#that he would have welcomed calls now - or in the last year - but there are so many scenes were poor karen is just getting shutdown by Matt

[ghostedgwen]

don't blame me | j.potter [part four]

note : I did not expect this series to go so well wotdaheal - you guys are sooo amazing and I am very very grateful, so happy to know I can provide an escape to people who need it through my writing, ily

warnings : more jelly jelly, james potter's mood swings, everything that's been simmering is now boiling over the pot, snogging?, oliver klove insert again idc I love my ravenclaw oc

𝖸𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝗅𝗂𝖿𝖾 𝗃𝗎𝗌𝗍 𝗍𝗈𝗈𝗄 𝖺 𝖻𝗂𝗀 𝗍𝗎𝗋𝗇 𝖿𝗈𝗋 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗐𝗈𝗋𝗌𝗍 𝗐𝗁𝖾𝗇 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝖿𝗂𝗇𝖽 𝗈𝗎𝗍 𝗒𝗈𝗎'𝗏𝖾 𝖻𝖾𝖾𝗇 𝖾𝗇𝗀𝖺𝗀𝖾𝖽 𝗆𝗈𝗌𝗍 𝗈𝖿 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝗅𝗂𝖿𝖾 𝗍𝗈 𝗈𝗇𝖾 𝖩𝖺𝗆𝖾𝗌 𝖯𝗈𝗍𝗍𝖾𝗋 - 𝗁𝖾'𝗌 𝖺𝗌 𝖽𝗂𝗌𝗍𝗋𝖾𝗌𝗌𝖾𝖽 𝖺𝗌 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝖺𝗋𝖾 𝖺𝖻𝗈𝗎𝗍 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗐𝗁𝗈𝗅𝖾 𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝖻𝗎𝗍 𝗐𝗁𝖺𝗍 𝗁𝖾 𝖽𝗈𝖾𝗌𝗇'𝗍 𝗎𝗇𝖽𝖾𝗋𝗌𝗍𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗂𝗌 𝗐𝗁𝗒 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝖽𝗈𝗇'𝗍 𝗌𝖾𝖾𝗆 𝗍𝗈 𝗅𝗂𝗄𝖾 𝗁𝗂𝗆 𝗈𝗇𝖾 𝖻𝗂𝗍. 𝖲𝗈 𝗁𝖾 𝗆𝖺𝗄𝖾𝗌 𝗂𝗍 𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝗉𝖾𝗋𝗌𝗈𝗇𝖺𝗅 𝗆𝗂𝗌𝗌𝗂𝗈𝗇 𝗍𝗈 𝖿𝗂𝗇𝖽 𝗈𝗎𝗍 𝗐𝗁𝗒. 𝗐𝗈𝗋𝖽𝗌 : 4.6k

The engagement party is everything you feared it would be - grand, ostentatious, and so very Potter. The Potters' ballroom is dressed to the nines, glittering under a ceiling enchanted to mimic a night sky full of swirling constellations. Chandeliers float in the air like stars, casting golden light on marble floors polished to a mirror finish.

Gold-trimmed curtains frame the tall windows, and a quartet of musicians plays a delicate waltz in the corner, the notes fluttering through the space like butterflies.

Guests arrive in waves, draped in velvet and silk, their laughter echoing as they sip on champagne and air kisses. You try to smile through it all, letting the opulence blur at the edges, until you hear the familiar sound of a bark-like laugh.

The Marauders have arrived.

Sirius Black walks in first, confidence personified, dressed in all black save for the silver embroidered waistcoat beneath his robe. He winks at a group of giggling girls before offering a shallow, mocking bow to a grumbling member of his family across the room.

Remus Lupin follows behind, a bit more subdued but no less striking in forest green robes, eyes scanning the room like he’s calculating how long he’ll be able to endure small talk before sneaking off for a book.

Peter Pettigrew trails after them, slightly flushed, slightly overwhelmed, but with a determined look on his face like he belongs here - even if he’s not quite sure how.

And then there’s James.

He arrives last, golden and grinning, one hand shoved into the pocket of his formal dress robes, the other smoothing a hand through his windswept hair. His eyes immediately seek you out in the crowd.

The Potters welcome everyone with warm smiles and practiced ease. Euphemia stands with Fleamont at the foot of the grand staircase, champagne flutes in hand as they call for attention.

“Thank you all for joining us tonight,” Euphemia announces. “It is our absolute joy to welcome you to our home to celebrate something very dear to us - the engagement of our beloved son, James, to someone we’ve loved as family for many years.”

You and James are ushered into the centre of the ballroom by polite applause. He grins as he raises your joined hands for everyone to see.

“She said yes,” he declares cheekily, lifting your hand higher. “Which is mad, really, because I’m me. But I like to think the ring helped.”

He flashes the antique ring on your finger, then holds up his own - a matching heirloom band that once belonged to his great-great-grandfather.

Yours, a delicate twin, belonged to his great-great-grandmother. The symbolism isn’t lost on anyone.

“Also a very happy birthday - to my soon-to-be Wife, she turned of age yesterday!”

The applause grows louder with some people shouting greetings and congratulations alike, and the champagne flows.

The party slips into a rhythm of laughter and music. Guests swirl around you in waves, offering congratulations and late birthday greetings.

James plays the role of perfect fiancé with surprising grace, his hand always at the small of your back, his smiles never faltering.

But your cheeks hurt from smiling - you haven't smiled for this long, your head spinning from the noise.

So you slip away, just far enough to lean against a marble pillar and breathe.

That’s when you see them - the Marauders, finally settled in one spot near the punch bowl.

“Care for a dance?” you ask, tone light, teasing.

Sirius raises a brow. “I’m flattered, sweetheart, truly. But I think my mother would spontaneously combust if she saw me waltzing at your engagement party. With you, no less.”

You snort. “So dramatic.”

“Always.” he gives a flip of his hair.

Remus, ever the gentleman, offers his hand. “I’d be honoured.”

You let him lead you onto the dance floor. It’s an easy, familiar kind of rhythm with him, your hands fitting comfortably together. He’s warm and steady, his touch respectful but friendly, and you find yourself smiling for real for the first time that evening.

“Enjoying yourself?” he murmurs, actually checking in on you.

“Trying to,” you reply with a tired smile. “This whole evening feels like I’m playing dress-up.”

He chuckles softly. “You wear it well, you look great.”

You return the compliment, calling him a handsome leprechaun. He laughed. He even managed to greet you a quick late birthday greeting, you thanked him of course.

You don’t need to look to know James is watching. You feel it, like a weight on the back of your neck. When the song ends, you curtsy and thank Remus. You barely get a breath in before James appears at your side, his smile a little too wide.

“Thought we weren’t dancing till the wedding,” he says, offering his hand.

“Changed my mind,” you reply simply, a smile tugging at your lips.

He pulls you onto the floor without waiting for more. This dance is faster, more playful, and you hate how easily you fall into sync with him. How your heart hammers when he spins you, how his laughter makes you forget how fake this is supposed to be.

At that moment, it wasn't fake - it was very real to you and some small part of you desperately wished that it was real to him too.

“Show-off,” you murmur after a particularly dramatic twirl.

“I live to impress,” he quips, grinning.

You’re still laughing as he leads you back to the edge of the floor, breathless. You both catch your breath while the other guests clamber on to the dance floor.

Sirius is waiting with a smug smile and two goblets. “Something to cool you both off.”

You accept one, not thinking twice, too thirsty to care. It’s strong - shockingly so but you didn't mind as you were gulping it down from thirst.

“Pads,” James coughs. “What the hell did you put in this?”

“Firewhiskey. Just a splash,” Sirius says innocently, managing a wink, “you’re welcome.”

Your ears failed to catch that. The boys watch in amusement - James' horror - as you downed the whole goblet in one go.

One goblet later, your face is flushed and your inhibitions dangerously low.

“So,” Sirius says, sidling up to you, “once you’re officially a Potter, does that mean I can start calling you Lady Prongs?”

You raise a brow, swaying slightly. “Sure but you get a new title too, Wet Dog.”

James chokes on his drink, you were very drunk and it was obvious with how you slurred your words - pointing at Sirius with a haze.

“That’s our cue,” he says, quickly stepping in, “we’re heading out. Tell Mum and Dad she’s off to bed early.”

Sirius salutes him with a grin. “Gladly.”

James wraps an arm around your waist, steadying your wobble as he guides you through the crowd.

“You’re such a lightweight,” he mutters with amusement. The comment is directed more to himself as he doubted you were sober to understand.

“M’not,” you insist. “I’m just emotionally fragile.”

He laughs, guiding you up the staircase and into the quiet halls. The distant music fades behind you, coulds till be heard though.

“You’re lucky you’re cute,” he murmurs.

You beam up at him., he lightly struggled to keep you in his arms. “I’m your cute wife.”

James falters.

“Merlin.”

You reach up and cup his cheek, thumb brushing the skin beneath his eye, swiping behind his round glasses and he felt so warm under your touch - you take note of how you could probably count his freckles if you were dedicated enough.

“My darling husband.”

He nearly drops you.

“You’re - this is - bloody hell.”

You giggle, nuzzling into his chest as he steadies you again, you felt so much warmer in his arms.

James tries to keep it light. “We should get you some water. Or maybe ten gallons of it.”

“Nooo,” you whine, still managing to slur a single word “you’re warm. Let's stay like thish!”

He glances down at you, flushed and soft and barely standing. His chest tightens, he drank in your drunk appearance.

Your eyes glossed from intoxication, cheeks puffed from feigned defiance at his words and he - he almost chokes. You were so cute.

“Okay,” he murmurs, giving in. “Just for a minute.”

You end up leaning against him in the hallway outside your rooms, your head resting on his shoulder. It’s quiet, just the two of you and the faint echoes of music below.

“I’m scared,” you whisper.

He tenses slightly, anticipating just what your confession might be. “Of what?”

“Of wanting this too much.”

James doesn’t say anything for a long moment, you can both pretend you didn't say it - if he wanted, you can both pretend those words never escaped you.

Then he shifts, pressing a kiss to your hair.

“I’ll try not to hurt you,” he says quietly.

You hum, not putting much of your mind into your respone - like it was an instinct, “you will anyway.”

He doesn’t deny it.

Eventually, he coaxes you to your door and waits as you fumble with the handle.

“Sleep well, darling wife,” he says with a crooked smile.

“Goodnight, husband dearest,” you reply, and slip inside before your heart can betray you.

Behind the closed door, you lean against it, hand pressed over your heart. Even drunk - he still shook you to the core.

And James, still standing outside, runs a hand through his hair and whispers to the empty hallway, “I think I'm in love, Merlin - fuck. I know - shit.”

The engagement party was the kind of spectacle that lingered in the air like perfume - thick, sweet, and impossible to ignore. But after the haze of Firewhiskey, too-tight smiles, and pretending not to notice James Potter’s eyes on you all night, the rest of the holiday slipped into a blur.

Your days were spent apart again, the Potters whisking James off to wedding meetings and more fitting appointments while you were handled by stylists and tailors and family members asking about table arrangements like your opinion mattered.

You barely saw him, and you did not know it at the time but it was probably for your own well-being, after that Firewhiskey thing.

A nod across the breakfast table. A silent pass in the hallway. Not even a whispered word when your rooms shared a wall.

And then, suddenly, it was January again.

King’s Cross was brimming with students and parents bidding their farewells, owls flapping overhead and trunks being levitated into compartments by frazzled prefects. The cold nipped at your ears as you hugged Euphemia goodbye, her lipstick leaving a smudge on your temple, and gave Fleamont a brief, polite hug.

"Be safe, sweetheart," Euphemia said warmly. "Write to us. And James, do help her carry her bag - "

But James was already beside you, fingers curling around your wrist, eager to jump on the train like he was gonna explode any moment.

"We’ll find a compartment," he muttered, not looking at his mother as he tugged you toward the train - you bid them and your parents a rushed farewell as he whisked you away.

You barely had time to protest before he pulled you into an empty carriage and shut the door behind him, drawing the blinds on the windows as well.

"Okay," you said, catching your breath, your trunk settled beside you. "Dramatic much?"

He didn’t laugh, he looks like hell.

Instead, he watched you with that unreadable expression, arms crossed over his chest like he was bracing himself -

"So," he said. "You remember anything from that night?"

Your brows furrowed. "The engagement party?"

He gave you a look, one you didn't know how to take. "You were drunk."

You blinked at him, confused. "I mean. . . yeah, but not that drunk. I remember dancing. With Remus. With you. Sirius and the Firewhiskey. Sort of," you scrunch you nose in distaste. "Why? Did I say something embarrassing?"

James exhaled slowly, as if he had been defeated and you frown at the action. He then shook his head. "No. Doesn’t matter. Forget it."

You frowned. "James,"

"Drop it," he said, a little more sharply than he intended -

And then the moment was gone. He slouched into his seat after putting both your trunks away, and stared out the window, and you sat across from him, feeling the silence stretch and twist between you.

Before you could try again - it was odd to have him behave this way, the compartment door slid open.

"Oi! We were wondering where you two buggered off to," Sirius announced, barging in with Remus and Peter at his heels. Remus gave a nod of greeting. Peter stumbled in, arms full of sweets.

Sirius took one look at the seating arrangement and flopped beside James, slinging an arm across the back of the seat. "So. Did you finally kill each other or just get tired of pretending to be in love?"

"You’re so charming," you said dryly, Sirius Black sends a wink your way.

"It’s a gift."

A sudden stampede of feet passed by the door - first-years giggling as they bolted down the corridor.

Then -

"You lot better not be setting things on fire again!"

The voice made you sit up straighter. Lily Evans appeared at the door, her Headgirl badge gleaming, her red hair pulled back in a no-nonsense braid.

Her eyes scanned the compartment, pausing briefly on you and James sitting opposite each other. Then she looked at the boys.

"Just checking in. You haven’t hexed anyone yet, have you?"

Sirius put a hand on his heart. "We solemnly swear that we are up to no good."

She rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth twitched. To a smile? or annoyance? you couldn't really tell.

"Hi, Evans," you said. Being the first one to address her properly.

"Hey," she replied, offering you a small smile. Her eyes flicked once more toward James, who remained studiously focused on the window. Odd.

Lily’s gaze lingered, curious but unreadable - her emerald eyes looked somewhat brighter when angry, like they're been set ablaze.

Then she turned to you again. "Hope you had a nice holiday, ____."

"You too," you said, replying quickly - she was almost intimidating.

She nodded to Remus. "See you at the meeting."

And then she was gone, disappearing down the corridor in pursuit of the wayward first-years.

Peter gave a low whistle, nudging James potter with a kick of his feet. "You didn’t say a word to her, Prongs"

James shrugged. "What’s there to say?"

Sirius grinned. "Oh, it’s the dawn of a new era, isn’t it? No more pining over Evans. Out with the unrequited, in with the loyal husband."

You stared at your lap, willing your heart to slow down.

James didn’t deny it.

You didn’t look up.

Because if you did, you’d find his eyes on you again, and you couldn’t afford to read too much into it.

Not now.

Not ever.

The welcoming feast was a blur of candlelight, floating pumpkins still leftover from the extended Yule décor, and a hundred conversations overlapping in the Great Hall. But your ears only caught one whisper:

“Did you hear? James Potter’s engaged.”

“It was in The Prophet!"

“Apparently she’s a Ravenclaw.”

"____? No way!"

You kept your head down, focusing on your plate as your housemates swarmed you with questions. You should have known it would be like this.

"What’s he like?"

"Did he propose on one knee?"

"Are you going to get married after graduation? Can I get an invite?"

You gave them nothing but polite smiles and vague answers. Mostly, you just wanted to eat your dinner in peace but that was too much to ask in the ever so noisy halls of Hogwarts.

Across the hall, James Potter was throwing you glances that could melt steel - Merlin, he's been moody since the train, what's got his wand on a twist?

"Okay, he’s been staring at you since the bread rolls," your roommate whispered.

"No, he hasn’t."

"He has. Look - now."

You refused, despite Macmillan's egging and nudging.

You stabbed your roast potato instead. Because if you looked at him, you’d remember how he looked, illuminated by a single birthday candle - leaning in closer and closer and -

You were going bloody mad.

Just as dessert plates were vanishing and sleepy students began to stretch and yawn, Professor Dumbledore rose from his seat, addressing the crowd.

He clapped his hands once, and the room fell silent. He opened by greeting everyone a happy new year, and hoped the holiday break has been exciting.

“Before you all scurry off to your dormitories,” he said, “one small note. After reviewing inter-house interactions, and noting that our usual pairings have resulted in several minor. . .explosions, we’ve decided to shift things a bit.”

The students muttered among themselves - you weren't liking the taste of this as you eye the old man.

Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled.

“Starting this term, Ravenclaw will now be paired with Gryffindor for Potions, Herbology, and Astronomy.”

Your stomach dropped.

You would now share three classes with James.

You groaned into your hand, while the students erupted into loud chatter over the announcement.

A fiftfh-year beside you whispered, "Ooh, you get to see your fiancé more! Lucky."

Lucky.

Sure.

You flicked a glance toward the Gryffindor table and caught James looking smug.

Smug.

Arrogant.

Golden.

He winked - and he was back.

You wanted to throw your goblet at his head.

And maybe kiss him afterward.

Which was the problem, because every act of violence towards him warranted a snog - a bloody snog!

You can only dread your fate, because now, there would be no escaping James Potter. You had hoped you could still your hammering heart during classes.

But all that was thrown out the window of the highest tower in Hogwarts. Poof.

This term was going to be hell.

In Potions, Slughorn paired you and James together because "What better way to ensure inter-house unity than with our most promising pair?" He said it with such cheer you couldn’t even groan properly. James sat beside you, all long limbs and casual confidence, swinging his legs under the table like he owned the place.

"Alright, partner," he whispered as he opened your shared textbook. "Let’s brew this Love Potion with the care and precision of a well-adjusted couple."

You nearly knocked the cauldron over, almost choking in your spit from the absolute tosser that he was being again. Long gone is his moody mood swings.

"Stop calling it that."

He just smiled, you pretend like it didn't tug at your heart.

"Would you prefer the good ol' 'Wife', then?"

You stirred the mixture aggressively, already following the instructions on the book - dumping the appropriate ingredients in.

"Try 'lab partner who will drown me inside this cauldron if I don't shut the bloody hell up.'"

He laughed, low and fond, and leaned closer. "See, this is why our upcoming marriage would be full of spice."

You refused to let the heat on your face be visible, you kept your head lowered as you pretended to focus on the potion brewing.

He was actually a decent partner despite the teasing - he was a competent potioneer, following the instructions smoothly and you worked well alongside him.

Ignoring his remarks about how well you two suited each other, a perfect couple, he joked.

"Ah! A perfect Amortentia! Splendid work, you two. A true match." Slughorn cut into the two of you, having just finished your potion.

The whole class turned to look, intrigued. You wanted to sink into the floor.

The scent curled from the cauldron in delicate spirals - iridescent, shimmering steam wafting upward. Amortentia, the most powerful love potion known to wizardkind, distinctive for its spiraling smoke and the unique scent it exuded for each individual: the smell of what most attracted them.

You leaned forward, just slightly.

The smell of old parchment hit you first - familiar, comforting. Then cinnamon, warm and sharp. And something else. Pine and the scent of storm-kissed air, like the moment before rain. It wrapped around your senses. It smelled like James.

You jolted back. You already knew the answer was him, but it was still air knocked off your lungs to confirm further.

James, beside you, had gone unusually quiet.

"What did you smell?" you asked, too curious to stop yourself.

He looked at you for a long moment, then tilted his head with a teasing grin. "You tell me first."

You gave him a look. "Absolutely not."

He smirked. "Fine. Fresh ink. That book smell. The scent of the stands on Quidditch day." He paused, then added, softer, "And something like honey and citrus. Weird, right?"

Your breath caught. You tried not to let it show though.

That was your shampoo.

You stirred the potion a bit too vigorously, and it nearly frothed over.

"Definitely weird," you mumbled, mind flying off - barely remembering his reaction when you replied with your own answer.

He nudged your foot under the table, and the air between you buzzed - you ignored the gesture.

That evening in the common room, you caught yourself sniffing your own hair. Desperately so, wondering if he knew it was your scent - or maybe, Evans uses the same brand -

Astronomy was the final blow - or not, just the dramatics.

The class had been reassigned to night sessions on Wednesdays. The sky above the Astronomy Tower stretched wide and dark, spangled with stars.

As you were top of your year in theory (right behind Evans), you found yourself explaining planetary alignment to James as he balanced a telescope and a Chocolate Frog simultaneously.

"You know," he said, voice soft in the dark, "I never really liked this subject. Too slow. Too cold. But it’s not so bad now."

You didn’t answer. You couldn’t - too scared of what you would confess under the stars this time.

Because the moonlight caught in his hair, the wind was gentle, and his voice had a kind of warmth that sank right under your skin - you keep repalying that night, on your 17th in your head.

James Potter was slowly, relentlessly, becoming impossible to ignore - not that you ever not minding him.

And you were falling.

Hard.

You excused yourself before the class ended, blaming the cold. But your heart knew better.

You were in trouble.

The rest of the week unfolded in dizzying episodes that left your head spinning.

On Tuesday, James charmed your quill to draw little snitches every time you wrote his name. You only found out after realizing your entire essay for Arithmancy was covered in golden-winged doodles. He just smiled, cheek resting on his hand as you smacked him with the scroll - ignoring the implications.

Wednesday, he conjured a bouquet of enchanted bluebells to hop into your satchel after Charms. "For the Ravenclaw in bloom," he said. You rolled your eyes so hard they nearly stuck, but you kept the flowers anyway - they're well-preserved, in your dorm.

Thursday, you dropped your Astronomy notes and James helped gather them, fingers brushing, lingering. You’d both looked up, breathless. And then promptly looked away.

By Friday, it was unbearable.

You lied to one of your housemates, claiming you had something urgent on the other side of the castle, and traded patrol rounds. That way, instead of James, you were paired with Oliver Klove—a tall, charming, and mild-mannered seventh-year Ravenclaw with a relaxed gait and glacier-blue eyes.

You never saw the appeal in him but if it wasn't the Black brothers making girls squeal, it was one Oliver Klove. Tall, dark and handsome - those blue eyes were just a bonus.

His parents must've been very beautiful people to come up with him. You were besotted with James Potter, but you also had eyes and they are liking Oliver Klove very much.

He was easy company, and you found yourself actually relaxing for once during patrols - I guess that's another, he's unline Sirius who flirted in all the ways, and not Regulus who was weird and mysterious.

You were at peace until James found you.

He stood frozen in the corridor, eyes sharp behind his glasses as he processed the scene: you and Oliver walking side-by-side, laughing about something he hadn’t been there to hear.

"Where's your partner?" Oliver asked him politely, trying to strike conversation - pretending like he doesn't read the fury in the lion.

"I could ask the same," James replied, cold.

You winced at his tone and how awkward this will get. "I swapped shifts - because I had errands to run."

Oliver caught on to the lie but neglected to throw you under the bus, he only raises his hands in surrender at Potter, making a comment about not trying anything with a girl promised to another.

James didn’t reply. He turned on his heel and stalked off. But instead of disappearing, he grabbed your arm and tugged you along.

"Hey! James - "

"You're with me tonight."

You threw a look over your shoulder at Oliver, who gave you a bewildered little wave before vanishing down the corridor, deciding he wasn't gonna ask - he'll just continue his patrols and pretend he saw nothing.

James dragged you all the way to the Astronomy Tower.

You yanked your arm back, throwing him a harsh glare. "What the hell was that?"

He turned on you, furious and flustered. "I show up for patrol and find you laughing with - Klove of all people - like nothing's weird about it?"

"It isn’t weird. He’s nice. I needed a break from your constant flirting." and leading me on, but you neglect to say the last part.

"Flirting?! You think this is -" He stopped, dragging a hand through his hair, the action was laced with frustration. You watch him, on edge. "I’ve been trying to tell you - "

"Tell me what? That I’m just another conquest until you get bored again? That Evans doesn't do it anymore so you decide I'm next on your list because I'm conveniently your bloody fucking fiancé?"

His eyes snapped to yours, those hazel pairs set ablaze. "Don’t. You know it’s not that."

The silence pulsed. Your heart beat painfully in your throat, the tension was rising and somehow - it felt awfully hot in the Astronomy Tower. This might actually be the day you throw someone off here - you.

"Then what is it?" you whispered.

He stepped closer. "You. It's always been you. And if I have to spell it out - I’m in love with you."

The air vanished from your lungs. He doesn't stop talking as he closes the distance between you two, grabbing to hold your hand - "You have me, completely and utterly besotted with you."

You barely managed to breathe before you surged forward, and your lips met his in a kiss that stole everything else away. It was hot and desperate, his hands in your hair, yours tangled in his robes, mouths slanting, pressing -

Hands slipped beneath fabric. A gasp. Your back against the cold stone wall.

Then, through the haze, you said it:

"What about Lily?"

James froze - that caught him off-guard, the last thing he expected you to say, mid snog.

You looked at him, breathless and trembling - anticipating.

He cupped your face, thumb brushing your cheek. "Evans - Evans was. . . the past. I liked her, Merlin - I won't deny that and pretend it wasn't a thing, " you could hear and see the sincerity pour out of him with every word. "But I love you. Not Evans - and Godric knows she'll never give me the time of day."

You allow those words to sink in.

"She's not the one who's matching rings with me, she's not the girl who'll slowly walk towards me down the aisle - it's you, it has always been you."

James lets out an exaspherated sigh. "I was just too bloody stupid to know that."

And somehow, impossibly, that was enough.

to be continued . . .

part five(final) | masterlist

[emeraldrush]

Whatever you do, don't think about how Bobby probably didn't pray for more time on earth, or for having an easy death.

No, that man got in his knees, lungs filled with blood and prayed for his wife, who he wished he could have kissed one more time. He prayed for his children, the ones he left behind: May, Harry, Buck. They will need him and it pained him way worse than any illness to not watch May and Harry graduate, not to threat May's future husband since no one would be enough for his little girl, not take Harry on a road trip of best buddies while teaching him all about the old good jams. And Buck, his eldest, he had been rooting for Buck and Eddie to get their shit together and realize they were in love with each other and now? He wouldn't be there to fix Buck's bow tie on his wedding day. To tell him "You should have gone with a regular tie, kid". To hug him and tell him he loved him and how proud he was of him. If he tried enough he could see himself in his backyard, hosting a «Welcome from your honeymoon, newlyweds» party, and Chris calling him "Grandpa" since his "Other Dad" called him "Pops".

No, he didn't pray to leave this world fastest. Bobby prayed for Chim, Maddie and Jee, for them to enjoy every second of their family and make the most out of their time together, may the Lord grant them many, many years. He prayed for Hen, Karen and Denny. For them to hold each other tightly and never forget that a home is built every day. He prayed for Ravi, for his youth to turn into wisdom and for him to never lose sight of his path.

You see, the only times Bobby prayed for himself he prayed for death to come and take him. And then he got to the 118. And then he found his family, and with them, his will. So he never prayed for himself anymore. He prayed for Athena to come home, always. He prayed for Buck and Eddie, for one to use his head and for the other to feel with his heart. He prayed for Hen and Chim, and for their loved ones. And for Ravi. And for everyone who gave him a reason to want to stay. A reason to live.

And as death heard his first prayers, and gracefully took his last breath, Bobby thanked for the extra time he was granted, and echoed words he read over and over again:

"My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from me. Yet, not as I will, but as you will"

[clairewritesfanfics]

No Goggles!Mark Grayson Origin (No Goggles!Invincible x Older!Reader) Part 3

Part 2

Author's Note: this is taking longer than i expected lol but if it wasn't obvious enough, no goggles/lensless is my favorite. he gives me strong "feral dog who becomes a puppy for the woman he loves" vibe.

Debbie Grayson was a stranger that haunted his father’s house, a fragment of the past. His dad burned all of her photos so all Mark had were his memories of her, but even those were unreliable. Sometimes she had hair as black as his, sometimes it was a touch lighter and almost brown. Sometimes her voice was high-pitched and bird-like, other times it was deeper. 

Every now and then, he could vaguely remember the Grayson house being warm and welcoming, but those felt like the daydreams of a child, so distant from the reality he grew up with under his father’s reign.

Even before his powers appeared, he lived the life of a soldier. Wake up before dawn, training, and if he was good, he could eat more than the basic requirement. He still had to go to school. He didn’t like anyone and nobody liked him. 

When he almost killed two other children when his powers first manifested, his dad pretended to be furious in front of the principal and other parents, then he rewarded him with a toy Mark had been begging for since he was eight years old. Mark’s powers came when he was eleven. Still, lame as it was, he cherished that toy, because it was one of the few reminders that his dad did care.

Mark worked hard to fit in as his dad ordered.

He observed everyone at school, learned what made each student and staff member tick. He learned to smile even when he felt nothing and he pretended to care when his “friends” were troubled. As Mark and as Invincible, he was the golden boy that people looked up to. He was the one where others approached when they needed help.

Everybody loved him, but nobody saw him.

Everybody got a piece of him, but nobody was ever his.

Life was a series of closed doors. The praises from his dad and adulation from the masses that he desperately chased stopped making him feel like he used to.

He was no different than a chunk of rock floating through the vacuum of space without a destination.

He didn’t think he would ever feel that again ever since he met you. 

From the first time you patted his head, life was never the same again.

You were his sun, the center of gravity that he didn’t even know he was searching for.

When you asked for a three-month break, it nearly tore him apart to agree and get away from you. Everyday was hell. He felt like he could fall apart at any moment.

He stayed away from everyone else as much as he could, fearing that he’d end up doing something you’d disapprove of.

But today was the last day of his torture.

He woke up extra early, took a cold shower, dressed in your favorite outfit of his and styled his hair just the way you liked. 

He had just exited the florist when his phone rang. Of course, you had a special ringtone and of course, he answered on the first ring.

“Good morning!” He could practically feel his imaginary tail wag behind him. “I’m so glad you called, I’m already on my way to your place. Do you want me to pick up breakfast? Do you want something salty or sweet? Wait, don’t answer, I’ll get you everything available to celebrate.”

His heart almost stopped when you laughed. God, he missed that laugh. He resorted to his secret stash of call recordings with you just for a restful night’s sleep, but nothing can compare to having an actual conversation.

“Actually,” you said quickly, “I cooked breakfast for the both of us.”

“My favorite?”

“What else? Take care. I’ll see you soon.”

He took care not to get caught when he sprinted and nearly shot up in the sky to get to you. 

Arriving at your front door in record time, Mark took a moment to pull on his collar and tousle his hair. 

He then pressed the doorbell, unable to control his smile when he heard your footsteps. 

You opened the door. You wore an apron over your pajamas and held a flipper in one hand. You met his gaze with a small smile. He wanted to kiss the deep circles around your eyes. He wanted to wrap his arms around you and never let go.

“Hey, Mark.”

He swore he almost teared up hearing your voice, your real voice and not a digital recreation, but he shook his head and offered the bouquet. “Hi.”

You glanced at the flowers, frowning for the shortest moment before fixing your expression and pulling him inside. “They’re beautiful. You always get me the most perfect bouquets.”

Naturally. Mark took extensive notes when it came to your preferences and inclinations. Case in point–

You stopped walking and reached over to fix his collar. He lowered his head, expectant. Chuckling, you brushed back his bangs, combing his hair with your fingers. “Did you fall asleep without drying your hair again?” You teased. “What would you do without me?”

He had a taste of what that life was like. He wasn’t going back. 

His hand found yours, softly pulling it from his head to his cheek. “Then from now on, just dry my hair every night.” 

Your fingers twitched. Mark looked at you.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m hungry.”

Lie.

But still, he grinned and reluctantly let go, following you into the kitchen. The smell of fresh pancakes and burnt bacon filled the air. 

You motioned for him to sit down and served him a plate. 

“Blueberry and banana pancakes, well-done bacon and sunny side up eggs with runny yolk. Just as you like ‘em.” 

“Thank you.” 

If a third party were here, they would look at the starry-eyed Mark and think that he was more interested in eating you than the food. It wouldn’t be an unfair judgment. After all, Mark hated sweet things, he preferred his bacon closer to raw, and he found runny egg yolk kind of gross. But you enjoyed them, so he enjoyed them too. 

He wanted to be your soulmate. 

He observed you as he had observed everyone in his life, he tailored every detail of his world to match yours. He would break himself over and over so he could mold himself to your preferences.

There were times where he would “disagree” with you, though those were for lesser things like pineapple on pizza, so you wouldn’t get bored.

You responded better when he was this sweet, harmless puppy that begged for attention instead of an arrogant alpha prick who played it hot and cold. Maybe it was because you spent so much time with hyper-aggressive, uber-competitive sharks at work. Maybe you were just a sweet person who could never ignore strays. Maybe it was both. 

Regardless of the reason, you liked pathetic men, so Mark did his best.

He discarded Mark Grayson, the golden boy, the star athlete and teacher’s pet, and became Mark Grayson, the cute, geeky and awkward guy next door.

If all went according to plan he would be Mark Grayson, your husband and the happiest man in the Milky Way. 

“Here you go.” You placed his favorite mug next to his plate. This really was his favorite. Two years ago, you got home really late after canceling a date and gave him a ribbon-tied box. Inside was a ceramic mug covered in clumsy hand-painted sunflowers and Seance Dog as a puppy. He was neutral to the comic book and the character, only claiming to be a fanboy because it suited his persona. But seeing the sloppily drawn ears and your bright, proud smile? He actually fell in love for real.

You took your seat across from him. “Dig in.”

Mark had to pause from eating so he could watch you.

You were nervous. You had been even before today. Mark knew something was wrong for a while now, though he didn’t expect you to ask him for a three-month break.

Without looking at him, you asked, “How’s school so far?”

Boringly easy. “It’s okay. I’ve been struggling but my friends have been helping me study.” 

“And the Team?”

Ugh. “They’re good.”

“Just good?”

Incompetent. Stupid. Kinda useless half the time. “They’ve been improving in hand to hand combat, but no one’s beaten me.” Praise me.

“It’s good to know you’re doing well with training, we’ll never know when someone strong will arrive wanting to take over Earth.”

He laughed with you, but the uncomfortable silence reared its ugly head.

He was already racking his brain on what to say before you cleared your throat.

“So… how’s Eve?”

Huh? “Huh?”

You softly stabbed the egg yolk with your knife. 

Did he hear you right? Why would you ask about that woman? When they first met, Mark was neutral towards her, but he played nice with Samantha the way he did with everybody else. He knew she had a crush on him but she never approached him and he just didn’t like her. Then he met you and she, like everyone else, just faded into the background. He introduced you to her as civilians, though it didn’t take a genius to figure out her identity as Atom Eve. You two were friendly, but as far as Mark was concerned, you weren’t exactly girlfriends. 

“Eve is okay, I guess.” He cut his pancakes into equal halves. 

“She’s an architecture major, isn’t she?”

“I think so. She’s been having trouble with some courses but from what she’s told me, she likes it.” Eve liked to talk. Mark just soaked in the information and responded as expected from him, but he didn’t actually care. 

“She called me a week ago, you know.”

He held his knife in the air. His lips twitched. 

You continued, “She–the whole team was worried about you. The phrase she used was ‘acting out.’”

“I have no idea what she means by that.”

“You fractured Rex’s collarbone and broke Amanda’s femur.” 

“...it was training.”

“You broke her Monster form’s femur.” 

He said nothing.

“Eve said you ignored their messages unless it was a major mission.”

Tattling piece of– “I just needed time alone. College has been really difficult right now, especially for a senior, and I guess I overdid it during training. I already apologized to Rex and Monster Girl.”

“...Eve seems like a good friend.”

He did not agree, but he smiled nonetheless. “That’s Eve for you.” 

You set down your fork and knife. 

He did the same. “Is something wrong?”

You stayed quiet for a while, refusing to meet his eyes. He could tell a thousand thoughts were running through that pretty head of yours. He always adored the expression on your face when you used your brain, like when you were tackling a difficult case. But right now, there was obvious melancholy in your gaze. 

“Honey?” He reached over the table, putting his fingers over yours.

You closed your eyes for a moment, and then turned to him. “Let’s break up.”

He could feel the air leave his system. You pulled away and he shot to his feet. 

“Mark–”

“What happened? What did Eve tell you?”

“Nothing–”

“Did Cecil say something to you? I swear to God, I’m going to…” He brushed his hair back. 

“I just... I… I’ve been thinking about us for a while now.”

“Yeah? Well, so have I.” He reached into his back pocket and revealed a small velvet box. 

You didn’t look surprised, but heartbreak was evident on your face. 

He fell to his knees, hands on your lap. “I love you. I’ve always loved you, did I not make that clear enough? Did you think I stayed with you for three years just because? You’re not just some… experiment or casual thing to me. Three years, I’ve done nothing but love you, how could you not expect this? I love you, [Name]. I love you . I’m not breaking up with you. I won’t. I’m going to marry you, maybe not this year or even next year, but you’re the only one for me.”

You grabbed his hands and stared at them. His knuckles were calloused but otherwise pristine as you thumbed them like they were made of crystal. His hands have prevented catastrophe after catastrophe, saved more people than you ever could. You met his eyes and cupped one cheek. 

“It’s funny,” you chuckled humorlessly. “Who knew this was what it would take to get you angry with me. Maybe I should’ve broken up with you sooner.”

“That’s not funny,” he said, leaning into your touch.

He was still a college senior. 

You didn’t doubt him for a moment, but he was young. Sure, he was mature in many ways, but he was young. A normal college student shouldn’t be thinking about marriage this early in his life. More importantly, a normal, healthy human shouldn’t be as obsessed with you as Mark was.

It took a while but you noticed that Mark’s smile when he was with other people didn’t look as sincere as the smile he showed you. It was cute. At first, you were flattered, to be honest. What woman wouldn’t enjoy the attention of a tall and handsome young man? 

But as the months passed, he barely tried to hide his dislike for anyone who wasn’t you. He probably thought his acting would be enough but he practically lived with you for three years. 

You knew he recorded your voice calls. You knew he stole your laundry every now and then. You knew how aversed he was to upsetting you.

You loved him. But you were also afraid… The sheer amount of his affection and the darkness that came with it terrified you just as much as it enticed you. You didn’t deserve his devotion, not because you hated his unhealthy fascination, but because you didn’t know how to return it. Also…

You put a hand over your belly.

It was better this way, you told yourself, you break both your hearts now and hurt for a while. This was preferable than having him devote everything to you so early in his life and then regret it later.

“I love you, too, Mark.” You pulled back your arm. “But this is over.”

“No, please don’t do this…” He quickly recaptured your wrist. 

“We’re at different points of our lives, Mark.”

His grip was firm. “I don’t care about that.”

“Well, I do.”

“No!”

You screamed, loud enough to cover the crunch of your bones.

Mark jerked back, falling backward on the floor and knocking the table down. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to–”

“Just…” you breathed through the pain, assessing your injuries  “...help me stabilize my wrist.”

He dashed through the flat for your med kit. He could only obediently do everything you asked.

“I’ll fly you to the ER,” he said, putting away the bandages.

“It’s okay, it’s not that serious,” you lied.

“Then I’ll clean up here.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

You both fell quiet. 

Mark bowed his head and gently tugged on your shirt. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I know.” 

“I love you.”

You didn’t say it back. 

He let go. “Keep the place, okay? It’s always been meant to be yours, nobody else’s.” And with that, he left your life just as quietly as he first appeared.

With the soft click of the door, you let yourself fall apart. 

the next chapter would either be the penultimate or the final one for no goggles. thanks for reading, comments are always appreciated <3

Part 4: Coming soon.

Masterlist Other Invincible Variant Origin (x Reader): Sinister Mohawk

[alfalfascouting]

The youtube auto-transcript struggles with the audio quality, and so too will many listeners, I imagine. And not having found any other transcript of this speech, I have endeavored to write my own, even though I know nothing about Don Quixote. I hope it helps anyway. Corrections on who he asks to give him his sword are welcome. Transcript follows:

By contrast: How do you sell to people at the bottom end of the scale? How do you even tell them that your game exists? Advertise on nightly news? I mean, these people don't read any of the regular magazines, they don't log onto CompuServe every 35 minutes, they're—These people, the way they buy games, they wander into the computer store once a year to get a new ribbon for their dot matrix printer. They get lost in the store and they stumble into the games section. And they say, "Oh gosh! Computer games, that's right. You know, I haven't played a game, in, ah, 2 years! Maybe I oughta buy one. Let's see. Oh look! Here's a pretty box! 'Harpoon!' That's a—(drowned out by crowd laughing)—I think I'll buy it. I'll bet it's about whales." How do you sell to these people!?

You know, and these people here—(holds hand high)—these are the ones you sell to because they tell you what they want. Designing for the bottom crap—(throws hands down)—it's hit or miss. You spend a half a million dollars on a game, if they don't like it, they won't even tell you they don't like it; they just won't buy it. But these people—(holds hand high)—Boy, try to stop them from telling you. They'll send you letters. They'll fill out the feedback form, send you email. They'll call you up in the middle of the night to tell you what's wrong with your game and how to make it better. These people! (holds hand high) Boy, it's easy to figure out what they want.

And what do they want? They want more depth. Yeah. They've invested a lot of money and a lot of time climbing that ladder. And they don't want to throw away that investment. They don't want to start all over on a new ladder. They want to keep climbing the ladder. They want to go higher and higher. They want more depth in their games. And think about how that compares to my dream. 'Cause I want to encompass the broad range of human experience and emotion. (holds his arms wide) What I want is breadth. (raises one hand high) What the customers want is depth. I am at cross purposes with my audience. And there's only one conclusion I can draw.

I have to leave. I don't fit in here anymore.

Now, I realize that's, ah… That's kinda strange. But you know, many years ago, I left the crowded cities of the eastern seaboard, fought cross the Appalachian mountains and came upon the virgin forests of Kentucky. There, I built myself a cabin and I hunted the dragon. I wasn't very good back then. I only bumped into him at night by chance. And then my encounters with him were brief and desperate; I'd wave my sword frantically and hear his claws hissing through the air, and then he would be gone. And I was learning. It was fun.

And then more people came. Hearty pioneers, they built cabins near mine. And pretty soon we had a lot of cabins. Pretty soon we had a village there with lots of houses. And then more people came until now… now we have a town. With stores, and people being busy, and streets, and property lines, and lawyers and…! This place has gotten too damn civilized for me.

I mean… I just don't fit in. So I hoist my backpack onto my shoulders and I walk down the main street one last time. I wave goodbye to a few old friends, but most of the faces I see belong to strangers. They look askance at me and turn to their neighbor and say, "Who is that scruffy old tramp anyway? I'm glad he's leaving town. We don't need his kind in our town."

At the edge of town I turn and look back one last time. It's a good town. I'm proud of the role I played in its creation. But out there, west, beyond the Mississippi, beyond the Great Plains, lays Rocky Mountain. There're no people there. Just rocks. Trees. Clear blue skies. And the dragon, he's there too. Waiting for me.

I can hear you saying, "Chris! This is crazy. I mean, you don't want to leave all this behind. You've got too much invested here. This is insanity!" And you know… You're right. (audience laughs) This is crazy. But let me tell you about another crazy old fool. Let me tell you about a guy by the name of Don Quixote de la Mancha.

You know, insanity is an inability to come to terms with reality. Don Quixote was definitely insane because he couldn't come to terms. But there was a reason. The reality in which Don Quixote lived was a sordid and ugly reality. The people were scrabbling for survival. Don Quixote didn't want that. He wanted to live in a world where there was truth and human dignity. And yeah, love. And try as he might, he couldn't accommodate that in the real world. Other people were able to compromise enough to reach an accommodation, but Don Quixote, for him, the gap was too great. He couldn't bridge it.

So instead of getting up on it, he imposed his reality on the real world. Where other people saw a filthy country hostel, he saw a castle. Where other people saw a flock of sheep, he saw a mighty army. Where other people saw a windmill, he saw a dragon. Yeah. Don Quixote was a crazy old fool. And you know, he was more honest about his dreams than most people. And for that, I honor him.

So, the time has come for me to make my commitment. I have committed myself. I have dedicated myself to the pursuit of the dragon. And having made that commitment, having decided that once and for all, now, all of a sudden, I can see him. There he is, right in front of me. As clear as day.

"I never thought that I would see you this clearly. I always saw you in brief glimpses in the dark. But now, now… You're so much bigger than I ever imagined! I'm not so sure I like this. I mean, yes, you're glorious and beautiful, but, you're ugly too. Your breath reeks of death. No, I… I never had a childish fantasy of conquering you. That thinking is for children. You're beyond that. Indeed I can see, stretched around your feet, the bodies of my predecessors. And all you have to show for it is a few nicks and scratches! But do you have to laugh at me that way? Am I so pitiful that you can sneer in my face like that? Yeah! Yeah, you frighten me! You hurt me! I felt your claws ripping through my soul! But I'm going to die someday, and before I can do that, I've got to fight you, eyeball to eyeball. I've got to look you right in the eye and see what's inside. But I'm not good enough to do that yet! I'm not experienced enough. So I'm going to have to start learning. Today. Here. Now. Come, dragon! I will fight you. Sancho Panza, my sword!"

(he draws a sword)

For truth! For beauty! For art! CHAAAAARGE! CHAAAARGE!!

(applause)

Finale of Chris Crawford’s Dragon Speech at GDC 1992

(Fun fact: Sid Meier is in the audience, seen in the bottom right corner  around 8:52)

[lightgamble]

DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN | 1.09

You couldn't call me?

[thoughtpeek]

I'VE FINALLY FINISHED BROTHERSHIP IT WAS SOOOOO GOOD!!!!!!!

[vox-off]

brandon's brother finally (finally)(FINALLY) got out of an abusive relationship and he's an absolute mess on our couch right now

i feel so bad for him but also am trying. real real hard. to forget i have a machete and i know where she lives

[dragons-and-yellow-roses]

Staring at the screen thinking, "You can reach out! Please reach out! I'm here, I will always be here for you, please message me. Please."

[foolinafable]

family matters

Five Hargreeves x Fem!Reader Synopsis: You and Five return after seven years away in a different timeline- but you don’t return alone Word Count: 1.8k Tags: Fluff, No Lila and Five, Pregnancy, Children, Season 4 fix it (kinda) Note: Got so much love on the last one I wrote this! Try to ignore spelling mistakes it's currently 3am.

Stuck with only your irritable CIA colleague Five Hargreeves was anything but a good time. You both got lost at the godforsaken subway station he mistakenly teleported you both to. Travelling for a year by his side certainly mellowed you out. His personality slowly making you feel comforted as you both explored multiple timelines together trying to find your way home.

Surprisingly, the idea he possessed powers was the easiest thing for you to come to terms with, probably due to your job at the CIA making it seem plausible to you that the government does hide a lot- they’re even hiding the whole science of separate timelines.  After around a year of trying and failing to find your way home, you and Five decided to ease off the vigorous schedule you unwittingly created, finding a timeline safe enough to stay in for a while allowing you both to rest and brainstorm ideas of how you could both find a way home to your families. 

