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caligvlasaqvarivm · 6 months

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Love is Stored in the Cat: A Nepeta Leijon Character Study

I guess these are a series now! I also have a request for Feferi in my inbox that I'll get around to eventually.

SO! Dear, sweet Nepeta.

Nepeta is the troll that is most against the existence of the hemocaste.

I believe the Ultimate Self speech was originally going to be from her, not Davepetasprite^2.

She's bad at shipping.

These all make her extremely impurrtant!!!

So furst of all, I'm going to start with the same disclaimer as my Eridan essay (go read that first!!! It sets up a lot of ideas that I'm expanding on here), which is that the things Hussie says are going to be lowered in value, because he likes to play coy about plot stuff. I'm also not counting anything but the actual text as canon, and even with in that text, I'm counting everything after GAME OVER as soft canon - a suggestion of what would have been, often truncated for time, often a deliberate middle finger to the shitty fandom.

Okay, so with that squared away!

Nepeta Says Fuck The Hemocaste

I'm not going to bother doing a deep dive on Nepeta's characterization, because fur the most part, I think the fandom more or less gets her right - she wears her heart (h33h33) on her sl33ve, after all! She's a very sweet little catgirl who loves roleplay and shipping, who is also a vicious hunter of wild beasts and lives in a cave. She's very nice and friendly, but has a tough streak and a spine.

She also says fuck the hemocaste, why does that even exist:

CT: D --> Your fraternization with the base classes have 100sened your morals, can't you see this AC: :33 < no! i dont care, they are fun AC: :33 < and i dont know anything about classes or bases or blood color, it doesn't matter! AC: :33 < what does gr33n blood even mean! it doesnt mean anything to me and it shouldnt mean anything to anyone else!

This is a radical stance not outright shared by any of the other trolls. Aradia calls highbloods "hateful sn0bs" that she and Tavros shouldn't have "ever had anything t0 d0 with", the highbloods are, of course, all casteist to varying degrees, and even Karkat seems fairly accepting of the class divide, at one point taunting Vriska that her rejection from the blue team is "ANOTHER INFURIATING VICTORY FOR GUTTER BLOOD OVER ARISTOCRACY". Not to mention his long-held dream of becoming a threshecutioner.

Even Feferi, despite saying to Eridan that "W-E AR-E NOT B-ETT-ER T)(AN ANYBODY!!!!!", is actually perfectly comfortable with the caste system's existence, comparing having to stop using her royal typing quirk to "peasant-IFICATING" herself - and let's not forget that a Beforus under her rule had its caste system 100% intact.

This means that Nepeta is the ONLY troll who has said, in no uncertain terms, that the caste system should not exist. It's stupid, it's bad, and it doesn't meowtter!

AND SHE'S RIGHT.

But she's never able to fully express this opinion, which brings us to:

A COMPLICKATED RELATIONSHIP WITH EQUIUS

Now, before I say anything, I must insist that I do believe these two work as good moirails. That does not, however, stop them from being 13, and therefore, being poor to each other the way 13-year-olds sometimes are. I don't think they should break up; I think they should re-examine certain dynamics, and I think they need some space to breathe apart from each other.

Equius has a lot of problems, which I won't get into overmuch here, because... that's a whole essay on its own (are you people seeing a trend yet). But with regards to Nepeta specifically, he's extremely controlling and protective, to the point where she's a little scared of him before the game begins:

AC: :33 < well it does sound like it will be a lot of fun but i think i should get purrmission first GC: BL4R!!!!! GC: TH4TS SO STUP1D GC: H3S NOT TH3 BOSS OF YOU AC: :33 < i know! AC: :33 < but still im kind of scared of him and i think purrhaps its best to just run it by him first so there isnt a kerfuffle about it or anything

She's also afraid to tell him about her crush on Karkat, since she knows he doesn't like Karkat:

AC: :33 < well AC: :33 < i have never told anybody this not even my moirail AC: :33 < heh, actually hes the LAST guy i might tell, he so wouldnt appurrve X33 AC: :33 < but yes i have liked somebody for quite some time, but alas he doesnt know it

By the time they end their game, she's gotten over this fear, seeing as she spends many hours curled up with Equius in a pile of robotics parts, but it still must be noted that they have some issues in their relationship that were never resolved, primarily on Equius's end. What this means for Nepeta, however, is that in addition to setting her up as the most outright anti-classism troll, the comic sets her up to be socially isolated due to her moirail's paranoia about letting her associate with both lowbloods (seeing them as bad influences) OR other highbloods, seeing them as dangerous.

He's not entirely wrong - his refusal to allow her to participate in FLARP kept her from winding up entangled in the horrible chain of revenge, as Tavros alludes:

AT: iT'S PROBABLY FOR THE BEST, AT: tHAT YOU LISTEN TO HIM, AC: :33 < i dont know AC: :33 < you think so? AT: wELL, AT: iF YOU DIDN'T LISTEN TO HIM BEFORE, AT: yOU MIGHT HAVE PLAYED GAMES WITH US BEFORE, AT: aND SOMETHING BAD MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED TO YOU, AC: :33 < hmm purrhaps

But he's still wrong. And it's probably an uncontrolled manifestation of his Heir of Void abilities - he's both consciously and unconsciously hiding her from other people.

This isn't to say she doesn't stand up for herself! Many of her discussions with Equius are pseudo-arguments, and she does get her way often enough, managing to get him to roleplay with her, and managing to get him back in the roboti% pile to talk about his feelings about Aradia. She also talks to the humans explicitly against Equius's orders, although she's keeping it a sneakret from him:

NEPETA: :33 < but equius already furbid me from doing that :(( NEPETA: :33 < not that i am listening to him, but shhhhh! :33 KARKAT: WAIT, HE DID? KARKAT: OK, THEN AS YOUR LEADER I ORDER YOU TO RP WITH THEM AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. BE AS OBNOXIOUS ABOUT IT AS YOU CAN. NEPETA: :33 < yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

But the fact that she has to tiptoe around him like this speaks to them having issues in their relationship that go unexamined and unresolved, especially since it's clear that Nepeta really would like to be friends with more people, were Equius not getting in her way. So, even though I do think they are good moirails for each other - they clearly genuinely, deeply care about one another. But they could use some relationship counselling.

In fact, Jasprosesprite^2 outright calls her lonely:

JASPROSESPRITE^2: Or the girl who likes ships! Cause they made her less lonely. ;3

So, she's anti-hemocaste and lonely, two character traits that were set up and never resolved. And beclaws this is Nepeta, in her honor, I'm going to talk about a third:

Her Unrequited Crush On Karcat

She has the BIGGEST flushed crush on Karkat. It's seen on her shipping wall twice, once with the word OTP on it.

And, despite never discussing it with her moirail, Nepeta mentions it once to Jaspersprite, and once to Jasprosesprite^2.

Now, I'm not really here to debate on the validity of KatNep - I think it's fine, even if I don't personally ship it, and don't personally think it would work out (there are lots of indications that they wouldn't work out, including Jasprosesprite^2 outright saying so). However, her crush on Karkat is both complicated and creates some interesting setups for her character. I am going to discuss it fairly critically either way, so KatNep shippers have been warned.

A lot of her feelings about Karkat - and about shipping in general - wind up being heavily interlinked with her status as a Hero of Heart, so I'm going to expand on it more there. But what I will note in this section is the fact that, despite Nepeta insisting twice that she doesn't think Karkat knows about her crush on her:

NEPETASPRITE: :33 < it was karkat NEPETASPRITE: :33 < but i never told him and im pretty sure he never found out how i felt!

He tooootally did:

KARKAT: OK, BUT TO BE FAIR, I'M PRETTY SURE SHE'S STILL OBSESSED WITH ME. KARKAT: IT'S A VERY UNFORTUNATE, VERY RED AND VERY UNREQUITED SITUATION I'VE BEEN TRYING TO TIPTOE AROUND FOR A LONG TIME, OK?

Interpret that how you will for shipping purposes, but I want to propose that this is a reflection of their statuses as Heart and Blood players. Heart, despite its players' obsessions with romance, is not the romance aspect, Blood is. Karkat displays this very same romantic acumen when he tells Dave that he's known Terezi and Gamzee were a thing for a long time, despite everyone else on the meteor trying to keep it a secret from him. Heart is, instead, about identity, feelings, motivations, souls, and self. In other words:

Nepeta Is Kind Of Bad At Shipping

Let's take a look at those shipping walls.

Let's break this down a little. Nepeta's ships are not entirely wrong, but even the successful ones are kind of wrong. Here's what I mean. We've already discussed how Equius and Nepeta's moirallegiance has some... issues in it. If we go down her list of ships that actually do happen, most of them have some issues in them!

Aradia expresses her regret for getting together with Equius in the Ministrife. Kanaya and Rose suffer some major relationship problems when Rose starts drinking, to the point Karkat feels a need to step in as an auspice. Karkat and Gamzee fail, as Karkat is not calmed by Gamzee, and Gamzee stops listening to Karkat. And while Sollux and Feferi seem to be fairly healthy, after they both wind up in the Furthest Ring, he's pretty much always next to Aradia - he and Feferi don't even get to exchange words with each other once they're in the Furthest Ring. Purrsonally, I think he and Feferi are meant to end up as moirails, but shhhh.

So what's happening here? Well, this goes back to her identity as a Heart player. Heart is concerned with feelings and motivations.

They simply want to understand the one thing we all are stuck with for our entire lives, i.e. our own minds. Forging an identity is extremely important to the Heart-bound, and every decision and action goes toward building a coherent narrative of their own story. That isn't to say Heart-bound don't care deeply for their friends and allies; they just have a tendency to assume that everyone is as concerned with identity as they are.

Nepeta's shipping has also been associated with her isolation and loneliness. When you put this together, it implies that Nepeta's shipping is about her desire to understand others, and much of her ships are based on one of the parties having feelings, regardless of compatibility, feasibility, or broader implications. After all, despite the fact that she has pretty terrible romantic acumen, she IS able to instinctively identify that Eridan's advances toward her were insincere:

NEPETASPRITE: :33 < well ok i guess eridan hit on me a few times NEPETASPRITE: :33 < but his advances always struck me as cr33py and insincere

And that Karkat secretly LOVES and RESPECTS his friends:

JASPROSESPRITE^2: On the contrary Nepeta. You deserve someone who will RESPECT and ADORE you. NEPETASPRITE: :33 < well... yes NEPETASPRITE: :33 < i always hoped to find someone like that some day NEPETASPRITE: :33 < i dunno maybe youre right but in spite of whatever problems he might have i always felt like i saw something in him that made me think he could be that purrson!

Or knowing that Equius loves to play games, and still feels sad about Aradia exploding:

AC: :33 < i s33 right through your stupid act, who are you trying to kid! AC: :33 < look how you go out of your way to use words that have x's in them so that you can use your silly purrcent signs AC: :33 < or use these absurd words that you can shoehorn a '100' into, even if its not strictly replacing 'loo'!!! AC: :33 < you are so transpurrent AC: :33 < i can tell you like to play games, d33p down you are a guy who likes to play games! AC: :33 < i can smell a guy who likes to play games from so fur away with this nose, you have no idea X33

NEPETA: :33 < she was so happy, just like she used to be, and she said she would s33 you soon! EQUIUS: D --> That's a nice thought, and thank you for sharing it EQUIUS: D --> But it was only a dream, and will surely have no consequence in reality NEPETA: :33 < equius? NEPETA: :33 < are those f33lings i an detecting with my wiggly whiskery nose? EQUIUS: D --> Maybe

Because feelings, and not relationships, are her actual domain.

And speaking of Heart powers...

Nepeta and the Ultimate Self

So from this point forward, I'm going to assume you're more or less agreeing with my take that at some point after Game Over, Hussie - for whatever reason - gave up on his original ending, and wound up truncating his ideas so he could finish the comic faster. I go more into detail about that here.

So, in this hypothetical original ending, I firmly believe that the speech about the Ultimate Self would have come from Nepeta. First, let's take a look at what the "Ultimate Self" entails, as it appears within the comic:

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < everything that ever happens to every version of you is an important part of your ultimate self... like a superceding bodyless and timeless persona that crosses the boundaries of paradox space and unlike god tiers or bubble ghosts or whatever, it really IS immortal DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < but in your physical form there are all these partitions in your mind that prevent you from remembering any of that which makes your existence f33l totally linear DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < which is probably for the best! DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < in a regular body s33ing all that would be too overwhelming ... DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < and after it sinks in for a while you start coming to this understanding of a greater self DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < maybe i "got it" quicker though because of the two people i was and their aspects DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < understanding heart is all about the nuances of a distributed self DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < nepeta never got to make much headway with her aspect but shes finally gettin the chance DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < the time aspect is all about running into different versions of yourself so you kinda get confronted with it in a really literal way that can be disturbing DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < obviously davesprite stuggled with that too, but now its fine DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < hes fr33 from worrying about it all and what it means for his place in reality DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < because he can s33 now all his selves have relevance in painting the full picture of who he truly is DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < im not COMPLETELY sure because im not like some sort of ASPECT MASTER but DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < my avian slash feline intuition tells me that all roads will lead you here eventually DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < gaining the d33pest possible understanding of any aspect will bring you to the same final conclusion about your ultimate self

Now, I believe - and I hope you'll agree - that it's kind of lame, narratively, for Davesprite to have been set up with so much angst about not being the "real Dave," and for Nepeta to have all her issues with loneliness and shyness, and for these two specific iterations of each other to have never interacted, but suddenly getting double-prototyped fixes all of their problems, and they achieve Ultimate Selfhood despite being two total strangers to each other. So let's instead break down the more salient points about what Ultimate Selfhood entails, divorced from the fact that it's Davepetasprite^2 doing the narrating:

Every player in the game possesses an "Ultimate Self," an ultimate culmination of all their experiences and memories, specifically referred to as a "persona"

Normally, people are not aware of this, because it would be too overwhelming to deal with so many memories and iterations of each other.

Everyone will achieve Ultimate Selfhood eventually as the final culmination of their understanding of their aspect.

Heart is all about the nuances of a distributed self.

Let's talk about that last one some more, and by that I mean, let's see what Calliope has to say about it:

TT: I don't know why it had to be this way for me. Juggling these two waking selves at once. TT: I guess I'm used to it, but it still makes for a pretty intense existence. TT: Do you even know what the deal with that is? Like is there any precedent in your readings? UU: i don't know aboUt precedent, bUt it makes plenty of sense to me as the type of path one might expect for a hero of heart. UU: a path rUled by the heart aspect can be a joUrney of splintered self. UU: that is, the player's being may exhibit the same kind of fragmentation which certain classes coUld caUse in others. UU: i think this is what has triggered yoUr dUal-awareness between waking and dream selves, thoUgh it woUld not sUrprise me if the symptoms manifested in even more ways than this.

Now, Dirk has a clawmplicated relationship with his alternate selves, given that he's a Prince, but Nepeta wouldn't have the same struggles, or at least, not to the same degree. The problem is, hampered by Equius and her own shyness about discussing her thoughts and feelings with others:

NEPETASPRITE: :33 < i get so shy and worried what people might think of me if i say how i f33l NEPETASPRITE: :33 < im always so scared that they wont f33l the same way or just think im stupid or pathetic or something

She never actually gets to explore this part of herself.

But What If... She Did?

The way I imagine the original ending going is that each troll that gets saved by John's interference in the timeline then asks John to help them fix their own mistakes, thereby saving somebody else. Each successive trip through the meteor brings new character development, and also riddles the comic with progressively more password pages, which I think would be really funny. And throughout all this the Game Over team is searching for Vriska, Meenah, and the treasure, and resolving their arcs that way, so it's not like they would be replaced - they're the ones who get to kill LE. The process, in my mind, goes like this:

Terezi asks John to save Vriska, and prevent her from getting too spades with Gamzee, as these are her two greatest regrets.

Vriska obviously had great regrets about killing Tavros, both pre- and post-retcon, so she asks for his death to be prevented.

Tavros staying alive means that he and Gamzee wind up hashing out some stuff - Gamzee mentions that he feels "So aT ChIlL WiTh yOu" while talking to Tavros, and Tavros reciprocates the friendship and also - interestingly - acknowledges Gamzee's religion, calling it beautiful even if he doesn't necessarily believe in it. This is interesting because Karkat's inability to do so is explicitly one of the reasons their moirallegiance broke down. So having Tavros back, alive, means that he and Gamzee would likely end up in some sort of relationship, probably pale despite flushed leanings, and would bring Gamzee back into the fold.

Gamzee would then be like, yeah, wow, that time I killed Nepeta and Equius was pretty bad, huh? Especially since his decision to hang onto his friends' bodies and prototype them is often interpreted as him genuinely feeling bad about his dead friends (he tells Kurloz to shut up when Kurloz mentions all the dead friends, and his religion seems to be about a paradise he wants to share with his friends anyway). So he'd ask John to prevent him from killing them, resulting in the two of them getting to live.

Things get much more hypothetical from here, since so much of the character dynamics would have changed, but I think by this point, Equius might command ask John to let him say goodbye to Aradiabot before she explodes, which he expresses feeling very sad about. However, in doing so, John and Aradiabot end up in the same room, and when she realizes that he has the ability to change the timeline without repercussions, she'd seize him by the arm and demand that he take her back in time, to before she died. After all, she expresses regrets about her reckless actions, and how she always felt like it was all one big setup.

She would take Aradia's place in the Vriska revenge chain, being once more freed of her robot chassis, and from there, would trick Doc Scratch and the Handmaiden into thinking everything was still going according to their designs. Meanwhile, Alive!Aradia would be hanging out at Equius's place, borrowing his void powers to avoid notice, coordinating a new timeline that keeps the beats of the original (too much deviation causes unpredictability, and an paradox'd timeline offshoot without John's direct interference would still become doomed), but allows them greater freedom and the ability to overcome the machinations of Doc Scratch and associates.

This would also prevent Sollux from becoming so self-loathing, since it's no longer "his fault" that Aradia dies, although he winds up in that hole again after Feferi gets killed. Now that his Aradia is alive, he wouldn't feel like he might as well stay in the bubbles because his closest companions are there, so he'd make it to the end, and would ask John to prevent Feferi's death.

Eridan still dies; he's so disconnected and isolated from all his friends that his course of actions is largely unaffected even by everybody else's timeline tweaks. But before Feferi can suggest bringing him back, Karkat would butt in.

The Friendship Troll should be the one to demand that ALL of their friends be revived, especially if they had everyone except only one guy, and Karkat and Eridan are heavily implied to be moirails anyway. The course of Karkat's fixes are so comprehensive, and primarily romance-based, that the end result of this final loop is everybody not only being alive, but god-tiered, with appropriate character development.

Now, where Nepeta's Heart powers would play into all of this is that she would start to notice something going on. After all, Heart players are sensitive to their splintered selves, and (Nepeta) is probably much closer to Nepeta than regular doomed timeline offshoots. As the loops continue, and Nepeta has more and more time to talk to people, and meets her dead alternate selves, and even meets (Nepeta), she starts to awaken to her Ultimate Self - to come into possession of alternate memories.

