you'd met at eight to the day he moved to South Korea at fourteen, you and Jake were inseparable. But after years of being apart, you've come to terms with the fact that at twenty, you and Jake just aren't what you used to be. That is until you get a text from him, and all of a sudden, he's back by your side, doing his year abroad at the university you study at, and all your feelings for him float back up to the surface. genre. college au, childhood friends to ???? to lovers, painful mutual pining, one bed trope..... a sprinkle of angst (my hand slipped) but mostly fluff i promise and smut (mdni!!!), also i made sunghoon really weird in this and idkw, this is set in scotland.. edinburgh uni rep!! word count. 23k author's note. everybody say happy belated birthday to @zreamy.. happy belated birthday zo!!! being 22 years and 6 days old is cooler than just 22 years old anyway.. hope you like it bestie... if you dont... well theres a building on campus thats 17 stories high sooo.. enjoy! i hope everyone else enjoys too, since this is a bday fic for zo she couldnt beta read so i had to raw dog this so if its terrible.. not my fault! lmk what u think!! i also made a playlist for this, do listen along!!
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“Alright kids, good news or bad news first?”
You looked at your teacher, then at the boy next to you, then back at your teacher. “Bad news first,” you said in unison.
You were only eight, but you were both wise enough to know that hearing good news second would assuage the blow of whatever these bad news were. Miss Dawson sighed as she crouched in front of you. “The bad news is your bus driver is on strike and won’t be coming. The good news is that your parents have been informed and are coming to pick you up soon.”
Following her instructions, you headed to the gymnasium and sat there silently among the other kids. Not many kids in your class rode the bus home, and the ones who did seemed to have drivers not on strike, so it was just the two of you. You were used to that, though - over January and February, you had made a sort of silent pact to stand and wait for the bus together. You sometimes shared snacks, but you never spoke. For some reason, you felt at ease with this boy, even though you didn’t know much about him. You had heard he had moved to Brisbane just at the start of this year, all the way from South Korea. You were pretty sure his name was Jake.
You handed him one of your Twix bars. Then he spoke. “I thought a strike was when you did really well in bowling.”
“Same,” you replied, mouth full of chocolate and caramel. “I’m not sure why that would keep the bus driver from picking us up.”
Jake looked at you with wide eyes, distress clear in them. “Do you think he went bowling instead of picking us up?”
This made you frown. “That’d be really rude.”
“It would. I always make sure to go bowling on the weekends, ‘cause if I missed school that’d be rude to Miss Dawson.”
You nodded your head in fervent agreement. “For sure.”
That weekend, his mum called your mum to ask if you wanted to go to the bowling alley with them. From then on, for the next six years, you were stuck together by glue. 
--
Twelve years later, Jake’s name appearing on your phone screen has become such a rare sight, you don’t believe it right away. It takes you a few seconds of intense squinting at the letters to actually realise your eyes aren’t deceiving you.
jake.sim15 hey y/n!! you go to edinburgh uni right?
You type and delete three different responses before settling for a simple yeah, I am! what’s up?, hoping you sounded nonchalant even though you very much felt chalant. You thought that whatever you sent wouldn’t be as weird as taking forever to answer such a straightforward question. 
As you wait for Jake’s reply, you scroll through your previous shared messages, noting with sadness that for three years in a row, the only instances you’d texted were to wish each other a happy birthday or when he reacted with a fire emoji to Stories of your dog, Milo. Before that, your last conversation was to congratulate each other about getting into your top choice universities and to discuss plans for your respective futures.
Futures that used to include each other, you think. His reply appears at the bottom of your screen before melancholy can fill your heart.
jake.sim15 i applied to go there for my year abroad next year annnnd i got in !! heh
You shoot up straight from your seat on the lounge chaise you’d been sunbathing on, a loud “Oh my God!” involuntarily escaping your mouth. 
“What? What happened? Is everything okay?” Chaewon asks frantically, rushing over to your side. “Oh,” she says when she sees your phone. “It’s a text… from a boy?” 
This makes Yunjin, previously unbothered by your panic, rise from her seat and take off her sunglasses. “A boy? Show me,” she demands, snatching your phone from your hands before you can protest. Upon seeing the texts on your screen, she lets out a loud gasp. “It’s not just any boy! It’s the one and only Jake Sim himself.”
“Give that back!” you plead, hand reaching for your phone, but Yunjin is already walking away.
“And he’s coming to Edi this September, apparently. He says he’s sorry for not saying anything earlier, but he was waiting for an answer up until now.” She scoffs. “Leave it to our uni to tell someone they’re in less than two months before term starts. Oh, you’re the first person he’s told, Y/N! After his parents. How cute,” she coos, protesting when you snatch your phone back from her. “Hey! I was reading that.”
“Those are my texts, Yunjin. I’m the one who’s meant to read them.”
She shrugs. “You would’ve told us anyway.”
“What are you going to reply?” Chaewon asks. With the both of them hovering over your shoulders and watching as you type a response, a sort of stage fright comes over you, making you send what might be the most unoriginal reply known to man.
“Awesome? Seriously, Y/N?” Yunjin reads, disproportionately disgusted with you.
“That’s a lot of exclamation marks. It almost makes it look like you don’t mean it,” Chaewon says.
“I do mean it!”
“Well, he seems to like it. A smiling-with-teeth emoji is a good sign, right?” she asks in an attempt to make you feel better.
“He has automatic caps off. That man is run-through,” Yunjin says, shaking her head as she walks back to her sunbed.
“You were excited about him texting me just a second ago,” you reproach.
“Yeah, before I found out he was a whore.”
“Yunjin, you know we don't slut-shame here!” Chaewon exclaims. Before Yunjin can say anything even worse in response, your phone starts ringing, and Jake’s name appears on your screen. “He’s calling you?” Chaewon gasps, making Yunjin sit up with a start for the second time in less than five minutes.
“This man is insane,” she remarks with all the seriousness in the world.
You run away from your friends, finding refuge in the outside kitchen area out of earshot. They don’t need to hear your conversation with Jake. You love them, but they can be weirdly unsupportive in moments like these.
“Hey, Jake,” you greet, hoping he doesn’t notice the breathlessness in your voice. It was because you had just ran, of course - you didn’t want him to think you were so nervous about talking to him after such a long time, you could barely breathe. Because you weren’t. At all.
“Hey, Y/N!” he replies, and the excitement in his voice makes your heart melt. “I hope it’s not weird that I called, I just thought it’d be nicer than texting, is that okay?”
“Yeah, it’s fine, it’s nice to hear your voice,” you say before you can really think about it, and cringe at your own words. Years without talking and the world’s worst line is the first thing you say to Jake. Thankfully, before you start excruciating yourself, a chuckle pours out of Jake’s throat and blesses your ears.
“It’s nice to hear your voice, too. What are you up to?” 
“Oh, I’m on vacation with my friends. One of them has a rich aunt who owns a villa in southern Italy, so we’re just chilling by the pool right now.” 
“You always wanted to go to Italy! That sounds so nice,” he says. Your breath catches gently in your throat - he remembers, you note.
“Yeah, it really is. What about you, how are you spending the summer?”
Jake tells you about the local bookstore owned by a grandpa that’s always had a soft spot for him and that gave him a part-time job for the summer. “I’m trying to save up as much money as I can before I leave. If I treat you to a meal, will you show me around the city?” he asks, and you can hear the grin in his voice. It makes you realise how much you’ve actually missed him.
“You don’t need to treat me to a meal, I’ll show you around anyway.” 
Still, he insists, and you find yourself giving in quickly - because it’s Jake or because free food is on the table, you’re not sure. Probably both. 
You and Jake get to talking, but fitting years and years of catching up into one conversation is an impossible task, and before you know it, when you check your phone, you’ve been talking for over an hour. Yunjin is angrily waving at you, pointing at her stomach to indicate hunger like a caveman who’s just learned how to communicate. You apologise to Jake, telling him you have to go, and plan to meet during fresher’s week before you hang up.
A few hours later, you get a text from him saying it was nice talking to you and jokingly asking whether Yunjin was satisfied with lunch. It’s innocuous, but it opens a gate for more texting, which leads to long, rambling voice messages, which leads to late-night phone calls that remind you of when you were fifteen and still kept in touch. When August fades into September, you feel like you’ve got your best friend back. 
You remember why you were so in love with him at fourteen.
--
You see Jake before he sees you.  
Among the throngs of people, you manage to spot the dark, messy flop of hair on his head weighed down by a nice pair of wireless headphones. After a thirteen-hour flight from Seoul, a four-hour layover in Frankfurt and a final, two-hour flight to Edinburgh, he looks rightfully exhausted, using what looks like the last of his energy to spot the exit and the airport bus stop. Even wearing a simple denim jacket, white tee and grey sweatpants, he’s so gorgeous you forget what you came here for, until he almost walks right past you without seeing you. You put yourself in his path and hold your hand-written banner up, making yourself as obvious as you can as you call out his name. 
When he sees you, he stops dead in his tracks for a second, someone almost running into him before he remembers the crowd behind him. His tired features break out into a bright smile that has your heartbeat speeding up so much, you think it might run out of your chest. 
He had told you not to come, that it would be late for you and he didn’t want to bother you, but you had managed to get the information of his arrival before he forbade you from picking him up so you did it anyway, wanting to surprise him. After years of being apart, rather than waiting another day, you wanted to see him as soon as possible.
Jake briskly makes his way to you, dropping his bags next to him on the floor as he engulfs you in a hug, warm and tight as if he’s trying to make up for all those years. You hug him back as if someone would appear out of thin air and take him away from you again.
“This was the longest day of my life, I’m so happy to see you,” he says when he pulls away, and you’re so happy you can’t even say anything back, resorting to giggling and lightly swatting non-existent dust off of his shoulders. 
As you wait for the bus, he tells you about every trivial thing that happened to him on his trip, from how expensive a sandwich is at the airport to the German kid sitting in front of him that kept turning around to stare at him on his second flight.
“How did you know he was German?” you ask, amused.
Jake pauses. “Just vibes.”
Conversation on the bus is slightly disjointed as you jump from topic to topic with random pauses here and there before one of you finds something to talk about - but it’s okay, you hadn’t expected for the two of you to be as easy as before. It’s more awe at seeing each other after such a long time than awkwardness. Even though you’d caught up over summer, there was a world of difference between speaking on the phone and actually sitting next to him. You notice things like the shine of his hair, the creases that form on the sides of his lips when he smiles, or, unfortunately for you, the veins that run along his forearms and hands - things you hadn’t noticed previously thanks to the sometimes questionable quality of the front camera of his phone. Once in a while, your thigh brushes against his, and it reminds you that he’s really here. Even that he’s real, at all. 
In a tragic turn of events, Jake lives in the student accommodation you used to live in in first year, and coming back to it two years later is slightly traumatising. His three-person flat is in a different building as your old one, and you marvel at how it somehow still smells the same - like dusty, decade-old carpeting and the permanent stench of students’ dubitable cooking. He’s the first one to move in, which makes the place slightly eerie, but it means that you’re not bothering anyone by unpacking Jake’s stuff and cooking Shin Ramyun the previous tenants had left behind at 11pm. 
Your late dinner was meant for you to take a small break, watch a couple episodes of Friends which Jake had been shocked to learn you’d never watched, and you had been shocked to learn he was a die-hard fan of (since one year ago), then get back to unpacking. But the ramen sends an already exhausted Jake into a food coma so intense, he falls asleep on your shoulder five minutes into the second episode. 
You let him sleep as long as he needs, turning the volume down on his laptop and stifling your chuckles as much as you can. You feel like a cat has fallen asleep in your lap - you are now obliged by law to stay still until Jake wakes up. It’s not until an hour later that Jake’s uncomfortable sleeping position forces him awake, lifting his head off of your shoulder with a grunt. He looks around himself, at his room that’s not quite familiar to him yet, then at you, eyes still scrunched with sleepiness as a grin blooms onto his lips.
“Sorry,” clearing his throat of its grogginess. “What time is it?”
“It’s almost one a.m,” you reply, and his eyes go wide.
“You should’ve woken me up! Does your shoulder hurt?” he asks, much more alarmed than he should be, and it makes you laugh.
“It’s all good. But now that you’re awake, I should probably head home.” 
“I’ll get you an Uber,” he says, already pulling out his phone. 
“It’s fine, Jake, my place is a ten-minute walk from here. I live just up the road.”
Jake’s fingers on his phone pause as he looks up at you. “Then I’ll walk you home.” He lifts a finger in warning when he sees you start to protest. “And don’t fight me on this. You did so much today, it’s the least I can do.”
As much as you love the idea of spending more time with Jake, even if it’s just ten minutes, you still don’t want to bother him when you know how tired he is. “It’s really safe around here. I can just text you when I’m home, if you’re worried about me getting kidnapped or something,” you say, taking his jacket from his hands and placing it back on his desk chair.
He grabs it back, putting it on before you can take it from him again, and rummages through one of his suitcases for a black, woolly scarf. Neither of you speaks as he wraps it tight around your neck, even though the early September weather isn’t cold enough to warrant it. His hands stop briefly on the scarf and a small smile spreads on his lips. You hope he doesn’t hear your sharp intake of breath when your eyes meet. “It’s not about that,” he says simply, voice low and unlike you’ve ever heard it before. You don’t think his voice had quite finished cracking when he’d moved away back then. 
Suddenly, he steps away, grabs his keys, and heads for the door. “Let’s go!” he says, voice back to its usual cheery tone. You don’t find it in you to question him, so you just follow him out, welcoming the night breeze that cools down your burning cheeks with open arms. 
The walk to your place is mostly done in comfortable silence, but it still goes by too quickly for your liking. You keep your hands in your pockets to prevent yourself from doing something stupid, like reaching out for Jake’s hand that swishes back-and-forth as he walks. Instead, you bury your nose in his scarf and relish in the unfamiliar but comforting smell that his cologne has left behind on the fabric. You hug goodbye when you reach your flat, and you have to remind yourself to let go. He insists on you keeping the scarf. “My mum packed me, like, three, so you can have that one.” 
“Your mum still pack your things for you, does she?” you ask, tone playful.
“No-” he says, voice slightly whiny, before he realises you’re just teasing him. “Whatever,” he chuckles, ruffling your hair. You hope the streetlights aren’t bright enough for him to notice the flustered look on your face. The both of you stand there awkwardly for a second, before he lets out another chuckle. “Right. See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” you beam.
“Okay,” he says, but still doesn’t make a move to leave. “Okay. Yeah. I’ll be off then.” He gives you one last smile then turns around, burying his hands in his pockets, and you watch as he walks away.
“Get home safe,” you call out after a few seconds. 
He pivots on his heels, and, with a wave of his hand, says, “I will! Go inside.”
“Good night!”
“Night, Y/N!”
When you walk into your living room, Yunjin is sitting on the couch, arms crossed over her chest, gaze trained on the wall opposite her, one lamp lighting the otherwise completely dark room. She looks like a detective in one of those bad cop shows.
“Gosh, what’s all this for?”
“You’re back awfully late,” she says, neither looking at you nor answering your question.
“Yeah, I was with Jake,” you shrug, heading into the kitchen for a glass of water. She abruptly gets up from her seat, following you into the other room and staying close behind you.
“And?” she demands, mouth way too close to your ear and making you start.
“And what?” you ask. 
“What do you mean and what?!” she says, clearly agitated. “I want to know everything!”
“There’s nothing to say, really. He seemed happy I picked him up from the airport, then I helped him unpack. He lives in Riego, by the way.”
“Ew.”
“I know, it was awful going back there.”
The two of you stare at each other as you drink your water. “Well?” she asks.
“What?”
“Is that it?”
You fill your glass again to take it into your bedroom. “I don’t know, we just ate and watched Friends.”
“You hate shows with laughing tracks,” she states like it’s an accusation.
“It wasn’t actually that bad,” you reply, shrugging.
She tuts. “Love will do ugly, ugly things to a person.”
“You’ve been in a loving relationship for the past two years.”
“This isn’t about me. Can we talk about how you’re still in love with the same loser from when you were ten?”
“I was fourteen, and don’t call Jake a loser when you haven’t even met him.” You ignore the roll of her eyes. “And I’m not. Not anymore. I’m just happy to have my friend back.” Yunjin gives you a look. “Okay, maybe I’m still a little bit in love with him. But it’s so little, it’s barely there.” Her expression is unchangingly unimpressed and you can’t help but throw in the towel. “Alright, fine. I still love him, what about it?”
“You’re pathetic.”
“I know that, no need to remind me.”
“Are you gonna do something about it?”
“My patheticness? I’ve tried, didn’t really work.”
“No, idiot, about Jake. You should go and get him! It’d be so sexy if you got together as 20-somethings after knowing each other since you were babies.”
“We were eight when we met. And I don’t know if sexy is the word I’d use here.”
“Anything is sexy if you try hard enough,” she says, and you have to laugh. “Anyways, you should confess your undying love and tell him you’ve felt that way since you met.”
“I wasn’t-”
“Guys might not show it, but they probably get all hot for stuff like that. Boosts their ego and shit.”
“Yunjin, I just got my friend back, I’m not gonna risk it. Plus, who knows, I might not actually be in love with him. It might just be my emotions acting up, like, seeing someone I used to like after a while. We’ve both changed so much, once I get to know him more now, I might not even feel the way I used to.”
“Notice how you’ve used the word might twice in ten seconds? You’re just trying to find excuses.”
You groan. “This is why I hate English Lit people.”
“You do English Lit.”
“I know, and I’m the only nice person that does it.” In your head, you add and Jake, but saying it out loud would only make this conversation worse for you.
“What’s that scarf, by the way? Did he give you that?”
You look down at the scarf like it’s a piece of incriminating evidence. “Can you stop grilling me, please? It’s late.”
“You’re not answering my question.”
You sighed deeply. “Fine. Yes, he gave me-”
“It’s not even that cold outside!” she exclaimed in an outrage. “Don’t tell me he also walked you home?”
You pause. “He did.”
She gasped. “He walked you home because he’s in love with you.”
“He walked me home because he’s a good friend that looks after me.”
“He walked you home because he realised how hot you’ve gotten and he wants some of that.”
All you can do is sigh. “Whatever. I’m going to bed.”
“If you weren’t such a coward, you wouldn’t be going to bed alone.”
“Whatever!” you say, shutting the door behind you, shaking that preposterous conversation out of your head. When you get into bed, it takes you at least half-an-hour before you can settle down, but you know your constant tossing and turning isn’t due to your inability to find a comfortable enough position to sleep in. Between your evening with Jake and Yunjin’s pestering, thoughts run wild and incoherent through your head. 
You want to tell her every little thing that happened with Jake tonight, but you’re afraid it might do you more harm than good. She is most definitely the type of friend who will take the smallest action a guy did for you or the most meaningless thing he might have said and turn it into a sign that he has the hots for you, which usually does wonders for your confidence, but right now, you don’t need that kind of delusion. Did seeing your childhood best friend you used to secretly harbour feelings for make you feel some type of way? Of course, but that doesn’t mean you still love him after all this time, after six years of being apart, the majority of those years spent with no contact. It wasn’t like you parted ways with resentment, or anything of that sort, far from it; rather, you drifted apart naturally, as two teenagers with over 7000 kilometres between them would. At first, you’d call frequently and even write each other letters - but as you became more preoccupied with school, friends, and extracurriculars, your phones gradually rang less and your mailboxes became gradually emptier. You don’t even remember who sent the last, unanswered letter. 
Tonight isn’t the first time you replay the moment Jake announced that he would go away, but it’s the first time it’s a bittersweet memory. It used to only be bitter - but now that you’ve reconnected, you can look back at it with fondness, wishing you could tell fourteen-year-old you the hurt would only last so long. 
It hadn’t started unusually.
“So, bad news first, right?”
In your six years of friendship with Jake, this had been the first time you’d really been wary of what he would say next. The look on his face told you that this bad news wouldn’t be as easy to shake off as usual. Your definition of bad news was things like I got grounded so I can’t hang out, I forgot we had a test tomorrow so I can’t hang out, my allergies are acting up again so I can’t hang out.
“I’m moving to Korea next month.”
I’m on another continent, so I can’t hang out.
You remember the words not quite making sense at the time. “Oh? How long are you staying there?” you said, taking a bite of your strawberry ice cream which Jake had insisted on paying for, even though you knew he didn’t get much allowance.
“Forever.”
You stopped chewing, and the ice cream melted uncomfortably in your mouth. You don’t know how long you stayed there, frozen as you stared at your best friend in disbelief. It wasn’t until he lightly shoved your shoulder, only meeting your eyes for a split second, that you remembered to swallow and to say something.
“Forever as in… You won’t live here anymore? At all?”
Jake shook his head. He kept his eyes trained on the vanilla-chocolate ice cream sandwich he’d left in its wrapper. In the blazing hot Brisbane summer, it had probably fully melted two minutes ago. “At all.”
“Oh,” was all you found yourself able to say. For some reason, you hoped that continuing to eat your ice cream would stop you from crying, but to no avail. Hot, salty tears quickly started raining down your cheeks, mixing with the sweetness of your ice cream when they reached your lips. 
“It’s my dad’s work. Same reason why I moved here when we were kids in the first place. They wanted him here then, they want him back there now. We just have to follow,” Jake explained, sounding just as upset as you felt.
“Right.”
“Are you mad at me?” Jake asked, worry clear in his voice, and finally turned to face you. At the sight of you crying, he let out a small oh, tears of his own pooling in his eyes.
You frowned. “Of course not. I’m never mad at you, you know that. I just… You’re my best friend, Jakey. It’s gonna be so lame around here without you.”
“It’ll be lame there without you, too.”
You attempted a smile. “Well, of course. But at least you’ll get to make new friends, see new places. You’ll be in a whole other country, I’m sure you’ll have fun there. I’m gonna be stuck in boring old Brisbane for the foreseeable future.”
“Do you know how offended our friends would be if they heard you speaking right now?” he asked, nudging your shoulder with his.
You sniffled and let out a chuckle. “They’re all great, but… I don’t like them nearly as much as I like you,” you said, staring down at your hands, hoping he wouldn’t realise exactly what you meant by that statement.
A weight was lifted off of your shoulders when Jake answered. “I like you the most too, Y/N.” You tried not to think too much about whether he’d meant it platonically or romantically - none of that mattered anymore. All that mattered was the feeling of his arms around you, his warmth enveloping your whole body, his familiar scent that you already missed. 
You felt him take a deep breath against you before he pulled away. He sniffled and did his best to put on a smile. “Right, enough of that. I’m not leaving until next month, so don’t think you’re rid of me just yet,” he joked, and it helped alleviate the weight on your heart, even if just a little. “You said you had something to tell me? Good news after bad news, and all that.”
“Oh. Right. I forgot about that.”
You thought for a second. Today was the day you had planned to confess your feelings to Jake - you’d only told him you had good news to share. But what was the point now that he was leaving? If he felt the same way, it would only make his departure that much harder, and if he didn’t, it would ruin your last moments together. It just wasn’t worth it.
Jake tilted his head, waiting for you to speak. In a split second, you made yourself forget your disappointment over having built the courage to tell him how you felt only for it all to fall through, and resolved to make the most of Jake’s last month here. You wiped your tears and mirrored his small smile as best you could. “Um, it wasn’t anything much. My mum made those cowboy cookies you like.”
Jake’s head fell back as he groaned in anticipation. “If she wasn’t happily married with three kids, I’d marry your mum. Let’s go right now.”
You laughed. “There’d be a bit of an age gap there.”
“We’d make it work,” Jake joked, throwing his arm around your shoulders as you walked towards your house. He beamed down at you, his bright, boyish smile that you loved to bits, and you beamed up at him as you grabbed the hand that hung off your shoulder in your own.
You walked as happily as you could. “Do you even speak Korean?” you suddenly asked.
Jake halted abruptly in his steps, a gravely offended look on his face. When you looked back at him in confusion, he rolled his eyes and started walking again, pulling you with him. “It’s literally my mother tongue, Y/N. I speak it every day at home.”
“Oh, right.”
At the time, you thought nothing could come between you and Jake. Not anyone, not anything, neither distance nor time. But they did. A week after he’d left, a boy from your class you’d talked to maybe once or twice asked you out on a date. You weren’t sure why, but you said yes. Then you said yes to being his girlfriend, even though you didn’t like him all that much, and you even said yes to reducing your texting with Jake because it made him jealous. When you’d broken up with him and wanted to catch up with Jake and apologise for your absence, you’d found that his new school in Seoul was a lot more demanding than yours in Brisbane, and he had to spend most of his evenings in academies if he wanted to get into a nice university. It’s when you learned that he’d be staying in South Korea for college that you decided to leave Australia too. Brisbane was a lot less fun without him there - why bother staying? You couldn’t go to him because of the language barrier and the cost of university there. If you were to essentially uproot your life, might as well go somewhere you could get a scholarship and understand the people around you. 
It seemed insane that someone you had thought would be by your side for the rest of your life, someone that was part of your most cherished memories, had been reduced to someone you casually texted once in a while. It seems even more insane that now that you’re finally done essentially grieving your friendship with Jake, he stands in front of you again, six inches taller but still donning those puppy-like eyes and smile of his.
For your sake, you just hoped you wouldn’t be as in love with him at twenty as you were at fourteen.
--
The next day, you show Jake around campus, which wouldn’t normally take more than ten minutes, but takes double that time because of the sheer amount of people there. Between the Societies Fair taking up most of the square, the tour guides leading freshers, walking slowly and taking in their new campus, and the pizza and drinks stands, freshers’ week always turns campus into what feels like the busiest place on Earth. You try not to let it hit a nerve for Jake’s sake, who’s clearly ecstatic at all the activity, but you like this place a lot more when it’s quieter. You walk through the Fair, laughing as Jake marvels at all the different clubs and societies at the Uni. 
“Gardening Society? Dungeons & Dragons Society? Wine society?” he exclaims, astonishment growing with every passing stand.
“And this is only the first day. They also have a Taylor Swift Society.” He grabs a flyer from about every society, even though you know he’ll join between two to zero of them. 
When you walk out, there’s a girl handing out samples of shampoo and conditioner, and you let her give you one, more out of politeness than anything. 
“These are so useless,” you start, and Jake chuckles, unaware of the incoming rant. “I had that job of distributing them last year, and we would get a tip if we gave them all out. So naturally I put a bunch in my bag, but then I had to use them for like two weeks.” You sigh. “First of all, my hair did not like it. And second, the ratio is so off. There’s way more conditioner than shampoo when it should be the other way around, so you have to condition your hair even though it’s not properly clean. So stupid.”
“Sounds terrible,” Jake says, laughing. “Is that why you’re not doing it this year?”
“Oh… Not really. I dated the guy that takes care of this promo stuff, so it would’ve been kinda awkward…” you trail, immediately wishing you could backtrack on conversation. Talking about your ex with Jake wasn’t on your to-do list for today. Or ever.
“You dated your boss?”
“The manager, yeah, I guess. He was only 24, though, don’t worry.”
“I’m more worried about the power imbalance than the age gap there.”
You shrug, looking down at your shoes. “It’s not like he was that high up.”
“So, what happened? Why did you break up?”
“Well, he acted like our four-year age difference meant he could treat me like a little kid. It was nice being taken care of at first but then I realised how condescending he was and dumped him.”
“How long were you together?”
You pause. “Two weeks,” you admit abashedly, making Jake chuckle. “At least he didn’t waste my time and showed his red flags early on.”
“Any boyfriends since?” he asks, and you wonder whether you’re making up the unsure tone of his voice. As if he’s curious, but doesn’t want to show it too much. You hope you’re not making it up.
“A few, but they never last very long with me,” you say, a meek smile on your lips. “Furthest I got was three months.”
“And why didn’t it work out with three-months-guy?”
“He started comparing me to his mum a bit too often.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, I ran out of there without looking back.”
“Well, it’s nice to see you’ve got high standards. I would hate to see you date just any loser.”
You want to say, High standards or issues?, but you don’t want to make it weird, so you play it cool instead. “I would never. I have a mental checklist with everything a guy needs to have for me to date him.”
“A checklist? I have to hear about this.”
You sigh, debating whether you should tell him about it. Would he notice it’s based on him? Would he notice the only person that could tick practically every box was none other than him? Jake gently elbows your side, goading you on. When you look at him, he’s got a shit-eating grin playing on his lips, and you give in. You look off into the distance as you start listing your requirements. “Well, there’s all your basics like funny, taller than me but not too much, ‘cause I don’t want neck cramps, smart, takes uni seriously, has plans for his future, easy to talk to, not emotionally stunted and can actually have a vulnerable conversation. It’s also a bonus if he has a nice face.”
“How much of a bonus?”
You think for a second. “It’s more a dealbreaker than a bonus, actually. Nice smile is a must, definitely.”
“Okay. Got any more specifics?”
“I do have some particular ones. It’s nice if he’s a reader, but it’s terrible if it makes him think he’s better than everyone or if he tries to sound smarter than me. I like it if he has experience, I don’t want to have to teach him everything. But obviously I don’t want him to still be in love with his ex. Guys and their first loves, I swear… I also don’t really like picky eaters.” You look over at Jake and take a double-take. He’s typing away on his phone, but because of his privacy screen protector, you can’t see anything. You huff. “I also don’t like it if he has those protective screens on his phone. What’s on there that’s so important that I can’t take a peek? What are you even doing?”
The sweet sound of Jake’s giggles erases any trace of annoyance that you felt seconds ago. He turns his screen towards you, showing the list of mostly ticked boxes that he’s written up. “See? I check most of these,” he says with a proud smile. “Guess your standards aren’t that high.” You don’t tell him that your standards are high, he’s just that amazing. 
