#you know i had to make it a little angsty

[fangel]

YVE !! ♡ my angel, your feedback means more than all the stars in the sky ଘ꒰ ॣ´͈ ᵕ `͈ ॣ꒱ଓ i’m going to scream with you under the cut

starting with the synopsis alskdwlmzap i mean who doesn’t see sunghoon and #WantThat ?! i fear he wouldn’t leave a room with me in one piece

as an evil, weird, off putting girl myself i had to represent !! she was so easy to write bc i was half self-inserting during this story 😭 i love her idc ! she never did wrong !!

m*n are rotten, and i wholeheartedly agree that 100 random m*n should be sacrificed monthly. honestly, put them all in jail to start until deemed worthy of being free ! ~ the father / reverend is the true evil here. absolute terrible man (but necessary for the plot) i love how you dragged him every chance you got LMAO he deserves all the hate “it’s time for you to die” IJBOL, so real

it was hitting real close to home while writing ㅠㅠ and you’re so right - she wasn’t born resilient, she had to become resilient because of the environment she grew up in !! and omg your comments about her made me realize how sad and angsty this story is (i didn’t even think it was that depressing while writing but ohmygod it really is ajskakf)

NOT THE “it’s nice to be seen, noticed” being a theme in my works 😭 am i exposing myself ?!? (yes)

sidenote — I LOVE ALL THE LIL MEMES AND GIFS SO MUCH HAHA the debby ryan ones always get me

i live love laugh when one of the love interests is a lil scared. yes, fear me, i love you but am also out to get you (in many ways, this adds to the mystery hehe) likkkke sunghoon doesn’t know what to do with all that !! … or does he?

THANK YOU! i pride myself in my weird creativity and no it’s not weird, it just means you’re a Real One. be giddy and excited !!!

you’re freaky comments kslakdpalb #REAL

soooo much religious trauma in this story. i’m the biggest nerd when it comes to theology and religious media (i honestly don’t know why, i don’t love or hate religion and im not religious (anymore), but something about it i’m always itching to write). i think it’s perfect for wanting to write about a relationship dealing with unlearning shame and guilt etc idk ! you get it? yeah, you do

reader is 100000% projecting her feelings / trauma onto him. she doesn’t even realize that until later and how ironically she kind of was acting like her father in a way. and you’re on the money again ! she does like ruining sunghoon and having power over something but eventually realizes she likes the company much more after being alone most her life

omg ty ily for loving my ‘evil’ mc :( 🤍 she’s so complex and so very human. loved how you described her because that’s exactly how i wanted her to come across. yeah she’s a little mean but how can we blame her 😔

NO YOU ARE CORRECT !!! jake in HoP is also jake from attic angel. just them as college students (tbh i don’t remember all my details from attic angel, but i did want him to make a cameo here so yes this is my multiverse)

FATHERLESS BEHAVIOR ! i screamed. but sunghoon is sooooo cute. i had to bring the babygirl hoon agenda to light bc he’s so sweet and loser boy coded to me

YES THE TEDDY BEAR SCENE it’s actually my favorite part of the whole story 😭 because she’s finally opening up to him and being somewhat vulnerable. tender intimate moments >> anything else. I LOVE SLOW BURN, AND I MEANT IT !! before writing on this account angst and slow burn was always my go to :)) also the blood oath scene is one of my favs. it was supposed to be longer but was lazy lol

(i have to reply to the comment, sorry not sorry) but i had to gut you open to blow on the boo-boos </3 i needed that fluff to feel extra rewarding after the angst

IM SOOOO HAPPY you feel this was made for you because it was !! it really truly was. you’re more than likely a lot like me and this story was a love letter to all the people that the world made me feel small. we are seen and we can and will be loved just as tenderly as we wish regardless of how negative we feel about ourselves or what others think, etc 🤍 (i swear i have no cameras watching you!! unless.. JK)

NOT YOU CALLING ME OUT ABOUT THE ROOMS HAHA college boys are truly a mess, you got me there. i remember my guy friends dorms and it was horrid. sunghoon would never tho..

i could reply to everything you said (i totally did out loud to myself while giggling and kicking my feet with a fat grin) but i’ll end with THANK YOUUUUU SO MUCH FOR TAKING YOUR TIME TO READ MY STORY AND EVEN MAKE COMMENTS WITH ALL THE PICTURES AND WHAT NOT IT MEANS THE WORLD TO ME HOW YOU PUT EFFORT INTO YOUR RESPONSES. I LOVE YOU SO BAD AND ITS BC YOU I ENJOY WRITING AND SHARING MY WORK EVEN MORE <3 !!!!!!! may the most tender, kind, and warm love find you.

harvest of purity — sunghoon [ 박성훈 ]

pairing ⦂ sunghoon ⨯ fem. reader

synopsis ⦂ au in which an innocent, shy, and faithful sunghoon takes a summer job as a farmhand. he’s never indulged on his desires until the farmer’s daughter shows him a taste of sin. although riddled with guilt, he cannot deny or escape the new rousing feelings that impurify him. especially when she's set on ruining him every chance she gets.

genre ⦂ smut, slow burn romance, strangers to lovers word count ⦂ 29k tags ⦂ fluff and angst, repressed desires, innocence loss, guilt and shame, exploring relationships, falling in love, southern gothic vibes, summer au, clingy down bad sunghoon, ‘mean’ morally gray reader, both are weirdo loser freaks content advisory ⦂ mdni ! dark-ish content ⚠︎ sexually explicit content in four scenes: handjob, oral (m. rec.), dry humping, thigh fucking, unprotected sex, virginity loss, corruption!kink, degradation!kink, praise!kink, switch!hoon, he whines whimpers and cries; religious themes, concepts, corruption, and criticism; manipulation, animal death, blood, intense scenes, abusive parenting, gun mention and use

note ⦂ poured my heart out. i hope you love it as much as i do. dedicated to my other evil, off-putting, and/or weird girls┊reblogs and feedback encouraged ⇀ playlist ⸝⸝ masterlist 🌾

　You’re not sure what life in your small town was like before you were born. You can imagine it’s not too different from what it is now though. The thing about old country towns is they never seem to change. Open fields and miles of farmland. Two gas stations, one grocery store, a few family owned vegetable stands or in-home produce product shops. Only one notable neighborhood where the majority of the townspeople lived if not hidden somewhere else in the countryside. And too many churches to keep track of if the abandoned ones were included in the count. 

You like to think your parents were happy before you too. Hopeful and optimistic when offered to take over your uncle’s farm. Excited for the next step in their relationship after their marriage. They were the ideal family dream coming to life: high school lovers, engaged after graduation, married, a career handed to them through family with a large property of land and lovely farmhouse. All that was left was to grow that family. To have children to not only help tend the fields and animals but run around barefoot, all smiles, and wide eyed. 

You were positive that it was something they wanted. 

But life couldn’t have been that easy for them; it would’ve been too gratuitous of a blessing.

The day you were born, your father knew there was something greatly wrong with you. He claimed that on the day you ripped your mother open, screaming and crying, that God spoke to him for the first time. He called it divine intervention. Believing the birth of your soul was a red-herring of all that was set to come but God would show him the light, the truth: that you were nothing short of evil and needed saving. 

That year on the farm there was nothing but death. It only furthered your father’s harsh thinking of you. The crops and produce either died or rotted before it had the chance to grow or ripe. The animals were dropping dead from unknown illnesses. Every female livestock that gave birth passed in doing so. Barely any profits were made that year. Taxes were rising and so were the prices of nearly everything. It was a huge toll for your family, especially when raising their first child. Before you were even conscious of the situation everything was already deemed your fault. 

Through the harrowing struggle, your father’s optimism turned to resentment. He claimed that bringing you to the farm was not like bringing a daughter home, but a corrosive parasite. He believed that you were the reason for the life being sucked away from their perfect farm life. So, he turned to the only thing that he could trust to save the family from your curse: God. Begging and pleading through prayers every morning and night to the sky for a better season. 

He studied religion here and there before taking over his brother-in-law's farm but with the farm failing for the first time, he took a change of career paths. He was already well known among the locals, close with the church goers in the community. And somewhere along the way, he managed to start preaching himself. Nearly every christian in your town moved churches to follow where he went. Like sheep to a shepherd. 

If only they knew what you did, what he was truly like behind the closed doors of your home. How his devotion was turning to violence. Day by day, becoming uglier. 

While your father busied himself with his new found family, often away from home on the farm, the crops and animals began to thrive again. Slowly but surely, growing and regaining health. He would say it’s God’s doing, a small taste of His salvation. 

Your early years were mostly troubled by the relationship of your parents. Too young to fully understand their disputes, drawing at the kitchen table with their yelling sounding the house. It was always about you, that much you knew. Because you watch and you listen. Quick to learn that they tried for another child but never had any success. They wanted someone else to be their baby. Something that felt more like a blessing than you. Your father constantly spitting in your mother’s face that you were the rot to the fruit of her womb. And then he would always end up leaving by slamming the door and your mother would always join you at the table with tears and a bottle of wine. You always just watched, listening in silence. Perhaps just born resilient.

Growing up was different for you compared to most of the kids in your town. You never had the opportunity to make many friends being homeschooled. The only time that was spent around others your age was kindergarten. Kindergarten was short lived because of your behavior; the teachers at school were concerned about you. How you were mean, rough, and sinister with your actions towards others. Picking on the kids you were simply interested in because of how different from you they were. Drawing pictures of gutted cattle or dead, half developed baby chicks still in their shell and giving them as gifts to the teachers. Sharing to classmates the cruelty of farm life and why it was pretty with a smile. 

Your father loved to find out about this, you could see it in his eyes. The way they were wicked and screamed I told you so to your mother. You didn’t understand why it was bad or caused trouble. You were only having fun for the first time. The way the kids ran away crying or the teachers wore faces of shocked horror, it made your insides light up in joy. A new feeling—a sense of excitement. You didn’t know it was sick. And of course, it was taken from you. You were removed from school and your mother became your teacher. Your classmates became stuffed animals and the real ones in the barns. It was hard for you to find that joy you briefly felt with others. 

Sometimes you had a glimpse of it again when your father would punish you. But even that you grew sick of. The mess, the stench of it all. Sticky and red, worse in the heat of summer. He drilled the sick moto for his actions into your head, “I know no punishment, only mercy.”

Father took you both to church more often after that. He had a false image to uphold afterall, one of a happy, God loving family. In his ego he had to prove that his preaching and prayers could fix you, save you. But that was only admitted at home, loud and scary to your mother. Your poor mother, weak and defensive of you, eventually waved her white flag. You wished she kept fighting for you and that she wouldn’t begin to see you the way your father did. 

Childhood and adolescence was a string of questions about yourself. Never quite finding out what made you so bad to be seen as devilish when all you thought of yourself was curious. Perhaps just unlucky to be correlated with negative happenings on and off the farm, always gone without a chance of understanding. Despite it all, you knew well enough the way your parents talked and looked at you was without unconditional love. 

On your 17th birthday, the family dynamic made the biggest shift to be experienced. 

At this age, you had such a strong sense of independence and with the lack of parental guidance and monitoring, you would leave town when you could. Ride your bike down the long road to the bus stop at the center of town and take the bus into the city over. Your mother was generous with allowance and you saved your money well, only spending it on books or trips to the movie theater. A form of escape that allowed you to learn more about the world and all the things your parents tried to keep hidden from you. A way to learn how to be human. 

So when your father was tearing your room apart in search of the same gift he re-gifts you every year, he found some things that made his stomach churn. Every year for your birthday he rewrapped the same, first ever, bible he’d given you. Funny enough that he gave you anything at all considering he never even referred to it as your day, only his day of revelation. And to his disgust, on his sacred day, he found books and journals of explicitly detailed copulation and debauchery. 

He almost fainted. Stumbling over his own feet, hands shaking as he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the words on the pages. That was the only time you smiled on that day. Just for a second. And then a glimpse of hell broke loose. 

In a rage, he destroyed everything. Your mother stood next to you in tears, telling him to stop and stop. Her hands covered her face but she saw everything through her fingers. You only watched in silence, hands balled in fists by your side. A silent hatred and anger coursed in you. He called you names that no man of God should, especially to his own daughter. 

“You’re a disgraceful deviant of Satan! I should’ve known. My own day of revelation is a curse!” You watched him rip pages apart, his voice booming through the house. “Years spent praying for you and this is how you turn out?! Succumbing to nothing but a dreaming whore?!”

A part of you liked his mean words. It was so rare for him to use such colorful language. 

You knew what would come next. He was going to have you ‘cleansed’. Something he always did when he discovered something new and sacrilegious of you. 

But it didn’t come. Because there was no dying, old sheep on the farm at the time. He did make a promise to not forget though. A promise to have you washed in sacrificial, blessed blood on a day you least expected. 

Your father left after that, leaving you and your mother behind. He moved to the city to continue his preaching at a larger church. He became known as the closest reverend to God for miles and miles. Lost in his ways, he only made visits when he needed to sort things out for the business of the farm.

You were content with his departure, yet couldn’t quite understand why your mother missed him. As far as you’ve seen, he was never kind towards either of you. 

　But now, it’s several years later. And although you’re free of your father’s heavy presence and homilies, he still makes his trips to the farm. You can feel the air change whenever he does, as if you’ve gained a sixth sense for his coming. Naturally intuitive to things having spent your childhood walking on eggshells in your own home. 

And today, the air feels particularly chill for summer. The breeze sweeps in through your open window. The forecast called for nothing but sunshine all week, yet there’s an angry, dark cloud hanging over your farm. A foreboding feeling shivers through you, and you know he’s going to fulfill his promise today. You sigh and slide out of bed. “Let’s get this over with.”

You spend the morning doing your usual routine. Brushing teeth, washing your face, then dressing in farm work attire. Your breakfast consists of tea and your mothers homemade strawberry scone. Next is tending to the animals. Your mother usually takes care of the crops and gardening. It’s a quiet and early morning, as most are. The both of you keep to yourselves, just doing what needs to be done day by day. 

The sound of a car is heard coming down to the long dirt road and you know who it is by the sound. It’s a fancier vehicle than the one he left this property with years ago. A meaner part of you likes to think his greedy hands got into that mega church’s donations but you’re too self aware of the successful farm your family owns. 

Your father parks in front of the house and your mother is quick to rush over to him, presumably with many questions: How have you been? Are you hungry? Thirsty? What brings you here so early in the month? 

You roll your eyes at her desperation to cling onto the relationship that clearly ended when you were a child. 

You place a hand on your hip, leaning your weight to the side that isn’t carrying the heavy bucket of chicken feed. Walking away from the coops and back towards the shed by the house, you make eye contact with your father despite only taking a glance. 

He watches you with narrow eyes from the lowered window of the car he’s still sitting in, very much not listening to a word your mother is saying. 

He calls your name before you can open the shed. Spinning on the heels of your boots, you turn around with raised brows of questioning. 

He mouths the words sacrificial tree as he exits the car. Your mother sees this. She wears pained disappointment as she scurries away. Presumably to the barn where the sheeps and lambs are kept. She might as well be a sheep too, you think. 

The bucket slips from your fingers and drops to the patchy dirt grass by your feet with a thud, spilling over in a mess that will be cleaned later. 

You don’t bother giving him a nod of understanding. You just turn around and begin your walk to the tree line where the man made path is. Knowing it would take some time for his preparations, you walk to the lake that’s hidden behind the farmland. 

It’s a brief walk through your familiar woods. Once at the short wooden dock, you sit down at the end, taking in the gloomy summer scenery. A light fog hugs over the water. You bring your knees to your chest, in your sitting position, and hug yourself the same way. 

This is your favorite place out of all the land your family owns. It’s serene, mostly. Always quiet. You’re the only one who comes here. And it’s nice to swim with when the weather warrants it. There’s a feeling here that’s hard to feel anywhere else you find yourself. Sometimes you imagine what it would be like with someone else, but you doubt it would be as nice. Trouble has a way of following you, it seems. You frown at the thought. 

It’s silent like this for a few minutes, just you trying to find a sense of calmness before the impending chastisement. Then you hear some rustling of leaves, heavy footsteps following. You don’t turn around yet, you only wait for the call of your name. Your time of tranquility is too brief. You sigh before giving yourself a squeezing hug. 

“It’s time,” the reverend calls out loudly, “quickly now, we have new farmhands arriving soon.” The sound of his feet walking away is when you stand. You wave a goodbye to the foggy lake before parting ways. Your feet move unconsciously, taking to where your body knows to go. 

Leaves crinkle underneath your boots and twigs snap. The trees’ branches sway in the gentle morning breezes that pass. 

In the mix of the small forest, man made crosses of sticks or plywood are spaciously scattered. Like a graveyard to all your bad doings. Most small but one large. Old rotted wood that stands crooked and begging to fall over right next to the largest, strongest tree. Your eyes, that are trained to ground, move upwards the cross and then to the tree. Your father stands there with a large knife in hand. Your mother waits cautiously not too far away. Her demeanor is frightful as if this is the first time. Coward.

An old sheep hangs by its hind legs from a sturdy tree branch. Unmoving and defenseless. Big beady, dumb eyes look in all directions but you. You think it must feel the same guilt as yourself, sorry that its life purpose is to embarrass you, make you hate what you are. 

“God told me to make a sacrifice to prove my faith. He guides my hand in washing your soul clean of sin. So here I am with our blessed, dying lamb.” He’s said this every time. His voice is always miserably rehearsed and preacher-esque. 

You thought long ago that this was their, the lambs, only use on the farm. It’s a shame. All that devotion has made him so ugly and violent. 

You make small steps closer to the lamb. It’s whining in bleat baas and mehs. Does it know what’s happening? Is it scared? You like the lambs, sheeps. Pure white, soft, and docile. They never fight back. They just take it. I doubt they need restraints. You could hold them above me just the same and they’d never resist. 

“Move faster, for the love of God. Yeah, stand right there underneath like you know how to.” He instructs you, annoyed. His patience running thin as the distant sounds of a truck makes way down the dirt road to the farm property. 

