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jnnul · 1 year

Text

ric flair drip

a/n: oh my god. it's finished. i've finally written all of her. i genuinely don't know how to explain the relief i feel right now. it feels strange writing this after writing and healing myself through writing this. i hope that anyone in college who's feeling the way y/n or jaehyun did knows that you can and will grow from it. heartbreak is inevitable and so is growth. quick note: feedback, comments, etc. GREATLY encourage writers! if you felt any sort of way (in a good or bad way!) about this fic, pls leave feedback!

word count: 20k

tags: college au!, frat boy!jaehyun x girlboss!y/n, honestly it just a dissertation about modern love and how people nowadays love each other, there's a lot of soul searching in this one, i poured my heart and soul into this please love her the way i do warnings: mentions of sex, underage drinking, and general college shenanigans! also explicit mentions of oral sex, uhhh foreplay and sex

HONESTLY, NOTHING ABOUT JUNG JAEHYUN IS REMOTELY APPEALING TO YOU. you hate the perfect boy act he puts on, you hate his need to impress everyone and everything, and you really fucking hated his dick.

because if it wasn't for his dick, which you were sure is just as perfect as the rest of his stupid self, you wouldn't be awake at inhumane hours, listening to your friend recount their sexcapades.

"oh my god, and then he did this thing with his tongue and i swear, i'm literally never going to be able to have oral again. he's fucking ruined me. i'm genuinely going to just make every guy i fuck put a jaehyun mask on from now onwards just to recreate it," sia yoo, unfortunately one of your best friends, quips dreamily. she yelps when roseanne park, your roommate and singular other voice of reason, throws a pillow at her.

"you sound like a fucking psycho. as in needs to be checked to a mental facility psycho. as in if i hadn't heard worse when you got with johnny suh, i'd be calling the cops right now psycho," roseanne says and easily ducks when sia winds up to throw the pillow back at her. fatima khan, sia's roommate and mother friend extraordinaire, pouts sympathetically with sia as the two of them turn to you as if you would fall on their side.

"sia, baby, honey, love and light of my life - i'm really sorry but i'm with rosie on this one," you say and sia puts on the most theatrical frown you she possibly could before she cocks her head curiously.

"rosie's got a reason for judging jaehyun since she doesn't even like men all that much. what's your excuse, y/n? you like men, judging by the way you were getting railed to next week by that freshie park seonghwa. you've never gotten dicked down by jaehyun."

you're half-tempted so tell sia that it's not fucking weird that you got with seonghwa, considering the fact that you're only a sophomore yourself but you're even more tempted to remind her that even though you were no stranger to a good time, you never recount your stories.

in fact, the only reason why the other three (well, you suppose rosie would know regardless given that you literally live with her) know about your sex life is because you choose to tell them whenever you felt like it. and usually, it was more than three days after the encounter.

you loved your friends, you really did - and sia was notorious for getting into one night stand rehash sessions at ungodly hours, so this was nothing new - but for some reason, every time jaehyun's name came up in the conversation, your skin would prickle with irritation.

maybe it was the fact that every single person around you seemed to be infatuated with him. or the fact that he was just so effortlessly good at capturing the attention of everyone in the room, no matter where he was.

or maybe, just maybe, it was the fact that you knew that if you looked too closely into the deep end, you'd fall right in with no life jacket. and jaehyun was an endless ocean.

+++

maybe you had given jaehyun too much credit, you lament. maybe jung jaehyun's as deep as a fucking kiddie pool. you know you're wrong because you were in the same english literature class and the man had been published because the professor liked his prose so much, she had submitted it to a literary journal.

and they had accepted it.

but as you stare at him across the lecture hall, burning holes into the poor guy's skull, you sure think he's stupid. because there was no way in fresh hell that jung jaehyun was in an introduction to east asia class. as a south korean.

people begin settling into their seats as you mull over the possibility that jaehyun had fucked so much, his brain had fallen out through his dick. from the stories of his more than above average size, it was definitely not out of the realm of possibility.

just as you're send a very judgmental text to fatima, who was supposed to be taking the class with you but had had to switch last minute when one of her major required classes opened up, jaehyun gets out of his seat to stand at the front of the room, next to the professor.

you realize belatedly that the people jaehyun had been so animatedly speaking to were none other than bambam and ten - two people who most definitely were in this class. and of course, they had chosen this class over all the others because oh my god, jung jaehyun is the uta for this class.

in hindsight, it makes sense, given that jaehyun is a east asian studies minor and a stellar fucking student. but it doesn't make the text you were about to send fatima any less humiliating as you realize your attempts to undermine his character were desperately failing. you try to backtrack on your phone, deleting the winding paragraph you were about to send her when your thumb slips, accidentally sending a half written message.

you: jaehyun is fucking

you're sure the statement will be true within the next couple hours (the jung bed at the nct frat never seemed to stay empty for too long - and that was just from orientation week last week) but it felt almost blasphemous that you would send a text so crude to your friend when you insisted that you couldn't stand his guts.

or what lay between them, really.

three gray dots appear on your screen as you half-heartedly listen to your professor drone on about how he went to china, became a changed man, and now taught about the wonders of east asia and its exoticism. his name was paul but the class could refer to him by his 'enlightened name' - lao ma. even jaehyun rolls his eyes behind the professor's back as all of the asian kids in the classroom begin to eye each other warily.

if this class wasn't so easy, you're sure the population would've shrunk to a quarter its size based on the weirdness of the professor on its own. or maybe not, if it meant that people got to stare at jaehyun's gorgeous face for an hour and a half every monday morning.

mommy tima 🤍: honey, i think whatever sia's got going is contagious. mommy tima 🤍: aren't you the one who hates him? mommy tima 🤍: he really lives in your mind rent free, huh.

you scoff under your breath as you type furiously, vaguely registering that you definitely need to check the syllabus for this class later because you have not been listening to a word the professor has said this whole time.

you: first sia's got cooties or a raging std that's what she's got going you: second he's my fucking uta you: as in i am going to be forced to see his face for an entire semester mommy tima 🤍: drop the class then, babe. you: can't this is too good for my gpa & the prof's a freak you: it's a gpa cushion and a circus in one go

you tuck your phone away when you see that jaehyun is coming up the aisle on your side with a packet while the professor is on the other aisle on the other side with the same packet to hand out. jaehyun probably wouldn't care that you had your phone out during lecture (syllabus week was just an excuse for college kids to get drunk during school days anyway) but it was the principle of the thing.

"here you go - oh, it's stuck together," jaehyun says as he stops at where you're sitting. his tongue slips out as he thumbs at the packet to give you one instead of three and suddenly, your treacherous brain takes you back to sia's rambling the night before.

and then he did this thing with his tongue...

you're shaken back to reality when you realize that you're staring at a blank wall, with a pink packet in front of you, and jaehyun has already reached the back of the classroom.

fuck. shit. bitch.

jaehyun had seen you stare at his stupidly handsome face and then some. he was your ta. oh my god, what if he docked points on some test because he thought you were the creepy stalker type.

damn you, sia yoo, you curse in your head.

+++

"damn you, sia yoo!" you yell over the blaring music that's so loud, you can feel the vibrations in your skull. there absolutely no reason you should be caught dead in a frat on the friday of syllabus week but sia had made it her mission to make sure you had a going out rate of at least 80% this school year, given that you were prone to trying to skip out on weekends out last year.

not that you didn't like going out - you actually really liked going out with your friends. you just took a little more inertia to get to the energy levels of actually going on.

sia just nods at you lazily as she bounces to the beat of another shitty remix of 'what you came for' by calvin harris and rihanna. you never understood why frats always found the worst remixes of classic party bangers but anything flew after you had enough alcohol in your system so the music would recede to the depths of your mind in a couple cups of whatever the fuck this drink was.

especially since you were a full sunshine drunk; whenever you were drunk, you became the life of the party and would always be found in the center of the room, regardless of the music. sia was a flirty drunk and you really couldn't remember the last time sia actually spent the entire weekend in her own bed. props to her stamina, honestly.

rosie was a mix of you and sia in that she would become so much more bubbly but the second she found someone she wanted to spend the night with, she went after them with no hesitation.

fatima usually played the role of sober mommy when you all went out. although she was never one to miss out on a good time, when she did get drunk, she much preferred it to be within the confines of the four walls that she shared with her roommate and the people she trusted the most - you, rosie, and sia.

which is why when rosie abandons you for her on again, off again fuck buddy (miyeon cho) and her fuck buddy (yugyeom kim), you're not surprised at all.

"that's going to be an interesting story in the morning," you say, nodding to where rosie, miyeon, and yugyeom are all heading upstairs together. fatima nudges you to look at sia, where she's pressed up against none other than johnny suh (or the love of her life, prior to jaehyun, apparently).

"that's going to be an interesting story in the afternoon," fatima counters. you turn to her with furrowed eyebrows, as if to question the timing. "i don't think i've ever heard of a girl leaving johnny's bed before 3 o'clock the next afternoon."

your jaw hangs in shock as you watch your friend wrap her arms around the tall man's neck, whispering something into his ear when he bends down to kiss her collarbone.

"are all of the nct boys secretly porn stars or something? how can they all be that good in bed?" you gape, waving at sia when she turns around to wink at you and fatima as her and johnny are bustling out of the door, undoubtedly to the nct frat house.

"they test us as part of rushing," says a low, velvety voice behind you. a hot rush of shame runs up your spine for two reasons: a) you were able to recognize jung jaehyun just from his voice and b) he heard you gossiping about his frat brothers' sexual prowess.

you exchange a look with fatima before whipping around to meet jaehyun eye to eye. he's wearing a plain black t-shirt and lightwash distressed jeans but he might as well be wearing designer trash bags for all you care. what you do care about, unfortunately, is the almost slutty way his v-neck dips to show off the beginnings of the planes of his chest.

you feel no better than a victorian man and it takes fatima a poorly concealed cough to break you out of your thoughts. fuck, you'd done it again. you really needed to stop getting caught up in jung jaehyun's pretty face. and body. and that stupid smile.

"haha. very funny. sounds like something straight out of a cheesy porno sponsored by viagra or something," you say, rolling your eyes. smooth. very smooth. normally, you like to think that you're proficient in the witty banter department but something about this boy made you almost feel dumb about your comebacks.

jaehyun cocks an eyebrow, and you're distinctly made aware that even with platform sneakers on, jaehyun is a good head taller than you when you have to look upwards to notice the motion. "you seem to be well versed, y/n. you make it a habit to stay up to date?"

you flush at the thinly veiled euphemism at your x-rated movie watching habits before clearing your throat. "i'm more of a fan of practical study, really. i am a scientist, after all."

you're aware that fatima has slipped away from you to talk to another friend, park jeonghwa, and also the fact that you are slowly beginning your descent into drunkenness but you can't seem to bring yourself to find the caution in it all. it's just jaehyun, after all.

jaehyun hums, bringing the solo cup in his hand to his lips to take a swig. "you're a biomedical engineering major, aren't you?"

you balk at that. "wait, wait. you know my name and my major?"

jaehyun nods slowly, seemingly stumbling for a moment before he gains his self-confidence once more. "you don't know mine?"

"you're literally my ta. i know you're an east asian studies minor and your name because you told the class," you say, recovering quickly. it was a really good thing you were a quick thinker because you were lying through your teeth.

you knew jaehyun's name, minor, and even major (computer science) because of his notorious reputation, not because he was your ta. but the last thing you wanted was to give him the satisfaction of asserting his popularity on campus.

"anyway. what was that you were saying about 'practical study'?" jaehyun's eyes twinkle in the dim lighting of the cramped basement you were in and you had a feeling that if you were any more inebriated, you'd be diving headfirst into jung jaehyun's bed as long as he looked at you like that.

but fortunately (unfortunately?) you're sober enough to make mostly intelligent decisions - which just means that you're not going to jump headfirst. maybe feet first but not headfirst.

"wouldn't you like to know," you sing-song, leaning into jaehyun's body enough to smell the mix of woody pine, fresh water, and vodka that seems to emanate from him. jaehyun watches you as you lean over him to grab another solo cup from the assortment that some lower ranked frat brother had been forced into bartending.

you down the entire drink in two swigs, patting away the stray stream of alcohol that had dripped down onto your chest. you don't notice the way jaehyun's eyes follow your hand down its descent to your chest. but you finally feel like your element, and in a moment of sheer idiocy and liquid courage, you enter the growing throng of bodies behind you, beckoning jaehyun to follow you.

you're not 100% sure what you want from him, honestly. you want to have a good time, and you're sure you'll have one with or without him. but something about the way jaehyun follows you like a puppy into the mess of people makes you feel like a zap of electricity has hit your body.

and if you're being completely honest with yourself (as you usually only are with ethanol in your system), you really didn't hate jaehyun. you had no qualms with him as a person, even if you hated the consequences that came with a night with him.

it's when you're in the middle of the crowd, with jaehyun looking at you with those hooded eyes and hands tucked into his pockets when you realize what you want from jaehyun jung.

you want him to desire you the way that his mere presence makes people desire him.

so you do what you do best and just let go. it's ric flair drip by metro boomin that's playing - a song that's definitely not the one to get down to. but the bass fills you up in a way that never hits the same outside of a sweaty frat basement so you can't even bring yourself to care.

"i'm tryna fuck you and your bestie," you sing along with the near hundred people surrounding you. jaehyun is still looking at you with an eyebrow sitting higher and an appraising expression; something that somehow manages to get under your skin.

in a moment of passion, you manage to hook your fingers into one of jaehyun's belt loops, pulling him closer to you. you're aware that you've painted yourself to be jaehyun's next conquest if the way that the girls next to you look upset means anything, but you couldn't care less.

especially when you're this close to the bane of your existence. the song switches to something a little more what you need (under the influence by chris brown) and you look up at jaehyun through your lashes and in that moment, jaehyun knows what you're offering him through your gaze.

a challenge.

+++

jaehyun never really meant to take on the role of nct's resident whore. in fact, jaehyun had been planning on doing the exact opposite when he came to college.

although it was unbelievable now, jaehyun jung had originally just been a very strange, nerdy, and sweet boy. he never got up to much trouble, kept to himself most of the time, and was known for...nothing, really. he was sweet and bubbly but he wasn't exactly running with the popular crowd.

in fact, jaehyun was kinda forgotten all throughout his schooling. it was easy to forget about jaehyun, as though he were some visage in a dream that everyone shared.

it hurt.

so when jaehyun finally hit his growth spurt in senior year, started going to the gym, and his voice no longer cracked every other sentence, he felt like a whole new person. like he was finally the main character in his own life.

it felt so fucking good to look at the same girls who had smiled at him pitifully and have them melting under a single wink. the summer between high school and college had been wild, with more stories than jaehyun could really even care to keep track of.

but when college began, jaehyun was fully intending to return to flying under the radar with his new upgrade in personality, appearance, and wardrobe. with a face like his, however, doing so was about as easy as trying to pass professor yoon's intro to bio class - nearly impossible.

slowly but surely, jaehyun morphed back into the personality he had adopted that summer and surprisingly, it wasn't as foreign as he thought. he was still a good student and wasn't a stranger to having to skip out on hanging out with his friends to study.

but having a new girl in his bed every other day? that was definitely new. a new revelation, but a welcome one nonetheless.

and in that, jaehyun was used to people using all sorts of tactics to get with him. playing hard to get, with coy smiles and flirtatious winks. or the bold ones, who told him straight up that they wanted to spend the night with him. even the downright horrifying ones who tried to pretend like they were blackout drunk in hopes that that would 'attract' him. spoiler alert? it didn't.

jaehyun originally thought you were of the 'hard to get' caliber. the type of girl to say that she wasn't like other girls and that's why he should get with her instead. so initially, when he approached you at the party after seeing you in his class, he was mentally preparing himself for the whole pick me speech.

but it was something about the way you looked at him.

it was like two halves of your mind were battling against each other. on one hand, you looked like you wanted to fax jaehyun straight into the fiery pits of hell with high speed shipping. on the other, it also seemed like you wanted nothing more than to ride him until the sun came up. mixed with a little bit of curiosity, confusion, and downright anger with yourself for all the emotions, you looked like the perfect cocktail of firebrand that jaehyun couldn't help but become intrigued by.

so when you were laughingly talking to your best friend (jaehyun's frat brother kun was half in love with fatima, which meant that jaehyun was more than well acquainted with her) about him and frat brothers, he took it to be the opportunity he needed.

and when you're looking at him like this, daring him to make a move, almost as if to make your mind fall one way or another about drawing a conclusion on him, what is jaehyun to do but to make good on the challenge you've offered?

he watches you for a moment more, trying to commit the memory of what you look like when you're this carefree and happy, before taking the micro-step it takes to get so close he can smell the citrus and apple cider that you seem to always smell like.

"i promise you i can fuck you better than johnny," jaehyun says, a corner of his lips tilted up as your eyes flutter the closer he draws.

"johnny's your 'bestie'?" you say, and jaehyun can tell that the last threads of your resolve are starting to snap by the way that your hand is now pressed against his chest.

"that's what you're curious about right now? the dynamics of the nct frat brothers?" jaehyun asks but he knows that this back and forth is exactly you need right now; the time to decide if you can take the plunge. or if jaehyun's worth your time tonight.

"as i mentioned, i'm a scientist," you say, and even as your voice stays stable, your fingers seem to leave burning trails against jaehyun's skin as they dip and feed into crevices of jaehyun's body that he didn't even know existed.

"hmm," jaehyun manages to eke out when your fingers lace into his hair. he's not sure how you manage to find every single sensitive spot he has but he's fairly impressed by the way you catch his breath hitching as you work your other hand up as well.

"hmm? cat got your tongue, jaehyun?" you say, making sure that jaehyun looks straight into your eyes as you lean impossibly closer. "you know that sia's with johnny right now, right? girls talk - especially with your best friends. which means that if you can't make good on your promise, i will find out."

jaehyun feels like he's sweating like a pig but thankfully, you don't notice, too busy making him sweat. he clears his throat once, and then twice to make sure that his voice doesn't give out.

"that right?" he says, and you roll your eyes, letting go of him and stepping back. you seem to appraise him for a moment (and jaehyun is unnaturally nervous about what you will decide) before grabbing his hand and leading him to the door. you only pause to flag down fatima, who takes one look at your intertwined hands, and waves the two of you away.

jaehyun blushes like a schoolgirl at the way fatima flashes him a catty smile.

"i swear to god, jaehyun, if you're all talk and no game - or if you're gonna sit still and look pretty the whole time - i will literally blue ball you. i don't do pillow princes," you throw over your shoulder as the two of you make your way to the nct frat. jaehyun knows for a fact that the nct frat will not be a quiet place tonight by the number of dresses and pants he sees in the foyer and leading the way up the stairs.

he says nothing, even as you're quite nearly storming up the stairs with a certain level of urgency, almost as though if you were to slow down and think about just exactly what you're doing, you'd turn around and leave right now.

jaehyun definitely can't let that happen.

so the second that he gets you into his bedroom (he had to rock, paper, scissors with doyoung to get the room tonight), he shuts the door and locks it behind him. he turns around to see you looking between the two beds, as if trying to guess which one was jaehyun's.

he mentally pats himself on the back when he sees the fresh sheets on the bed. reaching where you stand in less than a stride, jaehyun turns you so that you're facing his bed, and you squirm to turn to meet his eyes even as his hands are on your waist.

"what is with your hands?" you ask harshly and jaehyun blinks as he looks down.

"what do you mean? they're on your waist," jaehyun says softly, and once again, he's hit with a wave of citrus and apple cider. you simper at him, grabbing his wrist and moving it incriminatingly downwards.

"what am i? a virgin? put them somewhere useful." you whisper the last part and it's as though jaehyun has just woken up.

"you know," jaehyun begins, sliding his other hand downwards to sit comfortably on the curve of your ass. "if i didn't know any better, i'd think you were trying to rile me up. i wonder..."

he doesn't finish his thought, instead pulling you close so that your hips are pressed against his. he can hear the gasp that you're desperately trying to conceal, coughing uselessly to the side. a devilish smirk grows on jaehyun's lips and for the first time in a long time, you're sure you're going to be up all night.

+++

you were, in fact, trying to rile him up. you had heard all the rumors about jaehyun and johnny, about how one night with them was like one night in heaven. hell, you'd had first hand accounts from sia yoo about exactly what it's like to be in bed with either of them - multiple times.

so when jaehyun had fronted with such a cautious attitude when he realized what you wanted, you were almost offended. if you wanted to take control and fuck a man's brains out, you could do that with anyone. why would you fight against your own mind this much to get with him?

but seonghwa park. changkyun im. even kun qian, before you discovered he was head over heels for fatima. jung jaehyun.

these were all people who put you in your place. the way you wanted to be. it just seemed as though jaehyun might've needed a little more persuasion to get there.

so yes, you were riling him up. was that such a crime?

by the way jaehyun's looking at you right now, his breath hot and heavy on your neck and his eyes dark with a feeling that you can't describe but resonates with you on a deeper, more primal level.

"you know, after you got with kun, he wouldn't shut up about it for a week," jaehyun says, pressing kisses down your neck, pausing when he reaches your breastbone. he eyes your corset top with a discerning eye before reaching behind you to pull the lace strings that were precariously holding your top for a week.

"yeah?" you ask, threading your fingers through jaehyun's thick hair as he makes quick work of your top, leaving it pooled on the floor as his lips find your chest as though he couldn't be physically parted from it.

"yeah. even after he met fatima, he said that you were the best he's ever had - that's a big reputation to live up to when you're in nct," jaehyun says, his voice breathy and deep as he walks you backwards so that the back of your knees hit the frame of his bed.

"hmm. what can i say? i know what i want and what i want is usually lots of fun," you say, letting jaehyun unzip your jeans, pulling them down and kicking them off when jaehyun moves too slowly.

"i know. god, after knowing that you and kun were going at it, i swear everyone was jerking off in their room for an hour. even winwin wanted to go for you today. you're an unpredictable woman; no one knows where and when you're going to show up to one of the parties so everyone has to take their chances when they get them," jaehyun says, tugging his shirt off and throwing it somewhere behind him carelessly.

you nearly melt when you see jaehyun's uncovered top, eyeing each and every hard ridge of his body, reaching out to touch him. his chest is almost soothingly warm as your fingers memorize each and every aspect of the planes of his chest, almost worried that they might disappear if you let go.

jaehyun looks at you amusingly as he lets your fingers dance across his body, focusing on tugging your panties off to discard them where he's sure he's going to have to search for them later on.

you pout when you see the difference in clothing but jaehyun just gently pushes you backwards so that your back is against his bed, leaving your pussy exposed in away that makes you feel absolutely mortified. you move to gain some level of privacy back but jaehyun is too fast, gripping onto your thighs incriminatingly as he raises an eyebrow.

"don't think that i'm soft just because i'm being nice to you now, pretty girl. i know you don't like to listen but don't hide from me. i will not let you have any fun if you try to hide from me," jaehyun says, his voice dropping a full octave. you suppress the shiver that runs through your body (and that simultaneously delights jaehyun) as you nod softly.

he seems satisfied by the way your body melts and rewards you for your submission by licking a wet strip up your pussy, one hand snaking up to touch your nipple while the other one keeps your thighs open.

jaehyun is slow at first, exploring each and every hidden crevice of your body but as he feels you get wetter and wetter, he can't seem to stay soft for too long. he continues to press his lips against yours but the moment you try to grind your hips against his lips, he pulls away, his tongue darting out to taste your essence on him.

you almost whine at the loss of his hot mouth on your pussy, and you're embarrassed to realize that in front of jaehyun jung, you are no better than your best friend in falling in love with the way he moves.

"you're not going to cum from my tongue, baby," jaehyun says, practically ripping the belt out from where it was caging his jeans. "especially when i know that your pussy is magic."

"you say that, jaehyun, but you're being so fucking soft. if i didn't know any better, i'd think you're in love with me," you snort, trying to catch your breath. jaehyun freezes from where his boxers are hanging so low on his hips, you can see the muscles in his pelvis tense angrily as he looks at you dangerously.

"my fucking bad for making sure you're wet enough to take me," jaehyun whispers, pulling close to you. his eyes turn even darker than usual and a small spark of excitement ignites in your chest when you realize that you've finally reached it - jaehyun's breaking point.

"sounds like you're scared, jaehyun. you know what? you know why kun was so good? because he wasn't scared. he wasn't scared to fuck me like he was trying to break the bed," you retort, and saying kun's name is when jaehyun finally snaps. he tears his boxers off as he pushes you so that you're further up on his bed.

"y/n, i'm not fucking joking around. if you want me to stop, say it now. just say the word, and i'll pretend like this never happened. because i swear to every god in existence, if you let me, i'll ruin every other man for you," jaehyun says and his knuckles turn white from how hard his clenching his fingers to keep himself from pouncing. the thought is almost cute if you weren't desperate to be fucked into next week.

