#txt hyuka

[soob1nslut]

all i want is to hear hyuka whimpering is that so wrong

[hyukascampfire]

𝑯EART 𝑊ORM ⸺ hueningkai ℘˒´ˎ˗

  ⨾𓍢ִ໋ ˒˒ 𝚑𝔢art𝚠𝔬rm

[𝑛]. a relationship or friendship that you can't get out of your head, which you thought had faded long ago but is still somehow alive and unfinished, like an abandoned campsite whose smoldering embers still have the power to start a forest fire.

⸺ listen to the playlist .ᐟ ‧˚

〝﹙ 📼 ﹚“I was just... wondering,” you say, blood roaring. "Well, Yeonjun wants me to come over to his place this weekend, and... I’ve never...” Sucking in a quick breath, you just spit it out to get it over with, “Would you be my first kiss, Kai?”  ˛ ､､

wc ➛ 17.9k

𝔭airings childhood bsf!kai x reader (lowkey soulmates?) ⤷ ft. asshole!yeonjun x reader

𝒢 ‎; smut ˒ angst ˒ some fantasy

𝔴arnings angst, family issues, fingering, jealousy (i’m sorry i just love ts), yeonjun really is an asshole, orgasm denial, thigh fucking, unprotected sex (they're stupid!), strength kink a lil bit, breeding kink, possessiveness, creampie, choking... i think that's all, lmk if i missed any

✎୭ ashlynn's note omg. this was such a fun palate cleanser to write. this wasn't supposed to be as big as it is, but it just kept getting bigger and bigger, and i got super into the story. this kai is SOOOO!! yeah. i’m so nervous posting this because i’ve only ever posted TSFAWC, but…. here you areee (^^;; this is not proofread, so if you see a mistake... give me a sec. i'll get to it. hehe

Though you fan your hand furiously over your face, the little breezes washing over your clammy skin are not enough. The air is thick and heavy with summer’s heat. So thick that you almost feel it each time you swallow. It’s better than just letting yourself melt away, though. The cushion at your back doesn’t help much. It holds your warmth and returns it to you the longer you sit slumped back into it. You suffer it though—you’ve gone too sluggish to move.  

You let a leg dangle over the arm of a chair, watching a hopeful moth dance in the light of the buzzing porch light overhead. It flutters frantically in it, making a grand fight to reach that false moonlight, only to drop away when it realizes that it’s being burnt. You watch it rinse and repeat, relentless and sure, for who knows how long. It’s no special moth—no luna moth or the ones with the pretty pink wings—but the light falls down on it and colors it a pleasant stardust silver.  

You delight in letting your conscious brain turn off to watch it. It lets you forget the sweltering under your skin, and also that Kai had drug you out here. His dad gives him shit when he plays inside, but it’s way too hot to be out here. Isn’t it supposed to cool off after the sun goes down? It doesn’t feel like it. The deep acoustics are drowned out each time a car whirrs by. Playing outside should be the best option, but you and Kai live right on a busy road.  

When the roar of some car going ten miles over the speed limit doesn’t obscure his playing, though, you admire the intricacy of it. His fingers work up and down the neck, jumping frets that you imagine would be impossible to anybody without those long fingers of his. You had always been a loud supporter of his playing, even way back when the most he could play were simple chords, but you became especially so when a few years back he put a guitar in your hands and tried teaching you. Even with his fingers guiding yours, it was quick to learn that the effortlessness with which Kai handles the instrument is hard earned.  

He practices on the acoustic guitar, but that’s not his domain. With houses just a dash across the street from each other, Kai had grown up at your home more than he had at his own. So vividly, you remember the stars in his eyes when he’d listen to your dad’s music. Metallica, The Smashing Pumpkins, Linkin Park, any of it. He had fallen in love with it a long time ago. Your whole life you knew that it was only a matter of time before he was in his own band, chasing his dreams with a boundless mind and an indelible vision of himself on stage. How had that time come so soon, though? You don’t know if the notebooks full of inky lyrics that live wherever he deems inspiration might hit him make you proud or nervous. He’s making good on his dazzling aspirations, and you? 

You speak finally into the air, cutting through heat waves and his music and the night. “Isn’t it weird that we’re not going back to school after this summer?” 

He doesn’t have to even stop playing to answer you. Playing comes to him as a second nature. “Kinda,” he answers, brown eyes flitting up to you. “But it’s not like you won’t be back to it in September. College is the same shit.” 

The leg you’d been dangling and bouncing pauses. That’s right; you’re supposed to be going to that college you’d chosen because it was only a three-hour drive away from here. You pluck at the seat’s threadbare fabric, and the moth, still there, becomes oh-so-interesting once again. When his playing stops, you drop your head back with a cushioned thud and a groan that you wrangle in your throat. 

“Why are you acting like that?” he says, voice gone sharp like accusation. He doesn’t even know the truth, but he’s known you too long.

Can’t you just keep secrets for yourself, sometimes?

Kai, arms clad in a well-loved hoodie even in this dreadful weather, lays the guitar down. You maintain your silence. “Seriously, what?” 

Some secrets have timers, though. This one could only last you until about September, or even August when he realizes that you’re not preparing to return to school. A controlled sigh from your chest isn’t enough to soothe the nerves that sparks. “Nothing.” 

“Secrets, huh?” Kai says. When you do finally look to him, black spikes of hair frame his eyes and the accusation in them. 

It’s a simple poke, but it gets under your skin as sharp as any thorn might. It’s not like you don’t keep secrets from him, and you’re sure he keeps some from you too. But those are the little kinds, the inconsequential ones—like I ate already when asked why you’re not eating or like Yeah, I’m fine when it’s been a bad day. You don’t hide this kind of stuff from each other. Usually, you’d run over to his place to tell him whatever’s bothering you. Why not, when he’s known even the worst details of your life for almost the entirety of it? You’ve been holding this one close to your chest since somewhere around the end of senior year, though. The longer you let it fester, the worse your nervousness snowballs. “C’mon, Kai. Let’s not do this. Can you keep playing?” 

He doesn’t like that, of course. But you watch recognition dawn over his chocolate brown eyes, helpless to stop it. “You’re not going,” he says. It’s not a question nor a suspicion, it’s a bone-dry fact.  

Well. There that goes. You want to tear every hair on your head right out. Why had you even thought you’d keep him in the dark about it? When he’s not out in some garage making music, you two are together. The conversation was going to stroll by at some point; this was only inevitable. His disappointment radiates off him in waves and blisters you. He hasn’t even said anything yet, but you know exactly what he thinks of it. It’s why you kept it from him in the first place.  

Your silence is enough confirmation for him. “Why?” he says. “I thought you were excited to move out.” 

Wincing, you nod slowly. You were. Even went through the whole application process, along with most other kids your age. Ultimately, you never went through with declaring a college. You don’t exactly know why, but somewhere weaseled down in the shadowy recesses of your soul, you know. Taking those steps, the massive and terrifying ones from adolescence into adulthood, meant agreeing that this form of your life was over. It meant that at some point, you’d be moving away from here to where living your days away in Kai’s room would not be a choice. Everybody has to do it eventually, you know that. Kai’s music gig could take off any day, too. He’s going to make it happen. And then what? All this stalling and wishing on just a bit more time would mean nothing, he’d be off and chasing that dream. As excited as you are for it to finally become reality for him, there’s a nasty bitterness that’s budded in your chest, infecting your person.  

Can’t things just stay like this? 

“I was,” you say. It comes out of your mouth heavy.  

“Then why aren’t you going?” he says. Crickets, never seen but always heard, sing their song into the night’s darkness. “You didn’t get rejected. You’re too smart for that.” 

An ache sits heavily somewhere near the center of your chest, maybe over your heart. All those good grades, nights spent bent over a desk and AP paperwork—you’re wasting it. You shake your head. “No... just...” It’s an effort to dress your thoughts in a way that might appease him. A quiet moment stretches with your thinking before you continue, “I don’t know what I want to do.” 

He doesn’t like that, the yellow wash of the overhead light dancing over his taut lips and hard eyes. “Don’t know what you want to do?” he says, bringing his legs up onto the seat to crisscross them. He wears his favorite jeans. They’re heel-bitten and baggy enough over his legs that he can wear them around the house without any bother. “You’ve wanted to be an artist your whole life. You know exactly what you want to do.” 

Your chest only seems to ache harder. When the both of you were only young and hopeful, you both had big dreams. Kai was going to be the face of a metal band, and you were going to be an artist. A painter, potter, sculptor, even doing animation for those big companies like Dreamworks and Disney. You wanted any of it, just as long as you were doing art. You’d even promised him that you’d do the cover art for his albums with interlocked pinkies and flushed, hopeful cheeks. That passion and love wasn’t gone from you, it blazed strong in your veins. This blaze wasn’t the kind that kept you warm and excited to push forward into life, though. It had morphed into something that scalded you when you got too close or started imagining yourself pursuing its call. It’s a taunting silvery glow, no longer a guiding north star. Taunting words of family members stamped down on that hope hard. When you were little, it was said lighthearted and in passing. The older you got, though, the more serious their faces became. They wouldn’t say it outright perhaps, but you hear what they think well enough. Art is a dead-end career.  

Shifting in your seat, you tell him, “I don’t know.” 

“What do you mean?” Kai says. “There are good colleges for that.” 

“I just... don’t know.” 

Shaking his head, he tells you, “But you love it.” 

You do. In its every form, you love creating. But loving it doesn’t mean that it’s right for you, or that you should trust your future in its hands. “I think I can do it in my own time,” you say, finally pushing yourself upright from the cushion. “Don’t wanna kill the passion by doing it for a living, you know?” 

He thinks on that for a moment. “If you love it, you should do it,” he says. 

An awful frustration bubbles in your chest. Kai has always had a clear life path, the steps ahead of him set in stone and waiting for him to follow in them. It’s hard for him to see why you might not want to do the same. There’s nothing that makes you as happy as the fact that he has it all figured out, that he knows just where he’s going and that he’s so incredible at it that he doesn’t have to worry about meeting the requirements, but your path seems obscured and untrodden. Punctuating a deep, resonant sigh, you say, “It’s not that easy, Kai.” 

“If you’re not doing that, then what are you going to do? Are you just going to settle for a nine-to-five?” he says full of accusation, the tapping on his knees gone still.  

A dry laugh, you say, “Maybe I’ll marry a super rich guy and just do my art for a living. No nine-to-five.” 

His face flashes. He’d always been a bit reserved, especially around others, but he bared his emotions freely around you. You hold them dearly to your chest and made sure to do your best to make good on that trust. He says, “You’re more than some guy’s housewife.” 

Cheeks radiating in the heat, you snort. “I know, dork. I’m a rockstar’s best friend. It’s my personal favorite achievement.”  

His face sours when you reach out and pinch hard at his cheek, but he doesn’t pull away or brush you off. The skin there is warmed and clammy. Really, the two of you should go meet the cool AC inside before you suffer heat stroke. But this moment feels so nice—your shoulders feel tons lighter without something to hide. If you had it your way, things would stay like this forever. Just the two of you, sat here like you have so many times before, just taking for granted the time you’ve got together.  

His mouth opens to banter, probably something about how he’s not a rockstar yet or to get you back for calling him a dork. Wingbeat and sterling dashes about your face send the image into a blur, though. You’re a quick mess of limbs and a whipping head, as if it’ll chase the thing away from you. 

“Seriously?” Kai says. You’d climbed halfway over him, elbows digging into him and knee doing a number on his thigh. “It’s a moth. You’re not scared of moths.” 

Lingering for a few moments later to ensure the flying thing was nowhere on you or around you, you hold back a laugh before you climb off him and fix your hair with undignified tucks behind your ears. “He was in my face,” you say around a laugh, because you know it was a bit too much. Nobody likes wings in their ears and spindly legs in their face, though, and you’re in no control of what you do when anything with six legs tries and get too friendly. Even moths.  

“You just wanted me to protect you,” he says. A sarcastic, shit-eating smile tugs at the corners of his mouth.  

“Oh,” you scoff, batting your eyelashes and clasping your hands together all saccharine-sweet. “Yes, Romeo, won’t you kill that bug for me? This girl’s heart just can’t take it!” 

Kai’s nose crinkles, and the playful light twists into a glare. “Nasty.” 

“That’s how you sounded,” you say. “I only reacted accordingly.” Laughing, you kick your legs out over his lap and sprawl back out. He takes the guitar back into his hands. 

As much as you want to escape the mugginess, you’ll survive it for just a little while longer—if only with the force of an indulgent heart. The eternal moments are those you allow to linger.  

⚝⭒ 

Some things, you forget when you’re older. Maybe it’s time’s hand, eroding memories down and stuffing more in the longer you live to experience them. But also maybe because they’re the sort of things you can’t say in the adult world without a laugh in the face and a look from down their noses.  

This memory is one of those forgotten things. It’s moth-bitten and dusty, something you one day folded up in a moving box and decided to never revisit. 

You’d been down at the creek. Kai and you had spent so many summer days there. It wasn’t too far from home, just past the filbert trees and into the shallow neck of the backwoods, but there you were out of sight and free to get up to nothing good. It was a wonder your mom ever let you do it. Kai’s dad didn’t care too much where he went or what he did, but your mom dug her claws in deep. You like to think that she imagined you two would have each other, if anything ever happened. 

Usually, you’d be there holding your jeans up from the stream and Kai would be letting his jeans go dark with it. The bite of water was nice as it washed over warm skin. Fun was a simple thing to find, then. You dug your fingers into the mudbanks and tossed stones way too big to be throwing at each other, just because you two remembered how much the adults hated it when you did. Then, you’d drag tired limbs home avoiding sweetgum tree spikes that had fallen to the ground and dug splinters out from your feet.  

This day, you had been in the blackberry bushes. It was maybe late July or early August, and they’d gotten heavy on their branches. You’d waited until the smell of them, summer-warmed, was sweet and cloying in the air to pick them. With buckets in your hands, you plucked only the fattest berries from their bunches. Your fingers were stained a delightful purple and perhaps a bit thorn raw, but you didn’t mind much then. You plucked for hours, and it was dusk before you could catch it. Dinner was no doubt waiting for you back home. 

“There’s a bunch over here,” Kai had said. He reached a long boyish arm, still awkward and lanky with puberty, up high for ripe bush. You finished off picking before climbing around thick branches sticking out to take a peek. A bunch, there was. 

When you went to drop a handful of them into your bucket, Kai hissed. He’d been snagged by a vicious looking branch, those ones as thick as a finger with thorns to match and you’d warn each other tongue-in-cheek to watch out for that one. He’d worn those ridiculous shorts that day, the ones that looked half pants half shorts with how long and baggy they were, and the claws of the bush had jumped at the opportunity. At first the scrapes were white, but then red blood crawled out and down his leg.  

“Kai,” you said, some parts chiding and some parts just wondering how he’d managed that. You surveyed his leg for a bit, and then determined that he should wash his leg off in the stream. He walked there strong, but of course you noticed the hobble beneath his acting. When you squatted down into the dry grass and cupped water to wash off his leg, you laughed. 

“What?” he had said, holding the shorts up. You covered your laugh with a hand, but it erupted past your palm. You remember the glare on his face very well.  

You still laughed. “You’re stupid,” you had told him. 

“I didn’t see it,” he said. “I tripped over it because it was sticking out.” 

That time when you brought your hands to catch some water, there was a twinkle in its surface. You didn’t notice it for a second. The creek moved fast and you could see a lot of things in its reflection. When it lingered, that’s when your brows furrowed. It seemed to twirl, dancing around like alive over the stones. 

The sound of Kai’s voice remains with you. “Hey,” he had said, strong to call your attention but also wavered with uncertainty. 

When you looked up, there was silver dust dancing around you. 

It was fluffy and whorling, fine silver stardust. It’d moved weightless in the air, as though it barely existed. In the center of it were a few moths. They seemed to be made of sterling powder just as the dust was, and they glowed against dusk’s backdrop. If your memory serves you right, there had been a sweet hymn of coos from them. They beckoned you. Summer’s heat felt lighter, and so did your chest. You wondered where they had wanted you to go. 

Almost afraid that if you spoke they might have fluttered away, you whispered soft and low to Kai. “What is that?” He was stood frozen there, pant leg still scrunched up in his fist. Stardust glowed soft in his brown eyes while he took it all in, you remember. It wasn’t a scared frozen. You weren’t scared, either—rather, it was as if that lightness had found its way into the core of your being and brushed over it with mending hands. 

He whispered back, “I don’t know.” How could he have known? It was absurd. 

Those whisps had beckoned you, flowing toward the deeper woods. The soft moths, their murmuring brushing up against your ears, seemed to wait for you to follow. You remember a pull, soft tendrils wrapping themselves around your heart and the yearning it planted there.  

But there was also this reluctance, a bone-deep answering that had told you: No. You’re not ready. 

“Kai, I wanna go,” you told him. 

You didn’t even need to tell him twice. Berry buckets forgotten; the journey home was a stranger one. When your dad asked why you returned from berry picking emptier handed than you had left the house, Kai and you only shared a look. You pair kept that evening at the creek hidden so well that it became more forgotten than shared secret.  

⚝⭒ 

Once, you had been the type of girl that loved being around family. Some of your favorite days of your life were spent in this living room, T.V. roaring over bouncing conversation. Some of those nights ended in rosy cheeks and laughs, and some ended with words thrown angry like fireworks. You never knew which you’d be getting, but you endured the fear of not knowing because it was a simple love—the basic kind built with biology into you the moment your infant skin touched your mother’s. You endured it because eventually, sleep washed away the bad taste left in your mouth and you forgave them quick, sometimes quicker than you ought to, and things would go on as if it hadn’t even happened. You endured it because you could handle its burden, if only to feel the warmth you feel when it’s a good day.  

