#minseok fic

[xiubaek-13]

Requested: No

Genre: Canon-AU, smut

Pairing: ? (at this stage undecided) x Reader or is it Baekhyun x Reader ?

Warnings: 18+ fic, minors DNI! angst, fluff, suggestive text, making out, confessions of feelings. Not many warnings for this one but she's deeply in her head for a decent portion of this chapter.

Word Count: 22,599

A/N: Here it is. The final chapter. Like most of my writing in the back half of this fic, it was supposed to be considerable shorter but then I let the brain worms control my fingers and now you get this behemoth of an ending. It's only had one very quick edit so I hope it makes sense and isn't a let down.

7 years ago I knew the ending for this fic, but when I was plotting out the chapter that ending simply didn't fit anymore so we've got a new ending and I hope it doesn't let you down.

The flight home left you with a lot of time to think. You had asked Minseok and Baekhyun to let the rest of the guys know about your meeting, telling them that Junmyeon could probably fill in more of the details that you’d left out when you’d broken the news to them. Your mind had been focused on getting to Minseok’s reward at the time, so discussing the feedback you’d received in great detail was not front of mind. 

Feeling overwhelmed with your own thoughts, you’d also asked them to tell everyone that you had requested some space. From them. You just couldn’t handle any of them right now. You’d assured Minseok & Baek when you’d all woken up the next morning that they hadn’t overstepped or done anything, but that your mind was too busy and too much for you right now. The internal storm had been brewing for quite some time but you’d constantly pushed it down, too busy to deal with silly things like the future, feelings and relationships. But once the tour ended and the rewards were completed (inconveniently on the same night) it all came crashing down on you. The floodgates had been opened and you didn’t know how to act normal and not drown in your own mind at the same time. You needed space to simply exist. Space to sort out your mind before you did something utterly stupid and reckless. You’d promised to never disappear on them again without talking to them, and whilst you felt a bit guilty for withdrawing from them like that you had provided warning, and as much context as you could. Baekhyun refused to let you leave until you promised him you weren’t self-destructing. That you weren’t going to disappear and not respond to them.

“You said you wouldn’t do that again. You said you’d lean on at least one of us when you were struggling.” He said, his eyes full of concern as he watched you nervously pace around the room.

“It’s different this time. I’m not sad, or feeling lonely or headed to a dark place mentally.” You stopped in the middle of the room as you tried to hold off the panic attack that you could feel building within you. You needed to go. You needed to be away from it all. You needed them to understand. “It’s just loud. And overwhelming. And I need time to be by myself to sort through everything.” 

“But you’re asking us to not contact you.” He looked down at his hands. “How will we know if you’re ok?”

“It won’t be for long. I hope. Just give me a week, then Minseok or Kyungsoo can check in to make sure I’m ok.” You said. 

“Why not me?” He asked so quietly that you barely heard the words.

“Because I know they’ll just check in with me and nothing more until I’m ready to chat.” You smiled at him. “You wouldn’t be able to help yourself. You yap. It’s just part of who you are.”

“I hate this.” He grumbled.

“I don’t like it either, but I’ll do it.” Minseok replied. He looked worried for you as well, but he could tell you weren’t going to bend on this request. He didn’t want to back you into a corner. He knew if any of them did that, they ran the risk of you running from them. He hated to see you struggle with your thoughts but he hoped he knew you well enough to know that you’d reach out if you needed to lean on them. Even if you weren’t ready.

“Fine. I’ll do it as well, but know that I truly do not like this. Not one bit.” He sighed, resigned to your decision. He realised his words may have come across too harsh when he saw guilt flash across your features. “I’m sorry. I’m not mad. I’m just worried and wish I, or any of us, could help.”

You nodded. “I get it. I would hate it if any of you did this to me. Trust me I feel shitty about it, but I need to go deal with some stuff that I’ve been putting to the side because I simply didn’t have time to process it.” You shifted nervously on your feet, itching to leave the room. You felt your heart rate increase, and breathing was becoming difficult. You had to leave before your panic was obvious to them. You weren’t sure why you were so wound up this morning, but you knew you just needed to get away from the people who paid too much attention to you. “I’m sorry, but I have to go.” 

You knew that they had conveyed your wishes when the group chat you’d been added to, one that had been busy that morning with members arguing over the best American breakfast sandwich, just stopped. The messages just abruptly ended. It left a bittersweet feeling in your heart. On one hand, they were only respecting your request for space to think, but on the other, having nine large personalities all fall quiet at the same time made you feel lonely. You hadn’t realised how much they had integrated themselves into your life, and you theirs until then. You might not see them every day but their presence was always felt. Through messages bickering with each other, reminding you to eat, dumb selfies, silly jokes, recommendations for movies or tv shows, unflattering photos of the others. They were always there. Until now. Now it was as though they’d all simply ceased to exist. It was weird. It felt wrong.

You’d travelled back to Korea with the other staff members. No one found that strange as there was no reason for any of the guys to request your presence for a lesson - the tour was over. You mindlessly watched movies until you fell asleep. Dealing with the onslaught of thoughts and feelings was not something you were going to do on a long haul flight. Having a breakdown 30,000 feet above the ocean was not on your bucket list. Did you shed a tear or two at certain scenes in the movies you watched because they reminded you of certain people? Maybe. But lucky for you the staff were all equally exhausted and happy to sleep for the majority of the return trip. Once you landed the guys were called to the company whilst you and multiple other staff members were told to go home and rest. You were beyond thankful to be told to go home because that was the only thing you wanted to do. You wanted the safety of the familiar four walls of your apartment. The comfort of your bed. Maybe all you needed was a really long sleep and then you’d be less of an emotional wreck. You didn’t think you’d overworked yourself but maybe you were wrong? 

It was quiet in your apartment. Not that that was a new thing. No, the new thing was that you knew it would remain quiet. There would not be a knock on your door from a bored neighbour who wanted to raid your snack cupboard and hide from their roommates. There would be no flurry of messages to your phone or late night calls. It was probably a good thing. If this feeling that you were experiencing, like teetering on the edge of an abyss of panic, was anything to go by then you were probably deluding yourself if you thought it was purely related to being exhausted from work. 

No, if you actually thought about it, you realised that it was the culmination of a few things. First there was the fact that your contract was over and you didn’t know what was next for you, or how their CEO would respond to the work you’d done. Second was the fact that you had been sexually intimate with each of the members. You thought you’d kept the interpersonal relationship side of things separate from the sex but now your mind was throwing every ‘what if’ in the book at you. Were they your friends?, were they colleagues?, did any of them now want nothing to do with you because you’d been with the others?, did any of them want more from you?, did you want more from any of them?, did you ruin everything? Your mind was in full spiral mode, with no exits in sight. You were unfortunately in for the ride, even if you did not want to be.

You knew you needed to sit down and dwell in your thoughts and work out what to do about the nine very special men who were woven into your heart, each one you had slept with, but did you feel something more than friendship and attraction to any of them? Was it simply a working relationship that you’d sprinkled some highly unprofessional fun into or did you have romantic interest in any or all of them? You’d avoided thinking about this very thing for weeks now, always telling yourself that you were too busy with lessons. Now you were forced to address it. No one would come distract you, and there was no work to be done, and if you didn’t address it? Well it seemed like you were destined for a full blown mental breakdown if you left it to fester.

You were officially off the clock until the CEO summoned you so you had nothing but time to sit and dwell on your thoughts and feelings. Naturally you decided to clean your apartment instead. Then reorganise the kitchen, do all of your washing, make your bed and organise your desk. It was when your thumb was hovering over the call button for your parents that you snapped out of your procrastination spiral and forced your brain to start unraveling the mess that was your relationship with the EXO members. 

Like every other time you’d had to solve a seemingly large problem, you took out a notebook and pen and began to make notes. It wasn’t a pros and cons list, rather, it was your jumbled thoughts spewed out onto a page. You’d always worked best with problem solving when you had something to annotate. You needed visual logic cues if you were to concentrate on this long enough to deal with it. When you looked down at the page it was one very messy web of unfiltered thoughts. Seeing it all on the page didn’t ease your worries like it usually did. For some reason this felt bigger, like it was more important than you could perceive. 

The crux of the issue still seemed to be that they were your friends before you took on the role of teaching them English, then after they became colleagues you rather quickly implemented the reward system. Then came the issue of involving sex, but honestly, apart from some prying and joking the guys hadn’t changed in how they acted towards you. If anything some were more affectionate with you but that was never in a sexual way. They understood that the system was there for the lessons and if you excluded Minseok and Baekhyun - all sex acts were contained within the lesson rewards or punishments. Yixing was playful, but only because he knew he could get away with it. He never tried for more than being close to you, and you knew he cared about you (especially since the day at the Han River, and because he wasn’t always around), but you didn’t think he was pining for you though it was sometimes difficult to gauge what he was feeling. Junmyeon was a gentleman and rarely brought up anything to do with the reward arrangement. Chanyeol, Jongdae and Sehun liked to make suggestive comments and jokes but that was mostly in. Sehun had been clingy before all of this anyway. Kyungsoo was another who was difficult to read. He’d never tried anything after the reward, but he was sweet to you, and very familiar with you in a way he hadn’t been beforehand. Jongin was a sweetheart before and after, and you were pretty sure his reward was just an experience for him and nothing more. Minseok and you… well that has basically been a friends with benefits situation however neither of you appeared to be trying to push that arrangement into something more at present. You were both more than capable of hanging out and not fucking. 

Baekhyun presented a whole other problem. Your relationship with him had never been normal. The sexually charged banter had been there from the very beginning and only built as things went on. The day at the Han River proved that he cared about you enough to find you and help you. You enjoyed his company which wasn’t to say you didn’t enjoy all of their company, but with him it was different. Wasn’t it? You weren’t sure. The relationship that grew between the two of you had been sexually charged thanks to your drunken flirting very early on in the scheme of things but he’d never shied away from it - as long as you weren’t a drunken mess. The flirting had continued and your encounters always seemed to teeter on the precipice of taking that next step, but ended in delayed gratification so it was impossible for you to decipher if you had felt so strongly because you’d craved his body and his touch or if it was something more.

You paused in your deliberations to order some food. All this thinking was making you hungry and your mother had always told you to never make important decisions while hungry. It was something you’d lived by and you weren't about to stray from it now. A decision made while hungry could very well just be the impulsive choice rather than the choice you might make once hunger wasn’t making you impatient. Hangry was never a helpful state to be in.

What were you even trying to figure out? Did you want to date all of them? Was that even a possibility? It would be hard enough to date one idol, let alone nine of them. How would that work? You knew people back home who were in successful polycules but like, they were on the smaller side and had a more even split of gender. That and the fact that they weren’t also hugely famous in a highly conservative country and would receive backlash for anyone they dated. If you dated all nine of them, you would be the only woman and as far as you were aware, none of them were all that interested in exploring each other in that way. Did you feel that way about them? I felt like it had to be an all or nothing situation for it to be fair. You didn’t ask your brain what kind of logic that was because it made sense to you at the time. So would you be ok if you didn’t pursue anything more with any of them? Would remaining close friends with them be enough for you, or them? God you hadn’t even considered if any of them were romantically interested in you. How embarrassing would it be to make a decision only for it to be the opposite of their decision? Could your heart handle that rejection if you were dealing with freshly discovered feelings? You stood up and did a full body shake in a feeble attempt at releasing the building anxiety from your body. You needed to focus on one question at a time. Were you romantically interested in all of them? 

You weren’t sure. It was complicated. 

If you didn’t want all of them, would you be fine with just being friends with them? 

Again, you weren’t sure. All this thinking was making your head hurt. The lack of answers you were providing yourself wasn’t helping your anxiety in the slightest. Maybe you should just finish your food, go to bed and try again in the morning? You probably had jet lag. That couldn’t be helping. 

Did you want any of them in that way? Did any of them want you in that way? If you were just friends with them, would you be ok watching them date other people? Could you be happy for them? Your heart felt heavy and you were no closer to working out why. You closed your notebook and got into bed, hoping the cocoon of your blankets could wash away some of the worries and panic. 

Sleep was elusive. You tossed and turned for what felt like the entire night because you could not switch your brain off. It wasn’t supplying any new information nor was it being productive in any way. No, instead it was showing you all of the worst case scenario outcomes from your possible decisions. Thoughts of being doxxed for dating any of them, sasaengs hurting you or any of them, calls from antis to have the group disband or certain members thrown out. All of it haunted your sleep deprived brain. When your thoughts drifted to the possibility of you being deported over dating any of them, you finally heaved a sigh, called your mind an idiot and somehow fell asleep. It was more likely that you passed out from exhaustion at that point, too drained mentally to remain conscious. The dreams were just snapshots of all these awful thoughts. Your subconscious must have felt bad for you as it sprinkled in small glimpses of the happy endings where everything worked out. Little bursts of colour surrounded these moments, like it was really trying its best to show you there could be good outcomes. 

Warmth and laughter in their company, locked lips and entwined limbs, waking up in someone’s arms, secretive dates, happy smiles. Small glimpses of building a happy home together, of not dating but still hanging out and enjoying being with your friends. Feeling whole, and loved. Even dreaming you were no closer to a resolution than before. 

A new day brought distractions. So be it if those distractions were ones you forced upon yourself, they were still distractions dammit. You took yourself out for a walk in a feeble attempt at clearing your mind only to find yourself standing in front of an aquarium in Gangnam. Water always grounded you when your thoughts became too loud, and since you couldn’t sit at the beach, staring out at the waves for hours like you could in your hometown, an aquarium was the next best thing. Something about walking through enclosures below the water with sea life surrounding you was calming. It was serene and quiet. You allowed your mind to go blank as you made your way through the different exhibits, reading the fun facts that were put next to each enclosure. 

You learned about the sharks that could reproduce asexually, never needing the company of others to keep themselves afloat. Sharks were always so interesting to watch. A terrifying predator who seemingly feared nothing, but to you they were also these goofy looking creatures because of their teeth. There were too many and they were too sharp but it also made them look kind of ridiculous when they were simply existing. You had an appreciation for them. They were unbothered creatures, content to simply exist, only attacking for survival whether that be for sustenance or to defend themselves. They let specific creatures into their personal space, never attacking them, but seeming to simply coexist. Those suckerfish - that you now found out were actually called Remora - helped the sharks and in turn the sharks helped them. It seemed like a simple relationship. You imagined that one day they just attached themselves to the sharks and never let go and for some reason, the shark just let it happen. 

The tropical exhibit was vibrant and massive. You had to stop yourself from reciting lines from Finding Nemo lest you appear like a crazy foreigner talking to themselves. You knew a lot of the facts about these creatures from your studies at school but there were some things they had left out of your textbooks, probably to avoid teachers having to explain certain concepts to children. Concepts like polyamorous fish. Yeah, those existed. Well, technically the marine biologists simply documented that certain species of tropical fish mated with multiple partners. So one couldn’t explicitly state that the fish were polyamorous, but maybe that term was better than saying the fish were swingers. It was a ridiculous concept to think about. The inner working relationships of fish. Maybe you were losing your mind. 

You moved on to see the seals being fed. You always found them to be a deceptive creature. ‘Looks like a friend but is most definitely not a friend’ was the label you’d always associated with them. Growing up you’d been to a marine park and been in awe of the cute seals who did tricks for rewards in the form of fish. You even had a photo with a seal posed next to you. You remembered that it was heavy, very wet and its breath stank of fish, but it was pretty chill. Your cousin snuck you into a section you weren’t supposed to go to, where they were rehabilitating other animals - mainly dolphins and seals. He knew about a specific seal species that looked adorable and said he wanted to show it to you. He left out the part where this particular species ate penguins and other seals. He waited until you were home, talking to anyone who would listen about the world’s prettiest seal, about how they must be the sweetest and most amazing seals to ever exist. He waited until you were so enamoured by them that you were almost going to claim them as your new favourite animal to show you a section of a documentary of that specific species hunting. You had nightmares for weeks. Thankfully the seals in this enclosure were not the leopard seals of your childhood nightmares. It did remind you to call your cousin to catch up and remind him of how much he terrorised you as a child. 

You spent way too long watching the penguins in the arctic exhibit. They appeared to be nesting, at least that was the conclusion you arrived at. There were penguins lying in little circles made of rocks and ice, a nest you supposed, while their mate searched the enclosure for the perfect pieces of ice and rocks before bringing them back and placing them in the nest (you assumed they were mates since they kept returning to the same nest, never straying to a different penguin. That and you knew penguins mated for life, so if they weren’t mates then they were definitely courting the penguin they thought could be their mate). It was such a simple act but you found that you simply couldn’t leave the viewing window, entranced by such a simple act of love. 

When you finally left the aquarium a few hours later you felt more at peace than you had in weeks. By no means was your mind clear, but the chaotic tornado that had taken up residence in there was now more of a light breeze as all your worries quietened down, allowing you to logically sift through them. You allowed yourself to believe that you had in fact, been successful at teaching EXO English. The tour was successful and you hadn’t been required to step in very often during their ments or interviews. For a group with poor prior experience with learning English you had basically done the impossible. You managed to let go of the stigma that had clouded your mind for the past few weeks that was constantly telling you they were only succeeding because of the sex, but really if all they took from your lessons was the sex then they still would have failed miserably at their ments and interviews. Something you did stuck, and whether it was because you were someone they knew and trusted was kind of beside the point. You took the time to learn how each of them would learn the best from you, and tailored sessions to maximise their recall of their ments. And it fucking worked. You should really allow yourself to feel your oats more often than you did. The cloud of self depreciation that had been looming and trying to take root was dissolved. You did a good job. Others had told you so, you knew it to be true. You just had to be consistent in telling your self doubt to go fuck itself when it next tried to diminish your achievements. You felt a little lighter than you had this morning, one less voice causing chaos in your mind.

Riding on your good mood, you decided to take a walk through the nearby night markets, enjoying food from the street vendors and looking at the pretty wares others had on offer. You resisted the urge to buy gifts for the guys - this was a day for you, not a day for you to revert to stressing over if you would be giving a gift as a friend, as a romantic partner, or as a farewell. For now you simply took in the craftsmanship of the trinkets, clothing and jewellery on offer - deciding that you would go to more night markets in the future. The streets were so full of life, bustling with a palpable energy that was infectious. You loved it. The streets were illuminated with soft and pretty lights, making you feel like you were walking through a little fairytale rather than the streets of Seoul. It was an impressive feat for this small section of such a bright and bustling city to achieve. 

Eventually you decided it was time to begin the journey back towards your apartment. You wanted to call your family, possibly a friend as well, just to update them on your life as a translator overseas. Now that you actually recognised the work that you had done you knew you could feel confident talking to them about it. Talking about it to someone outside of the business might also help bring other things you were worried about into focus. You headed home with your head held high, finally feeling good about the work you had done these past months. 

Speaking with your parents and your closest friend back home helped you unpack more of your thoughts. Ones you wouldn’t have realised if you hadn’t had to conceal certain aspects of your life over here. Describing the boys as acquaintances then colleagues felt weird and wrong, but you knew you had to hide the friendship to an extent. After all, they didn’t know how damaging that kind of news could be if it got out and they would not feel the need to keep that information to themselves. You knew they’d just say you were overreacting if you told them not to tell anyone about it, so you simply kept that from them. It was easier this way even if it felt off. They meant more than you could tell your parents.

You’d always worried that your family wouldn’t be proud of you for taking a job in a foreign country and leaving as quickly as you did. You’d expected to cop an earful from your mother for not calling her more often but you were pleasantly surprised to hear how many questions she had about your work - how was your boss, how did they assign clients, were they treating you well, were the hours humane, were the conditions fair, did you get sufficient pay and time off. The list was endless. You answered all of her questions to the best of your ability without breaching your contract or giving away incriminating details. Your father wanted to know all about your living conditions, was it in a good neighbourhood, was the security good, were you safe, were you being smart when you left the house. You allowed him to nag you since that was his love language - fretting about his daughter's safety. He even convinced you to hang up and call again on video so you could show him your apartment and so they could see your face, to make sure you were being truthful about eating and sleeping well. Definitely not because they also missed you terribly. Once you had appeased them, promising no less than five times that you were keeping out of trouble, were eating well and getting enough sleep, did they allow you to ask them questions about life after you left home. It was comforting to talk to them, even if it made you miss them terribly - you longed for a warm hug from each of them more than you wanted to admit. You dodged questions of romance, citing that you were far too busy with work to date. You also had to explain how dating culture was different here, and once they knew how much faster relationships began your father was much happier to know that you weren’t dating. You’d die if he knew what you had been doing though. 

You eventually told them that you were at the end of the current contract you were on and that you were awaiting a final evaluation to see if the company you had been on contract with wanted to keep you on for other projects or if your boss would be assigning you to a new company to work with new artists. Your father could tell from your voice that you were feeling anxious about being in limbo. He told you to rest assured that you did the best work you could, and that your successes would be noticed. He told you that if they renewed your contract that would be great because you already had rapport and knew your way around the company building, feeling comfortable with that environment but he also told you that if they didn’t, that it wouldn’t take long for your boss to find you a new company because of your achievements on your current contract, and that change wasn’t a bad thing. It could lead to bigger and brighter things. Your mother was always good at talking out the minutiae of a problem with you but your father could pinpoint what you needed to hear and ease your busy mind. It was a trait you were thankful he had because it was what you needed right now. You talked for a long time after that, catching up on everything you had missed in their lives, on tv shows, the news, gossip around town. Your mother could harp on about anything if you let her. Eventually you had to try and wind up the conversation, you did have another call to make after all. After promising to call more often they let you go so you could call your closest friend. 

Speaking with her went exactly as you thought it would. First there was a lot of nagging about how you never called or told her anything, how you’d abandoned her for the rich and famous clients you had. That you’d probably snagged some uber rich and hot guy and forgotten all about little old her. Then came the endless I miss you’s followed by all the things she’d been dying to tell you. You got wildly sidetracked as you caught up on her life, her new boyfriend, her work, her plans and seemingly endless tangents. She was the kind of friend who could easily take over a conversation, something she had often had to do in the past. There were times where you just preferred to go quiet and let others lead the small talk. You preferred topics that interested you when meeting new people because you had something to contribute, and surface level conversation kind of bored you. You could do it, and did when work required it of you, but in your personal life you were often much more reserved in conversation with strangers. There was probably something to unpack there but you chose to ignore that for now.

You went through a similar interrogation about work and life in Korea with her, though she pressed for far more details than your parents did since she had some idea that you were working with idols. You managed to avoid incriminating yourself in any way but you knew this would not be the last time she pressed you for information. She had a knack for knowing when things were left unsaid, and boy did you leave a lot of things about your situation unsaid. When you got to the topic of your current employment potentially coming to an end she made similar points to your father, though she added that the more people you worked for in the entertainment sector, the more likely it was for you to meet some amazing guy. You almost choked on your laughter at that. Once again you had to promise to contact her more often before she would let you get off the phone with her. 

[9:21PM] Your bestest friend in the world: Don’t think for a moment that I didn’t pick up on the fact that something is going on with you.

[9:21PM] Your bestest friend in the world: I won’t push you for an explanation yet, but know that I’m here for you love. Anytime. 

She was too perceptive for her own good. You hated and loved her for it.

[9:21PM] You: Nothing gets past you does it? I should have known you’d pick up on it. I’m not ready to talk about it yet, still wading through my thoughts etc. But thank you bby. ILYSM <3

[9:21PM] Your bestest friend in the world: <3 Talk to me when you’re ready to unpack everything in that pretty little head of yours. ILYSM2

The calls left you feeling even more grounded and settled in your emotions. Your mind continued to be quiet and calm as you got ready for bed, hoping you would get a decent night's sleep and continue your ‘me’ time tomorrow. After all you still had to wade through your feelings about the guys, where everything between the lot of you stood now and where things were going. You weren’t sure that you could fully work out your feelings without talking to them, which could go horribly wrong but you were just too confused. You knew one thing for certain, you had to tell them that there had to be no more sex related things between any of you until this whole thing was worked out. That obviously meant no stress relief fucking with Minseok, but also had to include suggestive comments and jokes. You just weren’t sure if anything could be taken at face value, or if there was more to it.

You promised yourself that if you still felt calm and clear in your thoughts by tomorrow afternoon that you would reach out to the guys. Sure they were giving you space now, but you weren’t so naive to believe that this would continue if you reached a week with zero contact. Sure Minseok or Kyungsoo would message you but you’d rather not let it reach that point if you could help it. You knew them well enough to know that they’d start to worry, and then they’d jump to conclusions that it was somehow their fault that you weren’t talking to them. That was something you wanted to avoid. You weren’t the only one capable of spiralling in your thoughts.

***

Thankfully sleep came easily for you. The bed was comfy, the sheets a perfect texture and the room was cool, allowing you to snuggle into a blanket burrito and sleep deeply. You awoke the next day feeling well rested and more at peace than you’d felt in weeks. You promised to give yourself until the afternoon to make contact and you planned on honoring that self imposed promise so you headed out on another stroll since the weather was yet again pleasant. First stop was the coffee shop for your daily dose of sugar in liquid form (also known as an iced chocolate) and a flaky pastry. Today that was a blueberry danish. With your tasty treats in hand, you set off through the closest park, hoping to find a duck pond to sit by while you ate. There was no reason or tradition for the dunk pond, you just liked being near water when you wanted to get lost in thought. 

As luck would have it, you did find a pond, sadly barren, with no ducks, but it still had the desired effect of being an idyllic backdrop for you. You made a mental list of the things you needed to complete before returning to your apartment. 1. Get groceries so you could cook yourself some meals for the next week. 2. Buy some new clothes and accessories before the season changes so you wouldn’t be caught out. 3. Visit a nearby corgi cafe so you could give some fluffballs your love. 4. Buy a couple of gifts to send home to your parents and closest friend. It wasn’t too overwhelming, but it should keep you occupied until it was time to reach out to the guys. You probably wouldn’t check off the final item today, that would require a future visit to the night markets. 

Groceries were reasonably simple. After talking with your family you suddenly craved a simple western meal so you’d decided on some pan cooked chicken with roasted vegetables and a salad. If you seasoned each chicken breast slightly different it would change up your meals enough each night for you to not grow bored of them. You managed to successfully buy some new clothes and accessories to put away for the next season and then spent two blissfully happy hours at the corgi cafe. You were constantly being prodded with little paws or wet noses asking for pats and treats. You were quite literally covered in fur but you didn’t care. They were so cute and getting to spend time with them really filled the part of you that desperately wanted a pet. You’d have one one day, when the time was right and you could dedicate yourself to training and giving them all the affection in your being. 

With a little tri-coloured corgi resting his head on your lap you let your thoughts drift. When would you get the call from Mr. Kim? At this point you just wanted to have your meeting so you could stop weighing up the uncertainty of your professional future. Once that was set then you knew you could much more easily discuss where things either should or should not progress with the guys. That moment of clarity for what you wanted in that respect remained elusive. You knew that you wanted them in your life, and whilst the thought of nothing more than friendship didn’t entirely sit well with you (you still couldn’t pinpoint why that was), you knew you could do that if that’s all they wanted from you. You felt something for each of them but you hadn’t fallen hard for anyone, a feat that you thanked your guarded heart for immensely. There was closeness, attraction and lust but no deep romantic love. You could see yourself falling if you opened your heart to it and if it was reciprocated by them, but for now you were safe from heartbreak if they didn’t have interest in you like that. 

You’d thought about what you’d do if more than one, or oddly if all of them wanted some sort of arrangement with you. You’d decided that you weren’t opposed to the idea, but only if certain ground rules were in place to keep everyone safe.  If they were opposed to a more polyamorous relationship then you would step back and remain their friend. You refused to allow them to fight and potentially damage their relationships with each other - both personally and professionally - over dating you. It could be seen as a clinical approach but the reality was that they were at the peak of their careers right now and you would not allow the prospect of dating you to get in the way of that. You weren’t that important, you couldn’t be. There was also the secretive nature of whatever relationship you all moved forward with. Male idols were not supposed to be close with other women, that only led to dating scandals which was another thing you wanted to avoid at all costs. 

Ultimately you had to talk to the guys and lay all of your thoughts out for them. They had to know where you stood and then you had to give them time to work out where they stood and what they wanted. Would that be an awkward as fuck conversation? Yes. Was it necessary? Also yes. It was time. No more radio silence. No more dwelling. You quickly sent off a message before you could talk yourself into taking another day to sit with your thoughts. 

[6:13PM] You: Are you guys busy?

The response was almost instantaneous. You hoped that didn’t mean they were hanging out by their phones waiting to hear from you. 

[6:13PM] Junmyeon: Noona! It’s nice to hear from you :)

[6:13PM] Junmyeon: We all just got home. Do you need something?

His words calmed you a little. It was his usual routine to check his phone as soon as he got home. Then he did his best to ignore it for a few hours, only answering if a manager or family member called.

[6:14PM] You: I was hoping I could come up and have a chat with everyone?

[6:14PM] You: But like, only if you’re all free and ok to have me over. I’m sure you’re all still tired.

You might be offering to have this meeting but that did not mean you weren’t incredibly anxious about it. You’d kept your thoughts at bay for almost two days but as soon as you put the talk on the table all of your fears resurfaced. What if they were mad at you? What if you’d read too much into this relationship? What if you caused a rift in the group? You didn’t want to be EXO’s Yoko. 

[6:14PM] Junmyeon: Nonsense. Come on up.

[6:14PM] Junmyeon: They’d kill me if I didn’t invite you up here and you know it.

[6:14PM] Junmyeon: All I’ve heard since we boarded the plane is whiny men. Get your ass up here and put me out of my misery!

