#just haven’t felt motivated enough to work on it… or really more stressed about making the ending just right

[insert-cephalopod-joke]

Bro really visited her friend

Bonus!

[fortemelody]

❗️VENT POST ❗️

sorry not my usual content but something i really felt i needed to rant about. also nothing triggering in here btw i tried to make it non graphic.

i used to constantly complain about going to school and having a huge workload that comes along with it.

i then started complaining during the summer becus i was bored out of my mind.

i eventually realized after my mom brought this fact up to me that in reality the reason i complained during both summer and school months is that i don’t even have the motivation to live anymore. i feel too stressed to do school work but too useless when i had nothing meaningful to contribute to society/no one to please.

i could easily make more goals for myself and become an overachiever, but i feel like that’s just filling a void. in fact, that’s all life really is. you get anxious when you have too many voids to fill, but anxious when there aren’t enough to fill.

i will admit that a lot of this correlates to loneliness and what you perceive to be the meaning of life. there are small instances with the people i love that do make it seem worth it in the moment, but i wonder when or if all these moments will accumulate to ever being enough. i wonder when or if i think about my life, it’ll immediately be the tiny specs of hope or the mindless tasks i did on the daily until i died. i’ve never even had a real job yet either so i feel like the real horrors are yet to come.

in all honesty i really shouldn’t even be complaining from the get go becus i’m fortunate enough to have an education and the freedom to do whatever i want. and im not a complete pessimist, it’s possible to have goals that are genuinely enjoyable; i just personally haven’t found a ton of those yet and am obviously struggling in other ways with my mental health.

watch me delete this in like 2 hours cus i think it’s cringedjdkdjwfjdkedk

[aleksa-sims]

RL Simself Story ( 18+)

CW: mental illness, panic attacks

This is Dr. M., my Therapist. You have met her once before in my story. She helped me to control my panic attacks and practiced daily with me relaxation techniques. This really helped me after a while.

But now it was time for me, to use Dr M.’s help again. This time, it wasn’t panic attacks. It was rather.... stress & anxiety, that made my everyday life tough. I was afraid to leave the house alone.

Two days ago, I was already here. She prescribed me drugs, antidepressants, that I can continue to take during pregnancy. Weeks before, I attended those therapeutic group sessions she led. I haven’t been there often, but she asked me about Daniel there. She saw I wasn't well. And that's exactly the topic she first discussed with me today. She wanted to get an idea of my current situation and she was also worried about Daniel. She thought Daniel was going through something similar to me. Just he did not have panic attacks, but she was sure, he also struggled to process this thing .The attack on the two of us and the consequences of it. However, I also told her everything that had happened since Daniel left. Drugs, Adam & Ana, including N. & me.

Dr. M.: I'm glad you got confidence in me. I remember well how.... difficult certain topics for you were to address. That guy Adam, how do you handle what happened between you and him?

Me: Actually, nothing happened. And I don’t think he really wanted to hurt me. He had other intentions. It was about my sister.

Dr. M.: I see it a little differently. No matter what his intentions were or what his motive was, what he did is definitely wrong.

Me: Yes, I agree! It was wrong and made me angry. But-... ugh, I don't want to discuss about that. I get a headache from this subject.... No joke, my brain hurts rn.

Dr. M.: Here, a glass of water. You need to stay hydrated..... Better?....Fine. Explain please. What made you so angry about Adam?

Me: Um... what he did! To me.... Why does this keep happening to me?? 😫 It makes me so sick!😡 ... Agh, anyway. Pls let's change the topic.

Dr. M.: It's okay. But you did well! You finally showed me your anger and let it out... Oh, but you didn’t have a panic attack after that, right?

Me: No! I had sex 3 weeks later and well, I’m pregnant. Looks like sex isn’t a prob for me anymore.🤷‍♀️But even before that, it worked quite well between Daniel & me as far as this is concerned. You were right! Daniel wasn’t the trigger for my panic.

Dr. M.: He felt so awful about that. He blamed himself. But I’m glad this at least went well for you two.

Me: I was dreaming about him.... Again. It felt so real... I still feel like he was really with me last night. I was in our apartment. I felt like we were still together. I cleaned up, did our laundry and at night, he really came to me in my dreams... I just want to know where he is?.. Why did he leave me? And if he comes back?

Dr. M.: Let’s say Daniel comes back. What could your life together look like? Some things have changed. You are pregnant and Daniel’s situation or condition may have changed too? Could you imagine continuing your marriage with him?

Me: For him, I would try. I would also forgive him, no matter what he did. But how can I be sure he won’t leave me again?

Dr. M.: Exactly!..... You also have to be aware that you are pregnant. But do you think Daniel would be able to help you with your Baby?

Me: Um... Idk? It's not his Baby. I'm not sure if he can deal with that? But he'd help me, I know that. However, all of this is more of a wishful thinking of mine and not reality. So... I’m going to file for divorce tomorrow.

Dr. M.: That sounds reasonable. You should definitely do this step, for yourself! One of you two has to take the first step towards enlightenment, which doesn’t mean, that it really has to come to a separation in the end. My personal opinion.... Daniel had enough time. It's time to act now!

Me: Almost 3 Months.... Nevertheless, I think I made too hasty decisions and let myself be misled by false facts.... And Nico, whenever he shows up in my life, it gets complicated.

Dr. M. : Tell me more about him. How did you feel when you saw him again after a long time?

Me:...... (Gosh!🤦‍♀️) ... Ahhmm.... yea. It was okay. Nothing special. 🤥

Dr. M.: 🤨...  I can tell when you're fibbing.😉 But, let's try it this way! Ask me a personal question that interests you. If I answer, you will also answer my question about Nico.

Me: Hehe...Ok! Ahm??? Do you have kids  and are you married?

Dr. M.: No, I don’t have kids, my patients are my kids. But yes, I’ve actually been married recently.

Me: OH, congratulations.

Dr. M.: Thanks! You even met him. He examined you at the clinic when we were planning to include you in the study.

Me: No! That Doc is your husband??.. Cool! He's really nice, Dr. M. Cute. 😉

Dr. M.: Thank you. I'll tell him later. He will surely be pleased about it. 😄... But now back to you, A. How was it for you to see Nico again.

Me: My cheeks felt burning hot. I was beaming & smiling all over my face. 🤦‍♀️🥰.... Agh yea, I was so happy. Even though I was totally nervous and excited, it felt like he's always with me. And I think he felt the same. He kept telling me I was pretty and... hot. But he didn’t kiss me .He.... had a fiancé. He didn’t want to cheat on her, but I think if I told him I wanted him, he wouldn’t have said no. He made hints in that direction, but I was disappointed. Agh, honestly? I knew he was in a relationship. I wasn’t quite sure, but-... yea. I got involved with him anyway. I just can’t say no to him. I wanted him and... just a day later, I got him.

Dr. M.: It is right to say it openly. Feelings of attraction feel strong. Certain factors can amplify all this, making it even more difficult to ignore those feelings. But how did you and he decide to continue?

Me: We talked a lot, especially about the past. There were some misunderstandings that Nico and I were able to resolve. The present is more the problem I think, his fiancée and of course Daniel.

Dr. M.: Would he accompany you here? Like Daniel did... I’m trying to help you. I think Nico has a strong, very strong influence on you. You told me about him before, and.....well! It would be good for you, but also for him, if you come here together. You think he’d be willing to talk to me?

Me: Rn, I'm not really sure?... But Nico has surprised me in recent weeks, in many ways... I’ll see him soon anyway. He’ll accompany me to my prenatal check-up. So yea, I'm gonna talk to him.

Dr. M.: I’m glad to hear he’s accompanying you.... Fine, A.! And please! Please take your pills regularly! Or do I really have to call you here every other day?

Me: No! Pls don't!... I’ll take care of myself, I promise.

Dr. M.: That's just what I was hoping to hear. All right! Then.... See you next week, I’d say.

Me: Sure!...Ok thanks, see you next week Dr. M.

Previous/Next

[less-than-three-3]

Elden Ring - Fromsoft’s Magnum Opus?

(asks the person who has only previously played Sekiro)

Coming from Sekiro, and with the expectation that I wouldn’t really like the combat in a traditional Dark Souls (just based off impressions), this game really blew me away with how much I enjoyed it! Yeah, shocker, it’s an amazing game, almost like it’s the most awarded game of all time or something. But to me it’s so strange, because there are definitely elements present that I have complained about before in other games or had concerns about going in, but they like, oddly really worked well? And it’s the first game in a long while that I have really immediately wanted to dive back into? (I won’t because I have a decent backlog, but I definitely will sooner than later)

Full thoughts below, with minimal spoilers (but be warned for some small details):

Going into the game (and talking about my expectations for it), I should first briefly mention my experience with Sekiro - a game that I technically still haven’t finished. I beat the first Owl fight and went on to do the true ending stuff and just... got tired, I guess. Not out of boredom but out of stress. That game is stressful, in a good way but stressful nonetheless. Beating Owl after countless tries I was just burnt out and didn’t find the motivation to continue for too long. But undeniably everything about the game is masterfully made, especially the movement and combat dynamics. I think in terms of parry/stance-based combat and swordplay, it’s top notch perfection both among Fromsoft games and just in the genre as a whole, and it’s super satisfying to finally get down. So when some people say Sekiro is the best Fromsoft game, I totally get it. In terms of combat its probably the best they’ve done so far. (Bloodborne is also in commonly in contention, and damn do I want to have access to that game, but I don’t so I can’t really speak to that one) 

So in comparison, seeing, at least based on my perception, the less precise and more... dodge-rolly combat of the more traditional Souls games coming out of Sekiro, I really didn’t expect to enjoy it all too much. I didn’t end up loving it, but there’s certainly a lot to like, and I think the thing that kept me in the whole way through in the combat is actually that stress point I mentioned earlier. With Sekiro, every encounter just felt deadlier, required me to be on my toes the whole time, made sure that I was always alert. It’s fun but damn it can be draining. 

Here, though, a lot of the mobs pretty much get one or two shot past the early-game, or at least don’t require so much precision or have slow attack patterns to the point where my brain doesn’t need to always be firing on all cylinders and always scared of dying. There definitely was that kind of feeling more early game, as I’m just not that strong and I don’t know how to deal with threats, but as I got good (lol) that pretty much disappeared. Maybe part of it has to do with building strength so that I just kinda destroyed a lot of normal mobs at a certain point? (Not to say every mob was easy - there were certainly plenty of pretty tough and also pretty annoying mobs) But it was engaging enough to keep me interested, on top of the exploration and traveling, while still making some high tension moments for minibosses and great enemies. Were the peaks as high as Sekiro? Perhaps not, but I still really loved pretty much all the boss design. It’s so impressive to have boss fights that aren’t technically even really that hard, but feel so fucking awesome (Radahn is my highlight, though Rykard and Godrick were certainly also super cool fights), on top of the classic “beat your ass into submission until you break your bad habits and develop a real plan” bosses (i am malenia blade of miquella). That said I really didn’t feel the difficulty was like rage-inducing at all, maybe that’s just that this game is easier than other Souls games or maybe I’m just gamer or maybe I chose a baby build or maybe I got a tad overleveled idk. It was definitely challenging and I died many many many times, but I almost felt like the preconception was scarier than the game itself.

The second key to me was sort of exploration, but not really in the same way as, like, a BotW where you see a distant landmark and you just climb your way over to it. There were castles and ruins that you could do that with but it wasn’t really what I explored for. It wasn’t like, seeing new enemies and gathering new abilities and equipment, because I was pretty much just a big sword melee build the entire way through, with some experimentation with the weapon but not that much. I don’t really know what it was, maybe it was the allure of having a boss fight at the end, or I just enjoyed running around and killing shit, pushing forward to the next grace? Whatever it was, it really encouraged me to keep going forward. The exploration almost felt Metroidvania in a way, which maybe is a dumb comparison looking at, like, Hollow Knight (which is a soulslike for a reason), but it really activated that neuron and I’m not sure why. 

Oddly enough the lore and learning about the world really enthralled me too, which feels strange to me because typically games that, for lack of better words, unravel lore as you just travel and notice things don’t click that well for me. I think it was partially the way that they presented it - in that pretty much all of the basics of the lore is shown and explained to you in character dialogue, boss monologues, side quests, and are thus delivered pretty naturally. What usually ticks me off is expecting me to read a bunch of like item descriptions or random tablets with lore posts to actually understand what’s going on - that wasn’t the case here, between the opening cutscene, Melina’s guidance, and much of the side-quest and boss dialogue, the world was built very effectively and things clicked. I’m sure if you looked really into item descriptions and stuff you’d gain more detail, but you pretty much get the whole gist of the world, how it got here and what it’s like, and what your position is just by playing the game. I’m not sure how much of that is George RR Martin’s doing, but like it worked really well for me, and it definitely gives major SMT vibes. I really love the world that they built. The physical structure of the game definitely helped too - being able to sort of see things at your own pace. Early on, to me, it felt like the open world was almost overwhelming if not unnecessary, and while I don’t necessarily think it’s absolutely the best part of the game, I feel like it really helped everything feel more connected. 

Speaking of SMT, this game really unleashed the “build planner obsession” part of my brain, and it’s exactly why I really want to do a NG+ or just a fresh start soon. Even though I was pretty committed to the high strength big sword big doink big damage direction (and that was pretty limited admittedly in terms of diversity), just seeing all the weapons and arts and enchants and spells I felt all my gears turning and thinking about what I could possibly do. Having relatively easy access to respeccing after a certain point also definitely didn’t help the brainworms. I really wanted to beat the game with just pure raw fundies first (read: dodging around and swinging the giant sword) but I can definitely see myself having changed around builds a lot, and that’s probably what I plan to do the next time I play it. Maybe when the DLC comes out? (I had and will continue to try to avoid bleed and full sorcery, because I recall hearing those were pretty broken, but we’ll see where things go. Also there have been a few patches so maybe that’s outdated lol)

If there is any standout weakness to me it’s probably the music/sound design? Not that it’s bad by any means, just entirely unmemorable. I never had a Nightmare King Grimm or Soul Sanctum moment of awe, or really felt creeped out or otherwise felt that the ambience was anything other than, well, ambience. I think for what it is it works well enough, but I definitely love to see music really add to the life (or lack thereof!) of a game’s environments, so if there is any disappointment, there it is. 

So is this the best fromsoft game ever?? Best game ever??? I certainly think this is a really good example of how to do a great open world from a lore and exploration viewpoint - Fromsoft adapted the “genre” into the Dark Souls backbone excellently. I wouldn’t call it my favorite ever, but I think it is probably my favorite Fromsoft game (out of 2), in part because it scratches so many of my brain niches. Of course Sekiro is a great game, and I think it is a very different type of peak that Fromsoft achieved, and these two peaks can definitely coexist. Sekiro has an incredibly well designed combat system and bosses to complement it, and a fairly streamlined and straightforward experience, in terms both of narrative and playstyle (everyone gets the same tools pretty much except choice of prosthetic). Elden Ring is a sprawling, epic world of dungeons, lore, and character builds that one could easily sink hundreds of hours into and have vastly different experiences every time. Fromsoft has very clearly polished two very different directions with these games.

anyways I can’t wait to do this all again when I eventually get a playstation and get bloodborne

[wildernessuntothemselves]

Hey! I need some help if you don’t mind.

I’ve been seriously struggling with writers block and I’ve just been feeling like everything I write is shit.

It might have something to do with my creative writing class and having to write stuff for actual assignments and a grade and I’m really fucking terrible with deadlines so I feel like my work never lives up to its full potential so it’s really getting me down.

On my alternate account, I started writing but I only have the first part posted and it hasn’t been updated in around a year or more. I want to start writing for it so badly especially after someone commented that they want more, but I’m stuck in this slump. I also entered a bunch of collabs and I never finished or posted them and I’ve felt like a shitty horrible person ever since so I feel even less inclined to write even though I really wanna write and finish them.

And on top of school, I haven’t had enough time (or given myself enough time) to write at all.

I’m really stressed and scared because writing fan fiction really means a lot to me and I hate feeling so unpassionate about something I love and used to be so freaking passionate about.

Do you have any advice? Have you ever felt like this? What do you do when you get writers block or in a slump?

I’m sorry for the long message but this has been tearing me apart for weeks.❤️

I'm really sorry to hear you're going through that but I'm afraid I can't be of much help. Of course I've gone through multiple writing blocks, some lasting months but I don't really have good advice.

I think there are two ways of dealing with it: either you just don't try to force it and let it run its course until you become motivated/passionate again or you just write even if you don't like it because it's way easier to go back and keep refining the work you made rather than starting from scratch.

The second method is what I use most often. I just write whatever shitty draft comes to mind then I keep reviewing it and adding and altering thing. Each time i review it gets easier and better.

As for the work not living up to your expectations, I used to struggle with that a lot too but I just became so busy with work and other things and I had to face the fact that either I accpet the work for what it is or I don't post at all. Fanfiction is not my job and if I spent inordinate amounts of energy and time to perfect it, it would only harm me in the end because it would take away time out of my actual work and life. Besides, it's a hobby and hobbies are meant to be fun, not make you feel bad and guilty. I personally don't enter into any collabs and only do requests etc if I make it absolutely clear that there is no guarantee that I will actually follow through with it because I know it would only make me feel miserable if I don't.

The class is probably the reason things are going so bad for you so maybe when it's over you'll feel better and start enjoying writing again. I too am kind of going through this because of my work and other obligations so I have been writing very little and it upsets me because I really wanna update yamqn but I keep reminding myself that it's just a fanfic and while I love it and enjoy it, my real life comes first and I'll get to it when I get to it. I even warned readers multiple times that the chapters won't be as long or as good as previous chapters because I simply don't have the luxury to waste time and effort on it anymore and I and them are just gonna have to accept that since writing is not my actual job

[egcarlos]

Food, Faith and Family

As the end of June was approaching, the health of my grandfather started to deteriorate. So, I decided to set a trip to the Philippines to arrive on July 20, not knowing that he would pass away July 18th.

It’s not like it was totally unexpected, my grandfather is the type to not tell anyone what is wrong or what is bothering him. His pain tolerance is incredulously high, so for him to tell us that he wanted to go to the hospital around the second week of July, we knew something was up. It was a stressful 2 weeks for all my family, not only those who were actually present in the Philippines, but also for me as I was the one trying to coordinate and approve lab work and procedures for my grandfather. It was very difficult trying to communicate with doctors several thousand miles away in a different time zone. I regret having lost my patience with them at times and questioned their motives as the treatment they were offering my grandfather was sort of disjointed and scattered. At the end of the day though, that afternoon on July 18th that I got the news that he passed, I thought, It’s probably for the better.

He was almost 85 years old and lived a beautiful life filled with so many accomplishments, friendships and service to his community. His success and sacrifice in turn gave my mom the opportunity to find her own, starting the domino effect of leading me to where I am today. In the Philippines, it is custom to have a more extended wake filled with multiple services and prayers. For almost a whole week, I spent majority of my day in the chapel where my grandfather's body was being displayed socializing with my cousins (who slept in the chapel at night!), meeting relatives I haven’t seen in years and being able to spend quality time with some of my best friends from the Philippines who love and admire my grandfather as well. Despite it being a wake, followed by the funeral on the very last day, it really felt more like a party with laughter, lots of food and prayers. The only two things missing from making it a true Filipino party was the beer and the karaoke!

Faith, food and family are so intertwined in my culture. I guess you can say that about a lot of other cultures as well, but it is just so apparent every time I head back home. Churches, religious articles and catholic figures are everywhere. In Ususan, my hometown, today actually is the feast day of St. Ignatius (July 31st) and for the past week there has been a night market filled with street food to celebrate his feast day. It made me reflect and think about faith again, as I haven’t been the stand-up ‘good’ catholic the past several years. I’ll attend mass every now and then, but if I don’t have my family or my parents around, more likely than not, I probably won’t go. I don’t want to say that I’ve lost my faith, its just that I think my faith has changed or more so, the expression of my faith has changed. I am very thankful to grow up in the family that I have who grew up believing in God and going to church as my faith became a foundation for my life from the start. There were many times during undergraduate and medical school that I prayed so hard to be able to get through my classes and exams. Having faith gave me humility and gave me a reason to hope bringing me to where I am today. It's just that now, it just really feels like I’m actually able to live my faith out. I have the ability to serve God’s people; I am able to go to work everyday and give them the opportunity to be healthy and also serve God’s people as well. What touches me so much about the Chirstian faith is that we believe that God came down to earth and took up our own flesh and blood to live, suffer and sacrifice like us. It gives our humanity, our pain and our struggles meaning. There is significance in our everyday lives and struggles because God thought that it was significant enough for God to experience life as we know it. Each life is supposed to be significant, meaningful; each life matters. I think one of the gravest of sins is when we don’t acknowledge the humanity of a person. When countries (developing or developed) don’t acknowledge the significance, the importance and the holiness of one life, well, I think that this is when God gets the most mad and disappointed. Paul Farmer, infectious disease doctor and anthropologist and founder of Partners in Health said, “The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.” When a 5 year old living in the Democratic Republic of Congo dies from malnutrition or malaria, or when an unhoused individual from Skid Row in Los Angeles dies from Hepatitis C or when billionaires make their money on the back of the poor- I think this is when God actually gets the most disappointed. I guess, at the end, one can say that my religious practices have changed, but I still think that my faith has always stayed the same. I am a product of my past and my past, being Filipino, is also filled with a lot of family, food and faith. One of the many beautiful memories that I have of my grandfather is that whenever we would talk in the phone, he would always make a point saying that

Lagi kitang pinagdadasal, or  I am always praying for you And yes, I believe that his prayers worked. And now, he is continuing to pray for me and my family up in heaven. We love you Lolo.

[yosttravis]

How to Run A Sub 2:40 Marathon

About ten months ago I ran my first standalone marathon, achieving a BQ time at 2:57. Then I ran my second standalone marathon last April in Boston, and PR’ed at 2:43. Yesterday, I ran my third and PR’d, this time at 2:39.

At some point around mile twenty, and I was in cruise control here, it dawned on me I’ve cut a sub-3 marathon time by twenty minutes in about ten months. So that’s extremely cool.

I don’t have a running background at all, but at some point over the last year something told me to keep pushing on this, see where I could really end up. My mara times are still well off anything truly competitive, but they’re also in the universe for the first time, too. And actual runners along the way, you know people who are actually good and who have done this for a long time, have pushed me to explore it more. That these trim-downs this quickly aren’t typical. I hear that, and it’s like dousing gasoline over a fire. So I’m going to see how much lower I can take this. Remember, I’m really old. An Old, as they say.

But I can answer the subject < 2:40 question in one sentence: it’s about discipline. Yes you need some natural talent to go this fast, but if you think motivation will be perpetual, I promise you will learn differently. The further you get into training the easier it is to become unmotivated.

But by that time, you’re usually increasingly disciplined. Not getting mileage in, not spending time in the gym feels weird. It feels undisciplined. It feels like you’re not checking a box you do as part of your every day.

Build disciplined training. How fast you go, how long you go, what you eat, all of those questions are important — but they are secondary. Get on your feet and get moving.

The Race: Utah Valley

So, anyone who has a chance to run this race should do it. The scenery is top-top, running past Deer Creek State Park, historic downtown Provo, and the like. It felt like I was running through Yellowstone at times. Badass.

The race is competitive (2:39 was 13OV), and it invites faster runners by nature due to its BQ status and fast downhill. Some random chronological notes from the race:

Pre-race training was mostly maintenance from Boston end of April until now. Six weeks isn’t enough time to make real gains, but you definitely can get hurt, so I tried out some longer, slower runs this time around. (For context, that was about 215mi in May.) I also knew that a 2:43 on a tougher Boston course asked the question of what my real PR target/time currently was, so I wanted to go under at minimum.

For the first time in an event, I did not go chicken and rice (to be clear this is just my favorite meal by a mile and just so happens to work well for marathons), and went pasta with Chicken Parmesan. This was a bit regrettable as I burped non-stop for the first ten miles or so. That said, legs energy-wise felt great! Morning of, went with the best pre-training food there is, stinger waffles. With a little peanut butter toast.

Still dealing with popliteus tendinopathy. Mostly pain management at this point, not as bad as it was in March, but I haven’t taken any rest time and don’t plan to. The one thing that sucked is this sort of downhill run puts extra stress on core (and different) muscles in your leg, and behind the knees is no exception.

Another reason I strongly recommend the race, beyond the scenery: setup and volunteers and fans were awesome. 9.5/10. And anyone who has ran a race of any kind know that’s a tailwind for you.

I opened up the race with a plan of running neutral or close-to-neutral splits, figuring a 1:18 was more than doable for the first-half, and a 1:19 or so doable for the second half.

