#this is so unfortunate she was the best member | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

zoldsick · 5 months ago

Text

── Lagneía

𓍊𓋼𓍊 summary: shanks x f!reader - as the newest member of the red hair pirates, you have a long way to go to prove yourself, not only to your crew mates but your cocky captain as well. Unfortunately, things fall apart after a little excursion and a run-in with a glowing mushroom that has you feeling...hot.

𓍊𓋼𓍊 tags: smut, sex pollen, nsfw, dubcon (it's sex pollen, ya know how it is), MDNI

𓍊𓋼𓍊 wordcount: ~8k

𓍊𓋼𓍊 Read on AO3

𓍊𓋼𓍊 𓍊𓋼𓍊 𓍊𓋼𓍊 𓍊𓋼𓍊 𓍊𓋼𓍊 𓍊𓋼𓍊 𓍊𓋼𓍊 𓍊𓋼𓍊 𓍊𓋼𓍊 𓍊𓋼𓍊 𓍊𓋼𓍊

You really did respect your Captain, though you didn’t tend to show it.

Benn Beckman was the one who had recruited you when he stumbled upon you in a gambling hall. You had been using Observation Haki to beat the dealer, racking up thousands in berri. Beckman clocked your underhanded method and cornered you outside the casino. You were nervous that he would report you to the authorities, but as luck would have it, he turned out to be a pirate. He was impressed by your advanced skills in Haki, and the two of you hit it off. Eventually, he brought you to the Red Force and introduced you to Shanks, who did not give the best first impression.

“Who’s the kid?” Shanks questioned, barely looking up from his drink.

He immediately rubbed you the wrong way.

Beckman cleared his throat before you could tear him a new one, “This is Y/N. They’re who I told you about, the one gifted in Observation Haki.”

Shanks finally looked up from his drink, lazily trailing his eyes from your feet, all the way to your face. He finally met your eyes and you struggled to maintain your composure under the immense pressure of his gaze. You lifted your chin, desperate to keep your dignity.

Shanks kept his eyes on yours, his gaze intense as he questioned you, “And why should you be a part of my crew? Have you ever been around pirates or even worked as one? It’s dangerous work. Are you sure you’re ready for this kind of lifestyle, kid?”

“I didn’t come here to be interrogated by some old man,” you bit back quickly.

Shanks put his hand over his heart dramatically, feigning emotional pain.

“Listen, Red Hair, I came here as a favor to Beckman, I don’t have anything to prove to you.” You paused as the hair on the back of your neck stood up, “And if your friend hiding over there even thinks about shooting that spitball at me, I’m walking.”

Beckman looked surprised, but Shanks only smiled. There was a clatter and some swearing before another man with dreadlocks emerged behind nearby ship supplies. “Well, shit. So much for that plan, Captain. Seems like she’s the real deal.” The man then jokingly blew the spitball at Shanks, who to your dismay, easily dodged it.

“Color me impressed.” You look back to see Shanks smiling up at you. “You have a lot of potential. Let’s work hard together, Y/N.”

…

While you didn’t join the Red Hair Pirates for Shanks, you became proud to be part of his crew over time. You had been sailing for around 6 months and were glad to say you had quickly proved your worth. Although there were members with better Haki skills, you knew you were improving every day with each new experience.

You hated to admit it, but your captain occupied much of your thoughts. You often wondered if Shanks knew just how hard you were still trying to prove yourself to him. Though you saw him often, you rarely ever worked with him directly. In fact, you’d barely spoken to one another after your first meeting. You had occasionally exchanged a few words, formalities really, at mealtimes and during duty; but a part of you wished there was more. Though, you would never let him know that.

You always put on a tough face in front of him, using words to bite back and hold your ground against the confident, and often cocky, Emperor of the Sea. Truthfully, after your first meeting you had come to admire him, and were slightly intimidated by the powerful man.

While sailing the Grand Line in the New World, the ship stumbled upon an uninhabited island. It was a warm, tropical island, thick with jungle and vines. Shanks decided that the crew would depart and explore the island for supplies, and Roux hoped to find some edible plants and animals for their stock.

All active members of the crew made groups and departed from the Red Force, but since you were not on shift, you’d decided to sleep in. When you awoke and found the ship docked, you decided it would be fun to explore the island as well. It was better than being cooped up all day in the barracks.

As you stepped down the ladder a cheery familiar voice called down to you, “And where do you think you’re going, kid?”

You jumped at your captain’s voice and looked up to see him. His hand gripped a rigging rope, holding him as he stood on the rail’s ledge, and leaned far off the ship to gaze down at you. His hair fell over his face, but his smile was still visible.

“God, Captain. You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“Well, I’m just trying to make sure our ship’s hawkeye doesn’t stray too far and get into trouble,” he teased.

“I’m not getting into trouble,” you grumbled as you looked back down to continue your descent onto the sand. “I just wanted to explore the island like everyone else.”

“Alone?” His smile slightly faltered.

“Is there a problem with that?” You ask, confused about where this conversation was going.

“Well, we can’t afford to lose a member with skills like yours. I’ll come with you.”

You reached the bottom of the ladder and looked up at Shanks in shock, “That really isn’t necessary, Captain. I don’t plan on going far-”

“Nonsense. Besides, you’re not much of a fighter, you should have a bodyguard when you go to unfamiliar places. And I have a duty to protect the valuable members of my crew.” As he said this he jumped from the railing and landed next to you.

You did your best to hide how flustered you were, “There are other members with better Observation Haki than I do, you included.”

Shanks tsked at your objection. He looked hard at you and spoke genuinely, “Don’t sell yourself short. I heard about how you helped the snipers take out that marine ship last week. And I heard how you helped guide the navigator through the rocky sea and fog the other day. I’ve only ever heard other crew members praising you.”

You quickly turned away from the red-haired man adjusting the strap on your bag. You knew you couldn’t stop the blush that was forming on your face, so you turned around to start walking into the jungle. “I just do what I’m told, Captain.” You quickly dismissed him, “Are you coming, or what?”

Shanks laughed as he caught up with you, walking ever so slightly behind you. The walk was silent as the two of you marched deeper and deeper into the jungle, occasionally stopping to inspect certain plants or animals or collect samples in your bag. He enjoyed watching you as you took in the new landscape around you. He’d always found it fascinating to watch you while you concentrated. In fact, he had rarely taken his eyes off you since you’d joined his crew.

From the second he met you, he knew you would be interesting. Shanks would be the first to admit he tested you during your first interaction. He purposefully pushed your buttons to see what you were made of. He needed to know how strong your resolve was before he let you, a stranger, onto his ship. And boy, did you meet his expectations, surpassed them even. Your insulting response nearly made him fall for you right then and there. But he knew his place as captain. He couldn’t risk showing special attention, let alone romantic attention to one of his subordinates. It was his job to keep you safe and provide you with a place to hone your abilities. He had to keep his distance.

Yet… here he was, an Emperor of the Sea, trailing behind you like a puppy. He was rightfully worried to see you sneaking off the ship after the assigned explorers already left. He was doing this because it was the captain’s duty to protect his crew. At least, that’s what he told himself.

As you pushed your way deeper through the vines you tried to ignore the fact that Shanks was tailing you. This was just like any other outing with any other crewmate. You felt his eyes on you the entire time as you walked, but you tried not to let it affect your movements. Was he judging you? You felt a little more self-conscious than usual about what you stopped to look at or how you collected samples. Especially when you caught him staring intensely at your hands.

You finally reached a large plateau. Looking up, you examined the wall looming far above your head, and at the base of the formation, there was an illuminated opening.

“Shanks,” you called out to your captain, “there’s a cave over there.”

Shanks shoved some pesky vines out of his face and looked toward where you were pointing. There was a small opening, barely 4 ft tall, and a blueish light was emanating from the abyss. You moved closer to the cave willing your senses to reach out and explain the phenomenon. You couldn’t sense any danger coming from the cave, so it was time to be like a pirate and explore.

“I’m going to go in.” You stated as you dropped your bag to the ground and started making your way to the entrance.

Shanks was quick, definitely not desperate, as he moved forward and grabbed your arm, “Woah! Hold on there. There is no way I can fit in there.” he gestured towards his large stature and again at the tiny entrance.

You considered the situation and shrugged, “Then wait out here. I won't be long, I just want to check out what’s causing the glow.”

Shanks frowned, realizing there was no point in arguing with you. “Alright, but be careful.”

You saluted him with an exaggerated hand on your brow and firmly stated,. “No.”

You turned away from him and focused back on the cave opening.

“Brat.” you heard him mutter under his breath. You turned around quickly, did you hear that right? He had a smile on his face.

You stared at him for a moment, a warm feeling blossoming in your chest. You smiled back before rolling your eyes and descending.

The walls of the cave were rich in color, with layers of lichen growing throughout the chasm. You strained your ears to listen for any unseen threats that could have been lurking beyond your sight, but all you could hear was the rhythmic drip of the cave walls weeping. As you bent and contorted your body to ease your way through the damp walls, you could see the blue light growing in intensity ahead.

Finally, you reached a large pocket of space in the cave, enabling you to stand straight and take in your surroundings. As you stretched out your back you stared in awe at the sight before you.

Dozens upon dozens of glowing mushrooms covered the room, growing across the walls and floor of the cave. The view was nothing short of dazzling, the light blue glow illuminating the space around you like nothing you had ever seen.

You approached the fungus carefully, although they were beautiful, you knew well that not all beautiful things were good. You drew a handkerchief from your pocket and crouched forward to grab a sample.

Suddenly, the hair on the back of your neck stood straight, and your blood chilled. You trusted your instincts and rapidly jerked backwards from the mysterious mushrooms. Unfortunately, you were not fast enough.

The gills of the mushrooms expanded and expelled a great mist of spores. The sickly sweet-smelling mist filled the room instantly and you yelped in surprise, feeling your way out of the room and back into the tunnel. You coughed as you darted through the veins of the cave desperate for fresh air and open spaces. You could hear Shanks calling out to you and you forced yourself to push forward toward his voice.

Shanks was anxious from the moment he heard you cry out. He felt helpless, unable to fit into the cave. He briefly considered blowing a hole through the mountainside to get to you. Thankfully, hearing your panting and clawing as you made your way out of the cave stopped him. He placed his hand above the cave opening and began calling out to you, begging you to keep moving toward him.

Shanks wasn’t prepared for what came out of that cave.

You stumbled out of the suffocating walls and fell onto the grass in front of your captain. You could vaguely hear Shanks, his voice filled with worry, but you barely registered it. Something was wrong. Your clothes felt tight and itchy, you felt your cheeks warm while the rest of your body developed goosebumps from the jungle air hitting your skin. And most troubling, everything from the deepest part of your core felt tight and ticklish.

Shanks knelt down, grabbing your shoulder to lift your gaze to him. The contact between the two of you sent electric shocks to your core. Sitting face to face with your captain you could barely breathe. At this distance, every feature of his face was at your fingertips. You took in your captain's features. The jagged shape of the scars that ran down his face, the prickly stubble he grew across his chin, his eyes bright with worry, the color of his lips… It took you a moment to realize he was talking to you.

“Y/N! Snap out of it! Y/N! What happened in there? What's going on?!”

The seriousness of his tone did not reach you. Why did he look so worried? You wanted him to smile at you like before. You reached up and touched his cheek with the back of your hand. Taken aback by this gesture, Shanks froze for a moment, then grabbed your hand, pressing it to his face harder. “Y/N. I need you to tell me what happened in there. You can do that for me, right?”

Your eyes widened, coming back to your senses you groaned as you tried to move away from Shanks and stand, only to find that your legs were jelly. “Capt’n. What's happening?”

Shanks let out a shaky laugh, “Well that's the million berri question right now, kid. Tell me what happened in the cave so I can help.”

You push your hands into your eyes, struggling to retrieve your memories, “The glow,” you whispered, “The glow in the cave. It was some kinda, I dunno, mushroom. It puffed some dust on’ta me.” you panted your words out.

“Good girl,” Shanks stroked your hair with his hand, “Now tell me, what did this mushroom look like?”

“Was so pretty, just like the sea. Blue and glowing.” You smiled at the memory of the beautiful sight.

While you reminisced on the memory, Shanks froze, overcome with the realization of what he was dealing with.

It happened several years before you joined the Red Hair Pirates. Shanks and Beckman were wasting the night away at some bar when a woman approached him. He had noticed the dark-haired beauty staring at him from across the bar but had paid no attention. It wasn't uncommon for him to get stares as an infamous pirate.

The woman set down a blue sparkling drink in front of Shanks, “Don't think you're from around here, handsome.” She smiled and batted her eyelashes at him, “How about we get to know each other over a couple’a drinks?”

Beckman stifled a snicker and Shanks shot him a glare. Looking back up at the woman, Shanks politely declined her advances, “Sorry, I'm afraid I'm not looking for any more company tonight,” Shanks slapped Beckman hard on the back making him wince, “This fella’s all the entertainment I'll need for the night.”

The woman tried to hide her annoyance with a smile, “Well then, sorry for interrupting.” She sneered as she turned away, “But the drink’s still on me. Do enjoy.”

Shanks and Beckman eyed each other and the drink skeptically. “Poison?” Asked Beckman bluntly.

Shanks let out a hearty laugh, “Well, only one way to find out!” And downed the sickly blue drink in seconds.

Shanks was stuck in his room the rest of the night, fisting his cock and rutting into his mattress. He admitted it wasn't his best decision. Hongo guessed that based on the color he likely ingested an aphrodisiac made from a plant called the lagneía fungi. “I've heard of petty thieves using it on pirates to steal their loot.” Hongo looked at Shanks scornfully, “Can't believe our captain fell for something like that …”

Shanks shook his head refusing to believe the evidence right in front of him. No! It can't be that. He brought his gaze back down at you and examined your face. You were flushed red, your pupils were dilated, and your gaze wandered across his body. He reached out to touch your arm and you gasped, goosebumps exploding from his touch. He really couldn't deny it any longer.

“Alright Y/n, don’t worry. You’re going to be just fine, just try not to panic.” Shanks spoke, trying to reassure the both of them. Despite his words, Shanks himself was panicking. What was he going to do with you? Sure, it's just an aphrodisiac, but truthfully the experience was borderline torture. Furthermore, judging by how quickly its effects were overcoming you, you must have gotten a serious dosage in your system. If you were a male member of his crew he would laugh it off and condemn you to your bunk with a porno mag like he had done for himself. But how could he let you of all people suffer alone like this?

“Am I gonna die? Everything feels weird,” tears pricked at the edge of your eyes, “like I’m on fire.”

“You’re not going to die.” Shanks insisted, “You’re just, going to be… uncomfortable for a little while. Let’s get you back to the ship so you can lie down.” Shanks bent down and grabbed one of your arms to maneuver you onto his back. Hoisting you up, your breath hitched as your center came into contact with Shanks’ back.

Shanks took off at a brisk pace, navigating the rough jungle terrain. You tried to take Shank’s advice to calm yourself, but you were distracted by the friction created between you and Shanks as he strode back to the ship at an agonizing pace. Everywhere you were touching him felt hot and unbearable. You began to feel a familiar sensation brewing in your lower abdomen. No way, there’s no way! You panicked at the feeling and tried to create distance between you and Shanks to alleviate the burning coil between your legs, but he gripped your thigh back, securing you to his back. “Stop squirming, are you trying to fall over?”

“Captain, ugh.” You buried your head in his back, panting from the unintentional pleasure, “Please slow down. Wait, please sto- Ah!” Suddenly the pressure built up to its peak. You squirmed and shook against your Captain’s back, fingers digging into his shoulders, unable to control your movements or your voice. With a final moan and gasp, you pushed yourself backward off of Shanks’ back onto the jungle floor.

Shanks circled back on his heels to find you curled up on the ground, “What are you doin-”

The realization hit him. He noted your shaking legs and rapid breaths and suddenly he became aware of a slightly damp spot on his back where your bodies had just been connected. He grappled with his own arousal seeing you like this, disheveled and glassy-eyed.

“God, Captain. I’m so sorry,” You covered your face with your hands, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I couldn’t stop myself.”

Shanks was kicking himself mentally as he watched you before him. Here you were feeling humiliated, embarrassed, and vulnerable; yet, there he was feeling himself getting hard at the sight. He’d wanted you for so long, wanted to make you his. Shanks licked his lips. He pushed down his indecent thoughts and turned his attention back to you. This wasn’t the time. You needed to get back to the ship, and right now that’s all that mattered.

In one swift movement, he scooped you up, placing a hand under your legs, carrying you in his arm. You wrapped your arms around his shoulders, burying your face into his neck in embarrassment as he took off running. He was fast. You felt the wind on your face as he swiftly maneuvered through the trees at a great speed, his black coat flapping in the wind behind him. It took less than a minute for him to reach the ship. Shanks bounded onto the deck and managed to avoid the eyes of the returning crew. Reaching his room, he quickly ducked in and closed the door behind him, causing maps and papers to fly in all different directions.

Shanks walked with you in his arm over to his bed and laid you down as gently as he could. “Y/N, you need to listen to me,” he slipped his hand through your hair and gripped the back of your neck to force you to look at him. You looked up at him dazed, trying your best to concentrate on what he was telling you rather than the feeling of his hand on your neck. “You’re not dying. Those spores were an aphrodisiac,” He looked at you hard, making sure you understood what he was saying, “That’s why you’re feeling like this.”

You groaned and tried to hide your face out of embarrassment, but Shanks held you firm. “I’m going to get Hongo, he might be able to find some sort of sedative to help you work through this. You might have a shitty night, but I promise you’re going to be alright. I’ll be right back, ok?” He said softly.

Shanks lightly rubbed the back of your neck with his thumb before turning to leave, but you sat up and clutched his shirt to pull him back, “No! Please don’t. Don’t get Hongo.” You buried your head in his shirt, “I don’t want anyone seeing me… like this.”

Shanks’ gaze softened, “Y/N, Hongo is a professional, he’ll definitely be able to help.”

“No...I don’t…I can’t have anyone see me like this, please Captain. I-” your voice cracked, “I worked too hard to gain respect on this ship. Please. Don’t let anyone see me like this.”

Shanks began to disagree, “Hongo really would know the best way to deal with this, Y/N…” he stopped upon seeing the panic in your eyes. He sighed as he relented, “But, I’ll keep this between us for now. If that’s what you really want.”

You breathed a sigh of relief, though it was short lived. The aching between your legs was demanding attention, and you didn’t know how much longer you could restrain yourself from tending to it.

“Y/N.” You looked back up at Shanks, “If you really intend to deal with this on your own, the only way I know you can find relief is to stimulate yourself or… have sex.” Shanks kept your gaze as he spoke. “I’ll leave you my room. At least that way you can have some privacy while you deal with this. I’ll make sure nobody comes in here. You have my word.”

“Captain…” You found it hard to look him in the eye, you knew what you were about to ask wasn’t right, “Please. Don’t leave me.”

Shanks froze, for a moment he was speechless, he waited for you to meet his gaze and searched your eyes, “Y/N, do you really understand what you're asking right now?”

“I-” You doubled back over struggling to compose yourself, gripping Shanks silk sheets. Just imagining sleeping with your captain was enough to make your arousal unbearable. Despite your best judgment you shakily reached down and palmed in-between your legs, exhaling from the slight relief it gave you. You looked back up to Shanks, eyes pleading, “I can barely manage this right now. I can't do this alone. I'm begging you, please Shanks.”

Shanks stared at you, mouth agape and spellbound by the proposition. He could feel his mouth watering and his pants tighten. Shanks remembered just how miserable he had been with just the small dosage he’d taken, so he couldn’t even begin to imagine the turmoil that was currently wrecking your body. He balled his fist gathering the last bit of restraint he had and whispered, “It… wouldn’t be right of me to do this. You’re not in your right mind, you’d take anyone in your condition-”

“No. You’re wrong,” you were breathing heavily, choosing your words carefully, “I couldn’t bear it being anyone else. I want it to be you… Unless,” Your breath hitched, you weren’t sure if you wanted to know the answer to the question you were about to ask, “do you not… want me?”

This was the final straw for Shanks. You had broken the great Emperor who’d tried so desperately to do the right thing. His resolve crumbled at your words and he found himself lunging toward you. He pounced over you, throwing you back onto his mattress as his lips crashed onto yours. Your senses exploded with electricity by his contact and you moaned into his mouth, eagerly accepting more. It was utterly overwhelming and you couldn't control the noises that escaped from your mouth as Shanks pushed your hand away to tend to your clit himself, shoving his hand down your pants.

Shanks briefly separated your lips and breathed heavily trailing kisses along your cheek and to your forehead, “I’ll ask you… one more time,” he muttered between pecks, “Are you sure about this?” He pulled back to meet your eyes.

“Old man,” you huffed at him, “Won’t you shut up and put your mouth to good use for onc-”

Shanks didn’t let you finish your sentence and forced your mouth wider to deepen your kiss as he worked to slip your pants off. Once they were off you spread your legs obediently for him, pushing your hips against his hand for more friction. With your pants out of the way, Shanks had more freedom to explore your folds. His thumb kept a steady rhythm on your bud as his other fingers dove lower. He smiled as he found how soaked you were for him. He gathered copious amounts of slick from your pussy, and used it to tease you further. Shanks moved his mouth down your neck, leaving dark spots where he sucked and teased.

You could already feel that you were close to climax, you squirmed and whined for more. Shanks relented to your obvious request and slipped two fingers inside you. The gratifying release was instantaneous. You gripped Shanks’ arm as he massaged your walls through your orgasm. He reveled at just how seductive your body was and how your pussy gripped his fingers tightly.

Shanks lifted his head out from the crook of your neck and glanced over to you, but you were worlds away. His whole body reacted when he finally saw you in shambles from his touch. Tears streamed down your reddened face, unable to concentrate on anything besides how good you felt, you just focused on trying to catch your breath. It was all so overwhelming, Shanks’ touch, his kisses, and his scent all around you.

Shanks’ breath hitched as he let out a snide laugh, “Well, I guess that’s one way to shut you up, brat.”

Shanks pulled away from you for a moment and the sudden loss of contact made you whimper. Shanks scolded you, “Quiet now, it’s not good to be impatient, Y/N.” Shanks teased as he shook off his coat and lifted his shirt above his head, discarding it onto the floor. You watched, entranced by the way his muscles moved. His broad shoulders and massive tanned biceps patterned with scars. You felt the heat grow again as he turned back to you.

You pouted at Shanks’ words, “It’s a little difficult being patient when you're so horny you feel like you're gonna explode!” You huffed, frowning dramatically. “Being in a hot man’s bed and watching him strip is not helping my situation.”

You immediately regretted your words as you watched his brow rise and a wicked smile form on his face. “A “hot man,” you say. Is that what you think of me?”

“Don’t get cocky,” you spat back, staring him down. He glared back, not backing down from your challenge. You couldn’t take it anymore. You just wanted him.

With a mischievous smile, Shanks crawled back over to you, placing his knee strategically between your legs pushing into the wet spot of your underwear. He ground his leg as he reached his arm up to pull off your shirt, you lifted your arms to make it easier. Shanks sighed with bliss as your breasts came into view, no bra in sight.

You gasped as Shanks’ hand groped one of your breasts and his mouth found the other. You leaned back and interlaced your fingers in Shanks' hair stroking and pulling on the red strands. You couldn’t help but inhale his scent as he devoured you.

Shanks released his lips off of your nipple with a pop and moaned, “In all my years,” he said breathlessly, “I’ve never wished so much that I had both of my hands again.”

You couldn't help but laugh at this statement, it was just too ridiculous. Shanks eyed you curiously, “Are you laughing at your Captain? Or, are you going to start calling me by my name like you did before?” Shanks’ mouth moved lower down your body, kissing your stomach as he trailed down, “Don’t think I didn’t notice you called me ‘Shanks’ earlier. What made you think you could drop honorifics with your Captain like that?”

All you could do was watch him as his lips moved closer and closer to your core, you were speechless with anticipation. Shanks played with the fabric of your underwear, tracing the hem and circling lower towards your clit. You jumped from the sensation. “Though, I have to admit. I did like the sound of my name on your lips.” He continued to tease you with both his words and his movements.

“Please, just touch me already, I can’t-”

“Call me by my name again. Then I’ll consider helping you.” Shanks was enjoying this far too much. His eyes twinkled up at you as he grazed your hip bone with his fingertips.

You gave in immediately, your pride nowhere to be found, “Shanks. Please make me feel good. I’m begging, Shanks.”

“That’s more like it.” Shanks shoved your underwear aside and thumbed your clit roughly. You arched your back at the sudden contact and cried out in pleasure. Shanks was completely enthralled with what was happening in front of him, he couldn't take his eyes away from your glistening pussy, soaking wet, all for him. He wanted more and demanded, “Lift your hips.”

You immediately obeyed your captain and raised your hips. Shanks grabbed your underwear and ripped them off you. You leaned back with anticipation, but nothing came. You peered up at the red-haired man and you realized he was examining your panties. “Oh. Sorry, I know that old pair isn’t exactly sexy…” You explained self-consciously. Then suddenly, as if he was possessed, he shoved your soaked underwear into his face and inhaled deeply. Your mouth fell open at the sight. At last, when he lowered your panties from his face he stared at you intensely, his eyes drunk and lazy from your scent.

You watched mesmerized by the man in front of you as he tossed your underwear aside, gripped the back of your thigh with his arm, and shoved it back towards your head. Before you could react to the sudden change of position, Shanks plunged his tongue between your folds and lapped up your juices. You gripped his hair as he indulged in your aroused pussy. Shanks moaned into you as you tightened your grasp and pulled his hair slightly. He felt his hard-on twitch painfully, desperate and leaking with pre-cum. It didn’t take long before you were rutting into his face, chasing another high and coming undone for a third time by your captain.

As your spasms ceased, Shanks sat back up between your legs. You were mortified to see his face covered in your arousal. You sat up and began to apologize, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry let me just-” You raise your hand to wipe away the creamy slick from his face, only to have it shoved away and to be brought into another hungry kiss. The juices from Shanks’ mouth mixed in with your saliva as your tongues intertwined.

You were at Shanks’ disposal, at his mercy. You wanted him more than you’d ever wanted anyone. It wasn’t enough, not yet. You needed more. Reaching down, you pressed down on the protruding tent that was rising in Shanks’ pants. Shanks pulled away from you slightly and hissed at the contact. You continued to palm at his growing member and whispered, “I want this, Shanks. I want to make you feel good too.”

Shanks laughed weakly, “Well… if you ask me like that, who am I to say no?” He moved back to sit on his knees and fumbled with his belt and pants. You couldn’t help but smile at how he shakily tripped over his buckle with only one hand. You reached up and helped him by pulling his pants down. Although you knew from feeling him earlier, you were still taken aback by the sheer size of his cock as it nearly smacked you in the face.

You eagerly eyed his cock and looked up at Shanks hovering above you, “Can I…” you begin as you reach up to take him in your grip, “suck it?”

Shanks couldn’t help but let out a gasp as you came into contact with his dick. “If- that’s what you want. But only a little. I’m not confident that I’ll last long if yo-” Shanks was cut off by your tongue trailing up the side of his cock. A shiver ran up his spine, and he gripped your hair with his hand to hold on for dear life. You wanted to taste every part of him, you couldn’t hold back.

You weren’t particularly experienced, but somehow you knew exactly what to do for him. You teased his rosy tip with your tongue, licking circles before wrapping your lips around it. You savored the salty taste and traced your tongue along the veins running down him. There was no way you could take him in his entirety, but you pushed as far as your throat could allow. You only got a few pumps in before Shanks stopped you. “Alright. That’s enough.” He sat back down on his rear and motioned for you to come to him, “This isn’t about me.” Which was true, but he knew his words were just an excuse. He easily could have come from just your tongue if he wasn’t careful.

You got up on your knees as Shanks requested, and straddled him. His dick sat hard in between the two of you as he pulled you in for another breathtaking kiss while he used his free hand to continue to stretch you out. Finally satisfied with his prep, he broke the kiss and lifted your ass to hover over him. Shanks looked up at you and purred, “I’ll leave this part to you.” He wrapped his large hand around yours and guided it to his throbbing cock, “I don’t want to hurt you. So you need to go at your own pace.”

You hesitated slightly at his command, insecure about your skills. But whatever shyness you felt about taking the lead was quickly dismissed by your overflowing arousal. With one hand on Shanks’ shoulder to steady yourself and the other seizing his member, you raised your hips to accommodate his height. You rubbed the head of his cock on your dripping pussy and you both hissed from the contact. Once Shanks was properly lubed by your fluids, you held your breath and slowly lowered your hips onto the tip of his cock. The head alone stretched your inner walls with an intensely painful pleasure. You felt overwhelmed by his size and the electric current that emanated from its pressure. You intended to take him slowly and acclimate to his size, but your instincts took control. You wanted to feel full. You wanted to be completely consumed by him. You hastily realigned yourself, took a breath, and slammed your hips down, instantly taking him down to his base.

Neither of you could keep your voices contained. You let out a moan laced with the pain and pleasure of finally receiving Shanks in his entirety. The feeling was devastating. You gripped Shanks’ head pulling him to your chest as you entangled your fingers in his hair. Shanks cursed as he willed himself to stay in control, the pressure and sensation of your grip was mind-shattering. He wrapped his arm around your waist, gripping your skin to ground himself.

You didn't give him time to recover. You raised your hips again and slammed down hard against him, receiving a grunt from him. You felt drunk, unable to control your actions, you found yourself rocking into him at an uncontrollable pace. The pain was fading away and was replaced by unbelievable pleasure. You needed more, you needed him everywhere.

Shanks took advantage of your position above him, trailing kisses along your chest and leaving occasional bruise and bite mark. He used his tongue to tease and suck on your hard nipples. His hand wandered along the length of your back, grazing your spine with his fingertips leaving you gasping. Even the slightest touch on your body created an unbearable reaction, flooding your senses with bliss.

Shanks’ hand continued to explore your body, ticking the nape of your neck, pinching your nipples, and finally falling between your legs. He flicked and rubbed your clit as you rode him at an alarming pace. You felt yourself nearing another climax as the coil in your core began to tighten. You chased the high as you ground against him, willing yourself to continue despite feeling like you were on the brink of collapse.

Your climax hit you like a train, bringing earth-shattering pleasure throughout your body. You fell forward, pushing Shanks onto his back as the feeling overtook you, unable to continue. But Shanks wouldn't let you rest and you couldn’t contain your voice as Shanks cruelly thrusted up into you, compelling your senses to disintegrate as he fucked you through your peak.

Your ears deafened and rang as you laid exhausted against Shanks’ wide chest, still twitching on his dick. Shanks slowed his pace and you sat on him for a moment as you tried to catch your breath. You felt lighter than when you’d first entered Shanks’ room and your head was clearer, but the burning desire still lay unsatisfied. You tried to sit up to keep riding until your body was appeased, but found yourself collapsing again. Your legs were wobbly, unable to continue. “Shanks,” you whispered, “I think you’re going to have to take over from here. Please.”

Shanks was still reeling from your ruthless pace on his dick. He looked up at you, astonished that you still had the energy to keep going. “So demanding. You’re making me forget I’m the captain here.” Shanks sat up and reversed your positions, laying you flat on your back as he hovered over you, “But, I guess I’ll follow your command this time, Captain.”

Shanks pushed your legs back again and took a moment to examine your swollen pink pussy. It dripped and pulsed in anticipation, making it obvious that the mushroom was still wreaking havoc on your nerves. Shanks knew you wouldn't be able to keep this up much longer and decided to bring this to an end as soon as possible. He positioned himself above you and gripped his cock. Pushing it on you, he teased your clit with his tip for a moment before moving lower and watching in awe as you swallowed his thick cock to the brim of his balls.

You gripped the sheets around you tightly, this felt even deeper than before, he was reaching far down inside and rubbing all your sensitive spots. He sat there a moment breathing deep with his eyes closed, feeling the deepest corners of your pussy squeeze and warm him. He was only brought back to reality when you squirmed and whimpered underneath him. You needed more friction, more movement, more anything. Your body was not going to be as patient as Shanks was wanting.

Shanks opened his eyes and smirked down at you, “Don’t worry,” he gripped your thigh tightly with his hand leaving it stinging, “I’ll give you what you want.”

Without warning he lifted his hips, leaving his tip barely inside you, and plowed himself into you as deep and as hard as he could. You choked on your own breath as he pulled out and hammered down into you again, and again. He set an abusive pace, each stroke hitting your deepest nerves and causing waves of spine-tingling pleasure.

Your heightened senses multiplied every feeling, every touch, and every kiss. You felt as if your body was going to disintegrate underneath Shanks. The sensation in your body was unfamiliar and frightening and it was becoming too much. You put your hands on Shanks’ chest in a half-hearted attempt to slow him down, but his merciless tempo continued to wreck your body. Twitching from pleasure, you attempted again to turn your body to run from the feeling. It was all too intense, it was too good and you couldn’t take it anymore.

Before you could move away Shanks forced you back into position and entangled his hand with yours. His thrusts persisted as he leaned down his head next to yours and whispered gruffly into your ear, his slurring voice tickling your neck, “This is what you wanted, right? What you needed? Take it for me. Be a good girl for me.”

You were nearly comatose from the pleasure racking your body. Just from his words, you reached another climax, and Shanks fucked you through it once again. Your eyesight became hazy and you knew you needed to ground yourself. Out of desperation, one of your hands reached out to claw his back and the other clenched his hair. You opened your mouth and bit down hard on Shanks’ shoulder. Shanks hissed harshly as your teeth pierced his shoulder, yet he found himself smiling. Your disobedience had always been a turn-on for him. Excited from the pain, he moaned into your ear, “I’m- close. So close.”

“Come in me.” You cried out. You knew you sounded desperate, but you couldn’t help it. You wanted him to ruin you, “Please come in me, Shanks. Please… Please… Please,” tears ran down your cheeks and you lost all sense of self. All you knew was that you wanted Shanks, every last bit of him.

It took all of Shanks’ willpower not to fulfill your request.

Every last instinct in Shanks’ body willed him to release inside you, to truly make you his. But his reasoning prevailed. He knew that despite everything he could not do that to you in this state. So, with a few final harsh thrusts, Shanks pulled his cock out and released his warm come across your stomach.

Shanks collapsed next to you, panting. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt like this. Everything around him felt fuzzy as he came down from his orgasmic high. Once he finally caught his breath again, he turned over and reached for you.

You had passed out.

…

You woke with a jolt of pain as you turned over on your side in your sleep. Groaning, you shifted your body to try and stretch out your achy muscles. However, you realized that you couldn’t move. There was a weight laying across your abdomen… and your leg… and there was something pressed up against your back…

Your eyes snapped open.

You weren’t in your room, that was obvious. But where were you? You turned slightly to lay on your back, and looking down you saw an arm strewn across your stomach. Horrified, your eyes trailed up to see whose arm it was. It took everything in you not to scream as you realized you were entangled in your captain's sleepy limbs.

Your mind raced, desperate to remember what happened. You were exploring the island, Shanks came with you, you went into the cave and…

It all came flooding back.

You lay there in shock.

What was going to happen now? What if someone saw you? Would you have to leave the ship?

Your eyes wandered to where he lay, breathing deep in his slumber. He was shirtless and you couldn’t help but stare. Looking down you realized you weren’t wearing your own clothes, but rather an oversized off-white button-down shirt. It was obvious that Shanks lent you his own shirt. What a gentleman, you thought sarcastically as your body ached. But, you couldn’t help yourself, you turned your body to face him for a better look at the man before you, admiring his strong features.

As you savored the view in front of you, Shanks willed his body to sit as still as possible. He had woken up nearly an hour before you had and had spent the time watching you sleep, stroking your hair, and indulging in the feeling of sleeping next to you. He panicked when you shifted in your sleep and decided to pretend to be asleep. To his surprise, you hadn’t gotten up to leave, and he could feel your warm gaze on his face. He savored this morning, never wanting it to end.

The peaceful moment was ruined in an instant.

Shanks’ bedroom door flew open with a loud crash as none other than Benn Beckman strode in. You and Shanks’ eyes flew open and met each other in horror before turning your attention to the trespasser. Beckman didn’t get more than three steps into his Captain’s room when he realized what he stumbled in on.

There was a moment of silence, all three of you stared at each other, taking in the information in front of you.

Finally, you came to your senses and flung the sheets over yourself to hide from the embarrassment. You felt Shanks’ hand lay protectively on your back as you hid, “Beckman,” He spoke sharply, “you’d better have a good reason for barging into my room.”

Beckman gulped, “Definitely not a good enough reason for this.”

“Right. Beckman?”

“Yes?”

“Leave. Now.”

“Right. Don’t have to tell me twice.” Beckman turned to the door and stepped out of the room. You peeked out of the blankets and saw Beckman pause before closing the door behind him. He looked back at you and Shanks sternly, “I hope you two know what you’re doing.”

And with that, he closed the door.

You peeled back the covers and emerged next to Shanks. The two of you sat in silence for a minute, both pondering Beckman’s statement. He had a good point. What were you going to do now? Mushroom or not, the two of you crossed the boundary between captain and crewmate. Would you both ignore it and pretend nothing happened?

Your mind was spinning down all the possibilities that were laid out in front of you. Shanks thought your ears would start smoking soon, and he spoke first. Laying you back down on his arm he spoke two simple sentences that made you relax and settle down to sleep.

“Let’s worry about this tomorrow. I’m sure we’ll figure it out.”

𓍊𓋼𓍊 𓍊𓋼𓍊 𓍊𓋼𓍊 𓍊𓋼𓍊 𓍊𓋼𓍊 𓍊𓋼𓍊 𓍊𓋼𓍊 𓍊𓋼𓍊 𓍊𓋼𓍊 𓍊𓋼𓍊 𓍊𓋼𓍊

𓍊𓋼𓍊 authors note: HUGE shout out to @nanpecan for editing this and helping me not sound illiterate

2K notes · View notes

lustspren · 2 months ago

Text

D.A | LUV N DEVOTION / obsession.

Male reader x Wonyoung, Karina, Giselle.

🔙 Previous update (for now) | 📄 LUV N DEVOTION / obsession |

word count: 19.7k

tags: fluffy and princess treatment for wony, cum slut rina, bi, car blowjob, foursome, triple blowjob, elevator sex, daddy kink, fingering, anal, overstimulation, squirt, creampie(s), rough sex, pussy eating, anal fingering, facial

━•✦•━•✦•━

You knew that after that night in Tokyo things with Wony would never be the same, but not so drastically different.

Saying you were in love was not doing justice to what you felt for that damn girl now. Without going any further, the best way to describe it for you was obsession. Devotion. Not in a sick way, or toxic; you weren't that kind of guy. But since that October 12th, the only girl you thought about every day, 24 hours a day, was her. Only her.

In a way, that made you feel bad about yourself, because you had never felt that way for a person, not even for Hanni—from whom you were forced to emotionally detach yourself for a while at her request—or for Sully—who had simply started to like another person named Lee Chaeyoung and who was her girlfriend.

However, Wony made you happy on so many levels and facets that thinking about that had become something secondary. Something unimportant. Things were the way they were, and they happened because they had to happen that way. Period. Your conscience was clear: you were not to blame for your now failed relationship with Hanni, and you were not to blame for Sully's feelings leaning towards someone else. After all, you still loved them both, and their happiness was your happiness.

But if there was one thing you had to be thankful for, it was that all that chain of unfortunate events had brought you to where you are now: at the feet of a girl who reciprocated what you felt for her and who radiated perfection through every pore.

Wony turned out to be the antithesis of everything she seemed to you during all that time in which you felt hatred for her. You claimed left and right that she was a pretentious and spoiled bitch (she was just spoiled), and that you could never be her friend because she repelled you. Nothing could be further from the truth. While she had her bad attitudes like basically anyone, her virtues overshadowed everything; she was easily one of the sweetest and most caring people you had ever met in your life. Every single thing she did had you either sighing or smiling like an absolute idiot, and throughout the time you had spent together both in October and right now in November, you realized that she was everything you wanted and more.

And there was nothing more pleasurable and fulfilling than feeling reciprocated by her. By that monument made woman.

It was awards night. MMA's. You couldn't see each other on the day of the MAMA's because she had a pending appointment the next day and she didn't get permission, but things for that night were different: if everything went well, you would take her to dinner and then spend the night together. You were mad excited about it, and you couldn't wait for the hours to pass quickly so you could see her.

But for now, the priority was your damn job.

For some reason you had decided to do your daily stream at night, which was pretty stupid of you considering you knew you'd have to miss the red carpet as well as the awards and performances. Then you told yourself that just wasn't going to happen, and after only four hours you decided to cut it off just so you could turn on the TV and watch her.

You didn't regret it. Of course not. You had put on the stream just in time to see her and her members come out onto the carpet, and you didn't know how the hell you were going to function like a normal person again after seeing how outstandingly beautiful she was that night, with that high bun and that tight dress that hugged her curvy body and made it look like a total delight. You were so stunned that you couldn't help but take out your phone and record her through the TV screen until she left.

And with the phone in hand you couldn't help but text her either. You knew she wouldn't be able to answer you for a while, since you knew she was also going to be MC during the start of the awards. But you still had to let her know. You had to let her know how obsessed you were with her.

It was funny, because as soon as you sent the messages and read them you realized how screwed you were with that girl. It was a problem to fall so much at the feet of a person, it always was. But fuck it. If you were in a free fall into a bottomless abyss you were doing it with a big grin. It was something you talked about a lot with Sohyun and Hayoung. They had both insisted that you were giving yourself too much of a hard time with the matter, and that there was no point in thinking about the past or the future if your present was being this pleasant. Of course you objected using your recent history as an argument, but if there was one thing those two were good at it was giving you a good ass whooping so you would stop being a dramatic bitch.