You both made a mistake. Falling to know how long a while would be you find yourselves still in the timeline you chose as your ‘temporary’ home six years later. Finding each other a lot less frustrating than at the start of this. You suppose that’s an understatement as you watched Five play with your child, a girl who possessed brown hair and green eyes not too dissimilar to her father’s. It almost wasn’t fair how much her features favoured his. But, seeing his beauty reflected upon her features could never be something you would complain about. 

“Maybe if we get lucky the next one will resemble you more,” you remember his words from a few days earlier when you started to show a hand placed under your abdomen smiling as if this was the greatest gift he could ever receive. But you don’t think it would matter if this one ended up looking like their older sibling and their father. If anything you would prefer it- not that you would ever admit it.

Picking another fresh strawberry from the greenhouse of the abandoned home you now called your own. You placed it into the basket plans to make jam and jelly already filling your mind when you felt yourself begin to flush from the sweltering heat of the sun beating down upon the glass. Your skin heating up to a point of large discomfort, sweat beginning to gather at your temples. You sighed knowing that you couldn't continue to harvest anything else unless you wanted to face Five’s rath over you overheating again. 

“Mom!” Maxine ran towards you eagerly hands encircling your legs as she got close enough for a welcoming hug. She quickly looked up towards you big green eyes staring at you prettily 

“Hiya munchkin” You stroked the top of her hair as she smiled up at you with glee

“What doing?” the three-year-old questioned head titling as she waited for your response 

“Strawberries” was all you replied grabbing the basket to show her 

“Have one?” she asked pointing at the basket, batting her eyes to try to sway your decision. You simply plucked one out of the basket and gave it to her relishing in the delighted smile she sent your way before biting into the sweet fruit. You smiled at her before looking up to meet the other pair of green eyes that had made their way into the greenhouse. Five watched the interaction of his favourite girls softly only moving closer once you looked at him.

“Everything alright mumma?” he questioned noticing your flustered expression from the moment he and Maxine stepped foot in the conservatory

“A bit hot” you admitted with a shrug of your shoulders as he drew closer, trapping Maxine in between the two of you as the back of his hand touched your forehead he hummed in agreement with your words

“Let’s get you inside the house, don’t need you getting heatstroke” You forced down the urge to roll your eyes at his dramatics and simply nodded in agreement

“Some cold water and a sit down would be nice.”

He grabbed one of your hands and Maxine’s with the other leading you both back towards the house. After placing the basket of strawberries in the kitchen you quickly sat down on the couch feeling a slight ache in your feet while Five grabbed you a glass of water with more icecubes than you could even count, you smiled in thanks as he passed it to you while Maxine sat next to you, a small children book in hands that she was determined to read to you and her younger sibling as she wanted them to be just as smart as her. 

You could hear Five pattering around the house, tidying up before you could even think about it. Maxine had quickly given up on trying to read, getting bored after two pages and was instead sitting playing with some wooden blocks by your feet. You furrowed your eyebrows when you couldn’t hear Five moving around anymore a stark silence surrounding you now.

“Everything alright?” you shouted trying to figure out where he had gotten to, heart fluttering when there was no reply. Setting your glass down on the table in front of you as you rose from your rather comfortable spot on the couch, you walked into the other room where your lover was his body was stick straight, eyes not daring to leave the notebook in his hand. “What?” you questioned softly walking towards him, eyeing the words on the book as you got close enough.

“This” he began astounded “Is our way home, it’s written by me but I didn’t write this. Another me did.” you simply nodded before smiling  

“Looks like we’re going home.”

── ✧

You and Five found yourselves outside of what he assured you was his brother Diego’s house. Maxine who was resting her head on his shoulder, legs wrapped around his middle looked astounded by the snow while nerves filled you- the last time you saw any of his family was when you were put on the case that got you lost in the timelines to begin with and even then you barely saw his brothers and sister-in-law as they were quickly taken to hq for a show round to get them out of the way. You didn’t even want to think how you would explain this to them let alone to your own family but you guess this is the easier of the two as they all had powers and also been to multiple different timelines. Five set Maxine down next to you as he rapped on the door you quickly grabbed her hand before she could run off into the snow when the door opened 

“You back!” the man, Diego you assumed, smiled as he looked at Five 

“I am” he stared at his brother almost in shock that he had seen him for the first time for him in seven years

“Good” the man confirmed “We were all starting to get worried.” his eyes then turned towards you and the brunette-haired little girl who was trying to hide behind you “And you are?” he questioned and you quickly gave him your name his eyes sparking in recognition for some reason as he crouched to the ground to greet your daughter “And who is this little princess?” he asked quietly as Maxine started at him 

“This is Maxine” is all you said feeling Five’s eyes on you knowing he wanted to wait until you got inside to drop the bomb you could see Diego begin to connect the dots as he introduced himself to you but he was clearly confused because he would know if Five had a child in the last three years in this timeline at least.

“I will explain everything once we get inside- can’t let the missus get cold” is all he said to Diego as the man allowed you into his home. 

He quickly led you to the living room where to sat on the sofa, Maxine being picked up by Five and placed on his lap when she tried to climb onto yours, you turned towards him to complain but quickly stopped when you met his glower instead choosing to put a comforting hand on your tummy a habit you kept from your first pregnancy. Diego called for his wife Lila to come to sit with him when the door opened revealing more of Five’s family he whispered their names to you as they walked in all choosing to sit down when Diego told them that Five was going to explain where he’s been and why his colleague, a word you hadn’t been referred to as in a long time, was here. With most of his family here excluding Ben and Viktor, he cleared his throat to get their attention

“As you all know the marigold has made our powers a little different to what we are used to” They all made sounds of agreement “My blinking takes only to a tube station where each stop is a new timeline and we” gesturing to you “got stuck, unable to find our way back until now. We were away for seven years but for you has only been a few hours” he took their silence as a sign to continue “This is my wife” he spoke your name “And our daughter Maxine.” you sat in silence for a moment.

“Wait! This is the colleague he was always telling us about?” Luther asked excitedly you turned to the larger man confused when Klaus and Allison quickly agreed with him

“I thought he was joking when he said there was a cute girl who he worked cases with” Claire, Alison’s daughter, announced making her mother and uncles laugh

“I can’t believe you have a child” Lila spoke eyes wide

“Well he is going to have another one in a couple of months,” you told the already shocked woman who quickly smiled at the revelation while the others called out congratulations to their brother 

“How far along are you?” Allison asked as she came up to you silently questioning if she could touch the small bump you simply nodded “We think around thirteen weeks” looking to Five who simply nodded

“She only started showing a few days ago”

“I can’t believe it” Luther called out while pulling funny faces making Maxine laugh as she got a little less shy around her family.

You smiled as you watched Maxine get up and walk towards Lilas’ children playing with them as Five’s hand found its way to yours stroking your knuckles. You never thought you could ever get home let alone come back home happier than you had left it. You suppose a thanks was due to your rather irritable husband and his wacky powers.

[satellite-evans]

best friends

Pairing: Lando Norris x reader

Summary: Lando becomes best friends with your daughter after taking care of her when she's sick <3

Word count: 4.6k+

Warnings: fluff

A/N:

English is not my first language, so I apologize if I made any (grammar) mistakes. Feedback, requests, talks, vents, recommendations or just simple questions are always welcome.

Happy reading xxx

I do NOT give permission for my work to be translated or reposted on here or any other site.

It was one of those rainy mornings when everything seemed to move in slow motion. The sky was a dull shade of gray, and raindrops trickled down the windowpane, blurring the outside world into a watercolor painting. The sound of distant thunder rolled through the air, a reminder that the storm had settled in for the day.

You stood in your living room, fingers wrapped around a warm cup of coffee, the steam curling up into the air like a ghost of comfort. The aroma was rich, but the exhaustion clinging to your bones made it hard to appreciate. You took a slow sip, hoping the caffeine would work some magic, but the fatigue from the sleepless night refused to loosen its grip.

On the couch, your four-year-old daughter, Sophie, was curled up beneath a thick blanket, her tiny form barely stirring. Her usually bright, mischievous eyes were shut tight, her breathing soft but uneven. Her cheeks were flushed with fever, her little hands gripping the edge of the blanket like it was the only thing tethering her to comfort.

You exhaled, rubbing a hand over your face. The night had been long—hours spent checking her temperature, pressing cool cloths to her forehead, whispering reassurances into the dark. She had tossed and turned, whimpering in her sleep, too warm, too restless, too sick to find peace. And now, in the quiet of the morning, you were running on fumes, your body heavy with exhaustion, but there was no choice.

You couldn’t call in sick. Not again.

Your boss had been understanding the last time, but you knew there was only so much flexibility they could offer. And as much as you hated it, bills didn’t pause for feverish nights or exhausted single mothers. You had to push through. That’s what you always did.

Your gaze flickered to the clock. Less than an hour before your meeting.

Your stomach tightened as reality settled in—there was no way you could leave Sophie alone, not like this. The thought of walking out that door while she lay there, weak and vulnerable, made your chest ache with guilt. But what choice did you have?

You chewed your lip, fingers tightening around your phone. There was one person who might be able to help. Someone you weren’t sure you could ask yet.

Lando.

Your relationship was still new, fresh enough that you hesitated before burdening him with something this big. But he had always been kind, always made you feel like you weren’t alone in this, even when you were too scared to believe it. And right now, you needed help.

You took a breath and started typing.

Hey, Lando… Sophie is really sick today, and I have to go to work. I know this might be a lot, but… I don’t know who else to ask. Would you be able to help out for a bit? xxx

Your thumb hovered over the send button for a second, doubt creeping in. Was this too much? Would he feel obligated? Would this change things between you?

But there was no time to second-guess. You pressed send.

The seconds stretched unbearably as you waited for his response. You took another sip of coffee, your throat tight, your mind racing through backup plans—plans you didn’t have. Your gaze drifted back to Sophie, her small frame so fragile, her body lost in the folds of the blanket. She needed you. But she also needed the roof over her head, the food on her plate, the security you worked so hard to provide.

Then, finally, the ping of a message.

Your heart jumped as you unlocked your phone, your breath catching as you read his reply.

Don’t worry, I got you! I’ll take care of her. You’ve got nothing to stress about. I’ll be there in 10 minutes xxx

You let out a sigh of relief, but a small knot still formed in your stomach. The idea of leaving Sophie in someone else’s care, especially someone as new to your life as Lando, felt a little strange. It wasn’t that you didn’t trust him—you did. He had always been kind, patient, and effortlessly good with people. But Sophie wasn’t just anyone. She was your whole world, and handing over even a sliver of responsibility for her well-being wasn’t easy.

Still, you had no choice.

Not long after, a soft knock at the door broke through your anxious thoughts. You took a deep breath before opening it, finding Lando standing there, a concerned but reassuring smile on his face. He looked effortlessly casual in a hoodie and sweats, hands tucked into his pockets as if this was just another normal day.

“Hey,” he greeted, stepping inside. “How’s our little patient doing?”

You led him into the living room, where Sophie woke up and was curled up on the couch, watching TV with tired, glassy eyes. Although she was awake, she barely moved, fully focused on what was happening indient of her. The moment she saw Lando, she peeked up at him before quickly hiding her face in the folds of fabric, too shy to say anything.

You sighed, kneeling beside her and brushing her hair back gently. Her forehead was still too warm beneath your touch. “She’s still really warm,” you murmured, more to yourself than anyone else. Then, turning back to Lando, you handed him a small notepad filled with your rushed, yet meticulous, handwriting. “I wrote down everything you need to know.”

Lando took the notepad, his eyes scanning over it with careful focus as you continued.

“Her medicine is here—one dose every six hours. She won’t eat much when she’s sick, but she loves toast with honey and banana slices or the tomato soup in the fridge. She also only drinks apple juice or water, but try to get her to drink more water.”

Lando nodded, already taking mental notes. “Got it. Medicine, toast with honey and bananas, apple juice, and lots of water.”

You glanced down at Sophie, who remained silent but was clearly listening. “She likes Peppa Pig, but her favorite is Bluey,” you added, lowering your voice like it was a secret just for him.

At that, Lando chuckled. “Ah, a kid with taste. Oscar loves it too. Bluey it is.”

You smiled, appreciating how quickly he was absorbing everything. “She’s really shy at first, but once she warms up, she won’t stop talking.”

He grinned. “Challenge accepted.”

Your expression softened. “She also hates loud noises when she’s sick, so keep things quiet.” You hesitated before adding, “And… just call me if anything happens. Anything at all.”

“I will,” he assured you, his voice steady and certain. “You don’t have to worry. We’re going to be just fine.”

You wanted to believe that, and maybe you did, but leaving still felt wrong.

You turned back to Sophie, kneeling beside her once more. Her tiny frame barely shifted beneath the blanket, but when you smoothed her hair away from her face, she blinked up at you, her watery eyes full of unspoken words.

“I’ll be back soon, sweetheart,” you promised, pressing a gentle kiss to her warm forehead. “Be good for Lando, okay?”

Sophie’s lower lip trembled, and she clutched the blanket tighter. “I want you to stay,” she whispered, her voice barely more than a breath.

Your heart clenched painfully. You stroked her cheek, trying to fight the wave of guilt rising in your chest. “I know, baby,” you murmured. “I know. But I have to go to work, okay? Lando’s going to stay with you. He’s really nice, remember?”

She didn’t answer right away, her little fingers playing with the edge of the blanket. Then, slowly, she gave a tiny nod. It wasn’t much, but it was enough.

Lando crouched beside you, keeping his voice soft and light. “You know, Sophie, I was actually thinking I could use some help today.”

Sophie peeked at him through her lashes, wary but curious.

“You see,” he continued, as if sharing an important secret, “I don’t know the first thing about Bluey. And I heard you’re the expert. Think you can teach me?”

For a moment, there was nothing. But then, finally, Sophie nodded again, just a fraction more certain this time.

You let out a breath you hadn’t realized you were holding.

Giving her one last kiss on the forehead, you stood, grabbing your bag and coat. Before heading out the door, you turned to Lando one last time, meeting his gaze with quiet gratitude.

“Thank you,” you said softly, your voice thick with emotion.

His smile was warm, unwavering. “Anytime.”

For the first hour, Sophie was quiet, keeping her distance on the couch while Lando sat nearby. He didn’t push her to talk, didn’t try to force a connection—he simply sat beside her, arms resting casually on his knees, watching Bluey with an easy, relaxed expression.

The sound coming from the TV filled the quiet space between them, the rain outside creating a gentle rhythm against the windows. Every so often, he could feel her eyes on him—brief, cautious glances before she quickly looked away, burying herself deeper into her blanket.

Lando pretended not to notice at first, letting her come to him in her own time. But when he caught another quick peek out of the corner of his eye, he finally spoke, keeping his voice light and playful.

“You know,” he mused, as if sharing a secret, “I have a friend named Bluey.”

Sophie blinked at him, intrigued but skeptical. “You do?” she asked softly, her voice raspy from sleep.

“Yup,” he nodded, a grin tugging at his lips. “She’s blue, just like this Bluey, but she’s actually a little stuffed toy my friend keeps in his car for good luck.”

Sophie’s lips twitched, and then, to Lando’s delight, she giggled—a quiet, sleepy little laugh, but still, a laugh.

“That’s funny,” she murmured, curling further into the blanket.

Lando grinned, feeling the tension between them start to melt away.

A little while later, when Sophie’s tummy let out a small grumble, he took it as his cue.

“Sounds like someone’s ready for a snack,” he teased, standing up and stretching dramatically.

Sophie hesitated before nodding. “Toast,” she mumbled, rubbing at her tired eyes.

“Coming right up, ma’am,” Lando said with a playful salute, making her giggle again.

He moved into the kitchen, following the notes you had left. He spread a thin layer of honey over the warm toast, slicing up a banana just the way you had instructed. As he placed the plate in front of Sophie, he watched with amusement as she immediately picked at the crust first, nibbling at the edges before moving onto the softer center.

He tilted his head, noticing how familiar the habit seemed. Then it hit him.

“You eat your toast like your mommy does,” he remarked casually.

Sophie paused mid-bite, eyes flicking up to him in surprise. “Like mommy?”

Lando nodded. “Yup. First time I saw her do it, I thought maybe she was just being fancy. But now I know—it’s a family thing.”

Sophie seemed to like that answer because she grinned before taking another bite.

A few moments later, she pouted slightly as honey dripped onto her fingers. Lando reached for a wet napkin, handing it to her with an amused smirk.

“Sticky fingers, huh?” he teased.

She nodded solemnly, wiping her hands with small, deliberate movements. “Mommy doesn’t like sticky fingers either.”

Lando chuckled, leaning back into the couch. “You and your mommy are a lot alike, you know?”

At that, Sophie smiled—really smiled this time—and it was the kind of smile that made Lando’s chest feel unexpectedly full. She looked at him for a moment, her tiny body finally relaxing as if she had decided he was safe. Then, with a small yawn, she snuggled deeper into the blanket, inching closer to his side.

Just as her eyelids started to droop, she mumbled sleepily, “Mommy says you has pretty eyes.”

Lando’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, a slow smirk creeping onto his face. “Oh, really?”

Sophie nodded, her voice barely above a whisper. “She told her best friend, Louisa. She said they’re ‘so dreamy.’”

Lando chuckled, shaking his head in amusement. “Did she now?”

Sophie made a soft noise of agreement, already half-asleep. “She likes you.”

Lando’s heart swelled at her innocent words, warmth spreading through him in a way he hadn’t expected. He glanced down at her peaceful face, looking exactly like you.

Gently, he brushed a stray curl from her forehead and whispered, “I like her too.”

As the day stretched on, Sophie’s initial shyness melted away, replaced by giggles and small moments of trust.

At first, she was cautious—watching Lando out of the corner of her eye as he sat on the floor beside her tiny play area. But with patience and gentle encouragement, he managed to pull her into small activities. They built a pillow fort in the living room, carefully stacking cushions and draping a blanket overhead to create a cozy hideout.

“This is the best castle ever,” Lando announced dramatically, lying on his back inside their creation. “I think we should declare this as The Kingdom of Sophie.”

Sophie giggled, adjusting the stuffed animals she had lined up as “guards” at the fort’s entrance. “And you can be the knight,” she declared.

Lando gasped, clutching his chest. “Me? A knight? That’s a huge responsibility.” He leaned in with a conspiratorial whisper. “Do I get a sword?”

Sophie considered this very seriously before nodding. “But only a soft sword,” she said, picking up a plush toy and handing it to him. “No hitting, just protecting.”

Lando chuckled, accepting the stuffed animal with a solemn nod. “I will guard this kingdom with my life.”

After their castle adventures, Sophie pulled out her collection of books, choosing her favorites and snuggling into Lando’s side as he read to her. She listened intently, her little fingers playing with the hem of his hoodie while he brought each story to life with silly voices and exaggerated expressions.

“You’re funny,” she told him at one point, peeking up at him with a sleepy smile.

“I try to be,” Lando admitted. “But between you and me, I think you’re the funniest one here.”

She giggled again, clearly pleased.

Later in the afternoon, when her energy dipped, they settled at the coffee table for a quiet coloring session. Lando grabbed a handful of crayons while Sophie carefully worked on her masterpiece.

“What are you drawing?” he asked, peering over her shoulder.

Sophie held up the paper proudly, revealing a childlike drawing of three stick figures. One was clearly her, with curly scribbles for hair, another was you, and the last one—labeled “Lando” in wobbly letters—stood right beside you.

Lando’s heart clenched in the best way possible. “Wow,” he said, genuinely touched. “This might be the best drawing I’ve ever seen.”

Sophie beamed. “It’s Mommy and you! And me!”

“I love it,” he told her, nudging her playfully. “You’re a real artist, Soph.”

After a fun-filled afternoon of pillow forts, storybooks, and coloring, Lando noticed Sophie beginning to slow down. Her energy had dipped significantly, her tiny body slumping against the couch as she blinked sluggishly at the TV.

He frowned, reaching out to feel her forehead the way he had seen you do earlier. The warmth against his palm made his stomach twist uncomfortably—she was still running a fever.

“Alright, kiddo,” he murmured, brushing a stray curl away from her face. “Time for a little check-up.”

Sophie groaned, her response muffled by the blanket she had pulled up over her nose. “Noooo.”

Lando chuckled. “Come on, your mom left me very strict instructions to make sure you’re feeling okay. I don’t mess around when it comes to doctor duties.”

Sophie peeked out, her cheeks flushed from the fever. “Are you a real doctor?”

Lando gasped dramatically. “Excuse me? I’ll have you know I am Dr. Lando, and I am very serious about my job.” He reached for the thermometer you had left on the coffee table. “Now, open up, little miss.”

She pouted but obeyed, letting him slip the thermometer under her tongue. Lando sat patiently, watching the numbers climb before it beeped. He pulled it out, checking the screen.

“Not bad, but still warm, Soph,” he murmured, concern flickering in his eyes.

Sophie just hummed sleepily, curling further into her blanket.

Lando glanced at the notepad of instructions you had left, then back at her. “Alright, first order of business—water. Your mom said you have to drink some, and I’d rather not get fired on my first day as a babysitter.”

Sophie groaned but didn’t argue when he grabbed her little cup of water and held it out to her.

“Just a few sips, okay?” he coaxed. “I’ll even let you have a super exclusive VIP sip while sitting in the fort.”

That got her attention. She let out a weak giggle before reaching for the cup with small, clumsy fingers. Lando helped guide it to her lips, watching as she took a few tiny sips before wrinkling her nose.

“Bleh,” she mumbled.

Lando smirked. “Not a water fan, huh?”

She shook her head, but Lando tapped the cup gently. “I get it, but we gotta make sure you don’t turn into a little raisin.”

Sophie giggled at that, taking one more sip before handing the cup back.

“Good job, kiddo,” he praised.

Next came the medicine, which was a slightly tougher battle.

“Noooo,” Sophie whined, pulling the blanket over her head when she saw Lando grabbing the small bottle.

Lando sighed, shaking his head. “C’mon, Soph. Your mom told me you have to take this.”

“Don’t wanna.”

“Okay, what if I take some too?” Lando bargained.

Sophie peeked out, squinting at him. “You don’t have a fever.”

“Yeah, but I feel like I could be getting one,” he said with mock seriousness. “Better to be safe, right?”

She stared at him for a moment, considering his words. “…Okay.”

Lando grinned in victory and poured the correct dose into the little plastic cup. He handed it to her, watching as she took it hesitantly before scrunching her face at the taste.

“Bleh,” she groaned again.

“Yeah, medicine’s the worst,” Lando agreed, setting the cup aside. “But you’re a champ.”

Satisfied that he had followed your instructions, he helped tuck her back into the couch, adjusting the blanket so she was snug and warm.

He sat beside her, ruffling her curls lightly. “Feeling any better?”

Sophie hummed, rubbing her eyes sleepily. “A little.”

“That’s good,” he murmured, watching as she yawned and curled closer to him. He reached for the remote, lowering the TV volume. “Alright, you just rest now, okay? I got you.”

Sophie peeked up at him, blinking slowly, her eyelids heavy with sleep. “Mommy was right,” she whispered, her voice thick with drowsiness.

Lando tilted his head, raising an eyebrow as he tried to hide a small smile. “About what?” he asked softly, not wanting to disturb the peaceful moment.

She yawned again, her tiny body curling further into the warmth of the blanket. “You’re nice,” she mumbled, her voice barely above a whisper. “And you’re officially my new best friend.”

A warmth spread through Lando's chest, more than just the gentle feeling of Sophie’s innocent words. He smiled to himself, his fingers brushing a stray curl from her forehead as he whispered, “That’s an honor, kiddo. You’re my new best friend too.” His voice was so soft, so sincere, and Sophie’s breathing soon evened out, signaling that she was finally drifting into a peaceful sleep.

Lando stayed where he was, right by her side. The room was quiet, save for the soft sound of Sophie’s breathing. He glanced around the room, ensuring she was comfortable—making sure the blanket was tucked just right, keeping the environment as calm and secure as possible. He knew how much you’d want this—how much you’d want her to feel safe and loved.

And just as you walked through the door, everything around you seemed still, frozen in a sense of calm that made your heart swell in a way that took you by surprise. The living room was serene. The TV played softly in the background, a nature documentary flickering in the corner, but all your attention was drawn to the sight before you. There, curled up against Lando’s side, was Sophie—utterly content, her tiny hand resting trustingly on his arm. The sight was simple but perfect. She had found comfort in Lando's presence, just like she always found in yours.

You stopped in the doorway for a long moment, frozen by the unexpected tenderness of the scene. Lando moved with such deliberate care, adjusting the blanket around Sophie’s shoulders. He tucked it in gently, making sure she was warm and settled in, completely unaware of how much it all made your heart swell.

It was a moment of quiet beauty, and you couldn’t help but feel a soft rush of emotion rise in your chest.

Lando caught the sound of your footsteps and looked up. His lips curved into a quiet smile, one that spoke volumes without needing words. “Hey,” he whispered, careful not to disturb Sophie. “She did great today.”

You set down your bag, your voice warm with admiration. “Looks like you did too.” Your gaze softened as you looked at them, the scene too peaceful not to melt your heart.

Sophie stirred, the gentle sound of your voice pulling her from the last remnants of sleep. Her eyelids fluttered open, and she blinked a few times before her tired gaze landed on you. Her little voice was still thick with sleep when she murmured, “Mommy…”

You knelt down beside her, brushing a few stray curls from her forehead. “Hey, sweetheart. Did you have a good nap?” you asked softly, your heart full.

Sophie stretched slightly, but stayed nestled against Lando, unwilling to leave the safety of his side. Her eyes were still heavy with sleep as she spoke again, her words slow and deliberate. “Lando’s funny,” she said with a yawn. “And he said Bluey is his friend.”

You chuckled softly, amused by her observations. “Did he take good care of you?” you asked, a teasing smile tugging at your lips.

Sophie nodded, rubbing her eyes sleepily. “Mhm,” she murmured, her voice drowsy but content. “And…” She paused, clearly considering her next words carefully, before her face shifted into a mischievous little smile. “He has dreamy eyes. Just like you said.”

Your whole body locked up, the blood rushing to your cheeks in an instant. Your heart skipped, and your mouth went dry. Your mind raced as you scrambled for a response, but no words came out. Instead, you opened your mouth—then closed it—before finally opening it again, only to find yourself completely lost for words.

Lando, on the other hand, had zero plans of letting this moment pass without teasing you mercilessly.

His smirk spread slowly, his eyes glinting with amusement as he turned to you. “So… dreamy, huh?” he teased, his voice low and full of mischief.

You groaned, immediately burying your face in your hands. “Oh my God, Sophie,” you whined, your voice muffled by your palms. “I’m never speaking in front of her again.”

Lando chuckled, clearly enjoying every second of your embarrassment. “No, no,” he teased, “don’t stop now. I’m very interested in this topic.” His voice was playful, but there was a warmth in it that made you feel as though he wasn't teasing in a hurtful way—just in a way that made everything feel even more genuine.

You shot him a playful glare, your cheeks still burning with heat. “I hate you,” you muttered, but the words came out softer than intended.

Lando reached over and gently took your hand in his, his fingers squeezing yours. The teasing smile faded into something warmer, something more sincere. “Don’t worry,” he murmured, his voice low and tender. “I think it’s adorable.”

You exhaled, still flustered but unable to stop the smile that tugged at the corners of your mouth. It was impossible not to feel a little bit lighter with him beside you.

Lando lifted your hand and pressed a soft, playful kiss to your knuckles. “And just so you know,” he added, his voice dropping to a playful whisper, “I think your eyes are pretty dreamy too.”

Eventually, as much as you secretly didn’t want him to, Lando had to go. It was already getting late, and though Sophie had been asleep earlier, she was now awake and clinging to his hoodie with surprising strength for a four-year-old.

“Nooo,” she whined, her lower lip jutting out in the most dramatic pout. “Don’t go, stay.”

Lando smiled gently, crouching down to her level. “Hey, I’ll come back, okay? I promise.”

Sophie crossed her arms, her little face scrunching up in stubborn defiance. “Pinkie promise?”

Lando grinned, holding out his pinkie. “The strongest pinkie promise ever.”

She eyed him for a moment before looping her tiny pinkie around his. “You have to come back soon.”

“I will,” he assured her. “And next time, we’ll build an even bigger pillow fort.”

Sophie gasped as if that was the greatest thing she had ever heard. “With lights?”

Lando chuckled. “With lights. And a secret entrance. And maybe even some snacks.”

Sophie giggled, finally releasing his hoodie. “Okay… but don’t take too long.”

Lando ruffled her curls. “Deal.”

Sophie then turned to you and grabbed your hand. “Come, Mommy. You have to walk him to the door.”

Lando arched a brow, clearly amused. “Oh, do I get an escort?”

Sophie nodded seriously. “Mommy has to say goodbye properly.”

Your cheeks warmed again, but you didn’t argue, letting Sophie lead the way as the three of you walked to the door.

When you reached it, Sophie turned to Lando. “Bye-bye, Lando.”

He smiled, bending down to give her a quick hug. “Bye, kiddo. Sleep tight, okay?”

Sophie nodded before stepping back, watching intently as if she was expecting something.

Lando turned to you, his expression softening. “Thanks for trusting me with her today.”

You exhaled, offering him a small, genuine smile. “Thank you. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.”

Lando took a small step closer, tilting his head slightly. “Anytime.”

For a moment, you both just stood there, caught in the quiet, comfortable tension between you.

And then, before you could second-guess yourself, you leaned up and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to his cheek.

Lando froze for half a second, his breath hitching ever so slightly—but when you pulled back, his lips stretched into the slowest, most heart-melting smile you had ever seen.

“Was that a thank-you?” he teased, though his voice was lower, warmer.

You laughed softly. “Maybe.”

His eyes flickered between yours, something unspoken passing between you, before he lifted a hand and gently tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ear. His fingers lingered just a little longer than necessary.

“I really like being here,” he admitted quietly.

You swallowed, your heart skipping a beat. “I really like you being here.”

And then, before you could completely process it, Lando leaned in, brushing his lips against yours in a slow, tender kiss.

It was soft and warm, hesitant yet sure, the kind of kiss that left no doubt about where things were heading between you.

When he finally pulled away, his forehead rested lightly against yours, a quiet chuckle escaping him. “So… should I expect Sophie to tell you stuff about me too?”

You groaned, laughing against him. “Oh God, she totally will.”

Lando grinned, pressing one more quick kiss to your lips before pulling back. “Guess that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

From behind you, Sophie giggled. “Mommy likes you sooo much.”

You buried your face in your hands. “Sophie.”

Lando only laughed, giving your hand one last squeeze before stepping outside. “See you soon.”

And as he walked down the path, you stood in the doorway with Sophie, watching him go—your heart already longing for the moment he would come back.

[strawberryyyenthusiast]

Diabetic Steve who is at a Dairy Queen with Robin after he went with her to an all girl punk band that’s she’s been wanting to see for years. Steve had been feeling weird all day but he didn’t want to bail at the last second because he knew that Robin would just cancel everything to take care of Steve.

(Steve would do the same for her).

Steve plops down into a booth while Robin goes to order them food. He pulls out his pod and winces when he sees his glucose level.

64 and going down. Not a good sign.

Just to be sure he pricks his finger and holy shit, he’s actually at 43. It’s at that moment, when Steve is wiping his finger with the alcohol wipe, that his phone decides to loudly beep to alert him that, “hey you’re crashing pretty hard and fast— take care of it soon!!”

Steve is rifling through his bag while Robin is already trying to rush their orders.

“Shit,” Steve mumbles to himself. “I’m out of fucking juice.”

His hands start to shake and Robin begins to freak out. Steve is always so in control of his diabetes, she’s never seen him like this. So, Robin does what any other person would do and grabs the largest blizzard she has ever seen on the online orders tray and runs over to her best friend.

“Here! Have this, I’m going to try to get you some apple juice!”

Steve just nods his head and slowly spoons some of it into his mouth.

“This tastes like shit, by the way.”

“You’re welcome, dingus. Now shut up and eat.”

The worker behind the counter comes over and starts talking to Robin after she sits in front of Steve. Steve can’t really make anything out right now since he’s trying to focus on making his hands work. But, he thinks he hears the mention of calling 911 and an ambulance.

Time passes a little slower after that. Steve somehow manages to get down enough of the ice cream that he is slowly rising again.

57 after he pricked. Thank god.

It’s at that moment that Eddie Munson, lead singer of Corroded Coffin, walks in. He went to his best friend’s, Chrissy’s, show and needed a pick-me-up after helping her lug all of her equipment back into their vehicle.

He goes over to the online orders tray and it’s empty. He doesn’t really mind waiting. He walks over to the counter and sees that the worker is extremely frantic as she sorts some shit out.

“Hey,” he starts, his fingers tapping the fake granite counter top. “Just checking, I’m here to pick up an order for Edmundo and it’s not on the tray. Do you know when it will be ready?” He flashes an awkward smile and the worker just points to the table behind him.

“We’re working on it. Your nightmare of a blizzard was needed for something else. Give us five minutes.”

Eddie nods and slowly turned around, where he sees the most gorgeous man eating his blizzard. Reluctantly, he might add. The man has on a light pink t-shirt and brown corduroy pants, thick lensed glasses sliding down his nose. The woman across from him was clad in funky colors and had a dirty blonde bob. She was talking extremely fast and gesturing with her hands a bunch.

Chrissy would love her.

He walked over and tapped the man on the shoulder.

“How’s my blizzard?”

He slowly looks up and Eddie is met with honey brown eyes and beauty marks for days. A straight nose and an angular jawline. Jesus Christ.

The woman looks like she’s about to say something, but the guy beats her to it. “It tastes like if a unicorn threw up in my mouth, but it prevented me from passing out. So… thanks.” He smiles. “I’m Steve.”

Eddie needs to become Steve’s husband immediately.

“And I’m in love.” He pauses and then sees the look of glee on Steve’s face. “EDDIE. My name is Eddie.”

“It’s nice to meet you Eddie. Are you free tomorrow?”

[bagholes]

English subtitles for Johanne Sacreblue

You've probably heard of a parody of Emilia Pérez (produced by a Mexican trans woman!!!) called Johanne Sacreblue. The whole thing is in Spanish (and French, obviously), so I translated the whole thing to English (see read more)

While I wasn't involved in the production of the original short, I'm Mexican and I have a degree in Translation and Applied Linguistics, so hopefully you'll enjoy my translation. Please give the video some love and don't give Emilia Pérez more attention!!

!!!!!!!! ENGLISH SUBTITLES !!!!!!!!!

(Hey! I'm a professional translator, and I translated the whole thing in English. Please upvote so more people can enjoy this video!)

Ah, nauseating France.   

Home of wonderful food such as baguettes, croissants, and more.

Lots of wonderful people live here.

Obviously, we’re French. 

This might look like a love story,

but open your eyes and pay attention!

In France there’s rising burglary rates. 

But why tell you about France when I can show you?

Welcome to la France!

♫

Welcome to la France.

A unique and special country.

Where you’ll know what it means to truly love. Love, love from France.

Live the experience of this place. 

[Homer Simpson voice] Wow, classy.

Maitre D': Good evening, sir. Would you please leave without a fuss right now?

Homer: OK.

Welcome to la France

where you’ll get your heart stolen,

and your wallet, too.

Welcome to la France,

but if you’re Muslim, homosexual, or Black,

I want you to stay back. 

Crêpes? Les crêpes? I didn’t shower today. 

I’m not worried. I smell just fine. 

Like rats, sweat, and wine.

The cheese I eat smells better than me,

but my perfume can take care of it. 

I love feeling superior. 

Here’s some rapping just because. 

Oh, mon ami. Merci. Sacré bleu. Comment tu t’appelles? Merci. Déjà vu. Bon voyage! Pizza, kwason. 

It’s croissant, croissant, croissant!

Welcome to la France

where you’ll get your heart stolen,

and your wallet, too.

Welcome to la France,

but if you’re Muslim, homosexual, or Black,

I want you to stay back. 

Hit it, Mbappé. 

Viva Cinco the Mayo!

Long live cakes!

Marie Antoinette! 

Long live cakes!

My fucking crêpe still hurts when I think of you

Part 1: surprise and challenge.

Maybe all those years living in a ranch were good for him.

He wasn’t living in a ranch!

He lived in Mexico City for ten years.

Same thing. It might as well have been a jungle.

Mexicans are savages. 

Do you know what they do to cheese over there?

They eat it fresh!

I don’t think he copied their ways.

He’s still a good Frenchman.

He better be. I expect no less.

He’s my only son. 

All the suffering in Mexico must’ve gotten rid of his rebel nature. 

He’ll be the perfect man. The perfect male successor for the largest baguette company in France.

My son. My manly son. 

Did I already mention that my son is a man?

He’s here!

Maman, papa… bonjour!

Son of a-

[title credits] Johanne Sacreblue. Directed by someone with ADHD.

What were you up to in Mexico?

I learned how to open a beer using a bill.

Jonathan is using a dress, Bridgitte. And he has breasts! What do you think he was up to in Mexico?

Now my name is Johanne.

Nonsense! You’re not getting the company. No way. 

That’s fine. I don’t even want it. 

Honey, it’s your future. You’re our only DAUGHTER. You have to take the position. 

You’ll get the company. End of story. 

You don’t even want me to own the company!

Because I didn’t think it’s what you wanted!

Why did we stop speaking French?

What did you say?

Nothing. I got confused.

I’ll tell you something: remember the Ratatouille? They gave us this letter. They challenged us to the national France competition to decide once and for all what’s better: baguettes or croissants. 

Do you want to enjoy your fortune? Win this competition and manage the company. Or go back to Mexico to eat guacamole.

For the last time, no! You won’t get the company. 

I’m the only one who’s always loved croissants.

I’m the oldest son. It’s my right. 

Your right? How can think that about your brothers?

Any of them could do a good job.

Hugo can’t get over his artistic phase and he’s addicted to sniffing paint thinner!

I’m not just sniffing paint thinner! Yellow paint makes me happy.

Mario Hugo! Good luck with his twangy voice.

Mario Hugo: I agree with my beloved brother, but I love you, my family. 

No one knows what you’re saying!

Dugo is young! Why can’t it be me?

Well, first of all, you don’t have a penis!

Oof. Gotcha.

I’m trans. Other than that, I haven’t changed at all. 

Does it really affect you that much?

I’ve made myself clear: anything that affects our family affects me!

It’s not that we don’t love you, honey, it’s just that… you embarrass us. 

You’re not even an Hugo!

Yes, I am! I’m [French accent] Arturo! (Translator’s note: the rhyme got lost in translation. Sorry about that). 

“Arturo” isn’t “Hugo”!

Yes, it is! Ar-tu-ro!

Where did you get that?

Well… Chofls!! The letter!

The Sacrebleu have invited us to the Great Paris Competition. We will show once and for all what food item best represents our country! If you beat that family’s stupid transexual, you’ll get the company

I don’t know what to do, bestie. I don’t want to own that goddamn company. 

And why don’t you learn how to do something?

Because if I do it, they’re gonna cut me off, and I’ll be an unemployed, 28-year-old trans woman who has no life skills. 

Why don’t you just tell your father that you don’t want to do it and that you won’t do it?

It’s too late. I have no choice. 

Bestie, I’m so sorry you can’t enjoy your fortune with no commitment.

It’s awful…

Good evening, ladies. What can I get you?

I’ll have some French molletes.

I’ll have chicken.

Of course, ma’am. How shall we cook it?

Anything is fine as long as you kill it as cruelly as possible. 

Excellent choice, ma’am.

Anything else? Would that be all?

That’ll be all. Well, actually, I think I also want-

You said that would be all! You must assume the consequences of your decisions. Rot in hell! [spits]

Oh my, what a great service!

I know! They have the best customer service in France! Okay, so are you signing up for the competition?

I really don’t have a choice…

Bestie, you can do anything. You’re stronger than every woman I know, and I’m not just saying this because you used to be a man…

Thanks for the clarification.

You’re gonna compete and you’re gonna win.

Emily, you have no idea how much that means to me. You’re the only reason I wanted to come to Paris. I wanted to see my friend Emily in Paris. It was the only reason I wanted to come tot this city: see Emily in Paris.

Oh là là, I know! Everyone tells me that! What I don’t get is why you don’t want to compete. This is such an honor for France-

It’s just that there’s a lot of things I don’t understand since I came back. Why are we so impolite? Why do we love animal cruelty? And why exactly do we hate Muslims? 

Because it’s fun!

Yeah, maybe, but have you ever considered that it’s wrong?

Oh my God! You’re right! I’d never thought about it! We’re awful!

Oui!

What we do to birds… we drown them in cognac! Why are we doing it? Who thought of that?

I don’t know.

I feel.. dirty! I want to take a shower!

I knew I wasn’t crazy!

Seriously… I never thought that we were doing something wrong. I always thought that people who get minimum wage liked how we treat them. No wonder they sent you to Mexico… You’re crazy.

I got sent to Mexico for being trans.

They sent you to Mexico because you’ve been hallucinating. You’re seeing Marie Antoinette.

I’m not hallucinating! It’s the actual ghost of Marie Antoinette.

Marie Antoinette: don’t listen to hear. She dresses like a Guatemalan. I’m as real as my tragic death. They should behead her for having such damaged hair.

There’s no point in knowing the truth about France. At the end of the day, I’m just an ordinary French millionaire with enough money to live for four days. There’s nothing I can do.

Marie Antoinette: [unintelligible] sleep paralysis at night.

If you win, all of France will listen to you.

Ladybug: Welcome to the most important competition of la France, where France’s most important families will make a very important decision.

Cat Noir: that’s right! We’re here to make a very important decision. What food best represents France: baguettes or croissants?

Our fellow citizens will know what we’re talking about, but for those dirty foreigners that only know how to use soap…

Wear perfume!

We’ll explain the rules.

There’s two events: whoever wins both will be victorious!

The first even will be a race! The first one to reach the Eiffel tower, touch it and say our catchphrase “we give up!” will be the winner!

Without further ado, we’re heading to the competition!

It’s the best race I’ve seen years!

The Ratatouille throw a croissant to the Sacreblue and almost slashes her throat. It’s cat-tastic!

But Johanne takes the lead with 400 rats, and she wins the race!

Rats! Meow!

Here she comes!

Vive la France!

Your love for croissants ends here. What an embarrassment!

Don’t feel bad, honey. I never really expected anything from you. 

Arturo, I’m not gonna lie…

Brother, defeat will only make you stronger.

What?

You’re a great man. You’ll make it. 

Can I have five French dollars to buy yellow paint? I want to paint. 

Later that night in some French dumpster

♫

I’m just a trash man in Paris.

Another piece of trash in Paris.

But I’m also the greatest trash

I’m the trash man.

I’m such trash that I made a fortune using other cultures.

I’m such trash that I enjoy cancelling last minute

because I’m scared 

that they’ll see my tiny baguette.

I don’t have the guts to say that I fucked up.

I’m scared to know what people think of me

If I’m a good guy or just a bald bad guy

I’m such trash that it’s embarrassing.

I thought Karla Sofia was from Puebla.

I’m such trash that I wrote a musical about narcos.

“Penis to vagina, woman to man.”

What the fuck was that shit, bro?

I’m disgusting, don’t you see? 

I’m disgusting, don’t you see? 

Part 2: from hate to love

Why did you ask me to meet you here?

[sigh] I came to ask you to stop fighting over something as dumb as bread.

Baguettes are just bread, but croissants are France itself. It’s in our veins, in our wine, in the air we breathe!

Arturo, wait, don’t do it!

[coughing]

You can’t take a deep breath in France. Dumbass.

Whatever. You’re just saying this because you’ve been away for a long time. You’re nothing but a chimichanga lover. 

Cinco de Mayo!

How dare you!

Does it make you feel good to be a man hitting a woman?

Actually, yes. Now I get why we do it.

I’ve had enough! I can’t take it anymore! What’s wrong with France? Why do they like to hit women? Why do they like racism? Can’t you see that what we’re doing is wrong?

Actually, no. I had never thought about it. I never considered that… Oh my God… We’re monsters! What are we doing? We must put an end to this!

But how?

You’ll do it with me. With your amazing arguments, we’ll change France. 

Do you think it can be done? But how?

Oui, mademoiselle. If you let me win the second event, it’ll be a tie, and they’ll have to listen to us according to the French rules I hadn’t mentioned before. 

I don’t know if I can trust you.

Trust me, mademoiselle. Trust this stinky French heart.

Alright. Kiss me.

Do you want me to kiss you?

Yes. Give me a French kiss.

Here it’s just “a kiss”, stupid

Welcome to the second competition!

This is the most fabulous competition! It’s the racism competition!

That’s right, Cat Noir! And for those stupid Americans who don’t know what we’re talking about, in this competition, participants are given a total of 30 minutes to deport and catch as many immigrants as possible.

Everything is allowed: from making up crimes to blackmailing! 

Each Muslim is worth 5 points. However, participants can get extra points from hate crimes against Muslims, Black people, Latinos, members of the LGBT community, and fans of Emily in Paris!

Let’s watch the racism competition!

We apologize for the technical issues. Cat Noir had a fanatic episode. 

It was amazing! With a great lead, our winner, Arturo, was victorious. So we’ll have to call this a tie. 

Oh! For the first time in more than ten years, we’re getting some words from our ten French emperors!

Stop!

There… won’t be… a tie!

This decision will no longer be postponed. 

 Declaramos abierto el duelo final.

And it’ll happen right now.

Because I love Queen Marie Antoinette.

The final duel…

It’s the fight to the death with baguettes!

Good luck! And may the Frenchest win. Yes. Oui. Oui. Oui.

[Elmo]

Part 3: destiny

Fight to the death with baguettes?!

Fight to the death with baguettes?!

Fight to the death with baguettes?!

I think there’s gonna be a fight to the death with baguettes.

What? Fight to the death with baguettes? What’s that?

Oh, fight to the death with baguettes. I’ve heard about it. I think they’re gonna fight to the death… with baguettes.

[gasp]

Johanne: I don’t want to fight to the death with baguettes with you.

Arturo: Neither do I, but we have no choice.

J: Yes, there is. Haven’t they considered that this is wrong?

No!

Arturo: Papa Johns!

Papa Johns: I pitted your families against you with a little help from whom you love the most… your butlers. 

Arturo: Chofls!

Johanne: Wigles, why?

Wiggles: I’m sorry, madame. I need the money, and you haven’t given me raise in 25 years. 

Papa Johns: I’ll destroy you so the greatest French food gets recognition: French fries!

Johanne: You’re losing a lot of wine.

Johanne: you have a rat on your head!

Papa Johns: this tiny chef taught me his secrets, and I used them for evil. 

Wigles: I think I got Stockholm syndrome due to so many years of labor exploitation.

And that’s how we got away from the bad guy, Mr. French ambassador. 

Controlled by a rat… The nightmare of every French. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s how Johanne Sacreblue and Arturo Ratatouille restored the glory of France. What a captivating story you’ve brought us, full of pain and social commentary. Is there anything else you would like to add before we run out of funds?