And if the Ultimate Self is a very soul-y kind of concept, such that Heart players have a natural advantage in coming to understand it, then isn't it a natural fit that a Rogue of Heart - one who steals from Heart or steals Heart for others - would be naturally inclined to share the wisdom of her alternate selves, and even the very concept of the Ultimate Self, with her friends?

Because the Ultimate Self is actually, in my opinion, a pretty good narrative device. It turns the sadness of the dead and doomed timelines into something littersweet instead, and makes it so any weirdness regarding time travel and not really knowing your friends anymore will eventually be resolved, even if off-screen.

It's not really narratively satisfying when Davepetasprite^2 suddenly comes into being and reaches enlightenment, but imagine if instead it's a post-character development Nepeta comforting Davesprite on his relevance, or Jade on her loneliness, or John on not really knowing these new post-retcon versions of his friends? It would feel a lot better, since in this hypothetical, she would have reached that point after on-screen character development. Being able to share her true self with her friends on the meteor - by necessity, since what else are they going to be doing for three years - leads to her finally being able to fulfill her role as a Rogue of Heart.

Also, at some point during these repeated meteor trips, she dates Karkat (whether that's successful or not, I'll leave to reader interpretation - you already know where I stand), fulfilling Jaspersprite's musing that she might only be able to date Karkat after she dies.

So that's two out of thr33 of her outstanding plot hooks resolved... okay. So, I try not to make these essays into ship propaganda, but hear me out:

Hate Is Stored In The FefNep

Okay, so, remember that thing about how Feferi is actually a huge casteist hypocrite? Well, let's also note that the comic, post-Murderstuck, seems to put Nepeta and Feferi together a lot - they're a Commodore and Rear Admiral in the ghost pirate army, respectively, and they also wind up as Fefetasprite. So I think it's not entirely out of left field to say that these two were implied to have SOMETHING going on.

And that something... is a difference in political views.

I mean, let's be real, there's a reason Fefetasprite is the most explode-prone after Tavrisprite. Miss "The Hemocaste is Stupid and Shouldn't Matter" vs. Miss "I Love Being A Princess And Call Jade Hornless and Finless (Derogatory)"? Come on, tell me you don't see it.

Without getting too much into Feferi, this hypocrisy, and unwillingness to check her privilege (so glad I found an excuse to use that term unironically), are probably her greatest character flaws - ie, the things you would expect the story to address about her. Meanwhile, one of Nepeta's flaws, which she laments to Jasproseprite^2, is that she feels too shy to talk about her feelings to other people, leading to her having never expressed her views on the hemocaste to anyone but Equius.

I think that they initially think they'd be friends. Each one of them would go "oh man, this other girl is soooo cute, I wish I could talk to her more often!"

And then, once they do, they realize they fucking hate each other. Nepeta would go "X00 < you are such a hypocrite who f33ls like youre better than all of us!!!" and Feferi would go "You're suc)( an uneducated glubbing P-EASANT! 3X0" and then they'd claw each others' eyes out. It would be so funny, and if a homestuck ship isn't extremely fucking funny, then why are we even here.

But more importantly, this would further them along into resolving each others' arcs - Feferi would be forced to grapple with the greater implications of classism, and Nepeta - who is shown having a spine the most in defiance of somebody else - would grow more aggressive about being open about her feelings in defiance of Feferi. Even Equius would get roped into it in a positive way - you can just imagine him going "D --> Can I really believe my auricular sponge clots D --> Nepeta, you are finally taking interest in politi%" and be 100% on board with teaching her so Feferi won't be able to call her uneducated.

And then for flushed, I dunno! Karkat's an option, and Jade and Jake also both love the fuck out of furries, and Tavros seems nice. But yeah I'll die on the fefnep hate ship. Guys it would be so funny.

Thank you as always for reading! Let me know if there's a troll you want to hear me ramble about next.

#homestuck #nepeta leijon #feferi peixes #equius zahhak

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asahicore · 1 year

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love calculator - pjh (m)

this work contains smut - minors please do not interact

pairing. best friend!jihoon x fem!reader

synopsis. You were sure that Jihoon only took care of you so well because your brother had tasked him with looking after you when you started university, so you tried not to read too much into his actions until you couldn't deny your increasing sensitivity around your best friend anymore. What you didn't know was Jihoon was going crazy, finding ways to make his feelings for you more obvious than they already were.

genre. f2l, brother's friend, slight childhood friends action, college au, slow burn?, fluff, smut (mutual first time, they do it raw, dirty talking, very soft dom!jihoon)

warnings. jihoon is a menace, jihoon has a hot bod, junkyu is mean to everyone, mc is a bit slow, side romance but i dont actually ship idols i have a life, omegle, ok theres no actual stuff to be warned about its all good in there

word count. 28.2k dont ask me why or how idk either

a/n. there she is... i spent SO much time on her pls love it lots or i'll cry.. it was sm fun writing for jihoon omg i hope u love hoonyn as much as i do !!! @zreamy my dear sweet little zo ty for betareading this and freaking out over jihoon u rock

1K follower trope event - requested by @mosviqu, tysm for requesting and i really hope u enjoy it !!!! - listen to the playlist!

Oddly enough, it was Jihoon’s biceps that first made you think something was wrong with you.

It was the fourth week of the spring semester, that odd in-between when you knew midterms were creeping up but were still far away enough to be ignored. This meant that you could party guilt-free.

The plan for tonight was to pregame at one of those huge uni dorms where ten students shared a kitchen then head to an overpriced club downtown that always had the best music on Friday nights. You didn’t have any classes on Fridays, so you’d headed to Jihoon’s place around four p.m. to get ready together. Usually, that was something you’d do with Minjeong, your roommate, but that weekend, she was away for an excursion with her Geography course.

He was in the shower when you rang the doorbell, so his flatmate let you in, and you made yourself comfortable on his bed while waiting for him. You were so engrossed in the romance Webtoon you’d started that morning that at first, when he came in, you didn’t even look up from your phone.

“Hey, Y/N,” he said casually, unfazed by your sudden appearance in his room. The soft smell of his body wash filled the room, and you noted with smugness that it was the one you had jokingly given him for Christmas after you’d gotten fed up with his strong, ever-present Axe scent.

“Hey, Hoonie. You smell nice. For once.”

He chuckled. “It’s all thanks to you.”

“What would you do without me?” you said with a sigh, then looked up. You shouldn’t have. “Oh.”

The sight you were met with was unlike anything you’d ever seen in real life - Jihoon in all his post-shower half-naked glory, a simple white towel hanging low on his hips. Small beads of water fell from his hair and dripped down his chiseled chest and onto the plush carpet lining his bedroom.

You were pretty sure you’d seen at least five scenes like this in your romance comics.

“Oh?” he parroted.

You squinted your eyes at your friend before turning your attention back to your phone. “You’re naked.”

From the corner of your eye, you saw his grin widen. “I’m wearing a towel.”

“A towel isn’t clothes.” He turned around to rummage through his closet, and you took that opportunity to observe him more closely. This was the first time you saw your friend without a shirt, and you were trying your very hardest to not freak out, but it was a bit hard not to. Who would have known that under his baggy shirts and sweaters, Jihoon was hiding firm abs, broad shoulders, defined back muscles and protruding biceps?

His arms were what really got you, because you felt like you should have noticed them before. You’d already caught yourself staring a little bit too hard at the veins on his hands and forearms during a lecture before, so you could’ve conjectured that the upper part of his arms was well-defined as well. As mesmerizing as the shifting of his shoulder muscles was, what you really couldn’t look away from was the bump that formed his bicep.

“Jihoon, have you always had… arms?”

You had barely even realized you’d said this out loud until Jihoon turned around, a confused look on his face. His lips drew into a smirk when he saw how fixed your gaze on his biceps was.

“No, they just grew recently. Thank you for noticing.”

“No, I mean… arms. Muscles.”

“Oh, these?” he said, flexing his arms and pecking his biceps in such a cheesy way that it snapped you out of your reverie and made you burst into laughter. “I started working on them last year so, yeah, they’ve been around a while.”

“Huh,” you said, then picked your phone up again and resumed your reading. “Well, you should work harder, ‘cause it’s the first time I noticed them.”

Jihoon scoffed. “Don’t act like you weren’t just drooling over my dream bod just seconds ago.”

You looked up, outraged. “I wasn’t drooling, I was observing. And don’t call it a dream bod, that’s gross.”

“My bod is a dream bod.”

“Stop it.”

“Can you look away from my dream bod for a sec? I need to put some pants on.”

“I’m already actively not looking. This dude is way hotter than you, by the way,” you said, waving your phone.

“Let me see him,” Jihoon said, heading towards you after successfully putting a shirt and sweatpants on. Gray sweatpants, you realized with a frown. He took your phone and looked back and forth between the character on the screen and you, an expression of disbelief on his face. “Y/N, this is a two-dimensional fictional character that exists in a fairyland. It hurts my feelings when you call him hotter than me.”

A lip grew on your lips. “Yes, but he has pointy ears and doesn’t refer to his body as a dream bod, so he’s a ten in my books.”

As you spoke, Jihoon lay down on his bed, stretching his arms behind his head and resting it on his palms, looking up at you with a grin. You didn’t know what to make of the sudden flip of your stomach.

“Will I be a ten in your books if I stop calling it a dream bod?”

You laughed. “Dream bod doesn’t even sound real anymore.”

“I don’t think it ever was, to be honest,” Jihoon replied, laughing along. “Or maybe they invented it for me.”

After that riveting discussion, you watched the show you’d been watching together (which, you had been surprised to find, Jihoon had the discipline to not watch ahead for), then finished getting ready. That night out hadn’t been particularly extraordinary. Pre-gaming had been fun and chaotic, but the line at the club had been so long that you’d all sobered up by the time you were inside and none of you felt compelled to pay for six dollar shots. At least the good music and nice DJ that took all of your requests made up for it.

The interesting bit happened on the bus ride back home.

By some miracle, Jihoon had run into some of his friendly course seniors that apparently liked him so much, they decided to pay for all of his drinks. Only an hour after getting into the club, he was nothing short of wasted. In your five months of being at university with him, you’d not once seen him in such a state - disheveled hair (from dancing too hard or from getting his hair ruffled like a cute dog by all of his seniors, you weren’t sure), deep red blush staining his cheeks, forehead, ears and neck, unfocused eyes and constant lopsided grin. When he almost tripped over his own feet during Gimme More by Britney Spears, you knew it was time to go home.

Jihoon was usually the one that had to deal with a drunk you, so you didn’t mind taking care of him this time. It was actually kind of fun, seeing this new side of the person who had become your closest friend in the past months.

Luckily for you, a night bus ran directly from the downtown area you were in to the street you and Jihoon lived on, and you managed to lug him to the bus stop. Getting him onto the bus and into a seat was an arduous task, but you made it, and were enjoying a calm, uneventful ride home until you felt Jihoon’s head drop onto your shoulder. You thought he’d just fallen asleep, but then the unmistakable sound of his voice made itself known to your ears.

“Y/N, Y/N…” Jihoon murmured with a muffled voice, burying his face in the crook of your neck. You tried to ignore the prickly feeling down your spine when his lips moved against your skin.

“Yes, Hoonie?” you asked, a tilt of amusement to your voice. You really had never seen your friend so intoxicated.

He sighed, lifting his head from your shoulder and resting it against the window with a bang. He didn’t even wince at the impact of his head against the glass - the alcohol had apparently rid him of the sensation of pain.

“Don’t call me that,” he mumbled, voice so quiet you had to ask him to repeat himself. “I said don’t call me that!”

You were taken aback by his sudden burst of irritation, but he sounded more like an upset child than anything.

“Call you what? Hoonie?”

“Yes.”

“Why? I’ve always called you that.” You tilted your head at him, but he kept his eyes fixed on the road outside.

“Exactly. You’re the only one who calls me that. Everyone else says Jihoon,” he said, annoyance clear in his voice. It sounded like this had been bothering him for a while, but it was complete news to you. “Can’t you even be bothered to say my full name, or something?”

You chuckled and brushed some hair out of his face. Like an angry cartoon character, he puffed air out of his nose and crossed his arms over his chest. His frown deepened and a blush spread over his face that was already red from the alcohol. “Should I call you Jihoon from now on?” you asked softly.

His reaction was immediate. He whipped around, almost knocking your head with his, a look of total alarm on his face. His eyes were almost teary. “No!” he exclaimed loudly, garnering glares from some of the other passengers in the bus who probably wanted some quiet this late at night. “No,” he repeated, this time more quietly, and turned back to the window.

In slight disbelief, you chuckled again. “What am I supposed to call you, then?”

“Just-” he started, but cut himself off with a sigh. “Just call me whatever.”

A small smile tugged at your lips. “I’ll stick to Hoonie, then.”

He groaned as he lifted his head from the window and let it fall back against your shoulder. The angle must’ve made it highly uncomfortable for his neck, but he didn’t seem to mind. He only stayed still for a few seconds before shifting slightly and burying his face in the dip between your shoulder and your neck once more, then let out a low hum of satisfaction.

“You smell nice,” he mumbled. Your breath caught in your throat. He was too close, his lips were too soft and his breath was too warm against your skin. Your whole body felt hot, like the bus driver had suddenly cranked the heat up and turned the bus into a sauna. “Like almonds,” he added, pressing his nose deeper into the base of your neck and inhaling there.

You tried to laugh, hoping it would dissipate the tension in your body, but it only came out as a choked sound. “It’s my body lotion,” you explained, voice weaker than you’d intended.

“Hm.”

You didn’t know what it was about Jihoon’s proximity that made your head spin so - no one had ever made you feel this way, and the fact that your body was reacting so intensely to someone you had considered your best friend for the past months made it all the more confusing.

“Are you asleep?” you asked him in a small voice after he’d been silent for some minutes.

“Just sleepy,” he murmured, shifting in his seat again. You tried not to shiver at the tickling sensation of his hair against your neck.

A pause. “Jihoon?”

“Don’t call me that.” You smiled, but there was a slight whine to his voice that, for some reason, made your heart ache.

You corrected yourself. “Hoon?”

“Mmh?”

“Why did it bother you that I call you Hoonie, all of a sudden?”

He took so long to answer that you almost thought he hadn’t heard you. “Because… every time you call me that, it makes me love you more,” he answered, voice getting gradually lower until it became a whisper.

Everything seemed to disappear around you. The other passengers, the seat underneath you, the blinking lights and the night sky outside the window. It was just you and Jihoon, his body warm next to yours and the only thing keeping you tethered to Earth.

“Makes you… love… me?” you echoed tentatively.

But no answer came. When you bent your head down to look at Jihoon, it seemed like he had fallen completely asleep, mouth slightly agape and the blush of alcohol still red on his face. You didn’t know what to make of his words, but there was no point asking him about them now. So you let him sleep on your shoulder, only waking him once you were nearing his stop.

Jihoon woke up the next morning with a pounding head and a bruised ego.

He had always prided himself in his ability to drink copious amounts of alcohol and yet only end up tipsy. Sure, it wasn’t exactly good for his body, but it meant that he never had to turn down a drink or watch on the sidelines as his friends did shots, and he could still get home just fine and not wake up with a head-splitting hangover the next day. Unlike you, who started giggling for no reason after one pint of beer and who tore it up on the dancefloor or talked to strangers like you’d been besties for years after two shots of tequila.

It only made his state of the previous night that much more embarrassing. He wished he had your amazing memory-erasing superpowers - but sadly, he didn’t, and what happened in the bus was glued to his brain.

Before he could even lift his head or get a cup of water, his phone rang, the sound invading his ears and splitting his head in two. He slid a thumb across his phone to accept the video call and was greeted by a close-up of Junkyu’s smiling face.

“Rise and shine! I heard someone got their party on last night.”

Jihoon groaned loudly, chucking his phone somewhere on his bed so he didn’t have to see his friend’s face anymore. His was definitely not the face he wanted to see first thing in the morning. Unfortunately for Jihoon, Junkyu had been blessed with an extraordinarily loud voice that still rang clear even when the speakers of Jihoon’s phone were stifled by his blankets.

“Y/N sent me a video of you. You looked ridiculous, man.”

“I hate you. I hate your face, I hate the way you talk, I hate how mean you are to me-”

“I can’t hear you. What was that?”

With another groan and a lot of difficulty, Jihoon raised his upper body and retrieved his phone. “You suck.”

Junkyu’s smile widened. “Well, that’s all from me. Have a glass of water!” he said cheerily before hanging up. Jihoon had never wanted to kill someone so badly.

His murderous feelings softened when he turned his head to find a plastic bottle of water and a headache pill along with a handwritten note on his bedside table. Have this and text me when you wake up! with five hearts at the bottom. It wasn’t signed, but he knew it was from you.

When the two of you met up for brunch sometime later, he kept searching your face and reading into your actions for any sign that what he’d said last night had made you uncomfortable. He’d expected you to be awkward around him, but your attitude almost made him think he’d imagined the whole thing. You joked around with him as usual, as if he hadn’t practically confessed to you last night, and he was desperate to know what might be going through your mind.

Had you forgotten? Had you chalked it up to him being drunk and talking nonsense? Had he had just thought it very hard, and not actually said it out loud? Or, worst of all, had you heard it all and understood him and decided to just ignore it for the sake of your friendship?

Jihoon was going crazy. He could barely taste his chicken and waffles.

The truth was, you just had no idea what to make of his words, and you were scared bringing it up might make things awkward. Jihoon could have forgotten all about it, or he could have meant something entirely different from where your wild, romance-comic-filled imagination went. Save for his tired eyes and groggy voice, he was no different at breakfast than he usually was, so you dropped it.

“Okay, Y/N, I think it’s time for you to go home now.”

Different Friday night, different party. A week had passed and neither of you had mentioned what Jihoon had said on the bus - it wasn’t quite out of your minds just yet, but you’d both separately decided to pretend nothing had happened.

This time, Jihoon had found you in the hallway playing beer pong and downing the cup of beer your opponent had thrown the ball into. Everybody cheered you on as you gulped the cheap liquid down before lifting the empty cup over your head, eyes screwed shut at the unpleasant bitterness in your mouth. Jihoon wasn’t sure why you were playing - you hated beer, and you had one of the worst throws he’d ever seen. But even he, who was supposed to look after you, couldn’t suppress a smile at your attempt and inevitable total fail at scoring a point for your team. Even with all the concentration in the world, the sheer amount of alcohol in your system would’ve made it impossible for you to make it.

Back against the wall and arms crossed over his chest, he watched amusedly as you squinted your eyes at the cups across the table from you, even sticking out your tongue as if that would make your aim any better. After a few tense seconds, you threw the ping-pong ball and hit Lee Jeno right in the chest. You’d giggled at your own failure, letting people pat you on the back for trying and reassure you that it’s okay (even though you really didn’t care) before stumbling right into Jihoon.

