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enjakey · 1 month ago

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Where Have You Been

Pairing: figure skater!Sunghoon x archaeologist!Fem!Reader

Hello! This fic (20k) was posted in my old account that I have since deleted a long time ago. This is a new account so I’m reporting this here. I thought I’d never bring any of my old shit back but I love this series too much. If you’re wondering why this sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’ve read it a long time ago. Not because it’s plagiarized. None of my work is plagiarized, please understand that. My writing style is carefully curated from the many Japanese and Russian writers I engage with. This plot came to me after a horrible loss in my life- three years ago.

Please enjoy reading it. There’s a Jake version, too.

Summary: to the outside world, Sunghoon had it all- looks, friends, a successful career and a New York life. But he was lonely, brinking on the hope of never finding true love again. He’d come to the age of even giving up, watching some of his closest friends getting married and starting families. That is, until he met a curiously cautious archaeologist.

THERE WASN’T A MOMENT where he felt the prospects and depths of loneliness until Sunghoon realised how everyone around him was settling down and he was still calling the ice rink the love of his life.

His childhood wasn’t particularly rocky, excluding the handful of break-ups he went through. He always had people around him everywhere he looked; standing over his head were his loving and supportive parents that invariably extended a hand when he needed to be picked up in any crisis; his sister looked over his shoulder like a hawk, keeping him from harm’s way and taking on the duty of an older sibling instead of staying the naive little girl like she was supposed to; he had a few friends in school who he used to pass free time or confide in once in a blue moon; then, there were the friends he made in summer camp who practically become his extended siblings through a year’s course of writing letters to each other and sending postcards through the mail.

They were a group of seven in total. Heeseung was an academic and music prodigy, excelling in any professional field he dipped his foot in to test the waters. Jay was a product of nepotism, aspiring to take over his father’s travel company after graduating with a business degree. Jake started as an engineering geek but eventually shifted his foundation toward the world of modelling, fashion and fame and eventually starred as one of the most wanted models for many designers and brands. Sunoo dreamt of starting a skincare brand of his own and studied chemistry and cosmetics in college- he was known amongst them for dying his hair in wild and bold colours. Jungwon, though he was in high school, was the most mature and responsible out of all of them, a taekwondo successor who had the most intricately detailed schedules to follow. Lastly came Riki, the youngest of all of them, who was the dance prodigy often compared to Micheal Jackson or Fred Astaire.

Sunghoon was an ice skater, his life and career revolving around gliding on frozen water and getting coached by previous skating Gods so that someday, he would reach their level. His mother always said he was fond of the sport because he was born in the winter season. On a cold night, while a hail storm plagued his small town, his parents drove to the hospital regardless of the risk of hypothermia and he was born. His cries overshadowed the whistles and whispers of the storm and the snow outside morphed to look like sakura petals slowly transcending off the trees to rot on the ground. He was used to the cold since the day he was born and would continue to master the skill of figure skating, treating the ice rink like a second home. Hence, he was dubbed The Ice Prince by those he called friends and family.

Moving to New York for the sake of starting fresh with his summer camp friends was a thought wilder than the dreams he had of living in a mansion and lounging in hot tubs as a hobby. But he wouldn’t be training in The Concrete Jungle if it weren’t for Heeseung and his elaborate plan of bringing all seven of them so he could focus on New York University and the rest of them could have a better shot at building futures and making careers. This meant leaving behind his parents and his sister but he told them that it would be for a few years and he would eventually come back due to homesickness. He told his friends in high school that he would keep in touch with them but it was an empty promise. Once he settled into his apartment with Jay and Jake, he was burrowing himself into a new home, a new lifestyle.

When he turned twenty-two, Sunghoon had no plans of moving back to Korea like he had told his family. Homesickness washed away with the worries of juggling between college and figure skating. Learning a new language and suppressing his urges of using Korean slang was also something that took up his consciousness while he went about his days. He was more prone to stumble on his sentences while speaking to a girl he liked or would mix up the definitions of words that sounded similar while speaking to his professors or skating coach. He paid for tutors to teach him the ins and outs of the language and eventually, he got the hang of it.

In high school, Sunghoon shuffled through four failed relationships, all ending with burnt bridges, fire setting ablaze the wood of what was left of love and desire. His first relationship was with the eccentric girl in class. She was always cracking jokes and making people laugh, only to come home to loneliness and an empty phone where no one bothered to reach out to her. He wouldn’t say he regretted dating her but it was a struggle trying to get her to confide in him. His second relationship was in sophomore year, wooing the new girl in class with charm, humour and wit but her feelings towards him came as soon as they had left and Sunghoon was left with unfulfilled promises and hopes from her. She taught him a lesson- to never rush into a relationship with someone he barely knew so his third relationship was with a close friend of his whom he had known for around three years. But their rendezvous soared downwards like a plane crash and left both of them with one less friend. His fourth relationship ended because of his abrupt plans of moving to New York. It was very brief, lasting around one or two months before they agreed on a mutual separation instead of opting for long-distance because those never worked. He didn't speak to any of them again and would be embarrassed even to contact them.

His love life was in the same state of shambles in New York. He went on a myriad of dates and blew racks of money for girls that inevitably left him because they weren’t good for each other or his affection just wasn’t enough. His relationship with girls he believed was his soul mate or future wife, too, left him high and dry with tears streaming down his face every time he was broken up with. He couldn’t understand what he was lacking and he didn’t understand why no matter the sacrifices he made or how many times he settled, he was always fucked over, lied to, or even cheated on. His trust issues surfaced after a redhead, his girlfriend of six months at the time, kissed a random tattooed biker in a club, right in front of him.

Growing up in a small town, Sunghoon was never taught the sophistication of emotions. There were only happy, sad, or angry and emotions surpassing that radar were almost taboo to discuss. His parents, though not the orthodoxy type and were well educated, didn’t seem to speak about emotions such as heartbreak or jealousy, nor did they talk about traumas that lead to trust issues, insecurities or social isolation. The public school he attended didn’t have the budget to hire a counsellor, hence most of his classmates were also unaware that they were contributing to the world of teenage angst and dilemma. They just went along with it, some victimising or being the victim themselves of bullying and other forms of distractions towards the world of young psychology and hormones. Sunghoon knew that guys would beat up another guy if they found them flirting with their girl, but he assumed the action stemmed from jealousy rather than the feeling of emasculation and embarrassment. He watched students bully the weak and short ones and assumed it was because they thought they were weird-looking and not because they were threatened by their aptitude and adroitness. He only started becoming aware of the association between actions and emotions when he began to accept the fact that he was feeling heartbreak, rather than simply labelling the ache in his chest as sadness.

Out of the seven of them, Jake was the first to get married, which came as a shock to everyone as he was barely twenty-three. He got down on one knee and slipped a ring on Chiara’s finger in the middle of the café where they had their first date. In Sunghoon’s eyes, Jake and Chiara’s relationship was what he would consider ideal. They would fight, but always came up with a solution; they disrespected each other but quickly changed the habit to make sure acts like such would never repeat; they spent months learning about each other and being patient with one another to the point where they could not only finish each other’s sentences but could decipher what one was feeling about or during a particular situation with simply a raised brow. By the time they were married, they were like a couple out of a Disney Princess movie, riding into the sunset on a pristine white horse. They were both models, and they didn’t stop each other from achieving other goals in their life. For example, Chiara was ecstatic when Jake took up photography and Jake was overjoyed when Chiara went to college to study psychology because seeing each other succeed was what made each other happy.

Sunghoon was the best man at their wedding. He planned the best bachelor party Jake could ask for and detailedly organised their wedding alongside the maid of honour, Sheila. They even went tux-shopping together while Jake helped him put on a blazer when he said, “You should bring a date to the wedding, it would look weird if my best man had no date.” Sunghoon looked at his best friend like he hadn’t cried about his cursed love life and failed luck in relationships with him all these years. It was then that he realised how hopelessly lonely he was. Jake was getting married to the love of his life, Heeseung had a girlfriend of two years and Jay was only starting to go on dates and he was already gushing about how he thought he found the one. Sunoo refused to indulge in relationships until he became successful enough to raise a family, which everyone respected. Jungwon and Riki were still single, but everyone was playing cupid for them, trying to set them up with mutuals so they could at least venture into the world of committed relationships.

It was then that he realised that perhaps, after all the relationships he had been in and out of and after all the girls that told him that he wasn’t what they were looking for, perhaps he was fated to die with no hand to hold on his deathbed and no wife to share his love of figure skating with.

Like most people in his generation, Sunghoon took to Google to find answers to his fears during many eras in his life. He fell into a rabbit hole of Reddit threads, telling him that the wait was always worth it and Quora sites on people sharing their experiences of finding their one true love much later into their lives. He read about an elderly woman who only met who she believed to be her soul mate in her sixties after her husband died of leukaemia and when all the hairs on her head turned a rich shade of grey. He even learnt about the compatibility between zodiac signs and called his mother to ask about his horoscope but it turns out his family didn’t believe in the astronomical and spiritual. He researched the meaning of moles which led him to cry to Jay while drunk about how the mole on his left pinky toe held him back from the chance of having a marriage, let alone having a girlfriend. He even went to the booth of a shady palm reader who told him to just wait until she comes- he wasted his money on a sham.

Not long after meeting the swindling palm reader, Sunghoon found himself crying in Chiara’s lap as she was the closest person he had to a sister that he could contact. His tears stained her expensive leggings and her carved nails raked his scalp while she cooed and hushed him out of loneliness. His sobs echoed between the windows and walls of their million-dollar apartment and the television played a random movie, abandoned by those who were previously watching it.

“Am I ruining your clothes?” Sunghoon sniffled and Chiara chuckled, letting her knuckles smoothly glide past the corner of his eye to wipe away his tears.

“Not at all, ‘Hoon,” she hummed. “But you gotta tell me if you’re drunk before you say anything else.”

“I had a beer before coming here.”

“That makes sense.”

Since Chiara had met him, Sunghoon’s most prominent quality was his habit of drinking. On a normal night of a weekend or weekday, he’d drink with or without his friends and go bar-hopping alone if he had to. Beer was his favourite drink but there were times he had gotten drunk on wine as well. It wasn’t to say that his alcohol tolerance was low, it was just the quantity he consumed that made those around him fear for his liver and his life. She remembered finding herself in unthinkable, yet memorable, predicaments due to his habit- she once had to talk him out of jumping off her roof because he thought someone dared him to do so. After learning about his history of failed relationships, she assumed that was where the habit stemmed from but she wouldn’t say he was the modern-day drunk Romeo, nor could he be clinically diagnosed as an alcoholic. He was just deprived of what he truly craved for too many years.

“Do you want to talk now, at least?” She cooed again, patting his hair.

Sunghoon nodded, willing himself to gravitate off her lap and against the plush cushions of the pristine couch. His hair bounced as he shook his head, using the back of his hand to wipe his blotched face. His cheeks were puffy and his eyes struggled to stay open with the warm tears protruding past his lashes.

“At this point, I really don’t think I’m gonna find love, Chiara,” he frowned, slumping into his seat and pondering at the chandelier above him. If he tuned out the noises from the television, he could hear birds chirping, crickets singing and wind carrying wrinkled leaves across the building.

Chiara let out an exasperated sigh, pursing her lips and tilting her head towards the ceiling. “Did I ever tell you how lonely I was before meeting Jake?”

“What?” Sunghoon furrowed his brows. “Well, you did. But what does that have to do with this?”

“I’m saying that, before I met Jake, I barely had any friends and thought a guy that treated me toxically was the love of my life,” she explained. “But then I met Jake and suddenly, I wasn’t lonely anymore and he brought me good things. He gave me an opportunity to build a family, he loved me like no other, he cared for me, he respected me… and the list goes on,” she waved her hand, fingers frolicking amongst the air to signify glee.

“Yeah, and then you lived happily ever after,” he rolled his eyes, a scowl reaching his lips. “You met when you were teenagers. How old were you, eighteen? I’m in my twenties now. If I don’t meet the love of my life by thirty, I know I’m dying alone.”

“We met when we were teenagers because we just got lucky!” She defended. “Our love story was supposed to go a certain way and yours is supposed to go a different way. You can’t compare, you know? It’s just gonna make you feel worse. I mean, look at Sunoo. He hasn’t been on a proper date in years.”

“That’s because he doesn’t want to!”

“That’s not my point! My point is, you’ll meet her when the time is right-”

“Please don’t start with your destiny crap-”

“And you won’t die alone!”

When Chiara shook Sunghoon’s shoulder, Jake walked into the living room, a grin on his face as he looked between his wife and best friend. The sight wasn’t new to him; Sunghoon was moody over his teetering love life and Chiara was playing the therapist to install some faith and hope into him again. She was usually successful but on the occasions that she wasn’t, she’d let him camp on their couch and wallow over his emotions over a few drinks and lousy K-dramas. Jake would accompany him on most days and she would go to work or vice versa. Other times, they would call the rest of their friends and have a game night.

“Didn’t you say that you thought you were gonna marry a lot of the girls that you dated?” Jake’s grin didn’t leave his face. He leaned against the wall closest to the couch and crossed his arms across his chest. “Maybe the next one you meet might be the real love of your life.”

“You’re not funny.”

Sunghoon turned twenty-seven faster than he anticipated. He was still figure skating; he was one of the most well-known figure skating coaches in New York, in fact. He had dyed his hair silver now, a choice of fashion he had made a couple of years prior and it simply stuck to his personality. His love life was barren at that point, entertained with a few one night stands or hookups once in a while. But he was rich and successful and was even famous amongst figure skating enthusiasts.

His friends were exceptionally successful as well, though they didn’t change as much as he did. Heeseung was a rewarded music producer, perfecting the tunes of many well-known and upcoming artists. He had a house down in the suburbs, living a rather tranquil and amicable life with his wife, Karina, and a pair of twins who were just starting kindergarten. Sunghoon would see him and everyone else on most weekends during the dinners hosted at Jake and Chiara’s exorbitant apartment.

Jake was considered one of the top models in the industry, his name often showing up alongside that of Lucky Blue Smith and Bella Hadid. A little while after his fame in modelling expanded, his photography career bloomed as some were published in Vogue and Cosmopolitan magazines. Chiara’s modelling career was similar to his, collaborating with the Hadid sisters, Emily Ratajkowski and even Kendall Jenner. With a degree in psychology, she even dabbled as a therapist while being propelled into an aristocracy. The couple’s mutual success would explain their bougie possessions. They had a son, Kai, around three years old, who was already babbling about becoming a movie director when he grew up.

Jay had taken over his father’s travel company when he graduated college. There was no denying his power and authority in running the business better than his father. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and the spoon was getting bigger. His wife, Jade, was a childhood friend of his, the daughter of his father’s best friend and no one was surprised when their engagement was announced. Though, some speculated they were only getting married because he knocked her up. They now had a two-year-old daughter and everyone was hoping for her and Jake’s kid to grow up and get married.

It was funny, really.

Sunoo made regular trips between America and Korea, deeming them as business trips to check on how his cosmetics factories were doing. His brand was quite famous and a lot of Sunghoon’s past girlfriends- or flings- were regular customers of his. It was almost entertaining to watch when he told them that the owner of their favourite make-up brand was one of his best friends- some even tried leaving him for Sunoo but he was already engaged to none other than Chiara’s best friend, Sheila.

Jungwon, too, was engaged to a talented dancer to whom Riki had introduced him. Now, Jungwon, Riki and Ella own a dance studio, training kids who are passionate about the art. The three lived together as roommates in a cosy apartment that looked like it was out of a 90s sitcom; faint yellow paint, bathrooms with wallpaper and random wall decor that adorned every room. Riki was in a rather fresh relationship and refused to introduce his girlfriend to anyone until he was sure it was long-term- but Jay would always call him out saying, “Don’t even lie, you have terrible commitment issues. You’re gonna break up with her just like you did the last.”

Sunghoon loved his group of friends, he truly did. But the one thing that bothered him was that, at that moment, while he had the mall’s entire skating rink to himself and while he was gliding and the only sound was the sound of scraping ice, his friends were all involved with a girlfriend or life partner while he was still alone and his last rendezvous being a girl he met at a bar whose name he hadn’t even learnt because he kicked her out the next morning.

Usually, when he was skating alone, not busy tutoring boys who were overconfident about doing the pirouette or helping little girls who were scared to let go of the training handle and skate on their own, he would imagine himself in the stadium of a championship. His jeans and dusty shirt would transform into black pants and a red shirt adorned with rhinestones and loose sleeves tight at the cuffs. There would be a crowd cheering for him to perform his best figure skating tricks and throwing flowers at him and the ice would be cluttered with rose petals. His family would be sitting in the front row and his sister would have a poster larger than the size of her head with the words ‘WE LOVE YOU SUNGHOON’ written with cheap crayons-

That was his memory of when he was awarded the Novice Gold medal of the Asian Figure Skating Trophy.

Perhaps the sound of his blade shaving the ice as he figure-skated triggered such memories in him, furthering his homesickness. The frosty wind puffed up his hair and paled his skin more than he thought it could. All he heard was silence, along with what sounded like a whirring ice shaver.

The static in his ear lasted for about two more minutes as he let his thoughts wander into deeper corners of his brain, opening forgotten boxes of memories that either made him want to cry or laugh. But slicing through it all was the bleak sound of sneakers connecting with the marble tiles of the mall he was in. The Ice rink he was in was located on the ground floor of a rather small mall. Along with the ice rink, the ground floor housed shops of many fast food kiosks and beverage stalls. So, Sunghoon's feet tilted to stop his blades from moving any further and the sound of scraping ice was ignored when he faced the direction of the food stalls.

Jogging towards the boba tea café was a girl wearing old, musty sneakers and a stack of books between her arms. Her hair bounced as she finally stood in a long cue to give her order and her red-tinted lips pursed as she stood on the tips of her toes to see how long the cue was. She wore thin, silver glasses that complimented her eyes, and silver rings that matched the colour of her white nail polish. Her brown trench coat covered most of her outfit but she wore a white shirt and black trousers, a belt to top it all off. With furrowed brows, she checked the time on what looked like a vintage watch on her wrist, tapped her musty sneakers against the floor in haste and poked the inside of her cheek with her tongue.

Sunghoon didn't know how he noticed such details while standing at least a dozen metres away from this mystery woman. However, he could admit the clichés he was experiencing at that moment. The world around him stopped and everyone was moving in slow motion apart from him and the girl with silver glasses. He could hear his heart beating in his ears, his breath becoming more shallow with every passing second. A few feet away, a little boy's dollop of ice cream fell from his cone and his cries echoed across the floors of the mall. A few feet away from that was a woman who bumped her steaming coffee into another man and his curses could be heard from miles away. Just outside of the ice rink was a little girl holding onto the metal railings separating her from dry to ice and yelling to her parents about how she wanted to learn to skate. These were moments he usually noticed, but this time, it was all irrelevant because of the girl with silver glasses and red-tinted lips.

HE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT took over him but Sunghoon found himself footing towards her with subtle steps. Out of his friend group, he was known to be the one with the best pick-up lines, smooth-talking girls into his apartment as easily as batting an eye. His grin charmed hundreds and he didn’t even know when he attained such ability. Perhaps it was around the time he stopped looking for love and started looking for rendezvous or perhaps it was after the time the palm reader robbed him of his precious twelve bucks. But now, he was nervous and he hadn’t felt this way since the first time he met his last girlfriend and that was years ago.

I should be running away, he thought to himself when he deciphered what he was feeling. It was almost like meeting a new friend again, a profound familiarity in his heartbeat. He asked himself what he planned on saying to her; what it was that people usually said when wanting to acquaint themselves with someone new. It wouldn’t be as simple as introducing himself, it wasn’t a café that they were in. It was a mall- people were bustling around with their own problems, talking amongst themselves and creating a buzz of sound that soon became white noise to him and they were worried about moving further up the line to get a drink, as was the girl he was standing behind.

His intention wasn’t to be a stalker or a creep but he could easily look over her shoulder and read the spine of her books. All the books were bound hard-cover and looked like they were taken out of an abandoned bookshelf. With the number of times Sunghoon had explored the mall, he figured she had bought them from the antique store located somewhere on the top floor. The titles on the books were almost faded but he could figure them out as academic works- some were about wars he had never even heard of and some were about archaeology. He deemed himself lucky when he recognised a title. “The Battle of Yangxia”, it read in faded, golden cursive and he fought his conscience to remember where he remembered the name from.

A few months ago, Jay was hyper-fixated on Chinese history and spent an entire dinner ranting about the several wars they were never taught in high school history. Riki had pestered about how high school education was useless compared to what he learnt in college and that led to a whole conversation on its own. That night, Sunghoon remembered laying on Jake’s balcony hammock with a beer in one hand and phone in the other, sexting some girl he found on a dating app.

“I’ve heard about that before,” he meekly mumbled, leaning to reach the girl’s ear.

The breath of air he let out after finishing his sentence tickled her skin, travelling down her neck and running a shiver down her spine. She didn’t register his sentence but his voice and presence made her look past her shoulder, brows furrowing with confusion. She hugged her books tighter, intimidated by a stranger. It would be the first time any stranger took interest in her, the perplexed gape of her jaw was justified.

“The Battle of Yangxia?” Sunghoon cleared his throat when they made eye contact, offering her a toothy grin whilst clasping his hands behind his back. He rocked back and forth on his heels, tripping while failing to keep up with the line moving forward.

“Oh,” the girl looked at her books, re-reading the same title he was talking about. “Yeah,” she smiled back, expecting the interaction to end and looking away. She almost rolled her eyes when he spoke again.

“My friend had a phase where he geeked out about Chinese history,” he continued leaning towards her, hoping to elicit more of an interaction from her. “I’m Sunghoon, by the way.”

“Y/N,” she didn’t want to come off as rude or disrespectful so she introduced herself anyway. With another glance over her shoulder, she offered him a polite smile, ignoring the arm he had extended for a handshake.

Sunghoon cleared his throat and returned his hand to his back when he realised her rejection. He chewed on his lips, standing straight and continuing moving forward in the line while keeping his gaze on her hair, waves that flowed down her back that complimented her outfit. Then he stared at her sneakers which had worn-out laces and soles that looked like they had walked back and forth in the fires of hell. It almost made him chuckle but he figured she must have a reason for still keeping them.

“So, Y/N,” he mused. “Do you come around here often? First time I’ve seen you around.”

Y/N really rolled her eyes this time, clenching her jaw and poking her tongue into the flesh of her cheek. She wasn’t sure why she was getting annoyed. Normally, if someone tried making conversation with her or noticed her books, she would sheepishly respond with a plethora of nerves. But with this man, or Sunghoon, as he called himself, she wanted to move as far away as possible from him. But she thought she could humour him for some time, perhaps get rid of the pit- or butterflies- in her stomach. She couldn’t tell which it was but regardless, she took it negatively.

“You say that like you work here?” She looked over her shoulder with a scoff, lips almost pulling into a smile.

“I do, actually, work here,” Sunghoon chuckled, shaking his head. “I’m the ice-skating coach here.”

Y/N’s eyes almost widened, leaning to her side to glance at the huge ice-skating rink that was relatively familiar to her. For the time being, it was empty and if she squinted hard enough, she could see the fog of frost floating about the rink. “What’re you doing here instead of taking a class then?” she raised a brow.

“Even teachers need their breaks,” he defended with a pursed smile and shrugged. “And what do you do?” By the time he asked his question, Y/N had started ordering her drink. He interjected, asking for her to order the same for him but she looked at him with narrowed eyes, expression questioning his intentions. “I'll pay,” he offered enthusiastically.

“I’d rather pay for my own drink,” she tutted with a sarcastic smile and handed the cashier her money. “Thanks, though,” Sunghoon dug in his pockets to find change and he paid as well, rocking back and forth on his heels with crossed arms.

It was a moment of awkwardness as they waited for their drinks. Y/N stared at Sunghoon with eyes narrowed to slits, shifting her weight onto one leg and tapping her feet impatiently on the floor. Her shabby sneakers made thuds that were drowned out by the hustle and bustle of the mall, the rest of the world moving past them while Sunghoon looked everywhere but at her. For the first time in a long time, he felt dejected and incompetent in front of someone he intended to pursue. He wondered if she should take it as a sign to move on, simply walk away with his drink and never look back because he knew he would cringe and hit his head against his pillow. Yet another part of him wondered how it would feel to pry at this girl, Y/N, and find out whether attitude was the only thing she had to offer.