In the end, well, you shut up and lowered your head to listen. Dealing with stressful situations rationally was their forte, not yours.

Time passed and eventually the awards show started. Wony came out as MC, looking radiant and charming as always to introduce the awards and welcome them. During all those segments, about an hour passed, and she didn't show up anymore. Then you got texts from her.

You swore to god you were going to throw the phone out the window and follow it closely. Instead, you opened that picture and stared at it with a rapt smile until you snapped out of the trance.

Screwed up. You were really screwed up and two steps away from asking for her hand in marriage. You had to fucking control yourself a little.

But god, she was like a fucking angel fallen to earth. She was your princess. Yours alone. She...

Stop. You really needed to stop. You were letting your feelings carry you along and you weren't thinking with your brain.

Now, that didn't stop you from feeling jealous when Wony, at the beginning of her performance, danced and was picked up by another guy. Wonderful.

She looked beautiful, yes, and you were extremely proud and happy for her. But that damn guy's hands... you were going crazy. It burned inside you, like you had lava pumping through your veins. It really wasn't that big of a deal, you knew the guy was just being professional. Still, you expected his hands to fall off for some mysterious reason right after that performance.

And now it was your Italianness that was thinking for you. For the last time, you had to calm down.

After that, the hours passed normally. You were able to see many of the performances you wanted, like IVE, Aespa and tripleS, but you were forced to miss others like IDLE and ATEEZ because you had to get ready to go out.

The occasion of the night was special, and that called for you to dress as such. But you had a little block, so you had no choice but to call your trusted seamstress. Well, one of them. You didn't want to talk to the other at that moment.

"Do you have some Bottega Veneta?" Danielle Marsh asked on your phone. You had been on a video call for about twenty minutes, and you had dedicated yourself to showing her almost your entire closet. "The winter collection is gorgeous."

You chuckled and looked to the right of the closet-room.

"Well, it's funny you say that, because..." you walked over and took down the tobacco-colored bonded leather trench coat from Bottega Veneta's latest winter collection. You showed it to Danielle, who opened her eyes wide and brought her face closer to the camera.

"Oh my god!" she sighed. "That thing it's like 11 thousand bucks, Ezio."

“It’s worth every penny,” you said, removing the hook. “The leather quality is insane.”

Danielle was about to say something, but apparently someone else entered her room and her attention was diverted. Unfortunately you recognized the voice, and your expression darkened.

“Do you know where my AirPods are? I can’t fucking find them,” you heard Hanni ask Dani. “Who are you talking to?”

“Uh...” Dani looked at the screen to see you and then back at her. “With… Ezio.”

There was silence for a few seconds.

“Okay…” another small silence. “I’ll keep looking,” Hanni finally replied, and you heard the door close.

Dani once again focused on you.

“Sorry about… well, that,” she said, visibly uncomfortable being in the middle of your conflict.

“Don’t worry,” you shook your head, forcing yourself not to think about it. “We got the most important thing done, now we just need to pick out a good pair of shoes and accessories.”

The coat you pulled out ended up being the final choice, along with black wool trousers, a black Versace turtleneck sweater, and black brushed leather Prada lace-ups. As accessories you opted for rings: a Bulgari Serpenti on one hand and a Buccellati from the Opera Tulle collection on the other, in this case shaped like a green flower made of emerald. Nothing modest. But you weren't interested in being modest; you loved to show off.

Besides, you had a gift for your princess. What you had spent on it you preferred not to remember, but you were sure it was the first time you had genuinely spent so much money on a person (the Rome vacation with Sohee in September didn't count, the expense had been on yourself too). To you that meant a lot. But she deserved it, you were sure.

Now dressed you went out to the living room to wait for Wony's message. You expected a text, but instead she called you.

"Hi?" you answered the call, with the car keys in your other hand.

"Hi dear," Wony answered on the other end of the line. "You can come pick me up now."

"Aight on my way," you said, standing up. "But why didn't you just text me?"

You walked over to gather everything you were going to bring, which was your wallet and the gift box for Wony.

"Because I had something to propose to you."

"Huh?"

"You see, I know the normal thing would be to pick me up at the service entrance, but..." she paused briefly. "Why don't you pick me up at the main entrance?"

You chuckled. That was ridiculous.

"Good joke sweetheart, now tell me what you want."

"Baby, it's not a joke," she replied, and from the tone she used you could tell she was serious.

You stood there dumbfounded, staring at the wall.

"Vicky, sweetheart, have you gone crazy?"

"No!" she protested. "Just hear me out. We don't have to be so brazen, but I don't want to sneak around either."

"You're an idol, baby. Shit, you're like a goddess here in Korea. You'll get into trouble, a big one."

"Ezio, I know what I'm doing, and there's no media covering any group's departure here. It’s gonna be fine!"

"You don't know that, you know what those Dispatch bastards are like."

"Starship has no dating restrictions! I mean not for me at least, I don’t give a fuck about those asholes."

"And that saves you from your weird fans? Look what they did to that poor Riize guy!"

"Darling, I'm shielded from all sides, and I don't give a shit what those weirdos think about me or not."

"I know, I know," you sighed. "But honey, keep in mind who I am and the things I do and say on stream. I don't want to make the problem any bigger because I am the one dating you. You don't deserve that."

Wony giggled.

"Oh baby, being you is the main reason why I don't want to hide you, are you even listening to yourself and how cute you are?"

And just like that, she ended the entire argument. It felt like a prime Mike Tyson uppercut, but instead of knocking out a tooth from you, it made your cheeks blush. That was called being beyond down.

"I-I… should go out and pick you up right now?" you asked.

"Yes, silly, that's what I just said. Come here and pick up your princess."

Your fucking princess. Why did that shit sound so good?

The level of obedience was such that you didn't even warn that you were going to hang up. That had to leave her baffled and maybe a little angry, but you were determined to get the hell out of there and hurry to pick her up just to plant a big kiss on those perfect lips.

After a little check of your look and the things you had to bring, you went down to the parking lot of your building complex and got in the car to head to the venue where the MMA's were being held. The security belt was well established from corner to corner, and from what you could see there were no visible photographers covering the idols' departures. Wony was right, but that made the anxiety you felt about it lessen.

In order to get through the security belt you had to make calls, one to Wony and another to the IVE manager so they could get you the authorization. The situation reminded you When you had to pick up Hanni in Milan from the Gucci event, but here they were much stricter and more protocolary when it came to managing everything. It was a bit of a headache, since the lack of cooperation from the guards was coupled with the refusal of the girls' manager to let Wony go with you there, in full view of everyone. The situation was a mess, but half an hour later, all the parties involved agreed and you were allowed to enter with the only condition that your license plate would have to be covered, which was even better for you.

You parked the car diagonally at the entrance of the venue, behind a couple of vans that were being loaded with boxes. In the distance you saw familiar faces, which was to be expected, but only a few recognized your car; Seonghwa, Mingi and Yunho from ATEEZ, Seoyeon and Nakyung from tripleS, Shuhua and Miyeon, and you thought you saw Karina and Winter behind a couple of people. Everyone stared at you in bewilderment, and rightly so, because you weren't supposed to be there.

The only ones who dared approach you—with proper supervision from a member of their staff—were the guys from ATEEZ, who you'd hung out with a couple of times since that IDLE party last year. You rolled down the copilot window so you could talk to them.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Mingi asked, dapping you up. "Someone's gonna kick your ass."

You almost answered him in English, since you'd been talking to Wony in that language all day. You had to switch to Korean.

"I'm expecting someone," you replied, as you dapped the other two up.

"You're expecting someone? Here?" Seonghwa said with a chuckle. "Isn't that a like too reckless?"

"Tell her that. She's just itching to get into trouble."

"Woah, and you look expensive today," Yunho said, tugging at the fabric of the coat on your shoulder. "Dinner maybe?"

"You're right," you smiled, and behind them you could notice a new silhouette walking towards you. "Ah, and I think she's coming."

The boys moved aside and your line of vision was clear. Wony was walking towards you, in the exact same dress she had worn to the opening of the awards and with the same cute high bun. Her walk was confident; she knew she was untouchable at that moment, that she was the center of attention and all the spotlights were on how beautiful she looked. As soon as she met your gaze you both smiled, but her lips remained in a slight graceful curve to maintain elegance.

"Alright move aside apes," you said, and in a move even more risky than just being there, you got out of the car and walked around the front to open the passenger door the moment Wony was only a couple of meters away.

"Ah, this guy hit the gold mine," Mingi muttered in disbelief before bowing in greeting to Wony, Seonghwa and Yunho imitating him. "Hi."

"Hi!" Wony bowed back to the three boys before locking eyes with you. "Hi sweetie, thanks," she said, now in perfect, pretty English, before climbing into the passenger seat. You closed the door and saw the ATEEZ guys.

"I'm off, gentlemen," you said, walking past them to circle back around your car. "Take care okay?"

"You too!" the three of them said at the same time.

"Oh, are you doing anything tomorrow?" Yunho asked you. "We were planning on going to a club, a couple of the guys from Boynextdoor and Riize are going too."

"Uhm..." you opened the door and leaned in to look at Wony, who was looking at you with a raised eyebrow. Yes, you were definitely doing something tomorrow. "I can't, I'll be busy," you replied, looking at them over the roof of the car.

"Of course you will be," Mingi said with a laugh, stepping away from Wony's window and the curb.

"Yeah, sorry. But hey, you like FIFA right? You can come over sometime."

"Yeah that would be cool. We'll call you. See you later Tiramisu boy!" Mingi said goodbye, and Seonghwa and Yunho waved goodbye as well.

You finally got into the car, rolled up the tinted windows and looked at Wony, who was staring back at you.

"Tiramisu boy?" she asked with a chuckle.

"They met me eating tiramisu at a party last year, that's the explanation," you replied, adjusting your coat and making the car's engine roar a little to warm it up.

"Mmm, interesting, are you going to kiss me or not?" she asked, crossing her arms.

"Oh yeah come here."

You leaned towards her and cupped the side of her face with your left hand before bringing your lips together. Wony took that hand and caressed the back of it with her thumb, while the other one held onto your forearm. You could have kissed her for a while longer if it were up to you, but because of the location you had to settle for a few seconds.

"You did amazing tonight, my sweet girl," you said as you pulled away from her lips, looking into her eyes with your faces barely separated. "And god, you look fucking gorgeous."

"You think so? Thank you darling," she replied, looking at you with a sparkle in her eyes worthy of the most beautiful starry night. Then she looked you up and down. "You look very handsome too. Almost as perfect as me."

You let out a laugh, and you settled back into your seat to put a hand on the steering wheel.

"Sure, sure," you said, backing up and then squeezing past the vans and driving down the street. "You looked like Jesus Christ walking on water back there, and getting into a Ferrari on top of that. Not discreet at all."

"Honey, what can I do if I'm that pretty and you decided to have this thing?" she asked with a hand on her chest. "It's not my fault."

"I know it's not, but getting you out of there was a fucking problem," you said, looking at the road. "I really hope you're not in trouble, baby."

"I won't be, silly," she said, placing her hand over yours on the drive mode levers. "Is everything set up at the restaurant?"

"I called on the way to the venue to make sure, so yeah, there won't be any problems."

"Will we have company?"

"Uh... yeah, a baseball player and a model or some shit, with their dates of course. No one who cares about us being there."

"How do you know that?"

"I asked!" you replied, as if it were a stupid question. "Imagine if there happens to be a newspaper editor, we're screwed!"

Wony giggled, leaned over to cup the left side of your face and planted a delicate peck on your cheek.

"My sweet boy, you worry too much," she said, still close to your face. "Let yourself go and enjoy the night with me, please?"

You shouldn't have because you were on a busy road, but for a moment you took your eyes off the road only to turn your face and give her a quick succession of pecks on the lips.

"Hey!" she pulled away laughing, grabbing your chin to turn your face forward. "Don't kill us, donkey!"

You just smiled, and drove for a little over a minute until you remembered something you weren't going to let slide.

"Oh, were that guy's hands comfortable or...?"

"Huh?" Wony turned to look at you, having been caught off guard.

"The hands of the guy you danced with," you said. "They must have been really soft because you looked extremely comfortable in them."

Wony let out a laugh.

"Honey, are you jealous of a dancer I'll never see again?" she asked in disbelief.

"Nah."

Yeah you were. Not in a serious way, but you were willing to tease her about it for a while.

"Well, it's good you mention it because yes, his hands were quite soft," she said, shifting her gaze to her window.

It was serious now.

"Oh, okay," you nodded slowly, and tightened your hand on the steering wheel. "You should tell him to take you to dinner then."

Wony looked at you, and out of the corner of your eye you noticed the mischievous smile on her face.

"I can actually call him right now if you want."

"Yup, go ahead," you nodded with a carefree wave of your hand.

Your face must have been a picture at that moment, because she made a move to take her phone out of her handbag but quickly retracted.

"Honey, I'm kidding!" she said with a giggle, shaking your arm to get you to take your resting bitch face off. "Don't be like that!"

"Don't talk to me right now."

Wony was quiet for a moment, waiting for you to say you were joking too.

"Are you serious?" she asked, and your response was silence. "Alright, I won't talk then."

Then, in a move you should have expected, Wony kicked off her heels, climbed onto her knees in her seat, and bent over your crotch in a perfect arc that highlighted her wide hips and cute ass.

"What are you doing?" you frowned, lifting one arm to rest on her back.

"Just what you asked me to do: no talking," she replied, and began working on the button and zipper of your pants.

"That's not what... oh fuck you," you gasped, as Wony pulled out your limp cock and licked it from balls to top.

You couldn't form a single word of protest from then on. Wony took you into her mouth, sucking you several times until your cock grew and hardened between her spongy lips. Now fully hard, she placed both hands on your thighs and slowly pumped her head up and down the length of your shaft, using her tongue to lick the front with each pump.

Wony's blowjobs were usually messy and frenetic since she was prodigious at it, but you were surprised when she now opted for a slower, more leisurely pace, allowing you to enjoy the silkiness of her lips and the texture of her glossy lipstick in detail. It was perfect, because it was driving you crazy and at the same time it kept you from getting dirty for your night.

When you stopped at a red light you could finally look down and admire how she pumped her head at different angles to suck and lick every possible corner of your shaft. Then you turned to the right to see her raised ass. You couldn’t lift her dress up, so you had to settle for groping over it. Wony purposely moaned around your cock, and then you couldn't help but remove your hand from her ass and put it on her neck to push her down. She was forced to deepthroat you, but it wasn't a problem due to her skill at it, so she effortlessly held you there for a few long seconds until she pulled you out with a soft gasp.

"Are you sucking my jealousy off or what?" you gasped, forced to look at the road again.

Wony certainly didn't respond, she was determined to make you cum as fast and hard as possible, so after a few kisses and licks around your tip she took you back into her mouth, now helping herself with her hand to jerk you off at the same time.

She brought you to the edge of climax in no time, and the only possible place you could reach your hand was on her slim waist, while you unconsciously twisted your hips upwards and let out soft moans. Deducing that you were close, Wony dispensed with her hand and went back to using only her mouth, now with slightly faster and shorter pumps. Not even ten seconds passed when you exploded inside her mouth.

"Oh god!" you moaned, tempted to put your hand on her head to push it down if it weren’t because that would ruin her bun.

Jets of cum were discharged one after another into Wony's mouth, who pumped her head very slowly over every inch of throbbing flesh. You used all your brain power in order not to swerve and drive as straight as possible, in fact, you had to use the steering wheel manettino to put the driving mode on comfort, but that caused you to slow down and a couple of cars behind you to honk. You couldn't do much about it, since your toes were still curled and your legs tense as you filled her mouth.

When your climax finally passed you came back to your senses and stepped on the accelerator so as not to disturb the cars behind you, still breathing heavily. After swallowing your entire load, Wony pulled you out of her mouth with a soft pop, and raised herself to get closer to your ear.

"You're not just the only guy I've ever let cum in my mouth or on my face," she whispered with a hand on your thigh. "You're also the only guy whose cum I could have for breakfast every morning without getting tired. Keep that in mind before throwing another jealous fit," she then licked your cheek from jaw to cheekbone. "I fucking belong to you, and I have zero interest in anyone else."

Another fucking hook straight to the chin, and this was your knockout. There was no way you were recovering from that.

"Do you have anything else to say besides 'I'm sorry'?" she asked, tucking your cock back into your boxers and adjusting your pants back up.

"I... no," you shook your head slowly. "Sorry, babe."

"Good boy," she said, giving you a peck on the cheek before settling back into her seat.

There was still a long way to go to the Shilla hotel and there wasn't much else to talk about at the moment, so you opted to connect into the car's sound system and put on some chill songs from your playlist.

youtube

It was a nice trip, one of the most peaceful and satisfying you had ever had with someone. Even though you weren't talking, the simple fact of knowing that you had each other fulfilled you, that was evident by how you constantly sought out each other's contact, whether it was holding your hands or placing your hands on your thighs. Ironic to say the least. Three months ago, imagining yourself in that situation with her would have seemed unpleasant, almost blasphemous, and now it felt like a lucid dream from which you didn't want to wake up.

For fucks sake, you were in love. And it was all thanks to her and the time you had spent together since that night in Tokyo. At first you were a little skeptical, but you made the excellent decision to give her the benefit of the doubt. Of course, she didn't disappoint you, as she took advantage of her opportunity to show herself just as she wanted you to see her. From that moment on, it only took a couple of weeks for her to take over your heart and secure herself with iron feet

She was your princess now, she belonged to you and you wanted to give her everything. Fucking cheesy, but you loved it.

"Alright, this is what we're going to do," you said, already a couple of minutes away from arriving at the hotel. "A bodyguard will accompany you inside while I park the car, then we'll meet in the lobby."

"Can't I just stay with you to park and then go in together?" Wony asked, annoyed.

"Honey, we already took quite a risk picking you up from the venue, and that was even in a controlled environment."

"Ugh fine," she said. "But just this once!"

"I think you keep forgetting who you are, what country you live in, and what kind of fans you have," you replied, turning a corner after a stoplight.

"Fuck that. Someone needs to normalize it someday."

"And you wanna be that someone? In the prime of your career?"

"It happened to Jennie when she dated Kai!" she protested. "No one cared and everyone got over it."

"That's a completely different context."

"In what way?"

"Jennie dated a guy who is deified here, and you are dating a guy who makes a fool of himself on the internet and has more than one stupid controversy for the stuff he says. Do you think that benefits you right now?"

"Honey, how do you know if it benefits me or not?" Wony asked.

"You're perfect in front of the cameras. Literally the perfect idol."

"So what?"

"I don't know," you shrugged. "I am... I don't know."

Wony chuckled.

"Your problem is that you're not as exemplary as I am in the public eye?"

"Aha."

"Why do you care?"

At that point you made a left turn and entered the slope that curved across the hill towards the hotel, which took up the entire view in the distance.

"Fuck, I don't know Vicky," you sighed. "I just don't want it to lead to anything bad for you, that's all."

Wony put her hand on yours, squeezed it, and then brought it to her lips to kiss the back of it.

"Gosh, what did I do to deserve you," she said. "Just trust me darling, I wouldn't be so sure if I didn't know what I was doing."

You remained silent as you made your way through the last stretch of the hill and rounded the bend to park in front of the smaller, wider, traditionally-styled building that housed the hotel lobby and a few luxury shops. The bodyguard who was supposed to escort Wony inside was already waiting by her door, hands clasped together and eyes scanning everywhere.

"I'm going to ask you one last time..." you said, and turned to look at her. "Are you sure about all of this? About everything you've told me? We're getting into murky territory, darling."

"Thousand percent," Wony nodded, looking into your eyes.

You nodded back and then looked at the bodyguard, who was still waiting behind the white line that delimited the drivable area from the walkable area. You were thinking about something, seriously considering it, and if you did, there was no turning back. Maybe it was a stretch to think so, but it could be a life-changing decision.

Fuck it, you were no weakling.

"Aight, just for the record, you asked for it," you said, then reached an arm in front of her to roll down her window. The bodyguard immediately leaned when he saw you looking at him. "Good evening, Mr. Cho. Are any of these spots free?" you pointed behind him.

"Oh, yes," he nodded. "Follow my directions, please."

The bodyguard walked over the white line and stood in front of your car, then began walking backwards to guide you to an open space in front of a sedan with tinted windows.

"Uhm... what are you doing, sweetie?" Wony looked at you with a frown. "Wasn’t I supposed to...?"

"Stai zitto, amore," you said, focused on not running over Mr. Cho.

"Non voglio!" she replied back in Italian, and you laughed.

"You've been practicing huh?" you raised an eyebrow, finally parking in the spot you were told to.

"Well yeah! I want to be able to scold you in your language someday."

You pressed the touch button on the steering wheel twice to turn off both the engine and the car.

"You can do it in Japanese, and without me knowing what the fuck you're saying," you said with a smile, grabbing the car's remote to put it in a pocket of your coat.

"The point is that you know what I'm saying, baby, not the other way around."

"We'll have to work hard at the private lessons then," you winked at her, then got out of the car to walk around and open the door for Wony, offering her your hand.

"Huh? Really?" she asked, looking at your hand, her mouth agape and a cute glint in her eyes.

"You have my unconditional trust, my sweet girl," you said.

Wony looked into your eyes, blinked a few times, and took your hand to slide her legs out of the car. Then, as soon as you closed the passenger door, she stood in front of you with her hands on your chest and planted a sweet kiss on your lips, in full view of whoever was passing by at the moment or watching.

You couldn't help but smile at the boldness of that damn girl.

"Come on, let's go inside," you said, and put an arm behind her waist to hold her and walk into the lobby with her.

Upon entering, you went straight to the reception desk to check in, it was then that you were told that you were allowed to take the elevator up to the restaurant floor. Mr. Cho escorted you upstairs, and led you to a small foyer before the dining area.

“I’ll wait outside if you need anything, Mr. Leone,” he said, and then opened the double doors in front of you.

“Thank you, Mr. Cho,” you nodded, and walked past Wony into the restaurant.

The dining room was a small, elegant and refined space, with cream-colored walls decorated with subtle textured patterns and nice warm lighting provided by circular hanging metal lamps. On the other hand, the floor was covered by a beige interwoven carpet, and the tables, dressed with crisp white tablecloths, were accompanied by champagne-colored chairs with curved backs and metallic details. To your left was a mirrored wall, with a pair of decorative panels with red-to-gold gradients, and to your right, three windows separated by pillars, which provided a beautiful view of Seoul.

The other two couples that would be there that night besides you were already inside, one settled in on the left and the other on the right at the back. You didn't know the baseball player who was there since you didn't like the sport, but the model turned out to be Yoon Young Bae, who had done campaigns for Gucci and Prada in the past. Your table was the one next to hers.

If it had been another occasion and another place, you would have asked for a photo, but for the moment you only settled for a bow to both her and the rest of the people present. Then you focused on your date.

“Here, your grace,” you said, opening the chair for Wony.

“Thank you, dear,” she replied with a nod, and took a seat with her handbag on her lap. You placed your hands on her shoulders, which caught her attention and made her turn to look up at you.

“I have a surprise for you before we start,” you said.

Wony raised both eyebrows.

“Surprise? For me?” she placed a hand on her chest.

“Aha, close your eyes baby.”

Wony complied and looked straight ahead before closing her eyes. You pulled the turquoise gift box out of one of your inner pockets, placed it in front of her face, and opened it to reveal the necklace you had bought her, a Tiffany Victoria Diamond Vine worth around $150k. A huge hit to your wallet, but one you were fortunately able to afford since you had finished paying off your apartment just at the beginning of November.

"Alright, open," you said.

When Wony opened her eyes and saw the necklace she immediately gasped and brought her hands to her mouth in surprise. She turned to look at you, and then back at the necklace. And then back at you, and then back at the necklace.

"Baby, oh my f..." she was about to curse, but remembered where she was and retracted her words. "Oh my god!"

"Come on, take it," you nodded, handing the box into her hands.

Wony examined the necklace inside the box for a couple more seconds before pulling it out and setting the box on the table.

"Ezio, it's gorgeous!" she said, putting the necklace between her fingers to get a closer look at the diamonds embedded in the platinum. "It's too much, really, you didn't have to..."

"Nuh-uh," you hushed her. "Yes, I had to, it's the least you deserve, my sweet girl," you then leaned down and showered her cheek with kisses.

"Thank you, darling, I swear I don't know what to say," Wony said, still stunned, turning her face to meet your lips and give them a small kiss since the place didn't allow more, out of respect for the other diners.

"You don't have to say anything, the important thing is that you liked it."

"I love it!" she corrected you. "Would you help me?"

"Sure," you nodded.

You helped Wony change her necklace, taking off the one she already had and putting on the one you had given her instead. You stood by her side to see how it looked, and you realized that it was probably one of the best investments of your life, as the diamonds enhanced her royal aura and fit perfectly on her beautiful neck.

After helping her with the necklace and taking a couple of pictures for your personal memory, you finally took the seat on the other side of the table. A few seconds later, a waiter was with you, ready to take your order. First you ordered your starters and drinks, Hamachi Usuzukuri for you and Kumamoto Fresh Oysters for her, accompanied by a bottle of Barolo DOCG Red Wine. After about 45 minutes you moved on to the main course, and another half hour later you were eating dessert.

"So what do you have to do in the next few days?" you asked, with your Matcha Tiramisu half-eaten. "You must have the day off tomorrow, I guess."

Your entire conversation in those almost two hours had been based on her telling you all about her days at both MAMA and MMA, and how stressful it was to have to attend to all that with comeback preparations just around the corner. You also talked about your job, but no matter what you said, nothing created a worse mental burden than hers.

"Yeah tomorrow I'm free," Wony replied, looking at her Raspberry Lychee Mochi. "But this week we have the live for the IVE anniversary and the recording of a 1,2,3 IVE, with zombies."

"Zombies?" you raised an eyebrow.

Wony nodded, cutting off a small piece of mochi and popping it into her mouth while you drank your wine. The bottle was already a few fingers less than half full. She had liked it a lot more than you expected.

"Uhm, I don't really have much of an idea of what we're going to do but I know we'll have helmets with cameras."

You chuckled.

"Oh, that's going to be fun," you said with a smile. "You know, watching you run around."

"That's what you say, but I'll be terrified!"

As she spoke your phone vibrated in your pocket. Checking it you saw that it was texts from Rina, and thinking it wasn't important you ignored her for the moment. But about five minutes later the phone vibrated again repeatedly. Somewhat annoyed, you pulled out your phone again to open the chat, only to let out a slight bitter groan.

"What's wrong, sweetie?" Wony asked, seeing you staring at the screen with a frown. You just showed her your phone. "This has to be a joke." she said as she finished reading.

"At least she had the decency to wait until this hour," you said, and with a heavy breath you began to share a few messages with her.

"So? What are we going to do?" Wony asked, not looking at you but at the view of Seoul through the window. She definitely wasn't happy at all.

"We were going home anyway, right?" you replied. "Just that well, we'll have some company."

"Yeah, that's what I didn't want," she said, one side of her face resting on her knuckles.

"Baby," you reached across the table and took her hand. "Tomorrow I'll be all yours, all day. It'll just be this early morning."

"Can't you just tell them to go away?"

"That would be too rude of me, sweetie, I'm not like that."

"Yeah, that's why I like you this much, ugh," she rolled her eyes and finally looked at you. "But I don't want it to be a recurring thing, for real. I'll let it go this time because they're already there."

"I get it babe," you nodded. "It won't happen again."

"When I'm with you I want you to be all to myself," she said, gently squeezing your hand. "I hate sharing, and you know that."

"I know that perfectly well," you nodded again. "And you have my word."

"Alright then let's go,” she let go of your hand. “I don't want to keep them waiting so late."

"Huh? Right now?"

"Yup, let's just order this to go."

"Aight, if you say so."

You called the waiter over and asked him to give you the bill and take the rest of the desserts to take away. After about ten minutes, with everything already taken care of, you and Wony left the hotel to get in the car and head to your apartment.

On the way you couldn't think of anything else but how you were going to kill Rina as soon as you saw her. She had been acting like that ever since that night you and Isa spent together, and you understood perfectly why because you felt something similar. But she was also prone to doing that, to showing up without full notice hoping that you would make time for her. You never had a problem with it, but this was the first time it coincided with something more important.

It was partly your fault tho, and you had to admit it. That night you had let out a side of you that was probably the closest to Podrick Payne in terms of sex that you had ever been in your life. Rina had been absolutely delighted with you thanks to that, but she hadn't been the only one,; you were kinda obsessed as well, because she was bordering on the perfection of sex appeal: amazing tits, pretty ass, perfect thighs, hot tummy, face card to die for and adorably fun personality.

And on top of that, she was the purest definition of a bottom you had ever seen in your life, surpassing even Sullyoon, which in itself was a big deal.

In fact, you had a feeling that you were going to get into a big mess because of your sexual chemistry with her, but you weren't going to give it any thought at that moment.

After about 20 minutes of a quiet ride, you finally arrived at your apartment complex, parked the car in your assigned spot and went with Wony straight to the ground floor of your building. There, Rina and Aeri were waiting, sitting on the edge of the artificial mini waterfall to the left of the elevator while looking at something on Rina's phone.

"May I know why you're still wearing those clothes?" you asked, approaching, now in English because you knew that everyone there spoke it—maybe Rina a little less—, seeing that they were still in stage outfits under their hats and wide down jackets.

"Because we haven't gone home," Rina answered, standing up to walk towards the two of you with Aeri, who greeted Wony with a smile and a reciprocal hug. "We went to get something to eat because Minjeong-ah was craving something and we felt like having some fun," she switched back to Korean.

"By invading my house?" you asked, raising an eyebrow, as Wony now hugged Rina. You thanked god that they had a good relationship with each other. "You literally live alone."

"Yeah, but my apartment was further away than yours," she shrugged. "And your balcony has a better view than mine."

You sighed, and nodded for everyone to follow you to the elevator.

"Did something happen with Minjeong and Ning? It's weird that they're not here too," you said back in English, and pressed a button for the elevator to go down.

"They were both exhausted and wanted to sleep," Aeri replied behind you.

"Just like Liz," Wony said beside you, holding your hand.

"It's because they're the main vocals, and we all sing live," Rina said with a sigh.

A ding sounded and the elevator doors opened. The four of you stepped inside, Wony standing in front of you and Rina and Aeri at your sides. You pressed the button that would take you to the 28th floor, and the doors closed again.

"You sing quite a bit in all the songs too, how come you're not exhausted too?" you asked.

"Because my desire to s-... to drink was greater than my exhaustion," Rina replied, and as you turned to look at her she avoided your gaze. You had noticed what she was going to say, but you hoped Wony hadn't.

"I don't see any bottles anywhere, woman," you said upon realization. "Do you think I have a liquor store at home or what?"

"Ah, it's because we don't have a car and you do," Aeri replied. "It's easier than telling our manager to drive us."

"Then why on earth are we going up to the flat when we could have gone right now!" you yelled.

"Because we're going to change clothes, duh," Rina said.

You let out a tired sigh, closed your eyes, and leaned your head back against the wall. Wony on the other hand couldn't help but laugh.

"What a bloody pain in the ass," you whispered to yourself.

A few seconds later the elevator arrived at your floor. The doors opened, and Wony stepped ahead of the three of you to lead the way.

"Are we all going?" you asked as you made your way down the hall.

"I'll stay, sweetheart," Wony said in front of you. "I don't feel like another car ride today."

"Can I stay with her?" Aeri asked as you now took the lead since the next door was yours. "So we can cook something for the guests."

You paused with your key and gaze on the lock, then blinked a few times and took a deep breath.

"Guests?" you asked quietly, not wanting to get upset.

"It'll be a few people!" Rina said before you imploded. "We don't mean to make a fuss, really."

"And you can invite someone too, don't you have any friends?" Aeri asked.

You sighed.

"Yeah but it's 2:30 in the morning," you said, and finally opened the door to immediately find Rory and Helios waiting on the other side. "Hi babies."

"Ahhhh hi sweetie!" Rina squealed back in Korean, immediately scooping Rory into her arms as you all filed into the apartment. She was her darling.

"Girl, we're going to have to look up recipes online because I have no idea how to cook," Wony said, probably talking to Aeri as you dropped your stuff on the dining table and went to close the window blinds.

"Do you know how to chop things and turn on a stove?" Aeri asked.

"Uhu."

"Then you're useful."

"Hey, you," you pointed at Rina, who was standing in the middle of the living room with Rory still in her arms. "Hurry up and change, it's not 4 o'clock."

"Aw, I'll have to keep giving you kisses later, Rory," she said to your cat, then set her down before looking at you. "I'm going to your room."

"Ash you wish but come on," you hurried her over with a wave of your hand.

Rina, being the obedient sub that she was, hurried down the hall and into your room. You took off your coat, left it on one of the living room chairs and waited for her near the hallway exit. Ten minutes later she came out, dressed in the outfit she had worn to the awards carpet only without the bow in her hair, now loose and with pretty curls.

The two of you left the apartment and went straight to the elevator. You went in first, and as soon as you turned around, Rina surprised you by throwing her arms around your neck and crashing her lips flooragainst yours. It was then that you realized why you were really rushing her so much, because you wrapped your arms around her and kissed her back without a shred of hesitation.

After pressing the button for the ground floor, you instinctively leaned against the wall of the elevator, Rina's perfect body pressed against yours and your arms around her waist. The kiss heated up quickly, and before you knew it you were already groping each other, her hand rubbing your cock through your pants and you squeezing her firm ass cheeks through your dress. You hadn't even thought about it, it was something that came out of pure instinct.

"Would you fuck me in here daddy? Please?" she asked softly, between kisses that became more passionate and sloppy by the second and with a squeeze to your already hard bulge.

"Here and now?" you asked back, with both hands on her ass. "Are you that horny today?"

"Mhum," she nodded with a moan against your lips, unbuttoning your pants and lowering the zipper. "Very much daddy. Just looking at you makes me so horny."

"Can't you wait until later when things are hotter?" You said that, but your hands had lifted her short dress up to her waist and were now busy squeezing her soft, spongy, delicious ass cheeks.

"Aniyo, I want you now," she replied, taking your cock out from inside your boxers to stroke it. "Those three daesang don't celebrate themselves."

"Fuck, that's right," you said, pulling away from her lips for a moment to look into her eyes. "Congratulations baby."

"Thanks, but I need you to fuck me right now," she said, and kissed you again.

The make out session went on for a while longer as she pulled your pants and boxers down to mid-thigh so she could stroke your cock comfortably; as it was already throbbing too much between her fingers, you decided to grab her by the waist, turn her around and bend her against the right wall of the elevator. Just as the doors opened.

Thank god it was early in the morning and there wasn't a soul awake in your building, because that would have been the most embarrassing experience of your life.

"Oopsies," you said, and pressed the button for the top floor, the 40th.

With the doors closed again you could focus on your favorite cum slut again. Rina had her pretty cake ready for you and her hands resting on the mirror. Normally you would have yanked her panties off, but these were just too pretty, black lace with subtle embroidery and fine stitching, so you just pulled them away to her left butt cheek.

"How long has it been since you had something inside that warm pussy?" you asked, and you spit on your cock to lubricate it and rub the tip between her silky folds.

Rina turned to look at you with wide pupils and a parted mouth.

"Since the last time you fucked me daddy," she replied. "I've been a good girl."

"Not even your fingers?"

"Nothing. Only you and your cock deserve that privilege."

You smiled, and slowly took your cock inside her to admire how that gorgeous face twisted in pleasure as her folds engulfed your shaft inch by inch. When you reached the bottom both you and she moaned at the same time, and you put your hands on her hips to give her slow pumps until the friction was reduced to almost a minimum.

"Mmmm fuck," Rina moaned, biting the entire width of her bottom lip. "I missed your cock so much."

"Oh yeah?" you asked with a gasp, slipping your hand under her bunched up dress to rest on her soft lower back. "But it's only been a week, baby."

"I don't fucking care," she replied, watching as you fucked her harder and harder and made her ass cheeks jiggle. "Every second that passes without you inside me is torture."

"Such a slut huh?" you asked through clenched teeth, now with both hands on her waist under her dress.

"Mhum," she nodded with a cute moan. "Just for you daddy."

You kept up that strong but steady pace for a while, not wanting to sweat and feel uncomfortable under the sweater you were wearing. She didn't care that you weren't the absolute animal you always were with her, it was enough with the little effort you were putting in and your good use of your skills to make her cum.

But just as you reached the 40th floor and the doors opened.

"Mmmgh fuck! This thing is going to give me a heart attack!" Rina moaned between spasms and moans, cumming around your cock as you pressed the button for the second floor; you weren't going to risk getting to the ground floor and having the security guard of your building see you by chance.

"Do I have to remind you who had the idea to have sex in an elevator?" you asked as the doors closed again.

"Shut up!" she squealed back in Korean, still going through the vestiges of orgasm.

"Make me."

Feeling challenged, Rina pushed herself off the wall and grabbed the back of your neck with her right arm to crash her lips against yours. You held her against you, your left arm around her abdomen and one hand on her neck. You started fucking her faster, but not too much, just enough to hasten your own climax.

"You can't cum inside me, can you?" She asked between gasps against your lips, fingers gripping the back of your neck and looking into your eyes.

"Not if you want to be sticky down there the whole ride," you replied, lowering your arm from around her abdomen to place your hand on her pussy and rub it. "The only option is for you to swallow it."

Rina took a moment to organize her words, as between the cock in and out of her pussy and the fingers rubbing in circles she had been paralyzed with pleasure for a few seconds, her mouth half open and nothing but muffled sounds coming out of her throat.

"G-god I don't know!" she managed to say against your lips. "Just cum, I don't care where."

Perfect. That was just the trigger you needed.

You grabbed one of Rina's thighs and lifted it up to your chest, forcing her to hold herself sideways against the elevator wall. It was the moment you decided to get intense and give her pussy hard thrusts, shaking her whole body and making her tits bounce under her dress. She reached a second orgasm while you were fucking her, but she controlled herself so you could keep going. You felt yourself coming just moments later.

"On your knees baby," you said between gasps as you pulled out of her pussy.

Rina complied and got on her knees, then grabbed your cock, stuck her tongue out and masturbated you furiously with your tip pressed against her tongue. It only took a few strokes for you to explode in Rina's mouth, who let you watch as your entire load pooled on her tongue. She then took you inside her mouth and began sucking off what was left in your tank, and didn't stop until you were empty.

But what you hadn't realized was that the elevator doors were wide open. Still breathing heavily, you turned your head to look down the second floor hallway and make sure no one was watching.

"Remind me not to listen to you again," you gasped, pressing the button that would take you to the ground floor. "I'm going to get tachycardia from this."

Rina pulled you out of her mouth after swallowing your load and stood up on slightly shaky legs, adjusting her panties and pulling her dress back down.

"But it was fun wasn't it?" she asked with a giggle, as you pulled up your pants and boxers. Just then you reached the ground floor.

"Oh yeah, a fucking roller coaster ride," you replied, and grabbed her hand to finally pull her out of the elevator. She intertwined her fingers with yours.

"And you like roller coaster rides?" Rina asked, leaning forward to look at you.

"Nope."

"Mmm, and what about me?" she pointed at herself. "Do you like me?"

"More than I'd like to."

"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?" she asked as you walked out of the building to your car.

"I guess you'll find out later," you said, and then quickly changed the subject. "Hey, we can pick up two people on the way, so I recommend you let them know so they can get ready."

"Just two?"

You pressed the button on your remote to unlock the car doors and opened your door to slide in. Rina did the same with hers.

"I don't know if you notice that my back seats are single-seaters, woman," you said, pressing the touch button on the steering wheel just once to start the car's battery. "Call. No time to waste."

"You're not inviting anyone over?" Rina asked, pulling her phone out of her handbag.

"Fuck, I forgot," you reached out to the car's dashboard to touch the touch screen of the rotary dial and turn on the car's air calefaction in order to counteract the cold outside. "In that case it would have to be just one person. And you too."

"Oh don't worry, I know who I want us to pick up."

But you didn't.

First you'd rule out the people who would definitely be with someone else. Like for example, the guys from ATEEZ and your two friends from The Boyz. You texted Mingi and then Kim Sunwoo.

After texting them both came the real dilemma. Who the fuck were you going to pick up? It had to be one damn person, which left you with quite a few options, but you had a couple already in mind. First you had to take a shot with the Taiwanese princess, who responded pretty quickly.

She responded to that last message, but you decided to ignore her on purpose. Perfect, one of the few options ruled out. Next was Sohyun, but she didn't respond, probably because she was asleep. You tried Nana, but she was asleep too. No one from NMIXX or STAYC was in the cards; both groups weren't even in Korea at the time, neither was Somi. NewJeans of course, also ruled out. That left you with the Fromis girls, and you were sure none of them would be awake by now.

Except one. But in order to catch her attention, you had to call her.

“Hi?” Jiheon answered from the other end of the line. She never failed to be just as much of a night owl as you.

“Hey, do you want me to pick you up?” you asked. “We’ll be drinking at home.”

“Ah, you know I do,” she said. “Are you with someone?”

“With Rina, I don’t know if you two have met yet. Also Wonyoung and Aeri, and more people are coming.”

“Oh! Yujinie is going?” she asked, since the two of them were close.

“I have no idea. As far as I know she went to her house tired, but you know how that girl is.”

“Aw… well, I’ll get ready. Call me when you get here.”

You then hung up and turned to look at Rina, who had also been talking on the phone at the same time as you.

