#so the last member is fighting type.
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goldensunset · 11 months ago
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are we sure we can’t just let n win tbh. if not for ghetsis being evil behind the scenes at this point i’m like yeah pokémon battling IS just pain. do your thing
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maddieandangel · 8 months ago
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Had a weird Hollow Knight-related dream a couple days ago, so I decided to draw a major scene I remembered from it dgsgshf
More context will be in the tags, for those interested!
#hollow knight#little ghost#hk ghost#the knight#hk hornet#hornet#alright. as of writing these tags it's been a week since the original dream so! let's see what i remember dgsgsgf#i was playing a game. which was a sequel to hollow knight ((Not silksong though))#there was some new sort of divine infection in hallownest and hornet had asked ghost to investigate it. they ended the last one after all!#the red glowy spike gate thingy is what you jumped into to enter the 'infected' areas#though it actually led directly to a hub world type of place. which was kinda like an expanded base for the grimm troupe?#more like an entire lair instead of a camp. also some greek gods were there for some reason lmao. they had their own special rooms too#so sidenote but- new headcanon that there are grimm troupe members named ares athena artemis &... venus lmao. not aphrodite for some reason#also monomon was there?? i think??? except she was cooking????? she had a sidequest to deliver something to someone though i dunno hdgfhdgh#i remember going back to the grimm troupe lair a couple times throughout my 'playthrough'#anyway. the 'infection' this time around was more of a glitchy physical corruption thing? rather than a mind corruption.#though there were still aggressive enemies to fight. but i remember getting a map from cornifer early on and he was. probably infected#i think part of his body was covered in electricity or something? so he wasn't fully visible? but he was still acting normally#there was also a moth who was the seer but then later wasn't the seer (but was still the same moth) dghgdhf. i delivered stuff to her#that glowing white wall thing in the drawing was like a one-way gate. you could only cross it from the other side and ghost came from there#i guess things looped back up somehow i dunno ghdgfhgf#anyway. ghost's red eyes. those are significant! those happened while i was walking through a corridor. it had pools of shallow water#(shallow enough to just walk through) and also creatures that were lightseeds but red.the implication was that they were full of Blood lmao#and as i went along killing them--as one does--as i walked through the hall. they started turning the water red too#there was also narration about this as it was happening ashdgsf. specifically the narrator said the water turned red before it actually did#ghost's eyes slowly turned red too. but aside from that they were fine! since. they're the player character and the player is perfectly fin#BUT. when they encountered hornet again. she thought they were infected. and that she lost the only family she had left </3#she didn't attack though. instead she just jumped into the red spike gate without a word. decided to try to fix everything herself#but eventually you'd encounter her again down below and she'd fight you. didn't actually get to that in the dream though#aand i'm out of tags </3 i wanted to talk about what i'd do to make this make more sense as an au or something now that i'm awake but. :c
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des8pudels8kern · 1 year ago
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There is something about the Clones, a group as homogeneous as it gets, being technically descended from one of the two most diverse people in the known Star Wars universe, and becoming so entwined with the other.
I just don't know if it's poetic or ironic.
...it is bound to be confusing, though. So much that they consider facts, at least for humans, are actually variables.
What do you mean, space cilantro tastes like soap for some people?
No, sir, we aren't trying to be disrespectful, you just walked in on us exercising. See, we saw one of the Jedi Commanders roll their tongue, and we've been trying to figure out how to do that. It's more difficult than expected though and none of us have managed.
We switched out our General's boots with clone armor shoes because we thought it would look hilarious, and it did, but apparently adult feet are not in fact uni-size and now they've got blisters and are walking funny and if either of our superiors or medics finds out it was our idea we are on latrine duty.
General. General, look at me. You have to stay awake. I know, sir, but we need to keep pressure on the wound. That's it, keep looking at me. Now, they've got us pinned down good, so we are going to need to do a field blood transfusion to keep you-- General! General, calm down! I've done this before, I promise I know what I'm... but... I don't understand. You're as human as we are. Blood is blood. It's interchangeable, isn't it. Isn't it? General?
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dadbots · 1 year ago
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August… time to get spooky.
#dadbots.txt#this has been in my draft for... almost a month. Yikes.#I’ve been dissociating hella hard these past months or something. swear I don’t remember time moving this fast. maybe it’s just me tbh.#idk what to say about July other than… boring? not much happened and I don’t really remember it if I’m honest. just. mm. shrugs.#best way to describe it LOL#been sleeping a LOT lately and I think it’s fatigue again. was it like anything before? no. not at that rate (yet) but just.#where you wanna sleep and sleep and sleep type of fatigue. you never feel rested and just gotta sleep it off kinda.#just one of those moments yknow.#it sucks. all I’m doing is letting the days pass me by and ‘missing out’ on living life when I could be enjoying it. but I lost interest -#- in doing so for months - years now due to personal health matters. And whaddya know - it came back again. after months of healing.#I'm pretty pissed as it does feel like a slap in the face. but you win some - you lose some. Gonna try and fight through it.#I wrote something at the beginning of august but that got deleted. Had a breakdown and thought huh. what a great way to start the month -#and now it's almost september. Just like that. What a month it's been. Stuck on what else to say but that really.#don't want to keep talking about depressing stuff as that's what i used to do and realized hey. maybe you should stop doing that so often#and not use it so casually in humor and/or stuff. Even though I reblog vents here n' all. but yknow.#maybe it is hypocritical. but that's not the point. Just want to reflect and see if i've changed since coming back to the web after a year.#not like it's going bad. just wished this year was a bit more optimistic. Last year was rough & i'm afraid this year will be another repeat#though I did come out to a family member this month and that was like a punch to the gut. Considering my status with them and all.#won't get into that. for now let's just say i'm not too close with them. An impulsive choice on my end but hey. it went well.#and that's what matters tbh. My younger self would've thought i was actually insane. like to even DO that? really?#shocking. I'm still not over that moment. Probably one of my biggest achievements this year.#I'll update this if anything else comes to mind. none of this make sense and that's ok. clearing my mind right now.#let's see what september has in store for me. Hopefully it'll get better as things slow down w/ winter on its way.#hope y'all enjoyed your summer. 🖤🤘🏽
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lightblueminecraftorchid · 2 years ago
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(Context: I am Level 1 autistic and sometimes experience verbal shutdowns)
Things I appreciate someone doing if I’m upset and cannot talk:
- only asking one question at a time
- asking yes/no or binary questions instead of vague ones (Ex: “do you need space?” instead of “what do you need?”)
- being okay with not receiving an answer at all, and moving on (or rephrasing questions if necessary)
- accepting gesture, sign language, and/or AAC without pointing it out as unusual or joking about it
- offering comfort items or distractions, and allowing me to choose whether or not to use them myself
- treating me with respect and not talking down to me; there is a difference between being gentle and treating me like a child
- not assuming that I will regain speech as soon as I feel better
- letting me joke around and participate in conversations without speaking, even when I look happy and calm
- choosing communal activities that are low-key and don’t rely on verbal speech, such as watching a show, painting, or looking at memes together
- understanding if I need space, and leaving me be if I walk away from a conversation or leave suddenly
- letting me use comfort items and stim, even if it looks weird to you
- understanding that saying words =/= having full speech again; I usually regain echolalia before being able to generate my own sentences
#this is not a vague post this is a thank you#to everyone who has been patient with me when I’ve had a verbal shutdown#because I have time and again been met with incredible kindness and understanding as an adult#from my dnd groups. from close friends. from club members. from classmates.#the vast majority of people have been kind and patient and have let me calm down and communicate in the ways I can at my own pace#like in DND last year when I shut down after a tense fight because I was scared a character was gonna die#I couldn’t talk when we split up the loot after. so the DM read off the loot one by one and had us raise hands to claim it.#no teasing. no pointing it out. just smoothly running with it.#or when I was at my friends house and wound up crying in the middle of a convo and shutting down#and they gave me space to calm down and let me sign/text to talk. gave me a plushie and showed me Pinterest boards for dnd characters#no judgement. no pressure. just hanging out and calming down until I was okay. I was eventually able to tell jokes with sign and text.#or when I was in theatre and my prof saw I wasn’t okay and asked if I needed to go home. and then told me to go home when I couldn’t respond#and the autism club members who didn’t act awkward or rude about me being quiet while they chatted about movies. and patiently waited for me#to sign or get a couple words out so I could participate in the conversation.#or my classmates in the bio lab that night who treated me like normal and compared notes with me and let me type answers to their questions#to everyone who has been patient with me: thank you. I love you. it means more than I can express.
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thetangibleghost · 3 months ago
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I gotta confess it is so much more fun talking to Sal as if he is a separate person like he wants and not a member of the system. He's super creative like. Its just fun.
#It was hard to understand because they were wrapping up a bunch of stuff kinda fast. and it seemed like they were introducing new#things too? The fight scenes were cool.#person with Delusional Disorder: so hear me out#playing a dangerous game#Were bonding over sailor moon#JK btw like dont worry. The delusions dont really work like that. You could say i guess that thats his personal delusion?#idk its kind alike a severity scale MOST if not all of us have the truman show delusion. to some degree in some form. the specifics very#and then certain alters have additional delusions.#there all pretty bizarre. like I think thats the category you could put pretty much all of them in#which is interesting#some of them are more whatever the one where you think people are after you is called#so technically we would be mixed type? but idk if we would even fall into the type-able like... because the way it interacts with our DID#at first i thought my therapist was totally bullshitting this but the longer im like. living alone away from family the more sense this#diagnosis makes?#esp cause last time i googled it there was like. no fucking info. jut the wiki page about how this disorder gets misdiagnosed in people who#are part of grand conspiracies and how when thats not the case theyre basically just doing it to them selves :/#but i guess theres more research now? or something because now theres like medical articles!! and they make way more sense and actually#align with what we experience so thats super cool#its still kinda like. Huh??? but i guess it runs in families and i can totally think of several family members who i think have this#I also had drug induced psychosis i think. so- interesting how my therapist was able to parse that. i should text him.#omg yeah so apparently Sal (or specifically one of his alters) has seen just the end and ive seen just the beginning!!#i know thats so silly and like. Too Perfect. kind of thing but its fun!!!!! He said it was confusing and he liked it but it took him a#couple watches to know what was going on.#he actually didnt know what season he had seen (other than it definitely wasnt the first one lol) so i read through the ep titles until#he reconized them. he stilll didnt reconize them really but like half way through the last season (I went out of order) he was like#“this sounds sorta right. there was a lot of space fighting and stuff”#he had to think about it for a minute because i guess he just hadnt consider that that was the end#he was relieved to hear that theres specials and stuff after#but maybe hes lying 0-0 thats always interesting !!!!#syst
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mila-carat · 6 months ago
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Even INI noticed that Takumi and Yudai's hug scene was a little bit "🤨🏳️‍🌈?" and to be honest i'm glad I'm not the only one...
#👁️👄👁️#Yes two men can hug without it being romantic! It can be platonic! Don't get me wrong!#But the scene itself had romantic connotation because of their facial expressions. They seemed like lovers desperate to love but can't#Also the first time I saw it I thought they were trying to reach for the key#But they got rid of the chains when they touched hands (kind of “love saves the day” type of thing)#Their love (romantic or platonic) saved them from the chains that imprisoned them - not the key! :3#I'm not saying Yudai and Takumi have a thing - just that they seemed like they wanted to portray a same-sex couple#Both of them can act remember? Takumi is literally in a drama and Yudai was great playing that sassy princess!#Also... I have to say it 👀#Some small details in the MV seem to talk about LGBTQ+ rights and Pride Parade...#Again!!! I'm not saying it IS about queerness!!!#But the whole story of the MV being about riots... Hiromu's line “fighting against prejudice”#Rihito (a guy who openly supports LGBTQ+ rights) holding a big flag like it is a pride flag...#Their performance at Studio Choom literally making up the asexual flag at the screen and Takumi showing off a black ring in the middle#Finger of his right hand... (a.k.a asexual ring)#The line “PRIDE” itself... (Pride of what I wonder? Hmmm...) Their hair colors making up a rainbow... (ok this is just a joke) (but they do#The song being named “LOUD” (“Be Loud Be Proud” a.k.a phrase often used by queer people? Anyone??)#And last but not least it was released in JUNE (a.k.a Pride Month)!#Listen. I DO think the MV is connected to INI's MVs' storyline. Specially with SPECTRA and We Are and Password.#But... BUT. Hear me out. Please. Open your mind a little bit.#The boys (specially Hiroto who wrote the song) also want to express themselves their opinions and their feelings.#My boy Nishi LOVES doing that in the songs he writes. And maybe (just maybe) he and maybe other members wanted to#Help these queer people (specially queer MINIs) feel seem. Maybe some are queer themselves. We don't know and that is not our business.#But - whatever the reason is - they wanted to help these people feel seem and cared for. They wanted to tell them to continue fighting.#To fight against prejudice. To be LOUD and PROUD.#We MINIs know INI is not really afraid to think outside of the box... “Breaking the frame breaking the frame 🎵” :3#I mean Rihito literally stan an openly bisexual black man and he said “LGBTQ” in an interview even if he's an IDOL!!#He wore a t-shirt that says “Why being racist sexist HOMOPHOBIC and TRANSPHOBIC when you could just be quiet?”#(OMG he's so my ichiban for that 😭)#If Rihito can do that I wouldn't be surprised if other members also did something like what I said above! 😌
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luvyeni · 2 months ago
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( reaction ) bestfriend enhypen being touchy ! ୨୧ 一 엔하이픈 ՞
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⸃ ⸰ ⌁ times where bestfriend enhypen gets too touchy ヾ
bestfriend!엔하이픈・ fem!reader ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ g ・ smut ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ cw ・ ‎ wc ・ ‎n/a ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎| ‎ ‎click to library
request. could you write something about enha's hyung line as best friends with no boundaries? not necessarily yandere, and not even suggestive if you don't want to (though I wouldn't mind), but like that, touchy, needy, everyone thinks they're dating type thing
��� ୨୧ authors note 」 i hope you like it <3
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﹙ 𐙚 : heeseung﹚ .ᐟ
heeseung love to play fight with you , simply because he likes when you inevitably give up , and he can flip you over in his bed , pinning your arms down , sometimes his looks linger longer than they should be , hands tightening around your wrist , he's basically straddling you , anyone passing by would think it's soon about turn into something no one wants to see. "he-heeseung careful before someone see's" he smirks.
"see what? aren't we just playing?"
﹙ 𐙚 : jay﹚ .ᐟ
jays hand is always resting on your waist , very low at that , sometimes you have to take is hand , guiding it up just a bit , but it never last long , because his hand is once again low on your waist. "jay people are staring , you're hand his hella low." jay could care less if people were watching , he didn't want anyone to approach you anyway , bringing this hand lower.
"let them think what they want , stop moving i'm comfortable like this , those guys are just jealous anyhow."
﹙ 𐙚 : jake﹚ .ᐟ
jake was extremely needy; even as your best friend, you always found yourself tangled up with him while his hand found it's way up your shirt , rubbing on your bare skin while you scrolled through your phone. "jake your hands are cold." you whined. "your body is warm though , so you're helping me." he looked up at you with puppy eyes , you rolled your eyes. "and your members could walk in at moment and this will look weird to them." you said.
"so what , i need this , just sit here and warm my hands."
﹙ 𐙚 : sunghoon﹚ .ᐟ
another needy boy ; but he'll pretend his need for you isn't affecting him outside with his friends , his hand resting on your thighs , rubbing his thumb on your bare skin as you both hang out with your friends , gripping it. "hoonie stop." you take his hand off of you and the boy has to fight to not whine. he'll definitely confront you once you're alone. "hoon it's not a big deal , plus , what if they think something is going on?"
"that's not my problem, don't take my hand off of your leg again."
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©LUVYENI
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cinnamorollcrybaby · 3 months ago
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Doting
Tags: jjk men as dads, tooth-rotting fluff, comfort drabbles
Synopsis: How the JJK men treat you while pregnant (spoiler warning- they dote on you.)
An: This is my formal apology for writing Nanami angst on the “Baby’s first words” post 😔 it will never happen again (can we stop with the death threats now?)
SATORU • SUGURU • TOJI • SUKUNA • NANAMI
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SATORU
Oh, your loving husband is all over you while you’re pregnant. He genuinely has such a cute fascination with all the changes your body is going through. He seriously thinks you’re so strong for carrying his heir.
He loves rubbing your bump. In fact, he will always be touching it in some form or fashion while you two are together. When he’s away on missions, he has you send him pictures and updates on your pregnancy as if anything major has changed in a couple of days.
You best believe he is ready to indulge you on your every craving, no matter how strange. It’s three a.m and you’re crying because you need that specific brand of chicken wings and a can of whip cream? He’s heading to the store immediately to fetch whatever you tell him to.
He genuinely worries about being a good dad. Many nights he lays his head on your bump and talks to you about how teaching didn’t come naturally to him. He wasn’t born knowing how to meet people where they’re at. He use to expect people to be able to meet him on his level. He worries that he may inadvertently put a lot of pressure on his kid, and that’s the last thing he wants due to how he was raised. He just wants his kid to be a kid.
He’s the best, most loving and compassionate dad to your baby, more than you could ever hope for. Even if teaching didn’t come to him naturally, being a father did.
SUGURU
He’s such a “sit down and let me do it for you” while you’re pregnant. He cooks, cleans, works, and tends to you completely throughout your pregnancy.
Suguru gets hyper fixated on your health during pregnancy. He only feeds you the yummiest and healthiest foods while you’re pregnant. He encourages for you to sit on the yoga ball and do (very) light exercises. He just wants the best for you and his baby.
Whenever I said he tends to you, I genuinely mean he tends to you. He’ll gently brush your hair at night time, rub your back when your belly is becoming heavy to carry around, serve your breakfast, lunch, and dinner in bed, carries around emesis bags and breath mints for if you get morning sickness while you two are out.
This man is the king of enforcing your boundaries to people when they don’t listen. That really annoying family member that insists on being there for the birth even though you’ve already explained to them that you want this to be an experience for just you and Geto? Yeah, he’s made it very clear to them that they will not be at the birth if they want to be in your kid’s life.
He is absolutely not afraid to hurt feelings if it means his wife and future child are safe and cared for. He really don’t give a fuck who anyone else is. You and his child are first priority.
TOJI
Toji is definitely the type to express his love and devotion for you in other ways than the most conventional methods.
He is so incredibly gentle while you’re pregnant. He doesn’t rile you up as much or play fight with you anymore. He constantly reminds himself that you’re carrying another life inside you and that you have enough on your plate.
This man… whew does he love seeing you pregnant. Toji’s the type of man to feel so feral when he looks at you heavily pregnant with his kid.
He adores your body. He’ll rub lotion all over you and oils to help your skin accommodate to the stretch of carrying a kid. He massages your body and absolutely worships it while he’s rubbing the lotion and oil on you.
Your breasts are sore? He’ll gently massage them until they feel better. Your back hurts? He’d be the type to lift your bump up and take the weight off you for as long as you ask him to so you can feel relaxed for a few minutes.
And look this is probably TMI but like, if you got a clogged milk duct due to breastfeeding, Toji would unfortunately be the type of man to fix that issue with his mouth. i’m sorry but he would.
Final thing is, you better believe that he doesn’t allow anyone to get too close to you. He is so unbelievably protective over you while you’re pregnant. If he could, he’d lock you up at home to prevent anyone from getting close to you.
SUKUNA
On the outside, he acts very nonchalant and unbothered by your pregnancy. On the inside, he is constantly plagued by the thought that your body may not be able to carry his heir. The thought of losing you or his child haunts him.
He will secretly observe and take notes on your body and how it is changing. If he catches you expressing any sort of short windedness, he will immediately send you off to bed rest. Though, you’re usually able to convince him to take you off of it by the next day.
The only servant he trusts to tend to you is Uraume. No one else in his court is allowed to be anywhere near you unless he gives specific instructions. Still, he hates leaving you in the care of Uraume. He trusts them, but he wants to be the one to take care of you.
He loves holding your body close to him at night. All four arms are wrapped around you and holding you closely. Since he doesn’t need much sleep, he will stay awake rubbing on your tummy all night long. One time, he felt the baby moving in your stomach while you were asleep. He was so intrigued that he woke you up and told you to “make them do it again”.
Now, he will randomly approach you at any given time while you’re heavily pregnant and hold his hand out so he can feel his baby moving around inside of you. It soothes his worry.
During birth, Sukuna was a complete mess. The amount of blood lost during birth fucking terrified him. He was panicking and yelling at anyone to do something to save you, even while everyone was assuring him that you’re okay and this was natural.
After 9 long excruciating months of extreme worry and constant fear, he finally feels peace when he’s cradling a newborn in his arm and a sleeping wife in the other arm. All of his hard work to protect you paid off he thinks.
NANAMI
Oh, to be pregnant by the king of domestic love himself.
Nanami is the type of man to immediately start working on a nursery for you as soon as you reveal to him that you’re pregnant. He immediately changes the guest bedroom into a nursery that you design for your little baby.
He reads up on all the parenting books and articles. He’s constantly compiling things to either do or to not do during pregnancy and even while raising a kid.
Like Geto, he tends to your every need. He is a total house husband all while working 40 hours a week. When he’s at work, he is constantly calling and texting you to make sure that you’re okay and taking care of yourself, but let’s be fr he literally did everything for you before he even left for work (meal prepped for you, set out your clothes for you, put out all your self care items in case you want to bathe).
When you express concerns of your body getting bigger to him, he does everything in his power to show you that he loves and respects your body for creating life. He literally cherishes and worships your body for hours if you let him.
Like Toji, Nanami is protective over you. He constantly has an arm around you if you two are in public, and he watches everyone who dares to get close to you like a hawk. If he gets a bad vibe about anyone, he’s immediately stepping in front of you and taking over the conversation.
Nanami is the best partner to have during birth. His reading of articles during your pregnancy really paid off. He is supportive without being overbearing. He listens to your needs and tends to you without question. Constant praise and encouragement while you’re giving birth. The moment he gets to snuggle with you and the baby is the moment he realizes that he cultivated the life of his dreams. He has the family he always wanted.
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asahicore · 4 months ago
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cold hands - psh (m)
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this work contains smut - minors please do not interact
pairing. sunghoon x fem!reader
synopsis. plot plot plot what is a plot when you can just have vibes and a vague narrative direction... if you MUST know you go to your brother's hockey team back-to-uni party accidentally matching one of the members with your cowgirl barbie costume. hopelessly romantic sunghoon sees this as a sign that the two of you are meant to be together, but you're impossible to read and soon the two of you settle on an ambiguous secret friends with benefits relationship. unfortunately, conflict ensues.
genre. strangers to friends to fwb to lovers..?? its not an asahicore fic if it doesnt have fluff angst AND smut, brothers best friend, jock x nerd type vibe, slight miscommunication put your pitchforks away and hear me out pls it works out i promise, reader has ISSUES 💜 loser loverboy sunghoon, its mostly in his pov, i know nothing about ice hockey
word count. 39.5k 😂
a/n. inspired by @moonlighthoon's request for the 1k trope event! sorry it took ages to write but i hope you like it and that i met ur expectations!!!! hope everyone else enjoys it too, this is the longest fic ive ever written and im quite proud of it, pls pls pls let me know what u thought <333 shoutout to @zreamy .. good luck with your studies, thank u for beta reading and making this fic exponentially better as u always do ⭐️ credit to @/plutism for the dividers :)
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Some men never think of it. You did. You’d come along And say you’d nearly brought me flowers But something had gone wrong.
The shop was closed. Or you had doubts - The sort that minds like ours Dream up incessantly. You thought I might not want your flowers.
It made me smile and hug you then. Now I can only smile. But, look, the flowers you nearly brought Have lasted all this while. - Wendy Cope, Flowers
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When Sunghoon falls in love, it usually goes as quickly as it came.
Just to name a few:
There had been Ahn Yujin, whose family had moved next to his when he was twelve, and whose dog got on perfectly with his. His crush on the cute girl next door grew with every walk the four of them took but disappeared the second she ditched him to walk home from school with Na Jaemin. 
A few years later, there had been Bae Sumin, who sat in front of him and always had her hair up in a ponytail he found exceedingly pretty. An appointment at the hairdresser was enough for him to stop liking her, as if his interest in her had been laying in the ten centimeters of hair she had cut off. 
In his junior year of high school, there had been Kim Yerim, a college student that tutored him in Math and English. She was three years older, but that didn’t deter him—what did was the fact that she was dating a college graduate. She showed him a picture once, and the guy had biceps probably twice the size of Sunghoon’s. He thought it was safer to give up on her than to fight such a bulky guy five years his senior. 
The first time it stuck was during his first year of college. She was his coach’s daughter and he liked the way she would smile at him when she came to watch their practice. Sunghoon didn’t like to think about her, mainly because even after she broke his heart, for a while there, he continued to love her. 
So, when he first spots you from across the room at the Welcome Back costume party thrown by his hockey team, unintentionally the Cowboy Barbie to his Cowboy Ken, he tries not to read too much into it. Barbie was a hit this summer, it’s an easy and topical costume, of course there’s a pretty girl wearing the same bright pink cowboy hat he is. It doesn’t mean she’s the love of his life.
Right?
He knows you from the pictures that littered the walls of Minjeong, Yunjin and Chaewon’s apartment last year, from Instagram posts, both yours and your friends’, from your video calls with Jake, who dragged him into the camera’s view. Say hi to my sister, he’d insist, like Sunghoon was a child who didn’t want to greet his great-great-aunt. He’d dip in to say hi as requested, ask how you were, and mumble me too like a fool when you said you heard so much about him and were excited to meet him in real life. 
These are the things Sunghoon knows about you: Jake’s older sister by a year, currently on a year abroad in Rome, studies something fancy like Classics, which he hadn’t known people still did in the twenty-first century, deep attachment to Stardew Valley in first year, rarely seen with the same man twice, very pretty. Absurdly so. He’s also weirdly obsessed over the texts you’ve sent to the group chat he was added to at the beginning of last year—scarce, short, elusive. Never more than two sentences, and always long after the conversation was over. But sometimes you’d send photos and videos out of nowhere, of your adventures or of funny things you saw online, and he always hearted them. He even replied to it sometimes (brave hahas or that’s so cool!s), in hopes that it would make you like him, would make you think, he gets me. 
The two of you have never formally yet because you left for Italy the year he started university. He’s been nervous about meeting you since the first time the group told him about you. 
Now that he is about to, he can hear his heart thumping so loudly in his ears, it drowns out the bass of the music. He’s glad he gets to see you before having to talk to you—he’s not sure he could take in your presence and form coherent words at the same time. He watches you laugh with your friends, the smile lines that form like dimples around your mouth, the strands of hair you keep tucking behind your ear. Then someone joins your group—except it’s not just someone, it’s Minjeong, her denim jacket so often worn he recognises her from the back, and he realizes the people you’re with have been Chaewon and Yunjin this whole time. The three of them have been banging on about you all year, even more so due to the fact that their replacement flatmate was dreadful, a Spanish girl who only hung out with other Spanish exchange students and looked the girls up and down when they tried to invite her out somewhere.
You turn towards Minjeong, and before he knows it, he’s in your line of sight, and your eyes meet. Confusion, then a flash of recognition goes through your eyes. He had been resting his elbow on a countertop, cider bottle in hand and watching you, he realizes, not unlike a creep, but now he stands up straight and looks around him as if you hadn’t just caught him staring. Before he can find a way out, Jake appears by his side and throws an arm around his shoulders, guiding him into the throng of party-goers and, coincidentally, closer to you.
“Dude, you’ll never guess what.”
“What?” Sunghoon says, tone coming out more irritated than he means it to. He’s just had to give up on making a good first impression on you, and he doesn’t even have the time to think of a way to redeem himself. When he dares to look back at you, your eyes are already on him, a small smile on your lips. You probably hate him already.
“My sister is dressed just like you. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you guys came together or something. Hey, guys!” Jake calls out, and all of a sudden, it’s not just your eyes on him, it’s everyone’s. Well, to be fair, they’re also looking at Jake. But you’re only looking at Sunghoon, and he can’t look away from you either, can’t even manage the politeness to hug everyone in greeting like Jake is doing now. He watches as your eyes rake over his figure, taking him in, assessing him, and he suddenly feels awkward in his costume that matches yours, like he’s somehow overstepped a boundary, like you might think he’s asked around about your costume, found out you were going as Barbie and decided to match you so you’d think the two of you were meant together, like he had two minutes ago, and come to the fairly reasonable decision that he was the weirdest man on Earth. But then you meet his eyes, smile a kind, genuine smile, and his whole body relaxes. 
“Hey, Hoon!” Chaewon calls, arms open wide. He remembers himself and hugs everyone, even you, and he has to pretend like this is completely fine and normal, like his hands aren’t practically shaking as his arms circle your shoulders in a two-second embrace. 
You squeeze one of his shoulders, and keeping his countenance is a Herculean task. He feels like those people centuries ago who passed out at the sight of a lady’s ankle. “It’s so nice to finally meet you,” you say, peering at him over the rim of your red cup. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
Sunghoon feels the blush growing on his face; he wasn’t expecting so much of your attention so quickly. He takes a swig of his lukewarm cider, hoping if he seems drunk, it might explain his redness. “Good things, I hope,” he says, aware of the unoriginality but unable to come up with anything better.
“Oh, don’t worry, they’ve made you out to be a saint.” You’ve not once broken eye contact or stopped smiling—it should intimidate him, but instead, it makes Sunghoon feel like you’ve known each other for ages and that this isn’t your first conversation at all. He finds himself able to relax into a smile, and manages to meet your eyes for more than three seconds at a time.
“You don’t believe them?”
You pause, gaze zeroing in on him even more intensely than previously, smile turning smirk-like. Sunghoon’s heart skips a beat. Okay, maybe he’s not that relaxed. “I don’t know you well enough to make up my mind yet. But we’ll be seeing plenty of each other from now on, won’t we?”
This is exactly what Sunghoon has been warned about. You at parties, the way you look at guys, the way you talk to them. Sunghoon has been the audience of more than one recreation of such a scene, Yunjin pretending to be you, Chaewon pretending to be your “victim,” as the others liked to call them. Because once you had set your eyes on a man, he had little chance of making it out. Jay prides himself as being the only survivor, although he has to admit it’s only because Jake interrupted your conversation, telling him, “I see you’ve met my sister.” And Jay was not the kind of person that got off with their friends’ siblings, especially since his and Jake’s friendship was only a week long at that point, and he didn’t want to ruin the atmosphere in their dorm for the rest of the year just because his dick had gotten the best of him. His words. Whenever they were all hanging out together and they called you, one of the girls would inevitably ask if you had “turned any Italian boys into men” or if you had been “terrorizing the good men of Rome recently.” You would either roll your eyes or say this was not a conversation to be had in front of your brother.
Sunghoon had been sure they were exaggerating—it takes two to tango, as they say, and it wasn’t like you ensnared innocent men into your trap. They had to be willing, to want something from you just as much as you wanted something from them. He’d also gotten them to admit it wasn’t that frequent, that you weren’t looking for a new prey every party, just once in a while when you found someone you liked. (He’d been very quiet when Jay asked why he was trying so hard to defend you.)
