#what a shitty shitty set of things to happen in one day

[ennn]

Unpacking the Deals of Ep 8: Why and What They Mean

So episode 8 is... let's say a bit of a mess. I know there's some confusion around why Agatha proposes her terms for the first deal, why Rio flipped into cackling villain mode, why Rio makes another deal, etc.

Here's my read that hopefully helps draw a line from point A to B to C.

Let's consider the context of the first deal: Agatha's not having a good day. Two coven members who Agatha never expected to care about have died trying to protect her – a thing that has never happened before. And Death happens to be a person she can blame.

Death, who is pressing on that bruise ("Your coven is shrinking") and making her shitty day worse because she wants the kid Agatha is hardcore projecting on (and also didn't plan to care about) to die. Just like Nicky.

But Agatha then realises she has leverage on Rio. For the first time in forever, she has an advantage she can exploit. She can be in control.

And it's almost instinctive for Agatha at this point: finding the best buttons to push, the best terms for her given the opportunity.

Agatha: If I deliver Billy, you let me go. Rio: You will eventually die, Agatha. Agatha: But I want you to stop pursuing me. I want you to stop making my life hell. And when I die, a long, long, long, long, long time from now, I don't want to see your face. Rio: ... Okay.

The terms that Agatha sets out seem cruel because they are. She says what she does because she wants it to hurt. Agatha's not only rejecting Rio's continued presence in her life, she's denying all the love that Rio's given her, building on what she's said before ("You gave me nothing.")

From Rio's POV, Agatha's cutting words aside, this entire deal sucks. Because the options are:

(a) Agatha doesn't hold up her end, which Rio knows might happen: Rio knows Agatha cares about Billy ("I know how you feel about him"). Rio's constantly reminding her he's not Nicky. She was already doubting Agatha would deliver her usual number of corpses. She saw how affected Agatha was after Alice's death.

If Agatha doesn't help, she'd be choosing a boy over everything Rio's done again – and this time another woman's.

And if Rio somehow manages to take Billy anyway, Agatha will end up hating her twice forever.

(b) Agatha does hold up her end, which might also happen: Rio knows Agatha's manipulative and smart and capable. More than that, she's well aware Agatha hates her. That Agatha still doesn't see what she's done for her ("No one in history has had special treatment like you").

That she knows Agatha does care about Billy but maybe hates her so much that she's willing to go through with this to cut her out from her life. Billy would be a dear price but one Agatha's maybe willing to pay.

Even if it was a 50:50 chance for these options, I think Rio realises her relationship with Agatha is doomed either way.

Either way she does her job, with or without Agatha's help, she's going to be rejected and lose. One's just a slower path than the other.

I think that's why Rio gives in to her rage and bitterness and spite. Agatha thinks Rio's been making her life hell? She'll show her hell.

And Agatha, well I think there's some merit to the thinking that she didn't expect Rio to fold that quickly and completely.

Now for the context of the second deal, it's not clear whether Rio knows what happened with Tommy. I assume Rio doesn't – not yet anyway – as she doesn't mention it at all and seems focused on squaring that one life Billy stole.

Now here's where it gets a little squirrely, to borrow Schaeffer's language. Because if you don't look too closely, it seems to make sense: Billy stole a life so to maintain the natural balance, Rio needs to take a life, the one Billy has now.

But how does Agatha's life work as a substitute for this imbalance (“This means you’re coming with me”)? Would any other person’s life work? Could Rio have swapped someone else's life to save Nicky then? Agatha would have been all too happy to arrange for that murder.

I doubt the show is ever going to explain this so I offer few possible theories to deal with this weirdness:

Billy Maximoff is a product of chaos magic, so his existence and everything he affects already throws off the natural order, just to different orders of magnitude. Agatha’s life works as a substitute because his life is now intertwined with hers e.g. his hex probably saved her life from the Salem Seven and has the potential for greater imbalance

Rio is aware of Agatha’s tendency towards chaos and defiance of the natural order. Rio bent the rules of the universe only for Agatha. Taking her life would protect the balance in the larger scheme of things – if only so Rio won’t be further tempted to give her special treatment.

When Rio’s torturing Agatha it’s before she presents the second deal. So she’s still intending to go after Billy, she’s just removing Agatha as an obstacle while lashing out in rage and heartbreak.

In this moment Rio probably thinks Billy's in the wind. She saw how upset Billy was with Agatha at the end of episode 5. And Rio knows the reputation Agatha keeps ("Why do you let them believe those things about you?"), Rio probably thinks Agatha deliberately drove him off to keep him safe.

Then Billy pops up and Rio sees that Billy and Agatha care about each other and they're both aware they care about each other.

Fuckin�� great. Rio's not bitter at all.

Looks like you two are finally on the same page. So I'll let you decide. One of you stays with me. The other walks free.

Agatha proposed a deal designed to hurt her? Now it’s her turn.

From Rio's POV, I think here are the possible outcomes:

(a) Agatha sacrifices herself for Billy: Not impossible I think. Rio knows Agatha cares about the boy but she also knows Agatha will do anything to survive. She thinks she's above death. But again, I think Rio also knows Agatha would have sacrificed herself for Nicky if she had that choice.

What did Lorna want from the Road? To save her daughter.

This isn't an ideal outcome for Rio but she’s already resigned herself to losing Agatha I think, one way or another. This way if Agatha wants Billy to live so badly, this is the price she has to pay. The high cost of living.

(b) Billy steps up and sacrifices himself: Very possible given that Billy’s a young heroic sort and already showed up, risking his life to power up Agatha. Rio gets to do her job. Agatha will probably hate her more given the Nicky trauma but Rio’s already resigned to this on some level already, which is why she's raging.

Either way Agatha's going to hurt, and Rio's going to hurt.

It's interesting that when Billy does volunteer himself and Agatha seizes the opportunity to remind Rio of their earlier deal, Rio just shakes her head and looks amused.

You can also see for a brief moment Agatha looking almost remorseful about doing this before slipping her theatrical villainous mask on, overcompensating for her true feelings.

Do you remember pain? It kinda tickles doesn't it?

By the letter (not the spirit or intent) of the first deal, Agatha did ultimately fulfil her part:

I can arrange that. I can get him to the finish line and deliver him to you.

This is an opportunity that's almost impossible to resist for someone as calculating and ruthless and selfish like Agatha. She has power (chaos magic no less), she can have Rio leave her alone forever (she knows Rio honours her word), she knows Billy cares about her but can she really trust him?

But Agatha ultimately decides to take a risk. A calculated one sure, but still a risk.

I think the beauty in the kiss and her sacrifice is how – despite her calculating the odds – Agatha is choosing to give in to what she feels and wants in that moment.

Because she does want to protect the boy in a way no one did for her when she was young. She wants to save Billy like she couldn't with Nicky. And she does want Rio so much despite everything that's happened.

[peterman-spideyparker]

The Great War (Babe Part 2) (Matt Murdock x fem!Reader)

Author’s Note: Hey everyone! At the risk of forgetting to post part two, I'm doing it now! Like I mentioned in the first post, it's only a part two if you want it to be--you can just have read Babe and leave it at that, but this is just more idea to go with it that I couldn't stop my brain from working on. Enjoy! :)

Summary: It's been almost a month since you left Matt. Everything hurts, and you're doing what you can to get through. Foggy calls, and it turns out Matt's not doing much better. For the first time, you have no idea what your future with Matt Murdock looks like.

Listening rec: The Great War by Taylor Swift

Warnings: ANGST, Matt and reader are separated (Matt cheated), they’re both heartbroken at the situation, swearing, fighting/shouting/anger, throwing, Matt grabs reader (NO VIOLENCE, but the Devil of Hell's Kitchen pokes out), depression (mention of the word "borderline suicidal" in reference to season three Matt), Matt being reckless, lots of crying, drinking

Other Characters: Foggy Nelson

Word Count: 2,820

Before you can even say a feeble hello, Foggy is already speaking. “Matt’s devastated,” he breathes. 

You’re hurt. Offended, even. You left because of what he did in California, and he has the audacity to feel sorry for himself? “And I’m not?” you say, probably with more venom than appropriate. “Goodbye, Foggy.”

“Wait, hold on!” You don’t know why you don’t hang up, but you stay on the line. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t the right way to start this. How have you been?”

“I’m awful, Foggy. My marriage is done, my heart hurts, I’ve lost the man I love . . . I’ve never been worse.”

“(Y/N) . . . I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, Fog. All this is between me and Matt. It’s why you called, I’m guessing? Get all the answers for what exactly happened between us?”

“That’s between you guys. It’s none of my business or anyone’s. I’ve already ripped Matt a new one for doing what he did, and so did Karen and Frank, but he’s . . .” He stops and lets out a sigh. “Do you remember hearing from Maggie what Matt was like after Midland Circle? Despondent, depressed, borderline suicidal?”

Of course you remember, how could you ever forget? You’ve never seen him like that in your life. But the term “borderline suicidal” makes a pit grow in your stomach as you straighten up.

“He hasn’t tried to—?” you start to ask. 

“No, no, that was shitty wording on my part. But Matt’s not himself. It’s like watching a hollow corpse with a temper move about. He either doesn’t care at all, or a little thing will set him off. He’s being reckless on patrol, he’s drinking more than he usually does. I’ve been covering for him at the office, but . . . You need to talk to him.”

You close your eyes, tears rolling down your cheek. “I can’t, Foggy.”

“(Y/N)—.”

“He broke my heart, and I broke his in return. I stomped on it. I love him and I hurt him. If I talked to him . . . That’s salt on the wound for both of us.” More tears stream down your face as you think about it. “We both vowed not to hurt one another. H-He hurt me, but he wanted to fix it. I hurt him and don’t have that same courage to try.”

“Try now,” Foggy pleads. “Try now, help one another. Even if it’s for the last time.”

“O-Okay,” you say before you can realize it.

Foggy breathes a sign of relief. “Come to the loft.”

The loft. The scene of the crime.

You breathe a quiet confirmation before you hang up, taking time to mentally prepare yourself before you grab your purse and leave your sister’s place to talk Matt off whatever ledge he’s currently perched on. 

It’s a short trip, and Foggy meets you in the lobby of Matt’s building. He pulls you in for a long hug, and you actively tell yourself not to cry. 

“He’s that bad, huh?” you sniffle.

“Yeah,” Foggy sighs. “I’ve never been for him like this before. It’s like he’s not the same person.”

“I know what you mean,” you say quietly. “I haven’t felt like myself since that day.”

Foggy looks at you with a crestfallen expression, and you give him one more hug before you make your way up to the loft. 

Your key still works—you’re afraid if you knock, he won’t let you in. Hell, he probably heard you turn the block on your way here and wouldn’t answer out of anger or annoyance. Your stomach churns when you see Matt sitting in the chair. He’s in sweats, his posture is curved, his hair is disheveled, and he’s growing a thick beard. Beer bottles are on the table in front of him mixed with trash.

“Matt?” you breathe, but he remains unmoved. As you move closer toward him, he sits there like a statue, not caring to look your way. “Matt, it’s me.” Still, he doesn’t gaze your way. 

Putting your purse in its usual spot, you make your way over to him in the chair, gently cupping his face in your hands to tilt him up toward you. You suck in a small breath when you see the bruises and cuts on his cheeks, nose, and chin. If this is what his face looks like, you can only imagine the other injuries that his clothes are hiding.

“Matt,” you breathe. “What happened?”

He just closes his eyes in shame, starting to turn. You don’t let him, though, bringing his face back to center.

“Matty,” you plea. “Matt, talk to me, sweetheart.”

“You’re not my sweetheart anymore,” he finally says, and it burns like acid. You deserve it—you gave it just as good to him when he came back from California. “And I’m not yours.”

“We didn’t sign any papers yet,” you breathe, trying to lighten the mood as you hold back your own tears. “So, legally, I am.”

Matt peels back from my touch like he’s getting out of an itchy sweater. Okay, you deserve it. You deserve all of it.

“Matt—.”

“You left,” he spits. “You left just like everyone else, even when you swore you wouldn’t.”

You sit back on your heels. It hurts, but it’s the truth. “I did.” He turns back toward you like he’s shocked you actually admitted it. “I didn’t try to hear you out, and I’m sorry. I should’ve. It was . . .”

He turns toward you, ice in his blind gaze. You’ve never seen Matt like, this, and as he starts to slowly rise from his chair, it’s the first time you can say that you’ve ever been afraid of him. 

You spring to your feet as well, trying to at least keep things on the same level posture wise. 

“Now you’re trying to make things better?” he growls low. “You’re the one that tore it up in front of us. I wanted to stop the breakage, but you readied the wrecking ball. This shit is your mess. It’s like this because of you.”

Now you start to get mad. “Oh, just me? Any breakage that was the breakage that you started. Those images and videos were circulating for two whole days before you came home. I didn’t hear a single word from you—a ‘good morning’ or ‘I’m boarding my plane’ or otherwise. You just showed up here expecting it to all be fine—.”

“You don’t get to assume in this,” he grits, the space between you dangerously nonexistent as one of his hands tightly grab on to your wrist.

“Yes, I can. There’s two people in this mess. I’m saying what it seemed like on my end,” you say, your heart thundering in your chest. Matt wouldn’t hurt you—he’d never do that. But with how his hand is on your arm and the mood he seems to have been in since you left, you’re not entirely confident in that statement anymore.

“You never really knew a damn thing about me, did you?” he frowns. “You just kept a version of Matt Murdock in your head and lived with it this entire time, huh?”

“Maybe I did. Because this isn’t the Matt Murdock I came over to talk to. This is the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. So, if you’re gonna let the Devil out, let him out on me, Murdock. Do your worst.”

“Get the fuck out of here,” he threatens, the muscle in his jaw feathering as he clenches his teeth. 

“No. I came here to talk, and that’s what we’re gonna—.”

Before you know it, his hand is off your wrist, wrapping around the neck of a beer bottle before he whizzes it past your head like a threat. You flinch, moving to cover your head before the bottle leaves his hand, and you remain curled as the glass hits something behind you, knocking it over as they both crash to the ground. You slowly turn to see what was caught in the crosshairs—the beer bottle had hit a picture frame, knocking it down off the side table and breaking it. You can tell by the shifts in his body language he immediately regrets it, his shoulders slumping as tears start to sting your eyes. You notice he starts to take a step toward you out of the corner of your eye, but you’re on the move toward the broken picture frame. One of the pictures from our wedding.

Huh, you think. How fitting. 

You lower yourself to your knees, carefully picking it up and looking at how your faces were beaming with nothing but joy, how you held onto one another with love . . . and now how it’s the opposite. How you’re broken. You wouldn’t look at him the day you left, and he won’t look at you know. You curl over the photo, freely weeping on the pile of glass. You just want it things to go back to normal.

You hear Matt pad softly over to you, squatting as if he wants to put a hand on your back to soothe you, but he backs away to let you cry. Tears pour out of you like a geyser, a constant flow down your cheeks as you sit alone in the living room. Maybe it was an accident that he hit the picture, but his senses are so sharp . . . maybe he did want to hit it. Maybe he was trying to prove a point. Maybe he wanted to show you that by you leaving, you were the one who put the final nail in the coffin of your marriage.

Maybe he really doesn’t want you anymore. Maybe he stopped wanting you before he went to Los Angeles. Maybe he stopped wanting you a long time ago.

You’re still crying when you hear Matt come back over toward you. Through your limited vision, you watch him clean up the broken glass from the bottle and the frame. It takes him a few trips, but it’s eventually all cleaned up. He leaves again before walking back toward you, holding out a box of tissues. With a shaking hand, you grab one and wipe at your nose, desperately trying to calm yourself. 

“This is my favorite picture of us from our wedding,” you sniffle. “This is what I would grab if I could only take one thing from the loft in an emergency. This would be it. And now . . .”

You can’t finish your sentence, just weeping uncontrollably in your little ball on the floor over your two deepest treasures—this photo and your marriage. Shattered. 

“Angel . . .” Matt says so softly, so tenderly, you almost forget that your life has essentially imploded.

“This is all my fault,” you cry, spiraling, trying to trace it all back to you, your actions. The big explosive things all seem to have their root in something you can place back to yourself. Matt slept with someone else, but it goes back to something you did— you had a short attention span and a bit of a short fuse before he left because a bunch of shit at work that kept piling up, and you knew he was frustrated . . . how much he hates planes. You egged him on. You did nothing to help, and when he left to go to California, he found someone who understood him in a way you couldn’t. You need an answer for this, and that seems to be it.

“This is my favorite picture of us, and it’s all my fault,” you sniffle, repeating what you said earlier, your chest burning from the tears and hyperventilation. 

“It’s just a picture—,” he starts to say softly.

“It’s not just a picture,” you weep. “This, us, it’s all my fault. We’re broken because of me. This is all my fault.”

You hear Matt pad softly over to you, squatting down and taking the picture from your hands, putting it on the arm of a nearby chair before pulling you in for a hug. All you can do is sob against his shoulder as he holds onto you. 

“This isn’t because of you,” he tries to soothe, sounding like he’s about to cry as well. “It . . . It was my poor judgement, it was my shortcomings that did this. You’re in the flaming wreckage, and it’s not fair.”

“I just want things how they were,” you sniffle. “I want to come home. I want us to be okay.”

Matt’s silence is terrifying. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt rage like that. Darkness like that,” he says softly. You feel a tear fall from his cheek to the top of you head. “Shit, I grabbed you . . . Fuck, I’m so sorry. I-I would never—(Y/N), please—.”

“I . . . I,” you start. He’d never hurt you. For all his anger, for all his strength, Matt would never hurt you. But when you’re facing off with the man that patrols the streets? The man that brought down Wilson Fisk not once, but twice? You just didn't know. 

“I scared you.” Tears are flowing down his cheek. “I could hear your heart race . . . I knew you were scared and for a moment, and I didn’t care. It’s like I wanted you to be scared, and I liked it. I was glad you were scared of me.” He sounds disgusted with himself. “You really thought I was going to hit you.”

“I did. For a moment,” you admit. It catches in your throat, but there’s no use in lying if you’re trying to fix this. 

Is that what you came over to do? To fix this? 

He lets out a long breath, slumping to the floor. “What happened to us?”

“I . . . I don’t know,” you say. And it’s the truth. You don’t really know how you got to this point. Yes, you know why you walked out, but it’s like there were the small hairline fractures in glass—so fine that you couldn’t see them—and then a hammer came down on it and a million little pieces was left in its wake. But how he sounds . . . you know that tone. When it’s been a rough night on patrol, it coats his words like sap—he’s going into a dark headspace, and when he gets too far in, it’s hard to get him out, and you need to get him out. You move around to carefully sit next to Matt, putting a hand on his forearm. You can feel a thick bandage on his arm before you can process that he winces, so you move to slide your hand in his. 

“I know you’d never hurt me,” you breathe. “I know you’d never lay a hand on me like that.”

“But I did, though. If I added more pressure, I could’ve snapped your worst. It would have been easy for me to do.” You see him swallow the lump forming in his throat, his own self-hatred inflating at a dangerous rate. “I was full of rage. You were scared of me.”

“I’m scared of all of this,” you admit, your voice small. “What’s happening to us. How it’s effecting you and me. We’re . . . We’re not ourselves. I-I don’t recognize either of us. I don’t like it. I want things back how they were.”

“But they can’t go back.” He sounds broken, hollow—just how you feel. 

“Are . . . Are we too far gone?” you ask just above a whisper, terrified of the answer. 

“I don’t want us to be.”

You hang your head. “I haven’t been sleeping,” you admit. “It doesn’t feel right without you, your arms around me.”

He places a gently hand on your chin, lifting your face up and wiping tears off of your cheeks before pulling you in for a hug. It feels like warmth. Like love. “I can’t sleep in the bed. It smells like you, and with you gone . . . I just patrol all night.”

It’s like when you think your heart can’t break any more, it does. “I still feel so upset, but, I feel hollow more than anything. Like part of me is missing.”

“I’m sorry,” he breathes. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too. I-I’m so sorry.” He kisses the top of your head. “I should’ve listened, I shouldn’t have left like that, but I was just so upset. I couldn’t be around you without feeling like screaming or crying or both.”

“We . . . We can get through this. Can’t we?”

You think about it. Is this something you can do? You’ve been through worse— you’ve seen him near death more times than you would like, you’ve seen how the toll of Daredevil and the stress of being an attorney wear him down. Even the debate on how we should bring up our children should you choose to have them strained you both. But your happiness, your life together, it’s bigger than your low points. It has to be.

It has to be. 

Right?

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[shivunin]

WIP Wednesday

Thanks for the tag, @daggerbean! c:

I haven't had much time to write this week (given the circumstances), but luckily I have a handy pile of WIPs in various states of completion. This one covers the wedding scene at the beginning of Origins, the return to the alienage, and the Landsmeet, but it's a bit patchwork at the moment. This scene is set just after finding Shianni later in the game.

Sorry if I tagged you on the other blog already this week haha, my brain is goop. Tagging (no pressure): @demandthedoodles @dungeons-and-dragon-age @greypetrel @ndostairlyrium @vakarians-babe @star--nymph @zenstrike

CW: Panic attack, indirect references to the events of the Tabris origin

“The things that happened after your wedding,” Shianni said, her voice tight, “it was horrible.” Already, being back in the alienage was doing something to her. Wen was not the same girl who’d walked away from here. She could not duck her head and hope for the best as she had for the last ten years. She…also could not hate these people as she had when she’d left. Plenty of them were awful—had been awful to her family for as long as she could remember—but she could see the pained exhaustion in their faces now, too. They were all trapped here together and none of them could do a blighted thing about it. The closest they’d ever come to feeling powerful was kicking at her family when they could.  Arianwen didn’t want them all to die.  But this was—oh, this hurt her. Shianni’s eyes flicked to the left a second before Zevran spoke.  “A wedding?” he sounded like his old, amused self—which, she supposed, meant that he was very hurt. Curse it all. Curse this place and everything that'd happened here. “So there is a secretive side to you after all.”

Little insects crawled around inside of Arianwen’s skin. They carried with them the stench of the alcohol on Vaughan’s breath, the sharp scent of the hair oil Wen had been wearing that day, the heaviness of the dress on her body, the ringing in her ears when she’d woken in the arl of Denerim’s residence. Secretive—yes, she’d been carrying many tiny secrets inside of her. She’d thought she’d gotten rid of them, pawned and forgotten like the golden ring in Ostagar.  Zevran was waiting; she did not want him to wait. Wen looked over her shoulder at him and forced herself to meet his eyes.  “I was…betrothed,” she said, and his face didn’t change one whit. She’d have to explain herself later, when she wasn’t…when they weren’t… “It didn’t end well.” Shianni looked at her, but Wen couldn’t read her expression. It was too loud in her ears to make anything out, though she’d once known her cousin’s face better than her own. Everything around her seemed blurred, somehow, oil paint smeared by a careless finger. Zevran and his bright eyes and his kidskin voice were her present; this place, crooked and dark and foul-smelling, was her past. She didn’t like them meeting. If she’d been thinking, she would have left him at home and dragged Leliana and her pity along instead.  “No?” Zevran’s brows were arched, his mouth crooked with something that might be described as a smile. She wished she didn’t know him so well; she wished she couldn’t see the wound underneath the golden veneer.  Wen wanted to crawl out of her own body. No—she wanted Morrigan’s trick of shedding her own skin and taking another instead. She’d be a cat up the vhenadahl by now if she could, or a mouse lost to the roots.  “You left him at the altar, didn’t you?” Yes.  Yes, she had, in a way. She hadn’t been there for that, though. She’d been neither here nor there, really. She looked at Zevran, her lips parting and pursing again, and his smile faded to a sliver. Beside her, carefully, Shianni’s hand crept into hers. They’d stood like this a hundred times: in the market, when the other people would jostle them as they carried their purchases home; down the street to the gates when Shianni would leave for work; beside the pyre when Mother had been burned. Wen squeezed and Shianni squeezed back, her hands rough and cold but nonetheless comforting in their familiarity.  Tabris couldn’t read Zevran’s face, either. He wasn’t smiling. His eyes looked—she didn’t know. Would it be horrible if she was sick right now?  Yes. She should say something instead. Wen worked her jaw loose from its rictus and spoke.   “He died,” she said. 

[crownedwille]

I've come to the conclusion that loving young royals doesn't mean I can't be critical about it, maybe especially bc I love the show so much I have such strong feelings about it, good and bad and I can love parts of canon and agree with it and appreciate it but I don't have to love it all. I have accepted that it's okay if I don't accept the ending and I don't have to force myself to support it. It's okay to not agree with all of canon and it's okay to not side with all of the creators' intentions/views. Loving a show doesn't mean you have to take everything the writers say on face value and that's the only version that is allowed to exist. Canon isn't everything and fandom is about curating your own experience that makes you happy and not miserable. You don't have to dismiss canon in every aspect and ignore it entirely, that's certainly not what I want but there is a fine line between being canon respectful, allowing some parts to exist and sometimes, yes, you just have to say "fuck canon" and move on for your own sanity and wellbeing

[notjanine]

okay so our internship cohort is pretty tight and mostly women, so we be girl talkin. and the girls have gotten invested in my love life, partly bc this situation is so ridiculous and partly bc they're not autistic so they're like Omg you just talked with them directly about your wants and needs?! multiple of these bitches have expressed their desire to live vicariously through me in the context of all this etc etc. so anyway. a bunch of us are chatting about this after class and it's fun and loud, so Messy Guy comes up like Ooh what are we talking about?! and classmate is like Al out here dating two people, living the dream!! and i had to leave for a meeting before i could catch his reaction but they were still giggling about it when i left so l m a o

[callmepippin]

so what do you do when you're really quite upset and frustrated and angry but you have nowhere to put it?

[sillycyan]

[luvgam3]

Summary: You and your ex-husband Nanami have a good relationship. Even after the divorce you remained good friends and even better co-parents. Babysitting for one another isn’t out of the usual, and talking about your newest relationships isn’t strange either— but when you show up at his doorstep after a particularly nasty date it leads you both to wonder if your relationship is really truly over for good.

Cw: MDNI (18+), afab!reader, small mentions of cheating, you and Nanami have a kid together, girl dad Nanami, hair pulling, consent king Nanami, oral (fem receiving), aftercare !!!

“Fine! Fucking leave!” You yell, your voice cracking as cold rain pierces your skin.

That asshole. That shitty excuse of a man your boyfriend of two weeks, left you on the side of the road. Alone. In the middle of a late summer storm.

But what did you really expect to happen? The red flags were all neatly lined up for you. Sure maybe the fact that he smelt like a different woman’s perfume every time you met should’ve set you off, but maybe you were just over thinking it! Maybe he was a little too handsy for a man you just started dating, and maybe he was a little rude to waitresses, and bartenders, and you— but your last straw was calling him out on his empty threats. ‘I’ll leave you-‘ for this ‘I’ll shut your ass up’ for that. God did he ever stop talking. You snapped; telling him that if you pissed him so much then why didn’t he just drop you off on the side of the road. The only time he’d ever followed through… and it had to be now.

Low rumbles of thunder sound in the distance, blending with the pop of his engine as he speeds away. Inside your head is a loud jumbled mess of ‘where the fuck am I?’ and ‘who does he think he fucking is?’ but all of that sound is ultimately drowned out by that heavy pitiful feeling tugging at your heart. Angry tears prickle at the backs of your eyes as you walk, your heels crunching pebbles and walking through puddles, carrying you to the only place you know by heart. To the only man who you know wouldn’t leave you stranded.