That 1:18 number was on the softer side, especially because I opened up sustaining a 5:50/mi or so for a while and felt good. Until …

Mile 12! The choice was let my stomach explode from pee or pull out for a minute and hit the bathroom. This cost me close to a full minute on my total time, annoyingly.

Again, I made two general observations. There were many “better” runners in the field than me, but distance has a funny way of neutralizing things. You can only go so fast for so long and I’ve realized that what makes me competitive is I really don’t get tired. Maybe that’s good pace management, maybe it’s a testament to the endurance training and cross-training I do. Probably both. But again, I ended up passing a lot of sub-3 type runners from miles 17-24 or so.

Which, let me be clear: the 20-mile mark is notable for a reason. I don’t care how fast you are or what shape you’re in, your legs start really fatiguing here. A lot of the last 6-miles comes down to the amount of time on feet you’ve spent during training, and any injuries you may be dealing with.

i ended up finishing a little outside of the money, which sucked, but this is also something I could not have ever fathomed or imagined saying … fifteen months ago? Twelve months ago?

Got to meet some extremely nice people, always worth mentioning. Rode the bus up with the winner Tegene Fikadu — nice guy, built very differently from the rest of us, from Kenya I believe. Breathtaking speed. Also another reminder I need to drop about fifteen more pounds if I really want to leg down. (Problem there, already 2.9 BF, so I’m up against a wall of sorts there.)

I still prefer flat to flat/slightly downhill runs. The rolling hills are brutal; so too are unrelenting downhills on slopes highways. Legs just take a beating. Sometimes think it’s not worth the -5s or whatever.

One random funny-but-true thing: when you’re pacing 6-ish over this type distance, you become so acutely aware of even just a handful of seconds. A 5:55 pace versus a 6:02 pace feels very, very differently. Meanwhile, a 7:25 pace vs a 7:32 pace, still very good mile times, can feel identical.

Stats

Splits (5:42 lo)

As always, a special thanks to the friends and family who have helped me along the way.

[ghostcaterwaul]

For the "Weird Questions for Writers": 1, 17, 18, 19 ^-^ (Again, I know I'm a bit late, but if you still wanna do these~)

1. What font do you write in? Do you actually care or is that just the default setting?

Arial, because it’s the default font and if I tried to pick another one, I’d probably just spend hours trying to decide on which one to use and never get any writing done. Lol.

(The rest of this post is long so I'm going to put it under a read more thingy.)

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

Okay, so, I’m so not happy with the overall like, plot or whatever at this point. It sounded like a great idea while outlining but now I’m not so sure. I think Alice just doesn’t fit as well with the canon characters as I hoped she would, since she wasn’t made as a fan character or anything like that. I only started writing it because I was super excited to have such a new OC that was so developed and I really wanted to write about her but didn’t really have a story or anything and I’m currently hyperfixating on Metal Lords, so I figured putting her in a Metal Lords fic would make sense because I’d be motivated to write it but I’m not sure it’s working out and I’m lowkey annoyed. So, yeah, this is all subject to change and I have no idea what’s going to make it into the final story, especially since I’m having a hard time getting things from outline to draft, but anyways, here’s what I’ve got so far!

The outline of events I have written down starts before the movie, then there’s a few things during the movie and afterwards too (I haven’t written anything in like, 2-3 years, so I felt like using the movie as like, a blueprint for the outline would be the least stressful way to jump back into writing.) I’m thinking of either telling the whole thing in, like, disjointed scenes or in a sort of flashback format where the fic itself would start after Metal Lords, but have Alice recall different memories throughout the fic.

Alice meets Emily before the events of Metal Lords actually happens because they start at Glenwood Lake High on the same day after Alice and her mom inherit her late grandmother’s house. They get fairly close (as close as Alice will let anyone get to her, anyways). Alice falls hard for Emily. It’s very important, story-wise, that nothing romantic ever happens between them.

Emily totally starts unintentionally neglecting her friendship with Alice when she first starts dating Kevin, basically only hitting Alice up for “girl talk” AKA talking about her new relationship. Alice is wayyy too nice about this, because she’s way too nice about everything.

I’m not sure yet if Alice or Hunter is the first to notice that they’re both on the shit end of the stick as far as unrequited love is concerned, but this is like, the absolute basis of their friendship, at least in the beginning. The notes I’ve made seem to be leaning towards a queerplatonic type of thing with them, but we’ll see what happens when I actually finish a draft and start editing. Either way, I feel like Hunter needs someone to hang out with other than Kevin and Emily or he will absolutely lose his fucking mind.

Alice is kind of in love with the idea of being in love, but won’t let anyone get close enough to develop romantic feelings for her. This is part of her problem. Like, she doesn’t let anyone see past the tip of the iceberg, basically. Maybe Alice/Emily could have been a reality if Alice wasn’t so closed off.

Alice's mother always told her that her father left before she was born, but the truth is her mother is the one who left and her father has no clue she exists. Alice has no desire to try and connect with her father, so this will probably never come up and she will never find this out.

Alice’s room has so much stuff in it. I’m talking cluttered shelves full of stuff, stuff hanging from her ceiling and in her windows, stuff on her walls. Like, I have it all written down and I’m currently searching for some sort of outline/template that I can use as like, a reference sheet for her room just so it’s easier for me to read than the block of text I currently have in my Google docs.

Also, the more I outline and make notes, the more I’m sure that Alice isn’t cis. Like she’s probably under the non-binary umbrella in a “gender doesn’t make sense to me and feels like an abstract concept” kind of way.

I literally have so many notes on this WIP, overall, I had a hard time figuring out what to include in this answer, ngl. Like, I haven’t put this much work into something in a really long time, which is why I’m kinda determined to actually write it despite the fact I’m super hypercritical of it all the time.

18. Choose a passage from your writing. Tell me about the backstory of this moment. How you came up with it, how it changed from start to end.

Okay, so anything I have written for my current primary WIP is a very rough draft, if that, and completely unedited. So I hope it’s okay if I use something from one of my other WIPs. This is from an original work I was working on called A Chaotic Love (working title).

They sit a few feet away from each other, tormenting themselves, auto cannibalizing from the inside out, drowning in the blood of their feelings and choking on the emotional word vomit that threatens to spill from their mouths if they dare to part their lips to even breathe.

But it’s okay.

Everything’s okay.

Everything’s o-fucking-kay.

She feels so full that she doesn’t know if she can hold back any longer.

Everything’s okay.

He fills the void with cheap liquor, she uses it to drown out the constant noise in her head.

It’s okay.

They’re okay.

It’s all o-fucking-kay.

He passes out on the couch, still sitting up, arms crossed over the albatross tattooed on his bare chest. She stands up, wobbling at first. She can’t tell if the dizziness is from drinking so much or if she stood up too fast. She makes her way to her room, or rather, their room. Though, she doesn’t consider it their room anymore, as he’s been passing out on the couch, drunk, every night and never sleeps in bed with her. She slips out of her sundress and sprawls out on her stomach on the bed like a snow angel. She misses him.

It’s not okay.

It never was.

It never will be.

She’s not sure how much longer she can continue to hold on.

She’s not sure how much longer she can continue to pretend that it’s all okay.

Because she knows it’s not.

And she thinks he knows it too.

So, this is still very much a draft of a snippet that I probably won’t fully edit unless I actually finish writing the whole novel. This is Mallory and Jeremy after the honeymoon phase of their relationship, when Mallory is starting to become disillusioned with what she thought was going to be her fairytale romance and starts to realize that maybe running away from home with a guy she barely knew wasn’t the best idea, even though she very much needed to escape her parents and her hometown. This is supposed to be the beginning of the end for Mallory and Jeremy. If I remember correctly, I used my tarot deck as a prompt to get this rolling. I can’t remember which card(s) I pulled for this, though. I pretty much freewrote this. The very first sentence came to me super easily and I’m pretty proud of it, ngl. Only thing I really changed from the initial freewrite was adding in some details like Jeremy’s albatross tattoo, Mallory wobbling upon standing up, her sundress, the snow angel comparison, etc. Basically just added more description to that paragraph in general.

19. Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going?

I vividly remember putting together storybooks when I was as young as 5. I’d draw or trace pictures onto printer paper, and then dictate the words to my mom so she could write it in and then she'd help me staple the pages together. I just really liked making up stories. I got really into Buffy The Vampire Slayer when I was like, 9, and that’s when I started writing fanfic. Jumped from fandom to fandom for a while. Got into online written roleplay around the age of 11 or 12 and that’s where I’ve always done most of my writing. I didn’t really start thinking of writing as like, a career path until I was 13, when my 8th-grade English teacher overheard me complaining about the book she had assigned us, I don’t even remember the name of it, I just remember that I didn’t care about the main character at all, so enjoying the book was pretty much impossible. My English teacher got all pissy about my opinion and said something along the lines of “If you hate it so much, write something better.” And my snarky ass muttered, “screw you, maybe I will” and she fucking heard me, so then I was like, “Dammit, now I have to write a novel purely out of spite" because this teacher… Is the only English teacher I ever had that I could not fucking stand, I usually loved whoever I had for English, and she definitely had some sort of issue with me too, for some reason. So yeah, that’s when I started to take writing more seriously. I bought every fucking book and workbook on creative writing that I could get my hands on to perfect my craft and started writing more original fiction. I used to write every day. I was super dedicated too. Like, my parents would wake up at 5 AM, so I got my ass up at 4 AM every morning, so I could have an hour to myself to write with no interruptions while I had my coffee. Went to college for creative writing but never completed the degree. I’ve never finished anything multi-chaptered. I wish I could blame that on undiagnosed/untreated ADHD but I’ve been diagnosed and on meds for about 7 years now and I still can’t finish anything. Lol. I’m just now coming out of a really bad overall creative block where I just couldn’t seem to engage in any of my creative hobbies. I went from always having 1-3 projects (usually I’d be working on a story, something music related, and some sort of long-term arts & crafts project so I could alternate between the three) to not working on anything. I’m trying to focus more on fanfic right now over my original WIPs since fanfic is where I started, and I’m hoping it’ll get me out of this awful creative slump that I’ve been in for the past few years.

[radixxsort]

My intention in posting this is not to announce a return to tumblr, but rather, to provide a “where is she now”-esque update and most likely disappear back into the void.

Don’t worry – in the time since I last posted, I have been completely fine, and in all honesty, probably better after doing some of the work to unplug more compared to before. I am posting this to share my own experiences in detoxing from social media, in the hopes that someone finds even just one of these ideas useful. You don’t have to quit tumblr in order to benefit from this advice – I just personally don’t have much of a reason myself to try making tumblr work for me.

The main reason I joined tumblr in the first place was to try and find a sense of community, especially considering that I felt a void in terms of connecting with other feminists after quitting Discord due to privacy concerns with it as a platform. However, I haven’t been able to actually connect with people here on tumblr, and I think this is just a matter of the fact that I find it much harder to start and participate in conversations here. Additionally, I found that I was quickly falling back into old habits of obsessively scrolling through recent posts without really getting much from what I saw, just on my dashboard instead of channels in a Discord server. If there is enough demand for it, I might consider starting similar communities using Matrix or XMPP-based messaging services to allow for the sense of connection I had without the same privacy concerns as Discord – I would want to see if it’s possible to strike the right balance of allowing for a sense of community without falling back into the pit of eternal scrolling. On the one hand, I crave this sense of connection that I had on Discord, but on the other, I desparately want to make some sort of real difference that feels much harder to achieve over the internet. (If you’re interested in reading more about organizing over the internet and reclaiming our control, I recommend checking out this post of mine).

That being said, tumblr still has its things that kept me around for some time. I enjoyed having an outlet to write longer posts. In school, I was one of those students who always did well with essays, but didn’t actually enjoy writing them – having a tumblr blog, and even some other experiences since I left, have slowly shown me that I can enjoy writing argumentative and informative works when I actually get to choose the topic and I’m not stressed out from dealing with my poor time management skills.

The real thing that kept me around, though, was seeing well-crafted arguments from other users. Every so often within my dashboard, I would come across a post that articulated a specific issue very clearly or shed light on a novel perspective. On the one hand, it felt like these posts were Expanding my Intellectual Horizons and allowing me to Witness the Forefront of a Force of Change, but on the other hand, these hits of satisfaction would fuel my addiction and motivate me to slog through countless other posts that would be forgotten within a few minutes.

A short side note – if you’re like me and want to have access to YouTube for video tutorials that are genuinely useful, but you’re concerned about Google’s privacy practices and the addictive UI patterns, I’ll talk about my solution. I use Invidious (usually the yewtu.be instance, but there are many URLs that run Invidious) to watch YouTube videos without having as much of my information being set to Google, and a few browser extensions to cut back on distractions. I use Invidioucious to custom-tailor the UI and have these changes actually be consistently applied between browser sessions (specifically, I set the “other arguments” field to “&related_videos=false&comments=[]” to turn off related videos and comments), I use Redirector to automatically change any Invidious “popular” or “trending” feed page to redirect to a blank search page with no videos shown (I redirect both “*/feed/popular*” and “*/feed/trending*” to “$1/search$2” – note that in all of these, the quotation marks are not included in what you actually enter), and I use LeechBlock to automatically give me a 30-second delay in accessing the pages for YouTube channels on Invidious (blocking “*/channel/*”), since browsing through all of a channel’s videos is a way that I personally tend to fall down binge spirals. If you still want to use official YouTube instead of Invidious, then DF YouTube is a browser extension worth checking out for changing the UI.

During this stretch of time when I wasn’t on tumblr, I got back into reading. In the case of political theory, this allowed me to find a concentrated stream of the High Quality Takes that I only found in fragments here, often by going to the source in finding books that I saw frequently quoted. I was an avid reader as a child, but stopped reading as much in 2018 or so. I’ve read 41 books to completion in 2022 (with a few more I’ll probably finish by the end of the year). Most of that reading took place in May or later, and the majority was non-fiction – this was by far the most non-fiction reading I’ve done overall. I feel like this shift has had a distinctly positive impact on my mental well-being, by allowing me to become more informed without external distractions and by training myself to rebuild my attention span and think. I mention this so I can provide some advice for others looking to pursue this as well – the rest of this post is reading-related advice.

Firstly, I recommend knowing where you can get free books. You can definitely get far with resources like your local library or Project Gutenberg, which provides free e-book versions of books that are old enough that their copyright has lapsed. Also, as devastated as I was when Z-Library was shut down, I am not going to publicly endorse downloading books that were not properly authorized with regards to copyright, even though I personally think that copyright law is, to put it politely, a load of bullshit. (Whatever you do, though, don’t go to Library Genesis, unless you want to get eaten by the copyright monster or whatever…)

I’ve been developing a to-be-read list for a long time, probably a few years now. However, I found that even after I acquired a large hoard of free e-books through completely legitimate means and definitely not piracy, actually convincing myself to read them was a different issue. This brings me to my next piece of advice – know what format works for you and use that to your advantage. For a while, I tried getting back into reading just using my computer, only to find that it was an absolute slog. Reading dense text on a bright computer screen and hunched over my desk in an uncomfortable position doesn’t really work for me. I ended up purchasing a used Nook Simple Touch from eBay that cost me less than $20 USD, including tax and shipping, and its e-ink display and portability ended up being a fantastic match for my physical comfort.

However, I have explored other options for reading e-books without needing to purchase a new device, and I still had some good findings, even with the e-reader being my favorite. I tried using speed-reading software, which displays one word at a time at the same position, allowing you to read very quickly without moving your eyes. The fact that it is much faster, and in my case, a dark background with light text as opposed to the other way around, mitigated some of the discomfort in my eyes. However, I was unable to find software that actually saved my place in the book, and skipping to the place I wanted to read was a major pain because there was no function to skip a chapter at a time, so I had to hold down the arrow key to get to the specific place I left off at. There is probably software that does have this function, I just didn’t find it – even if there isn’t, this is still a good option for something you know you can read through in one sitting, such as shorter books and articles.

I have also tried reading in conjunction with text-to-speech software, and the combination of audio and visual input turned out to work well for me. This actually also allowed me to read at a much faster pace than one might expect – I usually gradually ramp up the speed in the text-to-speech software to 5 or 6 times the default speed, and I know that it’s working best when I feel myself fall into a rhythm with the way my eyes move through the text. Not only does this allow me to read faster while using text-to-speech, but I’ve found that it actually serves as “training wheels” to help me read faster without the text-to-speech. On a similar note, I recommend doing research on speed-reading techniques. There are many techniques that can be used together to do this, but the one that I think has helped me the most is learning to read with my peripheral vision and keeping my eyes towards the center of the page, mainly moving my eyes vertically and much less horizontally. To help with this, I recommend making sure that the overall column width of your e-book isn’t too wide, if you’re using a digital format.

[father-time-and-baby-new-year]

alphabet boy II

SYNOPSIS: college AU. Armin, your brilliant tutor, invites you over to his house for some studying. Naturally, you're nervous and he seems to be giving you a reason to be.

PAIRING: SCUMBAG!Tutor Armin x FEM!Reader

WARNINGS: half edited, noncon/dubcon, fingering, non-penetrative sexual content. gaslighting, manipulating,

A/N: really need the motivation to write again and I've been slacking on my multi-parters so here's a somewhat highly anticipated one. Armin fuckers, this is for you. non-Armin fuckers, I hope this converts you

WORD COUNT: 2.0k

II. I.

“You’re not paying attention.”

You feel his voice right by the shell of your ear, and the proximity nearly makes you reel back in surprise but you manage to catch yourself.

“S-sorry” You apologize, wishing you didn’t stutter.

The thing is you’re just really out of your element. This is the first time you’ve been to Armin’s house for personal tutoring, and it was hard to focus on the material when his presence was so distracting.

It wasn’t like you were fantasizing about him or anything [well…]-you always tried to banish those thoughts as soon as it came. But still, being alone with an attractive boy with a disarming charm was causing some jitters. You felt like a shy middle schooler, on edge and jittery.

The last tutoring session in the library when he [basically] called you stupid plagued your mind. The memory of him feeling up your thighs lived in your head rent-free.

“Let’s take a break.” He sighs. Your heart drops at the noise of disappointment but you suppose it’s what you deserve.

You push your laptop lightly aside on the table, the bleak light straining your eyes, and ask for the bathroom. You just wanted to freshen up and be alone for a few seconds. The bathroom is meticulously clean, something even you knew was unexpected for a boy. You looked at yourself through the spotless mirror, scrutinizing every flaw.

You sigh, fiddling with your dress collar. Why you had tried dressing pretty for a boy so out of your league, he may as well be in Mars--you didn’t know.

When you return, there is a tall glass of lemonade waiting for you.

“Thought you might be thirsty.”

It’s a simple gesture that makes you blush so you thank him earnestly. Like the gentleman he is, he assures you it’s no problem. Not wanting to prolong the awkward silence, you compliment his apartment, “This is a really nice place. So much light and space.”

You’re babbling but he engages you regardless, and you two are mindlessly discussing the benefits of living at off-campus housing over dorming. His words are pleasant but there’s a sinking feeling within you as you notice he’s bored. Or maybe distracted was a better word.

“So, do you have a boyfriend? Or anyone you’re seeing?”

You nearly choke at the question uttered through a buttery voice.

“Oh um, not really.”

“Not really?”

You made a mental note to answer in definitives. Armin seemed the type to snuff out anything he reasoned as half-truths.

“No. I uh, don’t have a boyfriend.” And then you clarified a pin-drop later, “And I’m not seeing anyone either.”

The blond hums a playful tune that’s vaguely nostalgic.

“Have you ever had a boyfriend?”

You don’t understand the point of this line of incessant questioning, and can’t calm your heart rate.

“I-um, I don’t-“

Taking one look at your serious face, eyes rimmed with worry and cheeks pink, he laughs. It’s a startling sound like bell chimes.

“Relax. I just wanted to know if you had any experience.”

The sentence flies out of your mouth before you can even ponder it: “What do you mean by experience?”

It’s not his fault if he can’t hide the feral grin that crosses his mouth right at that moment. You can’t discern his expression as you’re staring at anywhere but him, so you don’t notice the uncontained excitement that glimmers in cerulean eyes.

“Let’s move to the couch. You’ll be more comfortable there.”

You think about saying that you’re fine wherever you are and didn’t really feel like changing positions, but he’s already striding towards the couch. So you start packing up the materials, before a clear voice calls out to you, “It’s okay. You don’t have to bring all that. Just bring your flashcards.”

You hoped that wouldn’t mean he’d quiz you, but that’s exactly what he meant to do.

“Law of diminishing returns.”

“Wait! I know that one!” You brightly exclaimed, “ Uhh..it gives way to the catch-up effect which means poor countries tend to grow more rapidly and they’ll one day essentially catch up with wealthier economies.”

The blond ran his hand through his hair before sighing. You could feel your heart drop. You were sure you were right. Was your answer wrong enough to cause exasperation?

“Stick with the formal definition next time. I didn’t ask for the theory based on the law.”

You pouted, and Armin couldn’t help but relish in how eagerly you sought his approval, like a puppy performing tricks to appease their master.

“You should sit closer. Can you even see the word?”

You moved closer to him, knees knocking into each other. He looks down at the completed set.

“Well, you didn’t do as bad as I expected.” Ouch. But maybe he meant it as a compliment?

“But,” the corners of his mouth curled, “I’d say you’re still struggling.” Never mind.

“T-this is a new chapter though. I don’t think we’ve even gone over it in class.”

Blue eyes narrow, and you wonder if he’s going to give the well-meaning spiel about how staying ahead was the only way to keep up. That mantra may work for someone with high ambitions and an extremely good work ethic but you were no well-oiled machine. You had other classes too!

“Why are you so defensive?”

Your eyes widen in surprise at the question, spoken so softly and casually, you almost miss the disdained lilt.

“Oh uh-“

“Listen to me. I quizzed you so I’m able to assert your skill level. And your response to my assertion is that it’s something you haven’t gone over in class yet. Do those things relate to each other at all?”

Meekly, you shift your attention to the rug.

“Answer me.”

“N-no”, you squeaked.

“And what have I always told you? The only way to keep up is to-“

“Stay ahead.” You finished, “I’m sorry, I just-“

“Did I say you could interrupt me?”

You could feel the blood rushing to your ears, unsure when the atmosphere had shifted. Your heartbeat was beating rapidly and you could feel your body go warm.

He sighed, and placed a hand over over your folded ones, squeezing your palms.

“You know I’m just looking out for you right? It almost feels like you don’t care-“

“No!” You exclaim, “I-I do.” Heat pools into your cheeks once you realize your grave mistake, “I-I’m sorry for interrupting you.”

The blond smiles radiantly and it nearly melts away all of your worries…until he opens his mouth to deliver another damning remark.

“You know, with your looks…you don’t really even have to graduate. Maybe choose an easy major and then get some rich husband to take care of you.” There’s a distinct lack of humor in his tone as if he wholeheartedly believed every word he was saying.

Your eyebrows furrow in blatant confusion, and in the back of your mind, danger signs are flashing at the back of your head. Your thighs are growing warmer. Oh no, this could not be happening right now.

“That’s what most girls’ dreams are anyways.” He inspects his spotless nails, “You chose this class because Ackerman’s attractive right? That’s why his class has such a high drop rate…silly girls join, not understanding how harsh of a grader he is.”

You open your mouth to defend yourself but the next inflammatory remark he spews almost sends you to shock, “Though I bet, if you got on your knees for him, you’d be getting an A on those finals.” He laughs as if he was saying something particularly amusing, an undercurrent of spite coloring his words, “You wouldn’t even need me as your tutor.”

There are a million things on the tip of your tongue but no voice to speak them out. You want to ask him why he’s been so weirdly invasive, what his weird hang-up with professor Ackerman was, and of course, the casual sexism was really throwing you in a loop. Still, you have no doubt Armin could beat you to a bloody pulp several times over in a verbal lashing, and your mind was too fragile to deal with this.

You’ll sign up for a new tutor or better yet no tutor. You’ll get over your social anxiety and join a study group. You’ll go to all of Professor Ackerman’s office hours. Anything had to be better than this. You’re giving yourself this pep talk in your head but there’s no denying that your legs feel warm, and the self-improvement speech is withering away in your mind as it seeks to instead process how Armin fucking Arltert is touching you right now.

He pins you against the cushions, one hand locking both of your wrists. You’re shaking but your pupils are blown out wide.

He smirks, “There’s an excellent stress reliever for studying you know.”

You limp in his hold but the cocky attitude behind his words brings you back. You thrash under him, earning an annoyed growl from the blond.

