#sorry i had to end on a silly note!!

[somecoolpigeon]

Day 7: Free day agsgfksgdj

🐉🦁

[iknowwhereyousnoozeatnight]

this one's for all the yuri enjoyers out there — nsft under cut

meronia event prompt(s): scar

[cedarw00div]

Astarion(ascended) and Gortash are fighting over who's the worst character in my canon

meanwhile Raphael is standing in the background with a metal pipe

[zenoes]

i’ve never deleved so hard for a seperate interest just for a fictional man before. however i am having many many deep thoughts abt veritas’ greek origins (specifically, aletheia; bc that is his greek equivalent — ‘veritas’ was a roman goddess)

veritas values humanity soooooooo much; so to think his greek equivalent being sculpted by prometheus (in aesop’s fables), scratches my brain very nicely. walking, talking, learning with grace

i also like to think that veritas implores the same methods used, but in his free time. only to more futile results. there’s something very sad about creating countless versions of oneself in the hope that one of them will be gifted enough, smart enough, perfect enough to qualify as a genius. but im waxxing poetic about him too much he makes me sick.

anyways did you guys know that the chalk in his attacks is a stylus. and not actually a piece of chalk.

[lucalicatteart]

Poll adventure (paventure? lol) Day 13: read the small story tidbit below the poll for more details, OR just vote based on initial impression

(✦ see past poll results + further information HERE (link) ✦)

Yesterday's poll decided that The Adventurer should just start crying whilst being robbed in the abandoned barn ...

~

(----- tw for mild violence (he gets into sort of a fight) until after the next orange text section in parentheses -----)

Not sure what else to even do, The Adventurer simply collapses into a ball on the floor and starts sobbing, screaming, and rolling about. The hooded figure pauses in confusion at first, but.. apparently is not very sympathetic to his plight.

They rush over, grappling with him as he cries, fighting to pry the backpack out of his hands. The Adventurer continues screeching frantically, and during some of his flailing accidentally swings his arm up, elbowing the hooded figure in the face. They let out an exasperated sigh, knocking him against the wall then firmly yanking him up by the hair, securing their arm around his throat to restrain him as they grab for the backpack. He kicks a few times, struggling, clawing at the hooded figure's arms, but just isn't strong enough to free himself.. There's a thwack and a sudden sharpness in the side of his head, the backpack pulling away from his shoulders, cold ground, and then… nothing at all..…

(------------------- mild violence tw over -----------------) ...............

The Adventurer slowly opens his eyes to a quiet foggy morning.. Tiny particles in the dusty barn air gently flutter to and fro, dancing around in the streams of early sunlight trickling through the slight crack of the front doors. With a groan, he rolls over, suddenly feeling every ache in his body. His head, his wrist, his leg injury from crashing the raft.. He spends a while just laying on his back, watching the dust and gazing hopelessly at the moldy boards of the roof, mustering the strength to sit upright… What can he even do next? He's failed.. His first EVER actual quest of his adventuring career, and he can't even keep a stupid egg safe for more than a few days! What type of adventurer is that?? Maybe he should just give up.. Go back home and do nothing with his life, just as he was meant to... He sighs, turning back onto his side and curling into a ball to sulk even more dramatically. The cat trots over to him to interrupt his swirling thoughts, pawing at his face, then directing him towards a small stack of hay in the corner where... there it is! His backpack!! He scrambles over, immediately digging through to check for his belongings.. To his surprise, everything it still in it's place. His food, his money, all of the cool shiny rocks he's collected so far.. And tucked away in the very bottom, the Mysterious Egg box remains, completely undamaged.. somehow with the egg still inside! And... a note? He shakily unfolds a crisp sheet of pale yellow paper dotted with a few scribbly letters: "I took care of her for you. Be more careful next time. Just get where you have to go."

Well...... He supposes that if there's apparently going to be weirdos following him around anyway, maybe he's lucky at least one of them seems nice. Better than trying to ROB him, at least.. Even if it is a bit creepy. He realizes now that his injuries have been bandaged as well, and that when he woke up, he was wrapped in a blanket, and.. where is the hooded figure? What does the stranger mean that they "took care" of her?? He turns to the cat for answers, as if they'd be able to clear up his confusions, but they simply make a "mrrp!" noise and stare blankly in response. Figuring that it's all far too much to think about first thing in the morning (especially with the headache that he has), he just decides to be thankful he at least still has the egg, and thus can continue on his grand adventure!! He will NOT let himself fail again! Sore and limping but full of renewed motivation, he leaps up (at least as best he can) and continues back onto the road. After walking only a few hours, he comes to a clearing at the top of a large hill, overlooking the next stop on his journey (then double checks the map just to make sure it actually IS the next stop). This is a much bigger area than the previous villages he's been to, possibly large enough to even count as a small city. With a wider variation of shops and attractions available to him than usual, he wonders if he should just take a break and relax the rest of the day.

He's too tired to walk much today anyway, soo.. maybe it'd be good for him to spend some time in a safe public space, doing something to help take his mind off of this morning's drama… But, what should he do?

-

-

Additional Information

the adventurer's current main quest: follow his map to reach the abandoned castle ruins and see the rare animal specialist about the mysterious egg he has

[seouljazzbar]

GO WITH IT

MARK LEE (이민형)

ABOUT 𓂃 ࣪˖ “have sex with me so I can finish writing this” inspired by this tweet or when mark offers to solve all your problems, it's much better to go with it

WARNING 𓂃 ࣪˖ language, mark is a bit of a slut, 18+ spiderman kiss (you’ll see lmao), allusions to fat cock mark… 😵‍💫, overstimulation, unprotected sex, mark’s name repeated like 78 times (no seriously, it’s up there), reader bent like a pretzel, orgasm denial, this author loves a comma, a pinch of softdom!mark, silly ending

PAIRING 𓂃 ࣪˖ bestfriend!mark x bestfriend!reader

WORD COUNT 𓂃 ࣪˖ 6k

AUTHOR'S NOTE 𓂃 ࣪˖ a little surprise drop for my favorite neo! i guess it's also a wee bit of a belated birthday gift to him :) i skimmed it for typos and stuff but i unfortunately did not edit it the way i should have, sorrryyyyy hope y'all enjoy! omg also reader's room is yu nabi's from the kdrama nevertheless hehehe

Nobody was busier than your best friend, Mark Lee. Between his job, his vibrant social life, and his weekly family dinners, you were lucky to be offered a slot in his schedule. It was always a yes to Mark Lee. Usually.

The last three times Mark had tried to make plans with you were all failed attempts, and the excuses varied each time. There was nothing shameful about the truth, but you just couldn’t bring yourself to tell him that your friendship was being thrown to the backburner while you sloppily attempted to get your life together. He knew all about your small business, taking commissions for art prints and ceramics, but he had no idea how much time and effort went into each piece. Besides, knowing Mark he would offer to help, and that wasn’t going to be of service to you in the slightest. 

All you could do was rot in bed, hoping that something would spark your creative mind to no avail. Frustration was starting to take up every corner of your mind— from the nonstop orders that you couldn’t fulfill, to your supplier raising prices, to the fact that you hadn’t had a good date in two years. You were wound too tight to function, and any minute now you were going to start pulling your hair out in chunks.

The sound of the pin-pad at your door let you know that Mark was about to come barreling through. There were so many times that you’d be in strict creation mode, headphones in at full blast while Mark banged at the door pleading for you to answer; when it started to feel like a normal part of your routine, he just requested the code to let himself in. “Yo!”

Except, this time, none of that was necessary. Your headphones were stuffed in their case on the other side of the room, workstation completely untouched with your multiple projects stacked on top of each other. Despite the custom orders piling up over the last two weeks, you hadn’t had the artistic strength to move forward with any of them. The only thing you could do to  buy yourself a little time was to post a message asking for patience and understanding while you navigate some vague emotional hardship. Realistically, though, it would only buy you another week or so before people would start to get angry. 

“Hi.” Perched on a stool near the kitchen island, eyes locked on the cup of coffee you warmed up seventeen minutes ago, you were out of it.

Mark waved a few inches from your face, trying to get your full attention. “Hello? Earth to ___, are you okay?”

You snapped out of it, looking over at your best friend to see that he was dressed for a night on the town. “Sorry, got a lot on my mind right now.”

White, distressed tank top, loose plaid button-up undone, and his sexiest pair of black jeans. The way the meticulous curls fell around his face, looping around his forehead in a way that feigned boylike wonder. He looked oh so delicious, but you would never tell him that— his ego was big enough for the both of you. “Anything I could help with?”

A stifled chuckle barely reached his ears before you cleared your throat, turning toward him with renewed energy. “No, not really.”

Mark put his phone and keys down on the counter, taking a quick intermission to wash his hands before walking back over to you. He’d never been in your apartment in this way before— an unannounced hangout where you’re clearly just a stop along the way, being so underdressed in his presence. He’d seen you in a swimsuit before, but something about a big shirt and underwear felt far more intimate than the two strips of fabric. “This is like the third time you’ve curved me, if you hate me just say that.”

“Oh, you’re so fucking dramatic. I’m just busy.” You shoved at his shoulder, urging him to take a seat so you wouldn’t feel so awkward with him standing over you. He refused cooly, taking a look around your apartment to make sure you hadn’t been aimlessly rotting since the last time he stopped by.

“Even I'm not that busy. What’s going on?”

“I’ve just…” You sighed heavily, a breath you didn’t even know you were holding in. Talking about everything wrong in your life felt far too heavy, too much to divulge to a friend seemingly just doing a wellness check. “I think I’ve bitten off more than I can chew, and I’ve got all these creative blocks that won’t go away and honestly I just need to be fucked like properly fucked to get my juices flowing again but all of the men worth giving it up to are in hiding.”

Mark stood there, mouth agape in disbelief. He did ask, after all. “Woah.”

“Yeah.” It felt embarrassing to hear laid out like that, but there weren’t too many secrets between you and Mark in the first place. Your sex lives weren’t off limits for discussion, and the two of you had plenty of chats that were NSFW in nature. But blurting out how badly  you needed to be railed? That was a new one.

The silence spoke for itself, apparently. You didn’t want to chance a glance up at him, but you knew that you’d have to say something. Maybe something to cover your ass, let him know that you’re well aware how ‘TMI’ that was. Or even—

“I’ll fuck you.”

You nearly choked on air,“What?!” Now you had no choice but to look at him, scanning the twinkle in his eyes in search of sincerity.

“I’m really good, too.” He took a step towards you, eyes never leaving yours as his hands found home in his shirt pockets. This was a side of Mark you rarely got to see— charming, smooth, confident. There were times, namely on nights out, where you’d get a taste of it, watching him chat it up in some dark corner with the prettiest girl you’d ever laid eyes on. But this, being on the receiving end? Watching his eyes drink you in like sweet tea on a balmy Southern summer afternoon? It was enough to make your heart skip several beats. 

“Mark—”

The smile he cracks at you makes you embarrassed for even considering it. “I’m just messing with you, geez,” Heat takes over your face as you try to hide it from him, palms rubbing at your cheeks as your heartbeat tries to find its resting rate. “Although, given that reaction, maybe I shouldn’t be.”

“Shouldn’t be what?”

“Messing with you. Joking, rather. I can definitely mess with you, if you want,” Running so hot and cold in such a short window of time has you shivering under his gaze, scared to make the wrong move and ruin what you’d beg him for. “Hm? Is that what you want?”

The air is thick with anticipation, nothing but the consistent drip from a ceiling leak as the soundtrack to your staring contest with Mark. He was so close to you in all of his Friday night glory, cologne a cloud around you as the heat from his chest permeated your personal space. You were certain that just one taste, just one night in the throes of passion with a curly haired Mark Lee would solve all of your problems. If you closed your eyes, you could picture it— sweaty bodies intertwined amidst the sweltering heat of your studio after dark, the fanning of his breath in your face as he rocks into you, his strong frame caging you into the bed so all you can focus on is Mark, Mark, Mark! His sighs and whines of pleasure flooding your senses so they’re all you can pay attention to, just his voice and his unrelenting pace as he— “___,” The sound of your name on his tongue snapped you out of your lustful haze. “Offer’s about to expire, baby.”

Mark slipped his jacket off without breaking away from you, dropping it carelessly on the floor while your attention wandered to his arms. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing, crossing his arms against his chest as he awaited your answer. “You’re serious? This isn’t some cruel prank where if I say yes, you’ll tell me it was just a joke?”

“That’s not my idea of a prank, princess, where’s the fun in that?” Mark licked his lips, a faint smirk taking over. “Look, if you’re uncomfortable, we can pretend this never happened,” His fingers ghost along the side of your face, sweetly making their way to your lips. “But if it were up to me? I’d have you seven ways to Sunday all over this apartment.”

That was all you needed to lunge into a kiss with him, throwing him slightly off guard as you practically tossed yourself into his arms. But his lips were ready for you, steaming hot and sopping wet— just the way you like it. The smush of your lips together so suddenly garnered the sweetest moan from him, just enough to tease you of what’s to come. His arms wrapped around your torso like a claw machine, pulling you so flush against him as though he was afraid you’d slip through his fingers. 

Your lips were still tingling as he pulled away to lap kisses against your neck, peppering anywhere his lips could reach. “M-Mark, hmngh.”

It was no secret that Mark had a bit of a reputation in the bedroom, but you never thought you’d witness it firsthand. His hands delved blindly to your legs, hoisting you around his waist so he could move you over to your bed. You almost had a mind to remind him of the three big steps up to your bedroom area, but he was far suaver than you gave him credit for— this wasn’t exactly his first rodeo.

He tossed you on the bed, the slight recoil exhilarating before he was all over you again. “If a proper fuck is what you want…” His kisses had shifted to your chest, lips and tongue sucking in the essence of your skin like he couldn’t bear not to. He was almost more excited than you were, his touch reaching anywhere and everywhere all at once, like he couldn’t get enough of exploring everything you had to offer. It was all starting to feel real as Mark made a move to lift up your shirt and the implication of your best friend seeing you naked caught up with you.

“Wait, wait. We’re gonna see each other naked.”

Mark, with the fabric of your shirt caught in his teeth, stared at you blankly. “Yeah…” 

“Shouldn’t that be weird?”

He rolled his eyes playfully, squeezing at your hip with the hand closest to it. “Maybe, but how do you suggest we fuck then? Through my jeans?” He pulled your body swiftly down the mattress so you could feel how hard he was through your panties. 

“Shut the fuck up, oh, my God.”

“I was trying to before you got all weird and jittery,” Mark made a move for your shirt again, and this time you didn’t fight him on it. The balmy air hit your pert nipples the second they were exposed, and Mark couldn’t stop the gruff  noise that formed in his throat. “Just as pretty as I imagined.” You squirmed at the compliment, cheeks heating up at the sight of him drooling over you. “Like that? Hm? Are you my pretty girl?” 

His lips wrapped around the peak of your breast, tongue swirling to the same pattern his thumb and forefinger followed on your other nipple. “Yes!” It was embarrassing, how fast you succumbed to his commands. He struck with confidence, maneuvering his way around your body like he’d done it before. “I’m your pretty girl.”

“So sexy saying that for me, baby,” Your legs part instinctually to make more room for him, and Mark took that as his sign to shift gears. “You know… sometimes, every now and then, I’d think about you. If I needed a little extra push towards ecstasy, you’d pop in my head. Think about the way you’d look if I got my hands on you. How you’d feel, how you’d taste,” His fingers prodded at the growing wet patch on your underwear. “Gonna let me see?”

Your back arched off the mattress, hands pulling him impossibly closer to you. “Mark, please stop asking, just do it.”

“Mm, say ‘please’ again.”

“Mark!”

His laugh would be even sexier if it weren’t at your expense. “Alright, fine.” Your panties stayed on as his tongue lapped at your folds through them, the flimsy cotton doing absolutely nothing to stop him from devouring you. You jerked at the feeling as his tongue licked a bold strip through your folds, your hands entangling themselves in his curly locs. “You’re so wet, holy shit.”

One quick motion moved your panties to the side, puffy wet lips on full display for his greedy eyes. His eyes sparkled at the sight, mouth watering at the mere thought of getting to taste you. “Smell so good, pretty girl.” He was so hungry and you were the only one who could satiate him. His tongue had a mind of its own, pressing flat against your folds without a second thought, “Taste even better.”

Mark’s grip on your thighs held you in place as he licked you clean, running his tongue against every nerve-ending he could feel for. He pulled them apart just enough to spread you out for him, just enough to be on full display for him. Your taste occupied every corner of his mind as he blacked out in pleasure, lapping up every drop your gushing pussy offered up.

He circled your clit until you saw stars, your squirming uncontrollable as his tongue darted inside of you. “You’re so good to me.”

Mark groaned between your thighs, in love with the praise you were showering him with. There was something about how natural and seamless it was for you to compliment him that turned him on even more, if that was possible. “I don't think I'll ever get enough of how you taste, Christ.”

His free hand slithered up your torso, sinking his thumb into your eager mouth while his continued working at your core. He wasn’t shy, either, licking boldly from your ass to your clit while shaking his tongue side to side. Slurping up every drop that dribbled out of your entrance, twisting his tongue as far inside of you as he could reach. You were dripping down his chin by the time he introduced his fingers, prodding at your glistening hole with just one to test the waters. He took the way you gripped onto his hair as his sign that you were more than enjoying it. “F-feels good, oh, God.”

“Mm, don’t be shy.”

Laving at your clit, he drank up the praises the way he was drinking you up. He only pulled away to fully discard your panties, diving back into center with renewed vigor. “Need more.” You didn’t want to push him any closer to you, scared you’d smother him, but he didn’t seem afraid to drown. He’d awoken something desperately greedy inside of you, and you were slipping further into a haze of pleasure with every passing moment. Two fingers pressed their way inside of you, pumping slowly to get you adjusted before the jerk of your hips told him to pick up the pace. You couldn’t hold still with the way he was devouring you, mouth and hands prying you open deliciously all for his enjoyment. He would die between your thighs if you let him, you’re sure of it.

You had to physically pull him off of you to get him to stop, orgasming bubbling inside of you in record time. “Want you inside of me already.” The entirety of the lower half of his face was a sticky mess of your arousal, from his nose to his chin completely covered in you. “Bro, you need to wipe… that.” Times like these, you were glad that you kept tissues on your nightstand.

“You cannot and will not call me ‘bro’ now that I know what you taste like. How insulting.”

It hadn’t dawned on you that Mark was still fully dressed, sans his plaid jacket-shirt that was curled in a sad pile on the floor. “Is that an order?”

He bit at his lip, eyes darkening as he drank in your bare figure sprawled beneath him. Your hands ran themselves up and down his arms, finally getting a chance to admire his body after all the focus was turned to you. Maybe it was the lighting, the way his hair fell over his eyes, or just the fact that he was the best kisser you’d had the pleasure of test driving— but he looked divine. Halo of light circling his head as he fumbled with his belt, biceps flexing as he lifted the tank top off of his lean frame. Suddenly, he wasn’t your friend anymore; he was something new entirely.

You were so lost in your own adoration of him that you hadn’t noticed he was undressed, pulling you directly underneath him as he kissed at your collarbones. “Where’d you go off to, huh?”

“It’s nothing,” you shook your head, snapping back to reality (which was so much better than whatever was going on in your will they-won’t they fantasy). “Thank you, for this.”

Mark didn’t respond with words, instead opting to kiss you softly, tenderly. Slowly, deeply, passionately kissing you as he lowered himself atop of you. He wasn’t in a rush anymore, pulling you into him like you were made of glass, grinding against your center like you had all the time in the world. Everything was so delicate, like he was savoring the moment for years to come. It scared you, if you were being honest. “Mark? You know you can still kiss me while you’re inside of me, yeah?”

He hummed in approval, connecting your mouths again in a slow, languid kiss, tongues slithering into each other's mouths and twisting messily. You could feel him lining up with your entrance, his hand wrapped around his girth to guide himself into you steadily. Chancing a look down, you tried to hide the way your eyes bulged out at the sheer size of him— he would never let you hear the end of it if you fawned over how huge he was. It took all of your willpower to remain still, your body welcomed him as though it had hundreds of times, the shape of him slotting inside of you like he was made to. His fingers tangled in your hair, angling your head so he could travel to your neck, groaning out his praise against your sticky skin. The absence of his lips on yours made you whine, hands wandering the expanse of his back just for confirmation that this was real. “Tell me how it feels.”

You couldn’t. Months of the worst dry spell you’d ever experienced coming to a head with Mark milking you for everything you had couldn’t be described. All you could do was moan, coiling around him even tighter as he started to rock his hips forward as though he was testing the waters. He was the only thing you could focus on— his scent, his taste, they way his nose pressed right against yours, the feeling of his fingers intertwining with yours against the mattress, the dionysian desire his hips were fulfilling. It was all just Mark, Mark, Mark. “Mark!” His teeth couldn’t resist nipping at your lip, pulling on it playfully before letting go to let his tongues soothe the area.

“I can’t help it, you’re so fun to play with.” He kissed you to make up for the quick dot of pain, relishing in the way you immediately kissed him back with just as much enthusiasm.

“I’m, I’m close.”

He spread your legs further apart to give himself more room to buck his hips, pressing at your thighs as he fucked into you faster. “Hold it.”

“Whyyyy?”

“You asked for the Mark Lee experience,” His thrusts grew pointed, almost exaggerated as his hips drove forward with precision, “and I’m gonna give it to you.”

You could feel yourself teetering dangerously close to the edge, stomach coiled tight and lungs working overtime. The mere thought of being denied your orgasm was getting you worked up— you hate not getting your way. Your legs wrapped around Mark’s waist, locking your ankles together for good measure. If he wanted to play games, you were down for it. “Harder.”

But instead of faster, Mark slowed to a complete stop, hands drifting down to your hips to pin them to the mattress. “Oh, baby, do you think I’m stupid?” He chuckled in your face, shaking his head as the laughter subsided. “That’s a sure fire way to get nothing.”

“Wait, no, please! I didn’t mean it.”

The damage had already been done. His patience with you was wearing thin, and he didn’t take kindly to disobedience. “Have you learned your lesson?” Each second that passed stole a piece of your orgasm away with it, that delicious ball of tension and heat simmering down to a cool pit of nothing the longer Mark held your hips down. Your heart stopped fluttering with urgency, slowing to its resting rate as you dealt with the consequences of trying to outsmart your best friend. “Speak up, baby.”

“Yes,” You hissed out, annoyed that your declaration of needing to be fucked was currently going unanswered. Who is he to deny you of the very thing he promised you? “I learned my lesson.”

It was exactly what he wanted to hear, “God, you’re so sexy when you behave yourself.” 

You rolled your eyes, slapping his chest as he pulled away from you entirely. “What happened to ‘having me seven ways to Sunday all over this apartment’?” 

It was Mark’s turn to roll his eyes, fingers running through his hair as he sat back on his heels. “Up against the wall.” You did as he said, spreading your hands against the wall as you felt him behind you, lining himself up with your sodden entrance. The inward arch felt unnatural at first, but you settled into it as you got comfortable in it. “Look up at me.” Mark was towering over you, quite literally. From this angle, all you had to do to see his face was look up and there he was with that devilish smile. His cock pressed into you as you watched him, the sheer thickness splitting you clean open for him, sucking him in like your pussy had been waiting for him. “Fuck, you feel so good.”

Maybe it was the taboo of sleeping with a friend, but your body was on fire. You felt your entire body heating up at the sudden change in his demeanor, switching your flirty best friend to a man absolutely starved. With your eyes screwed shut, you reached a hand out to hold onto his arm, fingers giving it a squeeze, head bumping the bare skin of his chest.

“Fuck.”

You were even wetter than you were while he had you pinned to the mattress, the feeling of being filled by him more electrifying after a brief intermission. He was all over you again and that was all that mattered, walls tightening around him with a vice-like grip that had both of you gasping for air.

“Shit,” he hiss, already lost in the sensation, “so good to me, ___, so fucking good.” He emphasized the last syllable with a gentle thrust that had your nails scratching at the wall. Your orgasm was building back up faster than you would’ve liked it to, considering you knew Mark wouldn’t let you cum so soon after denying you.

It hit you deeply, in all the right places at the right angle. Mark was that good from the start, and you couldn’t believe you’d been missing out on it. If you knew he was this goof, you would’ve ruined the friendship ages ago. “So fucking deep, Mark, keep going like that,” you moaned, just as caught up as he was.

He captured your lips in a searing kiss, fucking into you with much more vigor than before, gripping your ass with such force you half expected to see the dents after. You moaned all you had to say, all you had to feel into each other’s mouths. When his velvety tongue enveloped yours you could almost taste the remnants of your arousal and the chocolate muffin he ate right in between sweeping and mopping. The water was still running, hitting part of his back and your leg.

You couldn’t pull away from him even if you tried— he was a part of you now, molded into each other’s bodies until you became one. “Wanna keep fucking you forever,” he groaned, pouring his all into every touch. “Keep you on me forever.”

It threw you for a loop. Keep you forever? Mark was a lot more emotional than he let on, sure, but you couldn’t shake the feeling that he meant it in ways other than platonic. You couldn’t even stop him to ask what he meant by that because he was so deep in your guts that you were starting to feel him in your throat. 

“Don’t stop,” you cried out, biting your lip when he hit a certain spot inside you and kept hitting it over and over again— the taste of blood didn’t stop you. “Don’tstopdon’tsopdon’tstop-”  

“Fuck,” he whisper, voice strained and raspy, smacking at your ass before gripping it and bringing you down to meet his increasingly harsh thrusts, the slap echoing throughout your studio apartment. “Wanna fuck you forever, baby.” One hand kept its vice grip on your hip while the other grasped at your neck, forcing you to maintain eye contact with him. “Gimme a kiss, pretty girl.” Your lips found his despite the blurring of your vision, a supple lock as he steadied rocking into your core. Kissing him upside down felt worlds away from the first kiss you shared with him, and yet you still couldn’t get enough of it. The hand on your hip slithered up to cup your breast, rolling your nipple as he pulled away from the kiss. “So obedient.”

All the shame had disappeared from your body, the satisfaction of finally being fucked numbing you to his quips completely. His name was on the tip of your tongue, begging to be set free, but the way his hips ricocheted off your ass made you short circuit. Your skin was hot to the touch, goosebumps littering the expanse of your body as your toes curled around the fabric of your duvet. 

“Who knew you were such a dirty girl, hm?” Mark tutted. You hold back your moans, reveling in the sensation of his tip sliding up and down you dripping folds. Interrupting his own rhythm just to get a rise out of you, giving you no warning before shoving himself right back in. 

“Bet this was your plan all along,” You ignore the fact that he technically initiated all of this, too blissed out to snap back at him cheekily. “Dripping all over my cock, fuck.” He’s thinking out loud, eyes locked at the way your pussy invites him in, grip unrelenting with each thrust. He drew his hips back again to repeat the same unforgiving tempo, laughing to himself at the way your thighs shake in anticipation.

“Wanted this for so long.” You whine, bashful about the confession rolling off your tongue so easily. Mark had always occupied a special part of your mind, but the barrier of your friendship with him always kept you from thinking of him in that way for too long. He’s hot, sure, and one of the most genuine guys you’d ever met— but risking that by dating him felt too stupid to risk.

Mark didn’t keep you waiting for too long, filling you to the brim with one stroke that had your toes curling. You gasp, a shiver running up your spine as he adopts a frenzied pace that nearly knocks you into the wall in front of you. “You’re so fucking warm.”  He can’t help but moan out at the feeling, clutching onto your hips as he pistons in and out of you. Blunt fingers digging into your skin as you let your body fall forward. You felt so full.

“Mark, fuck.” you whine, probably a tad too loud considering how thin the walls feel at night but you couldn’t help it, with the way he held onto you and fucked you like he had never had good pussy in his life. “Faster.”

“Where’d your manners go? Say ‘please’.” He teased, testing your obedience despite knowing you’d obey him. There was just something about knowing he held your pleasure in the palm of his hands, knowing that you’d do anything he asked of you. 

“Please, please, please Mark, need you so bad.” It sounded  pathetic, and it only makes Markn screw his eyes shut as he fucks you harder. All control lost as he watches the drool drip from your mouth down the wall— he was really fucking your brains out.

Mark's rough groans were slowly morphing  into needy moans, the sound causing even more slick to build up between your legs. “Taking my cock like such a good girl.” And you really were, considering you had nothing but the wall to grip onto, you let your body go wherever Mark led it. Each thrust sending you closer and closer to your climax, his dick hitting every single spot that you’re sure you’d see stars.

“I’m gonna cum, fuck.”

“You’re gonna cum? Mm, you can cum. Cum all over my dick, lemme see that pretty face.” You arched inward one last time for him, looking up at the man sending you to heaven and back on a loop. “There you go. Good fucking girl.” Mark smacked your ass sharply, holding onto your ass as he switched his rhythm to harsh, precise thrusts that were sure to throw you over the edge of pleasure. He kissed your forehead as the growing tension in the pit of your stomach snapped, your walls contracting around him in a tight frenzy that nearly triggered his own. He didn’t slow down, though. The clutching of pussy did absolutely nothing to deter him from fucking you with the same rigor, hips just as quick as they were before he finally let you cum.

“M-Mark, I don’...” The aftershocks of ecstasy silenced you in your tracks, the sparks of pleasure like electricity through your bloodstream. “Don’t stop.”

He laughed at the change of your tune, thumb flitting down to flick at your clit. “Baby needs more? Haven’t had enough yet?”

Even with him poking fun at your desperation, you were too drunk on his cock to care. All you could manage was a chorus of fuck me, fuck me, fuck me as Mark held you flush against him. “God, yes, fill me up like that.” Your arousal was dripping all over the inside of your thighs, the sticky slick glistening under the moonlight that peaked through your curtains. 

“That’s right, I’m not fucking done with you yet, pretty girl.” This side of him was lethal. He was insatiable, obsessed with the way your body responded to him, greedy for the way you bent to his every whim. It was such a change of pace from the way he was kissing you in missionary, the way he treated you like a doll that he was afraid of hurting you. “Feel good?”

He was mocking you— of course, it was good. You didn’t have to tell him that for him to know; but feeding his ego was so addictive. The way he’d reward you for praising him was enough for you to fall for the trap every single time. “So, good, Mark, hngh.”

The smack of his hips against your ass bounced off the walls, echoing the depravity that you and Mark were oh so good at acting on. All of your senses on overdrive, the overstimulation pulling at you from every end, you weren’t sure if you could take it all for much longer. Drool slipped from your mouth onto Mark’s arm, the edges of your vision blurring as you could feel yourself bubbling over. “Gonna cum again?”

“‘m gonna cum again.”

He was drunk with the power of controlling you. “Hold it.”

“Mark, I can’t.” You were surprised you were even able to do it the first two times he commanded it, not used to having gratification delayed against your wishes.

“Gonna fill you up and then you can cum.” It only took a few more targeted thrusts before he was spilling his seed into you, an endless leak of evidence of what took place over the last hour or so. Even as his cock began to soften, he made sure to fuck you through it, massaging tight circles into your clit until your legs spasmed. The air was snatched from your lungs, eyes flittering shut in sweet relief. It was only two orgasms, but the build up had really taken it out of you. Mark flipped you over gently on your back, brushing the hair out of your face as you sleepily opened your eyes.

“Look at that. Take a look at the mess we made, baby.” 

He gestured between your legs, a slippery canvas of cum smeared across your most intimate parts. “So much…” You couldn’t stop yourself from gathering some on your fingers, popping them into your mouth for a taste of the two of you mixed together.

Your brain was on fire, neurons alight with the molten sensation that was Mark Lee. Even though you took him up on the offer, you weren’t expecting him to completely change your world. A solid orgasm and a pat of the back, maybe. But now you were afraid that he was your new addiction that you’d never be able to feed. 

You woke up in a fresh sleep shirt to the smell of toasted bagels and coffee. Mark balanced the plates and mugs the best he could as he tackled the steps leading up to your bedroom area. “Mornin’ sleepyhead.”

“What time is it?”

He shoved a mug of steaming coffee into your hands, kissing you on the forehead. “Don’t worry about that. You were exhausted, wanted to let you sleep.”

“Thank you.” The coffee was exactly to your liking, just what you needed after a night of fucking like rabbits. “So, should we talk about… it?”

Blush rose to his cheeks and there was no hiding it, his hair pulled back into a messy bun so his face was on full display. “I mean, only if you want to? I’m okay with proceeding however you want to.”

“You’d be fine staying friends? Never talking about it? Pretending that nothing’s changed?”

He shrugged, “if that’s what you wanted, then yeah.” His attention shifted to his breakfast, eyes zeroed in on his eggs and toast like it was a gourmet meal. “Just don’t wanna make you feel weird about it, you know?”

“Mark?” You placed your coffee and plate down on your bedside table, turning your full attention to him as he continued to avoid your gaze. “What did you mean by all the ‘keep you forever’ stuff then?”

He rushed to try to explain himself, scrambling his words into a whole lot of nothing. “It’s not, like, a big deal or anything. I just get possessive… in bed, sometimes. I’m not a weirdo or anything, I promise.”

None of that mattered to you anyway, your dreams of Mark that clouded your head all night giving you the push you needed to throw caution to the wind. Would it be the worst thing in the world to risk it all with him? One kiss, chaste and sweet, was enough to shut him up for just a moment. “So if I said we should try exploring further, maybe go on a date or something, you’d say yes?”

His eyebrows shot up to his hairline, mouth falling agape as he searched your face for any signs that you were being facetious. “Y-yeah, yes. If that’s what you want.” He was so bad with his feelings, sometimes— but you were more than willing to be patient.

“Well, good, because that’s what I want.”

[wonryllis]

watermelon sugar (m) | sim jaeyun.

