#kiki writes things ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹♡

[sleep-drunk-kitten]

pairing: Sunghoon x fem!reader

genre: angst with a happy ending, fluff, established relationship

content warnings: emotional neglect, some swearing, hoon is kinda a workaholic ig?, I don't think there's anything that really needs warnings other than this is sad but lmk if I miss anything!

summary: your boyfriend comes home late after promising to be home on time for once, only to find that you're nowhere in sight...

notes: this is another one that I'm not sure how to feel about ;-; but I hope you guys enjoy it TwT fun fact, the whole thing was inspired by an rp that I did with an ai where the robot somehow managed to call me by another person's name while cuddling XD

I'm making a general taglist for my fics so if anyone would like to be added please either send an ask or a DM ^w^

Everything below the cut is NOT proofread

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  The white noise of your favorite movie buzzes through your living room, conversation and dialogue that you’d learned by heart filling the cold space with a false sense of familiarity. You sit cross-legged with your back pressed into the arm of the L-shaped couch in front of the tv, resting your chin on a plushie held close to your chest, looking not at the flickering screen to your right, but at the clock hanging in your kitchen–the only room in the house with the lights on. 

  9:17 pm, it reads. Roughly three hours and seventeen minutes since your boyfriend would typically get home from work. 

  Three hours and seventeen minutes since you’d been waiting on a barstool by the kitchen island where you both usually took your meals. 

  A tiramisu cake and a bouquet of flowers laid out in front of you. 

  Waiting.

  Waiting.

  So much waiting. 

  After an hour or so, you’d gently slid the cake back into its box, distracting yourself with the task of putting the flowers into a vase before they could wilt. 

  ‘He’s late again,’ you think sleepily, eyes struggling to stay focused on the clock, ’he promised he wouldn’t be tonight.’

  Your vision blurs as the long hand hits 12, eyelids too heavy to keep open, mind wandering to the conversation you’d shared with Sunghoon that morning. 

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  “What time will you be home from work today?” you asked sleepily, sitting up in your nest of blankets, having woken up to find that he was already in the process of pulling his socks on, careful not to wake you. 

  “I don’t know, Love, you know how crazy things have been with this update, I might be late again,” he said absently, looking around for his glasses. “Where the fuck did I put them?”

  He runs a hand through his hair frustratedly, leg bouncing in agitation. It made your heart ache slightly in your chest, disappointment, guilt, and worry mixing confusedly in your stomach. 

  You loved Sunghoon, more than almost anything else in your life, he was the man you’d chosen as your partner, who you’d decided to stand by through thick and thin. But ever since the game company he worked for had started work on a new update, you’d been seeing less and less of him. Always coming home late, tired and stressed, mind wandering and absent even when he was sitting right in front of you. You understood, you really did. Between the two of you he was the one with the bigger income, the burden of taking care of you, of making sure that the two of you could build a future together, was on his shoulders. And it was a responsibility that he did not take lightly. 

  But still. 

  In moments like that, where you slid off your bed to fetch his glasses off the nightstand–blanket wrapped securely round your shoulders to fend off the cold that permeated your apartment since the heating had started to malfunction–moving round the bed to stand in front of him… you couldn’t help but feel like he was breaking your heart. Just a little. 

  It was in the way he only met your eyes briefly when he took them from you before standing and gathering the rest of his things, sighing in what could’ve been frustration or relief, it was hard to tell. 

  It was the way he didn’t stop the flow of movement steadily taking him away from you and towards the office till you called his name twice, stopping in his tracks and fixing you with a look that, though probably unintentional, made you want to bury yourself under your mountain of plushies and hide. 

  “I’m going to be late, (y/n), what is it?”

  You winced. You couldn’t help it. Unaccustomed to hearing him say your name with so little emotion. “Just… could you come back on time tonight?” your voice is barely more than a whisper, tapering off into silence the longer you force your eyes to meet his. “Unless you can’t of course! I’m not saying you have to do anything, I understand that you’re busy and you can’t really dictate when or how things get done but just that it would be nice if you could be home on time tonight since-”

  “Okay.”

  “Huh?” 

  “I’ll make it home on time tonight.” 

  His voice was softer than it had been a moment ago, giving you the courage you needed to meet his eyes. They were still heavy with worry, brows drawn together to dig a permanent crease into the middle of his forehead, but they weren’t quite as cold or distant. He was looking at you, really looking at you for the first time in what felt like forever. 

  It wasn’t much, you knew that. But it was still enough to ease the knot building in your throat. Enough to bring a small smile to your face as you nodded. “Mnm! Okay, I’ll see you tonight then.”

   “Mnm, alright,” he said, a small, slightly strained smile coming to rest on his own lips.

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  The apartment was almost completely dark when the lock to the front door chimed, alerting the darkness that someone had arrived. The figure that stepped through was slumped over, backpack sliding off one shoulder with his jacket, shoes abandoned haphazardly. 

  It took a moment for Sunghoon’s mind to catch up to his body, for it to fully sink into his bones that he was home. That he was home and it was nearly 11 pm. Home and the tv and kitchen light were both on, white letters onscreen asking the room if anyone was still watching Netflix. 

  Something in the kitchen caught his eye, a handmade vase his sister had given you for your birthday set out on the kitchen island, filled to the brim with pink, white, and purple flowers he did not recognise. 

  ’Oh’

  It was his birthday. 

  That’s why you’d asked him to come home on time. 

  Sunghoon groaned, face twisting with what could only be described as pain as he quickly set his bag down by the front door and made his way to your shared bedroom. You were usually asleep by this time, unable to pull all-nighters the way you used to back when you were in high school, always out like a light by no later than 10:30 every night. 

  ’But she still stays up every night waiting for you,’ a voice in his head hisses.

  ’I know… fuck I know she does,’ his own voice replies, panic setting in when he finds your room empty, the bed neatly made, not even a dent to show that you’d been laying in it while working on your laptop during the day. 

  ’She’s not here… are you surprised? How long did you expect her to wait?’ the voice whispers, a chill cascading down his spine.

  The panic sets in with more vigor, wrapping round his throat and sending his tired mind into overdrive as he checks the bathroom, your home office, and finally the dark living room. Fear telling him that this was it. 

  He’d really gone and done it now. 

  He wasn’t a complete fool. He knew the moment you stood in the middle of your bedroom floor instead of closing the distance between you and wrapping your arms around his waist, choosing instead to clutch your favorite duvet like a lifeline, wincing when you heard his voice, all because you wanted to ask him to come home… he knew right then that he’d been an absolute idiot. 

  He’d meant to come home early, to be there to make it up to you, to apologise properly, tell you that he’d take some time off as soon as the update was done and dusted. 

  But he didn’t. He let work sweep him up again. Drowning in error messages and buggy code till the sky outside his office windows was filled with the flickering lights of the city at night. 

  And now… now you weren’t there. 

  He’d left you alone. 

  He’d left you alone too long and you were gone. 

  You were gone. 

  You were gone and-

  ’Oh.’

  There you were. 

  The relief when Sunghoon sees you–curled up on the couch, partially hidden by a small pile of blankets and stuffed animals–is immediate.

  He doesn’t really register the way he sighs your name, shoulders relaxing, body melting into the floor the moment he’s in front of you, hand brushing a few messy strands of hair out of your face. The need to feel the warmth of your skin, to confirm that you really are there in front of him more an instinct than a conscious decision. 

  You mumble something in your sleep, tilting your face away from his cold fingertips, eyes fluttering open. “Hoon… hi baby… welcome home,” you say tiredly, shifting under your blankets in an attempt to pull yourself up. 

  Sunghoon feels his heart crack in his chest. Why were you smiling at him? You should've been angry. You should've pushed him away, demanded to know why he was back so late, why he'd been neglecting you in the first place. 

  “Baby? My love… why are you crying?” you ask, reaching for him through the haze of sleep still clinging to your limbs. 

  Choking back a sob, he leans closer, tucking his head under your chin and doing his best to wrap an arm around you from his place on the carpeted floor. “Nothing,” he says, shaking his head, though the tears soaking into your sternum say otherwise, “just missed you…”

  Your vision blurs at his words, a thread of steadily building tension and worry that had been constricting your heart for the past few weeks snapping. “Oh…” your voice shakes slightly, lungs shuddering as your breaths begin to feel lighter, “I’m right here you goose, what’re you crying for?” 

  “Who says I’m crying,” he says, hoarse with tears. 

  “Right right,” you laugh despite the dampness now soaking through your own cheeks, “because my baby never cries, huh?” 

  “Never,” he sniffles, nuzzling closer.

  You stay like that for a while, eventually urging him to sit more comfortably on the couch, allowing you to settle yourself on his lap, his arms still wrapped firmly round your waist, hands occasionally kneading whatever part of you he was in contact with as if he needed to assure himself that you were there, solid and real. 

  He waits until he feels your heartbeat slow to a steady rhythm, trying his best to calm down so his own can match yours, beat for beat. The way it–in his opinion–should. 

  But it wouldn’t, there were words lodged in his throat, and every time he tried to get them out he felt that same panic wash over him, sending his heart into a frenzy. 

  You could feel like beating against your cheek, could sense that there was something he wasn’t saying from the way his grip on you would tighten almost imperceptibly, stiffening as if he was bracing himself for something. A part of you wanted to push him, prompt him and ask what was going through his head, why you’d woken up to the sight of him crying in the dim light of your living room. And you would’ve if he hadn’t beat you to it. 

  “I’m sorry, (y/n).”

  “What do you mean? For being late? I know you can’t help it, Hoon, it’s not some-”

  “No! I mean yes, I’m sorry for being late tonight but… I mean… I mean for everything… for not being… here, with you, like this… as often as I should be, I’m sorry,” he says, the hands at your sides nervously fidgeting with the fabric at your hips, nervously looking between your face and the static tv screen behind you. 

  Sunghoon had never been good with words. You’d learned early on in your relationship that he preferred to show how he felt through his actions. Yet here he was, fumbling through an apology because… because… 

  “My love… did you think I’d left?” you ask, gently cupping his face with one hand, urging him to look at you. 

  Puffy red eyes still wet with tears, messy unkempt hair from running his hands through it all day, tired and probably as emotionally spent as you’d ever seen him and still… still he was the most beautiful person in the world to you. He nodded, hiding his face in your chest again, hands stilling. 

  “Well,” you sigh, resting your chin on top of his head and running a hand through the hair at the back of his head, combing through it in a way he swears only you can, “at least you know you’ve got things you need to make up for…”

  “I know… I forgot for a while… but I know…”

  “That’s okay then,” you breathe, leaning back to kiss his forehead. “But Sunghoon… baby… darling… the love of my life… my little pookie bear… “ you both giggle a little at the pet names, “You know I’d never leave you over something like this right? I was sad, and hurt, and I still expect you to make it up to me by never doing this again but… I still love you, it only hurts because I love you… I’m not going anywhere.”

  Sunghoon pauses for a moment, letting your words sink in. You think that when he looks up, lips slightly parted, it’s to say something in response, but you really should’ve known better. 