You do your best to look only amused at this even though inside, you’re all but freaking out. “Which are you missing?”
“Well, I clearly own a privacy screen. And I don’t have much experience. Not nearly as much as you, by the sounds of it,” he admits, somewhat sheepish. “But other than that, I’m practically the perfect man for you.” He looks down at you with a smile so bright, it makes you wish you had brought sunglasses. It takes everything in you not to scream right then and there. Yes, Jake, you are the perfect man for me, but I wish you wouldn’t say it like it was a joke.
You let out a stiff chuckle, and, rather than saying something stupid and possibly damaging, shift the conversation to him. “What do you mean by not much experience? Have you not dated anyone?”
Jake sighs. “Nope, not anyone. I went on a few dates, you know, went through a few talking stages and all that, but it never went much further. There was always something…” He glances at you then. “Missing.”
“I know that feeling,” you say with a chuckle, and he laughs too, a breathy sound.
“I don’t have a checklist to pinpoint what it is, though.”
You smile. “You should try, it might help.”
“I just… I guess I’m like you in that I also have high standards. But it made me not even want to give anyone a chance, especially since I knew it wouldn’t end up anywhere.”
“Don’t tell me no one has ever managed to reach the great Jake Sim’s standards?” you ask, trying to keep your tone light.
Jake smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Of course someone has. She’s the whole reason I have standards in the first place. It’s not my standards I compare people to, it’s her.”
Jealousy has never made you feel as sad as it is right now. “And… it didn’t work out between you?”
Jake looks at you, eyes searching for something in yours but seemingly not finding it, and so he turns his gaze away. You don’t know why you feel so disappointed. “Nope,” he says, popping the ‘p’. “She didn’t feel the same way.”
Whoever this girl is, you can’t believe how stupid she is for passing up the opportunity to have Jake Sim. “That’s… It sucks, I’m sorry,” you say. You don’t think spitting on this girl would make him feel any better, so you keep those thoughts to yourself.
“It’s okay,” he says with a small smile. “It was a while ago already.”
“Doesn’t sound like you’re quite over it, though,” you say, and you’re surprised but glad to see his smile widen.
“That’s true.” His eyes meet yours again. “I don’t think I’ll be over her anytime soon, either.” You have to look away to shield the pain that flashes through your eyes from him.
Pretending you don’t have feelings for your best friend and that you’re okay with him being in love with someone else is like riding a bike: even after years of not doing it, it only takes a few minutes for you to be able to do it perfectly again. Muscle memory, if you will. So you sigh dramatically and throw your arm around Jake’s shoulder, slightly pulling him down to your level. “Don’t worry. We’re going to have so much fun this year, you’ll completely forget about her. Promise. She doesn’t know what she’s missing. Yeah?” 
He smiles down at you. You want nothing more but that glint of melancholy in his eyes to be gone. “Yeah.”
--
Jake is only half-glad to see you haven’t changed much from your childhood and early teenage years. You’re still just as pretty, just as warm; it’s still as comfortable to be around you. You’re also still as dense.
Then and now, he did everything he could to make his feelings for you very, very obvious. Either you’re completely oblivious, or the idea of dating him is so horrifying to you, you understand but pretend you don’t. He really hopes it’s the former. 
He arrived in Edinburgh just a bit over a week ago, and you’ve seen each other almost every day. Out of those times, there isn’t a single one where he hasn’t tried to send something your way - something that says, hey, what if we stopped being friends and dated instead? Wouldn’t that be cool? Can’t you see how desperately I love you?, but you never latch on. The ball’s in your court, and he wants you to throw it back, but it’s been feeling more like a boomerang that always hits him right in the face when it circles back than a game of catch.
But he’s reminding himself not to be too greedy. Even if it’s just as friends, at least he has you back, so he’s satisfied with that. For now.
His first class of the year is on the following Tuesday morning, a ninety-minute seminar specifically made for exchange students called Discover Scotland. (He has Mondays free, resulting in a three-day weekend, which you and your 9am Monday tutorial are very envious of.) As interesting as the English Lit courses he’s taking seem, it’s this one he’s most looking forward to - except for the one class he shares with you, of course. Not even because of the seminars themselves, which will be about all sorts of topics on Scottish culture and history, but because of the coursework, as crazy as that sounds. It consists of a singular project, not due until the very last day of the semester, in which he has to travel to at least three different places in the country, research its background and provide a detailed account of his experience there. It can take any form: a written report, an in-class presentation, a podcast, anything. He could even film a TikTok if he wanted. Jake knew that being part of the Arts & Crafts club for two years in a row back in Seoul wasn’t for nothing - his scrapbooking skills would finally have their time to shine. 
That afternoon, he practically snatches you as you come out of your lecture, giving you little time to say bye to your friends, and makes you take him to the biggest stationary store you know in the city. If he wants to ace this project, he will need supplies. Many, many supplies. And it’s more fun shopping if you’re with him. You seem happy following him around the store, and when he asks you if you want to come on his trips with him, he can pretend it’s because you seem so excited about his project and not because he had thought of you accompanying him as soon as he heard about it.
As you stand in line at the till, you tell him that if he wants to start his project now, you could go to the beach together. You raise your eyebrows at him when he snaps your head towards you. “There’s a beach here?!”
“Did you not look at a map before coming here?” you ask, amused.
“I guess I didn’t…” he says, distraught at the new information. It only lasts a second, though. “Okay, let’s go now.”
“Now?” you echo, and he nods. “But-” you start, but are interrupted by your thoughts. “I guess there’s no reason not to. The weather’s nice and it’s not like I have any uni work yet. Let’s go,” you agree, looking up at him with a smile. You’re so pretty he almost forgets to look away, until the employee calls Next in a bored drawl. 
An hour later, you’re at the beach, barefoot on the sand and ice cream in hand. Strawberry for you and vanilla for him, he notes with a smile. Really not much has changed, he thinks. From the sand, to the water, to the promenade along the beach, Portobello is worlds away from the beaches back home in Australia, or those of Jeju Island. But it’s still nice, and because you’re with him, it’s even better. You’ve been walking around for an hour, splashing each other with water and mercilessly ruining sandcastles left behind before he realises you technically came here for his project. He writes down things he doesn’t want to forget on his phone and snaps a few pictures, sneaking a few of you when you’re not looking. He wants to tell you how beautiful you are with your hair blowing in the wind and the way the chill bites at your cheeks, but he keeps it a secret between him and his Notes app. 
Even though he lives two stops further down, he gets off from the bus with you, containing his excitement as best he can when you invite him up for a cup of tea. “Depends. What tea do you have?” he asks, trying and failing to play it cool. He’s just grateful he doesn’t have to come up with an excuse to spend more time with you.
You roll your eyes playfully as you unlock the front door to your building. “I can make you hot chocolate, Mister Tea-Is-For-Old-People.”
He chuckles. “Actually, I’ll have you know I started drinking tea at uni.” When you turn around to look at him, a surprised look on your face, he nods proudly. “Mh-hm. I got addicted to caffeine very quickly into first year so I started drinking black tea for the sake of my heart,” he explains.
“God,” you say breathily, sounding mildly horrified. “A caffeine addiction sounds intense.”
“It was, yeah,” he says, laughing as he follows you into your flat. 
Yunjin and Chaewon are sitting at the living room table, watching an episode of what he thinks is Gossip Girl, and they greet him as normally as these two can, but he wonders what the knowing look they exchange is all about. He’d met them the previous weekend when you had all gone for drinks together, along with Jay, Yunjin’s boyfriend, and they had all but grilled him on his relationship with you. He hadn’t thought much of it, chalking it up to your friends feeling protective of you, and truthfully, he was just happy to get to talk about you. But now, he was wondering if you had told them anything about him that made them so curious about him. If you did, he hoped it was something positive.
He stands awkwardly in the kitchen, chatting with you as you boil the water and get cups out, but he can feel their gazes burning the back of his head. Clearly, whatever conversation he’s having with you, he’s also having it with them. “How do you take your tea?” you ask.
“Um, three sugars and lots of milk, please,” he says, smiling innocently when you slowly turn to look at him, a mix of disapproval, disgust, and offence on your face. 
You sigh deeply. “I mean, I’ll do it, but I’m not sure that’s even tea anymore.”
“You’re one to talk, Miss Caramel Frappuccino,” he says, recycling your bad joke from earlier.
“At least I don’t claim to be drinking coffee when I order a frap,” you argue. “And this is how you battled your coffee addiction? You’ll be getting another kind of heart problem, Jakey.” He doesn’t know if you even notice your use of his old nickname - the first time you’ve used it since he’s been here - but you don’t make a big deal of it, so he doesn’t either. Not outwardly, at least. Mentally, he’s running laps around your small kitchen.
Jake laughs it off. “I thought I came here for tea, not a health check-up,” he says, smile growing wider at the sight of yours. 
“Right, sorry,” you say, giggling. “I’ll make your tea just how you like it,” you add in a sweet voice. Jake knows you’re just doing it as a joke, but it still manages to make butterflies erupt in his stomach. 
His tea tastes even sweeter that day.
--
A few days after your impromptu trip to the beach, you’re waiting for Jake outside of his class. He heard of this donut shop he “absolutely needs to visit” and is dragging you along with him - well, “dragging” is a big word considering you’d follow him anywhere. You got here a few minutes early, not needing much of a reason to leave the library, so you scroll through your feed until Jake calls out your name. You’re only mildly surprised to see Jay leaving the classroom behind him.
“Y/N! Can you believe that Jay and I are in the same class?” he says excitedly as the two boys walk toward you. You feel like a dog owner being greeted by their over-enthusiastic dog after a long day (about three hours) of being apart.
“I can believe it, actually. You two do the same degree.”
You exchange quick greetings with Jay before the three of you start heading out. As you walk, Jake throws his arm around your shoulders so casually, it almost throws you off balance. Physical contact always came easy to him, but there’s something about him doing it next to someone else that catches you off guard. It reminds you of walking somewhere with Jay and Yunjin as they discretely held hands. It makes you feel like it’s not the three of you, but Jay with the two of you. Like you and Jake come as a pair rather than as two individuals. 
All of that from a simple arm around your shoulders.
Jake asking you in a very unsubtle whisper whether Jay can come with brings you out of your head and back into the conversation. “Yeah, of course,” you say, smiling. It’s not a bad idea to have Jay along: hanging out with someone else might snap you out of your delusion.
Most of the walk to the shop is done in laughter as Jake and Jay realise how much random stuff they have in common, from their peanut allergies to the embarrassing Harry Potter phase they had as fifteen-year-olds. Grassmarket is really busy on Friday afternoons, and there’s a bit of a queue of other donut-enjoyers in front of the boutique, but you don’t mind. The sun is shining down gently on the square and it gives you time to choose your donut out of the ten or so flavours available. In the end, you go for white chocolate and raspberry, while Jake chooses Biscoff and Jay, tiramisu. 
“My friend Sunghoon would love this,” he says after taking a hearty bite. “He goes crazy over tiramisu. Like a cat with catnip.”
Jake chuckles, mouth full of Biscoff. “That’s funny, I also have a friend named Sunghoon who loves tiramisu back in Seoul.”
Jay punches Jake’s shoulder, eyes wide in amusement and shock. “Bro, that’s crazy. You have to be lying at this point,” he says, but Jake shakes his head fervently. 
“I promise I’m not. I’ve even saved his number with the tiramisu emoji.”
“There’s a tiramisu emoji?” Jay asks, already over questioning the existence of Jake’s Sunghoon.
The conversation circles back to the courses you’re all taking this semester, and Jake tells Jay about Discover Scotland and the trips he’s planned so far. “Well, if you really want to discover Scotland as a student, you need to go on a night out in Glasgow,” Jay says. Going by the look on Jake’s face, Jay’s idea seems to have struck a chord in him.
“Y/N?”
You nod, finishing your mouthful of donut before speaking. “Yeah, Glasgow’s really fun. We should go,” you say, laughing when the two boys high-five in victory. Between the train, the drinks and the club entry, going out isn’t a cheap ordeal, and getting to and fro also takes a while - even so, the smile on Jake’s face makes it worth it. 
He wipes some raspberry jam from the corner of your mouth, shooting you a wink, and you want to disintegrate right then and there, become one with the bench you’re sitting on and never have to face him again. The conversation resumes as Jay tells Jake about all the best places to go out in Glasgow, but you don’t hear a word - the feeling of Jake’s thumb so close to your lips takes away your ability for coherent thought.
“It’s decided, then. We’re going out tomorrow night,” Jay loudly announces. “Let me gather the troops.”
That’s how you find yourself in line for the club the next day, already tipsy from pre-drinking on the train and at the pub. It’s still warm enough for you and the girls to wear as little clothing as you want, but Jake insisted on giving you his flannel jacket anyway. If not for the warmth it brings, you’re glad to have his scent enveloping you.
The five of you work exceptionally well together. You, Chaewon and Yunjin have been a given since you met in first year, and Jay and Yunjin went so well together that he was but a natural addition to your little group. Jake’s only been here for over a week, but it’s like he’s always been around, and you couldn’t be happier about it. Him and Jay hit it off immediately, and although the girls needed some time to warm up to him (it’s not everyday that you meet your friend’s ex-best-friend she’s practically always been in love with; you understand why they might’ve been wary at first), they now tease him just as relentlessly as they do Jay. He takes it like a champ.
For a little while, you watch your friends speaking over each other, bickering over nothing, a smile on your face. Two pints of cider and some of Jay’s fancy vodka have made you more grateful than ever for them - if you drink too much in the club, you’ll be hugging them and crying about how much you love them. You’re not sure what that might look like around Jake, so you decide to keep yourself in check for the night. 
It takes about thirty minutes before you manage to get into the club. It’s not coat check season yet, so you head straight to the bar. “Sunghoon said he’d meet us here,” Jay says, lifting his head to spot his friend in the sea of drunk students. “Oh yeah, there he is! Hoon, hey!” 
You hear a loud “Jongseong!” being shouted from somewhere in the crowd, but you’re not sure who Jay is waving at until a boy whose face is mostly eyebrows is standing - well, standing as best as he can, with the copious amount of alcohol he’s obviously already consumed - in front of you. He gives Jay a hug and the three of you a nod of his head, a lopsided smile on his face. When he turns to Jake, his eyebrows lift first, then his face breaks into a wide grin.
“Jake, my man!” he shouts, taking a stunned Jake’s hand and bringing him into a hug. 
“Sunghoon? What the hell are you doing here?” he asks, chuckling and frowning in confusion. 
“I’m just partying, man! Same as you!”
“No, I mean here in Scotland, you dumbass!”
“You two know each other?” Jay asks, looking back and forth between his two friends.
“Jake’s my man!” Sunghoon exclaims, unhelpful and stumbling as he throws an arm around his man’s shoulders. Jake shoots you a distressed look but you just laugh at him.
“This is Tiramisu Sunghoon I told you about,” Jake says, helping Sunghoon stand up straight.
“God, what I would do for a tiramisu right now,” Sunghoon says, looking at Yunjin like she might relate. She chuckles awkwardly.
“I have no idea what he’s doing in Scotland, though. Hoon, I thought you were going to NYU for your exchange?”
Sunghoon pauses to think for a second, looking like he’s never heard of NYU in his life. “Oh, that! Yeah, I did an online orientation thing and… it did not go well. Let’s just say there’s someone in New York City who wants me dead,” he says conspiratorially. You all stare at him but he gives no further explanation. On your right, you hear Yunjin whisper what the fuck under her breath. “So I transferred here instead!”
“I didn’t know you were an exchange student,” Jay says, still looking just as confused.
“Yeah, man! But anyways, let’s not talk about uni right now. I’m on a bender, day three, baby! Do not talk to me tomorrow,” he says, chuckling until the smile suddenly drops from his face. “I mean that.” You look around yourself, glad to find everyone is just as baffled as you. “Let’s party!” Sunghoon cheers, intoxicated grin back on his lips. Jake and Jay follow, but you and the girls stay back for a second, taking in everything that has just happened.
“That. Is the most beautiful man I have ever seen,” Chaewon blurts, staring blankly at the spot Sunghoon stood in a second ago.
“Yeah, he also seems to be a raging alcoholic. And he’s what, twenty-one?” Yunjin says, a scowl on her face. 
“I could fix him.”
“Okay, let’s go,” you say, grabbing your friends by their wrists before either of them can say something worse.
Feeling generous, Sunghoon buys shots for all six of you, and you quickly down them before heading to the dancefloor. On your way there, a group of sober-looking girls hand Chaewon a giant, still almost full jug of red liquid, something that costs at least twelve pounds here. They say they’re leaving and don’t need it anymore, smiling as you profusely and astonishedly thank them. You look at your friends, mentally weighing the risk and drugging possibility this might present, but shrug and pass the jug around after taking hearty sips anyway. It tastes so much like fizzy cherries that you wonder if it even contains any alcohol, but sure enough, twenty minutes later, the three of you are spinning around on the dancefloor, screaming the lyrics to your favourite pop songs at the top of your lungs. Jake at a club is a completely foreign sight to you, and you can’t stop laughing at all the silly moves he pulls. 
You’re shaking your whole body to a Nicki song from the early 2010s when you suddenly feel a hand on your hip. Before you can turn around and slap whoever this random man is that thinks he can touch you, a familiar voice whispers it’s just me in your ear, and you simultaneously relax and tense up knowing that Jake is standing right behind you. “There’s a creep staring at you,” he explains, lips and breath gently tickling your ear as he speaks. You look around the room and quickly notice a man standing in a corner, drink in one hand and the other in his pocket, unmoving as he eyes you with a smirk so slimy it makes your stomach turn. To avoid his gaze, you turn around, but you’re not sure the sight you’re met with is much better for you.
Jake peers down at you, eyes slightly glossed over and cheeks flushed from the alcohol, jaw locked in annoyance. He glances at the guy in the corner, who you assume is still staring when you feel Jake’s hands brush along your sides until they reach your waist. His gaze returns to your face as he brings you a step closer to him. Reflexively, you wrap your arms around his neck. 
“Is this okay?” he mouths. All you can do is meekly nod. You watch as his eyes deliberately scan your face, going down and down. Time stills when they reach your lips and stay there. It’s like someone has put the booming music of the club on mute, and the only thing you can hear is your heart loudly beating in your ears. You suddenly feel very sober.
You swear Jake’s face is slowly inching its way towards yours when you’re abruptly taken away. Yunjin has grabbed you by the forearm, leading you and Chaewon to the bathroom as she chants “Bathroom break! Bathroom break!”, clearly unaware of the moment she’s just interrupted.
Because of the queue for the girls’ bathroom and Chaewon’s decision to console this random girl who was in the middle of a breakdown, it’s not until half-an-hour later that you emerge back into the crowd. You spot the boys at a table, two empty shots each in front of them and all three with a beer in hand. They will not be happy checking their bank accounts tomorrow morning. 
“Y/N! You’re back!” Jake calls out happily when he spots you, and you can tell right away that he’s much drunker than when you left him. His whole face is flush, his eyes don’t open quite all the way, and a lopsided smile won’t leave his lips - even like this, he’s so pretty that you want to grab his hand and take him somewhere it’s just the two of you. 
Chaewon gets drinks for the three of you and then you’re dancing again. It’s already one am at this point, and the remaining two hours until the club closes, fueled with alcohol and good music, go by in a flash. Before you know it, the DJ is playing All of Me by John Legend and the lights have been turned on, clear signs that you’re overstaying your welcome. The few people that have made it to closing time stumble out of the club and into the street, heading for either the nearest subway stop or the next party of the night. Since there are no trains at this time, your group walks to the close-by bus station, listening to Jake and Sunghoon grumble about how the clubs in Seoul don’t close until at least five or six and how trains run all night there. 
The bus is already at the station when you get there, and the driver doesn’t seem too pleased about having six mildly drunk kids get on his bus, but he’s probably used to questionable people taking public transport at this time of the day anyway. Physically, Sunghoon is sitting across from you, but mentally, he’s off somewhere far, far from this bus. With his head against the window and mouth wide open, saliva pooling at the corner of his lips, he looks like he’s any second away from obnoxiously snoring. Jay and Yunjin are sitting somewhere you can’t see them, probably eating each other’s faces; she once told you they had their “most mind-blowing sex” when both a little drunk, and much to your dismay, you haven’t been able to get that piece of information out of your head since. Chaewon is on the phone to her long-distance bestie Sakura, for whom it’s a nice eleven in the morning right now. 
This means that you and Jake are left alone, both of you still tipsy and not tired enough to fall asleep. You drop your head on Jake’s shoulder, and not only does he let you, he also takes your hand in his, interlacing your fingers and placing them atop his thigh. Clumsily, because he now has to use his left hand, Jake slips his phone out of his back pocket and shows you the photos he took all evening. As the night progresses, they get blurrier and blurrier, so much so that towards the end, you can’t tell what he was even trying to capture, and you laugh at how inappropriate some of these would be to submit in a university project. 
When he softly says your name, you don’t raise your head, simply humming to let him know you’re listening. You close your eyes, cherishing the way your name sounds on his lips. It’s his tone, tentative and vulnerable as he tells you there’s something he’s been wanting to ask you, that makes you look up at him. He, however, won’t meet your eyes, and settles his gaze on the window, even though it’s so dark outside you can’t make out a thing.
“How come you never replied to my letter? I know it’s been ages, but… I still find myself wondering about it.” The question is softly asked and you know he by no means wants to hurt you, but it still feels like a punch to the throat. You hadn’t remembered who it was that had sent the last letter, while he’d been wondering all these years why his words had been left unanswered. 
He seems set on not looking at you, so you rest your head back on his shoulder. Your hand is still in his. “I’m not sure, Jakey. I’m sorry,” you say, aware it’s not a satisfying answer. You’ve thought about why you and Jake had stopped talking for hours on end; you’ve discussed it with your friends and your mum, looked at it from all sorts of angles, tried to come up with real reasons other than time pulling you apart. But now that Jake himself is asking you about it, the words don’t come easy. You’ve theorised that you were afraid putting effort into sustaining your friendship would only hurt you in the end, because it was just that - a friendship. You could fool yourself into thinking you were okay only being friends with him when he was with you, that putting your feelings aside was worth it since you could at least spend time with him. But now that he was away, you didn’t have that anymore - it just hurt. So what was the point? And how could you phrase all this without betraying your feelings for him?
“Our letters were so sparse anyway back then, even our texts and calls were getting less and less frequent… And whenever I had a new boyfriend, I’d get into the same argument about being too close to you over and over again, even though you were literally on another continent.” 
“You know, I always felt sorry about that.”
“About what?”
“Those boyfriends of yours. I felt like you waited for me to leave before you started dating-”
“It wasn’t like that!” you exclaim, lifting your head again. Finally, he meets your eyes, gaze softening upon seeing your affronted expression. “It wasn’t like that,” you repeat, relaxing your tone. “If anything, they were the ones that waited for you to be gone. I'm sorry I let their jealousy get to me.”
Jake smiles, the tenderness in his gaze making your whole body turn to jelly. He squeezes your hands. “It’s okay. I just… I felt like I was always in the way of your relationships, even after I left.”
“You don’t have to feel sorry about that. They should’ve had more trust in me.”
He pauses, gaze dropping down to your intertwined hands. “I would’ve been jealous.” When his eyes find yours again, there’s something in them that you quite can’t place. It creates a ball of nerves that pull at your stomach. “If I were dating you, and you had a guy friend you were as close with as we were back then, I’d be jealous. You know, I’d assume he had feelings for you. And that you might have feelings for him, too.”
Because I did, you think. I did, and I still do. You try to communicate that thought to Jake, but telepathy works especially bad when one has as much alcohol coursing through their veins as you do right now. So instead, you say the opposite of what you’re thinking, turning away from Jake to avoid his gaze. You watch the dribble of saliva trickle from Sunghoon’s lips. “That’s not a great view of male-female friendship.” 
Jake’s retort comes immediately. “But we were different, right?”
His words echo through your head until they make even less sense than they did initially. Different from what? From who? You’re not sure - but you like the idea of you and Jake being different, special. You especially like the idea of Jake thinking so. So you look at him and smile. “Right.” 
Slowly, his grin fades and turns into a worried expression. “Y/N?”
“Mm?”
“We’re still different now, aren’t we?”
You want to wrap him in your arms so tightly neither of you can breathe. You settle for running a hand through his hair and pinching his cheek. “Course we are.” Your whole being relaxes when his face breaks into a smile again. 
--
The next morning, you wake up to Yunjin plopping down on your bed unceremoniously, shaking you awake, and asking you if you want anything from Snax Café. On one hand, you’re grateful that she thought of you and that in thirty minutes’ time, you’ll have the greasiest sausage wrap and hash browns known to man in your hand; on the other, you’d like to think that she knows you well enough to know to order your regular from there without asking. But that’s probably the hangover talking.
You stumble out of bed, thanking last night’s you for having remembered to take headache medicine before crashing. Even if your stomach is very upset with the copious amount of alcohol it needs to rid your body of, and your throat is begging for water, at least your head doesn’t feel like it’s been split into two. As Yunjin barges into Chaewon’s room just as she had done yours, you head for the kitchen to get yourself a tall glass of revitalising tap water. You’re only mildly surprised to find Sunghoon passed out on your living room couch - it takes you a few seconds to remember that the three of you took pity on him when you learned he lived over an hour’s walk from the station, so you let him spend the night on your uncomfortable, cold leather sofa. While you down your glass in three gulps, you hear Yunjin shaking Sunghoon awake and asking him loudly if he wanted something from Snax.
“Fuck, I’d kill for a Snax right now,” he groggily says before he’s even opened his eyes. When he does, they dart around the room until they land on Yunjin, who's crouching in front of him. He looks like he thought her question was asked in a dream and not in real life. He also looks like he's not quite sure where he is, or who Yunjin is. It isn’t until Jay comes wobbling out of Yunjin’s bed to the couch opposite Sunghoon that the memories seem to piece back together in his head. The three of you watch him like he’s an unstable mental patient and you’re his doctors. 
“No need for that, I’m ordering it on Deliveroo.” He nods his head and goes back to sleep for the time being. 
Just as you’re about to text Jake, your phone rings with a call from him. His raspy morning voice as he asks you whether you slept well makes you want to put your head in an oven heated at 200 degrees Celsius. However, you resist the urge, and answer him with a smile, then ask him the same question.
“I slept pretty well too. I’d have slept in longer but one of my flatmates decided to have a Sunday fucking brunch and his friends are so loud. Can I come over?”
You’re very aware of the other people in the room, especially of Chaewon who has just walked in and is eyeing you suspiciously as if to say, Why are you smiling so hard at ten in the morning? You know the girls would jump at any opportunity to tease you about Jake, and with the added presence of Sunghoon in the room, you can’t have that. So you stifle the giggles bubbling in your throat and answer as nonchalantly as you can. It also gives you the chance to reflect on why Jake Sim asking you whether he can come over makes you want to giggle like a giddy schoolgirl so much.
(Maybe it’s because when it comes to him, you’re still the giddy schoolgirl you used to be.)
“Yeah, of course. I was going to ask you if you wanted anything from Snax, actually.”
“Snax? What’s that?”
“Oh my God, Jake, am I about to introduce you to Snax right now?”
Twenty minutes later, the six of you are sitting around your small living room table, all varying amounts of tired, dehydrated and famished as you dig into your breakfast. Given your current levels of energy, it’s fairly quiet; plus, the food hits such a spot that it’s hard to talk and eat at the same time. Jake eats like he’s never had a breakfast wrap and hash brown in his life. It’s an endearing sight if you’ve ever seen one. 
You spend the afternoon together, watching movies curled up in your bed, and you try desperately not to think about the implications of that - except that’s hard to do when Jake is right next to you, legs and arms ever-so-slightly brushing against yours, his warmth so close yet so out of reach. You purposefully let him pick movies you’ve already seen so that you don’t have to focus on anything but your own thoughts and the faint but dizzying scent of his body wash. The both of you had an innumerable amount of sleepovers as kids, so this shouldn’t feel weird, but it decidedly does, probably because you’re much more aware of him now in a way you weren’t before.  
As hard as you try to figure out what exactly he meant by “different,” you draw a blank. The only way you’ll understand is if you ask him, and you’re far too scared to do that. You don’t want to seem so hung upon a singular word he used when he was tipsy. It might be slightly dramatic, but you felt like some sort of balance had been restored since Jake was back in your life - the problem was it made you scared to do anything that might threaten this newfound equilibrium. It at least seems like different means a good thing to him, and that’s enough for you. 
You look over to him when the second movie comes to an end. He’s sleeping peacefully, lashes caressing the skin under his eyes and cheeks looking rounder than usual. It’d be so easy to reach a finger out and trace the line descending from the top of his forehead to his chin, gliding along the bump of his nose and feeling the plumpness of his rosy lips, but you settle for drawing that line with your eyes instead.  
You don’t think you’ll be able to fall asleep with him next to you and your heart beating so loudly in your ears, but you find yourself waking up a few hours later, the sun already starting to set. Jake is already awake, scrolling on his phone, one arm casually behind his head as if being in your bed is as comfortable to him as being in his own. When he sees you’ve woken up, his honey-coated smile washes warmly over you, and he makes a joke about how he keeps on falling asleep when he’s with you. “I feel that at ease, I guess,” he says, and you hope you’re not making up the small blush that spreads over his cheeks. 