“I’m an archaeologist, by the way,” she told him while grabbing their drinks. She smiled at him before handing him his tiger milk boba, struggling to keep her books in her arms.

“That’s cool,” Sunghoon grinned, taking his drink from her. “You need help with those?”

“No,” she assured and stepped back, giving him a small wave before walking away.

He stared at her as she made her way to the exit and he could see the corners of her books peeking from her grin, jogging as she drank her traditional boba tea. “Can I get your number, by chance?” he called out and he was sure she heard him but chose to ignore him. Regardless, he walked away, too, with a smile on his face and a skip in his step as he caught hold of the straw in his mouth.

After that interaction, Sunghoon drove to Jake and Chiara’s house like there was no tomorrow; like his heart would stop if he didn’t tell his best friends about the girl he had just met. He wanted to tell them all about the girl who showed him attitude but attention at the same time and he wanted to tell them about how she was an archaeologist. He wanted to tell them about her battered shoes and he wanted to tell them about every single time she smiled at him because, God, did it feel like a breath of fresh air after talking to Y/N; like it was his first time tasting sugar; like his dreams had come to life.

When he burst through his friends’ door, he took no time rushing in and asking for everyone’s attention. The smile on his face lit up the room brighter than the chandelier ever could and Jake couldn’t remember the last time he saw his best friend that way. From the kitchen, he heard Jay asking what all the ruckus was about and Sunghoon skipped towards him, grabbing onto the chair beside him and slipping into the seat.

“I have to tell you guys something,” Sunghoon gushed but his brows raised when making eye contact with Jay. “What are you doing here anyways?”

“Having lunch?” He responded with his mouth stuffed with bok choy and egg, chopsticks held in the air as though he was asking how more obvious his predicament could be.

“What is it?” Chiara entered the kitchen with Kai in her arms, Jake following suit with widened eyes and an excited grin.

Sunghoon ushered everyone to sit and took Kai in his arms. He let there be a moment of curiosity while everyone begged him to tell them what he was excited about and why he was smiling like he had just seen a rainbow. The kettle whistled while Chiara guessed that he might have gotten selected for a figure skating show and the oven dinged when Jake guessed that he probably bought another dog. Sunghoon was known to adopt dogs- he had six in his home being cared for by a caretaker he had to hire.

“Well,” he started. “Guess what Kai? I met a girl,” he cooed with a toothy smile, kissing the kid’s dark hair who laughed in his lap and clapped. Kai looked at him with curious eyes, having no clue what it meant but was excited by the smile on his uncle's face.

Jay and Jake’s expressions dropped, sighing with the anti-climatic news. “Another girl,” the latter rolled his eyes but his wife slapped his bicep in disappointment.

“Don’t be that way,” Chiara tutted and turned to Sunghoon with glimmering eyes. She rested her chin on her palm, her elbow on the table. “Tell us about her.”

And so Sunghoon told them everything he could muster up while hugging Kai like he was his anchor to reality. His friends listened to him intently, wondering if this encounter would end like all the others. While he talked about her, Chiara and Jake were reminded of how they first met in a photoshoot that started awkwardly but ended in an unexpected friendship. When Sunghoon told them she was an archaeologist, Jay suggested they google her as Jake and Chiara left to sleep.

Jay and Sunghoon spent the rest of the night on Google with a couple of beers, going through any article with her name mentioned. They didn’t find any social media but they did stay up reading one of her papers that had been published on artefacts dug out in Cairo, devouring hours of their time carefully decoding the meaning of words they had never heard of or learning about people they’d never learnt of.

When they were done reading the paper, Sunghoon slouched deeper into the chair and threw his head back, taking a moment to stare at the ceiling and ask himself if he were crazy for Y/N or crazy for love. “Do you think I’ll ever see her again?” By that time, Jay was fast asleep, his face pressed onto the cold table. Sunghoon chuckled and shook his head, his hair falling over his forehead. He dragged his palms down his face, willing himself to stay awake. “Will I fuck this up?” he whispered.

That same night, Y/N had settled in the public library with her books and her students’ previous test papers. The glare of her laptop sored her eyes while she looked through mark scheme upon mark scheme. She must say, she would get quite disappointed with some of her students. Ones that had potential were the ones that flunked their exams and those that did well in school were the ones she saw no future for. In only her second year of teaching, she wondered if she would stay a professor and the esteemed New York University or if she would get another chance to go another dig like she did in Cairo a few years ago.

Her life was peaceful when she wasn’t travelling or going on year-long digs. It was filled with old artefacts, books that could fall apart if she held them the wrong way and cracking paintings that either hung on her walls or stacked behind her closet. The latest addition would be grading test papers and prolonged essays. Sometimes, she liked this life. It would get lonely but her golden retriever, Blue, would keep her company. Her apartment was void of emotion but she was rarely home anyway. Other times, she missed being around people she could converse with. She missed sitting under the sun with a straw hat on her head, brushing away at the sand to uncover an old statue with people that she could laugh with.

By the time she was finished grading papers, the library was empty and her head was swarming with thoughts about the man she met in the mall. Sunghoon, as she recalled his name, wasn’t hard to find online. There were videos of his younger self competing in figure skating tournaments, working in the mall with a pearly smile on his face and a glimmer in his eyes and though he didn’t post much on social media, he was all over model Jake Sim’s Instagram. He was best friends with him and even knew an upcoming producer, Heeseung Lee. She even found pictures of Sunghoon Park with his natural black hair.

On the way home, she watched all the videos she could find of him figure skating, the glow of her phone illuminating the back of her cab. When she found herself smiling, she put her phone away and gazed at the street lights, wondering if she would ever see him again. When she saw a few Chinese restaurants and convenience stores still open, she realised she should have gotten dinner before going home. There were no groceries in the fridge or her cupboards. Perhaps there was some milk left. Y/N’s ego was too big to even ask her parents for a loan.

She was reminded of how she had a roommate a few years ago- Anna. She used to be the one who restocked groceries and cooked dinner, sometimes even reminding her to take care of herself and sleep; the responsible one, essentially. It used to be fun back then when they would sometimes stay up late and binge dramedies or gossip about whatever their work lives had to offer. Now she was somewhere in London, working with Bellerby Globemakers as a cartographer and left Blue for her to take care of. They lived together because it was easier to pay rent and serve food on their plates. Now they were in better places in life, earning more money than they previously were yet Y/N still struggled to keep her schedules in check. Oh, how she missed having a roommate.

The coming weekend, she willed herself out of bed and into a grocery store. Y/N realised that some of her fondest childhood memories were amongst the isles of many stores similar to the ones she was in. She laughed the loudest when her father pushed her around in one of those bright and colourful trolleys kids could sit in and her eldest brother always let her buy whatever junk food she wanted, regardless of what their mother said. She remembered how she would shoplift stationery with her cousins until she turned nineteen and she still had some of the pictures she took with her high school friends in the breakfast cereal aisle.

She also noticed that it was during times like this, when she wasn’t preoccupied with work, that her thoughts would wander off to Sunghoon- the boy she dubbed a handsome stranger with pouty lips and starry eyes. Y/N couldn’t remember the last time she was approached by a stranger who wanted to strike up a conversation. These days, the only social interactions she had were with fellow professors from the university, her students, her family or the occasional text on social media that she never bothered responding to. Though she realised she was awfully mean to him, she had forgotten what it was like interacting with people.

Y/N forgot when she became so introverted. Or rather, she forgot why she became comfortable being an introvert. Back in high school, she remembered always wanting to go out with her friends on the weekend and she remembered unapologetically making acquaintances with any human that crossed her path. Now she was reserved, too shy to approach anyone and building up her walls every time someone had something to say to her. Maybe it was a phase she would never grow out of- her parents did always say that in your mid-twenties, your personality kind of just sticks.

Her cart was filled with frozen foods and bags of fruit by the time she stood in line to check out. Impatiently, she tapped her foot on the floor and checked her watch, wondering when she could go home and heat a pizza for lunch. From what she remembered, she still had her new books to finish reading for the updated syllabus in class and she committed to cleaning her apartment so that was what she was going to do for the rest of the day. Eat, read, clean and repeat.

While Y/N stood in line, Sunghoon and Riki were walking past the same grocery store. Sunghoon stopped in his tracks when he recognised her from the corner of his eyes, through the glare of the glass doors. She was wearing that trench coat again and her feet were clad with the same worn-out sneakers. Her fingers were adorned with vintage, silver rings, this time and he noticed how her shopping cart was basically a stack of frozen pizzas and a few green apples. He chuckled mindlessly to himself.

Riki continued walking for a good ten seconds before he realised his friend was peeping into some shop with the brightest smile he’d seen on him in days, eyes gleaming under the sunlight. He swore he saw his entire body glowing from some kind of happiness he didn’t understand.

“Hyung?” Riki called, raising his brows and slightly stretching his arms as though he was asking what made him stop walking. “What are you staring at?”

Sunghoon didn’t move his gaze or falter his expression but instead continued to wave Riki towards him, flailing his hand around in the air in a way that made him look stupid. “You remember that girl I told you about?” He asked when he approached him.

“The one from the mall?” Riki confirmed. “The one that acted like a bitch?”

“Hey, I never called her that,” Sunghoon stood straight again, furrowing his brows at the boy.

“Well, you described her that way,” Riki raised his hands in defence, pursing his lips and taking a step back. “What about her, though?”

“She’s in the store,” Sunghoon pointed a thumb towards where she stood and Riki traced his gaze in her direction. “The one in the trench coat?”

“Oh,” Riki cocked his head to the side. “She’s pretty. But I’m getting late for work and you promised you’d visit the studio today,” he argued, face falling into a frown.

It wasn’t that Riki was uninterested in his friend’s love life- he knew how much he craved a significant other; someone to love and to be loved by. Yet, this time, the boy was only pulling Sunghoon’s attention away because he was sceptical of how it was going to end. No, he didn’t have faith in the fact that Sunghoon and Y/N could end up happy, solely judging from past experience.

He’d seen how much he was hurt by all the girls in his past. He was there when Sunghoon would stumble into one of their houses drunk, whining over heartbreak for probably the hundredth time. Riki was there to take care of him on nights when he was supposed to be studying for his finals and he was there when Sunghoon would introduce yet another girl to the group- he would call out their flaws every single time and he was right about the girls every single time. Though he hoped his predictions would turn out wrong, he knew his judgement was usually right.

He still remembered meeting that one red-head ex-girlfriend of his from a couple of years ago. Sunghooon had brought her into Jake and Chiara’s kitchen and he just knew that she would cheat on him. He presumed it was something about the way she smiled or the way she shook his hand that gave him a negative first impression. She was the sultry type, and though he had no issue with that, it didn’t mean she could use it as an excuse to flirt with every other man in the room. Riki was right about her and it would only make sense if he assumed he would be right about Y/N- she wasn’t a good idea. But for Sunghoon’s sake, he decided to think positive thoughts- maybe they would work out and he would get married and finally allow Riki a chance to be the best man in someone's wedding.

“Riki, just wait for like, ten minutes,” he pleaded. “Yeah? I’ll just… say hi and come back.”

“My, God,” Riki rolled his eyes while Sunghoon slowly stepped towards the entry of the store with a lopsided grin. “Fine, go,” he shook his head in disappointment and stared at the rest of their interaction from the other side of the glass, gagging with a cringe.

Sunghoon walked into the store with a skip in his step, grabbing the nearest candy bar and beelining towards the check-out line. He didn’t know where he got his confidence from- when he saw her for the first time in that mall, he was a nervous bundle of a mess but now, he stood right behind Y/N and he smiled when he knew she didn’t realise. So, he leaned towards her ear and said, “We have got to stop meeting like this.”

Y/N recognised his voice immediately, swinging around with a gasp of surprise. She covered her gaping mouth with the back of her hand, her glasses reflecting the ray of sunlight when she made eye contact with him. When she comprehended his figure, she felt a wave of relief wash down her torso. “You scared me,” she moved her hand to her chest, gulping. “Didn’t think I’d see you again,” she breathed out a smile.

“That too, in the same predicament,” Sunghoon smiled back.

The pair moved to the front of the cue and he helped her stock her items onto the conveyer belt. “What are you doing here, anyway?” she asked. “Stalking me?”

“No,” he mused innocently. “But if that’s what makes you feel better…”

“Oh, please,” she brushed him off and glanced at him from the corner of her eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Hey, we’re meeting in a checkout line for the second time. Don’t you think it’s fate?”

“You’re stupid if you believe in fate,” she laughed at his pouting expression. “Seriously, you believe in that crap?”

“Don’t make me feel bad about it, I have a good reason,” he defended.

“Well, what’s the reason?” She paid the bill with her phone, waiting for an answer from the handsome stranger.

He smirked at her, digging one hand into the pocket of his trousers and the other bringing the candy bar to his chin. He looked her up and down, raising an eyebrow to question if she knew what response would come. When she repeated her question, he asked, “I’ll tell you about it on a date sometime?”

SEEING SUNGHOON SKATING ON the ice rink in jeans and a shirt that barely insulated his torso was like watching birds flying freely with their wings spread in freedom. Y/N supposed that after years of dedicating his time to the rink, one would most likely get used to the cold. He had the brightest smile on his face, the type that made his cheeks bulge and his eyes disappear into his eyelids. His teeth glimmered pearly white behind his pouty lips and she wasn’t sure she had the heart to join him and ruin his solitude.

Over the past few months that Y/N spent getting to know Sunghoon, she realised how much he enjoyed his own company. It was ironic really, how he was known as the womaniser amongst his friends but would separate hours in his schedule just to be alone in his apartment with a beer and an old movie, in solitary with his thoughts and his six dogs. She also learnt that he kept a diary, entries meticulously planned in a manner that allowed him to write the smallest details of his day. It would explain the locked drawers in his room- a precaution he consciously took part in because he knew his friends would snoop if they ever found them. He agreed he told them pretty much everything but every man needs a secret of his own, he would say.

Even with their busy schedules, both being teachers of some sort, they managed to squeeze in a few dates after class, for lunch, during the weekends or late-night walks in the park where the moon was waxing but the stars weren’t as prominent due to New York’s pollution. She was even a frequent visitor at his apartment after the first month of knowing him, often sleeping over because she was too lazy to catch a cab and refused to let him drive her home. The latter was mostly because she was scared to bring him to her apartment, the messy space between four walls she lived in that hadn’t been rearranged or properly cleaned in over a year. At least there were no bugs hiding in nooks and crevices.

On the nights she spent in his apartment, one that was only slightly bigger than her own, they’d find themselves lying on his couch, his chin on her head, as they watched a random black and white movie they couldn’t help laughing at. His dogs would be with them, some gathered on the floor and others burrowing themselves in the spaces on his couch. Some nights, they would doze asleep and other times they’d end up in conversations where Sunghoon would talk about his days in high school with a roll in his eyes or about his family with the same smile he would have while skating on the ice rink. He would tell her about his tight-knit group of friends and he would talk about his struggles with perfecting the English language. Y/N would tell him about her siblings- four brothers and three sisters- with whom she talked to every day but had no idea of how she struggled financially sometimes. She would tell him about her international escapades when she went on archaeology trips and to make him feel better, she would tell him that her high school experience wasn’t something she wanted to look back on either.

She still remembered the first conversation they had when he took her out for the first time. He brought her to an upper-class restaurant for dinner, the pair dressed in formal attire to fit the aesthetic. Y/N had panicked at first, rambling about how she wasn’t sure if she could afford it but he assured her that he got the tab and that their table was already reserved so she had no other choice but to accompany him. With a grin, he led her to their table and pulled her chair out for her like a gentleman from a family with old money. The restaurant had golden chandeliers and a menu that went on for an unlimited amount of pages. For the first few minutes, they sat awkwardly, having no idea how to start a conversation but then she told him how it had been years since she came to a fancy restaurant as such and the pair couldn’t shut up around each other since then.

Their other dates included trips to museums where Y/N would effortlessly describe every artefact or painting on display and Sunghoon would listen to the historical anecdotes she had to offer. They once spent hours at The MET- she knew the history and he knew the celebrity galas that would take place annually. He took her to a bookstore once and he realised that if she could, she would have bought half the books in the store. She told him that she could finish an average novel in one and a half days and he refused to believe her unless he witnessed it first-hand. It was a bet the pair had forgotten about but he brought it up during a random phone call but she never found the time to prove herself.

“Come join me, Y/N,” Sunghoon waved for her from the middle of the ice rink and she nervously shook her hair.

Surprisingly, it was the first time he took her ice skating. One would assume it would be the first date he’d take her on because it was all he could talk about sometimes. Meanwhile, Y/N had never been ice skating before. She wasn’t much of a sports enthusiast either so convincing her to play any form of sport would be taking her miles away from her comfort zone. Her biggest form of adrenaline would be riding a high-risk amusement park ride or teaching a class on Malta’s catacombs without previous preparation.

“Come on,” Sunghoon encouraged again, slowly making his way towards her with his hands stretched in front of him and an excited smile beaming on his snowy features. “Don’t be nervous, I’ll hold your hands until you get the hang of it.”

His bare hands hold her glove-clad pair and her gaze stays on the way he holds her and wistfully walks her into the ice. She almost trips at first but after a few rounds of stomping and digging her skating blades into the ice, she could skate on her own without trembling or shaking. Sunghoon made rounds around her and took pictures of her, commenting on how she looked cute with a helmet on her head and a puffer jacket on her shoulders. She giggled and tried covering up the camera of his phone but failed and focused on balancing herself instead.

When Sunghoon giggled, she found herself staring at him for longer than she usually would. When she agreed to go on a date with him all those months ago, she wasn’t expecting herself to enjoy his company. She expected them to come out in the end as friends but then she found herself texting him every morning before waking up and every night before falling asleep. She thought about him every moment she had to herself and waited for the next time she could potentially meet him. She found herself noticing and making note of his small habits and characteristics and she wondered if he prioritised her the same way.

The last time she remembered feeling this attached to someone was in high school. Her brothers had warned her about the boy she had been getting close to and even threatened to harm him if she was harmed. They had dated for a short period, their relationship questionable to her siblings but deemed perfect by her friends. When they broke up, she remembered spending weeks crying over loneliness and it was then that she realised how toxic it all had been. With that memory in her head, she approached Sunghoon with more caution, especially while knowing his history with women.

“It’s getting late, no?” He pulled her to the exit of the rink by her hands, softly whispering in her ear. “We should probably head home.”

“Yeah,” she nodded, pulling off her gloves and jacket while he helped rid her of the horrid helmet that messed with her hair.

“I’ll drive you home?” He offered but was met with a brief moment of silence.

He waited for her to respond, her smile slowly fading from her face, replaced by exhaustion and fatigue. Y/N thought about how she hadn't enjoyed herself in so long and the only reason she was ending her days with tiredness from activities was because of Sunghoon. If she was being honest, he was probably the only person she had been outside her house with since Sarah.

“I don’t wanna go home,” she admitted, a shy purse on her lips.

Sunghoon chuckled and kneeled to help her off her skating shoes. “I just realised you’ve never taken me to your place,” he mumbled. “Why not tonight?”

“No,” she shook her head. “I like your apartment better.” “Are you ever gonna let me in your apartment?”

“Well, not today,” she passed off her comment as a joke but realised how put off he was by this. His gaze lowered and his lips pressed into a straight line. She wasn’t sure if she was even saying the right things anymore. “Can we just spend the night at your place for now? Come over next week, I’ll introduce you to my sisters.”

With that, Sunghoon complied with a smile and the pair spent the night cuddled in his bed, falling into a deep slumber.

Y/N spent the next week cleaning her apartment to perfection, not like before when she’d just scrub her tables and collapse from laziness. No, she put her heart and soul into making her apartment look presentable. Her countertops showed her reflection and her tables were organised after what felt like decades. Paintings and piles of books sat on her bay window which she excused for aesthetic purposes and her carpet wasn’t lined with Blue’s shedding anymore. She didn’t just do this for her sisters, she realised it was mostly to give Sunghoon a good first impression. Her sisters knew she was messy but getting to know someone new and allowing them into a messy apartment was like being handed the death sentence in her books.

The day her sisters would visit rolled around in less time than she expected. They brought her huge bouquets of flowers and home-cooked meals to have together for dinner. God knows how long it’s been since you must have cooked, they said while pinching her cheeks and for the first time in a long time, she was reminded of how much she used to dread being the youngest sibling of eight. Willow and Rose, being the eldest compared to Laurel and Y/N, tended to baby them to the point of frustration. They were adults now, living independently with their individual families but the oldest siblings still had their way of annoying the youngest.

All her brothers, Willow and Rose were married and Laurel was very recently engaged. Using that excuse, they crashed at Y/N’s apartment when they weren’t out celebratory shopping. From the second they entered her house, it felt like all hell had broken loose; like a tsunami of opinions had been unleashed. Willow was tutting at her messy fridge and Rose was opening and closing her cupboards in hopes of finding cleanliness but there was no hope. With a pitiful smile, Laurel sat on the couch with her arms crossed and Y/N joined her.

Over the next few hours, she had an earful of how she should move to an apartment with paint that didn’t chip off her walls and how she should rid herself of some of her useless positions. They demanded to go grocery shopping later and insisted on cooking dinner because she looked like she hadn’t eaten in over a century. At the end of the day, Y/N was the youngest of them all and would be pampered the most.

She formed an image in her head where she was surrounded by her three sisters with forks, spoons and chopsticks piled with food being shoved down her throat. Her tiny table was filled with dishes from all sorts of cuisines and juices of all kinds of fruit. As the cherry on top, there was a giant chocolate cake placed right at the centre. She was trying her best not to choke on the food, her cheeks swollen red, while her sisters wore hearty smiles, oblivious to her suffering from their smothering care.

“Make something nice for dinner, then,” Y/N stopped herself from flinching at the image in her head, one that would surely haunt her in her dreams. “I’ll introduce you to someone.”

Sunghoon didn’t realise how nervous he was to meet Y/N’s sisters until a few hours before he had to meet them. It was a mix of excitement and dread; his lack of confidence in himself to impress a potential partner’s family. He had texted her relentlessly, asking the most mindless doubts about what colour clothes to wear, if he should bring them any gifts or if he should dye his hair back to black because his platinum blond felt unprofessional all of a sudden. He wondered if they would disapprove of his profession and chalk it up to the fact that he had wealthy parents but he had to remind himself that Y/N’s profession wasn’t providing her with much earnings either.

Y/N responded to his texts calmly, which brought him the same effect. He found himself taking deeper breaths and told him that this wouldn’t be the first time he’s met a girl’s family. It was just her sisters which meant he wouldn’t have to face the wrath of her brothers yet. From what she had told him, they could start a boxing match with him in the middle of the road if they thought he wasn’t good enough for their sister. He wondered how some of the sisters managed to get married with such protective brothers.

Y/N gave him simple advice: compliment Willow's hair, she’ll like you instantly; bring chocolates as a present and Rose will be the first to commend you; ask Laurel how she met her fiancé, she loves telling the story; and don’t make it obvious that I gave you this advice.

He repeated these points to himself as he stood in front of her door, a box of gourmet chocolates in his hands and a red scarf tied around his neck. Dramatically, for his own satisfaction, he breathed heavily and told himself that dinner would go perfectly as planned if he just stuck to the advice.

Compliment Willow's hair.

Give Rose the chocolates.

Ask Laurel about her fiancé.

Be natural.

Then, the door opened before he could knock thrice and Y/N stood in front of him on the verge of sweating, a faux and toothy smile on her face. Her widened eyes told him to hurry inside the apartment and he made a point to slip his shoes before he followed her into the living room.

Her apartment wasn’t what he expected. In all honesty, he wasn’t sure what he expected. When he would imagine her in her apartment, he would simply picture a space similar to his home; white walls, minimalistic furniture and large balconies. But her apartment was something he would expect out of Pinterest, the type that girls swooned over as dark academia but in reality was just messily decorated and cleaned. Her walls were ivory with chipping paint, her couch a mustard yellow and her shelves overflowing with books that she had to pile in corners of her room. There were a myriad of paintings, some framed and some not, some hung neatly on the wall and others leaning onto any flat surface. He also spotted random artefacts, ones he was sure she would give a backstory of when the dinner is over.

“Sunghoon,” Y/N whispered rather agitatedly.

“Sorry,” he mumbled with a shy smile. “Just checking out your apartment.”