  Slowly, giving you enough time to pull away should you choose to, his breath mingling with yours before he steals it away with a soft, lingering kiss. Neither of you is in any rush to take things further. 

  It feels like a small eternity before he pulls away, like time stills for you both, but then he’s pressing his lips to your jaw, butterfly kisses tickling you down to your pulse point, making you giggle so you almost miss it when he says, “I love you too… so much…” 

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  It isn’t until the next day when you’re shuffling into your home office dressed in one of his oversized jerseys, complaining about a meeting that he remembers the flowers he’d seen on the kitchen island.

  Pulling out his phone, he makes good use of his detective skills (and google lens), remembering all the times you’d spoken to him about the language of flowers, and the meanings behind certain blooms. 

  He wasn’t quite sure whether to laugh or cry once he’d figured it out, opting to dig through the cabinets for a pack of waffle mix to fix you some breakfast instead. He had a lot of apologies to make…

Baby’s Breath: pure everlasting love

Pink Camellias: longing for you

Forget-me-nots: true love memories, do not forget me

[sleep-drunk-kitten]

𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐬𝐲 𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐝𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐢𝐞𝐬 | 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐮𝐝𝐞

pairing: enhypen x fem!reader

genre: crack, fluff, isekai!au, royalty!au

content warnings: slight allusion to suicidal thoughts, swearing, reader is anxious about the possibility of being killed

summary: after dying in a freak accident involving a suspiciously familiar white and blue truck, y/n wakes to find herself in the body of a petty side villain from a romance fantasy novel, doomed to die at the hands of her own fiance.

notes: I'm terrible at summaries but the girlies who get it get it!! This short series is going to be a very lighthearted parody of your typical romance isekai manhwa🤭with all the usual shenanigans and tropes that typically follow! I hope you all enjoy~

I will be making a taglist for this fic, so if you're interested in being added please either drop an ask or let me know in the comments

Everything after the cut IS proofread for once, but please feel free to let me know if any typos slipped through the cracks!

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  “Let's go over this one more time,” you say, pacing back and forth, shivering as your feet press into cold marble.

  “You said that five rehashes ago babe,” your best friend whines, head lolling over the side of your bed, “I think we get the plot, a bunch of Very Hot men all want you dead because you're sexy and you don't get along with their needy pick me girlfriend.”

  “That- well I mean yeah,” you sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose, “but that's not the point, Sun, the point is that we need to figure out how to make sure I, y'know, don't fucking die?!” 

  Sunoo groans, his silky black pyjamas blending into your tangled sheets so they cascade around him in an inky puddle when he slides closer to the floor. “The Princess was a bitch, a mean grumpy little thot, just don't be a hoe, avoid the Hot Men, and you should be fine- yah! What's with the face!-”

  Expression pressed somewhere between exasperation and disgust, you shake your head at him. 

  “You've clearly never read an isekai manhwa, you can’t just run away from the plot, it holds onto you like a clingy stalker ex… sometimes as a clingy stalker ex.”

  “So? Just… stick with plan Don’t Be A Thot?” he pauses for a moment before a shit eating grin spreads across his face, and you preemptively snag a pillow off the loveseat beside you. “It'll be hard to pretend to be something you're not but I'm sure you can do it!” 

  And there it is. 

  With well-practised precision, the embroidered cushion lands squarely in his face. 

  “This is my life on the line here Kim Sunoo! Could you take it seriously for just two seconds?”

  Against your will, your eyes begin to sting with tears, limbs already growing restless in the few moments you've been standing still, fatigue and fear battling under your skin. 

  You hadn't slept peacefully in over three weeks. Your mind refusing to shut down of its own volition since you'd woken up in the room you now paced in, in the body you now paced in. 

  For the first four days, you were insane. 

  Screaming and pleading with a man who claimed to be your father, confused by the sorrow in his eyes and the tenderness in his hands as he prevented you from leaving your room.

  Babbling through tears to the maids who filtered in and out, telling them that the title they were calling you by was not your own.

  Curled into a corner of a closet, trying and failing to steady your breathing as you slowly came to terms with the fact that this was really happening. 

  You'd been truck-kun-ed clean out of the life you'd known. 

  Despair followed. 

  Hopeless, hollow grief when you realised what your name in this particular world might mean. 

  Princess y/n l/n. 

  Spoiled and arrogant daughter of the Duke.

  A side villain of little significance set to die for the sake of the female lead. 

  Set to die.

  You'd laughed when it hit you. The one thing you'd wanted more than anything in your previous life was being handed to you on a silver platter. How fortuitous. 

  It wasn’t until the eighth day, when you'd resigned yourself to your fate, that Sunoo came crashing through the large oak doors that were usually locked to keep you in, raised voices and a stamped of footsteps following behind him. 

  “SHE'S MY FRIEND I CAN SEE HER WHENEVER THE HELL I WANT,” he’d shouted. 

  Slamming your doors shut as he turned to face you. 

  He was the one who'd been running, face flushed, chest rising and falling rapidly. But it felt like you were the one catching your breath, heart pounding in your ears. 

  “Sunoo?...” his name was barely a whisper on your lips.

  “(y/n),” relief flooded his features, “you're here.”

  He stumbled towards you, pulling you into his chest, body shaking as he held you so tight you could barely breathe. 

  “You're here you're here you're here-” he babbled, tears soaking through your clothes. 

  It took a long time to console him, and longer still for you to believe that he was there, puffy face squished between your shaking hands. 

  You remembered he'd been walking with you when the accident happened, his smiling face frozen in time when the headlights rushed closer. But you'd thought he survived. You didn't imagine for a second that he'd somehow landed in the same world as you. 

  That he'd be just as annoying in this world as he was in the last.

  “Okay okay, I'm sorry,” he says in the present, standing and dragging your blankets with him, “I was trying to lighten things up, you've been stressing about this too much, I’m worried.”

  And when he waddles next to you and wraps you in a hug, you know you wouldn't trade his annoying ass for anything. Sunoo was the reason you were trying to find a way to survive this in the first place. Without him, you knew you would've probably gone with the flow of the story, allowing the gallows to take you. 

  “I'm not stressing.”

  “Sweetie, you have a whole conspiracy theory board pinned into what I think is a very valuable painting of your grandfather.”

  “Touchè.”

  You both turn to look at said board, a mess of string and poorly sketched portraits pinned to a painting of a grumpy looking old man on a white horse. “Remind me again who's who, I think I have the gay prince mixed up with the emo soldier boy.”

  You smile, rolling your eyes, knowing full well he has no trouble remembering the character’s you’d told him about at least a dozen times. 

  “This one,” you say, pointing to an angular stick figure with a crown surrounded by sparkles, “is the crown prince who I'm engaged to because of fuckin’ course.”

  Sunoo nods, “Of fuckin’ course.”

  “The buff one is the knight I hire to kidnap the female lead when I think his royal highness has a thing for her, except knightey over here has a conscience and thinks the female lead is too pure and sweet to kidnap or whatever and ends up vowing to protect her or something.”

  “You'd think someone with a conscience would have the decency to do a job if they had the audacity to take money for it, I mean he had no issue kidnapping a chick before he had the hots for her, that's kinda gross.”

  “When you put it like that… anyway, the last two are a priest who wants her for her divine powers blah blah blah and the crown prince's illegitimate little brother.”

  “His brother?” 

  “Yeaaa…”

  “There’s other fish in the sea my man…” he says, giving the second crowned stick figure a sympathetic little pat. “So of the lot, who's the biggest threat?”

  “My fiance…”

  “No matter what we decide to do, you gotta dump the guy right?”

  “Yes,” you say, confidence creeping into your voice. “There are a lot of variables, I've read enough of these things to know that 90% of the time they get kinda weird about their fiances when they dump them, but it's gotta be done.” 

  “Then we start there, the rest of this nonsense can't be figured out till it happens.”

  He waves a hand at the other coloured threads linking squares of paper with possible outcomes and scenarios scribbled over them.

  “That's true…” you breathe, brows furrowed, eyes darting across the board.

  Sunoo’s lips curl into a slight pout when he sees you slipping back into the agitated state he’d been trying to coax you out of for the past fortnight. If he were being completely honest with you, he doesn’t believe in all this isekai nonsense, sure that if you simply avoid the plot you could easily live out your lives as a wealthy nobles without much trouble, but he knows that there isn’t much point in arguing with you. No, the best way to look out for you would be to support you as he’d always done, to have your back in this world the same way he had in the last, even if he thought you were being ridiculous.  

With a sigh, Sunoo presses a thumb into the crease between your eyes, distracting you from the painting of your grandfather, holding back a smile at the way your nose scrunches in annoyance.

  “Stop worrying,” he says, smoothing over the spot a few times before planting a kiss on your forehead, “whatever happens, we'll handle it together, okay?”

  “...Okay,” you breathe, resting your forehead on his shoulder.

  He presses a kiss to the top of your head, arms encircling your waist, the warm pressure of his presence surrounding you comforting. The one constant that had followed you into this life. “Plus, we’re early, aren’t we? The plot of your novel doesn’t start for…”

  “Another year,” you sigh, “It all starts in their second year at the royal academy, when the female lead shows up as a transfer from the land they were at war with till a while ago… a show of peace or something once it’s all over.” 

  “We have time… you’ll be just fine babe, he says. “Plus, you keep worrying about them killing you, but don't they always end up falling in love with the dimension yeeted villainess in those comics?”

  You scoff, pulling away. “I highly doubt that's possible Sunoo, I'm not the main villainess, I'm just a random side character.”

  “A gorgeous, quick witted, adorable little random side character with an amazing sense of humour and such a big brain that she chooses to use for the dumbest things-”

  “Sunoo!” you laugh, plucking another cushion off your couch to throw at him. 

  There was absolutely no way.

  …

  Right?

[sleep-drunk-kitten]

pairing: Husband!Jake x gn!reader

genre: sickening fluff, drabble

content warnings: could give u toothache idk

summary: some fluffy thoughts about husband Jake, that is all

notes: just a lil sumin inspired by yet another delulu conversation with the one and only @nar-nia

Everything below the cut is NOT proofread

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♡ I am fully convinced that Jake would be the type of lover who doesn't compute what shyness is when it comes to expressing how much he loves you

♡ and that would be fine, welcomed even

♡ except he's so corny about it 😭

♡ even when you're married and living together, he'll continue to use the most clichéd pickup lines on you, at the most random times

♡ "hey, my name’s Microsoft. Can I crash at your place tonight?"

♡ "we live together Jake"

♡ "if I could rearrange the alphabet, I’d put ‘U’ and ‘I’ together."

♡ "it's a whole bowl of alphabet pasta, good luck"

♡ "I'd say God bless you, but it seems like he already did!"

