#kyungsoo — threads.

[lilacsongs]

“sorry,  i  just  have  to  grab  something  real  quick.”  with  that,  kyungsoo  slips  into  the  master  bedroom,  before  he  catches  what’s  happening  by  the  periphery  of  his  eyes.  “oh.”  it’s  a  scene  that  he’s  all  too  familiar  with  and  he  remains  frozen  in  place,  unsure  whether  he  should  leave  the  man  to  it  or  join  him.  “.... do  you  need  any  help  with  that?”  he  asks,  amusement  palpable  in  his  low  voice.  / @artisn

[fadinglights]

continued from here, @pomegrnate

he  never  wanted  her  to  discover  his  secret,  knowing  that  her  reaction  would  be  difficult  to  handle.  he  doesn't  blame  her  —  it's  not  her  fault.  after  all,  who  would  remain  calm  upon  uncovering  their  lover's  destructive  vice?  uncertain  how  to  respond,  he  shrugs  and  admits,  "maybe  both."  despite  his  lively  persona  at  work  and  in  his  private  life,  there  are  darker  aspects  of  himself  that  he  prefers  to  keep  hidden  from  the  world.  these  are  his  wounds  to  bear,  not  hers.  “you  were  never  meant  to  find  out."

[cherrylgc]

konnichiwa?

          in her time in legacy, cherry had learned to always expect the unexpected, yet legacy kept surprising her, things she would’ve never guessed. why was she suddenly on a cruise? she’d travelled to japan and the us last year with legacy, and now once again she was going abroad. prior to legacy she hadn’t been anywhere beside korea since she was seventeen. she was sad her girlfriend wouldn’t be joining her, but she was also excited.

of course it wasn’t just all vacation, work shops were included too. they’d hit nagasaki and she was participating in a jpop workshop. she was excited, but also a bit scared if she would be tested on her japanese skills. she sends a smile to the trainee beside her, kyungsoo, “how good is your knowledge on jpop?” she gives a smile. “i’m sure i could recognize songs, but i suck at remembering song and artist names” she shrugs.

written for... @lgckyungsoo

[lgchyoseop]

you’re brew-tea-ful

​    for a man with such strong hatred for coffee, it seemed to keep popping up into his life, and not just in the way that people around him drank it, no that he kept working with it. a little before joining legacy, hyoseop picked up the job as a barista, prior to being a legacy trainee he had a lot of jobs, but he quit them all except working in a coffee shop. then legacy were forcing them to do volunteer work and hyoseop ended up having to make coffee as a trainee mission. due to future dreams though, he was forced to quit his job, but losing future dreams meant he was free again, and a half year later he was back being a barista. and here he was working in a coffee truck for legacy. and none of this wouldn’t be as funny if it wasn’t due to hyoseop being the world’s biggest coffee hater.

to hyoseop, not only did it taste bad, but it smelt bad, and he would very often complain and talk about this hatred for coffee he had. but coffee kept and kept sneaking it’s way around to hyoseop’s life. at least due to his long career in the coffee world, he had mastered making coffee art, it was kind of like how he learnt playing the guitar, not because he actually had an interest in it, he just wanted to impress others. and that was very much exactly what he could do now: impress kyungsoo. “look” he tells the shorter before beautifully making a swan in the coffee with the help of coffee cream. “it’s easy, want to try?” he sends the younger a smile.

                                                                         <3 @lgckyungsoo

[marshmallow-phd]

A Manor of Shadow and Blood

Genre: Regency Gothic AU

Pairing: EXO x Reader

Summary: A stormy night brought you to the manor in the middle of the woods. Nine strange men occupied its halls. They won’t let you leave. A dangerous secret haunts this estate. Learning it might either be your saving grace or it could lead to the last breath you ever take.

Part: 1 I 2 I 3 I 4 I 5

**

The grand hall was lit as bright as midday. Every surface was polished to perfection, reflecting the candlelight at a greater force. Brilliant brass and gold surrounded you as you made your way through the dancing couples, their movements in perfect sync. Wrapped in each other's arms, they spin around without a care for your wandering presence. 

While all who surrounded you were decorated in blacks and whites, your own dress was the color of freshly spilled blood. The heavy skirts that hug from your waist made it difficult to navigate the ballroom. Their fullness was of an older fashion, one that maybe your grandmother would have worn in her youth. The dropped shoulders left you exposed, your skin chilled despite the amount of bodies in here. 

You kept navigating the dance floor, on the look out for something, though you didn’t know what. Then you felt the familiar burn of eyes boring into your back, which sent a shiver down your spine. You whirled around to find the source, the dress brushing at your feet with the sudden motion. Through the crowd, you spotted Baekhyun leaning against the wall. With a single finger, he beckoned you over. And you obeyed. 

Breaking through the sea of dancers, you took in his elegant suit, the hems lined with gold thread that shimmered against black velvet. 

"You shouldn't dance alone," he purred. Arms crossed over his chest, he smirked at you with a grin even the devil wouldn't wear.

"I have no partner," you retorted. He held out a lazy hard. Hardly the romantic gesture. "No, thank you." 

"How about me?" asked a sweet voice in your ear. 

You turned your head to find Junmyeon at your back. He laid a soft hand on your hip to keep you from escaping out of propriety. When you didn’t shove him away, the hand slyly moved to your stomach, pulling your bare shoulder blades into his chest. With the fingers of his left hand, he tilted your chin towards him. 

"Am I a suitable partner?" 

No answer passed your lips. You could think of nothing to say. The thought of him twirling you around the dance floor was not… unpleasant. 

Junmyeon neither needed nor cared for a reply. He dipped his head to your shoulder and pressed a kiss to the skin. A small gasp passed your lips. And then he pressed another. More and more as he climbed up the curve of your neck. Heat rose from every inch of you as you sighed into the affectionate touches. You relaxed into his touch, welcoming each new contact of his lips. 

"It's rude not to share, Junmyeon.”

Your attention snapped back to Baekhyun, who you had forgotten was there. He pushed himself off the wall and stepped closer to you so he stood in front of the minor. 

No, not a mirror. There was no reflection. 

Except… there was. The mirror reflected the floor, the ceiling, the candlelight. You. 

But not Baekhyun. Not Junmyeon. And not the dancers still spinning behind you. 

Fingers snaked through your hair and pulled your head back, your vulnerable neck exposed. From the gallery above, Kyungsoo watched as elongated fangs flashed behind Junmyeon’s lips and plunged into your neck. 

*****

You woke with a start, the blanket flying off of you as you sat up in a fury. Sweet drenched every pore of your skin. Your day old dress clung to your skin in a way that felt suffocating. Each breath was a struggle for your lungs. 

Vampires. The nightmarish tale that had kept you up as a child until you were convinced they weren't real turned out to be true. But how could they be real? 

Creatures of the night. Blood drinkers. Horror stories meant to keep children from wandering about after dark. 

Curling your legs to your chest and encasing them in your arms, you tried to think of a way out. To escape. With what strength you possessed, you slid off the bed and walked over to the window. The sun, so bright and full of life, was just beginning its descent towards the horizon. Night–their domain–was hours away. If the legends were true, then they would all be asleep at this moment. Any risk that was to be taken had to be taken now. 

After changing into a sturdier dress, you retrieved your still mud-covered boots and, keeping them in one hand, you carefully pushed away the pathetic barrier and snuck out of the room. 

Each step was taken with unmatched caution. You tested every board with your foot before fully committing. Any squeak of a floor or stumble down a stair could alert them to your escape. But by the grace of a miracle, you made it to the front door. Fingers trembling, you pulled on the boots and tied up the laces before opening the door only wide enough for you to slink through. 

The next breath taken outside was like the first breath of life. But there was no time to take it in. 

Gathering your skirts in your grip, you took off into the trees. The dirt was dry and sturdy under your feet. Branches and leaves crunched with the weight of your boots. A lady’s delicacy was out of the question as you ran without abandon. You didn't know what direction you were running. But vampires needed blood to survive and they weren’t drinking yours. And Jongdae had brought those buns from a bakery, not their own kitchen. You doubted any of them knew how to cook. That meant a village or town had to be nearby. Junmyeon had lied about the isolation of the manor. If you just kept going, you could find freedom. 

However, your stamina was running out. This was never your preferred activity. Your lungs and throat burned in an unfamiliar way. The sun still shined above. A short respite could be spared. 

You leaned against a tree trunk for support. In your boots your feet pulsed. Only now did you realize that you had run away without food or water. Not knowing where the kitchen was located, you didn't have time to waste on it. You could survive, you told yourself. Just a little farther. The town couldn’t be too far. Unless you were headed in the wrong direction. 

A rustling rippled through the silent forest. You snapped to attention, trying to find the source. 

“The wind,” you gasped between ragged breaths. “It had to be the wind.” 

A low, rumbling growl said it wasn't wind. 

In the distance, large silhouettes emerged. Wolves. Nearly a dozen of them. 

You ran as fast as your crying legs could take you. With their superior nature built for the hunt, the wolves caught up to you within seconds. Their growls and howls grew louder and more threatening behind you. Running from the manor had been easy. Running from the wolves was to be your end. 

Powerful paws slammed into your back. You were thrown to the ground, rolling across the ground as a scream ripped at your throat. The momentum stopped you on your stomach. Hair covered your face, but you could still see your death through the strands. 

Wolves of gray and black gathered in a half moon circle. They had their prey in perfect position. The middle wolf pounced. All you had time to do was throw up your arms to protect your face. Claws raked across your forearm. Another scream echoed through the merciless trees. The wolf landed on the other side of you with pride. Now you were surrounded. A second wolf leapt. 

A blur appeared in front of you and collided with the wolf midair. The two bodies tumbled across the forest floor. A human and the wolf. 

Not a human. 

Chanyeol. The wolf trapped within his grasp, Chanyeol tightened his grip–

Crack. 

The wolf fell limply to the ground, its tongue hanging from its jaw. 

The others appeared seconds later. Not understanding what they were up against, the wolves let you go to attack the newest threat. 

"Are you alright?" Junmyeon knelt down in front of you. His hands were outstretched as if you were the wild animal on the verge of attack. Behind him, snarls and whimpers told of the fight–and who was winning. Despite not answering him, he caught sight of your bleeding arm. "We need to get back to the manor." 

He didn't ask permission before picking you up into his arms and sprinting through the forest. Everything blurred past you, your loose hair whipping at your face. He burst through the manor doors and didn't stop until he was able to set you down in the largest chair. Once you were safe, he fell to his knees, only his palms keeping him upright. The others soon stumbled in behind him, heaving and collapsing onto the floor. Only then did you notice the smoke floating up from each of their backs. Patches of burnt, red skin sizzled on their knuckles and faces. Anything that had been exposed to the sun. 

"Baekhyun," Junmyeon gasped. 

"I already have it." Kyungsoo came into the parlor with bottles stacked in his arms. He quickly passed them around, waiting until the others were quenching their thirst before pulling the cork out of his own bottle and chugging the contents. 

With his bottle empty, Junmyeon tossed it to the side and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. Red smears stained the ivory fabric. You shrank back in the chair as he turned towards you. 

"What hell were you thinking!" He growled. "I warned you about the wolves!" 

"Junmyeon, she's shaken up enough," Jongdae defended. Before your eyes, his burnt skin healed to be like new.

"She could have been killed!" 

Your head was pounding. He was… concerned about your life? The legends said that the sun was a vampire's deadliest enemy. It was why they thrived in the darkness. But they had all risked a final death to come after you. 

"Did you hear me scream?" you whispered. You could barely feel your own lips moving. All heads tuned to you. 

Yixing was the one to answer. "Yes. We all heard you." 

"Why were you out there?" Sehun asked aggressively.

You sucked in a sharp breath. There was no escaping the truth now. You stared at Jongdae. "I figured it out.” 

Baekhyun laughed. "At least we don't have to walk around delicately anymore." 

"When exactly did you do so?" Minseok mocked.

"Then you should remember what I said to you before was true. Harm would not come to you within these walls." Junmyeon crouched down next to the chair. His eyes... there was something behind the darkness that tugged at your still wildly beating heart. "I know you were running away. And if you're desperate to get away enough to get yourself killed, then the choice can be yours. We can send you on your way with every provision. Or," he cleared his throat, "you stay here. With us." 

A choice? He was giving you a choice?

Your gaze drifted over the faces that stared back at you. Even Kyungsoo refused to look away while he waited. There was almost a plea in his expression, a subtle beg. But was it to stay? Or for you to run as far away as possible? 

Junmeyon took your attention away when he picked up your wounded arm with delicate fingers. His pleading was much more clear. 

To leave would be the better choice. The more sane choice. But what would happen afterwards? You could claim being lost in the woods. With evidence of the carriage and the missing driver, what else could they believe? After a few days on bed rest, you would be back by your aunt's side, following her every whim. Including indulging her on a "perfectly adequate" suitor because you had no other option, no other path. That suitor who would then become your future. But you didn't want it. You refused to give in to it. 

Already within these few days, you were… changed in a way. They might not be human, but these men would forever be burned into your memory. Who could move you with music the way Chanyeol had? What silent strength could match the aura of Junmyeon? You had been promised that none of them would harm you. The chance for something extraordinary was right in front of you. The kind of chance you had only read about. It just had to be taken.

"I think… I think I want to stay."

*****

The moon became an ever changing friend. You hardly saw the sun anymore. Like the men you had given yourself over to, you lived under the stars. It was oddly beautiful. This time was often forgotten about by you and many others. The night was only a background to your time within your dreams. But now it was your entire world. 

Every evening, you awoke to the dying orange light of the day. Breakfast always waited for you outside the door. It was the rule that no one broke; none could enter your room without explicit permission from you. Those walls remained your safe haven when things grew too overwhelming. 

Despite your decision to stay, discovering that other creatures walked the earth required a step away once in a while. Especially now, with you aware of their true nature, the men were refusing to hold back. 

Dropping from the roof, running around with spectacular speed, and lifting objects that ten men couldn't hold. It was remarkable. Except for the diet and inability to walk in the sun, the… condition seemed more like a blessing.

"You're rather thoughtful this evening,” Jongdae commented. He walked beside you like he did every twilight. 

After you finished your breakfast, you met Jongae at the front doors to go on a walk around the manor grounds. Often others would join you as well. Junmyeon was the most frequent, though Yixing, Changed, and Jongin made many appearances over the past week and a half. Boundaries were constantly tested, but one word from you and they retreated.

"I guess you could say I am thoughtful tonight," you finally sighed. You hadn’t realized that you were being so obviously quiet. Funny, since you would have thought Jongdae would enjoy the silence. You typically had many questions or comments of your own to make. 

"Should I go steal a penny from Sehun?" 