﹙ 🎬 ﹚ ぃ ────𝗶𝗳 𝘄𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗻 𝘀𝘂𝗴𝗮𝗿 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗼𝗼 𝘀𝘄𝗲𝗲𝘁?

preview. he’s the sweetest to you, one might confuse him for your boyfriend, but he’s not, he just your fuckboy of a roommate who treats you like a delicate candy, always looking out for you and never at you; or so you think.

or where, jake can't seem to get you off his mind no matter how hard he tries.

meet the cast. simp sim jaeyun(jake) with his obsession fem!reader

genre. and they were roommates trope, fuckboy soft for his girl trope, SMUT MDNI!!!, lots of toothrooting fluff, tiny speck of angst but not proper angst, drunk confessions?, only one who can control him/her trope, happy happy ending, crack/humor, domestic scenes(newly added) college fuckboy athelete roommate!jake with his candy!roommate girl. computer science & programming major!reader, exercise physiology major!jake, nonidol!au, soccer player!jake.

word count. 13,488 unedited! it's word vomit.

warnings. fingering, dry humping, dirty talkkk lots and lots of it, nasty freak jake with innocent(seems to be) girlie, experienced x inexperienced(virgin but has idea), pussy slapping, somewhat drunk sex but there's consent consent, oral (m rec.) different scenes, p in v (unprotected! but pls pls pls do not do this ever use protection!!!!!) multiple orgasms (f.rec), overstimuation(f.rec) and somewhat (m.rec), spitting? slight nipple play, jake is rough and filthy, with heavyyyyy corruption kink it's all throughout the story, strength kink, size difference “i worship the ground you walk on” energy but still dominant jake, jake has soooo many dirty inner thoughts about you it's innumerable. he's a simp for you so you're a slut for him— i guess that's them?

theme song. animals by maroon 5 (jake pov), into you by ariana grande (yn pov)

﹙★﹚ ࣪DRABBLES (find them here)

` author notes. im sorry for making you guys wait three extra weeks I hope y'all still want to read this,, what do i say it was so horrible before the revamp, thankfully it's so much better now and the smut god, it was so hard to write it i hope it's good enough. REBLOGS AND FEEDBACKS ARE HIGHLY ENCOURAGED AND APPRECIATED!!

“i don’t mind this feeling.”

YOU DONT KNOW WHAT TO CALL IT, WHATEVER IS HAPPENING BETWEEN YOU BOTH, BUT YOU LIKE IT. IT FEELS SILLY AND FRAGILE AND GOOD. perhaps a little too good.

god forbid what you had done in your past life to get a roommate like jake, a complete package; a concoction of all classic kinds of roommate one could possibly expect. you aren’t complaining though he takes care of you in every way he possibly could. making you feel like his entire world revolves around you, from his time home to the hours he spends on the field. one would ask anything of him and his answer would surely include you in one way or another, everyone knew it, everyone could see it, the way he feels.

he makes you breakfast, he helps with the cleaning- you both actually have it planned to have a cleaning day every week to polish the apartment. he cooks for you and he does the dishes more often than not, the only exception being the time when you insist deathly on doing it yourself because come on you gotta do at least some thing around the house.

to add to the perfect mixture of god gifted man, he video games in his room with the door shut so that the sound of him shouting at the screen doesn’t disturb you. does the laundry- even your bras and underwear, he’s just too used to those clothings to give a care to get embarrassed (outwardly). he would never admit the way they get him all hot and bothered when he thinks of all the places those fabrics have touched. how wild his imagination runs and all the things he wishes he could do to you. all the sounds he could get, out of you and all the things you'd taste of.

you are his candy (well not exactly ‘his’ but according to him this nickname of yours is only and I repeat only reserved for him) literally because you are all over sweets all the damn time and figureratively because he’d die to have a taste of you; the forbidden fruit of his life, too innocent for a person like him to ruin. but lord would he give up everything to land a chance to lay his hands on you not so innocently.

this man does not give a fuck about who is not you, and maybe occasionally spare a care for his two best friends who so far have only been blessed enough to know your name because jake has made it clear that you're off-limits and if they ever dare to do anything given the opportunity he'd rip off their balls and feed it to ducks (he's serious he swears)

getting to the real point of your dynamic: the only drawback— jake sim is a renowned fuckboy on campus, the heartbreak prince and you, his miss americana as they all like to call it. it is a daily routine, having to find a new girl in the house and ofttimes hearing them even with your door closed and your hands pressed on your ears. at first it felt disgusting, then you got used to it, and now very recently you’ve been feeling weirdly dejected. a certain kind of hatred towards the girls, something you can’t pin point exactly to why and what it is.

“candy, my laptop broke down again!” jake's raspy voice dances through the little cracks of the bathroom door as you prepare for a quick shower. you sigh, tightening the towel wrapped around you before stepping out. a short knock at his batman poster door left ajar, and he's whipping his head to have a look at you as if he knew you'd be in the middle of washing up. a little secret, yes he knew because everytime ahead of bathtime you make sure to have a sip of your watermelon slush stack from the fridge and the sound of it's door reaches his room just right to let him know.

he remains seated on his bed, a sheepish smile on his face. your eyes fall at his desk to see his laptop closed, he tricked you, and like always you fell for it,“maybe if you used your school laptop to study instead of playing games on it, this wouldn't happen all the time. but i assume you probably did it to get me here, it’s not gonna work everytime yun,” you click your tongue in feigned annoyance making him grin wider,“well it does work everytime though,” he knows how to have you on his tail just like you know how to have him wrapped around your finger. it only seems fair, you both know what gets the other going and you use it to your advantage.

“what is it?” asking in a sing song tone, you plop down on his desk chair. spinning in rounds with your legs out swinging, hands gripping onto the arms of the chair while looking up at the phosphorescent glow-in-the-dark stickers you had forcefully put up on the ceiling of his room. a funny memory of jake trying to stop you because it would defeat the whole image of his room only to fold when you gave him the puppy doe eyes, baby talking that you really wanted to do it. it doesn't take much to have jake cave in, just one look from you and the boy is a flatline. fuckboy? he is that to everyone but to you he's practically whatever you want him to be, though you have never really had a talk about it.

“actually eunsang, she-” there is a hesitation is his tone you are well aware of, having almost a clear idea of what he's about to say,“i told- no warned you not to get involved with her for a second time, didn’t i?” you scold, feeling that little twinge of hurt knowing he probably will keep on being involved with girls like this no matter what you say. it's the one thing where you don't have him under your spell. or that's you think, i mean you you have no idea do you of how much he wants you. just like how you have no idea how much you want him.

“yes but it happened and now she’s after me all the time, she even showed up to my soccer practice yesterday! please just this one time, please help me get rid of her,” clamping together his hands in a plea, jake pouts as best as he can, giving you his puppy eyes. but when you don’t show a reaction of any sort he resorts to the next best guaranteed thing: bribery,“i’ll buy you tons of watermelon lollipops! from your favorite brand that too!” eyes sparkling with hope and expections of having you fall for it, like you do every single time, he waits. albeit patterns break, in everything and everyone.

“no, i’m on a diet. i gave up on sweets, what if i get diabetes? will you,” you point at him dramatically,“take responsibility?” to which his stance morphs into one of stunned. he would gladly take responsibility for you at any given chance, but it's one of more gravity and significance than diabetes. and he's sure he's not one you should be in care of as more than anything that you are right now. he's too corrupted and you are too naive.

“yes of course i’ll help you take your meds and-” he mumbles in a quick, hurried note aware that you’ll not let him answer if he’s not fast enough. you still beat him to it though, speaking loud over and above his voice, to drown out his words despite hearing them quite clearly,“will you? NO you will not! so let me just shower peacefully before i get the urge to lock you in the bathroom when you’re in there later,” with a silence after, one that has jake grinning again at your cuteness, you take it as a que to rush out swiftly. trying to make it to the bathroom before he decides to use his strength against you and hold you down wherever he wants. which though hasn't been often, has always left you breathless and flustered to a point you refuse to admit.

training to become an athlete, a buff center forward in comparison to you who barely puts effort into doing even a little bit of yoga once a month. it’s obvious he’ll have you give in if he wants but he’s too sweet to force you. and of course it's obvious, the tension of the strength kink that looms over in the room.

it comes as a shock to you when the next day, the first thing you see waking up in the morning and walking into the living room: is eunsang standing by the kitchen counter. and important point: clad in one of jake’s dress shirts that you recognize from doing his laundry occasionally, pouring herself a glass of water. oh you had to see this coming, this is jake we're talking about will be really ever like ever not bring over girls? no matter if they're clingy or not. the answer is ambiguous and definitely not to your favor.

she’s shares a small smile upon noticing you, a friendly smile which you know is obviously fake. she’s doing it just to look good and polite in jake’s eyes. just to show that she's not bothered by you, because as said everyone knows if they don't like you then they automatically are on jake sim's blacklist. and being the star player of the team, his acquaintance is more or less influential to a large extent, so note to be taken be nice to candy to not be on the cross out list.

however as sad as it is to say it’s of no use. she’s not even there in his eyes to begin with. the moment the jake comes out of his room, his field of vision doesn’t include her. passing by her very visible figure like she’s a microscopic bug to ruffle your hair in a dotting manner, his morning voice coming out in an adoring essence,“good morning, candy,” he smiles and scrunches up his nose when he notices the baby cat you both adopted last month, curled up in the corner of the couch,“and mei,” he acknowledges your pet kitty but not the girl he brought home, that should speak volumes to you, jake thinks. treating you like candy of his world you are, shouldn't that be the ultimate giveaway of his feelings? like even his hookups can see how down bad he is for you why is it that you're the only one who can't? he wants you to know but at the same time he feels he's not right for you, a dilemma he handles by fucking up over and over again.

wishing him morning in response you give him a look which silently delivers your question of what is going on. you did hear them last night (more like her), but you didn’t know it was her her. you weren’t even expecting her to be the one. after the conversation with jake yesterday, she was the last person you would have ever assumed. he sends you a flying look that he’ll explain everything later, shushing you off before you speak out loud.

“yunie,” your ears perk up at her voice, eyes narrowing in a deadly stare at the nickname you exclusively call him with, leaving her crusty mouth. certainly, like jake you blossom a definite possession over names too. perhaps it's the effect of living with him 24/7 but you seem to have picked up a lot of his antics.

jake’s eyes shift to look at you for a moment and then he’s running a hand through his hair, dropping his sweet conduct to get back into his usual cold fuckboy self. he absolutely does not like the way your brows turn down and the pretty smile you were previously adorning for him falling off your pretty lips. he can tolerate anything but seeing you bothered in any way. “you’re still here? it's better if you leave soon, candy doesn’t like all this,” walking around her to the other side of the counter and into the kitchen to open the upper cabinets, jake ignores her like a plague as if he wasn't showing her heaven last night. but alas, nothing comes above you, she should have known that.

“what do you want for breakfast candy? should i make you some toast? or do you want your usual dose of sugar?” his palms rest on the granite countertop, leaning against it slightly while turning to fix his gaze on you. it makes eunsang rage with anger, throwing you a demeaning look before she disappears into jake's room.

the moment his bedroom door closes, you feel the unfamiliar weight on your shoulders relax a tad bit,“my watermelon slush please,” finding your cozy spot on the kitchen counter, you give him your most adorable pout feeling like you had to gain back his warmth after the hookup. your legs dangle over the height between, toes softly brushing against jake's calves every two seconds. watching him prepare your drink, you decide to voice out the thing that had been disturbing since the moment you walked out your room,”did you like make a friends with benefit kind of arrangement or something?” it comes out in a low whisper, afraid if you said it too loud it'd come true. the thought of it disturbs you for some reason, it’s not new for you to see random girls in your apartment; or to hear them while they’re at it. yet it still gives you a sort of uneasy feeling, something you do not like feeling.

“it was a last time kind of deal actually,” he stops briefly to give you a quilty smile. finishing your sweet slushy just as eunsang hastily steps out, wearing what you assume her clothes from the previous night. she slows down to observe as jake hands you the cup, repulsively watching you take a sip,“is it good?” hearing him speak in a tone way different than the one she’s acquainted with him using with her has stomp her way out in a grumpy fit.

looking up from the edge of your cup with hopes to give her a sly stare, your eyes follow her figure, flinching silently when she bangs the door close harshly,“bitch,” you comment, hooded orbs shifting back to jake who scowls in disapproval,”language candy,” he reminds, knowing very well it does nothing to stop you.

“sorry yunie but she's so agressive, and for what?” you whine.

“from what i’ve seen, you’re way more aggressive,” jake laughs softly, index finger coming to poke at your cheek tenderly.

with full cheeks, you grin like a cheshire cat and jake feels his heart rate speeding up, who gave you the permission to be the cutest person he's ever known? the urge to kiss you just keeps growing with each passing day and with with each little sneaky smile and doe eyes you give him.

“we need to get the groceries this week, i have after classes soccer practice for the next four days and we're not gonna last that long,” the thought of spending the next four evenings alone in the unit is gloomier than the half assed ham and cheese toast jake makes for himself. if only you said yes to some proper breakfast, his taste buds and stomach wouldn't be suffering so much.

you nod as if he has eyes on his back, knowing well he's gonna want you with him but not force you, if you'd say no. whatever you want, is whatever he does.

“‘m gonna go take a shower first then,” hopping down, you place your empty mug in the sink, and skip to your room to take your bath supplies.

“let’s shower together,” jake's friskiness thrives in the way he shouts with an undertone of mischief. watching you with a teasing gaze as you step out the threshold of your bedroom door. a tiny smirk spreading onto his lips when you scrunch your nose in a grimace. cute, he mouths thinking you wouldn't notice but god you do. he's clearly joking but you can’t help feeling flustered internally. keeping up with his flirty and touchy stunts and tricks should have made it easier for you by now, but over a year in and you're yet to find yourself getting used to it. he’s too attractive and hot to get used to; at least that’s what excuse your brain gives you, which honestly is true to some extent. his looks score a lot of points and you can't deny that.

“and if we get locked in there, who’s gonna get us out? you know the door lock has problems,” you complain in a soft groan which, in his eyes is more adorable with the little annoyance you show. if you think you could ever intimidate him, you probably will because he'll melt right away to even think of a counter back.

his stance straightens at that, a fleeting look of flabbergast clouding his face before he’s breaking out in a taunt of smile, eyes closing in on you in a brazen look,“so does that mean if the lock was fine you’d actually shower together with me,” he feels this triumph of emotions, a sudden rush of sugar at the realization that'd probably maybe perhaps someday let him get in the shower together with you. the sheer excitement he experiences through his veins is over the roof, just the possibility of something so intimate with you is a bite of golden spoon for him.

he purposely stops all he’s doing to stare at you, moving his eyebrows cheekily, trying to provoke you,“i never said that,” you stick your tongue out at him, closing the door in a soft slam and crying out a ‘you’re sick in the head!’

“only for you!” jake yells back, chuckling to himself as he leaves the room.

two hours later you’re both strolling through the isles of shelving, bright florescent lighting, end displays of popular products, sale signs, banners with store mottoes, isle signs with product locations, rows and rows of household products and everything you'd always spend lots of time looking through until jake has to drag you back home.

he pushes the cart while you look around for items to throw in and cross out one by one from your checklist. the way you both discuss and bicker over what to keep in the cart and what not to every two minutes will lead any sane person to conclude you as a couple. you both would also admit it feels as such. how he insists on taking what you like while you argue that you’re on a diet and need to cut down on the consumption and desires of your sweet tooth. it feels sweet, he feels sweet. and you make him want to coddle you so bad, like what do you mean you're on a diet? you're perfect already. too perfect for him.

“i’m taking the pop tarts!” you hear him shout from two or probably three Isles away while you look through some new make up launches,”…okay fine!” capturing the attention of an old couple who glance at your way and mutter something you don’t quite catch but you assume it’s probably about how annoying you both are, shouting at the mart.

“yunie look these are so pretty,” you point at the line of lipgloss as jake comes over with cart. he hums in agreement, watching you scan through the shades in an animated mood, mumbling over the names and speaking of how it'd look good for an everyday look or with summer dress you recently got. oh how smitten he feels, observing the way you seem so pumped up simply over gloss.

“there's no mirror— “

“try it on me,” oh he's bewitched under your spell.

jake stands still as you apply the mauve on him, staring at you through hooded eyes,”oh, this one’s really pretty on you!” you beam, looking up at him as if he could see it too.

“it'd look prettier on you,” he's hardly able to whisper out, gaze trained on the way you part your lips while you wipe it off his and apply another. if he didn't have a strong self control, by now he would have shoved his tongue down your throat in the dirtiest and messiest kiss you'd ever known. knocking your breath out, as well as his. he's already on the verge of losing it with every little touch you leave on his lips, wetting your own as a habit.

“which one should i take?” you ask something cutely, jake almost feels guilty for the thoughts swimming in his head.

“i’ll buy all of it for you, we can do something like a chapstick challenge you know. the one where you kiss and guess the flavor,” he teases loving the tiny exasperated glare you throw him. “yunn, be serious! which one?”

“these two?” he points to ones you commented were pretty feeling impatient at the conjured up image of you wearing the colors on with you tiny, sexy little sundresses you got hidden in your closet. please feel guilty man he thinks.

in the end jake (successfully) convinces you to continue your diet later over the summer break offering to help you with it. and grabs a bunch of packets of your favorite snacks, your favorite brand’s watermelon lollipops and not to forget the fruit itself. checking all out he insists on carrying everything himself, only handing you the little bag that held your lollies in case you'd want one on the way back.

the subway is more crowded than usual, scarcely any seat left. it takes you a whole minute to scan around for an empty one, immediately encouraging jake to take it. a silly game of rock paper scissors to decide who stands, insisting firmly that he sit when you end up winning. the grocery bags rest by his foot and you stand between his legs, holding onto the bar wobbling every now and then. it’s just one stop left when jake suddenly pulls you onto his lap, adjusting you comfortably on his thighs and placing his hands on your legs possessively. you turn to look at him, lashes brushing against his skin and lips parting in the slightest at the adrenaline you feel pumping into your fast beating heart. the muscles in his chest feel firm at the faint touch of your back against him, the thumping of his own heart similar to that of yours.

he leans closer to whisper in your ear,“that creep right there kept staring you up and down,” pointing with a discreet move of his eyes as he drills holes through his stern gaze fixed on the said guy. you on the other hand, grow hot with irritation, perhaps just as hot and bothered you are feeling jake pressed so close. an abrupt and sharp impulse of anger.

“i’ll show him the fuck he was staring at," you mutter out, teeth gritted, and hands almost forming into fists, expression as innocent as always. jake seems to catch on to what you’re about to do and before you can get up from lap, his hold on you gets tighter,"okay, i know you hate this candy, but i don’t want you getting hurt in any way, if he does anything i’ll make sure to set him right, for now i think he got it that he’s not gonna stare at you however he wants,” hand grabing yours in gentle caresses along the expanse of your arm. delicate and slow like a soothing rub. his touch just as enticing and stimulating it is, is also calming, knowing exactly how to pacify your hot headedness. jake finds that really hot about you, the way you look like you couldn't harm a bug but he's seen you throw kicks and punches (for the right reasons) ‘looks like a cinnamon roll, could kill you’ he never knew that's his type. sometimes and really only some rare times he wonders if you're not as innocent as he thinks you are, getting rock hard at the thought of it, dick twitching multiple times imagining you saying and doing things that an angel like you shouldn't be.

for the rest of the ride he manages to lull you back to your sweet candy mode, making you laugh at his lame pick up lines, and occasionally tickling your sides. head falling back into his shoulder in cute giggles and hips rolling on him, damn only he knows how bad he's holding back. as shameless as he is he'd probably jump your bones right infront of everyone to see. thankfully you bring the decency in your relationship.

when your stop comes, he intertwines his fingers you as you walk out the compartment, just in case you decide to give the dude a slap before leaving.

“'m gonna flatten out all your abs today, you'll need to gym again,” jake chuckles, feeling you roll over his body like mei’s lint roller as he lays on your favorite fluffy kuromi rug typing away on his laptop an essay deadlined for tomorrow. the weight of your body on and off and the touch of your hot skin he feels funsies,“you do this all the time, candy and my abs have never left. how can i let them? knowing how much you love it,” reaching behind to hold you still on his back. you are glad he can't see the way your cheeks warm up at that, a bashful look on your face remembering all the times he's caught you ogling at his body.

“why are you sulking?” he asks when you don't respond with a whine like you usually do. aware that you behave this way either when you’re over the top bathing in happiness or dissatisfied with something.

“’m gonna gain weight now because of you, i’ll see all the snacks and sweets in the pantry and not be able to resist binge eating,” you lightly punch at the curve of his shoulders, dropping your head into the crook of his neck in a pout. jake turns around swiftly to hold you in a hug, wanting nothing more than to cheer you up,“i love your belly anyhow, whether it’s visible or not,” giving the plump flesh of your stomach a zephyr-like pinch. you wince playfully drawing back inches to tease him only to drop down into his arms to hug him back seconds later,“yeah whatever,” his words make you feel butterflies, a turmoil of frenzy and fuzzy feelings, cheeks growing warm once again, and the warmth spreading all over your mind this time. why does he have to be so sweet to you?

you both stay like that for a while breathing slowly, and taking in the comfort of a hug, the room saturated with a restful and serene silence. you’re the first to pull away,“you should finish that essay, i have to prepare for my test next week,” jake groans at the loss of your touch, wailing out with his hands as you leave the room.

”i’m joining you as soon as i finish this!”

four days later on the weekend, you sit on the couch alone, wrapped in the thin lilac charmeuse blanket jake got for you (he said it the softness of it, reminded him of you.) waiting for your him to join you. eight in the morning with ‘tangled’ running on the tv, it's not something jake would ever want to do, but he gives in because you like it; bonus sometimes when you get a little sleepy, he grabs the chance to cuddle you as close as he can, leaving a few fluttering kisses on your temple and cheeks. he's grateful you never say anything about it and just let him be.

“yunie, can you pass me the watermelon in the fridge? the one from yesterday,” you spare a quick glance towards jake as he walks out his room. his headset rests loosely around his neck, half naked, wearing only a pair of sweatpants and his black hair all dishevelled: looking even more messier due to the perm he got last week. “yeah sure,” the rasp in his voice as he mumbles out softly gives away the fact that he probably stayed up all night again.

taking the half a piece of watermelon out and grabbing a spoon, jake scoops out a small little portion. going up to your slouched figure on the couch, and extending it out for you to eat,“here you go, candy,” he does it quite often, infact he loves to feed you. seeing your cheeks full and your eyes sparkling makes him feel fond as much as it turns him on. picturing you the same way on your knees between his legs with his dick stuffed in your mouth. choking and gagging on him, tears dropping down your pretty eyes while you stare up at him with this same doe look. it'd be heaven. even more so if he would have to teach you how to do it right, further fueling the massive corruption kink he seems to have harboured after meeting you.

he passes you melon after you take the bite, sitting beside you with his legs crossed. eyes trained on the way you fill in more in your mouth than you can handle, face all round and full,”eat slowly,” he flicks at your forehead.

“do you want to go buy a new sofa at ikea tomorrow? this one’s pretty small,” he adds a minute later, raising his brows subtly.

“well, first of all i didn’t plan to have a roommate and secon- i swear if it’s for your hook-ups i’m kicking you out!” it comes out in a yell, voice raising with every syllable before you spit a seed at him. one that due to your bad aiming skills instead of landing on his face, falls and sticks to the skin of his chest. damn those muscles they get you feelings things you probably shouldn't be.

putting away the watermelon on your tea table, you pick up mei and settle her on your lap, pulling back your blanket which had slipped off in a crackle of laughter,“this is public space have some decency before you have such thoughts!”

“stop making me appear like a horndog!” he laughs along, whinning at your false accusations in giggles and a look of faux disbelief.

“well that is exactly what you are!” you throw the closest cushion at his face. grinning with your signature cutesy doe eyes and jake is a goner. he always is.

“no don't do this me,”

“change the sheets then, it's your turn this week,” turning away from him, you fix your eyes on rapunzel climbing down the tower. trying to avoid the way he stares at you with betrayal, immediately scooting over to tickle you.

“you cheeky liar it's your turn,” his hands glossing over your ticklish areas.

“i love you,” in a fit of uncontrolled giggles, you shout. pushing against him to escape only to have your wrists pulled away, held together in a tight grasp and pinned above your head. “candy! i love you is not gonna get you out of chores come on i'll help you. we'll watch tangled later. together, i promise,” his laughter dies down with every word he utters, whispering out the last part as he becomes aware of the proximity between you two. so close you both think, breaths slowing down and heartbeats picking up the pace with each passing second.

“we're doing this okay?” jake whispers again, albeit, his tone a tad bit more heavy and bothered. an ambiguous daze clouding over, as if he is talking about something entirely different than just changing sheets. a twinge of lust bubbling inside. having you under him like this makes him realize just how desperately he wants you, and how bad his strength kink blooms for you. to have you whimpering and moaning, gaze all hazy as you let him do whatever he wants with you. damn he feels his dick twitch at that, gulping nervously hoping you wouldn't notice.

“you look like eugene,” you mumble out suddenly and jake feels his thirst rise off the roof, because the size difference between the characters? he wouldn't deny he thought of you the first time he saw the animation. wanting you have you in his arms the same way.

“then you must be my rapunzel,” you feel even more flustered if that's possible, your stomach twisting and twirling at his words until,”now come on we gotta keep the house clean for mother gothel,” jake let's his grip on you loosen, taking a moment to get off you.

“yunie!”

“i'll make you some sweet soy-glazed potatoes too later,” he voice drowns out as he enters you bedroom first.

“well i guess it's okay then,” you giggle following after him.

“candy that's not how you tuck in the corners,” jake scolds you for nth time, running after you to fix the edges you mess up deliberately time and again. “hey! candy! get down!” you make it a chaos for him, jumping onto the unmade bed and messing up the sheets all the way.

“oops,” there's a devilish grin on your face as jake pauses to watch you have your sugar rush episode.

“if you wanna wrestle again and end up under me, just say so,” he teases, inching closer and grabbing you by the waist. you both laugh again as if you weren't dripping with need for each other just moments ago. he picks you up and walks to the door putting you down by the sill,”i seriously need to get this done, you go and peel the potatoes for me,” you can't cook for the sake of god and letting you use knives is like a deathwish, jake can only hope peeling will keep you busy and safe enough to not end up with cuts anywhere.

the doorbell rings just as you step into the kitchen, walking back to the front in a sluggish sigh. feeling utter regret for answering the door, the instant you notice the figure outside. not wanting to reveal the presence to jake, you shut the door behind.

he peeps out your room at the sound of it, shrugging it off as nothing because you’ve done it lot many times: when your friends show up because you simply don’t want them to fall under his radar as prey.

you spare an indifferent glance at the way eunsang stands tall; hands folded with a cocky look on her rather gorgeous face. she's a beauty and you hate to admit that, a vibe so opposite of you it makes you insecure considering jake's hooked up with her more than a few times. “i’m here to see jake,” she states, tilting her head to point over at the closed door, all the sugary honeyed act she keeps up around him nowhere to be seen.

“and he doesn’t want to see you, didn’t he tell you it was the last time,” you counterattack, folding your arms and straightening up to look intimidating. your stare is one of taunt, carrying a gaze of boredom in hopes to establish that you're one to reckon with.

“are you jake? i said i want to talk to jake not you,” her heels click in impatience and underlying disgust in the tone she uses with you gets on your nerves.

you close your eyes for a moment trying to calm the annoyance in you before it turns into anger, tongue poking at the side of your cheek, “and are you deaf? i said he does not want to talk to you,” assert dominance, assert dominance you repeat over and over in your head.

but what she says next makes you lose your temper.

jake, the very epicenter of it all, on the other hand has no idea of what's going on outside until there's a scream that sounds too much like you, one turning into many more. it's frantic and inhumane, the speed at which he runs out. dropping everything and anything. there in broad daylight he finds you and eunsang trying to rip each other's hair out in the thankfully empty hallway. he doesn't know if he should be worried more about your scalp hurting or your throat tearing from how loudly you scream over eunsang. his hands flail as he contemplates on breaking the fight or letting you calm down, which you probably won't as he knows. he grabs onto eunsang's hands on your head trying to loosen her grip on your hair, concerned over the pain you must be feeling while you're there now trying to kick her between her legs. she's shocked to say the least, watching him latch you off her in a swift motion and throw you over his shoulder. he takes you back inside quickly, groaning at your fists pounding against his back in a protest,”fucking let go of me! i’m gonna give her a good piece of my mind!”

“candy language!” putting you down by the kitchen softly, he grasps the side of your arms and forces you to look into his eyes,“stop fighting all the time, stay here i’ll talk to her, okay?” he speaks slowly as an attempt to calm you. when you wiggle off in a scornful shrug, he asks again, this time moving to cup your face, a tender look in his eyes,“okay?” you nod in a defeated sigh and he's out the door before you can say anything else. you're upset, really upset, you know what you did outside was not decent yet you can't get over the fact that he left you in here to go back to talk to her. he was on your tail last week trying to beg you to help him get rid of her and even shooed her out the unit harshly, what more is there to talk about?

truth to be told, this was how he first met you, or should he say saw you. it was the move in day, he had all the necessities for the week packed in a travel suitcase, with the other stuff to be brought in later on. he was waiting for the elevator in the lobby, more tense and anxious than ever to meet the girl he was going to be living with a good four years of his college life. hoping she'd not treat him like some stranger, or be someone impossible to get close to hash live with. along with little bits of curiosity and hopes again, that she'd be a pretty and sweet girl maybe someone help could form some kind of benefits with.

however never in a million years did he ever expect it to be the cute yet fierce girl in the elevator. to say he was flabbergasted would be an understatement, he was literally blown off his feet, scared or impressed, his confusion was massive. when the doors of the elevator had opened he had found you slapping a middle aged man,”fun? you think groping my butt ‘s fun, you sicko,” kicking him in the balls next. hard. jake had gulped at that, hard. heart on a pause. the look of feigned innocence on your face as you did all that. damn jake swears it was that moment he fell. maybe not romantically but you definitely got his dick hard.

you looked super cute, and you knew how to fight, jake thought he hit the jackpot when you turned out to be his roommate. pretty you were, definitely, and sweet wasn't even a question; you were sweet to him and you are a lot of sweet. the only thing that remains a mystery till now is if you'd taste as sweet. jake hopes he can find that out.

he returns a few minutes later, lips pursed in a small smile as he shuts the front door. it grows even wider when his eyes find you,“so your soy glazed potatoes,” he chuckles walking over to the kitchen and getting other things out.

“she called me a slut for living with a guy like you and i was in the midst of giving her a lecture on actually how good of a person you are-” you bang on the counter with a thud and turn around to face him,“and you dragged me in!” whinning in a pout that looked as upset as your furrowed brows.

jake glances over in amusement, halting to give you another grin as he boops your nose gently,“my darling candy, i’m only good to you,” the glare you throw his way only makes him snicker with adoration. the little flicker of bashfulness you feel making you break out in a smile which (thankfully, for you) jake doesn't notice.

“whatever, i’m gonna take a long shower. do not disturb me!” you leave in a rush afraid if you stay too long he'd see it all on your face.

ten minutes later, as you tiptoe to get your favorite shower gel from the shelf above the mirror, luck decides to remind you why you shouldn't ever stay away from jake sim. feet slipping on the wet floor, body colliding against the cold tiles in a thud loud enough to have jake come running.

“candy, you're okay? what happened? should i open the door? ‘m coming in,” his voice is laced with worry, snapping open the door to find you laying flat down, though to his relief not unconscious. he picks you carefully, bringing you to your room and seating you on the edge of the bed to check for any injuries. hands delicately caressing all over and asking if it hurts any where,”you're so clumsy, always getting me worried like shit,”

“language,” you giggle, trying to make him laugh and it works.

“sorry, just please be careful, okay?” his fingers brush back your hair as you give him a small nod,“do you feel pain anywhere?” another nod, and this one ticks his alarms.

“where!” your fingers reach out to press against the brooding crease between his brows, attempting to remove the frown from his face. and jake melts at that, feeling his heart flutter at your cuteness, god he loves this side of you so much.

“you little demon, look what happens if you don't shower with me,” laughing out together, oh how he wishes it were like this forever. and jake sim has never thought of a forever ever before.

a month passes by in the blink of an eye, your routines and relationship staying the same as always, classes, his soccer practice and your weekly cleaning day. but what seems to have changed is his routine of bringing over girls, the number alarmingly cutting down day by day (which currently sits at zero) and what you haven’t noticed- his display of affection towards you growing more and more. yet you think nothing special of it, assuming that perhaps now he got a grip over himself. which is partially true. jake thought of you as deserving someone better, so it was only right that he became better. and what better way than to start with quitting the position of campus’ resident fuckboy.

after an all nighter the previous day, coming back from your classes you get straight to bed. changing you clothes and getting tucked under the blanket from around eight in the evening. jake returns from his soccer practice later, unaware of the fact that you're already passed out. opening your door to let you know of his night out plans,“candy, i’m gonna go out with jay and sunghoon! make sure to have your dinne- oh you were sleeping? i didn’t know i’m so sorry candy,” he mumbles out in a soft whisper towards the end, supressing a smile watching your sleepy figure under the covers. trying to rub out the drowsiness from your eyes; heavy blinking and a small pout, his cute girl.

“it’s okay no need to get up, go back to sleep, i’ll be back in the morning,” approaching the bed as you lay back down, he pats your head in a 'sleep well’ before leaving.

it's probably past midnight when you wake up to constant ringing of calls. fumbling around for your phone in a daze only to find a dozen calls from an unknown number and a bunch of texts from the same. it's jay, asking you to get jake from the bar they're at. saying the guy's refusing to go back with anyone that's not you: whining for your presence and making it hard for his two friends.

