#this is why im so interactive today n like replying almost immediately to asks instead of taking my 4 hours

[cryingforcrocodiles]

I do live in the uk! arsenal fans annoy me so much that when a mutual on here, a good friend I have known for many years became an arsenal fan recently I almost immediately unfollowed them. bc I knew how annoying they'd become 😮‍💨 and I was right about that but I've held off on unfollowing them for now

that said, it is on sight if I catch somebody talking shit about saka

otoh I've known many city fans over the years and they could never in a million years match the annoyance or arrogance even if they tried. still hate the club but it's almost a passive hate atp. I would never knowingly be friends with a fan though snndmf passive hatred is still hatred

arsenal losing at the last minute would be so fucking funny to me. banter club for life <3

?@?@?@? HOW MANY YEARS IS MANY YEARS BIG MANC ANON... idk that's crazyyyy to me 😭 i mean hey. if friends aren't annoying at least a little bit, are they really ur friends? 🤗 oh my god...

!!!! yes !!!! im glad everyone loves saka REGARDLESS of club. he's perfect n arsenal are so happy & lucky 2 have him. id snatch up immediately but yk. his heart is in north london n he will be an england & club legend!

aksjsje passive hate. i see what ur saying i see it. and i feek it. idk ive been called and have myself "the only guy in the world who cares the manchester derby". all that territorial... animalistic history shit that comes with being that guy will make you wanna one up city sooooo bad and make them fall sooooo fucking bad. so the dislike is large. larger than what it should be, for me. but im glad that ur hateful n stuff, classic traditional hatred. lovely stuff, glad to see the world is still in the order.

boooo big manc boooo 😭💔 man shitty still have a chance 2 win a TREBLE. i do not arsenal them to bottle ANYTHING i will kill myself in that ugly ass stadium if they win the ucl, the fa, and THEN the prem. ill kill myself infront of ... idk YOU maybe if ur down. but i need arsenal to win. also i need yi (my dearest arsenal friend) happy.

maybe funny. devastating. DREADFUL. but a little bit funny. like funny "i bet my house on this..." hysterical laughter

[enhypia]

JW ; bestfriends to lovers

bestfriends to lovers answers questions with the choice of drinking instead of answering

pairings: yang jungwon x gn!reader

genre: fluff, angst if you squint

words: roughly 1.1k

masterlist ⸺ series masterlist

~guides and warnings~

italics - reader speaking

bold - jungwon speaking

[enclosed] - interviewer speaking

italicized bold - both reader and jungwon speaking

[enclosed bold or italics] - question (depends on who's speaking)

heavily inspired by: rec.create lie detector games, cut truth or drink

warning: contains and mentions of !!! drinking, swearing

i don't promote underage drinking, save your livers

-ˋˏ✄┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈

hi i'm jungwon

and i'm (y/n)

and we're bestfriends besties

okay one more time

we're bestfriends to lovers!

*they high-five

[you guys were invited here today as bestfriends turned lovers for a fun little drinking game, you guys aware of that right?]

we were

i had to convince jungwon a little bit because he's a lightweight

i am not

you can just answer the questions instead of drinking anyway

i hope you get hard ones so you get drunk

*(y/n) :P

[okay, for this game, questions will be asked and if you refuse to answer, you drink, it's that simple. should we start?]

*both nod

[how did you guys become bestfriends?]

our parents forced us, we were threatened

*they laugh

no, our parents are friends and they had this little get-together and they brought their children with

yeah, that's why we were forced to interact

it was better than listening to our parents and not relating to anything

and they got so happy seeing us interacting that we were just always brought to their hangouts

[what was your first impression of each other?]

that jungwon wouldn't hesitate to kick my ass

you weren't wrong

i know. his eyes are very expressive, and i thought he hated me the first time we met

i did

sucks to suck then cause you're dating me now

*jungwon sighs deeply

*(y/n) :O

i thought they were shy

I AM ?!@#

uh huh keep telling yourself that honey

*(y/n) !!??!?

[how about we officially start the game now?]

*both nod and played rock paper and scissors to determine who gets to ask first, jungwon wins

*jungwon ohhhs after seeing the question

[was there a point where you wanted to end our friendship?]

why are we starting heavy already? gosh

sooo??

i'm answering. there wasn't?

WHY AREN'T YOU SURE??

becaUSE I HAD FEELINGS FOR YOU??? of course i didn't want just friendship, isn't that technically ending it? but from my understanding is end the friendship like completely cut ties off?

*interviewer nods

then no, there wasn't

*(y/n) quickly picks up the card and immediately laughs after reading the question

what? what is it

oh you better answer this cause even i don't know

[when did you start having feelings for me?]

*jungwon blushes and starts to pour a shot

yah!

i'm still answering! i just need this drink

*(y/n) laughs

i started liking you around prom....

*jungwon refuses to meet (y/n) widened eyes

that was almost 2 years ago?!@!

*jungwon ignores the claim

so you're telling me that we could've been together already two years ago ?!

*jungwon eyes widen and smirks

*(y/n) realizes their mistake

[so you already had a crush on me back then too?]

*(y/n) takes a shot sporting a blush and gives a pointed glare, then smiles innocently

i've liked you way before that darling, you just didn't notice

*jungwon.exe has stopped working

okay! next question

[have you ever been jealous of anyone who hit up on me?]

oh god, you wouldn't believe how much time i wasted constantly reminding myself that i have no right to be jealous

*jungwon laughs

what do they even see in you ugh

*he rolls his eyes

you're literally dating me

and what about it??

*jungwon :P

[have YOU ever been jealous of anyone who hit up on me?]

no why would i be?

damn thought for sure the reason you distanced yourself from me when-

*he clamps his hand on (y/n) mouth

we do not speak their name

*(y/n) laughs and pushes jungwon's hand off their face then picks up a card

[question for both: was it scary falling for your bestfriend]

*both share a look and takes a shot

it was terrifying. because you're risking this once in a lifetime friendship and bond you know? that's why i tried really hard to suppress what i was feeling because i couldn't stand the idea of loosing all those just because i liked the person.

*jungwon takes a shot making (y/n) laugh

it was super scary since we've been beside each other for years and i'd rather deal with the unrequited love?? because not having them by my side would be more painful than that

*(y/n) drinks

*both giggle because they're getting tipsy by drinking even though they still answer the question

[who confessed first? how did you guys get together?]

i confessed first. my parents were thinking of moving and i was panicking because i'd have to leave everything behind and in my head i didn't want to leave without jungwon knowing what i felt for him, so i just went 'fuck it, i wont see him again anytime soon anyway' and confessed.

and then they RAN straight home right after, i couldn't even reply??

I WAS SCARED GIVE ME A BREAK

yeah but they forgot that i literally have a key to their house, so i just went there and confessed as well.

and it turns out, we weren't moving, so tada, here we are

we got together after like a week since the confession

jungwon got jealous of-

*he puts a finger to (y/n) mouth to shush them

no❤️

*(y/n) chuckles

what's important is that i love you, you're mine and i am yours, period.

*(y/n).exe is malfunctioning because of jungwon's boldness and drinks

sorry, he gets more straightforward when intoxicated

im intoxicated, not drunk, so my words are true

*(y/n) can't fight the heavy blush appearing on their face

i swear if you don't shut off i will fight you

no you can't, you love me

*(y/n) deadpans and suddenly stares at jungwon lovingly

*pokemon jungwon is paralyzed!

i do, i love you so much.

*he squeaks and tries to hide the blush on his face

*(y/n) bursts out laughing

[last question, how does it feel being in a relationship with your bestfriend?]

it's amazing and kind of scary actually, jungwon knows me so well, and too well, so i can't escape anything from him. whenever i don't feel the best he just knows already without me saying anything. i'm thankful honestly, because he's always there ever since, the bonus now is just i get unlimited kisses and affection

*jungwon rolls his eyes

it's,,, comfortable ?? it's like the safety and comfort home brings. i just feel so understood and loved, sometimes i wonder if i really deserve all these but like (y/n), i'm just grateful that i have them with me.

*everyone in the room aww'ed making them laugh

*jungwon and (y/n) takes one last shot and waved to the camera

and CUT!

»————-　♡　————-«

bonus: youtube comments

a/n: im so hapi that the series masterlist is getting notes huhu tysm <33 i hope you like this one, ive always imagined jungwon as someone who flusters people but you can easily fluster him back, esp if you're his s/o, i'll try to create the rest of the members' as quickly as i can :>>

[skeezsbbygirl]

dive + bang chan

hello lovelies! \ (•��•) / im sorry it took so long for me to post another scenario since i had to deal with school stuff :/ this is for anon who requested for a crush!chan, i hope you enjoy!!

REQUEST BOX IS CLOSED. 

"-and that's why I'm never skipping training."

You could faintly hear Felix's rant in the background -- something about having to train harder and longer during the week in payment of skipping three days worth of swim practice. But your mind was too preoccupied with the sight you were met with as soon as you entered the university's swim center, and no, you weren't gawking at the intricate details -- which probably cost a fortune -- that embellished the swimming grounds, it was more of a someone who caught your attention.

"They're here!" Jisung cheered from the farther edge of the olympic-size pool. "Lix!" Chris called out for the boy beside you, who was still cursing the older male under his breath and possibly in his head too, as you could just imagine him mentally listing off ways to push the black-haired male into the pool, judging by the look on your best friend's face.

"He can swim, you idiot," you deadpanned which caused Felix to stop in his tracks, staring at you in shock. "How did you even?" he asked, voice softening as his eyebrows contorted in confusion. Instead of giving him an answer, you lightly smacked his right arm, earning a yelp from the male. "Don't even think about it," you playfully scolded him.

"Today was arm day," he complained as he rubbed the spot where your hand met his flesh a few seconds ago. "I'm sorry, but you knew you had that one coming," you replied. "Are you psychic or something?" Felix questioned, his attention still on you with his hand still rubbing the same spot.

You just rolled your eyes at him as you neared Felix's teammates, sitting beside Jeongin and Seungmin, who immediately made room for you the moment Jisung acknowledged -- well practically announced -- your presence as you stepped foot inside the swim center. You were met with a chorus of various greetings, to which you smiled and waved in return. "Hey, you haven't been visiting us for a while," Seungmin noted and the other boys agreed. And in that moment, you quickly tried to rack your brain with a plausible excuse. "I'm a med student and finals are coming up, what do you expect?" you joked.

"I think Chan-hyung can help. He has a lot of spare time nowadays," Hyunjin offered, shooting a knowing look towards your direction. You almost choked on your saliva, but you managed to regain your composure and shrug off Hyunjin's attempt to embarass you infront of the whole team, especially infront a certain someone.

"Yeah, (y/n). I took some of the courses that you have now," Chris agreed, totally oblivious to what the younger male was hinting at, which made you breathe a sigh of relief. "I might have to take your offer," you paused as you shifted your gaze towards Felix and his run away accomplices, "But it seems like you have your hands full."

Everybody, except for Chris, Minho, and Seungmin, groaned in annoyance. "You didn't have to remind him," Changbin whined.

Chris chuckled at the younger one's response. "They got an earful from coach this morning. He’ll be supervising them during training, which means I have some time to kill."

"I'll let you know," you flashed him a small smile, biting the insides of your cheek in your attempt to suppress a full grin.

At this point, Hyunjin could've just blurted out that you had been catching feelings for their team's captain.

Chris, better known as Chan to his teammates, was the swim team's captain. He was quite popular alongside his teammates as he broke records, did well in his academic endeavors, and practically looks like a living embodiment of a god -- so needless to say, he attracts a lot of attention.

A year ago, you didn't think that you'd actually have a chance at being in the same circle of friends, but with Felix being your best friend and making it on the team, you were immediately welcomed into their group. You got to know more about them, way past those senseless rumors thrown around the campus. A few months into hanging out with them, you guys looked out for each other like family, but you saw Chris in a different light. He might have dropped hints here and there, but you weren't really sure if he was being playful or serious.

Sure, he'd ask you to hang out with him once in a while and he treats you sweetly. But, maybe he was being friendly? Or worse, maybe he just saw you like a little sister?

However, the both of you had gotten even closer over the past few weeks, since Chris has been teaching you how to swim. You took up his offer in order to skip your swimming classes next semester, but this would only be possible if a member from the team taught you the course and gave you a pass. It was a win-win situation, you lessen your load next semester and you get to spend more time with Chris.

"Alright boys, let's do some laps," Chris commanded, making his teammates sigh in defeat, following his orders nonetheless. "You sure you're okay here, (y/n)?" Chris asked you as he got up from his seat. You nodded, "Yeah, don't worry."

Two hours passed and the boys were finally done, all showered and ready to head home. "Bub, let's go. I'll walk you to your dorm," Felix spoke as he approached you, grabbing your bag for you and helping you up from your seat with his free hand. "I'll see you guys tomorrow," Felix turned towards his teammates. "Bye guys," you smiled and waved, the guys happily returned your gesture and told you to head home safely.

"I'll let you know," Felix mocked you in his best impression of your voice as soon as you guys exited the building, referring to your interaction with Chris a couple of hours ago. "I do not sound like that," you gasped, faking an offended expression. Felix laughed and continued his comical representation of you. "But seriously, ask him out already, " he said, assertion evident in his tone. "If it were that easy, we'd be dating for three months now," you argued. "It is that easy. I'm pretty sure hyung likes you back," Felix insisted, still set on convincing you to confess.

"Alright, I'll think about it, okay?"

[Two days later...]

The library was less congested during the early hours and considering that it was a Sunday, most students are out cold -- either passed out in their bed due to lack of sleep within the whole week or passed out due to a hangover. You settled for a seat at the second floor, near the computer section, making it easier for you to access the printers in case you needed to print out reviewers that you missed. Once you got your stuff laid out, you started your task.

A few hours into your self-proclaimed study session, a hand gently placed a drink on your desk, causing you to look up at the owner.

"Chris."

You greeted him with a smile as you gestured for him to take a seat beside you. "I figured you'd be here," he said, a light chuckle erupting from his lips. He carefully slid the takeout coffee cup closer to you. "Chai tea, it's good for you," he claimed. You muttered a 'thank you' and sipped the warm drink, which instantly spread throughout your body, allowing you to relax and ease some of the tension that was collectively gathering on your shoulders.

"Training?" you asked as you noted Chris' attire, the team's signature sweater, black shorts, and black vans. "Yeah, I'm heading out in twenty minutes," he replied and you nodded. "But I decided to stop by and check to see if you were here, and maybe ask you to hang out later," he added and quickly averted your gaze as a sheepish smile formed on his lips.

“Yeah, I’m down,” you agreed, taking another sip of the drink that was in your possession, suddenly finding the cup interesting -- your attempt to conceal the blush that dusted your cheeks. 

Chris cleared his throat and stood up. “Cool, well I should get going before the boys accuse me of being late,” he said. A soft laugh escaped your lips, knowing full well that the boys would try anything to evade their punishment and pin it on their captain. “I’ll see you later,” you replied, flashing him a smile as he did the same and went on his way.

A couple of hours later, you decided to conclude your study session and head back to your dorm. As soon as you stepped out from the building, a message notification from your phone stopped you in your tracks.

[Chris]: 7 pm at the swim center, bring a change of clothes

[You]: another swimming lesson??

[Chris]: you’ll see ;) i’ll pick you up, beautiful.

[You]: alright, see you later :)

[Chris]: later, bub

You smiled at your phone. This is what you mean by Chris’ actions hinting at something that crossed the line of being a good friend. Sure, Felix -- even Hyunjin and Jisung -- calls you a nickname every once in a while, but with Chris, it comes off different, it feels different. You feel butterflies in your stomach every time he graces you with a sweet gesture. 

But you try to push those feelings and fantasies away, not wanting to expect anything from him and end up getting disappointed, or maybe end up hating him for not reciprocating your feelings. After all, Chris is a nice guy, you’re pretty sure he’s just looking out for you as a friend, plus he probably just wanted to get your swimming course done and over with.

The time he had set for you both to meet quickly rolled by as you were now walking alongside Chris, your bag hung from his shoulders as he insisted on carrying it for you when he came and picked you up from your dorm.

“Go change, I’ll wait here,” Chris said, handing you your things and walking off towards the bleachers where his gym bag was settled. 

Soon, Chris was leading you towards the pool, taking off his shirt before jumping into the water. He extended a hand for you to take and you easily complied, feeling his grip tighten as you sit at the edge of the pool, carefully easing yourself into the water.

As you landed, you came face to face with Chris. You averted your gaze from him and cleared your throat.

“Today’s the last day of your course, by the way,” Chris spoke, your hand still within his hold. “Really? Already?” you exclaimed, looking up at him. “Yeah, so do your best,” he answered.

You nodded earnestly, wanting to make him proud in a way and of course, getting to get a free pass for your swimming class next semester. 

Chris went over the whole course that night, asking you every now and then if you had anything that you wanted to clarify. He showed you various techniques and tips on how to swim better in order to prevent yourself from getting injured. 

“Your posture on that last lap was better,” Chris complimented as you demonstrated the last pointer he gave you. “Thank you, captain,” you teased, which earned you a laugh from the male. 

You eased yourself up on the side of the pool, with your legs still in contact with the water. “Chris, thank you for doing this,” you beamed and as you spoke, Chris approached you, his hands coming up to your knees as he settled himself between your legs. Your eyes widened at his sudden movement, not sure where your hands should go so you opted to place them at your sides.

“Anything for my favorite girl,” Chris answered.

You stared at him wide-eyed, unsure of how to respond. What was he up to?

“Chris, stop joking around,” you replied as you lightly hit his arm in a joking manner. And as you did, Chris caught your hand and placed it on his shoulder, repeating the same motion on your other hand. He moved closer, his face now inches away from yours.

“I’m serious, (y/n),” Chris stated as he snaked his arms around your waist. “You know I didn’t just sign up for this in order to help you. I did this because I wanted to get to know you better, I wanted to be close to you, I wanted your attention,” he added, his brown orbs staring intently at yours -- desperately trying to convince you that he was dead serious. He wouldn’t play with your feelings like that, no way.

“You had my attention since day one, dummy,” you breathed out. “I like you a lot, Chris.”

Upon hearing your confession, Chris broke into a cheesy grin. The tip of his ears turning red as he giggled from embarrassment. “I like you a lot too, (y/n),” he responded, leaning an inch closer to rest his forehead on yours. He stared down at your lips, making your breath hitch.

“Can I?”

You nodded and he then closed the gap between the two of you. You could feel your senses going into overdrive as he kissed you, softly at first, and then with a shift of intensity that evoked new sensations you never thought existed or at least, those that you never thought you would be capable of feeling.

You pulled away first. Chris’ eyes were hazy, his facial expression mirroring yours as you looked at him with such affection.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered as he planted a peck on your forehead. “Well, you’re ethereal,” you replied, making Chris chuckle. He leaned in for another kiss, but you turned away, making him kiss your cheek instead. Chris looked at you in confusion.

“I would really like to kiss you again, but I’m getting cold,” you giggled. “Right, of course,” Chris agreed as he pulled away from your embrace, easing himself out of the pool and coming to your aid as he stood you up.

After an hour or so, the both of you finally exited the center with your hands in his. You shuddered as the night breeze grazed your skin. Chris noticed and stopped you in your tracks. He gently dropped your bags on the ground as he pulled a black hoodie from his bag.

“Arms up, babygirl,” he ordered, sliding the said article of clothing over your head and letting it fall onto your frame. “Better?” he asked while he fixed your hair, tugging some of the strands that were caught within the fabric. “Yeah, thanks,” you replied, giving him a quick kiss on the lips.

“So, do I get a pass on the course?” you questioned as the both of you continued your walk towards your dorm. Chris hummed in thought, “Under one condition.”

“And that is?” you asked, raising one eyebrow at him. “You say yes to being my girlfriend,” he answered, making you blush. “I thought the answer was already obvious,” you stated. “I wanted to hear it from you, though,” Chris insisted.

“Yes, Chris. I’ll be your girlfriend.”

“What was that?”

“I said yes, I’ll be your girlfriend.”

“I can’t hear you, (y/n).”

You playfully rolled your eyes at him and walked ahead, leaving him a few feet behind you. 

“Babyyyy,” Chris called for you, kissing your cheek as he caught up with your pace. “I was just kidding,” he cooed. “And since you’re my girl, you have to be present in all of my swim meets from now on,” he added. “First row seat?” you asked to which Chris nodded in response. “Finally!” you cheered as Chris beamed at your reaction.

“You excited to see me up close?” he asked, a cocky grin forming on his lips, certain that you would agree, but you decided otherwise.

“No. I’ve always wanted to see Hyunjin up close,” you deadpanned and Chris’ grin fell, only to be replaced with a small pout. You bit your bottom lip in order to suppress the smile that was tugging on your lips. You eventually gave in when you heard Chris’ reply.

“It’s the way he throws his hair back, huh?”

You let out a laugh. “You see right through me,” you gasped, placing a hand on your chest as you faked a shocked expression. Chris gave you a look which halted your comical antics. “Alright, I’ll stop,” you said.

“My eyes will only be on you, I promise,” you assured, tugging at Chris’ sleeve in order to make him lean down, grabbing the opportunity to plant a kiss on his lips as he complied with your gesture. “It better be,” he replied and pulled you closer to him.

[The next day...]

“Nice hoodie, (y/n),” Jisung noted as you approached their table at the cafeteria with Chris by your side, who was holding two trays of food. The boys immediately looked up and cheered upon hearing Jisung’s teasing. “Fucking finally,” Felix exclaimed, “I thought I’d have to lock you guys up and force you to confess to each other,” he added dramatically which earned him a chorus of laughter from the others.

“Shut up, Lix,” you whined, but you couldn’t resist a smile as you saw their reactions.

As you and Chris sat down, he gently pushed one of the trays towards you, asking you if you needed anything else. You shook your head and muttered a small ‘thank you’.

“Hyung, I need more water,” Changbin fake whined, batting his eyelashes at the older male. “Go get your own,” Chris replied, not even sparing the younger lad a glance. The boys laughed hysterically, dragging out their amusement for as long as they could. 

Soon enough, the laughter died down as you guys engaged in conversation, only to be interrupted by Seungmin who reminded everyone of the time.

“I’ll see you later, then?” Chris asked as the others took care of clearing the table. You nodded and planted a kiss on his cheek. “You missed, baby,” Chris joked, earning him a light slap on his arm. He faked a hurt expression, hissing in pain to add into his dramatic act.

“Now, I’m injured. Looks like I have to skip training,” Chris lifted his shoulders in a half shrug, intertwining his arm with yours and pulling you towards the opposite direction where his members were headed. You halted his playful attempt as you pulled away from his grip.

“Chris, no,��� you giggled at his actions. “I’ll meet you as soon as my classes are done, okay baby?” you assured as you gave him a kiss on his lips. 

“Fine,” Chris sighed in defeat. 

“Hyung, hurry up!”

“Save your smooching for later and somewhere private!”

The both of you chuckled upon hearing the boys’ hollers. “One more for good luck,” Chris requested as he leaned in and gave you a peck. “Now, go,” you said, pushing him away and watching him jog towards the boys.

[weasel-b33]

500 Miles (j.p x fem!reader)

Description: A few years after the birth of your son Harry, you and your husband James recall the beginning of your relationship. (NO VOLDY I CAN NOT DO THAT TO MYSELF) 

Warnings: Fluff, Kissing, A little Swearing, idk Cute Daddy James, Prolly many spelling errors I wrote this late and I am very tired...

 (THIS IS MY FIRST TIME EVER WRITING SOMETHING KINDA SIRIUS hehe SO IM SORRY IF IT IS TERRIBLE) 

Also the dates may be a bit wrong so im sorry in advance!! 

italicized is flashback!! 

Lyrics used in the song are from “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” by The Proclaimers (I KNOW THE SONG CAME OUT IN ‘87 BUT SUSPEND YOUR DISBELIEF PLEASE)

(not my gif)

The rambunctious laughter of the four year-old toddler and his father echoed throughout the large estate.

“Daddy!” exclaimed the messy haired Harry, “Can I please have a story.” Heavily emphasizing the puppy dog eyes he learned from his godfather, Sirius, a few years prior.

James Potter, the man unable to say no to anyone, tried to recall a story he had not told his son. Thinking back to the fairy tales of a prince slaying a fictional dragon, even though they are very much real, to save the princess that his mother used to tell him, James realized he was all out of good material. 

“I’m sorry bubs, I have nothing new too share,” the bespectacled man added lamely. The disappointment was instant on the child’s face, but luckily before the waterworks began, Y/N Potter strolled through the foyer into the den.

“Mommy!” Harry exclaimed, jumping up and bonding over to his mother, nearly knocking her over with his brute strength.

“Umph- Where’s the fire lovey?” you questioned with a slight chuckle. The dramatics of your son were never a surprise. Between his father and Sirius, you were surprised he had not acted much worse. Walking, more like sliding due to the child gripping your calves, over to your husband and lightly pecking his lips you ask, 

“What’s wrong now?”

Rubbing the back of his neck, he sheepishly stated, “I sorta don’t have a new story to tell him... he’s a bit peeved, if you couldn’t tell.”

A loud laugh tore through your throat as you pet your son’s hair affectionately.

“Come off Harry, Mommy has a perfect story to tell you,” you crooned softly.

“You do?”Harry questioned, rubbing the tears out of his stunning green eyes.

You picked him up and sat down near James, “Yes poppet, I have a very interesting story about how two very special people fell in love.” 

James quickly turned his head and quirked a questioning brow, “It all started when they were 15...” 

November 7, 1975

Quietly sitting on the vermilion couch of the Gryffindor Common Room, you began to fade out the noise of Lily ranting about the recent History of Magic exam, and Marlene’s long monologue over if she should or should not cut bangs. Instead, you were beginning to rip out each and every one of the hairs on your head because your Potions essay was nearly finished, yet you could not get those final words to conclude it all. 

Across the common room, a rowdy group of teenage boys, better known as the Marauders, were planning the newest prank on Snape. 

"We should give him that shampoo that will change his hair pink,” Sirius added.

Remus shook his head disapprovingly, “Pads, we did that last time come on..”

“WE HAVE NOTHING! WHAT IS WRONG WITH US, MOONY, HELP I’M DYING OF NO CREATIVITY!” Sirius exclaimed throwing himself across the scarred boy.

Although, many people turned their attention to the dark haired pureblood, James seemed he could not take his eyes off the girl nearly burning holes into her parchment, the girl he has fancied since he was 12. 

While playing with the snitch he stole, he said, “What if we tried that new rain spell we learned in charms today?” 

“Too difficult, we have not had enough practice.” Remus dismissed. “Well what if I found someone to practice on?” James added quickly turning to face his werewolf best friend. 

“Sure... Whatever, I could care less- Pads, get the bloody hell of me before I kick your arse,” 

“I’D LIKE TO SEE YOU TRY REMUS JOHN,” Sirius yelled beginning his quick climb up the stairs to the boys dorm, with Remus and Peter quickly following.

“You comin’ Prongs?” Remus asked to the brunette still staring at the girl with shaky hands.

“No, I’ll come up in a few, still want to try to figure this prank out...” he said quietly. The lanky boy followed his best friends line of sight and quietly smirked to himself.

“Alright, don’t wear yourself out too much.” 

Even throughout the commotion, you still made no move to change your line of sight. That was until Marlene nudged you and whispered into your ear.

“Psst! Oi! Y/N! Why is Potter staring at you?” 

You quickly shook your head and waved off her question, opting to continue to find the right words.

Well until your blonde friend gripped your jaw, and turned your head to the direction of the boy. You instantly made eye-contact with the messy haired Gryffindor and quirked a brow. He smirked and turned his head away. You thought nothing of the interaction, until you felt a sudden drop above your head...

Instantly, it seemed as though there was a storm in the common room. Looking towards the ceiling you saw the dark rain cloud above your head. Quickly turning your head to the essay you were writing you noticed it completely wet and ruined. You jumped into action, trying to salvage what you could, but it was too late. Ignoring the screeches of your friends and fellow housemates, you began to look for the source of the cloud.

That was until you made eye contact with the laughing and smug James Potter.

“POTTER!” you yelled. Almost immediately the rain stopped, but the damage had been done. “JAMES POTTER! YOU BETTER HAVE A REASON YOU STARTED A STORM IN THE COMMON ROOM!” 

Hearing the commotion, the rest of the Marauders came down to the common room to witness what was happening. But all they saw was a yelling match between you and their brunette best friend.

“YOU ARE A DICK JAMES POTTER! KARMA IS A BITCH AND SHE IS COMING! IT’S GONNA BE SO NICE TO SEE YOUR FACE WHEN ALL YOUR ACTIONS FINALLY COME TO KICK YOU IN THE ARSE!” you yelled.

“What? I did nothing, I don’t mean to dampen your mood, but I have no idea what you are on about.” James replies smugly.

“UGH- YOU ARE A BULLY AND A RIGHTEOUS, STUCK UP, EGOTISTICAL ARSEHOLE! I HOPE YOU ARE ENJOYING THIS BECAUSE-- OH MY! I-” You were quickly being dragged away by your red head companion. 

“Y/N, he is not worth it... let’s just leave.” 

“NO! I HAVE TO RESTART MY ESSAY! I WAS THIS BLOODY CLOSE. UGH- YOU ARE AN ARSE JAMES POTTER I HOPE YOU KNOW THAT!”

“Y/N, it was just a prank, its no big deal relax.” James said.

“RELAX! ARE YOU KIDDING... I-” you paused taking shallow and rapid breaths, ‘you know I can not believe you think its funny. You truly have no regard for people and how they feel do you?” you asked slowly and meticulously. 

“Prongs, just apologize and lets go..” Remus said quickly.

“I- I didn’t realize it would be that big of a deal.” James tried to say to you, but it was no use because you had already dragged Lily and Marlene out the common room and to the library to re-start your assignment. 

“Oh, COME ON! I did not” James stated jokingly.

“Darling, you must certainly did, I barley passed that essay as well. I blame you for me getting an E in that class.” You replied giggling.

“Moooommmyyy! Story, get back to the story,” Your son said dramatically, grabbing your cheeks and turning to face him for extra effect.

Hearing a chuckling from James in the background, “Alright bubs, back to the the story”

January 23, 1976

After months of back and forth between you and James, he was fed up trying to get your attention. From roses to chocolate, to even a firework show in your honor, James believed he had done everything to apologize to you for his stupid prank and prove his affection.

Tired of his friends constant whining, Remus and Sirius decided to take matters into their own hands and talk to someone who knew you better than anyone else, Lily and Marlene.

“Oh Evans, Mckinnon, we are in grave need of your beautiful minds” Sirius flirted. Remus smacked him across the head adding, “Ignore the git, we need some help its about-”

“James?” Lily and Marlene said in unison.

“Yeah...how did you know” Remus questioned. “Are we gonna ignore the fact they spoke at the same time” Sirius said, once again receiving a blow from his friend.

Rolling her eyes, Lily remarked, “Well, Y/N has been complaining about him for months,” Marlene quickly interjected, “...and you never are without him so its an easy assumption. 

Now its was the boys turn to roll their eyes to the back of their heads. “Anyways, he will not shut up about getting her to forgive him... so we were wondering if you had anything that could work to get her to forgive him?” Remus pleaded with the best Sirius puppy dog eyes he could muster.

“Fine,” Lily and Marlene said jointly.

“THEY DID IT AGAI- OH NOT YOU TOO AS WELL!” Sirius exclaimed rubbing the now sore bump on his head. 

Ignoring the dog’s dramatics, the group of four began conducting a plan for James that would knock Y/N’s socks off.

At this point, Harry had nestled between his parents and fell into a deep sleep.

The two of you put him to bed and settle down back into the living room.

Looking longingly at his wife, James says, “Well, might as well finish the story love... it is the best part.”

Giggling at the antics of your husband, you shrug and began to finish the story...

February 14, 1976 

The Great Hall looked as though Cupid had just went on a decorating rampage. The room lined with pink and red hearts and the sight of loving couples nearly made you want to gag. Then, you remembered the boy who has dying to get your attention for the past months and can not seem but to get excited.

What does he have planned for you? Is he gonna get me a gift? Do I look presentable? 

“WHAT!” you quickly think to yourself, “Why in Merlin’s name am I excited to to see Jame- Potter. Godric I can’t feel like this for him... He his as a fly that buzzes and will not leave me alone... but he is not the worst to look at”

You quickly snap out of your thoughts as Lily starts to put food onto your plate. You begin to eat, but can only think of one thing.

James Potter.

“Why?” You begin questioning again, “Godric, Y/N You like him... No I do not.. You realize you are having this whole conversation within your brain, right? It is obvious you like him...” you grumble to yourself as you realize your psyche has won once again.

Lily noticing your strange behavior begins to question if you discovered what they have planned. 

Almost as though the boys heard Lily’s thoughts the beginning of the plan is activated.

Instantly, the candles in all of the Great Hall extinguish and there is the beginning of a song plays.

Suddenly, a spotlight shines onto the teachers table where atop, James and the rest of the Marauders stand, Remus and Sirius with guitars and Peter on the drums. James holding a mic begins to sing...

When I wake up, Well I know I’m gonna be, I’m gonna be the man who wakes up next to you.

Your head snaps to the noise and there you see in all of his glory, James Potter holding a microphone staring straight at you.

When I go out, yeah I know I'm gonna be I'm gonna be the man who goes along.

Quickly shoving the breakfast roll down your throat you nearly choke as you see the boy slowly make his way towards the front of the Gryffindor table.

When I get drunk, well I know I'm gonna be I'm gonna be the man who gets drunk next to you.

Your eyes widen comically when you see James Potter jump onto the Gryffindor table. 

And when I haver, hey I know I'm gonna be I'm gonna be the man who's havering to you.

Slowly, the boy begins his walk across the table to where you sit. You try to make a run for it, but Lily and Marlene quickly grab your arms and anchor you down to the bench 

“What friends you are!” you hiss at the two.

Marlene just rolls her eyes and Lily pinches your hip.

And I would roll 500 miles And I would roll 500 more Just to be the man who rolls a thousand miles To fall down at your door

Once the boy is standing in front of you he reaches down for your hand. Stubbornly, you ignore his gesture, well until your two friends throw you up onto the table with the love struck brunette. 

When I come home well I know I'm gonna be I'm gonna be the man who comes back home to you And when I grow old, well I know I'm gonna be I'm gonna be the man who's growing old with you.