Well, actually, yes. As many of you know, I went to Mexico, and my fellow Mexicans asked me to bring a gift to France when I came back, and what a better person to give it to than the ambassador? 

Oh, what wonderful surprise have you brought from Mexico? Could it be some wonderful Mexican tortillas?

Wait… Is that-

Yes, a cake. Un gâteau. 

[Credits]

And that’s the story of how your parents saved la France.

Thanks for telling me these stories, grandma.

My grand-son. My grand-son, a boy…

[sigh] 

♫

Tito, my grandson Tito (translator’s note: another rhyme that got lost in translation. Sorry again). Tito, tito. My grandson Tito. 

You smell like frog legs in the morning.

You smell like you haven’t showered in weeks. 

You smell like a moldy baguette.

You smell like the omelette that I ate. 

You smell like cheese. Smelly, smelly!

You smell like your grandma.

Tito, Tito, Tito, my grandson Tito. 

You smell like snails. You smell like escargot.

You smell like France. 

[landopoet]

playgrounds and playdates.

pairing single dad!lando x single mum!reader

synopsis in which meeting a single dad and his son turns your whole life upside down.

author’s note this story has taken me so long to write and i’m so sorry for that!! as always, thank you to @clovermoters for the constant help, support and encouragement. i love you all, hope you enjoy <3

♯

࿐ ࿔*:･ﾟearly spring, march 13th

the green canopy of the trees held back most of the sunlight and the last drops of warmth you’d soak up before fully submerging yourselves in the forest. 

your little one, a three year old girl named stevie, was happily running along the track, her youthful laughter echoing through the silent forest. it just became warm enough to finally go on walks again and visit her favourite place. 

though, the girl had many favourite places. if you’d ask stevie, she’d name at least four before finally deciding on the playground. 

“mum, look!” stevie beamed, her tiny finger pointing towards the end of her path and the playground that came into view the farther she ran. 

you smiled at her, not needing to walk too fast to keep up with her pace. “i see, sweetheart. you wanna swing?” 

“nuh uh,” the girl shook her head, stopping in her steps to look up at you. “sandbox.” 

“ah, how could i forget,” you nodded in approval and your little girl took off running again. “don’t eat the sand, angel.” you warn as soon as you two make it to the sand pit. there’s already some toys there but pull out the pink sand toy set from your bag and hand it to stevie. 

as the little girl plays, you watch and wonder how you got so lucky with stevie, as she was already so independent for her age. she was smart, resilient, empathetic and everything you wouldn’t expect a three year old to be. 

you wanted her to remember her childhood as best as possible, so you made a scrapbook— called it ‘stevie’s adventures’— and marked down bits and pieces of her life. so far, you’ve added the hospital bracelet you wore during labour and some of her infant stuff, like socks, a few onesies and even a few binkies. 

you decide to snap a picture of her in the sandbox, now playing with a blond, curly-haired boy who couldn’t have been much older than her. taking a picture of a stranger's child would go against everything you’ve been doing to protect stevie’s personal life from online creeps, so you look around to try and find whoever’s responsible for the kid. 

the only other adult person on this playground is standing a few steps away from your bench, navy sweatered arms crossed across his chest, white cap adorning his curly haired head. he looks intimidating and cold, like he’d shatter you with just a glance. 

eventually, you muster up the courage to speak to him. “uhm, excuse me?” 

the man turns to you like he was expecting you to speak to him, moustached lips turning into a welcoming smile. “what’s up?” 

“is that your child in the sandbox?” you point to the boy, although you could already tell they were related— the subtle curls sticking out from under his cap matched the boys’ ones perfectly. the man nods, a little confused. “okay so this is really random, but i like to take pictures of moments in my daughter’s life and i was wondering if you’re okay with your son being in it?”

the stranger seems to let out a sigh of relief, a little less anxious about your line of questioning. “yeah, that’s fine.” 

you give him a slight nod accompanied by a small smile. he watches as you pull out your camera, bring it up to your eye and get your perfect shot before putting it back into your bag. when your eyes flicker back towards him, he hesitantly extends a hand. “i’m lando.”

you blink at him twice before getting up and shaking his hand. “nice to meet you, lando. i’m y/n.”

he lingers for a moment, just watching you when you turn your attention back to the kids in the sandbox. the little boy is sharing his dinosaur bucket with stevie and she’s shovelling sand into it, babbling on about something you can’t hear. 

࿐ ࿔*:･ﾟmarch 27th

“stevie!”

your head whips towards the source of the sound, coming from a young boy. it takes you a few seconds before you notice his dad and both of you smile at each other. 

stevie runs up to the boy and gives him a tight squeeze. “theo!” 

over the past two weeks, you had come to the park a few times and met lando, and his son theo, there each time. not on purpose, it’s just that your park schedules just seemed to match up. 

stevie became very fond of theo over such a short time and it warms your heart to see her beaming face as they play tag around the swing set.

“is your kid a picky eater?” lando suddenly asks, trying to break the unnecessarily awkward silence. “theo doesn’t eat carrots, all of a sudden. used to be his favourite snack until literally this morning.” 

you try to hide your laughter when lando pinches the bridge of his nose, jokingly frustrated with his son. “stevie doesn’t eat the crust on bread or broccoli stems.” 

“theo would agree with her about the importance of crustless bread in their diet,” lando hums, nodding at your answer. “sometimes i wonder if he’s even my kid, ‘cause his taste in food is so different.” 

“he’s the spitting image of you, lando, i figured he was yours before we even spoke.” you roll your eyes, playfully. “and i don’t think taste in anything is genetic. at least i hope not. god forbid stevie goes through the awkward teenage phase of wearing strictly skinny jeans and band tees.” 

lando chuckles. “yeah, i couldn’t see teenage theo rocking straight and damaged hair.” 

“did you straighten it?” you tilt your head to the side, curious as to why anyone would want to get rid of their curls. 

“used to,” he nods. “met theo’s mum and she taught me the proper techniques and products to use to get my hair healthy and curly again.” 

ah, theo’s mum. you had wondered if lando had a partner. not for any particular reason, it was just because you only ever saw him at the park with theo and never the boys mum.

“mum!” stevie runs up to you, out of breath. “thirsty.”

your daughter wasn’t a fan of using many words in her sentences and, at first, you had begun to worry about it, but after many doctors visits, they confirmed that it was just a quirk she had adopted.

you open your bag and take out her water bottle. stevie basically rips it out of your hands, urgent to get as many gulps down as she can before she continues to play tag with theo. 

the boy was stood by his dad, hugging him around the waist as lando pushed theo’s curls out of his face. “you tired yet?” he asks, already knowing the answer. 

“nuh uh,” theo shakes his head, instantly. “i like playing with stevie.” 

“i know you do, bud, but we have to make dinner. you said you’d help me make that cheesy pasta you like.” lando raises his brows a few times, trying to pique his son's interest.

theo sighs. “i know. could stevie come over someday, then?” 

lando’s eyes flicker up to yours, “could she? i host the best tea parties in town.” 

you turn your head back to stevie when an excited gasp leaves her lips. “tea party?” she practically squeals as she repeats what lando said. “mum, can we go? please, please, please!” 

the expectant look on stevie, theo, and even lando’s, faces makes you laugh. “i don’t see why not.” 

࿐ ࿔*:･ﾟapril 4th

“and would the princess like some biscuits with her tea?” lando asked, clad in grey sweatpants, white shirt… and a superman cape. apparently this tea party turned into a costume party, and you didn’t get the memo.

your daughter giggled before tipping her head and lifting up the sides of her cinderella dress. “yes, please.”

theo sat between them, happily smiling at the exchange between lando and stevie. “i want some too, dad!”

“biscuits for batman and cinderella coming right up!” he smiles at them before looking at you and nodding his head as an urge for you to get up. you follow him into the kitchen. 

“had no idea you were superman, i feel like i should bow down to my hero or something,” you smile over the rim of your cup. 

“nah, it’s a sidegig.” lando shrugs, nonchalantly, as he pulls out a few different types of biscuits from a cupboard. “is stevie allergic to anything?” 

“nope,” you shake your head. “but she likes to say she’s allergic to cucumber peel.” 

“ah, the famous excuse for not eating food they don’t like. been there. theo was trying to convince me that he was allergic to tomatoes until i told him what ketchup was made from.” lando laughed. 

you smile at how fondly he speaks of theo. “where’s theo’s mum?” you suddenly blurt, eyes wide as you cover your mouth. “sorry, that’s such a personal question, i didn’t mean to.”

“well, you were clearly curious about it.” lando looks at you. “and that’s okay. but i’d rather talk about something else.” 

“yes, sorry.” you nod. “what do you do for work?”

“i work at a karting place. i own it, actually.” lando spreads the biscuits out nicely onto a platter, adding a few cut up fruits from the fridge to make somewhat of a charcuterie board. 

“oh, so that’s why you can afford karting for theo,” you hum, before taking a sip of your coffee, remembering one of the first conversations you had about your children’s hobbies. stevie likes to draw and play pretend, meanwhile theo finds joy in racing. 

“that and his godfather being an F1 driver,” lando smiles fondly, eyes darting up to yours for a brief second before he goes back to assembling the snack board. “i used to race, too, before theo.” 

“do you miss it?” you watch him closely, noticing the slight wince in his face. 

eventually, he shrugs. “sometimes. other times, i realise how little energy fatherhood takes out of me compared to sitting in a small, hot space for hours at a time.” 

“mm,” you hum again, nodding. you can’t really imagine anything harder than motherhood. “but that’s cars versus raising and nourishing a whole other human and personality.”

“yeah, true.” he agrees. “i guess i just got lucky with theo.”

“or he got lucky with you.” you and lando share a glance that lasts a little too long and seems a little too fond for just acquainted parents. you clear your throat and look away, instead choosing to watch whatever’s left in your mostly empty cup.

࿐ ࿔*:･ may 23rd

after a few more weeks of playdates at each other’s houses, theo saw it fit to include stevie in one of his favourite things in the world— karting.

the young boy pestered his father endlessly, using his puppy eyes technique to get what he wanted. “please?” he asked, dragging out the last syllable of the word to be a little more annoying and convincing.

“i’m sorry, bud. i don’t think she’ll like karting.” lando watched his sons face turn from hopeful to frustrated. the little boy crossed his arms over his chest, turning himself away from lando and facing the nearest wall to their couch. 

“i won’t go if she’s not there.” 

the simple yet strongly made statement forced lando to hold back a snort. “fine, i’ll call and see if she’d like to come. but i’m not promising anything.”

when friday afternoon rolled around, lando was delighted— and relieved— to see you and stevie making your way over to where he and theo were waiting. 

“dad, it’s stevie!” theo’s face lit up as stevie ran over to them. “hi!”

“hi, theo!” stevie smiled and hugged him. she waved at lando. “hey, dude!” 

“stevie, what did i tell you about calling people dude?” you say and playfully roll your eyes before looking at lando. “she randomly picked it up from who knows where and now everyone is dude.” 

lando chuckles. “that’s funny, dude.” he looks down at stevie with an excited grin. “you ready to race?” 

“heck yeah, dude.” stevie giggles and balls her hand into a fist, bumping it with lando’s. her hazel eyes look intensely at his open palm when he offers her a hand, confused as for whether or not he’s safe to walk with.

stevie’s seen and spent time with lando multiple times now, but everytime she did, you were there. in this moment, she was stood alone next to theo and lando, and even though you were only a few steps behind her, she felt like she was all by herself.

she turns her blonde head of hair towards you, eyes glancing up to look at yours. she was looking for any sign of disapproval or worry, but instead she saw you nodding your head encouragingly. “you need to get your helmet on, baby. lando will help you and then you can meet me back here, okay?”

stevie bites her lip with a glint of worry in her eye, but swiftly turns around and places her tiny palm in lando’s. lando gives you a small smile and the three of them make their way into the building. 

stevie’s worries seem to lessen the more lando jokes around with her. first, he puts his balaclava on backwards, making both the kids laugh at how goofy he looked while flailing his arms around in the air. secondly, he tries to put on a helmet too small, which again results in a fit of giggles from theo and stevie. eventually, when he finds the perfect size helmet for stevie, he gets theo’s one— obviously designed with his favourite animated characters and colours— and leads the kids outside. 

you watch as stevie runs to you, looking like a bobble-head because of how huge the helmet seemed. “woah, look at you.” you gasp as you squat down to be her height. “you scared?” 

“nuh uh,” stevie shakes her head. “lando said i’m a rockstar and i’ll do great.” 

your heart swells a bit. just as you’re about to speak, theo runs up to you both. “sorry, but my dad asked to bring stevie over to get her ready. he said you can go make coffee inside, though!” 

“thank you, theo,” you smile softly and get up, watching as the two kids run towards lando with their hands held. 

while you navigate through the building and try to find a place where you can secretly watch stevie and theo racing, lando explains how everything works to stevie. 

“okay, so,” he places a hand atop her left foot, “you’ll have to push this foot forward to move, and this one,” he places the same hand on her other foot, “to slow down and stop. okay?” 

“just like a car?” stevie tilts her head to the side, her interest piqued despite her never even seeing how a kart drives. 

lando smiles and nods. “just like a car. if you get scared, you can slow down and stop, and i’ll run over to help you. you can go as slow as you’d like but don’t go too fast, you could hurt yourself or get dizzy.” 

“okay, dude,” stevie nods, trying her best to retain as much of the information as she could. her eyes follow lando as he walks over towards theo’s kart, the two talking about something that made theo laugh. 

you watch from inside the building, worried eyes following lando’s every move. when he starts up stevie’s kart, you can briefly feel your heart stop beating. you’ve never been so scared for her, and even though lando assured you there’s no way she could hurt herself, you’re not sure if you could forgive yourself in the case of an accident. 

lando finds you holding a hand over your chest as you watched the two kids drive around the track. “hey,” he said, calmly, trying his best not to startle you. 

you gave him a weak smile. “hi. was she nervous?” 

“a little, but that’s normal.” he walked up and stood next to you, before placing a reassuring hand on your shoulder. “i explained to her how it works. she’s a smart kid and a fast learner.” 

“yeah,” you nodded. “what if something goes wrong?” 

“it won’t.” his voice was calm as you leaned into his touch, his arm sneaking down your back and around your waist to pull you into a side-hug. “i asked theo to let her pass him a few times so she gets the full experience of karting. maybe you’ll have a little racer on your hands.” 

your head subconsciously lays on his shoulder as your crossed arms stay firm against your chest. “yeah, don’t think i’d be able to afford it, but i guess her and theo would get to have more playdates.” 

“i’d help you,” he hummed, his own head resting atop of yours. “i mean, the competitions would probably cost a bit but i’d provide her with a kart and helmet. max would also love to pitch in.” 

“don’t be silly,” you laughed a little. “she already does ballet in the mornings.” 

“who said she can’t be a ballerina and a racer at the same time? she’d be the coolest kid on the planet if so,” he softly smiles, eyes looking down at your focused face. “besides, i’d get to spend a little more time with her mum.” 

“mhm,” you bit back a wider smile. “who says you can’t do that regardless?” 

lando’s heart skips a beat when you turn your head to look at him, only then realising how close you two actually were— his nose brushed yours when you raised your head and his breath fanned your face. he felt his stomach drop and he froze before finally giving in. 

just as you felt his lips inch closer to yours, an employee of his knocked on the doorframe to the room. “one of the kiddos stopped in the middle of the track and she’s asking for lando.” 

the curly-haired man jolts away from you, as if he was caught doing something he shouldn’t have been and turns around to awkwardly say, “uh, okay, i’ll go and, uhm, check.” 

you can’t help but shake your head with a small laugh as you watched the man leave the room at record speed. 

meanwhile, lando was trying to keep his composure in front of the kids. he’s sure they’d blab to you if they noticed him smiling like an idiot. “everything okay, kiddo?” he kneeled in front of stevie’s kart. 

stevie tries to pull the helmet off, but the buckle keeps it tightly situated on her small head. lando helps her unbuckle it and pulls the helmet off, watching as she takes off the bright pink balaclava— her choice— and sighs. “i’m hungry.” 

lando snorts at how random her request seemed. “alright, let’s go get theo and ask your mum if she’d like to join us for dinner, yeah?” 

࿐ ࿔*:･ﾟ

“no, stevie, we don’t throw the food.” 

the little girl halted her movements, her hand in the air as her eyes focused on yours. she had a fist full of vegetables, ones that she clearly wasn’t enjoying, and was getting ready to throw on the floor and an evil glint in her eye. instead of doing as she first intended, she opened her fingers and the vegetables fell all over the table, a few of them landing in lando’s lap.

“sorry, sometimes she just-” you were already making up excuses for your daughter’s childish behaviour when lando cut you off.

“it’s okay, she’s probably overstimulated from an eventful day. it happens.” he shrugs as he picks the peas off from his lap. “y’know, theo threw up on me once after karting, which is why he refuses to eat before he goes on track anymore.”

you stifle a laugh before sitting back up from collecting the vegetables that fell to the floor. stevie was in active conversation with theo and seemed to have forgotten about the vegetables. a few minutes pass before lando speaks again.

“thank you,” he notices the confusion in the tilt of your head. “for coming. it means a lot to theo and, well, to me.” 

the sincerity in his voice made all the blood in your body rush to your cheeks, tinting them the gentlest shade of maroon that lando didn’t miss. “no worries, we’re happy to join you anytime.” 

lando ignores the feelings brewing in his chest and continues eating. you follow his lead and all four of you were done eating in another half hour. 

the waiter came to your table and before you could even ask to split the bill, lando was handing hera a few paper bills and she had scurried off to get his change. 

“weren’t we going to split?” you ask, a little confused. 

lando shrugged. “it’s on me, don’t worry about it.” 

you had already felt bad that he didn’t accept your money for the karting that day, or the ice cream he had bought for stevie a week or so ago, but dinner? you felt the guilt bubble in your stomach growing. “lando, it’s not fair on yo-“ 

“can you just accept that you don’t have to do everything by yourself?” he reasons. “i asked you to come to karting, i paid for it, same with dinner and that extra hour at the park so the kiddos could get ice cream from the ice cream truck. i did it because i want to and i don’t expect anything in return.”

when you look up at him, your expression clearly less upset than before, he decides to crack a joke. “except for maybe a kiss or two.” 

you roll your eyes and the waiter brings back his change just as you’re about to make a witty comeback. 

lando, being the gentleman that he is, offered to drive you both home and you couldn’t deny it after seeing how sleepy stevie had gotten. she fell asleep on the ride home and after lando pulled into the driveway of your small home, you got out to unbuckle her and carry her inside. 

theo waited patiently in the car, listening to a podcast about dinosaurs in his earbuds while lando walked you to your door. 

he smiled down at the sleeping stevie in your arms, bringing a hand up to gently caress her cheek with his finger. “we must’ve wore her out.” 

“she hadn’t had a nap today,” you looked down at your daughter. “pretty sure she’ll sleep through the night.” 

lando’s gaze had shifted to your face subconsciously and he didn’t realise how close you were getting when you looked back up at him. you pulled him in with a soft hold of his jaw, your lips gently pressing against his. 

lando’s hand came up to hold your cheek. the kiss lasted way longer than you intended, but you weren’t complaining. when you finally pulled away, breathless and pink, lando was speechless and in awe. “thank you for today.” 

you closed the door behind yourself, watching through the window of your living room as his car pulled out of your driveway. stevie covered her mouth with her small hand as she giggled. “ooo, mama kissed cool dude.”

a small gasp left your lips as you looked down at stevie. “you saw that?” she nodded her small head. “oh, god.” 

࿐ ࿔*:･ may 28th

you were making dinner in the kitchen when stevie yelled for you from the living room. 

“what is it?” you walk down the hall while wiping your hands on a dishrag. stevie points at the window, lando’s car coming into view when you step closer. “oh, what’s he doing here?” 

stevie watches from the window as you make your way outside to greet a disheveled lando and a smiley theo. 

“hey, everything okay?” you ask when the man finally looks up at you. “i didn’t know you were coming over, i would’ve doubled up on dinner.” 

“i’m not staying for long,” he says, hastily. you could tell he was stressed out and rushing somewhere. “could you watch theo for tonight?” 

“what?” you blink. 

“it’s max, he, uhm,” lando turns to theo and tells him to run inside to see what stevie was up to. when the young boy is out of earshot, lando continues. “max isn’t eating or sleeping. he’s had a bad race and the media’s giving him shit for it. i’m going to visit him and check up on him, and i’d usually bring theo but i don’t want him to see max like that.” 

“oh, god.” you place a hand on lando’s shoulder and he just pulls you into a tight hug. “i can’t imagine how stressed you are. you go take care of max, okay? theo will be okay with us.”  

“thank you so much,” lando pulls away and pecks your lips. “i’ll be back tomorrow evening.” 

and before you can even register that he just kissed you, he’s in his car and halfway down the neighbourhood.

when you make your way inside, the kiddos are on the floor in the living room, theo’s backpack open with half of the content spilled out. 

“would you like to have dinner with us, theo?” you ask the boy and he shakes his head, explaining that lando had given him his dinner before hastily packing his sleepover bag. but when you offered a snack of crackers and cheese, the boy happily agreed.

you turned on an animated film for the kids to watch as you did your washing up for the night before bed. a small smile creeped up on your face as you heard the two little humans giggling about something that only existed in their own world.

as the evening progressed and the kids grew more tired, you laid them both to bed. stevie had a second bed in her room as her cousin often comes visit during the summer, which ended up being perfect for a kid theo’s height. 

routinely, you were obligated to switch on the starry night light and read a story. theo requested a bedtime story about dinosaurs, meanwhile stevie wanted one about princesses, and you somehow managed to make both work.

once you heard the familiar tiny snores escape stevie’s lips, and when theo had turned to his side, you left the room and kept a small crevice of the door ajar. 

the next morning, you had already begun to prepare pancakes while dulcet sounds of jazz music filled your kitchen, when theo gently tugged on your apron. 

“you okay?” you kneeled down to his height and theo rubbed his tired eyes awake before pulling you into a hug. “oh.” 

“dad always gives me morning cuddles,” he explained, a certain sadness in his voice that broke your heart to hear. 

you picked the boy up in your arms and gently caressed his back. “you miss him, huh?” 

theo just nodded, nestling his head onto your shoulder as his arms laid draped over your biceps. “i knew you were as nice as dad said.” 

you can’t help but softly smile at his comment. “thank you, theo. he talks about me?” 

you knew it was wrong to ask a kid such a question, but the words had already escaped your mouth before you could catch them. 

“sometimes,” he hums, a yawn threatening to make its presence. “i think he likes you a lot.” 

“yeah? how so?” you poke his side as a tease. 

theo straightens up a bit, to see your face. “he gets shy when he talks about you to maxie and pietra. and he gets all red like you are right now.” 

you shake your head and tickle his face with the hair that flings around you both. “am not.”

“are too,” he giggles. 

you place him down on the ground and give him an encouraging tap on the back. “how about you go wake stevie up for pancakes?” 

“can you cut it into a pterodactyl?” 

 “can i cut it into a pterodactyl?” theo giggles when you scoff, displaying faux offence. “of course i can.”

the little boy runs back down the hallway and towards stevie’s room. your heart bursts a little when he calls out for your daughter.

“stevie! your mum’s making dinosaur pancakes!” 

࿐ ࿔*:･ june 10th

you expected your first date with lando to be somewhere fancy enough for you to wear a dress you bought while still pregnant with stevie. 

fortunately for both of you, lando offered a night in and you were far too big of a romcom lover to deny his request. 

“thank god you agreed to this,” lando slumps his shoulders when you pry open your front door. you take a second to admire his simple attire— a light blue zip up hoodie with matching sweatpants. 

you move to the side and open the door a little more to let him in. “thank god to max and pietra for agreeing to watch both the kids.” 

“oh, yeah, they’ve been begging me to bring both you and stevie over since the first time you four met.” he sets the bags of stuff down on the dining table. “i think pietra adores you a little.” 

“i hope she knows the feelings are mutual, she’s so cool.” you smile softly. 

“hey, she said the same about you!” lando laughs and when you come close enough, he wraps an arm around your waist and pulls you into a hug from behind while unbagging. 

“i bought way too much ice cream but i didn’t know what flavour you liked best so i chose five that i hoped you liked.” he explains as he takes out the third box. “oh, and wine.” 

you lean back into his chest and turn your head just barely to place a kiss on his jawline. “thank you.”

lando’s heartbeat speeds up in a brief second and he hopes you can’t see the blush on his face. he quickly recollects himself and, without letting you go, brings both of you to your kitchen. of course, both of you being so close against one another means that you nearly trip and fall with every step you take. 

eventually, through many giggles and bumps into furniture, you two find yourselves in the living room, spoons and ice cream in hand. 

lando takes a seat on the sofa, arm draped over the back of it as an invitation for you to join him. once you pluck the remote off the coffee table and fetch a blanket for the two of you, lando feels you nestle against him.

“what’re we watching?” he asks, eyes focused on you instead of the screen. 

you shrug. “horror movie?” 

“no,” he sternly says. “i hate them. rom-com, please.”

you stifle a laugh and focus back on the television. after skimming through the films, the two of you choose notting hill and cozy up to watch it. 

about half an hour in, you notice lando’s heartbeat quicken underneath your cheek, but you decide to brush it off as nothing. eventually, he speaks up. 

“so, i’ve been thinking,” lando begins, his voice soft and cautious. his eyes search your face, looking for any sign that might stop him from saying what’s on his mind. but all he sees is the face he’s grown to love and that only urges him to continue.

you slightly sit up, a little worried by what he’s going to say. “about what?”

“us, our kids, you.” he reaches over to grab your hand in his. as his thumb gently caresses the back of your hand, his eyes rest on yours. “i love the way things are between us lately, and i like being around you and stevie, but i want to be more than just movie nights and playdates.” 

your heart skips a beat. “you mean… like, officially? you want to be together?” 

he nods with that same smile you’ve grown so fond of. “yeah, i mean, i know it’s a long-shot and it’s risky with our kids’ friendship and all, but theo already loves you and i’m sure stevie adores me,” he jokes and you playfully roll your eyes. “but it would make me the happiest man alive if you were my girlfriend.” 

“wow,” you’re speechless. “i didn’t think i’d actually hear you say that.”

“i’ve been overthinking it for days,” he laughs, anxiety riddled all across his face as he watches your expression. he can’t exactly read it and that makes him even more nervous. “not to pressure you or anything-“

“yes,” you cut him off, a wide grin on your face as he pulls you into a hug. “i’ve never been so giddy about someone before.”

“yeah?” he flashes you that same, wide grin before pulling you in for a kiss.

“oh gosh, we have to tell the kids,” you gasp with a hand gently pushing lando’s kissy face away. he furrows his brows, confused as for why he can’t kiss his girlfriend.

“theo knows,” lando shrugs. “i told him that i’d be asking you to be my girlfriend and at first asked if he’d be okay with that.”

“and what’d he say?” you lay your head in lando’s lap as he plays with your hair, a small smile on his face. 

“he asked if that means you’ll be able to stay around more, and then said that you make the best pancakes.”

“oh, did he tell you about the dinosaur pancakes?”

lando nods. “he asked me to make them the next morning and told me to take him to your house, because i didn’t get them right.”

a laugh escapes your lips. “you could’ve come over, you know? i would’ve been happy to serve theo some more dino pancakes, and maybe taught you how to make them.”

“yeah?” he leans down to place a kiss on your lips, hoping that this time you don’t push him away. and it’s quite the opposite actually, because he feels your hand on the back of his head, tugging gently at the curls cascading down his neck as you pull him in deeper.

despite having kissed you a couple times before, this kiss makes lando that much more excited to spend as much time with you as you and stevie were willing to grant him. 

and he’ll make sure it’s the most loved you two will ever feel. 

࿐ ࿔*:･ december 14th

“theo, watch your step.”

the young boy was carrying a box bigger than himself with stevie following right behind him, a smaller box of her stuff in hand. 

today was the day you were moving into your new home– a home you and stevie will be sharing with the two most important boys in your life– and you couldn’t be more excited. 

to some, it seemed like it all came too soon— the relationship, the moving in together, caring for each other’s child whenever the other needed it, but neither you nor lando cared what others thought. 

it was clear from the first few months of knowing you that lando would be head over heels in love with you. he didn’t care how quickly your lives entwined, instead he was excited to see what would grow from it.

you placed the last few boxes in the living room and stood in the doorframe to the dining room, watching as stevie and theo chased each other, their laughter echoing off of the walls. 

lando’s hands creep around your waist as he pulls you in from behind. he places a gentle kiss against your hairline, “welcome home, love.”

you turn around to face him, arms instinctively hugging his neck as your eyes well with tears. 

“welcome home to us.” 

࿐ ࿔*:･ two years later, june 26th

the sun peeked from behind the clouds, rays of light bouncing off of your face as the pinks, blues and oranges merged into a beautiful sunset above the water. 

it was one of the warmer days and lando decided to take you all out for a picnic on the beach. it wasn’t unusual for him to plan spontaneous activities, but still he was nervous you knew what he was up to. 

the velvet box sat tucked away in the bag of stuff he packed, his heartbeat quickening every time you dove into it to find something you needed. 

that’s where theo came in.

“y/n,” he called out just as your hand was reaching into the exact corner the box was located in. you turned your attention to the boy, sitting up straight. 

while theo was blowing your mind with his dinosaur facts, lando hastily stuck his hand into the bag and retrieved the ring box, immediately putting it into his pocket. when theo glanced back over to his dad, lando gave him a reassuring wink and the boy took off to play by the water with stevie, again. 

“oh, guess that’s all he wanted,” you shrugged before turning around to lando. “you didn’t pack any napkins?” 

“oh,” lando panicked. fuck, through all his meticulous planning with max and pietra, he forgot to pack the most important thing. how was he supposed to propose with his hands all messy? “uhm, no, must’ve forgot, sorry.”

you leaned over to place a gentle kiss on his cheek. “that’s alright, i’ll go splash around in the water with the kiddos and wash my hands then.” 

lando watched as you pulled yourself up and made your way towards the water, his heart pounding against his sternum. he took one last glance at the box that could make or break the future with you he had already planned out in his head, and followed your lead. 

once he was close enough, stevie ran up to him. “lando! the water is so warm, come feel it.” 

he couldn’t say no to the little girls pleading eyes and followed her as she dragged him to the water. he took that as one last chance to calm himself down and get it over with. 

lando was only nervous because it wasn’t just you he’s proposing to. stevie had become such an important part of his life that he’s afraid of ruining her perception of him if the proposal were to go wrong. and his mother already loved the girl, even after the handful of times they’ve met. 

so, anxiety was understandable in his case.

he watched stevie’s wide grin as she looked out at the water, and then behind herself to where her mum and theo were chatting. 

you had noticed lando’s behaviour change, ever since last night, but you figured it was something he’d bring up to you if he wanted to talk about it, so you haven’t paid much thought to it. 

lando’s made his to you, stevie’s small hand in his, and his other one on the box. his chest felt like it was getting smaller and smaller with each step he took towards you. the only thing that calmed him down was your smile while looking at them both. 

you watched as stevie let go and ran towards you, yet quickly swerved to find where theo was. your eyes followed her to see that she wouldn’t run into any trouble, and when you turned back around, you saw a nervous lando. “you okay?” you nervously laugh. “you’ve been weird all day today.” 

“there’s so many things i could say to you right now, but i think it’s better to save them for our vows.”

“vow- what?” you furrow your brows. that’s when he sinks down to one knee and you feel your eyes well up with tears.

he took a breath, a small smile adorning his face, and then the words you had dreamed of hearing, ever since you were a little girl, left his mouth.

“will you marry me?”

࿐ ࿔*:･ wedding day

you watched the on-going bustle of guests from the window of your lonesome dressing room.

the echoing sound of your heart pounding against your sternum was loud in your head as you tried to steady your breathing. this was actually, really happening. 

you felt your hands shake with how nervous you were, albeit having practiced your vows in the mirror for the past two months, and knowing that lando is truly the one you wish to spend the rest of your life with. 

your feet drag you across the hardwood floor of the dressing room, fingers nervously fiddling with one of the more textured parts of your dress. you could feel yourself getting more and more nervous as the clock on the wall ticked by, each second granting you a moment more of anxiety and stress. 

your head whips towards the door when a knock echoes through the empty room. “uhm, who is it?” 

the door pries open to reveal a curly head of hair with a hand over his eyes. “me, may i come in?” 

“what the hell, no?!” you exclaim, panicking. “it’s bad luck for the groom to see his bride before the ceremony, we talked about this.” 

despite your best efforts to verbally usher him out, lando makes his way inside and shuts the door behind him, his eyelashes resting atop his cheeks as the green of his irises stay hidden behind eyelids. 

“i know, i know,” he sighs in defeat. “but i just had to come see you before the ceremony. well, not see you, exactly, but just, be in your presence, i guess.” 

you drop your arms by your sides, sulking a little. “i’m so nervous, lan,” lando could hear your pout and it made him smile. 

“i know, me too,” he makes his way over to where he thinks you are and reaches a hand out to find the cusp of your waist. he can feel the fabric of the dress as it sits atop your skin, a smirk forming on his lips. “feels pretty.”

“hey, no!” you swat his hand away. “i’ll run away from the wedding if you do that again.”

“oh, c’mon,” he defends, smiling underneath his palm. his eyes were still shut and his left hand covered them tightly, not a single space left between his fingers to ensure that he couldn’t get even a glance. “i don’t even get a feel?” 

“not even a feel,” you cross your arms over your chest and realised he can’t see your sassiness like he usually would. “i just crossed my arms, by the way.”

“i know,” lando shrugs. “i also know you’ve been staring out the window and ogling at people like a psycho.”

you furrow your brows, “how’d you know that?”

“cause i know you.” 

a shiver runs down your spine and you can’t help but blush at what lando says, even after close to three years of being together. “what did you really come here for?”

“a good luck kiss?” he asks, so soft and hopeful, that it makes you give in. lando feels your hands gently guiding his face down towards yours, before your lips softly rest against his. he, of course, tries to kiss you like usual– aggressive, long and sweet. 

yet you pull away before he can even think of pulling you in by the chin. “the better kiss is for the ceremony, babe,”

he sighs and drops his shoulders, his head dropping as he displays faux disappointment. “fine, whatever. saying you hate me would hurt less.”

“yeah, because i hate you so much that both me and my daughter are taking your last name,” you roll your eyes. 

“our daughter,” his voice is stern when he corrects you. lando hears a noise outside the door, suddenly alert and tense. “i think it’s almost time.”

you take one last peek out the window and notice everyone in their seats. “oh, god, yeah. go, you can’t be seen here.”

“alright, love you, see you out there” he turns around and reaches for the door. “pretend i winked at you when i said ‘see you out there’, cause i couldn’t actually wink an-“

“lando, go!” you step closer to him, your dress whispering beneath you as your hands gently urge him to leave. 

“one more kiss?” he suddenly turns back around and you roll your eyes. 

“you’re impossible,” you cup his face again.

“so i’ve been told,” he smirks against your lips. “and yet you’re marrying me, mrs. norris.”

“i wouldn’t have it any other way,” you place another peck against his pursed lips before the door shuts in front of you, and you’re left alone with your thoughts, again. 

you stand there for a moment, heart racing and palms sweating, yet still you were feeling more certain than ever that this was the best decision you ever could’ve made.

࿐ ࿔*:･ﾟ

the ceremony has long passed and now you are in the middle of the dance floor, your hands held with theo. 

the young boy expressed that he didn’t want to dance anymore, so you brought him to the table where his plate sits. on it, of course, are the dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets you and lando specifically requested for theo to have. 

your kids were now six and five, both very unique and yet somehow very similar. 

theodore maxwell norris was a smart boy, interested in pretty much anything to do with dinosaurs, space or monster trucks. he requested to spend his sixth birthday at a museum, which stevie was absolutely thrilled with. the two young children had always known how to entertain each other, ever since they met. 

stephanie jane norris, albeit a year younger than theo, was also quite smart for her age. she found interest in princesses, nature and most recently, karting. she accompanied theo to multiple of his races and took part in some practice laps, and found that it’s actually more fun than she remembered. 

your eyes caught a glimpse of lando as he danced with stevie on the dance floor, the little girl actively shaking her head to a rock song and lando laughing at her with max. the girl then grabbed both of them by the hand and started dancing in a circle, in turn bringing a smile to your face. 

“y/n?” theo poked your arm to catch your attention. you look down at him as he’s sat on the chair, eyes glaring up to yours. “do i have to call you mum now?” 

you kneel down to be his height and place a reassuring hand on his shoulder, “you don’t have to do anything you don’t feel comfortable with.” 

the little boy just shrugs before taking another chicken nugget off of his plate, “okay, mum.”

you felt your heart swell and eyes well with tears at the fact that he so casually called you mum. you had imagined that it’d take at least a few more years of getting more comfortable with you for that to happen, but the boy saw no reason not to call you that. stevie called lando dad, anyway, so it only seemed fair in his eyes.

what theodore failed to realise was that, without even knowing it, he managed to make extra room in your heart and build a pillow fort there, in which he and stevie resided. you had convinced yourself that stevie would be your only true love in this world, that you didn’t need to meet anyone or have more kids.

it’s funny how a man and his son could waltz their way into your life, and turn it around for the better. 

theo felt you place a gentle kiss to his head before you excused yourself to go dance with his dad. in the meanwhile, stevie had made her way behind theo and scared him. 

“don’t do that, stevie,” theodore warns before picking up his apple juice box and taking a few gulps. 

the girl shifts her weight from her heels to her toes. “sorry, theo. do you want to dance?” 

“can i be a dancing t-rex?” he asked, an eyebrow rising with curiosity. 

stevie giggled. “only if i can be your sister t-rex. let’s go!”  

he watched as you ran back towards the dance floor, his face still evidently confused as he mumbled to himself, “i thought she already was my sister?” 

࿐ ࿔*:･ﾟinterview about max fewtrell’s wdc

“theo! daddy’s on tv!” stevie’s voice echoed through the living room and theo came rushing in with a bowl of popcorn, as if the interview was some sort of movie.

you were sandwiched between the two kids, the bowl strategically placed in your lap so they don’t have to strain too much to get their snack. 

the television screen showed a clear shot of lando and max chatting, lando’s arm wrapped around his best friend’s shoulders as he congratulated him again. 

the interviewer— theo had informed you that he was a retired formula one driver, nico rosberg— invited them in to chat and all three of you eagerly watched, waiting for them to start talking. 

“lando! what a pleasant surprise to see you here,” his german, or maybe british, accent echoed in the living room. “haven’t seen you here since you left the sport.”

“yeah, y’know,” lando flashed his wide, toothy grin, “life had other plans.” 

“yeah?” nico tilted his head to the side. “how’s your family? your son doing okay?”

lando pointed at the camera next to them. “they’re watching from our home back in england,” he turns his face towards the lens and waves at it. “hi guys.”

stevie and theo eagerly wave back. “hi dad!” they say, in unison, before breaking into a fit of giggles. 

lando continued talking about personal matters, trying his best not to get too into it. he knew how the media was, and you had already had some encounters with less than pleasant fans. 

finally, as nico was ready to wrap up the interview, he asked lando if there was anything he missed from his racing days. 

“honestly? no.” he shrugged. “i think quitting opened up a plethora of new opportunities for me, including growing my own little family. my wife and i are blessed to have each other and raise our daughter and sons.”

“sons?” nico furrows his brows. he lowers the microphone away from their faces and leans in cautiously. “i thought you had only theo?” 

theo looks up at you. “you’re pregnant?” 

“i’m going to have another brother? awesome!” stevie jumped up on the couch, and your fingers found the bridge of your nose to pinch, in search of any comfort. 

lando panicked. “i, uhm, max did great. he’s much stronger and tougher than he lets on, and maybe we should let the champion talk, yeah?” he blurted out all in one breath as he grabbed max by the shoulders and pulled him towards nico. max shook his head with confusion before turning towards the interviewer. 

little did he know his best friend just announced your pregnancy to the entire world. 

࿐ ࿔*:･ mother’s day

“mum!” 

you heard their fragile little voices from behind your closed bedroom door and tried your best to sit up, your pregnant belly making it that much harder to function. 

you’ve been on bedrest for the past week, and it’s been absolutely amazing getting to rest, but so boring. what does one do when forced to stay in bed all day? 

stevie and theo knew the answer.

“could we make mother’s day cards for mum?” theo asked lando over breakfast, just as he was making your oatmeal with berries.

the curly-haired man shrugged. “sure, but you only have until tomorrow morning.”

“ooh! and can we get her heart balloons and flowers?” stevie muffled, as she finished up the last bites of her pancake.  

“we don’t speak with our mouths full, love,” lando warns. “but yes, we can also get her balloons and flowers. you guys think she’ll like that?” 

“and a kiss from dad,” stevie giggled before hopping off her chair and making her way to the dish washer. lando shook his head with a laugh. 

in the very crack of morning, while all of you were sound asleep, lando had gone to the grocery store to buy all the necessities— red roses, self care items, some sweets and, of course, heart balloons, as per stevie’s instructions. 

when the kiddos woke up and when lando had made sure you were awake as well, they made their way to the master bedroom. 

their small hands knocked a rhythm onto the door before they heard your silent “come in!” 

your face lit up with a smile when your three favourite people made their way into the bedroom. “happy mother’s day!” the three of them smiled at you and lando pouted when he saw your eyes well with tears.

you soundlessly said “hormones” before stretching your arms out to bring both of your little loves into a hug.  

stevie presented you her card first. “it’s us! and we’re on an air balloon. and that’s baby.” 

she pointed her little fingers at the five figures on the page— you were holding hands with lando and next to you stood your three children. the newborn baby was in a stroller, which you took as a sign that stevie hopes your son will be here soon. 

next it was theo’s turn. he gave you the card without saying anything, instead offering you another hug when tears spilled down your cheeks as you read it. stars live in space and also in you! happy mother’s day. scribbled in the cutest six year old writing you’ve ever read. 

lando later explained that theo had watched a video about there, supposedly, being stardust in everyone’s blood, which made you even more emotional.

“thank you, my loves,” you hugged them all once again before lando made his way over to give you a kiss and the flowers. 

“thank you for being the best wife and mother to my kids that i could have asked for.”

࿐ ࿔*:･ﾟwhere it all began.

baby noises and giggles fill your living room as you try to set up the camera to the best of your abilities. 

“theo, honey, could you hold henry more towards the middle?” you ask as you press your eye to the viewfinder eyepiece to check what the photo would look like. 

stevie sat on the left side of the sofa, an empty space left on the edge for you, as your newest addition— a six month old boy named henry parker norris— was snuggled between her and theo, with lando on the far right edge. 

“babe, just set it to video and come sit,” lando said, a little annoyed by how long the whole process is taking. “henry’s getting fussy.” 

“he’s okay, lan,” you roll your eyes. “and this is going in stevie’s scrapbook, so it needs to be perfect.”

it’s a few more minutes before you finally sit down and wait for ten seconds before you hear the click of your camera. after close inspection, you realise that stevie was making a weird face, lando was mid-blink, your hair looked a mess and theo was looking at henry. 

a sigh of defeat escapes your lips right as your front door opens and in comes pietra. “oh my god, thank god you’re here.” you exclaim, as if you hadn’t invited her for coffee, and she looks at you with a confused smile. “can you help with family photos?” 

she nodded and, without hesitation, followed you back to the living room. pietra stood behind the camera on the not-so-stable tripod and ordered you all around before snapping a few pictures. her logic was that if you take enough pictures in a set amount of time, at least a few of them are going to turn out good. 

and, after inspecting the pictures closely once more and deciding that they’re better than just good, you give her a hug and slump into it. “thank you, i was beginning to lose hope of making her a good scrapbook spread for her birthday.” 

pietra laughed. “she’s lucky to have such a hard-working mum, so i doubt she’d mind. but i’m happy to help!” 

after giving him the green light, lando helped the kids change and took care of henry’s feeding and diaper before packing them all up for a walk. “we’ll go make dinner while you two take my little man on a walk, sound good?”

you nodded and gave him a soft peck, and pietra followed you out to the front yard. both of you watched as lando, stevie and theo walked towards the car, on their way to the grocery store, while little henry waited for you, snug in his stroller. 

“i never imagined it,” pietra started. “lando being a dad to more than just theo, i mean. it suits him.” 

“yeah?” you turn your head towards her, a small and proud smile on your face as your fingers softly wrapped around the handle of the stroller. “i never imagined finding anyone else as important as stevie was to me. like i didn’t know my heart could expand enough to fit more than just her in there, y’know.” 

“yeah,” she nodded, following you as you made your way towards one of your favourite places in the world. “i mean, i guess that makes sense since you were each other’s biggest love for three years.”

“yeah, but now she’s a lot more loving to lando than me” a laugh leaves your lips. the chilly spring air caressed your cheeks as you pushed the beige coloured stroller. your little newborn lay peacefully in it, little eyes curiously wandering around. 

he was barely six and a half months old, but already so attentive, responsive and curious, and looked just like stevie when she was this age. he was a peaceful baby so far— not much fussing during the day and he slept well at nights. on the few occasions that he didn’t, lando would be up in a flash to take care of your little henry’s needs.

it was endearing to watch him explore fatherhood with three kids now, as opposed to when it was just him and theo. you admired how sweet he was with stevie while explaining why he does what he does when changing diapers or fixing bottles, or how he intently listened to theo’s explanation on how to properly burp a baby. 

“is this the place?” pietra nudged her chin at the playground that’s slowly coming more into view. it’s a little more worn now– the paint had chipped off the bars where theo used to pretend he was a monkey on, and the slide had little divots, yet it used to be smooth and barely worn out when stevie used to insist on taking it backwards, with her belly to the metal.

it brought back some nostalgia to when you first met lando. it was on the very same bench that pietra was sitting on right now. you watched the playground with a small smile on your lips, a tear threatening to spill from your eye.

henry fussed in the stroller and immediately calmed down when you placed a gentle hand on his tummy to steady him. “we’re at the playground. you’ll get to play here with your brother and sister when you’re a little older.”

pietra silently watched as you picked him up and gently laid his cheek to rest on yours, his little eyes adjusting to the light around him. henry looked around, the plethora of colours elicited a few excited ooh’s from his little body. “this is where i met your dada,” you smiled at henry. 

henry cooed as you pointed to things at the playground and explained each ones significance. you knew he didn’t understand it yet, but you were willing to tell him the story over and over again. it was the biggest twist of fate you had ever experienced– that very morning, stevie had begged you to finally take a walk since it had been too cold for months now, and you agreed.

if you had been just a little more careful and told her to wait another day, week or month, chances are you wouldn’t be holding your baby while your husband made dinner at home with your other two kids. 

pietra perked up when you walked over to her and she immediately extended her hands to take henry from you. “come to auntie p,” she baby talked as you handed her your son. “he has a nose just like lando’s.”

“he has the neck strength like lando’s, too.” you sit down beside her and closely watch as she gently bounced henry on her knees. just then, you blurted something that had been on your mind for a while. “do you think it’s weird that lando and i are together?”