As soon as you’d recognized your friend’s face, you’d thrown your arms around his neck and pulled him down into a hug as you yelled his name happily; his hands had come up to your hips and gently pushed your body away from his. Then, he’d said the words you always hated to hear at a party.

“But we just got here!” you cried, the same answer you always gave him when he wanted to leave. You started walking away from him and back into the kitchen for more alcohol. He sighed but was quick to follow you.

“We got here three hours ago. Plus we did pres at Yoshi’s place. You’ve had way more than enough to drink,” he said, snatching a cup you’d just filled with punch from your hands.

“I was gonna drink that!” you complained, leaning against the counter for support.

Jihoon took in your swaying body and your dazed eyes and knew he had to get you home. Any more alcohol and you’d pass out in this stranger’s apartment. Usually, he’d let you drink to your heart’s content and just make sure you got home safe afterwards, but midterms were coming up, and you’d planned on studying the next day - he was just trying to minimize the severity of your hangover.

You mustered your most pitiful expression - to drunk you, there was no way Jihoon could resist your pouty lips and sad eyes. “Do we really have to go?” you asked, and Jihoon had to read your lips because of the loud music.

He smirked, seeing right through your little act. He bent his upper body so that his lips were right next to your ear. “You’ll thank me tomorrow,” he replied, making you drop your fake sad expression.

“I should go say bye to Minjeong and the others first.”

“I’ve already told them we were leaving.”

You rolled his eyes at him and his stupid smile and lifted yourself from the counter, immediately losing your balance. Maybe you had drunk too much. At least Jihoon was there to catch you and prevent you from falling. He tried to put his arm around your shoulder to support you but you stepped away from him and fixed him a pointed look.

“I can still walk, you know.”

Jihoon smiled but said nothing, gesturing at you to go on and walk. You turned around and started making your way out of the place, ignoring Jihoon’s snickers as you bumped into various party-goers and pieces of furniture.

When you reached the front door, you decided that actually, no, you couldn’t walk. Sliding against the wall, you let yourself drop into a crouching position. Your head suddenly felt like it was twice its normal weight and you regretted those last few shots of whatever it was you had drunk.

Jihoon sighed as he lowered himself and grabbed you under your armpits to lift you up. He had never been more thankful for an elevator and a bus stop only a minute’s walk away from where you were. Standing under bright lights in a desert and quiet street, it appeared like an oasis to Jihoon. Whoever’s party this had been, they lived in a really calm part of town. At this time on a Friday night, Jihoon’s street would be teeming with drunk students deciding which bar or club they should head to next.

You had never been more thankful for a bus stop with seats. You plopped yourself down on one of them, resting your head on the glass behind you and tightening your jacket around your shoulders. You closed your eyes, deciding this was the perfect time for a nap.

“Are you cold?” Jihoon asked, his voice keeping you from nodding off. You let out a non-committal hum in response which he wasn’t sure how to interpret. He chuckled and you heard a rustling sound before feeling an added weight on top of your body. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he murmured, then sat by your side.

Next thing you knew, Jihoon was making you stand again, and your feet moved of their own accord as he led you inside the bus. As soon as you were seated, you drifted back off to sleep. You jolted awake when your head drooped over, making you feel like you were falling. You sat up straight and looked around the empty bus, frantically asking Jihoon where you were.

“I’m taking you home,” he answered, laughter clear in his voice.

“Oh, okay,” you mumbled, and closed your eyes once more, falling back asleep in a matter of seconds.

Jihoon watched with a tender smile as your mouth opened slightly and let soft snores escape it. Scooting closer to you, he placed his palm on your cheek and pulled your head towards his shoulder so it could rest there.

“Why do you drink so much if you can’t handle it?” he asked quietly, even though he knew you were already in dreamland.

When you opened your eyes the next morning, you felt like a kid who had fallen asleep in the car on the way home from a distant relative's wedding and mysteriously woken up in their bed. You stretched out your limbs, enjoying the softness and warmth of your sheets covering your body until a headache and pasty mouth hit you like a ton of bricks. It felt like the alcohol had made your brain shrivel inside of your skull - your whole body was screaming for water.

Some kind of miracle had made a large glass of water appear on your bedside table, and you gulped it down in mere seconds. The hour on your phone read 10:24 a.m. - so much for getting up early and going to study at the library.

You’d have rather stayed curled up under your blankets and slept the rest of your hangover off, but some rustling noises from the kitchen (and an intense need to pee) forced you out of the comfort of your bed. You stumbled into the kitchen to find Jihoon placing a pancake atop an already dangerously high stack.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty,” he greeted you, glancing at you with a smirk on his face as you made your way towards him. You stood behind him and rested your forehead at the base of his neck, as if catching a few last seconds of sleep.

The feeling of your hair against his skin sent shivers down his spine and he hoped his shaky intake of breath had gone unnoticed by you. His pancake was ready and he had to put it on the plate behind him, but as if a cat had fallen asleep in his lap, he couldn’t get himself to move. This was a moment he wanted to cherish - although you never particularly kept your distance from him, he was still always greedy for more of your touch.

“Hey, Hoonie,” you replied in a groggy voice. “Thank you for breakfast,” you said, moving to rest your lower back against the counter next to the stove. He missed you immediately. “And sorry for being a nuisance last night.”

Jihoon smiled at you as he turned to place the pancake on the stack. Then he leaned in slightly and you made sure not to breathe through your mouth so he wouldn’t smell your morning breath.

“You always apologize, and yet who’s dragging you home every single weekend?” he asked with an amused grin that let you know he wasn’t actually bothered by it.

He turned back to his pan and ladled more batter into it, forming a perfectly circular pancake. “Sorry,” you repeated guiltily.

He shook his head. “I’d rather be there and make sure you get home safe. And it’s not like I don’t have fun at those parties.”

A small smile on your lips, you nodded and let his words assuage your guilt. “I’ll make coffee as a token of my gratitude.”

“How kind of you,” Jihoon teased, beaming.

No matter how many times Jihoon reassured you, you still felt bad that he thought it his obligation to do those things for you.

Although you’d only grown closer at the beginning of your first year of university, now six months ago, you and Jihoon had known each other since you were thirteen, and he fourteen. You still remembered his braces, wide boba eyes and round cheeks from your teenage years - when you saw him again five years later, you couldn’t deny your surprise at his much… manlier appearance. Sharper jaw, broader shoulders, taller figure, deeper voice - it was hard to recognize the Jihoon you’d known and the Jihoon in front of you as the same person.

His parents’ job made their family move around a lot - your town had been their fifth home since Jihoon’s birth already. The year and a half they stayed went by far too quickly, and before you knew it, you already had to say goodbye. Jihoon and Junkyu had grown really close in that year, and since you were always in your older brother’s business at that time, you’d developed a liking for your brother’s best friend, too. You liked the way he’d ruffle your hair whenever he came over to your house, the way he remembered strawberry milk was your favorite, and the way he’d wave at you in the school hallways, effectively making you cooler than all of your friends for knowing someone who was in the year above. At the time, you hadn’t known if what you felt for him could be described as a crush - all you knew was that for the rest of high school, you missed him.

When you found out that he had not only come back to South Korea to study, but that he was attending the university of your dreams, you couldn't have been more excited. But you chalked it up to the relief of knowing someone in an otherwise unfamiliar place.

Jihoon had been even more welcoming than you’d expected. He had come to get you at the airport with a big, colorful Welcome Y/N banner, helped you move into your dorm and treated you to a meal the night you arrived in town. Over the following weeks, he’d introduced you to his friends, showed you around campus, and kept inviting you out “so you would know where the good spots were.”

Thanks to him, settling in had been a much less stressful and emotionally exhausting process than you’d expected. But no matter how grateful you were, you couldn’t help but wonder why he was going to these lengths to welcome you.

Somewhere in the town center, there was a square that was extremely popular among skaters for a reason beyond your understanding. But at almost any time of the day and night, you could find people practicing their skating there. You’d just left a bar nearby with Minjeong, Jihoon and his friends, and to an intoxicated you, skating, something you had never attempted before, seemed like the thing to try out right then and there. You ran up to the first skater you found and asked him if he could show you how to ride.

Minjeong had run after you, finding a skater of her own while Jihoon’s friends either watched or talked about something else amongst themselves. Of course, the inevitable happened, and as soon as the skater let you try skating on your own, you’d fallen on your hands and knees. In a flash, Jihoon had been by your side, frantically asking if you were okay and making you show him your palms. They were only grazed, and one of your knees was bleeding very faintly, but Jihoon acted like you’d just broken something. He got you to get on his back so he could carry you to the nearest pharmacy, leaving his friends and Minjeong to wonder what the hell was going on. You tried telling him you were okay and could walk on your own just fine, but he wouldn’t listen.

He’d sat you on the curb in front of the all-night pharmacy and asked you to wait as he got disinfectant and bandages. You watched his face closely as he rubbed medical alcohol on your wounds. A crease had plagued his eyebrows ever since you fell, and he would not stop mumbling something about you needing to be more careful and you’re lucky you didn’t get hurt badly.

You hadn’t realized you were crying until one of your tears fell on Jihoon’s hand, hot against his skin, and he looked up at you with worry, any of his previous frustration with you wiped from his expression.

“Y/N? Why are you crying?” he’d asked, voice soft, as if trying not to scare you.

You sniffled. “Why are you so nice to me?”

His eyes softened and a small smile grew on his lips. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

You couldn’t bring yourself to mirror his smile, and the more you cried, the sadder you felt. Inexplicably, your tears just fell and fell and fell. Under the bright white lights of the pharmacy, in the cold of a particularly chilly September night, Jihoon wrapped an arm around you and let you cry on his shoulder. He didn’t ask any further questions, just waited for you to calm down as he rubbed a hand up and down your back and whispered in your ear that it was okay.

When you thought back on it now, you knew that it had just been the alcohol making you unreasonably emotional - you weren’t actually sad about Jihoon looking after you, if anything, it made you happy. But once you’d started crying, you couldn’t stop.

“I’m just looking out for you,” he’d said once your sniffling had somewhat lessened. You’d leaned back to look at him.

“But why?” you’d whined.

Your frown had deepened as his smile had widened. “Because we’re friends.”

“Is that it?”

“Well, Junkyu also asked me to look after you,” he admitted sheepishly.

You gasped in affront. “He what?!”

“Y/N-”

“So he’s been forcing you to do all of this?” you asked, voice breaking at the end. Your anger had lasted two seconds - you’d gone back to being sad at the thought of Jihoon only being nice to you because your stupid big brother had asked him to.

“No, no, it’s not like that, listen to me-”

“I can’t believe the two of you! I’m not a child-”

“Nobody said you were-”

“So you don’t actually even care-”

“I do!” Jihoon had exclaimed, louder than you’d expected, and it shut you up. “I do,” he repeated, voice softer. His hands were still on your upper arms, and he leaned in closer. “You’re his little sister. Of course he was worried about you leaving home. He just asked me to make sure you don’t get into too much trouble,” he explained, lightly tapping the tip of your nose with his finger.

He sighed, smiling as he watched you try to keep an upset expression on your face. He took the bandages out of the pack he’d just bought and stuck them with caution on your wounds. “But I wouldn’t be doing all of this if I didn’t care, Y/N.” When your eyes met again, you hadn’t known what to make of the look in his. “I missed you, you know.”

Just like that, the ducts behind your eyes filled up again, and large, hot tears streamed down your face as you rested your forehead against Jihoon’s shoulders again. He chuckled at your dramatics but placed a reassuring hand against your hair. “I missed you, too,” you replied between broken sobs.

He’d texted his friends to take Minjeong with them and go on without the two of you, then carried you back to his apartment, which was thankfully only a five-minute walk away.

Ever since that night, you and Jihoon had been inseparable. He continued checking on you consistently, bringing you food and coffee without you even asking and, of course, getting you home safe from nights out.

You were thankful to have a friend like him.

“Pancakes?!” your flatmate exclaimed as soon as she walked through the door, snapping you out of your thoughts.

“Hey, Minjeong,” you and Jihoon greeted in unison.

She was wearing her clothes from last night and her hair was a mess, but she had a bright expression on her face (despite the faint mascara stains underneath her eyes). You narrowed your eyes at her but she made a beeline for the food, completely ignoring you.

“Hot,” she mumbled as she held a pancake between her fingers, but threw a piece in her mouth anyway. “You’re so lucky to have a boyfriend like him, Y/N,” she said around her food.

“Isn’t she?” Jihoon replied before you could say anything.

You rolled your eyes at the pair in front of you and poured a cup of coffee for Minjeong. She referred to Jihoon as your boyfriend so often that you didn’t bother to correct her anymore. “Not my boyfriend. And even so, he’s more like a bodyguard than anything.”

“Being a bodyguard is just one of the many duties of being a boyfriend,” Minjeong declared, easily ignoring you. “Don’t you agree, Jihoon?”

He nodded, a serious look on his face. “Absolutely. I take what I do very seriously.” When his eyes found yours, he shot you a wink. Your frown deepened.

“Anyway, care to share why you’re coming home so late?”

A blush creeped on Minjeong’s cheeks. “Well, Yoshi’s place is quite a ways from here…” she murmured, looking down at her half-eaten pancake.

“Called it!” you yelled, just as Jihoon let out a loud “no” of shock and defeat.

“Next takeaway is on you,” you told Jihoon with a proud smile. In a mature response, he stuck his tongue out at you.

Minjeong frowned at both of you. “You guys bet on this?” she asked, vexed. Jihoon exchanged a look, glanced back at her, and shrugged. “Not cool. I didn’t even know something would happen with him. How did you guess?”

You smiled. “You always go for the cute ones.”

She hummed in agreement, her expression almost a pained one. “He’s just the cutest little thing ever, I couldn’t help myself.” She took a sip of her coffee, cringing at the bitter taste before getting up to fetch sugar and milk.

You sighed at your friend. “You’re gonna break that poor boy’s heart.” You knew Minjeong wasn’t to blame for the boys that got attached to her when she made it clear she wasn’t looking for a relationship - but if it happened to Yoshi, you’d feel guilty. You’d met him in a tutorial for one of your Digital Media courses and he seemed like he wouldn’t hurt a fly. He’d invited you to do pres at his place, and you’d dragged Minjeong and Jihoon along, so they’d met through you. In a way, if Yoshi fell for Minjeong and got hurt, it’d be your fault.

“I told him I didn’t want anything serious,” she said, pouring as much milk as there was coffee in her mug.

“He doesn’t seem like the type to do casual stuff,” Jihoon chimed in as he placed the last pancake on top of the stack. But it was one pancake too many, and the whole stack fell over. Jihoon wasn’t rattled - he placed a few on his plate then rebuilt the stack.

Minjeong ate her last bite of pancake and got up from the stool. “Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

“We? This is your problem, babe,” you said.

Minjeong smiled at you, eyes crinkling as she pressed a wet kiss to your cheek. You were sure there was some pancake left on her lips. “You’re such a good friend, Y/N,” she said, making you laugh. Of course you’d help Minjeong if she needed - but you were starting to feel bad for all the hearts she kept breaking. “I’m going back to bed,” she announced. Then, she put her hand next to her mouth as if telling you a secret, but spoke loud enough for Jihoon to hear anyway: “I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, is all I’ll say.”

Jihoon choked on his food and you let out a groan of disgust, but you both burst into laughter anyway. “I want details later!” you called out.

“You won’t be disappointed,” she said between giggles as she closed her bedroom door behind her.

Just then, your phone buzzed with an incoming video call, Junkyu’s face taking up your screen. “Hey, ugly face,” you greeted, propping your phone up against the milk bottle.

“Hey, stink.”

“Hey, Kyu!” Jihoon called out and took a seat close next to you - you knew he was just trying to squeeze into frame, but the sudden proximity still made your breath catch in your throat for a second.

Your brother’s eyes narrowed. “What are the two of you doing together on a Sunday morning?”

You looked at Jihoon, then back at your screen. “Is there something wrong with Sunday mornings?”

“Not inherently, no…” your brother conceded. “But still.”

You rolled your eyes at him and his meaningless suspiciousness. “We just went to a party together last night and he crashed here afterwards.”

“She was so wasted I had to bring her home. And I made pancakes this morning.”

“Y/N, if you don’t marry this guy, I will,” Junkyu said with all the seriousness in the world, and Jihoon made a kissy face at him.

“What’s up with everyone today?” you sighed. “I’m going to shower. You two have fun.” You knew your brother probably didn’t have much to tell you anyway - he liked calling you for no other reason than to bother you.

“Oh, we will,” Jihoon said with a suggestive tone, and you made a vomiting noise before disappearing into the bathroom.

“When I told you to look after her, I just meant to make sure she doesn’t drink too much or get involved with weirdos. I didn’t mean to make her pancakes on Sunday mornings,” Junkyu teased, a knowing smile on his face.

Jihoon looked down at his place, a small smile growing on his lips as well. “I know, but I like doing those things for her.”

Junkyu let out an odd noise, half out of disgust and half out of annoyance. “I can’t believe you. Just ask her out, already.”

“So you don’t like me at her place on a Sunday morning, but you want me to ask her out?”

Junkyu rolled his eyes (Jihoon thought this was a family trait, at this point). “I’m trying to help you out here, buddy. I know she’s my little sister, but you’re also my best friend,” he started, ignoring Jihoon’s aww, “and I don’t know how much longer I can stand you being in love with her but not making a move.” He paused to sigh. “I know you’re a good guy, so you have my approval, or whatever.”

Jihoon smiled somewhat sadly, picking at his food with his fork. “I appreciate it, Kyu, but I really don’t think she feels the same way.”

“How do you know that? Have you asked her?” Junkyu asked, not even trying to hide his impatience.

“No, but-”

“Do I need to do it for you? Do you want to hide behind my back while I tell my little sister, hey, my friend here has something he wants to tell you? Hey, my friend thinks you’re pretty, do you want to talk to him? Are you a big baby who can’t do anything, Park Jihoon?”

“No, I just-”

“You know, if this were a k-drama and you were the main lead, everybody would get Second Lead Syndrome. Me included. You suck.”

“Supportive as ever, Kyu,” Jihoon said, sighing.

“If you don’t ask her, you’re a bitch. I’m hanging up now,” Junkyu said before Jihoon could get another word in. He just shook his head, chuckling as he dug into his pancakes again.

The two of them had had this conversation about a thousand times, and they always came to the same conclusion: Junkyu thought Jihoon should confess his feelings to you, and Jihoon dismissed the idea, knowing he’d never have the guts to do it. To him, making jokes about being your boyfriend and relentlessly flirting with you was sign enough of his affection for you - you just needed to figure out that he wasn’t actually kidding at all. He was already doing half of the work for you, really.