You grip onto the boys biceps for stability and are forced to look into his ravishing hazel eyes...

In that moment you forget all that he has done to you in the past and all you can think about is him and you. 

But I would roll 500 miles And I would roll 500 more Just to be the man who roles a thousand miles To fall down at your door.

Smiling, to yourself, you grab the face of the boy in front of you and mold your lips together. Ignoring the cheers of your classmates, the only sounds you hear are the background noise of the boy’s best friends signing backup. 

Da da da  Da da da                                                                                                            Da Da Dun Diddle                                                                                            Un Diddle Un Diddle Uh Da Da.....

Smiling to yourself and grabbing the hand of the man you love you start laughing.

“What’s so funny, love?” James asks.

“Nothing.... Just we began dating because you performed a whole song and dance in front of the entirety of Hogwarts.” you reply breathlessly.

“Well, hey, look at us now... happy, healthy, and a true family.” he replies smiling at your antics.

You lay down your head into the lap of your husband, and look up into his hazel eyes you got lost into all those years ago, “Such a sap, Potter, such a sap...”

Kissing your cheek softly, “Only for you, my darling girl... only for you...” 

“I love you Jamie”

“I love you more, my love.”            ______________________________________________________________

AHHH I HOPE YOU ENJOY!!! IM SORRY IF IT IS SO BAD!! THIS IS MY FIRST FIC PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF I COULD DO ANYTHING BETTER!!! AHHHH (but like kinda like this story... kinda proud ;))

[heyitsyn]

Manager!Seijoh Part 3

a/n: yall i love seijoh so much like theyre my favorite school and my favorite boys and i know their names by heart and im just so SOFT for them !!!!!

also: yall will find out what other fandom ill be writing for in the future in this one

for more seijoh content, check this masterlist out!

combined two anon requests:

- Could we get the boys reacting to finding out the seijoh manager is quite popular to both genders?? Maybe they over hear a confession?

- Why do I feel like half of the team would be all pouty when word comes around that a guy confessed to manager, the others would probably be annoyed/irritated. Oikawa being all bratty cause no matter what he tried,she never showed ant interest when he flirts. But now this boy comes alone ... (but like you said manager is too focused in school and the team)

MY HEART WAS RIPPED OUT OF MY CHEST AND THROWN INTO A BLENDER WHEN I SAW THIS PART OR JUST WHEN SEIJOH LOST IN GENERAL BC MY BABIES WORKED SO HARD AAAAAAA

oof girl the world is ending

so basically,,,,,

the entire just magically knew about what happened earlier and yahaba’s theory of team telepathy really does work bc not even a minute after it happened, they all spammed you messages and next thing you knew, oikawa was naruto-ing down from the 3rd floor to your class in the first floor

tbh, they shouldve seen this coming yanno?

you were ridiculously pretty and you carried yourself w such elegance and grace that it just seemed to hypnotize everyone into stopping what they were doing and watched you in awe doing the most mundane things like walking or sitting

lmao couldnt be me

your confessions usually happened over letters bc either tol boys kunimi or kindaichi are usually around you at all times so theyre too scared to do anything

hence why your locker was always filled with envelopes yet no upfront public confessions

it ranged from upperclassmen and upperclasswomen who expressed their interest in you and wanted to date you and get to know you better

but tf you dont even know them and you werent about to date a whole stranger

this made the boys a little peeved because you were popular with both the boys and the gals so they were constantly on edge on who was talking to you

it was like having an oikawa 2.0 but not indulging them and pretending theyre not even there

like when you walk to class and sit down, they would flock over and offer you drinks and snacks but you either turned them down or just flat-out ignored them

maybe this was what fueled others on more

your reserved attitude and your refusals made it look like you were playing hard to get and it was almost like a game on who could win the heart of the princess of seijoh

this was proven really difficult because not only do they have your dismissals, you also had guard dogs at every corner and would bite their head off at the slight indication of an interaction

however,,,,

today,,,

this morning,,,,

at 7:53 AM,,,,

they saw you walking down the hallway with a purple-haired boy holding your bag and you giggling at what he was saying

um EXCUSE ME MAAM WHAT

EVERYONE HAS BEEN TRYING TO GAIN YOUR AFFECTIONS FOR MONTHS YET YOU ARE HERE INTERACTING WITH A MALE WHO NO ONE EVEN KNOWS

ESPECIALLY SINCE HE WAS A MALE WHO WAS STANDING RIGHT THERE RIGHT NEXT TO YOU AND HE WASNT A MEMBER OF THE TEAM

!!!!!

and ofc, the boys would immediately know even though theyre spread all over the school

it was kyoken who saw you as he was leaning against your locker and his eyes narrowed before he secretly took a picture and sent it to yahaba, asking if there was a new guy who entered the team while he was away

when he replied with a panicked, ‘NO WHO IS THAT’

kyoken was already advancing to you

yahaba-san immediately sent the picture to the team group chat, that excluded you rood, and oikawa wasted no time and even pushed some fangirls so he could go to you

‘-and she destroyed my sheets’

you laughed at the story and hitoshi stared at you with awe in his eyes

how can someone laugh so beautifully?

like a snort should be considered ugly and gross but it was like cute little squeaks from you and he thought you were like a fairy

‘oh god, i wasnt-’

you were cut off with a hand that held your arm

you came face to face with the glaring face of one of your boys and you immediately turned to him in concern, immediately grasping an arm with the other hand on his cheek to look for any cuts

he rarely comes to you on a normal basis so you thought something was wrong

‘whats wrong, kyo-san? did you get into a fight? do you need me to patch you up?’

he didnt care what you were saying, instead heatedly glaring at this new guy, and grunted a response to agreeing with you going to the nurse

just anywhere to get you away from this,,,, stranger

‘toshi i have to-’

then you were cut off again

‘YYYYY/NNNNNNN-CHHHHHAAAANNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’

‘OI SHITTYKAWA!’

‘OIKAWA-SAN!’

‘OIKAWA!’

‘CAPTAIN!’

from behind you, 5 tol looming figures were running towards you and next thing you knew, you were in the arms of your captain

‘oikawa-san! what are you doing?!’

oikawa held you tightly against his chest and had his arms tightly around your form to prevent you from being taken away

most of the volleyball team were now circling you and pointedly glaring at the poor boy who was so confused that he wasnt bothered by the death glares

‘oh, its you’

kunimi grumbled

‘kunimi, whats happening?’

hitoshi questioned

you fought away from the hold of oikawa and pushed mattsukawa and hanamaki to stand in front of shinsou hitoshi

‘so sorry about this, toshi. i’ll help you with your room later and ill text you when practice is finished, okay?’

you sheepishly smiled and he nodded, his own smile reassuring you

‘yep. ill see you later then’

‘bye’

you softly said and he turned to walk away

but as soon as he was out of sight, you turned around with a grim looking expression and your hands on your hips, a hard look in your eyes

‘boys, what was that?’

you gritted out

‘y/n-chan! don’t you see?! he was going to take you away! he was an intrude-OW!’

he yelped when you reached up and grabbed his ear before grabbing the other closest who was iwaizumi

they both whined and complained about the ear and slapped your hand but you didnt let up

‘he is a friend, oikawa-san. you have no right on who i can be friends and who i can hang out with because i still have a life outside the team!’

you scolded and the others hung their heads low like puppies

‘sorry, y/n-chan’

oikawa mumbled and iwaizumi also mumbled his apology so you let go of them, dusting off your hands

‘and the rest of you, hold back your captain and dont intimidate him like that!’

‘sorry’

you sighed but ruffled their hair before turning to go to class

‘now, be good boys and dont bother others like this again’

‘yes’

they chorused and you nodded, satisfied

‘ill hold you to it!’

you shouted as you walked down the hallway

when you turned a corner, oikawa grabbed kunimi by the arms

‘you know him, dont you? who is he? what class? address? mother’s name? father’s name? age-’

‘oi stop it, shittykawa’

but despite that, iwaizumi looked at the younger, expecting answers as well

kunimi sighed

‘thats shinsou hitoshi from class 1-3. we have gym together’

and ‘we’ was kunimi and you since you were both in the same class so you constantly saw this shinsou boy?

nuh uh, dont think so, francisco

from the looks of it, you were still single and there was a pining from shinso’s part, maybe yours they dont know

and they were going to do everything in their power to keep you away from him

this was excused to them as protecting their manager from someone else and they werent going to let you be taken by someone else

during practice, they grilled you over your relationship with him

‘i honestly dont know why this is your business but if you must know, his adoptive father, aizawa-san, is my mother’s co-worker and i usually catsit for them. dont worry, we’re not dating. just friends, that’s all’

but they know it wasnt just a friendship type of situation

so when the 4 third years saw you being confessed to by this ‘friend’ outside, they almost toppled out the window as they tried to listen to what was being said

‘shittykawa get off my back!’

‘nuh uh! i want to see clearly!’

‘everyone needs to know that code red is happening!’

yall what

mattsun took a picture and sent it to the gc about their princess being confessed to 

no one replied, possibly too upset or too busy sulking

kyoken actually had to be excused outside bc he was glaring at everyone and everything and the teacher and students were so scared that they had to take him out of class

they were even more peeved when you just walked in like nothing happened

you didnt mention the confession to anyone else the whole day and when you entered the gym, it was very tense

the coaches even looked confused

‘did you guys fight?’

you questioned but no one answered

kunimi and kindaichi were playing with a ball and glaring at it as it hit the floor

the 2nd years yes including kyobabie were pouting to the side

the 3rd years looked annoyed and pissed off 

overall just not seijoh babie vibes

i am uncomfortable with the energy we have created in the gym today🧚✨

‘hey’

you gently said and walked to the captain to figure out what was going on

‘oikawa-san, what happened?’

‘are you dating him now, y/n?’

the seriousness in his voice shocked you and you took a step back in surprise

your expression made him think that you did accept the confession and he scoffed before walking away and doing a jump serve that sounded like a canon blasting

but you were actually confused and surprised that they even knew bc you were sure it was a secluded area where no one could see you

‘dating,,,? dating who?’

you asked to them and the 3rd years just knitted their eyebrows

‘dont play coy, y/n-chan’

oikawa hissed

‘no matter how many times i flirted or asked you on dates, you never said yes. never agreed or even showed a little bit of interest. on me!! your captain!!! but now!!! this little grape boy comes along and you suddenly start dating just because he has cats! what kinda bias is this?!’

he started ranting and whining and being a brat that you pinched his nose shut

‘oi, oikawa-san, are you jumping to conclusions again? first the hickey accident and now this?’

he made a whining noise for you to let go and rubbed his nose when you finally let go

you turned around to face the others and you sighed, massaging your temples

‘everyone, who spread this misunderstanding?’

no one pointed to anyone but their gazes settled on the thick eyebrow boy that you were sure wouldnt have ratted you out

a noise of surprise and betrayal escaped from you as mattsun quickly scrambled to get everyone to stop staring at him

‘MATTSUN-SAN! YOU-!’

you pointed at him and mattsun rushed forward to grab your hands before holding them close to his chest

‘y/n-chan, we just saw you when we were passing! it was makki who wanted to tell the others!’

the betrayal made iwa laugh but makki ran up to kick mattsun to the side

‘youre the one who committed the deed! i was merely suggesting it! it was iwaizumi who wanted to watch them first!’

‘IWA-SAN!’

you gasped at the normally chill third year and you didnt expect him to be the one who started it first

iwa panicked and held his hands out cautiously

‘y/n-chan, understand that i was just worried and i didnt want you to be outside by yourself after what happened, okay? i didnt know he was confessing to you’

you closed your eyes and pinched the bridge of your nose tightly

‘again! whoever and whatever happens in my love life is my business! mine! and only mine! you cannot control it and get angry at ME because i do want a boyfriend and i do want to experience dating bc i want to know how it feels to be loved like that! so i wont let a bunch of children stop me from having that!’

the third years shared a look before they they gave up and nodded in defeat

but oikawa was the most offended

‘Y/N-CHAN! I ASK YOU ON DATES ALL THE TIME AND I ALWAYS OFFER TO GIVE YOU THAT LOVE SO WHY CAN’T IT BE ME?! WHAT DOES THAT GRAPE HUMANOID HAVE THAT I DONT?!’

he whined and stomped his foot after crossing his arms and a pout on his face

you shook your head, not even bothering to answer that, and went to the others

‘dont be mad and be upset, okay? i refused him bc i have no time for a relationship when im too busy looking after my own boys. i really dont want to add another’

kindaichi and yahaba’s face scrunched as they rushed forward to hug you 

‘we thought you would leave us y/n-chan!’

‘stay as ours forever, okay?’

you were so relieved that they werent as aggressive as the oldests and gave each player their own favorite hugs

but you stopped in front of kyo, not really knowing how to hug him since youve never exactly showed any type of affection like that

so you were just awkwardly standing there with raised arms but he patted your head, you smiling and leaning more to his touch

‘hm, kyo-san, ya finally warming up to me?’

you teased but he scoffed, gently headbutting you with his forehead against yours

‘now, everyone! dont misunderstand and know that for as long as i will be a manager, i wont be in a relationship bc my time as a manager is too crucial since i would probably have to look after you so you dont get yourself to jail. a boyfriend is adding more boys in to that list and i dont want that. you will be my boys forever and i wont be taken from you so please trust on me and stop being so overprotective bc i wont give them the affection or wishes they want!’

oikawa teared up and was about to go trample you but he was held back

‘no! i want a hug! i want a family hug! cmon, iwa-chan!’

practice went by quickly but you demanded them to do 10 diving laps in punishment for all the misunderstandings theyve created 

but they gladly did it bc it meant that you wont be taken from them and you would be theirs forever and their cute manager is going to pay attention to them and them only

i got serious yandere vibes from this but its so heartwarming that theyre so overprotective and lowkey you got yourself a harem

after practice, they all wanted to walk home with you but you told them that shinsou’s house was the other direction

‘y/n-chan! you said you wouldn’t-’

you rolled your eyes

‘oikawa-san, just because i refused that confession doesnt mean i will stop earning money. i still have to catsit for his family and earn my money!’

they only agreed when kyo said that he was walking that way too but they were still weary and jealous bc he got to spend more time with you than them

as you were both walking, you looked up at him

‘kyo-san, what type of hug do you like?’

‘hah?’

he looked down at you bc we short with wide eyes and flushed cheeks

you smiled and looked forward, skipping slightly

‘everyone in the team has their own special hugs. i want everyone to have one bc you all are individually special to me so-’

but he stopped walking and pulled arm before he lifted you up, making you squeak and wrap your legs around his waist

thank god you were wearing your tracksuit and not your skirt

‘k-kyo-san?’

bruh is it obv that kyoken is one of my favorite seijoh boys like bls love on him

he didnt want you to see his flustered expression bc he still has a reputation to uphold, yanno?

so he tucked it in your neck and you softly smiled before playing with the baby hairs at the base of his neck

‘you like this kind then, kyo-san? kinda aggressive but perfectly suits you, yanno?’

he just grunted and you laughed

he wasnt about to tell you that he liked holding you on his arms bc you were so tiny and so you that holding you like this makes him feel like he was protecting you and feel good about himself bc he gets to be the one who shields you from the world

yuhhhhh get it kyo

‘so yahaba-san told me that you got kicked out of class bc you scared the teacher and kids?’

you questioned and he left his spot on your neck and pulled his face back so you could clearly see his face

it was red and possibly flustered but you just snickered

he still held you by his strong arms so you were able to move your small hands to his face where he flinched at first but relaxed when you touched his cheeks

your fingers gently pulled the sides of his lips and you tilted your head to the side

‘you,,, look really handsome when you smile, kyo-san’

you whispered and he was so surprised that his tough mask fell and was replaced by wide eyes and his eyebrows rose up, the intimidating look disappearing from his eyes

‘i-i do?’

you bit your lip bc this was so different from the aggressive kyo you knew and you didnt expect this type of innocence that he just showed you

maybe he wasnt so innocent from the fights and arguments he has started or been in 

but he was so innocent to soft touches and compliments bc he wasnt exposed to it, only used to the ones that were said due to the aura he exuded or his looks

‘yep, you do. so keep smiling for me, kay? dont have to be around the others or all the time, but i,,, want to see it sometimes’

he blinked at you but quickly went back to your neck to hide the big smile that was threatening to come out

you felt his lips move and you laughed

‘noooo! kyo-san!!! i want to see your smilee!!! dont hide it!!!’

but it was cut short when a familiar shout was heard from the other side of the street that was near the school

it seemed that oikawa was worried about you walking alone with kyoken so he followed you both with the other third years

‘kyoken-chan! y/n-chan!’

he shouted in betrayal

you were about to get away from kyo’s hold but he tightened his grip and leaned in to place a kiss on your forehead, still staring straight at the captain

‘mine’

again, do you know what happened next?

oikawa screamed

this was actually pretty funny to write bc wowza oikawa is so oikawa and hes just so oikawa-like, yanno? and im still simping over kyoken and shinsou is my ult fave in bnha and i really love him like ugghhhh :’)

[jaedore]

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐨𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭 | 𝐭𝐰𝐨

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: jaehyun x reader

𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: mythology!au, romance, loads of angst, smut (future chapters)

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: swearing, violence (choking) -if you are uncomfortable with these themes then i highly suggest you no longer interact!

𝐚/𝐧: IM TRYING AGAIN SO LETS SEE HOW IT GOES OR I MIGHT CRY. as always, italicized text are thoughts/emphases (you’ll know)

[ 7.5 k words ]

You huff, rolling your eyes as you walk out of the room. You hated everything about Jaehyun, his stupid ego, his stupid face, his stupid hair, everything. It was like he was made to hate everyone, including you.

“Hey!” you recognize Mark’s voice, making you snap your head up from the ground.

“Hey, Mark,” you thinned your lips.

“You okay?” he noticed you clutching your arm.

“I’m fine.”

“Wanna go practice then?” Mark raised a brow at you.

“Well since Jaehyun ruined my chance to, why not?” you painted a disguised look on your face by just the name of the so-called male.

Certainly surprised, Mark’s head slightly jolted back, “Jaehyun’s...practicing?” it was rare for the hot-headed male to practice in his free time, so when Mark heard it he didn’t know how to take it.

“Yeah,” you roll your eyes, “with Aera. Do what you want with that information. I’ll be waiting for you outside.”

Your footsteps were synchronous with Mark’s as he walked to the dagger room and you, to wait outside for him. Before you could open the door, you heard Mark scold Jaehyun and you couldn’t stop the smirk from growing on your lips.

You sat on one of the rocks that decorated the entrance as you waited for Mark, no one was here this early yet so everything was nice and peaceful. The birds chirped among the green trees spring provided, you were thankful that the training center was in the middle of the woods, it was far from the busy life on Mount Olympus. Far from the noise, the chaos, the rules, and the pressure of living a life as a child of a god/goddess.

It only took a few minutes before you heard the door swing open, you snap your head expecting to see Mark, but instead see Jaehyun storming out with his hands clenched in fists. You avoid eye-contact, your eyes growing big at the realization of what you may have just caused. You can hear Jaehyun mumble something from his lips, but you’re too timid to listen closely. Once you see his figure stomp off into the woods, you glance up to see Mark’s forehead creased and his arms crossed in front of him.

“Is he always so hateful towards you?” he chirps up, both of your eyes glued to the back of Jaehyun. You shrug as Mark passes you towards the clearing of the waterfall where you two usually practice.

“Seems like he’s always got something to hate,” you follow your friend into the woods, the narrow trail of dirt small enough for only the two of you.

“I wonder if Hades is like that too,” he whispers in thought.

No, he’s not, you thought to yourself. You remember last night’s event, the kind smile adorned his father’s face as his calm voice could lull you to sleep. At first glance, no one would think that he was the king of the underworld. Curiosity sits on your shoulders as you think how different the two are.

“What’d you even say to him?” you glance at the mud that splatters on your boot.

“I just told him that this is a room to train, not flirt.”

You sigh and shake your head, “Mark, that’s exactly what I said to Jaehyun too. Now he knows that I’m the one who told you.”

“Maybe that’s why he was so mad,” you could see him cock his head to the side.

You scoff at his oblivious remark, “Yeah, no shit, Mark.”

After a few more steps, the clearing to the azure waterfall and rocky boulders painted the scene in front of you and Mark bringing you both peace of mind. A feeling of relief washed over you, making you forget all the pressure and hate in the world.

Taking notice of the tenseness in your shoulder escaping with your breath, he whispers, “don’t worry, he’s probably just like that. I wouldn’t take it personally.”

“I know,” you thinned your lips. Of course, you knew that Jaehyun had something against everyone, but why did it feel like it was just against you? And why did you care so much?

With sore muscles and bruised fists, you and Mark were side by side walking back to the training center where all the students began to pour in for their daily lessons. The chattering of students became louder as you two got closer.

You and Mark were in the middle of talking when a tall man ran next to you, the smell of him immediately giving away who he was.

“Hey, Y/N!”

You turn your head to see Lucas, son of Psyche, Goddess of Soul, and Compassion, with a beaming smile shining at you. You couldn’t help but greet him back with your biggest smile and a little laugh because of the trance he had on you. Lucas is always happy, he’s always kind and spreading his love around to others making sure they were happy. He was like the water on a hot day.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Mark whispered to you, giving you raised, yet suggestive brows. You scowl at him for him almost being obvious, but Lucas’s laughter pulled your attention.

“Where’d you two go?” he asked.

“We just went for a walk,” you replied, being completely aware of the white lie you just told. It just wouldn’t be fair for him and others to find out that you were getting private lessons with Mark.

“Cool, cool, you two are close?”

Your gaze from the ground pulls your eyes to Lucas’s, it’s filled with wonder, curiosity, and a bit of hope, “yeah, we’re just good friends.”

“Friends,” Lucas laughs, it rings in your ear, the lovely sound of him expressing amusement lifts the corner of your lips, “well, then...do you wanna grab lunch together today? I know a place where we can eat, too-” he leans closer to you, “-plus, it’s better than the cafeteria.”

You chuckle a bit, raising a brow because you were not expecting him to ask you out for lunch, “like a date?”

Lucas nodded, “Yeah, you can call it that.”

Immediate heat rose to your cheeks, making your heart thump a little faster and constricting your throat, “y-yeah, we can do that.”

“Great, I’ll see you later then,” Lucas lightly punches your arm and runs to catch up with another friend and as you watch him go, your eyes follow his path and cross Jaehyun.

Your jaw clenches at the male as he sends fire bullets to your chest, your entire body tenses up that you run to the opposite entrance to avoid him. You shut the doors behind you with a gulp, but the second you turn around, a dark aura settles in your bones.

Dressed in dark leather and a cold stare, Jaehyun stands before you, his presence bringing the entire world down with him. “Was my father at your house last night?”

You inhaled a drawn-out breath at his question, almost wanting to just ignore it and walk past him, but something in your mind stops you from doing so. “Yes.”

Jaehyun narrows his eyes at you, the eyes that are sharp as a knife and could cut you at a glance, “why?”

“I don’t know Jaehyun, he was there before I got home. All I knew was that he needed to talk to my mother,” you reply as you find the courage to move past him, but as you did, you could sense the suspicious demeanor sitting on his shoulders, “don’t worry, it had something to do with the affairs of Olympus.”

“You don’t know that,” you stop in your tracks and turn back around, viewing his back.

“Yes, I do, Jaehyun. They wouldn’t tell me anything, so I’m pretty sure something’s going on, not between them, but on Olympus,” you reassure him, hesitating to put your hand on his shoulder.

No one knows the relationship between him and his father, the only thing everyone knew was that it was a tense relationship. Cautiously, you set your hand on his shoulder to relieve him. His sturdy shoulders that felt like they were holding up the entire world, slightly slumped, relaxing in your touch. You thinned your lips, thankful that at least part of him trusted you, but it only resulted in him snapping around to clutch your arm, the same arm that he grasped yesterday that had turned to hues of blue and red. You gasp at the solid grip he had on you, the pain from your bruise coming back as he tightened it. Your eyes widened at his dark orbs, making you feel timid and weak in his stare.

Jaehyun pulled you close to his chest, his strong muscles against your forearm and the smell of ashes, musk, and spice wafting to your nose. With the tiny time, you had to glance at him, his sharp features allured you to stare, even more, he was so beautiful up close. His skin was pale as the winter snow, yet his lips were as red as the cherry blossoms in the spring, everything about him hypnotized you that you didn’t even notice him lowering his head to your gaze.

“Look at me,” Jaehyun’s voice is low, almost quiet but still powerful, “I told you to never touch me again,” his voice is poison to your ears that injects fear in your veins.

You winced as you felt him tighten his hold a little bit more, but you managed to push him away from you, his grip easily slipping off like butter.

“Then don’t touch me either,” your brows creased at him before you turned on your heel to walk back to where everyone else was.

You could feel his gaze burning through your back, but you couldn’t help but turn back and see him staring right back into your soul. So you quickly walked until you saw civilization again, the buzz of lower-class students and the sounds of lockers slamming.

“Hey, where’d you go?” Mark came up behind you, making you jump.

“I-I uh, nowhere, it doesn’t matter,” you huff.

Behind you, Jaehyun turned from the corner you came out of, which sent questions out of Mark’s mouth. Such as, why you came out of the same place Jaehyun did if you were walking to him, what he had to say, etc. but you only shooed him off, picking up your pace to walk to the hand-to-hand combat room.

As much as you tried avoiding Jaehyun, the thought of him was engraved on the inside of your head. It didn’t help that since you two were in the same rankings, you’d have to train with him. Rank A, only for the best. When you found out Jaehyun was in the same class rank as you, you couldn’t help but feel a bitter taste on the tip of your tongue. You knew he was going to be trouble from the beginning.

“Um..okay, you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine Mark,” you huff at his question and he gets the signal that you no longer wanted to talk about it. That’s how you always were, you always brushed your problems to the side, and Mark’s afraid that one day, they might pile up so high on your shoulders that you’d combust and destroy yourself.

Nonetheless, Mark hums, glancing at how you purse your lips forcefully, “if you say so. What did Lucas have to say to you?”

Like the only light bulb in the only room, your eyes immediately lit up to the male’s name, “he asked me if I wanted to grab lunch with him and eat somewhere else...with just the two of us,” you thin your lips and fiddle with your fingers, even the thought of Lucas made you happy. A sudden outburst of Mark’s laughter makes you snap your thoughts to reality so you slap his arm at his lack of seriousness, “what’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Mark clutches his stomach, his other hand shielding himself from you, “it’s just weird seeing you act this way because of some boy.”

“He’s not just some boy,” you narrow your eyes at Mark, “he’s Lucas,” you giggle, your eyes closing in innocence.

“I guess I shouldn’t say ‘weird’. It’s different, but it’s a good different, I guess,” he shrugs and walks towards the arena because it’s almost time for training.

“You guess?” you run after him.

“Yeah,” his voice raises in reassurance as he opens the door, the smell of iron protruding the air and the feeling of cement on the heels of your feet.

You slightly pout your lips and blink in your thoughts, are you really that intense that you never showed any sort of happy emotion? You never focused on anything else other than training and perfecting your skills, but now that you have, a new feeling settles on your heart.

“Don’t think about it so much,” Mark nudges you and walks ahead of you to talk to the other trainers.

You watch him jog up to the others, soaking in what he said, but it spills out of your head the second you feel a hard push on your shoulder from the person behind you. Turning your head, the person who shoved you was no one other than Jung Jaehyun, he doesn’t even look back at you as he passes you, but you give him a dirty look and inhale a sharp breath. The things he does to test your patience.

“Asshat.”

It’s only a few minutes until the other students in your ranking pour in, it’s a small group, but it’s a proud group because everyone had to train endlessly to get to the top rank. There are a few new faces, but most of the students are ones you’ve seen for a while, you nod to greet them as they all step in and stand behind you. As expected, it doesn't take too long when you begin hearing whispers from them.

“Jaehyun’s in the top group?”

“How did he make it?”

“Is he really that good?”

“Hades probably bought him his rank.”

“Or he’s just really good.”

“Yeah, he’s really attractive too.”

You roll your eyes, but immediately catch Jaehyun’s stare. You hold his gaze raising a brow and mouthing “what?” to him because it seems like at this point, he’s just looking at you to look at you. Jaehyun peels his eyes from you to look at the other students, greeting them also. The gesture is kind, his lips thinned, not lifted, but his demeanor changes and it disgusts you.

“I know! Do you think he’s talking to anyone?”

You exhale a scoff, your tongue poking out from the inside of your cheek as you turn your head, “we’re here to train. You’ve made it this far, so if your mind is still focused on catching someone’s attention, go to the Aquatic then,” your whisper is sharp, almost on the brink of cruelness.

You didn’t have time to train with others who didn’t take training seriously, if they didn’t and were focused on other things, you urged them to leave. In this case, you suggested they leave for the famous club on Mount Olympus, Aquatic, since their mind is focused on catching someone’s eye, specifically Jaehyun’s. He’s not even that great, he’s an ass.

“Alright everyone, we’re gonna start,” Mark claps his hand, gaining attention from everyone.

“Newbies, welcome, this is going to be your first day in hell,” one of the other trainers said, earning a slap in the arm from Mark.

“No, it’s not, but we will be training you to be the best. Your limits will be pushed and you might cry, but we’re only trying to make you the best of the best,” Mark explains, eyeing his peer.

“If your mind isn’t in this training room right now, then I suggest you leave or else this will be a very, very long 4 hours,” a smirk grows on the other trainer, you can’t help but mentally laugh because of how he’s trying to explain this process by scaring the newcomers. You can see the slight fear and nervousness in their eyes.

“So that being said,” Mark claps his hands again, “we’ll be testing where your skills are. You’ll be paired up with someone who’s already been training on this team for years and will be required to fight them in front of us. We just want to see where you are and if you have potential in this rank.”

“And if we don’t?” One of the girls behind you speaks up, everyone’s head turning towards you.

“Then you get demoted to the ranking before this one. As in, you go back into your old ranking group until we see that you’re ready to join,” you turn your head and reply to the girl, you raise your eyebrow at her for her lack of focus from before.

“Just as Y/N said,” Mark responds.

“Then why recruit us?” She asks.

“You’ve scored well in your old ranks, which has gained you access to this ranking group, but we have to see if you’re good enough or have the potential to train with us. We have to see if you blend in well,” a female trainer adds.

“To see if we’re good enough?” the newcomer doesn’t stop with her questions as she repeats the female trainer’s latest comment.

“Look,” you turn until you’re completely facing her, “if you want to be here so bad, then shut your mouth and stop wasting time. Focus on training and getting better instead of asking questions about your own abilities, which you should know about unless you’re actually not as good as you seem.” You tilt your head when the corner of your lip lifts into a smirk, you don’t mean to be intimidating, but she’s wasting everyone’s time.

The newbie flashes you a distasteful scoff but glances back up at the trainers who also seem to be on your side. If you heard correctly, you thought you heard Jaehyun chuckle, but you ignore it when you see the narrowness of his eyes.

“She’s right,” the female trainer defends you, clapping her hands to end the discussion and to start training, “okay, we’re gonna pair you guys up now.”

Name after name was called until it was just you and the new girl who couldn’t keep her trap shut. She had a mouth, but did she have the skills?

“Newbie, you’re with Y/N,” the second you heard your name, your lips pressed together, an impatient sigh escaping your nose.

“Come on, let’s go,” you don’t glance at her as you lead her to the area you’d usually warm up to train, “as you probably already know, I’m Y/N.”

“Maeve,” it’s a pretty name, you’ll give her that, but she says it quietly, timidly, contradicting the time she had just opened her mouth to the most respectable trainers.

Her heavy steps are heard as she follows you, both of your frustrated auras tainting the air surrounding you two. Once you get to your spot, you begin jogging wall to wall to get yourself warmed up while she begins stretching. You raised a brow at her, but didn’t think too much of it, you needed to get focused because no matter what skill level she was at, both of you had something to learn from this. You ran, jogged, did some push-ups and sit-ups before you heard the faint name of Jaehyun’s get called. You glanced up to see he was paired up with one of the male newcomers, who was almost as tall as Jaehyun, but not as lean as him. When they walked up, the newcomer walked as if he possessed a sense of confidence, like he knew he was going to beat Jaehyun. Nonsense, you mentally scoff to yourself as you eyed him.

When Mark blew the whistle, the newcomer proved you wrong, he was doing certainly well with his sharp tactics and blocking defenses. You had a feeling of what Jaehyun was doing, it’s something you do too, he was waiting for the newbie to use all of their energy before attacking them. A corner of your lips slowly lifts when you are deemed correct. As the newcomer begins to stumble, Jaehyun goes for the male, immediately punching his jaw, then his rib. The newcomer trips over his own feet and-

“You got a thing for him or something?” Maeve questioned you.

“Who- Jaehyun?” you scan her up and down, she holds a smirk on her lips as she’s in a runner’s lunge. She’s dressed in the regular uniform but dressed it in her style, which you hate to admit, looked good.

“Yeah, you know he and Aera have a thing, right?” she narrows her eyes at you, signifying that you didn’t want to get involved.

“Oh, and is that such a big deal?” you also go into the lunge until you’re at her eye-level, “Please-” you scoff, “-why would I even care to be interested in someone like him?”

She laughs at your remark, but lunges closer to your face attempting to intimidate you, “you think you’re so high up there, huh?”

Your eyes shoot daggers at her, “what are you even talking about?”

“You clearly think that since you’re the daughter of Athena, you think that you’re so good, so high up there, better than everyone else when we all know that you’re not. That this-” she points her finger up and down at your figure, “is just a show. You’re not as good as you think you are, as everyone sees you as.”

You stand up, eyeing her figure that stretches below you, “what are you trying to do? Provoke me?”

The newcomer with apparently a big ego now, stands up and gives you the same dirty expression you’re giving her, “What if I am?”

“Y/N, newbie, you’re up now!” Mark yells at you two.

You throw a smirk at her, “well consider myself provoked. Get ready for it,” you raise a brow and nudge your shoulder with her’s as you walk past her to the ring.

Passing by Mark, you flash him a prideful smile, but he clutches your arm before you could even pass him, “be gentle.”

You scoff, “don’t worry, she’ll get what she asked for.”