You laughed. "I'd like to think my thoughts are worth more than a single penny.”

"They must be if you've become so skilled in deflecting from them." He crossed over to block your path. Gaze narrowed, he studied your carefully guarded expression. "What are you thinking about so hard? Regretting your decision to stay already?" 

"No," you insisted. "Not at all."

He raised an eyebrow that simply asked, "Then what?" 

"Do you always stay here?" you countered. "At the manor, I mean." 

"We travel," Jongdae answered with a nod. "Not too often. It’s a bit difficult, you see."

"But we like traveling north.” Minseok dropped from who-knew-where, landing with barely bent knees and hands folded behind his back. "In the winter, the night lasts longer. Junmyeon has a small hunting lodge up there. 

A hunting lodge? "Then why do you stay here?" 

Minsoek shrugged. "This manor is bigger." 

"Having nine of us in one household can be a bit volatile,” Jongdae added. He stepped aside to continue the stroll. "We need the room to separate so we don't level a building." 

Your foot caught on an invisible lump in the grass. "You could destroy a building while fighting?" 

Minseok snickered as he caught your stumble and helped steady your stance. His hand lingered at your waist until your sharpened glare made him remove it. "We haven’t crumbled a wall in a few years."

You scoffed at the casual tone. "What sort of fight caused that?" 

"I can't remember." Minseok leaned forward slightly to look at Jongdae for help. But he didn't seem to recall either. 

"Who knows what started it between Chanyeol and Kyungsoo.”

Your mouth dropped open in shock. Kyungsoo and Chanyeol had fought over something to the point of destroying a wall to crumble? It didn't feel plausible. Neither seemed like the hot-headed sort. You wanted to know the igniting incident so desperately. 

Both Jongdae and Minseok suddenly whipped their heads towards the front of the manor. 

"What is it?" you asked when neither offered an explanation. 

"Junmyeon's calling for us." Jongdae scooped you up into his arms without warning. At your confused expression, he explained, "We're not leaving you alone out here." Remember your last adventure in the woods lingered in the silence.

The short lived wind whipped at your hair that you still wore loose to cover your neck. As soon as he stopped running, you wiggled out of his arms to be back on your feet. Everyone else was already gathered just outside the door. Several eyed you and Jongdae with suspicious and annoyed glares. You took a step away from him for some separation. 

Clearing his throat, Junmyeon called everyone to attention. "We have to go hunting–real hunting. Now, normally, we all go together, but now that we have our guest," he nodded towards you, "some will have to stay behind with her until the first party… comes back." 

"If you all need to go,” you couldn't quite speak the word feed, "then I'll be alright. For a few hours, at least." You weren't sure how long this excursion would take.

Junmyeon's features softened. "No. We'll go in groups. Chanyeol, Kyungsoo, Minseok and I will go first. We shouldn't be gone long." He reached out and patted the top of your head before disappearing into the trees. Kyungsoo gave no goodbye as he followed suit. The last two playfully shoved each other while taking off. 

"Come." Yixing took hold of your hand and started pulling you inside. "I want to show you something."

"But–" You had wanted to ask Jongdae a question, but the traitor was already gone, off somewhere to do something he would never tell you about. So, you let Yixing take you into the manor and up the main staircase at the end of the hallway. At least he let you stay on your own feet instead of insisting on going at his speed. 

Going down an unfamiliar hallway, you were reminded how big this place was and how much you still had to explore. The men occupied most of your time, vying for your attention and pulling you this way and that so you didn’t have much time on your own. It was odd and overwhelming at times. 

During your seasons in town, you were hardly a well-sought after prize. There were prettier girls with grander dowries. You had accepted that fact. Now you were the center of a courting dance to which you knew none of the steps and possessed endless partners. 

Yixing paused in front of a door that looked identical to all the others. He kept his fingers tight around yours as he slowly turned the knob with his free hand. The door swung open. 

The gasp inhaled through your parted lips wasn't enough to convey your awe. 

Maps of all the places you'd heard of and dozens more you hadn't covered the walls like homemade wallpaper. Slipping out of Yixing's grip, you walked further into the study, spinning slowly around to take it all in. The maps were varying degrees of tan, some as light as his skin, others as dark as animal leather. 

Instead of bookshelves, doorless cabinets waist high lined three of the walls. Their squared shelves were stuffed full of parchment and ink and quills. A lone sketcher's desk sat in the middle, an unfinished drawing laying against the tilted surface. 

"What is this place?"

"It's my personal study," Yixing answered as he laid a hand on the edge of the desk. "Kyungsoo gave it to me after I had accidentally taken over one of the parlors." 

Your awe increased ten-fold. Your initial assumption was that he was a collector, not the original artist. "You drew all of these?" 

He nodded almost... shyly. "I did. I was a cartographer. Before." 

"Before?" You understood what he meant, but you didn't know how to ask for the story. 

Turning his eyes to the parchment, he pinched it between his fingers. "I didn't just love traveling. I loved capturing it on paper. I wanted to make these places into art, but not like every other painting. I wanted them to be perfect. Exact replicas as if you were staying at them from God’s point of view. And I wanted to be the best. I couldn't be, though. I wasn’t good enough." 

You moved closer to him, entranced in the story. "What happened?"

A rueful smile tightened at his lips. "I was given a chance to become perfect. What I didn't know was that I traded everyone knowing my maps for the talent to make it happen." Sorrow rolled from him like the tide warning of an oncoming storm. 

Feeling the pull to comfort him, you reached out and covered his fidgeting hand with your own steady fingers.

"People will be able to know your work some day," you whispered. "I’m sure of it." 

Perhaps you had been a bit too forward, a bit too open. 

Yixing moved gracefully forward to eliminate most of the space between you. A smooth thumb that once must have been calloused when it was human caressed the edge of your jaw. His flickering eyes made intentions obvious. 

Clearing your throat, you stepped out of the touch. "Why isn't this one finished?" You pointed to the drawing on the desk. It was an aerial view of the manor, with the top half of the parchment containing the beginning edges of the garden hedges. Disappointed, Yixing sighed and went along with your distraction. 

"I'm still working out the maze. It is intricate. Much more than I was prepared for." 

"Goodness." You were thankful that you hadn't wandered in there yet, especially on your own.

"Yixing.” 

Both of you turned towards the door to find Sehun standing under the frame. 

"Yes, Sehun?" Yixing said through somewhat gritted teeth. The young vampire wasn't phased. 

"I need to speak with you." 

"Fine." None of you moved. 

Sehun looked at you with a pointed glare.

You received the hint loud and clear. "I'll leave you, then.” 

With more relief than you cared to admit, you scurried out of the room and down the hallway. 

Around the corner, you pressed your back against the wall and forced yourself to take deep breaths that filled your lungs to capacity. Panic had been the response at Yixing's closeness. You didn't mean for that to be the response. You didn't want to be closed off to any of them. But you couldn't help it. Maybe it was merely the closeness of the situation. 

Giving yourself a small amount of grace, you pushed off the wall and made your way downstairs. So used to your time being absorbed by the men that you weren't sure what to do with yourself. Two of the ones that remained behind were currently occupied. As for the three others, they could have been anywhere. 

You wandered around the main floor with a fleeting hope that one would come to find you. Then you saw them. A row of grand doors evenly spaced along the north wall called you forward.

The grand ballroom took your breath away. Not so dissimilar to the one in your dream, though this one’s lack of warmth and light left you heartbroken. Memories of dancing figures and lively music haunted these walls. In the corner, you could imagine a small orchestra strumming their instruments in delight. 

You walked to the center where dozens of pairs used to twirl and bow and embrace each other in time with the melody. Ghostly laughter echoed in your ears. What had once been  bright and golden and full of life was dull, dark, and covered in cobwebs that swayed in the breeze of unknown origin. 

Glancing around, you confirmed that you were truly alone before closing your eyes, lifting your arms, and began a soft hum. 

You danced with an invisible partner in the fashion that your grandfather had taught you as a small child. It was more intimate than the choreographed dances currently popularized. You had always imagined your first ball like this, instead of the disappointment you really experienced. You had pictured a boy you didn’t know catching your eye. As the music was struck up, he laid a hand on your waist.

Just like now. 

Hm. Your imagination was running wild, even pretending the weight of a palm was there on your lower back. And now in your lifted left hand. 

No. That wasn’t your imagination. 

Your eyes snapped open. 

Jongin had taken the place of your imagined partner. He smiled down at you with a feline smirk as his hands tightened around you, refusing to let you slip away. There was no choice in leaving this musicless dance. You had stopped humming but he continued to whirl you around the marble floor. He controlled the dance, in charge of every step. He led with an expertise he shouldn’t have possessed–if he were a man of this age. 

In one final move, he slipped his arm fully around your waist, pulling you so close that no room remained between you. Without breaking the spin, he lifted you from the floor as if you were no more than a kitten and whirled you around like the heroine from your favorite novel.

When the spin came to a close, he set you back on your feet, but didn’t let go. Your lungs heaved from the exercise–and from the way your bodies pressed together. Each rise of your chest brought you even closer to Jongin. He kept your gaze like a stablehand trying to calm a wild horse. His right hand slipped from your fingers, softly tracing the delicate inside of your arm. The touch left behind a fire you couldn’t explain. A cold, simmering fire.

He cupped your jaw as his eyes drifted down to your lips. This was a different reaction to Yixing’s wandering gaze. Not panic, but something similar. 

Jongin held you in place as he leaned down, his lips pressing gently into the corner of yours. The thin breath in your lungs hitched. He lifted his lips only to find a new patch of skin. The delicate skin covering your pulse. Every muscle in your body froze. He kissed the skin softly. Surely, he could feel the race of your blood. 

“Whenever you need a partner,” he said in a hush against your neck, “just whisper my name.”

And then, he was gone. 

You stared off at the empty path left behind Jongin. The sheer hubris.

His name lingered on your lips, wondering if he would really come back like he said. But you kept the whisper inside and left the ballroom just the same. 

[soobadnoonecanstopher]

Rat Bastard - Part 4

Pairing: You x Kyungsoo

Rating: M (Mature)

Word Count: 9000

Warnings: There were too many beds, Enemies to Lovers, Slow Burn, Cahoots envy, UST

PSA: this couple is called the Rat Couple and their individual names will be Rat Princess and RatSoo (or Rat Basard when we are mad at him)

Tag: @ilovemyapopbaby

Links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

You were playing a game. It involved lots of fast moving and tricky words that this small group of people shouted out with cheers or groans depending on how good or bad they felt the words had been. You didn’t really get it. The explanations at the beginning went too quickly and you might have nodded off during the vital parts.

Obviously you were losing this game. It was a drinking game but you had nothing invested as your drinks no longer contained any alcohol. You had almost no other reason to keep playing except for boredom which, you were surprised to learn about yourself, was a pretty good motivator.

You’d been given a virgin drink to sip on by a thoroughly-scholded, Javier. He could hardly meet your eyes after being accused by his coworkers of ‘nearly killing the only girl we have.’ The marker board had come out again. There was now a ‘wall of shame’ section and Javier’s name was written in angry looking capitalized red letters.

‘A category five!’

‘I just didn’t expect an adult to have such a low alcohol tolerance.’

‘How could you tell her where the patio door was?’

‘Why were the drinks so strong?’

‘You told me to get her drunk!’

‘Just last week some guy died from falling off a stool. People have died from much less.’

‘The wall of babies conceived during the Serenity Sands Resort Singles Retreat is something to be proud of. Adding a death toll to the wall is not.’

‘Cat-Te-Go-Ry Five!’

‘We add to the population, we do not subtract.’

‘To be fair, it’s as if she has almost no sense of survival.’

Your mumbled and slurred declarations of how completely fine you were had gone unheard.

You’d long been eliminated from this game by the time your mind began to sharpen to what was actually happening. It was after Kyungsoo won a prize. You hadn’t even realized there were prizes, but the whole group of people were gathered around a table with various odds and ends, one of which was up for grabs each time a game was won. Because the seven of you were trapped here in this bunker for a week with minimal possessions, a few items had been brought over from the hotel, things that normally would not be so valuable but given the current state of things, these items suddenly had a whole new appeal.

There were a few emergency ponchos for the rain, pairs of waterproof rain boots to keep muddy flood water from seeping inside of your shoes, bug spray, lip balm, ear plugs, wet wipes, a big bag of marshmallows and lots of other snacks, a powerful flashlight and separately, a big pack of batteries for the flashlight or whatever other item needed them. The winner would need to either win both or be in cahoots with the person who won the other. Your eyes zeroed in on the high thread-count luxury blanket with real down feathers and beside it, a cheaper and lighter blanket with such a low thread count the package didn’t even advertise it. You remembered that your beds back there were made up with the bare minimum, just a fitted sheet, a sad pillow and a bed sheet that was so thin it would have been transparent if that room had any windows other than the tiny ones in the bathrooms.

Your now sharper mind began to really understand the stakes. This wasn’t only a drinking game. You’d be stuck here for a week. The small radio that Kyungsoo just won put a blinding smile on his face and you looked around the room at the stacks of items the other people had won. Sara won a neck pillow and an eye mask for sleeping. Mr. Chen, ever the diplomat, won a pack of bar soaps that he promptly ripped open and passed one around to everyone, leaving one sad little bar down at your feet with a pitiful smile. Roxy had won a jumbo pack of ramen and a camping stove and Jun had won butane fuel for the stove. It seems some cahoots were already in the works. The pair didn't even bother to separate their stacks of prizes.

Then and there you made a promise to pay attention to the rules of the next game and you actually felt a wave of relief pass through you when you realized that the next game wasn’t one that required much difficult thinking but only required you to be quick with your hands. Or more specifically the tiny stretchy sticky hand that you’d been given. Everyone got one and the smallest white button that had fallen off of Javier’s sleeve was placed on the surface, in the middle of the big table.

The object of the game was simple. First one to grab the button wins. There were a few practice throws allowed before the battle began and the table erupted in quiet chaos and giggles as everyone quickly realized that these things had very little control or aim to them. You simply threw it vaguely in the direction of the button as fast as you could and if you got lucky you might grab something other than some other player’s sticky hand.

The practice round was declared finished. Not a single hand grabbed the button on the table and clear reminders of the rules were announced before a countdown was called out and it was time.

You needed to win something. Once the go was given, you and everyone else was frantic with it. Slapping sounds echoed all around the room and there was screaming and yelping as hands came close to the button. You were moving so quickly you hadn’t realized you’d bumped up elbows with the person beside you and in the excitement you’d reached a hand out to hold him back. Kyungsoo was creeping into your space. The only thing you could do was fight him off with your free hand. You reached for his forearm and pulled him back, trying to get his tossing hand back enough so you could break through. The sound of everyone’s laughter was like a drug. The mood of the game was so fun and exciting you hadn’t even noticed that it was the sounds of Kyungsoo’s giggles that paired so well with your own. That it was a sound you’d never before heard in your life, the mixture of both of your laughter with his laughter and the two voice tones blended so beautifully together you had to force your eyes to look away from the giggling profile of his face so you could focus on the game.