"if i wanted you to stop, i wouldn't have said kun's name, would i?"

that's all it takes. no sooner do the words leave your mouth, jaehyun's on top of you, every inch of his body fighting to claim yours. he's not sure what it is about being with a bratty girl but every time a girl tries to challenge him, jaehyun can feel his excitement grow as his mind runs wild with ways to prove you wrong.

and with a girl as beautiful and sexy as you? he was going to have the time of his life.

time of his life he does.

+++

when jaehyun wakes up, he's almost happy. almost because he has bruises on his hips from how hard he had pounded into you, a litter of hickeys across his chest, and freshly washed hair from when you had enticed him into taking a shower with you.

inevitably, it led to another hour in the shower that jaehyun had spent having his soul sucked out from his dick, eating you out under the shower, and seeing you cum twice just from his tongue.

if only he had woken up with you still in his bed, jaehyun would've actually been happy.

realistically, jaehyun had no clue what he was expecting. after taking a shower, it had taken you a total of five minutes to fall asleep in his arms, wearing nothing but jaehyun's oversized t-shirt and your panties.

there was no pillowtalk, no heart to hearts, nothing. no discussions of having whatever happened last night happening again. no trying to get to know each other better.

not that you had ever been obligated to do so. if anything, jaehyun was far more obligated to do so, after practically declaring that he had wanted to get with you since last semester - which he had been completely serious about.

but with his reputation, regardless of what he had said last night, jaehyun's almost 100% sure that you would've disappeared by the morning.

he's so caught up in his thoughts that he almost misses the bright pink post-it note on his neatly folded shirt on his desk in the corner of the room.

9.5/10. if you see sia, tell her she was right about your tongue. see you in intro to east asia on monday.

jaehyun's half disappointed and half happy. disappointed because you'd never left your number or anything and happy because at least he knew that you weren't going to completely avoid him whenever you ran into each other next.

he shakes his head as he folds the post-it note and throws it in the trash can next to his desk.

jaehyun jung may not have started college with the intention of becoming the resident fuckboy but he still had a reputation to maintain. he had fucked countless women over his time at sm university and he had no intention of falling for any of them.

he was not about to get soft-hearted or soft-dicked by a girl he was with once.

even if she was really good in bed. like really really good. like good enough to make him think about the other boys she's been with and if they'd made you feel as good as he did.

fuck. her. which jaehyun had already done. which meant that he needed to move onto the next step of the day before his head exploded with all of the implications flying around in his mind about their relation to each other (nonexistent) and if you were thinking about him like he was thinking of you (you weren't).

he pads out of his room, passing doyoung on the way out, who claps him on the back and says, "you finally got with y/n?" jaehyun doesn't know how doyoung knows but it strikes him that neither of you are very subtle people and you had caused quite the scene leaving with him last night.

similar reactions are offered to him by everyone he passes. he's not really sure how many of the boys you've been with but jaehyun can feel his street cred go up by at least a decameter with the way some of these pledges are looking at him.

in fact, everyone is looking at him with a new look of respect in their eyes until he reaches the kitchen, where yoo sia and johnny are sitting, practically eye-fucking.

jaehyun was very used to seeing johnny's friends in the kitchen the next day, neither of them ready to really say goodbye each other yet but for some reason, knowing that sia was your best friend and seeing her with johnny sets jaehyun's stomach into a series of knots that he was sure he was going to have to unravel when he had his head on straight.

"she already left?" sia says, finally breaking her stare from johnny's. jaehyun shrugs, digging around the fridge to see if they had any coffee. they didn't (none that wasn't expired anyway) so he has to settle for a caprisun.

"she had somewhere to be," jaehyun says. he wants to ask sia if it's normal for you to leave that early. it can't be if sia seems surprised that you'd left before the clock struck ten. what did that mean? what does that say about jaehyun? oh god. what if you hated it. what if you hated it so much that you didn't want to spend a second longer with jaehyun.

he cringes as he locks eyes with another shiny eyed pledge (jaehyun thinks his name is jungwoo) and tries to shake his head to clear any and all thoughts of you. he was pussydrunk. that was the only explanation. he just needed to dick down someone else and then he would get over whatever little infatuation thing he had going on.

"really? hmm..." sia says finally. jaehyun turns to see her looking right at him and suddenly, he's transported back to the previous weekend, when sia had been wrapped up in his sheets.

+++

"why did you start fucking around like this?" sia had asked, her chest still heaving from their previous illicit activities as she wraps herself tighter in jaehyun's sheets. jaehyun pauses for a moment as he catches his breath, pulling on his boxers as he thinks. he throws the shirt that sia's grabbing at, still not sure how to piece together his thoughts.

or why he wants to tell sia the truth. maybe it's because no one's ever asked about it before, but jaehyun feels strangely vulnerable as sia watches as he clambers back into his bed, her expression pensive and uncharacteristically wise.

"i don't know," jaehyun says honestly, laying over the covers as he feels his face grow hotter under sia's unrelenting stare. "i think it's because i wanted to know what it felt like. to know what it felt like to be wanted for a night instead of just being in the sidelines as the guy with the potential. just the guy that people brought along as the friend of the hot guys that kept him around."

sia doesn't say anything, instead turning so that she was lying on her back. jaehyun turns to look at her, to see if he could decipher some level of understanding from her silence. really, he knows that he should feel embarrassed about confessing his insecurities to a girl that he's hooked up with two or three times but he can't bring himself to for some reason.

maybe it's because he knows that she wouldn't say anything about it to anyone. or because he knows that she's head over heels for johnny, whether she'd admit it or not. or maybe it's just because for the first time, someone had asked something about jaehyun just to get to know him as a person, rather than trying to get him in their bed.

not that he really minded that - it just made him feel like it was all a lot more transactional than he was used to. he had been a romantic once upon a time. when you grew up with the nickname of 'valentine boy', it would have been stranger if he didn't have some sense of romance.

but jaehyun's penchant for romance disappeared almost just as soon as he realized that no one else was yearning for a pure type of love like he was.

and yet, it didn't bother him as much as he thought it would. turns out that jaehyun's a very adaptable man. if he wouldn't find love in this decade, then perhaps it would be lust that he would have to settle for.

"then again," he begins, gaze darting over to where sia had slipped on his t-shirt as she tiredly begins to settle down in his bed once more. "isn't that what everyone is doing nowadays? looking for a warm body for the night, instead of a genuine connection?"

sia snorts at that, turning so that she was facing jaehyun now. "don't tell me that you're one of the boomer types. the ones who always go around peacocking about how they were born in the wrong generation and that they're one of the 'good guys'. i might actually leave right now if you are."

"no, no i'm not. well. maybe a little bit. but i don't know why that's so bad to be honest," jaehyun acquiesces finally. sia rolls her eyes, but even she goes quiet for a moment. once again, jaehyun's reminded that this is sia yoo - a girl who routinely wakes up in someone else's sheets every saturday (although it was johnny's more often than not) and as sexist as it was, someone who carried a reputation for it. even jaehyun was surprised to find that she was such a deep conversationalist.

of course, he mentally berates himself soon after but he can't help the thought. for him, sia was just the girl he would get with a couple times. a good time. the fact that that's the only role she fulfilled in his mind made him feel disgusting inside out as he waits for her response, vowing that he would work to change his mindset. or maybe just change personalities altogether. ick.

"you know one of my best friends? y/n? the one who got with kun before he decided to go clean for fatima?" sia says with a careful tone. jaehyun nods, not trusting that he wouldn't say something dumb after his sudden realization of his flawed thinking.

"this is something she always says but it's honestly pretty simple: love is however you want to define it. humans spend so much trying to find labels and definitions for things that just might not have or need them. for such an advanced species, we spend so much time concerned about how to put a feeling into a box or how to classify a thought instead of rejoicing in the fact that we had such a beautiful feeling in the first place."

"for people in this generation, the old school love is hard to find because they've got so many other types of love that weren't allowed back when old school love was big. it's a different type of freedom to love someone on the weekends but never to fall in love with them. maybe we're just romanticizing hookup culture but who's to say that we can't? maybe we're all more romantic than we want to admit. maybe when we fall into the sheets with someone we barely know, we're looking for a fragment of love to satiate our heart in ways we didn't know it needed."

jaehyun doesn't know what to say to that so he just pulls her closer to him and she lets him, throwing her leg over his as they fall asleep, closer to each other than they had ever been.

+++

you're not sure what had compelled you to leave so quickly that morning. you usually like to get the boys who sleep with to at least cook you breakfast before you left (for compensation of being terrible in bed, if the situation so called for it) but for some reason, every instinct in your body had pulled you to leave.

you had waken up at nearly 5 in the morning, a mere two and a half hours after the two of you had fallen asleep, gathered your clothes, and were about to leave when you turn to look at jaehyun, still snoring away peacefully, his arm crossing his body to rest on the empty space next to him that you had occupied previously.

you had a feeling that you're going to lament leaving this early after psychoanalyzing why you were leaving so early later in the day but for now, if your gut was telling you to leave, you were going to heed the precautions.

but even as you're about to leave, you find yourself turning to jaehyun's desk, sparse but somehow still a little messy as you rummage for a post-it note and a pen to write with. you grin to yourself when you find yourself successful (and endearing somehow that jaehyun has bright pink post-it notes).

you pass a brother on the way out (undoubtedly a freshman who had received the short stick of the duties tonight) but you wave him off when he offers to walk you home. dangerous? most definitely. but you really needed the time and space to yourself and the short, almost ten minute walk back to your apartment would offer some enlightenment.

spoiler alert: it didn't. no matter how hard you wracked your brain to come up with some version of a logical explanation, you realized that there was just simply no way to do so.

and something about that frustrated you. you knew it wasn't a big deal. jaehyun was just a hook-up. a one night stand. and yet...something wasn't fitting right in your mind. so you start to think in the only way you know how, collecting all of the pieces of information you did have.

a) you just had sex - mind-blowing sex with jaehyun. he was everything you expected and more when it came to a sexual partner. b) you didn't develop feelings for him. sex comes fifth on the list of things you subconsciously (or now consciously, since you've spoken it into existence) have when looking for a potential boyfriend. first comes personality, then intelligence, then ambition, then looks, and then sex. you didn't even have a conversation long enough to figure out if jaehyun had more than three brain cells to piece together. c) jaehyun jung had confessed that he had wanted to get with you since last semester. did he mean with you-r body or with you?

you shake your head as if to physically shake the irrational thoughts in your mind out and press your id against the scanner at the entrance of your apartment building, rubbing your fingers against your temples as you get into the elevator to reach your apartment.

unlocking the door to your (empty) apartment, you decide to shelf the thoughts for some time when your head wasn't pounding and collapse on your bed, thanking the lords you'd had the sense to take a shower at jaehyun's.

and the last thing you remember is the smell of jaehyun's shampoo in your hair as you drift into blissful, dreamless sleep.

+++

you're not surprised to feel a weight on your bed when you wake up the next morning. you blearily open your eyes to make out sia's general figure, rosie and fatima undoubtedly chatting quietly in the kitchen.

you vaguely piece together something about fatima having kun over but him sleeping on the couch and you try to push down the guilt that creeps up into your brain as you realize that you had left fatima alone at the party. a party where all of you knew a lot of people (and the outcome was just as everyone had thought it would be) but the principle of the matter stung nonetheless.

you push aside the thought - along with the idea that you should probably apologize to fatima when the cottony feeling in your mouth started to subside - in favor of looking at sia, who is strangely quiet as she watches you gather yourself. for her boisterous personality, sia yoo could see through anyone to the extent of theorized telepathy so you don't even bother trying to hide anything from her.

although, it really is hard to take her seriously when she's got hickey's littered across her neck. well. you suppose you don't look much better at the moment.

"you left before 10 o'clock," sia says simply. you don't pretend to not understand what she means as you nod, pushing yourself up on your bed as fatima and rosie also enter, rosie handing you a glass of water.

"i know," you say softly. "but i want to hear about everyone else's nights right now. i just don't know that i'm in the right headspace to think about why i left so early - i'm not even sure i know why i left so early."

sia says nothing for a moment, watching your face, almost as if she were trying to read your very essence. but she relents, reaching out to hold your hand briefly before completely switching up, speaking animatedly about her very adventurous night, leaving you to simmer in your thoughts.

had sia always been this smart? probably. who's to say that she wasn't, after all?

turns out that sia and johnny were actually going to go on a date on wednesday, after realizing that their chemistry extended further out of the bedroom than either of them had expected. sia was through the roof, obviously, given that she had been thirsting over johnny (although more in a sexual sense than anything else) for so long.

rosie, miyeon, and yugyeom also worked a lot better than any of them had thought so you were sure that you were going to lose your roommate to the other '97 liners more often for the foreseeable future.

fatima was the only one who had a pg night, with kun coming over to her apartment and just chilling together the whole night, eventually having him sleep over since he was too tired to walk back to the apartment that he lived out (it was on the other side of campus, given that he moved out of the nct house pretty late into the semester last year).

"speaking of kun, when are you guys gonna make it official? i mean after this year, you guys are going to only have one year together before you guys graduate," you say, bunching your comforter before letting go. it felt weird saying that. especially in regards to your friends. theoretically, you had all the time in the world together.

but all the time in the world wasn't enough when it came to these girls.

fatima sighs before getting up, wringing her hands together as she thinks. "i don't know. i mean kun's graduating a year early so i really only have this year left. i - i know how much he likes me. i know that he wants to do this right way. go the whole nine yards."

"but...?" rosie says, elongating the syllables as you and sia look at her patiently. fatima shakes her head, getting up to walk around the room, six paces enough to take her from one side of your room to the other.

"i just don't know. kun's great and honestly, i really think that's the one. or at least one of the ones for me. but i just don't know if my parents would be okay with it. i mean my parents are great! they give me so much freedom and honestly, i'm really thankful that my parents allowed me to find religious and spiritual freedom on my own, without ever trying to shove it down my throat."

"but at the same time...how can i betray their trust in me by dating someone who is so far from my religion? like. kun is a great guy but he's not muslim. and sure, i don't follow a lot of the stricter things in islam but i - i have god in my heart. and i don't know that god would want me to start a family that doesn't follow islam. especially since i can see that in my future with kun and kun - i don't know that i could ask kun to convert to another religion for me."

the room is silent for a little bit after fatima finishes, with her collapsing in your bed next to you. rosie and sia exchange a look with each other, and then you, as they both decide to leave the room, leaving you to console fatima.

you were always the most philosophical one out of the bunch anyway.

"look, fatima, i can't pretend to know what it's like to have that kind of mental burden and i really can't understand what it's like to think about the future and be concerned about the impact on the world you might create. i read about something the other day though - did you know that kun means 'manifesting' or 'believing' in arabic?" fatima looks at you with disbelief written all over her face, shaking her head.

"how did you know that?" she asks and you just shrug, nodding at the 'islam for dummies' book you had bought in hopes of understanding a little bit more about one of your closest friend's religion.

"that's not the point. but fatima, you are the single kindest, most beautiful person i know. and i have faith that you will choose what's right for you, not what's right for the people around you because you know better than everyone that the only person who can judge you is god. and no one - no one - on this earth has the right to take that peace away from you."

fatima is silent before wrapping you in her arms, the soft material of her hoodie comforting you and lulling you back into a sleep that's dreamless and calm.

+++

jaehyun doesn't know what to expect when he walks into intro to east asia on monday. should he say hi? wave? start a conversation? should he acknowledge that he spent the better part of his weekend wondering if he would lose his fuckboy status if someone realized just how down bad he was for you?

probably anything but the last one was a good idea.

jaehyun was not in a good state of mind. he was a hot 19 year old man with a near perfect gpa (a whopping 3.98 only because he got a singular a-), a not so terrible set of dimples, and a killer body. and yet he was walking around like how he had been prior to his enlightening summer.

it's almost freeing but also humiliating to think that one night in bed was enough to make him start an entire philosophy but that was where jaehyun was at so who was he to question anything, really?

in fact, jaehyun is so caught up in what he would name his new branch of philosophy (loserism, with a lot of inspiration from zeno) that he doesn't even realize that you've already walked past him and taken your seat.

third row, first seat. you're putting your bag down next to your chair, pulling out your laptop, tossing your hair over your shoulder when it falls in your face. jaehyun tears his eyes away, knowing that this was not a good look for him.

if jaehyun really wanted to pursue you, which he was sure was where all of his jumbled emotions were eventually going to lead him anyway, he knew for a fact that you weren't going to be interested in having to take the lead. especially if jaehyun wasn't even sure that you were interested in the possibility.

but that's a struggle for another day. what was it that stephanie laurens said? that all women want sometimes is a little old-fashioned loving?

that was, in fact, the opposite of what sia had said you were really into but jaehyun had a sneaking suspicion that you wouldn't mind handing the reigns over in the decision making process portion of a relationship, or the courtship, if your time together this weekend alluded to anything.

jaehyun almost misses the beginning of the lecture, where professor ma (no one actually calls him that besides himself) was going into some of his favorite places to stay during his time in china. and while missing any portion of professor ma's lecture was of no crime, he also almost misses the way that you're looking straight at him, faking a yawn when jaehyun finally locks eyes with you.

professor ma was known for giving stellar recommendation letters (which was why johnny had coerced jaehyun into ta'ing for his class in the first place) but he was such a pain in the ass.

jaehyun has to keep from laughing out loud when he sees your exaggerated gestures to show how boring you were finding the professor's lecture to be, pulling himself together in time for him to finally be able to take a seat in the back of the classroom, professor ma having asked him to take attendance for the some two hundred students in the classroom. by hand.

he almost drops the piece of paper that you slide into his hand, subtly slipping it into the pocket of his basketball shorts as makes his way up the flight of stairs to the tenth row, dropping his backpack on the floor next to him, in a rush to open the delicate piece of paper in his hands.

there's only three words on the piece of paper and a series of dashes and yet jaehyun knows that this is all he needs. this is all the signal he needs to know that he wasn't imagining the chemistry or the tension between the two of you. and fuck what anyone said about his 'reputation'; it was jaehyun's turn - the old jaehyun's turn - to get the chance to experience the relationship he had always been dreaming of.

he rereads the little piece of paper before smiling and tucking it into his pocket again.

earn the rest. 9__-___-____.

+++

johnny suh is getting whiplash from his best friend's actions.

one day, he's asking sia yoo if her best friend usually leaves her one night stands by the time they wake up. then he's throwing said one night stand's notes into the trash can before leaving for some frat meeting or another.

the next day, he's carrying another note from the same one night stand he can't seem to get out of his head.

jaehyun doesn't tell johnny anything. he really doesn't need to at this point. johnny suh is a senior in college and he's pretty much seen it all. he's also the vice president of a frat - which means that even if he didn't have all the experience that he did just because of his seniority, he definitely seen it because of the sheer number of stupid decisions frat brothers will find themselves making when they think they're going to either a) get drunk b) get high c) get their dick wet.

johnny knows it's all in good fun (fun that he's definitely not opposed to) but jaehyun's always been a little bit of an enigma when it came to all of it. he was good at the drinking and alright at the getting high and absolutely fan-fucking-tastic at the getting his dick wet.

it was the goddamn dimples. everyone always fell for the dimples.

and sure, while jaehyun had had crushes before (johnny could read his little like no other), they'd always been fueled by the hormonal rush of adrenaline and testosterone pumping through his veins. in fact, johnny's not sure that jaehyun had had a proper crush on anyone at college after getting fucked over in high school, where johnny had also gone to with jaehyun.

not that johnny had really known jaehyun. he was quieter and kept to himself more then. didn't really hang out in the same crowd as johnny.

he knows that's not necessarily true. johnny had, truthfully, just completely overlooked jaehyun. like a lot of girls had until jaehyun had finally started to grow into his features.

but johnny knows jaehyun now and he also knows that if jaehyun had never met gianna lee, jaehyun wouldn't have ever dove headfirst into the deep end of shitfuckery and sleeping around with every breathing body in sight.

cliché story of course. college boy becomes a fuckboy after having his heart broken by a girl in high school. johnny's almost 100% positive that sia's shoved at least two or three novels like those in johnny's face, with the same exact plot.

but what is life but a series of clichés after all. and honestly, did it even matter? it was real. it happened to jaehyun. that was all. end of story.

so johnny doesn't even say a word when he sees the post-it note in jaehyun's trash can. he's silent as he watches sia and jaehyun talk and jaehyun fall into a period of overthinking (and jaehyun knows he's overthinking too because johnny can see him shake his head even as he continues to stare at the 'people' tab of intro to east asia).

and johnny finally decides to break his silence when he sees jaehyun with a new post-it note, although this time it was a much more tame blue post-it, and a pensive look.

jaehyun slips it to johnny to read as they're sitting at the local starbucks, with johnny filling out some paperwork for the job he was signed on for as soon as the school year ended and jaehyun studying for the organic chemistry exam he had coming up the next week.

he doesn't say anything when he passes the note but johnny can see him sideye-ing him to catch his reaction and it's all he can do to keep from letting a little smile slip through.

he hands the piece of paper back, watching as jaehyun immediately stuffs it into his backpack, and for some reason, he's really not sure what to say. if sia were here, she would know exactly what to say, and how to say it. she had a way of saying things that were a little too straightforward to feel good but also obviously coming from a generally good place.

it was one of the reasons why johnny had thought it would be a good idea to make it official with her. sia yoo was nothing like what johnny had thought - and the thought simultaneously frightens him and comforts him.

"you plan on asking her out on a date?" johnny says lightly, sliding his laptop over to pretend to look at his phone casually. in actuality, he's typing furiously to sia (one of the few people that johnny trusted or consulted when it came to advice giving) about what was happening.

johnny is not very surprised when sia's gray bubble appears, disappears, and then appears again only to say, "yeah, i know."

he waits for a more elaborate response. or even a more sia-like response but the more that he talks to her, the more johnny is learning that sia is more unpredictable than she really seems to be.

and sia yoo seems to be completely out of the box.

johnny shakes his head, as if to physically get rid of the thoughts of her from his head, unsure why he was thinking of her when he was supposed to be helping out one of his boys.

"yeah. i think so? i don't know. i mean we had a good time and we definitely have chemistry. but we literally just had one night in bed and that's it." jaehyun furrows his eyebrows as he realizes that's not just it. "well, there is the fact that kun was walking around singing her praises. and i know that fatima wouldn't be friends with kun or y/n if she wasn't sure they're both good people. not to mention the fact that i've always thought she's kinda hot. but it's always been superficial. even us spending the night together was really nothing more than finding each other hot or trying to figure out if the talk around town was real or not."

johnny takes a sip of his americano as he lets jaehyun's words sink into his own mind. jaehyun rests his heads on his arms crossed in front of him and johnny knows exactly the set of thoughts that's running through jaehyun's mind because they were the same as johnny's when he had decided to ask sia out on a date.

is it worth it? is it worth possibly getting my heart strung up on someone again just to face the possibility of breaking it again?

so johnny offers the only advice that he really has.

"talk to roseanne. girls' fiercest protectors are their friends and something tells me that talking to her will make you fall on one side or the other."

+++

the next time that jaehyun sees roseanne is a complete coincidence. he really only meant to say hi to one of his homies, yugyeom, on the way out of the library and hadn't expected to run into roseanne or miyeon at all. especially not a singular day after johnny had suggested that he seek her out in the first place.

he watches as yugyeom thumbs the rip in miyeon's jeans as he continues to talk to jaehyun about something jeongguk had done the previous weekend. and then he sees miyeon press a kiss to roseanne's cheek as she gets up to fill up her water bottle.

jaehyun didn't think he would understand that dynamic at all but whatever floated their boat. who was he to judge? he had watched the barbie movie and was still having a crisis about his masculinity and was actively searching out his one night stand's (were you still just his one night stand?) roommate and best friend to fix it. to be fair, he didn't really fully understand the barbie movie, to the chagrin of doyoung's girlfriend nairobi but that was besides the point.

yeah. jaehyun was really in no position to speak. wow he had a lot of things to work on internally. the more he talked to the women in his life, the more he was realizing this. again. not the point.

roseanne takes one look at his face and then exchanges a look with miyeon and then yugyeom before standing up and walking towards the exit, looking at jaehyun questioningly when she realizes that jaehyun hasn't moved an inch. jaehyun hurriedly bids yugyeom and miyeon goodbye as he rushes after her.

the two of them linger outside of the library and roseanne just raises an eyebrow as she appraises jaehyun. and for some reason, jaehyun stands up straighter, and she just sighs, a small smile playing on her lips.

"let me guess. 'who makes people work for their number? what is this? sprinkle sprinkle type of stuff?' or maybe 'this is kinda cringey, isn't it?' or just a sweet and simple 'what the actual fuck?'" roseanne says nonchalantly, listing out each possible question jaehyun could have come to ask.