Kai was always there—his dad was hardly home, so he found family in yours. When you were younger, you’d been embarrassed he was there for caustic, spitted words and intimate fights. Now, you’re just grateful for his shoulder.  

So, yes. Once, you had loved being around your family. But things feel tenser now, nights spent all together less frequent and when they do happen, they’re tainted by a strange air. You think that this strangeness is new, but an awful worry also makes you think that it’d always been there, that you only feel it now because you’ve grown into your adult mind. A hollow ache stakes its claim in your chest, declaring that it won’t leave until you find that youthful ignorance and joy once more. You think that it might stay there forever. 

Bare feet bounding down the stairs, you make a rare appearance downstairs. The cupboard is only half open to make way for a snack raid before your mom’s voice cuts through the air. You know quickly just by the look on her face that you should’ve stayed upstairs. 

“Hey,” she says, gathering laundry into a basket. “You’ve been applying to jobs?” 

With an anxious belly, you tell her, “Yeah. A few. They’re not really, like, ideal, but I sent applications.” You don’t remember when it got hard to look into your mother’s eyes, but you can’t bring yourself to do so now.  

“Not ideal?” she says. “It’s not like you can be picky. Mcdonalds or wherever, I don’t care, you’re going to need to get a job if you’re staying here.” 

“I know. I applied,” you reiterate around a mumble. You close the cabinets, not so interested in a snack anymore. “I just... I don’t know, ma. I don’t want to do that for a living, going between those sorts of jobs.” 

Face hard and abrasive against the truth you bare, she does that awful taunting smile that makes you feel small. Stupid. “You’re not going to college, so that’s what it’s gonna be. You can’t sit up there and draw for a living. You’ve gotta get into the real world, get some real experience.”  

There’s a burst of hurt in your chest, dazzling and gnawing. She’s getting closer to saying how she really feels about your dreams out loud every day. Your face burns and so do your eyes, knot thick in your throat. “Yeah, okay. Got it,” you say, nodding. You’re at the front door before you even know it, slipping on shoes and fighting the greatest internal battle to will back tears. She’d use those against you, no doubt about it. “I’m going to Kai’s,” you throw over your shoulder.  

Whatever she barks back at you, you’re glad you don’t hear. Bells on some old Christmas decoration hung on the door that had yet to be taken down, even into summer, jingle and wash it away for you. 

Kai’s brows shoot up when he opens the door to your face crumpling. You’d done so well at damming it up, but the wall cracks and the water crashes through once you see him. If it were anybody else, you’d feel icky and attention seeking, but you’d held Kai to your chest through gut-wrenching sobs as much as he’s done it for you. Without question, he takes you into his arms, warm hand running up and down your back. The warm soothing is so familiar. You melt right into it.  

He keeps you there for a long moment. Then, his chest rumbles as he tells you, “Come on.” The walk through the AC to his bedroom is nice. Having a house like Kai’s to come to where it can just be you is nice, too. You step around the mess of clothes and scattered belongings on his floor like you have a muscle-memory roadmap of his room. Boxsprings creak and hard mattress welcome you back home. His room is dark as always, a night-dweller you call him. The array of peeling band posters plastered over walls you two had painted blue some years ago, when it’d been his favorite color, don’t help to lighten it up. He keeps a low lamplight on.  

“She never listens to me,” you say, crying gone to occasional sniffles from your chest. You rest your cheek on your bent knee. 

“I know,” he says. “But at least she cares about you. Pays attention to you.” His voice is soft and deep and right next to you. Always right next to you, there for you even when you might not appreciate it as you should.  

His dad cares too little what he does, and yours care too much. The grass is always greener on the other side, you know it. Still, you hold a fantasy where you’re able to do teenager stuff. Where you’d allow yourself to do bad things, because you weren’t so intent on painting yourself with their will. You two hold eyes for a long moment, your twinkling ones caught in that steady brown. “I just want to get away. Be my own person.” Your words are muffled in the softness of your skin. 

“You had the chance to do it,” Kai says, hand playing with your fingers. “But you didn’t.” 

Holding your legs closer, you lick your lips. What do you say to that? Would it ever be the time to tell him that you did it because you think that your soul is pathetically intertwined with his, and that it might snuff your lifeforce out to even try pursuing life without him? Without this? How do you tell him that you’re so frozen and unwilling to pursue any sort of future because it means accepting that this chapter is over? You clutch childhood to your chest like a wild animal guarding scarce food; you refuse. You refuse to acknowledge its end.  

“Kai,” is all you say, trembled and thick. It’s not just your mother’s words that dig at you and tear to shreds the last bits of what dreaming you had left in you, but so many other reality checks too. This isn’t the first time you’ve heard those sorts of words, urging you forward. You can only dig your heel into the ground for so long before you’re swept away in time’s ruthless, endless moving.  

He understands. Lifting your face with warm fingers against your cheeks, he says, “Hey. How about we go get ice cream, or something?” 

Ice cream does sound nice. “Dairy Queen?” 

Smirk tugged over his mouth, he says, “Yes, Dairy Queen. A blizzard. C’mon, let’s go.” Sliding off the bed, he offers you an urging hand up. 

But you falter. “I don’t know if we can. She’s mad at me. I don’t think she’ll let me go.” 

“Let you go?” he says, eyes narrowed. “She doesn’t have to let you go. You’re an adult now, you go if you want to.” He offers his hand to you again. 

It’s so him, freely going wherever he ordain it. The bullheadedness is very him, as well. Always the devil on your shoulder, he was the root of any rebellious thing you’ve ever done. He could never understand your apprehension, or why getting in trouble was such an awful thing to you. “I have to ask to get money.” 

Brows pinching, he says, “You think I’m not gonna pay for you? You don’t need them to give you money, I’ll pay. I’ll take care of it.” He drags you up from the bed this time. “Live a little. Do you want to go?” 

It was never the punishments or the getting in trouble that you were scared of, though. Disappointment was a scarier word than grounded. Sneaking out and those sorts of things, it’s not like you had angel wings at your back and never considered them. It’s that you are deeply, utterly terrified of changing how they look at you. You begin to tell him, “I do, but—” 

He cuts you off, adamant. “Then do it. Let’s go. If you want to go, then go,” he says. “At some point, your life needs to become your own. It’s not sneaking out when you’re graduated and eighteen years old, it’s going wherever the hell you want. You’ve... You’re gonna end up stuck here, in this town, forever. You don’t deserve that.” 

That sounds like both the best and the worst thing you’ve ever heard. You take his hand.  

⚝⭒ 

Your frozen fingers nurse your ice cream. The cup itself is cold, but the Dairy Queen on your side of town is always thirty degrees below what it should be. It’d always been that way. Even way back when you two couldn’t drive, you’d get dropped off here to escape the melting weather and get a frozen treat with a handful of dollars. Each time, you’d start off sagging with the relief of summer’s weight off your shoulders and left the place shivering and sugar-mouthed.  

It’s really only you two in here. You crinkle your nose when he takes a spoonful. “Out of all the flavors...” 

Unbothered and no doubt expecting you to say it, he offers you a flat, “You get your flavor, I get mine.” He makes a point of taking an extra-long bite. His lips linger around the red plastic of the spoon and his brows rest high in silent challenge.  

The corners of your lips twitch up. “Hmm. Well. I just have a hard time believing that Oreo... or, like, brownie fudge, is right there, and you actually want M&M. I don’t get how M&M your favorite.” A familiar banter falls over your tongues. Your heart buzzes and your cheeks radiate. This is the first you’ve done this all summer, and it’ll be weaning off into fall soon. Any other summer, you would’ve been here on all the hottest days. You hate that Kai’s been so busy with his music; you hate that you can hear the resounding ticks of the clock counting down your time. You also hate that the stubborn depths of you still believe that if you freeze yourself here in stasis that the world will relent and stop along with you. 

You look over the sharp lines of Kai’s jawline as it feathers with his chewing, and the broadness of his shoulders where his jacket stretches around it, and the starkness of his collarbones against his chest and the bobbing of his adam’s apple when he swallows. No, time doesn’t stop. Some of him remains the same, though. In it, you see the boy that had love creeping up on you so long ago, with all its aching and all its hope. That freckle on the column of his neck, the bump in his nose leading down to the button tip that beckons your lips to steal a quick kiss.  

And, those lips. They’re as soft as ever around the discontented grimace he pulls. “M&M isn’t my favorite.” 

With a pursed mouth and patronizing brows arched over your eyes, you say, “Oh, huh. That’s funny, because if my memory serves me right, it’s the only flavor you’ve ordered for the past... six years.”  

Kai husks a laugh at that. “That’s because they haven’t had my favorite for years,” he tells you, scooping up the final bit and then pushing it off to the side. “It was a blizzard of the month that they discontinued. The blackberry cheesecake one. I made peace with it, though. It lives on in my heart.” He grins, arms crossed over his chest and his back settled into the booth seat to let you finish your cup.  

“Blackberry cheesecake,” you say, voice made taunting. Your nod is slow and taunting, too. “Well, forget M&Ms. Why would blackberry cheesecake be your favorite? Ever?” 

His face falters, a moment where something flows over his eyes as if reliving a memory in a few short seconds. Then, he shrugs. “It just is.” 

You roll your eyes. “Whatever,” you laugh. “Maybe my palate is unrefined.” Imagining the tarte fruit in purple swirls of ice cream, you’re taken back to a humid July day and the scent of churned mud.  

The strange memory unfolds itself quick. As if it were waiting for you to find wherever it’d hidden itself away. With a sharp gasp, you say, “Oh my god, Kai. Do you remember that one day? That weird stuff we saw down at the creek?” 

He nods. “Yeah. I was just thinking of that the other day, actually...” 

Less interested in finishing your cup now, you let the spoon rest. “What?” you say, the word peaking in the middle. That day hadn’t crossed your mind once since it’d happened. “How weird is that?” 

Scoffing a laugh, he says, “Weird, yeah. Just as strange as two kids high on fermented berries.” 

That draws a breathy laugh from you. “Is that what you think it was?” you ask him with knitted brows. The berries had been fresh, and you two had popped plenty into your mouth. But no doubt, you’d have spat them right back out if they were that ripe. “I mean, we saw the same thing.” 

“It happens to animals all the time. Squirrells, and stuff.” He lends you a gallic shrug. “We just freaked ourselves out. Like that one time you said you saw the shape of something in the dark and we freaked out. And it was clothes.”  

Well, hallucinating, in tandem, a glowing mist because you two by chance ate fermented berries is a very long shot. However nonchalant he acts about it, he seems to have thought long and hard about it. Enough to reason it away with some far cry explanation. Would you have even been able to get drunk off a handful of fermented berries? And, god, you’re really sure that you’d have noticed. That taste isn’t really one you just don’t notice.  

Whatever. Maybe you were just drunk idiots. That’s a lot easier to swallow, anyway. 

“Okay, but you saw that. Did it not look sinister?” you say. With your spoon back in your hand, you punctuate the sentence pointing it at him. “You freaked out with me, too.”  

An unsatisfied scowl on his lips, he steals a spoonful of your dessert. You don’t even swat him away—your phone buzzes in your pocket. 

Catching sight of who’s calling, you share a long look with Kai. It’s funny, how fast those three white letters scramble you up. When you hesitate to answer, Kai tells you, “Answer.” 

You hope she can’t tell you’re not at Kai’s by the refrigerators’ dull buzzing. It’s an effort to tussle that invasive worry back. You’re at Dairy Queen. Getting ice cream with the boy she’s known since childhood. She should clutch her hands and thank the sky that you’re here, not out in some nasty frat house like you could be. You thumb the green button. 

Her voice comes through the speaker crackled and asking you to run over to do a quick dish load. For a heartbeat you consider telling her that you will and then start rushing home. Instead, you fork out the truth through resistant lips. 

The hangup tone sits heavy on the air between you and Kai. Having listened to the whole thing on speaker, he says, “What was so hard about that? The world didn’t end, did it?” 

The plush of your lip takes a hard gnawing. No, it hadn’t. “I know she’s not going to get mad at me for just going here,” you say as you rest your elbows onto the table. “It’s that they’re supporting me right now. I still live under their roof. The more I go around and insist I can do whatever I want, they’ll start reminding me of it.” 

His face drawn, he lets his mouth twitch to one side. “Yeah,” he muses. “I never thought yours would be the type to kick you out.” 

Kai’s dad had started threating him with getting kicked out years ago, when he first started telling him that he wanted to do music. How many times had he let reluctant tears flow into your shoulder over it? Because music wasn’t a real job? Back then, you’d whispered in his ears that he’d become everything he’d dreamed of and more as your fingers carded through shaggy locks of hair.  

“I don’t know,” you say, humming it out noncommittally. “Is your dad still... y’know?” 

Nodding slowly, his eyes tell. “Yeah. Always.” 

“Because you’re taking the band seriously, now?” you ask.  

“Probably. I don’t give a shit what he thinks about it. If I’m just his goddamn problem, I’ll give him what he wants soon enough.” His eyes blaze with promise of it.  

It takes a bit out of you to not wince. Kai living anywhere but in the house across from yours is wrong. “I don’t think he necessarily wants that, Kai...” You take his hand in your icy ones, the urge to reach out to him thinly veiled under the guise of searching out warmth. He’d always run warmer than you—your personal heater. “It’s probably because he can see that you’re doing it for real. Not just saying it anymore.” 

“Yeah, well,” he spits, “I can’t fucking wait to see what he’ll say to me when I make it. That piece of shit, though, he wouldn’t even care. It’s not like he ever gave a shit about me enough for it to matter.” 

But, it matters to you, you want to tell him. You understand his need to throw it all in his face, though. “Is that one label going to sign you? The one you were talking about?” 

His tongue darts out to wet dry lips. “They haven’t yet. I don’t know. But I don’t need that money to get out of here, I’ve been working on it.” 

“They will,” you say. “But, where would you go? Not too far?” You try and keep it light and playful, even as your heart aches. 

“Come with me,” he says. It’s painfully blunt, as if it were that simple. “Let’s go get and apartment; you and me.” 

“Kai...” you say. “You don’t have to drag me along because you feel bad.” 

The idea doesn’t sound half bad, though.  

“What?” His face tightens, as if somewhere under the surface your words had scraped somewhere tender. “You don’t have to stay here forever. Please. I want... I want you to come with me. You wouldn’t have to even tell them; just bring all your stuff and go together. We could do it together. Like we said we would.”  

“We were like, five. Everybody tries to pretend running away at five,” you deadpan. It’s a washy attempt at lightening things back up. 

Living with him, moving out together, should feel like everything you’ve ever wanted. And, maybe it is. But, he’s not asking you to live with him the way you want him to. Not in the way that your aching heart wishes he would.  

Kai doesn’t share the laugh you give him. “Yeah, okay,” he says, leaning into the table.  

Perhaps you should consider the potent disappointment he’s terribly masking with a face of indifference, though. 

⚝⭒ 

Slowly, the knots in your belly have worked themselves out. When Kai had dropped you off, they’d been so awful that you felt borderline sick. You sat the whole ride there in his old beat-up truck picking at your nails and rambling to him. He listened to you the whole time. And then when it was time to walk in, it had least felt a little easier to do so with his eyes on you, watching to make sure you made it in safely. 

You’d gotten a job. It’s not too bad, folding clothes out on display. It would be nice if they kept the lights a bit brighter, but you’ll get used it eventually, you hope. 

Most of your coworkers are around your age, but the one showing you the ropes... your heart had fluttered. 

“You’ll get it,” Yeonjun says. The smile you find on his lips once he straightens up from placing product on a display is smooth and smug. Sleek strands of black hair fall over his eyes. You fluster under his gaze.  

With arms crossed over your chest you say, “Yeah, probably.” You reach into the cardboard box for stock to practice on. 

“Where’d you work before this?” he asks, leaning back into a wall to watch you. Suddenly, you make sloppier work of your folding. “Your first retail job?” 

Some obnoxious pop song falls down from the speakers over the store. Nobody’s in here yet, thankfully; you’ve got some time to try and get a handle on everything. “No, this is my first job. I was so nervous walking in.” 

Interest catches in his eyes. It encourages that smooth smile on his lips further. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’ll show you the reins.” 

Your mind stalls. The suggestive, sly flicker to it—are you looking too much into it? Maybe that’s just how guys like Yeonjun act. It’s hard to pretend that you don’t see how he’s looking at you, though. It has your belly twisted up in fluttery knots. It’s not like you hadn’t had your share of his type. But, for some reason you’d rather not address, he’s got your heart thumping in your chest. 

He laughs at your fifth attempt to fold up the shirt. When he takes it from you to help, he smells of musk and vetiver. “You going to college near here?” he continues.  

“Nah, just doing this, I guess,” you answer, watching him fold it up to try and soak it up.  

“Really? Why not?” he hums, crossing his arms about his chest. “You seem like a smart girl.”��

Buffering, your blood buzzes in your veins and your cheeks burn. “Dunno. Not really sure what to do. Are you in college?” 

“Nah. I’m trying to figure things out, too.” 

The both of you pop your heads up when the bell rings to announce the arrival of a customer.  

“Yeah,” you say, eyeing him. He’s a few years older than you, no doubt, and yet his life hasn’t fallen apart because he’s not done anything grand yet.  