If the night were to play out correctly you wouldn’t be showing up till noon the next day, even when dates did go wrong you never made it his problem. You were divorced after all, your love life mishaps stopped being his problem a while ago. Okay that isn’t entirely true… Nanami comes over to your house once a week for family dinner. After your little girl is tucked away in her bed and the dinner dishes have been done do you two sit alone at the table, drinks in hand as you catch up. Talking about your kid wasn’t the only topic of discussion. Friends, gossip, dates, normal adult conversation. The topic of dating other people because less and less embarrassing as the years flew by. Like the amazingly wonderful co-parenting duo you are— you came up with the babysitting agreement. Nanami happily took your daughter for the night so you could relax and bask in the company of anyone you wanted. He cherished every minute he got with his little girl, it was never a disappointment when you texted him asking if he could take her for the night.

Lost in the depths of your own mind you aimlessly walked down the dark and dreary road. Void of people, void of light. The only sound the pattering of rain and the rumbles of thunder.

Static buzzed in your ears as you slid into the empty apartment lobby, your soggy heels clacking against the neat polished floors. Your tears fizzled into a pale anger that burned the back of your throat as you pressed his floor number on the elevator. The only good thing about this entire situation, you think, is that the rain washed away the feeling of his hands on your skin. The scent of him clinging to your clothes. All gone. Washed down the sewage drain with the unpleasant memory of him.

Softly, you knocked on his door. It’s well past eleven, he should be asleep, but you know him better than that.

Nanami slowly opens the door, his brows furrow as his eyes meet yours. Concern painting his face.

You don’t have the energy to answer his unsaid questions, so instead you silently squeeze past him, kicking your wet heels off at the door. The air-conditioned room sends shivers up your soaked spine, littering your skin in goosebumps as you carry yourself to his liquid cabinet. Your fingers find the key he keeps hidden on the top of the rich oak cabinet, quickly pushing it into the lock and twisting. You’re on a mission as you blindly grab a bottle, bumping the door closed with your hip before turning to his rack of expensive drinking glasses, plucking two and setting them onto the counter with a soft clink.

He watches you pop the cork as quietly as you can, pouring the expensive liquid into two glasses, pushing one towards him without a word as you bring the sparklingly clear glass to your gloss smeared lips.

Married for four years, divorced for two, he knows the crinkle of your nose and the subtle twitch in your eye means one thing— you’re fuming. Beyond mad. If there was a word for that level of anger he’d use it to describe you in this moment.

He knows better than to ask what’s wrong, so instead he drinks with you; listening to the wall clock tick, to your nails tap against marble countertop, to the soft melody flowing from his record player. Darkness envelops you both, the only light combing from his little yellow reading lamp. It’s hardly enough to aluminate your faces, but the flicker of amber reflects in your fiery eyes.

“I think I got dumped.” You mutter, swishing the dark liquid around in your glass. You don’t wait for him to respond as you groan, willing the anger to subside and for the chill in your skin to vanish.

The crackle of the record prickles your ears just as much as the cool night air prickles your skin, filling your veins with ice as you continue to drink.

Nanami watches you, your hair drips onto your shoulders, your mascara streaky and your lips smudged. Disheveled and shivering in his kitchen. Filled with that unmistakable blinding anger you hold with such grace. If he was still your husband his hands would be wrapped around your waist, pulling you close to him in a slow lazy sway to the soft music playing. But he isn’t your husband anymore. The word ‘ex’ stopped leaving a bad taste on his tongue a while ago— you’ve both worked around your usual ways to comfort one another and made them more friendly more… pg.

He pushes his glasses up into his hair, putting his glass down softly and disappearing into the dark hall. But you don’t notice. Not when your stomach pulls, not when your head is swimming with so many useless thoughts— thinking of the waisted days, waisted nights. Ugh even waisted money. All on some asshole—

“The bath is running, I left a towel out for you.” Nanami says as he reenters unnoticed, his voice soft and airy as he stops infront of you with a towelette. He tilts your chin to the side, your eyes scanning over his face as he cleans yours; he runs the cool wipe over your cheek, under your eyes and across your lips. He knows you’re more than capable, but still he handles you as delicately as humanly possible, swiping away stray hairs clung to your forehead and cheeks as if you would shatter under his fingers like the glasses you drank from.

He finishes, turning away to clean up the kitchen as you make your way towards the sound of running water.

The smell hits you before you push open the door; lavender scented suds decorate the surface of the water. Steam swirls into the air as you peel off your wet clothes— and for the first time tonight you were excited. Scolding water seeps into your skin as you step in, a tired groan escapes your lips as you sink farther in.

It’s funny how things change, how time passes and people grow apart, you think as you submerge your shoulders. Nanami used to run you baths almost every night, his small way of telling you how much he cherished you. Bubbles of every scent, bath oils and salts, candles and wine. The memory like a blanket as your skin tingles under the scolding water.

A soft knock at the door has your droopy eyes opening, “It’s unlocked.” You say, your voice horse and exhausted. Nanami softly cracks the door open, he walks in and places a small bundle of clothes onto the toilet lid, “You can wear these.” His clothes, a lounge shirt, too old sweatpants and a pair of boxers. You watched as he picked up your pile of sopping clothes, ringing the remaining water into the sink.

You’ve worn his clothes before. On laundry day, the morning after… an eventful night, even when you just missed him. That weird feeling in your stomach probably means nothing.

You watch him in the low light of the bathroom, his muscles rippling under his t-shirt as he works the water from the fabric in a comfortable silence.

“How was your night?” You ask, your fingers swirling through foamy bubbles. Nanami hums as he turns to face you; he rests against the sink, folding his arms across his chest. “Fine.” He says, his tone even as he scans your face.

It’s normal— seeing your ex wife soak in your bathtub, naked in your home for the first time in years. The thought makes Nanami shift slightly, his eyes focusing on the tile behind you. A safer option.

You mold the bubbles into little lumps, feeling his gentle gaze on you as if it’s normal again. Maybe tomorrow this memory will haunt you, make you burn up from the inside out. How oddly vulnerable the entire ordeal is. But for now you just smile softly, “what, you’re not going to ask me about my night?” You hum only half kidding.

Clearing his throat he turns back to the sink, “I assumed you wouldn’t want to talk about it.” Droplets of rainwater trickle down the drain as he squeezes the fabric again.

You don’t want to talk about it, so why did you even bother bringing it up?

You lean back, your eyes still glued to the fizzling bubbles in your palm and clinging to your skin. Where would you even start? Maybe how your date was ogling the waitress as soon as you got there, or maybe how he tried to gaslight you in the car, or how you have him the wicked suggestion to dump you onto the streets.

“Would you?” He asks, cutting through the silence, “Like to talk about it, I mean.”

Maybe you could talk about how your date never asked what you wanted. Or how he never called you gorgeous, just because. Maybe you could bring up how he only ever seemed to want you a little more when other women wouldn’t look his way.

There’s a line, right? Between ex’s and friends? There’s things you shouldn’t talk about past a certain point. Yet you still got excited to tell him about small insignificant things. Like the amazing bagel you had for breakfast, or how you and your daughter watched the most gut wrenching animated movie the night before and cried way more than she did; the small things you never seemed to tell your other partners. But you were friends… right? That’s what this was. A friendship.

You hum, “let me wash my hair first.” Nanami takes his cue, collecting your still wet clothing and leaving the bathroom.

You dip your head under the rapidly cooling water after heating the door click closed. The soft hum and the slight pop as the water envelops you like a liquid blanket, drawing you in as you hold your breath.

✮ ✮ ✮

His clothes seem to always sag on you, no matter your size they always felt so big. The cold hardwood floor sends a shiver up your spine as you step through the quiet hall. Nanami sits in his arm chair, your unfinished glass waiting for you on the coffee table, the record has been changed, joined with the soft hum of the drier now running, the warm yellow light still flickers away.

A time capsule of peace, this was your life. Coming home and reading your respective books on opposite sides of the room, or maybe together on the sofa huddled close together— but why’re you thinking about that now? Ugh it nags at you as you sit down, your body suddenly heavy as the plush couch pulls you in.

“What time is it?” You ask as you give in to exhaustion, your eyes fluttering shut and your head lulling back. You hear Nanami close his book, “2:45am.”

You sigh, digging the heels of your palms into your tired eyes, “Shit.” Despite the pang of unmet hunger in the pit of your stomach, despite the exhaustion gnawing at you, despite everything that’s happened tonight— you giggle. The sound startling another one out of you as you curl in on yourself, “god what a fucking night.”

Nanami gazes at you, drowning in his t-shirt, absolutely hysterical— with what he wonders.

“That asshole—“ you start, your wet hair clinging to your face as you roll your head to face him, “never once asked me what I wanted.”

He nods, and you continue, “not when we went out for dinner, not when we grabbed drinks, not when we fucked—“ your hands fly up on a silent groan, “who does that?” The question far above a whisper.

Nanami was many things— always busy, always working, but he never neglected you or your needs. That’s one thing you could never replace in your newer partners, his attentiveness.

“People are greedy.” He says, pushing his glasses up as he gently places his forgotten book onto the coffee table. “They—“ should he say this? Should he even be thinking it? But you’re friends… friends… comfort each other. “They don’t know how to please you in the ways you want crave— need. They never take the time.” His voice a husky whisper.

You groan, tired and not thinking as you go to continue complaining, “Like you know what I want.” The words come out with an edge you never meant to put there.

“I’m not saying that—“

“You might as well be, I never asked for your input, it was rhetorical.” You snap, the words clawing their way out before you can stop them. Was it pent up anger that made you stand up? Or maybe that simmering unmet lust burning deep in your gut that made you walk in front of him, challenging him, begging him wordlessly. Or maybe it was that deep history, etched into your bones, your body craving his forgotten touch.

He stares up at you, his legs spread wide, his arms gripping the armrests. His breathing slows, his eyes set on yours in a heated stare.

“Do you know what I want?” You ask, voice low, your words crackle with need. “Did you ever know what I wanted?“

Nanami knew you like the back of his hand. You liked when he’d go down on you, legs spread wide by his strong hands. You liked to pull his hair when he’d bite at your neck, so he grew it out. You liked when he’d ruin you with just his tongue while he held your small hand in his much larger one. He knew every freckle on your body, every stretch mark, every hair. He knew what your moods meant, when you were silently begging to be split apart on his cock.

He knew what you wanted more than you did.

The record keeps spinning as he rises, his body towering over you, his voice rumbles deep in his throat, “You know the answer… but tell me—“

You swallow thickly, your body stiffens as he brushes your drying hair from your shoulder, his face lowers, his hot breath fans over the damp shell of your ear sending goosebumps flying across your skin. “As long as we’ve been apart… have you ever wished… it were me between your legs?”

Your eyes flutter, just like your heart as you press your palms into his firm chest. Did you? You stand there, your fingers pressing harder into his clothed skin as you wrack your brain. Maybe you have been comparing your partners to him, maybe that’s by you can’t keep one— fuck maybe that’s why you got yourself kicked out of a car tonight. But his breath is so hot against your skin, you can feel his hands hover above your hips. You both know what you want, you both know what you need.

“If I said no,” your voice breathy, “would you believe me?”

He laughs, the sound brings a slime to your lips as his forehead falls to your shoulder. In this moment it seems so simple, feels so familiar. And maybe that’s all you need tonight.

“Is it… okay if I touch you?” He asks, that sentence hasn’t been heard in years, you’d almost forgotten how wet it makes you. Almost.

You nod, your palms slowly sliding up his chest and around his neck.

That light moment slowly fading before your eyes as he presses his lips to the exposed skin below your ear. “Words.”

“Yes dammit you know I hate when you—“

You choke on your words as he pulls back, his hand threading with your damp locks and craning your head back. Your eyes frantically search his, the reading lamp the only light reflecting off of them.

Nanami’s usual gentleness is gone as he stares you down. “You need to be quiet for me, can you do that?” One hand cradles your cheek, the other tugs at your hand, begging to be held.

Before you can answer he’s pulling you with him, leading you to his bedroom. The darkness of the apartment swallows you both as you enter the room, the music fading, the sounds of your eager breath becomes the only sound ringing in both of your ears.

He doesn’t waste time sliding his warm hands underneath your shirt, pulling you closer to him as his lips crash into yours.

Everything about him invades your senses, the taste of his lips, his touch, the smell of him— all of it makes you clench your thighs together as his fingers press into your soft skin.

“I forgot—“ Nanami’s lips trail a path down your throat, his fingers sliding under the waistband of the boxers you’re wearing, “how incredible you look in my clothes.” His boxers, his shirt, his sweatpants— all of it reeks of him— the overwhelming scent of his cologne makes you dizzy as the pads of his fingers teasingly brush against your clit. The tips of your ears burn as you choke down a moan, your own fingers tangling into his combed blonde hair.

He makes a quiet ‘tsk’ before biting your neck, a soft nip before he’s licking the pain away, “quiet—“ lithe fingers sink slowly into you, “or I stop.”

Lust clouds every rational thought swirling around inside of your brain as you nod frantically, desperate for him to continue.

“Good girl.” Your hips grind down onto his fingers, clit brushing against his palm with an infuriating lightness. Not enough. Never enough. A soft whine of frustration sounds in the back of your throat. His free hand sneaks up your throat, his fingers dancing across your jaw, this thumb pulling at your plump bottom lip. A groan—husky and raw sounds deep in his chest as the diget slips past your lips into your warm wet mouth. Hot and slick as he presses the pad of his thumb down onto your tongue.

Dark eyes meet yours in the inky black of his room, “get on the bed.”

He pulls out of you, turning away from you before you can beg him to continue. Nanami rushes to the door, his feet light as he gently clicks it closed. You’re too busy peeling off his boxers to notice him lick a long stripe up his slick fingers, but you hear the sound he makes. He groans as his tongue licks every last drop of you from his fingers.

You sink onto the bed just as he flicks on a small lamp, your body cast in that familiar pale yellow glow. Nanami however is a silhouette before you, warm light framing his every move. Clenching around nothing you watch him peel his shirt off, the sound of his pants following suit. You crawl backward in search of the headboard, his hands grasp your ankles and in one quick yank you’re back at the edge. You instinctively clamp your thighs together as he sinks to his knees, hands prying your legs apart. “Don’t run from me, show me what I’ve been missing.” He whispers, his gentle voice sending shivers down your spine and to your waiting cunt. And he notices. You’re spread wide with his hands trailing torturously gentle shapes into your skin.

He feels so pathetic. He’s harder than he’s ever been as he gazes at your weeping pussy splayed out for him, leaking down your ass and onto his freshly washed sheets. How long will he just stare at you, mouth watering as you bite down hard on your bottom lip while your legs tremble under his feather light touch.

“Kento-“ you mumble, “this is embarrassing stop teasing m—“ you gasp at the sudden sensation. His lips find your swollen clit without fail, the familiarity slowly rising back to the surface. He mumbles against you, his words muffled and sending shivers straight through you as his fingers prod at your dripping hole.

It’s torture you think. The way he flattens his tongue against your throbbing clit, fingers sliding in with ease as you clasp your hand around your mouth. Lips trembling as you choke down moan after moan.

Nanami’s always been a tender lover, putting your needs above his own— it’s nice to know that hasn’t changed as you dig your heels into his mattress, thighs trembling and back arching ever so slightly as he bullies his fingers into you again and again. The desperate depraved moans you choke down slip out as small squeaks that have Nanami leaking through his boxers.

He can’t take it— how warm you are against his fingers, juices leaking down his arm, his tongue working in ways he’d forgot possible. He moans against you one final time before pulling off, licking his lips clean as you prop yourself up onto your elbows.

“Ken—“

“Turnover” his voice deep and laced with utter desperation as you watch him tuck his thumbs under the electric of his boxers.

It was like a game, waiting to see who will crack first as he peels away that last layer of fabric. He’s throbbing and so painfully hard under your watchful gaze. Your eyes taking in every vein, admiring that upward bend that had to seeing stars countless times— not even a foot away from you now.

“Can I-“ suck you off.

Large hands pull you forward, “Later.” That inhuman strength has you spinning, landing on your stomach with a startled yelp.

You push yourself up, arms trembling as he reaches over you and snatches a pillow. “W-wait, I wanted to—“ you go to stutter in protest only for his palm to press down firmly on your back, right between your shoulder blades. One second your hips are pressed into the soft bedsheets— the next they’re held high in the air only supported by his brutal grasp.

Your senses are on fire. Your cheek is pressed into a pillow that smells so much like his shampoo, your thighs covered in your cooling slick, all you can hear is your own hammering heart and jagged breaths as his hands slide over you. One trailing up the small of your back, sneaking over your shoulder blades and stopping at your nape. The other holds you up by the hips as he slots his cock between your slick folds with a sickeningly low groan.

Nanami presses his chest against your back, you can feel his heart, feel his body heat, you can practically taste the sweat that already adorns his face as his lips hover over the shell of your ear. “Tell me to stop, and I’ll stop.” He whispers, his voice so husky you can feel the rumble slide down your throat and live in your ribcage. You nod frantically, “Fine, okay you have my word— fuck—hurry up already! Please-please-please—“ you whine, a memory that will have your cheeks the richest shade of red come tomorrow.

“Good girl,” he hums, his tip slowly enters you with an infuriating slowness that has you gripping the sheets under you. “You learned how to use your words, m’proud of you angel.” He moans as he wills himself to go slowly, he wants to savor the way you clench around him again, savor the way you gush at his gentle praise.

One twitch of your hips and you’d be completely split open, and somehow that’s what you need. You press yourself into his sheets, rocking your hips back into him with that impatience that pissed him off and made him even harder.

More.

More.

More.

You groan, your lip bitten and raw as you beg. “Ken—“

His chest still rests against your back as he litters your neck in open mouth kisses, “I know, Angel.” His teeth graze the flesh of your neck to feel you tremble under him. “Be patient for me.”

It’s so hard to obey when he’s moving so deliberately slow— drawing it out so you feel every vein, every twitch, every slight stutter of his hips when you whine into the pillow under you. You don’t know how hard it is for him not to grab a fist full of your hair and press your face into the sheets— how hard it is for him not to snap his hips into yours at such a brutal pace it gives you a lip the next day. He needs to hear you scream his name until your lungs burn and your hands cramp from clinging onto him with the last of your strength.

Next time he thinks. Next time you’ll be all alone, folded in half under him with your pretty little face staring up at him as he fucks you again and again.

“So good for me.” He moans into your ear as his hips finally meet the swell of your ass. “So good.” He bites your neck, stifling a moan as you clench around him.

Nanami kisses the pain away as he pulls out halfway and then slowly entering again. And again. And again.

The feeling of him so deep in your gut has you panting, trembling and clawing at his pillow. Your hands ache from clinging to anything you can reach, but you’re afraid if you didn’t occupy yourself you’d scream, so completely under his control it drives you insane. You’re so focused on breathing and willing yourself not to be too loud that you don’t feel one of his hands leaving your body only to wrap around your wrist, his thumb circling your skin in time with his movements.

Slow and lazy strokes turn into quick sloppy thrusts, the soft squelch of your mixed arousal becoming louder in your ears. All you can hear is Nanami’s low groans next to your ear and the subtle squeak of the bed frame and it has your head spinning.

“Ken—“ you moan, teeth imbedded in your bottom lip.

He reminds that eager little yelp in your tone even when it’s being suppressed. You’re close already. So so close.

He sneaks his other hand under you, trailing it down your stomach as the other tightens around your wrist. 

Even if he can read you, he needs to know. To hear it drip from your lips and into the heated sizzling air. “What do you need? Tell me—fuck— tell me what you need.”

Your stomach flutters, ears burning and legs trembling as you whine. So high pitched and pathetic it has him reeling on top of you, his cock throbbing at the sound of pure desperation.

“M’so close— Kento please I need—fuck fuck fuck—“ you shudder as you feel the heat of his palm hovering over your clit. “Need to cum—“

His fingers hone in on your pulsing bud before the words even finish leaving your lips.

Who is he to deny you that high?

Maybe you’ve been so unknowingly pent up, or maybe you just craved his touch that much— but as soon as the rough pads of his fingers sought you out you felt your back bow, your lips tremble and you’re turning your hand palm up to intertwine your fingers with his as the coil in your gut tightens.

Nanami’s face scrunches as he feels your pussy tighten around him. You squeeze his hand, you tremble under him and moan and drool onto his pillow. His bed might’ve smelt like him this morning but tonight it drips with you. The body he’s craved ever since his eyes met yours for the very first time— his pace quickens.

“Cum for me,” he hooks his chin over your shoulder. “Please— I need you to— fuck— I need it.” He whimpers, words trembling as his fingers quicken, his hand could fall off for all he cared. He needed this. He needed you.

He’s whined before, but now in this moment it sounded so sinful. His face was so close to yours, you could feel his now damp hair touch your cheek, you could feel his breath and if you opened your eyes— see the bead of sweat trickle down the curve of his nose.

His gruff voice sounded so sweet as he begged you, pleaded with you to cum around his cock.

You nodded, frantic.

The only warning your body allows is a shiver that shoots up the base of your spine as you cum. White flashes behind your eyelids as you bite into the pillow, your teeth threaten to pop a seam as you ride our your violent high through choked sobs.

Nanami cums after you, your tight walls spasming around him as he pumps you full with a groan that hangs heavy in the sticky air.

It takes everything he has left not to collapse on top of you as he eases his way out. Leaning back he watches as his cum oozes out of you, and with gentle fingers he pushes it back in, watching the way you writhe as overstimulation knocks on your door.

With a fuzzy head you allow him to carefully lay you on your back. His hand cups your cheek as he presses a parting kiss to your forehead. You hardly register his absence till you feel him part your legs, a warm towel glides up your legs and you hum at the cozy feeling of it. The familiar comfort he brings you is something you’ve missed. Nanami takes his time cleaning you up before he urges you under the covers. You sleepily comply.

Sleepily. Who knew his dick would be your melatonin again, you think to yourself as you tuck yourself farther into his bed with a content sigh. Before sleep can fully grasp you, you feel Nanami’s strong arms pull you to his chest, his nose buried in the crook of your neck once more. It isn’t long before you fall asleep in his arms, in the pitch black of his room, in a bed that smells like black coffee and lavender, just like you used to. It’s so familiar, so inviting and whole.

Maybe your next boyfriend will be better than the last guy. In fact… maybe he’ll be just like your ex-husband.

[jewishrat420]

No one has ever flirted with Steve the way Eddie flirts with Steve.

And it's not like no one flirts with Steve. God, no, it's not like no one flirts with Steve. Steve can't walk into the grocery store without at least three sets of heads turning and focusing all their attention on him.

And he's not even trying to be cocky about it. That's just the reality he was gifted when he came out of his mother's womb looking like the world's freshest Adonis. Honestly, he wouldn't be surprised if they changed the colloquialism to "Steve."

Regardless. For as many people like to flirt with him, make themselves known, filtering in and out of his orbit like willing planets, no one knows quite how to get him going like Eddie. Maybe it's that they're not as confident as he is, maybe they're scared of the rejection Eddie was born facing and will die knowing.

Maybe they're scared of ruining their chances. Maybe Eddie isn't.

For whatever reason, Eddie doesn't seem like he's scared. Even though there was a long time before he knew Steve was bi, was just as into the flirting as Eddie was, even though there was a chance (not like it'd ever happen, but the unknown was there) that Steve could have beaten him up just for calling him "sweetheart," he did it anyway. He got right up into Steve's space, close enough that Steve could get high off the remnants of the joint he'd smoked earlier, and gave him a look that offered everything.

And, God, Steve wanted it. He wanted it all.

And so that began months of what Steve has so aptly referred to as torture. Apt, because he knows what it's like. He has the scars and the fear of ice cream and needles to prove it.

But this... this is a different kind of torture. Mental, emotional, spiritual, whatever you call it-- this is meant to tear him apart from the inside out, meant to make him want to rip his own bones out from his body and offer them to Eddie if it meant the other man making a fucking move.

And Steve would, is the thing. He would absolutely make the first move-- it's what he usually does, anyway, and he's got a pretty damn good success rate for it.

But, for whatever reason, this feels different. This back and forth they have, the constant teasing, the sliding in and out of each other's orbits, unable and unwilling to refute the most fundamental laws of gravity... it's something special, at least to Steve. Something sacred.

Which is why, when Eddie calls Steve "Harrington" for the first time in months, his first response is to pout.

They're about halfway through splitting a joint, the sweet smoke curling around wisps of hair and parted lips and filtering in and out of the holes in their sweaters. The air outside is getting colder, thinner, sharper, as the winter months dreg on. But inside the trailer, it's comfortable and warm. Safe.

Steve's being a bit of a hog, and he's man enough to admit that. But he had a shitty day at work and all he wants is to feel nothing other than the weightless relaxation of a good high buzzing through his bones. Sue him for taking a little more than his fair share of the good stuff, even if it is Eddie's.

"Steve," Eddie whines, reaching his hand out and curling his fingers in request. "Give it over."

"No," Steve responds, just on the edge of whiny. He brings the joint to his lips and takes a long, slow, deep drag, feeling the sweet heat of the smoke burning in his lungs, taking up the space where oxygen should be. He goes a little dizzy with it, feels his eyes lower. "Mine."

Steve can't see it, but he knows Eddie's rolling his eyes. Can sense the shift in the air, can sense every little fucking thing about Eddie at any given moment.

"C'mon, Harrington, you're being a brat."

And, normally, Steve would find another aspect of that sentence to freak out about. Would zero in on the word brat and relish in the flare of heat it sends shooting up his spine like firework sparks. Would squint his eyes at Eddie and tilt his head in the way he knows makes him look good, would give him his cutest little smirk and say, "Who, me?" and would preen in the response it gets.

This time, though, he's much too focused on the other name Eddie used for him. The one he hasn't heard come out of Eddie's mouth since before he realized that Steve was, as he put it, "actually a good dude."

He doesn't realize he's pouting until the sudden silence in the room starts to creep in, make a home in the buzzing in his ears. He didn't realize that he didn't say anything, and neither did Eddie, and now they're sitting in a mess of their own making. Of Eddie's own making, really.

His next words come out without effort, without intent.

"Don't call me that."

He chances a look over at Eddie, at the risk of appearing as vulnerable as he feels, and to his distress, he can't get a read on the man. His dark eyebrows furrow, brown eyes squinting slightly, and his lips part like he wants to speak. He licks them. Steve's eyes follow the motion unintentionally.

"Call you what?" Eddie says on an exhale. "A brat?"

Steve shakes his head. "Harrington. Don't like it when you call me that."

Eddie kind of softens, then, and Steve didn't realize he had stiffened until he isn't anymore. He sort of sinks into the couch, spreads his legs imperceptibly wider, and Steve wouldn't have noticed if it wasn't for the way his left knee brushes against Steve's just barely. Just enough for those heated sparks to send a couple pinpricks across his skin.

"No?" he says, looking over to meet Steve's gaze. His cheeks are flushed, whether from the weed or the heat of the room or the heat between them, and Steve's sure that his look the same. "What do you want me to call you, then?"

Steve's definitely blushing now. He looks away from Eddie, tucks his chin to his chest, lets the joint between his fingers burn away. Eddie takes it from him, gently, and brings it to his lips. Steve hears the paper crackling as he inhales.

His voice is quiet, almost meek, when he speaks. It's completely unlike Steve, completely unlike the persona he used to so proudly take on-- but then again, Eddie is completely unlike anyone that Steve has ever met. He's more real, more human, and in turn, Steve is too.

"...You know."

Eddie makes a little noise, then, something in the back of his throat that was born and died within the very same second it was released. Something soft, almost pained, like his body couldn't help the reaction it had to that sentence.

Steve watches the thin, long line of Eddie's arm reach forward and press the joint into the glass of the ashtray. He follows the motion until Eddie's hand settles into the rips over his knee, fingers intertwining with the thread. His pinkie is dangerously close to Steve's own sweatpant-covered skin, and he feels the contact as if Eddie were touching him.

Eddie's hand twitches like it wants to move, and Steve resists the urge to grab it, hold it within the warmth of his own palms.