Through the struggle and the giggles when you pulled your sticky hand back quickly you shot it forward again and to your absolute shock your hand landed square on top of the button in the center of the table and quickly whipped it backward, trapping it right in front of you on the table. You reached down with a shout and gripped that button and you stood up in happiness as the entire rest of the table groaned at the loss.

You’d done it. You’ve finally won something. You were jumping up and down with excitement and you couldn't help the drift of your eyes over to the man who sat beside you with a pretty smile still on his face. He lifted a hand and ran it through his hair, letting the straight black strands fall back into place slowly and his dark eyes watched you for a few moments with that breathtaking smile taking just a bit of your oxygen and making it stutter inside of your lungs. You’d been denying it to yourself, refusing to admit even inside of your head just how beautiful he was, but again and again you would lose that battle. It had been getting worse lately, the longer stretches of time you got to actually look at him and the longer stretches of time when you actually held his brown eyes with your own.

Someone steered you to the big table of prizes and handed you an enormous multipack of batteries. Batteries that would power any one of these hand held devices such as the flashlight and even that small radio that Kyungsoo had stashed underneath his chair.

The weight of this prize brought a change inside of you. You had won the power, quite literally. Everyone who won an electronic device needed you. You had what might be considered currency.

“Roxy, I’ll give you the batteries for your portable fan for one pack of ramen,” you said as you sat down and her eyes widened and she nodded her head, ripping open the multipack of noodles and tossing them over to you in exchange for two small batteries. You had so many of them and curious eyes were now offering small trades.

Once the trading had started you noticed others making small deals as well. Kyungsoo gave Roxy a can of spam for some ramen and you looked at the several cans he had left and then down at his powerless portable radio but you lost the nerve to say anything to him when he looked at you. You just looked away and avoided his eyes until the next game started. The sticky hands game was quick and popular, more prizes were handed out, and you all played it again and again until all the sticking power wore off and nobody was able to grab ahold of anything anymore.

If you were meant to be avoiding this man those plans went out the window with the announcement of the next game. This one would be played in pairs and your eyes touched upon every single person in this room except for the man sitting beside you begging to God they hadn’t already settled on their person. Of course they were all taken, the dirty rats.

“Okay so you, and Kyungsoo,” Mr. Chen clapped his hands, “excellent, that works out perfectly.”

You’d cooperated with him already. You’d both worked quite closely and very well together in the kitchen when he was cooking blindfolded, but that was before the blowup outside. Before you hurt his feelings for real this time, he called you an asshole, and you drunkenly tried to blame your cruel, hateful words on the actions of the other people in this room when you got caught by him. Even as upset as he had obviously been, he still swooped in and caught you before you could fall off the patio and hurt yourself. But he’d not said a single word to you since, and even only looked at you when absolutely necessary.

This game was more physical. There was a big bowl of flour and two spoons and the task was to hold the spoon with your mouth and use it to scoop flour. You were then to transfer the flower scoop to your partner’s spoon and they took it to another bowl which sat on a scale. The fastest team to transfer 40 grams of flour won. The prize was the pair of blankets and while you weren’t about to share your new high thread count luxury blanket with this man, you could be convinced to give him the cheap one.

“There’s a catch,” Mr. Chen explained and you groaned in annoyance as you took the spoon back out of your mouth to listen to the added condition of the game that was being explained. “You must both stand within the same square on the tile during the flour transfer. Touching each other is allowed.”

You both looked down at the floor, realizing that these floor tiles were tiny. Maybe your feet and his feet would fit if you stood exactly on one side of the tile but it would have to be very close. In fact, everything about your bodies would need to be close for this.

Sara had her hand raised and Mr. Chen quickly added that pregnant persons with big bellies could use up two tiles. Everyone else was limited to one.

When the game began, Kyungsoo was standing closest to the flour supply so you simply stood at the halfway point, placing your feet carefully within your tile. From the looks of his shoes, it was likely he could manage to fit one foot between your two, and the other on the other side while remaining within the perimeter lines. He was coming with his spoon suspended in his mouth and a mountain of flour filling the spoon. He was coming with a big white spot of flour on his chin and several white spots down his cheek and what was probably hidden all over his white shirt and when he reached you, you felt him place his first foot in between yours and carefully place the other within the tile. With his feet in place the warmth of his body quickly followed and you felt the length of him pressing up against your body from thigh to chest. Oh god.

Your eyes were wide open and he looked into them with a quiet urgency in the small grunt he gave you. His head tiled the smallest amount, not enough to spill his flour but enough to tell you that your spoon was not at the right angle to receive and that you should tilt your head.

You could feel your heart beating inside of your ears with him standing so very close to you and you had to remind yourself that this was only for the game. This was only to win the prizes, your blankets. You would sleep warm and comfortable tonight if you won those blankets.

A commotion beside you called your attention briefly and you began to turn your head. Someone had coughed a faceful of flour on their partner and someone was coughing and laughing noisily.

Kyungsoo’s hand reached up and you felt the warmth of his palm land over your cheek, pulling your face to look at him again. He’d lifted his other hand just high enough to wrap around the small of your back and you felt the gentle pull there as he pulled you in closer to where he stood inside this tile. He was just refocusing you. He was only directing your face so you could tilt your head into him to gather all of the flour he brought to you and you held your breath as his head tilted further and the white flour fell into your own spoon.

He let you go and he stepped back, inhaled a deep breath as he moved, his eyes widened with a nod of his head and you quickly turned around to take the spoon to the scale. You had more than 10 grams already. You only had to do this three more times to win. You glanced around at the other teams, one who was still transferring, and the other who had gone back to square one covered in white flour all over their faces and hair.

Your waist and your face felt all dumb and tingly, your skin was acting unreasonable to be so undeservedly affected by his touch. He wasn’t even touching you because he wanted to. This was for the game. It has just been so very long since a handsome man actually put his hands on you.

When you returned to your tile, Kyungsoo was already coming with another spoonful. He was less careful with his touch this time and you felt the strong warmth of his hand that he placed on your waist the second he reached the tile and situated his feet. Your hands lifted to lightly touch the side of his waist to keep your balance and this time as he was turning his head to dump the flour, half of the flour seemed packed on his spoon, refusing to budge. You had to touch him more, you lifted your hand and guided his face more. You could see the moment the powder dislodged and plopped neatly inside of your spoon and you were glad you were holding your breath because you nearly laughed in excitement to see it fall. You were rushing to the scale, careful to not jostle your precious cargo any more than necessary.

This had been a bigger spoonful. Your totals were 25 grams already, much more than any of the other teams.

You gave him an encouraging nod of your head and he had a smile in his eyes that sent him rushing back to the bowl before you could even make it back to the tile he was waiting with both of his arms outstretched for you, hands falling easily into place now, faces tilted in a position with him that to anyone who might be viewing this from the back may seem romantic. It was definitely close enough to kiss his pretty lips if not for these blasted spoons.

You had your flour scoop secured and his eyes widened marginally when you lifted a hand to lightly brush stray the white powder off his cheek before you turned to deposit your spoon.

You were almost there. The sense of urgency moved your body and you rushed back to where he stood waiting for you with his spoon positively loaded up with flour.

You collided with him with more force than you had before, your desire to win clouding your judgment and with the impact you felt more of his firm body pressed against you. You felt more of the hardness of his thighs that flexed when you placed your own over him, straddling his legs so you both would fit perfectly in this tiny space. When his hand pulled you harder into him he used his entire hand and forearm and you were reminded of the position he caught you in out there in the rain when the thumping of your heartbeats seemed to scream even louder than the torrential rain hitting the roof of the patio; when the heat you felt between his legs pressed into you sent an overwhelming wave of warmth and attraction radiating through your belly and brought along a damp flush to your skin.

You didn’t have time for all of this. He was tilting his head into you and his hand was on your face, cradling your cheek, your jaw, your ear, slipping down the smoothness of your neck and his eyes were closing as he lightly exhaled through his nose. The flour moved. You caught the bit of some of it falling off the spoon and you felt the tickle as some of it fell over your bare chest.

Impossibly and as if he had been possessed, you felt the smallest brushes of his soft, warm fingertips along the skin below your collarbone, brushing away the little mess he had made of you there.

When his eyes pulled up you were staring into his face and you didn’t have time to decipher any of this because you needed to be moving. You hoped it would be enough. You spun carefully on your heels and you could feel the shadow of him following your journey as you made it to the scale and poured the contents of your spoon.

“43 grams!” Mr Chen shouted and you heard groans of disappointment from the other two teams, you heard the metal clanging as discarded spoons fell to the floor or landed and echoed on a table and your body felt as if it might be on fire from just how much Kyungsoo had been touching you during the game. Every single cell that his skin had touched felt electrified and when you spun to look into his face you caught the most beautiful smile of genuine happiness there.

It pulled the smile of celebration from your own chest and you laughed and leaned into him, lightly bumping your shoulders against his bicep, not quite trusting yourself to openly celebrate so freely with this man.

You felt it then, the smallest reach of his arm that he lifted and wrapped lightly around your waist, you felt the small pull of him there as he did it and you gasped in surprise to feel the brush of his fingers that landed over your hair. He was grinning and brushing flour out of your hair. He was happy and he was so beautiful and you smiled back at him, tapping away some of the flour that had fallen from his chest and when his eyes reached into yours you caught the shift as the smile slowly flattened out and he cleared his throat, pulling his eyes quickly away from your face and pulling both of his hands back to himself.

If you hadn’t been holding them together your hands might have been trembling.

It was time to claim your prizes so you steadied your expression as quickly as you could, making excuses about how sometimes the nature of celebrating wins involved tiny touches and achingly deep eye blinks with each other and trying to ignore the longing you felt to feel the temperature of his skin pressed up against yours like that again. This was getting out of hand.

You both looked down at the two blankets, one of them clearly more superior than the other and Roxy suggested you both have a competition to see who got the good one.

Someone said arm wrestling, someone else suggested a straight up fight for it and Kyungsoo snorted with laughter and reached out to grab ahold of your wrist, wrapping his fingers easily around it he lifted your arm and shook it wildly.

“I could snap her in two,” he said and you pulled your wrist back from him forcefully, not quite having the strength to fully break free from him until you felt his grip relax and he just let you go. You knew he was right but that didn’t stop the wave of undeserved confidence that surged through you; foolishly believing deep down inside that if you fought dirty enough you could probably take him in a fight. You’d go for the weak points first, obviously the crotch shot, then the eye balls, and you’d end with a throat punch that would send him to the hospital. You’d completed two self defense courses in your life and you knew if you hit him right now, when he wasn’t expecting it, you could win. As long as you didn’t give him any advanced notice of what you were up to.

You’d always had trouble with intrusive thoughts. You reached for him quickly from behind and wrapped your arms around his shoulders, reaching your hands around for his neck and he gave the smallest grunt of genuine surprise to find you so suddenly and aggressively climbing on his back like a flying squirrel might stupidly try to attack a gorilla. His grunt of surprise changed into a small grunt of effort and you felt a sudden but definite shift inside of his back muscles.

You should have known better than to attack from behind. Not someone with such a strong back as he had. You felt his arm muscles contract and he reached his hands around to grab you, you felt him bend at the waist and you felt him spin right inside of your arms. He had the upper hand in less than a second and you could yourself fully encased and trapped well inside of his arms as he casually lifted you right off of your feet and plopped you back down, lifting you up easily just to show you that he could. He took two quick steps with you trapped completely inside of his arms and you moved like a puppet. His hands had reached down, squeezing you tighter when you struggled against him and he grabbed ahold of both of your hands, keeping you from being able to tickle him or pinch any of his skin, as you had instantly tried to do. You were completely trapped.

“See,” he whispered into your ear, the heat of his chest laid against your back and you fell back into that same familiar feeling of being pressed up against his body, “you can’t beat me, Princess.” His voice skipped over your neck traveling slowly up your earlobe until his words sunk down deep within your ear.

You turned your head toward his voice and you felt the softness of his cheek press against your own and as he spoke you could smell the strong smell of alcohol on his breath. You might have been the more sober of the two right now. You were also the most desperate. You wanted that blanket badly. You moved into the head turn and you let your lips land against his skin, just high enough on his cheek to find his ear with your message to him.

“I’ll give you batteries for your radio,” you whispered against his skin, using the same low tone and sultry whisper he had used on you seconds earlier and you allowed your lips to pop the smallest bit, letting the softness of your lips play every so lightly with the softness of his earlobe. “Please let me win,” you whispered into his skin. The effect moved through him like a wave. It rippled through the muscles that held you tightly within his arms. You felt the nearly silent groan that originated somewhere deep inside of his chest that echoed throughout your back and with the groan you felt him cave in.

“Come on, that’s not a fair fight,” someone shouted from the back of the group, “he’s a man, and she’s a woman, how is that fair?”

But you could feel it, he had been ready to give in. He was relaxing his grip and you leaned against his back, pushing lightly against him as if you were really fighting this strong man off of you for show. As if you even wanted to get the heavy weight of his entire body off of you.

“Rock, paper, scissors,” someone else shouted, “ play for the blanket.”

He had let you go. You’d taken a step away from him and you turned back around to look into his face. His breathing seemed just a little bit hard for such a tiny struggle with you and you noticed his cheeks were quite pink as he looked into your eyes. You saw the smallest movement there. He blinked his eyes once as he lifted his chin the smallest degree. It felt like a gesture of agreement and you caught another motion as he lifted his hand and made a discrete fist with it, lifting his chin once more with a nod.

He accepted your terms and he was going to play rock.

The others were already shouting the commands to begin the rock, paper, scissors round and you had to quickly play your hand. You shot out a flat hand for paper and it landed squarely over his closed fist as he played the rock that he had promised you he would play.

“She’s the winner!” Javier shouted and you smiled wide and genuine — your evening was finally beginning to look up a little bit. You jumped up and down in happiness and you rushed to the table to grab your blanket and curiously you could still feel his brown eyes watching as you did it. There was an odd expression on his face for someone who had lost the round. His eyes followed you around the room as you’d celebrated your little win and you could have sworn you could see the smallest smile on his lips when he went to the table to retrieve his loser’s blanket. You couldn’t quite understand why he would have looked pleased by this. You won and he lost.

