#to be fair though; middle school just be like that

[jo-harrington]

Become What You Were Meant To Be (Eddie Munson)

Word Count: 2.4k

Themes/Warnings: Modern!Eddie, Older!Eddie, set in the mid-2010s, fandom lingo, nerd lingo, Star Wars, typical childhood bullying, angst, minor FOI reference, some canon divergence, coming of age themes, probably poorly written and not edited at all

Note: Happy Birthday to one of the backbones of this fandom, who supports and encourages so many of us, whose endless friendship I am so grateful for. Someone who has absolute endless creativity but doesn't give herself enough credit and grace, who is secretly sitting in the background pulling the strings on some of the best stories I've read and I've written. My muse, my life, my world, my cheeseburger. @fracturedarkness

Thanks to @dr-aculaaa for the beta.

You can find my masterlist here.

Please do not interact if you are not 18+.

Enjoy!

---

Eddie Munson was a nerd.

Point blank, end of story.

It was one of those badges he wore along with Freak and loser and...well, you get the gist of it. But it was a badge worn with pride. He owned his identity. Wasn't afraid to show everyone he came across who he was.

It hadn't always been that way.

There used to be a time when it felt like the worst thing in the world to be a nerd like that. The kids bullied him because he got overly excited talking about his favorite characters and favorite books that they found boring. They all teased him when he wrote stories about exciting heroes from fantastical worlds in English class, even though the teacher told him that his stories were ambitious and imaginative. And when he spent lunch doodling in his notebook instead of playing kickball or foursquare? Well, you get the point.

"You're so weird." They mocked him. "You're a freak. Draw normal things. Like normal things. Why can't you just be normal?"

It was cruel, in the way that children naively become perpetrators of cruelness. And it made Eddie sad.

Because what did that mean? He couldn't draw normal things, or like normal things, or do normal things. Then he wouldn't be himself anymore.

And that was the point where he decided normal was overrated. Why would he want to be normal when he could be...anything else.

He could pretend he was one of the Pevensies upon a throne at Cair Paravel. Or one of the Ghostbusters. Or a Jedi...

Of course, he couldn't actually be anything else; he was stuck being boring, old, nerdy Eddie Munson.

It wasn't until middle school--you know, middle school, when everyone decides to embrace who they are and become an individual--that he decided being Eddie Munson wasn't all that bad after all.

This epiphany definitely didn't happen after a Hot Topic opened up at StarCourt Mall. No sir. Not when one of the older kids that worked there, sporting armfuls of tattoos and a lip ring, told him the pen drawings on the toe caps of his sneakers were cool. Of course not. And not after he used the last bit of his birthday money to buy a cool band t-shirt and colored hair gel. Pssshhh...

So on the first day of 8th grade, he showed up rocking his dad's old leather jacket--the one that practically swallowed him--jeans that he ripped himself and a poor excuse for a mohawk, ready to accept the Freak label proudly.

He also accepted detention for breaking the dress code.

And a grounding from Wayne for cutting up a nice pair of jeans.

And a buzzcut because he'd done that poor of a job of cutting his hair for that mohawk.

But he'd gained a friend.

Several friends actually.

Ronnie Ecker and Doug Teague. They were both in the same grade as him, and shared many classes. And it might have been a little embarrassing, but a sixth grader named Jeff who told Eddie that he was his hero. That made Eddie feel like he was on top of the world!

They were friends that stayed with him all through high school, and when he repeated his senior year twice, even more joined the mix along the way.

Band kids and science fair nerds and...and...and...

He called them his sheepies, and he their shepherd clad in black band tees and ripped jeans.

And Eddie?

Eddie just got nerdier.

Got weirder.

Dug himself deeper into the pit of stark individualism that the close-minded town of Hawkins didn't know how to react to.

It was glorious.

He listened to music that made other kids cringe and turn away and neighbors complain about the noise; he liked it so much that he made his friends start a band with him. They played at every single school talent show until they graduated; they never won and sometimes people tried to plug their ears, but to Eddie and his friend, their sound and that stage was exactly what their hearts yearned for. To them, the auditorium might as well have been Madison Square Garden.

He started playing Dungeons and Dragons--started a club of his own design, Hellfire--when he found the guidebooks on a dusty shelf at the library. They were seemingly untouched since their initial publication in the 70s, but they were like a key that unlocked something inside of Eddie. Something that he seemed to have forgotten along the way of reclaiming the name "Freak."

Through DnD, the imaginary worlds that he left behind early in his adolescence opened their doors to him once again.

And his friends, his players, never made fun of him for knowing the ins and outs of the worlds of their fantasies. Worlds like Greyhawk and Faerûn.

Worlds like a certain galaxy far...far away...

---

Eddie's re-entrance into the world of Star Wars had been...an interesting one to say the least.

To Eddie, Star Wars meant the original trilogy. Cut, print, sign the check.

When he thought of Jedi, he thought of Luke Skywalker and Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan and a puppet Yoda. And of course he thought of the dreaded Darth Vader.

Yeah he had his books from the library, a whole extended universe with Mara Jade and Jacen and Jaina. But he'd missed out on the prequels growing up; from being a little too young to see them in theaters, to the whole fiasco of his mother's passing right before Revenge of the Sith had premiered.

As he got older, the need to see them just wasn't there, and hearing from friends and enemies alike that it wasn't anything to write home about was the nail in the coffin.

Until he met one Dustin Henderson.

It was the Jar Jar Binks t-shirt he wore on the first day of his freshman year that got Eddie's attention.

"What is that?" he flicked a finger against the graphic as he ran into Dustin and his friends in the lunch line. "Something from that new Star Trek movie?"

Cue a whole rant about the Gungans and the Separatists and an inter-galactic conflict that made Eddie happily fold Dustin and his band of nerds into the protection of the Hellfire Club.

Eddie still refused to watch the prequels, no matter how much Dustin begged.

"I like it when you guys talk about them," Eddie shrugged off the pleas. "Even better when you guys act out the whole fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan. I'd sell my left nut to relive seeing you and Lucas do that in Wheelers basement; it was the best day of my life Henderson, I swear to god. There's no way the movies could actually beat that."

He hasn’t expected that those little idiots would trick him into a movie marathon for Lucas's birthday.

Even Gareth was in on the whole plan. Traitor.

But it was the beginning of the end.

From the movies to the books to the cartoons, Eddie's love of Star Wars was rekindled. He even spent a short stint as a gamer playing The Old Republic on the old PC that was tucked into the corner of the trailer.

And when a new movie was announced, Eddie happily took his nerd-dom to the next level.

Yes, he was the one to suggest they all dress up for the midnight showing of The Force Awakens, but if anyone asked it was Mike.

He spent hours on a stupid Boba Fett costume. It was a different set of skills to the mini-figures he was used to crafting for DnD. He had to think on a different scale. Hot glue and spray paint and too much cardboard. Only to find real cosplayers used foam, not cardboard. His paychecks from Thatcher Tires went straight to the project, until he had something halfway decent for the premiere.

"What?" he laughed along with his friends when they joked about the hot glue spiderwebs that he'd been too lazy to clean up. "It's not like I'll have to do this again; we're not dressing up next time."

Or so he thought...

There was something so magical about sitting in a movie theater, in the middle of December, at midnight, surrounded by other people who decided to dress up for the occasion, and a few dozen plastic lightsabers all lit up.

To listen to the theme, to read the crawl on a big screen, to see the camera pan down into the vastness of stars...

This was what it was to be a nerd.

There was something extra special about finding a new favorite character. Something that touched something deep down inside of you when you saw something of yourself in them.

And Eddie had always been drawn to the villains. Whether in the media he consumed or the characters he created for DnD. He knew why; he wasn't totally oblivious. To be the hero of his own story, he often had to become a villain to someone else.

Besides, villains always had a little bit more fun.

So when Kylo Ren first made his way on screen, Eddie knew that he was done for.

The mask, the lightsaber, the Dark Side of the Force, the anger...how many times had he almost given in to the anger he felt at being mocked and teased. He'd overcome that time and again; what if he'd just given in?

There was also something about being Al Munson Han Solo's son.

Yeah. He could understand the anger there.

But then he was also Elizabeth Leia's son...the conflict.

It took Eddie a few days to get over the initial flurry of thoughts after seeing Force Awakens for the first time. That was when he realized he needed to see it again. And again. A matinee showing on Christmas Eve with Wayne, who he also treated to lunch. The last showing on a Thursday in January. Another outing with the guys, refusing to admit that he'd already seen it a few times between opening night and then.

Thankfully, this time, Mike was the mastermind behind their plans for the next movie as they waited for the previews to finish.

"So," Mike sat up straight. "I think I wanna get an early dibs on dressing up like Poe when Episode 8 comes out."

"I think I wanna try my hand at making an Admiral Ackbar costume," Dustin said with utter confidence, and then turned to Eddie. "What about you?"

It caught Eddie off-guard for a second; should he just say Kylo? Did they expect him to want to dress up as anyone else? Maybe they thought that he would want to be Poe, leader of their misfit group as he was.

"Eddie's obviously Kylo," Jeff piped up. Eddie's head immediately turned to him. "What? Don't think we didn't watch you drool over that lightsaber last time."

"And his ship?" Gareth cackled one seat over. "Fuck the Falcon. I swear, if you could turn the van into something that looked like that ship..."

"Oh my god, you're right!" Lucas cackled.

"Hey I think I could figure out a pretty convincing Snoke," Eddie argued, trying to deflect their teasing, but secretly pleased that he'd gotten exactly what he wanted.

And that his friends knew him so well.

---

For two years, Eddie worked on his costume.

Two. Years.

He was practically a different person by the time of the Last Jedi's opening night.

And yeah his motivation faltered, but he never quit.

It was strange, the need to perfect the costume. He’d almost given up many times. When there was a certain skill he wasn't good at or when he'd felt like it would never be finished. Every time, he felt like that silly kid who everyone just told to be normal. To like normal things.

He was growing up. He was a grown up! Shouldn’t he be passed all of this…silliness? Everyone else in the world seemed to think so, as they put away all the frivolities of childhood. Were they working round the clock and pricking their fingers on needles and burning themselves with hot glue?

Probably not.

Eddie found himself still stuck there, watching a world lose its joy and think that it was normal, and he always wondered if he should try to be normal too. For once in his life. The first time in his life.

But every time he thought about letting it all go, about putting his dream aside...something would come and drive him to keep going.

New promotional images, a new trailer. Especially the ones focused on Kylo himself.

"Let the past die," Kylo Ren grumbled in the voice over. "Kill it if you have to."

That became Eddie's driving force.

He owed it to himself to finish. He owed it to his younger self...not to let his dream die...to keep being weird and nerdy and happy.

"Let the past die," Eddie told himself as he stitched the hem of the tunic the week before opening night.

"Kill it if you have to," he said as he distressed the plastic helmet that he'd ordered, giving it the right amount of realism so it didn't just look like something so fake and commercial.

"Let the past die," his child self muttered, front teeth missing from the day Johnny B pushed him over on the playground because he was playing superheroes wrong. Eddie put a hand on his head and then stepped into his boots.

"Kill it if you have to," his preteen self urged him, self-assured, mohawk looking stupider than he realized way back when. Eddie flicked his ear good-naturedly before adjusting the cape on his shoulders.

There he stood--Eddie Munson, the young man, the freak, the nerd--in his bedroom before the mirror. He was adorned in pieces of foam and layers of fabric from the craft store, helmet tucked under his arm.

But in the mirror itself? There was Kylo Ren...there he was as Kylo Ren. In the hallway of a Star Destroyer, layered in armor and the shadows of the Dark Side itself, like he was ready for a battle with the Resistance.

Ready for the battle within himself.

But there was no battle, and the armor was actually Eddie's skin. This was his real self, his true self. All of his work came to fruition, all of the time and effort that he put into the craft. Not just two years working on a costume, but an entire lifetime poured into becoming an Eddie Munson who proudly wore the title nerd and freak and loser.

The destroyer melted away, and he was back in his bedroom once again. Surrounded by posters and books and drawings, by all of his crafts and his guitars and his endless clutter.

He smiled at himself, feeling lighter than he had in a long time.

Eddie Munson was a nerd, and as he lit the lightsaber and he was washed in a glow of crackling red light, he knew that this was who he was always meant to be.