An hour later, the two of you were sitting on the fifth floor of the library, where nobody ever dared to venture because of its dark corners and maze-like rows of bookshelves. It creeped Jihoon out, but it was your favorite place to study, so on days he couldn’t convince you to go to a nicer spot, he sucked it up and followed you to the table you liked by a window that overlooked the park next to the campus. The window let some light in, but to get there, you had to go through dim hallways that looked like they hadn’t seen a human soul in years. Jihoon didn’t know how you’d found out about it in the first place. It felt like something a fourth-year would keep as a secret, not something a first-year would have discovered in her first months of attending uni.

As he observed your sleeping figure, Jihoon couldn’t help but feel slightly annoyed. You’d gotten about twenty minutes of work done before resting your head atop your crossed arms, claiming you would just take a “power nap.” He couldn’t believe you’d emotionally manipulated him (pouted up at him and gave him puppy eyes - with that look on your face, Jihoon would agree to murdering someone for you) into going to this creepy part of the library only to sleep almost immediately after getting there.

He bent down onto his arms, mirroring your position, and let himself have this moment. Even though he saw you all the time, it wasn’t often that he could shamelessly stare at you and get away with it.

He watched as your shoulders rose and fell to the consistent rhythm of your breathing, as the sunlight pouring in from the window made your eyelashes cast shadows against your cheeks. You looked so peaceful that any trace of his irritation towards you vanished. It wasn’t like he could ever really be mad at you.

Jihoon loved how little you had changed in the years you’d been apart. Of course, you’d grown into your features and didn’t quite look like the thirteen-year-old version of you he’d known, but still, you had the same face and same habits he’d fallen in love with in the first place.

He still remembered the way his heart had swelled when he’d found your face amongst the crowd at the airport, how his whole body had buzzed with excitement at the idea of finally seeing you again after all these years. When you’d received your admission email from your university, the first thing Junkyu had told Jihoon was that he’d better look after you. It wasn’t like he didn’t think you couldn’t handle yourself, but it reassured him, knowing someone he trusted so much would be there to help you adjust to university life, since he couldn’t do it himself.

Jihoon had taken this seriously. Junkyu hadn’t given him any sort of instructions - the picking you up at the airport, introducing you to his friends, making sure you were well-fed and well-caffeinated, that was all him. At first, he tried convincing himself that he was doing this in an old friend, big brother fashion - he knew how close you and Junkyu were, so he fancied himself a sort of Junkyu 2.0 for you to rely on.

It had been when he saw your red, puffy eyes, trembling lips and tear-stained cheeks that he realized his old feelings had resurfaced. After all, don’t they say you never really forget your first love?

Truth be told, that whole night had been a dead giveaway. From the moment you met up at the bar to his little nurse moment in front of the pharmacy, his heart had not stopped racing. He kept checking on you, making sure you were having fun and handling your alcohol, and stuck by your side the whole time, like a bee to a flower.

He remembered standing arms crossed over his chest and observing you with narrowed eyes as you tried out skating. He was telling himself he was just watching in case you got hurt, but he couldn’t ignore the way his stomach twisted with a hot, unpleasant emotion as the skater guided you, hands on your waist. He didn’t like that you held that stranger by his shoulders, relying on him and not Jihoon for support, or that you laughed together like you’d been friends for years. Jihoon was your long-time friend, not this random long-haired, baggy-shirted, vans-wearing loser skater that probably had a name like Mark or something.

When you’d fallen from that skateboard, his heart had dropped in his stomach. He’d been sick with worry that you’d gotten badly hurt, and even upon seeing your barely-grazed palms and knees, he hadn’t been reassured.

Seeing you cry had made him panic like crazy. He tried his best to comfort you, but had no idea whether he was doing a good job. For days after that night, he’d replayed the conversation the two of you had under the lights of the pharmacy.

“Why are you so nice to me?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? I’m just looking out for you.”

“But why?”

“Because we’re friends.”

“Is that it?”

Jihoon hadn’t known whether you meant, is that the only reason, or, are we only friends? But he’d thought the second question was wishful thinking on his part. So he told you about the promise he’d made to Junkyu, and that had somehow made you even more upset. Even though he hadn’t said it outright, he’d thought he had made it clear that he wasn’t only doing this because Junkyu had told him to - he also wanted to be there for you. He did care, more than he wanted to admit.

Over time, his feelings for you had grown far bigger than simple teenage nostalgia - he loved your present self impossibly more than fourteen-year-old Jihoon had loved thirteen-year-old you. He thought he made it obvious - he always made sure to compliment you, remembered your coffee order and favorite dishes from your favorite restaurants, rushed to your side whenever you needed him, and did everything he could think of to support you. Sure, he relentlessly teased you as well, but that was just Jihoon.

If you noticed him, you didn’t show it. He wasn’t sure whether you genuinely didn’t know he wanted you as more than a friend or were playing dumb, but he knew you saw him as something like a second older brother. But Jihoon had come to terms with that - he’d rather be in your life as a friend than not at all.

This was why he was grateful for moments like these, when he could just look at you without you knowing.

After five minutes, Jihoon quietly got up and bravely made his way through the dark hallways and back outside to get you a drink - in case you woke up grumpy from your nap, he knew a matcha latte would appease you. He almost got lost on his way back, but when he found your table again, you were still sleeping. He couldn’t help himself - before rousing you, he snapped a quick picture of your sleeping face, making sure to get the drool pooling at the corner of your lips in frame. The photo went into his Y/N folder, full of pictures and videos he’d both secretly and not-so-secretly taken of you, which, no, wasn’t creepy at all, thank you very much.

When he pressed one drink to your cheek and the other to your forehead, you woke up with a gasp, then immediately winced at the pain in the side of your neck from the uncomfortable sleeping position.

“I wasn’t sure whether you’d want a hot one or an iced one, so I just got both.”

“Ooh, iced, please,” you said. “Thanks, Hoonie.” But before you could grab the drink, he snatched it away.

“No drinking until you get at least one thing done,” he said, a satisfied smirk on his lips.

You frowned. “But the ice will melt and it’ll taste all watery.”

Jihoon didn’t want to give in so easily.

“Hm?” you hummed, tilting your head at him.

Jihoon gave in, handing you your drink with a tut. Seeing your excited grin and hearing your sigh of contentment after taking a sip made it worth it.

About two (surprisingly productive) hours later, your stomach started demanding nourishment, and who were you to deny it? Your hangover was strong that day, and even the pancakes and coffee hadn’t completely rid your mouth of its sour taste. You needed something salty and greasy, so you pitched going to the fried chicken place a few blocks down to Jihoon, who agreed immediately.

On the way there, you tried to recollect some moments from the party yesterday, but quickly realized that not much was coming to mind. Pre-drinks at Yoshi’s were clear in your head, and so was walking to the other party - but the better part of your memories after that were fuzzy or non-existent.

“Hoonie?” you suddenly asked.

“Hm?”

“Did I do anything embarrassing last night?”

Jihoon chuckled. “Not more than usual.”

You groaned and pushed his shoulder, making him laugh even more. “I mean, you just kinda danced like crazy and talked to absolutely anyone. At some point you were gone for like twenty-five minutes, and I found you in the bathroom taking selfies with girls I’d never seen before in my life.”

You pulled out your phone and checked your gallery - indeed, there were about fifty pictures of you and some random girls. “Who are they?” you asked, more to yourself than to Jihoon, in disbelief at how comfortable last-night-you looked with these strangers. “They seem nice enough, I guess.” You laughed with Jihoon before sighing. “Well, that’s not too bad. I’ve done worse things.”

Jihoon made a face as if to say, Yeah, I know, and you rolled your eyes at him. You returned your gaze to the path in front of you, but if you’d kept on looking at Jihoon, you’d have noticed the smirk growing on his lips as a joke formed in his head. After some time, with a shit-eating grin on his face, he broke the silence. “Oh, well, there was also that moment when you confessed your undying love for me, tears streaming down your face, begging on your knees, all the works. That was pretty embarrassing. But I get it.”

It was so ridiculous that you couldn’t help yourself from laughing as you slapped his shoulder. “You wish,” you said between giggles.

I do wish, he immediately thought, but kept it to himself. He laughed instead and could only hope his real thoughts weren’t so obvious.

Two things happened in the fried chicken shop restaurant.

Well, three, if you counted their promotion on their chicken rice cake coleslaw menu, which was your favorite and which Jihoon always chided you for ordering (“Anyone who likes coleslaw is not human”), but in the grand scheme of things, that wasn’t so important.

First, your mom called. Now, this wasn’t anything huge in itself, but it was Jihoon’s behavior that got to you.

You had gotten maybe five words before he snatched the phone from you and lifted it to his ear. “Hi, Mrs Kim!”

You heard a faint but enthusiastic “Hi, Jihoon!” on the other side of the line. They made small talk for a bit, and you couldn’t believe your mom could have forgotten about her only daughter so quickly. You’d dived back into your fried chicken, pretending you didn’t care about whatever it was they were talking so energetically about, until you heard your name on the other end.

Your and Jihoon’s eyes met. A mischievous smile spread across his lips and your gaze hardened. “Yes, well, you know her, she’s a bit of a nuisance, but I’m keeping her out of trouble and all that. I saved her from joining a cult the other day,” he said, and you rolled your eyes at him.

“Oh dear!” you heard your mother exclaim.

“You didn’t save me from anything, I knew what that woman was up to.”

You’d been waiting for Jihoon outside of the movie theater when an older woman approached you. She seemed friendly enough, and you thought she was just a lonely grandma in need of a nice discussion - which it was at first, until it veered towards religion. Next thing you knew, she was telling you stories about the upcoming end of the world and how we had to beg for salvation. You didn’t believe any of it, but you found it captivating, so you stood there listening to her and egging her on until Jihoon showed up and forced you out of there. You thought it’d have been funny if he’d listened along, but knowing Jihoon, a small part of him might have actually believed her and started freaking out.

“I didn’t know you and my mom were so chummy,” you said when the phone call was over. She hadn’t even asked to talk to you again.

“Your mom’s awesome. I can’t believe such a lovely woman gave birth to two gremlins like you and Junkyu. Are you sure you’re not adopted?”

It had seemed like nothing at the time, but when you played the scene over again in your mind that night as you lay in bed, the fact that Jihoon got along with your family filled your heart with an unexpected warmth. It was almost like he was part of the family himself - not in a third child way, but more in a if you brought him home to your family, he’d fit right in, a thought that had made you panic as soon as it’d appeared in your mind. Because why were you thinking of bringing Jihoon home? Why did it make you so happy, knowing he’d be welcomed with open arms?

You shook your head against your pillow, hoping it’d make those thoughts vanish. You reassured yourself by telling yourself that you’d be just as happy bringing a friend like Minjeong home, and that you were sure she’d get along just fine with your brothers and parents.

The other sign had been much more straightforward. You weren’t afraid to eat messily in front of Jihoon, so some honey barbecue sauce had spread over the corner of your lips as you wolfed down one of the wings. As soon as Jihoon started to lean in across the table, you knew you were in trouble.

Not only did he wipe the sauce off your lips with his thumb, but he licked it off of his finger, never breaking eye contact throughout the whole ordeal. Your whole body tensed and you swear you stopped breathing for a second.

It only really lasted maybe five seconds, but felt like hours to you. You glared at him for a bit before diving back into your chicken, hoping you didn’t look as flustered as you felt. But Jihoon and his stupid, proud smirk probably knew what he’d done to you. As if that wasn’t enough already, he even had the audacity to whisper cute under his breath. Your eyes snapped back up to his face, but he just smiled and nodded towards your food, telling you to keep eating.

Over the next week, the word cute refused to leave your mind. You kept replaying that scene over and over - the feeling of Jihoon’s thumb on your lips, the sight of his own lips around his thumb, his gaze through it all. It wasn’t the first time such thoughts of Jihoon plagued you - once, he’d guided you through a crowded club with a hand on your lower back and the way the warmth of his hand against you had made you feel prompted you to ignore him for the rest of the night. Another time, he’d kissed you on the forehead after dropping you off at your apartment and you hadn’t been able to look him in the eyes for the following week.

You took the small but meaningful events of that day as your second sign of your new odd feelings directed towards your best friend, feelings that you didn’t know how to name just yet.

Crazy rich Yoon Jaehyuk was having a pool party at his house, and basically everyone was invited. If you knew about the party, you could go - all Jaehyuk had to do was to tell maybe ten people and let them spread the word. As his partner for an English Linguistics class you had together that semester, you were one of those privileged people who’d known firsthand about the event and had made sure to tell everyone you knew to come. You shouldn’t have been so surprised to find what must’ve already been a hundred people on the front lawn, inside the house and around the pool when you showed up with Jihoon and the rest of your friends there.

Coincidentally, this was when the third sign occurred. Third time’s a charm, as they say, and the events of that night and those following cemented your growing hunch that something really was up.

Pre-drinks at yours and Minjeong’s place had already taken quite a toll on you. Jaehyuk lived at the edge of town, quite a ways from your flat, but the vodka cranberry you’d snuck in on the bus prevented you from sobering up during the long ride. When your group arrived at the party, both you and Minjeong were ready to dance. But before you could rush to wherever the dancefloor was, Jihoon caught you by the wrist, effectively stopping you in your tracks. Your eyes went from his fingers around your wrist to his smiling face, a surprised look on your own.

“We’re gonna head directly to the pool. Don’t drink too much, okay?”

Your lips blossomed with a smile. Typical Jihoon. “Okay.”

The alcohol probably had something to do with it, but a surge of affection for your friend hit you and you stood on your tiptoes to press a kiss to his cheek before taking Minjeong’s hand in yours and making a beeline in the direction of the music.

I Gotta Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas was calling your name and you didn’t think to turn around to look at Jihoon, so you missed the way he watched your figure retreating into the mass of drunk students as he tried to commit the warmth of your lips against his cheek to memory.

You and Minjeong made your way to the center of the crowd, shrieking with drunken excitement when you found a group of girls from one of your shared classes there and exchanging very brief pleasantries before falling into the rhythm of one of your all-time favorite party songs. In your humble opinion, no one understood partying like The Black Eyed Peas did.

You only leave the dancefloor on one occasion, which is to take a round of vodka shots with your new best friends for the night - Jihoon had said not to drink too much, not not at all. One of the girls (Yunjin, you thought, but she showed up to class so seldom you weren’t sure) had a trick of pouring a lick of strawberry syrup before the alcohol, so that you wouldn’t be hit with the nail polish remover aftertaste of vodka. You were delighted to find it worked (almost) like magic.

It’s about an hour later when you and Minjeong reach the pool, not quite sober but more so than when you’d arrived at the party. For a pool party, there were definitely less people there than inside the house, maybe due to the fact that it was the end of February and most people didn’t want to risk getting hypothermia from the temperature difference between the heated pool and the cold outside.

The relatively small number of people makes it easy to spot Jihoon, in nothing but his swimming trunks and a towel around his shoulders, sitting on a longchair a dozen or so meters away from you. Something about half-naked Jihoon, you’re not sure what, makes you want to walk over to him and do… you’re not sure what, but Minjeong frantically slapping your arm and whispering your name stops you from doing whatever it was you wanted to do.

“Y/N! Y/N! Yoshi is right there,” she whisper-yelled. Indeed, Yoshi was in the pool, not far from where you stood, playing with his friends you recognized from pre-drinks at his place the other day. Minjeong’s face was redder than you’d ever seen it, and you recalled a conversation you’d had earlier that day.

“Will Yoshi be there?” Minjeong had asked, trying to sound innocent.

You’d looked at your flatmate with an incredulous look on your face. “Yes, he’ll be there, you slut. I thought you never went for a second time?”

She’d shrugged, an unusually shy smile playing on her lips as she looked down at her feet. “I don’t know, we’ll see.”

This was very unlike Minjeong - in your six months of knowing each other, it was the first time you ever saw her even consider getting with someone a second time. You didn’t know what sort of spell this Yoshi guy had cast on your friend, but it must’ve been very effective.

“Go talk to him,” you simply said.

“What?! No way, I can’t- Oh my God, he’s looking at us,” she said, words rushing out of her mouth, “he’s looking right at us, isn’t he?”

You just laughed at your friend and waved at Yoshi who was already waddling towards your edge of the pool. “Hey, Yoshi!” you called excitedly. At the sound of your voice, Jihoon’s head snapped towards you. He wasted no time in yelling your name, motioning for you to come over, so you gestured back that you’d be there in a minute.

“Hey, Y/N!” Yoshi called back with the same tone. “Hey, Minjeong,” he added, tone somewhat quiet, but the blush that grew on his cheeks told you you weren’t the one he was most happy to see.

“Hey, Yoshi,” she said so quietly, you weren’t sure the boy could even hear her.

“Nice to see you guys here,” he said, talking to you but glancing nervously at Minjeong.

“You too!” you replied, and before he could add anything, you placed a hand on your friend’s shoulder. “Well, I’m sure the two of you have a lot to talk about. See you later!”

You grinned innocently at Minjeong as she called your name, eyes wide in panic. She was a big girl, and Yoshi was clearly into her - she could handle herself. Jihoon eyed you amusedly as you made your way towards him.

“Are you setting them up?” he asked when you were within earshot of him.

“I’d be a bad friend if I didn’t at least try. I’ve never seen Minjeong blush over a guy, so this must be serious.”

A few of Jihoon’s friends were hanging out next to him, people that you knew from the many parties you attended together but that you rarely saw outside of drinking contexts. You waved at them before sitting on the deckchair next to Jihoon’s. He pivoted in his seat to face you, seemingly not minding that he’d just turned his back to his friends, then scooched his chair closer to yours so that your knees touched. You rested your palms next to your thighs and kept your gaze down. Something about Jihoon kept you from meeting his eyes, tonight. Maybe it was the half-nakedness.

Jihoon eyed you for a little bit, wondering what was making you so unusually quiet, before looking behind his shoulder to check whether Minjeong had been able to make progress on her own.

“Looks like it’s going well,” he assessed.

You followed his gaze to find Minjeong sitting at the edge of the pool and kicking her legs in the water while Yoshi stood next to her, water up to his belly button. You smiled as they giggled and splashed each other - it was going well, indeed.

“Have you been in the pool yet?” you asked, shifting your gaze to the party-goers playing in the water. The echoes of people talking and water splashing were quite loud, but Jihoon was so close that you didn’t need to raise your voice too much.

“No, I just took my shirt off for the hell of it.”

You had meant to bring your eyes up to his face, you really had - but somewhere on the way, they stopped on his abs, and got stuck there. It was probably a full five seconds before you could look away from the well-defined muscles on his stomach and finally meet his eyes. He didn’t need to say anything - the smirk playing on his lips and the slight surprise in the raise of his brows were enough to tell you he had not missed your stare.

You looked back to the pool, eyebrows slightly creased in shame at having been so obvious. Thankfully, you had brought a drink with you and took a swig of it there. “I wouldn’t put it past you.”

You were trying to ignore the way Jihoon’s eyes burned into the side of your face, the way they followed your every move, but with each passing second, you felt more conscious of them. Not unlike one would try to escape a wasp, you thought that going into the pool might tear Jihoon’s eyes away from you at least for a little bit. It’s not that his gaze made you uncomfortable, like that of a random old man in the street would, but it definitely made you feel… things. Things that you didn’t necessarily want to dive into.