"Can we go now?" you asked.

"Yep," she nodded. "Who were you talking to?"

"Jiheonie," you finally replied, starting the engine. "And you?"

"Eunbie-unnie."

"Kwon...?" you stepped on the gas and pulled out of your parking spot heading towards the dorm's exit.

"Hwang. You know, GFriend... Viv..."

"Yeah yeah, the girl whose ass you couldn't stop staring at in that challenge."

"I wasn't!-"

"Yes you were."

That left her silent, with a frown and a cute pout.

First you went to buy the alcohol, a fucking difficult task since it was a Sunday at 3 in the morning and very few liquor stores were open, but after driving around downtown Seoul for a few times you ended up finding one. You had no idea if people would bring their own alcohol, so you opted to buy everything at once, an expense that you split in half with Rina.

With that done, you headed to the address Rina had given you to pick up SinB. The short-haired woman was already waiting on the street under a streetlight, bundled up in a cream-colored jacket and white cargo pants; she was also wearing a cap and a face mask. You parked next to her, and she got in the right back seat.

"Whose idea was it?" she asked. "I was pretty comfortable in my bed."

"Whose idea do you think it was?" you asked, pulling away again, now heading to pick up Jiheon.

"The only one that makes it look like it's not 7 degrees?"

"Exactly."

"In my defense, I love this dress and wanted to show it off," Rina said.

SinB chuckled.

"Well you're going to die of hypothermia from showing off your legs and shoulders," she said.

"Then it will have been worth it."

"Slut..." you muttered in English under your breath.

"What was that?" Rina looked at you.

"Huh?" you played dumb, and she stared at you for a few seconds. "I don't know what you're looking at, I didn't say anything."

"Liar..." she muttered, but you heard her.

You arrived at the next stop only about five minutes later. You called her, and she got down a couple minutes later.

Apparently, Rina wasn't the only one who wanted to show off that night, because even though Jiheon was wearing a black and white striped sweater with a furry jacket, she was also wearing a short black skirt that showed off her delicious long legs adorned with fishnet stockings.

"Hi!" she greeted everyone as she climbed into the last available seat. She hadn't recognized SinB, and doing so nearly gave her a heart attack. "Omo omo omo. Ah! Hi! I'm a huge fan. Ah ottoke!"

"Have you really never met?" Rina asked as SinB and Jiheon greeted each other.

"No," SinB replied. "We've met at shows but always from a distance."

Jiheon nodded.

"Ah, interesting," Rina said.

"Hey, you guys like speed?" you asked, realizing that the streets were completely empty at that hour, and surely the highway you were supposed to take was too.

"No, don't even dream about it," Jiheon said immediately, already knowing your intentions.

"My pretty honey nougat, I don't know if you've noticed, but it's 3am and I want to get home."

"Ezio, there's snow on the streets," Rina told you. "They're wet. Do you want to die?"

"I don't think a $700,000 SUV is going to kill us. Chill."

"Just step on the gas," SinB said. "Come on, come on."

Jiheon put a hand on your shoulder and whined repeatedly for you not to do it, but ignoring her, you put the car into wet mode and floored the gas. She and Rina squealed in fear, but you and SinB were having a blast with the sound of the engine and the speed you were going. The really funny moment was when you entered the highway, where you had a long straightaway where you reached 150km/h in just a couple seconds. Rina was clinging to you so tightly that she was almost going to tear your arm off, and Jiheon was going to deafen you with her screams. On the other hand, you and SinB could do nothing but laugh.

When you exited the highway and were forced to slow down considerably, Rina and Jiheon shook you around with little bumps, pushes, and scoldings. They could be as upset as they wanted, but you were sure that you had cut at least half of the 10-minute trip.

"Open the damn doors before I kill you," Jiheon said behind you as you parked the car in your spot and turned off the engine.

"Oh, they were already open," you said after checking.

"Did we do that damn race without the locks on?!" Rina shrieked to your right, then opened her door. “Oh my god!”

You shrugged.

“I didn’t know,” you said, and Jiheon pulled your ear. “Ouch!”

SinB opened her door and got out, followed by the other two.

“Hey! It was fun!” SinB came to your defense, still giggling.

You got out, closed your door, and headed straight to the trunk.

“Unnie! Don’t defend him!” Jiheon shrieked to your left, arms crossed as you put down the bags of bottles. You handed her one to carry, and she didn’t object despite being angry. “He did it completely on purpose just to give us a hard time!”

“Yeah! Look at him smiling!” Rina protested to your right. You handed her a bag as well.

“Wah, are they always this whiny?” SinB asked behind you as you closed the trunk and handed her a bag. You grabbed the only one left.

"One is worse than the other. I won't say who. Come on."

"I'm not whiny!" Rina and Jiheon protested at the same time, causing you and SinB to burst out laughing.

You entered your building and headed straight for the elevator. At that moment your gaze happened to go to the floor, and you noticed that near the right wall of the elevator there was a stain that looked like...

You immediately stood on top of it so that no one else could see it. You locked eyes with Rina, and from the way she looked back at you, she had noticed it too, and had to make an inhuman effort to hold back her laughter.

As you walked up to your apartment the aroma of freshly made food greeted you. Wony and Aeri were both in the kitchen, going back and forth chopping, frying, and roasting ingredients. They already had appetizers made, including a bowl full of Caprese, which was basically tomato, fresh mozzarella, and basil. The idea had been Wony's, who told you that they had looked up Italian recipes online for the things they were going to cook. You were grateful for the detail, but something told you that Aeri had something to do with it, probably as compensation for invading your house without full notice at 2 in the morning.

The guests started arriving not long after. First came the boys from ATEEZ, and then Sunwoo and Juyeon. To your surprise Yujin came too, and Aeri's guests were a guy you didn't know and Yunjin from Lesserafim, a girl with whom you had only shared a few words every time you had met her.

You were glad that the 'party' had turned out as Rina and Aeri had promised: healthy fun without fuss, which wasn't too difficult considering the number of people there.

At first, everyone was with their own little group. You and Wony were of course together all the time, and you were joined from time to time by Aeri and Rina along with SinB, Yunjin and the other guy who you later found out was called Haon and was a rapper. Jiheon and Yujin, being as close as they were, were also like two peas in a pod, primarily talking to the guys from Ateez and The Boyz.

But as divided as you all were, from a certain point in the early morning the group started to become more and more homogeneous, until finally you all started talking, laughing, and drinking together. You had a great time, and luckily for you, you knew Wony had too, despite having seemed unhappy a few hours ago.

Your calculations regarding the amount of alcohol you bought turned out to be incorrect, as many of them had a fairly low resistance to alcohol and had gotten drunk faster than you expected (Jiheon was the first to fall, to no one's surprise). This led to you being left with about 3 bottles of vodka and two bottles of whiskey unopened on the table. You weren't much of a drinker on your own, so you ended up telling the guys to take everything home.

By 8am everyone was gone, leaving only you, Wony, Rina and Aeri, lying on the couch staring at the ceiling. You were all drunk—maybe Rina and Aeri a little more so—not to the point of vomiting in every corner of the house and stumbling around everywhere, but you still knew that the four of you were dizzy.

"Great, I just needed to mess up my bloody sleep schedule again," you said, lying with your hands on your chest on the right wing of the couch, which also functioned as a bed. You had your head resting on one of Wony's thighs, and she was leaning against the wall with her legs spread out between the backrest and Rina's body.

"And we have a trip tomorrow," Rina said, staring blankly at the ceiling. "I don't think this was the most responsible thing to do."

"Oh, you think so?" you asked sarcastically.

"Hey, can you please understand me? I won't have any days off for like two weeks!"

"You know, I just find it funny that you're the two oldest in your group and at the same time the most reckless," Wony said with a giggle, caressing your hair.

"Oh mind your own business, little princess," Aeri said from the other side of the couch. She was lying face down, her dress rolled up to her thighs to highlight her ass.

"But don't be mad at me!" Wony said, still between tipsy giggles. "It's not like I'm lying."

"You're the prettiest and most elegant in your group and who knows how many times you've choked on your boyfriend's cock. That’s worst"

Yikes. Now that was a counterattack.

Flabbergasted, you kept your gaze on the ceiling. You could only hear a discreet laugh from Rina.

"I do it all the time and I love it, so what? You try to put me on the ropes bitch?" Wony asked.

Aeri let out a giggle.

"I certainly wouldn't mind tying you up with ropes," she said. "That would be hot."

"Weren't you mad at me a second ago?!"

"I'm still here, just so you know," you said.

"Oh yeah, right," Aeri looked at you. "Tell me something, Ezio, do you like Japanese cake?"

"Ah... the cheesecake that's fluffy and tasty?" you asked, genuinely clueless about the true intent of the question.

"Wah, I love Japanese cheesecake," Rina added. "It's like eating a marshmallow."

"Hey! I was just talking to you!" Wony protested, and threw a pillow at Aeri that went over her and fell into the dining room.

"Nuh uh, I'll ask you again, and look at me," Aeri said, and you turned your head to look at her. "You like Japanese cake?"

As she asked that, she grabbed the dress and pulled it up over her waist, revealing her tasty bubble butt adorned by a burgundy thong.

"Ahhh! Don't look!" Wony squealed, and covered your eyes with both hands, but you had already seen what you needed to see.

You heard Aeri giggle.

"I'm just kidding, princess," she said. "No need to get worked up. Or are you afraid he'll get a boner from my ass?"

Wony wasn't blocking your view properly, so you could still see that wonderful ass perfectly. In that state it was impossible for you to control what you thought, and the inevitable happened.

"Ah, he already has it, look," you heard Rina say, and when Wony removed her hands from in front of your face, you saw Rina pointing at the hard bulge in your pants, which Aeri was staring at.

"That's only because it was a dirty move!" Wony protested. "You're such a slut!"

"Better not say it too much, because I'm starting to believe it and get horny," Aeri said with a giggle.

"He's my boyfriend!" Wony crossed her thighs around your head, in a fit of pure possessive instinct that felt like heaven. "Mine!"

"Well, girl," Aeri stood up, and with her dress still bunched up around her waist, went to sit on the edge of the end of the couch, right between your feet. The dress she was wearing left very little to the imagination, with that bare straight back that could drive the sanest man crazy, and her ass looked amazing in that thong and position, she just had to... take off the dress, which she did. "I know he's yours," Aeri looked over her shoulder at your bulge and bit her bottom lip. "But that cock is staring me right in the eyes."

Wony had to have been stunned by Aeri's sudden, bold move as well, as she didn't say a single word or move a single muscle.

"Don't talk about his cock or I'll get horny too," you heard Rina say to your left. "Every time I think about it I want it inside me."

"My god! You two are a couple of whores!" Wony squealed, releasing your head from between her thighs. "A couple of whores with... nice asses and nice tits."

"Both," you added.

"You shut up!" Wony slapped your forehead, startling you.

"Oh, you like us, don't you?" Aeri asked, and then she turned around and climbed onto her knees at the edge of the couch so you and Wony could admire her pair of round, nice, firm, perfectly sized tits.

Out of the corner of your eye you saw that Rina couldn't help but follow Aeri's lead and was taking off her dress, under which, just like Aeri, she was only wearing panties and no bra.

"I didn't say that!" Wony said, and as you looked up at her you noticed that her eyes couldn't stop staring at Rina and Aeri's bodies. "I just said that..."

She trailed off, and as you looked back up at the front you realized why. Aeri had crawled up on top of you, her hands on either side of your head and her knees on either side of your hips. That pair of breasts were right above your face, tempting inches away that you didn't dare to shorten just yet.

"What did you say, Vicky?" Aeri asked with a giggle, looking at Wony from very close, ignoring you despite having you underneath her. "Because I remember you said I was a slut."

Rina, half naked like Aeri, straddled Wony's calf with two hands above her knee, just watching her like a cat did with its prey.

"Y-yeah, because that's what you are..." Wony glanced at Rina out of the corner of her eye. "Both of you."

"I told you not to call me that or I would take it seriously," Aeri replied, and put a hand on your chest to bring her face so close to Wony's that you thought she was going to kiss her. "Come on, say it again."

"Slut!" Wony repeated instantly, without a hint of hesitation. But the tone she used sounded like a challenge to you.

"Fuck, I am," Aeri moaned, then giggled as she moved her hand down from your chest to your bulge to squeeze it without Wony noticing. "Again."

"Me, me, tell me," Rina said, now settling herself closer to Wony's knee.

Aeri was massaging your cock over your pants, making it throb with each deep squeeze. You didn't want to stay still, so you discreetly moved your hand up to her crotch to rub her pussy over her panties.

"You are the biggest slut!" Wony said now looking at Rina. "You fuck my boyfriend all the time!"

"Oh yeah and I fucking love it when he fills my pussy," Rina moaned, now adjusting herself on Wony's thigh. From the slight movements it seemed like she was rubbing herself against her. "You don't?"

You heard another moan, but this one was from Wony. Looking up you noticed that Rina had pulled her dress down, and now had her pair of cute little tits free.

"Y-yes I do..." Wony replied with a gasp. "Can we suck his cock already or...?"

"Nuh-uh, you're going to kiss me first," Aeri said, and then kissed Wony right above you.

Rina took the opportunity to wrap her arms around Wony's waist and dive into her neck with kisses, as she and Aeri kissed like they had been lusting after each other all night. And you, seeing that things had already gotten out of hand without you even having to intervene, finally leaned up on your elbows to take one of Aeri's tits into your mouth.

You had no angle of vision to know what was happening behind you, you could only hear muffled moans, fabric being manipulated and kiss after kiss. Aeri was trying to unbutton your pants with one hand, but noticing her inability you had to help her. Then when you took off your shoes, pants and boxers, she grabbed your cock with a reverse grip and rubbed it slowly.

Aeri's tits remained your focus for another long seconds; you moved between each mound, sucking and licking her cute nipples with your hands on her waist. A moment later Aeri moved away from Wony and lowered her body to straddle your abdomen. You were then able to turn to see what was happening behind you.

Wony was no longer wearing her dress, and like Aeri and Rina, she was only in her panties as she kissed and groped Rina, who was sitting on her lap with her hands around her neck. You didn't know how to feel about it, but your current state of mind only made the scene turn you on twice as much.

"Hey, I exist too," you called out to both of them, as Aeri climbed off your abdomen and went to settle on her knees between your outstretched legs. Now she was able to get a good grip on your cock and stroke it slightly faster.

"Hmm, sorry daddy," Rina said, breaking away from Wony's lips. "Her lips are too fluffy and delicious."

She made to lean in to kiss you, but Wony quickly put her hand between both of them.

"No!" she stopped Rina. "I'm not letting you kiss him, whore! That privilege is mine!"

"But I just kissed you!" Rina protested. "What's the difference?!"

"I just said no!"

"Shut the fuck up both of you and come suck my cock," you said.

"Yes daddy!" they both said at the same time, completely forgetting about their argument.

There wasn't room for the four of you on the couch together, at least not for what you wanted to do, so you told them to go to the bedroom. There were your two cats in there, which you dragged out to make room on the bed. You got in first, piling the pillows up in the middle so you could lay down with your head propped up. It was then that they joined you, Rina on your left, Wony on your right, and Aeri on her hands and knees between your legs.

Rina and Wony had their backs to you, lying on their sides with their faces on either side of your cock and their elbows resting on top of your abdomen. The first to take you into her mouth was Aeri, with slow sucks halfway down your shaft while Wony and Rina kissed the sides of your base, licking the sides every time Aeri moved up. With Wony it wasn't necessary since she still had her hair in the bun, but with Rina you brushed her hair back just to delight in that double view. Cute backs drove you crazy, and if that wasn't enough, their asses were just as cute.

"Fuck, it almost fit in my mouth," Aeri gasped, stroking your tip with her fingers in a ring, while you caressed Wony and Rina's lower backs. "Just the way I love it."

"The first time I was unable to take it all," Rina said, kissing and licking along with Wony every corner of your cock.

"Ha! I've always been able to take it down my throat without any effort," Wony said.

"Oh yeah? Then do it," Aeri goaded, and slapped Wony's face a couple of times with your cock. "Be a good girl."

Wony didn't hesitate and grabbed your cock and took it straight into her mouth. Unlike when she gave you head in the car, she was now true to her skills and gave you a sloppy blowjob, with plenty of saliva built up from the start. Rina and Aeri meanwhile sucked your balls, and you groped Wony and Rina's asses.

After a few seconds she put her hands on your thighs and lowered her mouth to the base of your cock in one smooth motion, taking every inch without a hint of gag reflex to let your tip rest against her throat for a while.

"Damn, you got a fucking talent for it huh?" Aeri said, as Wony slowly twisted her head from side to side with your cock stuck in her throat, something she did just to show off.

Wony pulled you out of her throat a couple seconds later, her breathing completely steady but her mouth full of saliva and connected to your cock by slimy threads. She stroked you quickly.

"Come on, I fucking challenge you two bitches," she said, looking at Aeri and Rina. "I bet you can't even hold it in for five seconds."

"Bet," Rina and Aeri said.

Again, they were pretending you didn't exist and were just an NPC with a usable cock. You didn't mind tho, and it wasn't like you would care when you were drunk.

Rina was the first to make her attempt. You knew she wasn't bad at it; she gave excellent blowjobs, but deepthroats were perhaps her only weak point in general. She grabbed you by the base, caught your cock between her lips and slowly lowered them down until you were in her throat. One... two...—first gag—, three—she coughed against your cock and pulled back with labored breathing.

"Ha! One out," Wony said with a smug little smile on her face. "Come on Uchinaga, you fucking gorgeous packed up whore."

"Fuck, I'm going to lose this shit..." she muttered, already accepting her fate.

Aeri took her shot, first flipping all her pink hair to the side and then grabbing your cock and plunging her mouth in. The outlook didn't look too hopeful for her, since halfway through she seemed to have a hard time taking you, but to your surprise she did reach the bottom. One... two... three...—first gags, Wony worried—, four... and just as the five seconds were about to pass, a huge gag reflex made her take you out of her mouth.

"I won!" Wony said, the cocky grin back on her face. "Ha! You can't beat me on that, sluts."

"Without preparation it's cheating, bitch," Aeri said, wiping the saliva off her chin with the back of her hand and side looking at her.

"I don't care, it's time for me to choose my prize!"

"Do you win a contest that you organised yourself and also choose your own prize?" Rina asked.

"You're right!" Wony replied, and got on her knees to cup Rina's face in her hands, give her a little kiss and then look at you. "My prize will be daddy eating my pussy and fucking me first!"

"But!-" Rina tried to protest, but Wony held up a finger.

"Nuh-uh, you didn't win the contest, refrain from protesting Miss Yoo."

Quite a comedian when she was drunk, and above all, a whore.

Wony then straddled you right on your chest, slowly slipped her hand into your hair to tangle her fingers there, and then raised her hips to pull you towards her pussy. You immediately ate her out like she was a three-star Michelin dish, making her moan and grind her hips against your face.

Aeri and Rina, without much other option, both focused on your cock, in a combined action in which they both sucked you off in the most messy and frantic way they could. You moaned against Wony's pussy, and she loved it. She let you know that by the little tugs she gave to your hair every few seconds.

You moved your hands up to hold Wony's small waist, and from there you moved up her back until you reached her tits, whose nipples you pinched in between light squeezes. Then you moved one of your hands up to her mouth, and brought two fingers inside for her to suck on while you attacked her clit with the tip of your tongue.

Aeri and Rina were going crazy on your cock. You couldn't see what they were doing, but their tongues felt amazing. It led you to moan more and more, and to breathe heavily against Wony's pussy, which led her to cum in your mouth.

"Mmmgh fuck!" she moaned between cute little spasms on top of you. "Can I ride you daddy?"

"Oh, now you ask?" you asked. "I thought you had forgotten that I have an opinion."

"I know you're always gonna say yes to everything, but consent is important daddy," she said, and took your hand to give the back of it a peck.

With this done, Wony got off your chest and turned to look at the girls.

"Get off his cock bitches, time for his girlfriend to ride him."

Rina and Aeri were diligent and moved away from your cock to give Wony room, who mounted you with her knees on either side of your waist and raised her hips to grab your shaft, aligning it with her pussy and slowly impaling herself on it with a long moan of satisfaction that made her face look like a work of art.

Wony left her hands on your chest, looked into your eyes and began to move her hips up and down, taking your cock in and out of her suffocating pussy. Rina positioned herself on the right, on her knees and facing Wony, to grab her chin and kiss her. Aeri approached you from the left, and got on her hands and knees to kiss you without Wony noticing.

"Would you mind lending me your face as a seat, love?" she asked after that brief taste of your lips.

"Whenever you want," you replied between gasps, as Wony was now bouncing faster on your cock.

Aeri stood up and positioned herself above your face, with her knees snug against the sides of your chest and her calves on top of your arms. She then lowered her hips, and pressed her pussy against your mouth for you to eat. You immediately grabbed her ass, delighted with how soft and round her buttocks were between your fingers. She moaned, but just seconds later those moans were muffled against Wony's lips.

You reached out with your right arm and without looking you reached for Rina's cute ass, which you groped while you ate Aeri's pussy and ass equally. Now you could hear Wony's moans loud and clear, and looking up you realized it was because Aeri and Rina were kissing and licking her tits while she bounced on your cock with her hands on your abdomen.

"Mmmgh fuck fuck fuck!" she moaned, fingers digging into your belly. "I'm gonna... I'm gonna... Fuck!!"

Wony sank down with a sudden thud to your pelvis and ground herself against you, spasms making her pussy walls throb around you. You continued to fully engage Aeri's pussy and ass, licking between her wet pink folds and butthole until she raised her hips.

"Alright get off bitch, my fucking turn," Aeri said to Wony. "You give Rina a good time."

"Yeah, come eat my pussy baby," Rina moaned, and grabbed Wony by the back of the neck to pull her off your cock, make her lay down together and make out beside you.

That left you 'alone' with Aeri, who only had to crawl down your body until her ass was positioned above your cock, which you grabbed and pressed against her pussy so that she only had to move her hips down and make your shaft slowly disappear between those glorious ass cheeks.

"Oh fuck," Aeri growled, her ass resting against your pelvis. She looked at you over her shoulder. "You like the view, baby?" She asked with a giggle.

"I very much fucking love it," you said, giving her right ass cheek a firm squeeze and then a spank to get her bobbing up and down.

Beside you, Wony and Rina were in the middle of a hot make out session, with the taller girl on top of the most bottom girl you knew. Rina was spread legged, and Wony had two fingers pumping in and out of her pussy. Again, you didn't know how to feel about it, you just knew it was hot as fuck.

Aeri was moving like a fucking demon on your cock, giving you quite the show of how to properly ride a cock in that position. It was hypnotic to watch her ass go back and forth, and her long pink hair run down her pale back. She kept going for about a minute more of you spanking her ass several times, until she planted her feet on the mattress and started squatting up and down on you, slamming hard against your pelvis.

To your right, Wony went from fingering Rina to being between her legs eating her pussy. Rina had one hand on the back of Wony's head, and the other was playing with one of her own tits, squeezing it and pinching her nipple between moans. Wony was apparently amazing at eating pussy too, as Rina's moans were almost as loud as Aeri's.

On the other hand, Aeri's ass, as massive and firm as it was, was almost taking your breath away with every crash against your body, but she didn't notice either because she was too horny or because the alcohol in her system didn't let her notice. The solution was pretty simple: grab her by the waist and push her off your cock, have her lie face down on the left side of the bed and get back inside her in that prone bone position.

"Mmm yeah daddy be fucking hard on me," she moaned, one side of her face buried against one of your pillows. You brushed her hair back and placed it in front of her right shoulder, so you could put your hand on the back of her neck and fuck her as hard as she wanted.

Fucking Aeri Uchinaga in that specific position felt like a luxury. Her ass looked amazing, jiggling with every thrust and quick spank you gave her. At one point you leaned forward and placed your fists on either side of her shoulders, pushing your cock hard up and down, then you stood up straight again, grabbing onto her waist to make her lift her ass slightly and pulling it towards you every time you pushed forward. What this created was absolute madness for Aeri, who moaned, screamed and groaned into the pillow until with a thud to the mattress, she came hugging the pillow.

You slowly fucked her through her orgasm, caressing her back and shoulders. To your left Rina was going down the same road. Wony was still eating her pussy, but now she was also fingering her at the same time. Rina's face reddened, twisted, and finally froze as he came in Wony's mouth as well.

"Daddy," Wony called to you, pumping two fingers in and out of Rina as she writhed in pleasure. "Come and fuck her, I want to see her being overstimulated."

Without hesitation you pulled out of Aeri's pussy and went to take Wony's place between Rina's legs. She looked into your eyes and then at your cock, well knowing what you were going to do. You didn't make her wait: you quickly grabbed your cock, and still soaked in Aeri's fluids, you took it inside Rina.

"Mmmgh wait wait wait!" Rina squealed with a hand on your abdomen, twisting her hips as your cock slid easily into her still sensitive pussy.

"Shut up and take daddy's cock," Wony ordered, lying down on your right with her face next to Rina's.

Rina brought her hand to her mouth to muffle her whimpers the moment you started pumping back and forth. At least you had the mercy to not go hard at first just to not make it too unbearable for her, but that was only a brief five seconds after which you went faster and faster.

“At least kiss me daddy… c-can you?” Rina asked looking into your eyes, her tits bouncing from your thrusts.

“No!” Wony immediately replied in your place.

“Pleaseee!!” Rina whimpered again, squeezing her tits as her eyes became teary. It was quite a deal for her not to be able to kiss you during sex – she was just too used to you spoiling her.

“I said no!” Wony repeated, and cupped the side of Rina’s face so she could see her. “Kiss me instead you little slut.”

Rina did so, muffling cute moans against Wony's lips while you had your hands on her thighs to keep her legs spread wide. Aeri had already recovered from her recent orgasm, and moved to get between Wony's legs and eat her pussy while she maked out with Rina.

Wony pulled away from Rina's lips and looked at Aeri with her mouth half open between gasps.

"It's about time you ate me out, Uchinaga," Wony moaned, entwining her fingers between strands of pink hair.

"Were you craving for it?" Aeri asked, licking between her folds and then her clit.

"Since I saw you making those faces while riding my boyfriend's cock," Wony replied.

You meanwhile continued to fuck Rina as hard as you could, squeezing her tits, her neck and making her suck on your fingers. She came within seconds, but you ignored her body's signals and kept going until you brought her legs together, pressed them against her body and held them with yours to now fuck her in a matting press.

"Are you gonna fill my pussy daddy?" Rina asked between moans, looking into your eyes as you hammered her pussy up and down. "Please do it... I need it! I need it so bad daddy!"

"Are you gonna cum again for me if I do baby?" you asked between gasps.

"Yes! I'll do whatever you ask daddy, anything!" she replied.

Your climax was just around the corner, it only took a few downward thrusts when you felt the tingle run down your cock.

"Then fucking cum, slut," you growled, and then exploded inside her.

Rina moaned in ecstasy as she felt your cock throbbing and shooting out jet after jet of cum inside her, and instantly she came too, her body shaking and her moans sweetening your ears. You continued to pump slowly, making sure to leave every drop inside her without any waste. She loved every second of it; it was what drove her craziest by far. She had to earn her nickname from somewhere.

To your right Aeri had stopped eating Wony out and was now on top of her, kissing her and rubbing her pussy in circles. You pulled out of Rina's pussy and looked at them.

"Hey, clean up, what are you waiting for?" you said, pointing at Rina's cum dripping pussy.

Aeri looked up, looked between Rina's legs and went there, pushing you out of the way. Wony followed her, and the two of them took turns cleaning your cum from Rina's pussy. You laid down on the pillows, leaning against the headboard between heavy breaths to rest.

Aeri and Wony looked up at you, and with cum pooling in their mouths, they shared a sloppy kiss that spilled your load over their jaws and onto the sheets below. They didn't stop until they shared every drop of thick liquid and were both clean and herself.

"Now that I think about it... there's one thing I do beat you at," Aeri said to Wony with a giggle, both of them sitting on their knees in front of Rina's spread legs.

Wony frowned and looked at her as if she was insane.

"Huh, at what?" Wony asked.

Aeri then looked at you, and crawled past Rina until she was between your legs, lowering her face and licking your cock from balls to tip. She then moved up to align her face with yours.

"Wanna fuck my ass daddy?" she asked, caressing the back of your cock until it was hard again.

"What?" Wony quickly crawled over to you, tripping over Rina on her way to your side. "N-No! You can do me too!"

Aeri giggled as she saw that Wony had fallen for her trap.

"Really, Vicky?" Aeri turned to look at her. "You don't look like you've ever tried to get fucked in the ass, have you?"

"W-well..." Wony avoided her gaze.

"No, right?"

Wony snorted.

"No! But I can try and I know my boyfriend is going to love it!"

Aeri then looked at you and raised an eyebrow.

"You hear that baby?" she asked. "The little princess wants your cock in her ass."

"Get the lube then," you said, nodding towards the nightstand to the right of the bed.

Aeri moved to get it, but Wony just stared at you with a scowl.

"Huh? What do you have that for?! Who are you fucking in the ass other than me?"

You didn't know how to tell her all the girls who had passed by that bed and been fucked in the ass.

"Yujinie loves it," you replied.

"Ugh!" she slammed her fist into her thigh. "That bitch!"

Aeri came back to you, with a bottle of lube that was almost gone but you knew would be enough for the night.

"Get on all fours, pretty girl," Aeri told Wony, and she complied.

"What are you going to do?" Wony asked, getting on her hands and knees on the right side of the bed, her ass facing you.

"I'm gonna get you ready."

Aeri sat on her knees beside her, opened the bottle of lube, and looked at you.

"You don't mind getting the sheets dirty?" she asked.

"I don't fucking care at this point," you shrugged and shook your head.

"Great."

Aeri then focused on her self-assigned task. She poured lube on each of Wony's ass cheeks, spreading it around until each one was a shiny pearl. She then moved on to her butthole, which she treated with the utmost care even as she stuck two of her fingers in there just to stretch it out a bit.

"Fuck..." Wony gasped, looking over her shoulder. "I-is that it?"

"It's perfect," Aeri said, and gave Wony a smack that made some lube splatter. She then looked at you. "All yours."

You moved on, going to kneel behind Wony. She looked at you with adorable little eyes, wanting you to be as careful with her as possible. Of course you would be. She was your sweet girl after all. Your princess to take care of and pamper. You would never be able to hurt her, not even accidentally.

"I just need you to relax, sweetie, okay?" you asked, one hand running up and down her back. She just nodded. "And let that hair down, I want something to pull on."

Wony complied and brought a hand to her bun to pull it free, freeing her wavy, shiny brown hair to fall down her back and in front of her shoulders. She also spread her knees further out to the sides, leaving her ass at a perfect level for you. Your cock was already hard again, and you brought it to her butthole to press slowly forward, as carefully as you could.

"Hey, don't tense up girl," Aeri said from your left. She had been applying the same treatment to herself as she did to Wony. "It'll be harder for you."

"I'm trying!" Wony protested, gripping the sheets with her fingers as you barely got your tip inside. She took a deep breath, and you saw her relax her hands. "Come on baby, you keep going."

You pushed forward a little more insistently, slowly taking every inch of throbbing flesh inside that tight butthole. There were a few hiccups, as was usual when someone did that for the first time, but a minute later you were fully inside her, suffocated by those tight walls.

"So? How does it feel?" Aeri asked, getting on her hands and knees beside Wony. Her wonderfully lubed up ass was a bit of a distraction, but you had to focus on your girl.

"It feels..." Wony closed her eyes, gasped, and buried her forehead into the mattress with her arms outstretched. "Baby, move."

You placed your hands on her buttocks and pulled back, slowly bringing your cock out and then pushing forward again. Wony let out a sensual moan as you repeated the same thing several times.

"Oh yeah it feels fucking wonderful," she moaned, and turned her face to face Aeri with a frown of pleasure.

"Wait until it gets intense then," Aeri replied with a giggle. "Cumming like that feels quite different."

As the seconds passed Wony became more comfortable, allowing you to go harder and faster. Wony loved every moment of it, and you were immensely happy about it, as her ass felt amazing. Aeri should be proud, for she had created a potential monster, both in you and Wony.

Wony's ass was your little toy for a while. You were fucking her hard, mercilessly, making your pelvis and ass make a sexual cacophony of clashing and wet sounds. Her hair and waist were your grip points at all times, one you pulled back in a fistful, and the other you held tight, not wanting her to slip away.

You would have kept going until she came, but to your left a delicious Japanese cake waited, glistening in the light of your room. Aeri watched as you fucked Wony in full attention, and bit her lower lip waiting for her turn. The moment you turned to look at her she just happened to meet your eyes, and you simply weren't going to say no to that look.

"I'll be back with you in a second, my sweet girl," you told Wony, and carefully pulled your cock out of her.

"Nooo!" Wony whimpered. "Fuck only me!"

"Don't be selfish, bitch," Aeri said as you positioned yourself behind her. "If it weren't for me you wouldn't have found out that you love that."

You repeated the process with Aeri, one hand on one of her buttocks as you brought your cock into her ass. The experience she had was evident, as your shaft slid inside with relative ease without her even wincing in pain. All that was visible on her face was pleasure; pure ecstasy released in a moan when you reached the bottom.

"Fuck," Aeri gasped, biting her bottom lip. "You really want to gatekeep that cock Vicky? How inconsiderate of you."

"Yeah, because it's mine," Wony replied.

"And why is it inside my ass?" Aeri teased with a giggle.

Any desire to tease Wony disappeared the moment you started moving your hips and fucking her hard, making her ass cheeks jiggle with each thrust. Your hands went to her waist, then up her back until you reached the nape of her neck and pushed her face into the mattress. Aeri kept her ass raised, perfect for you to plant your feet on the mattress and drill her butthole up and down.

After another while you went back to Wony, fucking her the same way you did Aeri: hand on the back of her head, face against the mattress and ass raised for your hammering. She came a little less than a minute later, with an aggressiveness that denoted that she was a first timer being fucked in the ass.

"Oh fuck!!" Wony screamed into the sheets, wrinkling them and twisting her hips. "Fuck it does feel quite different! God!"

As Wony's orgasm wore off you now moved to Aeri, but you had a different idea of how to go about it with her. From being on her hands and knees you now rolled her onto her side with her legs drawn up. As you moved back into her ass you moaned, since it felt twice as tight and warm in that position.

"Mmm, are you gonna fill my tight little ass daddy?" Aeri said, looking into your eyes with her head tilted as you picked up the pace. She had her pink hair all messy, with strands sticking to her face from sweat.

"Every fucking corner of it," you replied between gasps, one hand squeezing one of her tits and the other gripping her waist.

"Then fucking do it, mmmgh!" she moaned, holding onto your left forearm and with her hand on top of yours on her breast.

You moved your hand from her breast to her neck, and pressed your fingers there to get really intense with your thrusts. The bed shook as if an earthquake was happening, so strong that one of the pillows on the edge fell to the floor. Aeri tried to scream in pleasure, but the obstruction on her neck by your fingers prevented her from doing so. Her face turned red, and her hands went to hold on to your wrist until she came. You fucked her despite her spasms, but not for too long, because it only took a couple of seconds for you to explode inside that wonderful round ass.

"Oh my god!" you groaned, unloading every thick drop of cum inside the ass of the hottest Japanese girl in the entire industry.

"Oh yeah put it all in!" Aeri squealed as you loosened your grip on her neck. "Fill my ass daddy, fill it like a fucking cum dump!"

Aeri looked too fucking gorgeous with her face twisted in pleasure, mouth parted and hair messy, but if you leaned forward to kiss her you were probably going to sleep on the couch with Helios and Rory. You just grabbed her face and made her look into your eyes, then stuck your fingers in her mouth and had her suck on them as both of your orgasms passed.

Seconds later you pulled very slowly out of Aeri's ass, letting your cum spill out in several rivers that fell straight onto the sheet. But making her star appearance after a while of lethargy, Yoo Jimin came back to life and stuck her head between your knees and Aeri's ass to collect your cum from her butthole without even a fuss.

"And there's my fucking cum slut," you panted, sitting on your own ankles as Rina ate Aeri's ass and ate your cum.

"Mmm yeah," Rina nodded, wiping her chin once finished, and knelt up beside you to lick the entire side of your face. "And your cum slut wants to ride you."

"I just filled your groupmate's ass, honey," you said with your breath still uneasy, turning to look at her. "Can I have a little break?"

"You can have the break by eating my pussy," she replied, making eyes at you. "I don't deserve it?"

"Are you seriously going to manipulate me?" you raised an eyebrow.

"Does it work?"

"Yes," you said, and grabbed her waist to lay her down with her head between two pillows. "You're unbearable."

"You're obsessed with me and it burns you to say it," Rina told you, as you spread her legs and laid face down with your face in front of her pussy.

"It's funny you say that, Miss 'fuck me in the elevator because I'm so needy, daddy'."

"Huh?!" you heard Wony say, but in order not to be hung up by the balls, you decided to ignore her and plant your mouth on Rina's pussy.

Rina moaned and moved her hand directly to your hair to tangle her fingers there. With Rina's thighs on your shoulders you moved your hands up as well, to grab her tits and massage them as you tasted that delicious pussy that you were certainly—and very dangerously—obsessed with. You didn't take long there, just long enough until your cock was ready again.

"Come on and ride me then, slut," you murmured, and gave her pussy a peck before laying down beside her.

She quickly stood up and straddled you, grabbing your still wet cock and bringing it into her spit-soaked pussy to fully impale herself on every inch of your shaft. Without a doubt, that was one of your favorite sights in the world: Rina on top of you, with your cock disappeared behind her perfect belly like magic. And those tits, fuck, those fucking tits. You needed them in your mouth.

You grabbed her waist and pulled her towards you, wrapping your arms around her body and smothering yourself between her tits. Rina moaned and began to move up and down on your cock, with a certain speed and neediness already from the start. You ate each breast between gasps, covering them with kisses, licking them, sucking them and taking as much of them as you could inside your mouth. It drove her crazy, and she translated it into killer hip movements that drove you crazy.

A new weight to your right on the bed made you open your eyes. It was Wony, lying next to you and with her legs open for Aeri, who was eating her pussy with a good part of her hair covering her face. Something impractical, but considering how horny she was, it didn't surprise you.

Wony grabbed your face and made you move away from Rina's tits to kiss her. You didn't refuse, and you tasted her lips in a kiss full of passion and saliva. Something told you that Rina was a little jealous, because she was whimpering more than usual and quickly jumping on your cock to somehow get your attention.

"I want you to kiss me! Ugh!" Rina whined when you didn't turn to look at her. "Please!" she dug her nails into your chest, just to poke you a little.

"I already told you no, whore!" Wony said, pulling away from the kiss to slap one of Rina's tits.

Rina moaned, and went slower but harder and deeper on your cock. Wony repeated the slap, now on her other breast to make it bounce. Several slaps later, Rina's pale tits were red as apples. That left her too stunned to move properly, so you took the reins and planted your feet on the bed to grab her waist and fuck her hard, thrusting down and up.

Unable to find relief from you for her need for kisses, Rina collapsed forward and crashed her lips against Wony's, covering your face with her long red hair as you continued to hammer her pussy. She muffled moans and screams against Wony's lips, who also moaned against hers. Within seconds Rina came, shaking on top of you as if she was being electrocuted. Your only response was to grab her ass and spank both of her ass cheeks at the same time to make her squeal out between her moans.

"Alright bitch, enough," Wony said, pushing Rina off of you. "My boyfriend is going to give me his last load, as it should be."

You knelt up and went between Wony's legs. Aeri had already moved away for you, and laid down on Wony's left. Rina laid down on the opposite side, and as you took your cock inside your girlfriend, Aeri and Rina each took one of Wony's tits into their mouths to kiss and suck on.

As you picked up the pace and gave Wony hard thrusts, the other two demons got wilder and wilder. The main focus remained on Wony's tits, but then Aeri moved to her long neck to kiss it, and Rina settled in to specifically lick and kiss her abdomen. All together, it elicited cute whimpers and angelic moans from Wony, which filled the room and reverberated off the walls.

A minute later Aeri added another coat of paint to the work and brought her hand to Wony's pussy, to make circles on her clit while you fucked her with your hands behind her knees. Rina then kissed her too, and the two engaged in a make out session until Wony came.

But unwilling to give any quarter, you pushed Rina off Wony's right and lay down in her place to put your girlfriend on top of you. She made herself comfortable as best she could, but you didn't wait to take your cock back inside her and fuck her like you did to Rina a few minutes ago. Her face, as gorgeous and sexy as ever, with her hair all disheveled in front, was paralyzed with pleasure at the overstimulation.

Aeri and Rina knelt behind her. Aeri had dropped the now empty bottle of lube on the floor, and the next thing you knew, she was fingering Wony's ass with three fingers while Rina rubbed her tits against one of her oily buttocks. Wony looked at you with tears in her eyes, and with small squeals that wouldn't come out of her throat. It wasn't long before she slapped your chest a few times, and knowing what that sign meant, you pulled out of her so she squirted all over your cock, between grunts and strong spasms.

"OH MY FUCKING GGGGOD!!" Wony screamed, burying her face in your neck and clinging to your shoulders, trying to catch her breath as she continued to drench your cock with jets of squirt.

"Fuck, I had no idea she could do that," Aeri panted, her wrist visibly tired once she pulled her fingers out of Wony.

"She didn't know either," you panted, hugging Wony with both arms. "It was a nice surprise."

"G-give me... your load... on my face," Wony murmured in your ear. "Only me."