'where is my candy?’ jay and sunghoon are sick and tired of hearing it all night.

by the time you get him back to the apartment, it's three and your bones hurt from the weight of his body leaning all over you. it doesn't help that all he does is giggle and throw himself over you. there's been a lot of times you have seen him drunk, probably more than a dozen, but he's never looked as wasted as today. sunghoon told you it's because he drank way more than usual, and unbeknownst to you that you are the sole reason, you wonder of the things that plague his mind to the extent of drinking so much.

dragging him into his room you have him sit on his bed, going through his closet and getting him a pair of sweatpants and the first shirt you can grab. “come on yunie, get changed,” you hand him the clothes, turning away when he takes everything off nonchalantly. even though he likely would rather want you to look, from the many times he's said it before ‘why’re you looking away, candy it's all for you,’ his exact words. the bane of your existence.

after he's changed, you wipe the sweat off his body with a wet towel as much as you can. giving him a glass of water before leaving for your room when he grabs your wrist and stops you with his puppy eyes.

in the morning, around noon jake is the first one to wake up and having no memory of the previous night besides the fact that he was drunk. he sits at his desk chair, hands in his hair, watching you sleep on the other side of his bed, clad in his shirt. it’s like he feels everything is over and done from here. he did what he swore never to do, this was the very first thing he pinned on his mind as an important note: not using you even if he has very obvious feelings for you. he tugs on his hair in frustration, angry at himself for not staying in his lane when drunk. with his head hung in guilt, he doesn't notice you stirring awake, sitting up at the sight of his hunched figure.

“yun? are you okay? is the hangover severe? should i make you something for it?” startled at your soft voice, he flinches visibly. a thousand scenarios running through his mind and not one ends up good.

“you don’t even know any hangover recipes,” jake mumbles almost inaudibly.

“i can just search on the internet and try my best, it’s not like i’ll give you anything inedible,” you teaee, trying to lighten the heavy atmosphere you feel in the air.

it takes him a moment to speak again, sounding as miserable as he has never before,“candy i’m,” he halts, gulping to hold back the lump in his throat,“i’m sorry, i really didn’t mean to, i don’t why i, it's all my fault,” he stops again, leaving you confused and dumbfounded,“what are you saying? what apology?” it is when his eyes shift to stare at what you’re clad in, staying there for a hard minute when you get a rough idea of what he could be thinking of. your cheeks grow hot at the realization, shaking your head when unholy images pop up in your subconscious.

but the butterflies fly away just as fast as they came as his words dawn uppn you. even if it didn’t happen the fact that he wouldn’t mean it, want it, regret it has something in you twisting in pain, are you so bad? or that he actually really thinks of you as his little sister? that you read his affections wrong, assumed his feelings differently? your heart breaks more than a little at that.

“why? is it because i’m not like the others you have been with? because i’m not like eunsang? or because i’m not her? the one you were smiling so hard after talking to? are you dating he-”

“that’s the problem! you’re not like her! you’re not like anyone i've known before! you’re special and i’m afraid i’ll lose you, things will change and just i’ll have to get over you without even getting a chance,” it's the first time he's ever raised his voice at you, and the first time ever he's sounded so desperate, weak and dejected. so vulnerable.

the split moment of sadness dissipates with every word that sinks in. the revelation of a(n after)drunk confession. the fact that you're a different kind of special to him, that he would want a chance to be with you, that he's afraid to lose you. you supres the urge to laugh when it all settles into your understanding. having a better grasp over the bigger picture. your steps are slow and calculated as you walk over to him, sitting across his lap and cupping his cheeks in a fleeting breath of courage. his eyes almost bulge out when you brush your lips lightly against his, mumbling softly,“nothing happened, but if you still want i can give you a chance, it’s going to be hard though tolerating me, think wisely,” you giggle and jake malfunctions for an instant before grabbing you in a tight hug, burying his face into the crook of your neck.

“of course, of course i do want it, i’ve always wanted it,” chanting out in a trance.

“your lips tasted like watermelon,” he mutters out some time after, eyes locking with yours in an intense pull. still in a daze that out of all the bad things that could've happened it was none. literally none plus you perhaps wanting him just as much as he wants you.

“i had some in the morning before you woke up, anyhow yours taste like alcohol and your breath is horrible, go and freshen up,” you push at his shoulder, getting off him to leave the room to cook something. probably (as you said) a recipe searched up on the web, hopefully edible enough for a hungover person.

when he comes out later, all showered and back to the jake you know: the one who likes his hair slightly messy and almost never in a shirt. “why were- are you wearing my shirt then?”

“you practically begged me to last night while sobbing for i don’t know what reason,” he's a bit flustered at that, but hey, it's what got him here, you gotta do what you gotta do.

“candy, you wanna go out tonight? jay and sunghoon wanted to hang out but i don't wanna leave you so i said i’d bring you along,” jake asks, knocking at your door.

it takes you a little over a minute to open up but jake's does not mind it at all for obvious reasons, his jaw comically falling to the floor when you walk out in your tiny little blue sundress and the shade of lipgloss he was dying to see you in. you're unreal.

“yes! i heard you on call earlier,”

“oh my god candy, gimme a princess twirl,” the amount of desire he feels for you right now is unfathomable. biting his lips at the sight of your lace panties underneath that faintly flash him in the mini twirl you do. can you get any hotter?

“just fifteen minutes and i'll be ready,” he got ten minutes to do something about the boner he just popped, and it's more than enough to have him rub one out with what he just saw. maybe add a little hint of imagination and wondering what you'd sound like if he were to touch you down there. especially given the fact that the likelihood of it happening were through the roof now. you almost kissed last week, anything could happen at this point. and jake's dick gets impossibly sensitive at the odds of it.

at the restaurant, jay and sunghoon sit in an awkward silence, watching you both be all over each other. when they agreed for jake to bring his girl along, they didn't expect it to be so bad.

“um jake talks a lot about you,” sunghoon says trying to start a conversation that he knows probably wouldn't go anywhere.

“he does? that's so sweet,” you smile, giggling over something jake whispers in your ear, his hand palming over the plush of your exposed thighs,”what do you wanna eat?” sunghoon nerves feel boiled at the way jake completely skips over his attempt to talk to you. while jay sips at wine, agonizingly slow knowing this is how it's gonna be from now on. their friend is a changed man.

“i have this picture of jake from middle school, you'd love to see it i promise,” a little tipsy, sunghoon's persistence to put himself in the equation albeit admirable, annoys the fuck out of jake, scowling at the other well of aware of the so called picture he wants to share.

“jay man, take care of him. candy and i are going home,” jake gives them a tight lipped smile, holding your rather drunk self (it's just wine you had said)

“see you later ca- y/n,” at first jay leans in for a friendly hug but— nevermind. the way jake stares at him is scarily weird.

jake makes sure to have you sit on the couch before he leaves to get you water but you're sprawled out on the floor when he comes back. mumbling something about how cool the tiles feel against your skin,”come on you should drink some water,” jake pulls you up on your ass, sitting cross legged on the floor beside you. his hand softly holds the back of your head as he brings the glass to your mouth.

“alright say, what did you wanna say?”

“i wanna kiss you,” if jake thinks the pout on your lips is the cutest thing ever then the words you say must have to be the hottest thing ever. how can a simple word like kiss make his heart flutter so bad? and it's not even lust at this point.

he fulfils your wish without a thought, leaning in to capture your lips in a gentle kiss. sucking on your bottom lip a second long before he pulls away and boops your nose. no tongue and no other intentions. the after taste of your gloss lingering in his mouth.

“let me tell you a secret,” you whisper out, moving over to his lap, knees on the floor each side.

“i knew you stole my kuromi panties,” he's shocked you know about it, he made sure to be extra careful with it, though his nasty ass was internally hoping you'd catch him.

“mhm, i do have it with me but it's not really wearable now,” he did not see this becoming something sexual but the moment you brought up the panties, you might as well have brought up his dick. man practically re-lived every single time he used it to jerk off, all those orgasms coming to life at once.

“you need to punished!” you whine,

“what do you wanna do?” and jake feels his dick get harder at that.

“can we kiss again?” oh my god, you make him feel so fuzzy and horny at the same time, it's unbelievable. in the guide of jake sim: to make him horny is relatively easy, to get him all fuzzy is once in a lifetime and to get him both at the same time is impossible. yet you do it so effortlessly.

jake answers you with his lips against yours again, relishing in the feeling of them on his own. all those times he wondered of how it'd feel like to kiss you seemed so lame now that he actually did. no imagination could ever come close to way he feels right now. his hand comes up to cup the side of your neck, his grip firm as he pulls away for a moment,”i wanna love you so much and take you on cute little dates and buy you all the food you want and fuck you so hard you only remember my name,”he mumbles against your lips in a bit whisper, letting you take a breath before he dives right back in. this time he lets his tongue slide in, rubbing against your own for a short while only to pull back and go for another trying to keep your lips pressed together for as long as he could. finally pulling away when he feels you push against him a little too roughly, a crawl of shudders all over his skin at the roll of your hips against his bulge.

“wan’ you to fuck me too,” you whine, this time desperately.

“fuck candy, you're drunk we shouldn't be doing this,” he reminds, failing miserably to hold himself back. his hands keep twitching to just grab your hips and grind you down on his dick until you're both cumming together.

“i’m not, i swear. i just drank a little because i couldn't have done this all sober,” even through the layers of clothes, jake can feel your neediness dropping with the way you roll your hips harder against him. speeding up when you think he's pushing you away, but he's just grabbing you closer by the waist. he can't deny how wanted he feels right now, feeling like he'd explode any second. the fuck were you so horny for him?

“are you sure this is okay?” he asks again. no matter how bad he's dying to fuck you, he'll never do it if you don't to.

“‘s okay, please yunie,” you feel his hands slide along your thighs and in between your legs. fingers faintly brushing over the wet patch on your panties in a sharp inhale. he grazes two fingers against your clit, testing the waters. rubbing harder when he feels your breathing pick up it's pace, switching to spank your clit impossibly fast having lost control at the sound of your wanton whimpers.

“don’t move and take it baby,” jake growls, pushing you flush against his chest, making your back arch more and more into him. tits bouncing right up in his face as he bends down to nibble as the exposed skin between them.

he stops for a moment only to push your panties to the side and touch you raw. rubbing rougher and so intense, your legs feel number from pleasure,”has anyone touched you like before?” his jaw clenches hard, eyes dark with want as they remain fixated at the sight of his hands on your pussy. fuck he finally knows what touching you feels like.

“ngh— no, fuck!” and it boosts jake's ego through the roof, he doesn't think he's ever felt as horny as he feels right now. the thought of being the first to touch you in your princess parts, the first you have seen you putty like this, the first to be the one to get you like this. fuck, fuck, fuck! he feels so turned on it's literally inhumane. precum oozing out his tip with every twitch of his dick.

“mm, gonna put my fingers in you,” you feel one of jake's fingers press into you, sliding inside easily with how dripping wet you are. the pornographic moan you let out when he slowly slips in another and curves up has his dick twitch so damn hard he thinks he just came untouched. you sound so cute yet so fucking hot, his mind is in a spiral of everything he wants to do to have you moan like that again and again until you're so drunk on pleasure, you only want him all the time.

“shit you're so tight and warm, can't imagine how good you'd feel around my cock,” his eyes keenly hooked on the way you raise your hips to meet the thrusts halfway,”y-yun, ‘s feels too g-good ah,”

“fuck you're so hot and so perfect for me,” his words travel straight to your core having you clench tight around his fingers and all of a sudden you find your oragasm hitting you as violently as jake continues to run you through it, fast and painfully pleasurable. enamoured and obsessed with the way your doe eyes struggle to stay open, mouth parting in a loud whine, back arching and hips shooting up. god you're a piece of art and jake doesn't think he's ever gonna want anyone other than you.

he immediately stands up with you in his arms, walking over to the kitchen counter and placing you gently on the cold marble. his fingers run through your hair in a soft caress, tucking in the messy strands behind your ears,”you sure you want this? we can stop here if you want. just say the word and i’ll stop,”

“wan’ yun to be my first,” you whimper wearily, jake feels his heart skip a couple of beats. your first, he wants to be your last too and you to be his last.

”gonna make you cum so much harder on my cock,” he places his hands on your thighs in a tight grip and forces them apart fervently. he so damn wants to eat you out but he also wants to feel you cum around his cock, it's a hard choice to make but his cock feels so angry and heavy slick from all the precum he shot out each time you whimpered or moaned or whined, if he'd wait to get his dick wet he'd probably actually come untouched from your sounds and reactions alone. and only god knows(jay too oops) how bad jake sim wants the first time he cums with you to be deep inside you. so much so that he might develop a kink of getting you knocked up (nope you're too young for that!)

he takes his pants off in a snap, practically ripping his boxers along with it, grabbing his rock hard dick, throbbing and red at the tip and trusting into his fist a couple of times. breathing heavy at the way you watch him with your lips between your teeth. he wonders how good it'd feel to watch you touch yourself while he does the same, cumming together with your eyes locked. but he probably doesn't have that kind of self control to just watch you touch yourself, when he can do it himself?

he taps his tip against your clit for a hot minute sliding it along your folds in a strained groan. you're so embarrassing wet, it's like jake could shove himself inside immediately and your you'd hardly feel pain for a while. however, holding back his desires, he pushes into you slowly, holding your body close and stroking your back soothingly,”let me know when i can move,” a tender kiss at your forehead, trying to make sure you know you have the say it in.

jake groans as you give him the go seconds later,”mhmmm candy⁠— baby,” moaning soft and lustful as he pulls out till the tip and thrusts all the way in. your insides feel so warm and gummy, walls clenching around him crazy tight. he thinks he'll lose his mind and end up cumming embarrassingly fast like a teen getting pussy for the first time. the way he feels the pleasure throb in his veins so intense all over his body, it's almost numbing.

your hands loop around his neck, fingers scratching at his back as he pounds into you rough, his pace hard and fast pushing all his body weight against you.

“don't think i can ever get enough of you,”

the sight of the thin straps of your dress slipped to the sides, tits almost spilling out of the front gets jake going, fueling him to grab at you anywhere and everywhere his hands can possibly go,”tell me im dreaming fuckkk— i've wanted you for so long, can't count the number of times i've jerked off to the thought of having you like this, so pretty and dumb under me,” all those evenings when you roamed around the unit in the shortest shorts and the smallest crops, driving him mad shit insane, having to sneak off into the bathroom multiple times. fisting his cock hard, groaning and biting back his moans as he got off to the thought of you, while you sat all unaware and innocent on the other side of the wall.

he stops abruptly, pulling out in a frenzy and turning you around on your heels and pushing you by the back of your neck to lay against the cool granite. one hand going down to grab at your thigh and hook it up on the counter, drooling at the way your pussy glistens from the angle. he shoves his dick back in without a warning, feeling your ass collide against him harsh yet fervid.

you both pant in rasps when his cock hits a sensitive spot inside you. he shifts to angle himself just right to repeatedly brush against that spot and you mewl out loud at that, so loud your neighbours probably know what you're up to.

“fuck i can't stand not seeing your cute face,” jake bends over to grab you by your throat, pulling you up and flush against him, head resting back at his shoulders as he forces to look at him, fingers gripping your jaw softly,”eyes on me, okay baby?” grunting from deep within his chest, a wild grin on his face as he watches you get lost in ecstasy,”i’ll get you addicted to my cock,” just like how addicted he already is with your pussy and everything about you.

his other hand reaches up to tug the front of your dress down, groping up one of your tits, a silk touch to see your reaction. loving the way it's so obvious how sensitive you are there. mouth parting open with you in sensuous gasps as he twists your nipple harshly, rubbing the tip with his thumb. your walls clench a little too hard and your back arches off as you push your hips back into him, the tell tale signs of you getting close,”my baby's gonna cum for me?”

holding your jaw to have your eyes trained on him, he unexpectedly inserts his thumb in your mouth pressing against your wet tongue, your red swollen lips too tempting to resist,“fuck yes, show me how pretty you cum,” you mumble out a series of incoherent words in hazy chant.

the hand on your breast slips down to your lower abdomen pressing rashly against his bulge, feeling faint movement of his cock deep inside you. fuck you're so small and delicate. his hold on you tightening as his calloused fingers find your neglected bud, rolling it in quick, tight circles. it's so painful yet you feel so good, tears wailing down your cheeks as your orgasm crashes hard, overwhelming and violent, thighs trembling and pussy clenching uncontrollably. jake's continues to rub your clit, helping you ride out your high. eyes fluttering shut, and swallowing thickly at the sensation of you creaking over his sensitive length, cock throbbing impossibly hard.

jake refuses to stop even after you have come down,”one more candy, i know you can do one more for me,” hips hammering into you at full force, and lips finding yours in ragged breaths. and it dawns on you what exactly you have gotten yourself into when you feel the two of his fingers protruding at your entrance, trying to push in beside his cock,“if you try to close your legs i'm gonna punish you,” he warns making you whine into his mouth.

in a flash he turns your body to face his, quickly shoving his cock and fingers back into you. his other hand spanking the skin of your ass and kneading it a soft caress after. he eyes hypnotized at the view of you taking him in, a white ring of your cum adorning the base of his cock. he spits at your clit, once again toying with the engorged bud, pinching and flicking,”“gonna make you cum until you pass out, fuck i really wanna do that⁠—” your hand darts out to grip at jake's wrist, feeling too overwhelmed with hypersensitivity. wanting to shy away but the pleasure’s so good you can't bring yourself to push him away.

“but it's your first time,” jake mumbles between hoarse grunts.

before you can even realize it yourself your third orgasm courses through you vehemently. body jerking and twitching, almost falling over if not for jake's hold. jets of cum gushing out as you moan loud.

feeling you spill down his cock, all warm and tight, his brutal rhythm falters,”fuck- ‘m gonna cum,” eyes locking with yours as he thrusts once, twice and then stills, burying himself deep, streams of cum shooting out. hot spurt after spurt, swollen cock twitching against your walls. goosebumps all over, his legs quiver from how hard he came.

he stays quiet and motionless for a while, his arms wrapped around your shaking body. breathing in the scent of your shampoo, trying to calm his pounding heart and cock.

“you good candy? i’m sorry, i think i went a little rough on you,” you nuzzle into him in quiet,’its okay’ as he strokes your head, leaving fluttering kisses over your face. picking you up by the thighs he brings you to your bed, laying you down and gently pulling out. groaning at the way all your mixed cum oozes out, pretty little hole clenching around nothing.

exhausted, you let your mind drift, feeling the drowsiness kick in while jake bends between your legs with a wet towel. whining wearily, when his lips wrap around your nub in a suck, the wet sensation of his tongue against your clit like a shot of electricity,”sorry, baby just had to do that once,” he knew he didn't just call you candy for nothing and he was right. grining sheepishly as he wipes the rest of the cum off, cleaning you all up.

“you're nasty,” you manage to whisper out.

“only for you,” the touch of his body is hot and comforting, arms around your waist cuddling closely(and half naked).

“let's shower together in the morning, wanna eat you out so-”

“jake!”

“what? it's the truth!”

the following around four in the afternoon before jake has to leave for his soccer practice, you approach him on the couch, as always re-watching an episode of vincenzo. you haven't talked much about labels, but it's known to everyone that you're sorta together. more like jake is taken by you. his friends weren't too surprised to know about you both, it was obvious jake had the hots for you and from the little hangout at the restaurant they figured it all worked out for him.

“incoming, pocky!” you sit beside him with a banana flavored pocky stick between your teeth, leaning in teasingly.

“oh you want me so bad,” he plays along inch closer and biting it off in a snap, lips barely brushing against yours.

pulling you onto his lap with your back pressed into his chest, he locks you in place, chuckling at the way you attempt to escape. his fingers twirling the ends of your hair as you surrender in seconds, switching to watching the show absent-mindedly,”my parents wanted to meet you,” he drops the bomb, tracing random letters on your skin to distract of the fact that he just mention a meeting with parents.

“as my roommate, actually,” quickly adding the important point, fingers poking at your cheeks like jello.

“so suddenly though?” you think back on all the things you have ever done to him, for them to want to see you. perhaps they think of you as a snobby girl who’s indulging their son’s already unpleasant habits.

“they’ve actually been wanting to meet you for the past three months, i was putting it off but now summer break is starting next week and i have no more excuses to give,” hugging you, he rests his head on the curve of your neck, breathing in the smell of watermelon that surrounds you after you had basically devoured a whole at lunch. “if you don’t want to then you don’t have to, i’ll talk to them,” he assures, not wanting you to feel obligated to agree, or force yourself despite being uncomfortable.

“no it’s okay, we can go meet them. how long will the drive be?” fumbling with his red knuckles, your mind wanders off to when he fingered you, growing hot and embarrassed all of a sudden. hardly listening in on his answers.

when jake leaves for his soccer practice, you find time to complete the trivial chores around the house. watering the plants with a pout, missing jake more than ever. you have completely different majors and you are not in any clubs either to stay after classes. the only time you spend together being the one at the apartment which is also cut down by his frequent practice sessions, sometimes in the morning during weekends and normally most evenings on weekdays. it makes you ponder on whether you should try out for any club, after all these years doing something else besides studying. but you have no idea what you should consider, having no knowledge on which clubs you could be eligible to join.

it takes you two whole weeks and a bunch of outfit checks to find yourself on your way to meet jake's parents. feeling almost weird and exhilarating at how his parents and his older brother welcome you. treating you so well even though they recognize you as nothing more than just his college apartment roommate who helps fix his laptop and tolerates the boy knowing the kind of womanizer he is. appearing more as a meeting with in-laws when you jake and you are not even official yet, more so they have no idea of what's going between you two.

they try their best to make you feel at home. during the lunch as jake had told them beforehand, his mother had a few sweet dishes prepared for you, coddling you just as jake does back at your unit. they talk to you about casual things including your likes and dislikes, what major you are in, whether jake treats you well, if you have any complaints regarding his behavior. it doesn’t feel as awkward as you as thought it would and you didn't have to put on any act as you prepared yourself to do.

in the beginning of your roommate journey, his accent, his voice was the first thing to attract you but slowly as you explored his personality you came to like him for more than just what attracted you to him. now you as you spend time with people closest to him, you understand where he got it all from. the sweet person he is, which you never expected a fuckboy to be, you didn’t even have an ounce of hope that he’ll acknowledge your presence in the apartment when you got to know about his playing around conduct. yet he turned out to be the sweetest boy you’ve ever come around in your life ( and the nastiest perhaps, )

when you are sitting alone with his brother, while jake is away downstairs to bring you something sugary to eat, his brother takes it as a chance to share his thoughts,“you know until i heard him call you candy a while ago, i was under the impression that 'candy’,” he quotes it specially with a movement of his fingers,“is supposedly a cheerleader fling of his after i saw the contact name showing up when he got a call the last time he was here,” giving you a sly look as he catches sight of jake approaching,“turns out it’s you, i never knew he is the type to give such sweet, unique petnames,”

before you leave in the evening, jake makes sure to let them know that you’re toegther, and that he’s not playing around this time. he’s willing to give effort into it and change his usual ways of living, to be better for himself and as well as for you.

on your way there you had thought of a lot things, had a lot of assumptions and expectations. even prepared yourself to hear things that’ll stick to you not so positively. but what stays in your mind now is completely unexpected and opposite of what you had internally composed yourself for. it’s all you can think of in the car and after you’re back in the comfort of your familiar apartment.

cheerleader, not a bad idea—

“oh my god candy, you're gonna be the death of me!” jake pulls you away, dragging you to the back of the bleachers, his cock already rock hard and throbbing with need.

“don't you like it? i thought cheerleaders dressed like this,” you pout at him, fiddling with the ends of the literally shortest skirt of your closet.

“i love it baby, but you can't just show up to practice like that, how am i gonna be able to concentrate when all i can think of you is fucking you,” he groans scanning over your figure again and again, it's like you brought out a hidden desire he didn't even know he had. he'd win every game for you if you were to cheer by the stands like this, the adrenaline of getting to ruin your perfect outfit and your perfect makeup after, putting him on a winning streak.

“teach me to suck you off,” jake loses his mind when you get down on your knees, pushing your hair out of the way and looking up at him through your lashes, doe eyes driving him crazy.

“shit baby, i will,” oh he's so going to corrupt you.

[nereidprinc3ss]

strange perfections

in which spencer reid and fem!reader meet by accident at a coffee shop. and then they keep meeting there. they've really got to stop meeting like this. (no, seriously. hotch is pissed.) / do you believe me now? bonus chapter!

series masterlist

fluff! warnings/tags: meet cute:) some dark humor, romantically inexperienced reader, spencer reid graduated from caltech, mit, and the derek morgan school of rizz a/n: this can absolutely be read as a standalone BUT it was written as a prologue for my series do you believe me now? to explain how spencer and r met! completely optional, if you're only here for the smut no worries! reading this bonus chapter might make the next chapter better though as it contains discussions of how they met:) anyway, I LOVE YOU!! let me know if you like this silly little random thing! kisses

The café door opens again. A blustery wind raises goosebumps on your arms and makes your bones ache again. You look up at the latest intruder—a hobbling elderly man in a newsboy cap and a knit red scarf. 

Stupid scarf, you think. 

Stupid door. 

Stupid wind. 

Your mug is empty, and the table you’re sitting at is sort of sticky and rickety, and there are so many papers in front of you that you wonder why the hell you thought it’d be a good idea to print the PDF out and annotate it that way instead of just doing it on your laptop like a normal person in the 21st century. Nothing is going right today. It’s the third café you’ve tried in the past few weeks as you attempt to find some place that feels homey, lucky, but this one just feels… inconvenient. 

You look at the stack of papers and sigh. 

Stupid Lord Byron. 

Stupid cafe. 

Usually, cafés are relatively quiet and peaceful—a refuge for the overworked to bask in the luxury of quiet jazz and the smell of dark roast as they continue to overwork themselves. This particular establishment, however, today hosts a group of teenagers—presumably playing hooky—who have commandeered a big booth in the back and keep walking right past your table because apparently they couldn’t have just ordered their drinks at once and they all have to do it separately and loudly. 

One of them has an incredibly irritating, gratingly pubescent laugh, and they think everything is hilarious. This whole situation is unbearable. 

Just as you’re gearing up to go, of course the fucking door opens again. This time, it’s accompanied by a particularly strong gust. 

Strong enough that Lord Byron doesn’t stand a chance. 

Your printed copy of his works blows off the table, at first page by painstakingly annotated page and then before you can even process it, all at once. 

Yeah. This is definitely not your lucky café. 

As you curse and go to stand up, you run into one of those dumb kids. His huge ceramic mug goes flying, careening against the edge of your table and completely splattering you and all your stuff in 16 liquid ounces of scalding espresso and milk. 

It’s silent for a second, save for a few drips from the puddle on your table to the floor, before the kid is apologizing profusely and turning red as a tomato. You can’t even respond—you look down at your ruined favorite sweater, and then around at the pages of Byron littered with color-coded sticky notes, overflowing with angry and purposeful red ink that you spent so much time on, scattered all over the floor. 

Eventually the boy catches on that you’re not going to forgive him and he skitters away, back to his friends, who whisper and giggle profusely. Only a few of them get up to start gathering the fallen pages with you. Several other patrons end up helping as well, so the sheets of paper are gathered and returned into your sticky hands fairly quickly. You thank each person without looking up as they hand you their respective stack. All you want is to get out of here. 

“Here—I’m really sorry about this,” someone says—a tenor-ish male voice, distinctly sympathetic as he holds out a rather larger stack of papers than anyone else had bothered to pick up. 

“I’ll live,” you sigh, straightening up. “But thank… you.”

The man standing in front of you is the kind of man who makes you want to untuck your hair from its usual spot behind your ears, and to stand up straighter, and to try and not stare even though you want his attention. He’s gloriously beautiful in a way that repels and attracts you. He’s the type of man who wouldn’t have given you the time of day in high school and probably wouldn’t now. Instantly you feel both insecure and reduced to a former version of you who would simper and fawn over boys who wanted nothing to do with her. You feel like going to the other side of the café and sitting in the best light and staring out the window poetically and hoping he’s looking at you. 

“On the one hand, I feel bad for being the person who opened the door and let the wind in. On the other… I feel compelled to say at least they’re not covered in coffee like the rest of your table is?”

You laugh vacantly, a second too late, positively coveting the awkward smile on his angular face. Then you make eye contact, and his eyes are so the opposite of angular—they’re huge and inviting and the warmest golden-brown you’ve ever seen, and they’re looking right back at you—and you have to look down. Fuck. You hate when you do that. 

Think of something normal to say!

“Yeah, true. Now I just have to reorder 264 pages. That… that don’t have page numbers.”

You shuffle through the papers. They are hopelessly scrambled. Your heart sinks just a bit.

“Um… I might actually be able to help with that, if you want?”

You frown, glancing up. What kind of sex trafficking ploy is this?

“That’s okay. Might be easier with just one person.”

He laughs—it’s similarly awkward, similarly endearing. 

“Do you mind letting me just… try? It’ll only take a minute.”

Only take a minute? Is this beautiful man deranged? Why are the hot ones always crazy?

But, perhaps because you’re a pushover who can’t stand up to people, much less beautiful people, much less beautiful men who are paying you undue attention, you find yourself giving in. You hold the stack out. 

“Sure. Give it your best shot. I’ll be impressed if you can even figure out what page one is.”

He’s already flipping through the papers with a drawn brow, walking away with them, and barely looking over his shoulder as he mutters, “I have Byron memorized. It shouldn’t be too difficult.”

You follow him, because hello, he has all your annotations. He’s definitely insane, you think, as he sits down at a table and starts rapidly sorting the sheets into separate piles. 

All you can do is stand awkwardly behind him as he stacks papers seemingly at random, barely glancing at them before deciding where they go. 

Maybe a minute, maybe a few go by, each of which have you progressively more flabbergasted, before he’s tapping the edges of a stack of paper on the table and standing, handing them to you with his lips pressed into a thin pleasant line. There’s almost a glow about him—like he couldn’t be more in his comfort zone. 

“There you go. Should be in order now.” You sport a frown bordering on a grimace as you take the stack and flip through it a bit. Sure enough, it seems that everything is in order. You keep looking between the man in front of you and the papers, incredulous as you wait for something to be in the wrong spot. 

“How did you do that?” 

His cheeks turn slightly pink. 

“I know Byron really well. I know how each passage ends and begins so I put them together like puzzle pieces.”

“How did you read that fast?”

“Uh. I’m a speed-reader?”

You scoff, taking another look through the stack. 

“I think that may be underselling it.” A thought occurs to you as you’re grazing over one of your longer annotations—full of expletives and strong opinions. “Oh, god. You didn’t… you didn’t read my notes?”

The man’s eyebrows raise as if he was waiting for you to mention that and he smiles like he doesn’t quite know how to break it to you gently. 

“Maybe a few,” he eventually decides, laughing under his breath. “I appreciated the commentary on his relationship with Augusta. It was… colorful.”

Heat rises in your cheeks as you mumble. 

“Yeah, I had a hard time appreciating the romantic poems. They’re less cute when there’s like a fifty percent chance he’s writing about his sister.”

“Half sister,” he corrects. You give him a look. 

“Does that make it better?”

“… no,” he realizes. “Not even a little bit.”

You laugh, relieved that his face looks as warm as yours feels. 

“Well… thank you, for the help,” you say after a silent second. 

“Of course. Sorry, again. I, um—I hope your day gets better?”

“Yeah, well. I feel like statistically it has to, right? It’s kind of a low bar.”

He smiles, a perfect, perfect smile, and gives you a little wave as he leaves. Without coffee. Checking the clock on the wall, you realize it’s approaching one in the afternoon. If he’d been here on his lunch break, he sacrificed it to organize your stupid Byron texts. You smile to yourself. 

He was totally in love with me. 

And he can’t prove me wrong because I’ll probably never see him again. 

All things considered—this coffee shop does seem pretty lucky. Maybe you’ll stick with it for a while. 

The next time you see the mysterious sexy speed reader is four days later—though you’ve been here every day since. He catches your eye right as he walks in, and his brows jump in pleasant recognition. You smile. He smiles back, before going up to the counter and ordering a coffee with a ludicrous amount of sugar in it. 

I should take note for when I make him his coffee in the mornings, you think to yourself, and then you snort at your own delusions, shaking your head at your book. Obviously you’re not that divorced from reality, but you’ll entertain the fantasy forever until one of you stops showing up to this café. 

What you’re absolutely not expecting is for him to walk up to your table with his to-go cup. 

“Hi,” he says. 

“Hi!”

Jesus. Tone it down, girl scout. 

He gestures to your stack of papers: now secured in a three ring binder. The cup says Spencer. 

Spencer. Spencer. 

It feels important. 

“I see you’ve upgraded.”

“Yes! Yes, I did,” you laugh self-consciously, still struggling to meet his eyes. “Thank you for the help the other day. I would still be sorting through all of this if it weren’t for that, so… yeah. Thanks.”

“Of course! I’m glad I could be of use.”

“Spence!” Someone calls from the cafe door. You both look up to see a stunning blonde beckoning him away. 

Ah. Naturally. The girlfriend who is one trillion times prettier than you. 

Spence. 

Reality sets in. 

“Coming!” He replies, with all the eager compliance of a child, before turning back to you. “Um… well… I’ll see you?”

It’s an awkward way to say goodbye to a stranger, but you suddenly don’t care enough to dwell. Instead you nod once, less enthusiastic now that you know he has a 10 waiting for him on the sidewalk. 

“I am a creature of habit.”

Another wave as he walks away. 

The two disappear from the doorway, but the perpetual breeze seems to carry a snatched bit of conversation your way. 

“Who was that?” 

“Uh… I don’t actually know.”

Yeah. Reality definitely sets in. 

Over the next few days, you break your café streak. Life is busy. There’s not always time to artfully ponder Romantic poetry and drink a six dollar coffee while waiting around for certain people to show up. 

Okay, so… maybe it has more to do with him than you’re letting on. But you’re not going to do that thing you do again, where you become limerently obsessed with a man you don’t know and who is way out of your league just because you can’t form an actual attachment to anyone to save your life. Besides, you remind yourself; we probably wouldn’t be compatible anyway. He’s probably a huge loser. Or secretly a douche. Or chews with his mouth open. Obviously nobody that attractive can also have a good personality. 

Not to mention he has a girlfriend. That should put you off, too.

But you hadn’t been lying when you’d proclaimed to be a creature of habit—you return to the café once you feel sufficiently detached from this Spencer character. 

He’s there. Of course he’s there. Why had you been expecting for him to not be there? It’s not like he was a figment of your imagination. 