You laughed at that. You could practically see him pouting as he typed the messages out to you. It didn’t seem like they were mad, but a small part of you also began to worry that they were too prone to overreacting. You shut that down when you reminded yourself that you’d basically cut them off cold turkey right at the end of the tour. The only people who had spent time with you after that final concert were Minseok and Baekhyun, and only them and Junmyeon knew about your meeting, unless they’d told the others about it. After all you had said they could do that. 

[6:15PM] You: It’s barely been 36 hours. You guys are maybe a little too codependent on me.

[6:15PM] You: But fine, I’ll be up in like 30 mins. Is that enough time for you to round everyone up?

[6:15PM] Junmyeon: You know we love you, but it was the radio silence and request to not contact you that sent them in a tailspin.

[6:15PM] Junmyeon: Not that I’m mad, just to be clear. I get it, but they lowkey freaked out.

Yeah, that checked out. You needed to just get home and go see your ragtag bunch of idiots who seemed to care about you more than you ever thought they would. However you also need to stop whatever attempt at ‘down with the cool kids’ lingo Junmyeon was trying to achieve. He already got teased enough for being the old man of the group and poorly inserting lingo that was clearly out of place in his vernacular was not going to help him.

[6:15PM] You: Don’t say lowkey, that’s not who you are. 

[6:15PM] You: Sehun is probably the only one of you who can get away with saying that. Chanyeol and Baekhyun think they can, but the jury is out on whether or not they can.

[6:15PM] Junmyeon: I’m going to ignore that slander of my character. I’m up on current slang. 

You actually facepalmed. Why was he like this? WHY.

[6:16PM] You: Seriously. STOP. You are in no way helping yourself here.

[6:16PM] Junmyeon: 30 minutes is fine. See you soon. 

[6:16PM] Junmyeon: Just to check though, should I be emotionally prepared for some heartbreaking and serious talk? You rarely ask to speak to all of us at once.

You supposed it could come off as a we need to talk moment given the lack of context you’d provided. And it kind of was that, but also not? You really didn’t want them to freak out. Nine guys fretting would be too overwhelming for you.

[6:16PM] You: Semi serious, but nothing heavy. I just want to explain myself and where my head has been at so you all understand why I kind of just disappeared.

[6:16PM] Junmyeon: Bet. See you soon then <3

[6:17PM] You: You are too old to be saying bet. Who is teaching you this shit? You know what. Don’t answer that. Just stop saying ‘trend’ words. We both know you’re not cool enough to pull them off. No offence.

[6:17PM] You: See you soon. <3

[6:17PM] Junmyeon: Wow noona. Harsh. My lingo is on fleek, it's rude of you to not realise that.

[6:17PM] You: I’m never going to speak to you again. 

[6:17PM] You: And I might have to cause bodily harm to whoever taught you this lingo.

You locked your phone before you cringed at any further attempts at current slang were sent to you. It was go time for you. Whether you were ready or not (you were not), the conversation was happening. Time to get your butt home and face the music. So to speak. You just hoped you weren’t about to fuck it all up. 

***

Nine pairs of eyes stared back at you from the various spots in the living room. You stood awkwardly in front of the tv as you contemplated whether or not to find yourself a chair or if you were just going to stand here and speak. The choice ended up being made for you as Yixing brought a chair in for you to sit on. It was still placed in the centre of the room facing all of them, but it felt a little less intimidating to sit before speaking. Yixing’s fingers brushed over your shoulder, giving it a light squeeze, before he moved back towards his place on the lounge. 

You cleared your throat and decided to approach this as you would remove a bandaid - quickly. You knew the guys were all wondering what the cause of your no contact rule was and the sooner you put them out of their misery the better. It would be better for you as well because you would get at least this part of the conversation out of your brain. Your time at the aquarium had helped clear your thoughts, as had your walk through the city. You weren’t so sure if the evening sitting in your apartment spiralling in your thoughts helped, so this was your attempt at preventing that from happening again tonight while still putting some space between them and you while you sorted your shit out.

“I uh, I want to apologise for not speaking with any of you properly before we flew back from the tour.” You held up a hand to stop the immediate chorus of responses that were coming from the guys. “Please let me get all of this out before any of you speak otherwise I don’t know if I’ll be able to get through it.” Nine heads nodded at you and waited for you to continue. 

“I got really in my head about everything and needed to take a step away from all of it, from everyone, while I tried to settle my thoughts.” You started. “First I worried that I hadn’t done a good job because I’d been unprofessional, but after I let myself spiral I realised that wasn’t true and that I had done a great job. I didn’t get to tell you after the last show ended but I could not be more proud of each and every one of you. Your English improved SO much and whilst a certain amount of that is on me, a huge part of that is on you for applying yourselves to the lessons and the study in order to make those improvements. You should also all be really proud of yourselves for the progress you’ve all made.” You couldn’t help but smile at them, pride shining through you. You were truly impressed at the work they’d put in and the results they’d shown in such a small timeframe. “Were part of the lessons and some of my conduct unprofessional? Yes, but I now believe that none of those things hindered your progress, nor were they the sole motivation for your improvements. Whether I’m wrong or right about this, I’m now choosing to believe that they were a pleasant bonus to all of this.”

Time for the big reveal. The thing that had been weighing on you, causing you to nearly have multiple panic attacks. The thing you were most scared about admitting to them. Would they thing you were overreacting or crazy? Would they understand? “My relationship with all of you also began to get muddled in my head by the end of the tour. We all met before I took on the role of teacher and prior to that we were all friends, and with more than one of you there was also an undercurrent of flirtation - regardless of whether any of us were going to act on it or not. Then I became someone who worked for you, who was quite literally on call for if you needed a lesson, in any setting and at any time of day. We were still friends but it did alter the relationship with you. Then I added in the reward/punishment system and that kind of threw a spanner in the works. We were all close, but inevitably when you add physical intimacy or sex to the equation it blurs the lines. My brain kept spiralling between ‘are we friends, colleagues, fuck buddies, in a relationship, did you never want to see me again, were you going to fight if any of us wanted a romantic relationship…’ so yeah, after the last night in America I withdrew into my head and just needed to be with my thoughts - as much as I really really really did not want to sift through them. I knew I needed to for the sake of my mental wellbeing. I hadn’t realised it but those thoughts had been building for quite some time and after all the lessons were over and all rewards or punishments received, those thoughts were relentless and overwhelming. I couldn’t ignore them any longer.”

You couldn’t stop talking. If you did, you were pretty sure you’d bottle everything up until you did what you were best at, running. It wasn’t a fair thought to have, but sadly you were in no state to control the cruelty of your thoughts. You just had to keep speaking and once you finished you hoped they understood. “As I’m sure Minseok and Baek told you, I had a meeting with the managers and Junmyeon to discuss my work and for feedback to be provided. Without going into too much detail, the meeting went well, but my future with SM hangs on your CEO. He was sent video of your ments and interviews while overseas to review as well as feedback from the managers, staff and yourselves. I will either be let go and my boss will find me a contract with another company - which will mean we won’t see each other as much or as freely - or I’ll be kept on one of two contracts with SM. Either an exclusive contract with EXO with allowances for freelance tutoring in my free time within SM, or a contract with SM where I would not be assigned any specific group but would be available at the company to provide lessons for existing artists and trainees. Either of those options would mean we would see more of each other, but the latter would mean we would not be able to speak as freely as we do now with each other.”

“I spent a lot of time stressing about what I wanted to happen and what possible scenarios could happen but I guess professionally any option is good for me as all options mean I remain working in this field and helping others improve their language skills. I stress over large changes in my life, not sure if that is something I’ve ever mentioned, but it’s a thing. Obviously.” You scoffed as you made a vague gesture at yourself and the clear state of stress you were in. “Personally, I don’t want to lose what we have. I cherish each of you and love that we’ve still been able to hang out and play around while we’re all working. I know we’d make it work if I have to go to another company but I know we would see each other significantly less than we do now.”

You took a deep breath. You hadn’t looked at any of them while you spoke. You knew if you saw their eyes you’d stop speaking. So you just couldn’t. Not yet. What if they looked at you with pity, anger, happiness, disgust, or worse - indifference. You could rationalise it if they felt something, but seeing them feel nothing when your mind had been fucking chaos might just be the straw that broke the camels back. You didn’t look at them. “So to sum up, I overthought everything, stressed, spiralled and withdrew from all of you which may or may not have been the right thing to do but I’m here now. I should know in a few days where my future lies work-wise but wanted to open the floor to discuss whatever this relationship we all have now is because I don’t think it is something I can resolve by myself. We don’t have to discuss it now, but I want you to think about it. I don’t know if you view me as a friend or as someone you want to pursue something with, or someone you no longer wish to see. I’m sorry to just dump all of this on you but I need to put it all out there, as much as I can right now anyway.” 

You’d done it. You’d told them what had been going on in your mind. Mostly. You hadn’t discussed your feelings but you’d mentioned all possibilities so that had to count for something. You really just wanted to run and hide, to become invisible rather than be perceived right now, but you knew you had to remain in your spot and hear what they had to say. No matter what it was. 

Chanyeol was the first to speak. He ran his hands through his hair as he tried to keep his tone even. “Not going to lie, this is a lot. I think I speak for all of us when I say that, and I think you know that. I appreciate you opening up to us about what was going on in your head, I'm sure we all do, even if it does leave us with more questions and discussions to have.”

You nodded. It was a lot. You knew it. You’d lived with all of it in your brain. It was only fair to give them time as well. That’s why you’d said you didn’t need to discuss it now.

Minseok was next to speak, he smiled softly at you, his own way of trying to calm your nerves even now. “I don’t think it’s something we should talk about tonight. You know as well as we do that we can be impulsive and that discussions can get heated quickly if we haven’t had time to choose our words. As weird as it will be I think we all need to take some time to think about what we want, and what will work best moving forward.”

You nodded again. You’d used all your words in speaking to them and now could bring yourself to speak. 

“This is going to sound shitty noona, and for that I’m sorry but I don’t think there is a diplomatic way to put it, well at least not one that I can think of right now,” Junmyeon said, sighing as he had to be the guy to say it. “but we do need to consider how it might affect the group if one or more of us are interested in pursuing you, especially if it means some may be rejected. At the end of the day, EXO has to come first, and god I know that’s a shitty thing to say, but it’s something we need to think about and probably talk about amongst ourselves. No offence.” You knew someone would have to raise that point, and it was a valid one, one you’d thought about as well. It did make sense that it was their leader who was the one to say it. After all, he always did put the group above everything else.

You had to speak, nodding wouldn’t suffice in response to that. It would only make him feel like a jerk and that was the last thing you wanted him to feel. You cleared your throat and hoped you said the right things. “All valid points, and don’t worry, there’s no offence taken, Junmyeon. I’d also thought that you should all take some time away from me to think over what you want and to discuss with the group. If one or more of you wanting to pursue me would negatively affect the group then I don’t think anything more than friendship is possible.” 

You paused. Would they think of this option if you didn’t raise it? You weren’t sure. But if it helped them with their deliberations then it was worth the level of embarrassment you were about to feel by simply suggesting it. “I guess the last thing for me to put out there is that after some thinking, I’m not opposed to exploring the possibility of a polyamorous type of situation if that is something you guys land on. However, I’m also not opposed to monogamy or just friendship with all of you. It might sound like I either don’t care that much or that I don’t know what I want, and the latter is somewhat true, but I did draw a line between what we were doing in the rewards versus hanging out outside of that and it prevented me from allowing too many feelings to take root. I’m not sure where any of you stand and I don’t want to know right now either since all of this” You gestured with your hand, waving it vaguely to indicate all of you. “Is so fresh and we all have a lot to consider, or not consider. I don’t know.” Breathe you told yourself. You had to breathe or you’d panic before this conversation ended.  “I’ll hopefully have a follow up meeting in a couple of days and then will know what will be happening with the work aspect of my life. I think we should meet once I know that side of things and chat again? But if you need more time, I would completely understand.”

Not much was said after that. The air was tense and awkward as you all kind of forgot how to act around each other. You stayed for a little while to hear about the plans for their encore concert but as soon as that conversation topic dwindled, you said your goodbyes and headed back to your apartment.

It might be time to call your friend. You were more confused after that meeting and once again on the precipice of a breakdown. You couldn’t wade through this on your own and you couldn’t ask one of the guys for help because this was about them. You couldn’t tell your friend every detail, but you could tell her enough. 

[10:49PM] You: So uh, are you free for that chat?

[10:49PM] Your bestest friend in the whole world: For you? Always. 

***

You awoke the next morning to the sound of a text message notification on your phone. You rubbed your eyes as you tried to focus on the name of the contact who sent the message. You sat up in your bed as soon as your eyes managed to make out that the message was from your boss. Hopefully it was the message you’d been waiting for.

[7:42AM] Mr. Kim: Good morning, I hope you have had sufficient time to relax since returning from the overseas tour with EXO. I had a meeting this morning with SM’s CEO, Lee Soo Man about your performance under the current contract you have with SM and what his thoughts were for your potential future prospects at the company. I’ve scheduled a meeting for us at midday at my office. I’ll see you in a few hours to discuss. 

If you were half awake at the start of that message, you were wide awake now. Of course a meeting is called the day after you dropped what felt like a literal bomb on your nine upstairs neighbours. You had just over four hours to freshen up and get yourself over to his office. Not that you were nervous… not at all… not even a little bit. It wasn’t like the outcome of this meeting determined the future of your career or anything. No, shut up. You tried telling your mind as it attempted to spiral before any form of carb or sugar entered your system. You repeated your father’s words over in your head as you picked out clothes for the meeting, a simple and professional outfit that you would not anxiety sweat through before you even reached Mr. Kim’s office. You showered and got yourself ready for the day and whatever it would bring. Maybe it would be better once it was all over, then you could stop overthinking and fretting about every possible outcome. That wasn’t how you liked doing things but it seemed to be what happened whenever it was important to you. When you cared.

Just before you left the apartment you sent a message to the group chat so that everyone was kept up to date.

[10:25AM] You: Hey, just a heads up that I’m on my way to a meeting now. LSM has made his decision and I’ll know my work fate in a couple of hours. I know I suggested meeting again after I had my meeting but given I literally only proposed everything to you last night, I’ll bench our talk until you guys have had time to deliberate and all that. Just reach out when you want to chat and I’ll make myself available. 

It felt clinical and not how you’d ever spoken to them when there was no one to overhear your conversations. It felt like how you spoke to them when one of their managers was present. It felt wrong and something in your heart hurt. There was no response, but you could see the members slowly reading your message. Sehun reacted to it with a thumbs up message which then spurred everyone into chatting, mainly to scold Sehun but seeing the chat alive again felt right.

You put your phone on do not disturb mode as you approached Mr. Kim’s office, coffee in hand. Not the iced variety that was so popular among idols. No, the purpose of this coffee was not to keep you awake, rather it was to give you a caffeine hit as well as comfort you with its warmth. You were always nervous when it came time for a performance review, but unlike last time with Blackpink, you were a lot closer with the members of EXO and their staff. Unlike last time you knew that you had done your job successfully, you’d been present to witness the members grow in their language skills and watched them deliver their ments to their American audiences with little to no translation required. The only slip was the night Baekhyun forgot his lines, but the following shows he required no assistance.

Once you arrived, Mr. Kim’s secretary ushered you into his office, telling you he was just finishing up a meeting in another room and would be with you shortly. Thankfully you did not have to wait long before he entered the room. He smiled and greeted you warmly then moved to sit at his desk. You’d been in this room a few times now and it was always nerve wracking. 

“Once again I can tell that you are eager to hear your evaluation.” He chuckled.

You nodded. “Apparently my face hides nothing from you.”

“Actually your face is not what gave you away, it was the fidgeting fingers this time.” He pointed at your free hand which was unfortunately fidgeting with the buckle on your handbag.

Your fingers stilled, but you itched to keep busy with something. Anything to get the frenetic energy out of your system. “You got me. Now please put me out of my misery already and give me my evaluation.”

Lucky for you, he prided himself on business and got right to it. You never had to endure too much small talk with him. It was a much more pleasant experience than the managers you had back before moving here. They seemed to want to spend up to ten minutes chatting about nothing before switching to business mode. That was not the Mr. Kim way. His way was better. For you at least. Mr. Kim pulled a file up on his computer and turned the screen so that you could see it as well. “As you already know from the last time we did this, we assess you in three areas. 1. How well the tasks were performed 2. How you worked with the clients and 3. Work ethic/professionalism. I’ve reviewed the recording of the last meeting you had during the tour as well as received feedback from the SM CEO.” 

He clicked on a file and opened it. “This is a review of the tasks performed. As you can see, it was unanimous across the board that you have excelled in this area. You successfully prepared the members for their interviews and concert ments, improving their English significantly. You joined the group on tour and no issues were reported by staff or the members, nor did you appear in any fan reports or cause any scandals.” He paused to look at you, a knowing smile on his face. “But you already know this from your meeting with the managers and Junmyeon. I’ll only add the feedback from their CEO. He said he was impressed that someone of your young age was able to successfully complete these tasks to the level that you did, he made special mention of the tailored lessons as a genius move on your part. He noted that whilst it would be an arduous task for all clients, it worked for EXO in ways no one expected. They have not had this level of success in teaching a group that didn’t already have a member with a decent grasp on English or a native English speaker. He was also very impressed that you were able to fit in and work seamlessly with a well established team.” Mr Kim paused, signalling that you could now speak before he addressed the next criterion.

So far things were going well. Logically you knew that you had succeeded in your role, but it was always a relief to hear it. Hearing from your boss and the head of the group's company eradicated the last of the anxiety you felt about your ability as a teacher. “Thank you Mr Kim. I felt that I was succeeding in my role and I am glad to have that confirmed by the head of their company, but I do have to ask what he meant about my age?”

“Most translators or teaching staff that are brought in are older than you. Especially when it comes to English. There is a greater risk when idols are involved and most companies specifically request someone over 40 to be assigned so that there could never be any misunderstandings around the nature of the relationship.” He replied.

Your brow furrowed. “Then how did I get the job? I’m significantly younger than that, even if I’m still older than the members.” 

He smiled smugly. “Ah well that was me. I know companies prefer older staff, especially when they are working with the opposite sex, but I had a hunch that you would succeed where others had failed with EXO. Their CEO reluctantly agreed to trial you and had to admit he was pleasantly surprised after receiving the one month evaluations of the members progress.” 

Noticing that you weren’t going to add any more to that discussion, Mr. Kim moved on. He scrolled through the document until he reached the heading indicating the second criterion. “Before I move into discussing the external evaluations I would like to say that I am personally very impressed that you took on the feedback provided after your time with Blackpink and applied it to EXO. You managed to become more familiar with them and it shows in the reviews from the others. I strongly believe that this improvement is what made this job such a success for you.” He gestured towards you. “So I wanted to commend you on the large improvement in this area.”

You smiled. “Thank you Mr. Kim. Your advice was intrinsic to the development of the tailored lessons as well as my comfortability in becoming closer with the members so that we could work together to the best of our abilities.”

“As you know from the feedback from both managers and members, you exceeded expectations in this area, and everyone benefited from your approach. The CEO questioned whose idea it was for you to become closer to the members and expressed the concerns he had about it. Once I explained that it was feedback that you had been given from myself and the reasons why I felt it would improve outcomes, especially given your closeness in age to any 2nd or 3rd gen idols in comparison to the on staff teachers who were usually around the same age as the idols parents he understood. He stated that whilst he had his reservations about that kind of approach given the potential issues that could arise, dating scandals, sasaeng accusations, unprofessionalism etc. he could see how it worked in the members favour. The group had undergone quite a few hardships prior to this comeback, with members leaving and dating scandals damaging their public image. He stated that they were likely to be quite reserved and untrustworthy of someone new to their staff and that it would take a long time for them to begin to trust a new staff member. However, you managed to make them feel comfortable and not lose the authority you had over them as their teacher, whilst remaining respectful at all times. He said he was very pleasantly surprised by this.” He sat back in his chair while you processed his words. Mr. Kim had only had meetings with you a handful of times before this, but he already knew to let you take a moment while his words sunk in before having you respond. 

A weight lifted off your shoulders. Yes, you recalled the nature of the meeting you had with the managers and Junmyeon whilst overseas, but your brain had managed to twist their inarguably positive feedback into statements that you had turned over in your mind repeatedly as you second guessed every moment you’d spent with the members. Knowing that the CEO was reviewing all of the work you had completed overseas had stressed you more than you had realised. It was as if you could feel the tension leaving your body every time Mr. Kim read out his feedback. 

“I’m glad my efforts have been recognised, and that I’ve shown improvement in this area. I also understand the concerns their CEO had. We had meetings with the members and their managers regarding safety and security of both the members and myself to ensure no photos were snapped if we were not on a schedule. The last thing any of us wanted to do was bring negative attention to this working relationship. We also discussed at length the boundaries we should draw in order to not become overly familiar with each other and I believe that assisted greatly.” It wasn’t a lie as such. You really did have those meetings and you really did discuss those boundaries. It was just the managers weren’t present for the third meeting which involved you and the members working out how to put each other in line if any of you slipped and a glimpse of how close you really were slipped through. It was a miracle nothing ever happened in view of other staff or the public, but there were a couple of close calls. You’d all been very lucky in that regard.

Mr. Kim powered on. “On to the final point, we’ve never had any issues with your work ethic or professionalism, and neither have the members or managers. Their feedback was passed on to the CEO, who praised you for being available at short notice in order to fit with the members busy schedules. He was also very happy that the members did not abuse this clause in your contract but rather made sure the others were aware if one of them had required you early in the morning or late at night so that they could avoid overworking you.” Mr. Kim closed the document. “I’ll be honest, he got rather sidetracked at this point and spent a good ten minutes praising his EXO boys. I can assure you that he was very pleased with both your work ethic and professionalism. He agreed with the manager's statements that you clearly succeeded at your role, exceeding all expectations that were had of you.” He chuckled as he shook his head. “But once he starts talking about those boys it is hard to shut him up. You’d think they were his sons sometimes.”

You allowed yourself a pleased hum at the feedback you’d received. High marks in all areas of assessment. Exceeded expectations, exemplary results. “Thank you Mr. Kim. I’m very glad that my hard work paid off and that my approach was successful for the members.” You paused. “However, as much as I want to just bask in this feedback, I am too curious about my contract. Did their CEO happen to mention if he planned to renew my contract, or are you finding me a new group to work with?” You needed to know, and you needed to know like two weeks ago at this point. 

Mr. Kim, to his credit, did not outright laugh at your impatience. Instead he opened a drawer and pulled out a manila folder. “I understand that this must have been weighing on your mind these past few weeks.” 

You nodded. “You would be very correct.”

“He did come to a decision. I won’t draw this out as I can tell you just want me to get to the point. He was incredibly impressed by your determination and competency, and as we all know, the results speak for themselves. He does want to offer another contract, however it would differ from your current one.” He stated.

“How so?” You asked.

“Firstly, this contract would not commence until three months from now.” He explained. “They want you to continue your work with the company, working with all of their artists. EXO would take priority if and when they have any overseas schedules that would require them to speak English. The rest of the time you would assist whichever groups or artists he deems in need of your skills. You would also offer lessons in the company like you did whilst EXO were in Japan during your contract.” Mr. Kim slid the folder across the table for you to pick up and look over. 

“I am grateful to have the opportunity to continue to work with SM. Like I said in my meeting overseas, I have been treated exceptionally well by their company, its staff and idols and welcomed the opportunity to continue working with EXO, be assigned to another group within the company or as an in-house teacher/translator.” Well there it was, they had offered another contract. You could keep working for SM, potentially with the guys as long as their schedules required English, but you’d still be in the same building as them. There was a decent break before commencement which was nice, but you did have concerns about your income. Not working for three months would be a struggle for you financially. “I do have questions regarding the three month break in between contracts though.”

“I believe my next statement should cover whatever concerns you have.” He directed your attention to another section of the new contract. “During that time, SM has stated that they will contact you for freelance work if/when required but that you are also not exclusively bound to the label during that time, so you can assist other companies and artists. This will allow you to continue to earn income and gain further experience in this field. I will also say that you will find in the proposed contract that your fees have increased. I did not consult you on that, but felt that you had every right to request a higher rate given the success of your work thus far. I would encourage you to take a break for a couple of weeks, more if you wanted to take this opportunity to visit home, before letting me know you are ready for some more work with other artists. I do have one group in particular that I think would work for this short timeframe. They have not yet debuted but they do have varying levels of proficiency in English, varying from fluency to what is taught in our schools here.” He waved a hand in front of his face as he realised he’d said too much. “But that is a discussion for another date, I’m getting ahead of myself.”

You smiled, genuinely too. This was wonderful news and it settled a large part of your anxiety to have secured more work, especially work that would require little change. “Thank you Mr. Kim. I’ll take this contract home to review but it sounds promising. I think I will take a couple of weeks off to rest and recuperate, but I would like to request a clause be added to this contract. I understand that I may have some further changes to request, but I’m reasonably certain this one won’t already be in there.”

“What would that request be?” He asked.

“An allowance for one or two weeks of consecutive leave within the next 6 months for me to visit my family. I’m not ready to make a trip home yet, but I know I will be during that time period and I don’t wish to be told that I cannot go. I would provide sufficient notice for the leave, unless there was an emergency, so as to not hinder the progress of their artists' lessons.” In your mind it sounded reasonable, and you’d heard of difficulties with obtaining leave from work in Korea, so you wanted to safeguard yourself as best as you could. 

“I’ll have our lawyers make the addition. We’ll hold off sending it to SM until you’ve read through the contract and made any other amendments.” He stood and shook your hand. “You’ve done well so far, and I continue to be impressed with your work.”

The meeting ended shortly after that which you were glad for. The feedback was self esteem boosting, and proved to yourself that you had done a great job, that your hard work had not only paid off but had been noticed. You also managed to tell yourself that your closeness with the guys wasn’t the sole factor for your success, they really did suck at English before your lessons and whilst the sex during the rewards and punishments was great, you were pretty sure you couldn’t learn a language purely from fucking. Somewhere along the lines, your lessons struck a chord with them and they wanted to learn, so they did, and it stuck. That was a job well done by you. 

After you left Mr. Kim’s office you put your phone back in normal mode.The group chat had been busy these past few hours. Message notifications flooded your phone as you began the commute home. They had pinned a message so that you wouldn’t miss it once you finally checked your phone.

[11:48AM] Minseok: Please tell us when you finish your meeting. Kyungsoo wants you to come up for dinner so you can tell all of us what the outcome was. 

The messages after were a chorus of predictions and bickering. 

[11:51AM] Jongin: I think SM will do another contract.

[11:51AM] Sehun: Well duh. They’d be stupid to let her help our competitors.

[11:52AM] Jongdae: Noona could make some sweet demands if they offer a new contract.

[11:52AM] Kyungsoo: Yeah, make SM work for it. Lord knows they’ve fucked over too many idols in contracts. If they offer a new one MAKE A LAWYER LOOK AT IT.

[11:53AM] Yixing: Make demands of your own too. Make that thing benefit you, coz if they offer a new contract it means they want to stop you from working with other companies.

[11:53AM] Chanyeol: MAKE. SM. WORK. FOR. YOU. You’ll have the upper hand and they don’t want you to know that.

[11:54AM] Baekhyun: Yeah, fuck SM!!!

[11:54AM] Junmyeon: Guys… 

[11:54AM] Minseok: Idk man, all I see is valid points being made.

[11:55AM] Junmyeon: I… you were meant to be on my side Minseok.

[11:55AM] Minseok: I never promised that. 

[11:55AM] Minseok: Fuck SM. 

[11:56AM] Kyungsoo: So I think we might be doing the opposite of encouraging you to consider taking another contract with them if they offer. What we mean to say is, have someone look over the contract, make some demands (because they have to acknowledge your worth now) and know that our disdain for our company comes from the nature of idol contracts which are VERY different to the kind of contract you would be offered. 

[11:56AM] Junmyeon: Thank you!

[11:57AM] Kyungsoo: Stop making me do your job man. 

There were another 500 messages after that (which you did not read), but you made sure to send one as requested

[3:30PM] You: Holy crap that is a lot of messages. No offence but I am not reading through all of them. As requested, I’m letting you know that I’ve finished my meeting. I’m heading back to the apartment now. What time do you want me up there for dinner?

[3:30PM] Kyungsoo: Food should be ready at 7 PM. 

[3:30PM] You: I’ll see everyone then.

***

“Noona, can we talk before you come up for dinner?” You’d picked up on the first ring when you’d seen Baekhyun’s name pop up.

He sounded unsure of himself, which was a rarity. “Sure Baek. Is everything ok?”

“I think so? I hope so.” He groaned in frustration. “Ugh I don’t know.”

Now you were getting concerned. Was he ok? “What’s going on?”

“I’ve been thinking about everything you talked about last night and I think I understand why you had to just unload everything all at once to us.” He took a deep breath. “My brain has been working too much and making too many scenarios for me to keep up with.” 

Well that you could relate to. You really didn’t wish the clusterfuck that had been your thoughts over this past week on anyone, so you empathised with Baek if he was suffering with the downward spiral that too many thoughts inevitably brought. “I get that. Would it help if you just tell me everything?”

He was quiet for a moment as he thought over his options. Quite likely he was worried that speaking to you would only make things worse. That’s precisely what made you a nervous wreck before you word vomited all over their living room last night. “Maybe. Might make everything worse, I don’t know.”