Time’s hand around your neck loosens. Just a little bit.  

⚝⭒ 

You sit crisscrossed on top of Kai’s bedsheets. He’d thrown the windows open because the AC died, but it’s no help. The hot air wafting about the room sits heavy on your skin. You’d dressed in as little material as possible to let it breathe, bare thighs clad in a pair of loose shorts and a thin tank top, but it’s still miserable. 

Perhaps you two should be going over to yours, but you haven’t had time alone with him for a few weeks now. You hate this busier life, where you struggle to make room for this. 

Your new job isn’t so awful, though. Especially with Yeonjun there. A bout of nerves flows up through your stomach. That reminds you. 

Sitting up a bit straighter, you consider not doing it. In fact, you really shouldn’t. But your mouth moves before you can put a stopper on it. 

“Hey, Kai,” you say. The thickness in your throat makes you believe that your heart’s jumped up into it, caught. God, what are you doing? The unsure waver in your words has you regretting. 

His eyes flicker up to yours. He hums out a, “Huh?” 

No, this is wrong. You mess with the thin cotton strap of your tank top where it’d slipped down. “Never mind,” you tell him, trying to shrug it off.  

That piques his interest. “No, what?” His brow pinches.  

You lick your lips and shake your head. “Nothing, never mind. Really.” 

His eyes search you from where he sits up against the wall. “Tell me,” he demands. 

Really, you shouldn’t have said it in the first place. It was a ridiculous idea. But now you know he’s not going to let it go. And, ridiculously, you say it. “I was just... wondering,” you say, blood roaring. "Well, Yeonjun wants me to come over to his place this weekend, and... I’ve never...” Sucking in a quick breath, you just spit it out to get it over with, “Would you be my first kiss, Kai?” 

Insects buzz outside as he looks at you, frozen in spot. You reject the urge to dart away or throw up. You’re honestly just as shaken as him. But really, who else could you trust with something like that? You don’t want Yeonjun to be disappointed if he kisses you, or to seem inexperienced to him. 

And, perhaps, the hopelessly in love part of you hopes to at least feel his lips on yours at least once. If you’re going to be alone forever in your longing, you just wish that you can have this. 

“What?” Kai says. He looks rattled.  

Of course, he’s shocked. You shift. “Forget I said that,” you tell him, unable to meet his gaze.  

String-roughened fingers wrap around your upper arm. “I didn’t say anything,” he says, voice strained and face less shock-fallen and more darkened. “But... I mean, you want me to teach you to kiss for some other guy.” He spits out the last bit as if bitter in his mouth.  

“You don’t have to do it,” you say. “I just... thought that I might ask you to do it. I don’t know, I’m sorry I said it. I’ll just wing it or something.” His room’s grown ten degrees hotter, if that was possible. Especially where you feel his eyes on your face.  

Almost imperceptibly, his hand tightens around you. He swallows hard. “You want to learn how to kiss?” he says. “Fine. I’ll teach you.” 

In a heart-stopping moment, your eyes snap to his. Brown and familiar, they hold you with an intensity that turns your limbs into jelly. The air is stifling. “What... do I do?” you ask when the silence becomes too heavy.  

A muscle feathers in his jaw, reflected in the low light of his room. It’s quick and so easy to miss, but it tells you everything you need to know about how this is making him feel. How much disbelief he’s in. “Come here,” he says, stilted around the absolute absurdity of it. He pats on his lap. 

You make a hesitant crawl across the bed toward him. It seems as though your elbows might buckle beneath your weight, but you make it despite the odds. A fog settles over your brain when you rest your hands on his shoulders and bring your legs to straddle his lap. 

But you shove it back; you want to live and breathe every last second of this. No matter how unbelievable or blistering it is.  

Breaths fan out over your face. It’s seizing your mind like undiluted liquor. “Where do I put my hands?” you ask him. It’s breathless, the air stolen right from your lungs though your mouths haven’t even touched.  

“There is fine,” he says. His words sound breathless, too. The weight of his touch on you as he runs his own up to support your back is unsure. “And then...” he says. It falls out on your mouth slowly, and then he’s taking your lips onto his. 

The walls melt away, sound does too. All that is real is the taste of his lips and how they move against you. Your lips start tentative, but you try his mouth movements yourself. It feels like a timid dance—it feels like deep, deep down, finally everything is right. That mist, thick and blinding, falls back over you. 

Something changes. Something in it, where you two meet, changes. He becomes hungry. Softly locked lips turn biting and nipping, shaky breaths exhaled slow through your nose. His hands on your back become surer, and one even ventures off to grab your chin. The other holds you to his chest, melded together despite the intense smoke and flame rolling off your bodies. You wonder if he can feel your heart beating a mess there. 

Reluctance paints you both when you pull back. You’re panting deep drinks of air. It’s hard to think; your mind’s run off and sits just out of reach. Licking your messy lips, stained with illicitness, you can only manage to brush your fingers against it to form words. “How... was that?” you say, searching his eyes. You find his pupils blown so wide that they consume the warm brown. You’re ready to jump out of your skin with that look pointed at you.  

Kai doesn’t answer, though. He slams your mouths back together as if starved by just the brief moment you’d parted for air. Nips on your bottom lip and emboldened hands—he moves like roaring water through a dam. A dam that he’d worked hard to fortify, and yet, at a crack it’s all falling down. Fingertips digging through the fabric of your shorts down to your soft hips, his chest rumbles. You feel it reflected in your core, electricity charging there and shooting up your spine and down your thighs. 

You kiss him for all the times you wish you would’ve, but didn’t. The slight rolls of your hips down onto him come easy. You love how it has him making a sound into your mouth and taking the fat beneath his fingers harder into his hands. He helps you. 

He drops his head into your neck. Your head swims for air and he has you shuddering with just the brushing of his nose against the column of your neck. The walls of his room spin around you. “Kai,” you whine, every bit of friction his jeans provide, even clothed as you are, just enough to rile you but not to give you what you need. 

“God,” he growls, thumbs hooking under your waistband. “You always fucking run around dressed in nothing,” he says, letting his fingers linger like a suggestion of undressing you. “Did you do it on purpose? Expect to make me crazy, knowing I couldn’t touch you?” 

And, in those words, it seems that he steals every last bit of breath from you. How often had you gone braless or worn something like this around him? Laid here, in his bed, like that? 

Grown tired of your fruitless grinding, he brings a hand down to support your lower back and says, “Turn around.” 

Though you explode with the prospect of what he might be intending to do or what’s next, if you’re really going to do this, you do so in a flash of eager limbs. His chest is solid against your back, you melt against the feeling of it. He’d become such a man lately, filled out, and you watched it happen. It was hard for your eyes not to catch on muscle-corded forearms while he picked at strings or to not appreciate the timbred rumble of his voice when you’d feel it come from his chest. How could it not do things to you? Now, he’s dragging your shorts down your legs and you’re in disbelief.  

“Fuck,” he breaths out. His fingers find your panties soaked through. “So, you’re the type to get dripping wet.” 

An embarrassed blush decorates your cheeks. Kai drags his index finger in circles around your clit through the fabric as if enamored with how much of a mess you’d made of it. Your hips twitch every time he rolls right over it. It’s strange how he’s got your body acting on its own volition with his touches. Even stranger that it’s your best friend doing it. “Sorry,” you tell him, wavering.  

He continues those terribly slow circles. “Sorry?” he says, chin on your shoulder. He’s got you wrapped up in him, with nowhere to go but to melt back into him and let his fingers work. Free hand on one of your inner thighs digging divots into the plushness there to hold it still, he tells you, “It’s nothing to be sorry about. It’s hot as fuck. You’re so excited for me to touch you, huh?” 

The words wreak havoc on you, feeding the flame that has your belly twisted up tight and the ignition point between your thighs pounding. To hear them coming from him, reserved Kai, has you digging your fingers into his forearm to prove that it’s real. You’d never have imagined him being so... filthy. You imagine him behind falsely nonchalant eyes, devouring you with a perverted mind all the times you’d spent innocently sitting together in this room.  

Your cheeks squish beneath his fingers as he takes your face and turns it to him. He wants to make sure you’re look at him as he asks you, “Do you want me to finger you?” 

Like a record, your brain skips. Between the blunt, lewd question and his hand on you, it’s in overload. How could he ask something like that so simply? Stunned as you are, of course you want him to. You want him to do anything to you. You nod.  

Every last nerve and neuron in your system, just below the skin, cry out when his fingers slow down to nothing. “Hmm?” he says, ignoring the chasing of your hips and the opening of your thighs to invite him into paying your poor pussy the attention he’d ripped from it. He wants to hear you say it.  

About ten minutes ago, you lost your mind. It does not return to you now. “I want you to,” you say, chest beating in tandem with your cunt. 

“You want me to, right? Not some dumbass you met a week ago, huh?” he says. “Because you know that this is what it’s meant to be. Me, doing these things to you. Not some twenty-five-year-old piece of shit. He doesn’t deserve you, baby. Understand?” 

His fingers slider under your panties. Dumb brained and cognition gone muddled, you nod. All you can really think about is the moment his fingers slide over you. Fire licks up your lower belly and your insides as he brushes calloused finger tips finally right against your clit. 

Puffed breaths of a scoff raise goosebumps over your skin. “Teach you to kiss so that you can go over there and get his hands on you,” he says, middle two fingertips prodding at your entrance. “As if you were ever anybody’s but mine. You’d come crawling back to me, baby, because it was always meant to be us. He could never satisfy you.” 

His words might alarm you or have you asking questions if he hadn’t pushed his fingers into you and begun curling them with strong, pointed presses, pulling soft mewls and hums from you until he finds a spot that twists up your insides. Even through the palm you press over your mouth, your moans come out more like wavering grunts and croaks. Your thighs quiver and twitch, threatening to snap closed against your own will with each. Only your feet stay planted to the mattress. Like a cone of soft serve under the sun’s blistering attention, you melt down him. Just his frame keeps you upright. 

“Right there, huh?” he says. The smirk on his mouth filters his words into something taunting. “That’s where you like it.” It’s like he’s learning your body step by step, fulfilling all the questions he’d been forced to only guess at before this.  

“Uh-huh.” It comes out whiny and cracks in the middle, but you can’t find even an ounce of you to care right now. If this moment had been a long spiral, a fall from grace, down into a dark pit of forgotten inhibitions, you’ve just hit the bottom. Cheeks blazing cherry blossom pink and with your fingers curling into his pant leg, you don’t doubt that you are a picturesque mess. The kind of mess that’s beautiful because it’s dirty. Your teeth are not gentle on your plush bottom lip. It stings, tugged back and bitten and still a bit swollen with kisses. Perhaps you taste the tang of metal on it, but you pay it no mind. 

Kai redoubles his efforts. Now that he knows exactly how to play you, he’s fucking you on his fingers without mercy. The sounds coming from your cunt were wet, but now they’re different— nasty squelching. The only noises coupling with your pathetic keening. Forget anchoring yourself on his thigh, forget muffling your sounds. Instead, your hands fly to encircle his flexing forearm. Under your nails, angry red crescents dig into the muscle there. What had been a languid, building pleasure suddenly becomes everything. Your breaths run away from you, and you chase them frantically. Deep down in your core, the muscles spasm and rage against his fingers. “H—oh god,” you groan. Even the muscles in your thighs and tummy tighten up. 

“So whiny...” Kai mumbles, voice taut with the effort of eroding you down into pure, blinding-white pleasure. 

And then, in a swoop of mercy, your belly tightens. You hover here, on the precipice of something so consuming and voracious that your muscles and bones reject it, and yet your heart sings. Your eyes and cheeks and lungs and belly burn, the flame charring the edges of you in a beckon. You answer its call. Kai doesn’t mind the snapping of your legs shut around his arm, nor does your bucking or shaking deter him. He just holds you through it, arm like a metal bar around your waist. He’s everywhere, in this moment—the smell of him, leather and utterly familiar, his mouth dusting hot kisses over your skin, his fingers guiding you through orgasm. Where you’d gone silent in the initial crash of it, you devolve into mewls and grunts as you come down.  

He holds you even as you slump against him boneless. Afterglow simmers in your veins and has your brain all lethargic and lazy. Neither of you speak for a while, your pulse thumping a rhythm. His breaths rise and fall against you; it grounds you in this moment where you feel all spacey and gone. You become aware again of how disgustingly sweltering it is in his room, your skin sheened. 

That brainless bliss only lasts you for so long, though. When rational mind returns to you, no matter how you wish it wouldn’t, you’re hit in the chest with regret so hard it knocks the wind out of you. 

How will anything ever be the same after what you’d just done? Stricken still by the thought, you barely register him pulling his fingers out of you. After all your worrying about making sure no wedge comes between you two, look what you’ve gone and done. No; nothing ever will be the same again.  

⚝⭒ 

A couple of weeks ago, you ruined the one friendship you were supposed to have forever. It presses down heavy one you while you sit sprawled out on Yeonjun’s couch, his arm around your shoulder. His phone casts a glow over his features with all the lights out. 

It doesn’t smell like home. He, pressed against your side, doesn’t smell like home.  

Some stupid movie that he’d picked out, yet somehow you’ve ended up the only one still watching it, weaves a hum into the quiet of his apartment. Tangy hurt wells up in your throat. Even the moments when you and Kai would sit in mutual silence on your phones never felt like this. This is different.  

You haven’t seen Kai since that night. He’s been busy getting ready to move out, and you’ve been here most days. How fast all of it had changed. You wish you’d feel whiplashed, left empty, by the drifting that you’d been so terrified of. But you don’t. It’s just been you, locked on land, watching him being taken away by the ocean’s tide with no way to change its course. You tried and screamed to call him back, but now your voice has gone hoarse.  

And instead of watching him go, you choose to look elsewhere. It’s all you can do to protect yourself from the hurt. 

“Hey,” Yeonjun says, finally addressing you rather than whoever’s he’s got in his phone. “Did you bring anything to change into?”  

“I brought stuff to sleep in,” you say, eyeing him. You know that’s not why he’s asking. If it came down to it, you could just steal something from him and pull it on. He means going out clothes. Your jaw tightens. “But nothing nice. Why?” 

He stretches his arms behind his head in a flaunt of long arms and tanned muscle. Hours spent at the gym lent him those; you appreciate the look of it with a watering mouth. Kai had earned his build by hours spent outside with your dad, because his own could care less, helping him fix up cars and vehicles of all ridiculous sorts. You remember when Kai had first gotten his truck—junk on wheels, honestly—he’d spent so much of summer out there getting it running. And, well... the sun-kissed bronze of his skin and frame that came with it, you had no qualms with. 

But those memories only sit heavy in your chest as you’re sat here beside Yeonjun. You banish them elsewhere; you need to let him drift off. If you can’t have each other, and your feelings won’t permit just being friends, then you have to. You want him to do amazing things, and you fear that it’s your presence in his life that will interrupt that. As much as your feelings are real, they are selfish. You, your unsure direction and all your dead weight, should let him go. Because you love him. 

“The guys want to come over,” he tells you, pushing off from the couch. “You should probably into change into something less showy.” 

Less showy. Your mouth drops into a scoff of disbelief, looking down. A pair of shorts and a shirt, showy? You have to laugh, or else you’ll succumb to the strange embarrassment crawling at the back of your skull. What’s he trying to say? Is that what he thinks of you? “What’s that supposed to mean?” you say, face tilted up to him in a twist of distaste. “I’m wearing something comfy.” 

He shrugs, hands shoved into the pockets of his black sweats. “Don’t want to give them the wrong idea about you, that’s all, baby. They’re guys; I just want to protect you.” 

“No,” you say, the word falling out in a barked laugh. “Why would you even be bringing over dudes that you think will look at me like that? Why are you even friends with people that you think are gonna make moves on your girlfriend?” He holds a hand out to you, but your hands stay right where they are: crossed solidly over your chest. 

Throwing that hand up in audacious exasperation, he gives you a look that makes you feel small and petulant—like you’re throwing an overblown fit. And, maybe you are. You should probably just do it; him seeing you as some overbearing or high maintenance girl has that embarrassment flaring like wildfire that’s found dry brush. “C’mon, baby,” he says, a lazy smile on his mouth that gets under your skin. “Let’s just have an easy night. Don’t make it a big deal.” 

Let’s just have an easy night. As if you’re the one ruining the night. Something snarky tries to seize your tongue, but you hold it down. “I thought it would be just us. We wanted to watch the movie together, Yeonjun. Can’t you wait to hang out with your friends? Let’s enjoy our time together; you’ve got your shift tomorrow.” 

“My fucking god,” he groans, running a hand through his hair furiously. “You’re needy, you know that? The neediest I’ve ever had to put up with. I don’t put up with needy, baby. Can’t you just chill out a little? My last didn’t mind when I’d have friends over.” 

Your eyes burn. Your cheeks burn. He’d been with plenty of other girls before you; that, you’re well aware of. It’s been a corrosive source of self-doubt for you. You don’t want that title: the neediest he’s ever had. Don’t want him to think of you as some prude that won’t let him have fun. Just... hearing him bring up the other girls he’d been with before you stings and leaves welts no different from a slap in the face. Feelings of inadequacy shackle you and have you saying, “Fine. I’m gonna borrow some of your clothes.” 

Heavy resentment blooms on your skin where he bends down and presses kisses to your cheek, and then mouth, and then down your neck. “Thank you, baby.” 

And, where those ugly, wilted flowers of it bloom, you hear echoes of something. Something that tells you that Kai wouldn’t treat you like this. But you’ve made your bed, decided to do it yourself, and now you’ve got to lay on it. 