This time he’s accompanied by a different blonde woman—a bespectacled blonde with a big floral headband and a patterned dress and a red cardigan and tights and heels that look self-injurious. She’s quite eye-catching; you want to keep looking at her, but you seem to draw her attention, too. Her big eyes widen minutely and briefly you wonder if you’re supposed to know her, but certainly you’d remember meeting a person like that. She doesn’t seem easily forgettable. Both of you look to Spencer at the same time, who’s looking between you with an almost panicked expression. 

“Oh! Th—” the woman whispers, cutting herself off when she realizes how loud she’s being in the otherwise silent establishment. “Ah! Okay, right. Never mind.”

 Spencer sighs. You want to laugh, but you’re baffled by the whole thing. So you go back to reading. 

Ten minutes later, they draw your attention once more. 

“Go, go ahead! It’s more problematic for you to be late than me. I’ll be like, thirty seconds tops.”

You don’t look up as Spencer leaves the café—but are you supposed to gather that these two eccentric individuals are coworkers? And what of the first blonde woman, who you’d presumed to be his girlfriend? Where is she?

While you’re wondering all of this, the new blonde teeters her way over to your table. 

“Hi!” She says pleasantly, waving a purple-tipped hand and wearing the biggest grin. 

“Uh… hi?”

“I’m Penelope. You’ve met my friend Spencer. He just left.”

“Oh—sort of,” you smile weakly, closing your book. “Not formally. I didn’t know his name.”

That’s a lie, but maybe feigning non-chalance will make it real. 

“Well, I just wanted to come over and say I love your bag. And your jewelry and your coat. I love your whole look. I bet you’re a really cool person.”

“Um—thank you!” You perk up, smiling genuinely now. The compliment warms you—you didn’t think your look was all that interesting today. “You too. I love your outfit.”

“Great! You’re—you’re great. This is good information. Um… just out of, like, sheer curiosity, could I get your name, age, and occupation? Oh—and your zodiac sign?”

What kind of convoluted sex trafficking ploy—

“Garcia!”

Spencer is at the doorway again, looking adorably miffed. 

Adorable? Get a grip. 

“Wh—I’m just making a new friend! Is friendship illegal, now?”

“This is the kind of friend-making that gets you a restraining order,” he urges. 

You look up at Penelope Garcia, enamored by their whole dynamic. They clearly care for each other, despite the squabbling. What kind of job do they have where they talk to each other like this?

“It’s fine,” you smile, introducing yourself to her.

“That is such a good name!” She says, and you’re getting the sense she’s kind of always this enthusiastic. “So now we know each other’s names—we should probably definitely be friends, right?”

“Yeah! Um, definitely!”

“Yes? Oh my god! I love this! Okay, um—we work at Quantico, so, we’re like, 10 minutes away—but this is better than the coffee shop that’s closest to the building, so we come here all the time. Usually it’s just us and five grouchy old men, which makes this is really exciting.”

“Quantico… that’s the FBI academy, right?”

“Other stuff, too,” she nods, still smiley. 

Oh! Cool. So they’re FBI agents. 

So that’s cool. 

You’re cool with that. 

Her phone starts ringing—she locks eyes with Spencer. 

“Hotch?”

“Ooh, we are in trouble,” Penelope sing-songs, leaning down to write her number on your notebook without asking. Not that you mind, of course. She adds a little heart and a smiley face next to her name before capping your pen and toddling away. “Bye, new friend!” She calls over her shoulder, waving goodbye with just her fingers. 

“Bye,” you manage, though it’s probably too quiet. 

Spencer flattens his mouth into an approximation of a smile and waves again. 

You accidentally find yourself mirroring his goodbye, facial expression and all. Fuck. You hope he doesn’t notice. You hope he doesn’t read into it. 

Nah. Boys are dumb. 

You text Penelope later that afternoon—a simple greeting so that she can save your number—and then you forget about it. 

It’s not until five days go by without sign of any of them—the two blondes, Spencer, this mysterious and foreboding Hotch figure—that you start to seriously question your sanity. Did they drop off the face of the planet, or what?

But of course, just as you’re sitting at your usual table, Spencer walks in. Alone. 

He sees you immediately, but instead of the wave you’d come to expect, he immediately flushes, looks down at his shoes and hurries into the small lunch-rush line. 

Weird.

You corner him at the coffee bar, where he’s adding more sugar to his coffee. How are his teeth so nice if he does this to himself every single day?

“Hey,” you say, affecting casual confidence as you bus your empty mug. “… Spencer, right?”

It’s comical how you’re pretending you haven’t turned that name over and looked at it from every angle hundreds of times since the first time you heard it. 

He nods, only glancing up at you as he stirs. To your surprise, he knows your name, too. When you give him an odd look, he smiles almost apologetically, finally looking at your face for longer than half a second. 

“I heard you introducing yourself to Penelope. Sorry if that’s…”

“No, no! Is she around, today? I texted her last week, but she never responded...”

“Today is operating system update day, so I don’t even really have a way of knowing if she’s alive in her office.” It’s funny to him, but you just smile, baffled. He notices your silence and catches on, scrambling to explain himself. “She’s our tech analyst. There are 243 computers in our building and she has to update them all remotely, which requires getting every agent to agree to not touch their computer at the same time for an hour or so.”

“Oh… does the FBI not have, like… an IT guy, or something?”

He laughs again—the way his eyes crinkle when he does it makes you a little breathless. 

“You should say that to her. I think you would become her favorite person.”

It’s hard not to smile when he’s smiling because of you—however indirectly that may be. Quickly you realize you’ve both been standing in front of the coffee bar for too long. 

“Alright, well… tell her good luck, for me?”

“I would, but I’ve been kicked out for an hour while she does the updates.”

Your brow furrows and you laugh. 

“From the whole building? You just can’t keep your hands off your computer for an hour?”

“Not if I want to do my job, no. And I am kind of obsessive about my job. I’ve been the reason she had to start the whole process over again before and I’d rather not be that person again.”

You say it before you can think too hard. 

“Well, if you have an hour to kill… there’s an open seat at my table? No pressure, obviously.”

And that was the first of thousands of hours you would come to spend with Spencer Reid. 

After that, it sort of becomes a regular thing. He comes almost every day—except for occasional week or so long stretches, which you have discovered are a part of his absolutely fucking insane job—and sits with you, sometimes with Penelope, once with the other blonde, JJ, who you’ve since deduced is not his girlfriend, most often alone. Usually he can’t spare more than ten minutes, but he begins pushing it, little by little, until thirty minutes go by and you think surely his boss (the great and all-powerful Hotchner) must be beginning to notice. 

One day, during your usual lunchtime rendezvous, his phone rings. He talks right on through it, like it’s not happening.

It ceases. And then it starts again. 

Your head drops to your shoulder, something like pity or regret softening your features. He catches your eye and melts slightly, mid-sentence—like he knows you’re about to tell him to be responsible. 

“Do you think you should…”

His hands drop from where they’d been enthusiastically positioned mid-air. 

“They’ll be fine if I’m late from lunch one time. I’m usually more punctual than any of them.”

You roll your lip between your teeth—it’s not that you want to tell him to go; in fact, those delusions you’ve been harboring about your future life together are only getting worse with each inexplicable minute he entertains your company. 

But his job is important. 

“What if you have a case?”

“Then I would have gotten more calls from more people by now.”

Your head tips back as you laugh lightly at his unwavering insistence.   

“I’m flattered that you so enjoy my company that much. But I can’t with good conscience keep taking up your work hours like this.”

As the laughter fades, he just… watches you, lips slightly parted, eyes intense but not entirely present. 

“You’re probably right,” he finally breathes. “Maybe… you should start taking up my other hours, instead?”

Spencer Reid, you unexpected charmer. 

You balk.

“Like… we would hang out? At a different time of day? Not here?”

“Those are the basic premises, yes,” he chuckles, nodding affably. “I’ve never actually seen you anywhere else. For all I know you could be a ghost eternally tethered to this building.”

“Where would this hanging out take place?”

Fuck, you’re totally being weird. His brow knits. 

“I don’t know. Where else do people hang out?”

He’s not genuinely asking you, he’s gently turning you in the right direction. You charge forward blindly. 

“Restaurants.”

There’s that pretty smile of his again, the one that makes all the thoughts drain from your head like cold bathwater. Though, there’s a sort of mischievous edge to it now that you haven't seen before.

“That’s certainly an option. If I asked you to hang out with me at a restaurant... would you say yes?”

You look down. God, your face feels warm. 

“Would you be asking me out on a date? In this hypothetical scenario that we’ve constructed, I mean.”

Spencer seems to think about it for a moment, which fills you with unexpected panic. When you look back up anxiously, he has the same smile on his face, but his eyes are a little softer now. 

“I would.” 

More panic sets in—just a bit. But you don’t let what is undoubtedly a tidal wave of anxiety break through the emotional guard-dam. Keep it together. This is a good thing. This is what you wanted. 

Unfortunately, you are perhaps more transparent than you’d realized. Spencer begins to look slightly worried, leaning forward in his chair. 

“You don’t have to say yes. I know we don’t know each other very well, I just—”

“No!” You find yourself assuring him, though you curse yourself because you kind of want to know what he was going to say. “I would say yes. I’ve just, um—god,” you laugh gustily, self-consciously. “Sorry I’m being so weird. I’m out of my depth. Nobody’s asked me on a date before. I don’t really know the etiquette.”

Spencer chuckles. 

“You’re doing great. Don’t worry about it.”

Not, what?

Not, you’ve never been on a date before?

Not, that’s crazy, or that’s weird, or how have you gone your whole life without being asked out?

With the implication being, you’re odd. Different. Maybe not in a good way. 

He says none of that. 

“But I should probably actually ask you, huh?” His cheeks turn pink as his laughter is redirected inwards. 

“Sounds like a good first step.”

Spencer is still smiling as he says your name and it sounds so good from his mouth. It makes you sound so real. 

“Will you go on a date with me?”

Butterflies in your stomach doesn't begin to brush what you're experiencing—your entire abdominal cavity is like a Monarch sanctuary.

“I’d love to.”

He seems genuinely relieved as he beams, slumping back in his chair. 

“Oh, thank god. I was so nervous you’d say no. I never do that. Thank you for not saying no. Not that you couldn’t have said no—it would have been completely fine and obviously within your rights to—”

His phone rings again. Both of you are relieved that he was interrupted—but admittedly you thought his rambling was super cute. 

“I should—”

“You definitely need to go.”

“Yeah,” he agrees with a still-breathless smile. “Um—what’s your number?”

You look around fruitlessly for pen and paper. 

“I don’t—”

“Just tell me. I’ll remember.”

He’s so weird. 

A breeze hits your skin as he opens the door. You’re already writing your wedding vows in the back of your mind as you watch him go. 

-

part four

[zreamy]

i'll love you forever

pairing: park sunghoon x fem!reader

summary: you were sunghoon's first everything; first friend, first love, and first heartbreak. after years of quietly crushing on you, he was finally ready to confess. so ready to confess, that he told his parents the two of you were already dating! it was an easy enough lie to keep up and he kept it up for months, what could possibly go wrong? he thought. little did he know, you would have a falling out and stop talking for months.. and then, you'd both get invited to spend a week at home with his parents, who still believe you're his girlfriend.

genre: smut, fluff, angst, college au, childhood best friends to lovers, fake dating

warnings: minors dni, fake dating is pretty mild (sorry), she kinda doesn’t rate him at the start, these two kind of exist in a vacuum a little bit idk i had a self-enforced word count to stick to and broke it.. (im within the 10% allowance !), sunghoon in a vest, sunghoon arms, sunghoon

word count: 21,858

playlist: click here.. (for my non-spotify babes, the main song is light by wave to earth (which for some reason i put last.. whatever))

author's note: for silly @asahicore. happy birthday pooks i hope it's amazing and that u enjoy reading this when u have the time !!! LOL (lots of love) also im never writing without telling you things again this was so absurd.

to everyone else.. ok happy reading also emma did not beta read this so im sure it's missing its charm .. anyway it's for emma not you 😭 anyway i hope u enjoy regardless and lmk ur thoughts! omg this is the first fic im nervous about posting.......... please enjoy or else.

In the three years since Park Sunghoon moved away for university, he’d been doing a pretty good job of going home to see his parents. They’d welcome their baby back to the nest with open arms and wide grins. With a rehearsed level of indifference, his younger sister, Yeji, would say, “Oh, I didn’t know you were coming home this weekend.” when she saw him at the dinner table. Sunghoon pretended to only be marginally hurt by this. 

In the last three months, he hasn’t so much as sent a text to his parents. 

Or to you. 

Ignoring texts from his mother is devastating. Between classes, he watches as, “Hi, sweetie, I love you 😍,” turns into, “Missing you, honey, know you must be busy but spare some time for your old mummy, no?” which turns into, “Getting really worried now, are you doing okay? Has something happened with YN? Talk to me, I love you, my baby boy!” 

Ignoring texts from you is easy because texts from you never come. 

Sitting at the end of his bed, Sunghoon rereads a text his mother sent a few minutes ago: Please talk to me, son. Really worried and YN isn’t answering calls either. What’s going on with you two?

When he leaves his room, he finds Jake lying on the couch, and with his keys in hand, Sunghoon says, “I’m going home.” 

And the drive is great! At least, he tells his mum it is. In truth, the drive home without you was nearly impossible. Your ever-expanding home time playlist buzzed through the speakers in his car, but without you there to screech along to the songs, it wasn’t the same. He felt your absence the most when he stopped to get petrol and you weren’t there behind him struggling to carry enough snacks to feed a small family without offering to pay. 

The look of worry on his mum’s face stirs a pit in his stomach. “Why are you so quiet these days? God, you look so tired,” she says, frowning. “Is it school? Or something with YN? It’s not like her not to text back.” Her brows crease as she whispers the word unless. She pulls him into a hug, her chin resting perfectly on his shoulder, and her comforting hand strokes the hair on the back of his head. “Breakups are never easy, honey. I’m so sorry, I know how much you love her.” 

Breakups are never easy. The sentence hangs heavy over his head. 

Whether she knows it or not, she’s handed him a get-out-of-jail-free card, the opportunity to set things straight, to end this mess once and for all. No further questions, and most importantly, no more lies. 

For the first time since he left your flat three months ago, Sunghoon lets himself cry. He’d imagined this moment countless times, his first cry since you ended things. In his mind, it was always intense. Today, as it happens, only a few salty tears leak from his eyes, spilling onto the cuff of his sleeve, darkening the blue cotton in tiny indigo splotches. 

“We didn’t break up,” he says in a small voice—for some reason. “I’m just having a hard time.” Neither statement is technically untrue, but the words taste rotten in his mouth.

The tightening grip of his mum’s arms around his body is what brings on the harsh, shoulder-racking sobs he’d been anticipating. For a while, they stand like this, Sunghoon weeping into his mum’s cardigan until she sends him upstairs to lie down, promising a cup of tea that never comes. 

His childhood bedroom is chilly, so he changes into clothes he left behind and climbs into bed, pulling his duvet up to his chin. He turns his head to look at the walls and the room around him, everything is exactly where he left it in the summer. It should be comforting, but it’s weird to be home without you. 

There are photos of you and him everywhere, growing up and around each other through different stages of life. The two of you together during the summer your family moved in next door, you wore glasses back then and were the first friend he’d made in his life. Sunbathing and sharing earphones at the beach, listening to music together on your iPod classic. Sunghoon in thick glasses with a stiff smile and your arm around him on the first day of high school. Wide grins at the start of this summer, the last time things were okay between you. 

Overwhelmed, he stares up at the ceiling, only realising he’s crying when a hot tear slips from his eyes to tickle his ear. Because Sunghoon likes to upset himself, he screws his eyes shut and thinks about the night before you stopped talking. 

Though he didn’t know it at the time, you’d left Yeonjun’s place to sit with him in a tiny restaurant on campus, the one you’d only visit to toast to each other’s heartbreaks. It had become a ritual — ever since your first year boyfriend dumped you after two weeks — to cry as much as you wanted and drink as much soju as your bodies could handle before stumbling back to your apartments. 

Having spent years suffering from an unrequited crush on his best friend, Sunghoon was always the one to comfort you. But that night was different; you were there to comfort him. It was easy enough to play the part of ‘boy whose crush likes someone else’ because he spent your entire friendship in that role. He’d had no problem accepting his fate, but his composure started to slip when you met Yeonjun. It was the first time you’d dated someone who Sunghoon had reason to be jealous of. In every way, Yeonjun was better than him—taller, funnier, hotter. Sunghoon knew he didn’t stand a chance. He took it personally, you liking Yeonjun instead of him, and let his jealousy consume him from the inside out. 

This jealousy led him to start telling you about Minjeong—lying to you about Minjeong, and his feelings for her. She was a girl from a college out of town that he saw on his Instagram Explore page. He followed her by accident, and by some stroke of luck, she followed back. Sunghoon didn’t really have feelings for her — he didn’t even know her — but she was a girl that you didn’t know, so you wouldn’t be able to meddle. 

It only took a few weeks for Sunghoon to become so upset about your relationship that he couldn’t hide his emotions anymore. So, in a fit of tears, he told you over the phone that things ended badly with Minjeong, and he was in urgent need of a soju ceremony. 

But the night was missing its usual comforts.

It was strange to be the one crying, to see you looking put together and ordering the food. To see you pouring the drinks and raising your glass to propose a toast to ‘Hoonie’s first heartbreak’. You were driving that night, so you only had a tiny sip of soju and let him drink as much as he needed, the way he always did for you, at the same table, in the same restaurant for years. 

Hours later, in your car, you entertained his drunken rambles, though he remembers how your lips were set into a frown that he wanted to kiss away while you gripped the steering wheel like you thought it would run from you. Sunghoon was more drunk than he’d been in a while, drunk enough to let you sling his arm over your shoulders and keep him upright until you reached his flat. 

The voices coming from Yeji’s room disrupt the memory. He’s thankful.

“Your brother’s going through something, so be nice to him this weekend.” His mother’s voice is her version of hushed—a loud whisper. 

Yeji’s response is harder to make out, but he doesn’t miss the way their mum says, “I mean it, missy.” 

A dramatic sigh rumbles through Yeji as she barges into his room without knocking. Sunghoon sits up, feeling an ache in his back and crossing his legs. 

“Mum told me to lay off you today, which is fine, but before I do, I need to tell you something.” 

Yeji pushes the door shut behind her, and the open window makes it slam, both of them flinching from the sudden noise. She pulls her hair out of a silk scrunchie and throws herself on the floor. A pang of irritation forms in his chest, knowing that he could immediately find the empty hanger in his wardrobe where the shirt she’s wearing used to live. 

“I hate you and your perfect golden boy image, Hoon. Would it kill you to fail a class for once? I don’t know how I’m supposed to carry on your legacy.” She’s looking up at him, her chin in her hands and irritation written in the crease between her thick brows. 

It’s impossible to know if it’s because of Yeji’s complete lack of boundaries or the fact that her ‘perfect, golden boy’ big brother is on track to fail three out of three classes and get cut from the hockey team, but Sunghoon immediately bursts into tears. 

“Oh, uh.. I’m sorry?” Yeji offers. “I was kidding if that helps.” 

“I’m alright, it’s okay.” The tears don’t stop stinging his eyes. “Why do you want me to change everything about myself?” 

With a frown, Yeji pours out her frustration and mild resentment. She doesn’t understand how Sunghoon effortlessly conquers every aspect of life while she struggles. Neither do their parents, who had been baffled by her plummeting grades since she moved to boarding school, especially when Sunghoon’s academic performance has only soared since he left for university. The weight of this perceived injustice pulls Sunghoon’s shoulders down with guilt as she talks about the expectations he has inadvertently set for her. 

“But other than that, I’m good.” She shrugs, sitting with her legs out, and leaning back on her palms. “How’s YN?” she asks. It’s clear from the brightness in her voice that she thinks she’s helping. 

Sunghoon cries again. 

Back on campus, he’s trying to scrape together what’s left of his academic career with the help of two of the smartest guys he knows, and their friend Jay. Though the word ‘friend’ feels a little strong at the moment given the way Jay’s goading him. 

Sunghoon rolls his eyes, sitting back in his seat. “There’s nothing you can do that I can’t,” he says, meaning every word. 

Jay scoffs, shrugging and raising his brow in a way that, over the years, Sunghoon knows to interpret as his ‘about to say something ridiculous’ look. “Pretty sure I could call YN right now, and she’d answer.” 

There’s a pit in Sunghoon’s stomach as Heeseung turns his head in the other direction like he’s been slapped, trembling with stifled laughter. At least Jake doesn’t hide his amusement, throwing his head back in a fit of giggles that draw nasty looks from the other students in the library. Sunghoon doesn’t waste his energy trying to argue because Jay’s right.

Now composed, Heeseung turns back to the table, flipping through some of Sunghoon’s course materials to find whatever his class was doing in class that week. The English Literature class he’s taking — The Modernist Movement: Joyce, Woolf, and Hemingway — is the same class he had to send a million emails over the summer to get enrolled in, but it’s the same one Heeseung aced two years ago. Lucky for him none of the boys seem to be in the mood to make fun of him for trying so hard to have a class in common with you, and then practically failing out of it before the term had started properly.

“This class is, like, beyond easy, dude.” Heeseung pauses to sniffle and twist the stud in his ear. “Everyone in my class aced it. How are you doing so badly already?” 

“I only took it because YN thought it’d be fun if we had a class together, but.. I kind of haven’t been going since we stopped talking.” Sunghoon shrugs, pretending to be unaffected. 

As if the mere mention of your name has some sort of summoning power, like saying Biggie Smalls in the mirror three times, you appear in his eye line, rounding the corner with a furious stride. Your demeanour crumbles when Jay waves at you, and you grin, waving back, but as soon as you look Sunghoon in the eye again, the rage comes back, and you smack a hand on the table when you reach it, leaning over to him. 

“Sunghoon, a word?” you ask.

He thinks you’re asking, but it’s hard to tell with the way you set your jaw afterwards, and the way the warmth of your signature vanilla scent hits him hard. Dazed, Sunghoon lifts a hand, pointing at himself. “Me?” 

“Does anyone else at the table answer to Sunghoon?” 

“Okay,” he says, somewhat pathetically, nudging Jay for laughing at him. 

As slowly as possible, Sunghoon pushes his chair from the table and stands up, following you to the corner of the references section where only anthropology students in scratchy thrift store knits, and Jay, come to check out encyclopaedias by volume. You look good, save for the rage written all over your face—which, honestly, Sunghoon thinks he likes.

Sunghoon isn’t sure what to expect, so he says, “Hey.” He’s being cautious, waiting a moment to gauge your reaction. “What’s gooooood?” His cheeks burn as soon as he closes his mouth around the vowel, but you laugh. You laugh, and it’s beautiful and happy, and you’re laughing because of him—or at him, but he’s glad either way. 

Annoyance quickly clears all traces of amusement on your face. “Were you ever going to tell me we’re spending next week at Mum and Dad’s?” you ask. 

Sunghoon gasps dramatically, clicking his fingers. “I knew there was something I’ve been meaning to do.” 

His attempt at lightening the mood falls flat, and you only nudge his shoulder gently, sighing. “Can you be serious? For once in your life, even for a second, can you please think about how the things you say affect me?” You’re frowning, crossing your arms over your chest and looking at your feet. “It’s not fair, Sunghoon. For you to keep saying things—making plans involving me and then acting like I’m the bad guy when I turn you down.” 

“I don’t think you’re the bad guy at all,” Sunghoon admits. “If anyone is in the wrong, it’s me, I guess.”

You scoff, looking at him like you hate him. “You guess? Are you serious?” You look furious, but you sound hurt and Sunghoon hates it. Hates himself. “I can’t have this conversation with you right now. Tell mum I’m sick, and it’s contagious.” You roll your eyes and walk away, leaving Sunghoon alone with his thoughts and judgemental stares from students in crochet scarves so long they graze the floor. 

He sighs, slumping against the wall. How does he keep getting it wrong with you? 

Back at the table, Sunghoon manages to act like he’s not falling apart and makes some serious headway on his missing assignments with Heeseung’s help before they call it a day as the sun starts to set. 

When he gets home, he lies down on his bedroom floor, spending hours poring over the conversation you had. Over the minute changes in your facial expression, the tone of your voice, and the endless list of things he should have done, rather than watch you walk away. 

The moment feels familiar, both identical to and worlds apart from what happened after you left three months ago. When he managed to scrape the last shreds of his dignity from the kitchen table, he dragged his feet to his room and lay down like he is now, face to the rug. That day, he left his door open and lay so still that Jake thought he was dead. Sunghoon remembers wishing he had been. 

For once in your life, even for a second, can you please think about how the things you say affect me? The words run on a loop in his mind, over and over, until he can’t remember the order of the sentence or where you put emphasis. They’re cutting all the same. 

Sunghoon sighs into the itchy fibres of his black rug before rolling onto his back. In the diminishing purple light of the setting sun. he looks at the walls of his room. At the Fleetwood Mac poster, he stole from Jay when they moved out of their first year dorm, that curls away from the wall towards the ceiling—a diagonal strip of shiny tape being the only indication of the otherwise invisible tear through the face of Stevie Nicks. 

He’s glad when his phone rings, cutting through the quiet, though the sight of your name and the anatomical heart emoji next to it only dampens his spirit. Reluctantly, Sunghoon answers the phone, holding it to his ear. 

“I just got off the phone with Dad..” You trail off. Tangible silence follows, so thick it weighs on his chest. “I’ll go home with you.” 

“You will?” 

“Yes. Goodbye.” 

Sunghoon reaches your flat at five in the evening. You don’t smile when you open the door for him, nor do you invite him in. Instead, you dump your bag at your feet and he cringes, looking from the floor to you. You’re aggressively beautiful and cosy-looking as you pull a jacket over the sweater you wore that night. Sunghoon’s heart aches in his chest and he wonders if you even realise. Suddenly, the memory of the last thing you said the morning after hits him like a truck: Then let’s not be friends at all. 

A familiar weight lands on his shoulder—your hand. Concern lines your eyes as you ask if he’s okay. 

With a lump in his throat, Sunghoon nods. 

In the discomfort of his car, the two of you sit in silence while he starts the drive home. 

“How’s Yeonjun,” he asks, eyes flicking towards you but regretting it immediately when he sees how you clench your jaw. 

“No,” you say simply, shaking your head. “You don’t get to ask me about him.” 

These are the only words you exchange until Sunghoon stops for petrol. He has enough fuel for the rest of the journey, but he feels like dying and thinks the fresh air might quell his thoughts of running his car off the road. Like always, the two of you get out and head into the kiosk, where he follows you wordlessly through the aisles, watching you debate on snack choices before settling on the same things you always get. Sunghoon pays for your snacks and you roll your eyes but don’t protest, mumbling thanks as you take them into your arms, leading the way back outside.

He knows he needs to tell you before you reach the house, but he’s not entirely sure how to say it—so he just does. “My, uh.. my parents think we’re dating.”

You stop so suddenly in front of him that he almost bumps into you. Stepping around you, Sunghoon keeps walking. 

Over the top of his car, he watches your face cycle through all five stages of grief until anger comes back around in the loop as you scoff. “Why do they think that?” Your face is devoid of expression now, the blankness over your features dragging a sharp chill over his spine. 

He stares blankly at you, processing. “Because I told them we’re dating,” he mumbles. 

“Why did you.. do that?” You tilt your head, eyes pressing shut in a long blink. “What are you even talking about? Why did you.. What?” 

A thin layer of sweat coats his palms despite the cold. Why did he do that? “We can stage a breakup during the trip or say we broke up right now,” Sunghoon offers. “Just one night, YN, please.” 

The wind whistles by, ruffling your hair and jacket that you hug tightly to your chest. Behind you, Sunghoon takes note of the group of girls standing by the pumps, all five of them jerking their heads abruptly when they notice him watching, suddenly finding interest in the scattered litter and flickering halogen bulbs in the steel canopy over their heads. 

You’re staring when he looks back at you, nostrils twitching with a sniffle before you sigh. “Or we could say that you’re a liar and end things there,” you say. “Or better yet, you go down there on your own and tell them the truth.”

Sunghoon’s gaze drops, his thoughts racing in his mind. He knows you’re right. At some point, his parents will have to find out, and it’d be better for them to find out now. Sunghoon sighs, nodding. “Alright,” he concedes. “I’ll take you back.”

An angry laugh comes out of you as you shake your head. “No need, I’ll walk.” 

The station you’re at is neatly nestled in the middle of nowhere, on a road so narrow he’s not even sure it has a pavement. You’re halfway through the three-hour drive, so there’s no telling how long the walk would be, never mind the fact that the sun is already setting and it’s deep enough into October for the wind to sting. 

“From here?” he asks, incredulous. 

“Yes, open the boot so I can get my bag.” 

Sunghoon can only bring himself to say your name, a desperate whisper. 

“Open the boot.”

He repeats your name as if it’ll make a difference, he’s pleading with you, begging—though he doesn’t know for what. 

You go to the back of his car where Sunghoon joins you, a pit in his stomach when you step away. With misty eyes, you look up at him and his heart breaks. “Please.”

Sunghoon knows you well enough to know that you’re not actually going to attempt the walk home but also knows that you won’t back down if he keeps challenging you. He nods, opening the boot for you and getting into the driver’s seat—your move. 

You stand there, unmoving, and long enough passes that he thinks you’ll actually leave. The boot closes softly and you join him in the passenger seat. You sigh, buckling your seatbelt. “Let’s just get this over with.” 

For the rest of the journey, you sit in silence as Sunghoon briefs you on the relationship, fighting a smile as he thinks about being your boyfriend—even if only for a night. You scoff when he ‘reminds’ you that you’ve been together for four months now and the only reason you haven’t been able to come home recently is that your schedules don’t match up very well anymore—which couldn’t be further from the truth as, before term started, you went out to celebrate the fact that your class schedules couldn’t be more suited for seeing each other. 

Finally, at Sunghoon’s childhood home, the two of you smile and laugh for his parents before going to bed. Your relationship has only made his mother more averse to the idea of you sharing a room under her roof than she had been when you were younger. He’s relieved about this, and in the solitude of his bedroom, he lies on the duvet of his twin bed, staring up at the ceiling and thinking about the last few hours. 

With his parents, you’d sat up in the living room watching TV. They sat on the couch together, his mum nestled in his dad’s side, while you two sat on the couch opposite, mirroring their position. If your complete stiffness was anything to go by, you were less than comfortable with his arm around you and Sunghoon felt terrible for begging you to go along with this. It was after midnight when you all went upstairs and you let him kiss your forehead before all but slamming the door to the guest room in his face. His heart twirled and his mum beamed at him before saying goodnight again. 

Now, at 3 a.m. he can’t sleep. Flinching at the knock on his door, he furrows his brows and goes to open it. It’s you. Standing there with your hair scraped away from your face in one of his t-shirts. Your eyes are red, brimmed with tears as you step into his room and sit on his bed. 

He closes the door softly, heart aching at the sight of you so upset, and when he sits next to you, his heart tears apart because you move over, putting a distance between you. It falls out of his chest onto the floor when he realises you’re not wearing your necklace. 

Sunghoon suspected you might have stopped wearing it, it only made sense that if you didn’t want him, you wouldn’t want the necklace he bought for you either, but at least earlier, your sweatshirt sat so high he couldn’t see if you had it on or not. 

It was a gift for your sixteenth birthday, after your first heartbreak. He was so upset and angry that you let some loser hurt you that way, upset and angry that someone could be loved by you and fuck it up. Sunghoon was inspired by Jay, who’d gotten a pretty necklace for his girlfriend, and talked about her cute reaction for weeks, how happy she was to have a piece of him with her all the time. It was a locket, with a picture of Jay in one side and a picture of her in the other so the pictures would kiss when she wore it. 

While at the jewellers with Jake, Sunghoon thought something like that might be a bit much for the two of you and eventually picked out an equally pretty piece with his first initial on it. He wrote a corny note to put in the box, something about how ‘boys come and go but Sunghoon is forever’ and gave it to you with trembling hands a few nights later—it was the first time he ever made you cry. Immediately, he thought he’d done something wrong and was ready to snatch the box and run back to the jewellers (even though he trashed the receipt). You hugged him and told him you loved him. Sunghoon’s been riding that high ever since. 

Until tonight at least. 

“Are you okay?” he whispers. 

“I’ll do it, Hoon.” Your eyes lift from the floor to meet his gaze. “For as long as you need me to, I’ll pretend.”

As soon as the words leave your mouth, Sunghoon feels lighter, an unbearable weight slipping from his shoulders. You haven’t called him ‘Hoon’ in ages, and he can’t tell if you’ve said it out of vulnerability, or even noticed that you’ve said it at all, but it warms his heart nonetheless. However, he’s not fully at ease, still curious about your sudden change of heart and why you’re crying. 

“What happened?”

You pull him into a hug, and his eyes bulge out of his head. “It doesn’t matter,” you say, the words muffled by the skin at the base of his neck. 

For as long as he’s known you, you’ve smelled like vanilla, a sweet warmth that grounds him. Yet it’s only after these months apart that he’s able to put a name to the sensation: home. The realisation of how much he’s missed this feeling, missed you, floods him with a rush of emotion so overwhelming he can’t find the words to press the issue. A moment passes before he remembers to hug you back, his arms finally wrapping around you, pulling you close, and you sink into his hold. Months ago, he would have kissed the top of your head and mumbled reassurance into your hair, but tonight, Sunghoon settles for stroking the back of your head and hopes it’s enough. 

“You can talk to me, you know? You can always talk to me.”

A heavy silence follows, sharp as a dagger—scraping his skin, making the hair on the back of his neck stand on edge and lodging itself between his shoulder blades. Sunghoon’s breath hitches in his throat when you cling onto him even tighter, shifting so close you’ve had to settle in his lap. His heart races in his chest, pounding a rhythm so loud it fills the room. 

Finally, you speak, assuring him that you know and that you’re okay. At this, Sunghoon holds you as tight as he can, and neither of you speaks for the rest of the night. You fall asleep like this, in his arms, so deeply that you don’t even stir when he lies down. 

Rubbing your back, he watches the clock on his nightstand, the piercing green LED digits cycling through two whole hours right before his stinging eyes until you wake up. Sunghoon presses his eyes shut, pretending to be asleep when you kiss his cheek and leave his room. 