Mark only shakes his head as he leads the two of you to the ring. You and the newcomer both glare at each other, her with hate and you with amusement. It only takes three whistle blows until you two begin in your fighting stance. She’s quick and sharp in her movements as she attempts to throw a jab at you, but you’re faster at defending yourself. You have more force to your movements, so you punch her back, immediately coming in contact with her cheek. The newcomer spits out the blood that spills from the corner of her lip and while she’s distracted, you roundhouse kick the side of her face anticipating the sound of her body thumping the ground.

You stand and wait for her to get up and fight you, but she doesn’t. The next thing you knew, you felt contact with her feet against yours, she swung them under you, making you fall on your back, which results in you roughly falling on your back. Your breathing stutters as your chest heaves, but the next thing you knew, her hands made contact with your neck and she didn’t even show you mercy when she rapidly began to tighten her grasp on you. Your eyes widen as your passageway to air is blocked, you begin to thrash your limbs, hitting everything you could as stars begin to blanket your vision. Every second in your hold comes with a constricting pain, releasing almost every kind of worry in your head. You swore you almost saw her eyes turn black when she saw your struggle.

You can hear the shouts of trainers and chaos around you swirling through blurred vision. Everything was faint but you knew the person who managed to get the girl off of you. He lifted you onto your feet, with his arms wrapping around your limp body, knowing that you needed oxygen in your brain and blood back in your veins.

“It’s okay, I got you, I got you. You’re gonna be okay,” Jaehyun whispers in your ear, your head falling against his chest, your eyes slowly opening and closing each second as he strives to keep you standing. Each and every inhale you take is a sting to your throat, the constricting muscles feeling like they’re on fire.

“Let go of me,” you murmur through a hushed tone, weakly trying to push yourself away from him.

“Stop fighting me, let me help you,” he grunts as your body rejects any kind of his physical support.

“I don’t-” you cough, “-need...your help.”

“Shut up,” he mumbles into your ear, eyeing the trainers trying to get a hold of the newcomer who choked you.

You clutch onto Jaehyun’s arm as you glance back. Your vision is slowly returning but you can still see black in her eyes and the veins of her neck, every part of her is drowned in fury, chaos, and darkness, more intense than the male who holds you. She struggles in the trainers’ hold, the growls and screams of outrage screeching your ear.

With a wheeze, you shut your eyes at her piercing shriek, “just get me the hell out of here.”

Jaehyun does just that, he holds onto your shoulders but makes sure you’re still supported as he leads you to the infirmary. He can hear your stuttering breaths and tiny coughs. You bring your hand up to your neck, massaging the bruises and pain.

“I can walk myself,” you grumble under your breath, which is literally just your raspy voice now.

“Fine,” Jaehyun immediately lets go of you, giving you a slight push as he leaves you be, but it only leads you to fall on your knees and your palms stopping you from face planting.

You violently cough, your body still weak and slow in gaining air and strength. Glancing up at Jaehyun, he eyes you with a smug look, orbs filled with brutality. He knows that you clearly need help, your trembling breaths are begging for it but you don’t plead for his help. The last thing you want to do is ask for his help, along with being seen as weak and helpless, you didn’t want anyone’s pity.

You hear Jaehyun sighing at your crouched figure and your hand that clutches your chest, “that’s what I thought,” the taps of his feet become louder the closer he gets to you.

This time, he briskly lifts you into his arms with his hard chest against your arm. The steady bounce in his steps has your arm feeling the muscles of him, your hand fumbling with the fabric of your uniform on top of your chest. You try your best to hide the slight blush in your cheeks by looking somewhere else but your eyes land on his neck. Adorned with fine black ink into the image of a creature, it stares back at you as you admire the art that lays on his soft skin. If it wasn’t for the vile creature that stamped his neck, you would’ve perceived the artwork as fragile as an ancient vase of Olympus.

Jaehyun spares you a glance and sneers at you, “got enough air in your head, yet?”

You gulp and blink elsewhere, “yes.”

Jaehyun kicks open the door to the infirmary and lays you on the bed, “great. Now you owe me,” and proceeds to leave.

“Oh my gosh, what happened to you?” Kun’s eyes widen into space planets.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” you hush him, your voice still strained.

Kun thins his lips and tends to your care. He’s gentle and careful in adding ointment on your neck, fully aware of how sensitive you are, “you probably won’t be able to speak loudly for the next couple of days, but give it time. Your throat needs to rest, so take it easy, alright?”

You nod, sucking your bottom lip as you raise your neck for more exposure, hoping that you were making his job easier. The taunting memories of what just happened come fully back in your mind, the image of the newcomer’s black eyes and veins flashes across your brain, making you gasp and jolt away from Kun’s hold.

“Did that hurt? I’m sorry!”

You softly shake your head, “no, no...sorry, I was just thinking.”

Kun peers up at you, “wanna talk about it?” You sit on the cot, contemplating your next question, but he can tell that it slightly troubles you like a phantom itch, “we don’t have to.”

“Do you know who Maeve is?” you whisper gently, but your hand grips your knee to distract yourself from the pain.

“Maeve?” his forehead creases in wonder, his mind trying to recollect any faint memory of the name, but he shakes his head, “no, I don’t think I’ve heard of her.”

You hum at his response, it was usual for you to not know everyone that attended the training center. Those who enrolled were children of the gods/goddesses, demigods, and even children of those who had the faintest amount of power that flowed through their veins. Even if you could, no one was allowed to ask or look up the background of another student, no matter how well known they already were, it was one of the morals held at the center.

“Why?”

“She’s the one who caused this. Just wanted to know what she holds,” you respond, referring to her power, knowing who her birth giver was would be super beneficial.

“Oh? And what would you do with that information?”

“Use it for it’s good.”

Seems like I’m getting eaten alive more and more as I get near Jaehyun. You rub your neck, the cloth softly sticking to the ointment that Kun had just put on. He let you lay down for the time being until you were stable enough to finally be on your own and since you couldn’t talk, you listened to Kun’s rambling on his studies of the human beings that live on Earth. You had to stop him mid-sentence because you had a lunch date.

“Y/N!” your eyes snap up at the call of your name from your favorite person. Lucas, like the fresh breath of air you needed, ran to you with his big smile, gums showing his enthusiasm, and both of your lunches in his hands.

“Lucas,” you smile, your voice cracking at the male, you quickly clear your throat in the gentlest way possible as he sets a bowl of soup in your hand.

“Hi,” he huffs, “I heard what happened, so I bought you soup instead of a sandwich,” Lucas lightly nudges your arm towards the door that leads outside, assuming that’s where he plans to take you.

You stay quiet and shy when you follow him, a little too nervous to converse. The gravel beneath your scuffing feet turns into grass and then into leaves, the crunch filling up the silence between you two.

“So who’s the culprit?”

“Maeve,” your jaw tenses up when her name slips bitterly from your lips.

Lucas inhales a sharp breath, his head tilting to the side to think, “Never heard of her.”

“You don’t want to,” you mumble under your breath.

When you can hear the familiar sound of a waterfall and the crisp smell it brings, you quietly laugh to yourself as your head shakes. Disappointment taints your laughter when you wonder how Lucas found out about this place.

“It’s so pretty, isn’t it?”

“Yeah...how did you find this place?” You ask, your hand brushing against the branch that always blocks your way as you come in.

“Just a little exploring in my free time,” Lucas follows closely behind you, “come, let’s sit here.”

He leads you to the perfectly sized rocks, little does he know that you and Mark usually sit on it after your private training. He offers to open your container of soup and you let him, being the gentleman he is. Something about Lucas makes you feel at ease like he’s the four-leaf clover that can overturn the back luck that’s been happening. His laughter that soundwaves to your ears widens the smile on your face, he makes you laugh like no one’s ever made you.

You two spend time sitting on the rocks, you slurping your soup and him chewing away his sandwich as you both peer at the waterfall. With the little time you two have, it doesn’t stop him from sprinkling his little jokes from time to time, growing a smile on your face in doing so. You can’t help but feel so blissful when you’re with him, everything about him is so happy and compassionate, it’s easier to say so since he’s the child of Psyche.

“You okay?” abruptly, Lucas asks you in the middle of clutching your stomach from laughing so much.

“Yeah, why do you ask?”

“I don’t know, I’ve just never seen you laugh this much,” he shrugs, crumpling the plastic wrap of his finished sandwich.

“Maybe no one’s made me laugh this much before,” you manage to calm down, your voice returning to a quiet tone.

A pleasant smile expands Lucas’s lips, his eyes glimmer almost reflecting the waterfall and he leans in closer to you, “May I?”

You chuckle at his politeness, a part of you pleased that he had these kinds of manners, “of course.”

Gently, you felt his hands caress your jaw, and leans in closer to you, closing the gap between your lips. It’s slow, with a hint of playfulness, though he’s so careful with you that you can’t help but melt in his embrace. He makes up all of the bad luck that’s happened this week. The plumpness of Lucas’s lips left you craving for more and more, your hands resting on his chest as his hands wrapped around your waist.

“You don’t know how long I’ve waited to do that,” Lucas whispers as he pulls away from you.

“Should’ve done it sooner,” your eyes scanned his lips up to his eyes.

You’ve known Lucas for a couple of years, your mother and his are pretty good friends, so you’d see him around at some of the gatherings his mother would host. He was a little boy when you first met him, but you’d always see him playing in the mud with some of the other kids while you sat with your mother. The moment you knew that you had feelings for him was that time when you two were still young and other kids were making fun of you for not being like other girls, a lot of the kids were afraid of becoming your friend because you were good at defending at yourself, they’d think that you’d hit them, so they distanced themselves from you. Until, Lucas stood up for you and just said that you’re just like them, just good at fighting. You will never forget the smile he flashed you when he said those words, even if they don’t sound deep and serious, it meant everything to you as a child, and now.

Like a gentleman, Lucas let you finish your lunch slowly until you two trekked back to the training center. Since it was a Friday, training was a little more laid back in the second half of the day.

“Will you be going to the bonfire tonight?” he asks you, offering to grab your bowl.

“Yeah,” you turn your head to him as the leaves turn into gravel again, “you?”

“Of course, I’d never miss a good bonfire,” he gently nudges you, but before he can speak Marks walks up to the two of you.

“Mark.”

“I’ll see you later?” Lucas whispers, you nod to see him leave you and Mark alone.

“What’s up?”

“She’s calmed down if you wanna talk to her,” Mark lowers his gaze to your neck.

“I really don’t wanna talk to that bitch right now,” your eyes deadpan to elsewhere.

“Fine, then do you wanna see her?”

Your eyes switch back to Mark in curiosity, “does she still look the same?”

“A bit, she’s calmed down though.”

“Okay,” you inhale careful breath, “let’s go then.”

You follow Mark into the interrogation room where she sits alone, isolated in the cement walls. Mark opens the door to the other room, where you can see her but she can’t see you. In it, you find Jaehyun standing with his arms crossed as he observes her, his forehead creasing with wonder because he’s never seen anyone like this before.

“What is he doing here?” you whisper to Mark.

Apparently, you weren’t as quiet as you thought, “If there’s anyone that knows anything about hatred, it’s going to be me,” Jaehyun answers you, but doesn’t give you a glance.

You turn to Mark and all he does is just roll his eyes and nod, Jaehyun almost taking the words out of his mouth. You slowly walk up next to Jaehyun who stares at Maeve. Her eyes are still painted black, her veins tainted with black on her neck slowly disappearing, but still visible. Her hands are chained, attached to the metal table that’s drilled into the ground but there’s black smoke that surrounds her, almost as if she’s their master and whatever that smoke is, is her protection.

“So no one knows who her parents are?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Jaehyun responds.

“Do you think your dad would know?” you discreetly ask.

“Maybe, maybe not. I only know her name and I doubt that’d be helpful at all,” he shrugs.

“Y/N, when she came onto you, did she look like this too?”

Even the thought of it weakened your knees, but you shoved it deep into your mind with a stinging gulp, “yeah, everything except the smoke,” you can recall almost everything you saw, but another part of you doubts yourself, what if it’s just the lack of oxygen that made me see it falsely at the time?

“Do you think it’s because of something you said to her?” Mark inquired.

“I’m positive, if anything, she’s the one that provoked me,” you look at Maeve, the way both her eyes pools into blackness, it’s haunting and it does nothing but sends chills down your spine and grows goosebumps on your skin.

“I don’t believe you,” Jaehyun chirps and your head snaps to him, “I mean clearly, you did something to piss her off and literally choke you. Everyone knows you have a lurking temper.”

“I didn’t say anything to her Jaehyun,” you sneer.

“Okay, okay guys, let's not start something here,” Mark interrupts Jaehyun before he could even speak. His eyes are still fixed on Maeve, but his head is empty. He has no idea what he’s going to do with her.

You were just about to speak up again until you felt the familiar constricting feeling on your neck again, you clutch onto it but there’s nothing there other than your hands. You look at Maeve from the other side of the window and she’s looking directly at you with a smug look, she can see me, it seems like she holds some kind of power that can be telepathically sent through whatever surface she wants it to penetrate through. Panic settles in your eyes, widening them and you clutch onto anything that you can. Your hands land on Jaehyun’s arm and you grip onto it, catching both his and Mark’s attention. Like before, her grip doesn’t show you any kind of mercy and the pain from before slithers into your skin.

Before your knees go weak, you let out a loud cry, and tears spill from your eyes, but Jaehyun's quick in catching you. You felt as if everything went in slow motion, but nothing was visible to you, the only thing you could see was Jaehyun’s alarmed eyes, his dark orbs begging you to keep fighting. Funny, considering that it never seems like that whenever you encounter him.

“Kill her,” Jaehyun shutters.

“You know I can’t do that,” Mark panics.

“Mark, fucking kill Maeve before she kills Y/N!” Jaehyun shouts at the trainer, his veins swelling from his neck, which results in Mark running to the other room and completely knocking Maeve out of her state.

Mark doesn’t exactly kill because that would be illegal, but he does enough to knock her out and when he does, everything dissolves in the air, the black smoke evaporates and the translucent force falls into the cement, never to be seen. You gasp for air as your body shakes in hysteria, your hands clutching at the fabric that lays on your chest as the painful relief of air slowly comes back to you. You can’t help but become fearful of it coming again and you not making out of it alive.

“It’s okay, you’re okay,” Jaehyun tightens his hold on you, somehow the feeling of it brings you back to Olympus.

You stay in his arms, letting him rock you until you gain enough consciousness to push him away. You support yourself on your elbows before gathering the strength to run out of there, leaving Jaehyun foiled. Running through the walls, you don’t give care to those who look at you with bizarreness or concern, you have to go home, I need to get out of here, I need to get out of here. You repeat it to yourself over and over again until you’re actually out of the training center. Finding the nearest large rock, you plunk on it to attain the sufficient air to go on. After a couple of minutes of staring at the top of trees meeting the blue sky, you slowly stand up to walk towards town. You needed to go visit your mother, Athena.

Everything about the building she works in is luxurious, made in marble, lit with expensive diamond chandeliers, and the smell of champagne wafts to your nose. Each person you pass by gives you a respectable greeting, you do your best to return it in the friendliest way possible. Your mother is the Commander in Chief at Olympus Affairs, she’s in charge of anything that has to do with the welfare of Mount Olympus, given her title of being the goddess of warfare, wisdom, and other affairs.

“Y/N,” your mother shoots from her chair and runs to you, “what happened to your neck?” she glances at the fragility of your neck and winces in concern as she sees hues of reds and purples taint your once smooth skin.  

“That’s why I'm here, mother-” you walk to her computer that sits on her desk, “-do you know anyone’s daughter with the name of Maeve?” you begin typing in her database, trying to look for any kind of evidence, proof that you weren’t going crazy.

“Not that I can remember, why? Is she the one who did this to you?”

“Yeah,” you type her name and thousands of results turn up, you’re just thankful that ‘Maeve’ isn’t a common name on Olympus or else you would’ve gotten more, “twice.”

“Oh dear,” your mother cups her mouth in shock, “I need to talk to the center.”

You stop your mother from pulling out your phone, “No, mother stop. Please.”

Your mother gasps in disbelief, “you could’ve died!”

Another gasp rips through the air and this time it’s yours, “Her mother is Eris, who can manipulate shadows,” you whisper the latter, connecting the dots that Maeve must’ve inherited some of her mother’s shadow manipulation abilities. When you don’t hear anything from your mother, you turn to see the colors in her face flush with pallor as she grabs the phone.

“Mother, what’s wrong?” you stand from bending over her desk with furrowed brows. And who is she calling?

“She’s back...this isn’t good...I thought so too...when are you available to talk?... Two days?!? Do you know how serious this is?!?!” you jump from the anger in your mother’s voice, “Fine. I’ll come by then-” your mother looks at you, “-and I’m bringing my daughter with me...Why?...Because she literally almost killed my only daughter you JACKASS!” With that she ends the call and slams her phone on her glass desk, you swore you could feel not only her glass desk crack but the windows behind you two that stretch from the ground to the ceiling.

“Who did you call?” you ask nervously, a bit of you already know the answer but you didn’t want to hear it.

With her hands propped on her hips, your mother replies, “Hades, we’re having dinner at their place in two days.”

[xiaodejunletsact]

i still love you | zhong chenle

word count: 17, 367

genre: high school!au, basketball!player, angst, fluff, you are a bet au??? lol idk 8 letters!au

warnings: lots of angst, playing of emotions, mentions of panic attacks and sex.

authors note: im finally back!! with a chenle fic!! okay so,, i wanted to thank everyone who loved 8 letters, the reaction to that fic was better than anything i could’ve ever imagined, so thank you so much!! this is like a chenle version from the same universe. but most importantly: i decided to put songs in some scenes to enhance the experience while reading, you don’t have to but if you want to listen to the ‘soundtrack’ of this fic click the ‘🏀’!!!!! please enjoy!! 

synopsis: high school can be complicated. thats why when your crush of three years, zhong chenle, approaches you out of nowhere offering to drive you home you are right to question his intentions.

🏀

You can hear the loud thumping of your heart in your ears as you watch the players dart across the court. The squeaking of their sneakers against the polished floor as they furrowed their eyebrows in concentration. Well… as he furrowed his eyebrows in anticipation, you wouldn’t know about the rest of the players on the court because your eyes were focused on one boy in particular. Number 22, Zhong Chenle. Your crush since sophomore year and soon to be captain of the basketball team (even if this is your personal opinion you’re 87% sure of it). The boy had caught your eye when he first smiled your way back in 10th grade and offered to help you with everything since you were new, leaving a stamp on your heart that would mark it as his own for the next years to come. Of course, you hardly ever spoke to him, too nervous and clumsy to even think of approaching someone so out of your league but there was something about his crinkly smile eyes and fluffy hair that got a hold of and never let go. 

Which is why you find yourself seated at the school’s bleachers watching the basketball game like you did every week, hands clutching the sides of the bench as you watched Chenle get the orange ball passed to him, and the scene plays in slow motion. 

Sweat drips off the tips of his newly dyed blond hair as he gains impulse with a jump, shooting a perfect three pointer and deeming the game of victory for his team. You proudly smile as you watch his teammates cause a ruckus around him, cheering and hitting him occasionally. However, your mood dampened as you watched Chenle escape the clutches of his team, running to the side benched where Ava, (the bitchiest girl in school but also his girlfriend), sat. He leans down to peck her lips, only to be stopped when she holds her hand up, pushing him away with a disgusting, “you’re sweaty!” He looks dejected for a second, before forcing a smile and turning back towards the team. You wonder if you’re the only one who noticed the interaction, you wonder if you’re the only one who cares enough to want to march down there and tell her off. You huff, instead opting to march your angry way to the entrance of the gym starting the trek home. Wondering if Number 22 will ever be yours like you desperately want him to.

-

It’s funny how much of your life you could dedicate to one person without any sort of reciprocation. You felt almost embarrassed as you shoved yet another letter into an envelope that increasingly got thicker and thicker with every burst of your emotions. You see, every time your feelings for Chenle got too strong to bare you would write short letters about how you felt, obviously, with no intention of Chenle ever getting his hands on them, just for your own catharsis. It helped, most days. 

Today is not one of those days. 

“Uh huh…” you said absentmindedly at your friend, Donghyuck , who tries to explain to you what intricate contraption they are building in this week's robotics class. However, you’re too busy looking over his shoulder at Chenle who laughs half heartedly at something his friend says, before going serious once again. You furrow your eyebrows and say, “have you noticed anything off about Chenle?” 

Donghyuck  sighs, knowing he has lost you once again. Nevertheless, he humors your narrative turning to watch the boy in question along with you. “I mean… he is kind of down.”

“Right?” You reply, shutting your locker and clicking the lock. Donghyuck  shrugs.

“Maybe it’s because he broke up with his girlfriend this weekend.” 

You stop dead in your tracks, “He did what?” 

Donghyuck  nods, (like it’s not a huge deal!) “at the party you missed this weekend, they got into a big fight and he told her it was over and stormed off.” 

“A-and you didn’t think to tell me this?” You respond to which he just shrugs.

“It’s not like you had a chance with him anyway.” 

“Ouch, Donghyuck .” 

The words stung, of course but you knew Donghyuck  was just being realistic with you, never one to lead you into things that could only hurt you in the future. 

Donghyuck  says something after that, that you don’t quite catch but you guess it’s fine since you didn’t really want to listen to him right now anyway. 

Especially since Zhong Chenle just caught you staring at him and is now staring just as intensely into your eyes as you were to the side of his face. 

You don’t know what kind of glitch you go through that you are unable to form any type of reaction or look away. Instead just kind of… freezing. 

He brings up a hand and slightly waves in your direction. A kind smile on his face. 

Oh no. He actually sees you. 

Before you can even process it, you realize that you're running down the hall in the direction opposite to him. Out of the back door of the school, heaving as your heartbeat reaches 3000bpm.

🏀

Recalling the memory as you walk to the bus stop that afternoon causes you to slap your palm against your forehead once again. “What was I thinking? Now Chenle is really going to think I’m a freak.” 

You couldn’t believe yourself, kicking the gravel underneath your sneakers in frustration you beat yourself up over having ruined the only interaction that could’ve possibly been your chance to win his heart. It could’ve been the last time he ever looked your way again, and you wouldn’t blame him. 

But it wasn’t. 

Because just minutes after, like a miracle from heaven, you hear the roar of an expensive car engine near you before hearing his angelic voice call the syllables you thought you’d never hear him say: “Y/N!” 

Wide eyed, your snap your head to the sound of his voice only to see him through the window of his shiny million dollar car. He smiles and you feel like running again. He notices. “Wait! Don’t go!” 

You hear the buckle of his seatbelt being undone and watch in shock as he jogs around the car and suddenly he towering over you with a sweet smile. “Hi.” 

Say hi back! What are you doing? “Uh- I- uh- Hi?” 

He chuckles, looking down at his shoes before looking into your eyes once again. “How you doing?” 

“I’m- im good.” You stutter. 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah.” 

The silence that follows makes you want to get swallowed up by the ground and never see daylight again. 

Chenle notices how you avoid his eyes and chuckles once again, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “Well, um, I just saw that you were walking and wanted to know if you wanted a ride.” 

“In your car?” You ask in a quiet voice. Chenle laughs. 

“I mean, yeah. Unless you want to rent bikes from the tourism center.” You allow a small smile to grace your lips briefly before remembering the circumstances you currently found yourself in. Chenle (Zhong Chenle, Number 22, Yes. Chenle.) has just offered you a ride in his fancy car. The same car you watched him pull up in for two whole years. And he wants you to get in it. 

The millions of scenarios that go through your head as to why this could be happening but as you painfully remember today’s events, you realize what this is about. 

Chenle shoves both his hands in his jean pockets as he awaits your answer. “...So?” 

You breathe in deeply, “Listen, um, if you’re doing this because you feel bad about earlier or something, please don’t.” 

Chenle’s eyebrows furrow together and he comes closer to you. “That’s not the case at all, I just saw you walking all by yourself and thought to offer you a ride home.” 

“But you drive past here every day and you’ve never offered me a ride before?” You question out loud, wincing as you realize that you could possibly sound creepy for knowing where he goes in the afternoon. “I mean- you always drive in the same direction as my bus stop! So I see you!” You feel how clammy your palms are rubbing against the harsh fabric of your jeans. “Speaking of the bus, I should probably go before I miss it.” 

Just as you turn to walk away, Chenle’s hand grips your wrist where your sleeve has ridden up, allowing the first skin to skin contact you ever made with him. Your eyes widen at him and he lets go immediately, awkwardly. “I guess I was focused on other things, but now I’m focused on you.” 

-

In the fever dream that was Zhong Chenle flirting (?), and the insistent drumming of your heart in your ears you come back to only realize you were moving into Chenle’s car. (The doors opened upwards!) 

The boy took the liberty of opening it for you, closing it once you were settled in. You took the moment he was walking to the driver’s side to take in a deep breath and compose yourself. 

What the hell is going on? Why Zhong Chenle talking to you? Why is he driving you home? Why did he tell you he’s focused on you? What? What does any of this mean? 

Before you could begin pulling your hairs out in frustration, Chenle’s door opens and he plops down onto the driver’s seat. He looks over at you with a smile as he fastens his seatbelt, “Buckle up.” You do so quietly, biting your lip to prevent any further embarrassment. 

The drive begins with little to no talking, the only thing filling the silence being the constant humming of the air conditioning and static of the radio.

 “Do you want to listen to something?” He presses his pale fingers to the glossy touch screen in between you two. Soon enough, a soft beat travels through the ambience of his car. You see from the corner of your eye that he looks over at you and smiles, but keep your nervous eyes on the road in front of you; Chenle faces the road once again, tilting his head to the side in a gesture that you would find unbearably cute any other day makes you want to open the car door and jump out into the street, running away from the awkward silence and the confusing thoughts plaguing your mind.

-

Chenle leaves after promising to pick you up tomorrow morning, you can only nod your head rapidly and run into your house, afraid that he would be able to hear the loud beats of your heart.

Once the door of your room is closed safely behind you, you finally breathe for the first time this afternoon. “What the fuck? What the shit? What the hell?” You mutter to yourself as you pace around the room. 

Could it be that your dreams are finally becoming a reality? Had Chenle seen you the way you saw him this entire time?

The one sided crush wasn’t as one sided as you thought! Is what you wanted to think, but there was part of you that questioned where his intentions lie due to the abruptness of the situation. What if there was an ulterior motive behind his actions? No. Chenle wouldn't do something as bad as play with someone’s emotions like that? Right? 

As you lay in bed pondering the thought you decide it's best to ask him tomorrow.

-

You wake up 30 minutes earlier the next day, showering thoroughly and waiting in the living room so as to not make him wait too long to leave when he arrives. 

This moment comes while you’re sitting at the table with your family, your eyes widen as you hear the knocks on your front door. “I’ll get it!” You stop your mother from reaching the door as you run to it. 

Chenle smiles politely as your face appears from inside the house. “Hey.” 

You smile back nervously, “Hi.” You proceed to stand at the doorway for a few awkward seconds before your mother comes to see who it is. She is pleasantly surprised to see someone of the male species there in front of you. 

“Oh?” She says, smiling at him then looking at you suggestively. You try to convey a silent plea to not embarrass you before she looks away to shake Chenle’s hand.  “Hi! I’m Y/N’s mom, are you one of her friends?” 

Chenle smiles at her sweetly, “Yes, I am. I’m actually here to pick Y/N up for school.”

“You’re taking Y/N to school?” Your mother’s shocked face is enough to tell Chenle that it was probably the first time anything like this has happened to you. 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

Your mother sends you a sly smile that she thinks Chenle doesn’t notice before nudging your arm. “Then what are you doing standing there? Don’t make him wait!” Your groan and rub the spot on her arm where she pushed you as you go upstairs to grab your backpack.

Downstairs, Chenle accepts your mother’s offer of entering your humble home. Your house is a modest abode with strange decorations hanging up on the walls, along with pictures of your family. The living room looks like an orphanage where mix matched furniture goes to live. There's one pale green couch, one beige and one a bright yellow. Chenle thinks back to the pristine state of his own living room, the pure white furniture and modern, classy decorations hung up on the marble walls. He realizes that it is nothing like his own, in fact, he doesn’t think it could’ve been more different but he finds that he likes it. That it feels homey compared to his usually liefless house. It’s the kind of place he would stay in for a long time. 

Chenle shakes those thoughts out of his as soon as they appear, remembering why he was doing this in the first place, he couldn’t risk getting attached.

-

“Be honest with me.” 

Chenle startles upon hearing your voice above its normal shy muttering. You, on the other hand, are shaking in your shoes having practiced what you would say and thought over doing this millions of times last night. “What are your intentions? Like, it’s not that I think you’re a bad person or anything but I just don’t understand because of the suddenness.”

Chenle averts his eyes from the road to glance at you, smiling. He faces forward once again sighing slightly. “Okay, I’ll be honest,” He starts, you sit up straighter and involuntarily lean toward him. “I think you’re really cute, I always noticed you at my games and the way you would cheer me on was really endearing and it encourages me a lot.”

The butterflies that erupt in your stomach with his words are undeniable. “You noticed me?” Your quiet voice is back, still, he hears you. He smiles, and it’s genuine. 

“Of course I did,” he says, “And i know that it was very… sudden but if you give me a chance i would really love to take you on dates and maybe… more.”  

He sounds slightly unsure of himself. Rubbing the leather of his wheel with his hands. 

Your mind is mush. Chenle likes you! He thinks you're cute and he noticed you at his games! What is life?! 

“What do you say?” he says after the awkward pause in which you freaked out. 

‘No’ is not a word in your dictionary.

-

The cycle continues throughout the next week; Chenle picks you up every morning (never forgetting to bid your mother a good morning) and takes you home every afternoon (always politely rejecting your mother’s offers to stay for dinner), always spilling banter in the car, learning about each other. Chenle notices how you open up to him and he likes it (though he can’t really pinpoint why), he likes talking to you, and laughing with you and he finds himself wanting to be around you more often. Though this wasn’t initially part of the plan, he figures he can enjoy it until it had to end. 

The thought makes an eerie feeling rise in his chest, even if he doesn't know why, he thinks things will be a lot harder than he planned.

🏀

It’s friday when Chenle invites you to come watch his basketball practice.

You had imagined this scenario in your head plenty of times before but not once did you think you would ever actually be here sitting on the players bench watching up close as Chenle maneuvered across the court along with the rest of the players. There was sweat dripping off the tip of his blonde hair which made him look 10 times more attractive than he already was and you have to stop the drool that threatens to leak from your lips as he sits down next to you on the bench. “Hey.”

“Hi,” You reply, trying to keep yourself together.

“Practice is over.” Chenle says motioning towards the now empty court. It's only then that you realize that you and Chenle are alone, and suddenly, he’s sitting a lot closer to you than you thought. You turn your face to him and realize that your noses are nearly touching, Chenle smiles. “Hi.” He says, coming a bit closer until he feels the moisture of his sweaty arm against your dry one, he recoils. “Oh my god, I’m sorry. I’m so sweaty right now.” There’s a dust of embarrassed blush on his face as he slides away on the bench. Your heart starts beating erratically as you watch him try to rub his sweat away with his small hand towel.

You can’t find the words to tell him it’s okay (slightly scared to tell him that you like it) so you say the next best thing. “You looked cool playing.”

This eases him a bit, he smiles. “You think so?”

“Yeah!” You say, “Like Curry!” 

Chenle laughs, “Oh man! I can’t believe you just compared me to Curry.” He stands and takes a bow, waving his towel dramatically. “I am honored.” 

The scene causes you to giggle, and Chenle has to take a breather to calm his own beating heart. 

“Especially when you blocked Jaemin at the 3rd point and scored on the spot. I was impressed.” 

“You must know a lot about basketball.” He points out. You shake your head. 

“Not really,” is your response. “I only learned from coming to watch your games.” The sudden confession slipped from your lips and you momentarily panicked. 

Upon not hearing  a response from Chenle, your breathing deepens and you think maybe you ruined the moment. 

Unbeknownst to you, Chenle watches you with curious eyes. He senses the tension coming from you and walks away, leaving you alone in your troubled state. 

You think maybe Chenle left without, freaked out and uncomfortable because of what you said, however, you’re proven ridiculously wrong when you dribble a basketball on the floor. 

You lift your gaze to Chenle who dribbled the orange ball with a teasing smile on his face. “Why don’t you show me what you got?” 

“I- I don’t-“ you begin. 

“Oh come one, Y/N!” He says, passing the ball to you, “You have to be good. I mean, you did learn from the best.” The cocky shrug of his shoulders and teasing smile bring you peace of mind and you find yourself agreeing. 

-

It’s safe to say that Chenle is surprised at your skills. He should’ve known you had paid enough attention to him to learn all his techniques and dodge them while playing. And to think he was planning on letting you win so you could feel better. It eventually became a full competition. Sweaty bodies and heavy breathing, running, dodging, scoring. Teasing words and intense competitive gazes. 

The score was 7-7. Chenle sweeps in to swipe the ball from your hands but you pivot and shoot the three pointer right from your spot. “Yes!” You exclaim, throwing your hands in the air with a celebratory dance. “I won!”

Chenle is leaning with his hands on his knees, his chest heaving. “I need-“ he breathes, “I need to stop being so good at basketball. So heathens like you can stop learning my best tricks.” He brings his hand up to pinch your cheek teasingly. “You should join the team.” He says jokingly. You chuckle, rubbing the spot on your face that was just touched by his fingers. 

“As if.” 

“Hey! Does the idea of being in a team with tons of rowdy sweaty dudes that unappealing?” Chenle jokes, placing the basketball back in its place. 

“It’s enough with you.”

Before you can retract the statement, Chenle speaks. “That’s right, you only need one sweaty rowdy basketball player in your life.” He winks. “And that’s me.”

You laugh at his words but can feel your heartbeat all throughout your body. You can’t stop your mind from thinking: 

You’re damn right. It’s you. 

-

As you walk back to his car, Chenle is the first to break the comfortable silence. “You know… it was nice to see you so talkative and competitive today. I had fun.” 

And despite everything, he meant it. He knows he probably shouldn’t, but he does. 

Unaware of his inner turmoil, you smile. “I did too.” 

He gives you a lopsided smile in return before sliding the strap of your backpack off your shoulder and onto his own, keeping his own backpack company. “I’ll carry it for you.” 

You wonder if this is the start of something magical. Beside you, Chenle wonders the same but his thoughts are weaved with something more, something that meant trouble. 