♡ you don't respond, you have a cold and it's difficult to not smile and continue pretending to be grumpy after he made you take that god awful medicine

♡ your snarky replies and feigned annoyance never does much tho, he thinks it's cute when you scrunch up your nose in mock disgust, you're incredibly sexy when you remind him how smart and quick witted you are, and he loves to hear you laugh knowing he's the reason behind it

♡ there's no winning, but you wouldn't trade what you have with him for anything

♡ you'll be standing in the kitchen late one night, tiredly waiting for the light on the kettle to indicate that your water's ready and you can make yourself that cup of coffee you so desperately need

♡ when a pair of arms wrap round your middle, a warm body resting against your back

♡ Jake doesn't need to say anything for you to know it's him

♡ after all, nobody else fits against you so perfectly, no one could possibly know how to hold you in a way that makes you feel so safe and secure

♡ naturally, your frame melts into his

♡ you can feel Jake smiling into your neck as he presses soft kisses against your skin, knowing you're very ticklish

♡ you try to shove him off, but to no avail. It just makes him more determined. He'd dig his fingers into your sides, relishing your yelp of surprise and the high pitched giggles that follow

♡ he doesn't let up till you manage to twist yourself round, grabbing his wrists and resting your forehead against his

♡ you're both out of breath, grinning like idiots as you lightly kick his shin, informing him that he's absolutely evil

♡ he just snickers, kissing your nose and telling you he loves you too

♡ "life without you would be like a broken pencil... totally pointless"

♡ you groan, kicking him again, resting your head on his shoulder now, and whining about how he ruined the moment

♡ Jake just laughs softly, wriggling his wrists out of your slackened hold to weave his fingers through your own

♡ pressing a kiss to the side of your head, he says nothing, just starts humming a song you recognise as the one you both listened to together on your first date, when the movie you'd wanted to see was suddenly cancelled and Jake had dragged you to a park in all your sulky disappointment

♡ pulling you down to snuggle against his chest while you both sat on the edge of a slide, he'd passed you his phone and an earbud so you could both trade songs back and forth while telling each other what you loved about each one

♡ with his arms around your waist, your back tucked into his warm chest, his voice filling the quiet space, you were suddenly grateful for the "failed" movie date

♡ and you were grateful for Jake now, as he slow danced with you to music only the two of you could hear in your dimly lit kitchen

♡ with your cheek pressed into his shoulder, you tell him that you love him, and that

♡ "if I were a cat... I'd spend all nine of my lives with you..."

♡ Jake didn't know his heart could feel any bigger in his chest, but he swears it's almost suffocating, how much he loves you too

[sleep-drunk-kitten]

"𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫" 𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐟 "𝐍𝐨𝐰"𝐬

pairing: Barista! Kang Yeosang x fem!reader

genre: sickly sweet fluff, soft angst with a happy ending, coffee shop au?

content warnings: none

summary: After losing the one person who you believed would be your forever, finding love again seems nearly impossible... but the sweet barista who hands you your morning coffee might just changce your mind...

notes: Hey ya'll! I'm finally back and clawing my way out of that writing slump~ This fic was purely self indulgent and the past/present tense is a little all over the place, but oh well, I hope you guys enjoy it anyway!

Please support your authors, likes are sweet and all but it's reblogs, comments, and asks that give us the will and confidence to keep writing and sharing our work <3

Everything below the cut is NOT proofread

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“Forever” 

In hindsight, it was a fickle promise. 

Though born into existence to encompass eternity, the word had lost its meaning somewhere along the line. 

“Oh it’s been forever! How are you?”

“Traffic was so bad, it took forever to get here”

“Oh that? It happened forever ago, I wouldn’t remember”

Its meaning changed and shifted as surely as the ripple of dunes in a desert. 

A minute.

An hour. 

Months.

Days. 

In the case of you and the person you’d called your soulmate, forever had been all of eight years. 

Eight years spent holding their hand. Kneeling down to tie the shoelace they never secured quite right. Sharing whispered conversations in the dim lights of orange streetlamps bleeding through frosted glass panes. Building futures where you moved in together, your smiles greeting each other after every long day, your arms always open and waiting for them to fall into. 

You’d never planned for a life without them in it.

Not once had you truly believed it possible for them to leave. 

So it was only natural that when they did, they took a part of you with them. The part of you that once believed in promises like “I’ll be by your side, always.”

Promises of “forever” or plans for the future had become intolerable. Feeling like a lie. A scam. Insincerity on your lips even when you wanted more than anything to believe it. Something that had once seemed so beautiful and bright in your eyes now filling your chest with grief. The weight of it pressing down on your heart, churning and swirling in waves so high and tumultuous they lapped against the sides of your throat so painfully there were days when something as simple as breathing burned. 

You were sure you’d never be able to build a connection that strong with another human soul. 

That was of course until you met him.

“Here’s your order”

Kang Yeosang was a quiet man. Offering you no more than a smile and your order every morning when you dropped by the cafe on campus.

You’d smile back, thank him, and get on with your day. 

It became routine, the familiar smell of coffee beans and chocolate chip cookies embracing you for a few moments as you steadied yourself, mentally preparing for the day ahead. The sound of the vintage bell above the shop door almost hypnotic in the way it caused your whole body to relax. The weight lodged in your chest and throat ebbing. Leaving behind the barren, still peace of low tide. 

Your commitment to this ritual and your usual order was so resolute that the pretty barista no longer asked what you wanted, realising early on that you deliberately came to the cafe early because you enjoyed the quiet.

As long as you never asked for anything different, which you never did, he would acknowledge you with a nod when you walked in before wordlessly moving round behind the counter to prepare your drink. Allowing you to bask in blissful silence for a few extra minutes. 

It was nice. 

”It’s on the house”

Your careful monotony was broken for the first time on a rainy Wednesday morning. You’d missed your first class of the day by sleeping through your alarm, woken up late, and neglected to bring an umbrella in your rush to leave your dorm. 

Voices prickle over your skin in the already crowded cafe, clusters of people looking to escape the damp and cold surrounding you on all sides despite the fact that you’d wedged yourself into a small table by the large glass windows, knee bouncing in agitation as you stared out at the steely grey sky. The rain on the way to the cafe had been mild, barely more than a drizzle, but whatever was brewing promised to be much, much worse, enough to force you to seriously consider making a trip back to your room to get an umbrella. 

But that would mean more time lost, more walking, potentially arriving to class much later than you’d intended, which really wouldn’t be so bad but it was still so frustrating and-

“y/n?”

The soft call of your name catches you off guard, the deep, velvety voice cutting cleanly through the chatter despite the caution laced through his tone. You look up, familiar, dark brown eyes blinking back at you, as though he was the one who should have been startled. “Your order,” he explains, setting down a to-go cup and a small paper bag. 

It takes you a moment to notice the addition, peering inside the bag and finding four small chocolate chip cookies nestled inside. “I didn’t order this,” you say, holding out the bag to him, confusion and irritation creasing your brow at yet another unexpected change. 

“Oh! I know…” he says, pushing the cookies back towards you, “it’s… it’s on the house.” 

His ears flush red as he says it, a lisp you hadn’t noticed before creeping into his voice when he hesitates, his words coming out a bit like a question. An offer. A hand reaching out and asking ’is this okay?’

You pause, frozen in place for a moment, a blush creeping up your neck to match his own. “Ah… well… thank you, yeosang.”

He smiles, pushing back against the flurry of butterflies coming to life in his chest. 

You remembered his name.

He wants to hear you say it again, his mind already replaying how sweet it sounded coming off your lips on loop, echoing through his skull so that when he goes over the scene again in his head he can’t be sure whether or not his next words came out quite right.

“Of course, what are friends for.”

From then on, there was always a bag with a different sweet treat tucked in beside your order, and for some reason, you couldn’t bring yourself to hate the surprise. 

”I’m happy to be spending time with you right now”

Is what yeosang says on all your dates. 

You’re not sure how exactly it happened. When small talk turned to sitting and sharing your morning beverages. When study dates became actual dates spread out over picnic blankets on the beach. When trips art exhibitions and bazaars shifted into walking hand in hand under the light of bright shop signs and flickering lampposts, a large reusable grocery bag filled with the ingredients needed to make pasta hanging off his shoulder.

It’s barely a date. But he insists that the impulsive decision to leave his house at 8:30pm to join you at the grocery store may as well be. 

Because he was with you. 

And that was all he needed.

Free hand wrapped loosely around your own, watching fondly as you tiptoe to avoid the cracks in the tiles. 

He’d asked you to be his that night. Perched on a swing set that hung far too low for his legs. Lips parting slightly when you leaned over to swipe at them, chocolate ice cream smeared across his skin. You were fussing, telling him that he shouldn’t be such a messy eater at the grown age of twenty one, when his expression made your words come up short. An open, searching fondness in his gaze that made your heart swell painfully against your ribcage. 

You knew that look. 

That was exactly how you used to look at them.

Yeosang seemed to sense your hesitation, placing his hand over yours on his cheek before you could back away. There was no force in his grip. No pressure holding your hand in place. You could have retracted it easily if you wished to. But you didn’t. The confusing ache in your chest craving more of his skin against yours. 

“Is this okay?” he’d asked, allowing your joined hands to drop, hanging in the space between you. 

You could only nod. Wanting to highlight the fact that he’d been holding your hand for the better part of an hour just before you’d sat down to enjoy your ice cream, but opted not to when you found you couldn’t quite trust your ability to speak without your voice shaking. 

Yeosang wasn't always the best at reading people. He'd discovered very early on in life that smiles and bright voices didn't necessarily come with good intentions, and it left him wondering if he'd simply been foolish. Unsure of whether or not it was his own fault that he'd misunderstood and gotten hurt in the process. 

He often felt lost when it came to navigating the emotions of those around him. Confusion swirling in the undercurrent of nearly all his relationships… but not with you. He was never unsure about you. 

Admittedly, he couldn't really say he'd fallen in love with you at first sight or anything (though he wished he could've). When you'd walked into that cafe and fumbled through your tote for your wallet he hadn't thought much about it at all, smiling patiently and going about business as usual. He doubted he'd even remember your name. But you were there again the next day, and the day after that (you brought a backpack instead of the tote with a cat on it), twice on Thursday (your hair was an absolute mess on your second visit), and on Friday you stayed till late, body folded over scattered notes and highlighters (it seemed like you had a habit of tugging your own hair when you were stressed). 

With each visit, he began noticing you more and more, till he found himself wondering what had happened to upset you, or what made your smile seem brighter that morning.

It took some time (and a lot of teasing from Wooyoung and Jongho) for him to realise that he liked you. That no, he did not pay that much attention to all his regulars. And then it took a little longer (and a little encouragement from Seonghwa) for him to muster up the courage to actually approach you. A part of him expected that maybe, once you both became closer, you'd start to close yourself off. That the same confusion he'd come to expect from everyone but Wooyoung and San would come creeping into his mind when you found reason to hide how you felt. 

But that day never came to pass. Yeosang was pleasantly surprised to find that the more he knew about you, the easier you were to decipher. Even if you refused to say anything, your lips pressed into a thin line when you were upset. No matter how many times you smoothed your expression over, your brow always creased with worry when you felt anxious. You crossed your legs when you were comfortable, and sat up straight and folded your hands in your lap when you weren't. None of these things changed as he got closer to you, and the closer his heart moved to yours the more he understood. 

More often than not, he knew almost instinctively what you needed. And on the few occasions where he was unsure, he knew he could ask, because you could never find it in you to lie to a person you loved. 