“excuse me?” she turns to you with a confused face. “why would anyone think that?”

“i don’t know, i mean, like…” you take a second to collect your thoughts. it was starting to sound like you were regretting this life, meanwhile it was the complete opposite. “like the way we met, it was random.”

“it’s not random, love,” pietra rolls her eyes. “it’s something called fate.”

henry let out a happy noise at your question, his tiny fingers reaching out to poke at pietra’s face. “you agree, huh, lil’ man?” she asks as he pushes his whole hand to her cheek, and you can’t help but laugh at the unfolding scene in front of you.

after a few moments, when henry was back in his stroller and you two were on your way back home, you looked back to the area behind you with a sentimental look in your eye. “who knew playgrounds and playdates would bring me the loveliest life i could’ve imagined?”

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

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[baepsays]

I'D GIVE YOU EVERYTHING (I JUST WANT TO SEE YOU WIN) ‧₊˚𓇢𓆸 ⸻ clan head Gojo

CHAPTER TWO: Lady Gojo

𓍯𓂃 pairing⋙ post Shinjuku clan leader Gojo x non-sorcerer reader

𓍯𓂃 description⋙ navigating a married life is hard enough, it is harder when you know nothing about your husband other than his heroic scars and dizzying smile.

𓆰𓆪 cw in this chapter⋙ canon divergence, NSFW, MDNI, clan and jujutsu world politics, arranged marriage, husband Gojo, Gojo with scars, one sided conflict, one sided pining, eventually both sided pining, so much yearning, slow burn, in a sort of eccentric way ngl, suggestive stuff, they are both a little stupid about e/o, misogyny (not by Gojo), dysfunctional families, fem oriented reader, use of she/her pronouns, angst, some fluff, eventually fully, Mr. wife guy (non derogatory), condescending Gojo, this is quite an angsty chapter, lots of unhealed trauma, childhood abuse, physical abuse, mention of food, throwing up, riddled with insecurity, mention of death, blood, he is an idiot.

𓍯𓂃 a/n: art in the header by @/RUEheree on twt. honestly i do not think this is as sad as i am making it to be, lol it could be worse. and maybe it will get worse idk? anyway hope you have fun reading <3

word count: 8.1k

SERIES MASTERLIST ‖ <<PREVIOUS CHAPTER . NEXT CHAPTER>>soon!

People usually have a lot of expectations about the first day after their wedding. Things like sleeping in, making breakfast together, and having sex. Or go on a honeymoon, where you have more sex, to somewhere more scenic. 

Unfortunately this was not a very usual marriage that you have stumbled upon. Being the lady of the Gojo clan was huge in and of itself, but when you are married to Gojo Satoru on top of that, the living enigma—it is hard to say if you can exist in the shadows anymore.

It was daunting, to say the least, being the center of everyone’s scrutiny and attention. Entirety of thirty six hours have gone by, with you becoming the new lady Gojo, standing beside Satoru, and trying not to get eclipsed by him. Which is a flawed expression of words when there stood the same amount of distance between you two, as the sun and the moon—you have spent some easier thirty six days in your life compared to these last thirty six hours.

Mere thirty six hours, and you have somehow driven your husband further away from you than the preexisting light years of difference between you two.

All you did was, do as you were told. And yet here you were. Somehow things just do not work out for you even when you do as instructed. Neither do they work out when you try to go against the grain.

There has always been a misfit piece of puzzle handed to you, and when you try to forcibly jam it in, everyone seems to get more mad at you. But what can you do with the hand of cards you were dealt with? You play them. But when those cards do not seem to win you anything, how late are you to back away from these games?

What are you to do when your husband calls you wrong for trying to live up to the expectations of the society, your gender, and your respective families? If only you truly knew the answers to all these questions, which are far bigger in the grand scheme of things, than your head could comprehend.

And now it is a lifetime of fumbling around, until you are yet again able to become translucent enough to be ignored for the rest of time. 

You predict that your penchant for wanderlust into the pits of anxiety at this huge table, expanding along with the stretch of the entire room, would be a common occurring theme. Especially with the lack of a husband opposite you on the dining table, and an absence of appetite for the array of delicious food in front of you. Far too much for you to finish by yourself, and far too precious to disappoint the chef; who came up to you and introduced himself to you with the sweetest most welcoming smile that you have been offered by someone in a while. 

“I hope you enjoy everything Gojo-san, Gojo-sama specially requested everything to be made to your liking. ” Was all he said before he disappeared back into the kitchen. 

So you did your best. To finish as much as you could, at the very least, to try a bite out of everything chef Suzuki prepared, especially for you, apparently with your husband’s special request.

Even though he, himself, was not available to eat a proper meal with you under his roof. He made sure the food was catered to your preference, he most likely got the intel from your mother or someone else, because there was barely anything you could swallow down your throat without almost regurgitating it. 

You have spent your life in the confines of your father’s estate trying to mold into a perfectly eligible lady for a clan head to wed off. And that required a very specific diet and taste. Which unfortunately you never really became fond of, nor did you get accustomed to. You distinctly remember how as a child when you threw a tantrum at the dining table, for not wanting to eat the same soup you were chugging down currently, you were left to starve the entire night instead.

The lashes of thin bamboo leaving red marks all over your arms, were still fresh in your memories. And when the sweet grandma who did your laundry, and her grandson, sneaked in some packaged chips for you—you remember how hard you cried for two days and fell ill, not because of the lashes you got as punishment, but because your one and only childhood friend, and his grandmother, the elderly lady who actually treated you like a child, were dismissed and driven out of your clan's estate without a single thought. 

You do not want to repeat those mistakes again. One wrong move by you could have someone pay for it with their entire livelihood. Who knows if Gojo Satoru will even spare the chef his life. You have heard how much of a cruel man he is behind his suave facade, and you did not want to unmask that.

But how sure were you that the mask was not already being chipped away at? After the events of last night and this morning, you were not sure about your position in this game, what move to make next. Everything you know about the rules; the rights and wrongs, were all backfiring. 

So the wisest thing to do here, is to sit pretty and do as you are told.

The first seven days after the wedding were monotonous to say the least, and somber to say the most. The tour of the estate took about almost three days, and even then you could only explore the entirety of the right wing’s ground floor and some parts in the center, leaving behind at least more than sixty percent of the property unexplored. And you were left too tired and too overwhelmed to finish the rest of it. So you simply told the ladies appointed to show you around, that,

‘I have a lifetime to familiarize myself with the entirety of it.’

Sure the nervous chuckle you gave them before turning on your feet and heading towards the opposite direction, seemed innocent and endearing enough for them to spread the word—that how happy their madame is to be here! 

But the truth couldn't be further from that. 

To simply put it, it was too frightening. And it felt like you were crossing some sort of imaginary boundary. In these last three days, you've been confined to the right side, and some partial space in the center of the building. And it felt like that's all you've been permitted access to, because that's how it has always been. In fact this was more than what you've been brought up with. Sure, your parental home isn't as vast and huge as your husband's, but even then it was huge in size compared to what you think most normal houses are. And you've only been able to walk through only some of the halls of the place which was meant to be your home.

For a place which you wanted to call your home, it sure never felt like it. Whenever you wandered anywhere other than the library you cherished, your own room, and the gardens, and some other sitting rooms; you were given stern punishments. Eventually the unknown nooks and crannies of your own house became not worth the stinging red lines on the palm of your hands, or the little amount of food that was served to your room.

So naturally, when Satoru carried you in through the main entrance, and walked through the halls to get to your room, you associated that selected path, and area as your newfound boundary. Even the stairs leading to the second story of the mansion was too forbidden of sorts, for you to walk up to.

So part of the reason why you are yet to tour the entire estate was this, and the other part was that you were not ready to stumble into your husband in these halls. 

Even if it's your shared property, it's not your home. It's his, it's all his. And how dare you step a foot on something of his without proper permission? You should just be thankful enough to have been given so much, and it'd just be too greedy to ask for more.

So you left your husband to himself, and left him alone with some of the center, the left wing of the mansion, and the entirety of the first floor. In exchange, you gave yourself solace in the gardens surrounding the mansion, and the woods beyond it. So you couldn't dare to step over that line.

Except, maybe, the library. 

Books have always been a lovely companion to you, when much of your own words didn't mean anything. So you appreciated all the books scattered across all the shelves in the rooms you did not hesitate to step into. But you wanted to allow yourself some audacity to look for the actual library. The thought of its sheer size and capacity to hold hundreds and thousands of centuries old books, made you want to step over that imaginary line you drew for yourself. 

But then, you also have other things to distract you from giving into your desires.

The practice of acclimating with your duties as the now lady of the estate, was much easier than receiving the never ending messages of congratulations, or fighting the urges to cross over the unspoken boundaries that you drew out yourself. It was not as burdensome as you feared it would be, but nonetheless, the duties of the wife of the Gojo Satoru, was sure not easy. 

The first few days were spent in awe of everything, even though you were not from someone’s blood lacking in any affluence; but your new residence, surname, and—the living legend of sorts—husband were scintillating to a blinding degree. And any apparent distant giggling teases of a feet sweeping honeymoon, envisioned by the ladies at your reception—was not happening, to their utter dismay.  

Yet still you have come to enjoy the mundane tasks. Waking up to an empty bed for a straight week, since your first night with your husband, is compensated for by your ladies in waiting, namely, Mia and Suki . Both of their lively fuss in the morning over dressing you up feels more rejuvenating than any cup of coffee.

It makes you want to look forward to the mornings when you go to bed waiting for Satoru, only for him to slip under the sheets after he has been reassured by the maids that you are deep in slumber. So then he could walk into your room, as discreetly as possible, and get ready to slip under the same sheets as you.

To then only stare at how your eyelashes fall on your cheeks, the curve of your cupid’s bow, the bridge of your nose, and the blemishes on your skin, until he falls asleep himself—to then wake up before you, leaving his side of the bed cold and empty, and so neatly cleaned up. That it looks untouched.

Meeting Ichiji after breakfast, to go over Satoru’s schedule, before your husband’s departure to work, feels much more inviting than having breakfast at an empty table with your husband’s absence. 

Discussing breakfast the previous night with chef Suzuki, lunch for yourself and the staff at the estate—as well as discussing what should be packed and sent for the lord of the estate’s lunch. Looking over the needs of each staff member, catering to their meal requirements etc. it was quite a hard job, when done genuinely, but it made you feel closer to each and every member of your new family. 

Understanding the accounts of the estate expenditure, making notes of days when the staff are to be paid, fulfilling their requests, corresponding with other clan members etc. surprisingly kept you busy, as you did your best to remain accurate in your calculations. Because these were to then Bypass Satoru's finals checking.

It was a matter of concern for you before, how you will be spending your time usefully, rather than just sitting idly in a pretty attire. Before, you used to spend your days teaching destitute children, until your parents deemed your career as a good pastime that went on long enough, and eventually it was just that you were to focus on your overdue duties—marriage.

And just like that, that little freedom was also snatched away even after much groveling to your parents. So you presumed as much, it was going to be absurd to even ask your husband to continue that vocation—after all if the people of your own blood can confine you within a boundary before wedding you off on your merry way, like some livestock they raised to be butchered—then expecting anything more from a husband of a week and mere convenience, was out of the question.

The hardest possible job was calling your husband during a particular time of the day, to enquire about his preference for each day's dinner. When he would be on his break, you'd call him, but not at a time when he was actually free enough to pick up his phone immediately. But just busy enough to not be actually able to pick up the phone himself.

It took you some time to perfect the right timing. It is exactly two and a half rings, before you could hang up the phone without any guilt. It was long enough that it showed, ‘oh yes she really called.’, but not long enough for your husband to actually pick up the phone and converse with you. Of course it was silly. Why would you call him if you did not even mean to speak to him?

Because that was not the purpose of the call. It was almost another formality. And how dare you ruin all the efforts he has been putting into to ignore you, for an entire week at that? Of course it was nothing enraging enough to make you do petty things, because this was not petty! You just either really wanted to respect his wishes, or that you were too scared to start another conversation with him. And maybe the answer could be an amalgamation of all the aforementioned reasons.

It seems that you would rather go to far fetched lengths than speak to your own husband directly about what he would like for the kitchen to prepare for dinner. Instead, it was easier to call Ichiji with the excuse that Satoru did not pick up, to then have him ask and relay back what should be prepared for dinner.

It was not that it was imperative for you to ask Satoru such tedious things, you were not even sure how this whole thing started. The very first day after you two were wed, and later in the morning when he walked out on you after calling you wrong for trying to abide by your wifely duties, the kitchen asked for your opinion for dinner. And after that nauseating breakfast experience, you did not have the mind to think about food, so you skipped lunch, and so did Satoru, without you at the table he simply dismissed everyone to their own vices and returned to his hiding. You wanted to respect their wishes and give them an answer, but you also did not really have anything on your mind. 

Naturally, you told them to just ask Satoru, but since apparently your husband already locked himself in his office in the very opposite end of the estate from you, and had some important people over to congratulate him, no one was brave enough to disrupt him.

But something told them it was acceptable for you to intervene.

“How- how am I supposed to ask him? I, I do not think I should.” You spoke loud enough for the staff to hear, but it was mostly for yourself to hear those words, and know your place. 

“We truly think Gojo-sama would not mind if you went in, madam. Well, if you are still so hesitant, why not just call him?” Chef Suzuki suggested for the others to nod along with him. And you did not have the heart to tell them the already sour nature of your relationship with their lord. So you sat down in the nearest sitting room, if you can even call such a massive room, just that. The Gojo estate expanded through truly acres and acres of land, so there were plenty of rooms with the most comfortable couches and chairs, and plenty more telephone to communicate with people in the other areas of the estate.

One ring. Two rings. Two and a half rings. Three rings-

“Hello.” 

Oh he picked up. And oh, his voice sounded different. Different from how he speaks with you. It sounded more authoritative. More rough, more distant. 

And here you thought only you were subjugated to his apathy and ignorance.

“Hello?” Oh right, you answer someone when they pick up the phone, right.

“Um- hello.” All sound on his end halted. Or maybe it felt like that to him. 

“I- I just, I mean- the chef wanted to ask- what would you like for dinner?” Goodness, when did you get so bad at conversing over the phone?

There was a long awkward pause after that question. You were fully expecting him to just scoff at your audacity to even think you could call him to ask such things, and hang up on you. You were expecting dinner to be cancelled altogether. And after skipping lunch, and throwing up everything you had for breakfast, you couldn't afford that.

“Please let the chef know that I'll have whatever you'd like.” His voice sounded softer than how he previously spoke, or maybe it was just that he was trying to not shout at you in front of his guests. Either way, you were grateful. That he did not prolong this call with names of illegible culinary words you could not relay back, and get deemed unsophisticated.

“Alright. Please be at the table by the time it is served.” You did not expect him to have dinner with you. But you still asked, maybe there was some pleading in your voice as well. Or maybe you just did not want to eat alone. 

“Of course, sweetheart. And I'm sorry about this morning.” 

Oh? 

Oh!

He says sorry? The head of the Gojo clan says sorry, to his wife? In front of other people of authority? You've had some wild and confusing interactions with this man since you married him not even barely twenty four hours ago, and this was probably the wildest interaction you've had with a man in your life. A man with such power at that. And you could not, or maybe you did not know how to answer him. So you did the next worst thing to stutter an ok, you hung up on him. 

Everyone around you giggled and smiled discreetly, as you scrambled away to the kitchen, offering not needed, but appreciated, help to chef Suzuki. 

And when dinner time came, you started setting up that huge table by yourself, dismissing everyone to eat their own meals. Not expecting a husband to accompany you for the meal, you busied yourself with the cutlery and fine china, when a looming figure leaned on the door frame to observe you from a far.

It seems as though Gojo Satoru has developed a weird pension for staring at his wife from afar.

And he has also developed the knack for scaring her by silently coming up to her from behind without any warning. He liked that you shriek and jump when you realize you're not just by yourself anymore. He likes to think that one day you'll jump in joy rather than surprise to see him walk in without any warning.

So you both silently sat yourselves down at the very opposite ends of the dining table, both at the head of each end, and silently ate your dinner. Which was much easier to chow down than the breakfast you had earlier. Which thankfully did not upset your stomach too bad. You did not exchange words, just silently stole glances, and when your eyes would land on his eyes, which would be already trained on you more than half of the time—you’d scurry to finish your meal before him and leave him at an empty table. 

Reap what you sow. 

Now that is how this entire calling Satoru—or Ichiji to be more exact—thing started. Everyday since then you've never failed to call him, and hung up after that almost third ring, to not allow him the chance to respond; to then ask him through Ichiji, what he'd like for dinner. For lunch, If he was at his home office, he'd eat there. And if he was not home, his lunch would be packed and delivered.

Some sorry it was. Given as a formality, and taken not seriously.

The chef, or the staff, or the ladies appointed to you, never clarified that you did not have to do this entire thing, calling him everyday to just ask about dinner. This was not part of the duties assigned to you, and the kitchen has always cycled through a set of preparation their lord preferred, and it was already an established, much easier, routine. But no one tried to object to the new everyday routine. 

Especially when Satoru himself did not mind the new routine. Sure, he'd much appreciate you asking him directly, but he'd have the short end of the bargain either way.

And everyday it was more than enough entertainment for all of them to see their madame struggle to address their master. Satoru was never truly involved in such tasks, much of the responsibilities you take care of now used to fall on poor Ichiji’s shoulders, so the change of pace was much appreciated by everyone. After all, he was too busy being the strongest weapon in jujutsu history to look after everything himself. 

So somewhere everyone, including your husband, found your insistence to note down his opinions over such trivial things, too endearing to enlighten you. Though this routine of calls have become quite complicated over the past week. And so you have developed a habit of having lunch with the chef and kitchen staff.

On rare, yet day by day more frequent occasions, like today, instead of the kitchen staff, you would be sitting opposite your husband over lunch.

It was not often you sat down in a room with Satoru without any reason, in fact you can count on one hand how many times you have done that. So waiting for lunch to be served on a comically large dining table, sitting on the very opposite end from him, was new everytime. It was awkward enough to share any meal other than the scheduled dinner with him, that too he always left much earlier than you, thankfully. 

Who knows what it was? Was it his engulfing cologne clogging your nose, disabling you from smelling the food served in front of you. Or simply the annoyingly perfect sight of him, so casually eating like it was the most natural thing to do—while you sat there, a nervous wreck. But regardless, you did not seem to have any appetite. Which was apparent enough for everyone, including Satoru to notice that across from the table.

“Is there anything on your plate that you don’t like? I can ask the chef to make you something else.” There was, as if, a genuine concern in his voice. For you, that was simply weird.

“Oh. No, I am fine. I just had a snack earlier.” The poorly told lie was not one to pass Gojo Satoru or his six eyes. But for you he was willing to make an excuse. 

“Is that so? I think I am done as well.” It was a risky tactic he was employing, trying to bait you with guilt was low even for him. 

“But you’ve barely started!?” “And you barely had any breakfast. I am more than sure if I asked anyone here what fulfilling snack you had, the answer would be underwhelming.” How would he even know what you did or not have for breakfast when he was not even there to begin with?

For a few seconds he sat there assessing if he had pissed you off again. As invigorating as it is to mildly anger you, he would not have that at the cost of your meal. To his relief without any more protest you went back to your plate to take a proper mouthful bite.

If anyone tested Satoru’s patience as you did, as well as avoided him as skillfully as you have; it would have ended up not as kindly as it has been with you. He has been trying to give you space, to let you breathe, and foster a home for yourself, in his house. Unfortunately in those attempts he has made you feel neglected and ignored instead, for someone so perceptive, he sure is clueless.

Because when he tried to give you that space, after that poorly said sorry, he thought by extension it was part of the apology. Which mistranslated to you, as some formality and ignorance. When he was merely trying to make you feel more comfortable, and holding himself back from stepping over any more land mines. 

Those said land mines are simply just his unfathomably and rapidly growing feelings for you. His concerns, and worries about your wellbeing. And just thoughts of you randomly hijacking his mind. It takes Suguru one too many times a day to nudge his head, to bring him out of some sort of trance that he goes into when you come into his mind. 

But after the first week, he has found himself to enjoy invading your space rather than trying to give you space. It made him ecstatic to hear your voice panic a little when from time to time he would pick up your routinely strategic calls instead of missing them. He does think, even you have to admit for yourself, that two and a half rings are far too few before hanging up on someone. Also he did not appreciate Ichiji asking him what he would like for dinner, instead of you. You made this new habit, you must be the one to ask as well. 

“What would you like for the chef to prepare tonight?” 

“Hmm?” he looked a little dumbfounded at your sudden question, was it not enough you were infiltrating his mind and now you are reading his thoughts as well? Upon acclimating with the situation, he sees his own and your empty plates. Guess he finished his meal while he was too busy thinking of, again, you. 

“I mean, what do you want for dinner?” you ask once again, in hopes of a more clear answer. But god forbid your husband ever gave you a desirable answer to your questions. 

“You.”

If someone wanted to learn how to kill someone with a single word, it should be recorded how this exchange happened. The food in your mouth choked in your throat, it had your husband sprint from his own seat to your end of the table, to pat you on the back and hand you a glass of water. After a few minutes and some water later, the food went down the pipe, but the word did not.

“Goodness, I was only joking, sweets.” 

He was in fact, not joking.

“Y-you were?” He nodded a very convincing yes, trying not to scare off his already spooked wife. 

“It was a very poor attempt at a joke. But I appreciate the effort.” You ended your sentence with a smile that subconsciously made its way to your lips. He does not remember when was the last time you smiled at him, or, for him.

And he chuckled at your honesty. He found it so refreshing and interesting. It is not that no one has ever told him how bad his jokes were, or worse when people laugh at his jokes merely outbid fear. He knows his humor was not to everyone's taste. But he liked that you did not just put him down, maybe out of your still very scared view of him, or maybe out of sympathy. But he appreciated the change of pace where his friends would just shit on him for such jokes, or when people would laugh too loud and too obviously out of fear.

But then again, he was just trying to mask truth with humor. 

Which has been a staple for him. The truth is as plain as he said it, he wants you. He wants you carnally maybe, he wants to eat you up. He wants you to chew him up like a gum and spit him out at your convenience. 

But more than that, Satoru thinks he also wants you beyond bodily, physical needs. He does not think he even thought about touching you since your first meeting, until he actually touched your skin that night. He saw you in that room, sitting behind that cedar wood table, looking smaller than everyone in that room, despite your status. And he thought—’Great. A meek little mouse instead of a bride.’

But when you actually answered his teasing, and honestly, patronizing question instead of timidly bowing your head in respect, like he expected you to—he saw a dwindling spark in your eyes in that moment, instead of fear and vast pit of emptiness, that he first saw in them when he opened those doors.

And he knew even if there was someone more capable to stand beside him, maybe he would rather stand with you. 

He cannot still exactly pinpoint what it is that he craved from you, or if it's just that he simply craves you, but he wants more. He wants more of you, more from you. He wants you just simply to exist around him. Your skin sent waves of heat through his skin when he touched it, it was burning hot compared to his own cold body, you felt so warm and so alive in that moment, and he simply wants more.

He does not think he loves you. Yet. At the very least. He does not think he fell in love with you just as he laid his eyes on you that day, maybe he pities you that much. Maybe it is just like adopting a frail kitten stuck in a storm and giving her a shelter to thrive in. He has thought about that. But he came to the conclusion that he is done playing some hero. 

The world has had enough of Gojo Satoru—the strongest, the saviour, and the weapon.

He simply wants to exist, as he wants to exist for someone. He does not want to sacrifice anymore. For once he wants to be selfish. He wants to selfishly live on, and live with someone. And he has chosen that someone to be you. 

And if you were just some sympathy case, he doesn't think he would've felt such feelings for you. He truly needs you, more than he wants you. He needs you to want him, he needs you to look at him with the same eyes as you did when you told him off for being late, or when you looked him up through those blurry pupils while being pinned under him. 

He truly, earnestly, needs to have you. Most romantically, spiritually, and disrespectfully.

He would rather have you on this table than the spread of a very well prepared meal. But those aren't thoughts that can be easily dumped on his wife, who has schemed up tactful ways to avoid even hearing his voice through the phone.

“Just ask them to prepare what you'd like.” He smiled reassuringly before picking up your plate, as well as his, so quickly, even beating the staff and you to it—and headed straight to the kitchen sink.

To maybe drown himself in the sink after putting away the dirty plates.

It is truly magnificent, how wonderful the garden looks at night. 

How the koi pond dims down at night, and the stones and the sand become cold with the dropping temperature. The pine trees rustled and threw their needles all over the ground, as if to deter the sharp wind, to protect their garden from its sharp claws. And it seems like an entire play is happening right outside of your windows. 

But you have been more interested in what goes on behind that battle ground. In the little grove of trees, and wild flowers, where the wind seems more forgiving, and the trees feel more comforting. 

And it feels like an entirely new world beyond the bridge over the stream, that connects to the lake nestled in the trees. And you've come to find a safety net in that new world of yours. 

Particularly sitting down on one of those benches under the cherry blossom trees by the said lake, the one near the bridge seems too out of your reach, so you always opt for the one across it—the only reason why is because your husband seems to like that bench for himself.

Though it takes a bit of a walk from your room on the right side, or even the left wing of the mansion, to go over the only bridge that crosses the stream, which lies as a boundary between the tidy gardens and the unbridled woods—it was easily accessible from the center. 

After the first time you did dare to cross that bridge, you did not think of crossing it again. Maybe because you were too busy waiting for your husband to return to bed, or afraid of interrupting Satoru. Either way, you tried your best to not cross that bridge.

The second time you went there, was when you saw Satoru crossing that bridge around twelve AM, when you were just sprawled on the couch in that particular drawing room that looked over the bridge. Not ready to retire to that huge bed by yourself, you followed him there.

And all he did was sit on the bench under the cherry blossom tree, which stood by the lake around twenty five steps away from the bridge. 

You did not dare to disturb him, he looked so calm, and at peace. For once, from what you could make out from behind the huge and unkempt hydrangea bushes, his eyes did not look pained. 

It is that people often saw Gojo Satoru only with his blindfold on, but you mostly ever saw him without it. So you honestly felt like he was punishing you when he started wearing them around you more often since the first time you two had dinner together. You hadn't seen him for the entirety of that day, the entire morning you spent hunched over the toilet, and the evening you spent by replaying the conversation you had with him over the phone. 

‘I’m sorry.’

Is what he said. And you thought, maybe it was just a fluke, what happened that morning. Things will get better. Then to only be greeted with a husband across that long table, with a blindfold covering half of his face. And it felt more punishing than being told that you were wrong.

But from what you made out of what you have seen of his eyes, and those half empty smiles and smirks he threw your way—he was pained. It hurt him, to simply see you, just to be around you. The only place where he roamed around so freely without those obstructions in front of his eyes, for his own good, was his home—and now you've taken that away from him as well.

So then you started to ignore him. After waiting for him in that huge bed, that huge table, those huge rooms—you gave up easily. As easily as he threw a half assed apology for you to latch onto some false hope. You avoided walking into him. You avoided trying to stay up for him, or starving yourself, you avoided his voice, and but you still tried to get a peek of his hidden eyes.

Until you couldn't help but follow him into these woods. And so you sat there looking at him, creeping in the shadows, while the lake’s water reflected beams of light on his face, and made his blue eyes shine a different shade of blue than what it usually reflects. And the scars that dug themselves on his skin, looked deeper than what they usually did. It looked like he was freshly wounded, and the most vulnerable, he could allow himself to be.

You waited there until he got up from his seat and disappeared into the thin air. 

And that's how your own routine started. You waited until twelve AM to see if Satoru went into the woods, and waited for about an hour and a half more to check if the lights in your room were turned on from under the door. To then sneak into the woods. Some days he'd be gone, other days he'd still be under that cherry blossom tree.

And if he was not there, you'd make your own way to take a seat under the cherry blossom tree across the lake, other times you'd wait for him to disappear from behind those hydrangea bushes.

Today was one of those days.

You waited, and waited, until it seemed like he had teleported back to your bedroom, to make your way to the bench on the other side. And when you made it there, you found it out to be occupied by your husband himself. So you did what you could do, in a state of panic, you tried your best to silently turn around and walk away without rumbling the bushes or rustling the grass under your feet. To make your escape.

“You're leaving already?” His voice came out smooth and steady as ever. And you stopped in your tracks with your back to his back.

“Come here, sit down.” He simply said, without as much as even turning around from where he sat. 

And you could not help but obey. If it was possible, you'd run, run so fast and quick that even his techniques would not be able to track you down. But that is just a delusional imagination.

“I won't repeat.” He said in a heavier tone, but it didn't sound commanding, it was playful if anything. Light and breezy, but sharp. Sharp enough that if you tried to avoid it, it'd cut right through. So despite yourself, you walked over to the bench you've come to love so dearly over the course of the last few weeks, and sat down on the very edge of it. As far away from him as you possibly could sit.

But Satoru couldn't allow that.

It took him a second to lift his left hand off his lap, to lean slightly to your side and drag you towards him by your waist. The ring you put on him the day you married you, shined in the darkness with his swift movements. 

And just like that, you were sitting side by side with your husband. Your bare arm touched the soft fabric of the sleeves on his t-shirt, and the rigid muscles under them pushed into your own arm. His left arm loosened around your back, but his hand remained steady and static on your waist. And your lungs stopped working.

“Need help with breathing also?” It was only his taunting tone that gave your lungs the air needed to not pass out then and there. 

You did not answer him. You did not wish to entertain him. You've entertained him enough by thinking you could get away with trying to sneak past his eyes, when he had his sight on you from the beginning, all six of them. And yet again you felt like a defeated fool against him.

“You- come here often?” The suppressed giggle in his throat almost spilled over with each word uttered.

“Don’t ask questions that you already know the answers to.” You looked away from him, to face the lake, and the ripples in the water. It's as if even the lake was coming down with a second hand embarrassment, looking at how chaotically it's water started moving.

“Alrightttt, alright. I'll stop.” With a last few giggles, he looked away from your face, and focused his covered eyes on the same cherry blossom tree you were eyeing. The one he usually sits under, looked completely different from the other side. 

“I wish they'd bloom soon.” He spoke out loud, it sounded like a passing thought that spilled out unintentionally.

“Do you like cherry blossoms?” You turned your face towards him, his face however, did not turn.

“No. Not really.” “Really?”

“Why? Couldn't you tell that by just looking at me?” he smiled a big toothy grin. That stretched across his face, but even with the blindfold on, you could tell it didn't reach his eyes.

“No. I couldn't. Especially with that thing covering half of your face.” You sure were feeling brave today. Maybe it was the darkness of the night, or the secrecy in the woods, or just the embarrassment of how you ended up here. But words just seemed to flow out of your mouth instead of getting stuck in your throat.

He finally looked towards you, and cranked his neck to look down at your eyes, looking up at him. And he could tell that you knew. That you knew even with his blindfold between your eyes and his, whether he was lying or not. So why bother with it at all right? 

He brought his right hand up to his face, to hook his index and middle finger under his blindfold, and dragged it down on his neck.“I don't think I enjoy how quickly they wither away. But I like how they look when they fall. Unihibited and free.” 

He looked back over towards the lake. With his eyes free to shine under the moonlight. And there it was, the pain. 

“Is that why you have been avoiding me?” you blurted out with furrowed eyebrows and determined eyes.

“I've been- what? Because of the cherry blossoms?” His head whipped towards you as fast as it could without snapping his neck, his left hand tightened around you, and he looked confused.

“No. Because you look like you are in pain whenever you're around me.” Your throat was starting to tighten up.

Suddenly you felt like crying. In fact, your eyes started to well up after every passing moment from when you said your thoughts out loud. This is weird. You don't cry. You never cry. It's been years since you cried. Why are you crying? Is he going to reprimand you for that? 

Well, you can't wait here on this bench to find that out. So you haphazardly pulled yourself out of his arms, and made your way back to the mansion. 

You couldn't even make it past the fifth step, when Satoru dragged you back towards him. He was still sitting on that bench, except now you stood there between him and the cherry blossom tree, in between his legs. Once again, stuck. His chin rested itself on your stomach, as it fluttered away, his eyes looked so soft and his face looked like it wanted to be caressed. Both of his hands ended up on either side of your hips, as if his legs weren't enough to keep you captured. Even when your protests didn't match his strength.

He patiently waited like that until you stopped protesting, and just looked down at his face, still resting on your stomach, looking up at you, and you gave in trying to shove him off of you by his shoulders. Instead you just let them rest there.

“Would you like to elaborate? Pleaseee?” If you told anyone that Gojo Satoru was whining to you right now, they'd call you insane. And maybe that's what's happening to you.

“No.” You are becoming insane.

“Please.” Other than his many ancient and sought after techniques, his most lethal weapon was his pout. So how could you resist those quivering billowy lips?

“I- You just-”, you stuttered trying to answer him, thinking whether or not you could get away with some excuse or straight up lies. But of course you cannot. He truly is too dangerous.

“You just, always- you look as if you're in so much pain when you're around me.” You sighed, finally voicing it out loud, “Isn’t that why you started wearing these around the house, around me?” You passingly pulled on the blindfold hanging on his neck, to make a point.

Yet again, he was left speechless. It's as if you deploy all his devices useless. You render him to nothing. 

How was he supposed to answer you?

That yes, yes you pain him. Your presence simply has become so enthralling that it physically hurts him to hold himself back. To not cross lines he might not be able to come back from. That your claws are creeping deeper in his chest, and he is doing nothing to stop that bleeding.

He has bled to death on a battlefield twice, with no regrets on his mind. But if you were the one to sever him to death—he would gladly take it. And he'd regret that why couldn't he die at your hands an infinite amount of times more. This time around he'd be truly unhappy to leave behind the mortal realm. Because it’d mean leaving you behind with it.

He could not do that. He cannot survive, he simply cannot do anything against you. 

And that pains him. Aches him really, to be this close and yet so far away from you. 

He hates to make you feel avoided, and neglected, but what is he to do when he doesn't have any control over his thoughts and actions when he's around you? 

When your scent simply travels with the wind when you sneak into the woods trying to not alert him, his chest starts tightening up. Your clogged up loose hair in the shower runs a shiver down his spine. When you chew the food on your plate across from him, he wants to leap over the table and pull you into a kiss.

He wants to be the one to show you around the entire estate, and pull you into random little corners and halls, to kiss you helplessly, hidden away from some passing eyes. He wants to be the one to show you the library because he heard from a helper at parent's house that is where you spent most of your days, he wants to buy you all the books you have ever wanted and will ever want. 

He'd like to hold you and lull you to sleep, and dig his face in your chest, and just fall asleep listening to your heart beat—to feel your blood flow under his touch, and your skin warm up against him.

And it truly hurts him. It hurts to know you've never known a home. 

So he wants to give you that. He wants to hand you all the control over him, and have you pull all the strings from here onwards. He wants you to know that everything to his name is yours, even his name is yours, his mere existence is all yours. Because he wants to give it all up to you.

So it hurts him. It hurts to know that you don't know that.

“I'll take your silence as confirmation then.” His grasp on you easily broke off, maybe he was in a trance again, or maybe it was just the power you already held over him. But to you he was simply found guilty of the accusations that you made. And with no sense of justice, you walked away from him. 

And he did not protest. 

Because maybe it's too fast. It's too quick. To feel what he is feeling. How was he going to ever even verbalize these things to you? And not sound crazy? Let alone give you a satisfying explanation.

It has been barely a month since he has married you, barely two months since he's known you. Wouldn't it be too sudden to go from essentially neglecting you, to professing his vow of devotion to you?

But it's just that suddenly, Gojo Satoru realized then and there, how deep he is. That there were no excuses left to make. That perhaps it was too sudden, too quick, just as quick as cherry blossoms blooming and withering away in spring—maybe he is falling for you.

No. Scratch that. It's idiotic to even question this at this point. He has uninhibitedly and freely, fallen for you.

NEXT CHAPTER>>soon!

TO FIND MORE OF MY WORKS CLICK HERE.

divider by @/omi-resources. header is from, and watashitachi wa douka shiteiru drama. art in the header by @/RUEheree on twt.

thank you to indie @indiewritesxoxo beloved for proof reading pre edit <3 wouldn't be out today otherwise

i do not think it was that bad, was it? also i am just calling him husband and blah blah by his titles a lot. which if you find annoying womp womp because i am using that as part of the narration, like she will slowly start to see him more than that. and again it is slow burn, so sit with it. i am making bro so emotionally constipated muahahahaha he is gonna be rambling about sighhhh she is so sighhhhh and then be like hmm not like i love her or anything yk. he is just like me frfr

tag list (1): @cheralith @slayzzz @madamechrissy @gojosperms @gojoao @cuntphoric @cuntyji @cuntphoric @aishi-toru @fushitoru @rriwyu @arcanarix @lover-lyn @buckysm @wwwritererm @indiewritesxoxo @shouiow @user25384959574 @dxmnsaera @emyyy007 @ineedbetterhobbies0809 @littlemisswitch67 @dxmnsaera @kazupop @tabalugax @mariaelizabeth21-blog1 @thetiredcollegestudent @tokyolhtl @emochosoluvr @moncher-ire @hyunjinspdf @younjunie @em0cleo @novaisbebita @hisarmsaremycocoon @wise-fangirl @sheep-infog @arrozyfrijoles23 @ppejmurde @miizuzu @ricecake-mochi @tushkiiiiiii @ovela @69-gojos-wife-69 @lxxnour @mereniss @theorphicangel @gojosconsort @soupicidesquad +

[asahicore]

cold hands - psh (m)

this work contains smut - minors please do not interact

pairing. sunghoon x fem!reader

synopsis. plot plot plot what is a plot when you can just have vibes and a vague narrative direction... if you MUST know you go to your brother's hockey team back-to-uni party accidentally matching one of the members with your cowgirl barbie costume. hopelessly romantic sunghoon sees this as a sign that the two of you are meant to be together, but you're impossible to read and soon the two of you settle on an ambiguous secret friends with benefits relationship. unfortunately, conflict ensues.

genre. strangers to friends to fwb to lovers..?? its not an asahicore fic if it doesnt have fluff angst AND smut, brothers best friend, jock x nerd type vibe, slight miscommunication put your pitchforks away and hear me out pls it works out i promise, reader has ISSUES 💜 loser loverboy sunghoon, its mostly in his pov, i know nothing about ice hockey

word count. 39.5k 😂

a/n. inspired by @moonlighthoon's request for the 1k trope event! sorry it took ages to write but i hope you like it and that i met ur expectations!!!! hope everyone else enjoys it too, this is the longest fic ive ever written and im quite proud of it, pls pls pls let me know what u thought <333 shoutout to @zreamy .. good luck with your studies, thank u for beta reading and making this fic exponentially better as u always do ⭐️ credit to @/plutism for the dividers :)

Some men never think of it. You did. You’d come along And say you’d nearly brought me flowers But something had gone wrong.

The shop was closed. Or you had doubts - The sort that minds like ours Dream up incessantly. You thought I might not want your flowers.

It made me smile and hug you then. Now I can only smile. But, look, the flowers you nearly brought Have lasted all this while. - Wendy Cope, Flowers

When Sunghoon falls in love, it usually goes as quickly as it came.

Just to name a few:

There had been Ahn Yujin, whose family had moved next to his when he was twelve, and whose dog got on perfectly with his. His crush on the cute girl next door grew with every walk the four of them took but disappeared the second she ditched him to walk home from school with Na Jaemin. 

A few years later, there had been Bae Sumin, who sat in front of him and always had her hair up in a ponytail he found exceedingly pretty. An appointment at the hairdresser was enough for him to stop liking her, as if his interest in her had been laying in the ten centimeters of hair she had cut off. 

In his junior year of high school, there had been Kim Yerim, a college student that tutored him in Math and English. She was three years older, but that didn’t deter him—what did was the fact that she was dating a college graduate. She showed him a picture once, and the guy had biceps probably twice the size of Sunghoon’s. He thought it was safer to give up on her than to fight such a bulky guy five years his senior. 

The first time it stuck was during his first year of college. She was his coach’s daughter and he liked the way she would smile at him when she came to watch their practice. Sunghoon didn’t like to think about her, mainly because even after she broke his heart, for a while there, he continued to love her. 

So, when he first spots you from across the room at the Welcome Back costume party thrown by his hockey team, unintentionally the Cowboy Barbie to his Cowboy Ken, he tries not to read too much into it. Barbie was a hit this summer, it’s an easy and topical costume, of course there’s a pretty girl wearing the same bright pink cowboy hat he is. It doesn’t mean she’s the love of his life.

Right?

He knows you from the pictures that littered the walls of Minjeong, Yunjin and Chaewon’s apartment last year, from Instagram posts, both yours and your friends’, from your video calls with Jake, who dragged him into the camera’s view. Say hi to my sister, he’d insist, like Sunghoon was a child who didn’t want to greet his great-great-aunt. He’d dip in to say hi as requested, ask how you were, and mumble me too like a fool when you said you heard so much about him and were excited to meet him in real life. 

These are the things Sunghoon knows about you: Jake’s older sister by a year, currently on a year abroad in Rome, studies something fancy like Classics, which he hadn’t known people still did in the twenty-first century, deep attachment to Stardew Valley in first year, rarely seen with the same man twice, very pretty. Absurdly so. He’s also weirdly obsessed over the texts you’ve sent to the group chat he was added to at the beginning of last year—scarce, short, elusive. Never more than two sentences, and always long after the conversation was over. But sometimes you’d send photos and videos out of nowhere, of your adventures or of funny things you saw online, and he always hearted them. He even replied to it sometimes (brave hahas or that’s so cool!s), in hopes that it would make you like him, would make you think, he gets me. 

The two of you have never formally met because you left for Italy the year he started university. He’s been nervous about meeting you since the first time the group told him about you. 

Now that he is about to, he can hear his heart thumping so loudly in his ears, it drowns out the bass of the music. He’s glad he gets to see you before having to talk to you—he’s not sure he could take in your presence and form coherent words at the same time. He watches you laugh with your friends, the smile lines that form like dimples around your mouth, the strands of hair you keep tucking behind your ear. Then someone joins your group—except it’s not just someone, it’s Minjeong, her denim jacket so often worn he recognises her from the back, and he realizes the people you’re with have been Chaewon and Yunjin this whole time. The three of them have been banging on about you all year, even more so due to the fact that their replacement flatmate was dreadful, a Spanish girl who only hung out with other Spanish exchange students and looked the girls up and down when they tried to invite her out somewhere.

You turn towards Minjeong, and before he knows it, he’s in your line of sight, and your eyes meet. Confusion, then a flash of recognition goes through your eyes. He had been resting his elbow on a countertop, cider bottle in hand and watching you, he realizes, not unlike a creep, but now he stands up straight and looks around him as if you hadn’t just caught him staring. Before he can find a way out, Jake appears by his side and throws an arm around his shoulders, guiding him into the throng of party-goers and, coincidentally, closer to you.

“Dude, you’ll never guess what.”

“What?” Sunghoon says, tone coming out more irritated than he means it to. He’s just had to give up on making a good first impression on you, and he doesn’t even have the time to think of a way to redeem himself. When he dares to look back at you, your eyes are already on him, a small smile on your lips. You probably hate him already.

“My sister is dressed just like you. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you guys came together or something. Hey, guys!” Jake calls out, and all of a sudden, it’s not just your eyes on him, it’s everyone’s. Well, to be fair, they’re also looking at Jake. But you’re only looking at Sunghoon, and he can’t look away from you either, can’t even manage the politeness to hug everyone in greeting like Jake is doing now. He watches as your eyes rake over his figure, taking him in, assessing him, and he suddenly feels awkward in his costume that matches yours, like he’s somehow overstepped a boundary, like you might think he’s asked around about your costume, found out you were going as Barbie and decided to match you so you’d think the two of you were meant together, like he had two minutes ago, and come to the fairly reasonable decision that he was the weirdest man on Earth. But then you meet his eyes, smile a kind, genuine smile, and his whole body relaxes. 

“Hey, Hoon!” Chaewon calls, arms open wide. He remembers himself and hugs everyone, even you, and he has to pretend like this is completely fine and normal, like his hands aren’t practically shaking as his arms circle your shoulders in a two-second embrace. 

You squeeze one of his shoulders, and keeping his countenance is a Herculean task. He feels like those people centuries ago who passed out at the sight of a lady’s ankle. “It’s so nice to finally meet you,” you say, peering at him over the rim of your red cup. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

Sunghoon feels the blush growing on his face; he wasn’t expecting so much of your attention so quickly. He takes a swig of his lukewarm cider, hoping if he seems drunk, it might explain his redness. “Good things, I hope,” he says, aware of the unoriginality but unable to come up with anything better.

“Oh, don’t worry, they’ve made you out to be a saint.” You’ve not once broken eye contact or stopped smiling—it should intimidate him, but instead, it makes Sunghoon feel like you’ve known each other for ages and that this isn’t your first conversation at all. He finds himself able to relax into a smile, and manages to meet your eyes for more than three seconds at a time.

“You don’t believe them?”

You pause, gaze zeroing in on him even more intensely than previously, smile turning smirk-like. Sunghoon’s heart skips a beat. Okay, maybe he’s not that relaxed. “I don’t know you well enough to make up my mind yet. But we’ll be seeing plenty of each other from now on, won’t we?”

This is exactly what Sunghoon has been warned about. You at parties, the way you look at guys, the way you talk to them. Sunghoon has been the audience of more than one recreation of such a scene, Yunjin pretending to be you, Chaewon pretending to be your “victim,” as the others liked to call them. Because once you had set your eyes on a man, he had little chance of making it out. Jay prides himself as being the only survivor, although he has to admit it’s only because Jake interrupted your conversation, telling him, “I see you’ve met my sister.” And Jay was not the kind of person that got off with their friends’ siblings, especially since his and Jake’s friendship was only a week long at that point, and he didn’t want to ruin the atmosphere in their dorm for the rest of the year just because his dick had gotten the best of him. His words. Whenever they were all hanging out together and they called you, one of the girls would inevitably ask if you had “turned any Italian boys into men” or if you had been “terrorizing the good men of Rome recently.” You would either roll your eyes or say this was not a conversation to be had in front of your brother.

Sunghoon had been sure they were exaggerating—it takes two to tango, as they say, and it wasn’t like you ensnared innocent men into your trap. They had to be willing, to want something from you just as much as you wanted something from them. He’d also gotten them to admit it wasn’t that frequent, that you weren’t looking for a new prey every party, just once in a while when you found someone you liked. (He’d been very quiet when Jay asked why he was trying so hard to defend you.)

But now that he is on the receiving end of your alluring smiles, he starts to understand how one could fall for you without meaning to. He knows he can’t — Jake probably wouldn’t take to it kindly, and he didn’t want to spoil the dynamic of his best group of friends at uni — but he has a feeling that ten minutes of talking to you would be enough to shake his resolve.

“Oh, yeah, I’m sure we will. Jake said you studied a lot, but I’m sure we’ll get to hang out. All of us, I mean,” he quickly adds, lest you think he’s already asking you to hang out one-on-one. Sunghoon would not be that forward.