Oh right, his batteries. He must have been happy about getting batteries and a blanket out of this deal. If you were a blanket-less pauper, you might have also been happy to receive such a low quality crappy blanket.

You couldn't quite remember the last time you felt so happy to win something so dumb. You just knew this would solve all of your nighttime problems. You skipped up to him holding your prize and you quickly stuffed it under your seat next to the other goodies you’d either won or traded to obtain, feeling pretty damn good about how the rest of the week might go. If you had to, you’d just spend the whole week in bed under this blanket and catch up on all of the missed sleep you’d ever missed in your life.

When you stood up, Kyungsoo was standing right behind you with his hand outstretched toward you in a surprisingly congenial gesture of a handshake for a job well done. ‘Good job,’ his posture said, with a pleased smile on his smooth face. You reached your hand forward fully ready to make this change in your relationship with the man. Like a pair of coworkers who got along sometimes. Not friendly by any means but still able to get the job done if they were being paid to. You’d accept his congratulations. He was right, you had done a really good job of winning this and he should be thankful to you for how well you could walk with a spoonful of flour and dump it into a bowl without spilling a speck. If only that was a skill you could market. Your balance and coordination should be studied.

The second the skin of your palm touched his and you gripped your fingers around his hand to shake it, he pulled his hand back abruptly and came back hard with a swift smack of his hand against yours. Was this some sort of trendy side-five, not a high-five or a low-five, but a side-five?

“No, idiot. Batteries.” He said gruffly after swatting away your hand shake. He wasn’t here to make peace at all. He was here to claim what was his. His face didn’t look as grumpy as he usually did, but he seemed to be back to calling you names.

“I’ll give them to you in the room.” You said under your breath, a little bit of your earlier joy from having won something so precious deflated by the return of his crappy behavior.

He leaned his head closer to where you stood, “don't want the others to know that you’re a cheater?”

“I didn't cheat. I just made a deal. Something I wanted for something you wanted,” you said with a flippant dismissal and all it got from him was a doubtful scoff.

“Always playing a game, huh,” he remarked under his breath and it pulled your focus back on him for a few moments. There was something under the surface with his words. Something darker than the golden aura of winning.

Your memory flashed to the blurry drunk view you had of him and the actual hurt you saw in his eyes. The hurt you had trouble really understanding because it felt so unwarranted. There had never been any pretense to the way you felt about each other. You hated him and he hated you and people who hate each other don’t get to look that hurt when someone says something hateful, it’s a given. He said awful things to you all the time although now that you really got to thinking you were having a hard time finding an example of something truly mean he said to you. Something that wasn’t just a reaction to something you did first. Try as you might, you couldn’t bring up anything concrete. The nature of your very specific problem you had with him, that he had so callously rejected you back then kept you on edge around him so much that nearly every interaction you had with him had you on the attack. You always came out swinging first and asked questions later.

“Hey, Kyungsoo — I really, really didn’t mean all that stuff I told Sara about you —” this was difficult to get out but you really hated sitting on an unspoken apology when you had done something wrong.

If Kyungsoo’s unwavering focus was what you wanted — if his deep dark brown eyes looking into your face with every bit of his attention focused up close on every single centimeter of you from your eyes down to your lips, then you certainly had gotten what you wanted. His eyelids pulled wider when he realized what you were saying. His lips parted and his tongue darted out to moisten his bottom lip.

You inhaled to continue, “I was … drunk, yeah, but I still don’t — I didn’t —,” you couldn’t get any more details out, not with as closely as he was looking at you.

“I-It wasn't for you to hear, it was for her. I’m sorry if that was super mean of me.”

“It was,” he agreed, “mean,” he added for clarity and he inhaled to speak again, lifting his chest and shoulders with the breath and lifting his hand to run over the length of his face. You could feel the agitation in every motion of his body. The drink he still held in his hand rattled with the movement.

He half spun with it and came back, his voice teetering along the edges of anger, “it wasn’t for me to hear? That’s it? I was supposed to hear you saying all of that shit? Is that your apology attempt?”

“No, that’s not — that’s not what I mean,” he had to be the most difficult person to make your point with.

“Then what do you mean?” His lips closed as he pulled his bottom lip inside his closed mouth, his eyebrows lifting in question, “hmmm?” he prodded again. You figured you had about five seconds before another argument and another fight erupted and this time you didn’t even have a high balcony to hurl yourself off of.

“I know we don’t get along, but I don’t even really hate you. Not really. I mean, we got off to the worst start ever, not that there ever was anything to start, that’s not what I mean,” you sighed in frustration — this was so difficult to explain.

“I don’t hate you. I don’t think it’s the absolute worst thing in the world to be here with you. Actually working together on these games today, it seems like maybe we work together well, at least.”

Some of the wildness you’d seen in his eyes a few seconds ago had left with your rapid explanation. He still watched your face with rapt attention and the burdensome feeling under the scrutiny of his eyes had your face blushing and your voice cracking a little bit. You felt silly for having such a strong reaction to something as simple as a conversation with the goal of clearing the air.

You chuckled lightly to yourself, both with how silly you felt being this nervous and with the very beginnings of the thought that crept through your mind.

“This is only the first day,” you laughed lightly to yourself. Kyungsoo did not laugh or even smile. His lips were pulled into a flat line and he didn’t respond right away with any indication of what he was thinking.

“Maybe,” you closed your eyes and inhaled a breath, “maybe we could just be … f-friends?” You could feel the shape of your mouth pull into a grimace when you said it. The upward inflection put the ball squarely in his court to decide what he thought about your call for a truce and maybe even some of those cahoots you’d been dreaming about.

Kyungsoo didn’t respond right away. His eyes watched your face very closely and you caught the hard clench of his jaw and the half lidded blink as his eyes closed down. He inhaled the smallest breath and just under that tiny breath and using only the air and almost no volume of his voice you could barely make out a response from him

“‘Friends’” he whispered and you thought you might have heard a follow up response “friends is the last thing I want to be with you.”

He said it so quietly you doubted you’d even heard it the second the next inhale sounded out from his lungs. He cleared his throat at a normal volume and opened his eyes, that same pretty pinkness coloring his cheeks as he inhaled again, deeper and more committed this time and on the exhale he spoke. The words were slightly tinged with the alcohol on his tongue.

“Friends,” he said with more commitment, “umm, maybe… let’s just hold off on that for now.” His eyes formed a squint that matched the grimace you’d had on your face earlier and with his soft but decidedly sharp denial you felt the heat slip up your neck and touch along both of your cheeks. “It's just — the things you do and say always feel like a trick and I’m getting a little burned out tonight.”

His rejection of you time and time again burned against your skin but you needed him to expand on the first thing, that whispered, just under his tongue response that set off weird bubbles inside of your stomach with the strangeness of the sound of those exact words.

You had to speak. “What did you say the first time?”

He shook his head slowly back and forth as a response.

“‘Friends is the last thing I want to be with you’ — does that mean you really do hate me?”

His lips were closed and his head was pulled back. The pretty hair layed flat atop of his head after the distraction of his hand running through it had taken your attention from his dark eyes for a split second.

“I think I’m the drunk one now,” he said as a final response to your questions and you could feel the door slam shut. He downed the last of his drink and headed away from you toward Javier at the bar who was already ready with another one.

You watched him walk away from you and he didn’t turn back around.

You felt almost ready to give up. Ready to crawl into your bed, under your new blanket and block out the rest of the world for a solid week. You’d just avoid him entirely to save yourself any more humiliation. Not only did he not want to go on that date with you, but this handsome, charming, funny, and talented man didn’t even want to be friends with you. Even that was unbearable to him. How awful of a person were you?

You reached down beneath your seat and gathered your things, catching Sara’s worried eyes as you made your way toward the door to this kitchen that led back to that dark and scary hallway that would take you to your bed.

“We're calling it a night — already?” Mr. Chen’s voice broke through the laughter and giggles from the others who were still hallway through their drinks and clearly not ready to call it a night. You were fresh out of any more ability to be social and happy when you had been so obviously put in your place again and again.

“She’s feeling a little done so we are taking her things to her room — might settle in already,” Sara spoke up for you and soon was by your side linking her arm with yours as she helped you with the door, “don’t stay up too late, we might have a long stormy night ahead of us!” She called behind her toward the group in a cheerful voice. You heard an agreeing sound from Mr. Chen as he declared the same sentiment to the rest of the group.

Apparently the eye of the storm was supposed to come ashore within the next few hours and nobody knew how much sleep was possible with such a scary and loud event happening outside. Once through the doorway a click sounded out and your pathway was illuminated by a tiny flashlight she had in her hand. You knew for a fact that she hadn’t won that in the games and she gave you a knowing smile and a wink.

“Shhh, I got you one too. Nobody would dare search a pregnant woman,” she giggled and her brightness paired with the little metal cylinder she slipped into the palm of your hand brought your rotten mood up just a tiny bit.

You’d both made it all the way down the long hallway to the door of the bunks and you were thankful for the bathroom light Kyungsoo had left on before he left this room because it was empty, deserted, and quite spooky even with the lighting, you couldn’t imagine what it would be like at night when the lights were turned out. You looked all the way down to the end of this enormous room where his bed waited for him and you wondered just how many spiders stood between you and him in this big room.

“What happened? Did you two argue again?” She pleaded with her kind eyes, you could see the sincerity in her face and you sighed deeply as you unwrapped the new blanket and spread it out over the top of your bed. Something about your mood made this pretty, comfy thing feel just a little bit less than before.

“Yeah. No. Not really. I don’t know. I apologized to him for what I said. He neither accepted or denied it. I asked if he wanted to at least be friends and he doesn’t. So—” you lifted your eyebrows with a hopeless shrug.

“It’s the first day.” She said with a softening of her voice. She didn’t offer any promises or give you any more false hopes. All she had was a flimsy fact that you knew as well.

“I think I’ll shower before he gets here,” you grabbed your clothes and bath towels, also grabbing your swimsuit just in case the man happened to walk into that bathroom as you were sudsing your hair in the open layout wall of showers with no doors layout of this bunker style bathroom.

Sara said her good nights and you quietly changed into the solid black bikini you’d been toning your body and dieting for months to look amazing in and when you caught the reflection of yourself after rinsing the shampoo of your hair in the industrial mirror that was half rusted and cloudy with how old it was, you were thankful that at least you could still pull off a look this sexy even if your ego was thoroughly shattered by him.

That you could still look and feel pretty even after being rejected over and over again by the only man you’d ever agreed to be set up on a blind date with; the only man you’d ever been interested in enough to even consider deleting your dating profiles for and the man who you’d drive a solid hour facing the setting sun to reach the east side location of the swankiest restaurant in town to meet him that evening even if it meant braving rush hour traffic on the hectic and terrifying freeway to get there.

These showers worked on some sort of a timer. You pressed the button for a good amount of water pressure and flow and after several minutes the water would wind down, asking for another press of the button if you wanted more. You’d finished cleaning and rinsing and you were toweling off your legs after wringing all of the wet out of your hair. The water was still running noisily but had been winding down when you took your first steps out of the showering area and made your way toward the concrete tiled bench built into the wall where you’d left your folded clothes and the sound of the winding down trickle of the shower was replaced with a different and unexpected sound. It was the sound of a gasp, the quick intake of air made through the open mouth of an adult human being, a man. A man you knew.

The sound startled you enough to spin around and the towel you had over your head and nowhere near covering your bikini clad body slipped out of your surprised fingers and pooled down at your feet.

Burning into your skin was the deep brown of his eyes and he stood at the open space just at the foot of where his bed ended and the bathroom began with a true deer caught in the headlights look on his face.

He must have been pretty drunk. His eyes sank slowly down from your face, slipping lower and his mouth hung open, that same look of genuine surprise still spelled out all over his face.

“S-Shit, I’m,” he inhaled through his open mouth, using every last morsel of willpower left inside of him to pull his eyes up from where they’d been lazily lingering around your hips and with the single word he had left to squeak out you got the smallest, “sorry.”

You bent down to pick up the towel and spun around turning your back on the man. You weren’t in the mood to open up another hateful conversation with him right now. All you wanted was to have the strength to ignore that look you’d seen in his eyes just now so you could slip past him and go hide under your covers.

It was uncomfortable to put dry clothes over your wet bathing suit but the alternative was to strip down naked with him standing right there so you could dress yourself properly.

You felt too flustered and too much in a hurry for that and Kyungsoo was still very much frozen in place in the doorway. Drunk and slow. An immovable object.

You slipped on the silky nightshirt over the bathing suit. It would dry eventually. This nightshirt curved the shape of you and hung down to the middle of your thighs, it didn’t come with shorts and you didn’t usually mind. You hadn’t packed your bags with the idea that you’d be haunted by this bastard all night long and you might be better off sleeping in grubby sweat pants and an old t-shirt.

You needed to leave the bathroom. You’d made the requisite numbers of steps to reach the doorway and in any other situation with a normal, not inebriated, drunk or not, non-friend that he proudly proclaimed himself to be, the expectation was that he would bow his head, stop looking at you like he’d just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and move out of the damn way.

When you reached him in this doorway; he did not move and his eyes remained fixed on you. Something must be wrong with him. The look in those eyes felt different from any looks he had shot you before and something warm and achingly slow tickled a path down the length of your spine starting somewhere in between your shoulder blades and landing softly and deeply, well inside of your belly.

Kyungsoo was not moving out of the your way, you had to touch his arm lightly to push against the warm weight of him and when you did it, his hand moved, his soft rounded fingertips reached forward and you felt the smallest brush of them over the back of your hand, you felt the smallest touch from his reaching fingers that sent the biggest jolt of electricity through your startled brain because this was not allowed. It was not expected and it was not something he would ever be caught dead doing to you.

Why? Why would he touch you here and like that when he in all other places was filled with so much disdain for you. The shockingly noisy thumping inside of your chest echoed inside the hollow of you and you felt the stickiness of the gravity that must have been holding him here in this place. That gravity grabbed ahold of your feet so tightly and the stubborn things refused to move. You could see your destination but his fingers were touching the back of your hand and there was a burning just below your eyelids pulling your lids open, demanding that you open your eyes and look into his face.

He was watching you with the slowest blinks of his eyes and his lips were parted as he breathed through his mouth. His breathing felt so light and careful you wondered if he could manage to get any oxygen from it at all the moment you were caught inside of his eyes you felt like a prisoner here.

That warmth that has spread over your spine flooded and surged inside of you, finding a home between your legs and you felt not only trapped but now helplessly compelled.

You were leaning. The breath from his lips smelled like liquor. You were leaning and the brush from his fingertips moved as he touched lightly at first over your waist and then his hot palm was resting just over your hip and he took the smallest step into you, taking what was left of your air from you when the heat from his body cascaded into your much colder skin. The silk nightshirt did nothing to insulate his temperature and you could not escape this. The moment he lifted his hand and laid a palm just over your jaw you felt too lost to keep your eyes open.