So he sat with you in silence for a while. 

Tracing abstract patterns over your knuckles. 

Allowing the steady trill of crickets and buzz of cicadas to fill the silence.

Knowing the negative space was something you needed, even if he wasn’t always sure why. 

He waited patiently for the sound of your breathing to deepen, your hand relaxing in his own, your body unconsciously leaning closer to him before he spoke. “Thank you for letting me join you tonight.”

You chuckled slightly in response, dragging the heel of your shoe over the cracked rubber floor of the playground. “I should be the one thanking you, how would I ever make it home with such a heavy burden in my hands,” you'd joked, gesturing to the plastic bag settled on his lap.

“Oh but of course, you're just a girl after all,” he said with a serious little pout. 

“I really am, I shouldn't have to cook my own dinner or carry big heavy things like parsley and blocks of cheese,” you tried your best to mimic his sombre expression back at him, but failed miserably, the two of you breaking into childish giggles as soon as your eyes met. 

You took a few breaths to calm down, looking up to find that Yeosang was already smiling at you. His eyes shining with unshed tears from laughing too hard, that same fondness glittering under the warm streetlights. 

He brought your joined hands up to his lips, pressing a chaste kiss to your knuckles before turning your hand over and placing another on your wrist. 

“My girl…” he whispered, though it sounded almost like a question. 

You didn't immediately respond, mind stuttering as the painful swell of your heart faded into something much different, something more gentle and fragile. 

Unfortunately for you both, Yeosang mistook your surprise for hesitation, backtracking quickly. “Sorry, I just mean… I'm… only if you want to be, we don't-” 

“Can you say it again?” 

“Huh?” he'd blinked in confusion, and you were smiling. A slow, giddy sort of smile that made him thankful for the low light of the park. 

It was your turn to bring his hand up to your lips, pressing a soft kiss against his racing pulse. “I want my boy to call me his again.” 

Yeosang was sure he might implode. 

”But you’re here all the time, we might as well move in together at this rate”

Panic sets in when he says it. 

You wish it wouldn’t. 

The fear that had been digging its way into your thoughts since you’d agreed to be his crawling over your skin, curling into an uncomfortable knot in your throat. 

You try to smile when he turns back round, try to remember what the two of you had been discussing when he placed the popcorn in the microwave, but your mind is moving too fast, pulling you further and further into yourself before you can fight it. 

“My love? You with me baby?” 

His voice calls you back. Just like that time in the cafe, it reaches you easily through the overlapping voices in your head, a hand coming to rest on your cheek. “Yeah… Yeah I’m okay… just tired,” you dismiss easily, placing a hand over his and offering him a strained smile that leaves him thoroughly unconvinced. 

He purses his lips, looking thoughtful for a moment before deciding on an answer. “What… what kind of tired?” 

“Uhm… regular? Tired?” you try.

“Nono, not that, I mean… body tired? Brain tired? People tired?”

Oh.

You realise what he’s trying to ask, and the answer that immediately comes to mind, clear even in your muddled state almost makes you giggle despite yourself. Wrapping your arms over his shoulders and clasping them behind his neck, pulling him a little closer to you. “I’m a little people tired, it’s been a long week, but I’m not you tired, sangie, I want you to stay.”

“Are you sure?” he asks, hands coming to rest where they’d made a home for themselves on your hips, “we can always raincheck movie night if you’re not feeling up for it you know…”

“I know, my love, thank you,” you say, resting your forehead on his chest, timing your breathing to his heartbeat, the knot in your throat slowly unwinding with each exhale, “I’m really alright though… just happy to be with you right now.”

Yeosang breathes a sigh of relief, pressing his lips to the crown of your head. “That’s my line you know…”

“Oh I’m sorry,” you huff playfully, “I didn’t realise that saying it back was copyright infringement.”

“Hmnnn, that doesn’t make you any less guilty though, now does it?” he hums, wrapping his arms more securely round your waist and slowly swaying your bodies from side to side. “There’s a penalty for this sort of thing you know.”

You snort, tipping your head up to look at him incredulously. “And what might that be, good sir?” 

“For a cutie like you? Mmmmmnnn… a dance?”

You gasp, batting your eyelashes in mock horror. “And what if I say it again? What awful sum would I have to pay then?” 

He pretends to think for a moment, the two of you now shuffling and swaying in time to music no one else could hear. “Perhaps… a kiss?” he says, head tipping to the side in a way he knows you can't resist. 

You tut, shaking your head and sighing defeatedly. “I suppose you leave me no choice then, I’m afraid I must confess that I am immeasurably happy in this moment, I’m so very desperately happy to be with you.”

You both manage to keep up a serious facade for all of two seconds before bursting into fits of giggles, clinging onto each other for dear life. 

Once you both calm down, yeosang presses another kiss to your hairline, holding your body close to his, wishing he could somehow be even closer so his heart could rest beside yours even when heaven took his soul. 

”You are my small but definite happiness too.”

[sleep-drunk-kitten]

𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐬𝐲 𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐝𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐢𝐞𝐬 | 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐧𝐞

pairing: enhypen x fem!reader, platonic!Sunoo, ft. Lee Felix and Han Jisung of Stray Kids and Choi Soobin of TXT as side characters

genre: crack, fluff, isekai!au, royalty!au

content warnings: the crown prince is a bit of a jerk, war and an absent father are mentioned in passing, other than that there's nothing I can really think of? but lmk if I missed anything!

word count: 3.9k

summary: upon meeting her betrothed and possible murderer for the first time... our protagonist finds herself sure of two things: 1) he's every bit the princely male lead of the novel she'd loved so much in her previous life and 2) he's actually a little insufferable.

notes: It's finally hereeeee!! I'm so sorry for making you all wait for this, but I'm slowly working my way out of that writing slump~ I'm not sure whether or not I like how this turned out, but I hope you guys can just overlook it and move on if it sucks 😭 (please, for my sake, do. I will literally cry if my anxiety's proven right rn-)

I will be making a taglist for this fic, so if you're interested in being added please either drop an ask or let me know in the comments

Everything after the cut IS proofread for once, but please feel free to let me know if any typos slipped through the cracks!

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“Nonono, the blue one was a million times better,” Sunoo said, pointedly ignoring the deathly glares of Felix, your head maid.

  “Maybe it would be if I were going out for an evening ball or something, but it's a bit much for seeing a guest over some tea,” you reply dismissively, inspecting the girl standing in the three large mirrors placed round the circular platform you’d been standing on for the past hour, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to another as your maids brought dress after dress out from your closet and whisked you through trying them on one by one. 

  Sunoo rolled his eyes at the statement, marching towards your vanity and sifting through the jewelry scattered across it till he settled on a length of thin silk ribbons. “Babes, be real with me here, it's not just some tea party and you know it.”

  The three maids who'd been helping you into the layers of lace and silk that made up the soft buttercup yellow gown Felix had chosen stepped to the side to give Sunoo room on the platform behind you, having learned very early on that there was little to no point in trying to stop him. 

  Ribbon in hand, he began weaving the silky material through the hairstyle they'd arranged as neatly and prettily as possible, ignoring a pained noise from the one nearest him. “I mean, it's not every day your fiance comes all the way out to your family’s manor on the outskirts of the city to make sure the bride-to-be he doesn’t actually care about hasn't lost all her marbles.” 

  You didn’t understand how Sunoo managed to carry on chattering with their eyes boring holes into the back of his head, especially when their dirty looks were nothing compared to the expression on Felix’s face–his twitching left eye reminded you of a glitching video game character–but he did, carrying on as if it were just the two of you in the room.

  “Your Grace,” Felix’s voice was strained, “I really do wish you wouldn't say such things to her Highness.”

  “What? That her beloved fiance's come to see her?” Sunoo said, batting his eyes and pouting in mock innocence.

  “That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Felix snapped back, eyes darting between his face and the silk in his hands. 

  “You know she doesn’t really care, right? Why would she care about that cold-hearted stone-faced bas-”

  “Sunoo!” you gasped, cutting him off by stomping on one of his fluffy house slippers with the toe of the wildly uncomfortable heel that had been forced onto your foot. You swear you see the corner of Felix’s lip twitch at the strangled noise your best friend makes. 

  “Ow ?! That was uncalled for- what’s with the look? Is anything I’m saying wrong?”

  “No, but you still shouldn’t be talking that way about a member of the royal family,” you reply with irritation, “you not liking him doesn’t take away from the fact that he’s the fucking prince now does it?”

  In your peripheral, the three maids shift uncomfortably, and Felix doesn’t even try to hide a long-suffering sigh, making a mental note to inform your tutor that your etiquette lessons still weren’t sticking the way they should. 

  Sunoo sees this, of course–grinning evilly at you. “It would seem that it doesn’t change the fact that you’re a princess either, Your Highness, better wash out that potty mouth of yours before your dearly betrothed arrives.”

  You nearly grab a handful of your skirts to give yourself enough mobility to kick him, but Felix launches himself in your direction before you have the chance, shoving Sunoo rather unceremoniously to one side and holding your wrists under the guise of guiding you off the platform. 

  “An excellent idea Your Grace, but I fear we have neither the time nor the soap for such an endeavor as m’lady’s presence is needed in the garden.”

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  It really was a scene straight from one of your romance manhwas; a neatly laid tea table under a pearly white gazebo, your gloved hand wrapped delicately round the gilded handle of a steaming cup of tea–the picture of perfection in your soft yellow dress that matched the white and yellow roses blooming in the bushes surrounding you perfectly. 

They filled the cool morning breeze with their sweet perfume, sending ripples across the clear blue lake so it glittered in the morning sun.

  It was beautiful.

  So beautiful. 

  And yet it still didn’t quite compare to the man sitting accross from you. 

  You’d read his description countless times. Everything from the plush curve of his lips to the sharp intensity held in his dark eyes… yet nothing could have prepared your heart for the sound of his laughter, carried to you over the foliage, the sight of those lips spread in an easy smile as he chatted with your brother, shoulders shaking with mirth.

  Nor, you think, could anything have braced you for the chill that would run down your spine when his smile dropped the second Soobin said his goodbyes, worriedly whispering a plea for you to ‘behave yourself’ as he kissed your cheek and left the two of you alone. Your chest constricting almost painfully when those same dark eyes that you’d squealed and giggled over late at night fixed on you, void of any emotion. 

  He'd stood from his place at the table to greet you, bowing formally in reply to the curtsy your poor tutor had drilled into your bones. 

  “(y/n).”

  “Your highness.”

  “You look to be in good health.”

  “I am, the family doctor and my handmaids have tended to me with so much care since the incident, recovering well is the very least I could do.”

  An awkward pause.

  “You seem to be in good health too, Your Highness.”

  You could’ve kicked yourself when the prince simply nodded and thanked you in return–a flash of something like recognition passing behind his eyes–before they went back to that easy, indifferent facade you supposed was crafted especially for Princess (y/n). ‘which makes sense,’ you mentally deadpan, ‘she was about as close to a crazy yandere psycho as you could get without actually killing anyone.’ 