You tried to sound reassuring. It was always easier for you to provide comfort in person or via text. Over the phone was some strange middle ground where you didn’t always stick the landing. “It’s just me. Since when have we ever not been able to talk to each other?”

“You’re right.” He said. “Fuck. Ok.” Yeah, he was nervous. Should you be nervous? Was he about to reject you? Was he going to confess? No. You needed to remain as calm as possible. He was the one allowed to freak out right now, not you. 

You pushed your growing anxiety down and said as reassuringly as you could. “I’m right here. Promise.”

You heard him take a steadying breath before he started speaking. “I guess I’ve been trying to work out where things stand between us.” He said. “It’s never just been friendship between you and I. There was always flirtation and we only got bolder with it as time went on until we had sex, which I know was as a result of my lesson, but I don’t know, we only had the lesson because we were about to fuck and you stopped it from happening until after that. I guess it felt like more than just because of the reward stuff I guess. It felt like something that was inevitable, like we were orbiting each other until we would ultimately collide.” He took a breath, meanwhile your heart was hammering in your chest. 

“I know we’ve discussed it and both agreed that there was something more there, some kind of feelings neither of us had addressed. I don’t know how you feel now, but for me, after we slept together those feelings only intensified. I still didn’t know what they were so I just assumed they were born from lust but when you asked for space and then went silent for days I realised that they weren’t feelings of lust. I realised that I care deeply for you and the very thought of you not being in my life hurt me to my very core. I know it was just sex for you and everyone else but for me, I can’t say for sure, but I think I like you as far more than a friend and would not be satisfied just being a fuck buddy. I know I said I would never entertain us ever being able to actually be a real thing but I want that so much that it is physically painful. I needed to tell you before we all talked tonight because I want to be selfish and pursue you myself but I don’t know where you stand. I don’t know if I’m making a fool of myself right now and you’re thinking of the nicest way to reject me or if you don’t know how you feel or if you feel the same. All I know is that I barely slept last night after I realised all of this and I had to say something.”

“Baek,” You started.

He didn’t let you get the words out, not that you even knew what those words would be. So maybe him interrupting you was for the best right now. “I know this is a lot to dump on you, I know that, but I needed to say it.”

You weren’t sure if you were ready to tell him everything you realised on your call last night. It was still too confusing. Still too fresh. But you also couldn’t leave him hanging with nothing after he just poured his heart out to you. “You know I have feelings for you, just that at the time I didn’t know what those feelings were.”

“Have you worked it out since then?” He all but whispered, as though he was scared of what your response would be. 

You couldn’t say it yet. You couldn’t say it until you believed it yourself. It wasn’t fair to him, but you couldn’t bring yourself to utter the words back to him. Not yet. “I think so but I’m not sure. I am so scared of ruining everything Baek.”

“I’ll let you think some more, but I want you to know that for me it is about much more than sex now. So think about how you feel and ask yourself if you feel the way you feel about me with anyone else?” He tried his best not to sound deflated, but you didn’t miss the pang of hurt in his voice as he spoke. He’d just confessed to you and whilst you hadn’t rejected him, you hadn’t reciprocated his feelings. You felt overwhelmed. You needed to say something, but what? What could you possibly say when you weren’t ready to admit how you felt, when you were too terrified to ask for what you wanted.”

You had to say something. For him, you couldn’t just leave him with nothing. “I -”

He cut you off again, though this time it was probably out of fear that you would reject his confession. “Don’t answer now. Just think about it and we’ll talk later. Bye noona.” He hung up before you could attempt to speak again.

You hung your head in shame. Why couldn’t you just tell him? You didn’t realise you were crying until you felt a tear hit your hand. You sank to the floor and let yourself cry for a few minutes, too overwhelmed with emotion to even try to stop the tears from falling. You felt guilty for not being able to tell him how you felt, for feeling like you were toying with his heart. This sweet, funny and endearing man, who had been so good to you. When he needed you the most, you’d choked. You didn’t deserve the feelings he harboured for you, how could you if you couldn’t even respond to him. How could you be deserving of that love when you all but pushed him away. 

By some stroke of luck your eyes weren’t too red or puffy when you checked them before leaving your apartment. You really hoped your night didn’t end with you returning to this apartment to cry over a ruined relationship. There was only one way to find out, and in order to do that, you needed to walk out your front door and head upstairs.

***

“Alright, how did the meeting go?” Sehun broke the silence that was permeating the dinner table. Everyone had greeted you when you’d arrived, and made some small talk about their day. That felt strange. You’d never lacked for conversation with these men, but now they seemed to be walking on eggshells around you and you weren’t sure if it was because they were trying to protect themselves or you from where this evening went.

Regardless, you decided to put on a brave face and do your best to hear them out without breaking down. You felt exposed, fragile and breakable. But you pretended otherwise as best as you could. You just hoped they couldn’t see through the facade. “Really well. The feedback was all very positive and everyone agreed that I did an excellent job. Your CEO expressed his concerns about my boss and the managers suggesting that we be more personable but he agreed that the fact that we did that probably served as a catalyst for the success of the lessons.”

“That’s fantastic news!” Jongin said, far louder than he or anyone else at the table were prepared for. Everyone, Jongin included, jumped a little at his volume. He muttered a bashful apology afterwards, stating that he was just really happy for you.

You smiled at him. He was so very different to what the general public saw when he was onstage. He was soft spoken and endearing beyond words. “I’m also really grateful for the feedback you guys provided. I didn’t get a chance to say it before so I’ll say it now, thank you. Your words meant so much to me.” It was the honest truth. You had no idea that they would be asked for feedback about your work, and while they could have provided generic positive feedback they didn’t. Instead they provided in depth feedback about your abilities and how well you had worked with them. You would be forever grateful for the kind words contained in their feedback.

Kyungsoo decided to add to the conversation, his soft yet commanding voice cutting through your thoughts. “Bias aside, you earned that feedback. We did our best to only give the facts and not let our friendship cloud our opinions of you.”

“You cannot deny that we sucked at English before you noona.” Chanyeol quipped, laughing as he spoke.

Junmyeon looked personally attacked by his words. “Speak for yourself!”

“No, he’s right. We were bad at it.” Minseok laughed. “Like really fucking awful.”

Yixing pushed the food around on his plate with his chopsticks. “Anyway, uh, not to be pushy or anything but did you talk about what’s next for you?” He briefly locked eyes with you before diverting his gaze back to his plate.

“Yeah we did. Uh, they offered me another contract.” You saw all nine heads suddenly turn towards you and felt their gazes on you. “I do have to read over it and make sure it's fair but essentially they want to put me on contract for another 2 years. If EXO has schedules requiring English, then me teaching you takes priority over other groups, otherwise I’m free to work with any artists under the SM umbrella. Your CEO may assign me a group to work with, or managers may request my help. If no one requests then I’m kind of an in-house teacher/translator.”

Jongdae grinned. “I’m not going to lie, I’m glad they offered you more work, they would have been idiots not to, but it does mean you won’t be a stranger.”

Minseok was more hesitant as he spoke.“What are your thoughts on it, just based on the offer given you haven’t read it yet.”

You sat back in your chair, contemplating your response. “I’ve only had good experiences with SM so far, so the offer sounds good to me. I know a lot of the staff, I know the building, the resources, I know some of the artists, obviously I know all of you and work well with you. It feels like a good choice over starting anew elsewhere and hoping that I’m treated as well as I am here.” You smiled a little. “Plus, I get to see you guys if I’m still here, that’s a bonus.” 

A smile finally formed on Minseok’s face. “I know we may have come across a bit brash earlier but,”

“Oh don’t worry. I already had a copy sent to a lawyer to look over it, and I also made a request for a leave allotment to be added into the contract.” You cut him off, already guessing what he was referring to from the earlier flood of messages. “Once I read through it myself I’ll discuss it with my lawyer and make any other changes that need doing then return it to Mr. Kim to negotiate for me.”

The unanimous response that came from all of them was creepily synchronised. “Good.” 

You thanked all of them for their kind words again. “The contract won’t start for a few months, so until then I’m likely going to be freelancing. Mr. Kim has an idea of another group I can work with briefly before I become exclusive to SM. I think I’m going to take a couple of weeks off before committing to any of that though. I need some time to recalibrate.” 

“Uh I guess that brings us to the elephant in the room.” Junmyeon said.

You waved your hands in front of you, not sure you would ever be ready for this conversation, but after how well the contract renewal offer had just gone you were apprehensive about the ‘what are we’ conversation. “Oh, we really don’t have to talk about it yet. I only mentally unloaded on all of you last night so if you need to take more time before discussing with me, please do.”

He chuckled awkwardly. “That’s the funny thing I think. Without really realising it we have discussed it over the past few months as things progressed.”

“Oh.”

He straightened in his seat and looked directly at you. “Yeah. We kind of realised that last night when we started trying to discuss it.” He shifted, trying to get comfortable in his head. That was the only sign you had that he was equally as nervous about this conversation as you were. “I think we should each just speak for ourselves and then go from there?” He offered.

All you could do was nod. “That seems fair.” This was happening. You weren’t sure you were prepared for it, regardless of what they said. 

“As the leader I’ll go first.” He shifted again, this time his eyes looked everywhere but you as he spoke. “I, well, uh, I’ve actually just started seeing someone. It’s very early days but I really like her and want to pursue things with her. My parents introduced us and weirdly we kind of hit it off, which is not what usually happens when my parents play matchmaker.” 

You thought you’d feel sad at being told someone wasn’t romantically interested in you, because that’s what this was right? He was dating someone and he really liked them. But rather than feeling like you’d been stabbed in the heart you felt happy for him. “So at present, pursuing anything other than friendship with you isn’t something I’m interested in. I also think we work better as friends and don’t want to lose the relationship we’ve got. We did have the least amount of sexual interaction so I don’t think it will have any impact on our friendship moving forward.” Once he finished speaking he lifted his gaze to you, apprehensively since he wasn’t sure how you’d react, but he visibly relaxed when he saw you beaming at him. “As long as a potential relationship with another member or members doesn’t leave anyone unsatisfied from the start then I give my blessings.”

“Are we going in age order?” Sehun asked.

Chanyeol replied. “That’s boring, just go in seating order.” 

“Fine.” Sehun sighed, resigned to his fate of being the next to speak. “Noona, I cannot deny that my punishment was fun and that I experienced more than I ever thought I would. But for me it was never that deep I guess.” He shrugged. “The punishment/reward was an opportunity to explore some fantasies with no strings attached with a person who I trusted. I think I’d be a shitty boyfriend to you as well, I can barely take care of myself, and it wouldn’t be fair to you to put up with that burden. I’m not boyfriend material yet.” He wasn’t wrong about that. He always turned up unannounced, never read the room, stole all your chocolates and sulked if he wasn’t the centre of attention. Well, not always, but it happened more than it probably should. Maknae privileges. “However, I am excellent bestie material. So I’d like to remain a very good friend to you.” You’d been rejected as a romantic partner but once again, you didn’t feel sad. Sehun was an excellent friend to have. He loved chatting so he always had good gossip and he was so beloved that he could almost get away with murder. He smiled softly at you, hoping you weren’t disappointed in his choice. 

Kyungsoo took a sip from his glass of water before grounding himself and speaking. “There are circumstances where I could see myself truly falling for you. You have a lot of the qualities that I look for in a partner. But I have to be truly honest with myself, and if I do that then I have to say that right now, I am so insanely career driven - both with music and acting. It doesn’t leave much time to fit in a relationship in a way that is fair to either person.” Logical reasoning. You understood that, but much like you had forced yourself to do last night, you wondered where his heart lay in this. “Our reward was incredibly fun, and something I would do again in a heartbeat, but it would be with no strings attached. I value your friendship above everything else and I also think that whilst you put poly on the table as an option, and it is not something I’m opposed to, I can’t ignore the fact that Baekhyun clearly has feelings for you that run deeper than I originally thought. So I think it would be unfair to pursue anything with you to see if feelings develop when one of us is already carrying that torch for you.” 

You were shocked. Baekhyun barely even reacted to Kyungsoo’s words, something that unnerved you. You could feel him staring at you. Was he that obvious to them? Had he told them? Kyungsoo wanted to simply remain friends, and if he wasn’t so aware of how Baekhyun felt then he would have been fine to have a friends with benefits kind of situationship going on. You weren’t really sure what to do with that information. It was very flattering, but did you want to entertain someone who wasn’t sure if they had feelings for you? 

Too impatient to wait to see if you were going to respond to anything that had just been said, Jongin began speaking. “You have been one of my closest friends since the start. You looked after me when the guys were on tour while I was injured and we hung out so much. I think we bonded over fried chicken and movies.” He smiled fondly at the memory. “You were one of the first people that I’ve met since we debuted who wanted to know me for me, not for who I was as an idol. I agree with hyung, there is a future where I could see myself falling for you under the right circumstances, you’re kind of loveable like that noona, but I would trade that possibility in an instant for your friendship. It means the world to me. I also think there’s one of us who has real feelings for you and it makes me giddy to think of the two of you together.” Did he also mean Baekhyun or was there another member harbouring feelings for you?

The chair next to Jongin scraped on the floor as Jongdae tried to adjust his sitting position. If he’d been going to cool, calm and collected - he’d failed. He looked stressed beyond belief. Was it him? Did he have feelings for you? “Ok so, like the others I cannot deny how highly I value your friendship,” Ok so not him then. “or the fact that I am a person with two working eyes and have spent too much time around Baekhyun to not notice his feelings for you.” You glanced at Baekhyun who still seemed to be checked out of the conversation, even with his eyes locked on you. His gaze was somehow blank and intense at the same time. Did he not care what anyone else was saying about you? Was he really going to be that selfish? He said he wanted you to himself but did that mean that if anyone else at this table confessed that you’d have to reject both of them? Because if he was going to be this indifferent, especially when they kept talking about his feelings for you, then surely picking one person would only lead to a rift forming within the group. “All of that said, I’ve also kind of been seeing someone. And I like her, like a lot, like an insufferable amount. 

Minseok saw the opportunity to chime in. “He dreamt about having kids with her last night.” He smirked.

Jongdae looked mortified. “SHUT UP. Um, yeah. So that’s a thing and I just want my friend who I can ask questions to when I’m about to fuck everything up with my possible future wife. God I sound lame, I’m just going to stop talking now.” He sunk down in his chair, put his forehead on the table and banged it against the wood a few times. Minseok and a few others tried really hard not to laugh at him, but they failed miserably.

Chanyeol’s eyes darted around the table as he decided to try and pull focus from Jongdae, who appeared like he was waiting for the ground to open up and swallow him whole. “I uh, yeah I’m not dating anyone per se, but I’m also not looking to be tied down in a relationship right now.” Sehun snorted. “God, I sound like such a fuckboy saying that, but I think you kind of awoke some sort of confidence in me and I just want to play the field.” You heard a muttered “And absolutely no one is surprised you moron.” from Kyungsoo and had to stifle a laugh as Chanyeol continued to speak. 

“I care for you a lot, and I know one of us cares deeply for you so I want to leave things with us as friends. You’re interesting and fun to be around, you’re competitive in silly games and aren’t a sore loser. Hah, I could probably learn a thing or two from you there. Anyway, yeah. That’s me done.” Again someone saying that another member had feelings for you, but not specifying who. So did he mean Baek or did Yixing or Minseok also harbour feelings for you?  You were surprised how at peace you felt with everyone only wanting friendship from you - so far. Kyungsoo admitting he’d fuck you again in a heartbeat had shocked you. That man was usually much more reserved than that. 

Yixing was sitting next to you so he turned to you as he spoke. “Ah my sweet lady. I like you a lot,” He took your hand, his thumb caressing the back of your palm gently. “and honestly if I let myself I could so easily fall for you, but I’m also a workaholic to a fault. I have such high ambitions and drive for myself that I tend to fill up every minute I’m not on a schedule with more work.” He laughed. “If it weren’t for these guys, I’d probably forget to sleep.” He paused and you felt the room somehow grow even quieter. What the fuck was he about to drop on you that everyone else this still? “I’m also headed back to China in a few weeks and, ah this sucks,” He hung his head, clearly upset about having to leave Korea again. “I don’t know when I’ll get to come back this time. The political climate has never been great between our two countries but right now it is really tense.” 

Ah, that explained the feeling in the room. He was leaving and no one knew when or if he would return. You felt sad. You were going to miss him a lot, as were the rest of the guys. He always worked too hard when he was away from the group because no one on his team in China seemed to grasp how hard he would work himself unless they forced him to stop and take a rest. You returned your attention to the man in front of you. He sighed sadly. “So I’m going back and working on music as a soloist, working on some acting projects and would hopefully be back next year for our new album, but it's all kind of up in the air. I couldn’t burden you with any of the long distance crap and it wouldn’t be fair to either of us to even try to date and explore any feelings we may have when there would be such difficulty actually seeing each other. It will be a big enough strain on our friendship so whoever does end up dating you has my full support as long as they let me smother you with hugs when I return.” You were confused. His words made it seem like if it weren’t for returning to China, that he would want to date you, but he hadn’t said that he had feelings for you, just that he could see himself having feelings. Was it kind of like Kyungsoo’s situation? You let go of his hand as Chanyeol pulled him backwards into a big hug.

Minseok tapped you on the shoulder to get you to turn towards him. He smiled softly at you then took a deep breath. “Alright then.” He started. You knew he hated airing his business in front of others so regardless of what he was about to say, it was likely stressing him out. “Ah, well you and I probably had the most sex out of the group given the fuck buddy arrangement we’ve had going on. It was mostly stress relief and if we weren’t to have a physical relationship anymore, I don’t think it would drastically change our relationship. I value my movie nights with you over sex so ultimately I don’t want to lose my friendship with you. I trust you implicitly and we’ve both seen each other's ugly sides and haven’t run away from them. I could see circumstances where we pursue a romantic relationship, but like yourself, I haven’t really allowed my feelings to come into play so I’d be content just being your friend.” He glanced towards Baekhyun, who was staring at you. “Like the others, I also cannot ignore Baekhyun’s feelings towards you. I in no way want to come between what could be something beautiful between the two of you.”

Baekhyun doesn’t speak. He hasn’t said a word since you set foot in the dorm and he hasn’t averted his gaze from you the entire time. You could feel it boring into you while everyone spoke. He hadn’t said anything to correct anyone about his feelings for you and it seemed like he had no plans to speak in front of them either. You gave him a few moments to see if he was going to say anything, and noticed the way the others all looked towards him when he chose to remain silent.

You decided to respond to everyone else. Just because Baekhyun was choosing to be silent for the first time in his life didn’t mean it was fair to leave the eight other men in the lurch after they had all just told you how they felt. They needed to know how you were feeling about everything. “Well ok, this makes everything easier. After we spoke last night I did a lot more thinking about our relationships and where I wanted to stand with each of you. I came to the conclusion that your friendship means more to me than anything else and so with that, I was going to say that I think it is for the best that we don’t sleep together anymore. It kind of worked out well that all of you landed on that conclusion as well. Like some of you said, there are circumstances where I could see myself falling for you, but I’m also aware of how that would not be fair to explore, given everything. I love each of you in my own way, and I’m so happy that I get to keep my friends.” You could actually hear the en masse exhale that they let out once they heard you speak. They hadn’t hurt your feelings and everything was going to be ok. “The only thing I’ll ask, actually no - it’s more of a demand at this point - is that you stop being so awkward around me now. Things can go back to how they were, just don’t cross the line into being too inappropriate.”

They all laugh and agree, and just like that the strange tension that had surrounded the dorm disappears. However, one cloud of tension remains, concentrated solely around Baekhyun. He dropped his gaze when you’d spoken and hadn’t lifted it from the floor since. If anyone was worried about Baekhyun’s silence, they didn’t show it. You’d have to take him aside and speak with him soon enough. You’d promised to talk to him tonight. 

You continued to tell everyone how happy you were that they all wanted to remain friends with you, whilst also pressing Junmyeon and Jongdae for details about their dating life. You can practically see the hearts in their eyes when they talk about the new women in their lives and honestly, you couldn’t be happier for them. Poly was a fun idea to put on the table but it was never going to work long term for these guys. Logistically, emotionally or publicly. So it was for the best that none of you decided to venture down that path. 

Once everyone began to disperse you moved towards Baek and asked “Baek, can we speak privately?.” He shrugged but didn’t say no. He didn’t say anything. You walked towards his room and he followed you. You weren’t sure what the shift in him was from earlier this evening. Earlier he seemed like he wanted to date you, but now he wouldn’t even look at you and he looked so dejected and sullen, like he was fighting off tears. “Hey, Baek. Are you ok?” You asked. You wanted to reach out to comfort him but you weren’t sure if that would make matters worse. You had no idea what he was feeling.

He nodded in response, still not uttering a word. 

“Sweetie, you need to speak to me if you want me to believe you.”

“I’m just.” He sighed, “I guess I’m just struggling. Like of course I want to keep you as a friend, not having you in my life would be too hard, but I guess I was really hoping you’d work out your feelings for me as more than that.” He stared at the ceiling as he tried to remain calm but you could tell he was beginning to crack. “I know it wouldn’t be easy dating me, not because of who I am as a person, but because I’m an idol. Like we’d have to be secretive and couldn’t be all couply and go on normal dates like normal couples and maybe you don’t want to date someone who has to hide you. It’s just hard coz I realised all these feelings recently and now I’ve gotta reconcile with them and stuff them away. Which I will do, you are too important to me to not still be friends, but not gonna lie, it’ll be hard for me for a while I think.”

He just wanted to be friends now? But when he’d spoken to you earlier, he said he wanted so much more than that. You were so confused. “Baek, what are you on about?”

His head snapped back to stare at you incredulously. “What am I on about?!” He exclaimed, clearly frustrated and hurt. “You just told all of us that you want to remain friends with us. After I told you about how I felt earlier. So I guess I am not doing great with the rejection ok?”

Oh. Oh. Oh no. He’d misunderstood horribly. You’d responded to the others because they’d spoken. None of what you said at the table was for him because he hadn’t spoken. “No, oh my god no, you’ve misunderstood.” 

He looked so hurt, close to breaking as he responded. “What?”

You tried to remain calm, hoping it would make him calm. “Baek, I want to remain friends with the eight of them. I didn’t want to announce my feelings for you in front of them because you weren’t speaking. I didn’t know if you’d told any of them how you felt or if they’d all just worked it out, but then you didn’t speak. You stared at me the entire time but then you said nothing.” You paused as you took a step closer to him. “Plus my confession should be for your ears only first.”

He staggered backwards, not at all prepared for the words you’d said. “Wait, what are you saying?”

You locked eyes with him and did not break eye contact as you spoke. You needed to be certain that he heard you loud and clear. You’d been too weak to say it earlier, even though you knew how you felt. He deserved to hear it hours ago, but you couldn’t turn back time, so hearing it now would have to do. “Byun Baekhyun, I like you, a lot. Way more than is healthy for me I think. I want you in my life, I want to have you as one of my closest friends but I also want so much more. I want to be able to hold you, flirt with you, do domestic as fuck things with you, date you in whatever capacity we can date. I know that won’t be easy, I’m not naive about the secrecy that dating would require but to me you’re worth it. I want all of you, and I don’t want to share my romance with anyone but you. I’m not against bedroom scenarios that involve guests but I want you and only you as the person I fall even further for.”

“Fuck.” He whispered.

“Yeah. I want to do a lot of that too. You have no idea, but this is supposed to be romantic, not a confession from a horny teenager.” You both laughed. “I don’t know when my feelings changed or if I’d just ignored the way I felt about you for a long time but once I sat down and thought about my options with all of you, and spoke very discreetly with my best friend back home, I realised how sad I was every time I thought of not being able to be anything other than a friend to you. For every other member I was fine with the prospect of just friendship, but with you, it made me inexplicably sad.”

“Are you sure? Because don’t get me wrong, I want this, but it would be stupid of me to not understand the reality of it. Like you said, we won’t be able to go out on dates like a normal couple. We would have to be so careful. So unbelievably careful.” He paused as he took a couple of steps towards you, closing the distance between the two of you. “I think at this point a dating scandal wouldn’t ruin my career nor would it ruin EXO, but I’d be so worried about you.” He reached out to brush a stray strand of hair behind your ear, his hand lightly resting on your cheek afterwards. His eyes shone bright with emotion. He cared so much about you. “People can be so cruel, and I don’t want to see you hurt by their words should anything leak.”

You placed your hand over his, your eyes glistening with emotion. You knew his feelings for you, and he knew how you felt about him yet he still took the time to worry when he could be kissing you. “I don’t know that there is any way to prepare for the hate that would come my way if something got out about us, but I think that unless there was evidence of us in some compromising position it would be easy for SM to deny the rumours. In some ways working for the company and with the group allows for us to be seen together. We’d just have to keep things very work oriented when we aren’t in the safety of our homes.”

Baekhyun let out a shuddering breath. “I’m, fuck, why am I scared?”

You smiled. “Because. We really like each other. Fear is natural when you have something to lose but I think that just means trying to hang on to that special thing, or person in this instance, is worth anything that could be thrown at us. I’d like to think you wouldn’t just abandon me the moment a rumour comes out.”

He shook his head instantly. “I wouldn’t. I promise.”

“Then yeah, I’m all in on trying this thing. You and I. Exclusive. Together.”

His eyes widened at your words, like he still couldn’t quite believe this was happening. All the bravado you’d seen throughout the rest of your relationship with him was gone. The man who stood before you now was Baekhyun stripped bare. He was beautiful, inside and out. You don’t know how you denied yourself these feelings for so long, but if you continued to do so the sheer weight of what you felt might just consume you. “Is this really happening?” He asked.

“It is if you agree to it.” You replied. You stared up at him as you waited for him to accept your feelings and close the gap between you.

He leant in. “I can’t believe you actually like me. Didn’t you once say I was the most annoying person in the world?” He whispered. He was so close you could feel the ghost of the movement of his lips as he spoke.

“Maybe you’ll be less annoying if I get to call you mine.” Did he expect you to kiss him? Was he waiting for you to make the first move like you were waiting for him to do? 

“Oh. No. That’s where you’re wrong.” He smiled against your lips, the sensation of them touching but not kissing you was driving you insane. “I will be even more annoying if I’m yours.” His hand moved from your cheek to the back of your head, holding you in place.

“Still a risk I’m willing to take.” Baekhyun’s fingers tightened against your neck, stretching up into the edges of your hairline. He felt like he was trying to bring his own body as close to yours as possible. 

You waited for him to agree to date you, but he kept seemingly dodging a response. It was beginning to make your anxiety spike. What if he really liked you, admitted his feelings, yet still did not want to date you? Could you handle that? You didn’t think you could, not after laying your heart on the table for him like that. “Baek?” You asked.

“Yeah?” He replied as his free hand snaked around your waist, pressing your bodies against each other. You could feel your heart hammering in your chest as your breath hitched. 

“Please don’t leave me hanging.” You pleaded. You needed to hear him say it now that he knew how you felt. You felt light headed, and like your knees might buckle.

“What?” He sounded confused. The butterflies in your stomach felt like they were caught in a hurricane for how tingly you felt.

“I’ve told you what I want, confessed my feelings to you. B-but, you. You haven’t -” You struggled to get the words out.

He must have realised what you were trying to say as his grip on you tightened. “Fuck! Sorry noona, shit. I want to date the hell out of you.” You could feel how hard he was miling against your mouth as he spoke. “I’m excited for all the silly domestic things we can do. I want to buy couple pyjamas for us. I want to smother you with kisses and affection as much as I can when we are alone. If I don’t, I don’t think I’ll be able to handle my shit in public. I’m scared. I’m so so soooo happy, also a bit horny but that’s nothing new, mostly I’m just waiting to wake up from this dream.” You could feel yourself tremble, all the pent-up anxiety and fear and self-loathing having no other way to exit your body. The physical manifestation of the nerves wasn’t something you could control.

“Well could you hurry up and kiss me then?”

“Gladly.” Baekhyun closed the nonexistent gap between you as he pressed his lips against yours. The kiss started out softly, carefully and full of what could be referred to as love. He was kissing you with all the pent up emotion that he was now allowed to set free. You’d never been kissed like this before. Never been kissed in such a way where you could feel the emotion being poured into you. You felt desperate for him. It felt so good.

Baekhyun pressed harder against you as he kissed away all of your worries and doubts. You could feel how much he wanted you, more than just sexually, as his tongue swept across your lips, requesting entrance. You granted it readily, equally needing to devour him and reciprocate how you felt about him through the kiss. The raging butterflies in your stomach had morphed into tingling sensations that fluttered across every nerve ending. 

He pulled back just enough to cradle your face in his hands as he gazed at you with so much affection that you felt like you might combust. “I feel like I’ve gone crazy,” he chucked. “He didn’t allow you space to speak before jumping in to continue kissing you. 

You continued to kiss and hold each other for a while, trying to make up for lost time as you attempted to express every emotion via kisses. Some soft and loving, others rough and demanding. It’s you who pulled away the next time, as you both tried to catch your respective breaths. “We should tell the others.”

Baekhyun nodded. “Yeah, and then can we please go to your apartment? I just want to spend time with you. I don’t care if we just hold each other and make out or if we do more, I just want to be close to you.”

“That sounds perfect to me.” You pressed a chaste kiss to his lips before you grabbed his hand. “Let’s go before we change our minds and they find us in here.” 

The two of you headed back out towards the living area hand in hand. The others all appeared to be caught up in various discussions but they stop once someone notices yours and Baekhyun’s intertwined hands. Baekhyun cleared his throat, unable to keep the smile off his face as he exclaimed. “We’re dating, and I hope all of you can be happy for us because, speaking for myself here, I’m really happy right now. I thought I’d lost her earlier tonight but as usual I misunderstood.” He smiled down at you. “Thank fuck it was a misunderstanding, otherwise all of you would be dealing with me being mopey and heartbroken.” 