But now that he is on the receiving end of your alluring smiles, he starts to understand how one could fall for you without meaning to. He knows he can’t — Jake probably wouldn’t take to it kindly, and he didn’t want to spoil the dynamic of his best group of friends at uni — but he has a feeling that ten minutes of talking to you would be enough to shake his resolve.
“Oh, yeah, I’m sure we will. Jake said you studied a lot, but I’m sure we’ll get to hang out. All of us, I mean,” he quickly adds, lest you think he’s already asking you to hang out one-on-one. Sunghoon would not be that forward.
“Of course. I have to see if you did a good enough job replacing me for a year.” Sunghoon’s eyes widen, and before he can blurt out something weirdly laudatory like “I could never replace you, I would never even try, I don’t know you but you’re clearly far superior to me in every aspect and I could never even claim to fill your spot,” you giggle and tell him it’s just a joke. “If anything, I’m happy Jake has managed to make a new friend that he didn’t meet through me, that loser,” you say, and together, you laugh at Jake’s loserness, a topic that will never fail to amuse Sunghoon, although he’s not faring much better in that department. 
“Like, look at him right now,” you say, jerking your head in Jake’s general direction, somewhere behind Sunghoon’s shoulder—and that’s when he realizes that it’s just the two of you standing there, the others gone without him even noticing. Sunghoon turns around, finding the girls, Jay, and a bunch of other people he vaguely recognizes huddled around Jake. They all start chanting his name as he gulps down a giant red cup of beer, then raises the empty cup over his head in victory and crumples it, beaming at the people around him. 
“What is he doing?” Sunghoon asks, laughing at his friend.
“Jay called him over for a beer-off,” you explain. After a beat, you ask, “You didn’t notice?”
The implications are clear in your tone and in your eyes. In the smile playing on your lips, just shy of being a smirk. You didn’t notice because of me, is what you’re really telling Sunghoon—at least, that’s the impression he’s getting. And you’d be right. He was too busy talking to you and trying his best not to make a fool of himself to notice his friends leaving, too engrossed with you to register the sudden disappearance of four people. Across the room, where people have shifted their attention to yet another hockey player downing a sizable amount of beer, he catches Chaewon’s eyes, and she winks at him. Of course—leave it to Chaewon, to whom Sunghoon once made the mistake of drunkenly rambling about how pretty you looked in your Instagram posts last year, to give you and Sunghoon some time alone, “to get to know each other properly,” she would probably say. Although he isn’t sure that small talk over 2000s music counts as getting to know someone. According to the others, she and Yunjin started dating a month into their second year, so Chaewon has proclaimed herself as the goddess of dating and is now always trying to set people up. Sunghoon thinks she’s just living vicariously through her friends now that she has a Mrs. at home.
Because the filter usually at work between the part of Sunghoon’s brain where sentences are formed and his mouth is apparently on leave today, he says, “I do have a pretty distracting sight in front of me.” He’s immediately both mortified and impressed by this sudden bout of confidence, but then you look down and giggle, actually giggle, the sweetest sound he’s ever heard, and only pride remains. 
“So, Ken?” you ask, a cute attempt to change the subject, taking the fabric of the pink bandana around his neck between your fingers. Sunghoon wonders if you’re going to yank him down to your level, and he thinks he wouldn’t have much of a problem with that. 
He realizes that even though you should technically know each other’s names, you haven’t actually exchanged them, so in a confused but correcting tone, he says, “Um, Sunghoon.” He only belatedly realizes that you hadn’t gotten his name wrong, you were just making a comment on his costume, which he had completely forgotten he was wearing in the first place. Just as he’s about to backtrack and salvage what he can of the situation, you burst into laughter, hand leaving his bandana to cover your mouth as he hides his face behind his own hands, laughing along with you despite himself. 
“I know your name is Sunghoon!” you exclaim. The gratification of hearing you say his name takes away some of his embarrassment. “I’m Y/N, by the way. Not Barbie.”
Sunghoon nods. “Good to know.”
The laughter gradually dies down, but your smile stays the same; wide, bright, a smile that exposes your teeth and turns your eyes into crescents. Sunghoon can’t look away. He’s awash with nerves, your gaze simultaneously planting his feet to the ground like they’re full of lead and making him light-headed. His heart is beating so fast, he can barely feel it anymore. 
The two of you stand there, looking and smiling at each other, like in a cliché movie scene where everyone else at the party seems to fade into the background. He has no idea how much time has passed when you break the silence. “It really is nice to finally meet you,” you say, repeating your statement from earlier, as though you mean it more now. 
“It is,” Sunghoon simply replies, because he doesn’t know how else to express the relief of seeing you in the flesh after hearing about you and looking at a digital version of you for a year. The relief, but also the anticipation of what is to come now that he knows he likes you even more now that he’s actually seen you. And improbable as it sounds, you might even feel the same.
Sunghoon can already feel it. The beginning of something.
You nod towards his now empty cup. “Want a refill?”
Together, you make your way through the crowd of increasingly drunk students until you reach the kitchen, where the countertops overflow with open bottles of liquor of all sorts and paper plates with half-eaten pizza slices on them. He watches your every move as you find a cold bottle of beer in the fridge, a bottle of strawberry syrup in a random cupboard that you had to know was there, and a half-empty discarded bottle of lemonade on the counter. You ask him to tell you about last year, everything you missed out on, and so he does. He knows you’ve probably heard it all from the others before, but you still laugh and gasp like it’s the first time you’re hearing about any of it, all the hockey games they won, Jay getting food poisoning from the sketchy pizzeria he kept eating at, Yunjin almost getting into a fistfight with a man twice her size who was flirting with Chaewon. 
You assemble two drinks and hand him one of them. When he takes a sip, his eyes widen at the refreshing and sweet taste. “Good, right?” you say. “I discovered it on a trip to France last summer.”
“Thank God for France. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever enjoyed drinking beer,” he says.
“That’s probably because you can’t taste the beer at all.”
Sunghoon smiles. “Probably, yeah.”
You turn around, lower back against the counter, and take in the current kitchen population. “We really weren’t very original with our costumes tonight.” Sunghoon, who had not taken his eyes off of you this entire time, follows your gaze. He counts five partygoers dressed in some version of Barbie or Ken, and that’s just the kitchen. He doesn’t blame them—the fact that so many people came dressed in costumes at all impresses him, especially for a party on the 10th of September and not the 31st of October. The social committee of the hockey team just seems to really love themed and dress-up parties.
He chuckles, then takes a sip of his drink. It’s really nice. “Yeah, but we look the best.”
Your head whips towards him, eyes glinting with something that makes Sunghoon smile, even though he doesn’t know what you’re thinking. “Should we enter the couple’s costume contest?” you ask.
At the mention of couple, his eyes widen, his brain tricking him into thinking you’ve asked him out for a second. But when what you actually meant dawns on him, the first thing to come out of his mouth is, “There’s a couple’s costume contest?!”
“Mh-hm. The sign-up sheet should be around here.” 
For what feels like the millionth time since he’s started talking to you, his face heats up. “Are non-couples allowed to enter?”
“We’re Barbie and Ken. I’d say that’s enough of a couple, don’t you think?” 
Right. Because he had been thinking of Sunghoon and Y/N, while you obviously meant Barbie and Ken. In the contest, it doesn’t actually matter whether the contestants are dating in real life—it matters that their costumes match. Sunghoon knows that. He just needed a second.
He grins, deep dimples punctuating his cheeks. “Okay, let’s do it.”
Armed with your drinks, you walk around the kitchen in search of the sign-up sheet. You find it on a wall next to the dining table, which has been turned into a beer pong table for tonight’s festivities, and the sheet is almost filled with names already. Sunghoon can only hope that by midnight, when the contest is set to take place, most participants will have had too much to drink to remember it. You write your names on the list, and Sunghoon likes seeing his name in your handwriting so much he almost wants to take a picture.
“There you guys are!”
You both turn around to find Jake stumbling towards you, clearly more intoxicated than when he had left you half-an-hour ago. He rests his arms on your shoulders, forcing Sunghoon down to his height and making you stumble forwards from the sudden added weight. “I’ve been looking all over for you- You’re entering the contest?!”
For a split second, Sunghoon is scared he’s going to get scolded by Jake for trying to hit on his sister, but surprisingly, it’s you he narrows his eyes at. “Y/N, what are you roping my little Hoonie into?”
Sunghoon groans, face perpetually red at this point. Leave it to Jake to make him seem like a total loser. 
You frown at your brother. “I’m not roping your little Hoonie into anything.” Sunghoon wants to bury himself alive. “We agreed on doing it together. Right?” you ask, turning towards Sunghoon and batting your eyelashes at him. It makes him feel a bit better.
He turns back to Jake. “Right. We’re just joining forces to crush the competition.”
Jake scoffs. “As if.” He snatches the pen from your hands and underlines his name as well as Kazuha’s, the girl he came with tonight, three thick black lines that almost erases the names underneath them. “You can’t beat the hockey player and cheerleader combo.”
“Those aren’t even costumes, you guys are a hockey player and a cheerleader,” you protest.
“So?” Jake simply retorts, more attitude in his tone than he would have were he sober.
“So, that defeats the whole purpose of a costume contest.”
Jake knocks on your cowboy hat, and you immediately put it back in place, glaring at him. “As if Barbie was the greatest costume ever. Whatever, let’s just play beer pong so I can defeat you guys twice in one night.”
“You’re on, Sim.”
“You’re going down, Sim.”
Sunghoon had just been watching your back-and-forth amusedly when you grab his hand, leading him to the side of the table opposite Jake. His fingers tingle under your touch, but just like that, it’s gone. He’d rather keep on holding your hand than play this stupid game, but he isn’t opposed to taking Jake’s ego down a notch, either. The boy can barely stand straight, anyway, so it probably won’t be a very tough match.
Some guy he doesn’t recognize in a striped black-and-white referee t-shirt fills most cups with beer and a couple on each side with shots of vodka—he’s so earnest, Sunghoon isn’t sure whether he’s just taking his costume-slash-role very seriously or if he has genuinely been hired to look over the beer pong matches of the night. Some order in the brutish world of college parties, Sunghoon guesses.
Minjeong, Yunjin, Chaewon and Jay appear then, exchanging a quick look at the sight of you and Sunghoon together. The two former join your team, while the two latter join Jake’s, as well as other people that Sunghoon vaguely recognizes from other parties. But by the simple action of getting behind him, they become his most trusted allies for at least this part of the night.
You’re a terrible shot, but Sunghoon makes up for it by scoring almost every round. In his defense, he only misses when you come up close to him and whisper in his ear which cup he should go for. Your breath tickles his (oddly sensitive) ears and the combined scents of the strawberry and lemonade on your tongue and your delicate perfume make his head spin. He can barely think straight, so his aim is naturally thrown off—other than that, he makes Jay drink a healthy amount of beer. He almost feels bad for his friend, but he’d arrived late at the party and needed to quickly catch up with everyone’s level of ebriety anyway.
When the opposite team is down to their last cup, a lightning bolt of luck strikes you, and your ball disappears straight into the vodka-filled cup that Jake now has the honor of downing. 
Sunghoon gives you no time to celebrate, to gloatingly pump your fists in the air and point a mocking finger at your brother, because as soon as you make the shot, he wraps his arms around your waist and lifts you off the ground. When you’re on your feet again, you spin around to find a proud-looking Sunghoon beaming down at you. You burst into giggles and high-five him, your palms perfectly clapping against each other, and he threads your fingers together. A current of electricity rushes through him, and for a second, he swears it’s just the two of you in this packed room.
The moment is cut short by the loud cheers of the others on your team as they shake your shoulders and raise their hands for you to high-five them too. Minjeong flips the other team off and Yunjin has to go hug Chaewon and reassure her it’s nothing personal. It’s really quite easy to make college students happy—or devastated. 
You raise your eyebrows at Jake, who’s busy glaring at you instead of accepting his defeat and taking his shot. With a begrudging sigh, he tips his head back and drinks the vodka in one gulp, the cheers doubling in volume when his face scrunches at the bitter taste of the liquor.
“Don’t act so proud,” he scolds you. “Sunghoon carried your team.”
“Maybe, but she made us win in the end,” Sunghoon retorts, putting an arm around your shoulder. 
Jake scoffs, frowning at Sunghoon’s hand placement before eye-rolling his gaze away. “Whatever.” He slides his phone out of his back pocket and smiles as he shows the two of you his screen. “Would you look at the time? The contest is starting soon.” Then, with an accusatory finger pointed at you, adds, “You may have won this battle, but I’m winning the war.”
He stomps away, presumably to find Kazuha before the contest starts, and it’s your turn to eye-roll at his dramatics. You grab Sunghoon’s hand that hangs off of your shoulders, and together, make your way through the crowd again to the garage, where the contest is taking place. All the alcohol he’s been drinking has definitely started kicking in by now, and he finds himself giggling at nothing with you.
When you reach the threshold, still hand in hand, Sunghoon stops so abruptly behind you that you almost stumble. You look back at him, then follow his gaze towards the garage and the sheer amount of people in there. Worriedly, his eyes take in every single one of the contenders. You let go of his hand and stand in front of him, placing your hands on his shoulders and putting on a determined expression. You’d almost look like a parent reassuring their kid before their first day of kindergarten if you weren’t so much shorter than him. “Don’t even worry about them, Sunghoon. We look better than anyone here.”
His eyebrows crease. “There’s like, three other Barbie-Ken couples here. Some of these costumes are so original. And do you see their makeup? Is that even possible?” he asks, staring at a couple in scarily realistic cosplay of Simon and Jeanette from Alvin and the Chipmunks, fur and all. He can’t look at them for too long without getting chills.
You shake your head. “Almost everyone here is either a hockey player or a… hockey-affiliated person. You’re the beloved and talented defenseman of the team and I’m the star player’s sister. They’ll love us,” you say with a smile, watching the worry dissipate from his features.
“We’re like nepo babies,” he whispers. His lips break into a grin when your eyebrows furrow in confusion. “I don’t know how nepotism works,” he admits, smiling wider when you burst into laughter. “How do you know if I’m talented, anyway? You haven’t seen me play yet.”
Your eyes rake him up and down appreciatively. “I took a wild guess.”
Not unlike a cartoon character, Sunghoon audibly gulps. As a hockey player since his most tender age, and dare he say, a pretty good-looking guy, he is used to girls flirting with him, and he is even hit sometimes by the occasional lightning strike of confidence that allows him to flirt back (he still can’t believe he managed to call you “a distracting sight” without spontaneously combusting). But there’s something in your eyes, in your smile, in the way you talk—something about you that has his breath hitching and his heart racing. He doesn’t know if he wants to run away and hide in a corner or kiss you right then and there.
Heeseung, the captain of the hockey team, announces into a microphone (which Sunghoon wonders where they got the money for) that the contest will start now, so he can neither kiss you nor run away. Instead, he follows you to the side of the room where all the contestants, including Jake and Kazuha, wait for their names to be called out. There are so many participants, it takes way longer than Sunghoon would like for the two of you to step onto the makeshift stage. Judging by the looks on the audience’s faces, everyone is surprised to see you and Sunghoon together—the hockey community at your university may be big, but everyone knows everyone, and gossip travels fast. No one had seen you and Sunghoon together before, for the obvious reason that you hadn’t even met before tonight. But you could be sure that by tomorrow, as silly as it sounds, word will have gone around that you and Sunghoon had participated in a couple costume contest together. 
At least, you give them something of substance to talk about—as you and Sunghoon pose on stage, wearing your brightest smiles to please the crowd, you stand on your toes and press a kiss to Sunghoon’s cheek. Sunghoon’s eyes burn a hole in the side of your face but you just watch as the audience of drunken 20-somethings goes wild over something as simple as a peck on the cheek. Jake is the only one booing. 
Sunghoon is still in shock when the next couple is called forward and you have to step off. His cheeks are redder than before and he can’t quite meet your eyes. Apparently, he also goes wild over something as simple as a peck on the cheek. You nudge his shoulder. “See, I told you they’d like us.” 
He feels like a fourteen-year-old for it, but Sunghoon can’t stop thinking about your soft lips against his cheek, so much so that he barely says a word as the three judges deliberate. If you notice the sudden change in his behavior, you don’t comment on it, perhaps chalking it up to nerves. He’s glad for it—he doesn’t know if he could handle being teased about it, especially from you. Although he’s not sure he wants you to think he’s the kind to stress over a last-minute Halloween costume contest. 
In the end, you don’t win. He suspects it was a rigged contest all along: the couple in the unimpressive Edward and Bella costume are friends with one of the judges, probably leading to their anticlimactic victory. At least it isn’t Simon and Jeannette who win, or Kazuha and Jake, even less original than the winners. Anyway, Sunghoon couldn’t care any less. With your hand in his as you walk back to the main room in search of your other friends, he feels like the biggest victor of the night. He doesn’t even mind it when his teammates tease him about his costume and how good the two of you look together—the smile you shoot him makes putting up with it worth it. He tries to think straight, but between the alcohol and your proximity, he feels like you’ve cast a spell on him.
Jake stumbles into your group, three drinks drunker than when Sunghoon last saw him, enthusiastically reporting that a game of spin the bottle is about to start in one of the rooms upstairs, because what every college party needs is a middle-school game to shake things up. None of the guys seem particularly interested until Jake reveals that the cheerleaders are playing. 
Sunghoon looks down at you, laughing when he sees your mildly disgusted moue. “Don’t feel like playing?”
“Not really, no.” Your eyes linger on his face. “There’s only one person here I want to kiss, anyway.”
All capacity for thought leaves Sunghoon’s brain. He just stares back at you blankly, lips slightly agape, willing himself to say something but also terrified that whatever leaves his mouth might make him seem like the biggest loser ever. 
You couldn’t possibly mean him—but did you? Was he the person you wanted to kiss?
As these questions resound through his head, your gaze drops to his lips. There’s his answer. 
His heart beating wildly in its cage, Sunghoon decides to do one smart thing tonight and leans in, slowly but surely closing the gap between the two of you. Then a sudden vibration in the back pocket of his jeans zaps through him like lightning and he jumps back, as if startled out of the trance you had put him in. Shame flooding his cheeks, he checks his phone; it’s the stupid alarm he set himself earlier to make sure he doesn’t get home too late. Midnight, Cinderella-style. 
You scratch the back of your neck as your eyes dart around the room. For the first time tonight, you look embarrassed—Sunghoon is in disbelief at how pretty you look even then. “I, um,” he starts, clears his throat. “I have this thing tomorrow morning, so I can’t stay too long…” he says guiltily.
He doesn’t want to get his hopes up, but he swears that what he sees on your face is disappointment. It makes him want to take it all back, to stay here with you for as long as you want and forget about tomorrow morning. 
“Oh, right,” you say, nodding. “That’s fine. What thing?”
“Oh.” Sunghoon turns an impossibly deeper shade of red, further resembling the strawberry syrup the more he gets himself in these embarrassing situations with you. “Just… choir. I go to choir on Saturday mornings.” He looks down at his feet like he’s just revealed a secret, shameful part of himself.
You burst into laughter, and Sunghoon is scared for a second that you’re making fun of him, and his feelings are a lot more hurt than they should be by someone he just met. Although, to be fair, you don’t feel like someone he just met.
“That’s so cool! It must be such a nice change from all the dudes on the hockey team,” you say, a sweet, curious smile on your lips. Like you mean what you say. Like you might want to know more.
Sunghoon thinks he just fell in love.
He chuckles. “Yeah. Definitely a nice change. As much as I love hockey, it’s nice to do something calmer, you know. And I like singing. And the cakes the local grandmas bring.”
“So that’s what it’s all about, really.”
“Yep, you caught me.” Sunghoon still feels the almost-kiss lingering, a tension between the two of you that has him on edge. He feels like he’s just missed his bus because it left a minute earlier than planned. The opportunity is gone, and he would definitely mess everything up, trying to kiss you now. So instead, he decides to leave. Whatever must happen, will happen, even if it’s not tonight. You have the same friends—this is definitely not the last time you will see each other. “Well, I should probably head. I have to be up at eight tomorrow.”
“Oh, wow. The choir grandmas don’t play around.”
“They really don’t.”
“Well, see you around then,” you say, a clumsy laugh falling from your lips as you wrap your arms around Sunghoon’s neck, bringing him into a tight but short hug. You also smell good, he notes to himself. Of course you do.
“See you, Y/N.” Just as he’s about to turn away, you wrap your hand around his wrist.
“Wait. Sunghoon?” He’s only half-surprised at the immense relief he feels to hear his name on your lips. Like you, too, didn’t want to part with him just yet.
“Yeah?” he says, wishing the hope and anticipation aren’t too obvious on his face.
“Where’s that choir of yours?”
--
When Sunghoon arrives at his neighborhood’s community center, ten minutes before nine a.m., you’re already there. Despite the seven hours of sleep under his belt, he feels like he could’ve done with three more, and the singular cup of instant black coffee he had for breakfast was both atrocious and useless. But your smile has the restorative effect of two Red Bulls and a power nap. You look surprisingly bright, like you either managed to get a very good night’s sleep or are just the biggest morning person to ever exist.
He hugs you when he reaches you on the sidewalk, tighter than he probably should, but you return it. You smell like fresh soap and sugar. The two of you exchange quick greetings before he leads you inside the center. 
“I made some cookies as well.” You point to your tote bag and Sunghoon’s jaw slackens.
“You had time to bake?” 
“Kazuha made me take Jägerbombs, so I felt crazy when I got home. I thought it wouldn’t be fair on the old ladies if they did all the work.”
Sunghoon laughs. “They’re going to love you.”
You follow Sunghoon up two flights of stairs and into a spacious room with a wooden stage. There’s a snacks table on one side of the room that is almost fully decked with plates and tupperwares of all sorts, and although their contents remain covered by tin foil or lids, the coffee and hot water pots are free to use. Most of the chairs are stacked on each side of the room but a few have been put in the middle, the grandmas sitting and chatting there waving at Sunghoon as the two of you walk in. There are about fifteen people in the room so far, most of them older ladies, but not only. There’s a dad that came with his daughter, a couple of teenagers, and a few other adults. It’s quite an eclectic mix, and Sunghoon loves it.
Minjeong is here, too, which Sunghoon realizes he forgot to say until he sees the sheer confusion of finding someone you know in an unexpected place on both of your faces. She walks towards you, suspicious eyes darting between you two.
“Hey,” she says only to Sunghoon before turning to you, arms crossed over her chest. “And what are you doing here?”
“Hi, Minjeong, so nice to see you too!”
“I invited Y/N,” Sunghoon says quickly, although you did technically invite yourself. For some reason, he feels the need to defend you, even though he knows you and Minjeong have been friends for years now, and Minjeong is just always this blunt.
“I didn’t know this was the choir you went to,” you say to Minjeong.
“Oh, this?” She looks around the room. “It’s only the choir I’ve been going to since I was a kid. You’d know that if today wasn’t the first day you showed interest in it, ever.”
“I came to your concerts!”
One of the old ladies calls Sunghoon’s name from the snack table, and he is glad for the diversion. “Right. I’ll let you guys talk this out.” A hand on your shoulder, he smiles down at you. “I’m gonna say hi to the ladies over there. Be back in a minute.” He shoots Minjeong a look as if to say, Be normal. 
As he approaches the small group, one of them asks very loudly if you’re his girlfriend. They all burst into giggles, blushing and eager-eyed like they’re sixteen rather than sixty. Sunghoon would be endeared if you didn’t look so alarmed and Minjeong so horrified, both of you looking at him before turning back to each other and getting into a very heated and secretive discussion. He is bombarded with a hundred questions: what your name is, where you’re from, how did the two of you meet, are you together? No? But you’re so pretty! And he’s such a nice boy! He answers all of their queries to the best of his ability while checking that your conversation with Minjeong hasn’t turned physical—your arms are now also crossed over your chest, and you look annoyed while she looks like she’s accusing you of something, but at least, punches aren’t being thrown. 
Thankfully, it’s only a couple more minutes until the conductor calls for everyone to gather on stage, and a weight is lifted off of Sunghoon’s shoulders once the ladies’ collective attention is no longer on him. He isn’t sure where they came from, or why they’ve decided to make the choir rehearsal their hang-out spot, but there is always a group of women who sit there and knit while chatting quietly or listening to the songs, and they are sometimes joined by children whose parents are part of the choir but don’t want to sing themselves and apparently have nowhere else to go. Sunghoon had been so excited at the prospect of having you come see him that he hadn’t thought of how boring this might be for you, sitting with sixty-year-olds for two hours, listening to an amateur choir go through scales and sing corny romance ballads—they’re rehearsing for a wedding they’ve been hired to sing at. But as the minutes go by, his worry dissipates when the delighted smile on your face hardly falters. He can’t imagine that his choir is that good, but you genuinely look like you’re having a nice time, and it makes Sunghoon stand a little taller, sing a little louder. Your eyes are on him for most of the time, and he blushes every time your gazes meet, but he still can’t keep himself from looking away from the conductor to check on you every few seconds.   
Once rehearsal is over, everyone gathers around the refreshments table. When you tell Sunghoon that he looked good out there, he stuffs his mouth with banana bread to stop himself from blurting out something stupid. Your cookies are a hit, and so is everything else—Sunghoon would be more than happy to watch you eat as many baked goods as you possibly can and chat with the grandmas, but he has something to ask you. Without thinking much, he wraps his fingers around your wrist, gently pulling you away from the table and towards him. The question that was at the tip of his tongue fades as soon as you meet his eyes, looking up at him like a deer caught in headlights, cheeks stuffed with brownie. You’re so cute that words fail him for a second, and when he notices the proximity between the two of you, takes a small, bashful step backwards. You glance at his hand still around your wrist, and he withdraws it like he’s suddenly been burned. 
A playful smile grows on your lips. “Everything alright?”
He scratches the back of his head. “Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine. I just, um, well. There’s a bus that takes us from right across the street directly to the beach, if you’re, um, if you’re interested. In going. With me. If you want.”
Your eyebrows cock in surprise, and Sunghoon thinks he’s messed it all up. You shoot Minjeong a quick, worried glance, then seem to think for a second. But when you look back to him, your smile is soft. “That sounds nice.”
An hour later, you’re running around together on the beach—or rather, Sunghoon is running around, and after five minutes of watching him with a smile on your face, he’s convinced you to run around with him. You’ve both long discarded your shoes and socks, jeans scrunched up to your mid-calves, grins so wide, your cheeks start to hurt. The wet sand is hard under your feet and the water cold against your skin. Sunghoon’s t-shirt sticks everywhere you sprayed water on him, and he knows putting his shoes on later will be a whole ordeal, but it doesn’t bother him. Even the gray September sky feels brighter because you’re standing with him underneath it. 
The water-splashing battle quickly has you both out of breath, and Sunghoon is ready to call a truce when you spot something behind him, gasping and running towards it. He turns around to find you picking up a bunch of sandcastle-building toys that must’ve been left behind by some kids. “I haven’t built a sandcastle in such a long time, this is so exciting,” you say, excitement written all over your face. 
As much as he loves seeing the glint of childish amusement in your eyes, Sunghoon keeps looking around in case the owners of these toys might appear out of thin air. “I feel like there’s something immoral about this,” he says, and you stop stacking sand into one of the toys to look at him with a confused frown. “Aren’t we technically stealing from some kids?”
“Sunghoon. If those kids really cared about these plastic toys, they wouldn’t have left them here.”
“What if they come back for them?”
“Then we’ll give them back. We’re not monsters.” That’s all it takes for Sunghoon to give in. He helps dig trenches around the towers you build, carving out small windows on them and apologizing profusely when he accidentally pokes too hard into one of them, destroying half of it. 
The second he notices you shivering, Sunghoon is on his feet, unwrapping the scarf around his neck and laying it like a blanket over your shoulders. “I’m going to get us something warm to drink. I’ll be back in a minute!” he announces before you can even protest, and practically runs to the nearest café. 
He only leaves you and the slightly pathetic-looking sandcastle alone for a minute, quickly coming back with two take-away cups of milky Earl Grey tea and a brownie that he couldn’t help himself from buying. The moan you let out when you bite into it, gooey, sweet chocolate sticking to your teeth, goes straight down Sunghoon’s spine, but he tries not to let his thoughts get too carried away.
“Good, right?” he asks, laughing when you nod fervently. When you laugh too, it’s a sound so sweet, it rivals the decadence of the brownie. “I sometimes make the trip all the way here just for this.”
“I thought I’d be done with sweets after this morning, but this is so good.”
“Better than Berta’s banana bread?”
“Oh, a hundred percent,” you say, covering your mouth with your hand as you speak. “Sorry, Berta. I’ll be thinking about this for the rest of my life.”
Sunghoon hopes you’ll remember him as the boy who’d introduced you to those brownies, if nothing else.
The two of you are silent for a little bit, but it’s a comfortable silence—something Sunghoon didn’t know was possible with someone he’d just met. This was something he loved about the sea: it allowed for some quiet. The crashing of the waves against the shore, the calls of the seagulls, the dogs barking after them—it all meant he didn’t need to fill the space with needless chatter. He could look out at the peaceful water, you by his side, and just enjoy the moment.
“I’m still so amazed whenever I come to the beach, no matter how many times it’s been.” Sunghoon’s voice is quiet when he speaks, lower than usual. It sounds a lot more intimate than he means it to be. You turn your head to look at him, silently asking him to go on. There’s a small smile playing on his lips, a twinkle in his eyes as he watches the water. “The town I grew up in is right in the middle of the country, so the sea is like, a five-hour drive. There was a lake nearby, but it was nothing compared to this. It might sound silly, but being from somewhere where everyone knows each other, I never realized just how big the world was until I came here and saw the sea for the first time.”
“You’d never been to the sea before coming here?” you ask, surprise clear in your voice. 
He shakes his head. “My hometown isn’t far from the mountains, so it’s a huge tourist spot both in the winter and in the summer, which meant my mom had to work even when my sister and I were out of school and could actually go on holiday. We’d go visit my grandparents and aunts when we found the time, but that was it.” He meets your gaze, a smile playing on his lips at the thought of his hometown and his family. “This is the furthest I’ve ever been from home.” 
The corners of your lips raise into a smile too, matching Sunghoon’s. “And how has that been going?”
He sighs. “It’s okay. I miss my mom and sister like crazy, of course, but they FaceTime me so much that I barely notice it. And anyways, it’s also nice to be on my own. Discover another part of myself, and all that.”
“For sure.” 
There’s a slight shift in your expression that Sunghoon catches onto, a falter in your smile and a hint of sadness in your eyes. He doesn’t want to force a topic that you don’t want to talk about, so he just gently eggs you on, in case all you need is a small push.
“What about you? I think Jake mentioned you guys growing up around here, only an hour or so away.”
At the mention of your brother, the smile returns to your eyes. You take a deep breath and think for a bit, but eventually, you start talking. Although Sunghoon’s eyes are on you, you keep yours trained on the sea. “Yeah, we did. We live just up the coast, so we were always hanging out at the beach. In a way, it’s nice having the sea here as well. It’s like-I don’t know.”
“Like having a piece of home even when you’re away?”
Your gazes meet for just a second, the surprise clear in your eyes, but as quickly as it came, it’s gone, and you turn away from Sunghoon once more. “Basically, yeah.” A sardonic smile appears on your lips. “Although the constant reminder isn’t always appreciated.” 