Rolling her eyes, she led him to the kitchen, her sisters swallowed in a conversation at the dinner table. The three sisters ceased their exchange in silence with smiles as welcoming and warm as the dishes on the tables. To his relief, he didn’t have to introduce himself. He simply stood there, palms sweating, legs on the verge of folding and a toothy smile that he would not want to be photographed in, while Y/N introduced him to her sisters and rid him of his scarf.

“You’re just on time,” Rose cheered with her hands together, ushering Sunghoon to the empty seat beside her. “And you brought chocolate!” She cheered as he made himself comfortable in the wooden chair, an awkward chuckle slipping past his lips. He weaved his fingers together on the table while she took the box of chocolates in her hands and examined the brand in awe.

Ding! Sunghoon thought to himself as a moment of victory.

“It’s considered rude to visit someone’s house for the first time without gifts, in my family,” Sunghoon blabbered and shared an award glance with Y/N.

Willow and Laurel looked at him with questioning looks and he offered them another awkward smile. “Y/N told us you’re from Korea?” Willow asked.

“Yeah,” Sunghoon nodded. Then followed a moment of silence no one knew how to fill. The group of five simply looked at each other and Blue entered the kitchen from one of the bedrooms like a saving grace. “Oh, is this your dog?” he looked at Y/N with excitement and slipped off his seat to kneel in front of the Golden Retriever.

“Yeah, his name is Blue,” Y/N cooed with a proud smile.

“I know, you told me,” he hummed, ruffling Blue’s fur and touching his nose to the dog’s.

“You’re fond of dogs?” Laurel asked.

“I adore them,” he mused. “I’ve got six dogs myself.”

With that statement, the conversation somehow burst between the group. Though Y/N didn’t contribute much, she enjoyed the sight in front of her. Willow filled Sunghoon’s plate with food despite his objections and Laurel was gushing about her fiancé’s dog- which is when Sunghoon slipped in the question of how they met. Ding! She rambled about how they met in the airport at the ripe age of twenty-one and had been in each other’s lives since then- for eight years.

The story almost brought Sunghoon to tears, being a sucker for love himself. He felt jealous of people that had perfect and long-lasting relationships, the type where they would meet at young ages and grow old together and survive life through thick and thin. It was the type of love he always craved for. But then his gaze met Y/N and he forgot about the pang of loneliness in his chest. He continued asking Willow which salon she went to because her hair looked pristine. Ding!

As dinner came to an end, they told him anecdotes of their childhood and embarrassed Y/N to their full capacity. A story that stuck with him was of when they took a family trip to the beach, eight kids in the back of the car with their miserable parents in the front, fighting for just a moment of silence or peace. Y/N was described as a loud child, the one that was most spoiled because she was the youngest, showered with love from her older siblings and all her wishes granted by her parents. That day, she had spent all her time with her eldest brother because he was brooding from going through a recent breakup and played around him building terrible sand castles and collecting broken seashells until he laughed and played with her.

They even showed him her baby pictures.

He could imagine Y/N at that age, holding sand in her chubby palms and laughing while running away from the waves. He could imagine her in a pink-coloured bucket hat covering her tiny head, knitted onesies as her outfit for the beach. He could imagine her milk teeth peeking from behind her lips when she laughed and he could imagine just how happy she must have been when her brother accepted her seashells as a token of happiness.

“What are you laughing at?” Y/N asked, brushing her fingers over his chin.

The pair had winded up on her couch once her sisters were off to sleep. Sunghoon’s old figure skating videos were playing on the television because according to Y/N, if you get to see my childhood pictures, I get to see yours. They were long forgotten by both and the television reflected black while they kissed and cuddled, anything to use their time alone for their benefit. Eventually, they ended up naked under a thin blanket, his slender hands drawing circles on her shoulder and her arms wrapped around his neck, pecking his jaw anytime she felt like it.

“Nothing,” he chuckled, shaking his head and kissing her forehead. “I’m just thinking about you being all hyper and active as a baby,” he confessed, unable to stop the rest of his giggles.

“Hey,” she furrowed her brows, attempting to kick her leg at him but her movements were constricted as he held her tighter. “You just called me boring now.”

“No, don’t take it that way,” he grinned. “It’s just hard to imagine you now the way you were as a child. You know, because you’re all calm and collected now. The only times I’ve seen you laugh, like properly laugh and cackle-”

“I don’t cackle-”

“Is when we watch funny movies or when I make jokes,” he mused. “I mean even at dinner, your sisters made pretty good jokes but you didn’t laugh.”

“I normally would have. I’m quite open around my family,” she mumbled. “Just kinda felt overwhelmed today.”

“Because of me?”

She nodded against his chest.

“Why is that?”

“Because before you came, I was stressed thinking of whether they’d like you or not. I was praying that they’d like you,” she admitted. “And once you came and they started getting along with you, I was so relieved. I mean, even Willow seemed to get along with you so well. At that point, I had used up all my energy so I just took the time to relax and… observed, I guess.”

Sunghoon hummed, letting his fingers run lines up and down her spine. “What’d you observe, then?”

“Nothing in particular,” she said. “Just listening to them talk and you talk and bonding. It was nice to watch.”

“I’m glad it went well, then,” he nodded, chin moving to rest on her head. “I really thought they would hate me, you know? I was nervous before meeting them, too. Rose is the one that made it less awkward, it’s honestly all thanks to her that I managed with conversation.”

“Yeah, she’s always been like that,” Y/N agreed. “She has a way of making people around her feel comfortable. It’s not gonna be that way with my brothers, though.”

“Oh, dear God, I don’t even wanna think about that,” Sunghoon whined, hugging her closer as if it could change the inevitable.

“It’s fine, ‘Hoon,” she chuckled. “I’ll be there. My sisters will be there. I’ve told my parents somewhat about you and they seem to be fond of you. They even ask about you sometimes-”

“You talk to your parents about me?” Sunghoon’s grin widened into a smirk, moving his head so that he could peek at the flustered look on her face.

“Yeah?” She trailed, her cheeks turning a shade of crimson he couldn’t notice in the dark.

“I’ll be honest with you,” he started. “I told my parents about you, too.”

“Really?” Y/N’s eyes couldn’t stop blinking for a moment, her mouth hanging agape

“Yeah, why is that so surprising?”

With a shit-eating grin on his mouth, he lifted her by her waist and made her straddle his hips so that he could see her expressions as they talked. She yelped as she made herself comfortable, reaching towards the armrest to grab his shirt so she could cover herself. Her palms spanned across his chest while his fingers trailed to unbutton his shirt on her torso, playing with the skin on her stomach.

“Well, you know,” she responded with a grin reflecting his, unable to control the butterflies in her stomach. “You told me about your past relationships… and I didn’t think you’d tell them so early-”

“It’s been a while since we started seeing each other, no?”

“Yeah,” she nodded.

“It only seemed fair that I told them,” he shrugged, hands pulling her closer. “My sister’s quite excited to meet you, by the way.”

“How long has it been since you last told them about a girl you were seeing?”

“A couple of years… a long time, actually,” he pursed his lips in thought. “I haven’t been in a relationship lasting this long in years… it almost feels new.”

“Really?” She smiled even wider.

“That makes you feel good, huh?”

“Well, obviously,” she shrugged proudly. “Your parents like me.”

“Your parents like me, too,” he giggled.

“Yeah!” She exclaimed, leaning down so she could rest her head on his chest, wrapping her arms around his neck once again.

“And you know my friends that I keep mentioning?”

She hummed.

“I want you to meet them, too.”

“Somehow, that’s more nerve-wracking than meeting your family.”

Sunghoon erupted into laughter, his arms wrapping around her torso. She could feel the rise and fall in his chest, his heart rate increasing by the second. “There’s no need for that,” he assured with a croon. “They’ll like you and you’ll like them.”

“But didn’t you say Riki didn’t really like me when you told him about me?”

“That was when I met you the first time,” he said. “To be fair, you were kind of bitchy-”

“Ok, fine, my bad,” she rolled her eyes. “But what if they don’t like me?”

“They’ll like you,” he repeated. “Especially Chiara.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. When I started telling her about you, she was swooning. I’m not joking. She was begging to meet you-”

“When was this?”

“Like a month ago,” he said. “She’s been asking about you for a while. She wants you to come for next week’s dinner.”

From the myriad of times Sunghoon had talked about Chiara and all his other friends, she learned that she was like the mother of the group. Her and Jake’s house was where everyone could stop by even without an invitation- everyone had a spare key to their apartment. Her pantry was always filled with snacks and drinks of all sorts and if anyone needed anything to be whipped up, she would oblige with no hesitation. She was the person that could accept anyone regardless of their needs or flaws, the one that knew how to make everyone around her safe. But regardless of knowing all that, Y/N was still insecure to meet her.

“But-”

“Y/N,” he pressed. “You’ll be fine. I’ll be sitting with you the whole time.”

She groaned, defeated and having no excuse to give him. “Fine,” she mumbled.

To be precise, Sunghoon took Y/N out on their first date precisely six months prior. In those five months, the pair spent a lot of energy learning how to communicate with one another. Y/N was the shy and quiet type, the kind of person that tended to use sarcasm as a defence mechanism instead of voicing her concerns and feelings. Sunghoon, though he was quite sarcastic himself, used the mechanism as his sole form of communication, completely ignoring the fact that he was capable of having feelings pertaining to benefiting himself.

It took more than a few attempts to learn how to be comfortable with one another. If it weren’t for her pestering him to tell him about his past failed relationships, he wouldn’t be freely speaking about his family now. If it wasn’t for him arguing with her about how he wanted her to be carefree around him with her guard down, she wouldn’t even be able to laugh around him. Forget laughter, she probably wouldn’t even know how to kiss him without feeling embarrassed of the effect he had on her. Learning how to openly communicate with one another turned into learning how to ask each other for advice and depend on each other emotionally instead of accepting their individual isolation.

When Sunghoon first started to open up about his past relationships, she wasn’t expecting to hear what she did. The more stories she heard, the more she understood where his cockiness and inferiority complex stemmed from. There was a point where she thought her new boyfriend had hooked up with the entire female population of New York City with the amount of relationships he’d mentioned. But the one thing she realised after every story of past relationships he told her was that all he wanted was to settle down the way his friends and most of the population did, to start a family and marry a girl he was proud to be loved by.

Y/N would be lying if she said she didn’t feel even the slightest amount of luck.

Over the span of their relationship, Sunghoon couldn’t spend her twenty-seventh birthday with her. Her parents had bought her a train ticket back home and she spent her birthday with her parents, siblings and their spouses sitting around their average sized dinner table singing the overrated birthday song while she blew out the candles on a very small chocolate cake that only she ate at the end of the night. Sunghoon had called her later in the night to wish her when she was finally not surrounded by her family and it was the very same night that she had told her parents about him. Her sister-in-laws, brother-in-laws, all her siblings and her parents were bombarding her with questions and all she could tell them was that she was smitten by him with a toothy smile.

She couldn’t spend his twenty-eighth birthday with him either. He spent his birthday weekend at Jake and Chiara’s house- the house where all the parties, dinners and get-togethers were held- with the rest of his friends and all the kids were to stay the night with a very unlucky babysitter. He got drunk on beer, his favourite activity to indulge in, and was the model of most embarrassing pictures and videos. Jay, being the most sober out of everyone, was taking care of Sunghoon like his life depended on it while the rest of the party-attendees thrashed the house which left Jake and Chiara in a gruelling position to clean up the next morning.

That night, Sunghoon had called Y/N in a bout of slurs, his face too close to the phone camera which restricted her view on his face and the circus that was falling apart behind him. She could barely hear him through the excited screams of his friends and the loud music but she was able to hear fragments of what he was saying.

“I miss you so much, y/n,” he said. “I wish you were here… I always thought you looked so pretty, you know you’re really pretty, right?”

Y/N laughed at him through the entire call and offered suitable responses. “I miss you, too,” she said. “I think you look very handsome, ‘Hoon.”

However, it was during those two incidents that Y/N realised how much Sunghoon valued his friends, so much to the point that he considered them more his family than his actual family, and Sunghoon realised how close Y/N was to her family. A conversation wouldn’t end without him bringing up his friends and her day wouldn’t start without a text from anyone member of her family. It was then that they realised they couldn’t expect each other to continue their relationship without putting in the effort to meet each other’s families, their respective powerhouses for love and personality.

“WHY THE BEACH, THOUGH?” She asked with an open smile whilst being held in the air by Sunghoon. He held her up by her thighs, her bikini cover-up barely holding onto her frame as he spun her around. She wasn’t sure how he was able to hold his balance in loose sand, waves occasionally grazing his feet, but she was squealing in amusement, throat bubbling with laughter every time he craned his neck to kiss her. Her hair blew with the wind, ruining the effort she put into styling it that morning and his newly dyed black hair covered his forehead and enhanced the brown in his eyes.

“I don’t know,” he grinned. “I just wanted to see if you’d act like how your sisters described in that one story they told.”

Sunghoon let his arms slip around her waist now, her legs instinctively wrapping around his waist as their lips met again for probably the hundredth time that day. He wouldn't stop kissing her while she got dressed in front of her mirror, his hands exploring her stomach and lips exploring her neck. He wouldn’t stop kissing her on the car ride there, leaning towards her every time the road seemed empty or when they stopped at the red light. And he couldn’t stop kissing her when they reached the beach, hands refusing to leave her touch and holding her frame as close as he could and bruising her lips with his as often as he was allowed.

“Why so suddenly?” She asked before being pulled into another kiss, his lips devouring hers like he hadn’t kissed her in an eternity, like he wasn’t doing the same thing for the past three hours. “And what’s up with you and making out today?” She asked again, pulling away from his lips with a smack.

“Just in the mood,” he responded, chasing for another kiss through hooded eyes. She wasn’t sure which question of hers he answered to but she could only smile giddily, submitting into his lips yet again.

“Well, are you stressed or something?” She mumbled against his lips.

“Y/N,” he sighed, pulling away from her and letting her stand on her own two feet again. She blinked profusely, head tilting in confusion, toes wiggling into the familiar damp sand. “Just shut up and let me kiss you, alright?” And without letting her reply, he cupped her jaw with his hands and connected their lips again.

He was kissing her like she was his source of oxygen. He relished in the feeling of her jaw moving against his palms while she followed the movement of his lips, head tilting accordingly when he slid his tongue through the little opening in her mouth. Only he was in control at that moment and he was pecking her mouth, sucking on her bottom lip when she was gasping for air. But the moment of intimacy passed before she could register the butterflies in her stomach and he was lifting her up, throwing her over his shoulder. She erupted in laughter, legs flailing in the air as he ran into the water with a smile she could hear from a mile away.

He smiled so wide that his eyes were squinting to slits, throwing himself and her into the salty waves and emerging back up in a gasp for air. Y/N pushed her soaked hair away from her face, eyes as wide as saucers and mouth opened in shock while Sunghoon waited for a reaction- and a reaction he got. The next few minutes were filled with water being splashed in each others’ faces, their laughter louder than the group of kids visiting the beach for the first time. While she was failing on wrestling his, their fingers intertwined, he realised that this was what bliss felt like, to his girlfriend, his lover, happy and smiling and laughing like she was living the best moment in her life.

Over the next hour, Sunghoon sat beside Y/N in the sand while she built sandcastles like she was a kindergartener. Her hands built a mountain out of sand and taller towers beside the melting mountain. She would pout and whine and curse at him in laughter whenever he’d mess up her artwork and he would kiss her again, slow pecks that would eventually burn into her memory. Then he collected seashells with her which were eventually returned back to the sand and waters. When they found a dried starfish, coloured a bright magenta, she started ranting about the significance of starfish to the Aztec culture and he listened with open ears, nodding along to her words as if he would write an exam on the topic. In that hour, he could see the little girl that her sisters described her as in her, except she was wearing a bikini instead of a bucket hat and jean-shorts.

“I like seeing you like this,” he said, holding her hand in a moment of serenity, walking across the beach with their shoes clutched in their empty hands.

“Like what?” She asked, unable to put aside her smile.

“Happy.”

“You say that like you’ve never seen me happy before, ‘Hoon,” she chuckled and shook her head. “You brought me here because of the story my sisters told you, right?”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “You had this juvenile happiness about you. I love when you’re like this.”

Y/N squeezed his hand and made him turn towards her. He had a look of satisfaction in his eyes, bangs covering his brows. His lips twitched into a miniscule smile, one that she almost missed if she didn’t squint enough. The wind blew his shirt against his skin, an icky dampness he ignored suddenly made aware. “Thank you,” she said, pursing her lips to hide a thankful smile. “I loved today.”

Sunghoon kissed her forehead and led her to his car. He didn’t want to admit to her that the reason for his increased physical affection, constantly kissing her and touching her, was truly because he was stressed. He was stressed about introducing her to his friends during dinner in a few hours- he could only imagine the amount of anxiety she was dealing with and hoped that a day at the beach would perhaps help her into a positive mood. It wasn’t that he was questioning their relationship or personality all of a sudden, no that wasn’t it. It was the fact that he knew her well enough that her awkwardness around new people often led them to perceive her with a negative first impression. She wasn’t great at starting conversation and in all honesty, Sunghoon was no good at helping people involve themselves into conversation. That was Rose’s speciality, not his. Sunghoon was rather the type to laugh at jokes and comment on whatever stupid statement his friends made. The more he thought about it, the more he realised he couldn’t rely on himself to help Y/N ease herself into whatever conversation would take place during.

When he panicked to Chiara about his nerves, she assured him that she would be there to help her feel welcomed. She reminded him that his friends weren’t the type of people to isolate someone new, especially if it was someone Sunghoon said was special to him. “Even I wasn’t this nervous when I introduced Chiara to you guys,” Jake had said to him. “It’ll be fine. You know that.” So, he played out the scenarios in his head on how dinner would go; he imagined Jay bonding with Y/N over his random knowledge in history and he imagined Y/N sipping on wine with Chiara, Karina and Jade at the end of the night. He imagined Jake and Heeseung telling her about all his embarrassing stories and her laughing at them with no filter and he imagined her playing with all the kids- his nieces and nephews.

In his head, it was the perfect dinner, exactly the way he’d want his lover to fit into his found-family and as he looked at Y/N covering herself with a towel and drying her hair with her fingers raking her scalp, he knew that everything would go just the way he imagined.

“There’s a motel nearby, we can freshen up there,” he offered softly, stretching his arms to grab ahold of her hips and pull her closer towards him.

“What’ve you got planned for the day, hmm?” She teased. “I haven’t seen you this enthusiastic since you took me ice skating.”

He grinned, softly pecking her lips and digging his nails deeper into her hips. She chewed the inside of her cheek, smirking and nodding in understanding. Her fists rested on his chest, knees on the verge of buckling from his gaze alone. “After that, I thought maybe we could go to a bookstore or a movie. Anything you want, really.”

“That sounds really good,” she hummed. Her eyes hooded, scanning his face from his eyes, the mole on his nose and to his lips. “I think I prefer your natural hair better, by the way,” she smiled as she kissed him and he teased her with a hum, fingers drumming on her lower back.

The time leading up to dinner felt like floating through a dream. He remembered showering with her and helping her pick out a pretty dress to wear while she styled her hair in the shabby bathroom of the motel. He also remembered spending way too many hours in the nearest bookstore where he felt like a ghost following her around with shallow eyes. While she carried around a pile of non-fiction books and archives, softly explaining to him a snippet of history but nothing was registering in his head. He just remembered standing behind her with wide eyes and pursed lips, almost resembling a robot, imagining everything that could possibly go wrong at dinner; at dinner at his best friend’s house with the rest of the people he grew up around; at dinner with the people he called his family that saw him bring multiple other women to similar dinners.

He was just overthinking, right?

Yeah, he was. While driving, it was usually Sunghoon that had his free hand on her thigh but the roles were switched this time when Y/N saw his hands trembling. He looked like a lost puppy with those terrified eyes locked on the road in front of him.

“Sunghoon?” She called. “Park Sunghoon?”

He was so stressed, Sunghoon could feel the nerves in his jaw firing up before he opened his mouth to say, “yeah?”

“What’s on your mind?”

“What do you mean?” There was a laugh that escaped from his throat, hoarse and forced that almost made her flinch. “I’m fine,” his voice even went a few pitches higher.

“Honey, you’re not fine,” she insisted and moved to hold his hand that gripped the gear like his life depended on it. “It's dinner, isn’t it?”

The hesitation he showed before nodding his head was enough of an answer for her.

“Why’s it bothering you?”

He sucked in a breath and cautiously glanced at her from the corner of his eyes. “Well, you see,” he started. “They’re my friends.”

“I… know that,” she blinked profusely, confused.

“And they’ve seen me with tons of other girls,” he tried clarifying.

“How about you tell me something you don’t know,” she suggested, giving up on understanding his worries.

The first time Y/N saw him so stressed and nervous was when he was meeting her sisters. This would be the second time. He was trembling at the thought of his two worlds meeting, terrified that perhaps, like Riki had said, this relationship could end up like all others. But he was never scared to introduce his past girlfriends to them, never questioning whether it would end badly. What made Y/N different? Or has it just been a long time?

“I’m sorry,” he sighed. “I don’t know why I’m stressed. I think I’m just paranoid.”

“You and me both,” she gave his hand a few pats and pursed her lips to the side. “I’m meeting the people you call family which is a pretty big deal and from what you’ve told me, they’re all some sort of rich and famous. I mean, models, photographers, producers, writers, businessmen, dancers… It's intimidating.”

“We’re kind of all impressive aren’t we?” For the first time in hours, he cracked a smile; a smirk that made her chuckle. She nudged his arm and he chuckled with her, most of their worries draining away in that moment of glee.

“You’re feeling better, aren’t you?”

He nodded enthusiastically.

When Sunghoon parked the car in the parking lot of Jake and Chiara’s apartment, Y/N stayed stuck to the seat for exactly ten seconds. She was convinced that time had frozen for her to collect her thoughts and catch her breath. The nerves that left Sunghoon had somehow manifested in her. Suddenly, the clothes she wore felt too either too fancy or too simple and she was convinced her hair was a mess. Then, she realised she had forgotten how to conversate with new people, let alone a group of eleven adults and four children who barely had the ability to speak.

Perhaps she was too awkward for this. It’s not too late to bail, she thought.

Sunghoon had to shake her shoulders to snap her back to reality- the reality in which she wasn’t in her apartment eating cereal with her dog on the couch- and guided her to the elevator with his hand on the small of her back. She was the one acting like a robot now, her body a machine programmed to walk step by step, her eyes unmoving from whatever object was in front of her as though it would relieve the anxiousness that made her heart beat like it was about to jump out of her chest. She could hear her blood thumping against her ears, almost deafening her from Sunghoon’s voice calling out for her.

They were now standing in front of Jake and Chiara’s front door with a dozen pairs of shoes beside them.

They were all there.

“You ready?” He asked, lips curling into a hopeful smile. Her eyes followed the bead of sweat that rolled down the side of his face.

She shook her head. “We’re both scared,” she stated. “I will literally let you do whatever you want the next time we have sex if we bail from dinner.”

Sunghoon laughed at her statement, his hand reaching for her shoulder as he threw his head back. She looked at him as though she took her statement seriously and he shook his head. “Y/N,” he chuckled. “You’ll be fine. Being nervous is natural in such situations. It’ll really be fine.”

“You sound like you’re convincing yourself.”

Chuckling again, he shook his head and moved to hold her waist. “You know what’ll make both of us feel better?” He said and nodded his chin. Smiling, he kissed her like he kissed her on the beach, the dull lights that lit the apartment flickering above them as he pulled her closer. Y/N visibly loosened in his arms, the tense in her shoulders disappearing as she wrapped her arms around his neck. She focused on the fact that he was wearing her favourite shirt, a dark brown button down with black trousers- it was the outfit he wore on their first date, except his hair was dark now.

Then, she felt a little more confident.

He rang the doorbell after a few more brief pecks to her lips and moments later, Chiara opened the door. Y/N didn’t need for Sunghoon to introduce her- though he did anyway- because he had spent an hour showing her pictures of everyone so she could learn their names or she already knew them because they were famous.

The next few moments passed like a phantasm. Chiara was hugging her and dragging her through her richly furnished and exquisitely designed apartment and into the kitchen, where the dining table where ten other adults and four kids sat. Sunghoon followed them with slow footsteps, hands in his pockets as he watched his friends holler at the sight of Y/N and her awkwardly wave back with a messily stretched smile. When he saw Chiara pushing her towards Jake and Jay who were waving her towards them, Heeseung and Karina offering her drinks and Sunoo complimenting her outfit, he questioned why he wasted so much energy in worrying because the sight in front of him was perfect, like watching the happy ending of a cliché family movie.