For the entire morning, you stay in your room, and although Sunghoon is concerned, he decides not to bother you. In the afternoon, he sits at the dining table with his mum, listening as she talks about work. When she asks him, he gets up to make a cup of tea for her. It’s at that moment when you finally come downstairs, looking so effortlessly pretty. Your hair is still damp from the shower, and you’re bundled up in one of his old sweatshirts. There’s a bright grin on your face that leaves his heart thudding. 

“Baby!” you squeal when you see him, charging towards him and wrapping your arms around him from behind. “Good morning.” Your words are muffled against the back of his t-shirt, and the four-letter word, and the sugar coating it, make his cheeks burn. 

“It’s great to see you too, YN,” his mum says with a smile. “My night was amazing; I slept very well and had no dreams.” 

You let go of Sunghoon and walk over to the table, kissing his mum on the cheek and wishing her a good morning as well. “Sorry, mum, how are you?” 

His mother doesn’t seem to have the heart to correct you either, allowing your 3 p.m. ‘good morning’ to go unnoticed. 

Sunghoon carefully fills both mugs to the brim and, with extra caution, carries them to the table. He places a steaming cup of peppermint tea in front of his mum and a milky coffee in front of you. A warm smile spreads across your face as you mouth a ‘thank you’, and his knees turn to jelly. 

The next day, after eating an early dinner with his parents at the table, the four of you go out on a walk along the bike path you used to take for school. His parents have gone ahead, not intentionally, but because Sunghoon can’t stop you from dragging your feet. 

As with most things in the town where you grew up, nothing about the trail has changed. The leaves are yellowing in standard form for the season, and crunching under his feet with each step he takes. The only foreign experience is the silence that you’re determined to uphold. Everything Sunghoon says to you is met with either a hum, a nod, or no acknowledgement at all. At this point, he feels like he could drop dead at your side and the most you’d do is step over his body like a fallen branch. 

After letting you go ahead, the weathered slats of the wooden footbridge sag in the middle under his tread. It’s been like this for as long as he can remember and he wonders how nothing has been done about it. The stream rushes under it, loud and unruly, the smell of wet grass both comforting and suffocating as you look over the railing. It’s like something from a postcard, the low-hanging branches sweeping back and forth under the breeze, the grass lush and green around the path, murky water thrashing against the mud and rocks underneath with you in the middle of the frame, peering over the edge.

You keep walking when Sunghoon approaches, leaving him alone on the creaky bridge with nothing but the ache in his chest. He looks up, staring at the grey clouds in the sky through the gaps in the leaves, and sighs. 

Eventually, he catches up with you, grabbing your hand and locking his fingers with yours when his parents slow down. You stiffen, looking up at him with cut eyes and a creased brow. “What are you doing?”

Sunghoon matches your clipped tone. “Holding my girlfriend’s hand.” 

“No one’s looking, boyfriend.”

“You think my parents aren’t going to wonder why we’re lagging behind?” 

A scoff—your fingers remain defiantly stiff. “Do you think your parents are going to care whether or not we’re holding hands?” 

“My mum might after the show you put on yesterday afternoon, baby.” Bitterness covers the word like a blanket, a stark departure from how you said it. 

A long sigh rumbles its way out of you before you fix your lips into a strained grin. “Sorry, sweetheart, this is my first time pretending to be in love.” 

As your words hang in the air, Sunghoon’s emotions brew like a storm within him. Frustration gnaws at his patience. All hopes for a smooth week are dashed, though determination simmers in his chest with a strong resolve to make this work, to fix your relationship. It doesn’t stop the sharp pang of hurt piercing his stomach—he knows you don’t feel the same way, he knows you’re faking, but the word ‘pretending’ hits him like a truck anyway. 

“We held hands all the time when we were friends,” he points out.

Your smile drops immediately, hurt flashing behind your eyes. “Yeah, and now we’re not.” 

If there was a competition for who could hurt Sunghoon’s feelings the most, you’d be a shoo-in for first place. With distinction. 

“Exactly!” he says, feeling the sting of his own words. “Because now we’re dating.”

At the sight of his mum turning around, you switch up in an instant. Lock your fingers with his, wrapping an arm around his bicep, leaning into him, giggling. It’s forced but his parents are far enough away that all that matters is the curve of your lips.

“You two okay back there?” she asks. 

“Perfect! I feel like a kid again!” you call back, beaming up at Sunghoon in a way that makes his stomach flutter even though it doesn’t meet your eyes. 

The two of you don’t talk at all when you get home, with you hugging his parents goodnight and running up the stairs. 

“She’s not feeling too well,” he explains, nodding when his dad tells him to make you some tea. 

His parents spend the whole day at work, and you spend the whole day following him around like a shadow until the evening when they return. He doesn’t pretend not to like it.

Sunghoon helps you make dinner, turning leftover rice into fried rice with the help of some eggs and vegetables. It’s nice moving around the kitchen with you, watching you scramble eggs in his t-shirt and bump his hip with a playful frown when he eats some of the peppers you’re chopping. 

His parents watch from the table, cooing over the two of you and he does his best to fight the blush forming on his cheeks and neck. Embarrassed, he hugs you from behind, hiding his face in your neck—the scent of your coconut conditioner mixing with your vanilla perfume doesn’t do anything to stop the flush. 

Over a bottle of wine, the four of you eat together at the table, swapping stories about your days. Sunghoon tries to hide his surprise as you lie about the time you spent at the play park by your primary school, competing for height on the swings and spinning on the roundabout until you couldn’t stand up. You grin at him, and it meets your eyes as you hold his hand under the table, and kiss his cheek.

After eating, his parents head upstairs, leaving to clean up together. You hum a song he’s never heard as you load the dishwasher, carefully placing the plates and cutlery in the rack, shaking your head when he hands you the glasses you’d used. 

“Leave ours,” you say. “If you want.” 

Sunghoon nods, putting them back on the table, where you sit in the seat across from the one he was sitting in. He sits too, staying quiet rather than saying the wrong thing. You don’t speak either. It’s reminiscent of the past—the hours you’d spend in the same room, only speaking to share a funny post you’d come across or to ask if you were hungry. 

His eyes track your movements—reaching for the half-empty bottle on the table to pour yourself another glass, filling it to the brim. Before putting it down, you offer him some, filling his glass too when he nods. The three glasses of wine he’s already had must be the reason he wants to reach across the table and hold your hand, run his thumb over the soft skin on the back of it. 

Sunghoon doesn’t know why you’ve been so nice to him all day or why it makes his chest hurt. 

“You know you don’t have to be nice to me when we’re alone, right?” The words come out before he can stop them.

Over the top of your glass, your brows knit together. A sound of confusion, a low hum, comes from your throat as you try to finish your sip. “What?” you ask finally. 

“I only asked you to do this because of my parents, you know? You don’t have to sit or talk with me when they’re not around.” 

Sunghoon’s known you long enough to recognise the look that flashes across your face. The way your eyes narrow and your brows tug together, the little pout that sets on your lips before you speak; you’re hurt.

“Why can’t I just be nice to you because it’s the right thing to do?” 

Because it hurts, is what he wants to say. He wants to cry, to beg you to forget everything he said that day. “Because I don’t want to make you any more uncomfortable than I already have.” Is what he settles for. 

Your face softens. “I don’t feel uncomfortable around you, Hoon. We were best friends for ages, I don’t think you could ever make me uncomfortable.” You pause to take a gulp of wine. “Why can’t I just want to be nice to you?” 

Sunghoon has to chew on his cheek to distract himself from how much your word choice stings. The implications of were and all of your past tense. “I’m sorry,” he says. 

“What for?” 

“Everything.” 

There’s a sadness in the way you run your fingers on the base of your glass. The way you chew on your lip, how your hair falls when you tilt your head and how it moves when you shake it. “It’s not your fault,” you say. “I don’t know anyone who would choose to have unrequited feelings for their best friend.” 

Wow, he thinks. You’re on a roll. Sunghoon wonders if you’re meticulously choosing your phrasing to upset him. Wonders why you feel the need to remind him that his feelings aren’t reciprocated as if he didn’t live through and spend hours reliving the day he confessed. 

“But I didn’t have to tell you about it. It was unfair of me to spring that on you when I knew about Yeonjun.” 

“Did you.. did you think I was going to leave him for you?” 

“Maybe?” Sunghoon chews on his lip—he has no idea what he thought would happen. “I think I thought I loved you enough for both of us, that you might play the part for fun or out of curiosity, and.. I don’t know, just learn to love me.”

“Hoon,” you whisper, frowning. “How could you even think about settling for something like that?” 

Sunghoon shrugs. “It’s not settling if it’s you.” 

Silence takes a seat at the table after he speaks, interrupted only by the ticking clock on the wall—a glittery mess of scrapbooking paper and washi tape layered over each other that Yeji had decorated at summer camp years ago. You’re picking at your fingernails, letting flecks of black polish fall to the table, stark against the varnished oak. 

“I know it’s not my place to ask,” Sunghoon starts after a while, hesitant and only continuing when you nod. “But what did Yeonjun say when you told him? About.. everything?” 

You take a long sip from your glass and sit quietly for so long that he thinks you’re not going to answer him—he doesn’t blame you. 

“I didn’t.” 

He waits for you to elaborate. You don’t. 

Sunghoon nods slowly, deciding not to ask any follow-up questions. Instead, he takes another drink, scrunching his nose at the bitter taste. “He didn’t ask why we stopped hanging out?” he blurts out.

“I told him we fell out but I didn’t say why.” You shrug, but your posture is stiff. 

“Where did you tell him you were going to be this week?” He knows it’s not his business at all, that he’s pushing your boundaries, but he can’t help his curiosity.

“Nowhere.” 

“You told him you were staying on campus?” 

“I didn’t tell him anything.” Your gaze shifts, avoiding his as you toy with the stem of your glass. You drum your nails against it, letting the dull clink ring out. 

“So you just left?” 

“Does it make a difference to you?” 

Sunghoon nods.

For a while, you tug at the drawstrings on your hoodie, pursing your lips to the side, considering this. “Yeonjun and I aren’t together anymore.” Your admission is so shocking that Sunghoon’s jaw drops. He tries to cover his surprise by coughing, his tongue sticking out like a small child. “I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t want you to think it was because of you.” 

Sunghoon’s thoughts move at lightspeed, too fast for him to catch onto any of them and process this information. His emotions compete with each other—disbelief, guilt, and a painful glimmer of hope he hadn’t dared to acknowledge until now all at the forefront. 

“Was it?” he asks. “Because of me?” 

You scoff—an incredulous sound that doesn’t match the sad look on your face. “I don’t know, Sunghoon. Do you think my boyfriend used me to make his ex jealous because of you?”

He’s not sure what he expected you to say, but this is.. Complete disbelief eclipses him as his heart sinks in his chest, shock, and guilt bubbling in his stomach. 

“I’m sorry,” he says after too long. “That I wasn’t there. That I haven’t been there.” 

“You didn’t know,” you say, gaze softening as you look up at him. 

“But I made you feel like you couldn’t talk to me about it.” 

You shake your head. “I made me feel like I couldn’t talk to you about it. All you did was change the friendship, I’m the one who ended it.”

“I still should’ve been there.” 

“You’re here now, right?” 

Sunghoon nods, earnestly. “Always.” 

Only one thing comes to mind when you repeat the word ‘always’ before taking a sip from your glass, downing its contents. Sunghoon gets up and crosses the room with wobbly steps to open the fridge, where he pulls out as many bottles of soju as he can hold in his hands and puts them down on the table. He goes back to collect some glasses from the cabinet, puts some of the leftover fried rice from dinner into the microwave, and brings it all over when it’s done, with bowls and utensils. You watch him with a fond smile as he opens a bottle and he hopes you think the flush on his cheeks is from all the drinking you’ve been doing. 

“Is it bad that I’ve missed doing this?” You’re grinning now.

Sunghoon shakes his head, raising his glass. “To YN’s fifteenth heartbreak.” 

You grin, clinking the rim of your glass against his. “To YN’s fifteenth heartbreak,” you repeat. 

Both of you down the glasses, and Sunghoon refills them, pouring the soju with an oddly steady hand. As you eat spoonfuls of rice and sip your drinks, silence settles over the room. The soft glow of the kitchen lights forms a warm ambience, a cosy familiarity that brings up simple memories—doing homework together at the table while gossiping about your classmates, the first New Year after you were both eighteen and had your first drink with his parents. 

For at least an hour, the only sounds are the occasional clinks of forks against bowls, glasses hitting the table, the faint hum of the refrigerator and the steady tick of Yeji’s clock. Sunghoon’s eyes meet yours, and he can’t help but notice the slight change in your expression when they do. 

You clear your throat, running a hand through your hair. “This is my sixteenth, actually.” 

“What?” 

You take a small sip of soju, staring down at the table. “My fifteenth heartbreak was losing you. Yeonjun is my sixteenth.”

In the two days since your soju ceremony, Sunghoon finds himself sinking into the role of your boyfriend like a hot bath. But there’s no use pretending it doesn’t hurt. Pretending it doesn’t hurt when you kiss his cheek before bed, or when you reach out to push the hair out of his face or snuggle into his side on the couch; because it does hurt—a lot. It hurts to think that in three days when you put your bags in the boot of his car, you’ll sit in silence all the way home. When he drops you off at your flat, you’ll close the door in his face and stop talking to him again. These realisations are harder to confront when he’s alone in his room, like now. 

About an hour ago, you asked if you could borrow his car, saying there was something you needed to do on your own. It seemed important, so he handed over his keys with no question. Sighing, Sunghoon gets up from his bed and heads to the shower, where he jerks off to clear his mind. On his way back to his room, he notices the light leaking from the open kitchen door that illuminates the landing. 

He hears the lock on the front door clicking, and stands at the top of the stairs, dripping water onto the carpet while listening attentively. His ears perk up when he hears a gasp—his mother. 

“What’s this for?” she asks. 

“I just..” You trail off. “I know it’s not much, but I wanted to thank you both for always looking after me.” You pause, and Sunghoon holds his breath, waiting. Your voice trembles as you continue. “It’s been hard since my parents went back home, and I guess it was still hard when they were here, but you both supported me. I don’t think I could’ve managed without you guys. I want to make you guys proud, you know? And I’m trying, really, so this is me saying thank you. I’m sorry it took me so long.” 

He grips the railing by the landing, digging his nails into the wood until they start hurting—an ache in his fingertips that makes him wince. 

An odd feeling settles in his stomach, a bittersweetness tinged in his fondness for you, and the gentle shock of realising how much his parents have done for you. Growing up, you became an honorary member of Sunghoon’s family. His parents showered you with gifts during holidays and birthdays, which you often celebrated with them rather than your own family. 

The memory of your parents’ sudden decision to move across the country still lingers, and Sunghoon vividly recalls the tearful conversation he overheard at the top of the stairs. Your parents understood the enormity of their request but had earnestly asked if Sunghoon’s parents could continue looking after you. 

His chest tightens when you start crying. 

“You don’t have to thank us for anything, sweetie. Just you being here and taking care of our boy is more than enough thanks. You never forget our birthdays, and you always come and visit when you can. You’re doing a great job, and you should give yourself some credit,” his dad says, a little choked up. “We’ve always been proud of you.” 

Sunghoon’s eyes sting with tears and his skin gets dry in the spots where the water from the shower is evaporating. He presses his fingers to his closed eyes, forcing a few tears to fall and walks the rest of the way to his room with his eyes shut. He can’t hear anything through his closed bedroom door, which he decides is a good thing as he coats himself in moisturiser and swipes deodorant under his arms with intention to spend the whole night alone. Once he’s dressed, he gets into bed and pretends not to be bothered by the way his wet hair dampens his pillow. Under the duvet, he tosses and turns before sighing and heading to Yeji’s room.

In her absence, the room’s subtle transformation is stark. The sage green-painted walls, once a backdrop to the A3 faces of Wave to Earth and Beabadoobee, now bear the faint imprints of those missing posters. Tiny, shadowy rectangles are the only remnants of the 6x4-sized pictures of her and her friends, of her and Sunghoon, that she took away with her to school.

Her hairdryer is still on her desk where she’d left it for him to use and he sits in her stiff wooden chair, plugging it in. The airflow starts immediately, hot and loud, humming throughout the space as he runs his fingers through his wet hair, feeling cosy under the heat. His shampoo is fresh and soapy scented under his nose, and his reflection watches him in Yeji’s mirror, eyes red and concerned while his hair blows around his head. Sunghoon closes his eyes and finishes his hair, sighing as he lets his worries slip under the whir of the fan. 

Finished, he shuts off the dryer and opens his eyes, flinching at your reflection in the doorway behind him with a soft smile on your face. “Mum and Dad are going to open a bottle of wine if you want to join,” you say, meeting his eyes in the mirror. 

Sunghoon can’t find it in himself to speak, only nodding in response. You smile wider but don’t move. He unplugs the hairdryer and leaves it on the desk where he found it before crossing the room. Without giving himself a chance to think about it, he pulls you into a hug and kisses the top of your head, smiling into your hair when you wrap your arms around his waist, holding him closer. 

You’re sitting on the edge of the bathtub, mumbling sleepily that you’re never going to drink again, and Sunghoon leans over the sink brushing his teeth, he’s glad you have the decency to cover your mouth as you speak. 

“Brush your teeth and go back to sleep then,” he mumbles around his toothbrush. 

You don’t respond. 

Sunghoon sighs through his nose, spitting foamy toothpaste into the sink, leaving bubbly, blue splatters on the porcelain. “And quit staring at me, I can feel your beady little eyes on the back of my neck and it’s freaking me out.” 

“But you’re so pretty,” you coo. 

There’s a flutter in his stomach and he rinses off the sink and his mouth, buying himself some time. With a hand on the Listerine, he lifts his gaze to meet yours in the mirror and stops short. You’re still staring at him, features soft and glowing under the afternoon light. You look like an angel; a gentle smile spreading over your lips, and a sleepy glint sparkling in your eyes, wide and gorgeous as you watch him. Sunghoon gulps, mumbling his thanks and looking back at himself. He hopes you can’t see the flush on his cheeks. 

“Go back to sleep,” he says. 

“Will you come and lie down with me if I do?” Your voice is a sleepy drawl, coming out in a slow, high-pitched slur, and your eyes are closing on themselves. 

Lying down doesn’t sound like a terrible idea, especially not if it’s with you, so he nods. “If you brush your teeth, then yeah, baby, I’ll lie down with you.” 

You chuckle softly at Sunghoon’s agreement, the sound carrying a mix of exhaustion and genuine amusement, showing no repulsion to him calling you the B-word. He didn’t mean to, it’s been a confusing few days. You nod, saluting to him and getting up to join him by the sink, using your hip to bump him out of the way, but he feels like he’s glued to the spot. 

“Move, baby,” you mumble sleepily, reaching for your toothbrush. “We can cuddle in my bed,” you suggest, to which Sunghoon only nods, taking your words as a cue to unstick his feet from the floor and go to your room, playing the word ‘baby’ on a loop in his head. 

He stands in the doorway staring at your bed, the duvet is all crumpled in the middle, and the pillows are in an L shape at the top corner. He sighs, he can’t go on like this, can’t stand around hoping even a tiny part of you called him ‘baby’ and it meant something for you as it did for him. It’s not fair for him to project his feelings on you like this, but he can’t help it. You’re already pretending for his parents, so would it be so bad to pretend for his sake as well? Even if only until the day after tomorrow when you leave? 

The sound of the bathroom door shutting behind you snaps him out of his thoughts, your bright smile making his heart race when you tug him by the sleeve to your bed where the mattress dips underneath you as you curl into his form, resting your head on his chest and falling asleep. You’ve shared the bed before, countless times, but he knows you’ve only asked him because you’re tired. Because your brain is foggy with drowsiness that clouds your judgement, not because you want him there, not because you miss him when he’s two doors down the hall, tossing and turning at night thinking about you. He wonders absently if you can feel his aching heart beating through his chest, a painful, yet all too familiar rhythm that pulls his own eyes shut, plunging him into a deep sleep too.

It’s dark in the room when he wakes up, the sun already down behind the curtains and the soft yellow of the bedside lamp casting a glow around the space. You’re staring up at him, smiling and you don’t look away when he catches you. “What is it?” he asks, voice thick with sleep. 

“Nothing,” you mumble. “I just missed you.” Sunghoon has no time to respond or even register what you said before you clear your throat, speaking again.  “Come on, dad’s cooking tonight, he’ll need help.” 

Helping Sunghoon’s dad with dinner always looks an awful lot like Sunghoon eating snacks on the kitchen counter and staring at you as you help his dad cook. Tonight is no exception, he’s sitting on the island, and his snack of choice is a family pack of Chilli Heatwave Doritos his mum bought for Yeji. He’ll have to remember to replace them before leaving seeing as he’s reaching the halfway point. 

You go back and forth with his dad about measurements, with you rummaging through the drawers for measuring cups while his dad says it’s best to trust your gut. Reluctantly, you nod, chewing the inside of your cheek as you watch him eyeball the seasoning. 

The gas stove turns the kitchen into an oven, and you complain about it while opening a window, pulling your hoodie over your head and leaving it in Sunghoon’s lap. Time stops when you grin at him, the light from the stove hood illuminating the necklace you’re wearing, his initial resting on your chest and glowing under the light. He chokes around a crisp when he sees it, catching your attention with his coughing. 

“You’ll spoil your dinner, snacking like that, baby,” you scold, using a hand to push his knee. “We’re almost done, I swear.” 

All he can do is nod, cheeks burning as he folds the crisp packet over before putting it back in the bread bin where he found it. 

“Wow,” his dad says, resting his hands on his hips and shaking his head in amusement. “Being in love looks good on him, he’d never have listened if I said that.” 

It’s already your last day when Sunghoon picks up Yeji from school. She grumbles for the entire half-hour drive and all the way to the front door about why the two of you couldn’t have started the trip today instead of ending it, but all of her irritation dissolves when she sees you in the hallway, leaving the front door wide open to fling her arms around you. You and Yeji exchange compliments for a while — You look so pretty. No, you look so pretty. I love your hair. I love your hair. — as Sunghoon locks the door and watches with a smile.

“God.” Yeji sighs, holding you by the waist and craning her neck up to look at you, as you push some of her hair from her face, pinning back her wispy bangs with the palm of your hand. Yeji giggles. “I’m so happy you two are together, even though I have no idea what a girl like you sees in my loser brother.” 

Sunghoon rolls his eyes, leaning back against the wall. Despite his mild irritation at Yeji’s words, he finds the sight of you with her so adorable his stomach flutters. Over the top of Yeji’s head, you look at him with a fond smile. “He’s not so bad.” 

It doesn’t sound like a compliment, but Sunghoon takes it to heart. 

Like always, Yeji manages to capture your undivided attention and the two of you giggle and whisper with each other all afternoon while Sunghoon watches, too enamoured by the sight to care about being left out. An hour or so passes like this, until his parents get home from work, excited to see Yeji after a few weeks, and you leave her side, coming to cuddle with Sunghoon instead. 

It’s nice being home with everyone, laughing and sharing a meal before his family walks the two of you to his car with at least a month’s worth of cooked food for you to share at university. Yeji makes you pinky promise that she can visit you and waves with a pout on her face until the car is out of view.

Contrary to what he’d been expecting, the drive back is nice. Your playlist is on, and you’re telling him about all the new songs you added, catching him up on things with Chaewon and Yunjin, and all the things you got up to in the time you spent apart. You tell him about a new café that opened up near your place and how you’ll have to go together when he has the time, and Sunghoon bites his tongue before telling you that he always has time for you. The first half of the trip goes on like this but you start dozing off around the halfway mark, your sentences becoming few and far between, eventually turning into half-mumbled thoughts that end prematurely. 

You’re still asleep when he reaches your flat, head propped up against the window with your soft lips parted, looking too pretty and cosy to wake up. Instead, he drives in circles around your block, deciding to wait for you to wake up on your own. It only takes a half-hour but you blink your eyes open, stretching your neck before looking around and out the car window, recognising the street. You don’t say anything, only smiling when you look at him, a small curve of your lips that makes his heart race.

He gets out of the car with you, opening the boot to get your bag before pulling you into his chest for a hug, liking the way your arms settle around his waist. “Thank you,” he mumbles into your hair. 

Sunghoon doesn’t follow you when you take your bag from him, only watching from the back of his car. You don’t notice until you reach the main door, looking over your shoulder and frowning at him. “Aren’t you going to walk me up?” 

The two of you walk in silence up four flights of stairs as the lift in your building is out of order. Your bag feels much heavier in his hand now than it did outside. At your door, he watches you dig around for your keys, sighing with relief when you find them. 

“Do you want to come in?” you ask from your open doorway.

“I—uh—I have training in the morning and I’m already pretty tired, so..” He trails off.

Unfazed, you nod. “Right, of course. I had fun this week.” 

“Yeah, me too.” 

You smile at him, sweet and sincere. “Text me when you get home, yeah?” 

Sunghoon nods, saying goodbye. Out of habit, he doesn’t leave your doorstep until he hears the lock click shut, and walks back to his car with his head down. 

True to his word, he sends you a text to let you know he got back to his place safely and you read it immediately but don’t reply. It’s empty in the apartment, Jake is out with his football team and the space is larger than usual in his absence. Far too tired to even consider going out and joining him, Sunghoon goes through his night routine, putting his phone on the charger and stepping into the shower where he spends entirely too long wishing he could live in this week forever as he scrubs his body. With brushed teeth and damp hair, he goes back into his room where his phone lights up with a notification; a text, from you.

YN🫀: i’m glad you got home okay, i just got into bed :) i don’t want to make you uncomfortable or overstep or anything and you can say no (obviously).. i’ve been missing you so much and didn’t know how to reach out or if you wanted me to but i had soooo much fun this week and spending time with you again made me happy, so i’d like it if we could keep hanging out, like before yk? ik it’s a long shot ahahaha but just say you’ll think about it? 

hoonie: You’re not overstepping at all, I’ve missed you too, so bad. I had soooo much fun this week as well and I’d like it a lot if we kept hanging out, thank you for agreeing and coming along 😚 If you’re free after Lit tmrw you could come over? Or we could go out and do something, whatever you prefer

hoonie: I missed you so much.. 

hoonie: 🤍

The texts greet you as the first rays of Monday morning light filter into your room, instantly lifting your mood. Your bright smile doesn’t escape Chaewon’s notice as you find her in the kitchen, bathed in the soft light seeping through the sheer curtains. The kettle is boiling with a loud rumble that fills the whole room and leaves her yelling as she speaks to you. 

“Good trip?” she asks, coming over and hugging you. “Never leave me for that long again,” she mumbles into your shirt. 

“It was a week, Wonie,” you say, rolling your eyes even though you missed her too. 

She leans away, looking at you with knitted brows. “It was nine days.” 

“The longest of my life.” 

Chaewon pulls air through her teeth, tilting her head and releasing you. “That bad, huh?” she asks, walking back to her seat at your tiny square table and shooting you a look that tells you to join her. 

During your trip, you gave her nightly updates over text, so you know she knows how much you enjoyed yourself, but you elaborate anyway, sitting across from her. 

“No, not at all,” you say, shaking your head and trying to fight a smile. “I had fun.” As soon as the words leave your mouth, you have to bite your bottom lip to stop the grin curving them; it doesn’t work. 

Chaewon raises a suggestive brow, crossing her arms over her chest. “How much fun?” 

“You’re disgusting.” 

“I didn’t even say anything!” she defends, holding her hands up. “I made an implication. It was only a matter of time, you two have that whole.. lifelong best friends to lifelong lovers thing going on, and it’s hot.” 

“Shut up.” 

“You’re telling me, you spent nine days playing lovers with Sunghoon and you still don’t want him? You’re a lost cause, people would kill for that chance,” she says, tilting her head. “I think I would kill for that chance.” 

“Don’t touch him.”

“Oh?” 

“Jesus, Chaewon, it’s not like that. Hoon’s too sensitive for your roster.” 

“I never said it was like anything, you’re the one who’s dangling me over the ledge for saying I want to fuck your hot best friend.” 

“Sunghoon isn’t hot; he’s..” You find yourself at a loss for words, unsure how to continue your lie. Of course, Sunghoon is hot, you’ve known since you were seventeen and spent the summer at your grandparents’ house, only to come back to find your previously scrawny best friend having ditched his LEGOs for dumbbells. You sigh. “Just leave him alone.”

Chaewon grins, eyes sparkling as she leaves the table. “Okay,” she says in a singsong voice, leaving you and the irritation in your stomach alone in the kitchen.

You sigh, pressing your eyes shut and trying to will away your discomfort. It’s not like Chaewon would actually try anything with Sunghoon. Right? Even if she did, it wouldn’t bother you, nor would it be any of your business. They’re grownups and reserve the right to explore their options. Still, there’s a nagging feeling you can’t shake, an uninvited guest in the back of your mind. 

When you check your phone, you realise you have half an hour before you need to head to campus, so you leave to get ready and text Sunghoon back on the way to your room.

you: sounds good, see u later 🤍

After showering, you stand in front of your wardrobe, towel hanging from your body as you pick an outfit. For some reason, you feel under pressure, picking a pair of jeans that do the most for your ass and a low-cut top that Sunghoon once — drunkenly — said he loved on you.

You have the residual sting of mouthwash on your tongue, and one foot out the door when your phone vibrates in your hand. 

hoonie: Do you want to head to class together? 

you: sure! i’m omw out, where should i get you? 

hoonie: .. I’m outside your building :D 

Breathing a laugh through your nose, you don’t fight the giddy smile on your face as you make your way downstairs to meet Sunghoon. Through the glass in the main door, he’s standing at the edge of the pavement and kicking a stone between his feet. The top of his puffer jacket covers the bottom half of his face, and the draught nips your skin when the door opens. Two girls you vaguely recognise stumble in with smudged makeup and heels in their hands, smiling at you while holding the door to let you out.

“Hey!” you call out, jogging over to him. 

Sunghoon turns around, his head poking out of his jacket to grin at you, holding a travel cup and an abundance of tinfoil in your direction. 

“I wasn’t sure if you’d have eaten anything yet, you don’t normally in the morning,” he says, a sheepish smile spreading over his lips when you take it. “Matcha. Ham and cheese toastie.” 

“Did you make these?” you ask, inspecting the familiar cup and appreciating the warmth it provides. 

He hums, nodding his head.

You ignore the heat spreading over your cheeks and thank him with a hug, grinning when he offers to hold your drink while you eat on the walk. The toastie is still hot, the cheese coming close to burning your tongue as you chew, but you appreciate it wholeheartedly, humming contently with each bite. When you’re done, you shove the foil into your pocket, taking your drink from him and smiling around the sweet taste of a matcha latte as he tells you about his schedule for the day. 

“I’m meeting with Coach after class to talk about my grades, but I’m all yours after that.” 

“Talk about your grades? What’s wrong with your grades?” 

Sunghoon groans, head falling back and highlighting the bump of his Adam’s apple. “My grades are.. I failed my coursework this month, so I have resubmissions during finals, and I think he’ll bench me if I fail again.” 

He sounds like he’s being serious, and if the look on his face is anything to go by, he is. The news creases your brows because for as long as you remember, Sunghoon’s grades were your parents’ favourite point of comparison.

“Really?” you ask. He nods. “What’s up? Is something the matter?” 

A humourless laugh slips out of him before he pulls air through his teeth. “Yeah, my best friend didn’t talk to me for three months.” 

“Oh..” Guilt stirs your stomach as you look up at him. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not blaming you, it’s not like I was trying to talk and you ignored me.” He nudges your arm with his elbow, giving you a warm smile. “But if you feel as guilty about it as you look, you can tutor me for Lit.” 

“Deal.” 

Sunghoon grins, wrapping his arm over your shoulders and holding you close; the action itself isn’t unusual, but the increased heart rate it brings about is. “You’re too good to me,” he says, holding onto you for the rest of the walk to class.

At his request, you sit with Sunghoon in the back row, watching as the lecture hall gradually fills up in front of you. He seems well-prepared, with his laptop and a small notepad and pen neatly arranged on the desk in front of him.

Throughout the class, your eyes inadvertently track his every move. He diligently types up colour-coded notes, occasionally pausing to write things in his notepad before continuing to type or stopping entirely to listen. There’s something melodic about his actions and the way his fingers run over the keyboard. 

During a five-minute break, you glance at his screen. What you find is more than just lecture content; it’s a document adorned with Sunghoon’s own musings about Hemingway’s style and carefully analysed quotations that go beyond the class discussion.

“How are your notes so good?” 

“I picked up the book over the summer when you mentioned it,” Sunghoon replies with a shrug, a shy smile playing on his lips as he leans back in his seat. “I liked it.” 

A slow nod is your response, though your thoughts swirl like autumn leaves in a breeze. The last time Sunghoon read for leisure, you were in primary school, buddy reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid. But this—this is different. You can’t help but stare at him, awestruck as you take him in. His eyes are wide, shining amber in the sunlight as he pushes some of his hair from his face, frowning when it falls back where it was. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” he mumbles. 

Sunghoon takes a new line in his document and points at the screen where you watch the cursor move through the words he’s typing: I would’ve read and annotated the Bible if you wanted me to..

There’s no time to digest what he wrote or the funny feeling in your chest as you reread it before he deletes the whole sentence, pressing his lips together and looking out the window. Speechless, you stare at his side profile, willing your heart rate to slip back to normal. Steep-sloping nose, plump lips flattened into a line, two points of the triangular mole constellation on his face. Analysis worsens your condition, breath hitching in your throat before stopping entirely. Warmth and trepidation blend within you, fuzzy enough at the edges to seem like one thing—a single force that makes your palm itch with desire, desperation, to reach out and run a finger over his features, feel the bump of the mole on his nose — the most prominent — against your skin. 

You remain this way — silent, watching — even when your lecturer resumes the lesson, and Sunghoon starts typing, writing, and listening again. Polite enough to pretend he doesn’t notice your gaze searing into his face.