⚝⭒ 

The frat parties are the worst kind of social outing that Yeonjun insists upon. The smaller kinds, more intimate gathering with just his closer friends, you tolerate much easier. You’re not fond of the circles he chooses. Breathing in thick, smoked-out air surrounded by alcohol-coated breaths is not your type of fun night. Somehow, you end up doing that more than date nights. But that’s better than being here. The base rumbles up through your feet and makes your stomach sick, and it reeks of grinding bodies and body odor, and condensation coats your fingers from the red solo cup as full as when you’d first gotten it. 

But, still, you come along. Not every time, but when you don’t, you lay in his bed sickening yourself with images of what he might be doing here. How pathetic is it to attend parties with your boyfriend because you fear that otherwise, he might stick his tongue down the throats of other girls? 

You’re looking for him right now, awkward and left alone. He’d promised to stick around; you had begged him to. That was pathetic, too. You know that you put up with too much. If he loved you, or honestly even liked you, you two would be in the thick of the throngs dancing or off somewhere talking with others. Together. The frantic skimming and weeding of your eyes through the blur of faces is not right. That’s not how he should make you feel. It’s not how Kai would make you feel. 

Well, Kai would never have you here in the first place. 

Venturing out from your little corner, you sift between the bodies of people have a hell of a lot better time than you. Drunken, some you bounce off of like bumper carts. You press your palm over the round face of your cup to spare the floor from spillage threatening to pour over the lip. It’s not like a splash from yours would matter much, though. The linoleum has already been made a fetor mess of dirt off shoes and the sticky sugar of liquor. Your shoes peel from it as you walk. God, what would your parents think of you being here? 

You peek around corners and eye big groups. He’s not in the kitchen when you look there, either. Your stomach feels sick in a knowing way—a gut feeling that doesn’t justify anger or tears just yet, but you know. Right in the center of your chest, you know. 

It’s in some room that you find him. Sat on the floor along with a few faces you don’t know, he pulls from his bottle. And on his shoulder, he lets a girl with shining curls and pink cheeks rest her head. At your busting in on the intimate gathering, Yeonjun’s eyes slide to you. Recognition flashes over them and wars with bleary drunkenness. 

“Hey, baby,” he says. Their gazes all fall on you, but you can hardly see them through blurry eyes. 

The girl lifts her head from his shoulder. She’d caught the memo. 

“I think I’m gonna go.” You make it sound resigned, try to not let them see your shame, but your voice betrays you and crackles. Maybe it’s better to pretend it doesn’t feel like you’ve just been kicked in the stomach and left to reel against the force, but you can’t. You’re nowhere near shocked, nowhere near blindsided, but still you hurt. 

He follows you down the hall. “What’s your problem?” he says, the few, plain words mending and waving into a slurring. 

You’ve got one goal: get to the front door, away from the shitty music and him. His words, sharpened, fall off your skin despite his efforts. What good would fighting do you, anyway? It was always going to end up this way. This is just who he is, and he doesn’t give two shits enough about you to want to change that. 

“Baby, seriously? That made you this mad? I didn’t even fucking do anything. Stop being insecure,” he says. At the gritting of your teeth, he sees an opportunity and pounces on it. “You don’t need to be jealous. I don’t do jealous shit. We can dance, or something. Shit, I don’t know what you want! Just stop throwing a fit.” 

Didn’t do anything? You have to laugh. Maybe you didn’t walk in on him fucking someone else, but that’s not what this is about. Not even a little bit. You’ve checked out, and the fact that he thinks he can make you believe that it’s your fault this time only drives the killing stake in harder. 

Maybe you’re bitter. It claws at your insides—turns your face hot and screams in your face that you’ve been used. But beside it sits a sadness. Not the slow kind, but the quick sadness of hurt. Why hadn’t you been good enough for him to love you? To like you? You’d left behind Kai and rested your new life on Yeonjun’s shoulders. You’d wanted so badly for his approval, or for him to want you. You did your best to try and make this work out because you needed it to. You needed so desperately proof that you could fall in love with somebody else. But your best was not what Yeonjun was interested in.  

Pins and needles prick your skin as you step outside, like jumping into an ice bath. It shocks you out of dizziness. Words surge up and out in a flash flood like hard reality. You spin on him. “Jealous?” you say, choking out a scathing laugh. “The last thing I’d ever let myself suffer over you is jealousy. Get over yourself. I’m going, stay here if you want. I don’t care.” 

“How are you gonna do that, huh?” he says. The flickering yellow of the porchlight paints his features. The shadow of something fluttering around it cuts dark spots in the light, and then a small little moth comes down and jumps around in his face. He waves it off. “Gonna have bitch boy come pick you up? You can’t leech off him forever; he’s gonna get sick of picking up another man’s girlfriend.” It seems like you walking in on that had sobered him up, but his breath still curls out onto your face with the reek of alcohol. “It’s not a big deal. You’re making this a bigger deal than it has to be. Do you not trust me?”  

“You are such a piece of shit,” you grit out. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Ever. I don’t know how I let this go on for so long.” You don’t like him having Kai in his mouth, don’t like him trying to act like you’re conflating things, and especially don’t like that face he’s making. As if you’re acting crazy and overblown. “No, I don’t trust you. You didn’t fuck her, but come on, Yeonjun. Seriously? You think I’m stupid, and I’m sick of it. You thought this would be easy because I didn’t have the experience you have, but I’m sorry. I don’t like being walked over.” 

“If you’re gonna be so goddamn jealous, then maybe we aren’t gonna work,” he says. 

That moth, floating light in the air, is right back in his face. Yeonjun takes two hands and smashes it between a clap of his hands. He shakes its flattened, broken body off his hand. Looking down at it laying there on top of dirt-caked concrete, you get this... feeling. A tickling around your person.  

“See if I care,�� you snap, throat aching against the onslaught of emotion and held back tears.  

⚝⭒ 

Rivulets of raindrops dilute the tears on your cheeks. Your hair plasters to your face and your clothes to your body.  

For a week, you’d went about it all as if it hadn’t happened. And then you came here.  

It’d not been this rainy when you first got down to the creek—just a gentle trickle, really. You hadn’t been crying then, either. But, watching the water work at babbling over stone, you let yourself feel it. Here, where you’d had so many good memories. You’ve gone and tainted it, now. But for whatever reason, you’d just wanted to be here. Arms curled around yourself and fingers digging into drenched sleeves, you don’t wipe away the tears or cover the sounds of your crying. You let the stream hear it; it’ll sweep it right up and down the way. Somewhere far off, where you don’t have to feel it anymore. 

You realize that, usually, you’d be over at Kai’s right now. The fact that his room was not the first place you thought you could go to anymore is a punch to the gut. You drop your face into your hands and cry harder. Really, you’ve got to stop doing that to yourself. Thinking of sad things—putting your hurt under the microscope to see it closer. It’d be easier to just fold it up and tell yourself that it’ll pass, and that relationships end all the time. 

It’s not him that you cry over. Well, maybe some of it is. Rather, it’s that you have absolutely no idea where you’re going. Where you are. Finally, you’d built yourself a raft to get off the shore and go out to sea, because that’s what you’re supposed to do, and it’s breaking apart right beneath you. And, stranded and alone in the water, you’ve got no way to get back to shore to build yourself another raft. You’re stranded, and the scariest bit is that you’re doing it all alone. You weren’t supposed to do this alone. You two made promises back then. 

You suppose that a promise is one of those things you were supposed to leave faith in back on shore. 

The raindrops are heavy over you. The fall of it roars against the ground, a torrent downpour. It’s not coupled with whipping wind or flashes of lightning—just straight, still falling. It’s a somber feeling no different from the gnawing in your chest. 

Like chimes, there’s a distant, gentle sound. Maybe water falling over creek rock, but it’s more like suggestion. A sweet sound that you shouldn’t even be able to hear over the rest of it, it’s as if it’s right in your ear. A whisper.  

You fix your blurry eyes with a wet sleeve. Rain falls right back into its place, but you see it: a silvery, whimsy haze. And the moths. They jump and call you, this time. Their glow bounces off the rainy mist against the grey of night’s arrival. Then, all you can hear is the whispering. Where you stand frozen, your feet beg to move. To follow them. 

So you do. 

Their entourage of moondust trails them where they go, wrapping you up and weaving between raindrop and space. You don’t worry where they’ll take you, or even try to wrap your head around this happening again. You just follow, mind glossed over and entranced with how beautiful it is. When you’d seen them before, it’d made you uneasy. Mostly because it looked so unearthly and unbelievable. But this time you just follow. 

A far-off voice, one oh-so-familiar, peaks through the haze. It’s not enough to stop you, but then you hear it again, louder and closer. 

You blink a few times. Once to break away the fog, and then twice to focus your eyes on Kai stood in front of you. His hair lays in wet spikes over his eyes and beads of rain trace the planes of his face. He’s as soaked as you. 

“Kai?” you say. Looking around you, you’ve ended up somewhere in the field between your houses and the creek. But you’ve got no recollection of walking here. Whatever that mist is, sentient or not, had swept you here.  

His voice is strained, but you appreciate hearing it. “Break up with him,” he tells you. 

In his eyes, as you search them, there’s stardust glowing like reflection. Your face twists up. “What?” you say, breath a puff of smoke ahead of you. Summer had come and gotten away from you so fast, and now it’s gone all cold again. 

“Break up with him,” he echos, face solemn. He looks ruffled. 

“Why?” you ask, “And why are you out here?” 

“Because I’m moving out today, and I think I deserve to at least see you before I go.” His eyes look over you. “And... your dad said you went down to the creek.” 

He’s moving out today, and you had no idea. And really, it’s your fault. You’d driven that wedge between the two of you. “I did break up with him.” 

Downpour fills his quiet for a few moments, his face swirling with emotion like the clouds above you. He nods. “Good.” 

There are a few more long minutes between you; just you two searching each other's faces, antsy to say so much that it bunches up in your chests and stalls. It’s what a summer of longing does to you. Even with Yeonjun, even trying to slowly chip away the stitching that had connected the two of you at the hip, you were helpless to stop the gnawing of the love you bear for him. Even just seeing him now, you feel those threads mending back up. God, why does it have to be so hard? 

He just looks at you. For a few beats, he just looks at you. There are so many questions in his eyes. They flit across and turn over, but all he settles on is, “Why?” 

There’s so much you want to tell him. Words pile up to the top, some threatening to spill over. But you know that if you tell him some of it, just to make up for all the time you’d missed out on together, it’ll all come crashing out. And you don’t think you want him to know just how much you accepted, the way you let yourself get treated. So, you shake your head and say, “It doesn’t matter.” 

Kai looks like he wants to push that issue, but whatever look he finds on your face deters him. “Come with me,” he pleads. “I want you to come with me.” 

Your throat tightens. Curling your arms around yourself harder, the rain only coming down on you harder, you say, “Kai, I want to. I want to. I just... I don’t want to freeload off you, because you’re doing great things, and I’m just...” Your tongue darts out to wet your lips, but they’re already as soaked as the rest of you. “I’m just going nowhere. And I don’t want to be a burden, or ever be the reason that you can’t do what you dream of. If staying here means that you become everything that you’re destined to do, then I’m happy with that, Kai. I am.” 

He shakes his head, stumbling toward you. “No, no you don’t get it,” he says, frantically taking your shoulders into big hands. Under his touch, every taut muscle goes slack. You melt. “You don’t get it. You are the music. Every single song is about you. Every single fucking song is about you. I want you to come with me, please. I love you, I have always loved you, and I will always love you, and I thought you’d loved me too, and I don’t want to do this alone. I can’t do it alone.” 

He loves you. Kai loves you. The enormity of it rumbles the ground where you stand on legs you fear might just give in. You flex your fingers to combat the tears pricking your eyes. It doesn’t work; they brim and well up, spilling down over your cheeks. “What?” you say, voice softly breaking. “Kai, I didn’t...” 

“And just when I thought I finally had you, you left me,” he says, throwing a hand up beside him in a big gesture. “You left me! I woke up thinking you’d be there, and that maybe you loved me too, and you had left me. And then you threw me away for some piece of shit, and you stopped coming around.” His chest heaves for breaths. 

Your face contorts. That night, the one where you two had slipped up, you’d fallen asleep curled up against his chest on undiluted contentment. When you woke up, you had panicked. You thought he’d wake up and pretend it hadn’t happened, or he’d be uncomfortable, or even be disgusted and regretting. You couldn’t handle that, so you slipped out before he woke up. It’d been an attempt to protect your tender heart, but looking at the twitching of his lip now, you begin to think it’s the most selfish thing you’ve ever done. He thinks you used him and left him. Your stomach twists. Voice thick, you say, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left you, Kai. I thought you didn’t... I thought you didn’t see me that way. I was scared. I’m sorry I hurt you.” 

Brows knitted together, he says, “Thought I didn’t love you?” His hand cups your cheek, warm against the soft frozen skin he finds there. “I’ve... I’ve dreamed of you almost every night of my life. In my sleep, I see you, and you’re happy and glowing, and that damn... mist is all around you. I couldn’t get away from you even in my sleep.” 

Darting between his eyes, soft and reflecting your face back to you, it’s hard to breathe. Kai’s dreamt of you; he’s as sickly in love with you as you are him. Thunder claps, and the ground shakes, and the heavens open up above you, the trumpets belt, and you two are in love. Somewhere deep in your center, you feel it—your soul nodding yes. 

The mist. You know exactly what he’s talking about. “I saw it. That stuff, those moths. The stuff we saw back then.” 

“I did too,” he says, wet spikes of hair bouncing with a nod. “Not that long ago. It was the first time I saw it out of a dream since that day.” 

Back then, you two had only budding, innocent love for each other. Things hadn’t become mangled and lost to confused hearts or expectations. When they’d appeared to you, you hadn’t needed it. This time, you’d followed it. And it had led you here—somehow had led you right to the very spot you needed to so that every last piece might fall into place. For this moment to happen. You know why it did. 

“I’ll go with you, Kai. I’ll go wherever you go; I love you. I’ve loved you since forever,” you say, each and every word massive and lovely on your tongue. “I’m sorry I didn’t say it earlier.” 

So unlike the last times your mouth had met, he brings his mouth to yours with a dazzling clarity. No longer is it confused kisses; he locks his lips against yours with the urgency of so many years being unable to. Kai’s hands cradle your wet cheeks, hold you so tenderly into his kiss. His touch grounds you, makes the moment real. You melt into him—your fingers curled into his shirt as if holding him there so that he won’t disappear like something of an incorporeal dream. He sighs through his nose, kissing you harder. Even if it all were fake and this was nothing more than a feverish figment of your imagination, you think you could die happy just knowing this once. 

But it is utterly real, and utterly yours. You kiss him harder, too. 

When your lungs start to burn and plead for breath, you two pull away from each other. Your eyes flutter open to capture his. Warm and brown and the same ones you’ve stared into so many times before, but not like this, you sink into them. He runs his thumb over your cheek as he sinks into yours. His tongue darts out to lick lips painted with you. In the inches between you, space no longer feels heavy or charged with grievances. Every last unsaid thing had been answered. 

“I have my stuff up in the truck,” he says, breaths soft. Brown eyes dart around your face. “I’ll help you add your stuff to it.” 

You shudder out a breath. Add your stuff to it. A nervous energy settles down over you, but it doesn’t seem so bad if you’re doing it with him. Together.  

“Okay,” you whisper, a balmy secret just like the ones you used to share in small, giggly voices so many years ago. “Okay.” 

⚝⭒ 

Shivers seize you like jittering bones, all wrapped up in a blanket. The velour cushion seats beneath you have soaked up water and become damp, but Kai’s got the heater blasting. You wind around back roads, headlights illuminating the way ahead of you. Stray droplets whip in them, but nothing much. Isn’t it funny how the rain had just stopped like that? That’s just how the weather is, out here. You wonder how the weather might act wherever you’re headed. 

Your teeth chatter as if your jaw had its own will. The two of you had the windows down thinking that the wind might dry you off, but all it’s done is lap at your bitten cheeks. You reach down for the handle to crank it up. You’ve got a long drive ahead of you—either you’ll eventually dry off, or you can pull off at a rest area to change in a bathroom. The wet clothes are really not helping. 

With an arm up on the steering wheel, Kai turns his attention on you. You know that smile. “Cold?” he asks, eyes darting between your face and the road. With the hand he’s not got working the steering wheel, he runs fingers over your thigh. Soft, gentle massages, yes. The number it does on your core is absurd. Each mindless digging into your thighs and brush of his thumb, sparks sputter there. You’ve sat here, right in his passenger seat, so many times before. Day trips up to the lake, the one he’d joined your family camping at for so many summers, all the times he’d driven you to school in this truck, and even just a quick run down to a convenience store for a late-night snack. You’d deemed it your seat. But never once had you sat in it like this. Your heart does a flip. All those times you’d wish he’d reach over and do just this—a small gesture that would’ve been so big then. And it’s your reality, now.  

“Freezing,” you say. A brush of his fingers nearer the apex of your thighs sends you pressing them together and shifting in your seat. “But not everybody runs as hot as you, though, so.” 

His eyes catch the movement in just the split second he looked over to you. “Huh,” he says. He turns to look at you, his gaze flickering with something anew. Something that you’d only ever seen once before. “Is that it?” 

It’s hard to swallow. His fingers brush higher, and higher, feather-dustings of calloused fingertips that sends tingles shooting up your spine at the slightest suggestion of where he’s headed. “Yes,” you say, feigning indignance to cover the shiver that threatens to overtake you. When his fingertips dance at the waistband of your bottoms, it does so anyway. “Kai,” you say, blood hot in your veins. “You’re...driving.” 

