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soobadnoonecanstopher · 3 months ago

Text

Rat Bastard - Part 10

Pairing: You x Kyungsoo

Rating: M (Mature Smut)

Word Count: 12,000

Warnings: There were too many beds, Enemies to Lovers, Slow Burn, Sexual Tension, Idiots to Lovers, Mature Sexual Situations.

Tag: @ilovemyapopbaby

Links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10

If someone told you last week that today you’d find yourself staring into the eyes of Doh Kyungsoo — but really, really staring into the depths of them, and all around them, squinting and scrutinizing so up-close that you could even see that itty bitty mole in the lashline of his right — left — one of his eyes, and you could probably even count the lashes he had on his bottom eyelid with the way you leaned in to get the shape right, to get a good view of the shading, to get the minutest of details of this man’s eyes — if someone had told you that you’d be doing this right now with him, you’d recommend that they seek professional help asap.

It didn't help you at all the way his brown irises followed you around, that little dance of his eyebrows and the slow blinking and the little pop up of his cheekbones just below his eyes that vanished as quickly as it had appeared; the beginnings of a smile; some stifled reaction to you when your focus grew to levels too intense and he obviously felt some sort of way about it.

“Stop moving,” you complained when he scratched the tip of his nose with barely there fingernails and you moved to the other big eyeball on his face. The eyes were always the hardest. It was all hard but the eyes were really make-or-break, and once you’d scribbled in your best attempt, this thing might be broken. You were doing your best, but really, your best wasn’t so great.

“This isn’t going to be good, so just put that out of your head right now.”

His eyes flitted around your face again and he inhaled a quick breath through his nose as if he had something to say right now, right now when he’d already been holding the exact same face and exact same position for 25 minutes now and was seriously about to fuck it up with talking, “Shhhh, shut up,” you said preemptively pressing your pencil over his pursed lips.

That primed and ready breath of his was very carefully exhaled through his nose. Thankfully his lips stayed closed.

Your focus on his face was already hanging by a thread. There was just something about seeing him this close up that had you all messed up. You had to remember the task at hand lest you stumble and fall into those pretty lips of his. You did notice the clench of his jaw muscles and slight furrow in his eyebrows but you weren't drawing his mouth yet and you’d long ago scratched in some full eyebrows over his eyes that looked more like two poisonous fuzzy caterpillars than something you’d see on such an attractive face. It didn’t at all help that you were feeling so nervous today.

Today, Day 1 of you and him. For some reason you hesitated to count yesterday as Day 1. Despite the date; despite the dramatic weepy declarations of love; despite the sex. The day had just been so long and fraught with conflict, it felt appropriate to start things off today. Today, the day after you’d accidentally fallen asleep right here in this kitchen on this mattress and the man had simply tucked himself in right beside you and let you sleep and snore and drool or whatever the hell it was you might have done in your sleep; he just slept too. He must have been just as exhausted as you’d been. He didn’t touch you, he didn’t pull you in for a spoon or sleepy morning sex and when you’d woken up he had already been up for who knows how long. You found him cleaned, teeth-brushed, dressed in something fresh, having a cup of coffee as he sat on this mattress you slept on and he just — watched you sleep. Then watched you wake up slowly by the smell of the coffee and the creepy sensation of being watched and he smiled innocently at you as you crawled yourself up from the indignity of sleep and he didn’t even look away as you pretended as if you’d intended for this sort of thing to happen all along.

Whatever protests to your shushing him just now had quit and you moved your focus down to his lips. You were leaning and doing your best to resist the physical pull you felt to him, your resolve was strong today. You had been keeping a distance today. You scribbled some more onto your sketchpad that you held up to your chest to hide all of the awful things you were doing to his pretty face with your clumsy fingers. It was so bad. You didn’t usually draw, but somehow you’d come into this with false confidence. You’d really thought you’d do better than this. But this didn’t look like him at all. You dragged the pencil led down from the top of his forehead, pulling strands of black hair down again and again, hoping that by simply adding more hair you might be able to cover up some of your many offenses.

You’d made no grand claims to being an artist. Perhaps the most disappointing part of this was that you actually were trying.

His lips were soft and plump. Moisturized and full and in the middle of one of the humps sat yet another mole. You’d been counting them with a little hum from the back of your throat with each little dot you counted on the face of your polka dot man, when you looked up again, the corners of his lips were pulled into a tiny smile, clashing with the shape his mouth that you’d already sketched down somewhere below his nose and definitely too close to his chin for accuracy. You hadn’t drawn him with a smile. He needed to stop that.

You lifted your pencil, “Stop smiling. You’re ruining everything.” Your lack of talent wasn’t his fault, but somehow you felt better blaming this monstrosity on him. His eyes widened and he lifted a hand to his chest, lifting both of his fuzzy caterpillars in protest, in indignation, and you made a quick shushing sound with hiss and a tisk from the back of your throat and he somehow resisted the urge to say anything out loud.

The rules to this ridiculous game were clear and you’d both agreed to the terms ahead of time.

You each got 30 minutes to draw each other with the art supplies you’d found in the box. The subject of the portrait was not allowed to speak or move and the artist with the closer likeness would be the winner. If neither of you could agree on a winner, you’d enlist an outside judge. You looked down at the image you’d captured and seemed so bad he’d have to go out of his way to lose to you.

The prize was the last pack of ramen. Something, it seemed, that Kyungsoo might be ready to kill for. You weren’t too invested in the noodles, but you sure enjoyed seeing him work so hard for them. The loser had to wash the mountain of dishes that mocked you from the kitchen counter.

You knew when to quit. You’d shaded your last bits around his eyes, attempting somehow to make shadows but really ending up with some sort of leatherback sea turtle effect on this terrible portrait that might have looked a little bit like him if he was turning into some sort of half man, half moss covered forest creature caught mid transformation. The timer on his phone was ringing and Kyungsoo was exhaling a long breath, shaking his head and pulling his face into dramatic stretches. You placed your monstrosity face-down on the mattress you both sat on in the middle of this kitchen and you did your best to keep your poker-face in place. You wouldn’t let him know that he’d already won the game. He had to work for it a little bit first.

“Okay my turn,” he declared and he actually cracked his knuckles before grabbing his own sketchpad and reaching forward to grab ahold of the pile of assorted color pencils you’d been working through. Maybe that’s where you’d gone wrong, trying to match his skin tone and rosy lips and darker skin colored shadows which without any actual skill behind the application just made him look kind of abused. You should have gone with just black and white. Maybe the result wouldn’t have been so bad.

Kyungsoo was seated on his butt with his legs crossed and he scooted closer to where you sat waiting for him to position you into the pose he wanted you in so he could begin. His close proximity to you had his inner thighs flush up against your knees and you idly wondered about the necessity of such closeness. You’d done his portrait with just a little bit of leaning whenever you needed to get closer to see better.