“Of course. I have to see if you did a good enough job replacing me for a year.” Sunghoon’s eyes widen, and before he can blurt out something weirdly laudatory like “I could never replace you, I would never even try, I don’t know you but you’re clearly far superior to me in every aspect and I could never even claim to fill your spot,” you giggle and tell him it’s just a joke. “If anything, I’m happy Jake has managed to make a new friend that he didn’t meet through me, that loser,” you say, and together, you laugh at Jake’s loserness, a topic that will never fail to amuse Sunghoon, although he’s not faring much better in that department. 

“Like, look at him right now,” you say, jerking your head in Jake’s general direction, somewhere behind Sunghoon’s shoulder—and that’s when he realizes that it’s just the two of you standing there, the others gone without him even noticing. Sunghoon turns around, finding the girls, Jay, and a bunch of other people he vaguely recognizes huddled around Jake. They all start chanting his name as he gulps down a giant red cup of beer, then raises the empty cup over his head in victory and crumples it, beaming at the people around him. 

“What is he doing?” Sunghoon asks, laughing at his friend.

“Jay called him over for a beer-off,” you explain. After a beat, you ask, “You didn’t notice?”

The implications are clear in your tone and in your eyes. In the smile playing on your lips, just shy of being a smirk. You didn’t notice because of me, is what you’re really telling Sunghoon—at least, that’s the impression he’s getting. And you’d be right. He was too busy talking to you and trying his best not to make a fool of himself to notice his friends leaving, too engrossed with you to register the sudden disappearance of four people. Across the room, where people have shifted their attention to yet another hockey player downing a sizable amount of beer, he catches Chaewon’s eyes, and she winks at him. Of course—leave it to Chaewon, to whom Sunghoon once made the mistake of drunkenly rambling about how pretty you looked in your Instagram posts last year, to give you and Sunghoon some time alone, “to get to know each other properly,” she would probably say. Although he isn’t sure that small talk over 2000s music counts as getting to know someone. According to the others, she and Yunjin started dating a month into their second year, so Chaewon has proclaimed herself as the goddess of dating and is now always trying to set people up. Sunghoon thinks she’s just living vicariously through her friends now that she has a Mrs. at home.

Because the filter usually at work between the part of Sunghoon’s brain where sentences are formed and his mouth is apparently on leave today, he says, “I do have a pretty distracting sight in front of me.” He’s immediately both mortified and impressed by this sudden bout of confidence, but then you look down and giggle, actually giggle, the sweetest sound he’s ever heard, and only pride remains. 

“So, Ken?” you ask, a cute attempt to change the subject, taking the fabric of the pink bandana around his neck between your fingers. Sunghoon wonders if you’re going to yank him down to your level, and he thinks he wouldn’t have much of a problem with that. 

He realizes that even though you should technically know each other’s names, you haven’t actually exchanged them, so in a confused but correcting tone, he says, “Um, Sunghoon.” He only belatedly realizes that you hadn’t gotten his name wrong, you were just making a comment on his costume, which he had completely forgotten he was wearing in the first place. Just as he’s about to backtrack and salvage what he can of the situation, you burst into laughter, hand leaving his bandana to cover your mouth as he hides his face behind his own hands, laughing along with you despite himself. 

“I know your name is Sunghoon!” you exclaim. The gratification of hearing you say his name takes away some of his embarrassment. “I’m Y/N, by the way. Not Barbie.”

Sunghoon nods. “Good to know.”

The laughter gradually dies down, but your smile stays the same; wide, bright, a smile that exposes your teeth and turns your eyes into crescents. Sunghoon can’t look away. He’s awash with nerves, your gaze simultaneously planting his feet to the ground like they’re full of lead and making him light-headed. His heart is beating so fast, he can barely feel it anymore. 

The two of you stand there, looking and smiling at each other, like in a cliché movie scene where everyone else at the party seems to fade into the background. He has no idea how much time has passed when you break the silence. “It really is nice to finally meet you,” you say, repeating your statement from earlier, as though you mean it more now. 

“It is,” Sunghoon simply replies, because he doesn’t know how else to express the relief of seeing you in the flesh after hearing about you and looking at a digital version of you for a year. The relief, but also the anticipation of what is to come now that he knows he likes you even more now that he’s actually seen you. And improbable as it sounds, you might even feel the same.

Sunghoon can already feel it. The beginning of something.

You nod towards his now empty cup. “Want a refill?”

Together, you make your way through the crowd of increasingly drunk students until you reach the kitchen, where the countertops overflow with open bottles of liquor of all sorts and paper plates with half-eaten pizza slices on them. He watches your every move as you find a cold bottle of beer in the fridge, a bottle of strawberry syrup in a random cupboard that you had to know was there, and a half-empty discarded bottle of lemonade on the counter. You ask him to tell you about last year, everything you missed out on, and so he does. He knows you’ve probably heard it all from the others before, but you still laugh and gasp like it’s the first time you’re hearing about any of it, all the hockey games they won, Jay getting food poisoning from the sketchy pizzeria he kept eating at, Yunjin almost getting into a fistfight with a man twice her size who was flirting with Chaewon. 

You assemble two drinks and hand him one of them. When he takes a sip, his eyes widen at the refreshing and sweet taste. “Good, right?” you say. “I discovered it on a trip to France last summer.”

“Thank God for France. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever enjoyed drinking beer,” he says.

“That’s probably because you can’t taste the beer at all.”

Sunghoon smiles. “Probably, yeah.”

You turn around, lower back against the counter, and take in the current kitchen population. “We really weren’t very original with our costumes tonight.” Sunghoon, who had not taken his eyes off of you this entire time, follows your gaze. He counts five partygoers dressed in some version of Barbie or Ken, and that’s just the kitchen. He doesn’t blame them—the fact that so many people came dressed in costumes at all impresses him, especially for a party on the 10th of September and not the 31st of October. The social committee of the hockey team just seems to really love themed and dress-up parties.

He chuckles, then takes a sip of his drink. It’s really nice. “Yeah, but we look the best.”

Your head whips towards him, eyes glinting with something that makes Sunghoon smile, even though he doesn’t know what you’re thinking. “Should we enter the couple’s costume contest?” you ask.

At the mention of couple, his eyes widen, his brain tricking him into thinking you’ve asked him out for a second. But when what you actually meant dawns on him, the first thing to come out of his mouth is, “There’s a couple’s costume contest?!”

“Mh-hm. The sign-up sheet should be around here.” 

For what feels like the millionth time since he’s started talking to you, his face heats up. “Are non-couples allowed to enter?”

“We’re Barbie and Ken. I’d say that’s enough of a couple, don’t you think?” 

Right. Because he had been thinking of Sunghoon and Y/N, while you obviously meant Barbie and Ken. In the contest, it doesn’t actually matter whether the contestants are dating in real life—it matters that their costumes match. Sunghoon knows that. He just needed a second.

He grins, deep dimples punctuating his cheeks. “Okay, let’s do it.”

Armed with your drinks, you walk around the kitchen in search of the sign-up sheet. You find it on a wall next to the dining table, which has been turned into a beer pong table for tonight’s festivities, and the sheet is almost filled with names already. Sunghoon can only hope that by midnight, when the contest is set to take place, most participants will have had too much to drink to remember it. You write your names on the list, and Sunghoon likes seeing his name in your handwriting so much he almost wants to take a picture.

“There you guys are!”

You both turn around to find Jake stumbling towards you, clearly more intoxicated than when he had left you half-an-hour ago. He rests his arms on your shoulders, forcing Sunghoon down to his height and making you stumble forwards from the sudden added weight. “I’ve been looking all over for you- You’re entering the contest?!”

For a split second, Sunghoon is scared he’s going to get scolded by Jake for trying to hit on his sister, but surprisingly, it’s you he narrows his eyes at. “Y/N, what are you roping my little Hoonie into?”

Sunghoon groans, face perpetually red at this point. Leave it to Jake to make him seem like a total loser. 

You frown at your brother. “I’m not roping your little Hoonie into anything.” Sunghoon wants to bury himself alive. “We agreed on doing it together. Right?” you ask, turning towards Sunghoon and batting your eyelashes at him. It makes him feel a bit better.

He turns back to Jake. “Right. We’re just joining forces to crush the competition.”

Jake scoffs. “As if.” He snatches the pen from your hands and underlines his name as well as Kazuha’s, the girl he came with tonight, three thick black lines that almost erases the names underneath them. “You can’t beat the hockey player and cheerleader combo.”

“Those aren’t even costumes, you guys are a hockey player and a cheerleader,” you protest.

“So?” Jake simply retorts, more attitude in his tone than he would have were he sober.

“So, that defeats the whole purpose of a costume contest.”

Jake knocks on your cowboy hat, and you immediately put it back in place, glaring at him. “As if Barbie was the greatest costume ever. Whatever, let’s just play beer pong so I can defeat you guys twice in one night.”

“You’re on, Sim.”

“You’re going down, Sim.”

Sunghoon had just been watching your back-and-forth amusedly when you grab his hand, leading him to the side of the table opposite Jake. His fingers tingle under your touch, but just like that, it’s gone. He’d rather keep on holding your hand than play this stupid game, but he isn’t opposed to taking Jake’s ego down a notch, either. The boy can barely stand straight, anyway, so it probably won’t be a very tough match.

Some guy he doesn’t recognize in a striped black-and-white referee t-shirt fills most cups with beer and a couple on each side with shots of vodka—he’s so earnest, Sunghoon isn’t sure whether he’s just taking his costume-slash-role very seriously or if he has genuinely been hired to look over the beer pong matches of the night. Some order in the brutish world of college parties, Sunghoon guesses.

Minjeong, Yunjin, Chaewon and Jay appear then, exchanging a quick look at the sight of you and Sunghoon together. The two former join your team, while the two latter join Jake’s, as well as other people that Sunghoon vaguely recognizes from other parties. But by the simple action of getting behind him, they become his most trusted allies for at least this part of the night.

You’re a terrible shot, but Sunghoon makes up for it by scoring almost every round. In his defense, he only misses when you come up close to him and whisper in his ear which cup he should go for. Your breath tickles his (oddly sensitive) ears and the combined scents of the strawberry and lemonade on your tongue and your delicate perfume make his head spin. He can barely think straight, so his aim is naturally thrown off—other than that, he makes Jay drink a healthy amount of beer. He almost feels bad for his friend, but he’d arrived late at the party and needed to quickly catch up with everyone’s level of ebriety anyway.

When the opposite team is down to their last cup, a lightning bolt of luck strikes you, and your ball disappears straight into the vodka-filled cup that Jake now has the honor of downing. 

Sunghoon gives you no time to celebrate, to gloatingly pump your fists in the air and point a mocking finger at your brother, because as soon as you make the shot, he wraps his arms around your waist and lifts you off the ground. When you’re on your feet again, you spin around to find a proud-looking Sunghoon beaming down at you. You burst into giggles and high-five him, your palms perfectly clapping against each other, and he threads your fingers together. A current of electricity rushes through him, and for a second, he swears it’s just the two of you in this packed room.

The moment is cut short by the loud cheers of the others on your team as they shake your shoulders and raise their hands for you to high-five them too. Minjeong flips the other team off and Yunjin has to go hug Chaewon and reassure her it’s nothing personal. It’s really quite easy to make college students happy—or devastated. 

You raise your eyebrows at Jake, who’s busy glaring at you instead of accepting his defeat and taking his shot. With a begrudging sigh, he tips his head back and drinks the vodka in one gulp, the cheers doubling in volume when his face scrunches at the bitter taste of the liquor.

“Don’t act so proud,” he scolds you. “Sunghoon carried your team.”

“Maybe, but she made us win in the end,” Sunghoon retorts, putting an arm around your shoulder. 

Jake scoffs, frowning at Sunghoon’s hand placement before eye-rolling his gaze away. “Whatever.” He slides his phone out of his back pocket and smiles as he shows the two of you his screen. “Would you look at the time? The contest is starting soon.” Then, with an accusatory finger pointed at you, adds, “You may have won this battle, but I’m winning the war.”

He stomps away, presumably to find Kazuha before the contest starts, and it’s your turn to eye-roll at his dramatics. You grab Sunghoon’s hand that hangs off of your shoulders, and together, make your way through the crowd again to the garage, where the contest is taking place. All the alcohol he’s been drinking has definitely started kicking in by now, and he finds himself giggling at nothing with you.

When you reach the threshold, still hand in hand, Sunghoon stops so abruptly behind you that you almost stumble. You look back at him, then follow his gaze towards the garage and the sheer amount of people in there. Worriedly, his eyes take in every single one of the contenders. You let go of his hand and stand in front of him, placing your hands on his shoulders and putting on a determined expression. You’d almost look like a parent reassuring their kid before their first day of kindergarten if you weren’t so much shorter than him. “Don’t even worry about them, Sunghoon. We look better than anyone here.”

His eyebrows crease. “There’s like, three other Barbie-Ken couples here. Some of these costumes are so original. And do you see their makeup? Is that even possible?” he asks, staring at a couple in scarily realistic cosplay of Simon and Jeanette from Alvin and the Chipmunks, fur and all. He can’t look at them for too long without getting chills.

You shake your head. “Almost everyone here is either a hockey player or a… hockey-affiliated person. You’re the beloved and talented defenseman of the team and I’m the star player’s sister. They’ll love us,” you say with a smile, watching the worry dissipate from his features.

“We’re like nepo babies,” he whispers. His lips break into a grin when your eyebrows furrow in confusion. “I don’t know how nepotism works,” he admits, smiling wider when you burst into laughter. “How do you know if I’m talented, anyway? You haven’t seen me play yet.”

Your eyes rake him up and down appreciatively. “I took a wild guess.”

Not unlike a cartoon character, Sunghoon audibly gulps. As a hockey player since his most tender age, and dare he say, a pretty good-looking guy, he is used to girls flirting with him, and he is even hit sometimes by the occasional lightning strike of confidence that allows him to flirt back (he still can’t believe he managed to call you “a distracting sight” without spontaneously combusting). But there’s something in your eyes, in your smile, in the way you talk—something about you that has his breath hitching and his heart racing. He doesn’t know if he wants to run away and hide in a corner or kiss you right then and there.

Heeseung, the captain of the hockey team, announces into a microphone (which Sunghoon wonders where they got the money for) that the contest will start now, so he can neither kiss you nor run away. Instead, he follows you to the side of the room where all the contestants, including Jake and Kazuha, wait for their names to be called out. There are so many participants, it takes way longer than Sunghoon would like for the two of you to step onto the makeshift stage. Judging by the looks on the audience’s faces, everyone is surprised to see you and Sunghoon together—the hockey community at your university may be big, but everyone knows everyone, and gossip travels fast. No one had seen you and Sunghoon together before, for the obvious reason that you hadn’t even met before tonight. But you could be sure that by tomorrow, as silly as it sounds, word will have gone around that you and Sunghoon had participated in a couple costume contest together. 

At least, you give them something of substance to talk about—as you and Sunghoon pose on stage, wearing your brightest smiles to please the crowd, you stand on your toes and press a kiss to Sunghoon’s cheek. Sunghoon’s eyes burn a hole in the side of your face but you just watch as the audience of drunken 20-somethings goes wild over something as simple as a peck on the cheek. Jake is the only one booing. 

Sunghoon is still in shock when the next couple is called forward and you have to step off. His cheeks are redder than before and he can’t quite meet your eyes. Apparently, he also goes wild over something as simple as a peck on the cheek. You nudge his shoulder. “See, I told you they’d like us.” 

He feels like a fourteen-year-old for it, but Sunghoon can’t stop thinking about your soft lips against his cheek, so much so that he barely says a word as the three judges deliberate. If you notice the sudden change in his behavior, you don’t comment on it, perhaps chalking it up to nerves. He’s glad for it—he doesn’t know if he could handle being teased about it, especially from you. Although he’s not sure he wants you to think he’s the kind to stress over a last-minute Halloween costume contest. 

In the end, you don’t win. He suspects it was a rigged contest all along: the couple in the unimpressive Edward and Bella costume are friends with one of the judges, probably leading to their anticlimactic victory. At least it isn’t Simon and Jeannette who win, or Kazuha and Jake, even less original than the winners. Anyway, Sunghoon couldn’t care any less. With your hand in his as you walk back to the main room in search of your other friends, he feels like the biggest victor of the night. He doesn’t even mind it when his teammates tease him about his costume and how good the two of you look together—the smile you shoot him makes putting up with it worth it. He tries to think straight, but between the alcohol and your proximity, he feels like you’ve cast a spell on him.

Jake stumbles into your group, three drinks drunker than when Sunghoon last saw him, enthusiastically reporting that a game of spin the bottle is about to start in one of the rooms upstairs, because what every college party needs is a middle-school game to shake things up. None of the guys seem particularly interested until Jake reveals that the cheerleaders are playing. 

Sunghoon looks down at you, laughing when he sees your mildly disgusted moue. “Don’t feel like playing?”

“Not really, no.” Your eyes linger on his face. “There’s only one person here I want to kiss, anyway.”

All capacity for thought leaves Sunghoon’s brain. He just stares back at you blankly, lips slightly agape, willing himself to say something but also terrified that whatever leaves his mouth might make him seem like the biggest loser ever. 

You couldn’t possibly mean him—but did you? Was he the person you wanted to kiss?

As these questions resound through his head, your gaze drops to his lips. There’s his answer. 

His heart beating wildly in its cage, Sunghoon decides to do one smart thing tonight and leans in, slowly but surely closing the gap between the two of you. Then a sudden vibration in the back pocket of his jeans zaps through him like lightning and he jumps back, as if startled out of the trance you had put him in. Shame flooding his cheeks, he checks his phone; it’s the stupid alarm he set himself earlier to make sure he doesn’t get home too late. Midnight, Cinderella-style. 

You scratch the back of your neck as your eyes dart around the room. For the first time tonight, you look embarrassed—Sunghoon is in disbelief at how pretty you look even then. “I, um,” he starts, clears his throat. “I have this thing tomorrow morning, so I can’t stay too long…” he says guiltily.

He doesn’t want to get his hopes up, but he swears that what he sees on your face is disappointment. It makes him want to take it all back, to stay here with you for as long as you want and forget about tomorrow morning. 

“Oh, right,” you say, nodding. “That’s fine. What thing?”

“Oh.” Sunghoon turns an impossibly deeper shade of red, further resembling the strawberry syrup the more he gets himself in these embarrassing situations with you. “Just… choir. I go to choir on Saturday mornings.” He looks down at his feet like he’s just revealed a secret, shameful part of himself.

You burst into laughter, and Sunghoon is scared for a second that you’re making fun of him, and his feelings are a lot more hurt than they should be by someone he just met. Although, to be fair, you don’t feel like someone he just met.

“That’s so cool! It must be such a nice change from all the dudes on the hockey team,” you say, a sweet, curious smile on your lips. Like you mean what you say. Like you might want to know more.

Sunghoon thinks he just fell in love.

He chuckles. “Yeah. Definitely a nice change. As much as I love hockey, it’s nice to do something calmer, you know. And I like singing. And the cakes the local grandmas bring.”

“So that’s what it’s all about, really.”

“Yep, you caught me.” Sunghoon still feels the almost-kiss lingering, a tension between the two of you that has him on edge. He feels like he’s just missed his bus because it left a minute earlier than planned. The opportunity is gone, and he would definitely mess everything up, trying to kiss you now. So instead, he decides to leave. Whatever must happen, will happen, even if it’s not tonight. You have the same friends—this is definitely not the last time you will see each other. “Well, I should probably head. I have to be up at eight tomorrow.”

“Oh, wow. The choir grandmas don’t play around.”

“They really don’t.”

“Well, see you around then,” you say, a clumsy laugh falling from your lips as you wrap your arms around Sunghoon’s neck, bringing him into a tight but short hug. You also smell good, he notes to himself. Of course you do.

“See you, Y/N.” Just as he’s about to turn away, you wrap your hand around his wrist.

“Wait. Sunghoon?” He’s only half-surprised at the immense relief he feels to hear his name on your lips. Like you, too, didn’t want to part with him just yet.

“Yeah?” he says, wishing the hope and anticipation aren’t too obvious on his face.

“Where’s that choir of yours?”

--

When Sunghoon arrives at his neighborhood’s community center, ten minutes before nine a.m., you’re already there. Despite the seven hours of sleep under his belt, he feels like he could’ve done with three more, and the singular cup of instant black coffee he had for breakfast was both atrocious and useless. But your smile has the restorative effect of two Red Bulls and a power nap. You look surprisingly bright, like you either managed to get a very good night’s sleep or are just the biggest morning person to ever exist.

He hugs you when he reaches you on the sidewalk, tighter than he probably should, but you return it. You smell like fresh soap and sugar. The two of you exchange quick greetings before he leads you inside the center. 

“I made some cookies as well.” You point to your tote bag and Sunghoon’s jaw slackens.

“You had time to bake?” 

“Kazuha made me take Jägerbombs, so I felt crazy when I got home. I thought it wouldn’t be fair on the old ladies if they did all the work.”

Sunghoon laughs. “They’re going to love you.”

You follow Sunghoon up two flights of stairs and into a spacious room with a wooden stage. There’s a snacks table on one side of the room that is almost fully decked with plates and tupperwares of all sorts, and although their contents remain covered by tin foil or lids, the coffee and hot water pots are free to use. Most of the chairs are stacked on each side of the room but a few have been put in the middle, the grandmas sitting and chatting there waving at Sunghoon as the two of you walk in. There are about fifteen people in the room so far, most of them older ladies, but not only. There’s a dad that came with his daughter, a couple of teenagers, and a few other adults. It’s quite an eclectic mix, and Sunghoon loves it.

Minjeong is here, too, which Sunghoon realizes he forgot to say until he sees the sheer confusion of finding someone you know in an unexpected place on both of your faces. She walks towards you, suspicious eyes darting between you two.

“Hey,” she says only to Sunghoon before turning to you, arms crossed over her chest. “And what are you doing here?”

“Hi, Minjeong, so nice to see you too!”

“I invited Y/N,” Sunghoon says quickly, although you did technically invite yourself. For some reason, he feels the need to defend you, even though he knows you and Minjeong have been friends for years now, and Minjeong is just always this blunt.

“I didn’t know this was the choir you went to,” you say to Minjeong.

“Oh, this?” She looks around the room. “It’s only the choir I’ve been going to since I was a kid. You’d know that if today wasn’t the first day you showed interest in it, ever.”

“I came to your concerts!”

One of the old ladies calls Sunghoon’s name from the snack table, and he is glad for the diversion. “Right. I’ll let you guys talk this out.” A hand on your shoulder, he smiles down at you. “I’m gonna say hi to the ladies over there. Be back in a minute.” He shoots Minjeong a look as if to say, Be normal. 

As he approaches the small group, one of them asks very loudly if you’re his girlfriend. They all burst into giggles, blushing and eager-eyed like they’re sixteen rather than sixty. Sunghoon would be endeared if you didn’t look so alarmed and Minjeong so horrified, both of you looking at him before turning back to each other and getting into a very heated and secretive discussion. He is bombarded with a hundred questions: what your name is, where you’re from, how did the two of you meet, are you together? No? But you’re so pretty! And he’s such a nice boy! He answers all of their queries to the best of his ability while checking that your conversation with Minjeong hasn’t turned physical—your arms are now also crossed over your chest, and you look annoyed while she looks like she’s accusing you of something, but at least, punches aren’t being thrown. 

Thankfully, it’s only a couple more minutes until the conductor calls for everyone to gather on stage, and a weight is lifted off of Sunghoon’s shoulders once the ladies’ collective attention is no longer on him. He isn’t sure where they came from, or why they’ve decided to make the choir rehearsal their hang-out spot, but there is always a group of women who sit there and knit while chatting quietly or listening to the songs, and they are sometimes joined by children whose parents are part of the choir but don’t want to sing themselves and apparently have nowhere else to go. Sunghoon had been so excited at the prospect of having you come see him that he hadn’t thought of how boring this might be for you, sitting with sixty-year-olds for two hours, listening to an amateur choir go through scales and sing corny romance ballads—they’re rehearsing for a wedding they’ve been hired to sing at. But as the minutes go by, his worry dissipates when the delighted smile on your face hardly falters. He can’t imagine that his choir is that good, but you genuinely look like you’re having a nice time, and it makes Sunghoon stand a little taller, sing a little louder. Your eyes are on him for most of the time, and he blushes every time your gazes meet, but he still can’t keep himself from looking away from the conductor to check on you every few seconds.   

Once rehearsal is over, everyone gathers around the refreshments table. When you tell Sunghoon that he looked good out there, he stuffs his mouth with banana bread to stop himself from blurting out something stupid. Your cookies are a hit, and so is everything else—Sunghoon would be more than happy to watch you eat as many baked goods as you possibly can and chat with the grandmas, but he has something to ask you. Without thinking much, he wraps his fingers around your wrist, gently pulling you away from the table and towards him. The question that was at the tip of his tongue fades as soon as you meet his eyes, looking up at him like a deer caught in headlights, cheeks stuffed with brownie. You’re so cute that words fail him for a second, and when he notices the proximity between the two of you, takes a small, bashful step backwards. You glance at his hand still around your wrist, and he withdraws it like he’s suddenly been burned. 

A playful smile grows on your lips. “Everything alright?”

He scratches the back of his head. “Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine. I just, um, well. There’s a bus that takes us from right across the street directly to the beach, if you’re, um, if you’re interested. In going. With me. If you want.”

Your eyebrows cock in surprise, and Sunghoon thinks he’s messed it all up. You shoot Minjeong a quick, worried glance, then seem to think for a second. But when you look back to him, your smile is soft. “That sounds nice.”

An hour later, you’re running around together on the beach—or rather, Sunghoon is running around, and after five minutes of watching him with a smile on your face, he’s convinced you to run around with him. You’ve both long discarded your shoes and socks, jeans scrunched up to your mid-calves, grins so wide, your cheeks start to hurt. The wet sand is hard under your feet and the water cold against your skin. Sunghoon’s t-shirt sticks everywhere you sprayed water on him, and he knows putting his shoes on later will be a whole ordeal, but it doesn’t bother him. Even the gray September sky feels brighter because you’re standing with him underneath it. 

The water-splashing battle quickly has you both out of breath, and Sunghoon is ready to call a truce when you spot something behind him, gasping and running towards it. He turns around to find you picking up a bunch of sandcastle-building toys that must’ve been left behind by some kids. “I haven’t built a sandcastle in such a long time, this is so exciting,” you say, excitement written all over your face. 

As much as he loves seeing the glint of childish amusement in your eyes, Sunghoon keeps looking around in case the owners of these toys might appear out of thin air. “I feel like there’s something immoral about this,” he says, and you stop stacking sand into one of the toys to look at him with a confused frown. “Aren’t we technically stealing from some kids?”

“Sunghoon. If those kids really cared about these plastic toys, they wouldn’t have left them here.”

“What if they come back for them?”

“Then we’ll give them back. We’re not monsters.” That’s all it takes for Sunghoon to give in. He helps dig trenches around the towers you build, carving out small windows on them and apologizing profusely when he accidentally pokes too hard into one of them, destroying half of it. 

The second he notices you shivering, Sunghoon is on his feet, unwrapping the scarf around his neck and laying it like a blanket over your shoulders. “I’m going to get us something warm to drink. I’ll be back in a minute!” he announces before you can even protest, and practically runs to the nearest café. 

He only leaves you and the slightly pathetic-looking sandcastle alone for a minute, quickly coming back with two take-away cups of milky Earl Grey tea and a brownie that he couldn’t help himself from buying. The moan you let out when you bite into it, gooey, sweet chocolate sticking to your teeth, goes straight down Sunghoon’s spine, but he tries not to let his thoughts get too carried away.

“Good, right?” he asks, laughing when you nod fervently. When you laugh too, it’s a sound so sweet, it rivals the decadence of the brownie. “I sometimes make the trip all the way here just for this.”

“I thought I’d be done with sweets after this morning, but this is so good.”

“Better than Berta’s banana bread?”

“Oh, a hundred percent,” you say, covering your mouth with your hand as you speak. “Sorry, Berta. I’ll be thinking about this for the rest of my life.”

Sunghoon hopes you’ll remember him as the boy who’d introduced you to those brownies, if nothing else.

The two of you are silent for a little bit, but it’s a comfortable silence—something Sunghoon didn’t know was possible with someone he’d just met. This was something he loved about the sea: it allowed for some quiet. The crashing of the waves against the shore, the calls of the seagulls, the dogs barking after them—it all meant he didn’t need to fill the space with needless chatter. He could look out at the peaceful water, you by his side, and just enjoy the moment.

“I’m still so amazed whenever I come to the beach, no matter how many times it’s been.” Sunghoon’s voice is quiet when he speaks, lower than usual. It sounds a lot more intimate than he means it to be. You turn your head to look at him, silently asking him to go on. There’s a small smile playing on his lips, a twinkle in his eyes as he watches the water. “The town I grew up in is right in the middle of the country, so the sea is like, a five-hour drive. There was a lake nearby, but it was nothing compared to this. It might sound silly, but being from somewhere where everyone knows each other, I never realized just how big the world was until I came here and saw the sea for the first time.”

“You’d never been to the sea before coming here?” you ask, surprise clear in your voice. 

He shakes his head. “My hometown isn’t far from the mountains, so it’s a huge tourist spot both in the winter and in the summer, which meant my mom had to work even when my sister and I were out of school and could actually go on holiday. We’d go visit my grandparents and aunts when we found the time, but that was it.” He meets your gaze, a smile playing on his lips at the thought of his hometown and his family. “This is the furthest I’ve ever been from home.” 

The corners of your lips raise into a smile too, matching Sunghoon’s. “And how has that been going?”

He sighs. “It’s okay. I miss my mom and sister like crazy, of course, but they FaceTime me so much that I barely notice it. And anyways, it’s also nice to be on my own. Discover another part of myself, and all that.”

“For sure.” 

There’s a slight shift in your expression that Sunghoon catches onto, a falter in your smile and a hint of sadness in your eyes. He doesn’t want to force a topic that you don’t want to talk about, so he just gently eggs you on, in case all you need is a small push.

“What about you? I think Jake mentioned you guys growing up around here, only an hour or so away.”

At the mention of your brother, the smile returns to your eyes. You take a deep breath and think for a bit, but eventually, you start talking. Although Sunghoon’s eyes are on you, you keep yours trained on the sea. “Yeah, we did. We live just up the coast, so we were always hanging out at the beach. In a way, it’s nice having the sea here as well. It’s like-I don’t know.”

“Like having a piece of home even when you’re away?”

Your gazes meet for just a second, the surprise clear in your eyes, but as quickly as it came, it’s gone, and you turn away from Sunghoon once more. “Basically, yeah.” A sardonic smile appears on your lips. “Although the constant reminder isn’t always appreciated.” 

He tilts his head. When you don’t say anything further, he flicks some sand onto your hand and asks you what you mean by that. He looks at you with curiosity and kindness only, eager to know more about you, to let you know that you can open up to him, that he won’t judge you, but careful not to overstep any boundaries either. It seems to work.

“It might sound stupid, but back home, the beach was a place I could go to when it all was a bit too much, you know? Like an escape from everyday life. Where I could forget about all of the pressure on my shoulders.” Sunghoon hums, and you take another deep breath. “I don’t know if you and Jake talk about this sort of thing, but… our parents are barely nice when we do well, and pretty awful when we don’t reach their expectations. So we were like, constantly having to outdo ourselves just for them to say, ‘Keep it up’, or something like that. And if we did something wrong, well…”

You trail off, but Sunghoon knows what you mean. “Yeah, Jake said they barely spoke to him anymore because he decided to play hockey instead of becoming, like, a doctor or something.”

You smile, but it’s humorless. “Yep. They send him money, and he comes home for a bit over Christmas and summer break, but that’s it. I’ve gone home by myself sometimes and they won’t even mention him, it’s insane.”

“He also doesn’t talk about it a lot.”

“I know. I’m always the one to bring it up. I know it’s a sensitive topic for him, obviously, but I still find it amazing how well he deals with it. But me… despite everything, I still need their approval, you know?” you ask, and Sunghoon nods.

“That makes sense.”

You sigh. “I guess. And I’m obviously not becoming a doctor like them. Not a medical one, at least. It took a year of convincing them that doing the degree I’m doing was okay. ‘Cause at the end of the day, it’s still me filling in my university applications, and they can’t actually force me to go to medical school, but I still wanted them to be proud of me. Even if I study languages.” It’s quiet for a few seconds as you both look out at the waves crashing against the shore. When you start talking again, you look down at the sand, picking it up and letting it filter through your fingers. “So, yeah. Jake got a scholarship here, and I didn’t wanna be too far from home, so here we are. We’re so close to home, the sea I went to when I needed a break in high school and the sea I go to now are one and the same. And now it reminds me of my parents rather than making me forget about them.”

“I’m sorry for bringing you here,” Sunghoon says. “I didn’t think…”

You cut him off with a smile. “It’s okay. Now I’ve created new memories. Nice ones. And you know… wherever I am, it’ll be at the back of my mind. It’s up to me whether I let it affect my life or not.”

“Letting go of these things is never easy,” Sunghoon offers. “You also can’t blame yourself if it does affect you sometimes.”

When you look at Sunghoon, your eyes darting back-and-forth between his like they’re searching for something there, he feels himself tense up slightly. He can’t read you at all, has no idea what you’re thinking even as you smile and say, “You’re right.” Even as you silently link your pinky with his, gazing down at your hands with a small smile. He hadn’t realized how cold his hands were until this small touch, so small yet able to spread warmth throughout his entire body. When he speaks, he can’t bring himself to meet your eyes—he’s still so focused on where your hands touch, too aware of the skin of your finger right against his. Such a small, innocent touch. He can’t even begin to understand why it means so much to him.

“For what it’s worth, I think what you’re doing is super cool,” he says. “I’ve always been so shit at foreign languages, let alone dead languages. And packing your bags and going abroad for a year, not everybody can do that. Becoming a doctor might be hard, but it also takes a specific kind of person to do what you do. And what Jake does. It’s all valuable.”

“Now, if you could say that again while I record you to show my parents, please,” you say, making him laugh.

“It’d be my pleasure.”

“What about you?” you ask him after a small pause. “I can’t be the only one who trauma-dumps on the first date.”

Sunghoon’s breath hitches in his throat. He hadn’t even dared entertain the thought that this might be more than a platonic hang-out in case he was crossing a line—but you’ve just called it a date. With just a few casual words, you’ve changed the entire meaning of the hours you’ve spent together. He hopes you can’t tell how flustered it’s made him.

“Well, there’s not much trauma to dump, really. Sorry.” 

You giggle. “Don’t apologize. That’s a good thing.”

Now that you’ve just opened up about your parents, Sunghoon is scared that telling you about how good of a childhood he had might come off as insensitive—but you smile softly at him, holding his hand face-up in yours, tracing the lines of his palm with the tip of a finger, and he starts talking. “So, it was just me, my older sister and my mom growing up. My dad died when I was 2.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It is a bit sad that I don’t have any memories of him, but everyone who knew him said he was a great guy. And my mom’s had this boyfriend since I was like, 10? He’s the one who got me to start hockey. So it hasn’t been that bad.”

“Your mom must be really strong.”

Sunghoon smiles. “She is. She’s amazing. To raise two kids on your own while grieving and not royally fuck up is… well, amazing. She’s always been so supportive of us, no matter what we wanted to do. My sister did well at school, but I wasn’t so good. I never really enjoyed it, but she’s never made me feel bad about it. She didn’t mind that all I wanted to do was hit a puck around.” 

“And you’re pretty good at hitting that puck around, aren’t you?”

“I’m not so bad,” Sunghoon says, chuckling along with you. He’s about to go on, but he is cut off by a raindrop hitting his hand, then another one; before either of you know it, your clothes are soaked through. Sunghoon takes his denim jacket off, using it as a makeshift umbrella for the both of you as you run towards the nearest awning, shaking with giddy laughter until you forget about the chilly rain and the clothes sticking to your skin. When it doesn’t let up for another few minutes, Sunghoon suggests catching the bus back, and you agree. 

The heating on the bus is set on low, but it’s enough to warm Sunghoon up as soon as he steps onto it. You sit at the back in a corner of your own, multiple rows away from the other people onboard. The two of you are relatively quiet, lost in your own thoughts until Sunghoon, after much internal deliberating, takes one of your hands in his and interlaces your fingers together. You look up at him, but he doesn’t return your gaze, eyes fixed on the window to hide his shy smile and the blush slowly staining his cheeks. To his surprise, you squeeze his hand and rest your head on his shoulder. He freezes for a second, unsure how to react to your reciprocated affection, but he makes himself relax into your touch, and starts brushing his thumb back-and-forth on the back of your hand. The sudden storm has made day turn to night a little earlier today, and with the quiet hum of the bus, he finds himself on the edge of sleep for the whole ride—the only thing keeping him awake is his booming heart.

The bus is nearing his stop when the buzz of his phone in his back pocket jolts him awake. You lift your head from his shoulder, massaging your neck as you fish your phone out of your own pocket. Sunghoon, more intrigued by you than by whoever has texted him, watches as the brightness of your screen makes you wince. Once you’ve read the text, you turn towards him, sleepy eyes and sleepy voice as you ask him whether he’s seen “this,” referring to a text from Chaewon. dinner at our flat tonight!!! come whenever. bring drinks. 

“Oh, I forgot she was doing that tonight,” you say through a yawn.

Sunghoon chuckles. “Do you have enough energy for it?”

“I always have enough energy for Chaewon’s cooking.”

You and Sunghoon make a pit-stop at a grocery store to buy two bottles of white wine and the hummus Chaewon likes, then head to your flat. Naturally, questions are asked when you and Sunghoon arrive at the exact same time, but before Sunghoon can explain that you spent the day together, Minjeong’s head pops out of the kitchen door, and she asks whether you ran into each other downstairs. Chaewon is only looking at the both of you, waiting for an answer, so she doesn’t see the very pointed look Minjeong gives you, as if to say Agree with me or else. You quickly glance at Sunghoon then say, “Yeah, we just arrived at the same time.” When they’ve both turned away, you tell him in a hushed tone that you’ll ask her about it later. 

The girls are busy in the small kitchen and Chaewon insists that they don’t need any more help, so you and Sunghoon bring two chairs by the kitchen door and sit as Yunjin catches the four of you up on the most recent drama in her Law cohort. Jay arrives twenty minutes later, but it isn’t another hour before Jake shows up with the excuse that he was taking a nap.

“Someone would think you don’t sleep at night, with the amount of naps you take,” you say.

“Oh my God, I miss when you weren’t here,” Jake replies, flicking your forehead before promptly plopping himself down on the couch. “I was so hungover when I woke up. I had to sleep it off,” he explains as he grabs four cans of beer from his backpack. 

Chaewon always makes a point to ask how everyone’s spent their day, but today, she unfortunately starts with Sunghoon, so he doesn’t have any time to come up with anything believable other than the truth, which is exactly what he does—and when Jay asks, What, to the beach by yourself? under Minjeong’s heavy gaze, he has no choice but to say yes. He isn’t sure why it’s such a big deal that you spent the day with him, or why it needs to be kept a secret, but there must be a reason. He’ll find out later. When it’s your turn, you look straight into Sunghoon’s eyes as you say you spent the day at the library but didn’t get much work done. Everyone ignores Jake when he exclaims Boring! and Chaewon swiftly moves onto Jay.

But you don’t. 

Your eyes stay on Sunghoon, unflinchingly watching him, expression unreadable, and he finds himself unable to look away, even as he feels his face heat up and his stomach flip. Then you smile, a satisfied smirk like you got what you wanted, and shift your gaze to Jay, who’s going on and on about the first six episodes of Lost he binge-watched earlier and wondering why nobody had told him about this “masterpiece of a show” before. Sunghoon is too busy thinking about the way you’d looked at him and pondering all the reasons for it to listen carefully. He watched Lost when he was fourteen anyway.

All throughout the evening, as the seven of you eat Chaewon’s pasta dish (which she made entirely from scratch, and is probably one of the best things to have ever graced Sunghoon’s taste buds), drink, talk, and afterwards, play card games, every glance between you and Sunghoon feels like a secret conversation that only the two of you are privy to. No one except for Minjeong is aware that you spent the day just the two of you until now—and even she doesn’t know what it is you did. Within a day of knowing each other, you already share memories that are yours and no one else’s. Sunghoon is giddy with the knowledge, heart skipping every time your eyes meet, no matter how fleetingly. When you’re all saying goodbye, it takes everything in him not to hug you for an awkwardly long time and to tear himself away from you. 

He can hardly fall asleep that night.

--

For the entirety of the year you were gone, Sunghoon could only nod and smile while the others bemoaned your absence or commented on how much more fun it’d be if you were here (even Jake, after enough wine spritzers, would admit to missing you). He understood that the group dynamics might feel different to them without you around, but this particular set of people was all he knew, so he never minded it. It reminded him of people telling him how sad it must’ve been growing up without a father, trying to be empathetic, when he didn’t know how he could miss something he never had. 

But now that you’re here, he gets it. You add something to the group that he can’t quite put his finger on. It’s in your affectionate gestures towards Chaewon and Yunjin, in your shared sense of humor with Jay (which no one else seems to find funny, save for Sunghoon, sometimes), in your bickering with Minjeong and downright arguing with Jake. It’s a hackneyed expression, but you do light up a room—at least in Sunghoon’s opinion, you do. In your presence, everything feels not only more lively, but also more cohesive, like you were the missing piece of a puzzle. Like a historic work of art that has been returned to its rightful owner. 

Sunghoon just finds himself drawn to you, at times unable to keep his eyes off of you, and the only things keeping him from making a move are his inherent shyness and the eyes of your friends. He doesn’t want to mess up the friendship he has with anyone from the group, least of all Jake, just because he can’t keep it in his pants. He thought of Yunjin and Chaewon, how their relationship had gone smoothly from the beginning and posed no problem to the dynamic of the group, but he had no idea if this was replicable between you and him at all.

If he had to be honest, a big part of him was also just afraid you’d reject him.

Getting a read on you is hard, which doesn’t help. It’s been three weeks since the gang reunited, since that party where you met. The first semester of his second and your fourth year started a little bit over a week ago; Sunghoon sometimes worries that you think there is some big age gap between you and that you see him as a kid, even though, admittedly, two years is not such a huge difference. In those three weeks, there have been many encounters which could be seen as cases of flirting between the two of you—Sunghoon has noticed every single one of them and replayed each an embarrassing amount of times in his head. A hand carefully posited on his shoulder; prolonged eye contact; jokes whispered in his ear at a crowded house party; knees lightly touching at first, then pressed together during movie night. None of it ever fails to make Sunghoon’s heart flutter. You could breathe in his general direction and it’d make his heart beat fast enough to worry a cardiologist, so when you smile at him, it’s a small death every time.

And so he dares hope that his interest isn’t one-sided—although most of the time, he is so stuck between thinking none of it means anything and thinking every single thing you do is a sign that you like him, that he rarely knows what to think. And whenever you’ve paid him enough attention to make him believe it’s not all in his head, you do something that proves him wrong. Watching you interact with other people, he realizes that you keep good eye contact with everyone and that you’re just as touchy and playful with all of your friends. At parties, you hit it off with new people and catch up with old friends without so much as a hint of awkwardness. He watches as you talk to other guys, the same smile that has been making him weak for the past three weeks, directed towards them and not him. Sunghoon assumes you’re either really nice to everyone and oblivious to the fact that it could be seen as flirting, or you just flirt with everyone. 

In that sense, the two of you are complete opposites. Sunghoon, whose entire friend group hangs on the fact that he befriended Jay, who knew Jake, who knew you, Minjeong, Yunjin and Chaewon. Sunghoon who has spoken to maybe half of his hockey team outside of the locker rooms and the occasional party. Sunghoon who, outside of his usual friend group, has managed to make three other friends on his own in the year he’s been at university, because they had been put in a group project and magically hit it off enough to upgrade from classmates to friends. 

Then there’s you, who has to stop every thirty seconds at a party to say hi to someone you know. You, who still keeps in touch with the friends you made in a foreign country, even those who spoke broken English. You, who didn’t make Sunghoon feel like his crippling shyness was a problem when you first met. 

He doesn’t understand how everyone who meets you doesn’t instantly fall in love. 

Or maybe they do, and he’s just one of many vying for your heart. 

Tonight is one of the nights where all he can do is watch from afar as you interact with another man that he desperately wishes was him. With your lower back against the kitchen counter, drink in hand as you laugh with that other guy, eyes never leaving his face, it almost looks like someone has copied your time with Sunghoon at the costume party and pasted it onto this post-hockey game party. All you’re missing is a bright pink cowgirl hat and boots to match.

And yet, it’s his team jacket over your shoulders, his name and number on your back. Sunghoon shouldn’t feel nearly as jealous as he does.

So he does what any good friend would do, and blames Jay for reasons completely unwarranted—even now, days after receiving his advice, and hours after taking it, Sunghoon still can’t help but regret involving him at all. 

Initially, Sunghoon hadn’t wanted to tell anyone about his growing feelings for you—he’d thought that if he pushed them away and kept them to himself, they’d go away on their own. But clearly, they didn’t, seeing as how his stomach always twisted in nervous excitement at the prospect of seeing you and how he could never get through a conversation with you without blushing. So, quicker than he’d like to admit, he’d given in and told Jay about the day you’d spent at the beach and how felt about you now, thinking it was some big shameful secret that would render his friend flabbergasted. 

That was his first mistake. 

Jay wasn’t impressed. “Yeah, it’s been pretty obvious, dude,” he’d said through a mouthful of cheeseburger. It was after hockey practice, and they were sitting in the burger joint near the ice rink that had some of the best student deals in town. Jake was going on a Hinge date, and Sunghoon had lured Jay in with the promise of free food (Jay wanted to go home and game, but all Sunghoon needed to do to convince him was to say “I’ll pay for it”). 

“Obvious? How obvious? Does everyone know? Does Jake know?” Sunghoon asked, growing more agitated by the second.

“Jake is possibly the worst room-reader that has ever lived, so no, I don’t think he’s caught on. But the rest of us know. I mean, you look at her like a twelve-year-old with a crush on his English teacher,” Jay said, unceremoniously cramming fries into his mouth.

Sunghoon ignored the slightly humiliating remark, still preoccupied by the fact that he hadn’t been as discreet as he thought he had. He leant in towards Jay and dropped his voice to a whisper, even though the restaurant was practically empty, save for them and a group of rowdy middle school boys who were definitely not paying attention to them. “Do you think… does she know?”

Jay dropped his fist on the table in sudden annoyance, causing Sunghoon to jump back in his seat. “Now you’re acting like a twelve-year-old.” Before Sunghoon could defend himself and argue that he’s being completely rational, Jay launches into a surprisingly moving monologue. “It’s fine if you like her, there’s nothing to be embarrassed of. Everybody feels attraction towards other people, everybody gets crushes, it’s no big deal. Just talk to her. Worst case scenario, she doesn’t feel the same way, and you both move on, because you’re adults.”