  Still, those simple pleasantries, taken straight from the pages of volume two of your etiquette lessons, were the only words exchanged in greeting.

  It made even the silvery morning breeze feel stifling.

  Ever the gentleman, the prince pulled out your chair, made sure you were comfortable, and nodded once to your guard. “All is well with the knights of the (l/n) estate, Han?”

  The effort it took to refrain from snapping your head up and giving them both a confused once-over was monumental. It hadn't occurred to you that the crown prince would be familiar with any of your personal guards, though you supposed it made sense. Most of them had, according to Felix, been looking after you since you were only nine or ten, of course they'd be on friendly terms with your fiance.

  “We've been keeping busy, Your Highness,” Han said, and you could almost hear the smile in his voice. Knowing him, he was probably rocking back and forth on his heels, hands clasped behind his back. 

  “That's good to hear,” the prince nodded, settling into the seat across from you, “I fear the royal knights have grown rather complacent since the relief and revelry that followed the war, it has been a task for General Jeong to whip them back into shape.” 

  “I can imagine,” Han chuckled. “But really, who could blame them, it’s taken us a long time to reach this peace, what good would it be if we didn’t take at least a moment here or there to enjoy it? As it is, I doubt we would have stayed so diligent if it weren’t for Her Grace, (y/n)’s been coming down to the training grounds and asking us to teach her some basic swordsmanship of late.” 

  While Han was probably puffing up his chest and beaming proudly over at the prince, thrilled to share the good news that you were finally taking your swordsmanship and safety more seriously, you were trying to avoid choking on air. 

  There were many things that you didn’t know about Princess (y/n) (l/n)–daughter of an esteemed archmage and revered general–but one of the things that had been emphasised enough in the novel enough for it to stick firmly in your mind was this: she was a frivolous, selfish, bitter disappointment to her bloodline. Squandering the skills she’d inherited from her mother to brew potions that only served her own selfish needs, and refusing to entertain the possibility that she could possibly take after the father she loathed for abandoning her to fight in the war . 

  She would never willingly break a sweat. 

  Especially for the sake of swinging around a big heavy old sword. 

  And it seemed the prince was thinking the same thing, his next words directed at you. “I didn’t know you’d developed an interest in adopting such strenuous hobbies.”

  “I… I suppose almost dying will do that to you.”

  “Indeed…” 

  There was a brief pause, in which the prince looked like he was contemplating the milky way while stirring a cube of sugar into his tea. Setting your nerves on edge as you wondered if now was a good time to bring up wanting to end your engagement, or if you should try and “ease into the subject more naturally” as your tutor had told you with his head in his hands, tears of frustration pricking at the corners of his eyes after witnessing just how “abrupt” your manner of speaking was.  

  You were still turning the words over in your mind when his voice cut through your thoughts, crisp and clipped despite the concern you guessed the inquiry was meant to show. “I was told that you were caught in a storm.” 

  “I was,” you nod with a bit too much enthusiasm, relieved to finally have an excuse to fill the silence. “I was told that I was on my way back from visiting a cousin who happened to be staying in town when a sudden storm hit us and knocked my carriage into a ravine-”

  “You were ‘told’ that you were on your way back from visiting a cousin? That fact doesn’t come from your own memory?”

  You blink, caught off guard by his interruption. ‘Isn’t that rude? Is he allowed to be rude because he’s a prince or because he’s my fiance? But wait he shouldn’t be rude either way? Ah screw it, being mad won’t help my case anyway so…’ 

  “Yes, I believe His Grace mentioned in his letter to the palace that the event and the fever that followed seems to have caused a condition the doctors refer to as temporary amnesia, my memories are only there in bits and pieces.”

  “Is this memory loss permanent?” 

  “No, we suspect I’ll start remembering things  little by little, a few are already coming back to me,” you say, one hand gripping the material of your skirt in an attempt to keep your voice pleasant and calm.

Sure, the prince didn’t like the princess much, but that didn’t mean he had to be a prick about it, he could afford to be nicer when he was asking questions about her literally forgetting her entire identity. If you didn’t know how awful she’d be a few years down the road, you would’ve found him insufferable. 

  “I see…” he said, still slowly stirring his tea.

  “What exactly do you see, Your Highness,” you smile a little tersely, bringing your own cup up to your lips, praying that the lipstick your maids had chosen was transfer-proof. 

  The prince raised an eyebrow at you, apparently picking up on the shift in your tone.  “Nothing… I’m simply intrigued by your sudden change in character, and the rather dramatic event that you claim caused it.” 

  It takes you a moment to process his words, and a moment more for agitation to prickle under your skin. ‘The fudge muffin does he mean claim?? I fell off a hill??? Hannie carried me back??? I was out of my mind for a week???’

  Reminding yourself over and over again that in his mind he was talking to someone who definitely wasn’t you, you press your lips into one of the polite, plastic smiles Sunoo had been practicing with you. “I apologise for not hitting my head on something less dramatic… I’ll be sure to aim for the carriage windows instead of massive tree branches if it would be more convenient for you… Your Highness.” 

  “What would have been more convenient for me, and all parties involved, would be your learning to heed warnings, and refrain from traipsing off into town when you know that the sky bodes ill,” he replied smoothly, ignoring the agitation in your voice. 

  “I’ll do my best to remember that then, Your Highness,” you say through gritted teeth, taking a fortifying sip of your rich floral tea, immediately wondering how the prince could possibly drink something so naturally sweet with even more sugar. 

  Your answer seemed to surprise him, another flash of… something crossing his features before it vanished just as quickly as the one before. 

  “Very well,” he nodded, bringing the sugary concoction he’d like to call tea to his lips, distracting you slightly with the way his adam’s apple bobbed as he drank. 

  ‘Oh he hates my guts but dear mother of cheesy romance he’s definitely this world’s male lead…’ you mused, shaking your head slightly to get yourself back on track. You were annoyed. Very annoyed. And the source of that annoyance was speaking to you again. 

  “I came here today to confirm for myself that you have indeed recovered fully, now that I’ve made sure of that there really is no reason for me to linger longer than necessary,” he said, setting down his cup with such practiced ease that it barely made a sound.

  Alarm buzzed under your skin, causing you set your own cup down with much less grace than intended, a sharp clinking noise ringing through the empty gardens. “I- oh shoot- Your Highness there’s actually something I need to discuss with you before-”

  “If it concerns the steadily growing pile of invitations and inquiries piling up on your writing desk we needn’t bother with any discussion,”  he said, cutting you off without missing a beat, already signalling to the guards–who’d moved away at some point to offer you both more privacy–indicating that he intended to stand and leave. "As long as you stick to the promise you just made to listen to your guards and His Grace, you’re allowed to attend and host as many gatherings as your heart desires, just know that I will not be able to accept any invitations, I am a busy man-”

  “Your Highness,” you all but snapped, lips pursed into a thin line, as if sealing them together would stop the flurry of expletives in your mouth from rolling off your tongue.

  “(y/n),” he said mildly, raising an eyebrow.

  “That is not what I wanted to discuss, but while we’re here, why the hell would I need your permission to attend any kind of gathering?”

  The prince blinked blankly, holding up a hand to signal both his and your guards to wait. “What are you on about (y/n)? You’re my fiance.”

  “Yes, exactly, fiance, and by arrangement, not by choice.”

  “I can’t say I follow your meaning, both these things are well established.”

  You swore your eyes nearly popped out of your skull with the effort it took not to roll them. “If I were your wife, or your partner by choice I would, to a certain degree, understand if you wanted me to give you a heads up before I go out-”

  “A head?...”

  “But I’m not, and at this rate I’m really not sure I want to be, I’m an individual totally separate from you, these are my decisions to make, you have no right to dictate my comings and goings… Your Highness.”

  The Prince went silent, watching you steadily, his calm an aggravating contrast to the tense knot of anger and anxiety lodged in your throat. ‘Oh… oh… I’m so sorry Mr. Park…’ you whisper a silent apology in your head and offer a few prayers for your tutor and the vein in his forehead’s good health.

  “What exactly do you mean by ‘at this rate I’m really not sure I want to be’, Princess.”

  The chill that runs down your spine when he uses your title instead of your name is immediate, your hands going slightly numb in the silken confines of your gloves.

“I mean that… that I don’t want to marry a complete stranger,” you manage, fumbling through whatever you could salvage from the script you and Sunoo had prepared. 

  “Is that what you'd call someone you’ve known since childhood?” he scoffed, the annoyance creasing his brows the most feeling he’d shown in response to you since his arrival. 

  “Well from the way you’ve spoken to me till now I can’t exactly consider you a friend now can I?” you seethe, regretting it almost instantly when his expression twists into something almost like hurt. You’re not sure why he made that face, but in a moment it’s gone, and no matter how it made you feel, you have a goal here. Not. Dying. 

  Which probably meant that pissing off the crown prince wasn’t the best idea. But oh well. 

  “I have no memory of you, Your Highness, as far as my mind is concerned, today is our first meeting… and from what I can see, the boy who’s meant to be my future husband sees me as either an object or a nuisance… I was hoping that meeting you would ease my mind about this whole engagement thing, but I’m sure now. I don’t want this.”

  The prince stared at you for a few moments, expression unreadable, and you guess that–aside from what you hope looks like defience and resolve–you look much the same. 

  When the world finally clicks back into motion, he nods once. “You do know that dissolving this agreement between our families is not something to be taken lightly? While our parents cannot force us into marriage, they will still try to convince us of our obligations.” 

  He looked up then, and something in his expression was different. It was still indifferent and unreadable as it had been, but there was a softness to it that you couldn’t quite place. It was confusing. “I understand, I know it won’t be easy, but this is my wish,” you say, relaxing slightly in your own seat. 

  “If that is what you want… I will speak to my father once things have settled down within the palace… I jest about the knights and their complacency, but the air is less than still, war is a messy business, and cleaning up the aftermath will take some time.”

  “I can wait… till next spring, but you must have asked him by then.”

  “I will,” he nods, “and I’ll write to you once it is done so you may speak with His Grace as well.”

  “Thank you… it’s appreciated…”

  You stay like that for a beat longer, staring at each other from across an intricately laid tea table, each of you wondering what the other must be thinking.

  “If that is all… I shall take my leave,” he says, breaking the odd trance. Standing, waves your guards over, and you take that as your cue to stand and curtsy as well. 

  “It was a pleasure meeting you, Your Highness, the (l/n) family thanks you for your time.” 

  “Likewise,” he says, bowing. 

  Han and two other knights make their way over, wearing slightly troubled expressions, you guess they must’ve heard more than they were meant to. But it doesn’t matter, you think, eventually the news of the broken engagement would be the talk of the town, you shouldn’t be embarrassed about a few knights getting a preview. 

  “Before I go,” the prince says, “you should know that you never needed my permission for anything, (y/n). You may come and go as you please, you are an individual capable of thought and making her own decisions, as you say. However you must understand that to the public eye, you are the future crown princess, and that is not something to be taken lightly. It is my duty to do what I can to protect the royal family’s image, and having my fiance attend tea parties and balls when she is not in her right mind would have been foolish, to say the least.”