You, however, hurry home to pour your feelings into a letter. Hearts drawn on the borders of the loose leaf page and a smile on your face all throughout. 

🏀

Every week it gets harder to become immune to Chenle’s charm. 

Today, he did something as simple as drop you off at home after school. However, before bidding you goodbye as song rings from the radio of his car. Chenle perks up. “I love this song!” 

He turns up the radio to its full capacity and rolls down the windows, making the music sound through the street. 

“Chenle! Turn that down!” You exclaim but the laughter in your tone hints that you want the exact opposite. Chenle shakes his head. 

“No can do!” he waves his arms dramatically in the air, “Dance with me!” 

You laugh once again at the wonderful boy, “You’re ridiculous!”

“Oh yeah?” He says challengingly. Suddenly he is opening the door and dancing on the sidewalk where everyone could see him. His movements are almost manic and all you can do is continue laughing. “I’m not leaving until you dance with me.”

“My neighbors are going to see you.” You warn. He shrugs.

“It's fine. I’ll just tell them I’m with you!” 

“Oh my god no.” You say, stepping out of the passenger’s side, walking around the car until you’re in front of him, you cross your arms. 

“Show me some moves, I’m getting tired.” 

And so an impromptu two people dance party breaks out on the sidewalk in front of your house. Even though in your imagination dancing with Chenle would require the presence of an elegant ball gown and fancy chandeliers, all there is to be seen is loud music, laughter, grabbing of hands and playful banter. And you wonder if it could ever be more perfect than this.

-

Of course, like any other human, Chenle has his moments. 

The morning car ride was as silent as could be. Chenle’s hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, angrily. His usual smile is replaced but a scowl that only left momentarily when you stepped into the car earlier, a (clearly forced) polite smile is what you saw.

Since then you didn’t dare to speak, not wanting to bother him when he was clearly having a bad time. 

You arrive at the school and escape the still awkward ambience, bidding him a quiet farewell before running in. 

- 

You proceeded to spend the entire school day wondering what was up with Chenle that morning and what you could do to help him. It’s when you meet at the end of the day once again that you ask, “Hey, is everything okay?”

The boy freezes up, before clearing his throat. “Yeah, why do you ask?”

You shrug, “Nothing, you you were just kind of, like, quiet this morning… so i figured you were upset.” 

The blonde boy in the driver’s seat keeps his eyes on the road ahead of him, “It’s nothing, Y/N.” He says in a rough tone, one you’ve never heard or thought you would ever hear him use. “It doesn’t concern you anyway, okay?”  

Your form deflates into the seat, wishing you had kept quiet like you did this morning. You reply, “Okay.” 

There’s tension. Body swallowing tension that lasts all throughout the car ride to your house, as Chenle pulls up in front the driveway and you have already unbuckled your seatbelt before he got the chance to put the car in park. 

In the passenger’s seat, Chenle feels the guilt creeping on him. He realizes that you only asked because you cared. “Wait-” Seemingly, he is too late since you’ve already shut the car door and made your way up your driveway. “Goddammit.” He sighs to himself, working to take off his seatbelt.

Your feet hurriedly take you to your door after you exit Chenle’s car, your nerves increase as you hear Chenle leave his car. “Y/N, I-”

The door opens before you can turn the handle, your mother’s smiling face looks back at you. “Hey, Honey.” You smile back at the woman, who immediately notices the emotions behind your smile. Quietly, she asks: “Are you okay?” 

As soon as you nod in response, her eye catches Chenle standing guilty behind you. “Chenle! How are you?” 

Chenle smiles with a nod, “I’m doing alright.”

“Well, I would invite you in for dinner but I can imagine what your answer will be.” She says jokingly, teasing him for all the times he had rejected her offer. To her surprise, Chenle doesn’t laugh awkwardly or agree with her, instead, he ponders for a bit. His gaze finds your own causing you to quickly look away. He feels his heart contract as he thinks of starting at square one with you; back to when you couldn’t look him in the eye.

“Actually,” He says, “Dinner sounds great.”

🏀

Even though the tension between you and Chenle is painfully obvious, he feels his heart become lighter as he watches how you interact with your little siblings. Laughing at their childish antics and playing along with them at the dinner table. Your parents engaged in conversation with each other across the table and Chenle sat next to you, smiling and nodding as your little sister animatedly explained to him why the rocks she found next to the trash can at recess just had to be magical. As he looks at the dynamic you have in your home, he realizes that this feels more like a home than his house ever has. All of you are sat at the table, the splash of colors brought by the miscellaneous decorations, the laughter and the love radiating from every corner makes Chenle want to stay there forever. 

“Woah!” He acts, “Are you serious?” 

The little girl nods proudly, “Mhm! And I’m going to give this one,” she points to a particular shiny one on the dining table, “to Y/N, so she can make her dream come true. But don’t tell her it’s a secret.” 

He chuckles at her before whispering, “why do you think she’ll ask for?” 

She giggles, leaning closer. She puts a hand over her mouth as she whispers. “Number 22.” 

Chenle refrains from gasping, “Huh?”

“She talks about him but she never wants to tell me who he is.” She explains. “But I think if she had a rock to grant her wishes, she would wish for him.”

Chenle takes this moment to look over at you, studying your side profile as you tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, helping your little brother with his food. 

That’s when it hits him. He realizes that this isn’t what he planned it to be, that the bet he set up with his friends had gone too far, and that if he himself had a magic rock for his use… he would wish for you too.

-

“Thank you so much for the food, it was delicious.” Chenle says, rubbing his full belly to emphasize. Your mother chuckles. “It was my pleasure, Chenle. You can come back anytime you want, you are always welcome here.” 

“I definitely will, ma’am.” He says with a lopsided smile before shaking your father’s hand firmly. You can already tell by the way your father affectionately claps his hand on his shoulder and smiles at him that he too has taken a liking to the boy, like your mother. 

“Y/N.” She says sternly, turning to you who currently battled to avoid Chenle’s eyes. You hum. “Be polite and walk Chenle to his car, please.” 

You grimace subtly, not wanting to be the awkward air that would come with being alone with him. You want desperately to say no, but the gaze your mother gives you tells you that would mean trouble for you. 

The basketball player notices your hesitation and looks down sadly at his sneakers, remaining that way as you lead him to the front door of your house. Its then that Chenle looks up to the view of the back of your head, his hand twitches in want to smoothen out the ahi at the back of your head for you. 

You catch Chenle mid dilemma as you turn to face him, gesturing towards the open door. His eyes shift from you to the door. And to his car, he thinks about the ride home and how once he gets home it will just be him and he’ll be alone. 

He doesn’t want to be alone. Strangely enough, he wants to be with you. 

“Chenle?” He hears your soft voice. Your eyebrows are furrowed as you watch him stand there, unmoving, with a look of confusion. He looks into your eyes and realizes you’re waiting for him to walk through the door first. He does so, head tilted down. You follow him out the door and close it behind you. 

You trail behind him until he reaches his car, however, instead of getting in like you expected him to, he turns abruptly to you. His eyes are glossy and startled at the sight of them. “Do you-“ He pauses, hesitating. “Do you wanna go for a drive?” 

“A drive?” You ask, watching him fiddle nervously with his keys. 

“Yes.” 

“Right now?” He nods firmly. 

“I don’t- I don’t think my parents will let me go out this late.” You say, wrapping your arms around yourself to combat the winter wind. Before saying in a quieter voice, remembering the events that took place earlier that day, “And I thought you wanted to be alone.” 

Chenle feels guilty upon hearing your words. Knowing you felt hurt by his words from earlier. He shakes his head, stepping closer to you. “No. I don’t. That’s the last thing I want right now.” 

You see something in his eyes that you had never seen before. Exhaustion mixed with sadness and worry. The usually mischievous happy go lucky look nowhere to be seen amongst all the turmoil you found looking at him. You immediately grew more concerned. “Chenle…” you say, he looks away momentarily. “I’ll- let me ask my parents.” 

-

Much like many times before, you’re sat in the passenger's side of his expensive car. The scene has become common, except the ambiance is different. Chenle doesn’t attempt to start conversation like he always does, instead, he just stares forward blankly. Occasional tears rolling down his pale cheeks which he wipes away as soon as they appear, you are itching to ask the boy what is going on in his pretty head but decide against it once you remember how that turned out earlier. So you keep silent as Chenle presses harder on the gas causing the streetlights of the empty highway to become a blur above you. It momentarily impressed you how fast his car could go, however, once you look over at the boy, you see his state. Chenle has strings of tears running down his face, snot dripping out of his nose and even his hair is sticking to his forehead due to his excessive sweating. 

“Chenle, maybe we should pull over.”

He doesn’t seem to hear you, only pushing further down on the accelerator. Fear and concern enters your bloodstream as you watch him become a version of himself you’ve never seen, a version you didn’t even think existed. You reach over took him and rest your shaky hand on his arm. Upon feeling your touch, his head snaps to you and he hits the brakes abruptly causing your entire body to jolt forward. “Woah!”

Chenle’s chest heaves as he sees how scared he has made you. “I’m- I’m sorry.”

“Pull over, Chenle.” You say sternly, pulling your hand away and instead of doing what he wanted to do which was pulling your hand back to him, he does as you told him and park his car on the side of the road. The two of you sit in silence for what feels like forever, until you hear a sniffle come from Chenle’s side of the car. Looking over, you notice how he is hunched over the steering wheel, crying.

“Chenle?” You use the softest voice you could muster. “Chenle, what’s wrong?”

Your immediate response is silence. He takes in short choked breaths, it seems like every breath he takes causes him to fall into a state of agony. 

“I think-” he said, voice quivering. “Y/N, I think I’m a bad person.”

The sentence confuses you. “Why would you think that?” 

“Because I did something terrible to someone I care about.” He answers, you note that he is not able to meet your eyes. It scares you. “What did you do?”  

“I can’t-” He says breathlessly, his hand fumbling to open his car door. Stumbling out, watch as he makes his way around the car, leaning against the cement railing with his head in his hands. 

You watch him in momentary shock before following him his actions and getting out of the car as well. You carefully approach him. “What is going on with you?” 

Chenle sighs, pulling his hands away from his face. “I had a fight with my mother this morning, and everything was just piling up and I guess that was just the last straw.” 

“Do you want to talk about it?” 

“I just… everyone expects so much from me.” He breathes. “My parents, my friends, my teachers, everyone at that damn school!” The railing in front of him takes the blows of his frustration. “And I don’t think i’m as good as they think i am, i'm not worth it.” He looks over at you and you immediately straighten at the sight of his red face. “Like you, Y/N. You’re so good to me, so nice and sweet. I don’t deserve it. Especially from you.” 

You don’t know what he means by that. Chenle knows you don’t know but he stays silent. You take this as your chance to speak. “I’m not only nice to you because I want to be. Because you’ve always been nice to me too, Chenle.” You dare to step closer, into his bubble. “Don’t be too hard on yourself, it would be impossible to meet everyone’s expectations so just be yourself… that’s enough for a lot of people.”

Chenle’s mouth speaks before he can stop it. “Is it enough for you?”

To forgive me? To still be the same after you realize what I’ve done. 

There is a silence that follows that one sentence, Chenle avoids your gaze nervously, he doesn’t realize that your silence is the product of your racing mind. The mind that is currently trying to find the words to describe what is happening in your heart. You ultimately decided that the best way to go is the truth. 

“You know… I kinda had a crush on you all throughout high school, which is kind of embarrassing but that’s not the point,” you start, “the point is that I had this perfect version of you in my head. Of what you would be like. And then when you came up to me that day… I didn’t know if I could talk to someone who wasn’t the Chenle I knew up here.” You take the liberty of poking a finger against your temple. “But I did anyway, and I realized you were nothing like the Chenle I saw in my head…”

Chenle chuckled sadly before commenting, “Ouch.” 

“You were better than him.” Chenle’s gaze snaps towards you in shock, you look forward. Too afraid to meet his gaze. “Nicer, funnier, and way more handsome than I thought up close.” You chuckle, having made the comment to help him feel better. “So yeah. I would say you are enough. More than, even.” 

“You really mean that?” 

For the first time you make eye contact, you furrow your eyebrows to try and make your sincerity as apparent as possible. “I do.”

He knows you do and that mends his heart as much as it breaks it into tiny pieces. He wants nothing more than to pull you towards him and smash his lips onto your own, but he also knows that it will only worsen the situation that is yet to come. Still his hands reach before he can stop them and reach to cup either side of your face. 

Your heartbeat is running at an unearthly speed, Chenle can hear it but knows his own is probably the same. Betraying his common sense, he leans into you until your lips are almost touching, the top brushing enough to have you wanting more. You think he’s going to kiss you and close your lips tightly. However, instead of his lips, you feel his hot breath when he utters the words: “I’m sorry.” Before removing his hands from your face and backing away. 

You can’t say the action didn’t cause a hurtful blow to your feelings but you also knew Chenle was in a tough place right now. You smile at him. “You don’t have to be sorry.” 

Chenle hates how you smile at him when he does things that hurt your feelings. He hates that you’re so considerate and nice to him despite what he is doing to you behind your back. He hates that you will find out one day and that you’ll hate him as much as he hates this. He hates that he doesn’t want to lose you, and that in the end he probably will. 

-

Friday is a holiday, so you don’t see Chenle the day after he took you on a late night drive with him. (You wrote another letter that night). In fact, you don’t hear from him until your phone chimes Saturday morning, Chenle’s name above a text message.

22 [9:15am]: hey

22 [9:15am]: I hope you’re good :)

22 [9:15am]: I just wanted to let you know there’s a party at my house tonight

22 [9:16am]: if you want

22 [9:18am]: actually, I really want you there so…

22 [9:20am]: please come.

You read the texts over a few times, it dawns upon you that you've never seen Chenle’s house. Sure, you’ve heard from classmates who had gone to his huge parties that it was extravagant as can be, resembling a hotel lobby rather than a house. The thought of being in his home made your hands sweat. Still, you remember how anxious you were to see him, especially after the other night, and you find yourself typing a reply of confirmation before tossing your phone to the side and walking to your closet to find something to wear for tonight. 

🏀

As soon as your parents drop you off in front of what was easily the biggest, brightest, classiest house you’ve ever seen in your entire life, you get the unnerving urge to go home. 

The abundance of people did nothing to help the creeping anxiety, the stares of some that briefly trained on you before whispering something to their friends. You couldn’t help but feel out of place. That is, until you see a familiar face. Jisung walks up to you with his hand wrapped around his girlfriend’s. “Hi!” He calle brightly as the girl waved friendly. 

“Hey guys!” You try to stabilize your voice. “How’s the party?” 

“Honestly… it kinda turned sour once some lower class men came and started to get wasted.” Jisung chuckled out, his girlfriend nods in agreement as she grips his arm affectionately. You smile when he looks over at her and smiles. There’s a part of you that feels envious of the relationship the two have but most of your thoughts surround how happy you are for the two. “We’re probably leaving soon anyway.” Jisung adds on. 

After getting over your monetary panic of having to be alone once again you nod your head, smiling at them. “Okay, I’m going to try to find Chenle.” They nod and bid their farewells, you sigh out loud as you walk through the crowd once again, searching for the blonde hair of the boy you so desperately need to calm right now. 

“I heard that she is the one Chenle left Ava for?” You hear someone say. 

“No way! Chenle wouldn’t stoop that low, plus I heard Ava broke up with him.” 

“Either way, I don’t understand why he would be hanging with her anyway, he probably feels sorry for her. What a loser.” 

It’s strange how you can hear their comments over the loud music that causes the walls to vibrate. You feel like vomiting as your insecurities take over and another sweaty presses against you. You push them away and run the rest of the way, not looking to find Chenle anymore just wanting to get out of here. You find what you hope is the bathroom and open the door, running inside and shoving the door closed, chest heaving.

“Y/N?” You hear from behind you, you turn around in shock and make eye contact with the red faced boy you spent your whole night looking for. “Chenle.” 

It’s then that you realize that he’s not alone. Across from him is an equally red faced Ava, eyebrows furrowed and lips turned down in a frown. 

It dawns upon you that you might have just interrupted something. 

You look between the two before averting your gaze back to the floor. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry.” Hands grabbing the door handle and turning it quickly in a desperate attempt to flee the room. Completely deaf to the , “Wait!” That leaves Chenle’s mouth as you leave the room. 

Soon enough your back in the sea of sweaty drunks, trying to stabilize your voyage to the front door. To escape the stormy waters this night has caused your nerves. 

And you almost make it, had it not been for the harsh shove you received that sent you tumbling onto the floor. Suddenly, the people around you become giants and their huge feet stomp around you, threatening to squash you under their sneakers as if you were an irrelevant bug. 

Your shaky legs prevent you from standing up, and you only realize you’re crying when you feel a tear run down the side of your neck. No one seems to notice you’re there and you suddenly remember why being invisible sucks. 

It feels like ages have passed when you feel hands gripping your arms and lifting you onto your feet. Chenle’s voice sounds distance even if he’s barely an inch away from you. “Are you okay?” 

“I think-“ you say, shakily. “I think I’m having a panic attack.” 

Chenle takes your head and shoves it into his chest, making sure to keep a hand over your eyes as he leads you through the crowd. “It’s okay.” He whispers. “Everything is going to be okay.” 

He repeats the sentences over and over until you two reach a quieter place and you hear the door of a shutting door and the music becomes muffled. 

Chenle keeps a hand secured around your head as he holds you for a few more seconds before slowly letting you go. 

“I need you to breathe with me, okay?” He says. Before you can think, you nod. “In through your nose.” He demonstrated, you follow. “Out through your mouth.” 

You continue this until the beating of your heart has slowed down and you don’t feel like you're physically suffocating anymore. Instead, you feel tired. Chenle must have noticed because he ushers you to lay on the neatly made bed behind you, tucking you in before you had time to protest. 

🏀

It takes a whole ten minutes for either of you to speak, you half expected Chenle to leave after throwing this blue blanket over you, instead, he sits at the edge of the mattress and picks at his nails. Kind of like he wants to say something. 

“Thank you for helping me.” You speak first. “I don’t know what went wrong.” 

Chenle sighs, “I’m sorry for not finding you, I just- I was-“ 

“It’s okay, you don’t have to explain.” You interrupt, remembering where he was when you finally found him. It leaves a bitter taste in your mouth, still you know it’s not your place to question him. “I should get going, anyway.” You rush to slip on your shoes only to be stopped by Chenle. 

“No, it’s not what you thought it was.” He starts. You avert your gaze from him in fear of what he had to say. “Ava and I ran into each other earlier and she was just going off about how horrible I was in front of everyone. I think she was drunk, but she was causing a scene so I wanted to take her somewhere where it wouldn’t cause a commotion. I didn’t want to bring her in here so I just took her to the bathroom” He says, “We got into a bit of an argument, and that’s when you walked in.” 

“It’s-“ 

“She told me she wanted to get back together.” He blurts out, like he was getting something off his chest. 

“Oh.” Is your reply.

“Obviously I said no.” He says, almost expectedly. He doesn’t know that the knot that was tightening in your chest loosened a bit at his words. He watches you for a bit before speaking again. “What- what’s on your mind?” 

The question catches you off guard. You don’t really know what’s on your mind, the messy twister of thoughts going too fast for you to be able to reach in and grab a coherent thought. Only one thing pops up and you go with it. 

“Is this your room?” 

Chenle is silent for a second before he says. “Uh, yeah? Yes, it is.” 

You hum, laying on your back once again. It’s then that you notice the glow in the dark stars Chenle has stuck to the ceiling of his room, identical to the ones in your own. “You have stars on your ceiling.” 

He chuckles embarrassingly, scratching the back of his neck. “Yeah, I’ve lived here since I was a kid my grandad put them up there when I was young and I just never got around to taking them down.” 

“I have the same ones on mine.” 

“Really?” He asks. But he can’t help the shift his heart takes as he thinks of the two of you laying under the same glow in the dark stars every night. 

Before he knew it, he was walking towards the light switch and flicking it off. The lights shine to their full potential over you. It eases you a bit, until you feel the bed dip next to you and you smell his close proximity to you, feeling the warmth coming his shoulder where it touches your own as you lay side by side. 

The silence is comfortable this time. 

“Do you ever have panic attacks?” You ask suddenly. 

Chenle shakes his head but remembers you can see him, “No.” He whispers, as if someone would hear him. “But Jisung does sometimes, so I learned some techniques to be able to help him through it.” 

You smile into the darkness. “That’s nice of you.” You lower your voice to his whispering tone.

Suddenly words are absent and the two of you just stare at the stars to the ceiling. 

You know it’s weird, that after the other night, you are lying in Chenle’s bed beside him like nothing happened. Like you had always been there. You wondered whether you should be glad or scared that you feel that way.

Beside you, Chenle is having his own dilemma. On one part, he feels relieved that you’re safe now, that no one can hurt you now that you’re here with him. He feels comforted that you look so at home in his room, blending in so well it almost sends his head reeling. (Partially the reason he turned off the lights.) On another part, he feels so scared that he wants to think you blend in and that he wants to tell you everything in his head. That he wants to let you in, when he knows he shouldn’t. That he felt concern in his veins when he saw you in such a panicked state earlier, and all he wanted to do was tuck you into his chest and protect you forever. 

Why did he want to protect you forever? 

He turns on his side, you feel it. His breath fans on the side of your face. You turn to his darkness, staring to where you knew his face would be. 

“Can I tell you something?” He says, it’s too late to take it back now, since you nod. “The other night when I ate dinner at your house…” he starts, “I was in such a bad place, And I never thanked you for putting up with me and having me over for dinner, it made me feel so much better, you know before everything blew up in the car.” 

You furrow your eyebrows at his words. “That was actually my mom’s doing, but I will make sure to tell her you said so.” 

Chenle shakes his head, kissing his teeth. “No, that’s not it. It was because you were there, Y/N.” 

You hold your breath when he said that, not replying. Chenle takes his own in an attempt to calm his rapid heart. “Spending time with your family kinda made me feel like I was a part of something special.” He confesses. “Something you were a part of.”

An unsteady exhale tumbles from your lips, his statement doing a number on your heart. “What… what are you trying to say?”

This is it, Chenle. Tell her about the bet, confess what you did and fix everything before things get too serious and you break her heart. Tell her the truth! 

‘The truth’ Chenle thinks. ‘Okay.’

“I like you, Y/N.” You don’t see that he is squeezing his eyes shut even if the room is pitch black.

“What?” You say in disbelief, even if the butterflies have already started erupting in your stomach. 

“I like you.” He repeats. “So much.” 

You stare in his direction in a state of shock and happiness. Meanwhile, Chenle beats himself up in his mind, taking your silence as a bad sign. “It's okay if you don’t want to be a thing or anything, I just thought, you know, since I like you and you like me… Liked? Is that past tense?” 

Your head shakes and causes a ruffling noise against his pillow. “No, it’s very much present tense.” 

The warmth pressed against your shoulder disappears. And you hear Chenle’s footsteps throughout the room, suddenly the world turns bright and Chenle walks back to the bed. Now with the light on, he can see the blush on your cheeks and the small smile you wear. He smiles back at you, but he feels bad. So, so bad. 

So bad that leans down to lay over you, kissing your breath away. 

It's only after the momentary surprise that you begin to kiss him back.

His lips are rougher than you thought they would be, but still held some pillow like softness you expected. His hands hold your cheeks as he dips down further to bring his lips closer to yours. 

Now you totally understood why everyone was so crazy about kissing. It’s the best thing ever, and you never want it to end. However, breathing becomes an issue when you kiss someone, you learned. Chenle is the first to pull away, keeping his face a barely centimeters from your own, your breaths meet in the middle. 

When you finally open your eyes, you are met with Chenle’s worried ones already watching you. You immediately frown. 

“What’s wrong?” You ask. Are you a bad kisser? Does your breath smell? Does he regret it? His response is unlike those, shocking you when the words leave his mouth. 

“I don’t want to break your heart, Y/N.”  He looks away from you. His body is still positioned above you, the position being one that makes it hard to avoid your eyes (and one that is even suggestive).  Still he tries his best, that is, until he feels your soft hands cradling his cheeks just as he has been doing to your own just a few minutes ago. 

“Chenle, look at me.” You say, though your voice is wavering. He obliges. “Why are you worried about that?” 

“I just-” You can tell he would look away if you weren’t holding his head in place, he can’t hide his eyes now. “I’m just afraid I'll do something to hurt you and that you’ll hate me.” He says, which isn’t the whole truth but is also not a lie. 

“Why would I hate you? I could never.” Chenle wants to scoff sadly when you say that but you cut him off. “I’ll promise to not break your heart if you promise to not break mine.” You extend your pinky in between your faces. 

Chenle winces internally, feeling like he already broke your heart. And he is more scared now that it’s real. That you like each other and this probably makes you guys a thing, that he doesn’t want to hurt your feelings like he knows he will. But he also thinks about the fact that he has never felt this way with anyone else, that you were the first girl he ever felt comfortable enough with to let in his room, that you have glow in the dark stars like him and that it kind of feels like you’re split-aparts that have finally found each other. The longer he could keep you by his side, the better. 

That’s when he decides to let himself live in this world, at least while he can. He wraps his pinky around yours and lets your thumbs touch, sealing the deal.

He doesn’t have time to regret his decision because you lean up and catch his lips before he can think of anything but you.

🏀

Two weeks later, and most of your days have been spent much like this one. Chenle’s arms wrap protectively around your middle as you read the messages on your phone. One being a reminder from the president of the student council about the special dress code for Valentine’s Day. 

You turn in Chenle’s hold and meet his sleepy eyes, he smiles. “Did you see what the student council is doing?” 

“Mm?” He replies, you turn your phone to him. “A dress code?” 

“Yep, white for single, pink for complicated, and red for taken.” You say, bringing attention back to you phone. “I’m glad I look good in pink.” 

The statement confuses Chenle. “What do you mean pink? What is complicated?” 

You startle at the awareness and worry on his voice compared to the sleepy mumbles you were getting just moments ago. “Well… I mean, you never asked me to be your girlfriend.” 

Chenle freezes. You were right, he never did because part of the bet was to have a girlfriend by Valentines, it made him feel as though he wasn’t a complete asshole if he hadn’t completed the bet. “You’re right.” 

You watch him expectedly, but receive no response. Holding back a sigh, you bring your attention back down to your phone. 

“Are you upset with me?” His soft voice meets your ears. 

You shake your head. “Of course not, why would I be?” 

“It’s not fair to you that I keep you waiting.” None of what I’ve done to you is fair, he thinks. 

You reach up and stroke the hair that frames his face, smiling softly. “I’ll wait until you’re ready, Chenle. You know that.” 

It scares him how soft you are, how warm and safe he feels when he’s with you. That’s when he decides, it’s best if he waits out this week and lets himself live like this longer, even if it’s for a bit. 

“Kiss me.” He whispers. And you do. Pushing your chest flush against his, making sure every part of your body touches his own; remaining like that until you are sure you have blisters lining your lips from how much you’ve kissed him. 

The two of you end up hotly panting, you straddled over his lying figure. Chenle looks up at you from where he is before sitting up, suddenly, you feel the warmth of his hands tug at the edge of your shirt. His eyes ask for permission, which you reply to with a nod. 

You’re nervous. Very much so. You wonder if this will be the first time you have sex or if anything else will happen. 

Chenle lifts your shirt off your head and places it next to your body. “Is this okay?” He asks, his big innocent eyes looking up at you. 

“Yes.” Is the only answer you can formulate. 

The boy maintains eye contact with you as he says the following words. “Do you want to take off mine?” 

Your face flushed red, you can feel it. “I-if that’s okay with you.” His answer is in the form of his hands leading your own to the hem of his shirt, before letting go and putting his arms up. Your hands are shaking as you grab the clothing, slowly pulling it up, exposing his pale abdomen inch by beautiful inch. 

You smile at him as his head finally reappears from the whole in his shirt. “Hi.” You say, he smiles.

What he does next is something you didn’t expect from the lead up of events, unlike anything you’ve seen in erotic movie or read about in novels. 

He wraps his arms around your waist and pushes you down to lay next to him, he then pulls you towards him so that your the heat of your torso melts into his own. He shuffles until he is as close to you as he can get, only then is when stops moving. Resting his cheek against your own, you feel his breath on your ear. 

“I just want to be close to you, to hold you.” 

Just like that your heart is full to the brim once again. 

-

It’s the night before Valentine’s Day and Chenle is restless. He had decided tomorrow would be the day he would tell you everything. He would come clean and the two of you would start over (right?). He had practiced what he was going to say for hours earlier that night, wanting to have the perfect words so that his message got across to you. Still, even with all that practice, he knows there’s no guarantee that you won’t hate him. That you will swear him off and never speak to him again, when he has become so fond of you. The thought makes his hands ache and toes curl in an angsty feeling. 

After tossing and turning for nearly two hours, he finally gives up on sleeping and opts for looking at the stars stuck to his ceiling. He wonders if you’re awake right now. If you’re thinking about him while looking at your stars. He imagines your messy hair and pajamas and smiles softly to himself. “I miss her.” He says out loud, to the darkness of his room. 

Suddenly, everything happens in a flash as he throws his covers off himself and marches to the closet, pulling out his favorite red hoodie, grabbing the Valentine’s Day gift he had gotten you days ago then he’s in his car. Desperate to get where you are. 

-

It’s nearly 1am when you hear the knocking on your window. You had just begun to fall asleep when the noise startled you awake. 

Upon inspecting your window cautiously, you gasp when you see Chenle’s blonde hair. The window opens with a click. “Chenle! What are you doing here?” 

What is he doing here? “I just wanted to see you.” 

His words flutter your heart. “But it’s 1am, on a school night.” 

“I know that, I just…” he scratches the back of his neck because in reality he doesn’t know why the hell he even came here in the first place. “I had to give you something.” 

He extends the bag in his hand out to you. “Happy Valentine’s Day.” 

The bag contains two items, the first being the red hoodie you had seen Chenle wear many times before. His smell reeked off of it, causing you to nearly die of delight. “Wear this tomorrow.” He says. “Cause you’re mine.” 

You don’t know that his heart hurts for you, he pities you for being the one who causes him to lose all self control and make decisions that will hurt you in the long run. He feels so sorry that he couldn’t wait until tomorrow, that he just wanted you today, now. Before you get the chance to hate him. To run away. He wanted you to be his. 

You say nothing to him, only smiling bashfully as your cheeks matched the color of his clothing item. You look into the bag and see a black box that would be the second item. “What’s this?” You say to yourself, smiling up at Chenle. You open the box to reveal a beautiful necklace with a pretty pink diamond hanging off the end. You gasp. 

“Chenle, I can't accept that.” You say, closing it. You knew the necklace probably cost more than your house, you felt guilty taking it. 

“Please accept it. I bought it for you. I want to see it on you every day.” He seizes the opportunity to reassure himself. “And yes. It cost a lot, so that means we have to continue seeing each other, hm?” 

“Chenle…” you say. 

“Please.” He says in a way that makes you wonder if this is only about the necklace. 

“Okay.” 

You pivot and allow him to clip the chain, you turn to him and catch his reaction to the jewelry resting against your upper chest. “How do I look?”

Chenle’s eyes study the necklace before looking into your own. He smiles somewhat sadly as his arm reaches up to stroke your own. “You look beautiful.” He whispers. “Just like I knew you would.” 

You can’t put your finger on it, but something about his demeanor is unsettling. “Chenle, is something wrong?” You ask, to which he shakes his head weakly, but the sad look on his face tells you otherwise. You figure it had something to do with his family and refrain from asking. Instead you cup his cheek to provide him comfort, he leans into your touch and shits his eyes momentarily. “I love it. Thank you.” You say in a quiet voice. Chenle watches your features move into a soft smile before impulsively leaning forward to peck your lips. 

“I’m so happy.” To be with you, to be yours. “Let's be happy together for a long time, okay?”

You don’t say no.

-

The next morning you arrive before every other student to school. Chenle’s red sweater rests on your figure as you reach your locker and take out what had been heavy in your mind since last night. The letters. You were going to give them to Chenle and ask him to be your boyfriend. Sure, you were nervous to do so, but you knew Chenle was someone you wanted to have in your life for a long time. That's why you slip the envelopes decorated with his name one by one into the vent of his locker. 

You remember thinking this would be the beginning of something great. 

You were wrong.

🏀

There’s a pep in your step as you make your way through the halls after school clad in Chenle’s red hoodie, heart eyes searching for the boy. 

And for the first time in probably ever, you wished you wouldn’t have found him. You wished you didn’t have to see Chenle pressed up against his locker with his hands resting on Ava’s hips as she kisses him roughly. 

“Oh my god.” You say, voice small but enough to catch Chenle’s ear. The boy immediately pushes Ava away from him and turns to the sound of your voice with pleading eyes. 

“Y/N-“

“Look who showed up!” Ava interrupts, turning fully towards you. “I was wondering when you were going to come looking for him like you always do, I bet you’re glad it’s over, right Chenle?” 

The way the boy looks away from your eyes to shift his guilty gaze to the floor makes you furrow your eyebrows in confusion. “Chenle what is she talking about?” 

When the boy remains silent, Ava’s high pitched voice answers for him. “Well, since he doesn’t seem very talkative right now, I’ll just tell you myself.” She clears her throat, as if setting the scene, your hands are starting to ache. “A month ago, our darling Chenle made a bet with his friends after our break up, you know as boys do, they said he couldn’t get another girlfriend before Valentine’s Day. Obviously, Chenle’s competitive self took that as a challenge and it’s obvious that you had been in love with him for like ever so you were the easiest target.” 

The way the world stops spinning isn’t like it’s described in all the romance novels you read, it’s not the good kind that makes you feel like you're floating that nothing could stop you, it’s the kind that weighs you down and makes you feel dizzy, causing you to stumble. This is what you feel when you ask: “Chenle… is this true?” And the boy just stares at you, for a second before looking away once again. 

“Of course, it’s true. He was even showing me the pathetic love letters you wrote to him.” She motions to the stack of letters in Chenle’s hands. You gasp, feeling like every last bit of you was torn apart. The thought of them reading the deepest tellings of your heart and laughing at it, all when you wholeheartedly believed that the boy you spoke about in the letters was finally all yours.

When he wasn’t. He was never yours. But he wanted you to think that. 