“Why’s everyone so excited?” Sunghoon grinned while sauntering towards them. “All because of my girl, ay?” He could see Y/N blushing and Chiara teasing her by wrapping her arms around her shoulders.

“Sunghoon!” Jake yelled, lifting his glass of wine towards him. “How about you stop getting cocky and sit your ass down, ay?” Everyone laughed, offering their greetings to him.

“Behave tonight, don’t be the little shit you always are,” Heeseung pulled at Riki’s ear and he complained of being treated like a kid.

Y/N eventually ended up sitting between Sunghoon and Chiara- who had Kai with her- because at that point, they were the only people she felt remotely comfortable around. Chiara, though it was her first time meeting her, was already indulging her in pleasant conversation, pointing at each person on the table and giving her a brief description of their personality, oblivious to the fact that it was all known information already.

“Sunoo and Sheila are engaged,” Chiara said.

“Oh, yeah, when’s the wed-”

“Don’t ask them about it… they haven’t decided yet,” she slowly shook her head the way scared characters from horror movies did. “Jungwon and Eva are engaged, too.”

“Oh, the wedding’s probably in a month or two, by the way,” Jungwon lifted his head at the mention of his wedding and Heeseung dabbed him up with pride.

It felt like she was pulled into a whirlwind with the amount of conversations happening around her. Sunghoon and Chiara were keeping her company while Jade would chime in from time to time. Jungwon’s girlfriend, Eva, would start a conversation with her by offering her food and Riki had somehow wiggled his way into the conversation and offered brief phrases of acknowledgement as contribution. Then, Jay had called for her from the end of the table and started asking about her profession, claiming that he himself had an inclination towards history. For a little while, she had told him the brief of what she knew about Chinese history and offered to lend him some of her books pertaining to his interests.

Heeseung pointed to his daughters that sat between him and his wife, introducing them to Y/N as Luna and Sol and she recognised their names originating from Roman mythology. Karina encouraged her to elaborate and she went on a tangent about the stories behind the twins’ beautiful names. Eventually, the pair went on to tell her how they met, describing a romantic story between a music producer and a singer.

“Chiara, tell her how you and Jake met,” Heeseung nodded.

“Are we all gonna go around the table telling her our love stories?”

“Sounds about right,” Sunghoon clapped.

The story of Chiara and Jake was something out of a Netflix rom-com. She had heard it briefly from Sunghoon before and saw quite a few clips of them speaking about it on the internet, but to have them sitting with her on the dinner table, narrating their past with intricate detail, was something she didn’t know she needed. Watching the love between them thriving after so many years was what brought Sunghoon hope for his own love, the way they smiled at each other still seemed to bring some sort of warmth in everyone’s hearts.

Their love story was what made way for Sunoo and Sheila, who was Chiara’s best friend. They had met on a dinner similar to such, back when they were all mostly single and were still struggling to graduate or make a successful career. They claimed it was love at first sight, that Sheila had fallen in love with Sunoo’s smile and that he had fallen in love with the twinkle in her eyes. They started dating not long after they met, their personalities matching to the tea.

Though Jay and Jade started dating around the same time as Heeseung and Karina, they married much later. They were childhood friends and in fact, he was in the hospital the day she was born. They watched each other grow up because their families were close but the pair only became friends around the time Jay started taking over his father’s travel company. What started as a no-strings-attached relationship blossomed into family. However, Riki made fun of them and said they only got married because he knocked her up, to which Jay closed Evelyn’s ears with his hands and cursed at his youngest friend to never say such things around his daughter.

“What did I say about not acting like a little shit?” Heeseung warned with a finger pointing at the youngest amongst them.

Finally came Jungwon and Eva’s love story with Riki being a major reason for their engagement. The two didn’t even get along at first, always bickering when they were around each other and shooting each other death glares until Riki finally put them in a room together and forced them to put their differences aside. Turns out, they not only put their differences aside but also their clothes and now the three lived together and Riki was helping them plan their wedding. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the best man, but Jay was, because a few years prior, everyone had drawn chits to decide who would be the best man at whose wedding and Riki drew Sunghoon’s name. It was very unfortunate.

“Why didn’t you bring your girl, Riki?” Sunghoon asked.

“Oh, no,” the boy shook his head, moving his stare to the condiments left on his plate. “I broke up with her a week ago.”

There was no silence that followed his statement but a groan from Heeseung who slumped in his seat. “You owe me fifty bucks!” Jay yelled from across him. “I told you this would happen.”

Riki rolled his eyes and turned to Y/N with an unamused stare. “Don’t be alarmed, they do this a lot.”

“He’s known as the heartbreaker amongst us,” Jake firmly clapped Riki’s shoulder twice and turned to make fun of Heeseung.

“How about Y/N tells us how she felt when she first met Sunghoon, huh?” Heeseung attempted to shift the conversation and everyone was turning towards her, including her boyfriend, with grins and smirks she couldn’t escape from.

The night continued with such conversations.

Sunoo and Sheila left early like they always did and it was around that time that all the kids went to sleep and the hard liquor started coming out of the closets to be consumed. Chiara, Jungwon and Jade joined the kids to sleep as they weren’t huge fans of alcohol and everyone else had cleared the dinner table and filled it with cans of beer, bottles of vodka and glasses of whiskey, along with peanuts and kimchi. The golden lights that set the homely aura around the apartment were dimmed to blue lights, much like the lights that Sunghoon used to bring up everytime he talked about the many exclusive parties of New York he had attended.

Jake and Chiara’s apartment was one to ogle over. Their furniture came from the expensive catalogues Y/N had stashed in her drawers and their balconies reminded her of the ones she saw on romantic European contemporary films. They had books unlike the ones she had at home, the kind that literature geeks would drool over- they were Chiara’s collection, she supposed. They had rarely decorated hardcover copies of all the classics and a few crime novels scattered here and there. Y/N observed the pictures that hung around their television while sipping on wine on the couch while everyone else opted to chug beer.

“Y/N, come join us!” Jake bellowed from the kitchen with a can of beer raised in the hair. Karina followed his lead and raised a bottle of vodka.

Before she could answer, Sunghoon had answered for her and told them that she wasn’t much of a drinker. The crowd whined in defeat but soon went back to whatever they were doing- she wasn’t sure where the awful lot of loud sound was coming from but they were definitely yelling and hollering at each other.

She could hear something about daring Sunghoon to stay sober the whole night but that would be like expecting pharaohs to never leave curses before passing away.

The sane and sober minds that Y/N was so intimidated by just a few hours ago were either talking and stumbling across the apartment in incoherent babbles or were taking care of the people who were incoherently babbling. Y/N was laughing at whatever mumble that was sent her way and even entertained Jade who sat beside her and started complaining about her colleagues whose lives were boring because of the word load her father pushed on them. Jay eventually dragged her away and apologised to Y/N, telling her to enjoy the rest of the night and no not mind everyone else.

“We’re making a terrible first impression but we aren’t usually like this.”

Her wine bottle eventually became empty and she simply sat there on the couch, watching her boyfriend hang off Heeseung’s arm who was equally as drunk. Riki had pulled himself away from the group, throwing his empty can of beer in the trash before making his way to Y/N. He almost looked shy, tense shoulders pulling together the closer he got to her and he ended up standing in front of her, his gaze spaced out and lips opening and closing to contemplate what exactly he wanted to say. Y/N was only a little woozy from the wine and she cleared her throat as it got awkward with the silence between them.

“Do you smoke?” The boy eventually asked, pulling out a box of cigarettes from the pocket of his jeans.

“I do, actually,” she smiled softly, attempting to ease the boy’s nerves.

The pair moved to the balcony, arms leaning against the railings as freshly lit cigarettes hung from their lips, index and middle finger holding it in place. It was a habit Riki was embarrassed about after developing late into high school. The group of friends he made in school after moving to New York City could be labelled as the wrong crowd and of all the narcotics and alcohol he tried, cigarettes were the only thing that stuck. It wasn’t an addiction but if he didn’t smoke for a prolonged amount of time, he would face miniscule symptoms of withdrawal. Chiara, being their resident psychologist, had warned him of the physical and mental repercussions he could face and for some time, his friends had even forced him to use nicotine patches. Over time, he learned how to control his smoking. He was just grateful he didn’t end up a crack-addict like his cousin back in Osaka.

Y/N however, didn’t have much of a care of the stigma that surrounded tobacco and cigarettes. I, too, had started in high school when her best friend at the time introduced her to the cylindrical contraption. The practice would follow her into her adulthood and here she was, on a balcony with one of her boyfriend’s best friends. She didn’t smoke that often, just in social settings, much like this one.

“Sunghoon knows you smoke, right?” He perked up, turning his gaze towards her.

“Yeah, of course,” she grinned, shrugging her shoulders. “Why?”

“He has this thing against smoking,” Riki shook his head. “Everyone’s against it, but he loses it when someone smokes around him.”

“Yeah, I know,” Y/N mused. “On our third date or something, I told him I wanted to go out for a smoke and he freaked. Never brought it up around him again.”

When Riki laughed, Y/N felt a wave of validation. This was Nishimura Riki she was smoking with, the boy that disapproved of her being with Sunghoon not a few months ago. Despite the fact that everyone past the glass screen separating the balcony from the living room had given her their thumbs of approval, already making her feel a part of their group by offering her drinks, Riki standing there and laughing at her jokes was the biggest form of approval she could ask for. For the first time all night, she felt all relief from the stress she had harboured in her chest.

“When he found out I started smoking, he didn’t talk to me for three days straight,” Riki added. “I was like seventeen at the time, it came as quite a shock to everyone,” he shrugged.

“I was seventeen, too,” she mused. “I’m, like, twenty-seven now and my parents still don’t know.”

“If my parents found out, they would kill me,” he rolled his eyes. “You know, Jay still threatens to tell my parents about it if I annoy them?”

“They still treat you like a child, huh?”

“The price I have to pay for being the youngest.” “Yeah, I’m the youngest one out of all my siblings and they still think I’m in middle school.”

“How many siblings do you have?”

“Seven.”

Riki gave her a look of surprise, his jaw dropping for his mouth and his fist reaching towards his mouth for him to bite. Y/N nodded knowingly, silently telling him that she knew the pain. The pair ashed their cigarettes off the balcony and revelled in the number of similarities they had.

Before either of them could start a new conversation or continue the previous, the glass doors to the balcony had slid open and Sunghoon stumbled open with probably his twelfth can of beer wrapped in his palm. His cheeks were a soft shade of pink and his eyes disappeared behind his eyelids due to the genial smile on his face. His arms stretched widely as he came closer to approaching them and eventually collapsed on their shoulders.

If there was anything Y/N knew about her boyfriend, it was that he loved being drunk. It was the first thing that would be listed if anyone was to ever write his biography. Sunghoon had a habit of denying this habit of his but there came a point of acceptance when literally everyone around him started pointing it out. During dinner, she was lucky to be serenaded with his most embarrassing drunk-anecdotes, as Chiara liked to call it. Her favourite was the one where he woke up beside Heeseung in a hotel all the way on the other side of town with a basket of brownies placed between them and a note that read thank you for being amazing people. To this day, nobody knew what happened- it was the biggest mystery amongst their friend group. They ended up eating all the brownies and spared none for the others.

“What are you two talking about?” Sunghoon giggled as he looked between Riki and Y/N. “You better not be nice to her, Riki. She’s technically your Noona.”

Riki snatched the can of beer away from Sunghoon and contorted his face into a look of disinterest. “Y/N and I are almost the same age,” he argued.

“You still call Jungwon Hyung, right?” Sunghoon let go of Y/N and moved to wrap his arms around Riki. Struggling, the boy brought the can of beer to his lips.

“Yeah, so?”

“Y/N is your Noona,” he jabbed a finger into his chest with a wide grin. “She may even be your Hyung-su soon.”

Riki let out a breathy chuckle, shaking his head and pushing Sunghoon off of his back. The boy then smirked at Y/N, chugging down the rest of the beer left in the can. “Calm down, big boy,” Riki slapped his back and he moved to wrap his arms around Y/N. “I’m gonna go.”

While the boy slid the glass door of the balcony close, Y/N hung her hand on the arm that wrapped around her shoulders. “What does all that mean?” She smiled, oblivious. “Nothing,” Sunghoon giggled, kissing her forehead. “You’ve seen me drunk so many times,” he pointed out.

“It’s kind of your favourite hobby, ‘Hoon,” she pointed out.

“But I’ve never seen you drunk.”

SUNGHOON WOULD SEE Y/N drunk exactly one and a half months later at Jungwon and Eva’s wedding reception.

The events leading up to the reception were all smooth- there was the plane ride to the avenue, the part where the bride and groom were getting ready and then the meticulously planned wedding ceremony. It was all beautiful and heartwarming and Jay’s toast was tear-jerking. However, Sunghoon saw no need in replaying those events in his head when his girlfriend was drunk and hanging off his arm.

It was the most comical sight he’d ever witnessed.

You see, of all the morals and rules of self-control Sunghoon had waived upon himself over the years, not drinking during weddings was one of them and he held himself proud to the condition. Everyone, including Chiara, who was famed for her distaste towards liquor, was drinking that day and it would explain the mess that the banquet halls ended up in shambles. The flower bouquets were crumpled to pulp, the pristine white curtains around them torn to shreds and the delicious wedding cake looked like it was devoured by a wolf.

In the midst of it all, Y/N had downed four too many glasses and champagne and she was bubblier than a school girl. At first, Sunghoon simply thought that she was giddy from catching the bouquet Eva had thrown over her head but boy did he have a hard time bringing her back to their hotel room. In many ways, she and him were the same type of drunk. Granted, Sunghoon had a habit of crying if he ever was sad before drinking, but apart from that, they were pretty much the same. Both of them stumbled on their feet while trying to walk in a straight line, both giggled like they were being tickled and both spewed absolute nonsense while drunk. It was like looking at himself in a mirror- except she was a girl, his girlfriend to be precise.

“You’re really pretty,” Y/N giggled at him, her index finger gliding down the side of cheek as though she was flirting with him.

Flattered, Sunghoon offered her a toothy grin and wrapped his arm tighter around her waist. Her arm hung around his shoulders, her heels clutched by her free hand. “Thank you, Jagi,” he said. “But we really need to get you back to the room. You need a change of clothes and some sleep.”

“But I don’t want to sleep,” she pouted, her brows pulling together and bottom lip jutting out. The sight made him want to laugh- if she were sober, she would shoot herself before making such a face voluntarily.

“But you have to,” Sunghoon’s grin widened as he eventually got to the door of their room.

He was carrying her at that point, one arm under her head and the other under her knees. Her arms secured around his neck, her heels poking his ear. While she brightly smiled at him, he laid her on the bed.

“Don’t move, I’ll get changed and be right there with you.”

“No, don’t change! You look so hot in a suit,” she whined and caught his tie in her hand. She tugged him towards her and chased him for a kiss.

Though he enjoyed the action, he found himself pushing her back onto the pillow. He brushed away the hair that framed her face and cupped her cheek “Jagi,” he crooned. “You’re really drunk and you need some rest.”

“No, I need you,” she continued to whine, pointing her finger at him. “Just stay with me.”

“I am with you,” he smiled at her.

He finally understood what it felt like to be Jay when he was taking care of him.

“Good,” she said and pulled him in for another kiss.

He surrendered, letting her drag him on top of her until the span of his chest lay against hers. His legs lounged on the bed, his leather shoes kicked into one of the corners of the room. His hand cupped the side of her face and she gripped his collor until she couldn’t physically hold him closer anymore- but the moment was as fleeting as most were and her lips parted from his with an epiphany.

“Where’s the bouquet I caught?” She asked in a frenzy, looking around the room.

“Jagi, it’ll be somewhere downstairs, don’t worry,” he reached for her hand and propped himself on his elbows. His eyes followed her every move but he was quick to keep her beside him, refusing to let her leave the bed. “You need sleep, Y/N.”

“Can we go get it?”

Sunghoon chuckled. “You didn’t even want to catch the bouquet, it literally hit you in the head,” he argued. “If you want, I’ll buy a hundred more bouquets later.”

Y/N blinked at him, her eyes glazing over from her lack of sleep. “But I caught it,” she mumbled.

“I know, Jagi, and I’m very glad you did.”

“Doesn’t it mean we might get married or something?” If she could hear herself while sober, Y/N would probably slap herself. With that thought in mind, Sunghoon shut her up from speaking anymore words with another kiss on her lips. “Can you please sleep for me, Jagi?” He hummed. “Please?”

“Why do you keep calling me Jagi?” She asked while he cupped her head, leading her to lay on the pillow again. The span of her hand stayed on his chest, keeping him in place.

“It just means I love you very much, Jagi,” he smiled and she smiled back, fluttering her eyes shut.

“Ok,” she nodded her cheek against the pillow. “I like it.”

“I know,” he said. “Why didn’t you come into my life sooner, Jagi? Where have you been?”

“What?” She asked, voice barely above a whisper as she drifted into slumber.

“Just sleep.”

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emacrow · 9 hours ago

Text

Tall Danny because we don't get enough of it.

Puberty hit him like a god Damn Steam roller because he was getting taller than everyone in Amity Park after summer break along with Clockwork lessons. Mom and Dad accepted that he was half ghost and now cooperated with the ghost on their theories that they had to redo with each answer to old questions fixed after the Ecto Act was Disband by The Justice league, mainly because Martian manhunter got caught one time by the GIW.

Frostbite did say that his space and protection core may have a play onto this since his living body was mimicking the growing with his ghostly form so it won't be harder to shift between the two.

That the height of his body was growing at a rate that was defying the law of gravity at 10'6 feet that he had to get his clothes and shoes customized by the Ghost Seamstress. His hair was longer than rapunzel in that movie, but he wasn't allowed to cut it since Ellen liked to burrow herself in it cause it felt like what cloud should be.

Mom and Jazz helped braid it into a lovely yet masculine style so it didn't get in the way of his ghostly spars with the rogues, even ember giving him tips on how to wash it. His nails had turned black and was strong enough to cut titanium like melted butter. His blue eyes had darkened and morph that Dad told him that he was seeing the big bang being born in his eyes.

Tucker jokingly said he could easily win the tallest guiness award. Sam called him a beanstalk, but considering that both of them were going through the same issue as him.

Sam was growing lavander in her hair and diving into researching plant life, even making a hybrid cannibalistic plant that eats pesty weeds and produces a much more vegan yet nutritious milk that was safe enough babies to drink that actually got an approval from thousands of mothers who couldn't pay for formula.

Tucker got into university for technology even though he is currently the mayor of Amity Park with an intense hobby of being an Egyptologist.

Wearing supposedly 'duplicated' Gold relics in his braided hair, taking forever in the bathroom to tune up his eyeliner makeup (it not makeup Danny!) , having clothes full of egyptian modern clothes and the obsessive mixing together technology and Egyptian coding into his latest Frankenstein cellphone creation.

Danny can ignore the gaping stares as he sits in the subway to Gotham University.

He knew he was tall. He already got into Gotham thanks to Lady Gotham dropping him off near a library where Ellen was chewing on a rainbow sour worm.

Ellen immediately dived into his hair like a train diver again after noticing him while complaining about how Lady Gotham won't let her leave the city at all cause she saw that Ellen was Danny's mirror core.

She did mention a burger place called bat burger that a rated 3rd place in the best burger, beside Nasty burger on top 1st and Lunch lady's speical Wednesday burger surprise 2nd, while a nice lady in a wheel chair in the library behind her gave her sour worms.

#dpxdc #danny phantom #dc x dp #dp x dc #dp x dc crossover #dcxdp #dc x dp prompt #danny is the ghost king #tall danny #elderitch danny #sam is dryad avater due to Undergrowth #tucker is Duul Aman reincarnated but he became more at peace with his current mind merged #lady gotham saw Ellen tiny form and Danny's tall form and immediate response is to keep mirror baby near Danny in gotham #the mirror baby tried to leave gotham only to get snatch by the shadows and back in gotham she goes #innocent bystanders who saw a little girl get snatch straight into the sewers would sent themselves into the hospital #mumbling about it being real and snatching children like snacks into the sewers

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sheerfreesia007 · 7 months ago

Text

Spoil Me

Pairing: Seungmin x Reader

Word count: 6,074

Content warnings: Arranged Marriage, Fluff, suggestive

Summary: You and Seungmin have been committed to an arranged marriage together since before either one of you were born. When the two of you finally tie the knot it takes a surprisingly short amount of time to grow comfortable with each other. But Seungmin finds that even though he’s been living on his own for years now he rather likes it when you spoil him.

Part Two: Spoiled Rotten

The soft clinking of silverware is the background noise of your dinner as you sit in the cozy family run restaurant cutting a piece of chicken before raising it to your mouth. Slowly chewing your food your eyes dart over to your dining companion and you can’t help but let your eyes dart over his stoic features. As your eyes move along him you notice how much he’s changed over the years since you’ve known him and you can’t help but feel your heart stutter in your chest. His dark black hair is styled in a side part and there is a section of his hair falling over his eyes as he looked down at his plate while he cut into his dinner, it made your fingers itch to reach across the table and brush it out of his eyes. He was dressed in a clean white pressed button up shirt that he had rolled the sleeves up to his elbows with a dark tie that complimented his skin tone perfectly, the simplicity of his attire made your stomach heat with desire for him.

Every Friday night ever since you were a teenager you had a standing dinner date with Kim Seungmin, your betrothed. The two of you were committed to an arranged marriage that had been set up by both of your grandfathers years ago before either one of you had been born. It was a simple affair arranged by two best friends who had only wanted to see their families connected in a way that would last for generations. When you had been younger and just introduced to the idea of having your husband already picked out for you it had rubbed you the wrong way and made you feel stifled that you couldn’t make that choice on your own. But as your mothers had coordinated meetings between the two of you, your feelings on the matter had slowly morphed into one of understanding and then further into total acceptance of your fate.

Kim Seungmin was ever the perfect gentleman whenever he was around you. Always so polite and making sure that you were alright in every instance. He may be more on the quieter side, almost aloof and distant, but that was because he was so focused on his role in his family’s company. He was placed in a powerful position in the company and was in charge of a large department within the company. It was a position of pride for him and he took his role very seriously, which is why he was so business minded.

While he was so stoic and solemn you always made up for that with your boisterous urge to talk, and at times you thought that you got on his nerves with your penchant for being a chatterbox he never actually voiced that or made you feel insecure about it. Just like now when you feel the itch in your throat to fill the air with words you bite your tongue trying to curb the desire. You just loved talking to him and telling him about things in your day while learning everything about him, every little detail that you were able to pull from him made your heart swell with affection for him. Because he was so quiet it was almost like a game to you to be able to learn a new detail about him and his life before the two of you tied the knot.

“So do you have any preferences for flowers or colors for the wedding scheme?” you asked curiously as you cut another piece of chicken on your plate. Your eyes darted up to see him lift his head as his eyebrows furrowed softly before shaking his head.

“No, I trust that you have an idea of how you’d like our wedding to look.” he said softly and you smiled brightly at him before nodding your head.

“Yes, but I don’t want it to just be all my ideas. If you have any preferences, please let me know. It’s our wedding not just mine.” you said earnestly and Seungmin blinked at you for a quiet moment before his neck flushed slightly at your emphasis on the word our. He quickly shook his head before ducking it back down towards his plate making you smile softly at his awkward gestures.

“No, I don’t have any preferences. I know you’ll do a good job no matter what you choose. You’re better at being in charge of those things.” he said softly and you nearly preened with his soft spoken praise.

“Thank you.” you said happily and watched as Seungmin nodded his head quickly at you as his flush reached further up his neck to his cheeks. You grinned affectionately at him before biting into your food and chewing slowly, ever since your teenage years you knew you had some sort of affect on Seungmin he had never been that good at hiding his reactions to you even though he refused to voice his feelings for you. And you lived to see him affected by you, you had once gotten him so flustered that he had blushed as red as a tomato and had stumbled over his words. But while you loved affecting him in this way you knew that it made him feel awkward and uncomfortable so you didn’t push his boundaries too much or too often.

“Do you need anything from me for the wedding? Do we need to adjust the budget for the wedding?” he asked suddenly as he lifted his head slightly and his eyes found yours that were already looking back at him causing him to flush slightly more under your attention.

“No, we're still well within budget for the wedding. Right now I’m working with the wedding planner to run through the schedule with all the vendors once more before it’s all locked in. Your mother has been a huge help, she’s been able to keep me focused on task with all of the things I have to keep track of. I’ll have to send her something to show my gratitude for all her help lately.” you begin to ramble to him and Seungmin smiles softly as he nods his head at your words.