His eyebrows pinch into a taunting furrow. “I am,” he says, nodding. “Don’t worry about it, baby. I’ve got us.” 

And he does; fingers slipping under the band of both your bottoms and your panties, he doesn’t even tear his eyes off the road. He’d driven these roads so much, you think he might be able to do it asleep. Even drawing a mewl from you with a brush over your clit, he doesn’t look away more than a quick glimpse at your pinkened cheeks. 

Two fingers dragging up your folds, right over the source of the mess. “You get excited so easily, huh?” he hums. “You like it when I play with you.” 

When he presses those fingers at your entrance, you can’t help but be taken back to that night. It echoes and reverberates through you. Long fingers, strong and punctual brushes against the sweet spot—he was criminally good with his fingers. Playing guitar did more for him than just music. He seemed to know exactly how to utilize those roughened fingers and trained flicks. Your muscles flicker as he abandons your hole for more brushes at your bud.  

Those teasing, sly touches turn to something more serious. His fingers roll over your clit, slow but enough to have you sighing and rolling your hips against the seat belt. But last time had gone just like this, him touching you and receiving nothing. He should feel good, too. “Shouldn’t you pull over?” you sigh, muscles taut. Your breaths come out shuddering and half-controlled, interrupted by the tightness that each delicious swirl provokes. The door takes the brunt of your grip, white-knuckling the interior. 

He laughs, a husky sound that is tinder to fire. He knows what you mean. “Maybe,” he says. “But I think I’m enjoying this plenty. I think I want to see you cum on my fingers again.” 

Fingers pinching and flicking faster, you grow breathy and whiny, hips rolling against the seatbelt and back into the seat. Your muscles, all the way down your thighs and deep in your belly, jump and twitch each time his fingers run over your clit in just the right spot—that tender spot that’s so good that it teeters on overwhelming. The kind that makes you hiss and then want more. “Shit, Kai,” you whine. “Right—there, keep going."  

He doesn’t answer with any teasing words. No, he just doubles down right at that angle and pressure, leaned back into his seat and driving as if he wasn’t fingers-deep in your panties right now. His sculpted profile at total ease—it does something for you. A delicious tightness curls its fingers over your center, promising a sugary ecstasy that you can’t help but chase. Bucking into his hands as best you can, you go quiet. Right there—right there, you feel it. The cusp. Your fingers brush over it, clenching around nothing and squeezing your thighs tight around him. Every last drop of blood in your body reaches for it, singing and dancing through your veins and making you dizzy. 

And then he stops. Your mouth drops open, whiplashed and helpless to its slipping away from you. You whittle your gaze into something sharp and turn to him. “What—why?” you complain. The tide slips further and further and further back, but you still taste sea salt on your tongue. Frustration sets in its place as you feel it go. Seriously, you’d been right there. “You’re so mean.” 

He slows and then with the clicking of the turn signal, he’s off the road and pulling the truck into park on a little secluded side road. Where the headlights pierce the pitch black, nothing but gravel and field surrounds you. He doesn’t kill the engine, instead pulling his hand free from you. 

Your heart, still stuttering with your lost orgasm, kicks back to life as he smears your slick over your mouth, dragging it over your lips and then taking his thumb to run it right over the plush of your mouth. “Am I?” he says, fingers taking your chin to meet your eyes with his. Endless hunger, pupils so blown that his eyes look black, pins you. “I don’t think you’ve seen mean yet, baby.” 

Darting your tongue out to clean your lips, you look at him through your eyelashes. “Show it to me, then.” 

Something dark passes over his face. It has your skeleton jumping out of your body. Then, he says, “Is that what you want? You want mean?” 

Brain gone to mush that can only really think about him touching you, a slow nod is all you can manage. 

The engine’s hum prevails for some long, thick seconds. And then, he tilts his head in a gesture. “Get in the back.” 

Holy shit. You want to sit there frozen in an overwhelming sort of excitement, but his seatbelt clicks undone and you’re set into motion. In a flurry of giggles and clumsy limbs, you climb up over the center console and into the backseat. He slips out of the front seat, not bothering to even kill the engine. 

The door beside you opens in a swirl of cold wind. In nothing more than a blink, a strong hand has both your wrists pinned to the cushions and your back flush against it. Nose-to-nose, his breath hot over your face. “I’ve got plenty of ideas as to how I can warm you up.” 

You appreciate each other’s faces for a beat more, you looking up at him big-eyed and waiting. Kai breaks the moment to attack your neck in a procession of bites and kisses. Your mouth falls into a silent sound. 

“You know,” he says, free hand working your pants off. His eyes are trained on you, though. “I thought about doing this to you all summer. Touching you again.” He moves on to your top, pushing the fabric up until your chest is freed, clad in soft cotton. He eats the sight up. You want to reach down and cup the back of his head or feel his hair between your fingers as he presses his mouth against the soft beginning of your cleavage, but he’s got your wrists firmly planted. So much so, that you wonder exactly how he’s got you so secure with just one hand. Kai is strong, but maybe you hadn’t seen just how strong. Your skin aches under the purple bites he decorates you in. The sight of him—face in your chest and marking you up so lazily—has your teeth abusing your bottom lip. Whatever sounds you might make otherwise would be embarrassing. Kai lifts his eyes to you. “And I think you thought of me, too. Didn’t you?” 

“Oh, god, yes,” you say, writhing beneath him. He’s going so slow. You want him all over you. “So much.” 

He likes that. He takes your pebbled nipple into his mouth through the fabric. Soft grazes of teeth and sucks, you’re burning all over. When he pulls back, he’s left you dark wet patches when the bra had only just dried against your body heat. “Good,” he rasps, taking his big hands demanding and hungry over your torso. They swallow your frame up, soothing skin but lighting it aflame all the same. “Good girl.” 

You never thought just words could unravel you, but those did the job. Not a gasp, nor a sucking in of breath—no, you go silent and brainless, fumbling for rational thought. 

The dropping of your jaw has Kai delighted. “You’re so pretty,” he says. In a swift and powerful hoist, he’s tugging you down the cushions toward him with greedy fingers. He’s got your thighs pressed up to your chest. You’re bent right in half. 

Out of breath, you huff out, “You too.” 

A quick laugh falls from his mouth, lips pulled into a smug tilt. He nips at your calf up by his face. “So sweet, it almost makes me feel bad for what I’m about to do to you.” Reaching down for your panties, he pulls back on the suffocating press for only enough time to drag them up your legs. Those get discarded somewhere on the floor. Who cares about that right now, though? All you can register is the metallic clinking of his belt being undone. It’s got your nervous system twisting up. 

And, those words. Electricity shoots bolts of pure, sizzling revery into your core. What I’m about to do to you. You imagine a great deal of things that he might mean, but still, you think that none could hold a candle against the promise his voice held in saying it. 

Kai presses his body to your thighs and hooks your calves over his shoulders, and it all becomes real. The press of his heavy cock to your folds, the digging of his fingers into your outer thighs, his pretty eyes sparkling with something feral. As real as it gets—more real than anything you’ve ever felt in the entirety of your life. Your hands find perch flattened to his broad chest. 

The position leaving you two no option but to look right into each other, he holds your gaze and begins slow drags of his hot length up and down your slit. Tantalizing, awful, awful drags. When his tip nudges your eager clit, you jolt. And then he does it again. And again. 

“Kai,” you mewl. A press against your hole has you hopeful, and he lingers there for a moment, but doesn’t give it to you. Can’t he just fuck you? You’ve never been more pitifully in need of something in your life. 

“Shh.” His ruts get more daring, smearing your slick up onto your belly. “Take it.” 

You wiggle your toes in the air and make passes at arching yourself into him in search of better friction. He’s got you pressed so suffocatingly into the seat that it does absolutely nothing for you. In fact, he holds your harder and changes tack so that your thighs press together. At the very apex of them, his weeping cock slips through the seam. 

Pressing his cheek into your calf, he watches you. Every gasp and shaky inhale, he watches. It spurs his rutting on, sticky sounds and pants eating up the air. Your nails claw at his hands as, finally, a knot tightens in your core. 

“Yes, please,” you breathe. He fucks your thighs harder. Faster. Every nudge at your clit and hole becomes euphoric. “Kai, baby—I’m gonna—” 

Just as furiously easy as last time, he rips it all away from you. The rushing away of the buzzing and promise of shaking thighs—he takes it from you again. It brings prickling tears to your eyes. “Kai?” you hiss. “Again?” 

His eyes aren’t playful. He pulls your calves back over his shoulders, handling your hips into a better position to press his cock right at your entrance as if you weigh nothing. Face utterly straight, he says, “I don’t think you deserve it, do you? Not after what you did with Yeonjun.” 

A swallow goes down your throat hard. He presses himself just a bit harder into you. Not in yet, but right there. 

When he does begin sliding in, the stretch of it... You cling to him and squirm between him and the warm cushions behind you. Each inch is a heady feeling, all the way up to the hilt of him. He shudders a controlled breath. “You’re so fucking tight, though,” he grits out. “Did he not fuck you right?” 

Slaps of skin bounce off the car interior and between your bodies. He starts off at a brutal pace; you know it’s meant to make your brain go foggy. Squeezing your eyes closed, you manage, “I... didn’t fuck him.” It comes out strangled, voice bouncing as he fucks you into the car seat. 

Thumb tugging your bottom lip down and then dipping into your mouth, he watches the show of your ecstasy down to every last detail. “Yeah?” he says, voice shaking and almost desperate. “Always thinking of me, huh? Such a good little princess. You know exactly where your heart belongs.”  

You want to answer him, even just with a whine or moan. You try to. But with his thumb pressing down on your tongue, enough to pin it to the floor of your mouth, it’s not gonna happen. He tastes salty in your mouth. 

His truck consists of his grunts and whines, and your taut groans for some moments that seem to stretch forever. The planes of his groin grind against your clit when he delivers occasional pointed rolls, but mostly it’s just an animalistic, feverish dancing of your two sweaty bodies, holds growing more frantic the closer you get.  

Thumb wet with saliva; he frees your mouth. The hand trails slowly down your face and your chin, brushing feather touches, until he finds your neck. 

Your eyes fly open, wide. He pressed his fingers into your neck—no real pressure yet, he looks at you through damp strands of dangling hair and says, “Want my fingers around your neck?” His thumb brushes over the buzzing pulse point there. 

“Yes,” you grit out, body bouncing and back raw with friction against the coarse cushion’s surface. Your breath stutters, your mind stutters. Even your blinks stutter, eyelids too lazy to keep up. “Please.” 

The pressure of his fingers there—it frightens you and has you tightening around him at the same time. But you would trust nobody more with your life than Kai. 

He presses his cheek to your calf to indulge in the sight of you like this: underneath him, folded in two, nowhere to go but to take his pistoning hips, cheeks blazing, and his fingers pressed into your windpipe. If the way he becomes sloppier and more desperate in his tempo has anything to say for it, it does something for him. 

“Gonna be my pretty little girlfriend, huh?” he says. His voice is tight—so is your belly. You’re both so close. Hopefully, this time he’ll let you cum. “Take you to every show; show you off to everybody. Fuck.” 

Brain like static and swimming with a pinched flow of oxygen, you slur your words. “You’re—hah—gonna have other girls all over you.” 

The taunting, split-second raise of his brows flips your belly. You tighten around him again. If he keeps hitting that spot, tip ramming into the soft spot deep inside you that he’d taken such delicate care of finding last time, you’re going to burst into sparkling flame and firework. He growls, “Well, I’ll just have to knock you up so that they know I’m yours, huh?” 

Holy shit. You like the sound of that. Your nails dig into his wrist around your neck, but you cry out a pitchy, “Yes!” 

“Oh, you like that?” Kai releases your throat to take both your hips. You gulp for air, finding nothing but the thick air of sex and humid breaths, at the opportunity. He’s ramming into you like he’s found a purpose. “Isn’t this the perfect position to do it? Get you pregnant?” 

With every last bit of brain power you’ve got, teetering on the edge excruciatingly close to salvation, you groan a long, hoarse sound. “Fuck, yes! Please, Kai, inside—” A hot trail of tears roll down your temples. 

It’s all he’s got to hear to still inside you. His growl rumbles deep in his chest, holding you in place and filling you with his hot cum deep in your cunt. That feeling, coupled with his short grinds against your clit as he fucks his seed deeper, takes your soul by sinful claws and crumbles it down into nothing. You burst into a shaking, whimpering peak, sucking your lips into your mouth to bare through the sheer twisting of your insides and the flame that consumes up your thighs and cunt. 

He falls on you heavy, face in your neck. Warm kisses against your clammy skin meld with your slow floating down, the two of you a beautiful, nasty picture of fucked out. He stays right inside you—the absolute stillness of him, you think he has no plans of pulling out any time soon. His long fingers card through your sweaty locks of hair. 

Finally, he presses himself off you. You get a glimpse of the window behind him—fogged up and filthy with your affairs. Anybody to see the truck from the outside would know exactly what went on inside, but right now, you don’t care. Not one bit. Your panted breaths drag in nothing but musk and thick, hot air. The drumbeat in your chest tells you that, despite how you feel ripped straight from your body, you are very much still alive. More alive than ever. 

“Warm?” he says, pushing sticky hair off his forehead. He’s a mess, too. His hair is ruffled with your touch, his clothes rumpled the same, beads of sweat rolling down the planes of his cheeks and neck, and his eyes a lazy smolder. As much as he looks like sex personified, a soft smile twitches at his lips. 

You snort. You can’t help but feel giddy, here with him. You’re with him. Nothing has ever felt more right. Unplugged when he pulls out of you, your mess trickles down onto the seat below you. “Yeah,” you say. “Very.” 

Warm is not enough to begin to describe how you feel. In your ears, you hear whisperings. Soft and gentle. Perhaps it was divine intervention, or the fates lending you their word, or maybe just rational thought. It says: 

Home. You are home. 

✎୭ ashlynn's note how do we feel about this pair? i really didn't mean for this to get so long, but i ended up RLLY liking their chemistry. i had to do their story justice. also, i finished this with kai as a guitarist and then his drummer performance came out... hmm.

﹙🏷️ ﹚@lvrs-street2mmorrow , @soohashits , @f4iryfever , @arcturus444 , @linqed , @serenityism00 , @immelissaaa , @luv4cheol , @lickingan0rchid , @20-cms , @hhoneylix , @beestvng , @hyucktapes , @bewitchless , @prince-jjae , @blankliving , @yaoizee , @stormy1408 , @missychief1404 , if your tag isn't working, check the mentions part of your settings!

[odxrilove]

☆ TXT AND THINGS THEY DO THAT MAKE YOU QUESTION WHAT YOU TWO ARE

pairing: txt x f!reader

genre: hcs/scenarios, fluff, bsfs/friends2???? ~1.2k :D

a/n: requested by anon! song rec - nouvelle vague by wave to earth.. also big thank u to val pookie @fairybinie for helping me out sm with these scenarios!!! happy birthday poo i hope u had an amazing day and i wish u the best!! love you lots :D

back to masterlist!

☆ YEONJUN

constantly keeping his hand on your waist. such an action may seem futile and unnoticeable considering yeonjun’s the one doing it, but it still makes you confused. yeonjun’s known to be flirty, a literal heartthrob wherever he goes. he’s also very touchy, easily hugging someone or putting his arm around their shoulder. but it’s only truly with you that he lets his hand rest on your hip, finger hooked into one of your jeans’ belt loops.

at first he started doing it at parties, after finding you in the crowd, arms circling your waist to keep you from getting lost in the wave of people. it continued at normal hangouts, laughing alongside his friends as his fingers fiddled with the hem of your top. then it happened when you two were alone, lounging on your couch while watching a movie. there wasn’t anything or anybody he had to protect you from, but he still slid his hand between the backrest and your body until you were practically glued to his side, his arm comfortably holding onto your waist.

you’re not sure why he does it; maybe to show others you’re not available– you are though, or to purposely tease you and make your heart skip a beat– something that already happens a lot in his presence. but one thing you know for sure is, it certainly doesn’t help your already weak heart.

☆ SOOBIN

being oddly protective of you. soobin is the least confrontational person you know, so it didn’t surprise you when he kept his mouth shut as one of your classmates teased him in class. that’s initially how you two became friends, him nursing your wounded fist after you punched the bully right in the nose for calling him a lanky nerd. 5th grade sure was wild. the following years, soobin tried his best to defend you like you defended him back in the day but again, he’s the least confrontational person you know. however, his best friend-instincts took over him when a guy tried to hike up your dress at the graduation party. you nursed his wounded fist after and the two of you became even closer. after the “fight of the century” soobin swore to himself he would protect you. at first, you found it funny, trying to stop yourself from blushing when he would raise his voice at whoever decided to bother you that day. you don’t really know when it started but with each new time, his best-friend protection act would slowly turn into something that held a lot more feelings than just platonic ones. the way he would look at you to see if you were alright, or the way his hand would slid into yours, or even the one time he called you his partner instead of his best friend. everything was slowly changing, and you didn’t even know if soobin was even aware of it himself.