He tilts his head. When you don’t say anything further, he flicks some sand onto your hand and asks you what you mean by that. He looks at you with curiosity and kindness only, eager to know more about you, to let you know that you can open up to him, that he won’t judge you, but careful not to overstep any boundaries either. It seems to work.
“It might sound stupid, but back home, the beach was a place I could go to when it all was a bit too much, you know? Like an escape from everyday life. Where I could forget about all of the pressure on my shoulders.” Sunghoon hums, and you take another deep breath. “I don’t know if you and Jake talk about this sort of thing, but… our parents are barely nice when we do well, and pretty awful when we don’t reach their expectations. So we were like, constantly having to outdo ourselves just for them to say, ‘Keep it up’, or something like that. And if we did something wrong, well…”
You trail off, but Sunghoon knows what you mean. “Yeah, Jake said they barely spoke to him anymore because he decided to play hockey instead of becoming, like, a doctor or something.”
You smile, but it’s humorless. “Yep. They send him money, and he comes home for a bit over Christmas and summer break, but that’s it. I’ve gone home by myself sometimes and they won’t even mention him, it’s insane.”
“He also doesn’t talk about it a lot.”
“I know. I’m always the one to bring it up. I know it’s a sensitive topic for him, obviously, but I still find it amazing how well he deals with it. But me… despite everything, I still need their approval, you know?” you ask, and Sunghoon nods.
“That makes sense.”
You sigh. “I guess. And I’m obviously not becoming a doctor like them. Not a medical one, at least. It took a year of convincing them that doing the degree I’m doing was okay. ‘Cause at the end of the day, it’s still me filling in my university applications, and they can’t actually force me to go to medical school, but I still wanted them to be proud of me. Even if I study languages.” It’s quiet for a few seconds as you both look out at the waves crashing against the shore. When you start talking again, you look down at the sand, picking it up and letting it filter through your fingers. “So, yeah. Jake got a scholarship here, and I didn’t wanna be too far from home, so here we are. We’re so close to home, the sea I went to when I needed a break in high school and the sea I go to now are one and the same. And now it reminds me of my parents rather than making me forget about them.”
“I’m sorry for bringing you here,” Sunghoon says. “I didn’t think…”
You cut him off with a smile. “It’s okay. Now I’ve created new memories. Nice ones. And you know… wherever I am, it’ll be at the back of my mind. It’s up to me whether I let it affect my life or not.”
“Letting go of these things is never easy,” Sunghoon offers. “You also can’t blame yourself if it does affect you sometimes.”
When you look at Sunghoon, your eyes darting back-and-forth between his like they’re searching for something there, he feels himself tense up slightly. He can’t read you at all, has no idea what you’re thinking even as you smile and say, “You’re right.” Even as you silently link your pinky with his, gazing down at your hands with a small smile. He hadn’t realized how cold his hands were until this small touch, so small yet able to spread warmth throughout his entire body. When he speaks, he can’t bring himself to meet your eyes—he’s still so focused on where your hands touch, too aware of the skin of your finger right against his. Such a small, innocent touch. He can’t even begin to understand why it means so much to him.
“For what it’s worth, I think what you’re doing is super cool,” he says. “I’ve always been so shit at foreign languages, let alone dead languages. And packing your bags and going abroad for a year, not everybody can do that. Becoming a doctor might be hard, but it also takes a specific kind of person to do what you do. And what Jake does. It’s all valuable.”
“Now, if you could say that again while I record you to show my parents, please,” you say, making him laugh.
“It’d be my pleasure.”
“What about you?” you ask him after a small pause. “I can’t be the only one who trauma-dumps on the first date.”
Sunghoon’s breath hitches in his throat. He hadn’t even dared entertain the thought that this might be more than a platonic hang-out in case he was crossing a line—but you’ve just called it a date. With just a few casual words, you’ve changed the entire meaning of the hours you’ve spent together. He hopes you can’t tell how flustered it’s made him.
“Well, there’s not much trauma to dump, really. Sorry.” 
You giggle. “Don’t apologize. That’s a good thing.”
Now that you’ve just opened up about your parents, Sunghoon is scared that telling you about how good of a childhood he had might come off as insensitive—but you smile softly at him, holding his hand face-up in yours, tracing the lines of his palm with the tip of a finger, and he starts talking. “So, it was just me, my older sister and my mom growing up. My dad died when I was 2.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It is a bit sad that I don’t have any memories of him, but everyone who knew him said he was a great guy. And my mom’s had this boyfriend since I was like, 10? He’s the one who got me to start hockey. So it hasn’t been that bad.”
“Your mom must be really strong.”
Sunghoon smiles. “She is. She’s amazing. To raise two kids on your own while grieving and not royally fuck up is… well, amazing. She’s always been so supportive of us, no matter what we wanted to do. My sister did well at school, but I wasn’t so good. I never really enjoyed it, but she’s never made me feel bad about it. She didn’t mind that all I wanted to do was hit a puck around.” 
“And you’re pretty good at hitting that puck around, aren’t you?”
“I’m not so bad,” Sunghoon says, chuckling along with you. He’s about to go on, but he is cut off by a raindrop hitting his hand, then another one; before either of you know it, your clothes are soaked through. Sunghoon takes his denim jacket off, using it as a makeshift umbrella for the both of you as you run towards the nearest awning, shaking with giddy laughter until you forget about the chilly rain and the clothes sticking to your skin. When it doesn’t let up for another few minutes, Sunghoon suggests catching the bus back, and you agree. 
The heating on the bus is set on low, but it’s enough to warm Sunghoon up as soon as he steps onto it. You sit at the back in a corner of your own, multiple rows away from the other people onboard. The two of you are relatively quiet, lost in your own thoughts until Sunghoon, after much internal deliberating, takes one of your hands in his and interlaces your fingers together. You look up at him, but he doesn’t return your gaze, eyes fixed on the window to hide his shy smile and the blush slowly staining his cheeks. To his surprise, you squeeze his hand and rest your head on his shoulder. He freezes for a second, unsure how to react to your reciprocated affection, but he makes himself relax into your touch, and starts brushing his thumb back-and-forth on the back of your hand. The sudden storm has made day turn to night a little earlier today, and with the quiet hum of the bus, he finds himself on the edge of sleep for the whole ride—the only thing keeping him awake is his booming heart.
The bus is nearing his stop when the buzz of his phone in his back pocket jolts him awake. You lift your head from his shoulder, massaging your neck as you fish your phone out of your own pocket. Sunghoon, more intrigued by you than by whoever has texted him, watches as the brightness of your screen makes you wince. Once you’ve read the text, you turn towards him, sleepy eyes and sleepy voice as you ask him whether he’s seen “this,” referring to a text from Chaewon. dinner at our flat tonight!!! come whenever. bring drinks. 
“Oh, I forgot she was doing that tonight,” you say through a yawn.
Sunghoon chuckles. “Do you have enough energy for it?”
“I always have enough energy for Chaewon’s cooking.”
You and Sunghoon make a pit-stop at a grocery store to buy two bottles of white wine and the hummus Chaewon likes, then head to your flat. Naturally, questions are asked when you and Sunghoon arrive at the exact same time, but before Sunghoon can explain that you spent the day together, Minjeong’s head pops out of the kitchen door, and she asks whether you ran into each other downstairs. Chaewon is only looking at the both of you, waiting for an answer, so she doesn’t see the very pointed look Minjeong gives you, as if to say Agree with me or else. You quickly glance at Sunghoon then say, “Yeah, we just arrived at the same time.” When they’ve both turned away, you tell him in a hushed tone that you’ll ask her about it later. 
The girls are busy in the small kitchen and Chaewon insists that they don’t need any more help, so you and Sunghoon bring two chairs by the kitchen door and sit as Yunjin catches the four of you up on the most recent drama in her Law cohort. Jay arrives twenty minutes later, but it isn’t another hour before Jake shows up with the excuse that he was taking a nap.
“Someone would think you don’t sleep at night, with the amount of naps you take,” you say.
“Oh my God, I miss when you weren’t here,” Jake replies, flicking your forehead before promptly plopping himself down on the couch. “I was so hungover when I woke up. I had to sleep it off,” he explains as he grabs four cans of beer from his backpack. 
Chaewon always makes a point to ask how everyone’s spent their day, but today, she unfortunately starts with Sunghoon, so he doesn’t have any time to come up with anything believable other than the truth, which is exactly what he does—and when Jay asks, What, to the beach by yourself? under Minjeong’s heavy gaze, he has no choice but to say yes. He isn’t sure why it’s such a big deal that you spent the day with him, or why it needs to be kept a secret, but there must be a reason. He’ll find out later. When it’s your turn, you look straight into Sunghoon’s eyes as you say you spent the day at the library but didn’t get much work done. Everyone ignores Jake when he exclaims Boring! and Chaewon swiftly moves onto Jay.
But you don’t. 
Your eyes stay on Sunghoon, unflinchingly watching him, expression unreadable, and he finds himself unable to look away, even as he feels his face heat up and his stomach flip. Then you smile, a satisfied smirk like you got what you wanted, and shift your gaze to Jay, who’s going on and on about the first six episodes of Lost he binge-watched earlier and wondering why nobody had told him about this “masterpiece of a show” before. Sunghoon is too busy thinking about the way you’d looked at him and pondering all the reasons for it to listen carefully. He watched Lost when he was fourteen anyway.
All throughout the evening, as the seven of you eat Chaewon’s pasta dish (which she made entirely from scratch, and is probably one of the best things to have ever graced Sunghoon’s taste buds), drink, talk, and afterwards, play card games, every glance between you and Sunghoon feels like a secret conversation that only the two of you are privy to. No one except for Minjeong is aware that you spent the day just the two of you until now—and even she doesn’t know what it is you did. Within a day of knowing each other, you already share memories that are yours and no one else’s. Sunghoon is giddy with the knowledge, heart skipping every time your eyes meet, no matter how fleetingly. When you’re all saying goodbye, it takes everything in him not to hug you for an awkwardly long time and to tear himself away from you. 
He can hardly fall asleep that night.
--
For the entirety of the year you were gone, Sunghoon could only nod and smile while the others bemoaned your absence or commented on how much more fun it’d be if you were here (even Jake, after enough wine spritzers, would admit to missing you). He understood that the group dynamics might feel different to them without you around, but this particular set of people was all he knew, so he never minded it. It reminded him of people telling him how sad it must’ve been growing up without a father, trying to be empathetic, when he didn’t know how he could miss something he never had. 
But now that you’re here, he gets it. You add something to the group that he can’t quite put his finger on. It’s in your affectionate gestures towards Chaewon and Yunjin, in your shared sense of humor with Jay (which no one else seems to find funny, save for Sunghoon, sometimes), in your bickering with Minjeong and downright arguing with Jake. It’s a hackneyed expression, but you do light up a room—at least in Sunghoon’s opinion, you do. In your presence, everything feels not only more lively, but also more cohesive, like you were the missing piece of a puzzle. Like a historic work of art that has been returned to its rightful owner. 
Sunghoon just finds himself drawn to you, at times unable to keep his eyes off of you, and the only things keeping him from making a move are his inherent shyness and the eyes of your friends. He doesn’t want to mess up the friendship he has with anyone from the group, least of all Jake, just because he can’t keep it in his pants. He thought of Yunjin and Chaewon, how their relationship had gone smoothly from the beginning and posed no problem to the dynamic of the group, but he had no idea if this was replicable between you and him at all.
If he had to be honest, a big part of him was also just afraid you’d reject him.
Getting a read on you is hard, which doesn’t help. It’s been three weeks since the gang reunited, since that party where you met. The first semester of his second and your fourth year started a little bit over a week ago; Sunghoon sometimes worries that you think there is some big age gap between you and that you see him as a kid, even though, admittedly, two years is not such a huge difference. In those three weeks, there have been many encounters which could be seen as cases of flirting between the two of you—Sunghoon has noticed every single one of them and replayed each an embarrassing amount of times in his head. A hand carefully posited on his shoulder; prolonged eye contact; jokes whispered in his ear at a crowded house party; knees lightly touching at first, then pressed together during movie night. None of it ever fails to make Sunghoon’s heart flutter. You could breathe in his general direction and it’d make his heart beat fast enough to worry a cardiologist, so when you smile at him, it’s a small death every time.
And so he dares hope that his interest isn’t one-sided—although most of the time, he is so stuck between thinking none of it means anything and thinking every single thing you do is a sign that you like him, that he rarely knows what to think. And whenever you’ve paid him enough attention to make him believe it’s not all in his head, you do something that proves him wrong. Watching you interact with other people, he realizes that you keep good eye contact with everyone and that you’re just as touchy and playful with all of your friends. At parties, you hit it off with new people and catch up with old friends without so much as a hint of awkwardness. He watches as you talk to other guys, the same smile that has been making him weak for the past three weeks, directed towards them and not him. Sunghoon assumes you’re either really nice to everyone and oblivious to the fact that it could be seen as flirting, or you just flirt with everyone. 
In that sense, the two of you are complete opposites. Sunghoon, whose entire friend group hangs on the fact that he befriended Jay, who knew Jake, who knew you, Minjeong, Yunjin and Chaewon. Sunghoon who has spoken to maybe half of his hockey team outside of the locker rooms and the occasional party. Sunghoon who, outside of his usual friend group, has managed to make three other friends on his own in the year he’s been at university, because they had been put in a group project and magically hit it off enough to upgrade from classmates to friends. 
Then there’s you, who has to stop every thirty seconds at a party to say hi to someone you know. You, who still keeps in touch with the friends you made in a foreign country, even those who spoke broken English. You, who didn’t make Sunghoon feel like his crippling shyness was a problem when you first met. 
He doesn’t understand how everyone who meets you doesn’t instantly fall in love. 
Or maybe they do, and he’s just one of many vying for your heart. 
Tonight is one of the nights where all he can do is watch from afar as you interact with another man that he desperately wishes was him. With your lower back against the kitchen counter, drink in hand as you laugh with that other guy, eyes never leaving his face, it almost looks like someone has copied your time with Sunghoon at the costume party and pasted it onto this post-hockey game party. All you’re missing is a bright pink cowgirl hat and boots to match.
And yet, it’s his team jacket over your shoulders, his name and number on your back. Sunghoon shouldn’t feel nearly as jealous as he does.
So he does what any good friend would do, and blames Jay for reasons completely unwarranted—even now, days after receiving his advice, and hours after taking it, Sunghoon still can’t help but regret involving him at all. 
Initially, Sunghoon hadn’t wanted to tell anyone about his growing feelings for you—he’d thought that if he pushed them away and kept them to himself, they’d go away on their own. But clearly, they didn’t, seeing as how his stomach always twisted in nervous excitement at the prospect of seeing you and how he could never get through a conversation with you without blushing. So, quicker than he’d like to admit, he’d given in and told Jay about the day you’d spent at the beach and how felt about you now, thinking it was some big shameful secret that would render his friend flabbergasted. 
That was his first mistake. 
Jay wasn’t impressed. “Yeah, it’s been pretty obvious, dude,” he’d said through a mouthful of cheeseburger. It was after hockey practice, and they were sitting in the burger joint near the ice rink that had some of the best student deals in town. Jake was going on a Hinge date, and Sunghoon had lured Jay in with the promise of free food (Jay wanted to go home and game, but all Sunghoon needed to do to convince him was to say “I’ll pay for it”). 
“Obvious? How obvious? Does everyone know? Does Jake know?” Sunghoon asked, growing more agitated by the second.
“Jake is possibly the worst room-reader that has ever lived, so no, I don’t think he’s caught on. But the rest of us know. I mean, you look at her like a twelve-year-old with a crush on his English teacher,” Jay said, unceremoniously cramming fries into his mouth.
Sunghoon ignored the slightly humiliating remark, still preoccupied by the fact that he hadn’t been as discreet as he thought he had. He leant in towards Jay and dropped his voice to a whisper, even though the restaurant was practically empty, save for them and a group of rowdy middle school boys who were definitely not paying attention to them. “Do you think… does she know?”
Jay dropped his fist on the table in sudden annoyance, causing Sunghoon to jump back in his seat. “Now you’re acting like a twelve-year-old.” Before Sunghoon could defend himself and argue that he’s being completely rational, Jay launches into a surprisingly moving monologue. “It’s fine if you like her, there’s nothing to be embarrassed of. Everybody feels attraction towards other people, everybody gets crushes, it’s no big deal. Just talk to her. Worst case scenario, she doesn’t feel the same way, and you both move on, because you’re adults.”
There’s nothing worse than a friend being right about something you absolutely don’t want to hear. Sunghoon did feel like he had been carrying a horrible secret around, but Jay was spot-on: crushes are a very common, very human experience. And yet Sunghoon managed to feel like he was the only one who had ever had to go through this torture. “You say that like it’s easy,” he said, sulking.
“It is easy. You’re making it hard.”
“So what, your advice is just to confess to her?”
Jay rolled his eyes. “See? You’re saying confess like it’s some sin you have to repent for. Yeah, just tell her.”
“Just tell her,” Sunghoon repeated, looking at his friend like he was crazy. Jay just took another bite of his burger.
“Yeah, dude. It’s not even like you’ve known each other for a long time, so there’s no risk of ruining a friendship, or anything.”
“But do you even know if she feels the same way at all?”
Jay shrugged. “She hasn’t mentioned anything,” he said, and Sunghoon’s heart dropped in disappointment. “But it’s Y/N, she’ll be cool about it. And who knows, she might actually see something in you, for some godforsaken reason.”
Jay laughed at his own joke, and Sunghoon afforded him a chuckle. They moved on to other topics, but later, as they waited for Jay’s bus to come, he couldn’t help himself. “Do you think Jake will mind? If something happens with Y/N and me?”
Jay thought for a second. “I think he’d be more upset with her than with you, what with everything that happened with Heeseung... But knowing him, he probably won’t care as long as you aren’t weird in front of him.” He puts a hand on Sunghoon’s shoulder and shakes it gently. “Don’t let that stop you from making a move, okay? You’ll cross that bridge when you get to it.” His bus came then, so Sunghoon couldn't ask for more details about this Heeseung situation—he knew that there had been something between you and him which hadn’t ended particularly well, but no one ever really talked about it so he didn’t dare bring it up. All he knew was that it had been significant enough for Jay to mention it now, and for Jake to seem bothered every time it was mentioned.
He put all of that out of his head for the time being. In a way, he had just received Jay’s blessing; even if it scared him shitless, he could make a move. Perhaps not something as straightforward as Jay was suggesting, but something, at the very least. 
The first major hockey game of the season was that coming Friday. Sunghoon had an idea.
The morning of, he shot you a text. He tried to make it sound as nonchalant as he can, so that you wouldn’t know he spent close to an hour deleting, writing and pouring over a singular sentence. Can you meet me in front of the locker rooms 30 mins before the game? 
That was his second mistake.
You replied twenty minutes later, twenty minutes that Sunghoon spent questioning everything that had led up to this moment.
yn.sim i’ll be there!!
You even got there five minutes early. He was waiting for you, all decked out in his hockey uniform, save for the gloves and protective headgear. He was anxiously chewing on gum, heart doing somersaults inside his ribcage—a grin found his lips as soon as you appeared around the corner, the sight of you alleviating his nerves for a second, then doubling them when you came close. “Hey,” he said, voice soft and slightly trembling.
“Hey,” you simply replied, a smile on your face to match his as he took you in his arms. It was a hug that lasted a second longer than it should, but that also ended too early for his liking.
“Um, I only have a second, Coach will be wanting to give one of his pep talks,” he said when you separated. One quick glance back at the locker room doors behind him, then back at you. The tips of his ears burnt, and he couldn’t stop his eyes from furtively darting between your face and the floor. But he’d come this far, so he couldn’t back out now. He just had to get it over with. “Here,” he blurted out, holding out the letterman jacket he had been hiding behind his back. You grabbed it, eyeing him with amused suspicion at first, but surprise spreaded over your features as you unfurled the jacket.
“Your team jacket?” 
He couldn’t tell whether you were amazed or horrified. You stared wide-eyed at the jacket, at its dark green sleeves, at the four letters of his last name and the huge number 8 embroidered onto the back. Your surprise faded back into what he thought — what he hoped — was excitement as you looked at him. He scratched the back of his neck, feeling his face flush red. “Yeah, I just, you know… It’s the first big game of the year, and I thought it’d bring me good luck if a pretty girl was wearing my name…” he explained, repeating the words he’d practiced over and over, voice turning into more and more of a mumble as he spoke. He had planned on speaking with more confidence, but now, the fact that he could speak at all felt like a miracle.
A light giggle spilled out of your mouth. Sunghoon immediately took it for mockery and regretted every decision that had led him here. “Sorry, it was a silly idea, you don’t have to wear it if you don’t like it,” he said, reaching for the jacket. But you were quicker than him, hugging the thick bundle of fabric to your chest as you now beamed at him.
“Are you kidding? I love it,” you said, shrugging off your jacket and replacing it with his.
First, relief flooded his body, then pride and excitement — as you spun around and showed the jacket off — at seeing his name on your back, and his attempt at making a move being successful. At least, he thought it was clear what he meant by giving you his jacket to wear at his game—he could only hope you understood. “Well… I’m glad.” Your eyes met, and you both chuckled softly, gazes holding each other’s for a second too long. 
Two weeks ago, Sunghoon still would’ve been able to convince himself this was a fluke; that this was just another one of his crushes that a gentle breeze could blow away. Because after all, when Sunghoon fell in love, it usually went as quickly as it came. But at that moment, in front of the locker rooms, his mind solely on you and not the opening game of the season, he realized this was something else entirely. And whatever it was, he hadn’t felt it in a good long while.
He was terrified—but infinitely excited, too.
“Okay, I should probably head back in now,” he forced himself to say, but made no move to go.
“Okay.”
He paused. “Will you be cheering me on?”
Your smile widened. “Of course.”
He nodded slowly, upper body starting to turn away but feet still firmly planted on the ground. “Okay.” 
Another second passed, and just as he was about to actually walk away, you grabbed his hand. Before he could compute what was happening, you lifted your head and pressed a small kiss to his cheek. His hand was still in yours when you took a step back, and for once, it was you who looked sheepishly at the floor. “For good luck,” you explained. He had no time to reply—you were already walking away, only looking back once to wave and shoo him in the direction of the locker room. He chuckled and nodded, but waited until you were out of sight to head back into the locker room.
Inside the locker room, everyone was too focused on getting their head in the game to notice his giddy smile. Your lips had been warm and soft against his cheeks, a welcome repeat of that time at the costume party, but the quickness of it all had only made him want more. From that very first night he’d met you, the question of how your lips would feel on his had scarcely left his mind. This brought him a step closer to getting an answer, but also made his curiosity grow tenfold.
Thankfully, by the time his coach gathered them around for a last minute pep talk, he’d managed to put the distracting thoughts of you out of his head, at least temporarily—he’d need to play well, for himself and his team mostly, but impressing you was also a priority. 
As the captain, Heeseung said a few words. He reminded the team of how important this match was and went over the main strategy points. For the time being, Sunghoon was able to forget about his arguably unfounded resentment against the older boy and whatever it was he had to do with you. This was not the time for jealousy over someone he had no right to feel jealous over. 
A few minutes later, his members and those of the opposing team poured out onto the rink for warm-up. Sunghoon searched the crowd for your face—when he found it, you were already smiling wide and waving at him. His heart did something funny, but Jay punched his shoulder pad and he remembered what he was there for. He could get lost in the eyes of a pretty girl later, specifically when he’d destroyed the other team and shown her how good of a hockey player he was.
Every now and then as he skirted around the rink and did his stretches, he stole glances at you. They didn't last long, because every single time, you’d already be looking, as if your eyes never strayed from him. Knowing you were watching made him nervous at first, but by the end of warm-up, mainly because he didn’t have much of a choice, he’d turned those nerves into an ever stronger will to do well.
The moment the referee blew the whistle, and for the hour that followed, Sunghoon was locked in on one thing and one thing only: winning. He was only competitive when it came to hockey—he didn’t care about dying in an online battle game or losing to Jake at beer pong, but once he was on the rink, he had to win. Pride surged through him and filled every crevice of his aching limbs whenever he or one of his team members scored, and the feeling that came with a victory, with hugging his teammates in celebration or hearing the crowd cheer for them, was like nothing else he’d ever known. The other side of that coin meant that any loss was a tremendous disappointment. Getting beat at an important game could put him in a week-long funk. His sister had once carefully hinted at his self-esteem relying too much on his hockey performance, and although his first reaction had been to dismiss her, he knew she had poked at some truth there. But what could he do—on particularly lonely nights, he truly thought hockey was all he had going for him. 
To his overthinking nature, becoming so single-minded the second the whistle blows was a relief, a break from the stress of daily life. He didn’t have to worry about his next deadline or about what the guys on the team thought of him or about the inevitable phone call to his mom asking for more money for groceries. It was respite from the thoughts surrounding you that plagued him: how you felt about him, how you might react knowing what he felt for you, how Jake might react. Why Minjeong hadn’t wanted you to say anything that evening, but why Jay had told him to just go for it. Heeseung, whom he had to respect as the captain and an undeniably talented player, but also as someone who had had something to do with you, whether good or bad. All of it had been wildly bustling around Sunghoon’s mind, but once on the rink, all he had to concern himself with was the puck and getting it in the opposing team’s goal. 
And Sunghoon did just that—he scored the first goal of the game, another one in the second period, then a third during the eleventh hour, breaking the tie between the two teams. He smiled right at you after each one, just to make sure you had seen everything. He couldn’t quite describe how it felt to see you clap and cheer for him, jumping up-and-down, forming a megaphone with your hands around your mouth and yelling, “Go Sunghoon!” all while you wore his jacket. It was a separate kind of pride and satisfaction from the sort he’d get seeing anyone else cheer him on, for sure. 
The other team put up a good fight, getting in a few goals of their own and protecting their side well, but in the end, thanks to Sunghoon’s goal, it was his team that won. He took his helmet off and got his hair ruffled by half of his team, then shook hands with the other team, trying to contain his boastful smile—some ice hockey players flew off the handle very quickly, and starting a fight was the last thing he wanted.
Kids and local fans huddled by the barriers on each side of the player’s tunnel to get an autograph or a picture. People around here were weirdly attached to their university sport teams, and the athletes on teams that did particularly well — namely football and rugby — were sort of local celebrities. Their ice hockey team wasn’t quite at that stage yet, but they were placing better nationally with every year, and so the local interest had grown. More kids had started signing up for lessons, and their parents often brought them to home games. As Sunghoon chatted with men twice his age and took selfies with ten-year-olds, he tried to find you in the crowd, to no avail. He’d been hoping for a thumbs-up from you for a game well played, or even a hug, but you were nowhere in sight.
It wasn’t until half-an-hour later, after saying bye to all the fans that had waited after the game for them, listening to Heeseung and their coach congratulate them (but also remind them to not take anything for granted), showering and changing, that he got to check his phone.
chaewon we going k-bbq! u guys played well see u later at da party!!!!
Disappointment only had a second to sink to the bottom of his stomach. He’d barely finished reading the text when he was hoisted up by the shoulders. Two of his senior teammates, Soobin and Beomgyu, marched him towards the exit. “We are getting you wasted tonight, Park,” Beomgyu announced, a wide grin on his lips.
“I have a good feeling about this season,” Soobin added. Sunghoon looked back to find Jay and Jake simply shrugging and laughing at him.
Indeed, the second they got to the dorm where tonight’s party would be taking place, a beer was thrusted in his hand. It was only 7 p.m., still light outside, but that didn’t stop the team nor their friends that had come to the game. They sipped beer like it was water, so much so that two hours later, when the party started to grow, Sunghoon was already quite inebriated. It didn’t help that his cup was never empty for too long, and that he had the reassurance of being in his own dorm—it was the closest student building to the ice rink, and so was one of the prime spots for hockey parties. He could get as drunk as he wanted — or as Beomgyu wanted — and still get home in less than a minute. 
He somehow ended up in the corridor, part of a nonsensical conversation about candle-making with two guys he had recognized from one of his Phys Ed classes but could not for the life of him remember the names of. One had shared that candle-making was a big hobby of his, and it had made Sunghoon and the other unknown man lose their minds—Sunghoon had never realized how curious about candle-making he was, but he couldn’t stop asking questions. It sounded great. Maybe he’d have to pick up candle-making, too. 
Eventually, he headed back to the kitchen for a new drink. For the nth time this evening, he thought of texting you, then immediately thought against it. He wanted to know when you’d get here, but he didn’t want you to know that he wanted to know—although as the night deepened and his intoxication rose, he could remember less and less why that would be such a bad thing. He stepped into the kitchen, and going from the brightly-lit corridor to the dark kitchen with flashing neon lights made him so dizzy that he made a beeline for the couch, needing to sit down for a second.
And that was when he saw you.
Lower back against the counter, talking with a guy he’s never seen in his life. You look like you’re having fun—smiling, laughing, keeping eye contact with that guy. You’re still wearing his jacket. It should probably reassure him—his name is literally on you, what does it matter that you’re speaking to someone else? But instead, all he can think is that wearing his jacket must mean nothing to you. What was basically a confession from him seems to have fallen on deaf ears.
His friends’ words over the past year come back to him—how much you flirt with people, how it wasn’t a rare occurrence for you to go home with a guy after a party and never speak of him ever again. Was this what was happening here?
He knows it’s unreasonable, but in his drunken state, he takes it as a betrayal. Like he can’t believe you haven’t read his mind, figured out how he felt about you, and decided to give special attention to him and him only. He’s only able to take it for so long—two minutes later, he trudges out of the room, walking right past you but not looking your way.
His new mission is to find his friends, but before he’s done much searching, he hears his name being called out. Of course, he recognizes your voice immediately, but he doesn’t quite believe it until he looks over his shoulder, and there you are, face glowing and smiling wide. You’ve clearly had a few drinks, but he likes to think you’d be just as happy to see him if you were sober. He turns around to face you, watching as you narrow the distance between the two of you. He’s not in a much better state—the simple thought that you had come after him makes him forget any sort of resentment he held against you a second ago. When you reach him, he holds on to one of your arms, as much an effort to stabilize his swaying body as an excuse to touch you.
“Hey,” he simply says. He’s always at a loss for words around you, so scared he’ll say the wrong thing that he ends up barely speaking at all. He’s only sober enough to know that with all the cheap beer and vodka running through his blood, his odds of making a fool of himself are even bigger. 
“Hey. I was wondering where you were.” 
“You’re the one who came late.”
“I know!” you exclaim. “I wanted to come right away, but Chaewon was hell-bent on getting her Korean barbecue.”
“She does get cranky when she hasn’t had pork belly in a while.” Sunghoon feels like he’s just won the Nobel Prize when you let out a laugh. “Was the food good at least?”
“It was amazing. So worth getting here late,” you joke.
He rolls his eyes playfully. “I see how it is.” Then, before he can stop himself, he adds, “Then we should go there together next time.” 
Your smile changes, turning from cheerful to surprised, but amused—almost mischievous. You take a step forward. Sunghoon gulps; the gap between the two of you was narrow to begin with. “Are you asking me out on a date?”
Usually, this type of straight-forwardness would have him stuttering, but drunk Sunghoon is a man sober Sunghoon barely recognizes in the morning. “Yeah. I am. Is that okay?”
You nod. “Mh-hm.”