“You always were thoughtful when it came to other people’s help.” he said softly and you suddenly come to halt in your words as you blink at him with wide eyes. Seungmin furrows his brow slightly at your sudden stop before looking over to you again. “What?” he asked softly, you could see the worry starting to cloud his face as he watched you stare at him stunned.

“I just didn’t think you’d notice something like that about me.” you said softly as a blush creeps up your neck at his perceptive nature before you grin softly to yourself and begin cutting another piece of chicken for yourself.

“I’m not that clueless.” Seungmin gripes out softly and you burst out into surprised laughter at his words. You shake your head as laughter falls from your lips and your eyes crinkle with delight at his indignation while your hand comes up to wave in front of your face. Seungmin sits across from you, eyeing you quietly with a raised eyebrow before you slowly calm yourself.

“You’re the least clueless person I know.” you tell him honestly before grinning softly at him with affection. “But you’re so business minded and focused that I’m surprised you noticed something as trivial about me as me being thoughtful to others.” you explain to him kindly and he frowns softly at your confession.

“I always notice that stuff about you.” he says matter of factly and your heart stutters in your chest at his admission before you feel your stomach start to flutter with butterflies. You are so hopelessly in love with this man and have been ever since you came to terms with your arranged marriage, over the years your love and affection for him has grown into a soft warming love that fills you with some much happiness. Seungmin isn’t often affectionate with you but when he does have those rare moments you cherish them as if you’ll never have them again.

“What else do you notice about me?” you ask slightly breathless and Seungmin’s eyes focus sharply on your mouth for a second before darting up to your eyes causing your butterflies to begin fluttering like crazy. But he just shakes his head as his lips pull to the side in a lopsided smirk as his eyes sparkle at you knowingly.

“You’re teasing me.” he says softly and you adamantly shake your head at him.

“I’m not. I’m curious to see what you notice about me.” you insist but he shakes his head some more and you know he won’t answer you. Feeling slightly dejected you nod your head before shrugging your shoulders slightly trying to come off as unbothered by his side step of the question. You are so desperate and eager for any glimpse of affection from him that you have to bite your tongue to stop yourself from begging him. “What kind of gift do you think your mother would enjoy?” You ask then effectively steering the conversation away from yourself. You like talking with Seungmin but you know that he is a stoic person who doesn’t like to show much emotion. You’ve known this your whole life after meeting him for the first time, why should it bother you now that he won’t share how he views you? You don’t notice Seungmin’s sharp eyes watching you quietly as he takes in your now more subdued attitude change, his lips twisting on his face in indecisiveness for a moment before sighing softly to himself.

*-*-*-*

The morning of the wedding comes all too quickly for Seungmin and he finds himself being swept up into the chaos of getting ready for the big day. This day has been coming for a long time and he knows that you’ve been hard at work planning it and making sure that it all went according to plan. Oftentimes during your Friday night dinners the past couple of weeks you would grow quiet to the point that he would worry about you. Your quiet was something completely out of the norm for him to experience, he was usually so used to you filling the air with chatter. But recently you had grown subdued and quiet not voicing much about your plans and work, he had realized that he had come to miss your nonstop chatter.

He wonders idly how you’re managing with the stress of your wedding day since he knows it’s much more stressful for the bride. He hopes that you’re able to find some moments of quiet and peace during your morning to enjoy it. From what he had observed his mother talking about with his father about the wedding during family dinners you had taken on all of the tasks of finding appropriate vendors for every aspect of the wedding and had only delegated certain tasks to the wedding planner. His mother had often worried that you were taking on too much of the work while actually working at your corporate position. Seungmin was reminded of that one dinner where you had asked him what he would prefer to have at your wedding and wondered quietly if that had been your quiet request for help from him.

Sighing softly, Seungmin focused his eyes on his mother as she stepped in front of him and began to slip his russet orange tie, paired nicely with his midnight blue tuxedo, around his neck before expertly tying it in an elaborate knot. When she slid it higher up his chest to lay perfectly under his collar she looked up at him with a beaming smile on her face. Her make up was done perfectly to showcase her beauty and he wondered what make up look you had chosen for the day. He knew whatever you had chosen would only highlight your beauty and make you stand out as the most beautiful woman in attendance. You were always so well poised and perfectly put together that it amazed him whenever you broke away from that perfectly curated image, he loved when he would get to see those little glimpses into your character. It made him feel closer to you as if you were opening up to him and allowing him to see behind the mask that you erected for the public eye.

The two of you were always expected to represent your family in such a perfect way that oftentimes it would seem almost statuesque. But you always managed to pull him back from that mind numbing headspace that he would often fall into whenever he was thrust into the public, it was usually just you scrunching your nose at him playfully or winking at him teasingly. Or even that habit you have of needing to fill the quiet with words, it had always been a habit of yours and an almost urge that you couldn’t stop even when you were kids. Every once in a while it would be a bit too overwhelming for him but oftentimes he enjoyed your chatter, your voice was so pleasant to listen to and normally would drive away any of his frustrations from the day or any of the worries that he had. He had come to expect to listen to your voice whenever you were together and the few times that you were quiet were when he worried about you.

“You look so handsome.” his mother said softly as her hand came to brush some of his hair out of his eyes.

“Thank you.” he answered softly before smiling at her. “How is she? Have you gone to see her?” he asked quietly and blushed softly when his mother’s smile widened on her face.

“She’s a little stressed but she’s managing just fine. I think once it all starts happening then she’ll be able to relax and enjoy herself. It’s all turned out so beautiful.” his mother told him. Seungmin frowned softly at her words, his worry starting to rise for you. “Don’t worry, once she sees you she’ll be able to enjoy it all.” she reassured him with a soft pat of her hand to his bicep. Seungmin took a breath and slowly exhaled it while puffing out his cheeks and his mother smiled softly at him.

*-*-*-*

His mother had been right, everything has turned out beautiful. Seungmin stands at the altar with his best friend Jeongin standing next to him as they wait for your entrance. Seungmin can’t help but look around at all the decorations that hung around the inside of the church. There’s flowers in a pretty color scheme of russet orange, dark blue with light browns and creamy whites that manage to tie in the fall themed wedding that you had planned. There’s even denim blue and russet orange gauzy material draped along the pews in pretty loops and bows that catch his attention. It’s all done so simply that he can’t help but feel calmed by it all.

As the music suddenly picks up his eyes dart towards the end of the long aisle and his breath stutters in his lungs when he spots you. You’re absolutely beaming in a pretty long sleeved lace wedding gown that accentuates your body and leaves his heart racing. You’re not showing much skin besides at your collar bones where the neckline of your dress dips down just below them, but just that peek of skin has his breath coming out in soft pants and makes his heart climb up his throat. Jeongin nudges him and Seungmin clears his throat softly before slightly shaking his head. You duck your head as a pretty blush blossoms on your face while your eyes sparkle with delight at catching his reaction to your appearance.

When you finally reach him at the altar he bows deeply to your father before accepting your hand from him and tucking you into his side quickly before guiding you to where the priest is waiting for the two of you. The ceremony rushes past him in a blur of movement and tradition until the vows are ready to be read, panic suddenly consumes him and he looks panicked at Jeongin who’s standing next to him with a slightly bored look on his face. He forgot to write out his vows. Turning to you he grips your hands gently in his and feels the panic and regret start to rise up inside him like bile that’s waiting to spew from his mouth.

But as the panic is starting to take control of his body there’s something slipped into his hands and he looks down to see you smiling softly at him before winking cheekily at him. He takes the slip of paper that you had slid into his hand and turns it over to see a few sweet lines written in your neat handwriting and relieved twinged guilt grips him as his eyes dart up to your own. You had written out vows for him already knowing that he would be too distracted by his work to remember to do this. Guilt grips him tightly in silence and he promises to do something nice for you in return.

You nod once and he begins to recite the soft words that you had written out for him, the words soft sweet affirmations that he’d be true to you without any doubt in his heart. They were words that he could see himself actually confessing to you if he had remembered to write out his own vows, but once again you were being thoughtful and taking care of him. He was surprised by how well you knew him to be able to write something in his own voice and he’s gripped once more with guilt of not knowing you as well as you know him.

His eyes darted to you periodically as he recited the vows and watched as you smiled sweetly as your eyes slid closed letting yourself listen to the words without any distractions. He wondered if you were trying to imagine that he had written these words himself or if you just wanted to hear the soft words in his voice. And when he finished reciting the vows he could feel his heart stutter in his chest with affection for your thoughtful nature, he didn’t realize he was going to move until he lunged forward and cupped your face before pressing his lips to yours causing you to gasp loudly as the guests all gasped as well at his bold move. When he let you go and pulled away you were blinking up at him owlishly for a few quiet moments with your lips still pursed causing him to smirk softly at you before your face broke out into a dazzling smile.

After the reproving stare from the priest, which had caused you both to chuckle softly at Seungmin’s actions, it was time for your vows and Seungmin couldn’t help but mirror your action of closing his eyes and listening to your sweet voice promise to always uphold him above all else in your heart, mind, body and soul. Seungmin had felt the truth within every word that you spoke in your vows and while he knew that he wasn’t the most romantic man he silently vowed to always take care of you and cherish you.

Once everything was done and over and the priest had allowed him to kiss you after pronouncing you husband and wife, Seungmin couldn’t help himself. The first kiss he had stolen but this one was deliberate and he boldly slipped his hand into your hair to tilt your head to the side as his mouth captured yours once more. The first taste he had gotten wasn’t enough for him and he hummed softly against your lips now in pleasure. He hoped to always be able to find pleasure in your presence like this.

*-*-*-*

A week after your honeymoon, found both you and Seungmin comfortably moving all of your packed boxes into his luxury apartment. You had both decided that since his apartment was located much closer to his family’s company that it would just be easier for you to move in with him and not the other way around. Since you would be transferring into a position in the Kim’s family company it made more sense for you to live with Seungmin closer to the company.

You huffed softly as you set the last packed box down on the living room floor and watched as Seungmin set his box down as well before flopping tiredly down onto the couch. He exhaled heavily causing you to chuckle softly at him before quickly rushing over to flop against him. His loud groan at your weight landing on him made you grin and snuggle closer into his side while his arms wrapped tiredly around your body.

”So do we actually have to unpack all of it today?” He whined softly at you and flinched slightly as his nose dragged along your neck. “I know at least five better things to do with our time than unpacking.” He teased huskily to you as a blush darkened your cheeks.

”You've been insatiable since we got married.” You teased him softly as you quickly pecked his lips as they pouted prettily at you.

”My wife is pretty, I can't help it.” He grumbled out softly as he pouted his lips further trying to entice you. Your body heated with love for him as you pressed your lips firmly against his and he grunted softly before shifting to hover over you as his lips deepened the kiss. “So can I convince you to unpack later?” He asked softly.

”I have my first day of work tomorrow. I should really get the unpacking done now.” You said softly with regret and Seungmin quickly shook his head at your words as his lips trailed down your neck slowly.

”It can wait, I want to hold you first.” He whispered softly against your neck. “Let me give you a tour of the apartment.” He said sultrily while nipping at your neck. You chuckled softly at his words before smirking softly at him.

”You’re just going to give me a tour of the bedroom.” You said knowingly and his eyes sparkled delightedly at you causing you to chuckle at him.

”At least you’re not unaware.” He teased as he scooped you up into his arms and carried you down the hallway while sucking dark marks into your neck.

*-*-*-*

“What is this?” You asked with a slight curl of your lip as you pulled out an old container of take out from the fridge and tossed it into the garbage can without opening it. Seungmin sat at the kitchen island while watching you with quiet eyes, it was the weekend after your first week of work at the Kim family company and you had told Seungmin that you couldn’t live off take out for the rest of your life.

”Food.” He answered you with a shrug of his shoulders before you huffed at him while shaking your head.

”Seungmin there’s nothing in her but take out containers.” You said softly as your eyes widened while you took in his nearly empty fridge. Walking over to you he wrapped his arms around your waist and tried to close the fridge so that you didn’t judge him anymore. You were stronger though as you quickly pulled out the rest of the take out containers and handed them to him to throw out.

“I don’t know how to cook.” He grumbled out softly after tossing the containers and moving back over to your side. You turned to face him before smiling softly, you reached up to cup his face and pulled him down slightly to you before pressing a soft kiss to his lips that he quickly reciprocated hoping to distract you.

”C’mon let’s go to the grocery store baby. I’ll cook for you from now on. Make sure you’ve got a healthy diet.” You cooed at him and Seungmin felt his cheeks heat with slight embarrassment.

”Don’t tease.” He grumbled softly and you grinned up at him before kissing him deeply, effectively stealing his breath and embarrassment from him.

”I would never.” You gasped out softly. “My former bachelor.” You teased with a wide grin before dancing out of his reach as he moved to swat your ass.

”Get back here wife.” He said darkly as his eyes heated with a sultry look directed at you as you laughed brightly at him while grabbing his car keys and tossing them at him.

“C’mon former bachelor, let’s go.” You teased over your shoulder at him with a wink and Seungmin growled low in his throat before stalking after you.

*-*-*-*

Seungmin stared at the large sleek looking coffee machine with a raised eyebrow as you eagerly bounced in your place next to him. His eyes darted from you back to the machine with a tilt of his head as confusion began to fill him. He knew you didn’t drink coffee, preferring to drink tea so he wasn’t too sure why you would buy such a fancy coffee machine.

”You don’t drink coffee.” He says softly trying not to sound so ungrateful or confused, but when your face softens as you turn to face him he can’t help but feel his heart stutter in his chest.

“I don’t, but you do.” You say excitedly and Seungmin can’t stop the smile forming on his face as you let him know that you’ve remembered that tidbit about him. “I’m going to learn how to make an iced americano better than your favorite coffeehouse.” You tell him determinedly and he chuckles softly at the sure look on your face as he wraps his arms around your waist tugging you into his side while burying his face into your neck to hide his smile. “Already cook all your meals might as well make your coffee for you too.” You tease him and growls softly into your neck before nipping it softly causing you to yelp delightedly.

”Keep it up, wife.” He grumbles into your neck and smirks when he feels your body melt against his. “You like when I call you that huh?” He asks teasingly, enjoying the turn of events now.

”A little too much.” You confess softly on a gasp and he smirks deliciously against your neck. He begins to guide you out of the kitchen as you try to weakly stop him but when he nips once more at your neck you instantly melt against him.

”C’mon wife, lunch and coffee can wait for a moment. I need to show you something in the bedroom.” He says sultrily against your ear and he feels his heart stutter with delight in his chest again when you shiver against him. He managed to distract you enough until it was nearly dinner time and he promised to try your iced americano tomorrow morning.

*-*-*-*

Seungmin frowned as he heard the voices of his department employees just outside his office by his assistants desk. Standing from his desk he walked over to the door and leaned against the doorframe while crossing his arms over his chest. He smirked softly when he spotted you dressed in your work outfit holding a tray of chocolate chip cookies as his employees greedily took cookies.

”What’s this?” He asked bemused and you looked over at him with a grin on your face as your eyes crinkled softly at him.

”Cookies.” You say happily as you show him the half empty tray with a proud grin. Seungmin smirks softly as he scoffs softly before walking over to your side. He peers at the tray before grabbing a cookie and taking a bite out of it as he smirks at you.

”Delicious.” He says softly and watches delightedly as your cheeks flush prettily.

”Your wife is a great baker!” Comes praise from one of his employees and Seungmin hums softly and he finishes chewing the cookie before wrapping his arm around your waist and tugging you closer into his side.

”She’s a great cook.” Seungmin proudly tells his employees who all smile knowingly at him.

”Spoiled rotten.” Gripes out one of the employees and you burst out into happy laughter as you turn your face into Seungmin’s shoulder.

”I can’t help but spoil him. It’s my job.” You say with a cheeky grin that has Seungmin puffing his chest with pride.

”Be jealous.” He snips out and you laugh softly at his words while shaking your head at him.

”Ignore him.” You tell his employees and Seungmin pouts exaggeratedly at you. “I’ll make you guys more cookies and bring them around more often.” You tell them and they all cheer while Seungmin pouts at you. He then takes the cookie tray from you before setting it down on his assistant’s desk and guiding you into his office. When he shuts the door behind the both of you the jeers from his employees make you blush softly but Seungmin pays them no mind as he wraps his arms around you tightly and pulls you close.

”I missed you today.” He coos softly at you and you sigh as his fingers card through your hair and tilt your head back to stare up at him.

”Missed you too.” You whisper back at him and he grins before capturing your lips while humming softly.

”How much?” He asks sultrily as he backs you up to lean against his desk and you squeak softly as you feel his body press flush against yours.

”So much.” You whisper before sighing against his mouth dreamily. “I have to get back to my department though. I just meant to bring cookies for you and your department.” You tell him softly and he whines quietly against your mouth.

”Don’t go yet.” He whispers and you hum softly as your lips move against each other. “Just a little longer, please.” He said softly and you smiled softly at him before kissing his once more.

”Just for a little longer.” You promised softly, causing him to hum in delight.

*-*-*-*

The next morning Seungmin frowns darkly as his cell phone alarm blares loudly on his end table. Turning his head to bury it further into his pillow he groans softly and tries to get away from the offending noise. As he blinks his eyes open he frowns even more as realizes that his alarm had woken up instead of the smell of your cooking or your soft humming along to your favorite song.

Just then his alarm shuts off and his cell phone begins to ring with your ringtone, he frowns deeper before blindly reaching over to grab his cell phone and answer it.

”Good morning handsome.” You coo at him in a tired tone which causes his eyebrows to furrow at the tone and the fact that you’re calling him.

”Good morning sweetheart, where are you?” He asks in a soft raspy voice as he slowly wakes up from his sleep.

”I had to go into work earlier because of a new project. Remember, I told you last night at dinner?” You reminded him and Seungmin grunted softly as he rolled to sit up in bed.

”I was a little distracted last night.” He grumbled softly and you laughed teasingly at him before cooing softly as he rolled his eyes at your antics.

”What’s the matter handsome? Did your wife give it to you too good last night?” You tease him softly and Seungmin’s cheeks heatedly in memory at everything you two did last night.

”Watch it or I’ll come find you at work and give it to you just as good.” He grumbled out and you chuckled softly at him.

”You wouldn’t dare.” You teased and he smirked softly at you through the phone.

”What do you think the whole point of having my own office for is?” He asked darkly and heard your breath catch in your throat causing him him to smirk softly.

”Alright, alright. Anyway I wanted to greet you good morning and let you know that your breakfast is waiting for you in the oven and your iced americano is on the counter with your lunchbox.” You told him sweetly and Seungmin smiled softly at the knowledge that even when you weren’t able to be home with him you were still taking care of him.

”You take such good care of me.” He cooed softly at you and you chuckled softly before coughing tiredly.

”Well someone’s got to.” You grumble out and he laughs delightedly at your words. “I gotta get back to work. I love you, I'll see you at dinner tonight.” You say to him and he quickly responds knowing that you needed to get back to work.

”I love you too sweetheart. I’ll see you tonight.” He says softly feeling slightly dejected that you weren’t here to have breakfast with him but the phone call would have to do to hold him over until dinner tonight.

*-*-*-*

When Seungmin gets home that night he tiredly slips out of his work shoes before stepping into his house slippers and setting his briefcase down by the door and undoing his tie. He’s missed you all day today and he’s so eager to finally get to see you, his body and mind craving your presence after your absence. But as he walks further into the apartment he frowns softly as he notices that he can’t smell any food cooking and the kitchen is awfully quiet from your normal favorite music playing over your speakers.

”Sweetheart?” He calls worriedly as he moves through the living room to the kitchen to see what you were doing before he hears a soft low groan from the couch. Turning he finds you splayed out on the couch cuddled up against the pillows as a fluffy blanket is covering you completely. He walks over slowly before crouching down in front of you, he smiles softly and reaches forward to brush your hair out of your face to see your peacefully sleeping face. “Aww sweetheart.” He coos softly at you causing your eyes to blearily blink up at him.

Your eyes are bloodshot and your face is clouded with sleep making his heart clench with affection as he stares at you. You’re so pretty with your face swollen from resting against the pillows while your lips smack softly against each other. You groan loudly before a loud cough rings out into the air and Seungmin watches quietly as you frown before tucking your head back into the pillows.

”Are you okay sweetheart? Starting to feel sick?” He asks softly while running his fingers through your hair to comfort you.

”I think I’ve got a cold. Might’ve been running ragged lately.” You rasp out softly to him and Seungmin frowns softly before he quickly wraps his arms around you and scoops you up to cradle you against his chest. “Seungmin!” You cry out softly as you cuddle closer into his chest.

”I’ve got you, don't worry. Let’s get you into bed and I’ll make a call to your supervisor letting them know you’ll be out for the rest of the week while I nurse you back to health.” He says determinedly and you gasp at his words.

”Nurse me back to health?” You ask bewildered and he looks down at you with a furrowed brow.

”Duh sweetheart, can’t have my wife sick and still taking care of me and her job.” He said matter of factly as he walks towards your bedroom. “It’s my turn to take care of you now. You have nothing to worry about. I’ll make sure you have plenty of medicine, I’ll ask my mom for her soup recipe, and I’ll keep you well rested in bed the whole time.” He assures you. He smiles proudly as he watches you melt into his arms with a tired sigh and a sweet loving smile on your face.

”You spoil me.” You tease him softly and he grins while shaking his head at you.

”It’s my job.” He responds softly before he enters your bedroom holding you close to his chest as he presses a soft kiss to your temple.

SKZ Taglist: @intartaruginha, @kayleefriedchicken, @babigriin

#my writing #stray kids #skz #skz x reader #kim seungmin x reader #seungmin x reader #seungmin #kim seungmim

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rika-mmendmethings · 1 month ago

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Risqué Sketches | Sylus

Summary: You're an artist at heart with your boyfriend, Sylus, mostly being your choice of muse. What happens when he comes across a sketchbook that holds your innermost desires and has provocative drawings of him?

Warning(s): explicit language, profanity, first-time, reader is implied to be female, innuendos, cunnilingus, bodily fluids, unprotected sex (tap it, guys), p-in-v intercourse, dirty talk, use of pet names like sweetie and kitten, cervix fcking (I am bad at tagging, hope you get the point)

Word count: 4.5k

Now playing: 2 on by Tinashe

Notes: My first work here ♥ This is the aftermath of my ovulation phase starting.

The sound of your 4B pencil gliding over the smooth, pristine paper broke the silence of the maroon room. You began with a simple circle, which, with a few deft strokes, morphed seamlessly into a diamond-shaped face. Next, the sharp outline of the nose, followed by the delicate contours of the ears and neck, all took shape under your skilled hand.

But it was the eyes that always turned out to be your favorite subject to draw. Their deep, ruby tincture was intoxicating, always pulling you in whenever they met your gaze. In this sketch, his eyes were half-lidded, revealing only a narrow strip of that vibrant red, while his lips curved into a smirk that was borderline dangerous.

With a few final flourishes, you put your pencil away, now staring at the image of your boyfriend, Sylus — shirtless, toned, and looking like he might chain you to his bed if you gave your consent. You held the notebook close to your chest and squealed, face tinted with both embarrassment and ardor.

You were an artist at heart, preferring a more characterized style that personified a person’s personality. People were always your favorite things to draw. There was always something satisfying about being able to perfectly capture a person with simple lines and colors.

Over the course of your relationship, Sylus quickly became your muse — the subject you constantly returned to in your art, the person you longed to capture with perfect precision. As your feelings for him deepened, so did your need to render every detail of him flawlessly. This longing intensified the moment he asked you to be his girlfriend.

What had once been innocent sketches of his sharp, piercing eyes and his Cheshire grins gradually evolved into something more risque, something undeniably charged with desire. Pages filled with nothing but images of a shirtless Sylus, drawn with a quiet intensity, reflected your secret longing for him to take control.

This secret collection of yours was hidden inside the drawers of your study back in your home, only retrieved in the quietest, loneliest hours of the night when the urge to indulge in your fantasies grew too strong to resist. You were far too embarrassed to let anyone, especially Sylus, see these drawings. If he ever discovered what you’d sketched in the privacy of your thoughts, you feared he would end things without a second thought.