--
Semesters are always a short and intense affair, but this one passes by even quicker with Jake by your side. Before you know it, it’s midterms already, and you and Jake have travelled enough for him to complete his project and make another one just for the hell of it. He had scoured the internet for the cheapest train tickets and most noteworthy sites, planning trips that lasted anywhere between three hours and a day for the two of you. All you needed to do was follow and trust him, which was the easiest thing anyone could’ve asked of you. 
You’ve gone back to Glasgow, during the day, this time, as well as St. Andrews and Aberdeen. You’ve practically visited every loch and castle in a one-hour train ride radius of Edinburgh, and Jake has more lined up for the second part of the semester. He’s even said that your trips should continue being a thing next term, and you couldn’t have agreed faster. With every new destination, every train ride spent looking out a window or laughing about everything and anything, any odd Scottish food you try for the first time, you somehow fall for him a bit deeper. You didn’t know your love for him could bloom any more than it already had - but Jake is the gift that keeps on giving, and, unwillingly or not, he always finds new ways to make your heart speed that much faster.
Attentionate, affectionate, sweet Jake who always makes sure you’re comfortable wherever you go, always gives you his jacket or tucks your hair behind your ear to prevent it from falling in your face. Who, as time passed, grew more touchy, would hold your hand, ruffle your hair, pinch your cheek, which was simultaneously devastating and elating. Who, you could tell, started to linger more, both in his touch and in his gaze. Questions of does he love me back or am I seeing what I want to see? nearly drove you mad. 
--
“I feel like at this point the only way she’ll understand that I like her is if I kill myself and write in my suicide note that it’s her fault for not loving me back.”
Jake has been pacing back and forth in Jay’s living room for approximately twenty minutes, with no end in sight. At least he’ll have gotten most of his ten thousand steps of the day in.
Jay sighs heavily. “Okay, I really don’t think you need to go that far.”
“Sounds romantic to me,” Sunghoon says, mouth full of salted caramel popcorn.
“I hope you never get a girlfriend,” Jay retorts, looking at his deranged friend with a scowl. He turns back to his (slightly more) normal friend and gives him a sympathetic smile. 
“I mean, I told her we were different. Different. That we weren’t like regular friends. I tell her she’s pretty every chance I get. I give her my jacket all the time, even though this country is fucking cold. I’ve even given her a t-shirt of mine, sprayed with my perfume and everything. And don’t get me wrong, I do it ‘cause I love doing that for her-”
“Simp,” Sunghoon snickers.
“But what the hell else can I do? Like, she has to be ignoring it on purpose at this point.” 
“You could always, you know… tell her?”
Jake scoffs, fixing his friend with a derisive look. “Wow. What a great idea, Jay, I never thought of that one before!”
A popcorn lands right on Jay’s cheek. “You’re so clueless, man,” Sunghoon says, a shit-eating smirk on his lips. As if he knows any better.
Jay looks back-and-forth between his friends, an expression on his face like he’s been disparaged. “Sorry, I didn’t know being straightforward and honest was such a bad thing. It would just make things a lot clearer for the both of you.”
“But… I’m scared,” Jake says. 
“Man up!” Sunghoon suddenly yells, punching the sofa next to him, making his friends jump. “How can she ever figure it out if you don’t tell her?”
“You were on my side just a second ago, man, what are you doing?” Jake asks, confusion written all over his face. Sunghoon’s eyes dart back and forth between the two boys, retreating into silence as he stuffs his mouth with another handful of popcorn.
“Just ignore him,” Jay says. “But for once, he did say something that makes a modicum of sense. You think you’re being really obvious, but you might not actually be. Which could be a good sign, you know. I heard girls were super aware of a guy liking them if they weren’t into him, but being totally oblivious if they did like him.”
“Where did you hear that?” Jake asks, an eyebrow raised in suspicion.
“...Instagram Reels,” Jay reluctantly admits, frowning at Sunghoon who bursts into laughter. 
Jake holds the bridge of his nose between two fingers like his head aches. “You’re both so useless, I’m never coming to you with my problems ever again.”
“I’ll pretend I’m not offended by that.”
“I’d rather you didn’t, anyway,” Sunghoon says. He’s smiling but Jake genuinely can’t tell if he’s joking or not.
“But seriously, if you think you’ve done everything, then just do one last thing that’s so obvious she can’t misinterpret it,” Jay says.
“Like what?”
“Like kissing her, or some-”
“Kissing her?!” Jake echoes.
“That’s wild, man,” Sunghoon uselessly butts in.
“It’s just an example, calm yourselves,” Jay says. “Or, again, just straight up tell her how you feel. It’s what I did with Yunjin, and it worked.”
“You and Yunjin are dating?” Sunghoon asks, bewildered.
Jay shakes his head at him. “Where the hell have you been, bro? We were literally cuddling on the couch the other day.”
“I just thought you were really good friends, or something.”
Jake groans, holding his head in his hands. Sunghoon was of no help whatsoever, and Jay was so on point that it annoyed him. Confessing was the only solution - but Jake was so afraid of being rejected and losing your friendship that he had barely entertained the thought. But he had found the courage to do it once, and even though his planned confession had fallen through back then, he could get himself together and do it again. 
It was the day he had told you he was moving to Korea, which he himself had learned that morning. Originally, he’d texted you because he had news to share - good news. Or at least, he hoped they were good. He hoped the soft, lingering looks you gave him weren’t a figment of his imagination but rather the confirmation he needed that you liked him back. He hoped that like him, you cared too much about your friendship to make the first move into something else; that by confessing first, you’d be relieved of that responsibility; that his wish to hold your hand and kiss your forehead wasn’t one-sided. 
He decided not to prepare anything - just a couple sentences that he’d rehearsed over and over in his head. Declarations of love, bouquets of flowers, chocolate and couple keychains, all that could wait until after you’d said yes to being his girlfriend. He didn’t want to win you over just once, he wanted to show you every day how much he loved you. Fourteen-year-old Jake was absolutely head over heels for you; so imagine his disappointment when, as he was getting ready to meet with you, his parents called him downstairs, a tone to their voice Jake wasn’t familiar with, but that couldn’t mean anything good. 
“Your dad’s job is sending us back to Seoul next month,” his mom announced, not beating around the bush. He felt everything quite literally crumbling down around him. His friends in Brisbane, his school, his hobbies, but above all, you. He’d lose it all. And what was the point now in telling you how he felt? If you felt the same way, it would only make his departure that much harder, and if you didn’t, it would ruin your last moments together. It just wasn’t worth it.
What he had planned to be good news turned into the most awful ones. The thought of it happening all over again makes twenty-year-old Jake shudder. But he wouldn’t let himself be trapped by time again - sure, in seven months, the academic year would be over, and he would go back to Korea. But that didn’t mean that those seven months should be spent in agony, or the following ones either, for that matter. You would make it work. What was long-distance to someone who loved someone else as much as Jake loved you?
But he doesn’t want to get ahead of himself. He has to start by really resolving to do this, and in the off-chance that it actually goes in his favour, he’d start worrying about long distance then.
First, he has a trip to plan.
--
You should’ve known that a trip to the Scottish Highlands in the middle of November was a risky choice in terms of weather. The day started off nicely enough - no sign of rain when you woke up or as you watched the sunrise through the train window. Clouds turned the sky a bright white at first, then increasingly greyer and greyer. You feel the first drops of rain after lunch as you walk around a small village. By four pm, it’s pitch black and storming like you’ve rarely seen before. You head into a pub to grab a drink as you wait for the rain to subside, but subside it does not. You end up ordering fish and chips, one each, although one serving is enough to feed three. Even after taking your time eating, the bad weather does not let up. The last train, which is meant to be at eight pm, has been cancelled. Luckily, there’s an inn right across the road from the pub; you have no choice but to spend the night. 
The inn receptionist is sitting so low on her chair, you can barely see her over the desk until you’re standing right over it. Her face is hidden by a book and it’s only when you say hiya that she seems to realise you’re there. You had never heard of the book or of its author, but you recognized the cover design as that of those romance novels with repetitive plots and weirdly misogynistic love interests your mum and every other middle-aged woman was obsessed with.
Her smile widens as she looks between you and Jake. “Hi there. One room for the lovely couple?”
“Oh, we’re not-”
“Yes, please,” Jake interrupts, smiling down at her, then at you. “It’ll be cheaper if we share a room.”
“Our only room with two single beds is already taken, I’m afraid. One double bed okay for you two?”
You feel like you’re about to faint, so you’re glad Jake is there to answer. “Yeah, of course.” How the idea of sharing one bed with you is so okay to him, you’re not sure - granted, you’ve done it before, but this feels different. For all intents and purposes, this is a hotel room you’re staying in. And you’re staying in it with Jake. 
You try to calm your breathing as the receptionist guides you to your room, chatting casually with Jake on the way there. As she unlocks the door for you, she informs you that check-out must be done before eleven in the morning tomorrow, then bids you good night and leaves you to it, still wearing that smile you swear has mischievousness to it. The door clicks shut behind you, and it’s just Jake and you again, together in this small room until tomorrow morning. Your chances of survival are very, very low. 
Your room is a humble one, consisting of a desk, a cupboard, two armchairs, a small, separate bathroom and the infamous bed. Every surface seems to be covered with wood, from the ceiling, to the walls, to the old-fashioned furniture. Only the floor is a soft, beige carpet. Especially with the darkness outside, it makes for a gloomy room until you turn on the lamp by the entrance; it casts a warm, golden light in the room, one that would make you feel at ease if it wasn’t for Jake’s presence next to you. The implications of being essentially trapped in a barely-lit room with him are heavy on your mind, especially when he looks this gorgeous with his hair still damp from the rain and the soft lights playing on his face. 
His voice brings you out of your thoughts. “Right. Do you, um, do you wanna shower first?” he asks, setting his bag on one of the armchairs.
“Oh. Yeah, sure.” There has never been such an awkward tension between the two of you, but you know you’re not doing anything to ease it. You hope a shower will help you get out of your head and make you relax.
You feel the tension leave your muscles under the hot water, but your stomach is still in knots. You’ve never been this nervous around Jake before; back when you were fourteen and again in these past few months, you’d gotten so used to dealing with your unspoken feelings for him that you could almost forget about them when you were with him. They’d come back to you when you were alone and dwelling on the moments you’d spent together, on his words and actions you desperately tried not to read too much into but always ended up doing anyway. But right now, they’ve floated to the surface, becoming as obvious to you as a stain on your skin you can’t rub away. You’re scared Jake will notice it, and, in the worst case scenario you often thought about, would run away and never speak to you again. 
At least the raging storm outside would make that a bit harder.
When you step out of the shower, you curse yourself for not having worn more comfortable clothes on this trip. You definitely can’t wear these jeans and button-up sweater to lounge around. Thankfully, the inn provides two long bathrobes that you could wear over underwear and your tank top, but you wonder where on the scale of inappropriate this would be to wear with Jake in the room. He’s seen you in short pyjama shorts before, but this, like everything else that would usually be normal between the two of you, feels weird today. 
You wrap the bathrobe around yourself, tying it in place around your waist, and decide that it’d only be weird if you made it weird. And if Jake found the sight of your bare legs weird, then he was the weird one.
The scene you’re met with as you walk into the room makes you want to retreat into the bathroom immediately. Jake is lying on the bed with his upper half against the headboard, one leg extended and the other one bent, resting his head against one palm, using his free hand to scroll through his phone. His t-shirt has ridden up slightly, putting the waistband of his Calvin Kleins into view. Worst of all, when he sees you, his face breaks into a grin. 
Your stomach twists when he gives you a once-over, letting his gaze linger on your legs. “Did you bring a bathrobe with you or was it included?” he asks with an annoyingly handsome smirk.
You roll your eyes. “Yes, I bring a bathrobe with me wherever I go,” you say sarcastically. “Now shut up and go shower, you stink.” Reverting to insults is always the solution when you’re internally freaking out.
“Yes, ma’am.” 
He takes so long in the shower that by the time he comes out, you’ve dozed off in bed. As if you were a child, he wakes you up with a boop to the nose, crouching next to the bed and smiling at you. His wet hair falls on his head like that of a movie star in a shower scene, which you find extremely unfair, and his cheeks are red from the warmth of the water. 
“It’s still early. Do you wanna go grab another drink?”
“In our bathrobes?” you say, laughing. “Nah, I don’t really feel like drinking anyway.” Read: I’m not sure what I’ll do with alcohol in me.
“Okay, no worries. Um, I think I saw they had board games in the lobby?”
Your ears perk up at this. “Ooh, what kind of board games?”
Putting jeans on underneath his bathrobe, Jake slips away for a minute and comes back with Monopoly, Uno, and a deck of cards. “They didn’t have much for two players,” he says, dumping everything on the bed. 
You already knew that anything would become fun if you did it with Jake, but you definitely didn’t expect to spend almost five hours just playing Monopoly and card games with him. Neither of you stays put for very long, always switching from sitting criss-cross to laying on your stomach, making fun of the other’s bathrobe even though you’re wearing the exact same thing. You make each other laugh as you make up your own nonsense rules and disregard the laws of your games, attacking the other ruthlessly for a couple extra points or coins. Jake even makes you go get snacks from a corner store that’s miraculously still open because you lose the first round of Uno. 
After some time, Jake lets out a loud yawn, which in turn makes you yawn too. He checks his phone to find that it��s close to midnight already. “Time for bed?” he asks, and your nervousness that had finally dissipated as you played came rushing back. 
You nod. “Yeah, sounds good.”
The two of you clean up before brushing your teeth. Even that, with Jake by your side, becomes a silly affair as he pulls faces in the mirror and nudges your hip with his. You stay behind to use the toilet, and when you come back out, Jake’s already in bed, bathrobe tossed on one of the armchairs. This means that Jake is just casually in a t-shirt and boxers, waiting for you to join him in bed. Luckily, his back is turned to you, so you quickly take off your own bathrobe and slide under the sheets, careful to keep your distance from him. The sheets are cold underneath you, and you know it’ll take a while before your body heat warms them up - although you feel very hot and bothered because of the man lying next to you. 
“Gosh, I’m really sleepy all of a sudden,” he says, words distorted by a yawn. You only hum in response, and he reaches for the lamp to turn it off. Just like that, you’re in complete darkness, and Jake’s body is mere inches from your own. 
It’s eerily quiet for a while, and when you’ve managed to slow your heartbeat and regularise your breathing, you start trying to fall asleep. You toss and turn, unable to find a comfortable position until Jake’s low, sleepy voice breaks the silence. “Can’t sleep?” he asks, and you freeze.
You sigh. “No. I’m sorry for keeping you up,” you say guiltily.
“It’s okay. I can’t really sleep either. It’s a bit cold in here.”
You pause. “Right. Yeah, it is,” you say, even though you feel like you’re sweating buckets. 
The room plunges into silence again, long enough for you to think Jake has fallen asleep. You feel something cold against your foot, only realising as it slides up your calf that it’s his foot. “Jake!” you whisper-yell, withdrawing your leg as he bursts into giggles that warm your heart. “Your feet are so cold,” you say in-between chuckles.
“I’m cold all over,” he whines. “Have they not turned the heating on yet? It’s already mid-November.”
“People are used to the cold here.”
“Well I’m not. Can we cuddle?” he suddenly asks, and he must somehow feel the way you freeze in place because he stammers out a justification straight away. “For, I mean, just for warmth, you know. I don’t think I’ll sleep otherwise.”
His foot finds yours again and you can’t help but laugh. “Sure, fine,” you say with a sigh as if you were doing only half-heartedly for his sake. As if this was some big sacrifice you were making, and not something you’d daydreamed about one too many times before. 
Your heart is beating a thousand miles a second when you scooch closer to Jake, his hands finding your waist as easily as if they’d been there a hundred times before. He pulls you in much closer than you had expected, holding you tightly against his chest, one arm for you to use as a pillow and one hand resting on your lower back. You try to calm your respiration so that he can’t hear how short of breath you are, but based on his own breathing, he seems to be out in five minutes. It takes you longer to fall asleep, every shift of his body sending shivers down your spine, but you manage to relax after some time, letting his warmth envelop you as you drift off to sleep.
--
The feeling of waking up with you in his arms is so unreal, Jake thinks he might still be dreaming.
He looks down at your peaceful sleeping face and can’t stop the smile that spreads on his lips. Jake always thinks you’re pretty, but this is a sight he particularly wants to commit to memory. He watches fondly as the bright sun rays of the early morning hit your face, making you scrunch your eyebrows and bury your face deeper against him. You grunt softly, and when he feels you shifting and stretching your legs, he pretends to fall asleep so you don’t catch him staring. It seems like you’ve raised your head, chin tilted towards him - if he’s lucky, you’re watching him “sleep” just like he did seconds ago.
He contains a smile at the joke that forms itself in his brain before shooting his eyes open, catching you off guard during what you thought was a private, secret moment. 
“Shit!” you yelp, practically jumping off of him and rolling onto the other side of the bed. He bursts into laughter, proud that his little prank was effective. Before you can scold him, he makes his way to you, wrapping an arm around your waist and bringing your back against his chest. He thinks he feels your body tense; but then you bring your hand over his, swiping your thumb back and forth against his skin, and you relax in his hold. “You’re so annoying,” you complain, but your voice is tender, almost weak.
He buries his face in your hair, trying not to be too loud when he inhales there. “Sorry,” he says, the smile evident in his voice. “The opportunity was right there. Caught you staring, huh?”
“You’re such an idiot.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.” It’s quiet for a few minutes, and Jake is more than happy to enjoy this moment in silence, but there’s something burning the tip of his tongue. It’s been there for a while now, but he thinks he’s finally found the right moment. “Y/N?”
“Mm?”
“There’s something I couldn’t tell you last night, but I feel oddly okay saying it right now. Are you listening?” 
“I am, yeah,” you say gently, voice so soft it caresses his skin and draws goosebumps from it.
His chest expands and falls with a deep, shaky breath. With your back right against it, he’s scared you’ll hear that his heart is beating faster than it should. “Bad news first?” he says with a nervous chuckle.
“Uh-oh.”
“There’s no roundabout way to say this, so here goes, I guess.” He takes another breath. “I’m in love with you, Y/N.” You tense in his embrace, and he waits for you to say something, anything before he continues.
“Oh,” is all you say. He hopes it’s a good oh - even if it isn’t, he doesn’t let it deter him.
“Yeah. I really debated telling you this… I know you might not feel the same way. But I also know that if I don’t say anything and make the same mistake twice, I’ll beat myself up over it for the rest of my life.”
“The same mistake?” you ask, looking at him over your shoulder.
He gazes down at you tenderly, pushing hair away from your face with a gentle hand. “I already felt that way back when we lived in Australia. I was about to tell you but when I learned that I was moving, I didn’t wanna risk ruining the little time we had left together.”
The look on your face both breaks his heart and patches it up again. “Jakey…” you say, voice just a whisper. You turn around to face him and bury your face in the crook of his neck. The fact that you’re not saying much is making his stomach twist in agonising stress, but he takes it as a good sign that you’re still holding him tight and not running away.
“I think I’d be the luckiest guy on Earth if you felt the same way,” he says, hopefulness clear in his voice. 
And then he finally hears the words he’s been dying to hear all these years. “Of course, I feel the same way, Jake,” you say, eyes meeting his. “This isn’t bad news at all, it’s like, the best possible news ever.”
It takes him a few seconds, but when your words sink in, a bright smile graces his features. He feels tears coming up - tears of relief that you feel the same way, of sadness that it took the both of you so long to get here, of happiness that something new might start - he’s not sure. Perhaps everything at once.
“Of course?” he echoes, smiling wildly. “It wasn’t obvious to me.”
“Oh, gosh,” you murmur, burying yourself into him once more. “I can’t believe this is actually happening.”
He tightened his hold around you, bringing you to him as close as physically possible. “Me neither.”
The feeling of you tangling your bare legs with his and bunching up the fabric of his t-shirt in your fist awakens something in him - he had been in his head, thanking the heavens that you loved him back, reeling from his belated confession, but he was now very aware of his body. And of yours. He was reminded of Jay telling him to kiss you - although he hadn’t needed to go there to reveal his feelings to you, it was still a possibility. It was even more so now that he knew you felt the same way. 
He tries to be subtle as he brushes a hand up your back to the nape of your neck, gently grazing his fingernails against the skin there. He has to suppress a self-satisfied smirk when he feels you squirm under his touch, lifting your head to fix him with a scolding look. Your stern expression fades as soon as his eyes fall on your lips, however, and you quickly mirror his gaze. His lips part, and he feels his whole body shake as he takes a deep breath in. Who knew that you’d share your first kiss on a random Sunday morning in the fuckass middle of nowhere in Scotland?
Maybe you take pity on him, or you recognise the effort put into being the one to make the first move, or, as he’d like to think, you just really want to kiss him - either way, you’re the one who closes the gap and presses your lips to his.
Your lips. So soft, so delicate against his, absolutely perfect. It’s a simple, tentative touch, but he’s craved it for so long that it makes his head spin. He frowns, despite himself instantly needing more than this feather-like feeling of your lips brushing against each other. His mind tells him to calm down and take it slow, but his body takes over, urging him to grab the nape of your neck a little harder, to hold you a little closer to him, to kiss you a little stronger. Thankfully, you let him do all of this and more, hands finding purchase in his hair and returning his intensity tenfold. 
He doesn’t know what’s better - the fact that you’re kissing him or the kiss itself. The way your lips move against his is intoxicating; it wraps itself around its mind and leaves no room for thoughts that aren’t of you. You seem to want him as desperately as he wants you, to have waited for him as long as he did for you, and this is what drives him crazy. You press your body against his and he sees stars; you let out a moan against his lips and he kisses you deeper, ready to do anything to hear that melody again. 
Unfortunately, the only melody he gets to hear is that of his phone alarm, informing you that it’s quarter to eleven and that you have fifteen minutes to leave. Check-out at eleven am had sounded nice yesterday; now, he would stay in this dingy inn his whole life if it meant he got to keep kissing you. 
The both of you reluctantly break apart, bursting into giddy laughter when your eyes meet. As said before, Jake always thinks you’re pretty, but with your pupils blown and your lips plump from kissing, this might just be the prettiest he’s ever seen you. 
“You know, I like you a lot, but I’d like you even more if you could stop time,” you say.
He looks down at you with a smile, pushing away the strands of hair that had fallen on your face. “Sure, I’ll learn how to control time for you.”
“Thanks, Jakey.” You peck his lips, lingering, and he closes his eyes to savour your sweetness. 
“Anything for you, baby.” His eyes widen at the nickname slip, but you erupt into giggles.
“Baby?”
“Would you look at the time, we really got to go,” he says, detangling his limbs from yours. He pauses for a second. “Baby,” he repeats, pressing a quick kiss to your forehead before bouncing from the bed.
You get ready together, and the mundane tasks of stripping sheets from a bed and packing bags become the funnest things he’s ever done. You’re all over each other, attacking the other with kisses and hugs; Jake doesn’t think he’s ever felt quite this happy. 
And this is only the beginning.
--
There’s a glint in the receptionist’s eyes when you check out of your room, as if she knew something you and Jake had been oblivious to all along. It’s the only one in town, so you go back to the little pub for a full breakfast with eggs, hash browns, haggis, and sausages. You get coffee so strong you think you might not sleep for the next four days, while Jake drinks tea that is equal parts sugar, milk, and actual tea.
From the moment you leave the pub to the moment you arrive at your doorstep, Jake’s hands barely leave yours. When they have to, like when you’re searching for the perfect seat on the train or when the controller checks your tickets, they’re back together within a minute, like two magnets that can’t stay apart for too long. The rain has long subsided, leaving place to a bright blue sky and wet blades of grass that shine in the sun. 
Now that your mutual feelings don’t need to be kept secret, you tell each other about everything you had to go through, like you pretending your good news was your mum having baked the cookies Jake liked and him seeing your new boyfriends every two months on your close friends story. He tells you about all the hints he’s dropped, causing you to facepalm over and over again. It feels like two friends catching each other to speed on all the latest gossip, except the topic of that gossip is you.
The juxtaposition of your familiarity with Jake with the novelty of behaving like a couple, of not having to hold back with your touches or gazes or words, is nothing if not jarring. But you have a feeling you’ll get used to it in no time. 
As you unlock the front door to your building, you don’t ask him if he’s coming up - to you, it’s a given that you’ll be spending the rest of today and every day after that together. So when he doesn’t follow you, staying still on the threshold, you turn around with a questioning look on your face. 
“There’s something I need to do this afternoon,” he says, taking both of your hands in his.
“Can’t I come with?” you say. Jake wavers for a second, but sadly, he stays firm in his decision.
“Sorry, baby, it’s a surprise. I’ll be back at seven with takeout?”
You can’t possibly be mad at him when he calls you baby and offers food in the same breath. “Only if you bring takeout.”
“You only love me because I feed you, don’t you?” he asks, a smile on his face.
“Yup,” you reply. You’re standing on a step, so you bend down to kiss him - you intend for it to be a peck, but when your lips touch, you’re unable to pull away. You let yourself get lost in the feeling of his lips on yours, in the warmth that takes over your body and makes your brain all fuzzy. 
A loud, affronted gasp from behind you makes you jump from Jake, and when you turn around, Chaewon and Yunjin are standing in the stairwell, staring at you with wide eyes and gaping mouths. 
“So this was a sexcapade?” is, much to your horror, the first thing Yunjin says.
Thanks to Chaewon, neither you nor Jake have the time to dwell on this sentence as she comes running down the stairs and pounces on you. You don’t know how a woman so small can have such force, but her hug is so tight you can barely breathe, let alone hug her back properly. “I knew you could do it!” she exclaims. When she pulls away, she seems so moved, it looks like she’s about to cry. “You finally popped your Jake cherry,” she whispers, but it’s loud enough for Jake to hear. A bark of laughter escapes his throat.
“Okay, thanks, guys,” you say, escaping this awkward situation and going up the stairs. “I’ll see you later, Jake!” you yell over your shoulder. The girls seem to be on their way out, and you’re more than happy leaving him to deal with them on his own. God knows you’ll get the worst of it when they come back. 
As soon as you get to your flat, you make a beeline for your bedroom, plopping on the bed. You’re the same person, and this is the same room. But something within you feels entirely different, like a scar that you had been carrying around had, without you even noticing, healed so well you could barely see it anymore. You lifted your hands in the air, looked at the back of them, then at your palms. They were the same old hands that had been with you your whole life, and you were almost shocked that there wasn’t something utterly different about them after having held Jake’s hand for so long. Just to be sure, you sniffed your right hand, but it didn’t smell any different, either. But you still felt Jake’s hand on yours, like headphones you’d been wearing for hours and still felt on your ears after taking them off.
Yunjin and Chaewon are back from their shopping half-an-hour later; they got you a chocolate fudge cake from Tesco to congratulate you. “You guys are acting like this is my birthday…” you say, eyeing the cake greedily as Chaewon cuts it into three equal parts (even though it says serves eight on the packaging). 
“This is more important than your birthday, Y/N,” Yunjin states as she pours oat milk into three cups of Earl Grey tea. “This is, like, the moment of a lifetime.”
“Are you saying a girl’s importance depends on her having a boyfriend?”
“Yes, Y/N, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Especially when said boyfriend is the guy she’s been pining after for all of her teenage and adult life.”
You sigh. “Well, he hasn’t exactly popped the boyfriend and girlfriend question yet.” They both turn to look at you, an annoyed look on their faces. You stand up straight, uncomfortable under their gazes. “What?”
“Usually, I’m all for clarity on this issue,” Chaewon starts. “But isn’t it pretty obvious here?”
“You’re still gonna have to tell us everything in minute detail, but Jake’s already told us what happened. He had no qualms referring to you as his girlfriend, so I really don’t think this is something you need to worry about. What you should worry about is when and where you’re going to hop on that dick.”
Chaewon bursts into laughter, and you can’t help but follow suit. “Gosh, Yunjin, you really do have a way with words.”
“I know. This is what having a Jane Austen hyperfixation at fifteen will do to you.”
Following Yunjin’s orders, you tell them about the events of the previous day and this morning over tea and cake. They ooh and ah and gasp in all the right places, ask you very specific questions and even make you draw a picture of the room you stayed in. You’ve talked to them about Jake so many times that there’s only so much to say now - but still, you talk for hours on end, deviating off-topic so often you end up talking about something else entirely. 
You’re in bed reading for your Middle English Literature class when the doorbell rings. It’s seven on the dot, so it can be no one else other than Jake. It’s been mere hours, but you’ve missed him enough to last you for weeks. 
He brought takeaway from the Indian place you’d raved about a hundred times but hadn’t brought him to yet. Somehow, your heart grows even fonder as you watch his reaction to the food, the raise of his eyebrows, the widening of his eyes, the excited shimmy of his shoulders. When you ask him about his afternoon, a wide smile breaks out onto his face, like a lightbulb illuminating a room. Without a word, he scurries to your room, bringing back some sort of book with him. He hands it to you  with a shy smile and curious eyes, eagerly anticipating your reaction. The cover reads Y/N and Jake in his clumsy but endearing handwriting, with the date of his arrival in Edinburgh and an em-dash scribbled underneath. “I haven’t booked my flight home yet, so I’ll add the second date later,” he explains. 
When you flick through it, you’re met with photographs of you and Jake on all of the trips you’ve done so far, as well as the various adventures you got up to in the city. There’s even one of you sleeping in the library at two am during midterms when you had forgotten about one of your essays, due at midday. Jake had come with coffee and words of encouragement, and now he could brag that the high mark you got was thanks to him. It’s not only photos - it’s also ticket stubs, receipts, stickers, and even a dried flower you had found pretty on your trip to St. Andrews. He’s also written quite a lot, from diary-like entries about what you got up to that day or songs that reminded him of you. 