“I’ve been so fucking patient with you, you know? Planning out your study guides, sharing my notes with you, proofreading homework, going over the mock exams—don’t you think I deserve a little compensation?”

“I-I’m sorry.”

He's right. He's right. Armin actually has done so much for you. Maybe it was too easy to take for granted because of how efficient he was, and how he acted like it was nothing. But right now, nothing really was everything.

He smiles. Yeah, this is who you were. Add just a little bit of pressure and you crumble. That flash of bravery from before was nothing but a petulant outburst from a child who didn’t know any better.

Armin coos, “Isn’t it a little embarrassing to be a virgin at your age?”

With unbridled precision, while he’s still holding your lower body down with the weight of his legs, he unbuckles his belt and ties it around your strained wrists. Red fills your face, and like always, you’re struggling to find the right words to respond. To say anything at all. Most of all, you can feel a wetness building at your core.

“I know the way you look at me, you know.” He kisses the dip of your neck, slender fingers splayed from under your shirt, “I know you’re into this.”

And because he is a scientist who must have evidence to back up his hypothesis, his hands find themselves under the waistband of your floral skirt that you foolishly wore, pushing the cure pastel underwear aside. You’re writhing in his grasp but maybe not as much as you should be, but it’s not your fault your movements are sluggish right?

“You have such a funny habit of not deleting your windows and keeping your bookmarks open.”

You freeze.

“This entire time I thought you were some prudish virgin even though you dress like a whore. Someone with who I had to be gentle. But all that fucking porn you read? Nasty. Is that why you need help in this class?” He punctuates slowly, "Because you're wasting your brain for something else?"

Immediately, you remember how you left your laptop on the table. You remember how many times he used your computer to double-check the notes, and you trustingly let him, forgetting that despite deleting your tabs, the hidden windows of steamy erotica were not yet erased out of their existence. Embarrassment violently paints your body.

He doesn’t wait or care for your response as he starts a vigorous assault on your clit with his slender finger, rubbing up and down in a vicious manner. The second finger prods at your entrance, feeling a tight cavern despite the amount of slick collected. Your eyes roll back in pleasure-is this what being with someone is like?

Stop. Get a hold of yourself. Why are you so fucking horny right now? It doesn’t matter what Armin said about you or how he called you out for the fiction you’ve read, because this is real life. But Christ, it’s Armin, the boy you’ve had a crush on since the moment he explained to you what a marginal abasement curve was. Stupidly handsome Armin with a gentle voice and too-blue oceanic eyes. Stupidly handsome Armin who coerced you into being under him.

You’re so fucking warm and tight, and Armin can’t wait to sink himself inside of you, can’t wait to humiliate you further. With nimble fingers he untied the ribbons of your dress like you were a Christmas present, groping your soft mounds and marking up your collarbone with teeth and tongue. Crystalline tears roll down the side of your face. You really shouldn’t be crying when you’re this wet.

“So fucking funny how you can’t look at me in the eye when we have a conversation but you read the filthiest fucking smut I’ve ever seen.”

taglist: @candy-hime

[blackandwhlteaesthetlc]

When you said you also watched an early screening of mp, does that mean you also saw dwd? If so, impressions? If not, sorry about the ask!!!

I honestly can’t WAIT for this dwd shit to be over and start with mp promo. I’m soooooo looking forward to that!!!!

No need to apologize, anon ❤️

Just finished a big dinner so I’ll do my best to express myself coherently. 😂

Yes, I also watched DWD. It was at an early screening LAST YEAR. I can’t stress that enough. I haven’t watched it recently and I don’t intend to watch it again. I don’t even have a desire to watch it illegally but if people absolutely want to view it? Save your money and find a link here @igotthecinemapop

Be gay, do crime, etc & so forth.

Anyway, I signed multiple NDAs which is pretty standard for the type of event I attended where it was shown. The film is out now so I can share my thoughts freely but please know I’ve been DYING this whole time and really wish I could’ve shared more much sooner. I’m really boring and not a rule breaker though so here we are a year later. 😅

Moving on…You can probably guess I’m not a fan of the movie. And here I’m going to do my absolute best to remove my bias from the situation and explain why speaking strictly as someone that loves and studies film:

The writing is incredibly weak. Multiple plot holes with scenes that go absolutely no where and are never explained. The one that drives me the most crazy is an unnecessary plane crash. Listen, you can have confusing or disorienting scenes so you as the audience member start to take Alice’s side and root for her. She’s confused, you’re confused (we’re all confused, bro) so subconsciously you’re invested in her story and want her to get out of there. But there’s no satisfying payoff to these scenes. It was a jumble of weirdness edited together, it seems, to make you go “huh?” and nothing more.

Cringy, flat dialogue delivered by two-dimensional characters. Kiki Layne and Gemma Chan deserved better. It hasn’t escaped by attention all this time that these two women are woc but were pushed to the background (both in the movie and during promo) in favor of the director getting more screen time. Harry and Chris Pine also deserved better.

Speaking of Harry. Oh, Harry. Jack Chamber’s motivation to incapacitate his girlfriend because she works too many hours and doesn’t have time for him? The “twist” is explained in a rush at the end of the film so when this was revealed, I was already annoyed and disappointed. But this? All that build up to the lamest “ta-da” I’ve seen in a while.

It borrows too blatantly from other more notable films, including GET OUT, THE STEPFORD WIVES, SUSPIRIA, ROSEMARY’S BABY, INCEPTION…I can go on but you get it. And by borrowed, I mean the exact storylines, character designs (Violet has a pixie cut and is a wide-eyed newcomer to the town, too reminiscent of Mia Farrow as Rosemary), actual scene structures. I’m thinking particularly of the ballet studio scenes that had Suspiria written all over it. But Olivia’s “reimagining” did absolutely nothing new except just copy, copy, copy. These weren’t homages, it was just lazy plagiarism. Please watch any of the above, and I can absolutely recommend more, to see how a story like this can actually be executed well.

Was it pretty to look at? Yes. When I got out, I immediately thought “okay, well that’s a nomination for Cinematography and Costumes for sure.” Now, given how everything how panned out? Idk anymore. It may still get technical recognitions, possibly for music too. But I don’t see any acting nominations. If Flo or Chris Pine get nominated, I can’t imagine they’ll campaign too hard for it. And really I don’t blame them.

And now that I’ve brought up acting, I’ll say this about Harry. There are moments, I felt, he overacted because the scene called for him to have big emotions. He’s still a novice to this but he was leagues better in MP so I’m eager to see what he does next, outside of Eternals, because he has tons of promise to get better and better. I think he does well in quieter moments and has a good sense of comedic timing. His face is so expressive, you can see real emotion there when it’s needed. But sometimes, just sometimes, you could see him reaching or trying to pull the emotion forward too forcefully. And it took me out of a couple scenes while watching him DWD. I think he did much better in MP because Tom as a character can be stiffer and more reserved. But don’t get me wrong, his scenes with Emma and David were lovely. I think he felt a real comfort there that allowed him to let go completely.

I don’t think I’ve said anything new here but those were my thoughts from a year ago and I’m sad to see that so many reviews since Venice echoed those same thoughts exactly all this time later. Nothing seemed to get fixed and it’s a shame. I’ve already shared my thoughts on the marketing so no need to reiterate that again.

My last thought is I’m just disappointed for everyone involved that sought out to make a genuinely interesting and entertaining movie without any bullshit. They were let down by the studio and the director in a truly gross fashion.

[2jaeh]

ORPHIC : YUTA X READER

genre: smut, angst

warnings: mature themes, enemies to lovers kinda, kinda toxic theme, multiple smut scenes, swearing, alcohol, toys. 

slight jenoxreader 

word count : 17,5k (sorrry he’s my ult)

author: sin! 

You and Yuta never had a good relationship within your group of friends. The closest the two of you ever came to even slightly caring about each other was...in bed. After some friendly advice you decide to venture out of this toxicity and an old friend comes to the rescue. Thinking things will finally settle and you are ready to move on, Yuta comes to the realization that he wasn't a fan of you leaving him for someone else. 

A/N: WHOA this took me so long to write and rn its 2am and I barely proofread anything and just wanted to post it already! ALSO I just wanted to add Jeno is practically my ult as well and I wanted to use him for this scenario ! I promise Ill make it up to you guys with a full length fic of him lol Anyways enjoy. 

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You couldn’t understand why you hated him so much. Was it the way he did his hair ? The way he rolled his eyes at every snarky remark you directed at him ?

Or was it the way he stared at you from across the room, a smirk on his face signaling that it was going to be one of those nights.

You joined this collective of artists or the “blank space” as you were known to the public, a year ago. The team did everything from clothing to organizing crazy exhibitions, and the best part of it all was that the team members remained anonymous.

Now some of the members were already in the spotlight for their personal artworks and collections but anything under blank space was under that name only, promoted only under its respective social media accounts. The collective was founded by Taeyong, an introverted guy you met at a fashion show you once worked at. He approached you the night your art hit the runway and you’ve been working for him ever since.

You didn’t know everybody under Blank Space except for the people Taeyong trusted the most. Which from possibly 50 designers, only reduced to a total of nine close friends.

Taeyong, Johnny, Ten, Renjun, YangYang, Doyoung, Sungchan, Lucas and You.

And then, there was one person you called a friend when the mood was right. When he was not being an absolute pain in the ass.

Yuta Nakamoto.

————————————————————————

“So there’s a launch happening this weekend over at the shed” Taeyong announced to your friend group who were barely paying attention thanks to Yangyang attempting to stuff four marshmallows into his mouth. “Come on you can do one more” Lucas edged him on while Renjun shook his head disapprovingly and Sungchan tried to suppress his laughter.

“Guys please pay attention” Doyoung, the only type of authority around here spoke up, finally quieting down the room and allowing his best friend to speak.

Taeyong cleared his throat and shifted nervously as all eyes were focused on him again. “I’d like all of us to attend, maybe look for a new recruit” the timid pink haired boy spoke and everyone nodded knowing the routine of these launches at this point.

“Can we party hard or is this just one of those save face kinda gigs ?” Yuta raised his hand and the spark in Lucas’s eyes indicated that he may have had the same idea.

You rolled your eyes and crossed your leg over the other, “Yuta’s having a dry spell he wants to find some damsel in distress to get into his bed” you turned to him and he only smirked at your snarky comment.

“Well now y/n it’s only because you haven’t been in the mood for my dick lately” he pouted and Renjun threw his head back, followed by groans from both Johnny and Ten.

“I’m not in the mood for the two of you today seriously” Ten chimed in, rubbing his temples just waiting for this group meeting to be over. “Yeah me too” Johnny added, “you two fight the entire week then hook up over the weekend, we are tired.”

“Why are you guys tired ? Are you doing the fighting and fucking ?” Yuta scoffed and Doyoung jumped to his feet, folding his arms across his chest as he looked down at the scowling black haired man,

“This is a work meeting. If it's not about work” Doyoung eyes moved to you, “then we don’t want to hear about it.”

You nodded after getting reprimanded but Yuta being Yuta just snickered and downed the rest of his coffee, unbothered by what any of the people in the room had to say about him.

“Okay then well I’ll see you guys Friday night, if you find a possible recruitment just text the group chat and we will decide as a team then and there” Taeyong wrapped up the meeting and everyone dispersed back to their work stations to finish up any outstanding projects.

Blank Space had its own office block but you guys were the only ones with a private floor at the very end of the hallway, far away from the part-timers.

Everyone had their own cubicle made up of makeshift drywall, so it was private but not private enough. Taeyong felt that closed offices made no sense for a room of creatives and when working on bigger projects it was easier for members to move their stations to their partners' cubicles.

Your cubicle though had the unfortunate fate of being placed in front of Yuta. The members had tried to swap with either of you but neither of you budged. Moving meant there was a problem and showing that you had an actual problem with the other person meant it could sabotage the team and things may go sour.

So both of you conceded. Trying your absolute best to stay out of the other person's way during work hours. But it was impossible when bickering was just something you guys did.

From the very beginning You and Yuta had disagreed on almost everything. Both of you were pretty stubborn people and had a very similar mindset. Then on a random drunken night Johnny suggested that you and Yuta needed to release your anger in bed and the next day you’d be best friends. Yuta was pretty adamant on the idea and not only did you hook up once, it became this ongoing hell of fighting, building up your anger and releasing it during mind blowing sex.

Neither of you questioned the abnormality of your relationship. Rather, you ignored the red flags and the toxicity of it all and just assumed attraction only happened through liquor, high sexual needs and boredom.

“Hey y/n sorry about snapping like that earlier” Doyoung stepped into your cubicle, his gummy smile showing as he nervously scratched his head.  “It’s no problem, I’m sorry about my stupid comment” you pressed your lips together feeling a tad guilty that it all started because of you.

“You guys really love riling each other up don’t you?” Doyoung took a seat opposite you which was a bit unnatural for anyone who walked by. Doyoung was a very reserved person and never bothered to converse with any of you besides Taeyong. Unlike the rest of you Doyoung was recruited to handle finances and foresee the operation. He appreciated the arts but never delved in it, hence his awkwardness with the openness and unhinged personalities of the group.

“I get that it can be...exhausting” you sighed, propping your elbows up on the counter and pouting.

“Then why do you continue ?” Doyoung quizzed and you shrugged, “stress relief ?”

Doyoung chuckled at your words and pushed his spectacles up his bridge, “you guys are the ones stressing each other out,” Doyoung turned back to look at Yuta who was busy sketching and turned back to face you,

“All I’m saying is that maybe it’s time to look for a stress reliever that doesn’t result in anger the very next day, you guys need to move on.”

Move on.

Doyoung’s words swam in your mind hours after the short conversation had ended and you wondered if it was indeed time to move on. You looked up from your desk and to your surprise Yuta’s eyes were locked with yours as he twirled a lollipop in his mouth.

The issue was, as much as you hated him you couldn’t deny he was so goddamn hot. From the long hair to the edgy attire, physically he was your type. Personality on the other hand, it was like nails against a chalkboard.

Unbearable.

You kept your eyes locked with him until he slowly pulled the sweet out of his mouth, licked his lips and blew you a cheeky kiss from across the room.

“Moron” you mumbled and shook your head trying to ignore his devilish motives and get back to work.

Doyoung was right. You definitely needed to find someone to distract yourself from Yuta’s hold over you.

———————————————————————-

It was the night of the launch and everybody showed up with their own rides and  began mingling with former clients and partners. You arrived with Ten and Lucas who already decided to pre-game drinks just in case ‘there wasn’t enough at the party.’

“Hey please do us a favor and not hook up with Yuta tonight” Ten wrapped his arm around your shoulder as the two of you maneuvered through the groups of people. “Not planning on it” you replied in his ear, “and besides Doyoung already beat you to that pep talk.”

“Doyoung ?” Ten wrinkled his nose before ordering the two of you a mojito from the open bar.

“Yeah he said that I should move on, possibly find a new hookup” you shrugged, retrieving the drink and headed to a balcony that overlooked the first floor of the launch party. There were bodies of people everywhere, networking, checking out merchandise or just getting plain wasted.

“Seems like Lucas has already been cut off from the open bar” Ten pointed out, watching the tall man try to push his way back to the bar but the bouncer refused him to do so.

“Let me go help him out, I'll catch up later” Ten sighed and gave you a pat on your shoulder, “and yeah find a new hookup, if Yuta gets to sleep around so can you.”

You watched Ten disappear into the crowd and twirled the glass in your hand wishing what he had said was that easy.

There were no rules about hooking up with other people or just any reinforcements in general when it came to you and Yuta. But you we’re well aware of his loose sex life. There were many times where Yuta ended up going home with some random person if he wasn’t in the mood to hook up with you. But You on the other hand, never bothered these days because you were either too busy or whoever you met just ended up boring you to death.

“Y/n ?” You heard someone say from behind you and to your surprise it was a face you hadn’t seen in years.

“Jeno ? Oh my God” you quickly gave the blonde boy a quick hug, taken back by how much he had filled out since high school.

Jeno used to help you out from time to time during proms and fashion shows, lending out his strength to build anything from sculptures to installation art in the city.

“I was wondering when I was going to bump into you at one of these shows” his bright smile turned his eyes into crescents as he joined you at the balustrade. The Jeno you knew in high school was a lanky shy kinda guy but the Jeno you saw now was confident, mature and outright gorgeous.

“I’m quite surprised seeing you here actually” you chuckled shyly, “I didn’t know you’d pursue anything in this field to be honest.”

“Wow” Jeno mouthed and cutely grinned, “hmm that kinda hurt considering I’m the one who made the centerpiece of this entire launch”

Your eyes widened as you looked down at the structure of colored sharpies bound together to create a giant rubix cube in the middle of the party. “Holy shit that’s awesome my boss would absolutely love you” you gasped, knowing Taeyong absolutely loved installation art especially at a large scale like this.

“Oh who’s your boss ? I’m actually a free agent right now” Jeno replied and you quickly remembered the reason you were even at the launch in the first place. “Wait! We’re looking for recruits right now, let me just tell the others about it” you said excitedly, handing Jeno your drink and pulled up the group chat on your phone.

A few minutes later everyone confirmed the meeting place of a private room located on the second floor, quiet enough for a quick interview and decision. The best part of this job was everyone was so connected that there was no need to go through the process of a full portfolio look and a million interviews, all you needed was a trusted ally within the group to vouch for you and you were already one foot in.

“Ten and Yangyang took Lucas home after he tried to challenge the bartender to an arm wrestling match” Johnny entered the room and sipped his whiskey while Renjun and Sungchan followed close behind him. Taeyong and Doyoung stood in front of the room discussing something amongst themselves while you and Jeno took a seat on the burgundy couch.

Yuta entered shortly after, drink in hand and you noticed his eyes narrow in on Jeno who sat close to you. “Okay everyone who’s able to make it is here let’s get started” Taeyong clasped his hands together, “everybody this is Jeno Lee and a long time friend of y/n.”

“Not that long but yeah we did work together” Jeno chuckled and got to his feet, “well I’m an installation artist, I actually made the centerpiece in tonight’s launch.”

“Wow, it's amazing!” Renjun complimented and Sungchan agreed, giving Jeno a thumbs up, “yeah man that piece is brilliant.”

Jeno smiled from ear to ear as the meeting proceeded with everyone going through a few of Jenos works and what he could bring to the team. While your teammates concentrated on Jenos work all you could concentrate on was Jeno himself.

You wondered if Jeno knew how gorgeous he was in his effortless tank top and denim jeans combo. You hoped no one caught you staring but someone was well aware of your actions.

Yuta watched how you looked at the young guy, he wasn’t stupid, he knew when you found someone attractive and the way you were ogling Jeno right now, he didn’t like it at all.

The meeting ended and everyone welcomed Jeno to the collective. Johnny gave him a few pointers on which coffee to order from the cafe next to the office and Sungchan exchanged gamer tags with his new friend.

“I’ll see you guys on Monday” you waved as everyone exited the meeting and before you could make your way to catch up with Jeno and Sungchan you were being pulled back into the room.

“Your place or mine ?” Yuta mused and snaked an arm around your waist, looking down at you with dark eyes.

“Neither” you responded, “I’m gonna hang with Jeno and head home, you should find that little damsel to play with”

“Don’t be difficult y/n we're long overdue for our therapy session now” he groaned, pressing his lips to your ear and jaw. As much as he aroused you by just breathing you thought about what Doyoung had said, you needed to move on from this mess.

“Listen I think we need to just stop our sessions” you stepped away from him leaving Yuta slightly taken back from your actions, “let’s move on, be out of each other’s way and not make the group uncomfortable okay ?”

Yuta watched you press your lips together and finally make your exit, leaving him completely alone. You denied his advances for the first time since the two of you started sleeping together and something in him broke.

————————————————————————

Monday came around and the whole team buzzed about Jeno joining the team. Usually a new recruit would hang downstairs with the part time designers but because Taeyong trusted your judgement on Jeno, he was able to integrate with the team.

“Man that Jeno guy seems real chill” Yangyang hopped alongside Johnny and Yuta who were doing the morning coffee run. Yuta kept his composure despite knowing he wasn’t a huge fan of someone new joining the team and throwing off the dynamic. Hands in his pocket he ignored Yangyangs endless questions about the meeting, allowing Johnny to entertain the eager young boy.

“All I know is that having Jeno around means I don’t have to do all the carrying when Lucas bails on me” Johnny sipped his drink as they made their way back to their office. To their surprise Jeno had just arrived, looking like a lost puppy as he examined the names of the floors next to the secretary desk.

“Speak of the devil” Johnny threw his arm around Jeno, startling the boy and led him over to the elevator, “we’re at the top floor newbie, make sure to get an access card from Taeyong.”

“T-thanks” Jeno grinned and bowed politely to both Yuta and Yangyang before stepping into the elevator. The other guys barely bothered with Yuta’s reaction to Jeno because he rarely liked anyone enough to show any sign of enthusiasm. Jeno wasn’t going to change that.

The elevator opened to the top floor and Jeno awed at the chilled atmosphere you all had created here. From Ten’s thousands of plants around the room, Taeyongs fish, a pool table brought in by Lucas and gaming stations set up by Sungchan, it looked like paradise.

“This....is so cool oh my God” Jeno stepped in, his eyes wandering all over the place until it locked on you hanging over at the fish tank with Taeyong.

“Y/n!” Jeno jogged over and you greeted him with a wide smile and a tight hug, “Jeno you made it!” You gleamed. Jeno quickly shook Taeyong’s hand unsure of how formal of a boss he actually was.

“Whoa I feel like a principal” Taeyong giggled as he dropped a few fish flakes for his babies. “Wow, does everybody have their own cubicle ?” Jeno strolled around the room taking a peak at the vast versions of decor each cubicle adorned.

“Yeah” you responded, “but I don’t think yours is ready yet right Doyoung ?”

“That’s right,” Doyoung replied and folded his arms across his chest, “you don’t mind sharing for the week do you ?”

Jeno shrugged and looked over at you, “I was hoping to catch up with y/n anyway, I don’t mind sharing if it’s okay with you ?”

“It’s perfectly fine” you assured him and gestured over to your cubicle, “me casa is su casa.”

“I’m just gonna need some admin stuff sorted Jeno can you join me for a bit ?” Doyoung asked and Jeno nodded, giving you a quick hug before heading off to the administration offices with Doyoung. You watched the blonde guy exit and something just felt so much brighter in the office. You felt a sense of excitement of what’s to come now that Jeno was back in your life. But like all sunny days there always comes a thunderstorm and yours was staring you down like he was waiting to rain on your parade.

“What ?” You blinked, and Yuta shrugged as he peeked into your cubicle. “It’s a bit small isn’t it ? Don’t think two people can work in here” he raised his brow and looked over at you.

“It’s fine” you sighed and pushed past him, “it’s only for a week and he’s not a stranger to me, why do you care ?”

“I don’t” Yuta mumbled, dragging his feet back to his cubicle leaving you questioning his slightly odd behavior. Your mind quickly snapped out of it when Jeno had made his way back, that bright smile spread across his face and suddenly it felt like sunshine filled the room once more.

“I’m back!” He sang and pulled a chair opposite you, retrieving his laptop already looking like a regular in the office.

“Did Doyoung tell you about tonight ? Our little welcoming party over at Kleo’s Sky Bar ?” You asked, skimming through your emails for the day. “Oh, yeah he did, I mean you guys don’t have to do all of this” Jeno chuckled shyly, those pretty eyes distracting you for the third time that day.

“Nah we do it for everyone, and it’s better you know everyone drunk to avoid future surprises” you pointed over to Lucas who was coaching Yangyang through a trick shot at the pool table.  “Gotcha” Jeno nodded, as he watched one of the balls fly off the table and nearly knock Renjun in the back. It was chaos absolutely everyday in the office and you knew Jeno was going to love it here.

But even with Jeno in front of you, your new distraction, your new beginning, like Doyoung and Ten had said you needed, it was a habit at this point to look across the room, wondering what Yuta was up to. You watched him remove his cardigan, exposing his arms in those loose tank tops he always loved to wear as he concentrated on a sketch in front of him. Thankfully he was fully immersed in his work for once to take notice of your eyes on him. You continued observing him, watching him nod along to probably some alternative song blaring in his headphones as he sketched away on his iPad. He was so effortlessly attractive when he wasn’t aware of it.

You needed to snap out of this daydream.

“So are you seeing anyone these days ?”

“Hmm ?”

Jeno laughed as you finally realized that he’d been talking to you and you mentally cursed yourself for even being distracted by Yuta of all people.