“Nice. Okay.” For a second, you just look at each other. Another thing about drunk Sunghoon: he doesn’t feel like prolonged eye contact will make him spontaneously combust. He actually quite enjoys it. He also stumbles, even when all he’s doing is trying to stand straight. “You’re still wearing my jacket,” he eventually says, reaching out to take the end of your sleeve between his fingers.
You stretch out your arms and appraise the team jacket as if you only remembered you had it on. “Yeah. It’s comfy.”
“It looks good. You look good.”
“You’re not quite sober, are you?” you ask suddenly. 
“Is it that obvious?” When you nod, he giggles, lowering his head in defeat. “The guys made me drink so much.”
“You did score three goals after all. And you looked good doing it.”
At the praise, he stands up to his full height and places his palms behind his head in a victorious pose. “I did, didn’t I?” he says, looking off in the distance with a self-assured look that makes you burst into laughter. He drops the confident facade and laughs along with you, until somebody bumps into him and sends him stumbling forwards. If you weren’t standing there to catch him, he’d probably have fallen flat on his face. But even though he doesn’t fall, he feels all the alcohol catching up to him and threatening to come right back out where it came from. You hold him for a second, and just as you ask him if he’s okay, he says, “I think I’m gonna throw up.”
You sigh. “Okay. Where’s your room?” 
Arm under his shoulders, you let Sunghoon lean most of his weight on you as you guide him towards the elevator. It’s just one floor, but you said you didn’t want to risk the stairs with him. “Hey, who was that guy with you in the kitchen? That guy in the striped shirt? You guys seemed real chummy back there…” he mumbles as you help him out of the elevator. Even on the verge of sickness, Sunghoon is preoccupied by more important things.
“Oh, that was Jaemin.”
“Jaemin,” he echoes, more venom in his voice than needed.
You look at him, taking in his disgruntled expression, and chuckle. “Yeah, he’s having some problems with his boyfriend. He asked me for advice.”
Sunghoon almost freezes in his tracks, but you’re there to keep him walking towards his room. “Oh. He has a boyfriend.”
“Yeah…” He can tell you want to tease him about it, but thankfully, you say nothing. He’s made it clear he had gotten jealous of your gay friend—no need to spell it out in so many words. Once you reach his studio (which he’d stupidly left unlocked), he heads straight for the bathroom, locking himself in, half out of embarrassment, half because he really doesn’t want you to see him throw up. Talk about a turn-off. He leans over the toilet bowl, waiting for the vomit to rise, but nothing comes. He waits, and waits, mind completely empty, head spinning even though he’s sitting very still, when suddenly a knock on the door pulls him out of his stupor.
“Sunghoon? It’s been ten minutes. Everything okay?”
He doesn’t say anything, just unlocks the door for you. Without realizing, he fell asleep like a bored teenager in math class. “All right,” he hears you say.
He’s surprised you’re able to carry him out of the bathroom—if he was a deadweight before, by now, rigor mortis has practically set in. Despite his small student room, crossing it takes you an entire minute, and when you reach his bed, you all but let him flop on the mattress. He doesn’t mind. As soon as his body hits the bed, he feels quite snug, curling against his blanket. You start to unbutton his shirt, probably just thinking he’s already fallen asleep and wanting to make him more comfortable, but your fingers freeze when he starts giggling. Shoulders shaking with unbridled laughter, he feels as delighted as a five-year-old who just said a naughty word and made all his drunk relatives laugh at the family dinner. 
“I know I looked really hot tonight, but can we wait until I’m sober?” he asks, slurring his words slightly and keeping his eyes shut, despite the shit-eating smirk on his lips. You hit him on the chest but it just makes him laugh more.
“Bold of you to assume I’d still hit when I’ve just had to peel you off your toilet seat.” He lets you finish helping him out of his button-down. 
“Wouldn’t you?” he asks. He tries to look at you, but his eyes don’t quite open all the way, and they don’t focus properly, due to a strong mix of alcohol and inappropriate thoughts. Of you, specifically. His body feels suddenly very heavy, his want for you weighing him down into the mattress. The room is dark, your face illuminated only by the light in the bathroom and the glow of the street lights outside. You always look pretty, but your beauty is especially breath-taking right now, Sunghoon thinks. He wants to reach out and touch your face, wants to trace your jawline and know what your skin would feel like against his fingers. He doesn’t realize he’s actually doing it until he hears you inhale shakily.
The expression in your eyes is unreadable, and quickly gone, replaced by an annoyed squint. You grab his wrist gently, setting it back down next to him. “I’m gonna make you some ramen. You need to sober up, and you haven’t had dinner, have you?”
Sunghoon shakes his head. He feels rejected, and it makes him inordinately sad.
For five minutes, he watches as you rummage around his cupboards for a pack of ramen, fill a pot with water and bring it to a boil. His thoughts float back to your day at the beach, memories that he’s preciously held onto for the past few weeks. You running around on the sand, opening yourself up to him and letting him open himself up to you, holding his hand on the bus. That day, he’d really thought it would be the beginning of something new; but as time passed, he became less and less sure of himself. He’s scared it might’ve just been a fluke, and that he’d have to destroy the castle he’d built in his head. He’s seen you almost every day since, but it’s never been the same. And even if your eyes met unexpectedly sometimes, or if you went out of your way to sit next to him during movie nights, he can’t let himself go on with so few signs. Jay was right—he had to be clear about his feelings, otherwise this would go on forever. Even if it didn’t feel like it, the Earth would continue spinning on its axis if you didn’t reciprocate.
“I’ve missed you.”
You pause in your movements. “Missed me? But we’ve seen each other every day,” you say after a few seconds, still facing away from him. Your voice is softer than he’s heard it before, almost unsure of itself.
“No,” Sunghoon whines, frowning. He can barely keep his eyes open—he wishes you could read his mind so he wouldn’t have to explain, but alas. “I miss you—the you from the beach. When it was just me and you. It’s not the same with the others around.”
Silence falls over the room again. Sunghoon wonders if you’re just going to ignore what he said, until you take a deep breath, and walk back to his bed. You crouch in front of him and take both of his hands in yours. Electricity flows from where your hands touch to the rest of his body. He suddenly feels a lot more awake.
“It’s just the two of us now,” you whisper. 
Sunghoon nods. “I know. It’s nice.”
You smile. It might be the alcohol playing tricks on him, but Sunghoon swears there’s a hint of sadness in your eyes. One of your hands comes up to his hair. You thread your fingers gently through it, pushing it away from his forehead, then bring your hand down to the side of his face, your palm cupping it tenderly. Sunghoon lets himself lean into your warm touch. With his eyes closed, the darkness surrounding him makes this feel like a dream—he basks in the moment so as not to let a second of it go to waste.
“Do you wanna do something just us two this week?” you ask softly. His eyes shoot open—he needs to be sure this is really happening. He nods again, fervently this time, and it makes you chuckle. “Okay.”
“Just us two?” 
“Just us two.”
He relaxes once more. He guides your hand towards his mouth and presses his lips against your palm. Something shifts in your eyes—Sunghoon thinks the opportunity to finally kiss you has arisen, but as soon as his gaze drops to your lips, you’re back on your feet. “Let’s eat some ramen, shall we?” you ask as you head back towards the kitchen. Sunghoon tries his best (and probably fails) to not let his disappointment show.
There’s no dining table to speak of, only a low table near Sunghoon’s bed, on which you set down a wooden board and the steaming pot of spicy noodles. You hand him a pair of chopsticks and a spoon, and tell him to eat. Neither of you say much for a while, and Sunghoon grows redder and redder under your watchful gaze. He asks if you want any a few times, but you always turn him down. The silence quickly gets a little too unbearable for him, and he’s got a question burning the tip of his tongue anyway. Now’s as good a time as ever to ask it.
“Something’s been bugging me recently, actually…” You wait for him to go on. “So, at the costume party, right?” You nod. “You said there was only one person you wanted to kiss… Did you mean me?”
You tilt your head, looking at him like you’re trying to figure out whether he’s joking or not. “Yeah, Sunghoon… I meant you. Who else?”
He’s only half-relieved. “So why won’t you kiss me now?”
To his surprise, you smile. “Because you’re drunk.”
Confusion fogs Sunghoon’s brain. Is that all you’re worried about? Is his blood alcohol level the only thing stopping you from kissing him? “But I-I’m fine. I give you consent to kiss me, Y/N.” He’s dead serious, so when you laugh, it only frustrates him further.
“Finish your food, Sunghoon. We’ll see about kissing later.”
He sighs. Later he could deal with. “Fine. But I’ll hold you to it, okay?” he says, pointing a menacing chopstick at you.
“Okay.”
But Sunghoon can’t keep quiet for long—ten seconds later, he’s remembered another question he’s been dying to ask. He continues drinking his soup in an attempt to appear nonchalant. “So what happened between you and Heeseung?”
The question takes you so off-guard, you look like you would’ve done a spit-take had you been drinking water. “That’s-you know about that?”
“Well, not much, that’s why I’m asking.”
You scoff. “Why do you want to know? It’s boring.”
At those words, Sunghoon whips his head up to look at you. “It’s not boring!” he exclaims, perhaps a tad too vigorously. “Anything that has to do with you is interesting to me.”
Finally, the corners of your lips rise. Sunghoon hated the ten seconds in which you weren’t smiling. “Well, there isn’t much to say, anyway. We had a thing when we were in second year, I caught feelings and wanted more, and he didn’t. The end.”
Sunghoon freezes, staring at you with his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth agape. He then sets his cutlery down neatly next to the pot of ramen and clasps his hands together like he’s in a business meeting. “So you’re telling me that he had the opportunity to make you his girlfriend and he just… didn’t?”
You shrug. “Basically, yeah.”
He hits the bedsheets next to him, huffing out in annoyance. “What an idiot.”
“He sure is,” you say. You smile to yourself as you grab Sunghoon’s spoon and try some of the broth. He wonders whether anything lies behind that smile. “But it happened a while ago. Don’t be weird with him on my account. He’s still your captain.”
Sunghoon thinks for a second. “Can I side-eye him once in a while? Or not pass him the puck during practice?”
“Sure,” you reply, laughing. You swiftly move on to other topics as Sunghoon slurps the last of his noodles, asking him about the beginning of the party and just how much his teammates made him drink. He’s recounting the shot contest they held, which Mark won with an impressive seven shots of tequila in a row — Sunghoon hopes the boy is okay now — when your phones buzz at the same time. Minjeong’s name appears on your screen, Jay’s on his, both asking where you are.
“Should we head back now?” you offer, although Sunghoon, wishfully perhaps, detects a trace of reluctance in your voice. “You look like you’ve sobered up a bit, seeing as you’re able to string more than two sentences together.”
“I wasn’t that bad!”
“I should’ve filmed you.”
It’s one a.m. when you head back down, and the party is in full swing. Pop music blasts through someone’s JBL speaker in the shared kitchen, the hallways are more crowded than the subway at rush hour, just as full of hockey fans celebrating their team’s win as students who just wanted an excuse to party, and every window is open to alleviate some of the stuffiness. They probably have another hour left before the dorm residents who decided not to join in the festivities call campus police on them.
Sunghoon is relieved to find that Jake is off with other team members, reaching levels of drunkenness that will most definitely be regretted in the morning. Technically, he hasn’t done anything wrong—he simply let you nurse him back to sobriety after he almost regurgitated his pre-game protein bar and three beers all over your nice shirt. Chaewon and Yunjin are busy making out in a corner, their lack of decorum only increasing when they’ve been drinking, but Jay and Minjeong eye you suspiciously upon seeing the two of you arrive together. You explain what happened so casually that they don’t question it any further.
Chaewon and Yunjin only tear themselves off of each other when a Beyoncé song starts playing, and they drag all four of you to the makeshift dancefloor, which is really just three meters away in the middle of the kitchen. Sunghoon is practically all sobered up by now, but he’s loosened up enough not to feel self-conscious with every step he takes; the fact that you look so happy, dancing with him and laughing at his silly moves, is a considerable bonus. He won’t drink any more, not wanting to risk embarrassing himself further in front of you, and Jay, as the group’s self-proclaimed health guru, probably had his last beer around nine p.m., but the girls, each of them with a cup of suspicious transparent liquid in hand, are getting drunker by the minute—and so is Jake, who has now joined you all on the dancefloor, if his inability to stand straight is anything to go by. Sunghoon assumes you’re also done with alcohol for the night, until you turn to him in the middle of a song no one has heard since 2015 and tell him you’re going to get a drink.
“Okay!” he simply answers, and for a good thirty seconds, basks in the blissful satisfaction of knowing he was the one you informed of your whereabouts. That is, until he realizes a minute later that it was probably a covert invitation for him to come along, which he totally missed. But when he looks over at the counter where all the drinks are, his heart drops—Heeseung is standing in front of you, pouring gin and lemonade into your cup. A flurry of emotions course through Sunghoon, emotions he has no idea what to do with, because he’s not sure they’re entirely warranted. He’s angry that Heeseung is talking to you, after what he did, confused that you’d let him; but mostly, he’s jealous. But he knows it’s only because he has no guarantee that you like him, and that you won’t go off with Heeseung, despite having just talked about how you were over him.
Wait—is that really what you said? You told Sunghoon that what happened with Heeseung didn’t bother you anymore, which doesn’t necessarily mean you wouldn’t go back to him, given the chance. 
Before he can think it over a second time, Sunghoon heads over to where you and Heeseung stand. He places himself right behind you, reaching for a bottle of Coke on your side and pouring himself a drink.
“Oh, hey, Hoon,” his team captain says, clearly surprised to see him there and looking so discontented. Sunghoon can’t remember whether they’ve ever been close enough for Heeseung to call him by his nickname. “Having fun?”
“Yep,” he curtly replies, avoiding eye contact with either of you and looking out at the crowd of party-goers instead. He can feel your gaze, heavy on his face, can see the knowing smirk slowly rising on your lips. How was it that you could see right through him so easily?
“Too much dancing made you thirsty?” you ask, taking a drink from your cup and hiding your smile behind it.
He glares at you, more annoyed that his attempt at subtly sussing out what you and Heeseung were doing together was shut down so quickly than anything else. “Yep,” he repeats.
“You guys know each other?” the older boy asks, eyes darting between the two of you.
“Jake introduced us,” Sunghoon quickly answers. To his surprise, this makes Heeseung chuckle.
“Jay, Sunghoon, me… Wow, do you meet all your friends through your brother, Y/N?” he asks jokingly. Immediately, so many alarm bells ring in Sunghoon’s head—the implication that you and Heeseung are friends, the fact that he put himself and Sunghoon in the same bag, and above all, that teasing, almost flirtatious tone of his. 
He’s horrified to find you rolling your eyes playfully and saying, “I have other friends, thanks,” in a tone far too similar. At that moment, Minjeong starts yelling about how much she loves everyone in this room but particularly “you guys,” pointing to Jake, Jay, Minjeong and Chaewon, and “you guys, too!” screaming over the music as she points to you and Sunghoon.
“There’s one of them,” you say, half-amused, half-exasperated. “We should probably go check on her. See you around, Heeseung.”
“Right. See you, Y/N. Sunghoon.” 
Back to no-nickname basis, apparently.
Your group’s indicator of when it’s time to go home is when Minjeong starts one of her “I-love-my-friends-so-much” rants—if she’s that drunk, everyone else must be wasted. Indeed, Chaewon and Yunjin are holding onto each other to keep themselves from falling down, and Jake is unable to keep his head up. You, Sunghoon and Jay herd your friends outside and wait for Jake’s Uber, making sure to get him safely inside and to tip the driver generously for his pains. Jay lives nearby yours and the girls’ flat, and Sunghoon, ever the gentleman, walks you all home.
“Just ‘cause you and Jay might need a hand getting these three home,” he tells you. Yunjin, Chaewon and Minjeong are currently running around on the road, pointing and laughing at random shop names, and Jay is yelling at them to get back on the sidewalk.
“Mh-hm.”
“And it’ll be good to completely sober up before going to bed.”
“Right.”
There’s no use putting up a front with you—he’s an open book and you’re an avid reader. You don’t need to say anything to make it clear that you know it’s just an excuse to spend more time with you.
“You know, I told you not to be weird with Heeseung,” you say, gently punching him in the arm.
“Was I weird?” he asks, knowing fully well he hadn’t acted at all like he usually did around his captain. 
“You basically only spoke to let Heeseung know we’re friends. You were making yourself all tall and looking mysteriously out into the distance instead of at us.”
“But I am tall and mysterious,” he says, pride coursing through him as it always does when you laugh at one of his jokes.
“You’re probably the least mysterious person I know, Hoon.”
Hoon. How much sweeter that name sounds coming from you over anyone else.
“So you agree that I’m tall?”
You roll your eyes, but there’s a grin on your face. A win is a win. “That’s just a fact.”
Sunghoon smiles victoriously. “I’ll take a fact. But I’m sorry if I was acting weird… I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t bothering you.”
“Heeseung is always bothering me,” you say with a sigh. “He comes up to me like this at every party. He’s just asking how I’ve been, but it’s like he’s sussing out whether or not he’s still got a chance.”
“Do you need me to beat him up? Threaten him? Dox him?”
Even though Sunghoon was only half-joking, you burst out laughing, hard enough for Minjeong to whip around and shout, “What are you laughing about?” as if you had offended her personally. At least Jay is there to make her turn around and focus on walking straight.
“I appreciate the offer, but that won’t be needed. I just don’t like talking about it, ‘cause it’s really not that big a deal anymore. It feels like digging up old bones, you know?”
Sunghoon shrugs. “I’d commit grave robbery with you.”
“You-what?”
“Nevermind. We obviously don’t have to talk about it, but I’m curious.”
You sigh. “I guess it’d make sense for you to know about this.” Sunghoon thinks he sees something like panic flash across your features, but it’s so quick and such a rare expression on you that he’s not sure whether he just imagined it. “You know-just ‘cause everyone else is aware of it, and everything,” you quickly explain.
“Sure.”
“I just… I’m sure Heeseung is a nice guy when it comes to other things, but what the girls and I have concluded is that he’s a bit of an attention whore, you know. When it comes to girls. We fooled around for a while, and he never made it official, even when I made it pretty clear that that was what I wanted. But every time we saw each other after that, he’d flirt with me like nothing had happened. I fell for it at first and flirted back, thinking he had changed his mind… but he really just wanted to make sure I was still into him.”
“Looking for validation,” Sunghoon says.
“Exactly. And when I realized that, I stopped giving it to him. I was getting tired of him anyway, saying the same thing every time. But now, I entertain him for a couple of minutes before I walk away. I shut him down before he gets a chance to do it to me.”
“That’s smart.”
“I know,” you say, smiling. “I understand the need for validation, but he won’t be getting any from me.”
Jay bravely handles the three drunkards the whole way home, letting you and Sunghoon hang behind and carry on talking. You reach the boy’s apartment first, and yours five minutes later. But when you reach your front door, Minjeong announces she needs to talk to Sunghoon. “Privately,” she emphasizes.
You give Sunghoon an amused look and shrug as if to say “She’s your problem now.” He doesn’t have time to protest before you’ve bid him goodnight and disappeared behind the door, Yunjin and Chaewon in tow, yelling good night at Sunghoon like they’re not going to see him for months. 
Minjeong places her palms flat onto Sunghoon’s torso and looks right at him—to the best of her ability, at least, considering she’s having a hard time focusing her eyes. “Sunghoon,” she says gravely.
“Minjeong?”
“Listen, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you,” she says, slurring her words. “You know I love Y/N, she’s amazing…”
“Yeah, she is,” Sunghoon says firmly—already, he can tell where this is going, and he doesn’t like it.
“But she’s not the best with relationships.”
“What do you mean?”
Minjeong’s hands drop by her sides and she exhales deeply. “I’ve just never seen her in a committed relationship in the-in the almost four years I’ve known her. She never lets things get serious. She’s just so afraid of being hurt, Hoon, and I-” 
A hiccup escapes Minjeong’s lips as tears start pooling in her eyes. Sunghoon has only ever seen Minjeong cry when drunk—even movies that had him sobbing barely made her eyes water. Even if she isn’t in her right state of mind, he knows it means this must be important to her. He holds her arms and tries to put on the most reassuring tone he can. “But I wouldn’t hurt her.”
“No, I know that. I’m scared you’d get hurt. I don’t want things to become weird between all of us.”
Sunghoon shakes his head. “Minjeong, what-that wouldn’t happen.”
“But it will!” she exclaimed. “If something happens with you and her, and it doesn’t work out the way you want it to, it’ll make things awkward-”
“If that happens,” he interrupts, “I’ll deal with it. I won’t make it your guys’ problem. Y/N and I are adults, okay?”
“You’re like, nineteen…”
“Yeah, whatever. Don’t worry about it, okay? It’ll be fine.” He takes a step back and opens the door for her to get in. 
She’s only on the first stair when she turns back around. “But, Hoon-” she tries, though he cuts her off.
“Minjeong, I promise-”
“Just don’t rush into anything, okay?”
“Okay.”
“And don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Go inside.” 
She complies, giving him one last look before climbing the stairs to her apartment. Sunghoon closes the door behind her, a heavy sigh leaving his lips.
--
Sunghoon is on his way home from hockey practice when his phone buzzes with a text from you.
yn are you still up for doing something this week?
He almost throws his phone in the air in celebration, as if it was a graduation cap. His Sunday was spent going back-and-forth between lapidating himself for his drunken stupidity, memories, rough as stones, hitting him in the face every time he thought of what he said and how he acted, and congratulating himself for having finally made his feelings for you somewhat clearer. Hopefully, you now know he isn’t just awkward and silent around new people—well, he is, but it’s worse with you.
She never lets things get serious.
Minjeong’s warnings echo in his head as he types a positive — although not over-enthusiastic, ‘cause that’d be uncool — answer, but he dismisses them easily. Perhaps he shouldn’t; Sunghoon is, after all, incredibly serious about any and all romantic encounters. The girl at the grocery store who reached for the same red bell pepper as him was the most serious thing to him in the world for a good ten minutes; all of his school crushes were of utmost importance to him, however long they had lasted.
So this? This is capital-s Serious. But therein lies the problem; he’s so serious about you that he’d let you not make it serious. If Minjeong is right, and you’re not planning on taking this nearly as far as he wishes for it to go, he can already tell he’ll just let you. He’ll probably be happy you wanted anything to do with him at all. 
He has ways of reassuring himself, of convincing himself he isn’t a totally lost cause. Because when Sunghoon falls in love — and he had an inkling this was what this was — it usually goes as quickly as it came. Who’s to say this time next week he won’t have completely moved on? Maybe this date that he’s agreed to will go horribly wrong, you’ll be rude to the waiter, you’ll spill tomato sauce all over your shirt, and the flame in his heart will be put out. Easy as that.
You decide to meet on Wednesday evening, two days from now. Sunghoon suggests a Japanese restaurant he likes, a place he had gone to with his mom and sister when they had dropped him off at university before his first year, and that he knows is nice enough for a date but won’t burn a hole through his wallet.
Seeing you at the library the day before is a real thrill. Nobody but you knows of your plans—at least not until he caves in and tells Jay about it, who congratulates him with a roll of his eyes and a pat on the head. All of your eye contact feels loaded with the kind of complicity that comes with sharing a secret. As much as he would love boasting about it to every soul who’d listen, this secrecy electrifies him—it binds the two of you with something much more real than before. At least, more real than Sunghoon’s imagination and one-sided feelings. He knows that your text wasn’t in any way a confession of your own feelings for him, but it’s a step in the right direction.
In the few hours before your reservation at seven p.m., Sunghoon spends so much time thinking about the date that he’s almost late for it. He thinks about his expectations, then tries to get rid of them; he comes up with ideas of what your expectations might be, remembers Minjeong’s words, dismisses them, remembers them again; he goes through scenarios upon scenarios of everything that might go wrong and everything that might go spectacularly well. He ends up with less than twenty minutes to get ready, but manages to arrive at the restaurant a minute before you.
When he sees you approaching, Sunghoon feels like one of those boys in Disney movies as they watch their girlfriend coming down the stairs in her prom dress. You’re not wearing an over-the-top poofy purple dress, but the effect is the same—his eyes are glued on you with every step you take towards him.
You grab him by the arm and lead him into the restaurant as soon as you reach him. He’s too busy taking in your appearance to be bothered by it. “Don’t look at me like that,” you chide as you wait for waiting staff to seat you. He’d actually think you were mad at him if it wasn’t for the small smile playing on your lips.
“Like what?”
“Like what you’re doing right now! You’re staring.”
Realization slowly dawns on him; your gazes have made him lose his composure too many times for him not to know what being flustered looks like. He’d be lying if the fact that it was you in this tight spot and not him didn’t heavily stroke his ego. 
“Why wouldn’t I? You look beautiful,” he says, dropping his voice to a whisper so that the approaching waitress can’t hear. Her presence saves you from responding verbally, but as she brings you to your table, you pinch his arm lightly as if to say Be on your best behavior—although Sunghoon would argue this was his best behavior.
You have trouble making up your mind about the food—you want to try everything on the menu. Sunghoon tentatively offers to order a bunch of dishes and share them. “It’s what my family always does at the restaurant, just try as much as you want and take the leftovers to go. We never ate out very often because my mom would spend so much money every time,” he recollects, smiling fondly.
“That actually sounds like a dream. My parents would never do that. It was always just eat what you got, but I’m unable to look at someone else’s food and not want to try it. It honestly should just be common practice to share dishes at the restaurant.”
Sunghoon thinks he could get down on one knee right then and there. Whenever they went out to eat, the boys would roll his eyes at him when he stole bites of their food. But you—you’re like him. He knows he’s prone to over-exaggeration, but he can’t help but feel like if you understand each other on this, you must understand each other at a molecular level.
He had expected a level of awkwardness to your date, at least at the beginning — God knows the moments in which he doesn’t feel like a mumbling fool in front of you are few and far between — but to his surprise, everything goes smoothly. There is no uncomfortable silence, all his jokes miraculously land, even the lousy ones, and you both laugh and talk and share sushi and pork cutlets like it’s the most natural thing in the world, which perhaps it is. His attempts at flirting are well-received and he only turns violently red twice when you compliment him and smile at him in a particularly pretty way.
It’s that day at the beach all over again. Always on the same page, you dip in and out of topics with a synergy he has rarely felt before. Sunghoon realizes it must be the presence of others, rather than you yourself, that makes him feel like he can’t act the way he wants to around you, makes him so nervous. Save for the moments where you make his heart flutter like a thousand butterflies’ wings, he actually feels quite at ease with you, all things considered. Of course, he still tries — and fails — to look cool for you, but he knows it comes from a place within himself rather than because you make him feel as though he has to meet a certain standard. Surprisingly, he can be totally himself, and it seems to be enough for you.
He loves his friends. He wouldn’t trade them for the world. But he’s not sure he won’t have moments where he’ll wish nothing more than for them all to go away and leave the two of you be.
You eat until you can’t anymore and are still left with enough food for another full meal. You only let him get the bill once he’s promised that next time will be on you. If it means there’ll be a next time, he’s more than happy with making that promise. The sun has set when you exit the restaurant. Sunghoon shivers as he steps outside, the temperature having gone down by at least four degrees in the last two hours.
You grab his hand; it warms him right up.
Your apartment is a thirty-minute bus ride away, but Sunghoon offers to walk you home. Anything to spend more time with you.
He spends the first few minutes of the walk worrying about his hand, whether it’s too clammy, whether it’s holding yours right, but he eventually relaxes into the touch. When a particularly chilly gust of wind blows, you drop his hand and hold onto his arm instead, inching closer to him for more warmth.  He only drank lemonade with his meal, but he feels blissfully light-headed.
Silence only arrives when you reach your doorstep. You stand in front of each other, Sunghoon looking down at his feet, you gazing out at the empty street. He knows this is the moment where he is supposed to kiss you. If there was a step-by-step guide on how to date — there probably is, but Sunghoon hasn’t resorted to such loser-like measures yet — this would probably be the moment where it would be written to just kiss her, you idiot. But nerves get the best of him.
At least, you’re there to save the day. You direct your gaze towards him, a bashful smile playing on your lips. “So… are you gonna kiss me now?” you ask, essentially reading his mind. 
He reacts immediately. “Y-yep. Yes. I am.” Heart racing, he takes a step towards you as he rests his hands on your waist. Then he changes his mind, and brings one hand up to your cheek. There’s an eyelash that has fallen below your eye; he brushes it out of the way with his thumb before leaning in and pressing his lips against yours.
In all of his late-night scenarios and daydreams of kissing you, he had never imagined something as good as this. You find your rhythm within seconds. It’s slow, almost hesitant, yet so tender, it makes Sunghoon’s heart ache. As your lips move against each other in perfect sync, as your hands find their way around Sunghoon’s neck, he realizes he should have known — this will not go away as quickly as it came.
Only when you grab a fistful of his hair, making him react viscerally and wrap his arm around your waist to bring you closer to him, does he remember where the two of you are. He leans back, then almost passes out when you chase his lips and press a shorter but just as sweet kiss there. He commits this view to memory—the smile on your lips, the glow on your face, the haziness in your eyes.
“Do you wanna come up?”
“Yes,” he replies immediately, and it makes you laugh. You grab his hand and lead him up the stairs and into your apartment.
“Are the girls in?” he asks as you lock the front door.
“Minjeong is at karaoke with her school friends, and Yunjin and Chaewon are at a dinner party somewhere.”
“Minjeong karaokes?”
“Get enough G&Ts in her and she’ll do anything.”
You turn on a small lamp in your room and take off your jacket. Sunghoon has been in your apartment before, but never in your room—at some point, he’ll spend an hour observing every photograph and trinket in detail, asking you about every backstory, but right now, he’s got more important things to tend to. His heart beats uncontrollably as you shut the door to your room and walk towards him, eyes gazing deeply into his. The corners of your lips rise when you tug at the bottom of his sweatshirt, a clear indicator that you want it off. He wastes no time in obliging.
The air is buzzing with electricity when your lips find each other again. You’re both more confident this time around, and so the kiss is deeper, your touches bolder. Everything happens quickly—one second, you’re standing in the middle of your room; the next, you’re laying on your bed, Sunghoon underneath you. 
“You know,” he says between kisses, “I’d really planned on being a gentleman and not going up to your room after the first date…”
Your lips move from his lips to his jawline, warm and soft against his skin. Sunghoon closes his eyes and lets out a low hum of approval. “I’m glad you changed your mind,” you whisper, lips brushing against his neck as you speak. “And since we’re onto confessions, I can finally say I’ve been wanting to do this since we met.”
This information sends his mind reeling. Not once had he been sure of how you felt about him — he even remembers you saying no to a kiss — and here you are, saying you’ve been wanting to kiss him since the beginning, just like he had. 
“You’re me,” he replies breathlessly.
“Hm?”
“I mean, me too.”
You pause your kisses to giggle, a sound so soft and intimate it has Sunghoon melting impossibly more. “You’re me?”
Unfortunately, he is too preoccupied by you to put a filter between the weird, half-formed thoughts in his brain and the words that leave his mouth. “Don’t question it,” he says, a smile audible in his voice, before moving his head and catching your lips. If he couldn’t stop himself from saying odd things, he could at least distract you from them.
Sunghoon thinks he’s doing a good job keeping himself together, until you roll your hips against his. It’s barely anything, but it sends waves of pleasure and anticipation through his body. His grip on your waist tightens, and when you repeat the motion, his hands sneakily find their way down your back and under your dress. Palms splayed against your ass, he brings you down closer to him. The second you moan into the kiss, he’s a goner. 