The problem was that, to go into the pool, you’d need to get into your swimsuit. You’d thought ahead and had come already clad into your bikini underneath your clothes, a black, strapless tube dress that was easy to take off so you could jump into the pool at any time. But getting rid of that dress right in front of Jihoon and his watchful eyes was more nerve-wracking than you’d imagined.

You downed the rest of your cup for some liquid courage and shot up from your seat, releasing a deep breath as you did so. You thought it was better to just get it over with than make it last any longer than it needed to. Jihoon’s eyes glinted with amusement as they followed your every move.

“Let’s go back in.”

Your plan had been to lift your dress off of your body and head straight to the pool, but Jihoon’s gaze made you freeze in place after stripping. You couldn’t quite describe it as lustful, or as hungry, because there was a hint of surprise there that softened it. It was like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing and loving it at the same time, if the slowly growing smirk on his lips was anything to go by. Your whole body felt like it was on fire, a fire that made your knees turn to jelly and that rendered you close to breathless.

You let his curious eyes travel your body for a few seconds before clearing your throat. “Do you want a picture or something?” you asked ironically, hoping your voice didn’t sound as shaky as you felt.

His smirk only widened. “No need. The real thing is so much better.”

You tried not to cower under his shameless gaze, instead stood up straighter and stared right back at him. “My eyes are up here, you know.”

“I know,” he replied, but his eyes stayed trained on your body. You watched as they slowly made their way up your legs, took in your stomach and waist, then paused on your chest, which was quickly falling and rising with your shallow breathing. It was only when you scoffed and crossed your arms that he looked at your face.

Still that lopsided smirk on his lips, he stood up and languidly made his way towards you. He came so close that you had to slightly crane your neck to meet his gaze.

Your heart raced as he let a few seconds of silence stretch between the two of you, keeping his eyes locked in yours. “Nice eyes,” he murmured after a pause, the sudden depth of his voice sending a shiver down your spine.

After six months of seeing him almost every day, one would think Jihoon’s flirty personality would not have such an effect on you anymore. And most of the time, it didn’t - even back in the day, he was already fond of teasing you, so usually, him telling you how pretty you looked, patting your head or him tucking stray strands of hairs behind your ear went somewhat unnoticed by you. Or at least, it was easier not to freak out over “small” things like these.

But this was one of the times when you thought he was really pushing it, and you lost the ability to even eye-roll, which was your usual defense against his flirting attacks. You hated to admit, but you just couldn’t pretend it didn’t have an effect on you. You hated it because you knew he was just flirting as a joke, not because he was actually interested or anything of the sort, and you felt stupid that it still did something to you - although you sometimes doubted whether he really was doing it just for fun. You wanted to think he was acting the way he was on purpose, to get a reaction out of you. It’d make you feel less of a fool.

Before you’d even had time to understand the meaning behind his words, he’d already walked away from you and to the pool. When your senses had come back and you spun around, he was already inside the water. He looked like a cute wet puppy with his hair sticking out all around his head, especially when he shook it and let droplets of water fall off his hair and splash around him, and you couldn’t believe this was the same man that had essentially called your tits nice just moments prior.

The raging butterflies in your stomach were your third sign.

You must’ve stared long, because after a while, your eyes met again, and a smile reappeared on his face. An actual smile, this time, not a smirk or anything of the sort. As if nothing had just happened - as if it was absolutely natural for your best friend to practically devour you with his eyes like that.

He waved you over and you noticed Minjeong and Yoshi were with him, seemingly waiting for you as well. When you reached the edge of the pool, someone entered the room with a platter of shots of God knows what, and you immediately reached out for one and downed it. Sambuca, you realized with relief as the sweet liquid burned its way down your throat. That way, if your body kept buzzing the way it had been around Jihoon, you could blame it on the alcohol and nothing else.

Minjeong and Yoshi were already back in their new little world, but Jihoon watched with an amused grin as you measured the temperature of the water with a foot, then, deeming it warm enough, made your way towards your friends. There, the water reached up to your shoulders, and the fact that it got up to just a little bit under Jihoon’s chest only marked your height difference further, which shouldn’t have made you as flustered as it did.

“Didn’t I tell you not to drink too much before going into the water?” Jihoon asked, laughter clear in his voice.

“How about you let me drink as much as I want, and make sure I don’t drown?” you bit back, even though you knew it wasn’t much of a comeback. You had spoken in an irritated tone that, going by the way his smile softened, Jihoon found cute.

“Okay, I will,” he said, and the sweetness in his tone only served to further unnerve you.

If he noticed your annoyance, he didn’t say anything.

You let yourself be convinced to play a game of chicken fight against Minjeong and Yoshi, which (along with that shot of Sambuca) made your competitive streak kick in and allowed you to, at least momentarily, forget about your irritation towards your friend. The reason behind that irritation was something you didn’t even want to think about.

Somehow, you endured the prickling on your skin as Jihoon kept your thighs tightly pressed around his shoulders with two big hands. Even when he squeezed the flesh there or craned his neck to look up at you with those big, round eyes of his, you managed to not let the way your stomach flipped get to your head.

You weren’t sure how you won all three rounds of chicken fight, if it was thanks to Jihoon’s devotion to the gym, or yours to the free weekly Sunday morning pilates class your uni gym offers. It might’ve been down to the level of complicity you and Jihoon had built over the months that Yoshi and Minjeong hadn’t reached yet (if that can even be a factor in chicken fight success) - all you know, is that you do, and that even underwater, Jihoon’s hands burn as they snake their way around your waist, and press your body flush to his in a celebratory hug.

Some time later, you sit at the edge of the pool by yourself, having been deserted by the two lovebirds who not-so-sneakily snuck away under the pretext of getting some drinks, as well as by Jihoon who was called by some friends to join him back in the pool. You were at the level of tipsiness that made you want to self-introspectively sit on your own and people-watch for a little bit.

Until someone broke your peace.

“Hey, Y/N,” you heard a vaguely familiar voice say. Before you could respond, Kim Sunwoo was sitting next to you, a bit too close in your opinion for your level of acquaintance, clad in black swimming trunks that let the band of his Calvin Klein underwear peek through.

He wasn’t half bad-looking, you decided in that instant.

“Oh, hi, Sunwoo,” you replied, smiling as you unquestioningly accepted the drink he offered you and thanked him for it. You peered at the orange liquid and decided it was the right color for alcohol before taking a sip. It being orange vodka didn’t come as much of a surprise. “I didn’t know you knew my name,” you admitted.

You recognized Sunwoo’s face from the Introduction to Literary Theory lecture you’d had last semester, and had learned his name when the lecture had to be online due to the professor falling ill, and he was one of the few brave students who had turned his camera on. With a face like his, you understood where the confidence came from.

Then, one night out on the town with Minjeong and other friends, you’d run into him at the counter of a bar, and had exchanged a few (flirty, if you recalled correctly) words, but not your names, hence the slight confusion.

He chuckled and you watched as two deep dimples appeared on his cheeks. “I did my research before coming here. Sadly, no one knew what kind of drink you liked, so I went for something basic and prayed.”

“This is perfect,” you said, laughing.

“To be perfectly honest,” he starts after a slight pause, “I’ve seen you around campus, and we even saw each other at a bar once, didn’t we?” he asks, and grins when you nod. “I felt stupid for never asking for your name, or your number. So when I saw you sitting here, I thought it must be fate that brought me to this party.”

You had barely registered his words, let alone formed any sort of response in your mind when Jihoon suddenly appeared in front of the two of you, placing a hand right next to your thigh on the pool edge. You hadn’t noticed him swimming your way.

“Hey, Sunwoo. I see you’ve met my girlfriend,” Jihoon blatantly lies as if it was the most natural thing in the world. The shock is apparent on Sunwoo’s face, and if it wasn’t for the sweet, convincing smile Jihoon was looking at you with, you might’ve let your surprise show more.

Sunwoo didn’t know Jihoon like you did, so you didn’t know whether he noticed the tightness in his grin, the challenge in his slightly raised eyebrows, or the general way he was holding himself that screamed Leave. But he must’ve noticed something, because it only took him a few seconds to start nodding slowly and rise from his seat.

For some reason, you stayed quiet, letting the word girlfriend and the way it had rolled off Jihoon’s tongue so easily repeat over and over again in your head. Maybe it was the alcohol, but he had said it so convincingly that you almost questioned whether you actually were Jihoon’s girlfriend. Before you could think any more about it, however, Sunwoo broke the increasingly tense silence.

“My bad, man, I didn’t know she was taken. I’ll leave you two to it, then,” he said with a smile, and that was that.

You watched his retreating figure for a bit, eyebrows creased in confusion, before snapping your head towards Jihoon. Head tilted, he was fixing you with a questioning look, as if to ask, What are you up to?, when he was the one that had just acted strangely.

“What was that all about?” you asked.

Jihoon shrugged. “I chased him away for you. I’ve only heard bad stuff about that guy, like he sleeps with a new girl every weekend and doesn’t treat them right.”

You thought for a second, bottom lip slightly jutting out in concentration. “Well, couldn’t you have told me about his reputation then let me make the decision for myself?”

“I-” Jihoon started but stopped himself. He seemed to mull over your words for a bit, then sighed. “You’re right, I guess I could have, but you’ve been drinking, who knows if you would’ve made the right decision?”

This made you furrow your brows. “So what if I did? Getting drunk and going home with a rando is not unheard of, I would’ve been fine. Just maybe ashamed tomorrow morning.”

A flash of annoyance swept across Jihoon’s features, and your curiosity couldn’t help but be piqued. The two of you had had your fair share of aimless arguments over the months, but he’d never actually gotten cross with you. For some reason, you were suddenly itching to know what angry Jihoon was like.

“I wouldn’t be fine with it, though. I’d hate knowing that I let you go home with a prick like that.”

This wasn’t the first time Jihoon had fended off guys for you during a night out, but to his credit, they weren’t ever guys you wanted to talk to. And, well, admittedly, after learning what he was like, maybe you didn’t want to talk to Sunwoo either, but Jihoon’s protectiveness tonight was bothering you more than it ever had.

You let a silence stretch between the two of you before speaking again. “You- you can’t just do that, you know,” you declared, not meeting his eyes.

“Do what?”

“Act like you just did. Pretending to be my boyfriend just to get a guy away from me.” Jihoon was just staring at you silently, so you felt compelled to add, “You’re not actually my boyfriend, you know.”

Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say, because his jaw locked and a coldness you had never seen before appeared in his eyes.

“Aren’t I basically?”

That caught you off guard. Where was this coming from? Jihoon had never entertained the idea of being your boyfriend, ever, so why was he suddenly acting like he was? Like he had always been?

And yet, you found yourself toying with the idea of dating Jihoon once more. The one question that pervaded your thoughts was, would things be so different? You’d never had a boyfriend, so you weren’t sure what they did, but you thought it wouldn’t be too far off from how Jihoon treated you now. Keep you safe, bring you food, buy you random keychains or pencils that reminded him of you, text you throughout the day, compliment you. The only difference would be…

Your eyes drifted down to his lips, and you swore you heard a shaky intake of breath coming from the man right in front of you.

The thought had barely crossed your mind that panic rose in your chest. You could not be thinking about kissing Jihoon. You couldn’t think about him being your boyfriend, either. You weren’t sure why, but your sudden heart palpitations at the mere idea told you that you just couldn’t.

“No, you’re not.” You had wanted to speak firmly, but you feared your voice had come out shakier than intended.

To your surprise, Jihoon scoffed. “So if I went off and started dating someone else, it wouldn’t bother you?” he asked in a disbelieving, almost mocking tone.

“No, it wouldn’t,” you answered, and as soon as the words were out, you knew they were a lie. You scrambled to your feet, suddenly wanting to be away from this conversation and the way it made you feel. “I’ll, um, I’ll head back inside.”

You ignored his call of your name and picked up your dress, hastily sliding it back on as you made your way back towards the living room where most of the action was. You quickly found that it was too loud, too hot, too packed in there. You headed back outside through another door that led to a part of the backyard far from the pool, where people sat in small groups around a big fire, either nursing a drink or passing round a joint, the smell of weed heavy in the air. At least it was quiet here.

You walked around some before spotting Jaehyuk, the man of the house himself, sitting on his lonesome on a swing bench in a dark corner of the garden, looking down despondently into a red solo cup. A couple hours into the party, this was the first time you saw him, you realized. It made you wonder how long he’d been sitting out here on his own.

“Hey, Jaehyuk,” you greeted, catching him by surprise. You took a seat next to him, sliding your hands underneath your thighs to keep them warm.

“Oh, hey, Y/N. Nice that you came.” He mustered a smile for you before taking a swig from his cup and cringing at the taste of what must’ve been alcohol.

“What are you doing out here by yourself?” you asked softly. You were used to cheery, smiley Jaehyuk, and even though you weren’t very close, you couldn’t help but be saddened by seeing your friend in such a state.

Jaehyuk sighed deeply. “The girl I planned this party for isn’t here.”

“The girl you… planned… this party for?” you echoed, and he nodded. “You mean this,” you said, gesturing to the house and backyard full to the brim with people, “is all for one girl?”

He sighed and nodded again, taking another sip from his cup. He tutted at the drink, or maybe at himself for drinking it when he knew how awful it tasted. “I wanted an excuse to see her outside of class.” He chuckled. “I realize now that I might have gone slightly overboard.”

“Just a bit,” you laughed along, watching as a group of stoners cheered at their friend who had found marshmallows and sticks God-knows-where. “It’s not even midnight yet, she might still be coming.”

Jaehyuk shrugged. “I’ve stopped hoping. I think I just need to get into the party and forget about it for tonight.”

You smiled. “Sounds like a plan.”

“What about you, what made you escape out here? The music not to your liking?”

“Are you kidding? This is the Danish alternative pop playlist of my dreams,” you said, earning a chuckle from him. “No, I just…” You realized you didn’t even know how to talk about this. What was making you so upset?

“I got into a bit of a… squabble with my friend, if you will. He-”

“Oh, so it’s a he?” Jaehyuk cut in, a knowing smile on his face.

“No- I mean, yes, he is, but it’s not like that, it’s- it’s…”

“It’s?” he egged on.

“Ugh, fine, it might be like that,” you finally admitted, as much to Jaehyuk as to yourself. Your irritation made him laugh.

“It’s okay, it happens.”

“I didn’t think it would happen to me, though.”

“Why not?”

You sighed. “Just ‘cause… him and I, we’ve known each other for such a long time, it feels weird that things would start changing now.”

“How long have you known each other?”

“We met when we were thirteen and fourteen. Then he moved away and we only met again in September last semester.”

“Did you keep in touch?”

“Not so much. I just heard from him through my brother, they’re much closer.”

“So… what I’m hearing is, you’ve known each other a long time, but you’ve only really become friends since September, right?”

“Right,” you echoed dubitatively, wondering where Jaehyuk was going.

“Y/N, that’s just a bit over six months.”

“...So?”

“So, that’s not nearly as long as you make it out to be. It’s not like you’ve been best friends for years and things are suddenly changing. Six months… aren’t that short, I’ll give you that, but I think it’s a reasonable time for people to get closer as friends and then start developing feelings.”

“Feelings?” you immediately echoed, panic evident in your voice.

Jaehyuk let out something like a chuckle, looking at you like he was figuring out whether you were joking or not. “Is that not what this whole thing is about?”

You dropped your gaze down to your thighs, frowning. “Feelings just sound so serious…”

“They can be, but they don’t have to.” After a few seconds of silence, he noticed your upset expression and nudged your shoulder good-naturedly. “What’s worrying you so much?”

“It’s just confusing. I… It’s not like I’ve been totally indifferent towards him up ‘til now, but there’s something about him lately, especially tonight. It makes me actually wonder about… you know. Whether I want him as a friend or not.” You sighed. “And even if I am feeling… feelings, I don’t know how he sees me. I could still be a sort of little sister in his eyes, for all I know.”

“What makes you think that?”

A small smile grew on your lips as you blew air from your nose. “Junkyu - my older brother - tasked him with looking after me when he learned I was going to attend this university with him. So, while I go crazy trying to figure out why he acts the way he acts and why I feel the way I feel, he might just be keeping a promise to my brother.”

“But have you ever seen him as an older brother?”

“No,” you replied immediately. Your surety almost took you aback. “Jihoon is… Jihoon. He’s definitely not Junkyu.”

Jaehyuk smiled. “Then I don’t think he would see you as a little sister, either. The way you act with a sibling and with a friend, potentially someone you like, is very different. I don’t think there’d be room for question if he treated you as a younger sister, you’d just know. Most guys I know are very obvious when they like someone, me included, so if you’re thinking about this so much just because of the way he acts with you… well, you’re probably onto something.”

“You think?”

“I do.”

You and Jaehyuk stayed outside chatting for a few more minutes until you decided to go back inside for some warmth and a refill of your empty cups. In the kitchen, you ran into some of your classmates, so you joined in their animated discussion on which version of The Sims is better (Asahi offended everyone by saying the mobile app was the best) instead of going looking for Minjeong and Jihoon like you had intended to.

A few minutes later, as your phone buzzed with six consecutive texts from your roommate, you found out where both of them were.

minjeong girl do u know how many bedrooms there are in this goddamn house??!!!! yoshi and i are spending the night here xxx ask jaehyuk if he has a room for u or get home w jihoon whos that girl he’s talkin to in the kitchen btw??? love yaa xxxxxoooo text me if u need anything!! i’ll be busy but i’ll keep my phone on ;)

Usually, you’d have rolled your eyes at the exorbitant amount of x’s and the cheesy winky face, but something else had got your attention. Suddenly stepping away mentally from the conversation (which had turned into an interrogation on Asahi’s suspected addiction to mobile games), you looked around the crowded kitchen until your eyes settled on your culprit.

From where you were, you only had a view of his side profile, just as Minjeong had said, Jihoon was talking to a girl, red solo cup in his hand and stupidly attractive smile on his lips. She was leaning against the wall while he stood in front of her, both looking as relaxed as if they had known each other for years. What was up with all that eye contact? What was making them smile so hard?

You hadn’t realized how hard you were staring until Jaehyuk’s voice broke through your thoughts, asking if you were okay.

“You look like you want to kill someone,” Sumin joked, not knowing she was closer to the truth than she thought.

You tried to laugh it off, saying you were just deeply disturbed by Asahi’s predicament, but you couldn’t keep yourself from glancing back at Jihoon and the girl every thirty seconds. Another girl arrived, and Jihoon shifted to make room for her so that he was now directly facing you. Over the chatter of the kitchen and music booming from the speakers in the living room, you couldn’t hear anything they were saying, but it seemed like Girl #1 was introducing Jihoon to Girl #2, placing a palm on his bicep as she did so. You counted - that hand stayed there for four whole seconds, and when she finally took it off of him, your eyes drifted back to Jihoon’s face.