“I’m sorry..Uhm no I’m not seeing anyone” you replied, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear and Jeno nodded cutely, “uh good...uhm not good that you’re alone but I was hoping you weren’t...God I’m still so bad at this”

You felt your cheeks heat up seeing Jeno fumble over his words and get nervous about asking you such a question. He was so adorable and something in you also wondered if he was like this in a relationship, or in the bedroom.

Was he dominant ? Was he passive ? Yuta was very dominant and you’d even rile him up to the point of him making you shut up with his actions.

“Y/n ?” Jeno waved his hand in front of your face and you shook your head, you couldn’t believe you did it again. What the hell was wrong with you ?

“Oh my God Jeno I'm so sorry...these emails are just a pain in the ass” you lied but thankfully Jeno took the bait and nodded, “it’s okay I’ll let you get back to work, I was going to go down to the cafe, do you want anything ?”

“Yeah a cafe latte would be great thank you” You felt guilty but it was still only two days since you decided to cut off Yuta so adjusting was going to take a bit of time.

Jeno had left for the cafe and you quickly dove straight into your work, hoping the time would just fly by. That was until you heard a knock and watched Yuta saunter into your cubicle and take a seat right in front of you. You watched him prop his elbows on the table and his piercing eyes narrowed down on you as if he were waiting for an answer.

“Why are you here ?” You questioned him, doing your best to divert your attention from his chiseled arms and exposed chest.

“I want an explanation,” Yuta said calmly, his voice deep and monotone.

“To what ?” You knew fully well what he was talking about but you were really  not in the mood to talk to him about this.  Yuta sighed and cocked his head to the side, clearly annoyed by your response. “Why the fuck are we calling it quits when we are nothing to each other ? Can’t we just hook up and ignore each other as usual ?” You sensed the annoyance in his voice. Denying him that night was indeed eating him up since you’ve never done it before.

“Yuta that’s the whole point” you rubbed your temples, “if we are nothing to each other then we shouldn’t be hooking up, it just ties us together for absolutely no reason.”

Yuta stayed quiet for a bit and eventually just nodded, “fine do whatever you want I guess.” You watched him walk out, not bothering to give you a second look and you wondered if the unsettling feeling you were experiencing in this moment was how he felt two days ago.

Nothing made sense.

————————————————————————

The evening arrived and everyone was in good spirits because you were all headed to one of your favourite spots in town. “Lucas you gotta do karaoke tonight” Sungchan threw his arm around the large brown haired man as they entered the bar. “Hmm give me a few rounds of drinks first” Lucas stuck out his tongue as he gestured to the waitress to get the gang the usual table.

Thankfully tonight the bar was fairly empty which meant that the gang could really loosen up without the prying eyes of strangers wishing you’d all just leave.

“Wow this place is pretty cool” Jeno gleamed, allowing you to enter the booth first like a true gentleman before scooting right in next to you. Yuta opted for the seat at the very end as usual, so he could sneak off to smoke without bothering any of friends every couple of minutes. The position also gave him a clear view of you and Jeno who were snuggled up in the corner already lost in your own private conversation.

“Beer ?” Johnny nudged Yuta, snapping him out of his fixation. Yuta nodded and slumped back in his seat trying his best to focus on whatever Renjun and Yangyang were talking about. It’s not like him to feel this way. Usually by now he’d be seated next to you, annoying the shit out of you until he saw those pretty eyes glare at him with rage. Then after you’d have a few drinks you’d be leaning on his shoulder, playing with his rings until he offered to take you home, and then-

“To Jeno!” Lucas yelled, lifting up a shot glass of God knows what and rallied everyone to join in on his toast.

“To Jeno” you grinned leaning into Jeno’s side and clinked glasses with him. Jeno felt warm, comforting, he made it so easy for you to just enjoy having him around rather than it being a task. That’s what a healthy relationship was like wasn’t it ?

“Jeno Im glad and also sorry that you have to join the most annoying group of people ever” Doyoung half smiled and Taeyong waved his hand, “we’re not that annoying Jeno I promise” the pink haired boy reassured him despite Renjun and Ten agreeing with Doyoung’s words. Jeno just laughed it off and turned to you with a bright smile as he draped his arm over your shoulder,

“Kinda feels like fate that I bumped into you huh?”

You know he may have been joking but Jeno was really unaware that his presence really was the antidote to getting rid of the Yuta situation. The team loved him, he was someone you knew and could trust, it was all right there for you, written on paper. Nothing could possibly go wrong… right ?  

“Fourth round is on me” Taeyong held up his card to the waitress despite his tired eyes were quite evident. Everyone was well over tipsy and Lucas had already entertained the bar with his beautiful rendition of “Starboy” by The Weeknd and Johnny stepped in as his air guitar player in the back.

“Gotta go to the bathroom!” You whined while Jeno helped you to your feet as you pushed your way past a sleeping Renjun and a spaced out Sungchan. You could tell tonight was going to take a toll on everyone tomorrow morning.

You quickly exited to the back where the bathrooms were located. You walked down the dim hallway, mentally thanking yourself for not overdoing it with the alcohol as each step became darker and darker.

“Watch your step” someone said and you turned around to see Yuta leaning over a railing with a cigarette sticking out of his mouth.

“Yeah” you managed to say and entered the bathroom before he could say anything else. The lack of alcohol didn’t stop the intrusive thoughts of Yuta filling your mind as you stopped to wash your hands. All you could think about was if he was going to be there when you walked back. Was he going to say anything ? Was he going to do anything ?

Were you going to do anything ?

You stepped outside, head a little more muddled than when you walked in and your first question was answered, Yuta was still there leaning up against the wall looking ahead of him. You slowly began your journey back, keeping your head down to avoid any type of confrontation with him.

“Y/n….” He mumbled, reaching out until he had a grip on your wrist causing your eyes to look up at him. Why did he look so goddamn breathtaking right now, with his stupid black hair all messy and his eyes luring you in like a lion to it’s prey.

“W-what ?” You replied, unsure why you still allowed him to hold you or even have the nerve to stop you from getting back to the rest of your friends. Yuta pushed himself off the wall and turned your body so you were now pressed against the concrete and his body was pressed against you. Your breathing hitched as he ran his fingers lightly down your arms. His eyes concentrated on his movements while yours focused on his face, watching him bite down on his lip as he took in the position the two of you were now in.

“You remember a few weeks back and I had you up against this wall moaning my name ?” His voice was so low that it aroused you, making you mentally curse yourself for the lewd thoughts.

“Yuta…” you sighed but there was a hint of desperation in your voice surprising yourself but not really phasing Yuta at all.

“Yeah just like that” he hummed before pressing his lips to your jaw, and peppered kisses all the way down to your neck. You felt yourself willingly giving him access, melting into every kiss he placed on your warm skin. Yuta’s hands grabbed your waist and pinned you against the wall while your hands instinctively wrapped around his neck and into the soft tufts of his hair.

“Yuta…we shouldn’t…I shouldn’t” you breathed, feeling yourself pulling him closer instead of pushing him away.

“Tell me no and I’ll stop y/n '' Yuta said into your ear to which you responded by pulling him by his belt buckle and pushed yourself up to capture his lips. Yuta’s dominance finally showed when he slipped his leg in between yours, giving you the chance to gain a bit of friction your core so desperately desired at this point. You felt Yuta’s smirk in your kiss when you began grinding down on his thigh showing him the obedient whore you were for him. Nothing Yuta loved more was for you to beg for him, beg for his touch, need him. That was until the two of you heard footsteps and to your dismay it was the last person you’d ever want to see you trapped against a wall with the man you hated.

It was Lee Jeno.

“I’m sorry I - I’m sorry I’ll leave you guys alone-“ Jeno stumbled, he felt his cheeks heat up and made his quick exit out of the hallway.

“Jeno!” You called, pushing Yuta off and tried to neaten yourself. Yuta felt a heated sensation overcoming his body the moment he saw the look in your eye when you saw Jeno and the way you pushed him off like he was a piece of trash. Like he was nothing.

“You know maybe if you’d stop pretending like you don’t wanna fuck me then we can go back to normal” Yuta spat, not caring about the unfortunate situation that had just unfolded.

You turned around to face him and the next words that came out of your mouth you weren’t sure if you were going to regret it or not.

“You’re right Yuta that’s all you are to me and that’s all you ever will be, a good fuck for about an hour and that’s it. Other than that there’s no use for you. At all.”

You stormed away before Yuta could respond, but by now you would have heard his curses echoing throughout the hallway, the whole damn bar would’ve heard it. But there was nothing.

Absolute silence.

———————————————————————

It had been two weeks since the interaction with Yuta at the bar and what you had to him still resonated with you, wanting so badly to apologize. But each time you saw him at the office he paid you little to no attention, going on about his day peacefully and you didn’t want to interrupt that.

Jeno thankfully understood the situation and was more than willing to be the rebound guy, his only rule being that besides work related matters you needed to cut off communication with Yuta altogether.

‘It was the only way you’d get full closure and my mind would be at peace’ Jeno had said after you gave him the rundown of everything that had happened.

Jeno and you agreed to just casually date, nothing official and nothing too serious. You guys went on movie dates, cafe dates and kept the physical aspect to a minimum. It was simple. Laidback. A very normal form of dating.

“Y/n I’m gonna need you on a photo shoot set in a few hours” Taeyong peeped his head into your cubicle and you looked up at him with a frown, “I thought we were working on that rappers record party ?”

“Yeah that rapper wants you, Yangyang and Yuta to tag up the wall for a video segment of his photo shoot” Taeyong replied with a shrug and left you bewildered.

Yuta. From all the damn people he could’ve chosen you had to work beside the person who practically called trash in your last meeting.

Great.

You wrapped up the last of your work and headed downstairs to the parking lot where an Uber was waiting for you. Thankfully Yangyang  could talk anyone’s head off because just sitting next to Yuta during the car ride felt tense. Normally he’d be pushing you into Yangyang or commenting on how his tattoos were better than yours. But all he did was look out of the window watching as the buildings moved past, keeping his airpods in to avoid any type of communication with anyone.

“You guys are finally here! Good Mark Lee is waiting for you at the shoot location” a woman dressed in all black led you into what looked like a gymnasium turned into a giant canvas.

“Are we going to paint all of this ? Man this is going to take forever” Yangyang gasped as the three of you walked through cans of paint, staff members and models.

“You guys are the designers from black space who did that painting over at Jynx Club ?” A young guy approached who you quickly realized was the new hot rapper around town, Mark Lee.

“Uh yeah, that’s us” you chuckled shyly and looked around, “are we really doing up the entire room ?”

“Oh hell nah just the backdrop behind me” Mark waved his hand, “we just laid everything out for a few cgi effects but you guys, do ya thing over there!” You watched the hyped boy get called over by the director leaving the three of you faced with a gigantic piece of white board and no idea.

“Since you guys are uncultured and probably don’t listen to Mark Lee, let me be in charge of this piece” Yangyang pulled out his iPad and began scrolling through some of his sketches. “Be my guest” Yuta shrugged, completely disinterested in the topic and most likely just wanted to get done and go home.

Yangyang finally settled on something that utilized all three of your styles and you all put  on your white overalls, immediately getting to work.

The vibe of the whole job was quite chilled and because of the fumes most of the staff had left the gymnasium leaving the three of you to work in peace. “God I need to pee so bad,” Yangyang groaned as he dangled from a ladder, an aerosol can in hand and a nearly completed section in his corner.

“Dude take a break we’re way behind you anyway” you walked over to steady the ladder as Yangyang finally made his way down. “Thanks guys, be back in 20” he shot you a thumbs up and disappeared into the tunnel leading to the gym lockers.

The tension returned but it was somehow worse than ever before. Even though Yuta was minding his own business for the first time while retrieving a paintbrush he looked at you. There was no unsettling glare or the feeling that he was pissed off at you, he just looked at you like he’d look at anyone else.

And somehow that felt even worse.

“Yuta…do you mind if we talk for a bit” you cleared your throat and he looked over at you and removed one of his airpods signaling to you that he was listening.

“Okay Uhm well I want to apologize for what I said that night” you bit down on your lip, “I didn’t mean it, and it was selfish of me to even think of you like that after coming onto you in the first place.”

Yuta blinked and eventually just nodded, “apology accepted, and I can see that you like Jeno so I’m trying to stay out of the way” he shrugged and continued painting as if this conversation wasn’t that deep to begin with.

“Are you not going to get me back? Are you sure you’re Yuta ?” You raised a brow and Yuta’s manic laugh echoed throughout the gymnasium, “you want me to be mean to you ? Wow y/n that’s truly some kink you got there”

“Ugh you know what I mean” you shoved him playfully, unaware that the brush you were wearing was still wet and now Yuta’s jaw adorned a light shade of orange.

“Oh shit I’m sorry” you quickly said but Yuta had already responded by swiping his red painted fingertips across your cheek and smirked, “now we’re even.”

“Hey mine is way worse than yours!” You grumbled and flicked more paint at Yuta which then enabled a paint war between the two of you. Yuta giggled so much that for a second you forgot how silent he actually had been the past two weeks. He was back to his usual self and so were you, playfully making a mess with him until Yangyang emerged from the tunnel and yelled,  “What are you morons doing ?!”

You and Yuta stood still in the middle of the room both covered head to toe in paint but the scene was way too comical to hold in your laughter any longer.

“Yangyang we’re so sorry but look, it gave the canvas a little more color” you gestured to it and you weren’t lying, it actually did look a lot better than before.

“Fine you two can go on break, I'll finish up so we’re not sitting around until midnight” Yangyang huffed and returned to his masterpiece. “Is there a place to clean up here ?” Yuta asked and the woman from earlier on walked in and pointed to the tunnel located in the back of the gym, “there are bathrooms and showers back there, our crew provided fresh towels as well so go ahead” she smiled and you silently thanked her before heading to the tunnel with Yuta.

“God I have paint everywhere” you whined as you took a look at yourself in the mirror. Yuta chuckled as he began inspecting himself, looking at the peculiar fingerprints all over his face and neck. “This shit better not stain my skin” he grumbled as he picked away a piece of paint from a crevice in his ear.  “Tell me about it” you responded and began removing the overalls. All you could think of was jumping into that shower stall and allowing the hot water to melt away all the grime and paint when you noticed Yuta was already down to his boxers.

Your gasp made Yuta snicker to himself as he walked around the bathroom looking for the ideal stall to take his shower in.

“Nothing you haven’t seen before” you heard him say before hopping into one of the stalls and drawing the curtain. Despite his words being correct it still made your cheeks heat up with embarrassment. You guys were comfortable like this before, not now, not with Jeno in your life.

You shook your head and entered a stall opposite Yuta and a few rows down, just so you weren’t close to him but not far enough that made you feel alone.

“Fuck how is their paint on my ass ? That’s impossible!” Yuta groaned and you couldn’t help but laugh, “TMI, Yuta” you replied and Yuta scoffed, “says the person who’s responsible for this.” The banter ended and again all you heard was the sound of both showers hitting your bodies simultaneously, the air filled with steam and more unusual tension.

“Y/n ?”

“Yeah?”

Yuta was silent for a while and then you heard his water turn off. “Do you uhm mind checking if I got all the paint off my back ? I’ll uhm put my boxers on” he mumbled and you felt your heartbeat speed up.

First of all the Yuta you knew would’ve just walked over butt ass naked and pulled your curtain aside not caring at all. The way he acted now was out of character, but somewhat familiar.

“Yuta I’m still in the shower and naked” you chewed on the inside of your cheek while you waited in silence.

“I’ll close my eyes, I just don’t want this shit to dry up when we get back to work later” he replied and you heard his light footsteps coming toward you. Quickly moving your hair back and holding the curtain against your body, you slowly peeled back the material to reveal Yuta with his back facing you and with his eyes closed, like he said.

You peered down at his golden skin, taking in his broad shoulders and tiny waist as you inspected for any more signs of acrylic paint.

“Uhm yeah you have a little on your shoulder blade and lower back”

“Do…you mind…”

You bit down on your lip knowing this was already crossing the line. But you had just made up and it was your fault that he had paint on his back in the first place. It was innocent. That’s what you had to keep telling yourself while staring at one of the sexiest people you had ever met.

You began rubbing away pieces of the paint, ignoring Yuta’s whines when you used too much pressure. Your hands traced down to his lower back, settling in the dip as you tried to remove a very stubborn piece of paint.

“Ugh this one is not coming off” you scratched at it and to your surprise Yuta had let out a moan instead of the usual wincing.

“I don’t mean to kink shame but-“

Yuta spun around and glared at you, challenging you to finish your sentence but you were more concerned at the fact that the only thing protecting your nude body from Yuta right now was a thin piece of fabric.

“Yuta!” You scolded and he rolled his eyes, “oh please y/n I’ve seen it all, now can you please help me with the paint ?”

You watched wide eyed as Yuta stepped into the shower going back on his word to close his eyes and face the wall. You couldn’t believe what was happening right now but the quicker you removed the paint the quicker he’d be out of here.

“Aren’t your boxers…going to get wet ?” You watched him step closer to water already allowing his hair to soak up the warm stream. “Well you’re not gonna let me take them off with you in here and I’ll probably just go commando when we get back to the office” Yuta shrugged and you should’ve known that was one of his options since he has done it in the past.

You sighed and let go of the curtain allowing your naked body to be free and go back to work on his paint splatter. Yuta was calm and collected throughout the process, you silently commended him on his restraint, that was until he decided to turn around and look at you.

“Y-Yuta you promised” your voice was small but you still didn’t do much to cover up your body. Yuta leaned against the cold ceramic wall as he stared at you, his stare was dark, inviting you in like that night at the bar.

“I’m not going to do anything y/n unless you want me to” he reassured you, still maintaining a distance and doing absolutely nothing to persuade you. But did you need persuasion when all he needed to do was be in the same room as you?

The two of you stared in each other’s eyes for a few minutes and you had no idea who actually made the first move but there you were in the center of the shower stall, in a random gymnasium, kissing Yuta Nakamoto.

Yuta’s bare body was pressed against yours as the two of you fought for dominance in the kiss. You placed your hands on his chest to which he responded by wrapping his arms around your waist, pulling you closer until his hardened member twitched against your stomach. There were no words, just actions. Each kiss only made you more desperate for him, not feeling this type of arousal since that night at the bar. He was the only person who could turn you on to the point that every image of Jeno was erased from your mind.

You tugged down his boxers with urgency and Yuta helped you quicken the process, quickly kicking away the piece of clothing and had you pushed up against the wall with your legs wrapped around his waist. Yuta pulled away from your lips with a sultry bite on your bottom lip and lined up his member with your core. He kept his eyes on you the entire time from the moment he slipped into your wetness to the harsh thrusts he was now giving to you against the coldness of the wall. You felt like you were complete, filled with the right amount of passion and ecstasy. God you hated to admit it but nobody could fuck you the way Yuta did. Absolutely no one.

Yuta slowed down his thrusts and you brought your feet back to the ground, gesturing for him to take a seat on the floor and got on top of his member once more. Yuta threw his head back as you rode him relentlessly, grabbing onto your ass as he tried to meet your rhythm. The sight of him partially under the water and his swollen lips was delicious, you couldn’t ask for a better view right now. Yuta on the hand was also enjoying having you bounce on his length, quickly realizing that the women he had bedded during his time without you were not worth it. Not a single one of them made him feel the way you did. Even the times you guys were fucking around he’d sleep with other women because he didn’t want to admit that you are his best. You will always be his best.

“G-gonna cum” you panted and Yuta quickly rubbed circles on your clit to help you reach your orgasm. He watched your body spasm and you threw your head back with a soft moan. The sight alone made him come undone straight after you, filling you up completely.

You slowly got to your feet with the help of Yuta offering his hand and managed to finally catch your breath.

What the fuck did you just do ?

“Before you say this was a mistake and you hate me, hear me out” Yuta spoke up, “I need to know something”

You bit down on your lip. “Yeah?”

“Do you like me ?”

“What ?” You quietly questioned and Yuta sighed, rubbing his temples, “do you like me y/n ? actually like me ? Or is it you just like fucking me ?”

“I don’t know Yuta you know that I’m seeing Je-“you began explaining before Yuta quickly cut you off. “Don’t say his name, listen I know you like fucking me because that’s what happened right now despite whatever feelings you have for…Jen..him.”

“So what am I supposed to do ?” You asked, still unsure of how you were even going to face Jeno back at the office after this.

“Use me,” Yuta deadpanned, “keep me as your dirty little secret and I won’t tell a soul. I just don’t want this to end. I’m fucking addicted to this, and clearly you’re in need of me just as much as I need you.”

Yuta took a step forward and cupped your cheek with the palm of his hand. “I just crave you all goddamn day and nothing is fulfilling that need until right now.”

You knew exactly what he was talking about but you couldn’t bring yourself to share how much you ached for him. Late nights when you were alone you even pleased yourself with memories of him. You were unsure if it was lust at this point or you actually missed being around him. Despite every fight and argument the two of you had, there was something always drawing you in.

“First of all I don’t hate you” you sighed and he chuckled dryly before you continued, “I don’t know if this is a good idea but I’m only agreeing because Jeno and I aren’t serious yet and if we are-“

“I’ll back off I promise” Yuta quickly added and you nodded, “he can’t know about this, nobody can.”

“You have my word” Yuta pressed his lips together and for the first time he looked absolutely serious. Something in you made you trust that he wouldn’t fuck this up, because that would mean the one thing he wanted most right now would fall through.

You just hoped that this little need the two of you had for each other wasn’t turning into an…obsession.

————————————————————————-

“You guys are finally back” Ten stretched his arms above his head as you, Yangyang and Yuta returned back to the office after quite an eventful afternoon.

“Wanna see pics ? It turned out great!” Yangyang grinned quickly, running over to the older guys, showing off his artwork. Jeno was over at the game area with Sungchan completely invested in beating his friend in a round of Call Of Duty.

“Hey you” you sunk into the beanbag next to Jeno who shot you a quick glance before concentrating on his next move, “your hairs wet, why ?”

“Showered after the painting session” you answered diligently hoping there were no follow up questions. Thankfully he was way too invested in his video game to care much, you really weren't in the mood for an interrogation after half a day with Yuta.

Jeno asked a lot of questions when he felt insecure about something. Even though time had been short with him, it still somehow felt like a 2 year relationship. For a young guy Jeno was pretty old fashioned, he made you pick all the date places and never bothered to make the first move physically until you hinted to him that it was okay.

He was so different to what you were used to and you were afraid that if you didn’t speed things up with him this little secret with Yuta would turn into a reality.

“Hey y/n can you help me with lunch ?” Doyoung called from the makeshift kitchen area a few feet away and you silently thanked him for distracting you from your thoughts.

“Hey Doyoung” you smiled as you began opening containers from the Chinese delivery you guys frequented. “Just wanted to check in with you” Doyoung sweetly said as he grabbed a few utensils, “you and Jeno huh ? Was that part of my advice ?”

You pressed your lips together and nodded. “Yeah I guess so, it also helps that I’ve known him for a while now and he did actually have a thing for me in high school” Doyoung cocked his head at your words and leaned in, “and you liked him back or you’re seeing something in him now that you didn’t see before ?”

“U-uhm I think he’s hot” you chewed on your lip and Doyoung chuckled softly, “you know not everything is about looks or…hooking up, do you enjoy his time ? His interests ? His company ?”

You turned back to where Jeno was still playing his video games and you did feel a little confused as to what you guys actually did have in common. “I mean…” you began, crossing your arms across your chest, “we’ve only been seeing each other romantically for two weeks I think it’s too soon to tell.”

Doyoung combed back his hair and instead of bringing forth his insight in order to make you see things clearer he just nodded.

“You’re probably right, well I wish you guys all the best, it’s better than being with someone who doesn’t care emotionally right ?”

You slowly nodded and with that Doyoung began taking the food to the dining area leaving you with more confusing thoughts than you had before.

Lunch and the rest of the evening went on smoothly. Yuta stayed out of your way and there was absolutely no sign that the two of you we’re together that day. It was easier to fake seeing Yuta since the group knew the two of you would’ve been bickering straight after hooking up. It was the perfect illusion.

“Mark Lee’s party is at 9pm tomorrow night you guys, don’t forget” Taeyong looked around the room until he heard a confirmation from every single mouth.

“9pm ? Shit would it be okay if I only stuck around for an hour ?” Jeno sighed and looked over at Taeyong, “my brothers in town and I promised I'd get him from the airport at 10:30.”

“Well you’d have to show one of the guys here how to turn the installation on” Doyoung’s worried look matched Taeyong.

“I’ll be there to turn it on I’ll just need to leave straight after” Jeno assured them and squeezed your hand under the table, “it’s all really sudden but you’ll be okay right ?”