But here he was.

You squared your shoulders and clasped both hands in your lap looking into his up-close face and you waited, giving the smallest bounce of your eyebrows the second he looked up from his sketchbook and his brown eyes slipped up the length of your face and bounced all around your features, somehow never quite sinking down deep into your eyes. He was looking up at your forehead and he lifted his rounded fingers, lightly trailing the pads of his fingertips over the skin of your forehead down over your eyebrow, you could feel the stray strands of hair he brushed aside. The touch was so light and yet it quickly followed with the silent slip of his eyes down into yours where they lingered for half a second; for long enough for you to inhale through your nose and have to hold it; for long enough for your own eyes to widen and and for you to feel the microscopic bounce of your eyebrows.

Those eyes had you for such a brief moment and yet you felt so captured. Maybe it was the way he was observing you. He had a job to do here though, and he let you go. You exhaled slowly through your nose, careful not to make it known that you had stopped breathing while he looked at you.

You could hear the scratching of his pencil on his notepad in his lap. He kept it just angled enough to keep you from being able to see what he drew and when the temptation grew too irresistible you lowered your chin just a hair, dropping your eyes with your churning curiosity.

Would you also look like a troll or did he have some actual talent? So far he’d proven to be annoyingly talented at so many things.

You felt his fingertips land just below your chin and he lifted your face up with the slightest of pressure with warm fingertips that did not leave your skin right away. He was looking into your eyes again and you forced your eyes to remain up. It took some effort and with him looking at you again this way you felt the same captivation as before. His fingertips under your chin, no longer needing to direct you, yet remaining nonetheless. His fingers left your face and his eyes looked back down at his sketchpad and you exhaled the held breath just as carefully with a controlled and undetectable exhale. You rolled your eyes around inside your head, to moisten them, to make a promise to yourself -- you would make an effort to get the upper hand over your flimsy self control. You would not cheat. You would stay still and you’d follow the rules and then you’d wash the dishes when he was done and you’d probably even wash his still warm ramen bowl after he ate all of the noodles by himself.

If you weren’t allowed to see his progress you’d just have to settle with reading the reflections of moisture in his eyes. You’d just have to settle for catching every glance and glimpse of his pretty eyes that examined your face so closely you swear to god you could make out the shape of you reflected back in his black pupils.

Kyungsoo lifted his pencil to your face, placing the eraser end of his pencil flush against your skin in a few spots that you wondered if he’d ever let you win against him at least once in your life together. He held it once against your forehead, marking a spot on the pencil with his thumb and adjusting something on his masterpiece.

He was back with the pencil and he leaned in and squinted as he looked quite closely at your mouth. The scrutiny had you feeling a certain way and you pursed your lips just a little bit, puckering your chin and giving your face the smallest shake and you cleared your throat.

Your movement caught his attention and he was holding a tiny grin somewhere trapped inside of his mouth. You could see the evidence of it in his eyes.

After not too much of a fight and while he was looking down at his work you saw his mouth pull into a wider grin. He was laughing. Maybe at you.

You knew you shouldn’t speak so you dipped your face ever so slightly and lifted your eyebrows with the tiniest questioning whine escaping from the back of your throat.

His smile widened and you saw teeth, and his eyes bounced up to touch into yours, hearing your unspoken question and clearly understanding.

“Nothing,” he said with the smile still on his face and a quick shake of his head back and forth, refusing to tell you. His response made you furrow your brows and your head ticked backward with a pout forming on your lips from him denying you an explanation. What exactly was funny enough for him to be wearing that silly smile. Was it something about your face maybe? Was it a flaw, perhaps? Something you’d spot in the magnified mirror and obsess over for a week? Did he see something too?

He was still focusing on his work, but you felt the tiny scowl in your lips and when he looked up again you pulled your eyes away from his, looking straight ahead at the empty kitchen behind his head.

You could feel him looking at you. The kitchen cabinets were old and had big sections of chipped away and flaked paint and you wondered how many years ago this place was painted. His face bounced around in front of yours, eyes seeking to touch yours again and you kept your focus on the big loose flakes of paint that might come off easily if you wanted something fun to occupy your evening tonight, you could pick off that old paint all alone and get lead poisoning from it without the man who wouldn’t tell you what he found so damn funny about your face.

“Hey,” you heard him say and you inhaled a very slow, very steady, and very calm breath; exhaling that used-up air with just as slow, steady, and calm of an exit. He called you. You ignored him and stared at your chipped paint.

“Princess?” Warm fingers touched over the back of your hand and his face moved just in front of your line of sight, those brown eyes moved in, uninvited and you felt it again. He had you again, so easily, his sweet tone and that sweet nickname and you gave in. You tightened your fists between your thighs and his eyes roamed around your face again, slipping down into your eyes. You hadn’t heard any scribbling on his paper in a while and you wondered if this multi-talented man was already finished beating you at something else. Your eyelids bounced as you fought against your desires and he was so close to you now you wondered if he had moved even closer while you had your own silent little big-baby fit about absolutely nothing a few minutes ago.

You heard his inhale and your lips parted when you felt the warmth of his hand land over your cheek. You moved nearly unconsciously, pulling your chin up so your lips were in line with his. You could still feel it inside of your chest, that very minor fit, that very slight upset at the very idea that he was laughing at you about something he refused to tell you. You knew you were being silly. This knowledge did not help you any.

“I think I’m done drawing,” he said with a whisper and you inhaled to speak the moment he called it. If he was done you didn’t need to be still and quiet anymore.

“What was so funny before?” You could hear the petulance in your voice as you said it, but you just couldn’t help it. You had some insecurities that loved to make an appearance at inconvenient times, no matter how lovely of a time you’d been having with him. Your question pulled his attention back up and he lifted a single eyebrow with a little tick of his head.

“Oh,” he said with his mouth pulling into another smile with such a softness inside his eyes as he caved to it. He was shaking his head and he broke eye contact.

“It’s,” he inhaled again and you could make out just a little bit of a rosy shade that covered over his neck. If he had that color during your portrait you would have used all of the crimson colors you had in your pile and made him look like some sort of red-necked woodpecker, “it’s silly, but I drew your lips without actually looking at them first. And when I did look, I got them right,” he gave a little head shake and he wrinkled his nose, inhaled, and his focus was back on your face and you felt his hand slip off of your cheek now that he had you back from the silly fit that was really nothing at all; as you knew deep down all along it would be. Your sweet boyfriend would never make fun of your face.

You shook your head lightly, getting his point but feeling a desire for him to say more. Maybe he could describe just how many days, hours, weeks, months he’d daydreamed about kissing your lips. The smile on his lips sank slowly and his eyelids sagged halfway down before he inhaled again, “I‘ve had your face in my mind for so long, I hardly even had to look at you.”