There’s nothing worse than a friend being right about something you absolutely don’t want to hear. Sunghoon did feel like he had been carrying a horrible secret around, but Jay was spot-on: crushes are a very common, very human experience. And yet Sunghoon managed to feel like he was the only one who had ever had to go through this torture. “You say that like it’s easy,” he said, sulking.

“It is easy. You’re making it hard.”

“So what, your advice is just to confess to her?”

Jay rolled his eyes. “See? You’re saying confess like it’s some sin you have to repent for. Yeah, just tell her.”

“Just tell her,” Sunghoon repeated, looking at his friend like he was crazy. Jay just took another bite of his burger.

“Yeah, dude. It’s not even like you’ve known each other for a long time, so there’s no risk of ruining a friendship, or anything.”

“But do you even know if she feels the same way at all?”

Jay shrugged. “She hasn’t mentioned anything,” he said, and Sunghoon’s heart dropped in disappointment. “But it’s Y/N, she’ll be cool about it. And who knows, she might actually see something in you, for some godforsaken reason.”

Jay laughed at his own joke, and Sunghoon afforded him a chuckle. They moved on to other topics, but later, as they waited for Jay’s bus to come, he couldn’t help himself. “Do you think Jake will mind? If something happens with Y/N and me?”

Jay thought for a second. “I think he’d be more upset with her than with you, what with everything that happened with Heeseung... But knowing him, he probably won’t care as long as you aren’t weird in front of him.” He puts a hand on Sunghoon’s shoulder and shakes it gently. “Don’t let that stop you from making a move, okay? You’ll cross that bridge when you get to it.” His bus came then, so Sunghoon couldn't ask for more details about this Heeseung situation—he knew that there had been something between you and him which hadn’t ended particularly well, but no one ever really talked about it so he didn’t dare bring it up. All he knew was that it had been significant enough for Jay to mention it now, and for Jake to seem bothered every time it was mentioned.

He put all of that out of his head for the time being. In a way, he had just received Jay’s blessing; even if it scared him shitless, he could make a move. Perhaps not something as straightforward as Jay was suggesting, but something, at the very least. 

The first major hockey game of the season was that coming Friday. Sunghoon had an idea.

The morning of, he shot you a text. He tried to make it sound as nonchalant as he can, so that you wouldn’t know he spent close to an hour deleting, writing and pouring over a singular sentence. Can you meet me in front of the locker rooms 30 mins before the game? 

That was his second mistake.

You replied twenty minutes later, twenty minutes that Sunghoon spent questioning everything that had led up to this moment.

yn.sim i’ll be there!!

You even got there five minutes early. He was waiting for you, all decked out in his hockey uniform, save for the gloves and protective headgear. He was anxiously chewing on gum, heart doing somersaults inside his ribcage—a grin found his lips as soon as you appeared around the corner, the sight of you alleviating his nerves for a second, then doubling them when you came close. “Hey,” he said, voice soft and slightly trembling.

“Hey,” you simply replied, a smile on your face to match his as he took you in his arms. It was a hug that lasted a second longer than it should, but that also ended too early for his liking.

“Um, I only have a second, Coach will be wanting to give one of his pep talks,” he said when you separated. One quick glance back at the locker room doors behind him, then back at you. The tips of his ears burnt, and he couldn’t stop his eyes from furtively darting between your face and the floor. But he’d come this far, so he couldn’t back out now. He just had to get it over with. “Here,” he blurted out, holding out the letterman jacket he had been hiding behind his back. You grabbed it, eyeing him with amused suspicion at first, but surprise spreaded over your features as you unfurled the jacket.

“Your team jacket?” 

He couldn’t tell whether you were amazed or horrified. You stared wide-eyed at the jacket, at its dark green sleeves, at the four letters of his last name and the huge number 8 embroidered onto the back. Your surprise faded back into what he thought — what he hoped — was excitement as you looked at him. He scratched the back of his neck, feeling his face flush red. “Yeah, I just, you know… It’s the first big game of the year, and I thought it’d bring me good luck if a pretty girl was wearing my name…” he explained, repeating the words he’d practiced over and over, voice turning into more and more of a mumble as he spoke. He had planned on speaking with more confidence, but now, the fact that he could speak at all felt like a miracle.

A light giggle spilled out of your mouth. Sunghoon immediately took it for mockery and regretted every decision that had led him here. “Sorry, it was a silly idea, you don’t have to wear it if you don’t like it,” he said, reaching for the jacket. But you were quicker than him, hugging the thick bundle of fabric to your chest as you now beamed at him.

“Are you kidding? I love it,” you said, shrugging off your jacket and replacing it with his.

First, relief flooded his body, then pride and excitement — as you spun around and showed the jacket off — at seeing his name on your back, and his attempt at making a move being successful. At least, he thought it was clear what he meant by giving you his jacket to wear at his game—he could only hope you understood. “Well… I’m glad.” Your eyes met, and you both chuckled softly, gazes holding each other’s for a second too long. 

Two weeks ago, Sunghoon still would’ve been able to convince himself this was a fluke; that this was just another one of his crushes that a gentle breeze could blow away. Because after all, when Sunghoon fell in love, it usually went as quickly as it came. But at that moment, in front of the locker rooms, his mind solely on you and not the opening game of the season, he realized this was something else entirely. And whatever it was, he hadn’t felt it in a good long while.

He was terrified—but infinitely excited, too.

“Okay, I should probably head back in now,” he forced himself to say, but made no move to go.

“Okay.”

He paused. “Will you be cheering me on?”

Your smile widened. “Of course.”

He nodded slowly, upper body starting to turn away but feet still firmly planted on the ground. “Okay.” 

Another second passed, and just as he was about to actually walk away, you grabbed his hand. Before he could compute what was happening, you lifted your head and pressed a small kiss to his cheek. His hand was still in yours when you took a step back, and for once, it was you who looked sheepishly at the floor. “For good luck,” you explained. He had no time to reply—you were already walking away, only looking back once to wave and shoo him in the direction of the locker room. He chuckled and nodded, but waited until you were out of sight to head back into the locker room.

Inside the locker room, everyone was too focused on getting their head in the game to notice his giddy smile. Your lips had been warm and soft against his cheeks, a welcome repeat of that time at the costume party, but the quickness of it all had only made him want more. From that very first night he’d met you, the question of how your lips would feel on his had scarcely left his mind. This brought him a step closer to getting an answer, but also made his curiosity grow tenfold.

Thankfully, by the time his coach gathered them around for a last minute pep talk, he’d managed to put the distracting thoughts of you out of his head, at least temporarily—he’d need to play well, for himself and his team mostly, but impressing you was also a priority. 

As the captain, Heeseung said a few words. He reminded the team of how important this match was and went over the main strategy points. For the time being, Sunghoon was able to forget about his arguably unfounded resentment against the older boy and whatever it was he had to do with you. This was not the time for jealousy over someone he had no right to feel jealous over. 

A few minutes later, his members and those of the opposing team poured out onto the rink for warm-up. Sunghoon searched the crowd for your face—when he found it, you were already smiling wide and waving at him. His heart did something funny, but Jay punched his shoulder pad and he remembered what he was there for. He could get lost in the eyes of a pretty girl later, specifically when he’d destroyed the other team and shown her how good of a hockey player he was.

Every now and then as he skirted around the rink and did his stretches, he stole glances at you. They didn't last long, because every single time, you’d already be looking, as if your eyes never strayed from him. Knowing you were watching made him nervous at first, but by the end of warm-up, mainly because he didn’t have much of a choice, he’d turned those nerves into an ever stronger will to do well.

The moment the referee blew the whistle, and for the hour that followed, Sunghoon was locked in on one thing and one thing only: winning. He was only competitive when it came to hockey—he didn’t care about dying in an online battle game or losing to Jake at beer pong, but once he was on the rink, he had to win. Pride surged through him and filled every crevice of his aching limbs whenever he or one of his team members scored, and the feeling that came with a victory, with hugging his teammates in celebration or hearing the crowd cheer for them, was like nothing else he’d ever known. The other side of that coin meant that any loss was a tremendous disappointment. Getting beat at an important game could put him in a week-long funk. His sister had once carefully hinted at his self-esteem relying too much on his hockey performance, and although his first reaction had been to dismiss her, he knew she had poked at some truth there. But what could he do—on particularly lonely nights, he truly thought hockey was all he had going for him. 

To his overthinking nature, becoming so single-minded the second the whistle blows was a relief, a break from the stress of daily life. He didn’t have to worry about his next deadline or about what the guys on the team thought of him or about the inevitable phone call to his mom asking for more money for groceries. It was respite from the thoughts surrounding you that plagued him: how you felt about him, how you might react knowing what he felt for you, how Jake might react. Why Minjeong hadn’t wanted you to say anything that evening, but why Jay had told him to just go for it. Heeseung, whom he had to respect as the captain and an undeniably talented player, but also as someone who had had something to do with you, whether good or bad. All of it had been wildly bustling around Sunghoon’s mind, but once on the rink, all he had to concern himself with was the puck and getting it in the opposing team’s goal. 

And Sunghoon did just that—he scored the first goal of the game, another one in the second period, then a third during the eleventh hour, breaking the tie between the two teams. He smiled right at you after each one, just to make sure you had seen everything. He couldn’t quite describe how it felt to see you clap and cheer for him, jumping up-and-down, forming a megaphone with your hands around your mouth and yelling, “Go Sunghoon!” all while you wore his jacket. It was a separate kind of pride and satisfaction from the sort he’d get seeing anyone else cheer him on, for sure. 

The other team put up a good fight, getting in a few goals of their own and protecting their side well, but in the end, thanks to Sunghoon’s goal, it was his team that won. He took his helmet off and got his hair ruffled by half of his team, then shook hands with the other team, trying to contain his boastful smile—some ice hockey players flew off the handle very quickly, and starting a fight was the last thing he wanted.

Kids and local fans huddled by the barriers on each side of the player’s tunnel to get an autograph or a picture. People around here were weirdly attached to their university sport teams, and the athletes on teams that did particularly well — namely football and rugby — were sort of local celebrities. Their ice hockey team wasn’t quite at that stage yet, but they were placing better nationally with every year, and so the local interest had grown. More kids had started signing up for lessons, and their parents often brought them to home games. As Sunghoon chatted with men twice his age and took selfies with ten-year-olds, he tried to find you in the crowd, to no avail. He’d been hoping for a thumbs-up from you for a game well played, or even a hug, but you were nowhere in sight.

It wasn’t until half-an-hour later, after saying bye to all the fans that had waited after the game for them, listening to Heeseung and their coach congratulate them (but also remind them to not take anything for granted), showering and changing, that he got to check his phone.

chaewon we going k-bbq! u guys played well see u later at da party!!!!

Disappointment only had a second to sink to the bottom of his stomach. He’d barely finished reading the text when he was hoisted up by the shoulders. Two of his senior teammates, Soobin and Beomgyu, marched him towards the exit. “We are getting you wasted tonight, Park,” Beomgyu announced, a wide grin on his lips.

“I have a good feeling about this season,” Soobin added. Sunghoon looked back to find Jay and Jake simply shrugging and laughing at him.

Indeed, the second they got to the dorm where tonight’s party would be taking place, a beer was thrusted in his hand. It was only 7 p.m., still light outside, but that didn’t stop the team nor their friends that had come to the game. They sipped beer like it was water, so much so that two hours later, when the party started to grow, Sunghoon was already quite inebriated. It didn’t help that his cup was never empty for too long, and that he had the reassurance of being in his own dorm—it was the closest student building to the ice rink, and so was one of the prime spots for hockey parties. He could get as drunk as he wanted — or as Beomgyu wanted — and still get home in less than a minute. 

He somehow ended up in the corridor, part of a nonsensical conversation about candle-making with two guys he had recognized from one of his Phys Ed classes but could not for the life of him remember the names of. One had shared that candle-making was a big hobby of his, and it had made Sunghoon and the other unknown man lose their minds—Sunghoon had never realized how curious about candle-making he was, but he couldn’t stop asking questions. It sounded great. Maybe he’d have to pick up candle-making, too. 

Eventually, he headed back to the kitchen for a new drink. For the nth time this evening, he thought of texting you, then immediately thought against it. He wanted to know when you’d get here, but he didn’t want you to know that he wanted to know—although as the night deepened and his intoxication rose, he could remember less and less why that would be such a bad thing. He stepped into the kitchen, and going from the brightly-lit corridor to the dark kitchen with flashing neon lights made him so dizzy that he made a beeline for the couch, needing to sit down for a second.

And that was when he saw you.

Lower back against the counter, talking with a guy he’s never seen in his life. You look like you’re having fun—smiling, laughing, keeping eye contact with that guy. You’re still wearing his jacket. It should probably reassure him—his name is literally on you, what does it matter that you’re speaking to someone else? But instead, all he can think is that wearing his jacket must mean nothing to you. What was basically a confession from him seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

His friends’ words over the past year come back to him—how much you flirt with people, how it wasn’t a rare occurrence for you to go home with a guy after a party and never speak of him ever again. Was this what was happening here?

He knows it’s unreasonable, but in his drunken state, he takes it as a betrayal. Like he can’t believe you haven’t read his mind, figured out how he felt about you, and decided to give special attention to him and him only. He’s only able to take it for so long—two minutes later, he trudges out of the room, walking right past you but not looking your way.

His new mission is to find his friends, but before he’s done much searching, he hears his name being called out. Of course, he recognizes your voice immediately, but he doesn’t quite believe it until he looks over his shoulder, and there you are, face glowing and smiling wide. You’ve clearly had a few drinks, but he likes to think you’d be just as happy to see him if you were sober. He turns around to face you, watching as you narrow the distance between the two of you. He’s not in a much better state—the simple thought that you had come after him makes him forget any sort of resentment he held against you a second ago. When you reach him, he holds on to one of your arms, as much an effort to stabilize his swaying body as an excuse to touch you.

“Hey,” he simply says. He’s always at a loss for words around you, so scared he’ll say the wrong thing that he ends up barely speaking at all. He’s only sober enough to know that with all the cheap beer and vodka running through his blood, his odds of making a fool of himself are even bigger. 

“Hey. I was wondering where you were.” 

“You’re the one who came late.”

“I know!” you exclaim. “I wanted to come right away, but Chaewon was hell-bent on getting her Korean barbecue.”

“She does get cranky when she hasn’t had pork belly in a while.” Sunghoon feels like he’s just won the Nobel Prize when you let out a laugh. “Was the food good at least?”

“It was amazing. So worth getting here late,” you joke.

He rolls his eyes playfully. “I see how it is.” Then, before he can stop himself, he adds, “Then we should go there together next time.” 

Your smile changes, turning from cheerful to surprised, but amused—almost mischievous. You take a step forward. Sunghoon gulps; the gap between the two of you was narrow to begin with. “Are you asking me out on a date?”

Usually, this type of straight-forwardness would have him stuttering, but drunk Sunghoon is a man sober Sunghoon barely recognizes in the morning. “Yeah. I am. Is that okay?”

You nod. “Mh-hm.”

“Nice. Okay.” For a second, you just look at each other. Another thing about drunk Sunghoon: he doesn’t feel like prolonged eye contact will make him spontaneously combust. He actually quite enjoys it. He also stumbles, even when all he’s doing is trying to stand straight. “You’re still wearing my jacket,” he eventually says, reaching out to take the end of your sleeve between his fingers.

You stretch out your arms and appraise the team jacket as if you only remembered you had it on. “Yeah. It’s comfy.”

“It looks good. You look good.”

“You’re not quite sober, are you?” you ask suddenly. 

“Is it that obvious?” When you nod, he giggles, lowering his head in defeat. “The guys made me drink so much.”

“You did score three goals after all. And you looked good doing it.”

At the praise, he stands up to his full height and places his palms behind his head in a victorious pose. “I did, didn’t I?” he says, looking off in the distance with a self-assured look that makes you burst into laughter. He drops the confident facade and laughs along with you, until somebody bumps into him and sends him stumbling forwards. If you weren’t standing there to catch him, he’d probably have fallen flat on his face. But even though he doesn’t fall, he feels all the alcohol catching up to him and threatening to come right back out where it came from. You hold him for a second, and just as you ask him if he’s okay, he says, “I think I’m gonna throw up.”

You sigh. “Okay. Where’s your room?” 

Arm under his shoulders, you let Sunghoon lean most of his weight on you as you guide him towards the elevator. It’s just one floor, but you said you didn’t want to risk the stairs with him. “Hey, who was that guy with you in the kitchen? That guy in the striped shirt? You guys seemed real chummy back there…” he mumbles as you help him out of the elevator. Even on the verge of sickness, Sunghoon is preoccupied by more important things.

“Oh, that was Jaemin.”

“Jaemin,” he echoes, more venom in his voice than needed.

You look at him, taking in his disgruntled expression, and chuckle. “Yeah, he’s having some problems with his boyfriend. He asked me for advice.”

Sunghoon almost freezes in his tracks, but you’re there to keep him walking towards his room. “Oh. He has a boyfriend.”

“Yeah…” He can tell you want to tease him about it, but thankfully, you say nothing. He’s made it clear he had gotten jealous of your gay friend—no need to spell it out in so many words. Once you reach his studio (which he’d stupidly left unlocked), he heads straight for the bathroom, locking himself in, half out of embarrassment, half because he really doesn’t want you to see him throw up. Talk about a turn-off. He leans over the toilet bowl, waiting for the vomit to rise, but nothing comes. He waits, and waits, mind completely empty, head spinning even though he’s sitting very still, when suddenly a knock on the door pulls him out of his stupor.

“Sunghoon? It’s been ten minutes. Everything okay?”

He doesn’t say anything, just unlocks the door for you. Without realizing, he fell asleep like a bored teenager in math class. “All right,” he hears you say.

He’s surprised you’re able to carry him out of the bathroom—if he was a deadweight before, by now, rigor mortis has practically set in. Despite his small student room, crossing it takes you an entire minute, and when you reach his bed, you all but let him flop on the mattress. He doesn’t mind. As soon as his body hits the bed, he feels quite snug, curling against his blanket. You start to unbutton his shirt, probably just thinking he’s already fallen asleep and wanting to make him more comfortable, but your fingers freeze when he starts giggling. Shoulders shaking with unbridled laughter, he feels as delighted as a five-year-old who just said a naughty word and made all his drunk relatives laugh at the family dinner. 

“I know I looked really hot tonight, but can we wait until I’m sober?” he asks, slurring his words slightly and keeping his eyes shut, despite the shit-eating smirk on his lips. You hit him on the chest but it just makes him laugh more.

“Bold of you to assume I’d still hit when I’ve just had to peel you off your toilet seat.” He lets you finish helping him out of his button-down. 

“Wouldn’t you?” he asks. He tries to look at you, but his eyes don’t quite open all the way, and they don’t focus properly, due to a strong mix of alcohol and inappropriate thoughts. Of you, specifically. His body feels suddenly very heavy, his want for you weighing him down into the mattress. The room is dark, your face illuminated only by the light in the bathroom and the glow of the street lights outside. You always look pretty, but your beauty is especially breath-taking right now, Sunghoon thinks. He wants to reach out and touch your face, wants to trace your jawline and know what your skin would feel like against his fingers. He doesn’t realize he’s actually doing it until he hears you inhale shakily.

The expression in your eyes is unreadable, and quickly gone, replaced by an annoyed squint. You grab his wrist gently, setting it back down next to him. “I’m gonna make you some ramen. You need to sober up, and you haven’t had dinner, have you?”

Sunghoon shakes his head. He feels rejected, and it makes him inordinately sad.

For five minutes, he watches as you rummage around his cupboards for a pack of ramen, fill a pot with water and bring it to a boil. His thoughts float back to your day at the beach, memories that he’s preciously held onto for the past few weeks. You running around on the sand, opening yourself up to him and letting him open himself up to you, holding his hand on the bus. That day, he’d really thought it would be the beginning of something new; but as time passed, he became less and less sure of himself. He’s scared it might’ve just been a fluke, and that he’d have to destroy the castle he’d built in his head. He’s seen you almost every day since, but it’s never been the same. And even if your eyes met unexpectedly sometimes, or if you went out of your way to sit next to him during movie nights, he can’t let himself go on with so few signs. Jay was right—he had to be clear about his feelings, otherwise this would go on forever. Even if it didn’t feel like it, the Earth would continue spinning on its axis if you didn’t reciprocate.

“I’ve missed you.”

You pause in your movements. “Missed me? But we’ve seen each other every day,” you say after a few seconds, still facing away from him. Your voice is softer than he’s heard it before, almost unsure of itself.

“No,” Sunghoon whines, frowning. He can barely keep his eyes open—he wishes you could read his mind so he wouldn’t have to explain, but alas. “I miss you—the you from the beach. When it was just me and you. It’s not the same with the others around.”

Silence falls over the room again. Sunghoon wonders if you’re just going to ignore what he said, until you take a deep breath, and walk back to his bed. You crouch in front of him and take both of his hands in yours. Electricity flows from where your hands touch to the rest of his body. He suddenly feels a lot more awake.

“It’s just the two of us now,” you whisper. 

Sunghoon nods. “I know. It’s nice.”

You smile. It might be the alcohol playing tricks on him, but Sunghoon swears there’s a hint of sadness in your eyes. One of your hands comes up to his hair. You thread your fingers gently through it, pushing it away from his forehead, then bring your hand down to the side of his face, your palm cupping it tenderly. Sunghoon lets himself lean into your warm touch. With his eyes closed, the darkness surrounding him makes this feel like a dream—he basks in the moment so as not to let a second of it go to waste.

“Do you wanna do something just us two this week?” you ask softly. His eyes shoot open—he needs to be sure this is really happening. He nods again, fervently this time, and it makes you chuckle. “Okay.”

“Just us two?” 

“Just us two.”

He relaxes once more. He guides your hand towards his mouth and presses his lips against your palm. Something shifts in your eyes—Sunghoon thinks the opportunity to finally kiss you has arisen, but as soon as his gaze drops to your lips, you’re back on your feet. “Let’s eat some ramen, shall we?” you ask as you head back towards the kitchen. Sunghoon tries his best (and probably fails) to not let his disappointment show.

There’s no dining table to speak of, only a low table near Sunghoon’s bed, on which you set down a wooden board and the steaming pot of spicy noodles. You hand him a pair of chopsticks and a spoon, and tell him to eat. Neither of you say much for a while, and Sunghoon grows redder and redder under your watchful gaze. He asks if you want any a few times, but you always turn him down. The silence quickly gets a little too unbearable for him, and he’s got a question burning the tip of his tongue anyway. Now’s as good a time as ever to ask it.

“Something’s been bugging me recently, actually…” You wait for him to go on. “So, at the costume party, right?” You nod. “You said there was only one person you wanted to kiss… Did you mean me?”

You tilt your head, looking at him like you’re trying to figure out whether he’s joking or not. “Yeah, Sunghoon… I meant you. Who else?”

He’s only half-relieved. “So why won’t you kiss me now?”

To his surprise, you smile. “Because you’re drunk.”

Confusion fogs Sunghoon’s brain. Is that all you’re worried about? Is his blood alcohol level the only thing stopping you from kissing him? “But I-I’m fine. I give you consent to kiss me, Y/N.” He’s dead serious, so when you laugh, it only frustrates him further.

“Finish your food, Sunghoon. We’ll see about kissing later.”

He sighs. Later he could deal with. “Fine. But I’ll hold you to it, okay?” he says, pointing a menacing chopstick at you.

“Okay.”

But Sunghoon can’t keep quiet for long—ten seconds later, he’s remembered another question he’s been dying to ask. He continues drinking his soup in an attempt to appear nonchalant. “So what happened between you and Heeseung?”

The question takes you so off-guard, you look like you would’ve done a spit-take had you been drinking water. “That’s-you know about that?”

“Well, not much, that’s why I’m asking.”

You scoff. “Why do you want to know? It’s boring.”

At those words, Sunghoon whips his head up to look at you. “It’s not boring!” he exclaims, perhaps a tad too vigorously. “Anything that has to do with you is interesting to me.”

Finally, the corners of your lips rise. Sunghoon hated the ten seconds in which you weren’t smiling. “Well, there isn’t much to say, anyway. We had a thing when we were in second year, I caught feelings and wanted more, and he didn’t. The end.”

Sunghoon freezes, staring at you with his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth agape. He then sets his cutlery down neatly next to the pot of ramen and clasps his hands together like he’s in a business meeting. “So you’re telling me that he had the opportunity to make you his girlfriend and he just… didn’t?”

You shrug. “Basically, yeah.”

He hits the bedsheets next to him, huffing out in annoyance. “What an idiot.”

“He sure is,” you say. You smile to yourself as you grab Sunghoon’s spoon and try some of the broth. He wonders whether anything lies behind that smile. “But it happened a while ago. Don’t be weird with him on my account. He’s still your captain.”

Sunghoon thinks for a second. “Can I side-eye him once in a while? Or not pass him the puck during practice?”

“Sure,” you reply, laughing. You swiftly move on to other topics as Sunghoon slurps the last of his noodles, asking him about the beginning of the party and just how much his teammates made him drink. He’s recounting the shot contest they held, which Mark won with an impressive seven shots of tequila in a row — Sunghoon hopes the boy is okay now — when your phones buzz at the same time. Minjeong’s name appears on your screen, Jay’s on his, both asking where you are.

“Should we head back now?” you offer, although Sunghoon, wishfully perhaps, detects a trace of reluctance in your voice. “You look like you’ve sobered up a bit, seeing as you’re able to string more than two sentences together.”

“I wasn’t that bad!”

“I should’ve filmed you.”

It’s one a.m. when you head back down, and the party is in full swing. Pop music blasts through someone’s JBL speaker in the shared kitchen, the hallways are more crowded than the subway at rush hour, just as full of hockey fans celebrating their team’s win as students who just wanted an excuse to party, and every window is open to alleviate some of the stuffiness. They probably have another hour left before the dorm residents who decided not to join in the festivities call campus police on them.

Sunghoon is relieved to find that Jake is off with other team members, reaching levels of drunkenness that will most definitely be regretted in the morning. Technically, he hasn’t done anything wrong—he simply let you nurse him back to sobriety after he almost regurgitated his pre-game protein bar and three beers all over your nice shirt. Chaewon and Yunjin are busy making out in a corner, their lack of decorum only increasing when they’ve been drinking, but Jay and Minjeong eye you suspiciously upon seeing the two of you arrive together. You explain what happened so casually that they don’t question it any further.

Chaewon and Yunjin only tear themselves off of each other when a Beyoncé song starts playing, and they drag all four of you to the makeshift dancefloor, which is really just three meters away in the middle of the kitchen. Sunghoon is practically all sobered up by now, but he’s loosened up enough not to feel self-conscious with every step he takes; the fact that you look so happy, dancing with him and laughing at his silly moves, is a considerable bonus. He won’t drink any more, not wanting to risk embarrassing himself further in front of you, and Jay, as the group’s self-proclaimed health guru, probably had his last beer around nine p.m., but the girls, each of them with a cup of suspicious transparent liquid in hand, are getting drunker by the minute—and so is Jake, who has now joined you all on the dancefloor, if his inability to stand straight is anything to go by. Sunghoon assumes you’re also done with alcohol for the night, until you turn to him in the middle of a song no one has heard since 2015 and tell him you’re going to get a drink.

“Okay!” he simply answers, and for a good thirty seconds, basks in the blissful satisfaction of knowing he was the one you informed of your whereabouts. That is, until he realizes a minute later that it was probably a covert invitation for him to come along, which he totally missed. But when he looks over at the counter where all the drinks are, his heart drops—Heeseung is standing in front of you, pouring gin and lemonade into your cup. A flurry of emotions course through Sunghoon, emotions he has no idea what to do with, because he’s not sure they’re entirely warranted. He’s angry that Heeseung is talking to you, after what he did, confused that you’d let him; but mostly, he’s jealous. But he knows it’s only because he has no guarantee that you like him, and that you won’t go off with Heeseung, despite having just talked about how you were over him.

Wait—is that really what you said? You told Sunghoon that what happened with Heeseung didn’t bother you anymore, which doesn’t necessarily mean you wouldn’t go back to him, given the chance. 

Before he can think it over a second time, Sunghoon heads over to where you and Heeseung stand. He places himself right behind you, reaching for a bottle of Coke on your side and pouring himself a drink.

“Oh, hey, Hoon,” his team captain says, clearly surprised to see him there and looking so discontented. Sunghoon can’t remember whether they’ve ever been close enough for Heeseung to call him by his nickname. “Having fun?”

“Yep,” he curtly replies, avoiding eye contact with either of you and looking out at the crowd of party-goers instead. He can feel your gaze, heavy on his face, can see the knowing smirk slowly rising on your lips. How was it that you could see right through him so easily?

“Too much dancing made you thirsty?” you ask, taking a drink from your cup and hiding your smile behind it.

He glares at you, more annoyed that his attempt at subtly sussing out what you and Heeseung were doing together was shut down so quickly than anything else. “Yep,” he repeats.

“You guys know each other?” the older boy asks, eyes darting between the two of you.

“Jake introduced us,” Sunghoon quickly answers. To his surprise, this makes Heeseung chuckle.

“Jay, Sunghoon, me… Wow, do you meet all your friends through your brother, Y/N?” he asks jokingly. Immediately, so many alarm bells ring in Sunghoon’s head—the implication that you and Heeseung are friends, the fact that he put himself and Sunghoon in the same bag, and above all, that teasing, almost flirtatious tone of his. 

He’s horrified to find you rolling your eyes playfully and saying, “I have other friends, thanks,” in a tone far too similar. At that moment, Minjeong starts yelling about how much she loves everyone in this room but particularly “you guys,” pointing to Jake, Jay, Minjeong and Chaewon, and “you guys, too!” screaming over the music as she points to you and Sunghoon.

“There’s one of them,” you say, half-amused, half-exasperated. “We should probably go check on her. See you around, Heeseung.”

“Right. See you, Y/N. Sunghoon.” 

Back to no-nickname basis, apparently.

Your group’s indicator of when it’s time to go home is when Minjeong starts one of her “I-love-my-friends-so-much” rants—if she’s that drunk, everyone else must be wasted. Indeed, Chaewon and Yunjin are holding onto each other to keep themselves from falling down, and Jake is unable to keep his head up. You, Sunghoon and Jay herd your friends outside and wait for Jake’s Uber, making sure to get him safely inside and to tip the driver generously for his pains. Jay lives nearby yours and the girls’ flat, and Sunghoon, ever the gentleman, walks you all home.

“Just ‘cause you and Jay might need a hand getting these three home,” he tells you. Yunjin, Chaewon and Minjeong are currently running around on the road, pointing and laughing at random shop names, and Jay is yelling at them to get back on the sidewalk.

“Mh-hm.”

“And it’ll be good to completely sober up before going to bed.”

“Right.”

There’s no use putting up a front with you—he’s an open book and you’re an avid reader. You don’t need to say anything to make it clear that you know it’s just an excuse to spend more time with you.

“You know, I told you not to be weird with Heeseung,” you say, gently punching him in the arm.

“Was I weird?” he asks, knowing fully well he hadn’t acted at all like he usually did around his captain. 

“You basically only spoke to let Heeseung know we’re friends. You were making yourself all tall and looking mysteriously out into the distance instead of at us.”

“But I am tall and mysterious,” he says, pride coursing through him as it always does when you laugh at one of his jokes.

“You’re probably the least mysterious person I know, Hoon.”

Hoon. How much sweeter that name sounds coming from you over anyone else.

“So you agree that I’m tall?”

You roll your eyes, but there’s a grin on your face. A win is a win. “That’s just a fact.”

Sunghoon smiles victoriously. “I’ll take a fact. But I’m sorry if I was acting weird… I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t bothering you.”

“Heeseung is always bothering me,” you say with a sigh. “He comes up to me like this at every party. He’s just asking how I’ve been, but it’s like he’s sussing out whether or not he’s still got a chance.”

“Do you need me to beat him up? Threaten him? Dox him?”

Even though Sunghoon was only half-joking, you burst out laughing, hard enough for Minjeong to whip around and shout, “What are you laughing about?” as if you had offended her personally. At least Jay is there to make her turn around and focus on walking straight.

“I appreciate the offer, but that won’t be needed. I just don’t like talking about it, ‘cause it’s really not that big a deal anymore. It feels like digging up old bones, you know?”

Sunghoon shrugs. “I’d commit grave robbery with you.”

“You-what?”

“Nevermind. We obviously don’t have to talk about it, but I’m curious.”

You sigh. “I guess it’d make sense for you to know about this.” Sunghoon thinks he sees something like panic flash across your features, but it’s so quick and such a rare expression on you that he’s not sure whether he just imagined it. “You know-just ‘cause everyone else is aware of it, and everything,” you quickly explain.

“Sure.”

“I just… I’m sure Heeseung is a nice guy when it comes to other things, but what the girls and I have concluded is that he’s a bit of an attention whore, you know. When it comes to girls. We fooled around for a while, and he never made it official, even when I made it pretty clear that that was what I wanted. But every time we saw each other after that, he’d flirt with me like nothing had happened. I fell for it at first and flirted back, thinking he had changed his mind… but he really just wanted to make sure I was still into him.”

“Looking for validation,” Sunghoon says.

“Exactly. And when I realized that, I stopped giving it to him. I was getting tired of him anyway, saying the same thing every time. But now, I entertain him for a couple of minutes before I walk away. I shut him down before he gets a chance to do it to me.”

“That’s smart.”

“I know,” you say, smiling. “I understand the need for validation, but he won’t be getting any from me.”

Jay bravely handles the three drunkards the whole way home, letting you and Sunghoon hang behind and carry on talking. You reach the boy’s apartment first, and yours five minutes later. But when you reach your front door, Minjeong announces she needs to talk to Sunghoon. “Privately,” she emphasizes.

You give Sunghoon an amused look and shrug as if to say “She’s your problem now.” He doesn’t have time to protest before you’ve bid him goodnight and disappeared behind the door, Yunjin and Chaewon in tow, yelling good night at Sunghoon like they’re not going to see him for months. 

Minjeong places her palms flat onto Sunghoon’s torso and looks right at him—to the best of her ability, at least, considering she’s having a hard time focusing her eyes. “Sunghoon,” she says gravely.

“Minjeong?”

“Listen, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you,” she says, slurring her words. “You know I love Y/N, she’s amazing…”

“Yeah, she is,” Sunghoon says firmly—already, he can tell where this is going, and he doesn’t like it.

“But she’s not the best with relationships.”

“What do you mean?”

Minjeong’s hands drop by her sides and she exhales deeply. “I’ve just never seen her in a committed relationship in the-in the almost four years I’ve known her. She never lets things get serious. She’s just so afraid of being hurt, Hoon, and I-” 

A hiccup escapes Minjeong’s lips as tears start pooling in her eyes. Sunghoon has only ever seen Minjeong cry when drunk—even movies that had him sobbing barely made her eyes water. Even if she isn’t in her right state of mind, he knows it means this must be important to her. He holds her arms and tries to put on the most reassuring tone he can. “But I wouldn’t hurt her.”

“No, I know that. I’m scared you’d get hurt. I don’t want things to become weird between all of us.”

Sunghoon shakes his head. “Minjeong, what-that wouldn’t happen.”

“But it will!” she exclaimed. “If something happens with you and her, and it doesn’t work out the way you want it to, it’ll make things awkward-”

“If that happens,” he interrupts, “I’ll deal with it. I won’t make it your guys’ problem. Y/N and I are adults, okay?”

“You’re like, nineteen…”

“Yeah, whatever. Don’t worry about it, okay? It’ll be fine.” He takes a step back and opens the door for her to get in. 

She’s only on the first stair when she turns back around. “But, Hoon-” she tries, though he cuts her off.

“Minjeong, I promise-”

“Just don’t rush into anything, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Go inside.” 

She complies, giving him one last look before climbing the stairs to her apartment. Sunghoon closes the door behind her, a heavy sigh leaving his lips.

--

Sunghoon is on his way home from hockey practice when his phone buzzes with a text from you.

yn are you still up for doing something this week?

He almost throws his phone in the air in celebration, as if it was a graduation cap. His Sunday was spent going back-and-forth between lapidating himself for his drunken stupidity, memories, rough as stones, hitting him in the face every time he thought of what he said and how he acted, and congratulating himself for having finally made his feelings for you somewhat clearer. Hopefully, you now know he isn’t just awkward and silent around new people—well, he is, but it’s worse with you.

She never lets things get serious.

Minjeong’s warnings echo in his head as he types a positive — although not over-enthusiastic, ‘cause that’d be uncool — answer, but he dismisses them easily. Perhaps he shouldn’t; Sunghoon is, after all, incredibly serious about any and all romantic encounters. The girl at the grocery store who reached for the same red bell pepper as him was the most serious thing to him in the world for a good ten minutes; all of his school crushes were of utmost importance to him, however long they had lasted.

So this? This is capital-s Serious. But therein lies the problem; he’s so serious about you that he’d let you not make it serious. If Minjeong is right, and you’re not planning on taking this nearly as far as he wishes for it to go, he can already tell he’ll just let you. He’ll probably be happy you wanted anything to do with him at all. 

He has ways of reassuring himself, of convincing himself he isn’t a totally lost cause. Because when Sunghoon falls in love — and he had an inkling this was what this was — it usually goes as quickly as it came. Who’s to say this time next week he won’t have completely moved on? Maybe this date that he’s agreed to will go horribly wrong, you’ll be rude to the waiter, you’ll spill tomato sauce all over your shirt, and the flame in his heart will be put out. Easy as that.

You decide to meet on Wednesday evening, two days from now. Sunghoon suggests a Japanese restaurant he likes, a place he had gone to with his mom and sister when they had dropped him off at university before his first year, and that he knows is nice enough for a date but won’t burn a hole through his wallet.

Seeing you at the library the day before is a real thrill. Nobody but you knows of your plans—at least not until he caves in and tells Jay about it, who congratulates him with a roll of his eyes and a pat on the head. All of your eye contact feels loaded with the kind of complicity that comes with sharing a secret. As much as he would love boasting about it to every soul who’d listen, this secrecy electrifies him—it binds the two of you with something much more real than before. At least, more real than Sunghoon’s imagination and one-sided feelings. He knows that your text wasn’t in any way a confession of your own feelings for him, but it’s a step in the right direction.

In the few hours before your reservation at seven p.m., Sunghoon spends so much time thinking about the date that he’s almost late for it. He thinks about his expectations, then tries to get rid of them; he comes up with ideas of what your expectations might be, remembers Minjeong’s words, dismisses them, remembers them again; he goes through scenarios upon scenarios of everything that might go wrong and everything that might go spectacularly well. He ends up with less than twenty minutes to get ready, but manages to arrive at the restaurant a minute before you.

When he sees you approaching, Sunghoon feels like one of those boys in Disney movies as they watch their girlfriend coming down the stairs in her prom dress. You’re not wearing an over-the-top poofy purple dress, but the effect is the same—his eyes are glued on you with every step you take towards him.

You grab him by the arm and lead him into the restaurant as soon as you reach him. He’s too busy taking in your appearance to be bothered by it. “Don’t look at me like that,” you chide as you wait for waiting staff to seat you. He’d actually think you were mad at him if it wasn’t for the small smile playing on your lips.

“Like what?”

“Like what you’re doing right now! You’re staring.”

Realization slowly dawns on him; your gazes have made him lose his composure too many times for him not to know what being flustered looks like. He’d be lying if the fact that it was you in this tight spot and not him didn’t heavily stroke his ego. 

“Why wouldn’t I? You look beautiful,” he says, dropping his voice to a whisper so that the approaching waitress can’t hear. Her presence saves you from responding verbally, but as she brings you to your table, you pinch his arm lightly as if to say Be on your best behavior—although Sunghoon would argue this was his best behavior.

You have trouble making up your mind about the food—you want to try everything on the menu. Sunghoon tentatively offers to order a bunch of dishes and share them. “It’s what my family always does at the restaurant, just try as much as you want and take the leftovers to go. We never ate out very often because my mom would spend so much money every time,” he recollects, smiling fondly.

“That actually sounds like a dream. My parents would never do that. It was always just eat what you got, but I’m unable to look at someone else’s food and not want to try it. It honestly should just be common practice to share dishes at the restaurant.”

Sunghoon thinks he could get down on one knee right then and there. Whenever they went out to eat, the boys would roll his eyes at him when he stole bites of their food. But you—you’re like him. He knows he’s prone to over-exaggeration, but he can’t help but feel like if you understand each other on this, you must understand each other at a molecular level.

He had expected a level of awkwardness to your date, at least at the beginning — God knows the moments in which he doesn’t feel like a mumbling fool in front of you are few and far between — but to his surprise, everything goes smoothly. There is no uncomfortable silence, all his jokes miraculously land, even the lousy ones, and you both laugh and talk and share sushi and pork cutlets like it’s the most natural thing in the world, which perhaps it is. His attempts at flirting are well-received and he only turns violently red twice when you compliment him and smile at him in a particularly pretty way.

It’s that day at the beach all over again. Always on the same page, you dip in and out of topics with a synergy he has rarely felt before. Sunghoon realizes it must be the presence of others, rather than you yourself, that makes him feel like he can’t act the way he wants to around you, makes him so nervous. Save for the moments where you make his heart flutter like a thousand butterflies’ wings, he actually feels quite at ease with you, all things considered. Of course, he still tries — and fails — to look cool for you, but he knows it comes from a place within himself rather than because you make him feel as though he has to meet a certain standard. Surprisingly, he can be totally himself, and it seems to be enough for you.

He loves his friends. He wouldn’t trade them for the world. But he’s not sure he won’t have moments where he’ll wish nothing more than for them all to go away and leave the two of you be.

You eat until you can’t anymore and are still left with enough food for another full meal. You only let him get the bill once he’s promised that next time will be on you. If it means there’ll be a next time, he’s more than happy with making that promise. The sun has set when you exit the restaurant. Sunghoon shivers as he steps outside, the temperature having gone down by at least four degrees in the last two hours.

You grab his hand; it warms him right up.

Your apartment is a thirty-minute bus ride away, but Sunghoon offers to walk you home. Anything to spend more time with you.

He spends the first few minutes of the walk worrying about his hand, whether it’s too clammy, whether it’s holding yours right, but he eventually relaxes into the touch. When a particularly chilly gust of wind blows, you drop his hand and hold onto his arm instead, inching closer to him for more warmth.  He only drank lemonade with his meal, but he feels blissfully light-headed.

Silence only arrives when you reach your doorstep. You stand in front of each other, Sunghoon looking down at his feet, you gazing out at the empty street. He knows this is the moment where he is supposed to kiss you. If there was a step-by-step guide on how to date — there probably is, but Sunghoon hasn’t resorted to such loser-like measures yet — this would probably be the moment where it would be written to just kiss her, you idiot. But nerves get the best of him.

At least, you’re there to save the day. You direct your gaze towards him, a bashful smile playing on your lips. “So… are you gonna kiss me now?” you ask, essentially reading his mind. 

He reacts immediately. “Y-yep. Yes. I am.” Heart racing, he takes a step towards you as he rests his hands on your waist. Then he changes his mind, and brings one hand up to your cheek. There’s an eyelash that has fallen below your eye; he brushes it out of the way with his thumb before leaning in and pressing his lips against yours.

In all of his late-night scenarios and daydreams of kissing you, he had never imagined something as good as this. You find your rhythm within seconds. It’s slow, almost hesitant, yet so tender, it makes Sunghoon’s heart ache. As your lips move against each other in perfect sync, as your hands find their way around Sunghoon’s neck, he realizes he should have known — this will not go away as quickly as it came.

Only when you grab a fistful of his hair, making him react viscerally and wrap his arm around your waist to bring you closer to him, does he remember where the two of you are. He leans back, then almost passes out when you chase his lips and press a shorter but just as sweet kiss there. He commits this view to memory—the smile on your lips, the glow on your face, the haziness in your eyes.

“Do you wanna come up?”

“Yes,” he replies immediately, and it makes you laugh. You grab his hand and lead him up the stairs and into your apartment.

“Are the girls in?” he asks as you lock the front door.

“Minjeong is at karaoke with her school friends, and Yunjin and Chaewon are at a dinner party somewhere.”

“Minjeong karaokes?”

“Get enough G&Ts in her and she’ll do anything.”

You turn on a small lamp in your room and take off your jacket. Sunghoon has been in your apartment before, but never in your room—at some point, he’ll spend an hour observing every photograph and trinket in detail, asking you about every backstory, but right now, he’s got more important things to tend to. His heart beats uncontrollably as you shut the door to your room and walk towards him, eyes gazing deeply into his. The corners of your lips rise when you tug at the bottom of his sweatshirt, a clear indicator that you want it off. He wastes no time in obliging.

The air is buzzing with electricity when your lips find each other again. You’re both more confident this time around, and so the kiss is deeper, your touches bolder. Everything happens quickly—one second, you’re standing in the middle of your room; the next, you’re laying on your bed, Sunghoon underneath you. 

“You know,” he says between kisses, “I’d really planned on being a gentleman and not going up to your room after the first date…”

Your lips move from his lips to his jawline, warm and soft against his skin. Sunghoon closes his eyes and lets out a low hum of approval. “I’m glad you changed your mind,” you whisper, lips brushing against his neck as you speak. “And since we’re onto confessions, I can finally say I’ve been wanting to do this since we met.”

This information sends his mind reeling. Not once had he been sure of how you felt about him — he even remembers you saying no to a kiss — and here you are, saying you’ve been wanting to kiss him since the beginning, just like he had. 

“You’re me,” he replies breathlessly.

“Hm?”

“I mean, me too.”

You pause your kisses to giggle, a sound so soft and intimate it has Sunghoon melting impossibly more. “You’re me?”

Unfortunately, he is too preoccupied by you to put a filter between the weird, half-formed thoughts in his brain and the words that leave his mouth. “Don’t question it,” he says, a smile audible in his voice, before moving his head and catching your lips. If he couldn’t stop himself from saying odd things, he could at least distract you from them.

Sunghoon thinks he’s doing a good job keeping himself together, until you roll your hips against his. It’s barely anything, but it sends waves of pleasure and anticipation through his body. His grip on your waist tightens, and when you repeat the motion, his hands sneakily find their way down your back and under your dress. Palms splayed against your ass, he brings you down closer to him. The second you moan into the kiss, he’s a goner. 

After that, it doesn’t take long for clothes to be discarded or for curious fingers to find the other’s waistbands. Your movements are hasty, messy—the tension that had built up over weeks of pining for you, after getting close to kissing you twice and thinking about it a hundred times more, it all comes crashing down in this moment, as his teeth sink into the flesh of your neck, as your hands pull at strands of his hair, as your bodies gently bump into each other. If someone asked Sunghoon right now how long he’d known you, he’d say years, not mere weeks. It couldn’t possibly be real that this much desire had accumulated inside of him — and inside of you, if your broken moans and rapid breathing are anything to go by — in just over a month. 