☆ BEOMGYU

calls you his girlfriend. the first time he did it, you thought he was just joking around, trying to tease you. so you laughed it off, attempting to hide the way your heart fluttered at the thought of you being his actual girlfriend. but the second time, a week or so later, you were even more confused. did beomgyu think you two had something going on? did he find out about your old crush on him? you really didn’t know why he started calling you his girlfriend, since none of his other actions showed he felt anything except platonic feelings for you. he stopped after the fourth time, after he noticed your disoriented and clearly disheartened expression. weeks passed and not once did beomgyu explain his old but short habit to you. but then, months later, when you had almost forgotten about the whole ordeal, beomgyu did it again. to be honest, him calling you his girlfriend that time was in fact beneficial for you– you refused to talk any longer to the creep begging for your number. but the way the word rolled off his tongue, a hint of arrogance and a ton of proudness, made you reach for his hand, acting like the role he had assigned you. tension followed after, for weeks, and your heart continued to long for him. if only you knew you were the only thing on his mind whenever someone said the word “girlfriend”.

☆ TAEHYUN

constantly buys you things. it may seem shallow at first, but whenever taehyun brings you a small trinket or whatever food you were craving at that moment, your heart fills with joy. it’s not the way he spends money for you, but the way he looks at you when he gives it to you, eyeing you to see your neutral expression change into a happy one. taehyun’s a great listener, so he knows all your orders and favorite things by heart, which only makes it easier for him to empty his bank account for you. he swears you’re not special, or at least not more important than the rest of his friends– for whom he rarely ever buys anything– but he can’t really stop his brain from thinking of you when he sees something pretty or tasty at the mall. the dainty necklace around your neck is the literal proof of his favoritism towards you. he had given it to you on your graduation and you hadn’t taken it off since. it was a symbol for your friendship, he said, something to remember the many years you spent together, but the shiny “T” letter pendant made your heart swell every time you felt it against your skin. in all truth, taehyun was just waiting for you to notice the letter pendant of your name he wore on his necklace and hid, carefully, under his shirt collar.

☆ HUENING KAI

he constantly mentions you two in his future. you and kai have been friends since the two of you were in diapers and basically experienced all your first together. spending all those years together, in the same neighborhood, school and friend groups lead to many talks about your futures, sometimes wiping anxious tears away or doubling over from laughter at the mention of so many possibilities. it was a normal thing for you two, getting together and just talking about whatever would be on your mind at that moment. every conversation was different but one thing never changed, the way huening kai wouldn’t forget to mention you in his future plans. he would have pictured everything out, you two living next to each other in your own homes, working across the street from each other, adopting pets at the same time so they could be friends, meeting every friday for a ramen and movie night… whenever you were worried about what the future prepared for you, kai would comfort you, reminding you that no matter what happened later, he would always be there. it always reassured you but unfortunately, you never had the guts to tell him that you’d prefer to live together later, spend your work lunch breaks together, adopt a pet together, and turn every night into a movie marathon.

taglist: @0x1lovebot @fairybinie @blaqpinksthetic @odetoyeonjun @pockyandme @soobin-chois @lolalee24 @soobisms @junityy @kaimal @laylasbunbunny @jaeyunverse @enhacolor @honglynights @starry-mins @bibinnieposts @raevyng @yoonzin0 @tyunni @pointlessapple @yyx2 @pearlygraysky @angelyeo-hyj

please do not copy, repost or steal any of my work. all content belongs to @odxrilove

[blue-jisungs]

texts with bf!kai

# author’s note … let’s ignore the fact that it took me A G E S i just didn’t have any ideas :( AND LMFAOOSOOSOSSO SORRY FOR THW LAST ONE 😭😭😭😭 can u tell i have a younger brother 😍😍😍

beom tae jun soob versions

masterlist <3

taglist. @primoppang ,, @mirxzii ,, @laylasbunbunny ,, @slytherinshua ,, @kazmura ,,

@nicholasluvbot ,, @ameliesaysshoo ,, @weird-bookworm ,, @mon2sunjinsuver ,, @ocean-minho ,,

@eternalgyu ,, @haecien ,, @nonononranghaee

[seoulzie]

blurred boundaries

WHEREIN: huening kai needs help with his...! MDNI

pairing: inexperienced!hyuka x f! reader genre: suggestive, smut warnings: explicit sexual content, swearing, desperate kai-ish, handjob

SEUL SPEAKS! this was only supposed to be suggestive but i got carried away.. this is my first time ever writing straight-up smut

the room was dimly lit by the soft glow of a single bedside lamp, casting a warm hue over the scattered books and papers. huening kai sat on the edge of the bed, his usually playful eyes filled with a mixture of anxiety and desire. you’d been friends for years, the kind of friendship that often teetered on the edge of something more, but had never quite crossed that line.

tonight felt different, though.

“kai, what’s up? you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” you teased, trying to lighten the tension that had settled between you.

he looked down, avoiding your eyes. “can we talk? about something serious?”

you nodded, moving to sit beside him on the bed. the silence stretched out, and you could feel your heart pounding in your chest. “of course. what’s going on?”

he took a deep breath, his voice barely above a whisper. “i… i need your help with something. and it’s not something i can ask anyone else.”

his words sent a shiver down your spine. “anything, kai. you know that.”

he finally looked up, his gaze locking onto yours with an intensity you hadn’t seen before. “i need you to help me… with this.” his eyes flicked downward, and you followed his gaze, understanding dawning on you.

“oh.” it was all you could manage to say, the implications of his request hitting you like a tidal wave. am i really going to do this? to a friend? the thought echoed in your mind, the internal conflict rising.

“i know it’s a lot to ask,” he said quickly, his face flushing with embarrassment. “but i trust you, and… i don’t know how else to deal with it.”

you took a deep breath, trying to steady your racing heart. this was uncharted territory, a step that could change everything between you. but the vulnerability in his eyes, the trust he was placing in you, was undeniable.

“okay,” you said softly, the word feeling heavy with the weight of your decision. “tell me what you need.”

his relief was palpable, and he reached out to take your hand, his touch warm and slightly trembling. “just… help me with this. please.”

you nodded, moving closer to him. your fingers brushed against his thigh, and you felt him shiver. the air between you seemed to crackle with tension as you leaned in, your lips hovering just inches from his.

“are you sure about this, kai?” you whispered, giving him one last chance to back out. your mind was still racing, questions and doubts swirling. this was huening kai, could you really cross this line?

“i’m sure,” he replied, his voice steady despite the vulnerability in his eyes. “i need you.”

with that, you closed the distance between you, your lips meeting in a tentative kiss. it was soft at first, a gentle exploration, but quickly deepened as the desire between you ignited. his hands found your waist, pulling you closer as you shifted to straddle his lap.

you could feel the hardness of his arousal pressing against you, and it sent a thrill through your body. breaking the kiss, you moved to press your lips against his neck, eliciting a low groan from him.

“kai,” you breathed against his skin, “tell me what you want.”

his hands tightened on your waist, guiding your hips to grind against him. “i want you. all of you.”

you nodded, understanding his need and your own desire to fulfill it. slowly, you began to undress, each piece of clothing falling to the floor, leaving you exposed and vulnerable. his eyes roamed over your body, filled with a hunger that matched your own.

as you reached for the waistband of his pants, he caught your hand, his eyes meeting yours with a silent question. you nodded, giving him the reassurance he needed, and together you removed the last barriers between you.

the feeling of his skin against yours was electric, and as you moved to take him in your hand, his breath hitched in anticipation. you began to stroke him, slow and deliberate, watching the way his eyes fluttered closed, the way his lips parted in pleasure.

his breaths came in short gasps, and you felt the tension coiling in his muscles. you quickened your pace, your hand gliding smoothly over his length, the soft, slick sounds filling the room. his moans grew louder, and you could see the struggle in his expression, the way he tried to hold back.

“kai,” you whispered, leaning in to press a kiss to his parted lips, “let go. i’ve got you.”

his response was a deep, guttural groan, his hips bucking against your hand as he finally surrendered to the pleasure. you felt his release, warm and wet against your palm, and you continued to stroke him through the aftershocks, milking every last drop of his climax.

when he finally stilled, you released him, your hand sticky with his essence. he looked up at you, eyes glazed with satisfaction, and pulled you into another kiss, this one slow and languid, filled with gratitude and lingering desire.

as you pulled away, you reached into the nightstand drawer, retrieving a condom. his eyes widened slightly as he watched you tear open the foil packet, his breathing quickening once more.

“are we really doing this?” you asked, your voice soft, giving him one final chance to change his mind.

he nodded, his eyes locked onto yours. “i’m sure. please.”

you rolled the condom onto him with practiced ease, the sensation making him groan with anticipation. positioning yourself over him, you slowly lowered yourself onto his length, the feeling of him filling you completely sending waves of pleasure through your body.

the rhythm you set was slow at first, each movement deliberate and controlled, savoring the sensation of being joined so intimately. but as the pleasure built, your movements quickened, driven by a shared need. his hands roamed your body, caressing and exploring, heightening the sensations.

the sounds of your shared pleasure filled the room, a symphony of gasps, moans, and the slick, rhythmic slap of skin against skin. you felt the tension building within you, the familiar coil of impending release tightening in your core.

“kai,” you murmured, “i’m close.”

“me too,” he replied, his voice strained with desire.

with a final thrust, you felt yourself tip over the edge, the waves of pleasure crashing over you. he followed moments later, his body tensing beneath you as he found his release.

for a few moments, you lay together, catching your breath, the reality of what had just happened sinking in. you rolled off him, lying side by side, your fingers intertwining.

“thank you,” he said softly, turning to look at you. “for everything.”

you smiled, leaning in to press a gentle kiss to his lips. “we’re in this together, kai. no matter what.”

and as you lay there, wrapped in each other’s arms, you knew that whatever lines had been blurred tonight, the bond between you was stronger than ever.

© 2024 seulzie

[ruin-d]

please warm hyuka themee ??!

⠀⠀(─‿‿─)✿ ⠀⠀ ﾟ࿔ ⠀◻️

⠀⠀⠳⣄⣀⣠⠞˖*✿⢷ ⠳⣄⣀⣠⠞˖*✿⢷ ⠳⣄⣀⣠⠞˖*✿⢷⠳⣄

⠀⠀3️⃣⠀ Tomar-té ⠀⠀ ♥︎ིྀིྀ༷ ⠀ de⠀⠀ ꫶ࣺ᭮᭰  ㅤ ㅤ ͚

ㅤ๑ï ⠀ ☘️🪵 ⠀ #lOvE ∗ ִ

[linos-luna]

Music Lessons ❣️

Perv!Huengingkai x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Perv!Hyuka, fingering, groping, spanking, oral (fem receiving), unprotected sex

—————— 🔥

Hyuka is your sweet innocent best friend. He’s the last person you’d suspect to be a sexual deviant. But looks are deceiving. The sweet boy persona was just the tip of the iceberg. A perfect facad.

You were getting frustrated. Piano wasn’t easy and you kind of hated it. However you already committed to it for this college semester. Now you have a final coming up and of course you waited last minute. Luckily your best friend Hungingkai was over to help out.

The man watched as you demonstrated what you practiced, although he wasn’t watching the piano; he was watching you.

He loved the way your jeans hugged your butt, thighs, and legs. They weren’t skinny jeans but also not very loose. Just enough to tease him: he both loved and hated it. Hueningkai knew that you didn’t have a shirt under that hoodie, he knew that it was probably just a bra. Or better yet, nothing at all.

“How was that?”

The man blinked as you got his attention. “Oh um… it’s fine but…”

“But what?” You asked with a frown.

“Not sure exactly… just not very smooth.” He said before getting behind you. “Lack of confidence?”

“Well thats why I brought you here, yeah?” You teased.

“Well noona, looks like you need more practice.” He said with a light attitude before leaning in, placing his hands over yours that were over the keys.

You blushed a bit as his body was pressed against your back.

“Go on.” He said bluntly.

You nervously moved your fingers. His hands remained over yours as if guiding you. Surprisingly, you were doing better and he could sense that. You continued to play while the man slowly ran his fingers up your arm, lifting your sleeves.

Somehow, you were too focused on the piano to notice.

“You’re doing really good, noona. Keep going.”

You nodded as he pulled a stool behind you, sitting with his hands under your hoodie and on your waist.

You started to turn your head when feeling him.“Hyu-?”

“Shh….” He interrupted, pushing your head to face the piano again. “Focus… focus on the music.

It was hard to keep going. He was rubbing at your waist and getting awfully close to your breasts.

“No bra?” He whispered in your ear. “You really are a fuckin tease… yeah noona?”

You froze as his hands traveled higher, reaching your breasts. You whimpered a bit as he squeezed them like stress balls.

“Hey. I didn’t say to stop.” He said while pinching your nipple.

“K-Kai—?!”

“Keep playing…” he teased while whispering in your ear. “Keep playing so I can play with your body already…”

After some more massaging of your breasts, he dropped his hands to your hips.

“W-what are you doing…?” You stuttered and he rubbed between your legs.

“Noona… you’re such a fuckin tease….” He huffed before slowly unzipping your jeans and inching his fingers toward your clothed cunt.

“H-Hyuka— H-H—…” you couldn’t finish, only letting out a moan when feeling his fingers rubbing your clit, only for him to cover your mouth with the other hand.

“Shhhh..,, relax noona… just relax… he whispers softly. “I know you like it… don’t lie to me.”

Your voice was muffled under his hand as he ran his fingers through your folds, bring ever so slow.

“I don’t think you understand just how worked up you get me…” he groaned while kissing and sucking at your neck. “You do it on purpose… all these years…”

The motion of his fingers as he teased your hole had you reeling. Your eyes rolled back and muffled moans increased as he continued. It was all too much and you knew that your high was coming soon. And he knew it as well.

Just as you were reaching your peak, he lets go, causing you to nearly cry.

“W-why?! W-w-why—?!”

He roughly grabbed you by the hips and lifted you over the piano before practically ripping your pants right off, followed by your panties.

“H-Hyuka—?!”

“Hush!” He snapped, giving you a harsh slap to your bare ass. You made a small squeak then a cry as he did it again.

“You’re gonna take it…” he said while breathing heavily. “You’re gonna take it like a good girl.”

This was insane. You’ve never heard him speak like this. Sure you’ve caught him looking at your chest and he says little flirty comments here and there but she’s never talked like this. He’s never treated you like this.

You could hear him removing his pants but we suddenly surprised by another sensation. One that had you gasping loudly and cum on the spot.

The man had his face between your legs, licking and slurping lewdly at your cunt from behind. The sudden orgasm had you panting and moaning as he continued to lick up your essence, not missing a single spot and licking it off your inner thighs.

“So fast… you let go so fast.” He groaned. “You’re no fun, noona.”

“S-sorry—” a sudden slap to your ass made you cry out.

“Bad noona!” He pouted before landing another harsh spank.

“A-Ahm— I-I’m sorry—!”

He spanks you again, leaving your ass red and stinging. Soon he was moving you while holding your hips and rubbing his hard cock. The man made sure you were perfectly bent onto the piano.

“K-Kai—?”

“You thought I was done?” He chuckled. “Oh noona… so funny. Now hold still.”

——————————————————

Not proofread

[bang-chan-my-man]

TXT The Star Chapter: Sanctuary 'ANGEL' - Huening Kai Concept Photos

[page-yerin]

𝐋𝐔𝐋𝐋𝐀𝐁𝐘. 강태현

sypnosis: you can’t sleep so your boyfriend comes over to help

genre(s): fluff

pairing: nonidol!kang taehyun x afab!reader

trigger warnings: profanity, (mentions of) insomnia

a/n: i wrote this for myself honestly LMAOO insomnia really loves messing with me these days

for my fellow insomniacs that stan taehyun<3

You toss around your bed for what seemed like the nth time, the mattress sheets shuffling under you. With a heavy sigh, you roll around to the small table on left side of the bed. Your fingers lightly tap on your phone screen, the brightness spreading and lighting up the whole room.

2 AM. Well.. shit.

You groan into your pillow, coming out as muffled grumbles. All you wanted was sleep, even one hour, but insomnia just had to bite you. Not even the lingering scent in your boyfriend’s clothes could help.

Tired—literally, and of no sleep—you grasp your phone. You pull it over to you, laying sideways on your pillow and pressing your boyfriend’s contact.

[y/nie] : taeee are u awake? can’t sleep ㅠㅠ

You knew he probably wasn’t, but it gave you some comfort to let him know you were awake. Although, you did feel guilty if your message wakes him up in the middle of the night.

You get up from the bed and manage to stumble downstairs, eyelids heavy and exhausted. You plop down onto the couch next to the front door with a deep exhale. You pick up the remote next to you, turning on the TV in front of you.

Just a few minutes into the video, the doorbell rings. Taehyun. You hastily shut off the TV and dash to the door, opening it.

Your boyfriend stands there, at your door, the street lights reflecting onto his skin in the dark of night. Taehyun scans you up and down, a gentle smile enveloping on his face. “You look really cute in my shirt.”

Your eyes widen, feeling heat rising to your cheeks and your stomach filling with butterflies. “Thanks..”

Taehyun slowly steps into your house, closing the door behind him. As soon as the door shuts, he snakes his arms around your waist and lowers his chin onto your shoulder.

“Were you on your phone before you went to sleep?” Taehyun murmurs into your ear as you wrap your arms around him and bury your face into his neck.

“Mhm..” You hum, feeling his lips press onto your collarbone. Taehyun pulls away to look at you, eyes softening.

“That’s why you can’t sleep, princess..” He scolds lightly. You nod sheepishly, letting your head fall to Taehyun’s chest.

You hear Taehyun sigh before sliding one arm to your upper back. He pulls his other arm away from you, moving to one side of you and crouching to slide his other arm under your thighs. He then lifts you up bridal style, making you let out a small squeak.