“Oh my god,” you run to him and attempt to rip the letters out of his hands only for him to hold on tighter. “Let go, Chenle.” 

“Y/N, please-“ 

You can’t help the sob that creeps up your throat as your attempt weakly to shake your heart out of his hands. “Please, let go.” 

Chenle watches you cry before him and feels like that the act of ripping his actual heart out of his chest would hurt less than this. 

You take this moment of weakness and rip the letters out of his grasp, before running down the hall. 

-

It’s only when you feel a hand grasp your shoulder and spin you around that you realize that Chenle has followed you all the way out to the parking lot. 

Seeing him caused every bone in your body to ache, and the contractions in your heart were hard to ignore. “Wait, okay? I need to explain somethings to you.” 

“I don’t want to hear your explanations! I just want to go home.” You realize that you probably sound like a bratty child but you couldn’t care less. 

Chenle nods, “Okay, then let’s go.” 

“Not with you.” 

Chenle can't help the dagger that the sentence shoots into his heart. “Then I’ll say what I need to say right here!” He exclaims, trying to mask his pain with anger. “It’s true that I made a bet with my friends to date you the day I first drove you home, and it’s really shitty of me, I know. But I had just broken up with Ava and everything was so messy and I just wanted to make her feel bad so I said yes. “ He pauses, “I said yes and so I went to you since I knew you liked me-“

“Jesus,” you wince, embarrassment creeping up your throat and clogging it up. Your eyes water as you think of how truly fucked up the situation is. 

That day, one month ago, you were right to question Chenle’s intentions. No, he didn’t admire you or see you the way you saw him, you were just easy bait. And everything has been a lie. “I can’t- I can’t do this.”

Chenle tries to stop the tears of guilt that threatened to leak from the corners of his eyes. “I’m sorry, Y/N.” 

“No you’re not.” Your bitter words are a shock to Chenle, he had never heard you use that tone with him (or with anyone) before. “You’re not fucking sorry.” Tears of humiliation and frustration run down your face and Chenle wants desperately to cradle your cheeks in his hands, but thinks he might never be able to after this. “It might not have been a big deal to you Chenle, but you were my first kiss, you were the first guy who ever took me on dates and drove me around in his car, you. And I thought you were the first boy who ever liked me.” The smell of him you once loved reeks of the hoodie covering your body, however, instead of feeling welcomed and happy you feel like it’s creeping up the sides of your neck and suffocating you to no end. You groan as you grab the hem of the article and rip it off your body, leaving you in a flimsy t-shirt to combat the winter cold. 

Chenle sighs, “I know you’re mad at me but you’re going to get sick if you walk home like that. It’s cold.”

You scoff in response, “Lucky for you then, because you don’t need to worry about me anymore.” In a quieter voice you say. “I was probably just a burden to you this whole time.” 

The boy immediately opposes the statement, “You were never a burden, I liked hanging out with you. I care about you.” 

“Only because it helped you win that stupid bet, and to make your ex jealous!” You exclaim, finally looking into his sorry eyes. He looks tired, you almost falter in your stance before putting up the wall separating you two that had always been there before the day he drove you home. 

You wished he had never approached you, because the Chenle in your dreams would never do this to you. 

It’s in that moment that you feel the weight of the dove on your neck, your finger move to unhinge it as you place it on top of the hoodie resting against his chest. You watch his jaw tense as he looks at you. You make eye contact one last time with the blonde haired boy in front of you, Before sadly turning away. 

“Y/n please,” it’s the weakest you’ve ever heard his usually booming voice. “Don’t leave me like this. What about our promise, huh? You’re breaking my heart right now.” Chenle knows the attempt to get you to stay is pathetic and desperate but he’s at a loss of what to do. 

Angrily, you spit. “You broke my heart the moment you approached me that day so I guess that promise was made to be broken wasn’t it?” 

Chenle watches you walk away with your arms wrapped tightly around your shaking body. He sees as you walk past a trash can and dump all your letters into it, wiping your tears and starting your journey to the bus stop. 

And he would never share this with you, walks up the trash can with tears in his eyes and reaches into the garbage, picking out every letter in there. He figures it’s the only piece of your heart he can manage to save for himself. It’s proof that the hate you now hold in your heart for him was once love. 

Even if he ruined everything. 

-

You never knew they called it heartbreak because your chest physically hurts this much. At times you feel like throwing up, at others you want to throw all your belongings across your room. The pain was almost unbearable at the beginning, embarrassing and hot flashes of anger running through you constantly as you think back to that moment.

You don’t go to school that Monday, telling your mom you were feeling sick. Which isn’t entirely a lie, especially when you see Chenle’s car pull up outside your house that morning. You feel like throwing up again. You’re angry at him. So so angry that he thinks things will be the same after what he did. That he thinks he can pull up at your house and drive you around after completely breaking your heart. 

You pull the blinds down as your mom comes through your door. “Honey, Chenle is here.”

“Tell him to leave.” You seeth, tears running down your face. You wipe them away frustratedly. “Tell him to never come back here, Mom.”

Your mother watches with sad, sympathetic eyes. Before nodding solemnly and closing the door on her way out. 

Due to a strange urge, you peek through the blinds and wait to see him walk out your driveway. He does, dragging his feet. Much to your dismay, he stops suddenly and turns to face your window. You immediately step away in the darkness of your room, away from the light and Chenle’s eyes. 

-

Three weeks pass, things at school remain the same for the most part. You hang out with Donghyuck like you used to. You try your best to not look over at the athletes table even when you feel Chenle’s eyes on you. However, somethings do change, you no longer spend your class time daydreaming about a certain blonde boy, or writing love letters on the back pages of your notebook about how pretty his eyes look when they catch the light. Instead, you stare out the window of your classrooms, wanting nothing more than to be in your room away from everyone once again. You sigh and look away from the window momentarily before looking up again. You startle as you see Chenle on the other side of the glass. Watching you with eyes that looked like they had a lot to say. You shudder  when you take in the bag under his eyes and exhaustion written all over his face. You want to believe it’s because of you, you hope it is. You hope he can’t sleep at night thinking of you. Nevertheless, you remember what happened on Valentine’s Day and realize you were probably too insignificant to him to have caused him to be this way. 

He softly smiles at you, bringing his hesitant hands up to wave at you, only for you to avert your eyes away from him and to the teacher at the front of the room. 

Chenle looks down dejectedly before continuing his walk, meanwhile you sit at your desk, wanting to escape more than ever. 

-

Three days later, your mother informs you that you have a visitor. “Tell him I don’t want to see him.” 

“It’s not Chenle.” She says before confusedly adding: “He said his name is Jisung.” 

Jisung? What the hell is he doing here? “I’ll be down in a minute.” 

When you finally get down stairs Jisung smiles awkwardly at you before gesturing towards the door. “Do you like milkshakes?” 

-

“What is this about?” 

The words that say heavy on your tongue the whole car ride here finally leave you as you sit across Jisung at Billy’s. He sips his milkshake before clearing his throat to speak. “How have you been?” 

You’ve been really shitty. “I’ve been fine, I guess.”

Jisung hums, rubbing his hand together before sighing. “I guess we should just get straight to the point, then.” He pauses, “Have you spoken to Chenle recently?”

While you figured this meeting had something with Chenle, you still sit up straighter when you hear his name. You clear your throat as if this is a kind of declaration. “No. I haven’t spoken to him since Valentine’s day.” You don’t want to ask about him, so you try the next best thing. “Why- why do you ask?” 

“I haven’t seen him since last week.” Jisung says, something in your stomach doesn’t sit right. “He’s been missing practice, which he never did, and he’s not answering any of my messages or calls. And the pre-final game is tomorrow and no one has heard from him.” 

His words are bazar. Basketball is unarguably the most important thing in Chenle’s life, why would he risk this chance of winning the championship like this? “He hasn’t spoken to me either, sorry.” You say, but your mind is fogged with worry as to where the boy could be. Jisung remains silent for some time before he clicks his tongue. 

“I know what happened between you two.” You avoid his gaze and feel blood rush to your cheeks. “And I think you’re right for not talking to him after that.” 

How could he say that about his best friend? Still, you nod. “But I think you only know a part of what’s really going on here.”

“Huh?”

“I mean, yeah. The whole thing started as a bet, but after a few weeks Chenle told me that something changed. He said he didn’t want to do the bet anymore, that he felt guilty for using you like that because he ended up really really liking you Y/N and I’m not just saying this because he is my best friend or anything but I think when the time is right, you should give him a chance.”

You finally look up at him and realize upon feeling a tear trail down your face that you were crying. You wipe it away quickly and sigh. “I don’t know, Jisung. He really hurt me, I was so embarrassed I felt like I could die.” 

“Sometimes we make stupid decisions.” The ‘we’ reminds you of the story of Jisung and his girlfriend’s love story that Chenle animatedly told you about one night you stayed at his house. You remember wondering how someone as sweet as Jisung could do any of those things, and how his girlfriend could forgive him for any of it.However, you knew the love they had for each other in their hearts was more than the anger due to his actions. You wonder if the attachment you have for Chenle would ever be enough. 

Jisung reads your mind. “I think he loves you.”

Your eyes become wide as planets before you scoff in disbelief. “Don’t say that.” You say, weak hearted.

“He does! While you two were still a thing he wouldn’t stop talking about how cute you were, how good you are at basketball and how you have the same glow in the dark stars on your ceiling that he does.” 

What? You didn’t think cared enough to talk about you or to remember those details. “He told you that?” 

Jisung nods, “And a lot of other things, but I don’t think we’ll have the time.” 

“He… he never told me he loved me.” You thought Chenle had just come into your life as a lesson to always be on your guard, to never let anyone in and protect yourself above others. But now… you wonder if you meant more to Chenle than you thought.

“Take it from me,” Jisung says, “sometimes those 8 letters can be the hardest to say.” 

🏀

Once you’ve parted ways with Jisung, (who offered to drive you home to which you politely declined to, telling him the walk home would give you time to think) you make your way home on your dirty sneakers and think about what Jisung said. 

It’s hard to believe that Chenle would actually say those things about you, while knowing he was playing you. You wondered if it really did change for him like Jisung said, and if he really felt sorry like he was telling you that day in the parking lot. 

You’re so lost in thought that you don’t realize the familiar car parked in front of your house until you hear the voice your heart has been longing to hear for weeks now. “Is Y/N home?” 

You bolt to the nearest bush and duck behind it, close enough to hear their words but far enough that Chenle and your conflicted mother are unaware of your presence. “Oh, I’m sorry sweetie she went out a few hours ago.” 

“Oh.” You flinch when you hear the disappointment in his voice. “Can you tell her I stopped by?” And that I miss her, he wants to say but you don’t know that. “And please give this to her too if it’s not too much trouble.” You hear shuffling as Chenle hands whatever it is he wanted to give you to your mom. 

“I will, sweetie.” Your mom says. “And Chenle?” There's a pause in which he hums. “Get some sleep, honey.”

You can imagine that Chenle throws her his signature polite smile, “I will try, Ma’am.” 

It’s not longer after that you hear his sneakers against the steps of your porch and see him get into his car. You have a perfect view of him from where you are. Watching as he frustratedly runs his hands through his hair and throws his head back against the seat. You don’t know why you feel sorry for him. You know you should be angry but after what Jisung told you, you need to stop yourself from going to him. 

-

You contemplate if even looking inside the bag is a decision. 

It sits in front of you neatly on your bed where you had placed it after your mother handed it to you with a worried: “He looks so tired, Y/N.” Which caused hurt to arise in your heart. 

The bag is a bright red one, the type that usually is full of candies and sweets, maybe flowers. You want to know what is inside manically, but you're afraid about what this would mean for your relationship (if you could even call it that) with Chenle. Is this his final goodbye or is this him trying to get you back?

You had to know.

Upon opening it, you are shocked to see a pale yellow envelope with your name written in Chenle’s messy handwriting on top. You grab it with shaky hands, the texture is different somehow, because for the first time ever, this letter was meant for you.  

Inside, there is a loose leaf paper much like the ones you had sent to him neatly folded. Your heart beats in your ear as you finally see the first words, you breathe in deeply and read away.

“Y/N, 

       I thought for a long time about what I would say to you in this letter, I’ve been sitting on it for three weeks trying to find the right things to say that would convince you to forgive me before I realized that they all sounded tacky and cliche when I read them back. So, i’ve decided to just go with the truth. It’s true that at first I wasn't honest with you, that I only approached you to complete a dare my friends had given me that day and I won’t make any excuses because I was such a huge asshole to you. I was just so hurt that day because of Ava and I wanted to make her feel like shit so bad, I wanted to hurt her like she had hurt me and I used you to do so, Y/N. But after I approached you and started spending time with you,I started thinking back to all the times I would look at you when the sun came in through the window in the English classroom before I had even spoken a word to you. I bet you didn’t know I did that, did you?” 

You didn’t, the you at that time would’ve freaked out if she knew though.

“I remember thinking you were so pretty, that you were untouchable to me so i just never tried. But something changed when i got to know you, i realized that you were the coolest person i’ve ever met, that you were real and that you were there with me whenever i needed someone. No one has ever made me feel so safe and comforted. I became selfish with you because I never wanted it to end. I didn’t want to tell you because i was scared you would hate me do you hate me? The night before valentines i went to your house because i planned on telling you everything the next day, i wanted to see your happy eyes just once more just in case i ruined everything. On Valentine’s day, when i got to school and read your letters. You wouldn’t believe how happy I was to read all the wonderful things you said about me. I was so happy that you held me as close to your heart as I held you to my own. I was going to tell you everything after that, i was going to confess and tell you that i couldn’t go another day with this secret. I was going to tell you how i felt but Ava stopped me, she told me she knew about the bet and then she kissed me and that's when you showed up. I’m so sorry you had to see that, I’m so that i used you like that. I’m sorry that I took advantage of you but I want you to know that I meant everything I told you, I loved spending time with you, and being with your family made me feel so special. I remember thinking we were split aparts and i know that sounds stupid but i really want you to know that i meant it. And every kiss we shared and every time I held you I felt it and I really really really mean it when i say that i loved you. I loved you so much that I didn't ever want to lose you.”

The past tense makes your chest tighten.

“I won’t tell you to forgive me, but your spot on the bleachers looks so empty without you. The pre finals are tomorrow and i would love it if you came, to cheer me on like you used to. You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to but I wanted to give you something that would portray how serious I am about this. That if you are willing to come cheer me on with a part of me with you.”

This when you reach into the bag and pull out the item that once laid underneath your letter. The 22 of Chenle’s basketball jersey stares back at you, you gasp as you hold the fabric in your fingers. You had watched him run around the court with this very jersey plenty times before, you knew how much being number 22 meant to him. You were grateful he would trust you so important to him, you really wanted to grab his face and tell him that. Instead, you finish reading the letter. 

“You make me feel brave. And I will forever be sorry for what I did to you, but I mean it when I say I loved you I still love you. 

Please come.                                                         - Zhong Chenle.”

He loves you! Present tense. You could almost jump from joy. You want to see him, tell him you love him too. A million times if you can. You want to say that you forgive him for everything, that you have felt incomplete without him these past few weeks and the Chenle you made up in your mind was too perfect anyway. 

-

Chenle sighs for the upteenth time the next afternoon as he stretches along with his teammates. He tries his best to take his mind off of you for the time being, at least until after the game is over, he needed to focus but he found it very hard when he began to wonder what was going through your head when you read his letter, and if you were coming today.

He startles when he feels a hand on his shoulder. Hopeful, he turns. His hopefulness fades away when he sees Jisung standing before him. 

“Damn don’t look too sad to see me.” He jokes. Chenle shakes his head

“It’s not that…” Chenle explains, biting his lip nervously and subconsciously looks toward the bleakers where your empty seat was. Jisung gets the hint. 

“Chenle,” he says. “It's okay, she’ll come.” 

Chenle wants to ask him how he is so sure, that if he were you, he would hate himself too. Instead, he nods at him and readjusts the waistband of his shorts on his hips as the coach calls for the team to step out onto the court. 

People immediately start cheering for the players as they come into the view, girls go crazy in the stands and the members’ friends and families cheere enthusiastically from the side lines. The players smile and wave at their ‘fans’ doing a lap around the court to warm up and high five audience members. 

Chenle can only bring himself to smile half heartedly and wave weakly due to the fact that your spot on the bleachers still remains empty. 

He sighs out again, puffing his cheeks as the referee finally calls for the first round. That’s when his adrenaline starts pumping and he feels a bit better. 

The game goes on. 

-

Chenle’s jersey is only a bit big on you, almost fitting like something that would be your size, still, you try to pull it down over your hips in a nervous habit. You finally made it to the game, having fun late due to traffic. The spot you usually sit in is occupied by a woman holding a baby, so you decide to stay and watch from the sidelines, standing. 

The first time you see him, he is running across the court so fast he becomes a blur. You only know it’s him because of the head of blonde hair you see in the blurry image. He looks breathtaking as always, his hair being pushed away from his face by a sweat band being an addition to his look you wouldn’t mind seeing again. 

His sneakers squeak against the floor as he gets in position to shoot. You cross your fingers, but something is off. His eyebrows are furrowed in something that doesn’t look like concentration, but more like worry. His legs give him the impulse to jump up and soon enough his arms are shooting the ball towards the basket. You watch in disappointment as it hits against the rim and bounces back at him, he catches it with a frustrated click of his teeth. 

The audience has already begun whispering, having never seen the star player miss a shot. 

One of his teammates comes up to give him a fist bump of comfort, Chenle accepts it but still holds a troubled look on his face. The thought crosses your mind that it might  be because of you, it troubles the organ in your chest as much as it warms it. You notice he keeps glancing at a certain part of the bleachers, this is when you know he meant everything and that he surely is waiting for you. 

“Chenle!” You yell, trying to get his attention.

The boy doesn’t look your way, your voice getting lost in constant shouts and chatter from the people in the crowd. You try again, louder this time. Nothing. 

You groan frustratedly, the boy continues the game the best he can, but he’s out of it. You hate to see him like this, a deep hurt in your chest rising up. You cheer for him as loud as you can, deciding it would be better to wait until after the game to see him. 

As the game is coming to an end, Chenle appears to grow more and more tired and absent. Nevertheless, his team scores the winning point and the audience goes wild, including you. Chenle smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes. 

 You can’t wait to hold him and tell him you forgive him for everything and that everything is going to be okay, and be with him for real this time. To have him be yours and be best friends against, go on nightly drives and have impromptu dance parties, to lay on his bed and count the plastic stars on his ceiling, to kiss him and be close to him. 

And for it to be real.

🏀

Chenle can’t help but feel dejected when your seat was never taken by you. He should’ve known this would happen, that is true but there was a fraction of him that thought you would read his letter and realize how sincere he was, he thought there was a part of you that knew it had been real and there was no way everything he said could've been made up. But he was wrong, and now as he packs his gym bag to go home, he faces the consequences of his high hopes. 

He’s mad, practically throwing his belongings in his bag, he almost throws his phone in the trash can next to him when he hears the ringtone go off. Chenle answers it with an irritated, “What?”

“Hey.” He recognizes your voice that same instant, still he pulls his phone back and makes sure its your caller ID before speaking again. 

“Y/N? Oh my god, hi!” He clears his throat  before repeating himself. “I mean, hi, hey.”

You hold back a laugh, noting his nervousness. “I’m sorry for calling so suddenly.” You decide to tease him, although, unbeknownst to him, you wear standing about 20 feet behind him after finally finding him in the now that the crowd of people has dispersed after the game. 

“No, don’t worry about it. I was actually…” Chenle flicks the zipper of his bag with his nervous fingers, “I was waiting to hear from you.” 

“Were you?” 

“Yeah, I wanted a chance to talk things out with you and uhh… i'm sorry if me asking you to come out to the game was too much or if it made you uncomfortable I didn’t-“

“Chenle.” Your voice cuts his rant short. You internally marvel at the fact that you aren’t the one caught in a nervous ramble for once. “It didn’t make me uncomfortable. I’m here.” 

“You’re here?” Someone clicks in his mind as he frantically looks around him in an effort to find you. When he does, his eyes turn soft and a smile takes over his face. “You came.” 

You nod at him, feeling a bit overwhelmed when you finally make eye contact with him. There are people between you too, Chenle begins to close it as he walks forward. “I did. I just wanted to tell you that I missed you.” 

“I missed you more, I swear on it.” He replies.

Your eyes burn, you wipe them and lighten the mood. “And that Curry would be sad to see you so out of it at a game.” You click your teeth jokingly. “What do you think he would say if he saw you like that cause of a girl?” 

He laughs, “I think he would understand, after I tell him how amazing you are.” 

You blush. “I also wanted to tell you that your jersey smells like you, and I like it.” This makes him beam, speeding up his footsteps that carry him to you. 

“Is that it?” He asks, jokingly. 

“And that I love you, Zhong Chenle. Not the Zhong Chenle that I had a crush on for 3 years and not Number 22 but you. The rawest versions of you. I love all of it and that i forgive you for everything.” He slows his pace in shock, his chest heaving. 

“You mean that?” His voice is wavering and you can see the flush on his cheeks from how close he has gotten. Suddenly, he is taking big steps until he is directly in front of you. He puts his phone down and his pretty eyes look directly into your own. 

Chenle’s face is hopeful, happy and lovestruck. He whispers: “You love me?”

You can only nod, overwhelmed. Chenle smiles wide, you can almost see his molars and his eyes disappear. “Say it.” He says, in a wondrous tone. 

“I love you, Zhong Chenle.” 

“Oh my god, yes!” 

And he’s kissing you, arms wrapping around you and pressing your body against his, his finger grip at the jersey on your body and he moves his lips against yours. Every memory that you have ever shared, every kiss, every touch, and every laughing fit come to your mind. It’s all you can think about as you think about this boy. You don’t think about the bad part, because that doesn’t matter anymore now that Chenle is yours and you are never letting go.

-

4 months later; Graduation 

“Chenle! Come on!” Jisung yells as he sees the boys floppy newly dyed orange hair amongst the crowd of people. 

You were all posed for a picture, blue cap and gowns adorning your bodies and your parents huddle you together for a picture. “I’m coming!”

Your boyfriend appears from the crowd with his cap in his hand along with a giant bouquet of flowers. He walks directly to you, extending it with a smile. “For you.” 

Your friends start squealing, playful hitting you and Chenle and your parents smirk at each other at the portrayal of young love before them. You cover your face with your hands to hide your blush. Chenle laughs and hugs you to his side. 

“Y/N! Chenle! Pose for the picture!” 

The two of you run to where your other friends are posing, haphazardly getting into the frame and posing crazily. 

The air is full of laughter and youth as the sun begins to set on your time in high school. For a moment, you’re too busy basking in the presence of the relationships you have developed while in there that you forget you won’t be seeing these people every day like you had been for so many years. Or that your lives might take completely different courses and things won’t be the same after this. Instead you allow yourself to enjoy this moment. 

🏀

You do think about it when you are on your way home though, in the passenger’s seat of Chenle’s car. His hand holds yours over the gear and he smiles to himself while humming along to the songs on the radio, unaware of the internal conflict going on in your head. 

It wasn’t until he parks outside your house that he realizes that something is wrong. 

“What is going to happen to us now?” Is your reply to his questioning. Chenle’s eyebrows furrow.

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean-“ you collect your thoughts, “high school is over, and we’re going to go to college and we will be so busy and what if-“ 

“Whatever you think will happen, won’t happen.” 

You look at him, offended that he could dismiss your worries so easily. “You don’t un-“ 

“I do understand. You’re worried that now that we won’t see each other every day that we’re going to drift apart, right? And that we won’t be together, am I right?” 

You nod silently. 

“Y/N, how many times am I going to tell you that I’m crazy in love with you? I won’t let you slip out of my hands, baby. Not again.” Chenle says firmly, sincerely. His eyes widen so you can see right through him and know he is telling the truth. 

His pale hands come up to cup the sides of your face, making you face him. Your tear filled eyes meet his own. He brushes away your tear that rolls down your cheek. “I’m sorry, I was just overthinking.” You say.

“Don’t be sorry.” Chenle shakes his head, leaning forward to kiss your cheek lovingly, letting it linger for a few seconds before pulling back. Smiling upon seeing your smiling face. 

It happens in a flash, now that the moment was right. Chenle gasps, starling you. “What?! What’s wrong?!”

“I love this song!” And he’s turning it up all the way on the car radio, rolling down the windows and stepping out. “Come on, Y/N!” 

You don’t let him see the pure happiness on your face that you wanted to mask with annoyance. Chenle dances on the sidewalk crazily and you laugh in the passenger’s seat. You decide it was best to not let your boyfriend embarrass himself alone, wiping the excess of your tears and step out of the car. “M’lady has arrived to the dance party!” He exclaims. 

And as you start dancing wildly together, the sun begins to set causing a golden hue to fall over your features. Anyone watching the scene could either think that you’re crazy or they will see what is really there: split aparts that have finally found one another. 

Chenle thinks so too, he stops dancing for a bit to catch his breath and just watches you. He remembers the pain it took to make you his, how much you both cried and the beginning of the relationship was far from ideal. But there is no doubt in his mind that there are not enough glow in the dark ceiling stars in this world that will amount to the love he harbors for you in his chest. He was so happy that he had met his split apart, he couldn’t thank the universe enough. 

This when he reaches forward and spins you around to face him. His chest against your own, you feel the rumble of his words from his chest when he says: “I’m so glad I found you.” And then he is kissing you, and the ground seems to melt away from your feet. You’re floating hundreds of feet in air and forget to take a view of your neighborhood from up here because Chenle is all you can think about. Because he makes you feel this way. You whisper in between kisses, he smiles knowingly, he feels it too. 

“We. 

Are.

Off.

Our.

Feet.”

[beifongsss]

princess yue [sokka]

Pairing: Sokka x reader (one-sided)

Requested?: no and i’m so so sorry but i really needed to just write this bc this idea had been nagging me for the longest time and im really really sorry but the reader is the Yue’s older sister it just works with the idea im sorry they’re related to a character. also i’m sorry that the reader is female. Also, do they ever say what happened to Yue’s mom? I don’t think so, so in this fic she’s dead.

Summary: You’re the crown princess of the Northern Water Tribe. Yue, your sister has just turned 16 and is already betrothed and although you are slightly older, you are not. That changes when the avatar and his friends arrive, but not in the way you think.

In this story, Yue is her normal sixteen, Sokka is fifteen going on sixteen, and the reader is sixteen going on seventeen. So you’re a year older than Sokka. also this is short and not happy but i really needed to write this.

i’m sorry :(((

.masterlist.

~

You had struggled with your position as crown princess for as long as you could remember.

You were Chief Arnook’s oldest daughter, just one month shy of your 17th birthday when the Avatar and friends arrived. You had greeted the group upon arrival, welcoming them to your home.

As the future Chief, you had taken it upon yourself to give the Avatar and his companions a tour around the city and you had been immediately taken with the Southern Water Tribe boy. He had made many sarcastic and witty comments throughout the tour, causing his sister to continuously smack the back of his head. You had found them endearing, even teasing him back sometimes and causing his face to break out into a blush.

To say that he had been thoroughly surprised when you were introduced as the crown princess during Yue’s birthday dinner was an understatement, panic clear on his face as he remembered his earlier behavior.

He had later apologized for his language, only to be surprised when you laughed it off, finding his honesty and humor refreshing. As crown princess, and as a woman, you found it hard to interact comfortably with the members of your community. You were constantly battling with the Council, always trying to prove that you were worthy of the throne even if you were a woman.

The moment you knew that you were fond of the Southern Water Tribe boy was when he quite literally crashed into you one night as you took a walk around the city.

“(Y-Y/N)!” Sokka had yelped, cheeks blushing and eyes wide as he realized he had addressed you in a less than formal way. “I mean, Your Highness.”

You stared at him as he bowed. “Good evening Sokka. Please, bowing isn’t necessary and (Y/N) is fine.”

Sokka smiled as he stood up straight, an embarrassed blush spreading across his face. “What are you doing out here?”

“I find that taking long walks around the city helps to clear my head,” you admitted, looking away from the boy. “Would you like to join me?”

Sokka blushed brightly before speaking. “I’m actually on my way to meet with y-your sister.”

“Oh?” you replied, your eyes widening at his words. You felt your heart drop slightly and you found yourself silently chastising yourself for your feelings. You forced a smile onto your face before continuing on your way. “You should hurry then. Make sure to stay out of sight and have a good night Sokka.”

“Good night (Y/N)!” the handsome boy replied, already making his way to the bridge where Yue was waiting for him.

Your heart felt heavy as you walked back to the palace, both from knowing that Sokka was interested in your sister and because you knew that even if Yue liked him, she was now betrothed.

~

Your eyes burned slightly as you sat as your desk, shuffling through various Water Tribe scrolls. The council had been giving you multiple tasks to prove your worth as the next Chief and this week they had you learning about the way Water Tribe currency had changed over the centuries.

You leaned back in your seat, rubbing at your eyes before your door slammed open. You jolted up, relaxing when you noticed it was only Yue.

“Yue, what are you doing here?” you asked, standing up and walking over to greet her. You grew concerned immediately when you noticed her sobbing. “What happened?”

Yue threw herself into your arms and you immediately embraced her, guiding her over to your bed and sitting down.

“I-It’s nothing,” Yue hiccuped, trying to calm herself down. “It’s s-stupid.”

“It can’t be stupid if it’s making you upset,” you chided softly, getting up and closing your door. “Now c’mon. What is it?”

Yue didn’t speak, instead reaching under her coat and pulling out her betrothal necklace. You nodded in understanding before sitting back down. “I take it Sokka found out?”

“How do you know about Sokka?” Yue gasped, looking up at you.

“He told me!” you cried, raising your hands in defense. “I bumped into him on my walk and I asked him to join me but he declined and said you were waiting for him.”

Yue looked at you for a few seconds before crying out. “You like him!”

“No I don’t,” you replied, feeling a blush creep on to your cheeks. “You like him.”

“Fine, I do,” Yue stated, crossing her arms as a smile spread across her face. “But so do you.”

“It’s not a big deal,” you said, trying to tell your sister that you didn’t plan on making a move on Sokka.

“Yes it is! You never like anyone!”

You winced lightly at her words, knowing she was right. “It doesn’t matter Yue. We are not talking about me. We are focusing on you.”

Yue’s face fell as she remembered why she had come to you in the first place. “You’re right. He found out I’m betrothed and I really like him but I can’t be with him.”

“That’s unfair,” you said softly, your heart breaking as you looked at your sister. “He really likes you, you know?”

“He does?” Yue asked, looking up at you. “Aren’t you upset? You like him as well.”

“I’m not,” you replied, wrapping your sister up in a hug. “I care about you so much more than I’d ever are about some boy. And yes, he really does like you.”

Silence engulfed the two of you as Yue quietly let our her tears and you thought about how to help her. You closed your eyes as you came to a possible solution, tightening your grip on Yue.

“It will all work out. I know it.”

~

The next day, you found yourself in the Council’s chambers, dressed in your formal Water Tribe clothes. Your father, Chief Arnook, stared at you uncertainly as he thought about what you had told him the night before. To his right sat Hahn, Yue’s betrothed.

“Why have you called us here?” Anheir, the Council’s leader, asked.

“I have come with a proposition,” you replied, walking up the Council and bowing deeply. “One that I think will please everyone.”

Anheir looked at his fellow members before glancing at your father, who simply nodded once. “You may continue.”

You didn’t get a chance to speak as voices filled the hall.

“...and here is the Council’s hall,” Yue spoke. “This is where they give their judgement whenever anyone needs to settle something.”

The hall went silent once again as Yue turned away from the group she was with and faced you. You nodded at her before glancing at her companions, bowing when you noticed Aang, Katara, and Sokka.

“I’m sorry father,” Yue said, bowing as she faced the Council. “I wasn’t aware there were any proceedings going on today.”

“It’s quite alright my dear,” Arnook replied swiftly. “I’m afraid this was something very last minute.”

“What’s going on?” Aang asked, eyes wide as he looked around the grand room.

“We are settling an important matter concerning the crown princess,” Anheir said before motioning to the empty seats beside Hahn. “Perhaps the Avatar would like to sit and observe how our Tribe’s Council operates? Your companions are more than welcome to stay.”

You closed your eyes and inhaled sharply as they agreed. You shook your head slightly as Yue sat down, shooting you a confused glance. You hadn’t wanted her here during your proposition.

“Now Princess (Y/N),” Anheir addressed you once more. “You may proceed.”

You nodded once, glancing at your sister before speaking. “As you know, I am next in line for the throne, and in a little more than a year I will be ascending and taking my father’s place.”

The council exchanged disapproving looks, which didn’t go unnoticed by the Gaang.

“What’s their problem?” Sokka grumbled almost imperceptibly as he leaned closer to Yue. The princess didn’t flinch but acknowledged his words with a whisper of her own.

“Our tribe is very traditional and they do not believe that a woman, much less one who isn’t betrothed or married, should lead us,” Yue replied, her eyes shifting towards Sokka. “They don’t want her to be in charge.”

“That’s dumb,” Sokka replied, shooting a glare at the Council. Yue smiled softly at his response.

“I am also aware that you disapprove of me leading the Tribe. Please don’t deny it, I’ve heard what you’ve said to my father,” you continued, your lips twitching when you heard Aang and Sokka try to choke back their snickers. “That is why I have come to you today to offer you a solution to ease your worries.”

You took a deep breath before continuing, “I believe that the Council will feel much more at ease if I have a husband ruling at my side; someone to help me when making important decisions that pertains to the good of our Tribe. I do not think I will be able to find a husband within a year, especially not with my duties as crown princess. This is why I am here today to ask you to let me take my sister Yue’s place in her betrothal.”

The room erupted into gasps at your words. The Council looked bewildered, exchanging surprised looks with one another. Katara was also surprised at your words, letting out a gasp. Aang and Sokka’s jaws dropped and Yue stood up, making her way over to Arnook.

“Father! You can’t possibly allow her to do this. It’s my betrothal,” Yue cried out. All her life she had looked up to you for being independent, claiming that you didn’t need a man by your side and refusing every betrothal that had been proposed by the Council. You had always told her that you would be the first single, female Tribal Chief. You were everything she had ever wished she was.

“Sit down Yue,” Arnook said, his face remaining impassive. “This is the Council’s decision.”

Frowning, Yue walked back over to Sokka, but didn’t sit.