Oh, yes, of course.

Of course it wasn’t something bad that he had noticed. You felt your own lips purse and your bottom lip pushed forward, feeling rather ridiculous for the negative thoughts that had filled your head earlier, before you even gave him, or yourself any credit at all, even though deep down inside you knew it, you knew it.

“I still wanted to. To look at you.” He was smiling while looking down at the sketchbook in his hands, “you have a very nice face. I feel everything when I look at you.”

He blinked slowly and his eyes were back. “I can't even remember anymore -- it was so recent, but I’m struggling to remember any of those old feelings from before. Before I loved you.” He laughed to himself once, “But even this — kind of feels like a dream. I get these flashes of fear that I might still wake up.”

He leaned into you then, moving in close so quickly your eyes went crossed and he blurred in front of you and you gasped in surprise when his lips parted just over your pouting bottom lip and he kissed you quick. You hardly had time to register him coming in, let alone kiss him back.

“You’re still real.” He said with the softest giggle. You felt a tightness inside of your throat. How could he be this beautiful? You felt such warmth in your cheeks. It was the suddenness of it. After yesterday, even after the love you and he had shared together, even with the small touches and longing looks, it was still all so brand new to you both that you almost felt too nervous to touch him as freely as you really wanted to. Maybe he really had been the more conservative type of man. What if you scared him off with how much you wanted from him and how badly you craved him? He seemed to pick up on your nerves and memories of him just sleeping beside you last night not touching you and you too nervous to touch him; well of course this odd distance from him only made you even more anxious for every little potential touch from him. The kiss just now nearly sent you back in time.

You felt the burst of butterflies that filled your chest and you felt absolutely accosted by the overwhelming surge of giddiness that instantly followed.

You had to cover your face. Both of your hands flew up to touch over the burning heat you felt in your cheeks and you closed out the view of him. You had to hold it in, but my God this rush was unparalleled and the built up energy had to go somewhere. It came out of you as giggles; you were too worked up again. You were giggling like a mad-woman hiding under your own hands and when you peaked through your fingers that breathtaking smile on Kyungsoo’s face never even came close to satisfying it; the deep need you felt inside of you to look at him, to laugh with him, to be silly with him and play with him. The best you could do was the little squeal; lean forward with both of your hands on his shoulders and the smallest push against him. How dare he be this perfect, this attractive, this absolutely loveable and how dare he do it with a face that gorgeous?

With the push came some more laughter from somewhere inside of him, you’d jostled it free with the attack and your eyes caught the flutter of a sketchbook that fell down onto the mattress beside his thigh. Your eyes couldn’t resist looking, you really did not try to look and you hadn’t even seen all of it but what you did see was a black and white pencil sketch of a nearly perfect representation of your mouth. There was expert level shading, there was absolutely no mistaking the raw talent this man had for drawing even though at the beginning of this game, he’d promised, swore to you up and down that he had no formal training in art, hadn’t even taken a single art class or watched an art centric youtube video. His fingers grabbed his book the moment it had fallen and since it had all happened so quickly, you’d given nothing away to betray the fact that you had seen it.

Your mind was slipping down to the memory of what you’d managed. That awful monstrosity that sat face down on the mattress beside you and you could feel a dark and dirty cloud; the used motor oil-like, dirty mop water-esque, three times used bath water sense of absolute shame covering over you from your head to your toes. He was just so very special and seeing yourself compared to him just made you feel unworthy. Unworthy of his time, his company, his touches and kisses and love. You felt an urge to hide from this feeling.

You reached a hand out and gripped your sketchpad tightly, shoving it far under your thighs so that you sat on the thing and you opened your mouth to begin hostage negotiations both to save your pride and to save his feelings for having to see such a terrible gross misrepresentation of that absolute beautiful face of his.

His giggles had long since calmed down and you closed your eyes and inhaled a steadying breath; your recent giggles now a long distance memory and in no way competition to beat back the apprehension you felt coursing through your mind.

He couldn’t see this. You’d just give up now and you’d take this thing to the grave with you. He could have the ramen. You’d wash the dishes. You’d rip the page out, tear it into a million pieces and you’d eat every single bit if you had to, but he couldn’t see this.

“Umm,” you said softly, your eyes unable to meet his very suddenly — suspiciously so — and finding your mouth had gone too dry for your words to come out freely, you had to lick your lips, look at the cupboards with the chipping paint flecks behind his head and shake your head to loosen up your tongue.

“I -- uhh,” You exhaled, knowing that it was ridiculous for you to be suddenly nervous about this but you knew the kind of person he was, you needed to find a way to get out of this without raising too much suspicion so he would let it go and just take the win.

“I don’t think we should do this.” The second the words were out of your mouth, you looked into his face and you noticed the immediacy with which you’d grabbed his attention. This game had been a bad idea and you needed to convince him that it was in his best interest not to complete it.

But something was changing on his face; that beautiful smile was sinking quite slowly and he pulled his chin back, giving his head the smallest head shake of non-understanding.

“I just don’t think — it’s the best idea —” your brain wasn’t working right. His eyes had changed and it had happened so suddenly, the dramatic darkening inside of his eyes swallowed up your words and took your confidence.

“What are you talking about?” His whispered question felt so small and unsure and you absolutely hated the look that had manifested in his eyes. Oh no. You’d used the wrong words for this. You’d captured a look of fear in his eyes; the very last thing you meant to do.

You very quickly reached a finger out to lightly grip the sketchbook he’d abandoned on the mattress beside him. You were shaking your head, stoutly denying the awful conclusions he’d had jumped too.

“Let’s just say you won, okay?” There was a whining, pleading tone in your next words to him and that flash of darkness in his eyes shifted when he looked down at the sketchbook that you were still pulling into your lap, while shoving your own farther under your butt. The smile on your face was to really sell it. He won, you lost. Neither of you needed to check the drawings.

You heard a sound come from his chest. A rough exhaled puff of pure air straight from deep inside of lungs. He was lifting his hands and rubbing roughly over this face.

“Why would you say it like that? I thought you meant us.” He said from under his hands and when he pulled his hands down you could see a distinct pinkness in his cheeks, his ears were bright red kind of like the bright red ears on a Tasmanian devil. Maybe the portrait needed more color.

The man had been flustered by your choice of words. Your hands were up and you waved away the very thought of that. Your own insecurities be damned, you loved him and you weren’t about to give him up so easily.

You quickly spoke, to clarify. “No, no. You can have the ramen. I’ll wash the dishes. We should stop this game.”

You smiled wider, meaning it. Nodding your head with how much you meant it. Searching inside of his eyes for signs that he was accepting your graceful terms of defeat.