The millimeters of space that separated the two of you evaporated when the warmth of his soft mouth touched your lips and when he pulled your bottom lip into the space of his open mouth and sucked, his hands clenched hard into the flesh of your hip, slipping around to dig roughly over your ass, his hand slipped around behind your neck and his mouth devoured and demanded from you as that unimaginable heat you felt between his legs pressed into you, begging you to have mercy on him; have mercy on yourself; put both of you out of your miseries.

Your skin felt aflame. You couldn’t remember another time in your life when you’d felt so desperate and completely consumed by another person in such a short amount of time.

You wanted him. You’d give anything to have him and yet the small gasps for air from his lungs in between the kisses had the tiniest grunts of complaints under their tones.

Tiny curses came from deep within his chest. Your mind reeled and sharpened to the sounds he made and that same desperation reminded you of the very last thing he’d said to you. That he wanted nothing to do with you. That he didn’t even see the possibility of being friends with you. That you would always only be an enemy to him. Untrustworthy and unlovable. You felt it then, it broke through the rough nibbles of his teeth against the soft skin of your neck and you gasped in a breath to ask him a question — your conscience could not let you stand for this without asking.

“Kyungsoo, I thought — that you didn’t want this — what — what are we doing?”

You were an idiot. It felt like it had to be asked and yet your body clung tightly to him despite it all — just because of the possibility that he didn’t mean any of this, that it was just the alcohol driving this desperation, that this was the kind of mistake that would destroy the both of you in the morning — you simply could not let this happen if any of those were a possibility.

“Kyungsoo, is this — a mistake?”

Your questions pulled his face up and the darkness had built inside his eyes to such an extent that it took him several seconds of looking into your face for you to see the shift of understanding to break through. With the understanding came the painful and horrible when he pulled his hand up to cover over his parted mouth and mumbled the quickest “I’m sorry,” before he covered up any other terrible words he might have been about to say to you.

You felt his retreat with the temperature drop.

It had been what you feared. It was only the alcohol taking ahold of his body and making it betray his heart. For inside of his heart, there would never be a place for you. The crushing feeling you felt inside of your stomach pulled your shoulders down and you were sure the look on your face would be close to tears but he wasn’t looking at you anymore.

He had separated his body from you and your wounded feelings flared up hot, desperate for something to ease some of the pain. You found none.

Kyungsoo was shaking his head back and forth and another soft apology landed with a dull thud against your hollow chest. The echo sounded like the beat of a funeral drum.

“I — I’m going to bed,” you whispered with what last bits of your voice you could find to work and paused briefly to ask something else just for the sake of your own wounded ego, “Does this make us even?” His eyes pulled up from his dazed focus down on the floor and he looked into your face when you asked the question.

“And I know it didn’t mean anything, Kyungsoo. I knew it was just the alcohol. I was just drunk then and you were just drunk now.” You pushed the corners of your mouth up as hard as you could stand and they may have even moved up a tiny bit.

You hoped to God he was too drunk to have noticed the wetness that settled heavy inside of your eyes and you were suddenly and eternally thankful that your bed was as physically far away from his bed as possible.

Links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

[joshiji-darling]

ㅤ🪸͟ ָ֢ ’’ 𐙚˙⋆.˚ 𝐤𝐰𝐨𝐧 𝐬𝐮𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 ๋࣭ ⭑⚝

follow my tiktok for more content (anything without a link is coming soon!) PAIRING: doh kyungsoo x oc

┈─⚝ kwon suin profile

┈─⚝ her discography

┈─⚝ suin x seventeen ,, caratland unfit songs & svt covering suin's song,, (video for it)

┈─⚝ her acting career

┈─⚝ her kdrama's storylines; goblin

ᯓᡣ𐭩 ࣪. kyungsoo x suin ୭ ˚. ᵎ

┈─⚝ mars mv behind the scenes video with suin

┈─⚝ mars mv featuring suin

┈─⚝ doh kyungsoo x kwon suin ,, the nation's favourite couple (facts)

┈─⚝ a twitter thread of suin through kyungsoo's eyes

┈─⚝ their history ,, breakup era edit

┈─⚝ scenarios/oneshots: one,, two,,

┈─⚝ songs about each other,, tiktok of it

┈─⚝ exo crumbs

┈─⚝ seventeen crumbs

┈─⚝ exo x seventeen crumbs

┈─⚝ kyungsoo's jealousy (ft. kyungsoo's attempt of making suin jealous, ft. youngji)

┈─⚝ suin on "i live alone" (ft. kyungsoo)

┈─⚝ the proposal

┈─⚝ the wedding annoucement using "only"

┈─⚝ a glimpse of us

┈─⚝ meet the doh family (meet the newest additions)

┈─⚝ welcome the doh family to return of superman!

ᯓᡣ𐭩 ࣪. darliing.. 2007-2012 ୭ ˚. ᵎ

┈─⚝ the history

┈─⚝ Darling profile & shin ryeonha

┈─⚝ the aftermath

ᯓᡣ𐭩 ࣪. twitter thread୭ ˚. ᵎ

┈─⚝ a twitter thread of suin's chaos

┈─⚝ a twitter thread of suin being a concept queen

┈─⚝ a twitter thread of suin through dearest's eyes

┈─⚝ a twitter thread of suin through kyungsoo's eyes

┈─⚝ a twitter thread of suin through seventeen's eyes

┈─⚝ a twitter thread of suin and ateez being menaces

┈─⚝ a twitter thread of suin having the most aura

┈─⚝ a twitter thread of seventeen and suin forgetting their idol image

┈─⚝ a twitter thread of suin sleeping anywhere and everwhere

┈─⚝ a twitter thread of producer suin

┈─⚝ a twitter thread of suin during darling

┈─⚝ a twitter thread of suin's kdramas

ᯓᡣ𐭩 ࣪. scenarios ୭ ˚. ᵎ

┈─⚝ suin's award show antics

┈─⚝ suin being the industry's beloved maknae

┈─⚝ suin being a legendary senior

┈─⚝ suin on youngji's drinking show (ft. kyungsoo)

┈─⚝ suin on "i live alone" (ft. kyungsoo)

ᯓᡣ𐭩 ࣪. darling entertainment ୭ ˚. ᵎ

┈─⚝ darling entertainment

┈─⚝ suin x ateez

┈─⚝ suin x aespa

┈─⚝ the press- conference

ᯓᡣ𐭩 ࣪. the betrayal୭ ˚. ᵎ

┈─⚝ the betrayal

┈─⚝ moments after

ᯓᡣ𐭩 ࣪. gallery ୭ ˚. ᵎ

┈─⚝ fashion icon

comment if you want to be added to a taglist for updates (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)

[eomayas]

interruptions • dks

pairing: prof!kyungsoo x wife!reader

synopsis: two times the reader interrupts professor kyungsoo and the two times he loves it

genre: fluffyyyyy, first half is a little suggestive

warnings: none

a/n: hiiii this is kind of a filler bc i have other things to post but they’re taking too long and this was in my brain and is super short. i love kyungsoo bye

kyungsoo lifts his eyes from the test papers in front of him when the door to his office is opened. you slip inside, a tired smile on your face. “hey, baby,” his throat is scratchy from not having said anything in the last few hours. it’s timbre makes your heart flutter.

“sorry to interrupt, but it’s late,” you comment, walking over to him. kyungsoo spins around in his chair to face you and opens his legs for you to walk into. kyungsoo puts his hands on the back of your exposed thighs while your hands fall to his shoulders. “are you going to come to bed?” you ask, threading your fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck.

“i’m still grading,” he says, sliding his hands up higher underneath your silk nightgown. kyungsoo looks up at you with wide eyes and wets his lips as he drags his eyes up your body. you raise an eyebrow at him and he leans back in chair, pulling you closer to him so you practically fall into his lap. “coming to keep me company?” he mumbles, kissing the underside of your jaw.

you situate yourself on his lap and look down at him. he glances down at your chest and you scoff lightly. “you missed your chance for the night,” you say, rolling your eyes when he sticks out his bottom lip. “too bad.” you say, kissing him on the lips. kyungsoo wraps an arm around your waist and tugs you closer to him.

he skates his free hand higher up on your leg, sliding over your smooth and underwear free hip. he stops kissing you and pulls back. “really?” he mutters, reaching for the tie of your silk robe.

“i was waiting for you,” you say, readjusting yourself on his lap. he bites his bottom lip as his member strains in his pants. “but it’s late, and we both have work in the morning.” you add, gently running a hand over his hair.

“we can be quick,” he says, pulling your robe open. you let him, liking the way he checks you out like he’s trying to commit it to memory. “damn, y/n.” he mumbles, a small smile on his face as he runs his finger tips over the hem of the nightgown. kyungsoo licks his lips again as he drags his eyes up from your heavily exposed chest, to your eyes. “i’ll be quick.” he says, almost like a promise.

you chuckle and stand up from his lap. “don’t stay up too late, soo,” you say, bending over to give him a kiss (and to let him look down your dress one more time). “goodnight, baby. i love you.” you say from the doorway, giving him a soft smile before leaving and shutting the door behind you.

“love you too,” he mutters at the door, his hand palming himself through his pants pathetically.

as calmly as possible, kyungsoo rakes through the briefcase again, pressing a hand through his forehead as all of the papers in it belong to you. in his rush this morning, he must’ve grabbed yours on his way out. it’s a rookie mistake, one he hasn’t made in years, but he’s been distracted all morning and this just proves how much. your work bags are similar, but there are notable differences like his being a zipper opening and yours being held together by buckles. his had a straps as well as a handle, and yours just a handle.

kyungsoo sighs and checks his watch, pressing his lips into a thin line as he notices he’s late to start class. “morning, everybody,” he says, clearing his throat. “sorry for the late start, i, err, grabbed my wife’s briefcase on accident.” he admits, earning a few snickers from his students.

he walks around the front of his desk and leans against it, crossing his arms over his chest. “so i don’t have your tests with me—i know, i know. i’m already a class behind. but i posted the grades online a few minutes ago, so you should be able to see how you did. i have no lesson plan, so in the meantime, we can just chat about anything, i guess,” he says, an embarrassed blush forming on his cheeks. kyungsoos eyes scan the class of bored students who clearly want to go home. “no takers? alright, somebody catch me up on the chapter we read last night.” he says, grabbing his mug off of his desk and taking a sip of his coffee.

the class is silent and he snorts behind his cup. “im serious. if nobody answers either options, then i’ll just move the deadline for the project up a week,” kyungsoo threatens—he won’t actually do it, but he’s not going to sit here like an idiot. a few hands shoot up and he calls on the first student he sees, who reviews the reading that was assigned last night.

kyungsoo freestyles the lesson, utilizing the whiteboard way more than he typically would because of his lack of slides and lesson plan. he’s deep into lecturing when the door of the classroom opens and he snaps his head to see who it is, ready to tell whoever it is not to interrupt like that again, until he sees you trying to sneak in as quietly as possible.

a small smile stretches across his lips as you glance around at the students guiltily, feeling bad for interrupting. “sorry to interrupt,” you say to everyone, ducking your head and smiling bashfully as you make your way to the front towards your husband. “hi. you grabbed the wrong one.” you say, dropping his bag onto his desk and taking yours.

“technically, we both grabbed the wrong one,” he says, and you roll your eyes. “thank you, by the way.” he says, clasping his hand over yours. you smile at him and then remember you have an audience, and slip away from him.

“i’ll see you later,” you say, starting to walk away.

“y/n,” he says. you turn around and he raises his eyebrows at you. aren’t you forgetting something? he asks with his eyes. your cheeks tinge pink before you hop back up to him and place a chaste kiss to his lips that makes somebody in the classroom ‘aw’ at the two of you. “oh, give me a break.” kyungsoo says, squeezing your hand before saying goodbye and watching you speed walk out of the classroom. you stop at the doorway and face him, mouthing ‘i love you’ before disappearing, leaving him to mumble a ‘love you too’ to his shoes, a smile on his face.

[yeolsaintlaurent]

yeolsaintlaurent's MASTERLIST

Series

Nocturnal Reverie - PCY :ongoing: *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ Chapter 1: City of Shadows Chapter 2: Unveiling Secrets Chapter 3: A dangerous game begins Chapter 4: Unveiled Desires Chapter 5: Operation Shadow Veil Chapter 6: Threads of Deception and Dilemmas Chapter 7: Echoes of the Past Chapter 8: Unexpected Encounter Chapter 9: Harmony in Midnight melodies Chapter 10: Glimmers of recognition

Crimson Veins, Midnight Flames - BBH :ongoing:*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ Chapter 1: Freshman Impressions Chapter 2: Intoxicated Whispers of Realities

One-Shots

Kyungsoo request coming soon~~ Baekhyun request coming soon~~

[aphrodite1288]

You don't have a picture of Nam Kyungsoo?

They say on Twitter that she is a woman, and some fans say that she is a man?

If you know and have a picture of him, show us

He's a man.

Check all info about him in these threads:

https://twitter.com/moonillusion112/status/1213153461505794048?t=IJEkJP2IOLhO2nChCdjuQw&s=19

[krp1x1finder]

hi hi :) 22+, looking for a partner to fill a couple wanted plots.

oc x oc only. interested in plots in the entertainment industry and general angst. i would really, really, really like to write a specific mxf plot with myself writing the female character. once we get to know each other better, we can write fxf alongside that plot! i am extremely open to doing so, but i have a few specific mxf plots i am dying to write right away. so please only like this ad if you're willing to write the male character in a mxf plot with the potential to double with a fxf thread in the future.

i'm comfortable with smut and dark content! i tend to use faces from the following groups: gidle, twice, everglow, fromis_9, itzy. for opposites, i love kim hanbin (b.i), dpr ian, jungkook and taehyung (bts), sunwoo and juyeon (tbz), hongseok (pentagon), park wonbin (riize), jaehyun (nct), kai and kyungsoo (exo), im changkyun (monsta x), choi san (ateez). however, i always want my partner to use whoever they want to.

please leave a like on this post if you're interested, and i'll message you!

🌸 !

[lilacsongs]

“there’s  no  way….  you’re  bullshitting.”  kyungsoo  narrows  his  eyes  in  suspicion,  waiting  for  the  cracks  in  eden’s  stupid  fucking  prank  to  appear.  they  don’t.  “you  don’t  remember  anything…  at  all?”