"Do I?" Eddie says, his voice quieter than it was a moment ago. That thick silence fills the trailer once more, settling in between the soft buzzing of the lightbulb in the kitchen and the muffled humming of the crickets outside. Steve hears Eddie take a stuttering breath. "Tell me."

Steve sighs, feeling his chest burn as his heartbeat picks up. His throat pounds with the pulsing of it. He places his own hand on his right knee, pinkie finger edging closer and closer to the space where Eddie's meets his. Eddie's hand twitches again.

"Like it when you call me sweet things," he says on an exhale, as though getting it out all in one breath would make it easier. "Like how it makes me feel."

Eddie lets out another one of those noises, then, something more like a cut-off groan. His hand curls into the fabric of his jeans for no more than a second before he releases it, and Steve gets to watch as the blood blanches and then returns to his knuckles.

"Sweet things, huh?" he muses, voice only slightly strained. If Steve didn't know any better, he'd say Eddie is nervous. "Like... Stevie?"

Steve hums. "Yeah. I like that."

Eddie's pinkie moves closer. Barely. Imperceptibly, if not for the way Steve is tuned into his every movement, like a dog to the sound of their owner's keys.

"Yeah?"

Steve hums again.

"What about... sweetheart?"

Steve closes his eyes. Lets out a shaky breath, inhales a smoother one.

"Yeah."

Steve feels something brush against his pinkie. Something warm.

"Honey?"

Steve nods, biting his lip. "Mhm."

Eddie lets out a quiet little laugh. "Even big boy?"

Steve returns it helplessly, feels the edges of a smile pulling at his lips. The air feels cold on his teeth, as though he's burning up from the inside out and anything outside of his own body is a cooling salve.

"Especially big boy."

Eddie laughs a little louder, and the jostling of his body brings his pinkie even closer to Steve's. Completely pressed against his own, now.

Steve swears he can feel his heartbeat through it. Or maybe it's his own.

"What about..." Eddie takes a breath. "Love?"

Steve's own breath hitches. He opens his eyes, looks at where their skin is touching in more than one place. He feels it, feels every point of contact where the cells that make Eddie are existing with the cells that make Steve. Wonders, maybe, if they stay here long enough, if they'll merge and mold over time. Become one.

"Yeah," Steve breathes. "I like that one a lot."

Eddie hums, and the room falls back into silence for a moment. Steve's skin burns where their fingers are touching. He moves his hand to the right, just barely, just enough to let Eddie know that he feels it. Just enough to ask Eddie if he does, too.

His response is overwhelming.

Eddie moves his hand to the left, solidifies all the points of contact between them, and Steve feels like he's exploding. Feels like a bubbling pit of lava that's set to burst, to overflow, like it can't hold back anymore. Like it's tried for so long that it's hurting, now, pressurized and boiling and hot, way too fucking hot.

And then, Eddie crosses his pinkie over Steve's, and Steve thinks he's dying.

He takes in a sharp breath like it's the last one he'll ever get, and he doesn't even have it in him to be embarrassed about it. He knows Eddie is right there with him, knows he's not the only one feeling this irrefutable pull like gravity between them. Knows, hopes, it's only a matter of time before they collide.

Eddie hums again. He taps his pinkie once over the smallest of Steve's knuckles, almost like he's making a decision. He takes a long, slow breath before he speaks.

"You know which one's my favorite?"

Steve's throat clicks. "Which?"

"Look at me."

Steve turns his head to the right for no more than a second before Eddie's lips are on his.

It's hungry, it's indulgent, it's immediately addictive. It feels like breathing.

Eddie presses his whole body against Steve's, and he can feel the way his tendons flex where his hand is covering the back of Steve's. Where their pinkies meet, their fingers intertwine and cross over one another like the roots of a tree, their bodies the whole mycorrhizal network.

The next word is spoken against Steve's lips, and Steve can feel the way his mouth forms around it. Decides, from this moment on, that he never wants to hear it another way.

"Baby."

Steve's exhale is more of a moan, a dying sound that, like Eddie's before, lived for only a moment in his throat before pushing through the wall of his lips. Eddie takes it, holds it in his own mouth, swallows it down hungrily and slides his tongue against Steve's as though asking for more.

"That's--" Steve pants, getting his hands on Eddie's hips and pulling until he's seated in his lap. "Mine too."

"Yeah?" Eddie asks, his lips still pressed against Steve's. Their words are muffled against each other, but they don't need to hear them to understand. They only need to feel the outline of them, the shape of the consonants and vowels against and around each other's tongues. They only need to press their bodies together and know, intimately, the meaning in each other's hearts.

"Yeah. Want you to call me that forever."

This time, Steve feels Eddie's laughter against his lips. His chest. Feels it bubble up in the space between his ribs, feels it flow into his mouth like a river, swallows it down like the first glass of water after a run. Feels his own creep up behind his teeth in return, gives it back to Eddie like an offering, who takes it greedily. Hungrily. Gratefully.

"Think that can be arranged, baby."

[obsesssedblerd]

Part Four: "I promise, I'll make this right."

- the jjk men promising to be a better partner for you after they forget your anniversary. 

final written part of this smau series.

Pt 1: Toji, Nanami, Geto, and Sukuna

update: gojo, shiu and choso here

contains: angst to comfort

a/n: AHHHHH FINALLY!!!! here's part one! sorry for any mistakes!

thank you so much for being patient. I appreciate it. <3

---

TOJI 

Before you can even knock on the door to Toji’s house, it flies open. Five year-old Megumi drops his dog plushie and rushes to hug your legs, his body shaking as he looks up at you with teary eyes. “Where’d you go? I was scared that you weren’t coming back.” 

“Aw, Gumi,” you sigh, reaching down to pick him up so you could hug him closer to you. “I’m sorry, honey.” 

“Please don’t leave,” he whimpers between sniffles. “Me, Tsumiki and Papa would be so sad. He’s already sad. He was crying yesterday.” 

You knew it. You thought your mind was playing tricks on you when Toji came to see you yesterday, but you heard correctly—he was crying. Your heart aches at the utter fear in Megumi’s voice, and the way he’s clinging to you, like he’s certain that you’d disappear if he didn’t. You had greatly underestimated how much you meant to him.

“Megs?! You can’t just open the door for anyone! It’s dangerous—” Toji gasps when he comes downstairs and sees you there, holding Megumi and comforting him. He stands there frozen, eyes wide with disbelief. 

One look at his eyes confirms what you heard last night. They were a little red and slightly puffy.

“Sweetheart,” you whisper to the boy in your arms, “I need to talk to your dad, alright? Why don’t you head back inside?” 

He nods, and you set him on his feet. “Sorry, Papa,” he mutters to Toji as he uses his sleeve to wipe his eyes. 

Toji smiles softly at him and ruffles his spiky hair. “It’s okay.” 

Once Megumi is inside, you and Toji stand next to each other on the porch. You think about what life’s been like the last few days. The anger, the arguing. The hurt. Perhaps this was the hardest part—accepting that you can’t keep pretending that everything is alright, no matter how much you love Toji. 

A warm, comforting hand intertwined with yours, and it shakes you from your thoughts. “We have to talk about this,” Toji starts. “I can’t let this happen.” 

You exhale. “Toji.” 

“I do not care what needs to be done. I’ll do it,” he says, his voice thick with determination.

You glare at him. “I meant it when I said that I’m tired.” 

“And I meant it when I said that I’m not letting you walk away,” he bites back, then takes a small, shaky breath. “Yes, I was crying yesterday,” he admits. “I was crying because you’re considering leaving me, and it terrifies me so much more than I thought it does. Treating you like you don’t matter to me by always hanging out with my friends, along with forgetting our anniversary is such a shitty thing to do, and I know that there’s nothing I can do or say to undo that.” He then squeezes your hand gently, desperately. “But I’m going to try to make it right by keeping my promise to you and being a better man for you.” 

You want to say something, but your eyes pool with tears, so you face the ground instead. It’s so frustrating. You want this to work. You love him, and walking away from him will destroy you, but you also didn’t know if it could work. What if he chooses his friends again? What if he continues forgetting you? What if none of this is worth it and—

“Look at me.” His voice is soft, yet firm.

You shake your head. 

“Baby, please, look at me.” 

You muster the strength to meet his eyes, and his thumbs tenderly swipe underneath yours to wipe away the tears. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, slightly leaning forward so your foreheads are touching. “I’m so sorry. I swear to you, I’ll never do this shit to you again.”

You’re quiet for a while, then you tell him, “If it does happen again, then I’m done.” 

“Deal.” 

He pulls you to him, and you feel his body relaxing into yours. When you hear him sniffle, you begin to pull back, but he only holds you tighter. He’s crying again, and he doesn’t want you to see. “No,” he tells you in a quivering whisper. “Just let me hold you for a minute.” 

“Toji-” 

“I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if you disappeared. Not to mention figure out a way to break it down to Megumi and Tsumiki.” At the mention of his kids, he sniffles again. “Especially Megumi. Fuck, if you left, I don’t think he’d ever forgive me, or smile again. You make him so happy and comfortable.” 

You let him take his time, and relax your head on his shoulder. Once he’s calm again, he pulls away to look at you. “Give me a day to find a new restaurant for our anniversary, and find a babysitter for the kids. Then, I have a surprise for you.”

“A surprise?” 

“Yes. I’m going all out to make this up to you. You’re crazy if you think all you’re getting is a dinner after I fucked up this badly.”

---

NANAMI

Though you were super upset with him, you still dreamed of Kento. You dreamed of hefty, detailed conversations that weren’t rushed, long walks along the sandy beaches of Malaysia, private moments that had no chance of being interrupted, and plenty of time to do nothing at all. 

When you awoke from your dreams and remembered that he made the decision to spend his only free moment with Shoko and not you on your anniversary, your heart ached brutally within your chest. Is this how it was going to be forever? Are you going to spend your entire relationship wishing to be with him rather than actually spending time with him? 

You know that you have to talk to him; you’re just unsure of what you’re going to say. A part of you has accepted that Kento Nanami is simply too busy for a relationship with you, and that he’d rather spend his limited free time relaxing. 

You sit in your car, which is parked outside of the house that you and Kento share. Maybe it was best for you two to split ways. You could break the news, then move out within a month. You have plenty of money in your savings, and resources to help you find a new place fast. 

Okay, you think to yourself. Time to go. You exit your car, then walk in towards the front door, your hands shaking while reaching for your keys. When you finally unlock the door and step inside, you stop in your tracks. The living room of your house is beautifully decorated with red and gold balloons and streamers, and there’s rose petals sprinkled on the floor. On the table, there’s a massive, luxurious bouquet of roses in a glass vase, and a box of chocolate covered fruit next to it. There’s also various gift bags neatly arranged on the couch and the floor. 

You expected this. 

“Love, is that you?” You hear Kento’s voice come from the kitchen, and then he appears in the doorway, his shoulders slumping when he sees you. He’s holding another gift bag, and it looks like he was getting ready to place it with the rest. 

“Kento, I-” 

“No, sweetheart, please.” He sighs, then walks over to you. “Please allow me to explain myself.” 

“There’s nothing that needs to be explained. You missed our anniversary.” 

He grabs your hand when you start walking in the other direction. “And I’m so sorry for it. I’m extremely disappointed in myself for missing the dinner you had planned. I promise-” 

“Yeah, that’s the thing, Kento. You keep promising, but you never deliver on those promises!” You snap, whirling around to face him. “You promise me that you’re going to work less so we can spend time together, but you never do. You promise me that things are going to change, but they never do. You promised me one night, which was all I wanted, and you missed it. I took care of everything else so all you had to do was just show up, but even that was too much for you!” 

Kento goes quiet, his honey brown eyes full of desperation as he squeezes your hand gently. “I know,” he says softly. “You’re right. I’ve made promises, and I never delivered. It’s incredibly selfish to ask for more when you’ve already given so much without me returning any of it. It got so bad to the point where you believe that asking for one night is asking for too much, even though you deserve far more than that. I understand all of it, love, and I know why you feel like a break-up is the only option, but… I can’t let you go. I’d be so lost without you. Keeping you requires change, and I’m going to change things, starting now, if you grant me another chance.”

When you don’t answer, he continues, “You’ve been gone for so long. I spent hours sitting here, right on this couch, waiting for you to walk through the door. I was beginning to think that you wouldn’t. I felt sick, and I couldn’t sleep. I don’t want to get used to you not being here anymore. I don’t want to live a life where you’re not here by my side. I love you. I’m so sorry for taking you for granted. I have a lot to prove to you, and if you give me another chance, I’ll do it, no matter how long it might take. I won your heart once, and I’ll win it again.” 

You’re still quiet, but Kento doesn’t press you. Instead, he brings your hand to his mouth and places a light kiss on it. “I have two months off,” he says softly. “Come to Malaysia with me.” 

That surprises you. You blink in shock, then meet his eyes. “What??? Is two months even possible? But Kento, what about your job? Isn’t there something big happening in Shibuya?” 

“I told Yaga that I needed time off, so I got unassigned from that. Since I have had plenty of PTO earned over the years, it’s no problem,” he says simply, then gestures to the room full of presents. “Gifts mean nothing when what you crave the most is time with me. So, I want to give you that, like I should’ve done so long ago. Come to Malaysia with me, and I’ll earn you back there. Just me and you. No sorcerer stuff, no students, no interruptions.” 

“But-” 

“Sweetheart.” His voice is slightly shaky. “I always keep saying how I’d be spending more time with you after just one more mission.” His eyes drift downward. “But as a sorcerer, there’s no guarantee that I’ll come home every single time. There might be a mission where I don’t make it back, and I’ll regret all of the time I didn’t get to spend with you.” 

Your heart suddenly feels heavy. You hate talking about this stuff with him. You can’t imagine getting a phone call and hearing that he died on a mission. However, he’s right. There isn’t a guarantee, and you would be stupid to think that there is. 

He strokes your cheek tenderly, and it pulls you back to reality. “Come with me,” he says. “Let it be the start of me not only making this up to you, but also changing like I talked about earlier.” 

Time alone, completely uninterrupted. It’s all you ever wanted. You know that it would take time to return to good terms, but like he said, it’s a start. 

“Okay,” you say, and he sighs in relief before pulling you into his arms. “Thank you,” he whispers. “I promise, I won’t mess this up.”

---

GETO

Shoko lightly taps your shoulder, and it snaps you from your daydream. You look up at her, and she takes the cold cup of coffee from your arms. “You’re spaced out,” she says. “It’s obvious that you’re not going to drink this.” 

“Sorry,” you mumble. 

“Don’t apologize. These last few days have been hard for you.” Shoko disposes of the coffee, then begins washing the mug. “Have you talked to him since?” 

“No.” 

“Well, what are you thinking?” 

For the millionth time, you reread the last few messages between you and Suguru. He was right about you not trusting him, and it seemed like he took accountability for his actions. However, you’re still hurt. You think you’re going to be hurt about this for a very, very long time. Just thinking about how you spent a while at the restaurant anxiously checking the time, waiting for him to show up, has you falling silent again. 

“Hey,” Shoko sighs as she rubs your back. “It’s alright if you don’t know right now. You might have an answer when you see him-” 

A sudden knock at the door has both of you straightening up. Your eyebrows furrow, and you point towards the door. “Did you text him?” 

“No. I was just about to ask you that,” she says. 

You two approach the door, and you hear voices coming from the other side of it. 

“Satoru, this is a bad idea. She said that she-” 

“Lalalalala! I’m not listening!” 

“Satoru.” 

“Look, I don’t care! You should’ve done this days ago after forgetting the damn anniversary, dumbass. Me, Nanako, and Mimiko are tired of listening to you cryin’ in the shower.” 

Shoko facepalms. “Idiots. Both of them.” She opens the door, and Satoru grins, his blue eyes glimmering from behind his glasses. “Well, look who it is!” 

Suguru, your boyfriend, is nervously scratching the back of his head. You can tell he wants to say something, but doesn’t know what. Shoko looks over at you, and you nod that it’s okay. She nods in return, then pokes Satoru’s chest. “C’mon, let’s walk up the street to the bakery and give them a minute.” 

“Yes!” Satoru cheers, then waves at you before shoving Suguru inside and closing the door to Shoko’s apartment behind him. 

Suguru groans in annoyance. “I’m sorry. I know you needed time, but that asshole teleported us here before I could even-” 

“It’s okay,” you tell him as you sit on the couch. Half a minute later, he hesitantly sits next to you, relaxing into the cushion when he sees that you don’t move away from him. 

“Angel,” he starts, and like always, your heart jumps at the nickname. “I’m so sorry that I did this to you.” 

You wave him off. “Suguru, you’ve apologized enough.”

“No, you’re saying that because you’re drained. There’s no way I can apologize enough for missing our anniversary. I don’t blame you for being upset or for contemplating a break-up. Anyone would. That’s why I told you that I’m willing to earn your trust back. It’s going to take a lot, and I’m okay with that, if you’re willing to give me another chance.” 

“But what if this is nothing but a waste of time?” You ask. 

He sits up, determined. “It won’t be. I won’t let this happen again.” When you don’t reply, he places his hand on top of yours. “I missed you. Every day, Nanako and Mimiko asked about you. Our little home isn’t the same without you there. I’m so sorry that I missed your dinner. If you give me another chance, I’ll do better.”

Without even knowing, you lace your fingers with his. Though you’re mad at him, you’ve also missed him. But, you miss the Suguru who spent so much time with you towards the beginning of your relationship. You wondered if you’d ever see him again. 

“Hey.” You look towards Suguru, and he brushes his thumb over yours. “You know that I won’t force or pressure you,” he says calmly, even though his voice shakes. “I messed up badly and hurt you. If you truly want to end this, I understand, but-” 

“Suguru,” you cut him off loudly. “I just want my boyfriend to choose me as often as he chooses his friends. It feels like you only consider me when they’re not available, and it got so bad that you forgot our anniversary.” 

“And I’ll do that, and so much more,” he says firmly. “I know that I promised you before to spend more time with you. There’s so much that I need to make up to you.” 

More promises. Though you’re hopeful, you’re also nervous. 

“If I mess up this badly again, I’ll let you go. I won’t argue, I won’t fight it,” he proposes. 

“Alright,” you mumble. “One chance.” 

“All I need. Thank you.” Suguru carefully grabs your wrist, then tugs you into his arms. You breathe in his scent, and your body settles comfortably into his. 

“Don’t make me regret this, Suguru Geto.” 

“I won’t. Now come on, I have some promises to keep.”

You text Shoko that you’re locking up her apartment when you and Suguru leave, then you let Suguru take you outside.

---

SUKUNA

It’s well after midnight when you return to Sukuna’s estate. You walk the familiar hallways until you find your way to the garden. You sit on the dewy grass, and exhale slowly, enjoying the night air. 

You don’t go looking for him. You know that he’ll sense you here and come find you. 

The tiny bursts of light get your attention. Fireflies. He was right, they are out. You were surprised when Ryomen Sukuna told you that he remembered your love for them. After he forgot your anniversary, you were convinced that he just simply didn’t care about you, especially when he said that he only remembered things that were important to him. 

Suddenly, the air around you thickens as you sense his presence. He’s here. 

“You’re back,” Sukuna says from behind you. He sounds a bit uncertain. 

“No point in staying out forever,” you reply flatly. 

He doesn’t respond. He joins you on the ground, and you feel him watching you closely. You stare at the ground, your fingers lightly stroking the blades of grass. 

“But if I did decide to stay away,” you start, still facing the grass, “would you have let me go?” 

“Not if there was a possibility of earning another chance.” 

You finally look up at him, and before you can say another word, he gently puts a finger to your lips. “You are here, so I’d rather not waste time talking about hypothetical situations where you are not here.”

You shrug, then look away again. Truthfully, you didn’t know what to expect when coming back here. The King of Curses was anything but an easy partner to have a relationship with. You didn’t know why you, a mere sorcerer, loved him, but you did; so much and so deeply that it hurt to breathe sometimes. You know that he sees nearly everyone beneath him, but you thought that he at least respected you enough to show up for the dinner you planned. Maybe you’re foolish for returning.

“I hated every second that you were gone,” he says. Usually, Sukuna doesn’t admit to anything like that. It feels nice hearing it. “This place is so quiet without you.” 

A breeze blows in the garden, and it’s chilly enough to make you shiver and wrap your arms around yourself. Sukuna uses an arm to pull you closer, and you settle into his warm body with a small, relieved sigh. Your back falls against his chest, and you feel his chin rest atop your head. 

“There is something I haven’t told you,” he mutters.

“What is it?” 

“A year ago, right here in this spot, I realized that it was love.” Your eyes slightly widen, but you don’t stop him. “You were watching the fireflies and explaining some memories you had about them from your childhood. So simple and so harmless, yet it felt like my entire soul had shifted when I finally figured it out. Then it hit me again when I watched you play with Yuuji in the rain, then once more when I held your hand while you slept. It also hit me when you left, and I spent the last few nights feeling your soul tremble as you cried, knowing that I caused it.” 

Sukuna gives your shoulder a little squeeze, then fully wraps his arms around you. “Perhaps if I had told you these discoveries of mine the moment I had them,” he explains, “then you would have never questioned your importance. You have no idea how much you mean because I have not told you. That, in addition to this situation, is my fault.”

Something within you cracks, and a new wave of tears rush to your eyes. You blink them away, deciding that you’ve cried enough in the last few days. 

“Forgive me, petal,” he whispers. “I know you believe that I missed the dinner you planned on purpose so I could hurt you, but that is not true. It will never happen again. You have my word.”

When you tilt your head up to look up at him, you’re met with his gorgeous, crimson eyes. Your king was evil, no doubt, but you always believed that he was the most beautiful being you’ve ever laid your eyes on. You nod once, and he presses a kiss to your forehead. 

“Come with me,” he tells you. 

“Where are we going?” 

He stands up, then lifts you into his arms. “You need to rest, and I would like for you to do so with me so I can have you close. Then tomorrow, I will begin to make this up to you, like I promised.” As he carries you inside, you rest your head against his shoulder. “Happy anniversary, petal.” 

Finally, you smile. “Happy anniversary, Ryomen.”

[highvern]

When in Rome

Pairing: Choi Seungcheol x f!reader

Genre: fluff, smut, angst

warnings: alcohol consumption, cheating, nudity, mentions of drug use, explicit sexual acts (unprotected sex, dirty talk, oral, swallowing)

Length: ~24k

Note: excited to have this for the @svthub world tour collab! thank u to @gyuswhore for helping, @wonuvs for fact checking my shitty italian, @the-boy-meets-evil for making sure i actually finished this fic bc i live to torture her and everyone else who contributed to this over the months it took me to finally write it!

this is from cheol's pov which was a new challenge but i loved it (i will never do it again). i'll be out of town when this goes up but can't wait to read everyone's feed back!!!

Summary: After months of no contact, Seungcheol isn't sure what to expect when he sees you again at Jeonghan's wedding. He's prepared to apologize, to grovel, to bear the weight of a cold shoulder. Whatever it takes to have you back, his best friend since diapers; or whatever will ensure the last third of your trio has the best day of his life. But when he overhears the most recent development in your relationship, he must come to terms with something he was never prepared for, or risk losing you for good.

m.list

This blog is intended for 18+ only! Minors/blank blogs will be blocked.

There are fewer places Seungcheol hates more than airports. Dentist offices, his grandparents’ house during the holidays when they ask about grandkids, and even the time he ran into his elementary school science teacher the first time he was buying condoms at the pharmacy, all were more favorable than the hustle and bustle of an international airport. 

Seungcheol likes to be straightforward and direct. Something that becomes seemingly at odds with the average person traveling because at the one place everyone has somewhere to be, they act as if they have all the time in the world.

But the simple thought that it's all temporary, that his personal ninth circle of hell is the only thing standing between him and a week in Italy is enough to grin and bear it. 

On the other side of the terminal, his best friends are waiting for him. It’s not as if they haven’t seen each other for long; Jeonghan and Sofie were at bar trivia last week as their last hurrah before tying the knot. As usual they wiped the floor with everyone, rousing several allegations of cheating that Jeonghan deserved. But Seungcheol is about to watch them get married and it makes him a little misty around the eyes because he loves his friends more than anything. 

The only concern, which is less of a concern and more of a titanic size anchor sinking in his gut, is that you’re one of Sofie’s bridesmaids. And you haven’t spoken to him since New Years when you revealed you were moving to New York with your boyfriend, Johnny.

Another place Seungcheol dreads, right next to the airport, is anywhere Johnny happens to be. He’s everything you aren’t: abrasive, arrogant, catty, disorganized. And those are just the traits at the front of the alphabet. 

You had a plan. A list of criteria he had to listen to over and over again after each failed date. Even the guys Seungcheol set you up with after carefully vetting didn’t seem to make the mark. It was respectable, commendable. You wouldn’t settle for anything less than “perfect.” Whatever that meant to you. 

At a bar, three years ago, Johnny approached you. Seungcheol watched from across the table as you mentally ran over your checklist. Johnny met the physical ones: tall, good hygiene, well kept appearance. The other things would need more investigation. What did he do for work? Was he close with his family? Kids? Opinions on cheating at bar trivia?

The more Seungcheol learned about Johnny after your detailed debrief from a few dates the more confused he became. Johnny worked in banking. You hated finance bros and called them scum of the dating pool. He was an only child and only talked to his parents on holidays and birthdays. You had grand dreams of close grandparents and houses full of cousins. He didn’t want kids. You did. He didn’t think bar trivia was that serious. Seungcheol watched you threaten Jeonghan’s life on more than one occasion over the use of Shazam during the music round. Johnny was everything you said you didn’t want. 

And then you followed him across the country after two years of dating cut with three breakups. 

It didn’t make sense. 

When Seungcheol pulled you aside after you announced you’d be moving, trying to figure why you thought living with the man who once asked if you really needed to wash bath towels if you only use them when you’re already clean, you told him to mind his business. Later that night, after enough drinks to make everything blurry, you two got into a screaming match on the sidewalk with your shared friends attempting to play referee. It was the last time you two spoke. 

In over twenty five years of friendship, founded on the backs of elementary school shenanigans under a reign of terror of one Jeonghan Yoon, you and Seungcheol’s real fights can be counted on one hand. 

The sixth grade field trip where you and Jeonghan left him out, senior year of highschool when the girl Seungcheol took to prom argued about his parents taking more pictures with you than her, and junior year of college when Seungcheol caught you making out with his frat brother after ditching him under the guise of having a stomach bug. That was it. Three fights, all of which were resolved within a week because as stubborn as you both are, you’re best friends. 

Five and a half months of not speaking, except when you called Seungcheol in the middle of the night without leaving a message and when he tried calling you back in the morning you didn’t answer. Not until a month later when he finally swallowed his pride and texted a half hearted apology to which you responded with a quarter of forgiveness. That was it. 

But Seungcheol won’t dwell. He refuses to make things awkward for Jeonghan and Sofie during the most special week of their lives. Knowing you, you’ve probably already come to the same resolution. The only person you’re closer to than Seungcheol is Jeonghan with Sofie a close second. If there is anyone you two will agree to put aside an argument for, it's them.

The sun has already begun setting when he makes it through customs and out towards the Arrivals, painting everything in buttery yellow. 

“SEUNGCHEOOOOOOOOOLLLLLL!” Sofie screams, hands cupped around her mouth.

She’s half outside the cherry red sports car. An Intermeccanica Italia Spyder because Seungcheol knows three things in life: expensive watches, expensive whiskey, and expensive cars. Sofie’s family happened to have plenty of the last and Seungcheol assumed the first two as well.

When Sofie became his study partner in law school she ended up following him on Instagram. He assumed from the way she carried herself, perfect posture with tailored clothes and an ‘air of society’ as you called it, that she was well off. But then, during a late night gossip session, you and he did a deep dive and found out Sofie wasn’t just well off. Her family had more money than God. 