“Okay…” You don’t fight him, with arms crossed behind your back and a hand squeezing around your own wrist, you move closer. Maybe you’re a lamb too. 

Maybe all your father really was is the executioner. 

He raises the knife as he begins to speak, it slides over its cotton, white throat but does not cut, “Revelation 7:13-17 Then he told me, ‘These are those who come from the great tribulation, and they’ve washed their robes, scrubbed them clean in the blood of the Lamb. That’s why they’re standing before God’s Throne. They serve him day and night in his Temple. The One on the Throne will pitch his tent there for them: no more hunger, no more thirst, no more scorching heat. The Lamb on the Throne will shepherd them, will lead them to spring waters of Life. And God will wipe every last tear from their eyes.’” He slits its throat in a quick, harsh movement. The blood spills just as fast, squirting spurts of red before it comes pouring down onto you. “Face up,” you obey even though it brings you rage, “it ought to cleanse those unholy thoughts I know that are still in there.” 

Head raised to the sky with eyes and mouth squeezed shut, you let it consume you. Warm, thick and wet washes down from your head onto your clothes then down to your feet. The smell of animal, metallic iron covers you. It’s sticking to your hair, eyebrows and lashes. You can already feel your clothes clinging to your skin in the dirtiest ways. 

You stand there, drenching in the its blood. Your father speaks again, firm and slow, “Say it with me now, ‘I know no punishment, only mercy.’” All you feel is the animal’s rain of life flooding you.

You open your mouth to speak but are quick to spit and cough out the blood that manages to get into your mouth. Smack. 

“I don’t have time for this,” his voice sounds like an echo, your head is ringing from the harsh swing of his hand. The skin of your cheek stings. He hits like a bitch, you think. “Say it with me now, dammit!” You can feel him wipe his bloodied hand on the side of your shirt. 

You step back from under the red shower. “I know no punishment, only mercy.” Your words align with his in the perfect paced harmony you’re trained to do so. Enunciated, slow and strong, through gritted teeth.

There’s a beat of silence before the sound of your parents footsteps walking away. 

Standing there in red, yet to open your eyes, you breathe out a shaky sigh of defeat. It sounds more like a growl. With the mostly clean hands you kept safely behind you, you bring them up to wipe the blood from your face. You don’t dare to look at the dead animal in front of you. Being covered in it is enough alone to make you feel sick. 

You think of going back to the lake, jumping in and letting the blood wash off you there, but knowing you’d either walk back with further drenched clothes or naked didn’t seem like options you wanted to deal with either. So you just head back to the house. It’s a slower walk than need be, but you just felt like avoiding the eyes of the newcomers, hoping they’d be off in the fields or in a barn by the time you walk through. You feel numb. 

You’re wrong though, by the time you’re passing the barns and coops, the group of new farmhands are already lined up outside the horses’ stable. Your mother is talking to them, although not all are paying attention. Only a few pairs of wide eyes follow you. Catching the sight of you must really shock them but you can’t blame them. Something about this makes you excited. You stop in your tracks and look around to see if your father’s car is gone. It is. The realization feels like a wave of relief and it suddenly feels brighter outside already. 

You take a glance down to your disheveled appearance. Shirt, pants, and boots painted like the barns. You look back to the group, brushing the soiled hair back from your face. Some pieces stay stuck, in the early stages of drying against your skin.

It’s safe to have a little fun. 

You begin a slow walk over to the group. You take a headcount and there’s five of them. Two younger men, closer to your age. The other three look a bit older, not by much but definitely older. Your mother is yet to turn around from whatever rundown she’s giving them. Too dense to even recognize that now none of them were paying any attention to her. 

You creep up beside her and open with, “Hello,” your voice is louder than even you’ve heard it be in a long time. It’s nice to be heard, noticed. You usually avoided the farmhands, but this summer was going to be different. You decided this on the walk over. 

Being cooped up on the farm for so long made you different, it’s obvious to anybody. Not properly socialized in your developmental years caused you to be an anomaly to the ones who did come across you. Enigmatic from far away and up close. Now isn’t the greatest example though, the situation is too clear as to why. 

Your mother turns to you, gasping and jumping back slightly in the shock of your gross state and sudden introduction. “My goodness, girl, whatta ya doin’ here like this?” Her voice is hushed, clearly unsettled with the situation. 

They all just stare at you, open mouthed and bewildered. You take the time to get a good look at each of them up close. Your eyes follow their faces individually down the line. And then they stop. 

At the end of the line is a man more beautiful than the ones you’ve seen in the movies. You feel stuck in time, left with parted lips, staring at the man before you. And far too intently for your character. He stands tall, sharp, pale, and elegant. What is a boy like this doing here? He averts his eyes from you, clearly uncomfortable by what’s before him. He looks uneasy, shifting his weight foot to foot with his hands behind his back. His pretty eyes glance around from you to your mother to the other men and the ground. He simply doesn’t know what to do with himself. You find it dangerously darling of him. 

You don’t even realize the small smile that takes your lips. You step closer to him and he steps back, now looking at you with wide eyes of small fear. You extend your hand to him, it’s coated in drying blood. He gulps and the sight, his adam’s apple bobbing in such a biteable neck stirs something in you. This will be far more fun than you intended. 

You say your name softly for introduction and step a little closer, “Nice to meet you," you feign cuteness as much as you can, looking up at him through your blood clumped lashes. It’s clear to everyone there is something off; there’s little to no real emotion behind your voice and face. 

Your mother eyes you suspiciously as you corner the handsome man, but she says nothing. Sometimes she fears you too. 

He looks from your eyes to your hand, having an internal battle with himself on what to do, “Ah, I am Sunghoon... Nice to meet you too.” His politeness must be stronger than his frighteness, because he takes his hand in yours and shakes it gently. His hand is large in yours, nearly covering it entirely. You squeeze it hard, your eyes never leaving his, trapping him in the scene. 

He wants to look away, to hide somewhere. The way his skin crawls tells him he’s a prey already in the mouth of a predator. And you know he’s nervous under your intense gaze because your hand feels like a lamb is still bleeding above you. His palms are sweating, and it’s nowhere near hot enough for that yet. Your smile grows to a smirk. 

Although you’re wearing the lamb, having Sunghoon’s hand in yours made you feel like a wolf. 

　Sunghoon’s first day of his summer job starts off duller than he imagined. The sun isn’t out this morning and it only intensifies his anxiousness, as if the grey skies reflect his inner emotions. He’s already new to the area, away from home and staying in an apartment not far from his college in the city. A private, christian school that he studied hard to get into with his friend. He wishes his best friend and roommate, Jake, was joining him in this job, but Jake already had plans to teach at a summer soccer camp for kids through their school. 

He found this opportunity through the college church they attend together. A reverend from another church in the city came to visit one Sunday, handing out flyers to the young men in hopes of finding farm help. The pay is good and the bus fairs to the small town over where the farm’s located is covered. He’s never done work like it before, nevertheless was he going to let a simple offer pass him up. 

Things are going smoothly to start, being told how to care for, clean, and feed the animals to crop preservation. Everyone would have their own specific roles on the farm. Sunghoon was assigned the easier of the tasks, either feeding animals or watering and fertilizing the vegetables and fruits crops. He learns there are already regular farm workers that would come throughout the week to collect produce, material, and use the machinery for the more laborious work. And if she wasn't around when needed then they could ask any of the regular employees for assistance or find her at the house. 

As the farm owner is about to give details on the horses’ maintenance, a girl saunters in. And the anxious feelings become of Sunghoon all over again. His eyes are wide, taking in her appearance. The smell of the farm dissipates and putrid copper takes over. The worst part is how calm she appears, and the fact that she’s unbothered with all that she wears. 

He thinks his brain short circuits, everything seeming muffled and unreal. He doesn’t even realize he introduced himself or touched her. It all was too quick and unfamiliar for him to grasp. 

He watches as she walks away, back to the house that sits slightly over the hills and valleys of the property. His expression is blank, blinking slowly at the strange girl then down to his hand that’s stained red too. 

“Don’t pay her no mind,” the woman speaks up, she sounds as if she’s warning them. “Just get yer work done and when everyone’s finished y’all can head back home. I won’t ask too much of ya in yer first month here, alright? That might be a different story later.” She tries to end the statements in humor with her forced laugh. 

Sunghoon nods but his eyes don’t leave his dirty hand. The other men nod along too and give their ‘yes, ma’ams’ in return. 

The woman continues walking them around the farm, listing rules and guidelines they must follow, along with advice and tips for the work they’ll be doing. 

The day flows as easy as it can for Sunghoon. He doesn’t talk much with the other farmhands. He also doesn’t know them well enough to be comfortable in their conversations, so he just exists in awkward silence, sometimes reacting. While they can joke around and find fun in the work, his mind keeps wandering off to the girl from earlier, to you. How your empty eyes held onto his and small hand even tighter. He thinks the palm of his hand still burns from the interaction. 

Around the afternoon time, Sunghoon and the guys are sitting around a picnic table near the house. The sun is beating down on them all now while they chug down water and eat their lunch. The owner was kind enough to provide their refreshments and meals. They were all thankful. 

She adds that there’s a small lodge up the dirt road. It’s a little old but homey and has space with two spare bedrooms if they need to wash up or rest at any time. It was originally built for the farm workers that worked late and needed a place to stay if need be. 

Once done, the boys stand up and talk about what they have left to do. The next bus back to the city isn’t running for another two hours so they speak of taking some leisure time and exploring the farm property. Meanwhile Sunghoon is still sitting, watching them huddled in conversation. He wipes some sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand as they begin walking towards the fields.

Sunghoon, taking what the farm owner had mentioned previously, decides that he’d like to stay inside to get away from the beating sun for a while. So he gathers his trash to throw away in the bin by the road near the house’s mailbox and begins his walk to the lodge. 

Once inside he takes in the rustic, outdated furniture. It’s a little dusty and the floorboards creak beneath his feet but he finds it somewhat comforting. The living space has two couches by an old stone fireplace, a center table with board games and cards, a kitchenette, and a large dining table with enough space to seat six people. 

The decor is very farmers-life-esque. From a cow print rug in the small kitchen area to the antlers mounted on the wall near the dining table. There’s scenic southern paintings hung up along with antique crosses and prints of bible verses, all adoring the faded and peeling floral wallpaper. Above the fireplace hangs a painting depicting Jesus healing a blind man. 

He walks down the only short hall in the lodge to find the two spare bedrooms the woman had mentioned along with a bathroom. He takes this time to wash his hands thoroughly and splash some cold water on his face. With his hands resting on the sink, he stares at himself in the mirror. The cold drops of water slip down his face, jaw, and back into the sink. 

In his mind he’s questioning whether or not he’s sure of this job. It’s all too different from what he knows and he can’t help but feel out of place here. With a sigh, he drops his head and watches the water slip down the sink. 

He jumps slightly at the sudden sound of the front door opening and closing, not expecting the others to join him here quite yet. No noise follows the action for a moment, not even footsteps. Then there’s the sound of a click, like the door is being locked. He straightens his posture and peaks out the bathroom door, listening for their voices or any sound other than silence. It offers nothing to him so he begins to feel tense. 

“Hello?” Sunghoon calls out skittishly, but there’s no response. His heart rate picks up a little and he starts to think the boys are trying to pull some sort of childish prank on him. He leaves the room and makes slow steps down the hallway to the main area of the lodging house. 

As he rounds the corner he doesn’t find any of the boys there though, he just sees you. His heart jumps at the realization. Sitting on the couch, in overall shorts and nothing else. Bare legs crossed and hands against the couch by your sides as you watch him peer around the corner with apprehension. You’re  just sitting there, leaning forward and waiting for him to come find you. 

Cowardly, Sunghoon makes a half turn. He presses his back against the wall of the hallway as if he could hide away or disappear into it. He even closes his eyes, thinking of a quick prayer to save him from this circumstance. 

“Are you pretending to be shy or are you really this cute?” Your voice is teasing, and he can hear the wicked smile in it without seeing. 

Feeling caught, he just sighs and slowly makes his way to the living area. He tries not to look at you, thinking you are too revealing. So he looks everywhere else and then to large windows that give view to the farm; none of the guys are in sight. Most likely somewhere goofing off. All he can see is the fields and farm buildings standing large in the distance. 

He doesn’t move and speaks softly, “I should probably go find the others-”

You speak before he can finish his attempt of an excuse, “Come sit with me.” You pat the space on the couch next to yourself. Your voice sounds welcoming but he knows there’s an undertone of mischief. 

He makes a quick glance to you and sucks in a breath at the view of your body that’s exposed from your overalls. The glimpse of the curve of your breast disappearing under the denim already makes him feel like he’s seen too much of you. And he has. He’s never seen such bare skin on a girl and he’s never been alone in a room with one either. 

“Come sit with me, now.” You’re more stern this time, demanding in a gentle way. Your hand makes small movements, soothing over the material of the couch like you’re warming the space for him. 

He visibly swallows as he makes his hesitant steps over to you. His heart is racing and with every beat there is a question of his strength. He sits down on the same sofa but not directly next to you like you want. You smirk nonetheless and turn to face him, sitting with your legs criss-cross now. 

With your elbows to your knees you hold your head in your hands, watching the side of his face. You’re again realizing how sculpted his features are. Dark thick hair on his head, eyebrows and lashes too. An array of moles sprinkle his pale face. A sharp nose that sits above pink, full lips. You wonder if he knows of his own beauty. It’s fascinating to see such a person like him in front of you. 

He’s sitting with perfect posture, not relaxing into the couch. Alert like a deer that’s waiting for too sudden of movement to pounce away. His eyes just watch the table, reading through the names of the board games that lay there as a way of distracting himself. He’s awkward. 

“Uhm… d-does your family own this farm?” he tries for small talk to break the silence. His bottom lip finds itself between his teeth as he makes one quick look over to you. Luckily your overalls sit high up or he’d have a full view of your chest. He can’t help but think of the fact and it makes him shift uncomfortably. 

“Do I make you nervous?” you question, seriously so. Brows pulled tight in a furrow with a straight face. You lean in even closer to him, watching for every change on his face. 

“Yes,” his response is honestly quick and ends with a tight lip, like he’s holding his breath. He is yet to comprehend what is happening, still in a whirlwind of thoughts of what could—will—happen. 

“Why?” Your head tilts slightly to the side, it makes him think of his roommate briefly. And man does he wish he were here to ease the tension. 

He doesn’t want to admit that he’s never been in such close proximity with a girl alone before, so he just clears his throat and remains quiet after doing so. 

Curiously, you bring a hand up with a pointed finger and brush the tip of it over the mole on the side of his nose. He jolts back at the sudden touch, his cheeks flushing a warm pink. His eyes now watch you with gentle confusion. He touches the same spot you did with a trembling hand. 

“You have a constellation on your face. So many moles… Do you have a girlfriend?” 

His face burns a little more, both from the observation and the question. He shakes his head, sitting himself further into the couch and further away from you. He can’t quite understand the situation. Are you messing with him? You seem too serious for such. Maybe you’re just weird like he initially thought. Either way he can feel his faith slipping; he is cupping holy water in hands during an earthquake. 

“Did I do somethin’ wrong? Am I not pretty?” You pout to be playful with him, acting as if his actions are offending you. He takes it literally though. 

“No!” his hands rest on his knees and he holds them hard, trying to find stability despite sitting down. “Y-you are… pretty,” his words grow quieter, like he’s sharing a secret. “I just don’t know you or why you want to talk to me.” 

“Hm.” You lean your head back against the couch. With your eyes still on his face, you speak just as quietly, “I’m still trying to figure that out too.” After some beats of muted air you speak up again, but with more presence, “You came to work here. Why?” 

“A man was handing out flyer ads at the church. I wanted a summer job.” 

Is he always this direct and boring? And church, of fucking course. You roll your eyes, pushing yourself off the back cushion and even closer to the man. Your knees touch the side of his body and his thigh. He looks like he’s trying to control his breathing, to feign lack of disturbance, but his face says everything you need to know. 

You place a hand on his thigh and his whole body stiffens at the action. Your smirk to yourself. It’s only resting there on the top of his jeans. “You act like a girl has never touched you before.” You give him a soft squeeze and he sucks in a sharp breath. “Well? Has a girl ever touched you?” 

He shakes his head quickly, “No,” he breaks, feeling overwhelmed and wrong, “and I don’t think you should be. It’s against the churches values-”

“At your age you still follow the rules?” Your hand slides lower and back up his thigh, it’s a slow and teasing motion. There’s enjoyment in how scared he’s becoming. 

Sunghoon knows that this is only going to lead him down a path he swore to God not to take. And if his parents were to know that in his first year away from home in the summer since college was locked in a lodge with a promiscuous girl he’d have it handed to him. The thought of their wrath makes him shiver all the more. 

“I just don’t want to sin.” His eyes close and he bites down onto his lip again. He no longer cares if a stranger sees him as a loser or prude. His virtue is being tested in real time, and he’s feared facing this battle many times in the night because even in his dreams he loses. 

“I’m only touching you. How is it a sin?” The tone of your voice changes, it’s soft like the hand that moves closer to in between his thighs. Your fingertips press into his clothed skin here and there, curiously feeling him up. You just try to get a reaction out of him. There’s a warm feeling in your stomach that you don’t recognize; it’s faintly familiar. 

“Your hand isn’t supposed to be… there.” He makes a strained sound, something like a low whine, as your hand ghosts over his cock. 

You look down to your movements for the first time and realize he’s sporting a half chub. You snicker quietly, cupping him in your palm. “Then why are you getting hard, Sunghoon? Do you like the way I’m touching you? I bet you’ve thought about doing this before too.” 

He makes another noise, a whimper. He can’t bring himself to open his eyes and accept what’s happening. He also can’t find it in himself to stop you, or get up and leave. This wasn’t just a struggle with evil’s temptation but his own biological nature. Something yet to be explored, something that’s been scratching at his ribcage for years to be fed. 