[fadinglights]

continued from here, @nvrlcnds

“you  don’t  look  okay.”  kyungsoo  states  frankly,  looking  at  hyunjin  with  concern.  even  if  things  ended  terribly  between  them,  it  doesn’t  mean  that  he  has  stopped  caring  for  the  other.  it  isn’t  a  switch  that  he  can  turn  off  by  will  and  the  progress  of  getting  over  their  relationship  is  hindered  by  the  texts  that  scattered  here  and  there  every  time  they  were  intoxicated.  he  reaches  out,  pulling  the  man  up  to  stand  on  his  feet.  “i  didn’t  think  i  would,  either.”  he  responds  quietly,  yet  he  doesn’t  move  away.  “come  on,  let’s  get  you  home.”

[cherrylgc]

OIH Ep2: “the mammoth”

        being a legacy trainee wasn’t really that much about having fun, it was a packed schedule, surprises left and right, punishments, but every now and then, it was fun. cherry wouldn’t complain about being a trainee, far from it, she was happy to have joined the company, even when she wasn’t fully sure why she was a trainee. but most of the time it was about being serious and hard-working, sadly two things cherry wasn’t exactly the best at. but when she had joined chaekyung’s show in twenty-twenty-two, for once she was sure about something: she wanted her own show.

so no matter how little cherry wished to be serious and hard-working, she’d tried her best studying and practicing variety and mcing skills, quite hard to figure out how to practice such things, especially since she was on her own. but somehow it had ended up working out well in the end. she’d been writing down millions of ideas lately, and when the chance came around she had to submit an idea, she wasn’t sure what to submit, and when she submitted her idea she was still unsure but, it ended up working well, didn’t it?

episode two already.

“hello everybody and welcome to episode two of our incherrysting history! this is a cooking and quiz show combined! our guest will be tasked with cooking as i tell about an extinct animal, every now and then i’ll ask questions to our guest, does our guest answer correctly, nothing happens, does our guest answer incorrectly then an ingredient of theirs will be swapped! as always, i’m kim cherry and i cherish you all! for episode two we have joining…” she gestures to kyungsoo for him to introduce himself.

written for... @lgckyungsoo

[pomegrnate]

[ wound ] receiver cleaning / bandaging sender wound(s) for kyungsoo and jia? could be after the breakup or not i love mess aksjda

jia, a vision of ethereal grace and tender vulnerability, navigates the shadows with a fervent longing etched into the contours of her being. her soul, an intricate tapestry woven with the threads of desire and devotion, finds solace in the turbulent embrace of kyungsoo. for him, the allure of the streets is an irresistible call to arms, a visceral battleground where adrenaline reigns supreme. but for jia, the echoes of violence reverberate too deeply within her delicate spirit, rendering her unable to reconcile the beauty of their connection with the brutality of his world. and so, amidst the shattered fragments of their fractured love, she finds herself caught in the tender embrace of contradiction, her heart torn between the intoxicating pull of kyungsoo's presence and the haunting specter of his violent reality. but even as the gulf between them widens, she cannot deny the whispered yearnings of her soul, the primal ache that draws her inexorably back to him. 'stay still' she had found him battered and bruised. without hesitation, she had gathered him into her arms, her touch a gentle caress against the canvas of his pain. and lead him home, her heart heavy with the weight of their shared history. she had stitch' him back up, carefully taking care of every wound like each step was the mere importance of her life. 'damn it, who did this to you?' it's all she could mustered, feeling his tender skin under her fingers, trailing the war edges of his face. for all of the love she had for him, she was fearful to lose him. but she would patch him up again and again, until her own hands were bruised and scattered, until he could finally understand that a soft touch was always much better than a punch.

[soobadnoonecanstopher]

Rat Bastard - Part 5

Pairing: You x Kyungsoo

Rating: M (Mature)

Word Count: 9684

Warnings: There were too many beds, Enemies to Lovers, Slow Burn, UST, Idiots to Lovers

Tag: @ilovemyapopbaby

Links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Not even the 1000 thread-count, egyption cotton goose down stuffed, softest and most beautiful feeling against the bare skin of your legs luxury blanket could save the shit show that was the sleep you got that night.

You could lie to yourself and say that the reason you were lying here with your eyes wide open staring at the ceiling was the shrieking 150-mile per hour winds that were making this entire building groan, tremble, and shake maybe hard enough for thousands of pounds of bricks and steel to crash down on top of your head, but the real reason you were awake was because of the man who was sound asleep on the end furthest away from you of this big room.

While it was the sound of the storm that woke you up, once you were awakened, you found it impossible to fall back asleep. You had no idea what time it was and the second your mind awoke it betrayed you. It was the remnants of a dream that was interrupted. The imagery of the dream faded nearly instantly but you didn’t need the details to recognize the subject of your dream. That familiar face that had been haunting you for months and after the mistake he made tonight, that face and specifically those lips seemed to have been knitted into the fabric of your subconscious.

You rubbed your eyes. The view of the underside of the bunk bead on top of you was nearly as black as the inside of your eyelids had been. You felt the last bits of the dream slip away. It didn’t matter much because your brain simply switched from trying to grab ahold of the dream to sinking down hard into the very recent, very real actual memory of Kyungsoo’s lips and unimaginable softness of them. His lips and his teeth and his tongue and the pull from him. From his mouth, from his arms, from somewhere deep inside of his chest when he inhaled his air right from within your mouth and pulled and pulled from the center of you right smack into the center of him.

Of all the things he could have done. Of all the things he always did.It was almost as if he was tuned in and hyper aware of all of your weaknesses and ready to exploit each one of them at a moment's notice. Your sleepy mind tried to grasp it, desperate to explain it — him kissing you, and that kiss being just a drunken mistake, it felt like just another way for him to mock you.

Of course he had no way of knowing how long it had been since a handsome man had showed you attention. You hoped he couldn’t tell just how desperate you felt for it, for the touches, for the kisses, for the sex — all of it. You’d probably die on the spot if those things were also accompanied by someone also being nice to you.

This was Doh Kyungsoo you were talking about. Not only did the man despise you but he sought out to actively torture you on the daily. Before it was online but now he’d been doing it in person and what if this — what if this fucking kiss had also just been something he did for his own sick amusement because he knew you would wake up at 2 or 3 or 4am and be unable to sleep because if you touched your own lips ever so lightly with your fingertips it kinda sorta reminded you of the way it felt for that terrifyingly beautiful man to kiss you.

You dropped your hand from your face and you tossed over to your side on the bed. It squeaked as you moved and you wondered at his ability to sleep through the scariest and loudest winds you’ve ever heard in person.

Your body woke up and now you could feel your bladder calling. Any more attempts at sleep were finished.

You grabbed your flashlight and plopped your feet down on the floor, covering the beam with the palm of your hand so the whole room wasn’t lit up like the Fourth of July and with the tiny bit of light you allowed to escape you were able to navigate the straight shot between the bunks toward the bathrooms.

You had to walk by his bed to get there and you squeezed your hand around your flashlight tighter as you did it, not in any hurry to wake your own personal demon any earlier than you absolutely had to.

From the motionlessness of that tightly covered bastard sized lump on his bed, he was clearly not bothered by the storm enough to be pulled from his deep sleep.

After using the bathroom and washing your hands, all with the flashlight turned off for maximum discretion, you took a barefooted step on the floor and stepped on something hard and plastic. It hurt and you lifted your foot when you put it back down your foot landed down on something sticky and cool feeling. The room smelled overwhelmingly of peppermint.

You had to use the flashlight. You wrapped it in your sleep shirt as tightly as you could manage and you turned it on.

Toothpaste. Blue toothpaste, the kind with the tiny bits of sparkly confetti inside of it that was probably terrible for the environment. It was everywhere. There were long strands of it squirted clear across the floor in front of this sink and even several streaks on the mirror on the wall. The toothpaste cap was the piece of plastic you had stepped on and you recalled how you had tried to ignore the sounds of a great struggle you had heard in here last night after you had gone to bed. You’d heard deep grunting, water running, items clattering, and the occasional drunken mumble. You were entirely too upset at the time to even want to help him and you had some dark thoughts about how even if he slipped and broke his neck you wouldn’t even consider getting up to cover his body with a sheet. It seemed a certain overly indulgent drunk man had fought a great battle here with a tube of toothpaste and you looked down at the wrangled and crumpled capless tube that sat on the edge of the sink here and the toothbrush very carefully balanced beside it.

You, yourself, were fighting your own battle right now. You grabbed the toothbrush he’d so stupidly left behind and you lifted your foot, scooping every bit of that thick peppermint gunk off of the bottom of your foot, using the water to rinse it so you could go in again, this time using the bristles to thoroughly clean in between your toes. While he deserved it, you decided against scrubbing this whole floor or god forbid the mirror, sink and even the toilet with the thing, not because you had any sort of bad feelings about it, but because you didn’t want to work that hard at maybe 2, maybe 3, maybe 4 in the fucking morning when you should be asleep rather than be on fire from the inside and cleaning up the mess he made when he was too drunk to control himself. Instead you grabbed toilet paper to clean up the remainder of the mess and tossed the whole thing inside of the big trash bin. The entire room smelled delightful.

His toothbrush got one more pass over the bottom of your foot before you carefully placed it right back in the same spot he had left it next to the now capped tube of his toothpaste. You’d smoothed out some of those deep wrinkles caused by his careless fingers. The volume inside was much less but at least it looked somewhat normal again.

You didn’t bother with covering your flashlight as you exited. You were done with it. With feeling bad about possibly waking him up, with feeling bad for having wanted him so badly last night, with feeling any sort of way about him whatsoever. You simply moved through the room as if you were it’s only occupant and you could hardly even hear the low bellied groaning that was coming from that bed when the bright beam of your LED flashlight just happened to make a few careless passes over his bed.

You saw his closed eyes tighten and arms tensed as he pulled his crappy loser’s blanket tightly over his head. You heard the lowest curse under his breath when his hands flew up to cradle his head and he groaned out in pain.

He’d be waking up to a hangover for sure. He’d have a killer headache made so much worse by the loud sounds of the wind outside and the bright flashlight in his face. He’d be feeling even more miserable than you felt right now.

“What — time is it?” He groaned, reaching out with wandering hands within his blanket until he found something — his phone, he groaned while dropping the phone within his blankets again. You could see he’d connected his phone to charge on the snazzy portable power bank he’d won in the games. You’d won no such prize and even if you did charge it, your phone didn’t have any signal or any real purpose to serve for you to bother with charging it. Before it went out you could see that the clock on his black phone screen said 4:35am. You’d managed to get a little more sleep than you thought.

“Why are you up?” He’d obviously seen you, he’d obviously figured you’d been the one to shine the flashlight right in his face. His voice was low and very groggy sounding, “storm woke you up?” The word sexy flashed through your mind quickly and it stung like a rubber band against the flesh as you pushed it deep down.

You’d long ago dropped the flashlight from his face but something in his line of questioning had you caught off guard. Doh Kyungsoo didn’t usually ask you much about you. He felt different in his sleep. It was odd and you let the flashlight sag down just behind your back, just enough for the light beam to be more of a distant afterthought than a blinding occurrence.

“Can’t sleep,” you admitted in a whisper just quietly enough for the words to be made out over the sound of the storm.

His questions had stopped and you wondered if he had fallen back asleep but another look at him told you he wasn't sleeping but had gone silent because he was beginning to really feel it. You could see how he massaged his temples with the thumbs of both hands and after a few moments you heard another low groan of pain.

“What’s wrong?” You asked without any of the well earned smugness you really deserved, “drank too much last night?”

He rolled under his blanket and the groan turned into a moan. It sounded like he was in pain. It was a pain sound, not a sound that could be misinterpreted by your silly 4:35am brain to sound like anything else; this low throaty moaning was the sound of a man deep into the throes of regret, physical pain, probably nausea, and even more regret. In fact, you hoped and prayed that regret was the primary symptom and everything else was just a bonus.

“Do you usually make a big mess of things when you drink?”

He was sitting up. He was moving.His eyes were closed and his mouth was open. His cheeks were flushed and pink and his hair was standing up in places. You could smell the stale stench of alcohol coming from him in waves.

“I don’t — usually — get drunk — easily.” His words came out staggered. While he might have brushed his teeth last night, he hadn’t figured out the genius way to shower without risking being fully nude in an open room right next to your arch nemesis like you had. His blanket was tossed away and he was placing both feet on the floor and he reached out a hand to touch the wall for balance.

“Fucking Javier,” you heard him mumble under his breath, of course blaming someone else for the problems he caused himself. He had a hand outstretched to you now, his squint so severe as he turned in the direction of you and your blinding flashlight that you didn’t think his eyes were open at all, “can you — turn that off?” he pleaded.

“Turn what off?” You lifted the flashlight and waved it around the room, sending jolts and waves of bright light all around you, being sure to pass a few bright beams right toward his face. “This?” You shook it a little. His hands flew up to cover his face. “How will you see? It’s completely dark without it.”

“Please,” he groaned again and he was pushing with his feet, standing up on two of the wobbliest legs you’ve ever seen a man standing on.

He’d made the two steps required to get out from between his bed and the wall and the second he reached the space where you stood and had removed his security hand from the wall that was keeping him grounded, you pushed the button to turn off the light, sending you both in the blackest darkness you thought possible.

He made a sound. A mixture between a yelp and a whimper and you heard the smallest shuffle of feet taking itty bitty steps forward. He was quietly cursing again. You knew he’d been disoriented now. You’d had a good look at your position in the room before you’d turned out the light and you knew the exact number of steps and the exact direction you needed to take to get back to the comfort and security of your bed. You’d even memorized the number of bunk beds you’d need to pass to get to yours.

Something had your feet stalled though. You kind of wanted to see how he fared.

You heard the moment he went for a bigger step by the collision his shin made with the cold hard metal of the edge of the bunk. He hadn’t cleared the obstacle completely before he went for it and instantly there was a deep gasp of air, a hiss from the pain and another deep throated curse word, probably in many ways directed at you.

“A-Are you still here?” That was absolutely directed at you. You heard more movement. More small steps and you could hear it closer to where you stood listening over the sounds of that storm that raged outside and you waited for something awful to happen.

When something awful happened it wasn’t inside of this room though, a bang sound, it felt and sounded like a bomb, it hit so sudden and felt so shocking, so loud, so much louder than anything you’d ever heard, the thunderous boom of a thunderclap that must have hit extreme close by — from the nearly instantaneous flash of light that echoed through the bathroom from those tiny windows, maybe even hit the building itself and you screamed and jumped so hard with the shock you dropped your flashlight and heard it clanking down somewhere at your feet and the telltale sounds of it rolling somewhere in this room, somewhere under a bed maybe, somewhere far away in the absolute pitch blackness of a room with at least 10 pinky toe breaking metal bed frames and zero ideas where to start looking.