But everything on the surface was a contrast to who Sofie really was. Heiress to a fortune but studied more than anyone in their class just to graduate second. Perfect posture and tailored clothes are a stark contrast to her favorite bar where she’d outdrink anyone, and cheer when the prize for trivia was cheap plastic margarita glasses.

Or right now, where she belts Seungcheol’s name again like some drunk frat boy while sitting in a car worth more than his life.

Seungcheol jogs to where she waits, already smiling. 

“I would have brought a ‘Welcome back from rehab’ sign but my mom thought you’d be embarrassed,” Sofie says as she hugs him over the console. 

“At least make it ‘welcome home from prison’ so people won’t walk in my way.”

“I’ll make sure Jeonghan remembers you have a preference,” she calls over the wind. 

Technically, the house (which is really a mansion) is almost an hour from the airport. With Sofie’s driving it only takes twenty minutes in which Seungcheol thinks he might need to start going to church. 

The pebbled driveway crunches underneath the tires as they approach the imposing building he’d call home for the weekend.

In the evening light, the house is more daunting. An imposing stone facade rises from the ground, akin to a small castle than an actual home. Smooth stone with detailed carvings, windows with huge shutters, and on the top floor, a balcony, fenced with wrought iron, juts out.

Even after years of seeing pictures, Seungcheol still can’t believe his friend grew up here. He can’t believe it actually exists and isn’t some set from a historical drama.

Sofie throws the car in park right in front of the door before jumping out. 

“By the way, there were some issues with one of the rooms.” Sofie drops her voice, “My aunt and uncle are fighting again, so I hope you don’t mind sharing?”

Seungcheol knows most of the guys coming to the wedding. Worst case scenario he’s stuck in a twin size bunk bed with a weird cousin. And with how busy he’ll be as best man, his room will be for sleep and not much else. “Yeah, that’s fine.”

“Perfect! Just leave your stuff, everyones out back.” Sofie pushes him as hard as she can manage which isn’t much at all given she’s five foot nothing. 

The garden is filled with bodies upon bodies crowded together, some old, some young. Seungcheol recognizes a few faces in the mix: Soonyoung, Joshua, Seungkwan. More friends from law school. Jeonghan’s sister waves from across the way. Everyone seems to be paying attention to whatever is happening at the iron garden table. 

And then, like a scene in a movie, everyone parts for a second and time freezes. 

Seungcheol would recognize you anywhere. Even if he can’t see your face, he knows it's you. The curve of your shoulders, the tilt of your head. The bark of laughter as your chin drops forward. He knows it's you and the weight in his stomach lightens and leadens in an odd cycle.

He missed you.

Then everything comes back into real time. Wine and cards. Then he sees the chips on the table, your stack to the side significantly higher than anyone else's. 

Months of ruminating over what he’d do when reunited fly out the window. Seungcheol doesn’t waste a minute as he approaches, hand on the back of your chair as he peeks over your head to sneak a glance at your hand.

“Who let you talk them into poker?”

You’re already smiling when you tilt back to look at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

Oh, how he missed you.

“She said she didn’t know how to play,” an old man grumbles from the side. 

Seungcheol doesn’t recognize him but he’s got the same expression as all the people you’ve sharked before: mildly impressed and slightly murderous. Two other guys sit at the table, one old enough to be his grandfather looks almost proud. Seokmin fills that last seat, head in his hands at being swindled so easily. 

“I said,” you start, throwing your gaze to him. “I hadn’t played in a while.” 

You look back up at Seungcheol for some kind of support. Eyes round and innocent in a way you both know you’re not. Pool, cards, darts, any game a man a few drinks in could beat you at was easy fodder for your con. Usually it ended with free drinks, sometimes money, but mostly it’s Seungcheol playing referee for the disillusioned guys you swindled while wearing a bright grin. 

Tossing a few chips towards the three men at table with a smart ‘don’t spend it all in one place,’ you rise and throw your arms around Seungcheol like everything is normal. 

“Hi,” you whisper into his neck.

Seungcheol’s hands are already curled around your waist, pulling you in tight. “Hi.”

“I missed you.”

Seungcheol doesn’t think to question the sudden rush of familiarity after months of silence. Every fight in your long friendship ended this way; you both stew and stew until one day things snap back to normal. It’s how it’s always been.

“I see that you can’t even greet your best friend.” Jeonghan coughs from the side.

Seungcheol squeezes you tighter at the jab. It’s Jeonghan’s wedding but Seungcheol saw him last week when dropping the couple off at the airport to come here. He’s far more interested in dragging out his reunion with you as long as possible. “I’m in the middle of that actually.”

He scoffs in response, walking away. “Whatever, I see too much of you anyway.” 

There’s glasses of wine waiting when you break apart. Seungcheol keeps closeby, not that you seem eager to go anywhere. His staring is obvious but he doesn’t care. You’re really here and the cold shoulder he expected to find is nowhere to be found.

Another two hours of celebrating, filled with drunken toasts and more card games with Sofie’s family that only end with you digging into their pockets even deeper, fly by before the exhaustion of a day starting in one continent and ending in another catches up to him. You’re too busy arguing over if Jeonghan cheated in the last round to notice Seungcheol slipping away from the table and towards the door leading inside.

Sofie is in the kitchen just beyond, another bottle of wine sloshing in hand as she talks animatedly on the phone. “Okay, look. I am on vacation. I’m about to get married. I literally left notes for everything I'm not working on during my wedding week. Figure it out. Bye.”

She hangs up without response, tossing her phone on the counter before taking a swig straight from the bottle.

“Good?” Seungcheol asks.

“Oh, you know, just the usual. I leave and suddenly no one knows how to do their job.” Sofie rolls her eyes. “What’s up? Need another glass?”

She raises the same bottle and the thought of more wine nearly turns his stomach.  

Seungcheol brushes her off, moving to the sink and rinsing his glass with finality. “I think I’m gonna crash for the night.”

“Really?” she asks. “But the party just started!”

“For you maybe, some of us have been cramped on a plane all day.” He feels it. In his back and knees. The cramp in his neck from passing out halfway through and waking up bent at ninety degrees. And the hours he spent agonizing through emails with the inflight WiFi because even on vacation he can’t sit still for more than one minute. But now it’s a ticking time bomb before he curls up in a chair and passes out until morning.

Sofie snatches his glass before shooing him away from the sink and taking his place. “I forgot you’re an old man now.”

“You’re the same age as me?”

“Anyway,” she sings. “I know we promised you’d have your own room but—”

“That’s fine. I really don’t mind rooming with one of the guys.”

“Well… you and Y/N were the only ones not sharing and she said she wouldn’t mind for the weekend.”

“Huh?”

“I thought it wouldn’t be a big deal! Seokmin and Kwan agreed to share and room with Josh so things are pretty tight but I can see if we can switch things around and—”

“No, if she’s okay with it then it's fine.” Seungcheol says. “We just haven’t talked since, you know?”

Sofie seems to soften at that. “I know. But it looked like everything was fine outside.”

“Yeah,” Seungcheol sighs. “I missed her.” 

“I know she missed you too.”

“She said that?”

“Oh please, neither of you have to say anything, you’re both pathetic,” she says while pouring another glass. “But I think this weekend will be good for you guys! Like old times.”

Old times. Before the fight. Before you moved away.

“Yeah, just like old times… At least we aren’t sharing a bed, right?” He jokes. 

“Actually,” Sofie grimaces. 

The one solace Seungcheol is gifted is the bed is massive. Almost the entire room is dominated by the plush mattress, a dresser, and a chair in the corner. He considers sleeping in that instead for all of a minute before realizing you probably wouldn’t let him and the absolute torture it’ll do to his neck. 

At least the forced proximity won’t be awkward since you’ve silently agreed to leave the past behind you. He can’t imagine Sofie would consider this solution if you were still mad at him, even if it was her wedding week. The realization lightens the weight on his shoulders an ounce more.

Seungcheol throws his bag down at the foot of the bed. It’s no big deal; sharing a room with you. Childhood sleepovers had been the norm, a few nights in college you’d shared a clunky old twin bed when you both were too drunk to find your ways home separately. Your first apartment together, when you two had to share a mattress on the floor for the first weeks because all your money went into paying rent, flash in his head. Old times.

Thirty minutes later, freshly showered and in clean clothes, Seungcheol heads back downstairs for a glass of water before bed.

He remembers where the kitchen is after Sofie’s short tour, trapezing through the huge house easily. Behind different closed doors he catches glimpses of pre-sleep conversations: couples spitting harsh whispers to each other, a few cartoonish voices reading bedtime stories to an audience of childish giggles. But when he reaches the threshold of his destination Seungcheol stumbles into an entirely different atmosphere.

“You haven’t told him yet?”

“No. I didn’t feel like the kind of thing to say over text,” you whisper.

“Well you could have called him!”

“And say what? ‘Hey Cheol, I know we haven’t talked in months because we got into a huge fight about my boyfriend but Johnny and I–’”

Seungcheol strains his ears to hear the rest of your sentence but fails to decipher anything before Jeonghan’s voice cuts in. Whatever ‘it’ is, you seem keen on keeping it a secret.

“Just tell him.” Jeonghan says through a mouthful of something. “I’m sure he’ll be happy.”

His mind races with a million possibilities, all related to Johnny, all things you wouldn’t have told your best friend of over twenty years because of some stupid fight. Something you don’t know how to tell him over the phone, something you need to tell in person.

The realization strikes like lightning.

You and Johnny are engaged.

Thirst forgotten, Seungcheol turns back the way he came. He thinks through the new information as he stumbles up the stairs.

How could you not tell him? How could he make you feel like you couldn’t tell him? How long have you been hiding this? And why did Jeonghan and Sofie know before he did? Was everyone in on the secret and he was the odd man out?

You and Johnny weren’t even that serious when you moved away; or, that's what Seungcheol thought. In all honesty he fully believed it was some joke when you told him. A drunken practical joke taken too far but you didn’t laugh when he did. There was no punchline to share. The boxes were packed away and then the moving truck came and you left with it. 

Everything else hits him in the seclusion of the bedroom. Your shared room. He doesn’t even have the luxury of coming to terms with your latest surprise in private. 

Seungcheol isn’t happy. He is, but because you’re you, argument aside. The past few months are the longest you’ve ever gone without each other and seeing you again lifted a weight off his chest he’d come accustomed to in months of silence. 

It’s an easy decision. If Johnny makes you happy enough to tie your lives together then Seungcheol can bite his tongue. You’re his best friend and by default he’d never think anyone was good enough for you but if you loved Johnny, if you were this serious about him, then Seungcheol would support you.

Even if it meant there would always be a Johnny sized ravine between you.

Seungcheol wakes far before the sun breaches the horizon. The room still washed in the shadows of early dawn grants him some peace to think over his own conflicts with the news, your quiet snores a backing track from across the bed.

On your side facing him, Seungcheol gets the first good look at you in what feels like forever. Even with the size of the bed barely a foot of space separates your bodies. You hand twisted in the hem of his shirt like even in your sleep you can’t stand to be apart more than necessary.

You look ridiculous; hair a mess and limbs splayed. But your face is soft in sleep, eyelashes fanned on your cheeks and lips in a pout. 

There’s an odd flutter in his stomach. He wasn't lying when he said he missed you. But now things are complicated. 

He hadn’t slept at all last night; mind constantly replaying the conversation he heard in the kitchen, formulating his reaction when you finally let him in on the ‘surprise.’

Perhaps under different circumstances he wouldn’t struggle with news. Seungcheol wants you to be happy. Johnny is the problem in the scenario. They never got along, barely spoke outside of the few times forced circumstances required them to. Seungcheol was polite. Johnny was polite. 

Seungcheol wanted to kill him and he’s certain Johnny felt the same.

Relationships naturally take priority over time but Johnny seemed to creep in and choke Seungcheol out of all the places he’d been firmly planted for years. Another reason he isn’t happy.

Monday night Bachelor? Canceled, because Johnny plays beer league softball with his friends and you started going to that.

No more sleepovers at Seungcheol’s after a night out because ‘it makes Johnny uncomfortable.’ Fair complaint. Seungcheol wouldn’t appreciate his girlfriend sleeping over at a guy's house after drinking if the roles were reversed. But Seungcheol isn’t some guy and you were his best friend before you were Johnny’s girlfriend.

Traditions at Christmas felt hollow without you. The first one you spent meeting Johnny’s family in Minnesota you texted Seungcheol the entire time about how cold it was, how they were a 5k on a holiday type family despite the fact there was three feet of snow outside. 

All small details that mean everything to Seungcheol, never meant as much to you. 

And that’s why he doesn’t like Johnny. Because he made Seungcheol realize that.

It’s not that you and Johnny didn’t work. Seungcheol just couldn’t wrap his head around why you wanted to overlook all the glaring differences to make it work.

But pointing that out left him with a cold shoulder lasting six months so he plans to keep his mouth shut.

You tried talking to him before bed but gave up when he pretended to be asleep. It took everything he had not to give in and talk into the early morning. Six months was more than enough ground to cover for you two to catch up; he was promoted, you had an entirely new life in another city that he wanted to hear all about. His insane neighbor from across the hall, who you both are sure sells drugs, is actually a preschool teacher (mysteries of the universe). And he knows you probably have kooky neighbors of your own in New York.

But, in all honesty, he didn’t want to hear stories with Johnny’s name attached. Wasn’t ready to hear you say you’re engaged. It’s one thing to know it. But the second the words leave your lips then it’s real. Then Johnny is here to stay and it's only a matter of time before you two are arguing again.

Especially when everything said months ago was still fresh in his mind. Words he’d stand by no matter what. But Seungcheol has figured out that there are conversations he’s allowed to have with you and ones that should never see the light of day if your friendship is to survive. Johnny is one, the other is a memory from college that remains vivid no matter how hard he tries to forget.

But this weekend wasn’t about you and him, it's about Sofie and Jeonghan. If Seungcheol can dive into focusing on them, maybe he’ll survive.

Today is the one day reserved for sightseeing before ‘the inevitably disorganized shit show of an Italian wedding’ as Sofie puts it. 

Seungcheol has already seen some of the big things thanks to his study abroad in undergrad: the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon. So for today, he'll stick by whatever you want to do. You’re the building nerd architect.

When he finally finds the willpower to roll away, carefully extracting your grip on him before ducking from the sheets, you stir enough to release a sleepy whine in protest before burying back under the blanket. 

It’s odd but he notices you’re not wearing a ring. Seungcheol looked closely if you took it off before bed but nothing stands out in the bathroom or on the dresser. He assumes you took it off to make the weekend about Sofie and Jeonghan rather than yourself. It’s something you would do. Or maybe it’s at the jeweler’s for repairs. Maybe Johnny had gaudy taste and bought a ring so flashy you refused to wear it. 

Seungcheol doesn’t know but it strikes him as strange.

The kitchen is already bustling with life even at such an early hour. Family and friends trickle in one by one, joining Seungcheol at the table with cups of coffee and munching on fruit and biscuits as their hangovers ebb. Quickly, the peace he preserved in the early quiet melts into loud laughter and a million buzzing conversations.

You melt into the chair beside him, eyes barely open as you snag his cup and scowl after finding it already drained.

“Coffee?” you mumble.

Seungcheol pushes his plate of unfinished fruit and a half finished pastry you way. “Sofie’s mom is brewing more. But it’s strong.”

“Oh trust me, I know,” you say around a mouthful of jam and dough. “I drank a full cup the first day I got here and felt like Sonic.”

“That’s how you know it’s good.”

“You’re insane.”

“What are your plans for today?”

“So there's this church, the Santa Maria Sopra della Minerva. It’s near the Pantheon!” you ramble, peeling another orange. “It’s just beautiful and it's got a statue by Michelangelo next to the altar and the design is incredible.”

Seungcheol can’t help but laugh at your enthusiasm. A city filled with ancient buildings and history is right up your alley. 

He remembers how you pouted when he came back from his trip in college after yours to Venice was canceled due to ‘not enough student interest.’ The only thing that managed to quell your anger was all the pictures Seungcheol took with you in mind. Close ups of the tiniest details about ancient designs tour guides pointed out to disinterested business majors but he knew you’d care if you’d been there. If you were there then you’d probably be leading the tour yourself whether the guide liked it or not.

“Mind if I come with?” he asks over his fresh cup of coffee.

“Duh,” you roll your eyes with a smile. “I waited for you to get here to go.”

Sofie’s uncle, the one not under threat of murder by his wife, agrees to drive you both out. He drives at full speed from the second he hits the gas pedal. With the windows down. The breeze is as nice as a wind tunnel and cuts off everything Zio Berto tries to point out except for his screams at other drivers. 

On the other side of the back seat, you’re turning green. Seungcheol is glad the window is already down because if you get sick, he will too. And Sofie would refuse any payment for the cleaning fee, Seungcheol is morally opposed to ruining such a nice car with vomit.

The city whips past outside the windows, cobblestone streets slowly growing more crowded as the car edges closer to the center city. Berto finally slows down to avoid pedestrians and mopeds but only by a fraction. He doesn’t seem to share Seungcheol’s concern about body fluids clashing with the car design.

Finally, after what feels like a century, the car jerks to a stop. You don’t even pretend to be polite and exit immediately, hands on your knees while dry heaving for air.

“I’ll be around. Have fun!” Berto calls from the driver's seat. “Call me when you’re ready to head back.”

Seungcheol waves him off and when he turns back where you were standing, you’re already gone; circling the elephant obelisk in the center of the cobblestone courtyard.

“Isn’t it so cool?” You gush, snapping photos.

The exterior of the building is unassuming. Flat sandstone brick without much detail but you see the things that are important. In a few minutes you’ll be in tour guide mode, pointing out the smallest crack no one would see unless they already studied the church's history in depth.

“Soooo cool,” he jests. He appraises the statue with you, turning his head this way and that. 

You slap his shoulder, “Don’t be a jerk!”

“Okay, okay. Give me the tour.”

“It was built on the ruins of a temple of Isis.”

“Okay, and why the elephant?”

“The obelisk was taken from the Church of San Stefano del Cacco down that way,” you point. “It's originally from Sais in Egypt but got moved all the way here. The elephant was commissioned by the pope to display it based on a book that was popular at the time.”

“Interesting.” 

You point at the inscription on the plinth before continuing, “that’s from the book.”

Sapientis Aegypti insculptas obelisco figuras ab elephanto, belluarum fortissima, gestari quisquis hic vides, documentum intellege robustae mentis esse solidam sapientiam sustinere.

“Whoever you are, who sees here the figures of the Egyptian wise man carved on the obelisk carried by the elephant, the strongest of wild animals, understand the symbolism to be that a strong mind supports firm wisdom,” you translate. 

“I didn’t know you read latin.”

“I don’t. It’s in English on the other side,” you laugh. “But I do know, the guy who designed the statue made it look like it's farting because the pope told him to change the design from what he originally wanted.”

“Really?”

“Yep. He said having it stand on four legs was dangerous so the sculptor added the saddle and a cube at the base, but he also made its butt face the convent so the friars would have to see its ass every time they came out.”

“Wow.”

Seungcheol circles the statue and sure enough the tail is angled to look like it's blowing wind.

“I’m pretty sure it’s a lie but I’d like to think people were that petty hundreds of years ago. Now all people do is subtweet and post vague Instagram stories. I want someone to hate me so much they design an entire statue just to minorly inconvenience me each morning.”

You’re fully of facts Seungcheol would never know. It’s one of the best parts of visiting places with you. It’s not just some building or some random statue. You give the architecture a new life.

Seungcheol’s mind flashes back to the first time he accompanied you and Johnny to a monument back home. In the five minutes you’d been there, he realized Johnny truly did not care about your interests.

The look on your face that day told him you realized Johnny didn’t care either.

It’s the same pact everyone that moves to D.C. makes to visit all the museums and monuments and landmarks. Good intentions with zero realistic goals. Except you’re stubborn and the drive to say you did something means Seungcheol has tagged along to thirty out of the one hundred and fifteen on your list. Johnny missed most either from work trips or some other excuse and the one Seungcheol missed had been the only one Johnny came to because of the flu.

Safe to say the first time visiting together was a shit show. Johnny didn’t pretend to evaluate the ‘important’ parts, didn’t ask questions or bother reading the placards detailing events of significance, raced through the entire thing to leave you and Seungcheol behind. It’s not like you or Seungcheol were overwhelmed with beauty and needed hours but Johnny finished his round after less than thirty minutes and told you to text him when you were done. 

So Seungcheol did the only thing he could to get back at Johnny without upsetting you: walked as slow as possible, pointing out things he knew you’d know more about, and dragging things out so Johnny was stuck waiting in the frigid winter wind outside to suffer.

You knew what he was doing, obvious from the way you hook your arm through his and give an affection squeeze. Your smile didn’t reach your eyes but you both pushed through.

Thank whatever powers be that Johnny wasn’t here now.

“See the windows?” you ask, pointing to the three different sized circular windows hanging over the main doorways. 

“Yeah,” he nods.

“Well you can’t tell from here but they’re rose tinted.”

Seungcheol tries to see what you’re talking about but the windows are dark and covered in some kind of lacquer that makes them look gray and dusty rather than pink.

“And why is that important, Professor Y/L/N?”

“Because it’s the only medieval church in Rome like that!” 

You continue rambling off facts, talking a mile a minute as your point at different things and walk Seungcheol around the exterior. A few other people's ears perk up as you go on about how the details had been done over and over; first Romanesque, then Gothic then, some guy named Carlo Maderno added Baroque designs inside, and friars who put in stained glass windows.

By the time you take a breath, the crowd has taken a closer interest in the windows and the elephant statue due to your brief history. A few look at the flood plaques which are some of the best preserved records the city has.

Seungcheol hangs onto every word. He doesn’t care about the old church, it’s an interesting bit of history sure but he could be outside any church in Rome and have the same reaction. He cares about the church because you care. And your passion about old windows and flood markers make it the most interesting place in the world right now.

“Go stand on the steps so I can take your picture,” you demand.

“Do I have to?” Seungcheol jokingly complains.

“Just go.”

Seungcheol poses as you direct, flashing a few silly poses you laugh at. He manages to wrangle you into taking a few photos as well. Ones that will probably be sent to your mom and never see the light of day other than her Facebook. Your Instagram is reserved for, in order: buildings, animals, food, and the rare picture of you with friends at some sort of occasion (wedding, graduation, the time Jeonghan broke his leg drunk on a city scooter and ended up in the ER). 

You’re in the middle of pretending to hold the Leaning Tower of Pisa when someone approaches Seungcheol.

“Would you like us to take your photo?” an elderly woman asks. She is a quintessential tourist: fanny pack, camera around her neck, sun burnt around the ears. A man in a matching shirt approaches with her, donning the same gear and pink tinge. Seungcheol recognizes them from a few minutes prior when you gave your lecture about elephant butts and petty sculptors.

“Sure, thank you.”

He hands over his phone and joins you on the steps. You both pose like normal adults, smiles plastered on your face while Seungcheol gives you bunny ears and you pull his hair.

“Beautiful couple!”

“Oh, we’re not…” You both object.

“We’re on our second honeymoon.” The man croons at his wife, chuffed when she rolls her eyes and focuses on the camera screen. “You two?”

“We’re here for a wedding.”

“Wow! Married in Rome,” the wife gasps. “How romantic.”

It isn’t the first time you two have been mistaken for a couple. Anytime you’re with him or Jeonghan someone assumes you’re dating. Occasionally, you’d play it up, make an entire story about how you met, how long you’ve been together, biting your tongues the entire time as each detail is more ludicrous than the last.

Jeonghan takes the cake as the most ridiculous. Two tornado chasers that ran into each other ten years ago and never let go. Him and Seungcheol, not you. Which really threw the waitress off. Never mind the fact you all were sophomores in college, high as kites and stuffing yourselves full of hashbrowns in a greasy spoon diner for Seungcheol’s birthday.

“Did you two meet here?” the husband asks.

“Oh no, we actually met in a competitive bowling league,” you fib, wrapping your arm through Seungcheol’s.

What the hell?

“Romantic!” The wife belts like she actually believes nothing could inspire love like sharing shoes with countless strangers and cheap beer.

Seungcheol would take the piss under any other circumstances. Except this time you’re actually engaged and the last time you two pretend to be a couple was when you fake proposed to him in a fancy restaurant to score free champagne and dessert to celebrate the end of law school.

“Would you mind taking a few of us?” the man asks.

You snap a few pictures on the wife’s phone and after more coos of ‘romantic!’ and a few thank yous they melt into the crowd.

“Alright, let's go inside.”

“Lead the way.” Seungcheol feels more awkward than before, cheeks red but not from the sun beating down

Upon entering the church, he discovers the inside is much more interesting than the outside. Holy water stoups are held up by marble. Two statues flank the entrance. There’s more things to see than Seungcheol’s brain can handle but he follows behind you, mind lingering on the scene outside.

“‘My husband’?” Seungcheol asks.

“What? We won’t see them again. Who cares?”

Probably your own fiancé but just as Seungcheol opens his mouth a priest silences him with a sharp, “SHH!”

Passing through a high stone archway, you enter the nave. The ceiling, cobalt and gold with motifs of  biblical figures and cherubs, rises high above. 

“Look!” you whisper. “Isn’t it cool?”

Your point at a marble Jesus wearing a bronze loin cloth.

Cool isn’t the word he’d choose but he goes with it.

“Michelangelo started it but two other people had to finish it for him.”

“Oh.”

“But people still call it Michelangelo’s statue because it’s more impressive. Besides, he did most of it before his apprentice took over.”

He observes the paintings and statues, the stone work that bulges from the walls like they’re trying to come alive and escape their immortal capture. There’s even a tomb and shrine with incredible detail. 

It takes two hours to see everything and another thirty minutes to make your way out of the church because you both keep catching missed signs or there's some tiny piece of the ceiling with an odd detail.

He missed this.

Outside, you open your phone and look at the message from Sofie. She made the recommendation to come down here and gave an extensive list of everything else to be done in the area. There’s so many options it would take at least a week to see half of them.

“This hotel has a rooftop restaurant that’s supposed to have a good view of St. Peters,” you say.

The restaurant would have a great view of the city, if it wasn’t shut down for renovations. The staff don’t even let you near the elevator before you’re both swept outside and back on the street.

“Well…” Seungcheol starts.

“Should we call Berto?”

He doesn’t want to. Partially because Berto’s driving might kill him and also because he doesn’t want to end his time with you just yet. One of the things he missed about you living in the same city was weekends in museums for hours. Now that he has it again, he hesitates to cut the time short.

“Wait, I think we’re near one of the parks we visited when I came in college.”

“Oh my god,” you gasp sarcastically. “Did you study abroad? I never knew!”

“Shut up.”

Seungcheol pulls out his phone and dials Berto’s number. “Hey, Berto. No, we're good, everything is fine. But I was wondering how far away is Villa Borghese from us? Oh really? Would you be able to come drop us off? Awesome. Thanks man.”

“Well?”

“He’ll be here in five.”

Five minutes turns into fifteen and in that time Seungcheol burns out. Jetlag and the dull thrums of city streets make him sleepy. You sit in front of him on a bench outside the church. He thought he was better at hiding it but he’s pretty sure if he sits down, he’ll fall asleep.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” you ask once Berto arrives. “We can go back to the house if you want.”

There’s an unofficial official itinerary for today.

Anything before four is fair game. After that there is a welcome cocktail party at a fancy restaurant in the city one of the De Luca’s family friends own.

If Seungcheol doesn’t go home now then it’ll be a close call to nap and shower in time. Not that Sofie is exceptionally punctual about things like that but Seungcheol is.

“I don’t want you not to see stuff just because I’m tired.”

“Cheol, I’ve been here all week with Sofie and Han. I promise this was the only thing left on my list of stuff to do. Anything else would have been a bonus.”

“Only if you're sure.”

“We can always come back again. I’m pretty sure Sofie’s mom is decorating a room for me.”