"would it make me a bad man if i said yes to all of the above?" jaehyun asks, shoving his hands into his pockets. roseanne shrugs, crossing her arms across her chest.

"not really. i don't think so at least. it's a fair set of questions that even i asked her the first time a guy came up to me asking who the fuck my roommate thought she was," roseanne says. she takes sees the look of confusion on jaehyun's face as she continues, "you're definitely not the first person to ask me that but you are of a selective few. y/n usually doesn't let people get this far in the first place. and secondly, she doesn't really tell us much about people she's interested in until much later."

"she's a strange person, if i'm being honest with you. there's just something about her that makes her so captivating and invisible at the same time. she'll capture the attention of everyone in the room but if you talk to her, she'll make you feel like her best friend. she seems like an open book, and an even more open friend. and you feel so close to her within a conversation and then you end the conversation, you realize that even as she spoke, she revealed nothing about herself."

"i'm her best friend and i could tell you very confidently that i didn't know a single thing about her truly until recently. it made me frustrated at first. like i was a shitty friend or something. but the closer to her i got, the more i realized that she's always been a great friend but no one's been a great friend to her. she's very selective with the people she associates with - not just people she lets herself be seen with but people she confides in."

"this whole thing is a defense mechanism. she'd be caught dead before she'd ever admit it but she just hasn't been loved in the way that she's loved and now she's more guarded for it. i'll tell you this jaehyun, but if you want to give up, do it now. she says she's just going to give you her number if you earn it but once you get all 10 digits, know that she's gonna give you her heart."

"it seems like i'm violating girl code by telling you all this but like i said, even if you were to ask y/n, she would say the same thing. not in so many words but still. like i said. she's an open book and a closed heart. she knows you're gonna ask me and so she only tells me something that she would be okay with you hearing."

jaehyun, who had been listening quietly and patiently the whole time, cuts in with a quiet voice. "isn't it exhausting to live like that?"

roseanne looks at him strangely, as though she was truly seeing him for the first time. jaehyun doesn't know if he's offended or relieved that she'd done what he'd done to sia - made assumptions based on his appearance. he lands on neutral. it's human nature, to try and make proper guesses about who's gonna act like what.

the ancient art of preventing heartbreak, jaehyun supposes.

"maybe. i don't think so though. it's gotta be a different level of relief knowing that no one's gonna talk shit about you because a) no one knows you well enough to do that or b) because you're so careful with who you trust that you know they'd never betray you or even c) they can only talk about what you put out into the world. it's why censorship is so effective. people can only talk about what they know. there's few people who will ignore what they see to find what they can't see tangibly."

"are all of y/n's friends secretly poets or something? why the hell are you guys all speaking cryptically like you're all freemasons or some shit like that. i can't tell if i find it cringey or cool," jaehyun says, cocking his head.

roseanne lets out a real, full bellied laugh at that, clutching her stomach as chuckles escape her. jaehyun's not sure what he's said that's so funny but he knows for a fact that she's not laughing with him, but at him.

"why is it cringey, jaehyun? why would it be cool? it's just what it is. we're just girls. you'll see us at the party next weekend, drinking our weight in alcohol. we'll have the conversations about makeup and dresses and having fun and our future and our past. there's nothing like freemasonry, i promise. it's just so amusing to see men get alarmed by the thoughts that girls have been wrestling with since they've been twelve. the duality of man, i guess," roseanne says finally, once she's caught her breath.

jaehyun doesn't know how to respond to that so he elects to save the remaining tatters of his dignity by just not responding at all. if there's one thing he's learned about you, it's that you surround yourself by women who are not hesitant about putting him in his place. and he's oddly thankful for it.

"i have one last question. well, two last questions, actually," jaehyun says when he sees roseanne turning around to head back inside, still wiping the tears from her eyes from laughing too hard.

roseanne turns, a knowing glint in her eyes even before jaehyun asks his question.

"how many guys have talked to you? and what's the highest number anyone's ever gotten to?"

roseanne is silent and just as the silence begins to turn awkward, she promptly turns on her heel and begins to walk away. she opens the door to the library before she seemingly changes her mind and looks back at jaehyun.

"two guys have talked to me. you're gonna have to ask fatima about the second question though. and jaehyun? the next number is 6."

96_-___-____.

+++

jaehyun finds fatima not soon after his conversation with roseanne. he's sitting in the nct house, watching johnny pace back and forth in his room, trying to figure out if what he was wearing was too casual for a date to a bowling alley.

it was way too formal, in jaehyun's opinion. but he was just going to wait for johnny to finish panicking (even if he would never admit that he was, in fact, panicking) to figure that out on his own. seriously though, who wore a button down and slacks to a bowling alley?

then again, he was going on a date with sia yoo so really, anything was fairplay when it came to that girl. she was a whirlwind of literally everything that could possibly go into a human being. she was a maximalist to the fullest, seizing every opportunity she could to make good memories, pressing forward with a sense of perfect clarity and sobriety that most people would be scared of.

the type of girl who was the main character of any story that she would feature in. sia was the type of person that people who trip and fall over themselves trying to have a good time with that she practically promised. she walked around with fairy dust in her fingers and a strange sense of wisdom that felt like she could read you like a book within a singular meeting with her.

jaehyun knows that she's the most intimidating out of all of the girls. out of you, roseanne, fatima, and sia, she was hands down the most frightening because even though she could read everyone else, no one could really read her.

then there was roseanne. she was the wet dream of every girl alive - the reason why straight girls lamented that they were straight and still falling a little bit in love with her. she was hot, flirtatious to the extent of making everyone wonder what they were when she gave them even a split second of attention, and so incredibly full of life. it doesn't surprise jaehyun that she had become exclusive with miyeon and yugyeom. for some reason, he feels like she just wouldn't have been able to settle for liking one person at once.

she was a little too much for just one person to be able to handle. she was like the human personification of a leather jacket wearing, motorcycle driving, woody cologne smelling wattpad trope. jaehyun understands her appeal all too well.

and then there was fatima. she was kind, sweet, kept to herself, and always offered a helping hand to those around her. jaehyun understood why kun had fallen so hard for her within two minutes of meeting her. she had an air about her that made you feel like she was someone who truly cared about you, even if you didn't know her and she didn't know you all that well. she was the type of girl who was always forgotten in the novels about warriors and princesses. the girl who was often reduced to nothing more than the main character's best friend.

until you met a girl like her in real life. fatima was still a little forgotten, and jaehyun knew that. guys often overlooked her in favor of her 'hotter' or 'wilder' friends, which is admittedly what jaehyun had thought at first. but she was just so genuine and clearheaded. she protected her peace in a way that was so unusual for young, college-going students. not to say that sia, roseanne, or you weren't genuine or anything like that. but fatima was the type of girl that jaehyun knew was perfect for kun. the girl that he could go home and know that no matter what he had done in his past, she would love him all the same.

and there was you. smart, strangely private, and a series of contradictions housed within one heart. jaehyun wracks his brain, trying to gather everything that he knew about you and yet, he comes up empty.

frustratingly empty.

jaehyun vaguely registers the fact that johnny has finally changed and is getting ready to go. he knows that he should say something about how johnny should just be himself and that sia liking him is completely up to her, regardless of what johnny were to do. but when he locks eyes with johnny, he realizes that johnny already knows.

so jaehyun just claps him on the back as he heads back to his room, his mind spinning as he tries to think of everything that he knows about you. and he draws a blank every fucking time.

he knows superficial things about you. maybe it's because he doesn't know you like he knows your friends. he hasn't talked to you as much as he's talked to them. but how does he not know you? he's been wanting to get with you for so long. he wanted more than just your body. he wanted your charm and your appeal.

was it just your body? is that all it was? is that all jaehyun wanted? somehow, jaehyun doesn't want to believe that. he doesn't want that for himself. logically, he knows that gianna's impact on his life shouldn't be extending this far. he knows that he shouldn't want or have to fight himself this hard but you're not making it much easier for him.

when was the last time jaehyun wanted to get to know such an enigma of a girl? gianna lee. and he wants nothing to do with a girl like that ever again.

and yet, here he is. falling into the same trap all over again.

jaehyun's so caught up in his own thoughts, feeling himself starting to spiral when he bumps in fatima and kun, who are equally caught up in a conversation with each other.

"oh, my bad," jaehyun mumbles, ready for fatima to brush past him but she doesn't, looking at jaehyun and then kun.

"hey man, we're headed back to my place. why don't you come back with us?" kun offers, and jaehyun just nods blankly, as he starts to follow them out of the nct house. kun stops at the entrance where he picks up a textbook from yuta, who had been borrowing it for the last week, before the three of them make their way out.

"how are you, jaehyun?" fatima asks with a sweet smile as they pile into kun's car. somehow, jaehyun doesn't want to give her a generic, insincere answer.

"i'm...okay. i'm just okay. confused but okay," jaehyun says and fatima seems alright with this answer. kun pulls out of the 'driveway' of the frat house, exchanging in a quiet conversation with fatima about what they were planning on eating for the night, leaving jaehyun to simmer in his thoughts.

gianna lee. there was a name that he thought about almost every day and never all at the same time. the girl who had made him and broke him. the girl that jaehyun had trusted with his heart and made him regret ever doing that.

the girl who had been the first love of his life.

+++

gianna was a year younger than him. smart, so incredibly sweet, and yet someone that no one could confidently say that they knew. she was the type of girl who could slip under the radar as easily as her friends seemed to always stay on top of.

she ran in the same circle as jaehyun had in senior year, right when jaehyun was beginning to blossom into the man that he was today. she had always been kind to him, if not a little withdrawn, even when he was a skinny boy with proportions that absolutely did not seem to match each other.

jaehyun didn't even know her well enough for her to break his heart, honestly. jaehyun had liked her even before having a proper conversation with her. he knew how left out she felt in her own body. even though he couldn't imagine a more gorgeous girl, he knew that she didn't feel that way about herself.

he knew that she always compared herself to her friends. her well-accomplished, 'main character' best friends who were the talk of the school. and her. no matter how intelligent or kind or put together she was, no one really looked at her the way that jaehyun did. she knew it.

even jaehyun couldn't place why he liked her so much. maybe it was the fact that he was somehow comforted that a girl with so much beauty could feel the same way as him. maybe it was the fact that she had always held the same smile for him, regardless of what he looked like. or maybe it was even the fact that one time, she had held his hand as she pulled him across the street, running to catch up with their friends who had already crossed.

jaehyun just remembers looking at her dyed cherry red hair falling into her eyes as she laughs, pulling him forward to where the rest of their friends were standing. and as he breathes in the smoke in the air and the raspberry scent of her perfume, he just knows that he really, truly likes gianna lee.

gianna lee doesn't like him the way that he likes her. he knows that. logically, jaehyun knows that his feelings are truly unfounded. he really has no reason to like gianna the way that he does. and yet, there's a part of him that holds onto the hope that maybe, just maybe, she'll turn around with those big eyes and upturned lips and say that she likes him the way that he likes her.

so he continues to look at her first when he makes the friend group laugh. he always slips her a napkin when he's getting one for himself when they're out getting milkshakes. he offers to help her with apush when she's stressing about a test the next week.

the closer he gets to her, the more jaehyun realizes that really, she was nothing like the image of her he had conjured in his head. she was every bit sweet as he had thought but she was argumentative, competitive, and all too obsessed with perfection. she always needed to be right in an argument, always had to win, and always had to make sure that she looked flawless doing so.

jaehyun doesn't realize it, of course. he's so obsessed with his glazed over façade of her that he just continues to let her win the arguments even when he knows that she's wrong. and she lets him wrap his arms around her when she gets an 89% on her test.

he lets her walk all over him and she lets him act on his feelings.

it was a toxic, parasitic relationship that neither of them were truly happy in. when gianna asked him out, jaehyun hadn't felt like fireworks were going off in his stomach. he felt like he had won a prize at a marathon. like he'd won a medal.

gianna wasn't a medal. she was a flawed, beautiful human being - every bit gorgeous and horrible as jaehyun and every other human being was. but jaehyun had won, hadn't he?

he hadn't. and it took so long for him to realize that by the time he'd realized that gianna had really only taken to him out of pity, he was so far in his own head that he didn't know how to leave her.

eventually, the summer before college rolled around and gianna had taken it upon herself to do the nasty deed of breaking up with him. it had been an amicable split, as far as their friends were concerned.

but none of them had ever truly either of their friends. so what did they know?

what did they know about gianna finding comfort in her ex's arms? what did they know about her grades slipping at the end of the school year? what did they know about her having to excuse herself at a meeting for her internship to sob in the bathroom as she realized the true fallacy in the way she had acted? what did they know about the way she had to reconstruct herself bottom up? nothing.

what did they know about jaehyun spending every other night with a different girl, trying to ease the ache in his heart? what did they know about the obscene number of hours at the gym, not sure how to combat the sudden numbness after girl after girl? what did they know about the fact that jaehyun could not physically stand the smell of raspberries anymore? absolutely nothing.

no one knew anything until jaehyun had finally come to college. it was once he joined the frat and met guys who were so alike and different from him at the same time that he finally opened up about gianna.

only to doyoung, kun, and johnny but people nonetheless. everyone had gone through something similar - while for some it happened at college or back home, they all knew the pain. some of them were more in the fault than others but pain is pain and a paper cut bleeds the same red as a gunshot wound.

which is why when kun sits him down on the couch and fatima hands him a cup of iced tea to save them all from the sweltering heat as august makes a last stand against september's winds, jaehyun spills everything.

gianna. his past. his insecurities. everything. he knows he shouldn't. logically, fatima had nothing stopping her from going and telling everything that jaehyun had told her to you, but for some reason, jaehyun thinks that she won't.

she doesn't.

+++

fatima knows that jaehyun was going to talk to her about something like this. it seemed that all of the nct boys came with some level of trauma like this. she wasn't sure what it was about every single boy she had met in college (although, granted, they were either her friends' conquests or kun's friends - a very interesting group of very intertwined boys) having their hearts getting ripped to shreds. sometimes it was of their own volition but they all seemed to be some level of hurt either way.

so when jaehyun spills his heart out on kun's carpeted floors, she's ready with a well-rehearsed speech. he's one of six boys she'd already had this same exact conversation with (kun has a bad habit of picking up strays) but when he looks at her with such raw anguish in his eyes, she falters.

she looks to kun, who's looking at her with the same question that she knows jaehyun is asking.

"how do you know when to choose between your head and your heart? because my heart is so fucking scared of getting attached to someone again. but my head knows that i can't push everyone away because i'm scared."

fatima is quiet, searching for the right words. she's about to say something when kun speaks up, looking determinedly at fatima.

"you learn to choose you. instead of choosing between your head and your heart, just choose yourself. at the end of the day, you and y/n are good people who aren't trying to hurt each other. you're both trying not to get hurt. and honestly, maybe you'll realize that you both are better off as friends along the way. maybe you just realize that you don't want to be with someone right now. or maybe you find someone who makes you feel like you're safe and loved when you're around them, whether you're in love with them or not." fatima looks at kun with a soft smile, reaching out to hold his hand gently.

"you have to choose yourself, jaehyun. trust me. the more you start thinking about what is best for the people around you instead of thinking for yourself, you'll look back fifteen, twenty years down the road and see everyone but yourself in your life. don't do something because gianna and how she made you feel. don't let your past define your future," fatima says, and jaehyun can feel the tears prick his eyes. he blinks determinedly, trying to make them disappear but when kun sits on one side of him and fatima on the other, he starts losing his battle against his emotions, finally letting himself mourn the innocence he had once had.

he buries his head into fatima's shoulder and for some reason, he feels as though kun and fatima would be amazing parents. because jaehyun doesn't remember the last time that he had felt this safe in an embrace.

"and jaehyun? the furthest anyone has ever gotten is five numbers. you're at three. it's your call from here. do what you want, not what you think you need to do." fatima taps his shoulder gently and lets him cry for as long as he needs to.

963-___-____.

+++

jaehyun gets the next number from you. after his conversation with fatima, he's sure that if he wants to go any further than this, he needed to talk to you first.

it's strange. he's earning your number but it feels like jaehyun's somehow earning himself back. and when he finds you again, he knows that you can tell.

even johnny could tell. when he had come back from his (successful) date with sia, the first thing he had said was, "wow. you look so...light."

jaehyun hadn't said anything but 'thank you' but it was enough.

johnny had just smiled at him and recounted the date, stating that he was going to ask her to go on another date this saturday night. jaehyun doesn't mention the fact that nct is throwing that night because johnny already knows.

and honestly, sia is a junior and johnny is a senior. they've been to their fair share of parties. one party being missed wouldn't be life changing for them. but skipping a party as the vice president of a frat and a girl who was sought after as a sweetheart for six frats meant something nonetheless.

he hadn't expected that they were to get that serious that quickly but it was a refreshing change. even fatima and kun were starting about talking about talking to fatima's parents to get their blessing for their relationship. her dilemma was no secret and it seemed that the conversation between the three of them had served to help them through their own issues as well.

there was just something in the air, jaehyun had supposed. august turned to september in the week that jaehyun had wrestled with himself, eventually leading to seeking you out.

it had been at the nct party, actually. you were standing with some of your acquaintances, all of your friends having dispersed to do what they were going to do. jaehyun had been on the other side of the room, convincing bambam that it was most definitely not a good idea to try and pursue soyeon jeon if he wanted to make sure that he woke up with all his limbs intact the next morning.

you had met his eye, raising an eyebrow before continuing your conversation, all thoughts of him seemingly out of your mind. jaehyun looks between bambam (who has gone from trying to get with soyeon to jumping into the pool) (that pool had not been cleaned in a full six months) and you. he just finds jungwoo, one of the pledges, and hands him a very drunk bambam.

"do not let him do anything dumb. i'm counting on you pledge," jaehyun called out over his shoulder as he weaves through people to get to you.

"jaehyun! hey! long time no see," hailey whitfield says, throwing herself in jaehyun's arms. jaehyun looks at you, where you're staring straight at where hailey's body ends and his arms begin. jaehyun tries to push her off of him. once upon a time, jaehyun would've been behind happy about getting with her again - she was so good with her mouth. but now, he has no intentions of giving you the wrong impression.

at least until he has a proper conversation with you so that you knew where he stood with you. and where you stood with him.

"hey hailey, sorry i've gotta get to my friend," he says, not even looking at her as he pushes off of her, resuming his threading through the crowd to where you're standing. you look at him, unimpressed, but jaehyun knows you well enough to know that three numbers are enough to make you feel a certain way if jaehyun was fooling around with other girls.

which he hasn't been. not a single night. jaehyun jung's bed has been empty for an entire two weeks, something that doyoung and nairobi have been taking full advantage of.

even some of jaehyun's friends had started asking if he was having problems or something but he had brushed them off. he definitely wasn't having problems, if hailey whitfield was any indication. but he felt like it would be doing you dirty if he had someone in his bed while he was talking to your friends about you.

so he hadn't.

he knows you know. he knows that you know he's talked to sia, roseanne, and fatima. he'd figured that you'd find out either through them or just by him. he can tell by the look in your eyes that you've read him thoroughly.

so he really doesn't feel bad about pulling you away from your friends, taking you upstairs to his room. finally, doyoung had promised that they would go back to nairobi's place on the condition that jaehyun made sure that no one would try to fuck on his bed. he promised, knowing that the only person who'd be coming up here would be him. he needed to talk to you tonight. if he knew anything it was that.

but once you're sitting on his bed, watching him pace back and forward, he's lost everything he's been wanting to say. where does he even start? with gianna? with the questions he has for you? with the number? where does he begin?

jaehyun looks at you, where you're watching him with a small smile on your face and suddenly, it doesn't matter where he begins. you'll listen to it all. he knows that much.

"why do you want me to work for your number?" jaehyun asks. you look at him curiously, tilting your head as you piece together an answer.

"are you sure you don't know the answer to that question?" you say, folding your legs so that you're sitting criss cross on the navy covers.

"i do. but i want to hear it from you, y/n. you know what all your friends say about you? that they didn't properly know you until a full year of friendship with you. but they said that you never lie. so i want you to tell me," jaehyun says, chest heaving by the end of his ramble. his eyes turn soft as he watches you become more and more solemn and he steps forward, sitting down on his desk chair and swiveling it over so that he was sitting directly across from you.

you pause for a moment, searching for the words before saying anything. "i've never been in a relationship before. so i don't have the trauma that could come from something like that. but i know what it's like to lose your heart to someone. and i know that it hurts. i want to be loved in the way that i never thought i could be. so the number thing is just an excuse for me to get to the point where i won't feel guilty about liking someone."

you shrug, smiling but not allowing the smile to reach your eyes. "it's a good way to make sure that the guy knows what he's getting into either way."

jaehyun nods at that. he knew that much. it feels different hearing it from you though. when you're the one saying it, jaehyun knows that it's real. raw. not coming from people trying to protect you because they know that you're far too soft to truly come at him guns blazing.

somehow, he likes it. he likes that you're much softer than you seem. that you're a lot more vulnerable than you come off as. and for some reason, jaehyun hopes that you never perfect the art of becoming standoffish.

"hmm. you've never been in a relationship before?" jaehyun says finally and you nod, shrugging once more. a shadow of bittersweet nostalgia crosses your face before you're back to your soft smile and guarded yet curious eyes.

"nope. part of it was on me; i've got high standards, if you can't tell. and the other part was that i've always wanted someone who fascinates me. of course, i wasn't all that appealing to men because i spent so much time trying to beat them at the only thing they were good at - ego-boosting themselves but they weren't interesting. none of them were people i really wanted to get to know," you say, unfolding your legs.

jaehyun likes the fact that the tips of your toes are the only part of your feet that touch the ground from how far back you're sitting on the bed. in an act of boldness, jaehyun moves forward to sit next to you, right where you're sitting. his feet are flat on the floor, he realizes.

he doesn't know why he's noticing things like this but he is and something about that frustrates him, frightens him, and tugs at his heartstrings altogether.

"you're heartbroken, aren't you? boys like you always seem to be a little hurt," you say, tossing the words into the air like rose petals. they're recklessly thrown but they're somehow beautiful in the way that blackened roses are always beautiful.

"yeah. i was. i think i will always mourn who i was before that. i was so naïve. but i'm not him anymore. and i think i'm realizing that i'm actually okay with that." jaehyun says the words just as carelessly as you do but once they're out in the open, he realizes that he's being completely honest. he turns to you with a strange look though.

"boys like me?"

you smile and nod at him. "boys like you."

you stand up, walking to where jaehyun has a corkboard with a shitload of scraps and photos from the past two years. you don't mention the fact that none of the memories that he has on the board date from before senior year. you don't need to.

"boys like you who've never been loved completely. boys who think that they need to listen to what the world says about how they should be acting or thinking. boys who are hopeless romantics but what would the world say if they knew that these boys just wanted a little bit of love? what would they say if they were looking for warmth in an empty and cold bed?"

jaehyun hates that you're right. it's the college boy tragedy. condemned to never be able to completely heal from one bad experience and then always breaking hearts to collect enough pieces to build themselves a new one.

he didn't want to end like that. even if it wasn't with you, he was ready to grow past it. he didn't want to end as a heartbreaker.

"boys like me...and you like a boy like me?" jaehyun asks. he doesn't know why he does. this is the first proper conversation you've had with him when both of you are decidedly sober. you want to deflect the question but if he's being honest, that's a sign for you to be just as honest.

"i don't know. from what my friends say, and what i know about you as a person in class, i know you mean well. and honestly, i've always just been the type of person to like someone past things like the books they read or the way they dress," you say, still looking at the memories jaehyun's pieced together over the years on this board. "i feel something around you. and i don't know you well enough to know that i like you as someone more than a friend but i'd like to at least have the chance to get that far."

that's all jaehyun needs. he gets another number that night.

+++

jaehyun waits for you outside of intro to east asia, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet as he waits for you to make it out of the classroom. you're the last one to leave, knowing that technically, you and jaehyun weren't allowed to see each other while he was your ta.

jaehyun had never really pegged you as someone with so much respect for the rules but you had argued that it was mostly about the principle.

he'd learned a lot about you that last weekend. you and him had stayed up all night, talking about nothing and everything under the sun until the sun itself rose, eventually falling asleep in a tangled mess of limbs and conversations.

he learned that while you didn't like the rules, you often followed them as long as they followed your own moral code. that you would die for your friends and that had landed you in many bad friendships when people would use that to their advantage before you'd met your friends in college. he learned that you were super close with your family, and that they were quite literally the best friends that you could always rely on.

and he learned that you wanted to see him again. on a date. sometime soon. so with no real way of communicating with you outside of social media (and he somehow felt like sliding into your dm's was corny and somewhat of a copout), here he was. waiting outside of the classroom like he was ripped straight from a 1950's romance movie. he even had the letterman jacket on to boot.