So, it was a wonder why you'd carelessly left the sketchbook in your small overnight bag, uncharacteristically exposing it as you prepared to stay at his place. It was an oversight, a lapse in judgment — one that could easily spiral into disaster if you weren’t careful. And yet, some invisible pull urged you to pull it out and continue your drawings. After all, Sylus was out finishing the last deal of the day, and he’d be back at exactly 11:15. It was only 10:30, surely you had a little time to lose yourself in idle fantasy, right?

Your eyes traveled back down to your newest sketch, your brain trying to decide whether or not you were disgusted with yourself or if you should be pleased. The drawing itself seemed alright; the anatomy was near perfect, but the actual content…well…It felt sinful, like drinking too much bubbly soda that left a deep hole in your stomach and spoiled your dinner.

As your eyes drilled into the drawing before you, your mind split into a battlefield of guilt and curiosity, dissecting the morality of repeatedly sketching your boyfriend — especially the more risqué ones. You questioned yourself, wondering if your art had crossed a line when, suddenly, the door to your shared bedroom opened with a soft creak. You froze as if caught in the headlights of a car, watching helplessly as Sylus walked in, unfastening his cuffs.

"Beloved, I’m home," he announced, his voice light with a relaxed smile. "The diamond deal with Chang wrapped up rather quickly, so I came home and picked up some food for us."

Every profanity you’d ever learned rushed to your tongue in an explosive wave — cursing your bad luck, the spiteful gods, Chang the businessman, and most of all, yourself. This was it. The disaster you had been silently fearing. You should’ve thrown the sketchbook into the fireplace the moment you realized you’d brought it with you during your weekends with your lover—or better yet, you should never have sketched it at all.

You hastily shoved the indecent drawings beneath the maroon sheets, your fingers trembling. "T-that’s… wonderful," you managed, your voice unsteady as you fought to maintain composure. One wrong move, one slip-up, and Sylus’s razor-sharp instincts would catch on. "Welcome home, my love."

You forced a smile, as calm as you could muster, but Sylus’s unblinking gaze made the effort feel hollow. His smile faded into something more inquisitive, his eyes narrowing ever so slightly. With a fluid motion, he removed his blazer and tossed it onto his mahogany armchair. Then, he took a few steps toward the bed, leaving the food untouched on the desk, its rich aroma floating through the air and teasing your senses.

"Wh-what’s up?" You tried to laugh, but it came out half-hearted, your words trailing off in the air as his presence seemed to loom over you, intensifying the tension. Did he really have to stand above you like that? Like a cat toying with its prey before the inevitable pounce?

“Nothing. I think…I think I just like the idea of coming home to you on my bed like this.” He plopped down onto the bed next to you. “That and you are acting quite peculiar.”

Oh, Lord.

“O-Oh? I am?” you stammered, inching toward the sketchbook in a desperate attempt to shield it from his view, silently praying to any higher power that Sylus wouldn’t notice its presence. Your fingers crawled toward the book, attempting to cover the glaring "SYLUS QIN, MY BELOVED" label emblazoned on the front.

Yet, despite your silent pleas, fate seemed to have something far less merciful in mind.

Sylus’s gaze narrowed, his eyes tracking your every movement, until they landed on the book — half-hidden but still unmistakable. “Ah, you were drawing,” he observed, his tone smooth and steady. “I don’t recognize that cover. May I see it?”

The sensation in your body was electric, every nerve igniting with panic. It felt as though you were doused in gasoline, and Sylus — ever so calm — was holding the match that would set everything aflame. The heat spread quickly to your cheeks, your throat tightening with the sharp sting of embarrassment. His gaze bore into you as if peeling away every defense you had left. You knew, then, that the longer you hesitated, the more suspicion he would harbor.

“Sketchbook?” you croaked, struggling to regain your composure. “Right, yes, I was just… drawing while waiting for you to get home. Totally normal, nothing you’d really want to see.” You grabbed the pad with frantic hands, clutching it to your chest as though it were the last thing keeping you tethered to reality. Your arms shielded it like an impenetrable barrier, a fortress protecting treasures from a curious and relentless dragon.

Sylus’s lips curved into a faint frown, and with barely any effort, he arched a single eyebrow in disbelief. “That’s nonsense, sweetie,” he said, his voice laced with amusement. “I always love seeing your art.”

“I-I really don’t think you’d want to see it,” you stammered, your words tumbling out in a rush. “I mean, the sketches are so rough, they might burn your eyes out. And your eyes are too beautiful to be burned.” You tried to force a laugh, but it felt weak, hollow.

Sylus’s expression hardened into a skeptical frown, his nose scrunching slightly in the way he always did when he wasn’t buying your excuses. And in that moment, you realized — he wasn’t fooled. Not for a second.

Unfazed by your protests, Sylus extended a hand with a swift and decisive motion, reaching for the sketchbook before you could react. Panicked, you scrambled off the bed and hurriedly backed toward the center of the room.

“Beloved, this is nonsense. Why can’t I see your drawings?” Like a predator, Sylus stalked his way towards you slowly yet purposefully.

“Because—!” You blurted out, voice cracking under the weight of your panic.

“Because…?” he prompted, his gaze never wavering, his tone insistent.

He was now mere inches from you, close enough for you to feel the tension radiating from his body, his slight frustration simmering just beneath the surface.

“Because I…” You dragged the word out, trying to buy yourself a moment of clarity. “I want to keep it private?” It was a half-truth, and you both knew it. Sharing your art has always been one of the most intimate ways you connect, a way to reveal parts of yourselves without words. You had never once turned down the opportunity to show him your creations — it was a quiet kind of intimacy you treasured deeply. And now, you were lying to him about it.

The room hung in a thick, charged silence as the two of you locked eyes, a fierce contest of wills. And in that moment, when Sylus’s lips curled into a knowing, almost playful smirk, you realized you had already lost this battle. He knew. He always knew.

“Forgive me for this, alright, sweetie?” he said, his voice low, and before you could react, his arm shot forward with the precision of a strike. He reached for the sketchbook again, and the tug-of-war began in earnest.

You fought back with all your strength, pulling desperately to keep the book out of his reach, but no matter how hard you tried, Sylus’s relentless determination — combined with the strength honed from years of training — meant you were always on the losing side. For every inch you gained, he yanked it back with ease, closing the gap effortlessly.

With one final, forceful tug, you lost your balance and crashed to the carpeted floor, the sketchbook slipping from your hands. Sylus stood over you, his imposing figure casting a shadow as he loomed above. One hand pressed down on the floor beside you, trapping you beneath him, while the other gripped the sketchbook with a satisfied smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

He pulled away, resting some of his weight on your lower abdomen and rendering you immobile. Despite the situation, you couldn’t help but feel a certain way with Sylus on top of you like this. His smirks were always rugged and somewhat sinister in tone, but now, with him on top of you, it felt like electricity shooting through your body and down between your thighs.

He studied the front of the small binder with a soft chuckle escaping his lips as he glanced at the cover. “Ah, I see why you didn’t want to share this with me,” he mused. “A sketchbook full of nothing but me? Kitten, I’m flattered.”

You squirmed beneath him, desperation rising as you tried in vain to stop him. You pleaded and begged, but Sylus — unfazed — hummed softly as he began flipping through the pages. Each turn of the page only seemed to fuel his already growing ego, his confidence swelling with every passing second. With each flip, you felt as though the moments you had left as his girlfriend were slipping away. Time felt like it stretched into eternity, and worse still, you were powerless to stop it.

“I don’t know why you didn’t want to share this with me, kitten,” he continued, his voice light but laden with curiosity. “These are wonderful—”

His words trailed off as his gaze fixed on the next page. You could feel the weight of his body, the tension in the air, and the shift in his expression as his mouth parted slightly, his eyes widening with surprise. A faint blush tinged his ears, and suddenly, the silence in the room became almost suffocating. The air grew thick with something unspoken between you. Another shiver ran down your spine, like the brush of a ghost’s touch, as his intense ruby eyes met yours. You felt yourself becoming dizzy with the force of his stare, a pull so magnetic it made your body freeze, paralyzed by an overwhelming surge of emotion. You closed your eyes to steady yourself, fighting the urge to fall deeper into him.

You waited for him to speak, to say something, but Sylus remained silent, his gaze still locked on you, his fingers idly turning the pages. The only sound was the faint ringing in your ears, the heavy silence amplifying the tension between you both.

“I knew you would think I was disgusting…” you muttered, the words slipping from your lips before you could stop them.

Sylus shook his head, his expression softening, his eyes crinkling with disbelief at your accusation. “What? No, no…” he said quickly, his voice gentle but firm. “It’s not that, beloved. This isn’t disgusting in the slightest.” He paused, his gaze never leaving yours. “I was just a little… surprised, my love.”

His finger trailed down your neck to the opening of your shirt, leaving a fiery trail of butterflies in its wake and teasingly playing with the buttons. “I didn’t realize you needed me this badly, sweetie…” He whispered in your ear.

“S-Sylus…”

You shifted around, body suddenly searching - yearning - for something, but you weren’t sure what. It was an exuberant, even wanton, anticipation; a breathless pining that consumed every ounce of your being until your mind became clouded with need. Any previous inhibition or self-doubt you had quickly drifted away.

There was some more shuffling of papers and yet another soft chuckle emanated. “Kitten, if you wanted to know how big I was, you could have just asked.”

He held up another picture from your sketchbook, one where you attempted to draw a fully nude picture of Sylus that ended up being scrapped, the only remnant being the question How big even is he? 5, 6 inches maybe?

Instead of being embarrassed by this though, the comment only furthered your lack of restraint, and you had to slowly rock yourself back and forth against Sylus’s thigh to assuage the increasingly empty pit deep within you. Sylus’s lips pressed against your neck once more, surely leaving marks to remember in the morning.

A small whimper escaped your mouth, his hands wandering up further until they palmed your chest. You allowed yourself to move just a bit faster, only for Sylus’s hands to trail back down and tightly grab your hips, forcing you to remain still.

“Sylus, what the hell!” You whined.

“Patience, sweetie. If you want me to make love to you then you have to calm down, alright?” He turned you around so that you were now face to face and kissed you gently. “This is our first time, after all; I want to do it right.”

He continued to press tortuous open-mouthed kisses down your body, unbuttoning your blouse along the way. “You are so beautiful…” He murmured against your skin.

Your back arched from the hint of pleasure feasting your body, picking away at every last bit of sanity until nothing remained. The comfortable clothes you wore suddenly felt too tight and restricting to breathe.

He pushed you onto the bed so your back was flush against the covers, his frame looming over you, and from the tent of his black slacks, you could tell that your estimation of five to six inches was far off.

“Sylus…I need you…” You panted. “Please”

“And you will have me, sweetie.” He assured, the loving smile he only showed you in full view. “But for right now, I just want you to stay still and be good for me, alright?”

His mouth was back on yours before the words of agreement completely passed your lips, and his arms returned to their place on your cheeks, pressing you closer. He led the kiss this time, his tongue hungrily searching for your own, a groan rumbling low in satisfaction when it met its mark.

His mischievous mouth left yours to press kisses to your jawline, your pulse point, your neck. An involuntary whine left your throat when he found the sensitive spot nestled at the bottom slope into your shoulder, his teeth marking it as his own. “You taste so good, kitten,” he murmured, his assault on the thin skin continuing until you were sure it’d bruise. Despite his task, he didn’t miss the way you shivered at the affectionate moniker.

His tongue was back in your mouth, hands traveling from your throat to your collarbone, shifting around your heaving breasts to toy with your swollen buds. His kisses only paused long enough to rid you of the remaining garment before joining your skin again, traveling down to the hollow of your throat, the swelling skin of your breast, leaving violet blooms in his wake. You were writhing, full of need, your hands grasping desperately at his shirt until he took the hint and shifted it over his head.

Leaning back, he traced the outline of each nipple, moving slowly until he could palm each breast, squeezing slightly. “You’re so beautiful, sweetie,” He sighed, molten gaze focused on the sight of his hands full of you. “I’ve been thinking about how these would feel since forever.” Thumbs pinched and rolled the tender buds, causing you to keen loudly before he smoothed the hurt, lips coming to pull one peak into his mouth.

His tongue swirled against you, fingers alternating their pinching and pulling until you were whimpering. “Sylus, please,” you cried, a hand coming to tangle in his silver locks, tugging at the roots. He chuckled low against your skin, a devilish sparkle in his eyes as he looked up at you. “Shhh, I’ll give you what you want. Let me enjoy this.”

You pulled your bottom lip between your teeth. He was making you crazy with need, taking his sweet time in his torture of your body, and you weren’t sure you’d survive his exploration of you. A lick down your abdomen signaled his ascent, hands trailing down the curve of your pelvis. Bare before him, he admired your form, hands smoothing up and down your thighs. “God damn, you’re fucking sexy. I bet you taste as good as you look.”

Putting a finger in his mouth, you watched helplessly as he suckled the digit, pulling away once It was drenched in his salvia. Electricity raced through your veins when he made sudden contact with your throbbing center, dragging up your slit and pressing against your clit. A loud moan of his name had him grinning, leaning back down until you could feel his warm breath against your cunt. “Is this where you want me?” at your affirmative hum, he nuzzled closer, his tongue darting out to lick a stripe up your sopping core. His movements were slow and skilled, tracing a delicate pattern into your folds until he found the bundle of nerves at the apex. Wrapping his lips around it, he suckled gently, applying pressure until you were crying out for him.

He had you so worked up at this point that it wouldn’t have taken much longer to set you over the edge, his palms keeping you spread as his wicked tongue lashed against your heat. Your hips were undulating against him, hands pulling and tugging his hair as you held him closer. “Fuck, I’m so close, Sylus!” Your eyes rolled back, another moan leaving you. He grunted against you, the vibrations making you shiver. Letting go of your clit with a lewd pop, his fingers trailed up and down your slit, his eyes boring into your own.

A shrill cry left your lips as his efforts doubled, vision blurring with tears as you felt the band in your belly tighten. He had you right on the brink, and you wanted to go over the edge so badly. His fingers were pumping into you wildly, curling to hit that spot that made you see stars, unable to continue forming coherent sentences at his assault.

The second his lips suctioned back to your throbbing clit you slipped over the edge into orgasm, the white-hot band snapping and blooming from your nerves. Moans tore from your throat, a cacophony of his name. He murmured praises against you, his free hand smoothing circles into your flesh until you came back down, chest heaving. When he was sure it had ended he pulled his fingers out, licking them clean before crawling back over your body. “So good. You are amazing.”

Mouths joining again, he grasped you tight to roll over, switching your positions until you were now straddled on top of his torso. Your hands explored the expanse of him; strong muscles beneath flawless skin, smooth under your fingertips. Shifting your hips, you pressed your dripping heat against his strained erection still painfully hidden in his slacks, lapping up the deliciously low moans he pressed into your mouth. The friction of his pants against your sensitive flesh had you mewling, your lips finally leaving his own to trail messily down his jaw, his neck. Large hands join your own in pulling off the remaining offensive clothing between you, leaving him bare to your greedy eyes. He immediately pressed a reassuring kiss to your lips before grunting, “Hands and knees, sweetie. I'm about to make you see stars in the daytime.”

Shifting below him, you leaned on your forearms until your ass was perched in the air, wet cunt fully on display. A deep growl left his chest at the sight, a hand coming down to slap the flesh presented to him, causing you to yelp. “You’re such a devastatingly good tease, aren’t you?” Another slap resounded in the room, leaving a reddened mark in its wake. “So sexy, and all for me.”

Hips swaying, you taunted him further, the feel of his blunt head toying at your entrance making you whine. “Sylus, please, I need to feel you.” He hummed thoughtfully, continuing the slow drag of his cock against your dripping core. He seemed content in teasing you, enjoying the way you jumped when he brushed your sensitive clit before diving down to catch at your ready hole and sliding his cock to saturate your arousal. He stuttered, a low moan leaving his lips and sending a shiver down your spine as his palms returned to the flesh of your ass. “God, I think I might die.”

His descent into you was slow, your walls slowly adjusting to his girth to welcome him deeper. You pleaded, “Move, Sylus. I need you to mov—”

An urgent thrust cuts off your words, a gasp tearing from your throat instead. You felt unbelievably full, the slight sting from the stretch quickly ebbing into a low hum of pleasure, one that radiated down to your toes. Eye closing on instinct, you could feel every inch pulse against your sensitive walls, each of his glides torturously slow. You needed him harder, faster - you needed to fall apart against him.

His thrusts started coming at a rapid speed, his cock slamming home harder each time until the slapping sound of skin was echoing throughout the room. You felt the white hot band of your impending orgasm pull tighter, hands furling into the sheets. You wanted to drag your nails down his skin, to destroy him the way he was destroying you, but his current hold on your body prevented any movement.

It seemed he could read your thoughts because the next moment, you were flipped so that your back hit the bed and you were face-to-face with your lover. He ran a hand through his sweaty locks, briefly explaining, “Wanted to see your face as you came. I want to see you all ruined for me.” You felt a rush of wetness at his words, body already following his directions without a second thought.

The devil of a man just smirked, licking his lips as he positioned himself against your weeping core. Grabbing your knees, he folded them back into your chest before sliding home, the guttural groan leaving his chest in perfect harmony with your own. Arms caging you in, his face was inches from your own as he started pumping into you, crimson eyes taking in each expression of pleasure on your face, each whimper and moan from your throat. A particularly angled thrust had you crying out a garbled form of his name, and it was then he knew he found what he had been looking for.

Dewy lips crashed against your own and you were silenced by the overtaking of his mouth, his tongue seeking yours and stealing your breath. Your cries increased in pitch, the build in your lower gut ready to spill at any moment, and yet he continued to swallow each moan, rubbing your throbbing clit with his thumb.

It was with his next thrust against the tender spot of your walls that had you shouting out his name, orgasm slamming into you until your eyes rolled back and back arched into a dome. Sylus worked you through the high, his hips rolling and grinding into yours until you were messy, nails leaving an angry trail down the skin of his back and biceps.

He cursed, hiding his face in the crook of your neck before finally spilling inside of you, murmurs of your name pressed into your throat as he rolled his hips through his release. You reveled in its warmth, and after a few more lazy strokes he was collapsing on top of you, cock snuggly resting inside your core.

Heavy breaths were the only sound for the next few moments, a content hum leaving your boyfriend's throat as you raised a hand to stroke lazily through his white locks. Your body was sated, thrumming with a calming glow that had every muscle relaxing and your eyes drooping shut.

Unsure of how much time had passed, you were startled when you felt him pull out slowly, his cum spilling from your core. You pout, reaching out for him. “Where are you going? Come back.”

He chuckled, body leaning over yours once more. “Just going to clean up, kitten, don’t worry.” You watch as his eyes look down at the mess he made of you, his sleepy grin now turning dark as he eyed his release dripping down your thighs. Long digits swiped through the milky substance, his heavy-lidded gaze setting your skin ablaze before he pushed it back inside your abused walls, a small squeak leaving your lips. “Keep that where it belongs.”

You must’ve fallen asleep again because you woke to him wiping your tender sex clean, pulling your body upright to slip one of his t-shirts over your naked form. Allowing yourself to flop back down on the bed, you peered up at him as he slid into the bed beside you, wiggling you into his arms. Your head nestled perfectly in the crook of his neck and his hands found purchase on your waist and nape. He started playing with the hair there idly, causing you to melt against him. Silence enveloped you both and you drifted off to the land of dreams, content in the newfound intimacy that had bloomed between you two.

Check out my other works if you liked this ♥

#rika's works ✎#love and deep space #Sylus x you #sylus imagine #sylus x reader #lnds sylus #love and deepspace smut #lads x reader #sylus x mc #love and deepspace sylus #sylus lads #qin che #l&ds sylus #sylus qin

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strwbrychffoncke · 4 months ago

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"and so i drank one ,it became four ,and when i fell on the floor i drank more,, 2.4k words synopsis: lads men taking care of you when you're drunk contains: lads (separate) x drunk!reader ,f!reader (use she/her pronouns around + femme petnames) ,fluff, some drunk comfort ,completely self-indulgent (based on me when i drink so keep in mind) ,reader is a lightweight (lol) ,some suggestive dialogue but nothing happens its mostly teasing ,that might be it note: unedited! wrote after drinking myself so beware of typos lolol, this was written in honor of the new yrs :x

zayne

(implied) established relationship, you're at his place, doctor zayne mode activates, reader is pretty clingy, zayne gets you water, you get carried, you sleep in his bed, he hides the alcohol from you (lol???)

"it looks like someone overindulged themselves tonight."

"huuuuuh?"

you tilt your head, innocent eyes finding zayne's hard gaze.

"whad'y mean?"

coming home to see various alcohol bottles sprawled out across the kitchen counter, and a couple of empty bottles of some sweet mixed drinks you had sitting in the fridge for who knows how long was not something he expected after another long shift at the hospital.

he only sighs in response to your question, walking towards you to check you over before you cling to him.

"zayyyyne, missed you soooo much," you mumble, arms encircling around one of his tugging him closer.

"you're drunk."

you burst into a fit of giggles before refuting.

"no im nottt."

"just how much did you drink this time?"

you think it over for a long moment before deciding on your answer.

"just a little," you emphasize by holding your index and thumb fingers up, a small distance in between them.

zayne leans towards you, hand rising to rest on your forehead.

"how do you feel?"

"my head feels like its going to fall off...." suddenly your expression morphs into one of worry, and your eyes water as you look up pleadingly at zayne.

"it won't fall off, will it doctor?? its so heavy, it feels like its going to fall off...."

"no, its not going to fall off," he reassures pointedly, drawing his hand back in favor of pinching the bridge of his nose.

"really????"

you look up at him, eyes wide and hopeful, and when he looks back down at you he can't help but to pat your head.

"really. now, let me examine you further."

you give a short nod, small giggles escaping your lips as he gives you a good once-over, dragging his index finger across your line of vision (noticing how you quickly lose focus and laugh instead) and taking note of your hazy, half-lidded eyes.

"my diagnosis is that you're drunk."

"i'm nooot," you whine.

"i'm going to get you some water, and then you'll get some rest."

you let out an involuntary yawn, proving his point before he stands up and turns towards the kitchen.

"i'll be right back," he says, but only manages a single step before you latch onto his hand with both of yours.

"don't leave," you whine, looking up at him again with those wide, tearful eyes.

seriously, how much did you drink????

"i'm only grabbing some water for you. i'll be back in a moment."

with that, he takes off, leaving you to giggle to yourself for a moment before calling out to him.

"zayne.... zayyyyne.... come baaaaack............ where did you gooooo?"

he's back in under a minute, and you're quick to cling to him once he's back in your sight.

"zaaaaaaayne!"

"let's get you to bed."

"carry me?" you ask, reaching your arms up as your lips curl up cutely.

he sighs before promptly reaching down for you.

"it seems this particular patient requires plenty of rest given the way she's acting."

with those words, he lifts you up with ease, carrying you bridal style towards your shared room, quickly noticing the way you almost seem to go limp in his arms by the time he gets to the bed.

you already managed to fall asleep?

after he tucks you in, he makes sure to hide every liquor bottle properly while making a mental note to tell him when you wanted to drink so that he could make sure to be with you when you did.

even if your drunk self was a handful, he thought you were still quite cute.

who knew you were such an easily amused drunk?

xavier

established relationship, out together before he takes you to his place, sleepy!reader (+ xav), he gives you water, affectionate!reader moment, he changes you (freak mode is not activated), cuddling

tonight, the hunter's association went out drinking to celebrate a particularly grueling mission that turned into a success.

while neither you or xavier drank much, you decided to indulge just a little given the nature of the mission.

though, despite xavier's warning for you to not overdo it, he watches as you down your second drink as he sips on his water, already preparing himself for the trouble you'll be causing later.

which leads to now, supporting you (almost like half-carrying you) as he unlocks and leads you through the entrance of his apartment.

"ah, im so.. sleepy...."

"yes, me too. the sooner we get you in, the sooner we can get to bed," he reassures.

you're led to his sofa, falling back into the cushions as he runs off to retrieve water from his fridge for you.

when he comes back, your eyes are closed.

he bends himself to your level, nudging your cheek with his finger.

"hey, don't fall asleep before drinking some water."

"head hurts.." you mumble.

"the water will help, come on."

he opens it for you, pushing it towards your lips.

they part, and he takes the opportunity to tilt the bottle slightly, hydrating you himself.

after ten seconds, he pulls it back, wiping a stray droplet from the corner of your lips before screwing the lid back on.

"why would you drink so much when you can't handle it at all?"

you chuckle at this, and he sighs.

"come on, let's get to bed, i'm tired too."