After that, it doesn’t take long for clothes to be discarded or for curious fingers to find the other’s waistbands. Your movements are hasty, messy—the tension that had built up over weeks of pining for you, after getting close to kissing you twice and thinking about it a hundred times more, it all comes crashing down in this moment, as his teeth sink into the flesh of your neck, as your hands pull at strands of his hair, as your bodies gently bump into each other. If someone asked Sunghoon right now how long he’d known you, he’d say years, not mere weeks. It couldn’t possibly be real that this much desire had accumulated inside of him — and inside of you, if your broken moans and rapid breathing are anything to go by — in just over a month. 
He only slows down when he has you naked and heaving underneath him, reminding himself to savor the moment instead of rushing it. His fingertips graze down your sides until they reach between your thighs, and he marvels at the way his touch makes you shiver. His eyes are so wide with amazement at the sight of you that he probably looks like he’s never seen a woman before, but he can’t help himself—he always thought you were beautiful, but this is something else entirely. 
His first touch is hesitant, a slow upward motion of his thumb between your folds as if quite literally testing the waters. But it has you arching your back and gripping his bicep, meeting his eyes to silently plead for more. Sunghoon takes that as his green light, thumb circling your clit as his lips continue their work on your neck, on your face, everywhere they can reach. He slips a finger inside of you, then a second one, and when he is satisfied with the state he’s gotten you in, all disheveled and gasping for air, he replaces his fingers with his dick, rock-hard just from seeing and hearing you.
He slowly inches forward until he’s bottomed out, letting you adjust around him. “All good?” he whispers, lips moving against the shell of your ear.
“Never better,” you whisper back, smiling. You kiss him, and the tenderness of your lips on his, mixed with the feeling of being inside you, has Sunghoon’s heart constricting inside his chest. He starts rocking his hips back-and-forth into you, the side of his face is pressed up against yours, head light from the little oxygen the two of you share. It all feels oddly intimate for a first time, feels more like the kind of sex two people would have after years of knowing each other’s bodies. He moves like it’s second nature, thrusts deep and slow, trying to reach those spots that have your hands clawing at his back. He wraps an arm around your waist, pulling you closer to him, using his free hand to push the hair that sticks to your face with sweat.
You wrap your legs higher around his hips, the shift in angle letting him go deeper. “Fuck, right there,” you say, voice strangled. Sunghoon doesn’t need to be told twice—he picks up his pace, and already within a minute, starts to feel himself reaching his limit. He tries to muffle his groans against your skin, but with the way your hold on him tightens and your moans go higher in pitch, you seem to be just as close as he is. When you do come undone around him, breath hitching in your throat before you release a heavy sigh, he has mere seconds left in him. A few thrusts later, his orgasm finally releases him from the tension that had been twisting his stomach into a knot for the past half-hour. You’re both spent, but he continues lazily rocking his hips against yours chasing the last remnants of pleasure, wanting to bask in it just a bit longer. He rolls onto his back after sliding out, wrapping his arms around you. You bury your face in the crook of his neck.
His chest rises and falls as his breathing takes its time returning to normal. In a way, he’s almost relieved it’s over, like any longer would’ve actually taken too much of a toll on him. He likes the comfort he gets from having you in his arms as much as the sex itself. “I didn’t know it could feel this good,” he says, the words spilling out of his mouth before he can stop them. He needs more than a few minutes to get his head back on straight and start thinking before he speaks again. You chuckle airily, he chuckles too, and within seconds, you’re both laughing for seemingly no reason. The bliss of such an intense orgasm and the lack of oxygen must have gone to your brain, too.
“Me either,” you say once the laughter dies down. When your lips find his once more, Sunghoon forgets entirely about his exhaustion and feels like he could go for a second round. “Shower?” you ask right when he realizes how sticky and smelly he is.
“Yes, please.”
He can’t keep his hands off of you in the shower, rubbing soap on every square inch of your skin when you could do it perfectly fine yourself, kissing you even when you’ve both got foaming cleanser on your faces. The taste of soap in his mouth is worth the giggles he gets out of you.
Sunghoon reaches heaven when you drop to your knees in front of him, water rushing down his back as you take him in your mouth. He’s eager to return the favor, of course, thumb flicking your clit with a speed and dexterity even he didn’t know he was capable of. If you weren’t already in the shower, you’d have needed another one.
As soon as your bodies hit the mattress, you both drift off to sleep, limbs wrapping around each other as though they had been separated for too long and finally found each other again—not to let go again.
--
When Sunghoon wakes up, it takes him a few seconds to realize that he hadn’t dreamt up last night’s events. He reaches a hand out hesitantly, still half-asleep and scared that you’ll disappear into thin air at the touch of his fingertips. But no—he feels your skin, warm and soft, and he knows this is real.
You’re laying on your side, facing away from him, so he has to strain his neck to peek at your face. You look so peaceful as you sleep—he doesn’t want to wake you up, but he can’t stop himself from wrapping an arm around your waist and pressing his torso against your back, humming contentedly to himself. He presses a soft, quiet kiss to the top of your head, just because he can.
Outside, clouds part, and a bright ray of sun shines through the window, landing right on your face. Sunghoon watches as you grumble and turn around, burying your face in his chest to avoid the blinding light, but the damage is done—you’re awake. He can tell from the drawled-out whine you let out and the way you grab tightly onto his waist, as if it was his fault the sun had decided to shine right on you. 
He lets you settle in a comfortable position. Stays still as you hike your leg over his legs, then slip it between them instead; as you press your cheek against his chest, then bury your nose in his neck; as you wrap your arm around his waist, then move it to thread your fingers through his hair, until you give up on falling back asleep altogether. “It’s so bright in here,” you mumble in lieu of a good-morning greeting.
You can’t see him, so Sunghoon smiles and tightens his grip around you—one arm circling your shoulders, the other, your waist. Skin to skin. “We forgot to close the blinds yesterday.”
“It’s okay,” you say, sighing. You press a kiss to the base of his neck, right between his collarbones, then lift your face to look at him. “How are you feeling?”
This is what it feels like to wake up next to her, Sunghoon thinks. He’d thought about it so many times: what you would look like first thing in the morning, what you’d say to him, what it’d feel like when your eyes met. If you’d be a slow sort of morning person, cuddling in bed with him until the very last possible second, or if you’d be up and about as soon as you woke up. If you’d be grumpy. If you’d want coffee. If you liked morning sex. 
It seems to be a recurring theme that Sunghoon’s imagination never quite lives up to reality. Your sleepy eyes boring into his, struggling to stay open, your fingers playing with the hair at the nape of his neck; your skin, so warm and so soft, your scent, so intoxicating he can barely think straight.
You’re better than a dream.
“I feel great. Do you feel great?”
“I feel amazing, thank you so much for asking,” you say, burrowing yourself impossibly closer to him.
The two of you stay like this for a while, talking about your plans for the day and begrudging how little you want to go about them. Sunghoon wishes this could go on forever, but then his stomach growls so loudly, his face turns red from embarrassment. He hadn’t even noticed how hungry he was. 
“You’re me,” you say, laughing, and Sunghoon can’t help but join in. “Is it crazy to have last night’s leftovers for breakfast?”
What Sunghoon hears is that you want him to stay; that you don’t want to part ways just yet.
“If by crazy you mean the best idea ever, then yes.”
“Amazing, because I’ve been thinking about that curry all night.”
“Really? I was thinking about something else,” he says, burrowing his face in your neck and leaving warm kisses there. 
You hum and lean into his touches, leaning into his touches. Chills run down his spine as your nails graze his sides. “There might’ve been other things occupying my mind, too.”
And just like that, breakfast is postponed to thirty minutes later.
--
After that night, Sunghoon forgets how to act right.
His mind has never been so singularly taken up by sex in all of his life. It was already preoccupied with you most of the time, but now that it has more material to gnaw on, it’s practically started to eat away at him. It doesn’t help that you’ve seen each other every day since, or that at every chance you get, you smile knowingly at him or try to get him to play footsies with you. Of course, he loves every bit of attention that he gets from you, but whenever he feels his heart get carried away, Minjeong’s words come back to him in a panic, and he remembers that he has no idea what it is that’s happening between you and him. You could be stringing him along, for all he knows, or you could be as into him as he is into you and just letting things happen. Unfortunately, just letting things happen was not something Sunghoon was good at—if things weren’t written black and white, he’d find a way to overthink even the littlest of details. Like how you’d kissed him for a good five minutes before letting him leave your apartment, otherwise known as the least platonic parting to exist, or conversely, like how you’d sometimes take hours to reply to texts.
If he was already a mumbling fool in front of you before, his condition has only worsened now. He tries his best to be normal and not make you or anyone in the group feel weird, but the fact is that you rocked his world and now he can’t look you in the eyes and not remember how it felt when you touched him or the sounds you made or the way you looked. It’s all playing in a loop in his mind and the only way he knows how to control it is by limiting his interactions with you, which doesn’t even work that well. 
The first couple days, you seem amused by his shyer-than-usual demeanor, but you quickly grow confused more than anything. Sunghoon won’t sit next to you, only speaks to you when necessary, doesn’t seek you out outside of a group setting. He tells himself he just needs some more time to be able to be around you casually again, but before that happens, one day at the library, you make a point to ask him if he’ll come help you get drinks for everyone from the dispenser machine. He knows it’d be too odd to say no, so he follows you.
He presses the buttons for everyone’s order (a Sprite for him, Diet Cokes for the girls, a Red Bull for Jake who has a midterm tomorrow and nothing for Jay who only swears by his disgusting herbal infusion) as you lean against the machine, arms crossed over your chest as you stare at him.
He has never felt so awkward in his life.
“So…” he starts although he has no idea what to say—he hopes something will just appear in his mind and that it’ll alleviate the tension. However, you seem to have other plans.
“What the hell, Sunghoon?” you say, taking him aback. When he glances at you, you don’t seem angry—just genuinely confused. “You’ve been avoiding me like the plague.”
“I haven’t!”
“Sunghoon,” you say sternly. He gives in right away.
“Okay, I’m sorry. I just-I didn’t know what to do. After we, you know…”
“After we had sex?” you say, then burst into laughter when he looks around the room to make sure no one’s heard. His cheeks heat up.
“Yes, after we had sex,” he whispers.
He pays for the drinks and picks them up. When he looks at you again, your smile has completely died down, and worry has settled into your features. “Do you regret it?” you ask, voice now as low as his. As if it hurts to say the words too loud.
Panic overcomes him, and he almost drops half of the drinks as he shakes his head. “No, of course not! I’m really sorry, Y/N, I never meant to be weird about it, I was just trying to wrap my head around everything, and I just… Well, I just didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry.”
You nod, taking his words in. “That’s fine. I get it. I just wanted to say, you know, it doesn’t have to change anything. We can still be friends and all. Like you said, it shouldn’t make things weird.”
Sunghoon’s stomach drops. He knows you’re trying to make him feel better, but you’ve inadvertently said the exact opposite of what he wanted to hear. He doesn’t want things to stay the same, or for you to stay friends. For him, things can’t go back to normal after that night — whatever normal means for the two of you — and he was foolishly hoping that you felt the same.
But clearly, you want to let the whole thing die and pretend like it never happened. And whether it’s a good thing or not, his feelings for you have grown so much, he’ll just let you lead him anywhere. Even if that turns out to be nowhere. 
So he conjures up the most convincing smile he can, hands you half of the drinks to carry, and says, “Yeah, sounds good.”
--
After that conversation, Sunghoon doesn’t think anything else will happen between the two of you. You had sex, you talked it out, and that’s the end of it. But then, it turns out that both of your last midterms are at the same time, in the same building, so you invite him to celebrate with pork belly and some drinks. Sunghoon is finishing his second beer when he starts to feel like he’s on that date again, laughing for no reason, butterflies in his stomach every time his gaze catches yours. You lean on your hand as you listen to him talk about a stupid memory from his childhood and he thinks he’s never seen anyone as pretty as you. 
The sun has long set when you say, “You know, it’s Wednesday today.”
He’s not sure what you’re trying to get at. “Yeah?”
“Minjeong’s out at karaoke tonight.”
With these simple words, all the images of you that Sunghoon had finally managed to banish from his mind come flooding back, and he is not even surprised to find himself half-naked in your bed thirty minutes later. So much for staying friends—one time is one thing, but Sunghoon knows he’ll never be normal again after a second time with you.
It’s not a long time before he finds himself in your room again. Every item of clothing between the two of you is gradually discarded while you kiss, lips growing more impatient with every inch of bare skin uncovered. He reluctantly lets you go when you suddenly giggle and say that you really need to pee, watching as you grab his t-shirt off the floor and put it on, just in case Minjeong comes home. You wear it like it’s yours, like it’s the most natural thing in the world that you’d be wearing his clothes. An indescribable feeling washes over Sunghoon at the sight, so intense he feels tears welling behind his eyes. Like something he’s been yearning for is finally at the grasp of his fingers; like it might slip away at any moment. 
His feelings must’ve transpired in the way he was looking at you—when you meet his eyes, your expression shifts slightly, and you quickly slip out of your room. He tells himself to reel it in. Get it together, he thinks. Or you’ll drive her away. 
A wave of tiredness hits him in the minute that you’re gone, probably due to all that soju and beer. “I’m back,” you whisper, but he doesn’t move, only opens his arms wide for you to get back into bed with him. It’s like a weight is lifted off his heart when he feels you against him again. You’re back. Your face is fresh, as if you’d splashed it with cold water, but when he slips one of his hands underneath your (his) t-shirt, your skin is still just as warm as before. Far from the fuzzy, tingly feeling he had gotten when you’d woken up together the other morning, now, he feels his desire for you deep in the pit of his stomach. The kind of hunger food couldn’t satisfy. “I missed you,” he whispers, voice low and gravelly. He reacts immediately when you squirm against him, tightening his grip around your waist and pulling you to him.
“I was gone two minutes.”
“I mean these past few days. I was starting to think I’d dreamt you up.” His hand on your lower back sneaks its way up between your bodies until it finds your breasts, cupping one of them with his palm before taking your nipple between his thumb and index, gently twisting. It pulls a half-gasp, half-moan from your throat, and the sound goes straight to his dick. “But you’re real, aren’t you?” 
“Very real,” you reply, a tremor in your voice. He’s barely touching you, and you’re already having trouble breathing. Sunghoon smiles at the idea of him having as much of a hold on you as you do on him.
“Good,” he says, voice so low it’s almost a growl. In one quick sweep, he pushes you down so your back is against the mattress, resting his palms on each side of your head.
He’s inside you within mere minutes. He’d wanted to hold back a bit, but you whispering Just put it in after thirty seconds of his fingers loosening you up was enough to convince him. His mind is already fuzzy with remnants of alcohol, and his overwhelming desire for you only makes matters worse. He barely has any control over his movements, rushed and sloppy, but as he drives himself deeper into you, your moans increase in volume. He only later realizes how tight his grip on your hips is when he sees two small bruises forming on the skin there. 
He comes quickly, probably embarrassingly so, but he can’t bring himself to care—he’s got other things on his mind. He’s not even bothered to discard the condom as he makes his way down your body, lips around your clit before you’ve even had the time to register what was happening. You cry out, a sound that Sunghoon works to pry out of you over and over again. Even when your thighs start shaking and you squirm away from him, he doesn’t relent. He’s just as desperate to make you feel good as he was desperate chasing his own pleasure earlier. He hooks his arms around your thighs, bringing you down to him and ensuring that you can’t get away. One hand still in his hair, the other clutching the bed sheets, you’ve turned your face sideways into the pillow so that your moans come out muffled. He is only satisfied when you’ve reached your second orgasm. 
As your breath slowly returns to normal, Sunghoon makes his way back up your body, leaving a trail of kisses in his wake. You clear your throat of its dryness and burst into soft, quiet laughter. “What’s funny?” Sunghoon murmurs, lips against your neck. 
“Nothing,” you say, still laughing. “That was just really, really nice.”
Sunghoon smiles. “I’m glad,” he says before kissing you, lips moving slowly against yours.
As he lays against you, the top of his head under your chin and your fingernails grazing along his back, a weird feeling overcomes him. Sunghoon is usually a pine-from-afar sort of guy, with at least five instances of hanging out that could or could not be a date before making things any sort of official. The pining has been a constant with all of his crushes. He’s gotten to the hanging out stage a couple of times, but the officialising has only happened once. Despite its low success rate, it’s a cycle Sunghoon feels comfortable with, and he’d imagined the rest of his romantic encounters would follow that pattern. 
But this is completely different. Of the three times you guys have met separately from your friend group, already two times have included sex. This isn’t a stage Sunghoon usually reaches before at least a few months and it disorientates him. What does it mean? That you like him so much, you decided to skip all of the steps and jump straight into the thick of it? He is reasonable enough not to delude himself into such a thought. He likes you a lot—that much he can be sure of. He’s liked you since the moment he laid eyes on you, even if the reason eludes him. Something in the way you smiled at him, the way you took him in stride as if you’d known him forever. When he thinks back to that party, he can’t believe it started out as the two of you being strangers. Even now, feeling your warm skin against his, it feels like a lie that just two months ago he hadn’t even met you. 
What he can’t say with total certainty is that you like him the same amount. Or that you like him any amount, really, although in his naivety he doesn’t understand how anyone could be this intimate with another person without liking them at least a little bit. And he doesn’t just mean the sex. He means this. The silently laying in each other’s arms, the soft kisses, the caresses wherever hands can reach. Eating post-sex snacks together, laughing as you watch the first episode of each other’s favorite sitcoms (Brooklyn Nine-Nine for him, Pen15, oddly enough, for you). Falling asleep together, cuddling the entire night then waking up and diving right back into each other’s embrace. 
After an entire day spent in rumination, Sunghoon’s still not sure what to make of it all.
All he knows is that when he DMs you that night, asking you how your day went, he goes through every emotion between anxiety, self-hatred and indifference in the five minutes that separate his text from your reply. He’s never been so happy to hear that someone couldn’t concentrate in class because of him.
--
Sunghoon has always been obsessed with the way couples stand together in public. 
Every time, it takes everything in him not to stare, because he wants to take in every little thing they do. He has that practically everywhere he goes, wanting to stare at people just to see what their deal is, but he is never quite as simultaneously fascinated and envious as when he spots a couple. But he knows staring isn’t the socially appropriate thing to do, so he either steals glances or watches for a little bit then pretends they aren’t there. He can’t help himself—even if they aren’t holding hands or obnoxiously making out in public, it’s still visible to anyone with eyes that there is something tying these people together. It’s in the way they stand near each other, their bodies turned inwardly, as though enveloped by a bubble containing just the two of them and no one else; in the way they look at each other, their eyes never straying from the other’s face as they talk, intimacy showing itself even in a loud, crowded room. Sunghoon craves to find that proximity, to be able to touch and be touched so softly, every graze of a hand purposeful and unconscious at the same time.
It’s the first of November already. The Weather app, as it tends to do, has deceived you; so instead of a walk on what was supposed to be a sunny day, you find yourselves in a busy café near the University, the air outside too chilly even with your scarves and gloves. You’re waiting for your order at the end of the counter — a mocha for him, an oat flat white for you — when he notices it. Your body is fully facing him, you’re distractedly playing with the hem of his sweatshirt, and you’re not looking at anything but him as you rant about that annoying classmate of yours that goes by a self-made nickname and always talks over the tutor. In this light, the two of you are like the couples he’s always longed to be—the simple thought makes him want to cry. As more and more often is the case these days, you have no idea what you’re doing to him.
It’s been around two months since you first met and in that time, although Sunghoon is lucky not to have enough fingers to count the number of times you have seen each other one-on-one, not much has happened. Minjeong, who had understood what was going on the first time she saw the two of you eating leftovers from the Japanese restaurant on the couch at 10 a.m., has grown accustomed to his presence in the apartment and even sometimes sits down to watch a movie with the two of you—a movie that Chaewon would usually have forced you to watch in the living room instead of the privacy of your bedroom, so that everyone could join. Sunghoon is just glad Minjeong has stopped silently scolding him with her eyes every time he comes out of your room. She never mentions that night when she essentially warned him against you after the party. 
Jake seems to be the only oblivious one in your group. Yunjin and Chaewon have eyes like hawks and horrifyingly vivid imaginations when they put their heads together, so they were probably already making plans for your wedding and fighting for the title of godmother when you and Sunghoon met at the beginning-of-semester party. They cornered him once at a party and forced him to spill the beans and spare no detail, because you apparently were “denying everything, but we know there’s something going on.” Jay is still Sunghoon’s go-to person when he needs advice concerning you, although the older boy doesn’t understand why it has to be so complicated and always tells him to “just tell her how you feel,” which Sunghoon will not do unless there is a gun to his head. But Jake just seems happy to see his friend and his sister get along this well—no matter how many times you wear his jacket at their games or disappear at the same time at the end of parties, he doesn’t grow suspicious. If he does, he doesn’t mention it to Sunghoon, at least.
Between the two of you, not a word is spoken about the nature of your relationship, which remains unbearingly undefined. For a while, he weakly convinces himself that he doesn’t need to have that conversation with you. He’s young, he’s free, he should be able to enjoy casual sex without putting a label on it. The main problem, though, was that the sex could not be further from casual, at the very least not to Sunghoon.
He has never known anything quite like it. In mere weeks, you’ve both mastered the art of pleasuring each other. He understands your body like it’s his, knows what each of the sounds and expressions you make means. He knows where to touch you to have a kiss go from light-hearted to dizzyingly intense, how to move his mouth to have you arching your back and holding onto him for dear life. And you—he thinks your skin must be laced with cocaine, the way he can never get enough of it. 
But it’s always the moments afterwards that get him in his head. To him, casual sex means getting dressed the minute it’s over and going off to do other things, which is the absolute opposite of what you do. Whether it’s falling asleep together or spending Sundays in bed, you always stay together afterwards, curled up in each other’s arms as you talk away the hours, conversations interspersed with slow, lazy kisses. He’ll say things like, “You’re so pretty,” or “Why do you smell so good?” because he’s so smitten with you that he can never stop himself from uttering every compliment that flashes through his brain, but the things he really wants to say are harder to speak out loud. Even just a What are we?—three simple words that he can’t bring himself to ask, too scared it’ll ruin everything. 
Arguably worse is that sex isn’t even a requirement for when you and Sunghoon see each other. He goes on walks with you whenever you’ve spent too much time in the library and need some fresh air. You go shopping with him when his department throws a fundraiser and he needs a formal outfit. He cooks you your favorite meal when your period is particularly nasty. You sneak into the ice rink after his practice and let him ‘teach’ you how to skate, even though you already learned how with Jake when you were kids. Even mundane moments become fun when spent with you, and you share so many hobbies and interests that you never run out of things to do or talk about.
And yet, it feels like one step forward, two steps back with you—if you let him close one night, you’ll run away the next. A week will pass without you seeing each other outside of the library or group hang-outs, and if Sunghoon asks you out, you’ll say no, usually blaming the amount of work you have. He gets it—due to the nature of your degree and your being a fourth-year student, your workload is much heavier than his, with essays, translations and oral presentations due every other week. And that’s not even including midterms and finals. But still, he doesn’t see why you would need to stay at the library for ten hours straight for days on end. He’d start worrying about your health if you didn’t at least relax on weekends. 
So while Sunghoon wants nothing more than to go all in with you, he senses you holding back. He notices you avoiding eye contact during particularly intimate moments, and when you look at him perhaps too fondly for your liking, you quickly catch yourself and resume your neutral, sometimes almost cold expression. When he tries to broach more personal, sensitive topics, you always find a way to change the subject or turn the conversation towards him before you get too deep. 
As time passes, and especially as exam season nears, he can tell there’s something that you’re not telling him about. His suspicions are confirmed when you come back from a weekend at your parents’ house. He’s also been away for an out-of-town hockey game, and because he hasn’t had much time to text you (and because their team won, so he wants to show off a little), he’s particularly looking forward to seeing you again that Monday. It’s only been three days since you’ve last seen each other, but he misses you like crazy. 
But the minute you’re back, you bury yourself in work like never before, often waking up at ungodly hours and staying at the library until midnight. More than once, he stays behind with you, long after the others have gone, reminding you gently every hour that it might be time to go home and get some rest. The moments you actually agree are few and far between, and although he sticks it out at first, sleeping with his head on the table until you tell him you’re ready to go, your stubbornness soon starts frustrating him, and he ends up leaving when he gets too tired. He knows this is important to you, but he doesn’t understand why you have to go to these lengths—you’d still easily be one of the best students in your class without all this exertion. And despite his many attempts, you won’t tell him what’s wrong, won’t even admit that something is wrong—you keep repeating that “it’s just what exam season is like.”
When he asks your friends about it, they seem just as confused as he is. One evening when you have plans to order some food and watch a movie at your apartment, he shows up at the agreed time, but you’re nowhere to be found. Thankfully, the girls are there to let him up and not leave him standing outside in the rain. You don’t pick up when he calls you and call him back a minute later, apologizing profusely but still saying that there’s something you really need to finish first. If it was only a one-time thing, it wouldn’t make him as angry as it does—but this has been going on for almost two weeks now, and Sunghoon is close to boiling point. 
The fact that it’s been months since your date at the Japanese restaurant, and the only thing that you’ve said about what was happening between you and Sunghoon “didn’t have to change anything.” The fact that you’re essentially each other’s boyfriend and girlfriend without the label or the reassurance that comes with it. The fact that there’s something clearly bothering you but that you won’t tell him about it. The fact that this something is effectively coming between the two of you. Sunghoon was originally more worried about you than anything—now that studying has taken obvious precedence over him in your list of priorities, he’d be lying if he said his ego wasn’t wounded. He isn’t asking to be the number one most important thing in your life, and he knew before even meeting you that high academic performance meant a lot to you, but he likes to think he deserves at least a little bit of your time and attention. 
Except, does he really? It’s not like you’re actually dating.
There’s a pang in his heart as he remembers this fact that he should never have forgotten in the first place. It hurts—and so perhaps, he’s less patient than he ought to be.
“Whatever, Y/N. Don’t worry about it, just let me know when you have time for something other than getting As.”
He hangs up and meets your flatmates’ worried eyes. 
“She still at the library?” Chaewon asks, tone delicate as if trying not to scare off a wounded animal. Sunghoon nods, a deep sigh escaping his mouth. 
“She always studies a lot,” Minjeong starts, “but this is something else.”
“Have you guys tried saying something?”
The girls nod. “Even Jake has talked to her, but she won’t listen. And he usually always gets to her,” Minjeong says. 
He goes home soon afterwards and spends the rest of his evening in rumination, torn between his worry and his anger towards you—emotions which only increase as more days pass, and he sees less and less of you. Your behavior was already concerning while preparing for your exams and final assignments, it gets even worse when exams actually do start. He doesn’t hear from you for an entire week, and the one time you miraculously agree to a short group hang-out in the form of getting coffee, you’re only half there, physically present but mind far, far away. You barely react when the guys tell you about their victory at the latest hockey game—which you didn’t attend, as well as any other game recently. 
No matter how much he tries to put it out of his mind, to focus on his own exams and hockey games, you stay at the forefront of his thoughts. The hockey team is away for another out-of-town game when he decides to broach the subject with Jake, with whom he’s sharing a room. The entire semester, he’s been careful not to raise Jake’s suspicions about the two of you, both out of consideration for you, who’d mentioned you didn’t want your brother to know what was going on, and for himself, who would also rather Jake not know, at least not until your relationship became official. Which it never did. But now that all he gets from you is radio silence at a time when you’d usually be an hour into a FaceTime call, he can’t help himself.
Jake is just coming out of the bathroom, drying his hair with a towel, when Sunghoon takes his shot in the dark. “Have you heard from Y/N recently?” he asks as nonchalantly as he can, pretending to not be avidly waiting for his friend’s reaction by keeping his eyes on his phone.
“Y/N?” Jake echoes. “No, not really. Why?”
“Just ‘cause I haven’t seen her around much. I’m wondering if everything’s okay.”
“You mean her staying at the library all day?” Sunghoon nods; Jake sighs. “Yeah, she’ll snap out of it soon enough. She gets somewhat like this every time exams come around, but even I have to admit it’s pretty tough this time around. The last time I saw her like this was way back in high school, and that’s because our parents were watching right over her shoulder. It’s been better in university thanks to the distance.”
“So this has to do with your parents?”
“Oh, one hundred percent. She’s always wanted to do well at school, but she only gets this obsessive when our parents are involved.”
“I guess this did start after that weekend when she went home…” Sunghoon muses absent-mindedly. It could’ve passed off as an off-hand remark, but Jake pauses in his movements and looks at him warily.
“Yeah, she did… You noticed that, huh?”
Sunghoon pauses. This whole time, he was sure Jake was oblivious to anything happening between you and him—but he might have underestimated his friend. Like brother, like sister; he can hardly read either of you when he really needs to. Jake might genuinely be surprised that Sunghoon remembered your whereabouts that weekend, or he’s onto him. “I guess I did,” he finally says, going for as noncommittal an answer as he can.
Jake says nothing for a bit, and Sunghoon thinks he’s managed to get through the conversation without raising too much suspicion—until a minute later, when Jake speaks again. “Do you… like Y/N?”
Sunghoon freezes, snapping his head towards Jake, who’s lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling. His first instinct is to deny, but there’s no point pretending anymore. It’s one thing keeping it from Jake—lying to him about it is something else entirely. It’s an uncomfortable conversation, but it must be had. “Yeah, I do,” Sunghoon replies, guilt clear in his voice, more because he’s only now admitting it to Jake than because of his feelings themselves.
A shaky breath comes out of Jake’s mouth, as if this was the exact answer he had dreaded. “Right, okay. Since when?”
“Since I met her, basically.”
Jake’s head whips towards Sunghoon, and their gazes meet awkwardly. “Since that party in September?” he asks, shock written all over his face. Sunghoon nods, and to his surprise, Jake bursts out laughing. “Don’t tell me it’s because you accidentally matched costumes?”
Sunghoon looks away, frowning. “That might’ve helped things along,” he mumbles, embarrassment washing over him as Jake’s laughter intensifies. At least he was taking it well—a bit too well, perhaps.
“You’re so predictable, man,” Jake says when he’s calmed down, wiping a tear from his eye. 
“How did you know, anyway?”
“You’ve been pretty obvious with it recently,” Jake replies after a few seconds. “I could tell you were a bit shy around her at first, and when it got better I just thought you’d become friends or something. But when she showed up with your jacket at every game and you never left her side at parties, I assumed something else was going on. You’ve always been staying behind at the library these days, and I know you don’t have that much work.”
Sunghoon chuckles. “I guess I haven’t been trying hard to hide it lately.”
“Yeah, why would you hide it in the first place? You could’ve just told me.”
“I didn’t want to make things weird.”
Jake frowns. “It wouldn’t have been weird. If anything, hiding it makes it weirder.”
“I just thought, if one of my friends had a crush on my sister, I’d probably rather they hid it. Like, I don’t need to know about that,” Sunghoon says, and it makes Jake laugh.
“Dude, Y/N and I are only a year apart. Do you know how many guys have come up to me asking me for her number or advice on how to ask her out? It’s been, like, one every few months since middle school. Guys here especially have no shame telling me how hot they find her.”