"oh my god, you scared me," you say, pressing a hand to your chest as you quite nearly bump into jaehyun. he smiles, readjusting his backpack on his shoulders as the two of you start walking.

"you knew i was waiting for you outside, didn't you?" he says, pushing the side door open to walk towards the parking lot, where he's convinced kun to let him borrow his car for the day.

"yeah but i didn't think you would be literally outside the door," you murmur, checking your phone to see the rest of your day's schedule. you had purposefully blocked off three hours of your schedule to hang out with jaehyun, which you were sure to regret later on when your organic chemistry class kicked your ass. but that was a later issue.

"well, i couldn't text you where i was so i figured i'd wait in plain sight," jaehyun retorts, opening the passenger door for you without a word. huh. that was the first time a man has ever done that for you. and jaehyun did it as though it were second nature - like it was a given.

you don't know why something so small means so much to you but you're alright with it. you're alright with just appreciating it.

"that's fair," you say. another number's on the tip of your tongue as you watch him get into the driver's seat but jaehyun beats you to the punch.

"don't give me a number. not yet," jaehyun says. "not that i don't want one. but i just...me waiting outside your classroom or opening your door isn't enough for a number. even if i don't get all ten, you've got to up your standards."

you don't know what to say to that so you don't say anything, turning on the music and letting the melody of chemtrails under the country club by lana del ray fill the rainy september afternoon sky.

+++

when jaehyun pulls up to a run down diner, you're pleasantly surprised. although you're not much of a sucker for romantic places, the fact that jaehyun is somehow makes you happy. it makes you happy that he still sees the beauty in places like these. and when you look over at him, dimples threatening to show as he breathes in the air of misty fog and the smell of milkshakes and burgers, you're so tempted to kiss him.

so you lean over, looking at him with a twinkle in your eyes once jaehyun has parked.

"can i kiss you?" you ask, mere inches from his lips. jaehyun just looks at you, and from this close, you realize just how beautiful his eyes are. they're dark, darker than anyone else's that you know. and yet, it feels like you could fall in and never regret it.

"please."

it's all you need. and it's all he needs because as soon as word slips from his lips, he's pressing forward, his lips against yours. he's soft, you register vaguely. nothing like last time. nothing like how he'd kissed you like he could think of nothing but absolutely ruining you.

jaehyun is soft. like the feeling of slipping a cold hand into someone's warm jacket pocket. he kisses you like he's scared of ruining you. ruining this. and you're absolutely addicted to the feeling.

the feeling of knowing that he could just claim you instead of trying his best to claim your heart. no matter how fucked up it was that you were even thinking that someone could 'claim' you. he wasn't like that and you could work with that.

he pulls away from you, eyes still closed as he sits against the drivers seat, his head against the headrest. you watch him, a silly and childish smile on your face - although you're not really sure why it's there in the first place. but who are you to knock anything?

there aren't many words to exchange as the two of you make your way into the diner. jaehyun had opened your car door again. this time, you just offer him your hand and you're strangely alright with just how safe you feel with his hand locked in yours.

the diner seems as though time has frozen still here.

and everything about the date seems the same. it feels as though time has frozen still - almost as though the two of you are in a little bubble with no one but each other. it's a feeling you haven't experienced in a while. a feeling you don't think you've ever had because of a boy.

it feels...almost scarily comfortable. it doesn't feel as though there are fireworks exploding for every word that jaehyun says. but it does feel as though that there's a hot mug of cocoa that's been handed to you on a cold winter night. and that feeling, the feeling of warmth spreading through every corner of your body, is the feeling that you know is good for you.

so you listen to him, watch him speak animatedly about basketball or a book he read, chin resting in your palm as you find yourself falling deeper and deeper.

jaehyun gets two numbers that day.

+++

it doesn't take much longer for jaehyun to get the rest of the numbers. soon enough, you're more than happy just to spend time with him the way that you spend time with your friends. you feel as though you've made a good friend out of someone you'd thought that you wouldn't even be able to get along with.

"you know, when i first met you, even before i knew you, i really didn't like you," you say, taking a sip out of your latte. the seasons have changed, fall giving way to winter. the november air bites your skin every time someone opens the door to the tiny café the two of you were sitting in.

jaehyun smiles, nodding as he leans back in his chair. "i know. i could tell by the look in your eyes."

"the look in my eyes?"

"yeah. the one that said that you wanted to get to know me. to figure out my deal even if you didn't necessarily want to find out for sure. kind of like you wanted to be the one that said 'aha!' at the end of a movie, even though you weren't sure of the ending at all."

you look at jaehyun for a moment before laughing, shaking your head as you laugh. "you're even starting to talk like me now."

jaehyun pauses before he nods, smiling with you. "yeah, i know. you've rubbed off on me in a lot of ways."

"i've improved your music taste, that's for sure," you snort, taking another sip out of your latte. "i still can't believe you didn't like ric flair drip when we met."

"it's not that i didn't like it and it's still not that i like it now. but i guess i just have a good memory associated with it now so it's growing on me," jaehyun says. your eyebrows furrow as you try to recollect what good memory he could possibly be referring to.

"oh my god. the night that we met! i was trying to get in your pants with ric flair drip," you say incredulously, shivering when someone opens and closes the door once more. jaehyun hands you his hoodie, leaving his arm extended silently when you protest.

you don't know why you still bother trying to protest with him when you knew you were going to lose. you put the sweater on as jaehyun starts talking, letting the scent of clean water and pine trees swaddle you softly.

"honestly, i think i was more than you that night," jaehyun says, as he looks at you with an incriminating twinkle in his eyes. "that was around the time that even taeyong said that he wanted to see if kun's vivid descriptions were true or not. and i wasn't about to let him get the opportunity to get to you before i did. i don't know why. i felt almost protective over you. but not in a good way. in the type of way where i wanted to show you how good i could make you feel - more than anyone could even begin to think of making you feel."

the previously cold café begins to become a lot hotter than you were feeling before, clearing your throat as you try to let the moment pass.

"how did we even get here?" you say, fanning yourself delicately. the move only serves to work against you when you fan yourself so that the scent of his cologne on his hoodie only gets stronger in your mind.

jaehyun leans back, letting you switch the conversation. he'd bring it up to you later in the night, anyway. besides, for someone who puts on such a strong front, it's honestly a little fun to see you squirm at the slightest implications from jaehyun.

"but, uh, jaehyun. i've been meaning to ask you something for a while," you begin, fidgeting with the wrapper of the straw in front of you. jaehyun tilts his head as if to question what you have to say as he waits patiently.

"what are we?"

now jaehyun is truly confused. was the past month of going on dates not clear enough? jaehyun wasn't going on dates with anyone else. oh my god. were you going on dates with other men? is that why you're asking.

"i thought we were dating?" jaehyun says, phrasing his sentence more like a question than a statement. "i mean i'm not talking to anyone else and i kinda assumed that since i'd gotten all ten numbers, neither were you."

you hum, unable to stop the silly smile on your face.

"good. that's just what i was thinking too."

+++

honestly, everything about jaehyun jung is appealing to you. from the way that he engulfs you in a hug when you're up late studying. or the way that he convinces you that you have a virus on your laptop just so that he could spend more time with you 'fixing' your laptop for you. or the way that he sits with you and your friends, patiently listening and offering advice wherever he can (or honestly, is just allowed to speak).

you're so glad to see him like this. as your boyfriend of four and a half months (you hadn't let him make it official until he was no longer your ta), you've seen him grow in ways that you'd never thought. jaehyun was every inch the stupid, naïve fuckboy you'd thought him to be in the beginning. and he was also every inch the hopeless romantic with a little too much love to give for a scarred heart.

so you heal together. you help each other when you quite literally can't handle the pain and together, you grow. he's more confident. not just in the way that he looks - but the way that he speaks around people. the way that he educates himself. the way that he communicates how he feels.

and he helps you everyday. he shows you what it feels like to be loved the way you love others. he shows you that you are worth the princess treatment. and most importantly for you, he loves the people around you the way you love the people around you.

kun and fatima find their happy ending. fatima had spoken to her parents and while they took some time to warm up to kun, his soft demeanor and the way that he loved fatima so completely and sincerely eventually won them over. fatima even met kun's parents with equal success, although kun's mother kept asking when fatima and kun would get married.

(their wedding was already in the works by both fatima's mother and kun's mother. you were beyond elated to go to both the traditional muslim ceremony and the traditional chinese ceremonies.)

johnny and sia ended up going out on a couple more dates before realizing that they probably just weren't meant to be a couple. they loved each other as friends and were probably always going to hold a special place in each other's lives but it just wouldn't be as each other's significant others. johnny was already starting to retreat from the frat boy lifestyle after meeting a girl at the library one day. and sia had finally met someone who could handle her crazy personality with a sweet smile, bringing her back down to reality whenever she went a little...too lively. you're looking forward to meeting him over summer, where the four of you and your friends were going on a vacation together.

roseanne, yugyeom, and miyeon still haven't put a label on their relationship. but you've caught roseanne falling asleep in yugyeom's arms more than once (one too many times than rosie cares to admit) so you figure that it's a good thing that they've all found each other. as unconventional as their relationship might be, they all mesh together so well that you can't even find it in yourself to question it. all's fair in love and war.

jaehyun and you frequent the diner as a favorite date night spot to visit, although you're upset to hear that they're remodeling the entire establishment for favor of a new, more 'modern' atmosphere. although how modern a diner could get was a little bit of a strange notion. but as people change, so do the winds.

and when you walk into the diner the next semester, hand in hand with jaehyun, you're a little comforted to see that diner is now a speakeasy (in true 1970s fashion) with three words written in blinding rhinestones against the velvet background. of course.

ric flair drip.

#jnnul #nct fic #jaehyun fic #jaehyun fluff #nct fluff #jaehyun smut #nct smut #nct 127 fic #nct 127 fluff #nct 127 angst #jaehyun angst #nct angst #nct x reader #jaehyun x reader #nct 127 x reader #jaehyun imagines #nct imagines

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blackkatdraws2 · 4 months

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I'm involved in a Stanley Reblog Chain and put effort into these drawings so I'll post them here too.

[The other characters belong to insomniphic / beartitled / and marionette-j2x]

[Just me rambling underneath!] ↓

Tumblr has a tag limit and it grates my nerves to no end to know that I can't ramble as much as I'd like to...

Stanley and the bad bitch he pulled by being a loser. Imagine having a hot babe deform reality just to be together with you because he sensed you were feeling lonely without him. [WHEN IS IT MY TURN?!]

It's funny because with the general vibe of their AU, it would make sense for him to show up in the most flashy but also unnerving way possible. The Narrator's [Black's] arrival has to grab people's eyes since attention and views are what he's all about.

I wasn't sure what type of characterization they had so I just played it safe and [tried to] draw how my characters would respond instead of blindly guessing how the others would talk or act around each other. [My Stanley is antisocial and an anxiety-ridden freak.]

Also, I've been wondering what their height differences actually were when I saw my Stanley have to look up at Marionette's Narrator [since this guy is pretty damn tall] so I did a bit of digging and this was what I found.

I had a lot of fun making this by the way. It's been a while since I've participated in any Reblog Chains that involved character interactions and making comics, so it's a real throwback to when I first started posting TSP art in 2023.

Stanley here is an absolute social shutoff teehee, but he does talk back when talked to. His responses usually leave no openings to continue the conversation though. He's the type of guy to stay on the corner and watch everyone else.

As for the Narrator [Black] he's a bit strange. He's proper in public, but he doesn't think the other people are special [or not as special as he is at least]. He just doesn't care to be honest, he keeps to himself [along with Stanley] and that's it. It's a miracle for Stanley to have even pulled somebody like Black considering their personalities are the type to clash with one another. [They love each other though, genuinely. Despite how deranged they can be towards each other sometimes, that development took a long time to be nurtured into something healthier for those two.]

Also, 4th wall breaking in action!!!!!!!!!!!

Black didn't want to interrupt this comic since it was made for Stanley but after the other three came in he lost reservations and came in as well.

[Copy and Pasting the tags of my other post because I am NOT re-writing all of this...]

These two would probably just stay in their own spot [somewhere quiet and more alone]. This place is a bit too crowded for their liking. But I would be very happy to jump on any opportunity to make my guys interact with the others!!!!! Don't be afraid to throw a bone [prompt] for me to bite on, okay?

#the stanley parable #the stanley parable ultra deluxe #tspud #tsp #tsp au #narrator tsp #tsp narrator #stanley tsp #tsp stanley #stanarator #stannarrator #stanarrator #stannarator #my drawing museum

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clumsyromantic · 11 months

Text

NOT ANOTHER RAINBOW LEGACY CHALLENGE

Welcome to this ten generation legacy challenge based on vibrant colors! Inspired by all the other color themed legacies out there, because who doesn’t like basing their sims whole personality on a color (I know I’m a sucker for it lol). I won’t put a long list of rules here, because at the end of the day I want this to be your gameplay and story that you create. I will suggest that you follow each generation, but if something isn’t to your liking, by all means, change it for yourself. With that being said, don’t claim this challenge as your own, even if you tweak it. Remember, though, legacy challenges are all about having fun!

If you play don't forget to tag me here or on instagram @clumsy.romantic or use the hashtag #notanotherlegacy. I would really love to see some gameplay/stories!

Generation One: Licorice.

You never stay in one place too long. As a criminal, you’re always on the run. You don’t commit to anything. The only thing you’ve ever truly loved and committed to is your career. When it comes to actual love, you dip as soon as it seems like things might get serious. You don’t like being that close to people, letting people in like that. You can’t trust anyone, or so you thought.

Traits: Evil, Non-Committal, Romantic. (Additional: Self-Assured, Mean)

Aspiration: Serial Romantic.

Career: Criminal.

Have more enemies than friends.

Have a child with an enemy.

Move to a different world each time you age up.

Only your child(ren) can be your partner in crime.

Get caught cheating at least once.

Max your career.

Complete your aspiration.

Master the Mischief, Handiness and Programming skills.

[Packs used: None]

Generation Two: Pearl.

From the time you could hold things, you were coloring, drawing, painting, anything that could help you express yourself. You are the exact opposite of your parent. Maybe you’re like the other one? You wouldn’t know, though. You never met them, nor heard a single truth about them. That doesn’t matter, though, because as soon as you can, you move out of your parents home so that you can start your own life and family. Love isn’t easy, as you don’t truly know what it’s supposed to look like, but with how kind and caring you are, it almost comes easy to you.

Traits: Creative, Cheerful, Family-Oriented. (Additional: Loyal, Good)

Aspiration: Big Happy Family.

Career: Painter.

Complete the Artist Prodigy as a child.

Move to a different world from your parent.

Marry someone with amazing compatibility (or someone with similar traits).

Have 5 children.

Have a bowling night with the family at least twice a week.

Max your career.

Complete your aspiration.

Master the Painting, Parenting and Bowling skills.

[Packs used: High School Years, Growing Together, Parenthood, Bowling Night]

Generation Three: Latte.

You come from a big family, and you’ve always loved every bit of it. However, nothing can compare to the love you have for fitness. As a teenager, you become a simfluencer who models athletic wear and shows off your healthy lifestyle. As a Young Adult, you constantly have dogs. You tell yourself all you need is dogs, until you meet another fitness buff who you end up having a baby with.

Traits: Active, Dog Lover, Vegetarian. (Additional: Ambitious, Outgoing)

Aspiration: Friend of the Animals.

Career: Simfluencer.

Have a good relationship with your parents and siblings.

Go to the gym four times a week.

Change your hairstyle once a week.

Have at least 3 dogs as a YA.

Become a B-lister.

Have a baby with someone you meet at the gym (bonus points if they have the active skill).

Max your career.

Complete your aspiration.

Master the Fitness, Entrepreneur, Media Production, and Pet Training skills.

[Packs used: Cats & Dogs, High School Years, Get Famous]

Generation Four: Dandelion.

It was hard for you to relate to your parents, as they were much more outgoing and sociable than you were. Keeping up conversations and being around people always made you feel drained. You preferred being by yourself with a good book. It was usually a sci-fi book about robots. It’s no surprise that you’re the first in your family to go to university and you end up working in engineering. Your best friend, perhaps lover as well, is a robot you built. Seems like a good life to you.

Traits: Loner, Overachiever, Socially Awkward. (Additional: Bookworm, Geek)

Aspiration: Nerd Brain.

Career: Engineer.

Attend university.

Build a servo bot.

Be romantic partners with the servo.

Woohoo with the servo in the rocketship.

Only adopt or have science babies.

Max your career.

Complete your aspiration.

Master the Logic, Handiness and Robotics skills.

[Packs used: High School Years, Discover University]

Generation Five: Emerald.

You want to make the world a better place for the next generations. Everything you do involves Mother Earth. You live off the land, garden and fish for your food. You raise chickens for your eggs and cows for your milk. You also fabricate and make things for yourself, others and your animals. Some of the things you create you sell on Plopsy for income. You have a baby with someone you’re engaged to be married to. But as soon as you can, you pack up and leave them, taking the baby with you.

Traits: Loves Outdoors, Maker, Freegan. (Additional: Green Fiend, Recycle Disciple)

Aspiration: Master Maker.

Career: Plopsy Seller.

Live in Evergreen Harbor (If you don’t already, move there as a YA).

Live in Port Promise, where you must make the eco footprint green.

Additional Challenge: have the Simple Living lot challenge in Evergreen.

Knitted and Fabricated items can be sold on Plopsy when you need simoleons.

Get engaged and try for a baby until one of you is pregnant.

Once you have reached green for the eco footprint; break off the engagement, take the baby and move to Sulani.

Complete your aspiration.

Master the Knitting, Fishing, Gardening and Fabrication skills.

[Packs used: Eco Lifestyle, Nifty Knitting, Island Living]

Generation Six: Turquoise.

Growing up on a beautiful beach with your single parent doing everything for you made you into a spoiled brat. The only thing you actually want to do, besides sleep and chill, is fashion photography. You have a real eye for fashion. Although, you don’t really have a knack for picking up work. You’re more likely to be suntanning than actually doing your job. The few times you do accept a job, you fall in love with the model. Instead of falling happily in love together, you are constantly fighting, and to make matters worse, you have a kid together. Something neither of you wanted.

Traits: Self-Absorbed, Lazy, Hates Children. (Additional: Jealous, Squeamish)

Aspiration: Beach Life.

Career: Freelance Fashion Photographer.

Accept a job once a week.

Have a baby with one of the models that has the Mean, Hot-Headed or Evil trait.

Only have 1 child.

Have a bad relationship with your child.

Move to San Myshuno as an Adult.

Max your career.

Complete your aspiration.

Master the Charisma and Photography skills.

[Packs used: Get Famous, Outdoor Retreat, Moschino, City Living]

Generation Seven: Ruby.

You constantly heard your parents fighting over something. They were never not fighting. You found your solace in music; listening to it, writing it, playing instruments, just everything about it. You get married young just so you can move out. But you’re in love with a musician on the side. You’re not really sure if you should keep seeing them, or stick by your spouse. You never really were good with decisions, especially ones that could really impact your future.

Traits: Music Lover, Hot-Headed, Childish. (Additional: Erratic, Dance Machine)

Aspiration: Musical Genius.

Career: Live off tips and fame.

Marry and move out as a YA.

Have a bad relationship with your parents.

Cheat on your spouse with someone who plays an instrument or sings.

Only earn money from tips when you play instruments or sing in public.

Have either a dance battle or karaoke night once a week.

Obtain fame, at least c-lister, from music.

Complete your aspiration.

Master the Singing, Dancing and any instrument skills.

[Packs used: Get Famous, City Living, Get Together]

Generation Eight: Magenta.

You’ve always used humor and pranks as a way to cope with everything going on in your life. No one but your best friend really gets you. It’s hard for you two to get over being friends when you realize that you have feelings for each other. Except, after having a baby together, you realize you were better off as friends. You still civilly raise the child, just not under the same roof anymore.

Traits: Paranoid, Goofball, Gloomy. (Additional: Clumsy, Cat Lover)

Aspiration: Chief of Mischief.

Career: Social Media.

Have a childhood best friend.

Have a baby with said best friend.

You and your best friend fall out, but you still raise the child civilly.

Have at least 1 cat.

Max your career.

Complete your aspiration.

Master the Comedy, Writing and Mischief skills.

[Packs used: Cats and Dogs, Strangerville, City Living]

Generation Nine: Tangerine.

You prefer the finer things in life. You live in the city, but as a young adult working in law, you often take vacations to Mt. Komorebi. Where, when you fall in love with a local and have children, you take your children there often. Not until you retire, do you and your spouse move there. In the meantime, you enjoy the time you spend there; skiing, snowboarding, rock climbing, sightseeing, etc. You dream of your vacations while at work.

Traits: Adventurous, Kleptomaniac, Bro. (Additional: Lactose Intolerant, Materialistic)

Aspiration: Mt. Komorebi Sightseer.

Career: Law.

Take 2 vacation days a week to go to Mt. Komorebi.

Marry and have children with someone who lives in Mt. Komorebi

Continue living in San Myshuno until you retire and move to Mt. Komorebi.

Steal one item a day.

Max your career.

Complete your aspiration.

Master the Skiing, Snowboarding and Rock Climbing skills.

[Packs used: Snowy Escape, Cottage Living]

Generation Ten: Aubergine.

Your parents always showed you the luxurious sides of life. Treating you to everything and anything you could ever imagine. It lit the way for your future career as a critic. You enjoyed being able to put your 2 cents into whatever you could get your neatly, well kept fingers on. You also always looked and presented to be your best self.

Traits: Neat, Foodie, Snob. (Additional: High Maintenance, Perfectionist)

Aspiration: Party Animal.

Career: Critic.

Host 3 parties a week.

Each party has a theme; decorate and cook accordingly.

Get married 3 times (not to the same person).

Have 1 child per marriage.

Don’t get close to your children until they are Young Adults.

Max your career.

Complete your aspiration.

Master the Cooking, Writing and Gourmet Cooking skills.

[Packs used: Spa Day, City Living]

#the sims 4 #sims 4 #s4 #thesims4 #sims4 #sims legacy #sims lets play #notanotherlegacy

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mayariviolet · 27 days

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𝐏𝐭𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐞𝐚 / 𝐈’𝐦 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐌𝐚𝐧.

Episode Two of First Love / Late Spring.

summary: “You believe me like a god; I'll destroy you like I am.” // “Please don’t look at me. I can see it in your eyes; he keeps looking at me. Tell me, what have you done?” //

Some letters that were addressed to you dated before and after Suguru defected, still in their sealed envelopes.

══════════════════

cw: f!reader x Geto, mentions of murder, blood, mental instability, swearing, suggestive themes, angst, Geto being over protective.

a/n: Hi… sorry it took me so long to update this my cousin died in March and I haven’t been the same since… Thank you all for being so patient! Also, so sorry if I forgot to tag someone on this update. My mind has been all over the place. Gonna also link the songs the titles are based on so y’all can see the vision fr. Also on Ao3.

wc: 5.9k

🏷️: @jeanboyjean @tacobellfreshavocado @r0ckst4rjk

August 2007

One week before he defected.

Dear Friend,

Do you ever think about that saying, "people are captains of their own fate?" I do. Then again, what about those who think they're "captains of their fate." Or even worse- a fully prepared fool who still gets it wrong. Where do these people end up? Were they predestined to fail?

Anyhow, I think I'm about to make a big mistake.

Well, I've been thinking about this decision for a while. In general, I've been thinking a lot. You've probably noticed my absent stares and maybe you said something in regards to how I look. But I'm having trouble remembering. If you didn't notice, I don't blame you. Even though I want you to notice. You've been going gone through a lot. But then again, so have I.

Yuki and I had a conversation that stuck with me. If you're wondering, it's not about what my kind of woman is. I'm still embarrassed that you overheard that. Even more so, I didn't give a direct answer. However, I don't think my coy, halfway glances at you gave away too much…

When you pulled Haibara away for something I can't remember now (I think you were asking me to come take a look at your door), Yuki plopped down next to me. She was spread out obnoxiously, and my eyes were too heavy to see her expression.

Thus, I was resigned to her rants and entertained some of her ideas. Somewhere in that conversation it brought to light some questions that had been rattling around my brain after what happened with Rika. I'm trying to push away those uncertainties.

I should clear the air right now- you did what you could. What happened or did not happen is not your fault. I will tell you that a million times- however many you need.

If anything, it's my fault for not being there for you. I will always be there for you. It might be in a way that doesn't make sense, but I am there nonetheless.

Sorry about making excuses and skipping our movie nights. Sleeping has been difficult. Maybe it's because you're not here. I don't want you to worry about me- but I also do at the same time. It's an odd feeling, wanting something or someone, having multiple opportunities to do something about it, and letting time slip you by either way.