You carefully pulled Wony off of you and laid her on her back where you were. Once again, Aeri and Rina laid down on either side of each other, and you straddled Wony's chest to masturbate right over her perfect sweaty face and full, parted lips. A few quick strokes later, you exploded with moans, filling every corner of your girlfriend's face with cum, especially her sexy lips that were still purposely parted. Wony was a good girl and a perfect canvas, her eyes closed and completely still until you finished painting her.

"Daddy... can we help her?" Rina asked, looking at Wony's face biting her lip.

"Go ahead, I'm dead," you nodded with a gasp.

Rina and Aeri got to work. They licked every drop of your cum off Wony's face and slowly accumulated it inside their mouths. Relatively finished, Wony opened her eyes and then her mouth, also sticking her tongue out. Then Aeri and Rina rose above her, and let your cum fall from their mouths into Wony's mouth, who swallowed it all despite the drops falling on her chin.

"Oh… wow..." you said, completely flabbergasted, and fell back onto the mattress.

Somehow, your body had completely ignored the fact that you were drunk while fucking. But your senses had returned to 'normal', and with it, the alcohol in your system that reminded you that you haven’t caught a sleep in almost 22 hours. You fought as hard as you could, but you were so fucking exhausted that you simply got knocked out.

—————————–

Spren Notes: I hope you guys appreciate this, because it's been a while since I put so much love into a fic lol. As always. Thanks for reading! MASTERLIST HERE!

#wonyoung smut #karina smut #giselle smut #ive smut #aespa smut #kpop smut #smut fanfic #male reader smut #male reader insert #x male smut #x male reader smut #Youtube

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luludeluluramblings · 2 months ago

Text

The Tape

Reader and Conner’s sex tape gets leaked…

Based on this…

Warning: Fem!Reader, NSFW themes, no actual smut, pure crack nonsense, fake Twitter post

A/N: @fanfictionlover277353 Heard you wanted some more! Here’s some of my nonsense!

☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️

"Come on, Babs. Please. I'm begging. Just for a few hours. Two tops." Dick's whining could be heard through out the entire cave. The vibrato of his voice echoing off the rocky walls and stalagmites as he leaned over Barbara's shoulder and played with her hair.

She was currently sitting at the Bat Computer, looking over anything related to the family or incidents in Gotham with strained eyes and an exasperated look on her face.

"I told you, I'm busy-"

"You need a break." Dick interrupted, playing the hypocrite with a grin. "Come on, two hours. We'll watch a movie, you can even pick. No sappy Rom-coms, anything you want. All your choice." He wiggled his eyebrows at her.

Admittedly, Barbara was tempted, but she let out an indulgent sigh.

"Fine. I'll set up notifications to alert me if anything that needs to get scrub gets posted." She quickly type out a few things on to the computer, having it connected to her phone before Dick whisked her off with way too much excitement.

It was a simple notification system. One that would alert her if anyone's vigilantes identities were mentioned in the media. Unfortunately, it wasn't set up to alert her if anyone's civilian identities were mentioned. That included the family's only civilian member as well.

And, a lot can happen in two hours with the power of the internet and a very interesting topic.

☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️

You were having a good day. A very nice day. You had gone out into the world, enjoying the sights and sounds of a mid-morning Gotham. Ignoring the wailing sirens in the distance, by now you had grown used to it.

Dick, Babs, and Alfred where in the manor doing either Bat stuff or sleeping. Damian was visiting Jon. Duke was on patrol. Cass was at dance practice. Bruce was at the Watchtower. Tim was at the Wayne office. Stephanie was your chaperone (stalker) of the day. And, Jason was fuck who knows where.

A peaceful, calm day.

Until you got a Twitter notification and you realized...

"Oh, that's not good. That is really not good." You mutter, watching as the internet burns while you drink your coffee. Not like you could do much else. You still sent a quick text to Conner, just to prepare him while you mentally packed.

You warned him when he suggested filming the two of you making love in the Wayne manor parlor right in front of the fireplace.

You had suggested you’d both go to the mountains and fuck in the wild, but he just had to be kinky and want to do it in the manor. Better lighting he said.

If it wasn’t for the fact that it had been your anniversary and he had pulled out all the stops, you would’ve said no. (It doesn’t matter that he had you literally crying from the pleasure when the two of you had finally finished filming. Nope. Not at all.)

However, that mountain sex might still be on the table. You didn't want to be around when the rest of the family saw that video, so a remote location in the mountains sounded like a decent idea. You’d been wanting to runaway from the manor for a while anyway.

“Hey, Steph, hand me your phone real quick…” Best to probably by yourself some time.

☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️

Conner had a tendency to mute his notification on all his socials. Not that he didn't look at what people tagged him in or mentioned him in. He just find it easier to manage.

So when he got a text from you saying to check Twitter, he was a bit puzzled. But, he figured you had seen him tagged in something funny and wanted him to see it too.

Only for the record in his head to scratch when he realized what he had been tagged in.

"SHIT! Shit, shit, shit, shit." Could he get off planet fast enough? This was bad. Not the video. That was good. He may have thrown extra fuel on the fire by liking it and retweeting it on to his official account, but, damn it, was he proud of that. Probably shouldn’t have hired that rando to edit it for him though.

But, yeah, he was about to possibly be the only man ever murdered in cold blood by Batman. It was one thing to fuck his civilian daughter, but filming it in the man’s own home? Yeah, the kryptonite was definitely coming out and getting stabbed into his skull.

"JON! Distract Damian!" Conner yelled out before taking off, knowing that Jon's super hearing would pick up it up. Best get to Gotham and grab you before Batman came after his ass.

There was a nice planet a few solar systems over that you two could have some fun on. Maybe if he was lucky, you could visit that spot in front of the fireplace on last time. He doubted the two of you would get another chance to do it there again.

☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️

Jason had actually been at Roy’s that day, having finished some Outlaw business from the night before. Only to be interrupted when Roy suddenly choked on his drink and sprayed it all over him from across the table. Soaking Jason and the papers on said table.

“What the fuck?” He muttered in disgust whipping the dripping liquid off him.

Roy, however, was still choking. Wheezing as he clutched his phone like it was the most precious thing in existence.

“Nothing! Nothing!” Instantly, Roy was trying to back the video up the Cloud and his back up phone. He’s paid for porn with less quality than this and he was not wasting this opportunity before it was scrubbed from the internet.

“Let me see that.” Jason pushed the table and slammed it into Roy’s gut, causing the phone to clatter on to it. A video silently playing on the screen.

A video of two people in a fancy parlor. Doing very intimate things.

Two people Jason knew. In a fancy parlor that Jason knew.

A parlor that Jason had literally sat in three days ago watching the fire in the exact same fireplace.

“Did you fucking save this, asshole?”

“Dude, that is ART!”

☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️

Back in the BatCave Alfred had come down to tidy up after resting a bit only to look at the screen in horror. Despite his many skills, socially media escaped him at times.

However he did manage to learn one thing…

“That was what was on my bloody carpet?!”

☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️

Tim had been in his office, going over a couple charts when his secretary burst into the room. Stumbling and falling on the floor panting. One of her heels broken.

Normally she was a serious and composed woman, not tolerating any nonsense from him. So this behavior was unexpected and worrisome.

Tim rushed to stand up at help her when she suddenly blurted out, “Leaked sex tape!”

That made him panic. Before confusion hit him.

“Wait, did I film on of those? I don’t remember filming one of those-“

“Your sister! Superboy! PR is going fucking nuts and getting calls. Share prices are fucking increasing because of this!”

☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️

The Justice League Watchtower was in a meeting. Quite a long one judging by the way most of it’s members sitting around the table seemed to be drifting off or subtly scrolling their phones.

Oliver Queen, Green Arrow was one of those people scrolling. Checking over twitter, catching up on the latest gossip. Only to nearly fucking scream in the middle of the meeting when he realized what Superboy had shared on his official account.

Forget man of steel, the kid has damn balls of steel.

Worst yet, the video had been posted for over an hour. A full hour. Almost two. There was no way that was going to be getting scrubbed and forgotten. He’d bet it was in a military archive already with a team of scientist documenting the half-Kryptonian’s dick size right now.

It was an impressively long video. One that Oliver was sorely tempted to watch. But, he didn’t because he knew Batman would actually rearrange his face if he did. Like fist and plastic surgery rearrange it.

So, when he heard Batman’s voice ring out in the meeting, he broke his phone in half to hide the evidence of his discovery.

Only, Batman hadn’t been calling for his attention. He was calling for Booster Gold’s.

“Booster, focus on the meeting. Put that away—“

It was amusing to see Booster get caught with his phone out watching him scramble to shut it off in a panic. Only for it to fall to the ground.

And, the sound to turn on at full volume.

Moans to fill the silent void of the room.

Oliver could only look on in horror when he realized just what Booster had been watching, during a Justice League meeting, and across the table from Batman himself.

“Conner, please, p-please, stop teasing.”

“No, I don’t think I will. You look so pretty like this. All nice and—“

No one moved. Not as they watched Batman literally work through every emotion under that cowl of his and Superman’s face went as white as it possibly could, anguish washing over both their faces when they realized who was in the video booster was watching.

Diana was the only one that stood up and moved to pick up the phone. Everyone held their breaths when she slowly looked down at the screen.

“Quite impressive. You both must be proud.” She said with a slight hum.

☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️

A/N: I apologize so much for this, but I just was cackling the entire time I came up with this and wrote it. Forgive me y’all! 🙏🏻

A/N: All the Twitter stuff was randomly generated and picked! I’m not good with it, but I added it for giggles!

#yandere batfam #yandere batfamily #batfam x reader #batfamily x reader #yandere dc #yandere batfam x reader #yandere batfamily x reader #anon ask #batfam #batfamily #yandere conner kent x reader #conner kent x reader #yandere conner kent #conner kent #the tape

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yoru-exe · 29 days ago

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PHAINON ࣪ ִֶָ ⋆ . call my name

as overly formal and unnecessary as it sounds, the amphoreus' hero has always been lord phainon to you. while it comes with great honour and respect, much like how it applies to your master; lady aglaea, it feels like there's a barrier between you and him, and he doesn't really like that, considering that he'd like to know you better, closer.

so naturally, he revels in making you drop the honourary title, and the best way to make you do so (based on his countless personal experiments of trial-and-error, which he very much enjoyed) is to catch you off guard. shock you enough to make you forget all about the formality, enough to make you see him not as just amphoreus' hero, but as phainon himself.

one of the times that happened was when you found a lost little girl in the wood. so you asked around the village nearby if she's familiar. you were starting to get some leads when you stumbled upon an elderly man who commented, "my, what lovely family you three look".

"no, we're not-".

"well, thank you so much, good sir. unfortunately, they're not family members. we're actually looking for this child's parents. although i'd like to note that i do look forward to starting a family with this woman".

"phainon!".

of course, that's just one method of making you fall into his plan. there's trill in guessing how you'll react. the blush that never fail to paint your face rosy red always manage to make him fall deeper for you. but nothing made him completely weak than you calling his name consciously out of your own choice.

not even mydei's hardest punch to his gut could do as much damage as you do in this situation.

he was looking at the moon one night all alone when you appeared beside him. "someone seems busy with his thought. would he be so generous to share?", a teasing tone laced your words, making him chuckled. you always seem to know how to calm his nerve when it's going wild.

"just.. thinking about the battle to come. do you think we'll make it this time?". from the hill you're standing on, the ruins around the perimeter glowed under the moonlight. the destruction they faced was unmistakable. from the way he sympathetically shifted his gaze upon them, you guessed that perhaps it's from his previous battle, one that you didn't embark together with, one that he failed.

without warning, you took his hand in yours, caressing circles on the scars on it, a gentle smile gracing your lips. "of course we will, because you have me by your side", you announced pridefully, so full of confidence that it felt contagious on him. "and you by mine, phainon".

you voice was so low, as if a whisper of a mother soothing her crying child, or a girl confessing to her lover of her affection. but he heard you loud and clear.

although, he felt like he needed you to repeat that again because his system was in a mess from you saying his name that he didn't get to savour it to its fullest.

"no, that only come once".

safe to say that he spent the rest of the night begging that you call his name like you just did. but where's the fun in a challenge if you just give him what he wants?

⊹₊ author's note ₊⊹

this is kinda silly, but someone implied that phainon isn't as innocent as what we originally thought he would be did something to my brain chemistry. and you know what? good for him. this man needs some fun before he d***

#honkai star rail #hsr #honkai star rail x reader #hsr x reader #phainon #phainon x reader

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t2316m · 3 months ago

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Cass is face blind, not like oh she’s bad at remembering faces but in an actual cannot for the life of her know who she’s looking at kinda way. Instead of faces she uses context clues, body language, and voices to tell who she’s interacting with. She’s gotten pretty good at it each of her family members having an obvious tell that it’s them. Some of them include how Dick always has blue incorporated into his outfit. Jason always smells slightly of gun powder and cigarettes. Tim’s posture is so bad Cass can tell it’s him from a mile away. Damian has green eyes, Steph has blonde hair, Babs has red hair. Cass wishes all the boys had different colored hair, as it would simply make her life a lot easier.

The face blindness really doesn’t impare her abilities during patrol cause all of the Gotham rogues and heroes wear such dramatic outfits Cass doesn’t need to see their face to know who they are.

Unfortunately problems often arise when she’s in civilian form,

Cass: *at starbucks*

Dick: oh my god Cass! is that you?

Cass: *confused but polite* hello.

Dick: hey, how’s your day been?

Cass: *is unsure why this random guy is talking to her but once again polite* good.

Dick: *confused on why his sister is acting weird*...that’s good.

Cass: *grabbing her order and attempting to leave.*

Dick: Wait don’t you want a ride back to the manor?

Cass: No. *rushing away and is very uncomfortable.*

Cass: *halfway down the street, realizing she’s heard that voice before, immediately pulling out her phone*

Dick: Hello?

Cass: Starbucks?

Dick: Yea..

——

Jason: *recently dyed his white streak black cause he was feeling insecure about it*

Cass: *stands next to no streak Jason sitting at the batcomputer* Bruce?

Jason: I beg your finest pardon

Cass: Oh, Hi Jason.

Jason: *on his way to bleach his streak back cause never again.*

——

Bruce: *brings Clark to the manor, they’re both in civilian clothing looking identical.*

Cass: No metas, too confusing.

Cass: *staring directly at Bruce thinking it’s Clark* I. Don’t. Like. You.

Bruce: *has not been this heartbroken since Khoa Khan.* Clark, I think it’s best for you to leave

——

Cass: *staring at the blonde person in the kitchen thinking it’s Steph* oh wow your hair..

Bernard: *also face blind.* Tim…You sound different.

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charliemwrites · 3 months ago

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Omegas are the best for the military. Everyone knows that, it’s just common sense.

Omegas are notoriously level-headed and calm, protective without the tendency towards aggression and territorial possessiveness that characterizes their Alpha counterparts. They’re cooperative and adaptable, with heightened senses that at one evolutionary time kept them safe from rabid Alphas.

Now, it’s best suited to sniffing out potential threats, communicating sub-vocally, and noticing the smallest changes in their environment. The military finds them much more economical for combat, special ops, and even espionage compared to Alphas, who are pheromone sensitive, hard-headed, and generally indelicate.

That said, they’re not without their uses. Alphas tend to be lean, fast, and vicious. That aggression makes them both sword and shield in a fight, filing their sense of pain and fatigue down to almost nothing until the threat is neutralized.

Still, having a full-time Alpha in a squad isn’t a necessity except in special circumstances.

Per usual, Task Force 141 is special circumstances.

Four specialist Omegas with a metric ton of trauma per team member has the unfortunate consequence of hormonal imbalance. One thing feeds into another, a heat is put on hold for a mission because they can’t spare the manpower - it stacks and stacks and stacks until sleep is scarce and their usually well-maintained instincts are bursting at the seams. Compound that with the near loss of one of their team members…

The new Alpha is already there when the team returns from their latest assignment.

Laswell is waiting on the tarmac and an operative in black gear is standing a polite distance (plus one step more) from her elbow. Well within peripheral, but deferent. Their hands are clasped behind their back, shoulders straight but loose.

As TF141 approaches, Price expects the Alpha pheromones to waft his way any moment. It’s normal, expected even. A new environment, meeting strange Omegas, Alphas usually burn through their neutralizers quickly. Perhaps a vestigial instinct to carve a space for themselves in the world. Not necessarily their fault, but it happens.

Price is surprised that he smells nothing from the Alpha at all. Just the scents of detergent and soap, clean and standard. A quick glance at Simon confirms their most-sensitive nose doesn’t detect anything either.

Laswell introduces them, an Alpha that she’s personally worked with before and can verify is solid both on and off the field.

The Alpha’s muzzle is heavy duty but long-wear design. Hard-case and rigid instead of the more popular soft and flexible ones. Cushioned but firm at the bridge of the nose, chin, and corners of the jaw. Buckled tight at the back of the head, steel grid pattern across the front.

Price doesn’t arch his eyebrows at it but it’s a near thing.

They duck their head in greeting when Laswell introduces them as Saint, eyes flicking up briefly to each team member, eye-shine reflecting green in the bright runway lights.

Soap whistles, impressed.

“Yer a big ‘un, tha’s fer damn sure. Didnae ken they make ‘em like ye,” he drawls. Ghost cuffs him upside the head, reminding him to behave.

Saint blinks and doesn’t say anything. Curious.

“Let’s do proper introductions inside,” Price decides.

It goes much the same way in the 141’s den as it did out on the tarmac. Saint stands quiet and still while the Omegas take their turns.

There’s no scent to familiarize themselves with, so it’s mostly offering theirs to the Alpha. Except Saint doesn’t duck down to the neck Gaz offers. Instead, they pluck up his hand and bring his wrist to their muzzle. Inhale so quietly that only the swell of their chest indicates that they’re breathing him in.

They chuff softly, hold so loose that Gaz’s hand nearly drops from theirs. It’s approval, it can’t be anything else, but it sounds so… detached.

Still, Gaz chuffs in return, and makes way for the others. Saint does the same to Soap and by the time Simon steps up, he’s already tugging his sleeve up and his glove down.

Simon, to his own surprise, receives the same polite huff as the two sergeants. Most Alphas have found his direct scent to be unpleasant - too sharp and savory, bordering on Alpha. But Saint doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest.

When it’s finally Price’s turn, the only difference is that Saint swipes their own wrist along his. Scent claim. Not marking the 141 as theirs, but rather Saint as belonging with them.

Laswell, suspiciously amused, takes her leave soon after.

The 141 has an Alpha. A permanent one.

Living with an Alpha would have been a learning curve on its own. Living with SAINT is something else entirely.

For one, they apply clinical-strength neutralizer religiously. They have spares stashed everywhere. In their go-bag, their combat gear, the den, the lockers - even one in Price’s office. It’s better than the ones with fragrance, but if not for their ever-present muzzle, no one would be able to tell that they’re an Alpha.

And speaking of the muzzle.

It goes beyond common courtesy and public conduct. Even in the den, they keep the thing tightly pressed to their face, and don’t remove it for anything. They eat in their room and drink through straws when necessary.

When Price tells them that the team wouldn’t mind if they used a bite guard in the den, they just chuff softly and brush a hand along his shoulder. The muzzle stayed.

It’s not to say they don’t seem comfortable. Day by day, little signs of trust and ease seep into their Alpha’s mannerisms if they know where to look for it. A brush of skin here, a sub-vocal purr there. Spending hours upon hours in the den, available for any of the Omegas to sit with or cuddle or chat to. As much as teammate as an Alpha in the traditional sense.

It doesn’t take Soap and Gaz long at all to start hanging all over them, but Saint takes it with all the patience of their namesake. Price finds Soap lounging in their lap most times that they’re sitting, or leaning hard into their side while they watch recruits.

The muzzle is a no-touch zone, but they don’t get even growl the first time Soap discovers that. They just redirect him with a quiet click of their tongue, and let him nuzzle in when he apologizes.

Gaz is hardly any better, scent marking Saint like some bad Alpha stereotype. Poor thing goes around smelling overwhelmingly of bergamot and honey sometimes, but they never mind, never stop him from pressing his face to their chest or their back or even into their hands. Rubbing his face over any bit of skin or fabric available, even their jugular, despite the vulnerability of such a spot.

Still, Saint is aloof.

They’re perfectly responsive to their Omegas, head tilting at the slightest vocalization, quick to offer physical comfort when asked. They hardly ever seek it out for themself though, and show none of the near-obsessive behaviors associated with even the most mild of Alphas on the spectrum.

“I dinnae think Alpha likes us,” Soap whines one evening.

Saint is eating in their room, leaving the Omegas to a cuddle pile while they wait for their return.

He’s been lamenting it for a while now, repressing the rejected pang in his gut any time Saint doesn’t vocalize back, or reach for them first.

They work out in the Alpha-Only gym on base and do their laundry in the designated Alpha wash. Neither of those are regulations, it’s a choice they make. And it hurts a bit.

Saint is sweet, but their politeness goes past the point of old-fashioned.

“Course they do,” Simon grunts, dismissive. “They probably like us too much.”

“How do you reckon?” Gaz asks.

“Alpha didn’ go t’ eat ‘til we were all fed,” he replies, shrugging.

And it’s true. Saint doesn’t collect a scrap of nutrition until every one of their Omegas has had something to eat. Even Price, stubborn and work-focused as he can be, is gently urged to eat before Saint fills their own belly.

It doesn’t stop there.

Saint is always the last one on or off a transport, and quick to notice if any of them are injured. They’re always present around large groups of other Alphas, especially recruits.

The sheer amount of time they spend available is unusual, preferring the den to rest in their off hours - even sleeping there on occasion.

Then Gaz’s heat is due. A week out and he’s already feeling it descending - it’s been well over six months since his last one. His skin feels itchy, his senses on overdrive. Thirsty and hungry and generally feeling restless beneath the skin.

“Alpha,” he calls.

Saint’s eyes are on him instantly, one-sided conversation with some other, non-Pack Omega forgotten. Gaz purrs, pleased.

“I want something of yours.”

They tilt their head, a silent question.

“A shirt or something,” he specifies.

And something in their gaze flickers. Gaz isn’t sure what it means, but it definitely looks positive.

Saint brings him something better - a blanket. It’s intimate; it’s perfect. It smells incredible, if… oddly faded. From his most reserved Pack member, it means the world.

Gaz balls himself up with it in the nest he assembles over the next day and a half, until he wakes up one morning with the knowledge that his heat will l well and truly have taken hold before midday.

He puts in his notice and calls his Pack.

Saint is the last to enter his barrack, a huge bag of supplies in their arms. Not just for Gaz, but for the rest of them. No one will be leaving unless duty calls.

And it’s perfect. The best heat Gaz has ever had. Surrounded by Pack and protected by his Alpha, who stays on watch while Price and Ghost and Soap fuck him through the dregs of preheat and well into Heat proper.

Half of him purrs at his Alpha’s dedication to protecting them, to providing for them. The other half protests the Alpha’s attention being anywhere but on him.

“Alpha,” he calls. And when that only earns him Saint’s eyes and not his affection, he barks, sharper, “Alpha.”

They come to him instantly, settled in between his legs, smooth their thumbs along the glands at the base of his neck. He curls into them trilling and chirping and needing more than just social acceptability right now.

And finally, finally, a low rumble sounds through his Alpha’s chest. It’s deep and rich, hits the subharmonics in a way that has all the Omegas going still and quiet. Their voice purrs out a moment later, practically vibrating their skulls.

“Easy, Omega.”

Gaz bares his neck, whispering, “Saint.”

They lean in, breathing loud and deep, warm hands soothing an ache in his lower back. “I’m here, Kyle.”

They fuck well into sundown, Kyle so wound up that he can’t bear to be parted from Saint to even let them breathe. Any space between them is whined or growled or bitten out of existence, the ever-indulgent Alpha soothing their Omega with their body, with the newly discovered vocalizations that he just can’t get enough of.

Ghost and Price have to feed and hydrate him between rounds, working together to manage his clingy limbs and careless (but sharp) teeth. In the meantime, Soap helps to do the same for Saint, who is far more cooperative.

“How’re you still goin’?” Soap wonders, amazed, slipping bites of granola between the bars of their muzzle. Saint is sitting upright with Gaz collected against their chest, sweaty but already breathing evenly again.

Saint licks a bit of chocolate off their lip and meets his eyes easy as anything, serene for how blown out their pupils are.

“I’m your Alpha. I go until you need me to stop.”

Which just sets them all off, each taking (needing) a turn with their Alpha.

By then, their neutralizer has begun to wear off, friction and sweat and fabric thinning the chemical deodorant to nothing. The scent is intoxicating, unlike anything any of them have ever smelled before. It’s overwhelmingly Alpha, overwhelmingly good. Even Ghost and Price, rare to bend the knee to anyone, find themselves weak for that scent.

No wonder Saint keeps it on lock, it’s practically a weapon in itself, not demanding submission but expecting it. A foregone conclusion. In a social setting it would be a brutal domination, rude wouldn’t even be the right word for it.

Saint isn’t just an Alpha, they’re on the extreme end of the spectrum.

The kind that comes with counseling and desensitizing therapies. Etiquette schools and specialized doctors.

The kind of Alpha that can not only manage four chaotic Omegas, but give them what they need.

With types like Saint, Alpha isn’t just a designation, it’s a title. And the 141 is proud that it’s theirs.

#cod #thoughts™️#my writing #fanfiction #john soap mactavish #kyle gaz garrick #john price #simon riley #a/b/o dynamics #a/b/o #non traditional omegaverse

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gaywineauntsstuff · 3 months ago

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Every single member of the Batfamily lies about their taste in music

Damian will claim that he only listens to classical music and that everything else is beneath him.

Damian will unironically listen to trashy Arab pop and the absolute worst Bollywood songs known to man (Dick introduced him to them and he hates the fact that sometimes he gets Sheila Ki Jawani stuck in his head during missions)

Tim will put on the most ear grating hyper pop you've ever heard and claim with full chest that these is the peak of humanities capabilities with music (Damian, Jason and Steph have all tried to kill him for this take) He will also play stuff like the living tombstones and sing it obnoxiously loud when he's working on the computer.

Tim however loves his 90s grunge and it's all that's playing in his headphones. (think nirvana, pearl Jam, Melvins, Alice in Chains etc) He has tracked down so many shirts and concert posters and watched every bit of content from the older shows.

Jason will claim he only listens to east coast rap, biggie, Nas, Jay etc and maybe some older metal. He will fight you on east vs west coast music, there will be weaponry involved.

Jason likes rap music... he unfortunately prefers west coast rap and has listened to no vaseline like 500 times. He will deny this till the day he dies...again. (Dick knows and threatens to tell Steph)

Steph will steal the aux and play Taylor Swifts greatest hits until one of the Boys threatens mutiny. Every single one of the bats has had style stuck in their heads during a stakeout at least twice. She will claim that the only rap song she can tolerate in Eminem and the 7/11 is Beyoncés best song.

Steph is an underground fan, think the dude selling mixtapes on the subway type shit. She also unlike Jason genuinely loves East Coast Rap music more than anything and knows every single wu-tang clan song by heart, same with Biggie. Not only does she love the music she also spends any free time binging those "history of rap and its consequences" videos and has been a firm believer that P.Diddy had a hand in a lot of the Death row records well...deaths.

Cass, well everyone thinks Cass has really good taste bc its Cass and she has zero flaws (don't @ me) she never takes the aux and will usually listen to her music while she's chilling or doing stretches. None of them have heard or seen a single one of her playlists except Duke.

its all 2010s top 40s pop music and like the trashy kind too, Beauty and the Beat, Kesha, Katy Perry. It's her turning of her brain time and she will be straight vibing to Rude! by magic or Boom Clap or Shower. she has shown this to Duke, smirked and told him that even if he tried to tell anyone they wouldn't believe him.

Duke is the only one who doesn't... lie. He just hides a few things. Lies of omission don't count as lies when the bats will lie to you about what they had for breakfast, while they are visibly eating breakfast. Duke says he listens to everything and he does. Literally everything. His patrol Jam is offensive bc it with start with Norwegian death metal and immediately switches to "like a G6" followed by kendrick Lamar and then descendants Disney channel movie music.

Bruce... Bruce is just weird, everyone asks him and gets a different answer. Bc he doesn't... like music. Like at all. It's all noise, his mother played instruments so he learned like 14 and he hates how they all sound. He just like vague batwings fluttering in dead silence.

Dick Grayson will obnoxiously play top 40 and radio music religiously around the bats. He claims it's the best music for rhythmic acrobatics and trapeze work and that true! Jason hates this kind of music the most, it's formulaic and holds no substance and drives him insane.

But Dick only listens to that music when he's moving, flipping doing high energy stuff. When he just wants to chill? This man has the most depressing music taste you've ever seen. You know that sad song from ur favorite artist that you can't listen to without crying. Yeah that's his bread and butter. Every single song is just flat out tear inducing, some of these bands have like 100 listeners and he is one of them and it's just their saddest song that reads like suicide note. The titans have conducted an intervention bc its just... concerning. He just thinks it's neat!

#batman #jason todd #tim drake #cassandra cain #damian wayne #dick grayson #duke thomas #batfam #batfamily #comics #ur honor theyre all mentally ill #Alfred says listens to rain sounds over violin #he actually listens to horror movie pre jumpscare music #im not elaborating #Jason todd is a fake fan smh #Tim is a 90s kid even if he is now born in 06 #no I will not take criticism

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asahicore · 6 months ago

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cold hands - psh (m)

this work contains smut - minors please do not interact

pairing. sunghoon x fem!reader

synopsis. plot plot plot what is a plot when you can just have vibes and a vague narrative direction... if you MUST know you go to your brother's hockey team back-to-uni party accidentally matching one of the members with your cowgirl barbie costume. hopelessly romantic sunghoon sees this as a sign that the two of you are meant to be together, but you're impossible to read and soon the two of you settle on an ambiguous secret friends with benefits relationship. unfortunately, conflict ensues.

genre. strangers to friends to fwb to lovers..?? its not an asahicore fic if it doesnt have fluff angst AND smut, brothers best friend, jock x nerd type vibe, slight miscommunication put your pitchforks away and hear me out pls it works out i promise, reader has ISSUES 💜 loser loverboy sunghoon, its mostly in his pov, i know nothing about ice hockey

word count. 39.5k 😂

a/n. inspired by @moonlighthoon's request for the 1k trope event! sorry it took ages to write but i hope you like it and that i met ur expectations!!!! hope everyone else enjoys it too, this is the longest fic ive ever written and im quite proud of it, pls pls pls let me know what u thought <333 shoutout to @zreamy .. good luck with your studies, thank u for beta reading and making this fic exponentially better as u always do ⭐️ credit to @/plutism for the dividers :)

Some men never think of it. You did. You’d come along And say you’d nearly brought me flowers But something had gone wrong.

The shop was closed. Or you had doubts - The sort that minds like ours Dream up incessantly. You thought I might not want your flowers.

It made me smile and hug you then. Now I can only smile. But, look, the flowers you nearly brought Have lasted all this while. - Wendy Cope, Flowers

When Sunghoon falls in love, it usually goes as quickly as it came.

Just to name a few:

There had been Ahn Yujin, whose family had moved next to his when he was twelve, and whose dog got on perfectly with his. His crush on the cute girl next door grew with every walk the four of them took but disappeared the second she ditched him to walk home from school with Na Jaemin.

A few years later, there had been Bae Sumin, who sat in front of him and always had her hair up in a ponytail he found exceedingly pretty. An appointment at the hairdresser was enough for him to stop liking her, as if his interest in her had been laying in the ten centimeters of hair she had cut off.

In his junior year of high school, there had been Kim Yerim, a college student that tutored him in Math and English. She was three years older, but that didn’t deter him—what did was the fact that she was dating a college graduate. She showed him a picture once, and the guy had biceps probably twice the size of Sunghoon’s. He thought it was safer to give up on her than to fight such a bulky guy five years his senior.

The first time it stuck was during his first year of college. She was his coach’s daughter and he liked the way she would smile at him when she came to watch their practice. Sunghoon didn’t like to think about her, mainly because even after she broke his heart, for a while there, he continued to love her.

So, when he first spots you from across the room at the Welcome Back costume party thrown by his hockey team, unintentionally the Cowboy Barbie to his Cowboy Ken, he tries not to read too much into it. Barbie was a hit this summer, it’s an easy and topical costume, of course there’s a pretty girl wearing the same bright pink cowboy hat he is. It doesn’t mean she’s the love of his life.

Right?

He knows you from the pictures that littered the walls of Minjeong, Yunjin and Chaewon’s apartment last year, from Instagram posts, both yours and your friends’, from your video calls with Jake, who dragged him into the camera’s view. Say hi to my sister, he’d insist, like Sunghoon was a child who didn’t want to greet his great-great-aunt. He’d dip in to say hi as requested, ask how you were, and mumble me too like a fool when you said you heard so much about him and were excited to meet him in real life.

These are the things Sunghoon knows about you: Jake’s older sister by a year, currently on a year abroad in Rome, studies something fancy like Classics, which he hadn’t known people still did in the twenty-first century, deep attachment to Stardew Valley in first year, rarely seen with the same man twice, very pretty. Absurdly so. He’s also weirdly obsessed over the texts you’ve sent to the group chat he was added to at the beginning of last year—scarce, short, elusive. Never more than two sentences, and always long after the conversation was over. But sometimes you’d send photos and videos out of nowhere, of your adventures or of funny things you saw online, and he always hearted them. He even replied to it sometimes (brave hahas or that’s so cool!s), in hopes that it would make you like him, would make you think, he gets me.

The two of you have never formally met because you left for Italy the year he started university. He’s been nervous about meeting you since the first time the group told him about you.

Now that he is about to, he can hear his heart thumping so loudly in his ears, it drowns out the bass of the music. He’s glad he gets to see you before having to talk to you—he’s not sure he could take in your presence and form coherent words at the same time. He watches you laugh with your friends, the smile lines that form like dimples around your mouth, the strands of hair you keep tucking behind your ear. Then someone joins your group—except it’s not just someone, it’s Minjeong, her denim jacket so often worn he recognises her from the back, and he realizes the people you’re with have been Chaewon and Yunjin this whole time. The three of them have been banging on about you all year, even more so due to the fact that their replacement flatmate was dreadful, a Spanish girl who only hung out with other Spanish exchange students and looked the girls up and down when they tried to invite her out somewhere.

You turn towards Minjeong, and before he knows it, he’s in your line of sight, and your eyes meet. Confusion, then a flash of recognition goes through your eyes. He had been resting his elbow on a countertop, cider bottle in hand and watching you, he realizes, not unlike a creep, but now he stands up straight and looks around him as if you hadn’t just caught him staring. Before he can find a way out, Jake appears by his side and throws an arm around his shoulders, guiding him into the throng of party-goers and, coincidentally, closer to you.

“Dude, you’ll never guess what.”

“What?” Sunghoon says, tone coming out more irritated than he means it to. He’s just had to give up on making a good first impression on you, and he doesn’t even have the time to think of a way to redeem himself. When he dares to look back at you, your eyes are already on him, a small smile on your lips. You probably hate him already.

“My sister is dressed just like you. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you guys came together or something. Hey, guys!” Jake calls out, and all of a sudden, it’s not just your eyes on him, it’s everyone’s. Well, to be fair, they’re also looking at Jake. But you’re only looking at Sunghoon, and he can’t look away from you either, can’t even manage the politeness to hug everyone in greeting like Jake is doing now. He watches as your eyes rake over his figure, taking him in, assessing him, and he suddenly feels awkward in his costume that matches yours, like he’s somehow overstepped a boundary, like you might think he’s asked around about your costume, found out you were going as Barbie and decided to match you so you’d think the two of you were meant together, like he had two minutes ago, and come to the fairly reasonable decision that he was the weirdest man on Earth. But then you meet his eyes, smile a kind, genuine smile, and his whole body relaxes.

“Hey, Hoon!” Chaewon calls, arms open wide. He remembers himself and hugs everyone, even you, and he has to pretend like this is completely fine and normal, like his hands aren’t practically shaking as his arms circle your shoulders in a two-second embrace.

You squeeze one of his shoulders, and keeping his countenance is a Herculean task. He feels like those people centuries ago who passed out at the sight of a lady’s ankle. “It’s so nice to finally meet you,” you say, peering at him over the rim of your red cup. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

Sunghoon feels the blush growing on his face; he wasn’t expecting so much of your attention so quickly. He takes a swig of his lukewarm cider, hoping if he seems drunk, it might explain his redness. “Good things, I hope,” he says, aware of the unoriginality but unable to come up with anything better.

“Oh, don’t worry, they’ve made you out to be a saint.” You’ve not once broken eye contact or stopped smiling—it should intimidate him, but instead, it makes Sunghoon feel like you’ve known each other for ages and that this isn’t your first conversation at all. He finds himself able to relax into a smile, and manages to meet your eyes for more than three seconds at a time.

“You don’t believe them?”

You pause, gaze zeroing in on him even more intensely than previously, smile turning smirk-like. Sunghoon’s heart skips a beat. Okay, maybe he’s not that relaxed. “I don’t know you well enough to make up my mind yet. But we’ll be seeing plenty of each other from now on, won’t we?”

This is exactly what Sunghoon has been warned about. You at parties, the way you look at guys, the way you talk to them. Sunghoon has been the audience of more than one recreation of such a scene, Yunjin pretending to be you, Chaewon pretending to be your “victim,” as the others liked to call them. Because once you had set your eyes on a man, he had little chance of making it out. Jay prides himself as being the only survivor, although he has to admit it’s only because Jake interrupted your conversation, telling him, “I see you’ve met my sister.” And Jay was not the kind of person that got off with their friends’ siblings, especially since his and Jake’s friendship was only a week long at that point, and he didn’t want to ruin the atmosphere in their dorm for the rest of the year just because his dick had gotten the best of him. His words. Whenever they were all hanging out together and they called you, one of the girls would inevitably ask if you had “turned any Italian boys into men” or if you had been “terrorizing the good men of Rome recently.” You would either roll your eyes or say this was not a conversation to be had in front of your brother.

Sunghoon had been sure they were exaggerating—it takes two to tango, as they say, and it wasn’t like you ensnared innocent men into your trap. They had to be willing, to want something from you just as much as you wanted something from them. He’d also gotten them to admit it wasn’t that frequent, that you weren’t looking for a new prey every party, just once in a while when you found someone you liked. (He’d been very quiet when Jay asked why he was trying so hard to defend you.)

But now that he is on the receiving end of your alluring smiles, he starts to understand how one could fall for you without meaning to. He knows he can’t — Jake probably wouldn’t take to it kindly, and he didn’t want to spoil the dynamic of his best group of friends at uni — but he has a feeling that ten minutes of talking to you would be enough to shake his resolve.

“Oh, yeah, I’m sure we will. Jake said you studied a lot, but I’m sure we’ll get to hang out. All of us, I mean,” he quickly adds, lest you think he’s already asking you to hang out one-on-one. Sunghoon would not be that forward.

“Of course. I have to see if you did a good enough job replacing me for a year.” Sunghoon’s eyes widen, and before he can blurt out something weirdly laudatory like “I could never replace you, I would never even try, I don’t know you but you’re clearly far superior to me in every aspect and I could never even claim to fill your spot,” you giggle and tell him it’s just a joke. “If anything, I’m happy Jake has managed to make a new friend that he didn’t meet through me, that loser,” you say, and together, you laugh at Jake’s loserness, a topic that will never fail to amuse Sunghoon, although he’s not faring much better in that department.

“Like, look at him right now,” you say, jerking your head in Jake’s general direction, somewhere behind Sunghoon’s shoulder—and that’s when he realizes that it’s just the two of you standing there, the others gone without him even noticing. Sunghoon turns around, finding the girls, Jay, and a bunch of other people he vaguely recognizes huddled around Jake. They all start chanting his name as he gulps down a giant red cup of beer, then raises the empty cup over his head in victory and crumples it, beaming at the people around him.

“What is he doing?” Sunghoon asks, laughing at his friend.

“Jay called him over for a beer-off,” you explain. After a beat, you ask, “You didn’t notice?”

The implications are clear in your tone and in your eyes. In the smile playing on your lips, just shy of being a smirk. You didn’t notice because of me, is what you’re really telling Sunghoon—at least, that’s the impression he’s getting. And you’d be right. He was too busy talking to you and trying his best not to make a fool of himself to notice his friends leaving, too engrossed with you to register the sudden disappearance of four people. Across the room, where people have shifted their attention to yet another hockey player downing a sizable amount of beer, he catches Chaewon’s eyes, and she winks at him. Of course—leave it to Chaewon, to whom Sunghoon once made the mistake of drunkenly rambling about how pretty you looked in your Instagram posts last year, to give you and Sunghoon some time alone, “to get to know each other properly,” she would probably say. Although he isn’t sure that small talk over 2000s music counts as getting to know someone. According to the others, she and Yunjin started dating a month into their second year, so Chaewon has proclaimed herself as the goddess of dating and is now always trying to set people up. Sunghoon thinks she’s just living vicariously through her friends now that she has a Mrs. at home.

Because the filter usually at work between the part of Sunghoon’s brain where sentences are formed and his mouth is apparently on leave today, he says, “I do have a pretty distracting sight in front of me.” He’s immediately both mortified and impressed by this sudden bout of confidence, but then you look down and giggle, actually giggle, the sweetest sound he’s ever heard, and only pride remains.

“So, Ken?” you ask, a cute attempt to change the subject, taking the fabric of the pink bandana around his neck between your fingers. Sunghoon wonders if you’re going to yank him down to your level, and he thinks he wouldn’t have much of a problem with that.