Jihoon, who was staring right at you. Jihoon, who raised his eyebrows at you as if to say, What about it? while yours were creased in - confusion, anger, you weren’t sure what, but an ugly feeling you weren’t accustomed to. Jihoon, who, you decided, had to know what he was doing, had to know how this was making you feel.

The only thing on your mind was getting out of here and taking Jihoon with you. Without thinking much, you fished your phone out of your sweater pocket, texted Jihoon Let’s go and said bye to your friends, lying that your friend had suddenly asked you to leave.

After a few minutes of waiting by yourself outside in the cold, crouching to maximize body warmth, you started to wonder if Jihoon had decided to not follow you. But when you felt a weight drop on your shoulders, you snapped your head up to find him smiling down at you.

“Where did you get this?” you asked, meaning the blanket he had given you.

“I stole it from the living room.”

“Jihoon,” you scolded.

“You know the guy right? Just give it back to him this week,” he said, lowering himself down to your level. Similarly to your eye contact in the kitchen, you were still frowning while he kept on smiling. “Not like you to want to leave before one a.m.. Is something the matter?” he asked, and you debated whether he was faking his innocence or not.

For about ten seconds, you tried to stay quiet, not wanting to betray your feelings to him. You glared ahead of you, watching your breath form wisps in the late February night air.

But then he called your name so softly, it undid all of your resolve. The sound of it made you sigh.

“Who was that you were talking to?” you finally asked, voice barely above a whisper.

“Hm? That was just Shuhua, she’s a Tawainese exchange student from one of my classes. Then she introduced me to her friend Yuqi.”

You nodded slowly, still not meeting Jihoon’s gaze. “I didn’t know there was a Taiwainese exchange student in one of your classes.”

“Y/N?” The unexpected seriousness with which he had called your name forced you to look at him.

“Hm.”

“I have something to tell you.” He must’ve noticed your sudden inability to speak, so he continued, lowering his head to be at eye-level with you. “There’s a Taiwainese exchange student in one of my classes.”

A smile broke through his serious facade and you had to look away to hide your own growing grin. “You’re stupid,” you said, but it only made Jihoon laugh.

“So is that what this is all about? A little bout of jealousy from my Y/N?”

You didn’t know what to focus on - the fact that he had finally put a name to what you were feeling or the face that he had called you his. It made you frown. “I wasn’t jealous,” you said, aware of how unbelievable you sounded.

“No? Then what made you want to leave so suddenly?”

“I- You-” you started, glaring at Jihoon when he snickered. “How come I can’t talk to guys but it’s okay for you to talk to girls?”

“So you are jealous.”

“No, I just think you’re being unfair. I’m calling you out on your hypocrisy, Hoon. Double standards and all that.”

Jihoon grinned. Had he known that he’d get such a reaction from you after talking to a friend that happened to be a girl, he’d have done it much earlier. And yet you had never had a problem with any of the girls in his usual friend group - if anything, the bunch of you often ganged up against him - so he wondered what was wrong with Shuhua in particular. Was it because you didn’t know her, and misunderstanding could arise?

His smile and eyes softened. No matter how adorable you looked to him right now, he wasn’t one to play games with feelings, his or yours. It was hard enough to make you realize how much he liked you (although he hoped that scene at the pool had made things more apparent), so he wasn’t going to make it even more confusing by letting you think he might like someone else.

Earlier, when he’d asked you if him dating someone else would bother you, and you’d answered no, he hadn’t formed any plan whatsoever to go off and talk to another girl right in front of you. Things just happened in his favor. He’d been talking with a whole group of people in the kitchen, but save for Jennifer, they’d all left for a game of spin the bottle (at their grown college age). Shuhua had a boyfriend back home and he had you, so they both had no interest for it. So it was just the two of them bonding over their love for Taylor Swift’s music when you appeared in the kitchen with Jaehyuk.

Did he also feel a pang of jealousy seeing you with another guy, even though it was just Jaehyuk and he already knew of your friendship? Perhaps, but this wasn’t anything new with Jihoon. He didn’t think he’d be able to get rid of it until he had the surety that you were his, which had felt like a faraway goal until recently. Maybe it was due to his growing boldness or maybe you had managed to piece everything together yourself, but he was sure he’d felt a shift in your attitude towards him lately. There were times you would get shyer than usual, refusing to look him in the eyes; other times, like tonight, you’d defy him, as if trying to prove to both him and yourself you didn’t feel any sort of way towards him. But he hadn’t missed the way your eyes had drifted down to his lips and stayed there for a few seconds, hadn’t missed your panic when things seemed to get too real.

Just like you, although he didn’t know about that, he also found that there was something different about tonight, some tension between the two of you that was bound to explode. The fact that you were both in swimsuits had probably not helped. As soon as he’d seen you in your black tube dress, his imagination had started running wild. The way you casually had a gray zip sweatshirt of his in your room and donned it before leaving your place had made it harder to not just keep you in your apartment while the others went off to the party, and seeing you in your bikini was like the final boss he hadn’t been able to defeat. Keeping his eyes off of you was simply impossible. He wasn’t sure how he had resisted kissing you right then and there, showing everyone who the prettiest girl in the room - hell, at this party - belonged to.

(Jihoon had a bit of a possessive streak.)

Even now that you had somewhat made up, he still felt the changed air around you, like there was no going back from here. No pretending there were no unsaid feelings anymore - at least, that’s how he felt. If you needed the extra push to realize either his feelings, your own, or both, he didn’t mind initiating it. If anything, he had been waiting for it.

So he made sure to clear things up. “I didn’t want you to talk to Sunwoo because I knew he had bad intentions. Or at least selfish ones. Shuhua has a boyfriend, nothing was gonna happen there.”

“Oh, but if she didn’t, something would’ve?”

“No, Y/N. No,” Jihoon said firmly.

“Why not? She’s pretty.” You knew you were being unreasonable at this point, arguing for the sake of arguing, but you couldn’t help yourself.

Jihoon sighed before placing a hand at the top of your head, brushing your hair gently. “I know someone who’s prettier.”

You turned your head slowly to look at him and were met with a sight you forever wanted to keep in your heart. Jihoon was looking down at you, eyes soft and filled with an emotion you wanted to describe as adoration, corners of his lips upturned into a sweet smile. You wanted to reach out and touch his cheek, feel the warmth of his skin under your palm and make sure he was real, but you were too stuck in his gaze to move.

“I actually know the prettiest girl in the world. I��m very lucky.”

You continued staring at each other for a few seconds or maybe a few hours, until he booped your nose and stood up. “Our Uber’s here, pretty girl.”

You took his extended hand in yours and let him help you up, still in a daze as he opened the car door for you and rushed to the other side. You didn’t expect the relief you felt when he took your hand in his again as the Uber started driving. As the driver and him made minimal small talk, you watched out the window, but you couldn’t hear or see anything - you could only focus on Jihoon’s fingers intertwined with yours. Had hand-holding always felt so natural?

Even once you reached your apartment and you had to let go of it to get out of the car, the only thing you wanted was to have it again.

You didn’t notice right away, as you punched in the code for the entrance to your apartment building, that Jihoon had stayed behind on the pavement. A light rain had started and his hair, all curled up from the pool, shone with small beads of water that the streetlights reflected on.

“Aren’t you coming up?” you asked, turning around to face him and leaning against the door so it wouldn’t close.

“Not tonight,” he simply said, and you hesitated to ask him why. Whatever it was, he must have his reason, and you would see him again soon anyway, so you dropped it.

“Okay.” You nodded and hoped you didn’t sound as disappointed as you felt.

You thought that would be it, but then he took a step closer to you, then another, until he was standing right in front of you. The doorstep made you taller so that your eyes were on a parallel with his lips, on which they naturally fell. No matter how confusing tonight might have been, if what you thought was about to happen actually did happen, you knew there was not a cell in your body that would resist it.

Jihoon leaned in closer and closer, until he was right there, and your lips would touch any second - but he leaned to the right, pressing a kiss to the corner of your lips instead. You stood with bated breath as he leaned back, wearing a proud smirk. “Good to know you wouldn’t push me away if I tried to kiss you,” he said, but on this rare occasion, you were speechless.

His smirk softened to a smile as he ruffled your hair. “Good night, Y/N.”

It wasn’t until he had reached the corner, turning around and waving at you to go into your building before disappearing that you snapped out of it and made your way to your apartment. As soon as you’d shut your front door behind you, you realized just how disappointed you felt that Jihoon hadn’t come up like he usually did, how much you missed the reassurance of having him there, even if the two of you were a room apart.

You also realized you didn’t want any walls to separate you anymore.

And there you had it - the signs were too obvious to ignore anymore. The heart flutterings, the thoughts of him invading your mind day and night, the jealousy. The constant longing to be with him.

You were in love with Park Jihoon.

You fell into a deep sleep for about four hours, before waking up with a start.

You were in love with Park Jihoon.

What had seemed like a comforting thought at the time now freaked you out to no end. Park Jihoon was your best friend, your brother’s best friend, someone you’d met so long ago he’d known you during your embarrassing bangs phase of 2015 (BangGate, as your friends from home inappropriately liked to call it).

You were great as friends, sure, but how would you fare if things went further than that? There was no way for you to know other than by trying it firsthand. Did you want to take that leap, and risk falling face first - or chance falling right into his arms?

For some reassurance, you got your laptop out and went to Google. At first, you intended to search some YouTube videos or blog posts about successful best-friends-turned-lovers stories, but something deep inside your brain compelled you to type Omegle in the search bar. Even if it was five a.m. for you, it’d be a reasonable time of the day for people with good relationship advice somewhere, right?

In your interests, you typed love, relationship and advice, hoping this would lead you to your savior. After skipping a few naked men who apparently were into love too, two young girls appeared on your screen who, going off of their accent, were British. They looked about eleven and were doing their nails, not paying attention to their screen. NewJeans was playing in the background.

They were perfect.

“Hey, girls!” you said, cringing at the sound of your own voice.

They raised their heads in unison, looking at you for a second before coming closer to the screen, all wide smiles. One of them had braces with pink elastics. “Hey, girl!”

You decided you had no time to lose, so you directly told them you needed advice with a boy you liked. They nodded vigorously. So you told them everything - from how you and Jihoon had met, to reconnecting in September, to the events of the past few months (including a detailed rundown of what happened at the pool, which they loved). They even insisted on seeing a picture and squealed when you showed them. Your Jihoon really was handsome.

“So? What do you think I should do?” you asked when you were done recounting everything.

“I have this thing I do whenever I fancy someone,” the girl on the right started, while the other one munched on some sour candy. You nodded for her to continue. “It really helps me know if I should keep fancying them or if they’re not worth it. It’s called a compibi- compa- combali- Rosie, what was it again?”

“A compatibility test,” Rosie said, tongue blue from her candy.

“Right, that. It works like magic. Just the other week I thought for sure Leo was the cutest boy in school but then I did the test thing and got forty percent with him and a few days later he was dating Sarah anyway.”

“Sarah is terrible,” Rosie chipped in.

“Oh no!” you exclaimed.

“Yeah, really bad,” the other girl said, nodding. “But then, I did it with Martin and got eighty-six percent and we’ve been dating for ten days now, we have,” she finished proudly.

“That’s amazing.” You didn’t know if it was the lack of sleep or the conviction with which the girl spoke, but you were hooked. “How do I do it?” you asked, although you’d probably done it when you were their age too.

“Oh, it’s easy. You just type the comp- Rosie?”

“Compatibility.”

“That, test on Google and click any one of them and type in your name then his. Any of them will do, I’m sure,” she shrugged, reaching for a candy.

“Okay, let me do it right now. Gimme a sec.” After a few clicks, you’d reached an early 2010s-style website called lovecalculator.com, all pink and cupids shooting their arrows into the sky. You typed in your name, then Jihoon’s, then pressed a shaky finger to the Enter bar.

“Oh my gosh!” you squealed. “We got ninety-nine percent!”

“Oh my gosh!” the girls yelped back, clapping and hugging each other in celebration.

“Girl, you need to go tell him right now,” non-Rosie said firmly.

“Right now,” Rosie echoed.

You pouted. “I can’t, it’s five a.m. right now.”

“You better go later then! You two are meant to be! You’ll last at least like, a month or two.”

“At least.”

After thanking and saying good-bye to your new best friends, you spent a good three minutes staring at the big 99% in bright pink on your screen. This randomly generated number made you so happy that you took a screenshot and printed it out on Minjeong’s printer in the living room, then put it on your fridge for you to admire. You used a magnet Jihoon had gifted you for Christmas - it was a four-cut photobooth picture of you two you’d taken at the Christmas market. You thought you’d only taken the paper version, but he’d made you go get food for the both of you while he bought the magnet version as well.

Your mind at ease, you started heading back to your room, but you ran into someone right as you walked out of the kitchen.

You looked him up and down. Yoshinori was standing in your living room half-naked, looking like a deer caught in headlights.

“H-hey, Y/N,” he said, breaking the silence first. “I’m sorry, I thought you were sleeping…”

“I woke up early,” you replied, unable to keep yourself from smiling at his awkwardness. “What are you doing?”

“Just, um, just getting some water.”

“And you have to come to my apartment to do that?”

“No, I, um- Someone called the cops, so Jaehyuk kicked all of us out.”

“I thought you were in a room somewhere?”

“Yeah, but we went outside to see what was happening, and he saw us, so we had to leave.”

“Right… Well, glad you made it back home safe.” The strangeness of the situation suddenly hit you, and you realized you should probably let the half-naked man get his glass of water and leave. “I’ll go back to my room, then.”

“Oh, right, see you, Y/N. And sorry.”

“No worries!” you said, waving his apology off and scurried off to your bedroom. You plopped into your bed with a satisfied sigh, hugging a plushie Jihoon had won for you at an arcade close to your chest. He really was everywhere.

When you woke up next, sunlight was pouring from the window into your room. You checked your phone - nine a.m.. Not early enough to go to late sleeper Jihoon’s place, but definitely early enough to call your probably still sleeping brother. You had to tell someone about your newfound revelation, and Minjeong next door was either asleep or busy.

Your phone rang with an outgoing call for so long that you thought Junkyu might simply not pick up. “I’m in love with Jihoon,” you blurted out as soon as your brother’s face appeared on screen.

He paused for a second, taking your words in, then yawned and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “Good morning to you too, Y/N.”

“I’m in love with Jihoon,” you repeated, more insistently.

“I heard you the first time.”

“Well, what do you think?!” you asked, impatience rising. You couldn’t believe your brother could be sarcastic in an emergency like this.

Junkyu frowned. “Uh, congratulations?”

You tutted. “Kyu, I’m serious about this!”

“I know, I can tell,” he said, chuckling. “Are you going to tell him?”

“I think I have to. I think… I think he feels the same way about me, actually.”

Junkyu rolled his eyes. “No shit, Sherlock.”

You paused. “Huh?”

“Everyone and their mom knows he’s in love with you, we were just all waiting for you to see it.”

“Huh?!” Junkyu shrugged. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

Your brother sighed. “Some things in life, you have to figure out on your own, sis. Like taxes.” You just frowned at him. “Well, how did you figure it out?”

“Now that you say it, I guess I should’ve noticed it earlier. But really what happened is I saw him talking to a girl.”

“Put the man in jail!”

“Shut up. And then we talked for a bit, and he didn’t outright say it, but he heavily implied that he… liked me.”

Junkyu scoffed. “That’s an understatement.”

You ignored your brother. “But I don’t know if I should wait for a bit or go tell him now-”

“Y/N. Please, put that man out of his misery and go tell him now.”

“Don’t you think he’d get upset if I confessed first? You know Jihoon, he gets proud about random things like that.”

“Believe me, he won’t care. He’ll just be happy you like him back after all this time.”

You thought for a second, a small smile blooming on your lips. “Does he really like me that much?”

Junkyu sighed. “He’s been harping on about you since we were fourteen. He probably keeps a diary or a boyblog where he just writes about you. Just go get him, girl.”

Your smile grew wider and your heart started beating faster, excitement growing in your stomach at the thought of seeing Jihoon again. “Okay, I will.” You and your brother stared at each other for a second, eyes wide in anticipation, until something struck you.

“Wait… You don’t mind, do you? Your sister and best friend dating?”

“I l-word both of you, so no, I don’t mind. I trust you both enough to not hurt each other. But I’m still your brother, so if that prick does anything to hurt you, I’ll kick his ass, okay?”

“Kyu, he bench-presses your weight as a joke.”

He squinted his eyes at you. “I’ll metaphorically kick his ass, then.”

“And what if I hurt him?”

Junkyu thought for a second. “I’ll… give you the silent treatment for a few days.”

“How scary,” you laughed.

“Anyways, congratulations in advance and all that, but for my mental health please pretend you’re not a couple in front of me and remember that premarital sex is a sin.”

“Will do! Bye, Kyu!”

Right after hanging up with your brother, you texted Jihoon, asking if you could come over. You quickly got ready, doing affirmations in the mirror to calm yourself down, and as soon as your phone pinged with Jihoon’s answer (miss me already?), you were out the door. It was usually a thirteen-minute walk between your and Jihoon’s place, but with the power of love, it only took you eight.

You felt like your body had gone on autopilot - instead of practicing over and over what you would say to him in your head, imagining all the terrible ways it could go or pacing back and forth in front of his apartment building, you just walked, the loud thumping of your heart in your ears drowning everything else out. You’d just get there and get it over with.

Even when you had to wait for seven seconds (you counted) for Jihoon to open the door after you’d rung the doorbell, you didn’t start panicking.

“Hey, Y/N, I just ordered some-”

“I love you.”

“Breakfast… You what?”

“I love you, Hoonie,” you beamed. The relief of letting those words free made tears pool in the corner of your eyes.

Jihoon just stared at you, mouth agape and expression like he couldn’t believe what was hearing. Reaching for your hand, he brought you closer to him and shut the door behind you, eyes never once leaving yours. Then, he pulled you into a hug, one so tight you’d be worried about your blood circulation being cut off if it wasn’t Jihoon’s arms you were in.

“Can you say it again, please?” he asked, nose buried in your hair and voice weak like you’d never heard it before.

You tightened your hold around his waist. “I love you,” you whispered.

“Again?”

“I love you,” you repeated, giggling.

He laughed too, more out of relief than anything. “I love you, too.”

He leaned back and raised his hands to gently cup your face in his palms. The both of you were smiling like idiots from ear to ear, gazing into each other’s eyes. Tears streamed down your cheek and he wiped them away with a thumb before pressing a soft kiss to your forehead.

“Took you long enough,” he said, making you laugh again.

“I know, I’m sorry.”

Jihoon shook his head. “Don’t be. You have no idea how happy I am right now.”

“I’m happy for you guys and all, but could you like, not do this here?” a voice interrupted you. You looked behind Jihoon’s shoulder to find Hyunsuk, one of his roommates, on the living room sofa, watching Brooklyn 99. You hadn’t even noticed him. In his defense, you were declaring your love for each other right next to him in the entrance hallway.