As I'm writing this, I remember a conversation with your mom about how "right now time is your friend. But later, time will be your enemy."

Maybe tomorrow we can have a conversation about how I'm feeling. I always feel at ease talking to you.

I hope that feeling is mutual.

Sincerely and with love,

Suguru.

Four days before he defected.

Dear Friend,

Uhm, unfortunately, our conversation did not… go well. That's putting it lightly. When I told you about my plan, the expression plastered on your face was something I would carry with me forever. It was agonizing to see you look at me with such disgust.

My chest was tightening, and I could feel you pulling at my hair sharply as you braided it before letting go. Watching you stomp out of my bedroom door through the reflection of my rickety vanity mirror, I have never felt worse in my life, but at the same time, so firm in the choice I'm making—a paradox in real time.

I didn't say it in my last letter, but I'm leaving Jujutsu Society and this bullshit mission made by people who probably need help wiping their ass.

Sorry, that last part was a little profane, but I know you agree with it. I mean, what good is there in protecting people who don't even appreciate what you do? I spent a lot of time reflecting on what happened in the last year and a half, outweighing the pros and cons. The pros obviously involved you, but the cons also involved you.

There's also the fact that I spend a lot of time sitting in my dark room- until the sun is barrelling over the horizon and seeping into my blinds. I wish you had been there during those moments. I'll think about our childhood, your birthday party, how we began writing letters, the day we got recruited to become Jujutsu sorcerers and the overwhelming optimism you had.

We had an opportunity to escape that hell hole town, and we took it without even thinking that staying there might have been less painful than leaving. Sure, we had a couple of surface-level friends, but at the end of the day, we had each other.

God, I wish that was enough.

I think about how happy people must be living in their ignorance, and I get angry again. So, I write. Primarily to you, even though I never express my frustrations. I'm infuriated that no matter what we do, how much we I excorsise curses (that, if born from my own emotions, would definitely be a Special Grade in its own right), it's not enough for those gas bags.

Yes, I might be considered one of the 'strongest,' but I don't want to be, at least, for people who don't deserve it. It's annoying, though, how you've maintained your optimism all of these years.

I shouldn't say annoying.

It's endearing how you want to nurture the world I want to burn to the ground. Well, 'burning to the ground' is a little extreme. I should say I want to make the world a better place for you and me, not those monkeys.

Emphasis on only for you and me.

Sincerely and with love,

Suguru.

══════════════════

September 2007

The day he defected.

Dear Friend,

Well, what's done is done. I'm leaving today. I'd like to say that I'm going without any regrets, but I have one stupid thing sticking around my head. Yaga asked if there was anyone who might be interested in accompanying me on this mission I've been assigned. He kept glancing over my shoulder.

I didn't need to turn around to see who he was talking about. You and Satoru were doing some training or something of the sort. My fist tightened when Satoru told you a stupid joke, and you laughed.

I mean, he's not that funny…

I wasn't mad that you were laughing at his joke, obviously. I was furious because, for the first time since we were kids, I felt disconnected from my body. To be honest, I've been feeling like this for a while. Like I was floating above it all, and what I saw was a future without us, me, you.

You should know by now what I told Yaga.

I'll leave my door open with a note in the hopes you can understand. Or even better yet, come find me after this mission is done.

Sincerely and with love,

Suguru.

Two and a half weeks after he defected.

Dear Friend,

Sorry I haven't written in a while. I've been preoccupied with this mission and tying up some loose ends. I'll explain later, please don't mind the blood on this letter. I didn't write for a while since I half expected to see you with flushed cheeks chasing after me.

I should've known better than to wait for you.

Alas, laying low due to tying up said loose ends is proving to be quite time-consuming. So here's a recap of what I've gotten up to:

Finished the mission (easy work)

Adopted twin girls (not easy work)

Visited our hometown

Saw my parents (not easy work)

Visited your parents (kind of easy work?)

I checked in on that grandma we used to help (unfortunately, she's sick, so my visit was brief).

I explained to my parents the predicament I've found myself in (See the part where I said 'not easy work').

Argued with my parents and then yours.

Settled into my childhood bedroom from complete exhaustion of arguing with those monkeys.

Set a plan to finish up with my loose ends…

I hope you're well. The rain is washing away any residual blood (not mine) on my things. I'll have to stop by a pharmacy to get some hydrogen peroxide to lift any stains the rain might miss.

Drink some tea, and get some sleep. If you're missing me like I am missing you, just sleep with that sweater I gave you. Although it's not me, I hope it will be enough in the meantime. In a roundabout way, it's like I'm still there holding you while you sleep, right? At least, that's how I like to think about it.

Don't worry. I'm not mad that you kept it; I always thought it looked better on you than it did on me.

Sincerely and with love,

Suguru

(P.S.) My letters will be spread more from here on out. I don't want to accidentally leave anything that might make it easier for someone to find my whereabouts. That doesn't mean I'm not thinking about you. I'm always thinking about you.

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October 2007

One month after he defected.

Dear Friend,

It feels like every time I write to you, I apologize for not saying enough. Which is funny, because that's how we I started writing letters to each other in the first place. Well, kinda. From now on, I'll keep my apologies to a minimum.

It's hard to keep track of the days that are passing, but I know that by now, Satoru has told you what I've done. It's completely necessary, by the way.

Killing my parents. Killing yours. Killing that grandmother. She was sick anyway.

I would like to think I put her out of her misery. I killed whatever remained of that god-forsaken, hell-hole town. I'll spare the details of what happened when I exterminated our my old life.

Just know that I had no remorse for killing your father and only a little for your mother. They died knowing you were okay and, unfortunately, with a smile on their face. I was surprised that they didn't immediately turn into curses. I guess you've been talking to them. Or were talking to them.

When I left that town bloodied and empty, I felt like a bird finally escaping a circus master's cage. Doing all of this will make it easier to forget. It was the closing chapter of a book I had no pleasure in reading. Please don't thank me for what I've done.

Right now, Mimiko and Nanako (the twin girls I saved during that mission) are having a hard time sleeping. I'm watching their furrowed brows and how their mouths twitch in their sleep. I guess even in their dreams, they can't rest. Sounds like someone I know knew.

In about five minutes, one of them will wake up and then another. I'll need to tend to their troubled minds soon enough. Before that happens, I will say sorry one last time. Sorry.

Knowing you, you're probably waiting up for me, probably in your room, probably waiting with Satoru, whose sweaty palms and jittery disposition betray his cool facade.

Maybe Satoru will take my absence as an opportunity to teach you about Digimon. It will be nice for you to take up another hobby. Or get into gardening again. I remember how much you wanted to start.

Eat well, get some sleep (or try to), and be kind to yourself. At least enough for both of us. Hell knows I haven't done that in a while.

Sincerely and with love,

Suguru.

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November 2007

Two months since he defected.

Dear Friend,

There was something in my last letter that I forgot to mention. It was one of the things that I told Satoru. I said that I hated righteous people- which is true to some capacity.

Sincerely and with love,

Suguru.

Two and a half months after he defected.

Dear Friend,

We're getting rain again. I realized that I might be repeating the same mistakes as your monkey parents by being too proud to lease a decent place. But things are getting harder to maneuver through what little connections to jujutsu society I have without tipping off any higher-ups. Mei Mei offered me some jobs that she said 'wasn't worth her time for the money.'

I guess I'm worthless.

But money is money, and I have two daughters now. Is it possible for curses to smell even worse when the holidays come around? I suppose so- with all the lonely people without any family to celebrate with. You can't help but think that they may have isolated themselves. I don't blame them.

Long story short, I've scraped up enough money to lease a place away from the higher-ups. Should I start looking for furniture made by sorcerers? Or should I swallow my pride and just buy some mid-tier premade stuff? Second hand? But then again- there's the issue of residual curse energy. But I could always take care of that.

I'm feeling exhausted again.

Sincerely and with love,

Suguru.

══════════════════

February 3rd 2008

Six months after he defected.

Dear Friend,

Maybe it's the nostalgia, maybe it's the first birthday I'm celebrating without you, but I keep reliving that weekend prior to it all. That house in Okinawa. The moon was hanging in the sky while the stars pricked the darkness, shining brightly. Sounds of waves crashing against the rocky shore, pulling whatever footprints or human error into the black abyss.

There wasn't a cloud in the sky. You insisted that Satoru get some sleep and that we take turns keeping watch. He shook his head and stupidly emphasized that he was fine. Satoru's heavily lidded expression did very little to disguise his fatigue- both of us could tell.

I was watching you, and you were watching him. I felt sick.

Satoru suggested that you get some rest first since you planned the whole trip for Rika, and you scowled before trudging over to the couch, insisting that you weren't tired. I wanted to grab your face and kiss that annoyance away, over and over again- maybe a little more. When you inevitably passed out, I glanced over to Satoru, who looked more alert now that you were asleep. It was like the task of keeping Rika alive had the same level of importance as dog sitting.

I wondered if you ever noticed. Or noticed that I've shared that same expression since we were kids.

I guess there's no use in ruminating. Today, I ran some errands, nothing major. I had a cake that Mimiko and Nanako decorated; they started calling me 'Papa Geto.' It's sweet.

I forgot to mention that while I was rearranging some furniture, a journal that I have kept since we were kids got knocked down from a bookshelf and pathetically fell on the ground. Mimiko and Nanako bolted like a feral tanuki.

I was mildly horrified at what they might have seen (before remembering that they aren't super great at reading yet, and then I relaxed slightly).

What happened next was probably worse than some scribbled preteen angst. They found the picture of us on your birthday, where I had your birthday cake all over my face. That was the first of many years when my parents bought you a birthday cake.

My girls laughed at me (why is it that when a child laughs at you, it's exponentially more mortifying than if an adult was?) but were incredibly kind to you.

After scolding them for not respecting other people's belongings (ironic given the subject matter of the photo), they apologized and asked who the 'pretty girl' in the picture was.

Embarrassment was replaced with excitement as I got to talk about you.

Anyhow, the money I've made from expelling curses prior to defecting is depleting rather quickly, so I need to come up with some plan.

Sincerely,

Suguru.

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April 2008

Eight months since he defected.

Dear,

Dear Friend,

Spring is here, and I have taken over the former Star Plasma Vessel Church, or cult, or whatever those idiots called it. In addition to having some stable footing, there's a roof over my head that I don't have to thank some monkey landlord for giving me it. It's very cozy, to say the least. Which I think was the realtors code for 'small and borderline inhabitable.'

It'll be some time before I'm able to build a decent following, but those who decided to stay will do so for now. Mimiko and Nanako are being homeschooled for the time being- until I find a school that is okay with my standards.

I was grocery shopping the other day, and I found some green tea that you might like. Before I could even think, it was in my basket next to some sugary cereal for my girls. I was mentally shooting myself in the foot because I'm on a budget (at least for a while).

I don't even like green tea, for goodness sake. But that night, I found myself fixing two cups, one with a dollop of sweetened condensed milk and a spoonful of honey, stirred counter-clockwise. The other one was disgustingly plain, and I steeped the leaves a little too long.

I drank the plain tea, stewing in my impulsivity. The other cup was a milky brown; it was unappealing and painfully sweet, yet I found a warmth spilling over me. I must have been half asleep, but somewhere in my delirium, I thought I heard you scold me for taking a sip of your drink.

My eyes shot open immediately, and I frantically looked around the kitchen. Had some monkey snuck up on me? I shudder at the thought. But that wasn't the case. Just my mind playing tricks on me. I should get more sleep.

I hope you've been getting some, too- you need to get stronger. Anyway, I finished the rest of my tea and grabbed the other cup, which was ice cold. I poured the drink and watched it trickle down the steel sink- before crawling into bed.

I don't know why I thought that was worth mentioning.

Sincerely and with love,

Suguru.

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June 2008

Ten months since he defected.

Dear Friend,

Do you ever think about how dreams can be worse than reality? Writing that down seems silly because you know more than anyone, and considering I've held you until we fell asleep, I should know the answer. In truth, whenever I held you, I thought it would be a good opportunity to say things to you that I couldn't do while you were awake, as if these letters weren't enough!

I used to say really embarrassing things and a sadistic part of me wished you would wake up and ask me if I really meant what I said- but I digress.

It's hard to distinguish alcohol-laced dreams (brought upon by terrible dates the girls have insisted I go on) from memories. All that to say, I had a vivid dream (?) of how I think my first kiss went.

Autumn had brought about a cool night and an impulsive decision to sneak into an amusement park. We drunkenly went on this massive Ferris wheel, and you pulled out a cigarette and offered me a drag. I said no, and for some reason, we got into an argument and then sat in silence.

At some point, I thought to myself, "When will this ride stop?" then, by some miracle, it did! We sat in silence, and then I started smoking a cigarette too. Maybe because it felt cold in my dream, but the warm glow of nicotine and your body kept me warm. Then I kissed you.

Writing about this now… it's too clear to just be a dream. I hope it wasn't a dream. My youth seems so distant compared to where I am now.

The humidity is so oppressive. I feel like I'm soaking in my own sweat. It seems a little facetious to say that now. I keep recalling pockets of my adolescence. It's kind of like a gum packet you thought was empty, but when you go to dispose of it- there are actually three pieces left.

There's poetry in that somewhere, not to mansplain. Obviously.

Excuse my tangents; I'm still trying to recruit new curse users, not to mention pacifying the congregation at my Church, and my mind is so disorganized.

What's new, though?

Sincerely and with love always,

Suguru.

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September 2008

One year since he defected.

Dear, Friend,

Dear Friend,

I went on a walk the other day. The sun was just rising above the horizon, nothing was open, and everything was quiet except for the few stragglers who had missed the last train. Some of them reeked of curses and desperation; it's enough to make a person grow a second stomach and throw it back up.

I did collect some in passing (in case I need it later), but I found no joy in helping others who can't even help themselves. This is what we sorcerers were made for, right? Cleaning up shit that's not even ours? I'm getting sidetracked again.

If you're wondering about my influence over the former Star Plasma Church- it's going okay. Slowly but surely, I'll get a more extensive following. I cannot remember if I told you this, but I have decided to promote myself as a monk. I am relying on word of mouth and exorcising curses or "performing miracles," to gain some trust.

Anyhow, if I'm going to exorcise these curses, I'll make sure to get a steady income. I am a father, after all. Hopefully, there's something else to gain from that. But I can only do this for so long. Please remind me to think of a more permanent solution.

The sun is rising again.

Sincerely and with love always,

Suguru.

(P.S.) I know you can't ever remind me of anything, really, but like always I feel a little more at ease writing this down.

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December 2008

One year after, he defected.

Dear Friend,

Merry Christmas. Or, happy holidays. I've been keeping busy, and I hope you have been, too. Technically, this is my second Christmas / Holiday without you. It's still as weird as the first.

Actually, I don't know if it will ever get comfortable.

People say that the holidays are the worst for people like me. Exacerbated loneliness and the weather all contribute to an increase in curses. It's great money, but how useful is that?

I mean, you could have all the money in the world and still be miserable. Recently, I've started to gain traction from this stout millionaire who always seems to have a gang of curses around at all times.

We met by an unfortunate yet beneficial accident. Apparently, he's one of the few dimwits who can see curses. He's been aimlessly wandering about, trying to find someone to help, but no one believed him.

I was taking the girls to an optometrist appointment, and while I was finishing some paperwork, I overheard this screeching. Curiosity took over me, so I snuck a glance into the room behind the secretary's desk.

There was a massive commotion with several doctors trying to reassure that man I was talking about before. It turns out that he could see curses, and when no one was looking, I exorcised them for him. It was second nature to help someone so pathetic. He kept on calling me a miracle worker- insane! I guess I've been like that since I was little… However, he kept thanking me, and an idea popped into my head:

If I can get a steady number of people to pay for my miracles, I could make an obscene amount of money and have better insurance for separation from the higher-ups.

This man seems to come from money or considerable influence. Maybe he can be my test case. It's getting late now, so I should get some rest. I have to dress up as Santa for Mimiko and Nanako.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a Happy Birthday to Satoru.

Sincerely,

Suguru.

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March 2009

Two years since he defected.

Dear Friend,

Recently, I went on a hike. It was okay and long. The ground was wet, and when I got home, I found mud everywhere. I'll tell you about the trail. It was beautiful. A murmuring stream, the wind dancing through the budding trees and a dusty rose sky. You would have loved the flowers. Whenever I see anything flourishing after a tough season, I think about you.

Despite being filled with tourists, non-sorcerers, and whatever, I was able to enjoy the sunset. Mimiko and Nanako had extra tutoring lessons, so I took advantage of the little free time I had. However, after being constantly bombarded with questions about anything and seemingly endless children's movies, the quiet that followed disturbed me.

Once I reached the end of the trail, I found myself eager to see my girls. But the hike was long, and I thought it would be a waste if I didn't stay for a minute or two. I thought it would be nice to take some pictures, so I did that before locating a place to sit. I found a wooden bench tucked underneath this wisteria tree (how it grew there is a mystery). My mind wandered aimlessly; funnily enough, I just now remembered we had that assignment due before I left.

I apologize for not doing my part. Do you think we could still submit it? Haha.

Anyways, while sitting on a bench, I overheard two people talking. It was a boring conversation, definitely not worth eavesdropping on (you'd probably say otherwise), but for whatever reason, I decided to tune into the tail end of their conversation.

One of them had been blurting out facts in order to keep a dead conversation going. Some of it was interesting, but most of them were things that they probably saw on a popsicle stick. Their friend nodded along, listening intently. This went on for a while until the one who kept spewing facts (let's call them popsicles) said something along the lines of:

"Have you ever thought about how we're a mosaic of every person we've ever met, talked to, or loved?"

Even though I don't know them (nor do I care to), that was probably the most intellectual thing they've ever said in their lives. I thought to myself and laughed.

But then I felt a sort of heaviness in my chest. The more I observed them from my peripheral, the more I could see bits and pieces of the habits they shared. How they playfully hit one another after cracking a joke, covering their mouth after saying something slightly offensive. It made me nostalgic.

On my way back down the trail, I thought about you. It was nearly dark now. I thought about how if I was a mosaic of everyone I ever loved:

"How many pieces of you make up my whole?"

"Which parts of me do you keep?"

I'm glad I'm never sending these letters; I'm probably better off not knowing these answers.

Sincerely and with love,

Suguru.

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November 2010

Three years since he defected.

Dear Friend,

I've realized that it's not love I felt for you but obsession. It's harsh, cruel and painful to put you through that. For me, you were never home. That much is true. Which isn't to say you weren't something. You are a temple, and I am a sinner. If I were to step into the Holy Land you so graciously keep tidy, I would only desecrate it with my ideals.

Unfortunately, I do not want to bathe in the river to clean myself of these thoughts. So, I will seek refuge elsewhere. You deserve that after everything.

Sincerely,

Suguru

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April 2015

Eight years since he defected.

Dear Friend,

I don't think I'll ever get tired of writing to you. Even though you'll never read these, it's stupid how only now have I realized what your father meant when he said it was easier to write things than to say them out loud. Time really is my enemy now. My previous letters mentioned how well Mimiko and Nanako are doing in school. I just thought I would say that again. I'm so incredibly proud of them.

Maybe by now, you have kids of your own- I know that you'll treat them with kindness rather than the contempt your father displayed. I thought about my parents again and their role in my life, but not for long.

You probably saw them as a safe place; to me, they were just there. A starting point to the inevitable destruction brought about by my existence. Did you know that I thought I could always save them? They trusted me to do so and keep you safe as well. Funny how life throws us around.

Work is exhausting, and during the slower days, I let my mind wander to the possible outcomes had I stayed at Jujutsu Tech. Would I be a teacher? Would I be a good teacher? Are we both teachers? You're a patient person- I know that you would be a good teacher. A faculty favourite. How promising would my students be? What would our daily routine be like? How often do we get to see each other in between classes? Are we still friends?

Are we together?

Are we in love?

From what I've gathered, you've taken a bit of a leave…

I'll save myself the hurt of writing the reason why. We both know, and unfortunately, I understand.

There's a storm barrelling towards the Church. Actually, they've issued a squall warning. The skies are rolling with grey plump clouds. I wish I could tell you what a squall is- it sounds dumb, but apparently, it's dangerous.

Sincerely,

Suguru.

══════════════════

September 2016

Nine years since he defected.

Dear Friend,

Allies seem to come from the most unlikely places. That man I was talking about before turned out to be a great asset. I've gotten more followers and even an assistant out of it! If you're wondering, yes, it's vital.

One thing I hate more than people who cannot use jujutsu is paperwork. It takes up so much of my time. Luckily, my secretary has been doing most of the heavy lifting now. We've been working long hours together, and to be honest, I don't mind. She's smart and beautiful. Her attitude kind of reminds me of you.

Sorry about the short letters- historically, mine have been longer than yours, but I have been planning something big that needs my attention. Not to mention, Mimiko and Nanako are entering their phase where everything I do seems to make them cringe.

Years ago, I said that children laughing at you was more mortifying than adults. I still believe that to be true; however, both cannot hold a candle to the shame and quickly depleting self-worth a couple of teenagers laughing at you but promptly saying, "Oh, it's nothing" can do.

My family is growing, not in the way yours is. Or so I've heard.

It fills me with so much joy to be surrounded by other like-minded people. People who believe that in order to obtain peace or a brief period of one- non-curse users should cease to be.

My heart is overflowing- but there's still a piece where you always will be.

Sincerely,

Suguru.

══════════════════

November 2017

Ten years since he defected.

Dear Friend,

Do you ever think about who gets to determine the natural outcome of anything? Is it fate? Is it man? I suppose it's hard to say since answers vary from person to person. I would like to think that it's around sixty percent individual choice and forty percent chance.

I mentioned years ago about a man who could see curses; well, yesterday, I killed him. His use to me finally ran its course. I do thank him for all he's done and the people he's brought to me. My plans are coming to fruition. The Higher Ups have been tracking my movements and expanding my influence. I bet you have already had a debrief on what to expect.

I could see how, on your end, I'm being irrational or unreasonable. But I argue that cleansing the world of non-sorcerers is the only solution. Ending their suffering will put an end to ours.

But God, what I would pay to hear what Yaga is saying! He's probably wearing those stupid sunglasses and cursing. Satoru has asked me to meet with him- probably to ask me, yet again, if I'm really going through with the Night Parade.

My answer remains firm: yes. He's probably going to tell me to stop and think about you.

Like I've said before and like I always tell Satoru, I always think about you. When I meet with Satoru, I'll ask him if he can pass along how I want to see you. The girls are calling me to take them out, so I'll perform my fatherly duties.

I hope you'll say yes. I need to see you at least once.

Sincerely,

Suguru.

══════════════════

December 2017

Three days before the Night Parade of 100 Demons.

Dear,

I must be some sort of pervert to believe that you would run away with me. I don't think pervert is the right word, but that's how I felt right then and there when you rejected me. In all fairness, I couldn't think appropriately after seeing you.

Then again, you must have some masochistic tendencies to agree to meet with me. Your hair looked beautiful, and the way the cigarette burning a bright cherry red hung on your cracked lips reminded me of that night on the Ferris Wheel, which, in fact, did happen.

I came across some old letters to confirm my hazy memory. When the snowflakes landed on your eyelashes, I just about melted, like when the sleepy snow makes its warm welcome for spring. The moon was casting shadows on your tired but beautiful face. You had a glow that made hearing you curse me out a tad more bearable.

But I'm rambling. You couldn't think about going to Shinjuku, right? I could never stop you, even more so now, but I can't back down. Not even for you- which I think was detrimental for us both ten years ago and now.

Seeing you standing next to Satoru, cursing at me, with his hand placed firmly on your hips with a face full of disdain, I think I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. But that's not a proper death. You should be standing next to me!

I watched you walk away in the dark night with a sense of urgency, a new purpose. You will probably fight in your own way, but please let me do this.

I'm not asking you- I am begging you to let me take care of you one last time.

You might not believe me, but everything I have done until now, all the blood I have shed, has been for you. I promise I will spare your children (to be fair, raiding the Gojo estate would be a waste of good sorcerers), but I can't make any promises for anyone else who stands in my way.

It seems contradictory, but I know what I am doing is right.

When I write to you again, it will be something you can read- in the new world, and we will have all the time in the world. No longer beholden to curses, only each other.

Sincerely and with all my love,

Suguru.

a/n: Suguru Geto. The man that you were and the man that you became. I love you either way, my beautiful raven-haired, purple-eyed princess. We’re about half way there! Thank you all for being so patient these last couple of months🤍. Also, apologies for any inconsistencies, I have tried my best to remember the details of this story wah!