One by one the members got up and came forward to embrace the two of you. You were over the moon with the outcome from this evening. You’d secured a new contract, didn’t have to move companies, got to keep some of the best friends you’d ever had and gained a boyfriend. Pretty productive night if you said so yourself. However, you couldn’t help but notice that neither Minseok or Kyungsoo had approached the two of you since Baekhyun’s announcement.

In fact, neither of them were even in the room. Suddenly the lights dimmed and the two missing members entered the room, holding a cake. It wasn’t anyone’s birthday. What was the cake for? As they got closer you heard the other members giggling and grew suspicious. Any of these men giggling was never a good sign. Finally the cake came into view as the two of them stood before you and Baekhyun. “Yah!” Baekhyun laughed as he tried his hardest to sound mad. “Did you fucking plan this?!”

“Dude, you could not have been more obvious in your affections as far as we were concerned. “Kyungsoo deadpanned. “After we all talked last night it became pretty obvious that none of us felt the same way you did, and whilst some of us could see ourselves reaching that point, we weren’t there now. We were always expecting you to confess, and well, noona, you were always closer to Baek than any of us. There was always something brewing under the surface there so we had faith that you’d reciprocate his feelings. So we figured baking a cake for the occasion was a sure bet.” 

“You did have us worried when you didn’t say a single word at the table but I’m glad to see it all worked out. We did change the message on the cake just in case you hadn’t confessed to each other by the time you came back out of the room.” Minseok smirked. You finally diverted your gaze to the cake. And laughed. You laughed so hard that you struggled to breathe.

Hurry up and confess to each other so we can celebrate.

“This was your amendment?!” You managed to splutter in between laughs.

Kyungsoo grinned. “Yeah. The original message said Congratulations on realising your feelings.” 

“I hate all of you, just so you know.” Baekhyun grumbled, though it was not even remotely convincing what with the huge smile on his face.

“You love us.” Minseok said. “And we’re very happy for you.”

“Now eat the damn cake. I baked it with love.” Kyungsoo said as he thrust the cake towards the two of you.

“You baked for us?” You asked as you smiled.

“Of course I did. I’d only let the others bake if I wanted you to be poisoned. I don’t know how he’d manage it but Junmyeon could give you food poisoning even if all the ingredients were in date. What do you take me for, a monster?” He replied, unable to wipe the smile off his face.

***

After the cake had been eaten,you and Baekhyun decided that it was time to take your leave and head down to your apartment for the night.  You made your way around the room to bid each of the members goodnight, and to give each of them a warm hug. You held Yixing extra tight, promising to come have a movie day with him before he had to return to China. You also made him promise to schedule video calls with you so you could keep in touch. He swore that we would and you planned to hold him to that promise.

Minseok walked the two of you to the door. The three of you chatted easily as you and Baekhyun put your shoes on. You were enveloped in a strong embrace as Minseok held you and told Baekhyun to take good care of you because you now had eight friends who would gut him if he hurt you. The weight of his words was diminished when he posed the exact same threat to you. Baekhyun laughed at his protective hyung, cooing at how cute he was for threatening the two of you. 

He didn’t let go of you as he reached out to playfully slap Baekhyun. To his credit, Baekhyun let the two of you have your moment as he watched you both silently. 

You should have known better. Silence and Baekhyun were never a good mix. “So what if I want Minseok to join in every now and again?” He said as though he was talking about the weather.

“What?!” You both spluttered.

Baekhyun shrugged. “Noona, Hyung, you should see your faces.” He giggled. “I’m only half kidding though.”

“Yeah, you are going to have to say more than that dude.” Minseok groaned.

Baekhyun smiled at both of you. “I don’t know about either of you, but if I had to take a wild guess - we all had a better than good time during hyung’s reward. I’m just not opposed to something like that happening again, obviously not a frequent thing, but yeah. I’m sure you are more than capable of taking charge in the bedroom noona but it was really fucking hot watching both of you and being told what to do. So uh, yeah, just saying I’m happy to leave that door open for a future session.”

“Baek, you can’t just say things like that as though it's normal conversation.” You replied.

“What made you decide to bring that up now of all times?” Minseok asked as you spoke.

“To answer noona - Is that a no to my idea then? Coz like, that’s also fine. To answer hyung - I was reminded of it when the two of you were hugging.”

Minseok shook his head at the younger man. “You’re fucking weird dude.” 

“You like it.” Baekhyun quipped.

“I don’t dislike it.” He agreed. “Look, I’m down as long as it doesn’t become weird. It was fun, it was deeply satisfying and it was hot, but not something I’d be willing to ruin our friendships over.” 

You finally found some words, not quite believing where the night had taken you. “I feel the same. So uh, I guess at such a time when we want to involve a third, we know who to call…”

“This cannot be my life.” Minseok shook his head in disbelief and pointed towards the door. “Can you two leave already so I don’t get sprung with any more headache inducing conversation topics?”

Baekhyun grabbed your hand and led you through the door. “Let’s go angel.”

You were content, more than content as you stepped across the threshold with Baekhyun, who was now your boyfriend, you supposed. You’d have to discuss labels later. You wanted to spend the entire night in his arms, and like him you did not care if that was while you watched movies, played games, talked, or expressed your feelings for each other in a much more physical manner. All you knew was you felt right, you felt loved and cherished and you felt like you were in a state of utter bliss. 

A/N: Thank you if you've stuck with me over the course of the past 7 years. I simply don't have the words to express my gratitude to everyone who made it to this point of my lil fic. Well it was supposed to be little. It was supposed to be 9 chapter of pwp and only take me a couple of months to write but then all of this happened. I grew as a writer through this fic and explored different aspects of what I could write. I'm proud of this fic and glad that it didn't become another one of those unfinished fics on the internet.

It would mean the world to me if you could leave a comment. I love you all.

[xiucakes]

the pink book.

the pink book

xiumin x reader, wonwoo x reader.

word count: 2.2k

summary: you meet a handsome roommate who just moved in, you offer help but you never knew it could turn up like this.

warnings: (mostly) angst, fluff, no happy ending.

a/n: this is my first fic i’ve wrote, i’m not the best at writing as i’m trying to improve so do leave comments if needed! enjoy reading! pls note that this was purposefully wrote lower cased and not proofread!! thank u! ❤️

being a student at SM university was harder than you thought. walking back from a long day to your dorm, you saw a unfamiliar figure standing in front of the dorm.

“hi, do you know where the owner is?” spoken the man with a face of an idol, you were stunned. how could someone be this handsome right at your doorstep?!

“i’m the owner, is there anything you need?”

he looked up and down, you were bewildered as you noticed his cat-looking eyes checking you out.

“i’m moving with you. i’m a transfer student from seoul.” him replying with a low tone.

“what’s your name by the way?” he asked.

“my name is ___.” you were fidgeting, looking away from his direction.

“i see. pretty name.” he exclaimed as he stared at you

“what about yours?”

“i’m kim minseok, but you can call me by xiumin if you want to.”

“do you need help with your suitcase?” you said as your eyes redirected to his.

“sure, would love to get help from a pretty girl anyway.” he grinned.

dragging his suitcase, your heart was pounding fast as your mind was blown at the fact that a flirty handsome guy was living in the same dorm as you. he was right behind and you couldn’t believe it was real. you led him to the only empty room in the house.

“alright this is your room. this is the only other bedroom in the house so decorate it however you like! let me know if you need anything!” you smiled at him.

“will do ___!”

1 week passes..

who knew this wasn’t just a small crush? you thought the butterflies in your stomach would go away but it didn’t. everytime you looked at minseok, your heart starts beating and you feel a guilty knot in your stomach. it was worse knowing that he probably doesn’t feel the same way towards you as it was now known he was the flirty type towards everyone. with no surprise, he became popular instantly.

you were snacking on some cereal at the counter as you weren’t craving for a huge meal for dinner. suddenly, minseok barged in with someone with him, a girl you were definitely unfamiliar with. walking towards the stairs, holding her hand tightly.

you stared at them with the spoon filled with cornflakes and milk holding your hand, your heart tightened. he glanced at you and just went into the room to shut the door. you assumed they just had sex, maybe a one night stand? you didn’t really know for sure.

you went out for some fresh air and sat at a nearby bench, to let out your feelings. you sobbed hard, cupping your face. you didn’t expect minseok to like you back but it hurts so much.

after 30 minutes or so, you went back to your dorm. you went to your room straight, while minseok was on the couch. not sparing a glance at him, he on the other hand was confused and wondered why you looked puffy as if you just cried.

the next morning, you woke up to the smell of pancakes. you went out to see that minseok was almost done flipping the pancakes. he smirked when he saw you.

“hey ___! you want some pancakes? i made enough for the both of us.”

you stood there nodding your head, half awake.

“i’m going to brush my teeth and wash my face first.”

you came out of the bathroom refreshed and sat at the table, eating the chocolate chip pancakes minseok made.

“ahem. so about last night, i’d like to apologise.” he coughed his apology out.

“um. for?” you seemed confused on his apology.

“for barging in the dorm with a girl last night, it seemed rude and i didn’t tell you prior to the occasion.” he said with ease.

“oh no it’s fine, i mean we all are legal adults anyway. i wouldn’t be surprised if you brought home a girl once in a while. just let me know beforehand so i don’t get so frightened.” you fake smiled shocked that he even bothered to apologise, with the pancake still in your mouth.

“may i ask why you were crying yesterday?”

said minseok with a worried face.

“i didn’t cry? what do you mean?”

“don’t lie to me ___. you don’t normally cry, you and i know that. you do know that you are someone important to me. right?” he exclaimed with a stern look with a worried tone.

an important person..? to him? what kind of sweet talk bullshit is this?

“i really mean it minseok, let’s just finish our pancakes and get to class already. we are going to run late!”

minseok didn’t want to force it out of you but he had a gut feeling.

a few days passed, you avoided minseok unless it was something related to school or something important. he was getting tired of your silent treatment. you were walking to your locker, not acknowledging his presence near you but he grabbed your hand.

“___, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

you stood there blankly with the obvious eye bags you have. you were too drained to try and process what he wanted to mean.

“what do you even mean by that?” you said softly, avoiding eye contact. you knew deep down why he confronted you.

“don’t act dumb, just tell me the reason. i don’t understand why you’re hiding this from me!”

he shouted, people around you both looking at him with clueless eyes on what’s going on.

“look minseok, i’ll tell you eventually. i just need time.” you glare at him, letting go from his harsh grip.

“whatever, you have 1 day. or i’ll find it out myself. i’m tired of this silent treatment you’re giving me.”

he growled.

you stood there wondering why this affected him so much. i mean, you both were just roommates. right?

you went to bed deciding that once and for all, you should tell minseok the real reason why you’re acting this way towards him. otherwise the friendship between you two will end soon, and you definitely did not want that to happen.

the next morning, you made some breakfast bagels for minseok. you knew it was his favourite breakfast item. knocking on his door, he opened with messy hair, droopy eyes and shirtless, looking surprised that you were at the door. seems that he just woke up.

you fake coughed to ignore the beautiful sight in front of you, and started the conversation.

“i’m sorry for not telling you what’s bothering me this entire month, i’ll tell you what’s going on after classes end. i hope you can accept these bagels as somewhat my apology for now.”

you grinned to make sure he accepts it.

“alright ___, i’ll be waiting.”

he gave a small smile and you just wondered how one can be adorable with that small smile.

the bell rang, you were rushing back to the dorm. you walked in but you saw minseok on the couch with a girl on top of him, they were making out.

“hey minseok.”

you spoke. he pulled away from the heating session and glanced at you.

“oh you’re here, come and sit down.”

you glanced at the girl and him.

“is this your girlfriend?”

you questioned him, knowing the answer.

“yeah! i actually wanted to introduce her to you earlier but you know, our little fight.”

he grinned.

“so are you going to tell me the reason once and for all?”

you mumbled a yes.

“can she step away for a while though? i won’t take long.”

he nodded.

“go back to your dorm first baby, i’ll meet you there once i’m finished with this.”

he grinned and gave a peck on her check, god you wished you were her.

she left shortly afterwards, giving you a small smile.

“where do i start?”

you said with worry.

“whenever you feel that is right.”

he responded with ease.

“i love you.”

you finally said it out. he sat there with shock.

“i loved you since the day we met, the day we became roommates, walking to class together, making meals for each other, watching movies while cuddling, it just made me fall in love with you more. i ignored you because i felt jealous when you brought back your girlfriend that night, hence why i ignored you for so long. now that you both are together, i’ll be submitting my form to change dorms so i can move on. thank you for being a good roommate minseok.”

you explained, holding back the tears and the pain in your heart.

minseok was stunned, he never expected this kind of response.

you got up from the couch.

“this will be the last time we’ll see each other okay? i’ll see you when i’m better.”

you walked away to your room.

minseok on the otherhand couldn’t believe it, he got his girlfriend named yeojin just to move on from you. but he couldn’t hurt her like that. he called yeojin to tell her he needed to rest for the night. he went to the bedroom, feeling hollow.

the next morning, he woke up to the dorm being silent. he opened your door, to see that all of your stuff are gone. there was a bright pink book and a small box on the bed.

he went through the pink book first.

07/03/2023

Today felt like the best day of my life! This handsome guy named Minseok came to my dorm and told us we were roommates?! Like unbelievable!! Hope this guy was better than my past roommate, turns out we have the same classes together too! He seems nice.

he chuckled at the past notes, he didn’t know you felt this way. he found the second note.

17/03/2023

Today wasn’t the best. Minseok came in with a girl today, could that be his girlfriend? I heard grunts from the room so I guess it is her. Should I ignore him? It’ll hurt but it’s for the best.

his smile dropped reading your note. he almost teared up whilst reading it, but he didn’t want to seem like a crybaby even though you aren’t here.

21/03/2023

It’s 5 days before his birthday. I got him a present. I’ll muster up the courage to go talk to him once and for all, I feel childish doing this to him. I hope I can make this whole situation alright.

tears welling up in his eyes, he’s never felt this upset before.

26/03/2023

Dear Minseok,

I know you are reading this as the busybody you are. Happy birthday. This is somewhat a farewell letter to you? I’m assuming you read my old notes in this book. I bought this book because of you. Writing my cringy feelings and hopefully when we got together, I could’ve shown you. But that’s long gone huh? I hope you appreciate this present I got you. I can’t speak to you without trying to prevent myself from kissing you so I’ve decided to do it this way. I hope you can give it to her of some sort or keep it as a souvenir for yourself. Once again, happy birthday Kim Minseok.

Love,

___,

he finally let his tears flow down, he liked you but he never knew you liked him back.

he felt so foolish but he can’t turn to you now because of yeojin.

2 weeks has passed, you were still lingering on minseok’s mind. he missed you so fucking much. meanwhile, you made a friend called wonwoo. he was your classmate. he was kind, handsome and understanding to your situation, wonwoo liked you but he didn’t want to be used as a rebound. so he held in his feelings for now, whilst you continued ranting to him about minseok. you felt some feelings for wonwoo but you thought it was infatuation because you still felt that connection with minseok.

minseok has always watched you and wonwoo, he felt jealousy. why were you talking to him for so long? you even changed your seat just to talk to wonwoo.

a month has officially passed. you and wonwoo got together shortly, you both were delighted and were happy together. you’ve officially moved from on minseok and you couldn’t be more happy. wonwoo treated you like a queen. fetching you from school, buying you meals and taking care of you always.

one day, you were near your lockers and walked past minseok. you glanced at him but you saw he was holding a pink book.

it was your book to be specific, the one you left in your bedroom. you felt stunned slightly and stopped your tracks. wonwoo realised you stopped walking, asking what was wrong. you came back to your senses and told him you zoned out slightly. he shrugged it off and continued holding your hand.

minseok watched you both walked away, he held the pendant necklace you left for him whilst he was wearing it. he broke it off with yeojin recently cause he knew what he wanted. it’s just that he couldn’t get it. at last, all of the memories he had with you was only left with the pink book.

[amazegallery]

Mais que amigos, friends!

Eu estava ouvindo VIXX quando lembrei desse dia kkkkk Não me controlei e acabei fazendo essa capinha. Disponivel para doação aqui, veja a disponibilidade das capas aqui. Post: 19/09/24

Dessa vez eu fiz um videozinho monatando ela, mas acabei esquecendo de colocar pra gravar a tela inteira hihi, mas ta ai pra quem quiser ver.

[eomayas]

in the morning • kms [req]

request: can we get a morning sex fix with xiumin where he is both very sweet and very thirsty please and thank you

pairing: minseok x f!reader, established relationship

genre: SMUT 18+ MINORS DNI!!!!

synopsis: reader is late to work because minseok is hard to resist in the morning.

warnings: SMUT!! p in v, praise, unprotected s**, oral (f receiving)

a/n: hehe i told anon that id consider writing this and i did! i hope u like it, thank you for all of the support thus far <3 ps xiumin is a munch heheheheehhe

you shouldn’t have been surprised when his lips found purchase on your neck the moment he felt you stir awake. his hands on your hips, rubbing across your stomach and pulling you flush against his hard member.

last night, drunkenly, he had asked (and you thought he was joking) if he could hit it in the morning. you assumed he was singing the song, teasing you mostly, but you had said yes in your drunken state. in all honesty, neither of you were that drunk, and your saying yes was mostly because you don’t give a shit where or when he fucks you, as long as he does it right and often.

“min,” you murmur, voice laced heavily with sleep. minseok slides a hand underneath your shirt, fingers splaying across your stomach and toying with the tie on your sleep shorts. “i have work.” you say, but it’s like placing a stop sign on a highway the way he doesn’t budge.

“i know,” he mumbles, pressing himself into you. “you told me i could hit it in the morning.” minseok nearly whines when he says it, his mouth by your ear. all you can do is chuckle softly, mildly shocked at his upfront-ness. he kisses underneath your earlobe and goosebumps arise on your skin.

“did i?” you ask rhetorically, moving your head to give him more skin to kiss. “i’m gonna be late.” your complaint falls on deaf ears, your boyfriend slipping his hand underneath your sleep shorts. you can’t help but open your legs wider for him.

minseok removes himself from behind you and crawls on top of you, quickly capturing your lips in a heated kiss. it’s not long before he’s kissing down your neck and shoving your shirt up to rub his hands over your skin. “min,” you say, threading your fingers through his hair, urging him to keep kissing and touching you, though he really shouldn’t if you want to make it to work on time.

“what?” he asks, cutting his eyes to the clock on your bedside table. “at least let me eat it.” he says, already sliding between your legs. you look down at him, lip caught between your teeth. his eyes are pleading, if his fingers digging into the soft skin near your core wasn’t enough indication that he’s starving for it, you don’t know what was.

“if you’re quick,” you say, running a hand through his hair. he quickly tugs at your bottoms and you help him take them off. minseok lowers himself to your exposed core and kisses your clit like the sweetheart that he is. he drags his tongue up your slit experimentally, paying attention to the way you suck in a sharp breath and tense up.

minseok eases your legs open when you try to close them around his head, resting his palms on the inside of your thighs and applying pressure so you don’t move. he makes out with your core, for lack of better imagery, taking his time with you as he sucks on your nub and pokes his tongue into your hole. you cry out his name and throw an arm across your eyes, your back arching off of the bed. “fuck!” you sputter, mouth falling open as you let out moans and whimpers.

he rubs your clit with his fingers when he pokes his tongue in your hole, your legs starting to shake when the pleasure gets to be too much. minseok like when you get like this, when he drives you over the edge and overstimulates you until you can barely talk or think straight. he relishes in seeing your legs shake because he knows he’s doing his job right every time. “you’re close, huh?” he mumbles against you, looking up at you with wide eyes.

“yes!” you whine, drawing him closer by wrapping your legs around his shoulders and holding his face to your core. minseok groans and grinds himself down into the mistress, wanting to be trapped by you in another way. “fuckfuckfuckfuck!” you chant when he starts sucking and licking at you without mercy. he slurps you up like soup, quickly getting you to orgasm all over his face and the bedding.

minseok unhooks your legs from around his head and kisses the inside of your thigh. your eyes flutter open and you sit up to look at him over the rapid rise and fall of your chest. “min,” you say, curling a finger and beckoning him to you. he crawls up your body, kissing your stomach and then kissing you lips, spreading your arousal on your lips. you don’t mind, not right now when you need him lecherously.

your hands quickly work to pull down his sweats, and your start to turn your body around so you can get on all fours, but he stops you. “i wanna see your pretty face,” minseok grouches, gently pulling at your waist to flip you onto your back. “better.” he kisses your neck softly and hooks one of your legs onto his shoulders, checking with you to make sure it’s comfortable before lining himself up with your entrance.

work is lost on you, the time long forgotten the moment he sheathes himself inside of you, burying himself to the hilt and slowly rocking himself inside of you. you cry out his name and hold onto his shoulders, your acrylics creating shallow indents in his skin. “ah, fuck, y/n,” minseok moans, his eyes squeezing shit.

you slide one of your hands into his hair and tug at his roots, your chest arching into his as his thrusts speed up. “minseok, baby, please!” you whimper. what you’re begging for, you don’t know. he’s stretching you wide and hitting it so deep that your brain can’t fully process how you’re feeling. “min!”

“i-i’m right here,” he pants, kissing your jaw. “do you want me to stop?”

“no!” your tone takes on one of offense and you harshly pull at his hair, making him hiss at the action. you gasp when he lifts his chest up and plants his right hand by the side of your head while the left holds your thigh against his shoulder. “oh, m-minseok!” you mewl, your mouth falling open as you look look down at where you two connect.

“so beautiful,” he praises, his voice breathless. “and so tight. always s-so tight a-and pretty for me. i-i could stay here a-all day.” he stammers, pulling his bottom lip in between his teeth and hanging his head as his thrusts start to become less rhythmic.

“i love you,” you choke out, putting a hand on his cheek. minseok turns his head and kisses your palm, mumbling an ‘i love you too’ into your hand. you buck your hips when a knot forms in your core, tightening as he keeps up with his strokes despite being near his own release. “min! i-i’m gonna come!” you gasp out and throw your head back onto the pillows.

eyes rolling back into your head, your body convulses as your orgasm takes over. you squirt onto the bed sheets and onto his bare abdomen, calling out his name as he stills momentarily before releasing inside of you. minseok pants removes your leg from his shoulder and collapses next to you, his arm slinging across your abdomen.

minseok lifts his head to glance at the clock and lets out a chuckle. “fast enough for you?” he mutters, rolling onto his back and covering himself with the bed sheets. you lean over him to check the time and nod.

“perfect,” you mumble, kissing his lips with more passion than necessary, especially since you’re cutting it close to being late for work.

“babe,” minseok whines when you pull the sheets back and crawl on top of him and settle your bare core over his lap. surely your boss could handle you being a few minutes late, just this once.

[honeyhotteoks]

hey chai!! tysm for the 4 updates I loved it so much,, I hope everything is going well for you because I'm sure your writing is helping a lot of us <33 anyways I'm curious about your thoughts about everyone scents including woosanhwa I don't know if you've stated it and I just missed it but yea I hope you have a great day as always and remember to drink water!! <33

oh thank you so much!!! all of their scents are subtly included, but some are more obvious than others for sure. here's a little break down of all our main characters and their scent notes, but as a note.... scents change a bit depending on who's breathing it in and scents change with emotions or biological shifts. i include some thoughts about that below too! --

reader: chamomile tea, willow sap, & honey; when reader is in heat or aroused, the honey scent is much stronger, and when she's feeling really upbeat, joyful, there's hints of clean lemon zest. the willow is subtle, but a little sharp in it's medicinal almost wintergreen scent, it's one of those smells that you either love or you hate, but mingi and yunho both love.* when she's afraid, her scent turns bitter like over-steeped tea. if reader were to be pregnant, her scent would turn a little milkier, like tea with sweet cream and honey. yunho: rain / wet earth, cedar, & clarysage; when yunho is trying to comfort reader or draw her in with his scent, it's much more of a true petrichor / wet earth scent. when he's aroused or in a rut the cedar is stronger and more masculine, but underneath both of those tones is a bit of a sweeter/herbal tone with the sage. to reader, his scent really pulls like a comforting childhood memory that makes her feel safe and secure. mingi: dark chocolate, cinnamon & pink peppercorn; when mingi is angry, aroused, or in a heightened emotional state the cinnamon really shines for him, but when he's in a calmer or comforting state it's more chocolate and cocoa. the pink peppercorn is something that is only really caught when you're close, something undefinable that enhances the sweetness and the spice, but is undeniably mingi. seonghwa: freshly brewed coffee, jasmine, & pear; seonghwa to me lives in a beautiful space between masculine and feminine energy and his alpha scent is reflective of that. warm and strong coffee is ever present, but jasmine really comes forwards with those he's comfortable with or aroused by. pear is sweeter and more decadent and comes to the front when he's with san especially. san: jasmine, sandalwood, & oakmoss; san and seonghwa's scents are intentionally complimentary, but san's scent undertones are more masculine and 'alpha' like compared to his jasmine top note. he's floral and fresh, bright and energizing, but a scent that deepens in masculine complexity the closer you are to him. when he's comfortable and relaxed, the warmth and natural notes of oakmoss are more present. wooyoung: linen, salt, & green apple; wooyoung's scent is fresh and bright, evoking something clean and summery. when he's in heat, the apple scent turns a bit caramelized and sweet, but normally his scent is more even and calming with the linen and salt being forward in tone. to reader, his scent also calls to mind a memory more than distinct scents, and she and others often associate his unique blend with the last days of summer sun in august.

*note on reader's scent: admittedly, my inspiration for reader's scent was directly taken from one of my favorite books, a discovery of witches by deborah harkness. the full quote is below because i think it's so lovely and this line often gets stuck in my head:

"You smell of willow sap. And chamomile that has been crushed underfoot. There's honeysuckle and fallen oak leaves, too, along with witch hazel blooming and the first narcissus of spring. And ancient things - horehound, frankincense, lady's mantle. Scents I thought I'd forgotten."

[yeolsaintlaurent]

yeolsaintlaurent's MASTERLIST

Series

Nocturnal Reverie - PCY :ongoing: *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ Chapter 1: City of Shadows Chapter 2: Unveiling Secrets Chapter 3: A dangerous game begins Chapter 4: Unveiled Desires Chapter 5: Operation Shadow Veil Chapter 6: Threads of Deception and Dilemmas Chapter 7: Echoes of the Past Chapter 8: Unexpected Encounter Chapter 9: Harmony in Midnight melodies Chapter 10: Glimmers of recognition Chapter 11: The Message

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

~New Series Coming Soon

[oh-exos]

to be yours.

pairing : whoever you love

genre : fluff, friends to lovers

synopsis : your male bestfriend gets rid of your insecurities

warnings : none (kissing ig?)

‘What's the matter?’ He whispered, his eyes though on the fascinating stars.

I wonder what's in him that senses every emotion of mine without me expressing them. It's been years to us being the closest friends and from those years there comes three of them where I fell for him. This is a secret, still kept from him. It's a friendship I perish and if I dare move forward, I'm afraid I'll lose him forever.

‘Nothing, of course,’ I replied without turning to him, because oh his eyes. Bright and alluring, always holding their magic on me.

‘You can't lie to me. I know something is wrong. You never stare at the stars in silence. There's always a beautiful memory of the day you tell me while watching the stars, because don't you say that the stars remind you of happiness?’

The stars remind me of you, the happiness I described was you.

‘They do, indeed,’ I said, ‘But today...’ The sentence hung on for a while until I found it hard to continue it anymore.

‘Tell me, what's wrong?’ His eyes were still wandering from one star to another.

I sighed and started.

‘I don't feel like someone would ever love me. I can't picture anyone having a likeness towards me. I can't picture anyone thinking about me before they fall asleep, there's rarely any impact I put on people. I can't picture them getting butterflies because I greeted or smiled at them. Though, why would they even? I'm not special, very normal. People would find better than me everywhere, why settle for something low?’ I laughed, trying not to sound needy for some sympathy.

His eyes shifted to me. I felt a shiver run down, they had some magic. He smiled and I swear I would've been caught blushing had I not turned away. His fingers gently grabbed my chin and turned my face back to him. He moved closer, his breath was even and smooth unlike my shaky one.

‘You are normal and that's what's special about you. It's not just the greetings or the smile, every word you speak does something to me. That laugh you have, brings butterflies. Every story you narrate lingers in my mind. My nights are incomplete without thinking about you, it makes me restless to meet you again. I understand if you can't picture anyone liking you because I, love you,’

When I thought he couldn't have captured my heart anymore, his tender lips held mine. They stayed there for enough time until our existence felt unknown. There was no me nor him, it was just us. The stars didn't matter anymore, all that mattered was us.

[chanyeolsbiggestfangirl]

ANNOUNCEMENT

EXO headcanon and drabble requests are now open across all genres (Smut, Angst, Fluff)

Details that are needed to be specified in order for the drabble to be written:

Member's name and the genre

the au or troupe you'd like it to have. eg: non idol au or a best friends to lovers or friends with benefits, etc.

the supposed prompt or storyline or plot you want it to follow

Any other necessary details you'd like me to add would be appreciated in the asks.

You can send me your requests through dms or anonymously.

- Katie

P.S:- Reblogs and comments regarding any doubts are welcome.