Kyungsoo shook his head back and forth and closed his eyes lightly through the denial. He had no convincing smile on his face to maintain. He had no scams to run to get out of showing his portrait.

“But you won,” you said with your teeth bared, the wide smile getting more difficult to maintain. “I lost. We don’t need to check. You’re superior. I’m inferior. You’re the best. I’m the worst.”

His face was blank now and he was watching as you rambled, simply letting you dish out as many nervous words as you could at a rate at least twice as fast as a normal loser might declare their loserdom.

“Winner.” You motioned a hand toward him and that blank look in his eyes turned into a suspicious squint. You were over selling it. Something that had been impossible to sell to begin with. Perhaps you’d never have been able to convince him that he didn’t have to look at your picture.

“Loser.” You whispered with your hand on your chest.

“What did you do? Did you draw me with devil horns or something?”

“Not on purpose,” you answered in a shameful whisper. “I really did my best, but, please — it’s just so, so bad.” Your hands were clenched down very tightly both of the sketchbooks. Your right palm dug quite hard against the metal rings that bound the pages together.

“Let me see,” he said in a very calm voice. You wished your own voice could sound so calm.

You shook your head.

“We agreed. Let me see.” You let go of his own sketchbook but doubled down on your own, grabbing tightly with your left hand to the mattress when you noticed the shift in his balance. He would have to drag you out of this room to get this sketchbook from your hands. The silliness of your overdramatics we’re having an effect on him. You could see that the smile was back on his lips. You did your best to fight your own smile but you could already feel just how ridiculous you must seem.

“We can share the ramen and we can wash the dishes together.”

Oh, he was offering now. He was negotiating with his precious ramen and his precious free time after lunch and you had been a fool to think you’d ever get away from this without playing the entire game you’d agreed to play with him.

You closed your eyes and you exhaled through your mouth, opening your eyes again to find that his face had changed again.

“Please, let me see it.” This expression felt much more dangerous. His lips had pulled into a pout, a powerful one. His pretty bottom lip pushed out and his brown eyes begged well before his whining words eked out.

“What did you do to me?” The question felt oddly pointed. Did he still mean the drawing? His voice had dipped with his chin that puckered, his eyebrows and his eyes pleaded.

Your mouth fell open. You hadn’t seen him act this way before and you felt blindsided by how easily you began to entertain the idea of giving in. He leaned in closer to where you stubbornly sat gripping the mattress with just a little less force now and loosening your tight and aching hold around those metal rings of the book.

He leaned in closer to you, that same disarming pout growing even deeper on his face but he was moving so close the polka dots, woodpecker neck, and Tasmanian devil ears all blurred together; you could hardly even see his mouth but you could feel the body heat radiating off his skin.

He could have it.

He could have anything he asked you for as long as he asked for it in this way.

“Baby,” he whined softly, right into your ear. “Please let me see it.”

You felt that whispered word, all that it represented, the very first time he’d called you that, it sunk straight down inside of your chest and you could have let go of everything. That word, that name for you, for how he felt about you, said with that low voice of his, directed at you with about enough sweet syrup dripping off of his tongue to soften every single nervous gasp, every tremble of your hands that grasped so feebly at your old habits and insecurities and every uncertainty you had inside of your body.

His warm palms, as hot as they were debilitating, slipped around your waist and both of his arms slinked tightly around you and you gasped out loud when he pulled you into him, and where he sat, onto his lap; moving you so easily within his strong arms. His lips bounced against your earlobe and you felt too stunned to move. Your skin was ablaze. He was touching you. He was so close to you and he was calling you Baby and you were actually floating away; no longer glued to this mattress with that terrible book under your butt; he had you on his lap and in his arms and his lips had just touched your neck and you were putty. A pitiful, weak-boned loser.

“It’s really bad. Like actually awful. You’ll die,” you whispered, feeling like some sort of puppet under his direct control. You’d felt so desperate for him to actually touch you all morning that honestly, he could get whatever he wanted from you. You were a damned idiot if you thought you stood a chance in any kind of fight against this man.

You felt the inhale he took from within your hair and heard the small stutter of a grunt in his throat. The moment he’d gotten his warm hands around you, you’d already felt too affected by him, by his closeness and now with the way he breathed in his oxygen from so close to you, exhaling again slowly with the ghost of a groan echoing through the chambers of your heart, you were pretty certain his mind was beginning to drift away from the actual discussion you both had been having about the portraits.

“Sorry,” he whispered. He was wrapped all around you but he suddenly felt tense and whatever coaxing movements had quite suddenly paused with his apology. “I’ve been trying to behave -- I know I should hold back and I shouldn’t do things like this, but you have certain--” his head pulled back enough for you to be able to see his face, see his eyes and the movement of his lips as he spoke. His hand was waving now, indicating with his motions what he meant, “--certain parts of you that make me lose my mind.”

“I don't want you to think that I only want one thing from you.”

The tightness with which he’d held you had gone slack and you felt him shift under your ass and you were slid, very carefully down the curve of his hips until you were no longer sitting on him.

It felt like such a loss. You could have wept.

You were shaking your head back and forth. He had been holding back. He had been sparing with his touches and before you had a chance to respond to him, to tell him exactly how much you did not want him to hold back with you at all, he was reaching with his fingertips and grabbing both notebooks and suddenly the crisis was no longer happening inside of your pants but right here on this mattress with him flipping both of the books around at the exact same time so that they were both face up in all of their holy hell, putrid and horrifying, and lovely and absolutely fucking incredible glories.

You ran your fingertips over his drawing of your face and you melted. It was very obviously your face. it was you. It felt like love when you looked at it. Your chest felt tight. You noticed he’d added small details that you were positive you’d been the only one to notice about yourself. A tiny mark here mirroring something that had happened to you long before you were able to form lasting memories. The look he’d somehow managed to capture in your eyes had a depth that you didn’t think was possible to create with just a pencil and paper and yet the focus he portrayed looked far away, deep in thought perhaps, and somehow, inexplicably beautiful.

Beside it sat your portrait.

To your surprise, Kyungsoo did not laugh right away. You did hear the sharp intake of breath he took as he looked at what you had spent the entire 30 minutes to produce. This … shit. He lifted his hand to cover over his mouth and God dammit, he’d held out for so long. Longer than anyone in their right mind could have done.

A testament to how much he loved you; how desperately good the sex had been but how much he didn’t want you to think he was only after one thing was spelled out right there in the stifled silence before he broke.

Right before that palm clasped over his parted lips, you could see the pinkness in his cheeks, the stuttered exhaled breath that came out in rhythmic huffs from both is nose and his mouth and he was holding himself together at the seams now, that hand covering over his mouth and his eyes feasting on the rotten truth before him. It was so bad.