There’s too much he can’t admit in this moment. Starting with how he enjoys the sound of your voice, the slight accent and dialect difference he picks up. How the way his name leaves your lips makes him want to crumble like a burning church. And how he silently likes the fact he can’t control the way his body is reacting to your hands on him. 

It’s all wrong, wrong, wrong. And he is weak.

“Answer me, Sunghoon.” Your hand presses down on him, feeling the growing hardness under your palm. You give him a small squeeze, massaging over the bulge. To your surprise he feels big. Your eyebrows quirk at this and then you look back to his face. A single tear runs down his face and you find satisfaction in it. “Lying is a sin too,” you remind him. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, his hands fist the couch cushions at his sides. He grips the material so tight that his knuckles turn pink through the pale of his skin. His chest rises and falls through slow and deep breaths. 

“You shouldn’t feel sorry for something that makes you feel good.” You palm over him a few more times, drawing out little moans and whimpers from him. He’s struggling to sit still. You can even feel him try not to push his hips back up into you; if only he would admit that he wants it. He’s practically pulsing beneath you, like there’s never been such a rush of blood to his cock in his life. You sigh dramatically and pull your hand away from him, sitting back to give him space. “That’s too bad. A good dog will always be loyal, huh?”

His eyes shoot open when he feels your hand is gone. He looks at you desperately with wet eyes, a small pout to his lips. You make him feel sick for wanting to ask why you stopped, or if he did something bad for you to take away his short-lived pleasure. 

You smirk at his expression, so pitifully beautiful with want. “Have you ever touched yourself?” you ask, placing your hand over his that hasn’t let go of the couch. It takes you back when he flips his hand around to hold onto yours, clingy and wretched. His thumb brushes over your knuckles. Repulsed, you react quickly and take your hand away from him at his impulsive intimacy. It makes him frown with a meek whimper. 

He shakes his head slowly, looking down to his lap. “I can’t.” He knows he’s not allowed to. His father was adamant through his puberty that he mustn’t succumb to his body’s natural taste for sin. He was told that sometimes the devil had a funny way of sneaking into a man’s mind. That Satan would haunt boys in their sleep to wake them up with guilt of uncontrollable lust to be like him. 

“But you like when I do it, right?” You rest your head on his shoulder and look up at him. His eyes look from your face to the thin opening of your overalls where your chest can be seen from the angle. He bites down hard and nods slowly. You coo, moving your hand back to his still hard, clothed cock. “I can make it go away if you want. You want that?” 

He’s battling all the repressed things he’s been too afraid to explore; fearful of the swing of his parents belt he felt once long ago after being caught in a misunderstanding. In spite of it, he nods again. “It hurts.. Please, help me.” His voice is so quiet. Even he doesn’t want to hear his own pathetic begging. 

Your fingers find the zipper of his jeans then you tug it down slowly as you stare at him. “You have to pull them down for me, okay? I can’t help you with just this.”

Sunghoon freezes for a second knowing he has control over being the one to take out his own cock. Yet apprehension leaves in a breath. Then he’s pulling the clothing down to his knees with frantic haste. You didn’t expect him to take everything off so fast but there’s a sense of pride in how eager you’ve made him become in such a short time. 

You weren’t sure what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t this. His cock is as beautiful as him. Pale and raging pink, crying at the tip much like his eyes. He’s also big, bigger than you knew dicks could be. You thought they’d be ugly, gross and worm-like. But his is clean and pretty. It’s your first time seeing one in person; you wouldn’t let him know that. 

You take him bare in your hands, feeling him like a foreign object. More curious of his body than in his pleasure in the moment. His body tenses then relaxes against the couch. A shaky, breathy moan leaves his lips. His eyes flutter at the contact of skin. 

You squeeze him, making his moan weakly again. It’s heavy in your hand. Truly just a stick of warm flesh. A part of you wants to squeeze him as hard as you can just to see if it can break, but you withhold on hurting him for now. Not wanting to scare him too much in hopes of exploring him further through the summer. 

Your hand wraps around the length as much as it can, pads of fingertips brushing over every vein and curve as you slowly move your hand up and down. When your thumb circles around his tip and flicks the leaking hole, his body lurches forward with a loud cry of a moan from him. You wonder if he’ll cum in the next few seconds of simply touching him. 

“I think you’re a slut for a little pleasure, Sunghoon.” You use your palm to gather his precum, circling over the tip to smear the thick cream around. Then you drag it back down himself, wetting his cock in his own prerelease. It slides easier now, your hand. You move faster, jerking him off in lazy, inexperienced motions. Not that he would know anyways. “You gave into lust so easily, didn’t you? Must’ve wanted this for so long. Your body’s nasty, eager for it.”

In his ears, you make the nasty words sound delicious. And he wants to devour more and more, like the starved man he is. His hips snap up into your hard, sudden and rough. You wrap your free arm over his shoulders, a hand sneaking up into his hair to tug aggressively on the thick dark locks. You’re pulling his head back, forcing him to look at you. “Don’t be a whore. I’m helping you. I didn’t say fuck my hand.” 

“Ahsh- I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” he whines, tears burning his eyes, “it, it f-feels good. I feel so good.” His head falls to lean against yours, face burying into your hair. His head makes little shakes as he begins to cry, telling himself no, no. 

“Shut up...” You don’t like how close he is to you. You only like doing so to tease him, but when he does it, it makes you feel a fiery anger in your chest and belly. Uncomfortable. Smothering.

Your hand works in sloppy motions. Pumping his pulsing cock to reach his orgasm. At the tip your wrist makes flicks with your thumb, working him up further and further. 

He stutters out incoherent apologies into your hair throughout his sobs of wanton, whimpering moans. Everything about his body is sensitive to the new sensations. He can’t help but move his hips up into your hand, humping the small fist that’s fucking down onto him. 

Confused by the warm, tight feeling flexing of his abdomen he whines against you, “I can’t- I can’t take it. My body feels weird now. Mmph, ‘m sorry. I don’t know what’s h-happening.” His body feels volcanic, ready to burst. 

You continue your movements, jerking his reflexing length until he’s cumming into your hand. It’s a heavy load of thick, creamy mess. His voice is too close to your ear as he moans a drawn out needy sound. Your face remains plain while you pump him until he’s milked dry. His body flinches and curls into yours through the aftershocks, clearly overstimulated and over-sensitive. His arms snake around your waist to pull you against him.  

You stare down at your hand that was earlier covered in the blood of a lamb and now the cum of a virgin. It looks like fucking snot, you realize with repulse. Without thinking you bring your hand up and lick the strange release. Your face scowls at the unknown taste so you just wipe the rest on your overalls. “You are disgusting,” you mutter. 

Sunghoon remains silent aside from his sniffles, eyes peeking through his bangs to watch what you’re doing. He still hasn’t stopped clinging to your side, as if you could save him from his first lustful sin. 

You push yourself up and off the couch, his body slightly falls to the side where he was leaning on you but he catches himself. He watches you with sad, scared eyes. You stare blankly in return then look out the window to see the group of men walking around the picnic table they ate at earlier. 

“Farmhands will be leaving soon. Clean yourself up in the bathroom.” You don’t spare him another look, you just walk to the front door, unlock it, and leave. You ignore the way he looked like a sad abandoned puppy. Something about it angered you in the same way he was being clingy. 

You walk back to your house with a slight skip to your steps. As you step through your front door, you’re about to head upstairs to your room but stop in your tracks because your mother speaks.

“Hate him all ya want,” your mothers words slur, she speaks slowly and tired-like, “but he was a good man. He used to love me… And then you came along.” You turn to the living room on your left where your mother lays on the couch, wine glass in hand and eyes heavy lidded. “I know what yer capable of. I’ve seen the things ya do on this farm, in this home.. When ya think no one is watching.. He just might be right about you.” You glare at her now. “There is something evil in ya, child. Leave that boy outta yer wickedness.” 

Her wine glass falls to the floor from her fingers and she groans, turning to her side. You stare at her for a moment before walking up to your room. 

Meanwhile Sunghoon spends his next 20 minutes in a spiral of guilt and shame. He cleans himself up in the restroom like you told him to. Then waits, watching outside the window for when the boys are gathered around the truck they drove in from the bus stop to leave in. It was hard for him to get the tears to end. He fell right into sin’s lustful trap and it made him feel so- No, it only made him feel hurt. Stupid. Bad. 

On his bus ride back into the city he prays. Sitting in back, alone with his indignity, and head bowed low so no one could see his red rimmed, glossy eyes. Time goes by so fast that he nearly misses his stop to get off. 

He ignores his roommate when he’s home. Jake, excited and curious of Sunghoon’s first day, is left cold. Sunghoon showers for longer than usual. He scrubs so harshly at his skin he turns red; unable to feel clean no matter how much he washes. He doesn’t eat dinner because he feels he doesn’t deserve to. He gets into bed earlier than most days too. He tries to sleep but the day haunts him, keeping him awake. 

He’s up all night in tears, face in his pillow with the blanket thrown over his head, trying to hide from He who watches. The begs of forgiveness seem endless. 

“Dear God,” he whimpers, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” He doesn’t sleep much that night because he can’t find it in himself to stop humping into his mattress in hopes to chase and achieve the feeling you gave him earlier. His hips rock his aching hard cock into the bed, anguished yet titillated. “Please, forgive me. Forgive me. I’m so sorry.” He continues to cry, drowning in his pillow, knowing he will do it again. 

　The next day on the farm is an early morning for everyone. Sunghoon sits quietly in the truck with the other summer volunteer farmharms. They talk amongst each other about the day’s schedule of duties and tasks. He struggles to keep his eyes open, head leaning against the window despite its bumps from the uneven dirt road. He thought about calling it quits on the whole job after yesterday, but couldn’t bring himself to. It’s for selfish reasons too. The ones that deepen his guilt. 

The arrival to the farm is quicker than anticipated. Sunghoon forces himself to be more alert and awake, starting to pick up on the conversations between the others as he exits the parked truck. 

“Do you think it’s still hanging there?” One says. “The lamb of slaughter?” Another dumbly asks with a snort. “Well yeah, dipshit. You guys think that girl did it? She was weird as hell.” A third voice chimes in, “Being covered in blood and then leaving a dead animal hanging from a tree is creepy as fuck. The lady was right, stay the hell away from her.” He laughs. The others walk away in continuous chatter, leaving Sunghoon by the truck. 

Sunghoon is confused by this conversation and deeply disturbed. He doesn’t follow or press them with questions though. But it will give him much to think about for the day. He’s so exhausted from the lack of sleep, he wonders if he even heard them all correctly at all. Yeah, your whole introduction was strange but killing an animal and acting like nothing happened and then toying with him on the same day? Was all that really something a girl like you would do? He can’t say for sure because he doesn’t know you. 

He goes about his morning tasks lazily. His mind is too busy with the thoughts of you. He thinks of when or if he’ll see you today. You haven’t shown around the farm all day. It’s only an hour before noon, he tries to rationalize with himself. He still ponders throughout his work. What time will you come? Will you mysteriously show up like yesterday? Will you touch him again? Will you let him feel good? Is he forgivable or going to burn in hell for wanting more?

He shakes his head to rid it of the thoughts. Perhaps he’s too hopeful. After lunch time he goes back to the farmers lodge to take a nap. At least that’s the realistic excuse he used. He struggles to even fall asleep because he’s so anxious about listening for any sound of you possibly coming back here. 

His eyes, sullen and tired, just can’t stay open after half an hour of waiting. So eventually he does fall asleep. You never show up. When he wakes up from his long needed nap he somehow feels worse knowing you didn’t visit than he did committing his first sin. 

The following day of work is a repeat. He doesn’t see you at all yet you occupy all of his thoughts. He thinks badly of himself for many reasons. 

　On the fourth day, you finally decide it’s time to check up on the poor boy. You watched Sunghoon mope around the farm for two days and it was cute at first but you’re getting bored again. You did like how his eyes were always searching around, hopeful that every sound he heard from behind or around corners was you. Knowing you had such an effect on him made you wonder how much more you could do to him. 

From the window of your room, you watch when they all arrive. Your mother greets them like she does in the mornings and gives them all tasks that need to be completed for the day. It’s Thursday which means she’ll be out for a few hours to go into town and sort out business for products: cow and goat milk processing for cheeses and soaps. At least you assume considering you overheard her phone call about such the day prior. 

You spend the morning around the house, reading and snacking on fruits, waiting for your mother to leave so you can proceed with your plan. There was some effort into your appearance today. You wear a spaghetti strapped white babydoll dress, lined at the bottom with sewn embroideries. It’s simple and flows nicely above your knees when you walk. You hate it because it alludes to soft purity but at least it feels good to dress light in the summer heat. And it might make you all the more approachable to feeble Sunghoon. 

After about an hour, your mother finally leaves. You give it about 10 minutes before you’re shoving on your boots and leaving the house. Some of the blood from earlier in the week still stains the brown leather; you did clean them off but clearly not to the best extent. You’re okay with that though, it seems prettier this way to you. 

Looking and walking around the property, you see the scattered farmhands busy with different things. The sun isn’t kind today, it’s piercing in brightness and temperature. The sweat begins to seep from your pores in a matter of minutes, making you feel sticky. You run a hand through your tangled hair, fingers getting caught in unbrushed knots that you yank through anyways. You don’t see Sunghoon anywhere that’s directly under the sun. You continue to search around the farm, gaining a few cautious looks from the other workers. As you walk past their gazes you wear a wry smile with a tilt to your head. They look away quickly after being caught staring. 

Some wandering in and out of the different barns and coops are done. He wasn’t in any of them though.  You greet the animals you pass by and give pats to some of the cows. “Have you guys seen him nearby? I’m not a fan of hide and seek.” You mumble to one of the goats, scratching lightly beneath its chin while it chews away at grains and hay. It maas in return. You pull your hand back out from the stable then leave to continue the manhunt. 

It’s when you’re walking by the horses’ stables that you see they’ve already been cared for, telling you that someone was here already. You glance to the smaller shed nearby, having a suspicious inkling that it's where Sunghoon is. You walk to the shed and see yourself inside. And he is. He has his back turned to you, standing at a work bench table and cleaning something off. 

You walk up behind him, the sound of your footsteps being dulled by the scattered hay on the wooden floors; he doesn’t notice that you entered the space, clearly lost in his own thoughts. You tap his shoulder which makes him spin around in surprise, dropping the brushes he was cleaning. 

Sunghoon’s eyes are wide at the sight of you standing so close to him. You can tell he’s lost sleep by the dark circles around his eyes and how his complexion is impossibly paler. His mouth is stuttering to find words, opening and closing. 

You step closer to him and he steps back, his backside now pressing against the table. It wobbles on the uneven wooden stilts that hold it up. Reflexively, his hands reach back to hold onto the table, but he’s using it for his own stability. You simply stand there in between his legs, staring up at his face and taking in all the details that differ from the last time you saw him. He swallows, quietly watching your face in return. 

“I haven’t seen you around.” Sunghoon speaks first, his voice a soft surrender. You feel his breath on your face. 

“I know. I saw you though. You missed me.” You state bluntly, taking note of the little fangs he has for teeth. He probably bites good, you think, licking the back of your own teeth. 

“If you saw me then why didn’t you…” he trails off into a quiet again, closing his eyes for a moment with a sigh. “I wouldn’t call it that.” His eyes open again as he feels your hands on his chest, sliding up his white tank and underneath the sleeves of his denim jacket to his shoulders. He bites down, suddenly stiff. 

Ignoring his response you continue, “How can you wear this when it’s so warm out?” Your hands slide over his shoulders and down his toned arms, the jacket slips down to reveal the toned limbs. Your eyebrows raise at the sight yet your face remains relatively blank. “You’ve got muscle. Good for farm work.” Small hands continue to run over the smooth milk-like skin, learning every curve of his lean built physique. It’s not sexual, just exploratory. 

Sunghoon sucks in a breath, watching you inspect him. He begins to feel flustered, relishing in the contact of skin on his. You notice his tense body and ask him if it’s okay, to which replies a raspy stutter, “Y-yeah.” Your hands slide down his arms and back up to his shoulders. Then down his chest and body to stop at the waistline of his jeans. He has a nice body; he must be athletic. You don’t care to ask in what ways. Your fingers dip into his jeans just slightly to pull him in closer to you, he gasps, his growing cock pressing against your stomach. 

“Sunghoon,” You ridicule him, tsking under your breath at the pressure you feel of his arousal. “Already?” You look up at him but he can’t meet your eyes, feeling embarrassed. You play with the waistline, your fingertips running back and forth between the denim and his skin. “Is this sinning?” It’s a soft question yet mocking. He only shakes his head, nervously gnawing at his bottom lip. “Do you want to?” He whimpers, slowly nodding his head. You take your hands off him, crossing your arms. “You have to tell me. Look at me and tell me.” 

He looks back at you dispirited. He knows that you know what he wants. And here you are making him admit it outloud, both to you and God. “Please.” He begs quietly, hoping it only reaches your ears and not the sky’s. “I want you.” 

There’s that feeling again. The lit match that falls from your throat to the gasoline of your stomach that erupts in flames. Fire to your abdomen and loins; it’s an angry feeling, sparked by his honest admit of want, and for you specifically. You watch him with narrowed eyes while mumbling, “you revolt me.” 

He doesn’t reply to your venomous insult. It stings to hear the degrading words in both his heart and pants; he thinks himself disgraceful too. 

You drop to your knees, hands finding place back on his jeans to undo his zipper. He stares down at you in bated breath, hands still gripping tight on the table behind him. His are pulled down slowly, purposely so. You watch him writher, body and face. “Did you do it again?” you question, looking up at him from below. He would never avow to how the sight of you on your knees alone makes him ache all the more. 

He wants to tear his eyes away from you but he can’t. The image of you in your white dress on the ground before him needs to be burned into his memory. He stutters a mumble of words but you don’t catch anything, if he even said a coherent response at all. You ask again, pinching his thigh. He tries to hum over the strained noise in the back of his throat, “Yes.. I mean no! B-but I didn’t touch myself.”