“You misspelt right here,” you say, pointing to a sentence that reads This is the café write next to the hotel where the last Harry Potter book is said to have been written!!! under a photo of you drinking a massive cup of hot chocolate. The more you look at the typo, the more it makes you laugh, until you have tears brimming in your eyes.
Thanks to Yunjin’s messiness, pens and pencils are strewn over your coffee table. Jake, flushed red in embarrassment at the small mistake, snatches a pencil and aggressively erases write, spelling it correctly the second time around. “This is the level of today’s English Lit undergrads,” he murmurs under his breath. His frown disappears when he looks at you and he laughs along.
You continue looking through the album until you land on a page titled Why I love Y/N. From top to bottom, left to right, it’s filled with Jake’s tiny handwriting. You can tell he put effort into making it neat. There’s a singular photograph of you, one that dates from the first days after Jake’s arrival when you were walking around in the Meadows, the park right next to campus. The sun shone down on you and you smiled brightly at Jake behind the camera.  
You’re not a quarter through reading when tears swell in your eyes, rendering your vision blurry. You wipe them away before they can fall and stain the page. Jake has detailed every last thing he loves about you. It can hardly get cornier than this, but the fact that he wrote this about you makes your heart so full, you’re afraid it might explode in your chest. It ranges from basic things like the way she makes me laugh or her pretty face when she falls asleep in the train (or anywhere, for that matter) to more you-specific things like the strict pastel colour-coding she uses for her notes and her perseverance when eating spicy food even though she can’t take it. He mentions things about you that you didn’t even know, and that feeling of being known in-and-out, of being really seen by someone else only brings more tears to your eyes. Your favourite line comes at the end - the way she makes any place feel like home. A proper sob pushes past your lips at this, and Jake, who had been watching you with an anxious smile, rests a palm on your knee and inches closer to you.
“Why are you crying, is- Did I write something bad?”
You shake your head fervently. “No, no, Jakey, this is… It’s perfect. I’m just…” you trail, letting out a half-sob, half-chuckle. You look at him with a smile before pulling him into a tight hug. “I love it so much. I love you so much.”
You can feel Jake relax against you. “I love you too, baby. I’m glad you like it.”
You pull away after a small while, and turn the next page over. It’s a picture of you over breakfast this morning, with words WE’RE DATING!!!! written underneath it, and those simple words make you so happy, your cheeks ache from smiling. But every page after that is empty. Jake scratches the back of his neck. “I, um, I thought we could fill the rest out together. I debated just doing it myself and giving it to you at the end of the year, but I thought it’d be more fun doing it together.”
“It would. This is such an amazing idea,” you say, flicking back through the pages.
“I thought of it because of that project I had. When I started working on it, all the photos I wanted to include were of you, but I wasn’t sure how much my professor would appreciate that… So I decided to make one more personal. One for us,” he says shyly, shrugging like it’s no big deal.
“Thank you so much, Jakey.”
He smiles. “It’s no worries.”
“Did you do it all this afternoon?”
“I had started it before, but I added it most of today, yeah. Which, by the way, awful timing. I wanted nothing more than to spend today with you.”
Your heart leaps. You’re not sure you’ll ever get used to hearing such words from Jake’s mouth.
Sometime later, you’re laying in bed with Jake between your legs, watching the most recent animated Spiderman movie. With the tips of your fingers, you draw random patterns on his forearm, and if it wasn’t for his occasional chuckles, you’d think he had fallen asleep. You chat for a bit after the movie, but you find that after such an emotionally-packed day, you’re ready to call it a night fairly early. But when the lights are off and it’s just you lying against Jake’s chest, his fingernails grazing your scalp and his familiar, comforting scent clouding your judgement, all thoughts of an early night are thrown out of the window.
You shouldn’t feel so nervous - you had fallen asleep in his arms last night, and it had gone well. Really well. 
“This is different from yesterday, isn’t it?” Jake suddenly says, breaking the heavy silence with a low voice. It’s like he read your mind.
“Yeah,” you whisper against his skin.
No other words are needed. You brush the tip of your nose along his neck until you reach his jawline, pressing soft kisses there and delighting in the increasing shakiness of his breath. The feeling of your lips meeting is so intense, so all-encompassing, that you don’t know if you’ll be able to handle anything more.
This is still new territory, but you’re both so eager to discover it that it makes for a messy kiss, lips moving against each other ravenously, tongues beckoning moans from the other. It’s a kiss that somehow leaves you breathless and breathes oxygen back into your lungs at once. 
In a matter of seconds, Jake has flipped you on your back and is hovering over you, one hand holding him up and one hand free to roam your body. He slips it underneath your t-shirt, brushes it along the side of your waist, his touch leaving behind a trail of fire blazing on your skin. It’s so distracting, you can’t even kiss him back properly anymore. Jake doesn’t seem to mind. At first, when he starts pressing hot kisses to your jawline and your neck, you think he’s giving you a respite - but when he gently sinks his teeth into the skin there, leaving marks that will later remind you tonight wasn’t a dream, chuckling as you squirm and whine under him, you understand that this is anything but a respite. 
You curse your earlier decision of not wearing a bra, because it gives you no preparation whatsoever to the sensation of Jake brushing his thumb against one of your nipples. With a loud gasp, your back arches off of the bed, which only aids Jake in raising your t-shirt up over your breasts. 
He takes a minute to admire the sight of you panting and half-naked underneath him. It makes you feel shy, and you want to do something so that he stops looking and starts doing, but his gaze holds you in place. His pupils are blown with lust, eyes raking over your body and taking everything in. You have a hard time wrapping your head around the fact that it’s you he’s looking at with those eyes. 
His soft lips attach themselves to your nipple while his fingers continue their work on the other one. You’ve never felt this sensitive, never felt this on edge, like you might fall apart at any second even with so little simulation. Your core throbs, impatiently waiting to be tended to, but you’re already trembling so hard from Jake’s attention to your breasts that you don’t know what will happen to you once he actually touches you down there.
“You doing okay, baby?” he asks, the rasp in his voice making you want him impossibly more. You grip his hair and he looks up at you, a tender smile on his lips. You nod your head yes and he laughs. “Yeah? You want more?” You pause at his question. You do want more, but is it worth your sanity?
It takes you a second to decide that it’s worth that and more. You nod again. 
Jake seems to have sensed your hesitation. He tucks a strand of hair behind your ear. “You sure you’re okay?”
“I am. It’s just a lot.”
His expression of worry softens into a smile. “I’ll take it slow for you, love. It’s a lot for me, too.” He leans in to press soft kisses to your cheek, and some of the tension in your body diffuses. Whatever happens, Jake will be there to take care of you. “But it feels good, right?” he asks, lips moving against your ear, sending shivers down your spine.
“So good, Jakey,” you reply shakily.
“Good.”
You can tell that Jake really does want to take it slow - his movements are more deliberate, gentler. But eagerness, both yours and his, soon takes over, and a minute later, he’s trailing kisses down your body until he reaches your lower stomach. Your breath quickens as he hooks fingers underneath your leggings and underwear, sliding both garments down your legs and leaving you bare to him. You think the feeling of his lips on the fleshy parts of your inner thighs is what might actually do you in, make you lose your sense of reality forever - but then his tongue darts out against your clit, a barely-there touch, and your whole body flatlines. 
Your reaction eggs Jake on, who, more confident now, takes the sensitive bud in his lips and alternates between sucking and licking motions. A knot ties itself embarrassingly quickly in your stomach, a knot that tightens and tightens as Jake flattens his tongue against you, licking up your juices from your entrance to your clit; a knot that threatens to come loose when he slides a long finger inside of you. You can’t take more than thirty seconds of this.
“Jakey,” you say, voice practically a moan. Your brain is fuzzy and it takes a distressing amount of time to form a simple sentence. “Can you come here?”
“Is something wrong, baby?” he asks breathily, sliding his finger out of you and coming back up so that his face is right above yours. 
“No, just… I want you.”
Any trace of worry on Jake’s features dissipates as he cocks an eyebrow, one corner of his lips tugging up into a smirk. “Is that so?”
This kind of boldness would usually have you rolling your eyes, but here, it only makes your core throb more violently. It’s almost humiliating how much you want this man. It’s definitely humiliating, how easy it is to swallow your pride and play into his game. “Yes, please,” you say, eyes pleading with him.
He smiles almost giddily before burying his face against the side of yours. “My baby’s so polite,” he says, pressing a kiss to your cheek. “I’ll give you whatever you want.”
“Take this off, then,” you say, grabbing the bottom hem of his t-shirt. 
“So she says please and gives orders,” he jokes, quickly obliging anyway. 
Not once in your time apart had Jake posted any sort of beach trip or pool photos, so this was the first time you saw his bare chest. God, was it one for the history books. You trace the defined lines of his muscles with a finger and wonder how he had managed to get even more perfect. He lets you marvel at him for it, clearly proud that you’re gawking so shamelessly, but your mind drifts back to more urgent matters when he presses himself into you, his clothed cock, hard and hot, brushing against your folds. “Fuck,” you sigh, bucking your hips into his to feel him over and over again.
It’s so much, but it’s not enough; Jake instantly gets your message when you hook your fingers under the waistband of his boxers, pulling him to you and kissing him feverishly. Your lips don’t part as he slides his boxers off, and you drink up the nectar that are his moans as you take him in your hand, pumping him a few times.
“Condom?” he asks, but you shake your head.
“I’m on the pill. And even so… I usually always use a condom, but I don’t want to now. Not with you.”
Jake closes his eyes as he takes a deep, stabilising breath. “I feel totally normal about that. Not crazy at all.”
You giggle, and he opens his eyes, a wide smile gracing his lips before he bends down to kiss you. “You ready for the night of your life?” he asks against your lips. “It’s gonna last five minutes, tops,” he says, making you laugh again. “I’m sorry, baby, I can’t do anything about it. I think I could’ve cum just from eating you out.”
“That would’ve been hot.”
“Really? We’ll make it a challenge for next time, then.”
When Jake plunges into you, it’s unlike anything you’ve ever felt before. He fills you up, slow inch by slow inch, until he’s buried to the hilt inside you. You both need some time getting used to the feeling - Jake drops his head in the crook of your neck and lets out a sound between a grunt and a moan, something you’ve never heard from him before. You grab onto his shoulders, fingernails digging into his skin as you try to tether yourself to him. You hold him so tight that he has no choice but to let his body rest on top of yours, his arms coming to circle your waist and bring you even closer. 
His movements start out halting, the pleasure so overwhelming that it makes it hard for him to move steadily. In time, he falls into a torturously slow rhythm, but it’s the perfect kind of torture, the kind that has tears brimming in your eyes. It’s so hard to take, and yet you want more. You’re brought closer to the edge with every thrust of his dick into you, especially as he picks up the pace and lifts your hips to meet his. The new angle has his tip brushing against that spot deep inside you that makes it hard to breathe. 
You can tell he’s just as close as you when he loses that steady rhythm he had found, his motions growing more desperate, harsher, quicker. Conscious of your roommates, you slap a hand over your mouth to muffle your moans as your orgasm washes over you, your whole body on fire, so sensitive that the few more seconds Jake needs to come undone himself drive both your body and your mind into overstimulation. Even the feeling of him pulling out, drops of hot liquid dripping out of your entrance, is too much and makes you let out a small, tired whine. 
Jake peppers your face with kisses as he holds your waist tightly, brushing his thumb back-and-forth on your warm skin, sticky with sweat. “You did so well, baby. So good for me.” You think you might be ready for a second round if he keeps talking to you like that. “I love you so much.”
You sigh deeply, as if you were just told disconcerting news. “Okay.”
“Okay?!” he echoes, looking up at you with an outraged expression on his face.
“I’m sorry, I love you too, I just- I’m not used to this yet! You can’t just tell me you love and expect me to be normal. You have to warn me first.”
“Can I just warn you now that I’m going to tell you I love you every time I get the chance?”
You sigh. “I guess.” 
“Can I tell you now?” he asks, and you hum. “I love you.”
“I love you more.”
Jake tuts. “I highly doubt it, but whatever makes you happy.”
You hold Jake close to you, one arm around his shoulders and the other hand playing with his hair as you come down from your high. You think he might’ve fallen asleep, and you’re close to drifting off yourself when he speaks. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this. Not just the sex, although that has been on my mind for a while now,” he says, making you laugh, “but all of this. Being together, getting to be in your arms like this, kissing you whenever I want. Calling you my girlfriend.”
“Me too, Jakey. I waited so long I didn’t think it would ever happen.”
Jake chuckles. “How stupid were we not to have noticed we felt the same way?”
“Very stupid. I think we felt so sorry for ourselves that we were stuck in one-sided love, that we didn’t even realise the other was going through the exact same thing. But at least we’re now.”
“At least we’re here now.” You and Jake yawn at the exact same time, making you burst into giggles, giddy with sleep and love.
“Let’s sleep, baby,” you say.
Jake hums, burying himself deeper against your body. “Sleep well, my love. I’ll be here.”
--
After years of pining after each other, you and Jake find it a bit hard to keep your relationship to yourselves, or your hands off of each other.
At the beginning, all of your friends had been happy for you, but that quickly went away when your and Jake’s honeymoon phase never died down and the PDA just kept on going. If the glue you were stuck with previously was metaphorical, this one was pretty close to being real. Superglue kept you together, your moments together rarely spent without some sort of physical touch. Yunjin fake-gagged so often, you were afraid she might actually vomit one of these days. It took Sunghoon two weeks longer than everyone else to clock you and Jake had started dating.
This meant that in private, there was truly no holding back. Jake back-hugged you any chance he got, to the point you started to think he was more koala than human - although that’d imply he saw you as a tree. Make-out sessions were a particular favourite of yours - how could they not be when your boyfriend’s lips seemed to have been carved by God himself, soft and plump to the heavens, like they were made to be kissed. Really, you were just honouring God’s will when you kissed Jake.  
The goodbye that comes at the end of the year is not an easy one, and the month spent at home before you fly to Korea seems to never end. But you get there eventually, and as nice as it is to catch up with Jake’s parents after so long, you feign sleepiness after lunch as an excuse to get some time alone with your boyfriend. Ironically, this “time alone” is spent so intensely that you do end up falling asleep afterwards. 
You have to admit, you really did a number on your boyfriend this time - what can a girl do when she missed her boyfriend this much? Jake is still passed out when you wake up from your nap, so you slip out as discreetly as you can from his embrace and get out of bed. You head for the closet first and swipe the comfiest looking sweater of his that you find there so you can stay warm as you look around his room. A pang of melancholia hits your chest - most of the pictures and objects on his walls and shelves are parts of his life you weren’t around to witness. Friends you don’t recognize, places you’ve never heard of, phases you’d never known he’d gone through. But then you see the frame on his desk, a faded photo of the two of you at ten years of age, eating ice cream on the bench outside of your house. Milo is sitting at your feet. Jake’s family hadn’t adopted Layla yet. You realise that even if there’s whole parts of your life you didn’t get to share with each other, nothing could touch your memories, or your future.
You want to go back in time and tell fourteen-year-old you that no matter how painful it might seem at the moment, it will all be worth it for the sight of Jake Sim slowly drifting into wakefulness, patting the bed next to him, and noticing you’re missing with furrowed eyebrows. When he opens his eyes and they settle on you, a sleepy smile will grace his dazzling features, and he’ll say, “Come back to bed.”
You’ll be even more in love at twenty than at fourteen.
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saerins · 1 year ago
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°୨୧ INEVICABLY, UNDENIABLY
+ gojo satoru x f!reader | wc 3.3k | content: fluff, modern au, friends to roommates to lovers, timeskip thing; from high school -> adulthood, alcohol, implied sex, children, marriage, gojo is mostly clingy and annoying and we love him for it, the years and age correspond to his actual birthdate, take this as my birthday fic for him <3
summary: despite seemingly having it all, gojo satoru’s goal has always been the same all these years you’ve known him—all he wants in life is you, and only you. during his birthday this year, gojo counts his blessings.
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2006; seventeen.
the day you agreed to be satoru’s partner in homeroom class is the day you signed away your sanity. not because satoru’s hard to get along with or that he’s rude or slacks off, but because it’s hard not to fall for a boy with such pretty eyes and even prettier lips who likes to say the most beautiful things.
getting to know satoru is like taking a deep in the clearest, coldest ocean after an entire lifetime of being dipped in molten lava. he’s annoying, refreshing and eye-opening all in one.
satoru shows promise in the first lesson, doing fairly well at cooking and sowing, although afterwards he just falls off because you end up having to teach him how to properly use alcohol in his cooking so he doesn’t burn himself or that you’d end up patching his fingers up since he accidentally pokes himself a lot more than the average human would.
still, it’s not his fault he isn’t naturally talented in the home economics department. he is in sports, you find out, after a few months of being in the same class as him.
“hey, y/n.” he’s leaning back on his chair, depending on its hind two legs for support. it’s become his habit during class to bother you whenever the teachers aren’t in.
you were assigned the seat diagonally behind him, and it’s become a habit for you to ignore him—mostly because most of the time, it’s nonsense that falls out of those lips, especially after you’d gotten close. it’s his sign of affection, you realise.
“hey y/n, i’m being serious this time, i need to talk to you,” satoru whines, pouting and sighing in that over dramatic way that only he can.
that’s also not the first time he’s tricked you into acknowledging him so all you do is look at him, a smile appearing that you failed to suppress, and bring a finger to your lips, signalling for him to hush.
unperturbed, satoru smirks and gets to scribbling on a piece of paper, folding it (annoyingly and quickly) into a swan before handing it to you. he winks at you, and you’re immediately driven not to give him satisfaction by reading it. instead, you bow slightly and stuff it in your pencil case, making satoru pout again and giving yourself the sweet taste of victory.
the rest of your sophomore year in high school, you find yourself growing closer to satoru, an unfamiliar feeling growing inside of you. you find that you like knowing what makes him tick, and even the way he says your name, or even watching him ace every kind of sport and then having him blow a teasing kiss to you after each win.
“y/n, i’m so jealous of you, how’d you manage to get gojo satoru of all people?” one of your classmates whine, swooning endlessly over him.
you only laugh it off, deigning to think too much of it.
it’s weird; he’s most of the schoolgirls’ crushes, but you’ve never considered him to be yours. maybe it’s just a fleeting feeling that will go away with the test of time.
yeah, that should be all that is.
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2007; eighteen.
“why not? we’re practically going to the same college.”
with time, you thought that maybe satoru would become a little more sane. like how growing into adults, you slowly shed the ridiculous dreams you had as a child. but he’s not, if not—he’s even more insane.
“we haven’t got the results yet, satoru.”
“i’m pretty sure we’ll get in though.”
“and what’s your basis for that?”
“i’m never wrong about these.”
as always, satoru lives in his own little bubble and you can’t help but to sigh. in his head, both of you will get into that same college you applied for and he has it all planned out: “we get into college, sign up for whatever classes, and then rent an apartment together—genius right?”
that was satoru just moments ago, elbows leaned over the grocery cart as he grins at you, beaming like a dog waiting for their owner’s approval. now he’s still doing the same, except you’ve flicked him on the forehead before turning your attention to the aisles because apparently, he says he hates the food at home and would rather have what you’re cooking.
he’s made it his life mission to invade your meals over the weekend, squeezing himself into your family, bonding with your sibling and your parents and only then did you realise what you forgot in the first place: satoru is one of the most charming people to ever walk the earth. your siblings constantly ask about the next time he’s coming over, and your parents are just waiting for you to announce that he’s your boyfriend—which he’s not, but he sure likes to make it seem that way.
another thing you notice about satoru thanks to your now-weekly grocery runs: he likes to wander around way too much, and complains afterwards when he finds you after losing you.
“y/n!”
it’s like routine by now; the way satoru rushes over to you, putting his arm around your shoulder and sticking his cheek against yours, telling you how he almost died because he thought he lost you—like the drama queen he is. by now, all you can offer him is a ruffle of his hair before you carry on like normal, as though your heart isn’t beating right out of your chest from that simple proximity.
because satoru, despite his generally icy look, is always warm; his body heat, his cheeks, the way he looks into your eyes all the time, even his fingertips when they brush against you.
you think he’s especially warm when he falls asleep beside you after watching a late night movie, his head nuzzled in your neck, hands somehow rested over your own. your favourite thing about the friendship, though, try as you might to deny it, is how satoru’s hands always find yours when he walks you home, fingers lacing around your own as if it’s second nature.
ever since then, these routines have become a staple, and perhaps even does your growing feelings. the inexplicable one.
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2008; nineteen.
satoru was right.
both of you did get into the same university, and the same course, with different minors so at least there’s some differences. so of course, satoru did not let the shared apartment idea go. though, of course, thanks to your initial hesitance on the matter, the only available apartment is a 4-bedroom, entirely too big and hence you’d convinced satoru to just rent the other bedrooms out for extra change.
and no, satoru does not need extra change because his family’s loaded (which you realised you didn’t even know before this) but at least this would allow you to not dwell on whatever you’re feeling too much. university is going to be stressful enough without the added consideration of your possible feelings towards satoru.
then enters geto suguru—your new roommate who, thankfully, steals enough of satoru’s attention so you have some breathing room. turns out, they’re like two peas in a pod. but while you and satoru major in business, suguru majors in psych. so that still means satoru’s around just you most of the time.
some routines change; like how movie nights are shared amongst the three of you in the living room instead of just you and satoru in your room. or how during grocery runs satoru still runs up to you when he finds you again except this time, an exasperated suguru is beside you sighing at him, always a “how do you stand this guy?” rolling off his tongue. the most surprising one for you might be how meals include suguru now and satoru’s the one who does the cooking now, and funnily enough, he’s absolutely great at it. no ounce of hesitation as he flips the pancakes, or stirs the fried rice—no whining about how it’s too hard because he’ll get burns on his fingertips and has to ask you to tend to his wounds.
but some change in a different way. they leave no room for someone else, like how satoru always finds your hands to hold on to, keeping you within a reach too close to pass as just friends but both of you refusing to label it anything else anyways. it leaves no room for other people to butt in and whisk either of you away.
and for now, at least, both of you are okay with just that.
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2009; twenty.
participating in different activities and clubs inevitably mean that you and satoru wouldn’t be attached at the hip most of the time. and of course, while that leads to satoru becoming even clingier when you’re both home (not that you’re complaining when it’s nice to feel wanted from the very guy you’re completely not having a crush on), both of you are in separate social circles.
satoru occasionally has his friends over, the ones you don’t really know that well. the one where you can only remember names like haibara because he’s extra friendly and yuki because she’s one of the prettiest people you’d ever seen and nori because she’s a mix of the two. you’re nice, and cordial to all of them, although you can’t really say the same for satoru.
occasionally you and suguru invite your friends over, because nicely enough, you both have the same interests. it’s mostly shoko and nanami, a med student and law student respectively, but both of which satoru loves to annoy to no end. lucky for you, shoko is strangely naturally tolerant of his antics and nanami shrugs it off as white noise.
“y/n, surely you’d rather spend time with me rather than that blondie?” satoru always asks, pouting as he looks at you over his shoulder during breakfast—a constant whenever you have plans that involve nanami.
it’s kind of cute.
“mmm, that’s a secret,” you’d always tell him, knowing that satoru’s pouts won’t last all day anyway. it’ll relegate to an excited grin whenever you’re back after that.
you’d never really had to face your feelings, then, until all of you gather one night, before the holidays officially start. you should’ve known that something would be different this time, especially when there’s alcohol involved. naturally, in the circle you sit in, satoru asks people to scoot over, purposely sitting beside you, as close as he can, close enough that your arms and knees practically brush.
it’s just for a simple game of truth or dare, and it’s innocent enough until someone asks nanami and he says truth, and his truth is that out of everyone he knows, he’d most likely date you. beside you, while everyone else is whooping at the declaration, satoru clicks his tongue in annoyance, though he says nothing about it. and you’re not really emphatic about it until someone dares nori to kiss the guy she wants to date the most and she kisses satoru, deep and slow, in front of you, haibara letting slip that she’s had a crush on satoru for a while now.
satoru’s five shots in and tipsy and he was imagining that was you and maybe that’s why it lasted for five seconds before he pulls away.
and when it comes to satoru?
as though noticing his dilemma, suguru gives an amused smile as he states his dare, “kiss the girl you most wanna marry.”
he doesn’t waste a single second in pulling you close and kissing you, his alcohol-tainted lips pressing against yours, daring tongue teasingly prying open your lips, chuckling as he feels you kiss him back.
“not most,” satoru corrects right as the both of you pull away, his forehead still pressed against yours and both of your half-lidded pair of eyes still staring at each other.
“what?” you’re almost breathless, forgetting that everyone else is watching.
“the only girl i wanna marry.” and you think he’s never looked more handsome, genuine smile plastered on his face and pretty blue eyes threatening to pull you in.
while everyone moves on, satoru doesn’t—he keeps you there with him, telling you for the first time in four years since he’s known you, “i love you.”
the next week, after you get home for the holidays, the first time being away from satoru in a while, you manage to find your old pencil case, the folded paper swan satoru folded for you all those years ago still inside, somehow forgotten.
curious, you finally open it, finding his message enclosed inside, bringing a smile to your face.
i’m gonna marry you one day.
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2010; twenty-one.
dating satoru is like finding a new hobby that you’re effortlessly good at.
despite living under the same roof, instead of finding out the ugly, you find the good in each other. even with suguru in the mix, you all live harmoniously like you have been since the start. except now, satoru likes to sleep in your room, both of you fooling around and occasionally forcing suguru to tell you to pipe down.
satoru is still full of surprises, sometimes pulling up with his car as though both of you don’t sleep under the same roof, telling you that he planned a date and to dress nice. he buys you flowers even if you’re not particularly fancy of them and surprises you by buying things that simply reminded him of you.
dating satoru is like finding out that the right person for you will always think of you and your feelings, no matter the circumstance. the way he makes sure to tell you if he has to hang around nori, or the way he asks if you need anything when he passes by the grocery store alone, or going so far as to memorise your cycle so he knows exactly what to show up back home with.
by the time it’s your one-year anniversary and his birthday comes and you ask him what he wants, all he can answer is “you” and for the first time, you can tell he isn’t trying to be annoying or cheeky or flirty—satoru is surprisingly simple and his answer always has been and somehow always will be just you.
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2013; twenty-four.
you still remember the day satoru got down on one knee, his handsome smile even more radiant under the golden hour glow, those still-beautiful blue eyes gleaming even from beneath his bangs.
just an intimate proposal with your closest friends, both shoko and suguru helping to distract you in order to create a successful surprise, while nanami and haibara helped with the decorations and photography.
thanks to them, you’re laughing now, at your wedding reception, looking at all the ways you nearly found them out that day, exactly one year ago, in the form of pictures. and thanks to the best man’s toast, you find out that suguru’s always known about satoru’s feelings, and just how deep his emotions for you ran.
“i won’t forget how much he whined about y/n getting close to nanami. that was probably the one time his whining got so out of control that i wanted to stuff a pillow over his face,” suguru divulges, garnering laughs around the hall, including from you, as your new husband pouts and squeezes your hand.
thanks to that, nanami finds the need to disclose during his speech, “i have never intended to date nor had such thoughts about y/n. my truth during that game of truth or dare was simply the result of a process of elimination—” and haibara cuts him off to give a more fitting speech, fits of laughter all across the room.
that day, you steal glances at satoru, wondering how you got so lucky to be with someone who loves you so much and continuously proves so with every passing day.
“satoru?” you call to him softly that night, as you both find yourselves completely bare in the bedroom of your new apartment, one to yourselves.
his piercing blue eyes flick up to meet yours, relishing how it feels like inside of you, every time as though it’s the first. “yeah?” it’s breathy, because he’s about to lose himself.
“i love you, satoru, and only you, forever and ever,” you tell him, finally knowing that in this life, it will always be gojo satoru for you, and that it’s the same for him too.
he only chuckles, pulling you close, “forever me and you, baby, only us.”
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2023; present day.
“wow, more than ten years, i think i need to give you a trophy for that, y/n.”
satoru groans, rolling his eyes. “what’s that supposed to mean?”
beside him, suguru laughs at shoko’s comment. this time, the six of you find yourselves at a round table in a seafood restaurant during satoru’s birthday, talking about how it’s you and satoru’s tenth year together too.
“i’m not too much, am i?” satoru teasingly asks you, although you only shrug in amusement before drinking your glass of water as an excuse not to answer.
you’ve always been like that, but it’s part of what satoru likes about you. scratch that, he’s loved every part of you since he met you. it’s like it was meant to be; or so he likes to think. there’s an undeniable pull that always lulls him back to you. to satoru, there’s never been question that you’re the only one for him, maybe that’s why it’s so clear-cut.
“you’re just so head over heels for me, huh?” you ask him, a smug grin on your face, the conversational context something he’s missing since he’s been zoning out in his thoughts.
since the first time he saw you, he’s been drawn to you every second of every day. maybe that’s why he did all those stupid stuff like pretending not to be able to cook and ‘accidentally’ burning himself to get you to tend to him, or purposely pricking himself with the needle and asking you to put a plaster over it just to feel you close. even those times at the supermarket when he purposely loses you so he can find you again and see your helpless smile and feel the way you rub his head affectionately afterwards.
maybe it’s stupid too, how he had to silently admit he knows how to cook all too well because he didn’t want suguru to taste your cooking when he first moved in. it was something satoru felt he wanted to himself, something he wanted to keep between him and his future wife. or how a wordless stare between him and suguru during that game of truth or dare was all suguru needed to know that satoru wanted to make you his at that very second, afraid that kiss between him and nori would make you hesitant.
he shouldn’t have underestimated you though, because you know him better than most people do. there were never any pointless arguments or unrecoverable friction.
as they sing happy birthday annoyingly loud like best friends do, chanting for him to make a wish—his hands find yours again as they always did, he can honestly say that there’s no other way he’d rather live his life. you’re made for him and he has you and the little mini yous at home so really, there’s nothing that he has to wish for.
except, maybe, one thing, if he could be selfish.
in this life, and every other life, he’ll want to be with you and only you, forever.