“I’ll be fine, I’m probably going to head home after the music video airing anyway” you smiled at him and he placed a soft kiss on your forehead earning a whistle from Lucas.

Yuta awkwardly shuffled at the sudden PDA and he hoped no one at the table noticed but it caught the attention of none other than Johnny Suh who narrowed his eyes at his coffee run mate.

The evening had wrapped up and everyone had already headed home except for Yuta and Johnny who were adamant on finishing a photography project for a band they were working with.

“Trouble in paradise ?” Johnny hummed as he edited an image on his laptop. Yuta, who was busy sorting out the Polaroids, turned to face his large best friend with a lost expression.

“Huh?” He raised a brow to which Johnny shook his head still staring at his screen.

“I can’t believe this, after all these fucking hellish months now you realize you like her?”

Yuta leaned in on the desk. “What the heck are you on about Johnny ?”

“Y/n” Johnny sighed and your name made Yuta’s heart race a bit, hoping Johnny hadn’t found out about the shower incident. God you’d hate him forever if anyone found out.

“Listen Johnny we-“

“You like her! After all those months of fighting I knew you were secretly in love and now” Johnny threw his hands in the air, “now that Jeno has entered the arena you have ruined your chances. Way to go buddy.”

“Wait what ?! I’m not in love with y/n!” Yuta scoffed. Saying that sentence out loud felt like a lie even though he couldn’t fully convince himself.  Was he in love ? Was Johnny mistaking love for just lust ?

That’s all it was and ever was right ?

You enjoyed fucking around with him and he was okay with it. That’s what he wanted too. Even if you didn’t answer his question of whether you liked him or not, it was okay. Whatever you wanted was okay as long he got to be with you.

“I’m not in love with y/n.”

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You and Jeno arrived at the party with Yangyang and Sungchan all helping carry equipment for Jeno’s installation. The piece was a pixel art board that formed Mark Lee’s latest EP cover, and once plugged in it gave it an animated effect, basically bringing the EP cover to life. You marvelled at the hard work Jeno had put in, it was just a shame that he wasn't sticking around to receive praise from everyone who attended.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay here ? I know how much you hate these parties” Jeno pressed his lips together as he brought you into a tight hug. You hummed and looked up at him smiling, “Only been dragged to one of these parties a million times, another round won't hurt.” Jeno responded by pressing his lips to your forehead before joining Sungchan in setting up the installation. You always wondered why Jeno opted for your forehead instead of your lips most of the time despite already having your first real kiss. You understood he wasn't big on PDA, but the only time you ever got to kiss him was at your apartment door when a date had ended or when you sneaked in a kiss at the cinema. As much as you liked his chivalry, God at times you just wished he took initiative and bent you over your kitchen counter and had his way with you. It was kinda humorous how Jeno was the ideal type of any women out there but for you, you needed an unhinged, sex-crazed maniac to match your energy.

You needed Yu-

“It looks really good Jeno.” Your breathing hitched when you heard Yuta’s voice from behind you. You turned around but to your surprise he wasn't alone. Yuta was accompanied by a familiar face, Mei, a part-time designer from a few floors down. The way she held onto his arm made something stir inside of you. Your cheeks burned up and you dare say it for the first time you felt...jealous.

You were used to seeing Yuta with many different girls but it was always some nobody that he never bothered to introduce to the group. He always made sure none of them integrated with his work life but Mei, Mei was the first person you actually knew.

“y/n its been a while, Oh my God you look great” she said sweetly and you returned a friendly smile despite your awkwardness. Yuta gave you a quick glance not really paying you any mind as he kept a steady hand on Mei’s lower back, the two of them practically looking like a couple. It made you feel uneasy. After all he had said to you that afternoon in the shower, It seemed like he didn't mean it.

“It’s perfect Jeno you really outdid yourself” Taeyong applauded as the rest of the team finally arrived, all congratulating Jeno on his first big project under Blank Space. Jeno shyly thanked everyone and checked his watch, sighing that it was already time for him to depart.

“You're going now ?” You walked over to wrap your arms around his waist. You didn't care much before about Jeno leaving early, before Yuta decided to bring a date to the party which meant you would definitely be on your own. Jeno pouted and stroked your head, “yeah, we're still on for Sunday though right ?” and you replied with a nod before sinking into one of his very warm hugs. You had no idea why, but the need to ease your jealousy and get back at Yuta was so strong that you ended up pulling out of the hug and kissed Jeno in front of everyone. Thankfully Jeno didn't shy away and maybe the guilt of leaving you made him return the kiss, wrapping his arms around your waist, pulling you against your body.

“Get a room you guys” Ten joked when the two of you finally pulled away, and Jeno chuckled shyly before leaning into your ear, “let’s do that more often” he cheekily smiled and pecked your lips once more before making his way to the exit. Johnny watched as Yuta still looked visibly uncomfortable, more so now than before. But Johnny also knew how damn stubborn Yuta was and watched him throw his arm around Mei, departing from the group most likely for the rest of the night.

It was late into the night and Yuta was already way too many shots down to call himself sober. Mei was talking but he was not listening. Mei was a nice girl who had made it known to him that she liked him for a while now, but unfortunately for her she was not you. All Yuta wanted was you and again he cursed himself for being so fucking hooked. He wanted to make you jealous but after he saw you kiss Jeno it just came back to him ten thousand times harder. He came to terms with his addiction now in his drunken state he was scanning the crowd for a glimpse of the only person he cared about.

You.

“Hey I'm going to leave now...do you want to come with ?” Mei nervously bit down on her lip hoping the man she's been pining for months will finally take notice of her.

“Nah im good, I’m probably going to wait until my friends leave” Yuta replied coldly, his eyes still scanning the crowd as he took another sip from his jack daniels and coca-cola concoction. Mei nodded, disappointed that her night had not gone as planned and left silently, leaving her date to finally gain his freedom.

Yuta scanned the crowd for the tenth time until he did a double take at a figure in the back corner, dancing on their own with no care in the world. Downing the rest of his drink Yuta kept his eyes focused on you despite the alcohol blurring his vision and his body feeling heavy, he had to get to you.

You were in the same state as him, most likely worse since Lucas challenged you to a drink off. You had no clue when you separated from the rest of the group so you stuck a little corner hoping to sober up before heading home. As you swayed along to the music you felt someone wrap their hands around your waist and the familiar scent of that Tom Ford perfume made you realize who it was.

“Yuta…” you groaned, pulling his hands away from your body, still remembering how awful he made you feel a few hours earlier. God were you the rebound chick now ? The thought alone was sickening.

Yuta, still blissfully unaware that you were mad at him, still pushed his body against yours until your back was pressed against the wall and you had no choice but to look up at him. You watched him move his face down in order to capture your lips, but you quickly evaded it with a turn of your head. Yuta scoffed and sufficed for your neck, giving you soft wet kisses all the way down to your collarbones until you pushed him off yet again.

“What the fuck ?” He growled in your ear, “I thought we had a deal.” You rolled your eyes at him, there was the side of Yuta you hated the most. You wondered how long it would be until he factory reseted back to an asshole.

“I thought I was first choice” you snapped at him, “all your talk about no one can satisfy you like I can, use me y/n, I only want you” you mimicked his voice and flipped him off with your finger. Yuta knew you were jealous but it was kind of ironic given the situation. You were the one in a relationship, not him. “Oh so I'm supposed to see you suck face with Jeno but I can't have any fun y/n ?” Yuta had you back against the wall, this time his hand was locked on your jaw with his lips against your ear.

“Maybe I should've fucked Mei” Yuta’s voice was dark, you felt him smirk against your ear when his words clearly affected you, “Maybe if I fucked her she would've been so good that i would forget all about you y/n.” Your eyes darted to him and he cocked his head, challenging you, waiting to see how much you could take before you caved. Normally you’d be the one getting Yuta riled up like this. It was common knowledge that Yuta was a very jealous person and just mentioning another man sexually he would lose his mind. Once you were craving his attention and casually mentioned to him that if Doyoung was interested you’d let him screw you on his office desk, and Yuta responded by fucking you senseless in the supply closet until the only name that escaped your lips was his.

But now the tables were turned and you didn't want to hear about Mei. You didn't want to picture her next to Yuta let alone in bed with him. It was selfish on your part considering Jeno, but you wanted Yuta all to yourself.

“Shut up” you narrowed your eyes at him and grabbed a fist full of his shirt and brought him closer. Yuta traced his thumb over your lips and smiled, already knowing he won this round.

“Tell me why I cant fuck her right now y/n, tell me” he coaxed, and you responded by pulling him into a sensual kiss, your tongue slipping into his mouth and your hand palming his member until you heard him groan in your ear,

You pulled away from the kiss and pressed your swollen lips to his ear, “Because...you're mine.” Yuta licked his own lips at your words and grabbed at your ass,

“Show me I'm yours, baby.”

You had no idea when and how the both of you got to Yuta’s apartment in one piece but the moment he had his foot in the door, Yuta was tugging your dress over your head. “Fuck why do you always wear the most  complicated things” Yuta whined which you found cute even though you would never let him know that you were well aware of his adorable side. Sighing from victory, Yuta finally got your dress off and pulled you into his familiar bedroom, which you honestly missed so fucking much.

Taking in the familiar scent of his perfume and his slightly messy room, with posters on the walls, and a rack of band shirts - it was his little heaven and you loved it.

You walked over to lie on his bed, sinking into the soft fabric of the bed sheets as a familiar rock song began playing from Yuta’s stereo. You watched him as he discarded his shirt and ripped jeans, showing off his chest tattoos and belly ring, just the sight of him was already making you wet. Yuta was none the better, groaning as his boner pushed against the fabric of his underwear as his eyes took in your body, sexily laid out for him like you used to be.

“Fuck…” his lips parted as he watched you spread your legs, waiting for him obediently. Yuta crawled up onto the bed and nestled in between your thighs, his mischievous eyes looking up at yours before he began peeling away the thin piece of fabric revealing your core.

“You're…so…wet baby” he said in a low voice and leaned in to give your heat a soft kiss. The instant contact made your body shiver, reaching down to play with his dark curls. “Yuta…please” you whined as he continued his light kisses, not giving you the pressure you desired. Yuta looked up with an innocent face and cocked his head, “Why should I do it ?” His fingers traced circles on your hips and abdomen, waiting for an answer.

“Because…you’re mine Yuta, I want you…all to myself…I want to please me, only me” you threw your head back. Not having sex for over a month was really getting to you and the frustration had you saying just about anything. Yuta watched you squirm and after hearing those words he figured it was a good enough reward for his dear fuck-buddy. Yuta kissed your core once more but this time his tongue darted out every once in a while, awarding you with a better sensation. You moaned inaudible words as he began eating you out like a pro, lapping away like his life depended on it before inserting two fingers inside you.

“Yuta wait I’m gonna-“ you grabbed onto his hair, feeling your orgasm come on way too early for your liking as his fingers moved rapidly and his tongue licked away at your clit. Yuta ignored your plea knowing this was only the first of many and honestly he was glad that he was still the only man giving you orgasms for the past couple of months.

Yuta pulled away, a devilish smirk spread across his face as he watched you cum all over his fingers and just as your vision was in focus you had the pleasure of seeing him lick his fingers clean as if he just had the most amazing meal ever,

“Mmmm tasty” he bit down on his lip and winked at you. God he was so damn cocky, and it didn’t take you long to recover from that orgasm to make room for another. You got to your knees and sat back, your face now level with Yuta’s clothed member.

Yuta groaned as you palmed him, his length already twitching against your touch. He wouldn’t admit it to anyone but since the night you had called it off with him, his desire had subsided and he wondered if you were the sole reason for his high sex drive. You placed your lips against his belly ring, giving it a kiss before pulling down his boxers and allowing his member to spring free. Yuta cursed as your tongue swiped across the tip and you looked up at him with those large eyes, and Yuta knew exactly what you were waiting for. Positioning your mouth over his tip, you waited until Yuta grabbed a fistful of your hair and guided you down on his length, groaning loudly as you took in all of him.

Yuta’s hips began to meet your rhythm and the grip on your hair tightened, the sudden roughness made you shiver with excitement. You and Yuta always liked it rough, since it took out your anger on each other and any type of nurturing or romance would throw off the dynamic.  

Yuta threw his head back as he released, keeping you on him until you swallowed every bit. He muttered curse words as he pulled out and watched you lick your lips, swiping the corner of your mouth with your thumb and sucked it off.

“Yum” you mimicked his words from earlier with a smirk essentially driving Yuta crazy with lust. You giggled as he pushed you onto the bed and attacked you with bites and kisses, leading from your neck down to the valley of your breasts. “How long until you get hard again?” You sighed playfully but winced when Yuta’s teeth sunk into your skin, punishing you for your words.

“Cocky aren’t we ?” He moved back up to your lips and kissed you passionately. Just as you began melting into the kiss, Yuta pulled away and jumped off his bed heading to his closet.

“What are you doing ?” You groaned as you watched him sift through the mess of his closet until he finally retrieved a familiar box. “Yuta you’re literally hard right now, come on let’s just fuck already” you whined, knowing that when Yuta brought out that box it was his way of getting rid of your bratty attitude.

“If you wanna be impatient two can play at that game” he grinned and hopped onto the bed, pulling out his favorite pair of hair cuffs and with ease, cuffed you to his headboard. You watched him look through his box of toys, rubbing your thighs together excited about what his choice will be.

Yuta grabbed something out of the box and discarded the rest onto the floor, making his way back up to your body and pressed his lips against your ear, “you remember the safe word baby ?” Yuta pecked you when you nodded and you watched him insert a mini vibrator in your core and roll off the bed with the remote in his hand.

“I wasn’t even that mean to you” you grumbled, still getting used to the device inserted in you. Yuta shrugged and turned the device on, keeping it on a low setting as he watched you stir in his bed.

“I’m not punishing you for that actually, I’m punishing you for something else you did” he said calmly, pacing around the room butt ass naked.  You frowned and thought back to the party when he had found you, what did you say to him ?

“I’m sorry I pushed you…away” you pouted but a moan escaped your lips when you felt the setting turn higher and you watched Yuta shake his head, “nope that’s not it.” You groaned and threw your head back, unable to even think what the hell he could be on about. Yuta would get mad at every little thing so it honestly could’ve been anything.

“Can’t I have a hint or something ?” You pleaded and Yuta raised his eyebrow and eventually sighed, giving in too easily. “It happened in the beginning at the party” he said annoyingly, and finally something in your brain clicked.

“The kiss ? You’re mad over the kiss ?” Your words fell off when you felt the vibrator go another setting higher, the new speed was decent enough to start building a second orgasm. “You don’t sound like you’re apologizing for it” Yuta scoffed and dangled the remote in front of your face, “this goes up 4 more speeds y/n.”

“Why do I need to apologize for kissing my boyfriend when-“

Another setting higher.

“Fuck wait Yuta” you breathed, it was impossible to even keep focused at the new speed and the sensation was now running throughout your entire body. “You kissed him in front of me to make me jealous didn't you?” Yuta questioned and you nodded frantically, pressing your thighs together to ease the intensity, “yes yes oh my God, I wanted to make you….jealous because you brought someone else…and..fuck” just as you felt your body finally build up a perfect orgasm the vibrator suddenly turned off and you were met with Yuta’s cocky smile.

“You like to have it all don’t you y/n” he hummed as flung the remote aside and knelt between your thighs that were shaking from the orgasm denial. “You want to fuck me, but not let me fuck anyone else, you want Jeno but you don’t want me to get mad over it” he continued as he pulled the dripping wet toy out of your core and tossed it to the floor. Yuta placed his hands on either side of you and looked down at your defeated face and smiled, “Do you want me to fuck someone else?”

You shook your head and Yuta undid one of the handcuffs. He pressed a soft kiss to your cheek and again asked you another question, “Do you want to fuck me ?” and you quickly nodded, earning your second hand free from the cuffs allowing them to fall to your sides. Yuta placed his hand around your throat and squeezed gently, smirking as you arched your back, thirsting for him so desperately.

“Who would fuck you better, me or Jeno ?” Yuta mused as his hand released a bit of pressure on your throat. “Y-you” your voice was small and Yuta released your throat and his hand moved down to smack your thigh.

“Say it, say who will fuck you better” he hissed.

“You Yuta, you will fuck me better than anyone…better than Jeno” Yuta grinned at your words, a little surprised that you used Jeno’s name in such a blasphemous way. He was in euphoria at this point. It was all he needed to hear after continuously seeing you and Jeno look as if you were in love with each other.

It was all wrong.

You and him loved each other.

Fuck. He loved you. He really did.

Yuta pushed his length into your core and groaned as the realization of his thoughts and his conversation with Johnny all hit him at once. The sight of you beneath him, moaning his name and your confession that you wanted him over Jeno. It was all too much.

You moaned as he thrusted into you, his hips violently hitting against yours as your nails dug into his lower back. The lewd sounds filled the room and for a second the two of you looked into each other’s eyes, both feeling something…different. Usually Yuta would be fucking you from behind, his favourite position because he loved looking at your ass but tonight especially after his sudden questioning, he took care of you differently.

You don’t know what came over you and it was yet another thing you never did during sex but you pulled him down to kiss you. Your lips moved passionately against his, desperately clinging to his body as his strokes became longer and more powerful. Yuta sighed into the kiss, palming your cheek and his movements suddenly became more gentle as if he were making love to you, not fucking you.

“Yuta…I’m close” you moaned into his ear, loving this new feeling of him on your body. Yuta hummed in response and quickened his pace, making sure to sneak in a kiss every now and then until he finally brought you to your long awaited orgasm. You watched him bite down on his lip as he thrusted into you, chasing his own orgasm until he pressed his against your ear and said the words you never thought you’d hear from him.

“I love you y/n”

Your body slightly froze as Yuta finally came and he rolled off your body, mentally cursing himself for allowing those words to escape his mouth at this moment. But it’s what he felt.

Johnny was right.

“W-what ?” You finally managed to say and turned to him. Yuta licked his lips and kept his focus on the ceiling above him.

“You heard me right” he said calmly and you felt your heart race. Where was this coming from ? He was the one who always implemented the no romance rule and he chooses now, the moment you’re seeing someone else to confess to you.

“I have to go” you murmured and jumped off the bed, starting to collect your clothes from the floor. You heard the bed creak and Yuta sat up and watched you dress up. “It’s late now y/n and you drank, stay the night and leave when the suns up” he insisted, eventually grabbing his own boxers,

“Here you can sleep in one of my shirts and you’re welcome to sleep in my bed for the night.”

“Y-you…that was one of the rules…no staying over” you were biting on your nails, everything that had happened in the last ten minutes made no sense. Yuta shoved the shirt into your hands and sighed, “Look, we don’t have to talk about what I said or what happened, just stay the night and you can go back to your perfect life with Jeno.” Yuta began making his way to his door when you grabbed onto his arm making him stop in his tracks,

“Where are you going ?” You asked him softly.

Yuta looked at you and sighed, “I’m going to sleep on the couch.”

“Yuta..”

“What ?”

“Stay with me.”

—-—————————————————————

You had no idea why you had told him to stay in bed with you considering all that had happened a few minutes ago. But here you were, curled into his chest listening to his heartbeat as he lightly stroked your hair.

“How…long ?” You broke the silence and felt his heartbeat slightly race, “The realization came recently but I’ve…always liked you y/n” Yuta responded softly.

“Well you don’t have a good way of showing it” you rolled your eyes and Yuta’s soft laughter filled the room. “Well at first you actually were annoying but I did find you cute” He replied and shifted until you were on your back looking up at him,

“You put up with me and we’re not afraid to fight back. You know it’s not even about the sex, I think we’ve always enjoyed each other’s company, we just have a weird way of showing it.” You listened to his words and did a bit of reflection for yourself. You were already well aware that he occupied your mind 24/7 and did not enjoy seeing him around other girls he would eventually sleep with. But was this…love ? You weren't so sure.

“Do you ever think it’s more of an addiction rather than…love ?” You looked up at him, hoping your words did not offend his sudden confession in any way. Yuta sighed and rolled onto his back, staring up at the ceiling deep in thought.

“What is love then ?” He murmured, clearly by the look on his face he had been pondering on this question for a while now. You joined him in laying on your back and looked up at the ceiling, “love is when the other person completes you” you began, “when you’re having a dull day and just the sight of them could turn that around. Love is wanting to protect that person all the time, it’s just love.”

Yuta turned to you, “have you ever been in love ?”

You shook your head. “I don’t think so.”  Yuta shrugged and returned his focus above him, “whatever you just described is how I feel, but maybe I’m just still hung up on the Jeno situation.” You felt a pang in your chest as if you just completely destroyed his spirit. You always saw Yuta as a strong confident presence, yet the person next to you seemed lost, he looked broken. But deep down you knew that whatever he was describing had floated in your head from time to time, maybe it needed to be said out loud for you to finally realize.

“Give me a week”

“Huh ?” Yuta’s eyebrows raised at you.

“Give me a week to figure all of this out and we will have this talk again” you sat up and looked back at him. Yuta propped himself up on his elbows and shook his head, “y/n, if you don’t feel the same way it’s okay I won’t come in between you and…Jeno anymore.”

“Yuta”

“Hmm?”

You pulled the boy by his shirt until you were able to lock your lips with his, slipping your tongue into his mouth and he mimicked your actions before pulling away, a confused expression spreading across his face.

“I don’t know where this is going to go and whether we’re right for each other,” you chuckled dryly, “but I will always want you Yuta, you’re not coming between Jeno and I because the one who wants… .”

————————————————————————

It was finally Monday and you already regretted seeing Jeno at the office since you faked a terrible hangover to get out of the Sunday date, something that wasn’t entirely a lie. You spent the whole of Sunday laying in your bed thinking about the night you spent with Yuta and all that was shared during the morning.

You thought back on your own words about what your version of love was. Protecting someone. You reminisced about the days when Yuta got sick after a night out and you were the one to take care of him despite his protests. You thought back to when the two of you were working on a project, arguing as usual and you managed to slip on a wet paint spot, causing you to sprain your ankle. Yuta was the one to help you around the office when needed, he wasn’t appointed to you nor did he have to use up his own time to help you but he did it anyway.

When you were having a dull day the person you loved would find a way to brighten it up, just the sight of them was enough. There was an occasion where a client got real mean with you in the office, and hated the project you worked almost a month on, refusing to pay you for the labor you had put in. Yuta had seen the commotion and joined you in your booth and the two of you flooded the clients company with hilarious bad reviews anonymously until you were literally tearing up from laughter. That was one of the rare days the two of you didn’t get into an argument and the moment completely slipped your mind. You had  forgotten that Yuta and you actually shared fond memories of each other outside the bedroom.

You thought about every moment you got to the office and Yuta would be sticking his tongue out at you, calling you names and being a jerk as usual. But days when he had to work out of the office felt boring, empty, it wasn’t worth sitting in your cubicle without seeing him across from you.

But then after feeling the warm fuzziness of knowing Yuta felt the same way about you, your phone buzzed with Jeno’s name across the screen. Why were you doing this to him ? Why was Jeno in the crossfire when all he wanted to do was get to know you better ?

All you ever wanted was a distraction from the man you were scared to fall in love with.

“Heyyy you, you feeling okay ?” Jeno beamed when you entered the office, immediately bringing you into a tight hug and ending with a kiss on the cheek. You nodded and the sense of guilt over took your body as you looked up at his cheery smile.

“I heard you guys got so wasted at the party, damn I wish I stayed” Jeno giggled as the two of you walked hand in hand over to your cubicle. “Yeah it was…crazy” you faked a smile before settling in your seat. You looked across, a force of habit and you were greeted by a soft smile from Yuta before quietly returning to his work.

“I was thinking we should go see that new marvel movie tonight, what do you think ?” Jeno’s eyes were so bright and full of energy that everytime you looked into them it just made it harder to keep up your facade. “I’m pretty busy this week but hey Friday you can come over, I…need to talk to you anyway” you bit down on your lip and Jeno’s expression changed from excited to slightly wary, clearly noticing that something wasn’t quite right.

“Is….everything okay?” He asked in a staggered voice, and you slowly nodded and reached to squeeze his hand, “yeah let’s hang out on Friday okay ?” You smiled and Jeno pressed his lips together and nodded. You watched him exit your cubicle and all that was left in your view was the only person you wanted to see today, Yuta.

Yuta looked up and caught your stare, smiling softly as he rested his chin on the palm of his hand and winked at you. It was sweet and innocent, nothing like how he usually acted from across the room. You found yourself blushing and hid your face until you heard a beep come from your phone. Opening the messenger app you were greeted by a picture of yourself hiding your crimson cheeks with the message ‘Cute’ attached to it.

y/n: didn’t take you for a simp.

yutaa: fuck off, I have a folder like this.