“What happened to being an independent, powerful leader?” Anheir finally asked, a mocking edge to his voice. Your jaw clenched at his words and you tried to control your temper. Meeting Anheir’s gaze, you threw yourself to your knees.

“Forgive me Council,” you stated, keeping your head bent down as you forced the words out. You were doing this so Yue could be happy. “I was wrong. There could never be a powerful female leader and I was foolish to think I could change that.”

“(Y/N), you can’t possible mean that!” Yue cried out, beginning to step forwards before she was held back by Sokka, who gave her a subtle shake of his head.

“Indeed you were,” Anheir said, agreeing with your statement. “We agree with you. You don’t have what it takes to rule alone. We approve your request. From here on out, Princess Yue’s betrothal to Hahn is no more that is, if the men agree as well.”

You shifted your gaze to your father who still remained emotionless. He met your gaze and you nodded your head, sealing your fate.

“I have no objection,” Arnook said. “I wanted her betrothed to Hahn when she first turned sixteen. I am proud to see she has finally come to her senses,”

“Father, don’t do this,” Yue begged once more. She was promptly ignored.

“What about you Hahn?” Anheir questioned, turning to face the handsome young soldier.

Hahn walked over to you and bowed deeply before straightening, a proud smirk on his face. “It would be my honor to marry the beautiful princess.”

He picked up your hand and pressed a kiss to it. “I will get started on your necklace right away.”

“What about me?” Yue cried out. “Don’t I get a say in this?”

“Be quiet Yue,” you cut in sharply, your face set in a harsh glare. “Your opinion doesn’t matter.”

Yue’s face fell immediately at your words, tears springing up in her eyes. She turned away from you, running from the hall as the Gaang went after her.

~ “I don’t understand.” Yue spoke sadly as Katara gave her a hug. “Why would she do that? She never wanted to be betrothed and if she did she always said that she wanted it to be on her terms.”

“Maybe she did this for you,” Katara said softly, trying to calm the girl down.

“I did.”

Everyone turned to face the door, where they found you leaning against it. You were still dressed formally, having followed Yue immediately after the Council had dismissed you. You walked closer, sitting on Yue’s other side and wrapping an arm around her when Katara stood up.

“What?” Yue asked, looking up at you through her tears. “Why?”

“It was the best logical course of action,” you commented with a shrug. “At least this way the Council is satisfied, I am no longer at risk of losing the throne, and Hahn gets to live out his weird power hungry fantasies.”

Yue chuckled at your words. “But now you’re engaged. To Hahn! You hate him!”

“I don’t hate him!” you exclaimed, earning a challenging look from your sister. “Okay he’s not my favorite person but at least he’s nice to look at. That’ll make being married to him somewhat easier. Besides, you would’ve been miserable with him.”

“But you had a chance at happiness,” she countered. “You could’ve had a chance with Sokka!”

The boy in question choked on his spit at Yue’s words, looking at you with disbelieving eyes. Katara’s jaw dropped, not believing that his brother had somehow managed to woo not one, but two princesses. You blushed as you swatted Yue, silently berating her for exposing your feelings.

“No, he likes you. Even if I had a chance with him I would never forgive myself for being with him when I knew you liked him,” you spoke softly, your gaze not leaving Yue. “That’s why I had to do this. Without Hahn, you’re free to be with whoever you want. I already cleared this up with dad. Your happiness means the world to me Yue, and as long as you’re happy, I will be the happiest woman in the world.”

Yue looked up at you with glittering eyes before engulfing you in a hug. “Thank you. I just wish you had told me before you did it.”

“You would’ve told me not to,” you laughed, hugging her close. “But this is the happiest I’ve seen you since mom died.”

The two of you hugged tightly, Yue finally understanding why you had gone ahead and butted in to her engagement. The silence didnt last long however, as Sokka spoke.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” he began, a small smile spreading across his face. “But both of you like me?”

Katara rolled her eyes and smacked the back of his, causing everyone to laugh. “Shut up Sokka.”

“Ow!”

~

once again i apologize a million times for making the reader yue’s sister but this idea had been bugging me for so long and i really had to write this out.

~

taglist!

@mywigglybaby​, @musicalkeys

[catboymingi]

baby steps

navi/masterlist

pairing: mingi x reader

genre: a little humour, mainly angst & fluff; best friends to lovers

word count: way too many considering this was supposed to be a short piece (6.2k)

warnings: eating disorders! no disordered behaviour discussed in detail, but it is quite obvious what’s going on and there’s some disordered thought patterns mentioned, so please be careful! somewhat of fainting mention also? some language but not too bad!

mingi has to admit that maybe you’re not as okay as he thought, and you have to admit that maybe you’re not as strong as you thought.

mingi knew something was wrong when you’d turned off not only your first, but also your second and third alarm, staying in bed longer than you usually allowed him to be when he was over. he knew you were an early bird - you’d complained more than once to him about waking up incredibly late, and when he asked you when you’d woken up you said 07:30 or so. so for you to still be in bed at this time was very untypical and kind of worrying. he didn’t want to pressure you, though, so he just stayed in bed with you, though at this point you weren’t really in each other’s arms anymore, mainly because you’d shuffled to turn off your alarms and he hadn’t known if you wanted him to hold you. he didn’t know if it was his place to do so - you’d been best friends for a while now and hadn’t been shy about physical contact right from the start, but he knew you didn’t feel the way about him as he did about you. he had confessed, somewhen months ago, and you had given him an apologetic smile as you told him that he was an amazing guy but you just weren’t in the headspace for a relationship right now. and that was fine, your friendship had resumed with barely any change (he’d become a bit more aware of how he interacted with you, not wanting to make you uncomfortable) and there’d never been any awkwardness. but in situations like this it was hard for him to know what to do, what you’d be comfortable with, what would be too much. 

just as he had his thoughts you had yours, though yours were going in a whole other direction. you’d been trying to not let people see you were slipping again, but it got harder the worse you felt, and it was especially hard around mingi. you spent so much time together it was hard to keep your act up. it was hard to convince him that you’d already eaten, or that you had great food waiting for you at home, or that you felt a little sick so you didn’t want to. but you’d never told him about the underlying cause for your unwillingness to eat, so he didn’t double-check. maybe he should have. you were far from okay, but you didn’t want to worry him, so you didn’t tell him how you felt and what you were doing to yourself. no matter how much you would have needed him there for you, you knew that it wasn’t worth making him scared like that. he would be scared, definitely, he was a good friend, but just imagining the pained expression in his eyes if you ever told him had been enough to keep you from doing so. but today you felt weak, and disgusting, and you didn’t want anyone but mingi to ever see you again. he wasn’t even touching you at all, though, and you had no way to know that it was because he didn’t want to make you uncomfortable, so instead you convinced yourself it was because he’d finally realised how abhorrent you looked. and no matter how much you tried you couldn’t stop yourself from crying, trying so hard to keep quiet, but the way your body shook gave you away. it was dry, violent sobs, and mingi sat up in panic.

“what’s wrong?” the first words either of you had spoken that morning.

you didn’t reply. you didn’t want to hear him confirm what you thought the problem was. but you couldn’t convince him you were fine either, not having the energy to do anything but sob more. he was really worried now. he’d never seen you cry like this. he’d never genuinely seen you cry at all. but he still had no idea what to do, so he just looked at you. should he stroke your hair? should he hug you? should he leave? there was no way for him to find out other than to just ask you directly.

“what do you need?”

his voice was soft now, deep and calm, and it made you feel like maybe, just maybe, he didn’t despise you. so you gathered every ounce of courage left in your body (it really wasn’t a lot) and asked him to hug you.

he immediately did as asked, not saying anything of value, mainly making calming sounds until you stopped shaking like that, finally having stopped crying.

“do you want to tell what’s wrong? you don’t have to.” he was worried and just wanted to know what had caused this, but more than that he wanted you to be comfortable. 

you didn’t directly answer his question, instead apologising for something that had never even crossed his mind.

“i’m sorry i look like this. i’m sorry you have to be in public with me when i look like this.”

mingi damn near laughed as you said that, but stopped himself in consideration of the state you were currently in. he’d never even considered that you might feel this way - you’d always been nothing short of perfect to him, and his friends had on more than one occasion acknowledged how pretty you were, joking about how lucky he was to even be in the friendzone. but you did not seem to think the same way and he really didn’t know how to react, overwhelmed with the entire situation.

that didn’t help your insecurity at all, though, his silence seeming like confirmation to you. you grabbed the arm he’d wrapped around you when you asked him to and pushed it off you, having to face him for that but refusing to look him in the eyes. 

“y/n, what’s wrong?”, he asked again. he knew he had fucked up somehow now, but he still had no idea how to make you feel better at all.

“don’t touch me. please. i don’t want you to feel…” you stopped, too ashamed to even say the words.

“to feel what?” he probed, carefully, wanting to know what the problem was but not wanting you to feel pressured.

“like… this”, you pointed at yourself as you spoke, “the fat and just… everything.”

you hadn’t looked at him even once as you said that, so you didn’t see the expression of shock on his face. the last thing he’d expected to hear from you was that you were scared you were fat when he was convinced that if he grabbed your wrist too hard he might break it. it made sense now, though, your behaviour. the way you’d never worn anything short or tight when you were in public, and how it had taken you several months to let even mingi see you in a t-shirt. the way you kept declining his food. 

“you didn’t actually eat all those times you told me you weren’t hungry, did you?” it wasn’t an accusation, you knew it wasn’t. he was just asking. yet you felt like you’d been caught, you felt embarrassed to admit it.

“mingi…” you didn’t confirm it, but you didn’t deny it, and that made the answer obvious.

“i wish you’d told me.”

this surprised you. or, the way he said it did. he didn’t say ‘why didn’t you tell me’ or ‘you should have told me’, but ‘i wish you’d told me’. no blame at all. so you decided - subconsciously - that mingi could be trusted with this, that mingi was safe.

“you know i couldn’t. you’d worry.” again he doesn’t try to argue or convince you that of course you could have, instead pulling you into his chest and stroking your hair, trying to calm both you and himself.

“of course i worry.” he wanted to say more but didn’t know what. it felt like there were no right words for this situation, so he just didn’t say anything, focusing on holding on to you and trying to ignore just how small you were against him. not that you were that much shorter than him, but you just felt very small, and he cursed himself for not having realised there’s a problem earlier even though he’d been in this position with you countless times before. 

the two of you laid there in silence for a while, him still stroking your head carefully. at this point he wasn’t sure if you were even still awake, but it didn’t matter. he wasn’t going to let go. still, it surprised him when you spoke up.

“mingi?” he hummed in response, and you went on. “can you please forget about this?” this was not what he’d expected you to say, and it almost made him angry that you’d even suggest that.

“i’m not going to. not until you’ve stopped.”

“it’s not that easy.” the resignation in your voice apparent.

“i’ll take care of you. it’ll be fine.”

for some reason, this filled you with rage. both the prospect of being babied and (mainly, if you were honest) the thought of having to stop living like this.

“i’m not a child! i can take care of myself!” you pushed against his chest as you said that, not being able to move him but shuffling backwards some yourself. and now mingi’s frustration came to the surface as well.

“you can’t! you’re killing yourself with this!” 

“that’s not your problem!”

he watched you as you sat up, moving towards the foot end of the bed and getting off. or, trying to. as soon as you got up he noticed something was off, your arms were wailing slightly in the air, but that was your only movement. until your knees gave in. the argument was forgotten in that moment, all he cared about was making sure you were okay.

you felt his arms around you while your vision was still black. he pulled you into his lap, rocking you back and forth like a baby, his face pressed against your hair, whispering incomprehensible words against your skin. he was scared, and so were you.

“mingi…”

your voice sounded so weak it almost broke his heart. you were stammering, trying to figure out what it was you actually wanted to say, but you didn’t know. all you knew was that you were horrified. so you told him that.

“i’m scared, mingi. i’m scared that you’re right. that i won’t be able to stop until im…” you couldn’t say the last word, but he knew what you meant. until you were dead. he didn’t know what to say, though, just continuing to rock you back and forth.

“i don’t know how to stop. it’s not just ‘eat more and then you’re fine’. but people don’t understand. they try to make me eat all at once and then they say i don’t want to stop when i say i can’t. but it’s not that. it’s just overwhelming when there’s a whole plate and i’m supposed to eat it all and i know that if i won’t i failed but if i eat it all that’s only going to make it worse too because i wasn’t ready and it just feels like i can’t win. at least like this i know what to do.”

this was the first time you’d told someone how you felt. how scared you were. but you felt like you could trust mingi. like he’d understand, not the details of how you felt inside but just why it was so hard to get out of this. and he did.

“baby steps, then.” and, remembering your outburst earlier, he added: “if i can help. if you want me to.”

he smiled when he felt you nod. then, he gently slid you off his lap, only to pick you up right after and have you sit on the bed again. 

“how baby does the step have to be right now?” it wasn’t even like he’d said anything extraordinarily funny, but you couldn’t help but smile.

“some juice.”

“to your service.” he saluted (he’d seen the way you smiled and was determined to make you smile again) before leaving to get you what you wanted, hearing your laughter from behind him as he did so and unable to stop himself from smiling as well. then, he returned with your juice, settling next to you as he watched you drink. once you were done he took the glass from you and put it on the sink and you sighed in feigned annoyance at his refusal to let you do anything by yourself. deep down, though, you thought it was sweet. you hadn’t realised just how much you’d wanted - needed - someone to take care of you. but here he was, doing so when you hadn’t even asked him to.

//

and it continued like this. mingi all but refused to leave you alone, staying over at your place more than he slept at his own, causing his friends to make teasing remarks. going from baby step to baby step. he didn’t pressure you into doing more than you were able to, ever - if you said you couldn’t then that meant you couldn’t. but he also didn’t let you get away with behaviour he knew was you purposefully trying to worsen your situation. even so, his scolding was always kind and caring, never harsh or blaming.

you’d reciprocated his feelings even when he first confessed, but everything that was going on in your life had made it impossible for you to tell him. you hadn’t been lying when you said you weren’t in the headspace for it, and you just hadn’t wanted to burden him with what he was now doing anyway. you didn’t want to be a charity project for your partner, you wanted to be a girlfriend. and the fear of him not treating you like that, no matter whether that happened on purpose or not, had made you turn him down. but the more time you spent with him the more you realised just how much you appreciated him, his silly jokes, his goofy grin, his presence. he made it hard to feel bad. so you kept spending time with him, and while both of you knew that he wouldn’t be able to fix you it helped to just have him there while you were trying to fix yourself. mingi gave you strength without even doing anything. however you were certain that, after all these months without so much as an attempt at making advances, any feelings he might have had for you had been nothing more than a small infatuation and that things would get awkward if you were to bring yours up now. so you did your best to hide them and mingi didn’t notice anything. his friends did, though.

//

after several unsuccessful attempts at trying to get mingi to confess (again), they decided it was time to attack you. yunho and seonghwa had been sent on this mission - yunho because he was closer to mingi than the others, and seonghwa because it hadn’t gone unnoticed that mingi was babying you, and while they didn’t know the reason it wasn’t hard to figure out that something was wrong, so they wanted to send the oldest just in case. they approached you, knowing that mingi would be busy for a while (hongjoong had messaged him, saying that he needed some help), and you knew you didn’t like whatever they had planned when you saw their expressions.

“i don’t trust those smiles”, you greeted them, wary.

“y/n.” yunho’s voice came out as more of a sing-song than a normal greeting, and it was now you were certain that you really didn’t like whatever they had planned for you.

“what do you want?” it wasn’t like you never spoke to mingi’s friends at all - you liked them and it seemed like they liked you, too, so you’d sometimes hang out with them as well when you met up with mingi -, but this was the first time they’d ever approached you when mingi wasn’t around.

noticing the suspicion in your voice, seonghwa decided that it might be better if he were the one to present their request to you.

“you’ve been spending a lot of time with mingi lately.”

“yes?” you didn’t know what he was getting at. of course you were spending a lot of time with mingi, he was your best friend?

“and you like him a lot”, he continued, waiting for your reply.

“he’s my best friend.”

“would you ever consider him as something different than just your best friend?”

okay, you didn’t like this. at all. what were they trying to do? did they know about your feelings? you decided to play clueless, just in case.

“how do you mean?”

by this point yunho had gotten tired of seonghwa’s guessing game and decided to tell you straight out what seonghwa had only hinted at.

“you like mingi. everyone knows.”

seonghwa sent him a glare that you were certain had the power to kill a man, but you were too shocked to say or do anything at all. everyone knew? did mingi..?

“mingi doesn’t”, seonghwa added as he saw your horrified expression. 

“and he won’t believe us when we try to tell him you do”, yunho added.

“you told him?!”

it was time to plan your emigration. which country was the farthest away from south korea, geographically speaking? how hard would it be to get citizenship there? what did a house in the smallest, most unknown village there cost, on average? would you- 

seonghwa interrupted. 

“he’s convinced you still don’t like him back, so he refuses to make a move. which is why we approached you, now.”

“hold on. refuses to make a move?” this was too much too fast; you felt like your brain was getting thrown around in a washing machine, hitting the walls with a ‘donk’ whenever either of the boys said anything more. 

your reply apparently confused them, yunho asked: “wait, i thought he’d confessed?” and you could see traces of uncertainty on seonghwa’s face as well.

“well, i mean, he did? but it’s been so long and he never brought it up again, so i just assumed it wasn’t a big deal.” really, you’d been convinced that he realised you weren’t good enough for him, but you weren’t about to tell the boys that.

“are you serious?” this seemed to be far from what yunho expected, judging by his tone of voice and expression. “he’s been giving you puppy eyes for ages now!”

“doesn’t he give everyone puppy eyes though?” you still weren’t convinced.

fearing that yunho would absolutely lose it from how oblivious you were seonghwa decided to speak up again.

“he tends to, but he only gives us puppy eyes when he wants something. with you, puppy eyes are on 24/7.”

“so what do you want?” even though you didn’t believe them about mingi’s feelings for you you decided that having them get to the point right away would spare you from even more embarrassment. 

“we want to set you up”, yunho said bluntly, once more almost making your eyes pop from their sockets.

“it’s a little frustrating to see how both of you stare at each other longingly all the time but neither seems to notice that that’s what’s going on”, seonghwa elaborated, hoping to get your eyes to return to their anatomically appropriate size.

“do you have a plan or were you just coming to me with the thought ‘if we tell her mingi has feelings for her without providing any proof, maybe she’ll make a fool of herself and confess’?”

you didn’t mean to sound passive aggressive, but you realised that you did as soon as the words were out. lucky for you, though, the boys seemed to understand where you were coming from, and just nodded.

“we do have a plan, actually.” seonghwa was the one to reply, but you were looking at yunho upon whose face a mischievous smile had made its way.

“considering the way yunho is looking at me right now i don’t think i like that plan”, you tried to back out, but it was too late. you had implied your willingness to go along if a plan existed and they were determined to finally end mingi and you’s mutual pining.

“it’s a good plan!”, the reason for your concern defended himself. “you just have to play along.”

“shall you enlighten me, then, oh genius one?”

your words held some sharpness, but your voice softened the blow, showing that you were not as opposed to confessing at all as your words implied.

“okay so we were thinking…”

as they explained what they - together with the other five boys that were impossible to get rid of whenever you hung out with mingi at his place - had come up with you had to admit that maybe, just maybe, they weren’t going to send you on a suicide mission. you hated to say this, but their plan was actually good. so, after asking another four times if they were really absolutely completely 100% sure that mingi felt the same way about you as you did about him and after having them promise that you wouldn’t have to do anything other than being in the right place at the right time, you agreed.

//

they’d never told you when they were planning on making their masterplan become a reality, though. so when you, roughly two weeks later, saw that hongjoong had sent you a message during the night (which you saw while you were trying to turn your alarm off before mingi would wake up, so your base state was already one of mild panic), you got a bad case of nerves. you’d expected at least a little more time to mentally prepare. you got less than a day’s notice! but it didn’t seem like you had a choice, all you could do was accept your fate.

“y/n?” so much about trying not to wake up mingi. he scooted closer, pulling you back into his chest, almost making you drop your phone and hit your chin on the edge of the bed in the process. 

“what time is it?” he was barely awake and you knew that he’d kill you if you told him that you’d woken him up at 5 in the morning just because you were too slow in turning your alarm off. 

“if i say seven will you believe me?”, you tried, sounding more nervous than appropriate. but how couldn’t you be after seeing hongjoong’s message?

mingi just hummed in reply, the low ‘mmm’ turning into a laugh as he decently wrapped his arm around you. you felt yourself relax into his touch as you always did, and pushed the thought of what was to come to the back of your head. but unlike the giant behind you (who you were certain had re-entered the land of dreams in the span of five minutes) you were not able to fall asleep again. so while your next alarm came as a curse to mingi it came as a blessing to you.

“mingi, you need to wake up.” he mumbled something that sounded suspiciously much like ‘just five more minutes’ and you started laughing. 

“you can have as many minutes as it takes me to get ready, that okay?”

he still didn’t seem pleased but released you from his embrace, making it possible for you to leave the bed to get ready. you didn’t particularly hurry, but when you got back it seemed like mingi hadn’t moved at all.

“time’s over!” 

no reply. had he fallen asleep again? you moved closer to check, leaning onto the mattress with one hand as you tried to shake him awake with the other. he wasn’t asleep, though, as you had to find out when he pulled your arm out from under you and causing you to fall onto the bed, which he took as his opportunity to trap you in his arms again. 

“why are you so horrible!” he knew you didn’t mean this, your laughter giving you away. 

“it’s in the job description”, he simply replied, though he was laughing as well.

“can i fire you?”

“you wouldn’t. who’s going to baby you if you kick me out?”

“touché.”

//

it continued like that the entire morning, bickering about every single thing up until you had to part ways to go to class. and as soon as you did so your anxiety returned. the boys had asked you for your weekly class schedule, and you assumed they’d done the same with mingi if they hadn’t already memorised it, and hongjoong’s message had made it clear that they’d put their plan into action after your classes today. so it was near impossible for you to concentrate, instead worrying about how mingi would react.

it was both a relief and a cause for panic when your last class ended. soon you’d no longer have to worry but up until then your worry increased exponentially with every second that passed. yunho was waiting for you, a massive grin on his face as he told you to follow him.

“at least one of us’s excited.”

he rolled his eyes, turning around to make sure you saw. he didn’t give you a snarky remark, though - honestly, he could understand you. it was easy for him to be excited when he knew it was going to work out, but you didn’t have that certainty. even though you should, in his humble opinion. 

unlike you, mingi had absolutely no idea what was awaiting him. so when his entire friend group (minus yunho, who was busy dragging you along without any consideration for the difference in leg length and the resulting difference in walking speed, and seonghwa, who was waiting at the final destination) stood in front of his classroom, he knew something was up. and he started to get incredibly nervous when they told him to come along while refusing to tell him why. but he did as asked (or ordered to - it didn’t feel like he had much of a choice), following them with no idea about the destination.

both you and him were surprised to see that you’d been taken to mingi and the boys’ shared apartment. mingi because really, that’s what you acted like this for?, and you because this had not been part of the plan. mingi arrived first, with yunho and you coming in shortly after. when you saw everyone gathered in their living room you sent glances from yunho to seonghwa to mingi to seonghwa to hongjoong, your gaze darting around aimlessly until wooyoung decided to speak up.

“dear guests, we have gathered here today to make these two clueless idiots stop acting like annoying teenagers. thank you.”

the boys couldn’t suppress a laugh as the orator walked towards mingi, handing him an envelope, seonghwa mirroring his actions and giving an identical one to you.

“what’s going on?” mingi seemed at least as confused as you were, and you appreciated his question. you, too, wanted to figure out what on earth was happening right now.

“you’ll see.” wooyoung was enjoying this situation too much for your liking.

“we’ll go get lunch now”, seonghwa informed you, and with those words the seven devils left you and mingi alone in awkward silence.

“what’s the envelope for?”, you asked after a minute of painful avoidance of eye contact and refusal to move.

“no idea. should we check?” 

you nodded, glad to finally have something to do, hoping the tension would lessen once you knew what this was about. but you were a lot less glad as you saw what they had put into the mysterious envelope. it was a print of someone’s chat history with mingi (one of the boys, you assumed), where they were talking about how mingi should confess to you because it was starting to get frustrating to watch your mutual pining, to which the alleged piner said that he wouldn’t because you definitely didn’t feel the same way and he didn’t want to ruin your friendship. this was nice, this you were glad to read, getting confirmation that he reciprocated still. what wasn’t nice was the realisation that you had had a similar conversation with seonghwa, over chat, and that mingi was most likely staring at the printed counterpart to his indirect confession.

“please tell me they didn’t put in yours what they put in mine.” 

he had no idea how to best describe the emotion in your voice, but he was certain it was the exact same one he was feeling right now as he realised just what their plan had been.

“i’m certainly not looking at cat pictures”, he attempted to joke, and you groaned in response, turning away from him because really, this was embarrassing as shit.

“anyway, it was nice knowing you, i’ll be taking the next flight that takes me away from here”, you told him while walking towards the door, but he stopped you, quickly moving to block your way.

“i can pretend i didn’t read this if you pretend you didn’t read it either”, he offered with an awkward smile, still not moving away.

“nope, sorry, too embarrassing, i’ll never be able to look you in the eyes after this.”

“you act like you’re the only one who’s been exposed.” 

if this wasn’t mingi you’d be scared that he was angry at you for making it seem like this was all about you and your feelings, but this was mingi, and you knew he was just trying to make you feel better.

“it’s not the same!”, you defended yourself. “you’ve said this before so it’s not embarrassing, and you’re way out of my league so i’m lucky if there’s even the slightest chance you might like me while me thinking you might actually still like me is just embarrassing.”

“wha- it’s not! i’m not! i’ve been”, he checked the chat for the term seonghwa had used in his message, “giving you puppy eyes forever!”

you couldn’t stop yourself from laughing at this, him looking at the paper like he’d forgotten his lines, and any tension that had been between you quickly subsided.

“no but for real, this is embarrassing”, you said after you’d calmed down enough to form full sentences again.

“i can’t believe they did this”, mingi agreed, though he was smiling.

“they didn’t tell me this was their plan!” 

he laughed at how appalled you sounded before double checking something you said.

“you knew they had a plan?”

“kind of”, you admitted. “but it definitely wasn’t this. they told me they’d planned something cute! not something embarrassing.”

“what do you mean?”, though it was slowly starting to dawn on him.

“seonghwa and yunho kind of convinced me to confess, but i didn’t expect them to be this ruthless!” the more you thought about it the more embarrassed you got.

“my offer still stands”, he said, making you look up at him in surprise.

“i can still pretend i didn’t see this and you can do whatever you were planning to.” the smile on his face was impossible to miss, but you had to let him down.

“no, it’s too embarrassing now”, you whined and your best friend couldn’t help but laugh at that.

“don’t laugh at me!”, you scolded, lightly hitting his arm.

“can i do it then?”, he said hurriedly, and now it was him who couldn’t look you in the eyes. you were certain he’d said something embarrassing based on his reaction, but you were still too caught up in your own shame to realise what he was talking about.

“what do you mean?”

“you know… confess.” the last word was barely above a whisper, but you heard him regardless, and his reply took you by surprise.

“if you want to?” you tried to play it cool but your heart was racing at the prospect of his possible next words.

“alright.” 

he cleared his throat before looking at you, but as soon as he started speaking his gaze went from your eyes to your forehead, knowing it’d be impossible to say what he wanted to if he was looking into your eyes the whole time. 

“you know i’ve like… said this before, right? that i kinda like you. or, not kinda. but you know. and you said you weren’t in the position to…”, he stopped to find a wording that would get his point across without being too embarrassing, “do anything about it? yeah. and that’s fine and i never brought it up again because you said that and it really didn’t seem like your position had improved lately”, you grabbed your own hand at the memory of how you’d almost fainted right in front of him, “so i didn’t think that you’d want me to say anything. but it’s not changed. how i feel, i mean. so…”

he stopped talking, finally daring to look you in the eyes again but immediately moving his gaze away again and biting his lip. you were waiting for him to say more, felt that he wasn’t done yet, but he remained silent.

“you were right, this is embarrassing”, he finally said, a short, forced laugh accompanying his words.

“would it be less embarrassing if i told you i only turned you down because i didn’t want you to have to deal with all this? you know, my… position.” now it was your turn to look away as you elaborated.

“i knew you’d worry and i knew you’d care and i didn’t want to have to tell you. but it would’ve felt wrong to keep it secret if i hadn’t turned you down. but now you know anyway. so i guess i don’t have a reason to turn you down now?” you laughed awkwardly. why was talking about feelings so hard and weird?

“so are you going to accept my hand in boyfriend-girlfriend relationship?” he held out his hand as he pretended he was joking, but you knew he was serious. still, it made you laugh, genuinely this time.

“why are you so awful?”, you asked, smiling up at him who was staring down at you anxiously until you grabbed his hand. “but i want to know the terms and conditions.”

“you accept?” he really really wanted to be sure, and when you nodded the brightest smile he’d ever given you lit up his face.

“first, you have to accept that i’ll introduce you to everyone as my girlfriend now. objections?”

you pretended to think, teasing him with a long ‘hmmm…’ and a melodramatic thinking pose before you smiled at him and said: “i can deal with that. anything else?”

“nothing i can think of. for now”, it was his turn to tease you now. “except…”

you looked at him questioningly and found him avoiding your eyes again. 

“except?”

“if it’s fine with you i kinda want to kiss you.” his voice got more quiet again as he said those last words, and you wondered if he’d always been this adorable or if this was a recent development.

“go ahead.” 

it surprised you that you were able to get that out as relaxed as you did when your insides felt tangled up, like someone was doing acrobatics in your stomach. but that thought quickly faded into nothingness when mingi leaned in, slowly as if he was trying to see if you were actually serious about it, before kissing you. 

as soon as his lips touched yours it felt like things had finally fallen into place. you gave his hand (which you were still holding from his awkward proposal earlier) a firm squeeze and you could feel him smile against you which made you smile as well. you just stood there, kissing and smiling and being comfortable, and everything felt right.

that was, until someone opened the door. or tried to, rather - you and mingi were still standing in front of it from when he had prevented your embarrassment-motivated emigration earlier. it bumped against mingi’s back and yeosang’s head could be seen peeking into the apartment.

“we should’ve taken a little longer. they’re doing pg-rated things”, he informed the others, who were without a doubt waiting right behind him and curious to see if their plan had worked. embarrassed, you moved away from your now boyfriend, who followed suit to allow his friends to actually enter the apartment.

“i told you it would work!” 

wooyoung seemed triumphant, and you soon knew why when he looked at yeosang and told him: “you owe me fried chicken now.”

“so this was your plan?”, you asked innocently, and he was too excited about the free meal that was to come to notice the look in your eyes.

“it was!”

“i’m gonna kill you.”

[prettywordsyouleft]

Experimental

Summary: As a scientist, it was up to Changkyun to ensure the variables in this experiment remained controlled. The last thing he expected was to become part of the experiment himself.

Pairing: Im Changkyun x reader

Genre: vampire au / co-workers to lovers au

Warnings: a snippet of vampire sexual urges but it’s all really tame tbh.

A/N: The final week of Frightful October is here! Welcome to The Classics! Who doesn’t love a good vampire story, huh? And because I forever enjoy writing Changkyun and science together, let’s continue that trend here!

Word count: 4059

[Frightful October Masterlist]

It all happened quite fast really.

One day, Changkyun was human and the very next day he was a vampire. Waking up in his new form had initially confused him. Much like Peter Parker in the Spiderman series, once the venom had run throughout his body, the physical attributes were the first sign to his change. Changkyun sat up in his bed, his vision increasingly sharper than it had been the day before. Rubbing at his eyes, he returned to staring at the curtains, letting out a yelp when the skin over his face started to feel overly hot with the stream of morning light hitting it.

Unlike Peter Parker, Changkyun’s changes didn’t excite him about being some amazing superhero with heightened abilities.

Instead, he let out a curse. An incredibly long, unintelligible string of profanity actually, dashing out of his room and into the bathroom with haste. He should have been more concerned, but he laughed incredulously as he swore again, no longer capable of seeing his reflection in the mirror at all.

And that was when Im Changkyun realised his experiments had adopted a very different variable that he hadn’t been prepared for.

“Are you alright?” you asked when Changkyun arrived in the lab two hours later, glancing up from the microscope you were observing slides of the specimen under and frowning. “Your skin looks deathly pale.”

With another bitter laugh, Changkyun nodded, slipping on his lab coat and coming over to your side. He knew enough about the blood you were working on together now that he expected the burning before he even took a single step forward. But it was unimaginable how overwhelming it all got. He could hear your heartbeat, steady and strong. Your blood was rushing through your veins, flowing down forks and pathways at a rate he had never anticipated. He could sense your next slightest movement before you made it and you suddenly had a scent permeating off your body he had never smelled before.

It was so delectable, he could almost taste it.

Still, to you, Changkyun appeared sluggish, perhaps a little unwell. His sudden transformation overnight was unbeknownst to you and you merely smiled warmly at him when he was close enough.

Far too close for a newly turned vampire, he thought.

“I’ve been monitoring the slides you made last night and there have been some evolving cells in slide seven,” you explained, picking it up and placing it under the microscope. Changkyun had seen it before you had placed it down, blinking rapidly at being able to pick it up without the assistance of equipment. Still, he humoured you, stepping in front of the instrument and looked down into it.

Of course, there had been some improvement. The hybrid cells had formed thanks to him and the mishap he had last night.

At first, he hadn’t wanted to admit he had made a mistake. As the head scientist on this project, he knew more than anyone else about the impacts of the specimen you were working with. Whilst there was no vampire present in this lab – or at least, there hadn’t been until now – the blood was potent enough that if a single drop touched human skin, it would end up being a fatal experience.

And then you’d wake up a vampire, just as he had.

It wasn’t even that simple. He had been on the brink of discovery, focusing on the cell structure in slide number seven that was showing possible indications on how to duplicate it enough to create a cure. Whilst vampires only made up 5% of the world’s population, the primitive creature comforts of drinking from the necks of victims was now in for a modernised revision. There was a market for medical research, to help vampires live more comfortably alongside humans. No more sucking them dry or using up blood banks that were exploiting the not-so mythical creatures for all they were worth. Instead, they would offer a synthetic drug with components that allowed the vampire to exist peacefully in a world run by humans. It wouldn’t cure them completely, but if taken regularly, it would keep the carnal urges at bay, allow them to walk in sunlight and even share normal interactions with humans.