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#cw blood #cw suggestive #𝒎𝒐𝒏𝒊’𝒔 𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒆𝒔₊˚⊹🪞.𖥔 ݁ ˖📖#suguru x reader #geto x reader #geto suguru x reader #jujutsu kaisen x you #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen angst #jjk geto #geto suguru

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sxcret-garden · 4 months

Text

4th Desire ღ Hush, My Dear [M]

ღ Aspects of Desire series ღ Ateez Jongho x fem!reader ღ words: ~5.8k ღ genre: established relationship, college AU, fluff, some humor, slice of life, a bit of angst, smut (dom!Jongho, sub!reader, semi-public (they have to keep quiet cause reader’s family is literally in the other room), quickie, clothed sex, fingering, unprotected sex, pain kink, biting (idol receiving), he’s lowkey mean… again askjfkljas, orgasm denial, praise) ღ warnings: reader has a difficult relationship with her family, mentions of her mother trying to convince her to wear a dress to an event even though reader doesn’t like wearing them, mentions of a bad experience Jongho had in his past relationship, (him running his fingers through reader’s hair)

Desc.: Dinner with your family goes about as you expected - you’re slightly uncomfortable because of their choices in conversation topics and very much bored. Luckily, your boyfriend tagged along and knows just how to make you feel better, and in the process he too seems to be able to finally let go of his worries.

Author's note: This has a bit of a different pacing than the chapters so far... fun fact! It's also the first chapter I wrote for this fic... no I don't write them in order, that would be way too simple kalsdjflksda

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“Necklace or no necklace?” you ask, raising your voice a little so your boyfriend would hear you in the other room. You hear footsteps, and not much later his figure appears in the doorframe to his room, where you’re looking yourself in the big mirror next to his wardrobe, trying to decide what to wear.

“Y/N…” he mutters your name, and as you shoot his reflection behind you a look, you immediately respond,

“I know…”

“It’s just your family,” he says it nevertheless and he walks over to you. Coming to a halt right behind you, his palms find your waist as he lets his gaze take in your figure through the mirror. “You don’t have to dress up for them.”

“I know,” you say once again, peeling yourself out of his hold in order to walk over to the far end of the closet, pulling out yet another different necklace. “This one?” you ask and Jongho gives you a huff, a sympathetic smile showing on his face.

“Did you hear what I said?” he questions, coming closer to put his hand above yours. “Wear what’s comfortable. Your parents won’t expect you to look like you’re going to some big event.”

“Well you’re the one talking…” You shoot his outfit a look - neat black pants paired with a knitted sweater in dark colors and a button-up shirt underneath it. You can tell he put at least some thought behind it.

“Hey,” his gums show as he smiles at you. “I’m trying to leave a good impression on your parents, okay? You’re their daughter, not the boyfriend who needs to make sure they like him,” he chuckles.

“They already love you. You could show up in pajamas and they’d be fine with it,” you retort.

“I wouldn’t take it that far.” You put the necklaces back to their assigned space in your boyfriend’s wardrobe, before closing its doors. You decide against wearing one after all.

“Actually… we still have time, so I want to ask you something,” you start, turning towards him. “Let’s sit down first?”

“Sure.” You notice by the way his stance changes ever so slightly that your partner can sense you have a more or less serious question. Really, you’re just curious about something that’s been on your mind for a while now. Making yourselves comfortable in the living room, you clear your throat and pose your question.

“You’re being very careful… ever since we started experimenting more while having sex,” you state. “And I appreciate that! It’s just making me wonder if there’s a reason to that, other than for general safety’s sake? Because I feel like you really don’t have to check in with me as many times as you do.” You were afraid he might not share your opinion on this, and feel criticized for something that seems perfectly reasonable to him. But to your relief he seems to know what you’re trying to say.

“Ah… you’re right,” Jongho responds, and then he thinks for a while. “There is a reason for that, actually,” he then says. You guess it might have something to do with his previous girlfriend, and it looks like you’re correct in that assumption. “I told you about how me and my ex tried going in that direction too, right?”

“Right.” The way he suddenly becomes very serious makes you tense up as well - it’s like a barely noticeable darkness reflecting in his gaze.

“So we didn’t want the same things… a lot of the time. There was this one specific thing - I’ll spare you the details here - that she kept wanting to try out but I always said no because it felt too risky for me.”

“Makes sense.”

“And one day we were out with friends, drinking.” You have a hunch what his story might lead up to, and you furrow your eyebrows as you listen on. “And we came home tipsy. Not totally drunk, we were still aware of what we were doing, but also not sober. And this time I gave in, thinking if it’s something that will give my partner pleasure, it will be fine.”

“It wasn’t fine…?” you guess, and a short and regretful laugh escapes him.

“No…”

“Oh,” you breathe.

“I hurt her that day. Not seriously, and not permanently. But it could’ve been avoided… and I think that’s why I’m being so extra careful with you. I swore to myself after that, that I wouldn’t do certain things if I’ve had something to drink or I’m too tired.” He glances up at you now, one finger swiping his hair covering his face to the side as his features soften, and he looks at you as if you were the most precious thing he’s ever laid eyes on. “But I guess I’m more afraid of hurting you than I thought I was.”

“So that’s why…” you respond. “I thought you were overdoing it a bit,” you admit. “But now I get why you’re so focused on making sure I’m okay at all times… thank you.” Grasping his hands in yours now, you look him right in the face. “I mean it. Thank you for keeping me safe.” He can only watch and blush when you bring your joint hands up, brushing a kiss onto his knuckles with your lips. “But now I’m wondering… can you enjoy it like that? I mean.. it must be stressful to always carry that fear with you.” There’s a complicated expression on his face now, and he hesitates for a second before he speaks.

“Yes and no,” he answers honestly. “I am enjoying it, please don’t misunderstand! But… yeah, I think you noticed that overall I’m not letting go as much as I might be able to without those fears. Except for last time…”

“When I called you-”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t let you say it out loud, and you wonder why. Does it really affect him that much?

“Then…” You give him a reassuring smile. “When you’re ready to let go of that fear, you can. I trust that you won’t hurt me. And I promise I will say something if you’ve overstepped a boundary or I feel unsure about something. Okay?”

“Okay,” he mouths. You get up to take a step towards him, closing the distance between the two of you, and you put your arms around him, bringing your hand up into his hair as he leans into your embrace. “Sorry for overcomplicating things and not telling you sooner,” he mutters, but you shake your head.

“No, it’s okay,” you reassure him, fingers combing through his locks. “You have a very good reason. Don’t feel pressured to go against your gut feeling, okay?”

“Okay. Thank you too for understanding.”

You remain like this for a while, and the longer you stay in this position, the harder it becomes to tear yourself away from the warmth of the hug. However, eventually you force yourself to step back anyway, because it is soon time to make your way to your parent’s place.

It’s half past 6 on this Saturday when the two of you arrive at your destination to have dinner with your parents and your grandparents. The invitation had come suddenly, and not completely unrelated to your cousin revealing that she and her long-time boyfriend would get married soon. Your mother had already warned you over the phone that she wanted to discuss some “details” with you, and that you and Jongho should come over for dinner on the weekend. You could only guess that those details would be mostly about trying to convince you what you should wear for the occasion according to her, and once you arrive at your childhood home, it doesn’t take long for that fear to come true.

“Oh my, who do we have here?” your mother greets you and, mostly, your boyfriend, who she seems to like a lot. It’s really no secret that ever since you first introduced him to her, she too wishes her daughter would get married soon. Though you’re nowhere near ready for taking such a huge step, so whenever the topic arises, you do your best to quickly switch to a different one. However, today her concerns aren’t of your marital status, but of - as you had guessed - your planned outfit for your cousin’s wedding.

Pulling you aside after making sure everyone else is seated at the dinner table, entertaining themselves with a conversation about who knows what, her demeanor immediately changes and she becomes serious.

“So, Y/N…” The moment she calls you by your name, you startle just a little bit. “I’ve been thinking.” Whenever she uses that line, you know something uncomfortable is about to go down.

“What is it?” you reply, acting as if you didn’t already know the answer.

“For your cousin’s wedding… you’re not gonna show up in that suit again, right?” Memories of the last occasion you decided to go with neat dark blue dress pants and a fitting blazer instead of the dress that multiple people apparently expected you to wear come back to you and you gulp.

“I was going to,” you say, and your mother sighs. It’s a condescending sigh, one that’s supposed to tell you how naive and young you are and how you should trust your mother’s words, who surely knows better.

“You should wear a dress at least for her wedding,” she says. “Don’t you think? I mean… every young woman there is going to wear one!”

“How do you know that?” you dare to talk back at her, but she raises her eyebrows at you in response. Evading your question, she continues,

“You’re so young and such a pretty girl! It would be a waste if you went in pants.” With a bitter taste in your mouth and a glance towards the living room where the conversation seems to be dying down a bit, you retort,

“Mom, can we talk about this another time? I think everyone’s waiting for us to join…” Not expecting your attempt at getting out of this uncomfortable conversation to work, you’re surprised when she gives in and you find her agreeing with you.

“Okay, I’ll call you about it during the week. Don’t even think about not picking up!” she adds, lifting a finger as a silent warning, and then she lets you off the hook, walking into the living room where everyone else is gathered. Letting out a deep sigh, you too follow.

Eventually you reach the part of the evening where the conversations of your family members are starting to bore you. Just because you've moved past the uncomfortable questions (at least you know your mother won’t bother you about your outfit for the wedding in front of the others) doesn't mean you feel particularly up for engaging in their small talk and occasional political debate. If you're being completely honest, you just might've been fine if it was only the small talk.

Yet here you are, watching your parents and grandparents argue about economics and politicians, and from the way Jongho is reaching over to place his hand on your thigh and gives it a gentle squeeze as he tries not to frown too much at what's unfolding at the table, you can tell he notices your discomfort too. And it's not like you didn't warn him, it's not like he didn't assure you multiple times that it's fine, he doesn't mind, he wants to come to your family dinner anyway. But now you can't help but feel apologetic to him.

As if he knew what's going through your head when you shoot him a look, your eyebrows furrowed, he shakes his head and leans in to whisper in your ear,

"Are you okay?" Frankly, you're not okay per se. Used to this is what you are, and equating one with the other in your mind, you give him a weak nod.

"They'll stop... eventually," you whisper back, so the people in question wouldn't hear. And they really do stop a mere moment later. To your dismay, they pause their noise only to comment on you and your boyfriend instead.

"The two lovebirds... look at how they can't wait until they're alone." It's your grandma of all people who makes the comment, a knowing grin sitting on her face and you feel uncomfortable. You know it's just how people act when they see a young couple - they tease. But that doesn't mean you particularly appreciate what's probably just an expression of them being happy for you.

"Mom!" your mother exclaims and everyone laughs. You glance over at Jongho, and you see him smiling along to their bickering. It's a polite smile, nothing more, because he knows how much you hate receiving this kind of attention.

"Well it's true, isn't it?" your grandma defends herself, the creases around her eyes deepening with mischief. "We were like this too when we were their age." Now she shoots your grandpa a look, one filled with warmth as he gives her a somewhat awkward laugh because of her straightforwardness, and then puts his arm around her frame to pull her in close for a moment. You can't help but wonder if you too will still be as in love with your partner once you've reached their age, and your gaze naturally wanders over to your boyfriend sitting next to you. The familiar sight of his smile, the way he lowers his head ever so slightly because after all he's still a little shy around your family, and the way he sits up straight the exact moment your father asks him a question to start a conversation all fill your chest with warmth. Without thinking, he lets his palm glide up and down your thigh once as he answers, and just as you're about to put your hand above his, he deprives you of his touch, gesturing along with the way he talks instead. You listen to them chat as the rest of the family returns to political debates, and in your father's face you can unmistakably see that, just like your mother, he's taking a liking to your boyfriend, and it fills you with relief. And yet you soon find your mind drifting off again, wondering what would happen if your boyfriend put his hand back on your thigh, letting it wander just a bit higher. Wondering how far he could technically go without anyone else at the table noticing - though you know he’d never cross the line in front of other people. And so instead you fantasize about how he would continue unknowingly riling you up, or maybe he’d be aware of it, he is Jongho after all. He’d tease you and keep an eye on you all while making sure to keep the conversation going naturally, so that not a single soul would even guess that you’re craving for him to touch you, and he’s craving for you to beg for it. And then, after dinner is finally over, he’d pull you to another room, and-

Jongho’s hand actually returning to your thigh pulls you out of your thoughts, and as he glances over to you, noticing how your mind is drifting off further and further from the conversation at the dinner table, he moves his palms a little more towards the inside of your leg. You almost startle at the sensation, and at what it inevitably stirs up inside of you, and so you turn to look at him. As soon as you do, you find him already staring back at you, the expression on his face having changed almost unnoticeably. He leans in to mutter something in your ear again, and with it, his fingertips move towards your middle just a bit, sparking desire deep inside you once again.

"Shall we get out of here for a minute?" Thankful for his suggestion, you nod, and with the excuse of you having a headache along with assuring everyone that you'll be fine, you just need some quiet, so as to prevent anyone from following you two, he leads you out of the living room and towards the bathroom at the other end of the corridor. As soon as you close the door behind you, locking up as well, he pulls you towards him by the hand he's already holding.

"You okay?" he asks, his eyes wandering to your lips instinctively, and with his free hand he captures your chin.

"Whatever..." you breathe.

"Don't say that," your boyfriend retorts, tilting his head to the side a little, now looking you in the eyes instead. "I can tell you kept zoning out in the middle of their conversations."

"Can you blame me?" You give him a huff and a weak smile as you look away and he lets go of your chin to comb his fingers through your hair instead.

"No, to be honest." Now he as well shows you an apologetic smile. "What were you thinking about when trying to drown out the sound of their arguing?"

"Just... nothing much," you answer, suddenly worried about whether he saw right through you or if his question didn't have so much meaning behind it after all.

"You sure? I noticed that you were upset when I took my hand away earlier... you sure it was nothing much?" You gulp at his tone, the way his voice alone reveals that he very much has a pretty good guess about what you've been fantasizing about for most of the evening. And at the same time he's now taking a step towards you, forcing you to back away and eventually your behind hits the edge of the sink, with your boyfriend now towering above you.

"I..." you try to say something, but it seems your body language already tells him everything he needs to know, because now he's placing one hand on the small of your back as he leans in, his lips hovering just beside your ear.

"Cause I've been thinking about dragging you off to somewhere else and putting you in a better mood for a whole while now." You swallow thickly, and when he takes a proper look at your face to see your reaction to his words, all you can do is part your lips and whisper a confession.

"Me too." He retrieves his hand from behind you, his palm wandering to your sides and then to your front, dragging it up across your chest and letting his fingertips graze your throat on its journey to finally cupping your face. Your eyelids flutter shut almost instantly as his thumb brushes across your bottom lip, and then he leans in, coming to a halt a mere inch apart from you.

"Want me to entertain you for a bit?" His enticing offer leaves you unable to do anything but nod, and when you take a glance at his face you don't miss the look he’s giving you, knowing he already has you under his spell. However, Jongho doesn't leave you much time to think about it as he kisses you slowly, a pace meant solely to make you crave for more. You throw your arms around his shoulders as you let him part your lips to deepen the kiss, and still it ends too soon. The pleading expression in your eyes only makes him chuckle, but for now he gives you what you undeniably want and he kisses you again.

His hands wander towards your hips eventually, and after pulling down your pants and underwear just enough for comfortable access, one of his hands keeps you in place while the other finds your core. A mere finger, dragged up and down your folds painfully slowly, is enough to have you moan into his kiss, and next thing you know he pulls back and ceases all motions. Shaking his head at you, he mutters,

"They might hear us."

"R-right..." you whisper an answer, already having forgotten all about your family still chatting merrily not too far away from you.

"Let's be careful," Jongho says, shushing you while momentarily removing his hand from your side. Not letting you wait, he continues his teasing motions, and you bite your bottom lip as you try not to make a sound under his touch and his more than curious gaze scanning even the tiniest of your reactions. "What?" he whispers, a somewhat mocking tone in his voice. "Didn't think you'd already be that wet just from thinking about me all evening." And before you can even come up with anything to say in your defense, he dips a finger inside you quite effortlessly, and your hips instinctively buck into his hand. The act makes him smirk, and he pushes you back into the edge of the sink to keep you from moving around. Clicking his tongue at you as quietly as he possibly can while the amusement in his gaze is apparent, he says,

"So impatient." Furrowing your brows, you shoot him a pleading expression that causes his features to soften, and he adds another finger. "That what you want?" Nodding, you can see his eyes growing darker, and you squeeze yours tightly shut as he watches on, slowly pumping his fingers in and out of you. "Feels so good, hm?" he keeps talking, his voice low and quiet, and you dig your fingertips into the fabric of his shirt where it covers his shoulders.

"Y-yeah..." you answer, doing everything in your might to keep your volume at a whisper.

"Shh," he, however, shushes you. "Don't talk. You don't wanna risk getting caught, do you?" And so you do as he says, merely shaking your head vigorously, and earning yourself a kiss brushed against your lips.

"Good girl." And then he picks up the pace just a bit, thumb now pressed against your clit, and the way he curls his fingers against that perfect spot deep inside you makes your head spin.

"Fuck," you mouth, and you earn a sharp look from your boyfriend, but he keeps going nonetheless. You can feel your knees getting weak as you melt under his touch, heatwaves rushing through your body with every time he pulls out and pushes back inside. And then, just as your high starts building up in your stomach and you throw your head back, he pulls out just as slowly as he started. For a second you stare at him blankly, but when he takes a step back, you immediately find yourself protesting.

"Don't do this... not now, please..." You can tell exactly how satisfied he is with himself for riling you up like that and then withdrawing just as you were about to find your sweet release by the cocky grin he's giving you, head leaned back ever so slightly so he could triumphantly look down at you even better.

"Why?" he asks. "It's far too risky to let you lose control. Remember?" He leans in closer now, his fingers that have just been inside your pussy merely a few seconds ago now brushing against your lips just before he leans in, the tip of his tongue licking your juices off your mouth. "They might hear us." Unable to say a word, all you can do is reach out for him, cling to him as he tries to walk backwards.

"No, please... baby... need you so bad..." You press your thighs together tightly as you speak those words, his gaze immediately dropping down to your legs as he registers the movement, and as his pupils darken, he slowly lets his eyes wander back up to your face.

"Then what do you want?"

"Just fuck me please... do whatever you want but please fuck me..."

"Love..." he calls out to you rather softly now, quite in contrast to the firm grip on your ass that he pulls you towards him with. You suck in a breath as you can unmistakably feel his bulge against your lower stomach, but Jongho doesn't waver. "I don't think you can keep quiet if I do whatever I want with you."

"I can... please..." you push him, and he seems to ponder on your plea for a moment. Just when he lets go of you, you think this is it, you're not getting what you want tonight, but then you see him unzip his own pants, and before you can think any further, he orders,

"Turn around." You don't hesitate. All you do is do as he says, facing yourself in the mirror as you bend over the sink as far as the insufficient space between its edge and the glass surface in front of you lets you. You can see his eyes being glued to you from behind, one hand moving to your back and pulling your shirt up as your boyfriend moves it towards your shoulders, while he's giving himself a few strokes with the other. His palm wanders back down, fingertips tracing your spine, and you arch your back for him as he follows your shape, eventually letting his hand rest on your ass.

"That's right," he mutters, rubbing circles onto your skin before squeezing the flesh. For a second there you prepare yourself for impact, but he's already steadying your hips, aligning himself with your cunt. Even just his tip parting your folds makes you shudder, and so he leans forward, until he can comfortably place his hand over your mouth.

"Is it okay if I do that?" he asks, whispering, and you nod your head in desperation. At this point you think you'd comply with almost anything if only he finally filled you up, and at the same time you feel warmth spreading in your chest as he checks in on you and makes sure you're comfortable. And then he pushes up into you, forcing you to bite down a moan that would've almost escaped, and you find yourself agreeing with his earlier words. There really is no way in hell you could keep quiet when he has his way with you. And yet you manage to keep it down as he settles inside you with his full size.

"One sound and I won't let you cum, got that?" he warns, and you can barely nod as he begins rolling his hips into you. Though he starts slow, he too seems close to losing his composure as he picks up speed, using you to chase his own high as well. And even though the pleasure keeps gradually building up deep inside of you, you can keep it together so far. However, when his other hand lets go of your hips so he could rub circles against your clit instead, you know he's about to drive you insane. And so, as a moan threatens to escape your throat, you do the only other thing you can think of as an alternative - you sink your teeth into the palm of his hand. With him bringing you closer to the edge with every repetition of his movements, you don't pay attention to the impact of your actions, but when you bite down harder you can suddenly hear your boyfriend hissing a curse above you.

"Fuck..." Finding the reflection of his face in the mirror and the way his features distort in pleasure as he fucks you harder only causes you to apply even more force to how you’re biting down on his palm, and in turn he tightens his grip on your face. Squeezing your eyes shut as you're about to roll them back from all the sensations coursing through your body, your orgasm comes crashing down on you, shaking you whole. Only a mere second later, a strained grunt escapes your boyfriend as he cums inside you, halting at once to allow for you both to come down from your highs.

He pulls out carefully as you release his hand, and grabbing a few paper towels, he begins cleaning you up. With one arm around your waist he helps you stand, the other wiping clean the insides of your thighs, making you shake whenever he grazes your still sensitive core.

"You okay?" he asks finally, placing a kiss just below your ear as he holds you close, letting you rest with your back against his chest.

"Yeah..." you whisper, before remembering his hand. "What about you?" You turn around, reaching for his wrist to take a closer look at his palm, only to find very apparent bite marks there. You can't help but snort at the situation, remarking, "Well, I guess it's not the noise we need to worry about now."

"Ah... right..." Taking a look at the mark himself, an embarrassed smile now graces his face, gums showing as his ears take on a soft shade of pink. You take a hold of his hand again, bringing it up to your mouth now.

"It's okay," you say, blowing some cool air onto it, before placing gentle kisses all over the mark. "I'll make it better."

You return to the table significantly later than what would’ve been a timespan where you could be sure nobody would get suspicious, but thankfully the only question you receive is whether your “headache” is better now or not as everyone’s busy cleaning up the table. Your boyfriend immediately takes a heavy looking stack of dirty plates from your mother’s hands and carries them to the kitchen instead, and once again it makes you happy to see what a good impression your parents have of him.

“You really picked a good guy, Y/N,” your mother tells you as she moves over closer to you, and you agree silently as you glance over to where his back is disappearing in the kitchen. Caught up in your feelings, you startle as she claps her hands together next to you, the loud sound immediately makes you look at her. “You get to work too! You’re gonna have to be a good wife to him!”

“Mom!” you call out, finding several things that bother you about that sentence, but in the end only addressing one. “We haven’t even been dating for that long!”

“Oh,” she throws one hand over her mouth, before smiling with a hint of mischief in her eyes, just like your grandma had done earlier. “Sorry, I got ahead of myself. But can you blame me?” Now putting her hand on your shoulder, she points in the direction of the kitchen, and following her movement with your eyes, your gaze soon comes to rest on your boyfriend, who gives you a smile upon noticing.

“Jongho,” you call out to him to make him come over to you. “Can you tell my mom to stop simping over you?”

“What?” they ask, in unison, but very much for different reasons, as your boyfriend can’t help but smile in amusement, whereas your mother adds, “What’s simping…?” And before you can explain, your boyfriend chimes in,

“It’s a good thing, I promise.”

“Ah, well,... either way, someone’s gonna have to get dessert ready, and I assume it’s not your father,” your mother switches topic, shooting you a look. And then, glancing at Jongho and then back to you, she adds, “But that won’t be a problem you’re gonna have, right?” Walking away with that, she leaves you to protest in vain and to internally die of embarrassment, and when you see your boyfriend merely laughing at the situation, you’re not sure if that makes it better or worse.

“God, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have brought you here…” you mutter, but he shakes his head, one arm snaking around your body loosely.

“Don’t worry, I’m okay,” he tries to reassure you, and yet your mood won’t change.

“But I’m not… I hate it when they are like this. They act like we’re already married…”

“Hey…” He pulls you aside, fingertips dancing down your arms until he takes a hold of your hands. “They like me. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess…” you say, averting your gaze because you really don’t want to keep discussing this, but at the same time you can’t shake the feeling that they’re taking this too far too quickly. And instead of dwelling on the topic, your boyfriend now finds reason to complain about something entirely different.

“You guess?” he asks, his tone making it sound like he’s upset, but the playful spark in his gaze as he raises his eyebrows at you tells you he’s just fooling around.

“I mean… no, it’s a good thing,” you correct yourself, shooting him a thankful smile for attempting to cheer you up and then letting him pull you into a quick hug, before your mother starts calling everyone to the dinner table again in order to have dessert. It’s self-made chocolate cake, sweet just as you like it, and even though you know it couldn’t possibly match your boyfriend’s tastes, he still finishes his entire plate.