Yeah, because most men are fine with their fiancée taking international trips with another man. Not that you’d listen or Johnny has the balls to say something about it. But Seungcheol knows the chances of coming back here together, like this, are slim to nonexistent.

“Alright. But you can’t bring it up in an argument.”

“I can and I will.” The corner of you mouth twitches as your head shakes before opening the back seat for him. “Now get in the car, old-timer.” 

Seungcheol falls asleep on your shoulder in a blink. Berto is quiet (or the open windows drown him out enough that Seungcheol can pretend) and the heat of your body next to his lulls his heart. It’s not a peaceful rest and his neck is killing him by the time Berto pulls into the driveway, but it’s nice.

Seungcheol beelines for the bathroom while you slip into the kitchen. Something about centerpieces or napkins or tablecloths; he isn’t really sure but Sofie’s mom says it's urgent so he goes upstairs alone, showers in record time, and dives under the covers.

His dreams are filled with blue and gold elephants, He wakes to the sound of your voice blended with the sound of water.

You’re singing. More so humming some off key melody that bounces off the shower tiles and echoes straight into his brain. It drags him in that liminal space between waking and dreaming where anything is possible. Maybe he’s still dreaming. Of you and him, back when you shared an apartment and things weren’t so complicated. When there weren’t secrets and omissions and he didn’t have to bite his tongue.

His eyes stay closed, refusing to budge until the last minute.

The shower turns off but the humming continues, louder now that you’re out of the bathroom and collecting your things.

You must think Seungcheol is still asleep because when his eyes slit open, only enough to decipher your hazy silhouette, you’re in nothing but a towel. A very very tiny towel that hides nothing but the necessary bits and even then only barely. 

He can’t wake up now. Not when you bend over to look in your suitcase for Seungcheol closed his eyes just in time. But it doesn’t stop his brain from latching on to every sound in the quiet of the room; the humming tickling across your lips, the wet thump! of your towel on the ground. Oh god, now you’re not even wearing a towel. 

Seungcheol won’t be that friend. He never has. Or has always tried not to be. But teenage hormones make a young boy’s brain untamable so it’d be a lie to say he’s never thought of you like that. But despite his feelings, Seungcheol has made sure they never became a factor in your friendship.

Even though there is a peace of his soul that will always belong to you.

So he pretends to be asleep, forcibly controlling his breathing while you shuffle around the room none the wiser to his rising predicament.

Finally, you disappear back into the bathroom to change and Seungcheol’s lungs stretch with air until they burn.

You look pretty. Objectively. You glow in the late afternoon sun pouring in from the window, a ditsy floral print dress of orange and cream that hugging your figure; delicate collar bones on display under the flimsy straps and the column of your neck bare save for the necklace you’ve worn everyday since your parents bought it for your sixteenth birthday.

“C’mon sleepy head,” you whisper.

Seungcheol is thrilled his gawking is easily disguised as jetlag.

He changes in the bathroom. Taking a moment to grip the sink, his reflection stares back in the mirror. It’s the exhaustion and dehydration making his brain muddle. Nothing to do with you or him.

It’s fine. Everything is perfectly fine.

The downstairs foyer is in complete chaos but Sofie commands the room like she always does from the top of the stairway.

“Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Are you ready?” She yells like a WWE announcer.

Cheers rise up from the gaggle of adults. Cousins, friends, parents, aunts and uncles. Most of them Seungcheol has never seen before and is pretty sure neither have Jeonghan or Sofie but it’s fine. The more the merrier.

Except when different cars end up filled to the brim and you end up sitting on Seungcheol’s lap instead of a seat.

His heart leaps with every bump, yo

ur hair flying into his face and leaving the sweet smell of perfume to flood his senses. Seungcheol can’t even think about that because Sofie’s Zia Linda puts her husband's driving to shame.

At some point you nearly fly out the open window–Why does no one believe in keeping the windows up?– and Seungcheol is forced to wrap an arm around your waist to keep you from ending up a part of the cobblestone road.

“Sorry,” you say. The squeeze at his arm tells him your thankful at least something is stopping you from becoming roadkill.

“It’s fine.”

If you notice his strained breath, you don’t say anything.

The rooftop restaurant is gigantic but with everyone it feels small and crowded. Below, all of Rome spreads out. Lights twinkle in the distance and the moon is heavy overhead, ready for a night of revelry. It’s a welcome party so things are casual, finger foods and drinks flow heavily while everyone mingles.

Sofie and Jeonghan laugh at their own table, holding court with family and friends that flood in and out with congratulations. They’re good at it. Jeonghan ventures on the more introverted side but Sofie could have a meaningful conversation with a pile of rocks. 

You're off at another table, talking with Soonyoung and Seungkwan, a second glass of wine in hand. Laughter rings out and he feels drawn to it like a siren call. It was foolish to worry that the scar from Johnny wouldn’t heal over eventually. All you two needed was time.

Seungcheol barely leaves your side during the party. You dance and drink and dance some more until you’re both left in a heap at the same table by the dance floor. Soonyoung and Seokmin provide ample distraction, taking to the floor to do…something Seungcheol hesitates to call dancing because it resembles a child's idea of a circus. 

Dancing, food, and wine leave him feeling loose and sleepy. You’re not much better, head on his shoulder and hand tangled with his across your knees.

“Cheol?”

“Yeah?”

“I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

His shirt is unbuttoned, sleeves rolled high. In the back of the car on the ride home, you trace the muscle of his forearms draped over your waist until it lulls him to sleep.

Back at the house, you, Sofie, Jeonghan, and Seungcheol throw out sleepy goodnights and I love you’s before retreating to your separate corners of the house. Jeonghan is technically staying in a room in the same wing as you two (Sofie’s house is big enough to have an east and west wing which still shocks him). Something about family tradition and bad luck for the wedding but Jeonghan follows his fiancée like a shadow to her room at the opposite end of the house without theatrics.

And then there’s just you two.

You lean on each other the entire walk up, like you need the other support or you’ll crumble to the floor and sleep there. Honestly, it’s not a bad idea. Seungcheol has slept in worse places.

The stairs present their own challenges. You go first, Seungcheol right behind in case you fall backwards which has happened enough times that it’s become a habit to walk this way when alcohol is involved. But it doesn’t solve the issue of you tripping up.

Which you do with an effortless lack of grace on the last step.

“Oh, shit!” you giggle.

Seungcheol laughs so hard his knees buckle and he flops on the floor next to you like a dying fish.

“Shhh!” you slur, finger pressed to his lips. “People are sleeping.”

But you're cackling now and he can’t breathe from the painful quaking laughter rooting in his belly. He’s on his back, and you prop up on your arm to loom over him. Twin smiles breaking your faces, eyes watering with drunken mirth.

You go silent first, tracing his features silently like they must be committed to memory. Seungcheol does the same. You’re exactly the same as the day you left. Except for the vacation glow from being here for the past week. He recognizes all the parts of you he’s known for a lifetime. The silver scar on your chin from learning to ride a bike and crashing into a tree. The color of your eyes. The blush of your mouth.

The finger pressed to his lips traces along the plump flesh, then his chin, then it circles the back of his head and you’re ducking down.

Alarms go off in Seungcheol’s head screaming: 

DANGER! DANGER! THIS IS NOT WHAT FRIENDS DO! DANGER!

“Wow, it’s late,” he laughs horsley as he rolls away and to his feet. 

You jump away, dazed for a second before laughing as well. “Yeah, let’s um…let’s go to bed.”

He can’t quite read your expression. Several  emotions swirl across your face but Seungcheol can barely look at you without feeling his face heat so he doesn’t linger. 

Seungcheol takes the bathroom after you finish, rushing through his night time routine in sober silence. 

You're drunk. That’s the only reason you’re trying to kiss him. Or he had something on his mouth and you can’t find the words to tell him. It was a mistake. A momentary lapse of judgment that didn’t mean anything.

It wasn’t even a fraction of an almost kiss. Your noses barely touched, it doesn’t count.

When he comes back into the room, you’re curled up on the bed in your pajamas asleep.

Seungcheol circles to the other side, slipping under the covers and getting comfortable. The room feels smaller after what just happened. But it wasn’t a big deal. Nothing happened. You both were drunk and missed each other. You never would have kissed him.

Despite the fact the first, and only, time you two kissed was in very similar circumstances.

Rolling over, you find him and cuddle into his chest. Seungcheol opens his arms for you on instinct. 

“Did you have fun today?” you ask into his collarbone. The vibration of your voice tickles but it’s dulled from Seungcheol’s heart thudding wildly.

“Yeah.”

His hand smooths the back of your hair, down your back. You readjust, throwing a leg over his own and pulling him in tight.

“Good,” you say around a yawn. “Me too.”

Seungcheol tamps down the piece of him that wants to indulge in this. Just holding you, pretending things outside the door don’t exist and it’s just you and him and no one else. 

But he can’t do that.

“You know,” he starts. “I’m happy for you no matter what, right? You and Johnny…I’m happy for you.”

Seungcheol waits for a response that will never come because you’re out cold, snoring against his chest.

You’re still asleep when Seungcheol wakes around noon. Sometime in the night you shifted to the far side of the bed, taking the blanket with you. He doesn’t try to wake you, still confused at exactly what happened last night.

Seungcheol isn’t naive. He knows what women look like when they want to be kissed, when they're thinking about how his mouth will feel against theirs. Usually he revels in it; loves the flare to his ego, the chance to tease before giving in.

But to see the expression on your face sent him into a panic. He’s seen it once before, indulged in it, and it ruined his life for the better part of college. Lips parted, eyes glassy as you stared. All the telltale signs were there: the lift of your chin, hands twisted in his shirt, eyes drooped low.

And the worst part was you did all that despite having a fiance waiting back home none the wiser. Even if Seungcheol couldn’t stand Johnny, he’d never do that. Never allow you to do that. 

Even if he wanted nothing more than to feel your lips on his.

He heads as far away as he can. Turns out it’s down stairs for breakfast. Sofie is at the kitchen table, typing on her laptop.

“Morning,” Seungcheol croaks.

“You look like shit. Wild night?”

“Just some old timers thinking they’re twenty one again.”

“What assholes.” She laughs. “How's Y/N?”

Seungcheol freezes like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar. Sofie couldn’t know what almost but certainly didn’t happen in the hallway last night. “She’ll probably need an exorcism but she’ll survive.”

“By the way, I meant to give her this last night but everything was crazy. Can you pass it off? Jeonghan and I have to take my grandma to lunch and she’s already called twice sooooo…”

“Yeah, go. Have fun.”

Sofie is up and out before he can blink, a tiny piece of cardstock left in her place.

Kira Long

Artisan Jeweler

Her social media and number are at the bottom but Seungcheol doesn’t need more information.

He hides around the villa most of the day. Catching up with the guys around the pool, feigning fatigue when you come out to join. The gardens are big enough for him to disappear into for a few hours before he needs to go and get ready.

Unfortunately, that also means you are getting ready. 

A leg.

That’s all Seungcheol sees when he opens the door.

Your leg specifically, propped on the dresser while you apply lotion in nothing but that damn skimpy towel designed to torture him.

“AH!” you shriek, shocked by his sudden entrance. 

“I’m sorry!” he shouts.

The fabric unravels around your chest and suddenly you're naked and Seungcheol is not looking. 

“What the fuck? Have you ever heard of knocking?”

He’s not.

“Why are you naked?”

The ceiling is very interesting. 

“Because I wanted to scare you.” you scream sarcastically. The door to the hallway is still open. Seungcheol either stays in with you or goes back out because it can’t stay open much longer. He makes the fatal mistake of locking himself inside with you. “Because I thought you’d knock, you fucker! Jesus fucking Christ, turn around.”

Seungcheol saw you naked. 

He hides in the bathroom like a wimp until it’s time to leave.

—

It’s a short walk to the church down the street for the rehearsal ceremony. It’s all a blur given the million and one things flying through his brain; most of them you. You in your towel. The fact you’re engaged. You looking at him like you’re dying to be kissed. The fact you’re engaged. How everyone has assumed you’re a couple this entire weekend and you’ve played along. The fact you are engaged to a man that isn’t him and Seungcheol can’t help but feel bitter about it for a completely different reason than he ever thought he would be. 

Luckily, the ceremony is only planned to last less than an hour. He knows he isn’t subtle but he tries to grin and bear it for his friends. He can see the same sentiment in you. Your smile doesn’t quite fit but Seungcheol can’t think about what it could be about. 

“Do you take this man…”

Was it his rejection? It wouldn’t make sense if it was. You’re his best friend but not even that dictates cheating. You weren’t the type; in your own words cheating was more pathetic than ghosting someone as a form of break up. 

He doesn’t get it.

“I always love you even though you sleep like a princess, my love,” Sofie gushes.

“And I’ll forgive you for snoring like an old man, love of my life.” Jeonghan fires back.

They’re saving their real vows, the one Seungcheol helped Jeonghan with, for the ceremony. Even with all the confusion swirling in his head, he can’t wait for Sofie to hear what Jeonghan has in store.

The priest is less than impressed but moves forward like he can’t wait to have them out of his congregation as fast as possible.

“Okay, and you two leave and the wedding party follows…”

Seungcheol offers his arm to the Maid of Honor, Maria, guiding her back down the aisle where Jeonghan and Sofie bicker. You follow with Seokmin, break away the second it's polite with some excuse about needing the bathroom before you dissolve into the crowd.

The dinner is back at the house. The outside is lined with chairs crowded around tables covered in exploding bouquets and candles. Family members and friends weave to and fro, drinks and food flowing heavily.

You’re talking to Seokmin in the corner of the courtyard, a glass of wine already in your hand as you laugh along to whatever the other man said. 

“So Sofie said you’re a lawyer?” Maria asks. 

“Yeah, that’s how we became friends. I actually was the one who introduced her and Jeonghan.”

“Wow, so you’re a lawyer and a matchmaker.” 

Seungcheol laughs at the compliment. Introducing Sofie and Jeonghan had been a complete accident with unintended consequences. “I wouldn’t say that. I thought Sofie would strangle him the first time they met.”

“Oh, I heard all about that. When Sofie told me they started dating I thought she must’ve meant a different Jeonghan.”

Maria makes good company through the first rounds of drinks before dinner is served. She takes his focus away from you, how your leg presses against his under the table. She grew up down the road, went to school with Sofie all the way through undergrad. Her boyfriend, Jihoon, is a surgeon back in Seattle while she works in marketing. Unfortunately getting time off for a second year resident verges on impossible so he couldn’t come to the wedding.

“You two are so cute together, how long have you been dating?” Maria asks before taking a swig of her drink.

“Oh we’re not together,” Seungcheol corrects swiftly.

You give a tense nod of agreement. 

“Really?”

“Yep. We grew up together. She’s like my sister.” 

He sounds like an asshole. The words are bile but there can be no room for incorrect interpretations. This weekend had been nothing but confusing so far. Seungcheol needs to set himself straight on where he stands with you.

“Oh,” Maria nods. “Okay. So Y/N, are you dating anyone?”

“Actually I—”

Your response fizzles out because Jeonghan’s dad rises from his seat for a speech.

“I want to take a moment to express my deepest appreciation to everyone here this weekend to celebrate Sofie and Jeonghan. I remember the first time he told us about her, how happy he was and thought ‘oh this poor girl doesn’t know what she’s gotten herself into’.” There’s a smatter of laughter throughout the room. Sofie leans into Jeonghan’s shoulder and he places a kiss on her temple. “But then I met Sofie and I can say, without a doubt, there are very few people more perfect for each other than those two. Sofie, welcome to our family.”

Dinner passes, course after course and more wine until Seungcheol physically can’t have any more. You and Maria hit it off, rambling about Jihoon’s two cats and the abandoned kitten that hangs out around his work he’s trying to bribe into coming home. You barely look at him during the conversation but he prefers it.

Dessert comes with coffee and then everyone dissolves. Some stay around the tables to chat and drink and laugh, others help clean up. But Seungcheol, Jeonghan, and the groom's party head for the back gardens, Seungkwan already queueing up the song for one last practice.

It’s tradition, in southern Italy at least, for the groom to serenade his bride-to-be the night before their wedding. Seungcheol couldn’t believe Jeonghan was planning to go through with such tradition but he’s seen the man do more for Sofie than he thought he was capable of so it shouldn’t come as a shock.

The warm summer air does good for his mood, as does laughing with the guys when Soonyoung and Seungkwan get into a wrestling match after debating if they step-shuffle for three or four counts. But they all agree with four because it’s easier to remember.

The top floor balcony at the front of the house turns out to be Sofie’s room. The light floods out of the open doors, and two sets of giggles pour down to where they stand.

Jeonghan cups his hands around his mouth and calls, “Juliet, Juliet! Let down your hair!” 

“That’s not the saying.” Seungcheol corrects. 

“Shut up, I’m talking to my wife.”

“That’s not the saying!” Sofie laughs from above. 

You and Sofie peek over the side of the iron terrace, grins already splitting your faces. You knew what was happening. It’s why you whisked Sofie away with whatever distraction you could think of while the men gathered outside for a quick last minute dry run. Something about broken heels and needing to borrow a pair of shoes.

“Sofie Cosima De Luca, you are the love of my life.” Jeonghan yells. He’s drunk on love (and a lot of champagne). “I can’t wait to marry you tomorrow. I just hope after this you still want to marry me. Hit it!”

The obscenely large speaker Seungcheol carried out starts humming the instrumental to Sofie and Jeonghan’s song. The very one Jeonghan drunkenly serenaded her with in a dingy bar, back when she didn’t believe he could handle a serious relationship and he was hopelessly wrapped around her finger.

“I’ve got sunshineeeeeeee on a cloudy day…” Jeonghan croons.

“Oh my god,” Sofie cackles.

Everyone else joins in, harmonizing in the back along with the choreo Seungkwan and Soonyoung came up with. A simple side step with occasional jazz hands (much to Soonyoung’s tipsy dismay). “I guess you’d say what can make me feel this way?” 

“MY GIRL,” Jeonghan belts his line, smiling dumbly.

You’re watching the shenanigans unfold, smiling as well. But while you're looking at everyone else, the only person Seungcheol can look at is you; the way your eyes gleam in the moonlight, your chin tipping back to laugh when Jeonghan’s voice cracks. You’re breathtaking. For a brief moment, barely a passing thought in the roaring river of his brain focused on his cue to sing and side step when needed, Seungcheol imagines what it would be like if you two were the only ones around.

Chalking it up to the moment, Seungcheol thinks about anything else as they finish the performance.

The music dwindles away and all that's left is Jeonghan staring up at his future wife as the rest of the group takes exaggerated bows. Other guest peek from windows or the edge of the drive way, cheering loudly.

“Bravi! Bravissimi!” Sofie cries as you both clap. “Can I make a request?”

Jeonghan nods like an eager puppy in response.

“Sing the Thong Song!” you both request through giggles.

“That's for after the wedding.” Jeonghan winks.

Time for Seungcheol to do his best man duties and prevent Jeonghan from making a complete ass of himself. "Alright Casanova, let’s go.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow!” Jeonghan calls over his shoulder, fighting against everyone ushering him away.

“Don’t be late!” Sofie demands.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” 

After returning Jeonghan to his room for the night, Seungcheol heads back to his completely unprepared to see you again. Too many feelings swirl in his head. Feelings he thought he finally left back in college.

He remembers only a few key events of his early childhood. When he lost his first tooth, when he broke his arm for the first time, and his soccer game at four years old when Jeonghan and he rubbed dirt in each other's faces and rolled in the grass instead of playing. But other than that, his life has been distinctly divided into two parts: before you, and after you. He remembers when you marched into the first day of second grade with a sparkly blue bookbag much too big for your little body. You went to the front of the class, introduced yourself loud and proud, and then looked around the room like you were daring anyone to say something back. 

And like any other childhood friendship is made, you sat at Seungcheol and Jeonghan’s table and asked if they wanted to be your friend. Without even considering the options, they both agreed. From then on out you’d always been Seungcheol, Jeonghan, and YN. Friends in elementary school, all through middle school, and even into the far reaches of highschool when Seungcheol played sports all year while you and Jeonghan did theater. It never occurred to any of you to be apart. Until Jeonghan stayed home to attend university in your hometown. And then it was Seungcheol and YN. Jeonghan came to visit when he could and vice versa. But at university it was you two against the world.

The first time Seungcheol realized he liked you was in third grade after you dumped chocolate milk on Jeonghan’s head because he put a bug in your lunchbox. He married you on the playground and made mud pies to celebrate. And then in high school when Seungcheol realized you weren’t just a girl but a pretty girl and the hormones of his teenage body latched onto that fact and plagued his dreams with the information. 

And he never did anything about that crush because he knew it wasn’t worth losing you to act on those silly notions. They passed just like he thought, melted away as time went on and you both dated other people. 

But that night freshman year of college…

It doesn’t matter. 

Because you have a fiancé and Seungcheol is happy for you.

The sound of running water echoes from the bathroom as Seungcheol enters your shared room. At least it delays the inevitable awkwardness. 

Or he thought it would.

“Hey, Cheol?” you call from the door.

“Yeah?”

“I forgot my clothes. Can you bring them to me?”

“Ugh, yeah.” Seungcheol scrambles for the pile of clean pajamas at the corner of the bed, snatching them up and stepping closer to the door that separates you. “Here.”

Mind caught on other things – like not remember that he caught a glimpse of you make last night, barely a second, no real detail except creamy skin and details his brained filled in on its own accord to his own chagrin – Seungcheol trips over his own feet and slams into the piece of wood head first.

The only thing stopping the door from flying straight into the wall is you.

“Shit!” you exclaim following a ricocheting ‘thump.’ “What the fuck, Cheol?”

Clutching his forehead, Seungcheol is oblivious to the tangle of limbs you’ve both collapsed into. 

“Fuck, sorry.” He blinks against the stark brightness of the overhead light. You’re clutching at your face, hands cupped around your nose and eyes filled with tears. “Here let me see.”

Your eyes crack open enough to glare at him, narrow and rimmed red. As if he didn’t feel awful enough.

Without a second thought, he strokes across the curve of your knee soothingly. “I won’t touch it, I just wanna make sure it isn’t broken.”

A hand shakenly falls away to unveil your perfectly fine nose. Seungcheol tips your chin up, moving in for a closer look just in case. But everything is fine. You’re not even bleeding, just a runny nose that definitely hurts worse than it looks. 

The initial rush of panic ebbs only to be replaced with awareness. Seungcheol is kneeling between your legs, your towel is definitely too short, and the beads of water caught on your collarbone are down right taunting him. He needs to get away.

Now.

“Oh my god,” he gasps, moving back.

Your face morphs into horror at his tone. “What?”

“You’ve got a huge bat in the cave.” Seungcheol rises to his feet, offering you a hand up while ignoring the way your chest struggles against the tie of the towel as you come to your feet as well.

“Fuck you,” you laugh, pushing him away. “Give me my clothes and get the fuck out.”

Seungcheol does just that. As the lock latches back he’s left alone with nothing but thoughts of you.

He remembers. That night you two have never spoken about. And probably would never discuss even under the threat of life and limb. A drunk kiss, in the stuffy bar that didn’t care if your IDs were fake as long as you had money.

Seungcheol remembers the way you felt in his lap, the taste of your mouth, the breathy whine against his lips when he first pulled away from the kiss. Maybe that last detail was a hallucination but it felt real. The heat of your body haunted Seungcheol for the week after it happened. 

Not even Jeonghan knew about it. 

And he’d rather die than open that can of worms. The first time Seungcheol had a crush on you in high school, he swallowed those feelings and never let them see the light of day. Because you’re his best friend, his longest friend, and if it was between the risk of losing you from his feelings (that he was certain would fade eventually despite the fact they never have) or keeping you in his life, then he’d stay silent if it killed him.

It’s your turn to disappear the next morning. You’re side of the bed is long cooled by the time Seungcheol’s alarm goes off, a piece of him gone with it. 

His dreams hadn’t helped. A faceless woman, not even sounds or sights or tangible things he could identify. But he knows the feeling. That alluring warmth of a body firm against his own, the kind that leaves him aching when he wants up. Seungcheol knows it's you. It’s the same images that have plagued his subconscious since adolescence when he’d wake up to messy boxers and the inability to look you in the face for days after.

Feelings he’s long suppressed came out last night. Seeing you in the window, in the bathroom, it’s all too much. And now it chases him into sleep; the one place he thought he might have peace.

Luckily your absence means there's no awkward explanation of why he’s hard. The trip to the bathroom is more of dejected desperation than eager need. Seungcheol hops into the shower and takes care of it, careful to keep his thought as abstract as possible or risk you popping up in his fantasy. Dreaming about you is damning enough. He doesn’t need to add to the guilt weighing on his conscience.

The rhythm of the water lulls his brain into a cycle. He can’t do this. He can’t go another minute 

He can’t even survive Jeonghan’s wedding. How he will sit through yours with a grin will be a true test of his acting ability.

But that is future Seungcheol’s problem. Right now he needs to get through today and then tomorrow and after that he’ll be on a plane back home where he can ruminate in the isolated confines of his apartment. 

He just needs to focus on one thing at a time. 

Right now, it’s getting downstairs in the next ten minutes or risk losing tee time with Jeonghan and the other groomsmen. 

There’s only two people he’d ever turn to in a time like this, except he can’t talk to either of them because one is the problem and the other is getting married in a few hours. The last thing Jeonghan needs is to hear about an issue between his two best friends.

Which is why he’s the first to pick up Seungcheol’s mood. 

“You look like shit,” Jeonghan greets. 

The other mill about the kitchen, snagging leftover pastries and fruit. Usually Seungcheol is the first to show up, not the last. But Soonyoung still seems to be missing.

“Thanks.” 

“Rough night?”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Well if you’re tired you can always join the girls at the spa.” Jeonghan offers. “Sofie said they’re doing mud baths.”

The wedding isn’t until this afternoon leaving the entire morning free. So the boys play golf while the girls go soak in mud.

“That sounds…horrible.”

“I know,” Jeonghan nods. “Alright gentlemen, let's head out.”

Seungcheol eats shit the entire morning. He usually scores around seventy five but he’s destined to break well over a hundred today and even Jeonghan pretends he doesn’t notice. 

“Do you ever think about why nothing happened between you and Y/N?” Jeonghan asks right as Seungcheol prepares to swing.

Kicking a man when he’s down is more of a guideline for his best friend rather than something to avoid.

Seungcheol’s shot flies wide, straight into a fairway bunker a good thirty yards behind everyone else’s ball. He watches for another solid minute, deflating.  “No.” 

“If you’re gonna lie, at least make it believable.” Jeonghan chides, setting up his own tee.

“I’m not lying.”

“Humor me. It’s my wedding day and I’m trying not to freak out.” 

“You’re freaked out?” 

“Dude, of course I’m freaked out. We’ve never gone more than a few hours without talking since we started dating and I haven’t seen her since last night. So just let me focus on something else,” Jeonghan sighs.

Seungcheol thinks about his next words wisely. Jeonghan can smell bullshit a thousand miles away, and playing mind games right now feels a little unfair. “I don’t wonder why nothing happened anymore.” 

“Lying again but whatever.”  Jeonghan grabs for his drive and lines up the shot.

“Why are you asking?” 

“I don’t know. Everyone thought you two would end up together eventually and then you didn’t. I’ve got a lot of people asking and I wanted an official response because you’re not exactly subtle and she isn’t stupid.”

Jeonghan’s shot lands square on the first cut, fifty yards ahead of Seungcheol’s ball. 

“Yeah, well.” Seungcheol huffs. “If she noticed, she never said anything.”

“Okay but did you ever say anything?” 

Jeonghan hands his club over to his catty before they start towards their respective zones. Seungcheol and his friend trailing behind.

Seungcheol argues. “You just said I wasn’t subtle?”