You try not to giggle, biting the inside of your cheek. Knowing he wanted to feel that way again but couldn’t on his own gave you a funny sense of power over him. One of your hands traces the outline of his hard cock through his boxer briefs. “You make a mess?” He shivers at the feeling of your breath on his suffocating length. He breathes out a ‘no’ while you lick a strip over the material. “Why not? I showed you how.”

He moans softly, trying not to let his hips chase after the feeling that he’s been after for days. “You know I can’t,” he exhales. You roll your eyes, mouthing and licking at him languidly. Your hands are still half tugging at the material that keeps him hidden. A faint pool of precum quickly stains his boxers. 

“Sunghoon,” you look up at him with your chin resting on the bulge. He swallows hard, acknowledging you with a hum. “You will never be free from it. The sin I let you taste will forever linger on the tip of your tongue, begging and licking to taste more in crave. No holy blessed water can possibly cleanse you even if you drown in it.” 

His bottom lip pouts out with a little droning whine. He should defend himself, say that his faith is stronger than he is and that his soul is saveable by mercy. But a part of him also feels that doesn’t want to be. His eyes begin to well with tears. 

“Not even a god could make you pure again,” you give him a small smile and pat his naked thigh before pulling down his underwear. His cock now free slaps his stomach to which he breathes out heavily. You grab him with both hands, giving him one last look before taking the leaking head into your mouth. Hands working on him steadily. 

“T-that’s dirty!” he leans forward with a low sounding moan, his hands on your head and in your hair. Your eyes go wide at this. “Why would you put that in your mouth?!” he gasps, the warm wetness around his tip making him dizzy. “This is so vulgar, oh God, forgive me.” he cries, not pulling your mouth off of him but holding you there. 

You circle your tongue around the tip and over his leaking slit, licking the beads of precum that leak out. It makes your grimace before you lean back, a wet pop as your mouth leaves. “Enough of your penitence, and take your hands off me.” It sounds like a warning to which he complies without question, only a hushed apology. He’s the one who wants to be touched anyways, not you. 

You take him into your mouth again, your lips wrap around him in a painful stretch to accommodate his size. He sits heavy on your tongue that lays flat underneath, doing what you can with it. Your hands at the base work around him, jerking and squeezing him like you did before. You weren’t really sure what you were doing, mainly just mocking the actions you read about in books. It seems to be working for Sunghoon regardless because he can barely hold himself together. Whining and whimpering through fat tears, whole body shuddering from the overwhelming wet heat of your mouth. 

His jaw goes slack, mouth hung open only to elicit a breathless moan. His head rolls back on his neck and his eyes flutter to a close. The feeling of your mouth wrapping around him is hot heaven. His body trembles with the new, sweeping sensation. Stomach already tight with contracting muscles. He thinks he could pass out. 

Watching his face, him, discover and feel pleasurable sin is slightly euphoric to you. You’ve seen it in movies and read of it in books, but it was something you never quite fully explored yourself. There’s been a few instances that you did touch yourself; it always felt empty or like something was always missing. There’s little to no excitement when doing it alone in shameful hiding. Witnessing, causing such debauchery is different somehow. Safer in ways you didn’t dwell in thought on. You do wish he would stop crying about it, you find it pathetic of him in a provoked way. 

Involuntarily, he thrusts himself down your throat with a guttural groan. You gag and cough around him, tears sting your eyes that make you squeeze them shut—refusing to let a single one dare to escape. Now it felt like a challenge. One to which you wouldn’t back down in fear of looking weak. 

Your hands hold his thighs roughly, bruisingly so if you had the strength. You move his body in a small back and forth motion, encouraging him to continue his movements. You’re looking up at him with glazed over eyes and a slight nod. He chokes a sob at the sight, you on your knees not to pray but to devour him.

“Ah, I- I’m sorry. Your mouth is so wet, so warm.” He starts off with shallow thrusts, dragging his cock along your wet muscle. His hips stutter while his world seems to be crashing down. “This is so dirty. You look so dirty. And—ngh—it’s.. it’s so good. It’s so good,” he babbles, pushing himself as far down into your mouth as he can. His tip kisses the back of your throat making you gag around him. Your nails digging into the flesh of his strong legs. He can’t stop moaning and whimpering, becoming a slave to pleasure. 

He watches your face. Hollowed cheeks sucking and swallowing around him, the tightness of your throat around him hugging and contracting through chokes that reverberate your body to his cock. The spit that leaks from your lips and all over him is obscene, such a sinful mess. He so badly wants to grab your head and force himself down further, but his nails dig into the wood of the table instead. 

“Hm, I can’t—” he moans your name, thrusting rougher now. His whole body crumbling in on itself, chasing the feeling of release. 

Then there’s the sound of footsteps and a few voices that follow. Sunghoon sucks in a deep breath, taking a fist to his mouth to bite down onto. He looks at you in fear because of the proximity of the other farmhands right outside. This only makes you smirk around him, a glint of evil in your eyes. He shakes his head hurriedly, stopping his movements—as if that would make you both disappear. 

You push yourself off his cock, licking over your cracked and saliva covered lips. You bring a finger to your lips and shush him. “Be quiet or they’ll find out what a nasty whore you are. Unless you want that.” Your voice is quiet and raspy from the abuse of him fucking himself down your throat. You stare into his eyes intently before taking him back in. He glances from you to the door of the shed, his body shaking. 

You slurp and suck him up, purposely loud and sloppy. A hand jerking off the base that doesn’t quite fit in your mouth. He cries quietly with his mouth open, meek and desperate sounds escape that he can’t withhold. “Please…” He’s whimpering, begging for something that he doesn’t know the context of. 

“Do you think the extra feed is in this one?” A voice questions, the door being opened just a crack. 

Sunghoon quickly tries to bend down for his jeans but you slap his hand away, pushing him back into the table. You grip his thighs and force yourself to take all of him down. You gag around him, eyes never leaving his panicky and fucked out face. His face silently begs for you that enough is enough but you don’t stop, because a part of you knows he doesn’t want you to either. 

“It doesn’t hurt to check, does it?” The other replies with a light chuckle. “Could take a break for some shade too while we’re at it.” The door opens slowly with an agonizing creak, sunlight barely pouring. 

Each passing second feels like an eternity to him. The door is still only cracked, not enough for them to see inside but it’s cutting it close. His cock twitches at the thought of being caught with his dick down the throat of the farmer’s daughter. A blazing adrenaline rushes through him. 

Sunghoon can’t bear it any longer. His hands find purchase on the back of your head, pushing himself completely into your mouth. His hips stutter with a whimper on his lips as the hot cum pours down your throat. “Ah, sh- ngh!” You smack at his legs for him to release the hold, choking for air to breathe. You instinctively swallow around him, consuming his load of sin.  

“You dumbass! The horses are already fed, let’s just go for a water break.” The door slams back on itself to a close. Their footsteps can be heard walking away. 

Sunghoon breathes heavily, letting go of you. His body instantly relaxing back with his elbows on the table to support him. Meanwhile you fall onto your ass, a hand around your throat while you gasp for air through rough coughs. “What the fuck did I say about putting your hands on me?” You rasp before coughing again. The taste of him sits on the back of your tongue no matter how much you swallow. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, “we shouldn’t get caught.” He pulls his pants and boxers back up then extends a hand to you, an offering to help you stand back up. 

You scoff, ignoring his hand and stand up on your own. You brush the dirt and stray strands of hay from your knees. “Whatever. We both got what we wanted.” You start to turn for the door to leave the shed with the thought of brushing your teeth in mind. 

Sunghoon, confused as to what you could’ve gotten out of helping him, just reaches for your hand. He grabs you and pulls you back to look at him. His eyes are sad, maybe even a little afraid by your haste to leave. “Y-you’re just going to leave me again?” He sounds broken by the fact. 

“What?” You can’t help but breathe a laugh, “Did you expect me to do more?” You ask with raised brows. 

“No! No, not like that.. But..” He swallows his pride, “I- I don’t know. Just don’t leave yet. Please.” 

You blink at him, scanning his features like a robot in calculation. The pleading of his expression and his words aggravate you. A fiery burning to your insides and the skin that he touches, that he reached for. You look down to his tight grip on your hand before yanking it away. You don’t say anything more, and neither does he. He wipes his eyes from whatever salty wetness is still there. 

A moment of silence solidifies your decision. You beckon him to follow you out and he does. 

For the rest of his work day you remain. You try not to think about why. But subconsciously you know it’s because for the first time someone willingly wants to be by your side. At first you imagine it’s because of what you’ve done for him—gave him what any man desires: pleasure. A man falling into temptation is far too easy. 

Though he doesn’t ask for more and he doesn’t bring it up. Almost like it never happened. 

It seems like he really just wants to be around you. There’s little said between each other. It’s just idle farm work with company. And it’s more peaceful than you expected it to be. He didn’t touch you, question you, or do much at all to bother you in general. 

Sometimes he stares at you, but you do the same to him. He even gives a sheepish smile when he catches you; it doesn’t get returned. That doesn’t bother him though. He thinks you look beautiful on the farm in your dress with dirt covered hands and hair messy from the wind. He hopes to tell you that one day but for now he stays shy, still weary and afraid. 

The sun shines relentlessly unless a cloud mercifully passes by. The breeze is rare yet kind. The animals make their sounds to sing a collective song. The trees and crops sway like waving hands of hellos and goodbyes, depending on where you’re headed to or from. It’s not so bad. 

　Two weeks go by. Time flies by for both you and Sunghoon. He comes to work during the week, and he spends his weekends missing you. He doesn’t know what you two are to each other, and he’s too scared to ask. There’s definitely been changes to the dynamic, however. Subtly so. You still don’t smile, or let him touch you. You roll your eyes and insult him if he’s too emotional. But you’re there. 

Certainly not everyday, but most, you spend his work days with him. It’s easier to be around one another. There can be small talk, usually about the farm or the weather. Still much to be learned about on a personal level, but he’s fine with the pace of the relationship (outside of the unholy acts that are committed). Sometimes you even end up helping him. Or at least he thinks of it that way. In reality you don’t like how he does things and take over to do it yourself. 

You still tease him in your cruel ways. Always ending with him in a mess because he’s easily worked up by your handsy curiosity. He caves into you every time because he can’t fight the divinity that you show him. 

There are other times where you confuse him. You suggest a water break knowing he’d gone hours without hydration under the summer heat. You insist on having him take a break under a roof away from the sun when his skin gets too sweaty or red. Which is followed by a reminder that sunscreen is important if he wishes to keep his milky complexion. It’s critical statements that you provide him, but he can’t help to think it’s a weird way of showing you care. 

Sure, it could be seen as you selfishly saying these things because it’s what you want for yourself, but in the back of his mind he’s very aware of how you watch and cater to him. It makes his heart jump every time and butterflies swarm his stomach. He can’t help it. The little things, the small acts of kindness—that you might not even intend—make him delusionally overthink. 

On the third weekend since starting his summer job, Jake can’t help all the questions he’s been building up and dying to ask. Jake doesn’t understand what Sunghoon has been going through, especially when his moods change so drastically. At first, Sunghoon was self isolating and pouty, clearly in his own head and sulking. But then he would come home from work beaming with an afterglow to his aura. And then on the weekends he was back to his reclusive, depressed state. 

Sick of being left out of Sunghoon’s inner turmoil, Jake finally pesters his friend. 

“When are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Jake stands in the doorway of Sunghoon’s room, staring at his friend who’s laying face down in his bed. 

“I don’t know…” Sunghoon’s words are muffled in his pillow. 

Jake walks in with a sigh and sits at the end of the bed. He playfully slaps Sunghoon’s leg. “Dude, just tell me. You’re obviously going through something. You know I can keep a secret. I won’t judge.” 

Sunghoon rolls over on his back, his hands clasped together over his stomach as he stares up to the ceiling. He confides in Jake, telling his story from the beginning of when he first met you. He stutters over his words when he admits to the sinful acts he partook in with you. He tells Jake of his guilty conscience and how he enjoyed indulging in the feelings. Then he tells Jake about how he simply likes your company even without the sexual circumstances involved. How he’s mystified by your complex personality and only wishes to know you more. However, he does leave out the viciousness of your nature, since a part of him doesn’t quite believe in it. 

“It seems like you’re starting to develop a crush.” Jake laughs lightly, “And if it’s about religion, don’t overthink it too much. Nobody dies completely pure.” He reassures him. “You should show her more of you. That you like her too.” 

Sunghoon groans and covers his face at the terrifying suggestion. If only you were that easy to approach in such a vulnerable way. “I guess… I’ll consider it.” 

The next day is Sunday. Jake and Sunghoon attend church as normal. Sunghoon participates less in his prayers and songs than usual. His mind is too preoccupied with all he has going on in life. He feels guilt and frustration. 

Sunghoon, lost in his own world, fails to realize that his best friend—Jake—battles something similar internally. 

You’re never as alone as you think you are if you take a better look around. Everyone is riddled with their own self disgust, guilt, or shame. How else would the churches be so full? 

　Entering the fourth week of summer should feel easier than it does for Sunghoon. The work seems to be picking up regarding responsibilities. The weather is only becoming less forgivable. The peak is yet to hit, but that only means the seasonal storms are right around the corner. More care is needed in the fields and barns in terms of protection in case of unpredictable weather. 

Aside from the work, Sunghoon is anxious because of you. He hasn’t seen you yet today and he feels nervous about it. Perhaps he has grown too clingy, finding close comfort in knowing you’re there with him on the farm. There’s a sense of safety when you’re in the line of sight; you make things easier for him and he enjoys the presence. 

While he’s watering plants and checking the sprinklings through the fields, an older man approaches him. It’s a familiar face that he’s seen around a few times over the past month. The man waves with a smile and Sunghoon does the same. 

“It’s amazing what you’ve done, boy.” The man begins, Sunghoon questions where he’s going with the start because he’s just an extra hand of help and doesn’t feel he’s accomplished or improved the farm in drastic ways. “I’ve worked here, hm, well I’ll be damned! Nearly 15 years! And I’ve never once seen that farm girl talk to anyone. Much less spend time.” the man chuckles. 

“Oh!” Sunghoon blushes and hopes it’s only mistaken as feverish from the summer. He smiles small and stares down to the bundle of plants he brought with him to the farm today. He feels special knowing this much of you. “She’s something…” 

“Sometimes I’d see her talk to herself and the animals.” The man pulls out a cigarette and lighter to smoke. “She’d walk around aimlessly like a ghost. Used to scare the hell outta me.” As he laughs, smoke escapes his lungs. He wheezes a little before continuing, “But now she follows and watches you like she’s worshipin’. If only she did the same with her daddy. Although with a face like yours, I can’t blame the girl.” 

“Pardon? What do you mean by that?” Sunghoon, bemused, watches the man smoke and laugh between weak coughs. “She has a dad?” His last question is overroad by the man who speaks over him. 

“You keep up your work, kid. I outta get back to mines too.” And then he’s walking away with a low chuckle, shaking his head to himself. 

Sunghoon’s aware of your mother. He always thought it was just the two of you running things. He’s never once seen a man, your father, leave the house or so much so be around it. This gives him more to think about, especially on the fact that he still doesn't know much about you at all. You’re still an enigma to him, but he wants everything. 

By the afternoon when all the guys are finishing up their break, you finally come out of the house. With the sound of the front door opening, Sunghoon is quick to straighten his posture and find your eyes. You’re already looking at him, watching him and his surroundings with no expression. His cheeks burn and he can’t help the smile forming on his lips. 

Two and a half days without seeing you feels like so much longer. 

He stands up from the picnic table, grabbing his newspaper wrapped bundle of greenery and shyly hiding it behind his back. He walks over to you, tripping over his feet as he approaches the porch steps to the house. You stand there in front of the door but at the top of the few stairs, arms crossed and amused. 

He’s diffident, arms behind him and modestly attempting to hide how nervous he feels on the inside. His stomach is doing flips, his heart racing. On top of already sweating. He feels like he could throw up his lunch right in front of your feet. He swallows thickly before slowly bringing his hands out in front of himself. 

“I,” he clears his throat, “ehem, I got these for you.” With outstretched arms, the bundle of flowers shake in his trembling hands. He suddenly feels he’s too nervous to even meet your eyes, so he watches the chipped paint wood of the front porch steps. 

You just stand there, watching him with wide eyes and your heart in your throat. Your mouth is lost for words, glancing around at the few farmhands who haven’t left yet and are staring at Sunghoon’s exchange in a similar bewilderment. Some are trying to keep themselves from bursting out into laughter.

“Are you some kind of stupid?” You whisper harshly for only him to hear, snatching the flowers out of his hands. “Why the hell would you do this?” Your words like your tone are mean, but in your chest there’s a raging pounding. It’s a seething raw emotion that doesn’t know how to be dealt with. You’ve only just stepped out of the house and your body feels like it’s inside a furnace. 

Sunghoon’s head shoots back up to look at you, his face and heart drop. “I-I’ve never had a girlfriend before so I wasn’t sure what to do.. This is what boyfriends do, right?” He takes a hand to scratch at the back of his head. Inner turmoil takes over and he thinks he’s fucked up. He bites at his lip, doing his best not to instantly cry in regret. 

You notice this and sigh, irritated. You look from the neatly wrapped white roses and tulips and back to Sunghoon. “So you are stupid,” you mumble before taking your own bottom lip between your teeth. A part of you wants to sneer, but you spin on your heels to hide the warmth that floods your face in substitution. “I’m throwing them away,” you announce, opening the door and walking back inside your house. 

Sunghoon, broken, just drops his head and turns back. A few of the farmhands are snickering from not too far away, chattering among each other and eyeing Sunghoon. He wishes God would smite him on the spot from the humiliation. 

Wanting to avoid everything for a little while, he thinks of heading to the lodge to lay down in hiding. But before he can walk away, the front door of your house swings open once more. He glances back at you, meeting your eyes like he always seems to do. 

“Done for the day already?” You call over to him, now leaning over the banister of the porch with crossed arms. 

Sunghoon, unable to refute you, offers a weak smile and shakes his head. “No.” 