[exoterrorandtalesfest]

Terror and Tales Round 2: Sing ups

If you know T.E.R.R.O.R.—it's time we opened our doors! Want to report something uncanny or abnormal? Now's the time. Terror and Tales is ready to catalogue you and your work! Sign up today! We'll be in contact!

Sign-up Form (x)

[xiubaek-13]

Chapter 47 - Do It Together

Requested: No

Genre: Canon-AU, smut

Pairing: ? (at this stage undecided) x Reader or is it Baekhyun x Reader ?

Warnings: 18+ fic, minors DNI! Smut, power play, pet names, dom/sub dynamics (if you squint), oral (m & f receiving), threesome mfm, unprotected sex (don't be like them), overstimulation, restraint, vaginal fingering, face fucking, vaginal sex, creampie, masturbation (m), dirty talk, like the entire chapter is smut ok? You've been warned.

Word Count: 10,350

A/N: Oh boy, ok so this took some time but also, these are my two EXO biases so writing this put me through it. There is only one chapter left after this and then this story will finally come to a close. It's been a labour of love (and took many more years to complete than I ever anticipated) and I'm thankful to each and every one of you who read and interact with this.

“Ok but like, if he comes back are we really doing this?” Baekhyun asked as soon as Minseok had left the room.

“Only if we all agree to the terms of the reward and are willing. He likes to be in charge so I dare say he’ll have rules about what you can and cannot do. So if you aren’t ok with being instructed by Xiumin then probably mention it sooner rather than later.” You replied. You paused for a moment then added. “I cannot tell you how nervous he has been to bring it up with you Baek. He was so certain that you would laugh and reject him. So like, let him down easy if you don’t want to do this.” The last thing you wanted was for him to come back only for Baek to change his mind. Minseok would be so embarrassed.

He shook his head and moved his chair closer to yours. “No, like I said, I’m completely down for this and I don’t mind if I’m in charge or if someone else is when sex is concerned.” 

“So versatile.” You smirked.

“You love it.” He winked.

“Actually, I don’t think I’ve experienced you not being in charge like that.” You let your mind drift as you imagined the different possibilities. Would Xiumin lay down a few generalised rules or would he direct the whole experience? Would he make Baek watch? Would he watch you and Baek? 

Baekhyun hummed in response, obviously also letting his imagination run wild with the opportunities this night might bring. 

You laughed as you caught him lost in thought. “I can always leave if you want him to yourself Baek.” 

Baekhyun raised a brow at you before smirking. “If that was something I was down for, why do I feel like you’d want to watch?” You blushed at the thought.

“Moving on.” You murmured. Why was your face so warm?

Your embarrassment was not missed by Baek. “Oh we are most definitely discussing that later.” He grinned. 

“I said moving on.” You repeated. That wasn’t something you were going to unpack right now but there was no denying that the image in your brain was anything other than hot. 

“Mmmhmm, for now.” He agreed. Baekhyun’s face took on an inquisitive expression as he asked. “Did he have someone else in mind or was I really his first choice for this?”

You nodded. “As far as he told me, which stretches back to before these lessons began, you were his choice.” The man across from you preened at this. “Don’t let it go to your head Baek.”

He smiled softly. “Bit hard not to, if I'm being honest.” Byun Baekhyun sounded genuinely flattered. For all of his bravado and confidence in all other areas of his life somehow Minseok choosing him made him coy? He then added. “I don’t know who I thought he’d pick, but I wasn’t expecting to be his first choice for something like this.”

You levelled your gaze at him. “You are literally the mood maker of the group. He trusts you to listen to him when he’s serious about something but also to keep any situation light hearted and not let things get awkward.” You paused, then shrugged. “If you think about it, you’re kind of the perfect choice for this.”

His small smile started to turn smug. “So many compliments for me in such a short time. You should stop feeding my ego noona.” He leant forward so his lips could brush your ear. “Especially after our earlier conversation.” You felt his hand glide over your waist, sending a shiver through your body. You were so responsive and ready for the night to proceed, certain that you’d fall apart quickly for them. “Whilst that particular activity was a very pleasant surprise - and came with a happy ending - I can’t honestly say I’m completely satisfied. I got to hear all the pretty noises you make for me but I didn’t get to touch you.” His hand gripped your waist as he spoke, his thumb rubbing small circles, the motion coupled with his words caused your breath to shudder.

“So many things I want to do to you noona,” Baekhyun leaned down, his soft lips peppering kisses on your shoulder, working his way up your neck. “I don’t know what I want more, to fuck you and have him watch.” His teeth grazed over your collarbone, sending even more shivers as you gasped aloud this time. “To watch him fuck you.” You felt him smile against your skin as he let out a soft chuckle as your body betrayed you with another shudder before he continued his path and kissed up your neck, “Or both of us take you at the same time, until you’re so fucked out you can’t form a single.” to your chin, “coherent.” then to your jaw. “thought.” He brought your face to his, locking your lips together in a searing, hunger filled kiss. Your hands moved to cup his cheeks as his grip on your waist pulled you closer towards him. 

“Baek,” You murmured through the haze of lust that was threatening to take over your senses. You were barely keeping your desire restrained and Baekhyun’s lips on your body and the words coming out of his mouth were in no way helping ground you for what was to come. You also didn’t want the first thing for Xiumin to see when he returned was that the two of you didn’t even wait for him before you got started. You could see the look of disapproval he’d give you and it was enough to break through the sinful feeling of Baekhyun’s lips and wandering hands on you. You pushed him with just enough force to separate yourself from him. “We need to wait. This is his reward, we can’t ruin it for him.”

He pouted at you, almost sulking. “Well hyung needs to hurry the fuck up then, because I want more of you.” 

You laughed softly. “Did you or did you not say less than ten minutes ago that you were good at taking direction? You’re sounding like a real brat right now.” 

“Shut up. I’m horny. My brain is like 85% not in use right now okay?” He made a point of shoving his hands under his thighs, basically sitting on them, in order to stop himself from reaching out to touch you.

You weren’t faring much better, holding on to your self control by tattered threads. You needed Xiumin to come back and take control of this whole situation before Baekhyun and you could no longer resist the temptation. “Yeah, well you aren’t the only horny one Baek.” You sighed. “But we need to control ourselves. You have no idea how nervous he’s been about discussing this. Without me slipping up I don’t know if he’d ever have actually discussed it with you.”

Baekhyun took a few deep breaths as he tried his best to put his lust in check and wait. He knew you were right, and that he also wanted this reward to be everything Minseok hoped it would be. He didn’t have to be happy about waiting though. “Fine,” he conceded at last. “We wait.”

Thankfully neither of you would have to wait much longer.

***

You could feel the shift in the air when he returned to the room. Minseok had taken time to calm himself, and you assumed, mentally prepared himself for the role he was about to play. The switch into his more dominant side was always fascinating to you. It was always there but when he turned it towards the bedroom it was just so damn sexy. The others got to see him tap into a sexy persona during choreo and take charge in certain situations but most of the time he was just their cute, nagging hyung. 

Sure, they’d all shared a living space for many years and had no doubt seen and heard everything more times than they wanted to count. There was no one who could convince you that if you placed a group of guys in their late teens to early twenties together that they were never caught masturbating or having sex by any of the others. But actively including one of those guys in your own sexual experiences? Now that was something you were less sure they had done - and if any had, clearly the two men you were currently with had not been involved. Regardless, it was happening tonight and you had a front row seat, or rather, you were on the stage with them, a very active and willing participant. 

Xiumin walked towards the two of you but didn't take a seat. Instead he picked up one of the arm chairs and moved it so that it was facing the end of the bed, then pushed it to the left until he was satisfied with the off centre view of the bed whoever sat in it would have. The new angle would definitely provide a better view of whatever happened on the bed. So he wanted someone to watch? He turned to face the two of you, motioning for you to move towards the bed. “Noona, please take a seat.” He gestured to the armchair, so you did as you were told and took a seat. He took a seat at the end of the bed, tapping the spot next to him for Baekhyun to follow suit.

Once Baekhyun was also seated he began to speak. Gone was the nervous wreck that was Minseok, replaced by the very self assured, confident and in control Xiumin who was ready to receive his reward. “Before we begin we need to go over some ground rules.” Both Baek and you nodded in agreement causing Xiu to chuckle. “Firstly, words are required. If you are asked a question, want something or are spoken to, I expect it to be conveyed verbally.” He paused as he waited for the two of you to realise that he was waiting for confirmation that you each understood him.

“Got it.” Baek replied. “Uh, do I have to call you anything in particular? Or can I stick with hyung?” He asked. 

“Hyung or a variation of Xiumin is fine for you to use Baek.” He replied. His eyes turned to you. “You, however, will refer to me as Xiumin, Xiu or Sir tonight. Am I clear?”

Instinctively you began to nod, catching yourself when he raised a brow at you. “Very clear Xiumin.” You replied, doing your best to mask the desire that was building in you again. You and Minseok had engaged in power play on more than one occasion, but most of the time it was simply him taking control as you lost yourself to pleasure. Xiumin was going to control what all of you got to experience tonight, and you could tell that if you didn’t do as you were told then you weren’t getting any relief. Your thighs rubbed together in anticipation.

“Secondly, we need to discuss how this will play out, everyone’s limits and a safe word.” He looked at each of you and smiled softly. “I think we start with each of your limits.”

Baekhyun smiled and gestured for you to go first. “Ok, well I guess as far as my own limits go, I don’t like extreme pain. Light stuff like restraints and spanking is fine but actual pain crosses the line for me. Uh, I’m also not ok with any bodily fluids that aren’t cum or saliva. Oh, and I’m not a fan of anal. I think that’s all?” There were probably more but as far as ones that might come into play tonight, those were all you could think of. 

Xiumin nodded. “Pity about the last one, but noted. Baek, what about you?”

Baek shrugged. “Uh honestly? Apart from the same bodily fluids thing as noona, I don’t think I have any. I will let you know if I’m not ok with anything as it happens - though I kind of doubt that I’ll have to.” 

You thought of one almost immediately and cocked your head as you spoke. “You don’t like degradation.” 

He nodded. “Oh yeah, I don’t like it, it’s not a hard limit for me but praise is far more effective for me.” He thought hard for a few more moments before deciding that no, there were no other limits he thought needed mentioning. “What about you hyung?”

Xiumin didn’t miss a beat. “I have a few but I think the only relevant ones for tonight are degradation and causing actual pain. If I hurt either of you, you need to tell me immediately. I wouldn’t forgive myself if I caused you pain without any pleasure. I like to play rough but not at the expense of the other person, or in this case, people’s enjoyment.” He sighed. “But essentially, that’s all for me.” He looked at each of you earnestly as he summarised. “Ok so no inflicting pain, no degradation and no anal for noona. All of that should be easy enough to work around.”

Baekhyun raised his hand. You choked back a laugh as Xiumin raised one brow at him. “Yes Baek?” 

“I still have questions.” He said.

“Of course you do.” Xiumin sighed. “Go ahead and ask then.” Baekhyun’s eyes lit up but before he could utter a word Xiumin added on with some exasperation. “Don’t make me regret this.”

Baek shook his head. “It’s nothing strange, just how will this work? Are we going with the flow or are you telling us what to do? If you’re telling us what to do, can we also make suggestions? Are we fucking her at the same time, one after the other, is there anything that’s off the table for you? Is -” He stopped speaking when Xiumin held up a hand.

“Ok that’s all the questions you get to ask. What was that, seven in like 5 seconds? I was getting to all of this you impatient fuck.” He shook his head, trust Baek to always find a way to test his patience. “To answer pretty much all of it, I like being in control so I’ll tell you what to do in a broad sense, and you’ll do that until I give further instructions. You can make suggestions but I reserve the right to deny said requests.” Baek nodded, remembering at the last second to verbalise his understanding. Xiumin acknowledged him then  turned his head and locked eyes with you. “Any questions before we begin?” 

“No.” You replied. 

He stared at you, as if he was waiting for you to say something else, but for the life of you, you couldn’t think of what that was. He shook his head ever so slightly then spoke. “No?”

You paused. You’d forgotten something, but what was it? He wanted you to speak in response to him rather than rely on non verbal cues. You’d done that, so what else was there? You could feel his eyes on you as he waited for you to reply again. You glanced at Baek, hoping he would provide insight into what you’d missed but all he did was give you a little salute. Weird. Why would he be saluting you? There was no context for that, and even as strange as his gestures could be at times, they always fitted in contextually with what was going on. Oh. OH. You realised 5 seconds later than it should have taken you to. Xiumin told you to refer to him in specific ways tonight. You returned your eyes to his expectant gaze. “No sir.”

It seemed to do the trick, as you saw him let out a breath that you weren’t aware he’d been holding. “That’s more like it.” He licked his lips, his eyes flitting between yours and your lips. The desire he was holding back was evident, but as the three of you stood on the precipice of beginning this thing, you could see the fire building in him. This was his fantasy, and he was about to make it a reality. After months and months of build up, and weeks of him fearing he’d be rejected for even suggesting it, it was happening, he just had to take the final step over the precipice and set everything in motion. You couldn’t help but smile at him as you waited for him to give the first instruction, knowing he was having one final internal debate about the entire thing, and probably on some level fretting about the cleanup afterwards. 

You didn’t want to be disobedient but if he took too long to get things going you weren’t sure you’d be able to stop yourself from throwing yourself at him. It had been too long since you’d felt his lips on yours. He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and took the leap. “Baek, I want you to move up to the other end of the bed and sit against the headboard.”

“Ok hyung.” He replied eagerly. “Clothes on or off at this stage?”

“Leave them on for now.” He replied. Baek obeyed, pushed himself to the other end of the bed and leant against the headboard as instructed. He looked comfortable, but the desire in his eyes told you he was desperate to touch you, or himself. He spread his legs and smirked at you, your joke about his manspreading replaying in your mind. You failed to keep the small laugh in. Xiumin looked at you then at Baek and sighed. “What?” He asked.

A look of apprehension appeared on his face and you wanted to squash any growing doubts immediately. Of course you laughed at the worst time, right as he decided to start his rewards. Naturally he now thought the two of you were mocking him, which was absolutely not the case. “I once made an observation about Baek’s chronic manspreading. His reply was that there was a lot of room for activities between his thighs.” You explained. Relief and annoyance flooded him. 

Baek scoffed. “That particular observation was made via text, in a room full of staff and you guys on the day of a concert.”

Xiumin sighed to himself. “Oh my god, you are both such brats.” He reached forward and grabbed your hand gently, tugging you toward the bed. “Baby, go sit between his legs, with your back facing him.” 

You placed a chaste kiss on his hand as you stood. “Can I offer a suggestion hyung?” Baek asked as you moved on the bed towards him.

“Go ahead.” He replied.

You felt Baek’s chest against your back as you leant back against him. “She should place her legs over mine, leaving you sufficient room,” He smirked. “For activities.” 

Xiumin shook his head as a laugh escaped him. “You know what, terrible joke aside, that’s a good idea.” He nodded at you. “Baby, do as Baek suggested.” You couldn’t help the blush as you did as you were told. You felt exposed, even though you were still fully clothed. Xiumin sat back and looked at the two of you, taking in the sight before him, his eyes practically shining as he did so. Baek hadn’t touched you since Xiumin had entered the room. He was behaving and doing as he was told, a rare sight to behold. His eyes travelled down your body, satisfied with how you were spread open for him, unable to close your legs when he got closer. 

Xiumin swallowed thickly as he crawled up the bed towards the two of you. He made his way into the space left for him between your legs. Once there he hooked a finger under your chin as he guided your face closer to his. He absentmindedly parted his lips the closer you got to him. You licked yours in response. You heard Baek suck in a breath when Xiumin leaned in, capturing your lips in a soft but sure kiss. You felt your body relax at the familiar feeling of his lips on yours. You sighed into it, your hands moving up to cup behind Xiumin’s neck and pull him forward, closer to you. He allowed you to control the kiss for a moment before pushing you as far back as he could without losing his balance. You could feel Baekhyun breathing erratically behind you, unable to do anything but watch as you and Xiumin made out. The kiss had started soft as the two of you got reacquainted with each other but it was rapidly growing more passionate as your tongues collided with each other.

“Fuck.” You heard Baek murmur from behind you. You felt an unmistakable hardness forming against the small of your back as the kiss grew more heated. You moaned into Xiumin’s mouth as he pulled your bottom lip between his teeth and bit. He pulled back to survey his work, taking in your dilated pupils and flushed face. 

“That gone after one kiss?” He remarked, though not entirely faring much better himself. “How wrecked are you going to look after Baek has his turn?” You tried to respond but all of the pent up desire from the day chose to flood your system. All you could feel was your desire for each of them and the fact that at that exact moment, no one was touching you. A whimper escaped you, making Xiumin chuckle. “You want Baek to kiss you baby?”

“Please.” You sounded far more desperate than you wanted to, but you needed it. It was difficult to describe the feelings you were experiencing but the overwhelming desire was clouding everything in its path. Logic and reason were locked away for the night, and you were going to indulge in Xiumin’s fantasy and love every moment of it. As long as someone touched you, right away. Otherwise you felt like you might implode. “Xiu please,”

“Go on Baek, give her what she wants.” He instructed, his eyes never leaving yours. Baek didn’t need to be told twice. You felt the soft press of his lips on your neck which made your eyes flutter as you gasped. You felt Baek smile against your skin as he continued peppering kisses along your neck and jaw before his hand turned your face towards his so he could capture your lips in a searing kiss. His other hand held you firmly against him as the two of you made out. Xiumin took advantage of your neck being bared to him and, not to be outdone by Baek, began peppering it with kisses. You let out a soft moan, and it was as if the tension in the room snapped, taking everyone’s restraint with it. You felt Baekhyun pressing against you as his body sought out any friction he could get, at the same time Xiumin’s soft kisses to your neck became deeper. Every time you felt the scrape of his teeth on your neck you moaned, each one louder than the last. 

Baekhyun noticed what his hyung was doing and took the opportunity to short circuit your brain by doing the exact same thing as Xiumin was. The feeling of having your neck ravished by both men was making you light headed. You were pretty sure that Baek was leaving marks all over the expanse of your neck. The previous marks he’d left had only just faded, not that you cared one bit in that moment. It was nothing an oversized scarf and hoodie couldn’t cover. 

Both men managed to detach themselves from you long enough for Xiumin to utter “Help me strip her.” Baek removed all the clothing on your upper body while he removed your pants, leaving you in just your panties while they were still fully clothed. 

Xiumin scowled at the dark hickey on your hip - the one that had yet to fade, asking who left that mark on you. “That would be me hyung.” Baek replied, “I couldn’t help myself.” He shrugged. He might not have noticed the way Xiumin’s jaw clenched as he stared at the mark, but you sure had, even through the haze of lust clouding your mind. He wasn’t the jealous type but something about them was making him tense. It was on your hip, hidden by clothing but for anyone who got you undressed enough to see it, it was left as a clear reminder of who had been there before them. Of who had claimed you as theirs.

You moved your hand up to cup his jaw softly. His sharp eyes, darkened with lust and something else, something carnal, lifted to yours, and stared at you. “Xiumin, are you jealous that he left marks there?” His gaze swirled with something dangerous, but not dangerous enough to deter you. 

“Careful.” He murmured. His piercing gaze made you feel like prey about to be devoured. Something you were absolutely not against. You steeled your resolve, wanting to make him let loose like you knew he could. If you pushed him just the right amount, he’d forget every insecurity he had about this reward and lose himself to dominating everyone's pleasure. You’d never regretted it in the past so you figured giving him that little push now would result in you getting fucked within an inch of your life before the night was over.

You leant forward, until your mouth ghosted his ear as you whispered. “Would you like to leave your own marks on me Sir?” You heard the hitch in his breath as you spoke. “I’d love it if you left your mark on me. Every time I see it I’d be reminded of exactly what you did to me.” You pulled back, kissing the corner of his lips as you settled back against Baekhyun’s body. From deep within his throat, it sounded like Xiumin growled.

“Hold her hands behind her back. Both of you are going to sit there and watch,” He rasped. “And you,” he said as his eyes locked back onto yours. “Will not cum until I allow you to.” 

“Yes, Sir.” You replied as Baekhyun pulled your hands behind your back and held them in place. 

Xiumin kissed you harshly, the force of him pushing you further back into Baekhyun. You had to arch your back slightly to remain as comfortable as you could in his hold. He broke the kiss and began his descent down your body. He took your request to heart, nipping and sucking your flesh as he moved from your mouth, to your neck, your chest, and stomach before settling between your thighs. Your head was becoming fuzzy from the stimulation, and your body was responding in kind. You could feel the heat running from your neck, down through your chest and settling in your stomach. You weren’t going to be able to look in a mirror and not think of Xiumin for weeks at this rate. 

Your body felt like a live wire. If no one touched you properly soon, you might just cry from how turned on you were. Xiumin’s eyes connected with Baekhyun’s as he clamped his jaw onto your upper thigh, and sucked hard. Baekhyun’s breath hitched and you felt him roll his hips against your lower back, his now hard length grazing your hands. You moaned loudly at the sensation. These two were going to be the death of you tonight, you were this far gone and you’d barely even begun. 

“Look at you, soaking through your panties. We haven’t even touched you properly yet.” He licked his lips as he hooked your legs back over Baekhyun’s, spreading you wide for him. You whimpered, so turned on and desperate for one of them to touch you where you needed it. Xiumin was an excruciatingly patient man though, you knew this as a fact. He would touch you when he was good and ready, and not a moment before that. He probably wanted to get you so worked up that you cried when he finally did give you what you wanted. “Does noona want me to touch her?” He asked condescendingly. Without waiting for your answer he pressed a finger over your clothed pussy, rubbing the digit over the wet spot of your soaked panties. You gasped at the feeling, your hands grasping behind your back, not realising until he whimpered in your ear that you’d palmed Baek’s hard length. Xiumin smirked up at both of you. “I honestly can’t tell if I’m about to ruin both of you or if you’re about to ruin me.” 

“Hyung.” Baekhyun sounded breathless as he stared down at Xiumin between your legs, the elder toying with your panties as he drew out whines from you. Unbeknownst to him, every time he drew a whine from you, your hand clenched around Baekhyun’s cock. Baekhyun’s eyes were beginning to glaze over with want. He was doing everything in his power to not run his mouth or rut up into your hands. “Hyung please, god, please touch her.” 

Xiumin gave him a shit eating grin as he continued playing with your clothed pussy, the fabric now completely soaked through as it all but stuck to you. “I thought I was touching her.” He leant forward and licked a stripe up your ruined panties, making you moan desperately. “See how responsive she is to my touches?”

“Please,” You all but sobbed. “Please, I need more.” Your chest heaved as you tried to regulate your breathing. You felt trapped between their two bodies, your own screaming with desire. “Sir, please.” 

Apparently your near broken plea coupled with calling him Sir was all it took for Xiumin to crack. His control wavered, his patience almost lost as he ripped your panties off of you. You barely even registered the fabric tearing. His eyes floated down, taking in the soaking mess in between your legs. “You’re so fucking wet noona, just for us.” He licked his lips, that devilish smile back. You didn’t have time to breathe before he moved forward, his tongue licking a thick stripe through your folds. His voice deepened with a moan. “You taste so fucking good.” His hot breath joined in the sensational overload as his tongue ran over your clit, brushing little strokes of varying pressure and sending little shocks through your core and up your spine. “You always taste so fucking good.” He murmured against you, the vibrations sending jolts of pleasure through you. “Could eat you out all day, shit.”

Words failed you when he addressed Baek. “Doesn’t she taste divine?” His face still buried in your folds, teasing you with his skillful tongue.

Baekhyun hummed as he rolled his hips into your hand, unable to stop himself from seeking the friction. “Always hyung.” He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the sight of Xiumin all but making out with your pussy. “Makes it hard to stop eating her out.” He groaned as you flattened your palm against the head of his cock. It wasn’t enough, the layers of clothing separating you from him prevented the pleasure from feeling anything but teasing. Still it was better than nothing.

“You’re not wrong. I could stay here for hours.” Xiumin replied. You cried out as his tongue entered your needy hole, lapping at your juices, and you clenched around the muscle. He ate you out like a man starved. He latched onto your clit and sucked while his skilled tongue flicked over it with desperate movements. You knew it wouldn’t take you long to reach your peak, not with all the anticipation and teasing that had led to this point. You felt your legs tremble as your orgasm built inside you. But you weren’t allowed to cum yet, Xiumin hadn’t said you could. You didn’t know how you could possibly stop yourself from teetering over the edge but you tried your best to last as long as you could for him. You didn’t want to disobey him today, you wanted to be good for him. 

The two of you had dabbled in having him be a brat tamer before, and whilst that was a very very fond memory, it was not fitting for today. His low voice pulled you from your thoughts. “Are you ok baby?” The pressure within you was mounting and your body shook from every flick of his tongue over your clit. You couldn’t speak, as much as you wanted to, all you could do was let out broken moans as Xiumin brought you closer and closer to your peak. A peak you didn’t want to cross without being given permission to. 

Baek answered for you. “I think she wants to cum hyung. She’s practically vibrating against me.” He was enthralled with watching you fall apart on another man’s tongue, a sight he didn’t think he’d ever erase from his memory, but he wanted to keep things moving as he grew more and more desperate to be actively involved. “She’s done so well for us so far, and I can’t lie hyung. I think it’ll be really fucking hot to watch her cum all over your face.” 

Xiumin had to pause at Baekhyun’s brazenness. He’d expected the dirty talk to extend to you but was rapidly finding out that the filthy exchanges they were having were only turning him on more. “Well, when you put it like that, how could I resist?” He replied. He gave you no notice as he closed his mouth over your clit, taking it between his teeth and sucked hard, the pressure that had been building exploded as your orgasm slammed into you. The force of it knocked the air from you, a loud and desperate moan left your lips, your legs shook from the intensity of it. He massaged your legs, gently lapping at your pussy while you came down. Your body twitched with the residual aftershocks he continued to draw from you with every swipe of his tongue.

As you recovered from your intense high you felt the soft press of Baekhyun’s lips on your neck. You shivered at the sensation, coupled with Xiumin rubbing his hands over your thighs, up to your waist and back down in a soothing motion. Your breathing was still laboured as you opened your eyes only to find Xiumin staring up at you, his mouth and chin glistening with your juices as he stopped overstimulating you. His gaze was still intense as he watched Baekhyun continue to leave little butterfly kisses along your neck, causing your body to shiver with need. 

Your movement did not go unnoticed by Xiumin, who chuckled. “You still need more huh? Nearly passed out from your first orgasm but you already want more don’t you?” 

Baekhyun smirked against your neck. “Noona, so needy for us. Was hyungs mouth not enough to fully satisfy you? Do you need something to fill you up?” He brought his hands to your breasts and tweaked your nipples as he sucked another mark into your neck.

You cried out. “God, yes. Please.” There was no denying that the orgasm Xiumin had just coaxed from you was mind blowing. Despite that, you could feel your pussy clenching around nothing. You needed more, needed something inside you.

“All in good time, can’t have you being selfish and getting all the pleasure now can we?” Xiumin said. “I think it’s time you did something for us.” He continued, as he stood from the bed and pulled his shirt over his head, revealing his toned torso to you. “To show that you deserve what we can give you.” He crooked his fingers and beckoned you to come to him. You leant forward and crawled towards him, removing yourself from Baek’s reach. Behind you Baekhyun bit his bottom lip as he watched your naked form move away from him. 

You popped the button on his jeans and slowly unzipped his pants, his bulge tenting his underwear. He let out a soft grunt as you let your hand roam over his underwear. “Do not fucking tease me right now. You know better than that baby.” You smiled to yourself as memories flooded you, the times you had pushed his patience over the edge, of how roughly he took you, not letting you cum until you were a mess of tears, begging him for your release. But tonight, you were going to do as you were told, even though it was becoming evident that your bratty side wanted to play. You were doing your best to keep her in check. You pulled his pants and underwear down, letting them pool at his ankles, his cock slapped against his stomach as it was finally freed from the confines of his clothing, your mouth watered at the sight. You looked up at him and he raised a brow at you. “Why don’t you show our Baekhyun how well you suck cock?” You said. Heat flooded you at the thought of being watched while you had another man’s cock in your mouth. 

He lifted his head and made eye contact with the younger, very horny man behind you. “And Baek, be a good boy and strip. You’re only allowed to watch now, no touching yourself.” You heard Baekhyun whine behind you, the poor guy was needy. He’d been rutting his hips into your lower back and hands for friction just moments ago and now he had to sit and watch, and wasn’t even allowed to relieve some of the tension he was clearly feeling. 

“Do not make me wait noona.” Xiumin’s commanding tone brought you back to the present. He was hard, very hard. You didn’t want to tease but you also didn’t want to rush this so you slowly spread the precum over his cock, running your fingers up his shaft, around the head, and down again. Xiumin opened his mouth to scold you for teasing him but his words were replaced by a groan of pleasure as you wrapped your fingers around his length and started moving your hand up and down, varying the pressure as you pumped his cock. “Fuck,” He all but whispered. 

He was always so responsive to your touches, so much so that it only spurred you on. You wanted, no needed to taste him. Part of you also wanted to ruin Baekhyun by making him such a horny mess that he might just cum untouched from watching you and Xiumin. You licked the tip of his swollen cock before bringing your lips to it and sucking softly. Xiumin let out a gasp, his hips bucking involuntarily as you finally took him into your mouth. You moved slowly, relishing in the feel of him in your mouth, filling it up. You blinked your eyes slowly as you gazed up at him as your mouth enveloped his cock. A sheen of sweat covered his forehead as he stared back at you through heavily lidded eyes.