"sleepy time," you mumble as he grabs your hand and helps you to your feet, steadying you with both his hands.

"sleepy time indeed," he nods once, leading you to his bedroom.

right at the doorway, you suddenly wrap your arms around him, planting sleepy kisses across his cheek.

"oh?"

xavier is stunned for a moment but accepts the drunken affection, wry smile forming on his lips.

you pull away to look at him.

"you're so pretty," you sigh, gaze faraway yet almost enchanted by him.

he laughs at this.

"come on, lets get to bed already."

he helps you shed your outer clothes before ridding of his own, pulling one of his sweaters over your head as he pulls on sweatpants, tugging you to fall into the mattress with him.

he hugs you close, planting a kiss on your head, then your cheek, your nose, and then your lips as your breaths even out.

"sleep well, my lovely star."

rafayel

implied established relationship, whiny!reader, teasing!raf, he calls you "cutie," you're at his studio/home

truth be told, rafayel loved when you got like this.

since you didn't drink often, it was quite the treat for him to see you as clingy and needy as he felt for you on a daily basis.

"raaaaaaaaf," you whined.

"yes, cutie?"

you hugged him.

"'s so hot," you breathed out, slumping beside him.

he laughed.

"but i opened the window to let the sea breeze in awhile ago, isn't it working?"

you pout, shaking your head before quickly regretting it, laying it back down against his shoulder.

"not at all."

"you poor thing," he said half-teasing, reaching his free hand out to pat your head.

"raf."

"hm?"

"rafayel."

"yes?"

"ra-fa-yeeeeel."

he broke into a wide smile.

"need somethin', cutie?"

"jus' like your name," you mumbled.

"oh? really?"

"mhm."

"well, i like yours more."

"nope."

"mhm."

"no."

"do too."

suddenly, you reach for his hand.

you tug it towards you before beginning to trace his fingers.

"are you a fortune teller now or something?

he maneuvers his hand so that his fingers intertwine with yours.

"too bad, looks like you can't see it anymore."

you giggle at him.

"stay like this?" your words come out as a question.

"there's nothing i'd want more," he answers, heart full at the satisfied smile on your face before cuddling into him once more.

sylus

relationship can be seen as established or not tbh, he calls you "kitten" several times, incorrect use of evol? (but its to save reader from falling lol), you get carried, he comforts you

sylus walks into the kitchen as you step out, taking note of the various alcoholic beverage cans and bottles across the counter.

"having a party without me, kitten?"

you shake your head.

"no, no," you smile. "jus' needed t' grab som'ing" you manage to slur out, headed towards the stairs.

he watches you as you begin making your way up some stairs before you stumble.

before you can even register that you're falling, black and red tendrils wrap around your body, catching you with ease.

your airy laughs fill the room, uncaring of you almost falling down the stairs, the feeling of the tendrils circling your waist and thighs almost electrifying against your sensitive skin.

"s-s-sylus! aha! tickles, hahaha-!"

the man in question half grins at your reaction, none the wiser to the surge of panic you just caused him.

in no time at all, he's beside you, tendrils gently uncurling from you as he looks down at you.

"such a clumsy kitten," he shakes his head. "what will i do with you?"

you're still swaying slightly, blinking up at him, and he doesn't wait for an answer that you may or may not give before hauling you over his shoulder, causing a surprised sound and you erupting into another fit of giggles.

he holds you securely, making his way towards his room with you, the pleasant sound of your amused laughs his favorite melody.

he passes by luke and kieran, asking them to do away with the beverages that are still out on the counter.

"is she... alright?" luke asks out of concern.

"oh, she's just fine. it seems a little kitten can't hold her liquor very well," he shakes his head.

after they leave (you waving at them as they disappear into the distance) sylus feels you shiver against him.

"cold?"

"so cold..."

"don't worry, kitten," he begins, pushing the door to his room open. "you'll be warmed up in no time."

he wastes no time gently dropping you into bed, watching as you bounce slightly on the mattress, a pleased sound escaping you as you waste no time to get under the covers.

"are you alright?" he asks, head tilted and concern lacing his tone.

you nod before you frown.

"stomach hurts...."

"my poor kitten."

sylus quickly turns out the light, settling beside you as his large hand comes up to rub over your belly.

you curl into him, pleased grin stretching across your lips, and without realizing it, you've drifted off in sylus comfort and warmth.

he doesn't know how long he stays by your side, gaze fixed on your sleeping face as he continues soothing the spot of pain, but he knows that in this moment, there's nowhere he'd rather be.

caleb

implied established relationship, slight suggestive remarks, worried!caleb, caleb teasing you

when you stumble your way through the front entrance of your home, the first thing you're met with is caleb, hands crossed over his chest as he stares down at you, unamused.

before you can greet him, he speaks up.

"do you have any idea what time it is?"

your eyes slowly shift up to his, and you can't help but to burst into a fit of giggles.

"hiiii," you drag out once your laughing begins to subside.

caleb stares down at you for a moment, taking in your slightly disheveled state and your lack of comeback, hardened expression softening just slightly.

"are you.... drunk?"

you burst into giggles again as you deny his accusation.

"not at alllll," you deny, swaying side to side.

"ok, you're literally just lying."

you move to take another step but somehow stumble right into caleb, who quickly wraps his arms around you.

"what the hell did you drink, pipsqueak?"

"dunno..." you trail off, closing your eyes, feeling comforted by caleb's embrace.

"'m dizzy.. so sleepy...."

"ok, let me just get you to your room first, yeah?"

you nod, allowing yourself to be led by caleb to your bedroom.

you make it quickly, not without a few more stumbles, mostly leaning on caleb's large frame for support as you're led to sit down in your desk chair.

"ok, wait here, i'll be right back."

when he leaves your gaze lingers around your room, darting across the shelves and decorations as if its unfamiliar before you slump down in the chair.

you sway side to side for a bit before you allow yourself to slip down further, sinking down down down until you're splayed out on the soft carpet.

just as you make yourself comfortable, hurried footsteps get closer and enter through the doorway.

"ok, i'm back, i have-"

caleb pauses, staring down at you before his eyes crease in amusement.

"pipsqueak, what are you doing on the floor?"

"'s comfy," you answer, grabbing a nearby plushie (that caleb won for you) and hugging it to your chest. "wanna sleep here."

"well, you can't."

"why?"

"because your bed is right there."

"don' wanna get up..." you whine, eyes shut and curling up comfortably.

he sets down the water and medicine bottles he brought in on your bedside table before his attention is on you again.

"making me do the work like usual, huh?"

you don't have time to try and process the underlying meaning of his words before you feel yourself being lifted, erupting into laughs at the action before you're tossed onto your bed, bouncing against the mattress before you're settled, amusement still circulating the room.

"caleb!"

you're looking at him through your creased eyes, half closed as you slowly recover from your fit, watching as he shrugs, teasing smile playing at his lips.

"you said you couldn't get up, so i helped you."

when the giggles subside, you're both staring at each other for awhile before caleb breaks his gaze away.

"ok, you should really sleep now. do you need anything else before i go?"

"you?"

your answer comes out so simply, so honestly, that it catches him off guard, stuck in momentary shock when you speak up again.

"sleep with me," you pat the side of your bed.

he recovers from his shock at these words, smirk breaking out.

"oh? really, pipsqueak?"

"caleeeeb," you whine.

he puts his hands up in mock surrender.

"kidding, kidding," he closes the distance, standing right at the side of the bed.

"you sure you want me to sleep with you?"

"yes," you say, grabbing his hand.

"ok, ok, let me just get the light first."

he switches the light off, making his way back over before being tugged into bed by your eager pull.

even after he falls into the mattress with an oof, he quickly settles in before teasing you again.

"you sure you don't have any ulterior motives in pulling me into bed with you this time?"

when you don't pipe up again, he takes a look to see you having already dozed off.

he sighs, hand reaching up to cup and caress your cheek.

"sleep well, my pipsqueak. i'll be sure to punish you for worrying me so much tomorrow," he whispers his promise into the night, sealing with a kiss to the corner of your lips before slipping his eyes shut.

with you safe and secure in his arms, he could finally fall asleep peacefully tonight.

a/n: writing this after drinking hehe... i want to write more detailed (maybe full fics) of lads x drunk!reader but wrote these little imagines up for nowwww... i would like them all to dote on me but i think im quite funny in this state hehe -

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theemporium · 9 months ago

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hiiii!! could i please order a smutberry with prompts 32 and 40 with luke hughes?? 💕💕

thank you for requesting!🫶🏽

40. “Go on. Fuck yourself on my cock.”

Luke Hughes never considered himself an overly cocky or arrogant guy.

Maybe it was down to the way he was raised growing up, or maybe it was more related to the fact that it just never really fit his personality. He was confident, no doubt. But it was never too in your face, never too over the top. It wasn’t his style. It wasn’t who he was.

But sometimes—just sometimes—there were certain situations where Luke found himself acting a bit…douchey, for lack of a better word.

It was warranted. It was always warranted. And this time was no different as he stepped off the ice, buzzing on a high that the final game buzzer left ringing through his bones. He felt like he could jump over the fucking moon if someone gave him the chance. And the energy in the locker room was no different.

It was no secret that there had been a lot of slack and doubt thrown at the Devils for drafting him. Most of them claimed he was only chosen for his name, for his brothers’ talents rather than his own skills. Most of them said he was a bust, a flop choice, and a variety of other names that left a bitter taste in his mouth.

But he had been on fire for the last few games. Absolutely killing it. And it all lead to tonight’s game, a multi-point game that ended with Luke scoring the goal that secured the Devils the win to keep their streak going.

And he was fucking buzzing out of his skin.

The thrill of the win and satisfaction of proving those haters wrong morphed into something cockier, something that settled in the pit of his stomach and left him wanting more than slaps on his back or beers at a bar or praise from the media.

He wanted something much more fulfilling than all of that.

“Fuck,” Luke groaned, his head falling back against the headboard as you sunk down onto his cock. “Atta girl, babe.”

You let out a choked gasp as he bottomed out inside you, your chest heaving and your legs already shaking. You were straddling his lap, your legs spread and your wet thighs already exposing just how much he had been teasing you since he arrived home, since he practically ripped your clothes off and bent you over the back of the couch before devouring you from behind.

He was on a high and he wanted to keep his good mood going.

It just seemed that was at the expense of your brain because you were pretty sure he wasn’t stopping until he had fucked you dumb—not that you had any issues with that.

“Shitshitshitshit,” you whined, your nails digging into his shoulders and your head dropping to his chest. “Fuck, feel so big.”

“Yeah?” You could hear the cockiness in his voice, his hands soothing up and down your thighs. “God, baby, look at you. Fucking wrecked and I’ve not even done anything.”

“Luke,” you breathed out, your cheeks flushed and your eyes glossy as you looked up at him. “Please.”

“Nuh uh, baby,” he cooed as his hands cupped your face, tucking your hair behind your ears. “I’m the man of the night. You said so yourself, said you wanted to reward me.”

You tucked your lip between your teeth, the memory of your messages to him after the game flashing to the front of your mind.

“Go on. Fuck yourself on my cock,” Luke grinned, leaning back against the headboard and giving your ass an encouraging slap. “Wanna see my pretty girl bouncing on my dick, see you fuck yourself dumb until you’re begging me to take over.”

#cece's cocktail celebration #luke hughes #nhl #new jersey devils #luke hughes x reader #luke hughes x you #luke hughes x y/n #luke hughes fic #luke hughes one shot #luke hughes smut #nhl x reader #nhl x you #nhl x y/n #nhl fic #nhl one shot #nhl smut

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sturniolo04 · 2 months ago

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hii!!! i desperately need some chris fluff!! maybe where reader is on her period and her and chris are cuddling and ended up falling asleep and nick and matt go into chris’s room and see that so they take a picture and talk about how cute they are then leave?

husband!chris x Wife!reader

A/n: ofc! I absolutely love these requests I have coming in, you guys are amazing!! I made it into a small blurb I hope you love it! And remember to leave requests in my inbox! If you don’t like the pre added name in my works you can simply put in your own or don’t read it, it up to you :)-Charli

Dividers: @issysh3ll

For as long as you and chris had been dating Chris was pretty certain he knew you like the back of his hand. He could always easily tell when you weren’t feeling well, probably being on your period, to even knowing when you hadn’t eaten all day.

He just knew the signs and patterns you had day in and day out. So I think it came as a surprise when you seemed to be having the worst cramps of your life. Your period was never a huge issue in the past. You never have terrible cramps or even had the nausea feeling like ever and never in a million years did you think that would every change.

It was currently 2 in the morning you can chris were sound asleep kinda. You couldn’t get quite comfortable for the past 30 minutes, you kept tossing and turning you were surprised you didn’t wake chris up but you knew chris was a heavy sleeper so it was totally okay. You didn’t realize that it was period slowly starting. Feeling the instant shock of the pain emerging in your abdomen causing you to quickly wince and sit up in excuriating pain.

“OW OW OW OW OW OWWW”

You exclaims holding you stomach startling Chris causing him to stir awake.

“What’s wrong love what happened”

Chris rasps out sleep still evident in in his voice as he brings his hand up to rub your back lovingly.

“I think my period started”

You sob out as Chris’ eyes widened.

“Oh babygirl was it suppose to start soon”

He says sitting up a little more in the bed next to you as you nod your head he begins to grow concerned as you continue to sob and lean over in pain.

“Its not suppose to hurt this bad though”

You cry out as chris gently combs his fingers through your hair.

“How bad is it hurting”

Chris asks you rubbing your back after leaning over and turning on the lamp on the nightstand.

“Really really bad chris”

You sob out. Chris gets up to grab your heating pad to put over your stomach to see if that would soothe you.

“Here princess see if this works”

Chris states as you shake your head ‘no’ as he quirks and eyebrow up.

“I can’t lay down it hurts too much”

You sob out.

“Okay well what can I do to help you; you want water”

Chris states as he notices your face morphs into pure sickness.

“ what Whats wrong”

Chris questions as you immediately get up running int you guys connected bathroom leaning over the toilet puking.

“Oh baby baby baby baby”

Chris rushes out following up holding your hair back as you continue to dry heave into the toilet bowl.

“I don’t know why this is happening chris my period never makes me puke”

You sob as chris puts your hair up in a messy bun.

“I don’t know do you want to try some aspirin or something I can go get some real quick”

Chris states putting his shoes and shirt on.

“No I will tough it out it might be a fluke”

You disagree not wanting chris to leave you in this state. Chris shakes his head ’no’ while gently coming back into the bathroom to pick you up and carry you bridal style down to the couch in the living room.

“I will be real quick just sit here with your blanket and try to rest okay”

Chris reasons with you as you continue to slightly wince at the aching pain in the lower part of your body.

Chris shortly made it back after and had you take the aspirin which kicked in relatively quickly. You two ended up staying on the couch.

“Feeling better”

Chris questions bring you slowly into his cuddling grip as you nod your head resting your head on his chest drifting back off to sleep.

“Good mornin- oh would you look at that”

Matt chuckles as nick gasps as they both are met with the sight of you two still tangled together on the couch.

“New lock screen chris you’re welcome”

Nick chuckles snapping a quick photo of the pair.

Taglist

@mintsturniolo @spicymuffins03 @dirtylittleheart333

@stayingstromboli @wh0resstuff @ksturnz @chaoswithus @emely9274 @ivysturnss @sturniolo-szn2 @lezleeferguson-120 @courta13 @chrepsi

#sturniolo imagine #matt sturniolo #sturniolo triplets x reader #matt sturniolo x you #matt sturniolo fanfic #chris sturniolo #girlypopsquad🩵#christopher sturniolo #chris x reader #nick sturniolo #charli'scornerrequests🩵#charli'scorner🩵

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xpulchritudinousx · 13 days ago

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something you'd never expect

Summary: You’re Bakugo’s wife and he’s finally introducing you to his friends… But things take a turn. Disclaimer: This might be a sensitive subject to some people, there’s nothing NFSW, but it briefly talks about fertility issues. If this triggers you at all, please don’t read, I don’t want anyone to be uncomfortable when reading my content.

The doorbell of your home rang, with Bakugo looking exhausted already at the idea of having to deal with his friends. Opening the door to see everyone besides Mina thanks to her not being available to join. He was just about to tell them to come in when you shove your head over his shoulder to see them. “Are these guys your friends?” You ask him in English, looking them all over before shoving your hand up to take a sip out of your milkshake as you look at them all. Katsuki just sighs, giving you a forced glare, trying to get you to behave for once. “They’re not my… Forget it, just move so I can let them in.” His words rang half hearted, not really having the energy to do anything. Pausing when he sees you move and give him an apologetic look, his expression morphing to be fond as he pats your head before walking you over to the couches. Everyone looked shocked to see him actually let you eat somewhere other than the dining table. What happened to their high strung Bakugo that they know and love? “Katsuki, could you get me some fries?” “You just put them in the fridge?” “I know but I changed my mind and don’t wanna get up.” “...Fine.” That’s how he ended up getting up and going to reheat your leftovers while you sat with his friends. At times like this, they wished Mina had more free time for them, they still didn't know how to talk to girls, even at their grown age. “So how’d you meet Bakugo?” Sero asked you in English, trying not to be insensitive to the fact that you were clearly only communicating in it. “Oh he was in America when he was working on Izuku’s suit and-” Katsuki gives you a panicked look from the kitchen, looking over the counter as he waved his hand cut-throat style to tell you to stop talking about it. Not wanting the details of your unsteady citizenship in the country be discussed until his lawyers figured everything out. “We got along cuz we both like food and kinda fell in love I guess.” Katsuki’s expression fell to an unimpressed one hearing how much of the story you skipped over. He knew you were trying not to go into the details, but damn… He forgot how bad you were at reading social cues. “Of course that’s what it was.” Denki says, making everyone else just smile awkwardly. It was laughable how much of a softie their friend actually was, finally coming back after microwaving your fries and adding some more salt to it. Bringing you the little paper cup they were kept in and wiping some whipped cream you got on your cheek. His action had you beaming at him, moving to press a kiss to his as thanks, not noticing how red his ears turned at the action. He sighed a bit, fiddling with the little ring on your finger quietly, wait no correction that thing was huge, what the hell? Bakugo definitely wasn’t cheap, that much is becoming more and more apparent. The way you were dressed finally settled into their brains, pale colors and lace trimming. The group’s jaws just drop, not expecting his wife to genuinely be his polar opposite. Beaming widely, wearing pale white accents with your clothes looking more dressed up next to him wearing all black and dressed in track pants. What’s he doing with a princess? That’s when they saw you munch down on your fries with a blissful look on your face, reaching for the little bag of goldfish you had and some cheese sticks. You were eating a lot actually, they didn’t notice until now. Watching you finish up and start gulping down at that giant milkshake in a size they didn’t even know restaurants served.

They all pause, faces pulled into awkward little smiles or looks of complete shock. Of course he married someone who eats just as much as him. The sight of you happily sipping on your milkshake as you hug his side was an interesting one, with his face expressionless as he rubs his hand up and down on your shoulder. He was letting you be affectionate with him?! No, he was the one being affectionate… Did you have him for ransom or something? Actually, he looked pretty happy, or as happy as he could really show?

Katsuki looks at you, expression held calm as he brings a hand to the top of your head, sighing a bit at how sweet you looked in the moment. As silent as he tried to keep it he was weak to you, so weak that he could barely hide it. “You said if I took you to get something unhealthy you’d only have a little bit of the food today, you finished the whole bag.” He chides as he gently runs his thumb over your cheek. Kirishima being ever the gentleman comes to your defense, furrowing his eyebrows in concern. “Hey man, let her eat what she wants.” The defense just left Katsuki slightly miffed, looking over to his friend tiredly. “It’s not like that, I just-” Katsuki pauses when he notices you going over to the kitchen, eyes shooting wide before turning on the couch and looking over it to you. “Hey! What did I say about snacks?” Your shoulders slump cartoonishly, looking at him with a frown. “To eat fruit or to ask you to make me something…” Katsuki gives you a stern look, watching you stop yourself from opening the pantry where all your favorite snacks were. Sighing in disappointment with himself for even letting you convince him to buy all of that. “Right, and what are you doing right now?” Your expression looks more ashamed at his words, looking down as you kicked your foot to the tile of the floor a bit. “I’m not doing either of them.” With that you mope and walk back over to him, snuggling to his side quietly, leaving him to feel the tiniest twinge of guilt. Sighing as he pets your head with a look of concern, muttering into your hair as he brings you closer. “I’m sorry, you know I’m not trying to upset you. But you know what the doctor said, we’ve gotta eat healthy for everything to work…”

The small intimate moment just had his friends sitting there nearly the color of ghosts, looking at him with their jaws nearly hitting the floor. Finally, one of them spoke up, the four of them doing their best to not go speechless every time they saw him interacting with you as if it was a crazy phenomenon. “What exactly do you need to work?” Sero asked, giving Katsuki a slightly sceptical look, unsure how he was going to react to the question.

Everyone’s mouths went from wide open to snapped shut when Katsuki sighs, looking at you quietly before letting himself admit it. “We’ve been going to the doctor a lot lately… We’ve been trying for a baby and things have been… Hopeless.” He admits, bringing his hand down from your cheek to your shoulder, squeezing it in reassurance when he feels your mood shift. Your eyes downcast as you lean into him, fighting the urge to bring your hand to your tummy. Fingers clutching into your skirt, words quiet as you speak in English; still struggling with Japanese even after the months went on, catching onto what he was telling his friends. “I’m the reason we can’t and I wanted it…” You whisper out, quickly being shushed by Katsuki, his hand running over your hair as he pressed a chaste kiss to your head. “It doesn’t matter, we’re doing it no matter what.” He promised, sighing a bit when you nod but head off your room. His eyes glued to the floor, expression ridden in nothing but guilt, looking back over to his friends tiredly. “Not a word.” He threatened, getting up and following behind you. The four just sat there, looking at one another with furrowed eyebrows, Kirishima, Sero and Kaminari speaking to each other about it. Concern written all over their expressions as they let their thoughts run wild. “Man, that’s tough. I never would’ve thought Bakugo would even want to be a dad, but this? This is just…”

“Depressing?” Kaminari fills in, looking less sad and more concerned. “I hate to say it, but maybe it’s a blessing in disguise. I mean he just bought a Porsche, that’s not exactly a baby safe car. Not to be the bearer of bad news, but Bakugo isn’t exactly the most nurturing guy around.” Kirishima furrowed his eyebrows at Sero’s words, fidgeting a bit as he adjusted himself in his seat, sighing a bit as he conceded to it. “I mean yeah, he couldn’t have been with her for that long if we never knew about them, plus she can barely even get a sentence in Japanese out. But still… That’s gotta be rough.”

Izuku finally spoke up, having been quiet as he processed his thoughts with his eyes to the ground. “Kachan’s a lot more capable than you guys are giving him credit for. He never does anything without thinking. This makes sense though, he’s been a lot less angry and more just sad. We should be more supportive, he probably won’t say it, but he wants to know he has hope, especially when he has to be the one to give it to her right now.” Like usual whenever Izuku speaks up, everyone goes quiet for a minute, contemplating the way he sees things more clearly than them. Always analyzing the little details until they come together for him to fully understand the situation.

“I guess I never thought of it like that.” Kirishima admitted, with Kaminari chiming in to agree. Katsuki finally came back without you after a bit, not saying a word with his eyes puffy and slightly reddened. Keeping his responses short and offering up some tea, not responding when Kaminari asks about where you went. Simply saying goodbye to everyone without you when they took the hint that now wasn’t a good time for him to have company.

Even with all of them walking out together in silence, Izuku hoped the next time they came by, things would be different… The next time they’d come over would be a couple months later when Katsuki called them over to help with some housing adjustments. You opened up the door for them with a wide smile and noticeable change in your figure. Walking in to see him working on building a pink playpen and watching you rush over to him to hug his side, the blond letting out a little huff as he brings his hand to your head, leaning it closer as he rested his own to it. The four of them watched for a second. Kirishima smiling, with Kaminari and Sero processing it for a second, looking halfway to tears, but Izuku was beaming. Looks like you guys are going to have a girl.

thank you for reading, kind words and comments r always welcome!

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eveningepiphany · 10 months ago

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need | h.s oneshot

summary: the two elite enemies of St Jacklyn college finally cave against the mass amounts of sexual tension they’ve shared… at a campus sleepover of all things.

warnings: SMUT, hot and heavy, enemies with impulsive benefits, dirty talk, fingering (fem rec), piv sex, classic supply closet sex!!

a/n: after being gone for a little while (basically M.I.A let’s be fr) I wanted to post a little smutshot🤍

———

At college, things happen, and they happen fast.