He had been so close with a breakthrough, only to taint it with his own blood instead.

Looking at the slide, he could see the cells had morphed, enhanced by his blood that it had absorbed. Essentially, he had fed the deprived specimen when his finger had slipped whilst working last night, and whilst he had been focusing more on himself and trying to not get infected, he had abandoned the slide’s immediate changes.

Now up close, it looked beautiful.

“I don’t know how such a change could have happened,” you mentioned with confusion, lifting your hand to rest on his upper arm as you would often do in the lab. However, he knew it was about to happen and stepped away before you could touch him, your perplexed expression deepening at his jittery behaviour. Your eyebrows knitted together. “You okay?”

“Just watch that slide for me. Do not touch it with your hands.”

You rolled your eyes. “Who would be dumb enough to do that? That’s why we have specialised equipment, Kyun.”

“Of course. I’ll be up in my office if you need me,” he mumbled, leaving you on the lab floor and taking to the stairs in the corner, hurrying up them and into his sanctuary. Once the door was shut, he ran a hand over his face irritably, soon pulling away to inspect his finger. The cut was gone, as he expected it would be but still, it piqued his curiosity. As a scientist, it was an innate skill to always ask questions of the problems presented to him. He couldn’t understand how he had changed into a vampire when his actual finger hadn’t touched the slide. What had been contaminated by the blood before his wound happened? The outside of his gloves? Your chiding answer repeated in his head, and Changkyun replayed last night’s hours spent in the office. He marvelled at the speed in which his brain functioned, the clarity of his memory now exceptional. It was as if he was rewinding through CCTV, finding the moment of his accident and watching it unfold in his mind once more. He had been using the equipment expected of his team. Although his attention was definitely not on what was happening around him, and that was where the fault lied. He recognised there was more than one slide infected, leaping up from his chair and raced down the stairs right as you glanced up at him in horror.

“Changkyun, slide four is empty!”

He already knew where it had gone.

Explaining his mishap wasn’t something he wanted to do. Especially since he was now a vampire. He didn’t know what this variable meant to this team. Would you freak out and tell the officials? Were the past five years of his endless research about to go to waste now that he wasn’t effectively alive? Changkyun knew he couldn’t risk that, and yet he had no option but to let you know considering this project was as important to you as it was to him.

“You’re being really weird today,” you told him as he pulled you aside from your panic over the missing specimen, whining at his hand on yours. “Are you running a fever? You’re ice cold.”

“I’m dead.”

“Ha-ha, very funny, boss,” you replied, rolling your eyes. Changkyun didn’t respond and when you were done with your dry humour, you stared at him, unblinking.

“It was a mistake,” he mentioned weakly, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly. “I wasn’t paying enough attention and-”

“Slide four?!” you exclaimed, looking him up at down as if you would find a visible sign on him. There was already enough physical evidence before you, but it didn’t give you the clarity you sought out in your current state.

“Slide seven is contaminated with my blood,” he told you and then heaved a deep breath. “Slide four contaminated me.”

“You’re really dead?”

“Want to grab a stethoscope and check for the lack of beats in my heart?” he offered dryly but you had already grabbed at his wrist, checking for his pulse. You dropped his hand with a dramatic gasp when you found no living signs within his body and Changkyun sighed.

“You’re… you’re a vampire?” you whispered and he nodded. “Really? You’re dead?!”

“So now we have this established-”

“Oh my God, Changkyun, you can’t be a vampire!” you wailed, tears springing to your eyes. You appeared to be in mourning of his loss of life and for a moment, he softened, reaching out to pat your back gently. You glanced up at him through the veil of your emotions, your expression changing. You then thumped him on the chest. “You absolute idiot!”

“Was that meant to be an attack? It felt like a fly landed on me,” he mused and you growled at him, thumping him again. Chuckling at your now weakened attack on his body, he allowed you to hit him three more times before he suddenly took your hands hostage, quirking a warning eyebrow at you. “Now, don’t excite me too much, Y/N. We don’t know what my new skills can do.”

“I can’t believe how stupid you are. Of all the people, who preached on and on about keeping the experiments stable and safe, it’s you who gets infected. Are you sure you didn’t just do it on purpose? Oh, look at me, the scientist vampire!”

“Okay, that’s enough,” he grumbled, all humour evaporated as he stared at you darkly. “Accident or not, I’m still your boss. And this is my experiment I’m leading. We’ve just got a new variable in place now.”

“Instead of using slides, I can use you?” you offered sourly, folding your arms across your chest. “Here, you didn’t have a vampire specimen in the flesh before, now you can use me.”

“Are you done?”

“No, I’m still frustrated,” you admitted with a heavy breath, looking up at him soon after. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Well, I don’t know. My studies tell me that I should be okay until I’m hungry.”

“Which is when? Should I go get you some blood? I think we have some in the chiller. What type do you fancy? A, O-positive?”

It all sounded so unfathomable to him right then and he merely glared at your rambling.

“What? I need to keep myself safe too. Soon you’ll be telling me how delicious I smell and want me to offer up a wrist or something.”

Changkyun swore for the umpteenth time today. “You do smell better than any meal I’ve ever had.”

You gaped at his announcement, but he merely moved to the chair behind his desk, shaking his head. “But I’d be damned if I ever drank a sip of your blood.”

Three days after his transformation, you had calmed down enough to see the benefits of having a vampire in the lab. Of course, Changkyun was concerned about the changes to his body and requested a full examination before your thoughts ran off with you. He did agree with you, advances on the research would be faster with his newly gained immortality. A test subject would be needed eventually, and this way he would be able to control the experiments on the subject since it would be himself.

Still, initial findings were needed.

“Okay, strip,” you instructed gleefully, Changkyun darting his focus to your wicked expression. “What, I need access to your body to get in-depth analysis, boss.”

“There’s no need to sound so exceptionally excited about it. There’s nothing major to uncover,” Changkyun grumbled, unbuttoning his shirt all the same. Your avid watch soon changed, the further his body appeared on display, the deeper the blush on your skin became. He smirked. “Or maybe, there is something to be excited over.”

“Who knew an overworked scientist would find enough time to hit up the gym,” you breathed, supposedly out of hearing. Though you realised his improved hearing had picked up on your admiration and you coughed loudly, turning away from him to gather your equipment and hopefully some more composure.

“What’s first?” he asked as he sat with his legs dangling over the edge of the examination table, and you turned far too quickly, his hand reaching out to stabilise you. He quirked an eyebrow at you. “Are you fit to examine me?”

“Get over yourself, of course I am,” you muttered, taking a deep breath. Staring up into his eyes as opposed to his naked torso, you listed off all that you wanted to check. The basic stats had already been kept on record since his change, Changkyun monitoring his own health. Of course, apart from the whole lack of a heartbeat and aversion to sunlight, he felt physically perfect.

And your findings supported this. “The x-rays show no abnormalities and your reflexes are off the charts. Sight is far superior than before and you aced your hearing exam. Only one thing left.”

“Ultrasound?” he concluded and you nodded. He moved onto the examination table again, resting into the back support that you had raised up so he could watch your findings. You wheeled the machine over and started setting up; now relatively quiet for someone who normally had a lot to say.

“Is it all becoming too much for you today, doctor?” he teased and you glanced at him, your expression vulnerable. Changkyun frowned, wondering what you were thinking of.

“Is it true about the uncontrollable sexual desires?” you asked softly as you gently dabbed gel onto the points of his bare chest that you would use to help the wand glide over his skin. You dare didn’t look up, but the rosy flush to your skin was enough to excite Changkyun.

Still, he shrugged in answer. “I’ve been a vampire for three days, what would I know about it?”

The truth was he was acutely aware of the multitude of urges of his new existence. Not only did he track your vitals constantly, but he had vivid fantasies over how he wanted to hear your heart rate spike from him bending you over the table behind you. He wanted to take you as his own and carry you through elicit passion until your human body could no longer continue.

Then again, Changkyun didn’t quite need to be a vampire to have sexual fantasises over you. He’d been having them for as long as he had known you, just not to the extremes they were at now. And he had never been bold enough to act on any of them.

He wondered how long he would be able to hold out on them now.

“I guess it’s another myth. We’ll have to cross it out of our studies.”

“There’s no need to be that hasty, Y/N,” he breathed, arching under the feather-like touch of the wand on his chest. He was annoyed that it wasn’t your hand instead; his desires now heightened thanks to your opening of the topic. Glancing away from your sudden look in his direction, he tapped at the screen. “I want a full study of my heart. That is the one area we need more information on. The findings we have suggest it’s the heart that stimulates the disease so let’s start with that.”

“Of course,” you answered firmly, picking up the task and expertly examining the inner areas of his chest. As you worked, Changkyun tried to focus on any findings of his own. Instead of his chest, he watched you. Were you comfortable with his new form already? You showed no fear towards him, that was evident. But could he trust that you would protect his identity from the higher-ups? That part he hadn’t quite figured out yet. He was prepared to close the experiment down if it kept you safe, and open a private case-study away from here to focus on ways to improve his condition.

But having you onboard had always been a requirement for his studies and without you, he didn’t know what he’d do.

“You’re right; I believe the vampire qualities stem from your heart. I’ll need to study the new slides of your blood cell count, but for now, I am seeing several abnormalities to your heart.”

Changkyun didn’t answer, too lost in staring at you. What more would he have to give up to have you stay at his side? He couldn’t be cliché and say he’d give up his life for you. That was already taken away. But could he exist away from you? His brooding intensified, so focused on his thoughts that when your hand touched his bare chest, he flinched, reacting out of instinct.

You were underneath him on the table in lightning speed, both arms pinned under the weight of his hands. Despite your wide stare, you weren’t frightened at all. He was breathing heavily over you, panting from the outburst.

“Changkyun, did you lie?” you asked softly, your dry swallow echoing in his ears. “It’s not a myth is it?”

“Vampire or not, desires about you have always been there, Y/N.”

“Will you do anything about it?” you hoped, lust surfacing in your gaze. He could take you right there and then. Fulfil all he wanted to, answer every craving.

Instead, he climbed off of you, shaking his head in rejection.

“We need to know all about how I work first. I’m not risking your safety just because I want you.”

You had always been a hard worker, yet since the heated moment during his examination, you were further dedicated to your work. From the first moment you stepped into the lab, you were right to it, taking notes on the slides you were monitoring. You requested more examinations throughout the week, and barely stopped to eat lunch and dinner from being so consumed with your studies.

If Changkyun hadn’t been the subject, he would have been thrilled at your determination and work ethic.

However, he was growing concerned by the day. The discoveries made were all positive, but working so closely alongside you was giving him quite the headache. He was wrestling with his morals, the wickedness of his vampire side battling with the remnants of the human mind. He craved more of you as each hour went by.

It was soon the weekend and Changkyun had given you the day off, spending his own in the lab. The artificial lighting made him feel as if he was still able to function, knowing that he couldn’t join you in running into town to get the groceries since the sun was out. He realised even if you did love him back that your relationship couldn’t be normal now. No dates, not unless they were at night. He couldn’t just go out anywhere either, triggered by the slightest changes around him. Being relaxed and carefree with you was basically impossible.

When one touch from him could crush you.

The weather had turned by the time you arrived back, your clothes sodden as you stepped into the lab, heading for the kitchen to put away your purchases. Just looking at you heated him completely and he snapped the titanium instrument in his grasp in two as if it was a toothpick. You reappeared, gasping at his predicament, blood dripping from his hand.

“Changkyun, you’re bleeding!” you cried, dashing over and he backed off just as fast, pressing himself into the wall. He felt an imprint forming behind him but he didn’t care, watching you to ensure your movement stilled. Looking away to the blood on the table, you went to clean it when he hissed.

“Y/N, leave the lab, now. Go shower and change and I’ll clean this up.”

“But you’re hurt-”

“NOW!” he roared and it was enough for you to back off, turning on your heel and racing towards the exit. He could smell the change in your mood, frightened by him for the first time since he became a vampire. Now out of his sight, he slumped onto the floor, hanging his head.

Nothing could be normal between you as a couple.

The next day you didn’t appear in the lab, and Changkyun didn’t call you down either. He focused on watching over the four slides he had been experimenting with and not on the tears he would hear you shed from upstairs now and then. The weather was still storming outside, the sun nowhere in sight when he left the lab in the afternoon to retrieve a book from his room. Staring at the outside world, he felt compelled to walk out into it, smiling when the rain hit him. His skin didn’t burn or tingle, the sky cloudy enough that this world was safe for him to be out in. He didn’t know how long he walked for or how much he stopped and stared up at the heavens raining upon him, but when he heard your desperate cries behind him, he finally turned, noticing the tears in your eyes.

“Why are you out here?!” you asked, spluttering over your emotions. “Are you okay?!”

“I’m fine! The rain doesn’t hurt at all!”

“Really?” Sniffling back your tears, you stepped closer. “You’re fine?”

“I’m fine. It’s just the sun I can’t be out in!” He laughed, and you grinned, the shared moment easing some of the troubles between you both. You moved until your arms wrapped around his waist, firmly gripping at him so he wouldn’t push you off.

“I don’t want you to leave me,” you told him, pressing into his body further. “I can’t lose you.”

“It’s dangerous around me though, you saw how I was the other day.”

“We’ll figure it out; we’re both pretty good at solving puzzles.” Looking up at him, you squinted against the rain still falling upon you both. Changkyun angled his head enough so that the water didn’t fall onto your face. You beamed. “See, you just solved that problem.”

“You’re stupid for loving me, you know.”

“If it helps you any, I’ve loved you a whole lot longer before you became immortal, Changkyun.”

“Just don’t be like the typical female characters in movies who fawn over their vampire boyfriends like they’re something amazing. I’m still the quirky guy you’ve known since university.”

“I have to get a vampire boyfriend first and that’s been proving rather difficult,” you retorted, scrunching your nose up in disgust. “I basically threw myself at you and you denied me. Guess I’m too human for you now, huh?”

“It’s nothing like that,” he confirmed, cupping your face in his hand gently. “Though I do worry about hurting you.”

“Worse comes to-”

“Don’t finish that sentence; your heart has to keep beating.”

“Why?”

“Because it sounds beautiful,” he told you, leaning down to kiss you. It felt long overdue, the sweetness of your first embrace soon overwhelmed by a hunger that he was certain stemmed more from you than him. He was surprised by your eagerness, allowing you to call how long the kiss lasted. And when you pulled away, you grinned.

“You protect my heart and I’ll do whatever I can to make sure you can walk in the sun again.”

“That sounds like an unfair agreement. Do you know how much control I have to maintain when I’m around you?” he pointed out, taking your hand in his. Then he held up your linked hands and shook them. “I could break your hand right now.”

“You won’t,” you assured with a smile and Changkyun rolled his eyes. “You know, I could work on a way to make you stop existing if you piss me off too much. Scientist, remember?”

“And am I now your biggest subject?”

“I guess you could say that. I need to open up a new case study when we’re back at the lab.”

“What’s it about?”

“How to be a human in love with a vampire,” you told him, smiling demurely. “Reckon I’ll find out all the answers?”

“I’m not sure,” he mused, leaning down to kiss you again. “But you have a lifetime ahead of you to find out.”

_________________

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[capcarolsdanver]

Hanahaki

Request: hi, i love ur writing! could you maybe write a hanahaki au with reader x brie larson? (with a happy ending iM SOFT)

Pairing: Brie x Reader

A/N: Hey! I’m back!! Ok let’s be real I had to google what the hanahaki disease was because I’d literally never heard of it.. With that in mind, I hope what I’ve written is okay as this is my first experience writing/reading a story featuring it. Feedback as usual is always appreciated!

Please do not repost my writing anywhere without my permission.

You and Brie have been best friends for years. In fact, you’re so close that you’ve even attended several different award shows with her when she’s chosen not to bring a date. Whenever she does have a date to an event, or a partner in general, you do have to admit you feel something, though you weren’t sure exactly what to call it.

Through every one of her relationships though, Brie always knocks on your door when things go wrong, and you always feel a little guilty because of how glad you feel about her breakups. And it’s not like she ever neglects your friendship or doesn’t spend time with you when she’s in a relationship, but it just feels different when she isn’t dating anyone.

Obviously Brie has a busy schedule, so over the years you’ve gotten used to there being certain periods where she isn’t around so much. Right now, though, you haven’t seen Brie in about 3 months and you can’t even describe how much you miss her.

You’re sitting on your couch watching some tv when your phone rings, and you look at the screen to see that Brie is Facetiming you. You smile, quickly running a hand through your hair before you answer.

“Hey!” You say when Brie’s beaming face appears on your screen.

“Hey! I missed you and I’ve got a few minutes so I just wanted to see your face,” she rushes out, and you smile at her words.

“You’re a dork.”

“Yeah, but you love me anyways,” Brie shrugs with a cheesy grin on her face and you have to duck your head a little to cover the blush that suddenly covers your face without your control.

“How much longer until I see you?” You ask her, effectively changing the subject.

“Not much longer now. Another six weeks and we’re done filming.” You nod, quietly arguing in your head that six weeks actually does seem like too long, when a man approaches from behind Brie. He taps her on the shoulder and smiles at her.

“We’re heading back to set now.”

Oh, okay. Thanks,” she replies to him warmly and you narrow your eyes slightly at their interaction as the man nods and walks away.

“Who’s that?” You can’t help but ask and Brie looks back at you through her screen.

“Oh, that’s one of the sound guys. I’m pretty certain he’s got a thing for me.” She speaks casually and you feel a pang in your chest at the smile she wears on her face. “Okay, I’ve gotta go. Talk later?”

“Yeah, of course.”

You both say your goodbyes and when Brie hangs up you drop your phone on the couch next to you, completely lost in your thoughts.

Suddenly you feel a scratch at your throat and you try to clear it, but instead end up coughing, bringing your hand to cover your mouth.

When you move your hand away, you panic at the sight of a single flower petal resting in your palm. You look at it for a long moment, not really believing your eyes, before throwing the petal in the trash and trying your best to brush it off. You’ve been pretty stressed out lately so you probably just imagined it, or so you try to convince yourself.

------------------------

When you wake up in a coughing fit the next morning, you can’t even try to deny what you’re seeing as two more flower petals land in your palm. You really begin to panic now, grabbing your phone from your bedside table and bringing Google up to try to find out what the hell is happening to you.

Looking through your search results, you see several of the same answer. 'Hanahaki disease’. It’s something you’ve never heard of before, and the more you read about it the more it scares you. A condition that can occur when someone feels unrequited love. Flowers growing in the lungs. Unless the love is returned, or at least when the victim believes the love is returned, the disease can take the life of the person suffering from it.

You still have a hard time believing a disease like this can exist, but that scratch in your throat returns and you cough up yet another petal. You try to process all of the information you’ve just learnt, and you know there’s only one person that you love.

You didn’t realise you’d fallen so hard for Brie, but obviously you had. You make the decision then to not tell her. You’re sure she won’t return your feelings and you don’t want her to pity you.

So, you continue talking to her while she’s gone as if nothing is wrong. And every time you see that same sound guy appear near Brie whenever the two of you FaceTime, you lose just a little more hope. She doesn’t mention him to you at all, which you find somewhat surprising, but you just carry on as if everything is fine.

Your symptoms seem to progressively get worse as the weeks go by. You notice an almost constant scratching in your throat which you struggle to soothe, and when you cough up more flower petals, they’re often covered in drops of blood. You start to feel a constricting kind of tightness in your chest too as the flowers continue to grow inside your lungs.

When Brie is done filming, you head to the airport to pick her up. The moment you see each other, Brie grins and runs to you, meeting you with a strong embrace. You can’t help the wince you let out as she knocks the wind out of you and your lungs ache. Brie notices and is immediately pulling back.

“Sorry, did I hurt you?” She gets a good look at your face and her smile is quickly replaced with a look of concern. “Y/N, what happened? Are you sick?”

Over the weeks you’d watched yourself become paler and paler, deep dark circles forming under your eyes, so you know exactly what Brie is seeing and you know you can’t really hide any of it from her.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” you say, ducking your face away from her gaze a little. “I’ve just been a little under the weather the last couple weeks.” She looks you over before nodding and the both of you leave the airport.

You don’t ask about the sound guy and Brie still doesn’t mention him, so you aren’t sure whether to take that as a good sign or not.

------------------------

It’s been about a week since Brie’s return, and you find yourself lounging on your couch in your apartment feeling a little sorry for yourself. You’re ashamed to admit that you’d been avoiding Brie since she’d come home, trying to hide your illness from her for as long as possible.

You lift your head from where you’re lying on the couch when you hear a sound at your door and a few seconds later Brie walks in and stops in front of you, surveying you.

“Hey, I texted you. Did you not get it?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t checked my phone,” you mumble, dropping your head back to the couch. Brie watches you for a few long moments before walking to the couch and making your move your legs before she sits down and lets you rest them across her lap.

“Okay, well I wanted to see if you’d come on a hike with me.” She smiles hopefully at you and you let out a sigh.

“Brie, I don’t think I’m feeling up to it today.” Her smiles drops into a pout and her hands land on your legs.

“Please,” she begs, offering her best puppy dog eyes.

And really, how are you supposed to say no to her when she looks at you like that? That’s one of the reasons why you got in this mess in the first place. So you grumble as you get up from the couch and get changed out of your pyjamas.

------------------------

You just had to agree to go on a hike with the one person you were trying your hardest to keep your secret from, didn’t you? Of course you knew it was a bad idea. You just didn’t realise it would get thrown back in your face so quickly.

You’re not even that far into your hike yet but your lungs burn like nothing you’ve ever felt before. You fight the overwhelming urge to cough, leaving the hiking trail so you can stop for a moment. You reach a tree and rest your weight on it, trying to steady your breaths.

Brie is quick to follow you. She places a soothing hand on your back and tries to get a look at your face.

“I guess you really weren’t up for this today, huh?”

You’re still trying to catch your breath when you feel that familiar tickle in your throat and panic fills your body as you turn away from Brie. You can’t hold back your coughs any longer, and Brie watches in shock as petal after petal falls from your mouth.

“What the hell?” You hear from beside you. “Y/N, I think you need to go to the hospital. Come on, I’ll take you.” Brie’s words come out in a rush and her hand reaches your arm to lead you back down the hiking trail before you stop her.

“Brie, stop. It’s okay,” you say weakly.

“It’s okay?!” She says in complete disbelief, the expression on her face matching her words. “Y/N, you just coughed up literal flower petals.”

You know there’s no way to avoid telling her now. You have no choice. You let out a defeated sigh.

“If you take me home I’ll explain what’s going on.”

------------------------

“Hanahaki disease,” Brie repeats. She paces across the room, the same action she’s been doing since you told her about your illness, and watch her from where you’re seated on the couch.

“So we need to just make sure whoever you love returns that love, right? Who is it?”

“Brie, I’m not going to tell you. It doesn’t matter, anyway. I have a feeling there’s not really a chance my love will be returned.”

Brie stops pacing to look at you.

“You’re crazy if you believe that,” she mutters. “We have to at least try, Y/N.”

You stubbornly shake your head at her. “It’s not gonna happen,” you get out before you break into a coughing fit. Brie rushes to your side and gently rubs your back in an attempt to comfort you. By the time you finish coughing your hands are full of flower petals, which you drop into the small trash can you’d moved next to the couch when you were lazing there earlier in the day.

“You see what it’s doing to you?” Brie says, distress lacing her words. You use some hand sanitiser and take a generous drink of water from a glass before Brie grabs one of your hands.

“I can’t lose you.” You look up at her and see tears forming in her eyes. “You mean too much to me.” You hold eye contact with Brie for a long moment, her fierce emotion honestly taking you a little by surprise. You think you imagine it when her eyes fall to your lips for a second, but then she can’t seem to control herself as she leans forward to meet your lips with hers.

She kisses you with passion, purpose, and most importantly love and you feel your heart beat faster as you pull back from Brie. You look at her with wide eyes as you feel the tightness in your lungs begin to fade, the roughness of your throat soothing a little and your eyes swell with tears.

“Oh my god,” you breathe out and Brie must take it the wrong way as she pulls away from you completely.

“I’m sorry. I just ruined everything, didn’t I?” She speaks in a panic and tries to stand from the couch before you grab her arm, keeping her planted in her spot next to you.

“Are you kidding? You just saved my life,” you tell her, shock mixing with glee. Brie blinks at you a few times.

“I did?” She asks nervously and you nod at her, a shocked laugh escaping you. You grab at Brie, pulling her close to you again and leaning in.

“Wait,” you say before your lips can meet hers again. “What about the sound guy?”

Brie’s brows furrow in confusion. “What sound guy?” She asks, and the tightness in your chest completely fades.

“Never mind,” you say. You shake your head slightly at yourself before smiling shyly at Brie, finally closing the distance between the two of you again.

[taexual]

HOLIC - 23 | jb x reader

pairing: Im Jaebum x Reader

genre: enemies to lovers au | roommate au

warnings: fluff (has holic ever had fluff as a warning) ft. a soundtrack

words: 4.9k

disclaimer: i do not own the gif, please let me know if it belongs to you, so i can give proper credit

               prev / next

You’ve never been to a recording studio before, so you didn’t know what to expect but the building looked ordinary from the outside. Not that you were hoping for flashing signs or anything, but the lack of pretentious looking artists – which, okay, was exactly what you were expecting to run into – at the lobby was somewhat surprising.

“You look disappointed,” Jaebum remarked, walking next to you and pointing at the elevator before you could wander off on your own. “Jackson’s on the seventh. Let’s not take the stairs, I’m sick of the elevator in our building not working.”

You nodded, following him. “I’m not disappointed. I just wasn’t sure what I’d see here but it’s… kind of empty.”

“Everyone’s working. They don’t come here to hang out in the hallway,” he explained, pressing the elevator button. “It’s not empty, though. As soon as we’ll get off on the seventh floor, you’ll see many people hitting their heads against the wall, trying to write song lyrics. Been there, done that.”

“Did you write your song lyrics here, too?” you asked, unable to stop yourself. No matter how hard it was for him to speak about his music, you couldn’t help but want to know more. This was the most beautiful part of him – not the mysteriousness surrounding his songs, of course, but his love for music.

“Some of them,” Jaebum revealed, tapping his hand against the wall next to the elevator door, impatiently waiting for it to open. Once it finally did, he allowed you to enter first and then followed right after, pressing the button with the appropriate number on it. “I don’t usually write my songs in the hallway, though. I write the best while I’m talking to Jackson. He has ways of stimulating my mind until I find myself turning my emotions into words I could never voice otherwise.”

You were already starting to like Jackson even though you haven’t even met him yet – then again, you’d have liked anyone who supported Jaebum’s dream, to be honest – but you were still a little cautious. After finding Mark to be extremely endearing and even befriending him, you got into a fight with Jaebum that you did not want to remember or relive in any other way. Hence why you didn’t want to come off as too eager when it came to meeting Jackson – although, really, you were dying to see the guy who helped Jaebum create his music.

“Right here,” Jaebum guided you out of the elevator and down the hallway, which was – just like he’d warned – lined with various different people, all seated on the floor or laying against the wall, nodding to themselves, notepads or laptops on their laps, thick headphones on their ears. “Don’t look them in the eye.”

You sped up, following after him. “What? Why not?”

“The ones going through writer’s block will start asking you to give them random words,” Jaebum explained, “and once you start to help them, they’ll never let you leave.”

“Huh,” you carefully looked around the hallway. “I don’t think it’s so bad here. Maybe it’s in my blood to become a lyricist.”

Jaebum turned to look at you over his shoulder, his eyes drifting to your shoulder bag which you’d unzipped to get your camera out. “No. It’s in your blood to become a photographer. Now, come on.”

He stopped suddenly, opening the door on his right, and you were immediately met with loud music – which proved that each room in this building was soundproof and, therefore, no one would have had any idea about anything that was happening in there if they didn’t peak inside; it intrigued you, really – and, only after you followed Jaebum inside, did you notice a brown-haired guy, spinning around in an office chair, seemingly oblivious to your presence.

“Jackson,” Jaebum said, closing the door after you’d entered. He wasn’t too loud so you figured his friend wouldn’t hear him over the music, but Jackson whipped his head around immediately and smiled, standing up.

“Jae!” he shouted, his enthusiastic voice easing some of your anxiety. He gave Jaebum a half-hug and then pointed at you. “Is this the girl? It better be or else we’re going to start having problems about you bringing girls over to the studio.”

Jaebum groaned. “Yes, this is the girl. Don’t you see the camera in her hands? I don’t know any other photographers.”

“Well, that offends me deeply,” Jackson frowned, “I know I might focus on music, but I can find my way around a decent camera, too,” he turned to look at you, the teasing smile he’d used for Jaebum turning into a genuine one, “hi. I’m Jackson.”

“Hi,” you shook his extended hand and introduced yourself. “Sorry if I’m bothering you by being here.”

“Not at all! I get sick of being alone with Jaebum so it’s nice to have someone else here,” Jackson replied and you saw Jaebum roll your eyes.

“Sometimes I forget why he’s my friend,” Jaebum commented as Jackson patted his shoulder in mock-affection.

“I don’t know what you mean,” you replied to your roommate, grinning as you watched him interact with Jackson. “He seems great.”

“I like her!” Jackson declared, sitting down on his chair. Aside from being talkative and easy-going, he was starting to seem hyperactive as well. Each time you blinked, he was doing something else. “Are we having a photoshoot here? Fair warning, I haven’t really brushed my hair today, I was going for a natural look.”

“Uh, well—” you hesitated, glancing at Jaebum for help – he was too busy with the equipment of the control room as he tried to turn the music down – because you weren’t sure what you should have said. “I was just about to ask if it’s really okay for me to take pictures here. I’m not sure what I’m really doing, I just want to experiment, I guess. I don’t normally photograph people, so your face might not even be visible—”

“Oh, so it’s a whole different kind of photoshoot we’re talking about here, huh?” Jackson winked, giving Jaebum a look too – and earning a glare in return. “Well, the rest of my body is much more prepared for a shoot. I even skipped lunch for this.”

“You—”

“Stop messing around,” Jaebum warned him.

Jackson only laughed. “Come on, of course, it’s fine if you take pictures here. I’d love to see them once you’re done, too, if you won’t mind. I’m not a professional, but I have some photography background.”

“That’s a humble way to say his family basically owns Nikon,” Jaebum informed you.

“Uh-huh, and that’s why I am so upset to see a Canon in your hands,” Jackson nodded in the direction of the camera you were holding. “Is it any good? Did it come with this lens?”

“N-no, uh, I bought it,” you said, a little overwhelmed with everything but pleasantly surprised to find Jackson so friendly. Talking to him was like a breath of fresh air – not a single awkward moment passed between you and you’ve only met him a minute ago – and you understood that Jaebum probably purposefully chose to surround himself with people like this, because Mark was similar, too. “Would you like to see some of my old shots?”

“Yes,” Jackson nodded, not even checking what Jaebum was doing and instead, driving his office chair towards a settee by the wall of the room before indicating for you to take a seat on it. “I was just looking for a new lens for my own camera because last time, I ended up buying a fish-eye one by accident, and it’s only good for panoramic pictures. Now, while I don’t think I’m extremely bad-looking, you do not want to see what my selfies look like through a fish-eye lens.”

“Yes, because that’s the only reason why you’re looking for a lens,” came Jaebum’s input into the conversation, “to take selfies with your professional camera.”

“Absolutely,” Jackson replied, no shame in his voice whatsoever. “You have to immortalize this work of art.”

You chuckled, opening up the gallery on your camera and passing it to Jackson so he could go through it. You felt almost like you were showing your portfolio to an employer -- but if you wanted to take pictures in his studio, he had every right to know what kind of pictures you took usually -- which was nothing short of stressful.

Jackson was surprisingly quiet as he looked through your photographs, only nodding his head every once in a while, and humming something under his breath. You weren’t sure what he thought until he reached the final picture and then finally raised his eyes, passing his camera to you.

“They’re really good,” he said in an unexpectedly serious voice. Jaebum – who had already entered the studio booth and was now going through some papers – didn’t hear him, so Jackson turned around to find his friend behind the glass of the control room. “Hey, Jae! She is fantastic. You’ve never told me you knew a photography prodigy.”

Jaebum, popping his head out of the isolated booth, smiled proudly. “Jealous?”

“You’re the first talented person that has entered this studio,” Jackson told you, purposefully mocking Jaebum who just rolled his eyes—this was clearly Jaebum’s way of showing love to his friends—and returned to what he’d been doing before. “Do you perhaps sing, too?”

You laughed. “No. Not that I don’t love to yell at the top of my lungs.”

“We can work with that,” he said, giving you a smile before standing up from his chair. “You can fix your settings and go ahead and take pictures of anything you want, yeah? I’ll go check on Jaebum to make sure he doesn’t break anything.”

“I heard that!” came your roommate’s response from the booth.

“I was hoping you would!” Jackson countered, leaving you alone with your camera.

After adjusting the white balance and configuring the other basic settings to ensure the higher quality of the pictures in this specific setting, you began to photograph the room around you. Somehow, the dim lighting in the studio made the pictures come out looking almost amorous, but you went with it because, as you watched Jaebum explain his ideas to Jackson, it seemed to fit the mood.

Originally, you’d planned to only photograph inanimate objects but there were only so many pictures of the office chairs and the general equipment you could take before it started to seem repetitive, so you couldn’t help but allow your camera to wander to the two boys who had returned to the control room and were now busy arranging something that seemed like verses of a song.

Jackson was difficult to take pictures of because his movements were sporadic and unexpected. Also, he could feel the camera on him and kept on smiling, thus, ruining the natural look you were trying to go for. Jaebum, on the other hand…

As soon as your camera landed on him, you seemed to feel a wave of unexpected excitement wash over you as if you’ve been looking for something special about this room and now you’ve finally found it. Jaebum never ceased to pose – without realizing it – and even though only certain parts of his body were visible in the pictures – like his eye and the two moles you’ve admired since the first time you saw him, or his hand as he waved it around for more effect – you could almost hear the story he was telling in the pictures that you took.