“Oh nooo,” he whispered through a trembling voice, and you closed your eyes up, bit down on your bottom lip hard and risked another quick glance at his face. “Oh my God -- what is wrong with me?” He was staring down at it, picking it up and, holding it up to his face, even looking closer at it and then his hand was back on his mouth, this time he pinched his nostrils closed hard and the suction of his desperate inhale pulled them tight. He was shaking now, on the inside. You felt the trembles through the mattress. You could hear the silent laughter stuttering deep down inside of him, even though his hand plugged his nose and his mouth as tightly as he could manage to dampen the sounds of his laughter but it only made it more frantic.

It was impossible not to laugh. You knew this would happen. It was so awful and dreadful it actually might have looped back around to some obscenely hilarious thing that definitely shouldn't exist; this cursed object.

“L-Look, why c-colors” he couldn't even talk. Your chest was shaking with your own laughter but when his rounded fingertips pointed to the eyebrows, you lost the fight against it. You had to cover your mouth to keep from actually spitting on him.

“Help -- my, my eyebrows,” he was lifting that same hand that touched the portrait and he rubbed his fingertips over his own eyebrows on his face, probably checking to see if a family of big black creepy crawly caterpillars had moved in when he hadn’t been paying attention.

You reached a hand forward and laid it over the drawing, covering as much as you could but both of you were laughing too much to get many words out. Your out of breath squeaks did their best to convey the ‘No. Stop. Don’t look anymore,’ messages. He was pulling your fingers down to uncover more bits to try and ask you questions about. You heard something to the effect of ‘w-why m-my nose’ but he fell over onto his side; rolling onto his back with his eyes closed up tight and his laughter taking the rest of his words and making them come out in rough nonsensical guffaws.

The laughter was too deep. His hands were holding his belly and you reached up a swift palm to smack several times on his butt in some attempt to get him to stop the maniacal laughter and breathe before he died.

“Stop. Stop! I told you, you’d die.”

He was gasping through it, wiping wetness from his eyes and your abdominal muscles were beginning to ache from it all.

“It’s so funny and so amazing,” he managed to sit back up but he was wobbly and very pink and even a little bit damp. “I can’t believe this.”

“It’s so awful! Stop, stop.” You’d reached for the book, pullin hard and the second he’d registered that you were grabbing it he doubled down, holding it so tight you might both rip it in half before either of you gave it up.

“No, no, no, it’s mine,” he was really fighting you for it. You lost your flimsy hold on it amid the giggles. His eyes were wide and his voice was agitated and overly dramatic sounding. “You cannot take this from me. I’ll never ever forgive you. It is mine.”

“I’m pretty sure this is going to be a core memory.” He’d scooted himself several times back and away from you with his precious disaster and he held it up right beside his face, “Look at us, we’re twins.”

You collapsed in laughter again to see them side by side. Your stomach genuinely ached and you were actually begging him now, “Kyungsoo, please. No more. I’m going to puke.”

You had to put a stop to it. He was insane. He could have it. You give up. You could only escape. You pushed yourself up and off of this mattress in the middle of the floor, took a step over the projector that was still playing some long forgotten movie on mute and you made your way toward the kitchen sink for your punishment.

You weren’t working alone for long. Kyungsoo was quick to slink up beside you, flipping on his radio and slipping his hands into the same soapy water you had your hands inside.

It wasn’t exactly a practical way to wash dishes. His hands kept grabbing for the same things you were already washing and after the little tug-of-war over a coffee mug that resulted in a tidal wave of soapy water that soaked your t-shirt to near transparent levels you had to actually shove the man with your hips away from your sink of dishes. He was unshovable. While he did move a tiny bit, he was back in an instant with a rough plop of his hands right back into your water and a chest full of manic giggles. You were feeling just a little bit exasperated by his silliness. It was adorable and it was, it was taking at least twice as long as it needed to and you were actually getting very wet. Your shirt stuck to your skin.

You inhaled to voice out a quick complaint, not even looking at him as you nagged. “Dammit, Baby, let me wash them. The soapy part is not a two person job. Why don't you just rinse them or dry them or put them away? Get out of my bubbles.”

You’d expected him to move. You’d expected him to take his hands out of the water, rinse them off under the tap and move to some other more helpful spot in the kitchen so you both could get this boring chore out of the way and maybe play another game, or take an explorative walk outside to survey the damage from the storm. He hadn’t moved though and after a few moments of his very noticeable stillness you turned to look at him.

Kyungoo was looking at you, an odd expression on his face, almost confusion, almost disbelief. Did he not usually do boring kitchen chores? He was watching your face for a long while and you watched the very slow manifestation of a smile that built on his lips. His eyebrows rose up above his eyes and that same smile stuttered halfway through. His cheeks seemed just a shade rosier and you genuinely could not figure out what could possibly be going through his head.

“What?” you had to ask. He was suddenly acting stranger than normal. He was, ultimately, a weirdo deep down inside, but this was an odd reaction even for him.

He leaned in then, his warm and soft lips landed over your mouth and this time he kissed you much slower than that quick stolen kiss during the game. You had a few moments to respond, you had a few moments to close your eyes and enjoy the unbelievable softness of his lips, the taste of his tongue. The sopping wet, soapy hand prints that added to the wetness on your shirt was an afterthought to the warm breath that you pulled into your lungs from his mouth, the slow and gentle way he pulled away from you before coming in again and when at least he inhaled to speak he didn’t bother to move his lips away from yours with the whisper.

“You called me, Baby“ he said with his teeth bumping lightly against your top lip, “Am I your Baby? How can I resist? What should I do when you call me that?”

Did you really call him that? You knew you’d been nagging him. He got you all wet with his stubborn attempts to help.

“Did I?” You whispered with a little raise of your eyebrows. His eyes were on you when he gave you the smallest nod of his head and you remembered something about the odd words he’d been saying and the pointed way he’d held back with you all day. Small touches here and there but that unbelievably sexy man who had not only fucked you last night, but did so without hesitation or even protection was now trying to behave himself.

Was he standoffish because the two of you had rushed into things so quickly? Was he out of his depth now and trying to retreat and rewind? Was this someone being done out of misguided respect for you or was he somehow reacting to your own anxious energy you’d been emitting all morning? You admit you had been rather nervous around him today but that wasn’t because you had any reservations or regrets; it was just so very new to you and the last thing you wanted to do was fuck things up so early in the game when the two of you were still getting to know each other by essentially living together in a strange place right off the bat.

Your lifted your still dripping hands, trailing a wet path over his shirt from his abdomen up his firm chest and your eyes followed your fingertips over his shoulder bring your fingers to touch lightly over the back of his neck. His hands were still around your waist and his eyes had drifted a little with you touching him.

You’d been so nervous today that you hadn’t touched him much, maybe even not at all. Maybe it had been your doing. The unwelcome weirdness.