After class, and his meeting with Coach, you let Sunghoon lead the conversation and the way to your flat, where you find Chaewon and Yunjin sitting on the couch, whispering to themselves while the two of you study at the coffee table. It’s uncomfortable, an awkward height, too high for the way you’re sitting but you feel calm under the supervision of Chaewon and Yunjin—you won’t do anything to merit teasing in front of them, no matter how badly you want to feel Sunghoon’s face in your hands or stroke his cheekbones with your thumbs. 

To the best of your ability, you answer the questions he has for you—he’d written a ton in his tiny notepad during class, his own concerns clear with each neatly-penned iteration of: How to see actions/dialogue for what they are and not what I want them to be? written in the margins and you try not to feel heartbroken for him.

Three hours have passed by when you walk him to the door, the two of you wrapped up in a bubble so secure you’re surprised to find Chaewon and Yunjin still sitting on the couch. They don’t say anything about Sunghoon in his absence, or the fact he’d given you his sweater when he noticed you were cold. You’re not sure why their silence disappoints you.

Instead, Yunjin asks you about trivial things like dinner while Chaewon sits in silence. 

“What flavour for ice cream?” Yunjin asks, rolling her eyes when you tug on the blanket but not complaining. “And don’t say something ridiculous like mint chocolate, YN.” 

“That happened once! And it was three years ago.. How was I supposed to know you hate fun?” 

Chaewon leans into you, letting you curl your limbs around her from behind as you rest your chin on her shoulder, liking the way her clean scent tickles your nose. 

“Mint-cho isn’t that bad,” she starts. “It’s a little jarring, sure, but it’s kind of sweet. Like watching people come to terms with their feelings for each other.” 

You nod your head, humming in understanding and furrowing your brows when Yunjin scoffs, staring straight at you. Her tone is equal parts cutting and loving, so you know she’s not trying to insult you, but don’t know what she means when she says, “It must be so nice to be as oblivious as you.” 

Yunjin never elaborates, and you never ask, actually feeling the statement’s journey in through one of your ears and out the other when dinner arrives. The three of you share pizza, ice cream, and secrets — the three pillars of 20-something-teenage-girlhood — at the kitchen table, with Chaewon sitting in your lap and picking pepperoni from your slices. 

It’s only hours after Yunijn’s gone home, that her words circle back to you, the statement and all of its weight perching on your chest with all the debilitation and persistence of a sleep paralysis demon.

“I think I’m getting sick,” you say as soon as she opens her door. “It’s been coming on for a while now, at least a week, maybe more.” 

Unimpressed and exhausted, Yunjin looks down at you through half-closed eyes. “Do you..” She pinches the bridge of her nose, sighing. “Do you have any idea what time it is right now?” 

“Yes. It’s three a.m.” 

“Exactly. See a doctor if you’re sick, I’m going back to sleep.”

“This is an emergen—” Yunjin cuts you off by pinching your lips together. “It’s three in the morning,” she reminds you. “You can’t yell like that in my hallway, come in.” 

You nod, crossing the threshold and taking off your shoes next to hers. “Sorry,” you whisper when the door is closed. 

Using her hand, Yunjin lifts your chin, squinting as her eyes adjust to the light when she flips the switch to inspect your face. “You don’t look or sound sick,” she mutters, flicking the light back off and going to her room. “What are your symptoms? And why did you come here?” 

You don’t have an answer for her last question so you ignore it, following her and tripping over a pair of her shoes in the process. “My cheeks start burning like crazy and my heart races, sometimes it gets hard to breathe.”

“You seem fine to me.” 

A shoulder-slumping sigh slips from your lips. “That’s the thing. I’ll be fine and then Sunghoon shows up with his pretty smile and perfect hair and I feel like I’ve run a marathon.” You know how it sounds, choosing your wording meticulously to let Yunjin be the one to say the words out loud instead of you—it’ll be easier to confront that way. 

From the doorway, you watch as she arches a brow, her interest piqued. “Oh?” 

“I know.” You nod, head bobbing rapidly in furious agreement. “It’s only a matter of time before I cough up a lung and die in his bedroom.”

At your words, Yunjin doesn't reply, only lifting her duvet and getting cosy underneath. You feel like you’re glued to the spot, waiting for her to say something, anything, but nothing comes. All she does is pat the empty spot in her bed. 

“What are you smirking for?” you ask, entering the room properly and closing the door. 

Her response only comes after you’ve taken your jacket and hoodie off, sitting next to her under the covers. “It’s nothing,” she says, laughing. 

“Tell me.” 

Yunjin sighs, resting a hand gently on your shoulder. You think it’s meant to be comforting but it’s the opposite. “You’ll be fine, I promise. Lovesickness isn’t deadly.” 

Feeling the weight of her reassurance, you settle down properly and sigh when your head hits the pillow. Lovesickness. Hmm. 

Closing your eyes, you try to sleep but can’t help tossing and turning as Yunjin snores behind you. You pat blindly around the end table for your phone, grabbing it and wincing at the brightness of your screen. Chewing on your lip, you open Google, looking up ‘lovesickness’ and frowning immediately at the results. Endless negativity fills the screen, terrifying words like ‘unrequited love’ forming a pit in your stomach. There’s nothing negative about what you feel for Sunghoon, nothing unrequited—you think. 

It was obvious during the trip, painfully so. In the way he’d tuck your hair behind your ear when his parents weren’t there to see, or how he slipped up and called you ‘baby’ in the bathroom, blushing when you said it back. You can’t fake something like that.. Can you?

Yeonjun did.

Shaking your head, you open Instagram to distract yourself. Jake’s story comes up first; he’s at a party where Jay is losing a game of beer pong, and at the other end of the table is Sunghoon grinning with a bright red lipstick kiss on his cheek. You lock your phone, using your hands to press on your belly to stop the stirring. 

Oh, you think. Lovesickness. 

When you wake up, the first thing you do is check Jake’s story again. The video is still there and that terrible stir in your stomach churns on, burrowing deeply into a pit of canyon-like proportion—so vast there’s a safety railing lining its edges. 

You eat breakfast in silence with Yunjin, zoning out mid-chew to figure out the origin of these feelings and how to handle them. Suddenly, the moment hits you clear as day, vivid like you’re watching it on a screen—it was your third night at his parents’ house, after your walk. 

You felt bad about how you acted, and what you said, so went straight up to your room. With nothing but the bedside lamp turned on, it was dimly lit, shadows cast on the walls as you sulked, replaying everything in your head. Guilt wrapped its long arms around your body, making you feel sick as you thought about it all. About the hurt etched over his face with every word you said, and the frown that stuck around for the rest of the walk as his hand clung limply to yours. 

There was a knock at the door, so gentle you almost missed it, and Sunghoon was standing there when you pulled it open, chewing on his lip with a mug in his hand. Steam skated over the opening, a rich chocolatey smell hitting your nose but the real kicker was the mug itself. In its place on Jake and Sunghoon’s mug tree, it was unassuming, a regular white mug, but upon meeting hot water, the face of young Sunghoon appeared, grinning with his tiny glasses on. It was a gift from one of his old coaches and though he never used it, it was your absolute favourite cup in the world. 

You felt soft around the edges when you looked up at him, his eyes wide and unsure as you met his gaze—he brought that mug three hours across the country so you could use it again. The thought shifted your heart into a comfortable position, settling in your chest with overwhelming warmth and an increased rate. 

“Hi,” you said, clearing your throat. 

“Hi,” he repeated, holding the mug out for you to take. “It’s still hot so be careful.” 

Nodding, you covered your hands with your sleeves, taking the cup from him and asking if he wanted to come in. Sunghoon nodded, shutting the door behind him and standing by the bed, watching you set the hot chocolate on the bedside table as you sat down. The two of you stayed like that for a while, with him only moving when you patted the spot next to you on the duvet. Your train of thought escaped you as soon as he sat down, the warmth of his familiar fresh, citrusy scent taking over and becoming the only thing you could register. The smell of summers with him, long days at the beach and short nights spent on the couch at random parties, cuddled into his side with his arm over your shoulders. The smell you’d come to associate with comfort and home—with Sunghoon. 

“It’s not fair for me to treat you like shit just because I’m annoyed, I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that earlier. I’m sorry.” 

A crease ran over Sunghoon’s thick brows as they tugged together, he shook his head. “You don’t have to apologise. I roped you into this whole thing and didn’t even try to think about how you would feel. I’m sorry.” His eyes carried a mix of regret and sincerity, mirroring the weight of his words.

“Anyway, I only came to bring you that,” he said, pointing at the cup. “And to check up on you, I’ll get out of your hair for tonight.” Sunghoon wiped his palms on his pants before standing up, reaching behind him to pick up the cloth he brought. For a moment, he stood there, staring down at it in his hand while you thought about telling him to stay, telling him that you wanted him in your hair—whatever that meant. But he spoke before you had the chance. “You left this, at mine, after.. well, you know. I’m sure you left it intentionally, I mean it was folded up perfectly on the end of my bed, so I know you did, but it didn’t feel right keeping it, you always wore it more than me.” 

Sunghoon extended his hand, holding it out to you and you knew exactly what it was as soon as the fabric touched your skin after so long. It was the shirt Jay bought him for Christmas in first year—they were roommates still trying to get a feel for each other. For a few weeks, Sunghoon had been pestering you about what he should get for Jay, saying it didn’t feel right not to get him anything, and you suggested a targeted t-shirt, one you’d been laughing at all day after seeing an ad for it on your timeline. Sunghoon was sceptical, but bought the red shirt anyway, hoping Jay would find BEING DAD IS AN HONOUR, BEING PAPA IS PRICELESS funny. He did. And Jay bought Sunghoon a targeted shirt too, your favourite. It was black and two sizes too big, with I NEVER DREAMED I’D BE A SEXY FIGURE SKATER BUT HERE I AM KILLING IT written over the chest. 

“Goodnight, YN,” Sunghoon said, crossing the room to leave but hesitating before closing the door. He poked his head through the opening and sighed. “I really am sorry.”

That night, you fell asleep in the shirt, the thinning, yet cosy, fabric wrapped around you like a hug as your heart started to beat a new rhythm, one that eerily echoed the five-foot-eleven figure skater who you let break it. 

This morning, Yunjin claps her hands in your face, seeming irritated when you look over at her. “You have class in an hour, what are you doing?” Before you have the chance to speak, realisation covers her face. “Oh, the feelings.” 

You nod solemnly, too caught up in the butterflies raiding your stomach to come up with something to say. 

At lightspeed, you scarf down the rest of your food, apologising for showing up so late as you head out the door. When you get home, you take the fastest shower of your life and feel grateful Chaewon isn’t around to tease you about the smile you can’t wipe from your face thinking about Sunghoon—you’ll text her later.

You run to campus, feeling the brisk autumn wind beating against your face while the rest of your body overheats under your jacket, hoodie and long sleeve. Despite the discomfort and ache in your lungs, you don’t stop until you reach the door of your lecture hall, huffing and puffing into the faces of classmates who don’t take any notice. Of course, in a stroke of pure luck, your lecturer is late, and you realise bitterly, that all of your huffing and puffing was in vain—you would have gotten to class with time to spare even if you walked.

It’s not a total waste though; you use the time to update Chaewon. 

you: i have news wonie..  i like sunghoon

wonie: …………….. fork in the kitchen yn what’s the news? 

wonie: OHHHH news to YOU.. can i call? 

She calls you immediately. You answer without thinking because your lecturer still hasn’t arrived, and there’s no one sitting close enough to hear or notice you taking a call. 

“Are you going to tell him?!” Chaewon’s voice is so loud you wince, pulling the phone away from your ear. 

“I don’t know.” You shrug even though she can’t see you, still holding the device at a distance just in case. “I don’t have any confirmation that he still.. likes me. It’s been a while, and I was pretty mean that day. 

Chaewon groans and you can picture her throwing herself onto her bed, exasperated. The rustling that comes through the receiver only frames the image, hanging it up. “Did you have to tell him to get a grip?” 

“You know..” You trail off, chewing on your bottom lip. “In hindsight, probably not.” 

A beat passes, she’s thinking. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll help you.” 

“I.. have never been so worried in my life.” You sigh, picking at your freshly painted nails. “But I know you’ll do something no matter what I say, so do what you want, Wonie, but please be subtle about it.” 

Chaewon squeals down the phone. “I love youuuuu!” And it’s the last thing she says before kissing the mic a few times and hanging up. 

Slumping in your seat, you don’t have any time to stress about Chaewon’s plans because your lecturer walks in, with a travel cup in her hand and a paperback tucked under her arm. 

She apologises for being late, running a hand through her hair as she announces that you’ll be watching a film, an adaptation of a book you read at the start of term—Ian McEwan’s Atonement. You spend the first hour of the movie falling in and out of sleep until a text comes through from Sunghoon, and sheer excitement keeps you up.

hoonie: Wanna study together after class? 

you: of course!!!!!! 

hoonie: 🤍

The rest of the movie goes by in a drag, and you come away from it with a mild irritation towards Saoirse Ronan.

you: class just finished, heading to lib rn 

hoonie: Shit, still in the locker room, sorry !!! Omw, can you get a table? 

you: i’ll try..

It takes a while but you find an empty booth on the second floor, and set your bag on the plush green seat to take pictures of your surroundings to send to Sunghoon. You sit on the side facing the stairs so he can see you when he arrives. The thought of seeing him makes your heart race and you try out a few natural-seeming poses for when he’s here, cycling between resting your palm under your chin and sitting with your arms crossed a few times until the top of his head comes into view. 

Seeing him knocks the wind out of you as he approaches the staircase, taking them two at a time with his damp hair clinging to his forehead and neck. It doesn’t help that he’s wearing a tight black vest, and his sweats are hanging low on his hips. A breath you didn’t realise you were holding slips out when he lifts his head, spotting you immediately as a grin spreads over his lips and he raises his arm to wave, the veins in his forearm peeking out to say hi too. You can’t tell if it’s his lack of winter wardrobe or your newfound appreciation for him that’s making his biceps look so huge but it’s hard to look away, even when he reaches the table. 

“Are you hot?” you blurt out. 

Sunghoon laughs, raising a brow and something about the way he’s looking down at you makes your cheeks burn. “Depends who’s asking.” He takes his backpack off, leaving it on the table as he sits down, dumping his jacket and hoodie in a pile beside him.

“I’m asking,” you mumble. 

“Then, yeah, I’d hope so.” 

Is he flirting? It sounds like he’s flirting. Flirt back! “Nice arms.” 

He looks down at his biceps for a beat before looking at you warily. “Are you flirting with me?” He can’t fight the smile twitching at the corners of his lips but he tries his best, pressing them into a straight line.

“A little. They are nice though,” you admit.

Sunghoon grins. “Thanks, I’ve had them for a while now.”

You can’t come up with anything to say, too distracted by the way his smile reaches his eyes, lighting up his whole face and forcing a flustered heat to spread over your cheeks and neck. It’s only when you look away from him that you remember what you’re here for. It’s a study date, not a study date—there’s a difference. 

You hand Sunghoon the material you’d printed for him over the weekend, excerpts from texts you’d studied in class, so he can practise close reading and proper citation. As he makes his way through them, you can’t help stealing glances, smiling at the way his tongue sticks out a little while he focuses, or how he twirls his pen in his fingers while he’s thinking. You aren’t making the best use of your time together, copying out the slides from class yesterday, but you can’t help noticing the way he watches you when he thinks you can’t see. The small smile on his face while he does so only flusters you, an odd weakness settling in your knees as your cheeks heat up. 

After a while, Sunghoon sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Could you stop watching me?”

“If you noticed me watching, that means you’re watching me.” 

He shrugs, chewing on his lip. “Well, yeah. I’m always watching you,” he says like it’s a given. “But you don’t normally watch back, it’s distracting.” 

“You’re distracting.”

A playful smile curves his lips as he arches a brow, smugness painting his face. “Am I?” 

Too scared to verbalise your response, you nod slowly, hoping you don’t look as wound up as you feel. 

Sunghoon’s eyes flick over your face, flashing with something you don’t recognise. At least not from him. He sits back in his seat, assessing you and eventually shaking his head. 

“You know,” he says, eyes glowing with something you do recognise: cockiness. “If my sexy arms are getting to you that much, I can always put my hoodie back on. Wouldn’t want my little tutor getting distracted, would I?” 

Oh. 

Your stomach turns with want, mind reeling from his tone and the way his gaze lands on your lips. Sighing, you roll your eyes and try to seem unaffected. “Sunghoon, I never said your arms were sexy.” 

His phone starts to go off, buzzing against the table and he turns it over immediately, screen down on the surface as he shifts his focus back to his work. He chews on his lip while he does, eyes flicking back and forth between his phone and the words on the page. Curious, you lean over the table, elbows propped up as you rest your chin in your hands. He doesn’t spare you or his phone, which vibrates another four times, a glance.

“Are you going to get that?” 

Sunghoon shakes his head. “It’s nothing.” 

You hum, letting just enough curiosity seep into the sound that he’ll elaborate without being asked to. It doesn’t take long for him to deliver.

“It’s just Chaewon,” he says, running his hand through his hair and lifting his head. Sunghoon smiles. “We’ve been texting a lot these days.” 

“Cool.” You nod a few times, aiming for nonchalance but hitting bobblehead as you wait for him to continue. He doesn’t, only humming in response, nodding too. 

After a beat, he picks up his phone, angling it just high enough that you can’t see the screen. He reads the messages, an exhaled laugh coming from his nose as the tips of his ears redden—Fuck. This is worse than you thought. 

Chaewon’s commitment to girl code runs deep—she’s been rebuffing Jake since first year when she overheard a girl she’d never seen before telling her friends she thought he was cute. So you know without having to read the texts that nothing she’s saying is even remotely flirty, you can smell the auto-caps and use of the word ‘buddy’ from across the table. 

What you hadn’t counted on, however, was the potential for Sunghoon’s feelings to shift. If they really have been texting more, can you rule out the possibility that he might like.. her? Chaewon is a catch, beyond a catch, and you’d already turned Sunghoon down. Brutally. Of course, he’d move on, he has moved on. 

The rest of the study session is spent manifesting, writing Park Sunghoon over and over in the back of your notebook. You fill three pages while brainstorming ways to snatch a lock of his hair until he suggests that the two of you call it a day. He walks you home, telling you about how Jake’s been bribing him with food to get a ride to the LEGO store across town for the new Marvel set. 

“With or without the meals, I would’ve taken him, but his ramen is my favourite, so..” Sunghoon says, climbing the last step of your building and holding the door open for you. “He even brought a slice of tiramisu to the rink for me after practice.” 

“You’re terrible,” you say, frowning up at him as you search for your keys. “Do you want to come in?” 

Sunghoon chuckles, shaking his head. “I have a meeting with one of my lecturers soon, I’d have to leave in—” He pauses, rolling up the sleeve of his jacket to check the time. “—eight minutes.” 

“I’m cool with that if you are,” you mumble, suddenly shy. 

A bright smile spreads over his lips and he nods, following you in. 

Chilled by the harsh wind, the only thing on your mind is a hot drink as you lead Sunghoon to the kitchen. He shakes his head when you offer him one, sitting on the countertop and exhaling into his palms before rubbing them together. You can’t help but frown at the sight, feeling guilty that you can’t change the weather to suit him. At your thought process, your brows raise. Wow, you think. Is this who you are? 

You busy yourself with the selection of hot drinks you and Chaewon have accumulated, eyeing each container from top to bottom. A purple tub of Cadbury’s hot chocolate that you’re sure is on the brink of expiration, coffee—sachets of the instant stuff you’ve grown to like since leaving home, Earl grey from one of many brands, or the fancy silk tea bags Chaewon’s mum brought home from a trip—rooibos or plum-apple-cinnamon. 

Craving something sweet, you settle for hot chocolate, pulling the heavy container from the cupboard next to Sunghoon’s head and setting it beside your cup. He’s on his phone, scrolling too fast to take in anything he’s seeing and he shakes his head when you ask if he wants something to drink. 

On the dish rack, Chaewon’s mug catches your eye, so you pick it up to dry it off and put it down next to yours. “I’m going to check if Wonie wants any,” you say, wiping imaginary crumbs from the counter onto the floor. 

Sunghoon only clears his throat, shaking his head. “She’s not home, one of her acrylics popped off so she’s at the shop waiting for a cancellation.” 

The information itself isn’t jarring but hearing it from Sunghoon is. You put on what you hope is a neutral smile and nod, taking milk from the fridge and assembling your drink on autopilot while thinking of ways to redirect the conversation. 

“If you knew you’d have to go back to campus so soon, why’d you walk me home?” you ask, watching your cup spin in the microwave. “I could’ve walked on my own.” 

Sunghoon is already looking at you when you turn your head, his cheeks puffed out with air as he blinks slowly. Because I love you, is what you hope he’ll say. You think you need him to say it. 

“Because you don’t have to do anything on your own when you have me,” he says instead, and it’s infinitely better. 

The words seep through your every fibre, his intonation and lucid affection making a home for themselves in your heart, spreading warmth from head to toe. Your smile becomes a radiant grin, only brightening when he shakes his head, smiling down at his feet. 

Sunghoon hugs you in the kitchen when it’s time for him to leave, his arms holding you tight to his chest as he rocks you back and forth. You inhale his scent, all warm citrus under freshly washed cotton and something exclusive to him.

Wiping the smile from your face feels impossible. You don’t let go when he does, and a sweet laugh — a giggle, you think — tumbles out of him as he mumbles that he really has to go. Still, you cling onto him, taking clumsy steps backwards, with your arms locked around his waist, to your front door, smiling as you watch him put his shoes on. 

“You don’t have to walk me downstairs, honestly,” he says, looking down at you in the doorway.

“I want to.” 

His lips quirk up at the corners, a full smile breaking through and causing your stomach to flutter with so much force you’re sure it’s visible through your shirt. His eyes fall to your lips, lingering, before he clears his throat, looking away. 

“I’ll text you when I get to the door, promise.” 

You lock your pinky with his. “Send a selfie, just so I know it’s you and not someone else using your phone.” 

Sunghoon’s head falls back in a laugh. “Should I just call you? That way you can make sure I get back to uni in one piece.” 

You nod.

“That wasn’t anything with Chaewon earlier, I just needed advice on some girl stuff..” He trails off, searching your eyes. It’s obvious that he’s telling the truth, that he wants you to believe him. You do. “I wasn’t sure if that was something I could talk about with you.” 

Girl stuff. Hmm. You try not to read too much into it and look at the bigger picture instead—your best friend is going through something and doesn’t feel like he can come to you about it.. You squeeze his pinky reassuringly, a flutter in your stomach when he smiles. 

“You can talk to me about anything,” you say, meaning it. 

Sunghoon presses his lips together, humming and unlinking your fingers. “Next time,” he says after a beat, waving at you. 

You shut the door, locking it while watching through the peephole, he leaves as soon as the lock clicks shut. In the kitchen, your hot chocolate is cooling down, and your phone rings in your back pocket. Sunghoon’s calling. 

Hanging out with Sunghoon. Making sure he sticks to the time-blocked schedule you made for him. Quizzing him on biology terms until he gets restless. If the last two weeks were an episode of Family Feud, those would be the top three answers to the question: Name something YN is doing right now.

Thankfully tonight, it’s the first one. 

You’ve been sitting on the couch for so long, Jake has both left for football practice and arrived from football practice. Conversation ebbs and flows—an hour or so of nonstop talking, followed by another hour or so of comfortable near silence. 

It’s during a quiet hour that Sunghoon sits up straight, clearing his throat before saying, “Let me ask you something. He retreats to the other side of the couch, turning to face you with his whole body. “I don’t want things to be weird after I ask, so no matter what your answer is, I won’t bring it up or ask again.”

Arching a curious brow, you nod. “You can ask me anything,” you say, meaning it.

Sunghoon’s face is impressively blank—minus the motion of sharp teeth worrying plush lip, there’s absolutely nothing behind his eyes that seem to stare right through you. 

Eventually, he asks, “Can I kiss you?” He says more. Big, scary words like for closure and moving on, but they don’t register. They don’t matter. 

Your heart pounds at the base of your throat as you find interest in your hands that sit in your lap. Even without looking at him, you can’t get over the slight crease he had in his brow and the slight tremor in his hands. 

“For closure,” you repeat, though your voice doesn’t sound like it’s coming from you, muffled under the thump of your heart. 

Sunghoon nods. “For closure.” 

A humourless laugh sneaks past your throat as you look at him. You shouldn’t have. In the lamplight, Sunghoon is golden and glorious. Warm light casts one side of his face, diffusing gently over the steep slope of his nose, highlighting his moles and the look in his eyes, gentle and curious all at once. Unwillingly, your gaze falls to his lips, parted, tempting. 

One firm nod of your head brings Sunghoon’s hand to your face, his palm cupping your cheek with soft skin as his thumb traces your cheekbone. You grow anxious under his stare, under the drag of his eyes over your features, taking them one at a time like he’s committing them to memory.

Leaning in, your eyes flutter shut as your lips meet his and he freezes, mouth completely still on yours. Delicately, your tongue traces the seam of his lips, soft and plump, until they part for you, moving with yours. Sunghoon’s kiss is unpolished when it reaches you. It’s hesitant but tender, clumsy but sweet, he’s trying and he’s perfect; your favourite. 

The kiss is.. it’s everything. It’s the racing of your heart, the thudding, the vibrant buzz you can hear, feel humming against your ears. It’s a rush of blood to the head, a lightness all over that pulls you out of your body. It’s Sunghoon’s soft lips curving into a smile against yours, his gentle hold on your face never letting up as he holds you as close as he can manage, and it’s every bit as lovely as the rest of him.

Palpable is the heartbeat of your friendship, beating to a lull under the surface of the kiss, fizzling out into nothing, a steady silence, flatlining to give way to something more, something bigger. 

Every brush of your lips against his is a revelation, a confession. You’re all I’ve ever wanted, you tell him with your kiss. You’re everything I need. His free hand finds yours, locking your fingers and squeezing, the action timed well enough to make you think he hears you, to make you think he’s saying, we’ll be okay, I still love you. 

With that, he pulls away, a delicate tension piercing the air. Blown eyes and laboured breathing—he’s beautiful, fuzzy around the edges with warm orange and all of the love in your heart. Breathless, you chew on your lip, cognisant of Sunghoon’s hand in yours and the sparkle in his eyes as he looks at you. 

Belatedly, you squeeze his hand back, smiling. “Was it everything you ever dreamed of?” you whisper, part teasing, all curious.

Abruptly, Sunghoon stands up, letting go of you in the process. “I have to go.” 

You want to stop him, you think you’re supposed to. To grab him by the arm and kiss him again, to yell in his face that you love him until he understands. But you don’t. Instead, you stay seated, staring at Sunghoon’s back and following him with your eyes out of the room and down the hall until he’s out of sight. 

It’s your first time being so upset after a kiss, and you can’t tell if it’s his leaving or the mention of him moving on that’s tripping you up so much. That’s causing melancholy to crawl from the shadows, sinking its jagged nails into your skin to pull you under. 

You love him. He’s gone. 

Eyes stuck on the doorway, time stretches over the room around you, thick and malleable, wet and cloying—clay stuck under your nails for days as the fire in the kiln rages on. 

Sighing, you get up and wait at his door. You ball your hand into a limp fist, knocking weakly. Sunghoon doesn’t reply. You try again, harder. Still nothing. 

Barging into the room, you find him sitting on the end of his bed with his face in his hands. 

“Don’t move on.” The words come out before you realise and Sunghoon lifts his head, squinting at you. 

“Huh?” He tilts his head, watching closely as you approach him, tipping it back enough to meet your eyes when you stand over him. 

You take a breath, holding it until your head starts to spin. “I don’t want you to love someone else, Sunghoon. Please don’t move on.” 

The stillness that follows is disconcerting, a long quiet you can feel on your skin, amplifying the blank stare on his face as he looks up at you. His eyes flash, a spark of hope behind them so bright it stings to look at.

“Do you..” He trails off, his lips moving to form the next word though stopping short.

“I do,” you whisper, nodding. “I’m sorry for taking so long.”

An exhaled laugh comes from his nose as he grins, shaking his head. “You like me?” he asks, excitement and disbelief fighting for authority over his voice, his hands holding your waist and pulling you down into his lap.

“I love you,” you admit, settling on his thighs. 

“You do?” His eyes are wide and gleaming, searching every feature on your face before settling on your own.

You nod. “So much.” 

Sunghoon’s chin tips up, his lips pressing against yours, excited pecks that can’t turn into much more for the smiles on your faces. You rest your arms on his shoulders, hands clasping behind his head, nervous fingers playing with the hair at the nape of his neck. 

“So.. will you be my boyfriend? For real?” 

Tilting his head, he tries and fails to fight a smile. “I will. I’m a little bummed though.” 

“Why?” You raise a brow, and the word tips up at the end with it. 

“I wanted to be the one to ask you.” Sunghoon’s honesty warms the room, endearing you completely. 

You grin, loving the heat spreading over your cheeks. “Ask me anyway.” 

“Please can I be your boyfriend?” 

In the weeks that followed, it became immediately clear that boyfriend Sunghoon operated on a pendulum swinging between sexual ferality and terror. He’d get distracted during study sessions at home, finding more interest in biting at your neck than stream-of-consciousness prose, but closed his eyes if a sex scene came on TV. He’d buck his hips against yours while making out but flinch at the sight of condoms in the store.

He wasn’t ready to have sex and didn’t know how to tell you, so you took matters into your own hands, asking if you could wait until after his results for resubmission came in, saying you didn’t want the distraction for either of you. Sunghoon agreed, pecking your cheek and holding you tight to his chest. 

The only thing was that your lecturer hadn’t given him an exact date, so every morning, you held your phone in a vice grip waiting for Sunghoon to update you, and every morning, you got the same text: Nothing today, baby ☹️ 

This morning, you’re brushing your teeth when he texts you, in all caps: NO FUCKING WAY I GOT A 98 !!! LOOK !!!

When the picture comes through, it’s of him in the mirror and you choke on mouthwash at the sight. He’s smiling, bright and beautiful, in a black vest that he’s holding up a little to show his stomach, though his palm is in the way of his toned abs, and it cuts off right at the top of his grey sweatpants. 

Your mouth goes dry as you click on it, fixating on every little detail you can find: the thickness of his fingers against his phone, the dip in his collarbones, the breadth of his shoulders and the cinch of his waist. In a fit of desperation, you try swiping at the bottom of your screen, willing the picture to magically extend. It doesn’t. 

hoonie: Finger slipped.. You like?

you: mm.. 

you: 98??? HOLY SHIT, LOOK AT YOU!!!

hoonie: All you.. do you like the picture?

you: i love it………….

hoonie: My girl 🤍

Another picture comes in, and sure enough, through the glare of his laptop screen, you see: Course name: The Modernist Movement: Joyce, Woolf, and Hemingway. Marks Awarded: 98.0.

you: well done baby !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hoonie: Thx 😁

hoonie: Can I have my prize now ha ha .. haha 😈

you: just for that emoji, no you absolutely cannot.

Your resolve isn’t strong enough when it comes to Sunghoon, because purple devil emoji and all, you show up at his door with condoms in your bag and a bouquet of lilies behind your back. 

The door creaks open and Sunghoon greets you with a grin. “Hey, gorgeous. You proud of me?” 

You beam at him, holding out the flowers. “I’m very proud, Hoon, well done.” 

“I don’t want to ruin the moment,” he starts, taking the bouquet from your hands and sniffing the flowers with an approving smile. “But hearing you say you’re proud of me is awakening something I didn’t know existed.”

“A good something?” 

“Mm,” he hums, arms finding your waist before he pecks your lips. “A very good something.” 

Sunghoon’s words hit your lips and your core, a desperate heat flooding your stomach as he kisses you deeply, his body pressed tightly against yours while he pulls you into his apartment. He kicks the door shut with his foot, slipping his hand under your jacket to settle in your back pocket, not quite squeezing but holding your ass as gently as he can manage. 

He breaks away from you, love in his eyes as he stares down into yours, catching his breath. “I don’t think we own a vase.” 

In his kitchen, you rifle through cupboards to find something to hold the flowers, eventually finding a whiskey decanter in the cupboard under the sink, and holding it up for Sunghoon to see.

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “It’s Jay’s. It’ll work right?” 

You nod, taking it to the sink to rinse it. Sunghoon wraps his arms around you from behind, resting his chin on your shoulder watching you fill the decanter with water and flower food before grabbing the bouquet. He presses open-mouthed kisses to your neck and you struggle to stay focused as you cut down the stems on the flowers, arranging them neatly. 

“Can I take a photo?” he asks when you’re done. 

He’s smiling when you turn around to look at him, a soft curve of his lips that makes your heart race, a deep tenderness in his eyes when you meet them. You smile too. 

“They’re yours, baby, do whatever you want.” 

“A photo of you with the flowers,” he clarifies. 

Warmth settles in your chest, a grin spreading over your lips from ear to ear. You nod, taking the decanter in your hands when he lets go of you, holding the flowers up beside your face and smiling for his camera. As his phone shutter clicks away, you steal glances at his face behind it. He’s watching the screen with a smile, telling you how beautiful you are.

“I want pictures of you too,” you say, handing the flowers over. 

“I’m yours, baby, do whatever you want.” 

Sunghoon poses for your photos, smiling sweetly in some and sniffing the bouquet appreciatively with closed eyes for others. He’s glowing and he’s beautiful and your heart triples in size while taking picture after picture until your phone tells you it has ten percent. 

“Thank you, YN,” he says. “I’ve never gotten flowers before, I love them.” His arms settle around your waist, lips pressing against yours before you have the chance to respond. 

You try anyway, mumbling against his lips that you love him. In response, Sunghoon grins, but the feeling of his cock growing hard against you is distracting, a lust-coated thorn in the side of the butterflies fluttering in your stomach. With locked lips and uncertain steps, the two of you bump into corners and trip over your own feet, stumbling to his room and parting only to tear his hoodie over his head.

Breathless, you pull away, eyes trailing over him and picking up on everything, from the tremble in his hands to the lust-addled worry in his eyes. He’s nervous, you think—though it escapes you, the last word coming out like a question.