[cillyscribbles]

my modern!cats au giving me, an avid non-smoker, thoughts about smoking and self image, of all things. i will put them under the cut, but meanwhile! enjoy this 1. shameless illustration of my own fic 2. tugger not quite loving the makeup (or costuming) of his poet-murderer role. (yes a local staging of roberto zucco changed my life, very nice of you to ask!)

so smoking bad etc etc don't smoke. anyway, all three brothers deuteronomy smoke, or at least have smoked for large chunks of their lives, albeit for wildly different reasons and standpoints.

munkustrap's been smoking since middle school, his start more or less aligning with the time period when old deuteronomy falls sick, grizabella ramps up her work, and munkustrap, at the ripe old age of maybe 14, starts managing the household and finances and whatnot.

he wishes he'd never started smoking, don't get me wrong. he wishes the relief of the thing wasn't worth it. he quits and starts again throughout the years, over and over and over, climbing into the third decade of the habit without being able to break it, never moving past the numbed feeling of failure for it. it's the one crack you'll occasionally catch in that aged picture of constant steadfastness and responsibility he's got going on.

to be unable to handle it all feels to him as good as giving up entirely. he smokes behind the school. he puts away the ashtrays when he has guests over. he doesn't like smoking with company, and he hates his shame being made known. if you'll allow me a pretentious second, it's sort of like an upward climb that he wants to take on alone so nobody else sees him stumble, and no one helps him if he twists an ankle. it's fine by him because he needs to be able to handle it himself. he needs to.

so. all this, versus tugger, who started well into adulthood and barrelled into it full and consciously. tugger, who smokes to replace sleep and sanity when his life runs on cigarettes and caffeine. but nothing more. he doesn't care to quit, he doesn't care to change. cigarettes look good between his fingers. he knows how to hold them pretty, like he knows everything else about himself that builds the picture he wants.

and, on a more interpersonal level, it upsets him that munkustrap is so acutely ashamed of it, the same way munkustrap is upset tugger is so casual about it. to some degree, though, i think that's because tugger's entirely hyperaware of how fragile life is and on how small a technicality shit can go sideways and end up killing him or anyone else. it's hard for him not to think about it. but it gives him some sort of strength to look for morbid humour in the things munkustrap wouldn't let himself laugh at, i think. it's gallows humour, to be fair, but it's good humour to tugger nonetheless. he finds stakes if not thrilling then certainly intriguing.

besides, making any sort of change to himself for other people, to tugger, is like betraying himself. he's built up that resistance to outside influence, and he's built it up hard and total. he doesn't mold, he doesn't bend, he'll do and look and say whatever he wants, he associates seeking validation strictly with misery. he doesn't understand munkustrap's frustration, or desire to please people, nor does he want to.

the thing with how tugger is, i think, is that he's just prodded at enough for both the street culture he grew up in and the inclination towards self-preservation of someone visibly queer to mesh together into something that can be spectacular and unmovable, and sometimes still turn ugly. i think curiosity is easy to push into cruelty with tugger.

shame is easy to mock for someone who's overcome it and tries hard to forget how insidious it can be. i think both munkustrap and tugger can be cruel to each other without wanting to and without really transgressing toward each other in a way that would dent their relationship, primarily because it's such a strong relationship but also because they're used to some sort of cruelty from the world at least, they just know better where to hit each other verbally to mess each other up. so. self-control, boys. comes to one of them easier than the other, LOL. and again, don't get me wrong. tugger doesn't want to be cruel to munkustrap, but it's not always a thing he can push away the instinct for. munkustrap doesn't want to be cruel to tugger, but he's been making hard decisions for ages and all but expects someone to be hurt by the end of it, and tugger is manageable. so. damn

[pink-lighter]

was anyone going to tell me that “oh no!” by marina is, in fact, satire, and not, in fact, a guideline on how to live? or was i just supposed to figure that out at age 20 after derailing and sabotaging my life and dealing with crippling burn out?

[rocketkit]

bobs doodles. rambling in the tags

[maddy-ferguson]

fun fact about me: i'm insecure about so many random things that i've never flipped anyone off in my 22 years of life because i think my middle finger looks awkward and ugly by itself

[deus-ex-mona]

dealing with assigned reading like

[deer-with-a-stick]

Oh shit I forgot how dark this series was. And yet, middle school me did not bat a single eye

[pepprs]

you will never be too old to find someone for you. society puts a lot of emphasis on dating in high school or right after but in reality the number of people who stay in those relationships untill marriage is low. real life doesnt prioritize those years! you are never done meeting people who will love you and you will love too. there is no timer ticking down. 24 is not too old, i promise.

i know you’re right 😞😞😞 idk why i have issues abt this bc most of the ppl i spend time w / follow on inst*gram (where i saw that post 🥴) / etc are at least a couple yrs older than me if not decades and also in most cases didn’t meet their person until they were around my age or older so it’s like why not enjoy the ride and just trust that it’ll all fall into place bc ur teens and 20s are definitely not as stable or happy or whatever as they’re made out to be sometimes. i think i just need to stop looking at social media that isn’t tumblr and find a different counselor and learn how to drive 😭

[variantoutcast]

Not sure how to insert a read more on mobile so this post about my personal experiences with transphobia and ableisn will be in the tags only 👍

[marshmellowtea]

shout out to breathe carolina for The Song Lyric Ever with this absolute gem of a line from mistakes

i think the only thing that can come close to topping it is this lyric from the exact same song lmao

[feralprancinghomosexual]

Is my mental health the worst it's been since leaving uni and being diagnosed properly? Yes! Are me and jo trying to do everything to avoid becoming homeless and placed in emergency housing even though no other authority seems to care very much about that? Yes! But did I have the ingredients for a mountain of bruschetta and did it make me feel a little better? Also yes!

[hedgehog-moss]

Last time I went to the village to buy bread I saw a woman in the street who was dressed like a 19th-century peasant, complete with a thick old-timey accent with dialect words no one uses anymore—she was telling a little group of people to follow her so of course I had to drop everything and follow her too.

And it turned out she was a theatre actress who has read a lot of local archives in libraries and town halls, and offered her services to organise guided tours of various villages to tell people about local history in a fun way, by playing characters who lived here in the Middle Ages, the 19th century, or WWII. It's such a cool idea! I talked to her for a bit after the visit and she said she wasn't sure it'd work / attract enough people, but she had groups of tourists + local families show up for the visit every week, in every village where she did this, so she think she'll be hired again next summer.

When I joined their group she was talking about WWII, and how my & other nearby villages were known by the Nazis and Vichy as a hotbed of terrorists, with some Gestapo officers killed in bomb attacks. (In retaliation the Nazis eventually rounded up 100+ locals and deported them to camps, as well as shooting a few.) I was mostly familiar with WWII anecdotes from the North-East, where my grandparents lived during the war, and I found it funny how different they sounded—my grandfather made Resistance activities sound well-planned and careful (espionage, sabotage, underground presses, infiltrating railway services etc) while oral histories around here make them sound a lot more spontaneous and—handcrafted? like "Emile brought what we needed for the bomb in his wheelbarrow hidden under a layer of straw and we exploded 2 Nazis."

We then went to visit the former girls' school, and I learnt a lot about my country's history of education for girls! Also it was really sweet because there was an old lady in our group who had attended this school as a child and had lots of school memories to share. Most of them were very wholesome, until eventually our tour guide went "Surely you also have some School Mischief to tell us about" and the old woman at first was like no no no no, I was a good girl. And then she conceded that when she had to sort lentils for the nuns' dinner and she resented one of them for berating her in class, she'd do a shit job on purpose and leave some little stones in the lentils.

Then our last step was the fairground where the town fair was (and is still) held, and our tour guide told us little 19th-century anecdotes (in-character, more like acting them out) that she'd found in old postcards and letters in the archives—how the town fair was where you'd go for your dentist appointment (i.e. to have your bad teeth pulled with pliers with no pain medicine) and to get any object repaired, like damaged pans or clogs; how there were dancing bears and performing monkeys; how one year the merchant who sold linen for women's trousseaus had her linen display trampled "by 300 cows" (might have been an exaggeration) and she hit the cow herder and it started a massive brawl.

My favourite anecdote was how back in the 1800s the local innkeeper was frustrated by the fact that the nearest village is just 10km away, and people who came to the fair often decided to go spend the night there so their journey back the next day would be less long, and so he started to tell them about the beast that lives under the bridge between the two villages. Travellers say horses go mad when they see it and just jump into the water. Some say the beast has dug up corpses from the cemetery because it likes human flesh, though of course it prefers it fresh. I'm now convinced half of local legends were single-handedly created by business savvy innkeepers determined to get more customers than the rival inn 10km away.

I'm sad I only learnt about these visits at the end of summer when they're coming to an end, but I'll definitely follow this woman around again if she returns with more stories next year!

[sescoups]

on my knees - choi seungcheol

masterlist

summary: your best friend and roommate is out of the country, and you come home to find nothing short of a disaster. who else would you have called but her brother?

word count: ~9k oops

a/n: I have no fucking clue what happened to me, but I just started writing and then didn't stop for like 4 hours so. here you go. you're welcome and also I'm sorry.

18+ MDNI!! warnings under the cut!

warnings: heavy kissing, seungcheol is the epitome of a Simp, p in v sex, unprotected sex (don't), oral sex (f receiving), slight size kink, let me know if I missed something!

You had been best friends with Sua since you were both six years old. One of the older boys had pushed you onto the ground, wanting to be ahead of you in the line for the slide. Most of the other kids had laughed as tears started pouring down your cheeks, your knee rubbed red and raw and your pretty dress covered in dust and gravel.

“Are you really so immature you can’t even wait your turn?” a small voice had piped up.

Through the haze of your tears, you had seen a pretty black-haired girl kneel down to help you out. She had brushed away the worst of the dirt from your dress, and leaned in to look at your knee.

“I don’t know much about scrapes,” she said thoughtfully, “but I think you should clean it. That’s what my mom always says to me and my brother.” Then she smiled before standing up and glaring at the boy again. “You’re a poopyhead, and I will never play with you.”

Thinking back on it as adults, you always laughed at her phrasing; even more amusing was the way the little boy had taken Sua’s comment way too seriously and tried to fight her in the playground. Before any of the adults had been able to intervene, Sua’s older brother had stepped between the two of them menacingly, arms crossed across his chest. He was three years older, so the other boy quickly back-tracked when faced with Seungcheol’s nine-year old frame. After the little boy had run away out of fear, crying, the two siblings had helped you off the ground and to your parents.

The rest was history; playdates as children, study dates in middle and high school, and spending every single summer vacation together. You had gone from climbing trees to shopping at the mall, and from learning the alphabet to crying your way through chemistry together. Well, you more than her, but still. The suffering was mutual.

Your dynamic remained largely unchanged throughout the years. You were the crier, and Sua was the fixer. You hated the way you cried at the smallest inconveniences, and often felt bad for Sua for having to fix it, but she always said it was cute. She said you were just like that, and that was okay. Sua had her own quirks, mainly being quick to anger - you reassured her that you didn’t mind holding her back from fights and silencing her before she could yell insults at undeserving people, so really, you were the same. Just, you know, in a different way.

Another thing that never really changed was the way Seungcheol took care of the both of you. He helped out with homework when he could, taught Sua how to fight (truly a dubious decision considering her anger, but that was his business and not yours), and scared away any icky boys that were mean to you.

It was a very different dynamic to how other siblings seemed to act, but since you were an only child, you wouldn’t really know. Though, to be fair, he seldom held back the snarky comments when the opportunity presented itself. He would roll his eyes whenever you cried, call Sua an idiot when she didn’t understand a math problem, and generally be a dick when you played games together. It was all in good fun, you supposed.

Now, being 24 years old and two years out of college, Sua was your roommate and your rock. She was the one who put up with your generally messy habits and lack of cooking acumen, and she only complained once a month or so. In return, you were the one to make sure bills were paid on time and keep the freezer stocked with ice cream during the hot summer months. A symbiotic relationship, if you’d ever seen one.

You saw significantly less of Seungcheol, though he was far from an uncommon fixture in your household. He knew the code for the keypad on the door, so sometimes he just showed up unannounced to raid your kitchen and take a nap on your couch, but you didn’t mind. He did tend to fix anything that was broken and clean up whatever you couldn’t be bothered to, so the transaction was fair in your opinion.

One fateful Tuesday, you received a call during your lunch break at work. Usually, you wouldn’t answer, preferring to take your 45 minutes to scroll down your social media feeds aimlessly while eating your food, but Sua had always had special privileges, so you picked up anyway.

“Hey, sorry, I know I’m interrupting your scheduled vegetable time,” she started, and you snorted in response.

“I am not eating anything with vegetables in it, and I think you know it.” You were opening the store-bought lunchbox while speaking, your phone tucked between your elbow and your cheek.

“If I didn’t cook you dinner every day, you would have scurvy,” she shot back without a second’s hesitation. “No, dumbass, I meant your own brain-turning-to-vegetable time. Duh.”