You stifled your laughter when Yuta sent a screenshot with a folder just of you in your cubicle. From you flipping him off, to you glaring at him clearly pissed off at something he had said, and one of you trying your best to pay attention to whatever story Yangyang was on about.

y/n: oh my god you’re a BIG SIMP.

yutaa: maybe.

y/n: well I do have ONE of you that I don’t have the heart to delete.

yutaa: oh really ?

You sent Yuta a picture you absolutely treasured of him in your bed fast asleep hugging one of your plushies. It was one of the last nights you had with him before things got sour. Normally you’d never allow him to nap in your bed after a hookup but he looked so at peace and so adorable  that you decided to bend the rules a little.

yutaa: that was a good ass nap. yutaa: simp.

y/n: maybe.

The rest of the day went on and honestly you felt as if you were on cloud nine, chatting to Yuta like he was your high school crush. Smiling every time he texted back and glancing up every now and then, waiting for him to look at you with that cheeky grin. But as reality set in and Yuta’s smile faded, you were still dating another man. Who now had his arms wrapped around your waist peppering kisses all over your neck and shoulder while Yuta looked on, not being able to do a thing about it.

————————————————————————

The team decided to head out for dinner the next day, and something in Jeno had switched. After Yuta had watched him cuddle you until the day was over, you barely even got the chance to talk to Yuta face to face since Jeno offered to take you home. He was being suspiciously clingy and you wondered if he suspected anything.

“You’re okay with sharing a pasta and plate of fries ?” Jeno smiled over at you, one hand rubbing your waist and the other holding up the wooden menu. You nodded and Jeno placed his order in with Johnny who was doing the rounds for everyone. Yuta sat across from you and you could feel his stare on you from time to time, and the moments it felt like he was staring, Jeno’s grip on your waist got tighter.

“Is...is something wrong ?” you leaned into Jeno as he took a sip of his water. Even though he was smiling, his jaw was clenched signaling that he was trying to suppress himself from doing or saying something. “I'm just really tired” he rubbed your back and to your surprise leaned in to capture your lips. It was innocent but your lack of effort to mind his feelings wasn't good enough for Yuta. Frankly he had no idea where you two stood at the moment, for all he knew you could be playing him right now. It probably wasn't the case though, but Yuta was not really used to his life getting a happy ending. The night drove on and the group split with you, Ten, Doyoung, Taeyong and Renjun seated at the table while the rest of the guys were hanging around the bar babysitting their drinks. Jeno was really a changed man since high school. He was so confident, well-built and a good socialite with the team. You watched him lean against the bar counter, drink in hand entertaining whatever story Lucas had for the night.

“So you and y/n huh ? Have you scored yet ?” Lucas raised his brow cheekily to which Jeno chuckled and shook his head, “Really Lucas ? were talking about my sex life now ?” Yuta was in conversation with Johnny and Sungchan but he couldn't help but overhear your name in the chat next to him.

“Yeah man, I'm sure she’s good too after locking down my boy Yuta” Lucas smirked and Yuta flinched when the boisterous man grabbed onto his shoulder and pulled him into the conversation. “Even though they hate each other I just know they had the best hook ups” Lucas laughed despite Johnny trying to make him shut up.

“Well that’s all over now” Jeno’s eyes narrowed on Yuta before looking up at Lucas, “she invited me over tonight and considering the type of pictures she sent me, i'm guessing it’s going to be one hell of a night.” Yuta’s chest felt tight not only at the possibility that you may have invited him over to finally sleep with him but mainly because of the way Jeno spoke about you. He probably only shared that information to appease Lucas but hinting at you sending him nudes was not something you would like the guys to know about.

“She’s really been trying to speed up the process between us too it's cute actually” Jeno continued as Yangyang and Lucas egged him on, “that night after that painting you guys did for Mark Lee she was practically begging me to fuck her after our movie date. God if my brother didn't give me all those errands I would've done so right on the kitchen counter.”

Yuta shot back the rest of his drink and stormed off as Lucas and Yangyang hyped up Jeno, pouring him another shot and laughing erratically in their drunken state. From where you were seated you saw Yuta storm off and watched Johnny run after him worriedly, making you slightly anxious.

“Yuta don't listen to them man '' Johnny huffed as he finally caught up to his friend a few blocks down from the restaurant. “I dont fucking care man I really dont” Yuta chuckled dryly and ran his fingers through his hair, “It doesnt matter because at the end of the day im still the worthless piece of shit and guys like him are God fucking sent.” Johnny watched Yuta’s expression change and he turned around to find you standing there, desperately looking between them for context.

“Yuta what happened ?” you asked in a small voice and the familiar sting in his chest returned, hearing you call out his name, following him out here while Jeno was still inside, it was all just confusing to him.

“I thought you giving us a week meant you felt the same way and I could finally relax knowing you were going to be with me y/n” Yuta groaned in frustration while Johnny took a step away from the heated exchange. You shook your head as you approached him, “yes I did, so what's the problem ?” Yuta scoffed and folded his arms. “What's the problem ? doesn't look like anything’s changed y/n. I have to see you act like the couple of the year after telling you how I felt about you ? That's brilliant.”

“I told you I would speak to him this week” you snapped, unbothered by the now random onlookers who were concerned at the scene taking place. “But fine honestly Yuta if you really want me to say it you have my permission to fuck some random girl until im finally free.” You rolled your eyes about to turn on your heels to leave when you felt a tug on your wrist and Yuta pulled you into a kiss. He held your face in his hands as he kissed you passionately, sighing as he slowly pulled away and pressed his forehead against yours,

“When I said I loved you I fucking meant it y/n, I only want you. But please, if youre going to invite him over or send him dirty...pictures atleast tell him not to tell the whole fucking world about it.”

You took a step back and frowned at his words, “What ? What pictures ?”

“The ones he told Lucas about, y/n honestly I don't care I was just mad that he was airing your business out like that” Yuta bit down on his lip and yet again you were deeply confused as to what he was on about.

“I...I didn't send him anything” you responded, “I didn't invite him over tonight and I definitely haven't sent him any...nudes.”

“Tell that to him then”

You turned around and noticed most of the team was now outside watching the commotion go down and right in front was Jeno, who by the look on his face had most likely seen the kiss you just shared with Yuta.

Jeno approached the both of you with an irritated groan and scoffed, “I was going to ignore the signs but God I was so right, you were still fucking him this entire time ?” You lowered your head and Yuta glared at Jeno, “If you knew all this time why didn't you just break up with her and move on ?”

Jeno rolled his eyes and took a step closer to Yuta to which Johnny quickly responded by placing a firm hand on Jeno’s shoulder making sure the boy was at safe distance from his best friend.

“I'm not like you Yuta” Jeno licked his lips, “unlike you I respect her, I understand that she was going back to you because you like to play around, you never cared about her until I showed up. You were threatened by the fact that you were no longer in control of her.”

“Nobody is in control of me first of all” you chimed in, “and second what’s this about me inviting you over and sending you nudes that apparently the whole fucking bar knows about”

“It's just banter y/n” Jeno shook his head.

“Banter ?” Yuta repeated, “didnt know talking about how you were going to fuck your girlfriend on the kitchen counter in front of her coworkers is banter.”

“What?” you walked up to Jeno, “W-where is this coming from Jeno ? you’re not like this.”

“Well how am I supposed to be y/n ?” Jeno raised his voice, “you wouldn't mind if he said that to you. You're always letting him get away with shit. Im the one sitting around here knowing my damn girlfriend is fucking around with someone else yet somehow still trying to forgive you and figure this out.”

“Why, though ?” you shrugged, “Is it because you want to prove to other people that you're the bigger person ?”

“Would you rather be with someone like him ? someone who will probably throw you aside after he’s bored, or someone like me who was always patient, always willing to put you first no matter what” Jeno reached for your hand, his eyes widening when you shrugged him off.

“Someone who I barely know that talks about me to my friends like im just some kind of whore or someone i've known for a while and not once shared anything intimate that happened between us,” you looked over at Yuta, “It was my one rule, the same rule I gave you Jeno and he was, Yuta is the only one who has abided to it.”

“y/n Im sorry,” Jeno lowered his voice, “we hurt each other and I want to fix that, just make your final decision...me or Yuta”

“Jeno….I apologize for using you, I'm sorry for leading and hurting your feelings” you began and Yuta slowly shook his head and turned around ready to hear the bad news that always seemed to follow him,

“But as crazy as it may sound to everyone here, I'm most like myself when I'm with Yuta, I love the person I am when I'm around him” Yuta turned at your words and instead of the sting he felt a sense of warmth. Hearing you say that in front of everyone who wanted the two of you apart, besides Johnny ofcourse, was absolute bliss.

“Who knows maybe it won't work and it will explode but I really want to try, that's the thing I'm most sure of, I really really want to try” you smiled as Yuta made his way over to you and pulled you into a tight hug.

“Let's get out of here” Yuta whispered before placing a kiss on your cheek and draping his arm over your shoulder as the two of you exited the street walking away from the mess and not even giving it a second glance.

The two of you ended up at your apartment full of smiles and giggles as you slowly discarded your clothes on the way to the bedroom. Once your back touched your soft duvet covers Yuta pressed his body against yours and peppered your skin with kisses all the way up to your ear. “I want to try something different” he whispered and you nodded in response while Yuta pulled his shirt over his head and discarded his jeans. Yuta pulled you on top of his body and returned to your lips, kissing you slowly and passionately. His touches were so delicate and nurturing that every time his fingers ran down your back you felt butterflies in your stomach. You unhooked your bra shimmied out of it, still attached to the addictive taste of Yuta’s lips. He slowly rolled you onto your back and left soft kisses all the way down your neck, down the valley of your breasts until he reached your abdomen. You watched as he pulled your underwear off, looking at your body like it was the most beautiful thing he had seen. That was it. Instead of lust he looked at you with love. He looked like he wanted to take care of you, be gentle with you, savour every moment he had with you. Your breathing hitched when you quickly realized that he inserted himself inside of you and used one arm to steady himself on the bed as he lent down to meet your lips. His strokes were slow but sharp, digging his nails into your thigh from time to time, preventing himself from losing control. Wanting to feel more of him you signaled that you wanted to switch positions and Yuta licked his lips as he watched you place your knees on either side of him and sit down on his member. “F-fuck” he cursed as you began to ride him, keeping to his wishes of keeping things calm and slow. Yuta wrapped his arms tightly around your waist as the two of you kissed in between your moans, twirling your tongue with his as your hips slammed into his.

“Y-Yuta…” you moaned, feeling a tear escape your eye as the long night and the building orgasm caught up with you.

“Yes baby ?” he hummed in your ear.

“I really fucking love you” you sighed, just the words finally leaving your mouth made you sob with joy. It felt so fucking good to finally say it out loud.

Yuta responded by flipping you onto your back and chased both his and your orgasm, fucking you with his usual intensity until you came and he followed straight after, filling the room with heavy pants and both of you trying to catch your breath.

“I love you too y/n” He finally said, bringing you to his chest and pressed his lips against your forehead.

The two of you lay in your bed both napping for a bit until the first sight of dawn began filling the bedroom. You winced at the sun and hid your face in Yuta’s arms as he grinned at your actions.

“I don't want to go to work!” you grumbled.

“Fuck go to work after all the drama you caused ?” Yuta pinched your cheek playfully, earning a nudge in his side from you.

“Anyway” Yuta continued, “I got an email from Taeyong and he said if we want we can work remotely, he gave us the Okinawa project.” You sat up in bed and turned to face him, “the Okinawa project ? Its 9 months in Japan, the same project the whole damn building was trying to get” you blinked, still unsure if Yuta was just fucking with you.

“That's the one” Yuta shrugged, “anyways he said he was going to send either of us anyway since he knows we always get the job done. Oh and he actually said something really funny actually”

“What ?” you raised your brow and watched Yuta reread the text message on his phone.

“He said Doyoung was the one who suggested the two of us be the ones to go, who would've thought ?” Yuta closed the messages and tucked himself back into bed.

“Yeah” you smiled, “Who would've thought.”

THE END

[en-hale-archives]

Me with You ~~

pairing ⑅ bestfriend!Jake x fem!reader

genre ⑅ friends to lovers, fluff, slow dancing, suggestive/smut

words/read time ⑅ 3.9k/12-19 mins

warnings ⑅ 18+ content, light cussing

synopsis ⑅ Jake is back in his hometown to spend time with his closest friend. During some fun and frivolous dancing, things start to heat up...

author's note ⑅ I’m really proud of how this story turned out. I'm not a huge fan of second person, so I wrote in first, but if anyone asks, I can copy and post again in second person. It's more fluff than anything, but it does get a bit steamier towards the end, so I’m just going to go ahead and put a warning.

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When the back door finally slammed shut and the cacophony of barks faded down the street, I could finally let out my sigh of relief that I had been holding in since this morning. I tapped on my phone. How many days had we been watching Mrs. Chen’s pets? And just how was I able to put up with hours of barking, the smell of fresh turd lying across the lawn, and dog walks till dark? Including their rigorous feeding times and bathroom breaks -- I’m surprised I haven’t exploded yet.

I had so much planned the minute they left my house, but instead, the sudden silence felt all too relaxing and I laid my head against the cold countertop. I could finally stop stressing, stop thinking, and stop worrying about reprimanding for chewing on my shoes or peeing in the house or the continued barking that never ended. I was free. I felt like I could’ve stayed laid on the countertop forever, drowning in the evening sun. Who knew watching five dogs would take such a burden out of a person. Jake and I had taken on the job of dog sitting for Mrs. Chen while she visited some family in Tokyo. We both switched off every other day; some of the dogs at my house and the others at his; until we realized it would be easier if he just spent the few days at my house as we co-doggy sat. He got up bright and early to take them on their walks while I prepared their highly detailed and specific meals. Then from there, we spent the rest of the day making sure they didn’t run off somewhere or cause too much destruction in the house. But alas, Mrs. Chen came back early from her getaway and picked up Toby, Caleb, Khao, Sofia, and Pickle on her way home. Although I was exhausted from watching 3-foot dogs all day, the pay was amazing for me, and it would help tremendously for all the online classes I was going to be taking next semester.

The warmth of the sun cast a comforting trance over my heavy eyelids, and soon enough I was fast asleep, standing in the middle of the kitchen with the soft sound of nothing surrounding me.

By the time I had fluttered my eyes open, I had realized I was now seated in my dining chair and a large black jacket was placed over my shoulders. I sat up and let out a yawn, wincing at the bright light coming from the tv and shaking my now numb arm awake. I must have been sleeping for a while because the evening sun had turned to pitch of black. The moonlight beamed through the window and danced along with the sways of the large oak tree out front. I stood up and walked over to the refrigerator in which I grabbed two water bottles and some leftover pasta.

I was sure that Jake hadn’t eaten since lunch, seeing as he only ate if someone sat food in front of his face. I dragged my feet up the stairs until I heard the slamming of a book and the fast typing of a keyboard come from the living room. I turned and looked behind me. Jake had settled his things on the coffee table and floor, large books, folders, and several amounts of crumpled up pieces of paper found their way around Jake, himself slouched up against the edge of the couch. He had changed clothes since the last time I had seen him, he now wore a plain blue shirt with grey sweats, his eyebrows furrowed as he worked hard on whatever he was getting at.

“Oh yes, I was starving!” Propping himself up on the couch, he took the plate of pasta. I placed the waters on the coffee table and settled comfortably on the couch beside him.

“I can’t say that I’ve ever seen anybody sleep standing up before. Look,” Jake took his phone off the charger. “I got a picture.” He pushed the screen in my face, and of course, there was my unconscious body laying on the counter, mouth open and all. I playfully pushed it back his way as his face lit up with a smile I was all too familiar with.

“What are you doing down here so late, it’s almost 12 in the morning,” I asked. Jake’s smile disappeared when he was reminded of the work he had been doing seconds before.

He let out a large huff of air. “Trying to get some words on paper but instead it turned into a paper massacre,” he jokingly replied, “sorry for the mess.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I replied, taking a swig of water. I was going to ask if he wanted to watch a late-night movie, or pull an all-nighter and talk endlessly until the sun rose, but I could tell by each passing second that Jake was worried about this, and he wanted the time he had now over the summer to work on his music. I wished I was motivated to work on my own music, but unlike Jake, I wasn’t in a globally popular boy band. My complicated best friend for over 10 years had been working his butt off since middle school. It was his annual time to sit back and relax while he had the time to, but instead, he chose to use that time to help watch a bunch of dogs with his hometown bestie. God, I loved him.

Jake pulled himself off the couch and right back onto the floor, leaving the rest of the pasta to me. He picked up his pen again and started scribbling down words as quickly as he could, trying hard not to forget the lyrics that had floated into his head. Until he stopped, closing his eyes for just a split second, and let out a powerful sigh. Crumpling up the sheet, he stacks it on top of the others in frustration and started frantically tapping his pencil against the table.

“Maybe it’s best to just try again in the morning,” I advised, taking a small bite of the pasta that was left by my side.

“How come I’m having such a hard time with this?” He gazed up at me frantically for a clue, as if I had the answer to fix a problem as big and as important as his was. I looked at his doleful eyes and the bags that were starting to grow underneath them. I couldn’t help but think, because I made you sit up and watch a bunch of dogs with me.

“Do you want me to see if I could come up with something?”

“If you want. But, hold on, I think my thoughts are coming back up.” He quickly grabbed another piece of paper, his eyes narrowed in concentration.

I tried my best to keep occupied by watching videos on my phone, but I found myself suddenly bored out of my mind. I laid out on my back and picked up one of Jake’s folders. Briefly looking through it, I couldn’t help but feel a bit jealous at the amount of fan art and letters, praising him and the other members. Followed with that were just more and more engene stuff, full of nothing but kind words and heartfelt messages. Part of me wished that I was able to travel with Jake and see the world like he was. How fun would it be to meet people that praised you? And how cool would it be to see that you had fans? I couldn’t help but plaster on a huge smile as I skimmed through some of the notes until I finally came to one with familiar handwriting.

Remember Me were the words written on the top of the paper in bold and bright colors. But the message written underneath is what caught my attention:

To the person that makes me the luckiest guy in the world, this song is for you. It’s okay if you don’t feel the same, but please just remember me -- it was Jake’s handwriting.

I didn’t feel like I was breaking any crime reading his stuff until this moment, but curiosity killed the cat, and right now I didn’t mind being a feline. I checked to make sure Jake was still busy, and he was, almost like he had teleported into his own world. I quietly turned back to the sheet and started reading. It was about a girl, presumably his crush I’m sure. She was someone important to him, someone who made him love so much that it hurt. But this was far from a happy song, in fact, it was terribly heartbreaking. She didn’t understand his love, she wasn’t able to interpret it like he wanted her to. But he confesses that he was scared of what telling her would do, worried that she wouldn’t feel the same. So instead, it was like he was apologizing, and asking that she forgive him for not being brave enough to tell her, and if he did ever get the courage to, for her to remember him even if she wasn’t able to love him like he wanted her to.

The song ends like how the title began, and I find myself flabbergasted at the beautiful mixes of rhymes and metaphors that read like a poem. This was the first of Jake’s songs that made me feel this way, like I had just finished watching a tragedy movie with Ryan Renolds starring. I blink back the tears that I didn’t realize were forming. How come he never told me this? We never kept secrets from each other, like ever. It never mattered the subject or the severity, we had always promised that we would be open and honest with each other. I wish I would’ve known this sooner, maybe I could’ve saved him from feeling this way. And what girl could it possibly be? I knew for sure I was the only girl he was presumably close to; but was there someone else?

I glanced down at Jake, who was still in a focused state of mind with the pencil in his mouth and mumbling lyrics softly under his breath. I tried picturing my bubbly Jake writing these agonizing words and miserably failed.

Jake looked up at me as if he could feel my gaze on the back of his head. “I think I’ve found the chorus, but it’s the rest of the song I’m not able to get, and how come it’s so hard to find another word that rhymes with severe? Beer? Sphere? Revere? Appear? Gosh, rhyming sucks some serious ass!”

“This song is beautiful.”

Jake furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. “Huh?”

“This song I found in your folder.” I glanced back at it in my hand. “Remember Me.”

Jake’s gaze leaped from my eyes to the sheet, and I felt his body tense. “Where’d you get that from?”

“I was just going through one of your folders. Did you accidentally get it mixed up in your fan folder? Cause this is -”

“Did you read it?” He interrupted.

“Yeah, and it’s perfect.”

Jake glanced at me for a split second before turning back around, obviously uncomfortable. “I was watching one of those Kdramas you love so much and it inspired me. Could you help me rhyme with severe now?”

I knew Jake like the back of my hand, so I knew continuing on with this conversation would get him upset if he’s clearly avoiding it. But, I wasn’t going to just let him off that quickly. “Jake, come on, you can tell me anything. Who is this about?”

Jake looked back at me with a hint of something in his eyes, something I’ve never seen before, and something I wasn't able to decipher. “Nobody, I was just feeling really inspired, that's it.” His tone had switched from calm to agitated.

I give him my I’m-not-stupid look and he comes back with his own you’re-being-delusional stare. “It’s seriously nobody, truthfully and honestly.”

“Okay, okay I’ll back off.” I could tell he was starting to get defensive, and when he got like that, it took him at least a few hours before returning to normal. I watched Jake's Adam's apple move up and down, a way in which I could tell he knew I was not convinced in the slightest. “Well, sometimes we go through things that can remind us of situations like that, but not necessarily in that same exact context, you know? It has to be amplified for that audience appeal.”

“Okay...but have you ever felt this way before? Not exactly like how it’s written, but maybe somewhere along these lines?”

I thought I was going to get another vague answer, or worse, an aggravated one. But instead Jake looked down at his pencil as he tapped it along his wrist. “...maybe, but I think everyone can connect to the words in some way. I mean, everyone feels some kind of heartbreak in their life, right?” Jake's answer was still pretty vague, but at least I was able to get something out of him.

“Okay, but you know you can tell me anything, like, anything ever because you know that you’ll never actually have to feel this way, right?” I said, maybe too much in a hurry.

“Of course I know that.” He replied, giving one of his awkward grins.

“And if anyone has made you feel this way, then you know you can tell me that too cause there a sucker to lose out on a perfect person like you.” I teased in a sing-song way, poking his shoulder hard. Jake chuckled and poked me back.

A weird silence grew in the room, and Jake went back to trying to find rhyming words. I tried getting back on my phone, but I knew I needed to say something to let go of the tenseness in the air.

“Hey, crystal clear rhymes!”

He leaned his head back and looked up at me. “Nevermind, I give up for tonight.”

I could see the stress that played on his face. “Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out.”

“Yeah, but by the time I do, it’ll be too late.”

“What do you mean?”

Jake pulled his knees up to his chest and spoke. “This was going to go on our album comeback that needs to be finished in the next four months. By the time I think of something, it'll be too late and I’ll have to wait until the next four months. But by then, I'll have forgotten. This always happens and I have no idea how the hell to fix it.” I couldn’t tell if he wanted my help or just a bit of comfort.

“Did you try asking the other guys to see if they had any ideas?”

“Yeah, but they’re working on their own parts, I can’t ask them to do this too.”

“I’m sure they’d be willing to help if you asked,” I assured him.

“I know they would, but I just don’t want to. I always ask them for help, I thought being away from the studio and being back home would help my brainstorming abilities.” He gave a weary chuckle that almost sounded like a groan.

“Well, maybe tomorrow will come with better results.” I did my best to give him some motivation, but I could tell I was failing miserably at that too.

Jake watched as a car zoomed past the window, a low bass sounding off as it zoomed away. “I bet it’s easier to just listen to music than to try and come up with it. I remember when I would just blare NCT all day long and jam out in my room. It seemed so much easier back then to come up with stuff than it does now. I miss it.” He took a slight pause before continuing. “ Did you know that song you read was the easiest thing I have written in my life? I remember writing too. I just had this super weird feeling in my chest one day so I basically locked myself in my room and took maybe two hours and just wrote a bunch of words down and connected them to sound like a song. For once my mind had just gone blank and I couldn’t stop thinking and feeling that song, like I knew what it was supposed to sound like, I knew what the lyrics were supposed to mean. I just knew everything. And I miss that feeling, that feeling of like- '' He broke off his sentence when he looked back up to my eyes. It seemed like he was talking more to himself than to me. He swallowed hard and looked back at the pencil still in hand.

“Well, I'm sorry you don’t feel free anymore. I wish there was something I could do to make you feel like that again-”

“No, please don’t feel like that. It’s just something that had just recently started happening, something I really just can’t fix…” His voice gets softer and softer the more he spoke.