He praised with a rough voice, as his fingers gripped your hair. “That’s right, baby, just like that. You look so good with my cock stuffed in your mouth.” You didn’t break eye contact as you moved down his length, curling one hand around his base as you bobbed your head, taking more of him in each time you made your descent. You flattened your tongue against the underside of his cock and felt his hands hold your head in a vice grip as his resolve started to wane, a deep groan emitting from his throat. He let his head roll back, his breathing growing erratic as short pants mixed with small groans flow out of his mouth.

He held your head in place as he rolled his hips into you, fucking into your mouth. His first strokes were slow and languid, letting you get used to the fullness in you, but he soon began pushing further and further. His cock started hitting the back of your throat, and on one deep thrust he had your nose pressed up against him as he bottomed out. He held it there for a few seconds. “Fucking hell. Look at you, taking me all the way. You love this don’t you? Choking on my cock in front of another man.” You shivered, as you felt your arousal leak from you. You hadn’t expected to be this turned on from just sucking his cock but you felt light you were on fire with need. You wanted to be used by them so thoroughly that you couldn’t move at the end of the night. 

You let yourself relax around him, trusting yourself in his hands, after all Xiumin had never once hurt you. He’d been the one you’d played the roughest with but he’d always taken care of you. When he felt you relax he began thrusting again, this time his strokes were getting faster, but still just as deep. “Love fucking your face noona, you, shit, you feel so good.” You struggled to hold yourself up as he used you, his hand in your hair the only anchor holding you up as you became a puppet for his use.

You knew he was approaching his climax when he began to move with less concern for the wellbeing of your throat, gagging you with his cock every few thrusts. You did your best to keep your jaw slack, as your throat was being rubbed raw, drool and precum fell down your chin in streams. “So messy, fuck, look at you. I’m almost there baby, you can take a bit more.” You moved your spare hand to massage his balls, rolling them in your palm as he thrusted into your mouth. Your action makes him groan louder than before, needier too. Your thighs clenched together, desperate in your need for friction. But you were being good, you didn’t touch or move. You choked a few times, tears falling down your cheeks to mix with the other fluids on your chin as he came. “Such a good girl for me, took me so well, let me use you to get off.” He stroked your face gently, wiping the tears away as he smiled down at you. “Wasn’t she such a good girl Baek?” He asked.

“Fuck, yes hyung, she was.” Baekhyun’s reply was strained with desire. 

“Did you touch yourself Baek?” He asked bluntly. You turned to look at him and felt a jolt through your core at just how wrecked he looked. He was breathing heavily, his chest flushed as his hands had a death grip on the sheets to stop him from touching himself. He looked so painfully hard, his rigid cock practically weeping with pre cum, twitching with need, it was so messy, and you knew how he loved it messy.

Baekhyun shook his head. “N-no. Fuck if you could see how much wetter she got from you throat fucking her hyung, my god. Please, let her touch me or let me touch myself I’m fucking dying over here.” You felt heat wash over you as you clenched around nothing. You should have felt some type of shame about how lewdly they were talking about you but you didn’t. You trusted these two men with your entire being and knew that they would never speak ill of you. Plus you were a little too fucked out to care.

Xiumin caught you staring at Baekhyun and smiled. “Baby, why don’t you treat him to your filthy mouth?” He gave you a little push to set you in motion as you crawled between Baekhyun’s legs. “Holy fuck, you weren’t wrong Baek. She is so fucking wet.” You turned your head to look back at Xiumin, who was now kneeling on the bed as he stared between your legs. His eyes flicked up to yours understanding what you wanted. “If you’re good I’ll give you what you want.” He gave your ass a light tap to direct your attention back to Baek.

“Please don’t tease me noona.” Baekhyun whimpered as you slowly grasped his length in your hand.

“You don’t want me to take my time with you?” You asked playfully. Baekhyun was always putty in your hands when it came to having his cock in your mouth. He got too eager, enjoyed it too much and never lasted that long. You guessed tonight would be no different especially since he’d had to watch you and not relieve himself while doing so. 

“Fuck. No. I’m just too fucking horny to endure it.” You heard the need in his voice, the normally even tone pitching up slightly as he tried to hold himself together. “I’m doing my best to not grab your head and shove my cock in your mouth right now. Watching you with hyung, holy fuck it was so hot, I don’t know if I’m going to last very long after watching him rail your throat.” He panted.

“I’ll make you feel good Baek, I promise.” You said. He let his head fall back against the headboard as you took the head of his cock into your mouth and sucked gently. He moaned loudly at finally being touched, his eyes wide with pleasure.

“Hyung, can - fuck - can I touch her?” He sounded so broken as he tried to speak, his breath hitching every time you moved your tongue around his swollen head.

You felt Xiumin shift on the bed until he was kneeling behind you. He rubbed his hand down your spine as you took Baekhyun into your mouth once more. “You may.” Baekhyun gripped your hair as he watched his cock disappear into your mouth. You shuddered when you felt Xiumin’s fingers drag through your slick folds. “Noona, you are so fucking wet. Does it turn you on this much to be with two men?” 

You lifted your head from Baekhyun’s cock, much to his disdain. “Yes, fuck” you rasped, your throat raw from the abuse Xiumin had inflicted upon it. “Sir, please touch me.” 

“Why should I?” He teased as one finger circled your clit.

You moaned loudly. “I’ve been so good.” 

“Do you want your noona to suck your cock Baekhyun?” Xiumin said as you lowered yourself back towards his cock. You stared into his fucked out eyes and waited for him to respond. He nodded and you shifted down, placing a kitten lick to the tip of his leaking cock, causing him to whimper at the feeling. You don’t break eye contact with him as Xiumin spoke again. “You want your noona to suck your thick cock and make you fall apart while your hyung stuffs noona with his fingers?”

Baekhyun’s eyes almost rolled in the back of his head as Xiumin spoke, his hips bucking up towards you with need. “Jesusfuckingchrist hyung, holy shit, yes. Yes I want that. Please.”

Xiumin waited for you to take Baekhyun back into your mouth before he plunged two fingers into your aching pussy. You moaned around Baekhyun’s cock at the feeling, finally being touched and having your mouth filled at the same time. You swirled your tongue on the underside of his cock as you took more of him in, finding your rhythm so you could rock back onto Xiumin’s fingers and forward onto Baekhyun’s cock. 

You ran your nails down his thighs as you let your jaw relax, allowing Baekhyun to begin thrusting up into it. “Holy shit this is hot, you should see yourself noona, gonna make you choke on my cock while hyung makes you cum on his fingers.”

“You liked that didn’t you?” Xiumin remarked. “I felt you clench around me, you needy little thing. If you want to cum then you’d better hold still and let us use you.” Your eyes widened as you clenched around his fingers again.

Baekhyun began to fuck your throat as you held yourself in position, your hands gripping his thighs. You moaned around his cock as you felt Xiumin's hand match the pace Baekhyun was setting. They were both entering you at the same time, you’d never felt so full. The pressure was building within you at an alarming pace and you knew you’d snap if they kept up this momentum. Baekhyun’s moans became higher pitched and more frequent as he started to really enjoy the feeling of your throat sucking him in every time he fucked into it. The vibrations from your moans were only adding to the pleasure he was feeling. “Fuck, I’m close.” He panted.

Xiumin removed his fingers from you. You whined at the loss only to let out a strangled cry as he began to vigorously circle and tap your clit. “Then cum. Both of you.” Both of you came undone at his words, your orgasm slamming into you as Baekhyun thrusted once more and held himself in your throat as he came while you writhed against Xiumin’s relentless fingers, tears streaming down your face at the combination of choking on Baekhyun’s cock and being overstimulated by Xiumin. 

You pulled off Baekhyun as you tried to get away from Xiumin’s relentless fingers. “Xiu please, I need a minute. Too sensitive.” You whined. He acquiesced and released you from his wandering hands. 

Baekhyun was immobile, his chest heaving as he recovered from his own high. He somehow looked even more fucked out than he had before. “Holy shit.” He said to himself. 

Xiumin pulled him from his daze by telling him to move to the chair at the end of the bed and watch. Baekhyun stood on slightly wobbly legs, walked over and threw himself down on the comfy chair facing the bed, leant back and got as comfortable as a naked man could in a hotel chair, as his eyes roamed over the bed as they sought you out. “I know this is your reward hyung but I feel like we’re all reaping this reward.” He grinned. 

He had a moment where the facade cracked and you saw the excitement in Xiumin’s eyes as he took a beat to take in that he was actually experiencing one of his largest fantasies right now. Not only that, but it was going well. He only let that slip last for a second before he was back, moving to sit in the position Baekhyun had been in on the bed. You stared at him as you waited for him to tell you where he wanted you. He was lazily stroking his hard length as he let his eyes roam over your body. “Come here noona.” You made your way over to him, and climbed onto his lap.

“Are you enjoying your reward Xiu?” You asked softly as you wrapped your arms around his neck. 

He let his forehead fall forward and press against yours. “It is everything I imagined and more. Thank you for helping make it happen.” He smiled genuinely at you, that beautiful gummy smile that you adored, before he kissed you. He let his hands run over your shoulders, ghosting past your breasts, running down the sides of your waist so gently it made you shiver, before coming to rest on your hips, kneading the skin there as he deepened the kiss. He sighed into you, pressing his lips down harder, hungrier. You gasped into his mouth as he pulled your hips against his cock. “Turn around. Want you to ride me while facing him. Make him watch you fuck yourself on my cock. You’ll ruin him, and I’ll get to watch your ass bounce on my cock so we both win.” Xiumin gave you another one of his annoying little smirks. 

You gave him one more heat filled kiss before you turned in his lap. Baekhyun’s eyes widened as he figured out what was happening, his hands gripping his thighs in anticipation. You didn’t have much time to focus on the look on his face because Xiumin suddenly dipped his finger into your sopping entrance, using your juices to coat his cock. You let out a shaky moan as he moved you into position and waited for you to begin. He let you know you were taking too long by delivering a swift smack to you ass, which caught you by surprise as you cried out.

Slowly you lifted yourself up, aligned his cock with your core and sunk down to the hilt. You both moaned out at the feeling of your wet, hot walls moulding around him and pulling him in. You stayed like that for a second, head thrown back and nails digging into his thighs as you got used to the stretch. “Fuuuuck, that’s hot.” You heard Baekhyun groan. You locked eyes with him as you started to move, setting a steady pace to begin with as you relished in the feel of Xiumin’s cock hitting you in all the right places from this angle. Xiumin’s hands rubbed up and down your sides as he helped guide you up and down on his length. He threw his head back in pleasure at how deep you were taking him.

Baekhyun couldn’t help himself any more as he was hard again. The sight of you bouncing on Xiumin’s cock, your tits bouncing, the sounds you were making, all of it was too much. He wrapped his fingers around himself and squeezed hard. He bit back a moan, as his head tipped back as the relief of his own touch spread through his body and pre cum leaked from his tip. You moaned at the sight of him touching himself as you fucked yourself on Xiumin’s cock, quickening your pace. You heard Xiumin moaning and cursing behind you as your pace became increasingly desperate. 

“Hyung,” Baekhyun’s voice was strained with need.

“Wh-fuck, what?” He grunted.

“How does she feel?”

“She feels amazing, fucking herself on me so good.” He moaned as you changed the angle of your pelvis, desperate to feel him hit that specific spot inside you. “Our baby is desperate to get off aren’t you?”

“I can’t, Xiu-” You cried out. 

“Baek, get up and kneel in front of her.” He said as he pushed you off his cock, moving you onto all fours. “Baby, think you can take both of us at the same time? One fucking this pretty pussy and one using that skilled mouth of yours?”

You whimpered at his question, too overwhelmed with the prospect of being filled so wonderfully by them that you forgot to answer. “All you need to do is say yes, baby.” He said. “But I will not do anything until you tell me how much you want it.” He slowly dragged his cock through your folds.

“Yes, oh god, yes, please sir, I need it.” When he didn’t move a muscle you tried again. “Xiumin, please.”  

“Sorry baby, I was just savouring my fantasy. Trust me, we want nothing more than to give you exactly what you need.” He entered you in one thrust, bottoming out with a grunt. Your hands grasped onto Baekhyun’’s arm for dear life as your body went rigid. A loud moan and gasp left your lips and when Baekhyun grabbed your jaw and brought his cock to your lips an honest to god whine came out. You were completely lost to their ministrations, theirs to use as they saw fit. As long as you came you didn’t care what they did. Baekhyun pressed his length into your mouth and began to thrust into your mouth at the same pace that Xiumin pounded into you from behind. You had never felt so full in your life.

"Look so good with our cocks inside you, noona," Baekhyun praised, his voice huskier than you’d ever heard it before, which made you clench around Xiumin, who let out a loud moan.

"Fuck, yeah," he breathed, as he snapped his hips into you even harder, working himself in and out of your pussy. "Keep talking to her like that, Baek," he grunted the younger man, "Her sweet little pussy's tightening up so fucking perfectly."

"You like when I talk dirty to you don’t you noona?" He teased as he fisted your hair into a makeshift ponytail as he matched Xiumin’s new pace. “Noona is just greedy and cock-hungry for us aren’t you? You like having hyung and I inside those needy holes of yours don’t you?" You could barely think straight as one cock entered you the other pulled back, alternating their thrusts to ensure there was never not a cock filling you.

You moaned in agreement around his cock as you let them stuff you full, telling you exactly how you felt around them and how good you’re being for them. Xiumin’s cock brushed against that spot inside you that made you cry out in pleasure, the sound muffled by Baekhyun’s cock filling your mouth. Your thighs shook as Xiumin brought you to another climax. You felt Baekhyun pull out of your mouth as he watched you fall apart on Xiumin’s cock. He kept thrusting into you as he chased his own high, his pace somehow becoming harder and faster. “Fuck noona, you’re sucking me back in. Your tight pussy is taking me so well. FUCK.” He snapped his hips into you at a brutal pace, his hands gripped your hips hard enough to leave bruises.

“You’re gonna let Baek fuck you as soon as I’m done with you. He’s been so patient, waiting to fucking ruin you on his cock.” He groaned as his pace grew erratic, a clear sign that he was going to cum soon.

“Yes Xiu, I’ll let him fuck me. He can fuck your cum back into me.” You moaned, the overstimulation beginning to turn into pleasure once more. “Please Xiu, want you to cum inside, want you to fill me up.” He growled as he thrusted into you once more as he came inside you. He held himself in you as he panted, trying to catch his breath and come back down from his dizzying high.

“Baek, your turn.” He said as he pulled out of you and flipped you on your back. His hair was stuck to his face from the exertion of fucking you. He looked spent as he moved to your side and leant down to kiss you passionately. “You look so fucking hot noona, being so good for us.” He whispered in between kisses.

Baekhyun moved so that he was between your legs and groaned at the sight before him. “Oh baby, you have no idea how much I want to wreck you now.” His first thrust was deep and slow, moving with purpose as he enjoyed the feel of being inside you. “You look so filthy with hyung’s cum dripping out of you. You wanted me to fuck it back into you?” The next thrust had more force behind it and you felt him. Your head fell back as he fucked you, his grunts and moans increasing in volume. 

His hair stuck to his forehead from the exertion, his eyes alternating their focus from your face to watching his cock disappear into your pussy. He leant forward, effectively folding you in half as he sped up, his thrusts becoming more erratic. “Fuck, how are you this hot? I am not going to last long baby.”

“Shit, me either Baek.” You moaned as Xiumin moved from kissing your lips to your neck, down your chest until his mouth attached to your nipple. He used his hands to massage your breasts as his tongue laved at your nipples. He watched you intently as you cried out for them both to keep touching and fucking you. “Oh fuck, I’m gonna, Baek, I’m gonna cum.”

Baekhyun picked up his pace, slamming into you with vigour as you clamped down on his cock, milking him for all he was worth, your final orgasm of the night hitting you so hard that you almost blacked out. You felt utterly spent, in the best way, but you could do very little as the two men praised you, Baekhyun carrying you to the bathroom to clean you both up while Xiumin went to his room to steal the sheets from the bed. It didn’t matter how spent he was, he’d rather die before sleeping on cum stained sheets. When they’d finished cleaning you up all three of you fell into your bed together, a tangled mess of limbs. You had one man on either side of you. The two that had started this whole thing. 

“Well that was better than my drunk texts.” You murmured. Both men burst into laughter on either side of you. 

Silence settled over the room again as you all began to give in to the call of sleep, comfy, clean and warm. Baekhyun hummed. “I wish you’d had that cheerleader outfit with you.”

“Shut the fuck up.” You replied with a laugh.

“No, he’s onto something there.” Minseok reasoned as he giggled. “That outfit was really hot. Do you still own it?”

You couldn’t help but laugh at them, even though you wanted to sound pissed off. “I hate both of you, and if my legs worked I’d get up and leave this room right now.”

“Hyung high five, we broke her.” Baekhyun continued laughing.

“Shut up!” Both you and Minseok yelled happily.

You let your laughs die down as you snuggled into each other, exhausted both physically and mentally. You realised now that all the rewards had been completed. You’d think on what that meant moving forward later. Right now you just wanted to pass out, and maybe wake up to some continued fun, but you’d understand if Minseok considered the threesome request completed now.

Minseok chose that moment to speak up. “Thank you both for this. It’s uh, it’s weird to thank you for it but you know, it feels necessary. But I’m glad it was the two of you.” Minseok was doing his best to stay awake long enough to thank you both, something he really didn't need to do.

“Talk later, sleep now.” You mumbled as you felt yourself succumb to post coital exhaustion.

A/N: Um so yeah, that happened. Did the smut get away from me? Yes. Are we ok? Can I hand out fans and refreshments to any of you? Real talk, thank you for reading and sticking with me over the insanely long time it's taken to write this fic. I'd love to hear who you want her to end up with, I've got 3 endings penned and I'm still picking which one feels right so your feedback would help :)

Masterpost | Chapter 46 | Chapter 48 (coming soon)

[iwillgotoheavenforyou]

Chapters: 15/15 Fandom: EXO (Band) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Kim Jongdae | Chen/Kim Minseok | Xiumin Characters: Kim Minseok | Xiumin, Kim Jongdae | Chen, Tan | Kim Minseok's Cat, Byun Baekhyun, Park Chanyeol, Kim Junmyeon | Suho, EXO Ensemble, Other K-pop Artist(s) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Witches, Demons, Demon Hunters, Werewolves, Vampires, Pixies, Other Supernatural Creatures - Freeform, Murder Mystery, Mild Gore, Horror Elements, Slow Burn, Eventual Smut, Minseok Just Wants To Make Coffee But Everyone Involves Him In Their Chaos Summary:

Moon witch Minseok is living the dream, running his newly-opened coffee shop, offering his customers that little something extra with each cup he brews. He's content to live a low-key life with his protective feline familiar, gently improving the lives of his new neighbors. Unfortunately for his serene ideals, those neighbors—a frustrated demon-hunter, a conflicted werewolf, an unnerving vampire, and, despite Minseok’s protests to the contrary, a trio of orphaned pixie bairns—seem entirely unable to leave Minseok’s existence anything close to chill.

[lewisvinga]

yeah, my wife | oscar piastri x fem! reader

summary; oscar randomly revealed that he was married young and it sends the grid into chaos and confusion. what he reveals after made everything more chaotic

fc; various girls on pinterest

warnings; cursing

taglist; @namgification @louvrepool @locelscs @thehufflepuffavenger1 @minseok-smaus @goldenmclaren @ollieshifts @lavisenri @graciewrote @xoscar03 @c-losur3 @fall-bambi

note; tbh this was originally gonna be a written fic but i decided w smau lols

masterlist !

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆

liked by yourusername, landonorris, and others !

oscarpiastri: 7 years of being with you, 4 years of being married. thank you for always being by my side and giving me one of the greatest gifts, our daughter. happy anniversary, i love you.

tagged; yourusername

yourusername: osc🥹🥹🥹

yourusername: oscar jr and i love you so much🧡🧡

landonorris: OSCAR JUNIOR?????

oscarpiastri: his name actually isn’t oscar dumbass

landonorris: whyd she say oscar jr🙄

yourusername: bc i happen to carry her for 9 months only for her to look exactly like the man who participated for 5 mins 😔

oscarpiastri: she’s my mini me😁

username: TJIS IS NOT A DRILLLL

username: omg he’s A GIRL DAD????😧😧😧

username: that’s so perf for him omg

logansargeant: happy anniversary to my favorite couple!❤️

oscarpiastri: 4 years ago we partied like miami frat boys wow😮

yourusername: thank you, logan<3333 i’m bringing sugar cookies tmrw btw!!!

logansargeant: SCORE!

alex_albon: share w the rest of us🙄

logansargeant: no

charles_leclerc: A CHILD HAVING A CHILD???😀😀😀

oscarpiastri: i’m 23 actually

charles_leclerc: A CHILD BASICALLY????

username: wait omg high school sweethearts this is so cute 🥹🥹🥹

maxverstappen1: damn with a child too??

oscarpiastri: well, yes!

lewishamilton: fatherhood suits you! congrats to you both❤️

oscarpiastri: thank you, lewis!

yourusername: akkdoakxkdkxoskxosdo lewis knows who i am alsnakdk

username: y/n is so me actually

pierregasly: yk what, hiding a wife and child is such a you thing.. congratulations though!

oscarpiastri: 😺😺

username: never beating the cat allegations i fear

username: LMAO DID NONE OF TJE DRIVERS KNOW???😭😭😭

landonorris: NO. 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

landonorris: HE’S SO FAKE

landonorris: #cancelloscarpiastri #oscarpiastriisoverparty

logansargeant: i knew 😋

landonorris: FUCK YOU AMERICANS!!!

oscarpiastri: someone’s grumpy…..😆

yourusername: maybe he needs a nap like baby piastri 🤔🤔

landonorris: actually i am quite tired

[ksoodomination-write]

saksi rembulan

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: M/M

Fandom: EXO (Band)

Relationship: Kim Minseok | Xiumin/Oh Sehun

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - High School, Prom, Past Relationship(s), Getting Back Together, Exes, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Truth or Dare, hints of baeksoo

Language: Bahasa Indonesia

“Sehun, Minseok, dan rangkaian malam berkisah dua manusia dan truth or dare.”

[goopeculiar]

Better Than Sliced Bread minseok/baekhyun, PG, 5699 words. Minseok is a fan site admin who takes his hobby very seriously. When someone starts stealing his pictures and posting them without proper credit he takes matters into his own hands.

[eoieopda]

triple-dog dare | lsm

“Bambi.”

The sternness of his tone surprised both of you, so much so that when you snapped to look at him, both of you froze. Your moon-sized eyes were further proof that your childhood nickname still rings true to date, although your being the deer made him the oncoming car in this scenario. 

He didn’t love that analogy.

Recovering quickly, he pulled the Ace from his sleeve: the surefire way for one of you to get the other onboard:

“I triple-dog dare you to come with me.”

pairing: lee seokmin x reader summary: when you're left off the guest list to seokmin's parent's thirtieth anniversary party, you're content to keep your questions to yourself and stay home. seokmin, on the other hand, is not content. in fact, he pulls the one card he knows will always win. au: childhood best friends to lovers genre: fluff, angst, smut type: one-shot rating: 18+ only. minors do not have my consent to interact. wc: 13k cw: pov switches, complicated sibling dynamics (seokmin’s), there is in fact one (1) bed, halmonis gone wild, stupid childhood nicknames, fingering (v), oral sex (m receiving), multiple orgasms, implied penetrative sex (p in v). reader notes: afab, uses she/her pronouns, wears a dress/heels to the party, is implicitly an only child. the setting is intentionally ambiguous, so she's not implicitly korean and/or asian. there are no descriptions of body shape/size, complexion, etc. a/n: thank you to the incomparable @daechwitatamic for beta-ing this! it's been a long damn time since i've written anything, so this might not have seen the light of day without jo, the hype-man. on that note, i suck at summaries; just read the fic, lmao. svt masterlist. svt permanent taglist. multi permanent taglist.

For being the walking disaster that he is, there have been shockingly few moments in Lee Seokmin’s life where he’s needed to shove his oversized foot into his oversized mouth.

Prior to the incident at your apartment, the last time he’d embarrassed himself like this was when he’d asked his oldest sister, Soyeon, in earnest whether or not she was pregnant, only to learn that she was just bloated; and he’s just an ass.

To your credit, you’re far from cruel when he slips up, but that almost makes it worse. You visibly deflate when he asks his well-intentioned but ill-fated question, rather than letting him have it the way his two siblings would have done.

The day in question went like this:

He asked, “Did you reserve your room yet for the 31st? If not, we can double up. It’ll be a lot cheaper.”

And you blinked, stunned like you’d been slapped. “Have I what?”

It dawned on you both at that moment that, for whatever reason, his parents’ thirtieth anniversary party was in fact news to you. Two things then happened at once: you tried to hide your surprise and the twinge of pain that comes with being excluded; and he racked his stupid brain to find any explanation for why you had to feel either one of those things.

The best option he found was to gently toss his middle sister, Seonmi, under the metaphorical bus. 

“Seonmi’s been working on something special for them. You know how she gets,” he waved dismissively. “So obsessed with finding the perfect napkins — ” He wiggled his fingers for emphasis. “— and creating custom cocktails, that she misses the forest for the trees.”

You didn’t look convinced. Likewise, you didn’t look any less uncomfortable.

Fuck.

“I’m sure it was an honest mistake.” To drive his point home, he reached from his spot on your couch to give your knee a reassuring squeeze. “I have a plus-one, so it’s not like it’ll be a logistical problem. You belong there as much as we do.”

And he meant it, wholeheartedly. 

All his life, the running joke has been that Soonyi and Minseok Lee have four kids: two biological daughters, a younger son, and his otherwise unrelated twin, who spent more time sleeping on his top bunk than in her own home next door. 

The way he saw it — and the way he’s sure his parents would see it — is that no family gathering is complete without you. That’s a hill he’d die on if need be.

You shifted in your seat, which caused his hand to slip off your knee, whether or not you meant for it to happen. Glancing uneasily out your window, you worried your bottom lip between your teeth, mumbling, “I don’t know…”

Seokmin frowned. You didn’t see it, though, and therefore weren’t moved by it. Instead, you cycled through your anxious thoughts at high velocity. If he was still touching you, he’d be worried that your sparking brain might catch him on fire.

“What if it’s not a mistake? I mean, what if it’s a couples thing?” 

He couldn’t even classify these questions as rhetorical because he wasn’t meant to hear them in the first place. Though you asked out loud, each one of them was for your ears only. From his half of the couch — miles away — his frown deepened, unbeknownst to you.

“You know, Seonmi follows me on Instagram; she’d know that Kai and I broke up a few months ago. Maybe she doesn’t want me to feel awkward? Even if I went, and I didn’t feel weird about that, her expecting it to be weird might make it weird, right?”

Fuck.

You’d spiral all day if Seokmin didn’t stop you. As much as he loves how thoughtful you are, he knows better than most that you have a tendency to take it too far, inflicting that relentless consideration on yourself until it wounds. 

“Bambi.”

The sternness of his tone surprised both of you, so much so that when you snapped to look at him, both of you froze. Your moon-sized eyes were further proof that your childhood nickname still rings true to date, although your being the deer made him the oncoming car in this scenario. 

He didn’t love that analogy.

Recovering quickly, he pulled the Ace from his sleeve: the surefire way for one of you to get the other onboard:

“I triple-dog dare you to come with me.”

Begrudgingly, you’d conceded, just like Seokmin hoped you would. You sat with him while he figured out travel plans to the mountain resort, helped him visualize what the hell he needed to wear to an event like this. When the time came, you sent him half the cost for the room he booked, even though he repeatedly insisted that you didn’t need to chip in.

Now, that unsolicited sum sits untouched in his Venmo balance. You sit next to him on the night train out of town.

Sit, he thinks, is a bit of an understatement. You’re barely upright, so exhausted from your work day that his shoulder and side are bearing most of your weight. His arm went from tingling to numb an hour ago, but Seokmin doesn’t mind. There isn’t a burden he wouldn’t carry for you, up to and including you yourself.

Besides, he’s not worse off for being left to his own devices. In fact, he keeps himself thoroughly entertained by taking selfies of the pair of you. The aftermath will stay securely in his camera roll — largely because you’d kill him if you saw how squishy your face is, pressed against his coat, or how your little pout trembles slightly, almost as if you’re trying to talk through your sleep — but he still finds it worth the risk. This mochi-cheeked version of you is one of his favorites.

When Seokmin has amassed enough silly photos to comprise a dossier, he tucks his phone back into his pocket with a self-satisfied smile. You’re still out cold, so you don’t stir at his subtle movements or the sound of the concession trolley rattling your way down the aisle.

The girl manning said trolley is significantly outweighed by the thing itself. She hardly looks old enough to have graduated high school, he figures, and he can’t imagine how it is that she’s working at this hour — or how she got stuck doing this job, when it takes all she’s got to maneuver the giant metal contraption through all the train cars.

“Anything, sir?” She asks politely, albeit slightly out-of-breath. 

Even though she’s speaking to him, her gaze is directed squarely at his hat, leading him to believe that she may also be too shy for her job. Nonetheless, it’s been two entire hours since his dinner, and he’s on the brink of starving to death, so he coughs up a few bills in exchange for several different snacks. 

She could do him the kindness of assuming his massive pile of food is for sharing, but she doesn’t. She gestures to you and whispers, “Anything for your —?”

Seokmin intercepts the question, knowing exactly where it’s headed: in the same direction as the million others like it that he’s heard over the years. 

“— parole officer?” He supplies with a smile, “No, this nap is fueled by a lot of crab rangoon. She’ll be out for the duration, I fear.”