“Baby,” you called out and you pulled your eyes up from the view of his parted lips that inhaled a sharp breath, looking up into his deep brown eyes that searched your face with the sweet name again slipping off of your tongue, “Why are you holding back? If it’s for my sake, I don’t want that.”

“You seemed,” he pulled his head back to look into your eyes and whispered, “a little different today. I thought —”

You leaned in and you kissed him, capturing whatever words he had to say about whatever weird nervous mixed signals you’d accidentally sent him with your lips.

His eyes watched closely for whatever meanings you’d hidden inside of that kiss when you pulled away.

“I’m just — you make me nervous and a lot has changed.” His mouth hung open and he watched you speak. “I must like you too much.”

“But I am serious about you, Kyungsoo, and I definitely don’t want you to hold back with me,” you added quickly and the look in his eyes changed as the corners of his lips twitched hinting at the smallest smile. He licked his lips and bit down before anything obvious could manifest.

“You’re nervous?” You heard a hint of amusement in his question and finally, your eyes caught the smallest slip of a smile on his pretty face.

“What do we do? We can’t both be nervous. I called dibs on nervous already, so you have to be something else.”

His reassurances brought a smile to your face and you’d both stood here for too long already. The fabric on his chest had begun to lose the wet hand prints. The dish water was in danger of going cold.

He moved first, with a quick dip of his hands inside of the bubbles he was grabbing dishes, your dishes, your punishment for destroying something as breathtakingly beautiful as his face and he was washing them. You were shaking your head as soon as you noticed what he was doing.

“You stop washing them right now.”

“My woman shouldn’t have to suffer alone,” he mumbled and you opened your mouth to protest.

“No, Kyungsoo, I turned you into a sea monster. Let me do it.”

You should not have said anything. He inhaled a sudden gasp and his eyes closed up tight as he started to laugh all over again, bringing his wet and soapy hand up to cover over his belly in pain as he laughed. The contagiousness of his giggles had you laughing entirely against your will. His laughter didn’t even sound enjoyable anymore, he simply couldn’t help it. He breathed in and out again, forcefully deep, trying to control it; holding a hand up and pressing fingers into his arching cheeks.

“Sea monster! I was trying to figure out the animal. It was definitely something aquatic. Why did you put so many spots on me?”

“Those were your moles, Kyungsoo, you are covered in them.”

“Jesus. I am? Really?” he whined out his question in a playful voice and you smiled widely and nodded your head up and down in earnest. He really was quite spotted and the more you looked at him the more you saw. They were quickly becoming one of your favorite things about his face.

His balance was off and it was easy to pull his hands up by the forearms and plop him down into the other side of the sink, getting him the hell out of your bubbles once and for all. You had no idea he could be so silly and so happy so deep down on the inside that it bubbled up from inside of him and spilled out all over like this. You couldn’t remember the last time you felt this kind of joy before and to feel this while scrubbing the burned on bottom of an old soup pot that was probably older than you were was unreal.

The stray giggles had long gone quiet and you’d both worked in a comfortable silence for quite some time before he inhaled and whispered out a casual sounding question.

“Do you want to finish watching that movie after this?”

You looked behind you at that mattress and the movie you’d hardly been paying any attention to and looked back at him. At some point, he must have paused it. You searched your recent memory and you could have sworn that he wasn’t really paying much attention to it either, but maybe he had seen it before.

You watched his profile for a few seconds, noticing how he’d quite calmly asked this question, made no other suggestions for other movies, or even suggested restarting it so you could catch up on the plot and after a few moments his tongue darted out and he moistened his bottom lip, swallowed the moisture in his mouth and he just quietly cleared his throat in a very certain sort of way; all the while not looking up from the pot that had rinsed and re-rinsed at least five times now.

This was something.

You weren’t born yesterday. There was something happening here with this innocent, but only on the surface question that he’d clearly worked up the nerve to ask only after confirming how very receptive you were to the idea of him not holding himself back when it came to the physical aspects of your brand new relationship. Doh Kyungsoo was testing the waters.

You asked an equally innocent question.

“Any updates from the hospital?”

He must have known what you were asking. Would the two of you continue to be alone for a significant amount of time? Enough time for whatever might take place under that blanket on that comfy mattress if you just so happened to agree to slipping into that bed with him under the guise of watching an easy to ignore movie that neither of you were invested in.

“Still waiting. They’ll be a while longer,” he said into his sixth rinse, all of his attention and focus down on that flowing water. You didn’t even give his response an acceptable amount of time to stew before you shrugged out a quick response.

“Sure,” you answered his first question with as much nonchalance as you could convince your tongue to portray, “let’s watch the rest of the movie.”

You were still looking at him when he finally pulled his eyes up to look at your face with your nonplussed ‘Sure.’ Your lift of a single eyebrow as you accepted his suggestion to watch the movie had his big eyes watching your face for a long while and somewhere hidden deep inside of those dark pupils, you caught the slithering tail-end of enough thick desire to flood your stomach with heat. The bounce of his own eyebrows and that slipping focus of his eyes that slid down your face; sinking down to your lips and sitting right there until you felt the itching need to twitch, to lick your lips, to bite down on them to do anything you could manage to do to satisfy those dark eyes of his and get him to finally look away from you.

The dishes were washed, dried, and put away.

No movie snacks were prepared.

There were no attempts to catch you up on what you missed on the movie; you doubted he himself knew. You didn’t even know the name of this movie and when you’d made your way to the mattress you found him sitting on his butt, his legs bent up in front of him at the knees, and with a quick button pressed on his phone, that movie began to play again.

You took your space beside him and adopted a similar position, wrapping both arms around your knees and you stared ahead at the wall where the movie scene played, feeling an overwhelming nervousness about the unpredictability of this. This movie had something to do with magic. You’d seen bits of flashes of lights and smoke. Someone had said a spell. You could feel him moving beside you, shifting his body into a more comfortable position with the piles of pillows propped up behind his back. He adopted a more casual half laying down position, his knee caps facing in your direction and his chin propped on his hand bent at the elbow. You could not even tell if his eyes were on the movie. You felt much too self aware to face him right now. You didn’t look directly at him but kept an eye on him in your peripheral vision.

You forced your eyes forward but your every focus remained on the position, the slight movements, the little adjustments of the man who laid down beside you. The movie was playing and yet you could hardly absorb a single cinematic detail and you were still sitting up on your butt with your arms wrapped tightly around your bent knees, beginning to feel the urge to just give into this and lay down beside him under this ridiculous guise of watching a movie. You knew what this was. Your body was already responding with the flush of heat you felt all over, because of him, because of this man who had so easily burrowed himself a permanent home right under your skin.

Your legs were beginning to feel tingly. You had to move. You had to shift. You couldn’t really see the screen as well as you wanted to with the angle your face had been in and that was why you couldn’t focus on this. It had nothing to do with anything else, it was just for comfort, the tingly legs, the angle of the screen.