“Oh, that,” you replied, unphased by her insults and generally snarky tone. You were used to it. And also kind of deserved it.

“Yeah. Well anyway, something came up at work and I’m gonna have to take an unscheduled work trip.”

“Cool. Where to?”

“Tokyo, so not that far,” she sighed, and you could picture her running her fingers through her hair. She never did well with unexpected travel plans. “I have to leave tonight. I just thought I’d let you know, so you can make plans to get takeout tonight.”

You scoffed down the line, placing a forkful of bulgogi in your mouth and chewing quickly. God bless convenience store lunchboxes. “I know how to take care of myself, mom.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, you slob.” Again, you could picture Sua’s nose crinkling in disgust. “I’m kidding, by the way. I know you can take care of yourself. Just letting you know I’m leaving so you don’t think I’ve been kidnapped or killed or something.”

“Thank God I don’t have to deal with the paperwork for a missing person,” you deadpanned and took a drink of your Sprite. “No but for real, enjoy the trip. I’ll be fine, and so will you.”

“Thanks,” your best friend sighed back. “I’ll be back in a week or so. I’m gonna go home and pack now, so if anything’s a mess when you get home- actually, nevermind. That doesn’t bother you at all. Bye.”

“Hey-” you started to protest, but the line went dead and you rolled your eyes.

Well. At least now you could have sushi for dinner without having to listen to Sua complain about the smell of raw fish.

You were so ready to become a couch potato as soon as you came home. One of the new employees at work, Jun, had screwed up a pretty important document, so you’d had to stay late and help him fix it. It wasn’t his fault, he was still new, but you were tired nonetheless. You took your shoes off by the door and turned the lights on in the kitchen, placing the bag of takeout on the counter before you heard it.

The water.

You had never had any issues with the pipes in your apartment, but something had obviously gone wrong with the pipes under the bathroom sink, because the floor was absolutely flooded. You gasped and shut your eyes tightly for a second, willing the problem to be miraculously gone as soon as you opened them again. Alas, no such luck.

The tears pressed behind your eyes, begging to make their escape. You tried to hold them back as you thought about what to do to solve the problem. The faucet wasn’t on, so it was definitely the pipes. Damn. You thought about calling the apartment management and asking for help, but their turnover time was two days at the best of times, and the office was already closed for the day. You heaved a deep sigh as you settled on the best option you could think of. You pressed the name in your contacts and begged the universe that he would pick up.

“What’s up?”

Seungcheol sounded relaxed and unbothered, and you could hear the chatter of a TV in the background. You hated to bother him, but hey, it was his little sister’s apartment too. You cleared your throat to try and get rid of the thickness in your throat brought on by the tears.

“Hey, Cheol,” you began, and you heard him sit up immediately and pause whatever was playing on the TV.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

He sounded worried; he usually only called you an endearment when he was worried or teasing you. Clearing your throat had evidently not been enough to get rid of the tears in your voice. Some of them finally escaped in tracks down your cheeks, and you swore, leaning your forehead against the doorframe.

“So uh, I just got home, and Sua isn’t here because she’s in Tokyo and I-”

“Y/N, I don’t care about Sua right now. I know she’s fine, she landed half an hour ago. What’s going on with you?”

“The guest bathroom is flooded, like completely, and I don’t know what to do.”

You heard the rustling of clothes and what sounded like keys jingling through the phone. “Jesus Christ, I thought you were fucking dying,” Seungcheol scolded, and you hiccupped a little, apologizing. “No, don’t worry darling, I’m coming over to help, okay?”

“Okay.”

You were sniffling, and you heard him curse under his breath. You hung up after a quick goodbye, and then you were left alone with the mess again. Looking closer, you realized that the bath mat was soaked along with a towel left on the floor. You sighed and took your socks off, deciding to do something productive while waiting for your knight in shining armor.

You took a picture and sent it to Sua, who replied immediately with a bunch of question marks and swear words directed to the apartment management. She also realized they would be no help at this hour. Great.

Once the soaked bath mat and towel were hung up and dripping into the tub as opposed to the flooded floor, you started clearing out some of the decorations that were taking up floor space. There was a giant plant, two laundry baskets, and a really heavy wooden dresser that held all your clean towels - you didn’t want the wood to rot.

You heard the door open while you were in the process of moving the plant. Honestly, you should have waited for Seungcheol to move this one; the plant was heavy as fuck and really awkward to carry, and you could feel your back protesting before you had even gotten it outside of the bathroom.

“What the hell, Y/N.”

The voice was closely followed by a pair of hands grabbing the plant from you and heaving it outside of the door in mere seconds. Showoff.

“Are you okay?” Seungcheol asked after placing the plant down on a towel, grabbing your upper arm gently. You nodded, and he sighed, squeezing your arm. “Let’s see the- oh fuck.”

You couldn’t help it, you started laughing. Hysterically. The bathroom floor was covered in two inches of water, and the sound of more spraying out was echoing off the walls. Your best friend’s brother glared at you for two seconds before he started laughing too. It wasn’t funny, but it kind of was. How had this even happened? And how had Sua not seen anything when she was home to pack?

“Sorry, Cheol,” you giggled, wiping under your eyes to get rid of the tears that were still falling. Typical. “I, uh, wanted to move the plant and the dresser to make more room and-”

“Darling, that plant was almost heavier than you are. Not to mention that dresser. What were you thinking?”

His voice soothed your panic. He had been solving your problems for the past eighteen years, after all; this was nothing he couldn’t handle. He looked ruffled, you realized. He had been relaxing after a long day at work when you called, and had gotten to your apartment as fast as he could just to help you. And now he was here, being all nice and caring and calling you sweet names. You felt like a stupid child.

“I-I’m sorry. For calling you, I shouldn’t have, I-”

“Absolutely not. You can call me about anything at any time, you got that?” he asked sternly, gazing directly into your eyes. You swallowed, but nodded. His words gave you unwelcome butterflies, the intensity of his gaze making you look away.

“Got it,” you replied when a nod didn’t seem to be enough for him. “Uhm, so how do we deal with this?”

For a moment, the only sound you could hear was the steady spray of water coming from under the sink. You realized that all the products underneath would be useless now, and you would probably have to change out the entire cabinet housing the pipes. You felt a migraine start a steady throb against your temples, and you deflated even more, resting against the doorway.

“It’s okay, I’ll fix it for you, darling,” Seungcheol said softly, pulling you in for a hug. Your stomach erupted in butterflies again. You seriously needed some psychological help.  “Just go change, okay? You must be exhausted.”

You shook your head, but relented when he lifted an eyebrow at you. You went to your room and closed the door. For a moment, you just stood there, staring at nothing. Your bathroom was flooded. And your best friend’s brother was helping you fix it, calling you sweet nicknames and saying shit straight out of a romance novel - as if your dumb crush on him needed any more encouragement. You sunk onto the edge of your bed for a moment, just breathing deeply and blinking back more tears. Enough was enough.

When you were fourteen or so, you’d had a crush on Seungcheol. Who wouldn’t? He was tall, pretty, smelled good, and helped you with your homework. Ever since then, it would come and go, usually at the most inopportune times. You appreciated his looks pretty often, particularly when he came over to fix stuff for you and Sua, but you tried not to think about it much - mostly out of self preservation. He was still pretty, still nice, still smelled good, and whenever you let your mind wander for more than five seconds, you knew you were in danger.

You definitely should get it under control. First of all, he had known you since you were six. He had seen all your weird phases, watched you find your own identity, and that came with some really cringy stuff. Additionally, you were his little sister’s best friend. You had some loyalty to her, sure, but more than anything you were sure that he saw you as an extra sister or something. Considering the amount of time you had spent at their house growing up, that would only be logical.

Armed with the reminder of why he would never be into you, you shook it all off. You located your regular home attire - bike shorts and a big t-shirt which origins you forgot - and put your hair up and out of your face. Then you steeled yourself again, vowing not to cry at the sight of the water, and walked back towards the accursed bathroom.

You found Seungcheol on his knees in front of the open cabinet from where the water came. He was hunched over, hand in front of him to block some of the water and seemingly looking for something. His white t-shirt had been sprayed with water, and it was sticking to his chest. You gulped at the sight, repeating that he saw you as an annoying crybaby to yourself in order to stop the stupid butterflies that had seemingly taken up permanent residence in your guts.

“Do you need a flashlight or something?” you asked timidly, making him look up at you. He paused and blinked at you once, twice, before clearing his throat and nodding. You got out your phone and turned the flashlight on, carefully stepping in behind him so as not to splash him.

“I, uh, think we need to remove this middle shelf from the cabinet,” he said, having positioned himself to shield you from the spray.

“Alright,” you replied, placing your phone to the side and leaning to grab the shelf before being stopped by one of his hands. He had placed it carefully on bare skin so as not to get your clothes wet. Damn him. “What? I’ll just grab it and get it out of the way for you.”

He scoffed. “You’ll get wet.”

Now it was your turn to blink at him stupidly, eyes wide and questioning. You could feel your cheeks burning, as did your arm where his hand was resting. This stupid, stupid man was going to make you fall in love with him, and that just couldn’t happen. At all.

“Who cares, Cheol? It’s just water. Let me get it out of your way, and I’ll hold the flashlight again, okay?”

He grimaced, but let go of your arm. You grabbed both sides of the shelf and lifted it. It took a bit of pressure, but eventually it came loose. You backed up slowly and brought the shelf over the tub with the soaked bath mat and dirty towel. Gross.

Even though you had been fast, Seungcheol had been right; your entire torso was soaked with water. You decided that you could do something about it after the leak was dealt with, and so you just ignored it and grabbed your phone again. Your friend was staring at your front with a wrinkle between his brows, mouth open a little, and you rolled your eyes affectionately.

“Cheol.” He looked up at you. “It’s fine. I know you wanted to shield me or whatever, but it’s just a shirt. Now please, help me solve this?”

He nodded wordlessly and turned back to the considerably more spacious cabinet, taking a deep breath. His pout was cute, and you hated your heart for beating faster at the sight of him.

Seungcheol seemed to finally have found what he was looking for, and reached into the cabinet. You altered the angle of the light to make sure he could still see what he was doing despite the shadow of his arm. He grabbed ahold of something and started tugging, his biceps flexing distractingly and his eyebrows screwing up in effort. You were definitely not holding the flashlight in a particularly helpful way anymore, but thankfully your helper didn’t seem to mind.

After a second or two the water slowed before stopping completely, and you cheered out loud. The sound had somehow become grating after only an hour, and the silence was very much welcome. Seungcheol stood up with a wince, holding a hand to his back like an old man. Without thinking, you pulled him into you and gave him a bear hug. You felt tears prick at your eyes again, but held them back. You were just so grateful to have him.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

You felt him laugh against you before he wrapped an arm gently around you and returned the hug. You pressed your cheek to his chest, just standing there and enjoying the embrace for a while before your brain would inevitably come back online. You felt his chin press against the top of your head for a second before he pulled away suddenly.

“Shit, sorry, I’m all-”

“I said I don’t care, stupid,” you scoffed, but your cheeks were definitely getting red now. How could you have just grabbed him like that? And embraced him? You would have cried if you hadn’t been so tired your head felt like it was full of cotton.

Now that you thought about it, you were extremely tired. It felt like a movie effect, the way your blood pressure just suddenly dropped and you swayed to the side. You were expecting a splash and a very uncomfortable kiss with the tile floor, but instead you found yourself back in Seungcheol’s arms. Oh.

Again with the stupid romance novel shit. The universe was testing you for sure. How were you supposed to resist him, really? You were doomed. Even the thought of your infatuation with him being one-sided could no longer bring you back down to the ground. You were simply fucked.

“When was the last time you ate anything?”

And he cares? Fuck the universe, seriously.

“Uhm, I think it was lunch. I stayed pretty late at work, so-”

“Please tell me you have food.”

“Y-Yeah. It’s uh, it’s on the counter in the kitchen.”

Without hesitation, the man picked you up and carried you into the kitchen. Your heart was going crazy, as were the butterflies in your stomach. You were at a loss for words, just going limp in his arms as he brought you to the dining table and placed you on one of the chairs gingerly. You continued to simply blink at him as he disappeared back into the hallway and came back with his hoodie, pulling it over your head before disappearing into the kitchen.

You wanted to scream and kick your feet, because was this man even real? You had no idea how you had deluded yourself into thinking your feelings toward him were sisterly, because currently, your pussy was screaming for him to come ruin you. And honestly? Both your heart and your head kind of agreed at this moment. You were so screwed.