Both halves of his response seem to stun her, which means he has to cover his inevitable laugh with a fake cough. 

This bit of yours will truly never get old, although the implications that prompt it did a long time ago. It was a stroke of genius on your part, dodging inaccurate references to your relationship status by offering up something too absurd to converse around.

“You two make such a cute couple,” an Uber driver once told you.

“He’s not in a relationship,” you’d politely corrected him. “He’s in witness protection. I’m duty-bound to keep him and his identity safe.”

The silence turns awkward, so Seokmin thanks the girl and gives her a smile he hopes says, “you’re allowed to run away from me now; I won’t take it personally.” She bows her head a little too eagerly, then skitters off with a grimace, like she pulled something in her neck.

Alone again with you, he wiggles gently upright in his seat so that you can rest more comfortably against his pectoral, rather than his shoulder bone. Even though you’re still asleep, Seokmin swears he hears a quiet mmpfh, as if you’re expressing gratitude. He bites his lips to keep from smiling, knowing that smiling in your proximity is one step away from laughter: the only thing you’ve never been able to sleep through.

Instead of giving into the urge, he murmurs, “You should get paid royalties whenever we use that joke. Being as smart as you are should pay off.”

Now, he knows he’s not simply hearing things because you’re just barely loud enough to overcome your own mumbling. 

“Agreed,” you sigh on an exhale before slipping to sleep off again.

“Well?” 

There are two beats between his first question and his next: the unfilled gap you’ve left in the conversation and the cab’s trunk shutting firmly. “‘s that cool with you?”

Seokmin stares at you, staring at him. His expression is soft, like your lack of responsiveness is something to be fond of, rather than annoyed by. It’s unexpectant, too, leaving the door wide open.

You blink. “Sorry — I — What did you say?” 

Hitting him when he least expects it, you shift your suitcase from your dominant hand so you can gesture properly to the bright, poorly crocheted bucket hat flopping over his forehead. “It’s a bit hard to hear you. That hat is so loud.”

His quizzically raised eyebrows drop in an instant. Likewise, that airy smile of his flattens into a straight line. 

Bullseye.

“Is it me that you hate?” He asks, tone dead serious as he points his finger towards his own chest. “Or is it the very concept of whimsy?”

You’re too busy biting back a grin to protest when, without being asked, Seokmin reaches out and takes the handle of your suitcase into his own hand, as well as the garment bag you’d draped over your arm. Before turning away to abscond with both sets of luggage in addition to his own, he shoots you an incredulous look. It dissolves entirely before his face even disappears from view. 

“This is an objectively delightful hat,” he mutters, nonetheless, in furtherance of the bit.

He spots a member of hotel staff standing on the sidewalk directly outside the hotel’s double doors and pleads his case to them. “She made me this hat, you know,” he announces, gesturing back to you with a nod.

The valet’s uniform hat casts a shadow under the lamplight, but it doesn’t do enough to hide the expression on their face. It is abundantly clear — even in the dark — that they didn’t hear a single word Seokmin said before he offered up that bit of trivia, seemingly apropos of nothing. They muster up a customer-service smile that doesn’t reach their eyes and tell him it’s a wonderful hat. Meanwhile, you roll your eyes from behind because nothing either of them just said is true.

That hat is the byproduct of delusions of grandeur and innumerable skeins of color-conflicting yarn. You made it for yourself, believing that you were the kind of cute and kitschy person who could pull it off; and inconsolable weeping Christ, were you wrong. It was — no, is — your greatest fiber arts failure.

Frankenstein’s floral monster would be in a secondhand shop somewhere if you’d had any say in the matter. It isn’t because you didn’t. Seokmin “rescued” it from the “to donate” pile on your bedroom floor. Since then, he’s worn it at every — public — opportunity, season be damned.

Admittedly, he’s exactly the kind of cute and kitschy person who can pull it off, but you’ve decided out of sheer pettiness to keep that appraisal to yourself.

You take your time catching up to him, both because his long legs make it hard to keep pace; and because the room is reserved under his name. After all, he’s the welcomed guest, not the reluctant party-crasher. The receptionist is already handing him a white keycard when you finally reach the desk. Seokmin holds it up between his index and middle fingers, closed-eye grin sparkling in a matching shade of ivory.

Though the journey up to your shared room is long, the real trip is being confined to an elevator with mirrors for walls. 

No matter how hard you try to avert your eyes, you manage to keep finding some new, horrible angle of your stale, post-train state. It’s torture. Three versions of you stare back with deep, dark undereye circles; and all you can think about is how dull your complexion is — especially in comparison to Seokmin, who may as well be bioluminescent with the way he glows from the inside out.

It’s joy, you know, his primary state of being and something he radiates like no other. He’s happy to be here, happy that you’re here, and happy to be happy. Whether or not he means it to be, it’s infectious. Now, you feel yourself starting to smile, too.

Despite your quiet observation, you must have missed him looking at you. Seemingly out of nowhere, he carefully sets down your belongings, raises his now-empty hand, and cups the right side of your jaw. Unaware that you’ve frozen solid, he swipes his thumb carefully over your cheek, tilting his own head to the side and frowning.

“I got you bad, huh?”

You blink.

“The zipper on my coat,” he explains, laughing. “Looks like it took a bite out of you when you used me as a pillow on the train.”

For reasons you can’t possibly explain, the only word to roll off your tongue is a sheepish, “Sorry.”

For a second, Seokmin is just as confused as you are about whether you’re needlessly apologizing to him or his coat. He chuckles quietly at how easily distracted you both are, then he gets back to the point: “Does it hurt?”

“No.” 

Your response comes unnaturally quick. Your pulse does, too, when you finally make eye contact with him. After clearing your throat, you give him a half-hearted smile, ignoring whatever medical event you seem to be experiencing. “I didn’t know it was there until now.”

He hums in acknowledgment, then rescinds his hand. You watch in silence while he re-encumbers himself with your luggage and turns back to face the elevator doors, which open almost immediately.

Seokmin steps out easily, like the weight of your respective burdens doesn’t mean a thing. “I’d say this way, please, but I’ve already forgotten the room number,” he admits with a sheepish laugh. “The keycard’s in my pocket.”

You take his cue and reach into the front, right pocket of his coat for the keycard. As soon as you see the room number, you snort.

“You booked room number 218 because that’s your birthday, and then… what? You forgot your own birthday?” 

“I’m deeply flawed.” He sighs, put-upon. “Now, let’s go, Bambi. It feels like you packed a week’s worth of bricks.”

There’s no time to point out that you never asked him to carry your suitcase or bag for you in the first place. Likewise, there’s no opportunity to ask exactly how many bricks is a week’s worth. He’s on the move again before you can blink, energy evident in each step regardless of how late it is.

Once again, you follow Seokmin’s lead. Despite the signage, which is clearly visible on the wall, he walks confidently in the wrong direction, prompting you to grab him gently by the elbow and steer him the opposite way. His smile doesn’t falter; he plays it off as if he was just testing how closely you’re paying attention. 

It takes several turns down several additional hallways before the pair of you reach your target. When you come to room 218, you tap the keycard against the reader, causing the lock to click open. You turn the handle, push the door open into the room, and step awkwardly out of the way so your personal bellhop can get by.

“This is what I was trying to tell you when you so viciously insulted my favorite accessory.” Seokmin nods his head towards the center of the room. “All of the rooms Seonmi included in the reservation block have a king-sized bed — singular. The rooms outside the block are criminally overpriced for ski season.”

It’s far from the first time you’ve doubled up, so you shrug. “Just like old times, right? Like, when you thought your house was haunted, and you forced your way into the top bunk with me?”

“First of all,” he says as he sets both of your suitcases down and places one hand on his hip, the other pointing at you. “We were six.”

After locking the door behind you, you toe off your shoes, smirking at him from over your shoulder. “What’s your second point?”

“It was haunted —” He insists. Then his stern expression melts into something smug, the way it always does when he’s about to blatantly rewrite history. “— and you asked me to come up there because you were scared.”

A laugh slips out of you automatically, but you selflessly decide to let him have this. Crossing to him, you pat him on the bicep, patronizingly simpering all the while, “You are the brave one.”

Even though you’re both cowards, and he knows it, he pockets this little victory with a pleased hum and a grin.

Turning away from him, you make a beeline for the closet area near the door. There, you shuck off your coat and hang it up, out of the way. While you do, Seokmin passes you both your garment bag and his. From there, the pair of you work in efficient silence: you, pulling your respective formal wear from their bags and smoothing out any wrinkles; him, tucking away your extensive collection of toiletries in the bathroom.

When everything is in its place, you turn back around and notice for the first time how beautiful the room actually is. Though the shades of the floor-to-ceiling windows are almost completely drawn, the snow-covered mountains are at least partially visible through the gap in fabric. If you had the time, you’d spend all day tomorrow sitting on the forest green, velvet chaise directly in front of the window, staring at frosty peaks so massive, they feel close enough to touch.

To your right, an electric fireplace heats the room, while a portrait-framed television hovers on the wall above the mantle, flipping through famous artworks as a screensaver. In between flashes of Van Gogh’s Almond Blossoms and Klimt’s The Kiss, you catch a glimpse of Seokmin’s smile reflecting on the black screen.

Awestruck, you turn to him and sigh, “Don’t let me get used to this.”

He jerks his thumb to his right, gesturing towards the bathroom. “Don’t judge me if I steal one of the bathrobes. They’re probably more expensive than half the shit in my apartment.”

“I won’t, but they’ll bill you for it when they figure it out,” you warn him. “On that note, do you need to shower or anything before I start my skincare side quest?”

Seokmin shakes his head, causing the crocheted abomination to flop. “All yours. My hair’ll get weird if I don’t deal with it tomorrow before we head out.”

And with that mental image of his insurmountable cowlick, you quickly grab your pajamas and shuffle off towards the bathroom.

The first few seconds after you close the door are spent gawking at the insanely intricate, geometric tile pattern in the walk-in shower. Thinking of how much time it must’ve taken to lay each one of them, you set to work on your own tedious task: your ten-step regimen of cleansers, toners, serums, and moisturizers. Seokmin says otherwise, but you don’t think any of them truly make a difference. As stupid as you know it is, the routine itself is therapeutic, even if your skin is no more bouncy and glowy than it was before.

When it’s all said and done, you emerge from the bathroom to find your best friend stretched out on the half of the bed nearest the door with his eyes fixed on his phone screen. It’s the side of the room he always chooses, claiming that it’s to protect you from any intruders, but you know the truth: he’s too much of a freeze baby to sleep near the window, and he knows you like it cold.

“Feeling refreshed?” He mumbles to the best of his ability; his sweatshirt hood is pulled up and drawn so tightly that it squishes his cheeks and chin, restricting his movement.

Chuckling quietly as you go, you pad over to your half of the bed and slip under the comforter. Like a moth to a flame, the other occupant sends his last text, tosses his phone to the side, and scoots closer to you, eager to siphon whatever extra body heat he can. His head winds up on your shoulder, while your cheek rests against the top of his head.

“Before you tell me that I look it, I’d encourage you to stare long into the abyss that is my under-eye circles.”

When he laughs, it’s merely a puff of air from his nose. “You never look as tired as you feel,” he says distractedly, fiddling with the drawstrings of his hoodie. “Pretty miraculous, given how little sleep you get.”

That comment warms you up so thoroughly, you wonder if he can feel it. Then, you wonder if that was the point. You intend to tease him for that, but then it dawns on you how fidgety he’s being. It’s rare for him.

“You okay, Thumper?”

It feels silly, using that nickname after so long. Your clumsiness stuck around for the ride, continuing Bambi into perpetuity; but he grew out of his companion name when he hit puberty, and his giant feet were suddenly proportional to the rest of him. 

He’s certainly no bunny, nor is he a child, but the low ebb of anxiety rolling off of him reminds you of the scared little neighbor boy you used to know. It fits, even if it is silly.

At first, Seokmin begins his explanation without peeling his gaze off his restless fingers. “Apparently, Seungcheol and Mingyu are in town.”  Then, his eyes slowly lift up to find you peering down at him. “They want to meet up to go snowboarding before we leave.”

Ah.

There it is: the top-secret look in his eye that only you can decipher. The one he’s been practicing for years, at your insistence, for moments like this, when he needs to be talked into something. When he needs to be brave and avoid missing out on something he’d love, solely because it freaks him out.

You respond the same way you always have; the way you once pinky-promised you always would: “I triple-dog dare you.”

He sighs deeply, neither fully resigned nor relieved, but then he nods. His head knocks slightly against your shoulder as he does. “I’ll do it.”

And that’s that; it’s settled.

Or so you think.

A beat passes in silence, until Seokmin suddenly pipes up again, “But you’re going to have to hold my hand on the chair lift, or I’ll pass out and fall to my death.”

“Deal.” 

You grab his hand now in consideration of your promise and scratch affectionately at his palm. Surprisingly, his thoughts haven’t made him clammy. His skin is even softer than usual, likely due to the expensive hotel lotion he’s undoubtedly now harboring in his suitcase. Tongue firmly in cheek, you look at him sideways. 

“Just — leave the hat in your suitcase, okay? The snow will be blinding enough.”

Seokmin’s been dressed and ready for at least thirty minutes, but you’re still standing exactly where you have been for the last forty-five. Face pinched, you turn this way and that in front of the mirror, smoothing fabric that’s already wrinkle-free, apparently for the hell of it.

“I’m oh-for-three.” Your exasperated sigh is punctuated by your bare, right foot stomping on the carpet. It doesn’t make the impact you likely hope it will, at least sonically. It does, however, speak volumes about how close to the ledge you are.

“All of them looked good,” he says earnestly. “I think this one is my favorite, though, if that means anything.”

Apparently, this is the wrong answer. Your wild-eyed gaze lifts from your own reflection until you’re staring him dead in the eye through the mirror.

“Why did I even pack this?” You ask, “Do you see this?”

Suddenly, you lift a manicured hand to point at your neckline, from which he’d admittedly been averting his eyes. “This is too much cleavage for a family function, isn’t it?”

As quickly as you glanced at him in the first place, you go right back to fussing with your dress, thankfully missing the way he swallows thickly.

Fuck, now he’s staring — but you’re the one that made him look in the first place — and he can feel heat rising to ears, a dead giveaway. His sudden silence does enough to communicate his struggle. He has no idea how to respond without vaulting over the boundaries of your friendship.

Is it hot in here?

Deciding to rely on his usual tactic, he jokes his way out.

“If you think I’ll ever side against tiddie…” He forces a grimace, shaking his head gravely. “Then you really don’t know me at all.”

You laugh loudly, and whatever one-sided tension filled the room snaps like a twig. Better still, the smile you give him stays on your face while you reassess your dress. Seokmin takes it as a personal victory that you commit to his choice, rather than cycle back through your options for the second time. 

While this means that you’ll both be able to hit the open bar sooner rather than later, the biggest upside is that he no longer has to keep excusing himself to the bathroom so you can change again, and again, and again.

You finish up quickly, tossing on jewelry, and then turn to him. His shoulder keeps you steady while you slip into your devilishly high heels. Seokmin pays them little mind now, however; his attention is drawn to the accessories you’ve chosen. Sure, they match perfectly with the rest of your outfit, but that’s not what strikes him. It’s the fact that everything you’ve picked was gifted to you by his parents at one point or another.

Unable to stop himself, he reaches out and gently taps on one of your dangling earrings. “Eighteenth birthday,” he muses to himself. 

Then, both his gaze and his hand lower to your necklace. He skims his fingertip along the delicate, gold chain, inadvertently making you freeze up. “Christmas 2019?”

You shake your head slightly, though it barely counts as movement.

“Ah,” Seokmin corrects himself. “2020.”

Sensing that he’s somehow made you uncomfortable, he reels himself back in and clears his throat. “Shall we?” He asks, furnishing you with a bent arm to loop yours through.

You take his cue, link your arm to his, and sigh, “I suppose we shall.”

The walk to the elevator is quiet, in that neither one of you says a thing. Seokmin can hear the gears in your head turning, though, without any conversation to drown them out. 

You step inside that glorified, mirrored box; and for a few minutes, he lets you work through the thing he knows ruined your sleep last night. That is, until he hears your breathing come a little quicker than usual.

“Hey.” 

It was supposed to be a jumping off point. He was going to go from there and reiterate that you belong here with him. The plan was to reassure you for as long as it takes to get you to believe it, but you look up at him almost helplessly, and his Etch-a-Sketch brain is wiped clean in an instant.

The very best he can do is smile and offer a single word: “Hi.”

“Hi,” you whisper back, eyes twinkling. 

Your plagued frown curves slightly back in the right direction. The creeping shroud of doom lightens, if only a little bit.

“That’ll do, pig.” You swat his arm, but he says it again, emphatically, “That’ll do.”

Halfway through you scolding him for quoting Babe at a time like this, the elevator door reopens, ready to regurgitate the pair of you out onto the ballroom level. 

Unlike the lobby, which sits only one floor below, this floor looks like it was ripped straight from the pages of a fantasy novel. Everywhere he turns, there’s something new — and vaguely elven — to look at. Fairy lights hang in perfectly spaced arches from the lofted ceiling, delicately illuminating the exposed, wooden beams above. The chandeliers — plural — are crafted out of antlers of some kind, cutting between rugged and highly refined.

As stunning as it all is, Seokmin’s mind snags on a single conclusion. You’re the one who voices it, though, much to his surprise.

“This is the most Seonmi thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” you whisper to him, all without taking your eyes off the extravagance in front of you. “Is this a dress rehearsal for her wedding next year?”

He bites down on his lips hard to keep his laughter to himself. Of course, you’re dead on. Nothing about this space feels like his parents, who are supposed to be the sole focus of this entire event. He already found it odd that they agreed to such a big to-do in the first place — especially when it would require their loved ones to go out of their way, literally and financially — but this is….

“Am I being petty, or is this kind of… selfish?”

Petty, no. 

Psychic? Probably.

“You’re right, and you should say it.” Seokmin nods and withdraws his arm from yours so that he can drape it properly around your shoulder. “This way to the beer, please. We’ll need it.”

Merely four steps in the direction to the bar, and a screech rings out from somewhere neither of you can locate. In fact, Seokmin’s head is turned the opposite way when someone launches themself at you, damn near ripping you from his hold.

“Oh, my god! I knew you’d come!”

Soyeon’s relief in seeing you is palpable. Seokmin can practically feel his bones being crushed as she hugs you tight, swaying from side to side. He catches a glimpse of your expression, which barely peeks through the curtain of his oldest sister’s hair; you’re far happier now than you were in the elevator.

His sister kisses the side of your head. “I missed you so fucking much. I love my residency program, but I hate how far away it keeps me.”

A solid minute passes by like this. When it starts to get unbearable, Seokmin clears his throat, hoping to remind his sister that she hasn’t seen him in months, either; and he’s also standing right here.

Instead of greeting him, Soyeon shoots you a wry smile. “Who is he today? A fugitive you’re harboring?”

In tandem, the two of you appraise him with thoughtfully narrowed eyes. See, this he didn’t miss: being both of his sisters’ least favorite younger sibling.

“Oh, no, though I can see why you think that.” You shake your head, then reach out to pat his shoulder patronizingly. “If anyone asks, this is a foreign diplomat, and I’m the interpreter he can’t understand a word without. Best not say hi to him; he won’t know what you’re saying.”

Soyeon nods, though Seokmin wonders if she truly  gets what you’re trying to achieve. Not quite, he realizes a moment later. Instead, she covers his chin with her hand so she can squeeze both his cheeks at once.

“He’s adorable,” she coos. “Doesn’t look old enough or mature enough for diplomacy, though.”

Seokmin rolls his eyes. “Well, we can’t all be doctors, can we?”

Again, in tandem, all eyes on him widen with feigned shock. Between overlapping gasps of “he does understand!” and “someone’s been studying!”, he shakes off his sister’s touch and scowls.

“If you’re going to keep bullying me, can you at least do it at the bar? That way, I can numb my suffering with booze.”

At this, Soyeon drops the charade and pulls him into a hug like a vice grip. She holds him so tightly that his vision starts to get spotty. It’s not until he gently pats her back, begging for air, that she lets him go.

“I missed you too, Thumper,” she swears, prompting you to snicker.

Now, he’s annoyed for a completely different reason — one that makes even less sense to him. That nickname hasn’t bothered him in the last decade, so it shouldn’t now. Then again, the only person who’s called him Thumper since middle school is you.

The rules are different for you, if they exist at all.

“And I promise to catch up with you later, but I’ve got five thousand questions for Bambi, and the answers aren’t half as juicy with you around.”

Just like that, his plus-one is subtracted.

As much as you love Soyeon, she’s no Seokmin. With him, talking is easy; he never rushes to fill silences, doesn’t steer the conversation with a white-knuckled grip. 

On the contrary, his oldest sister comes forward with a pickaxe, smashing through small talk while she mines for the wild stories she thinks she’s missed out on since moving away.

You don’t blame her, really. If you spent all your hours in a hospital, only sleeping in the lulls between other people’s trauma, you’d probably become just as intense — the human equivalent of a cracked-open fire hydrant — in the search for closeness, too.

In the thirty minutes you sit with her, you brief her on all the cliffhangers you’d left her with the last time you saw her.

Yes, you’re still stuck with your lease in the same apartment; and the old lady next door still regularly sets off the building’s fire alarm by accident.

No, you decided not to stay with Kai and haven’t spoken since the breakup; he needed more of your time and energy than you wanted to sacrifice for him.

No, Seokmin still hasn’t gone out with anyone that you know of in months. In fact, it’s been so long since either of you have touched on this topic, especially compared to how little time he and the last girl were together, that you can’t even remember her name. 

Beyond that first, limited fact, you keep your mouth shut about the rest. It’s not your business to share; and it wouldn’t kill her to ask Seokmin about himself for once.

The longer you spend with her, the more frustrated you find yourself getting, although you keep this fact to yourself, too. Soyeon and Seonmi have both spent their lives fussing about Seokmin, talking about him like he’s some helpless baby, without doing much to get to know him.

That’s it.

If you were at all confident that Soyeon would take the initiative, you’d let her find all of this out on her own. She won’t, you know, but maybe it’ll sink in if she hears it from you.

“Seokmin’s doing really well, now that you mention it,” you offer, though she barely mentioned him in the first place. “He got promoted last month; he’s now lead architect on that massive commercial lot downtown. Apparently, it’s still a secret, whatever it is they’re putting there. Must be something special.”

Seokmin is something special, you all but yell inside your head.

Soyeon’s eyes brighten. 

Nobody loves secrets quite like she does. You wait for the barrage, anticipating all the questions to which you’ll have to respond with “seriously, I don’t know,” but they don’t come.

Instead, she puts her drink back on its coaster, reaches out, and squeezes your wrist with her slightly chilled hand. “I’m grateful that he’s always had you, Bambi. If he didn’t, I don’t know if he’d lean in to opportunities like that.”

The look on her face tells you she means it. Maybe that’s what makes your stomach sour: that she can sit there, hearing of Seokmin’s accomplishments, and still find a way not to credit him for them.

Anger ignites inside of you. The flames lick up your esophagus, ready to explode, and you suck in a breath with every intention of letting her burn.

But then an arm slinks around your waist. Seokmin’s head bumps slightly against yours until you’re cheek to cheek.

“I hope I’m interrupting something.”

For a second, you think his slight tipsiness caused him to misspeak. Tilting your head to the side the best you can, you look at him out of the corner of your eye and catch his very subtle wink.

Soyeon opens her mouth, but Seokmin makes his wish a reality.

“Sorry, sis,” Seokmin says, entirely unapologetically. “I just found out that the band takes requests; and I’ll be goddamned if Bambi and I don’t show you clowns the meaning of dance.”

It takes no encouragement whatsoever for you to slip off your stool, get to your feet, and inch your way closer to his side. Then, like a starting gun was fired, the two of you bolt clumsily away from the bar, with you shouting “sorry!” over your shoulder as you go.

Your heels skid against the dance floor when you finally reach it, but Seokmin steadies you before you can eat shit in front of god and everyone.

“You’re way too expressive, you know that?” The fact that he’s out-of-breath doesn’t keep him from laughing. “I could’ve seen that grumpy turtle face of yours from space.”

Unintentionally, you prove his point, drawing your eyebrows together and frowning. “I do not —”

“— Also, I lied,” he interrupts yet again.

This, coupled with the everything else going on, leaves you too stunned to speak.

“This band is all trot, all the time. They don’t take requests — trust me, I tried — but if you stay here with me long enough, we can kill two birds with one stone.”

Seokmin doesn’t wait for you to answer because he knows it’s a yes. He doesn’t wait for you to assume your position, either, and instead holds your left hand in his right before placing your right on his left shoulder. This close, you feel the urge to tell him how handsome he looks with his hair parted off his forehead. You don’t, however.

The music swells behind you. Seokmin leads, and you follow, swaying slowly and moving across the floor.

“Two birds?” You remember to ask, one eyebrow arched.

His right arm lifts. “Spin,” he whispers. You step under his arm, then twirl. While you’re facing the opposite direction, he continues, “There. Do you see it?”

“Oh, my god.”

You do.

The bar stool you were just occupying is now filled by Seokmin’s great-uncle, Hajoon, while his new and much younger girlfriend, Yunhee, hovers near his shoulder. Even from this distance, you can see the look of abject distress on Soyeon’s face, totally unhidden by her attempt to seem engaged.

You return to your position in front of Seokmin, your hand accidentally landing on his bicep, rather than his shoulder. Flustered by the deceptive bulk there, you immediately scoot your palm back to where it belongs.

He leans in so that only you can hear him. It doesn’t feel necessary at all, given how loud the band’s horn section is, but you don’t recoil this time. 

“They had me trapped over by the appetizers,” he explains, low voice making you shiver involuntarily. “Every time he started a story with when I was your age, I wanted to point out that Yunhee hadn’t been born yet.”

You can’t help the laugh that erupts out of you and therefore can’t pull your head away from Seokmin’s ear in time to save him. Instead of wincing or complaining, he looks at you and breaks into laughter of his own as soon as your eyes meet. The effect doubles, and before you know it, both of you are teary-eyed.

“How the hell did you get away from him?”

It’s a feat you've never once managed. Uncle Hajoon’s inability to read a room is equal parts due to his horrible hearing and his tendency to never stop talking. Even if he did leave space in the conversation for you to excuse yourself, you’d never successfully get the message across.

Seokmin lifts his arm again but not for you. He takes his leave to spin himself, simpering as he goes, “That’s where Yunhee came in handy, actually. I didn’t know she had it in her, but she’s not as much of a dud as we initially thought.”

“Oh?”

“She told him that I should be able to dance with my girlfriend, and he shouldn’t keep me any longer.” He shrugs. “It didn’t seem like the time to correct her.”

All the heat in your body goes straight to your cheeks. Nonetheless, you attribute it to the dancing and choke out, “No royalties for me, then.”

“Not this time.” Seokmin shakes his head. “I said that Soyeon was trying to catch up with everyone and would love to hear his stories.”

You bite back a grin. “You’re a bastard, you know that?”

“Maybe.” He smiles with every single one of his teeth. “But you’re free.”

“Surprisingly so. I haven’t felt the Eye of Sauron on me at all yet.” Just in case your statement serves as a jinx, you glance around the room for Seonmi. The tension you’ve been keeping in each one of your muscles slackens when, once again, your radar is blip-free.

“Dinner was supposed to start ten minutes ago. If I had to guess, she’s either leaving a scathing Yelp review or personally waterboarding the chef as we speak.”

“Both at the same time,” you counter, earning a wry smile. “She inherited your mom’s self-assuredness. If she believes she can, she will.”

After the pair of you dance through two more songs, the band breaks, and the hotel’s battalion of waiters come in, bearing domed, silver trays. Seokmin takes off in a hurry for your assigned table in the far corner of the ballroom, so famished that he barely remembers to tug you along behind him.

Through the meal and all its complimentary wine pairings, you do your best to focus on the conversation. Seokmin introduced you to the few people sitting with you that you haven’t had the occasion to meet yet. While he does what comes naturally to him, charming them with ease, you struggle for the first time to pay attention to him.

A few tables over, Seonmi sits down with her fiancé, joining the company of her parents; Soyeon and her date are there, too, leaving Seokmin out by design. Like an insane person, you can only watch her, rather than Seokmin’s blatant theft of bites from your plate. She laughs at whatever jokes her mother cracks, but you’d recognize that look of veiled angst anywhere. She isn’t happy, you realize. You can’t avoid the feeling that you’re the reason why she isn’t.

Time passes, somehow too quickly and too slowly. The plates are emptied, then cleared away by the wait staff — except for your half-empty glass, which is your third. Much like the other guests at your table, the joyful buzz you’d been feeling so far leaves, too.

All that’s left is you, Seokmin, and that ominous, storm cloud you can’t seem to shake.

“You’ll probably feel better if you talk to her.”

He’s always more observant than you give him credit for. You snap out of your zoned-out stare across the room in order to look at him. You frown. “I doubt it. She already looks pissed. Me parading my presence here despite her isn’t going to help anything.”

“Bambi,” Seokmin sighs, not impatient but gentle. “She’s not exactly warm, but she has always liked you. There’s literally no reason why she wouldn’t be happy to see you —”

You open your mouth to argue.

“— that happened over twenty years ago, and you really need to stop feeling guilty about it —”

You close your mouth, cross your arms self-consciously, and sink in your seat. Despite yourself, you glance over at him and catch the way he’s looking at you. He doesn’t need to say the words out loud for you to hear them.