Fifteen minutes into the scene, you moved. You shifted further down on the bed, you let the blanket he pulled up cover over your legs and you laid down with the center of your back propped up on your own personal pile of pillows. You pulled another one just under your head and you let your face sink toward his just a little bit, just enough to feel the warmth and comfort of another living human beside you, just enough for you to be able to smell his skin.

It took another ten minutes for you to relax enough to drop a hand down between both of your bodies and it only took two minutes for you to feel the warmth of his fingertips touching lightly over the back of your hand and your silly mind lost the ability to keep track of time after that.

His fingers were traveling, just light as a feather touching up and down your arm, slipping up high into the crook of your elbow before switching direction and making his way back down again with just as light of pressure and as heavy as hell intentions.

You felt on fire. Every single perceivable thing about the man felt heightened. Your cells felt the warmth of his cells. Your skin was hyper aware of the exact position and location he lay in. You knew his bent knees were maybe 4 centimeters from yours, facing you. His thighs would have been within grazing distance from your hand if you merely reached a bit. Your ears tuned into the rhythm of his breathing, even the stuttered half breath he took with the little block you heard in his throat made its way into your ears and when he shifted his face mere millimeters you turned yours in involuntary response. It felt unimaginable that he wasn’t touching you more. He wasn’t reaching a hand up to slip behind your neck to pull you into him; he wasn’t lifting himself up to kiss you on the mouth, wasn’t rolling over your body and pressing himself in between your needy thighs, he was just laying there, lightly touching your inner arm with his fingertips as your entire body burst into flames that rivaled the burning building you caught glimpses of in that movie.

You could have fallen with one word from his mouth.

It was the last slow exhale that did it. You could tell that his lips were parted and his face had turned, impossibly closer to yours. You felt the heat from his lungs against your face and the skin of your scalp prickled and pulled with the goosebumps that spread from your nape down to the center of your spine; it moved like a wave through you and when you finally lost the battle and turned your face enough to look at him, he was watching your face with his dark brown eyes. The moment he had you held within, he inhaled through those parted lips and let his eyelids sink down halfway through the breath, his brown irises turned black in this dim lighting, his pupils never once letting go of your face.

He didn’t look away.

You couldn’t look away.

The forces radiating out of him felt too heavy to resist and you gave in with a sigh. You turned your face, dipped into him and you kissed his lips. That want had you by a chokehold, the way you wanted him nearly suffocated you.

You kissed him and he kissed you back and oh -- oh you were trembling. It was coming from inside of your chest and each gasp for air had a stutter. His soft lips changed, tightening against your mouth; you felt the smooth hard toothiness of a grin and the puff of air from his laugh blew over the wetness left behind by his mouth. His hands were holding your face and after the chuckle from him came the inhaled whisper, “Why did it take you so damn long to kiss me?”

You didn't know. You didn’t know. You shook your head back and forth and leaned into him again, touching his face, reaching for his lips, capturing him again in another deep and desperate kiss before pulling away again to answer his question with one of your own.

“Why didn’t you do it? You could have kissed me.”

You wanted him. Every bit of your body wanted him. You kissed him again; it felt insatiable. Biting down on his lip did not satisfy it. Sucking on his tongue felt like not enough — you wanted to burrow under his skin just like he’d done to you and when you pushed yourself to sit atop of his slim waist and your thighs tightened their hold around his hips you felt eternally thankful for the thinness of the fabric of your panties below the shorts you wore today. Thin enough to be able to feel the definite shape and size of his arousal pressing hard into you; the friction and pressure gave very little relief. His hands dug hard enough into your thighs to leave marks and he pushed his hips up while his rough grip pulled you down.

He shook his head back and forth and his lips pulled, showing his teeth before he pulled his pink lips in and bit down. He made a sound from the back of his throat, a moan that turned into a no, matching the shaking of his head, answering your question with a sound before he spoke.

“It had to be you,” he said cryptically. Smiling the moment you shook your head in confusion.

“Why?”

Kyungsoo sat up then, and he was reaching for your face with one hand, wrapping his other around you, pulling you harder over his lap with a strong forearm around your lower back.

“Because I want you to fuck me—” your skin reacted first to his words whispered into your ear; you felt the goosebumps erupt everywhere. Another wave of warmth flooded your abdomen, settling between your legs.

“I already know what I want.”

“But I need you to want me. I need to feel you wrap yourself around me completely.” His hand tightened around the back of your neck and you felt the sting of his hard teeth sinking down into your neck below your ear.

“And have me.” Your breath was caught in your throat. “And fuck me.”

You nodded your head, “I do — want to,” feeling much too breathless for quite as many debilitating words as he used. Your hands were pulling uselessly at his clothes; feeling not quite in full control of yourself with the trembling that you still felt happening inside. It was too much. You were overwhelmed but you managed a whispered request, “Take your clothes off.”

You had to get off of him. The logistics of removing all of these damned layers demanded it. You let balance give in and you sank down, noticing how the clarity in your mind very gradually returned without his hands on you; without that pressure between your legs; without those low whispered weighty words in your ear.

If you’d been under the impression that he was beautiful before this moment, you hadn’t come into this with the full impression of him. You’d thought he was simply beautiful but this word felt so inadequate for the illuminatingly, nearly blinding view of this man watching you — waiting for you. You hadn’t come to this conclusion with everything; not the glimpse of that thick heady look of arousal in his eyes and the way he consumed you entirely as you stripped bare in front of him. You hadn’t made up your mind about his actual beauty without first properly considering the swollen lips; plumped up by your teeth — the dark eyes, black eyelashes, the perfectly straight hair that fell over his forehead and contrasted perfectly with the pink in his cheeks; the expanse of absolutely perfectly smooth skin; the very scant trail of dark hair that scattered from his navel; a breadcrumb trail that lead to the evidence of the effect you’d had on him. That beautiful part of him that swelled and twitched when you touched lightly along his abdomen with your fingertips as you made your way closer.

Your lips pulled into a smile, feeling quite satisfied. His beauty was overwhelming and when he saw your smile, his lips mirrored it, pulling his lips in staggered bursts as his big eyes watched you climb over this bed coming closer to where he was, moving a thigh over him to sit over his waist again. This time without any barriers between your skin and his skin.

The moment you felt him, when his hardness and your wetness met each other, the smiles fell for the sake of the other senses that overwhelmed. You closed your eyes and had to breathe through parted lips as you moved your hips over him, the slip within the wet here; each pass; each bump between your legs was particularly addictive. A peek through heavy eyelids gave you glimpses of him; his face as he felt you, the furrow of his brows, the way his lips fell open — pink and plump; the flutter and drift of his eyelids and the way his head fell back; him reacting to the way you felt slipping over the length of him. Those sinful words he’d said to you still echoed inside of your mind as you moved. You felt encouraged by his words. He wanted this. He wanted your unrestricted enjoyment of his body.