  He’s being earnest, you realise. Apologising in his own roundabout way. Maybe. Whatever it is, you choose to take it, knowing that beneath whatever dislike he may hold for the former princess, Park Jongseong was a good person. 

  “I… I’ll remember that in future…” you murmur.

  “Good… and one last thing.”

  “By all means.”

  “I know now that you have no memory of me, but you should know that you’ve never called me by my title.”

  “Oh?” to your memory, the princess had never called him anything but his title, he wouldn’t allow it. “Did I… call you by your given name?” 

  For the first time, he smiles at you, and you curse your heart for the way it flutters in your chest. “No, I don’t expect you to use it if it brings you discomfort, but the nickname you gave me when we were six was ‘Jay’, because you said I resembled a bird by the same name.”

  “A Blue jay?”

  “Yes, my hair was lighter then.”

  That confuses you slightly, his hair is black, as far as you can tell, but you ignore it, choosing to smile politely and nod along. “It must have been a very handsome bird.”

  “It was rather ugly, actually,” he says, walking down the gazebo steps to join his guards. “I bid you farewell, Princess, the royal family thanks you for your time.”

  “Likewise,” you respond, watching him as he goes. Noting with a hint of amusement that his hair shines blue in the now bright morning sun. 

  “What was all that about?” a voice says, and, predictably, Sunoo appears from one of the side paths. 

  “Were you listening the whole time?” 

  “Well I tried, but the fountain was too loud, only caught some yelling.”

  “Some guard you are,” you whine, smacking Han on the arm as he joins the two of you, “did you even realise a sneaky little rat was eavesdropping? 

  “Ow! For your information I did, but I figured there was no point chasing him round the gardens when I knew you’d be inviting that rat to tea anyways.”

  “That is very true,” you sigh, grabbing a plate and settling yourself across from Sunoo–who already had a mint chocolate chip cookie stuffed in his mouth. 

₊˚ ‿︵‿︵‿︵୨୧ · · ♡ · · ୨୧‿︵‿︵‿︵ ˚₊

  “(y/n)! Forget soap we’re gonna need bleach for that mouth tonight,” Sunoo cries, doubled over in a fit of giggles.

  “I knowwww,” you groan, massaging your temples. “Mr. Park’s gonna kill me.”

  Sunoo shakes his head. “You make the poor guy sound like an old man, you do realise he’s only our senior by about two years, right?”

  “He’s still my tutor! I’m trying to show some respect, as a thank you for how patient he is with my dumb ass.”

  “He deserves a raise,” Han chips in, settled on the marble gazebo rails with a plate of cheesecake in hand. 

  “He doessss,” Sunoo agrees, waving a teaspoon for emphasis.

  “You’re all really mean y’know,” you sigh, slumping over the table and grabbing one of Sunoo’s hands and moving it into the shape of a rabbit.

  “Not as mean as Sunghoon’s about to be when he sees your posture,” Sunoo says. 

  “What do you mea- Oh! Good morning Professor Park!”

[sleep-drunk-kitten]

pairing: Jay x fem!reader

genre: fluff, slight angst/miscommunication trope? if you squint? Oneshot bullet point fic

content warnings: none

Summary: Sunoo is sick of watching you pine after Jay when he clearly has feelings for you too, so he devises a plan to give the two of you some much needed alone time

notes: this was the result of a very delusional conversation I had with @nar-nia, thank you for fueling my delulu thoughts and beta reading the first draft love <3 I would never have posted this if it wasn't for your support ;*

Everything below the cut is NOT proofread

₊˚ ‿︵‿︵‿︵୨୧ · · ♡ · · ୨୧‿︵‿︵‿︵ ˚₊

You were going to kill Jake and Sunoo

This was all their fault

They were the ones who had insisted that you all leave the “stuffy” confines of the airbnb your friendgroup had rented for your annual trip to the beach to visit the boardwalk and amusement park barely an hour after you’d all arrived

Doing everything in their power to drag a spaced out Sunghoon and a tired looking Jay along

Sunoo sulking and singing an extremely off-key rendition of “part of your world” while dragging you through the living room in a clumsy waltz, gesturing dramatically at the large glass windows leading out onto the patio to emphasise his point every time he hit a line about dancing or walking

When his attempts at annoying them into going inevitably failed, he decided the only thing left was to get both you and niki on his side and beg

Convincing Niki was a bit of a task, the younger boy content to lounge around on a beanbag with his nintendo

He probably would’ve stayed there had if it was only Sunoo asking him for help... purely for the sake of annoying his hyung

But Jake overheard Sunoo's whispered pleas, and when he joined the campaign and asked the younger boy for help, Niki couldn’t really find it in him to say no

Enlisting your help was significantly easier, even if you were a bit annoyed by his earlier antics

Because while you were close to everyone in your little group, Sunoo in particular had a special place in your heart, having been by your side since childhood, you would do almost anything for him

Even if it meant putting on an indifferent facade in front of the man you’d been in love with for an unhealthily long time

Jay really didn’t want to go to the amusement park

although the rest of you had gotten to sleep and recharge between stops, he and Sunghoon were both tired after staying alert and herding you all from place to place all morning

All he wanted to do was sleep

But Sunoo had somehow managed to rope both you and Niki in on his schemes 

It would have been hard enough to say no to his precious little brother

But you?

How could he say no when you were asking so nicely? Pleading your case by saying that this was a trip you’d all taken to make memories together, so what was the point if Jay and Sunghoon weren’t there with you?

God you were just too cute

Jay tries to appeal to you and Niki, knowing there’s no point in trying to talk Sunoo out of this

“But (y/n)-ah, Niki, we’re tired, it’s been such a long day, can’t we just stay in till dinnertime?”

“Exactly,” Sunghoon says from his spot beside Jay, eyes coming back into focus for the first time since you’d started speaking, “we could always go tomorrow, the fair isn’t going anywhere.”

“It is, actually,” Heeseung joins the fray, walking into the living room from the kitchen, looking at something on his phone. “Or at least the ferris wheel is, they’re closing it down for maintenance tomorrow, and it won’t be open again till the day we’re leaving.”

“See! Heeseung gets it!” you exclaim, high fiving him.

Jay feels his heart sink just a little at the sight

It had been almost two years since Niki had told him about your feelings for Heeseung, casually dropping the bomb as the two of them sat on lawn chairs by Jake’s pool, watching you try and fail to yank him off a large unicorn shaped pool float and into the water

Jay had played it cool, laughing along like it meant nothing

Except it did

Because Jay had realised very early on in your friendship that he was a dead man walking

From the moment when Sunoo dragged you over to their table at lunch, announcing that you were his best friend, and you’d introduced yourself with a nervous little smile on your face

To the days where you walked home with them, laughing and bickering with Jake over silly things like whether or not water was wet and if black was a color

And all the times he’d seen you sitting quietly with Niki, allowing him to lean on you like an older sister 

With every day that passed, Jay had found himself falling faster and faster, till he got to a point where he feared there was no return 

But he was too late

You liked Heeseung

And whether you chose to act on that or not, it just wasn’t his place to try and win you over when you liked someone else

So he sets his feelings aside, packing them neatly away and schooling his expression into something as neutral as possible

“That’s just the ferris wheel though, isn’t it?” Sunghoon asks, still trying to find a reason to stay curled into the soft couch cushions

“Yeah but (y/n)’s been looking forward to trying the ferris wheel since we started planning!” Sunoo whines, nudging you pointedly

“Mnmm!” you nod, It wasn’t exactly true, you’d only mentioned once that the ferris wheel looked pretty

But they didn’t have to know that

“Really, (y/n)?” Jay asks

You nod enthusiastically, not knowing how much you’d regret it

Jay can feel his resolve crumbling, how could he deny you anything when you look so genuinely excited about it? He’d rather drown himself in the sea than be one to take that away from you

So here you all were, walking along the crowded boardwalk, passing by booths with an assortment of hand crafted souvenirs and trinkets on display against a backdrop of colorful cloths, the smell of warm sugar and sizzling street foods mingling with the ocean breeze

It was all fun and games at first, all of you trying foods, taking pictures, walking up to a few stalls and attempting to win prizes, competing to see who could walk away with the biggest stuffed toy that night

You were laughing, joking around with Jungwon, winning a large duck plushie for Niki, twirling around and showing off the pretty sundress you’d thrown on when Sunoo pointed his camcorder at you

Blissfully unaware of the pointed looks passing between him and Jake

The two of them had noticed early on the way Jay stuck close to you

Carefully placing himself between you and any other tourists who were brushing past a little too close for comfort

Watching you twirl for the camera with such a nauseatingly lovesick expression on his face that Sunoo nearly gagged

Only to move away as soon as Heeseung approached you

Giving the two of you “space”

Space to do what exactly Sunoo had no idea

Sure you’d liked Heeseung when you’d first been introduced to his friends

But that hadn’t lasted long at all

Your affections quickly shifting to someone else

The poor pink-haired boy had lost count of the number of times he’d had to listen to you complain about how handsome Jay was

How kind and attentive he was

What an amazing husband he’d be one day

How lucky his future wife would be

Sunoo wanted to grab you by the shoulders and remind you that there was a fair chance that that future wife could be you

He had done just that on more than one occasion

But you brushed him aside every time

Saying there was no way Jay could ever have feelings for you

It drove him insane

Especially when he noticed the way Jay looked at you 

Jake was thankfully spared from most of your rants

But he was very much aware of how you felt

And he agreed with Sunoo, there was absolutely no way Jay didn’t return your feelings

So the two of them had come up with a plan

At some point, Jake let slip that while you were very excited about riding he ferris wheel, you were actually scared to go on because you were afraid of heights

You turned to him in surprise, unsure how to respond to the wholly false claim without exposing the fact that you’d lied about wanting to ride the ferris wheel in the place

Sunoo joined in a moment later, complaining about how he’d tried to convince you that it wasn’t all that scary, that these things were checked regularly to ensure they were safe, but that you just wouldn’t listen

You’d elbowed him in the ribs, confusion painted across your features

When Jay made a suggestion 

An absolutely terrifying one

“Well… one of us could go with you if you’d like? It probably won’t be as bad if you’re not all by yourself”

“That would be brilliant! But Jake and I promised to go in the haunted house with Niki…”

“I could go with her then, I don’t really feel like scaring myself silly when I won’t be sleeping in my own bed tonight.”

“Could you? That would be great! Whaddya say (y/n)?”

All three pairs of eyes land on you, and for a moment you feel your mouth go dry

On a ferris wheel… In a small glass box… alone… with Jay…

It sounds absolutely terrifying

“I’m not too sure…” you start to say, but Jay bumps his shoulder against yours, and when you manage to will yourself to look at him, he’s smiling down at you

“C’mon, I’ll be right there with you he whole time,” he says, “you’ll regret it more if you don’t go.”

You swallow around the lump that’s formed in your throat

He’s right

You were the one who’d gone on and on about making memories 

Here was a prime opportunity to build a memory you’d surely never forget

Wouldn’t you regret it more if you chickened out now?