When he came back with your sushi all plated and a glass for the drink you had bought, you couldn’t help but let the tears come back. You hated that you were so weepy, especially in front of a man you apparently were head over heels for, but it was just who you were. You were sad? You cried. Happy? Cried. Angry? Waterworks. You were helpless to it, and apparently to him, too.

“Good job picking up food on the way back home,” he teased, placing the plate in front of you. Then he poured your drink into your glass for you, promptly ignoring the way you were wiping your cheeks with the sleeve of his hoodie.

“Shut up, I’m an adult,” you pouted back. He snorted loudly and sank into the chair opposite you, looking at you as you picked up your chopsticks and got ready to eat.

“Sometimes, maybe,” he drawled with a smirk. You glared at him, but your teary eyes had little to no effect, and you knew it. “I’m kidding, baby. I know.”

He was still studying your face as you placed the first piece of heaven into your mouth, sighing happily and smiling in delight. It made him smile, too, and you could have died at the sight of his dimples. At this point, you had just accepted the butterflies and their claim to your stomach; doing anything else seemed futile.

“I’m sorry I’m so weepy, Cheol,” you said between bites, pouting a little. He shook his head but you interrupted him before he could speak. “No, really. There was no reason to cry so much, or so many times, but I just- I don’t know. I literally got home right before I called you, and that was, what? At around-”

“9.30.”

“Yeah,” you sighed, leaning back in your chair and tilting your head back in exhaustion. “9.30. I’m just tired, is what I’m trying to say.” You sat back up and huffed, sending him an embarrassed smile.

“And what I’m trying to say,” Seungcheol said while you readjusted the sleeves of his hoodie, “is to not worry about it. I know you’re an emotional person, but that’s okay.” He paused for a second, smiling when you almost dropped your sushi into the soy sauce. “Being emotional is just a tiny part of who you are. You excel at so much; it’s okay to have a few flaws. We all do, I promise. Besides, being emotional isn’t really a flaw, it’s just part of being human.”

At this, you couldn’t help but laugh a little. First of all, he was way too well-spoken to be a man in his twenties. Second of all, if he was implying that he, of all people, had any flaws, he was dead wrong. You had never seen him fail at anything, had never seen him do something awkward, even as a child. God, you wished he had, because maybe then he could have remained the brother of your best friend instead of becoming so incredibly meaningful to you.

“As if you have any flaws,” you mumbled, sticking another piece of food in your mouth. At least the sushi was good.

“Oh please, sweetheart. I’m twenty-seven and single. There’s plenty wrong with me.”

You shook your head vehemently. “Being single is not a flaw, you dummy. It’s just a relationship status. Who cares.”

“As if that’s all it is,” he laughed back.

“Okay, so the fact that I’m single reflects badly on me? ” you asked, raising an eyebrow. “Good to know.”

Your plate was empty, and your chopsticks were resting on the edge of it. The only sound in the apartment was a steady, slow drip from the drying bath mat in the bathroom. You were staring at one another from across the table. Why the tension suddenly was so thick was anyone’s guess. All you knew was that the air in your little kitchen suddenly felt suffocating.

“You’re single?” he asked after a while, and you laughed a little.

“Yeah, Cheol.”

“What about that dude, what was his name… Mingyu?”

“Ew,” you said, wrinkling your nose. “God no. We went on like, one date and then decided it was weird to be anything other than friends. He feels more like a brother than anything.”

“What about Chan?”

“Wh- Chan? That was four years ago,” you laughed, shaking your head. At the curious tilt of his head, you kept going: “He was fine, we just got stressed during college and broke up. It happens.”

Something about this line of questioning felt momentous, for a few reasons. One, he was inquiring about your dating life, a topic the two of you generally never talked about. Two, he remembered the name of potential partners that had been in your life, even ones that hadn’t stuck around for long (or at all, in Mingyu’s case). And three… the way he looked at you was different. There was something in his gaze that you couldn’t place, something you didn’t know if you dared hope for.

“Well he’s obviously an idiot,” Seungcheol said under his breath. You were probably not supposed to hear it, but you did. Your heart stuttered in your chest as he looked at you guiltily, as if he had done something wrong. “I just meant that- uhm.”

A few seconds passed in silence. You barely dared to breathe. You were hoping he would keep going, hoping he would clarify before your thoughts went way too far again. The tension was so thick it could have been cut with a knife. Finally, he let out the heaviest sigh you’d ever heard.

“No, you know what, I meant it. He was an idiot for breaking up with you, because anyone would be lucky to have you.”

Time stopped. What do you say after that? You wanted to scream with joy and jump his bones, of course, but you couldn’t exactly do that. What if he didn’t mean it like that? If he didn’t feel the way you hoped he was implying? Because he, or more specifically his sister, was such a huge part of your life, and awkwardness was just not an option.

“Are-” you started, but blinked and started over. “Are you… serious?”

“Of course I am, Y/N.” He sounded almost exasperated. He ran a hand through his slightly damp hair, making it fall over his forehead in the most attractive way you had ever seen. Fucking. Unfair. “I’m not- I mean. I get it if you don’t feel the same or anything, but-”

“Feel what, exactly?” When he stared at you in confusion, you elaborated. “Please be clear with me, Cheol. I don’t want to keep guessing.”

It had come out as a whisper, but he had heard you. His expression softened, and the wrinkle between his brows disappeared. His mouth was slightly open as he seemingly looked for the right words. Your heart was beating out of your chest, and you almost felt it in your throat.

“Baby,” he started, and it made your breath hitch. “I don’t think I’ve ever met someone as dense as you are.”

“Hey!”

“No, seriously,” he kept going, not a single trace of evidence that he was joking, “do you actually mean to tell me you don’t know how I feel about you?”

“Look, I don’t-”

“I guess you don’t, and in that case, that’s my bad.” He got up from his chair and rounded the table, crouching next to your chair and grabbing your hand. “I am so ridiculously into you, it’s not even funny. Sua literally won’t stop teasing me about it, neither will my parents or my friends. No matter how hard I try I can’t stop thinking about you, but I’m honestly not sure I would want to even if I could. You mean so much to me, Y/N, and I really don’t want to be overbearing but I- fuck, I can’t-” he shuts his eyes in an attempt to collect himself, “I love you, baby, and if you don’t feel the same that’s fine, but I at least need you to know that I’m on my goddamn knees for you.”

Your glass, still containing some of your soda, toppled over from the force with which you left your chair. The way you threw yourself at Seungcheol forced him back, but you took the opportunity and placed yourself in his lap as you kissed him deeply. It took him half a second to respond, but then he was kissing you so ardently that you never wanted him to stop.

His arm wrapped around you from behind and pressed you to his chest. You could not give less of a shit that he was sprawled on your kitchen floor, or that you were down there with him, because you were kissing him. You were kissing the man that you most definitely had been in love with since you were a teenager, and fuck did it feel good.

“I, uh, take it you feel the same, then?” he asked after having reluctantly pulled away. You pressed your forehead to his.

“I bet that I have loved you longer.” You were breathing heavily, already missing the feeling of his lips on yours.

“Absolutely not,” he replied before kissing you again.

This time, you couldn’t hold back. You nibbled gently on his lower lip before soothing it over with your tongue. Seungcheol groaned deep in his chest and brought his left hand into your hair, pressing you even closer to him. He opened his mouth, letting your tongue tangle with his, and you felt the way he became jelly underneath you. You were not faring much better, your panties hot and sticky and your hands shaking. Despite this, you snaked one hand into his hair and tugged on it; his hips jumped in response, the action seemingly completely involuntary. You didn’t think you’d ever experienced anything hotter.

“Please, baby,” he heaved as you trailed your lips down his neck, “I can’t take it.”

You rolled your hips against his slowly, and that seemed to be his breaking point. He rolled you underneath him before standing up and taking you with him, carrying you into your bedroom while you followed the shape of his jaw up to his ear with your mouth. A shudder streaked through him as you sucked on the spot behind his left ear, his arms tightening around you and a hoarse moan leaving him.

You barely noticed him closing your bedroom door, only brought back to reality by the sensation of falling when he dropped you on your bed. You whined at the loss of contact, which made him smile; he loved the way you craved him, because honestly, he felt the exact same way about you. So he was quick to cover your body with his, his lips back on yours with a shuddered sigh from the both of you.

He felt so big above you, and yet you felt so safe. Not once had he done anything to hurt you. In fact, he had always been the one to take care of you and prevent you from being hurt. (Along with Sua, but you didn’t really want to think about her at that moment). His weight on top of you made you shudder in delight, your hands starting to wander. You played with the hem of his white t-shirt, still damp from the earlier bathroom catastrophe, but you didn’t care at all. All you wanted was to feel his skin against yours.

He was breathing as if he had run a marathon when he pulled away from your lips. He stared into your eyes, looking for any sign of reluctance, but not finding any.

“Are you sure, darling?” he asked, and your heart swelled about three sizes.

“I’m so sure, Cheol. Please, please, I need you.” You were properly whining now, but you were far past caring.

“Okay baby, okay,” he breathed, pulling away to get his shirt up and over his head. He was about to lay back over you, but froze and let his eyes wander your body. He shut his eyes, his forehead wrinkling once again as he took a few deep breaths. “You in my hoodie and underneath me, I can’t- Y/N, baby, I need a second, I’m so-”

You giggled a little before grabbing the hem of said hoodie, pulling it up and over your head. Apparently, that didn’t help, as Seungcheol’s grip on the sheets tightened and he cursed under his breath.

“I thought this would be better,” you said in confusion, blinking up at him.

“I’m actually going to die,” he gritted out, sounding as if he was genuinely in pain. “I don’t think you realize what seeing you in a wet t-shirt did to me earlier, sweetheart. What it’s doing to me now is just torture.” You flushed at his words, having forgotten that little detail. “Wait. Is that my shirt?” You glanced down and flushed even more when you realized it must be. “Fuck, gonna be the death of me, gonna fucking-”

He cut himself off by pressing his lips against yours again. Your head immediately got fuzzy again, the only thought you could formulate being that of his dick inside of you. When he ground his hips against yours and you felt the outline of it, you let out the most sinful moan Seungcheol has ever heard, which caused his hips to keep grinding into you without his brain’s permission. You disconnected your lips from his for just long enough to pull your wet shirt off your alarmingly hot body, and the man on top of you didn’t even have the strength to look at you without a shirt. He might actually have came in his pants if he did.

You didn’t even mind, because you finally had his skin pressed against yours. The heat of him poured over you, driving you absolutely insane and making you whimper against his lips. If he didn’t do something in the next minute, you would just have to take care of yourself.

“Cheol-”

“Please say it again,” he begged, his lips trailing down your neck toward your breasts.

“Cheol,” you sighed, and he moaned against your skin, his dick grinding perfectly against your clit even through four layers of fabric. You barely recognized your own sounds even as you felt them leave your lips, so high on his proximity you couldn’t have produced a thought if you tried.

When you repeated his name one more time he finally closed his lips around your right nipple, his deft fingers playing with the other and his cock still pressing deliciously against your pussy. Your hips lifted to grind back on him, and he actually whined for you.

“Seungcheol,” you whined, and his only response was a harsh thrust of his hips and another whine. “Please, take my shorts off, I need you to fuck me so bad.”

He let go of your nipple, chuckling as he looked into your eyes and dragged his hands down to rest on your hips. “Want these off?” he asked, flicking the elastic of your bike shorts against your skin. You nodded frantically, pressing your hips up into his again. He looked like he wanted to protest, so you decided to do the only logical thing and beg for his cock.

“Cheol, please please please, take my shorts off? I need it, please,” you begged, your eyes big and innocent as you stared into his. “I want your cock, baby, want it inside me, please.”

Honestly, it was no surprise that his confident facade crumbled along with his will to tease you any longer. If he was telling the truth, and you had no reason not to believe him, he had been in love with you for a long time. You had played dirty by begging him for his cock when he had already been on the verge of losing his mind - especially with those big, innocent eyes of yours. How was he supposed to say no to you?

“Evil, evil woman, fuck,” he muttered to himself as he all but tore the shorts down your legs along with your panties.

The sight of you, his absolute dream, naked beneath him made him believe in God for two whole seconds, for who could have accomplished something like you but an almighty deity? He must have shaped you with his own two hands, he thought, before coming back to his senses and thinking that no, you were a creation of your own. No one but you could have accomplished something like you.

With very little preamble, Seungcheol lowered himself between your thighs, kissing up the inside of each thigh as he went. He looked up and met your gaze, and you had never seen a more erotic sight. Sure, other people had gone down on you before, but none of them had been Seungcheol; none of them had been the one that counted. His big brown eyes met yours, and you swore you saw raw hunger in them.