He realizes that even though you should technically know each other’s names, you haven’t actually exchanged them, so in a confused but correcting tone, he says, “Um, Sunghoon.” He only belatedly realizes that you hadn’t gotten his name wrong, you were just making a comment on his costume, which he had completely forgotten he was wearing in the first place. Just as he’s about to backtrack and salvage what he can of the situation, you burst into laughter, hand leaving his bandana to cover your mouth as he hides his face behind his own hands, laughing along with you despite himself.

“I know your name is Sunghoon!” you exclaim. The gratification of hearing you say his name takes away some of his embarrassment. “I’m Y/N, by the way. Not Barbie.”

Sunghoon nods. “Good to know.”

The laughter gradually dies down, but your smile stays the same; wide, bright, a smile that exposes your teeth and turns your eyes into crescents. Sunghoon can’t look away. He’s awash with nerves, your gaze simultaneously planting his feet to the ground like they’re full of lead and making him light-headed. His heart is beating so fast, he can barely feel it anymore.

The two of you stand there, looking and smiling at each other, like in a cliché movie scene where everyone else at the party seems to fade into the background. He has no idea how much time has passed when you break the silence. “It really is nice to finally meet you,” you say, repeating your statement from earlier, as though you mean it more now.

“It is,” Sunghoon simply replies, because he doesn’t know how else to express the relief of seeing you in the flesh after hearing about you and looking at a digital version of you for a year. The relief, but also the anticipation of what is to come now that he knows he likes you even more now that he’s actually seen you. And improbable as it sounds, you might even feel the same.

Sunghoon can already feel it. The beginning of something.

You nod towards his now empty cup. “Want a refill?”

Together, you make your way through the crowd of increasingly drunk students until you reach the kitchen, where the countertops overflow with open bottles of liquor of all sorts and paper plates with half-eaten pizza slices on them. He watches your every move as you find a cold bottle of beer in the fridge, a bottle of strawberry syrup in a random cupboard that you had to know was there, and a half-empty discarded bottle of lemonade on the counter. You ask him to tell you about last year, everything you missed out on, and so he does. He knows you’ve probably heard it all from the others before, but you still laugh and gasp like it’s the first time you’re hearing about any of it, all the hockey games they won, Jay getting food poisoning from the sketchy pizzeria he kept eating at, Yunjin almost getting into a fistfight with a man twice her size who was flirting with Chaewon.

You assemble two drinks and hand him one of them. When he takes a sip, his eyes widen at the refreshing and sweet taste. “Good, right?” you say. “I discovered it on a trip to France last summer.”

“Thank God for France. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever enjoyed drinking beer,” he says.

“That’s probably because you can’t taste the beer at all.”

Sunghoon smiles. “Probably, yeah.”

You turn around, lower back against the counter, and take in the current kitchen population. “We really weren’t very original with our costumes tonight.” Sunghoon, who had not taken his eyes off of you this entire time, follows your gaze. He counts five partygoers dressed in some version of Barbie or Ken, and that’s just the kitchen. He doesn’t blame them—the fact that so many people came dressed in costumes at all impresses him, especially for a party on the 10th of September and not the 31st of October. The social committee of the hockey team just seems to really love themed and dress-up parties.

He chuckles, then takes a sip of his drink. It’s really nice. “Yeah, but we look the best.”

Your head whips towards him, eyes glinting with something that makes Sunghoon smile, even though he doesn’t know what you’re thinking. “Should we enter the couple’s costume contest?” you ask.

At the mention of couple, his eyes widen, his brain tricking him into thinking you’ve asked him out for a second. But when what you actually meant dawns on him, the first thing to come out of his mouth is, “There’s a couple’s costume contest?!”

“Mh-hm. The sign-up sheet should be around here.”

For what feels like the millionth time since he’s started talking to you, his face heats up. “Are non-couples allowed to enter?”

“We’re Barbie and Ken. I’d say that’s enough of a couple, don’t you think?”

Right. Because he had been thinking of Sunghoon and Y/N, while you obviously meant Barbie and Ken. In the contest, it doesn’t actually matter whether the contestants are dating in real life—it matters that their costumes match. Sunghoon knows that. He just needed a second.

He grins, deep dimples punctuating his cheeks. “Okay, let’s do it.”

Armed with your drinks, you walk around the kitchen in search of the sign-up sheet. You find it on a wall next to the dining table, which has been turned into a beer pong table for tonight’s festivities, and the sheet is almost filled with names already. Sunghoon can only hope that by midnight, when the contest is set to take place, most participants will have had too much to drink to remember it. You write your names on the list, and Sunghoon likes seeing his name in your handwriting so much he almost wants to take a picture.

“There you guys are!”

You both turn around to find Jake stumbling towards you, clearly more intoxicated than when he had left you half-an-hour ago. He rests his arms on your shoulders, forcing Sunghoon down to his height and making you stumble forwards from the sudden added weight. “I’ve been looking all over for you- You’re entering the contest?!”

For a split second, Sunghoon is scared he’s going to get scolded by Jake for trying to hit on his sister, but surprisingly, it’s you he narrows his eyes at. “Y/N, what are you roping my little Hoonie into?”

Sunghoon groans, face perpetually red at this point. Leave it to Jake to make him seem like a total loser.

You frown at your brother. “I’m not roping your little Hoonie into anything.” Sunghoon wants to bury himself alive. “We agreed on doing it together. Right?” you ask, turning towards Sunghoon and batting your eyelashes at him. It makes him feel a bit better.

He turns back to Jake. “Right. We’re just joining forces to crush the competition.”

Jake scoffs. “As if.” He snatches the pen from your hands and underlines his name as well as Kazuha’s, the girl he came with tonight, three thick black lines that almost erases the names underneath them. “You can’t beat the hockey player and cheerleader combo.”

“Those aren’t even costumes, you guys are a hockey player and a cheerleader,” you protest.

“So?” Jake simply retorts, more attitude in his tone than he would have were he sober.

“So, that defeats the whole purpose of a costume contest.”

Jake knocks on your cowboy hat, and you immediately put it back in place, glaring at him. “As if Barbie was the greatest costume ever. Whatever, let’s just play beer pong so I can defeat you guys twice in one night.”

“You’re on, Sim.”

“You’re going down, Sim.”

Sunghoon had just been watching your back-and-forth amusedly when you grab his hand, leading him to the side of the table opposite Jake. His fingers tingle under your touch, but just like that, it’s gone. He’d rather keep on holding your hand than play this stupid game, but he isn’t opposed to taking Jake’s ego down a notch, either. The boy can barely stand straight, anyway, so it probably won’t be a very tough match.

Some guy he doesn’t recognize in a striped black-and-white referee t-shirt fills most cups with beer and a couple on each side with shots of vodka—he’s so earnest, Sunghoon isn’t sure whether he’s just taking his costume-slash-role very seriously or if he has genuinely been hired to look over the beer pong matches of the night. Some order in the brutish world of college parties, Sunghoon guesses.

Minjeong, Yunjin, Chaewon and Jay appear then, exchanging a quick look at the sight of you and Sunghoon together. The two former join your team, while the two latter join Jake’s, as well as other people that Sunghoon vaguely recognizes from other parties. But by the simple action of getting behind him, they become his most trusted allies for at least this part of the night.

You’re a terrible shot, but Sunghoon makes up for it by scoring almost every round. In his defense, he only misses when you come up close to him and whisper in his ear which cup he should go for. Your breath tickles his (oddly sensitive) ears and the combined scents of the strawberry and lemonade on your tongue and your delicate perfume make his head spin. He can barely think straight, so his aim is naturally thrown off—other than that, he makes Jay drink a healthy amount of beer. He almost feels bad for his friend, but he’d arrived late at the party and needed to quickly catch up with everyone’s level of ebriety anyway.

When the opposite team is down to their last cup, a lightning bolt of luck strikes you, and your ball disappears straight into the vodka-filled cup that Jake now has the honor of downing.

Sunghoon gives you no time to celebrate, to gloatingly pump your fists in the air and point a mocking finger at your brother, because as soon as you make the shot, he wraps his arms around your waist and lifts you off the ground. When you’re on your feet again, you spin around to find a proud-looking Sunghoon beaming down at you. You burst into giggles and high-five him, your palms perfectly clapping against each other, and he threads your fingers together. A current of electricity rushes through him, and for a second, he swears it’s just the two of you in this packed room.

The moment is cut short by the loud cheers of the others on your team as they shake your shoulders and raise their hands for you to high-five them too. Minjeong flips the other team off and Yunjin has to go hug Chaewon and reassure her it’s nothing personal. It’s really quite easy to make college students happy—or devastated.

You raise your eyebrows at Jake, who’s busy glaring at you instead of accepting his defeat and taking his shot. With a begrudging sigh, he tips his head back and drinks the vodka in one gulp, the cheers doubling in volume when his face scrunches at the bitter taste of the liquor.

“Don’t act so proud,” he scolds you. “Sunghoon carried your team.”

“Maybe, but she made us win in the end,” Sunghoon retorts, putting an arm around your shoulder.

Jake scoffs, frowning at Sunghoon’s hand placement before eye-rolling his gaze away. “Whatever.” He slides his phone out of his back pocket and smiles as he shows the two of you his screen. “Would you look at the time? The contest is starting soon.” Then, with an accusatory finger pointed at you, adds, “You may have won this battle, but I’m winning the war.”

He stomps away, presumably to find Kazuha before the contest starts, and it’s your turn to eye-roll at his dramatics. You grab Sunghoon’s hand that hangs off of your shoulders, and together, make your way through the crowd again to the garage, where the contest is taking place. All the alcohol he’s been drinking has definitely started kicking in by now, and he finds himself giggling at nothing with you.

When you reach the threshold, still hand in hand, Sunghoon stops so abruptly behind you that you almost stumble. You look back at him, then follow his gaze towards the garage and the sheer amount of people in there. Worriedly, his eyes take in every single one of the contenders. You let go of his hand and stand in front of him, placing your hands on his shoulders and putting on a determined expression. You’d almost look like a parent reassuring their kid before their first day of kindergarten if you weren’t so much shorter than him. “Don’t even worry about them, Sunghoon. We look better than anyone here.”

His eyebrows crease. “There’s like, three other Barbie-Ken couples here. Some of these costumes are so original. And do you see their makeup? Is that even possible?” he asks, staring at a couple in scarily realistic cosplay of Simon and Jeanette from Alvin and the Chipmunks, fur and all. He can’t look at them for too long without getting chills.

You shake your head. “Almost everyone here is either a hockey player or a… hockey-affiliated person. You’re the beloved and talented defenseman of the team and I’m the star player’s sister. They’ll love us,” you say with a smile, watching the worry dissipate from his features.

“We’re like nepo babies,” he whispers. His lips break into a grin when your eyebrows furrow in confusion. “I don’t know how nepotism works,” he admits, smiling wider when you burst into laughter. “How do you know if I’m talented, anyway? You haven’t seen me play yet.”

Your eyes rake him up and down appreciatively. “I took a wild guess.”

Not unlike a cartoon character, Sunghoon audibly gulps. As a hockey player since his most tender age, and dare he say, a pretty good-looking guy, he is used to girls flirting with him, and he is even hit sometimes by the occasional lightning strike of confidence that allows him to flirt back (he still can’t believe he managed to call you “a distracting sight” without spontaneously combusting). But there’s something in your eyes, in your smile, in the way you talk—something about you that has his breath hitching and his heart racing. He doesn’t know if he wants to run away and hide in a corner or kiss you right then and there.

Heeseung, the captain of the hockey team, announces into a microphone (which Sunghoon wonders where they got the money for) that the contest will start now, so he can neither kiss you nor run away. Instead, he follows you to the side of the room where all the contestants, including Jake and Kazuha, wait for their names to be called out. There are so many participants, it takes way longer than Sunghoon would like for the two of you to step onto the makeshift stage. Judging by the looks on the audience’s faces, everyone is surprised to see you and Sunghoon together—the hockey community at your university may be big, but everyone knows everyone, and gossip travels fast. No one had seen you and Sunghoon together before, for the obvious reason that you hadn’t even met before tonight. But you could be sure that by tomorrow, as silly as it sounds, word will have gone around that you and Sunghoon had participated in a couple costume contest together.

At least, you give them something of substance to talk about—as you and Sunghoon pose on stage, wearing your brightest smiles to please the crowd, you stand on your toes and press a kiss to Sunghoon’s cheek. Sunghoon’s eyes burn a hole in the side of your face but you just watch as the audience of drunken 20-somethings goes wild over something as simple as a peck on the cheek. Jake is the only one booing.

Sunghoon is still in shock when the next couple is called forward and you have to step off. His cheeks are redder than before and he can’t quite meet your eyes. Apparently, he also goes wild over something as simple as a peck on the cheek. You nudge his shoulder. “See, I told you they’d like us.”

He feels like a fourteen-year-old for it, but Sunghoon can’t stop thinking about your soft lips against his cheek, so much so that he barely says a word as the three judges deliberate. If you notice the sudden change in his behavior, you don’t comment on it, perhaps chalking it up to nerves. He’s glad for it—he doesn’t know if he could handle being teased about it, especially from you. Although he’s not sure he wants you to think he’s the kind to stress over a last-minute Halloween costume contest.

In the end, you don’t win. He suspects it was a rigged contest all along: the couple in the unimpressive Edward and Bella costume are friends with one of the judges, probably leading to their anticlimactic victory. At least it isn’t Simon and Jeannette who win, or Kazuha and Jake, even less original than the winners. Anyway, Sunghoon couldn’t care any less. With your hand in his as you walk back to the main room in search of your other friends, he feels like the biggest victor of the night. He doesn’t even mind it when his teammates tease him about his costume and how good the two of you look together—the smile you shoot him makes putting up with it worth it. He tries to think straight, but between the alcohol and your proximity, he feels like you’ve cast a spell on him.

Jake stumbles into your group, three drinks drunker than when Sunghoon last saw him, enthusiastically reporting that a game of spin the bottle is about to start in one of the rooms upstairs, because what every college party needs is a middle-school game to shake things up. None of the guys seem particularly interested until Jake reveals that the cheerleaders are playing.

Sunghoon looks down at you, laughing when he sees your mildly disgusted moue. “Don’t feel like playing?”

“Not really, no.” Your eyes linger on his face. “There’s only one person here I want to kiss, anyway.”

All capacity for thought leaves Sunghoon’s brain. He just stares back at you blankly, lips slightly agape, willing himself to say something but also terrified that whatever leaves his mouth might make him seem like the biggest loser ever.

You couldn’t possibly mean him—but did you? Was he the person you wanted to kiss?

As these questions resound through his head, your gaze drops to his lips. There’s his answer.

His heart beating wildly in its cage, Sunghoon decides to do one smart thing tonight and leans in, slowly but surely closing the gap between the two of you. Then a sudden vibration in the back pocket of his jeans zaps through him like lightning and he jumps back, as if startled out of the trance you had put him in. Shame flooding his cheeks, he checks his phone; it’s the stupid alarm he set himself earlier to make sure he doesn’t get home too late. Midnight, Cinderella-style.

You scratch the back of your neck as your eyes dart around the room. For the first time tonight, you look embarrassed—Sunghoon is in disbelief at how pretty you look even then. “I, um,” he starts, clears his throat. “I have this thing tomorrow morning, so I can’t stay too long…” he says guiltily.

He doesn’t want to get his hopes up, but he swears that what he sees on your face is disappointment. It makes him want to take it all back, to stay here with you for as long as you want and forget about tomorrow morning.

“Oh, right,” you say, nodding. “That’s fine. What thing?”

“Oh.” Sunghoon turns an impossibly deeper shade of red, further resembling the strawberry syrup the more he gets himself in these embarrassing situations with you. “Just… choir. I go to choir on Saturday mornings.” He looks down at his feet like he’s just revealed a secret, shameful part of himself.

You burst into laughter, and Sunghoon is scared for a second that you’re making fun of him, and his feelings are a lot more hurt than they should be by someone he just met. Although, to be fair, you don’t feel like someone he just met.

“That’s so cool! It must be such a nice change from all the dudes on the hockey team,” you say, a sweet, curious smile on your lips. Like you mean what you say. Like you might want to know more.

Sunghoon thinks he just fell in love.

He chuckles. “Yeah. Definitely a nice change. As much as I love hockey, it’s nice to do something calmer, you know. And I like singing. And the cakes the local grandmas bring.”

“So that’s what it’s all about, really.”

“Yep, you caught me.” Sunghoon still feels the almost-kiss lingering, a tension between the two of you that has him on edge. He feels like he’s just missed his bus because it left a minute earlier than planned. The opportunity is gone, and he would definitely mess everything up, trying to kiss you now. So instead, he decides to leave. Whatever must happen, will happen, even if it’s not tonight. You have the same friends—this is definitely not the last time you will see each other. “Well, I should probably head. I have to be up at eight tomorrow.”

“Oh, wow. The choir grandmas don’t play around.”

“They really don’t.”

“Well, see you around then,” you say, a clumsy laugh falling from your lips as you wrap your arms around Sunghoon’s neck, bringing him into a tight but short hug. You also smell good, he notes to himself. Of course you do.

“See you, Y/N.” Just as he’s about to turn away, you wrap your hand around his wrist.

“Wait. Sunghoon?” He’s only half-surprised at the immense relief he feels to hear his name on your lips. Like you, too, didn’t want to part with him just yet.

“Yeah?” he says, wishing the hope and anticipation aren’t too obvious on his face.

“Where’s that choir of yours?”

When Sunghoon arrives at his neighborhood’s community center, ten minutes before nine a.m., you’re already there. Despite the seven hours of sleep under his belt, he feels like he could’ve done with three more, and the singular cup of instant black coffee he had for breakfast was both atrocious and useless. But your smile has the restorative effect of two Red Bulls and a power nap. You look surprisingly bright, like you either managed to get a very good night’s sleep or are just the biggest morning person to ever exist.

He hugs you when he reaches you on the sidewalk, tighter than he probably should, but you return it. You smell like fresh soap and sugar. The two of you exchange quick greetings before he leads you inside the center.

“I made some cookies as well.” You point to your tote bag and Sunghoon’s jaw slackens.

“You had time to bake?”

“Kazuha made me take Jägerbombs, so I felt crazy when I got home. I thought it wouldn’t be fair on the old ladies if they did all the work.”

Sunghoon laughs. “They’re going to love you.”

You follow Sunghoon up two flights of stairs and into a spacious room with a wooden stage. There’s a snacks table on one side of the room that is almost fully decked with plates and tupperwares of all sorts, and although their contents remain covered by tin foil or lids, the coffee and hot water pots are free to use. Most of the chairs are stacked on each side of the room but a few have been put in the middle, the grandmas sitting and chatting there waving at Sunghoon as the two of you walk in. There are about fifteen people in the room so far, most of them older ladies, but not only. There’s a dad that came with his daughter, a couple of teenagers, and a few other adults. It’s quite an eclectic mix, and Sunghoon loves it.

Minjeong is here, too, which Sunghoon realizes he forgot to say until he sees the sheer confusion of finding someone you know in an unexpected place on both of your faces. She walks towards you, suspicious eyes darting between you two.

“Hey,” she says only to Sunghoon before turning to you, arms crossed over her chest. “And what are you doing here?”

“Hi, Minjeong, so nice to see you too!”

“I invited Y/N,” Sunghoon says quickly, although you did technically invite yourself. For some reason, he feels the need to defend you, even though he knows you and Minjeong have been friends for years now, and Minjeong is just always this blunt.

“I didn’t know this was the choir you went to,” you say to Minjeong.

“Oh, this?” She looks around the room. “It’s only the choir I’ve been going to since I was a kid. You’d know that if today wasn’t the first day you showed interest in it, ever.”

“I came to your concerts!”

One of the old ladies calls Sunghoon’s name from the snack table, and he is glad for the diversion. “Right. I’ll let you guys talk this out.” A hand on your shoulder, he smiles down at you. “I’m gonna say hi to the ladies over there. Be back in a minute.” He shoots Minjeong a look as if to say, Be normal.

As he approaches the small group, one of them asks very loudly if you’re his girlfriend. They all burst into giggles, blushing and eager-eyed like they’re sixteen rather than sixty. Sunghoon would be endeared if you didn’t look so alarmed and Minjeong so horrified, both of you looking at him before turning back to each other and getting into a very heated and secretive discussion. He is bombarded with a hundred questions: what your name is, where you’re from, how did the two of you meet, are you together? No? But you’re so pretty! And he’s such a nice boy! He answers all of their queries to the best of his ability while checking that your conversation with Minjeong hasn’t turned physical—your arms are now also crossed over your chest, and you look annoyed while she looks like she’s accusing you of something, but at least, punches aren’t being thrown.

Thankfully, it’s only a couple more minutes until the conductor calls for everyone to gather on stage, and a weight is lifted off of Sunghoon’s shoulders once the ladies’ collective attention is no longer on him. He isn’t sure where they came from, or why they’ve decided to make the choir rehearsal their hang-out spot, but there is always a group of women who sit there and knit while chatting quietly or listening to the songs, and they are sometimes joined by children whose parents are part of the choir but don’t want to sing themselves and apparently have nowhere else to go. Sunghoon had been so excited at the prospect of having you come see him that he hadn’t thought of how boring this might be for you, sitting with sixty-year-olds for two hours, listening to an amateur choir go through scales and sing corny romance ballads—they’re rehearsing for a wedding they’ve been hired to sing at. But as the minutes go by, his worry dissipates when the delighted smile on your face hardly falters. He can’t imagine that his choir is that good, but you genuinely look like you’re having a nice time, and it makes Sunghoon stand a little taller, sing a little louder. Your eyes are on him for most of the time, and he blushes every time your gazes meet, but he still can’t keep himself from looking away from the conductor to check on you every few seconds.

Once rehearsal is over, everyone gathers around the refreshments table. When you tell Sunghoon that he looked good out there, he stuffs his mouth with banana bread to stop himself from blurting out something stupid. Your cookies are a hit, and so is everything else—Sunghoon would be more than happy to watch you eat as many baked goods as you possibly can and chat with the grandmas, but he has something to ask you. Without thinking much, he wraps his fingers around your wrist, gently pulling you away from the table and towards him. The question that was at the tip of his tongue fades as soon as you meet his eyes, looking up at him like a deer caught in headlights, cheeks stuffed with brownie. You’re so cute that words fail him for a second, and when he notices the proximity between the two of you, takes a small, bashful step backwards. You glance at his hand still around your wrist, and he withdraws it like he’s suddenly been burned.

A playful smile grows on your lips. “Everything alright?”

He scratches the back of his head. “Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine. I just, um, well. There’s a bus that takes us from right across the street directly to the beach, if you’re, um, if you’re interested. In going. With me. If you want.”

Your eyebrows cock in surprise, and Sunghoon thinks he’s messed it all up. You shoot Minjeong a quick, worried glance, then seem to think for a second. But when you look back to him, your smile is soft. “That sounds nice.”

An hour later, you’re running around together on the beach—or rather, Sunghoon is running around, and after five minutes of watching him with a smile on your face, he’s convinced you to run around with him. You’ve both long discarded your shoes and socks, jeans scrunched up to your mid-calves, grins so wide, your cheeks start to hurt. The wet sand is hard under your feet and the water cold against your skin. Sunghoon’s t-shirt sticks everywhere you sprayed water on him, and he knows putting his shoes on later will be a whole ordeal, but it doesn’t bother him. Even the gray September sky feels brighter because you’re standing with him underneath it.

The water-splashing battle quickly has you both out of breath, and Sunghoon is ready to call a truce when you spot something behind him, gasping and running towards it. He turns around to find you picking up a bunch of sandcastle-building toys that must’ve been left behind by some kids. “I haven’t built a sandcastle in such a long time, this is so exciting,” you say, excitement written all over your face.

As much as he loves seeing the glint of childish amusement in your eyes, Sunghoon keeps looking around in case the owners of these toys might appear out of thin air. “I feel like there’s something immoral about this,” he says, and you stop stacking sand into one of the toys to look at him with a confused frown. “Aren’t we technically stealing from some kids?”

“Sunghoon. If those kids really cared about these plastic toys, they wouldn’t have left them here.”

“What if they come back for them?”

“Then we’ll give them back. We’re not monsters.” That’s all it takes for Sunghoon to give in. He helps dig trenches around the towers you build, carving out small windows on them and apologizing profusely when he accidentally pokes too hard into one of them, destroying half of it.

The second he notices you shivering, Sunghoon is on his feet, unwrapping the scarf around his neck and laying it like a blanket over your shoulders. “I’m going to get us something warm to drink. I’ll be back in a minute!” he announces before you can even protest, and practically runs to the nearest café.

He only leaves you and the slightly pathetic-looking sandcastle alone for a minute, quickly coming back with two take-away cups of milky Earl Grey tea and a brownie that he couldn’t help himself from buying. The moan you let out when you bite into it, gooey, sweet chocolate sticking to your teeth, goes straight down Sunghoon’s spine, but he tries not to let his thoughts get too carried away.

“Good, right?” he asks, laughing when you nod fervently. When you laugh too, it’s a sound so sweet, it rivals the decadence of the brownie. “I sometimes make the trip all the way here just for this.”

“I thought I’d be done with sweets after this morning, but this is so good.”

“Better than Berta’s banana bread?”

“Oh, a hundred percent,” you say, covering your mouth with your hand as you speak. “Sorry, Berta. I’ll be thinking about this for the rest of my life.”

Sunghoon hopes you’ll remember him as the boy who’d introduced you to those brownies, if nothing else.

The two of you are silent for a little bit, but it’s a comfortable silence—something Sunghoon didn’t know was possible with someone he’d just met. This was something he loved about the sea: it allowed for some quiet. The crashing of the waves against the shore, the calls of the seagulls, the dogs barking after them—it all meant he didn’t need to fill the space with needless chatter. He could look out at the peaceful water, you by his side, and just enjoy the moment.

“I’m still so amazed whenever I come to the beach, no matter how many times it’s been.” Sunghoon’s voice is quiet when he speaks, lower than usual. It sounds a lot more intimate than he means it to be. You turn your head to look at him, silently asking him to go on. There’s a small smile playing on his lips, a twinkle in his eyes as he watches the water. “The town I grew up in is right in the middle of the country, so the sea is like, a five-hour drive. There was a lake nearby, but it was nothing compared to this. It might sound silly, but being from somewhere where everyone knows each other, I never realized just how big the world was until I came here and saw the sea for the first time.”

“You’d never been to the sea before coming here?” you ask, surprise clear in your voice.

He shakes his head. “My hometown isn’t far from the mountains, so it’s a huge tourist spot both in the winter and in the summer, which meant my mom had to work even when my sister and I were out of school and could actually go on holiday. We’d go visit my grandparents and aunts when we found the time, but that was it.” He meets your gaze, a smile playing on his lips at the thought of his hometown and his family. “This is the furthest I’ve ever been from home.”

The corners of your lips raise into a smile too, matching Sunghoon’s. “And how has that been going?”

He sighs. “It’s okay. I miss my mom and sister like crazy, of course, but they FaceTime me so much that I barely notice it. And anyways, it’s also nice to be on my own. Discover another part of myself, and all that.”

“For sure.”

There’s a slight shift in your expression that Sunghoon catches onto, a falter in your smile and a hint of sadness in your eyes. He doesn’t want to force a topic that you don’t want to talk about, so he just gently eggs you on, in case all you need is a small push.

“What about you? I think Jake mentioned you guys growing up around here, only an hour or so away.”

At the mention of your brother, the smile returns to your eyes. You take a deep breath and think for a bit, but eventually, you start talking. Although Sunghoon’s eyes are on you, you keep yours trained on the sea. “Yeah, we did. We live just up the coast, so we were always hanging out at the beach. In a way, it’s nice having the sea here as well. It’s like-I don’t know.”

“Like having a piece of home even when you’re away?”

Your gazes meet for just a second, the surprise clear in your eyes, but as quickly as it came, it’s gone, and you turn away from Sunghoon once more. “Basically, yeah.” A sardonic smile appears on your lips. “Although the constant reminder isn’t always appreciated.”

He tilts his head. When you don’t say anything further, he flicks some sand onto your hand and asks you what you mean by that. He looks at you with curiosity and kindness only, eager to know more about you, to let you know that you can open up to him, that he won’t judge you, but careful not to overstep any boundaries either. It seems to work.

“It might sound stupid, but back home, the beach was a place I could go to when it all was a bit too much, you know? Like an escape from everyday life. Where I could forget about all of the pressure on my shoulders.” Sunghoon hums, and you take another deep breath. “I don’t know if you and Jake talk about this sort of thing, but… our parents are barely nice when we do well, and pretty awful when we don’t reach their expectations. So we were like, constantly having to outdo ourselves just for them to say, ‘Keep it up’, or something like that. And if we did something wrong, well…”

You trail off, but Sunghoon knows what you mean. “Yeah, Jake said they barely spoke to him anymore because he decided to play hockey instead of becoming, like, a doctor or something.”

You smile, but it’s humorless. “Yep. They send him money, and he comes home for a bit over Christmas and summer break, but that’s it. I’ve gone home by myself sometimes and they won’t even mention him, it’s insane.”

“He also doesn’t talk about it a lot.”

“I know. I’m always the one to bring it up. I know it’s a sensitive topic for him, obviously, but I still find it amazing how well he deals with it. But me… despite everything, I still need their approval, you know?” you ask, and Sunghoon nods.

“That makes sense.”

You sigh. “I guess. And I’m obviously not becoming a doctor like them. Not a medical one, at least. It took a year of convincing them that doing the degree I’m doing was okay. ‘Cause at the end of the day, it’s still me filling in my university applications, and they can’t actually force me to go to medical school, but I still wanted them to be proud of me. Even if I study languages.” It’s quiet for a few seconds as you both look out at the waves crashing against the shore. When you start talking again, you look down at the sand, picking it up and letting it filter through your fingers. “So, yeah. Jake got a scholarship here, and I didn’t wanna be too far from home, so here we are. We’re so close to home, the sea I went to when I needed a break in high school and the sea I go to now are one and the same. And now it reminds me of my parents rather than making me forget about them.”

“I’m sorry for bringing you here,” Sunghoon says. “I didn’t think…”

You cut him off with a smile. “It’s okay. Now I’ve created new memories. Nice ones. And you know… wherever I am, it’ll be at the back of my mind. It’s up to me whether I let it affect my life or not.”

“Letting go of these things is never easy,” Sunghoon offers. “You also can’t blame yourself if it does affect you sometimes.”

When you look at Sunghoon, your eyes darting back-and-forth between his like they’re searching for something there, he feels himself tense up slightly. He can’t read you at all, has no idea what you’re thinking even as you smile and say, “You’re right.” Even as you silently link your pinky with his, gazing down at your hands with a small smile. He hadn’t realized how cold his hands were until this small touch, so small yet able to spread warmth throughout his entire body. When he speaks, he can’t bring himself to meet your eyes—he’s still so focused on where your hands touch, too aware of the skin of your finger right against his. Such a small, innocent touch. He can’t even begin to understand why it means so much to him.

“For what it’s worth, I think what you’re doing is super cool,” he says. “I’ve always been so shit at foreign languages, let alone dead languages. And packing your bags and going abroad for a year, not everybody can do that. Becoming a doctor might be hard, but it also takes a specific kind of person to do what you do. And what Jake does. It’s all valuable.”

“Now, if you could say that again while I record you to show my parents, please,” you say, making him laugh.

“It’d be my pleasure.”

“What about you?” you ask him after a small pause. “I can’t be the only one who trauma-dumps on the first date.”

Sunghoon’s breath hitches in his throat. He hadn’t even dared entertain the thought that this might be more than a platonic hang-out in case he was crossing a line—but you’ve just called it a date. With just a few casual words, you’ve changed the entire meaning of the hours you’ve spent together. He hopes you can’t tell how flustered it’s made him.

“Well, there’s not much trauma to dump, really. Sorry.”

You giggle. “Don’t apologize. That’s a good thing.”

Now that you’ve just opened up about your parents, Sunghoon is scared that telling you about how good of a childhood he had might come off as insensitive—but you smile softly at him, holding his hand face-up in yours, tracing the lines of his palm with the tip of a finger, and he starts talking. “So, it was just me, my older sister and my mom growing up. My dad died when I was 2.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It is a bit sad that I don’t have any memories of him, but everyone who knew him said he was a great guy. And my mom’s had this boyfriend since I was like, 10? He’s the one who got me to start hockey. So it hasn’t been that bad.”

“Your mom must be really strong.”

Sunghoon smiles. “She is. She’s amazing. To raise two kids on your own while grieving and not royally fuck up is… well, amazing. She’s always been so supportive of us, no matter what we wanted to do. My sister did well at school, but I wasn’t so good. I never really enjoyed it, but she’s never made me feel bad about it. She didn’t mind that all I wanted to do was hit a puck around.”

“And you’re pretty good at hitting that puck around, aren’t you?”

“I’m not so bad,” Sunghoon says, chuckling along with you. He’s about to go on, but he is cut off by a raindrop hitting his hand, then another one; before either of you know it, your clothes are soaked through. Sunghoon takes his denim jacket off, using it as a makeshift umbrella for the both of you as you run towards the nearest awning, shaking with giddy laughter until you forget about the chilly rain and the clothes sticking to your skin. When it doesn’t let up for another few minutes, Sunghoon suggests catching the bus back, and you agree.

The heating on the bus is set on low, but it’s enough to warm Sunghoon up as soon as he steps onto it. You sit at the back in a corner of your own, multiple rows away from the other people onboard. The two of you are relatively quiet, lost in your own thoughts until Sunghoon, after much internal deliberating, takes one of your hands in his and interlaces your fingers together. You look up at him, but he doesn’t return your gaze, eyes fixed on the window to hide his shy smile and the blush slowly staining his cheeks. To his surprise, you squeeze his hand and rest your head on his shoulder. He freezes for a second, unsure how to react to your reciprocated affection, but he makes himself relax into your touch, and starts brushing his thumb back-and-forth on the back of your hand. The sudden storm has made day turn to night a little earlier today, and with the quiet hum of the bus, he finds himself on the edge of sleep for the whole ride—the only thing keeping him awake is his booming heart.

The bus is nearing his stop when the buzz of his phone in his back pocket jolts him awake. You lift your head from his shoulder, massaging your neck as you fish your phone out of your own pocket. Sunghoon, more intrigued by you than by whoever has texted him, watches as the brightness of your screen makes you wince. Once you’ve read the text, you turn towards him, sleepy eyes and sleepy voice as you ask him whether he’s seen “this,” referring to a text from Chaewon. dinner at our flat tonight!!! come whenever. bring drinks.

“Oh, I forgot she was doing that tonight,” you say through a yawn.

Sunghoon chuckles. “Do you have enough energy for it?”

“I always have enough energy for Chaewon’s cooking.”

You and Sunghoon make a pit-stop at a grocery store to buy two bottles of white wine and the hummus Chaewon likes, then head to your flat. Naturally, questions are asked when you and Sunghoon arrive at the exact same time, but before Sunghoon can explain that you spent the day together, Minjeong’s head pops out of the kitchen door, and she asks whether you ran into each other downstairs. Chaewon is only looking at the both of you, waiting for an answer, so she doesn’t see the very pointed look Minjeong gives you, as if to say Agree with me or else. You quickly glance at Sunghoon then say, “Yeah, we just arrived at the same time.” When they’ve both turned away, you tell him in a hushed tone that you’ll ask her about it later.

The girls are busy in the small kitchen and Chaewon insists that they don’t need any more help, so you and Sunghoon bring two chairs by the kitchen door and sit as Yunjin catches the four of you up on the most recent drama in her Law cohort. Jay arrives twenty minutes later, but it isn’t another hour before Jake shows up with the excuse that he was taking a nap.

“Someone would think you don’t sleep at night, with the amount of naps you take,” you say.

“Oh my God, I miss when you weren’t here,” Jake replies, flicking your forehead before promptly plopping himself down on the couch. “I was so hungover when I woke up. I had to sleep it off,” he explains as he grabs four cans of beer from his backpack.

Chaewon always makes a point to ask how everyone’s spent their day, but today, she unfortunately starts with Sunghoon, so he doesn’t have any time to come up with anything believable other than the truth, which is exactly what he does—and when Jay asks, What, to the beach by yourself? under Minjeong’s heavy gaze, he has no choice but to say yes. He isn’t sure why it’s such a big deal that you spent the day with him, or why it needs to be kept a secret, but there must be a reason. He’ll find out later. When it’s your turn, you look straight into Sunghoon’s eyes as you say you spent the day at the library but didn’t get much work done. Everyone ignores Jake when he exclaims Boring! and Chaewon swiftly moves onto Jay.

But you don’t.

Your eyes stay on Sunghoon, unflinchingly watching him, expression unreadable, and he finds himself unable to look away, even as he feels his face heat up and his stomach flip. Then you smile, a satisfied smirk like you got what you wanted, and shift your gaze to Jay, who’s going on and on about the first six episodes of Lost he binge-watched earlier and wondering why nobody had told him about this “masterpiece of a show” before. Sunghoon is too busy thinking about the way you’d looked at him and pondering all the reasons for it to listen carefully. He watched Lost when he was fourteen anyway.

All throughout the evening, as the seven of you eat Chaewon’s pasta dish (which she made entirely from scratch, and is probably one of the best things to have ever graced Sunghoon’s taste buds), drink, talk, and afterwards, play card games, every glance between you and Sunghoon feels like a secret conversation that only the two of you are privy to. No one except for Minjeong is aware that you spent the day just the two of you until now—and even she doesn’t know what it is you did. Within a day of knowing each other, you already share memories that are yours and no one else’s. Sunghoon is giddy with the knowledge, heart skipping every time your eyes meet, no matter how fleetingly. When you’re all saying goodbye, it takes everything in him not to hug you for an awkwardly long time and to tear himself away from you.

He can hardly fall asleep that night.

For the entirety of the year you were gone, Sunghoon could only nod and smile while the others bemoaned your absence or commented on how much more fun it’d be if you were here (even Jake, after enough wine spritzers, would admit to missing you). He understood that the group dynamics might feel different to them without you around, but this particular set of people was all he knew, so he never minded it. It reminded him of people telling him how sad it must’ve been growing up without a father, trying to be empathetic, when he didn’t know how he could miss something he never had.

But now that you’re here, he gets it. You add something to the group that he can’t quite put his finger on. It’s in your affectionate gestures towards Chaewon and Yunjin, in your shared sense of humor with Jay (which no one else seems to find funny, save for Sunghoon, sometimes), in your bickering with Minjeong and downright arguing with Jake. It’s a hackneyed expression, but you do light up a room—at least in Sunghoon’s opinion, you do. In your presence, everything feels not only more lively, but also more cohesive, like you were the missing piece of a puzzle. Like a historic work of art that has been returned to its rightful owner.

Sunghoon just finds himself drawn to you, at times unable to keep his eyes off of you, and the only things keeping him from making a move are his inherent shyness and the eyes of your friends. He doesn’t want to mess up the friendship he has with anyone from the group, least of all Jake, just because he can’t keep it in his pants. He thought of Yunjin and Chaewon, how their relationship had gone smoothly from the beginning and posed no problem to the dynamic of the group, but he had no idea if this was replicable between you and him at all.

If he had to be honest, a big part of him was also just afraid you’d reject him.

Getting a read on you is hard, which doesn’t help. It’s been three weeks since the gang reunited, since that party where you met. The first semester of his second and your fourth year started a little bit over a week ago; Sunghoon sometimes worries that you think there is some big age gap between you and that you see him as a kid, even though, admittedly, two years is not such a huge difference. In those three weeks, there have been many encounters which could be seen as cases of flirting between the two of you—Sunghoon has noticed every single one of them and replayed each an embarrassing amount of times in his head. A hand carefully posited on his shoulder; prolonged eye contact; jokes whispered in his ear at a crowded house party; knees lightly touching at first, then pressed together during movie night. None of it ever fails to make Sunghoon’s heart flutter. You could breathe in his general direction and it’d make his heart beat fast enough to worry a cardiologist, so when you smile at him, it’s a small death every time.

And so he dares hope that his interest isn’t one-sided—although most of the time, he is so stuck between thinking none of it means anything and thinking every single thing you do is a sign that you like him, that he rarely knows what to think. And whenever you’ve paid him enough attention to make him believe it’s not all in his head, you do something that proves him wrong. Watching you interact with other people, he realizes that you keep good eye contact with everyone and that you’re just as touchy and playful with all of your friends. At parties, you hit it off with new people and catch up with old friends without so much as a hint of awkwardness. He watches as you talk to other guys, the same smile that has been making him weak for the past three weeks, directed towards them and not him. Sunghoon assumes you’re either really nice to everyone and oblivious to the fact that it could be seen as flirting, or you just flirt with everyone.

In that sense, the two of you are complete opposites. Sunghoon, whose entire friend group hangs on the fact that he befriended Jay, who knew Jake, who knew you, Minjeong, Yunjin and Chaewon. Sunghoon who has spoken to maybe half of his hockey team outside of the locker rooms and the occasional party. Sunghoon who, outside of his usual friend group, has managed to make three other friends on his own in the year he’s been at university, because they had been put in a group project and magically hit it off enough to upgrade from classmates to friends.

Then there’s you, who has to stop every thirty seconds at a party to say hi to someone you know. You, who still keeps in touch with the friends you made in a foreign country, even those who spoke broken English. You, who didn’t make Sunghoon feel like his crippling shyness was a problem when you first met.

He doesn’t understand how everyone who meets you doesn’t instantly fall in love.