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hana-no-seiiki · 7 months ago
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WHY DON’T YOU GIVE ME A SMILE? (ACT 2)
YANDERE! BATFAM x JINX (ARCANE/LEAGUE)-ESQUE! READER
[ ACT ONE HERE ]
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cw/tw: mentally ill reader. schizophrenic reader. reader w/ abandonment issues. manipulative reader. crimes. arson.
summary: we dive deeper into Gotham's explosive personality and history with those that took the title of ‘boy wonder’
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MORE ON YOUR ORIGINS
“They were right! You’re just a Jinx.”
“Everybody shut up! I need to think!”
“We weren’t . . . “
As much as you scared the crap out of Joker’s goons. Since they saw you grow up first hand. A lot of them tended to be overprotective over you.
I mean, they’re insane enough to follow Joker. What more you?
They see you as his successor. An heir of sorts.
Which is why Jason Todd felt like he had no choice but to either fix you or keep you locked up.
You don’t remember much of him. If you did you would hate him.
He was the one that essentially helped you pull the trigger on your family.
If you haven’t read my other posts about it, here’s the rundown.
Jason had a massive crush on reader when the two of em were kids. Prior to everything. Before he was adopted, before reader set their world ablaze, before shit hit the fan essentially.
He saw how neglected you felt. The rejection you faced from your peers for not being strong enough. For being small and weak.
Him and your sister were pretty popular amongst the kids but it only made the comparisons worse.
It was always how they were “twice the kids at [Y/N]’s age.”
And so he thought of a little gift. Just a little something to show the others how cool you really are.
He didn’t expect you to use it that way. And the worst part of it all, he wasn’t there to comfort you. I mean sure, dozens of people died that day. Many of which he was somewhat fond of. But he was sure they’d want him to comfort you. To say that it wasn’t your fault.
And despite all that, you only knew Jason as that one guy Joker went too far with.
“Hey, [N/N].”
The call of your name almost froze you on the spot. Their screams pushed forward from the back of your mind into the forefront. You didn’t think. Your hands just pulled the trigger of your machine gun on its own.
“Who the hell are you?” You grit your teeth. You’ve heard of this Red Hood going around and ruining your adoptive father’s plans lately.
And what’s worse? The man kept forcing you to stay away. Plying you with all sorts of prostitutes and all the money you could ever need or want.
Despite your hostile disposition, the man in question doesn’t return it. “I’m sorry. This was all my fault. I shouldn’t have left you behind.”
“Leave.” You lowered your machine gun. A sudden wave of drowsiness overwhelmed you. A sense of calm. Weakness. Everything was screaming at you to end the source. But if he kept dodging your bullets them perhaps diplomacy would work.
You breathed out. [Y/N]. That name, that identity — though it fell down a well and was long dead it still had it uses.
Softened voice, doe eyes, and posture loose. If you had no other weapon they you always had your vulnerability.
“You need to leave, Joker is coming soon and I can’t help you if you’re caught.”
“Who was that, Jinx?” Joker asked.
You turned around. Your eyes meeting his chest and then his face, where that wide, freakish grin was stuck unto him.
“Old man, I think you mean what.” The toxic pink glint flashed through your eyes as you once again buried your old self along with the rest of the corpses that have met their demise by your hand.
“Meet Fishbones.”
BACK TO YOUR RIVAL:
Recently Tim had been . . . more agreeable to your demands somewhat?
You could tell he was pulling his punches.
Sometimes he’d even join you in your exploits.
You never trusted him of course. You never trusted anyone but yourself. But he was fun to be around is all. Whether it was you two beating each other to near death or blowing up buildings (he made sure to evacuate its residents before you two went all out).
“You know. I kinda wanna blow up that building. Don’t you think we’ll have a better view of the sky that way, Timmy?” You pointed to the structure with your signature gun shaped hand gesture.
That was one of Bruce’s buildings.
“You . . . “ Tim blinked at you a couple of times. “are so right.”
“Let’s go.” You yanked him the hand.
Tim smiled. Even if he wasn’t making direct contact with your skin, and you with his — he couldn’t help but smile at the intimacy of this moment. What were his worries with you beside him? All the sadness and anger felt so fleeting when he was with you.
His glee almost costed him his life as it took him a couple of moments to realize that you have pushed him off a building after a while of parkour.
He managed to grapple himself back, and with your assistance, he got back up to the ledge you two were on.
He gave you one half hearted glare. You laugh at his face, “You’re such a loser! Always ready to cry! Wah wah wah!” And you set off. Getting within the building with no care for stealth whatsoever.
What was the point of being all sneaky like when you had bombs on you?
"Wait up! Get back here!" Tim ran after you. He didn’t mind that you were essentially destroying all his and Bruce’s hard-work on his industries, but you were being too reckless. He would sure as hell minded if you were caught.
Turns out he wasn’t so far off when it came to his fears and suspicions.
“You. You set me up.” You glared at him. Hands on your blaster. Ready to shoot at a moment’s notice. Your eyes flicking between the men in front of you, wondering who was best to pick off first.
Batman, Nightwing, or the man you stupidly thought was your friend.
“No. No you have to believe me I—“ Tim tried to explain. But Dick cuts him off, “Good job, we couldn’t have done it without you.”
“You traitor. I knew it. I knew it.” Your voice got weaker and weaker.
No, no, no. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. This wasn’t part of the plan. Tim was supposed to be with you for longer.
“I told you, you have no choice.” Bruce finally spoke. His cape moved to his back.
He wasn’t going to let you go. Not without making it bloody.
“Oh, boohoo. You’ve always been no fun!” Your eyes never leave the two dark suited men, but Tim knew you were speaking to him. “Good thing I never trusted you.”
And you take a deep breath, dropping the laughing gas Harley gave you for emergencies. It wasn’t as strong as the original one, hell you’re sure that those people probably expected that move. But it at least blocked their line of sights on you, allowing you to create some distance.
You managed to get far enough to ready your weapons and send a call of help to your adoptive parents before your prediction proved to be true — footsteps behind you; loud and clear.
“Look’s like we’ve got even more company. Huh, boy savior?”
“Don’t move and I won’t cut you down.”
Pow pow in your hand, and desperation in your mind. The last thing you heard is a blade unsheathing before you pull the trigger.
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୨ ©️ ୧⸝⸝﹕hana.no.seiiki - yun | 2024﹐⊂☁️⊃ ‹𝟹
AUTHOR’s NOTE: YALL THOUGHT THIS WAS GONE!! WELL THINK AGAIN!! I AM BACK!!! Sorry for the late update!! Man I’m so excited for season 2 of arcane ahahsheudidj
Taglist: @w31rdg1rl @cherry-peach-flavored @ice-cream-writes-stuff @speckle-meow-meow @inejghafawifesblog @sitepathos @mimiissia @rolo-at-midnight @mossyvampire @kawaiimusiccollection @harpy-space @takottai @maddeningmangos @obsessed-with-a-fictional @ihatemylifeuwu @caramelstrikezz @szapizzapanda @vanessa-boo @imbiafandbored @victor-rose @earphonejack09 @rainnyydaysworld @bubbabobabubbles @ksziggy @evan-trand @emo-z0mbiezzz @nyra-42 @h0rr0r-10ver-69 @orangeboulevard @alwayszealousdetective @huhuhhuhh @iwasveronica @imginarygirl @nebuluma @heyitsaloy @mysticalhills
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bitchimasnake-sss · 6 months ago
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🧸teachin' some lessons ft. yuuji itadori!
set-up: your best friend's pink-haired, younger brother seems to have some trouble with his girlfriends. maybe you can help him out, one lesson at a time? warning: inexperienced!yuuji x experienced!reader; nsfw themes include oral (both male and female receiving), slight voyeurism, sukuna ffs. mdni!! wc: 4.6k (oof my longest fic, and its about one of my fav men of all time ugh) ⁎ porn with plot ⁎
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"hey yuujiii~" you called out sweetly, walking in through the main door. the familiar scent of the itadori household sneaked up on you as sukuna closed the door behind you. the keys jingled softly as the older itadori brother followed after you, his pace slow and languid.
the messy living room met your gaze with yuuji sitting on the couch, headphones on. in his hand was a controller, and he seemed to mutter angrily under his breath as he played the game. "fuck— come on, come on. hit harder. fuuck-"
the pink-haired was clearly unaware of your presence till you plopped down next to him on the couch. the furniture dipped under your weight and his eyes widened. the young quarterback moved quick – the game paused under his thumb, his deft fingers yanked out the headphones hastily – and he sat up straighter, taking in your sudden presence, "yn?"
"hey!" you beamed at him.
"hey?" he smiled back, confusion etched onto every crevice of his face. And you could see the puffy eyebags and residuals of sleep on his facehe briefly looked up at sukuna, who was standing behind you on the couch, “what’s going on?”
but sukuna was a man of few words. so, instead, the older delinquent wasted no time in walking to the tv and unplugging it, hence, turning off whatever game was playing on the screen, “time for a little heart to heart, brat.”
"you fucking asshole–" yuuji glared at his brother, cussing him in a single breath, "i was still fucking playing."
"tch, play later. she wanted to talk to you."
when yuuji cocked up an eyebrow and glared harder at sukuna, unfazed, you laughed. and that brought the jock's attention back to you, "well i– anyways. what's up?"
"well–” you dragged out the syllable to soften the awkward blow, “'kuna said something about your break-up and that you were being all sulky sulky–"
"ughh why?" yuuji cut you off with a pained groan. a silent blush crept up to his face in embarrassment and he looked away.
seeing his reaction, you put your hands up in mock surrender, "your brother is an ass, i know i know. but we are here for you, you know that right? you can talk to us."
"i-" yuuji's voice faltered and he looked away from you to glare at his brother again, "do– fuck you, by the way– do you have brain damage, sukuna?"
"nuh uh."
"fuck you mean nuh uh."
"don't make me wanna smack you." sukuna answered back just as smoothly, "now talk."
yuuji managed one last groan past his pretty lips before succumbing to the situation. he chose to look at you, avoiding his older brother's scorching gaze, "yeah, i did– get broken up with I mean. uhm, yuko... she broke up with me."
"yuu, really?" you asked dumbfounded, "I thought everything was going well? did she, like, give you a reason why?"
"no. I mean, I dunno really? there's never a fucking reason. everything always seems to go so well. then, all of a sudden they're breaking up with me." his voice quitened down, "maybe it's my fault? I don’t really know at this point."
"yuu, no. don't think shit like this." you gave sukuna a quick glance, your mouth running dry as you looked back at yuuji, "im sorry if im overstepping my boundaries but like... how's your sex life?"
yuuji almost choked on air, "wh-what?! i'm not talking about that with him around!"
"i'll leave if you'd like to actually have a heart to heart, brat." sukuna argued back, "not like i wanna hear about your tiny dick issues."
and with that the tatted, older boy disappeared down the hallway and into his own room.
"hey…" you offered once the silence had grown thick between the two of you, "if you want, i can help you out? give you a few tips maybe? like, you know you can discuss your relationship troubles with me?"
but the quarterback went blank.
and when he didn't react, you quickly continued, panicked – because this is yuuji, your best friend’s younger brother. "i mean you can come over my apartment tomorrow night? we can discuss whatever's been bothering you. it'll be easier without 'kuna sulking around."
"right." he finally breathed out. then offering you a small smile, he nodded his head, "sure, tomorrow night."
⋆。゚☁︎。⋆。 ゚☾ ゚。⋆
your house was eerily quiet.
your housemates were out doing god knows what on a friday night. and technically, you should be out with them, drinking and leaving smudged lipstick against some drunk man's neck. but here you were, sitting next to the boy a year younger than you, sipping on your third can of beer (because god knows you needed liquid courage to make this conversation work.)
"well, i don't want to make this more awkward than it already is for you, yuuji." you took a sip out of your can, "so, let's just get into it, right?"
you tried to steel your nerves. this was yuuji. this was the boy that had asked you to marry him at the age of seven, who asked you with a pipsqueak voice if you could be his first kiss when he was thirteen cause “everyone’s teasin me for not having a kiss yet, please?”. this was the boy who had sobbed on your shoulder when he went through his first heartbreak.
and, now this was the boy man sitting on your couch, sipping on his own can of beer with a uncertain, unnamed resolve in his eyes. he nodded, hiding his gaze under the pretense of examining the brand of the beer he was drinking.
"so, you said you were doing everything right, right? what are you even doing with them?"
he froze, "i mean, the- the usual? dates, cuddles, movie nights and all?"
"awh well that's sweet, isn’t it?" you smiled, reminiscing about the time when a guy put that effort into any of your relationships.
he nodded awkwardly and you continued, finding courage as the alcohol poured into your bloodstream, "then maybe it's something else? "
"my sex life's okay…?" his mouth seemed to have gone dry and he swallowed wantonly, "i mean i think? i haven't really gone beyond second base with a girl yet."
"what?" you mindlessly scooted closer to him, putting your hand on his bicep and staring him down. "but didn't you date the girl before this one for a good five months? what was her name– uh, kugisaki's friend, right?"
"i mean yeah—"
"—yuuji?! have you just been ignoring your girlfriends? five months is a long time."
"what?!" his face went hot, the blood rushing to his ear-tips and nose, "it is not! I- I mean I just dont wanna look like a pervert by coming onto them, you know?"
"by making them wait five months? you're insane."
before yuuji could defend himself, you were getting ready to cut him off again. you leaned in till you could count the acne scars on his left cheek, and that tiny cut under his eyes where sukuna accidentally hit him. and now, you were suddenly hyper-aware of his gaze on your lips and his breath on your cheek. you pulled back slowly with a shuddering sigh.
this was yuuji.
the alcohol was raging in your system. clearly.
you sighed, choosing to look away from his face. pulling yourself back fully, you ran your hands through a wayward strand of hair, "look you're clearly a good looking dude, yuuji.” you didn’t ignore the way his jaw grew tense under your compliment, eyes boring into yours, “I mean, you are well-built and you're nice. you’re the goddamn quarterback. half the girls probably wanna get with you cause they wanna get fucked by the quarterback."
"really?” his gaze faltered and for a second, he was the thirteen year old asking for his first kiss, “but i- i don't know how to do… that."
"do what?"
he chewed on the inside of his cheek, "fuck someone i guess?"
he took another sip and you didn't ignore the way his tongue peaked out to lap off a drop that lingered on his bottom lip. dragging your eyes upwards to meet his, you found him staring at you, the resolve in his eyes hardening. silently, he put down his can of beer on the coffee table.
you tensed, sensing something wrong in the anticipatory silence, "what?"
but before you could press further questions, he was scooting closer towards you. his deft fingers plucked the can out of your grip and kept it on the coffee table next to his own. meeting your heated gaze, he softly, uncertainly brushed the pad of his thumb against your bottom lip. he paused, “you want this?”
your eyes dropped down to his slightly chapped lips as you leaned into his touches, “maybe...?”
he let out a trembling sigh, the heat on your face erupting goosebumps across your body. but he pulled back quick, changing his mind, "you're drunk."
your fingers found purchase on his chest, and you pushed him backwards till his back was flush against your couch. daringly, you straddled him and the plush fat of your thighs felt wildfire warm against his clothes. your eyes pleaded against his, trying to find an excuse to do the wrong thing. you found yourself whispering, "not that drunk."
you shift above him. letting your hips rock gently against his thighs, you whispered again, "what are you scared of, yuuji?”
his pupils dilated, hair tousled and tongue got stuck to the rooftop of his mouth as you hovered over him. when he spoke, it felt like he was holding back a groan, “we shouldn’t – sukuna, he’d kill me if he found out.”
“we aren’t doing anything wrong. I think i can teach you a thing or two, yuuji." flashing him a quick smile, leaning downwards to tease him, "a few lessons, you know? you want it?"
he paused, growing sure of his words, “when do we start?”
🧸 lesson 01: please the lady
you were sprawled out on your sofa, hair a tangled mess. your fingers tugged his hair, moving him up and down like a personal fucktoy till you could no longer hold in breathless moans.
yuuji itadori met your eyes as his tongue flicked against your clit, too good for it to be a first time. then parting from your dripped core, he pressed a wet kiss to your inner thigh. eyes never leaving yours. his pupils were blown out, face flushed and hair sweaty. when he spoke, his voice seemed too thick for his body, "am i doing okay?"
you nodded, running your fingers through his scalp as he resumed the cruel pace of his wicked tongue against you, “you– you sure this is your first ah fuck- first time?”
“that good?” he just smiled against your heat, the throbbing of your clit in wicked sync with his ragged breath, as if he was gonna cum just from eating you out.
"yuuji~" his name came easy to you. it was a name you had moaned on some nights where your depraved fantasies caught up with you under those silken sheets.
you didn't dream of fucking your best friend's brother! that's gross! no, ofcourse not... it's just that one day the growth spurt hit and suddenly, yuuji was no longer a tiny blimp with a huge smile next to you. no longer the boy with a sweet, innocent crush on you. now, he towered over you, hair falling across his forehead and sweat dripping down his jaw as he saw you after practice back at his home sometimes.
but you didn't wanna fuck him. obviously not.
your voice betrayed you. the syllables strung in moans and gasps left your lips as you keened hungrily into his face, "fuck, you're so good at this already, god- ah fuc-"
he hummed against you, basking in the praise, and the soft vibrations ran up your spine.
you knew this was wrong.
he was sukuna's younger brother and 'kuna will eat you alive if he ever found out that you had offered his brother to play with your cunt as if it was a toy.
but it felt so right.
the way his sturdy fingers dug into the plush of your thighs, the way his tongue felt against your clit. slowly, as he went lower, you could feel his nose bump against the bundle of nerves and his tongue push into your drenching core. you squirmed as you forced his face closer to yourself, grinding your hips against his face to allow him to fuck you faster, “fast- nghh faster, please please- aaugh oh my god yuuUji-”
and yuuji obliged, letting you use him and his pretty mouth to get off.
it felt – no – it was right.
"mmph ohmygod–" your thighs tried to close around his pretty face as your back arched, trapping him against your pussy. the knot in your stomach tightening until the waves crashed violently in front of your eyes and came on his face.
yuuji moaned, a starving man and you were both his heaven and hell from the way you kept him trapped against your gushing cunt.
🧸lesson 02: returning favours
you pushed the jock on the same couch against which you were ravaged. finding yourself straddling his broad figure with ease as you took your top off.
yuuji’s eyes flicked from you pretty face to your heaving chest to your inner thighs – still wet from his administrations. dripping down slowly, almost ruining his pants. your thumb swiped across his wet bottom lip before your lips crashed against his.
he tasted of beer and you and sin.
“ah fuck–“ he hiccupped as you found your teeth against his pulse, your teeth violent and lips soothing. his hip jut upwards, the hard-on begging some attention, some friction, anything.
a laugh escaped you, you mumbled into his bruised jaw and neck, “easy now, yuuji.” your experienced fingers softly dragging over his erection – and feeling the wet fabric underneath – and he bucked into your touches desperately. flashing him a pretty smile, “let me take care of you, yeah?”
your predatory eyes set him ablaze as you backtracked and got down on your knees. your manicured fingers undid the button of his jeans, his hips eagerly jumping upwards to let you tug his jeans downwards and freeing him from his misery.
with a final tug, his cock sprung free. his tanned, slightly curved length nestled comfortably against his stomach. his tip was weeping, drenching his abs in a translucent white. you batted your eyes up at the boy, taking in his flustered expression, “don’t forget to breath.”
“you– you don’t have to do this.” but his eyes betrayed him, showing such utter devotion and desperation towards the woman in front of him.
“i wanna, yuu.”
his body tensed up at the use of the nickname in such a lewd situation. how dare you let the same childhood nickname fall from those pretty lips and then use those same lips to kiss his dick? honestly, how dare you.
yuuji closed his eyes, his jaw slacking and pelvis jumping up at the innocent featherlike kisses that you placed on him. his mouth grew dry and without much cognitive thought, he pushed your head down on his cock.
you made a depraved noise as he pushed the tip past your lips, forcing his length into your mouth with unabashed bravery. he opened his eyes but his breath picked up at the sight of you. eyes welling up from the sudden intrusion, spit down his length and on your pretty face. spurred on by the sight, he pushed your face downwards, relishing in your strangled moans.
“yuu-“ you moaned around his cock. and there it was again, that fucking nickname.
he groaned, throwing his head back, “fuck, don’t call me that or I’ll cum in a second, pl-please.”
his grip loosened, letting you move your head up and down at your pace. you pulled yourself upwards, sucking on his tip as your hand roamed his entire length.
“fucc-“ his words and hips stuttered in a wicked symphony, “shi– shit yeah, please keep going.”
your phone rung.
you expected the jock to beg you to ignore it, but once he heard the ringtone, he picked up your phone in his shaky hands. turning the screen to show you the name of the caller, he whispered, "sh-should i, like... pick it up?"
still sucking on yuuji’s dick, you saw ‘kuna💀’ flash up on the screen. shit. you let go of the tip with a pop, looking at yuuji with wide eyes. but before you could ask him to cut the call, the jock accepted it.
he put the grumbling man on the other side on speaker as your hands still worked on the younger brother.
"took you long enough to answer." sukuna huffed, "open the door, i'm outside."
your voice pitched up, eyes widened, but hands still moved up and down with ease, "whaT? you are? why??"
"i thought you'd wanna hang out since your roommates are gone?" he paused, "you sound like you’re busy. you’re busy?"
almost as if on cue, yuuji let out a broken gasp; his teeth caught his bottom lip, head thrown back as he tried to contain in the sinful noises.
"what was that?" sukuna asked, and yuuji pressed his broad fingers to his mouth, trying to hold off any and all sounds.
"mhm, nothing." you nodded no frantically as if sukuna could see you. all the meanwhile, his younger brother's brought his hands to your tits, softly tugging on your nipple. yuuji, that fucking brat. you restrained the choked moans and continued, "i'm no-t well, that's all, 'kuna."
"really? you were okay last night."
"yeah yeah, you... you should go back home, really." you squirmed at the jock’s expressions. he was now biting down on his fist, trying to hold in the wayward groans and moans. the sight spurred you on to move your hands faster, pressing chaste, wet kisses every once in a while.
testing both of your and yuuji’s limits over this phone-call.
"if you're sick, then you should let me in. i'll make you soup or something." sukuna sighed, "don't worry, i am not going all sappy on you, brat. i don't have anything else to do right now, anyways. you wouldn't believe, you know satoru?? that oldie, he went back to his ex su–"
"hm? really?" you answered half-lidded as yuuji’s abs tensed, his eyes rolling back in ecstasy and he bit down on his fist harder. a second later, thick white spurted all over your hands. the liquid drenched your hands and his abs, glistening under the overhead lighting.
“–do you want takeout right now?"
you broke out of your daze, suddenly realizing that your best friend was at the door as his younger brother lay spent in front of you. finally, you mumbled, "okay i'll open the door in a second, kuna. wait."
"yeah, i'm waiting."
"yuu?" you cut the call and looked up at the man. from the dazed look on his face, you were sure he hadn't paid any attention to your conversation with the man on the phone.
he looked down at you in mock anticipation and you raised an eyebrow, "did you tell sukuna where you were going?"
"fushiguro's. to play video games." he mumbled before tugging you upwards to kiss you.
you put a hand on his chest to halt his motion, and he whined. you brought a soft hand to his cheek, "great, so, uhm. your brother's outside and you're not supposed to be in here."
yuuji looked like he just heard his own death sentence.
he finally mumbled, "i'm sorry what!?"
"you were too busy getting a hand-job to listen—"
"—huh?!"
"—its okay, its okay, yuu." you stood up, and yuuji followed your actions, standing alongside you. you placed a quick kiss on his cheek before giving him a pleading look, "just go hide in the bathroom yeah? i'll ask kuna to go in a few minutes."
"what??" he looked genuinely surprised but obliged nonetheless. nodding mindlessly, yuuji pulled his jeans upwards and slipped into the bathroom at the end of the hall.
cleaning your hand, and putting your clothes on at lightning speed, you tried to smooth your hair out as you walked over to the door. opening the door, you found the tatted man peering down at his phone and scrolling away.
he looked up at you with confusion, "you look like you got railed."
oops.
🧸lesson 03: playin' it unfair
without commenting any further on the state of your hair or clothes, the older itadori had moved past you and sat down on the couch. the very couch where his younger brother had laid you down and gone to town in.
locking the door incase your roommates walked in early from their night out, you had turned around to look at your best friend. trying to hide the slight slur in your voice, you had nagged him, "you saw my face, now leave."
ignoring you, he continued scrolling his phone. then once he had done whatever inspection he had to, he had asked you without even glancing up, "so should i order chinese or what? in the mood to go to an in n' out?"
"didn't i just tell you that i was sick?"
"you are so bad at lying, dude."
"im not lying!"
and the ever-observant sukuna had nodded towards the two opened cans of beer on the coffee table. one of them had your lipgloss smothered over it while the other had been on his younger brother's lips. well, fuck. how did you forget to hide that?
you probably weren't aware of your kiss-bitten lips, of the trailing purple bruises that were laid bare against your jaw and neck, and the ones that trailed even under your loose shirt. you probably didn't know just how damp your hair looked and how your eyes darted from him to the rest of the apartment in a guilty dance.
"who was here?" he had finally asked. his voice was barely curious, just a normal question, "did he do something stupid?"
sukuna never bothered to lecture you about who you decided to bring back home or not, neither did you question the women he slept with. but if he found out who was here this time, it might end badly for all of you.
he wouldn't know yuuji was here, would he?
you had gulped wantonly, "what? no." you continued with a light laugh, "nobody was here, 'kuna. trust me. just some guy, total idiot." you had paused, trying to improv your way out of the situation, "he left a while before you called."
but for someone who was so scared of sukuna finding out, how did you end up back in the bathroom? letting yuuji fuck you on his finger as his brother waited in the living room outside?
"yuu, don't." you whispered as you sunk deeper into door behind you, your back flush against the hard door as yuuji caged you in.
"you said he'd be gone in five minutes, it's been atleast fifteen." he nipped along your jaw, slowly licking over the blossoming bruises he had left. he picked his head up, eyes pointing at you with ungodly desperation, "send him back, please."
his words were accompanied with slow circles on your clothed pussy, teasing you as he whined against your soft skin. his head dipped upwards, carefully brushing against your neck and cheek. hot breath tickling you as his hand carefully guided you to his hard-on.
a teasing laugh escaped you, "didn't i just make you cum?"
he smiled, but his voice was breathless, "should i apologize? i don't think so—" his voice died in his throat, hands going faster to get you just as riled up as he was.
"yuu, come on. kuna's outside." you muttered, but your fingers betrayed your words, palming him leisurely through his pants. running your hand up and down, you restrained any moans within when his teeth sunk down on your exposed neck. he kissed the bruise, "but you can't cut the lessons short."
"yuu—"
"—fu-fuck, jus' like that." yuuji ignored you, bucking his hips to get more friction out of your skimming touches. his pace fastened against you to match your relentless teasing. the quarterback leaned into your touches, teasing you faster and faster and faster and messier, so so messily, through the now-wet pair of shorts. as if his brother wasn't sitting outside, waiting for you to come back.
but the idea of getting caught only turned you both on further, the adrenaline acting like a cheap aphrodisiac as you both tried to grab any and every part of each other.
using his right hand, he grabbed ahold of your face and drew it closer to his. then, he kissed you. he kissed you as if you were the high his body was so desperately chasing. his hand slipped inside your shorts and started toying with your cunt, smiling against your lips when you closed your eyes and let him have his way.
"yuu—" you gasped, still sensitive, "don-don't do that"
he kissed you again, swallowing any objections and that wretched nickname down his throat with ease.
the door rattled as sukuna banged on it, "oi!"
both you and the jock you were tangled against stopped. breath caught in your throats, wide-eyed and looking at each other in horror. stabilizing your breath, you gathered courage and yelled back, "what is it, kuna?"
"you've been in there for way too long, everything okay?" he continued, "the food's here. and it's getting colder."
you casted a quick glance at yuuji, who seemed to have pursed his lips together so as to not even breathe.
"yeah, yeah everything's okay. i just, uh thought i got my period. but false alarm!" you chirped, sounding uncharacteristically enthusiastic about your monthly disaster, "just coming back."
"you're sure it's nothing else?" sukuna asked, and you could picture the suspicion on his tatted face.
"yeah yeah. aah—" you bit down your lip when yuuji decided it was a great time to thumb your clit. probably being a needy brat. you pursed your lips, before choking out a hasty, "—jus' go wait outside! give me some privacy, asshole."
"damn, okay. watch me eat all the food by the time you're out, brat."
"kunnaa" you groaned when yuuji went faster against you, "jus' go sit, i'll be out in a minute, okay?"
"fine." he grumbled before walking off.
you were about to whisper-shout at yuuji but he kissed you again, keeping the pressure of his fingers against your oversensitive clit constant. your knees wobbled, deciding to give out as the waves of orgasm threatened to wash over you. your thighs shook, head lolling back to rest on the wooden door.
"just a little more," yuuji egged you on, "come on, just a little bit more. gimme it, gimme please."