“May I, baby? Please?”

“You- You’re begging to eat me out?” you asked, in complete and utter shock. You had figured this was somewhat of a chore to him, something that needed to be done both to woo you and to prep you for his cock. One look at his glazed eyes had you changing your mind.

“Yes,” he said without hesitation. His voice was hoarse and his eyes desperate, that simple look giving you enough material for many fantasies in the future. “Please, let me eat you out?”

What were you supposed to do, say no? Absolutely not. You simply nodded at him, and he fucking dove for it. His tongue explored your folds gently but firmly, and as soon as the flavor of you met his taste buds, he was in heaven. His hips ground into the mattress of their own volition as he was lapping at you, his tongue mapping you out and figuring out what brought you the most pleasure.

Seungcheol’s eyes were shut in pleasure, your juices covering his chin all the way up to his nose, but he couldn’t think of anything better. He wanted to drown in you, on his stomach between your legs, or - if he was allowed to dream - underneath you while you were grinding all over his face, taking all the pleasure you could from him.

You weren’t exactly complaining, either. His tongue felt divine, moving to gently circle your clit before he sucked it into his mouth. When your fingers tangled in his hair, tugging in pleasure, your lover let out a grunt that sent vibrations traveling through your entire body.

“F-Fingers, Cheol, please-”

He just grunted an affirmative and pressed his middle finger into you slowly. The warmth surrounding his finger drove him insane, making his hips press harder against the mattress and his eyes squeeze tighter. Having something to clench down on brought your pleasure to even greater heights, and you started to feel the familiar tightening signaling your release. You had felt the outline of his dick earlier, and you knew you would need another finger to make him fit.

“Another, I need you to fit later, baby.”

Your voice came out shaky, but the man consuming your pussy like it was the best meal he’d ever had didn’t seem to mind. He simply let his ring finger join his other inside you, grunting when he felt how tight you were around him. The tightening in your lower belly grew more and more intense by the second, the filthy noises of Seungcheol devouring you bringing you that much closer to the edge. You let out a mewl that sounded like it came straight from a porno, and felt his grip tighten on your thigh.

“I’m so close, baby, so close, please-”

“Come for me,” he growled hoarsely before resuming his delicious torture of your clit.

You followed his request a second later, moaning loudly and squirming around on the bed. His free hand pressed down over your hips to keep you still as he coaxed you through it, and he didn’t stop until the overstimulation almost hurt.

His fingers left your pussy gently, absolutely covered in your slick. You blushed as he put them in his mouth, moaning at the flavor as if you were the best thing he’d ever tasted. And to him, you were. He would remember the flavor of you until the day he died.

Your chest was rising and falling as you gulped down air. The way Seungcheol couldn’t help but grind into the mattress again made you want to cry, because how could he be so perfect? And how could he want you, of all people?

When he kissed you again, you could taste yourself on his lips and tongue, and you loved it. It was a reminder of just how voraciously he had just eaten you out, and you took the opportunity to reach down and cup him over his underwear. He hissed and pulled his hips back, panting already.

“I- you can’t.”

“But, baby I just want to return the favor-”

“My love, if you touch me again I can’t guarantee that I will have faculties to be inside you.”

His words made you laugh, both because of how ridiculous his phrasing was, but also because of the effect you seemed to have on him. Had he really been driven so far by making out with you and making you cum? It seemed like it.

“I love you so much,” you ended up breathing out. He gazed into your eyes so adoringly you felt like time stopped again.

“I love you more, Y/N.”

His response prompted you to kiss him, and he deflated on top of you. As he sunk further into your embrace, his still-covered dick brushed against your wet core, and the whine he let out was almost pathetic.

“I hate to ruin the moment, but please, let me be inside you now. I think I’ll die if I can’t,” he confessed. You laughed out loud again before nodding, kissing and sucking a trail down his neck while he removed his boxers. “Condom?”

“I don’t have any, but I have an IUD and I’m clean.” You could practically see Seungcheol’s brain grind to a halt. “But, I mean, if you don’t want to we can just wai-”

“No!” he almost yelled, his entire face flushing pink. “No, I’m clean too, and I- fuck, I would love to be inside you without a condom.”

You nodded, and he took a deep breath. The thought of having him inside you without a barrier excited you to no end, and it seemed he felt the same. You kissed him passionately again while he lined himself up with your core, and moaned through a sigh as he pushed into you. He didn’t have a monster cock or anything, but it was still bigger than what you were used to taking.

As he bottomed out, he let out a punched out sigh. You could feel him shaking on top of you, and did your best not to move or clench down on him. Unfortunately, your pussy didn’t exactly obey you and clenched down anyway. It made Seungcheol’s breath hitch, and he squeezed his eyes shut tight so as not to look at you while he was trying not to cum.

“I swear,” he wheezed, “you are going to kill me.”

His words made you chuckle, which in turn made him groan and bury his face in the crook of your neck. You were ready for him to move, and told him as much, but he still needed a second. You could feel tears sting the corners of your eyes, as per usual feeling weepy as soon as you felt a big wave of emotion. To distract yourself, you locked your lips with his and kissed him with all the passion you had left to give.

As your tongue tangled with his he groaned low in his throat, and his hips thrust into you of their own accord. Once he had started, he couldn’t stop, and you didn’t want him to. He started out fairly slow, taking his time to make sure you weren’t hurting at all. Then you accidentally clenched down on him, and he could no longer hold back.

He started pounding into you, his cock reaching the deepest parts of you and making you dizzy. You moaned out every time the tip of him hit the spongy spot inside you, and you couldn’t help the way you were clenching around him. You were hurtling toward your end so fast it was almost alarming. He filled you up so perfectly, so perfectly thick and long, it was as if you were made for one another.

Seungcheol was mumbling an endless stream of praise, grunting every time your cunt squeezed him a bit tighter. He felt like he was in heaven, your slick walls molded around him in a way that made him mourn the time spent doing anything other than this. He wanted to keep you like this, impaled on his cock and making you feel as good as you ever had.

Sadly, he was so wound up he wouldn’t be able to last as long as he usually did. While he didn’t blow immediately as he had been worried he would, he started feeling his balls drawing up around five minutes in. The way your nails were scratching down his back wasn’t helping his situation.

In an effort to save himself from cumming before you, he lowered a hand to circle the nub of your clit gently. The extra stimulation was exactly what you needed to build the rest of the way to the edge, and you tangled your hands in his hair as your thighs shook.

“Please, Cheol, baby, I’m gonna-”

“Oh thank God, please cum around me, baby, wanna feel it,” he begged, and it did the trick.

Your orgasm was spectacular, your entire body feeling like it was on fire as you exploded around him. You were moaning his name, clawing at his back and arching your back to the high heavens. Your toes actually curled. It was the orgasm of orgasms.

Seeing you like that, your eyes rolled to the back of your head as he brought you pleasure was enough for Seungcheol to follow you over the edge. He came so hard he saw nothing but white, his hips stuttering as he spilled himself into you. His face was pressed into your neck, but his moans could not be concealed even if he tried.

You both lay there, panting and soaked in sweat, for a pretty long time before he finally pulled out and rolled off of you. He sprawled on his back and stayed like that, his eyes shut in complete and utter bliss and his heart beating out of his chest. Your hair was an absolute bird’s nest around you, and there were tear tracks running down your cheeks and into your hairline.

You clumsily flopped over to rest against his side, and he pulled you in until your head was resting right over his heart. You slung your bare leg over his waist, and he groaned in what sounded like agony.

“You can’t do this to me,” he whined, and you giggled lightly at him.

“I just put my leg on you, baby,” you said, looking up at him innocently, and he had to shut his eyes for a second and remind himself he wasn’t dreaming. You, yourself weren’t entirely convinced all this wasn’t a dream; and if it was, you never wanted to wake up.

“Okay, well you’ve just seen what seeing you in a hoodie and bike shorts does to me, so,” he reminded you, and you bit back a grin. It was good to know you could tease him easily.

You laid in silence for a while, just listening to his heart beating against his ribcage. Every once in a while it would slow down, and then he would look down at you and it would speed back up. Your heart seemed to match the pace of his, and you found that you loved it that way.

“So, “ Seungcheol started, and you pulled yourself up on your elbow to look at him as he talked. “That… just happened.” You snorted into a laugh, and he joined you, flicking your forehead gently. “I uh, I’m going to a work thing on Friday. I usually don’t bring a date because, well, because I’m usually single, but maybe, this time, I could bring you?”

You blinked at him slowly, admiring him in the light from your bedside lamp. He was pretty no matter what, but with his cheeks glowing and his eyes glittering, he was beyond what was natural, in your opinion. You stroked a bit of his hair behind his ear and hummed.

“I mean, are you not single anymore?” you asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Uhhhh-” he was interrupted by your laughter, and he pouted at you jokingly. “Don’t do that! I get scared I fucked up,” he said and rolled over to wrap his arms around you.

“I’m sorry,” you giggled, “I just don’t know either.” You paused. “Hey Cheol?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you want to be my boyfriend?”

At your words, his entire face lit up. He started giggling and buried his face in your hair, trying to hide from view. Even still, you knew he would be blushing. His arms squeezed tighter around you as he pulled you even closer, and you didn’t even mind that you couldn’t breathe.

“I was going to ask,” he ended up whining once brain function had returned to him. “Can I?”

“I mean, sure?” you answered, trying your hardest not to just lean in and kiss away his pout. Your willpower sucked, so you did it anyway.

“Great! Hey, Y/N, would you be my girlfriend?”

You bit your lip to hold in your laughter, but all it did was summon your boyfriend’s gaze to your mouth. You released it and broke out into a huge grin, nodding.

“I would love nothing more.”

“So what you’re saying is,” Sua said thoughtfully, “you finally put him out of his misery?”

It was a week later, and you were sitting on your balcony with Sua and drinking coffee. The bathroom floor was now dry, and while the stupid bath mat had been unsalvageable, everything else had been fine. The apartment management had gotten the leak fixed after five days, proving that calling Seungcheol had been the right choice for more reasons than one.

Even thinking about him, you couldn’t help but smile. Your boyfriend. The one who had brought you to a work function as your first date, and the one who had gotten jealous because you had greeted a coworker of his when he was getting you a drink. The one that had helped you save your apartment from water damage. The one you had loved for the past decade.

“Okay but how could I have put him through misery if I didn’t know he liked me, hm?” you asked, raising an eyebrow at your friend. She had her eyes closed, face turned toward the sun like an old lady.

“You cannot be serious,” she said incredulously, turning toward you and opening her eyes wide to show her shock. “You’re telling me you didn’t know Cheol was in love with you? He has been so down bad for you since we were like fourteen, man. He bought you flowers for your graduation. He reminded you to take your allergy pills before going to a dog café.” You flushed a little at your own blindness, but Sua just sighed and turned back toward the sun, her eyes closed again. “At least it will be easy to kill him if he hurts you.”

a/n: if you liked this, please don't forget to like and reblog! <3

masterlist

[yinyuedijun]

SINCERITY

Flirting with Suo is never a good idea—you can never tell whether he means to charm you or make fun of you when you do it. Sometimes it feels like both. Occasionally it feels mean. More often than not, you like to entertain it. But you can't right now, not when his blood is all over the washroom sink. Your manager will be furious about the mess, and also about the fact that you're giving first aid to three delinquents while you're on the clock. If Suo makes one more joke about marrying you, you'll probably throw up and cry. (Or: Suo, Nirei, and Sakura get into a fight in the red light district and go to you to get patched up. Suo takes the opportunity to tease you mercilessly.)

4.5k words, suo x reader with implied one-sided sakura x reader, sfw with mature themes. set post-canon (they are all 18-19 years old), non-canon backstory details for suo and sakura (speculative as of ch. 146). fem reader – references to gendered professions, e.g. hostessing; reader wears a dress for her job in a girls’ bar. warning for inaccurate depictions of first aid! dividers by @/cafekitsune.

Suo’s never liked your job.

You suppose this is fair. The feeling is mutual. You’ve never liked the fact that Suo chose to go to a delinquent school rather than a proper high school, and he’s never liked the fact that you chose to drop out of your proper high school to go work in the red light district—first at a kyabakura, and now at a girls’ bar. His master, who also happens to be your master, has always told you that this was a natural reaction on his part. Having a secondary school certificate is important, after all. But Suo’s disapproval of your income sources, no matter how politely or subtly phrased, has always felt like it runs deeper than simple concern for your education.

Still, this has never stopped him from visiting you at your place of work, though he only tends to come by under the worst possible circumstances—tonight worse than any other.