“Oh, right, sorry, Suk. Let’s go into my room,” he said, tugging at your hand.

The both of you burst into giggles as soon as the door shut behind you. Jihoon wasted no time in pulling you into another hug, and it felt like your whole body sighed as you let his warmth engulf you. You cursed yourself for not letting yourself have this earlier. You gently rocked from side to side together, as if slow dancing to a melody only the two of you could hear.

“I guess a little jealousy goes a long way, huh?” Jihoon said after a minute of silence.

“I wasn’t jealous,” you huffed, leaning back so he could see your frown.

“What made you realize your undying love for me, then?”

“I just… I thought we’d be good together. I realized how compatible we are, if you will.”

“Our compatibility? Did you only notice it last night?”

You grinned. “Guess I did,” you answered, just to tease him. Jihoon did not need to know about your love calculator epiphany.

He looked at you like you had hung the stars in the sky. You felt shy under his gaze, but you couldn’t get yourself to look away. “So does that mean we’re… boyfriend and girlfriend now?” he asked, making you burst into laughter. “Don’t make fun of me! It’s important to make things clear,” he complained between giggles.

“Yes, let’s be boyfriend and girlfriend.”

“Awesome,” he replied, then pursed his lips as if debating to say what he wanted to say next. “So, now that we’re boyfriend and girlfriend…”

“Yes, Hoon?”

“Does that mean I can kiss you?” he asked, a small smile playing on his lips that you mirrored.

“Please,” you whispered.

So he did.

When his lips touched yours, it was like a flower that had been waiting for the right moment finally bloomed inside your chest. It felt soft, and comforting, and just right. Like your lips had always meant to meet.

At least, it started out that way. The fabric of Jihoon’s t-shirt bunched up in your hands while his cupped your face tenderly, your lips moving in a slow cadence against each other’s as if you had all the time in the world - and you did. You were both so filled to the brim with excitement that when you pulled away for a breather, you laughed together, foreheads resting against each other.

But then, you raised your hands and threaded your fingers through his hair, tugging on it gently as you deepened the kiss. You probably hadn’t done it on purpose, simply wanting to feel more of Jihoon out of some basic instinct - but it undid something in him.

He slid his hands down the sides of your neck and your shoulders until they reached your arms, pulling on them to have your body closer to his. His hands then continued their journey down to your waist, where they sneaked themselves under your t-shirt. They ran up and up until almost your entire back was exposed to the fresh air in his room, the contrast between that and the fire-hot warmth of Jihoon’s hands against your bare skin making you shiver.

He walked you backwards until the back of your legs hit his mattress, unto which he helped you down gently, somehow not breaking the kiss as he did. One of his hands came to brush hair away from your face, while the other remained on your waist, after some time venturing onto your stomach, a sensitive spot for you that made you sigh into his mouth. He took that opportunity to slide his tongue against yours, yet another new sensation that made your head spin.

This was exceeding any expectations you had ever had for a first kiss. In fact, you had always thought first kisses were messy, awkward things, but this was nothing of the sort - your whole body was on edge, responding to every little movement on Jihoon’s part. Your fingers buzzed with a fizzy electricity that put your brain in a daze. You could do this forever, you thought.

But forever was cut short by the sudden buzz of Jihoon’s phone. Jihoon started, practically leaping off of you and dramatically holding onto his chest when he realized it was just his phone that had interrupted you. The delivery person was calling him to announce their arrival.

Jihoon pressed a kiss to your forehead, took a few steps, then came back to press another kiss, this time to your lips. Your stomach growled loudly while you waited for him, and you realized you still hadn’t eaten today. Add making out to that, you were ready to devour whatever it was Jihoon had ordered.

The smell coming from the paper bag Jihoon held as he entered the room again made you close your eyes in bliss and take a deep whiff. “Johnny’s,” you whispered. “You know me so well.”

Johnny’s was your absolute favorite breakfast place in all of town. It had been opened a few years ago by a graduate of your university who had mastered the art of hangover food. From soups, to hash brown patties, to iced coffee, he knew exactly what it was that students needed after a night out. You could tell he had a lot of experience with that himself. He was kind of like a God amongst the student body of your university.

“Of course I do. I know your order from all of your favorite restaurants, and somehow you only realized yesterday that I was pathetically in love with you.”

You smiled sheepishly, taking a bite of your sausage and egg wrap. “How long are you going to hold this over my head?”

Jihoon grinned brightly. “Until I forget about it.”

“So never?”

“Precisely.”

He put on the next episode of your show, and for the next couple hours, the two of you stayed holed up in his room, cuddling once you were done with your food. Even though you had spent endless time watching shows or movies side by side, neither of you had ever dared initiate physical touch, no matter how much you’d wanted to. He’d been scared you’d pull away from him, and you’d been scared it’d be awkward. You hadn’t realized how much you’d longed for his proximity and warmth until you had it.

Save for his laptop screen, it’d been quiet for a while, and you thought you might fall asleep when Jihoon spoke. “I’m so glad I don’t need to pretend anymore,” he said as one episode finished and the next one started.

“Pretend what?”

“That I’m not desperately in love with you and that every single little thing you do doesn’t drive me insane.”

You giggled. “Does it?”

“Yes,” he whispered, his voice a heavy sigh, almost a groan. There was a slight edge to it, a deeper meaning behind that short yes that had your stomach suddenly feeling very tight.

“Oh,” was all you could answer. You suddenly wondered what you might have done without thinking that had had an effect on Jihoon, just as he’d done to you many times before. You also wondered what sort of effect you may have had on him, what sort of thoughts he may have had about you that he had to keep to himself all this time.

Tentatively, you cocked your head up, only to find he was already looking down at you. The glint in his eyes made your body burn. Just as he started to lean in to reunite your lips, your phone buzzed with many texts in a row. Jihoon closed his eyes in frustration and sighed. “I want to throw both of our phones away,” he said, making you laugh.

minjeong hey pooks idk if ur out somewhere or still sleeping but im going to yoshis placeee he needs some stuff there so we’re going together and i’ll prob spend the night over… we’re like inseparable rn or wtv. anyways dont set the place on fire while i’m gone x

you ok thx for letting me know xx im w my boyfriend rn

Minjeong’s response didn’t even take three seconds to come through.

minjeong HUHHHH??? GIRL ???

you hehe

minjeong park jihoon is one lucky man

you how do u know its him?

minjeong literally who else would it be wait does that mean we’ll go on double dates…

you yeah ur right and pls no

minjeong DOUBLE DATES !! girls night tomorrow night i want all the deeeets have fun having the place all to urselves and rmb to use protection xx

you why is that where ur mind goes first ?? down for girls night tho can we watch teen beach movie

minjeong duhhh

“Teen Beach Movie?” Jihoon said, startling you. You hadn’t realized he’d been reading over your shoulders.

“It’s a good movie,” you mumbled, frowning.

“Right.” He said nothing for a few seconds, but he just couldn’t contain himself. The question was burning his tongue. “Aren’t you on the pill?”

Your head snapped towards him at the sudden question. “Uh, yeah, I am. Why?”

His eyes scanned your face as a smirk grew on his lips. “Then we don’t need to use protection, do we?”

You gulped. Your whole face felt hot - after having just shared your first kiss, you hadn’t expected him to mention sex so easily. Not that you weren’t interested in that, far from it, you were just… nervous.

You turned away from him, unable to sustain his gaze any longer. “I guess not,” you murmured. You had started taking the pill at the beginning of university, mainly to regulate your period and lessen your hormonal acne. The contraceptive part was just a bonus, one you had never imagined would come into handy like this.

Jihoon’s eyes suddenly widened. “Oh, I need to tell Yoshi about this! He’s gonna freak. I hope he won’t be mad he learned it from Minjeong and not me first.”

“Yoshi?” you asked as you watched him reach for his phone on his nightstand.

“Yeah, we’ve been updating each other on our love lives. He’s really into Minjeong, by the way.”

“That’s… strangely wholesome, actually.”

While he typed away, you tilted your head and took the time to appreciate your boyfriend’s features. The round eyes, heart-shaped lips, sharp nose and even sharper jawline. He was so pretty, and now, he was all yours.

Without thinking, you traced a finger along his jaw, liking the feel of it against your skin. When his eyes found yours, you dropped your hand and straightened your head, expression like you’d just been caught red-handed.

“Should we go back to your place? We can pick up food on the way.”

You smiled. “We just ate.”

“And I’m hungry again,” he said, mirroring your smile and pressing a chaste kiss to your lips. Or at least, he had intended it as a chaste kiss, but he found that he couldn’t quite get himself to pull away. “Let’s go,” he said, lips moving against yours as he spoke, but made no move to actually go.

“Let’s go,” you repeated, staying perfectly still. You’re not sure who was the one to cross the millimeters between your lips, but before you knew it, you and Jihoon’s lips were stuck to each other once more. This kiss had none of the gradual intensity of the previous one - right off the bat, the feeling of Jihoon’s lips against yours flooded all of your senses.

Your hands found purchase in his hair while his found their way to your waist once more. With surprising ease, he pulled you to him so that you were straddling his lap. For a second there, you were conscious about how heavy you might be on top of him, but it was all forgotten when he pressed his lips to yours again in a passionate kiss. In this new position, you could press your body close to his, so close you could almost feel his heart beat against yours. He also had easier access to your back than before, and he quickly took advantage of that.

Just like before, he sneaked his hands underneath your t-shirt, making you arch your back against him. He slid a finger underneath your bra strap and pulled away for a second to ask if this was okay. You looked at him - his eyes were darker than you’d ever seen before and his face had lust written all over it. You were sure you looked similar.

“Yeah, it’s okay,” you whispered before diving back into the kiss. One second apart felt like hours to you.

Your breath got shakier as he unclasped your bra. He didn’t do anything right away, settling on brushing his palm up and down your back while your heart raced with anticipation. You were so on edge that you couldn’t even kiss him anymore - you buried your face in his neck, gripping his hair so tightly you were probably hurting him. You didn’t care if he could feel how desperate you were. Then, finally, painfully slowly, one of his hands made its way to your front, and he gently grabbed your breast underneath your bra that was hanging from your shoulders. That was already a foreign sensation in itself, but when he took your nipple between two fingers and pulled on it ever-so-gently, the pleasure that overtook your body was so intense that it made you let out a loud gasp and you pulled away from Jihoon, startled as if you had been shocked by lightning.

“Are you okay?” he asked, breathing heavily, a mix of worry and desire in his eyes.

You nodded, holding onto his shoulders as you tried to make your breathing return to normal. “I’m fine, just… it’s all very new, is all. I’ve never done any of this before.”

Never had a boyfriend, never held hands romantically, never kissed - that was you. Not that you minded, though, since you’d never been interested in anyone and you were happy to do this with Jihoon, whom you trusted more than anyone else.

He smiled softly. “That’s okay. Does it at least feel good?” he asked, low voice making the hairs on your arms stand.

You whined, hiding your face in the dip of his shoulder again. “It does…” you admitted, voice muffled against his skin.

“You know, it’s my first time too,” he said after a while.

You lifted your head to look at him. “Really?”

“Mh-hm. You’re my first girlfriend.” His eyes were full of affection as he gazed at you, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. You giggled. “What’s funny?” he asked softly, pressing a kiss to your jaw.

“We’re each other’s firsts,” you explained. “I think that’s nice.”

Jihoon made his way to your lips, giving them a small peck. “That is nice. And I promise I’ll make you feel so good,” another peck, “you’ll want me to be your last as well.”

You looked at him for a bit, taking in his features that looked even more beautiful to you now that you’d realized your feelings for him, and thought of a life with him. It might have been slightly premature, but you already knew you liked the idea of that.

“Okay,” you said, as if what he had said had been an offer. It made him smile.

“Okay.” He kissed you, softly like you could break underneath his touch. “You’re so cute, you know that?” he asked against your lips, but didn’t leave you time to answer before kissing you again. “Okay, I think we should take a break,” he said after a few minutes. “We can go to your place. And then we’ll have more… privacy.”

You agreed that spending some time not pressed up against Jihoon might help you think straight again. The walk to your apartment was nice and quiet, your interlocked hands swinging back and forth between your two bodies. When you walked past the grocery store, you stopped in your tracks, looking at Jihoon with a smile which he mirrored immediately, even without knowing the reason behind it.

“Should we bake a cake to celebrate our first day together?”

“That’s very cheesy.” His grin widened as he took a step closer to you. “I love it.” He pressed a kiss to your forehead and led you into the store.

The rest of that afternoon was spent baking and decorating the cake. It was a simple vanilla batter, but it took way longer than it should have, because Jihoon first insisted on having a flour fight (which took ages to clean), then on having two cakes and having a competition for whose would be prettier (yours, of course), but you loved every last second of it. It was like a scene out of a movie, and you could not have been more content. To really bring home the cheesiness of it all, you even recorded yourselves blowing out the number one candles of your respective cakes.

The evening came around, and, full of cake and Chinese takeout, you were holed up in bed together, watching the first movie that had popped up on your Netflix recommended. It was too easy, falling asleep in his arms. The combination of his comforting scent and the soft back rubs he was giving you lulled you to sleep like nothing else.

When you woke up next, it was because of a sudden lack of warmth next to you. You lifted your head to find Jihoon opening your bedroom door and heading into the living room. He had just been going to get water, but you didn’t know that.

“Hoon?” you called out, raising yourself to a sitting position on your bed. He immediately turned around, walking back towards you and crouching next to your bed.

“Hm?”

“Aren’t you staying?” you asked, reaching for the hem of his t-shirt sleeve. He looked at your hand before his gaze slowly made its way back up towards your face, a smirk growing on his pretty lips.

“Do you want me to?” he asked back, gazing deep into your eyes. His voice had dropped to a low volume that made it hard to breathe. Initially, you’d just wanted him back by your side, but now all sorts of thoughts were running through your mind.

“Of course. I mean, we’re dating, right?”

In an attempt to lighten the atmosphere, you tried to chuckle, but all laughter died in your throat when your eyes locked with Jihoon’s. You weren’t scared of his intensity - you were scared of the pace at which your desire for him was growing. One inch closer, and you knew you’d be wrapped around his finger.

He leaned closer.

“What are you trying to say?” he asked, tilting his head innocently to the side. Mindlessly, you rubbed your thighs together, searching for some relief for your core that had started to throb of its own accord, but Jihoon was following your every movement and had noticed it. “Are you saying you want to consummate our relationship?” he asked again, a hint of amusement in his voice as he placed his hands on your knee that wasn’t covered by the blanket.

You scoffed and looked away, hoping you didn’t look as flustered as you felt. “Not if you say it like that,” you mumbled.

Jihoon’s eyebrows perked up. “How should I say it, then?” he whispered. His hand slowly brushed along your sides until it reached your waist. Even over your layer of clothing, his touch burned. “You want me to make love to you?”

You kept your gaze fixed on something behind his shoulder, focusing on your breathing that was getting shakier and shakier. He drew the blanket away, leaving your thighs exposed to the chilly air for a second before he splayed his large palms on them, bringing you some warmth but intensifying the throbbing in your core. His hands inched closer and closer to where you most needed them, rubbing over your inner thighs but swerving right before he actually reached your core, setting them on your hip bones instead.

“Or do you want me to fuck you, Y/N?”

He took your chin between two fingers, forcing you to meet his gaze. Your eyes locked for a second before they dropped to his lips, watching the smirk that grew on them. “Guess it’s the latter.”

As soon as your lips touched, you were overwhelmed by the immensity of your desire for him. Your whole body burned in want, in need. You had no idea what to do except hold on tightly to him and hope for the best, hope that he’d know how to guide you through this even if it was new for him as well.

If you thought the kisses you’d shared earlier in the day had been intense, this one was on a whole other level. Your hands grabbed everywhere they could find and his gripped your waist firmly as your tongues danced with each other, resulting in a messy kiss that had your head spinning from lack of air in seconds. And yet, you couldn’t get enough. You kept pulling Jihoon impossibly closer by the hem of his t-shirt until he got frustrated from the layer of clothing between you two and simply took it off, discarding somewhere in your room. He gave you no time to admire his defined chest or abs, because he trapped your lips right away.

He pushed you slowly onto the bed until he was hovering over you, alternating between kissing your lips and your neck, that you were sure would have a couple of purple marks for you to find the next day. Your skin burned wherever he touched it, and it was like a trail of fire had appeared as his hand made its way to your breasts once more, grabbing harshly at the soft flesh there.

The whole time, he had been in some sort of a trance, drunk on your body, on your scent, on the way you were touching him - on the feeling that you finally wanted him as much as he’d wanted you all this time. But when he helped you out of the articles of clothing covering your upper body, and he had you half-naked underneath him, he had to take a double take and remember to take his time instead of just devouring you whole. For both his sake and yours.

So he stopped for a bit, letting himself admire you. He noticed you shifting uncomfortably, so he leaned down again, pressing soft kisses along your cheeks and your jaw. “You really are the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen,” he whispered before kissing you. He then continued his journey down your neck and collarbones until he reached your breast. “Really so beautiful.”

When he took one of your nipples in his mouth, your back arched against him and you let out a loud moan. He couldn’t keep himself from chuckling slightly - he found it adorable how sensitive you were everywhere he touched you. Your moans were like music to his ears.

Nothing had ever felt like this before. As he circled his tongue around your nipple - God knows where he had learned how to do this - it took everything you had to not just scream in pleasure. Even if Minjeong was out, you still had neighbors. Now that you couldn’t grab his t-shirt, you’d switched to his hair, and you were tugging at it so hard you wouldn’t have been surprised if you ripped a clump of it from his head.

Your panties were sticking to your core, all slick with your arousal, and you didn’t know how long you could go on anymore without attention down there.

As if he’d heard your thoughts, Jihoon started making his way down your body once more, trailing kisses all across your ribcage and stomach.

“I’m torn between taking this real slow and making it last as long as possible.” His lips found a sensitive spot on your lower stomach, right next to your hip bone, and he gently bit the skin there, licking it afterwards to offer you some relief. “Or just devouring you now that I finally have you.”

“Jihoon,” you sighed, desperation evident in your voice. “Please, just do something.”

“Like what?” he asked, clearly enjoying your lust-filled state of mind.

“Anything.”

He chuckled, and by the sound of it, you knew he didn’t have anything good in mind. He lowered himself some more until his mouth was positioned right in front of your pussy, and, with no warning, licked a long strip from your hole to your clit over your panties, humming at the taste of your arousal.

“Something like this?” he asked afterwards, but was only met with a whine. He kissed the soft flesh of your inner thighs while you squirmed in his hold.

“Don’t tease me, please…” you begged, and your voice was so weak and genuine that he could only give in.

“Whatever you want, baby,” he obliged, the nickname rolling off of his tongue casually. He had no idea what it did to you.

He helped you out of your underwear, finally getting you fully naked just for him. Jihoon was a man of his words, so not a second was lost before he dived right back into you, licking up the arousal spilling out of you before flicking his tongue at your clit. He held your hips tightly in both of his hands so you couldn’t squirm away from him and ate you out like a man starved. You were so sweet and warm against his tongue, and your taste was worlds more intoxicating than any alcohol he’d ever had. He’d do this forever if you let him.