"fu- ngh no—" you bit on his lip to keep yourself quiet as the tides of orgasm washed over you and your knees gave out.
if he was in pain from your attack, he didn't show it. instead choosing to support your spent figure.
you both slumped against the door, sliding down as the pink-haired enveloped you into a hug. you breathed hard, resting your forehead against his chest. when you finally looked up at him, he gave you a smile, "too much?"
"you're an asshole." you whispered back. your fingers swiftly traced over his bottom lips, finding a little swollen bump where you had bit him.
"doesn't hurt." he reassured you, "barely felt like a pinch."
"i'm gonna go take sukuna into my room." you cleared, brushing the wet strands from his forehead, "you use the time to sneak out, okay?"
the quarterback pouted. what a child. "the lesson's over so quick?"
your fingers rested on his jawline, pulling his pouty face forward to lay down a chaste kiss. you give him a teasing smile, "i think i'll fry your brain if i taught you everything in one go, yuu."
"that so?"
"mhm."
the jock gave you a devious smile, "you're gonna make me wait?"
"teach you some patience while i'm at it, you know? patience is sooo import—"
"—I ATE YOUR FOOD, FYI. ITS GONE, DON'T COME CRYING TO ME LATER, BRAT." sukuna's voice boomed from the living room.
"fuck."
"fuck."
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a/n: guess which motherfucker is posting while still being on a "writing hiatus" (this is a scheduled post lmao). haha, hello, hi. should i post a second part because a few lessons are yet to be learnt? ofc. ofc i should. will i? thats between me and god. (jk, i'll write it if someone wants to read it lol) let me know incase you wanna be tagged in part 02! is here!! divider: by @plutism tagging: @kingofthe-egirls because you love yuuji just as much as i do <3
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uravitypng · 8 months ago
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𝐰𝐞'𝐫𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞!
pairing: atsumu miya x chubby reader
word count: 1.1k words
a/n: this is a slightly longer version to something i wrote a couple days, an anon asked for shameless smut with atsumu and a chubby reader and i delivered them this (x) this is the longer version of that
content warnings: (not a lot really?? its pretty fluffy for smut) horny/needy atsumu, vaginal sex, body worship, atsumu making a joke about you looking hot while humiliated, he's kind of a meanie (a menace if you will, but a menace in love) / mdni
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"tsumu we're going to be late! our reservations are at half seven, we're meeting all the others in less than an hour." you're meant to be celebrating a msby win with the team and their partners but instead you're laying in your shared bed with your fiancee with your dress bunched up.
"don't blame me. it's yer fault for looking so hot. you can't blame me when my wife looks so good."
"wife? not yet." you try and pull your dress back down but atsumu isn't having it and swats your hand away, not letting you.
"shut yer trap, ya know what i mean." while keeping your dress bunched up he runs his large hands over your thick thighs, enjoying your soft skin underneath his hands.
you giggle at his response but your laugh is cut off as he places a kiss over your clothed clit making you gasp. tsumu slightly pushes your underwear to the side and then blows air against your clit getting satisfaction from make you shudder. the tips of his fingers stroke you up and down, lightly, teasing you, a patch already soaking through from your arousal. " 's not my fault when you look so hot in that dress, clinging to all your curves like that. you're making me go crazy." he pulls down your underwear and throws them somewhere behind them not taking any notice to where, "we can be a little late." 
"a little?" you snort as you stare of in the direction of your discarded clothes. he smirks and kisses your hip, pulling down your dress at the top too so that your tits are on display and your dress is only covering the middle part of your body. atsumu pulls down your bra as well and gropes your breasts harshly before pinching your nipples causing you to whine.
he drags his digits along your already wet folds, his fingers becoming the same. he feels no shame as he sucks his fingers clean. you swallow as you watch his tongue circle his two fingers that are still in his mouth, he hums and there's a popping sound as he takes them out. "ya taste so good sweetheart."  
you turn your head away embarrassed from the act, "none of that now if you don't look at me i'll stop what i'm doing and i'm sure you want me to keep going at this point." he warns you and you reluctantly look back at him, still embarrassed. he smirks as he sees you try and shy your eyes away from his, "aw, you embarrassed love?" he chuckles. "there's no need. i wasn't lying or nothin' ya taste fucking amazing."  
"don't say that tsumu, it's humiliating," you whine, finally making eye contact with him again. 
"humiliation looks so good on you though," he smirks while pinching your nipple harder that he had been previously, making you yelp and him to burst out laughing because of the noise. you scowl at him but he just smirks again, unapologetically.
atsumu runs his large hands all over your body before stating suddenly, "this is stupid," and he starts pulling up your dress to take it off completely and moves up to face you so he can look at how pretty you are.
"i thought you said it looked hot?" you wrap your arms around his neck and pull him down to kiss him.
"you do! ya just look better with it off," he smirks and allows you to pull him down. kissing messily, all tongue and teeth, clashing , right in the moment, he just can't help himself when it comes down to you and you're not one to complain just as swept up around atsumu as he is with you. most of the time atsumu kisses you slowly and tenderly while cupping your cheek but you never complain when he looks at you more hungrily.
now that you're completely naked he squeezes and grabs your pudgy tummy and kneeds your love handles, groaning as his fingers sink into your soft malleable skin. 
his clothes come off just as rushed as yours did, hastily pulling down his jeans and boxers all at once, he quickly threw them behind him too, getting the same treatment as your clothes did, his dick already rock hard and weeping, begging to buried inside you.
atsumu lifted your thigh up, resting his palm at the bottom where he's slung your thigh over his shoulder and he's folding your body as he plunges his fat cock into you to the hilt as deep as possible hitting the spongy spot making you see stars, his coarse semi-groomed pubes stimulating you further. your wet heat envelops him and he groans, "jesus baby, i love ya s'much."  
he ruts into you hard and fast, causing your plush body to jiggle with each thrust and atsumu doesn't know where to look. you look like a goddess in his eyes and every inch of you is perfect he just can't decide; your tummy rolls that are squished together, your breasts that freely bounce without any bra, your cute face and chubby cheeks, your pretty pussy that keeps sucking him back in with every thrust, not wanting him to go leaving a creamy ring at the base of his cock with every thrust. he can't decide where to look- you're perfect.
his balls make a smacking sound with each trust when making contact with your ass and your thighs start to ache with how pressed up they are against your breasts and it's good thing atsumu is driving tonight because it's doubtful you'd be able to walk far after this, your whole lower body will likely be sore. you love every second of it though.  
you admire how handsome your fiancee is above you, hooded brown eyes that are gazing at you like he wants to bite into you and eat you up, lazy smirk that adorns his face, bleached dyed hair that's become messy after him jumping on you, a light sheen of sweat covers his forehead and his lips plump, looking slightly swollen, from how much you've been kissing. you reach a hand up and tug his hair, pulling him down so he's close enough for you to kiss again and you do kiss, tongues dancing together.
you intimately press a palm against his cheek and feel the heat radiating under your hand, atsumu's eyes flutters close a few times, smiling sweetly as he feels your warm touch. one hand is still holding onto your thigh occasionally squeezing the softness making him harder. his other hand is holding onto one of your hands, fingers intertwined. he repeats himself from earlier, mumbling against your forehead, "love you, love you s' much."
"love you too 'tsumu!" you moan and you're gripping onto his hand even tighter.
you turn up to dinner late, very late.
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repulsiveliquidation · 10 months ago
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without you || Ona Batlle
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warnings : angst w/ happy ending, i promise. mentions of illness and death. based on the poem above. enjoy :)
last night you were in my dreams
looked me in the eye
god
it felt so real
her side of the bed’s empty. there’s no note left for you in her pretty writing. her car is gone from its place next to yours in the driveway. her pillow smells so much like her, it’s almost like she’s still here. the tears. you hate the tears. they fall without your permission. they wet your pillow, “I’m sorry,” you whisper, the lump in your throat made it hard to swallow.
you roll over to her side of the bed, the cold sheets solidify your loneliness. Ona’s gone. she left this morning, bags seemingly packed for such a long time that there was a little dust bunny at the back of the closet from where she hid the duffle bags.
the sun shines into your room just a little, the window left open from the night before. you had shared a glass of wine there, laughing so loud that the old man who lived across from you yelled for you two to go to bed. his wife scolded him and apologized for his behavior, blowing you a kiss and a promise of fresh pastries she would send you the next morning.
you opened the front door and there they were, neatly packed in a little basket. they were Miguelitos, Ona’s favorite. tears filled your eyes again, picking up the pretty basket with an unsteady hand. the old lady calls from across the road and you force a smile, voice breaking when you yell a thank you in a terrible attempt at Spanish. she smiles and nods anyway, watching as you tread back into the house and she sees you wiping a tear away.
they’re still warm so you leave them on the kitchen uncovered. you call Jonatan and tell him you feel like, faking a sniffle that he doesn’t buy but he gives you the day off anyway. suspiciously, Ona calls him not three minutes later with the same excuse. normally you’d call and tell him you were both under the weather but separate calls raise flags in his mind.
you crawl back into bed and begin to sob, hot tears staining your cheeks and pillow. you pull her pillow close to your chest and try to calm yourself, knowing it was no use when all you wanted was your girlfriend to hold you close and tell you everything was going to be alright.
she had done this two times before. Ona was a perfectionist, a master of her craft. every pass, tackle, dribble, and kick had to be perfect. one loose ball that was her fault meant another hour on the pitch perfecting the pass till her toes hurt from kicking the ball. the first time you had to physically throw her over your shoulder and drag her home, having a strict conversation with Alexia as she cleaned up. you made her promise to take her health seriously or Alexia would wait for the green light from you to be benched until she bucked up.
the message got to her head for about six months until a badly timed tackle earned her a second yellow of the game and the send-off. she ran off the pitch in anger, lashing out at Vicky who was comforting her as she walked off. you were on the bench with a little ankle sprain and waddled after her with Alexia, Mapi, and Pina in tow. you were ready to give her an earful when you heard muffled sobbing in the changing room. you told the others you would handle it and they backed off, faces full of concern for their friend.
“Ona?” you called, walking into the room slowly. she wiped her tears away, trying to look like she wasn’t crying. she refused to raise her head, eyes fixed on her muddy cleats.
“Amor, it’s just me,” you comfort, sitting beside her and rubbing her back. she flinches but leans into your shoulder, crying into your pressed shirt. you rock her a little and let her cry it out, gripping your coat tight as she shook in your arms.
“shh, it was just badly timed princesa. it happens.”
“I’ve let the team down, they need me…” she cried harder, snot running down her face. you reach into your pocket and pull out some tissues, reminding yourself to ask the girls which one of them stuffed it into your pocket. you wipe her face and kiss her nose.
“the girls are fine, we’re five goals up with ten minutes to go. we’ve got this game in the bag.”
“but the next games…”
“should give you a chance to rest and regroup. you’ve been working yourself to the bone again.”
“I’ve been sloppy at training, I can’t afford to make mistakes!” she yelled standing up and storming into the showers.
you lean back and decide to give her some space to breathe, hearing the loud chattering of girls high off another win and a clean sheet. you smile and congratulate them, not wanting them to worry about their teammate. Ona comes out from the showers second to last, hair wet and cheek rosy from the hot water. you sit in her cubby patiently waiting and she kisses you.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” she apologizes, fiddling with her fingers. you nod and smile at her, standing up gingerly since your legs have gone numb. she changes and you notice that she’s got one of your ratty t-shirts on and your training sweats. you shake your head and walk out the door, yelling that you’d have the car warmed up for in the front in five.
she scrambles into the car and relaxes into the seat, muscles visibly melting into the warm upholstery. you drive leisurely back home, the Barcelona sunset to your left. Ona snores in the passenger seat softly, not even waking up when the scent of the Chinese takeout you pick up fills the car.
she rouses when you park in front of your house, feeling the familiar cobblestone that you have to drive over just before bringing the car into park. she smacks her lips and feels your lips press a soft kiss on her cheek.
“We’re home, my love.”
she smiles and stretches her arms, climbing out of the car sleepily. you’ve brought all the bags into the house, already cleaning out her kit bag. she rummages through the bags of food and smiles when she smells her favorite. maybe taking a break wasn’t such a bad idea.
it was as if you were here again
deep down inside me feel
Ona locks herself in her room. the sheets feel foreign, itching her skin. you always had the softest sheets, catering to her sensitive skin. the bonus was that they always smelled like you and she made sure to take deep breaths when you changed the sheets every week.
the room smelled stale too. an expected circumstance since she was rarely over here anyway. your house was closer to the pitch and she already had half the closet to herself, why make the trip every time?
there was a knock on the door about twenty minutes after she got home. she knew it was Aitana with a billion questions but all she wanted was to be alone. really she wanted to be with you but she’d fucked that up. she didn’t even know why she ran, the pressure of performing was becoming too much and she didn’t want to be a burden. she couldn’t bear to see that look of disappointment she saw glimmer over your face when she got her first red card with Barça.
the banging on her bedroom door was what woke her up hours later. Aitana mentioned breakfast in the oven and coffee in the coffee pot before the front door slammed shut. she checked her phone and there was radio silence, half hoping that you had left an angry voicemail telling her to come home. instead, she was met with her wallpaper of you holding Coco over the summer at her parent’s house.  
tears pool in her eyes as she scrolls through her camera roll, swiping through all the silly photos you made her take that night. she threw her phone on the bed and screamed into the mattress, hoping deep down inside she was braver in another lifetime.
and when the light came to wake me,
and you slowly starting to fade away,
my soul was longing for you to take me,
Ona walked onto the pitch three days later, heart aching to see you. she stepped onto the pitch and spotted you talking to the girls, Ingrid slapping you on the back laughing at a joke Mapi told the group. she decides to avoid you, too cowardly to face the music. you notice her and smile but she turns away quickly, busying herself with her laces. you decide to try and corner her at the end of practice you do, needing the help of the girls to keep her from running to her car the moment Jonatan blows his whistle.
“why did you run away like that, Oni?” you ask her quietly, the rest of the team filtering out when Alexia begins to shepherd them outside.
“it’s none of your business,” she growls, tears flowing down her cheeks as she packs her kit bag. you grab her shoulder and she turns around with anger seething in her eyes. you’ve never seen hatred in her eyes before, it was unlike her; unlike your cheerful, noisy, playful but shy girlfriend.
“Ona? what’s gotten into you?” you ask, feeling tired of all the secrets she’s been harboring. for weeks you’ve been concerned about her odd behavior. she’s been making frequent visits to the medics, getting off practice earlier and staying longer sometimes, random trips to the ‘store’ for hours on end. you thought that she was planning something since your anniversary was coming up and she liked to make a big thing about it but when she left that morning it hit you that she was probably preparing to leave. this time though, it was for good.
it's her third round of dialysis this week. Ona sat in the lumpy chair of her dialysis center when her doctor walks in.
“how does it look, doctor?”
“it’s fourth-stage renal failure, Ona. you need a transplant or else you’re never playing football again. frankly, I don’t know how you’ve kept playing this long.”
“Jonatan knows.”
“I see,” he says and sits. “does your girlfriend know?”
“she’s not my girlfriend anymore.”
“did you decide that for her, or did she have any say?”
Ona looks up at him in shock. she tries not to jostle the machine as she sits up.
“How did you know?”
“you looked like you didn’t want to believe it when you said it.”
“she deserves better than,” she gestures to the machine, “this.”
“she deserves you,” he says and stands. as he walks away and Ona is about to cry, he turns and clears his throat. “she’s donated blood here before, she’s a perfect donor match.”
Ona tries to cry into her palm quietly, the weight of her decision bearing down on her shoulders.
but instead,
i must live without you,
for another day.
you wake up feeling groggy, and the sound of steady heartbeats fills the room. there’s another heartbeat that deep down sounds familiar and it puts a smile on your face.
a chilling call from Jonatan put you in this hospital bed. he explained that Ona needed a transplant and that you were a perfect match. you cried in his office, body shaking with anger at yourself more than at Ona. you knew that it ran in her family and that her age was when the onset was. the extra visits to the doctor and ‘shop’ trips all made sense now. you punched a wall on your way out dramatically, crying like a baby all the way home. you barged into her house, Aitana following behind you like a puppy.
“so you were just going to run and wait for you to die?” you yelled at her, body shaking in fury. she just stared at her fingers, fiddling with the end of the throw blanket in her lap.
“answer me!”
“you don’t deserve this!” she screamed back, tears running down her face. “you don’t deserve someone who is dying to be your girlfriend!”
tears flood down your cheeks and you hear her door click closed, Aitana in front of it.
“you had no right to decide that for me, Oni!”
“I couldn’t put you through this. if I don’t get a kidney soon, first it’ll be football then it’ll be me!”
“I know I’m a match.”
her head whips up to look at you so fast, you’re sure she’s gone and given herself another ailment.
“no.”
“I’m a perfect match, Onita.”
“I could never ask you to do that!”
“you’re not asking if I’ve already asked them to make sure it goes to you.”  
“Bebé, I–”
“no, you would do the same for me. I love you too much to see you like this,” you kneel in front of her as she sits on the bed, feeling overwhelmed. “Please, Oni,” you beg with your head in her lap, “Please let me help you.”
Ona wakes up and looks over at you, sighing in relief that the surgery was a success. the nurses have pushed your beds close enough together that you stretch your arm out and she does the same, fingers laced together with an unspoken promise to face every challenge that comes your way the only way you knew was right; together.
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thelittlestoflives · 10 months ago
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Burning for You
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this quite literally came to me in a dream soooo i had to write it!! just a lil silly drabble about the sweetest fire boy (not proofread IM SORRY)
afab reader, uses of YN
portgas d ace x strawhat!reader
✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
it's pretty steamy so i'm gonna say NSFW MDNI but it's not tooo explicit
wc: 1.5k
✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
The building exploded, bricks and debris flying through the air and smashing through anything in its path. You barely had time to gape in disbelief before you saw your crew scattering in different directions. Of course, this is how the ‘stealth’ plan went. 
Luffy’s brother, Ace, was staying with the crew for a while and the two of you had most definitely been making eyes at each other when you thought the other wasn’t looking. You were staying on an island when the crew had discovered some nefarious goings-on, and would you really be the Strawhats if you all didn’t try and right these wrongs? The plan was to sneak into the suspected building, scope it out, and then figure out the intricacies once you all knew its layout. The plan was not to blow the damn building up.
“Quick!” Ace sprinted past you, grabbing your hand and pulling you behind him. 
“Was that you?” You yelled at him, referring to the building’s demise.
He flashed a grin over his shoulder at you, confirming the answer as you both ran through the unfamiliar streets. 
Eventually, you stopped in an alleyway, breathing heavily.
You threw a glare at him. “I don’t recall ‘blowing up the building’ as the course of action, Ace.”
He simply threw a smile your way. “But didn’t that make it much more fun?”
“Oh, okay. So your idea of fun is, I don’t know, terrorism?” 
“Pfft. They deserved it. The bastards inside were up to no good. It’s not exactly my fault they had highly flammable objects in there.”
You groaned and pinched the bridge of your nose. “I can’t believe we sent Fire Fist himself into a flammable building. I guess we have nobody to blame but ourselves for that one.” You looked up to see his incredibly (cute) smug face brightly beaming at you.
“Exactly. So really, it’s all your fault,” he teased. 
“You really are Luffy’s brother,” you remarked, unable to stop your mouth from turning up. 
His smile grew. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Sure.”
You both began to walk out of the alley and back into the city as the fire brigade and island’s police ran past you to the inferno in the centre. You tried to look as nonchalant as possible as Ace walked without a care in the world beside you, arms up behind his head.
“I see you staring at me, you know,” he said. 
You splutter. “Sorry?”
“You don’t need to apologise.”
“No, I wasn’t-”
“I see you staring because I’m staring at you,” you didn’t have to see his face to know exactly what kind of smile he wore. “You’re pretty damn cute.”
You could feel the heat rise to your cheeks. He stepped closer to you and draped an arm over your shoulders.
“And while we wait for the smoke to settle, if you’ll pardon the pun, I think we might as well enjoy the time we have alone together, don’t you?” 
“You’re shameless,” you manage to say, head spinning due to the close proximity. 
He laughed. “Maybe. But you’re too gorgeous to pass up on. What do you say, YN? Shall we make the most of it?”
You grumble at the compliment, and the butterflies in your stomach intensify. “What, uh, what did you have in mind?”
“Grab a drink somewhere? Get to know each other?” 
“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
“Great!” His arm moved from your shoulders and you found yourself missing the warm contact, but only temporarily as his hand found yours and your fingers interlocked. “I want to know how you ended up on my brother’s crew.” 
The bar Ace picked wasn’t one you would have chosen - slightly too ‘old man pub’ for your taste - but the drinks were cheap and there was hardly anyone inside, so you couldn’t complain too much. You both sat in a booth in the corner, shielded from any eyes that might look your way. The conversation flowed just as easily as the drinks you both threw back, and soon you were leaning over the table clutching your stomach in fits of laughter.
“You’re something else,” you choked out as you wiped the tears of laughter from your eyes. 
Ace had a wicked grin on his face. “You love it though, don’t you?”
“Presumptious.” 
“But true.”
You lean back in your seat and look at him only to find he was already looking at you. 
At some point in the conversation, Ace had moved closer to you, dangerously close. You could feel the heat radiating off his skin. 
He lifted his hand to hold your cheek, fingertips in your hair. 
“If you don’t want this to go any further, you have to say now, princess,” he murmured. “Because I don’t know how much self-control I’ll have.” 
“I… I don’t know, Ace,” you whisper. “I don’t normally do this sort of thing… I don’t want to just be some notch on your belt.” 
“Oh no, no, no, YN. You’re much more than that. I don’t do this sort of thing either. I’m not some hotshot ladies’ man who sleeps around whenever he can.” He moves his hand to brush over your lips to silence your response. “I know that’s what you think of me, it’s okay. But I need you to know that’s not who I am, yeah? You’re… breaking my resolve, that’s all.”  
Your eyes flutter at the closeness, the intimacy. “But, I’m on your brother’s crew. We couldn’t… I mean, we can’t…”
He raised an eyebrow, a cheeky glint in his eyes. “Says who?”
Oh, fuck it.
His lips were close enough that you barely had to move to crash yours against them. He grunted a little in surprise, but wrapped his arms around you, pulling you impossibly close. Your mouths moved in tandem, the kiss getting deeper and deeper. Your hands move to tangle in his hair, his hat now off his head and hanging by the strap around his neck. His skin was on fire underneath your touch, and he groaned slightly as your tongue entered his mouth. He pulled you onto his lap so that you were straddling him, neither of you caring that you were in some random bar. His hands clutched at your waist and grabbed at any part of you they could. It was desperate, messy, passionate. You could feel the hardness in his shorts under you as you began to gently grind on him, the kiss now sloppy as he panted into your mouth. Thank god the booth you were in was hidden. 
“YN…” He groaned as you pulled away to kiss his jaw and neck, sucking and nipping the skin lightly. “You’re teasing me.” 
“Want me to stop?” you whisper, biting his ear softly. 
He pulled your face away and held it in his hands, his pupils blown and cheeks red. “Not here, not like this,” he said lowly. “Something as beautiful as you needs to be devoured slowly, and not in some gross bar.”
You flushed at the compliment which pleased him greatly.
“Your room, tonight. We’ll finish what we started, yeah? Properly this time,” he pulled your face back to his and kissed you deeply. 
The two of you finished your drinks, in between kisses and touches, before slipping out of the bar and dancing through the streets, hand in hand. 
By the time you and Ace returned to the ship, it was dark out. He pressed some kisses to your face and you giggled, swatting him away as you didn’t want the crew to see.
When you pushed open the door to the kitchen you were immediately crashed into.
“YN!” Luffy’s excited voice called as he wrapped himself around you. “I’m so happy you’re my sister!”
For the second time that day, you splutter. “W-what?”
You didn’t miss the mischievous grins on your crew behind him. 
“Well, you and Ace are together, and he’s my brother, which means you’re my sister! Welcome to the family, sis!”
Ace burst into peals of laughter at the redness of your face. You glared at your crew behind Luffy, as this was obviously their doing. Once you and Ace failed to return to the ship when everyone else did, they put two and two together. 
“Oh, no, Luffy, I’m not… We’re not… It’s not like…”
Ace slung his arm around your shoulder and kissed the side of your head. “Yeah, welcome to the family, YN.”
You grumbled, but couldn’t find it in you to actually be mad. It was rather sweet after all. Whoever told your Captain about you and his brother would suffer your wrath eventually. For now, you indulge in silliness and love and count down the minutes until everyone is in bed and Ace can come to yours.
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maeby-cursed · 1 year ago
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KISS ME, TRY TO FIX IT…
𓂃 COULD YOU JUST TRY TO LISTEN ?
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a/n: starting a new series of songfics ! this one is very obviously inspired by sad, beautiful, tragic, so you can see where this might be going. enjoy the results of my brainrot ♡ (also, i’ve never written for gojo before, please have mercy)
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✧ synopsis: you’ve been waiting for satoru gojo for ten years, but there’s no trace of the man you fell in love with when you were sixteen years old. it’s time to let go, but he might not want to.
✧ pairings: satoru gojo x fem!reader
✧ wc: 2k
✧ rating: angst. so much of it, angst to drown in. might get suggestive at some points.
✧ cw: mentions of drinking, of the great jjk tragedy of 2006 and its aftermath, implied cheating, gojo may be ooc, toxic relationship ??
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An ice-cold wind blows through the window as you wait.
It’s not even December yet but it’s already snowing.
Soft snowflakes the size of stars, far away in their firmament, enter your living room. When they land on the sofa, they dissolve, leaving in their wake thousands of specks of water that look disturbingly like tears.
It doesn't matter. You don't think he's going to notice anyway.
It's been ten long years of waiting. Ten long years of fighting, of fixing what's broken and denying that it's ever been broken.
It's over. Let winter freeze everything in its path.
When Satoru walks in through the door, you hesitate for a moment. A moment of madness when you see his hair, as white as the snowfall that has invaded your home. Just a moment when you see him in his burgundy turtleneck sweater, his tight-fitting coat. One single moment when you recognize the cold in his pink cheeks.
But it's all over when you meet his crystalline eyes. The fault is theirs.
"Is the window broken again?" he asks, dropping his keys on the entryway’s table.
The window has been broken since September.
You nod and he grunts, running a hand over his face.
"I'll call someone tomorrow, although you could have said something," he says. This is your fault. Of course.
You keep your eyes fixed on the snow. From the living room you can see the sidewalk across the street, covered in a blanket of white that sparkles under the street lamps. It's so painfully beautiful it makes you nostalgic.
You and Satoru moved into this house three years ago, when he got his teaching position, and you can't quite get over the fact that it's time to say goodbye.
You've spent three years of solstices here. You've seen the sidewalks covered with dead leaves, with thousands of little flowers that broke the pavement in their wake. But it’s never snowed. 
It’s not fair, not one bit.
Satoru says no more. He goes to your room and undresses; he replaces his street clothes with a black outfit that seems very appropriate for the occasion. Since you’ve known him, he always takes off his glasses when he crosses the hall of your building, but for once, you wish he'd put them back on. 
When he returns, his hair is dripping over his forehead. You hadn't even noticed that he was taking a shower. 
But he hasn't noticed that your bedside table is empty, either; that your slippers are missing, that there's a seeping coldness in the hearth of your house, and it's not coming from the window.
"What's for dinner?" he asks, plopping down on the couch with his cell phone in his hand.
You get up.
9:26 p.m., November 8. This is where it ends.
"I don't know. I'm going out to dinner," you say.
He doesn’t even bother to look up.
"Hmm, where are you going? Are you bringing something back or should I order myself a pizza?"
It's painful to watch as nothing seems to touch him. He’s infinite — always infinite.
"I'm going to a work friend's house."
"The one with the lovely curly hair and those pretty hazel eyes?"
Christ.
"No. I'm moving in with Rhea. Dark-eyed, blonde, leggy."
"Hmm, how nice."
A moment passes where he just keeps staring at the screen, and you despair.
"Satoru."
"What's up, baby?"
"I'm moving."
At last – at last – he looks up. In his eyes you see nothing; two blue marbles that have sworn you two to an unjust fate.
"You're moving out? Why?"
Where to begin? Because you have been loving a man destined to save everything and everyone for a decade, because you have been trying to fill a void that is not your size for eight years, because the windows are broken and the bed is cold and Satoru arrives several nights smelling of anisette and the perfume of another, because you don't want to live looking at the Strongest, the possessor of the Six Eyes. Because you thought that in some hidden corner Satoru Gojo was still there, and he isn’t.
"Because it's killing me to live like this.” You settle for that as your explanation and try to keep your stare unwavering.
"Like this how?" he questions, suddenly irritated. "In a luxurious house?" He gestures around him with the cell phone in his hand. "Comfortably, with your dream job? Knowing you'll never have to worry about money?"
"No, Satoru. Like this, without you loving me."
That chills him to the bone.
"Of course I love you."
"Do you? Do you want me for anything other than to warm your bed and your cock? Do you want me here, as your partner? Do you need me for anything at all?"
You don’t gesticulate, you barely move from your spot in the middle of the room. Everything in this fucking place is white and uncannily clean; the sofas, the coffee table, the walls, even the snow; but you and Satoru. He’s in all black, you’re in all red. It’s almost dreamlike, and you struggle to stay grounded. 
The only thing you could remove from this house that would grab his attention would be you.
"Yesterday you weren't complaining about any of this, what the fuck is the matter with you today?"
And you can't stand it anymore. The winter current lifts your hair, soaks the back of your neck and disguises your tears.