Or maybe they do, and he’s just one of many vying for your heart.

Tonight is one of the nights where all he can do is watch from afar as you interact with another man that he desperately wishes was him. With your lower back against the kitchen counter, drink in hand as you laugh with that other guy, eyes never leaving his face, it almost looks like someone has copied your time with Sunghoon at the costume party and pasted it onto this post-hockey game party. All you’re missing is a bright pink cowgirl hat and boots to match.

And yet, it’s his team jacket over your shoulders, his name and number on your back. Sunghoon shouldn’t feel nearly as jealous as he does.

So he does what any good friend would do, and blames Jay for reasons completely unwarranted—even now, days after receiving his advice, and hours after taking it, Sunghoon still can’t help but regret involving him at all.

Initially, Sunghoon hadn’t wanted to tell anyone about his growing feelings for you—he’d thought that if he pushed them away and kept them to himself, they’d go away on their own. But clearly, they didn’t, seeing as how his stomach always twisted in nervous excitement at the prospect of seeing you and how he could never get through a conversation with you without blushing. So, quicker than he’d like to admit, he’d given in and told Jay about the day you’d spent at the beach and how felt about you now, thinking it was some big shameful secret that would render his friend flabbergasted.

That was his first mistake.

Jay wasn’t impressed. “Yeah, it’s been pretty obvious, dude,” he’d said through a mouthful of cheeseburger. It was after hockey practice, and they were sitting in the burger joint near the ice rink that had some of the best student deals in town. Jake was going on a Hinge date, and Sunghoon had lured Jay in with the promise of free food (Jay wanted to go home and game, but all Sunghoon needed to do to convince him was to say “I’ll pay for it”).

“Obvious? How obvious? Does everyone know? Does Jake know?” Sunghoon asked, growing more agitated by the second.

“Jake is possibly the worst room-reader that has ever lived, so no, I don’t think he’s caught on. But the rest of us know. I mean, you look at her like a twelve-year-old with a crush on his English teacher,” Jay said, unceremoniously cramming fries into his mouth.

Sunghoon ignored the slightly humiliating remark, still preoccupied by the fact that he hadn’t been as discreet as he thought he had. He leant in towards Jay and dropped his voice to a whisper, even though the restaurant was practically empty, save for them and a group of rowdy middle school boys who were definitely not paying attention to them. “Do you think… does she know?”

Jay dropped his fist on the table in sudden annoyance, causing Sunghoon to jump back in his seat. “Now you’re acting like a twelve-year-old.” Before Sunghoon could defend himself and argue that he’s being completely rational, Jay launches into a surprisingly moving monologue. “It’s fine if you like her, there’s nothing to be embarrassed of. Everybody feels attraction towards other people, everybody gets crushes, it’s no big deal. Just talk to her. Worst case scenario, she doesn’t feel the same way, and you both move on, because you’re adults.”

There’s nothing worse than a friend being right about something you absolutely don’t want to hear. Sunghoon did feel like he had been carrying a horrible secret around, but Jay was spot-on: crushes are a very common, very human experience. And yet Sunghoon managed to feel like he was the only one who had ever had to go through this torture. “You say that like it’s easy,” he said, sulking.

“It is easy. You’re making it hard.”

“So what, your advice is just to confess to her?”

Jay rolled his eyes. “See? You’re saying confess like it’s some sin you have to repent for. Yeah, just tell her.”

“Just tell her,” Sunghoon repeated, looking at his friend like he was crazy. Jay just took another bite of his burger.

“Yeah, dude. It’s not even like you’ve known each other for a long time, so there’s no risk of ruining a friendship, or anything.”

“But do you even know if she feels the same way at all?”

Jay shrugged. “She hasn’t mentioned anything,” he said, and Sunghoon’s heart dropped in disappointment. “But it’s Y/N, she’ll be cool about it. And who knows, she might actually see something in you, for some godforsaken reason.”

Jay laughed at his own joke, and Sunghoon afforded him a chuckle. They moved on to other topics, but later, as they waited for Jay’s bus to come, he couldn’t help himself. “Do you think Jake will mind? If something happens with Y/N and me?”

Jay thought for a second. “I think he’d be more upset with her than with you, what with everything that happened with Heeseung... But knowing him, he probably won’t care as long as you aren’t weird in front of him.” He puts a hand on Sunghoon’s shoulder and shakes it gently. “Don’t let that stop you from making a move, okay? You’ll cross that bridge when you get to it.” His bus came then, so Sunghoon couldn't ask for more details about this Heeseung situation—he knew that there had been something between you and him which hadn’t ended particularly well, but no one ever really talked about it so he didn’t dare bring it up. All he knew was that it had been significant enough for Jay to mention it now, and for Jake to seem bothered every time it was mentioned.

He put all of that out of his head for the time being. In a way, he had just received Jay’s blessing; even if it scared him shitless, he could make a move. Perhaps not something as straightforward as Jay was suggesting, but something, at the very least.

The first major hockey game of the season was that coming Friday. Sunghoon had an idea.

The morning of, he shot you a text. He tried to make it sound as nonchalant as he can, so that you wouldn’t know he spent close to an hour deleting, writing and pouring over a singular sentence. Can you meet me in front of the locker rooms 30 mins before the game?

That was his second mistake.

You replied twenty minutes later, twenty minutes that Sunghoon spent questioning everything that had led up to this moment.

yn.sim i’ll be there!!

You even got there five minutes early. He was waiting for you, all decked out in his hockey uniform, save for the gloves and protective headgear. He was anxiously chewing on gum, heart doing somersaults inside his ribcage—a grin found his lips as soon as you appeared around the corner, the sight of you alleviating his nerves for a second, then doubling them when you came close. “Hey,” he said, voice soft and slightly trembling.

“Hey,” you simply replied, a smile on your face to match his as he took you in his arms. It was a hug that lasted a second longer than it should, but that also ended too early for his liking.

“Um, I only have a second, Coach will be wanting to give one of his pep talks,” he said when you separated. One quick glance back at the locker room doors behind him, then back at you. The tips of his ears burnt, and he couldn’t stop his eyes from furtively darting between your face and the floor. But he’d come this far, so he couldn’t back out now. He just had to get it over with. “Here,” he blurted out, holding out the letterman jacket he had been hiding behind his back. You grabbed it, eyeing him with amused suspicion at first, but surprise spreaded over your features as you unfurled the jacket.

“Your team jacket?”

He couldn’t tell whether you were amazed or horrified. You stared wide-eyed at the jacket, at its dark green sleeves, at the four letters of his last name and the huge number 8 embroidered onto the back. Your surprise faded back into what he thought — what he hoped — was excitement as you looked at him. He scratched the back of his neck, feeling his face flush red. “Yeah, I just, you know… It’s the first big game of the year, and I thought it’d bring me good luck if a pretty girl was wearing my name…” he explained, repeating the words he’d practiced over and over, voice turning into more and more of a mumble as he spoke. He had planned on speaking with more confidence, but now, the fact that he could speak at all felt like a miracle.

A light giggle spilled out of your mouth. Sunghoon immediately took it for mockery and regretted every decision that had led him here. “Sorry, it was a silly idea, you don’t have to wear it if you don’t like it,” he said, reaching for the jacket. But you were quicker than him, hugging the thick bundle of fabric to your chest as you now beamed at him.

“Are you kidding? I love it,” you said, shrugging off your jacket and replacing it with his.

First, relief flooded his body, then pride and excitement — as you spun around and showed the jacket off — at seeing his name on your back, and his attempt at making a move being successful. At least, he thought it was clear what he meant by giving you his jacket to wear at his game—he could only hope you understood. “Well… I’m glad.” Your eyes met, and you both chuckled softly, gazes holding each other’s for a second too long.

Two weeks ago, Sunghoon still would’ve been able to convince himself this was a fluke; that this was just another one of his crushes that a gentle breeze could blow away. Because after all, when Sunghoon fell in love, it usually went as quickly as it came. But at that moment, in front of the locker rooms, his mind solely on you and not the opening game of the season, he realized this was something else entirely. And whatever it was, he hadn’t felt it in a good long while.

He was terrified—but infinitely excited, too.

“Okay, I should probably head back in now,” he forced himself to say, but made no move to go.

“Okay.”

He paused. “Will you be cheering me on?”

Your smile widened. “Of course.”

He nodded slowly, upper body starting to turn away but feet still firmly planted on the ground. “Okay.”

Another second passed, and just as he was about to actually walk away, you grabbed his hand. Before he could compute what was happening, you lifted your head and pressed a small kiss to his cheek. His hand was still in yours when you took a step back, and for once, it was you who looked sheepishly at the floor. “For good luck,” you explained. He had no time to reply—you were already walking away, only looking back once to wave and shoo him in the direction of the locker room. He chuckled and nodded, but waited until you were out of sight to head back into the locker room.

Inside the locker room, everyone was too focused on getting their head in the game to notice his giddy smile. Your lips had been warm and soft against his cheeks, a welcome repeat of that time at the costume party, but the quickness of it all had only made him want more. From that very first night he’d met you, the question of how your lips would feel on his had scarcely left his mind. This brought him a step closer to getting an answer, but also made his curiosity grow tenfold.

Thankfully, by the time his coach gathered them around for a last minute pep talk, he’d managed to put the distracting thoughts of you out of his head, at least temporarily—he’d need to play well, for himself and his team mostly, but impressing you was also a priority.

As the captain, Heeseung said a few words. He reminded the team of how important this match was and went over the main strategy points. For the time being, Sunghoon was able to forget about his arguably unfounded resentment against the older boy and whatever it was he had to do with you. This was not the time for jealousy over someone he had no right to feel jealous over.

A few minutes later, his members and those of the opposing team poured out onto the rink for warm-up. Sunghoon searched the crowd for your face—when he found it, you were already smiling wide and waving at him. His heart did something funny, but Jay punched his shoulder pad and he remembered what he was there for. He could get lost in the eyes of a pretty girl later, specifically when he’d destroyed the other team and shown her how good of a hockey player he was.

Every now and then as he skirted around the rink and did his stretches, he stole glances at you. They didn't last long, because every single time, you’d already be looking, as if your eyes never strayed from him. Knowing you were watching made him nervous at first, but by the end of warm-up, mainly because he didn’t have much of a choice, he’d turned those nerves into an ever stronger will to do well.

The moment the referee blew the whistle, and for the hour that followed, Sunghoon was locked in on one thing and one thing only: winning. He was only competitive when it came to hockey—he didn’t care about dying in an online battle game or losing to Jake at beer pong, but once he was on the rink, he had to win. Pride surged through him and filled every crevice of his aching limbs whenever he or one of his team members scored, and the feeling that came with a victory, with hugging his teammates in celebration or hearing the crowd cheer for them, was like nothing else he’d ever known. The other side of that coin meant that any loss was a tremendous disappointment. Getting beat at an important game could put him in a week-long funk. His sister had once carefully hinted at his self-esteem relying too much on his hockey performance, and although his first reaction had been to dismiss her, he knew she had poked at some truth there. But what could he do—on particularly lonely nights, he truly thought hockey was all he had going for him.

To his overthinking nature, becoming so single-minded the second the whistle blows was a relief, a break from the stress of daily life. He didn’t have to worry about his next deadline or about what the guys on the team thought of him or about the inevitable phone call to his mom asking for more money for groceries. It was respite from the thoughts surrounding you that plagued him: how you felt about him, how you might react knowing what he felt for you, how Jake might react. Why Minjeong hadn’t wanted you to say anything that evening, but why Jay had told him to just go for it. Heeseung, whom he had to respect as the captain and an undeniably talented player, but also as someone who had had something to do with you, whether good or bad. All of it had been wildly bustling around Sunghoon’s mind, but once on the rink, all he had to concern himself with was the puck and getting it in the opposing team’s goal.

And Sunghoon did just that—he scored the first goal of the game, another one in the second period, then a third during the eleventh hour, breaking the tie between the two teams. He smiled right at you after each one, just to make sure you had seen everything. He couldn’t quite describe how it felt to see you clap and cheer for him, jumping up-and-down, forming a megaphone with your hands around your mouth and yelling, “Go Sunghoon!” all while you wore his jacket. It was a separate kind of pride and satisfaction from the sort he’d get seeing anyone else cheer him on, for sure.

The other team put up a good fight, getting in a few goals of their own and protecting their side well, but in the end, thanks to Sunghoon’s goal, it was his team that won. He took his helmet off and got his hair ruffled by half of his team, then shook hands with the other team, trying to contain his boastful smile—some ice hockey players flew off the handle very quickly, and starting a fight was the last thing he wanted.

Kids and local fans huddled by the barriers on each side of the player’s tunnel to get an autograph or a picture. People around here were weirdly attached to their university sport teams, and the athletes on teams that did particularly well — namely football and rugby — were sort of local celebrities. Their ice hockey team wasn’t quite at that stage yet, but they were placing better nationally with every year, and so the local interest had grown. More kids had started signing up for lessons, and their parents often brought them to home games. As Sunghoon chatted with men twice his age and took selfies with ten-year-olds, he tried to find you in the crowd, to no avail. He’d been hoping for a thumbs-up from you for a game well played, or even a hug, but you were nowhere in sight.

It wasn’t until half-an-hour later, after saying bye to all the fans that had waited after the game for them, listening to Heeseung and their coach congratulate them (but also remind them to not take anything for granted), showering and changing, that he got to check his phone.

chaewon we going k-bbq! u guys played well see u later at da party!!!!

Disappointment only had a second to sink to the bottom of his stomach. He’d barely finished reading the text when he was hoisted up by the shoulders. Two of his senior teammates, Soobin and Beomgyu, marched him towards the exit. “We are getting you wasted tonight, Park,” Beomgyu announced, a wide grin on his lips.

“I have a good feeling about this season,” Soobin added. Sunghoon looked back to find Jay and Jake simply shrugging and laughing at him.

Indeed, the second they got to the dorm where tonight’s party would be taking place, a beer was thrusted in his hand. It was only 7 p.m., still light outside, but that didn’t stop the team nor their friends that had come to the game. They sipped beer like it was water, so much so that two hours later, when the party started to grow, Sunghoon was already quite inebriated. It didn’t help that his cup was never empty for too long, and that he had the reassurance of being in his own dorm—it was the closest student building to the ice rink, and so was one of the prime spots for hockey parties. He could get as drunk as he wanted — or as Beomgyu wanted — and still get home in less than a minute.

He somehow ended up in the corridor, part of a nonsensical conversation about candle-making with two guys he had recognized from one of his Phys Ed classes but could not for the life of him remember the names of. One had shared that candle-making was a big hobby of his, and it had made Sunghoon and the other unknown man lose their minds—Sunghoon had never realized how curious about candle-making he was, but he couldn’t stop asking questions. It sounded great. Maybe he’d have to pick up candle-making, too.

Eventually, he headed back to the kitchen for a new drink. For the nth time this evening, he thought of texting you, then immediately thought against it. He wanted to know when you’d get here, but he didn’t want you to know that he wanted to know—although as the night deepened and his intoxication rose, he could remember less and less why that would be such a bad thing. He stepped into the kitchen, and going from the brightly-lit corridor to the dark kitchen with flashing neon lights made him so dizzy that he made a beeline for the couch, needing to sit down for a second.

And that was when he saw you.

Lower back against the counter, talking with a guy he’s never seen in his life. You look like you’re having fun—smiling, laughing, keeping eye contact with that guy. You’re still wearing his jacket. It should probably reassure him—his name is literally on you, what does it matter that you’re speaking to someone else? But instead, all he can think is that wearing his jacket must mean nothing to you. What was basically a confession from him seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

His friends’ words over the past year come back to him—how much you flirt with people, how it wasn’t a rare occurrence for you to go home with a guy after a party and never speak of him ever again. Was this what was happening here?

He knows it’s unreasonable, but in his drunken state, he takes it as a betrayal. Like he can’t believe you haven’t read his mind, figured out how he felt about you, and decided to give special attention to him and him only. He’s only able to take it for so long—two minutes later, he trudges out of the room, walking right past you but not looking your way.

His new mission is to find his friends, but before he’s done much searching, he hears his name being called out. Of course, he recognizes your voice immediately, but he doesn’t quite believe it until he looks over his shoulder, and there you are, face glowing and smiling wide. You’ve clearly had a few drinks, but he likes to think you’d be just as happy to see him if you were sober. He turns around to face you, watching as you narrow the distance between the two of you. He’s not in a much better state—the simple thought that you had come after him makes him forget any sort of resentment he held against you a second ago. When you reach him, he holds on to one of your arms, as much an effort to stabilize his swaying body as an excuse to touch you.

“Hey,” he simply says. He’s always at a loss for words around you, so scared he’ll say the wrong thing that he ends up barely speaking at all. He’s only sober enough to know that with all the cheap beer and vodka running through his blood, his odds of making a fool of himself are even bigger.

“Hey. I was wondering where you were.”

“You’re the one who came late.”

“I know!” you exclaim. “I wanted to come right away, but Chaewon was hell-bent on getting her Korean barbecue.”

“She does get cranky when she hasn’t had pork belly in a while.” Sunghoon feels like he’s just won the Nobel Prize when you let out a laugh. “Was the food good at least?”

“It was amazing. So worth getting here late,” you joke.

He rolls his eyes playfully. “I see how it is.” Then, before he can stop himself, he adds, “Then we should go there together next time.”

Your smile changes, turning from cheerful to surprised, but amused—almost mischievous. You take a step forward. Sunghoon gulps; the gap between the two of you was narrow to begin with. “Are you asking me out on a date?”

Usually, this type of straight-forwardness would have him stuttering, but drunk Sunghoon is a man sober Sunghoon barely recognizes in the morning. “Yeah. I am. Is that okay?”

You nod. “Mh-hm.”

“Nice. Okay.” For a second, you just look at each other. Another thing about drunk Sunghoon: he doesn’t feel like prolonged eye contact will make him spontaneously combust. He actually quite enjoys it. He also stumbles, even when all he’s doing is trying to stand straight. “You’re still wearing my jacket,” he eventually says, reaching out to take the end of your sleeve between his fingers.

You stretch out your arms and appraise the team jacket as if you only remembered you had it on. “Yeah. It’s comfy.”

“It looks good. You look good.”

“You’re not quite sober, are you?” you ask suddenly.

“Is it that obvious?” When you nod, he giggles, lowering his head in defeat. “The guys made me drink so much.”

“You did score three goals after all. And you looked good doing it.”

At the praise, he stands up to his full height and places his palms behind his head in a victorious pose. “I did, didn’t I?” he says, looking off in the distance with a self-assured look that makes you burst into laughter. He drops the confident facade and laughs along with you, until somebody bumps into him and sends him stumbling forwards. If you weren’t standing there to catch him, he’d probably have fallen flat on his face. But even though he doesn’t fall, he feels all the alcohol catching up to him and threatening to come right back out where it came from. You hold him for a second, and just as you ask him if he’s okay, he says, “I think I’m gonna throw up.”

You sigh. “Okay. Where’s your room?”

Arm under his shoulders, you let Sunghoon lean most of his weight on you as you guide him towards the elevator. It’s just one floor, but you said you didn’t want to risk the stairs with him. “Hey, who was that guy with you in the kitchen? That guy in the striped shirt? You guys seemed real chummy back there…” he mumbles as you help him out of the elevator. Even on the verge of sickness, Sunghoon is preoccupied by more important things.

“Oh, that was Jaemin.”

“Jaemin,” he echoes, more venom in his voice than needed.

You look at him, taking in his disgruntled expression, and chuckle. “Yeah, he’s having some problems with his boyfriend. He asked me for advice.”

Sunghoon almost freezes in his tracks, but you’re there to keep him walking towards his room. “Oh. He has a boyfriend.”

“Yeah…” He can tell you want to tease him about it, but thankfully, you say nothing. He’s made it clear he had gotten jealous of your gay friend—no need to spell it out in so many words. Once you reach his studio (which he’d stupidly left unlocked), he heads straight for the bathroom, locking himself in, half out of embarrassment, half because he really doesn’t want you to see him throw up. Talk about a turn-off. He leans over the toilet bowl, waiting for the vomit to rise, but nothing comes. He waits, and waits, mind completely empty, head spinning even though he’s sitting very still, when suddenly a knock on the door pulls him out of his stupor.

“Sunghoon? It’s been ten minutes. Everything okay?”

He doesn’t say anything, just unlocks the door for you. Without realizing, he fell asleep like a bored teenager in math class. “All right,” he hears you say.

He’s surprised you’re able to carry him out of the bathroom—if he was a deadweight before, by now, rigor mortis has practically set in. Despite his small student room, crossing it takes you an entire minute, and when you reach his bed, you all but let him flop on the mattress. He doesn’t mind. As soon as his body hits the bed, he feels quite snug, curling against his blanket. You start to unbutton his shirt, probably just thinking he’s already fallen asleep and wanting to make him more comfortable, but your fingers freeze when he starts giggling. Shoulders shaking with unbridled laughter, he feels as delighted as a five-year-old who just said a naughty word and made all his drunk relatives laugh at the family dinner.

“I know I looked really hot tonight, but can we wait until I’m sober?” he asks, slurring his words slightly and keeping his eyes shut, despite the shit-eating smirk on his lips. You hit him on the chest but it just makes him laugh more.

“Bold of you to assume I’d still hit when I’ve just had to peel you off your toilet seat.” He lets you finish helping him out of his button-down.

“Wouldn’t you?” he asks. He tries to look at you, but his eyes don’t quite open all the way, and they don’t focus properly, due to a strong mix of alcohol and inappropriate thoughts. Of you, specifically. His body feels suddenly very heavy, his want for you weighing him down into the mattress. The room is dark, your face illuminated only by the light in the bathroom and the glow of the street lights outside. You always look pretty, but your beauty is especially breath-taking right now, Sunghoon thinks. He wants to reach out and touch your face, wants to trace your jawline and know what your skin would feel like against his fingers. He doesn’t realize he’s actually doing it until he hears you inhale shakily.

The expression in your eyes is unreadable, and quickly gone, replaced by an annoyed squint. You grab his wrist gently, setting it back down next to him. “I’m gonna make you some ramen. You need to sober up, and you haven’t had dinner, have you?”

Sunghoon shakes his head. He feels rejected, and it makes him inordinately sad.

For five minutes, he watches as you rummage around his cupboards for a pack of ramen, fill a pot with water and bring it to a boil. His thoughts float back to your day at the beach, memories that he’s preciously held onto for the past few weeks. You running around on the sand, opening yourself up to him and letting him open himself up to you, holding his hand on the bus. That day, he’d really thought it would be the beginning of something new; but as time passed, he became less and less sure of himself. He’s scared it might’ve just been a fluke, and that he’d have to destroy the castle he’d built in his head. He’s seen you almost every day since, but it’s never been the same. And even if your eyes met unexpectedly sometimes, or if you went out of your way to sit next to him during movie nights, he can’t let himself go on with so few signs. Jay was right—he had to be clear about his feelings, otherwise this would go on forever. Even if it didn’t feel like it, the Earth would continue spinning on its axis if you didn’t reciprocate.

“I’ve missed you.”

You pause in your movements. “Missed me? But we’ve seen each other every day,” you say after a few seconds, still facing away from him. Your voice is softer than he’s heard it before, almost unsure of itself.

“No,” Sunghoon whines, frowning. He can barely keep his eyes open—he wishes you could read his mind so he wouldn’t have to explain, but alas. “I miss you—the you from the beach. When it was just me and you. It’s not the same with the others around.”

Silence falls over the room again. Sunghoon wonders if you’re just going to ignore what he said, until you take a deep breath, and walk back to his bed. You crouch in front of him and take both of his hands in yours. Electricity flows from where your hands touch to the rest of his body. He suddenly feels a lot more awake.

“It’s just the two of us now,” you whisper.

Sunghoon nods. “I know. It’s nice.”

You smile. It might be the alcohol playing tricks on him, but Sunghoon swears there’s a hint of sadness in your eyes. One of your hands comes up to his hair. You thread your fingers gently through it, pushing it away from his forehead, then bring your hand down to the side of his face, your palm cupping it tenderly. Sunghoon lets himself lean into your warm touch. With his eyes closed, the darkness surrounding him makes this feel like a dream—he basks in the moment so as not to let a second of it go to waste.

“Do you wanna do something just us two this week?” you ask softly. His eyes shoot open—he needs to be sure this is really happening. He nods again, fervently this time, and it makes you chuckle. “Okay.”

“Just us two?”

“Just us two.”

He relaxes once more. He guides your hand towards his mouth and presses his lips against your palm. Something shifts in your eyes—Sunghoon thinks the opportunity to finally kiss you has arisen, but as soon as his gaze drops to your lips, you’re back on your feet. “Let’s eat some ramen, shall we?” you ask as you head back towards the kitchen. Sunghoon tries his best (and probably fails) to not let his disappointment show.

There’s no dining table to speak of, only a low table near Sunghoon’s bed, on which you set down a wooden board and the steaming pot of spicy noodles. You hand him a pair of chopsticks and a spoon, and tell him to eat. Neither of you say much for a while, and Sunghoon grows redder and redder under your watchful gaze. He asks if you want any a few times, but you always turn him down. The silence quickly gets a little too unbearable for him, and he’s got a question burning the tip of his tongue anyway. Now’s as good a time as ever to ask it.

“Something’s been bugging me recently, actually…” You wait for him to go on. “So, at the costume party, right?” You nod. “You said there was only one person you wanted to kiss… Did you mean me?”

You tilt your head, looking at him like you’re trying to figure out whether he’s joking or not. “Yeah, Sunghoon… I meant you. Who else?”

He’s only half-relieved. “So why won’t you kiss me now?”

To his surprise, you smile. “Because you’re drunk.”

Confusion fogs Sunghoon’s brain. Is that all you’re worried about? Is his blood alcohol level the only thing stopping you from kissing him? “But I-I’m fine. I give you consent to kiss me, Y/N.” He’s dead serious, so when you laugh, it only frustrates him further.

“Finish your food, Sunghoon. We’ll see about kissing later.”

He sighs. Later he could deal with. “Fine. But I’ll hold you to it, okay?” he says, pointing a menacing chopstick at you.

“Okay.”

But Sunghoon can’t keep quiet for long—ten seconds later, he’s remembered another question he’s been dying to ask. He continues drinking his soup in an attempt to appear nonchalant. “So what happened between you and Heeseung?”

The question takes you so off-guard, you look like you would’ve done a spit-take had you been drinking water. “That’s-you know about that?”

“Well, not much, that’s why I’m asking.”

You scoff. “Why do you want to know? It’s boring.”

At those words, Sunghoon whips his head up to look at you. “It’s not boring!” he exclaims, perhaps a tad too vigorously. “Anything that has to do with you is interesting to me.”

Finally, the corners of your lips rise. Sunghoon hated the ten seconds in which you weren’t smiling. “Well, there isn’t much to say, anyway. We had a thing when we were in second year, I caught feelings and wanted more, and he didn’t. The end.”

Sunghoon freezes, staring at you with his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth agape. He then sets his cutlery down neatly next to the pot of ramen and clasps his hands together like he’s in a business meeting. “So you’re telling me that he had the opportunity to make you his girlfriend and he just… didn’t?”

You shrug. “Basically, yeah.”

He hits the bedsheets next to him, huffing out in annoyance. “What an idiot.”

“He sure is,” you say. You smile to yourself as you grab Sunghoon’s spoon and try some of the broth. He wonders whether anything lies behind that smile. “But it happened a while ago. Don’t be weird with him on my account. He’s still your captain.”

Sunghoon thinks for a second. “Can I side-eye him once in a while? Or not pass him the puck during practice?”

“Sure,” you reply, laughing. You swiftly move on to other topics as Sunghoon slurps the last of his noodles, asking him about the beginning of the party and just how much his teammates made him drink. He’s recounting the shot contest they held, which Mark won with an impressive seven shots of tequila in a row — Sunghoon hopes the boy is okay now — when your phones buzz at the same time. Minjeong’s name appears on your screen, Jay’s on his, both asking where you are.

“Should we head back now?” you offer, although Sunghoon, wishfully perhaps, detects a trace of reluctance in your voice. “You look like you’ve sobered up a bit, seeing as you’re able to string more than two sentences together.”

“I wasn’t that bad!”

“I should’ve filmed you.”

It’s one a.m. when you head back down, and the party is in full swing. Pop music blasts through someone’s JBL speaker in the shared kitchen, the hallways are more crowded than the subway at rush hour, just as full of hockey fans celebrating their team’s win as students who just wanted an excuse to party, and every window is open to alleviate some of the stuffiness. They probably have another hour left before the dorm residents who decided not to join in the festivities call campus police on them.

Sunghoon is relieved to find that Jake is off with other team members, reaching levels of drunkenness that will most definitely be regretted in the morning. Technically, he hasn’t done anything wrong—he simply let you nurse him back to sobriety after he almost regurgitated his pre-game protein bar and three beers all over your nice shirt. Chaewon and Yunjin are busy making out in a corner, their lack of decorum only increasing when they’ve been drinking, but Jay and Minjeong eye you suspiciously upon seeing the two of you arrive together. You explain what happened so casually that they don’t question it any further.

Chaewon and Yunjin only tear themselves off of each other when a Beyoncé song starts playing, and they drag all four of you to the makeshift dancefloor, which is really just three meters away in the middle of the kitchen. Sunghoon is practically all sobered up by now, but he’s loosened up enough not to feel self-conscious with every step he takes; the fact that you look so happy, dancing with him and laughing at his silly moves, is a considerable bonus. He won’t drink any more, not wanting to risk embarrassing himself further in front of you, and Jay, as the group’s self-proclaimed health guru, probably had his last beer around nine p.m., but the girls, each of them with a cup of suspicious transparent liquid in hand, are getting drunker by the minute—and so is Jake, who has now joined you all on the dancefloor, if his inability to stand straight is anything to go by. Sunghoon assumes you’re also done with alcohol for the night, until you turn to him in the middle of a song no one has heard since 2015 and tell him you’re going to get a drink.

“Okay!” he simply answers, and for a good thirty seconds, basks in the blissful satisfaction of knowing he was the one you informed of your whereabouts. That is, until he realizes a minute later that it was probably a covert invitation for him to come along, which he totally missed. But when he looks over at the counter where all the drinks are, his heart drops—Heeseung is standing in front of you, pouring gin and lemonade into your cup. A flurry of emotions course through Sunghoon, emotions he has no idea what to do with, because he’s not sure they’re entirely warranted. He’s angry that Heeseung is talking to you, after what he did, confused that you’d let him; but mostly, he’s jealous. But he knows it’s only because he has no guarantee that you like him, and that you won’t go off with Heeseung, despite having just talked about how you were over him.

Wait—is that really what you said? You told Sunghoon that what happened with Heeseung didn’t bother you anymore, which doesn’t necessarily mean you wouldn’t go back to him, given the chance.

Before he can think it over a second time, Sunghoon heads over to where you and Heeseung stand. He places himself right behind you, reaching for a bottle of Coke on your side and pouring himself a drink.

“Oh, hey, Hoon,” his team captain says, clearly surprised to see him there and looking so discontented. Sunghoon can’t remember whether they’ve ever been close enough for Heeseung to call him by his nickname. “Having fun?”

“Yep,” he curtly replies, avoiding eye contact with either of you and looking out at the crowd of party-goers instead. He can feel your gaze, heavy on his face, can see the knowing smirk slowly rising on your lips. How was it that you could see right through him so easily?

“Too much dancing made you thirsty?” you ask, taking a drink from your cup and hiding your smile behind it.

He glares at you, more annoyed that his attempt at subtly sussing out what you and Heeseung were doing together was shut down so quickly than anything else. “Yep,” he repeats.

“You guys know each other?” the older boy asks, eyes darting between the two of you.

“Jake introduced us,” Sunghoon quickly answers. To his surprise, this makes Heeseung chuckle.

“Jay, Sunghoon, me… Wow, do you meet all your friends through your brother, Y/N?” he asks jokingly. Immediately, so many alarm bells ring in Sunghoon’s head—the implication that you and Heeseung are friends, the fact that he put himself and Sunghoon in the same bag, and above all, that teasing, almost flirtatious tone of his.

He’s horrified to find you rolling your eyes playfully and saying, “I have other friends, thanks,” in a tone far too similar. At that moment, Minjeong starts yelling about how much she loves everyone in this room but particularly “you guys,” pointing to Jake, Jay, Minjeong and Chaewon, and “you guys, too!” screaming over the music as she points to you and Sunghoon.

“There’s one of them,” you say, half-amused, half-exasperated. “We should probably go check on her. See you around, Heeseung.”

“Right. See you, Y/N. Sunghoon.”

Back to no-nickname basis, apparently.

Your group’s indicator of when it’s time to go home is when Minjeong starts one of her “I-love-my-friends-so-much” rants—if she’s that drunk, everyone else must be wasted. Indeed, Chaewon and Yunjin are holding onto each other to keep themselves from falling down, and Jake is unable to keep his head up. You, Sunghoon and Jay herd your friends outside and wait for Jake’s Uber, making sure to get him safely inside and to tip the driver generously for his pains. Jay lives nearby yours and the girls’ flat, and Sunghoon, ever the gentleman, walks you all home.

“Just ‘cause you and Jay might need a hand getting these three home,” he tells you. Yunjin, Chaewon and Minjeong are currently running around on the road, pointing and laughing at random shop names, and Jay is yelling at them to get back on the sidewalk.

“Mh-hm.”

“And it’ll be good to completely sober up before going to bed.”

“Right.”

There’s no use putting up a front with you—he’s an open book and you’re an avid reader. You don’t need to say anything to make it clear that you know it’s just an excuse to spend more time with you.

“You know, I told you not to be weird with Heeseung,” you say, gently punching him in the arm.

“Was I weird?” he asks, knowing fully well he hadn’t acted at all like he usually did around his captain.

“You basically only spoke to let Heeseung know we’re friends. You were making yourself all tall and looking mysteriously out into the distance instead of at us.”

“But I am tall and mysterious,” he says, pride coursing through him as it always does when you laugh at one of his jokes.

“You’re probably the least mysterious person I know, Hoon.”

Hoon. How much sweeter that name sounds coming from you over anyone else.

“So you agree that I’m tall?”

You roll your eyes, but there’s a grin on your face. A win is a win. “That’s just a fact.”

Sunghoon smiles victoriously. “I’ll take a fact. But I’m sorry if I was acting weird… I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t bothering you.”

“Heeseung is always bothering me,” you say with a sigh. “He comes up to me like this at every party. He’s just asking how I’ve been, but it’s like he’s sussing out whether or not he’s still got a chance.”

“Do you need me to beat him up? Threaten him? Dox him?”

Even though Sunghoon was only half-joking, you burst out laughing, hard enough for Minjeong to whip around and shout, “What are you laughing about?” as if you had offended her personally. At least Jay is there to make her turn around and focus on walking straight.

“I appreciate the offer, but that won’t be needed. I just don’t like talking about it, ‘cause it’s really not that big a deal anymore. It feels like digging up old bones, you know?”

Sunghoon shrugs. “I’d commit grave robbery with you.”

“You-what?”

“Nevermind. We obviously don’t have to talk about it, but I’m curious.”

You sigh. “I guess it’d make sense for you to know about this.” Sunghoon thinks he sees something like panic flash across your features, but it’s so quick and such a rare expression on you that he’s not sure whether he just imagined it. “You know-just ‘cause everyone else is aware of it, and everything,” you quickly explain.

“Sure.”

“I just… I’m sure Heeseung is a nice guy when it comes to other things, but what the girls and I have concluded is that he’s a bit of an attention whore, you know. When it comes to girls. We fooled around for a while, and he never made it official, even when I made it pretty clear that that was what I wanted. But every time we saw each other after that, he’d flirt with me like nothing had happened. I fell for it at first and flirted back, thinking he had changed his mind… but he really just wanted to make sure I was still into him.”

“Looking for validation,” Sunghoon says.

“Exactly. And when I realized that, I stopped giving it to him. I was getting tired of him anyway, saying the same thing every time. But now, I entertain him for a couple of minutes before I walk away. I shut him down before he gets a chance to do it to me.”

“That’s smart.”

“I know,” you say, smiling. “I understand the need for validation, but he won’t be getting any from me.”

Jay bravely handles the three drunkards the whole way home, letting you and Sunghoon hang behind and carry on talking. You reach the boy’s apartment first, and yours five minutes later. But when you reach your front door, Minjeong announces she needs to talk to Sunghoon. “Privately,” she emphasizes.

You give Sunghoon an amused look and shrug as if to say “She’s your problem now.” He doesn’t have time to protest before you’ve bid him goodnight and disappeared behind the door, Yunjin and Chaewon in tow, yelling good night at Sunghoon like they’re not going to see him for months.

Minjeong places her palms flat onto Sunghoon’s torso and looks right at him—to the best of her ability, at least, considering she’s having a hard time focusing her eyes. “Sunghoon,” she says gravely.

“Minjeong?”

“Listen, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you,” she says, slurring her words. “You know I love Y/N, she’s amazing…”

“Yeah, she is,” Sunghoon says firmly—already, he can tell where this is going, and he doesn’t like it.

“But she’s not the best with relationships.”

“What do you mean?”

Minjeong’s hands drop by her sides and she exhales deeply. “I’ve just never seen her in a committed relationship in the-in the almost four years I’ve known her. She never lets things get serious. She’s just so afraid of being hurt, Hoon, and I-”

A hiccup escapes Minjeong’s lips as tears start pooling in her eyes. Sunghoon has only ever seen Minjeong cry when drunk—even movies that had him sobbing barely made her eyes water. Even if she isn’t in her right state of mind, he knows it means this must be important to her. He holds her arms and tries to put on the most reassuring tone he can. “But I wouldn’t hurt her.”

“No, I know that. I’m scared you’d get hurt. I don’t want things to become weird between all of us.”

Sunghoon shakes his head. “Minjeong, what-that wouldn’t happen.”

“But it will!” she exclaimed. “If something happens with you and her, and it doesn’t work out the way you want it to, it’ll make things awkward-”

“If that happens,” he interrupts, “I’ll deal with it. I won’t make it your guys’ problem. Y/N and I are adults, okay?”

“You’re like, nineteen…”

“Yeah, whatever. Don’t worry about it, okay? It’ll be fine.” He takes a step back and opens the door for her to get in.

She’s only on the first stair when she turns back around. “But, Hoon-” she tries, though he cuts her off.

“Minjeong, I promise-”

“Just don’t rush into anything, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Go inside.”

She complies, giving him one last look before climbing the stairs to her apartment. Sunghoon closes the door behind her, a heavy sigh leaving his lips.

Sunghoon is on his way home from hockey practice when his phone buzzes with a text from you.

yn are you still up for doing something this week?

He almost throws his phone in the air in celebration, as if it was a graduation cap. His Sunday was spent going back-and-forth between lapidating himself for his drunken stupidity, memories, rough as stones, hitting him in the face every time he thought of what he said and how he acted, and congratulating himself for having finally made his feelings for you somewhat clearer. Hopefully, you now know he isn’t just awkward and silent around new people—well, he is, but it’s worse with you.

She never lets things get serious.

Minjeong’s warnings echo in his head as he types a positive — although not over-enthusiastic, ‘cause that’d be uncool — answer, but he dismisses them easily. Perhaps he shouldn’t; Sunghoon is, after all, incredibly serious about any and all romantic encounters. The girl at the grocery store who reached for the same red bell pepper as him was the most serious thing to him in the world for a good ten minutes; all of his school crushes were of utmost importance to him, however long they had lasted.

So this? This is capital-s Serious. But therein lies the problem; he’s so serious about you that he’d let you not make it serious. If Minjeong is right, and you’re not planning on taking this nearly as far as he wishes for it to go, he can already tell he’ll just let you. He’ll probably be happy you wanted anything to do with him at all.

He has ways of reassuring himself, of convincing himself he isn’t a totally lost cause. Because when Sunghoon falls in love — and he had an inkling this was what this was — it usually goes as quickly as it came. Who’s to say this time next week he won’t have completely moved on? Maybe this date that he’s agreed to will go horribly wrong, you’ll be rude to the waiter, you’ll spill tomato sauce all over your shirt, and the flame in his heart will be put out. Easy as that.

You decide to meet on Wednesday evening, two days from now. Sunghoon suggests a Japanese restaurant he likes, a place he had gone to with his mom and sister when they had dropped him off at university before his first year, and that he knows is nice enough for a date but won’t burn a hole through his wallet.

Seeing you at the library the day before is a real thrill. Nobody but you knows of your plans—at least not until he caves in and tells Jay about it, who congratulates him with a roll of his eyes and a pat on the head. All of your eye contact feels loaded with the kind of complicity that comes with sharing a secret. As much as he would love boasting about it to every soul who’d listen, this secrecy electrifies him—it binds the two of you with something much more real than before. At least, more real than Sunghoon’s imagination and one-sided feelings. He knows that your text wasn’t in any way a confession of your own feelings for him, but it’s a step in the right direction.

In the few hours before your reservation at seven p.m., Sunghoon spends so much time thinking about the date that he’s almost late for it. He thinks about his expectations, then tries to get rid of them; he comes up with ideas of what your expectations might be, remembers Minjeong’s words, dismisses them, remembers them again; he goes through scenarios upon scenarios of everything that might go wrong and everything that might go spectacularly well. He ends up with less than twenty minutes to get ready, but manages to arrive at the restaurant a minute before you.

When he sees you approaching, Sunghoon feels like one of those boys in Disney movies as they watch their girlfriend coming down the stairs in her prom dress. You’re not wearing an over-the-top poofy purple dress, but the effect is the same—his eyes are glued on you with every step you take towards him.