He noticed quickly that attention to your clit was what got you moaning the loudest, so he alternated between circling his tongue around it and gently sucking at it, sometimes releasing it with a pop just for the hell of it. He slipped a finger easily inside of you, your wetness accommodating him immediately. He couldn’t wait to be inside you - his hard cock was throbbing in the confines of his underwear, but his only concern right now was to make you come undone for him.

When he found that deep spot inside of you, the one that had you gasping in pleasure and moaning his name, he slid a second finger in, and just like that, you were done for. You came apart on his fingers and tongue, a complete moaning mess underneath him, and he lapped up the arousal leaking out of you like it was water.

You’d already thought you were at the peak of pleasure when your orgasm came ripping through you like an avalanche, blindsiding you and making you see bright white stars behind your tightly closed eyelids. Your throat felt dry from all the moaning and heaving you’d been doing. You had to take Jihoon’s face between your hands and gently pull him up yourself, otherwise it seemed like he was happy to keep going, but it was starting to overwhelm you.

Jihoon held you in his arms as you came down from your high. You let out the laughter bubbling in your throat as your breathing returned to normal - not because something was funny, but because you had just felt so ridiculously amazing that you couldn’t help but laugh.

“How was it?” Jihoon asked, a lot shyer than you’d expected.

You lifted your head to look at him, a bright smile on your face even though you felt close to exhausted. “I have a hard time believing that was your first time giving head, Hoon.”

He chuckled. “Very first time, I promise you. I must just have some God-given skills.”

“I’m not even gonna fight you on that, because that was amazing,” you conceded, nuzzling yourself closer to him.

“I’m glad I could do that for you,” he said softly, burying his nose at the top of your head and inhaling there. The scent of your hair was oddly comforting for him.

Before you let yourself drift off to sleep, you started raking your fingernails across his chest and abs, smiling proudly to yourself when you heard him breathe shakily or felt his muscles clench under your touch. He wasn’t saying anything, but you could tell he was holding himself back. “I think,” you started, pressing a kiss to the corner of his jaw, “That you deserve something in return.”

“You don’t-”

You knew Jihoon. He didn’t like it when you insisted on paying for coffee because he’d done it the last time, or when you baked him something because he’d stayed up all night with you studying for a test. He liked taking care of you, but you always had to almost force him to let you take care of him. You wanted your relationship to be fifty-fifty - you wanted to give him as much as he gave you. Even if he would let you, it wasn’t fair to just take and take.

So you insisted. Whatever he was about to say, it died on his tongue as soon as you placed your palm on his erection. It felt hot and hard under your hand, and saying you weren’t slightly intimidated would be a lie, but you wanted to do this. If you were able to give Jihoon half the pleasure he’d given you moments prior, you’d be satisfied.

You rubbed your hand slowly up and down over his clothes. “Really, baby,” he managed to say between shaky breaths, “I didn’t do that to get something in return- Fuck,” he whispered as you hooked your fingers underneath the waistband of his sweatpants, pulling it down his legs so he was only left in his underwear. Under the black fabric, his bulge looked huge, and you gulped at the idea of having it inside you.

“This feels good, right, Hoon?” you asked, steadily getting bolder and pressing slightly harder against his bulge as you continued rubbing it.

“It- it does, but-”

You shut him up by pressing your lips to his. He reciprocated it immediately, almost unconsciously, before moaning into the kiss. “So let me do this for you,” you whispered before ridding him of his underwear.

“Okay,” he said, sighing as you rubbed your hands from his knees along his thighs.

The groan he let out as you took him in your hand sent shivers straight down your spine. You could finally put to use all the knowledge Minjeong had passed on to you over the past few months. You let go of Jihoon’s cock to spit in your hand, the moisture helping you glide your loosely closed fist along his shaft with more ease. Your movements themselves were probably very clumsy, but Jihoon didn’t seem to mind - he moaned shamelessly, head fallen back against the pillows and exposed Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.

Seeing him like this and knowing it was all because of you drove you crazy, and soon, you became greedy for any sign of pleasure from him. You wanted to hear all of his moans, sighs, groans, watch his abs clench tightly and feel him grab your hair, which he did as soon as you flicked your tongue across his tip, already leaking with pre-cum. The endless string of curses and moans that flew from his mouth as you circled your tongue and shallowly bobbed your mouth around him filled you with satisfaction.

“Fuck, just like that, Y/N. You’re doing so fucking well, baby. Making me feel so good.” Those words had been the cherry on top.

Jihoon was of a more-than-decent size, and fitting all of him inside of your mouth was probably a task that would take a few tries to achieve - you still did your best to take as much of him as you could. You massaged his balls with one of your hands, using the other to hold the base of his shaft while you bobbed your head up and down. You did this with increasing speed then let him take control over your pace as his fingers threaded themselves in your hair, guiding your head around him. You didn’t even know if he was doing it on purpose or out of reflex, but you definitely did not mind handing him the reins.

“You’re gonna make me- Fuck, Y/N, I’m gonna cum, sweetheart.” You hummed around his shaft, and that seemed to do him in - with a loud groan, he released his load, hot and sticky inside your mouth. Taken aback by the bitter taste, you lifted your head and only swallowed what you had caught. You took him in your hand again, jerking him off to help him ride out the rest of his high.

You watched him, transfixed by his heaving chest, eyes screwed shut, the beads of sweat pearling across his torso, and the red blush that had spread from his face down to his neck. You’d done this. You’d gotten Jihoon in such a state. You let him rest for a bit as you wiped your hands and his body with a tissue and had a sip of water.

You then pressed a kiss to his cheek, taking the time to admire his smiling face. When he opened his eyes and found yours, you suddenly felt so shy that you returned to your usual cuddling position, head resting against his shoulder. He wrapped an arm around your shoulders and pulled you close to him. You were both smelly and sticky, but you couldn’t care less.

“You did so good, baby. You did such a good job,” he whispered, the praise going right to your heart.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. That was amazing.” He sighed contentedly, then lowered his head to look at you. “You feeling sleepy?”

You shook your head no, a shy smile on your lips.

Jihoon smirked slightly. “You wanna keep going?”

You nodded.

He shifted himself so that his back rested against the headboard. “Come here,” he whispers, pulling you to his lap. You both winced in sensitivity at the feeling of your core right against his softening dick, but you didn’t want to pull apart either. If anything, the small stimulation created a pit in your lower stomach for the second time of the night.

You wrapped your arms lazily around his neck while he rested one of his hands on your hips and used the other one to rub your back. “How are you feeling?” he asked, eyes soft and full of affection.

You pressed a long, gentle kiss to his lips. “Good. Really good,” you said, making him chuckle.

“Good. Me too.”

You made out lazily, lips moving languidly against each other, neither of you in a rush to get anywhere. But after some time, you started to feel Jihoon hardening under you, and when you rocked your hips against him, coating his growing erection with arousal, he groaned. His hands traveled down to your ass, grabbing hard at the skin there as he helped you rock back and forth against him. You started out slowly at first, moaning every time your clit brushed against his tip, but it wasn’t long before you sped things up and lost yourself in pleasure once again. Your arms tightened their hold around his neck and, burying your face in his neck, you pressed your chest flush to his and muffled your moans against his skin, in both pleasure and frustration at having him right against you but not inside.

You suddenly lifted your head, and the look on your face made Jihoon instantly stop. “Is everything okay, baby?”

You nodded, but your worry was still evident in the crease of your brows. “Yeah, I just…” You pouted. “I’m scared it’ll hurt, Hoon.”

Jihoon caressed the side of your cheek with his palm, brushing some hair away from your face. “We don’t have to do this today-”

“No!” you exclaimed, taking the both of you aback. “I want to.”

“Okay.”

“I’m just a little bit nervous.”

“Okay. That’s okay, baby.” One of his hands rubbed reassuring circles into your lower back. “We can go as slow as you want, okay? And we can stop whenever you want. Just let me know. Does that sound good?”

You nodded, taking a deep breath. “Yeah, it does.”

Jihoon smiled and pressed his lips to yours. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah,” you whispered.

He helped you lay on your back against the mattress and hovered over you, propping himself up on one forearm. As he kissed you, he caressed one of your thighs, hand inching closer and closer to your core and making your blood rush with anticipation. Then he finally pressed two fingers to your folds, gathering up some of your arousal

before sliding his digits inside of you. As you gasped out in pleasure, his lips trailed away from your lips and found a new home in your neck.

He scissored his fingers inside of you, stretching you out and getting you ready for him as he murmured words of “you’re doing so well” and “I’ll make you feel good,” as if he wasn’t already. When you seemed relaxed enough, he slid his fingers out of you, smiling at you mischievously while he sucked your arousal off of them. Then, taking his dick by the base, he rubbed his tip along your folds, making your body twitch and loud moans escape your mouth. He pressed a final kiss to your cheek and buried his face in your neck, trying to ground himself too as he slowly started pushing himself inside of you.

His dick was so much bigger than his fingers, and you gripped his hair tightly as you got used to the new sensation. Tears prickled in your eyes, the unexpected stretch making you frown in discomfort. It was a completely different pain to what you were used to, but the overwhelming pleasure mixed with it made it almost welcome.

Jihoon was using all of his self-control to not pound you into tomorrow - your tight pussy was sucking him right in, and it was like his whole body sighed of relief when he bottomed out. He couldn’t believe he was inside you, feeling your walls clench around him and hearing your soft grunts as you got used to him. It was a scene right out of his wet dreams.

“You okay?” he asked, voice muffled against your skin. His voice sounded strained and heavy.

“I’m okay, Hoonie. I just need a minute.”

For that minute, as you breathed shallowly and relaxed around him, Jihoon pressed wet kisses wherever his lips could reach and twirled one of your nipples between two fingers to take your mind off of your pain.

“Take your time. I know I’m big, baby,” he said. You could hear the smirk in his voice.

“No, you’re just right, Hoon. It feels nice now.”

Objectively, Jihoon knew that this was a good thing, and that you had meant in a good way - better for him to fit right inside rather than cause you pain, but a part of his ego had still been hurt by your refutal of his claim. But then you told him he could move, and he forgot all about it.

It took him another superhuman kind of effort to go slow, slowly rolling his hips against yours with a self-control he didn’t know he had. He scanned your face for any signs of discomfort, kissing your small frown in the hope it might go away. He watched as your jaw relaxed and the soft hums escaping your throat turned into moans, as the crease in your eyebrows softened and turned into one of pleasure rather than pain. He allowed his movements to speed up, noting with satisfaction the increasing volume of the noises you were making and the way your fingernails dug into the skin of his shoulders.

He lifted himself on his palms and hooked one of your legs around his hips, the new, deeper angle having you seeing stars. He asked if you were okay again, and when you not only nodded yes, but asked him to go faster, Jihoon had to admit he got a little bit carried away, both in his actions and his words.

Jihoon had a big mouth - you knew it, everyone knew it. What you didn’t know was that he would keep that big mouth even balls-deep inside you.

Maintaining a fast pace, he lowered himself so that his lips tickled your ear as he spoke. “You’re doing so well, baby. Taking my cock like the good girl you are. Isn’t that right? You’re my good girl,” he grunted, punctuating his words with harsh rolls of his hips into yours. You couldn’t even get yourself to answer, that’s how far gone you were, his words going into your one ear and coming out the other. All you could think about was how good it all felt, from his tip repeatedly hitting that delicious spot inside of you to the feeling of his warm, sticky skin against yours. The room smelled of sweat and arousal and was filled with all sorts of noises - your heavy breathing, your moans, your grunts, the wet sound of Jihoon’s dick inside of you.

“Can’t even say anything, can you? Am I making you feel that good, baby?”

You moaned, thinking that should be enough of a yes for him, but you should’ve known better.

“I think you should answer me when I ask you a question, Y/N,” he commanded, slowing his pace down to get you to listen to him.

“Y-yes, it feels so good, Hoon,” you replied, out-of-breath.

“Attagirl,” he whispered, smiling as he bit the lobe of your ear.

You hadn’t even realized you were crying until Jihoon halted in his motions, feeling one of your hot, wet tears on his palm. He was quick to wipe it away, searching for any pain in your features, but you only whined, asking him why he’d stopped.

“Why are you crying, baby? Did I hurt you? Are you okay?” he asked frantically. The worry in his voice only amplified your already overflowing love for him.

“No, you didn’t do anything wrong, I just… God, this is so embarrassing,” you all but sobbed against his skin, realizing that the pleasure had been so overwhelming, tears had started flowing from your eyes.

“No, it’s not.”

You screwed your eyes shut for a second before meeting his gaze again. “I just- it feels so good, Hoon.”

A pause passed as he took a deep breath. “Is that it?”

“It is, I promise. Please, just… let’s keep going, Hoonie. I was so close,” you whined, and Jihoon couldn’t help but chuckle at your desperation. How was it that he still found you so adorable even in such a situation?

“Okay, baby. I’m relieved.” He wiped more of your tears that had fallen, but as soon as he moved inside of you again, taking a minute to return to his previous harsh pace, your tears resumed streaking down your cheeks. Jihoon kissed them, savoring their salty taste on his tongue.

It didn’t take long for the knot in your stomach to become tight again, and with every deep thrust, you felt yourself getting closer and closer to the edge.

“You look so pretty like this, sweetheart. All fucked out for me.”

“Mm. I’m so close, Hoon, gonna- fuck, gonna-”

“You’re gonna cum for me, baby? Gonna cum and make a mess all over my cock?”

“Yes, Hoon, fuck-”

You gasped out loud as his hand found your clit again, using his thumb to rub quick circles into the sensitive bundle of nerves. “Cum for me, sweetheart, show me how good it feels.”

That did it for you. Your second orgasm of the night washed over you, making you release your loudest moan yet. You held on to Jihoon like you might fall apart if you didn’t.

The quick clenching and unclenching of your walls around Jihoon’s dick as he fucked you throughout your high drove him crazy and, soon enough, he came undone himself, hot, white ropes of his cum filling you up. The squelch as he fucked his cum into you, the both of you moaning in overstimulation, was nothing short of pornographic.

Jihoon all but collapsed on top of you, humming as you traced your fingernails up and down his back. You took a few minutes to collect yourselves, and you thought he might have fallen asleep, soft dick still inside you, when he lifted himself up with a sigh and slid out of you. You winced at the loss of his warmth. He pressed a kiss to your forehead and said he’d be back in a sec.

When he entered your room again, he was carrying a towel, a tall glass of water, and leftovers from your takeout earlier. He cleaned you off and asked you how you felt, then you chatted as you ate your food. You could pass out at any moment, but it was nice, talking a little bit after the moment you shared instead of falling asleep straight away.

He almost choked on his water when you asked him where he’d learned to talk so dirty - now that he was out of the moment, his cheeks reddened at the thought of everything he’d told you. “It just comes naturally,” he’d said shyly.

“Do you want anything?” he asked when you were done eating.

You kissed him, smiling against his lips. “I’m all good, Hoon. You?”

He mirrored your smile. “All good, too.”

“I just wanna cuddle and sleep now. I’m spent.”

“Sounds perfect to me,” he whispered. He laid down on his back and you followed, letting him wrap an arm around your shoulder while you rested your head on his chest. He drew you close to him and pulled the blankets over your intertwined bodies. “Is it creepy if I just stare at you for a little bit?”

“Kinda, yeah.”

“But you’re so pretty,” Jihoon pouted.

“I’ll just sleep and pretend I don’t know anything about it.”

“Okay, just don’t panic if you feel a strange but very attractive presence looming over you.”

You snorted. “Noted. Night, Hoon.” You pressed a kiss to his neck and he hummed.

“Night, pretty. Sleep tight.”

When you woke up a few hours later, your room was bathing in the bright yellow glow of the early morning. You and Jihoon had shifted positions in the night and you’d ended up curled up on your side, back to him while he slept on his back, arms sprayed out next to him. It was the feeling of him shifting closer to you and wrapping an arm around your waist that had awoken you, a sudden warmth engulfing your body that made you feel like you might still be dreaming.

But no, it was all very real. From the man behind you, to the events of the previous night, to the dull but not unpleasant ache you felt between your legs. You sighed contentedly, taking his hand in yours and wrapping it tighter around yourself.

Curious to see if he was awake, you turned around after a few minutes and faced him. He seemed pretty passed out until you pressed a soft kiss to his nose, then another to his cheek. His eyebrows creased for a second and his foot moved against yours. He didn’t open his eyes, but he pursed his lips for a kiss. He wasn’t content with just a peck, however, and you found yourself making out with him first thing in the morning, lips full of sleep and cotton-soft like your pillows.

“You have no idea how much I’ve dreamed of this,” he says after a while, keeping his eyes closed, morning voice sending chills down your spine. “Waking up next to you.”

“You have?”

“I have. I don’t know if I should freak out over this and have a party or just be chill about it,” he said, smiling.

“We can have a party.”

“Really?” Jihoon asked, opening his eyes wide, excited like a kid who was just told they were going to Disneyland.

“Sure,” you giggled. “We can invite all of our friends and celebrate our one-week anniversary or something. Minjeong will probably want to plan it.”

He sighed happily. “I’m holding you to that. We’re celebrating.”

After lazing around in bed for a couple hours, going back and forth between chatting while cuddling and making out, your growling stomachs forced you out of your room and into the kitchen.

You and Jihoon noticed it at the same time. It was hard to miss, after all - a bright pink sheet of A4 paper with hearts and little Cupids everywhere right in the middle of the surface of your fridge, but more importantly, your name and Jihoon’s in big bubble letters with 99% in the middle. You wanted to rip it from the surface of your fridge, but the damage had been done - index pointed at the paper, Jihoon turned to you with an incredulous look on his face. You scratched the back of your neck and looked around the kitchen for a way to escape.

“Y/N, what’s this?” Jihoon asked, amusement laced in his voice.

You tried to find some sort of excuse, but to no avail. “This is just, um- you know, just a, uh, just-” The sound of Jihoon’s cackles interrupted you. You looked at him, unimpressed. “Don’t laugh at me. I was stressing out, okay? I needed something to reassure me.”

Jihoon was grinning wide as he pulled you into a hug, one arm around your waist and one hand on the back of your head. “You’re so adorable,” he mused, pressing a kiss to your hair. You wrapped your arms around his middle and nuzzled your nose against his neck, the comforting scent of his skin making you forget about your embarrassment.

He leaned away slightly and took the paper off of the fridge, smiling down at it. “As cute as this is, you don’t need it. I’ll show you everyday that I’m the perfect man for you, okay?”

You mirrored his smile. “Okay.” Even when your lips found each other, you couldn’t stop smiling, giggles escaping from your lips into his. You only laughed harder when he started pressing small kisses all over your face, making sure to not miss a single spot. He pressed a final one to your forehead before resting his against it, both of you closing your eyes and relishing in each other’s presence.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

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