Sunghoon makes a face. He doesn’t disagree, but he’d never go out of his way to tell your brother how exquisite you looked in certain outfits. “That’s gross.”
“Yeah, it is. But you’re my friend, not some greasy rando, so I trust you. If anything, I’d probably have to tell her to be nice to you, and not the other way around.”
“Yeah, you could say that again,” Sunghoon grumbles, then realizes his mistake immediately, eyes widening.
“What do you mean?” Jake asks, sounding genuine at first, but when Sunghoon stays quiet for a couple seconds, debating whether he should just lay the truth bare, Jake sits up on the bed and repeats his question, his tone much warier this time around. Sunghoon glances at him then looks away guiltily.
“Well, to be completely honest… We’ve sort of been seeing each other, kind of. But it’s complicated.”
Jake flops back down on his mattress with a grunt. “Who else knows?” he asks, rubbing at his eyes with his hands as if suddenly very exhausted.
“Everyone…”
“Everyone?!”
“Well, Jay, Minjeong, Yunjin and Chaewon.”
“So everyone.”
“Basically, yeah.”
“Great.” Jake sighs. “Since when?”
“Since October,” Sunghoon mumbles, feeling guiltier than ever. He’s belatedly realizing that it would’ve been much easier to have everything out in the open from the get-go, both with you and with Jake; now he’s both stuck in situationship limbo and has to face the consequences of keeping something this important from one of his closest friends. “Are you upset?” Sunghoon asks, feeling a bit like a ten-year-old.
“Kinda, yeah, but more at her than at you. I’ve told her not to go after anyone from the hockey team.”
“‘Cause of Heeseung?”
“Yeah. God, that was messy. He gave her mixed signals for so long, I could barely talk to him without thinking of her crying for so long. And now he’s the one who can’t quite look me in the eye,” Jake says, shaking his head at the mere thought of his captain.
“Was it that bad? She made it seem like it wasn’t that big of a deal.”
Jake raises his eyebrows. “Really? It upset her for a while though,” he says, then turns his head to look at the ceiling again. “I guess that’s not so surprising of her. She sometimes likes pretending she doesn’t have any emotions, even though I’m pretty sure she has more than most people.”
“Huh.” That would explain some things, Sunghoon muses. Emotions are not a topic that comes up very often with you, and every time he’s gotten an inkling of them, you seem to shut it all down immediately.
“But you know, I’m more surprised than anything. About… about it all, really. Not just that you’re only telling me now, but that it’s lasted this long. She must really like you.”
“You think?” Sunghoon says, his face brightening with hope, the words slipping from him before he can stop them once again. He shrinks when Jake laughs at him.
“Look at you. Down bad, huh?”
“Shut up.”
“But yeah, dude. I’ve told you about this. I’ve never seen her in a relationship, ever. Says she doesn’t have the time,” Jake says, air-quoting you. “I’ve only had the displeasure of seeing her go home with one-night-stands. You know that since she started college, she’s had a rule that she’d only see someone three times and that was it?”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, so she wouldn’t catch feelings. I’m telling you, she’s crazy. So you must be special.”
Sunghoon can’t stop the smile from spreading on his lips—special. But it doesn’t make him feel that much better, either. “It’s not like we’re actually dating, so I’m not sure how special I can be…”
Jake’s head turns to look at Sunghoon again, but the younger boy keeps his eyes trained on the ceiling fan above him. “What’s happening between you guys?”
A blush creeps on Sunghoon’s cheeks. “Is this something you really want to talk about?”
“Well, spare me the gruesome details, please,” Jake says, chuckling, “but yeah, I would like to know what’s going on with my best friend and my sister.”
“I’m your best friend?” Sunghoon says, grinning as he meets Jake’s gaze, who rolls his eyes.
“Don’t change the subject.”
“Fine.” He sighs. “Well, I didn’t think it would happen more than once-”
“What would happen more than once?”
Sunghoon pauses. “Well, you know…” Jake gives him a look as if to say, Well, no, I don’t know, so Sunghoon is forced to go on: “Sleeping together.”
“You guys slept together?!” Jake exclaims, sitting up on his bed once again.
“Yeah, what did you think?”
“I don’t know, just that you were going on dates, hanging out one-on-one, or whatever…”
“Well, we were.”
“Ugh, whatever,” Jake says, waving his hand in front of his face like swatting a fly away. “So, not just once, then?”
“No. And I thought it’d be a one-time thing, ‘cause a few days afterwards she said something about it not having to change our friendship…”
“Damn.”
“Yeah. But then it did. Happen again, I mean. And it’s been happening frequently since. But we’re not… dating dating. We haven’t had that conversation.”
Jake frowns. “Why not?”
Sunghoon releases a shaky breath. Why not, indeed. “‘Cause she hasn’t mentioned it. And I’m too scared to do it.”
“What are you scared of?”
“The typical stuff. What we have now… it’s not what I want, but it’s managed to not disrupt the group, you know. I’m scared that if I tell her how I feel, it’ll make things awkward between the two of us, and between all of us by extension.”
“Well, it might,” Jake says after thinking for a few seconds. “I wish I could tell you with certainty that she’ll like you back, but I honestly can’t. As obvious as you were towards her, she was not giving anything away.” Sunghoon chuckles, more out of self-deprecation than anything. This was not the pep talk he had hoped for. “But, I can tell you that she won’t be the type to make things awkward. You have nothing to risk by telling her, because in the long run, you’ll be better off that way. I know you, Sunghoon. You’ll be miserable if you can’t be fully yourself with someone.”
Decidedly, Sunghoon’s friends had a way of telling him the exact opposite of the things he wanted to hear while being completely right. He wishes things with you could stay the same — minus the overworking yourself and ignoring him in the process — and that he wouldn’t have to do anything that might make them change. But just as Jake said, he’d also reach a point where he couldn’t take it anymore—a point he was already inching closer and closer to with every passing day. He likes you enough to let you not define the relationship, but he likes you too much to let it go on. He likes you too much to not be able to tell you, and show you, and remind you of it every day. He hated having to hold back, and he hated feeling you holding back. He wanted to give you his all and he wanted all of you, too, not just bite-sized portions of you.
“You’re right,” he finally says. “I haven’t been able to talk to her lately, but I’ll have to tell her soon enough. When her exams are over, I guess.”
Jake sighs. “Yeah. I don’t know if there’s any getting through to her right now.”
“She’s blown me off so many times! I don’t know what she’s doing, spending so many hours in that library. I’d go insane.”
“She’s a perfectionist,” Jake says, shaking his head. “I’ve talked to her about it. When it comes to school, she needs everything to be as flawless as can be. She spends hours re-reading and editing her work. It’s not good.”
“Not really, no.”
“But she’s only got a week left. I’ll try to convince her not to go home for too long, and it’ll be better after the holidays. Then we’ll make sure there’s not a repeat of this next exam season.”
He thinks of Christmas break and of not seeing you for two weeks; of next semester and going through all of this with you a second time. The uncertainty, the fooling around behind your friends’ backs — although that might not be needed now that Jake is in on it too — Sunghoon’s not sure if he can go through it all again. “Yeah, we will.”
--
They lose their game the following day. They had an amazing run, either winning or tying every game so far; this loss is not enough to make them drop significantly in the rankings, but it’s enough to demoralize Sunghoon. It couldn’t have come at a worse time—between you and this failed game, his self-esteem is taking a real hit.
He dared hope for some comfort from you once he was back, but in vain. He doesn’t know why he imagined your attitude might’ve changed overnight, and when he texts you asking to hang out, the same old sorry I can’t atm fills his phone screen. And just like that, as strong as his feelings for you have been all this time, so is his resentment—unwarranted, perhaps, but he thinks he deserves better than this, and he’s both angry at you for not giving him anything and at himself for letting it happen.
Now, he’s the one who spends hours working himself to the bone in the ice rink, who’s clearly preoccupied with other things when everyone gets together, and who doesn’t even show up to the party the whole group goes to when you’re all done with exams. The last game before winter break is in two days, and he doesn’t want to waste a day nursing a hangover when he could be practicing.
That night, he thinks everyone is out at some random club downtown, so he does a double-take when it’s past eleven p.m. and you show up at the rink. He’s skating laps, practicing his speed and his goal-shooting, only noticing you when you’re standing in the middle of the rink. He almost skates right into you.
“Y/N?” he asks, not completely sure you’re not just a figment of his imagination. He’s so exhausted, he wouldn’t be surprised if he were dreaming you up.
“Jay texted me.”
“Oh. Why?” He’s out of breath, and the words come out blunter than he intends them to.
“Because it’s almost midnight and you’re still here,” you reply, crossing your arms over your chest. There’s a hint of a smile on your lips, but your eyebrows are furrowed in what looks like worry. It’s the first time Sunghoon’s seeing you concerned over something other than an assignment. 
He shrugs and resumes his laps, slower this time, forcing you to keep turning on your feet. “I’m practicing. There’s a big game coming up.”
“Which is exactly why you should be resting, like everyone else on your team right now.”
He resists rolling his eyes. “Why would I rest when I could be getting better?”
“Because you need rest as much as you need practice. You won’t be any use on the rink if you’re too tired to play properly.”
“And I won’t be any use if I can’t shoot properly, either.”
“Sunghoon, you need a break. You’re clearly exhausted-Will you stop it?” you suddenly snap. “I’m trying to talk to you, and I’m getting dizzy.” 
Your small outburst only has him growing more agitated, and even though he does stop, it’s more so you can see the annoyance on his face than anything. “You know, this is a bit rich coming from you, Y/N.” He knows this is not the right time to bring this up—if he has grievances against you, he shouldn’t be bringing them up when he’s already frustrated. He’s well aware of this, but he can’t help himself.
You scoff. “Excuse me?”
“You’re the one who spends twelve hours a day in the library during exams and does not budge even if I tell you you should go home.”
“That’s different-”
“How is it any different?” he interrupts, voice rising. “You don’t listen to me when you overwork yourself. I don’t see why I should.”
“So you realize that you’re overworking yourself?”
“Of course I do! But I have to.”
“No, you don’t-”
“Y/N, please. I have to win as much as you have to get the top grades. Is it actually necessary? No, but you know how shit it feels not to.”
“And it’s exactly because I know that feeling that I’m telling you to stop. You’re just feeding into it.”
“So are you, staying until 2 a.m. in the library. You’ve never once gone home when I asked you to.”
“Again, that’s different-”
“How?! How is it different? Please enlighten me, ‘cause they’re the exact same thing to me.”
You sigh. A sudden sadness appears on your face. Sunghoon is torn between wanting to see this to its end and taking everything he’s said back. But he keeps quiet, and your eyes, when they meet his again, harden. “Are you really gonna make me say it?”
“Yes.”
As if you couldn’t say your next words while looking at him, you tear your gaze away from his face. “Because I’m actually concerned about you, here. The only reason you want me to stop and go home is so we can fuck.”
Sunghoon is so astounded that all words fail him—he stares at you, mouth wide open like you just shot him. After a few seconds, all he’s able to come up with is an incredulous, “What?” His voice is a mere whisper. 
“You heard me,” you say coldly.
He closes his mouth and swallows. “So… you’re the one who’s worried, and I’m only after sex?”
You glance at him. “Yeah.”
A chuckle escapes Sunghoon’s throat, then another, until laughter spills out of him uncontrollably. He feels like the world is upside down. How could you have lived the same thing and come out of it with such different perspectives? Your account of his intentions with you is so ridiculous and unfathomable to him that he can’t do anything but laugh.
You seem taken aback at first, but your surprise quickly turns into annoyance. “Something funny?”
“Hilarious, actually,” he says, holding his stomach. He takes a deep breath, trying to calm himself. All he finds at the end of his amusement is anger, bright red and hot. It’s not an emotion he feels often, its rarity only serving as an intensifier—he starts making his way out of the rink before it can explode and hit you in its wake. “Well, that’s convinced me to call it a day. So you got what you came for, I guess.”
His fingers tremble as he undoes the laces on his skates and puts his sneakers on again. You stand by the door of the rink, holding onto the frame as you look at him, that same sad look still on your face. “Hoon,” you say, voice weak. What would usually have him melting only has his anger flare harder.
“Don’t. For the first time ever, I actually really don’t want to talk to you right now.” He stands up, gives you one last harsh look, and turns away. He only halts right before exiting the bleacher area, and after a couple seconds of thinking, turns back around. “Oh, but don’t worry, I’ll let you know when I want to fuck again. Since that’s all this is, clearly.”
--
It seemed to you no one thought you were good enough for Sunghoon.
Only Yunjin and Chaewon seemed excited at the prospect of the two of you getting together, or at least getting to know each other, but they were also the type to coo at dogs in the street and tear up at the sight of old people holding hands; Minjeong was apprehensive from the start, and made it clear; Jay was indifferent; Jake was oblivious for a while. Sunghoon was…
What was Sunghoon?
Someone who had come out of nowhere, shaken up your routine and messed with your head. That’s what Sunghoon was. He didn’t seem apologetic in the slightest.
Maybe it was your fault for not opening up to the people closest to you and letting them think you were some kind of no-strings-attached one-night-stands-only emotionless maneater who had been single for as long as they had known her, who would be seen with someone new every few months, and never for long, who, as far as the eye could tell, only used men for sex. Maybe it was their fault for never trying to dig deeper.
No, okay, it was definitely your fault.
Based on your conversations with your friends, they thought Heeseung had broken your heart, and you had never bounced back properly. He’d hurt you so much, you couldn’t fathom a real relationship anymore—you could only be with someone casually. Which wasn’t so far from the truth, but what Heeseung had done was much worse than just breaking your heart. He’d confirmed what you already knew of yourself: you want too much. You want what you can’t have, what you don’t deserve.
From the moment you met Park Sunghoon, you knew you didn’t deserve someone like him. Minjeong seemed to agree, and when she saw you and him together at choir that Saturday in September, three months ago already, she made sure you knew her thoughts on the matter.
“This is so… unlike you,” was the first thing she’d said after she pulled you aside. 
“What is?”
“This,” she repeated, waving her arms around. “Being here. Coming with him.” She pointed at Sunghoon, whose hair was being ruffled by one grandma and his cheek pulled by another. He kept glancing back worriedly at you—you liked him so much already. “See? You’re smiling at him,” she said, making you realize a sappy smile had started growing on your lips at the sight of him. Your face dropped and you scoffed at the disgust in her voice.
“Yeah, some of us like to smile. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Y/N, you know what I’m trying to say.”
“I don’t think I do, actually.”
She sighed. “You don’t do this. You don’t meet a guy and show up to his choir practice the next morning. What’s happening?”
You crossed your arms over your chest. Had you known your presence would be questioned like that, you might’ve thought twice about coming. “Can’t a girl enjoy a choir without getting interrogated these days?”
“You’re avoiding my question! Listen, Y/N. Sunghoon is not the kind of guy you usually go for. He’s-Stop. Don’t smile at me like that.”
“If you like Sunghoon, you can just tell me. You know I wouldn’t stoop so low as to go after a guy my best friend likes.”
“So you are going after him?”
“So you do like him?”
Minjeong shook her head violently and put her hands on your shoulders, staring into your brain as if trying to make you see some sense. Calmly, she said, “No, I don’t. Sunghoon’s nice, but he is so far from my type. He’s too… nice.”
“You mean he doesn’t wear leather jackets or ride a motorcycle?”
“That was once. But no, he doesn’t do that. And what I’m trying to tell you is that he’s not your type either.”
“And how have you gathered that?”
“Because so far, you’ve only wisely chosen guys who are as detached and emotionally stunted as you.”
“I’m not-”
“But he’s not like that, Y/N. He’s the bring-home-to-your-parents-for-Christmas type. Not the hump-and-dump type.”
“I’m starting to get offended by this conversation.”
“All I’m saying is, don’t go breaking his heart. Or yours, for that matter. It pains me to say but I care about both of you very much and I don’t see this going anywhere good.”
You shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Was her opinion of your romantic tendencies — or lack thereof — that bad that she couldn’t even recommend you to her friend? You felt like a chastised child whose mom told you you couldn’t get the toy you wanted. Despite being well aware that you weren’t the most committed when it came to relationships, you still felt like she was going overboard. Just because nothing had stuck so far didn’t mean it wouldn’t now—she was acting like you went around playing with people’s feelings for fun.
“Jesus, this is my second time seeing him. I just wanna see what his deal is. I’m not breaking anyone’s heart, okay?” 
The choir conductor had called out for everyone to gather on stage then, and that was the end of that conversation. You still remember how funny of a thing it was, seeing Sunghoon in his nice shirt and trousers, his hair falling into his eyes, singing diligently with the choir, when just the night before he had been playing beer pong dressed as Cowboy Ken. In this new light, you understood why Minjeong was so adamant about him not being your usual type, and why the grandmas were fussing over him. You hadn’t known what had pushed you to invite yourself to this rehearsal, and even then as you sat there, you weren’t sure what you were doing or why you couldn’t stop smiling as you watched Sunghoon sing. 
Time made things clearer, starting with that afternoon at the beach. The salt in the air that day had clouded your thoughts, covered them with a thin layer so that your usual reluctance to share anything remotely personal had dimmed. Or maybe it had had nothing to do with the air and everything to do with the boy sitting next to you on the sand, the way words came tumbling out of your mouth before you could think about them and were only met with understanding and empathy on his part. For once, you didn’t feel the need to guard yourself, to adapt your words and actions to the person in front of you. It was something you didn’t know was possible with a near stranger—perhaps because Sunghoon felt nothing like one.
He made you feel things you hadn’t felt in a long time; things you had been craving to feel, needed almost as much as oxygen. Being with him felt like breathing again. But you had been underwater so long, being on land again felt foreign, scary, and you couldn’t help but dive back into safe waters, coming up for air once in a while.
Whether he had intended to or not, Sunghoon had started to scratch at your surface, until he’d burrowed a small hole—shallow, but enough for cracks to appear, cracks you were quick to put back together as best as you could.
So when his gaze was too tender, his touches too gentle, you bristled. You went away, because you were afraid of what might happen if you stayed. The more you wanted to give him, the less you gave him anything at all. Your own desire overwhelmed you. His letterman jacket was warm around your shoulders, you proudly walked around with the four letters of his last name on your back, but you couldn’t get out of your mind how cold it would be if it was one day ripped away from you. 
You thought of Heeseung, how disillusioned you had been when you thought you had finally met someone who would love you the way you had always yearned to be, only for him to toss you away when you started asking for too much. You thought of your friends in middle school, how it seemed that no friendship could be more wonderful until you overheard them talking about you at a sleepover, about how clingy you were. You thought of your parents, how they had only bestowed kind words upon you when you performed well in your role of perfect daughter, of academically gifted child. How they hadn’t even glanced at any of the drawings you’d done of the four of you, mother, father, son and daughter holding hands with a bright yellow sun in the corner of the sky. How they had pushed you away from their bed when you seeked some comfort after a terrible nightmare. How they had never bothered to hide their disappointment when you came home from school with anything less than an A. How they had shunned your brother for not going down the path they had envisioned for him, how hard you had to fight to make them accept yours was not a worthless one.
Even your best friend seemed to think you were unable to receive affection of the likes of Sunghoon’s—but what you were afraid of was that he wouldn’t handle the amount of affection you knew you were able to give. In a way, that was what had drawn you to Sunghoon in the first place—from the moment you’d met him, you had been able to tell there was something of you in him. It seemed to you he had a heart that was overflowing with love, love to give, love to spare on whoever would have it. In his words, you were him. Nevertheless, your fear of getting hurt overrode your desire to feel Sunghoon’s love, and you didn’t know whether you would be able to revert to your nature after having spent so much time perfecting your new facade.
You knew what it was like to be cold. And so you prematurely braced yourself for it by pushing away Sunghoon’s warmth. If it was going to happen at some point, like Minjeong had hinted it would, might as well get used to it, right?
Except the cold never came. Sunghoon kept on burning relentlessly, no matter how much wood you fed his fire with—you could cling to him for nights on end or ignore his texts for days, without fail, he’d welcome you with his usual, unwavering warmth. He allowed you to bask in it, to momentarily let down your defenses. But something always happened to make you raise them back up—Minjeong would eye the two of you suspiciously, Heeseung would post on Instagram (Is one of the girls on slide five his new fling? Are they serious and it wasn’t that he wasn’t ready for a relationship, it’s that he didn’t want one with me?), or your mom would text you to ask you whether everything was okay.
Yet increasingly, you suspected there was something behind Sunghoon’s warmth, something you had missed, something that was tricking you. He looked at you like you had hung the stars in the night sky, yes; in public, a knowing look from you was enough to have his face turn bright red, and in private, one simple touch had his chest heaving, yes; he expressed disappointment every time you turned him down for a hang-out. Your attachment to him grew, and it became harder to put what the two of you had into words.
It wasn’t just sex—it couldn’t be. It ran deeper than that. You knew what relationships that consisted of just sex were like, and this wasn’t that, it was too good, too intimate to be just that. But you weren’t a couple, that much was clear. Only four other people were aware something was even going on, your brother not included, and you acted as regular friends in front of everyone. Jake had insisted you didn’t fool around with another member of his hockey team because his relationship with Heeseung had already deteriorated enough, he didn’t need to be on weird terms with anyone else on your behalf, so you were not keen on letting him know about what you got up to with Sunghoon. Anyway, even if everyone on earth was in on your shenanigans, you and Sunghoon hadn’t convened on what it all meant. Who knew what was going on in his head? You were no stranger to how deceitful men could be when they were after certain bodily pleasures. Unless Sunghoon said it in so many words, multiple times, you would not be a hundred percent sure he wasn’t only looking to get laid, or wanted someone to act like his girlfriend without the label and the obligations that came with it.
Because you basically were acting like his girlfriend, and he like your boyfriend. You always went to each other. Always, only each other. Whether he needed a second opinion on an outfit, you needed a rant session about your dissertation, either of you a really good orgasm, it was each other you went to.
You waited for him to initiate a conversation about the status of your relationship like one waits for church bells to ring at the turn of the hour—you knew it was coming, but the sound might be too much to bear. And the longer you had to wait, the more you dreaded it. Because how would you react when the time came? You didn’t trust yourself not to run away; neither did Minjeong.
The cold hadn’t come yet. You couldn’t let yourself feel the warmth unreservedly. It was all unpleasantly lukewarm.
Then you went home for a weekend.
It was a good friend from school’s birthday, and despite having spent a lot of time with Sunghoon at the expense of studying, you had done well this semester and thought you deserved a break. After having been away for so long, you had started to underestimate the power of your need for your parents’ approval over you. One small instance that your brother and many other people would’ve brushed off easily was enough to set you off—that same cold look of disappointment when you decided to be honest and told them one of your courses was deadly boring all while being unnecessarily complicated and you had received a low B-grade in it. They barely spoke to you for the rest of the evening.
Exams were a mere few weeks away when you got back. You buried yourself in work, forgot everything and everyone else, even Sunghoon, even yourself.
The cold hadn’t come yet, so you sought it out for yourself.
At the same time, you hadn’t indulged in enough introspection to realize how frustrated you had been at Sunghoon for not trying to create defined boundaries around your relationship. You were unable to do it yourself, you unrealistically wanted him to do the work for the both of you, you got upset when he didn’t. What you were able to do was make up reasons why he wasn’t giving you the what are we talk—he doesn’t like you that much, he just wants sex, he’s settling for you until he finds the next best thing, the real thing. This wasn’t leading anywhere, so you cut it off before he could.
You set foot in the library at seven thirty a.m. on a Monday and every following day of that week, then the next, then the next. He managed to pull you out every now and then—you weren’t that strong against his big pleading eyes, his soft messy hair, his warm hands that entirely covered yours. 
Oftentimes, you were too tired at the end of a long library day to have sex. Sunghoon never held it against you—he seemed more than happy to cook you dinner, let you fall asleep halfway during a movie you had chosen, and cuddle all night long. But your body burned with resentment at his mere presence in your bed, in your home, in your text messages. Who was he to stop you from studying, from achieving your goals, to distract you from that top grade just so he could get off? Even your friends and brother weren’t trying so hard to make you take breaks. The worry that furrowed his eyebrows, which you used to want to see fade away with a caress of your thumb, now infuriated you to no end, it seemed — to you — put-on. He kissed your neck and you wanted to push him away instead of melt into him like you had before.
It was his turn to leave for a weekend for an out-of-town hockey game, and you convinced yourself his absence came as a relief. But on the Sunday evening they got back, as you came out of the library, you spotted your brother waiting right outside of the building.
“Why is it so hard to reach you?” he said when he saw you in lieu of a greeting. “What’s the point of having a phone if you don’t even use it? I called you, like, five times.” “It was on airplane mode.” He rolled his eyes so hard, you could almost hear them moving beneath their lids. “What have you done to Sunghoon?” You stopped dead in your tracks. “Sunghoon? What about him?” you asked, chest constricting at the mere thought of him and at the implication that something had happened to him, even if you were the cause. He hadn’t said it in so many words, but it was clear the truth had been revealed to Jake, and for some reason, it didn’t surprise you. You knew they roomed together and assumed Sunghoon must’ve told him. You tried your best to take it in stride. “I thought we said the hockey team was off-limits after Heeseung,” he said sternly. “Also, Sunghoon, of all people?” he adds before you can say anything. “That’s like, my bro. And he’s the nicest guy ever. Not the perfect pick for one of your victims, I must say-” “Oh, please, he’s not a victim. He’s a consenting adult.” “Then why is he so upset over you spending more time studying than with him?” “That’s the male ego for you, Jakey.” Your brother sighed deeply. “He’s really hurt, Y/N. If you were going to reject him, you could’ve done it nicely.”
You frowned. “Who said anything about rejecting him?”
“You’ve shut him out. You’ve shut all of us out.” Jake was staring at you, trying to get you to look at him, but you kept your gaze on the ground and kicked non-existent pebbles around, hands hiding in your coat pockets. “You might not have meant it as one, but he took it as a rejection.”
You scoff. “There was nothing to reject. It’s not like we’re actually together.”
“Yeah, thanks for telling me anything was going on, by the way.”
“It wasn’t any of your business.”
“It is, ‘cause it concerns my sister and my best friend.”
“He’s your best friend?” you echo, a teasing smile on your lips. He rolls his eyes again.
“God, maybe you guys aren’t so bad together after all. But Y/N—I’m serious. You need to do something.”
“Why can’t he?”
“Because you’re the one who’s been fucking around.”
Ouch. “You’ve known about this whole thing for what, two days, and you’re already blaming me for the fact that it’s not going perfectly? How little do you think of me?”
“I don’t think little of you, Y/N, I just know you have a track record of not being serious about relationships.”
Your body tensed up. Maybe it had been a particularly long day. Maybe it had been a long time coming. Tears well up in your eyes—a sight you’ve not let your brother see in many, many years.
“You know what, fuck this, Jake. I’m stressed enough as it is. I’ve done my best with what I have, and you don’t get to pin this on me. As if I was the only person in that relationship. If Sunghoon has a problem, he can take it up with me directly.”
You walked away. Jake called after you once, and when you didn’t come back, caught up with you. “I’m sorry, Y/N. I don’t wanna upset you. I just-I hate seeing him hurt, you know? And you too.”
“I’m glad my feelings are of some importance to you.”
“Of course they are,” Jake said, too concerned to detect the sarcasm in your words. “And you’re right, I’ve only heard Sunghoon’s side of the story. But it really sounded like-”
“Listen, Jakey, I really don’t wanna do this right now. Let’s talk about it when exams are over. I can’t have anything else taking up mental space. I mixed up my Greek third declension endings earlier.”
“God forbid.”
After some arguing, Jake let you off the hook—“Just for now,” he said. You’d get him to recount his and Sunghoon’s conversation in excruciating detail later.
You come out of an evening of contemplation resenting Sunghoon for bitching about you to your brother, of all people. As if he had been begging on his hands and knees for your devotion, as if you had been cool-headed and detached and not thinking he’ll ask me to be his girlfriend any second now every time you spent time together. You told yourself you were well and truly done with him for the time being. If there was anything to salvage, that was future you’s problem.
But late on Thursday evening, Jay sent you a voice message, something he only did when he was gravely drunk, shouting over loud chatter and rap music that Sunghoon hadn’t shown up to a party and was apparently still practicing. You’d caught wind of their loss at the game, and even though your heart had swollen with concern for Sunghoon, very well aware of how important winning was to him, you’d managed to squash it down. You had bigger fish to fry, namely, an Italian written exam that made up 75% of your overall grade for that course. But after ten minutes of re-reading the same three lines of an article from Republicca, you couldn’t get the image of Sunghoon skirting endlessly around the ice rink and potentially hurting himself out of your head. You told yourself you only had this one exam left and plenty of time to revise for it, packed up your things and headed for the rink.
It was past eleven p.m. when you got there. The rest is history. 
Your grievances came out in an ugly way, but Sunghoon’s refusal to listen to you got the best of your nerves, and although you really did feel that your worry was more genuine than his, you didn’t truly believe that all he wanted from you was sex—at least, you hoped it wasn’t. It was the first time you ever saw any sort of negative emotion on Sunghoon’s handsome features, be it anger, sadness or pain. It tugged at your heartstrings, made you want to wrap him in your arms and get him away from whatever it was that tugged his eyebrows into a frown—even if that was you.
Now, as if the water has inched up your ankles and frozen over, your feet stay planted on the ice for a while after he’s stormed off. You don’t even realize you’re crying until a hot, salty teardrop falls on your lips.
Your feet regain control of themselves, and they seem to move of their own accord as they guide you right in front of Sunghoon’s dorm room. You’re barely conscious as your knuckles rasp against the door, and the tears that had fallen back behind your eyes spill out once more as soon as your eyes meet his. He’s just come out of the shower, a white towel wrapped around his hips, another one that he uses to dry his hair. His movements stop when he realizes who’s standing at his door, mouth falling slightly agape, chest visibly rising and falling. He’s so beautiful, you feel your heart breaking all over again.
Sobs pour uncharacteristically out of you, so much so that you have to hide your face behind your eyes. He ushers you in, holds you tight as everything flows out, the stress, the resentment, the loneliness, the longing. How could he be so close yet so far away this whole time? Did he want those miles of distance between you, or had you forced them upon him?
Sunghoon smoothes your hair down and shushes you, telling you it’s okay and that he’s here, voice strangled as if he’s on the verge of crying, too. A part of you still feels angry towards him, but the bigger part of you knows only he can give you the comfort you need.
“I missed you,” you say when you’ve calmed down partly. You only realize how true those words are once you’ve spoken them. You’ve missed waking up next to him, watching trashy reality TV together, taking coffee breaks that lasted too long in-between study sessions. You’ve missed the scent of his hair, the scent of his skin, you’ve missed watching the way his back muscles shift at the slightest of movements, feeling the weight of his head as he lay on your chest. All for a bunch of As you would’ve gotten without exerting yourself so much anyway.
“I missed you too, baby. Where did you go?” Just like that, you break down again, and he dissolves into apologies. “You’re here now, it’s all that matters,” he whispers against your hair.
“You didn’t see them, Hoon. You didn’t see the way they looked at me,” you say, struggling to speak, unsure you’re even making any sense but unable to stop. “I got As in everything, I worked so hard. Just one B, one week where I had four things due at the same time. Their faces, Hoon, like they were thinking, what was the point of letting me do this degree if I wasn’t even going to excel in it?”