“Have you spoken to your manager about it?” I asked. “He’s super nice from what I understand. And he’ll probably have better answers than your friend who can barely play the piano, let alone produce an entire song.”

Jake laughed before I had the chance to. “ See, now you're underestimating yourself. Remember that song from freshman year? The one about-- what was his name, Josh?” Jake teased. I grabbed a pillow and slammed it into the back of his head. “Oh my gosh, I thought we promised we’d never bring it up again!”

Jake chuckled and laid his arm on the couch completely turning towards me. “How about we sneak out and go get ice cream and try to not wake up your mom in the process?”

I suddenly jumped to my feet when I have the perfect idea on how to cheer up the gloomy Mr. Shim. “Or, we could do something even better!”

“Urgh!” Jake groaned.

I grabbed my phone and hooked it up to the speaker. I was going to turn on his hit song Drunk-Dazed as a joke, but Jake needed this break from his career, so instead, I crunk up Beyonce as loud as it could go without disturbing my mom who slept upstairs. I turn back to Jake and reach out for his hands, already moving my hips to the music.

He shook his head and threw it back onto the couch as if throwing a temper tantrum. “I literally dance for a living.”

“Okay but this will be different, I promise.” I grabbed the piles of papers on the ground and threw them in the trash, I then pushed the coffee table near the wall and piled his folders and books neatly on top.

“Come on, cowboy!” I grabbed his hands and helped him up. He was reluctant to get up, but he threw one last groan before standing on his feet.

“This will get the brain juices flowing again!” I told him. I go back to my phone and switch it to one of my favorite Beyonce songs that she covered, At Last.

I sang dramatically to get Jake to smile, and luckily, it worked. I placed both my hands over his shoulders and swayed us back and forth, still miming the song as overly exaggerated as I could. Jake still couldn’t help but smile, and it didn’t take him long to join me in the rhythm and sway naturally with me. I learned at our middle school dance that Jake had perfect rhythm. He was able to impress the rest of the crowd when he busted out moves from BTS. Everyone was impressed, including me.

Now we were on a steady roll. I accidentally stepped on his feet a few times, but it was fine seeing as I was wearing foam flip-flops and he was barefooted. After a while, the song switched and played another of my favorites that didn’t match our style of dance, but we still moved slowly to the beat. Jake tried twirling me, but since I have two left feet, I almost ended up hitting the wall each time and Jake laughed loud at my clumsiness. The moonlight from the kitchen had now switched to the window in the living room. It gleamed through and glistened on Jake like a spotlight, just like the ones on the stage did for him. In a split second, I was reminded that he wouldn’t be here forever, just like he wasn’t here for the past year. I tried to not let it settle on my face that I was scared to see him go again, so I played up on the fun we were having now. Jake looked like he was at ease; finally, since he’d been here, he looked genuinely happy and I wasn’t going to ruin that.

After another handful of songs full of laughs and giggles, we were soon sweating and taking deeper breaths than normal. Each song was different from the one before, but it didn’t stop us from sticking to our style of dance. Even with the simplicity of the moves and the slowness of the steps, I had to take a minute to relax. I hooked my arms around his neck and rested my entire body on his. I could feel Jake’s own sweat seeping through his shirt, But I didn’t mind the wetness that was now attached to my cheek. I thought he would act awkward and ask for me to pull away, but instead, he gripped tighter on my hips and started slowly moving me side to side. I let out a long overdue sigh, trying my best to match the steady breathing of Jake’s with my own. It was actually therapeutic: hearing his heartbeat in one ear and the softness of the music in the other.

I tried to continue our steady breathing together, but his had picked up a bit, almost out of nowhere. I felt the heat of his breath on the nape of my neck, and it made my entire body tingle in a way it never had before. After this sudden feeling, I realized just how close we really were. His leg hair tickled my legs, I could feel the bone of his foot connecting to mine, I could feel his thin waist against mine as well. I felt like I needed to back up, but instead, I couldn’t and continued to sway softly against him. A few seconds later, Jake’s hands rose a little higher, planting themselves on my waist and tightening their grip as if they were trying to pull me closer than we already were.

The sensation hadn’t stopped though, it clung to my body like my damp shorts did on my thighs. Sooner or later I felt pressure on the lower part of my stomach and thought for sure that Jake was messing around and wasn’t feeling what I was, which indicated that I needed to pull back before this feeling became too much.

This is so embarrassing. I thought. How could I let myself feel like this? How was this in any way okay? I finally pulled back, the sensation becoming too unbearable, and glanced up at his face. His pupils were large in a way I hadn’t seen before. His mouth was slightly open and a drop of sweat slowly traced down his forehead, onto his nose. That pressure I was feeling on my stomach had now doubled in force, and Jake's face had switched from calm and subtle, to alarmed and panicked...

————✧————

(part 2 possibly...?)

Thank you guys so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it! Please, leave any constructive criticism you have on helping improve my writing!

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None of the images are mine, They all belong to their rightful owners :)

[m4rgera]

dave england ★ lonely girl part one

authors note : sorry for the length! i would rather have it be really long and impactful then short and boring. last few paragraphs are not proof read since i wrote them slightly in a rush. they will be fixed and edited tomorrow.

warning : this story will contain sexual subjects, drug use, drinking and topics of severe stress and anxiety. the character is written as female, although she / they pronouns are used. if you are sensitive to any of those please refrain from reading this. also lowercase is intended, requests are open for one shots and headcannons.

“hello?” monotone rang throughout the phone. the line was blank until jeffs voice was finally heard from the other end, “hey y/n, quick update on the show. its premiering tomorrow night and mtv rented out a spot in a bar for the whole crew tonight, to get an early viewing. im just calling everyone to let them know. hopefully see you there.” the line went blank. it took you a few seconds to process what jeff had said with how quickly he spewed it out.

you slammed the notebook shut that you had been scribbling some ideas for stunts down in. being a screenwriter for jackass was, well, tricky to say the least. it’s difficult to write a script for a show where all thats going on is injuries, injuries, and more injuries. you got stressed and frustrated easily with it yet couldn’t afford to lose your job.

your plans for staring through the notebook for the entire night and not getting any ideas out, were ruined. you let out a huff, not quite yet having the motivation to at least change your clothes and brush your teeth.

the bar wasn’t exactly packed. besides the whole crew, there wasn’t too many people in here. some of the guys had brought some of there buddies along and there were a handful of girls from set as well. you weaved your way through until you were will the few people you felt comfortable with being around — stephen and chris.

stephen had been supplying you with xanax for the past month after your doctor cut your prescription on it. it surprised you since he never really complained when coming to him for it, and never made you pay. yeah he was your plug but he was also a genuinely great guy. and chris just radiated happiness. when filming sometimes he would just sit by you and smile, he was a sweet guy.

“dude! you just missed steve-o licking ricks hairy ass nipple!” chris yelled while walking over to the wall you were slightly leaning against.

“wow, i really wish i didn’t miss that!” you said with a sarcastic tone. “don’t worry it’s all on video.” chris giggled while holding the camcorder up for you to see, you gave him a smile back. stephen came shuffling over to you two, stumbling slightly on his own feet. he had a drink in his hands that was nearly empty, “bro this is sick. we’re like famous or some shit.” stephen chuckled while nudging chris.

you tried your best to make small talk with the two of them, but most of your time was spent with trying to convince stephen not to lick everyone in sight. it was almost like watching a toddler, except the toddler is 26 and on ecstasy. “you haven’t really talked with the other guys have you?” a voice was heard right behind your shoulder, knoxville.

you were acquainted with johnny but never got to much talking. in a way he almost intimidated you, he came up with stunts and ideas so easily and it wasn’t even his job to, it was yours. “um, yea not really. i didn’t wanna come here. i got a ton of work to catch up on.” your voice was just loud enough for him to hear. everyone was having such a great time and you didn’t wanna bring down anyone’s mood just because you were so worried about work.

“ahh, well thats never a good excuse to not have a good time!” he gave you a slap on the back, and shook your shoulder slightly. “they already know everyone on set. just go chit-chat, you’ll be fine.” you pursed your lips and nodded slightly. you could visibly see him sigh before walking over to a group of some other guys, you deciding to follow along.

“you just can’t get enough of me can you.” johnny implied ending his sentence with a small chuckle. “yea right, you told me to talk so im here to talk.” he gave you a small shrug of defeat before pointing at a boy with blonde hair, and what looked to be blue eyes. yet it was hard to see anything under the horrid lighting of the bar. “see, him over there. that’s dave, go talk to him. you two will get along.” he shoved you slightly away, sighing you decided to go talk. it would be better then just sitting here in boredom swallowed by the thought of jeff scolding you next week for lack of script.

you made your way over, it looked like he was talking with chris, this calmed your nervousness a bit. you were familiar with chris and comfortable enough to go talk. turning around you could see johnny giving you a thumbs up and smile, you gave a small laugh before flipping him off and walking over to chris.

“yay, y/n’s back!” chris’ words were starting to melt together due to the alcohol, earning a laugh out of you. “y/n this is dave, but you already know him im assuming.” chris drunkenly waved his hand in the air while speaking. you looked at dave, who didn’t look quite as intoxicated as chris but had a drink in hand.

“your lucky your not meeting darf right now.” chris continued on with his awkward little giggle, “darf?” you questioned chris, looking over at dave who looked just as confused as you did. “darf is dave when drunk. and darf is not a fun guy, trust me.” chris was describing all his words with hand motions, it had both you and dave laughing. “hey did someone roofie chris?” dave yelled out jokingly.

“you caught me, i roofied chris.” you held your hands up in defeat. “yea right, it was probaly fucking steve-o or someone, but im not roofied. this was all caused by that tap over there.” chris waved his hand over to the bar, where the tapped beer was.

“are you implying i can’t roofie someone?” you turned your head towards chris pretending to be mad at him, but he just kept laughing. “no y/n im sure you’ve roofied tons of people before!” dave said imitating chris’ dramatic hand motions.

“you know that’s not funny dave. y/n would never roofie anyone, and if they did, it’s would be themselves… or themselves.” chris tried to laugh at his own joke, it was until he noticed neither dave or me were really laughing until he stopped.

“that was a joke, y/n hates drugs.” he winked very obnoxiously, which was followed by a giggle again. “you know i’m hoping that was a joke but i have a feeling it isn’t.” dave said, the laughter continuing on.

“it isn’t.” chris was in a unstoppable fit of laughter. you shot him a small look of disappointment, you couldn’t quite bring yourself to hit him. “maybe he’s so drunk he’s confusing you for steve-o.” dave nudged you with his elbow slightly and you forced yourself to a laugh.

it wasn’t until now you had really looked at what dave looked like. and it sounds odd but his smile was very odd looking, almost like it would cause a domino effect of smiles. and that’s exactly what it did, you found yourself smiling just as big and chris and dave, yet you weren’t quite sure what you were smiling for.

“hey i heard that and it wasn’t funny. y/n is nothing like steve-o!”

“yea im definitely driving him home tonight.” you sighed in defeat as chris wobbled away towards ehren and preston. “someone definitely is.” dave blurted out before downing the rest of his drink.

the night was passing by pretty quickly. you weren’t fleeing to chris and stephen when left alone, because for the remainder of the night you have been with dave. you went on explaining to him how much work had been getting to you lately. you wouldn’t normally share that with someone you met a few hours ago, but he was going on about how some of the stunts were more interesting in the past few weeks and the conversation just bloomed naturally.

“if i were you i wouldn’t stress too much about the stunts. if jeff doesn’t like them he’ll just modify them. plus you can always just call me and i could give you some idea starters.” you hummed at his words, only really picking up parts of the conversation, only really picking up parts of the conversation. “yeah, i guess so, but i mean if jeff ever found out i feel like i can get in trouble for it.” your starting to feel there was no way of getting around this obstacle they called the writer's block. in a couple weeks you probably get another phone call from jeff warning you that if you didn't get any work in soon you're going to lose your job. you didn't want to have to put the burden on dave - someone you just met an hour ago - of helping you write things for your job, not his.

“who said jeff had to find out?”

a few weeks have passed by and nothing interesting really happened at the bar, except for you and dave exchanging numbers strictly for work purposes. although you do find yourself thinking sometimes you wish it wasn't for work purposes. whenever that happens you have to block out the thought, jeff was already getting mad at you enough for getting you're working late. you can't quite imagine what he would do if he found out you had been sleeping with one of the actors. you two have never shown even a sliver of interest in each other, except for the thoughts in your head, everything was strictly for work. it was a never-ending loop; exchanging ideas for stunts, sending them into jeff, filming them, and repeat.

although you weren't commonly on set, today you happened to be there since you wanted to see how a stunt had turned out although you did not come up with this one. dave had yet to be credited with it since there was nothing to turn in for that week, and dave did what he normally did, faxing you over a few ideas for you to use. you felt horribly guilty doing it however dave promised you he didn't mind at all, and you can't really afford to lose your job quite yet.

the set was fairly empty besides the film crew, ehren, preston, stephen and dave. the air was sticky and hot, summer was at its peak. the guys were doing some stunts involving water so a lot of them were shirtless, as you would expect. it didn’t bother you, however your eyes kept getting drawn to dave. you hated it. you weren’t a creep, you never were a pervert and you weren’t gonna start living a pervert lifestyle today by wooing over dave, even worst, while at work.

deciding to end your staring session, you walked over to dave to break the awkwardness that was only in your head. “hey dave, is it going as planned?” you motioned over to ehren who was being wheeled down a ramp into a length. “not sure, i think there trying to find the best chair to push him down on.” he looked up from the lawn chair he was sitting in, squinting at the sunlight.

you felt your heart flutter, his eyes were such a piercing shade of blue the only way to describe them was alluring. “are you ok y/n? you’ve seemed kinda off ever since yesterday on the phone.” all the air you were holding in was released in one big quiet breath. you tried to block out the phone call. dave called, like the usual, to discuss a stunt he had in mind. the whole call your mind was in other places, something that you tried to forget due to embarrassment. you ended up missing everything he said, after twenty-minutes of him describing this extravagant stunt all you could say was ‘uhm’ before hanging up.

“yea no im fine, somebody else was just calling me. it was an emergency so…” you sucked at lying. dave saw right through it laughing, “alright, cool.”

this is horrible your whole demeanor was probably making him extremely uncomfortable but you couldn’t help it. attraction is a infection and you couldn’t get rid of it for the life of you.

“not sure if your interested but i have a break in ten minutes, wanna go brainstorm ideas for stunts.” you forced your gaze down towards him, giving a small nod, “sounds good.”

your not sure what the fuck just happened. anyone would’ve seen that as a normal conversation, but with the pairing of dave being shirtless and soaked from the lake, your pretty sure everything was obvious. like everyone had a red alert going off that you wanted to fuck dave england, bad.

you got to your truck for some fresh air, fresh air as in an edible. seated in your car, you scurried through the center console digging out a baggie filled with pills. not edibles but it will do. it was either xanax or something stephen left, you took a lucky guess that it was xanax due to the shape and took a bar.

you dry swallowed it, trying your best to catch your breath yet there was nothing to lose it over. you found yourself still being hot and bothered over nothing, well, of course it was something but you couldn’t bring yourself to accept it.

leaning your head back and closing your eyes you tried your best to collect your thoughts. it was going well, that was until there was a knock on the drivers side window. you huffed while tilting your head to see who could possibly be bothering you. it was dave, peeking through the window and waving at you. you weren’t quite sure what he was trying to do, so you just smiled.

he ran around to the passenger side door, opening it and hopping in closing it behind him. “i left a little early for the break so i figured i should go looking for you.” he flashed his cheesy smile at you, and you couldn’t help but smile back. “i didn’t know you wanted to talk somewhere else, let alone in my car.”

“actually it’s not about stunts. somethings bugging you, does jeff know i’m helping you with stunts or some shit?” he kept eye contact with you, you could tell he was genuinely concerned and it was making you even more nervous. how the hell can you lie your way out of this?

“just stressed out with work.” you tried to look away, instead you tried to scan the dash for anything that could distract you from doing something you could regret later.

“y/n you are a horrible fucking liar.” he let out loud laugh, if your face wasn’t heating up with embarrassment you probably would have laughed along. despite the embarrassment you took your eyes off the dash for a bit to glance over at him, a beaming smile still lit on his face.

“well it’s not like i could’ve made a move at the bar and it’s too late now.” it all came up at once, you couldn’t even look at the dash, so you just looked out your window. maybe if you stared away long enough he would leave.

“of course you could of! you think i wasn’t wanting too the whole time? you really really suck at lying.” a wave of shock hit you, dubbed with confidence as well. your not sure where it all from but you looked at dave who had a small smile rested on his face. you took time to build up your vocabulary again as it feels as if your brain is mush, completely wiped with no thoughts or words. “you know, i get really bad at lying when i wanna kiss someone really bad.” you laughed at the end of your sentence, letting the silence ring out.

“really?” you gave him a small nodd, your heart beating so fast you swear you could hear it in your ears. you rested your elbow on the center console leaning forward slightly, you were trying to tell if he was feeling the same as you, or if he was ready to jump out of the car and run very far away from you.

“y/n, if you joking this would be a great time to let me know.” his words were breathy and spaced out, “dave, im not joking.” it felt like and entirety before you finally responded.

the events to follow were only to be described like a whirlwind. your lips met together, leaning between the two seats to do so. moving in a steady rhythm pulling apart for breath, you made eye contact once again, him being the once yo shoot yiu a shy smile this time.

you awakwadly hopped over the console to the passenger side were dave sat, yiu looked at him giving a slight nod to make sure that this all wasn’t too much. that none of it was a mistake or something yiu would regret for the rest of your life. he didn’t even have to respond, the smile and small mld he gave you was all you needed for the go.

he pulled you into his lap, it wasn’t the most comfortable due to the confined space of your car but at the moment all you cared about was dave. your lips continued to mold into eachother, hands slowly roaming as you both still warmed up to the feeling.

with what fell like seconds you both pulled back to gasp for short breaths of air. he kissed you once more before making his way down to your neck and shoulders nipping and sucking ever so slightly. almost too embarrassed to moan you let out small breathy sighs. the overwhelming feeling of relief yet tension building. he broke away for a few seconds just to move the strap of your tank top and bra to the side.

as dave was pulling your top down, a knock was heard from the window and panic settled in quickly. your heart was beating faster for a bad reason now, too afraid to look you rushed over the console hitting your head in the process, returning to your seat. looking over you could see it was only chris, who was waving with a smile on his face.

“what the fuck…” you let out a mixture between a sigh and a laugh while rolling down the window closest to dave.

“as bunny the lifeguard would say, wrap before you tap my friend.” chris reached his hand through the window to give dave a high five before giggling and walking away. you both laughed, although daves was more of a sigh.

“maybe my next break we could resume what we started.” before leaving he reached over pulling your bra strap back up before exiting the car.

[carpisuns]

Just wanted to come there quickly and just share some love and appreciation. Way back before I even got my own tumblr yours was one of the ones I would always love to check and go through. I adore you talking in the tags and my favourite thing ever is you rambling in the tags and just the way you gush and fangirl over posts and all the beautiful fanworks. There's just something about seeing that love that just adds so much more to the post idk it's just so lovely to see all that being expressed. And all your creations as well man!!! Your fics and lil rough sketches and comics and fanart they are all so beautiful and you are one of the funniest people for me when it comes to ml I just love the humour you inject into your works! The fic you wrote for my commission just asdfghjkl thank you again from the bottom of my heart. I feel like you've worked so hard and created so much this year alone and I hope you can see that!! I'm in love with pink and in awe of all the chapters. You have made so much and shared so much with us and it has been more than enough. Please don't think that you haven't been contributing as much idk just I get the vibe that you're a bit unhappy with the pace at which you're completing things/the amount you've created over a span of time? And I just wanted to wholeheartedly say please don't be hard on yourself you've made so much and it's all been brilliant. And even if you weren't to make any of your own content for a good while and stepped away I hope you can see you bring so much to the ml fandom and people's tumblr experience regardless. The joy I get from viewing your blog and reading your tags and just getting to see all you share is more than enough it's so precious and brings so much enjoyment. Anyways hope you have a wonderful day and sending you all the love💞💞

honestly I can’t even tell you how much it meant to me to get this ask. it came at a time when I really needed it. I’m super grateful. seriously 😭💖

I don’t want this to be a big vent post but I have been struggling with stress and burnout a lot so this felt very validating 🥺 it’s taken a toll on my general energy level and my ability to create and it’s just tough for me to not be able to be as enthusiastic and involved as I used to be. I’ve had a really hard time with creating, to the point that I’m almost worried I’ve just like lost those skills forever 😭 and I also haven’t had much energy/motivation to consume content and give feedback either which is a bummer and makes me feel frustrated with myself. I really value being part of the fandom and feeling like I’m contributing to the ongoing dialogue among all the fans so it’s hard to feel like I have nothing much to give anymore, on the creator side and the consumer side.

Anyway this message just really hit me and felt like a big hug! Thank you so much for the kind words and for going out of your way to deliver them. I know it took time and energy to do that and it means a lot that you did. You are a really compassionate and thoughtful person 🥺💕 and thanks for commissioning that fic as well! i really enjoyed writing it

[tnystrk-exe]

Estocolmo 3

Hannibal x Reader

Masterpost

First Chapter

Warnings: 18+ thigh riding, in a public setting, degration, cockwarming

Word count: 6k

Chapter Three

Maybe you hadn’t thought through about going to Hannibal’s dinner party. In the moment you had just missed the sound of his voice. His touch… Okay, you were motivated by other things than how much fun you would have at this little dinner party of his.

However you had to pull a lot of strings and work extra shifts, just so your bosses would even consider letting you off for a couple days. You were a valuable worker, one that would damage them to lose, but pettiness didn’t know any bounds. The stress was adding up. Still you trudged through it all. Not one to ever want to end up on Hannibal’s bad side.

You didn’t like making the perfect, polite ones angry. Loud anger you could handle. You were used to it. Quiet anger was just upsetting. He’d be upset you let him down, but he wouldn’t say it right. A soft sigh followed by a half meant it’s okay would probably be the most he’d give you. Disappointing him was a no go.

“I can’t wait for you to leave.”

“You’re so good at making me feel loved.”

“You know I do!” She laid back in your bed, arm’s comfortably behind her head, “But since you planned yourself a date. I did too.”

You grabbed clothes and threw them into a small duffel bag. “The chick from work?”

“God I wish. Can't work up the courage.”

“Don’t tell me you called up Reggie,” you laughed.

“Don’t tell me you got called up by Hannibal,” she mocked your voice. “Look! We’re a team! You can get dicked by someone that doesn’t deserve you. And I’ll romance a very pretty woman the entire weekend.”

“When is she getting here?”

“I’m shooting the text the second you’re out that door.”

You sighed, “You replace me so easily.”

“Oh baby,” she cooed, “Remember who’s leaving who.”

“A couple of days. You could be lonely for a few days.”

Alex walked you out. Stressing that you had to text her throughout your drive. It was only a three hour drive, but a lot could happen within that time.

All in all it wasn’t a bad trip. Monotonous without your usual partner in the passenger seat, but not bad. Your nerves bit at you. Hannibal’s social presence really was everything to him. Your head ran though countless ways you could mess up the night. Ultimately you wouldn’t, you knew that, but your brain sure did like to torture you with the idea.

“Everything will be fine,” you told yourself as you parked alongside the manor. Staying in the car for a moment you built yourself up. It was Hannibal. He knew about your home life. How you took your coffee. The things you’ve allowed him to do to you. Probably some understanding of things that he hadn’t done to you yet. A knock on your window pulled you out of your thoughts.

Opening the door you got out of the car.

“You weren’t thinking of running away, I hope,” Hannibal greeted.

“I wasn’t. Nerves,” you admitted. “It’s usually just the two of us, y’know…”

“Darling,” he scoffed, adjusting a piece of your hair, “I have no doubt in my mind that my companions wouldn’t adore you as much as I do.”

You moved to grab your bag, only for Hannibal to immediately take it from you. “You say that now, but that’s only because you’ve become accustomed to that certain charm I have at three in the morning after a night of studying. I’m not sure I can be as adorable to all of your friends.”

“Anyone that thinks otherwise has no place in my home.” Hannibal grabbed your hand in his own, leading you to the manor.

Once the front door closed, he wasted no time pulling you close. The kiss was long and rough. Both attempting to make up for lost time in the limited minutes you had. A soft moan from you made him press you against the door, the bag that had been in his hand long forgotten. His hand pressed lightly against your throat as he pushed a knee in between yours.