When you see the three of them limping through the clamour and heat of the red light district—the neon glow of the street making the blood smeared across Suo’s face shine vibrantly—you entirely forget that you're on the clock. You chuck your sign onto the ground (3000¥ per hour! it reads) as you cut a path toward them, almost tripping in your stiletto heels. Your customer service voice gives way to your regular one, which is so outraged that it startles everyone around you.

“Suo, you motherfucker—are you trying to lose the only eye you have left?!”

Suo is unbothered. His smile is calm and deeply shameless as you approach him. It’s nothing like Nirei, who cringes at the furious look you give him, or Sakura, who looks like a deer caught in headlights when you round on him instead. Like he doesn’t know what to do at the fact that someone is worrying over him, and especially not when that person is wearing an extremely revealing evening gown. For a minute, you think he's going to bolt.

But Suo keeps him there, grip tight on his arm.

“Hi,” he says brightly, like there isn't blood all over his face and shoulder. “Are you busy? We might need to trouble you.”

“Of course I'm busy! I'm in the middle of a shift!” you fume at him. But you still extract Sakura from him, scruffing him by the neck before he can clam up and run. You pull him in the direction of your bar, and gesture for the other two to follow. “Hurry up before my manager sees you.”

Smuggling three delinquents into the washroom of a girls’ bar is not a skill you thought you'd ever need, but it is one that you've become an expert in. This is at least the third time you've done it. The Furin trio rarely ever loses fights, but they occasionally slip up in the part of the red light district that isn't controlled by Roppo-Ichiza. This is somewhat unavoidable, as Keyaki Street is a different beast from Keisei Street. It isn't just delinquents here, but bona fide criminals. “Like, actual fucking Yakuza,” you grouse at Suo for the millionth time. You wipe at the blood remaining on his face—most of it you've already rinsed off, staining the melamine sink with iron—and the paper towel in your hand blooms red.

“But these guys weren't Yakuza,” he says cheerfully.

“They still pulled weapons on you! Bladed weapons!”

“Mm… well, that's true. I'm sorry.”

You scowl at him. “No, you're not.”

“No, I'm not.” He’s still smiling. “In our defense, we didn't have much of a choice. They were about to do something terrible to an innocent person,” he says, and you deflate a little, because you know Suo can't stand to see injustice. This is something you love very dearly about him, and also a quality of his that constantly raises your blood pressure. But then you roll your eyes when he happily adds, “And in my defense, it’s all our Captain’s fault!”

“Oi!” Sakura yells from one of the stalls, where he’s sitting and holding a bag of ice to a knot on his head. “Wasn’t my fault we ended up fighting. They were practically beggin’ to have their asses kicked.”

“You did provoke them, Sakura,” Nirei says. He's in the other stall, trying to stay off his sprained ankle.

“Well, they were dangerous! Not like you wanted to just leave them alone either,” Sakura grumbles, and Nirei apologises, though Suo accurately points out there is no need for him to. After hearing this story, you can't help but agree, and you suppose you shouldn't have expected any differently. After three years at Furin, Sakura is no longer the type to pick fights for no reason. Whatever those guys were up to must have been pretty bad for him to start shit in unfamiliar territory.

Still. The red light district is what it is. Touts, street gangs, and Yakuza are constantly causing problems here, with violence of a scale and nature that Bofurin simply don't see on their own turf. Your street in particular makes someone like Endo look like a joke. “You should still learn to exercise some restraint,” you say to Sakura. “And you”—you give Suo a miserable look—“you know the area. You should have known better. At the very least, you should have called me for backup.”

“But you were on the clock,” Suo points out, and you frown. Despite having absolutely no need, you take out an alcohol wipe and swipe it over his cut. He winces.

“I'm still on the clock now,” you reply, voice dry, “and here you are, distracting me anyway. My boss is going to be on my ass about it if I don't bring in any customers tonight, you know.”

“We can be your customers,” Suo offers.

“You aren't old enough to drink!”

“Neither are you, yet you work here.” His gaze has turned a little sharp. His voice too. You blink, suddenly mollified.

“...okay. If each of you buys a drink after this, I’ll call us even.” Then you glance down at his changshan, which is sliced through, the pearly silk stained red at the shoulder. He’s insisted that the wound is unserious and said that he'd rather clean up his face first, and you're starting to question his priorities. “That is, if you don't have to go to the hospital after this.”

“I don't.”

“I don't know if I believe you.” You pull out some polysporin. “Come closer.”

Suo could do this on his own. His hands aren't incapacitated. But he humours you, as he's always humoured you, and allows you dab his cut with the antibiotic. You feel a little sentimental as you do it, and almost a little sad. Doing this reminds you of when he was a kid who had just started learning martial arts. Granted, he never got any real cuts back then, but sometimes he’d scrape his knees or his elbows or—god forbid—his face, and you would plaster bandaids all over him when he did. But none of those were real injuries.

More than anything, doing this reminds you of when he lost his eye. The state that he was in after the accident. The way his face was bandaged after the surgery. The texture of the gauze against your fingers when you asked to try swapping out the dressings for him.

If Suo notices the way your lip is trembling, he doesn't comment on it.

“You’re so mean—how come you never believe anything I say?” he asks. You press the gauze to his cut with more pressure than necessary, and he blinks. He opens his mouth again, but then the door rattles violently.

“Sorry!” you yell. “Washroom’s closed for cleaning!” You wince as you hear complaints in reply—you’ve been closed for half an hour!—and shoot Suo a sour look as the customer leaves. “I’m really risking it all for you three,” you remark.

“I'll make it up to you,” Suo says. “I'll stick around the whole night and buy as many drinks as you want. Your manager won't be able to hassle you about anything then.”

“No way. You're not wasting that much money on the red light district.” You frown. “Master will kill me if I let you piss away your inheritance like that.”

“I’m not wasting my money on the red light district. I'm wasting it on you.”

“Well, I'm employed at a girls’ bar, so when you waste money on me, you are in fact spending it on the red light district.”

“Then you should quit so I can spend as much money on you as I want.”

“Quit and then live on what income?” You set aside the first aid kit and grab some more paper towel. “Take off your shirt.”

“Oh? Right here? Right now?” His eye goes wide. “How forward.”

Sakura coughs very, very loudly from the stall. If you weren't so used to Suo saying this kind of thing just to mess with you, you'd probably do the same. In fact, you'd probably choke on your spit and die on the spot. But as it is, you only sigh and start unbuttoning Suo’s changshan, starting at the high collar. Any sentimentality or concern you previously felt is quickly drowned out by annoyance.

“Suo.”

“Don’t worry—I don't mind,” he adds. “I thought you'd never ask. I just didn't think it’d happen here. And so suddenly.”

“Don’t do that. I can't do this today.”

“Don’t do what?” he says innocently. He lets you slip his changshan off one shoulder. To your relief, the cut does look very shallow—he’s too quick for anything other than a bullet to land a serious hit on him, you guess—but you still swallow when you see it. It looks like he's bled a lot more than he probably actually has.

Or you hope so, anyway.

“Joke like that,” you reply after a moment. “It's very mean.”

“I’m not joking about anything.” You feel his eye on you as you start dabbing at all the red on his skin, the paper towel in your hands blotting crimson as if with ink. Your breath shakes as you study the wound. He lifts his hand, his knuckle brushing against your cheek. You smack it away, but he doesn't seem bothered. “I was being very serious,” he continues. “Quit working in the red light district and let me support you instead.”

“Suo,” you say, your voice flat, “there is no job you could qualify for on this planet that will let you earn more than what I'm making now. If anything, you should let me support you.”

“Ah,” he says brightly. “I get it now—you want me to be your trophy husband!”

Now you are choking on your spit and you do think you're dying. Sakura sounds like he's not doing much better—something bangs loudly against the washroom stall, and you assume it’s his forehead. Even Nirei is affected, not-so-subtly clearing his throat.

“I do not want you to be my trophy husband.”

“Just a regular husband, then?” he asks. “That’s alright. If I joined the Yakuza, I could make plenty of money. You could even stay at home if you wanted.”

“Suo you motherfucker you are not joining the fucking Yakuza! And I wouldn't be a stay at home wife!”

“Oh? You wouldn't want to be?”

“No, god! Do you know how much I could make if I scored a hostess gig at a high-end place? Why would I ever turn down that kind of money?!”

“Ah, so you want us to be dual income?”

“Of course I would want us to be dual income!”

“You could get a different job and we could still be dual income.”

“There’s no other job that would pay as well.”

Suo sighs, and your brow twitches. You've always been suspicious about why he disapproves of your choice in career. It’s not in his disposition to judge people, but sometimes you still worry that he's doing it to you.

“What,” you ask, “would you be so against marrying a hostess?”

“No, not at all. But I'd be worried if my spouse worked somewhere unsafe. What if you end up at a Yakuza-owned club?”

You pause, startled at the abruptly earnest tone of his voice. Suddenly you feel guilty.

“Oh… well, I wouldn’t work at a Yakuza-owned club.”

“Hm… then I guess it's fine.” Suo nods, as if arriving at a decision. “We’ll get married, we’ll be dual income, and neither of us will work for the Yakuza.”

“Yes, exactly. We’ll get married, we’ll be dual income, and neither of us—” Your eyes go wide as you realize what you're saying. You feel yourself flushing. “Wait.”

“What? Is there a problem?”

“Suo.”

“Don’t tell me you're going to change your mind now. That would just be mean.”

“I'm being mean?” you ask, flabbergasted.

“Well, yes. You don't think it would hurt if you changed your mind about marrying me? And so soon after agreeing, too.”

You stare at him in disbelief. You have a number of possible retorts that cross your mind, and somehow you pick the least relevant one: “You can't trick someone into marrying you.”

“Then can I trick you into dating me?”

“Suo! I said don't do that!”

“Don’t do what?”

“Joke about that kind of thing!”

“I'm not joking about anything.”

“Yes you are? You don't actually want to date me. Stop saying that you do!”

Suo leans in. He stares at you, his gaze distinctly vulpine. It's very attractive, and also intimidating, and you should be used to it by now, but your heart rate ticks up anyway. You swallow thickly as his thumb glides along your cheek again, your skin scorching beneath his fingertips. You forget to bat his hand away this time.

“You’re so mean,” he repeats, voice lilting, “how come you never believe anything I say?”

He's baiting you. He's obviously baiting you, and you consider for a moment whether you want to bite.

Flirting with Suo is never a good idea—you can never tell whether he means to charm you or make fun of you when you do it. Sometimes it feels like both. Occasionally it feels mean. More often than not, you like to entertain it. But you can't right now. His shirt’s stained with such a bright red that it keeps distracting you, just like the blood he's left all over the washroom sink. Your manager will be furious about the mess, and also about the fact that you're giving first aid to three delinquents while you're on the clock. You think they'd go broke before they could spend enough money here to appease her, were she to discover the four of you. You might even lose your job. Then you wouldn't be able to support yourself anymore, let alone Suo, who cracks jokes as easily about being your trophy husband as he does about being Leonardo DiCaprio.

If he makes one more joke about marrying you, you'll probably throw up and cry.

“You're not being very gentlemanly right now,” you finally point out. He raises a brow.

“No?”

“No. I'd even say you're being a menace, actually. Doing a very bad job of”—you almost laugh as you say this, because you've heard this speech so many times—“engaging with my feelings. Not being supportive at all. Really falling off the staircase to adulthood, you know.”

Suo studies you. Something complicated passes through his eye before he pulls away, his expression now back to normal. It's deceptive how innocent he looks.

“Sorry,” he says. “You’re right. I’ll play nice.”

“No, you won't,” you retort, and Suo smiles at you, not replying. But he does give you a break. You finish cleaning up the cut without incident, although you do get flecks of blood on your evening gown, which you hope won't be too noticeable against the black satin. You bemoan the lost cause of Suo's changshan too—made of Suzhou silk, a gift from your master—and silently make a note to buy him a replacement sometime.

You're in the middle of buttoning up his shirt when the door clicks and swings open. Met face to face with your coworker, you freeze up.

Your stage name leaves her mouth in an angry bark. “What are you doing? I told you you're not supposed to be having sex with customers here, you should be doing that someplace—” She stops, evidently spotting the blood on Suo’s shirt, and then the other two individuals locked up in here with you, one of whom is blushing violently and looks to be on the verge of dying from embarrassment. Beneath your hands, you feel Suo’s body go stiff too.

“Oh,” she says before either of them can comment. “It’s just your delinquent boyfriend and his buddies.” Suo waves at her, and she nods back before squinting at the sink. “Are you going to clean that up?”

“Yes,” you say quickly. “Please don't tell our boss.”