“This is why they like you so much,” you mutter eventually, when people start moving again to get ready for bed. “You’re risking a tummy ache just to make them happy.” He can’t say anything to that, having been caught red-handed by you, who wouldn’t not know his ulterior motive behind forcing himself through sugary hell. So instead, you get up, touching his shoulder lightly as you do. “Let’s get ready for bed too?”

You help your mother put the remaining plates and cutlery into the dishwasher before brushing your teeth and eventually moving to your old room with your boyfriend. Making yourselves comfortable under your blanket which is that much fluffier than the one you’re using at his place, you immediately feel sleep tugging at your bones and you let out a content sigh.

“Say…” you mumble, facing him as you’re both rolled over onto your sides. “You didn’t seem so anxious about possibly hurting me today.”

“Oh, you’re right,” he whispers a response, sounding as if he hadn’t really noticed that fact himself.

“Is it because we didn’t have much time?” you ask, grinning at the thought of your dirty little secret that you’re keeping from everyone else in the house. Jongho thinks for a short while, but then he shakes his head along with an “mh-mh” coming from his side.

“Because I trust you.” Your smile widens at his words. “I think the trust that you’ll say no if you want me to stop is finally bigger than the fear of accidentally hurting you…”

“That’s good,” you respond, reaching out to place your palm onto his cheek, squishing it lightly between your fingers and contrary to the expected reaction, Jongho merely raises his eyebrows at you slowly, as if he couldn’t properly process what you just did. Letting go of him, you move your hand towards the back of his head instead and your partner shows you a delayed shy smile. “I’m really glad for that,” you whisper, before you roll onto your back and he reaches out for your hand in order to place a goodnight kiss onto the back of it.

“Me too.”

#ateez smut #jongho smut #ateez x reader #ateez x fem reader #ateez x you #ateez scenarios #ateez imagines #ateez series #ateez drabbles #jongho imagines #jongho x reader #smut

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bella-rose29 · 10 months

Text

You Shall Go to the Ball!

Anthony Lockwood x f!Karim!reader

Requested by anon: Hey, I don't know if you accept requests, but I have one. Reader(she is George's sister) accompanies Lockwood&co to the ball at Fittes and she is jealous when she sees Lockwood talking to the girl (maybe reader enemy or something)most of the time. She decides to interrupt the conversation and introduces herself as his wife, while showing the ring Lucy gave her, explaining what to do. A long chapter please😊

I am so sorry that this took so long anon 😭 (I'm also not sure about the title tbh but oh well)

a long chapter this will be! I made the reader George's adopted sister (I hope that's ok!). I also made this super long because I got so carried away and if it deviates from what you wanted then I'm so sorry my lovely

I made it just... a generic ball? I don't know if you had one specifically in mind but I thought it would fit better to have an occasion where they aren't fighting for their lives lol

sorry if your name is Maya bc that is the name of Lucy's crush in this and also sorry if your name is Steph bc she's the enemy of the reader (I had to put names in I'm sorry 🥲)

Word count: 9.8k (I'm doing my bit you guys)

Warnings: swearing, a sexual innuendo or two, bullying (mostly focused on the fact the reader is adopted), lockwood and reader love each other but they haven't done anything about it, tumblr lagged while I wrote most of this so there are probably mistakes, lockwood has some mildly self-deprecating thoughts, mentions of lockwood's suicidal tendencies, there's probably more but idk what

Tag list: @anathemaloren, @augustisintheair, @avdiobliss, @dangelnleif, @el-de-phi, @ell0ra-br3kk3r, @informedimagining, @karensirkobabes, @mischivana, @mitskiswift99, @mrsklockwood, @mrsyixingunicorn10, @novelizt, @ran23sblog, @superpositvecloudshipper, @t2sh0, @taygrls, @tournesol77, @wandamaximoffbae, @whenselenefallsinlove, @wordsarelife

As always, let me know here if you would like to be added to/removed from the tag list for my lockwood and co works (or drop me a message!) <3

Y/n was not happy.

She ought to have been, given the occasion, but she was very much unhappy instead.

Lucy was trying not to laugh too loudly, but was failing at her attempts to stifle just how funny she found the whole situation. "You know," she said between breathy laughs, "all of this would be a whole lot easier if you just told him how you feel."

"Nope. Not happening. Every time I try I freeze up and blabber some unintelligible words that make no sense, and I look like an idiot. So no."

The 'him' in question was Anthony Lockwood, the head of Lockwood and Co and resident of 35 Portland Row. Lucy Carlyle, George Karim and Holly Munro lived here too, and as George's sister Y/n had been invited to Lucy's 18th birthday party. It was a small party, only the five of them (six if you included the Skull, but only Lucy could hear it so Y/n didn't), but the atmosphere was lively and music was playing over the speakers George had set up. Banners and balloons stating 'Happy Birthday!' were strewn all over the living room (Y/n could already see Holly's eye twitching at the amount of confetti on the floor), and the boys were busy refilling glasses (another reason not to count the Skull - it had nothing to hold a drink with).

"You have to do it at some point though," she whispered into Y/n's ear. "But right now, you need to move." Lucy pointed in the direction Y/n was supposed to go, and she tilted her head back as she groaned.

"Remind me why you ever made me play this game?"

"Because it's my birthday, and you love me. Go on, unless you wanna forfeit."

"You're evil," Y/n hissed as she pushed herself off of the floor and made her way over to Lockwood. "I'm sorry, again."

"I'm not sure what for, to be honest. You're just playing the game." He smiled up at her from his place by the fire, and Y/n tried to ignore George's glare. "George, please stop looking at me like that. Lucy was the one who dared Y/n to sit on me." Y/n felt her face warm at his words, knowing that this night could only end in disaster for her, and decided to bite the bullet. Huffing, she turned and sat down, her back facing Lockwood as her legs went either side of his, and she let out a small yelp of surprise when his arms snaked around her waist and pulled her against him. Lucy only laughed, loud and obnoxious, and Y/n couldn't find it in her to shoot a look, still too taken aback by the feel of being hugged by Lockwood in this way. "You alright?" he asked, voice quiet and gentle in her ear, and she felt his breath on the side of her face.

"Y-yeah. I'm alright. How are you?" She cringed at herself, but his light chuckle reverberated through her and calmed her immediately.

"I'm alright. Quite comfy, actually. You're very warm." As if to back up his point he snuggled in to her shoulder, nose rubbing against the side of her neck, and Y/n almost choked. Instead she made a sort of strangled noise, and he stopped and looked up at her as though he was about to say something. Lockwood opened his mouth, but was cut off by George.

"Okay, she's sat on him, can she go back now? I don't wanna look at this anymore."

"George, Lucy dared her to do it for the rest of the game," Holly piped up, clearly enjoying this as much as Lucy. She also knew about Y/n's feelings for Lockwood, the three of them having had multiple nights where they talked for hours about the other two members of Lockwood and Co, and hadn't wasted any time at all in joining Lucy in her teasing about Y/n's crush. "Rules are rules, I'm afraid."

"Yeah, and it's my birthday, so don't even start to think about asking to stop the game. Besides, they look quite comfortable now, wouldn't wanna make 'em move again, would we?"

"I'm very comfortable, thanks Luce," Lockwood said, his hold tightening on Y/n.

"Y-yep. Perfectly good." Lucy and Holly shared a look, stifling their laughter. George sat back and crossed his arms over his chest, huffing at the scene in front of him. Y/n's brother also knew about her feelings for his boss, and he while he wasn't exactly mad about it, he also wasn't thrilled. She knew that he meant well, and was only looking out for her (especially since Lockwood tended to throw himself directly into danger most of the time), but a little support would be appreciated.

The rest of the game went without much incident, although George did have to stick his hand in the toilet (a dare from Holly that nobody expected, although since her arrival in the house the toilets were spotless so it wasn't much of a trial), and by the time Y/n realised that she should be getting home it was well past midnight.

"Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Okay, um- Lockwood! Hi!" He had just entered the living room where Y/n was stood clearing up (the others had gone up to their respective bedrooms), and she apprehended him in the doorway. "Can you help me call a taxi? I need to go home now and it's really late and-"

"Woah, slow down!" He placed his hands on her shoulders, a smile on his face. "Why don't you just stay over, yeah? It's what, two in the morning? You might as well sleep here and leave after breakfast. Your parents probably expected you to stay here anyway, right?" She nodded. It was a common occurrence for her to stay the night at Portland Row when visiting, since she didn't see them all that much. "So it's not a problem, really. You can take my bed if you like, save waking the others up."

"Lockwood, you really don't have to do that," Y/n started, but he cut her off.

"Nonsense. Holly's stayed too, so I'd feel bad if I turfed you out at this time of night."

"No, I mean giving me your bed. You don't have to do that." He shrugged, then moved to grab a blanket from one of the cupboards.

"I'll be alright, I'll sleep on the sofa. Seriously, Y/n/n, it's fine." He flashed her one of his smiles, and instantly she melted and gave in.

"Ugh, fine. But don't complain tomorrow morning when your back hurts," she wagged a finger at him, exhaustion winning out over guilt about taking his bed as she moved towards the door.

"Alright," he laughed, and Y/n didn't think she'd heard a better sound.

She traipsed upstairs and got ready for bed, and when she fell asleep moments after settling in she dreamed of the brown haired boy downstairs.

~~~

Y/n was sat at home in her room a day or so later when George burst in, arms filled with papers and glasses skewed on his nose.

"I've been thinking," he started, dumping the papers on the end of her bed and flopping next to her.

"Hi, Georgie, I'm doing great, thanks. What am I doing? Oh, not much, just sat here reading a book and listening to music." She sent him a pointed look to which he huffed and lightly slapped her arm.

"Shut up. Hi, how are you? Great, nice, okay. Can you listen to me now?"

"What?"

"So I've been thinking about you and Lockwood, and I've decided I don't mind too much. I mean, it's irritating, really, but technically I don't need to do a boyfriend check because I live with him so I know all his nasty habits and that, and I know that he's loyal to a fault, which is something I should probably raise with him, actually," George paused, frowning as he lost his train of thought.

"Um- okay... Where has this come from? I thought you wanted me to stop liking him?"

"Yeah, but then I had to listen to him pining after you for the last two hours at the Archives and I realised that maybe it would be better if you just got together already." Y/n stared at him in shock, processing the information her brother had just spewed.

"Wait, wait. Lockwood likes me? Are you sure?"

"Completely. This isn't some hypothesis or theory, it's fact. My sanity can prove it because it's nearly all gone."

"Okay, but... you're sure? Like this isn't a joke, right?"

"No! It's not a joke! God, you really are perfect for each other; he said the same thing you know. Didn't believe that I was telling the truth about you reciprocating his feelings. Seriously, you're both idiots for not seeing it, I mean, he let you sit on him a couple of days ago!"

"That was part of a game!" Y/n spluttered, face heating at the memory of his hands around her and his head in the crook of her neck.

"Well he wouldn't have cosied up to me, would he!" Y/n fell backwards against the headboard, hands pressed to her face as she groaned in frustration."You're still not gonna do anything about it, are you?" George was quieter now, and Y/n moved her hands slightly to peer at him through her fingers.

"Correct. I want cold hard proof before I make a proper fool of myself and have to never go to Portland Row again for fear of dying from embarrassment." Now it was George's turn to groan in frustration.

"Well somebody's just going to have to engineer a situation where you confess then, aren't they?!"

"Please, no. I will murder you while you sleep if you try anything." George was impassive when Y/n glared at him, used to her threats of death.

"Fine! I won't do anything, alright! Happy?"

"Sort of." They sat in comfortable silence for a little while, Y/n trying to read her book again but eventually getting too distracted by the mountain of paperwork that her brother hadn't touched since arriving. "What is all that, anyway?" she pointed to the end of the bed.

"Oh, my research for a case we have in a couple of days. I couldn't sit with Lockwood anymore, he was driving me insane."

Y/n rolled her eyes at her brother's dramatics. "Do you want help looking through it all?"

"Please. I have no doubts that Lockwood will be doing anything but research right now, and there's a lot to get through. At least I know that you'll stay focused."

"Come on then. Oh, are you staying for dinner? Mum's cooking tonight so you know it'll be good."

"I might do. I get caught up in this stuff anyway so we'll see what time it is. Thanks for the help, Y/n/n."

"No problem, Georgie." She ruffled his hair, laughing when he practically threw himself off of the bed to escape. He landed on the floor with a thud, only making Y/n laugh harder.

"I hate you," he said, sitting up and glaring at her through wonky glasses. "You're the devil, I swear."

~~~

Lockwood and George were cleaning the equipment after yet another successful case when George dropped the chains he was oiling and looked up at his boss.

"I don't get it," he started, making Lockwood glance up with a frown.

"Get what?"

"You barely know Y/n, and you only ever interact when she's here with us, so how are you so hopeless when it comes to my sister?"

Lockwood blushed as he remembered all the times he'd lied to his friends, telling them that he was going on a supply run or heading to the shops when in reality he was making his way to the cafe that Y/n worked at. He spent a good hour or so in there multiple times a week, and sometimes he'd offer to walk her home at the end of her shift, desperate for another few minutes in her presence. Since first meeting her not long after George joined his agency (she'd brought cake, homemade, saying that she wanted to give George a 'congrats on the new job!' present) Lockwood had wanted to be around her all the time; she was like the sun, and everything was gloomy without her. The first time he'd showed up at her place of work, he'd pretended it was a coincidence, acting surprised when he saw her behind the counter. Truthfully, he'd taken a gamble on whether or not she'd be working that day, but the blinding smile that was present on her face as she served customers (although Lockwood could tell it was a fake one) immediately told him that his gamble had paid off.

"Lockwood? Hi! How are you? How's Georgie doing, is he alright? Oh, did you want anything?"

"Just a tea, thanks love," he'd replied, not meaning for the term of endearment to slip out, but her resultant blush was enough to make him decide on repeating it. She started making a cup (he'd asked for it to take away), asking questions every now and then to get his order right, and he answered those as well as her previous questions about George. Eventually, he'd had to leave, paying for the tea he now held and exiting the shop with a promise to come back soon when she'd waved goodbye. It had become a sort of ritual for the two of them, Lockwood appearing a couple of times a week, sometimes to sit at a table with some case files, others he would just get his order to go, but he'd find a way to talk to her every time. On the days when he'd promised to walk her home she would have a cup of tea already prepared for him, sat on his usual table in the corner next to a plate of whatever pastry or cake she thought that he would enjoy. At some point over the years, Lockwood had started feeling his cheeks heat up whenever Y/n smiled at him, or butterflies start up in his stomach when their hands brushed, and eventually he'd had to accept the fact that he was falling in love with her.

"Lockwood? Lockwood! Back to the present, please!" George demanded, snapping his fingers in front of his friend's face. He was sure it had only been a few seconds, but George was annoyed all the same at Lockwood's daydreaming. He huffed in frustration, picking up the chains again."You two are insufferable, do you know that? Seriously, just ask her out already. She feels the same and you know it."

"I thought you didn't want me dating your sister?" Lockwood frowned, feeling hope start to bloom in his chest.

"Yeah, well, then I had to sit and listen to you talk about her for two hours the other day and I lost my mind."

"Oh. Well. I wasn't that annoying, was I?" George only stared at him, expression saying 'Are you serious?' and Lockwood had his answer.

"Just, I don't know. You both like each other, so why not? It'll save me from the pining at least."

Lockwood was quiet for a while, mulling over George's words. "I just know that she can do better than me," he eventually said, not looking up from the boots he was polishing. "I don't want her to... regret being with me, or something."

"Lockwood, having spent the last four years listening to her talk about you I can say with confidence that she won't regret being with you. All I ask is that you dial down the suicidal tendencies on cases, yeah? I really don't want to deal with her heartbroken." George's voice was the softest Lockwood had ever heard it, and Lockwood nodded his assent.

"Alright. I'm not making any promises though Sometimes my suicidal tendencies help us stop dying instead."

"I'm not doing much better than that, am I?"

"Nope. I will be slightly less chaotic on cases and that's as much as I can do for you."

"Fine. Keep polishing those boots, you've missed a spot."

~~~

It was a few weeks later when Lucy called Y/n up in a panic, yelling random words down the phone and ranting about something that sounded important.

"Lucy, Lucy! Stop talking for a moment!" The other girl did so, promptly falling silent, and Y/n took a breath. "What's happened?"

"There's this party- ball- thing that Fittes are throwing in like, two weeks, and we have to go because we've been invited but I have nothing to wear. At all. And you always know what to do in these situations so I figured you could help me?"

She was quiet for a moment, and then said "But it's... in two weeks?"

"Yeah."

"So why are you worrying about it right now?"

"Because loads of people have been invited, Y/n! What if the perfect outfit sells out? What if I end up in something I hate because there was nothing else?"

"Wait, wait wait." Y/n sat forward on her bed, pulling the phone off of the nightstand when the cord no longer reached. "Are you trying to impress somebody?" Now it was Lucy's turn to be quiet, and Y/n scoffed in disbelief. "Oh my god, Lucy Carlyle, do you have a crush?!"

"No, I don't! Shut up! Ugh! You are so annoying, for fuck's sake!"

"You totally do! You so have a crush! Who is it? Tell me!"

"I am telling you nothing, you nosey little bastard!"

"Okay, okay! Fine! I will get this information out of you, I hope you know. When do you wanna go shopping then?"

"Today?"

"Jesus, thanks for the notice!"

"A different day then! But we are not leaving it to the last minute like you always do!"

"No, no, it's fine, Luce. Mum's gone full clean mode anyway so it gives me an excuse to get out the house. Make my siblings do the work."

"Aren't you worried about your own room coming under fire?"

"Nope. We did mine yesterday, so I know I'm safe. I'll meet you at yours in twenty minutes?"

"Yeah, alright." They hung up and Y/n rushed downstairs, grabbing her bag and coat and pulling her shoes on, and within a few minutes she was yelling to her parents that she'd be back later and laughing at her siblings when they complained about her leaving them to their mother's cleaning fury.

~~~

"So," Y/n started, her tone supposedly disinterested as she, Lucy and Holly browsed the department store racks for something for the two agents to wear. "Who is it? The person you're dressing up for?"

"Oi, quit it." Lucy sent a glare her way, but it was too late. Holly had overheard and was joining in, and for once Y/n was glad that it wasn't her being questioned about a crush.

"Are we talking about Maya?"

"No," Lucy shot back, far too quickly for it to be the truth, and her rapidly reddening cheeks weren't helping either.

"Is that her name? Oh my god, okay! Wait, what do you know about her, Holly?"

"She hasn't told you anything? Okay, okay, so she's called Maya, works at Fittes which isn't brilliant, but she's sweet enough. Lucy totally wrecked her first impression though, which was hilarious."

"It was not! I looked like an idiot!" Lucy now had her face in her hands, and Holly had moved to link arms with Y/n. It turned out that Lucy had quite literally fallen for this girl after tripping on a kerb when staring at her, and Holly had laughed so hard she had to dash to a nearby toilet.

"Yeah, no, that is hilarious, Luce," Y/n cackled, gaining some glares from other shoppers.

"You can't talk, little miss 'I sat on Lockwood's lap and fucking yelped'!" Y/n opened her mouth in protest, looking to Holly for support, but the girl only shook her head and sided with Lucy again.

"I didn't think anybody heard that," she mumbled, mortified that apparently they had heard, and worse, hadn't forgotten.

"Oh we all heard, trust me."

"Ugh, I thought I was free because Lucy has a crush now!"

"Nope. Neither of you are off the hook," Holly declared as she laughed, and Y/n and Lucy shared a look. "Why did you yelp, anyway?"

"I was surprised, okay?"

"Did he have a flare in his pocket?" Lucy snickered with an exaggerated wink, and Y/n whacked her arm.

"No, he did not! You are ridiculous! He just... pulled me backwards into a hug, and it surprised me," she explained, voice higher than usual.

"Right... okay," Holly said, playfully narrowing her eyes. "Whatever you say!"

"I'm telling the truth!" Y/n called after them as they moved on, and she rushed to catch up.

~~~

"Oh, this store is so much better than that last one, look at the range!"

"Holly, have you ever considered working in retail if you stop being an agent?"

"God no, have you heard the horror stories? No thank you."

They were wandering around the third department store of the day when Lucy gasped loudly and practically ran to a rack of clothes.

"This one. This is the one. Oh, look at it! No, no way! It has pockets?! I am in love, and I can die happy!"

"Lucy, what are you actually talking about? Because we can't see it from here," Y/n said, and Lucy turned around with a wide smile on her face as she held up the dress. It was similar to the one she'd worn a while ago, back before Holly had joined and Lockwood and Co were into theft (they needed a book from the Black Library), but Lucy had wanted a new one given the other was slightly worse for wear.

"Oh, Lucy, it's gorgeous," Holly complimented, and Y/n agreed.

"Yeah, seriously Luce. Go and try it on!"

They ushered her into the changing rooms, and while they were waiting Holly and Y/n had a seat on the chairs nearby.

"What are you going to wear?" Holly asked, and Y/n frowned in confusion.

"What do you mean?"

"To the ball? What are you going to wear? You are coming with us, aren't you?"

"Uh, I guess I can. I hadn't thought about it, to be honest. I don't think I have anything suitable to wear though."

"Well we've still got time, we can look around for something! Maybe something that will help you confess?" Holly nudged, and Y/n was just about to stop spluttering in protest and defend herself when Lucy walked out.

"Holy shit, Lucy."

"Yeah, holy shit."

"'Holy shit' in a good way or 'holy shit' in a bad way?" she asked, chewing on her lip and smoothing out the fabric.

"Good way," Y/n and Holly replied instantly.

"You look amazing, Luce, honestly," Y/n smiled, and Lucy returned it.

"Definitely that one," Holly agreed.

~~~

Holly had insisted that they keep looking around the store for something for Y/n (Lucy had agreed with Holly that Y/n 'shall go to the ball!' - she'd even declared it like the fairy godmother), and so they spent the next few hours carrying out the same painful process that they had just done with Lucy.

"Y/n? Is that you? It is!"

Y/n froze at the voice, squeezing her eyes shut in the hopes that if she just kept walking then she would be left alone.

"Y/n!"

No chance of that, then, given she'd been taken by the arm and wrapped in a hug that was entirely too fake and smelt incredibly strongly of perfume.

"Steph, hi," Y/n hoped she didn't sound too displeased to see the girl, but then again they'd never been friends, and Steph had always been a bitch to her.

"What are you doing here? I didn't think shopping was your..." she waved her hands at Y/n, "thing." She glanced up and down Y/n's body, raising her eyebrows slightly and smiling too widely.

"Not really, but I prefer it when I'm with my friends and they wanted to go out," she said, trying to figure out an escape route.

"Oh, so you're not getting anything?" Before Y/n could respond, Steph had already started talking again. "Of course you aren't, you couldn't afford it, what with your family having so many people in it."

"Who the hell do you think you are?"

"Lucy, please don't," Y/n hissed, trying to deter her friend from beating the shit out of her enemy.

"You have no right to talk to her like that, okay? And for your information, she is getting something, and it's going to be a dress that makes her look like the goddess she is, alright? So take your fake brands and irrelevant opinions and shove 'em up your arse!" Lucy ranted, shoving her finger in Steph's direction to emphasise her points. The girl was taken aback for a moment, blinking in shock, then scoffed.

"Whatever. Enjoy your lame dress, Karim. Or whatever your last name is, since we all know that you're adopted." Steph left, her two companions following with a click of their stupidly high heels, and Y/n felt tears start to prick at the corners of her eyes. Lucy was practically growling after them, and Holly had brought Y/n into a proper hug, tight and comforting.

"Well she's a bitch. How d'you know her?"

"School," Y/n sniffed, trying to prevent the tears from falling. "She never liked me for some reason, or maybe I was just easy to pick on because I don't know who my real parents are, but she always made it a point to single me out."

"Right, if she ever comes back I'm punching her."

"Lucy," Y/n berated, although she was laughing a little as she did so.

"I mean it! She's awful! Now, have we looked everywhere in this store?"

"I think so, let's try the next one," Holly said.

"Guys, it's not a big deal, really. Don't let me take up more of your time."

"Y/n, stop being ridiculous. We are finding you a dress and that's that."