"THE MATTER IS THAT I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR TEN YEARS. WAITING FOR YOU. WAITING FOR THE MAN I MET AT SIXTEEN TO COME BACK, SLEEPING WITH A MAN OF ABSENT GAZE WHO STAGGERS INTO MY BED WHEN HE'S TIRED OF BEING IN EVERYONE ELSE'S. I DON'T WANT TO BE YOUR DOG, SATORU. I DON'T WANT YOU TO COME HOME AND FEEL OBLIGATED TO GIVE ME A WALK, A PETTING."
The words come spilling out of you without remedy, every wound bursting open through the stitches. He just looks at you.
"You think I don't love you?"
It hurts to hear him say it, it fucking hurts. You were prepared for the yelling and the coldness, even for a quick vulnerable stare. But never for his trembling voice and soft frown.
You inhale deeply.
"I don't think your love is of any use to me any longer."
Satoru stands up at that.
He's tall, tall and beautiful like Michelangelo's David. All your life, you've been feeling like you had no right to touch him. His infinity assured you that was the case. 
He takes a step in your direction and whispers:
"Then what should I do now?"
Your eyes, fixed on the ground, rise to meet his. There's something in the void and you're not sure if it's just your reflection.
"What?" you mutter. 
"How do I fix it? What do you need that I can't give you? Do you want me to quit work, for us to leave, for me to come home and kiss your temple, to cook for you, to listen to you, to cherish you in bed?” A heartbeat. “I will."
There’s something about the desperation in his tone, you aren’t sure of what to say next.
Satoru knows how to lie, but you don't know how to tell the difference.
"I don't want anything, Satoru. I'm tired," you whisper back, eyes full of water. "I want it to end. I want you to let it end."
He shakes his head, frowning, and through the mist of your tears you recognize that he is crying too.
"There has to be something. Anything. Something I can do, I can do it all."
It's partly true. He's Satoru Gojo; all-powerful, all-knowing. Eternal and young and beautiful and tragic as a poem.
You are just another person. You cried when Suguru left, when Haibara died, when Kento gave up the Jujutsu world and when Ieri locked herself in her office. You clung to Satoru, who resembled an empty seashell more than a person. 
You remember those nights back in 2007. You remember blindfolding him so he wouldn't activate infinity by accident, by reflex, out of overstimulation. You remember cutting his hair when he couldn’t and looking for him in his old antics. You remember taking care of Megumi – always reluctant – and Tsumiki – who you felt was too mature for her age. You remember the burden of being eighteen and having lost a world.
And, above all else, you remember Satoru under the rain. Under the pressure of the world you had lost, the one that he was trying to put back together. There was a month where he seemed catatonic; no smiles, drinking anisette as if it were his one source of life. A thirty-day period followed by the rebirth of a person who looked like the one that stood before, but who seemed cold and alien to you.
"Don't you love me, my darling?" he seeks for you, reaching out a hand to brush against your cheek.
Of course you love him. You love him even like this, like you have loved each and every one of his versions.
"I adore you, Satoru. But I can't stay; you can't fix it."
"Of course I can," he reaches out to you, holding your face between his fingers, "Of course I can."
His lips connect with yours — one last attempt, you don't know by whom.
Snow fills the room and it's cold, but you drink from his mouth, from his everlasting warmth; everything in him lasts forever.
Between kisses, you show him everything you have been for years. Ten years of kisses, of hands looking for hands and flesh searching for flesh.
He moves backwards, keeping you between his hands and guiding you towards the hallway and from the hallway to your shared bed.
This is where it ends.
"Satoru..." you whisper.
"I'm here. I'm here, beautiful, my favorite girl. Talk to me."
A sob escapes you as he utters those words. My favorite girl. That’s what he used to call you. Talk to me, he used to plead, that year at sixteen, when everything was about to start.
Isn't it beautiful that it ends the exact same way?
"Satoru, I'm leaving," you press a farewell kiss to his jaw.
"No, you're not leaving," he murmurs, smiling against your mouth, searching for your lips.
You back away and look at him one more time. And you smile, because there's nothing left.
"I'm already gone. Just let go of me, please."
"But..." he starts, his smile hesitant, "But I'm going to fix it."
You take one of his hands between yours and kiss it as it presses against your cheek, before lowering it to your lap.
"Satoru..." You pronounce each syllable of his name carefully and he stifles a cry. "I'm not going to go any further. I've already made the move and Rhea's expecting me at her house in an hour. I love you, I’ll love you until I run out of kisses, but it does me no good to love you. It is of no use to me, this love. I wanted to tell you. I wanted you one last time. Wasn’t it my turn to be the selfish one for once?"
He watches you, and his mouth shuts close. You've never seen Satoru lose. 
No, that's not true. There was a time, one time, where you saw him lose everything.
His eyes fill up with you one second and empty the next.
This is his second time.
He lifts his chin with an arrogance that no longer means anything and lets go of your hands.
"Go then, if you want. I'm not going to do anything to stop you,” he drags the words with feign disinterest. “I can't do anything."
That's the last gift he can give you. An honesty unbecoming of him, a truth that will never belong to Satoru Gojo ever again. 
From god to human in three kisses and a goodbye.
"Thank you," you say to him. Then you get up, heading for the living room, where your coat and your escape door await you.
He stays in the bedroom – with himself as he always is – after you leave. 
And he hides you where he always hides the things he breaks, in the back of his eyes, where no one can reach to see anything.
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© 2023, MAEBY-CURSED — do not copy/repost/edit.
(reblogs are appreciated !!)
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starshideurfics · 6 months ago
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Thirsty Thursday - Ring My Bell
steddie, omegaverse, flagging/signaling culture, mdni 🔞
Based on a fun worldbuilding convo in the SHOM discord that’s still buzzing around my head. Credit to @itcanbepalped and @jeffgoldblumsmulletinthe90s for vibing on this one
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Steve’s parents never wore rings. They said it was gauche; very new money of them.
“Why bother with jewelry on your fingers that will get banged up on your hands when you can wear a necklace,” Clarissa would say when she spotted someone at the club with a ring, or god forbid two! Her own betrothal and bonding necklaces were layered, drawing the eye to her bite.
That was the whole point of a necklace. Either it emphasized a bonding bite, or it highlighted the fact that the wearer’s bonding gland was intact.
Steve had been given a necklace after he presented, a simple gold chain with a bejeweled padlock.
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Pretty fucking gauche if you ask him.
Steve wouldn’t have worn it, but it was expected. Plenty of omegas wore something similar; he’d rather have his grandmother’s old claddagh ring, but his mother said it was low class.
So he wears his necklace every day, a reminder that he belongs to his father until he is mated. Then, he’ll belong to his alpha. Legally. At least until Congress hot its act together and passed some of the proposed equity laws.
Maybe his mom was right, rings were more easily lost. They tainted the scent of your hands with harsh metal.
It’s just that he’s seen some interesting ones, shapes so far beyond the standard lock, circle, and eternity knot. Meanings far more individualized than his necklace.
Which is why when the pups start following after Eddie Munson, Steve really notices his rings.
He gets what the book means. Or, he thinks he does. Munson doesn’t wear blockers, ever. His scent is an open book.
And the skull could be one of those gothy, ‘I mate for life’ things.
But the pig makes no sense. And no scents. Pigs don’t typically have a smell worth advertising.
The ring on his right hand is so simple in comparison that Steve gets stymied there, too.
He drops it, not wanting to reveal his interest in anything to do with Eddie Munson.
Steve is perfectly ready to let it stay a mystery until the night he comes to pick Dustin up after Hellfire only for Eddie to be the only one left in the lot, hauling his stuff out to his van. 
“Sinclair got his permit; your chuckleheads all went with him so he could show off.”
“Oh,” Steve says dumbly, only for his brain to catch up and spit out, “And they’ve never heard of a phone?”
“Real butthead behavior on their part,” Eddie agrees with a smirk. “Anyway, sorry you came out here for nothing.”
“Eh, could be worse.” Steve’s thinking monsters or g-men.
Of course, Eddie doesn’t know that. He gives Steve an appraising look. Then he surprises Steve. “I could make it up to you,” Eddie says with a crooked grin.
“How?” Steve asks, swallowing back the ‘not your fault’ that almost slipped out automatically. Because it kinda is.
Steve wouldn’t be here if not for Eddie’s club and the hold it has on Steve’s merry band of twerps. So he’s open to whatever Eddie’s offering to make them square.
He shouldn’t be surprised when Eddie pulls a joint from his pocket, sets it in his mouth to light, and inhales.
He holds it towards Steve as he blows out a stream of smoke. “We can hang, take the edge off your night.”
Steve takes the joint. Eddie grins and skips over to his van, opening the back door and giving a joking bow.
Steve laughs. He didn’t expect to be charmed so easily.
But he is, and after a couple hits he feels relaxed and loose in a way that would be fine in the safety of his bedroom, not so much when he has to drive.
He’s going to say as much, tell Eddie he should clear his head, when his eye catches the shine of silver on his fingers.
It’s like his brain isn’t connected to his mouth as he asks, “Why the pig?”
Eddie looks up from the box of cassettes he’s looking through and furrows his brow. “Huh?”
Steve’s brain must be cut off from his body too, since he reaches out and snatches up Eddie’s left hand.
“The pig,” Steve says, tapping on the offending ring. “Like, the book and the skull I think I got, but I’m coming up empty on the pig.”
“I’m surprised you knew it was a book.”
“But it’s book-shaped!”
“You mean rectangular?”
“But it is a book right?”
“Yeah.”
“So that’s about your scent,” Steve feels smug as he says it.
“I don’t smell like books,” Eddie says, clearly confused. “That’d be pretty awesome, though. Old books smell nice. Unless they’ve been in a basement too long.”
Steve nods sagely. This is obvious wisdom. No one wants to jump your bones if you smell like a musty basement.
Then he remembers his point. “You don’t smell like books, you are a book. Easy to read your scent ‘cuz you don’t wear blockers.”
“Don’t like ‘em. Make my head all fuzzy, and not in a fun way.”
“And the skull is a ‘til death’ thing right?”
“It’s actually a vampire skull.” Eddie points out the elongated canines. “You know, ‘the eternal kiss’ or whatever. I think bites should mean something.”
Steve nods again, feels a weird pull low in his belly. “That’s cool. Not enough alphas I know have that opinion.” He’s seen too many broken bonds at the country club and his father’s company Christmas parties.
Seen too many couples who shouldn’t have bonded in the first place.
“So, what’s the pig?”
Eddie looks down where Steve is still holding his hand. “Ever heard of a truffle hunter?”
“Like the chocolates?”
“No, the mushrooms! You’re rich, don’t you know about fancy mushrooms!”
Steve shakes his head, feels dumb. 
But Eddie just accepts his ‘no’ and moves on, “Well, they’re these rare mushrooms, and pigs like to eat them, so they’re really good at sniffing them out. And that’s me. I fully plan to sniff out my scentmate, and until then…” He shrugs. “Plenty of hot omega pussy to smell.” 
As soon as the words are out of his mouth, Eddie slaps his right hand over his whole face in shame. “Shit, sorry. Not appropriate in front of an omega. Or anyone. I promise I’m not a creep trying to get in your pants.”
But Steve’s mouth has gone dry. He wears blockers still, for work, the scent neutralizing deodorants and perfumes good at covering up his scent. The only place he doesn’t apply it is his crotch, because no one should be getting close enough anyway.
Suddenly he wants Eddie to be close enough.
He’s still holding Eddie’s hand, can still smell the edge of his woody scent over the weed. “It’s okay,” he says. Turns Eddie’s palm toward him and brings it to his nose.
The metal smell is there. But also pine and herbs, deepened by dark musk. His tongue darts out for a taste.
His hand mostly tastes like skin, a little like salt and smoke, but the scent is still there. Makes him want more. He pulls back, looks at Eddie who is staring at him with awe on his face.
“Okay, Mr. Trufflehunter, how do I smell?”
“You’ve got blockers on-”
“Not everywhere.”
His movements are slow, giving Eddie every chance to back out as he slides his fingers into Eddie’s hair, gripping the side of his head, and guiding him down towards Steve’s crotch.
Towards his wet pussy.
continued in part 2
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arminsumi · 1 year ago
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i know you already made one but i NEED more mean dom! armin arlert to readd 🙏 it’s not a want anymore it’s a NEED for him to say the most evil, diabolically, appalling shit to my face. this man can destroy me however he wants. i need this man to degrade me so bad.
🔞 You're So Mean!
★ Note : mean dom armin? HMM. i cooked this up, hope it's nutritious!
★ Warnings : 🔞 MDNI/18+ "sl*t"/"wh*re"/"b*tch", dom!Armin, mean!Armin, condescending dirty talk, rough sex, toys, edging, he takes a pic of ur orgasm face, breeding, creampies
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He has a cooing, sweet voice when he talks down at you after cumming all over your face.
"Aw, you look so sweet with your tongue out for me. Like a pathetic little puppy. Come crawl over onto my lap and lick me clean now."
You're riding his lap — sorry wait no, correction; he's making you ride his lap and practically bouncing you up and down on his cock. And you're just holding onto his shirt's suspenders, blanking on his cock as it hits deeper and harder with each thrust.
"Nasty fucking slut." he smiles cutely, "Listen to how loud that pussy is. You should be ashamed of how wet you are."
His tone sounds praising and you're so fucked-out when he's got you folded over and restrained over his desk. So you just think he's praising you, you're barely registering the vileness of his dirty talk.
"Baby, you're so pretty, 'm gonna breed your cunt tonight 'n put a baby in you. I think you'll like that, huh? Yeah a slutty little succubus like you loves creampies."
He especially loves taking you from the back, so he can grab your neck from the back and pull you back, forcing you to look up at him with teary eyes.
"Min, 'm gonna cum! Don't stop!" you cry. He just gives you this naughty smile, "Oh baby, bad girls don't deserve to cum. Maybe if you beg I'll change my mind, though. So beg."
"Please! Daddy!" you beg. He's awful, he uses your cock-drunk state to his advantage and makes you beg until your voice goes hoarse.
"That's it, keep begging like a god damn slut. Gonna make me blow my load inside you, pretty girl." he's edged you until your mind melted like a popsicle stick in the heat.
Your knees buckle, he has to keep you upright. His pale, soft hands come down to rub frantic circles at your clit. "Let's make that lil' clit feel good." he grins devilishly against your ear.
Oops! He edges you again and jerks his cock over your pussy 'till he cums, painting your slit white with creamy cum.
"Please! I was so close! I need—mmm fuck!" he shuts you up by stuffing a vibrator into your pussy and letting it buzz at max.
"Aw, I know you were close that's why I edged you, you dumb fucking slut. But look, I'll be a nice boy for you and let you cum this time as long as you tell me you love me, baby."
He almost laughs at how quickly you tell him your I love yous. Over and over. You're incoherent, hole clenching around the G-spot clit vibe, arching and thrusting your hips to help your orgasm along faster.
"Look at that slutty cunt working for its orgasm." he mocks, using one hand to spread your plush ass wide enough until both your holes are exposed. "You're so beautiful. Now you can cum baby, come on chase it like a good puppy and cum for me."
Your eyes roll back, you pant and make the most erotic expression as you cum which Armin mocks. He takes a picture of your cumming face and shows it to you as you come down from your orgasm.
"Isn't she a slutty bitch?" he smiles, then his thumb goes to press the little heart so that picture is favorited in his gallery.
"Miiin, you're so mean!" you complain half-heartedly.
"Yeah, well, you asked for it." he kisses your tear-stained cheek. "Not my fault I caught a kinky bitch, is it?"
Oops. Yeah well you can't deny it — you practically begged your nice boyfriend to degrade you, didn't you? He was so sweet in the beginning but now he loves fucking you until tears stream down your cheeks.
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© arminsumi
I do not permit the copying/reposting/translation/plagiarism of my works. Do not steal what I've worked hard to create.
This is fictional work.
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yoonlattesworld · 2 years ago
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Love me Noona: JJK Teaser
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Synposis: he is a strange man. You've thought this since the first day you met him. See, there are countless of pretty freshman girls in your college. Some of them so pretty that it made you wonder if he's blind or something. Because despite so many beautiful girls of his age dying to be with him, he wasn't even glancing at them. Why? Because he, Jeon jungkook, the most popular freshman in your college, was interested in you, a boring senior who'd rather die than attend a damn party. So even though he was a strange man, hearing him say "good morning Noona!" became a part of your morning routine.
Genre: Noona romance, smut, fluff, angst, pairing fresh man koo with senior mc,college au
Warnings: smut, older reader, riding, bold koo, tattooed koo, flirty koo, mentions of fight, koo punching someone, raw sex, a little cum play, grinding, switch koo, will be updated with the one shot.
Author's pov
"I can't believe we're getting so many assignments even with the exams coming" yoona grumbled as she angrily typed in her laptop. At this rate the poor laptop will start crying too.
Sighing tiredly you made a noise of agreement while rubbing your forehead because of the forming headache. "Mr Kim is cruel" you mumbled taking another sip of your iced coffee as another whine left yoona's lips.
A frown made its way to your face as you realised that you drank the whole cup as the only liquid coming through the straw was a few drops of water of the melting ice. Standing up with another sigh you looked at your equally tired best friend "you want anything? I'm going to the cafe"
She immediately nodded and smiled gratefully as she took out her wallet "one hot coffee please. My treat" you hummed with delight, taking her card "thank you" blowing her a kiss you let out a small giggle as she blowed one back and turned around. While walking towards the gate of your college,you heard some commotion and looked towards the noise for a second to see people forming a crowd around someone.
Thankfully the line wasn't too long so you were able to come back quickly. Perhaps you were too quick to get back to your seat and finish the damn assignment because one second you could see yoona waving at you and one second all you could see greyness and-
"oh my-!" you gasped sharply as you collided in a firm chest causing you to stumble back as both the drinks spilled from your hand. Your eyes were clenched shut as you waited for your body to fall on the hard ground but instead you felt muscular arms wrapping around your waist and your hands flied to grip whatever they could.
As you came back in your senses, the first thing you heard was a heart beat, and the next thing you heard was a low chuckle "you okay there?" and the last thing you heard was a raspy voice which sent chills down your spin. Your eyes widened as you hastily stepped back, now noticing that you were in the arms of an unfamiliar man.
Feeling a rush of embarrassment you bowed your head "i-im very sorry-" as you looked up, your breath got caught for the second time as your eyes took him in. When you felt his muscular body against you, you were sure that his face would be on the rougher side. So you were very surprised when you found yourself staring at a pair of big doe eyes and a small bunny smile.
"it's okay. It was my fault too" he raised his eyebrows and for a second you thought you were looking at a small kid. But then you also realised that you had to crane your neck upwards to look at his face properly. Even in his grey t shirt you could see the outlines of his muscles. The way his arms flexed as he raised his hand towards you "jungkook. Jeon jungkook "
Your eyes widened slightly as you quickly looked away and judging by the small smirk hanging on his Lips, you're sure he caught you checking him out "y/n. L/n y/n" smiling softly you took his hand, staring at how his hand fully engulfed yours. For a second he didn't leave your hand and kept looking at you but when you cleared your throat, he smiled, his hand leaving yours.
"y/n l/n 3rd year" you looked at him questioningly as he mumbled to himself but then noticed that he was looking at the Id card hanging on your neck "so you're a senior " he mumbled yet again and you wondered if he was talking to himself or you.
You were surprised when he looked at you with a smirk. The soft doe eyed face completely disappeared and instead you mischief in his eyes which seemed to sharpen with his smirk "then...." you hummed smiling at him as you saw a few people looking at you both out of the corner of your eye.
"Good morning Noona. I look forward to getting to know you"
For some reason you wondered if the tilt in his voice was your imagination or not. Because right now he was looking at you with eyes so intense that you felt your heart beat increasing.
Still, you smiled yet again as you nodded "likewise, jungkook"
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sugar-omi · 8 months ago
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OMFG DUDE I was thinking abt coves dick again (as one does 🤭) and just realized w the dick size math that cove prolly bought normal condoms before yall went ‘all the way’ bc he didn’t kno he was huge (like u said in that one ramble like “move ur arm” “that’s not my arm”)
so when yall actually get into it and he tries to put it on u just have an awkward moment where he’s like
“it’s too small🧍‍♂️”
and now he’s apologizing for ‘ruining’ ur ‘real’ first time together and ur torn between comforting him that he didn’t ruin shit and laughing bc usually when guys say that it’s a fucking lie but he’s actually so deadass and u can see it the way the rubber doesn’t even accommodate his tip 😭💀
then u gotta tell him it’s okay to hold off until yall get bigger condoms or ur okay going raw if he is 🤭🤭🤭
-🗑️
ARGHH YOU ARE NOT HELPING MY ACCIDENTAL CREAMPIE BRAINROT. "the way the rubber doesnt even accommodate his tip" ohhh god biting my lips off my face rn. i can't fucking....
he would be too scared to go raw, especially first time. he knows that's a demon he's not ready to face (if you ask, he'll say he worried about any accidental children. but deep, deep in his mind. he knows something will, and does, click when you do it raw and he cums in you the first time...)
mmm, there's a few different ways to go with this...
because I can see cove waiting, im sure he does. he does wait, he wants things to be perfect (as perfect as 2 virgins fucking for the first time can be) and for you guys to avoid any unwanted scares or accidents.
but I also love the thought of him being impatient..
he buys the "right" condoms the second time around, and it doesn't look exactly right... but it's definitely not as small as last time...
decides to go with it after a bit of inner turmoil... "..maybe it's meant to fit that way? I thought it was supposed to go all the way to the base, though. its a bit tight, too... fuck, it'd be way too embarrassing to get the size wrong again. not that y/n would bully me about it or something, but... argh, I really want this to be perfect too. and I wanna go all the way with her..."
or even if he buys the right size, perhaps doesn't realize, or chooses the thin condoms since that's what was left. doesn't realize how different the thin ones are, especially of they're the ultra thin.
eitherway, all~~ circles back to right now. he's sinked into you, and he is gentle, he wants your first time to be romantic after all. but as he gets closer n closer to the edge, he gets a bit excited, his hips thrusting deeply into you.. all he can think about is how much he loves you, your pretty sounds, your body pressed against his, and the tight heat of your cunt.
doesn't realize when it breaks, not really anyway. gasps and moans because fuck you feel so hot inside, so wet and perfect... too far gone to think about the sudden change in sensation. and when he finishes, he definitely doesn't think about it. too lost in the feeling of his cum filling up the "condom" and your walls tightening around him as you finish too.
also love the thought that regardless of if he buys the right size or the thin, or if he remembers to pinch the tip of the rubber, all that sweet stuff.. he still ends up cumming inside you. not noticing if he teared the rubber in his hurry to be inside you already (blame teenage hormones, it's not his fault yeah 🙏)
of course not blowing his full load inside you, but i like to think that he cums so much, its really a miracle he doesn't break the rubbers from that amount alone... either way it's gonna leak out, n even just that little bit..
but regardless of how it happens, once he gets past the initial stress of it all n you get past the scare. his mind is totally filled with thoughts of actually coming inside you..
n even his dreams are filled with the image of your cunt all twitchy and wet with fluids n a bit puffy from all the fucking, n having earlier ate you out in the dream, n his fat load of cum leaking out of your cunt...
can't look you in the eye. he's totally ruined... probably can't look his parents in the eye either since he promised to be responsible, but now he's dreaming and fantasizing of doing otherwise..
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queserasora · 3 months ago
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ZORO X FEM READER | NSFW / Soft Smut ™  WORD COUNT: 7.9k CONTENT WARNINGS: alcohol consumption, nudity (duh), unprotected sexual intercourse (just don’t do it folks, only works in fiction), biting, scratching, kissing, lots of angst and sexual tension, if you’re looking for light and fluffy this isn’t it, excessive mentions of the moon (so if you’re anti moon gtfo), groping, nipple play, zoro talking too damn much and being a little nasty, for ZORO this is pretty TAME because he is like….enamored, so just let him be, allow this moment of softness because it doesn’t come often, so, SOFT ZORO, and like this is zoro being soft so if you don’t think it’s soft enough…idk what to tell you, it’s zoro, i proof read it twice so if you find a typo ignore it, if you tell me there is a typo you need to suck my dick first, thx
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NEW MOON 
A dreamer has no home in Mock Town. 
Dreams were for children. Quaint little stories made of glittering sand sprinkled into their eyes, blinding them to the harsh truth of the world. The sting would force their eyelids shut, and they’d drift off into lands made of fantasy and fluffy clouds, carrying them off to somewhere peaceful; somewhere they would never be hurt, a haven safe from pain. 
They’d lay in their bed woven from lies while the moon spills its light through the window.
It had been a long time since there was any moon watching over you. You slept in darkness, holding the lies you told close to your chest. A romantic heart held prisoner in a chest constructed by cynical chains. You spoke like a realist, even when it split your tongue in half. The taste of copper grounded you to your reality, and you swallowed it down, finding it a fitting exchange.
Your blood for the chance to avoid their scorn. It was the price you paid to live in anonymity.
Loneliness went down easily when you drank it with whiskey. You had learned this years ago, so you consume it daily; a necessary evil. It is smooth on your tongue as you watch them from your corner of the establishment. The back of their heads are unfamiliar as they sit at the bar. You think you imagine it, the way your heart seizes at the sound of his voice. A gruffness so rugged it cuts into your skin, spilling everything you held inside. You scoop it up immediately as you throw the rest of your drink back into your throat. The burn in your chest is antiseptic. 
Dreams had nowhere to run in Mock Town. This is where dreams came to die.
It is a mantra you repeat, with every blow they deal on the loud captain and his swordsman. It is a mantra you clamp down on with aching teeth, when their navigator begs them to fight. Your fingers twitch around the etched glass in your hand. You grip it so tightly it cracks, like fault lines across the illusion you had been hiding behind. When they leave the bar, everything shatters.
You wake up, at last, from the nightmare you had built yourself only to plunge into a different colored one. 
They’ll never come back. It is a lie you feed yourself, cram it into your mouth and down into your stomach, until everything overflows. Until you believe it. You pick up the fallen pieces left in their wake and start gluing them back together, before your heart can escape again. But he does come back, and a hammer swings into you when his fist flies into Bellamy’s face.
You chase after him as he takes his prize, your oversized kusarigama attached to your back. The chain links clink as you run, its sound chasing your steps. His name is stiff on your tongue but you cast it out, a coin entering a fountain–one last desperate wish. Luffy finds your proposal comical, and so is the weapon on your back. He smiles until the corner of his eyes crinkle, a smile so radiant you swear you’ve only felt the same warmth under the sun. 
“Please!” your voice pleads, hands grasping at invisible strings. “I want to see the sky island too!”
His hum is contemplative. You feel time stop. You don’t breathe, you can’t, until he answers you at last: “Sure!” His laugh is infectious and odd. “You seem pretty strong, Kusari.” It isn’t your name. It never has been, but it sounds right when he says it.
It still sounds right when he introduces you to everyone; feels right in your bones. The swordsman’s eyes connect with yours–his gravity too large for you to avoid its pull. Inside you, the ocean’s tide begins to change. A smile graces your lips, congenial and friendly. One that was practiced and rehearsed, like every lie you told. Pretending was a curse you had been tasked with. It was easy and it was necessary. The method that always kept you safe.
Zoro shakes his head at everyone’s enthusiasm. Luffy’s impulsiveness was something he was used to, but disagreed with, time and time again. You were a risk he would have never taken. There were too many dubious variables, your background as a bounty hunter made you skilled and dangerous. His doubts on your genuineness are cast aside by excitement of a new adventure. Zoro lived on the edge of his swords, betting his life at every hurdle, his destiny always held firmly by his own capable hands. Sky island or you, it didn’t matter what the peril was. If it was in his way, he’d cut it down without mercy. 
It would be a shame, he thinks–an afterthought polluting his resolve–if he would have to make you his enemy. Your weapon intrigues him, at least that’s his reasoning. There would be no other behind his curiosity. You had a face he could forget, if he really wanted to try. 
He’d just have to want it badly enough.
WAXING CRESCENT
A persistent irritation, like a rash from a poisonous leaf, plagued him. You were too familiar, too quickly ingrained in his routine. Your sense of humor reminded him of Robin. Your mouth was always twisted, in a cynical kind of smile–but only with him. It annoyed him. You had no riddles for Sanji or Luffy or Usopp, but when you’d speak to Zoro–he was constantly baffled. 
What was your insistence on befuddling him? He figures ignoring you would do the trick but your presence is unforgivable; a sin, like a nick on his blades, a scar on his back, a sake poured on dirt. He wanted to obfuscate your existence, like a dark cloud in a night sky, hiding the moon from sight.
Robin and you quickly become a pair, synchronized jokes, and synchronized looks. You team up and prepare riddle after riddle that Zoro can’t seem to solve. He contemplates leaving you two with Nami to your devices but there are so many unknowns in the jungle his conscience doesn’t allow it. His worries become unfounded when he watches you wield your weapon with ease. There was no sign of hesitation when you acted on Chopper and Nami’s behalf–placing their safety as a priority. His shoulders relax, but doubt still circles–a fin in the water–reminding him that it was still too early to tell if you were friend or foe.
Friend or foe, he can’t deny it.
Your face was one he could forget, if he really wanted to. The problem was, he was starting to believe he didn’t want to. In the brief free moments, his eyes would search for it–like a dry tongue seeking water. The softness of your cheeks beguiled him, made him wonder, like a fool, if they were soft as they looked. But your smile was a blade whose sharpness he knew too well. He couldn’t allow himself to be cut. It was a shame he could never live down.