Each photograph of Jaebum seemed to speak to you and even though you’ve never heard the songs he’s written before, you could sense the words and the melody just from the movement of his body alone. It was magical – he wasn’t even aware you were taking pictures of him and yet he created the most beautiful compositions by just existing. You barely had to do anything, just make sure that your hands weren’t shaking as you pressed the camera button over and over.

Somehow, you got so lost in the world Jaebum had created, you didn’t even hear Jackson calling out for you.

“Huh?” you mumbled distractedly after you captured his confused eyes as he stared right at the lens of your camera.

“You really enter a different realm when you take pictures, don’t you?” Jackson said, a good-natured smile on his face.

“Yeah, sorry,” you turned the camera off. “What were you saying?”

“I can’t listen to Jaebum complain about not liking the arrangement anymore,” Jackson said. “Do you want to hear the song and give us your opinion?”

Waves of hotness ran throughout your body at the offer. You’d waited so long for this and yet you couldn’t help but notice the way Jaebum covered his face as soon as Jackson finished talking.

“I-I mean, I would love that,” you said. “But if Jaebum doesn’t want—”

“Oh, who cares what he wants,” Jackson cut you off. “He’ll never get anywhere if he gets so bashful about his music. It’s good, man. I swear. She needs to hear it.”

You could tell that this wasn’t it – Jaebum wasn’t awkward about this because he thought his music was bad. He may have considered his songs good but not good enough. You went through the same thing each time you started to edit your pictures. They looked nice eventually, but there was always something you could add; little things that made a big difference. You were constantly afraid you’d miss those little things and end up being left with an average picture instead of an extraordinary one.

“I have the rough copy of it on my laptop,” Jackson added when his friend didn’t protest.

“Alright, I don’t want to be in the room when you hear it,” Jaebum said, standing up and looking at you. “No offense or anything, I just—you know.”

Before you could open your mouth and say anything – maybe even ask him to stay or offer to hold his hand or something so the obviously stressful experience of letting others listen to his music wouldn’t be so bad for him – Jackson started to speak.

“Yeah, well, go, then,” he encouraged, pointing at the door of the studio without turning away from his laptop. “We’re doing this whether you like it or not. It’s time.”

Jaebum looked at you as if waiting for your approval and once you gave him a small nod, he nodded back and then left. You weren’t sure what the silence between you two meant and you sure as hell had no idea if you hearing his song would change anything between you, but you found yourself feeling so nervous, your hands started to shake.

“Alright, here it is,” Jackson said after he heard Jaebum close the door. “It’s about his ex. It’s just the right amount of aggressive and sad. You’ll love it.”

You forgot how to breathe before Jackson even pressed play. You weren’t expecting Jaebum’s first song that you’d get to hear to be about Suji of all people, but if you really thought about it, it made a lot of sense. Jaebum constantly emphasized how bad he was at expressing his feelings. Perhaps the only way he knew how to pour his heart out was through music.

“It’s called Don’t Touch Me,” Jackson added and immediately after he stopped talking, you heard Jaebum sing the first words of the song, the combination of the sensuous melody and his voice sending shivers down your spine.

      ♪ Why on earth are you like this to me?

      ♪ What do you want? It's already over for me.

The lyrics were obvious and yet you blinked quickly, trying to hide your emotions because Jackson was watching you, eating up your reaction. You had a feeling that he could probably hear the sound of your heartbeat even over the music, though, so it was almost useless for you to try to hide anything.

It wasn’t so much the lyrics that have affected you – although they were definitely part of the reason why you were almost hyperventilating as you sat on the settee, listening to Jaebum sing – as it was the realization that Jaebum could sing.

Of course, you knew that he had a nice voice. You had a feeling he didn’t say he wanted to become a singer in the future because he couldn’t do anything else and being a singer just seemed cool. He said this because he had serious ambitions – and serious talent. You knew he possessed the ability to make people feel all that he was feeling when he talked – you’ve experienced that first-hand – but up until today, you haven’t really grasped just how powerful this ability was.

      ♪ How many times do I need to say it, no more.

      ♪ Don't stick to me ever, the end result is obvious anyway.

“Good, right?” Jackson called out to you over the music, nodding his head along to the beat.

You didn’t dare to nod – or to move – in case you’d miss a line and end up not hearing something. This was the first time you were listening to Jaebum’s music – and, consequently, the first time you were hearing your roommate use his voice for something other than yelling at you – and you were, to put it simply, unprepared.

You’d been waiting for this but each word, each line of the song took you off guard. Perhaps it was good that Jaebum wasn’t in the room with you or else he would have seen so many different emotions cross your face, you’d never find an explanation for all of them. Jackson – although he watched you cautiously – probably couldn’t understand you, either, but it didn’t matter as much because the song wasn’t his, and he didn’t strike you as a person who’d get very weird and almost dismissive about his works of art, anyway.

Jaebum was a whole different story. He’d think you hated it. He’d think he’d done something wrong when, in reality, everything he’d done with this song was right. It was too right and you suddenly found your fingernails digging into the leather of the settee as you listened to the song progress.

      ♪ The same conversation every day, I don't wanna no more.

      ♪ You know it yourself, don't you? Already done, no more.

      ♪ I'm getting sick of this now, you know how I think of you.

      ♪ Regardless of what you think, it already happened.

“So much raw emotion!” Jackson continued as the song approached the chorus. “The song has so much potential.”

“Hmm,” you mumbled lamely.

You had expected his music to be good. Perhaps you were even expecting his music to reflect all the feelings he was never able to say but you still couldn’t help but feel like you’ve just stumbled deep into his mind and entered a room you weren’t supposed to enter. When he’d ask you what you thought of the song, you wouldn’t know what to say because, essentially, you’d have to comment on so many different things that made you feel too many emotions that were all slowly driving you insane.

His voice made you feel warm but as the song went on, you realized you were itching to get out of this suddenly hot, suffocating room and find Jaebum. You didn’t want to think what you’d say—or do—to him once you found him.

His lyrics made you realize just how deep his feelings about all that had happened in his life ran. If this was a song he wrote about someone he couldn’t wait to run away from, what kind of songs would he sing about someone he actually wanted to be with? Someone he loved?

And the music… you weren’t sure if he made it himself or if he had someone else arrange it for him, but you couldn’t tell a difference between his voice and the music itself. They blended together, not sounding just harmonious, but sounding like they were inseparable — like they were one and they could not exist without each other. Jaebum could not sing these words without this music accompanying his voice and the music could not play without his words emerging from it.

      ♪ Don't look for me anymore.

      ♪ I don't want you.

      ♪ Even if you say you long for me,

      ♪ Even if you need me to death,

      ♪ I won't waver a single bit, ever.

You knew how Jaebum felt about Suji – hell, he said you were one of the few people who knew it well – but listening to him sing about it, each word coming straight from his heart, felt too intrusive to handle and, while you wanted to never stop listening to his calming voice as he sang, you also weren’t sure if you’d be able to endure the entire song.

You didn’t start fidgeting because you were uncomfortable listening to Jaebum sing about his ex-girlfriend. You started to fidget because you were uncomfortable with yourself and with the conclusion that your heart had finally landed on.

It was clear as day to every part of your body and there was no denying it anymore. There was no longer any room for doubt and even your stubborn mind was able to recognize it – you were falling in love with Jaebum.

       ♪ Don't touch me now, don't stay close to me.

       ♪ Just as you were before, nothing's changed about you.

       ♪ Don't touch me now, don't stay close to me.

       ♪ Just as you were before, nothing's changed about you, baby.

You’ve known you no longer saw Jaebum as just a roommate for a while now, but you refused to dig deeper into your feelings. You refused to over-analyze them, instead focusing on analyzing the behavior of Jaebum and the things he was feeling towards you. Maybe, in a way, you’ve avoided confrontations with your heart the same way that Jaebum avoided coming face-to-face with his music.

You didn’t want to admit to yourself that what had started out as curious admiration had bloomed into attraction – somehow skipping the hate you’d assumed you were supposed to feel for Jaebum after everything you’ve gone through with him – and now you were overwhelmed by all that you’d tried to run away from. You were no longer just admiring him and his mind. You were no longer just attracted to him and everything that he did.

Even despite all the fights you’ve had, you were always afraid to lose him. Despite the fear you felt about never having a chance with him, you constantly thought about him. Despite not wanting to put him through the same thing he’d gone through with Suji, you still wanted to be with him.

You were falling in love with him and, as his song played on, you suddenly weren’t sure what to do with the extra beats of your heart because they all belonged to him. They were all screaming for him.

Jackson cleared his throat suddenly, distracting you from the wild feelings that were freewheeling all over your chest. He gave you a gentle smile once you turned to look at him, your eyes still wide.

“You… know the person he’s singing about, don’t you?” he asked slowly. “Sorry if that’s a very personal question, you just—you looked really uncomfortable for a while there, and I know there’s no way it’s because you don’t like the song.”

“No, uh, the song’s great,” you said, trying to get yourself together enough to appear normal but each word that came out of your mouth sounded foreign. “It’s really really good. I don’t know why I’m surprised, I knew it was going to be good—but, uh, it’s amazing. And… yeah. I think I do know the person he’s singing about.”

“Oh,” Jackson nodded, taking this information in. You wondered if he started to feel awkward because he didn’t know about Suji or if the look on his face symbolized sympathy because he knew what Jaebum was singing about, too. “Does it feel weird to listen to your boyfriend sing about his ex?”

You blinked in surprise, Jackson’s words working like an electric shock, startling you awake from a trance Jaebum’s song had put you in. “My—oh, no. Jaebum—no. We’re not—he isn’t my—no.”

Your mind flashed back to your shopping session at IKEA where a salesman had assumed you and Jaebum were together – many things have changed since then but you were still awkward when explaining to people that the things between you were strictly platonic. Even more so now that you realized just how hard you wanted to be with Jaebum without a label in the way.

“We’re not dating,” you clarified in case Jackson did not figure out what you were trying to say as you rambled clumsily. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Okay, I got that,” Jackson said, a subtle smirk on his lips, “It’s just that Jae’s never brought a girl over to my studio -- actually, he'd never introduced me to any girl that he knew before, so I figured this was his subtle way of letting me know that you and him--well, nevermind, then,” he stopped, shaking his head and going back to the previous topic, “anyway, what did you think of the song?”

“It’s—”

The door of the studio opened at the same time you started to speak and an awkward Jaebum poked his head inside. He looked afraid to hear his own music still playing and he seemed to visibly relax as soon as he realized you and Jackson were talking in silence.

Your heart – that could not seem to rest ever since you heard the first chords of his song – suddenly started to beat even faster as if attempting to break out of your chest and exit your body in any way it could. You were afraid to open your mouth.

“Don’t look like you just stumbled into the wrong room,” Jackson told his friend. “Come in. She liked the song.”

“She did?” Jaebum asked, shooting you an awkward, sheepish look.

You have never seen him this flustered and, for a moment, you even considered the possibility of him feeling about as affected by this as you were. Jaebum clearly didn’t let many people listen to his music so you could only imagine the anxiety he must have been feeling after you heard his song, and yet, you still weren’t sure if it was possible for anyone to feel as many emotions as you were feeling in that moment.

“Yes, it’s incredible,” you managed to speak, clearing your throat once you heard how weak your voice sounded. You hadn’t even realized you stood up as soon as you started to talk, “there’s so much feeling in the song. You have a wonderful ability to tell the most emotional story with your music, I—,” you stopped, noticing the look Jaebum gave Jackson – as if he was asking his friend if this was really happening. “It’s really g-great. Your voice is very, uh, fitting for this kind of song. It’s just sensual enough to make the listener feel all that you’re feeling and more.”

“I, uh…” Jaebum was evidently new at receiving compliments for his music because, probably for the first time in your life, you caught him at a loss for words. “Thank you. Did you really think it was good?”

“Yes. Somehow, this is exactly the kind of music I was expecting from you,” you said despite just having been caught off guard by how much his music had made you feel. “Your voice made every word sound attractive and somehow soothing, despite the song… not being about the most positive kind of things. It--it’s probably weird but I got the feeling like you could sing about the end of the world, describing every disturbing thing that was going to happen to the humankind, and your voice would make the listener feel like, despite it being the apocalypse, everything was still going to be okay.”

Because Jaebum had a hard time finding what to say and Jackson did not want to interfere – alright, maybe he did want to cut in with the most teasing phrase he could muster, but he chose to stay out of it and let you two play around your feelings for a little while longer – you were starting to feel awkward – shit, you shouldn’t have talked about his voice so much; what a way to make your feelings for him obvious – so, after glancing at the clock on your phone, you sighed in an overly dramatic way.

“I think I’m going to head out,” you said. “It’s getting quite late, I got the pictures I was hoping for, so I won’t disturb you anymore. Thank you for bringing me here, I had a lot of fun. A-and thank you for finally letting me hear your music. Oh! And it was very nice to meet you, Jackson.”

“Nice to meet you, too!” Jackson replied, shooting you a wink. He might have been the only person in this room – other than you – who understood exactly why you needed to leave because Jaebum still looked too overwhelmed with everything to figure anything out. Thank God for that.

“Wait—” your roommate called out as you headed for the door, your abrupt decision to leave not sitting right with him. “I--I’ll take you home.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” you said, unsure if you’d endure a ride back home with him. You felt like you needed some time alone to get yourself together. Looking at him right now made you feel too much and you still haven’t recovered from the intense emotional rollercoaster his song had taken you on – you were seriously far too sensitive to all things that involved Jaebum. “You stay and work on your music. I’ll find my way back.”

Conflicted what to say and still overwhelmed from all that had just happened, Jaebum didn’t stop you, giving Jackson a questioning look – and earning a shrug in return – before mumbling a soft, “she thinks I have a sensual voice,” right as you walked out of the door of the studio.

   chapter directory

[sassysweetstories]

Second Chances

Request: “Im kinda crazy for chris argent of TW pls kindly do a fic about him where his highschool sweetheart is back in town n to teach in allison school. She was heartbroken by chris who choose allison mother over her before. But chris has his reason. Now that shes back, they cant deny that they still have feeling for each other. Make it angst pls. Thanks.” 

Ship: Chris Argent x Fem!Reader 

Warning: angst, swearing, fluff, minor kissing, yelling, mentions of cheating, fighting, etc. 

Notes: none of these gifs are mine, credit to owners. 

Your P.O.V

[A few years ago..]

How could he? I thought to myself as I glare daggers at the back of my now ex-boyfriends head. So much for high school sweethearts.. He wraps his arm around Victoria, smiling as they dance across the floor, swaying to the music above us. They look like polar opposites. It was like watching the angel and the devil tango. Nobody liked it. And even though we broke up a few weeks ago, it still stings. We were the perfect couple after-all. I guess we weren’t perfect enough. Glancing back at my date, I force a smile despite the pain emulating within my heart. When he spins me around, I feel Chris’s eyes burning into the side of my face. Maybe he regrets his choice? I sure hope so.

[Now]

Glancing up at the sign, I sigh to myself. Mixed emotions plague my mind. Don’t get me wrong, I am thrilled to finally have the opportunity to teach. It had been something I’d always wanted to do, ever since I was a kid. But in all honesty, I was petrified. Sucking in a quick breath of fresh air, I head into my classroom and prepare for the day ahead. When the students start shuffling in, I start to feel more confident. That is until my gaze caught wind of a beautiful chocolate haired girl. She sat down in the middle of the classroom with a contagious smile. For some reason, she looked familiar.

Looking away, I ignore the weird feeling that begun to bubble inside my stomach. Glancing up at the list of names, I begun to call off- “Stiles Stilinski.” My eyes trailed to the hand raised. A boy who gave me a goofy grin. “Scott McCall.” The boy next to him waved his hand over to catch my attention, sporting a similar likable puppy dog smile. I can't help but return the respectable grin before continuing down the list until one name caught my eye.

Allison Argent

It can't be.. "Uh.. Allison Argent." The beautiful girl I saw earlier raised her hand and smiled. That’s why she looked familiar. She looks just like him. I stare at her for a second before asking, very much dreading the answer. “Do you happen to be related to Christopher Argent?” She nodded and smiled before saying, “Yeah, he’s my dad.” In that moment, my heart dropped and shattered into a million pieces. That bastard. She continued. “Why do you ask?” I have gotten fairly good at lying these past few years. Especially when it came to the protection of my own broken heart. 

So when I reply, my tone is calm and collective. “We went to high school together. Small world.” She nodded, genuinely intrigued by the topic. I finish calling off everyone’s names then proceed to educate the class on Hamlet, my favorite of Shakespeare’s many pieces. But I couldn’t for the life of me get the pang of pain out of my heart. Had he really moved on and stayed with Victoria and had a child? Pff, why do I even care? That was years ago. none of that should matter now. Except it does. At least in my heart it does. 

The next few weeks were not as easy as I thought they’d be. Every time I looked at the poor girl, I was reminded of the long tear filled nights I had spent crying over a boy who never really loved me. And instead of looking at her, I avoided all eye contact. It helped but I’d be lying if I said there still wasn’t this void within me. I file my work away and start to clean my classroom, which got surprisingly dirty quite quickly. Playing some soft turns from my old CD player, I almost hadn’t noticed a new body enter the room. “Hi, Allison. What can I do for you, hun?” 

She smiled at the nickname and entered. “My rides a little later and I was wondering if I could wait in here until he came? It’s pouring like crazy outside and it’s freezing in the halls.” I pull out the nearest chair and pat it, softly. “Of course, make yourself at home. I hope you don’t mind the music while I clean my room up. Ya know, you’d think I’d wrapped my head around the fact that kids are messy.” She giggles softly before staring off and out the window. I finish picking my room up and sit to grade some papers. The soft music and a small hum of rain that pattered from atop the roof was the only thing sound between us. 

I get up again to put a file away before a low, gruff voice spoke from behind. “(Y/n)?” As I turn over my shoulder to see whom the voice belonged to, my heart dropped. Standing before me was my high school sweetheart, Chris Argent. Shit, I should have guessed he would be picking her up. Idiot. He was a lot taller than I had expected him to be. Chris’s face was gruff and more bearded than ever. His body was built and toned like a god. Oh, for gods sake, I could practically see his pecks under his thin grey shirt. His brown eyes were still the same but they looked harder than ever. His hair slightly tinted with grey to mask his aging process. Probably due to stress. Chris looked good, too good. 

God, damn it! Why couldn’t he have turned out ugly?! “Chris.. Uh- long time no see.” I internally roll my eyes. What kind of response is that, you soggy poptart?! The way he’s looking at me makes me think he’s sizing me up just as I am doing right now with him. “(Y/n).. Is-Is that really you?” The way he asks the question shocks, not only me, but his daughter, too. It was the most innocently soft thing I’d ever heard. I could have sworn he was about to cry. “Yeah, it’s me. You look great, Christopher. You have a beard now. Impressive. I remember when you couldn’t even grow a mustache.” We both laugh but there’s an unspoken pain between us. When I look into his eyes, all I see is regret. Good. 

“And you. You cut your hair. You look..” He pauses for a second, trying to find the right word before saying, “..immaculate.” I can feel my cheeks flushing but above all else, it’s like someone ripped open a wound that’s just about to heal. No. I will not let him break me again. I clear my throat, beckoning towards Allison whom he hasn’t looked at since he first entered. “Uh.. Thank you. You two should get going. Don’t wanna get caught up in the storm.” Allison’s by the door, waiting and watching our interaction closely. “We should get coffee sometime. Catch up.” He says softly. And when I look up at him, I feel an immediate sense of regret. There’s so much hope in his big blue eyes. 

But I was not about to get my heart broken again. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I am Allison’s teacher, after-all. That would be highly inappropriate.” The second the words leave my mouth, a bitter taste starts to form in the back of my throat, like bile. His eyes look sad and regretful. I had never seen someone go from such a high spirit to a low one so quickly. He shook his head, heart still hopeful. “It’s just coffee-” I cut him off. “Good day, Mr. Argent.” When I say his name, it’s almost like a reminder of what positions we are in. He’s married and a father. I’m Allison’s high school teacher. But that was only the beginning. 

I don’t bother to watch his tragic state as he walks out with his daughter. I cannot get involved with Christopher again. I don’t think my heart could take it a second time. Seeing him was like opening a wound that had finally been shut. He still looked like himself, just more aged like a fine wine. I clutch my chest and sit down, feeling dizzy all of a sudden. But he’s always had that effect on me. 

Third P.O.V

“Why were you acting like that, Dad?! You were looking at her in a certain way. You’ve never looked at mom like that. Dad!” Allison cried, feeling conflicted and hurt and confused. Chris was hurting inside. Seeing his beloved for the first time in a so many years. She looked as beautiful as the day they first met. Finally he caved in, tired of keeping secrets. Especially from his beloved daughter. “Okay, okay. A long time ago, your mom, Mrs. (Y/L/N) and I attended high school together. We were what you kids today call “couple goals”. We were like Romeo and Juliet, Bonnie and Clyde Ying and Yang. 

“We were a perfect pair. We had a love that kids only ever dreamed of. The kind of sappy stuff you see in movies. We were so in love and attached to the hip that people would be uncomfortable if one of us was without the other. We were absolutely inseparable. The power couple among power couples.” His voice died out, cracking towards the end. Allison’s heart ached for her father. He was the strongest man she knew. And to see him so torn up, to the point of tears, she knew he must’ve been hurting something fierce. She wanted to console but more importantly, understand what happened. 

“What happened between you two?” She took his hands to support him and only hoped he would press on. Mr. Argent cleared his throat and swallowed down the pain like a shot of whiskey. “I went to a party. (Y/n) and I had gotten into a small argument, one that I had blown up over. It was a stupid reason, too. So I told her I was going to a party. She warned me not to. To just be safe and be careful. That it was a bad idea but I didn’t listen. That’s when your mom got involved.

“We drank so much that night. The next morning I woke up in her bed. I ran to (Y/n) in hopes that she would understand that it was nothing. But she shut me out and I deserved it. I broke her heart. But then everything changed when Veronica- your mother- confessed to me that she was pregnant. Pregnant with you. I was beyond shocked but there was no doubt in my mind that I would not love you unconditionally. I would not abandon you or your mother when all I wanted was a child. I just had expected it to have happened with (Y/n). But over time, I grew to love and respect your mother. 

“But at the end of the day, you can’t forget your first love. No matter how hard you try. And god knows I loved that woman more than anything in the universe. But I broke her and I deserve to suffer, to hurt. I fucked up bad. And seeing her again made me want to fix everything with her again. I just want to mend the wounds I put there.” Allison listened intently, clenching her fists to hide her anger towards her father for being so reckless but was also feeling sad for him, too. He was her father, after-all. Her mother was long gone, but throughout their marriage, Allison could not tell how unusual it all seemed. They both loved Allison but neither really loved the other. 

And, without having too look up at him, she knew what he was thinking. Should I fight for her? Or have I done enough damage? For a split second, she thought no. Leave the poor woman alone. She’s been through enough. But then she thought of Scott. He loved and fought for her, cherished and held her close to his heart. And even when they broke up, he was still there for her. And for a second she wondered if that’s what her dad and teacher had had. “Go get her dad. Fix your mistakes.” That was all he needed to hear before he revved the engine as Allison hopped out of the car. 

Christopher hadn’t thought about what he’d say or what he’d do. All he knew was that he needed her, desperately. Pulling up to the school, he quickly got out of the car, not even bothering to throw on a jacket to mask himself from the pouring rain. He’s drenched from head to toe by the time he enters the school. Nearly slipping and falling on his ass, he runs to her room in hopes to catch her in time. Mr. Argent’s jaw drops to the floor when he sees her still standing there, looking as beautiful and radiant as ever. Before she could even speak, he waltz's up to her and places his lips atop hers. The kiss was passionate, heavy and warm. 

It was needy and desperate on both ends as she begun to kiss back, plunging helplessly into the darkness she would soon experience again. But then she registered what was happening and pushed him back. “No, no, no, no. I’m not going to do this again, Christopher. You’ve broken my heart once, I won’t let you do it again.” She’s crying now, trying to keep herself together as best she can but it seems useless. “(Y/n), let me explain-” She pushed him hard, pulling back before clutching her sides. “No! You cheated on me with Victoria! What did I do to deserve that-” Chris shook his head, practically yelling. “None of this was your fault! I got completely smashed!

“Yes, I did cheat on you. And being drunk isn’t an excuse. But it happened. A few days after it happened, Victoria told me that she was pregnant with Allison. And you know me, (Y/n). I would never leave someone like that. I wasn’t gonna let her fend for herself. I wanted a baby to call my own. I just- I wanted to have it with you.. And I can’t tell you I’m sorry enough.. God knows it won’t ever clean the wounds I put there. But I loved you so much.. I still do. I am not longer married. I’m actually widowed. Victoria- she- she died. She’s been gone for five years now.” (Y/n) can’t help but feel the need to apologize. The loss of someone is undeniably unbearable. 

“So you just- you impregnate Victoria and don’t tell me-” Chris shook his head, almost to the point of tears as he looked down at his beloved. “You wouldn’t let me. And you had every right! You hated me and I deserved it. I deserved to suffer and I still do but I will not leave here with bad blood. I love you. I always have and I always will. I’m not gonna let you go again. Not when I can actually do something about it. (Y/n), I am so sorry. For everything I did to you.” The two looked at one another, neither making a sound. That was until (Y/n) took two steps forward and smashed her lips onto his. She shouldn’t be doing this but she needed him as much as he needed her. “I love you, Chris Argent.” He grinned from ear to ear before muttering. “I love you too, (Y/n) (Y/L/N).” 

(I hope you liked it! I’m really sorry for the long wait. I’ve been very very busy!!) 

[wannawrite]

Melting Of The Ice Cream Girl

PD101 / MXM’s Im Youngmin X Reader [fem ver] ( I can finally type MXM instead of BNM :“) he has debuted I am still shooketh by their album I wrote this on the day of the debut itself ) Fluff, mild angst

part one

part two 

bulletpoint ver. • ok so at your sch, Youngmin is like THE sunbaenim • you’re super shy to everyone - since you’re so quiet everyone is like ‘bruh we better stay away she’ll kill us’ but wild asf with your friends • you have a crush on Youngmin bc tbh who doesn’t ??? hello anon, thank you for requesting, you know I love my MXM boys :”) uhh, you didn’t really specify if there should be romance + how it should be formed so I went ahead and did it anyway…..hope you’re okay with that. Drop me a feedback ask !! Especially if you want it rewritten, in scenario form too etc, it’s okay. But please drop me another ask on how you would like part two to be :) I split it because I wasn’t sure and I’d rather get feedback from anon yourself. This is just plot set up i’M SORRY THERE ISN’t anY ANGST FOR NOW PLEASE TELL ME Hope you like it. - admin L PS: this actl describes me perfectly ?? anon have you been stalking me ??? __________ • okay so everyone loves Im Youngmin • like literally everyone • Mrs. Wang from Science block 3 ‘I love Im Youngmin I gave him a new school bag for his birthday’ • Cindy from History, Wednesdays, third period ‘Once, Im Youngmin stepped on my worksheet and apologised after. It was the best moment of my life’ • Jae in Art, Fridays, fifth period, 'Sometimes I draw Im Youngmin when asked to freehand art’ • Youngmin is THE sunbae of the school • c'mon • you really need to arrive at school in this fancy ass limousine like car? • with your school shoes being custom Gucci sneakers ??? • on top of that • he’s so good looking Jihoon from physics aka the prettiest boy in school cried when he first saw Youngmin’s visuals • you still have that video on your phone bc Jihoon is one of your close friends • Youngmin also has the sweetest personality • boyfriend material • everyone in the school is charmed by him • infatuated almost 

• sometime last year, he accidentally spilled his coffee on your notes in the library and offered to rewrite them • by hand • you were so shocked • and shy • no words came out • instead, you grabbed your things and ran out because you were too shy to even look at him • 'oh no the ice princess strikes again’ • everyone talked about how you ignored Im Youngmin sunbaenim and rushed out • for days • like ??? move on • but interaction between the Senior sunbae and Junior ice princess was rare • Youngmin tried multiple times but you kept disappearing, brushing him off • turning the other way when you saw him • quickly running to class • avoiding his gaze in the canteen • you name it • you did it • eventually, his best friend. Kim Donghyun told him you were the infamous Junior ice princess • simply because you repulsed everyone else other than your clique in this school • ice princess™ • no ??? you were just too shy to form words • even to reply to teachers • the words just got stuck in your throat and you constantly panicked • everyone just assumed you were the toughest, baddest bitch in Junior year after that • Youngmin shook his head, sighing • 'no way, she can’t be’ • 'it’s true, hyung! Y/N is really an ice princess’ • 'THE ice princess of Brand New’ • he asked Sewoon and he said the same thing • in fact, his entire sunbae + chaebol clique agreed • 'Y/N is Brand New High School’s ice princess’ • you were cold, mean and unforgiving • like winter • but sometimes • you only play with snow in winter • your clique found it ridiculously funny it became an inside joke • Hyemi always found some time of the day to make fun of it • only Hyemi, Jihoon, Daewhi, Woojin and Mina knew the truth • you were the craziest person they knew • once, Woojin got a call from Mina at 3am because you had climbed through her room window • essentially, you broke into your best friend’s bedroom even though you knew the passcode to her house • btw did I mention you were also super charming and charmed tf out of your friends’ parents ??? • so your friends’ houses were like your second homes • you were welcomed anytime • honestly, you said the weirdest shit on a daily • and communicated in memes • another time, you challenged Woojin to race around the supermarket with trolleys • it’s safe to say you aren’t allowed back into the supermarket • but i heard you like bad girls? • you walked in there and bought chocolate milk • twice • no one noticed • anyways • main jokester • and prankster of your squad • it was Jihoon’s birthday and you woke him up by shooting him with water guns • he fell sick almost immediately after • once you heard that, you ran over with medicine and soup • you stayed the weekend on his bedroom floor just to nurse him back to health • 'y/N yoU don’T haVE TO’ • 'nO I MUST CARE FOR YOU. YOU MIGHT DIE OTHERWISE’ • ’…..’ • 'jIHooN DRInK YOur SOuP’ • 'wAiT i’m goIng to gET MORE BANDAGES’ • 'whAT DOES A FevER havE TO dO witH thAT ?’ • your friends just make you all soft and sweet honestly • which is why Youngmin knew you couldn’t be the ice princess of Brand New • he tried to talk to you a few times before • but you were already introverted beyond conversation on a daily ??? • much less in front of your crush • you really didn’t mean to let your eyes widen so much • you looked at him straight in the eye • well tried to • and nearly chemically combusted after looking into his beautiful orbs • Youngmin thought you glared at him and backed off after that. • it saddened you that it was partially your reputation’s fault for ruining whatever chances you had with Youngmin • until…one day…Youngmin confides in his best friend, Donghyun • but Daewhi and Donghyun are like twins so • Daewhi finds out and tells Mina • fun fact: Mina and Youngmin are in the same math class bc Mina is an intellectual • she tries her best to get you two together • but yoURE JUST TOO SHY REALLY MINA • i CanT SAY A WORD IN FRONT OF REGULAR PEOPLE EVEN • minA WTF DO YOU WANT ME TO DO • ok so since she’s an intellectual right   • instead of listening in advanced math class, she’s listing down ideas on how to tell Youngmin about you • it’s okay bc Mina knows every formula and still scored an A • oooh another fun fact: Mina and Youngmin now sit together for a new term • you’re lowkey salt but you don’t know her plans • Mina and Youngmin become good friends ??? Somehow ??? • idk he says hi to her in the hallways and once again you feel a pang in your chest • but you’re the ice princess, you don’t exactly have emotions • one day, youngmin lent his math notes to Donghyun so • 'hey Mina can I borrow your notes real quick?’ • he’s flipping through her note book when he comes across this • 'sweet things Y/N has done for us’ • 'how to get Y/N to confess’ • 'Y/N X Im Youngmin’ • oh god he’s so intrigued and flattered • and now he’s a blushing mess • he reads and realises that his theories are true, that you are the sweetest and craziest person in this school, contrary to your reputation • so he decides to give you a new name; the ice cream girl • sweet but cold, sometimes appearing in crazy flavours • and sticks to his lips ;) • and Im Youngmin is going to melt you (guys Donhyun literally saves Youngmin as 'Melting Youngmin’ in his phone and if that ain’t the cutest) • he starts off by doing the least but also the most • which is acknowledging you in the hallways, in class, at your locker • you always keep your head down and kind of bow slightly instead of saying anything because your entire face looks like a tomato like why • but eventually, you return his greetings with a shy wave • and it makes his entire day, his clique is like 'hyung, why are you so happy today? Are you okay?’ • 'oh i’m fine.’ he says as he spins around like a ballerina ( bc my son is graceful ) and nearly slams into a locker • 'Im Youngmin sunbaenim brushed by my locker and I was eternally blessed’ - Tina, chem lab • one day, you’re out with Daewhi and Woojin to shop for a birthday present for Daewhi’s mum • ya’ll being the cutest best friends ever. racing around the mall, making bad puns and memes out of weird items • the usual, how you are in your true form • sunbaenim + chaebol™ squad is also at the mall • youngmin spots you and daewhi being super lovey dovey and close and he feels this strange pain in his chest ??? he doesn’t even know anymore tbh • 'hyung let’s go and eeeeaaatttt’ donghyun begs and the entire clique let’s him choose where to • great, he just had to choose that place that daewhi, woojin and Y/N walked into • daewhi and woojin spot donghyun the second he walks in and starts waving frantically • 'hyUNG! HYUNG! HYUNG COME SIT WITH US!’ • youngmin tells the rest of the squad to sit first and that he and donghyun would join them soon • BNM babies reunion :“) • you’re just sitting there awkwardly to the side shoving fries in your mouth but it’s cute to see your friends interact with their close seniors • 'hey Y/N, how are you?’ Youngmin suddenly asks and you’re forced to reply • 'uh-uh i-i’ve been good, sunbaenim’ ok Y/N pull yourself together why did you say that • Youngmin just chuckles 'Sunbaenim? Aww Y/N you’re so cute but please, just call me oppa’ • you can practically hear daewhi, woojin and donghyun’s snickers • youngmin’s heart is softening the more he looks at you • he just needs to uncover your true interior • meanwhile, your heart is thudding a 150km/h you don’t even know because you’re so alarmed by Youngmin being nice to you and all • what should you do? part two has arrived

pls drop me a feedback ask + direction you want this to take :)