You lean against his chest as Taehyun carries you upstairs, pushing the door of your bedroom open. He gently lays you onto your bed, going back to close the door. He returns shortly after and slips in next to you.

You shuffle towards him, laying your head on his chest. “Sorry for waking you up in the middle of the night..”

“It’s okay, love. I got up because I want you to be able to sleep.” Taehyun tucks a strand of your hair behind your ear.

You look up at him and whisper, “Can you sing for me? It might help me sleep.”

Taehyun looks back down at you with a small smile, wrapping his arms around your torso. “Anything for you, princess.”

Your heart flutters at his endearing words, and warmth envelopes you as Taehyun holds you close. Your eyes shut as you listen to the sound of his heartbeat and his soft lullaby. Sleep once again welcomes you in open arms.

[harmonicakai]

Anyone Else But You, a six-part series

It's starting to feel like you're the only person in the world that Huening Kai isn't best friends with, and you're determined to figure out why.

Part 1: The Only Exception

Part 2: Look After You

Part 3: This is Me Trying

Part 4: Like or Like Like

Part 5: Was It Something I Said?

Part 6: The End of Beginning

Epilogue: I’ll See You There Tomorrow

FIC INSPIRED SPOTIFY PLAYLIST <3

[squoxle]

[9] • WHY DO YOU HATE ME? - H. KAI

skater!bully!huening kai x loner!junkie!reader

plot: working alongside your ex-best friend, who's also a full-time asshole, turns hot after a heated conversation... | wc: 3.9k | cw: angst, mentions of death and suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, other sensitive topics, smut

From your point of view, life continued for three reasons;

1. For your family…the only friends you had.

2. Another episode of you current obsession, and

3. The next cigarette...or cancer stick as your next door neighbor liked to call it.

Sometime your third reason helped you the most. One puff relived the stress and every one after that made life a little easier. Oftentimes, smoking was like an escape for you. A way to cope with the shitty hand the universe had dealt you.

You lived in a cheap apartment. And all of the money you made was split between you and your parents. There was a shared belief in your family that the children should take care of their parents when they move out. Assisting in whatever way they could.

This belief is what compelled you to send money to your family. It wasn’t a burden. You knew that if you ever needed a place to stay that you were always welcome back home. The only problem being that you couldn’t shake your smoking habit. And that was the reason you had to go in the first place.

You seen all the stupid YouTube videos about what happens to your lungs when you smoke and how much money you could save if you weren’t buying packs of cigarettes weekly, but none of that mattered to you. After the death of your only friend near the end of senior year, life seemed almost impossible.

Meaningless and empty without Eve by your side.

You held onto those three reasons because everything in you wished for one more day with your friend. Just one more day to tell her how much you loved her. And at this point, the sweet taste of death was the only thing separating you from her.

You grew up as an only child for most of your life. By the time your mom had your little brother, you were already 14 years old. Around that time you met Eve.

You had just started high school and up until freshman year, you were known to be a loner.

You walked into your first class of the day, sitting in the chair furthest to the back of the classroom and that’s when you met her for the first time.

“I’m Eve,” she smiled, extending her hand to you. The two of you were like complete opposites. She was warm, cheery, and full of life. You on the other hand felt like the world had been against you since birth.

One more detail about Eve is that she was a huge chatterbox. Since the two of you rode the bus together, you never felt alone. The darkness that was your life felt a little brighter with her around. Even your mom noticed the positive change in your behavior.

“You sure look happy,” your mom raised her brow as you looked at your phone.

“Yeah, I met this really cool girl at school today. Her name is Eve,” you smiled.

“Well maybe you should invite her over sometime. Anyone that can make you smile like that must be really special.”

And she was…Eve was really special to you.

You could talk to her about anything. She wasn’t just an expert at talking, she was also a great listener. Sometimes her advice wasn’t the best, but you were both kids at the time.

You just wish that she would’ve talked to you the day before…she killed herself. You always blamed yourself for her death. There had to have been a sign that she was hurting, but maybe you were too selfish to see it.

You had both started senior year together and all you ever talked about were how the two of you would move out together and graduate from the same college. You saw a life with her…and all of that was over in one night.

You think about it every day. What makes it even worse is that your co-worker is the biggest asshole you’d ever known.

You were never brave enough to stand up to him. Maybe because you felt like the fight just wasn’t worth it. But he knew Eve too. The three of you were friends before her death. Your past friendship is probably another reason why you wouldn’t speak up.

When you really think about it…a lot changed after she died. You started smoking and Kai seemed to hate you for no reason.

You never knew why…

“You’re locking up tonight,” he said as he slammed the cash register.

“What?!”

“You heard me,” he spat, turning to you. “You’re locking up tonight because I’m heading out early.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? I have a life too y’know.”

“Do I look like I care?” You stared at him blankly before he continued, “Exactly, just do what the fuck I told you,” he swatted his hand before walking to the back to grab his things.

“You can’t expect me to do all of this by myself,” the gas station you worked at was extremely understaffed and you two were often the only ones at work.

“You can handle it,” he leaned down, picking up his skateboard before heading toward the front door.

“This is so fucked up,” you slammed you hand against the counter. “You’re such a fucking dick,” you mumbled, rolling your eyes.

“You know what’d be really fucked up?” He asked softly walking back over to the register. “If you had a little accident at work,” he tilted his head to the side. “It’d be pretty hard to come to work if you slipped and hurt yourself. Wouldn’t it?”

You lowered your gaze, afraid to say something stupid and not in the mood to hear anymore of his threats. You knew better than to push him…he’d done a number of things to torture you.

You thought back to the one time he took your phone and locked you in the storage closet over night because you wouldn’t stay after hours and wax the floors.

You watched as he walked out with his skateboard tucked under his arm. You sighed deeply, striking your lighter as you lit your cigarette.

You parted your lips, letting the clouds of grey smoke fill the air as you took out the trash before turning off all the lights and locking up for the night.

Without Eve your life felt like Groundhog Day. A continuous, endless, hell-like loop of waking up, clocking in, and clocking out to do it all over again. The most diversity you had in your life was a new assignment.

Oh and to make life even better, Kai went to the same school as you. A cheap community college where you could earn your associates before taking out student loans to get your bachelors.

Sometimes you wondered if life ever got any better from here…

A few days later, you were working the cash register with Kai when he decided to take his break in the middle of the 12 o’clock rush. “Perfect,” you sighed sarcastically. “Just fucking perfect,” you rolled your eyes as you prepared yourself to deal with the line of customers that had wrapped around one of the aisles.

“You should smile more often,” a man smiled. He looked to be about 40 or 50.

“Excuse me?” You asked, wondering why he would even say something like that.

“I’m just saying,” he shrugged pulling out a $20. “Life is beautiful. There’s a lot to smile about.”

“Right,” you scoffed.

“You should try it sometime,” he smiled as you handed him the receipt.

“M’kay,” you shook you head, wanting nothing more than for him to just take his shit and leave.

“Thank you so much sir for pointing that out,” Kai came out grinning ear to ear like the fucking Cheshire Cat.

“You’re welcome. I just know how much a smile can change the working environment for everyone.”

“Exactly,” Kai nodded. “____, I don’t wanna have to write you up for this because I know how much you need this job. But you’re gonna have to change your attitude.”

You sighed as you rubbed the spot between your eyebrows. Another detail that you hated to remember and often forgot was that Kai was your manager…and the reason you got this job in the first place.

Ironically you started working here during your last year of high school. You planned to earn some money for college to give you a bit of a head start, which only somewhat worked out in your favor.

To be honest, the pay here was pretty good and better than any other option. You assumed this had a lot to do with the low staff.

Anyways, you were hoping that Kai was only joking about writing you up until you were called into the office for a staff meeting on Friday.

“Look, ____. We’re already very low on staff as I’m sure you know. And it’s hard to keep customers coming back if you’re out there looking like you want a bullet in your head,” the owner said, folding his hands.

“That’s probably because I do,” you mumbled to yourself.

“All I’m saying is, try to look at least somewhat pleasant. You don’t have to go overboard, just be natural, okay?”

“Yeah, okay," you shook your head as Kai sat next to you.

"Thanks again, Kai. I really appreciate you for bringing this to my attention. I've been noticing a decline in customer reviews and now I know why."

"No problem," he smiled giving you a look that made you wanna knock his teeth out.

Kai closed the door to the main office as the two of you walked down the hallway.

“I can’t believe you actually fucking ratted me out,” you spat.

“I’m only doing what’s best for the—“

“Drop the fucking act,” you sneered. “We both know you don’t really give a damn. Because if you did I wouldn’t be locking up at night by myself. You’d be there helping me out and not somewhere just jerking off. Y’know what? Maybe I should go tell the boss about what you’re doing since we’re in the bitching business,” you turned around, but just as you tried walking away Kai grabbed your arm, pulling you back and throwing you to the ground.

“Don’t be such a stupid fucking bitch,” he spat.

“You did the same thing to me,” you brushed yourself off as you stood to your feet only to be pushed back down to the ground.

“If I were you I’d quit while I was ahead,” he knelt down.

“I’m tired of you treating me like shit, Kai. I don’t know what your fucking problem is, but I didn’t do anything to deserve this.”

“If you really believe that you’re even dumber than I thought you were.”

“Fuck you,” you spat, looking him dead in the eye. You don’t know what came over you, but you had never been brave enough to stand up for yourself.

“I’d watch my tongue if I were you,” he pressed his forearm against your neck. “Karma can be a real bitch y’know,” your eyes watered as he held you against the wall. You felt weak and powerless against him and you hated it, but there really was nothing you could do about it. Or at least that’s how you felt.

Your bottom lip quivered as he slowly let you go. You sucked in your breath, catching a tear with your sleeve before running off to the bathroom. You cried in there, more than you had in a really long time.

And that evening, after closing early, you smoked through a whole pack. You were on the last one as Kai was walking back to the store. You assumed he’d forgotten something inside as he unlocked the door.

Catching the sight of you, smoking behind the register, he walked up and slapped the cigarette out of your mouth, casting ashes across the floor. “What the fuck?” You spat, picking up the bud before sticking it back between your lips.

“You know that shit could kill you right?”

“I already feel dead,” you hummed, pulling out your lighter. “This is the only thing that makes me feel alive,” you continued, striking the lighter.

“Well you can die on your own time,” he snatched the cigarette out of your pursed lips. “I don’t wanna be the one cleaning up after your corpse when your lungs collapse.”

He looked in the small trash can underneath the register where he saw more than 15 burnt buds and an empty packet. “Did you smoke this whole pack?”

“Obviously,” you rolled your eyes.

“Are you trying to kill yourself?”

“You wouldn’t care anyway. You obviously hate me.”

“Don’t let me catch you smoking again,” he spat.

“You’re not my fucking dad. You can’t tell me what to do,” you reached to try and get your last cigarette back as he shoved you into the counter, putting the bud out on the countertop beside you.

“Next time it’ll be your hand,” he sneered. “Now, clean this shit up and get this disgusting fucking smell out of here,” you forcefully wiped the tear from your eye as he walked away. Grabbing whatever he needed before walking out again.

Sometimes you wondered if this was why Kai always messed with you, because he got a kick out of seeing you cry.

As sadistic as it sounded, it couldn’t be any closer to the truth which you learned later that week one night when Kai told you to close by yourself again. The only difference was that he was somewhat tipsy at this point.

He had been drinking a lot more after the altercation you had in the hallway. You wondered if it was because he felt guilty, finally seeing the error of his ways.

“Can you at least take out the fucking trash before you go?” You spat as he walked to the back putting his stuff away. “Please,” you threw your hand up.

“If I do it will you shut your big fucking mouth?”

“Yes,” you rolled your eyes. He was in an even pissier mood when he drank, but surprisingly he was more useful. He’d do almost anything you asked him to do as long as you bitched about it enough.

“Thank you,” you smiled as he mumbled to himself throwing two bags over his shoulder, and dragging another two out the back door with him.

You heard bottles clanking outside as you shut down the register. Another loud crashing sound shook you up as you called out Kai’s name. You were feeling a bit annoyed at this point. “I don’t even make that amount of noise when I take out the trash,” you sighed.

More noises and no reply from Kai led you to go outside and check on him yourself, leaving your phone in the counter. “What the hell are you doing out here?” You spat as you saw him throwing glass bottles against the wall with bloody hands.

“Kai! Stop it!” You shouted as he shielded his ear with his shoulder.

“Can you stop fucking yelling at me and just go back inside,” he rolled eyes, launching another bottle at the wall.

“No because after you’re done fucking around like a jackass I’m gonna have to come out here and clean this shit up.”

“No you’re not,” he hummed.

“Yes I am.”

“No you’re not,” his words slurred together at this point.

“Yes. I am.”

“No you’r—“ you ripped the bottle out of his bloody grasp.

“You’re way too fucking drunk right now. Just get the hell out of here and go home already.”

“Where are you going,” he asked sounding slightly frustrated.

You started to walk back inside, “I’m gonna go get a broom to clean this shit up,” you sighed. “Someone has too,” you reached your hand out to open the door only to jump, quickly turning around after hearing rapid footsteps approach you.

Kai had pinned you against the door, slamming it shut as he held another bottle in his hand. He broke it beside you head and held it to your neck. “If you scream I’ll cut your throat open right here,” he slurred.

“Get off of me you drunk bastard!” You yelled, squirming in an attempt to free yourself from his grasp. He slapped you in the face with his bloody hand before clenching your jaw.

Tears filled your eyes as you stamped your feet against the ground. You beat against his chest as your arms were stuck in one position. “Kai!” You cried. “Stop it! Please,”

“Why should I? You’re not my mom,” he pressed against you harder, crushing your hands beneath his weight.

“Why do you hate me?” You choked on tears as you couldn’t hold them back anymore.

“Shh!” He put a bloody finger against your lips.

“No, I want you to tell me why you hate me so much. It doesn’t make sense. We used to be friends before…before Eve killed herself,” it was silent for a moment as Kai lowered his head, he body started to tremble as a tear dropped from his face.

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” He shouted repeatedly slamming your body against the metal door, dropping the broken bottle.

“You’re hurting me, Kai! Stop it!” You yelled as you felt a pain tugging at your bones. “Please,” your voice shook.

He rested his hands on your shoulders before falling to your knees. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “God, I’m so fucking sorry,” he cried.

You knelt down and lifted his teary face. “It’s okay, Kai. I miss her too,” you sniffled before wrapping your arms around him.

He pulled away gently, looking up at you with teary eyes. “I’m really sorry, _____,” he apologized. “I’ve been such a dick…”

“And I don’t even understand why…”

“D’you remember the day before Eve died?”

“Of course I do…I think about it almost everyday.”

“What if I told you it’s my fault she’s dead…”

“Wh-what do you mean?”

“She called me…”

“She did?! Why didn’t you ever tell me? What did she say?”

“I didn’t know how to tell you…but she told me to be happy…”

“I don’t understand. Why did she say that?”

“Did you ever notice how she was around you? Like the way she behaved. Did she ever seem like she liked you as more than just a friend?”

“I-uhh…I never paid attention to it.”

“Yeah well she really liked you, but when she found out I liked you too, she started to back off some. Things really took a turn for the worse when her parents heard us arguing one night—“

“What were you arguing about?”

“She had started hurting herself…”

“Like cutting?”

“Yeah…and I guess it didn’t get any better…I should’ve told someone,” he said softly as tears trickled down his cheeks.

“You can’t blame yourself for that.”

“But if I would’ve told someone she might still be here…”

“We don’t know that for sure.”

“It could’ve helped her…she also called me a few nights before she died and told me that her parents found out about her crush on you…I don’t really know how…but they did and she was really upset about that. Do you think her parents are the reason she killed herself?”

“We can’t know for sure…she didn’t really leave us any way of knowing why. But I think you should listen to her and be happy. Just look at the way we’ve separated…”

Kai looked down at his bloody hands, “____…”

“Yes?”

Kai cradled your face in his hands before kissing you on the lips. One kiss turned to three and the next thing you knew his lips were all over your neck as he groped your tit in his hand.

Not a single word was spoken as breathless moans took the place of speech. You grabbed his hair in your hand, untying the small bun he wore as you tousled his hair. He slipped his tongue into your mouth as he pulled you closer.

You pulled his head away as his lips fell to your chest. “What?”

“Don’t you think this is kinda fast?”

“We can think about that in the morning,” he hummed, kissing your neck again.

You held Kai’s hand as he took you inside. He picked you up, placing you on the metal cabinet as he kissed you, unbuttoning his pants.

“What about a condom?”

“Do I look like the type of guy to just have a condom in his wallet?”

“I…uh…”

“Exactly. Don’t worry…I’ll pull out,” he shrugged as you pulled your pants down. You watched as his dick sprang out of his boxers.

You climbed back onto the cabinet, spreading your legs as he stepped between them, lining his tip up with your entrance. “Ngh!” You moaned as he pushed through.

“Mmm,” he hummed feeling your walls contract around him. You wrapped your arms around his shoulders, holding onto him as he pumped into you. He nuzzled his face into yours, bringing your lips back to his as he pushed his tongue into your mouth.

You moaned as you felt yourself coming close to finishing. You threw your head back as he sucked onto your neck. You squeezed your thighs around him, pulling him closer as you climaxed.

"Fuck," he swore.

"What?"

"I'm gonna cum," he bit his lip as he started to pull back.

"I don't care," you pulled him closer, kissing him again.

"But I thought you--"

"We'll think about it in the morning," you whispered as he pumped every drop of his hot load into you.