You grab him by the arm and lead him into the restaurant as soon as you reach him. He’s too busy taking in your appearance to be bothered by it. “Don’t look at me like that,” you chide as you wait for waiting staff to seat you. He’d actually think you were mad at him if it wasn’t for the small smile playing on your lips.

“Like what?”

“Like what you’re doing right now! You’re staring.”

Realization slowly dawns on him; your gazes have made him lose his composure too many times for him not to know what being flustered looks like. He’d be lying if the fact that it was you in this tight spot and not him didn’t heavily stroke his ego.

“Why wouldn’t I? You look beautiful,” he says, dropping his voice to a whisper so that the approaching waitress can’t hear. Her presence saves you from responding verbally, but as she brings you to your table, you pinch his arm lightly as if to say Be on your best behavior—although Sunghoon would argue this was his best behavior.

You have trouble making up your mind about the food—you want to try everything on the menu. Sunghoon tentatively offers to order a bunch of dishes and share them. “It’s what my family always does at the restaurant, just try as much as you want and take the leftovers to go. We never ate out very often because my mom would spend so much money every time,” he recollects, smiling fondly.

“That actually sounds like a dream. My parents would never do that. It was always just eat what you got, but I’m unable to look at someone else’s food and not want to try it. It honestly should just be common practice to share dishes at the restaurant.”

Sunghoon thinks he could get down on one knee right then and there. Whenever they went out to eat, the boys would roll his eyes at him when he stole bites of their food. But you—you’re like him. He knows he’s prone to over-exaggeration, but he can’t help but feel like if you understand each other on this, you must understand each other at a molecular level.

He had expected a level of awkwardness to your date, at least at the beginning — God knows the moments in which he doesn’t feel like a mumbling fool in front of you are few and far between — but to his surprise, everything goes smoothly. There is no uncomfortable silence, all his jokes miraculously land, even the lousy ones, and you both laugh and talk and share sushi and pork cutlets like it’s the most natural thing in the world, which perhaps it is. His attempts at flirting are well-received and he only turns violently red twice when you compliment him and smile at him in a particularly pretty way.

It’s that day at the beach all over again. Always on the same page, you dip in and out of topics with a synergy he has rarely felt before. Sunghoon realizes it must be the presence of others, rather than you yourself, that makes him feel like he can’t act the way he wants to around you, makes him so nervous. Save for the moments where you make his heart flutter like a thousand butterflies’ wings, he actually feels quite at ease with you, all things considered. Of course, he still tries — and fails — to look cool for you, but he knows it comes from a place within himself rather than because you make him feel as though he has to meet a certain standard. Surprisingly, he can be totally himself, and it seems to be enough for you.

He loves his friends. He wouldn’t trade them for the world. But he’s not sure he won’t have moments where he’ll wish nothing more than for them all to go away and leave the two of you be.

You eat until you can’t anymore and are still left with enough food for another full meal. You only let him get the bill once he’s promised that next time will be on you. If it means there’ll be a next time, he’s more than happy with making that promise. The sun has set when you exit the restaurant. Sunghoon shivers as he steps outside, the temperature having gone down by at least four degrees in the last two hours.

You grab his hand; it warms him right up.

Your apartment is a thirty-minute bus ride away, but Sunghoon offers to walk you home. Anything to spend more time with you.

He spends the first few minutes of the walk worrying about his hand, whether it’s too clammy, whether it’s holding yours right, but he eventually relaxes into the touch. When a particularly chilly gust of wind blows, you drop his hand and hold onto his arm instead, inching closer to him for more warmth. He only drank lemonade with his meal, but he feels blissfully light-headed.

Silence only arrives when you reach your doorstep. You stand in front of each other, Sunghoon looking down at his feet, you gazing out at the empty street. He knows this is the moment where he is supposed to kiss you. If there was a step-by-step guide on how to date — there probably is, but Sunghoon hasn’t resorted to such loser-like measures yet — this would probably be the moment where it would be written to just kiss her, you idiot. But nerves get the best of him.

At least, you’re there to save the day. You direct your gaze towards him, a bashful smile playing on your lips. “So… are you gonna kiss me now?” you ask, essentially reading his mind.

He reacts immediately. “Y-yep. Yes. I am.” Heart racing, he takes a step towards you as he rests his hands on your waist. Then he changes his mind, and brings one hand up to your cheek. There’s an eyelash that has fallen below your eye; he brushes it out of the way with his thumb before leaning in and pressing his lips against yours.

In all of his late-night scenarios and daydreams of kissing you, he had never imagined something as good as this. You find your rhythm within seconds. It’s slow, almost hesitant, yet so tender, it makes Sunghoon’s heart ache. As your lips move against each other in perfect sync, as your hands find their way around Sunghoon’s neck, he realizes he should have known — this will not go away as quickly as it came.

Only when you grab a fistful of his hair, making him react viscerally and wrap his arm around your waist to bring you closer to him, does he remember where the two of you are. He leans back, then almost passes out when you chase his lips and press a shorter but just as sweet kiss there. He commits this view to memory—the smile on your lips, the glow on your face, the haziness in your eyes.

“Do you wanna come up?”

“Yes,” he replies immediately, and it makes you laugh. You grab his hand and lead him up the stairs and into your apartment.

“Are the girls in?” he asks as you lock the front door.

“Minjeong is at karaoke with her school friends, and Yunjin and Chaewon are at a dinner party somewhere.”

“Minjeong karaokes?”

“Get enough G&Ts in her and she’ll do anything.”

You turn on a small lamp in your room and take off your jacket. Sunghoon has been in your apartment before, but never in your room—at some point, he’ll spend an hour observing every photograph and trinket in detail, asking you about every backstory, but right now, he’s got more important things to tend to. His heart beats uncontrollably as you shut the door to your room and walk towards him, eyes gazing deeply into his. The corners of your lips rise when you tug at the bottom of his sweatshirt, a clear indicator that you want it off. He wastes no time in obliging.

The air is buzzing with electricity when your lips find each other again. You’re both more confident this time around, and so the kiss is deeper, your touches bolder. Everything happens quickly—one second, you’re standing in the middle of your room; the next, you’re laying on your bed, Sunghoon underneath you.

“You know,” he says between kisses, “I’d really planned on being a gentleman and not going up to your room after the first date…”

Your lips move from his lips to his jawline, warm and soft against his skin. Sunghoon closes his eyes and lets out a low hum of approval. “I’m glad you changed your mind,” you whisper, lips brushing against his neck as you speak. “And since we’re onto confessions, I can finally say I’ve been wanting to do this since we met.”

This information sends his mind reeling. Not once had he been sure of how you felt about him — he even remembers you saying no to a kiss — and here you are, saying you’ve been wanting to kiss him since the beginning, just like he had.

“You’re me,” he replies breathlessly.

“Hm?”

“I mean, me too.”

You pause your kisses to giggle, a sound so soft and intimate it has Sunghoon melting impossibly more. “You’re me?”

Unfortunately, he is too preoccupied by you to put a filter between the weird, half-formed thoughts in his brain and the words that leave his mouth. “Don’t question it,” he says, a smile audible in his voice, before moving his head and catching your lips. If he couldn’t stop himself from saying odd things, he could at least distract you from them.

Sunghoon thinks he’s doing a good job keeping himself together, until you roll your hips against his. It’s barely anything, but it sends waves of pleasure and anticipation through his body. His grip on your waist tightens, and when you repeat the motion, his hands sneakily find their way down your back and under your dress. Palms splayed against your ass, he brings you down closer to him. The second you moan into the kiss, he’s a goner.

After that, it doesn’t take long for clothes to be discarded or for curious fingers to find the other’s waistbands. Your movements are hasty, messy—the tension that had built up over weeks of pining for you, after getting close to kissing you twice and thinking about it a hundred times more, it all comes crashing down in this moment, as his teeth sink into the flesh of your neck, as your hands pull at strands of his hair, as your bodies gently bump into each other. If someone asked Sunghoon right now how long he’d known you, he’d say years, not mere weeks. It couldn’t possibly be real that this much desire had accumulated inside of him — and inside of you, if your broken moans and rapid breathing are anything to go by — in just over a month.

He only slows down when he has you naked and heaving underneath him, reminding himself to savor the moment instead of rushing it. His fingertips graze down your sides until they reach between your thighs, and he marvels at the way his touch makes you shiver. His eyes are so wide with amazement at the sight of you that he probably looks like he’s never seen a woman before, but he can’t help himself—he always thought you were beautiful, but this is something else entirely.

His first touch is hesitant, a slow upward motion of his thumb between your folds as if quite literally testing the waters. But it has you arching your back and gripping his bicep, meeting his eyes to silently plead for more. Sunghoon takes that as his green light, thumb circling your clit as his lips continue their work on your neck, on your face, everywhere they can reach. He slips a finger inside of you, then a second one, and when he is satisfied with the state he’s gotten you in, all disheveled and gasping for air, he replaces his fingers with his dick, rock-hard just from seeing and hearing you.

He slowly inches forward until he’s bottomed out, letting you adjust around him. “All good?” he whispers, lips moving against the shell of your ear.

“Never better,” you whisper back, smiling. You kiss him, and the tenderness of your lips on his, mixed with the feeling of being inside you, has Sunghoon’s heart constricting inside his chest. He starts rocking his hips back-and-forth into you, the side of his face is pressed up against yours, head light from the little oxygen the two of you share. It all feels oddly intimate for a first time, feels more like the kind of sex two people would have after years of knowing each other’s bodies. He moves like it’s second nature, thrusts deep and slow, trying to reach those spots that have your hands clawing at his back. He wraps an arm around your waist, pulling you closer to him, using his free hand to push the hair that sticks to your face with sweat.

You wrap your legs higher around his hips, the shift in angle letting him go deeper. “Fuck, right there,” you say, voice strangled. Sunghoon doesn’t need to be told twice—he picks up his pace, and already within a minute, starts to feel himself reaching his limit. He tries to muffle his groans against your skin, but with the way your hold on him tightens and your moans go higher in pitch, you seem to be just as close as he is. When you do come undone around him, breath hitching in your throat before you release a heavy sigh, he has mere seconds left in him. A few thrusts later, his orgasm finally releases him from the tension that had been twisting his stomach into a knot for the past half-hour. You’re both spent, but he continues lazily rocking his hips against yours chasing the last remnants of pleasure, wanting to bask in it just a bit longer. He rolls onto his back after sliding out, wrapping his arms around you. You bury your face in the crook of his neck.

His chest rises and falls as his breathing takes its time returning to normal. In a way, he’s almost relieved it’s over, like any longer would’ve actually taken too much of a toll on him. He likes the comfort he gets from having you in his arms as much as the sex itself. “I didn’t know it could feel this good,” he says, the words spilling out of his mouth before he can stop them. He needs more than a few minutes to get his head back on straight and start thinking before he speaks again. You chuckle airily, he chuckles too, and within seconds, you’re both laughing for seemingly no reason. The bliss of such an intense orgasm and the lack of oxygen must have gone to your brain, too.

“Me either,” you say once the laughter dies down. When your lips find his once more, Sunghoon forgets entirely about his exhaustion and feels like he could go for a second round. “Shower?” you ask right when he realizes how sticky and smelly he is.

“Yes, please.”

He can’t keep his hands off of you in the shower, rubbing soap on every square inch of your skin when you could do it perfectly fine yourself, kissing you even when you’ve both got foaming cleanser on your faces. The taste of soap in his mouth is worth the giggles he gets out of you.

Sunghoon reaches heaven when you drop to your knees in front of him, water rushing down his back as you take him in your mouth. He’s eager to return the favor, of course, thumb flicking your clit with a speed and dexterity even he didn’t know he was capable of. If you weren’t already in the shower, you’d have needed another one.

As soon as your bodies hit the mattress, you both drift off to sleep, limbs wrapping around each other as though they had been separated for too long and finally found each other again—not to let go again.

When Sunghoon wakes up, it takes him a few seconds to realize that he hadn’t dreamt up last night’s events. He reaches a hand out hesitantly, still half-asleep and scared that you’ll disappear into thin air at the touch of his fingertips. But no—he feels your skin, warm and soft, and he knows this is real.

You’re laying on your side, facing away from him, so he has to strain his neck to peek at your face. You look so peaceful as you sleep—he doesn’t want to wake you up, but he can’t stop himself from wrapping an arm around your waist and pressing his torso against your back, humming contentedly to himself. He presses a soft, quiet kiss to the top of your head, just because he can.

Outside, clouds part, and a bright ray of sun shines through the window, landing right on your face. Sunghoon watches as you grumble and turn around, burying your face in his chest to avoid the blinding light, but the damage is done—you’re awake. He can tell from the drawled-out whine you let out and the way you grab tightly onto his waist, as if it was his fault the sun had decided to shine right on you.

He lets you settle in a comfortable position. Stays still as you hike your leg over his legs, then slip it between them instead; as you press your cheek against his chest, then bury your nose in his neck; as you wrap your arm around his waist, then move it to thread your fingers through his hair, until you give up on falling back asleep altogether. “It’s so bright in here,” you mumble in lieu of a good-morning greeting.

You can’t see him, so Sunghoon smiles and tightens his grip around you—one arm circling your shoulders, the other, your waist. Skin to skin. “We forgot to close the blinds yesterday.”

“It’s okay,” you say, sighing. You press a kiss to the base of his neck, right between his collarbones, then lift your face to look at him. “How are you feeling?”

This is what it feels like to wake up next to her, Sunghoon thinks. He’d thought about it so many times: what you would look like first thing in the morning, what you’d say to him, what it’d feel like when your eyes met. If you’d be a slow sort of morning person, cuddling in bed with him until the very last possible second, or if you’d be up and about as soon as you woke up. If you’d be grumpy. If you’d want coffee. If you liked morning sex.

It seems to be a recurring theme that Sunghoon’s imagination never quite lives up to reality. Your sleepy eyes boring into his, struggling to stay open, your fingers playing with the hair at the nape of his neck; your skin, so warm and so soft, your scent, so intoxicating he can barely think straight.

You’re better than a dream.

“I feel great. Do you feel great?”

“I feel amazing, thank you so much for asking,” you say, burrowing yourself impossibly closer to him.

The two of you stay like this for a while, talking about your plans for the day and begrudging how little you want to go about them. Sunghoon wishes this could go on forever, but then his stomach growls so loudly, his face turns red from embarrassment. He hadn’t even noticed how hungry he was.

“You’re me,” you say, laughing, and Sunghoon can’t help but join in. “Is it crazy to have last night’s leftovers for breakfast?”

What Sunghoon hears is that you want him to stay; that you don’t want to part ways just yet.

“If by crazy you mean the best idea ever, then yes.”

“Amazing, because I’ve been thinking about that curry all night.”

“Really? I was thinking about something else,” he says, burrowing his face in your neck and leaving warm kisses there.

You hum and lean into his touches, leaning into his touches. Chills run down his spine as your nails graze his sides. “There might’ve been other things occupying my mind, too.”

And just like that, breakfast is postponed to thirty minutes later.

After that night, Sunghoon forgets how to act right.

His mind has never been so singularly taken up by sex in all of his life. It was already preoccupied with you most of the time, but now that it has more material to gnaw on, it’s practically started to eat away at him. It doesn’t help that you’ve seen each other every day since, or that at every chance you get, you smile knowingly at him or try to get him to play footsies with you. Of course, he loves every bit of attention that he gets from you, but whenever he feels his heart get carried away, Minjeong’s words come back to him in a panic, and he remembers that he has no idea what it is that’s happening between you and him. You could be stringing him along, for all he knows, or you could be as into him as he is into you and just letting things happen. Unfortunately, just letting things happen was not something Sunghoon was good at—if things weren’t written black and white, he’d find a way to overthink even the littlest of details. Like how you’d kissed him for a good five minutes before letting him leave your apartment, otherwise known as the least platonic parting to exist, or conversely, like how you’d sometimes take hours to reply to texts.

If he was already a mumbling fool in front of you before, his condition has only worsened now. He tries his best to be normal and not make you or anyone in the group feel weird, but the fact is that you rocked his world and now he can’t look you in the eyes and not remember how it felt when you touched him or the sounds you made or the way you looked. It’s all playing in a loop in his mind and the only way he knows how to control it is by limiting his interactions with you, which doesn’t even work that well.

The first couple days, you seem amused by his shyer-than-usual demeanor, but you quickly grow confused more than anything. Sunghoon won’t sit next to you, only speaks to you when necessary, doesn’t seek you out outside of a group setting. He tells himself he just needs some more time to be able to be around you casually again, but before that happens, one day at the library, you make a point to ask him if he’ll come help you get drinks for everyone from the dispenser machine. He knows it’d be too odd to say no, so he follows you.

He presses the buttons for everyone’s order (a Sprite for him, Diet Cokes for the girls, a Red Bull for Jake who has a midterm tomorrow and nothing for Jay who only swears by his disgusting herbal infusion) as you lean against the machine, arms crossed over your chest as you stare at him.

He has never felt so awkward in his life.

“So…” he starts although he has no idea what to say—he hopes something will just appear in his mind and that it’ll alleviate the tension. However, you seem to have other plans.

“What the hell, Sunghoon?” you say, taking him aback. When he glances at you, you don’t seem angry—just genuinely confused. “You’ve been avoiding me like the plague.”

“I haven’t!”

“Sunghoon,” you say sternly. He gives in right away.

“Okay, I’m sorry. I just-I didn’t know what to do. After we, you know…”

“After we had sex?” you say, then burst into laughter when he looks around the room to make sure no one’s heard. His cheeks heat up.

“Yes, after we had sex,” he whispers.

He pays for the drinks and picks them up. When he looks at you again, your smile has completely died down, and worry has settled into your features. “Do you regret it?” you ask, voice now as low as his. As if it hurts to say the words too loud.

Panic overcomes him, and he almost drops half of the drinks as he shakes his head. “No, of course not! I’m really sorry, Y/N, I never meant to be weird about it, I was just trying to wrap my head around everything, and I just… Well, I just didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry.”

You nod, taking his words in. “That’s fine. I get it. I just wanted to say, you know, it doesn’t have to change anything. We can still be friends and all. Like you said, it shouldn’t make things weird.”

Sunghoon’s stomach drops. He knows you’re trying to make him feel better, but you’ve inadvertently said the exact opposite of what he wanted to hear. He doesn’t want things to stay the same, or for you to stay friends. For him, things can’t go back to normal after that night — whatever normal means for the two of you — and he was foolishly hoping that you felt the same.

But clearly, you want to let the whole thing die and pretend like it never happened. And whether it’s a good thing or not, his feelings for you have grown so much, he’ll just let you lead him anywhere. Even if that turns out to be nowhere.

So he conjures up the most convincing smile he can, hands you half of the drinks to carry, and says, “Yeah, sounds good.”

After that conversation, Sunghoon doesn’t think anything else will happen between the two of you. You had sex, you talked it out, and that’s the end of it. But then, it turns out that both of your last midterms are at the same time, in the same building, so you invite him to celebrate with pork belly and some drinks. Sunghoon is finishing his second beer when he starts to feel like he’s on that date again, laughing for no reason, butterflies in his stomach every time his gaze catches yours. You lean on your hand as you listen to him talk about a stupid memory from his childhood and he thinks he’s never seen anyone as pretty as you.

The sun has long set when you say, “You know, it’s Wednesday today.”

He’s not sure what you’re trying to get at. “Yeah?”

“Minjeong’s out at karaoke tonight.”

With these simple words, all the images of you that Sunghoon had finally managed to banish from his mind come flooding back, and he is not even surprised to find himself half-naked in your bed thirty minutes later. So much for staying friends—one time is one thing, but Sunghoon knows he’ll never be normal again after a second time with you.

It’s not a long time before he finds himself in your room again. Every item of clothing between the two of you is gradually discarded while you kiss, lips growing more impatient with every inch of bare skin uncovered. He reluctantly lets you go when you suddenly giggle and say that you really need to pee, watching as you grab his t-shirt off the floor and put it on, just in case Minjeong comes home. You wear it like it’s yours, like it’s the most natural thing in the world that you’d be wearing his clothes. An indescribable feeling washes over Sunghoon at the sight, so intense he feels tears welling behind his eyes. Like something he’s been yearning for is finally at the grasp of his fingers; like it might slip away at any moment.

His feelings must’ve transpired in the way he was looking at you—when you meet his eyes, your expression shifts slightly, and you quickly slip out of your room. He tells himself to reel it in. Get it together, he thinks. Or you’ll drive her away.

A wave of tiredness hits him in the minute that you’re gone, probably due to all that soju and beer. “I’m back,” you whisper, but he doesn’t move, only opens his arms wide for you to get back into bed with him. It’s like a weight is lifted off his heart when he feels you against him again. You’re back. Your face is fresh, as if you’d splashed it with cold water, but when he slips one of his hands underneath your (his) t-shirt, your skin is still just as warm as before. Far from the fuzzy, tingly feeling he had gotten when you’d woken up together the other morning, now, he feels his desire for you deep in the pit of his stomach. The kind of hunger food couldn’t satisfy. “I missed you,” he whispers, voice low and gravelly. He reacts immediately when you squirm against him, tightening his grip around your waist and pulling you to him.

“I was gone two minutes.”

“I mean these past few days. I was starting to think I’d dreamt you up.” His hand on your lower back sneaks its way up between your bodies until it finds your breasts, cupping one of them with his palm before taking your nipple between his thumb and index, gently twisting. It pulls a half-gasp, half-moan from your throat, and the sound goes straight to his dick. “But you’re real, aren’t you?”

“Very real,” you reply, a tremor in your voice. He’s barely touching you, and you’re already having trouble breathing. Sunghoon smiles at the idea of him having as much of a hold on you as you do on him.

“Good,” he says, voice so low it’s almost a growl. In one quick sweep, he pushes you down so your back is against the mattress, resting his palms on each side of your head.

He’s inside you within mere minutes. He’d wanted to hold back a bit, but you whispering Just put it in after thirty seconds of his fingers loosening you up was enough to convince him. His mind is already fuzzy with remnants of alcohol, and his overwhelming desire for you only makes matters worse. He barely has any control over his movements, rushed and sloppy, but as he drives himself deeper into you, your moans increase in volume. He only later realizes how tight his grip on your hips is when he sees two small bruises forming on the skin there.

He comes quickly, probably embarrassingly so, but he can’t bring himself to care—he’s got other things on his mind. He’s not even bothered to discard the condom as he makes his way down your body, lips around your clit before you’ve even had the time to register what was happening. You cry out, a sound that Sunghoon works to pry out of you over and over again. Even when your thighs start shaking and you squirm away from him, he doesn’t relent. He’s just as desperate to make you feel good as he was desperate chasing his own pleasure earlier. He hooks his arms around your thighs, bringing you down to him and ensuring that you can’t get away. One hand still in his hair, the other clutching the bed sheets, you’ve turned your face sideways into the pillow so that your moans come out muffled. He is only satisfied when you’ve reached your second orgasm.

As your breath slowly returns to normal, Sunghoon makes his way back up your body, leaving a trail of kisses in his wake. You clear your throat of its dryness and burst into soft, quiet laughter. “What’s funny?” Sunghoon murmurs, lips against your neck.

“Nothing,” you say, still laughing. “That was just really, really nice.”

Sunghoon smiles. “I’m glad,” he says before kissing you, lips moving slowly against yours.

As he lays against you, the top of his head under your chin and your fingernails grazing along his back, a weird feeling overcomes him. Sunghoon is usually a pine-from-afar sort of guy, with at least five instances of hanging out that could or could not be a date before making things any sort of official. The pining has been a constant with all of his crushes. He’s gotten to the hanging out stage a couple of times, but the officialising has only happened once. Despite its low success rate, it’s a cycle Sunghoon feels comfortable with, and he’d imagined the rest of his romantic encounters would follow that pattern.

But this is completely different. Of the three times you guys have met separately from your friend group, already two times have included sex. This isn’t a stage Sunghoon usually reaches before at least a few months and it disorientates him. What does it mean? That you like him so much, you decided to skip all of the steps and jump straight into the thick of it? He is reasonable enough not to delude himself into such a thought. He likes you a lot—that much he can be sure of. He’s liked you since the moment he laid eyes on you, even if the reason eludes him. Something in the way you smiled at him, the way you took him in stride as if you’d known him forever. When he thinks back to that party, he can’t believe it started out as the two of you being strangers. Even now, feeling your warm skin against his, it feels like a lie that just two months ago he hadn’t even met you.

What he can’t say with total certainty is that you like him the same amount. Or that you like him any amount, really, although in his naivety he doesn’t understand how anyone could be this intimate with another person without liking them at least a little bit. And he doesn’t just mean the sex. He means this. The silently laying in each other’s arms, the soft kisses, the caresses wherever hands can reach. Eating post-sex snacks together, laughing as you watch the first episode of each other’s favorite sitcoms (Brooklyn Nine-Nine for him, Pen15, oddly enough, for you). Falling asleep together, cuddling the entire night then waking up and diving right back into each other’s embrace.

After an entire day spent in rumination, Sunghoon’s still not sure what to make of it all.

All he knows is that when he DMs you that night, asking you how your day went, he goes through every emotion between anxiety, self-hatred and indifference in the five minutes that separate his text from your reply. He’s never been so happy to hear that someone couldn’t concentrate in class because of him.

Sunghoon has always been obsessed with the way couples stand together in public.

Every time, it takes everything in him not to stare, because he wants to take in every little thing they do. He has that practically everywhere he goes, wanting to stare at people just to see what their deal is, but he is never quite as simultaneously fascinated and envious as when he spots a couple. But he knows staring isn’t the socially appropriate thing to do, so he either steals glances or watches for a little bit then pretends they aren’t there. He can’t help himself—even if they aren’t holding hands or obnoxiously making out in public, it’s still visible to anyone with eyes that there is something tying these people together. It’s in the way they stand near each other, their bodies turned inwardly, as though enveloped by a bubble containing just the two of them and no one else; in the way they look at each other, their eyes never straying from the other’s face as they talk, intimacy showing itself even in a loud, crowded room. Sunghoon craves to find that proximity, to be able to touch and be touched so softly, every graze of a hand purposeful and unconscious at the same time.

It’s the first of November already. The Weather app, as it tends to do, has deceived you; so instead of a walk on what was supposed to be a sunny day, you find yourselves in a busy café near the University, the air outside too chilly even with your scarves and gloves. You’re waiting for your order at the end of the counter — a mocha for him, an oat flat white for you — when he notices it. Your body is fully facing him, you’re distractedly playing with the hem of his sweatshirt, and you’re not looking at anything but him as you rant about that annoying classmate of yours that goes by a self-made nickname and always talks over the tutor. In this light, the two of you are like the couples he’s always longed to be—the simple thought makes him want to cry. As more and more often is the case these days, you have no idea what you’re doing to him.

It’s been around two months since you first met and in that time, although Sunghoon is lucky not to have enough fingers to count the number of times you have seen each other one-on-one, not much has happened. Minjeong, who had understood what was going on the first time she saw the two of you eating leftovers from the Japanese restaurant on the couch at 10 a.m., has grown accustomed to his presence in the apartment and even sometimes sits down to watch a movie with the two of you—a movie that Chaewon would usually have forced you to watch in the living room instead of the privacy of your bedroom, so that everyone could join. Sunghoon is just glad Minjeong has stopped silently scolding him with her eyes every time he comes out of your room. She never mentions that night when she essentially warned him against you after the party.

Jake seems to be the only oblivious one in your group. Yunjin and Chaewon have eyes like hawks and horrifyingly vivid imaginations when they put their heads together, so they were probably already making plans for your wedding and fighting for the title of godmother when you and Sunghoon met at the beginning-of-semester party. They cornered him once at a party and forced him to spill the beans and spare no detail, because you apparently were “denying everything, but we know there’s something going on.” Jay is still Sunghoon’s go-to person when he needs advice concerning you, although the older boy doesn’t understand why it has to be so complicated and always tells him to “just tell her how you feel,” which Sunghoon will not do unless there is a gun to his head. But Jake just seems happy to see his friend and his sister get along this well—no matter how many times you wear his jacket at their games or disappear at the same time at the end of parties, he doesn’t grow suspicious. If he does, he doesn’t mention it to Sunghoon, at least.

Between the two of you, not a word is spoken about the nature of your relationship, which remains unbearingly undefined. For a while, he weakly convinces himself that he doesn’t need to have that conversation with you. He’s young, he’s free, he should be able to enjoy casual sex without putting a label on it. The main problem, though, was that the sex could not be further from casual, at the very least not to Sunghoon.

He has never known anything quite like it. In mere weeks, you’ve both mastered the art of pleasuring each other. He understands your body like it’s his, knows what each of the sounds and expressions you make means. He knows where to touch you to have a kiss go from light-hearted to dizzyingly intense, how to move his mouth to have you arching your back and holding onto him for dear life. And you—he thinks your skin must be laced with cocaine, the way he can never get enough of it.

But it’s always the moments afterwards that get him in his head. To him, casual sex means getting dressed the minute it’s over and going off to do other things, which is the absolute opposite of what you do. Whether it’s falling asleep together or spending Sundays in bed, you always stay together afterwards, curled up in each other’s arms as you talk away the hours, conversations interspersed with slow, lazy kisses. He’ll say things like, “You’re so pretty,” or “Why do you smell so good?” because he’s so smitten with you that he can never stop himself from uttering every compliment that flashes through his brain, but the things he really wants to say are harder to speak out loud. Even just a What are we?—three simple words that he can’t bring himself to ask, too scared it’ll ruin everything.

Arguably worse is that sex isn’t even a requirement for when you and Sunghoon see each other. He goes on walks with you whenever you’ve spent too much time in the library and need some fresh air. You go shopping with him when his department throws a fundraiser and he needs a formal outfit. He cooks you your favorite meal when your period is particularly nasty. You sneak into the ice rink after his practice and let him ‘teach’ you how to skate, even though you already learned how with Jake when you were kids. Even mundane moments become fun when spent with you, and you share so many hobbies and interests that you never run out of things to do or talk about.

And yet, it feels like one step forward, two steps back with you—if you let him close one night, you’ll run away the next. A week will pass without you seeing each other outside of the library or group hang-outs, and if Sunghoon asks you out, you’ll say no, usually blaming the amount of work you have. He gets it—due to the nature of your degree and your being a fourth-year student, your workload is much heavier than his, with essays, translations and oral presentations due every other week. And that’s not even including midterms and finals. But still, he doesn’t see why you would need to stay at the library for ten hours straight for days on end. He’d start worrying about your health if you didn’t at least relax on weekends.

So while Sunghoon wants nothing more than to go all in with you, he senses you holding back. He notices you avoiding eye contact during particularly intimate moments, and when you look at him perhaps too fondly for your liking, you quickly catch yourself and resume your neutral, sometimes almost cold expression. When he tries to broach more personal, sensitive topics, you always find a way to change the subject or turn the conversation towards him before you get too deep.

As time passes, and especially as exam season nears, he can tell there’s something that you’re not telling him about. His suspicions are confirmed when you come back from a weekend at your parents’ house. He’s also been away for an out-of-town hockey game, and because he hasn’t had much time to text you (and because their team won, so he wants to show off a little), he’s particularly looking forward to seeing you again that Monday. It’s only been three days since you’ve last seen each other, but he misses you like crazy.

But the minute you’re back, you bury yourself in work like never before, often waking up at ungodly hours and staying at the library until midnight. More than once, he stays behind with you, long after the others have gone, reminding you gently every hour that it might be time to go home and get some rest. The moments you actually agree are few and far between, and although he sticks it out at first, sleeping with his head on the table until you tell him you’re ready to go, your stubbornness soon starts frustrating him, and he ends up leaving when he gets too tired. He knows this is important to you, but he doesn’t understand why you have to go to these lengths—you’d still easily be one of the best students in your class without all this exertion. And despite his many attempts, you won’t tell him what’s wrong, won’t even admit that something is wrong—you keep repeating that “it’s just what exam season is like.”

When he asks your friends about it, they seem just as confused as he is. One evening when you have plans to order some food and watch a movie at your apartment, he shows up at the agreed time, but you’re nowhere to be found. Thankfully, the girls are there to let him up and not leave him standing outside in the rain. You don’t pick up when he calls you and call him back a minute later, apologizing profusely but still saying that there’s something you really need to finish first. If it was only a one-time thing, it wouldn’t make him as angry as it does—but this has been going on for almost two weeks now, and Sunghoon is close to boiling point.

The fact that it’s been months since your date at the Japanese restaurant, and the only thing that you’ve said about what was happening between you and Sunghoon “didn’t have to change anything.” The fact that you’re essentially each other’s boyfriend and girlfriend without the label or the reassurance that comes with it. The fact that there’s something clearly bothering you but that you won’t tell him about it. The fact that this something is effectively coming between the two of you. Sunghoon was originally more worried about you than anything—now that studying has taken obvious precedence over him in your list of priorities, he’d be lying if he said his ego wasn’t wounded. He isn’t asking to be the number one most important thing in your life, and he knew before even meeting you that high academic performance meant a lot to you, but he likes to think he deserves at least a little bit of your time and attention.

Except, does he really? It’s not like you’re actually dating.

There’s a pang in his heart as he remembers this fact that he should never have forgotten in the first place. It hurts—and so perhaps, he’s less patient than he ought to be.

“Whatever, Y/N. Don’t worry about it, just let me know when you have time for something other than getting As.”

He hangs up and meets your flatmates’ worried eyes.

“She still at the library?” Chaewon asks, tone delicate as if trying not to scare off a wounded animal. Sunghoon nods, a deep sigh escaping his mouth.

“She always studies a lot,” Minjeong starts, “but this is something else.”

“Have you guys tried saying something?”

The girls nod. “Even Jake has talked to her, but she won’t listen. And he usually always gets to her,” Minjeong says.

He goes home soon afterwards and spends the rest of his evening in rumination, torn between his worry and his anger towards you—emotions which only increase as more days pass, and he sees less and less of you. Your behavior was already concerning while preparing for your exams and final assignments, it gets even worse when exams actually do start. He doesn’t hear from you for an entire week, and the one time you miraculously agree to a short group hang-out in the form of getting coffee, you’re only half there, physically present but mind far, far away. You barely react when the guys tell you about their victory at the latest hockey game—which you didn’t attend, as well as any other game recently.

No matter how much he tries to put it out of his mind, to focus on his own exams and hockey games, you stay at the forefront of his thoughts. The hockey team is away for another out-of-town game when he decides to broach the subject with Jake, with whom he’s sharing a room. The entire semester, he’s been careful not to raise Jake’s suspicions about the two of you, both out of consideration for you, who’d mentioned you didn’t want your brother to know what was going on, and for himself, who would also rather Jake not know, at least not until your relationship became official. Which it never did. But now that all he gets from you is radio silence at a time when you’d usually be an hour into a FaceTime call, he can’t help himself.

Jake is just coming out of the bathroom, drying his hair with a towel, when Sunghoon takes his shot in the dark. “Have you heard from Y/N recently?” he asks as nonchalantly as he can, pretending to not be avidly waiting for his friend’s reaction by keeping his eyes on his phone.

“Y/N?” Jake echoes. “No, not really. Why?”

“Just ‘cause I haven’t seen her around much. I’m wondering if everything’s okay.”

“You mean her staying at the library all day?” Sunghoon nods; Jake sighs. “Yeah, she’ll snap out of it soon enough. She gets somewhat like this every time exams come around, but even I have to admit it’s pretty tough this time around. The last time I saw her like this was way back in high school, and that’s because our parents were watching right over her shoulder. It’s been better in university thanks to the distance.”

“So this has to do with your parents?”

“Oh, one hundred percent. She’s always wanted to do well at school, but she only gets this obsessive when our parents are involved.”

“I guess this did start after that weekend when she went home…” Sunghoon muses absent-mindedly. It could’ve passed off as an off-hand remark, but Jake pauses in his movements and looks at him warily.

“Yeah, she did… You noticed that, huh?”

Sunghoon pauses. This whole time, he was sure Jake was oblivious to anything happening between you and him—but he might have underestimated his friend. Like brother, like sister; he can hardly read either of you when he really needs to. Jake might genuinely be surprised that Sunghoon remembered your whereabouts that weekend, or he’s onto him. “I guess I did,” he finally says, going for as noncommittal an answer as he can.

Jake says nothing for a bit, and Sunghoon thinks he’s managed to get through the conversation without raising too much suspicion—until a minute later, when Jake speaks again. “Do you… like Y/N?”

Sunghoon freezes, snapping his head towards Jake, who’s lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling. His first instinct is to deny, but there’s no point pretending anymore. It’s one thing keeping it from Jake—lying to him about it is something else entirely. It’s an uncomfortable conversation, but it must be had. “Yeah, I do,” Sunghoon replies, guilt clear in his voice, more because he’s only now admitting it to Jake than because of his feelings themselves.

A shaky breath comes out of Jake’s mouth, as if this was the exact answer he had dreaded. “Right, okay. Since when?”

“Since I met her, basically.”

Jake’s head whips towards Sunghoon, and their gazes meet awkwardly. “Since that party in September?” he asks, shock written all over his face. Sunghoon nods, and to his surprise, Jake bursts out laughing. “Don’t tell me it’s because you accidentally matched costumes?”

Sunghoon looks away, frowning. “That might’ve helped things along,” he mumbles, embarrassment washing over him as Jake’s laughter intensifies. At least he was taking it well—a bit too well, perhaps.

“You’re so predictable, man,” Jake says when he’s calmed down, wiping a tear from his eye.

“How did you know, anyway?”

“You’ve been pretty obvious with it recently,” Jake replies after a few seconds. “I could tell you were a bit shy around her at first, and when it got better I just thought you’d become friends or something. But when she showed up with your jacket at every game and you never left her side at parties, I assumed something else was going on. You’ve always been staying behind at the library these days, and I know you don’t have that much work.”

Sunghoon chuckles. “I guess I haven’t been trying hard to hide it lately.”

“Yeah, why would you hide it in the first place? You could’ve just told me.”

“I didn’t want to make things weird.”

Jake frowns. “It wouldn’t have been weird. If anything, hiding it makes it weirder.”

“I just thought, if one of my friends had a crush on my sister, I’d probably rather they hid it. Like, I don’t need to know about that,” Sunghoon says, and it makes Jake laugh.

“Dude, Y/N and I are only a year apart. Do you know how many guys have come up to me asking me for her number or advice on how to ask her out? It’s been, like, one every few months since middle school. Guys here especially have no shame telling me how hot they find her.”

Sunghoon makes a face. He doesn’t disagree, but he’d never go out of his way to tell your brother how exquisite you looked in certain outfits. “That’s gross.”

“Yeah, it is. But you’re my friend, not some greasy rando, so I trust you. If anything, I’d probably have to tell her to be nice to you, and not the other way around.”

“Yeah, you could say that again,” Sunghoon grumbles, then realizes his mistake immediately, eyes widening.

“What do you mean?” Jake asks, sounding genuine at first, but when Sunghoon stays quiet for a couple seconds, debating whether he should just lay the truth bare, Jake sits up on the bed and repeats his question, his tone much warier this time around. Sunghoon glances at him then looks away guiltily.

“Well, to be completely honest… We’ve sort of been seeing each other, kind of. But it’s complicated.”

Jake flops back down on his mattress with a grunt. “Who else knows?” he asks, rubbing at his eyes with his hands as if suddenly very exhausted.

“Everyone…”

“Everyone?!”

“Well, Jay, Minjeong, Yunjin and Chaewon.”

“So everyone.”

“Basically, yeah.”

“Great.” Jake sighs. “Since when?”

“Since October,” Sunghoon mumbles, feeling guiltier than ever. He’s belatedly realizing that it would’ve been much easier to have everything out in the open from the get-go, both with you and with Jake; now he’s both stuck in situationship limbo and has to face the consequences of keeping something this important from one of his closest friends. “Are you upset?” Sunghoon asks, feeling a bit like a ten-year-old.

“Kinda, yeah, but more at her than at you. I’ve told her not to go after anyone from the hockey team.”

“‘Cause of Heeseung?”

“Yeah. God, that was messy. He gave her mixed signals for so long, I could barely talk to him without thinking of her crying for so long. And now he’s the one who can’t quite look me in the eye,” Jake says, shaking his head at the mere thought of his captain.

“Was it that bad? She made it seem like it wasn’t that big of a deal.”

Jake raises his eyebrows. “Really? It upset her for a while though,” he says, then turns his head to look at the ceiling again. “I guess that’s not so surprising of her. She sometimes likes pretending she doesn’t have any emotions, even though I’m pretty sure she has more than most people.”

“Huh.” That would explain some things, Sunghoon muses. Emotions are not a topic that comes up very often with you, and every time he’s gotten an inkling of them, you seem to shut it all down immediately.

“But you know, I’m more surprised than anything. About… about it all, really. Not just that you’re only telling me now, but that it’s lasted this long. She must really like you.”

“You think?” Sunghoon says, his face brightening with hope, the words slipping from him before he can stop them once again. He shrinks when Jake laughs at him.

“Look at you. Down bad, huh?”

“Shut up.”

“But yeah, dude. I’ve told you about this. I’ve never seen her in a relationship, ever. Says she doesn’t have the time,” Jake says, air-quoting you. “I’ve only had the displeasure of seeing her go home with one-night-stands. You know that since she started college, she’s had a rule that she’d only see someone three times and that was it?”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, so she wouldn’t catch feelings. I’m telling you, she’s crazy. So you must be special.”