You braced your hands on his abdomen and you pushed and lifted yourself up and as if he had been made specially for you, he lined up so perfectly without any effort at all. As if you were two pieces of the same puzzle, he slipped inside of you, making you feel complete in a single motion as you sank down on top of him. And all at once, all of the feelings of this, of him inside of you, of the slight pain of the stretch, the bump against him inside and then with how good it felt to feel him again; all of this consumed you so completely, you struggled to pay attention to anything else but the memory of his words; you let go of whatever silly restrictions you usually attached to sex. You could have this man. You could do what you wanted.

Still again and again your eyes sought him out. You watched his face as you fell. He was so beautiful and so very overcome — you watched him react to the feeling of you and each gasp from his lips, each furrowed brow and each bite down of his lips all fueled your movements. His hands were touching you, moving with you and he struggled to keep his eyes open, despite the very obvious need to look at you riding him like this, these feelings took his self control away from him.

The temptation to watch his reactions was so strong but another sensation demanded precedence. Closing your eyes and feeling him was everything. With each sink, each glide, each rough grip of his hands on your hips that pulled you down onto him the pleasure built inside of you, and when you could feel yourself succumbing. When you snaked your hips forward, slipping against him in that desperate way that brought you closer, you simply gave in; tightening your thighs, tightening your walls around him, shaking and trembling and coming undone on top of him with a reckless abandoning of every inhibition you’d had in the past. Something about him -- something about Kyungsoo. You gave in without hesitation.

And he -- he gave you only a few moments of it. You were still trembling when Kyungsoo sat up, compressing his strong arms around you tight enough to steal your breath. You felt dizzy when his hand landed on the back of your neck and his demanding mouth opened; he used plump lips to spread your parted lips further, he suctioned your tongue into the hollow of his mouth and the trail of wetness that connected your mouths when he pulled away held on, succumbing to the distance with a wet pop that landed on your heaving breasts. You felt just as desperate as his needy kiss; even his humid naked skin when pressed up against yours seemed reluctant to let go, you felt the warm stickiness wherever your skin met his, and when he moved just too far away, the humidity slicked over your skin’s surface begged to hold on just a little while longer.

His tight hold around you did not let you go, even through the rough roll as his muscles pushed and you found yourself on your back, looking up into the ceiling at the harsh fluorescent lights that lined this big room. Your limbs all wrapped tightly around his body as he pushed and pushed and pushed in between your sticky thighs, into the slick wetness, deep inside of you again and again until he was shaking, until he was pushing in hard, until he was moaning into your ear with that low voice, until the tremors echoed inside and brought the flooded heat that he filled you up with.

There was a pause, only for a few breath’s worth of time.

You felt the weight of his body land over your chest for a moment.

Kyungsoo laid his head down on you, his temple right over where your heart beat frantically inside of your chest and you unwound one of your hands, slipping your fingers into the strands of his straight hair and feeling the heat of his scalp with your fingertips and you just touched him softly and gently, feeling all of the life inside of him and knowing that this was something bigger than you. It was something bigger than him. It felt like so much more. All of that labored breathing and these two thumping hearts that beat in sync beside each other seemed to fall into the background.

This felt like nothing you’d ever felt before. This felt more than love. This felt more than happiness. Something greater than peace or satisfaction and something insurmountably bigger than the universe. Something unnamable, something indescribable like the nanoseconds of death itself when the soul slipped over the threshold and exploded into pure light.

You could have cried; if it had prolonged for longer than only a few breaths you might have. You felt him shift, probably worried he was suffocating you by laying on your chest like this. With the shift of his body came the soft sounds from him; the soft touches and gentle kisses over the surface of your skin that was already beginning to cool off.

He sighed into the skin of your neck and the dreamy sound pulled your lips into a smile.

His whispered words slipped inside of your waiting ears. “I can’t wait to spend my life with you.” With these words, they carried along the dreamy sort of promise that slipped into your open heart and clamped down tight inside the chambers, promising to never ever let go. Promising you a lifetime of this -- this something that you might just spend the rest of your life with him trying to give a name to.

“Me too,” you whispered and for now you just smiled, not too concerned with silly things like finding the right words to describe just how much this human meant to you.

All that mattered was that he was yours and that was enough for you.

Links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10

#exo fanfiction #exo smut #kyungsoo #exo fic #kyungsoo smut #kyungsoo fic #exo story #do kyungsoo #kyungsoo fanfiction #exo ff #kyungsoo series

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lilacsongs · 2 months ago

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“.... is everything okay?” kyungsoo asks, shifting uncomfortably with a towel wrapped around his waist post shower, but the concern in his expression is apparent. it’s still confusing but as far as he can put together, he thinks he might have overheard a couple’s quarrel on the phone. or is it exes? either way, it’s awkward as hell. / @artisn

#( last plot in source in his musician verse <3 )#kyungsoo — threads.#kyungsoo ft. eden.

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fadinglights · 9 months ago

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muse: baek kyungsoo, bartender/underground fighter, 26 open to: m / f / nb plot: maybe your muse just found out about his other job

"look at me. this is who i am, no matter how much you wish it wasn't.”

#kyungsoo — threads.#open rp #open starter #indie rp #indie starter

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formorethananame · 1 month ago

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Oh, if he had ovaries, they would have exploded into tiny, tissue-y pieces.

River watched Kyungsoo lift their baby into his arms. She was still so small, but now, Jisoo could recognize them both. Her little fingers immediately grasped the strands loose from Kyungsoo's braid as she babbled at him. It made his heart swell so big he was sure one deep breath would make it burst. Asking for their own baby was the best decision they'd ever made.

"Of course she was!" River strummed his guitar, the tune soft and sweet. "She's the best baby ever, duh!"

Kyungsoo was never a very expressive person, and yet he grinned so easily as he took River's hand and sat beside him. His boyfriend had brought him more happiness than he'd ever thought possible; he really had no option but to smile. "Already turning her into a little musician, are you?" He asked, pulling River into a soft kiss. He hated being away from him for so long, but River understood his need to go. Jisoo, on the other hand, didn't. So he quickly scooped her into his arms, cradling her against his chest and letting her little hands reach for the strands of hair that had escaped his braid as he worked. "You like when your appa plays for you, don't you, sweet one. Were you good for him while I was gone?"

#weedzkiller #replies; river #threads; river x kyungsoo #verse: where the wild things grow

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soobadnoonecanstopher · 4 months ago

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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

#exo fanfiction #exo smut #kyungsoo #exo fic #kyungsoo fic #exo story

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marshmallow-phd · 7 months ago

Text

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.

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