“Fuck,” he swore outloud at the same time as you screamed, “fuck — that was close.”

“Can — can you turn the light back on?”

You had uncovered your ears and lifted your head back up from the cowering position and after a few moments you registered his question.

“I dropped it. I got scared and I dropped it.”

“You dropped the only light we have?” His voice suddenly had all of the familiar tones of judgements and sass that you’d grown so accustomed to hearing from him and you rolled your eyes even though he wasn’t able to see it, it still made you feel marginally better.

“We? Honey, that was my own personal flashlight to drop.”

“Well shit. Well done, Princess,” you could hear him moving again, this time closer to where you still stood. You suddenly felt nervous that you might lose your carefully mapped mental layout of this room if you moved too much.

“Wait a minute,” his movement stopped, “you never won a flashlight.”

You were grateful for the darkness. You hadn’t figured out your cover story for how you got one of Sara’s stolen flashlights yet.

“I brought it with me,” you lied and you heard the smallest scoff from him.

“Are you kidding me?” The sounds of his shuffling grew much closer and began to wonder what on earth he was even doing. If he was looking for the bathrooms he was going the wrong way.

“You didn’t even bring a charger for your phone. You — You,” he emphasized the target of his rant, “You, vapid, social media addicted, attention desperate, doom scroller who hasn’t gone a single hour without posting something in the last four years, You haven’t posted a single thing about this trip.” You frowned at the man, annoyed once again that he seemed to know way too much about you at all times.

“So that means that you didn’t even get,” he continued, “an — an international SIM card for your phone, and you expect me to believe that you had the circumspection, mental preparedness, and forethought to bring a flashlight on this trip?”

“A friend gave it to me here,” you confessed too quickly, making every word you’d ever said in the past and every word you’d ever say in the future forever sound suspicious even though it was purely the guilt you felt for receiving that stolen flashlight; you didn’t win any games to earn such a precious thing — not quite knowing why you would bother to feel guilty about it but feeling a the guilt nonetheless.

“Bullshit,” he declared, now that you’d come up with a second, back up story your credibility was shot. “You stole it. Or the friend stole it. Which means it isn’t really yours.” There was effort in his voice. He was moving roughly, doing something in the darkness that made his words come out jagged.

You heard him a split second before you felt the blow. You felt a swinging arm collide roughly with you at probably the speed of an actual punch and instantly a sharp jolt of pain surged through your chest, namely your left boob. The pain was overwhelming in an instant and it took your air from your lungs as it radiated through your entire chest. You yelped out in a cry of pain and that hand that had collided with you, paired with the other, very suddenly reached out for your shoulders, gripping and rubbing up and down lightly.

“Shit, sorry — sorry, I didn’t mean — fuck, I’m sorry,” he was talking fast in an instant. He was apologizing and the sound of his voice was so much softer and devoid of his usual sarcasm, more than you’d ever heard from him. “Where did I hit you? I can’t see anything, fuck, you know I wasn’t trying to hit you, right? God, I’m so sorry.”

You were gasping as the pain slowly began to turn from that sharp burn and it shifted into a slower moving throbbing ache and through clenched teeth you answered, “you got me right in the tit.” You lifted your hand and rubbed over it, “fuck,” you added, unable to pretend like it didn’t hurt just for the sake of the genuine apologies that flew out of his mouth, because it really actually did hurt.

“Goddamn,” he whispered. Now that his hands were on you, you noticed he wasn’t letting go, but probably using you as some sort of a landmark so he could figure out which direction to travel. He inhaled a breath and his hands rubbed up and down your arms once more. He was rubbing you in the way that someone might rub over the injury, but it wasn’t as if he could do that.

“D-Do you want to hit me too? So are we even?”

You felt one of his hands leave your shoulder, moving downward and he reached down to grab ahold of your hand. He lifted it and with his other hand he very carefully closed your fingers, folding them into your palm to make you make a fist. You felt him pull your fist and you heard the smallest sound from his mouth, a punching sound effect as he softly pushed your fist into his chest.

“Here you can hit me,” he whispered, “that might not hurt the same,” he paused and lifted your hand, touching lightly over your fingers to readjust your fist form and you felt him pull it into the softness of his cheek where his cheekbone was. “Here, it’ll hurt here. Hit me here.”

You didn’t even feel the pain anymore. You hadn't said anything to him either and you felt an oddness deep inside of you with the unusually soft way he was talking to you. With the under layer of silliness you could hear in his voice with the sounds of your fake punches he acted out by pulling your fist into his face again and again. You put no strength into it though, you just let him move your hand into him again and again until he went motionless with his hand still wrapped around your wrist up near his face.

After a few moments of your inaction and silence he inhaled to speak.

“You okay?” You weren’t.

You didn’t answer him. This was too hard already. This version of him, this sweet, silly man that he never ever gave you any of, this handsome and charming and talented man who wanted absolutely nothing to do with you as a person — you, the vapid attention whore without the mental acumen to even consider bringing along a charger for her phone and you hadn’t even known an international SIM card was even a thing but that was just who you were. And he’d really rather get drunk out of his mind than spend any time alone with you sober.

You felt it then. This was hopeless. You and your stupid habits. You and your entire life lived without anything worth a damn to show for it except for a stolen flashlight and even that you couldn’t hold on to.

Kyungsoo spoke again, only this time and for the first time in all of you knowing him, you heard him whisper something unimaginable. He called out your name. There was that same sound of worry on his voice and the hand he had your wrist held in shifted and you felt it open, you felt his fingers wrap around your hand and he squeezed down around your closed fist, saying your name again with another, “hey, come on, you okay?”

He must have heard the first few sniffles from your nose even over the sound of the storm.

“Come on, say you’re okay.” He pleaded lightly, “I’m sorry I was doing speedy windmill arms during a blackout and accidentally punched you in the tit. Come on, you’re supposed to get mad at me and punch me in the face and call me a rat bastard.” He lifted your hand again and made the pow-pow-pow sounds with his mouth.

The surprise of his candor brought the smallest laugh out of your chest, against your will. He was shaking your hand down near his thigh with the words he was saying.

You pushed lightly against his chest with your free hand and wriggled your other hand free from within his closed grip. He let you go easily but you still felt his fingertips lingering just over your forearm. He didn’t want to lose your position again.

“Why the hell were you doing that anyway?”

“I don’t know. I’m an idiot. I was trying to find you and I got too into it. What’s it feel like? Getting hit in the tit?”

“It fucking hurts, Stupid. Want me to kick you in the nuts so we can compare on a pain scale of one to ten?”

You lifted a knee halfway up. You felt the clench of his muscles when you said it and his hands moved down in alarm, one arm blocking over his crotch and the other arm you felt his entire hot hand land over your bare thigh. You weren’t really going to do it but it was still fun to witness him panic like this. He had been so fast to block it and it brought another small giggle from you which thankfully was blocked out by another loud thunder boom.

You could feel him moving now. The perceived crisis with him actually physically hitting you with his hands instead of the usual wounds made with his words was over for now and you could feel the grip of his hands pulling on your night shirt as he moved away from you now.

“Which direction are you going?” Whatever he was seeking, you still had the layout of this place well ingrained in your head and you could probably help, for the sake of both of you who were trapped in this situation together. It really was in your best interest to find some light. You knew of three sources, a tiny lightbulb that could be turned on with the red light switch on the wall located somewhere deep in that bathroom that was connected to the emergency generator, the red electrical socket near his bed which was also connected and his own cell phone, which should be easily findable if he just found his bed frame first, which should be about five steps behind him to the right.

“Your bed is behind you, to the right. Just look for your bed and get your phone.” You applauded yourself for being so helpful to someone who deserved so little and you heard the soft grunt of approval from him as he turned and let go of your shirt.

“Five steps back, then turn right and it’s right there.”

You heard some silence and then you heard hands running over fabric. It felt, to your ears, like he might not quite have listened to your directions though. He was coming from the left side of you. You heard a few straining sounds and more hands running over fabric.

“This isn’t my bed,” he said from somewhere in the distance, “you said right? Your right? My right? Whose fucking right?”

You felt it then, the panic for your slip. Again. Again and again.

“Uhh,” you whispered, knowing you’d done it again. “It’s to the left, my left. I got them mixed up again.”

“Jesus Christ,” you heard him say under his breath and he was moving again, presumably making his way around the wrong bed, headed twice as far now in the correct direction, “they never change. I don't understand how you can’t learn something that never changes. What if you just call it something else? Okay, which direction from you is the bathroom?”

“I don't know. Left?” You got it right because it was fresh in your mind. That was the way he was supposed to go for his bed. Left. You knew it would vanish if any significant amount of time passed though.

“Okay so instead of left, let’s call that ‘interior,’ and right can be ‘exterior.’”

You’d never thought about naming them something else before but you felt more and more exhausted the longer he talked about this. It was too damn early for this kind of lesson on language and you could feel your mind beginning to drift the longer he nagged about it. You must have let out a long and tired sounding sigh.

“Calling it ‘interior’ is kind of…” you were grumbling at this point. You didn’t really care enough about being right all the time, especially if it meant that he got to struggle a little harder whenever you were wrong, “kind of weird,” you finished your critique of his choice of words.

“Yeah, I know, right? If only they had perfect names already, like East and West, or Right and Left. Lift up your interior hand.”

You sighed and lifted the hand that was closest to the bathroom and you did it instantly and you let out a surprised little “oh.”

“Did it work? Is the hand closest to my voice?” he asked, and you flinched and squinted when the room was suddenly lit up. He had his flashlight on his cell phone illuminated and you were standing with your ‘interior’ hand lifted high up into the air just as he had told you.

“Exterior hand,” he said and you quickly dropped the left and raised the right hand.

“Okay now turn around.” You felt his fingers land on your shoulders and he was pushing you to spin around in a circle and you rolled your eyes as if this little brain rewiring thing he was doing would even work with you.

“Remember, ‘interior’ is always going to be this side of you, even if the bathroom moves.” He tapped your left side lightly with his fingertips.

“Exterior,” he said much too loudly for not even five in the morning and you lifted the right arm easily. You could make out his hair bouncing with the nodding up and down of his head and he called out the other side, smiling lightly as you responded as he wanted you to. He did it a few more times and you were getting sick of this, shaking your head and scowling at him because you were done. You don't want to learn anymore. You were too old and you were tired.

“East!” He shouted, his voice in full volume with his arms outstretched in some mysterious direction toward the wall behind his bed. You just shook your head and crossed your arms in front of your chest. It was clear to anyone that you were done cooperating with this man. “Come on. That way is east, so the other way is west.” He was reaching with his voice. You had already taken several steps away from him and all of his effort to make you a better person. He could fuck right off with that — and at five in the morning.

“Bed!” you shouted. You were done. You were spinning on your heels, spotting your flashlight easily near one of the beds about the middle of the room thanks to the light on his phone that illuminated the room enough. You reached down and picked it up. “Flashlight!” you shouted, matching his crazed enthusiasm for directions of all things and by the time you’d made it back to the sanctity of your bed, away from any more grand life lessons he had already given up on you and had disappeared into the bathroom, taking his light with him. You could see the glow in the room, disappearing further into the room and it grew fainter as he used the toilet, becoming a little brighter as he went to the sink to wash his hands and becoming even brighter still when he emerged at the bathroom door. All you saw was a bright circle of light. You couldn’t make out what he was holding behind the blinding light that was facing in your direction.

Apparently, all it took was some exhausting educational lessons to make you feel very sleepy. You had already covered your head with your winner’s blanket to drown out the sounds of the wind and the rain outside as well as the sounds of anything else that man might want to say to you.

You could still hear enough though and his next question managed to seep through the layers of feathers and one thousand threads per square whatever and his question pulled you up from the sleep you were falling deep into.

“Hey! Did you throw away like half of my toothpaste?”

He must have been cleaning up for the day already. After you didn’t respond to him you drifted off to the sounds of the running shower somewhere on the other side of that wall.

When you woke back up it must have been hours later. You felt so much more energized than when you had woken up in the middle of the night. A quick stretch with plenty of stretching noises preceded your sitting up on the bed and shoving your blanket off of your groggy body but something felt different about the sounds in this room. Everything felt so quiet. You looked around, listening for sounds of him, for sounds of the storm outside and there was an eeriness about the silence that made you wonder if perhaps the storm was over and he had left this place, leaving you to navigate the maze of spiders and dark spooky hallways all alone.

You stood up and made your way through the bunks, seeing that all of his belongings were still exactly where he had left them and the bathroom sink still had his toothpaste and toothbrush — you felt the bristles and could feel a dampness that told you that yes, the man had used the foot scrubbing toothbrush this morning and after the tit punch, you refused to feel bad about it — as well as a few bottles of shampoo and that one bar of soap that Mr. Chen had passed out to everybody last night. Clearly he had just left you to sleep in after his early morning shower and you wondered if he was already eating something delicious for breakfast without you.

You were hungry but more importantly you needed the bathrooms. Without any real fear of him barging in on you now you took just a bit of extra care getting ready. You’d picked out one of your cutest outfits from your suitcase, the one that you were sure was supposed to grab the attention of all of the most handsome and charming men at the Shady Sands Resort single’s retreat and you even took care to get your makeup looking fresh and not overly done, making sure the view from behind showcased your greatest assets, the shape of your ass and your waist that you’d been specifically working on for months at the gym. So what if there were no men you were interested in here. There was one man you were at least interested in torturing a little bit here. That would have to serve as your entertainment.

As you made your way down the hallway toward the blue door of the kitchen you could hear the faint thumping of music playing behind the door.

You pulled the door open and you were greeted by a few familiar faces, apart from Sara, each one looked just a little bit tired and green around the edges. Sara and Mr. Chen sat on one side of the kitchen counter, Javier was on the other side with a — god bless him — coffee pot full of black gold, and Kyungsoo sat with his head thrown back and his eyes closed in what looked to be a rather groggy but freshly showered state. His hair was completely dry and the way it moved you could tell just how soft it must feel to the fingers — should someone wish to do such a thing with his hair and their fingers, these were hypothetical fingers. Definitely not your fingers.

“Good morning!” Mr. Chen forced the smile to his face to see you and you caught the shift in Kyungsoo’s posture as he straightened his shoulders, turned his head toward you and opened his eyes. You tried not to linger too long inside of his eyes and you noticed once he looked at you he quietly turned his head and looked away from you just as quickly as you had done to him.

Sara and Javier seemed to be working on something together, there were stacks of ingredients for breakfast and seeing the ingredients alone had your stomach begging for some food. You didn’t see Jun or Roxy around and you felt just a little bit like a responsible adult for not being the last one to wake up today.