“You aren’t,” Jeonghan snorts. “But Y/N is about as impressionable as rock.”

“Did you think something was gonna happen?”

Seungcheol reaches his ball first. All the other guys are further ahead but Jeonghan sticks by.

“No.” Jeonghan says. “But I know you kissed her.”

Seungcheol turns to the other man, mouth gaped in shock. “How the fuck did you know that? Did she tell you?”

“I KNEW IT.” Jeonghan points at him like a little kid tattling on his friend. “ I fucking knew it! Sofie owes me fifty bucks.”

“What?”

“Y/N is a better liar than you, I’ll give her that but I knew something was off that first week I came to visit. I knew you didn’t have the balls to sleep with her so I must have been something else.”

Jeonghan asked you if you remember the kiss. Jeonghan and Sofie know you kissed. You remember the kiss. But you never said anything. If that doesn’t solidify Seungcheol firmly in the friendzone then nothing else would.

“You made a bet with your fiancée on whether your best friends kissed or not?” Seungcheol shakes his head in disbelief.

“You’ll understand when you have a successful relationship.” Jeonghan touts.

The catty hands over Seungcheol’s driver. He looks about Seungcheol’s age, maybe younger, and by the look on his face he’s trying very hard to pretend he isn’t listening to the unfolding drama. 

Another person to witness how hopeless he is. Great.

“It doesn’t matter. It was a mistake.”

“You never know,”  Jeonghan shrugs, following his catty further up the fairway and ending the conversation.

Back at the house, you’re nowhere to be seen while Seungcheol showers and changes. It’s for the best. No sleep, a horrible golf game, and now all the feelings that returned over the weekend have left him with nothing but a foul mood. 

Every step is dragged out so he doesn’t have to pretend you two are fine. He can’t afford another blow out right now because today is meant to be for Jeonghan and Sofie. Even if Jeonghan thought he should talk about it, Seungcheol couldn’t do it anymore. He wouldn’t do it anymore. But the time it takes leaves his head spinning out of control.

You’re pretending nothing is wrong. Cuddling up to him, calling him your husband. You nearly kissed him. You would’ve if he didn’t stop you. You always said cheating was worse than heartbreak but now here you are, capitalizing on his feelings for whatever satisfaction you selfishly crave; using Seungcheol to hurt your fiancé in secret. Who you seem dedicated to pretending doesn’t exist. 

It’s a nasty cycle. Feeling used, disbelief of who you’ve turned into in months away, that piece of him that always craved something more with you flowering only to wilt because it’s not real. 

You don’t want Seungcheol.

You never have.

The wedding party gathers outside the church. Sofie is tucked away in a private room until her grand entrance. She wanted everyone to be surprised, leaving her bridesmaids to mingle with the groomsmen until it was time to for the ceremony to start.

The lavender bridesmaid dress is nothing special. A tie at the top keeps the entire thing up, the front void of any details. The open back adds a flash of skin but other than that there isn’t much to it. But you’re wearing it and Seungcheol can feel his heart jerk as the fabric flows around your curves. The universe is taunting him with what he’ll never have.

He doesn’t stare despite the fact that every time he blinks his gaze automatically searches for you. It’s hard to ignore the only person he sees in a crowded room. Even if he’s pissed at you.

You excuse yourself from Seokmin, creeping over to where Seungcheol stands with a grin. “You clean up nice.”

“Thanks,” he nods.

“Is something wrong?’ 

A shot of annoyance flashes through him. Now is not the place. Last time he felt like this, you two got in a screaming match on a snowy sidewalk. “No.”

You shake your head, hand coming to rest on his arm in an act of comfort. “Are you sure? Because you’ve been acting weird.”

Betrayed by his own body. Half of him wants to get on the next flight home and block your number so he can forget all of this. It wouldn’t work. The times tried anything remotely of the sort only leave him in circling thoughts day and night.

The other half of him wants to wrap you in his arms and take whatever you're willing to give him. The half that could act like Johnny didn’t exist, at least not in this little bubble where nothing else exists but you and him. Because he's selfish and he’s been in love with you for years and he would never expect something in return for his feelings but he can’t take it any more.

But he can’t pretend anymore.

Pretending he’s never been jealous of your boyfriends, and that the night in college when you kissed meant nothing. That it didn’t flood his brain everytime he looked at you; that it didn’t leave more questions than answers. He’s been pretending everything has been fine, that seeing you asleep on his chest doesn’t make his heart hurt, and that he was stronger than the temptation to kiss you last night.

He remembers that night with clarity despite how drunk he was. Thought it meant you felt the same way he had for years.

“Cheers to finally being adults!” you scream, tequila shot raised over head.

Seungcheol laughs. Nothing is that funny but he’s nineteen and drunk in a dingy college bar with his best friend . “Adults!”

Someone passes by and knocks you forward, straight into Seungcheol's chest where you keep laughing as you look up at him.

You’re close. Closer than ever before. He could count all your eyelashes if there weren’t four of you floating in his vision. But Seungcheol doesn’t need to see clearly. Not when you’re already kissing him.

He’s kissing you.

It’s sloppy and drunk but his brain doesn’t think in big picture. It’s all feeling. Your hand in his shirt, a sweet sigh against his chin when you break away for a second just to come right back. Your mouth tastes like alcohol and lime and he’s never had anything better sweep across his tongue.

Thank god for the booth because you’re in his lap now, grinding against the seam of his jeans until he’s hard and when you finally realize you say his name.

And then Seungcheol pulls away, turns his head, and vomits before blacking out.

He hates that he thinks about it. He thinks about it all the time. What if? But there’s no more what ifs. There's only right now. Just you and him and the widening space in between that's become unnavigable. 

“I’m acting weird? I’m not the one rubbing herself all over me, calling me her husband to strangers, and trying to kiss me.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I can’t believe you would do something like this. Why would you put me in this position? Do you think it’s funny?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m happy for you, really. I just think it’s best if we don’t talk for a while. I think you need to sort things out with your fiance.”

Now that seems to get your attention. “Seungcheol, what—”

The music swells from the organ inside, cueing the ceremony and effectively silencing your questions. 

Good. It’s better that way. Seungcheol is weak for you in all the ways that matter and he knows if he had to stand there for another minute then your hurt expression is all it would take for him to fold and pretend he never said anything.

You join the other bridesmaids and Seungcheol ducks inside the church after the wedding planner opens the doors. One by one the other groomsmen walk in: Joshua, Seungkwan, Soonyoung, and finally Seokmin. Each line up further down Jeonghan’s side. Then the bridesmaids follow. 

Sofie’s cousin, who Seungcheol met once, glides down the aisle followed by another taller cousin who looks nearly identical. Then it’s Sofie’s roommate from college, Mona who Josh had been trying to get with all weekend.

You walk up the aisle, a smile plastered on your face but it doesn’t reach your eyes. You won’t look in his direction. 

Everything is slipping through his fingers and you both have to pretend they aren’t.

Everyone turns to watch Maria, and then Sofie. But the only person Seungcheol is paying attention to is you. 

The ceremony flies by. Sofie cries, Jeonghan cries. 

Sofie cries even harder when Jeonghan recites his vows in Italian. It’s odd, watching his two friends who usually are the couple laughing in the corner, be so vulnerable. Declaring their love for each other in front of a few hundred people.

“Sofie, sin dal primo momento in cui ti ho incontrata, sapevo che ti avrei voluta nella mia vita per sempre. Che tu mi amassi o odiassi, per me andava bene, perché significava che avresti pensato a me tanto quanto io pensavo a te. Mi hai dato il privilegio di chiamarti mia, e non posso aspettare di farlo per il resto delle nostre vite.”

Six months of using Seungcheol as practice, along with Sofie’s cousin, and he sounds decent. Jeonghan wouldn’t win any awards for his language skills but everyone’s faces melt around the room. Even the people that don’t know a word of what he’s say can feel the earnest dedication he has to Sofie. Even Seungcheol gets misty eyed.

“Io, Jeonghan, prendo te, Sofie, come mia sposa e prometto di esserti fedele sempre, nella gioia e nel dolore, nella salute e nella malattia, e di amarti e onorarti tutti i giorni della mia vita.”

“I, Sofie, take you, Jeonghan, as my husband and promise to be faithful to you always, in joy and in pain, in health and in sickness, and to love you and every day honor you, for the rest of my life.”

Then they kiss and Sofie screams something along the lines of “we’re married, bitches!” much to the priest demise before exiting the church. 

From there it’s chaos. 

The entire wedding party is corralled for endless pictures while everyone else heads back to the villa for the reception. You don’t look at him and Seungcheol refuses to acknowledge you until your parents are forcing you two together for awkward pictures like its high school prom.

By the time it’s over and he gets to the reception, the party is in full swing and the sun is setting.

Dinner is a blur. He makes his toast, short and sweet like Jeonghan told him to. The night progresses and people flood the cleared area serving as a makeshift dance floor in the center of the courtyard.

Seungcheol sips his wine. Three glasses in an hour because he isn’t sure what to do with his hands when his obligatory dance with Maria is over and he’s avoided being dragged on the floor by one of Sofie’s more zealous aunts because she herself demands a dance.

“How does it feel to be Mrs. Yoon?”

Sofie turns to watch Jeonghan twirls her great grandmother. Or more like Nonna Cosima leads him. She’s surprisingly spry for someone pushing triple digits. “I think he’s gonna be a great first husband.”

His gaze settles on you, Seokmin leading you across the floor in a ridiculous fashion. The younger man is trying hard to make you laugh and it seems to be working.

“She thinks you’re mad at her,” Sofie says.

“Maybe I am.”

“Care to share with the class?” She prods but Seungcheol doesn’t break, using the ending of the song to find a table at the edge of the makeshift dance floor. “Fine, but I feel like if you’re gonna pout at my wedding I should at least know why. Especially because I owe Han fifty bucks because you can’t lie to save your life.”

Seungcheol is mad. But mostly at himself. For tricking himself into thinking maybe, just maybe, there could be something more. That in all the improbable universes you returned his feelings, this would be one. 

And he did all that knowing you’re dedicated to someone else who is so entirely wrong for you.

“What did she tell you?” Seungcheol asks. 

“That’s not how this works. No pay, no play.”

He studies Sofie for a minute. She’s good at keeping her cards close but she knows about you and Johnny. It wouldn’t be a far leep to assume she knows about everything else.

“God, you sound like Jeonghan.”

“Have you and Y/N talked? Like, really talked, since you got here?” There's a weight at the end of that sentence but Sofie doesn’t elaborate. 

“Care to be more specific?” he asks, grabbing for another glass.

“I’ll take that as a no then.” Sofie takes the seat beside him.

His chest tightens. This is it. 

“About her and Johnny?”

“So she did say something…” Sofie fishes.

“No she didn’t. But I heard you guys in the kitchen the night I got in.”

“You did?” she gasps. “And you didn’t say anything to her about it?”

His jaw ticks in annoyance. “What’s there to say? ‘Congrats on your engagement, you’re too good for him’? I don’t think that's what she’d wa—”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Sofie throws her hands up, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. All around the party continues. “You think Y/N is engaged? To who?”

“Johnny! Who else?”

Her drink sloshes over the sides of her wine glass, narrowly missing the white gown and falling to the cobblestone. “Oh my god, you’re an idiot!”

“Excuse me?”

“She’s not engaged, you dipshit,” she goes on. “Oh my god, you’re both so stupid. I told Han, I told him we should’ve said something.”

“What?” he says quietly.

Sofie continues as if Seungcheol hasn’t spoken at all, “I can’t believe she hasn’t told you.”

“Told me what?”

“She broke up with him!”

She broke up with him. She (you) broke up with him (Johnny). You and Johnny are done. It’s like he’s hearing the news from underwater.

“She broke up with him.” He repeats dumbly.

Someone cheers and then applause follows but Seungcheol is lost in his mind. You and Johnny aren’t engaged. You two aren’t even dating. Haven’t been. 

“When?”

Sofie’s face softens. She knows. The first time he introduced you to Sofie she assumed you two were dating. She didn’t like Johnny for a lot of the same reasons Seungcheol did, but also because she thought you two were meant to be together. “A week after she moved.”

That phone call the week after you moved. It must’ve been something to do with you and Johnny. But why didn’t you answer messages the next morning? Why would you break up with Johnny and then refuse to tell him? Why would you let Seungcheol think he was being used as the other man?

“So this entire week…”

“She was supposed to tell you. I told her to tell you months ago but does she listen to me? Nope.”

“Do you know why?”

“Now that is something she needs to tell you.” Seungcheol looks where you're dancing with Seokmin. Your smile doesn’t reach your eyes but you laugh when the man dips you almost to the floor and struggles to lift you back up. “But first you need to apologize.”

“Is it that bad?”

“When I imagined someone crying at my wedding it wasn’t because of you.”

Seungcheol winces, “She cried?”

“Yep. You owe me a nice ass wedding gift for that one.”

“Sofie, I’m sorry I—” he tries to apologize. 

“Cheol, don’t worry about it.” She pats his arm. “It was actually a nice distraction from the insanity this week.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“It really is.” Sofie rises from the table, snagging a glass of champagne from a passing tray. “Now if you’ll excuse me, my husband owes me a dance. And Cheol?”

“Yeah?”

“You should tell her how you feel.”

Seungcheol takes his chance at Sofie’s departure. With the change in music Seokmin bows out and you're left on the dance floor alone. Cast in the soft glow of garden lights and candles, you’re tragically beautiful. Soft around the edges in a dreamy haze. Seungcheol feels like he’s intruding by approaching you but he needs to apologize before you both return to your separate corners of the country tomorrow night.

“Hey,” he greets.

You look at him apprehensively, eyes dark, before speaking. “Hi.”

You’re just as petty as Seungcheol so he knows if you’re speaking to him then there's some kind of hope he hasn’t completely ruined your friendship. But it could also mean you’re about to rip him a new one in front of everyone for not the first time in his life.

Hopefully, it’s the former.

“Mind a walk?”

“We’re at a wedding.”

Jeonghan and Sofie curl tightly around each other at the center of the courtyard. It’s clear from the way both their faces soften, lax grins reaching their ears, that the world has stopped spinning just for them.

“I’m pretty sure we could light them on fire right now and they wouldn’t notice. Besides, Sofie gave me her blessing,” he jokes but you don’t laugh.

“Fine,” you say before stalking towards one of the paths leading to more secluded parts of the house.

People drape across different parts of the villa as you two walk in silence to find some privacy. The gardens are full of chatting elders, kids running around in the dark or falling asleep in some adults' holds. After ten minutes with no luck at seclusion, Seungcheol has half a mind to go back to your room and talk it out but he doesn’t. The idea itself freezes his blood.

It’s not until you're deeper into the maze of shrubs and bushes that the voices and music fade. The silence is so tense he might shatter under the pressure.

You whip around to face him, still five paces ahead. 

“What did you want to talk about?” you deadpan.

Seungcheol thought through every thing he wanted to say, all the questions and whys and what ifs he’d collected during this trip but they abandoned him now that they have the chance to be answered. Instead, all that comes out of him is a shaky,  “I’m sorry.”

You wait for him to elaborate but he doesn’t. He’s apologizing for more than he could put in words and he’d list them off until the sun comes up if he starts now.

“Okay. Is that all?” you ask.

“Sofie told me about Johnny.”

You blanche. “She did?”

“Yeah, she did.”

“What did she tell you?” your arms draw tightly around your center. Like you’re holding your heart from spilling out your chest. 

Seungcheol regurgitates the limited facts Sofie shared, which is that Johnny hasn’t been in the picture for months and you never deemed him worthy of that information.

“Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“I tried. But you didn’t answer your phone and I felt so stupid afterwards and… I just couldn’t do it.”

It hits a nerve deep in his heart. How could it have been easier to spend months pretending he didn’t exist then tell him your relationship ended? More anger slips through. The nasty kind that makes him say things he doesn’t mean but Seungcheol tries to reign it in.

“So you just ignored me and thought that’d solve all our problems?” 

“No!’

“Then why didn’t you say something?”

“Because I moved cities for a guy I didn’t even like that much! I changed my entire life for him just to prove a point. Because you were right about him and I was wrong and only took a fucking week to realize that after I screwed everything up. I should have listened to you but—”

“So you lied to me because you didn't want me to say ‘I told you so’?” Seungcheol fumes. “Are you serious?”

“I didn’t lie to you!” you object.

“Yes you did! You stopped talking to me for months! Months. I can’t even remember we went a week without talking but you dropped off the face of the planet,” he rants. “I thought you were happy in New York with Johnny but apparently I’m the last to know anything. If you had just told me I wouldn’t have said anything. I would have gone up there and moved you back home myself.”

“I don’t want you to fix my mistakes!”

“Then what do you want? Because from where I’m standing I have no idea. All week you’ve been acting weird and because you didn’t tell me I thought you were using me to cheat on your boyfriend. How do you think that makes me feel?”

“I didn’t mean to. Things just kept happening and I got swept up before I could tell you.”

Seungcheol was nothing more than a meaningless distraction, a rebound.

“So it didn’t mean anything to you?” he asks.

“No!” you cry. “I was just distracted.”

“Distracted? Are you serious?”

“You know what? Forget it. You don’t want to listen to me, you just want to be mad and yell.”

You’re right. Seungcheol does want to be mad and yell and pull his own hair out because what you’re saying isn’t helping untangle the knotted mess of his brain. It’s making it worse. Your confessions are watering that seed of hope in his chest despite the fact he knows nothing will ever happen. Even with Johnny out of the picture.

“Why did you break up with Johnny?”

“I—” Your eyes close. Pulled tight like you’re finding the courage to tell Seungcheol some dark secret. “He…” you swallow. “I broke up with him because…”

Seungcheol tenses, prepared for the absolute worst. You moved your entire life for the guy and broke up with him a handful of days later. There had to be a reason. “Because why? Did he do something?”

“No!” you correct. “I wish he did, I probably wouldn’t have felt like such a bitch but he didn’t do anything at all. I just realized we didn’t work.”

“You didn’t ‘work’?”

I told you so, indeed.

“Yeah. It’s kinda difficult to be with someone when you're in love with someone else,” you reply.

Suddenly, Seungcheol wishes he never brought it up. Another guy. One that isn’t him. Again. He’s the other man. Those gut feelings, the nagging voice at the back of his head that reminded him time and time again you couldn’t feel the same has its own ‘I told you so’ moment.

But that’s not what makes him feel horrible. He’d suffer from overthinking as long as needed just so you wouldn’t look so ashamed. 

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Seugncheol waits for you to elaborate. More silence except for the crunch of your shoes across the stone walkway. A bench comes into view and you slip into one of the spots before speaking again.

“I…I always wondered why those dates never worked out. Like, I would like someone but then they didn’t want the same things or they’d want the same things but I didn’t want them. And I guess Johnny was my last ditch effort because maybe if I knew from the beginning things weren’t gonna work out then I’d never be disappointed.”

Seungcheol isn’t sure what to say so he stays quiet.

“And I thought I could just live with it. Knowing I didn’t have what Jeonghan and Sofie have. Like who actually gets that in their life? But…”

“But?”

“But then I realized that there was only one guy my whole life that’s actually been everything I wanted and I was comparing everyone to him.”

“Who?”

“You.”

Him. You’ve compared every guy you’ve dated to him. He’s the person you want, the man you’ve measured everyone up to and found them wanting.

You’re in love with Seungcheol. You broke up with your boyfriend for Seungcheol.

You love him back.

“It’s fine, if you don’t feel that way about me. I’m okay with it. I wasn’t planning to tell you because I expected anything. I just… part of the reason I didn’t say anything is I know you don’t think about me like that but this week I thought— I don’t know what I thought. But I didn’t want to lie to you anymore.”

“You…what?”

“Let’s just agree to pretend this never happened, okay? We should get back to the party.” You move to rush past him but Seungcheol hooks an arm around your torso, light enough you could break through if you really wanted to but you stop all the same.

There is no way in hell you drop that bomb on him and leave him to deal with the aftermath alone.

His voice is unrecognizable to his own ears. “You broke up with Johnny because of me?”

“Yeah,” you swallow. You refuse to look at him, focusing on the neatly clipped grass your heels sink into.

“Because you’re in love with me.” 

You flounder. It isn’t a question. It’s a fact.

“How long?” Seungcheol presses.

“What?”

“How long have you been in love with me?”

“It's always been you.”

Seungcheol���s heart detonates into a million pieces.

“You?” His pulse is sprinting. You’re in love with him. Have been. Maybe as long as he’s been in love with. Impossible for it to be longer because there's no moment in time when Seungcheol didn’t carry his feelings for you like an old friend. “You didn’t say anything.”

Your eyes are wet again, more tears he wants to brush away but he can’t do anything but stare. “I didn’t want to ruin our friendship.”

“You wouldn’t have,” he whispers back.

“What's supposed to mean?”

Your nose brushes along his, eyes soft as you glance at his mouth. 

Seungcheol won’t let himself kiss you yet. He can’t. The first time he feels your lips on his in years has to be in private because he shakes at the idea of it, a part of him chips away from just imagining even the most chaste brush. But mostly because he’s terrified that once he starts, he knows he won’t be able to stop.

“Do you remember that night in college?” he asks. You’re stunned speechless by the abrupt shift in topic but the words fall out of his mouth before he can think of a better way to say what needs to be said. He continues, “when we did a million shots and you kissed me?”

You snap back, slapping a hand on his chest and nearly teetering to the ground. “You bitch! You kissed me!”

“So you do remember!”

“Of course I remember,” you declare. “I thought you didn’t remember.”

You remember. You remember how his mouth tasted, how you ground into his lap, the feeling of his hands on your ass. All of it sticks with you like it stuck to him.

“Trust me, I remember.”

“Well, why didn’t you say anything?” you huff.

“I was going to but you told me you started dating whatever-his-name before I could.”

“Because I thought you didn’t like me back!”

“I’ve liked you since the first day I met you.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

“You should’ve said something.” The admonishment means nothing. Not with the way you smile at him. It makes his heart soar, hope bursting at the seams. 

“I didn’t even know you realized I was a dude until college, why would I say something?”

“Trust me, I knew you were a guy way before college.”

“And we’re back to the original question: why didn’t you say anything?”

It's ridiculous. Utterly comical and unimportant of who said what when because they’re being said now and Seungcheol never has to pretend he isn’t hopelessly in love with you ever again.

You cozy up into his chest, fingers tracing the collar of his shirt. “Wow, barely five minutes we’re already fighting.”

“We’re not fighting.” His lips burn the word into your hairline, arms wrapping around your frame so his fingers can finally, finally, trace the bared skin of your back.

“Oh really?” You laugh. “Then what are we doing, oh wise one?”

“We’re having a spirited conversation over the fact you kissed me and never said anything.”

“And now we’re fighting over whether or not we’re fighting.”

“We’re not fighting.”

“You’re exhausting.” Your eyes roll. He can’t see it, not with how you duck into his neck, but he knows you did it. Because Seungcheol knows you better than anyone else.

“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“And you kissed me.”

“Well then there's only one way to settle this.”

“Which is?”

Seungcheol doesn’t answer. If Jeonghan could be lit on fire and not think of anyone but his wife, then the world could fall to dust and the only thing on Seungcheol’s mind is the way your mouth feels against his.

It’s light at first. Airy because you’re both still laughing over arguing if you’re fighting or not. But then Seungcheol loses his balance and you help by curling a hand around his shoulder but refuse to stop kissing him and the world blinks out of existence for a second.

All the cliches start making sense. Two halves of a whole, puzzle pieces slipping together, all the things poets could say in a million more eloquent ways than him.

But Seungcheol feels at home for the first time in his life.

It’s not easy maneuvering a full grown woman up and into his lap. It’s especially not easy because you’re you and you’re more stubborn than anyone he’s met in his life which means you object to every step, huff and puff at a brief second of broken contact, but the second he spins you around and drags over his lap you melt.

Your tongue glides along his, sending a tsunami of want through his bones. You whimper. Or maybe he does. Seungcheol can’t tell what's up and what's down right now. He finds the open back of your dress and relishes in the arch of your spine, the choppy breath he can feel beneath his palms.

The silk bow holding your dress up teases his hand as Seungcheol traces the notches of your spine. No one would see. No one except him and the moon and the stars who’ve all stopped to watch. He wants to. God, he wants to but he doesn’t.

You tug at his hair and your name floods his tongue like a curse. 

Draped across his lap in nothing but thin satin, you can feel all of him. How his cock hardens against the back of your thighs, shaky breathes in his lungs wrecking into your own chest. You're not wearing a bra. None of that tape or the sticky thing you’d leave hanging in the bathroom when you lived together. Seungcheol knows because he thumbs over the soft swell of your chest and you respond with a rock of hips that leaves his mouth watering.

The last time he kissed you, that fateful night freshman year of college, Seungcheol thought about it every night for months. He thought about it in the shower, in his bed. His mind would wander towards the memory during class and when he walked around campus.

Now he’ll think about this for the rest of his life.

A shrieking laugh almost sends you to the ground in haste to break away, but Seungcheol catches you in time. 

“Um…” you choke. Your lips are swollen, eyes a little dazed.

“We should go back inside.”

“Yeah.”

“Just, give me a minute.”

“Why?” Your smile grows steadily as you press more firmly into his predicament.

“I have an issue right now.”

“What kind of issue, Cheolie?” you stare at him through your lashes, finger tracing down the front of his shirt until you reach the button of his pants.

“Oh God,” he grunts as the heel of your hand rocks into him. “You’re actually evil.”

Your lips trace over his jaw, sucking and nipping at the lobe of his ear until he shudders. “Don’t you want me?” 

“I do,” he breaths. “Shit.”

His hand squeezes across your ass, your breasts, mindful of how much freedom you’re giving him. To feel you like this, to touch you the way he’s wanted to for years. 

“Then have me,” you moan. 

“Don’t say stuff like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you want me to fuck you right here.”

“But I do want you to fuck me.” Your hand is in his pants. “Right.” A tight squeeze on his cock. “Here.” He ruts into the next one.

His insides spark with a hot kind of electricity at the idea of you jerking him off where anyone could see. But he wants to touch you. And that he doesn’t want anyone else to even imagine. He’s shared you enough with the world. 

Seungcheol wants a piece of you that's just for him right now.

“Fuck, okay. Stop.”

“What’s wrong?”

“We’re going back inside.”

“Oh?”

Seungcheol doesn’t give into your obvious goading. It’ll just waste more time. Give you another chance to wring him out to dry and he knows if you get his pants down far enough it’s game over for the both of you. 

He rushes you through the garden, all but dragging you behind him in his haste to get you somewhere secluded. He’d settle for a broom closet at this point. Anywhere he can have you alone.

But you won’t go down without a fight.

You slow to a near stop, whining, “My feet hurt.”

Seungcheol leads you back over another stone bench, immediately kneeling and grabbing your ankle. The pebbles of the path dig into his knee but the slit of silk revealing your bare legs is a good distraction.

“Alright, Cinderella. Let’s get these off,” he jokes. The buckle is delicate and keeps slipping from between his fingers no thanks to your help.

“I can do it myself!”

You try to kick him off but Seungcheol catches your calf easily. Instead of focusing on the teasing stretch of skin, he watches the way your nose wrinkles indignantly after thwarting your attempt to catch him off guard. You’re cute. Probably because he’s in love with you and the rush from knowing you love him back has him feeling a million miles tall.

“Cheol?”

“Yeah?”

Pulling your foot into his lap, Seungcheol brushed his fingers against the knob of your ankle. The tiny buckle that refuses to come undone. Your shaking doesn’t help much.

“Cold?” he asks.

You nod furiously. Warmth hangs in the air but Seungcheol won’t assume your comfort; the silk you're wrapped in doesn’t provide much coverage against the elements. It doesn’t provide him any protection from a wild imagination fueled from years of pining. Without a thought, he shakes off his jacket and hands it to you before moving back to your shoe.