"Lucy," Y/n whined as the girl grabbed hold of her arm, Holly taking the other, and led her off out of the store.

~~~

"This one?"

"Hm? No, I don't think so."

"What about this one?"

"God no, I'd look like shit."

"How about-"

"Ew, nope."

Many of their discussions had continued in this manner since leaving the store where Steph had appeared, and Y/n was still trying to find a dress that she loved. There had been many that had looked great, but when she'd tried them on there was something just not quite right, and she'd taken it off with a sigh. Curfew was starting to creep up on the three of them, and Y/n was worried that she'd never find an outfit and have to either go in a potato sack or just not go at all.

"You'll find something, Y/n," Holly said, nudging her shoulder against Y/n's.

"It's not looking very likely though, is it?" Holly didn't say anything, offering a sympathetic smile instead.

"Oh. My. God. Y/n/n, what about this one?" Lucy shouted from across the store (the last one that they hadn't previously looked around). Y/n and Holly giggled at their friend's antics, walking over to see what she wanted them to see. She was holding up a deep red dress, gaping at it with her eyes wide and mouth hanging open like she was a fish. "Ok. No thinking, no questioning, find the dressing room and put this on." Lucy bundled the dress into Y/n's arms and then shoved her in the direction of the changing rooms.

"You sure about this one, Lucy?"

"I'm positive, Holly."

~~~

The two agents were waiting outside for Y/n to appear when George turned up.

"What are you two doing here? Lucy, haven't you already got a dress?"

"Oh, hi George. Yeah, I got one earlier since my other nice dress is kind of old now, but Y/n's trying one on. Why are you here?"

"Apparently my other suit isn't nice enough, so I had to get a new one. Lucky that we've been getting some high paying customers recently that I could afford it."

"When you say your 'other suit', do you mean the one that has plasm stains and holes in it from moths?"

"...Yes."

"She's been in there a while, do you think she needs help?" Holly said after a lull in Lucy and George's conversation.

"I'm fine! Gimme two seconds!" Y/n shouted, and Lucy snickered.

"Wait, why's she trying on a dress?" George frowned, finally registering the fact that his sister was in the changing room.

"Because she's coming with us to the Fittes Ball in a couple of weeks and this girl was being a bitch-"

"Stephanie?"

"Uh- yeah. How'd you know?"

"Y/n complains about her a lot. I think they're arch enemies or something."

"Oh."

"What's she got to do with finding a dress though? Attending the ball makes sense, but where does Steph come into this?"

"Lucy might have shouted that Y/n was going to get a dress that made her look like a goddess," Holly chimed in.

"Ah, I see. So now my sister is... what, trying one on?"

"Yep. You sure you're okay?" Lucy shouted the last part in the direction of a stall, just as Y/n swept back the curtain and stepped out.

"Woah," Lucy and Holly said. George was silent, staring at his sister.

"Good woah or bad woah?" Y/n asked, smiling a little as she remembered Lucy asking a similar thing earlier that day.

"Good woah, for sure," Holly said, Lucy nodding next to her.

"Oh, Georgie. I didn't know you were here," Y/n looked more nervous now, clearly wanting her brother to say something positive.

"Do you like it?" he asked.

"Yeah. I do. I really do."

"You look beautiful, Y/n/n."

"Thank you, Georgie."

"Definitely look like a goddess," Lucy added.

~~~

"Lockwood, hi!" Y/n hadn't expected to see him today, but he had just entered the small cafe that she worked in.

"Hi, Y/n/n, how're you?" He looked antsy, like he wanted to know something, and was shifting on his feet.

"I'm alright... you okay? You look like you have a rash," she said, starting to make him a tea the way she knew he liked it.

"Uh- what? No, I don't... I don't have a rash, I just, well, I heard that you're coming to the ball with us next week?"

"Oh, yeah. The girls convinced me to go. We went dress shopping for Lucy last week and Holly told me I should go with you all. You don't mind, do you?"

"No! No, of course I don't mind!"

"Good, 'cause I already got a dress when Lucy got hers, and it was expensive and I need a justification for getting it or Mum'll be mad." She poured the hot water in, careful not to spill any over her hands (it had happened more times today than she'd like to admit), turning and finishing the tea off, placing a lid on the top of the take away cup. She pushed it across the counter, shaking her head when Lockwood pulled out his wallet to pay. "On the house, you look like you need it." He smiled at her, making her heart flutter, and pushed a fiver into the tip jar next to her as he ignored her protests.

"Thank you. Are you going to get changed with the rest of us? Or do you want us to pick you up from yours?"

"Oh, I was gonna get changed with Holly and Lucy. I'll probably come over quite early if that's alright with you?"

"Of course, you know I don't mind having you over, love. Thanks for the tea!" he called out as he left, unaware of Y/n's blush.

~~~

"Why do girls take so long getting ready for things?"

Lockwood looked up at George's words as he entered the kitchen, folding his paper and throwing it on the table. "Not sure. I'm relatively sure they plan world domination while they do it."

"Makes sense," George shrugged, flopping into a chair and pulling at his bow tie. "They have been in Lucy's room for hours now though. Do you think we need to be worried?"

"I hear them laughing every now and then, so they're still alive at least," Lockwood replied. George hummed, pushing his glasses back up his nose. All of a sudden the two boys heard footsteps thundering on the stairs, and a moment later Lucy's head poked through the kitchen door.

"Please make your way into the hall!" she half shouted, not caring that she was only a few metres away from them and disappearing again. Lockwood and George shared a look, then slowly pushed themselves out of their chairs and moved into the hallway to stand in front of the stairs. A few minutes passed, with hushed conversation barely audible from the top of the stairs, and eventually Holly said "Oh, I'll go!" and came downstairs. She looked lovely in her dress, gold fabric shimmering as she took the steps and ended up at the bottom, Lucy following closely behind in her deep blue (a staple colour for the girl), also looking gorgeous. Lockwood frowned slightly when he realised that Y/n wasn't with them, and when her head poked over the bannister with a worried expression he started feeling nervous.

"Guys, are you sure?" she asked, biting her lip. Lucy and Holly nodded, and George gave her a thumbs up.

"Wait," Lockwood started. "Has everybody seen her dress but me?"

"Yep," George said, the girls nodding behind him.

"So why are you so nervous, Y/n/n?" he called up, frowning.

"I don't know!"

"Just come downstairs!" A loud honk sounded from outside then, and the four agents turned to look in the direction of the sound.

"That'll be the cab," Lucy piped up, heading over to the door. "We'll wait for you two," she winked, and Lockwood felt his face heat up. How did she know about his feelings for Y/n?

"Please don't break her heart, Lockwood. Or I'll deliberately throw badly the next time we're on a case."

"George, no offence, but you can't aim anyway. Maybe if you deliberately aimed badly you'd throw it the right way."

"I mean it. Remember what we talked about the other week, and don't screw it up, yeah?" George patted Lockwood's shoulder, grabbing his jacket and heading outside after the girls.

"Lockwood?"

"Yeah?"

"They've all left, haven't they?"

"Yeah." Y/n didn't answer, instead letting out a groan that made Lockwood chuckle.

"Just come downstairs, Y/n/n. We're going to be late."

"Promise you'll be nice?"

"Why would I not be nice?"

"I don't know! Just promise?"

"Okay! I promise!" He was trying to stifle his laughter in the hopes that she wouldn't take it the wrong way when Y/n appeared at the top of the landing and took his breath away. She was stunning, the dress fitting perfectly and making her look ethereal.

"Lockwood? I look terrible, don't I? I'll stay here, you guys go without me-"

"No! No, don't... you look... you look- pretty," he settled on, wincing at his awkwardness. "You look really pretty, Y/n." He didn't miss the way her smile grew, or the way his face warmed, and when she muttered a small 'Thanks' under her breath his heart stuttered. "We should, uh," he cleared his throat. "We should probably... go..." he trailed off, still blushing. She had come closer and now he could smell her perfume, and when she brushed past him to open the door he thought he might faint from the brief physical contact. What was wrong with him? He was Anthony bloody Lockwood, so why was he acting so foolishly around this girl?

"Are you coming, then? Or are you gonna keep standing there like a lemon?"

"Uh, yeah, I'm- yep."

They packed themselves into the taxi, Lockwood stubbornly ignoring Lucy's smirk as the last two available seats for him and Y/n were right next to each other (which he was entirely certain had been planned), thighs pressed together, and a few moments later they were on the road, heading for the Fittes building.

~~~

"Holy shit, this is insane, Lucy," Y/n gasped, staring around the room in wonder. "Lucy?" She looked for her friend, wondering why she hadn't said anything in response, when she saw Lucy talking to a girl.

"That's Maya," Holly whispered, taking Y/n's arm and looping it through her own.

"God, she's gorgeous. I can see why Lucy likes her." Holly hummed her agreement, taking the two of them on a lap of the room.

"Did something happen between you and Lockwood before you got in the taxi?" she asked after a pause.

"What? No, why?" Y/n's eyes were wide, heat creeping up her neck at the memory of him calling her pretty.

"He can't stop staring at you. He looks like an idiot, to be completely honest." Now her eyes were wide for a different reason, turning to find Lockwood's body in the crowd. Sure enough, he was already looking their way, and after a few moments he seemed to realise that he'd been caught, blushing and rejoining the conversation he was having with George and some agent from Rotwell.

"You sure nothing happened?" Holly asked again, eyebrow raised.

"...Yep." The other girl just laughed, clearly not believing her, and dragged her further around the room.

~~~

"You alright, Luce?"

"Not really," she said, slumping into the chair next to Y/n. "Maya's talking to some other girl and I couldn't relate to anything they were saying, so I left."

"Aw, Lucy. You have been talking to her for what, an hour already? You're not going to have everything in common," Y/n reassured her friend, offering a soft smile.

"I s'pose you're right," she started. "That's what makes a good relationship, right?" Lucy was perking up with every word, sitting up in her chair and leaning forward.

"Yeah, like Y/n and Lockwood," Holly chimed in.

"Yeah, Holly's right. Wait, like- what?! What do you mean?! We're not- he's not-" Y/n spluttered, trying desperately to gain control of the situation after the slip-up and failing miserably. Lucy and Holly were doubled over laughing, clearly finding the situation hilarious, when all of a sudden Y/n shot her arms out to either side, grabbing hold of her friends. "No, seriously, stop it now. Look," she pointed towards Lockwood, hoping the girls would pick up on what was wrong.

"Is that-?"

"I'm gonna kick her arse into next fucking we-"

"Fucking Stephanie," Y/n spat, not missing the way that she was flirting with Lockwood. She hadn't realised the bitch was here, but now that she had it was incredibly difficult to take her eyes off of the scene. Now it was her turn to be gloomy, and every attempt to talk to Lockwood ended with Steph's friends (minions) pushing her back and acting like incredibly non-threatening bodyguards, but Y/n didn't want to cause a scene in the middle of a party that she wasn't technically invited to by shoving back.

Roughly an hour and a half after first spotting Stephanie with Lockwood, Y/n was stood with her back to a wall as she miserably looked on at the two of them somehow still engaged in conversation. The worst part was, Steph didn't look like she would be ending their chat anytime soon, and didn't appear to want to leave. Whether the girl knew about his affiliation with Y/n or not, she wasn't sure, but it was making Y/n increasingly more irritated as the night went on.

"Here," Lucy said, appearing at Y/n's side. "Take this." She held her hand out, one of her rings that she always wore sat in the centre of her palm, the sapphire shining up at her from its place in the centre of the band of silver.

"Uh, why?" A frown settled on Y/n's face, unsure where Lucy's mind was going.

"Because you're gonna go up to Lockwood, big smile on your face, and ask Steph why she's fondling your husband." Y/n could only stare at her friend, wondering what the actual hell had come over her.

"But... he's not my husband?"

"She doesn't need to know that, does she? You two are practically an old married couple anyway, so what does it matter? Besides, if nothing else it's an opportunity to cuddle up to him," she said the last part with a wink, making Y/n flush as she remembered the last time she had 'cuddled up' to Lockwood.

"Well, George is over there, he's not going to play along, is he?" she attempted to find a way out of this situation that Lucy had put her in, but the agent had a solution to everything, it seemed.

"Oh, I told him about this. He's promised to go with it. There was absolutely no way I was gonna let your brother be oblivious, he's a terrible liar sometimes." Lucy was still standing with her hand out, ring gleaming up at Y/n, and she had half a mind to say no and continue suffering until she heard a loud laugh come from the other side of the room. Both girls looked for the source, and Y/n bristled when she realised that it was Steph laughing, hand placed firmly on Lockwood's arm as she leaned into him. Not thinking twice, Y/n grabbed the ring, shoved it on her finger, and marched over to where her new fake husband stood. She squeezed between Steph and Lockwood (difficult, since the other girl had practically glued herself to him) and wrapped her arms around his waist, trying to steady her heart as she felt his warmth engulf her.

"Hi, love," she smiled up at him, willing him to stop staring at her with his eyes so wide open in shock and hug her back. He stuttered for a moment, going red, and vaguely Y/n registered Steph's outraged expression in the corner of her eye and George's stifled laughter.

"Uh- hi- hello."

"Y/n? I didn't realise you were going to be here," Steph asked through gritted teeth, obviously annoyed at the interruption.

"Oh, Steph! I didn't see you there! Of course I'm here, why wouldn't I be? My husband got invited and so naturally I was his plus one!" It was petty, she knew, but totally worth it for the look on Steph's face when Y/n emphasised the word 'husband' while smiling lovingly up at Lockwood.

"...Husband?" she asked, eyes flicking back and forth between the two of them. Lockwood was still rigid as a pole, although he had brought his arms around Y/n's waist after she pinched him in the side. He leaned in to whisper in her ear.

"I second that. Husband?"

"Oh, did I not tell you?" Lockwood hadn't moved his head away from her ear, instead nuzzling further into her neck, and it was becoming difficult to think straight. "We got married!" She flashed the ring at Steph, delighting in both the pure, unfiltered shock on her face and also the way in which Lockwood had moved his hands to hold her body closer to his.

"Well- I- okay then. But one question, for Lockwood?" He pulled his head up, dopey smile on his face as he nodded for Steph to continue.

"Why would you ever marry someone like her? I mean, you know that she's adopted, right?"

Y/n could practically feel George bristle behind her and get ready to punch Steph's lights out, but Lockwood remained calm, his expression sharpening and spine straightening as he took Steph in.

"I don't see how her not being biologically related to her parents affects how much I love her, do you?"

"It's just that-"

"I married Y/n because of who she is, not because of her family, although having George around is wonderful," Lockwood cast a smile at Y/n's brother before continuing. "She's the most incredible person I have ever met, and she far outshines you in every way and I think you know that, and you're jealous of it. I know that I'm jealous of how incredible you are, darling," he turned to Y/n, using the hand that wasn't around her waist to push back a lock of hair, his fingers lingering for a few moments more than was necessary as he smiled softly at her. "And quite honestly, Steph, if you can't agree with me on that then I don't think we have anything else to talk about, do we?" It was a rhetorical question, Lockwood already turning away and linking his hand with Y/n's as he dragged her to the side of the room, but they could hear Steph spluttering being them as they went.

"So," he started once they were far enough away. "What was that all about?" He hadn't let go of her hand, and his thumb had started softly tracing patterns over their intertwined fingers.

"What?"

"I don't remember marrying you, Y/n, unless it happened when I was really drunk or sleep deprived," he joked, although something in his eyes was searching for any hint of truth to the words in her face.

"I just- she's- I-" Y/n took a breath, trying to figure out how to explain the whole thing to him without him getting mad or laughing at her. "Steph's always hated me, and Lucy knows that-"

"What's Lucy got to do with this?" She huffed at him, small frown appearing on her face.

"If you let me finish then you'd know!"

"Alright! Alright!"

"Yeah, so Lucy knows that Steph hates me, and I hate her, and you two were talking for so long and she was all over you and I couldn't keep watching, so Lucy gave me this ring that I think is actually one of mine that she stole," she frowned down at her hand, going off on a tangent, "and she told me I should go over and say we were married to get rid of Steph."

Lockwood didn't say anything, instead just staring at her with a blank expression, and Y/n looked down at their still linked hands.

"I'm sorry," she whispered after a while.

"Don't be," he whispered back, using his free hand to lift her chin up. "I'm just a little annoyed, to be honest."

"Oh, god, I really am sorry, Lockwood! I didn't mean to make you upset or anything, I just got pissed off with her and-"

"No! No no no, stop right there. I'm not annoyed at you, darling, never you. I'm annoyed at myself for not coming up with that plan earlier. She was really starting to piss me off too, and I kept hoping that George would intervene or something and he never did- I'm going to have to talk to him about that," Lockwood frowned, looking in her brother's direction. "I'm also... I'm annoyed that this is how I tell you that-"

"Here you are! I was wondering where you two had run off to!" George appeared, bright smile on his face, and Y/n couldn't stop the glare that came onto her face. Tell me what? If only George had turned up a few moments later, then she would know what Lockwood wanted to say. "We should probably find the others, party's wrapping up now and I'm craving my bed." Lockwood heaved a sigh, then nodded in agreement, following after George as her brother tried to find Lucy and Holly, casting a slightly pained glance over his shoulder at Y/n.

Tell me what?!

~~~

The journey back to Portland Row was uneventful since everybody was exhausted, although Lucy was practically buzzing in her seat because Maya had passed on her number, telling Lucy to call her.

"This means something, right?" she exclaimed as they piled through the front door. "I have a real chance with her, don't I?"

"Yes, Lucy. Yes you do," Y/n yawned, leaning slightly on Lockwood to take her heels off. Why she'd ever let Holly convince her that heels were needed when she could have worn her trainers instead she wasn't sure, but she breathed a sigh of relief when the first one was finally off. She wobbled for a moment trying to undo the strap on the other one when Lockwood steadied her, crouched down, and took her leg into his hands as his fingers worked the clasp. A few moments later he was done, gently pulling the shoe off of her foot, and although he had only had his hands on her for what couldn't have been more than ten seconds Y/n could feel her cheeks heating up and her heart beating faster.

"Lockwood, what the fuck are you doing?"

"George, they're having a moment, alright? Leave 'em alone," Lucy hissed, taking him by the arm and dragging him upstairs, hushed apologies whispered as he tripped and face planted due to her harsh tugging.

"Good night you two, I'll see you in the morning," Holly said, following after her coworkers and leaving Y/n and Lockwood in the entrance hall alone for the second time in the last twenty-four hours.

"You're not going to bed, are you?" Y/n asked, a knowing smile on her face as she looked at Lockwood. He shrugged, heading towards the library instead of up the stairs.

"I'm not feeling too tired, to be honest," he replied.

"You never feel tired, I swear. Do you ever sleep?" She mock gasped. "Are you a vampire? Is that why you're so pale and are always awake at night?" She broke off into a fit of giggles, exhaustion making her mildly hyper.

"No, I am not a vampire," Lockwood laughed, shaking his head at her antics. "Go on, you should head up. Unlike me you can't run on tea and tea alone."

Y/n nodded, heading for the stairs, but stopped a little way up as she remembered something. "Lockwood?"

He paused in the doorway of the library, turning to face her with one hand still on the handle. "Yeah?"

"What were you gonna tell me before George came over? At the ball? You said you were annoyed that it took you so long to tell me something." A frown had worked its way onto her face, but Lockwood's was filled with a smile.

"Go to bed, darling. I'll see you in the morning." He disappeared into the library, leaving Y/n standing on the staircase staring at the place he had just been.

~~~

The next morning Y/n woke to an empty room, Lucy and Holly nowhere to be seen in the attic. She laid in bed for a little while, soaking in not having to get up and go to work, but eventually the need for food grew too strong and she was forced to start her day.

The kitchen was empty of George, too, and a short investigation led to finding a scribbled note on the thinking cloth that Holly, Lucy and George had gone for a grocery run at the supermarket. That left Lockwood, who was either hiding away in the house or had gone off on his own somewhere. Y/n's question was answered a few minutes later as she was pouring hot water into a mug for tea, and she nearly spilled the liquid all over her hands when Lockwood appeared and asked her to pour a cup for him.

"Shitting hell, Lockwood! Where did you come from?"

"Oh, I was downstairs. Doing a spot of rapier practice. Thanks," he gratefully accepted the mug that Y/n handed him, smiling brightly at her over the edge. She tried desperately to ignore the flush to his skin (and the mental images of Lockwood training), and turned back to her own mug of tea, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment in the hopes that she could go back to thinking normal thoughts. "You alright?"

"Hm? Oh, yes! Yeah, yep. I'm fine," she exclaimed, wincing at how the words came out. Lockwood stifled a snort (unsuccessfully) and took a sip of tea, yelping a moment later.

"Shit, that's hot!"

"Why wouldn't it be? You idiot!" Y/n was laughing fully, not bothering to hide how amusing she found the whole situation, and Lockwood was glaring at her from where he stood fanning his mouth. "You literally watched me pour boiling water into that like, a minute ago!"

"I know! I know! Stop laughing, will you? I feel bullied. I'm being bullied."

He took a glass out of the cupboard, filling it up with cold water from the tap and taking a long drink. They stood in silence for a while after that, Lockwood taking tentative sips of his tea while Y/n took large gulps, trying not to laugh at him when the memory of his reaction came back. They were very rarely alone in the house, with at least one other person somewhere and about to walk in, and Y/n decided that Lockwood had nowhere to go so she might as well corner him.

"Why didn't you answer me last night? When I asked what you wanted to tell me?"

He froze momentarily, the tips of his ears going pink as he hid behind his mug and scratched at the back of his head. "It doesn't matter, Y/n/n. Really."

"Well it matters to me, Lockwood. If nothing else the not knowing is killing me. Also I had just dragged you into a marriage with me, and while I do feel bad about that I also feel that you owe me this as well."

"You didn't drag me into a marriage, you surprised me with one," he joked, clearly stalling.

"Okay, fine, but seriously what were you going to say before my idiot brother came over?"

"I was just... going to say that..." he mumbled the last part, all the words smushed together and said quietly so that Y/n had trouble picking them out.

"Sorry, I genuinely could not hear you for the life of me Lockwood," her expression was apologetic, and he sighed through his nose as he looked up at the ceiling, closing his eyes before making a decision.

"I was going to say that I was annoyed that it took me so long to tell you that I love you."

"I love you too, Lockwood," Y/n frowned, wondering why he looked so beaten up about it. The five of them often told each other that they loved them, the words thrown around casually all the time.

"No, I mean- I love you, Y/n. To the point that George punches me in the arm sometimes because I won't shut up about how amazing or funny or kind or smart you are."

"Oh."

"Yeah." He hesitated for a few seconds, then spoke up again. "If you don't... I don't want this to ruin our friendship if you don't feel the same way though."

"Why wouldn't I feel the same?"

"You haven't said anything and it's- it's freaking me out!"

"Well I do feel the same! I'm just also freaking out because you love me too!"

"We're a mess, aren't we?" Lockwood laughed.

"Absolutely."

"So- So if I asked you on a date... would you-"

"Yes. Sorry, I- you can finish."

"I mean I think I got my answer, to be honest." He smiled softly at Y/n, placing his mug down and slowly coming over to where she leaned against the countertop. She reached her arms up and draped them around his neck, bringing him into a hug, and his own hands found their way to her waist. His eyes flicked between hers and her lips, and then he was whispering "Can I kiss you?" and leaning in when she nodded, pressing his lips to hers gently. They didn't rush, taking their time as they kissed softly, Lockwood's fingers brushing the skin just under her jumper and Y/n's fingers tangling in his hair, and when they pulled away for air they stayed close, foreheads bumping against each other.

~~~

When Holly, Lucy and George got home just over an hour later, arms laden with shopping bags, the silence was deafening.

"I really hope they haven't killed each other," Holly frowned, peering up the stairs as if doing so would help her find their missing friends.

"Maybe they've finally got together and are on a date," Lucy exclaimed, poking George in the side when he wouldn't move out of the way of the cupboard that she needed to open.

"Ow! I'm torn about that. On the one hand if they do get together I'll be glad they've stopped pining, on the other they'll be insufferable. You know what Lockwood's like, all lovey-dovey and attention giving, and Y/n will soak it up like a dry sponge."

"Oh, I found them!" Holly poked her head through the kitchen door, neither Lucy or George having noticed her leave. She lead them to the library, motioning for quiet as she pushed the door open. "They must have been reading and got tired. They totally confessed, just look at them!"

Lockwood and Y/n were curled up (somehow) on the larger of the two armchairs in the library, limbs entangled and hanging off of the arms and a book dangled in Lockwood's free hand, the other wrapped around Y/n keeping her safely tucked into his chest as the two of them slept. George looked like he was trying to be upset, but Lucy could see the smile he was holding off at the sight in front of them.

"We should leave them to it, I s'pose," Lucy murmured, pulling the door shut softly with a small click. "You alright, George?"

"Just thinking about how horrible things will be with them finally together," he replied, rolling his eyes and heading back into the kitchen to start dinner.

"He's not really upset, is he," Holly said, more stating it as a fact than posing a question.

"Nope. He's gonna be singing while he cooks, I can guarantee it."

Sure enough, barely five seconds after Lucy said the words, singing could be heard from behind the closed kitchen door alongside the clash of pots and pans.

#lockwood and co #anthony lockwood #anthony lockwood x reader #anthony lockwood x you #lockwood x reader #lockwood & co #idiots in love

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