He walks back over to you and you meet him halfway. You don’t say anything else. You don’t bring up the fact that he had bought you flowers or confused the odd relationship you share for dating. It’s cute in all its blind innocence, but that just goes to show you that you have more work to do with him. 

You don’t think of messing with him today. He’s distinctly grown too clingy with how much time you’ve spent with him. Yet you can’t ignore him either. The two of you carry out the rest of the day’s farm work in silence. The inner fury you feel with him doesn’t seem to go away, despite how he hasn’t said much or even brushed skin with you. 

You don’t know how you’re remaining pacific by his side. The rampaging of your heart strings tug like a screaming instrument just from being next to him. How he can keep walking tall, stare at you when he thinks you aren’t looking, or even smile at you is beyond what you know is capable of humans. Men like him only existed in books and movies. You wonder if he’s perhaps playing a game like you.

By the time he’s in the truck to go back to town to catch a bus into the city, you’re sitting at the lake dock. Criss crossed legs, a bouncing knee, and fingernails being ripped at by your teeth. You stare blankly at the water, hoping for that sense of serenity to encapsulate you. It never seems to come. It just feels cold.

So you decide on punishing him for making you feel this way. 

You don’t leave your house for the next three days. You don’t make yourself known, heard or seen. However, you’re peeking out every window of your house to get any chance of a view of him. You hate yourself for being so curious of him in the first place. What was supposed to be good fun has only left you feeling angry. Taking his innocence was never going to heal you, or even make him like yourself. In fact, it’s making you sicker.

And on the night of the fourth Thursday, you’re laying in bed staring at your ceiling. A stuffed animal is hugged tightly to your chest. You can’t sleep and you can’t stop thinking about someone for the first time in your life. No amount of tossing and turning, counting sheep, or button presses to your distorted singing, stuffed bear made it easier. 

Somehow, you ended up punishing yourself. You always had a knack for that, historically, but this time felt different. It actually kind of hurt. Being alone came naturally to you, but tonight it hits you just how lonely you’ve always been. 

　Friday, the farmhands are huddled on the front porch of your house. All the animals are safely away in their designated homes thanks to their help. It started to storm in a heavy downpour only minutes ago. What started out as a dark gray gloom and windy rain quickly turned into an early flooded property, illuminated by strikes of flashing lightning and roaring thunder. 

You stand dry under the protection of the porch roof by the front door. Watching and listening to your mother suggest the shaking cold, soaked men take shelter in the lodge until the sky lets up so they can head home. 

Sunghoon hasn’t spared a look to you all day, but you know that he feels his eyes on you. It’s in the way he shifts awkwardly amongst the men that ignore him. How his eyes are trained low and unfocused yet always trying to move in your direction. His wet hair falls over his face, concealing his emotions you wish to dissect. He comes off as stoic but you know he wears his heart on his sleeve; how his body language speaks volumes. 

Your mother pushes past you to get back inside, saying she’ll check the basement for a spare heater that the boys could use at the lodge. There’s something in you that makes you move without thinking. Suddenly a hand is tugging at the bottom of Sunghoon’s damp jacket for his attention. The material is too thin for this weather and the thought of him becoming sick crosses your mind. 

“It’s warmer here,” your words, for once, came out soft. Too much so, being lost in the cracking sound of thunder. He looks at you through his bangs. The wave of alleviation from whatever he was dealing with is palpable. His eyes and body almost look relaxed. You tug him towards you once more, insinuating that he follows you. 

He does. Like whatever subconscious emotion made you approach him also made him follow you in. As he steps in, he notices the indistinguishable vibes of the farmer’s lodge. It’s updated and cleaner, but similar in aesthetics. A shotgun sits leaning up against the wall by the front door. His brows furrow and eyes narrow. “Those aren’t safe to have lying around…” he mumbles. 

You tug him towards the staircase to walk up, “It’s protection. Only my mother and I are here,” is mumbled back as you lead him up the wooden, creaking stairs. Your feet move light and quick, like a mouse in a home not theirs. If your mother saw you, there would be unnecessary consequences. And the possibility of your father’s involvement would only worsen such. 

Sunghoon cautiously steps into your bedroom, his body tenses at the sound of you shutting and locking the door. He feels on edge, wrapping his arms around his shivering body and soaked clothes. You move around him to sit on your bed, telling him to remove his sopping attire. He does so with shaking hands, leaving him in nothing but his underwear. He shyly looks around the room while using his hands to cover his manhoon. 

His eyes scan over you, sitting quietly on your bed with a look of contemplation that stares past him. A wooden cross hangs on the wall above your bed, the dark wood matches the decadent bed frame. The nightstand nearby has a pile of books and journals with a low light lamp and unlit candle. 

The large window has sheer white curtains drawn open and a vase on the windowsill. A glass vase filled with the flowers he gave you earlier in the week. His heart aches at the sight of the still healthy white roses and tulips, and a smile graces his lips. You liar! You kept them! Is what runs through his thoughts. 

Without Sunghoon realizing, you got up to grab a towel and drape over the back of his shoulders. He’s taken aback by your ghost-like actions, but offers you a small smile of appreciation. “Thanks…” 

You nod for response and glance from him to the vase of flowers he was lost in thought over. You didn’t have it in to explain yourself, mostly because you didn’t understand why you had done so either. 

He dries himself off and finds a place to sit at the end of your bed. You’re on the other end with your back pressed to the headboard, watching him, counting every mole you can find on his pale canvas. The stuffed animal you sleep with is being mindlessly fumbled around in your hands. 

Sunghoon turns to face you directly, he reaches a hand out, eyes shifting from your face and the winged bear. You shoot him a mean look at first, only holding it closer to yourself before your face softens to slowly extend it out to him. 

He takes it with careful hands and looks down to inspect the old toy. Its cream colored fur is dirtied and matted with age. The holographic satin wings on the back have loose stitching and its halo is crooked. Across the chest of the bear reads ‘Jesus Loves Me’ but it’s obvious the sewn name Jesus has been ripped away at. One paw has a red heart embroidered saying ‘press me’. His thumb brushes over the button heart before pressing down. The bear sings in a distorted happy voice the lullaby of Jesus loves me. 

“His name is Saint Michael,” you say quietly and he almost doesn’t catch it. Sunghoon can only breathe a laugh because he finds the dichotomy cute. You almost laugh too, but bite your tongue and look back to your empty hands. You don’t know it but he can see you try to fight your little smile. To him, this moment means more than anything; he’s starting to see you’re more tender than you realize. It brings him a sense of surety in knowing that he can break you like you to do him. 

Silly as it may seem for a troubled girl, the bear was the only comfort you had throughout childhood. There was no kindness from your father, no solace from your mother, no guide in knowing life or love. But there was Saint Michael, the stuffed angel bear; he may not have defended you in battle but he hugged you back, and that was enough to cherish him like a deity. 

Sunghoon crawls across the bed and sits himself next to you, too close for your liking, but you don’t push him away. He hands the stuffie back to you and you place it on the nightstand to face away from you. You lower yourself in the bed, shuffling under the covers of the blanket and he does the same. His skin naked bare yearns for more warmth, yours specifically. 

You feel him turn on his side next to you, pressing up against you despite there being enough space on the bed. His movements are awkward and nervous like he is. You feel a certain pressure against your thigh that isn’t his bones or limbs. You spare him a glance, he doesn’t know if it’s a warning or dare. 

“...Have I ruined you?” You wonder aloud, looking back to the ceiling. 

“No,” he answers quickly, shaking his head against your shoulder. The way he’s missed you in his desire to touch you, hands tingling with want to snake around your waist and pull you in tight. “I think I just want you all the time now. I can’t help it, m’sorry.” He sounds ashamed in his soft mumbles. 

“I’ll only keep stripping all that purity from you. Once it’s mine it’ll remain mine, you know that right?” You look back at him before brushing some of his drying hair from his eyes. He tries to lean up into the touch but your hand is taken back. “And I will pretend it’s healing all that’s missing from me. Do you really want to be mine, Sunghoon?” Your words are so gentle yet laced with threat. 

“Yes,” he exhales, “I want to be yours. Let me be yours please.” It’s hushed, a secret prayer with hope. His hips push further into the skin of your leg, where the hip meets the thigh. He wouldn’t mind going to Hell if it meant more time with you. 

“You beg like a needy barn animal in heat.” You use a hand to cup his face, he sighs into the hold as he eyes flutter to a close. You push your leg in between his, terribly close to his exposed and vibrating body. “So hump me like one.” 

“W-what?” he stutters out before licking over his lips, his thighs squeezing around the plush of yours now trapped in his. His eyes already wet with desperate want, staring back at yours.

“Do it. Like it’s mating season and you want to claim me before anyone else.” 

A cracked voice whine falls from his lips and he begins to roll his growing bulge against you. You watch as he sucks in breaths between quiet breathy moans. His pink, plump lips pursing and falling open. His eyes try to stay on your face, how close you are to him, but they fall shut sometimes in his basking of rapture. It’s a slutty sight of a faith-sickened boy. 

He loves the little to no proximity that there is. His hands find place on your waist, and he’s aware of how that makes you feel, but he can’t stop it. He wants more and more of you. His hands slide up under your shirt, the feeling on your bare skin in his hands makes his body shudder. Untouched, warm flesh for his large hands to explore and learn every curve of. 

Even you stiffen at his exploration, holding in your breath as if you’ve forgotten how to breathe. Your shirt lifts up more with his hands and the exposure is daunting like you’re revealing your insides. 

The pit of your stomach lights up and you're frozen under his clutch. The pads of his fingers hold you so tight as if he’s scared you’ll disappear. His cock is raging and you can feel every pulse of blood that his heart beat floods to. He’s humping into you desperately, chasing the euphoria that he could never find on his own. Such a delicate, shy boy now driven by lust and longing. 

“You’re pathetic and disgusting. You’re practically fucking me through our clothes,” you murmur while you try to push his hands down off you, but his grip won’t let up. Instead his nails dig further into you, a barely sounding broken noise escapes you from the pain. This makes his body collapse further into you, his head dropping between your shoulder and neck. His movements are sloppy and rushed. 

“N-no, I’m still good. You make me feel good, I am so good,” he whines, tears beginning to fall from his eyes to your shoulder. You try to imagine his holy water is washing you clean but it only singes. 

“Tell me that only I make you feel good, that you’re only good for me.” 

“Only you—can only be you to make me good,” he cries against your warmth, rocking himself into you roughly. His leaking cock begins to twitch against you and his hips won’t quit their stuttered jerks. 

You hum lightly and run a hand through his hair, pushing it back from his face. He looks up at you with those desperate, wet, dark eyes and you can’t help but acknowledge how pretty he is like this. His puffy cheeks are flushed pink as the tip of his nose. “Only for me,” you mumble.

“Yes, thank you, I am yours. Yes.” His breaths are jagged and heavy. There’s a coiling in his abdomen that feels borderline explosive. You were right, he craves this feeling. It’s surreal to him how he’s gone so long without it. His arms wrap around you completely now, holding you down while his body rolls on top of yours, situated between your legs. His heart hammers against your chest; he wants to mold into you, to become a singular rot. 

You squeak a gasp, being caged down by him. Your heart beats with the same veracity. One of your arms wraps around his waist to hold his back while the other holds the back of his head that hasn’t left the safety of your neck. He continuously sobs through meek moans. His hair tickles your skin like sparks while his lips brush over your jaw and neck making the tingle feel like crackling flames. 

Under his weight you feel yourself slipping in both confidence and dominance, your body wanting to sink down in submission from the unknown comfort of his control. Your heart aches and you feel something you’ve never felt before. You think you’re scared of it, yet your body pulls him closer. Hand in his hair, tugging with fearful aggression. Nails piercing the skin of his shoulder blade. You’re pliant under his heavy thrusts and sounds of sin. 

The rain pours harder outside with whips of harsh winds smacking the window. It’s almost like God’s wrath is screaming to be seen, to shout that He is watching. 

Sunghoon’s hard cock is relentless against your core. The rough grind of him is stimulating in ways   you’ve never felt before, your body sensitive and starving for more. You squeeze your eyes shut and moan within your closed mouth, hating yourself for feeling this way because it was never supposed to be about you. You are betraying yourself more than your fathers.

The sounds you try to withhold make Sunghoon weaker. He feels uncontrollable, only becoming needier and hungrier with his movements, “I can’t stop. I can’t stop.” He whines, begging for you to vocalize how you feel it too. 

You feel like you’re breaking underneath him, and it feels shameful. Like every harsh word your father ever spat at you was true now that you’re a part of the experience and not just the cause. Everything is too much. It takes every ounce of strength you have to turn both of your bodies over. Now sitting up on top of his lap, you can finally breathe again, sighing in relief. He whimpers at the distance between you both but also from the view of you. 

He moans your name softly as he grips your hips, pushing himself up into your clothed pussy like he’s fucking you. Your hands push down on his shoulders. You stare into his eyes with a plain expression and contrasting sharp eyes, grinding your hips back down on top of him. It’s hard to ignore the way it makes you feel, watching him fall apart beneath you as his pulsing cock fucks against you, but you manage. 

“Cum for me,” you demand quietly, “make a mess and imagine it’s inside me.” 

“Holy fu—ngh,” his entire body spasms and shudders with a low groan falling from his open lips. His movements slow down only to become lazier and uncoordinated. You can feel the warm wetness he spills soak through your thin pajama shorts and underwear. 

“You’re right. You are good for me,” you coo softly, cupping his face and using your thumbs to wipe away the tears. Your hips circle and swivel slowly on him until his quivering cock finishes cumming. 

Sunghoon has a sparkle to his wet eyes. The way the gentle praise left your lips makes him melt, and he can’t stop the flickering glance between your eyes and lips. He breathes heavily through his post clarity. Still he basks in your touch with a hopeful look in his eyes. His tongue slides over his lips before he’s leaning up towards your face, hands affixed to your waist to pull you closer to him. 

This makes a wave of panic wash over you, knowing what he wants to do. You shake your head no and pull yourself away, slipping off of his lap only to turn away from him. 

“None of that. It’s not what-” 

And then there’s a press of lips to your cheek. Your face burns as if a hot coal was what kissed your face. Your eyes go wide, turning to see the boy sitting up next to you. He only wears a shy smile as he sees your reaction.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a week now,” he admits with a small laugh. “Not exactly there but that’s fine. I wish you would let me help you feel good too.” he whispers, looking back to the windowsill where the gifted flowers stood in their vase with the raging storm as their backdrop. 

“That’s dumb and I don’t need to,” you reply, still watching him stare forward. Your chest feels painful; it’s an ache like shattered glass trying to piece together in the wrong ways. Stabbing but trying.

“I think you deserve to,” he argues. “But I understand if it’s not what you want. I was really touchy and I shouldn’t have been because you don’t seem like it. I was too caught up in the moment.” His mind goes to the mess he’s still sitting in and he feels self-conscious all over again. “Is it embarrassing how much I need you?”

You blink at him, swallowing the words that were never going to come out because you didn’t even know what they should or would be. So you settle with a simple, “No.”

You think it would kill you to admit how much you actually always wished to be wanted, needed, or loved. A bigger part of you didn’t think you were worthy of it, let alone capable. The world had such a way of saying otherwise. Until it brought Sunghoon to you; the boy who showed you feelings and experiences you never thought possible. 

As if he could read your mind, he asks, “Why did you choose me out of everyone?” He falls back onto the bed, laying down and pulling the blanket over himself. 

“I think you reminded me of a lamb.” 

“Pardon?” His brows furrow. 

You lay back down next to him, facing him like he is to you. “Pretty, white, and docile. You were so nervous when I first saw you—sometimes you still are.” You even laugh a little. “When you shook my hand I knew I could do anything to you because you’d let me.” 

“You think I’m pretty?” He smiles wide, scooting closer to you. 

You scoff with an eye roll, leaning further away from him. “Oh shut up, you’ve seen a mirror.” 

And then it’s his turn to laugh a little. He looks at you like you’re the reason the sun rises and falls. It kind of hurts you to see him like this because it reminds you of your initial rotten intentions and how they’re dissipating the more you’re with him. 

Time passes faster than the two of you realize. There’s light banter and easy conversations. You learn more about Sunghoon. Where he goes to school, what he studies, and who his friends are. He tells you of the sports he used to do and what he does in free time with his best friend. The more you learn about him, the more you understand his naivety and how despite what you’ve done, he won’t change. There’s something lovely about it. 

You don’t have much to share about your life the way he does, at least not in the same light. But you show him your favorite books, drawings you made over the years, and share the stories of movies you found interesting. He savors the moment of you simply confiding, enjoying the more he can know about you. 

The storm passes later in the evening. So caught up in borrowing time, the rain has slowed down to a simple pitter patter. The clouds dispersed and the setting sun only came through to say goodbye to the day. 

The sound of the truck that the farmhands use to take back to town is heard roaring to life, signalling you and Sunghoon that it’s safe and time to head out. 

Sunghoon jumps out of bed but by the time he’s shoving himself into his still damp jeans and looking out the window, the truck is already speeding down the dirt, now mud riddled road. 

“They just left without me,” he breathes out. “I’m used to them leaving me out, but t-this is.. How am I going to get home?” He looks back to you with sad eyes, not the light they had earlier. He’s not shocked by their actions, but he is disappointed. A hand runs through his hair in his stress. 

“Should I kill them?” Your question is brazen, body and voice eerily still in your seriousness. 

“W-what?!” he whispers in shock, freezing for a moment. 

“I’m joking.” You sit up and watch Sunghoon resume getting dressed. “I think you should head back to the lodge for the night. There’s a washer and dryer for your clothes. And spare food for dinner too.” 

Sunghoon nods slightly, “your jokes are weird, but okay.” He looks like he’s thinking of something, taking his bottom lip between his teeth in thought before speaking again. “Can you stay with me for the night at least?” he asks shyly. 

“No,” comes out quicker than you intended. “...But I guess I can walk with you there.” 

He nods again but now with his signature small dimpled smile. You almost forgot about being angry at the other farmhands for taking it away. 