Everything from here became a blur until the two of you woke up in the backroom. You were laying between his legs as he rested his back against the metal cabinet.

"Shit," you spat as your eyes shot open. "We have to be ready to open in like 30 minutes," you said, scrambling to your feet.

"No way," Kai rubbed his eyes, looking up to see the analog clock on the wall, confirming what you just said.

The two of you scrambled to open up. He wiped off the cabinet from the two of you last night and you worked together to restock the coffee station and check the slushee maker.

"I'll take care of the mess outside," he chuckled, ruffling his hair. You handed him the hair tie that was wrapped around your wrist. It was the same one you took off of him last night. "Thanks," he smiled before kissing you on the cheek.

"Hey, for the record," you hollered. "Whatever happened last night doesn't change anything between us. I still hate you," you smirked.

"I hate you too," he smiled before heading out the back door.

What happened from this day on is hard to explain. It was like the two of you went back to being friends, but something else tugged at your heart aside from the memory of your dead friend. You were starting to like Kai and you could tell that he liked you too, but dating each other just didn't feel right.

As far as sex was concerned, it hadn't happened again since the first time you did it, which was about 3 weeks ago. Even though you did have the occasional makeout session that never seemed to last long enough.

Maybe there were 4 reasons why life continued for you...and he was definitely one of them.

a.n.: I wanted to add more detail to this one, but I didn’t want it to be too long. Sorry if it feels rushed.

𝒦𝒾𝓃𝓀𝓉𝑜𝒷𝑒𝓇 𝑀𝒶𝓈𝓉𝑒𝓇𝓁𝒾𝓈𝓉

❀ Thank you all so much for reading! Make sure to check out other works on my masterlist!

@chlorinecake

@wonbinisbabygurl

@nishiimuranights

@wildflowermooon

@heeseungshim

@ramyeonzprincess

@bangchans-gf5

@wand3rlustm3

@heeseunghee7

@norihoyeon

@gacktsa

@hyunj00

@mimikittysblog (not sure how much you're into moody kai lol)

[ghiblixie]

it's you and me in this world, 내게로 다시 와, tie me =͟͟͞ 𖧷 날 구원할 거라면, just come kiss me and bite me 

[gyorouis]

── ✦ not just on christmas.

⋆˚ 𝜗𝜚 ˚⋆ synopsis⸝⸝ i adore you, not just on christmas

꒰ genre⸝⸝ fluff, holiday romance pairing⸝⸝ stranger!kai x afab!reader wc⸝⸝ 1.5k warning⸝⸝ burnt marshmallow lol, could be cringe fluff or not, idk tune in⸝⸝ ariana grande — not just on christmas ୨ৎ ꒱

the christmas market was alive with the kind of energy that could only come from the holidays—twinkling fairy lights draped across every stall, the scent of cinnamon and pine hanging heavy in the air, and the distant hum of carolers’ voices weaving through the crowd. you stood behind your stall, rearranging the handmade wreaths for the sixth time that evening. not because they needed it, but because your hands needed something to do in the biting cold.

“you know, if you move those around any more, they’re going to revolt,” a familiar voice called out.

you looked up to see huening kai, his breath visible in the frosty air as he held two steaming cups of cocoa. his scarf was slightly crooked, and his cheeks were flushed, probably from the cold, though you couldn’t help but notice how the pink suited him.

“and here i thought you were busy charming your customers,” you teased, taking the cup he offered.

“oh, i’ve got time to spare,” he said with a grin, leaning casually against your counter. “besides, someone has to keep an eye on you. you’re scaring away business with that serious face.”

“my face isn’t scaring anyone,” you replied, feigning offense. “if anything, it’s your burnt marshmallows doing the damage.”

kai gasped, clutching his chest like you’d just wounded him. “i’ll have you know my marshmallows are artisanal.”

“artisanal marshmallows? is that what we’re calling over-toasted now?”

he chuckled, the sound warm and easy, like everything about him. “keep talking, and i’ll start charging you for this cocoa.”

you rolled your eyes but couldn’t hide the smile tugging at your lips. “fine. your marshmallows are perfect. happy?”

“very,” he said, raising his cup in a mock toast. “to perfectly toasted marshmallows and grumpy neighbors.”

the banter became a regular thing, kai popping over between waves of customers, always with a quip or a question that made you forget the cold for a while.

“so, what’s the story?” he asked one evening, propping his elbows on your counter.

“what story?”

“you. this stall. these wreaths. you’re not here just for the money. what’s the real reason?”

you hesitated, caught off guard by the sudden seriousness in his tone. “i like the market,” you said finally. “it’s... comforting. people are kinder during the holidays, and it feels good to be part of that.”

“huh,” he said, studying you with a thoughtful look that made you squirm. “that’s nice.”

“what about you?” you asked, deflecting. “why cocoa?”

“because i’m excellent at it,” he said with a dramatic flip of his hair.

“seriously.”

he shrugged, his grin softening. “my mom used to bring me to this market when i was a kid. the cocoa stand was my favorite. when the old owner retired, i thought... why not keep it going?”

you nodded, a small smile forming. “that’s... kind of sweet.”

“kind of?” he asked, mock-offended. “i’ll take it.”

the days blurred together, the market’s festive energy becoming your new normal. kai, of course, made himself indispensable.

“your decorations are sad,” he announced one afternoon, appearing with a string of multicolored lights.

“excuse me?” you asked, hands on your hips.

“sad,” he repeated, plugging in the lights and draping them over your stall. “see? now it looks like christmas.”

you had to admit, the lights did make a difference. “fine. but don’t think this means you’re in charge.”

“oh, i’m definitely in charge now,” he said, winking as he stepped back to admire his work.

one particularly frigid evening, kai arrived with a paper bag in hand. “cookies,” he declared, placing it on your counter. “for you.”

“what did you do?” you asked, narrowing your eyes.

“nothing! can’t a guy just be nice?”

“you? nice? suspicious.”

he rolled his eyes. “just eat the cookie.”

you took a cautious bite and immediately regretted your teasing. “okay, these are amazing.”

“i know,” he said smugly. “you’re welcome.”

as the market’s final week approached, you found yourself dreading the end. it wasn’t just the lights or the carolers or even the steady stream of customers—it was kai. his easy laughter, his ridiculous banter, the way he always seemed to know when you needed a warm drink or a kind word.

“what happens when it’s over?” you asked one night, as you both sat on a bench near the center of the square, sharing a blanket he’d brought from his stand.

“when what’s over?” he asked, turning to look at you.

“this. the market. the... magic.”

kai was quiet for a moment, his gaze fixed on the twinkling lights strung across the trees. “it doesn’t have to be over,” he said finally.

“what do you mean?”

“i mean, the magic isn’t just about the market. it’s about the people. the connections. and those don’t disappear just because the stalls close.”

his words lingered in your mind long after the market had emptied for the night.

“let’s go somewhere,” kai said suddenly.

“we’re still at the market,” you pointed out.

“later,” he said, smiling ever so sweetly before walking back to his stall, leaving you thinking about what he had just said.

the evening wore on, and as the crowd began to thin, kai returned with a bag slung over his shoulder. “come on,” he said, extending a hand.

“where are we going?” you asked, eyeing him suspiciously.

“you’ll see,” he said, his grin as mysterious as it was charming.

despite your protests, you let him lead you through the market. he guided you past the now-familiar stalls, past the carolers who waved at him like old friends, and toward the edge of the square where a small ice rink had been set up.

“no way,” you said, shaking your head. “i can’t skate.”

“neither can i,” he admitted, laughing. “but that’s not the point.”

before you could argue, he was pulling you toward the rink, renting skates for both of you. the next thing you knew, you were clinging to the edge of the rink, your legs wobbling precariously beneath you.

“this was a terrible idea,” you said, glaring at him as he skated—somewhat gracefully—a few feet ahead of you.

“you’re doing great!” he called, clearly lying.

“i’m going to kill you,” you muttered, but you couldn’t suppress the laugh that escaped as you nearly toppled over.

kai skated back to you, offering his hands. “here. trust me.”

“i trusted you, and now i’m here,” you pointed out.

“fair, but come on. it’s fun, right?” he said, his eyes sparkling.

reluctantly, you took his hands, letting him guide you away from the edge. the world seemed to blur around you as you focused on his face, his laughter echoing in your ears every time you stumbled. by the time you made it around the rink once, you were both breathless from laughing.

“see?” he said as you finally stepped off the ice. “not so bad.”

“speak for yourself,” you said, but you couldn’t deny the warmth that spread through you, even in the cold night air.

as the market began to close, kai walked you back to your stall. the twinkling lights he’d added earlier seemed to glow even brighter, casting a golden hue over the now-empty square.

“so,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “this is it, huh?”

“yeah,” you said softly, glancing around. “it’s weird, isn’t it? how something can feel so alive and then just... end.”

“it doesn’t have to end,” he said, his voice quieter than usual.

you looked at him, your breath catching in your throat. “what do you mean?”

“i mean...” he hesitated, his cheeks tinged pink. “maybe we don’t have to wait until next christmas to see each other.”

you blinked, caught off guard by the vulnerability in his voice. “you mean that?”

“yeah,” he said, his usual confidence replaced by something softer. “i like spending time with you. even if you think my marshmallows are burned.”

you laughed, the sound light and unrestrained. “well, i guess i could put up with you. as long as you bring cookies.”

“deal,” he said, his grin returning.

before you could say anything else, he pulled something from his bag—a small, carefully wrapped gift. “here,” he said, handing it to you.

“what’s this?” you asked, taking it from him.

“open it,” he said, shuffling his feet like he was nervous.

inside was an ornament shaped like a cocoa mug, complete with tiny marshmallows.

“a reminder,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. “that love doesn’t have to be just for christmas.”

you stared at him, the weight of his words settling over you. “kai—”

“you don’t have to say anything,” he interrupted, his cheeks turning pink. “just... keep it. and maybe, you know, think about me when you see it.”

you smiled, clutching the ornament close. “i don’t think i’ll need a reminder for that.”

his grin returned, brighter than any of the market lights. “good. because i’m not letting you forget.”

and as you stood there, the sounds of the market fading into the night, you realized he wouldn’t.

gyo's note: to officially wrap up the holiday tales, here‘s the hyuka one for you guys! personally, this is my favorite one!! i HONESTLY love writing for hyuka, he makes me blush everytime (ot5 DOES!) anyway, how did you celebrate your christmas! i was so knocked out last night because i had drinks with my cousins, so i literally just woke up i fear,,, if you made it to this part, thank you so much! you will be loved. xoxo!

✮ 2024 gyozies, all rights reserved.

[aeraras]

 ˁ⠀𑂳˕ ᪲ˀ  𖥧𓋼𖥧𓍊 Rains In Heaven ࿙ྀི⃜࿚⃜

   𓎢𓎟𓎡 ྀི 𓎢𓎟𓎡 ྀི 𓎢𓎟𓎡 

[blue-jisungs]

included

author's note. idk guys this is just very self indulgent …

warnings. mention of yn having bad friends :(

genre. unestablished relationship in a meaning that it’s not said whether kai n yn are dating; comfort but may feel a bit angsty sorry

you’ve gotten used to it. 

sure, it’s sad. but you lived enough springs to get used to the feeling of being not listened to. 

ever since you were little your parents would simply ignore your babbling or rambling. growing up, they’d ignore you because of work. then… friends from high school would not listen just because. just because maybe they didn’t hear you, or you weren’t interesting enough… there were many excuses that you made in your head. 

sure, it hurts every time. knowing that you’re being ignored. 

that sinking feeling when you’re talking and no one is even looking. 

it doesn’t even surprise you anymore. you just watch, sit back and observe the group. 

sometimes it’s not intentional, though. 

your new friends are just way too energetic to keep up with one topic, more often than not screaming loudly. and you’re not the one to interrupt. 

“it is literally not possible! bear for sure!” yeonjun huffed, causing taehyun to roll his eyes. 

“you’re not reasonable! look at it this way–” you giggled and wanted to share your thoughts on the topic you were just discussing ‘what would win in a fight - a gorilla or a bear’. but beomgyu groaned loudly and– 

“of course a bear!” 

“are you out of your mind? gorilla! it literally has hands and a grip” taehyun put his hand forward and moved his fingers. you felt your smile slowly disappear, realizing no one paid attention to your previous words.

“you need a grip on reality” soobin mumbled “bears are much more…” 

you sighed and felt that similar pang in your heart. sinking even deeper into the couch, you started fiddling with your fingers and looked up with a small sigh. 

that’s when you noticed kai’s soft gaze on you from across the coffee table.

“–but the gorilla can climb too!”

your cheeks warmed up. was it because of his acknowledgement or being caught – you weren’t sure. you just sent him a small smile, biting the inside of your cheek when he returned it. 

“can we hear y/n out tho? she started talking but you all act like a bunch of wild animals” kai joked and your eyes widened. 

“oh, sorry y/n! you’re…” taehyun frowned, trying to remember which side you were on. 

“team gorilla. as a reasonable person would be” the youngest grinned and taehyun leaned forward to bump your fist. 

a warm feeling, almost as if someone spilled honey, took over your heart. your gaze lingered on kai for mere moments before clearing your throat.

“yeah, gorilla. i really do love bears but come on, have you seen an angry gorilla? the chances of survival are literally zero” you huffed. 

“yeah, for a human! but a bear has claws and fangs!” beomgyu frowned dramatically. 

“you’re just biased! gorilla is much more intelligent” you rolled your eyes and taehyun nodded. 

“that’s what i’m saying! it would use the surroundings and territory, strength is not everything…” the younger one started and you caught yourself smiling again. 

just because finally someone included you in a conversation that you were a part of. 

you looked over at kai and maybe if you weren’t too shy, you’d mouth ‘thank you’. 

but he knew you like the back of his own hand and the pure happiness sparkling in your eyes spoke for itself. 

masterlist <3

taglist. @primoppang ,, @mirxzii ,, @laylasbunbunny ,, @slytherinshua ,, @kazmura ,,

@nicholasluvbot ,, @ameliesaysshoo ,, @weird-bookworm ,, @mon2sunjinsuver ,, @ocean-minho ,,

@eternalgyu ,, @haecien ,, @nonononranghaee

[bluhourz]

when you're both awkward

-

You and Hueningkai had only been dating for a few weeks, and while you both were thrilled to finally be together, the awkwardness that came with the newness of the relationship was undeniable. Every interaction felt like a delicate balancing act—neither of you wanting to mess up or seem too eager, but both equally smitten.

Today, you had decided to visit him at the practice room. The TXT members had been rehearsing all day, and you thought a quick visit might brighten his day. As you walked in, carrying a small bag of snacks for the group, the room erupted into a chorus of greetings.

“Y/N! You’re here!” Beomgyu was the first to notice you, his grin wide and mischievous. “Finally! Someone who can distract Hueningkai from staring at his phone all day waiting for your texts.”

Hueningkai, who had been stretching in the corner, immediately turned bright red. “Hyung!” he hissed, shooting Beomgyu a mortified glare.

You chuckled softly, feeling your own cheeks heat up as you handed out the snacks. Hueningkai walked over to you, his usual confidence slightly overshadowed by his bashfulness. “Thanks for coming,” he said, his voice soft but warm.

“Of course,” you replied, smiling as you sat down next to him on the bench.

The two of you sat side by side, close enough that your knees almost touched, but neither of you made the move to bridge the gap. Your hands rested awkwardly in your lap, and you couldn’t help stealing glances at him. Every time your eyes met, one of you would quickly look away, both of you pretending to focus on anything but each other.

The other members noticed immediately.

“Look at them,” Soobin whispered loudly, nudging Yeonjun. “It’s like watching a high school drama.”

“They’re so awkward, it’s painful,” Yeonjun agreed, though his grin was anything but teasing. “But also kind of adorable.”

Taehyun leaned against the mirrored wall, crossing his arms with a smirk. “I give them another week before they start holding hands without looking like they’re defusing a bomb.”

Hueningkai groaned, burying his face in his hands. “Can you all not?” he muttered, his voice muffled.

You couldn’t help but laugh at his reaction, your nerves easing slightly as the teasing continued. “You guys are terrible,” you said, trying to defend him but failing to keep the amusement out of your voice.

Beomgyu, never one to let an opportunity for mischief pass, leaned forward and pointed dramatically. “Hey, Hueningkai, your hand is right there! Y/N’s hand is right there! It’s a crazy coincidence. What are you going to do about it?”

“Stop!” Hueningkai exclaimed, his voice rising an octave as he shoved Beomgyu lightly.

The rest of the members burst into laughter, and you couldn’t help but join in. Hueningkai looked at you, his embarrassment melting into a sheepish smile. “Sorry about them,” he said. “They’re... a lot.”

“They’re not wrong, though,” you said teasingly, summoning every ounce of courage you had. You reached out slowly, your hand brushing against his. His eyes widened slightly, but he didn’t pull away. Instead, he intertwined his fingers with yours, his touch tentative but firm.

The room erupted into cheers and applause, Beomgyu standing up and clapping dramatically. “They did it, everyone! History has been made!”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Soobin said, trying to maintain his leaderly composure but failing to hide his grin. “Leave them alone.”

Hueningkai turned to you, his cheeks still pink but his smile brighter than ever. “I guess they’re not going to let us live this down, huh?”

“Probably not,” you agreed, squeezing his hand gently.

As the practice continued, the two of you stayed like that—your hands clasped and your hearts a little less unsure. The awkwardness was still there, but it was sweet, like the first chapter of a story you both couldn’t wait to write together.