“Jun and Roxy had to leave early this morning,” Mr. Chen burst your responsible adult bubble, “Roxy’s mom lives on the island and her home sustained some heavy damage from the winds last night so they went to help out. We are still in the eye of the storm, but the south side is projected to be much weaker, so hopefully the worst of it is over.”

Left behind on the table near the white board were the prizes they had won last night and you wondered if there would be more games to claim them or if that camping stove and fuel cans were now officially communal.

The white board hadn’t changed much since last night. Your column had an extra warning about your low alcohol tolerance, instructions to make drinks at half strength, and the word ‘fall risk’ written there too but there were no equal warnings next to Kyungsoo’s name. In fact it seemed that he had very little negative things written in his column at all. On paper this guy was perfect. Meanwhile you could still feel the remnants of him all over you. Mostly from the self-inflicted obsessive thoughts about the kiss, but your boob was still just a little sore when you’d put on your bra this morning.

They obviously didn’t know about his secret drinking habits that liked to come out only when there were no witnesses.

“Javier was serving coffee and you gratefully accepted a cup, pulling a seat up to sit right beside Kyungsoo at this counter as you watched Sara carefully arranging utensils for cooking.

Yet no actual cooking was being done and you began to get that same old familiar feeling that something was afoot. There would be some sort of competition. Beside you, Kyungsoo refused to look at you and seemed to only focus on his coffee in front of him with the occasional hand lifted to massage his temples. He still had the headache.

You reached into your front pocket and pulled out the little foil pack you usually carried with you at all times, some pain relievers for when womanly aches and pains simply became too much to handle and you tossed the little packet on the counter right beside him.

His head ticked toward the sound and he looked down at your offering; his big eyes popping up to look into yours. He didn’t grab it right away and you leaned your head toward him, urging him to just take it with a small disarming smile. It was the least you could do; an apology in advance for what you were about to do to him. You turned away from him and lifted your coffee for a sip. Out of your peripheral vision you could see him reach for the foil packet and he was opening it when you opened your mouth to speak.

“Javier,” you spoke-up clearly, “I think Kyungsoo’s drinks need to be made at least half as strong from now on.” You lifted a hand and pointed toward the white board, specifically meaning the section under his name that was missing the same sorts of warnings as yours displayed.

In an instant, you had the attention of everyone in the room.

“He’s got quite a doozy of a drinking habit that I personally learned about first-hand after last night.”

You heard a sound come from beside you and you glanced to your ‘exterior’ side to see a pair of big brown beautiful eyes looking at you in alarm. Apparently, although the man was too drunk last night to act responsibly with his hands and more distressingly, his lips, he still remembered the entirety of the event. Tellingly, his wide eyes looked down at your lips and back up again into your eyes before his face flushed and he swallowed the mouthful of coffee he had in his mouth.

You looked at him and he looked at you with his cheeks, his neck, and his ears slowly turning a bright red with the memory you had just dragged up. In his hands was the empty foil packet of the pills he had just taken for his headache. It would be a while before they started to work and he groaned beside you, closing his eyes and rubbing both of his hands over his face. It was embarrassment mixed with pain.

“I’m listening,” Mr. Chen had perked up from his own hangover headache and Sara had a positively wild eyed look in her eyes and an eager smile, ready to hear whatever bit of gossip you had to offer about the man who sat right beside you.

You giggled to yourself, “Apparently, when he’s very drunk,” you lifted a finger to gesture in his direction. His face was still covered with both of his hands as you began to speak, “he likes to go into the bathroom to brush his teeth and make the biggest mess with toothpaste you’ve ever seen.”

The hands dropped and he looked at you. His mouth hung open.

Their faces were amused, all but Kyungsoo who just looked at you with rapt attention. Based on his reaction, this was not the bombshell he thought you were about to drop.

“I even stepped in it at 4 in the morning in complete darkness, I stepped on something disgusting. It was so cold and wet. When I turned on the light my whole foot was covered in blue and there was toothpaste all over the floor, sprayed all over the mirrors and the walls. Like someone murdered a Smurf.” You were full on giggling and Kyungsoo had looked ahead of himself with both of his hands fisted in front of him and his bottom lip lightly bouncing off of his closed fists.

“What did you do? Did you wake him up and make him clean it himself?” Sara and Mr Chen shook their heads back and forth, clearly amused but Javier had been the one to ask the important question.

“Well, I had to clean it all, or course. It was a slipping hazard. I scrubbed my foot with a toothbrush I found in there — just left behind on the sink — green one, I think.”

You’d looked into his face when you said it and his open mouth fell even further before his jaw snapped shut and he looked ahead of himself, across the countertop toward Javier. His jaw was clenched down hard. His nostrils flared and he breathed hard, in and out.

“Got in between the toes and everything,” you smiled widely and Sara stifled a giggle in the palm of her hand. She was already headed to the white board and you heard squeaks as there was now a matching red note below his name to match yours. Both said ‘half strength drinks.’ You were satisfied with that much.

You’d spare the both of you the humiliation of bringing up the kiss, which would have been a bigger hoot with this crowd and would definitely garner another entry under that sad little heart column that sat between your names. There hadn’t been an entry there since early yesterday. If anything, he was lucky you’d stopped there with the grand revelations. He was glaring at you though, unable to be thankful for a damned thing you did for him, even as those pain medicines were dissolving in his stomach now and beginning to make their way into his bloodstream to take care of the lingering headache that the caffeine from his coffee hadn’t gotten rid of.

“Did you seriously scrub your foot with it?” He was speaking lowly to you while looking down at the empty pill foil. Looking just a little more queasy with each passing moment.

“Why — was that yours?” You shrugged and lifted your cup for a sip, “guess you’ll be happy to hear I showered last night. In fact I was just finishing up when you stumbled in there, Kyungsoo. Do you remember that, or were you too drunk for that too?”

His eyes were on you and he closed them slowly as he inhaled a calming breath.

“I — remember,” he confessed after several breaths.

“All of it?” you pushed back, strangely needing this spoken by him. He didn’t respond with words but you saw the strained single nod of his head and he inhaled a breath, lifting himself from the stool to move his empty coffee cup to the countertop beside the sink.

“Well…why’d you do that?” You’d started this talk with all of the false bravado you could dream up, but the longer it went on, the less gumption you found to fall back on. You’d begun to sound just a little unsure of yourself, just a little scared of the answers he would have for you. “Just to mess with me?” The last question came out meek and scared sounding.

“I’m not having this conversation with you,” he said in a single breath; his voice low yet direct with a hand raised to dismiss you entirely with a quick wave of his fingers.

Why did he get to decide that? Why was he the one who got to call the end of the conversation just because he couldn't really come face to face with the fact that he might be a bad guy?

“Hey, are you two still talking about the toothbrush?” Finished with her notes on the white board, Sara watched you both with suspicious eyes.

“Yes.”

”Yes,” you both answered at the exact same time and his eyes shot toward yours darkly, with a warning behind them for you to drop it. It wouldn't be discussed and it definitely wouldn't be happening again, not with the restrictions written into the rules of this retreat here.

“Okay, so half drinks for everyone, Javier. Mr. Chen looks rough this morning too.”

The head chef frowned his lips and nodded his head sheepishly.

Mr. Chen was taking his position at the front of the room and he cleared his throat. You knew to look for him for the instructions for whatever challenge you both would be presented with next and he clapped his hands quietly once and began to speak.

The challenge this morning was for breakfast. It seems you both would be cooking together again. That wasn’t new. The roles however were switched this time and much to your dismay you were going to be the one handling the ingredients and actually cooking them. Because Kyungsoo was an actual chef, he needed some sort of a handicap and Mr. Chen announced that Kyungsoo would not be able to use his voice during this cooking round but you could use all of your senses because, according to the three individuals who were in charge, you were a ‘liability.’ You frowned to hear this, feeling that maybe they had misjudged you. But at the same time not wanting to fight them too hard for them to blindfold as to disagree with them. If it meant you could keep your eyes, you would be their liability.

All of Kyungsoo’s instructions to you would need to be made with only his eyes and gestures, but touching was also allowed and highly encouraged. After the last cooking round where you’d spent much of the activity practically hugging the man, you hoped to god he was satisfied with your cooking skills enough to just let you figure it out yourself. You had one hour.

You at least knew enough to gather all of the veggies and take them to the sink to wash them and Kyungsoo was standing beside you with his eyes down on the ingredients looking at them individually and looking up at you. He did it a couple of times and you shook your head at him. Were you supposed to know what he was saying? This was bullshit. He was wasting time. You lifted an onion and asked “do you want me to cut this?” He shook his head.

“Do you want me to peel it?” was your next guess and that got another head shake. You were already frustrated. The man needed to do better than this.

“Do you want me to shove it up your ass?” There were giggles around the kitchen and he closed his eyes and inhaled a breath, then he looked up into the empty space above him for just a few seconds.

At last he moved. At last he lifted a hand and placed it on your forearm, lifting your hand lightly, he placed it on top of a tomato that sat beside the onion. He reached for your other hand and placed your hand on top of the knife handle and you gripped both.

“Cut?” You asked and finally, that got a nod. Jesus. You’d stab the man at this rate.

You held the tomato and made one cut right down the middle, cutting the thing in half. His eyes watched you and you couldn't quite make sense of the expression there but when you lifted one of the tomato halves to hold in your hand and you were about to cut out the inedible core, you felt him move quickly. With one swift hand, he slapped you on the back of the knife hand and he did it hard. It made you jump and gasp in shock. He had just slapped your hand like you were a misbehaving puppy.

Whatever it was that you were doing he didn’t like it. He was standing behind you and you could feel the warmth of his chest cover your back as he did this. His other hand wrapped around your tomato hand and he turned it around so the tomato was facing sliced side down on the cutting board. You saw him lift the hand that held the knife again, pointing the blade part toward your hand, he dropped it and made a little X shape with both of his fingers. He then turned the knife around, pointing the sharp point toward your body and again, made the same X shape with his fingers. You were corrected instantly, all sharp and pointy parts of the knife should point away from your body. He was saving you from slicing your hand off, or stabbing yourself in the stomach.

“Oh, don't stab myself to death — got it,” you whispered into the space in front of you. When you turned your head slightly to the ‘interior’ you could just make out his face there, super close to you.

You cut the stupid tomato into chunks. They were big and clunky but they were cut. He forced your hands into a certain shape and you were now picking the cutting board up and taking it over to set down beside the stove.

You felt like his puppet. He’d long given up on letting you take the reins after the first thing you tried to slice up was yourself, and you were now steered and directed by expert hands. Not only had you, as his avatar, managed to make something tasty and saucy with those tomatoes and a few other ingredients, but he now had you vigorously whipping up something thick and bright yellow that had butter and egg yolks, which were challenging to get out without breaking them. The sauce was coming out velvety and thick but he was shaking your hands so hard to get them to whisk faster the whole thing made you tremble and vibrate so much that every question you asked had a tremor that made you giggle and when you turned your head to look at him you caught the matching smile on his face that widened when he grabbed your hand again and shook you even harder.

When it was time to taste the sauce, your hand was simply grabbed, made to stick out your index finger and he dipped it right into the sauce, lifting it up to stick it into your own mouth.

“It’s good,” you declared and never one to take your word he was dipping your finger into the sauce and pulling your finger into his open mouth. You froze for a moment when he did it. His eyes were looking down at the sauce when he sucked on your finger but he must have felt the gasp for air you inhaled and it pulled his own eyes into your own. You pulled your own hand away, leaving behind his wet tongue and soft lips and those big brown eyes that looked into your own without saying a single word.

Something was happening inside of your chest. The close proximity paired with the scent of his soap and the warmth of his body had been taking its toll. You must have been imaging it to feel the soft grip he held your hand with as you poached the eggs. You must have imagined the soft caress of his thumb over the back of your hand and you froze almost entirely with the egg cooked to soft jiggly consistency suspended inside the slotted spoon. There was a plate with english muffins and thick cut ham slices ready to receive this egg but your stupid mind kept replaying the way his fingers traveled so slowly up your forearm to reach your hand, the gentle circles he touched into your skin, maybe giving you secret messages with scribed letters that told you things about the meaning behind that kiss last night.

You were stuck. The egg jiggled and he ran his hands up your arm slowly before he tap-tapped twice, lightly on your arm, urging you to turn around to deposit the thing on the plate so it could be finished off with sauce. You were a mess though. What was he doing to you? This felt like a trick of your mind. He was just trying to cook using your hands and you were imagining that his touches were softer and more meaningful than they were. That inhale he took from your neck and the softest groan that you felt echoed through your chest didn’t solve any of your mysteries either. You were stuck.

It was him that moved you. You felt his arm wrap around your waist and the warmth of his chest pressed into your back, his chin landed over your shoulders, dipping his cheek against yours; you felt the warm exhale against the skin of your neck and his hand landed just under your breasts, gripping you tightly, high around the rib cage. He lifted you and spun you around, bringing your inaction, your confusion, and your jiggly egg along for the ride and he placed you down not with a rough drop but with a gentle and careful slip down the length of his body behind you, you slid right down in place in front of the plate. There was a movement of his hand, he rotated your spoon and the egg landed with a soft plop where he wanted it.

You turned to look at his face. You needed so many more clues than he was giving you and you found his brown eyes watching you with something unreadable happening inside of them. Those eyes looked into your own and unimaginably, they touched down the length of your face and landed on your lips. Unimaginably, you did the same thing and when it all became too much you simply closed your eyes, finding that the thumping of his heart beating inside of his chest seemed to match the racing you felt happening inside of your own.

With your eyes closed you could feel some of your mind returning to you. You could feel just a little bit more control coming back into your own hands and you lifted a spoonful of sauce to pour it over the top of the very first set of Eggs Benedict you’d ever made in your entire life, complete with homemade hollandaise sauce and a fresh mozzarella, basil and heirloom tomato salad with a balsamic prosciutto vinaigrette that honestly looked like it belonged in a millionaire’s garden party instead of in some bunker during a hurricane operating on emergency generator power.

You looked down at the plate in awe. There was some sort of a timer beeping that called your attention up and away from this pretty thing you’d just created with him and you looked up into the faces of three people who had watched you both with their mouths hung open in stunned silence. Mr. Chen reached forward to push a button on the timer that was ringing out but the other two didn’t seem to move a muscle.

When you looked over at Kyungsoo he had already backed up enough so you could no longer feel every single one of his abdominal muscles through the thin fabric of your summer top and he looked down at the dishes that had been assembled with both of your hands.

His lips pulled into the smallest smile while he looked down and when he looked back up into your face that smile came along with his attention on you.

You felt the smallest bump of his shoulder against yours and he whispered into your ear.

“Not bad for a Princess,” he said with a lift of a single eyebrow.

Links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6