One minute you’ll be doing homework, and the next you’ll be at a party after a spontaneous invite.

Or you’ll plan for a night with friends but find yourself hooking up with a campus stranger.

It’s the way of life, you’re either going from one extreme to the other, or you’re not really in college.

And that’s exactly what’s currently about to happen to you again. It’s about to be zero to a hundred with you and one of the worst people to walk St Jacklyn halls.

It had started out as you both being out on a walk for fresh air, somehow at the same time. Which turned into a run in as it always does with the two of you— Harry Styles, the colleges token ‘golden’ boy immediately tutting out, “well well, look who else has snuck out for a walk around the halls.”

“How unfortunate our walks have coincided.” You had drawled at him, shaking your head as your feet clacked against the smooth stone flooring.

He had morphed a solo stroll into a joint one, because now he trailed by your side as you wandered the schools dim corridors, “don’t sound so upset, I know y’truly excited by the prospect.”

“Harry, can you fuck off?” Originally, this walk was purposed to clear your muddled head.

One of your ex-friends, Belle, had come up to you in the library— which was turned into a sleeping quarters— with a snide expression written all over her face. She was imploring that in around 2 hours, you check the St Jacklyn gossip page.

It sounds fickle, because it is fickle. The site is dedicated to the drama that goes on at the huge school. And you had been on the front page more than you would’ve liked lately, especially after your fall out with Belle.

“Why would I want to do that…? Plus, I’ve heard word that a story is bubbling about you.” He supplies, and your gaze slants over to him.

His long untamed hair is set free over his shoulders, and his green eyes were already trained on yours.

A sigh breaches through your mouth, the news coming from him is as unfortunate as being murdered before a month long holiday in the tropics. Because if he knows about it, then it just means Belle is telling everyone.

“Do you happen to know what it’s about too?” You ask, half prepared for him to avoid the question.

Which good thing you were expecting it, because that’s just what he did, “She’s being rather venomous. I really didn’t think she’d find footing after what she did to you. Shes much like…” he pauses in thought, brows furrowed as he files through his mind, “like a pest you can’t quite catch.”

“A pest.” You repeat in agreement, the first time you’ve ever sided with him on a statement, despite it being a backhanded dig at the fact you can’t seem to sort it out once and for all.

“Indeed, dove. And from what i know, the news that’s going up is nothing good.” He smirks, hands coming to clasp behind his back.

“Ah, bad news about me on St Jacklyns gossip page. Something you would know nothing about, of course.” You sneer at him, a reminder that you have neither forgiven or forgotten.

“All is fair in love and war, darling.” He justifies with a shrug, “you can’t claim to be a saint either.”

“Never did.” A scoff pasted your lips, “however you cant claim you didn’t start it.”

He overlaps you with his steps, now walking backwards in front of you, his eyes trailing up and down your body, “Just as bitter as ever…”

“Of course I’m bitter.” You spat out, flaring your hands out in quickly bubbling anger.

“You’re acting as if you weren’t the one to tell the blog I was sleeping with Sherman! Which was a fucking lie!”

“And like you didn’t egg my house after it.” He fires back.

“You stole my cat and dyed him green.”

“Well, y’shouldnt let your cat outside.”

“You’re a horrible person.”

“And you know what, Y/N, I think you are too.” He smiles, as though he’s proud of you.

“God.” You frustratedly huff out, stopping all together.

He smirks, coming to a halt as well, “Not my name, but I can appreciate the confusion.”

He steps forward into your space, lips curling upward, something mischievous sparkling in his green gaze.

“You are unbelievable.” You shake your head, face contorting with disgust. Trying to ignore his muscles that are popping as he crosses hims arms over his chest.

“Oh, but I have a feeling you love it.” He coos.

“I hate you, Harry.” You grit out, mimicking his stance— turning the sight of the two of you into the likes of a stand off.

“Mmm, you do?” A low hum comes from his throat, licking his lips as he looks at you.

“Harder than you’d ever be able to fathom.” You almost stutter out, mind fumbling as you’re sure he is mapping out some kind of move he’s about to make on you.

Things around here imitate a game of chess, every play as calculated as the next.

He is smiling at your constant digs of his character. You’re so this, you’re so that, you’d kept saying to him. Finding the most offensive describing words you could.

“So unbelievable that if I kissed you right now, you’d be shocked?”

You scowl at him, “not that I think you’d have the balls, but yes, I likely would be.”

“Is that a challenge?” He further perks up at your quip.

You have doubts he’d ever follow through, because you nod, with a cock of your brow. And oh how you were wrong about that. You should’ve known with the way he was eyeing you off like a meal.

He leans forward into your space, fast like the wind, yet his kiss like a breeze. Quick and gentle, and his point proven with a smug smirk being felt against your mouth hardly a second before he pulls away.

You— however shocked and slightly appalled that the enemies mouth just touched yours— are frozen to the spot.

He soaks in the look of surprise on your features, and a part of him tingles with the thrill of kissing someone who he knows could try and ruin his life. Just as you had countless times before.

An adrenaline rush spiked in him, along with something else, something stronger that he can’t quite put his finger on.

“Want your own challenge?” he suggests, derailing from his original plan. He doesn’t wait for an indication of an answer from yourself.

“You wouldn’t dare admit that you enjoyed that.” He muses.

“I didn’t.” You try to force confidence in your voice, certainty. But you’re only sounding defensive, just like a liar.

His words kick you into gear, and you shove his shoulder with the flat of your hand— yet it hardly budges his firm figure in the dim hallway.

“Should we try again?” The direction of the wind had changed, clearly. His voice a low constant hum, leaning forward again, hands brushing gingerly against your waist.

You swear the warm lights upon the walls flicker as though they were a flame being licked by the shift in the air around you.

“No.” You scoff, hands grabbing his wrists where they hung loosely on your hipbone— you’re tempted by his scent, but cautious of his habitual lying.

A wrong move and he will use it against you.

“And why not?” He says, and you choose your next words carefully.

“Because. You have to admit it first.” You state, deciding not to entirely close off the idea of kissing him again, but atleast removing an aspect of vulnerability from it.

“I’ll show you,” he pulls your body further into his, nose nudging against your own. It pushes your face up so your mouth is more accessible to his.

You’re suddenly flushing at the action, this was too far to prove a point— even for you— you decided.

He feels you squirm, “Do you not want me to kiss you? Or are you just nervous around me.”

“Don’t be conceited…” you scowl against his cheek, “you still repulse me.”

His throat makes a deep sound, and he grazes over your mouth. A tease, he does it again, and again.

The heat of his mouth is brushing yours in a torturous cycle— one that doesn’t seem to be ending on his terms. A soft pass of his lower lip, and you’re eager for more, but he pulls away just a fraction. All you can feel is the hot air passing through his parted lips. He doesn’t give in.

“I wouldn’t make you do something you didn’t want t’do…” His voice is no more than a whisper. It is truth as much as it is a trap. He’s instating that if you make the next move, you want this.

Everything is in the fine print around here.

You can feel him talking almost against your mouth, the small vibration of every syllable that passes through his lips. It’s tempting beyond belief, beginning to forge a sense of desperation in your body that not even you can condone.

His plan is working to a tea. You hate him so much for it.

He brushes his hands over you, heat radiating from his body. But not pushing into your mouth, just lingering.

Not making a move until you cave against him first.

He somehow knows you like the back of his hand, because you couldn’t resist pushing back into his mouth after all that. Despite the alarm bells absolutely blaring in your head, you went against them completely.

Three minutes of teasing was practically all it was, but it was enough to leave the hairs on your body standing up, and your lungs panting for air.

Enemies spend so much time carving stakes to throw at each other, that along the way they find out more about one another than anyone else. Idiosyncrasies that you somehow learn from warfare, has now stemmed into to being used with the art of… romance or whatever you call it.

Probably not romance— actually not at all romance— but whatever this is.

You know it’s true because right now, your hands are itching to pull his hair. You know he’s into it, since a whole post got aired out about it and you tried to use it against him hardly a few months ago.

He only played it off with a smirk, and an offer to see just how riled up it got him.

Just as now he bites at your lip, a thing he worked out of you when you were absolutely trashed at Belle’s end of semester party.

Something he cant lie he’s been craving to do since he found out.

This kiss goes from teasing and something that’s merely testing boundaries to an entirely fueled makeout session.

There was no room for words suddenly, except muttered curses being shared between the two of you.

Both of you are moving in sync, stepping backwards until his hands fumble with the door of a conveniently placed supply closet.

Your mind is whirling as he guides you into the even darker room. Hardly lit, it made everything feel like you were imagining it. Only outlines are visible, thanks to the thin warm rays of light snaking their way through the gap in the door.

Christ, he is tugging you hard against him, and you want it… his hands skating over your hips and dipping teasingly down to your ass are hardly helping your case.

Finally you get something out of your mouth, “fuck— is this still a part of your stupid agenda? Or do you actually want something?

He grabs your wrist, suddenly guiding it down to a place you can feel just how much he wants something.

You bite down hard on your lip to contain the gasp that almost slipped out as you feel the bulge he’s sporting beneath his jeans, “feel that, baby?”

Fuck… this is going to completely fuck you over. You need him? It hits you like a tonne of bricks, and also straight between your own legs.

A whine exits your mouth quicker than you can hold it back, and you wish for an ounce of shame that Harry just heard that. But you can’t seem to find it.

And infact, he revels in the noise, that high pitched sound of need that comes from you. It fuels him, because he wants to hear more of it.

Neither of you are thinking about circumstances right now. All you can feel is the intense sense of desire.

At least for yourself, the idea of finding a way to royally fuck Harry over is on the back burner.

You remind yourself this is just how college is. Things happen, and that’s fine…

Well, thats how you’re justifying right now. Because in reality, you don’t have a lot else to vouch for yourself with.

Overall, you’re stricken of breath from your actions, both figuratively and literally.

The way Harry’s lips are melded to yours, hot and smooth— kissing your mouth with such keen intent, anyone from the outside would think the situation laid on completely different grounds to the reality.

His body is moving insatiably against yours now, like you’re two people who have been longtime acquaintances or friends that have finally managed to make a move.

His hands skate the skin of your back with fervour, as though you both were strangers that really hit it off at an event.

But you still think those circumstances wouldn’t feel nearly as good as this one did. The hatred that flooded you everytime he was around fuelled you all the same.

Your hand is still placed over his bulge, cupping it as you both half devour each other. It’s hot to know you’re currently placed over his most vulnerable spot, and the fact he’s allowing it.

Especially when there’s enough history to warrant a punch to the groin.

It’s a reminder to how horrid an idea this technically is. That you’re fraternising with the worst person you possibly could.

You pant against him, spitting out a much needed reality check, “Fuck— I still hate you.”

He is your enemy. Your adversary. Your opponent. Not friend, only foe. Yet you’ve landed yourself in this supply closet with him. At your college. While half of your grade level is mingling downstairs.

You can’t tell if you regret picking a college that does so many random community activities. Such as a college sleepout, camping on campus as they’d deemed it.

It was set to strengthen connections with peers and mesh with those you haven’t before upon a familiar location.

And oh, are you meshing with someone you don’t usually…

“Hate me, hm?” He hums against the skin of your throat, baring his teeth and grazing them against it. Evoking a shudder from you at the sensation, which zipped down your spine and furthering the pool of warmth that gathered at the peak of your thighs.

Your hands tightened as they clutched his waist, nails scratching against the muscled flesh as you searched for a response.

“You’re an ass, Harry, I cant forget that even with your tongue in my mouth. And…” He licked a stripe up your neck, drawing back to meet your eye level as you spoke. Suddenly words weren’t coming out again.

“And?” He prompts, “Can’t forget tha’ even when im making you feel this good? When im getting you this worked up? And, probably when you know im able to give you the best orgasm of your life.”

You shoved his chest, yet balling his shirt up so you could immediately pull him closer against you. The idea of going further made you flushed, despite that being the only way everything is headed with the make out session you just had.

But it’s hard to miss the way it’s exactly what your body is rioting for. Not to mention the way his gorgeous and pouty face that’s hardly visible in this light works you up even more.

“Just… shut your mouth. Keep it closed.” You pleaded, letting your hands slide underneath his shirt and scratch against his taut muscles. A part of you longing to see the tattoos hidden beneath.

“How would I do this, then?” He guided his lips back against yours and licked into your mouth. His skilful tongue made you weak against him, the way it swirled around your own.

The exchange almost made your knees buckle where you stood pressed up against the door. Hands wringing against the oddly soft skin of his back, his mouth tasting of mint.

Every part of him was unfairly perfect, down to the way he tasted— which made you almost drool it was that good. But regardless, it’s messed up he’s allowed to walk around being so flawless.

Well, physically flawless anyway… given what flaws he lacks in that department, he makes up for with his subpar personality.

As his warm mouth moves against yours, your hands dipped back down to where his belt laid, toying with the buckle.

He drew his mouth back, yet pushing his thigh forward— slotting it between your legs with a satisfied hum. “Pretty thing, pullin’ on m’belt like you’re desperate for something.”

His words made you shudder, and you know he’s trying to ease you into some kind of submission. And you hate the way it would probably work.

“Desperate? Coming from the one who is already pushing his cock into my hand through his jeans.” The scoff he let out gave you a rush of satisfaction.

Although he didnt verbally retaliate, a hand tucked into your hair and pulled your head back. Exposing your neck so he could suck a harsh mark into it.

“Y’all talk, darling…” he whispers, letting your hair go and slipping his fingers nimbly under your fitted shirt.

His hand is pressed into your breast firmly over the top of your bra, held down by the tight fabric of your top.

It renders you senseless, the feeling of his warm palm atop your skin. Hand held over the heart you swore a million times he wanted to rip out of your chest.

Your own fingertips glide along his arm, feeling the soft hair dusting them, and coming to instinctually clutch his bicep.

There was both fear and arousal pumping through you, it was a sick and twisted adrenaline high that pushed you further into his game.

You unconsciously ground yourself against the thigh his had worked its way between your legs, a whimper slipping out as he gently squeezed your tit.

His name slipped from your mouth, sounding like a desperate plea.

“Y/N, baby.” He mocks almost, “just tell me what you need.”

It’s a shame you didn’t have the strength to even hesitate, “You.”

A satisfied hum from his throat embarrassed you, yet not enough to stop grinding down onto his jean-covered thigh.

His hand retracts from where it was inside your top, and disappears south. Fingers dipping below the fabric of your leggings, and touching over your core like it was nothing.

Your legs nearly gave out as his fingers drew over your fabric covered clit. A noise rattling in your chest as he adds a hint of pressure.

It feels heavenly even over a layer of fabric. Nails were now dug into the flesh of his arm, and your brain starting racing even faster than your heart.

Need, need, need.

That’s the only chorus you could hear in you head, you needed to feel his fingers press inside of you. You would even resort to begging if it came to it.

“Everyone always acts like you’re such a good girl, dove.” He shakes his head, already foreshadowing his disagreement with his tone.

He delivers a flick of your clit, “but you’re not really. Not at all.”

The dampness of your panties could almost make him moan aloud, but he holds himself back, continuing his little speech.

“If only they could see how wet your pussy’s gotten for me. Just how badly you want something from me.”

“Shut up.” You wish it held even a hint of venom, but it was yet another plead to him.

He leans forwards and captures your lips in a short but searing kiss, licking into your mouth for hardly a second before retracting.

“Want my fingers inside of you?” He asks, ignoring your previous complaint.

The idea sounds like a fucking dream right now, and you nod feverishly despite him hardly being able to see it.

“Yes, just do it, please.”

He waits hardly much longer before pushing your soaked underwear aside, allowing his middle finger to slip through your wet centre.

The sensation of the first contact skin-to-skin releases a full body shudder from you, and then furthers into a groan as he eases into your soaked hole.

He wastes no time curving it upward, eager to hear your moans. There’s no resistance as he touches you, you melt into him.

“Fucks sake,” he curses as you rut into his palm, craving the friction of it against your clit.

“So keen to grind yourself all over my hand, huh? Who would’ve thought I’d have you in here tonight, making a mess on my fingers.”

His voice is idilic as it enters your euphoric mind, even though his words are a dig at you, you can help but be turned on even more by it.

“Please…” you whine, although you’re not even sure what it is you’re begging for.

He starts to move his hand faster, there’s a level of skill behind it, he knows what he’s doing.

The pressure of his upper palm against your clit, and the circles he’s rubbing inside of you. Pressing at a sweet spot that’s making you drip.

It’s not long before you can hear how wet you are, hardly masked by the moans flying from your mouth.

“Already going to come?” He chuckles, kissing at your mouth.

“Fuck, fuck— Harry…”

He pushes in a second finger, making your back arch in pleasure. Christ, it felt so fucking good.

You are so unbelievably wet, and in the back of your mind you can’t believe he’s got you in a state like this.

Palms fisting at his shirt, pulling him as close as you can get. He can tell you’re starting to unravel between him.

Your hole is pulsing in response to his fast and firm hands, and profanities flying from your lips.

“Cmon, show me how much you hate me, Y/N.”

“I hate you!” You cry, and the feeling of your impending orgasm is taking over your whole body. It’s burning in your stomach, aching in your chest.

His fingers somehow curl faster inside of you, and finally make you snap.

A cry falls from your mouth and your hips jerk harshly against him.

“Ride it out, good girl…” he coos to you, and your head is spinning.

Somehow, as you come down from your high, it was not enough.

“More, Harry.”

A silence envelops you both for a second, “what?”

“Need you inside of me.”

When he doesn’t move to action your request, you start fumbling to unbuckle his belt.

“Woah, slow down baby. Think for a second, gotta let you settle first.” His tone translates as unsure in your mind.

“Do you not want to?” You frown at him, “Just say that, im not going to be—

“No.” He immediately interjects, “not sayin’ that at all dove, just want you to clear y’head for a second.”

His hand has slipped out of your leggings, and his reminder makes you take a deep breath. It was almost sweet, even though it was the bare minimum.

“I’m fine.” You sigh, “thank you, though.”

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, okay?”

You’re surprised he has any decency at all in that regard.

“I know…” your hands have now slid his belt off him, “but I want you to fuck me, like fuck me absolutely stupid.”

“God, Y/N.” He rasps, “trying to be so gentle with you right now, an’ y’just want to be filled with my cock.”

“I do, so help me take these off.” You work to slide his jeans down.

There’s a fumble with eachothers clothing that quickly follows, all the sudden shirts are being torn off and pants shucked down from eachothers legs.

Thrown in random directions to be dealt with a later time, because right now all the can be felt is the desire.

“I’ve got a condom.”

“Why the fuck do you have a condom at a school camp out?” You scoffed, but typical of Harry to cart around a condom ‘just incase’.

“Ah well, yknow. Prepared for any occasion.”

You rolled your eyes, hands pressed on his chest, “God you have a way of making a girl feel special.”

“Darling, if you’re worried about that let me show you.” He runs his fingers down your body, lingering on the low of your belly.

“I shouldn’t be so surprised, I know better than anyone you’re one of St Jacklyn’s biggest man whores.”

“Not a man whore, just have an appreciation for a woman’s beauty.”

You lean in to kiss at his jaw, “I’ll pretend that’s not a bit objectifying.”

He groans, subconsciously cocking his head back so you have more room to peck at, “you’re impossible to please.”

“You haven’t tried that hard yet.” You sing, swinging the topic back to its original starting point.

“Oh yea?” He grips at your waist, tearing the condom he pulled from god knows where and moving his briefs down his thighs so he can roll it down his length.

He quickly pushes you back, so your body is pressed into the wall again, and a heat envelopes your body all over again.

His hands are now toying with your underwear, his lips back over yours as he teases you all over again.

You can feel his cock pressed against your thigh, and although there’s hardly enough light to get a good look, you can tell he’s big. Perfectly equipped, if you will.

Your hand finds its way to wrap around him, wishing for a second he wasn’t covered with a condom so you could really feel him.

Nevertheless, you give him a slow and steady stroke, taking great pride in the pleasure-filled sigh that gets drawn from his lungs.

“Fuck Y/N…”

“Look who’s whining now, good boy.”

He doesn’t even have the mental resolve to quip back at you, he simply cranes into your touch, mouthing at your chest absentmindedly.

“You’re gonna make m’come before im even inside of you. C’mere.”

He tugs your underwear down all the way, letting you step out of it. Wasting no time sliding his hand around the back of your thigh, lifting it up around his waist.

Your hands run over his shirtless frame, palming at the taut abs he has, trying not to salivate.

“You tell me if you want to stop or change something, alright?”

You nod, but it wasn’t enough for him, “need an answer, darling.”

“Yes, thank you.” Your answer was sighed, a flutter of your eyelids as he presses his cock against your clit.

You whine as he runs his tip through your slit, coating himself in your pooled arousal, his breathing heavy.

He takes his time here, teasing you, pushing into you just enough to have you clenching around him yet still leave you begging him for more.

“Harry, Harry please.”

He knew exactly how to work you so he got this. The begging and pleading to be filled up with him.

“Tell me what y’want.” His voice is raspy, yet drips with honey.

“You.”

He tuts, flicking your sensitive clit, “need more detail than that.”

“Want… fuck.” You roll your hips against him, “want you to fuck me so deep, please. Need to feel you all the way inside of me.”

There was no shame for you right now, all you could focus on was the pulsing need deep in your core, aching to be stretched out by him.

“That’s it dove,” he finally pushes in, moaning in sync with you.

“Fuck, you feel so nice around me.”

Your hole is already clenching around his length, your hips mindlessly grinding down into him. Pulling him in deeper until he’s hitting all the perfect spots.

He groans at your needy rutting against him, making him start to pump inside of you, hardly taking a slow start.

You feel your brain nearly switch off, all but the part that’s associated with him. His scent, his touch, all the history that you’re seemingly fucking out right now.

“Need you to go harder.” You cry, making him almost chuckle.

“What a wonderful thing t’hear from you. That you, the girl who fucking hates me wants me to fuck her senseless.” His statement is panted out, and usually you’d say something snarky back, but right now none of that crosses your mind.

“Please, want you to ruin me…”

Right now that is all you want, to be completely ruined.

He doesn’t take your request light heartedly, he ruts into you with deep and fast strokes. Hand coming to where your clit is, toying with it at the same pace.

He mutters dirty words into your ear as he keeps going, winding you up even when you didn’t think you could anymore.

“Cmon baby, show me how you let go around me.” He pushes, grabbing at the back of your head, lacing his hands into your hair.

He tugs your lips against his, and your moaning against him still, mouth wide open.

His name falls from your tongue like a mantra, over and over again until you’re nearly collapsed. He has to hold you up when you start to come, your knees completely cave in.

“Oh my— oh my god!” Your whole body rocks against his hold, his cock hitting places inside of you that you didn’t even know you had.

“Don’t stop, please don’t..” you feel the second he starts to unravel with you, his thrusts lapse in pace and all the sudden his breath stutters.

“Oh fuck, Y/N!” He grunts and falls into you as, “why didn’t we do this earlier, fuckin’ hell.”

His cock twitches inside of you, and both of you are stricken of air, lightheaded but filled with so much pleasure.

“That was so good, Harry…” you kiss at his neck, and his breath passes out as a chuckle.

“Still hate my guts though?” He laughs.

Your palms run down his back, relaxing as he slides out of you, “Mhmm, a good fuck isn’t gonna change that.”

“Atleast you can admit im good in bed.” He teases.

“Technically we’re not in a bed, so not sure if that point stands.”

“Just had you crying out my name as you come around my dick n’ you’re already back to mouthing me off.”

“Mouthing you off, huh?”

He snorts, “right, you dirty thing.”

“Can mouth you off if you beg for it.”

“Already want a round two with me, isn’t that saying something.” He stares at you, lips curling into a smile.

“You made me finish twice, seems only fair.” You suggest.

And suddenly, you realised you’ve gotten into a very dangerous spiral with a very dangerous player in your game.

Only time will tell…

———

a/n: I have hardly edited this but I really really just wanted to post again, I hope it’s okay and the writing isn’t too rusty lol

#harry styles smut #harry styles #harry styles one shot #harry styles fanfiction #fanfiction #harry styles imagine #harry styles fluff #fanfic #prompts #reader insert #harry styles x you #harry styles writing #harry styles smutshot #smut #enemies to lovers #enemies with benefits #college au

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