Looming over him, Seungcheol feels your breath hit his forehead. He wants to look up but you’re too close. Too tempting. 

He finally undoes one shoe, then the other. But you don’t say anything and neither does he from his spot between your legs. It’d be easy. So easy to bunch your skirt around your waist, part your legs, and make you cum on his finger. Then his mouth. Then his cock.

You’re thinking the same thing. A hiccup of breath rustling the hair on his forehead, your hands stroking the muscles of his neck give you away. 

But when he starts, he knows he won’t be able to start. He’ll want nothing less than all of you. Give all of himself to you. If you’ll have him.

But a hard stone bench isn’t the place to worship your body the way you deserve. He’d be a gentleman. Even if it killed him to wait any longer. You were worth waiting for. Seungcheol would wait a million more lifetimes if he got to feel like this again.

No shoes means he’s carrying you the rest of the way. He’s done it before and you’re not that heavy but he’s been drinking. And then there's the matter of all the blood in his body heading south, so he struggles more than usual.

“You’re sure you’ve got it?” you cling on for dear life when he nearly stumbles under the first step.

“Sorry, I haven’t been carrying a lot of full grown women around lately.”

“I thought you were looking a little small,” you goad.

“Small?�� he objects.

“Yeah, small.” You squeeze over his biceps and his chest like you two aren’t sneaking around a packed mansion where anyone could stumble by. His resolve slips further out of reach at the dig of your nails. “Been skipping the gym lately?”

He feigns dropping you, laughing when you scramble for hold under threat of falling flat on your ass.

“Asshole!” you laugh.

Things fizzle back to comfortable silence. Your companions are far off laughs and the loud music from the courtyard. The garden is all but abandoned, not a single soul in sight. It makes it all too tempting to find another bench and take up what was interrupted earlier. The heat of your breath against his ear with each giggled whisper didn’t help. Neither did the warm weight of your thighs in his hold or the firm press of your chest against his back. 

It’s a mistake to look over his shoulder. Your eyes shine in the moonlight as you stare back, a smile lifting the corner of your lips.

Seungcheol focuses back on the hallway, double checking for any passersby. There’s nothing indecent about a man giving a woman a tipsy piggy back ride. 

But there is something entirely inappropriate about how hard he is while doing so.

And Seungcheol knows you know. Or if you don’t then the universe has a personal investment in his suffering. Every step is more difficult than the last because your thighs squeeze around his torso, and your hands find their way down his chest, and then there’s the giggling every time he back tracks because a drunken guest stumbles by on the way to their own room.

You’re sneaking around like two idiot teenagers and it might kill him from lack of blood to his brain.

But Seungcheol wouldn’t have it any other way.

He pauses at the last staircase to catch his breath. There’s no reason you’re still on his back other than the fact he doesn’t want to let you go and the position is the only reason he hasn’t found a dark corner to do whatever you please yet.

“Awww poor Seungcheol, tired already,” you coo. 

Your teasing tone makes his blood boil, worse how you readjust your hold with more squeeze and stretching that leaves him with nothing but horribly inappropriate thoughts of what you’ll do after he gets up the stairs.

Finally, the hallway housing your room appears and he can’t get through the door fast enough. 

You're pressed flat between the door and his body in a blink, fully at Seungcheol’s mercy as he kisses you again. 

“Wait,” you mutter.

Seungcheol sucks along your bottom lip. You pull him closer, arching into his chest. Your stomach is soft against the gentle grinds of his cock. He doesn’t want to wait anymore.

“We—hmmm,” you sigh. “Need to talk about this.” 

Seungcheol pulls away from your mouth, trailing scorching kisses down your neck that leave you shivering. “What about it? I love you, you love me. Feels like that's all there is to it.” 

The second he says it, Seungcheol knows he’s wrong. But he doesn’t want to think about the fine details. He’s never done long distance but you’re only a train ride away. 

“Cheol.” You prod a finger into his collarbone until he dips back.

“I mean it’ll suck being in different cities but it’s not forever right? We’ll figure it out.”

You dip your chin. “I’m not staying in New York.”

“Oh. That’s—” he cups your cheek, pulling your gaze to his. “I’ll go wherever you need me.”

You smile up at him and everything goes blank. In that moment, he vows to do anything you ever ask if it means you’ll keep looking at him like that.

“I’m moving back to D.C.” You kiss the words into his palm, eyes never leaving his.

“Really?”

“Yeah.” You smile. “Sofie’s friend needed a roommate and my job agreed to let me go remote so…”

“When do you move back?”

“Two months. They want to wait until the busy season is over.”

“But then you’re back. For good?”

“For good.”

It feels like you're promising a whole lot more.. 

You have Seungcheol for good too. As long as you want him, he’s yours. Probably for long after too. 

He’s so happy, it burns across his skin. It can’t be contained. This is all real. He fights the urge to pinch himself because not even in the wildest of his dreams did he think this was possible. 

"When you come back home.” Home he thinks. Home with him. Where you belong. “We're going on a date. And you're going to let me pay, and woo you, and take care of you because I love you. Okay?”

Your hands twine around his shoulders before you respond with a nod, “Okay.”

In the privacy of your room, you’re the one that tugs the knot holding your dress up. The silk slips down your chest revealing inch after inch of what he’s only dreamed off. When it pools around your waist, Seungcheol almost falls to his knees.

You shiver in the cool bedroom air. His eyes drink in the way your nipples peek under his gaze. Every inhale shakes in your lungs and he thinks this might just be enough for him to die peacefully. The silk trickles like water down your figure until you're left standing in nothing but skimpy panties.

“Fuck,” he curses.

Your hands flash to cover your chest, “What?”

“No, don’t,” Seungcheol reassures. His hands find yours, tracing along your thumb. “You’re just…”

“Just?” you ask.

“Wow.”

“I’m wow?” you laugh. 

Seungcheol takes another step into your space. And then another and another, your dress crumbling to the floor and leaving behind nothing but the thin band of your underwear for him to remove. Your knees hit the mattress and he follows you down into the cushion.

You're soft and warm like afternoon sunlight on a winter day under his wandering hands.

“You’re wow,” he responds, angling your chin so your mouth can meet his, noses grazing against one another.

You don’t have the patience to hear Seungcheol ramble about how perfect you are. Instead, you drag him into a desperate kiss, tongue teasing his. He’ll wax poetically later. Right now he wants to give you whatever you demand.

More kissing, the prickle of your teeth along his lip, and Seungcheol is pretty sure he’s never been harder in his life. It’s humbling and exhilarating all at once. Ready to crumble into nothing from some light petting.

He takes his revenge on the curve of your shoulder and it turns out to be extra sensitive. Every nip and suck along your collarbone leaves you panting, hands scratching up his back for some relief. He wonders what else is sensitive.

He laves against your nipple in maddening slowness. You torture him as well, ankles locking at the base of his spine while you grind against him and make more noises he’ll commit to memory forever.

 “God,” you whine when Seungcheol finally breaks and rocks down into the tempting heat of your core.

He needs more. 

“Do you think about this?” he grunts with another torturous press. He could come like this. You could come from this. Two adults, reduced to dry humping like horny teenagers.

“I think about you all the time,” you gasp.

“What do you think about?”

“You.”

Seungcheol snickers, “More specific.”

“Touching me, kissing me. Anywhere. Everywhere.”

A swell of neanderthal pride blooms in his heart. The image of you, touching yourself with his name on your lips breaks another piece of his self control that wants to savor this.

“Here?” he kisses the swell of your breast, waiting for a nod to move on. 

“Here?” A suck on your nipple again until the bed sheets threaten to rip from your hold.

“Here?” A bite at your hip bone.

His fingers part your core, wet at first contact even over your panties. “What about here?”

“Everywhere. I’ve thought about you touching me everywhere.” You sound like you might start crying if he doesn’t fulfill that fantasy soon. 

But he’s dying to know every little thought you’ve ever had about him. If you think about him a fraction as much as he thinks about you. Not just like this, but when he sees a building he’d never think twice about and know you’d have something to say about the construction of the window arches, or when he walks through the park and sees two dogs meeting for the first time and can hear your voice whisper ‘best friends!’ like you’re right beside him. You’re in everything. Every part of who he is.

Your panties come off and he licks between your legs slowly, savoring every part he can while you twitch and curl beneath him. 

“Cheol,” you whine.

There's no need to elaborate. He feels it too.

Your back bows under his touch, and Seungcheol watches you touch yourself with rapt attention. You grab your breasts and squeeze, nipples visible between fingers. 

He sucks your clit, tongue lashing at the sensitive nub. A million times Seungcheol thought about doing this and never did his brain imagine the sounds you’d make, the way you taste, the rough tub at his hair. You're hot and wet under his mouth and all Seungcheol wants is more, more, more.

“Tell me how it feels.”

“So good—fuck—it’s so good,” you gasps as he fucks your opening with his tongue, collection your flavor.

His finger wedges inside your tight walls. You angle your hips, sinking them deeper. Seungcheol pauses for only a moment before giving you a second one. The sting across his scalp from your frantic tugging leaves him straining against the zipper of his slacks.

He cups your ass, dragging you closer to the edge of the bed where he kneels. Your legs spread wider to grant him the space to  savor the pink of your folds under his tongue without obstruction.

Your pitch rises, moaning through a third finger joining the mix and a rough lap of his tongue that has you kicking the sheets.. He can feel it; your end just over the hill. A few vulgar flicks of his tongue and its release in long waves that make you keen his name horsley. 

You melt into a boneless heap. Occasional twitches of muscles flooding with pleasure the only sign of life.

Seungcheol mouths up your stomach, sucking a nipple between his teeth for a second before moving on to your mouth. If all you want to do tonight is kiss and let Seungcheol worship your pussy, then he’ll oblige. But the way pull at his clothes hints at what you want. He draws you back into his lap, your body hot against his, mouth coaxing yours open. 

“Good?”

You giggle against his mouth. “I can’t feel my toes.”

He can’t stop touching you. Probably won’t ever stop now that he knows what it means to call you his. To know your body. You’re no better. Your hands rake through his hair, goosebumps erupting as you tug him exactly where you want.

The soft lines of your throat, the intoxicating taste of sweat and perfume flooding his tongue. It’s better than anything his sorry excuse for an imagination could come up with.

You tug at his shirt, up and up until it’s forgotten on the floor. Your bare chest against his lights an inferno of want. Seungcheol pushes apart your limp thighs, making space for himself to grind against your sensitive core through his own trousers. 

Seungcheol remembers a crucial fact as you slip a hand in his pants and tease his leaking cock.

“Wait,” he mutters into your jaw.

You don’t stop, slowly jerking him off, teeth cutting into the vein on his neck. “What?’

Seungcheol savors your touch before responding, thrusting through your first with blind want. “I don’t have condoms.”

“Oh.”

“I can go and try to find some but I—” he rambles. 

“Cheol.”

“—everyone is probably still at the party so—”

You shut him up with a hand over his mouth, “I’m on birth control and I’m clean.”

“Oh.”

Oh. Seungcheol’s brain swims with lewd imagination; you stuffed with his cum, pussy stretched and worn from his cock. Feeling you raw, again and again until your helpless sweaty messes. 

“Unless you want to use them then that's fine!” you hastily supply.

He cups your face, smiling as you ramble about how okay you are with using condoms. Your face is warm, eyes avoidant while you enthusiastically declare you want to do whatever makes him comfortable. Which is an entirely new problem because if your goal is to make him comfortable, then neither of you will be leaving this bed for the foreseeable future and at some point people will start looking for you.

Seungcheol rolls over. You take advantage of the opportunity for free command of his lap, forcing his pants down until he’s as bare as you. He preens under your wide eye stare, ego flaring under your wide eye stare. Leaning back on his palms, he grows cocky from your silence.

“Like what you see?” Seungcheol goads.

Your gaze cuts to his, eyebrows arched in your own challenge. A flare of fear zaps up his spine. 

He loves it.

Seungcheol is accustomed to taking the lead in bed. Some girls want him to be domineering, others prefer to sit back while he naturally takes the reins. 

But you’ve butt heads with him in every aspect of life, hopefully this would be no different. He’s hoping you might even try telling him exactly how you want him.

“You’re so hard for me,” you whisper. Your hand reaches out, thumbing at the leaking head of his cock with seductive confidence. 

Seungcheol nods in agreement at a loss of words under your touch.

Your head cocks to the side curiously, empty hand slipping between your thighs, making space for the head of his cock to nudge against your clit. “Do you wanna fuck me?” 

He nods again.

“Good,” you smile. You hide in his neck, nosing along the tense muscles straining to break out from his skin. “I thought about you fucking me like this. When we were in high school. I thought—I wanted you to be the first.”

“Really?” he asked dazedly. 

Your first. Not Stoner Ricky from Calculus. But him. You wanted Seungcheol to have you first, possible be the only one for each other. It’s a lie if he didn’t think of you in the back of his mom’s car while Tiffany Something took his virginity. Your lips, your voice instead of her nasally pornographic sounds, when he came it was only because he closed his eyes and thought of you. 

He tells you that and earns a deep bite on his shoulder. 

You continue, “I’d watch porn or read those smut books, and I always pictured it was you.”

“God.”

You sink on his cock, pussy stretched on his length, stars flaring across your vision. There's not enough air in the room to breathe through the tight squeeze wrecking your guts. You’re in the position of control but Seungcheol can already see submission gaining control. You won’t admit you can handle his cock but pride warms his veins at how much energy it takes for your stunted rhythm. 

“Fuck,” you curse.

 “Yeah? Feels good having your pussy stuff with my cock?” Your nails bite into his chest in response. Pink lines flare in their wake, one he hopes are still there tomorrow. 

Seungcheol drags you into a kiss, a dirty culmination of teeth and tongue and your satisfied sighs and his needy grunts. You suck at his lips, focused on that rather than riding him. 

“Taping out already?” 

You ignore the dig. It takes the barest twinge of his arm and you’re rolling on your back, legs spread in invitation. He sinks into the space reserved just for him, sliding deeper than before. Now he’s the one that needs a moment. Squeezed to death between your walls is the sweet torture he’s ever experienced, the wet sloppy drag of your cunt, bare for him and him alone. 

It’s an act of bravery to pull out for the sake of thrusting back in. If he was confident enough you could get off without his hips sinking deeper then he’d never do it, content to keep his cock wedge inside you and play with your clit and tits until you cry from the pleasure. But he really wants to fuck you. 

“God, feels so good.” You break. He keeps his pace steady, building you up until you muster a way to squeeze him tighter and his skins on fire. 

He hoists your leg up, a deeper stretch that leaves him muttering about how good you feel. The wet slap of your cunt grows louder, sloppy clashes of his pelvis against yours.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he chants, stomach caving. The urge to cum is nipping at his heels but Seungcheol is better than that. Better than a quick fuck, at least for this first time. He wants to hear more of your sounds, fold you in every position he can imagine.

“More,” you grunt. “Fuck me harder, baby.”

He gives you what you ask for; plowing you into the mattress until the headboard slaps against the wall. “You like that?”

“Love it—shit. I love it.” You prop yourself up, shoving a hand between your bodies to swipe messy strokes across your clit. Seungcheol collects more sounds from the back of your throat, rough growls and stuttered squeaks. His cock is heavy in your guts, soaked with your arousal and his cum.

Your mouth finds his. Panting breath and loose tangles of lips. It’s a race against time with his vision bleached white. Your stomach caves with effort to meet each stroke with one of your own. 

“I love you,” he groans. 

You clench at his words, growing wetter if possible. Flailing against the bed, he hooks your other knee under his elbow and presses flat, pinning you down under his mercy. “I love you,” you whine back. “I-I—”

Your orgasm floods your veins, brain fuzzy and disconnected from anything beyond Seungcheol. He takes over the circles around your clit. Calloused fingers providing sick friction until you can’t take anymore.

“Wanna feel you come, Cheolie. Please,” you beg.

Something snaps and he’s rushing to pull out, jerking off over your stomach with your hand to help.

Rope after rope shines in the dim moonlight. He can’t even try to pretend the thrill of cumming inside isn’t on the forefront of his mind as the drips of his spend stare back at him. But you look like a fantasy come true cover in his cum, skinned flushed, eyes glazed and chest heaving. His own Venus come to life.

He pushes back in, spent cock sensitive to the squeeze of your cunt. Seungcheol doesn't want to be anywhere else. Now that he has you, he can't imagine a moment without you.

Sinking the weight of his hips, your legs lock him in. A combination of cum, sweat, arousal, and a few tears sticks between your sweltering bodies. Neither of you care, too enamored with cataloguing every bare inch of skin with in reach of your mouths.

‘Ugh,'' you groan. “I need a shower.” 

In the bathroom, where so many horrible dangerous thoughts have plagued Seungcheol since the start of this trip, it’s peaceful. The thrum of the shower drowns out any sound beyond your sleepy huffs and his hums of content. 

As the water heats you press him into the edge of the sink, kissing him as if there's all the time in the world to do just that. That seed of need that has been growing steadily in his gut since he kissed you in the garden comes alive again. You seem to ignore the prod at your thigh though so Seungcheol ignores it too and shepherds you into the stall.

He washes your back with soapy hands and you coif his hair into a shampoo mohawk and it’s feel right no matter how ridiculous he probably looks. You twist every time he touches your waist, shrieking in laughter because you hate being tickled.

Seungcheol is happy. It floods his veins, shoots through the tips of his fingers tracing your hip, forcing a content grin on his lips despite the fatigue of the day. He rests his forehead against your own and takes his first deep breath since New Years.

“I don’t want this to change anything."

“What?” you pull away.

“No!” Seugncehol shouts, wincing at the voluming. “Not—I didn’t mean that I just meant…I-I want you to feel like you can tell me anything. No more secrets. Okay? No matter what changes between us you're still my best friend. If I'm acting like an ass I want you to tell me. If you change your mind then-"

You watch him, features softening. “I won't."

You distract him with your own touches; it’s nice at first. Then it’s nothing short of blissful agony. Teasing nails across his stomach and sides, firm against his body in a way that leaves him weak and wanting. His heart thuds sporadically under your lips as his cock swells against your stomach.

“Y/N,” he sighs.

You kneel in front of him, smirking at how easy he is. You rub his cock with a slick grip. Your mouth comes into play slowly; kissing his hip, then his thigh, your tongue drags up the side until you suck the head between your lips and Seungcheol almost collapses.

You hold his thighs, guiding him further down your throat until there's no more space and you gag. He isn’t sure what to do with his hands but it doesn’t matter because he’s cumming. Fast.

Without missing a beat, you swallow everything he gives you. 

“Oh god—fuck.”

“Good?” you ask, still licking against the head of his cock.

Rather than answer the obvious, he pulls you to your feet with a gentle kiss to your forehead. He’ll make it up to you back in bed. For right now, you curl into his chest, tracing shapes into his collarbone as the water slowly turns cold. 

He pats you dry, ruffling your hair in the humid bathroom with all the time in the world before dragging you back to bed. You snuggle under the covers, still naked. Seungcheol joins immediately, rolling on top of you and caging his arms on either side of your head.

“Hi,” you smile from underneath him.

He can’t help but grin back. “Hi.”

You make love slowly this time. Your back to his chest, Seungcheol curled around you like a second skin, whispering his adoration in your ear until you lurch and cum with a cry. Then he does it again. And one more time because nothing is better than the taste of his name on your tongue.

This time, when Seungcheol finishes, it’s inside you. And when he tries to pull out, you protest with a sleepy threat before slipping into the land of dreams.

“Well, well, well,” Jeonghan tsks from the foot of the bed. “What do we have here?”

You’re still curled in Seungcheol’s arms, bare skin on bare skin only obscured by the blanket he had half a mind to drag over your two in the early hours of the morning. He’s still inside you for Christ Sake. 

And yet Jeonghan and Sofie stand like two cats who caught the canary; unperturbed by the state of things. More like they’re delighted.

It might go down as the shortest honeymoon in history because Seungcheol is going to murder them.

“Aren’t you supposed to be on a boat in Greece somewhere?” Seungcheol croaks, pulling you closer and forcing the blanket overhead. Maybe if he ignores them long enough they’ll go away.

“We were just leaving and wanted to say goodbye since some people decided to ditch our wedding. Now I see why.”

“Jeonghan,” you croak.

Jeonghan preens smugly. “Yes, whore?” 

 “Get out or I’ll show Sofie that video of you from Halloween.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“What video from Halloween?” Sofie asks.

“Jeonghan,” you warn. You’ll do it. The video of Jeonghan sobbing in a party city wig about how much he liked Sofie before they started dating is one of the few pieces of blackmail against him. 

“Fine. But when I’m back next month I want an explanation.”

“What video from Halloween?” She asks again as Jeonghan pushes her out the door.

“I hate him,” you say.

Seungcheol hums his agreement against your shoulder, tracing the skin with his lips until you shiver. “Me too.”

“Now, are you gonna do something about that,” you rock back into his pelvis, a tight squeeze around his cock he bucks into. “Or can I get up?”

“Roll over.”

Seungcheol fucks you for the nth time in so few hours. You whine and whimper and melt into the mattress under his weight, face buried in the pillows in an effort to stay quiet. He doesn’t care that the sun is heavy in the sky and half the house must be able to hear the way he groans around the syllables of your name. 

He doesn’t care one bit.

Seungcheol has seen you in plenty of relationships, been in several of his own, but he’s never been in a relationship with you.

Turns out all the daydreaming and what-ifs couldn't come close to reality.

It’s better.

Most things are still the same. You two still bicker about everything. He finds your hair all over his apartment. His clothes magically disappear from his closet only to turn up at your place. You call him a stubborn jackass and he calls you a drama queen (both in regards to how he loads the dishwasher).

And he loves that even while dating you two refuse to change. 

But Seungcheol also loves all the new things. The firsts you get to share.

The first time you visit home as a couple, your mom spots him kissing along your knuckles as you approach the house and she starts crying. Loudly. He spots his dad hand his mom twenty bucks but not before your dad hands over another ten.

Apparently, everyone was waiting for this to happen. 

His dad claps him on the shoulder and your dad shakes his hand and suddenly he’s no longer Seungcheol, childhood best friend who lived down the street. He is Seungcheol, boyfriend. He’s known your parents since he was in elementary school and his mom texts you more frequently than her own son.

But none that matters because, at the ripe age of thirty, you two are banned from sleeping over during the visit for the first time in your lives.

He’s got a suspicion it’s because none of them know how to handle their kids finally dating. You and Seungcheol have never been normal but they’re trying. 

Even if he sneaks out like he’s a teenager and climbs into your window in the dead of night. Now that's a fantasy come to life.

Back in the city Seungcheol discovers more ways things have changed.

You spend almost every night at Seungcheol’s apartment. When your sublease ends after four months there isn’t a big production about moving in with him. You had a key since he moved into the place years ago. Your stuff ends up in his spare room, which becomes ‘your’ room but you both call it the guest room and it's a new level of domesticity he’s never had.

In the mornings, you find him in the bathroom if he forgot to drop a good morning kiss on your forehead (something he’s started doing on purpose because you totter in with your eyes still closed and pajamas wrinkled, diving straight into his chest and grumbling incoherently until he gives in). It’s enough to make his heart squeeze even after the hundredth time). 

Or how you constantly find a reason to touch him. Curled around his back while he makes dinner, shimmying under his arm when he’s reading case files on the couch. A hand through his hair while you cuddle in bed. Your shared bed, in your shared apartment. Which he is embarrassingly giddy about but you are too and that makes him feel better. You meet for lunch, at either of your offices, and he can see the instinct to drop into his lap making your fingers twitch but only because his own flex with the urge to pull you in first.

The first time you go to a baseball game together and end up on the kiss cam and he doesn’t have to pretend to not notice or awkwardly wait for the cameraman to catch the hint, because you’re kissing him until his ears grow hot and the crowd hoots wildly.

In the best way possible it’s weird. He doesn’t know how to date someone he’s been in love with for as long as he can remember. A lot of it feels like being friends. Like whatever was there before is the bones and all the new things filled in the empty space between.

There isn’t really a guide or set timeline but you’re figuring it out. 

And Jeonghan helps. In his own Jeonghan way.

“You guys have been softcore dating since highschool. Just think of it like dogs. You’ve dated for a year now, right? That's like seven years for your guys.”

Seungcheol will tell you later tonight, after you’ve said yes, how the last part of your trio gave his blessing. How Sofie helped him pick the ring (which was really Seungcheol picking the ring and her providing moral support via muzzling her husband).

But for right now, he watches you across the table, laughing at something the waiter said, the weight of the velvet box burning a hole in his pocket.

And he knows the next first you have together will be the best one yet.

Taglist: @tomodachiii @cvpidyunho @miniseokminnies @ddaengpotate @arycutie

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@wobblewobble822 @futuristicenemychaos @seungkw1 @horanghaezone @jespecially

@scoupsjin @isabellah29 @luvseungcheol @crisle19 @iamawkwardandshy

@lukeys-giggle

Fic taglist:

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@min-core @helloiliketits @atsumulovemail @whoa-jo @asyre

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@smoooore @hanipopeta

© highvern. copying/reuploading/translating my work anywhere is strictly prohibited

[just-zy]

Possessive

pairing: Wednesday Addams x Fem Reader!

summary: If being unattractive and boring were a choice, Wednesday would've taken those choices for the both of you when you started dating. But, can she really blame your admirers?

A/N: hi hello yes, I got motivation, then it's back to writers block.. this is rly short!! & this is kinda shitty btw but whtevr

Warnings!: literally none.. I think.. I hope.. Just inappropriate language! (?)

Masterlist

Territorial—that was what Wednesday is. Possessive of what's hers, you. But the world doesn't know about that little detail, now do they? As much as Wednesday would hate to admit it, she despises seeing someone talk to you with flirtatious glances and the intention to take you out on a date afterwards. You were hers and she was yours.

If she wasn't ready to tell the world that you were hers, then so be it, you waited just like you said you would. You were always careful whether it'd been in public or private every time the matter of being in a relationship was being questioned.

"Are you dating someone?"

"Are you single?"

And your answer would always end up being;

"Uh– I have my eyes on someone right now-"

Which goes straight out of their heads!

"Oh? So you're single.. Okay so, I was hoping..."

And so on. Wednesday didn't like that, not when they're continuously asking you. That's what had been happening ever since she said yes to you.

Due to this, you were still that single popular outcast everyone wanted.

★

"Wednesday come on– she was just confessing, it's not like I agreed to the terms of it, I just heard her out-" I pleaded while I chased after Wednesday, short legged people are literally faster than light.

Another day another confession. It's not like it was on purpose! Besides, I have a girlfriend!

"You barely acknowledged me when I passed by, why tail me now."

"You're not serious are you? I didn't want to be rude and just leave her while she confessed!"

"For this reason, you're saying you care more about her than you do, me." Wednesday's monotone voice laid no remorse, whatsoever.

"What! I didn't say that?!"

She halts in her tracks and stared me down.

"You implied it."

She opens the door to her room right after the intense eye contact she made with me. I had no time to react, she completely locked me out!

"Wednesday, please? Open the door."

I began knocking rapidly, leaning my face to the door, my temple making contact with the wooden door.

"Continue knocking and I'll knock all your teeth in, Y/L/N."

I swore my heart stopped beating for a second, I moved away from the door whilst hearing faint clicks of Wednesday's typewriter. I click my tongue in annoyance.

"Okay."

...

Nevertheless, the pain lingered with you, which proves just how much Wednesday means to you, you wanted to know what was going on with her life, all the time. Every time.

But, it seems the world only gave you a few hours of the day for you to spend with your girlfriend.

You roamed around the quad, feeling a little sleepy. So, you took the initiative to just lay down on the nearest tree and set a timer on your phone.

Your eyes were growing droopy and tired, a few minutes in the sun wouldn't hurt, right? Besides, what's bound to happen in 10 minutes?