Sunghoon scoffs, his hands resting on your waist under your shirt, skin clammy against yours. “Of course, I’m nervous.” 

“You don’t have to be.”

“I just want to be good for you.” 

“Don’t worry about that, let me take care of you, Hoon.” Your palms drag up his torso — firm abs through soft cotton, defined chest over racing heart — to rest on his shoulders. “Sit,” you say when he nods. 

He gulps, taking a seat on the end of his bed under your gentle push, eyes widening when you sink to your knees between his legs and reach for his drawstring, pulling the ends to untie the knot. 

“Wait,” Sunghoon says, breathless, scrunching up his face and dropping his head. “Let me calm down, baby. At this rate, I’ll come just seeing your hand on it.” 

You giggle, resting your head on his thigh and wrapping the drawstring around your finger.

“I’m serious, YN,” he mumbles, laughing as he takes his vest off. “I need a minute.” 

Sunghoon’s eyes are pressed shut as he tries to collect himself, lips pouty and kiss-bitten, slightly parted with ragged breaths slipping out. You wait patiently for him. He’s so pretty like this, with the crease in his brow and the pretty pink flush dusting his cheeks as his chest rises and falls. You can’t help but smile, leaning into his touch when his hand rests on top of your head, his blunt nails grazing your scalp. After a while, he seems more at ease, his eyes finding yours and he smiles shyly, telling you he’s ready now and lifting his hips from the bed to let you pull his sweats and underwear down. 

Free from the constraints of fabric, his cock slaps his stomach with a wet sound as the tip meets his skin, leaving a pearlescent streak over his abs. The sight makes your mouth water and you can’t look away. “Pretty,” you whisper.

Wrapping a hand under his tip, you swipe it with your thumb, taking time to memorise the flutter of his eyelids, the bobbing of his Adam’s apple, and the soft sigh he lets out. You stroke him slowly, liking the way his breath picks up as his brows knit together before you take him in your mouth. It’s a tight fit but you do your best, spurred on by the way he tugs at your hair and stutters through a holy fuck as you take as much of him as you can. 

Sunghoon goes silent, only squirming when you use your hand to stroke him near his base. Self-conscious about his lack of vocal affirmation, you look up at him through your lashes, and the pure bliss on his face is unbearably attractive. His eyes are rolled back under furrowed brows, his mouth hanging open as he throws his head back.

“Am I doing okay?” you ask, using the moment to catch your breath.

He nods, inhaling shakily and screwing his eyes shut while his hips buck up into your fist. “I’m.. You’re doing such a good job, baby, so good.”

Satisfaction courses through you from the praise, a high that dulls the ache in your jaw. Still watching him, you massage his balls in your palm, pressing open-mouthed kisses to his tip when he whines. You tongue at his slit until he thrusts back into your mouth, tip hitting your throat, and he gasps when you gag, his arm coming up to cover his eyes. A belated apology slips from his lips, mumbled as he strokes your hair with a shaking hand and goes quiet again. When you speed up, his breath stutters, the muscles in his thighs contracting around your head as you suck and lick and drool on his cock. 

A moan of your name, and his hand holding your hand down, are the only warnings you get before Sunghoon comes, spilling his load right down your throat. Whining, his hips buck up against your face, pushing further and further until he falls back onto the mattress.

Your throat is hoarse and aches while you use the back of your hand to wipe at your lips, enjoying what’s left of his taste on your tongue. Deep red tints his neck and chest, a pretty flush gleaming under the sheen of sweat on his skin. He’s mesmerising, as he tries for air through swollen lips and looks up at you through squinted eyes. He reaches for you, cute grabby hands tugging your shirt and pulling you down so you’re lying next to him with your head on his chest. 

“You’re amazing, baby, so good for me,” Sunghoon whispers, eyes fluttering shut as you drag your nails over his torso, feeling the subtle heave of the slick, sculpted muscle over his stomach and chest. 

Pride heats your chest, satisfaction rolling over you like a wave. “Really?”

He hums in affirmation, nodding his head. 

“You were so quiet, I couldn’t really tell,” you add, hungry for more praise. 

“The walls are so thin in here, I just got used to being quiet,” Sunghoon says, frowning. Hand meeting your chin, he tips your head up towards him, pressing a soft kiss to your lips and mumbling, “I’m sorry. You were perfect, I swear.” 

It’s a sweet kiss. Until lips move harder and hands get lower, desperate as he thumbs the top of your leggings, palm unmoving but a dangerous heat blooms in your stomach anyway.

“Can I..” Sunghoon pinches you softly through the material, unsure eyes boring deep into yours. 

You nod. “You can.” 

Slipping under your waistband, his fingers skate across your skin dipping between your thighs. He grazes your slit, satisfaction clear in the groan he lets out as he feels the wetness there, pulling it over the length of your slit to cover your clit. Your breath hitches, a strangled gasp, pleasure and surprise meeting in your throat under the pressure of his thumb on your clit, the gentle sting of his finger pushing into you. 

What Sunghoon lacks in experience, he makes up for with the sheer length and thickness of his fingers. It’s almost jarring, it’s enough to force your eyes closed and bring a sigh rumbling out of you, ache and relief settling between your legs, where he curls a finger against your walls and drags slow circles over your clit. 

“Can you take these off, baby?” he asks, hand away to touch your leggings. 

You don’t waste a second, sitting up to pull them off, throwing them and your underwear across the room. Sunghoon licks his lips, tugging at the hem of your shirt. 

“And this? If you want..” 

You nod, pulling it off immediately to let it join the rest of your clothes in a heap on the floor. The way he gulps is a confidence boost, his dilated pupils taking in every inch of your body, though his gaze always pulls back to your bra—white and lacy, thin enough for your nipples to push through the fabric and Sunghoon can’t seem to get enough, though he waits until you’re lying down again to touch you. 

Sunghoon props himself up on his elbow, leaning over you. “You’re beautiful,” he whispers, dragging a finger over the lace at the top of your bra, toying with the material and the little bow sitting between your breasts. His eyes flick up to meet yours. “So beautiful,” he repeats. 

Hiding your face in his chest, you mumble, “Thank you,” into his skin while trying to ignore the heat spreading over your body wherever he touches you. His hand trails from your arm to your waist, resting on your hips to slip over your ass for a beat, where he grabs and squeezes the flesh there before coming back around to slot between your legs—you lift one of them, resting it over his body, and he’s smiling sweetly when you look up at him.

Sunghoon’s movements are unchanging, though the sensation is heightened by the unbridled desire in his lidded eyes that urges white heat to lick over every inch of your skin—this time he pushes two fingers into you.

It doesn’t get better than this, you think. But it does, quickly. 

Leaning over you, his eyes flick across your face, one feature at a time as he chews on his lip. Reaching up, you push some of his hair from his face, holding it back and saying, “Relax, baby.” 

“Don’t want to hurt you.”

Moving your hand, you blink when his hair flops back over his forehead, tickling your eyelashes. His eyes are focused now, staring straight down into yours, want and worry flashing behind them. 

“You won’t, I promise,” you say, locking your pinky with his, feeling relieved when he smiles.

Sunghoon pushes in slowly, his name slipping from your lips when he exhales shakily, head falling forward. The sting, the pleasure, make it hard to breathe, molten desire taking hold of your lungs as he carves out a place for himself as far as you’ll take him, all the way to the hilt as slow as he can manage. 

A moan tears out of him, lewd and whiny as his hair tickles your collarbone, head falling into the crook of your neck. His skin is hot and damp against yours, his breath burning your shoulder as he tries to calm down. It’s difficult to register much else, tethered only by the sound of his voice when he asks, “Am I hurting you?” 

“Hoon,” you whisper. 

“Can you look at me, baby?” He lifts his head, resting a hand on your cheek. You blink your eyes open, gaze locking with his, where concern pushes through his desire. “Am I hurting you?” he asks again. “Are you okay?” 

You nod. “I’m okay, just..” You sigh. “Full. Need a minute.” 

Sunghoon kisses you, lips moving gently with yours, passing breathy whines between your mouths until you feel yourself relaxing. Pulling his plush bottom lip between yours, you suck on it, nodding. “Want you to move, baby,” you mumble. 

He scans your face, eyes meeting yours as he pulls his hips back. He’s slow, so slow with his thrusts that your belly turns with want, your fingernails sink into the taut skin of his back, and jagged sobs fall out of you with each drag of his cock along your walls. 

Everywhere his skin touches yours is set ablaze with scorching heat, goosebumps pushing past the surface as his breath fans your neck and his sharp teeth graze your skin. He bites hard enough to sting, and you wince as his tongue flicks over your bitten flesh to soothe you.

You were so worked up earlier, writhing against the sheets and coming undone in his palm, so bliss quickly pushes through the ache between your legs. “Good, Hoon, feels so good,” you manage, struggling to convey how perfect it is.

“Just want to make you feel good.” His words melt into each other, vowels soft and elongated as they curl around each other. He’s working up a steady rhythm, his tip consistently nudging you where you need it—the spot that makes the room blur around you. “That’s all I want.” 

Before long, the knot in your stomach pulls you up from the mattress, arching your back towards the ceiling. Mouth to mouth, chest to chest—it’s the closest you’ve ever felt to someone else, the closest you’ve ever been. The thought alone knocks the wind out of you, and his persistent whining does nothing to help.

Your want and adoration for Sunghoon run bone-deep, inching up your spine and creeping over your shoulders, intertwined with an all-consuming pleasure that turns the heat in your stomach molten as a shudder zips through you. Even though you can’t find the words to let him know, he lifts your hips from the bed to fuck you deeper, harder, into the mattress until shaky orgasms pull both of you under. 

You let him fall into you, fingers curling around his hair, whispering I love you into the skin of his neck as he comes, most of his weight on top of you while you catch your breath, relishing in the fullness you feel as the last waves of your high pull back. You stay like this for as long as he needs, his head coming up from the crook of your neck to smile at you before pressing his lips to yours. A sleepy haze fills the room around you, tongue swiping tongue as you giggle happily into his mouth. 

After a while, he gets up, tying the condom to throw it away and comes back with his shirt. He uses it to clean up—gentle between your legs, pressing kisses to your calves while he does. Sunghoon’s tenderness wraps around your heart, and love clouds your vision, forming a blurry trail that follows all of his movements, glowing like something from a dream, ethereal, an apparition. 

The bed dips beside you, his arms around you, pulling you in so his chin rests on your head. You push your cheek into his chest, hoping the two of you will meld into one—the thought makes you warm all over, a fuzziness that reaches every part of your body while he presses kisses into your hair, rubbing your back. 

“I love you,” he says, voice as soft as the rest of him. “I’m glad I exist.”

mama park: Hi lovely 😍 missing you lots, wondering when you’ll be home for Xmas………..love ma

Sunghoon stirs, nose scrunching as he snores softly into the quiet of a winter morning. His chest rises and falls steadily under your head and he doesn’t move when you sit up. The lamp on his desk is still on — neither of you could be bothered getting up to turn it off last night — and under its dim glow, you admire him. Perfect lips gently curved—long lashes kissing the skin under his eyes. 

Love hits you from all angles, warmth all over from head to toe despite the chill in Sunghoon’s room. You can’t help but grin, leaning up to nose along the underside of his chin, his natural scent so soft yet dizzying as you nuzzle into him. He stirs again, turning his head this way and that before resting, you feel a bit bad, deciding to leave him be and text his mum back. 

you: hi mum !!! missing you sooooooo much :((( will be home asap

mama park: BTW Sunghoon told me everything. I raised such good actors LOL make sure he looks after you and keeps you happy!

you: i’m so sorry we lied to you..

you: but i’m really happy with him and he loves me a lot

you: i love him so much .. never been so sure of anyone in my life

© zreamy (2023), all rights reserved. do not repost, translate, or plagiarise my work. do let my know your thoughts !

permanent taglist: @asahicore

[indecisivemuch]

Lovesick & Lovelorn

Pairing: Luke Castellan x Reader

Summary: You thought that Luke Castellan, your best friend, did not reciprocate your feelings for him. To cope, you wrote letters addressed to him and kept them in a box. What happens when one of your sisters finds it? Inspired by 'To All the Boys I've Loved Before' (fluff, best friends to lovers; you thought it was unreciprocated feelings, happy ending).

Note: Ahh, I'm so happy the show got renewed for season 2.

Word count: 3.3k

You were deeply convinced your fate was tied to one with eternal lovelorn. 

Three years ago, you arrived at Camp Half-Blood and settled into the Hermes cabin before you were claimed by your Godly parent. It was there that you met Luke Castellan - one of your soon-to-be best friends. Though, you knew you were doomed from your first glance into his eyes. Then came his friendly smile and an offer of a handshake, where his hand engulfed yours.

At first, you thought that silly little crush would dissipate. But over time, as you became close friends with the Hermes cabin counselor, you were almost convinced he was faultless. You seemed to adore every little thing about him. Along with the fondness that grew in your heart was also self-pity. At one point, even looking at him hurt because you knew he did not return your feelings.

Hence, the letters.

In between your memories of Luke were letters you wrote throughout those years just to cope with the unreciprocated feeling. It was painful, but what else could you do? You truly believed confessing would put your friendship at risk. Neither did you feel like dealing with the heartache of a rejection. So you never uttered any of your feelings to him, continuing to imprint it on lined papers instead.

You scowled as the pen you were using ran out of ink, leaving the latest edition of unspoken words unfinished. Wordlessly, you fold the incomplete letter into an envelope and shove it into the turquoise box you bought while returning from a quest once. You neatly put the box under your bed.

“Y/N, it’s time to head out,” one of your sisters repeated. Two minutes ago, people were starting to leave, so those on cleaning duties could clean up your cabin. Since you were mid-writing, you hastily asked for a few more seconds. Now, you were the only one left besides two of your sisters.

“Yes, sorry,” you quickly muttered, exiting the cabin and almost immediately bumped into Luke. “Hey, what are you doing here?” you asked.

“I’m here for you. I thought we should hang out,” Luke answered ever so casually. Yet, your heart swelled at the thought that he was there for you. Before you could reply, you two were interrupted by another camper, who told you that one of your other best friends needed you and that it was an emergency.

“I’m so sorry, we’re gonna have to take a rain check on that hangout,” you informed Luke. You slowly started walking backward and away from him. “I’ll see you later, though?”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. Come find me whenever you’re done, yeah?” Luke requested, hoping to spend time with you later. His soft look made you pause mid-step, almost as if your foot had been cemented to the stones beneath. You nodded absentmindedly before snapping out of that state to comfort your friend.

After two hours of listening to your friend and comforting them, you finally left their cabin to search for Luke, who previously told you to find him after. However, around half an hour later, you slowly gave up at the thought of doing so, feeling almost defeated.

As you turned to head back to your cabin, you spotted the Hermes counselor exiting his. You called out his name, watching his back stiffen before he turned to you. You ignored the odd behavior and recalled, “I’m free now if you’re down to hang out.”

“I’m so sorry, but I’m really busy right now.”

“Uhm, well, I guess I’ll just meet you at our spot whenever you’re done then?” you suggested. You and Luke fell into a routine of star-gazing every night.

Laying under the dark sky that painted your whole horizon often made you feel small. But something about that was so calming, especially considering most of the time, you were suffocated by the weight and duties of being a Demigod. You wondered if it was the moment or if it was Luke’ presence that aided your momentary peace.

“I really, really can’t tonight, I have a lot of things to do.”

“Oh… that’s okay. I’ll see you around?” you replied, watching as Luke fidgeted and gulped while attempting to look normal. It was futile, really, because being best friends meant you could sense when the slightest thing was even off. He nodded, and you retreated to your cabin with thoughts swirling in your head.

Then came the next few torturous and confusing days. For the last two years, Luke would always approach you - almost daily, and vice versa. Being best friends with Luke has been wonderful. Every day together felt like a blessing.

Now, it seemed almost like he was avoiding you. He would find a new excuse whenever you approached. He wouldn’t even look in your direction. Yesterday, you made eye contact with him, and he turned away abruptly, facing his back towards you.

You had enough after day three. You went to your cabin after dinner and reached under your bed with one hand. You did not want to, but this would perhaps be your first-ever letter of anguish about Luke Castellan.

The box…where is the box?

You peered under your bed, mouth hanging open when your eyes could not spot it either. You looked up and around, hoping maybe you had misplaced it somewhere, even though part of you knew you had put it under your bed. You have always done so.

“Hey, have you seen a turquoise box?” you asked your sister as she walked by.

“Oh, the rectangle one, about this big?” your sister reconfirmed, using her hand to show you the size she indicated.

“Yes, that one.”

“Oh, I gave it to Luke.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I was cleaning the cabin three days ago, accidentally knocked it over and saw letters addressed to him. He was right by the door, so I thought maybe I should just deliver them to him.”

Blood drained from your face, and your heart plummeted. Anything else your sister seemed to be talking about started sounding like murmurs, and you could not focus on a word she was saying. Your worst nightmare seemed to have arrived. Somehow, your friendship with him had ended without you knowing. No wonder he has been avoiding you these past few days. He has read them all.

“I need to go,” you quickly muttered, storming out of your cabin. You could feel your body slightly shaking from the panic. No amount of Demigod training had prepared you for moments like these. Then you saw Luke walking over you…with the box in his hands. You took a deep breath and practically forced your voice box to work.

“Listen, Luke—”

“I didn’t think you’d buy birthday gifts that early, Y/N,” he interrupted.

“What?” you questioned and observed the sweet smile gracing his Adonis-like face.

“This?” he gestured to the box. “Your sister gave it to me and said it was from you. Though I thought I should give it back ‘cause it’s not my birthday yet, you might have wanted to give it to me yourself.”

“Oh…” it was the only thing you could utter as it dawned on you what he had perceived the situation as. “Wait, so you haven’t opened it?” you clarified.

“Nope.”

“...So we’re ok?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t we be?” your mouth hung slightly agape at his words. As you scrunch your eyebrows, you could see how his fingers fidget somewhat, almost as if he could tell you would bring his odd behavior up.

“You’ve been acting really odd the last few days, Luke. It had me worried. I thought I did something wrong. It seems like you were avoiding me.”

“I was just really busy with counselor duties,” he dismissed it. However, something about it made you a bit hesitant to believe his words. You did it anyway, nevertheless. You blamed it on your stupid heart.

“Yeah, but—” you stopped, not wanting to stir anything. “Ok then, I’m going to put this away, but I’ll see you later, yeah? Maybe we can finally not rain check again?” You hated how hopeful you sounded. You’re glad that the sun had set a few minutes ago, blessing you with enough degree of darkness to hide your facial expressions from being as evident as they would be in daylight.

“Of course, I’ll see you later, Y/N,” despite the dark and only dim lights from nearby, you noticed there was something different about him. Luke was wearing a nervous smile, almost sheepish like a schoolboy. There was a glimmer of amazement in his eyes like he was in disbelief. Though it was definitely overpowered by a glaring degree of warmth. He was looking at you like all those writers have written down in the books you have read before - something along the lines of adoration and love.

You shook those thoughts away again, refusing to somehow fool yourself into believing he could reciprocate those feelings.

“Yeah, see you,” you muttered, hand gripping tightly on the box as you took it from his hold. As soon as you reached your cabin, you opened the box to peer inside. You immediately sighed in relief upon seeing the copious amount of letters with your handwriting on them, all with Luke’s name on the front.

However, your eyes landed on one unfamiliar one. It had your name on it, written in a familiar wonky handwriting that you have always found endearing.

You sat on your bed, taking the letter out delicately, almost in disbelief. Then, dread overtook any other emotion. Was this Luke’s way of letting you down easy? By pretending to not have read any of your letters and rejecting you through the form that you express your love to him? — you had to physically shake your head at that thought.

You took the letter out of its envelope and started reading: 

‘Dear Y/N,

This is probably the 40th time I tried writing this letter. It feels impossible to try and convey everything onto one piece of paper.

You deserve someone to at least view you as their muse rather than always being the writer. 

Hence why, for the past few days, I had to physically drag myself away from you every time you tried approaching me because I knew if I didn’t, I would just end up spilling my feelings out right then. I knew if I even looked at you, I would have just abandoned this letter idea and run to you. You should have seen me yesterday. When we made eye contact, I had to turn away from you because having the knowledge of you liking me back was enough to knock all the air out of my lungs. I was a flustered mess from just that eye contact.

I doubt my words could rival what you have written about me. You once wrote how it hurts to love someone this much and to always be the poet but never the poem. Well, I’d like to thank you for making me your poems. However, now it is your turn. Allow me to be your poet.

You occupy my mind like it’s your castle. If I had to name everything I love about you, this letter would never end. But for starters, here are some of the first times:

The first time Chiron introduced you to the Hermes cabin, I could not take my eyes off you. Chris had to nudge me away. Just from that alone, a part of me knew I was in trouble. I think I came to the conclusion that I did not want to hold anybody else’s hand after just shaking yours.

2.5 years back during a campfire in June, even when the fire had died and the air grew cold, our voices still filled the air. Conversations just flow when I am with you. I remember never wanting that moment to end. Then you started talking about constellations and told me about the ones above us. Right there and then was the first time I had the urge to kiss you, and to show you that I was just as obsessed with you as you were with stars.

The first time I realized I was in love with you was while coming back from a quest 2 years ago. I remember feeling so numb coming back. The world almost seemed monotone, and I wondered for a second, what if I had made one wrong move? Just as I returned to camp, you bolted and hugged me. Somehow, it felt like I had just taken my first bit of fresh air after drowning for so long. I vividly recall shutting my eyes as I hugged you back because I felt like I was finally home. I remember never wanting to be away or out of your hold as others approached and rushed to get me into the infirmary for checkups.

It was only when I was lying on the infirmary bed that it hit me like a train that lost control. A large proportion of why I fought so hard was to come back to you. You’re my best friend, Y/N, and my place of solace and peace. Then came the realization that I was in love with you. I remember everybody else’s voice drowning out as I focused on that thought. It was strangely calming, as if my heart had known all along but was waiting for my head to catch up. Then I remember just smiling as I looked at the ceiling, unafraid of the new feeling.

Last year, the day we went on a quest together lapsed with Valentine’s Day. Every moment felt extra sweet. Us sitting on the train, staring outside the window together like a couple going on a trip. My mind savoured the small things like you falling asleep on my shoulder with my coat around you and us holding hands as we walked through the crowd to not get lost among couples - which I like to imagine that others had thought we were one as well. It was the first time I allowed myself to pretend this is how it would feel like if you were mine and how our lives together would be if we were not Demigods.

I thought for sure you would have realized something by the way I was staring and acting around you that I was irrevocably in love with you. After reading your letters, I realized that you did see it. But you refused to believe that I could ever be in love with you. Well, I hope my letters will reverse all your doubts, because Y/N, it is so easy to fall in love with you. 

In fact, the world I built up in my head during last year’s quest had consumed my thoughts enough to make me frown at the idea of returning to camp, where it would not just be the two of us anymore. Loving you has never been something I was afraid of. Loving you has been an honour every single day, even if you never knew of it. 

It’s also somewhat funny that I was heavily lovesick while you were lovelorn. But I promise, Y/N, that from this second on, I intend to make you know that you are loved and that I am so deeply in love with you.

Again, I never intended for you to wait for three days, but I ended up throwing away every letter I started because I felt like none had suffice. I didn’t want to mess it up and give you something less than you deserved. I wanted to do something nice for you. I promise I’ll make it up for those three days if you allow me to. But one chance is all I need.

If you are willing to give me that chance, you know where to find me.

Sincerely,

Luke Castellan’

Upon reading his last words, you immediately left your cabin with the letter in hand. You jogged to the spot where the two of you would always meet to stargaze together. Almost instantly, you saw his tall figure under the moonlight. As if he could sense your presence, the Hermes boy turned around and gave you a sweet smile.

“You meant it?” you asked as you raised the letter up, slowly approaching him.

“Every single word, including all the unspoken ones I intend on telling you from now on,” the way he said it felt like he was swearing it on his own heart. “In fact, I would have written more down, but I knew I was keeping you waiting for too long,” he explained as you stopped right before him.

Something about this moment felt cathartic. Three years of dancing around unspoken words and yearning led to this moment. Luke grabbed your hand and rubbed his thumb over your knuckle. You peered up at him, and it was then that you finally accepted what his looks meant: he was in love with you, and there was no doubt about that. There was no more denial on your end that Luke Castellan was enamored with you.

“Will you let me be your poet, Y/N?” he breathlessly referenced the words you and him had both previously written like he had been waiting for this for a lifetime.

“Of course,” you answered almost without hesitation, watching his eyes soften even more, if possible.

“Is it ok if I ask you another question?” he asked again, his other hand caressing your cheek.

“Yeah?” Your face flushed as you saw his brown eyes dart to your lips.

“Can I kiss you?”

This time, you didn’t say anything. You’ve written down way too many words in the past three years. You decided actions would speak louder in this case. So you pulled Luke down by his camp necklace, hands gripping the beads on it as you tiptoed up to reach his lips. 

Luke physically melted as he brought one hand to your waist to hold you up as he leaned down from the height difference. Everything Luke had imagined before could not match the kiss he was finally sharing with you - the kiss that seemed to seal his lips into a spell that would forever leave them unable to belong to anyone else. It felt like heaven and hell combined because he knew that this was going to ruin him forever, and every second he spent with his eyes shut would be one where he had this feeling and moment sown behind his eyelids. 

You had the same line of thoughts. The wait was long, but you felt like it was worth it. Under the stars, you may feel small. But standing there next to Luke, you finally realize it doesn’t matter. Because he was holding you like you were the only thing that mattered.

You were his sun, moon, and everything in between - no constellations could ever measure to you.

--------------------

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[seraphicsentences]

HEY! i knwo your on a break but just incase your bored could you write reader sending spicy texts2 streamer!ellie while shes on like a boss level, and then after ‘raging’ at reader for making her lose, she comes back as if the chat isnt questioning the sounds coming from the other room (silly girl forgot to mute)

hi. tumblr j deleted all my edits to this. i’m rage quitting and j posting this version i banged out in the span of 15 minutes 😀 anyways.

FUCK i’m sorry i know this took fucking forever and now i’m delivering mediocrity. loved this req either way this was smf to write. hope you enjoy sweet girl ;)

me when i disappear for a month and come back only to deliver pure dog shit. 🤪🤪

“-KID JUST GOT FUCKING DESTROYED, FUCKING BITCH.”

it was a late friday night, which meant ellie was streaming in her room, and you were supposed to be studying.

this week ellie was hosting a special in celebration of hitting 10k subscribers, and was grinding away to finally defeat Resident Evil’s final boss.

you could hear the chat dinging away with message after message, no doubt blasting ellie with compliments on her play, and the occasional comment thirsting over her hands or whatnot. it was nothing new— you’d seen the countless edits of her on your own social media page, and even had a folder of your own favorites saved away on a burner account.

“let me suck your fing- WHAT?! that is a crazy thing to say,” you could hear ellie’s shocked voice. “either way, chat, i’m married…”

“where’s my ring? UP YOUR ASS. c’mon, leave me be, guys,” ellie jokingly whined, bantering with her obsessive fanbase.

you held back a smile of your own, hand pressed to your mouth as she continued to scold the chat for their outrageously filthy messages. what a dork.

“alright alright, im muting the chat. love you guys but i gotta focus now! this is serious shit and i’m low on ammo now, hah-ha,” ellie spoke to the screen, words slightly muffled through the thin wall.

in the living room papers lay strewn across the floor, couch littered with eraser shavings and crumpled post-it notes, yourself splayed atop it all.

studying was a long-forgotten task you abandoned to instead sweep lazily through your camera roll, attempting to clear up some much needed storage.

you stopped abruptly at the thumbnail of an old video, in which depicted a downright sinful image of ellie’s bared neck for you as she arched back in pleasure.

you quite literally salivated at the veins that adorned her sweat-glistened skin, naked chest that was just covered by the play button in the center, goading you to click it.

quiet sounds of ellie’s desperate moans picked up, her head coming up look just above the camera and deliver the most pathetically fucked-out look.

“ple-ease can i cum, mommy?” she whined, voice breaking with every thrust of your fingers, wet squelching in the background a sign of her neediness.

“let me hear you, baby,” you heard yourself coo through the screen, the video becoming shaky as you picked up your pace— before suddenly ending on accident right as ellie let out a strangled whimper.

you met it with one of your own, frustrated with being left on an unfinished high, the throbbing at your core impossible to ignore.

your thighs shifted against one another, wetness pooling in your underwear as you replayed ellie’s final sound in your head over and over again.

your trance was broken by the sound of a frustrated groan coming from behind ellie’s door.

“fuck, i got it this time, i got it, swear,” she cursed as the game’s recognizable ‘revive’ audio cue played.

she could just do this again next week, right?

without a second longer of thinking, you quickly screen-shotted a clear frame from the video, shooting it ellie’s way and sending a quick text to follow.

~~

ellie choked on her own spit as she clicked the blur away. cough- “fuck-“ wheeze- “shit-“ hack- “sorry, guys, j choked on my own saliva.”

what the fuck? what games were you trying to play?

you groaned, hearing the firing of guns continue on alongside ellie’s commentary.

sliding your panties aside, you spread your legs to display the mess between them, snapping a quick picture.

you shot back another text.

“just one more hit, one more one more one m- i- fuck,” you hear ellie stutter. “oh fuck, yep… and i’m dead, ‘kay, sorry guys just give me like 5 i’ll be back. gotta take care of something.”

you heard the slam of her headphones hitting the table and a screech of her chair sliding back against the hardwood floors.

the door swung open, the look in ellie’s eyes making your heart race with anticipation.

“hey els, good game?” you asked innocently from your position on the couch, legs crossed with your arm resting over the back.

“good game? yeah, great game actually,” she replies sarcastically, sauntering her way over to you. “you didn’t happen to need something, did you?” she asks, hopping onto the couch and quirking an eyebrow up.

“me? no…” you trail off as she leans in to brush a kiss across your lips.

“no?” she tucks your hair aside, before leaning in to whisper, “you mind spreading those pretty legs for me then, baby? i just want a look.”

“els,” you whine, attempting to catch her mouth in a kiss.

she avoids it, dipping down instead to rasp words against your racing pulse, “show me.”

you uncross your legs slowly, a damp patch darkening the very center of your shorts.

ellie grabs the leg closest to her, swiveling your body in one swift move to face her direction, placing that leg over the back of the couch as she runs her other hand up your opposing leg.

“fuck, els, i need you,” you say breathlessly, hips bucking into the air.

“let’s get these off,” she replies with a squeeze, tugging at your waistband. “wanna tell me what’s got you texting me like a slut in the middle of my stream? was it the video? my video?”

she dips her thumb into your leaking hole, swiping your arousal up in a messy circle over your aching clit.

“ah- shit! yes, fuck, y’sounded s-so pretty in it, els,” you moaned, nerves overly sensitive from the wait. “please,” you cried out, unsure of what exactly you were begging for, but you needed more.

“so fuckin’ needy,” ellie laughs under her breath, relishing in the loud groan that escapes your lips when she replaces her hand with her mouth, tongue flicking rhythmically against your swollen clit to draw out more of those pretty sounds.

“oh-oh, god, right there, so good- mmph,” you rock your hips up, hand scrambling to tug ellie’s mouth even closer to you, if possible.

mmhm she moans into your pussy, the vibrations making you jerk up as your legs clamp tightly around her head. ellie’s hands dash up immediately to shove them apart, pressing them wide open with an iron grip as she practically growls, “you asked for this. so fucking take it.”

two of her fingers slide easily into you with the next pull on your clit, and you’re arching up in a manner almost identical to ellie’s in the video, whining nonsensically.

“you’re dripping, baby,” ellie tuts, “just couldn’t wait for me, huh?”

she continues to pump her fingers deep into you, curling them on every outstroke to slide against the spot that makes you see stars.

“c’mon, cum all over my fingers,” she teases, whispering sweet praises between kitten licks to your sensitive clit.

with your head thrown back, you couldn’t help but moan her name like a fucking prayer as your walls started to tighten, legs trembling under her grasp as she worked you through your high.

“that’s it, soak my fucking fingers.”

~

iluvgirls_moms: THAT WAS 1000% A MOAN

elliesleftarm33: guys what the fuck is happening 😀 ellie babes, i think you forgot to mute.

ewilliamsismy_wife: did anyone else j hear ellie’s name. are the voices getting to me?

elliewsjizzfr6996: how to be ellie’s gf no glue no borax? 🥲🥲

1toesuckersslurper: NAH ITS BEEN WELL OVER 10 MIN IM OUTTA HERE

yeahhh… looks like ellie owes her subscribers a real big 10k special next week. and an apology.

[plumipal]

Last Name Dilemma

Yknow, this is purely for myself, happy me hating my last name. This is a yandere thing btw and please note that I am an artist, not a writer :,) so sorry for any grammar/spelling mistakes

I had this amazing idea. If you don't really like your last name and get sucked into the world of twisted wonderland, why not just get a new one? It's very easy when you have suitors vying for your attention at every corner of the school! 🤭

It all started in the cafeteria...

Of course they were overjoyed you thought their last names were cool, did this mean you indirectly wanted to marry them? Well the game is on, and they for sure will win.

Much to their displeasure though, rumors speads fast at NRC, with everyone else quickly getting to know about your lastname dilemma. They are not backing down, wanting to burn the world down just to achieve their happy ending with you.

Ace

Of course you would want to marry him! He is your first friend in this wretched school after all! (Deuce would like to differ on that statement but yeah)

Ace may not be the richest, smartest or most beautiful, but he is your best friend, (hopefully) your first choise and (will make sure to be) your first love! Guy is serious. He will also pull all sorts of dirty tricks against everyone else, you're his bestie to marry no one else's!

Deuce

Ah poor little Deuce. Guy choked on his food when he first heard you talk about how cool their last names sounded. You think his last name is cool? Does that mean that you like him too? You wanna date him, marry him? Be his forever?? He is feeding into his own delusions and your words are only making it worse.