He only slows down when he has you naked and heaving underneath him, reminding himself to savor the moment instead of rushing it. His fingertips graze down your sides until they reach between your thighs, and he marvels at the way his touch makes you shiver. His eyes are so wide with amazement at the sight of you that he probably looks like he’s never seen a woman before, but he can’t help himself—he always thought you were beautiful, but this is something else entirely. 

His first touch is hesitant, a slow upward motion of his thumb between your folds as if quite literally testing the waters. But it has you arching your back and gripping his bicep, meeting his eyes to silently plead for more. Sunghoon takes that as his green light, thumb circling your clit as his lips continue their work on your neck, on your face, everywhere they can reach. He slips a finger inside of you, then a second one, and when he is satisfied with the state he’s gotten you in, all disheveled and gasping for air, he replaces his fingers with his dick, rock-hard just from seeing and hearing you.

He slowly inches forward until he’s bottomed out, letting you adjust around him. “All good?” he whispers, lips moving against the shell of your ear.

“Never better,” you whisper back, smiling. You kiss him, and the tenderness of your lips on his, mixed with the feeling of being inside you, has Sunghoon’s heart constricting inside his chest. He starts rocking his hips back-and-forth into you, the side of his face is pressed up against yours, head light from the little oxygen the two of you share. It all feels oddly intimate for a first time, feels more like the kind of sex two people would have after years of knowing each other’s bodies. He moves like it’s second nature, thrusts deep and slow, trying to reach those spots that have your hands clawing at his back. He wraps an arm around your waist, pulling you closer to him, using his free hand to push the hair that sticks to your face with sweat.

You wrap your legs higher around his hips, the shift in angle letting him go deeper. “Fuck, right there,” you say, voice strangled. Sunghoon doesn’t need to be told twice—he picks up his pace, and already within a minute, starts to feel himself reaching his limit. He tries to muffle his groans against your skin, but with the way your hold on him tightens and your moans go higher in pitch, you seem to be just as close as he is. When you do come undone around him, breath hitching in your throat before you release a heavy sigh, he has mere seconds left in him. A few thrusts later, his orgasm finally releases him from the tension that had been twisting his stomach into a knot for the past half-hour. You’re both spent, but he continues lazily rocking his hips against yours chasing the last remnants of pleasure, wanting to bask in it just a bit longer. He rolls onto his back after sliding out, wrapping his arms around you. You bury your face in the crook of his neck.

His chest rises and falls as his breathing takes its time returning to normal. In a way, he’s almost relieved it’s over, like any longer would’ve actually taken too much of a toll on him. He likes the comfort he gets from having you in his arms as much as the sex itself. “I didn’t know it could feel this good,” he says, the words spilling out of his mouth before he can stop them. He needs more than a few minutes to get his head back on straight and start thinking before he speaks again. You chuckle airily, he chuckles too, and within seconds, you’re both laughing for seemingly no reason. The bliss of such an intense orgasm and the lack of oxygen must have gone to your brain, too.

“Me either,” you say once the laughter dies down. When your lips find his once more, Sunghoon forgets entirely about his exhaustion and feels like he could go for a second round. “Shower?” you ask right when he realizes how sticky and smelly he is.

“Yes, please.”

He can’t keep his hands off of you in the shower, rubbing soap on every square inch of your skin when you could do it perfectly fine yourself, kissing you even when you’ve both got foaming cleanser on your faces. The taste of soap in his mouth is worth the giggles he gets out of you.

Sunghoon reaches heaven when you drop to your knees in front of him, water rushing down his back as you take him in your mouth. He’s eager to return the favor, of course, thumb flicking your clit with a speed and dexterity even he didn’t know he was capable of. If you weren’t already in the shower, you’d have needed another one.

As soon as your bodies hit the mattress, you both drift off to sleep, limbs wrapping around each other as though they had been separated for too long and finally found each other again—not to let go again.

--

When Sunghoon wakes up, it takes him a few seconds to realize that he hadn’t dreamt up last night’s events. He reaches a hand out hesitantly, still half-asleep and scared that you’ll disappear into thin air at the touch of his fingertips. But no—he feels your skin, warm and soft, and he knows this is real.

You’re laying on your side, facing away from him, so he has to strain his neck to peek at your face. You look so peaceful as you sleep—he doesn’t want to wake you up, but he can’t stop himself from wrapping an arm around your waist and pressing his torso against your back, humming contentedly to himself. He presses a soft, quiet kiss to the top of your head, just because he can.

Outside, clouds part, and a bright ray of sun shines through the window, landing right on your face. Sunghoon watches as you grumble and turn around, burying your face in his chest to avoid the blinding light, but the damage is done—you’re awake. He can tell from the drawled-out whine you let out and the way you grab tightly onto his waist, as if it was his fault the sun had decided to shine right on you. 

He lets you settle in a comfortable position. Stays still as you hike your leg over his legs, then slip it between them instead; as you press your cheek against his chest, then bury your nose in his neck; as you wrap your arm around his waist, then move it to thread your fingers through his hair, until you give up on falling back asleep altogether. “It’s so bright in here,” you mumble in lieu of a good-morning greeting.

You can’t see him, so Sunghoon smiles and tightens his grip around you—one arm circling your shoulders, the other, your waist. Skin to skin. “We forgot to close the blinds yesterday.”

“It’s okay,” you say, sighing. You press a kiss to the base of his neck, right between his collarbones, then lift your face to look at him. “How are you feeling?”

This is what it feels like to wake up next to her, Sunghoon thinks. He’d thought about it so many times: what you would look like first thing in the morning, what you’d say to him, what it’d feel like when your eyes met. If you’d be a slow sort of morning person, cuddling in bed with him until the very last possible second, or if you’d be up and about as soon as you woke up. If you’d be grumpy. If you’d want coffee. If you liked morning sex. 

It seems to be a recurring theme that Sunghoon’s imagination never quite lives up to reality. Your sleepy eyes boring into his, struggling to stay open, your fingers playing with the hair at the nape of his neck; your skin, so warm and so soft, your scent, so intoxicating he can barely think straight.

You’re better than a dream.

“I feel great. Do you feel great?”

“I feel amazing, thank you so much for asking,” you say, burrowing yourself impossibly closer to him.

The two of you stay like this for a while, talking about your plans for the day and begrudging how little you want to go about them. Sunghoon wishes this could go on forever, but then his stomach growls so loudly, his face turns red from embarrassment. He hadn’t even noticed how hungry he was. 

“You’re me,” you say, laughing, and Sunghoon can’t help but join in. “Is it crazy to have last night’s leftovers for breakfast?”

What Sunghoon hears is that you want him to stay; that you don’t want to part ways just yet.

“If by crazy you mean the best idea ever, then yes.”

“Amazing, because I’ve been thinking about that curry all night.”

“Really? I was thinking about something else,” he says, burrowing his face in your neck and leaving warm kisses there. 

You hum and lean into his touches, leaning into his touches. Chills run down his spine as your nails graze his sides. “There might’ve been other things occupying my mind, too.”

And just like that, breakfast is postponed to thirty minutes later.

--

After that night, Sunghoon forgets how to act right.

His mind has never been so singularly taken up by sex in all of his life. It was already preoccupied with you most of the time, but now that it has more material to gnaw on, it’s practically started to eat away at him. It doesn’t help that you’ve seen each other every day since, or that at every chance you get, you smile knowingly at him or try to get him to play footsies with you. Of course, he loves every bit of attention that he gets from you, but whenever he feels his heart get carried away, Minjeong’s words come back to him in a panic, and he remembers that he has no idea what it is that’s happening between you and him. You could be stringing him along, for all he knows, or you could be as into him as he is into you and just letting things happen. Unfortunately, just letting things happen was not something Sunghoon was good at—if things weren’t written black and white, he’d find a way to overthink even the littlest of details. Like how you’d kissed him for a good five minutes before letting him leave your apartment, otherwise known as the least platonic parting to exist, or conversely, like how you’d sometimes take hours to reply to texts.

If he was already a mumbling fool in front of you before, his condition has only worsened now. He tries his best to be normal and not make you or anyone in the group feel weird, but the fact is that you rocked his world and now he can’t look you in the eyes and not remember how it felt when you touched him or the sounds you made or the way you looked. It’s all playing in a loop in his mind and the only way he knows how to control it is by limiting his interactions with you, which doesn’t even work that well. 

The first couple days, you seem amused by his shyer-than-usual demeanor, but you quickly grow confused more than anything. Sunghoon won’t sit next to you, only speaks to you when necessary, doesn’t seek you out outside of a group setting. He tells himself he just needs some more time to be able to be around you casually again, but before that happens, one day at the library, you make a point to ask him if he’ll come help you get drinks for everyone from the dispenser machine. He knows it’d be too odd to say no, so he follows you.

He presses the buttons for everyone’s order (a Sprite for him, Diet Cokes for the girls, a Red Bull for Jake who has a midterm tomorrow and nothing for Jay who only swears by his disgusting herbal infusion) as you lean against the machine, arms crossed over your chest as you stare at him.

He has never felt so awkward in his life.

“So…” he starts although he has no idea what to say—he hopes something will just appear in his mind and that it’ll alleviate the tension. However, you seem to have other plans.

“What the hell, Sunghoon?” you say, taking him aback. When he glances at you, you don’t seem angry—just genuinely confused. “You’ve been avoiding me like the plague.”

“I haven’t!”

“Sunghoon,” you say sternly. He gives in right away.

“Okay, I’m sorry. I just-I didn’t know what to do. After we, you know…”

“After we had sex?” you say, then burst into laughter when he looks around the room to make sure no one’s heard. His cheeks heat up.

“Yes, after we had sex,” he whispers.

He pays for the drinks and picks them up. When he looks at you again, your smile has completely died down, and worry has settled into your features. “Do you regret it?” you ask, voice now as low as his. As if it hurts to say the words too loud.

Panic overcomes him, and he almost drops half of the drinks as he shakes his head. “No, of course not! I’m really sorry, Y/N, I never meant to be weird about it, I was just trying to wrap my head around everything, and I just… Well, I just didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry.”

You nod, taking his words in. “That’s fine. I get it. I just wanted to say, you know, it doesn’t have to change anything. We can still be friends and all. Like you said, it shouldn’t make things weird.”

Sunghoon’s stomach drops. He knows you’re trying to make him feel better, but you’ve inadvertently said the exact opposite of what he wanted to hear. He doesn’t want things to stay the same, or for you to stay friends. For him, things can’t go back to normal after that night — whatever normal means for the two of you — and he was foolishly hoping that you felt the same.

But clearly, you want to let the whole thing die and pretend like it never happened. And whether it’s a good thing or not, his feelings for you have grown so much, he’ll just let you lead him anywhere. Even if that turns out to be nowhere. 

So he conjures up the most convincing smile he can, hands you half of the drinks to carry, and says, “Yeah, sounds good.”

--

After that conversation, Sunghoon doesn’t think anything else will happen between the two of you. You had sex, you talked it out, and that’s the end of it. But then, it turns out that both of your last midterms are at the same time, in the same building, so you invite him to celebrate with pork belly and some drinks. Sunghoon is finishing his second beer when he starts to feel like he’s on that date again, laughing for no reason, butterflies in his stomach every time his gaze catches yours. You lean on your hand as you listen to him talk about a stupid memory from his childhood and he thinks he’s never seen anyone as pretty as you. 

The sun has long set when you say, “You know, it’s Wednesday today.”

He’s not sure what you’re trying to get at. “Yeah?”

“Minjeong’s out at karaoke tonight.”

With these simple words, all the images of you that Sunghoon had finally managed to banish from his mind come flooding back, and he is not even surprised to find himself half-naked in your bed thirty minutes later. So much for staying friends—one time is one thing, but Sunghoon knows he’ll never be normal again after a second time with you.

It’s not a long time before he finds himself in your room again. Every item of clothing between the two of you is gradually discarded while you kiss, lips growing more impatient with every inch of bare skin uncovered. He reluctantly lets you go when you suddenly giggle and say that you really need to pee, watching as you grab his t-shirt off the floor and put it on, just in case Minjeong comes home. You wear it like it’s yours, like it’s the most natural thing in the world that you’d be wearing his clothes. An indescribable feeling washes over Sunghoon at the sight, so intense he feels tears welling behind his eyes. Like something he’s been yearning for is finally at the grasp of his fingers; like it might slip away at any moment. 

His feelings must’ve transpired in the way he was looking at you—when you meet his eyes, your expression shifts slightly, and you quickly slip out of your room. He tells himself to reel it in. Get it together, he thinks. Or you’ll drive her away. 

A wave of tiredness hits him in the minute that you’re gone, probably due to all that soju and beer. “I’m back,” you whisper, but he doesn’t move, only opens his arms wide for you to get back into bed with him. It’s like a weight is lifted off his heart when he feels you against him again. You’re back. Your face is fresh, as if you’d splashed it with cold water, but when he slips one of his hands underneath your (his) t-shirt, your skin is still just as warm as before. Far from the fuzzy, tingly feeling he had gotten when you’d woken up together the other morning, now, he feels his desire for you deep in the pit of his stomach. The kind of hunger food couldn’t satisfy. “I missed you,” he whispers, voice low and gravelly. He reacts immediately when you squirm against him, tightening his grip around your waist and pulling you to him.

“I was gone two minutes.”

“I mean these past few days. I was starting to think I’d dreamt you up.” His hand on your lower back sneaks its way up between your bodies until it finds your breasts, cupping one of them with his palm before taking your nipple between his thumb and index, gently twisting. It pulls a half-gasp, half-moan from your throat, and the sound goes straight to his dick. “But you’re real, aren’t you?” 

“Very real,” you reply, a tremor in your voice. He’s barely touching you, and you’re already having trouble breathing. Sunghoon smiles at the idea of him having as much of a hold on you as you do on him.

“Good,” he says, voice so low it’s almost a growl. In one quick sweep, he pushes you down so your back is against the mattress, resting his palms on each side of your head.

He’s inside you within mere minutes. He’d wanted to hold back a bit, but you whispering Just put it in after thirty seconds of his fingers loosening you up was enough to convince him. His mind is already fuzzy with remnants of alcohol, and his overwhelming desire for you only makes matters worse. He barely has any control over his movements, rushed and sloppy, but as he drives himself deeper into you, your moans increase in volume. He only later realizes how tight his grip on your hips is when he sees two small bruises forming on the skin there. 

He comes quickly, probably embarrassingly so, but he can’t bring himself to care—he’s got other things on his mind. He’s not even bothered to discard the condom as he makes his way down your body, lips around your clit before you’ve even had the time to register what was happening. You cry out, a sound that Sunghoon works to pry out of you over and over again. Even when your thighs start shaking and you squirm away from him, he doesn’t relent. He’s just as desperate to make you feel good as he was desperate chasing his own pleasure earlier. He hooks his arms around your thighs, bringing you down to him and ensuring that you can’t get away. One hand still in his hair, the other clutching the bed sheets, you’ve turned your face sideways into the pillow so that your moans come out muffled. He is only satisfied when you’ve reached your second orgasm. 

As your breath slowly returns to normal, Sunghoon makes his way back up your body, leaving a trail of kisses in his wake. You clear your throat of its dryness and burst into soft, quiet laughter. “What’s funny?” Sunghoon murmurs, lips against your neck. 

“Nothing,” you say, still laughing. “That was just really, really nice.”

Sunghoon smiles. “I’m glad,” he says before kissing you, lips moving slowly against yours.

As he lays against you, the top of his head under your chin and your fingernails grazing along his back, a weird feeling overcomes him. Sunghoon is usually a pine-from-afar sort of guy, with at least five instances of hanging out that could or could not be a date before making things any sort of official. The pining has been a constant with all of his crushes. He’s gotten to the hanging out stage a couple of times, but the officialising has only happened once. Despite its low success rate, it’s a cycle Sunghoon feels comfortable with, and he’d imagined the rest of his romantic encounters would follow that pattern. 

But this is completely different. Of the three times you guys have met separately from your friend group, already two times have included sex. This isn’t a stage Sunghoon usually reaches before at least a few months and it disorientates him. What does it mean? That you like him so much, you decided to skip all of the steps and jump straight into the thick of it? He is reasonable enough not to delude himself into such a thought. He likes you a lot—that much he can be sure of. He’s liked you since the moment he laid eyes on you, even if the reason eludes him. Something in the way you smiled at him, the way you took him in stride as if you’d known him forever. When he thinks back to that party, he can’t believe it started out as the two of you being strangers. Even now, feeling your warm skin against his, it feels like a lie that just two months ago he hadn’t even met you. 

What he can’t say with total certainty is that you like him the same amount. Or that you like him any amount, really, although in his naivety he doesn’t understand how anyone could be this intimate with another person without liking them at least a little bit. And he doesn’t just mean the sex. He means this. The silently laying in each other’s arms, the soft kisses, the caresses wherever hands can reach. Eating post-sex snacks together, laughing as you watch the first episode of each other’s favorite sitcoms (Brooklyn Nine-Nine for him, Pen15, oddly enough, for you). Falling asleep together, cuddling the entire night then waking up and diving right back into each other’s embrace. 

After an entire day spent in rumination, Sunghoon’s still not sure what to make of it all.

All he knows is that when he DMs you that night, asking you how your day went, he goes through every emotion between anxiety, self-hatred and indifference in the five minutes that separate his text from your reply. He’s never been so happy to hear that someone couldn’t concentrate in class because of him.

--

Sunghoon has always been obsessed with the way couples stand together in public. 

Every time, it takes everything in him not to stare, because he wants to take in every little thing they do. He has that practically everywhere he goes, wanting to stare at people just to see what their deal is, but he is never quite as simultaneously fascinated and envious as when he spots a couple. But he knows staring isn’t the socially appropriate thing to do, so he either steals glances or watches for a little bit then pretends they aren’t there. He can’t help himself—even if they aren’t holding hands or obnoxiously making out in public, it’s still visible to anyone with eyes that there is something tying these people together. It’s in the way they stand near each other, their bodies turned inwardly, as though enveloped by a bubble containing just the two of them and no one else; in the way they look at each other, their eyes never straying from the other’s face as they talk, intimacy showing itself even in a loud, crowded room. Sunghoon craves to find that proximity, to be able to touch and be touched so softly, every graze of a hand purposeful and unconscious at the same time.

It’s the first of November already. The Weather app, as it tends to do, has deceived you; so instead of a walk on what was supposed to be a sunny day, you find yourselves in a busy café near the University, the air outside too chilly even with your scarves and gloves. You’re waiting for your order at the end of the counter — a mocha for him, an oat flat white for you — when he notices it. Your body is fully facing him, you’re distractedly playing with the hem of his sweatshirt, and you’re not looking at anything but him as you rant about that annoying classmate of yours that goes by a self-made nickname and always talks over the tutor. In this light, the two of you are like the couples he’s always longed to be—the simple thought makes him want to cry. As more and more often is the case these days, you have no idea what you’re doing to him.

It’s been around two months since you first met and in that time, although Sunghoon is lucky not to have enough fingers to count the number of times you have seen each other one-on-one, not much has happened. Minjeong, who had understood what was going on the first time she saw the two of you eating leftovers from the Japanese restaurant on the couch at 10 a.m., has grown accustomed to his presence in the apartment and even sometimes sits down to watch a movie with the two of you—a movie that Chaewon would usually have forced you to watch in the living room instead of the privacy of your bedroom, so that everyone could join. Sunghoon is just glad Minjeong has stopped silently scolding him with her eyes every time he comes out of your room. She never mentions that night when she essentially warned him against you after the party. 

Jake seems to be the only oblivious one in your group. Yunjin and Chaewon have eyes like hawks and horrifyingly vivid imaginations when they put their heads together, so they were probably already making plans for your wedding and fighting for the title of godmother when you and Sunghoon met at the beginning-of-semester party. They cornered him once at a party and forced him to spill the beans and spare no detail, because you apparently were “denying everything, but we know there’s something going on.” Jay is still Sunghoon’s go-to person when he needs advice concerning you, although the older boy doesn’t understand why it has to be so complicated and always tells him to “just tell her how you feel,” which Sunghoon will not do unless there is a gun to his head. But Jake just seems happy to see his friend and his sister get along this well—no matter how many times you wear his jacket at their games or disappear at the same time at the end of parties, he doesn’t grow suspicious. If he does, he doesn’t mention it to Sunghoon, at least.

Between the two of you, not a word is spoken about the nature of your relationship, which remains unbearingly undefined. For a while, he weakly convinces himself that he doesn’t need to have that conversation with you. He’s young, he’s free, he should be able to enjoy casual sex without putting a label on it. The main problem, though, was that the sex could not be further from casual, at the very least not to Sunghoon.

He has never known anything quite like it. In mere weeks, you’ve both mastered the art of pleasuring each other. He understands your body like it’s his, knows what each of the sounds and expressions you make means. He knows where to touch you to have a kiss go from light-hearted to dizzyingly intense, how to move his mouth to have you arching your back and holding onto him for dear life. And you—he thinks your skin must be laced with cocaine, the way he can never get enough of it. 

But it’s always the moments afterwards that get him in his head. To him, casual sex means getting dressed the minute it’s over and going off to do other things, which is the absolute opposite of what you do. Whether it’s falling asleep together or spending Sundays in bed, you always stay together afterwards, curled up in each other’s arms as you talk away the hours, conversations interspersed with slow, lazy kisses. He’ll say things like, “You’re so pretty,” or “Why do you smell so good?” because he’s so smitten with you that he can never stop himself from uttering every compliment that flashes through his brain, but the things he really wants to say are harder to speak out loud. Even just a What are we?—three simple words that he can’t bring himself to ask, too scared it’ll ruin everything. 

Arguably worse is that sex isn’t even a requirement for when you and Sunghoon see each other. He goes on walks with you whenever you’ve spent too much time in the library and need some fresh air. You go shopping with him when his department throws a fundraiser and he needs a formal outfit. He cooks you your favorite meal when your period is particularly nasty. You sneak into the ice rink after his practice and let him ‘teach’ you how to skate, even though you already learned how with Jake when you were kids. Even mundane moments become fun when spent with you, and you share so many hobbies and interests that you never run out of things to do or talk about.

And yet, it feels like one step forward, two steps back with you—if you let him close one night, you’ll run away the next. A week will pass without you seeing each other outside of the library or group hang-outs, and if Sunghoon asks you out, you’ll say no, usually blaming the amount of work you have. He gets it—due to the nature of your degree and your being a fourth-year student, your workload is much heavier than his, with essays, translations and oral presentations due every other week. And that’s not even including midterms and finals. But still, he doesn’t see why you would need to stay at the library for ten hours straight for days on end. He’d start worrying about your health if you didn’t at least relax on weekends. 

So while Sunghoon wants nothing more than to go all in with you, he senses you holding back. He notices you avoiding eye contact during particularly intimate moments, and when you look at him perhaps too fondly for your liking, you quickly catch yourself and resume your neutral, sometimes almost cold expression. When he tries to broach more personal, sensitive topics, you always find a way to change the subject or turn the conversation towards him before you get too deep. 

As time passes, and especially as exam season nears, he can tell there’s something that you’re not telling him about. His suspicions are confirmed when you come back from a weekend at your parents’ house. He’s also been away for an out-of-town hockey game, and because he hasn’t had much time to text you (and because their team won, so he wants to show off a little), he’s particularly looking forward to seeing you again that Monday. It’s only been three days since you’ve last seen each other, but he misses you like crazy. 

But the minute you’re back, you bury yourself in work like never before, often waking up at ungodly hours and staying at the library until midnight. More than once, he stays behind with you, long after the others have gone, reminding you gently every hour that it might be time to go home and get some rest. The moments you actually agree are few and far between, and although he sticks it out at first, sleeping with his head on the table until you tell him you’re ready to go, your stubbornness soon starts frustrating him, and he ends up leaving when he gets too tired. He knows this is important to you, but he doesn’t understand why you have to go to these lengths—you’d still easily be one of the best students in your class without all this exertion. And despite his many attempts, you won’t tell him what’s wrong, won’t even admit that something is wrong—you keep repeating that “it’s just what exam season is like.”

When he asks your friends about it, they seem just as confused as he is. One evening when you have plans to order some food and watch a movie at your apartment, he shows up at the agreed time, but you’re nowhere to be found. Thankfully, the girls are there to let him up and not leave him standing outside in the rain. You don’t pick up when he calls you and call him back a minute later, apologizing profusely but still saying that there’s something you really need to finish first. If it was only a one-time thing, it wouldn’t make him as angry as it does—but this has been going on for almost two weeks now, and Sunghoon is close to boiling point. 

The fact that it’s been months since your date at the Japanese restaurant, and the only thing that you’ve said about what was happening between you and Sunghoon “didn’t have to change anything.” The fact that you’re essentially each other’s boyfriend and girlfriend without the label or the reassurance that comes with it. The fact that there’s something clearly bothering you but that you won’t tell him about it. The fact that this something is effectively coming between the two of you. Sunghoon was originally more worried about you than anything—now that studying has taken obvious precedence over him in your list of priorities, he’d be lying if he said his ego wasn’t wounded. He isn’t asking to be the number one most important thing in your life, and he knew before even meeting you that high academic performance meant a lot to you, but he likes to think he deserves at least a little bit of your time and attention. 

Except, does he really? It’s not like you’re actually dating.

There’s a pang in his heart as he remembers this fact that he should never have forgotten in the first place. It hurts—and so perhaps, he’s less patient than he ought to be.

“Whatever, Y/N. Don’t worry about it, just let me know when you have time for something other than getting As.”

He hangs up and meets your flatmates’ worried eyes. 

“She still at the library?” Chaewon asks, tone delicate as if trying not to scare off a wounded animal. Sunghoon nods, a deep sigh escaping his mouth. 

“She always studies a lot,” Minjeong starts, “but this is something else.”

“Have you guys tried saying something?”

The girls nod. “Even Jake has talked to her, but she won’t listen. And he usually always gets to her,” Minjeong says. 

He goes home soon afterwards and spends the rest of his evening in rumination, torn between his worry and his anger towards you—emotions which only increase as more days pass, and he sees less and less of you. Your behavior was already concerning while preparing for your exams and final assignments, it gets even worse when exams actually do start. He doesn’t hear from you for an entire week, and the one time you miraculously agree to a short group hang-out in the form of getting coffee, you’re only half there, physically present but mind far, far away. You barely react when the guys tell you about their victory at the latest hockey game—which you didn’t attend, as well as any other game recently. 

No matter how much he tries to put it out of his mind, to focus on his own exams and hockey games, you stay at the forefront of his thoughts. The hockey team is away for another out-of-town game when he decides to broach the subject with Jake, with whom he’s sharing a room. The entire semester, he’s been careful not to raise Jake’s suspicions about the two of you, both out of consideration for you, who’d mentioned you didn’t want your brother to know what was going on, and for himself, who would also rather Jake not know, at least not until your relationship became official. Which it never did. But now that all he gets from you is radio silence at a time when you’d usually be an hour into a FaceTime call, he can’t help himself.

Jake is just coming out of the bathroom, drying his hair with a towel, when Sunghoon takes his shot in the dark. “Have you heard from Y/N recently?” he asks as nonchalantly as he can, pretending to not be avidly waiting for his friend’s reaction by keeping his eyes on his phone.

“Y/N?” Jake echoes. “No, not really. Why?”

“Just ‘cause I haven’t seen her around much. I’m wondering if everything’s okay.”

“You mean her staying at the library all day?” Sunghoon nods; Jake sighs. “Yeah, she’ll snap out of it soon enough. She gets somewhat like this every time exams come around, but even I have to admit it’s pretty tough this time around. The last time I saw her like this was way back in high school, and that’s because our parents were watching right over her shoulder. It’s been better in university thanks to the distance.”

“So this has to do with your parents?”

“Oh, one hundred percent. She’s always wanted to do well at school, but she only gets this obsessive when our parents are involved.”

“I guess this did start after that weekend when she went home…” Sunghoon muses absent-mindedly. It could’ve passed off as an off-hand remark, but Jake pauses in his movements and looks at him warily.

“Yeah, she did… You noticed that, huh?”

Sunghoon pauses. This whole time, he was sure Jake was oblivious to anything happening between you and him—but he might have underestimated his friend. Like brother, like sister; he can hardly read either of you when he really needs to. Jake might genuinely be surprised that Sunghoon remembered your whereabouts that weekend, or he’s onto him. “I guess I did,” he finally says, going for as noncommittal an answer as he can.

Jake says nothing for a bit, and Sunghoon thinks he’s managed to get through the conversation without raising too much suspicion—until a minute later, when Jake speaks again. “Do you… like Y/N?”

Sunghoon freezes, snapping his head towards Jake, who’s lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling. His first instinct is to deny, but there’s no point pretending anymore. It’s one thing keeping it from Jake—lying to him about it is something else entirely. It’s an uncomfortable conversation, but it must be had. “Yeah, I do,” Sunghoon replies, guilt clear in his voice, more because he’s only now admitting it to Jake than because of his feelings themselves.

A shaky breath comes out of Jake’s mouth, as if this was the exact answer he had dreaded. “Right, okay. Since when?”

“Since I met her, basically.”

Jake’s head whips towards Sunghoon, and their gazes meet awkwardly. “Since that party in September?” he asks, shock written all over his face. Sunghoon nods, and to his surprise, Jake bursts out laughing. “Don’t tell me it’s because you accidentally matched costumes?”

Sunghoon looks away, frowning. “That might’ve helped things along,” he mumbles, embarrassment washing over him as Jake’s laughter intensifies. At least he was taking it well—a bit too well, perhaps.

“You’re so predictable, man,” Jake says when he’s calmed down, wiping a tear from his eye. 

“How did you know, anyway?”

“You’ve been pretty obvious with it recently,” Jake replies after a few seconds. “I could tell you were a bit shy around her at first, and when it got better I just thought you’d become friends or something. But when she showed up with your jacket at every game and you never left her side at parties, I assumed something else was going on. You’ve always been staying behind at the library these days, and I know you don’t have that much work.”

Sunghoon chuckles. “I guess I haven’t been trying hard to hide it lately.”

“Yeah, why would you hide it in the first place? You could’ve just told me.”

“I didn’t want to make things weird.”

Jake frowns. “It wouldn’t have been weird. If anything, hiding it makes it weirder.”

“I just thought, if one of my friends had a crush on my sister, I’d probably rather they hid it. Like, I don’t need to know about that,” Sunghoon says, and it makes Jake laugh.

“Dude, Y/N and I are only a year apart. Do you know how many guys have come up to me asking me for her number or advice on how to ask her out? It’s been, like, one every few months since middle school. Guys here especially have no shame telling me how hot they find her.”

Sunghoon makes a face. He doesn’t disagree, but he’d never go out of his way to tell your brother how exquisite you looked in certain outfits. “That’s gross.”

“Yeah, it is. But you’re my friend, not some greasy rando, so I trust you. If anything, I’d probably have to tell her to be nice to you, and not the other way around.”

“Yeah, you could say that again,” Sunghoon grumbles, then realizes his mistake immediately, eyes widening.

“What do you mean?” Jake asks, sounding genuine at first, but when Sunghoon stays quiet for a couple seconds, debating whether he should just lay the truth bare, Jake sits up on the bed and repeats his question, his tone much warier this time around. Sunghoon glances at him then looks away guiltily.

“Well, to be completely honest… We’ve sort of been seeing each other, kind of. But it’s complicated.”

Jake flops back down on his mattress with a grunt. “Who else knows?” he asks, rubbing at his eyes with his hands as if suddenly very exhausted.

“Everyone…”

“Everyone?!”

“Well, Jay, Minjeong, Yunjin and Chaewon.”

“So everyone.”

“Basically, yeah.”

“Great.” Jake sighs. “Since when?”

“Since October,” Sunghoon mumbles, feeling guiltier than ever. He’s belatedly realizing that it would’ve been much easier to have everything out in the open from the get-go, both with you and with Jake; now he’s both stuck in situationship limbo and has to face the consequences of keeping something this important from one of his closest friends. “Are you upset?” Sunghoon asks, feeling a bit like a ten-year-old.

“Kinda, yeah, but more at her than at you. I’ve told her not to go after anyone from the hockey team.”

“‘Cause of Heeseung?”

“Yeah. God, that was messy. He gave her mixed signals for so long, I could barely talk to him without thinking of her crying for so long. And now he’s the one who can’t quite look me in the eye,” Jake says, shaking his head at the mere thought of his captain.

“Was it that bad? She made it seem like it wasn’t that big of a deal.”

Jake raises his eyebrows. “Really? It upset her for a while though,” he says, then turns his head to look at the ceiling again. “I guess that’s not so surprising of her. She sometimes likes pretending she doesn’t have any emotions, even though I’m pretty sure she has more than most people.”

“Huh.” That would explain some things, Sunghoon muses. Emotions are not a topic that comes up very often with you, and every time he’s gotten an inkling of them, you seem to shut it all down immediately.

“But you know, I’m more surprised than anything. About… about it all, really. Not just that you’re only telling me now, but that it’s lasted this long. She must really like you.”

“You think?” Sunghoon says, his face brightening with hope, the words slipping from him before he can stop them once again. He shrinks when Jake laughs at him.

“Look at you. Down bad, huh?”

“Shut up.”

“But yeah, dude. I’ve told you about this. I’ve never seen her in a relationship, ever. Says she doesn’t have the time,” Jake says, air-quoting you. “I’ve only had the displeasure of seeing her go home with one-night-stands. You know that since she started college, she’s had a rule that she’d only see someone three times and that was it?��

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, so she wouldn’t catch feelings. I’m telling you, she’s crazy. So you must be special.”

Sunghoon can’t stop the smile from spreading on his lips—special. But it doesn’t make him feel that much better, either. “It’s not like we’re actually dating, so I’m not sure how special I can be…”

Jake’s head turns to look at Sunghoon again, but the younger boy keeps his eyes trained on the ceiling fan above him. “What’s happening between you guys?”

A blush creeps on Sunghoon’s cheeks. “Is this something you really want to talk about?”

“Well, spare me the gruesome details, please,” Jake says, chuckling, “but yeah, I would like to know what’s going on with my best friend and my sister.”

“I’m your best friend?” Sunghoon says, grinning as he meets Jake’s gaze, who rolls his eyes.

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Fine.” He sighs. “Well, I didn’t think it would happen more than once-”

“What would happen more than once?”

Sunghoon pauses. “Well, you know…” Jake gives him a look as if to say, Well, no, I don’t know, so Sunghoon is forced to go on: “Sleeping together.”

“You guys slept together?!” Jake exclaims, sitting up on his bed once again.

“Yeah, what did you think?”

“I don’t know, just that you were going on dates, hanging out one-on-one, or whatever…”

“Well, we were.”

“Ugh, whatever,” Jake says, waving his hand in front of his face like swatting a fly away. “So, not just once, then?”

“No. And I thought it’d be a one-time thing, ‘cause a few days afterwards she said something about it not having to change our friendship…”

“Damn.”

“Yeah. But then it did. Happen again, I mean. And it’s been happening frequently since. But we’re not… dating dating. We haven’t had that conversation.”

Jake frowns. “Why not?”

Sunghoon releases a shaky breath. Why not, indeed. “‘Cause she hasn’t mentioned it. And I’m too scared to do it.”

“What are you scared of?”

“The typical stuff. What we have now… it’s not what I want, but it’s managed to not disrupt the group, you know. I’m scared that if I tell her how I feel, it’ll make things awkward between the two of us, and between all of us by extension.”

“Well, it might,” Jake says after thinking for a few seconds. “I wish I could tell you with certainty that she’ll like you back, but I honestly can’t. As obvious as you were towards her, she was not giving anything away.” Sunghoon chuckles, more out of self-deprecation than anything. This was not the pep talk he had hoped for. “But, I can tell you that she won’t be the type to make things awkward. You have nothing to risk by telling her, because in the long run, you’ll be better off that way. I know you, Sunghoon. You’ll be miserable if you can’t be fully yourself with someone.”

Decidedly, Sunghoon’s friends had a way of telling him the exact opposite of the things he wanted to hear while being completely right. He wishes things with you could stay the same — minus the overworking yourself and ignoring him in the process — and that he wouldn’t have to do anything that might make them change. But just as Jake said, he’d also reach a point where he couldn’t take it anymore—a point he was already inching closer and closer to with every passing day. He likes you enough to let you not define the relationship, but he likes you too much to let it go on. He likes you too much to not be able to tell you, and show you, and remind you of it every day. He hated having to hold back, and he hated feeling you holding back. He wanted to give you his all and he wanted all of you, too, not just bite-sized portions of you.

“You’re right,” he finally says. “I haven’t been able to talk to her lately, but I’ll have to tell her soon enough. When her exams are over, I guess.”

Jake sighs. “Yeah. I don’t know if there’s any getting through to her right now.”

“She’s blown me off so many times! I don’t know what she’s doing, spending so many hours in that library. I’d go insane.”

“She’s a perfectionist,” Jake says, shaking his head. “I’ve talked to her about it. When it comes to school, she needs everything to be as flawless as can be. She spends hours re-reading and editing her work. It’s not good.”

“Not really, no.”

“But she’s only got a week left. I’ll try to convince her not to go home for too long, and it’ll be better after the holidays. Then we’ll make sure there’s not a repeat of this next exam season.”

He thinks of Christmas break and of not seeing you for two weeks; of next semester and going through all of this with you a second time. The uncertainty, the fooling around behind your friends’ backs — although that might not be needed now that Jake is in on it too — Sunghoon’s not sure if he can go through it all again. “Yeah, we will.”

--

They lose their game the following day. They had an amazing run, either winning or tying every game so far; this loss is not enough to make them drop significantly in the rankings, but it’s enough to demoralize Sunghoon. It couldn’t have come at a worse time—between you and this failed game, his self-esteem is taking a real hit.

He dared hope for some comfort from you once he was back, but in vain. He doesn’t know why he imagined your attitude might’ve changed overnight, and when he texts you asking to hang out, the same old sorry I can’t atm fills his phone screen. And just like that, as strong as his feelings for you have been all this time, so is his resentment—unwarranted, perhaps, but he thinks he deserves better than this, and he’s both angry at you for not giving him anything and at himself for letting it happen.

Now, he’s the one who spends hours working himself to the bone in the ice rink, who’s clearly preoccupied with other things when everyone gets together, and who doesn’t even show up to the party the whole group goes to when you’re all done with exams. The last game before winter break is in two days, and he doesn’t want to waste a day nursing a hangover when he could be practicing.

That night, he thinks everyone is out at some random club downtown, so he does a double-take when it’s past eleven p.m. and you show up at the rink. He’s skating laps, practicing his speed and his goal-shooting, only noticing you when you’re standing in the middle of the rink. He almost skates right into you.

“Y/N?” he asks, not completely sure you’re not just a figment of his imagination. He’s so exhausted, he wouldn’t be surprised if he were dreaming you up.

“Jay texted me.”

“Oh. Why?” He’s out of breath, and the words come out blunter than he intends them to.

“Because it’s almost midnight and you’re still here,” you reply, crossing your arms over your chest. There’s a hint of a smile on your lips, but your eyebrows are furrowed in what looks like worry. It’s the first time Sunghoon’s seeing you concerned over something other than an assignment. 

He shrugs and resumes his laps, slower this time, forcing you to keep turning on your feet. “I’m practicing. There’s a big game coming up.”

“Which is exactly why you should be resting, like everyone else on your team right now.”

He resists rolling his eyes. “Why would I rest when I could be getting better?”

“Because you need rest as much as you need practice. You won’t be any use on the rink if you’re too tired to play properly.”

“And I won’t be any use if I can’t shoot properly, either.”

“Sunghoon, you need a break. You’re clearly exhausted-Will you stop it?” you suddenly snap. “I’m trying to talk to you, and I’m getting dizzy.” 

Your small outburst only has him growing more agitated, and even though he does stop, it’s more so you can see the annoyance on his face than anything. “You know, this is a bit rich coming from you, Y/N.” He knows this is not the right time to bring this up—if he has grievances against you, he shouldn’t be bringing them up when he’s already frustrated. He’s well aware of this, but he can’t help himself.

You scoff. “Excuse me?”

“You’re the one who spends twelve hours a day in the library during exams and does not budge even if I tell you you should go home.”

“That’s different-”

“How is it any different?” he interrupts, voice rising. “You don’t listen to me when you overwork yourself. I don’t see why I should.”

“So you realize that you’re overworking yourself?”

“Of course I do! But I have to.”

“No, you don’t-”

“Y/N, please. I have to win as much as you have to get the top grades. Is it actually necessary? No, but you know how shit it feels not to.”

“And it’s exactly because I know that feeling that I’m telling you to stop. You’re just feeding into it.”

“So are you, staying until 2 a.m. in the library. You’ve never once gone home when I asked you to.”

“Again, that’s different-”

“How?! How is it different? Please enlighten me, ‘cause they’re the exact same thing to me.”

You sigh. A sudden sadness appears on your face. Sunghoon is torn between wanting to see this to its end and taking everything he’s said back. But he keeps quiet, and your eyes, when they meet his again, harden. “Are you really gonna make me say it?”

“Yes.”

As if you couldn’t say your next words while looking at him, you tear your gaze away from his face. “Because I’m actually concerned about you, here. The only reason you want me to stop and go home is so we can fuck.”

Sunghoon is so astounded that all words fail him—he stares at you, mouth wide open like you just shot him. After a few seconds, all he’s able to come up with is an incredulous, “What?” His voice is a mere whisper. 

“You heard me,” you say coldly.

He closes his mouth and swallows. “So… you’re the one who’s worried, and I’m only after sex?”

You glance at him. “Yeah.”

A chuckle escapes Sunghoon’s throat, then another, until laughter spills out of him uncontrollably. He feels like the world is upside down. How could you have lived the same thing and come out of it with such different perspectives? Your account of his intentions with you is so ridiculous and unfathomable to him that he can’t do anything but laugh.

You seem taken aback at first, but your surprise quickly turns into annoyance. “Something funny?”

“Hilarious, actually,” he says, holding his stomach. He takes a deep breath, trying to calm himself. All he finds at the end of his amusement is anger, bright red and hot. It’s not an emotion he feels often, its rarity only serving as an intensifier—he starts making his way out of the rink before it can explode and hit you in its wake. “Well, that’s convinced me to call it a day. So you got what you came for, I guess.”

His fingers tremble as he undoes the laces on his skates and puts his sneakers on again. You stand by the door of the rink, holding onto the frame as you look at him, that same sad look still on your face. “Hoon,” you say, voice weak. What would usually have him melting only has his anger flare harder.

“Don’t. For the first time ever, I actually really don’t want to talk to you right now.” He stands up, gives you one last harsh look, and turns away. He only halts right before exiting the bleacher area, and after a couple seconds of thinking, turns back around. “Oh, but don’t worry, I’ll let you know when I want to fuck again. Since that’s all this is, clearly.”

--

It seemed to you no one thought you were good enough for Sunghoon.

Only Yunjin and Chaewon seemed excited at the prospect of the two of you getting together, or at least getting to know each other, but they were also the type to coo at dogs in the street and tear up at the sight of old people holding hands; Minjeong was apprehensive from the start, and made it clear; Jay was indifferent; Jake was oblivious for a while. Sunghoon was…

What was Sunghoon?

Someone who had come out of nowhere, shaken up your routine and messed with your head. That’s what Sunghoon was. He didn’t seem apologetic in the slightest.

Maybe it was your fault for not opening up to the people closest to you and letting them think you were some kind of no-strings-attached one-night-stands-only emotionless maneater who had been single for as long as they had known her, who would be seen with someone new every few months, and never for long, who, as far as the eye could tell, only used men for sex. Maybe it was their fault for never trying to dig deeper.

No, okay, it was definitely your fault.

Based on your conversations with your friends, they thought Heeseung had broken your heart, and you had never bounced back properly. He’d hurt you so much, you couldn’t fathom a real relationship anymore—you could only be with someone casually. Which wasn’t so far from the truth, but what Heeseung had done was much worse than just breaking your heart. He’d confirmed what you already knew of yourself: you want too much. You want what you can’t have, what you don’t deserve.

From the moment you met Park Sunghoon, you knew you didn’t deserve someone like him. Minjeong seemed to agree, and when she saw you and him together at choir that Saturday in September, three months ago already, she made sure you knew her thoughts on the matter.

“This is so… unlike you,” was the first thing she’d said after she pulled you aside. 

“What is?”

“This,” she repeated, waving her arms around. “Being here. Coming with him.” She pointed at Sunghoon, whose hair was being ruffled by one grandma and his cheek pulled by another. He kept glancing back worriedly at you—you liked him so much already. “See? You’re smiling at him,” she said, making you realize a sappy smile had started growing on your lips at the sight of him. Your face dropped and you scoffed at the disgust in her voice.

“Yeah, some of us like to smile. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Y/N, you know what I’m trying to say.”

“I don’t think I do, actually.”

She sighed. “You don’t do this. You don’t meet a guy and show up to his choir practice the next morning. What’s happening?”

You crossed your arms over your chest. Had you known your presence would be questioned like that, you might’ve thought twice about coming. “Can’t a girl enjoy a choir without getting interrogated these days?”

“You’re avoiding my question! Listen, Y/N. Sunghoon is not the kind of guy you usually go for. He’s-Stop. Don’t smile at me like that.”

“If you like Sunghoon, you can just tell me. You know I wouldn’t stoop so low as to go after a guy my best friend likes.”

“So you are going after him?”

“So you do like him?”

Minjeong shook her head violently and put her hands on your shoulders, staring into your brain as if trying to make you see some sense. Calmly, she said, “No, I don’t. Sunghoon’s nice, but he is so far from my type. He’s too… nice.”

“You mean he doesn’t wear leather jackets or ride a motorcycle?”

“That was once. But no, he doesn’t do that. And what I’m trying to tell you is that he’s not your type either.”

“And how have you gathered that?”

“Because so far, you’ve only wisely chosen guys who are as detached and emotionally stunted as you.”

“I’m not-”

“But he’s not like that, Y/N. He’s the bring-home-to-your-parents-for-Christmas type. Not the hump-and-dump type.”

“I’m starting to get offended by this conversation.”

“All I’m saying is, don’t go breaking his heart. Or yours, for that matter. It pains me to say but I care about both of you very much and I don’t see this going anywhere good.”

You shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Was her opinion of your romantic tendencies — or lack thereof — that bad that she couldn’t even recommend you to her friend? You felt like a chastised child whose mom told you you couldn’t get the toy you wanted. Despite being well aware that you weren’t the most committed when it came to relationships, you still felt like she was going overboard. Just because nothing had stuck so far didn’t mean it wouldn’t now—she was acting like you went around playing with people’s feelings for fun.

“Jesus, this is my second time seeing him. I just wanna see what his deal is. I’m not breaking anyone’s heart, okay?” 

The choir conductor had called out for everyone to gather on stage then, and that was the end of that conversation. You still remember how funny of a thing it was, seeing Sunghoon in his nice shirt and trousers, his hair falling into his eyes, singing diligently with the choir, when just the night before he had been playing beer pong dressed as Cowboy Ken. In this new light, you understood why Minjeong was so adamant about him not being your usual type, and why the grandmas were fussing over him. You hadn’t known what had pushed you to invite yourself to this rehearsal, and even then as you sat there, you weren’t sure what you were doing or why you couldn’t stop smiling as you watched Sunghoon sing. 