“Okay…I’ll go,” you said

And the cheers that erupted from the three boys were so infectious that you forgot about the nervous butterflies filling your chest

Until of course you were actually on the ferris wheel

The glass doors sliding shut to seal your fate

You hadn’t known that there was only one seat in the capsul 

Hadn’t counted on being right next to Jay, your thighs occasionally knocking together 

The proximity was doing nothing to help the racing of your heart, sharp pinpricks of heat blossoming under your skin and spreading up your neck and ears

“(y/n), you there?”

Jay’s voice startles you a little, and you wince before you can catch yourself

“Huh? Oh yeah… I’m here, sorry”

Your familiar, nervous laugh makes Jay smile a little, reminding him of the day you first met

But he quickly brushes the memory aside, choosing to focus on you

You seemed uncomfortable

Were you really this afraid of heights?

He tries his best to smile reassuringly, tilting his head to one side so he’s looking up at you instead of it being the other way round

“Well hello, welcome back,” he says, unaware of the way those few words send the butterflies in your stomach into a frenzy

“Hi…” you manage back, mentally patting yourself on the back for how normal your voice sounds

“Hi,” he chuckles, and the sound makes your brain go a little fuzzy, so much so that you barely register it when he gestures behind him. “I know you’re avoiding looking out for a reason, but you really should.”

“What? Oh, right, I- ooh.”

You sigh, suddenly forgetting why you’d been panicking in the first place

“It’s beautiful…” you say, but you’re also looking at Jay when you say it, golden light washing over his skin, making him glow against the backdrop of the sea

“It is,” he says, and if you’d been paying more attention, you would have noticed two things:

Jay’s back was to the sunset, he’d been looking at you the whole time

The ferris wheel had stopped moving some moments prior

Unfortunately for you both, your mind only processes the second, your eyes as wide as dinner plates when your brain catches up with your body and the lack of motion finally sets in

“Jay… Is this ride supposed to stop?”

“No?”

“No?!” 

“I mean I’m pretty sure it’s not?!”

Realisation dawns on you, and you rush to the side of the pod, watching as Sunoo and Jake, your own best friend smiles back you, blowing you a kiss

You know what they'd done.

You know because you would have done the same in a heartbeat

The butterflies in your chest seem to double, wings beating frantically against your ribcage 

The panic that had temporarily subsided beginning to creep back up your spine

Buzzing through your veins and going straight to your head

How long would you be up here? What were you supposed to do when your heart felt like it was caught in your throat? How were you supposed to remain calm when Jay was sitting right next to you looking so so beautiful knowing he probably thought you were insane for freaking out like this when it really wasn't a big deal and you should have been fine and-

“Hey, hey, calm down, breathe, I was wrong, stop looking out there (y/n).”

Oh no

He’s touching you now, a hand on your arm pulling you back, tugging you away from the glass and the view that honestly didn’t scare you as much as he thought it did

And closer to him

The real reason you felt like you were going to vibrate right out of your skin

Your eyes dart around almost frantically, focusing on anything but him

Jay watches you fidget in your seat, hands clasped together in your lap, face flushed, breathing uneven

He’s never seen you like this before

And he can’t help but blame himself

He should’ve never let Sunoo and Jake talk you into this 

“(y/n), (y/n) please, I need you to breathe, look at me please.”

His hands come up to gently cup your cheeks, turning your face away from the “frightening” view outside and forcing you to make direct eye contact with him

You feel your heart stutter where it’s lodged in your throat

“Focus on me, please, don’t think about anything else, just focus and breathe for me, yeah?”

You could cry

Tears welling up in the corners of your eyes

Jay has absolutely no idea how difficult he’s making this for you

Completely clueless to the way the deepening crease between his brows makes you want to kiss it

How the way his lips are pressed together with worry makes your heart flip in your chest

“(y/n), I can feel you shaking, this is just a technical difficulty, you’re okay, nothing’s going to happen.”

But I want it to

The words rest on the tip of your tongue

You want something to happen

The longer you stare at him the harder it is to focus on his eyes, the task proving impossible with the way your heart squeezes painfully in your chest at how soft and open they are, how intently he’s looking at you, it makes you feel like you’re special to him when you know you’re not

He’s looking out for you the same way he would Niki or Jungwon 

You need to remember that

But not looking at his eyes means looking at the rest of him

Which you soon discover is almost as dangerous, because what you find yourself focusing on now is his lips

The way they curve around the vowels of your name as he tries to talk you through the jumbled, scattered thoughts and feelings he's causing

Oh the irony

But he's not really faring much better

Jay feels like he’s going insane

He sees the way your eyes keep flickering across his face

Settling on his lips just a little too long for his peace of mind

You're making him question how you really feel about him

Pulling at the strings wound tightly across the box of memories he'd stashed neatly away

Moments where he'd been sure you looked at him in ways friends weren't really supposed to look at each other

He can't do this

Jay pulls his hands away from your face, allowing them to flutter over your skin

Over your jaw

Down your neck

Across your shoulders

Before coming to settle on your upper arms

Leaving a trail of goosebumps in his wake, gently pushing you away, holding you at arms length, his body bowed as if in pain

“You can’t do that (y/n),” he breathes, letting out a shuddering breath

“Jay?” your voice is barely anything above a whisper, fear creeping in with the panic

 Did he see? Did he notice? Did you somehow manage to make him uncomfortable after everything you’d doen to avoid that exact scenario?

“You can’t keep looking at me like that when you have feelings for Heeseung.”

It takes a moment for his words to sink in, for the cogs in your mind to turn them over and process them through white noise and fog filling your head like cotton 

And when they finally do sink in, you blanch, willing yourself to get it together, to apologise, to do whatever you had to do to salvage the situation

But Jay speaks again before you can

“I can’t keep pretending it doesn’t mean anything to me.”

It’s Jay’s turn to swallow around the lump in his throat, his grip on your arms tightening, face downturned, staring at the peeling blue vinyl between you

The butterflies in your chest slow, settling along your ribs so the anxious beating of their wings stills to a steady thrum

“What do you mean by that?” you ask, surprising yourself with how calm you sounded

“I mean… I mean that you have no idea how insane it makes me when I see you with him, when you’re laughing together and you smile at him like he’s your whole world, because I wish you’d look at me like that, because… and I know it’s selfish but I wish that I could be the only one to make you laugh… But I know that you like Hee, and that’s okay, my feelings are my own, it’s not on you to take responsibility for them, but I need to take care of my own heart (y/n) I feel like I’m losing my mind I-”

“Jay,” you cut him off, voice coming out more harsh than you’d intended, but it works, his mouth snapping shut immediately. “Jay, look at me please,” you say, more gently this time. 

He does as you ask, and your heart breaks a little when you realise that his eyes are as glassy as yours

You place your hands over his, and for one, horrible moment, though he knows he deserves it, though he knows you have every right to, he thinks you’re going to tear yourself away from him. 

But you don’t. 

Your hands are warm against his, too warm, and they’re still shaking, but they’re moving his lower, over your elbows, onto your sides, till they come to rest on your waist. He can feel your pulse in your wrists, matching his beat for anxious beat

He’s so distracted by how soft you feel and how perfectly you fit in his hands that he flinches when you lean towards him, moving away from you on instinct

Cute, you think, unable to stop the corners of your mouth from twitching upwards

“What if I want to?” you whisper, his pupils blown wide as he searches your expression, “what if I want to take responsibility for your feelings?”

For a moment, you’re sure neither of you remembers how to breathe. The world standing still

Jay isn’t really sure he’s capable of forming a coherent sentence, words rushing through his skull and coming to an abrupt halt before they could make it past his lips

So he settles for the next best thing 

Slowly, his hand moves from your waist, brushing against your knuckles, tentatively lacing his fingers through your own, careful to give you time to pull away should you wish to

But you don’t

No

You level your gaze with his, giving his hand a gentle squeeze as if to say ‘go on’

He lets out a breath, he didn’t know he was holding, cautiously bringing your hand up to his lips, barely brushing them over your skin before turning your hand over and placing a soft, chaste kiss against your palm

His eyes don’t leave yours for even a moment, watching you intently, gauging your reactions. When you don’t flinch or move away, he lets your entwined hands fall to the side. 

“What about Heeseung?” he asks, even as he’s leaning towards you, even when you can feel the ghost of his lips on yours.

You giggle despite yourself, bringing your free hand up to thread your fingers through the hair at the back of his neck. “It was never him, silly…” 

A shiver runs down his spine, whether from your words or your actions neither of you can really say

And it doesn’t really matter anyway

Your eyes flutter closed, you can feel the warmth radiating off his skin-

And the ferris wheel starts turning again with a sharp jolt

Sending you crashing into each other, foreheads knocking together painfully

You both groan in pain, looking around confusedly, trying to regain your bearings as the moment passes

When your eyes meet again, and you realise that your hands are clasped together tightly between you, neither of you can stop the fit of giggles bubbling up in your chests

You’re both still laughing by the time you make it back to the bottom, the doors sliding open to reveal your friends waiting for you with triumphant smiles on their faces

Niki grumbling as he hands Sunoo several folded bills 

You let go of Jay’s hand the second you see it, marching over to kick their shins 

“You didn’t even go to the haunted house did you?” you whisper-yell, glaring daggers at them

Sunoo’s smile is pure evil, flicking your nose and replying in the most annoyingly smug tone you’d ever heard. “Now now, (y/n), is that any way to talk to the person who so graciously helped you get over the pathetic moping phase of your crush?”

“Which lasted much too long by the way,” Jake chimes in, joining the conversation 

“You were in on this?!” 

“You weren’t exactly subtle sweetheart, Jay was just fed false information thanks to this kid.”

“Excuse me?” 

The bickering continues as you all walk away from the ferris wheel, Niki and Jake both getting whacked over the head with the large pink octopus Sunoo had won for you as an apology (the only reason he wasn’t getting beaten up too)

It isn’t until the two of them run away from you, cackling like hyenas, that you feel an arm wrap round your waist

Holding you loosely, Jay leans down so only you can hear him

“We’ll finish that conversation later, (y/n).”

And then he’s gone

Leaving you standing there, feeling flustered enough to match the octopus in your arms, glaring at a snickering Sunoo

[trashx678]

So cutee xx

pairing: Sunghoon x fem!reader

genre: angst with a happy ending, fluff, established relationship

content warnings: emotional neglect, some swearing, hoon is kinda a workaholic ig?, I don't think there's anything that really needs warnings other than this is sad but lmk if I miss anything!

summary: your boyfriend comes home late after promising to be home on time for once, only to find that you're nowhere in sight...

notes: this is another one that I'm not sure how to feel about ;-; but I hope you guys enjoy it TwT fun fact, the whole thing was inspired by an rp that I did with an ai where the robot somehow managed to call me by another person's name while cuddling XD

I'm making a general taglist for my fics so if anyone would like to be added please either send an ask or a DM ^w^

Everything below the cut is NOT proofread

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  The white noise of your favorite movie buzzes through your living room, conversation and dialogue that you’d learned by heart filling the cold space with a false sense of familiarity. You sit cross-legged with your back pressed into the arm of the L-shaped couch in front of the tv, resting your chin on a plushie held close to your chest, looking not at the flickering screen to your right, but at the clock hanging in your kitchen–the only room in the house with the lights on. 