“But you do excel in it, Y/N. You’re amazing at what you do. And even if you weren’t, you love it, and that’s what matters the most.”
“Not to them, it doesn’t.”
“Then forget them.”
“I can’t, Hoon,” you say, voice trembling. “I just can’t. I need them to be proud of me.”
“Isn’t it enough to be proud of yourself?”
“I wish it was.”
“Does it help if I tell you how proud I am of you and of how hard you’ve worked?”
He doesn’t see it, your face is still hidden in the crook of his shoulder, but a small smile makes its way to your lips. “A bit.”
“Then I’ll tell you everyday until you don’t need their approval anymore. They don’t deserve you, Y/N. They don’t even see what an amazing, beautiful, smart daughter they have. Or her sort-of-okay brother.” You laugh, and so does he. Sunghoon’s words and soothing touch against your back already alleviate the weight on your heart. “But I see it.”
You lift your head to look at Sunghoon. His eyes are glassy. “You see how amazing, beautiful and smart Jake is?”
He laughs again as he tucks a stray strand of hair behind your ear. “Yeah, exactly.” The way he looks at you makes you wish you could go back to the day you met him and right all of your wrongs. No more hiding or running away. You only want to stay under that gaze of his. But sadness soon replaces the joy in his eyes. “You mean so much more to me than you give yourself credit for, Y/N. This has never been just about sex for me. Not even for a second.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Then what has it been about?” 
He frowns like a student in an advanced math class who’s just been asked what three plus three is—isn’t it obvious?
“I love you.”
Your eyes dart between his as if searching for any trace of deceit there. Of course, you don’t find any—because there hasn’t been any since the start. You’d let your own fears invent things that weren’t there. Your lips tremble and you find yourself bawling on his shoulder once more, your tears like a well that digs deeper and deeper so as to never run out of water.
“I hope these are good tears,” Sunghoon says light-heartedly, but you can detect the nervousness behind his words. You nod your head vigorously, willing yourself to say something back, but your tears overflow, make your breath hitch.
“Why didn’t you say anything earlier?” you manage in between sobs.
“I didn’t think it was the kind of thing you wanted to hear,” he explains.
“I was waiting for you to say something.”
“I didn’t know. I thought I was being obvious enough.”
“You probably were. I was the one who couldn’t see it,” you admit.
“I thought you didn’t want me like that.”
“I thought you didn’t want me like that.”
Sunghoon chuckles, a sound of relief. “I’ve wanted you like that since the start.”
“I think I have too.”
“You think?”
You lift your head again and when your eyes meet Sunghoon’s, it feels like coming out of your hiding place hours after the round of hide-and-seek was over. He hadn’t forgotten to come and find you. He was waiting for you to reveal yourself.
Which goes against the rules of hide-and-seek, but you don’t blame him.
You smile; he smiles, deep dimples carving crescents into his cheeks. “I love you, too.”
You hadn’t realized how cold your hands were until Sunghoon found them.
--
Everything after that was a blurry mess of tangled limbs, warm kisses, happy tears and relieved laughter.
Your touch had always been intoxicating, but Sunghoon was particularly sensitive to it that night. The mix of not having felt you close in weeks and the heightened emotions driven by your confessions made his skin tingle everywhere it came in contact with yours. He’d never slept so little without regretting it in the morning.
It goes without saying that most of the night was not spent talking, but you still had things you needed to discuss. The two of you laid out all of your fears, and Sunghoon was immensely relieved to finally get a glimpse into that mind of yours. He made you promise to always tell him what was going on, and he promised you you’d never be too much for him. Always just right.
Now, he gets to wait outside of your exam hall with your favorite flowers in hand, to put his arm around your shoulders during movie nights instead of holding your hand beneath the blanket, to kiss you over the barrier at the end of a hockey game he won. Heeseung’s narrowed eyes at the sight of the two of you is an added bonus.
You text him that you’ll hang around the locker rooms after the game so that you can head to the party together. The end of December is nearing and you can’t wait for the new year, for twelve whole months of not hiding your feelings for Sunghoon from anyone, not even from yourself, least of all from him. At least, that’s what you told him in a sappy, drunken voice message at two a.m. the previous night when the girls made you drink a bottle of prosecco to yourself—their way of congratulating you for an arduous but successful exam period.
He steps out of the locker rooms with Jake and Jay. You’ve never looked quite as pretty, face lighting up as you spot the three of them, his jersey on your shoulders. You’d worn it during your last exam—“I thought it might bring me luck to wear a pretty boy’s name on my back,” you’d told him, to which he’d replied that it was good practice for when you actually took his last name. You’d looked away, fighting a smile.
Now your smile is full-blown as you look at him, but the downside of being an official couple is that Jake has now more material to tease the both of you with.
“Oh my God, you waited for me, what a sweet sister I have been blessed with!” he exclaims, arms outstretched as he barrels towards you.
“Fuck off, Sim,” you say but accept his hug nonetheless. “Nice game.”
“I know.” He pulls away and ruffles your hair. Jay nods at you like you’re someone he shared a class with back in second year and not his friend of almost three years.
As if on cue, just as Sunghoon reaches you and envelops you in a hug, Jake turns around and yells loud enough for all the players spilling out of the locker rooms, “And don’t forget to wear protection! I’m not ready to be an uncle yet.”
“That’s disgusting, Jakey,” you yell back, and he smiles proudly. Sunghoon had never thought the day would come where you’d initiate a kiss in a room full of people—he’s on cloud nine when you take his head in your hands and press your lips to his, murmuring praises about how well he played.
“It was all for you, baby,” he says, trying to appear cool even though a blush is creeping up his ears. 
“Not for the recruiter of the national team?” you asked with a smirk.
He smiles, shrugging. “Maybe a bit for him too. You’re the one I want to impress.”
“Consider me impressed.” You stand on your tiptoes to kiss him a second time.
You head towards your friends, hands warm against each other.
--
In classic mysterious Jay fashion, he organizes a New Year’s Eve party that he can’t attend himself.
He’s on holiday in some exotic country halfway across the world with his family, but he’s offered up their house for a celebration and tasked Jake with making sure no one trashes anything.
The party started three hours ago, and you’re sure it’s in full swing by now—you’re sure everyone is having a jolly old time, getting drunk enough to welcome the new year with a hangover, searching the crowds of people for the person they’ll want to kiss at midnight. You’re sure that people are having so much fun that whoever notices your and Sunghoon’s absence might think you’re missing out.
And maybe you are—but there’s nowhere you’d rather be than where you are now, straddling your boyfriend’s lap in the backseat of his car. He’s a little bit tipsy, you’re a little bit tipsy, it’s obvious in the way you kiss each other, messy, impatient, interspersed with giggles and with perhaps too much tongue. Your hands are not much more polite, harshly grabbing at his hair just the way you know he likes it, and neither are his, having snuck their way underneath your black satin dress long ago already.
When Sunghoon pulled you away from the party, you’d appropriately exclaimed, “But the party?”, to which he replied, “Fuck the party.” It wasn’t like him to curse, or to have anything but a bashful smile on his lips, like a guilty dog who’d been caught doing something it knew it shouldn’t, even though he was just standing there, so when you see his stoney expression, you think something serious must’ve happened.
The something serious turned out to be “that guy who was touching your shoulder.”
Clearly, it’d take Sunghoon a little bit more time to be entirely secure in your relationship. In the meantime, you didn’t mind letting him fuck his jealousy away.
Although he’d been the one to whisk you away, you’re the one who finds yourself begging for him to speed things up. Your flimsy thong does absolutely nothing, so you’re basically grinding yourself bare against his clothed erection—and it’s not like the fabric of his suit trousers is very thick, either. A girl can only put up with so much dry humping before having her boyfriend’s dick inside of her goes from being a want to a need.
“Need you, Hoon,” you coo against the shell of his ear. A few words usually do the trick, but Sunghoon has other plans tonight.
“What do you need, baby?”
“You.”
“I’m right here,” he says, punctuating his words with a squeeze of your ass.
“You know what I mean,” you say, practically whining.
“I’m not sure I do, actually.”
You pull away and, looking at him directly, say, “God, Sunghoon. I want you to fuck me.” His shit-eating grin simultaneously makes you roll your eyes and goes straight to your core.
“That I can do.”
He keeps one hand on your ass as he loosens his tie first, then undoes his belt and trouser buttons. His slacks and underwear pool around his ankles, and all he needs to do is hike your dress up around your hips and push your thong to the side. You wrap a hand around his dick, but your mind is too hazy to do much with it—he’s started rubbing circles on your clit with his thumb, the pressure and speed as perfect as it always is. You let your forehead fall against his shoulders and moan unabashedly, thankful he decided to park the car far enough away from the house.
“You like it when I touch you like this, baby?”
“I love it, Hoon.”
He hums his approval. “You’re so perfect. So perfect and so wet for me, isn’t that right?”
You start to say “yes,” but you interrupt yourself with a gasp. You hold onto Sunghoon’s arm, feel his muscles move under your palm as he slips two fingers inside of you without warning. “Please,” you choke out, a tight knot already forming in your stomach.
“Please what?”
“Need you. Need your dick, baby.”
He smiles as if endeared, but his words couldn’t be more different. “Maybe you should’ve thought of that before going off with some random guy the one minute I was somewhere else.”
“He’s just-fuck, Hoon, he’s just a mutual friend of Jay and I. Fuck, right there, baby.” Forming coherent sentences when Sunghoon’s fingers flick against that perfect spot deep inside you again and again is no easy task, but you need to defend yourself.
“Right there?” he echoes, voice a whisper against your ear. When you nod, eyes shut tight, he slips his fingers out. You look at him, betrayed. “That’s too bad. Why don’t you ask him to touch you right there, hm?”
You don’t know how much of his jealousy is put-on to get you to beg and how much of it is real. You make a mental note to have a conversation with him about this later—right now, you don’t mind playing along if it means your boyfriend will deign to fuck you. You know he wants to, he’s just making you work harder.
You move your hand up and down along his dick, brush his reddening tip with your palm every now and then. “He couldn’t touch me like you, Hoon.” You lean in and trail kisses along his neck, his jawline, his ears. “Can’t fuck me like you, either.”
With exams, hockey matches and any other responsibilities out of the way for winter break, the two of you had had an obscene amount of sex in the past couple of weeks. You’d done other things, of course, namely having much-needed conversations with each other, your friends, your families. Sunghoon’s mother was overjoyed at the news, glad her “duckling had finally met someone” — her words — and his sister kept stealing his phone from him to talk to you when you were on FaceTime. You and Jake had gone home for two days for Christmas, and although Jake had needed to pep talk you into it for over an hour, you managed to tell them that you wouldn’t stand for being belittled for your life choices anymore.
But in-between these conversations, you couldn’t keep your hands off of each other. You’ve grown more comfortable with each passing day, both of you bolder in vocalizing what you want and how you feel. And so, you quickly found out that your Sunghoon, your shy, sweet Sunghoon, got off like nothing else on salacious words. In line with his possessiveness, he loved hearing about how he and only he could do these things to you; in line with your need for validation, you could practically come from hearing his praises alone.
“That’s right, baby.” Like the gentleman he is, he fishes out the condom wrapper he had gotten ready from his trouser pocket, tears it open with his mouth and rolls the condom on with one hand, his other one still preoccupied with you. “Come here, my love,” he whispers, his sweet tone worlds away from his previous teasing, almost cocky one. He grabs your hips, guides you closer to him and lines your entrance with the tip of his dick. He lets you go at your own pace, rubs your thighs soothingly as you sink down onto him slowly and adjust to his size. You throw your head back, mind hazy with pleasure as you move your hips back-and-forth against him.
“You feel so good, baby. You’re doing so well for me.” His words make you pick up your pace, and you wrap your arms around his neck, fingers grabbing at his hair and sides of your faces pressed against each other as you start lifting your hips and sinking back down. Sunghoon’s hands hold your ass tightly, guiding you up and down. It’s hot in the car; sweat runs down your hairline and your back, air is running low, the windows are fogging up, but it only adds to the dizzying bliss growing in you. Even the seatbelt receiver digging into your knee doesn’t bother you.
“Feels so good, Hoon,” you moan.
“I know, baby.”
Your hours of studying everyday means your thighs aren’t the strongest—good thing for you that your boyfriend has enough stamina and strength for the both of you. As soon as he feels you tiring, your rhythm becoming slower and more irregular, he picks up your slack. One hand on your back, one arm around your waist, he presses you close to him, his hold on you so tight you can barely move. He bucks his hips harshly into yours, faster and faster, making you cry out with every brush of his tip against that spot deep inside of you. Your whole body shakes with pleasure as your moans grow higher and louder, until the tension in your stomach hits its apex and unravels. A gasp leaves your throat as you come around him, but he’s unrelenting, the overstimulation quickly making tears form in your eyes. Strings of curses and praises of how perfect you are spill out of Sunghoon’s mouth disorderly as he reaches his own end.
Together, you take your time catching your breath, his fingers roaming your back while you trail soft kisses all over his face and neck. “My pretty baby,” he whispers, and it makes your heart swell with so much affection for him that you press your lips to his, shutting him up in case he says something that actually has you exploding.
You wish you could spend some more time just the two of you before returning to the party, but when you check your phone, it’s already five minutes to midnight—he puts his clothes back on as you fix your hair in a rush, Sunghoon helping you wipe away traces of mascara under your eyes, and together, run back to the living room where everyone has gathered. You find Minjeong, Yunjin, Chaewon and Jake, who has Jay on FaceTime. It’s only five p.m. where he is.
Everyone counts down from ten together. The first thing you do in the new year is kiss Park Sunghoon—and you’ll make sure it’s the last thing you do, too.
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whateveriwant · 1 year ago
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The 141 in a reverse harem
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18+ content, GN!Reader, Reader is the ruler of an ancient kingdom
Soap
The moment you step into their communal quarters, Soap is always the first one to greet you, almost Iike he was sitting right beside the door
But nooooo, don't be silly. Of course he's not been impatiently waiting since your last visit. Though, you were 28 and ¾ minutes later than normal, not that he's been counting or anything
As you walk around their dwelling deciding on who to take back to your chambers for the night, he's following closely behind like a little horny whiny puppy
More than once, he's accidentally stepped on your robes because of just how close he likes to trail after you
Oh, but he's so terribly sorry! Here, let him make it up to you! Please, please let him make it up to you!
Because he tries to hog the limited time you spend with the men, it's earned him more than a few elbows to the ribs from his biggest “rival” in the group: Gaz. And speaking of which…
Gaz
Always trailing a little less desperately closely behind is the newest member of the harem: Gaz
Though he may be the youngest of the four, that doesn't mean he's any less experienced in these types of matters (and the young ones are always the most eager to please, aren't they)
Have you had a good day, darling? He knows you're very busy running a kingdom and all, so he for one is grateful you've taken time out of your hectic schedule to visit them
Oh, but your shoulders look so tense, darling! He can rub them for you if you'd like
And your poor feet! Those sandals of yours look awfully uncomfortable. Why doesn't he head back with you so he can show your full body the love it deserves
While he and Soap can't help but bicker when it comes to vying for your attention, on the rare occasion, the two have been able to put aside their differences and work together, if you know what I mean
Price
Unlike the two younger men, Price feels no need to fight for your time
No, he knows you'll eventually make your way over to him, swaying your hips in that way that makes him salivate like a dog
As the oldest and the longest resident of the group, he's become somewhat of a right hand of yours; almost like a concubine turned consultant, if you will
While of course he loves nothing more than to get down to the nitty gritty with you, these talks of yours are truly the highlight of his day even when they're entirely polite in nature
Why yes, he has done something different with his beard, thank you for noticing. He got some new oils from the market yesterday. Do you like it? Isn't it soft? Just wait until you feel it between your thighs
No matter who you're taking to your bed for the evening, Price always escorts you to the door of their quarters, leaving you with a kiss to the hand goodbye. Until next time, starlight
Ghost
Last but certainly not least is the man you have the most… interesting dynamic with, to put it one way
It's funny, really. He likes to pretend the sweet taste of you doesn't haunt his every waking moment, and you like to pretend that there was anyone else on your mind the second you walked through the door
But oh, he sees that you've arrived yet again... Well, this book of his is super interesting, so he's just going to sit in the corner and read, and absolutely not watch you out of the corner of his eye
What was that? No, he's not holding it in his lap for any reason. And no, his pant legs aren't shorter than normal. Why would you think that?
Oh, but the moment you hold your hand out for him, he has to stop himself from immediately tossing the dumb book aside and hauling you over his shoulder like some sort of rabid beast
Instead, he takes his time standing from his seat, almost indifferent as he takes your hand and lets you lead him back to your chambers
It's all a farce though, of course. Nothing makes his pride swell more than having you scream his name for the whole palace to hear, echoing all the way back to where the three other men are left to sit and mope
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kodamaghost00 · 6 months ago
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30 L lawliet Headcanons
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[Disclaimer!!]
This post will contain: NSFW,Sfw, Fluff, Smut It's also Genderless for the girls,gays and theys!
You’re a task force member in this scenario.
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He wouldn’t call you any nicknames, so that the other task force members won’t notices you two liking each other.
But the few times you two are alone together he calls you “Dear” or “Love”. He sticks with the romantic names.
He shares all his sweets with you, but you have to ask him nicely.
He enjoys gentle affection way more than rough love. Gentle hugs or forehead kisses are always welcome.
He doesn’t fall in love easily. In fact I would put him into the Aromatic spectrum. Only for the fact that he’s too focused on being the greatest detective of all time.
It took him some time as well to notice he loves you. Around 2-3 years to be exact.
He had some people seeking his love, but he never responded to any of them.
He’s probably the smartest man alive so sometimes you feel dumb next to him. (Sometimes he reassures you that you’re doing great)
His love language is Acts Of Service. He appreciates it the most when you buy him cake. He loves it even more when you backe one yourself!
He rarely cries. Like at all. You saw him cry like 1-2 times since you got to know him years ago.
He’s very paranoid of Kira killing you. Most of the time he tries to exclude you from the investigation.
Once you made him strawberry shortcake and he loved it! Loved it so much he wanted to show you how grateful he was…
He loves to give and receive neck kisses. He’d leave hickeys on you too but only where people can’t see them.
After all he wants to enjoy you alone. He’s very gentle so he rarely bites you. Not even when you ask him.
“I just don’t want to hurt you, that’s all. You’re so stubborn…”
He has great reflexes and is super flexible as well. He’s willing to try everything for your sake.
He also has a lot stamina. So you have to be prepared for nights that will last long. He cums throughout a lot.
He canonically can tie a cherry stem with his tongue only. Do whatever you want with this information.
He whimpers. But groans when he’s close.
He’s always awkward when it comes to aftercare. He doesn’t know what you want/need so he just decides to ask “What do you want to do now…?”
His cluelessness makes you chuckle most times but he does whatever you ask from him.
He’s not a fan of “sour” fruits like kiwi,pineapple or cranberry. He enjoys the sweeter stuff like banana,strawberry and cherry!
He’s the type of person that’s go non-verbal and let you ramble about your special interests. Not interfering once. Just absorbing all the information you provide.
If you guys fight he will apologize. Even if he knows he is right. He doesn’t like fighting with his loved ones.
He likes to buy you gifts at many times… he likes seeing your surprised smile!
He likes to hear your breathing while you sleep in one bed. It’s a nice ambiance.
He hates nuts. Walnuts, peanuts or even almonds. Everything nut related is a no go.
Every time you do something to make him laugh like embarrassing yourself for his sake, he laughs out of pity for you…
His full genuine laugh is so contagious… it’s really rare, so rare that no one besides you and Watari heard it before.
He takes his time with marriage or any commitment. He wants to make sure that you’re REALLY ready to marry a man like him.
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MASTERLIST
Hey guys! I’m really sorry that these took so long… and I’m also sorry if some Headcanons should come up twice, I’ve written this over a month now and just now finished it… don’t be too harsh on me!!!
- Your Ghost ༼ つ ╹ ╹ ༽つ
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thedensworld · 2 months ago
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Black Card Issue | L. Jh
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Genre: fluff, est. relationship, smut
Summary: after a fight, Jihoon didn't expect to receive notifications for a revenge. However, he's not complaining.
Note: having so much fun writing this with @hoshifighting please check lyla's blog here!
Welcome to the densworld woozi🧚‍♀️
Jihoon is a chill man. Very chill. He values his peace of mind so much that no one dares disturb him when he’s in the zone, writing music. His studio is his sanctuary, a place where time stops and the world outside becomes irrelevant. No one crosses that boundary. No one—until you came into his life.
A little bundle of surprise, Jihoon would say with a soft smile. You changed everything.
You love surprises. It’s something Jihoon figured out pretty early on, back when you were just dating. And now, after years together and tying the knot, he knows it’s not just something you like—it’s a part of you. You’re the kind of person who thrives on spontaneity. The joy in your eyes when you do something unexpected, whether it’s a small gift or a sudden change of plans, has become a familiar sight. Surprises are so integral to your personality that impulsivity became second nature to you, a habit you didn’t even realize you had.
And Jihoon? Well, he’s had to become well-trained in handling it.
It wasn’t always easy, especially in the beginning. Six months into dating, Jihoon was already struggling to keep his composure around you. You were a whirlwind of energy and unpredictability, and Jihoon was the type who liked things calm and structured—especially when it came to his work. But then you would send him something, like that photo on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon, just as he was about to attend a critical production meeting. A suggestive caption accompanying a picture of you that left him flushed and flustered.
He spent the rest of that day with his head spinning, barely able to focus on anything other than you.
His team noticed, of course. They always noticed when Jihoon was distracted—because it was rare. They’d been with him for over ten years, watching him pour his soul into his music, dedicated and unwavering. But you? It took you mere months to have Jihoon wrapped around your finger. And the best part? Jihoon willingly let it happen. He wanted to be wrapped around your finger.
And as much as his members teased him, he didn’t mind. Jihoon had always been the calm one, the focused one, the one who could drown out the world when he needed to. But with you, he didn’t want to drown out anything. He wanted to hear your laughter in the background while he worked. He wanted to receive those random photos in the middle of his meetings, even if they made him blush.
Now, Jihoon finds himself in his studio. Not the one at home, but the company studio. It was unusual—his fellow producers were surprised to see him there at this hour. 10 a.m.? That’s too early for Jihoon to be at work, they thought, especially since he rarely left the home studio after getting married.
“Did you two fight?” Soonyoung asked, making a quick stop before his schedule.
Jihoon didn’t answer. He simply turned the volume up, drowning out Soonyoung’s voice. Soonyoung scoffed but left, convinced that the only reason Jihoon would be at the company so early was if you two had fought. He knew Jihoon too well.
"Stop working for a while, man. Give your wife a rest," Soonyoung muttered as he left the studio. Jihoon cursed internally. How could Soonyoung read him so easily?
The truth was, last night didn’t go well. It was one of those nights Jihoon wished he could rewind—just take it all back. He came home late again, far too late. The kind of late where the house was eerily quiet, and the only light on was the one in the living room. He didn’t even realize how long he’d been working until he saw the notifications on his phone—your texts, your missed calls.
His heart sank. The guilt hit him immediately, but exhaustion numbed him from fully acknowledging it. He braced himself as he turned the knob, pushing the door open, hoping maybe you had gone to bed. But there you were, sitting on the couch, arms crossed, your phone lying idle beside you. You weren’t saying a word, but your silence screamed disappointment. And Jihoon knew—he’d screwed up again.
He paused at the doorway, waiting for you to say something, anything, but you didn’t. The air between you was suffocating, thick with unspoken words. He could feel your eyes on him, and it made his stomach twist. He hated it when you looked at him like that, like you were waiting for him to care enough to explain himself.
But instead of apologizing, instead of doing what he knew he should have done, Jihoon snapped.
"I work for you! I work hard to afford the life you want! Why don’t you understand?!" His voice rose, frustration dripping from every word. He didn’t mean it to come out that way. He didn’t mean to make it sound like you were the problem, like you were the one pushing him to the edge. But in that moment, he was too overwhelmed to control it.
The silence that followed was deafening. He saw the way your face fell, the way your shoulders slumped as if his words had physically weighed you down. You didn’t even argue back. You just stood there, absorbing the blow, your eyes wide and hurt, like you couldn’t believe the person you loved could say something so cruel. Jihoon could see it—the disappointment, the pain, the betrayal in your eyes.
He knew you weren’t with him for his money. He knew that from the start. You never cared about his fame, his success. You never asked for lavish gifts or expensive things. What you wanted—what you always asked for—was him. His time. His presence. But Jihoon, in his frantic rush to meet deadlines and exceed expectations, had forgotten.
He was so tired. The stress had piled up to the point that it felt like he was suffocating under the weight of everyone’s demands. His work was relentless, the pressure from his team to deliver perfection was unending, and somewhere along the way, he started feeling less like a person and more like a machine. And in all of that, he had forgotten you were the one person who treated him like a human being. The only person who reminded him to eat, to sleep, to rest.
But last night, Jihoon saw something in your eyes he never wanted to see again—pain. He had hurt you, and the worst part was, you didn’t deserve it.
You didn’t even say a word as you left the room, walking away with that shattered expression on your face. He stood there, frozen, wanting to chase after you, to take back everything he’d said, but he couldn’t move. He couldn’t think straight. The weight of everything felt too much.
Jihoon ended up sleeping in his home studio that night, staring blankly at his laptop screen, his mind racing with regret. He didn’t get any work done. How could he? All he could think about was the way you looked at him, the way your lips trembled like you were fighting back tears, the way you didn’t even argue because you were too hurt to speak. He hated himself for it.
The guilt gnawed at him all night, so by the time morning came, he couldn’t bear to be in the same house. He thought if he went to the company studio, if he just got out, maybe it would clear his head. Maybe he could focus on work and forget how badly he had messed up.
But he couldn’t. You were all he could think about. Even surrounded by equipment and projects, even as he tried to drown himself in work, his thoughts kept drifting back to you. The regret kept replaying in his mind like a broken record, and the truth settled in his chest like a lead weight—he could never stop thinking about you. He never could.
And now, sitting alone in the company studio, he could still see your face in his mind, the hurt he had caused, and it tore him apart.
"Jihoon…" His manager knocked on the door, pulling Jihoon from his deep focus. He turned his head toward the reflection in the glass and saw someone entering. Quickly, he put down his headphones.
"The bank called me," his manager said, concern lacing his voice. "Someone's been making a lot of purchases with your account, and they couldn’t reach you. So, I got worried."
Jihoon blinked, realization dawning as he remembered he had turned off his phone earlier to avoid distractions. He hurriedly switched it back on, and as expected, notifications flooded his screen. Among them were a surprising number of texts from you.
Curious, Jihoon opened your messages, and his eyes widened. You had sent him a series of photos—shopping bags piled high, receipts for luxury items, and then… a car. You bought a car?
Jihoon sighed, rubbing his temples as he scrolled through the notifications of credit charges—clothes, electronics, and more. Why did you decide to buy all of this in one day?
"Everything’s fine. It’s just… my wife," Jihoon said, a little embarrassed as he reassured his manager. "No one’s using my card without permission."
His manager chuckled, seeming relieved, before leaving Jihoon alone with his thoughts.
Just as Jihoon exhaled, another text popped up. A photo of you in a jacuzzi, clearly in some luxurious hotel, wearing a brand new red bikini. The caption that followed made Jihoon’s breath hitch.
You: Want to give me the life I want? Come here. Turns out, spending your money doesn’t satisfy me enough.
Jihoon sighed deeply, his face growing warm as he hurriedly turned off everything in his studio. It was no use—he’d have to go get his black card back from you. Or maybe get something else.
*
You feel the dash of cold air hit your skin as you lay back against the heated tiles of the jacuzzi, legs lazily draped over the edge. You can’t help the little smirk pulling at your lips as you scroll through Jihoon’s texts. He’s gonna kill you. Well, maybe not kill, but he’ll definitely be pissed off. The shopping spree, the car, the photos—God, you knew exactly what you were doing. Pressing his buttons like that, getting him riled up on purpose, all because he had the audacity to shout at you last night.
But, you’re done with his bullshit excuses. He can whine about deadlines and stress all he wants, but you’re not here for that. You’re here for him, and clearly, he needs a little reminder.
The door to the hotel room opens, and even with the sound of the jacuzzi jets bubbling, you hear it. He’s here. Your heart skips a beat as the familiar, steady thud of Jihoon’s shoes echo in the space. He doesn’t say anything at first, but you can feel the burden of his stare on you, heavy and unrelenting. His presence is like a storm, silent but brewing.
You stretch your arms above your head, not even looking up, knowing full well he’s staring.
“Took you long enough,” You hum, voice saturated by fake innocence, like you hadn’t been the one who set the whole thing in motion. “figured you’d be quicker if i spent a little more of your money.”
Silence.
Then, the sound of him setting something down—his keys? maybe his bag? You don’t care. You hear the shuffle of his shoes being kicked off, and that’s when you finally open your eyes.
Jihoon stands at the edge of the jacuzzi, arms crossed, jaw tight, his eyes dreary and locked onto you.
“You’ve got some nerve,” he finally speaks, voice low, a growl almost. “what do you think you’re doing?”
You shrug, acting like you don’t feel the tension. “Just giving myself a little treat. After all, i am your wife. Don’t i deserve the best?”
Jihoon doesn’t say anything, just stares at you for a moment longer before his hands move to his belt. Your eyes widen, mouth parting slightly. “Oh, you think this is funny? You think you can just spend my money, send me those pictures, and i’ll come running?”
“Well, you did come running…” You mumble as if you were talking to yourself.
Jihoon moves, and before you know it, he’s crouched beside the jacuzzi, fingers hooking into the strap of your bikini top, pulling you closer to him with little resistance. “You know,” he murmurs, his voice rough, “this is the last thing you’ll be wearing tonight.”
Before you can even form a reply, he tugs at the fabric, and the red bikini snaps, tearing with a sharp rip.
Jihoon stands back up, the smirk on his face teasing you in a way that gets under your skin. His hand casually tosses the torn bikini top aside like it’s nothing, he looks at you, riling you up on purpose. He doesn’t rush; he takes his time pulling off his shirt, his pants.
You narrow your eyes, trying to keep the annoyance in check, but he’s pushing your buttons. “Really?” you ask. “You had to rip it off just to mess with me? You’re such an asshole”
“Yeah?” he murmurs, taking a step closer until he's right in front of you again. He leans down, pushing you back into the jacuzzi, the water sloshing as your back hits the edge. “You look mad, but I bet you’re dripping right now.”
You can even think of a response, his hand slips into your bikini bottoms just as he sits down. His fingers brush lightly over your clit, not applying pressure, just teasing, circling it slow just to watch you squirm. You twitch under his touch, your legs parting on instinct, hips bucking just slightly. He’s not giving you enough, and he knows it.
“You like to play these games, baby?” he murmurs. “Teasing me, spending all my money. What’s the real reason, huh? Just wanted my attention this bad?”
You bite back a moan, refusing to let him win so easily. “Shut up,” you manage to grit out, but the breathlessness in your voice betrays you. His thumb starts rubbing a little harder, making the bud throb on his thumb. You feel your body arching toward him, a needy moan escaping despite yourself.