Time made things clearer, starting with that afternoon at the beach. The salt in the air that day had clouded your thoughts, covered them with a thin layer so that your usual reluctance to share anything remotely personal had dimmed. Or maybe it had had nothing to do with the air and everything to do with the boy sitting next to you on the sand, the way words came tumbling out of your mouth before you could think about them and were only met with understanding and empathy on his part. For once, you didn’t feel the need to guard yourself, to adapt your words and actions to the person in front of you. It was something you didn’t know was possible with a near stranger—perhaps because Sunghoon felt nothing like one.

He made you feel things you hadn’t felt in a long time; things you had been craving to feel, needed almost as much as oxygen. Being with him felt like breathing again. But you had been underwater so long, being on land again felt foreign, scary, and you couldn’t help but dive back into safe waters, coming up for air once in a while.

Whether he had intended to or not, Sunghoon had started to scratch at your surface, until he’d burrowed a small hole—shallow, but enough for cracks to appear, cracks you were quick to put back together as best as you could.

So when his gaze was too tender, his touches too gentle, you bristled. You went away, because you were afraid of what might happen if you stayed. The more you wanted to give him, the less you gave him anything at all. Your own desire overwhelmed you. His letterman jacket was warm around your shoulders, you proudly walked around with the four letters of his last name on your back, but you couldn’t get out of your mind how cold it would be if it was one day ripped away from you. 

You thought of Heeseung, how disillusioned you had been when you thought you had finally met someone who would love you the way you had always yearned to be, only for him to toss you away when you started asking for too much. You thought of your friends in middle school, how it seemed that no friendship could be more wonderful until you overheard them talking about you at a sleepover, about how clingy you were. You thought of your parents, how they had only bestowed kind words upon you when you performed well in your role of perfect daughter, of academically gifted child. How they hadn’t even glanced at any of the drawings you’d done of the four of you, mother, father, son and daughter holding hands with a bright yellow sun in the corner of the sky. How they had pushed you away from their bed when you seeked some comfort after a terrible nightmare. How they had never bothered to hide their disappointment when you came home from school with anything less than an A. How they had shunned your brother for not going down the path they had envisioned for him, how hard you had to fight to make them accept yours was not a worthless one.

Even your best friend seemed to think you were unable to receive affection of the likes of Sunghoon’s—but what you were afraid of was that he wouldn’t handle the amount of affection you knew you were able to give. In a way, that was what had drawn you to Sunghoon in the first place—from the moment you’d met him, you had been able to tell there was something of you in him. It seemed to you he had a heart that was overflowing with love, love to give, love to spare on whoever would have it. In his words, you were him. Nevertheless, your fear of getting hurt overrode your desire to feel Sunghoon’s love, and you didn’t know whether you would be able to revert to your nature after having spent so much time perfecting your new facade.

You knew what it was like to be cold. And so you prematurely braced yourself for it by pushing away Sunghoon’s warmth. If it was going to happen at some point, like Minjeong had hinted it would, might as well get used to it, right?

Except the cold never came. Sunghoon kept on burning relentlessly, no matter how much wood you fed his fire with—you could cling to him for nights on end or ignore his texts for days, without fail, he’d welcome you with his usual, unwavering warmth. He allowed you to bask in it, to momentarily let down your defenses. But something always happened to make you raise them back up—Minjeong would eye the two of you suspiciously, Heeseung would post on Instagram (Is one of the girls on slide five his new fling? Are they serious and it wasn’t that he wasn’t ready for a relationship, it’s that he didn’t want one with me?), or your mom would text you to ask you whether everything was okay.

Yet increasingly, you suspected there was something behind Sunghoon’s warmth, something you had missed, something that was tricking you. He looked at you like you had hung the stars in the night sky, yes; in public, a knowing look from you was enough to have his face turn bright red, and in private, one simple touch had his chest heaving, yes; he expressed disappointment every time you turned him down for a hang-out. Your attachment to him grew, and it became harder to put what the two of you had into words.

It wasn’t just sex—it couldn’t be. It ran deeper than that. You knew what relationships that consisted of just sex were like, and this wasn’t that, it was too good, too intimate to be just that. But you weren’t a couple, that much was clear. Only four other people were aware something was even going on, your brother not included, and you acted as regular friends in front of everyone. Jake had insisted you didn’t fool around with another member of his hockey team because his relationship with Heeseung had already deteriorated enough, he didn’t need to be on weird terms with anyone else on your behalf, so you were not keen on letting him know about what you got up to with Sunghoon. Anyway, even if everyone on earth was in on your shenanigans, you and Sunghoon hadn’t convened on what it all meant. Who knew what was going on in his head? You were no stranger to how deceitful men could be when they were after certain bodily pleasures. Unless Sunghoon said it in so many words, multiple times, you would not be a hundred percent sure he wasn’t only looking to get laid, or wanted someone to act like his girlfriend without the label and the obligations that came with it.

Because you basically were acting like his girlfriend, and he like your boyfriend. You always went to each other. Always, only each other. Whether he needed a second opinion on an outfit, you needed a rant session about your dissertation, either of you a really good orgasm, it was each other you went to.

You waited for him to initiate a conversation about the status of your relationship like one waits for church bells to ring at the turn of the hour—you knew it was coming, but the sound might be too much to bear. And the longer you had to wait, the more you dreaded it. Because how would you react when the time came? You didn’t trust yourself not to run away; neither did Minjeong.

The cold hadn’t come yet. You couldn’t let yourself feel the warmth unreservedly. It was all unpleasantly lukewarm.

Then you went home for a weekend.

It was a good friend from school’s birthday, and despite having spent a lot of time with Sunghoon at the expense of studying, you had done well this semester and thought you deserved a break. After having been away for so long, you had started to underestimate the power of your need for your parents’ approval over you. One small instance that your brother and many other people would’ve brushed off easily was enough to set you off—that same cold look of disappointment when you decided to be honest and told them one of your courses was deadly boring all while being unnecessarily complicated and you had received a low B-grade in it. They barely spoke to you for the rest of the evening.

Exams were a mere few weeks away when you got back. You buried yourself in work, forgot everything and everyone else, even Sunghoon, even yourself.

The cold hadn’t come yet, so you sought it out for yourself.

At the same time, you hadn’t indulged in enough introspection to realize how frustrated you had been at Sunghoon for not trying to create defined boundaries around your relationship. You were unable to do it yourself, you unrealistically wanted him to do the work for the both of you, you got upset when he didn’t. What you were able to do was make up reasons why he wasn’t giving you the what are we talk—he doesn’t like you that much, he just wants sex, he’s settling for you until he finds the next best thing, the real thing. This wasn’t leading anywhere, so you cut it off before he could.

You set foot in the library at seven thirty a.m. on a Monday and every following day of that week, then the next, then the next. He managed to pull you out every now and then—you weren’t that strong against his big pleading eyes, his soft messy hair, his warm hands that entirely covered yours. 

Oftentimes, you were too tired at the end of a long library day to have sex. Sunghoon never held it against you—he seemed more than happy to cook you dinner, let you fall asleep halfway during a movie you had chosen, and cuddle all night long. But your body burned with resentment at his mere presence in your bed, in your home, in your text messages. Who was he to stop you from studying, from achieving your goals, to distract you from that top grade just so he could get off? Even your friends and brother weren’t trying so hard to make you take breaks. The worry that furrowed his eyebrows, which you used to want to see fade away with a caress of your thumb, now infuriated you to no end, it seemed — to you — put-on. He kissed your neck and you wanted to push him away instead of melt into him like you had before.

It was his turn to leave for a weekend for an out-of-town hockey game, and you convinced yourself his absence came as a relief. But on the Sunday evening they got back, as you came out of the library, you spotted your brother waiting right outside of the building.

“Why is it so hard to reach you?” he said when he saw you in lieu of a greeting. “What’s the point of having a phone if you don’t even use it? I called you, like, five times.” “It was on airplane mode.” He rolled his eyes so hard, you could almost hear them moving beneath their lids. “What have you done to Sunghoon?” You stopped dead in your tracks. “Sunghoon? What about him?” you asked, chest constricting at the mere thought of him and at the implication that something had happened to him, even if you were the cause. He hadn’t said it in so many words, but it was clear the truth had been revealed to Jake, and for some reason, it didn’t surprise you. You knew they roomed together and assumed Sunghoon must’ve told him. You tried your best to take it in stride. “I thought we said the hockey team was off-limits after Heeseung,” he said sternly. “Also, Sunghoon, of all people?” he adds before you can say anything. “That’s like, my bro. And he’s the nicest guy ever. Not the perfect pick for one of your victims, I must say-” “Oh, please, he’s not a victim. He’s a consenting adult.” “Then why is he so upset over you spending more time studying than with him?” “That’s the male ego for you, Jakey.” Your brother sighed deeply. “He’s really hurt, Y/N. If you were going to reject him, you could’ve done it nicely.”

You frowned. “Who said anything about rejecting him?”

“You’ve shut him out. You’ve shut all of us out.” Jake was staring at you, trying to get you to look at him, but you kept your gaze on the ground and kicked non-existent pebbles around, hands hiding in your coat pockets. “You might not have meant it as one, but he took it as a rejection.”

You scoff. “There was nothing to reject. It’s not like we’re actually together.”

“Yeah, thanks for telling me anything was going on, by the way.”

“It wasn’t any of your business.”

“It is, ‘cause it concerns my sister and my best friend.”

“He’s your best friend?” you echo, a teasing smile on your lips. He rolls his eyes again.

“God, maybe you guys aren’t so bad together after all. But Y/N—I’m serious. You need to do something.”

“Why can’t he?”

“Because you’re the one who’s been fucking around.”

Ouch. “You’ve known about this whole thing for what, two days, and you’re already blaming me for the fact that it’s not going perfectly? How little do you think of me?”

“I don’t think little of you, Y/N, I just know you have a track record of not being serious about relationships.”

Your body tensed up. Maybe it had been a particularly long day. Maybe it had been a long time coming. Tears well up in your eyes—a sight you’ve not let your brother see in many, many years.

“You know what, fuck this, Jake. I’m stressed enough as it is. I’ve done my best with what I have, and you don’t get to pin this on me. As if I was the only person in that relationship. If Sunghoon has a problem, he can take it up with me directly.”

You walked away. Jake called after you once, and when you didn’t come back, caught up with you. “I’m sorry, Y/N. I don’t wanna upset you. I just-I hate seeing him hurt, you know? And you too.”

“I’m glad my feelings are of some importance to you.”

“Of course they are,” Jake said, too concerned to detect the sarcasm in your words. “And you’re right, I’ve only heard Sunghoon’s side of the story. But it really sounded like-”

“Listen, Jakey, I really don’t wanna do this right now. Let’s talk about it when exams are over. I can’t have anything else taking up mental space. I mixed up my Greek third declension endings earlier.”

“God forbid.”

After some arguing, Jake let you off the hook—“Just for now,” he said. You’d get him to recount his and Sunghoon’s conversation in excruciating detail later.

You come out of an evening of contemplation resenting Sunghoon for bitching about you to your brother, of all people. As if he had been begging on his hands and knees for your devotion, as if you had been cool-headed and detached and not thinking he’ll ask me to be his girlfriend any second now every time you spent time together. You told yourself you were well and truly done with him for the time being. If there was anything to salvage, that was future you’s problem.

But late on Thursday evening, Jay sent you a voice message, something he only did when he was gravely drunk, shouting over loud chatter and rap music that Sunghoon hadn’t shown up to a party and was apparently still practicing. You’d caught wind of their loss at the game, and even though your heart had swollen with concern for Sunghoon, very well aware of how important winning was to him, you’d managed to squash it down. You had bigger fish to fry, namely, an Italian written exam that made up 75% of your overall grade for that course. But after ten minutes of re-reading the same three lines of an article from Republicca, you couldn’t get the image of Sunghoon skirting endlessly around the ice rink and potentially hurting himself out of your head. You told yourself you only had this one exam left and plenty of time to revise for it, packed up your things and headed for the rink.

It was past eleven p.m. when you got there. The rest is history. 

Your grievances came out in an ugly way, but Sunghoon’s refusal to listen to you got the best of your nerves, and although you really did feel that your worry was more genuine than his, you didn’t truly believe that all he wanted from you was sex—at least, you hoped it wasn’t. It was the first time you ever saw any sort of negative emotion on Sunghoon’s handsome features, be it anger, sadness or pain. It tugged at your heartstrings, made you want to wrap him in your arms and get him away from whatever it was that tugged his eyebrows into a frown—even if that was you.

Now, as if the water has inched up your ankles and frozen over, your feet stay planted on the ice for a while after he’s stormed off. You don’t even realize you’re crying until a hot, salty teardrop falls on your lips.

Your feet regain control of themselves, and they seem to move of their own accord as they guide you right in front of Sunghoon’s dorm room. You’re barely conscious as your knuckles rasp against the door, and the tears that had fallen back behind your eyes spill out once more as soon as your eyes meet his. He’s just come out of the shower, a white towel wrapped around his hips, another one that he uses to dry his hair. His movements stop when he realizes who’s standing at his door, mouth falling slightly agape, chest visibly rising and falling. He’s so beautiful, you feel your heart breaking all over again.

Sobs pour uncharacteristically out of you, so much so that you have to hide your face behind your eyes. He ushers you in, holds you tight as everything flows out, the stress, the resentment, the loneliness, the longing. How could he be so close yet so far away this whole time? Did he want those miles of distance between you, or had you forced them upon him?

Sunghoon smoothes your hair down and shushes you, telling you it’s okay and that he’s here, voice strangled as if he’s on the verge of crying, too. A part of you still feels angry towards him, but the bigger part of you knows only he can give you the comfort you need.

“I missed you,” you say when you’ve calmed down partly. You only realize how true those words are once you’ve spoken them. You’ve missed waking up next to him, watching trashy reality TV together, taking coffee breaks that lasted too long in-between study sessions. You’ve missed the scent of his hair, the scent of his skin, you’ve missed watching the way his back muscles shift at the slightest of movements, feeling the weight of his head as he lay on your chest. All for a bunch of As you would’ve gotten without exerting yourself so much anyway.

“I missed you too, baby. Where did you go?” Just like that, you break down again, and he dissolves into apologies. “You’re here now, it’s all that matters,” he whispers against your hair.

“You didn’t see them, Hoon. You didn’t see the way they looked at me,” you say, struggling to speak, unsure you’re even making any sense but unable to stop. “I got As in everything, I worked so hard. Just one B, one week where I had four things due at the same time. Their faces, Hoon, like they were thinking, what was the point of letting me do this degree if I wasn’t even going to excel in it?”

“But you do excel in it, Y/N. You’re amazing at what you do. And even if you weren’t, you love it, and that’s what matters the most.”

“Not to them, it doesn’t.”

“Then forget them.”

“I can’t, Hoon,” you say, voice trembling. “I just can’t. I need them to be proud of me.”

“Isn’t it enough to be proud of yourself?”

“I wish it was.”

“Does it help if I tell you how proud I am of you and of how hard you’ve worked?”

He doesn’t see it, your face is still hidden in the crook of his shoulder, but a small smile makes its way to your lips. “A bit.”

“Then I’ll tell you everyday until you don’t need their approval anymore. They don’t deserve you, Y/N. They don’t even see what an amazing, beautiful, smart daughter they have. Or her sort-of-okay brother.” You laugh, and so does he. Sunghoon’s words and soothing touch against your back already alleviate the weight on your heart. “But I see it.”

You lift your head to look at Sunghoon. His eyes are glassy. “You see how amazing, beautiful and smart Jake is?”

He laughs again as he tucks a stray strand of hair behind your ear. “Yeah, exactly.” The way he looks at you makes you wish you could go back to the day you met him and right all of your wrongs. No more hiding or running away. You only want to stay under that gaze of his. But sadness soon replaces the joy in his eyes. “You mean so much more to me than you give yourself credit for, Y/N. This has never been just about sex for me. Not even for a second.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Then what has it been about?” 

He frowns like a student in an advanced math class who’s just been asked what three plus three is—isn’t it obvious?

“I love you.”

Your eyes dart between his as if searching for any trace of deceit there. Of course, you don’t find any—because there hasn’t been any since the start. You’d let your own fears invent things that weren’t there. Your lips tremble and you find yourself bawling on his shoulder once more, your tears like a well that digs deeper and deeper so as to never run out of water.

“I hope these are good tears,” Sunghoon says light-heartedly, but you can detect the nervousness behind his words. You nod your head vigorously, willing yourself to say something back, but your tears overflow, make your breath hitch.

“Why didn’t you say anything earlier?” you manage in between sobs.

“I didn’t think it was the kind of thing you wanted to hear,” he explains.

“I was waiting for you to say something.”

“I didn’t know. I thought I was being obvious enough.”

“You probably were. I was the one who couldn’t see it,” you admit.

“I thought you didn’t want me like that.”

“I thought you didn’t want me like that.”

Sunghoon chuckles, a sound of relief. “I’ve wanted you like that since the start.”

“I think I have too.”

“You think?”

You lift your head again and when your eyes meet Sunghoon’s, it feels like coming out of your hiding place hours after the round of hide-and-seek was over. He hadn’t forgotten to come and find you. He was waiting for you to reveal yourself.

Which goes against the rules of hide-and-seek, but you don’t blame him.

You smile; he smiles, deep dimples carving crescents into his cheeks. “I love you, too.”

You hadn’t realized how cold your hands were until Sunghoon found them.

--

Everything after that was a blurry mess of tangled limbs, warm kisses, happy tears and relieved laughter.

Your touch had always been intoxicating, but Sunghoon was particularly sensitive to it that night. The mix of not having felt you close in weeks and the heightened emotions driven by your confessions made his skin tingle everywhere it came in contact with yours. He’d never slept so little without regretting it in the morning.

It goes without saying that most of the night was not spent talking, but you still had things you needed to discuss. The two of you laid out all of your fears, and Sunghoon was immensely relieved to finally get a glimpse into that mind of yours. He made you promise to always tell him what was going on, and he promised you you’d never be too much for him. Always just right.

Now, he gets to wait outside of your exam hall with your favorite flowers in hand, to put his arm around your shoulders during movie nights instead of holding your hand beneath the blanket, to kiss you over the barrier at the end of a hockey game he won. Heeseung’s narrowed eyes at the sight of the two of you is an added bonus.

You text him that you’ll hang around the locker rooms after the game so that you can head to the party together. The end of December is nearing and you can’t wait for the new year, for twelve whole months of not hiding your feelings for Sunghoon from anyone, not even from yourself, least of all from him. At least, that’s what you told him in a sappy, drunken voice message at two a.m. the previous night when the girls made you drink a bottle of prosecco to yourself—their way of congratulating you for an arduous but successful exam period.

He steps out of the locker rooms with Jake and Jay. You’ve never looked quite as pretty, face lighting up as you spot the three of them, his jersey on your shoulders. You’d worn it during your last exam—“I thought it might bring me luck to wear a pretty boy’s name on my back,” you’d told him, to which he’d replied that it was good practice for when you actually took his last name. You’d looked away, fighting a smile.

Now your smile is full-blown as you look at him, but the downside of being an official couple is that Jake has now more material to tease the both of you with.

“Oh my God, you waited for me, what a sweet sister I have been blessed with!” he exclaims, arms outstretched as he barrels towards you.

“Fuck off, Sim,” you say but accept his hug nonetheless. “Nice game.”

“I know.” He pulls away and ruffles your hair. Jay nods at you like you’re someone he shared a class with back in second year and not his friend of almost three years.

As if on cue, just as Sunghoon reaches you and envelops you in a hug, Jake turns around and yells loud enough for all the players spilling out of the locker rooms, “And don’t forget to wear protection! I’m not ready to be an uncle yet.”

“That’s disgusting, Jakey,” you yell back, and he smiles proudly. Sunghoon had never thought the day would come where you’d initiate a kiss in a room full of people—he’s on cloud nine when you take his head in your hands and press your lips to his, murmuring praises about how well he played.

“It was all for you, baby,” he says, trying to appear cool even though a blush is creeping up his ears. 

“Not for the recruiter of the national team?” you asked with a smirk.

He smiles, shrugging. “Maybe a bit for him too. You’re the one I want to impress.”

“Consider me impressed.” You stand on your tiptoes to kiss him a second time.

You head towards your friends, hands warm against each other.

--

In classic mysterious Jay fashion, he organizes a New Year’s Eve party that he can’t attend himself.

He’s on holiday in some exotic country halfway across the world with his family, but he’s offered up their house for a celebration and tasked Jake with making sure no one trashes anything.

The party started three hours ago, and you’re sure it’s in full swing by now—you’re sure everyone is having a jolly old time, getting drunk enough to welcome the new year with a hangover, searching the crowds of people for the person they’ll want to kiss at midnight. You’re sure that people are having so much fun that whoever notices your and Sunghoon’s absence might think you’re missing out.

And maybe you are—but there’s nowhere you’d rather be than where you are now, straddling your boyfriend’s lap in the backseat of his car. He’s a little bit tipsy, you’re a little bit tipsy, it’s obvious in the way you kiss each other, messy, impatient, interspersed with giggles and with perhaps too much tongue. Your hands are not much more polite, harshly grabbing at his hair just the way you know he likes it, and neither are his, having snuck their way underneath your black satin dress long ago already.

When Sunghoon pulled you away from the party, you’d appropriately exclaimed, “But the party?”, to which he replied, “Fuck the party.” It wasn’t like him to curse, or to have anything but a bashful smile on his lips, like a guilty dog who’d been caught doing something it knew it shouldn’t, even though he was just standing there, so when you see his stoney expression, you think something serious must’ve happened.

The something serious turned out to be “that guy who was touching your shoulder.”

Clearly, it’d take Sunghoon a little bit more time to be entirely secure in your relationship. In the meantime, you didn’t mind letting him fuck his jealousy away.

Although he’d been the one to whisk you away, you’re the one who finds yourself begging for him to speed things up. Your flimsy thong does absolutely nothing, so you’re basically grinding yourself bare against his clothed erection—and it’s not like the fabric of his suit trousers is very thick, either. A girl can only put up with so much dry humping before having her boyfriend’s dick inside of her goes from being a want to a need.

“Need you, Hoon,” you coo against the shell of his ear. A few words usually do the trick, but Sunghoon has other plans tonight.

“What do you need, baby?”

“You.”

“I’m right here,” he says, punctuating his words with a squeeze of your ass.

“You know what I mean,” you say, practically whining.

“I’m not sure I do, actually.”

You pull away and, looking at him directly, say, “God, Sunghoon. I want you to fuck me.” His shit-eating grin simultaneously makes you roll your eyes and goes straight to your core.

“That I can do.”

He keeps one hand on your ass as he loosens his tie first, then undoes his belt and trouser buttons. His slacks and underwear pool around his ankles, and all he needs to do is hike your dress up around your hips and push your thong to the side. You wrap a hand around his dick, but your mind is too hazy to do much with it—he’s started rubbing circles on your clit with his thumb, the pressure and speed as perfect as it always is. You let your forehead fall against his shoulders and moan unabashedly, thankful he decided to park the car far enough away from the house.

“You like it when I touch you like this, baby?”

“I love it, Hoon.”

He hums his approval. “You’re so perfect. So perfect and so wet for me, isn’t that right?”

You start to say “yes,” but you interrupt yourself with a gasp. You hold onto Sunghoon’s arm, feel his muscles move under your palm as he slips two fingers inside of you without warning. “Please,” you choke out, a tight knot already forming in your stomach.

“Please what?”

“Need you. Need your dick, baby.”

He smiles as if endeared, but his words couldn’t be more different. “Maybe you should’ve thought of that before going off with some random guy the one minute I was somewhere else.”

“He’s just-fuck, Hoon, he’s just a mutual friend of Jay and I. Fuck, right there, baby.” Forming coherent sentences when Sunghoon’s fingers flick against that perfect spot deep inside you again and again is no easy task, but you need to defend yourself.

“Right there?” he echoes, voice a whisper against your ear. When you nod, eyes shut tight, he slips his fingers out. You look at him, betrayed. “That’s too bad. Why don’t you ask him to touch you right there, hm?”

You don’t know how much of his jealousy is put-on to get you to beg and how much of it is real. You make a mental note to have a conversation with him about this later—right now, you don’t mind playing along if it means your boyfriend will deign to fuck you. You know he wants to, he’s just making you work harder.

You move your hand up and down along his dick, brush his reddening tip with your palm every now and then. “He couldn’t touch me like you, Hoon.” You lean in and trail kisses along his neck, his jawline, his ears. “Can’t fuck me like you, either.”

With exams, hockey matches and any other responsibilities out of the way for winter break, the two of you had had an obscene amount of sex in the past couple of weeks. You’d done other things, of course, namely having much-needed conversations with each other, your friends, your families. Sunghoon’s mother was overjoyed at the news, glad her “duckling had finally met someone” — her words — and his sister kept stealing his phone from him to talk to you when you were on FaceTime. You and Jake had gone home for two days for Christmas, and although Jake had needed to pep talk you into it for over an hour, you managed to tell them that you wouldn’t stand for being belittled for your life choices anymore.

But in-between these conversations, you couldn’t keep your hands off of each other. You’ve grown more comfortable with each passing day, both of you bolder in vocalizing what you want and how you feel. And so, you quickly found out that your Sunghoon, your shy, sweet Sunghoon, got off like nothing else on salacious words. In line with his possessiveness, he loved hearing about how he and only he could do these things to you; in line with your need for validation, you could practically come from hearing his praises alone.

“That’s right, baby.” Like the gentleman he is, he fishes out the condom wrapper he had gotten ready from his trouser pocket, tears it open with his mouth and rolls the condom on with one hand, his other one still preoccupied with you. “Come here, my love,” he whispers, his sweet tone worlds away from his previous teasing, almost cocky one. He grabs your hips, guides you closer to him and lines your entrance with the tip of his dick. He lets you go at your own pace, rubs your thighs soothingly as you sink down onto him slowly and adjust to his size. You throw your head back, mind hazy with pleasure as you move your hips back-and-forth against him.

“You feel so good, baby. You’re doing so well for me.” His words make you pick up your pace, and you wrap your arms around his neck, fingers grabbing at his hair and sides of your faces pressed against each other as you start lifting your hips and sinking back down. Sunghoon’s hands hold your ass tightly, guiding you up and down. It’s hot in the car; sweat runs down your hairline and your back, air is running low, the windows are fogging up, but it only adds to the dizzying bliss growing in you. Even the seatbelt receiver digging into your knee doesn’t bother you.

“Feels so good, Hoon,” you moan.

“I know, baby.”

Your hours of studying everyday means your thighs aren’t the strongest—good thing for you that your boyfriend has enough stamina and strength for the both of you. As soon as he feels you tiring, your rhythm becoming slower and more irregular, he picks up your slack. One hand on your back, one arm around your waist, he presses you close to him, his hold on you so tight you can barely move. He bucks his hips harshly into yours, faster and faster, making you cry out with every brush of his tip against that spot deep inside of you. Your whole body shakes with pleasure as your moans grow higher and louder, until the tension in your stomach hits its apex and unravels. A gasp leaves your throat as you come around him, but he’s unrelenting, the overstimulation quickly making tears form in your eyes. Strings of curses and praises of how perfect you are spill out of Sunghoon’s mouth disorderly as he reaches his own end.

Together, you take your time catching your breath, his fingers roaming your back while you trail soft kisses all over his face and neck. “My pretty baby,” he whispers, and it makes your heart swell with so much affection for him that you press your lips to his, shutting him up in case he says something that actually has you exploding.

You wish you could spend some more time just the two of you before returning to the party, but when you check your phone, it’s already five minutes to midnight—he puts his clothes back on as you fix your hair in a rush, Sunghoon helping you wipe away traces of mascara under your eyes, and together, run back to the living room where everyone has gathered. You find Minjeong, Yunjin, Chaewon and Jake, who has Jay on FaceTime. It’s only five p.m. where he is.

Everyone counts down from ten together. The first thing you do in the new year is kiss Park Sunghoon—and you’ll make sure it’s the last thing you do, too.

© asahicore on Tumblr, 2024. please do not repost, translate, or plagiarize my works. support your creators by reblogging and leaving feedback!

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[princesssmars]

home sweet home

a vi x reader.

the war between the silco and the firelights has gotten tense, and all you want is a day off to rest. but when an old flame returns from the dead you find the energy to give her a welcome home present she won’t forget.

wc: 4.491

contains : fluff, adoptive brother ekko and firelight reader. mentions of vi's abuse in prison :c smut. dry humping and tribbing yippee.

a/n : idk something about being separated for years and celebrating the reunion with rough and/or desperate sex does it for me bro 💔 started this beforeeee everything and hopefully this gets posted the morning of act ones drop <3 update i love vi but i need to kick her ass yayyy enjoy.

-

for lack of a better word, your day was getting really fucking weird.

you woke up with a weird feeling in your stomach, an ache strong enough to rouse you from your sleep and out of your bed. you chalked it up to hunger, having skipped another meal last night to stay up looking over some of the injured firelight’s and new schematics for tools and weapons.

but once you got a good meal into your stomach, staring up at the giant tree you called your home, you realized the feeling wasn’t from neglecting your appetite. it was that feeing you got when something big was about to happen.

you felt it when the breakthroughs were made on some of the bigger inventions like the hoverboards, when the firelights found this impossible and beautiful grove and made it their home, on that day years ago where your life crumbled around you in the space of a few days.

so it was only up to fate if something bad or good would happen today. and you didn’t feel like waiting to find out.

quickly making your way up the tree, you rapidly do your special knock on ekko’s door, only to be met with silence. you try again and silence still. trying and slightly failing to keep yourself calm, you head back down and start asking others if they’ve seen him, the ache in your stomach growing at some of the awkward and shifty responses you get.

for six years you and ekko have been inseparable. both traumatized by the trials of growing up in the undercity, getting taken in by benzo, and then the sudden and bloody death of your friends, you had no one else to depend on except for each other. it was hard to put it lightly, navigating a rapidly changing undercity and taking care of your little adoptive brother while trying to deal with your own trauma. even as you met others and formed this group you now call family, you made a promise to each other to stick side by side no matter what.

and that included not running off and doing god knows what in the early morning while the other was sleeping.

you’re halfway through pulling on your coat and mask when you hear the sound of the main door opening and a small commotion, running as fast as you can to get down the tree again before a tall figure stops you.

he tries to be funny, throwing out a 'hey hey hey, slow down! your running like there’s a fire-ow!' before he holds a gloved hand to the side of his arm, cradling the spot where you punched him. you get a solid minute of berating and cussing him out before the look on his face tells you he's being serious, conflict clear in his brown eyes.

you have about a million questions running in your head as he leads you to one of the stock rooms, his breath inhaling multiple times to explain before he lets it out in frustration.

“just…promise you won’t freak out, ok?”

you nod before he pushes you inside and closes the door behind you.

you scoff, calling his name and knocking on the hard material for him to let you out. you weren’t in the mood today to entertain his hidden playful nature, most of the time you indulged him but you were too worried at the moment. you’re seconds away from cursing him out again when a soft voice calls out your name from the darkness behind you behind you.

no. it’s not possible. it’s deeper, more rugged then you remember, but you wouldn’t, couldn’t forget that voice. you heard it in your dreams for years, pushing you to keep going for yourself when you felt like giving up, reminding you she was always there by your side when you felt so alone.

you slowly turn your body, unconsciously trying to protect yourself from the possibility of this being a farce when two strong arms wrap around your waist and pull you into a sturdy torso. at the slightest glimpse of hit pink hair your eyes start to water and your chest is heaving with long building gasps, wrapping your arms around her shoulders and digging your face into her neck.

for years you’d daydream about this moment, what you’d say if you were reunited with the girl who was your best friend and likely the love of your life. you’d imagine the rushed out words and apologies, the shared wails as you assured the other you’d never leave their side again. but this silence just feels so right, makes so much sense for all the emotions you’ve been letting sit in your heart without any kind of resolution or closure.

she pulls away from you slightly and you hope she ignores the subtle whine that leaves your throat as she does. her large, and you mean really large, palms come up to cup your cheek as she stares at your face, blue eyes flitting across your features like she’s trying to commit every piece of you to memory. you don’t mind, you remember how she liked when you let her observe things so she could take in things as much as possible lest they be gone in a second. it just gives you an excuse to stare at her, too.

and gods above are you staring. obviously a large part of you is sentimental and sad as you see how much she’s changed over the years; the longer jagged shapes of her jaw, her nose. your heart pangs seeing the cuts in her brow and lip that you unconsciously bring a finger up to rub at. but it takes an embarrassing amount of strength not to pay attention just to her lips as you feel over the scar, how her bright eyes go wide and unblinking as she stands and lets you do whatever it is you’re doing.

you want to do anything to break the tension and you’re given the opportunity when your eyesight drifts slightly to the right and catches onto the tattoo on her upper cheek.

“did you…tattoo your name on your face?”

you’re still so close you can feel her laugh rather than hear it, her chest pressing into your when she huffs through her nose.

“wanted to make sure the guys in there knew who was kicking their asses without the need for introductions.”

“still punching first yelling insults later?”

“nothing anybody in there didn’t deserve.”

gods does your heart hurt for her. you knew it was likely other people like her were probably in stillwater, disposed of to cover someone’s ass or see as thrash just for where they were born. but you knew despite that she would have faced so much being thrown in there at such a young age that you not anyone else could understand, the way they must have treated her…

even after all these years it’s like she can ready your body language like a book, able to know your fingers stalling in their exploration means your mind is wandering, and given the previous subject matter she knows it can’t be good. her bandaged fingers gently wrap around yours and rub over your knuckles until your attention is back on her.

“hey, stay with me for now. we’ll have time to go over all that stuff later. right now just stay with me, alright?”

like you could ever say no to her.

you figure the best way to make progress until your much needed conversation is yo acquaint her with where your sure she’ll be staying until she gets back on her feet, however she chooses to do so. at first she seems uncomfortable with the idea of staying at the base, like she doesn’t want to intrude on the home you and others had built from the ground up.

“obviously i’ll help with anything you guys ask but are you sure everyone would be alright with me staying here? i kind of punched the shit out of that scar guy.”

“he’ll get over it just like everyone else. you’re a legend here, vi, you’re up on that mural for a reason.”

the whole time you show vi around you feel a warm mess in your chest. you forgot just how nice it was to spend time with her, thinking back on fond memories of the two of you sneaking away when the others were busy to spend time together on the safer and quieter parts of the undercity. your feelings aren’t helped with how close vi insists on being, hand never leaving your grasp as you tug her around and occasionally bumping her shoulder into yours when your mind wanders.

you’re recounting the story of how one of the hoverboards went haywire and crashed into one of the bases walls when a low rumble from the side of you cuts you off, footsteps halting you in place. when you turn to vi she has that same cute embarrassed look she used to have when you were younger, eyes wide and body still like if she didn’t move you wouldn’t acknowledge what just happened.

she knows better than to argue with you as you drag her pliant body somewhere, most likely to get her something to eat after only having some scarfed down jerichos a few hours ago. you bc lead her to some small communal dining area before not so gently guiding her to sit, eyes on her form for a few seconds to make sure she won’t be stubborn and refuse to let you grab some food for her.

and why would she even think of resisting when she can sit here and finally get a few minutes to just relax. ever since cait somehow managed to get her out of prison her body had been on, sheer stubbornness and willpower keeping her going until she found what she was looking for. a part of her knew she wouldn’t stop searching, wouldn’t stop hoping to see you and her sister again.

but as she watches you across the room pick and prod over a meal a vastayan is helping to out on your plate her shoulders unclench and the muscles in her legs ease. nothing felt better than when you’d dote over her. she remembers one time she caught a flu and had to stay inside and distant from everyone, ready to be miserable in solitude until you burst in with vander hot on your heels and insisted you wouldn’t leave her side until she was better, that she’d do the same for you.

which she did have to wind up doing as you caught the sickness from her after only three days. she never once complained.

when you finish her plate you look back to her with a sweet smile and start to walk back over to her. she writhes in her seat a bit under your gaze, suddenly feeling a little too warm when you sit the plate in from of her and tell her to eat up. she tries her best not to scarf this down as well, but when you give her a look that says you know how hungry she she is and won’t mind she can’t help herself.

she spends the rest of the day by your side, never leaving your sight as you introduce her to some of your fellow firelights and some of the younger kids who’d heard stories about her and vander. you can tell it still prods at an unhealed wound to talk about him in past tense, but that she still looks back on those fond memories with happiness. you’re more than happy to join in and help narrate the tale of one of your more adventurous and dangerous trips through the old undercity.

eventually the sun starts to set and the lights of the tree turn from a dazzling green to a soft collection of oranges and yellow, a signal to everyone that it’s time to wind down and end the day. the two of you meet back of with ekko who tells you he had already shown cait to an extra room she could use for the next few days.

“cupcake didn’t put up too much of hassle today, did she? don’t think she’s ever spent this much time past the promenade.”

“she was alright. uptight but i can tell she means well. you can talk to her in the morning, her room is right across from yours.”

you’re paying too much attention to just being in the space of two of your favorite people again that you don’t even notice how vi has turned her head to look at you, silently asking you to ask her for what she hopes you both want. by the time you realize and turn back to ekko he has that dumb little grin on his face that he used to wear all the time he’d catch the two of you getting a little too close for comfort.

“don’t even start, ekko.”

“i didn’t say anything! i’ll catch up with you two tomorrow. try not to be so loud, some of us need a good nights sleep tonight-“

you quickly reach over and swat at the young boys arm as he laughs and hurries away from the two of you, voice carrying as he leaves to head off to sleep.

it’s surreal as you take vi’s hand into yours and start the brisk walk to your personal quarters. you don’t have any expectations about tonight but you can’t lie and say a deep part of yourself isn’t hoping to get more than close with her tonight.

once you reach your bedroom you start shuffling for some clothes for the both of you to wear while she prods and examines all of your things. you watch her for a moment, nearly giving yourself away with a laugh when she nearly breaks the dusty antique snow globe you’d found abandoned on a scrap run.

“it’s crazy, right? how they’ll just abandon things without even thinking about their worth.” you speak offhandedly as you settle yourself on to your bed and start to remove your boots and holsters.

“yeah, no offense but i just. really don’t wanna talk about abandoning things right now.” her tone is malicious enough to make you sit your movements, eyes softening at the broken and tired woman in front of you.

“i’m sorry, i just-“

“no, no, it’s okay. i understand,�� you gently reach out your hand to hold hers, locked in that tight fist she does when she’s bottling up her anger. “can you talk to me about it? whatever you want to say, just say it.”

she rolls her shoulder before setting down the globe and sitting on the bed, her tensed back facing you. you gently pass the spare clothes you have for her and watch as she takes them and sets them on her lap.

“every night for the first year i was in there i’d have these nightmares. about what happened. first it was just, replaying what happened on this endless loop. then it was wondering what i could’ve done different, if i could’ve been smarter-“

“vi dont do that,” you crawled over to sit right behind her body placed your hands on her shoulders, gently rubbing them across and down to her forearms. trying to look her in the eye proves useless. “what happened was…tragic, and blaming yourself is pointless. you did what you could, i know you did.”

“how? how could you possibly know?” she finally turns her head to you and the look in her eyes does nothing to help the sick feeling you have building up in your throat and stomach. “i told you to stay with ekko, you weren’t there. how could you not be even a little angry at me, for not being here for powder, for ekko and the firelights, for you?”

you can hear the lump in her throat and see the tears building in her eyes when you bring your hands up to cup her face. a stray tear runs down her face and you brush it away with your thumb.

“i could never be angry at you, vi. not for this. the girl i know always kept fighting for her family, and if she didn’t come back to us it was because she couldn’t. she’d never abandon us, you wouldn’t abandon us.”

she gently nods her head and nuzzles her face into your hands. you give her a minute to calm down, continuing to softly brush her cheeks and her crazy hair out of her eye.

“what is going on with your hair?” you whisper as you struggle to push a strand away and out of her face, giving up once it falls back into place for the tenth time.

her eyebrows scrunch. "what, you dont like it? its cool."

"its covering half of your face, its horrible."

"you'll get used to it." she shakes her head with a small smile before softly resting her hand on your lower waist.

"maybe, but im definitely not going to brush over you tattooing your name on your face. please tell me you didnt make any other rash b ody adjustments in there."

the growing smile on her simultaneously puts butterflies in your stomach and makes you very nervous. its not helped when she turns her back to you again and starts to shrug off her jacket, revealing the previous glimpse of her neck tattoo you'd seen goes further down. way further down.

"wow. that's...wow." you want to bury your head into your hands and leave the room. 'wow just wow?' really smooth. "can i touch?"

"uhhh yeah, no problem."

after she gives her consent your fingertips lightly hover and brush over the interlapping lines of curves inked into her skin. you feel a small thrill seeing the goosebumps rise on her arms when your hands glide down them, taking pride in knowing you can still bring out a physical reaction in her with your touch.

"this is really nice, vi. did you get someone in there to do it for you?"

"nope, did 'em both myself. wasn't exactly the best environment to ask people to have access to your body with a needle for hours at a time."

you hum in response while continuing to observe the tattoo. you can see it goes further down her back and decide to speak without thinking too much about what you're saying.

"can i see the rest of it?"

you're a bit scared at how still she goes, wondering if maybe you crossed a boundary before her hands slowly reach behind her and start to lift the white fabric of her shirt until its full taken off of her body.

you make sure to continue the gentle touches as your hands run down the muscles and planes of her back, continuing to admire the clouds and gears that make up the design. you feel a little pang in your heart when you see the initials of mylo and claggor at the bottom of the tattoo, along with the number of welts and scars on her skin.

"its beautiful, vi." you whisper. her body subtly scooches back on the bed to get closer to your touch. the moment is just shy of overwhelming, which is probably why you leave a small kiss on her shoulder, right where one of the scars starts before trailing down her back a few inches. she lets out a muffled noise and you start to pull away before the strong grip of her palm clasps down on your leg, holding you in place.

you leave more kisses and pecks over the length of her tattoo as your legs start to wrap around her from behind, both of her hands grasping your thighs as she relaxes into the affection. you test the waters when you come back up to her neck, lightly sinking your teeth into her skin.

"oh fuck-" her strained voice hits your ears right before she abruptly pulls out of your arms and tugs you by the arm and leg until your reversed, sitting in her lap with her hands gripping at your hips.

you continue to drag yours up and down her arms, reveling in the fact that you can now see her facial expressions, how her eyes droop and lips part as you slightly scratch at her skin.

you adjust your hips to sit closer to her at the same time she lifts hers up, the friction causing small noises to escape both of your throats. her eyes open up and she stares up at you with those big light blues.

your hand travels up to her hair, running through it as you keep looking at her. "are you sure? i dont wanna push you,"

"you wont, i do. please, just wanna be close to you."

you give in, wrapping your arms around her neck and bringing her into a sweet kiss, reveling in the feel of her arms coming up to grip on your back. its slow and languid as you get used to each other before she adds her tongue to the mix, pulling a moan from your throat as you try to bury yourself even closer into her hold.

you move your focus onto her neck, trailing kisses and bites down and across her throat, as she rocks your bodies together and claws at your back.

"used to dream about this, about you, missed you so much," her voice has a slight rasp to it already that drives you nuts, instantly darting back up to bring her into a messy kiss. she adjusts her knee to rest in between your legs and lifts it up into your core, pulling away to look at you as you moan at the friction.

"jeez, what'd they teach you in there?" you let out a breathy chuckle while you grind down into her knee. your eyes drift close before her gentle kiss to her cheek drags your gaze back to her, unblinking as she watches you come undone for her. her stare along with the hazy smile on her face yanks you to the edge, gasping and moaning as you come in her arms.

you feel almost drunk as you come down from your orgasm, nuzzling into her neck while she presses gentle kisses to your shoulder and the side of your neck. she starts to place your body on the bed before you tug her back on top of you.

"what, aren't you tired?"

"maybe, but not tired enough to stop now. take off your pants."

she grins like she'd just been offered free sweets from a piltovian candy shop for the rest of her life. you try not to giggle as she stumbles off the bed and tugs her pants off before settling her body back on top of yours. she resumes her barrage of kisses and bites into your skin, finally paying some attention to your chest while you bring your hands up to thumb at her nipples, biting your lip at how sensitive she is to the touch.

she wastes no time spreading your legs beneath you and getting your silent agreement before moving her lips to rest over yours, taking a second to drag her fingers through your cunt and stuffing them inside her mouth.

"vi!"

"sorry, was just curious." she leans down to kiss you sweetly before resting her self on you, legs draped over the curves of her arms as she oh so slowly starts to drag herself back and forth over you.

you slightly wish you had done this first as the overstimulation makes it oh so intense for you, the feeling of her hair and clit rubbing over yours nearly sending you into a frenzy. your eyes roll back into your head once she starts to speed up her movements, her soft whines and grunts into your neck only adding to the physical stimulation you're feeling.

your core feels like its on fire when you start to hear the subtle whispers she's letting out into your neck, curses of 'fuck, fuck oh-fuck,' and grunts of your name mix together to create a desperate harmony.

"vi, feels too- oh my god i-"

"i know, baby, i know," she moans, pressing a harsh bite into the underside of your neck. you can feel her smile into it when you involuntarily let out a squeal at the action. "never gonna leave you, pretty. could never leave you, leave this."

you never fancied yourself the possessive type, but the reaction you have to her words definitely proves there's something there as you wrap your hands around her shoulder and squish her down into you again, moaning just a little too loud at the lack of closeness and feeling of her chest rubbing against yours.

you can feel your next orgasm building quick and fast, thighs trembling as you desperately grind your hips into her even harder. you can tell she's close too, hips losing their rhythm as her panting gets even louder. you nudge your face to the side and rub your cheek against hers, thankful she gets the hint to smother both of your noises with an intense kiss.

"fuck, vi, missed you s'much, love this, love you-"

you're grateful that you have some semblance of brain activity left to drag her head down to your neck to bit down as she cums, her groan loud and long as she keeps moving her hips until you cum only a few seconds after she does. you can feel a tear or two escape your eyes, overstimulation so intense you think you see janna for a moment.

both of your chests are rapidly panting as you catch your breaths, dragging your hand through her sweaty hair while she presses gentle kisses over the marks she no doubt left over your chest. now you'll have to wear more layers for a while, but at the moment you cant find it in you to care.

"you have no idea how glad i am that i still have you," you almost dont pick up on the silent whisper she says, muffled by the current kisses. you lazily drag your fingers to lift her up by the chin until she's looking at you, eyes filled with nothing but love and affection.

"you're always gonna have me vi, i promise."

you can tell she has her doubts, you do as well. but she lets herself relax into your hand yet again and wears the tiniest smile while she starts to fall asleep in your embrace.

you gently pull the covers over both of your bodies and follow her into the lull of sleep, falling asleep in vi's arms again for the first time in years.

you have the nicest dreams you've had in years.