  9:17 pm, it reads. Roughly three hours and seventeen minutes since your boyfriend would typically get home from work. 

  Three hours and seventeen minutes since you’d been waiting on a barstool by the kitchen island where you both usually took your meals. 

  A tiramisu cake and a bouquet of flowers laid out in front of you. 

  Waiting.

  Waiting.

  So much waiting. 

  After an hour or so, you’d gently slid the cake back into its box, distracting yourself with the task of putting the flowers into a vase before they could wilt. 

  ‘He’s late again,’ you think sleepily, eyes struggling to stay focused on the clock, ’he promised he wouldn’t be tonight.’

  Your vision blurs as the long hand hits 12, eyelids too heavy to keep open, mind wandering to the conversation you’d shared with Sunghoon that morning. 

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  “What time will you be home from work today?” you asked sleepily, sitting up in your nest of blankets, having woken up to find that he was already in the process of pulling his socks on, careful not to wake you. 

  “I don’t know, Love, you know how crazy things have been with this update, I might be late again,” he said absently, looking around for his glasses. “Where the fuck did I put them?”

  He runs a hand through his hair frustratedly, leg bouncing in agitation. It made your heart ache slightly in your chest, disappointment, guilt, and worry mixing confusedly in your stomach. 

  You loved Sunghoon, more than almost anything else in your life, he was the man you’d chosen as your partner, who you’d decided to stand by through thick and thin. But ever since the game company he worked for had started work on a new update, you’d been seeing less and less of him. Always coming home late, tired and stressed, mind wandering and absent even when he was sitting right in front of you. You understood, you really did. Between the two of you he was the one with the bigger income, the burden of taking care of you, of making sure that the two of you could build a future together, was on his shoulders. And it was a responsibility that he did not take lightly. 

  But still. 

  In moments like that, where you slid off your bed to fetch his glasses off the nightstand–blanket wrapped securely round your shoulders to fend off the cold that permeated your apartment since the heating had started to malfunction–moving round the bed to stand in front of him… you couldn’t help but feel like he was breaking your heart. Just a little. 

  It was in the way he only met your eyes briefly when he took them from you before standing and gathering the rest of his things, sighing in what could’ve been frustration or relief, it was hard to tell. 

  It was the way he didn’t stop the flow of movement steadily taking him away from you and towards the office till you called his name twice, stopping in his tracks and fixing you with a look that, though probably unintentional, made you want to bury yourself under your mountain of plushies and hide. 

  “I’m going to be late, (y/n), what is it?”

  You winced. You couldn’t help it. Unaccustomed to hearing him say your name with so little emotion. “Just… could you come back on time tonight?” your voice is barely more than a whisper, tapering off into silence the longer you force your eyes to meet his. “Unless you can’t of course! I’m not saying you have to do anything, I understand that you’re busy and you can’t really dictate when or how things get done but just that it would be nice if you could be home on time tonight since-”

  “Okay.”

  “Huh?” 

  “I’ll make it home on time tonight.” 

  His voice was softer than it had been a moment ago, giving you the courage you needed to meet his eyes. They were still heavy with worry, brows drawn together to dig a permanent crease into the middle of his forehead, but they weren’t quite as cold or distant. He was looking at you, really looking at you for the first time in what felt like forever. 

  It wasn’t much, you knew that. But it was still enough to ease the knot building in your throat. Enough to bring a small smile to your face as you nodded. “Mnm! Okay, I’ll see you tonight then.”

   “Mnm, alright,” he said, a small, slightly strained smile coming to rest on his own lips.

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  The apartment was almost completely dark when the lock to the front door chimed, alerting the darkness that someone had arrived. The figure that stepped through was slumped over, backpack sliding off one shoulder with his jacket, shoes abandoned haphazardly. 

  It took a moment for Sunghoon’s mind to catch up to his body, for it to fully sink into his bones that he was home. That he was home and it was nearly 11 pm. Home and the tv and kitchen light were both on, white letters onscreen asking the room if anyone was still watching Netflix. 

  Something in the kitchen caught his eye, a handmade vase his sister had given you for your birthday set out on the kitchen island, filled to the brim with pink, white, and purple flowers he did not recognise. 

  ’Oh’

  It was his birthday. 

  That’s why you’d asked him to come home on time. 

  Sunghoon groaned, face twisting with what could only be described as pain as he quickly set his bag down by the front door and made his way to your shared bedroom. You were usually asleep by this time, unable to pull all-nighters the way you used to back when you were in high school, always out like a light by no later than 10:30 every night. 

  ’But she still stays up every night waiting for you,’ a voice in his head hisses.

  ’I know… fuck I know she does,’ his own voice replies, panic setting in when he finds your room empty, the bed neatly made, not even a dent to show that you’d been laying in it while working on your laptop during the day. 

  ’She’s not here… are you surprised? How long did you expect her to wait?’ the voice whispers, a chill cascading down his spine.

  The panic sets in with more vigor, wrapping round his throat and sending his tired mind into overdrive as he checks the bathroom, your home office, and finally the dark living room. Fear telling him that this was it. 

  He’d really gone and done it now. 

  He wasn’t a complete fool. He knew the moment you stood in the middle of your bedroom floor instead of closing the distance between you and wrapping your arms around his waist, choosing instead to clutch your favorite duvet like a lifeline, wincing when you heard his voice, all because you wanted to ask him to come home… he knew right then that he’d been an absolute idiot. 

  He’d meant to come home early, to be there to make it up to you, to apologise properly, tell you that he’d take some time off as soon as the update was done and dusted. 

  But he didn’t. He let work sweep him up again. Drowning in error messages and buggy code till the sky outside his office windows was filled with the flickering lights of the city at night. 

  And now… now you weren’t there. 

  He’d left you alone. 

  He’d left you alone too long and you were gone. 

  You were gone. 

  You were gone and-

  ’Oh.’

  There you were. 

  The relief when Sunghoon sees you–curled up on the couch, partially hidden by a small pile of blankets and stuffed animals–is immediate.

  He doesn’t really register the way he sighs your name, shoulders relaxing, body melting into the floor the moment he’s in front of you, hand brushing a few messy strands of hair out of your face. The need to feel the warmth of your skin, to confirm that you really are there in front of him more an instinct than a conscious decision. 

  You mumble something in your sleep, tilting your face away from his cold fingertips, eyes fluttering open. “Hoon… hi baby… welcome home,” you say tiredly, shifting under your blankets in an attempt to pull yourself up. 

  Sunghoon feels his heart crack in his chest. Why were you smiling at him? You should've been angry. You should've pushed him away, demanded to know why he was back so late, why he'd been neglecting you in the first place. 

  “Baby? My love… why are you crying?” you ask, reaching for him through the haze of sleep still clinging to your limbs. 

  Choking back a sob, he leans closer, tucking his head under your chin and doing his best to wrap an arm around you from his place on the carpeted floor. “Nothing,” he says, shaking his head, though the tears soaking into your sternum say otherwise, “just missed you…”

  Your vision blurs at his words, a thread of steadily building tension and worry that had been constricting your heart for the past few weeks snapping. “Oh…” your voice shakes slightly, lungs shuddering as your breaths begin to feel lighter, “I’m right here you goose, what’re you crying for?” 

  “Who says I’m crying,” he says, hoarse with tears. 

  “Right right,” you laugh despite the dampness now soaking through your own cheeks, “because my baby never cries, huh?” 

  “Never,” he sniffles, nuzzling closer.

  You stay like that for a while, eventually urging him to sit more comfortably on the couch, allowing you to settle yourself on his lap, his arms still wrapped firmly round your waist, hands occasionally kneading whatever part of you he was in contact with as if he needed to assure himself that you were there, solid and real. 

  He waits until he feels your heartbeat slow to a steady rhythm, trying his best to calm down so his own can match yours, beat for beat. The way it–in his opinion–should. 

  But it wouldn’t, there were words lodged in his throat, and every time he tried to get them out he felt that same panic wash over him, sending his heart into a frenzy. 

  You could feel like beating against your cheek, could sense that there was something he wasn’t saying from the way his grip on you would tighten almost imperceptibly, stiffening as if he was bracing himself for something. A part of you wanted to push him, prompt him and ask what was going through his head, why you’d woken up to the sight of him crying in the dim light of your living room. And you would’ve if he hadn’t beat you to it. 

  “I’m sorry, (y/n).”

  “What do you mean? For being late? I know you can’t help it, Hoon, it’s not some-”

  “No! I mean yes, I’m sorry for being late tonight but… I mean… I mean for everything… for not being… here, with you, like this… as often as I should be, I’m sorry,” he says, the hands at your sides nervously fidgeting with the fabric at your hips, nervously looking between your face and the static tv screen behind you. 

  Sunghoon had never been good with words. You’d learned early on in your relationship that he preferred to show how he felt through his actions. Yet here he was, fumbling through an apology because… because… 

  “My love… did you think I’d left?” you ask, gently cupping his face with one hand, urging him to look at you. 

  Puffy red eyes still wet with tears, messy unkempt hair from running his hands through it all day, tired and probably as emotionally spent as you’d ever seen him and still… still he was the most beautiful person in the world to you. He nodded, hiding his face in your chest again, hands stilling. 

  “Well,” you sigh, resting your chin on top of his head and running a hand through the hair at the back of his head, combing through it in a way he swears only you can, “at least you know you’ve got things you need to make up for…”

  “I know… I forgot for a while… but I know…”

  “That’s okay then,” you breathe, leaning back to kiss his forehead. “But Sunghoon… baby… darling… the love of my life… my little pookie bear… “ you both giggle a little at the pet names, “You know I’d never leave you over something like this right? I was sad, and hurt, and I still expect you to make it up to me by never doing this again but… I still love you, it only hurts because I love you… I’m not going anywhere.”

  Sunghoon pauses for a moment, letting your words sink in. You think that when he looks up, lips slightly parted, it’s to say something in response, but you really should’ve known better. 

  Slowly, giving you enough time to pull away should you choose to, his breath mingling with yours before he steals it away with a soft, lingering kiss. Neither of you is in any rush to take things further. 

  It feels like a small eternity before he pulls away, like time stills for you both, but then he’s pressing his lips to your jaw, butterfly kisses tickling you down to your pulse point, making you giggle so you almost miss it when he says, “I love you too… so much…” 

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  It isn’t until the next day when you’re shuffling into your home office dressed in one of his oversized jerseys, complaining about a meeting that he remembers the flowers he’d seen on the kitchen island.

  Pulling out his phone, he makes good use of his detective skills (and google lens), remembering all the times you’d spoken to him about the language of flowers, and the meanings behind certain blooms. 

  He wasn’t quite sure whether to laugh or cry once he’d figured it out, opting to dig through the cabinets for a pack of waffle mix to make you breakfast instead. He had a lot of apologies to make…

Baby’s Breath: pure everlasting love

Pink Camellias: longing for you

Forget-me-nots: true love memories, do not forget me