“No...” he leans down, his lips brushing against your ear. “I wanna hear you say it. You knew I’d come running, right?”
His fingers press harder now, slipping lower, teasing your entrance without pushing in. Your hands grip the edge of the tub, eyes rolling back slightly as he continues torturing you.
“You’re so fucking annoying,” you hiss, your words catching in your throat as his fingers pick up the tempo. He’s still circling, still rubbing, but it’s not nearly enough. You need more, and he knows it.
“Oh, I’m annoying?” he growls softly, leaning his weight into you, fingers pressing harder, deeper, but still not giving you what you need. “What’s annoying is you buying cars and booking hotels like you don’t already have everything you want right here.”
Your legs spread wider, hips instinctively grinding down against Jihoon’s fingers as they tease your entrance. Your hand shoots up to grip his wrist, trying to gude his fingers in, but he stills the arm, cupping you. His other hand trails up your chest, stopping to toy with your nipples, flicking and squeezing them just enough to make you gasp. Then, wetting the valley of your breasts, his hand moves to your throat, wrapping around it in a firm grip, pushing your head back until it rests on the cold border of the jacuzzi.
“You’re so needy,” Jihoon mutters, watching as your mouth falls open, eyes half-lidded, breath coming out in shallow pants. You feel his thumb graze over your bottom lip, smirking as if he’s amused by just how desperate you’ve become. He hasn’t even given you what you want yet, but you’re already a mess for him.
Finally, his fingers push inside, just one at first, but the way your body responds—instantly clenching, your pussy practically swallowing his finger whole—makes him groan low in his throat. The water ripples around the two of you, splashing lightly against your skin as his movements grow rougher.
“God, you’re soaked,” he chuckles, voice almost mocking as his finger curls inside you, hitting that sweet spot making your hips jerk by their own. Even with the water swirling around, Jihoon can feel the heat between your thighs, the sticky slickness of your folds clinging to his fingers as he slides in another.
Your grip tightens on his wrist, trying to pull him closer, but he doesn't let up. Instead, his fingers work you harder, pumping in and out of you making the water splash with every push. The sound is obscene, the wet slaps of his fingers echoing in the room, blending with your suffered moans, and Jihoon's grunts.
You lift your gaze to him, lips parted, eyes pleading, practically begging for more. You look up at Jihoon with a needy expression that you know drives him crazy. But he just grins, slowing his movements slightly, his hand tightening around your throat.
“Aww, look at you,” he coos, voice soft despite the way his fingers are fucking into you hard, relentless. “Such a pretty little mess. You like this, don’t you? Me ruining you with just my fingers?”
You can’t form words, your head tilting back more as his pace quickens again, fingers curling deep, hitting the spongy spot that makes your vision blur. The water splashes harder now, droplets spilling over the edge of the tub as your hips buck in time with his thrusts. Your legs tremble, thighs shaking, and all you can manage is a soft whimper, your entire body arching toward him.
Jihoon chuckles again, watching you fall apart beneath him. “That’s it, baby,” he murmurs, fingers pumping in and out faster, thumb rubbing over your clit in quick circles. “You’re so fucking tight… taking it so well. What do you want, huh? You want more?”
Your breath catches in your throat, his words making your body ache. You nod frantically, too overwhelmed to say anything. The hand around your throat loosens slightly, giving you a moment to breathe, but he doesn’t stop. His fingers continue their brutal pace, fucking you deep, and you know he’s not stopping until you cum around his long fingers.
You feel your stomach flip when Jihoon curls his fingers and stills them, making your body arch off the jacuzzi edge as you instinctively reach for him, grabbing a fistful of his hair and pulling him down to kiss you.
The kiss is brutish, dirty—his lips smashing into yours, teeth clashing as his tongue slips into your mouth. He sucks your tongue hard, biting down on your bottom lip in that way that always makes your legs tremble. You can’t focus, the pleasure building too fast, making it impossible to keep up with the kiss. But you try, you desperately try, your hands clutching tighter in his hair.
It’s only a matter of seconds before your body betrays you. You moan into his mouth, the sound low and drawn out, muffled by the kiss. You pull him closer, your grip tightening painfully in his hair as the pleasure crests, your body trembling as your back arches impossibly high.
Your nipples graze his chest, the sensation of your sensitive skin brushing against his, makes him shiver, his breath hitching as your slick cunt clenches hard around his fingers.
Your moans become more frantic, desperate, and you can’t keep kissing him anymore. Your mouth falls open, head tilting back as you gasp for air, your body seizing up with the strength of your orgasm.
Your pussy tightens around his fingers, your thighs shaking uncontrollably as you cum, the water splashing violently around you from the press of your movements. Jihoon smirks down at you, clearly proud of himself, fingers still thrusting into you even as you come down from your high. “That’s it, baby,” he murmurs, voice soft but teasing. “Cum all over my fingers.”
Your mind is still swimming in the hangovers of your orgasm when Jihoon suddenly pulls his hand away. You’re left panting, trying to catch your breath, but he’s already manhandling you, turning you around and pressing you into the edge of the tub.
“Get on all fours,” he orders. You don’t hesitate, your body moving on autopilot as you shift into position, knees pressing into jacuzzi, hands bracing yourself against the edge.
Jihoon’s grip is firm as he presses you down, making sure you don’t slip on the slick surface. His fingers dig into your hips, holding you steady while he strokes himself behind you. You glance back, seeing him gripping his cock, pumping himself slowly, the tip flushed red and dripping with pre-cum, some veins popping up when he cuts the blood circulation. The sight makes your mouth water.
He lines himself up with you, the head of his cock teasing your wet pussy, but he doesn’t push in just yet. Instead, he grabs your bikini bottom—what’s left of it anyway—and yanks it harshly to the side, exposing your swollen, sensitive folds. You feel the fabric digging into your skin, tight and uncomfortable.
Jihoon watches, mesmerized, as your pussy clenches around nothing, your body still sensitive from your previous orgasm. Slowly Jihoon pushes inside. He takes his time, savoring the way your walls squeeze around him, they way you slick starts to coat him too, your body struggling to accommodate his size. You whimper, fingers clawing at the edge of the tub, trying to keep yourself stable as he fills you inch by inch.
He moans deep in his throat, the sound oscillating through his chest as he bottoms out, his cock buried fully inside you.
You bite your lip, arching your back even more, desperate to take him deeper. “Jihoon… please…”
But he just chuckles darkly, pulling out slowly, only to slam back in, making the water splash around you both again. “Oh, you’ll get what you want,” he promises. “Just keep taking it like that.”
His fingers tangle in your hair, tugging hard enough to make you gasp. The sharp pull has you arching back, your spine curving as he yanks you up against his chest, your back pressing flush against his front. The new angle makes his cock hit even deeper, your breath hitching as the tip grazes that swollen spot inside you.
Jihoon glances at the nearby mirror, his eyes glued to the reflection of your bodies. Your tits bounce with every thrust, soft and flushed, his eyes darken, watching the way your skin sticks to his, the way your body—though trembling—melts against him, sacrificing to the pleasure despite every nerve in your body wanting to tense up.
He moans suffered, his forehead dropping to your shoulder, feeling the warmness radiating off your skin. You’re burning up, both of you are, your bodies slick with sweat despite being submerged in water seconds after. Jihoon can’t help but bury his face against your neck, breathing you in, skin to skin, letting the sensation take over him.
“Fuck,” he mumbles against your shoulder, his lips brushing your skin, almost as if he's talking to himself. “I missed this. Missed you.”
His hips don’t stop, driving into you harder, your thighs shaking as you try to keep up, but your body is already on the edge. You’re clinging to him for dear life, your head falling back against his shoulder, mouth falling open as breathless moans slip out with every thrust.
“I’m sorry,” Jihoon suddenly murmurs, his voice softer now, tender. He keeps thrusting into you, but there’s an apology laced in every word, every snap of his hips. “I’m so fucking sorry… for everything.”
You don’t answer, can’t even if you wanted to. Your breath is caught in your throat, the only response you give is the way your body clings to his, melting further into his hold as his hands roam down your body.
He doesn’t expect you to answer. Maybe he doesn’t even need you to. He just keeps going, fucking into you like he’s trying to apologize through the way his body moves against yours. His grip loosens in your hair, his hand sliding down the curve of your waist, lower, until his fingers find the puffy bundle of nerves between your legs.
The second his fingers brush over your clit, your whole body tenses again, only to relax almost instantly as he starts rubbing teasing circles. You whimper, legs trembling, hardly competent to hold yourself up, and Jihoon groans into your skin, feeling the way you melt even more against him.
“You’re so fucking perfect,” he breathes, his voice raspy in your ear. “Always take me so well… fuck… so tight, baby… you feel that? You’re clenching around me.”
You don’t say anything, just a soft gasp escapes your lips, your head falling back further onto his shoulder, exposing the column of your throat to him. His fingers quicken their pace, matching the rhythm of his thrusts, every brush of his thumb over your swollen clit making you cry out.
“I know I fucked up,” Jihoon whispers, his forehead still pressed to your shoulder, his breath hot against your skin. "But I can’t stop… I can’t stop thinking about you. About this. About how good you feel around me.”
Your chest heaves with each breath, your thighs trembling uncontrollably as his hand continues working you, his other arm wrapping around your waist to hold you tighter, anchoring you to him. His fingers press harder against your clit, drawing tight circles that make your whole body twitch, every nerve ending alive and buzzing.
“Come on, baby,” he coaxes, his voice dipping into that familiar, filthy tone, the one that drives you insane. “Cum for me… I know you’re close. I can feel it. You’re squeezing me so fucking tight.”
You’re so close, your vision blurring as the heat in your core builds higher. Your body’s completely given in to him, to the way he’s fucking you deep and hard while his fingers expertly play with your clit, not giving you a single moment of respite.
And then it hits, hard and fast. Your back arches, body tensing as the orgasm rips through you, ripple after ripple of pleasure crashing over you as your pussy clenches tight around him. Your hands reach back, desperately grabbing at anything—his hair, his arms—trying to ground yourself as you moan out his name, breathless and trembling.
Jihoon groans at the feeling, his cock throbbing inside you as your walls pulse around him. “Fuck… that’s it,” he rasps, his hand slowing its movements on your clit, letting you ride out your high. He’s still buried deep inside you, his cock twitching, and he watches in the mirror as your body shudders against his.
He doesn’t pull out. Instead, he shifts you forward, placing you on all fours again, his hands steadying you as he lines himself up once more. His hand slides down to your ass, pushing your bikini bottom further to the side so he can watch as your tight puffy walls flutter around him.
Without delay, he starts thrusting again, his pace slow but deep, watching as your body tenses, clenching around him every time he sinks in.
Jihoon lets out a series of the neediest, whiniest moans you've ever heard from him, and it hits you differently—vulnerable, like you’ve broken through every layer he keeps guarded.
Then he sinks in fully and stops.
You slouch forward, your whole body going limp as you brace yourself on your forearms. You feel him pressed against your back, the warmth of his skin sticking to yours as his breath hitches in your ear.
And then it fills you—heat as his cum spurts deep inside you. Hot, thick, and it has you crying out, your voice breaking as your body quakes beneath him. You can feel every pulse of his cock as he fills you up, making your insides feel impossibly full.
Your back trembles under his weight, every muscle in your body quivering as his release continues to flood you. Your pussy clenches around him involuntarily, trying to milk every last drop from him, and it only makes him groan louder.
“Shit,” Jihoon breathes, his voice a wrecked, breathy mess as he leans forward, his forehead pressing into the back of your neck. His hands grip your hips tightly, like he’s using you to anchor himself through the intensity of his orgasm. “Fuck… you feel s'good.”
Your head drops onto your forearm, unable to do anything but take it all in. You can feel his cum dripping out of you, a warm, slick sensation as it mixes with the water around your thighs. Your legs are shaking, your core aching, but you don’t want him to pull out, you want to stay like this, to feel him deep inside you just a little longer.
Jihoon’s breathing finally starts to slow, his body still pressed flush against yours as his arms snake around your waist, holding you tight. You hum softly in response, his cum continues to spill out, and you can feel every slow drip as your pussy flutters, trying to recover from the relentless pounding he just gave you.
He pulls back slightly, just enough to glance down at the sight of your trembling back. A soft smirk tugs at his lips as he watches how your body reacts to him, still sensitive, still on edge. “Look at you,” he whispers, his tone soft but teasing. “You’re still shaking. Did I fuck you that good?”
You don’t answer him; just let out a shaky breath. Your body is completely spent, and you can narrowly keep yourself upright. Jihoon chuckles softly, pressing a kiss to your damp skin before pulling out slowly, the loss of him leaving you feeling empty and aching. The last bit of his cum leaks out of you as he does, and he watches, fascinated, as it mixes with the water beneath you.
He moves to your side, pulling you into his chest, his hands rubbing gentle circles on your back as you both come down from the high.
Jihoon gently lifted you from the jacuzzi, his hands steady as he wrapped a robe around your body, drying you with care. His touch was soft, and the tension between you started to ease with each moment. He laid you down on the bed with tenderness, his eyes flickering with a mix of concern and regret.
As he stepped away to quickly clean himself up, you could feel the weight of his emotions lingering in the air. When he returned, Jihoon slid into bed beside you, pulling you into his arms, his warmth pressing against your skin. His embrace was tight but comforting, as though he was trying to hold on to more than just the moment.
"I'm sorry..." His voice was barely above a whisper, yet the sincerity in it was undeniable. He rested his forehead gently against yours, his breath mingling with yours in the quiet space between you. "Please forgive me."
You could feel the vulnerability in his words, a side of Jihoon that he rarely showed.
You lay there in his arms, feeling the tension in his body slowly release as he held you close. His apology lingered in the air, filled with emotion you hadn’t heard from him before. For a moment, everything was quiet—the warmth of his skin, the sound of your breathing, and the beating of his heart against yours.
Jihoon pulled back slightly, his eyes searching yours for any sign of forgiveness. His brows furrowed, and he seemed almost afraid of what you might say. You reached up, your fingers brushing against his cheek, the familiar sensation calming you both.
“I know you didn’t mean to hurt me,” you whispered, the weight of the past argument starting to lift. “But it’s hard sometimes, Jihoon. You get so lost in your work…”
He nodded, the regret still heavy in his gaze. "I know. I promise I'll do better. I can't stand the thought of losing you, or pushing you away."
His words tugged at your heart, and you could see how much he meant it. There had always been that side of him—driven, focused, and dedicated—but sometimes it made him forget everything else. Still, here he was, trying, apologizing, and making the effort to put you first.
Without saying anything, you leaned in, closing the distance between you, your lips brushing his in a soft kiss. Jihoon sighed against your mouth, relief and gratitude flooding through him as he deepened the kiss, his arms tightening around you as though he couldn’t bear to let go.
When you finally pulled away, your foreheads touched again, both of you breathing a little more steadily now.
“I forgive you,” you said softly. His eyes brightened at your words, and you felt the tension finally melt away completely. Jihoon smiled, a rare, gentle one that you didn’t see often enough, and he pressed a kiss to your forehead.
“Thank you,” he whispered, pulling you closer again, as though he couldn’t get enough of having you in his arms.
*
Jihoon sighed deeply as he glanced around your living room, cluttered with bags and boxes of things you'd bought earlier that day. His eyes scanned the array of items before he asked, half-jokingly, “Is it even possible to empty my bank account in a single day?”
You smiled, shaking your head as you tried to ease his worry. “Don’t stress. I can sell them all on the marketplace. They’ll be gone in two days, tops. I promise.”
Jihoon raised an eyebrow and picked up one item that particularly caught his attention—a pair of leopard-printed underwear for men. He held it up with a bemused expression, “Leopard print... for me?”
You grinned mischievously, “Yup! Oh, and I got you the hot pink one, too. Thought you’d look great in it.”
Jihoon groaned, his face a mix of amusement and disbelief. “You know it was a joke when everyone said i wear these kind of panties, right? There’s no way I’d ever wear these.”
You crossed your arms, stepping closer with a playful smirk on your face. “Oh, I can make you wear them,” you teased, your tone light but daring.
Jihoon chuckled, shaking his head at your persistence. “Is that a challenge?”
“Maybe,” you replied, your grin widening. “I have my ways. Just wait until you see how good you look in them.”
He rolled his eyes, but a small smile tugged at his lips. “You’re impossible.”
You stepped even closer, standing on your toes to whisper in his ear, “You’ll thank me later.”
Jihoon’s laughter filled the room as he pulled you into a hug, shaking his head. “You never give up, do you?”
“Never,” you said, wrapping your arms around him. "And trust me, you’ll look amazing in leopard print."
With a defeated sigh, Jihoon gave you one more playful glare, “Fine. But don’t think this means I’m wearing the hot pink ones too.”
“We’ll see about that,” you replied, your voice full of challenge and laughter as you leaned into his embrace.
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togament · 7 months ago
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umemiya is such a sweet big brother type of character i feel he's a BIG family man so imagine the sort of thoughts that would be thunk when he sees his s/o taking care of the younger furin members/children in general.. 👉👈 could be both nsfw and sfw too hehe
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eeeee an ume ask! tysm anon. of course, i live to provide for the ume girlies too. him being a huge family guy is making me sweat a lil. hoooooo- 🥹
thinking about being fresh into a relationship with ume and him… realizing some things way too soon.
𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 : breeding breeding BREEDING. breeder ballz ume. imagined sexual scenarios. general seggs.
NSFW under the cut. +18 stuff. MDNI, pookie. sowwie. you know the drill.
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just like most nights, you and the Furin boys congregate to the Pothos Café.
also just like most nights, you find yourself standing over the first years’ table, playfully nagging at sakura for getting scratched up after you just patched him up good yesterday.
ume, being the absolute best boyfriend that he is, he doesn’t look on in jealousy. hell. he’s smiling so stupidly that hiragi spares him a glance and grins at him.
“take a picture it lasts longer,” hiragi teases, taking a sip from his black coffee, nudging ume out of his love induced stupor.
“can you blame me though? I mean, look at them,” he sighs wistfully, motioning to your table. hiragi follows his gaze.
you’re still there, fighting and giggling with a now red sakura, desperately trying to reach him to clean his wounds. it’s absolute chaos but seeing you getting along with the furin members and doting on them like your own siblings is only making ume fall for you even harder.
how his heart swoons at the thought of having you be a permanent fixture to his found family. how he wants to get married to you one day, to take care of a family of your own. “she’d be such a good mother to my kids,” he thinks. but before he realizes he was thinking out loud, he slowly turns to a smirking hiragi. “hm? say whatnow?” hiragi prods.
Pause.
‘she’d be such a good mother to my kids,’ he finally manages to think silently. he rotates that thought around in his mind like a puzzle, panicking inwardly. isn’t it a bit too soon to think of those things? right? I mean, you just got into a relationship with him after being friends for years — can’t be, right? to save face, he only chuckles, waving hiragi off with a limp hand.
“it’s a grown up thought. you wouldn’t get it.” he teases. but damn. just looking at you from across the café right now’s stirring a different type of feeling within him.
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he finds you again in his thoughts that night in his room, your tight cunt is in the form of his fist. your name falling from his lips as he pumps on his length. his eyebrows are knit together so tightly, his eyes closed, imagining you laid out on his bed, pussy dripping with his cum. if he can’t have you the way he wants right now, he’ll just have to put his mind to work.
he hooks one of your legs over his shoulder as he slides in for the nth time that night in his thoughts, the wet squelch ever audible. he’s reaching you deeper in this position now, eager to shoot more of his load as close to your womb as possible — overload it, even. it spills, drips down onto his bedsheets but he doesn’t care.
“y-you’re gonna be such a great mother,” you hear him groan. you’re way too fucked out to respond while his eyes are raking down your naked form, breasts bouncing with every harsh thrust. sweaty and panting, you reach down to rub at your clit and he bites back a moan at the added sensation. you’re tightening up around him. his fat breeder balls slap against your ass. it’s fucking amazing how endless his stamina is. you can only let out a weak whimper in response.
some days, he makes love to you so gently in his mind, taking his sweet time to bring you the pleasure you so deserve. pressing gentle kisses along your legs, your belly, your chest.
but lately, he’s been wanting to fold you over and fuck you senselessly, fucking his cum deeper inside of you. it’s downright nasty, rough—but can you blame him?
he needs to fucking breed you.
“gonna fill you up, baby. gonna put a baby in ya-“ he reaches down to cup your cheek in his hand. you instinctively lean into his touch and he swears his heart skips a beat. “y’want that? all plump with our kid inside of you. gonna look even more beautiful-“ he chuckles, ramming harder into you. his grip tightens around your leg, a pattern of crescents litter your soft flesh as he keeps a steady grip using it as leverage to fuck deeper.
you feel a tight coil in your belly, wanting to cum again on his thick, thick breeder cock. your fingers fly to the sheets below you, gripping so desperately with your head buried into the pillow beside you. moans and screams muffled by the saliva-soaked material.
“that’s right, sweetheart. cum. cum with me. f-fuuugh-!” a groan leaves your boyfriend’s lips as he feverishly rubs at your clit, bringing you to cum with him. a mixture of his juices and yours dribble down his balls and down your thighs, soaking the mattress further.
-
his toes curl and his back arches away from his bed as he pumps his cock desperately, your name escaping his lips unbidden in pants and whimpers. his cum squirts far, even reaching his cheek and his pillow.
“fuuuuck,” he whispers to himself, sitting up from his bed to wipe himself up, already dreading the clean up process.
but his doorknob turns with a gentle knock on his door.
you catch him looking like a deer in headlights, cock still in hand and cum smearing his uniform and cheek.
smirking, you step inside his room slowly, eyeing him down with a blush creeping up your neck.
“I’d be a ‘great mother’, huh?”
the door closes with a click behind you.
shit.
౨ৎ ˙⋆.˚ ᡣ𐭩
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a/n: 😮‍💨 gotta love me some desperate ume.
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chufflepop · 5 months ago
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The winners garden
This was inspired by my emerald rogue run (the old one), with my pidgeot whom I have named Victory after the run ended (or caught a pidgey in the safari and pretended it was her)
This'll be long because it affected me that much. I didn't expect to win this run- I thought I was a goner after Wallace. I swear this run felt like a movie sequence because my god it felt so climactic (to me)
Victory was a random pidgey I caught at before the first or second gym, and I was originally going to trade her off but I just felt like I lacked flying types. Eventually, I thought she was actually a really valuable member and kept her in. It also helped alot that the pidgeotite appeared the next time I got into the battle stop store, so it felt right keeping her around-
My team had a latios, thunderus, sylveon (who died but I managed to get him back because of the random lab encounter, thank god it was just a species curse), serperior, dracovish and mega pidgeot. Pidgeot with hurricane spam is so good I kept her around even more
It was a really solid team until I accidentally stumbled into a trainer battle while getting an item, and due to an unlucky crit, my latios goes down
At this point, I got mad because "AH, MY BEST TEAM MEMBER". He had a choice specs on and his job was to spam, but unfortunately, his psychic didn't kill the mega kanghaskan we encountered. It was unfortunate, I didn't level up because I thought I could avoid the trainer, but oh well
Caught a random alolan ninetales that did good aurora veil blizzard (after buying an ability patch) and I thought she'd be fine and for awhile, it was
Until I reached the champion. Wallace killed 3 of my team members, down went my serperior, my newly caught alolan ninetales, and my dracovish. And there was also an unskippable trainer when I moved on to the next route which killed my sylveon, leaving me with only my thunderus and my dear pidgeot
Remember the species clause I said earlier? That thing screwed me over when it only had 3 available pokemon (and worse, it was a water route so the surf point also had staryu, maybe I was just impatient and maybe another mon is in the surf point idk). I caught a starmie, a toxapex and a jellicent in that route. With the species clause active, I was handicapped to fight the REAL champion. I only had 5 pokemon instead of 6
The last poke stop. The trader was there, so I took a gamble with him and traded my starmie. And what came out of it felt right- It was a victini. At this point, I was giggling to myself like "I might win" because of victinis dex entry and such, about how it being with you is basically a guaranteed victory.
After I prepared my team to the best that I could and with some small confidence growing, I pressed on.
At this point, I only remember the pidgeot battle so I'm just trying to remember here and I'm probably wrong in some details
Red was the final champion and my victini took the lead. Victini died first, he was scarfed and spammed bolt strike until he MISSED. But it was still good enough, it was now a fair 4v4. Jellicent didn't have much, but he had will o wisp, which helped alot. He wasn't trained as well as the others so he was frailer than he was supposed to be, but he weakened one pokemon enough for thunderbolt range and died. 3v4 now
Thunderus tbolt, he goes down. Thunderus had a z crystal and it one shotted I forgot who immediately after.
It's now a 2v2
Terrakion. Easy enough for toxapex to take down (and spam recover)
2v1
Final pokemon was a giratina. Shadow force. Didnt want to switch out because tox was in good health and I wanted to knock off, but it critted and tox was lower than anticipated. Knock off did alright damage and I was sure it was a clear 2 hit ko if pidgeot lived. One outrage and tox was down
1v1.
My pidgeot, the pidgeot who's been with me since the start, the pidegot that I was going to trade away, the pidgeot that I doubted. From a little helpless pidgey to now facing Satan head on
She megas and hits her first hurricane but it doesn't kill and an outrage hits her and SHE BARELY LIVED. SHE WAS CLINGING FOR HER LIFE. AND THERE I KNEW, I KNEW I WON. ONE LAST HURRICANE AND DOWN GOES GIRATINA, AND MY SOLE SURVIVOR WON ME EVERYTHING!
IT FELT SO PERFECT. THE SPECIES CLAUSE, THE VICTINI, THE TOXAPEX, THE STRESS I BUILT, THE IMPORTANT POKEMON DYING JUST BEFORE RED, THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP TAKING DOWN POKEMON SATAN, IT DIDN'T LOOK LIKE MUCH VISUALLY AND SOME PEOPLE WOULD PROBABLY THINK IT'S CHILDISH, BUT I IMAGINED MY PIDGEOT ABSOLUTELY LOOKING COOL AND GOING HAM ON THAT FINAL BATTLE. THE FINAL BATTLE WAS COOL IN MY HEAD OKAY
After we won, I caught a female pidgey on the safari zone and named her Victory. It's the same pidgeot now pidgey that in my heart. And that's literally why I made this drawing. And also I significantly love pidgeot more now. I would also make an essay about my thought process when making this, but I think this tumblr blog is long enough (it was so corny ngl). Too bad I can’t bring her over but the newer game is fun too
I'm sorry this was long guys, I enjoyed talking about this way too much ahshsh
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fandom-lover-extra · 1 year ago
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DC X DP: Taking The Cake - Dead Tired
This had to take the cake.
Tim had noticed a couple of odd things about his boyfriend.
One: His boyfriend had an unusual cold temperature-- Tim had originally assumed it might just be because he had poor circulation in his blood stream. But as winter creeped in and his boyfriend still didn't get cold? Not only didn't get cold, but thrived in the temperature? Tim considered just maybe his boyfriend was a meta.
Danny had never mentioned being a meta. But Tim hadn't mentioned being Red Robin either. Not to mention, this was Gotham, so Tim understood why Danny may be a tad apprehensive as to mentioning his colder temperatures.
And if Tim kept the thermostat at a lower temperature from then on any time Danny came to visit? Well, that was his business and nobody else's.
Two: His boyfriend was abnormally quiet. Danny had managed to sneak up on Tim and a few of his family members before. He had managed to sneak up on Cass. And while, on some level Tim could understand his family's apprehension, he felt telling them to promptly 'f*ck off' had also been justified. Tim knew Danny, and Danny genuinely hadn't meant to sneak up on them. 
He had seemed just as startled as them when they shot up in surprise. (And maybe he did ask Cass if Danny was genuinely surprised. His boyfriend was a little sh*t and would totally pull something like this to laugh at. It was his business and Cass's and as far as the two of them were concerned, Danny was perfectly fine.)
Three: Danny was oddly protective. He freaked out anytime there was a Rogue attack and he hadn't heard back from Tim. And while Tim was touched, he hadn't exactly appreciated the mini heart attack he received when he saw Danny out in the field looking for him in a panic.
(That was one of their first big fights. Tim didn't want Danny out in the line of fire, he could take care of himself. Even if Danny didn't know that. But Danny had been just as insistent that he needed to hear back from Tim to know that he was safe.)
They'd reach a compromise. Tim made sure to always respond to Danny's text messages asking if he was safe during a major rogue attack. (Never any phone calls. Danny would know he was lying then.) And he would put up with Danny coddling him the next time he saw him. While it was a bit frustrating, Tim was still touched by the worry.
Four: Danny had enhanced senses. At first, Tim didn't really notice. But eventually, he saw how Danny would flinch at particularly loud noises. Would avoid crowds like the plague. Would sometimes have to wear sunglasses because it was "too bright". Tim never said anything. Never called attention to any of these occurrences, just attempted to help his boyfriend through it.
Tim knew it was a possibility that Danny was just sensitive to those types of things. But considering Tim was sure that Danny was some type of meta, he was leaning more towards that theory.
Five: His boyfriend was unusually strong for someone that looks as much like a twig like him.
Once when Tim had been injured particularly badly during patrol, he had practically been put on bedrest. Not because he hadn't attempted to go out the next night, but because Danny had found out he was injured and came to take care of him while he was injured.
When Tim had attempted to sneak out that night, luckily he had yet to change into his Red Robin suit, Danny had basically manhandled him back into bed. With absolutely no effort, even with Tim struggling against him. Not that Tim had struggled much, with how frazzled his brain had been when he realized that Danny was stronger than he realized.
And if Tim invited Danny to the gym next time he worked out? Well, that didn't have any ulterior motives, no matter what Steph insisted upon.
And now for number six. This took the absolute cake. The last thing Tim had expected. And at this point? Tim wasn't so sure that Danny was actually even human. Which means he would have to completely scrap his theories on his boyfriend and start over from scratch.
Because right now, Tim and Danny were cuddled up on the couch in Danny's apartment. They were having a series marathon of the Star Trek series. It had started out perfectly fine. It had started out as normal.
A weighted blanket on top of the two, Danny cuddled up to Tim, with a bowl of popcorn in-between the two. Eventually, they shifted. The bowl of popcorn ending up on the floor with Danny on top of Tim on the couch.
Absentmindedly, Tim began running his fingers through his boyfriend's hair, not really paying attention to the background noise of the TV. He was just so warm and felt safe with the added weight of Danny on top of him. The movements of his finger's being just as much as a soothing motion to Tim as it was to Danny.
And at first, Tim hadn't noticed it. Not when he was slowly drifting off to sleep. But as the sound got louder, Tim couldn't help but notice. Danny was purring. 
Tim blinked and he blinked again. Not once stopping in his ministrations as he blanked out. Danny continued purring away, leaning into Tim's touch, his eyes closed and a content smile on his face. Tim couldn't help but be reminded of an overly affectionate cat. Especially when he rubbed the space around Danny's scalp and ears, Tim was convinced the was purring louder than the sound coming from the TV at this point.
So maybe he wasn't human after all. Maybe Tim should have given more weight to Damian's alien theory.
But right now, Tim was tired, and he was sure he would remember in the morning.
In the end, Tim allowed Danny's presence to send him off into a warm and comfortable sleep.
(And if Tim proceeded to take apart his theory board and contemplate just how to ask his boyfriend about the fact that he wasn't human? Well, that was his business and nobody else's)
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