FIRST QUARTER
An adventure on Sky Island had been one you never even had dreamed of. An island in the sky was something only children thought of. It had been a long time since you basked in innocence. 
The thrill of surviving by the skin of your teeth still thrummed through your body. You giggled, a drink in your hand as you enjoyed the kitchen to yourself. The crew had gone to explore Water 7 and while you were happy to be part of the team–it was still something you were getting used to. Working by yourself, for yourself, had been something you’d done for years and were good at. Now, there were others; people you had started caring about.
He finds you in the kitchen, and immediately is envious of the glass in your hand. Not because the dark amber contents swirling around two blocks of ice is alluring. Not because of the way condensation clings to the glass, a sign of deliciously cold temperature enough to soothe most kinds of thirsts. He is envious of the glass, how you cradle it possessively when Zoro steps closer. He is envious of the rim, how your tongue flicks out to lap at a stray drop, sliding down–how it is graced by your lips when you bring it up for a drink.
“Looks good,” he says with strain. Tension pulls at his neck, making it difficult to talk. “Is there more of that?” 
You gesture at the table, where you had left the bottle of whiskey. He intends to move, truly, as he is mere steps away from your body but your eyes are bright and mystifying. They jumble his thoughts and it takes a quirk of your brow to kickstart his brain once more. 
As the moon commands, the tides obey, and a series of events unfolds that can’t be stopped. There’s so much to think of, you almost forget how much Zoro ails you. You forget how you think of him at night while you try to find a comfortable spot to sleep in. You forget the way his eyes pierce you during dinner, how they steal your breath. You forget the strange moments his hand brushes against yours when you pass him by, and the strange way he says your name as if it was a kiss given in secret.
You forget until Sanji is irate, top lip curled in anger. His words bounce off you, and you frown with a small shake of your head. You shake it, not because you find the accusation incredulous–you and Zoro had fought the best you could to protect the money–but because it feels as if you should care more. Zoro–usually calm, composed, quick to avoid drama–always flies at the handle at Sanji’s provocation. This time it’s no different. He comes, not to his own defense, but yours. The cloud over your mind lifts, and there’s a light beaming into your chest. Your mouth twists into a grimace.
You try to keep the light out by bringing a hand to your chest. Beams slip right through the cracks of your fingers. 
Your hand is still over your chest when Robin goes missing. You seek her out, desperate for an ally to make you forget–to remind you of the dangers of letting others in. There was an unspoken understanding between you two; a darkness shared and understood. You understand this even when you find out about Robin’s possible betrayal. In your heart, you try to reason, in your mind you find enough to doubt. When Zoro speaks up, like the devil on your shoulder, and makes it clear he isn't holding his breath when it comes to Robin, coldness sets in. People were complicated. You had learned that lesson with blood in your mouth. You wonder if Zoro has learned this as well–or was he the darkness too? Did he find it hard to trust? Had he been forced to cement walls around himself?
You begin to sink in, hiding behind your usual facade. Lies slip out of your mouth, one after the other, snakes with two and three heads. It was better this way, fabricating a self so different from your true source that nobody could ever hurt you. Desire could only lead to disappointment. Whatever embers he had left behind on the back of your hand, you try to smother it out, covering it with your free hand.
WAXING GIBBOUS
Raucous laughter meets shadows and light.
Luffy could never pass up a party, and after saving Robin there was so much to celebrate. The taste of sake on his tongue was familiar; a pleasant burning whose limits he knew all too well. This was something he could control, a phenomenon that did not incite fear or anxiety. 
He could not say the same about the phenomenon of your skin under the light of the moon. A throat so dry he feels choking seizes his words, so he drinks and drinks and drinks. Relief never comes, sentences he repeats in his head as he circles around you fester in the pit of his stomach. You are so happy–elated even, that Robin is back. You haven’t left her side, cracking joke after joke.
It’s sickening how much it irritates him that you refuse to be alone. If it’s not Robin, it’s Nami clinging to your hand, offering you another drink. If it’s not Nami, it’s Luffy trying to shove more food at you–food you gently refuse. If it’s not Luffy, it’s the stupid cook, hearts shooting out of his eyes as he touches your hand.
Your hand–the one he hasn’t touched.
He bites down so hard he thinks he’s cracked a tooth, so he spits at the ground, expecting blood. He sees nothing, and chooses to believe that this means nothing. The sake is rotten, and he is tired, so so tired. Zoro doesn’t pray, he has never prayed in his whole life but he considers it that night when he closes his eyes. So he hopes instead. He hopes he’ll be over it in the morning and you’ll be nothing–a long forgotten moonbeam in a distant night sky.
He wakes up, and realizes quickly that you are still not nothing.
He swings his swords repeatedly, motions that he is familiar with. He focuses on the strain of his muscles, the ache slowly setting in. He focuses on the sweat on the back of his neck, the one dripping down his rippling muscles. He focuses as much as he can, but your gaze on him is fastidious. 
He senses you watching him, a strange lecherous feeling that twists his stomach. He refuses to meet your gaze and bites down again. If his teeth cracked then so be it.
You are shameless, he thinks, as he swallows his drink. Your dark eyes are unwavering, focused on his neck. Zoro swallows, heart beating in his chest like a wild animal. His foot is under the table, tapping away as he tries to keep the rest of him still. Nami is arguing with Luffy, and Zoro shakes his head slightly, trying to wake up from the spell you have casted on him. He should laugh with the others, he should ignore Sanji’s pointed stare, he should ignore the cold sweat on his forehead and the sudden dip at the pit of his stomach when you lick your lips. 
When you finally drag your eyes away from his neck, in a way that looks like it pained you, Zoro takes a sharp breath. He thinks you have set him free from this twisted prison but you ensnare him again when you meet his eyes. Zoro brings his glass to his mouth once more, and swallows the remains of the whiskey.
It burns his chest on the way down, but there is a fire more heated and consuming at the bottom of his stomach. One that builds higher and higher when you smile at him.
Later that night, when he’s prowling the newly constructed Thousand Sunny like a restless large feline, Zoro has to remind himself why he even set out from his hometown. He reminds himself that he has to become the strongest swordsman, as he fights the urge to slide his hands down his stomach, to reach further down for the arousal that bothers him. His forehead pressed against the cold wood of the training room, he tries to reason with his breathing. He thinks about the new bounties announced, the thrill of new adventures. There is no room for deviation in his goals. He knows this. There is a set path to follow–the one the moon has been guiding him to all along.
Turning to you would just lead him to darkness. Zoro refused to be swallowed up by it, no matter how alluring the flash of its teeth were.
FULL MOON
A life for a life.
He thought nothing of it at first. He thought it necessary. At first he had lived selfishly, seeking to keep a promise given a long time ago. Somewhere along the way, his Captain’s dream had become as important as his. Somewhere along the way, he had friends he cared about, friends he wanted to protect. His strength alone had not been enough, and so for this sin: he offers his life.
If there was anyone who could protect the rest, it would be Luffy.
He tries to hold on to this hope as pain cuts into him. It rips at his skin, making tatters at what keeps him together. Blood splurts, hot and searing. A pain that burns so deep he thinks it’s in his soul. He clenches his teeth, willing for them to crack and splinter off, if it means keeping quiet. A man should not cry when his mind has been set up.  His eyes are open but he sees nothing–not in particular, except his own blood clouding his vision. 
He tries to focus on other things, when a pain so blinding and deep makes him want to drop to his knees. He thinks of Nami and Usopp, and hopes they’ll be okay. He wonders if Chopper will grow happier. He wants to believe Sanji will get stronger, enough to continue protecting everyone. That stupid, idiotic cook who had tried to offer his own life in his place. Zoro grimaces, a pained groan almost leaving his mouth so he bites down on his tongue–metal taking over his taste buds.
He had no regrets. He never had any but as his vision becomes blurry there’s a face that fills his eyes. A different kind of pain booms in his chest, until it fills everything, until it pushes out the air from his lungs. He takes a ragged breath, and feels fear for the first time in a long time. He fears regret. He fears never seeing her face again. He fears never knowing.
He should have held her. He should have kissed her. Just like he always wanted to.
He curses the sound of your voice, the same that cuts through the pain, and reminds him to hold on. He curses the softness of your skin–the back of your hand, the only sensation he knows of you. He curses how he craves to know more even in the face of this endless pain.
He curses you over and over again, until it is done, until all he knows is the pain you leave behind.
Sanji annoys him. Zoro tries to not lash out. His body feels heavy but he feigns it. He tries to keep it  together for as long as he can. He has to make sure they’re all okay. Once he is convinced that it was all worth it, once he sees your face wearing an expression he doesn’t want to think about, he allows himself to rest. It takes all the energy he has left to leave you–to walk away from you without touching you, to not run his fingers through your hair, to press your body against his. 
As consciousness fades, he wonders how much longer he can hold back. Would he regret it later? If he died? Would he regret never telling you? His inner voice becomes slurred, incoherent, distant until darkness takes him under.
Robin tries to tell you, even though Sanji tried to stop her. She tries to tell you the truth about Zoro but you dismiss her. You insist it is none of your business. Your voice is calm, flat even, as you fold laundry in an attempt to hide your trembling hands. In your mind, you’re screaming. In your mind, you want to run and grab him by the neck. In your mind, you want to understand what possessed him.
But in your heart you know why. In your heart, you know that Zoro wouldn’t have had it any other way, so you try to pretend you don’t know. It was the least you could do to pay him back for what he had given you all.
You know he will be fine. You know he will recover. He just needs time. You want to give it to him, and you do, as you try to stay busy. Still, your feet are treacherous. They keep taking you back to him. You watch him sleeping, a sickness weighing you down. Your eyes feel full, a heart so heavy you think you might collapse under its weight. Heavy feet root you to the spot by his bed. Trembling fingers reach out, so hesitant they can only touch lightly. You softly brush fingertips across his forehead; your silent prayer for him to wake up soon. The sight of his battered body makes you sigh, and your tear filled eyes rest on his hand. Those hands that had protected everyone time and time again. They seemed so strong every time he wielded his swords. Not once did you think they could look this frail. You reach out to touch the bandages, and gently squeeze his wrapped index finger.
Just as gently, you reach down and kiss his temple. 
“Wake up, idiot,” you whisper, lips brushing against his clammy skin. “I miss you.”
Your confession feels like a knife you pushed into your own chest. You move quickly, almost run out of the room. Blood gushes, and you hold up a hand, trying to push it back in; the feelings, the words, that kiss.
When he wakes, it takes a moment to feel like he is awake at all. It isn’t until the straw hats leave Thriller Bark that he feels more like himself. Per Luffy, there’s a celebratory dinner. Brooks–someone Zoro was still getting used to–had taken it upon himself to be the night’s entertainment. Fish-Man Island was the next destination and Zoro’s excitement was slowly overtaken by hazy thoughts of you. The more he drank, the more he thought he should finally tell you. The more he watched everyone laugh, eat, sing, drink—the more he thought he should just accept it.
He should accept the pull you had on him. He should accept the command, the order of things; like the moon and tide.
He follows this pull up to the crow’s nest, newly remodeled by Franky. There’s little time for Zoro to admire the modifications. He is too busy trying to find a way to breathe again after the sight of you left him breathless. You’re bent over the telescope, gazing at the sky–he figures maybe the moon, maybe the stars. He’s not sure. All he’s sure of is that his heart might burst if it beats any faster. All he is sure of is that if he doesn’t find a way to silence it, you might hear it past the bones, and flesh entrapping it. 
A fluttering of anxiety fills him with dread. A strange feeling he isn’t familiar with. It feels as if it was imperative he touches you; as if he didn’t, only death would follow, as if he didn’t hold you, the world–his or everyone’s–would end. It was such a dramatic, sickening feeling he wanted to rip his own heart out. If that was the solution, he’d do it but he had a feeling at the pit of his stomach that even that wouldn’t work.
He tries to quiet his breathing, not wanting to disturb you, too mesmerized by the sight of your round and plump ass. There’s fire over his skin, blistering and searing the hairs on his arms. He clears his throat, alerting you to his presence.
You turn around, embarrassed that you didn’t feel him entering the room. It’s a fleeting emotion, quickly overtaken by something much more complicated; heavier, infinitely more deadly. It is sickening, really, how insanely attractive he is. You swallow with difficulty, suddenly annoyed that you didn’t bring a drink with you; anything to whet your appetite if it meant keeping your hands off Zoro.
“Hey,” you say softly, trying to buy time for your mind to kick into gear. The cogs in your brain are sluggish. You blame the alcohol, and not the fire in your belly. You want to tell him you’re glad that he’s awake. You want to tell him how scary it was, but you know he wouldn’t want to hear that. “I’m sorry I drank all your sake while you slept,” you tell him instead, your mouth stretching into a crooked smile. “I figured someone should.”
He scoffs, matching your grin.
“That’s a poor excuse. You’re such a liar,” he tells you, and you take a sharp breath. You’re not sure if he meant it–that you were a liar–or if he just said it in passing. You blame the alcohol for your confusing thoughts, and you blame it again when you don’t notice the way he has quickly breached the distance between you two.
The moon is full and bright, hanging high in the inky night sky. Its light is bright and it shoots through the window, spilling over the floor. Zoro is mesmerized by the way it glistens on your brown skin. You look so small against the window, with your back to the moon, it makes him want to crush you against his chest. His mind is hazy, his tongue heavy. He blames the sake. He blames the sake and the moon. He blames them as his hand reaches out to brush a curl out of your face. He tucks it behind an ear, his eyes memorizing the roundness of your cheek, the shell of your ear. He blames the moonlight on your skin, when he cups your cheek to see if he can trap it there, between your skin and his calluses.
He blames the night sky, the smell of the sea when he reaches down to softly brush his lips against yours.
You can’t breathe when his nose brushes against yours. You still can’t breathe when he pulls back, enough to look down at you. His eyes stare into yours and you still can’t find your breath. You think you’ll die now, by Zoro’s mouth, by his hand on your cheek. Your heart pounding against your frail ribs reminds you that you’re still alive. It is a resounding call to arms. You think you should pick up your weapons, but the fire in his eyes burns your resolve to ash.
His heart is on fire. Zoro knows that is a ridiculous thought. He knows that’s not even correct or possible, but the longer he looks at you, the more he feels it to be true. He hears it in the distance; the sound of war—drums, and screaming, blades scratching against each other, sinew tearing, blood gushing; throbbing in his ears and in his veins. 
The sound echoes in his body, a rush of adrenaline lighting small fires throughout his being. This moment feels infinite, as if he is frozen in time. A want so desperate pools inside him until it ignites. 
He comes tumbling down when he kisses you again. A ravenous mouth open and seeking against yours. His large hands hold your face, as he brushes his tongue against yours with the sole purpose of consuming; conquering. Your tongue is warm and soft, slippery, a sensation he can’t get enough of. He hums when you give in, when you let him suck on it without inhibitions. His breathing is harsh through his nose, and it becomes quicker when you place your hands over his, when you move them down his arms onto his chest.
You grasp on to his shirt, as you return his kisses. His teeth are unforgiving. They bite down on your bottom lip, on the corners of your mouth. He is insistent on discovering everything about it. He runs his tongue against your bottom lip, his forehead pressed against yours. He wonders as he sucks on it, how many times have you bitten down on it, how many words have you swallowed in place to offer lies instead. He’s never told you how often he sees right through you. He sees it even now, as you struggle for control.
“Don’t fight it,” he breathes against your cheek, his fingers tangling in your hair. “Not now. Not tonight.” He kisses your closed eyes; one at a time. He kisses your cheeks, lips blistering hot. You feel him brush his mouth against your jawline. “Don’t think. Not until tomorrow,” he asks you against your neck, trailing kisses down the column of it. You think about this offer, consider rejecting, but when his teeth snags against the soft flesh on the hollow of your neck you forget everything. Your arms wrap around his shoulders as he follows your collarbone to one shoulder. He bites down with enough force to make you cry–one that turns into a soft moan.
It is enough. That is the sound that snaps his resolve. He wanted to be gentle. He wanted to make this moment last, as if he would never have it again, but you are something he was never prepared to fight against. When you moaned, with your nails digging into his back he was left with no choice. He had to have you, tonight, at all costs.
His hands are as unforgiving as his mouth. They rip into your clothes, ignoring your protests. The sound of tearing fabric is accompanied by the sound of your gasps. His breathing is harsh against your ears, causing a wetness between your legs you try to take no responsibility over. It is the sight of his chest, wide and thick when he rips his own shirt that makes your mouth water. Your hands reach out immediately, just as you always dreamed of. You run your palms over his muscles, memorizing every dip and sharp angle, as you press your open mouth to his neck. You suck on a spot, determined to leave a mark–any. It was desperation. One that was fed by fear. You feared this moment not lasting. You feared never again touching his skin, kissing him, holding him.
His own desperation was evident by his greedy hands. They way he seized your hips, to press his erection against you. His hands slide over your hips to your ass, and he digs his fingers into the supple flesh. He’s kissing you again, a clash of tongue of teeth; sloppy, and messy, a wetness on your chin he licks up before sucking on the spot. Zoro’s eyes take in the sight of the floor, as you kiss his chest. He moans when you bite down over a nipple, and he pulls on your hair.
“Stop that,” he hisses, pushing you back towards the benches. “Or I’ll fuck you on the floor.” It doesn’t sound unappealing to your ears, so you try to bite his other nipple but he is faster than you. He picks you up by the ass, forcing you to shout in surprise.  Zoro carries you to the bench, and he sits down after placing you back on the ground.
You look down at him, and his naked chest. His pants are still on and you feel extremely exposed. Zoro had, in his efficacy, ripped every single article of clothing you had on. Leaving you naked, and heated. You scoff.
“So you get to keep your pants on?” you ask him, pointing with a frown. Zoro laughs at you, as he reaches into his trousers with one hand. He pulls out his hardened cock, and strokes it gently. There’s a lump in your throat, one with no name, so you swallow it quickly. The sight of his pink tip is enticing. He smears the precum over his slit with his thumb. You think it a shame, and almost tell him so but he’s speaking trying to get your attention. 
“Pay attention,” he tells you with a raised brow, his hand settled now at the base of his cock. You raise a brow to match his. Zoro smiles, and pats his lap with his free hand. “Come here,” he commands you to move towards him, heart hammering away at the prospect. You had thought of this moment before. You had no shame admitting it now. You had thought often of how it would feel to have Zoro inside you, so deep you could feel like dying. It seems Zoro had other plans when you approach him as he spins you around by the hips. “This way. Your back to me.”
You swallow and sit on his lap, feeling his cock pressed against your ass. He kisses your shoulder, your neck as his hands roam over your thighs. There’s a slick coating your folds. You’re more aware of it the more he touches your skin. His breath is hot against your ear when he speaks again: “I’m going to spread your legs,” he tells you, and follows through quickly on his statement, spreading them by grabbing your thighs. You gasp, cool air touching your heated core. Zoro runs his tongue along the shell of your ear. He nips the top of it, teeth sharp and digging hard enough to leave an imprint. You feel yourself getting wetter. 
“You’re wet,” he breathes out–a heated whisper, almost trembling. His fingers rifle through your folds, slickness covering his fingertips. Zoro presses his mouth against your ear, his eyes closing at the pleasure. It feels so silky and soft in his fingers. He craves more. “I’m going to make you cum,” he tells you, slipping one finger in slowly, one knuckle at a time. “I’m going to make you cum over and over again. I want to touch you everywhere, deep inside.” He slips in another finger when you moan, curving them in search of that spongy spot. His desire builds the wetter you get, the more you moan and whimper in his hold. His cock is hard, and it leaks again against your back. You feel it there sticking to your skin. “I want you,” he growls against your shoulder, as he picks up the pace, scissoring his fingers inside your squelching pussy. “I want you so badly. This isn’t enough.” His teeth sink into the soft flesh of your shoulder. You cry out, as he clamps down harder, leaving a mark on your skin. He kisses the blooming bruise, hand moving desperately as you clench around his fingers. The soft pad of his palm beats against your clit, his calluses eliciting a pleasure you never knew could be possible every time they brush over your sensitive nub.
He leans over you, his broad chest making you feel vulnerable and small. Your thighs are aching as he continues to push his fingers in and out of you. “Maybe another one,” he grunts in between pants, peering over your shoulder. He watches himself insert a third finger into your soaking pussy. You cry out, at the sensation of being stretched. He is watching himself work, his bottom lip trapped between his teeth. Sweat clings to his temple, and runs down his cheek. You’re doing your best to hold back, the fear of being heard keeps you from giving in entirely but the sight of him so enthralled with the way he’s beating into your pussy makes you want to fold. “Do you like it?” he asks you, panting against your ear. You whimper and bite down on your lip, almost drawing blood. “You’re so wet and so tight. I think you do,” he insists, licking your ear, and sucking on your earlobe quickly after. “But why are you holding back?” His mouth is flushed against your ear, his breath humid. “Are you scared they’ll hear you?” 
Zoro chuckles lightly against your ear, picking up speed until it becomes a brutalizing pace. The sounds in crow’s nests are lewd enough to make you blush. You hear the wet sound of your pussy, the way you keep whimpering and gasping. Your body is shaking. 
“Come on, babe,” he asks you in almost a whine. You gasp, and moan, surprised at the visceral reaction your body had to the sound of his soft voice. “Let me hear you. The real you. Or do I have to fuck you harder?”
The moon continues to hang high in the sky as he works his fingers inside you. Its beams scatter in the room, casting shadows over the side of your face, and over your breasts. He wishes he could see more than he does. He wishes he could memorize the sight of you, falling apart to his touch, and never forget it. The scent of your shampoo haunts him, so he scissors his fingers inside you in a desperate attempt to even the odds. 
He kneads one breast with his free hand, squeezing its nipple between index and thumb. When you cry out, he gasps loudly against your ear, surprised at how much that turned him on. He wants to hear it again, again, and again; so he repeats the motion, twisting and pulling until you’re moaning and whimpering in his embrace. Your skin looks so soft under the moonlight. He brushes his lips over your neck and shoulders trying to taste you. It isn’t enough so he tries again, chasing the essence that makes you who you are. He nips at the flesh of your back as you bend over, a particular strong jolt of pleasure forcing your tummy to contract. No matter how many times he digs his teeth into your skin, until you’re covered in crescent shaped marks, he can’t seem to get his fill of you. You feel so good around his fingers, your arousal dripping down his wrist and his forearm.
Your orgasm catches him unaware, and he slows down his fingers, surprised at the loudness of your voice. He finds himself laughing against the hair above your ear, pleasure making him shiver. His fingers slow down slightly before he pulls them out entirely. “About time,” he whispers before he has you flip over to face him. He adjusts you on his lap, until you’re grinding your soaked pussy on his cock. “But we’re not done. I need more.” He brings your face to him, a hand on the back of your neck. The kiss is forced, mouth pressed tightly against yours. You whimper softly under its weight. Whatever tenderness that kiss held evaporates when his attention moves downwards to your breasts. 
He sucks on your breasts, as he grips your hips. His fingers hold you so tightly you’re compelled to move them against his length. He leaves bites over the swell of your breasts, and the fire inside you continues to burn. You had stopped trying to hold it in, your moans cast into the shield of darkness like stars on the inky sky. Zoro seizes them with his mouth, teeth bearing down on them. He pins them to his body like decoration and seizes to find more, conquer another every time he nips at your sensitive nipples. You hold on to Zoro, desperation forcing you to dig your nails into his back. Every time he kisses your breasts you feel like melting, disappearing into the heat of his mouth. 
Your hands reach out to his face, trembling. Your hips move still, the heat of Zoro’s hands keeping them steady. His eyes on your face send a shiver down your spine. Your breath feels so out of reach, as if you’ll never catch up to it, to place it back in your lungs. You trace over the angle of his cheekbones, try to memorize the sharpness of his jawline by going over it with one index finger. Although pleasure continues to build, you’re distracted by the sight of his ears. His earrings trap the light of the moon, and they blink repeatedly, little stars hanging from his earlobe; a mesmerizing sight that makes you want to make a wish. If you wished with all your heart, would it come true? If you wished for a dream, would it be fulfilled?
Your breath hitches, eyes glued to his swinging earrings. Their beautiful golden color is made all the more striking against his tanned skin. You touch them, fingers playing with them. Zoro takes your hand and kisses the inside of your wrist, the pool of your palm. He moves your hand to his chest, and presses it there. The feel of his heartbeat steals your breath. You gulp, trying to shake the dizziness, but Zoro is kissing you, taking your bottom lip into his mouth gently. You hold his face between your hands when he pulls away, feeling like you’re holding on to water. His hands are back on your hips. He lifts you up, as the fingers of one hand drifts to his earrings again. You brush your fingers against them, and they make a soft tinkling sound–a quick little song–as he buries his cock inside you.
It is better than you could have ever imagined. He fills you in an instant, provoking moan after moan to flood your mouth. Soft, and steady, you tell yourself, pressing your forehead against his. He lets you lead at first, his fingers tapping repeatedly against your hips. He’s counting, for who knows what, timing an entrance. 
Zoro thinks he's finally lost his damn mind. He was determined to savor this moment—like an expensive whiskey, consumed in small sips, swirled around the tongue before swallowing, but you’re so wet, your arousal coats his belly, and sinks into his pants. You’re hot inside, fiery, and smooth. Every swirl of your hips reminds him of how desperately he wants to ram into you, again and again. He thinks about you clenching around his fingers as you moan against his mouth. He sets his jaw, trying to tighten his grip around his willpower but your pussy is even tighter. His breathing is ragged, he shakes his head, trying to cast off the sudden heat in his eyes making him see red. 
But he can’t help it. He can’t fight it any longer.
“Okay,” he says against your neck as you continue to bounce on his cock at a slow pace. His hands are on your hips, they grip tighter. It should have been your warning but you’re so caught up in the feel of him, eyes shut as your face is turned to the ceiling, that you don’t realize what’s happening. “I’m sorry but I need to do it my way now.” He holds you still, and starts thrusting up into your pussy at a maddening speed. You cry out at the sudden change of pace, fingers digging into the muscles of his shoulders. He hisses, but he doesn’t let up, selfishly chasing the high of your tight pussy. 
“Oh my God,” you cry out, eyes shut tightly, as pleasure courses through your body. 
Zoro laughs against your pulse. He sucks on it even as laughter rumbles in his chest. When he comes up for air he asks you: “Who’s that? Don’t know him.”
You laugh but it turns shrill, morphing into a cry of pleasure. Zoro feels you clench around him, faster and faster. He moans, and bites your chin. He picks up the speed, angles his hips with his eyes on your face, determined not to miss a single thing. When you cum, fall apart around him, he watches you with his mouth open–barely staving off his own orgasm. You fall into him, and he holds you, your body twitching in his embrace.
“No,” he says, pushing your back on the bench. You look up, eyes fluttering close, your body feeling heavy and sore. “A little bit more. I need just a bit more.” You shake your head, weakly pressing a hand to his chest. Zoro takes your hand, wraps the arm attached to it around his neck. “Don’t act weak with me. I know how strong you are. So just take it. You can take it.” He takes one of your legs and places it on top of the backrest of the benches, your ankle bumping into the wall. Zoro stares down at you, and you’re caught again–by the heat of his gaze. Dark green lashes fluttering under the moonlight, his swinging earrings blinking at you, his mouth parted, a flush on his cheeks. It all looks so divine, you think this a sight belonging to the gates of Heaven. You think you’re close to dying.
And death comes calling when he enters you again. You have nothing left inside you to fight it. You moan time and time again, with every brutish slam of his hips against yours. His balls sound loud and impossibly perverse every time they slap against your ass. There are bruises forming, you’re sure, but you don’t care. You hold on to him, wrap your arms tightly around him but he pushes you down, determined to watch your expression. You cling to his hips instead, the ones that keep pummeling into you, harshly, his cock ramming into your puffy and overstimulated pussy. He thinks the sight of your face, twisted in a mixture of pain and pleasure is the sharpest knife he has ever been cut open by.
Zoro staves off a cry of pleasure by diving in for a kiss, desperately sucking your tongue into his mouth. He kisses the corner of your mouth. From his mouth, he hears stupid promises but his mind can’t believe it even through the haze of lust. He tries to take them back but he whispers into your ear again, soft and sweet things he wouldn’t dare speak in the light of the sun. You know he’s only saying this because he is not thinking straight, because like you, he is consumed by this burning lust. You know when a new moon comes, when this has waxed and waned, that he would forget the words uttered in a moment of madness. 
He loves the way you feel, the way it’s so easy to kiss you. He loves the way your voice catches on his skin, slipping into the little cracks to stay forever. He hates it too. Hates how he thinks he’ll carry you always. Even in the light. Even in the dark. He thinks he should take it all back, the kisses, the words. He thinks this even buried to the hilt, your pussy fluttering around his length again. He thinks this even as he gasps and moans, cuming with you. 
His body shudders as he spills inside you. You feel it start to ooze out of you, but you ignore it, just like you ignore the sudden flush of your face. 
Zoro crumples over you, and covers you in kisses. Your hands are shaking as you seize his shoulders, trying to find the sense to speak about what just happened but he is gone the moment you grasp him. There are towels nearby, and he drapes one between your legs. He lowers himself over you, trapping your body between his arms. His mouth is still relentless, kissing your bruised lips over and over again. You see the moon caught in his earrings again, and you reach out for it.
Someone once told you, a dream was a wish you made on a star. Your fingers dance along his earrings. The gold blinks back at you–twinkling stars hanging from his ear. You wish, on all three, for the same dream. 
You wish that maybe when the new moon comes, the pull it had on you two would bring you together time and time again.
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