You have to make sure the coast is clear before leaving the house. You tiptoe down the halls and stairs, weary of where your mother is inside the house. To your luck, she’s in her usual state. She’s passed out on the couch with two empty bottles of wine on the floor. The television volume is low, playing a rerun of the reverend’s sermon; the devil himself of your childhood, preaching about how he lost his child to the otherside. 

With a finger to your lips, you silently signal for Sunghoon to be quiet and to follow you out. 

Once safely out of the front door, you take his hand in yours and start running for the lodge. The tall boy is behind you, so you don’t get to see the bright smile on his lips or in his eyes as you run through the light run towards the lodge. 

Now standing in the front doorway of the farmer’s lodge, wet from the sky all over again and still hand in hand, Sunghoon bravely speaks up.

“I don’t like it when you disappear on me,” he breathes out shakily, honestly. “Nobody else sees me like you do,” he squeezes your hand tighter in his, feeling you begin to pull away. “Come with me into the city tomorrow. We can- I’m not sure yet, but I’m sure I want more time with you.” 

His eye contact is unwavering, begging. Both of his strong hands hold onto yours. You glance from your hand then back to his pleading expression. He will always remain so sweet, no matter what you do to him. 

“I felt less lonely before I met you,” you confess, eyes unblinking as you stare up at him for a long pause. “I’ll meet you here in the morning.” 

In only seconds, he’s pulling you into a hug. His arms wrap around you so tightly as he holds you to his chest. You go stiff in his arms, forgetting how to breathe for a moment. What feels suffocating at first turns into a warmth you’ve become all too familiar with, and it was never anger. The indignation you always wear is just a hand me down from your parents; it doesn’t fit you right even though it’s comfortable. 

With a shaky exhale, you wrap your arms around him too. The hug surrounds you like a blanket of unknown comfort. Your ear pressed to his chest listens to the sound of his racing heart. You can feel the pound throughout his entire body too. Every emotion held within is trying and fighting to be seen. It’s still so cold from the rain but he feels contrast, only warm. His lips press a kiss to the top of your head, making your body burn even more and your hold all the tighter. 

　True to your word, you meet Sunghoon at the farmer’s lodge the next morning. He seems happier than usual. Very giddy to be spending a weekend day with you without work in the way. No distractions or excuses to leave. Just the two of you and a new day with zero obligations.

Because you had a spare bike, you both are able to peddle towards town to the bus stop together. Having made these frequent trips alone, you’re familiar with the owner of the gas station at the stop. He’s a deaf older man, and it surprises Sunghoon that you know how to sign and ask him to hold onto the bikes until you’re back. You tell Sunghoon that you learned some basics from reading a book you bought a long time ago. 

Stunned, Sunghoon realizes that you went out of your way to do so for one man who watches your bike while you endure solo trips. You, the odd girl who was mean and sinful, used your money and learned a language for one man who did a simple favor. He’s learning more to admire you for by the day, and it’s crazy to him how you don’t see your own charm. 

Sunghoon pays your bus fares even though you insisted on being capable of doing so yourself. Sat in the middle of the bus that’s only barely half filled, he asks if there’s anything you’d like to do for the day while in the city. Nobody has ever asked you such an effortless thing, and you like it more than you imagined. Just uncomplicated curiosity of your wishes. 

“The book store. The small yellow one on main street. Maybe see a movie if anything is worth seeing.” You shrug, spewing out the usual things you do. Looking around the taken bus seats, you notice some familiar faces. 

“That sounds nice,” he smiles, “our first real date! I think there’s a cafe near that book store too. Do you like coffee?” 

Your cheeks burn as you stare at him in bewilderment, “you think we’re going on a date?!” 

“Of course we are,” he laughs like it’s obvious and wraps an arm around your shoulder, looking out of the window. All that the town can offer him other than you passes by. “I’m a fan of americanos. You seem like you’d take your coffee black.” 

“I don’t even like coffee,” you mumble, turning your attention out of the window as well. “Tea is nice though.” You add in, crossing your arms over your chest. 

“Hm. I can see that too,” he hums as he pulls you closer into his side. 

So much can change in such little time. You’ve experienced this many times in one life. How one day can open a new door to a path otherwise not taken. Showing Sunghoon more of you has made him bloom into a larger ray of light. He seems more comfortable, and now you’ve become the awkward one. 

The ride to the city doesn’t normally take this long, or at least you don’t think it does. Every second with him by your side makes the experience feel brand new. The theme of time being unreal is common with him, you’ve discovered. It’s when you’re in the bookstore and see a holiday sale that you realize it’s not even June anymore. 

While Sunghoon looks for books for his upcoming college semester, you find yourself in genre sections you never really cared for before. The dark and racy ones were fun to bring home, sure. But innocent, cliche romance was always something cringey to you. Now if you change your perspective to that of research then it’s less daunting, right? Perhaps you’d make sense of all the things you’re discovering about yourself and him. Yeah, that’s convincing enough. 

He teases you at the checkout counter when he sees what you picked out. Your face flushes in embarrassment and you can’t even bite back at him or defend your choices. So you smack him with the book on the way out while he laughs and makes jokes that aren’t very funny. 

The two of you do manage to catch a movie. You honestly didn’t care to see one, but having to sit silently in a theater for at least an hour and half seemed like enough time for him to, hopefully, forget and drop the whole book situation. It’s a summer slasher film. A group of teens go camping and the plot is very ‘who done it’ style. Overall, it’s a fun choice. You have your turn to laugh and joke when Sunghoon gets jumpy or scared. 

After the movie, you both end up at the cafe Sunghoon mentioned while on the bus. There was something painfully intimate about everything today. But especially sitting down to eat with him. Not even your mother could meet you at the table anymore. 

“You seem softer today,” Sunghoon states, setting his half-drunk coffee down. “Almost nervous. Is it because we’re out together for our first date? Or just the people in general?” 

You raise a brow at his brazen curiosity and observation. “Maybe you’re rubbing off on me,” you play with your fork to move around the barely touched food in front of you. “Or maybe it’s a bit of both.” 

“If you come to the city enough to know sign language for the man who watches your bike, do you like it better than the countryside?” 

“Don’t know. I’m used to the quiet life, but leaving it behind and pretending it’s not there is nice too.” 

“What keeps you there?” 

“The scenery. The air. The lake. Being friends with the animals.” You look up from the plate to Sunghoon who is watching you like a lecture: attentive and learning. “I’m not very good with people, so I think it suits me alright.” 

“You’re good with me though,” he argues softly.

“No, not really. I wish I was more like everyone else,” you inhale deeply as your eyes wander around the bustling cafe. There’s a choir of laughter, conversations, and social dynamics you would have to study to master. “If I were a good person, everything would be easier.” 

“...but I like you as you are,” he mumbles loud enough for you to hear, watching you shift in your seat. He doesn’t think you’re not a good person, and it hurts that you see yourself as such. 

As Sunghoon speaks, there’s a chime that follows as the front door of the cafe is swung open. A disheveled man stumbles inside, heavy feet stomping the tile floor to attempt to stabilize his disorientation. The man burps obnoxiously loud, and many eyes find him with the grand entrance. 

He scratches at his lengthy, unkept beard as he looks around. When his sunken eyes find you sitting at the table nearby his eyes grow wide and his mouth falls open. His hand shakes with a pointed finger in your direction, “y-you! The girl from the reverend’s sermon!” He’s loud, capturing the attention of everyone now. His sloppy movements make way towards you and Sunghoon; you feel everything within you freeze, and your heart knocks at your chest fast and hard with anxiety.  

He slams his hands on the table, causing your plates and drinks to rattle. He reeks badly of alcohol and his crazed eyes never leave yours. You swallow thickly, fight or flight mode still trying to understand the situation before you. Meanwhile Sunghoon, worried and confused, slowly begins to stand up and grab your bags. 

But you, you’re frozen staring at the messy man who talks of your greatest hate. Your hands tremble on the table. 

“I thought the reverend made you up for stories, but my God! You’re the real living thing just like the pictures; his only sin,” he laughs boisterously in your face and you try not to gag. “I saw him a little whiles earlier, ya know,” his voice goes quieter, it’s taunting even. You wish to remain calm but your eyes tremble and a frown takes your face. “I should go find him and tell him you’re here. He really-”

Sunghoon takes your hand, practically dragging you away from the table. You almost fall from your seat, like a baby deer just learning to walk, there’s little strength to your legs. 

“It’s not too late! You can be on the right side of things!” his voice ricochets off the walls of the now quiet cafe. “If I can be saved by his preaching, so can you! Look at me!” His mad laughter follows you and Sunghoon outside. 

Sunghoon watches you stand on uneasy feet, zoned out staring at the sidewalk. It didn’t take much to put the pieces together that the drunken man was talking about your father. Your father being a reverend who’s not in the picture gave him much to wonder about, but now isn’t the time. He just wanted to get you somewhere away from this memory. 

He crouches down in front of you. You slowly blink back to reality, now looking down at his back. You don’t want to speak so you poke his shoulder in questioning.

“Hop on. Let’s go somewhere else.”

“What if I’m heavy?” you look at the bags he’s already holding, feeling that you too are a burdened weight he doesn’t need to hold. 

“I’ve got good muscles, remember? Good for farm work,” he’s patient and calm with you while his eyes watch the man from outside the glass cafe windows. “Come on, baby.”

Without thinking, you end up on his back. He carries you on his back, strong arms holding your legs while yours are loosely around his neck. Your insides are a flared up hurricane but at least that allows your body to forget the empty ache you left at the cafe. With your chin hooked over his shoulder, you watch the many people and downtown stores that pass by.

Sunghoon doesn’t exactly know where he’s walking, but thinks it’s best to end the day here and return you to the bus stop. He’s never seen that look on your face before—the one you had when the man was loud in your face. He didn’t like it, and he’s sure you hated it. You looked intimidated, or afraid. 

“Would you kill him for me?” you watch the side of his face, “the reverend, I mean.” 

He stops in his tracks and turns his head to look back at you, “w-what? I can’t kill someone… and you should joke like that.” he panics, looking around to see if someone was listening to the wild conversation and request.

“Yeah, I know. I’m fucking with you,” you look away to hide your smirk, “and only half joking.”

“Did you believe him before?” He starts walking again, but this time at a slower pace knowing the bus stop isn’t too far now. 

“Who? My dad or Our Father?” There’s a use of air quotes at the end of your question. 

“Both?” his head tilts. 

“Neither,” you confirm. There’s a pause for thought and Sunghoon waits for you to further explain. “My relationship with both is too similar. They’ve both known me my whole life, right? Seen all of my wrong doings and in return shown wrath through unnecessary punishments called forgiveness. In what good world is tolerance violent?”

“What do you mean? What did he do?”

“Sometimes, after my mother set the table for dinner, he would knock my plate to the floor. Tell me to eat off the ground like the animal I was or starve.” Sunghoon frowns at this, coming to a slow stop when he sees the bus shelter bench. “Sometimes I had days and nights locked in the barns, but he switched it up to the basement when I was too close with the animals.” You laugh a little, but he senses the pain behind it. “I watched him kill the animals, too, only to smother me in their blood. Beatings were rare, but I think only because he despised the thought of even touching me.”

Sunghoon slowly sets you down to the ground and breathes out your name safely, taking your hands into his. He looks at you with sorrow, like he was the one who endured it with you. 

“God’s orders, am I right? My father, the church goers, speak of God like they’ve seen his face and heard his voice, but they haven’t. I would’ve by now too.” 

If He was really in everything, all around, why did He always turn a blind eye? Why does He pretend to not know you? It only made it harder to believe in—something that would bring you here, torture you then watch you suffer for not living how it pleases. God wants to be believed in, but so do you. Only you would never beg for compassion. 

Sunghoon squeezes your hands in his, “I don’t think you should stay there. You never deserved that… even if you’re volatile and strange… because you’re also kind and caring. It’s why I like you. It’s their fault for not seeing that,” he reassures. “I haven’t been through what you have, and I can’t understand. I-I mean I can try to, ya know… it’s not like I’d leave if I didn’t.” His words begin to stumble nervously, not confident in its sympathy reaching you where needed.

You laugh nervously, trying to tug your hands away from his grip that doesn’t let up. “Okay sure whatever, this is really embarrassing now…” You swallow hard and find difficulty in meeting his eyes. 

That’s all that matters, what he said to you, but you didn’t have it in you to say it. He already knows it though, smiling small and holding your hands still. Without words or excessive displays he can still see it in your eyes, the subtle comfort of acceptance. 

He could never blame you for your nature. He sees your anger as you just trying to be strong all while being sad. Whether you are his lover or executioner, he would accept you as you are every time with open arms, receiving hands. Even more readily, now.

　Even more time has passed since knowing Sunghoon. Summer has never flown by so fast. The calendar doesn’t exist to you anymore. It’s only the days you see him and the days that you don’t. The season will be wrapping up in the next few weeks, but only for him. He has to return to his regular scheduled routine of pursuing education while you will stay here, on the farm. It’s rare for you to feel this emotion: fear. You are scared of losing him. And the concept is something you do your best to avoid thinking about because it makes your skin itch with anxiety. It crawls over you like something that needs to be cut out. 

And then an idea hits you. Something far more deep-seated than everything else you’ve done with Sunghoon that would solidify that this summer is real and yours. Something that will always stay; a reminder that good things are possible despite how the world has made you. 

It’s a damn near perfect day. The sun is so bright, and only peers down onto you both through the gaps of the trees. It’s just warm enough. Just quiet enough aside from the sound of Sunghoon’s gentle breathing and natural composition of the nature that surrounds. Rustling of leaves, chirps of birds, and scurrying of whatever life that wishes to not be seen. 

You both sit criss cross at the wooden dock by the lake, simply enjoying the scenery and all it has to offer. His large knee is affixed to yours. If this was early June, you would have moved away. But now it’s a week into August and you wouldn’t have it anywhere else. Just like you always imagined, and secretly wanted, the view is nicer with someone else. 

He didn’t bother asking why you never brought him here before, or why it is that you chose to now. He’s just happy that you decided to at all. 

You slip a hand into your boot and pull out a pocket knife. You flick it open and do a brief inspection of the cleaned blade. The sun glints off the metal as you turn it. 

“Sunghoon, do you trust me?” 

His eyes flicker from your blank face to the blade. He nods slowly with a swallow, “of course.” There’s a subtle apprehension to him. You hand him the small blade and leave your palm facing up, open to him. 

“Cut a diagonal line down my hand,” you point and draw a line down the middle of your palm. 

“Huh, seriously?” he takes the blade confused and concerned with what you’re asking of him. “Why? I can’t hurt you.”

“Do it. Don’t think of it as hurting me, but still do it deep enough to leave a scar.” 

He struggles to understand the situation, but you’re so serious and clearly waiting for him to do as you asked. He exhales deeply, taking your hand in his while the other holds the knife just above the bared skin. Hesitant and slow, the tip of the knife pressed down into your flesh. You wince a little, which makes him pause. You nod, encouraging him to continue and he does despite hating the act. He slices the palm of your hand open just as you wanted. You hate blood, but it’s not so bad when caused by him.

“Shit, it stings,” you swallow through the pain. The feel of open flesh burning and stinging. “Your turn,” you exhale while taking the knife back with your free, unharmed hand. 

“My turn,” he agrees as if all logic has left him and readily displays his palm to you. Deep down, he feels guilty for hurting you, so to make it even he wants to feel the same.

Just as hesitant and careful, you create a matching wound in his hand. A deep enough, bleeding, lesion in his left hand to match  your right one. He cringes at the sight and the pain before looking back to your face. Your expression is so soft yet attentive, almost awestruck. 

“Even when you hurt me you’re gentle,” he remarks, watching you in amazement with a meek smile. 

“I am not gentle. I have sullied you,” you remind him, your eyes attempt to glare but they’re too bright in his. 

“In the softest way, why?” His voice is delicate and still like the lake that sits before you. You blink slowly at him because there are no words to be found. He continues, “I never thought of you as a bad person,” he pauses as you drop the red stained knife, unsure if he should continue at first but does regardless. “And, uhm, I’ve thought a lot about this summer. What I've learned from you. Purity is constructive—like something made to bring shame.” You don’t move, watching him. “I don’t have to be clean to be good…and your hands never made me dirty. Because they never were either.” 

Like an excavator to your tall, strong built walls Sunghoon has knocked your shield down. The facade of your character is breaking down, crumbling into the broken pieces that made it. A single tear escapes your eye and runs down your cheek. It’s rare for you to cry and you’re disgusted with the reality as to why it’s now that you break. Simply falling apart from kind words. 

You try to use everything in you to ignore the heat in your body, to show the anger you think you’re feeling inside. So your eyes remain sharp and strong, boring into his, as they still water. You swallow the dry lump in your throat and without a word, you take his hand into yours to join in a mix of blood. 

At first, you had one goal; one similar to murder. The sparkle he had in his eyes, you wanted to eat—to make them empty—and see the world ugly and godless like you. Yet somehow, somewhere along the way, his eyes shone even brighter. You only wanted to take and take of the innocent boy, but in this moment you realize, maybe I just wanted to give him some of me. 

You wipe the wet drop away from your face with haste, pretending as if it was never there. Whatever blood oath you’re making with Sunghoon allows you to feel something indescribable. You don’t know if it’s deserved, but you smile anyways. Because the indescribable feeling feels like it’s an unknown, unspoken promise. 

He’s seen you smile before with insidious malice, but this time, for the first time, you are really smiling. It’s a raw expression of surfacing emotions, and he returns the emotion like the sun. He thought of you beautiful before but with your brightness finally peering through your clouds, he believes you to be heaven sent. A part of him always wanted to see you cry—usually it was him with tears in his eyes; which is funny, because he wasn’t much of a cryer himself. You just had that way of breaking him down. He knows now he does for you too. And he can tell that you’re probably the type of person who needs to cry the most. 

His hand squeezes yours tighter, a grip so loving, as you bind in one. Neither of your eyes or smiles leave each other until the bleeding stops. 