It’s either the unspoken dare, his reassuring, soft-eyed smile, or all the blasted merlot that does you in. You’re not sure which of the three was the coup de grâce, and as you slink off towards her table, you realize it doesn’t matter. For one reason or another, you’ve decided that fear isn’t going to get the better of you this time.

Seonmi somehow senses you coming. Even without the band underscoring your movement, your timid steps across the mahogany parquet should’ve been impossible for anyone to pick up on. 

Must be an older sister thing, you think, being doomed to keep a perpetual eye on others. 

She doesn’t say anything when you slip into the chair next to her, which doesn’t bode well but isn’t a deal breaker, in and of itself. The important thing is that she doesn’t get up to leave. You tell yourself that this is a good sign. The knot in your stomach begs to differ, however.

Say something.

Say anything.

“Everything’s… lovely, Seonmi, seriously.” You gesture around you, smiling, but she only gives you a cursory look. “You’ve really outdone yourself with this one.”

Seonmi takes a sip of her cocktail — something bitter, the petty voice in your head assumes — and lets the corner of her mouth rise slightly. If it’s the closest thing you’ll get to a smile, you’ll take it. She hasn’t granted you a proper one in the decades since you got gum in her favorite Barbie’s hair.

“Thanks, kid,” she sighs, setting the drink back down on her personalized, cardboard coaster.

You can’t remember the last time she called you “Bambi”, let alone your real name. Just like Seokmin, you’ve always been a child to her. Apparently, you always will be, no matter what you do.

Her grip around the glass remains rigid, not unlike her overall posture. Condensation weeps under and around her manicured fingers, uninhibited. You watch those droplets soak through the coaster’s design, darkening her parents’ initials and wedding date, while you mull over whose turn it is to talk.

Ultimately, as is usually the case, Seonmi makes this decision for you. Without so much as a glance at you out of the corner of her eye, she muses, “It was a lot of work, getting all the details ironed out.”

You pick up on the subtext immediately. One of those details would’ve been the guest list; another, the invitations. Seokmin assumed it was all an accident and said as much to you no fewer than a hundred times, but this little comment from his sister blows his assurances to smithereens. 

Your exclusion wasn’t an accident at all.

Suddenly, somehow, the room is twenty degrees colder. You shoot a panicked glance over to where Seokmin was just sitting, wanting nothing more than to slink back to his warmth with your tail between your legs; but he’s not where you left him. In fact, he’s nowhere to be found.

Fuck.

“Ah,” is the best you can do.

And then the two of you sit awkwardly in silence while the seconds age in dog years.

You should’ve brought a drink over with you so you’d have something to do with your hands. Or your phone — except you left it on its charger, you idiot — or a time machine, so you can revoke your bullshit decision to walk over here in the first —

“He deserves that, don’t you think?”

The combined suddenness of her voice and the switch in topics makes you jolt ever so slightly. You try to pass it off, to pretend that you’re simply adjusting the skirt of your dress, but your efforts go unnoticed. Seonmi is too busy pointing casually ahead, drawing your focus to the center of the dance floor.

Like absolutely no one else is watching, Mr. Lee twirls around his laughing wife, his heart-shaped smile beaming so brightly that it almost hurts your eyes. The love of his life has to hold one of her hands over her mouth to keep her laughter from bursting out; the other hand is raised with the rest of that arm, allowing her husband to spin himself underneath. When he’s halfway through, she surprises him, drops her arm down, and embraces him fully, giggling all the while.

It almost makes you tear up — Mr. Lee’s unabashed, silly love, and how much it reminds you of his spitting-image of a son; the way Seokmin’s mother’s eyes sparkle in the same blissful, radiant way his do. Maybe the same can’t be said for his older sisters, but it’s abundantly clear where Seokmin came from. It’s even clearer where he should end up.

“Yes,” you breathe, and it almost sounds like a laugh because of course, he does. Before you can stop yourself, you ask, “Is that really a question?”

No, you realize too late, it’s bait.

Without batting an eye, she counters, “Is it really so hard for you to let him have that?”

Seonmi turns her head to look you dead in the eye. Confusingly, despite her words, there’s nothing in her tone or gaze that reads like malice. If anything, the slight furrow of her brow shouts concern.

Your mind is spinning too fast to keep up with. Whatever her next move is, you’re too dizzy now to see it coming and too disoriented to follow it. With the knot in your stomach tightening further, you stammer, “Is — what?”

“God,” Seonmi drops her face into her hands. “You don’t get it, do you?”

A fish on dry land, all you seem to know how to do is open and close your mouth. You may not be literally flailing, but with the state your mind is in, you may as well start.

“Seokmin loves love.” 

She says each of these words slowly, like she’s trying to hammer each nail through a thick skull. 

“It’s the one thing he’s wanted most since he was a kid, yet I can count on one hand the number of short-term relationships he’s been in. He doesn’t ever bring anyone home to meet us; he doesn’t bring anyone to weddings, or parties, or holidays; he just brings you.”

Of course, you’ve been right there through all of his situationships. He’s always scant on details when they end — and you’ve never pressed for any — but you know better than anyone that nothing has stuck long-term. 

You’ve never thought about how odd this really is, but with Seonmi spelling it out for you now, you can’t come up with a single, good reason why someone as objectively incredible as Seokmin can’t make these things work — or why, even as you rack your brain, the only constant you can find in his life is you.

She glares now, as if she’s daring you to speak; as if you’ve got anything she’d deem worth adding. The bulldozer revs up again, whether you’re ready or not: “You’ve always been the only person he saves space for, whether or not there’s a place for you, and he has no room left in his life for someone to love him like that —” 

Seonmi points again to her parents, who are circling slowly on the dance floor, talking softly to one another. 

“So, what is it? Do you truly not see what he’s missing, or are you choosing not to because you like his attention?”

Your eyes burn with tears, but you can’t let them fall, and you can’t wrap your head around why that is. 

Who are you hiding them from: Seonmi or yourself?

The longer she stares at you, the muddier it gets. You don’t want her to be right. You don’t want to be the kind of person she’s describing; but there’s something awful whispering in the back of your mind, saying that you might be. 

You’ve left every relationship you’ve been in, telling everyone who asks in the aftermath that you like being on your own better. But that’s bullshit. It’s not your own company that you keep when you’re single; it Seokmin’s. 

He makes sure that you never spend a day feeling alone, that he’s always available over the phone in the rare times he’s not physically with you. As his best friend, he treats you better than every single one of your exes ever has. Like you’re worth more than anyone else will credit you.

What kind of friend are you if you feel relieved whenever his relationships expire?

Seonmi’s hand drops, landing half-heartedly clenched on the tabletop. Just the same, her voice drops until it’s almost a whisper. 

“I am begging you,” she pleads, eyes narrowing desperately as they search yours. “If you don’t want him, someone else will. Please just —  get the hell out of their way.”

By the time you reach the elevator, all you’re left with is a blur. You’ve already forgotten how the conversation ended, or which one of you was the first to get up. If she said anything else to you, it was drowned out by your own hammering pulse and a looping chorus of voices validating your biggest fear, stating in no uncertain terms that you don’t belong.

You’re shaking when you reach your floor. Heels clicking under unsteady footsteps, you make for room 218; and as you go, you shove your hand into the well-concealed pocket of your dress for the keycard Seokmin forgot to grab himself on the way out earlier.

He’s certainly not in the room when you finally step inside, although you have no clue where he’s gone. It’s for the best. The door closes behind you, and with no one to see it happen, you burst into tears.

All rational thought flies out the window, shaken off by the tornado of utter confusion tearing through your brain. You grab your suitcase, needing nothing more than to be anywhere else, and begin haphazardly throwing your things back inside of it.

Why did you still come with him, knowing it wouldn’t end well? It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve told him no; he would’ve listened if you truly meant it.

If you didn’t mean it when you initially tried to squirrel your way out of this, why not? Was it just your friend asking sincerely that won you over without a fight; or was it because you knew, deep down, it’d hurt to see him bring someone else?

Why would it hurt?

The answer to that will crack the foundation of everything the two of you have built, but only if you admit it to yourself. It can’t threaten you if you don’t say it out loud, don’t make it real.

So, you won’t. 

You’ll bury it deeply enough to forget about, repour the concrete, and tiptoe through the rest of your life with your best friend still at your side.

That is, if your friendship survives the weekend — rather, your sudden departure from it — at all.

“Halmoni, it’s time to go back to your hotel, okay?” 

He coos this, as if he’s pleading with a toddler at bedtime, because that’s exactly what it feels like to wrangle the drunk, 80-year-old clinging to his arm.

Physically, she needs to hold onto Seokmin to keep herself steady. Mentally, she’s ready to run and has made several attempts to do just that when she thinks his guard is down. It’s no wonder the hotel staff cornered him and begged him for help; she’s too wily for those who don’t know her.

The manager had at least done him the courtesy of hailing a cab. It sits out front, warm and waiting, while he shepherds his grandmother through the lobby.

“— and another thing!” She slurs.

There is never not another thing. She shouldn’t bother concluding her sentences in the first place; she’s never done talking.

“I told your sister — I said, Sunny —”

Seonmi, he dares to presume, although he doesn’t dare to correct her.

“— you can’t have stuff like this —” She gestures animatedly, albeit vaguely around her. “— in places like this and expect retirees to pay for it! I said — oh, what did I say? — Ah, I said, ‘find me the cheapest motel in the area, or I’ll be staying in your room with you’ —”

Her kitten heels hit the brick outside with an angry thwump.

Seokmin can’t help himself. “She didn’t go for that?”

“No!” His grandmother squawks. 

The driver sees the ball of a woman wobbling his way and quickly exits the cab, skirts around it, and flings the back door open for her. 

“I can’t imagine why, halmoni,” he lies through his teeth, which shine down on her in his best, least sincere smile. “You’re a blast in a glass.”

She roars with laughter, even while two grown adults work together to pour her into the backseat without bumping her head on the doorframe. “Glast in a blass!”

“Exactly. Can you —?”

He gives up before he finishes voicing his request; it’s no use. Instead, he bends down to hug her and finagles the buckle of her seatbelt while she’s too distracted to fight him off. That click is the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard, after the clunk of the door shutting her in.

By the time Seokmin turns to the cab driver, his grandmother is fully slumped in her seat, pilled peacoat rising and falling with every wine-laced breath.

“I am so sorry.” He sighs, which devolves into a sheepish laugh, and fishes all of the cash out of his pocket. No tip could possibly cover the emotional toll of this ordeal, so he does his best and gives the driver everything he has.

The driver’s eyes widen. Seokmin gets the impression that he doesn’t quite understand the task he’s undertaking. 

Poor bastard.

Seokmin continues, “My grandfather is at the inn already; he didn’t feel well enough to come here, but he’ll be ready to get her inside once you drop her off.”

“Sounds easy enough.” The driver smiles and holds out his hand to shake. 

Seokmin reciprocates, and he declines to explain just how wrong that assessment is. He thanks the man and chirps a quick goodbye to his grandmother before rushing back inside.

Walking into the ballroom, he hopes to find you and Seonmi laughing about whatever misunderstanding had gotten in your way before. At the very least, he expects you to still be sitting next to each other at the same table. That would be good enough, he thinks; he could assist in repairing the situation from there.

The problem, it seems, is beyond his help. Neither one of you occupies the same table. If his quick scan tells him anything, you’re not even in the same room.

No matter which way he turns, he can’t spot you. His sister, on the other hand, is near the far corner, having what looks like a nightmarish conversation with their parents. There are approximately five billion things Seokmin would rather do than get in the middle of that, but you don’t have your phone on you, and he has no other way to find out where you went.

Above the heads of the two women, Seokmin’s father catches sight of his approach. They lock eyes; there’s something insane in his father’s gaze. The older man shakes his head, mouthing “no.”

Seokmin stops short, raises his hands with the palms up to get across his confusion, and mouths back, “Bambi?”

In response, his father extends a single finger and points upwards. He then makes a shooing motion with his hand. His wife and daughter are so engrossed in their argument that neither of them catches the pantomime or Seokmin’s quick exit, back the way he came.

On the elevator ride upstairs, Seokmin worries. The most likely explanation is that you went to find your phone so that you could find him – but you haven’t texted or called him in the time he’s been looking for you, so he supposes it isn’t likely after all. 

Maybe, he thinks, the wine caught up to you. You’re not as strong a drinker as you think you are. While he walks down the hallway to room 218, he steels himself. Even though you both hate it, he’s ready to hold your hair if he walks in and finds you with your head in the toilet. That dress looks too good on you not to be expensive; he’d rather talk you out of your embarrassment tomorrow than have you shell out for dry-cleaning.

You didn’t deadbolt the door behind you, which strikes him as odd. In fact, you didn’t even close it properly; it isn’t latched. All he has to do is tap on it for the door to open.

“Bambi?” He calls out before stepping inside entirely, thinking it’s only decent to confirm in advance that he’s not an intruder. “Sorry for disappearing. I had to pour my grandmother into a cab – it was exactly as awful as it sounds.”

The faint rustling sound he hears isn’t coming from the bathroom, which is both dark and unoccupied. Part of him wants to take this as a good sign, but the rest of him wonders if he’s walking in on a burglary. That flicker of fear is followed by a stupid sense of validation: 

You always laugh at him when he cites this as his reason for choosing the bed closest to the door; you claim it’s statistically unlikely. Finally being able to say “I told you so” after a robbery wouldn’t make either of your belongings magically reappear, of course. That said, it might make him feel a little better.

But the figure rooting through your suitcase isn’t a bandit at all. It’s you with your coat on.

“Um,” he starts, unintentionally startling you. “What is….” 

His question peters out when you look up at him. There are broken mascara tracks down your cheeks, as if you tried to wipe them off without actually looking at them. Above them, your wide eyes are wet, like you’re seconds away from crying all over again. Even worse, you’re trembling.

Seokmin’s only instinct is to reach for you. Before he can wrap his arms around you, you jerk away from him. “Please don’t.”

So, he stops, though he doesn’t understand why. This is quite literally the only time in your life that you’ve pushed him away.

“What’s going on?” Ideally, he’d project calm at a time like this. He just sounds desperate. “What happened with Seonmi?”

“She — um, she didn’t — It wasn’t that bad; I’m just… You know how sensitive I get when I drink wine.”

Like a switch flips, a half-hearted smile takes over the bottom half of your face. It’s not real; if it was, your eyes would light up and crinkle at the corners. Whatever that look is, it’s bullshit.

Seokmin gestures to your suitcase, where everything you brought with you has been unceremoniously shoved. “Sensitive enough to, what, run away? No. I’m not buying it. She said something — or did something — to make you this upset. Bambi, what happened?”

His urgency is selfish, he knows it. Seonmi’s always been way too intuitive for her own good. There’s no way she hasn’t noticed the way he looks at you when you aren’t looking; how god-awful he is at acting platonic.

He tries — has been trying, for a long time now — to shake these feelings off because he knows you’re not emotionally available. Because he knows who he’s supposed to be for you, and how devastating it would be if he threw your friendship away.

That devastation is right in front of him now; and it’ll  push you out of his life forever if he doesn’t shut it down. He has to get in front of it.

You strike first, though. “Seokmin, why didn’t you bring anyone else?”

There are two ways for him to interpret that question: with the emphasis on anyone, meaning not you; or as an escape route. For your sake, he chooses the latter.

“She gave me a plus-one, not a plus-two,” he says softly.

Despite his tone, it must hit you like a punch. You nod curtly, once. “Got it. Basic math. Thanks, Seokmin; that was never my strongest subject.”

Foot, meet mouth.

You immediately set back to work, reaching for the lid of your suitcase to close and zip. Before he thinks once, let alone twice, his hand darts out and flattens against the mesh inner pocket on the top, preventing you from doing so.

“No.” He shakes his head firmly. “Not happening.”

You don’t scowl at him the way he expects, nor do you even stop to look at him. It’s far worse than that; your eyes start swimming, focused helplessly on your suitcase. 

When you speak, your voice cracks. “I shouldn’t have come in the first place. I knew that this invitation shit wasn’t an accident; I knew I wasn’t welcome to —”

“— You came anyway.” Seokmin doesn’t mean to snap at you, but the point is moot. Softening at the edges, he quickly continues, “And I’m glad that you did because I don’t want to be here with ‘anyone else’.”

It’s not the whole truth, so it may as well be a lie. You know him too well for him to get away with it; it was stupid of him to try. Your head turns, and the slight narrow of your eyes says it all.

I triple-dog dare you to tell me the truth.

This fork in the road has two dead ends. His only options are to do just that or double down and lie straight to your face, while you see straight through him. Either option pulls the pin, he figures, so it’s no longer a question of who gets hurt; it’s who gets hurt worse.

Seokmin jumps on the grenade.

“I don’t want to be with anyone else!”

It comes out too loudly, startling you. In a way, it’s angry, too. He wishes could project that anger onto Seonmi for starting shit, as usual, but the person he’s maddest at is himself for putting you both in this position.

For the first time ever, he can’t decipher the expression on your face. He’d shove his foot into his mouth to try and keep himself quiet, but his adrenaline is firing on all cylinders, and he can’t seem to stop shouting.

“And I’m really fucking sorry to say it because I know you don’t want to hear it, not from me or anyone else. So, you can leave, alright? I’m not going to stop you.”

The force of the surprise almost knocks the air out of him, so quick that Seokmin can’t process what’s happening until his back is flush to the wall behind him — until your hands, flat against his white button-up, curl to grip the fabric, and you kiss him so hard that he sees stars.

You’re surprised too, it seems. When you pull away, chest heaving, you freeze in the same way he does. Eyes searching the other’s, unsure of what to do now that twenty-plus years’ worth of boundaries have been blown to bits.

You whisper, “Are you still sorry?”

Of the five million feelings swelling inside of him — fear, kind of; joy, yes; fucked up by your blown-out pupils, definitely — regret isn’t one of them.

Actually…

He cups your face in his hands like water from a spring, drinks down the sight of you in this new and perfect light. “I’m only sorry that it took me this long to tell you,” he confesses before kissing you back twice as hard.

You’d ask Seokmin to pinch you and prove to you that you’re not dreaming, but the fear you feel at the thought of waking up is too overwhelming. 

Even if it wasn’t, he can’t help you, can he? 

His hands are far too busy.

Your pretty dress is long gone now, having been shucked off and tossed somewhere out of sight. In its place, it’s Seokmin’s body that now drapes over yours, warm in touch and tone, like molten gold. 

His middle and marriage fingers curl inside you, working you up again; and all you can do is cling desperately to his hair, whimper, and wait for the fall.

“I take back what I said earlier,” he murmurs between nips and kisses at your neck.

You can’t ask him to elaborate. You’re too close to careening over the edge for the second time tonight; too busy babbling fucking nonsense.

His simper against your throat reverberates all the way down, lights up your every nerve in tandem like a switchboard. “Only an idiot would tell you to be less expressive.”

The pad of his thumb swirls over your clit; its movement synchronizes with his middle finger inside of you, targeting your weak spot. He presses down on that spongy patch of nerves, and your hips buck involuntarily, a hallmark of your body begging for you while your words fail.

“You were right, though.” 

You summon all your concentration. “I’m always right,” you counter. Seokmin pulls his mouth away from the underside of your jaw just to look at you pointedly. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

He picks up the pace of his ministrations, pulling no punches. You’re teetering on the ledge with no real ability to lift your own neck; your head crashes back against the pillow as you wail, clenching and gushing around his fingers.

“I do know how sensitive you get,” he snickers before slipping his fingers from you and sweeping down to kiss you sweetly.

The ringing in your ears has barely subsided, but you’ve decided not to take anymore of his teasing laying down. Slipping your fingers from his hair, you move your hands to his shoulders; and with whatever muscle control you still maintain, you flip him off of you, onto his back.

“How long —” 

You climb over his lap and straddle him, placing your palms flat against his chest. It’s as much a show of dominance as it is a carefully disguised trick for balance. 

“— have you been waiting to say that?”

Caught red handed, Seokmin shoots you that trademark, heart-shaped smile. His cheeks were already flushed from the effort he just expended on you; that perfect pink only deepens when he blushes and laughs, “What, you think I can’t come up with killer lines in the heat of the moment?”

You scratch your nails gently down the lines of his abdominal muscles. “Nope,” you purr.

Sitting up on his elbows, Seokmin tilts his head to the side and narrows his dark eyes at you. You’re nowhere near used to seeing him look at you like this, like you’re something to be devoured. The feeling of being wanted so badly makes your stomach flip.

“Give me some credit, won’t you?” He asks, voice low. “You’re a knockout; you’re naked in front of me for the first time; and it’s a miracle I can talk at all when I feel this concussed.”

When you lean in, he licks his lips expectantly. You’re close enough to kiss him, of course, but you stop a few millimeters shy of your mark and watch him fight the urge to pout. His eyes search yours, almost pleadingly.

“Is that why you’re still not naked?”

Seokmin’s next move is to reach for the black briefs he’s still got on, but you stop him, encircling each of his wrists with your hands.

“Ah, ah, ah,” you tut with a patronizing shake of your head. “You’re fired. I’m in control now.”

If the little sigh he lets out is any indication, he is very much on board with your self-promotion.

He takes your cue and reels himself in, allowing you to move further down his body, your fingertips hooking under his elastic waistband and tugging as you go. When his length finally springs free, you duck your head to take him into your mouth, beyond eager to feel his weight on your tongue.

“Oh, my god,” he groans, eyelids fluttering, while you swirl your tongue around his head. “Feels s-so —”

The rest of his sentence gets stuck in his throat; you take what you can of him down your own throat, working whatever remains with your hand. 

Seokmin wants so badly to watch, you know he does, but he’s sensitive, too. His head tips back, eyes closed and mouth hanging open.

It’s messy, the spit dribbling down your chin and the sound brought forth by the suction of your mouth around him. The obscenity of it all spurs you on. Nothing inspires you quite like Seokmin’s breathy whines and low moans, though. Above all else, it’s his reaction to you that slicks the inside of your thighs.

You’d give him the ending he deserves, right down the back of your throat, but you feel his fingertips graze your shoulder, beckoning you to look up at him.

Voice rough, he pleads, “Come here.”

With his steadying hands on you, you move back into your original position with your bent knees on either side of him. You immediately spot the indent his teeth have left on his lower lip, which is now slightly swollen. Delicately, you brush your thumb over the mark. “Oh, you’re a goner.”

Seokmin looks at you pointedly. Though you tease, you’re even worse off: drunk on the taste of him, as much as the sight of him underneath you, wanting you just as badly.

“Alright, alright,” you concede. “I am, too.” 

The hand you use to wave dismissively at him then reaches down between your thighs, fingers wrapping around his cock and lining it up with your entrance.

“But I’m taking you down with me.”

And you do.

So thoroughly that you barely recall him staggering off to the bathroom when all is said and done, the wash cloth he returns with to clean you up, or the way you slump into his waiting arms before promptly falling asleep.

You sleep so soundly, in fact, that you don’t stir when the sun blares through the open curtains. Likewise, when Seokmin carefully maneuvers himself out of the tangle of your limbs and places your head on a real pillow instead, you’re none the wiser.

What finally gets to you is the clatter of the expensive, hotel-issued shampoo clattering against the floor of the shower, echoing off the tile like a sonic boom. You sit bolt upright in bed, staring bleary-eyed in the direction of the bathroom. 

As if on cue, Seokmin pokes his head out of the doorway to see if you managed to sleep through the noise. Damp hair splays over his forehead, hanging just as loosely as his lazily-knotted bathrobe. If you weren’t still too sleepy to function, you’d love nothing more than to grab him by that tie and drag him back to bed.

“Shit. I’m sorry, Bambi,” he coos, though his mouth is full of both toothpaste and a toothbrush in a distinctly greener shade of blue than usual.

You merely point at his mouth with a half-powered look of distress, otherwise unable to put your suspicion into words. He doesn’t get it; he glances down at his chest, looking for what he assumes is a stray glob of paste.

When you finally do speak, it’s a prayer: “Please tell me that’s not mine.”

Seokmin blinks at you, then down his nose at the toothbrush he’s using. He cocks his head to the side, opens his mouth to assure you it isn’t, and finally, when the realization makes his eyes widen, he groans.

You wail, “Noooooo!”

Memories of your last trip together clash before your mind — specifically, attempting to navigate a drug store in a foreign language while you shopped for the replacement toothbrush Seokmin is currently holding.

Ears bright red with embarrassment, he ducks back into the bathroom. Immediately, you hear a rush of water from the tap, which nearly drowns out his feeble cry of “I’m sorry!”

“I know it’s an honest mistake, but how do you make it twice?” 

You collapse back onto the pillows and bury your face in your palms; and you stay that way, even when you hear him padding softly over to you. The mattress shifts under his weight as he makes his way, one knee at a time, until you feel him looming over you. His hands reach out and gently pull yours from your face.

Before you can get any ideas, Seokmin flattens himself on top of you; a weighted blanket, smelling like vanilla and spearmint. He folds his arms across your chest and props his chin up on the top of his right wrist, bright eyes sparkling as he peers up at you.

Suddenly, you find it very difficult to be annoyed with him. The worst part is that none of this is by design. He always just looks at you this way, not to get out of trouble but because you’re you.

Your hand reaches out of its own accord and brushes the remaining damp strands off his forehead. When your touch lingers, Seokmin leans into it, warming your palm with his cheek.

“Hey,” you say, after failing to come up with anything better.

He beams. “Hi.”

“Why are we awake at this hour?”

That smile of his evaporates slowly, giving way to a grimace you’ve seen before. “Seungcheol and Mingyu want to meet up at the ski lodge before the post-brunch crowd gets there,” he explains. “And I told my parents we’d get breakfast with them first, since yesterday was… well, mostly a disaster.”

“And it will conveniently provide you with time to think of a way out of snowboarding?” You chuckle quietly and pat his cheek.

Seokmin shakes his head firmly, then stretches his neck enough to kiss you.

“No,” he mumbles defiantly against your lips. “I never back down from a triple-dog dare.”

[always-chasing-the-sun]

This is a mood.

Like....there is a very different feeling between reading something someone else has written and rereading something you wrote. The two experiences are in no way comparable.

I can't magically erase all the knowledge of my fic from my brain. There's no sense of discovery and anticipation for a first time read through and no nostalgia or awe or even second discoveries (at least for me) on a reread. Its just. "Oh look a typo". Or perchance "it's oh no a plot hole". Or maybe even, "that line doesn't make sense at all".

Of course then there's the ones who say why don't you just read for a different member? Pretend it's minseok.

I don't know about anybody else but I have a hard time inserting one persons's name in place of another, i can't even put my own in when a fic uses y/n. I literally read it as your name. Beyond that there's the fact that for anything other than short drabbles or scenarios....this isn't feasible. Its a (member) fic. Presumably the writer wrote with that member in mind. Meaning it's not gonna read like a minseok fic it's gonna read as minseok pretending to be (member).or in my case it's gonna read as (member) because I can't swap names out in my head like that. Its not that easy for some of us to pretend that way.

Moreover these 'well go write it' or 'just pretend' attitudes are frankly insulting. Speaking for myself, prior to late 2023 when I started emptying out my previous blog to separate it into 2 and start fresh, i was a relatively active creator for the fandom. Mostly moodboards with fics thrown in here and there as time allowed. I never created soley for minseok and I still don't though as time goes on I'm leaning more and more to doing just that. There doesn't seem to be reason to diversify when hardly anyone else is willing to do the same. And the lack of others willing to create or write for more than a few members is the root of the insult of these suggestions.

What it boils down to for me and this goes well beyond fanfiction, this includes fanart, edits, gifsets, fanvids, etc. is it feels like I am being excluded from the fandom for liking minseok. It feels like the fandom thinks creating for him isn't worth thier time, they don't extend the same courtesy i extend to them to share in the joy of thier bias without prompting.

Awhich leads me to say before anyone asks why I don't make a request. 1.) Who would I ask beyond one or two of my friends? And 2.) more importantly and let me capitalize the importance of this I AND OTHER MINSEOK BIASED SHOULDNT HAVE TO ASK OR BEG TO BE THOUGHT OF AND INCLUDED IN THE FANDOM.

We shouldnt have to wonder if the next exo group fanvid we see on Instagram or TikTok is going to bother to include minseok, or use more than a blurry photo of him in a compilation.(these are both things I've seen personally happen btw.) We shouldnt have to mourn while scrolling through the tags on Tumblr. We shouldnt have to beg for scraps while others enjoy a fuller meal.

In the past, my minseok creations rarely recieved any attention while other members creations did...some more than others...so even if there were other minseok stans out there....they weren't talking about him. Which is probably why I wasn't seeing much created for him in the first place and now....his tags are ghost towns except for the rare gifset or lockscreen. Mostly it's filled with the aggregator blogs. So it feels like no one else is creating for him either. (Yes I know that creation itself is on the decline, doesn't change the fact that the other members still have more recent stuff in thier tags than minseok does.) The few active blogs that have created for him in the past as well as the other members....haven't in ages and what's there is....usually a pittance compared to the rest of the members. And most of the fics currently available were written prior to the pandemic.

And i get that there are acceptable reasons and justifications for this disparity. But that doesn't change how it feels. That minseok and by extension the minseok biased, are afterthoughts in the fandom. It feels often that my choices are to continue creating for the void and never getting to fully engage in the fandom or start stanning a different member and never fully enjoying the fandom .

"But you could write your own Xiumin fic."

I don't want to to write it, I just want to read it. Is that too much to ask for? 😭

I need more Xiumin content. I think it'll help. Just in general, nothing specific