“Have I ever ratted you out?” she asks. “Just get out of here soon. People do have to piss, you know.” Then she stops, looking at Suo with a dubious expression. “And make sure your boyfriend doesn't die.”

You're too tired to correct her on the nature of your relationship. “I've been trying,” you say, and she gives you a sympathetic look before retreating. You hear her laughing with a customer about people fooling around in the washroom, and I'm so sorry for the inconvenience, sir, and could you please go downstairs while I clean up. You’re so relieved, you nearly fall to your knees. A calloused hand touches your back as you rub your temples.

“I’m sorry for worrying you,” Suo says quietly—sincerely—and instead of saying no, you're not, you reply, “I know. I’m sorry too.”

Suo’s always hated your job.

He’s always hated your job, your boyfriends, your apartment, and a lot of other things about your life that Sakura doesn’t have any business prying into. And it's just as well. Sakura also hates your shitty job, and your shitty boyfriends, and considering that you live in the same shitty building as him, he isn't a fan of your rental situation either. Nirei’s too polite to say anything about it, but Sakura can tell that he disapproves as well. It’s not like any of them are living the most comfortable lives either—Sakura has personally been living from shithole to shithole, mostly alone, ever since his parents passed—but your lifestyle does make them all feel poorly.

You're just a very easy person to like. And it's very easy to want nice things for you. So Sakura gets it, how Suo feels about you.

What he doesn't quite get is how Suo acts about you.

One thing he’s learned over the years is that Suo is very good at reading people. Sometimes he understands Sakura better than Sakura understands himself, and he can convince Sakura to do things which he himself didn't think were possible for him to do. He's done the same with Nirei, and about half the other people in their grade, and at least a third of the guys in Bofurin. It’s frankly a terrifying skill. But Suo never uses it with you—not to get you to change jobs, or boyfriends, or even apartments.

At first Sakura thought that you were just immune to Suo’s tactics, but he's recently come to realise that Suo simply gets too emotional about you to know how to convince you of anything. He’s even emotional enough to get kind of petty and a little mean with you, which is something that Sakura has only witnessed from Suo during fights. Really bad fights.

It’s terribly uncomfortable, especially when you’re clearly head over heels for Suo.

Sakura doesn't have any business prying into your personal problems. Though truthfully, he’d be happy to thrash some random assholes for you anyway, if that would fix your heartbreak. (He's already done this to at least one of your exes, and it worked shockingly well.) The problem is, Suo is not a random asshole and Sakura isn't sure that you'd want him thrashed in the first place. But it's just fucking painful watching the two of you act like this around each other, so he ends up pulling Suo aside after you kick them out of the girls’ bar, scowling.

Suo looks at him, surprised. “Sakura? What's the matter?”

He doesn't mince words. “How come you were being such a dick to your friend?”

Nirei goes stiff. “Sakura,” he says in his panicked ‘why are you trying to pick a fight now’ voice, “where is this coming from? I don't think Suo was being rude…” But Sakura can tell, as Nirei’s finishing his own sentence, that he's second-guessing himself.

“No,” Suo replies. “I was being a bit terrible, wasn't I?” There’s no humour in either his words or his face, but the corner of his mouth lifts. He actually looks endeared. “I'm surprised you noticed, Sakura.”

“I mean”—Sakura feels himself going red, embarrassed at just the memory of how you looked at Suo; first so worried, then painfully fond, and then like you were going to burst into tears right there in the washroom and ask him to hold you, as if you were in a horrible getsuku drama—“it was kinda hard not to.”

Suo nods. “I suppose it’s natural to be sensitive to the feelings of someone you like.”

Heat floods his face. “I don't like her!”

“Did I say you did?” Suo’s mouth curls when Sakura can't answer. “Don’t be embarrassed. She's a very easy person to like.”

Sakura tries his hardest to ignore Suo—which should be easy, because Suo lies randomly and pointlessly all the time, whenever he thinks it's funny—and says, “If she's an easy person to like, how come you act like you don't like her at all?”

“Was I acting like that? Or was she acting like it was impossible for someone to like her?” Sakura stops. Suo gives him a long look, then smiles. “You would know how difficult it can be to accept being liked, Sakura. And how long it can take to understand that there are people who want to support you unconditionally.”

Sakura opens his mouth once, twice. A third time. Nirei sighs. The two of them watch as Suo—rather than walking in the direction of the subway—steps over to a vending machine and buys a bottle of oolong tea.

“Are you going to wait for her shift to finish?” Nirei asks.

“Mm, I think so.” Suo glances down at his ankle. “But you should go home, Nire-kun. You can’t fight like that. In case those guys come back here, I mean.” He opens the bottle, takes a sip. “They had bladed weapons. It would be bad if you risked it.”

Nirei glances at the entrance to your bar, worried. “But…”

Sakura understands without Nirei finishing his sentence. The security at your bar is terrible, and plenty of people like to exploit that. It was Nirei who noticed a group men eyeing you before anyone else did, following you all the way from Keisei Street to your place of work. And sure, Suo kicked the shit out of them in the end, did much worse to them than vice versa—but who knows if there aren't more of them.

Suo hates your job. All three of them do.

“It’s okay,” Sakura says. “I'm sure the two of us will be enough.”

“...I'll ask Tsubaki if he's free,” Nirei finally relents. “And I'll text Kiryu and Tsugeura too.”

“Thanks, Nire-kun.”

Suo gets a bottle of ramune after Nirei leaves, passes it to Sakura. Tsubaki comes by later, still in his pole outfit, with several pieces of taiyaki for them to share—I’m always snacky after dancing, he explains—and the three of them loiter in front of your bar until four in the morning. Tsubaki asks questions about you in a tone that has Sakura wanting to crawl into an alleyway just to hide, and Suo deflects masterfully with questions about Tsubaki’s new boyfriend. The guys from earlier don't show up. Maybe the sight of Roppo-Ichiza’s top fighter scares them off.

You're surprised to see them there when you emerge a little later. You give Tsubaki a happy but perplexed look as he hugs you.

“Tsubaki? What are you doing here?”

“Keeping these two company,” he replies. “And I wanted to say hi, of course. You should come by the club sometime, you know! I haven't seen you in forever.”

“Sure! That would be nice, but…” You turn to Sakura and Suo, puzzled. “Why are you guys still here?”

Sakura, on instinct, nearly recounts the whole evening to you—about the men tailing you, about how they got into a fight, about the kind of things they said they'd do once they caught you—but Suo answers first.

“Troubling you again,” is all he says. “It’s fine since your shift is over now, right?”

You give the two of them a long, curious look. For a moment, you look worried, but you're eventually disarmed by Suo’s expression.

“I guess it's fine,” you reply. You sound so happy. Suo’s gaze goes soft, and Sakura has to force himself not to look away. “Let's hurry up and go home.”

You smile at them, and it's the kind of smile that makes it very easy to like you. The kind of smile that makes it natural to want nice things for you. The kind of smile that would make anyone emotional, even if they're normally very controlled. It makes something in Sakura squeeze tightly, all knotted up and painful.

He’s starting to understand why Suo acts the way he does around you.

END

this wasn't meant to be a love triangle, my apologies…

this was also meant to be a very short piece (like 500w lol), but I kept thinking about what suo’s backstory might be, and why he was so comfortable in the red light district in the manga, and what these guys might realistically act like in an aged up, romantic context. that all coalesced into this very bizarre fic LOL. I'm not sure how it'll land, but I hope someone out here enjoyed it! I would like to write more about this triangle (+ nirei) but I'm not sure what the level of interest would be, or if it'll even make sense with the manga. I guess we’ll see eventually!

in any case, thank you for reading!! <3

[deus-ex-mona]

little brothers and their will to #slay, man </3

[hanibalistic]

#946C47 | SUN WUKONG.

genre | fluff

word count | 3738

warning | minor lewd thoughts from wukong / potential ooc + not accurate to jttw​

note | annoying monkey man i was forced to study back in middle school came back hot?

part | one, two, three

The ripe peach in front of you looked suspicious. Even though you thought yourself hungry enough to eat the fruit in one bite, you held back and raised a brow at the monkey sitting cross-legged in front of you instead. 

The river stream flowed like it had never seen disaster once, and perhaps the bed of clear water really hadn't. You wouldn't know until you figure out where you are, which has proven itself to be a difficult feat. You have prioritized coming to terms with the fact that you’ve been transported inside a fictional story above all else. 

Part of you wanted to say you were on Mount Huaguo because it was where you met Wukong, but the grouping of Bajie, Sanzhang, and Wujing told you otherwise. If you remember the tale you studied in high school, they should be on their trip to acquire scriptures. You have yet to figure out which of the 81 catastrophes they were facing, and you would like to stay in the dark about that, as figuring it out would mean you've been roped into one of them as well. 

To be fair, you might have accidentally become the 82nd catastrophe Wukong has to face by accidentally teleporting to his world. If helping a modern person return to their home was such a huge issue. 

You thought it must be, though, because the group had collectively decided to halt their significant journey so Wukong could focus on taking you to the celestial court, where you were more likely to find people who could bring you home. 

It was a huge sacrifice on his part, considering his interesting experiences with the likes of those associated with heaven. That much you understood, and you would thank him a million times and more if he was more serious about the concept of communication. Sometimes, trying to chat with him was like talking with a middle school kid who still finds fart jokes humorous.

"This is a regular peach," you said, your voice filled with doubt. 

“No, it’s a rock I changed into a peach. I want you to lose all your teeth!” Wukong exclaimed. He pushed his fingers at his upper lip to reveal his canines, but his grin faded when you responded with deadpan eyes. Retracting his hands, he blinked at you incredulously, the hair around his eyes swaying in disbelief over your distrust. Pulling a face at your seriousness, he nodded. "Yes. It is a regular peach."

"You picked it from a tree," you said. 

"Yes," he replied nonchalantly. 

"How come it took you so long?" 

“Peach trees don’t come for free. The closest one was far away.”

"I thought you were a fast monkey."

"I was taking a stroll through the forest."

He would do that. You told him you were hungry, and he had repeatedly made fun of your stomach growls. He knew you were starving for food—the kind of food you were used to eating, which was limited to the fruits growing on trees, and you wouldn't be surprised if he took his sweet time picking a single peach anyway. 

"Okay," you said as you picked the peach up and weighed it in your palm. It was useless. You never learned how much a real, good peach should weigh. "I'm not going to accidentally bite down on a clone."

"Oh, dear," he mused, putting a hand over his heart to feign disappointment. "That is most terrible! I would never do that to you!" 

“You have, for more times than I can count with both of my hands, shape-shifted into a rock just to watch me panic.”

"That I did! But the real issue is, you gullible one–“ he picked up his staff and playfully knocked the end against your head–“you fell for it more than ten times!”

You pursed your lips at his reaction. The trickster smile playing on his lips provided you no reassurance that he hadn't planned a prank to pull on you. At the same time, you realized the trick he was pulling may be paranoia, where you were the butt of the joke for believing he would waste a pluck of his hair just to watch you freak out over biting his clone.

Or perhaps the Wukong in front of you was the clone, and the real one was the peach in your hand.

"Wukong," you called softly, an exhausted exhale burning through your lips. "I'm really hungry."

He softened after a few seconds, his lips tightening into a thin line as he awkwardly looked away. 

You’ve fallen for his tricks multiple times despite knowing what kind of character he was. 

Him pushing you off tall cliffs just to catch you with the nimbus cloud; him turning himself into a rock so you’d think he had abandoned you in the middle of a forest full of monsters; jumping around trees and bursting through bushes like a maniac to scare you at night—repeatable pranks that overwhelmed you with fear and anger. 

You were too gullible was his accuse, but he knew more than anyone the problem was his tendency for trickery. You were never wrong for trusting him, and under particular circumstances, Wukong’s loyalty to you was engraved in his bones. It was evident in his ever-near presence and readiness to protect you from danger.

Otherwise, though, acting rather barbaric wasn’t a habit he could completely rid himself of. 

He didn't used to care at all about how you felt. Without Sanzhang here to tighten his gold fillet, he had been free to fool around at will until one incident when he accidentally dropped you in a cave that was the home to a wild yaoguai and ignored your panicked cries for help in an attempt to garner his sympathy.

You hadn't the energy to be mad at him after he saved you. He was used to your anger, your strengthless fists knocking at his chest, and a mouthful of empty threats he never took to heart. You didn’t do any of those that time, and neither could you move on from the corner you had scrambled toward after he hopped down to defeat the monster. 

Rigid like a stone and unresponsive as if you couldn't hear him, it didn't take Wukong long to realize you were in shock from almost being fatally attacked. 