It was a long while before he pulled away. He rested his forehead against yours. “I’ve missed my favorite plaything,” He spoke into the shared air, “You’ve been away so long.”

“Your favorite?” You asked, looking at him dazed.

He smiled, mischief in his eyes. “I’d wager they couldn’t kiss you so well you’d look at them like they hung the stars after.”

“I do not!”

“Of course you don’t, darling.” He picked up your bag. “Come, we should start getting dressed.” You followed Hannibal up the stairs to his room. Apparently yours too, at least for the next couple of nights, since he emptied the contents of your bag into an empty dresser drawer. “You’re more than welcome to explore if you do get uncomfortable. I know meeting a sea of people can feel overwhelming.”

“I’m just afraid I’ll be out of place.”

“You’re exactly where I want you to be,” he disappeared into the walk-in closet, “The other’s are decent enough people. However, it makes sense that such divine beauty doesn’t fit in amongst commoners. I’d never dream of you finding yourself their equal.”

You walked over to examine the drawings he had hung on the wall next to his bed. “I’m not sure I’m worthy of such high thought.”

He came back, placing the suit and dress onto the bed. Standing behind you, he wrapped his arms around you, resting his head on your shoulder. “I really do mean it, beloved. You’re strong and intelligent. As much as I’d like to, you won’t allow me to pull strings and help you. That’s more than most of the crowd coming over tonight. They haven’t faced hardships like yourself and I. Don’t allow yourself to be treated less than and, please, tell me if anyone makes you feel that way.”

You turned your head, kissing his cheek. “I’m not sure I believe it, but I’m grateful for the thought.”

“I simply must make it my mission to prove it.” He inhaled deeply, “You’ve changed your perfume?”

“I liked the one you bought,” you said simply, getting out of his arms, you looked at the dress he had gotten you. The piece of fabric was easily the most expensive thing you owned now. It didn’t match his suit, but the two certainly complimented each other. “You really didn’t have to.”

“I want to,” he went to open another dresser drawer, pulling out a small box, “Consider it all a graduation present. You worked hard and deserve a reward for it. We didn’t get a chance to see one another before you left.”

“You’ve had these since then?” You asked.

“Of course. How could I resist an opportunity to find you a gift? And with Alex so graciously allowing me to buy you a dress, I figured tonight would be a wonderful time to give you your gift.” He opened the jewelry box.

“Hannibal,” you gasped quietly, the jewelry glimmered brightly, “It’s beautiful.” Usually you weren’t one for objects, but this was also the most thoughtful thing you’ve ever received. Hannibal had taken the small bits he knew of you and picked out the perfect pieces of jewelry for you. It was the feeling of being known so well that made it special.

“The second I saw this set I couldn’t help but think of my darling girl. Would you like me to put the necklace on you now?”

You quickly shook your head, “After I get dressed, please. I wouldn’t want to risk dirtying it while I’m getting ready.”

“In that case, I’ll show you where you can get ready.”

You grabbed the things you needed to make yourself look presentable and followed Hannibal to the bathroom. To your surprise he started to undress after he hung up his suit and your dress. You shrugged it off and set your stuff on the counter, you were more than comfortable with him and you and Alex had taken to doing similar in your cramped bathroom early mornings. The shower turned on while you took out your makeup. His humming filled the otherwise quiet room.

When you were pleased with how your makeup looked, you moved on to fussing with your hair. The shower shut off and your eyes wandered briefly in the mirror. You watched the show as he dried off his chest and followed the towel up as he dried his hair. He caught your eye, brow raised, you shrugged and sent a wink his way.

You got undressed, tossing your clothes in the hamper as you did. Walking over to the dress you felt the fabric between your fingers, studying the intricate pattern that was sown on to it.

“You don’t like it, darling?” Hannibal asked as he buttoned his shirt. “There’s another in the closet, but I was hopeful you’d like this one. You'd look stunning.”

“Admiring,” you stated simply, “Wait there’s another?”

“There’s a show, I’d like to see tomorrow. I figured it could be an outing for us.” He checked himself over before styling his hair. “This is ‘Making it worth my while’ as Alex said.”

“Han, you know better than to listen to Al.” You sighed, “I’m grateful, I honestly am. It’s just embarrassing. I really can’t give you anything in return.”

Hannibal came over to you, holding one of your hands in his. “They’re simple trinkets of my affection. In the end they all mean nothing. YN, you grace me with your presence and time, which is something that can never be repaid in form. I hold you dearly, your time is more than I deserve.”

You stood on the tips of your toes kissing him gently. There was all the time later for a rougher touch. Now you just wanted to feel him pressed close against yourself. A brief flick of thought asked if you really wanted this to just be a fleeting thing between friends. Pulling away, you gave him one final kiss to the side of his mouth.

“You’re allowed to give me one gift a month,” you teased, as you grabbed his tie and set to work on tying it for him. “You’re not my sugar daddy, as much as Alex wishes you were.”

“And you’re welcome to set as many rules as you’d like when it comes to this. However, what’s forcing me to follow them?” His hands grazed along your sides, “We both understand who makes the rules, don’t we little one?”

The part of you that had become accustomed to that particular tone, faltered slightly. “Hannibal, we’re not always in sessions,” you reminded him as you tightened the tie, “You can’t just have your way.”

“Why not?”

You shook your head, annoyed, “Or you can do what you’d like. It’s your wallet after all.”

“I’m sorry,” he apologized immediately, “I don’t want to offend you.”

You let it go, there was no use to fight over this. “It’s okay, you’re only teasing right?”

“May I please see you in the dress?” He asked, lightening the mood.

You turned, returning to the piece of elegant fabric. Carefully you pulled it on. He really was excellent when it came to fashion. The dress hugged the right places and accentuated everything wonderfully. Hannibal stepped behind you once again. Zipping the back for you, his fingers trailing up as he did. Carefully, he moved your hair to the side as he fixed the necklace in place. Dipping his head down, he kissed that spot on your neck he had quickly learned turned you to putty in his hands. You leaned against him, angling your neck to give him better access as a soft moan escaped. His teeth grazed gently against your neck, he seemed to toy with the idea of making a mark before backing away. As much as he’d enjoy to see it blossom, he knew you had many first impressions to make.

You whimpered at the loss of contact. Suddenly realizing just how much you had missed him.

“I know, little one,” he sighed, pressing a kiss on the side of your ear, “but we have a night to get through. After this, I belong to you. We will have all tomorrow for each other.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

-

The dinner party was beautifully done. Of course it was. Hannibal never spared any expense, let alone when he was trying to impress. He had introduced you to a couple people, they were nice enough, but you just couldn’t find a connection with them. You definitely steered clear of Bedelia. That woman was intimidating to a whole other degree. Definitely someone you could actually see Hannibal going after. You wondered why he didn’t.

An hour into the dinner party, you slipped away. He had said you could explore and honestly, without him you weren’t much for conversation. You had already gotten a snide look for saying you worked at a bar on nights, but they didn’t hold much interest for you either. All the conversations you had heard were meaningless droning. People constantly trying to one up another or bragging about something new they acquired or some business deal.

So it was safe to say no one noticed your absence. Well maybe one extremely observant man.

You found yourself in his library, taking residence in a nook next to a window. Hannibal’s sketch book in your lap as you looked over his drawings. Each drawing looked like he must have spent hours on it. You marveled at his talent, watching the range go from almost romantic to grouesome. Some things could be recognized as his take on art pieces, and landscapes, while others seemed to be originals. The originals were darker in nature, but you supposed it made sense. He saw death as something comforting and could be considered beautiful. Of course it would translate into his pieces.

The door opened, revealing the man that occupied your thoughts at the moment. “Is everything alright, darling? No one bothered you, I hope.”

You smiled up at him. “I’m fine. I just wanted a break, I’m getting a little bit of a headache.”

“Oh?” He touched your forehead with the back of his hand, “Are you feeling well?”

“I’ll go back in a moment,” you promised himas you brought his hand down to press a peck onto it, “Go enjoy your party.”

“They can keep themselves entertained for a while.”  He took a seat next to you, pulling you to rest against him. “I could use a moment too.”

You couldn’t stave off the smile that played on your lips to get to have him to yourself. He made you feel comfortable and honestly you were out of your element at this party. Hannibal rested his head against the wall. That left his neck vulnerable and you couldn’t resist placing a kiss on it.

“Why must you insist on acting up when we are alone, darling girl?” He hummed quietly, his hand entertained itself absentmindedly drawing things on your thigh.

“I missed you,” you insisted. “Not just like that. We used to spend a lot of time together.”

“It has been a long time. I’m sorry about that.”

“I had your number too. I’m not completely out of blame.”

“Well, you’ll find a way to make it up to me.” He tugged you closer, “You’re too far.”

You straddled one of his thighs, placing your hand on his shoulders. “I’m sure you have a couple ideas of how.”

“A couple.”

Leaning in you caught him in a kiss. His hand started to trail lower, you caught him by the wrist before he got to his destination, placing his hand back on your hip. With his original plan voided, he bounced his thigh against you, the hands on your hips helping you grind down. You couldn’t help the moan you let out. Letting him continue until you remembered the party happening not so far away.

“Hannibal,” you whined against his lips, “Not right now.”

“But you sound so sweet, darling, don’t mind them.” He continued his earlier assault on your neck, this time not thinking twice before sucking his mark onto it. “You look so beautiful tonight. I know you can give me one before we’re missed, you’re always so good for me. Don’t you want to be good?”

The growing lust clouded your judgement. Hannibal’s soft words and the gentle but perfect rhythm he was working on made it hard to find any reason to argue.

“Yes, daddy,” you sighed softly, “I want to be good for you.”

The door opened again, followed by a dramatic gasp, “Hannibal, having dessert before the rest of us?” The strange man eyed you, “Plan on sharing?”

Hannibal had been quick to tug down the dress that had rode up, keeping you safe from prying eyes. “Unfortunately, I’m not one for sharing. If you don’t mind waiting in the hall. I’ll meet with you in a second.”

“Oh, I’d much prefer to stay. Hello, what’s your name? Is Hannibal keeping you entertained?”

You hid your face against Hannibal’s shoulder, your face burning to the touch.

“Shy thing isn’t she, daddy?”

“I really must insist you leave now,” Hannibal said, the anger evident in his voice.

“Fine, killjoy.” You heard retreating steps and the door closed again.

“Of course out of everyone to find us it was the gossip,” he sighed to himself, dropping a kiss to the top of your head, “I’m sorry about that, love.”

“I told you not now,” you said, pulling away and going back to your seat beside him.

“I know. I’m sorry,” he kissed the back of your hand, “I thought we’d have a couple more minutes before someone looked for us, let alone find us. Let me handle this and then you’ll never see him again.”

You nodded. “Can I go to the room for the night? He made me feel… strange.”

“Darling,” he cupped your cheek, a sad look in his eyes, “this is your home more than anyone else out there. Don’t let him ruin the night for us. I’ll make sure he’s gone and stay by you the rest of the night. Does that sound okay?”

And true to his word he was, he had escorted the man out quickly once he found him. However the Gossip was apparently a fast worker, because a couple people did give you lingering looks. Though they were quick to save face if they so much as thought Hannibal noticed. Whatever they thought didn’t matter. You were two grown, consenting adults that enjoyed each other’s company, be damned what others thought. Throughout the night you kept telling yourself that, hoping to cut the embarrassment short. A couple times you caught yourself, thoughtlessly intertwining your fingers with Hannibal’s when you were less than sturdy. Each time he squeezed your fingers gently, quiet reassurance that he was there for you.

-

You woke up the following morning. Hannibal was still asleep beside you, it must have been early. He looked sweet in the mornings. Relaxed, not as stiff as he usually was, his hair sticking up in places he’d immediately flatten out once he woke as he greeted you with that deeper more accented voice that accompanied the mornings. You pressed a kiss to his chest, before carefully removing the arm that was sprawled across your stomach.

Looking at the clock, you considered the time. There was enough if you worked quickly. Standing up, you grabbed one of your shirts and shorts. After freshening up, you made your way down to the kitchen.

It was different. You hadn’t toured much of the home, let alone know where anything was, but you gathered your bearings fast enough. The things you needed had been placed somewhat similarly to his old home and you set everything onto the counter. Protein scramble, fruit, and pancakes seemed like a good option today. The pancakes, he had taught you to make when you asked where the box mix was and obviously he wouldn’t stand for you not knowing how to make something so simple from scratch.

Your phone played music as you set to work, washing the used dishes along the way so there wasn’t too much of a mess.

As you were plating the food, you heard Hannibal call out your name.

“Kitchen!” You called out.

He was quick to meet you, “Darling, I could have made you breakfast. You should have stayed in bed with me.”

“I couldn’t sleep any more and you looked too sweet to wake,” you poured two cups of coffee and prepared them to both of your liking, “Figured why not play domestic for a while.”

“How did you like it?” He asked, walking over to take the cup from you.

“Eh well you know, the domestic life,” you shrugged, feeding him a cut strawberry, “I like to let my partner sleep in on Saturday’s and make them comfort breakfasts. Sometimes they ruin breakfast in bed by coming down too early, but what can you do?”

He chuckled around the bite of strawberry, “I’m sorry, beloved. I’ll stay put next time.”

“Yes, you will.” You stood on the tips of your toes to press a chaste kiss to his lips. “But I’m not too angry at you. I enjoy your company.”

His fingers toyed with the hem of your shirt. “Aren’t you usually sporting my shirts on these mornings?”

“I didn’t want to ruin one of them.”

“You couldn’t ruin a thing if you tried. I’ve got more than enough for you to steal away when you go back home too.”

“I only took them, because someone made a habit of messing up my shirts.”

“And your reasoning for keeping them, little one?” He grabbed the plates, “Come along, the mornings have been wonderful recently.”

You grabbed the cups. “You should’ve come and picked them up the same way I had. It’s your own fault they aren’t back where they belong.”

The afternoon was spent in each other’s company. Hannibal had insisted he’d wash the remaining dishes and asked you to pick up his sketchbook and pencils from the library since you were going to find yourself something to read. You did as asked, before returning outside. Setting his things on the table, you went to go sit in a sunny spot of grass.

It wasn’t long until Hannibal rejoined you outside and took a seat.

You glanced up curiously after a while, he was sketching away.

“Anything I can do for you, beloved?” He asked, not looking up from his work.

“Just watching.”

He hummed in response.

Some unease settled in your stomach when you remembered why exactly you were over here. What was the harm in voicing it? “Hannibal?” You waited until he looked up at you, “You’re okay that we haven’t slept together yet? I mean… I know that’s why I am here.”

It was true, the lingering looks you had gotten at dinner, paired with the small embarrassment of realizing one of Hannibal’s love bites got to bloom in front of them all threw you off at night. You had tried to let yourself go, let him have control of you for a while, but you couldn’t go past taking off some clothes and letting your hands feel the other. He didn’t mind when you didn’t want to do more. Always the gentleman. Instead he settled you against his chest, an arm keeping you close, quiet conversation and long breathtaking kisses filled the night.

“I’m not one of those little boys you’ve found,” he stated, seeming to be mildly offended, “I enjoy our quiet moments just as much, if not more. Sex is something else we could do together, nothing more. It’s not everything, little one. You’re not here for that purpose. What I enjoy is your company and I’ll take it any way you give it.”

You tilted your head looking at him closely, he mimicked you, narrowing his eyes at you playfully. That made you laugh softly, you decided he was being honest and not covering up his disappointment with sweet words. Patting the grass next to you, “Sit with me.”

“YN…”

“Please?” You asked, sweetening the pot with a pout.

He shook his head but gathered his things, soon joining you. Resting your head on his shoulder you looked at what he was sketching. The scene was you at the present moment. Half faced toward him, book in hand, completely relaxed, and more perfect than you ever dreamed of being.

“That’s an exaggeration, I’m not that beautiful.”

“That’s where we must differ, my love,” he kissed your temple, “Try as I might I’ll never be able to draw you with the dignity you deserve. It’s a poor imitation of the way I perceive you.”

“You’re a ridiculous man,” you said fondly, “Though I suppose I’d like to keep you around a while longer.”

“Suppose” he scoffed, “ You’d be lost without me.”

You stuck your tongue out at him childishly and went back to your book.

-

“Darling, I do adore when you take care of yourself, but we’ll be late if you don’t hurry,” Hannibal said, leaning on the bathroom’s door frame already dressed for the outing.

“It’s not my fault you always manage to get the bath perfect,” you groaned, getting out of the bathtub.

Hannibal walked over, grabbing a towel on his way. “I’ll run you another later.”

You took the towel, drying yourself off. It was nice to see a rare impatient Hannibal. There was more to that calm and collected demeanor he usually had. “You’re cute when you’re excited about something. Where are we going?”

“I got us tickets to the opera.”

“Really!” You lit up at that. When he talked about the shows he had seen before, he’d get so much more animated. It would be nice to experience one with him. “Which one?”

“Die Entführung aus dem Serail,” he answered, taking you in with a smile, “but darling, your excitement may go to waste, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll be quick!”

With you keeping your promise and Hannibal’s quick driving, it didn’t take anytime to make it to the opera house. There was time to spare and Hannibal socialized a bit, introducing you to other regulars. You exchanged pleasantries and let Hannibal control the conversation as you looked around the place. Some people you recognized from last night. One person you saw nod towards you whispering something to his companion.

“I didn’t think he’d be one for cradle robbing,” you caught the man say, as he eyed you up, “Lucky man. Reckon I could steal that little piece away?”

You subtly moved closer to Hannibal, feeling the heat rise to your face.

Hannibal turned his attention to you when the others started talking amongst themselves. “Are you alright?” He asked quietly, tucking away a strand of your hair that fell out of place.

“Yeah. I’m great,” you lied, knowing he’d probably take offense to any minute comment made about whatever kind of relationship the two of you had.

“Are you certain?” The tone of voice saying he knew you were hiding something. He always seemed to read you so easily. In that he knew you’d continue to deny anything. “Would you like to go to our seats now? The show should start in a couple of minutes.”

“Yes, please.”

Hannibal grabbed your hand in his, leading you away from the crowd. To your surprise he took you to a private balcony above the rest of the audience seating. “Since, it’s your first time, I figured privacy would do us well. No distractions,” he paused for a moment, “No one to get into that pretty little head of yours.”

“I just don’t enjoy all the looks and comments,” you sighed, allowing him to pull you down onto the seat with him. “I love spending time with you. It’s just soured by people that don’t mind their own.”

“It’s not ideal, but we mustn’t let them ruin our nights. With this kind of community, people make assumptions and talk. Darling, I really do insist you tell me when someone makes you upset.”

“I know, I know. Guess I should have braced for it more. I’m just not used to these kinds of things. When we’re alone it’s easy to just exist together. Just us.”

“I understand completely. However, I do enjoy that we finally got to leave the house. You look absolutely breathtaking tonight.”

You smiled at that, “Well, you do seem to have an eye for what suits me.”

“That, I do.”

Leaning your head on his shoulder, you breathed the comforting scent of his cologne, “I’m sorry I let them get to me when we're supposed to be enjoying our time together. It’s not fair to you.”

“They get annoying,” he gave your thigh a gentle squeeze, “Of course you’d take offense for us. There isn’t much we can do besides understand that we’re here for the right reasons. Though, it does get under my skin to see you affected so under my care.”

Soon the crowd made their way to the seats and the lights dimmed to near black. When the music started Hannibal whispered translations into your ear. You got caught up in the story between watching the characters go through their woes and Hannibal’s gentle voice guiding you through every detail. It was easy to see what Hannibal saw at these events. They really were thrilling to watch. Still it wasn’t so much the show, but getting to know another side of the man in question.

You looked at the man beside you, a happy smile plastered on your face. “Thank you for bringing me, Hannibal.”

“Anything for you, my love.”

“Your love?” You challenged teasingly.

A couple times he had thrown around the pet name. You didn’t take it for much. He was a sweet, old fashioned man, you had decided to believe. A sweet nothing that neither of you minded. Still you couldn’t deny the slight softness you felt from the moniker.

“You’ve promised yourself as all mine before,” he reminded you, “and I take no issue in claiming what’s mine.”

“That was said when I was drunk on you.”

“Deny all you’d like, sweet girl, you’re still mine.”

Hannibal tilted your head up slightly to kiss you. You couldn’t find it in yourself to care about why the music crescendoed in that moment. Not when he was kissing you with more passion than you had ever felt. He had a way of making it feel like you were the only beings in existence. Hannibal bit at your lip, asking for more, and you gave it to him without a thought. You’d do whatever he wanted at that moment. Still you couldn’t help grabbing his wrist when his hand found it’s way up your dress. He swallowed the helpless moan that slipped past your lips greedily.

You pulled away from him, your hips grinding onto his hand on their own accord. “Hannibal, I-“

He hushed you, “You’re missing a very important part of the show.” His hand didn’t let up from its ministrations as he continued to translate for you.

You went to cover your mouth with your hand, but Hannibal stopped you short, placing it back at your side. A quick mummer of be good was all he offered, not once stopping the pace he had set. You choked back the moan when he pressed against a spot that had been long neglected since the last time you paid him a visit. The music being so loud was your only safe haven, still, you pressed yourself further into Hannibal, hoping to hide yourself further from any wandering eyes that might look away from the show. Embarrassment and lust built with every thrust of Hannibal’s fingers. The former was getting increasingly easier to ignore as Hannibal pulled you closer and closer to your end. Pressing your face against his neck, you bit at the skin there in a cheap attempt at revenge for what he was putting you through.

Hannibal’s fingers stilled. A quiet chuckle met your ear when he heard your whimper of protest, stopping your hips as you attempted to help yourself. “Such an easy thing to toy with, you're nothing more than my own personal whore.” He didn’t miss the throb around his fingers at those words. “You’d let me use you however I’d like wouldn’t you?”

You gave a lazy nod as he brought his fingers up to your mouth. Eager to please him, hoping he’d let you finish, you opened your mouth and sucked his fingers clean. Behind your back, you felt him working himself out of his pants. Taking his hand away he adjusted your dress higher before pulling you on to his lap. With his other hand the head of his cock teased your clit, you forced yourself not to complain, knowing he’d go on longer if you did. When he finally pushed into you, you couldn’t fight off the moan of contentment as he filled you completely. Turning your head, you caught him in a languid kiss, caught up in only him despite the performance going on.

“Please?”

“What do you need?”

“You.” You shifted your hips slightly, “May I please move?”

“I’m sorry, little one,” you caught the slight upward twitch of his lip when you looked at him in disbelief, “I’d rather use you at my leisure.”

You whined in frustration, leaning against him knowing he’d play a cruel game. This time he offered no translations, keeping you entirely focused on the feeling of him buried deep inside of you doing nothing to help relieve your need for him. When you did manage to distract yourself, he circled your clit and gave a few sharp thrust, just enough to bring you back where he wanted you. His hand continued, changing the rhythm every so often so you’d stay aware of your position.

“I’ll be so good,” you begged helplessly.

“And yesterday you had been so against it despite having our privacy in the library,” he reminded you, pushing in and out of you in a too slow pace, but at least he was moving, “What was it that was missing, hm? The audience that could look up and see me using what’s mine?”

You didn’t know what had changed. Not truely. Maybe it was the couple of glasses of wine you had drunk throughout the day. Perhaps it was just finally getting what you had wanted for so long. Honestly, you couldn’t find yourself to be curious enough to find out.

“I wanna cum,” you told him, swallowing the embarrassment.

“I don’t know, darling, you’ve tried to find comfort with others. I really can’t say I approve of the notion. Suppose, I could just use you for your worth and leave you dry.” He groaned into your ear as you clenched around him, he sped up his thrust, “There’s my good girl, you like the sound of that?”

“Hannibal, please,” you whimpered, “I’ve wanted you for so long.”

“Beg for it.”

“I’ll never look for anyone else again. It was so stupid to think anyone else could make me feel as good as you.” Your breath hitched when he struck deeper, “I've been so desperate for you.”

“That’s all so very sweet, but that’s not exactly what I want to hear.”

You whined quietly as you tried to figure out the right combination of words to get you what you wanted. “I’m just yours… No one else’s… You’re the only one, I’m so sorry…”

“See? Was it so hard to apologize for your misconduct?”

You shook your head.

He pinched your thigh. “Words, darling.”

“No, daddy,” you moaned, as his hands guided your hips to move with him, “But I’ll be good for you now.”

“I still don’t think you deserve to cum, you pathetic thing.”

“You’ll let me?”

Hannibal’s hand grabbed your jaw roughly, making you look at him. “Next time I won’t be so generous. Understood?”

You swallowed down the slight twinge of fear that had worked its way into your system. “Yes, sir.”

He pushed your face away. “Work for it yourself.”

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