Sunghoon can’t stop the smile from spreading on his lips—special. But it doesn’t make him feel that much better, either. “It’s not like we’re actually dating, so I’m not sure how special I can be…”

Jake’s head turns to look at Sunghoon again, but the younger boy keeps his eyes trained on the ceiling fan above him. “What’s happening between you guys?”

A blush creeps on Sunghoon’s cheeks. “Is this something you really want to talk about?”

“Well, spare me the gruesome details, please,” Jake says, chuckling, “but yeah, I would like to know what’s going on with my best friend and my sister.”

“I’m your best friend?” Sunghoon says, grinning as he meets Jake’s gaze, who rolls his eyes.

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Fine.” He sighs. “Well, I didn’t think it would happen more than once-”

“What would happen more than once?”

Sunghoon pauses. “Well, you know…” Jake gives him a look as if to say, Well, no, I don’t know, so Sunghoon is forced to go on: “Sleeping together.”

“You guys slept together?!” Jake exclaims, sitting up on his bed once again.

“Yeah, what did you think?”

“I don’t know, just that you were going on dates, hanging out one-on-one, or whatever…”

“Well, we were.”

“Ugh, whatever,” Jake says, waving his hand in front of his face like swatting a fly away. “So, not just once, then?”

“No. And I thought it’d be a one-time thing, ‘cause a few days afterwards she said something about it not having to change our friendship…”

“Damn.”

“Yeah. But then it did. Happen again, I mean. And it’s been happening frequently since. But we’re not… dating dating. We haven’t had that conversation.”

Jake frowns. “Why not?”

Sunghoon releases a shaky breath. Why not, indeed. “‘Cause she hasn’t mentioned it. And I’m too scared to do it.”

“What are you scared of?”

“The typical stuff. What we have now… it’s not what I want, but it’s managed to not disrupt the group, you know. I’m scared that if I tell her how I feel, it’ll make things awkward between the two of us, and between all of us by extension.”

“Well, it might,” Jake says after thinking for a few seconds. “I wish I could tell you with certainty that she’ll like you back, but I honestly can’t. As obvious as you were towards her, she was not giving anything away.” Sunghoon chuckles, more out of self-deprecation than anything. This was not the pep talk he had hoped for. “But, I can tell you that she won’t be the type to make things awkward. You have nothing to risk by telling her, because in the long run, you’ll be better off that way. I know you, Sunghoon. You’ll be miserable if you can’t be fully yourself with someone.”

Decidedly, Sunghoon’s friends had a way of telling him the exact opposite of the things he wanted to hear while being completely right. He wishes things with you could stay the same — minus the overworking yourself and ignoring him in the process — and that he wouldn’t have to do anything that might make them change. But just as Jake said, he’d also reach a point where he couldn’t take it anymore—a point he was already inching closer and closer to with every passing day. He likes you enough to let you not define the relationship, but he likes you too much to let it go on. He likes you too much to not be able to tell you, and show you, and remind you of it every day. He hated having to hold back, and he hated feeling you holding back. He wanted to give you his all and he wanted all of you, too, not just bite-sized portions of you.

“You’re right,” he finally says. “I haven’t been able to talk to her lately, but I’ll have to tell her soon enough. When her exams are over, I guess.”

Jake sighs. “Yeah. I don’t know if there’s any getting through to her right now.”

“She’s blown me off so many times! I don’t know what she’s doing, spending so many hours in that library. I’d go insane.”

“She’s a perfectionist,” Jake says, shaking his head. “I’ve talked to her about it. When it comes to school, she needs everything to be as flawless as can be. She spends hours re-reading and editing her work. It’s not good.”

“Not really, no.”

“But she’s only got a week left. I’ll try to convince her not to go home for too long, and it’ll be better after the holidays. Then we’ll make sure there’s not a repeat of this next exam season.”

He thinks of Christmas break and of not seeing you for two weeks; of next semester and going through all of this with you a second time. The uncertainty, the fooling around behind your friends’ backs — although that might not be needed now that Jake is in on it too — Sunghoon’s not sure if he can go through it all again. “Yeah, we will.”

They lose their game the following day. They had an amazing run, either winning or tying every game so far; this loss is not enough to make them drop significantly in the rankings, but it’s enough to demoralize Sunghoon. It couldn’t have come at a worse time—between you and this failed game, his self-esteem is taking a real hit.

He dared hope for some comfort from you once he was back, but in vain. He doesn’t know why he imagined your attitude might’ve changed overnight, and when he texts you asking to hang out, the same old sorry I can’t atm fills his phone screen. And just like that, as strong as his feelings for you have been all this time, so is his resentment—unwarranted, perhaps, but he thinks he deserves better than this, and he’s both angry at you for not giving him anything and at himself for letting it happen.

Now, he’s the one who spends hours working himself to the bone in the ice rink, who’s clearly preoccupied with other things when everyone gets together, and who doesn’t even show up to the party the whole group goes to when you’re all done with exams. The last game before winter break is in two days, and he doesn’t want to waste a day nursing a hangover when he could be practicing.

That night, he thinks everyone is out at some random club downtown, so he does a double-take when it’s past eleven p.m. and you show up at the rink. He’s skating laps, practicing his speed and his goal-shooting, only noticing you when you’re standing in the middle of the rink. He almost skates right into you.

“Y/N?” he asks, not completely sure you’re not just a figment of his imagination. He’s so exhausted, he wouldn’t be surprised if he were dreaming you up.

“Jay texted me.”

“Oh. Why?” He’s out of breath, and the words come out blunter than he intends them to.

“Because it’s almost midnight and you’re still here,” you reply, crossing your arms over your chest. There’s a hint of a smile on your lips, but your eyebrows are furrowed in what looks like worry. It’s the first time Sunghoon’s seeing you concerned over something other than an assignment.

He shrugs and resumes his laps, slower this time, forcing you to keep turning on your feet. “I’m practicing. There’s a big game coming up.”

“Which is exactly why you should be resting, like everyone else on your team right now.”

He resists rolling his eyes. “Why would I rest when I could be getting better?”

“Because you need rest as much as you need practice. You won’t be any use on the rink if you’re too tired to play properly.”

“And I won’t be any use if I can’t shoot properly, either.”

“Sunghoon, you need a break. You’re clearly exhausted-Will you stop it?” you suddenly snap. “I’m trying to talk to you, and I’m getting dizzy.”

Your small outburst only has him growing more agitated, and even though he does stop, it’s more so you can see the annoyance on his face than anything. “You know, this is a bit rich coming from you, Y/N.” He knows this is not the right time to bring this up—if he has grievances against you, he shouldn’t be bringing them up when he’s already frustrated. He’s well aware of this, but he can’t help himself.

You scoff. “Excuse me?”

“You’re the one who spends twelve hours a day in the library during exams and does not budge even if I tell you you should go home.”

“That’s different-”

“How is it any different?” he interrupts, voice rising. “You don’t listen to me when you overwork yourself. I don’t see why I should.”

“So you realize that you’re overworking yourself?”

“Of course I do! But I have to.”

“No, you don’t-”

“Y/N, please. I have to win as much as you have to get the top grades. Is it actually necessary? No, but you know how shit it feels not to.”

“And it’s exactly because I know that feeling that I’m telling you to stop. You’re just feeding into it.”

“So are you, staying until 2 a.m. in the library. You’ve never once gone home when I asked you to.”

“Again, that’s different-”

“How?! How is it different? Please enlighten me, ‘cause they’re the exact same thing to me.”

You sigh. A sudden sadness appears on your face. Sunghoon is torn between wanting to see this to its end and taking everything he’s said back. But he keeps quiet, and your eyes, when they meet his again, harden. “Are you really gonna make me say it?”

“Yes.”

As if you couldn’t say your next words while looking at him, you tear your gaze away from his face. “Because I’m actually concerned about you, here. The only reason you want me to stop and go home is so we can fuck.”

Sunghoon is so astounded that all words fail him—he stares at you, mouth wide open like you just shot him. After a few seconds, all he’s able to come up with is an incredulous, “What?” His voice is a mere whisper.

“You heard me,” you say coldly.

He closes his mouth and swallows. “So… you’re the one who’s worried, and I’m only after sex?”

You glance at him. “Yeah.”

A chuckle escapes Sunghoon’s throat, then another, until laughter spills out of him uncontrollably. He feels like the world is upside down. How could you have lived the same thing and come out of it with such different perspectives? Your account of his intentions with you is so ridiculous and unfathomable to him that he can’t do anything but laugh.

You seem taken aback at first, but your surprise quickly turns into annoyance. “Something funny?”

“Hilarious, actually,” he says, holding his stomach. He takes a deep breath, trying to calm himself. All he finds at the end of his amusement is anger, bright red and hot. It’s not an emotion he feels often, its rarity only serving as an intensifier—he starts making his way out of the rink before it can explode and hit you in its wake. “Well, that’s convinced me to call it a day. So you got what you came for, I guess.”

His fingers tremble as he undoes the laces on his skates and puts his sneakers on again. You stand by the door of the rink, holding onto the frame as you look at him, that same sad look still on your face. “Hoon,” you say, voice weak. What would usually have him melting only has his anger flare harder.

“Don’t. For the first time ever, I actually really don’t want to talk to you right now.” He stands up, gives you one last harsh look, and turns away. He only halts right before exiting the bleacher area, and after a couple seconds of thinking, turns back around. “Oh, but don’t worry, I’ll let you know when I want to fuck again. Since that’s all this is, clearly.”

It seemed to you no one thought you were good enough for Sunghoon.

Only Yunjin and Chaewon seemed excited at the prospect of the two of you getting together, or at least getting to know each other, but they were also the type to coo at dogs in the street and tear up at the sight of old people holding hands; Minjeong was apprehensive from the start, and made it clear; Jay was indifferent; Jake was oblivious for a while. Sunghoon was…

What was Sunghoon?

Someone who had come out of nowhere, shaken up your routine and messed with your head. That’s what Sunghoon was. He didn’t seem apologetic in the slightest.

Maybe it was your fault for not opening up to the people closest to you and letting them think you were some kind of no-strings-attached one-night-stands-only emotionless maneater who had been single for as long as they had known her, who would be seen with someone new every few months, and never for long, who, as far as the eye could tell, only used men for sex. Maybe it was their fault for never trying to dig deeper.

No, okay, it was definitely your fault.

Based on your conversations with your friends, they thought Heeseung had broken your heart, and you had never bounced back properly. He’d hurt you so much, you couldn’t fathom a real relationship anymore—you could only be with someone casually. Which wasn’t so far from the truth, but what Heeseung had done was much worse than just breaking your heart. He’d confirmed what you already knew of yourself: you want too much. You want what you can’t have, what you don’t deserve.

From the moment you met Park Sunghoon, you knew you didn’t deserve someone like him. Minjeong seemed to agree, and when she saw you and him together at choir that Saturday in September, three months ago already, she made sure you knew her thoughts on the matter.

“This is so… unlike you,” was the first thing she’d said after she pulled you aside.

“What is?”

“This,” she repeated, waving her arms around. “Being here. Coming with him.” She pointed at Sunghoon, whose hair was being ruffled by one grandma and his cheek pulled by another. He kept glancing back worriedly at you—you liked him so much already. “See? You’re smiling at him,” she said, making you realize a sappy smile had started growing on your lips at the sight of him. Your face dropped and you scoffed at the disgust in her voice.

“Yeah, some of us like to smile. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Y/N, you know what I’m trying to say.”

“I don’t think I do, actually.”

She sighed. “You don’t do this. You don’t meet a guy and show up to his choir practice the next morning. What’s happening?”

You crossed your arms over your chest. Had you known your presence would be questioned like that, you might’ve thought twice about coming. “Can’t a girl enjoy a choir without getting interrogated these days?”

“You’re avoiding my question! Listen, Y/N. Sunghoon is not the kind of guy you usually go for. He’s-Stop. Don’t smile at me like that.”

“If you like Sunghoon, you can just tell me. You know I wouldn’t stoop so low as to go after a guy my best friend likes.”

“So you are going after him?”

“So you do like him?”

Minjeong shook her head violently and put her hands on your shoulders, staring into your brain as if trying to make you see some sense. Calmly, she said, “No, I don’t. Sunghoon’s nice, but he is so far from my type. He’s too… nice.”

“You mean he doesn’t wear leather jackets or ride a motorcycle?”

“That was once. But no, he doesn’t do that. And what I’m trying to tell you is that he’s not your type either.”

“And how have you gathered that?”

“Because so far, you’ve only wisely chosen guys who are as detached and emotionally stunted as you.”

“I’m not-”

“But he’s not like that, Y/N. He’s the bring-home-to-your-parents-for-Christmas type. Not the hump-and-dump type.”

“I’m starting to get offended by this conversation.”

“All I’m saying is, don’t go breaking his heart. Or yours, for that matter. It pains me to say but I care about both of you very much and I don’t see this going anywhere good.”

You shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Was her opinion of your romantic tendencies — or lack thereof — that bad that she couldn’t even recommend you to her friend? You felt like a chastised child whose mom told you you couldn’t get the toy you wanted. Despite being well aware that you weren’t the most committed when it came to relationships, you still felt like she was going overboard. Just because nothing had stuck so far didn’t mean it wouldn’t now—she was acting like you went around playing with people’s feelings for fun.

“Jesus, this is my second time seeing him. I just wanna see what his deal is. I’m not breaking anyone’s heart, okay?”

The choir conductor had called out for everyone to gather on stage then, and that was the end of that conversation. You still remember how funny of a thing it was, seeing Sunghoon in his nice shirt and trousers, his hair falling into his eyes, singing diligently with the choir, when just the night before he had been playing beer pong dressed as Cowboy Ken. In this new light, you understood why Minjeong was so adamant about him not being your usual type, and why the grandmas were fussing over him. You hadn’t known what had pushed you to invite yourself to this rehearsal, and even then as you sat there, you weren’t sure what you were doing or why you couldn’t stop smiling as you watched Sunghoon sing.

Time made things clearer, starting with that afternoon at the beach. The salt in the air that day had clouded your thoughts, covered them with a thin layer so that your usual reluctance to share anything remotely personal had dimmed. Or maybe it had had nothing to do with the air and everything to do with the boy sitting next to you on the sand, the way words came tumbling out of your mouth before you could think about them and were only met with understanding and empathy on his part. For once, you didn’t feel the need to guard yourself, to adapt your words and actions to the person in front of you. It was something you didn’t know was possible with a near stranger—perhaps because Sunghoon felt nothing like one.

He made you feel things you hadn’t felt in a long time; things you had been craving to feel, needed almost as much as oxygen. Being with him felt like breathing again. But you had been underwater so long, being on land again felt foreign, scary, and you couldn’t help but dive back into safe waters, coming up for air once in a while.

Whether he had intended to or not, Sunghoon had started to scratch at your surface, until he’d burrowed a small hole—shallow, but enough for cracks to appear, cracks you were quick to put back together as best as you could.

So when his gaze was too tender, his touches too gentle, you bristled. You went away, because you were afraid of what might happen if you stayed. The more you wanted to give him, the less you gave him anything at all. Your own desire overwhelmed you. His letterman jacket was warm around your shoulders, you proudly walked around with the four letters of his last name on your back, but you couldn’t get out of your mind how cold it would be if it was one day ripped away from you.

You thought of Heeseung, how disillusioned you had been when you thought you had finally met someone who would love you the way you had always yearned to be, only for him to toss you away when you started asking for too much. You thought of your friends in middle school, how it seemed that no friendship could be more wonderful until you overheard them talking about you at a sleepover, about how clingy you were. You thought of your parents, how they had only bestowed kind words upon you when you performed well in your role of perfect daughter, of academically gifted child. How they hadn’t even glanced at any of the drawings you’d done of the four of you, mother, father, son and daughter holding hands with a bright yellow sun in the corner of the sky. How they had pushed you away from their bed when you seeked some comfort after a terrible nightmare. How they had never bothered to hide their disappointment when you came home from school with anything less than an A. How they had shunned your brother for not going down the path they had envisioned for him, how hard you had to fight to make them accept yours was not a worthless one.

Even your best friend seemed to think you were unable to receive affection of the likes of Sunghoon’s—but what you were afraid of was that he wouldn’t handle the amount of affection you knew you were able to give. In a way, that was what had drawn you to Sunghoon in the first place—from the moment you’d met him, you had been able to tell there was something of you in him. It seemed to you he had a heart that was overflowing with love, love to give, love to spare on whoever would have it. In his words, you were him. Nevertheless, your fear of getting hurt overrode your desire to feel Sunghoon’s love, and you didn’t know whether you would be able to revert to your nature after having spent so much time perfecting your new facade.

You knew what it was like to be cold. And so you prematurely braced yourself for it by pushing away Sunghoon’s warmth. If it was going to happen at some point, like Minjeong had hinted it would, might as well get used to it, right?

Except the cold never came. Sunghoon kept on burning relentlessly, no matter how much wood you fed his fire with—you could cling to him for nights on end or ignore his texts for days, without fail, he’d welcome you with his usual, unwavering warmth. He allowed you to bask in it, to momentarily let down your defenses. But something always happened to make you raise them back up—Minjeong would eye the two of you suspiciously, Heeseung would post on Instagram (Is one of the girls on slide five his new fling? Are they serious and it wasn’t that he wasn’t ready for a relationship, it’s that he didn’t want one with me?), or your mom would text you to ask you whether everything was okay.

Yet increasingly, you suspected there was something behind Sunghoon’s warmth, something you had missed, something that was tricking you. He looked at you like you had hung the stars in the night sky, yes; in public, a knowing look from you was enough to have his face turn bright red, and in private, one simple touch had his chest heaving, yes; he expressed disappointment every time you turned him down for a hang-out. Your attachment to him grew, and it became harder to put what the two of you had into words.

It wasn’t just sex—it couldn’t be. It ran deeper than that. You knew what relationships that consisted of just sex were like, and this wasn’t that, it was too good, too intimate to be just that. But you weren’t a couple, that much was clear. Only four other people were aware something was even going on, your brother not included, and you acted as regular friends in front of everyone. Jake had insisted you didn’t fool around with another member of his hockey team because his relationship with Heeseung had already deteriorated enough, he didn’t need to be on weird terms with anyone else on your behalf, so you were not keen on letting him know about what you got up to with Sunghoon. Anyway, even if everyone on earth was in on your shenanigans, you and Sunghoon hadn’t convened on what it all meant. Who knew what was going on in his head? You were no stranger to how deceitful men could be when they were after certain bodily pleasures. Unless Sunghoon said it in so many words, multiple times, you would not be a hundred percent sure he wasn’t only looking to get laid, or wanted someone to act like his girlfriend without the label and the obligations that came with it.

Because you basically were acting like his girlfriend, and he like your boyfriend. You always went to each other. Always, only each other. Whether he needed a second opinion on an outfit, you needed a rant session about your dissertation, either of you a really good orgasm, it was each other you went to.

You waited for him to initiate a conversation about the status of your relationship like one waits for church bells to ring at the turn of the hour—you knew it was coming, but the sound might be too much to bear. And the longer you had to wait, the more you dreaded it. Because how would you react when the time came? You didn’t trust yourself not to run away; neither did Minjeong.

The cold hadn’t come yet. You couldn’t let yourself feel the warmth unreservedly. It was all unpleasantly lukewarm.

Then you went home for a weekend.

It was a good friend from school’s birthday, and despite having spent a lot of time with Sunghoon at the expense of studying, you had done well this semester and thought you deserved a break. After having been away for so long, you had started to underestimate the power of your need for your parents’ approval over you. One small instance that your brother and many other people would’ve brushed off easily was enough to set you off—that same cold look of disappointment when you decided to be honest and told them one of your courses was deadly boring all while being unnecessarily complicated and you had received a low B-grade in it. They barely spoke to you for the rest of the evening.

Exams were a mere few weeks away when you got back. You buried yourself in work, forgot everything and everyone else, even Sunghoon, even yourself.

The cold hadn’t come yet, so you sought it out for yourself.

At the same time, you hadn’t indulged in enough introspection to realize how frustrated you had been at Sunghoon for not trying to create defined boundaries around your relationship. You were unable to do it yourself, you unrealistically wanted him to do the work for the both of you, you got upset when he didn’t. What you were able to do was make up reasons why he wasn’t giving you the what are we talk—he doesn’t like you that much, he just wants sex, he’s settling for you until he finds the next best thing, the real thing. This wasn’t leading anywhere, so you cut it off before he could.

You set foot in the library at seven thirty a.m. on a Monday and every following day of that week, then the next, then the next. He managed to pull you out every now and then—you weren’t that strong against his big pleading eyes, his soft messy hair, his warm hands that entirely covered yours.

Oftentimes, you were too tired at the end of a long library day to have sex. Sunghoon never held it against you—he seemed more than happy to cook you dinner, let you fall asleep halfway during a movie you had chosen, and cuddle all night long. But your body burned with resentment at his mere presence in your bed, in your home, in your text messages. Who was he to stop you from studying, from achieving your goals, to distract you from that top grade just so he could get off? Even your friends and brother weren’t trying so hard to make you take breaks. The worry that furrowed his eyebrows, which you used to want to see fade away with a caress of your thumb, now infuriated you to no end, it seemed — to you — put-on. He kissed your neck and you wanted to push him away instead of melt into him like you had before.

It was his turn to leave for a weekend for an out-of-town hockey game, and you convinced yourself his absence came as a relief. But on the Sunday evening they got back, as you came out of the library, you spotted your brother waiting right outside of the building.

“Why is it so hard to reach you?” he said when he saw you in lieu of a greeting. “What’s the point of having a phone if you don’t even use it? I called you, like, five times.” “It was on airplane mode.” He rolled his eyes so hard, you could almost hear them moving beneath their lids. “What have you done to Sunghoon?” You stopped dead in your tracks. “Sunghoon? What about him?” you asked, chest constricting at the mere thought of him and at the implication that something had happened to him, even if you were the cause. He hadn’t said it in so many words, but it was clear the truth had been revealed to Jake, and for some reason, it didn’t surprise you. You knew they roomed together and assumed Sunghoon must’ve told him. You tried your best to take it in stride. “I thought we said the hockey team was off-limits after Heeseung,” he said sternly. “Also, Sunghoon, of all people?” he adds before you can say anything. “That’s like, my bro. And he’s the nicest guy ever. Not the perfect pick for one of your victims, I must say-” “Oh, please, he’s not a victim. He’s a consenting adult.” “Then why is he so upset over you spending more time studying than with him?” “That’s the male ego for you, Jakey.” Your brother sighed deeply. “He’s really hurt, Y/N. If you were going to reject him, you could’ve done it nicely.”

You frowned. “Who said anything about rejecting him?”

“You’ve shut him out. You’ve shut all of us out.” Jake was staring at you, trying to get you to look at him, but you kept your gaze on the ground and kicked non-existent pebbles around, hands hiding in your coat pockets. “You might not have meant it as one, but he took it as a rejection.”

You scoff. “There was nothing to reject. It’s not like we’re actually together.”

“Yeah, thanks for telling me anything was going on, by the way.”

“It wasn’t any of your business.”

“It is, ‘cause it concerns my sister and my best friend.”

“He’s your best friend?” you echo, a teasing smile on your lips. He rolls his eyes again.

“God, maybe you guys aren’t so bad together after all. But Y/N—I’m serious. You need to do something.”

“Why can’t he?”

“Because you’re the one who’s been fucking around.”

Ouch. “You’ve known about this whole thing for what, two days, and you’re already blaming me for the fact that it’s not going perfectly? How little do you think of me?”

“I don’t think little of you, Y/N, I just know you have a track record of not being serious about relationships.”

Your body tensed up. Maybe it had been a particularly long day. Maybe it had been a long time coming. Tears well up in your eyes—a sight you’ve not let your brother see in many, many years.

“You know what, fuck this, Jake. I’m stressed enough as it is. I’ve done my best with what I have, and you don’t get to pin this on me. As if I was the only person in that relationship. If Sunghoon has a problem, he can take it up with me directly.”

You walked away. Jake called after you once, and when you didn’t come back, caught up with you. “I’m sorry, Y/N. I don’t wanna upset you. I just-I hate seeing him hurt, you know? And you too.”

“I’m glad my feelings are of some importance to you.”

“Of course they are,” Jake said, too concerned to detect the sarcasm in your words. “And you’re right, I’ve only heard Sunghoon’s side of the story. But it really sounded like-”

“Listen, Jakey, I really don’t wanna do this right now. Let’s talk about it when exams are over. I can’t have anything else taking up mental space. I mixed up my Greek third declension endings earlier.”

“God forbid.”

After some arguing, Jake let you off the hook—“Just for now,” he said. You’d get him to recount his and Sunghoon’s conversation in excruciating detail later.

You come out of an evening of contemplation resenting Sunghoon for bitching about you to your brother, of all people. As if he had been begging on his hands and knees for your devotion, as if you had been cool-headed and detached and not thinking he’ll ask me to be his girlfriend any second now every time you spent time together. You told yourself you were well and truly done with him for the time being. If there was anything to salvage, that was future you’s problem.

But late on Thursday evening, Jay sent you a voice message, something he only did when he was gravely drunk, shouting over loud chatter and rap music that Sunghoon hadn’t shown up to a party and was apparently still practicing. You’d caught wind of their loss at the game, and even though your heart had swollen with concern for Sunghoon, very well aware of how important winning was to him, you’d managed to squash it down. You had bigger fish to fry, namely, an Italian written exam that made up 75% of your overall grade for that course. But after ten minutes of re-reading the same three lines of an article from Republicca, you couldn’t get the image of Sunghoon skirting endlessly around the ice rink and potentially hurting himself out of your head. You told yourself you only had this one exam left and plenty of time to revise for it, packed up your things and headed for the rink.

It was past eleven p.m. when you got there. The rest is history.

Your grievances came out in an ugly way, but Sunghoon’s refusal to listen to you got the best of your nerves, and although you really did feel that your worry was more genuine than his, you didn’t truly believe that all he wanted from you was sex—at least, you hoped it wasn’t. It was the first time you ever saw any sort of negative emotion on Sunghoon’s handsome features, be it anger, sadness or pain. It tugged at your heartstrings, made you want to wrap him in your arms and get him away from whatever it was that tugged his eyebrows into a frown—even if that was you.

Now, as if the water has inched up your ankles and frozen over, your feet stay planted on the ice for a while after he’s stormed off. You don’t even realize you’re crying until a hot, salty teardrop falls on your lips.

Your feet regain control of themselves, and they seem to move of their own accord as they guide you right in front of Sunghoon’s dorm room. You’re barely conscious as your knuckles rasp against the door, and the tears that had fallen back behind your eyes spill out once more as soon as your eyes meet his. He’s just come out of the shower, a white towel wrapped around his hips, another one that he uses to dry his hair. His movements stop when he realizes who’s standing at his door, mouth falling slightly agape, chest visibly rising and falling. He’s so beautiful, you feel your heart breaking all over again.

Sobs pour uncharacteristically out of you, so much so that you have to hide your face behind your eyes. He ushers you in, holds you tight as everything flows out, the stress, the resentment, the loneliness, the longing. How could he be so close yet so far away this whole time? Did he want those miles of distance between you, or had you forced them upon him?

Sunghoon smoothes your hair down and shushes you, telling you it’s okay and that he’s here, voice strangled as if he’s on the verge of crying, too. A part of you still feels angry towards him, but the bigger part of you knows only he can give you the comfort you need.

“I missed you,” you say when you’ve calmed down partly. You only realize how true those words are once you’ve spoken them. You’ve missed waking up next to him, watching trashy reality TV together, taking coffee breaks that lasted too long in-between study sessions. You’ve missed the scent of his hair, the scent of his skin, you’ve missed watching the way his back muscles shift at the slightest of movements, feeling the weight of his head as he lay on your chest. All for a bunch of As you would’ve gotten without exerting yourself so much anyway.

“I missed you too, baby. Where did you go?” Just like that, you break down again, and he dissolves into apologies. “You’re here now, it’s all that matters,” he whispers against your hair.

“You didn’t see them, Hoon. You didn’t see the way they looked at me,” you say, struggling to speak, unsure you’re even making any sense but unable to stop. “I got As in everything, I worked so hard. Just one B, one week where I had four things due at the same time. Their faces, Hoon, like they were thinking, what was the point of letting me do this degree if I wasn’t even going to excel in it?”

“But you do excel in it, Y/N. You’re amazing at what you do. And even if you weren’t, you love it, and that’s what matters the most.”

“Not to them, it doesn’t.”

“Then forget them.”

“I can’t, Hoon,” you say, voice trembling. “I just can’t. I need them to be proud of me.”

“Isn’t it enough to be proud of yourself?”

“I wish it was.”

“Does it help if I tell you how proud I am of you and of how hard you’ve worked?”

He doesn’t see it, your face is still hidden in the crook of his shoulder, but a small smile makes its way to your lips. “A bit.”

“Then I’ll tell you everyday until you don’t need their approval anymore. They don’t deserve you, Y/N. They don’t even see what an amazing, beautiful, smart daughter they have. Or her sort-of-okay brother.” You laugh, and so does he. Sunghoon’s words and soothing touch against your back already alleviate the weight on your heart. “But I see it.”

You lift your head to look at Sunghoon. His eyes are glassy. “You see how amazing, beautiful and smart Jake is?”

He laughs again as he tucks a stray strand of hair behind your ear. “Yeah, exactly.” The way he looks at you makes you wish you could go back to the day you met him and right all of your wrongs. No more hiding or running away. You only want to stay under that gaze of his. But sadness soon replaces the joy in his eyes. “You mean so much more to me than you give yourself credit for, Y/N. This has never been just about sex for me. Not even for a second.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Then what has it been about?”

He frowns like a student in an advanced math class who’s just been asked what three plus three is—isn’t it obvious?

“I love you.”

Your eyes dart between his as if searching for any trace of deceit there. Of course, you don’t find any—because there hasn’t been any since the start. You’d let your own fears invent things that weren’t there. Your lips tremble and you find yourself bawling on his shoulder once more, your tears like a well that digs deeper and deeper so as to never run out of water.

“I hope these are good tears,” Sunghoon says light-heartedly, but you can detect the nervousness behind his words. You nod your head vigorously, willing yourself to say something back, but your tears overflow, make your breath hitch.

“Why didn’t you say anything earlier?” you manage in between sobs.

“I didn’t think it was the kind of thing you wanted to hear,” he explains.

“I was waiting for you to say something.”

“I didn’t know. I thought I was being obvious enough.”

“You probably were. I was the one who couldn’t see it,” you admit.

“I thought you didn’t want me like that.”

Sunghoon chuckles, a sound of relief. “I’ve wanted you like that since the start.”

“I think I have too.”

“You think?”

You lift your head again and when your eyes meet Sunghoon’s, it feels like coming out of your hiding place hours after the round of hide-and-seek was over. He hadn’t forgotten to come and find you. He was waiting for you to reveal yourself.

Which goes against the rules of hide-and-seek, but you don’t blame him.

You smile; he smiles, deep dimples carving crescents into his cheeks. “I love you, too.”

You hadn’t realized how cold your hands were until Sunghoon found them.

Everything after that was a blurry mess of tangled limbs, warm kisses, happy tears and relieved laughter.

Your touch had always been intoxicating, but Sunghoon was particularly sensitive to it that night. The mix of not having felt you close in weeks and the heightened emotions driven by your confessions made his skin tingle everywhere it came in contact with yours. He’d never slept so little without regretting it in the morning.

It goes without saying that most of the night was not spent talking, but you still had things you needed to discuss. The two of you laid out all of your fears, and Sunghoon was immensely relieved to finally get a glimpse into that mind of yours. He made you promise to always tell him what was going on, and he promised you you’d never be too much for him. Always just right.

Now, he gets to wait outside of your exam hall with your favorite flowers in hand, to put his arm around your shoulders during movie nights instead of holding your hand beneath the blanket, to kiss you over the barrier at the end of a hockey game he won. Heeseung’s narrowed eyes at the sight of the two of you is an added bonus.

You text him that you’ll hang around the locker rooms after the game so that you can head to the party together. The end of December is nearing and you can’t wait for the new year, for twelve whole months of not hiding your feelings for Sunghoon from anyone, not even from yourself, least of all from him. At least, that’s what you told him in a sappy, drunken voice message at two a.m. the previous night when the girls made you drink a bottle of prosecco to yourself—their way of congratulating you for an arduous but successful exam period.

He steps out of the locker rooms with Jake and Jay. You’ve never looked quite as pretty, face lighting up as you spot the three of them, his jersey on your shoulders. You’d worn it during your last exam—“I thought it might bring me luck to wear a pretty boy’s name on my back,” you’d told him, to which he’d replied that it was good practice for when you actually took his last name. You’d looked away, fighting a smile.

Now your smile is full-blown as you look at him, but the downside of being an official couple is that Jake has now more material to tease the both of you with.

“Oh my God, you waited for me, what a sweet sister I have been blessed with!” he exclaims, arms outstretched as he barrels towards you.

“Fuck off, Sim,” you say but accept his hug nonetheless. “Nice game.”

“I know.” He pulls away and ruffles your hair. Jay nods at you like you’re someone he shared a class with back in second year and not his friend of almost three years.

As if on cue, just as Sunghoon reaches you and envelops you in a hug, Jake turns around and yells loud enough for all the players spilling out of the locker rooms, “And don’t forget to wear protection! I’m not ready to be an uncle yet.”

“That’s disgusting, Jakey,” you yell back, and he smiles proudly. Sunghoon had never thought the day would come where you’d initiate a kiss in a room full of people—he’s on cloud nine when you take his head in your hands and press your lips to his, murmuring praises about how well he played.

“It was all for you, baby,” he says, trying to appear cool even though a blush is creeping up his ears.

“Not for the recruiter of the national team?” you asked with a smirk.

He smiles, shrugging. “Maybe a bit for him too. You’re the one I want to impress.”

“Consider me impressed.” You stand on your tiptoes to kiss him a second time.

You head towards your friends, hands warm against each other.

In classic mysterious Jay fashion, he organizes a New Year’s Eve party that he can’t attend himself.

He’s on holiday in some exotic country halfway across the world with his family, but he’s offered up their house for a celebration and tasked Jake with making sure no one trashes anything.

The party started three hours ago, and you’re sure it’s in full swing by now—you’re sure everyone is having a jolly old time, getting drunk enough to welcome the new year with a hangover, searching the crowds of people for the person they’ll want to kiss at midnight. You’re sure that people are having so much fun that whoever notices your and Sunghoon’s absence might think you’re missing out.

And maybe you are—but there’s nowhere you’d rather be than where you are now, straddling your boyfriend’s lap in the backseat of his car. He’s a little bit tipsy, you’re a little bit tipsy, it’s obvious in the way you kiss each other, messy, impatient, interspersed with giggles and with perhaps too much tongue. Your hands are not much more polite, harshly grabbing at his hair just the way you know he likes it, and neither are his, having snuck their way underneath your black satin dress long ago already.

When Sunghoon pulled you away from the party, you’d appropriately exclaimed, “But the party?”, to which he replied, “Fuck the party.” It wasn’t like him to curse, or to have anything but a bashful smile on his lips, like a guilty dog who’d been caught doing something it knew it shouldn’t, even though he was just standing there, so when you see his stoney expression, you think something serious must’ve happened.

The something serious turned out to be “that guy who was touching your shoulder.”

Clearly, it’d take Sunghoon a little bit more time to be entirely secure in your relationship. In the meantime, you didn’t mind letting him fuck his jealousy away.

Although he’d been the one to whisk you away, you’re the one who finds yourself begging for him to speed things up. Your flimsy thong does absolutely nothing, so you’re basically grinding yourself bare against his clothed erection—and it’s not like the fabric of his suit trousers is very thick, either. A girl can only put up with so much dry humping before having her boyfriend’s dick inside of her goes from being a want to a need.

“Need you, Hoon,” you coo against the shell of his ear. A few words usually do the trick, but Sunghoon has other plans tonight.

“What do you need, baby?”

“You.”

“I’m right here,” he says, punctuating his words with a squeeze of your ass.

“You know what I mean,” you say, practically whining.

“I’m not sure I do, actually.”

You pull away and, looking at him directly, say, “God, Sunghoon. I want you to fuck me.” His shit-eating grin simultaneously makes you roll your eyes and goes straight to your core.

“That I can do.”

He keeps one hand on your ass as he loosens his tie first, then undoes his belt and trouser buttons. His slacks and underwear pool around his ankles, and all he needs to do is hike your dress up around your hips and push your thong to the side. You wrap a hand around his dick, but your mind is too hazy to do much with it—he’s started rubbing circles on your clit with his thumb, the pressure and speed as perfect as it always is. You let your forehead fall against his shoulders and moan unabashedly, thankful he decided to park the car far enough away from the house.

“You like it when I touch you like this, baby?”

“I love it, Hoon.”

He hums his approval. “You’re so perfect. So perfect and so wet for me, isn’t that right?”

You start to say “yes,” but you interrupt yourself with a gasp. You hold onto Sunghoon’s arm, feel his muscles move under your palm as he slips two fingers inside of you without warning. “Please,” you choke out, a tight knot already forming in your stomach.

“Please what?”

“Need you. Need your dick, baby.”

He smiles as if endeared, but his words couldn’t be more different. “Maybe you should’ve thought of that before going off with some random guy the one minute I was somewhere else.”

“He’s just-fuck, Hoon, he’s just a mutual friend of Jay and I. Fuck, right there, baby.” Forming coherent sentences when Sunghoon’s fingers flick against that perfect spot deep inside you again and again is no easy task, but you need to defend yourself.

“Right there?” he echoes, voice a whisper against your ear. When you nod, eyes shut tight, he slips his fingers out. You look at him, betrayed. “That’s too bad. Why don’t you ask him to touch you right there, hm?”

You don’t know how much of his jealousy is put-on to get you to beg and how much of it is real. You make a mental note to have a conversation with him about this later—right now, you don’t mind playing along if it means your boyfriend will deign to fuck you. You know he wants to, he’s just making you work harder.

You move your hand up and down along his dick, brush his reddening tip with your palm every now and then. “He couldn’t touch me like you, Hoon.” You lean in and trail kisses along his neck, his jawline, his ears. “Can’t fuck me like you, either.”

With exams, hockey matches and any other responsibilities out of the way for winter break, the two of you had had an obscene amount of sex in the past couple of weeks. You’d done other things, of course, namely having much-needed conversations with each other, your friends, your families. Sunghoon’s mother was overjoyed at the news, glad her “duckling had finally met someone” — her words — and his sister kept stealing his phone from him to talk to you when you were on FaceTime. You and Jake had gone home for two days for Christmas, and although Jake had needed to pep talk you into it for over an hour, you managed to tell them that you wouldn’t stand for being belittled for your life choices anymore.

But in-between these conversations, you couldn’t keep your hands off of each other. You’ve grown more comfortable with each passing day, both of you bolder in vocalizing what you want and how you feel. And so, you quickly found out that your Sunghoon, your shy, sweet Sunghoon, got off like nothing else on salacious words. In line with his possessiveness, he loved hearing about how he and only he could do these things to you; in line with your need for validation, you could practically come from hearing his praises alone.

“That’s right, baby.” Like the gentleman he is, he fishes out the condom wrapper he had gotten ready from his trouser pocket, tears it open with his mouth and rolls the condom on with one hand, his other one still preoccupied with you. “Come here, my love,” he whispers, his sweet tone worlds away from his previous teasing, almost cocky one. He grabs your hips, guides you closer to him and lines your entrance with the tip of his dick. He lets you go at your own pace, rubs your thighs soothingly as you sink down onto him slowly and adjust to his size. You throw your head back, mind hazy with pleasure as you move your hips back-and-forth against him.

“You feel so good, baby. You’re doing so well for me.” His words make you pick up your pace, and you wrap your arms around his neck, fingers grabbing at his hair and sides of your faces pressed against each other as you start lifting your hips and sinking back down. Sunghoon’s hands hold your ass tightly, guiding you up and down. It’s hot in the car; sweat runs down your hairline and your back, air is running low, the windows are fogging up, but it only adds to the dizzying bliss growing in you. Even the seatbelt receiver digging into your knee doesn’t bother you.

“Feels so good, Hoon,” you moan.

“I know, baby.”

Your hours of studying everyday means your thighs aren’t the strongest—good thing for you that your boyfriend has enough stamina and strength for the both of you. As soon as he feels you tiring, your rhythm becoming slower and more irregular, he picks up your slack. One hand on your back, one arm around your waist, he presses you close to him, his hold on you so tight you can barely move. He bucks his hips harshly into yours, faster and faster, making you cry out with every brush of his tip against that spot deep inside of you. Your whole body shakes with pleasure as your moans grow higher and louder, until the tension in your stomach hits its apex and unravels. A gasp leaves your throat as you come around him, but he’s unrelenting, the overstimulation quickly making tears form in your eyes. Strings of curses and praises of how perfect you are spill out of Sunghoon’s mouth disorderly as he reaches his own end.

Together, you take your time catching your breath, his fingers roaming your back while you trail soft kisses all over his face and neck. “My pretty baby,” he whispers, and it makes your heart swell with so much affection for him that you press your lips to his, shutting him up in case he says something that actually has you exploding.

You wish you could spend some more time just the two of you before returning to the party, but when you check your phone, it’s already five minutes to midnight—he puts his clothes back on as you fix your hair in a rush, Sunghoon helping you wipe away traces of mascara under your eyes, and together, run back to the living room where everyone has gathered. You find Minjeong, Yunjin, Chaewon and Jake, who has Jay on FaceTime. It’s only five p.m. where he is.

Everyone counts down from ten together. The first thing you do in the new year is kiss Park Sunghoon—and you’ll make sure it’s the last thing you do, too.

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