As soon as he has finished lunch he will excuse himself and make a call to his mom and tell her the wonderful news on how you and him will definitely get married! (He just gotta get you a sweet, sweet ring that you deserve)

Cater

Cater being quick on the trends, he was even quicker on the rumors about you having no last name (and definelty needing one). He has such a cute last name, it would fit so well with you! <3

He is already dreaming up the perfect magicam wedding, to show off how the oh so wonderful you chose him, and no one else. He also dreams of the private moments after, how you'll hold him as he sobs his heart out, so happy you chose him. He hopes these silly daydreams will soon become reality, cos he can't wait much longer..

He also definelty overloads you with his clones, giving you so much love you don't need to turn to anyone else for that :)

Trey

When Trey heard the rumors he sighed, feeling bad for how overwhelmed you probably are with everyone else's proposals. Well, come to him whenever you feel like it's too much, he will always make sure to lktsen to your problems (he loves the domestic feel to just having late night chats with you in the heartlbuyl kitchen as he prepares another batch of sweets for the next unbirthday party).

He will make sure that his own proposal of marriage is short and sweet, and he is sure it will win you over, who wouldn't want his sweets all day every day? He will make sure to feed and love you for the rest of eternity if you chose him <3

Riddle

Riddle is messy, he wants you as his spouse and he kinda wants it NOW, since he feels like he deserves it. You're the perfect match to him, the king of hearts to his queen od hearts...

He will show off how good of a husband he would be to you, how he will take care of you with a stable job, how he will help you with all homework and make sure you get special treatment on unbirthday parties. If he sees anyone trying to propose why they should be yours and not him, well, you know his unique magic...

Jack

Wolves mate for life. Jack wants to mate for life. Who does he want as his mate? You. You have changed his life, and he does not want to lose you, please. He is territorial, liking how your name would sound with his last name, now he just gotta make it happen..

Ruggie

Ruggie feels desperate when he hears the rumors. Why would you chose him, when you have literal celebrities, prince's and high standing people vying for you? Then he remembers, he owes you. It's usually the other way around yes, bur he owes you somehow.

With this he cooks up the amazing plan of giving you his last name as a thanks for that one time. He also gotta introduce you to his family, he knows granny bucchi is gonna peer pressure you into accepting marriage with him...

Leona

Leona will not lose you. He has lost so much coming second to everyone he knows. He will NOT lose you to anyone here, he will fight dirty and kill for you if there's a chance he gets with you. He has the money to hire help to get rid of people too, and that same money can sway you into chosing him, since that deadbeat crow ain't giving you a liveable sum to live on.

He makes sure to capture you for naps whenever he can, making sure to leave his scent on you, enough so most people can smell how he has been on you.

Floyd

Eeh? Shrimps wants a good last name?? Well with his you could scare oh so many away, leading to an easy life for you! It also leads to a fun life with you and him, and there will never be a dull moment in his life with you by his side!

Just don't take his last name with his brother yeah? Get with him instead.

Jade

Oya? The prefect wants a last name? A husband too perhaps? Jade's smile widens as he plans out how to trap you into a wonderful marriage with him. Perhaps some of his new mushrooms in his terrariums will make you tired enough to get you to sign a marriage contract with him?

Just don't marry his brother instead of him, he don't really know how he would handle that..

Azul

Azul feels himself become of sp happy whenhe heard the rumors. Finally! You will have him corner you as soon as he can, sweet smile on his face as he offers you a golden contract of his. He crafted it meticulously, making sure everything in it would be perfect for the both of you.

He tries to butter you up so badly, please he just wants you to himself, is that too much to ask for?

Jamil

Jamil has to hold back to use snake whisper, but he has it in case you chose the wrong option (not him). He wants you, he does that to lose you to anyone, ESPECIALLY KALIM. He probably uses snake whisper against others, to sabotage, to do anything. He just can't lose you...

He definelty shows off his cooking and cleaning skills, showing how he can be the perfect househusband for you. Look how good you could have it with him...

Kalim

Kalim is manipulative about this. He mat not be aware of it, bur he sure is. He wants you as his (spouce) bestie, and he will get that. Guy has never gotten a no, and he will not get one now (he hope atleast).

Let him plan you a grandiose wedding! With food, clothes, venue, parades and so much more worth millions and millions of thaumarks. He will space no expense for you!

Epel

Why is epel so roughened up? Why he fought for your hand of course! Isn't it manly to show off that you can easily fend gör your love? He also loves loves LOVES the attention you give him as you fix him up.

He feels so proud of the fights he won, wearing the scars like proud medals, so please take care of them before they get infected- he will only let you do it-

Maybe he will get into more fights if he can get your heavenly touch as a reward..

Rook

Rook stalks you on the daily, so of course he got to work as soon as the words left your mouth. He will hunt you down, get your heart and love and live happily every after :)

He 100% gets violent as well, bur of course you won't see that side of him! He wouldn't want to scare you..

Vil

Vil is certain you will chose him. He is the fairest of them all (niege don't count he is ugly), that is what you deserve. He will take care of you, especially your appearance. You've sent how he is with epel, now get ready for double that...

He dolls you up, makes you the best version of yourself so he can show you off on his socials,to mush it into that dumb nieges face that THE vil had you and niege doesn't. He is the fairest of them all with you of course..

Of course, he is the only queen worthy enought for your love and affection, so please just marry him already, he wants a Photoshoot together with you...

Idia (plus Ortho being STRICTLY PLATONIC)

I'm sorry but have you read his ssr story? Guy doxxes over nothing lol. He will breach your security if you tell him no, he has lost so much already, can't he have you please? You're the only thing he wants...

He will 100% use Ortho against you, backing you into a corner together with the robot. Ortho wants to make his brother happy, and he would be the happiest together with you. Ortho would also be so so so happy if you were his bif sibling too!

Theyve lost so much, they just want a happy family, together with you.. (ORTHO ONLY WANTS YOU AS A SIBLING NO WEIRD SHI AGAINST ORTHO PLEASE)

Sebek

Sebek has to run to lilia for guidance. Why has this human out this wonderful spell on him, why does he feel so lightweight? Why is his face so red? Why does he want to reject you for the rest od your days, more than he wants to protect malleus?

He wants to marry you. To have a wonderful marriage between human hand half fae, almost liek his parents... he will protect you at all costs. Please do love his loudmouth ass back..

Silver

Silver has no last name as well, so in his mind you both are already matching. He is too sleepy to actually do anything other than fall asleep with you.

Lilia

Lilia would snicker at the rumors. Ah, how he feels young again, silly what love can do to someone... he would love to help his son's with this, but sadly he wants this just as much if not more...

Malleus

Malleus does not want to lose his friend. His first and only real friend. He has tried to court you for so long, and now that you've dropped a hint that you wanted him (by saying you wanted a cool last name) he starts the royal courting traditions.

He follows all the traditions, step by step, being very careful to be correct and sparing no expense. He makes sure you see the future home of yours (the castle), his humongous hoard and his greatest treasure, gao gao dragon..

.. holy hell this was so much longer than what I expected. Well, who would you go for? Do tell :,)

Also, would yall want more long form content like this or way more short form? My asks got deleted so don't really have any to draw smhhh </3 so do send shi in please <3

[vanteguccir]

── ୨୧ !　𝗙𝗜𝗚𝗛𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗛𝗘𝗥 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗔 𝗧𝗥𝗘𝗡𝗗

　　　　　　　　　𝒄𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒔 𝒔𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒐𝒍𝒐 x reader

SUMMARY: Where Chris has the idea of doing the famous TikTok trend "fighting my girlfriend in front of my brothers" with Y/N, just to see Nick and Matt's reaction.

WARNING: Fake fighting, yelling, crying.

REQUESTED?: Yes, by anon

AUTHOR'S NOTE: That is my work, I DON'T authorize any plagiarism, copy, or "inspiration"! | English isn't my first language, so I'm sorry if there's any grammar error.

　　　༻✦༺ 　༻✧༺　༻✦༺

It was a typical sunny Sunday afternoon. The family of four were at home, enjoying the weekend to relax after their recent trip to Boston.

Nick and Matt were in the living room, playing video games on the big television, loud sounds of car and guns accompanied by laughter and swearing echoed through the large room; while Y/N and Chris were in the kitchen, the girl cooking lunch for them while her boyfriend was leaning against the closed refrigerator, enjoying the light cold that the stainless steel surface provided for his body.

His hands were holding his phone, where he was absentmindedly watching videos on TikTok, scrolling mindlessly, his blue eyes occasionally looking up at his girl, watching her with passionate and careful eyes.

Y/N was cutting some vegetables when Chris quickly approached out of nowhere, surprising her by suddenly touching her back, a wide smile already resting on his face.

"Babe, look at this!" The brunette shouted in a whisper, raising his right hand and resting his cell against his own palm so that the screen was facing Y/N, touching his thumb to the softly lit surface.

Y/N put down the pointy knife momentarily, focusing on the video on low volume that showed a couple pretending to fight each other over something silly in the presence of the boy's parents, apparently waiting to see the reaction of the elders. She had already watched some similar videos on her own app, vaguely remembering the new and already very known trend.

Her confused eyes looked up at her boyfriend's face after the video ended and went back to the beginning automatically, seeing him already looking back at her with a euphoric gaze.

"That's cool, baby, but what does it mean?"

Chris explained his plan in detail in a hushed tone, keeping an attentive eye to his brothers, not wanting them to see his actions.

He would go to their room to "get something" and seconds later, he would go back upstairs pretending to be furious, holding a broken mug that he would also pretend that was his favorite. He would accuse Y/N of breaking the dishes and say horrible things to her in front of Nick and Matt, all to see his brothers' reaction.

"Do you think this is a good idea? What if they take it too seriously?" Y/N watched him explain in detail, her teeth capturing her bottom lip in a light grip momentarily, feeling hesitant.

"Relax, it'll be so cool! Nick and Matt will understand when we explain it after. Plus, it'll be funny to see their reaction." Chris explained quickly, pushing his girl's right shoulder with his own before gluing his hands in a praying gesture.

After a few moments of reflection, Y/N agreed, rolling her eyes playfully at his happiness before picking up her knife again and going back to cutting the vegetables, watching from the corner of her eye as Chris opened one of the cabinets above the stove and fished a dull, white mug from the bottom of the triplets' collection.

The boy showed the piece to his girl excitedly, receiving a laugh and shaking of head as a response. He leaned slightly towards her, sealing the top of her head softly before turning around, walking in discreet steps to the stairs that led to their shared room.

It didn't take long for the sound of footsteps to be heard again, this time firmer and faster. The boy quickly went up the last steps, already getting into character. When he entered the double room, his face was red with "anger" and he held the shards of the mug tightly.

"Y/N!" He shouted, his voice echoing through the house. "Did you do this shit?" His hand, which was holding the broken mug, rose into the air, rudely showing the pieces. "You broke my favorite mug!? How could you be so careless?"

Nick and Matt, who were sitting on the couch, looked up quickly, stopping playing instantly, focusing their widened eyes on Chris. They had never seen their brother so upset, not with his girlfriend.

"Hey! I'm talking to you!"

Y/N dropped the knife on the counter with a dull thud, turning around slowly in fright, a fake expression of surprise resting on her face.

"Chris, I swear I didn't do it on purpose." The girl said, her voice slightly shaking as she raised her hands in surrender. "I was just cleaning up the mess, trying to help..."

"Help? You messed everything up! As always." Chris retorted, walking quickly towards the kitchen table and throwing the broken pieces of the mug against the wooden surface, the sound of more shattering ceramics echoing through the room. "That was my favorite mug! Do you have any idea when I got it? Years ago! You're useless, Y/N. Honestly, I don't even know why I'm still with you!"

Nick and Matt looked at each other, visibly uncomfortable and shocked. Nick shook his head, trying to understand if this was serious, while Matt bit his own lower lip, seeming to have an internal struggle between intervening or not. The sound of the video game coming from the television sounded muffled to their ears.

"C-Chris, I'm sorry, I can try to find another-"

"There's no other like it, Y/N! How could you?!" The boy growled, his features tightening more.

"Chris, hey, that's enough." Matt finally intervened, rising from his seat on the couch and approaching with cautious steps. "It's just a mug. You're overreacting."

"Overreacting? You don't understand, Matt. She always does this! Always ruins everything!" Chris continued, walking around the table and advancing towards Y/N, who took a few steps back until her back was against the counter, pretending to be scared. "Look at her! She can't even do a simple task without ruining it!"

"I'm so sorry, Chris. I didn't mean to do that..." Y/N made her bottom lip tremble slightly, forcing her own eyes to water. "Maybe it can be fixed-"

"Apologies aren't gonna fix it, Y/N! I'm sick of your messes!" He shouted as he gestured furiously, moving even closer.

Nick stood up from the couch abruptly as he saw his brother getting closer and closer to his best friend, his own fists clenched.

"Enough, Chris. I'm not going to let you talk to her like that. This is ridiculous! You're losing your temper." The oldest triplet shouted angrily, approaching Matt and glaring at Chris, who completely ignored him and continued advancing.

Matt realized within seconds that his brother wasn't going to hear Nick, sending a look towards the older triplet, who quickly shook his head. Nick approached the girl with quick steps, feeling Matt's eyes on his back, moving closer to the couple and placing himself in front of Y/N, crossing his arms firmly, his eyebrows knitting together in an angrier expression.

"Get out of the way, Nick. This is none of your business." Chris imitated his posture, crossing his arms and glaring at him, taking a quick look at his girl behind his brother, seeing her slightly wet face below the light of the room, feeling like crying himself. He hated seeing her upset.

"Oh, but it is my business, yes. She doesn't deserve to be treated like that!" Nick replied, his voice firm. "And if you scream one more time, I swear I'll shove all these mug pieces in your mouth and make you swallow them."

"You're crossing the line, Chris. It's just a mug, man. That's no reason to act like that. She's your girlfriend and a woman, have some respect, Mary Lou didn't teach you that." Matt joined Nick, nodding as he walked over as well, standing close to Y/N, casting a quick look of concern in her direction.

"How can you defend her? She broke my favorite mug due to lack of attention! I'm so sick of-" Chris's sentence was rudely interrupted by Nick, who took a step closer to him, his right hand coming up quickly and his fingers grabbing the tip of Chris's exposed ear, pulling it down hard. "Ouch! Are you fucking crazy? Nick!"

"You will see crazy if you insult my best friend one more time." Nick quickly responded, shrugging and looking down on him.

Chris held his glare for a few more seconds, his blue eyes darting from Matt - who was stroking Y/N's right shoulder lightly, asking in a hushed voice if she was okay - to Nick and back again, his ear starting to burn with pain, until he finally couldn't take it anymore and started laughing.

Y/N stopped pretending to cry and smiled, relieved, quickly wiping her face as a tearful laugh escaped her throat, jokingly pushing Matt lightly.

"Surprise!" Chris said, still laughing. "You've been pranked."

Nick and Matt broke their tense postures within seconds, Matt lowering his arms so they were straight at his sides before turning, looking at the two, confused for a moment.

"You two are such idiots!" Matt exclaimed, raising his right hand and running his fingers furiously across his face, trying to ease the tension that had settled there. "I almost had a heart attack here!"

"I really thought you were out of control, Chris." Nick said, letting go of his brother's ear, rolling his eyes at the wince the younger let out. "Don't ever do that again!"

"You almost got my ear off!" Chris exclaimed, massaging his ear and casting a look of fake horror towards his girlfriend, who laughed quietly at his reaction.

"You'll see what I'll really get off if you do that shit again. You too, Y/N." Nick pointed at the girl, receiving a look of false shock.

"It was his idea!"

taglist:

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(If you want to be added to the taglist, go to this post)

[daisynik7]

Pairing: Takuma Ino x f!reader

Rating: Explicit – MINORS DO NOT INTERACT

Word Count: ~1.7k

cw: explicit language, mentions of a popular horror movie, smut – PIV sex (cowgirl position), nipple play, blow job, mask kink, slight degradation (slut, whore), use of pet names (cutie, sweetie, baby) 

Summary: You and your new boyfriend Ino decide to watch a horror movie together in honor of spooky season. Halfway through, he notices how skittish you are, making him want to play a silly prank on you with his signature ski mask. It’s all fun and games until he realizes that you actually like seeing him in this way more than he anticipated. 

Author’s Note: Happy October y'all! What can I say, I am VERY into Takuma Ino right now and I just had to get this out of my system. This is barely edited or proofread, sorry for any grammar mistakes or typos, I really was just letting my fingers fly through this in a moment of passion LOL. Likes, reblogs, and/or comments are always appreciated, thank you for reading! MDNI banner by @/cafekitsune. 

You turn off all the lights, the only source of illumination coming from the TV screen, paused at the very start of the movie you decided to watch tonight. With a big bowl of freshly popped kernels in your grasp, you huddle beside your boyfriend, Ino, on the couch, covering both your legs with a fleece blanket. He wraps his arm around you, pulling you in closer, reaching to grab a handful of popcorn to stuff inside his mouth. “Ready?” he muffles, pointing the remote to the screen, finger pressed to the center button. 

Nuzzling your head against him, you answer. “Yup!”

It’s apparently one of those cult classic horror flicks according to Ino, who recommended it when you mentioned how you wanted to watch something scary for October. He’s seen it before, many times in fact, but he insists that you watch it. He has no clue how frightened you get over the silliest things, so tonight will be a treat for the both of you. 

The opening scene plays out: a beautiful blonde picks up the phone and the conversation ends quickly short because it’s the wrong number. Normal so far, good. It rings again, but now the caller seems interested in talking. Do you like scary movies? Do you have a boyfriend? The man’s voice gives you the creeps, and you find yourself shuddering from it, cuddling closer to Ino, who glances at you with a smirk on his face. 

You never told me your name.

Why do you want to know my name?

Because I want to know who I’m looking at.

This line gives you goosebumps and you lift the blankets up to hide behind it. “Ew, creepy!” Ino only laughs, throwing a few more pieces of popcorn into his mouth. 

It escalates from here, getting increasingly chaotic and violent. By the time you’re halfway into the film, the bowl is down to its last kernels and you’re crouched in Ino’s lap, peeking through your fingers. He pauses the movie after one particularly brutal kill. “Snack break! I’m going to make some more popcorn and go pee.”

“You’re leaving?!” you whine, clinging on to him as he tries to get up.

He chuckles. “Babe! It’s just a movie. I’ll be right back, okay?” He kisses you on the forehead, heading into the kitchen, leaving you alone in the living room. 

Of course it’s just a movie, but you can’t help feeling creeped out in the dark like this. You reach for one of the nightstands, turning on the lamp. You hear the drone of the microwave, and after a minute or so, the distinct sound of popping. Eventually, it comes to a stop, and the entire house is eerily quiet. You’re tempted to call out for Ino, wondering where he is, but you remember that he had to use the bathroom. 

Suddenly, a shadowy figure appears right behind on you on the couch, grabbing your shoulders and shouting gibberish at you. You scream bloody murder, ready to punch him and run away when Ino lifts his ski mask up to reveal himself, tears streaming down his face, cracking up at you. 

“Ino!” you yell at him, slapping his hands away from you. “You fucking asshole!”

He doubles over, cackling, wiping his eyes. It takes a good while for him to regain his composure as you glare at him, arms crossed over your chest. “I’m sorry, baby. I just couldn’t resist.” He sits beside you, stretching his arms out for a hug. “You have to admit, that was fucking hilarious.”

You shake your head, refusing. “You’re such a dick.”

“Oh, come on! It was just a little prank. Now you’ll be way more prepared for the rest of the movie!” He pulls the mask over his face again, everything covered except the holes for his eyes. “See? Not so scary anymore, right?”

You inspect him carefully, still pouting, not saying a word.

“I’m sorry, sweetie. Truly. I promise not to scare you again.” He scoots towards you, nudging you in the arm. 

You roll your eyes at him, relaxing. “Fine.”

“Can I get a kiss now?” 

He tries to lift his mask up, but you stop him, pulling it back down. “I don’t want to see your face right now. I’m still annoyed, you know.”

“Aw man! Really?”

You hoist it just past his nose, leaning in to give him a soft kiss on the lips. When you break apart, he smirks at you. “You like this, don’t you? Seeing me with my mask on.”

You shrug, a sly grin on your face, neither confirming nor denying his accusation. Sure, you were a bit upset at first, when he scared the shit out of you. But seeing his face covered like that may have sparked a desire in you that you never knew you had, until now. 

“Oh my god! You do, you do!” he exclaims, shaking your arm. “My cutie has a mask kink!”

“Shut up, asshole!” you yell at him, pretending to shove him off, smiling. 

“You’re a fucking freak!” he giggles, pouncing on you. He starts tickling you along your ribcage, causing you to squirm beneath him as he straddles you, trapping you between his legs. His fingers flutter under your arms, stroking your sensitive skin.

“Ino!” you cry out, laughing from the sensation. 

You can feel his cock growing hard in his pants, balls heavy on your stomach. Suddenly, he stops, mask still folded to expose his lips, leaning down to kiss you sloppily. He pins your hands above your head, locking his fingers with yours. He slips inside your mouth, grazing your tongue with his, hungry for your saliva. “Fuck,” he moans into you, nipping at your bottom lip. “You like this freaky shit, don’t you? Nasty slut.” His playful tone is laden with lust now, low and sultry, mouth brushing along your neck, sucking at your pulse points to mark you. 

You whine his name, wrapping your legs around his waist, grinding yourself against him. 

“Look at you, getting so fucking dumb all because of my mask,” he purrs. “What else turns you on, cutie? Tell me.”

Without thinking, you blurt out, “Spit. Your spit. I want it.”

“Oh shit,” he swears, licking his mouth. He traces the outline of your lips, beckoning you to open up, dribbling a thick wad of saliva inside you. You gulp it down, sticking your tongue out for more. 

“Oh fuck, you’re nasty,” he says, doing it again. “Makes me so fucking horny seeing you like this. Seeing my cutie act like a fucking whore.” He slips beneath your shirt, fondling your bare breasts, flicking your peaked nipples with his thumbs. 

“Fuck, Ino,” you whisper, pussy throbbing in your panties, arousal leaking through the fabric. 

“You like it when I play with your tits, huh?” Like it when I pinch them hard like this.” He squeezes them between his thumb and index finger, enough pressure to stimulate you, making you moan his name again and again.

He swears under his breath, shoving his pants down his legs, shimmying out of them until he’s only in his underwear now, erection stiff in his boxers. “You gonna suck my cock now or what, slut?” 

You nod, kneeling in front of him, knees on the carpet, spreading his thighs apart. He lifts his ass off the couch to slide out of his boxers, letting them fall around his ankles. You kiss the tip of his dick, smearing his precum around your lips like gloss before swallowing him into your mouth. 

He lets out a drawn out, “Fuck,” watching you with wide eyes as you bob up and down his shaft. Voice shaky, he asks, “Can I put my hands on you?”

Something about him in this ski mask makes you want to be submissive, makes you want to be used. You grab both his hands, guiding them towards the sides of your head, giving him free rein to manhandle you.

“Holy shit,” he murmurs, gripping you tighter, gradually thrusting his hips in tandem with you. His cockhead hits the back of your throat, teasing your gag reflex, but you resist, tears collecting in the corners of your eyes, enduring it. 

Noticing you, he pulls out, a string of spit between you. “Baby, baby. Please don’t force yourself. I don’t want to hurt you.” He reaches to his side, grabbing a tissue from the table beside the couch, wiping away the spit around your mouth and the tears in your eyes. “Come here, cutie. I want to make you feel good too.”

You strip out of your bottoms, straddling his lap, pussy wet and aching against him. He moans as you rock back and forth on his shaft, pressing his thumb to your clit, massaging it. “There we go. Now we both can feel good, yeah?”

After a few more strokes, you beg him to fuck you, lifting up to guide his cock inside you slowly, sinking down on him until he bottoms out. You bounce on him, his hands gripped to your waist, guiding you, moaning your name between expletives. 

As you approach your orgasm, you pull up his mask, placing it on his head as he usually wears it. He smiles brightly at you, nuzzling his nose to yours. “There’s my pretty girl. Can you come for me now? Come all over this cock?”

You kiss him passionately, arms wrapped around his neck as he thrusts into you, hands squeezed on your ass now. You reach your climax, moaning into his mouth. He comes with you, shooting his load deep into your womb, filling you up with his cream pie. The two of you continue to kiss slowly, catching your breaths. He caresses your back while you melt into his embrace. 

“We need to establish a safe word,” he suggests, cradling you in his arms. “I want to make sure I’m not hurting you.”

You hum into his skin, saying the first thing that comes to mind. “Popcorn."

He chuckles, stroking the back of your neck gently. “Alright. Popcorn it is.” A beat later, he exclaims, “Popcorn! I totally forgot about the popcorn!”

You laugh, giving your boyfriend a wet smooch on the cheek.

[scoutswritingcorner]

Can I request Hazbin Hotel characters reacting to an artist!reader that draws a lot but never shows anyone their work but one day accidentally left it out and their partner finds it and sees several sketches and finished drawings of them? Sorry if it’s an odd ask, I’m an artist and I thought it would be a cute idea I don’t see nearly enough, it’s okay if you can’t. Thank you either way!!!

Artist Rendition

Hazbin Gang x GN!Reader

TW:A little flirty with Angel’s reaction. Other than that none!

A/N: Not an odd request at all, Friend! For Angel’s part I did write for a male Reader and Fem Reader for Vaggie! KINDA SHORT I APOLOGIZE FRIEND!

-🦌Alastor🦌-

-🦌 Alastor was very curious to see you carry a sketchbook around all the time. He wanted to pry so badly.

-🦌 But he didn’t, he simply ignored the book and only ever asked about it if you were near him. You always get flustered and hide the book even further. Oh now he’s wondering what kind of dark secrets you have in there~

-🦌 But to his surprise when he finds it open and on a page, he sees drawings of him, he carefully flips the page and sees a half down sketch of him sitting in front of the fireplace.

-🦌 Oh boy you just made his ego inflate and his undead heart soar to new heights. His tail starts wagging and that’s the only way someone can catch how happy he is.

-🦌 Now? He’s going to poke a little fun at you, “My Dear, if you had to pick anyone in the hotel to be your muse who would it be?” 

-🦌 Silly deer man loves you and your abilities, he often tells you that your work needs to be displayed in a museum.

-🍎Lucifer🍎-

-🍎 Oh boy- when he finds out you can draw? Oh he gets super excited and asks if you can draw him a duck- even if it’s a little doodle! He doesn’t care!

-He doesn’t really ask or pry into your hobby much but he will admit he does want to see what you draw.

-When he does see that you drew him of all people he gets all flustered and he’s prideful cause his partner?? His darling little angel drew him?!?

-He will volunteer to pose for you, he’s used to sitting still for hours on end! 

-He will even pose naked if you want him to! Just say the word and he’ll drop his clothes right there.

-🎰Husk🎰-

-🎰 He watched you sit at the bar and draw to your heart's content and never really commented on it.

-🎰 When he does peek into your sketchbook it’s to pull behind the bar into a safe place so nothing ruins your work.

-🎰That’s when he notices the drawings and doodles of him and his tail curls happily. The way you captured him doing menial tasks sends his heart into overdrive.

-🎰 You were too good for him, damn it. The next time you find it? It has a little sticky note on the cover of your sketchbook and it has a little drawing of you with a small message, “Had to go out with Alastor. Love you, Dollface.” 

-🕷️ Angel Dust 🩷-

-🕷️ Oh this man- he loves it! You’re an artist and he’s also like an artist! But of a very very different genre.

-🩷 He also doesn’t pry much as he understands privacy. He wants to give you that as much as he can since he doesn’t get much of it.

-🕷️ Once he finds out you draw him? He’s over the fucking moon cause his man? His precious boyfriend draws him! 

-🩷Expect him to start flirting more and more but with art related flirts. “Come on, Suga’~ Draw me like one of your french girls~” im sorry. He’s very supportive!

-👑Charlie👑-

-👑 oh this baby girl..she’s been so busy lately that if she did notice it completely slipped her mind!

-👑 But when she finds your sketchbook? She gets super excited cause you draw this good?? She’s so proud that she immediately goes to find you!

-👑 She is another who fully supports you! You need anything, don't hesitate to ask!

-👑 Will try to convince you to start painting for the hotel! You can say no it won’t offend her.

-🎀Vaggie🎀-

-🎀 Much like Husk she won’t point it out or comment on it.

-🎀Will find out you draw her when she sees it when cleaning up and gets all blushy cause this is how you see her?

-🎀 Comes clean immediately about seeing your drawings and tells you how amazing they are.

-🎀 Shyly asks if she can pose for you next time, how could you say no to her?

[keisobe]

── ⋆˙⟡♡ 𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐬 (𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐚)

from spider-man : across the spiderverse (spoiler free!!)

characters. miles morales. miguel o’hara. hobie brown & peter b. parker. + pavitr prabhakar

notes. i quickly wrote this because spiderverse has consumed a lot of my attention (cue the tiktok edits i’ve saved of hobie and miguel). anyways hope i did the characterization accurate enough and hope it was fun to read ( ˘͈ ᵕ ˘͈♡) + not completely proofread

𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬 ❤︎

he’s painfully awkward when it comes to hugging. his limbs don’t know where to wrap around, so they keep flaring everywhere until you end up locking him into one solid hug.

miles is also very respectful of your boundaries, he would do that weird hover hand thing over your waist that would look very off in photos (his hand literally 3 inches away from your shoulder, but a good photo overall).

but when he’s close to you, he would pull you into a protective and warm embrace— especially if he has been worried sick about you. that’s until he pulls away and let’s out a chuckle accompanied with a light scratch on the back of his neck to ease his worries.

“umm… wait— lemme just…”

miles’ arms were bending awkwardly and moving in lightning speed, a nervous smile plastered onto his conflicted features— twitching brows and all.

you huffed at his failed attempt to simply embrace you, so you forcefully hooked your arms around his neck and brought him closer, feeling the softness of his cheek against your forehead and the pacing heartbeat you didn’t know he had.

“it’s fine, it’s just me silly.” you teased into his ear, prompting miles to chuckle at his own awkwardness and to wrap his strong arms around your waist.

“right, it’s you.” he whispered more to himself, leaning down to reach your height and to cutely rest his head in the nape of your neck. “just you.”

𝐦𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐞𝐥 𝐨’𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚 ❤︎

hasn’t been held in so long. he says that he doesn’t do hugs, will probably go into flight-and-fight mode if you even asked for a small embrace. if you’re lucky though, he’ll leave you with a deadly glare and an annoyed huff.

but in the heat of the moment, in the moments of needed comfort, he will be there to give you an embrace. although, his hugs are tight, to the point you have a hard time breathing. it’ll take him a moment to notice that you’re literally breathless and will cough a lousy sorry as compensation for squeezing you to death (but he actually feels bad).

what nobody knows (maybe expect you) is that he prefers hugs that can display his strength. lifting you off from the ground with ease makes him smirk to himself. surprise hugs from the back also avoids the awkwardness of confronting actual romantic contact (it’s also more fun for him).

“what now?” miguel folds his arms impatiently as he watches you dumbly spread your arms out, a determined glint in your eyes.

no response, you simply spread your arms wider. miguel huffs an annoyed laugh and awkwardly comes up to you to embrace you, with a tightness that made you choke for air. then he suddenly lifts you from the floor, making you latch tightly around his neck.

miguel sighs deeply, the irritation that emitted from him suddenly became comfortably warm.

“did you need this hug?” you managed to breathe out, threading your fingers through the loose brown hair in the back of his neck.

“yeah, i really needed it.” miguel mumbles out in embarrassment, tightening his muscular arms around your waist— prompting a weak yet satisfied wheeze from your lips.

𝐡𝐨𝐛𝐢𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐧 ❤︎

he’s chill with hugs, but he’s very friendly about it. likes to latch an arm on his mates and such— but an immediate sweet embrace you won’t really get (he’s good at reading people, so if you’re vibes are off, he ain’t moving an inch).

he generally prefers to give side hugs, nothing too personal and definitely fits his overall demeanor. match that up with a firm compliment and a friendly pat on the shoulder. but if he’s close to you, he’ll be there patiently with open arms.

then he’s analyzing you closely as you embrace him, listening closely for a change in your heartbeat or any small noise that escapes your mouth. he subtly smells you too and will not forget your scent (will use the same detergent as you right after the embrace). there’s a moment of silence and it’s perfectly comfortable.

“c’mere.” hobie faintly whispers with an expanded arm, his expression unusually soft.

immediately you ran to receive an embrace from his slim body, a wet sniffle muffled into his webbed suit as tears began to pour from your eyes. hobie hovers a calloused hand over your back, thinking for a moment, until he decides that it was fine to do so. he pats the small of your back comfortably, murmuring a song he wrote to soothe your sadness.

“thank you hobie.” you hiccuped, leaning onto his chest. hobie simply nodded, playing with the ends of your hair with a painted finger.

“yea...” he mumbled, noticing that the tears that stained your cheeks before faded and your breathing steadied. “no probs.”

𝐩𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐛. 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐫 ❤︎

he’s painfully awkward too. pull him into an embrace, he will let out an uncomfortable chuckle as he carefully pries you off his body. peter makes it obvious he wants his space, rightfully so.

actually, head pats is something he prefers to give. it’s comforting for him to be able to teasingly mess your hair to get a whine from you, or feel the texture of your hair under his palms. also, he’s an old man (will feel extremely insulted if you say his comforting technique is equivalent to that of an elderly folk).

but if he’s close with you or there is a moment when an embrace is desperately needed, he wouldn’t hesitate to pull you into a deep embrace. due to his new plushness to his body and rarity of his soft affection, peter’s embraces feel warm and inviting. sorry though, it’ll only last a few seconds until he’s pulling away immediately (will give up if you pull him back into the embrace tho).

“there, there kiddo…” peter softly pats your head, poorly attempting to cool your temper.

“not working peter.”

peter sighs in defeat as he slowly retracted his hand, thinking of a solution to cheer you up. without a second thought, he quickly pulled you into an embrace with efficient strength— the softness of his stomach contrasted the hardness of his chest. immediately you light up, nuzzling into his warm arms as he playfully swayed your body side-to-side.

“better?” he chuckled at your dazed expression, maybe hugging wasn’t so bad.

“yeah…” you could hear the slow patters of his heartbeat as he tightened the protective hold around your waist.

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