　A week later, Sunghoon asks you on a date. The summer fair is in town. It’s something like a festival where all the locals from towns around the city come to visit and join in on festivities from carnival games, rides, food, and uncommon entertainments. You think of being mean, denying him the acceptance of the date, but you have always wanted to go. So you said yes without your words: took his scarred hand in yours and nodded. 

The evening sky is a watercolor of warm tones as the sun begins to lay down for the night. The bright lights of the fair illuminate the large open field turned carnival. There’s a sea of people here tonight, and although it makes you nervous inside, having Sunghoon by your side makes the ordeal easier to handle. 

The line for the ticket booth is lengthy but it passes by. You approach the booth, standing a little behind Sunghoon who takes out his wallet to buy your entrance wristband passes and tickets. You look around at the many people: families, friends, and couples, all immersed in their own experience as the music and sounds blend in the background of conversations. 

“Oh wow! You’re really handsome,” the girl at the ticket booth gawks at Sunghoon. She straightens her posture and fixes her hair from her face, “one ticke-?”

Catching this, you step forward and snatch Sunghoon’s wallet from his hands, “he already knows that. Do your job or I’ll feed you to pigs.” You slap the cash amount for what you need down onto the table top with a straight face and mean eyes. 

Her eyes go wide and she hushes an apology, quickly giving you both wristbands and tickets for the evening. She even threw in extra tickets as you stared her down. 

Sunghoon watches you with a flushed face, even the tips of his ears burn red at your jealous threat. You both walk off into the fair, a sheepish smile on his face as he leads you through the crowd with an arm wrapped around your back and hand to your waist. 

“Was that one of your jokes too?” he grins down at you.

“Nope,” you glance at him with a small smile. You weren’t sure what came over you in the moment, but it was something internally deep, and territorial. An innate reaction to someone trying to appeal to something that belongs to you. It felt ugly and you didn’t like it. 

The idea that he could possibly be taken from you was a phenomenon you’ve thought of for a while now. Knowing he has an existing life outside you, outside of this summer, that he would return you made you sick. You’re far from perfect, or the right thing for him, and he could find a safer option if he ever pleased. Pushing the thoughts away is harder than you imagine, so you cling to his side even more. 

You and Sunghoon use up your spare tickets for carnival games. You toss rings around bottles, shoot water guns into the mouth of a clown frame, and throw darts at balloons. The both of you aren’t very skilled at any of the games, but it's fun enough to enjoy the time without winning a prize to show for it. 

Eventually, Sunghoon does find frustration within the ‘rigged’ set up of the games. He even pulls out his wallet for cash when the tickets are gone. You’re surprised at how competitive he is; his determined nature is something that stirs your insides around. You don’t know if you’ve ever smiled so much in your life. 

After 3 rounds of throwing a ball to knock over a moving target, he does manage to win. Going 3 for 3 and not missing a single shot. The excitement you feel when he succeeds takes over and you’re proud, doing little jumps in place and clapping your hands together. 

“You did it! You won!” you exclaim, hugging onto his side. 

He can only smile down at your joyfulness. A fire burns in his heart and he hugs you back, kissing your forehead. “All for you. Which prize do you want?” 

“It’s yours, you should pick it,” you blush, elbowing his side with a shy smile while your eyes keep looking up to the stuffed white lamb with a lace ribbon around its neck and a cushion gold bell adoring the throat. 

Of course, that’s the prize he ends up choosing. It might not be Saint Michael the stuffed bear, but it’s something far happier, cleaner, and softer. 

The stuffed animal never leaves your hold throughout the rest of the evening. It rides the many rides you and Sunghoon do. And sits at the picnic table with you both as you share fair snacks. Popcorn and cotton candy was never so sweet for either of you. Like contentment melting on your tongues. 

Cliche as ever, Sunghoon wants to end the night there with a round on the ferris wheel. The line moves quickly and when it’s your turn to step into the carriage, he takes your hand and sits you down the seat next to him. 

It moves slowly and rocks back and forth with shaky movements that have you gripping the side handles. With an arm around your shoulder, he holds you close to him. The array of flickering colorful lights and people below you feels almost magical. 

Taking your eyes from the heightened difference between you and the ground, you look back to the boy beside you who is already looking at you. The reflection of rainbow luminescence glistens in his eyes. It’s even prettier than the view from the top of the little world you’re in. You give him a shy smile, finding it impossible to look away. 

He says your name in a whisper, taking your chin between your fingers. “Thank you for choosing to let me in.” 

Confused and wide eyed, you watch him lean into your face. You gasp when his lips meet yours before returning the notion. With eyes closed, you melt into his kiss. It’s sweet as all the things you’ve experienced today because of him. 

It’s also as clumsy and messy as a kiss can be for two people who’ve never done so before. However, human nature and desire take over and ease the rest for you both. Lips move over another in a gentle waltz, careful and slow. 

And as if the situation couldn’t get anymore cliche, fireworks light up the sky. At first you thought it was just your imagination and all the books you’ve read flooding your consciousness, but the booming sounds and cheers of the crowd are too loud to not be real. 

You pull away from him first, and he’s already wearing a shit eating grin so wide that you can’t help but roll your eyes, fighting the urge to smile back at him. Your face burns in both embarrassment and adrenaline from the kiss. 

After that, you don’t leave the city like you should. The bus takes you both back downtown but neither you or Sunghoon feel it’s time for goodbye. So, for the first time, he takes you back to his apartment. You’ve never been to anybody else's home before, and it’s nerve wracking to say the least. The complex is large and somewhat modern, housing many of the second and third year private college students.

When you step inside, it’s quite plain but at least clean. You’re immediately greeted by a boy shorter than Sunghoon. He has a big mouth smile and shining dark eyes. His hair is shaggy but it suits him. He’s practically bouncing on his toes. You shift yourself behind Sunghoon and hold onto his shirt, hiding slightly from the excited puppy-like roommate. 

“How did it go? Oh, and nice to finally meet you,” he rambles out quickly, “I’m Jake. The best friend and roommate. I’ve heard a lot about you.” He shoots Sunghoon a wink before grinning back at you. He extends a hand for you to shake but you don’t reach out. Something about his eyes doesn’t sit right with you. 

“She’s shy,” Sunghoon laughs a little as he guides you past Jake and towards his room. “It was fun though. I recommend going before it’s gone.”

“Ah, you got yourself a nice little angel, huh?” Jake leans over the kitchen island, watching you both. His smile falters. “I’ll have one of my own some day.” For some reason, you think of him as a secret pervert.

Sunghoon laughs his comment off and tells Jake goodnight before showing you to his room. His room is neat and as simple as a college boy’s room can be. A bed, desk, dresser, closet, and bathroom. One poster of a musician you’ve never listened to and a window with unopened blinds. 

You sit yourself at the end of his bed and he sits down next to you. There’s some awkward silence as you look around, unsure of what you’re supposed to do. He feels similarly to your internal dilemma. 

“I-I’ve never had-”

“It’s okay,” you cut him off. Of course he’s never had a girl over. And of course you’ve never been over to a boys house. 

“Are you tired?” he asks, and you lie by nodding your head. So you both get ready for bed. He gives you a shirt to borrow for bed that change into in his bathroom while he changes into sweats and a t-shirt in his room. 

In minutes you’re both laying in his bed under the covers and staring up at his ceiling in the dark room. Not a word is said as you both lay there wide awake and untouching. But you know he’s wanting to by the way his body is shifting and turning, inching closer with every minute movement. 

And before you know it, although expected, his body is nestled closely to yours. His arms wrap around you, pulling you into an embrace. For the most part, he usually does keep his space. Knowing how you are when it comes to physical touch that feels too sudden or invading. But with barriers breaking down more over time, he thinks you’re learning to handle the comfort better. 

“I thought you were tired?” he mumbles, head on your shoulder. His hands trace up and down your arms that are wrapped around yourself like a guard. 

“I lied,” you whisper. Your eyes can’t look at him yet, so they remain aimless to the ceiling. Some moonlight slips through his cracked window blinds, giving you enough view of the spinning ceiling fan. 

“I had fun today. Mostly because you did. I like seeing you happy,” he smiles after kissing your shoulder that’s exposed in the neckline of his shirt too big for you. “And… I liked when you kissed me back,” his voice is quiet and shy-like. 

“Do you want to do it again?” Your eyes shift to him and you can barely see the warm flush to his cheeks. He’s cute. 

Taken aback at first, he just blinks at you with a parted mouth. Then he nods his head slowly, licking over his lips. 

You turn over onto your side to face him and his hands don’t leave your waist. Unsure of what to do with your own, you wrap them around his neck. Good thing they sit behind him and it’s dark in the room because it would kill you for him to notice the slight tremor in your fingers. 

With a scarily racing heart and stiff, trembling body you surge forward to kiss him. His lips are quick to capture yours. Soft and pillow-like, they mold into yours in waves. What starts off as clumsy and unskilled turns into hunger. Something desperate and needy. His grip feels bruising to your hips but in a nice way. In a way you want it to hurt more. 

His nails digging further into your flesh to keep you impossibly close make your lips gasp, or maybe it’s the lack of air, or just both. And instinctively his tongue is licking its way past your lips and into your mouth. He kisses you like he’s starved for it. His wet tongue drags over yours, and your teeth, then as far as it can inside of you. He whimpers, pressing his already hard cock to you as he licks and kisses you open. 

Your stomach has never burned this way before, and you feel the hot sensation all over then down to your core that aches like it’s hungry too. You feel disgusted by yourself but can’t fight the hum you make as you devour him right back. You’re getting wetter every second he’s in your mouth. 

This time, he pulls away first. Panting for air and staring at you with glazed over dark eyes. He licks over his wet lips again, savoring the taste of you on himself. He bites down onto it and a part of you wishes it was you he sunk his teeth in. 

“Can I do what I did last time?” he breathes out, his hips involuntarily jerking up against you at the thought alone. 

While trying to act like you’re not catching your breath too, you say quietly, “do whatever you want.” 

He kisses you again but with more desperation. You try to do the same but you can feel your heart and your head preparing for battle. The way he’s feeling you up and grinding himself on you is in no way unwanted, and that’s part of the reason you’re struggling to maintain presence. 

It’s so much happening so quickly, but you’d be lying to yourself if you said you didn’t imagine this happening eventually. Sex was inevitable. The way his body yearns to be one with yours makes you feel special almost. He’s already engraved into you but in his mind he has to be inside of you and it hurts so badly how you think the same. 

But is the last thing that keeps him pure really yours to take? You’ve stripped so much away from him for all the wrong reasons before and now it feels strange. You are no good and that’s all he is. 

The only thing keeping you here, in the moment, is him. His exploratory and gentle yet rough hands, his body grinding into you, his lips that can’t leave yours or your skin for even a second, and the weak wanting sounds that leave them. 

“I need more, please. I want- I need to feel good with you. Please,” he’s whining into your ear. Then pressing kisses along your jaw and neck that are all so tender, slow, and deliberate. Large hands caress you like you’re breakable, as if not already just a body of fragmented pieces made whole and called a person. 

Your still shaking hand reaches down between your two bodies and slips past his sweats. He had the nerve to go commando and you wish you could tease him, but you can’t. You’re lucky you’re even here right now and breathing his air. Your hand wraps around his aching length and gives him a few tugs to which he’s quick to moan. He kicks off his sweatpants while you bring him closer to you. The plush of your thighs trap him; he whimpers against the soft heat of your flesh. 

Your hips grind up into him once, showing him what he should do too. He’s slow to start, rocking himself between your thighs. Slutty and hopeless sounds leave him in a string of his want. His leaking hard cock is so close to your core. Only the thin layer of your underwear keeps him from feeling your clear need for him too. 

Wrapped in each other's arms, you bury your head to his shoulder. You can feel the pulse of his aching desire rubbing and grinding against you. It makes you shiver in sensitivity and cower further into his neck. You don’t bite down onto your lip, but his neck. There’s a sting to your eyes because you hate it—the wet warmth that pools out of you. Your sin sticks to your underwear and your skin like the red raining life of all the animals you made leave the earth; your haunting subconscious correlates with your growing pleasure. 

You know you’re not religious yet every time Sunghoon touches you there’s a divinity to it and it makes your hands want to join in prayer to thank the universe for sending someone like him to you. Because his hands roam your body as if they have in every world; as if there is not one timeline where you have not been made for him. Like you were carved from his rib every time. 

Your body smolders in that angry way it always did whenever Sunghoon got too close to you. Whenever his words were too kind, his touch too gentle, or god forbid when he just smiled at you. That fire is just the divine nature of your relationship, lighting up everywhere he touches and leaving flames in the wake. You thought it was your body rejecting his purity, but you were only denying the likeness. He made you feel good. And in the most ironic way possible. You just didn’t think you deserved it. 

Yet an anguished moan leaves you, rumbling against his skin as you bite down harder. Regardless of it all, he is yours right now. 

The feeling of your sinking teeth in him, the sounds you’re now making, and the damp heat between your legs he can’t stop chasing all makes his head spin. He bites down onto you just the same and it only makes you moan louder. 

“Please,” he’s whining again through the bite. His voice a needy tremble while his hips stutter and thrust between your legs that only squeeze tighter together. The way the fat of your legs hug his raging cock through his desperate grinds makes him chase more and more for that feeling he just can’t seem to reach. The crying tip kisses and pushes up then past your leaking folds every time. It drives you both insane. 

If your body is the fiery lake of creation's deepest pit, then he is the cleanest ocean of earth’s highest point. If anyone could extinguish you, and possibly make you feel whole, it was Sunghoon. 

This is the most horrifying reality you’ve come face to face with. Not just intimacy, but a stronger driving emotion. You have to open yourself, rip open your chest and bare your beating heart in all its naked vulnerability. Let it scream out I like being with you. You have allowed this person into your world that nobody else has dared to step foot in. To see you in such ugly ways yet still extend their arms for you. It’s a terrifying level of closeness that you’ve never once experienced and you don’t know what to do with. You’re beyond perplexed by what he’s done to you, in both terror and awe.  

You pull back from Sunghoon and he pauses everything for a moment to look at you, noticing your wet eyes. Before he can ask what’s wrong you reach down and slip off your underwear. You shift your body and maneuver him as best you can until he’s on top of you. Rattled with concealed embarrassment you remove his shirt and toss it somewhere to the floor, and he does the same. 

You take a deep breath and reach back down to his cock, lining it up with your pussy. You blink and swallow away all the things trying to stop you from allowing yourself him. Pliant beneath him, you grab his shoulders and pull him down to you for a quick kiss. Foreheads now pressed together with lips ghosting over the others, you tell him, “I hate you.” 

Sunghoon only smiles down at you before kissing you once more. With his arms caged around you, he slowly pushes himself forward. The fat tip of his cock fails to go through you, only sliding up and past the wet folds. He whines feeling the warm slick coat the head; his entire body shudders. He nearly cums from that alone. 

He looks at you confused, and nod once while trying to shift your hips around for a better angle. It’s not like you to be so quiet during things like this. It only tells him that for once, you’re nervous about new things the way he was. 

So he tries again, this time a little rougher. He thrusts his hips forward, the tip pushing past the tight walls but still barely in. You whimper at the intrusion and the feeling of you being stretched open. Your hands squeeze hold onto his biceps for purchase. 

The tight sensation of your pussy squeezing his tip feels otherworldly to him. He can’t help but need to sink deeper into you. His cock pushes in further at an agonizing pace until he’s as deep as he can possibly go. His arms shake while he tries to maintain his strength and keep himself from collapsing onto you completely. The wet walls that surround him flutter and try to pull him further inside, making him feel lightheaded. His moans are so needy it’s almost like he’s crying from the feeling. 

“Oh, f-fuck!” you whimper. Having Sunghoon completely inside of you feels so full. You’re stuffed with him and it hurts so good. “You gotta move, Hoon. Feels like you’re splitting me open.”

“You're so tight, mm.” His hips stutter from your words alone and he whimpers again. He pulls himself out halfway while your gummy walls kiss around him in an attempt to suck him back to be filled again. He begins to rock himself in and out of you. It’s inexperienced and awkward, but he gets the hang of it quickly. Doing what feels best for him and what seems to be the best for you too. 

“I hate you. I fucking hate you,” you whisper harshly, looking up at him with tear filled eyes. It all burns while feeling like heaven. Never have you been so full, held so gently, or seen than this summer. You bite back the breaking moans and whimpers. You claw at his skin. You even begin to cry when your hips can’t stop chasing his thrusts. 

“I love you too,” he whispers back. A kiss is pressed to your forehead as his cock pistons you. Sunghoon is smart enough to know you’re a liar. Your mean words that used to hurt him, he now understands. You’re not really a bad person. And you don’t hate him. You were just really damaged and if he’s damned for trying to heal that then he’s fine with that too. 

“I mean it,” your body shudders, feeling his tip pound so far and deep in places inside you that you didn’t know reachable. His fat cock drags out and forces through your tight hole, making you cream all over him more and more. The sounds that leave your body, the sounds your bodies are making, it’s so obscene. Fighting off the disgust and focusing on how he makes you feel is war. It’s so hard for you to win. 

“No you don’t,” he shifts himself to sit on his knees, taking your legs and wrapping them around his waist. He leans forward and kisses both of your cheeks before fucking himself into you again, only harder and faster than before. 

“Ngh,” you moan again through broken sobs, blinking away the tears as you stare up at him. “I’m t-trying to.” 

“I know, baby.” he mumbles before capturing your wobbling lips into a searing kiss. “It’s okay, haah, don’t cry. You’re good. You’re so good for me,” he says against your wet lips. You can only sniffle and try to turn your head away from him in your embarrassment. “No, no.” he takes your chin with his thumb and finger, forcing you to look back at him. His thrusts never letting up during his care. “Look at me. You’re so good to me.” He reminds you over and over. “We’re so good together. I’m yours. you’re mine.” 

“Say it again,” you sniffle through little sounds of sin. Your hand finds a place on his cheek, and your thumb rubs over his lips that wear a smile. 

“You’re so good, good for me. We are so good together. I am yours. And you are mine,” he says softly. His eyes are so filled with love, and if you could see your reflection in his then you would know yours are too. “Say you’re good, baby, it’s okay.”