.

Wednesday couldn't get you out of her head, it was like you were taunting her. She hoped you weren't too upset about her childish behaviour just a few moments ago. She was confident you'd be just behind the door waiting for her to open it, although.. The only thing was, you weren't there.

She hoped you weren't too agitated with her, now she's the one looking for you. Gosh, she just wants to hold you hostage with her in her duvet.

Searching for you wasn't hard, there you were, sound asleep by a tree, with the same girl heading your way–

That girl again? Can't she take a damn hint?

If Wednesday wasn't fuming earlier, well she was now. She wasted no time then began marching right towards to both of you.

"Hello."

You were a light sleeper, sometimes you were. Your subconscious lets you sleep soundly, occasionally.

"Uhm? Hi.."

"What's your business with Y/N?"

"Oh, I was just looking after her. She's out here in the sun, all alone–"

"But she's not, she's with me."

The girl snickered at her, as if mocking her.

"Finders keepers, loser." She sneered, in a way that shows that she was ridiculing Wednesday.

"Leave."

"Or what, Ghoul?"

"Or, I'd let my demonic girlfriend rip you to shreds."

That certainly had the girl look accurately close to Wednesday's skin color, her hooded eyes widening and her mouth flying wide open, with her creased eyebrows, was it out of realization or was it because she was horrified?

"You heard what my ghoul said, leave."

How unfortunate, she felt ashamed and left without a word. Wednesday likes being mysterious and secretive, but not about her relationship with you, not anymore anyways.

A/N: :)

[letteredlettered]

One of the best moments in TGCF is when Xian Lian is lying stabbed in the road in Lang-Er Bay, seriously thinking about committing genocide, and the merchant bumps into him, drops his rice, cusses and yells at him, and then a bit later comes back and apologizes for being angry and gives Xian Lian his bamboo hat. The reason it is the best is that we expect one moment of kindness. This is what happens in a book like this. We know that Xie Lian has to have an epiphany about humanity to draw him back from the brink of utter and complete darkness. We know he has to have a catalyst that makes it so he does not commit genocide and decides to save everyone instead. This is how these stories go. But in these stories, that moment is usually given to us by an innocent child. Or it's given to us by someone who is just a purer soul than all the rest. In the set-up for this scene, you fully expect the one who will give Xie Lian the will to save humanity will be the water merchant who has been wanting to help Xie Lian the whole time he was lying in the road with a sword through him. That water merchant has been shown to be more compassionate than the rest and has been held back by his wife, who fears the God of Misfortune.

And yet, in TGCF, that moment is not given to us by a pure, innocent child. It is not given to us by one person who just happens to be kinder than most. It's not. It's not. It's given to us by just your every day guy having a shitty day who is just as cruel and nasty to Xian Lian as everyone else, but who takes a moment to calm down and sees this pathetic loser in the rain and is like "hey, I lost my temper, sorry, don't be a pathetic loser, here's my hat, stopped getting rained on and looking so sad, go home."

It's not this pure shining moment about the inherent goodness of humanity. It's this pure shining moment about people doing shitty things and people doing kind things and how that's all mixed up within us and we're always both. It's that that gives Xie Lian the will to survive and sacrifice everything to save all humanity. It's not because there is good alongside the bad but because we're always both, and Xie Lian knows that he is both, and he thinks that's worth saving. He thinks it's worth being obliterated for.

When he's not obliterated for it, he lives for it instead.

[hannieehaee]

NEED TO KNOW (teaser)

18+ / mdi

summary: with jungkook's lifelong crush also came an aversion to dating anyone who wasn't you. but what would happen when the poor lovesick boy came crying into your arms after finally giving a chance to what turned to be a disastrous date?

content: virgin!jungkook, f2l!jungkook, loser!jk, sub!jk, college au, jk is insanely socially awkward and shy, kook is touch starved, afab reader, smut, dry humping, fingering, penetrative sex, etc.

(^ no actual content warnings in the teaser)

wc: 612 (teaser); 10k (full fic)

RELEASE DATE: november 26th

or you can check it out on my patreon today by subscribing!

a/n: picture 21 year old jungkook for this hehe<3

masterlist | patreon

Jungkook often found himself feeling like his life was one of those very shitty romcoms.

Except he had never really felt like the heartthrob, or even like he was the one getting swept off his feet.

No, his experience was more closely aligned with the loser virgin who was tossed aside so the star-crossed lovers could find their way to each other. This was just how it had always been.

Jungkook had watched most of his friends find love with a person he could easily consider their soulmate. He was a romantic at heart, after all. These things were not difficult for him to spot.

He often wondered when his turn would come, except it just never did.

Being one for romance was seemingly not for the weak, as Jungkook found himself passing yet another year as a lovesick fool hoping to find that perfect someone to finally look his way.

Scratch that. Many people looked his way. Even as a self-proclaimed loser, Jungkook received plenty of attention from boys and girls alike. Looks were often thrown his way, but they were never the looks he wanted to receive.

Sure, he could easily reciprocate the appreciation he received for his looks. He could smile back, maybe even ask for their number and then see where it all led afterwards.

Except that Jungkook needed the romance. He needed to be swept off his feet (or maybe the reverse, it depended on his mood). Jungkook needed a soulmate.

It all just became eternally more complicated when Jungkook insisted on having that person be you.

That and the fact that Jungkook was slightly, how to put it, socially inept. He was shy, anxious, unable to read social cues, and basically just an overall mess. But the worst of all was his undying crush on you, this he knew.

It was a tale as old as time. Falling for your best friend, pining after them for years, hoping one day they'd turn around and realize you'd been here all along. And now on year nine of knowing you, it still hadn't happened. Jungkook remained a sad, lonely virgin awaiting for you to grant his romcom wish and make him into the love interest.

It didn't really help how painfully socially awkward Jungkook was. Truly, he was surprised you'd stuck by his side for this long despite that. There was no way Jungkook would ever want to risk ruining your current relationship in favor of something he knew would never work out. You did not like him back, these past nine years made him very well aware of that.

And so, as a result, his friends had the grand idea of setting him up.

Not once, not twice, but countless times.

However, Jungkook being Jungkook, never agreed to it. Not once had his friends been able to reel him out of his dorm long enough to entrap him into a date.

Jungkook simply saw no point in it. Blind dates were the complete antithesis of Jungkook's beliefs about romance. He needed a connection before even considering entering a romantic relationship. The thought of going on a date with someone he'd never met before unnerved him to no end.

Plus, he was convinced no one would ever actually like him past his looks. There had been far too many instances of him being on the receiving end of insults to his personality or not-so-subtle stink eyes thrown his way. To have that happen to him whilst on a blind date was just a huge no.

Jungkook found himself stuck in an endless limbo. A loveless, endless limbo as he pined after the one person he could never have.

...

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[sharkenedfangs]

— ☆ “PRETTY BOY.”

— expect the worst when whitney has a stupidly, dumb puppy love crush on his upperclassman that happens to be you and even more so, when you predictably take notice of it. but, remember— he asked for it first, didn’t he? 3.5k w.

— warnings? yeah, mildly dub-con, handjob in broad fucking daylight, somewhat exhibitionism although no one gets to see the stupid, pretty boy squirm and upperclassman male reader who’s sort of.. a bitch. y’know the drill by now, plus a younger whitney (still an adult, no worries. I’m not into that sorta shit.)

Like a clueless moth instinctually drawn towards a burning flame, he’s no goddamn different than the clingy idiots who can’t seem to automatically take a hint when given so in their direction— y’know, the ones he’d audibly snicker and scoff at due to the sheer embarrassment, disgustingly obvious puppy love streaked along their flushed faces as they mindlessly follow the other’s every move. Innocently peer up in search of their crush’s approval like some sort of brain dead dog whose sole purpose is to joyfully please their master. Hell, it’s gross, and the blonde doesn’t make it any more difficult to showcase his wrongly placed dislike for it— yeah, by the repeated gagging noises spilling forth from his open maw.

“It’s nauseating to watch, stinks up the whole room with those big, puppy, doe eyes”— he’d openly say with an absent shrug of his broad shoulders, glinting, barely visible glimpse of the metallic barbell freshly pierced upon his curved tongue proving his judgemental statements to be otherwise.. fuckin’ hypocritical, no? ‘Cuz, isn’t that same piercing found in his mouth done due to one, single, stray comment you aimlessly made by chance?

Not like your liking of things plays a grand role in whatever he does, trouble he’s immediately roped into, fuck— no, definitely not! It’s a stupid, damn coincidence is what it is, nothing more and nothing less either. No need to uselessly pry any further in the meaning of his baseless actions. Just.. happened to have it done on the same consequential day you confidently expressed your idea that he’d get one because— y’a said it’d look good on him, didn’t you? And, look here, he fuckin’ did it like some cheap mutt. Obediently parted his rosy lips for your viewing pleasure to willingly prove to your pretty eyes that he truly went along with your absently made suggestion, for real. Gleefully hung upon your every important word like his life depended on it— god, it isn’t like that, okay?

An upperclassman he’s briefly looked up to is all you are, all you’ve ever been for that matter, and he’ll punch the shitty, fuckin’ lights out of any big mouthed idiot who dares to say so otherwise. Right in the guts for spouting out complete, nonsensical bullshit, alright?

Or is it time to reluctantly admit it with a bashful blush apparent upon his contorted features— accompanied by gritting teeth stubbornly grinding together in a futile refusal of his shoddy, unwanted sentiments burrowed deep within his stuttering heart? As if he’d ever would in your presence, which he possibly can’t help himself, to childishly imitate your gestures in the withering hopes that’d you scarcely notice his thinly veiled efforts, acts filled with meaning.

Well, well.. Whitney, the supposedly cold and untouchable bully here isn’t so unique nor different from those idiotic dumbasses he’d routinely poke fun at, huh? Time to face the embarrassingly evident reality set before him, whether his gaze dares to instinctively stray away or not from the unsettling truth— ah, good thing you’re here to seamlessly guide him on the right path, ain’t that right?

As for the so-called, morally ethical path he’s hopelessly talking about.. Perhaps, that’s a plain, ol’ lie he’ll repeatedly tell himself of so considering your shared reputations at hand. More likely than not, often referred to — as much as the nickname itself has the tip of his ears prickling scarlet, noisily yelling at the fuckers who cheekily name him that — your little, dumb puppy. Fuck, he’s not! The day he, himself, Whitney of all people, wordlessly bows down to the height of someone’s heel frustratingly grinding atop of his head, is the day one can loudly claim with unbridled conviction, that he’s officially lost his goddammit mind, that’s what.

Listen, you’re the one who faithfully promised and guaranteed your unwavering protection if he stuck to your sides like some fuzzy pet, so he did the obvious choice. Specially when met with the shitty conditions this rundown town, definitely shady for that matter, is. Rather be silently stamped as the ‘sly follower’ who went along with the smartest choice presented to ‘em— your offer, by the way — than some nobody seamlessly forgotten on the dirtied streets. Least, that’s what likely replays on and on in his mind like some cheap, broken record to dumbly convince his unmoving mind of what this annoyingly persistent feeling is deep within the pit of his quivering tummy. Annoying, ain’t it?

Speakin’ of tummy, you sure are touchy-feeling with him, aren’t ya? Not that he necessarily minds nor will outwardly admit the slightest shivers that comes to grace the entirety of his figure when met with the briefest grazes of your fingertips flush against his bare skin. Likes the physical contact intimately shared between you two? Fuck no— just keeping himself on your good side in case you were to suddenly discard him like you habitually do with your other.. nameless toys, which he doesn’t possess enough fucks to bother learning their names. As long as your flickering gaze doesn’t happen to stray too far from his, he’s actually, pretty content.

‘Course, it did progressively start off with the sorta things you’d absentmindedly do with your numerous friends. Brush of his golden strands glimmering against the gleaming sunlight— shit, even acted out like some cheesy rom-com at the way his face instantly heated up, glimpse of vulnerability you seem to so easily catch on with him and fuck, does he detests it— truly does like no other. Still, lets y’a carelessly stroke your fingers throughout the mess of a hairstyle the delinquent wears, even fucking.. tenderly pushed a single, stray strand of hair behind his burning ear. Shoulders instinctively drawn up in sheer defence at the tension residing within him because, really, how do y’a expect him to relax and ease up when it’s with you?

“What? What is it? Do I have shit in my hair or somethin’?” Oh yeah, nice goin’ on that fuckin’ stupid question of his, huh? Flush adorning the length of his face— god, even down towards his neck too— immediately deepening at the crude choice of words. Might casually speak so with anyone, but when it comes to you, he’s got this instinctual urge to not come off as some try-hard desperately trying to butter you up in hopes of your returned approval of him.

“Hm? It’s nothing, I just think you’d look cute if you grew out your hair a little bit. Don’t you think?” Ah, and there you go— with your surprising compliments spoken out of the blue like that.

“Cute?? Are you seriously tryna fuck with me right now?” Defensive mechanism or whatever to draw up that blank conclusion since this is just about the first time any sort of adjective resembling that of ‘adorable’ by the way, could’ve been made to plainly describe a rowdy, unrelenting boy such as Whitney.

“What? You don’t think so? I think you’re cute as shit, Ney-ney.” That fuckin’ nickname again, god. Quit it, will ya? And, don’t try to tentatively lean closer in his personal space when calmly making that stupid remark too! Your goddamn— ah, hot breath effortlessly heating up the shell of his ear, curled lips almost, insistently pressed against his cheek. “Real fucking cute, actually. Definitely cuter than the average boy that’s for sure— prettier too, but you’ve got too much of a stick up your ass to admit that, don’t you?”

At this point, you’re practically taunting him, and he would’ve unabashedly swung his fist if it weren’t for that said person being you. Grin cracking upon your lips at the doe, wide-eyed look he’s greeting you with, seemingly unable to utter so much as a word to that uncharacteristically depraved statement, or is that your idea of a damn compliment to another guy? Shit, that’s right! Both guys is what you two are— so, his cock hidden underneath the fabric of his ripped jeans, languish legs lazily stretched out along the creaking, wooden bench, shouldn’t be stirring up with peeked interest at the mind numbing prospect of endlessly being called ‘pretty’ by you. Nor profusely encouraging the alarming amount of translucent pre-cum dizzyingly forming at the swollen tip of his cock head, crudely staining the material sheer. Give the blonde a supportive head pat while you’re at it, too. Ah.. should be saying somethin’ right about now lest he wants to appear as some bashful fool.

“I don’t—“

“Yeah, yeah. You don’t swing that way, I know. I’m not hitting on you, I’m just telling the truth as it is. Got any idea how many guys would line up just to fuck your dirty mouth? Maybe your tits too, if they’re into that sorta stuff— shit, I think they’d go for the ass too, definitely. I could make a goddamn fortune just whoring out your pretty, slutty body to the old fucks at the pub, y’know that, Whit?” Endless chattering on and on, explicit details of how some grubby old men could be here, disgustingly groping his flesh instead. Yet, that lingering glimmer within your gaze, noticeably darkening in return at the mere idea of it as your thumb comes forth to idly tap at his blazing cheek.

“But, you know.. I don’t. I won’t. Not cuz’ I’m a nice guy or anything— hah, truthfully, I’m no better than them for wanting to ruin a pretty face like yours.” You’re.. god, he can’t keep up with whatever shit you’re nonchalantly spouting, gracing solely his ears to be the one to silently listen to this.. crap, can’t really say it— fluttering in his tensed stomach from your bold admission, depraved wants just as much as he does late at nights— wanting to fuck him too.

“Honestly, do you know why I don’t use your sorry fuckin’ ass, Whitney?”

If he’s meant to attentively keep up with your words by now, then his brain has happily shut off due to the dizzying amount of semi-insults, degration and somewhat praise shot in his way. Like he’d fucking know, shit!

“See, it’s cuz’ it’s real funny to watch you trotting ‘round my side like some dumb, fucking puppy begging for its owner’s attention. I give you just a bit of praise, and your doggy tail would start wagging if you even had one. You look so goddamn stupid that it’d hurt my conscience to sell you out like this. And, I don’t like it when other fucks touch what’s mine either. I’m not running some gracious charity, am I?” To be truthful, if you tirelessly keep up with that incessant spouting, he’s bound to boil over like some screeching, burning kettle considering.. the obscene amount of scorching heat riddled across his features currently, adorning his cheeks so stupidly — and prettily too, huh— crimson red for your unwavering gaze solely. Seems like you’re liking the rare show in front of you quite a bit, aren’t you?

Stunned would’ve been one of the few lacking words remaining in the thick, daunting dictionary to scarcely describe the absolutely idiotic expression he’s nicely sporting right about now.

“Shut up.. I’m not—“ Fuck, fuck, fuck!! And, how the simple concept of verbal speech dutifully fails the bully at a time like this. Great going there, fuckin’ dumbass! Visibly seething would’ve been the most reasonable reaction in face of this, but— but— fuck! Entirety of this crap is all too quick for his sluggish mind to steadily keep up with your unpredictable actions, pathetically keening with a drawled out curse— no, more like a high-pitched whine is what it truly sounds like, once your calloused palm gingerly strips him free from his relatively loose jeans in one fell swoop.

“What the fuck’re you doin’—?? Mmph, fuck.. don’t—“ Dumb question to be asking when the self-evident answer is plainly in front of him.

Weeping cock, flushed in the cooling, outside air, naturally springing forth out of its constricting confines to audibly slap against his bare rigid tummy. Aw, now ain’t that real pretty to witness? Timid, twitching cock profusely leaking out sticky pre to messily smear along the curve of the blonde’s stomach, which you promptly do the honours for him, unabashedly too.

Always been pretty confident in your audacity to joyfully serve people, haven’t you? By god, he’s half-hated ya for meddling with others private businesses to begin with, although his throbbing cock being so smoothly tended to can say otherwise, idly disagree with his withering logic. Shakily sighing, puffing out heated huffs of air as your so— fuck.. annoyingly warm and soft hand loosely tucks ‘round his fat cock, teasingly squeezes him down at the base. Meanly drawing out more pearly globs of his dribbling pre-cum with a resounding, wet squelch!, undeniable proof of his shared arousal at the newfound situation he’s unfortunately finding himself in.

‘Unfortunately’— one says, funny that you see right through that by the mocking nature of your barking laughter, sharply ringing within his ears.

“My, who’s the exact fucking pervert here, Whit? Y’seem pretty hard to me. Actually, you’re dripping wet down there, y’know that?” No fucking shit. Ready to single-handily cum from a single, measly stroke of your fist snugly wrapped around the veiny girth of his quivering length— fucking hell. Head instinctively thrown back to which you soon wistfully take advantage of, ‘course you would, wouldn’t you? Lazily pressing hot, heated kisses along the sharp edges of his jawline that soon has the same bully, known to be so very resistant, stifling wanton moans, firmly clasping a palm over his gaping mouth in a heedless effort to remain discreet as possible. Slithering, pink tongue laving and tracing over the heated shell of his ear, ushered snickering coupled by bouts of utter filth being so brazenly whispered towards him. And your canines— ah, are not helping at all either. Grazing the bobbing curve of his throat, delicately sucking a bruising mark upon the tanned skin to pridefully admire over later. “Nnh— no, fu— ah, uuckk! N-Not there, you bastard!!”

“Not here? What’s the matter, Ney-Ney? Can’t fucking speak properly when your pretty, pink cock is being stroked off like this?” Would’ve scornfully refuted you, barked out the meanest curses that would’ve had an elderly woman shockingly clutch her pearls if given the chance, but stealing a discreet glance down to humiliatingly witness how sticky and wet his tip has gotten, messily stained your palm in a string of creamy, white pre is not.. Possessing way too much pride to do so. “Y’see, you like this— hah, fuck— you like it when I actually take what I fucking want from you and ruin you down to this cute, little, slutty mess, yeah?”

“I-It’s not like that—“ Uncharacteristically meek protest on his part. Cat got his tongue, ‘s that it?

“No? Pretty boy. Use your words, will you?” Oh, fuuuuckkin’ god. Seeing sheer darkness as his eyes reflexively roll backwards to his skull from casually being called ‘pretty’ by your lulling voice.

Have any idea the way your hushed words dizzyingly affects his fuzzy brain? Renders him alarmingly stiff like a stoned statue, wobbling knees surely bound to buckle beneath the weight of your relentless taunting, all the while being boldly jerked off in broad, fucking daylight — hidden amongst the rustling bushes of the park, mind you — still, very much in an open space where one can be so easily seen by oncoming passerbys. And even then, the absolute control you possess over him, sneakily snaking your arm ‘round his middle, relishing in the little, heated gasps hurriedly rushed out of this dirty, fucking perverted bitch of a blonde’s mouth is too way goddamn much for him to precariously withstand another tortuously long second of this shit.

Yeah, one more minute? He’s fucking busting by then.

“What’s the matter? Can’t keep up? Gon’ shoot your filthy load soon, ‘s that it?” Mild disinterest lacing your very tone with a slight hint of, what’s that..? Actual anticipation? Hah, as if he can barely discern between the mind buzzing layer of reality set upon him when coupled by your soft— so fucking warm, shit.. hand relentlessly fisting him dry, milking every thick droplet steadily trickling forth. Uncaring for the accumulated mess below you both as his hips instinctually roll forward against the rewarding palm of your curled fist, sickeningly jolts at a noticeably harsh press of your padded thumb atop his oozing tip. “Well, then.. Go ahead, I’m not stopping you, am I?”

“Cmon, pretty. Paint my hand all sticky and nice for me, yeah?”

Predictably so, as the uttered rumours had notably confirmed— how downright desperate Whitney’s always apparently been for you to the damn point that he’s automatically cumming on command like a dog patiently withholding for its owner’s words and oh, was it fucking worth the extensive wait. Stifled whimper weakly slipping out, fingers immediately latching onto the comforting feel of your forearm lazily slung around his quivering figure for proper support. No use in making a fool out of himself by clumsily buckling down to his slacked knees— not that he hasn’t already, though too late to be thinking about it twice, huh? Thick, sticky strings of his hot seed directly shot out of his pulsing cock and into the air to, as expected, pervertedly dirty your open hand in a mess of his load which is kinda.. hot, no? Fuckin’ get ahold of yourself, shit! Minus the rest having uncontrollably splattered downwards onto the ground, pitifully traced in a puddled mess of droplets.

And somehow, the barely discernible hint of a relieved breath tumbling from between his parted lips. The natural conclusion that this is it, oncoming closure bound to take its place yet still— still, damn it; Always managed to keep the dirtied blonde on the edge of his toes, haven’t you?

So, truly, it shouldn’t have came off as an unexpected shock then, how you so brazenly mumble a stuttered curse beneath your puffed sighs at the melting sight. “Ah, fuck.” Swiftly freeing your fat— well, admittedly hefty cock for his following eyes to shamelessly gawk at in turn because, y’know.. fuck, he won’t outright voice it, but the sinful glimmer in his wide gaze says it all. Innate itch, unadulterated need— god, to merely sling down to his knees, sloppily drool all over your tasty-looking cock and coat it all shiny and wet with his spit. Although, too busy admiring the rare glimpse of your contorted features strained with pure, unrestrained concentration to bother paying much attention to the repeated, distinct fapping! noises of your cock being so hurriedly stroked raw, as if in a hurry, almost.

Furrowed brows deepening, lashes fluttering in their wake as your rosy lips that he’s known time and time again to be nonchalantly formed into a grin— now, so prettily stained crimson by the harsh press of your teeth against your puffy, bottom lip. “Don’t— ugh, fucking look at me like that.” You audibly groan out in the mix of a huffed chuckle. Slightest flush delicately dusting your cheeks a pink hue, so damn pretty too. “Hah, it makes things kinda awkward, y’know?” Ah, takes less than a stretched minute for his brain to acutely process what’s hit him before given the proper chance.

Something hot— and sticky too, actually it’s pretty evident what it should’ve been if he wasn’t so goddamn brain dead within this bleary moment. Splattering amongst the already present mess you’ve both collectively made of yourself, thick ropes of sweet cum landing right upon his rumpled uniform you’ve taken a gleeful joy of permanently ruining. Judging by the cackling laughter soon drawing forth outta ya thanks to the sheer, dizzying sight of the cum-stained mess he’s forced to pitifully endure for the time being.

Look what you’ve done, god— even if you manage to be one step ahead of him, as always, in such a predicament as the delinquent merely receives a thrown jacket straight in the face. “Sorry for ruining your nice shirt of yours, I couldn’t really help myself when you looked so dumb like that. Take it as an apology, alright?” Exhaling out shakily in the chilling air suddenly alarmingly cold without your warm weight shifted against his own, too deliriously fucked out of his mind to muster up a rightful remark to your cheaply made one. Dumb, little ol’ puppy is what he is to you, no?

And perhaps then, it’s the idiotic absurdity of your actions, swiftly turning away like the encounter itself hadn’t even taken place right at this very spot. Footsteps progressively fading amongst the rhythmic crunches of fallen leaves fluttering down from the withering trees, gaze tentatively flicking downwards to where your stupidly soft, discarded jacket rests within his arms. Meaningless gesture is what it should’ve been notably perceived as, though that doesn’t really help the gradual thump! of his swaying heart noisily beating against his chest nonetheless.

That’s not— oh.

Oh.

“..Fuck.”

Yeah, being wholly swallowed by the ground beneath his feet doesn’t sound so bad now, does it?

[eddiesghxst]

eddie throwing his back out giving you everything he has and ofc it hurts like a bitch the next day and he wants you again and again and again

🫶

ITS GIVING OLDER EDDIE HELLO

18+ — MINORS DNI

————

the next morning eddie’s making breakfast and he dramatically groans whenever he reaches up to grab something from the cabinets until you finally crack and ask, “what’s wrong, baby?”

he just jokingly glares at you and goes, “you destroyed my back, that’s what’s wrong. the last time i had this much sex was in my twenties, i’m not equipped for this.” he grumbles, reaching back to rub at his lower back.

you roll your eyes, stepping forward to slink your hands around his waist, pressing your body up against his back and kissing the bare skin between his shoulders, “for what it’s worth, even though you’ve got a shitty back, your refractory period makes up for it,” you joke, patting his stomach and kissing his back once again, pressing a smile into his skin when he grunts in response.

“don’t have much of a choice, do i? i’ve got a succubus for a girlfriend.”

you hum, “that’s weird, last i remember it was you asking for one more round, wasn’t it?”

you stretch onto the tips of your toes to rest your chin against his shoulder to peer down at his skilled hands hard at work preparing your meal, and eddie doesn’t bother glancing at you as he responds, “not sure, things start to blur after the third big-O.”

you hum as a teasing smile spreads across his lips, “whatever you say, big guy.” you playfully nip at his shoulder and he hisses, batting you away as you giggle, turning to lean against the counter beside him so you’re facing him, “when you’re done with this, come and i’ll give you a massage for your achey old man back, hm?”

eddie glances away from his task to look at you, “that pretty little mouth of yours is gonna get you in trouble.”

you tilt your head with a sly grin, voice smooth and sultry as you speak, “is that a threat, musnon?”

eddie let’s out an exasperated noise and looks at you with narrowed eyes, “can a man cook in peace, please? or at least without you trying to get in my pants like i’m some harlot,”

you raise your eyebrows and motion down to his crotch, the unmistakable print of his hardening length pressing against the seam of his sweatpants, “seems like he enjoys it.”

eddie playfully shoves you away then, muttering for you to get out of the kitchen and you giggle, yelping when he swats at your behind, “ow! what was that for?” you whine, rubbing at your sore cheek. eddie grins, dicing a few onions and dropping them onto the stove, “for being such a goddamn minx. get out of here before i accidentally set this house on fire.”

and even though his back hurts like hell, he still ends up drilling your shit, but you have to take over midway because eddie’s poor back really might just croak on him and he swears if that happens, you’re paying for his medical bill <3