He had to pick you up and carry you for the rest of the day. Your legs had been as weak as jelly, and all you did was cry to his shoulder, your arms curling around his neck as if he were a genuine savior. It hit him like an earthquake how small you were compared to himself—your muscles lacked confidence, and your movements were without skill.

You weren’t immortal; one mere strike would end you.

Wukong almost choked himself at the thought. His grip on your back and under your knees tightened to pull you closer to him. He didn’t apologize, but he swore on his many immortal lives that he would never pull any pranks on you again. 

Sanzhang has the tightening spell to stop the monkey king from fooling around. All you needed to carry was yourself. 

"Of course, you're hungry. You're such a picky eater," Wukong scolded as he rubbed the back of his neck. "It's just a peach. I promise."

You squinted at his honest face, then leaned in to catch yourself in his eyes. he tensed up, his breath stopping in his nose and the hair on his neck standing abruptly upon the proximity. The contrast of a physiological response to extreme cold to the burning heat souring his veins was uncomfortable, not in a way that produced hatred but rather a reawakening. 

A reawakening that, within these past few months, on your journey together to get you the help you needed to return home, he has developed an attachment to you. 

“It's a normal peach! Take it or leave it!" 

You scoffed and leaned back, ignoring his attitude. Wukong pressed his palm to his jaw and rested his weight on it. His eyes darted away to avoid you, but once the shyness reduced from his body, they slowly returned to watch you admire the ripe peach in your hands.

"Boo!" he screamed when you bit the fruit. 

"Ah!" You flinched and dropped the fruit from your palm. A golden glow engulfed it before hitting the floor, stilling the fruit in the air. You clicked your tongue at the sight and perked up, your furrowed brows not at all intimidating. "Sun Wukong!" 

He laughed. The sound was boisterous as usual, enough to make the leaves roar and the crows fly. "You're such a scaredy cat!" 

"I'm–" you held back a denial–"I just didn't want to hurt your clone."

His laughter slowed to a final chuckle, and then he shrugged. It was a useless precaution, but he warmed at the fact that you even thought about it. "You can't hurt me." 

"Well, I don't intend to," you said after you caught the peach in your hands. You nodded at him. "Thank you for the food."

You began to admire the peach again, then you took a bite and marveled at its taste. Wukong snickered endearingly at how you acted like you've never had a good peach before. His heart rested easy as you devoured it whole, and he ignored how your lips glimmered beneath the coat of your saliva. 

Apparently, promises meant nothing to the monkey king because a few weeks or so after you took a bite of the peach, you two were taken to the celestial court for a crime. 

It took him so long to find a peach on a tree, which the forest was riddled with, was because it wasn't a regular peach you ate. It was an immortal peach. He went to steal it from the peach garden in heaven. 

“Have you any idea what you’ve done?”

"Good grief, you really are handsome."

"What?" Wukong's questioning voice snapped you out of your trance. 

You shook your head and blinked harshly to rid yourself of the embarrassment. You have just been notified that you were granted 3000 years of life because you ate a forbidden fruit from a place you didn't even believe in ten seconds ago, and all you could exclaim was that Erlang Shen has got to be the most attractive man you've ever seen, just as the stories described him as. 

His third eye was off-putting, though. It was not because you weren't used to seeing a person with an extra eye, but because you didn't like that he could see through you like transparent glass. You tried to focus on the bright side of it—he would know that you and Wukong were telling the truth, that you were not a fraud. 

"I'm sorry. I don't..." your breath hitched when you noticed the four heavenly kings staring at you. You wondered if they even heard your meek voice. Stepping back, you hid behind Wukong, shrinking your shoulders and lightly grasping his sleeve. "I don't know."

He glanced at your grip on his battered shirt. Your reliance on him sent a shiver down his spine. Looking up at Erlang, Wukong shrugged. “I did what I thought was best.”

“Care to elaborate, monkey?”

“This mortal is not of this world. The only reason I even traveled all this way to face you insolent lots was because my master and I have decided you may be the only ones capable of sending them back!” Wukong clarified. 

“He's not lying!” you added hastily, unaware of where the abrupt courage came from. “I am not from here. I came from the twenty-first century–uhh…” You sighed defeatedly. “You won’t know what that means.” 

“The path to the celestial court is too rigorous. For the mortal’s safety, I must provide them with a second option.”

Erlang frowned. He couldn’t deduce an ounce of deception from Wukong or you. Your words were confusing, but they rang true. He tilted his head, accessing you further with his third eye, and then he hummed, “Where did you come from?”

“I… um…” you fidgeted with your fingers. “I was on a plane. There was awful turbulence, and I think it was crashing. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, I was here.”

“Monkey, do you understand their words?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Wukong replied. “They have attempted to explain things to me, but it all sounded like impossible ideas. A flying building that can carry more than thirty people at a time? There’s simply no way.”

“It’s not a building. It’s a plane,” you clarified. 

“You said it’s as big as a building!” 

“I am comparing the sizes so you have a better idea of how big a plane is,” you said. “I’m not saying a plane is a building.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“Silence!” 

Goosebumps appeared all over your skin at Erlang’s holler. Wukong shut his eyes and clicked his tongue in annoyance, unfazed by the wind that blew past you both.

“It was a good choice not to deceive me,” Erlang said. “But even then, nothing explains why you stole an immortal peach from the garden and gave it to a human.”

“The path to the celestial court is rigorous,” Wukong argued. “It is riddled with yaoguais, abandoned murals cursed to hell and back, and uneven grounds. A mortal would die before they make it here.”

“That’s because they weren’t supposed to.”

“How do you suggest they return home, you three-eyed freak?” Wukong said. 

“They cannot,” Erlang informed. “ After eating the peach, we mustn’t allow their departure with 3000 years of life. You shouldn’t have given them one.”

“I gave them one so they can have a shot at getting all the way here to seek the help they need! My actions are justified!”

Erlang remained silent for a moment. His eyes darted between you and Wukong. One of you reeked of partial deception; his third eye gleamed with an uncomfortable redness that forced you to look away. Before you could, your attention shifted to the man who called upon you.

“Mortal,” Erlang started with a calculative smile. He released his weapon into thin air, and it vanished. Then, he placed a hand behind his back and the other before his abdomen. “Have you any idea what this monkey thinks of you?”

“Huh? I–“ You looked at Wukong, who glared at Erlang with a conversation you couldn’t hear. “I don’t know. He protected me all this time so I suppose we are good friends.”

“Good friends!” Erlang boasted. He turned to Wukong, nodding humorously. “Did you hear that, monkey? After all the effort!”

“Erlang.”

“Mortal! Do you know the monkey dreams about you intimately?” 

“Erlang Shen!”

Wukong’s staff appeared in his hands as he lunged at the man. He raised it in the air, ready to pierce the pole through his forehead, only to catch Erlang raising his hand and motioning it toward your direction. Wukong swallowed a gasp, his head snapping over to where you stood. His body maneuvered away from Erlang to you, and a bolt of lightning hit the gold staff along with the spear before dissipating. The spear, too, returned to its owner. 

You blinked. Not a flinch ripped over your body, and that was not the result of a delayed reaction but rather a learned response. For as long as you have stayed with Wukong, there has only been one occasion when danger barely scraped past you. Besides that, you have never been scratched. Wukong hasn’t allowed one mistake. You’ve gotten so used to his presence as a symbol of safety that you didn’t flinch when Erlang Shen threw his spear at you.

Wukong would catch it. You knew, and he did. You remained unscathed.

Erlang stilled his movement to wait for the unfolding of the interaction to be contrived. He didn’t need to do anything physical to Wukong. This confrontation would probably be punishment enough. After all, the monkey king has fallen in love with a mortal. 

Staring up at the back of his head, you twirled your thumbs as you recalled what Erlang said. “Wukong… you…”

He hissed timidly, sparing a short glance behind his shoulder before looking away as he lowered his staff. How could Erlang have figured that out so quickly? It must have meant those thoughts consumed him, and indeed they did. Every night, at the very least, when you slept next to him. He tried not to look at you a lot, staring at the moon to distract himself. Yet, his mind remained full. 

The moon's beauty wasn’t enough to deter him from thinking about you. Skin bare, clothes torn; trapped beneath his weight, hands restrained, eyes barely opened; glistening with sweat and drool, trembling between uncontrollable pants of his name. What nonsense that he thought the moon could distract him. If the moon saw what he dreamt of, she would even have to stand and admire you. 

“I’m sorry,” Wukong muttered. “I’ll cease my mind of such impurities at once.” 

“No, that’s–I’m…” you shook your head. 

The notion of him thinking of you in that light was surprising, but to say you weren’t the slightest bit flattered was a lie. Nobody back in your world has ever taken a liking toward you. Yet, all of a sudden, possibly the strongest being in this set universe has a thing for you? You didn’t mind it at all. How many people could proudly say the sun Wukong was attracted to them? Not a lot! Granted, people back in your world would consider you insane, but still! what an exciting achievement!

That wasn’t the issue, though. 

“You could have brought me here long ago,” you said.

He made a roundtrip to and from heaven’s peach garden within a few minutes just to get you that immortal peach. The trip to the celestial court was unnecessary. He could have escorted you there in a week. Plus, the extended lifespan given to you by the immortal peach—after all the meddling with the celestial court, he must have known that you wouldn’t be allowed to leave this place with it, too.

“You don’t want me to leave,” you whispered. “You did this on purpose.”

Erlang clapped. “Very well deduced, mortal.”

“You!” You whipped your head over at his joyous demeanor, your nose scrunched and your eyes scratching up a fire, ready to burst through your lips. With hands curled into fists, you stomped over to the man with an accusing finger in the air. “You find this so amusing, don’t you?”

“Wait, don’t!” Wukong reached a hand out for you a second too late. 

“All you care about is your feud with Wukong, and you don’t notice how a single, stupid peach has disregarded all my effort to get here!” you exclaimed in Erlang’s face, frustrated tears rounding your eyes. “This is my livelihood! Do you understand that? I came to you for help, and you pawn my life for a moment of triumph against the monkey!”

“He’s not the terrible one. You are!” 

“Hey! Calm down–“ Wukong gripped your arm and pulled you behind him, shielding you as he stared at the three-eyed man stunned.

He wasn't sure how Erlang would react to your outburst, especially when you associated him with traits he despised. No mortal has ever been bold enough to speak to a God with such aggression, even when deeply angered. Watching the long-haired man like a hawk, ensuring he could catch even the faintest twitch of a finger, Wukong lowered his voice when he spoke for your sake.

“Erlang, they didn’t mean it." He blocked your whole figure behind him when Erlang looked up. "They’re very family-oriented and don't take any setbacks lightly.”

The God didn't speak for a while, and you almost took his silence as a sign that he felt disrespected. He should; you did disrespect him!

“No, I understand. I’ve also gone through quite the ordeal for my family,” Erlang muttered, though his eyes seemed lost in the clouds from your accusation.

Clearing his throat, he met your surprised eyes carefully and sighed. You were right. This didn't concern his relationship with Wukong. Even the monkey has enough heart to return to this damned place just to get you some help (disregarding the tricks he's done). He should be better than that.

“I will ask around to see if there is any way to send you home, but something must be done to take away the 3000 lives before you return.” 

You sniffed away the tears. “What do you suggest?”

“There are temples scattered across the path to the West. Each housing a Buddha with the power to take one’s soul. Travel to them and ask for their help,” Erlang said. “I don’t recommend too much at a time, as the ordeal is a mimicry of death. I don’t believe a Buddha would be willing to descend so much pain at once either.”

You closed your eyes. You anticipated that hurdle. “Thank you.” 

“You’re most welcome,” he replied. “I wish you luck. I wish both of us luck.”

With a light shove of his hand, a strong wind blew you off the cloudy ground, and you quickly fell toward the ground. Wukong hopped onto the nimbus cloud and chased after you, catching you swiftly in his arms.

“Let’s go find my master,” he muttered. “He should know what to do from here.”

“Okay,” you said. “3000 times, that’s a lot.” 

“I’m sorry for everything,” he said. 

You were upset with his decision, but logically, you also understood why he did it. If you fell in love and found out they would soon be leaving you, you’d do anything to delay the inevitable, too. The methods would be mundane for you because of the lack of magic in your world, but judging by that logic, feeding you an immortal peach was also mundane to Wukong.

“If there’s a way for me to die those 3000 times for you, I will,” he added. 

You bit your lower lip to hide the unexpected smirk. Perhaps part of you were relieved that you got to stay with him longer. Clutching his shirt in your hand, you leaned against his chest and watched the world pass you by.

“Wukong,” you called suddenly. There was something you wanted to ask him. 

“Yeah?”

“What exactly happens in your dreams about me?”