“I’m good,” you sob through your whimpers, “I’m yours.”

To Sunghoon, the idea of sex was always sacred. Something that’s only done and shared between lovers bound by marriage of the church. But now, he thinks differently. He knows that there is no shame in him loving you now or years later. And he was more than happy to make love to you all night until you believed it too. 

　Perhaps there was a thing such as divine intervention and if God’s timing was alway right, he knew how to be evil with it too. Because the next day, when Sunghoon takes you home, he’s met with your maker. 

Your mother, aware of the frequent trips you’ve been making and how close you’ve grown to the summer farmhand boy, is quick to make a call to your father the night you don’t return home. It wasn’t necessarily because she cared for your well being. You’re more than capable of handling yourself. But it was an excuse to try and get him to come back. Only it doesn’t go how she wanted.

When you see the reverend’s car parked in front of your house, your heart drops. Sunghoon picks up on your tension, He sees how you go blank at the sight and slowly turn back into the empty girl he met months ago. He tries to hold your hand but your fingers can’t move, can’t return the embrace. 

When the reverend walks out of the house with his infamous weapon of sacrificial forgiveness, you know what to do. Your body moves on its own, leaving Sunghoon to reach out for you that walks towards the woods. He goes to follow you and the desolate man that stalks behind, but your mother stops him. She’s hysterical as she drags him towards your house saying, “it’s going to be okay.” But she’s crying. 

Once out of their sight, the reverend takes you by the hair. He yanks your head around, pulling you towards that cursed tree. He’s uncharacteristically rough and your scalp screams for a release but you don’t show it. You don’t even look at the man. Not even when he’s tossing your body to the ground. 

“So you’re whoring around with my employees now, huh? Was ruining this farm not enough for you?” His words mean nothing to you. You dust off the dirt and go to stand again, but he kicks you back down. You tsk under your breath as he speaks again, “I’ve seen all the things you’ve done. Seen you leave my barns with red hands and smile. Cut heads off chickens like an anatomy project. Is he next? That church boy?” 

Now you look up to glare at him. Seeing the reverend was aggravating enough, but to say something about Sunghoon was infuriating to you. “I am not a killer. You are! And those animals were already dead.” You spit at his black leather church shoes. 

“Oh, you disgusting little devient,” he laughs lowly, untying the rope from the tree. “Your cruelty shouldn’t bring you joy. Sick and twisted, I should’ve dealt with you sooner regardless of what your drunk bitch mother protested. I can save the boy when you’re gone.” 

“What?” you shuffle backwards from him, angry and confused as he stalks closer to you until you’re backed against the tree. “All those things I did was because of you. Your righteousness made me rotten!” Your hands shake, gripping at the dirt ground for anything to make the fear stop. You glance up to the empty tree branch then the rope in his hands. Where is the lamb? You think briefly before it hits you. “You’re crazy,” you whisper, “I will not be your martyr… not now what I’m finally-”

“Condemn me to Hell for all I care,” he crouches down in front of you, “This is the last time I’ll be a killer.” He throws the rope to your lap and tells you to tether yourself. 

“Why do you hate me?” The words scratch at your throat. When you were younger, you did want the reverend to hate you. It was when he noticed you most, and it’s all you really knew. But now you’re older, and his disdain never made sense. 

You can’t bring yourself to move even if you wanted to. Was this His plan? To allow you one good thing in life before ending it? Was ruining Sunghoon your final sin? 

The rope shakes with your fingers as you stare down at it. The twine of the rope burns over the palm of your hand where Sunghoon carved his promise. Your throat feels dry, tight and suffocating; choking on everything you’ve ever done. And your eyes still puffy from the night before well with tears all over again. 

“I just do,” he thinks of slicing your neck open right there. So fuck tying you down, you were always secretly another lamb anyways. He raises his knife and the metal sits cold under your chin as he lifts your head up to look back at him. 

“Okay…” you swallow. 

Your eyes squeeze shut and so does your mouth, as you raise your head to the sky with an exposed throat. Why isn’t this easy? Unlike the animals, you do know what’s coming. And it’s scary. Scary not because of death, but because you aren’t ready. You haven’t told Sunghoon goodbye or that you love him back. And the thought of him finding something in this world to hate, is such an ugly feeling to die with. 

And then there’s a loud noise. A booming bang, followed by unsteady feet falling back and the ground rumbling with a thud. 

You open your eyes and your father is on his back clutching his abdomen. He coughs and gasps before raising his hand. It’s dripping in deep red. And you can’t help but smile with tears in your eyes as you exhale a jagged breath.

You turn your head and Sunghoon stands there with the shotgun in hand, open mouthed and wide eyed. 

“Sunghoon!” you scramble to your feet and run over to him, taking the gun from his hands as he’s frozen in shock. 

“H-he was going to- he was about to hurt you. I had to-!” he stutters, his eyes already crying and hands shaking, still feeling the weight and recoil of the gun. 

“It’s okay,” you coo softly. “Just- go back to the house and I’ll be right there, okay?” You rush out. Still in shock and dazed, he blindly trusts you and does as you say. 

When he’s no longer close by, you walk over to the reverend with a blank face. You stare down at him as he tries to crawl away, dirty and bleeding. The smile you make doesn’t reach your eyes. 

You point the gun back down at him, and place your foot over the shot wound Sunghoon created. The man gasps and tries to swat at your leg but you only press the gun further into his face, making him surrender. 

“Divine intervention, huh? Say it with me now. I know no punishment, only mercy.” Your voice is quiet, calm, and mocking of his tone. With the barrel to his forehead, you watch him writhe in pain and cough up a little blood. 

“Go to Hell,” he spits his words like venom. 

“If you say it, I’ll let you live. But if you show your face to me or Sunghoon again, I’ll shoot you right between the eyes.” Your foot presses down harder. You can feel that angry little girl inside of you jumping with joy.. Knowing his God demands to be bled for, and making him know the sacrificial suffering, well it feels good to say the least. “Say it. With me. Now.” Each word pronounced with the growing applied pressure to his shot wound. And then he begs for forgiveness. He’s never seen you smile the way you did when he was below you with those words. Empty eyes were never so alive for him either. He cries and chants ‘I know no punishment, only mercy’ over and over. It was like the most beautiful hymn.

　There wasn’t much to be said about that day. Sunghoon and you just pretend you shared a nightmare. Neither of you talked about it. It was just another thing that tied you together. 

Sitting there in the peak of summer’s heat. A day before Sunghoon returns to college classes. Birds chirp. The leaves of the tall trees thistle in the light breezes that pass by. Sunghoon sits criss crossed and while you have your feet hanging off the edge of the dock, kicking in the water. 

“I’m sorry,” you break the silence. Shocked, he looks over to you. He never would have expected you to apologize for anything. “I was selfish when I approached you. I wanted to take all that goodness out of you and keep it for myself. I thought I wanted to hurt you, but after sharing all this time with you, I realized I was wrong. It’s weird to say it out loud,” you laugh small, awkward, “but I really am sorry. I love you more than even I know.” You stare down to your feet in the water that has gone still. A tear falls from your eye, and down to your cheek. 

“I know. I love you too,” he wraps an arm around your waist. “But now the same sins bind us.” You hiccup silently and turn to look up at him. “Harvest all of my purity, farmer’s daughter.” 

For the first time, you really laugh. It’s bright and loud like the big smile he’s seeing for the first time on his favorite face. It’s morning sunlight that whispers through trees to kiss the forest floor. Birds that sing songs of hope to awake life into a new day. Nostalgic, expansive days of childhood where the concept of time doesn’t exist. To him, you look like the epitome of summer; he doesn’t want this season to end. 

You were never the lamb. Or the wolf. Not an animal at all. Nothing like the ones you grew up with. You were just a girl, scared and alone. But not anymore. Because it’s your last day on this farm, and tomorrow is the first with only Sunghoon. 

“Your humor is poetry.” you continue to laugh until tears prick your eyes all over again. You love it. 

“It wasn’t supposed to be funny.” he looks away shyly, blushing. It only makes your giggle more, but you stop to press a kiss to his cheek. He blushes harder. 

“I’ll keep doing it, harvesting all of your purity, for as long as you’re good.” you say with a smile. 

“Do you promise? I am always good, especially with you, so it could be a long while.” He bumps your shoulder playfully with a laugh. 

You take his scarred hand in yours and you laugh like he did, pure and true, “I do.”

© fangel ┊ do not copy, repost, modify or translate my content ໒꒱ tysm for reading, ⌗unlearn shame ⌇ taglist @tinycatharsis @simjaexy @leehsngs @511rkive @beomluvrr @jjongsaengzz @slvtella @jaerisdiction @kkamismom12 @rayofsunshineeee @nshmrarki @m3wkledreamy @hanjisbeloved @filmnings @stercul1a @hooniesfvngs @moriwori @sleepyhoon

[overadores]

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁only star ✮ manon bannerman

She may be the reason I survive

pairing.ᐟ actress!manon bannerman x reader

about.ᐟ when actress Manon Bannerman walks into your record store searching for a rare vinyl, she doesn’t expect you to be clueless about her fame. the brief encounter turns intriguing when a fan outs Manon’s identity, leading you to chase after her and get her number, but the connection is quickly tested—paparazzi ambush the both of you, forcing an escape to your apartment, where you bond in private. As you get a glimpse of Manon’s chaotic world, the reality of dating someone famous becomes overwhelming and just when things start to feel real, Manon’s girlfriend returns from L.A., ready to reclaim her place.

genre.ᐟ fluff, kind of angsty

wc.ᐟ 1094 words

a/n.ᐟ the song isn't really necessary, but i just want to appreciate this song cuz it just make me feel something, also i might not post or i'll try to post another angst today (thesis been biting me in the fuckin ass). anyways, happy valentines, my lovely peepz!

The why and wherefore I'm alive

The bell above the door chimed as Manon Bannerman stepped into the vinyl shop, the scent of old records and dust filling her senses. She wasn’t sure why she chose this particular store—maybe it was instinct, or just blind luck—but she was searching for something rare. Something special.

Rows upon rows of vinyl stretched before her, a collector’s dream. As she made her way to the rare collections section, she was greeted by the shop’s owner, a charming individual with a welcoming smile.

“Looking for something special?” a warm voice called out.

She looked up to see the owner behind the counter. You had an easy confidence about you, a quiet charm. Not someone who immediately recognized her, and that was refreshing.

“Yes, actually,” Manon replied, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Do you happen to have The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, signed by all four Beatles?”

You frowned, tapping your fingers against the counter. “That’s a deep cut. Let me check.”

As you sifted through your catalog, Manon watched you. There was something about the way you moved—calm, deliberate, unaffected. She could tell you weren’t used to dealing with celebrities, and for some reason, she liked that.

“No luck,” you finally said, glancing up. “But I can put out feelers.”

Her lips twitched in amusement. “You really don’t know who I am, do you?”

You shrugged. “Should I?”

Before she could respond, a high-pitched squeal rang through the shop. “Oh my God, Manon Bannerman?” A young woman clutching a stack of records gawked at her. “I love Uncharted! Your performance was unreal!”

Manon stiffened slightly, her expression flickering between amusement and frustration. That was when it hit you—she was famous. Like, really famous.

A beat of silence stretched between you before she sighed, muttering, “Well, that answers that.” Then, with an apologetic half-smile, she turned and slipped out the door

You hesitated only a second before following. “Hey, Manon!” you called, jogging after her.

She glanced back, surprised.

“At least let me get your number for when I find that record.”

She studied you, lips quirking. Then, as if making a decision, she plucked the pen from behind your ear, grabbed your wrist, and scrawled a number across your skin.

“Good luck,” she said before disappearing into the city.

A week later, you were sitting in your apartment, sipping whiskey with Manon while hiding from a pack of paparazzi who had caught you outside a café. What started as a casual text about the record had spiraled into something else entirely.

She sat cross-legged on your worn-out couch, flipping through your vinyl collection with a lazy smile. “You really don’t care about all this, do you?”

“The flashing cameras? The tabloid buzz?” you mused. “Not really. I mean, it’s a little surreal, but you’re just… you.”

She exhaled, relaxing. “I like that.”

And for a while, it was good. Until reality crept in.

So it went, an unusual romance blooming between a quiet vinyl shop owner and a Hollywood star, but dating someone famous wasn’t all stolen moments and whispered secrets. It was dodging paparazzi in alleyways, waking up to your face in gossip columns, strangers dissecting your relationship online.

Just last night, you had booked a secluded part of a restaurant—minimal windows, barely any people. Yet somehow, the paparazzi still got in and if that wasn’t enough, a waiter had kept pestering Manon for a picture, completely ignoring the fact that you were trying to have a normal evening.

The night was ruined.

Afterward, you hadn’t spoken much. She tried to explain, insisting this was inevitable, that she couldn’t escape the spotlight.

“I just want a goddamn normal life and a non-showbiz girlfriend,” you had snapped in frustration.

Her face fell, the words cutting deeper than you had intended. Without another word, she walked out, leaving you alone with your regret.

The next day, armed with a bouquet, you knocked on her hotel door, ready to apologize. But instead of Manon, another woman answered—wearing Manon’s shirt.

Your heart clenched. “Hi, is Manon here?”

Before the woman could respond, Manon appeared, eyes widening when she saw you. She quickly pulled the other woman back inside and stepped into the hallway with you.

“Who the hell was that?” you demanded.

She hesitated. “That was my ex. She showed up causing a scene, and I let her in to calm her down.”

You didn’t believe it. “Really? Wearing your shirt?”

She sighed, exasperated. “It’s not what you think.”

You exhaled sharply and shoved the bouquet into her hands. “You know what? I give up.”

“No!” She grabbed your wrist. “Please, can we just talk?”

You contemplated, then shook your head. “I need to think this through. Can we take a break?”

She swallowed hard but nodded, stepping back into her room.

That night, you found yourself at your sister’s house, breaking down in her arms.

“Oh, darling, everything’s going to be fine,” she soothed.

You sniffled. “It doesn’t feel fine.”

She sighed. “You either accept her for who she is or find someone who fits your idea of normal.”

The words lingered in your mind.

The next day, you dragged yourself to work. It was quiet, save for the occasional customer. As you searched for Manon’s record, someone cleared their throat.

Looking up, you found her standing there—natural hair, no makeup, a soft, hopeful smile.

“Hi,” she said. “Can we talk?”

You led her to the back office.

“So, how was your weekend?” you asked lightly.

“Spent it in my hotel,” she admitted. “Thinking about how I messed up.”

Silence stretched between you before she continued, “I’m leaving today, but I wanted to see you—maybe to remind you that I still like you. A lot.”

You stared at her, heart pounding. “Manon…”

She bit her lip. “I know I come with baggage, but I don’t want to lose you. Maybe we can find a way to make this work?”

You hesitated, but then you thought of her smile, her laugh, the way she felt like home despite the chaos. Maybe your sister was right—you either accept someone for who they are or you walk away.

You reached into the drawer, pulling out a package. “I found something.”

Her brows lifted as she unwrapped it—The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, not signed, but still pristine.

She laughed, teary-eyed. “It’s perfect.”

You grinned. “So, should we give this another shot?”

She nodded, stepping closer. “Yeah. Let’s try.”

And as she kissed you, soft and slow, you knew—you were all in.

[hcverns]

Risks Taken

pairing: yoon jeonghan x fem!reader, minghao is mentioned

word count: 9.4k

warnings: mentions of drinking, cursing, some spice (making out)

genre: angst, fluff (basically angsty stuff with a happy ending), best friends to lovers.

synopsis: in the midst of enjoying his blissful saturday night with you and a romance movie, his world suddenly stopped spinning when you mentioned another guy's name.

a/n: hi oh my god i'm so nervous. this is literally my first fanfic i've ever written. i wrote this for my best friend and i asked her permission to post it on tumblr and she said yes so here i am :) i apologize for the typos and grammar mistakes or any mistake at all, really. likes, replies and reblogs would be much appreciated. much love <3

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

It was Saturday night. The TV was on in your living room. A rom-com movie was playing on the screen. What was the title, he wasn’t sure. But it was quite entertaining. He had underestimated your choice of movie at first, but you had begged him so nicely with those puppy eyes that always made him weak in the knees. Who could blame him for giving in to his best friend’s request?

So here you two were. Relaxing on the couch while watching a movie. There were a bunch of snacks on the coffee table in front of you. You were sitting side by side, both your feet resting on top of the coffee table without a single care with just the right amount of distance separating the two of you. Just a perfect Saturday night.

Jeonghan stretched his arm to reach for a bag of gummy bears on the table, only to find none of it.

“What the— Hey, did you finish all the gummy bears?” He asked you who were sitting beside him on the couch but his question was responded by silence.

He sighed and shook his head slightly. He turned his gaze to you only to notice that your eyes were focused on the TV screen. Instead of calling you out for finishing the gummy bears, he looked at your features in silence. A small smile appeared on his lips unintentionally. He noticed your hair had gotten longer. It almost reached your shoulders.

He remembered the time when you had cut your hair short. Like short, short. Masculine type of short hair. You’d been so excited to show him. He couldn’t, wouldn’t ever forget the happiness in your eyes when you facetimed him to proudly show him your brand new look. And it really surprised him with how beautiful you looked with that hair. Your excitement and confidence really added into it. He was happy to witness you being brave enough to look different, to look bold, to express yourself just like you had wanted to.

He snapped back to reality when you squealed like a schoolgirl.

“Han, they’re gonna kiss. They’re gonna kiss!” You said in excitement.

Jeonghan furrowed his eyebrows slightly. “What?”

“They’re gonna freaking kiss! You heard me.” You repeated yourself without turning your gaze in the slightest bit.

“How do you know?”

“How could I not? I’ve watched this befo— AAHH! They kiss! See?” You turned your head to him with the biggest smile on your face.

Jeonghan had to fight the urge to say “so fucking adorable” out loud at the sight of his best friend’s smiley face. Instead, he decided to ask you, “You’ve watched this movie before?”

You simply nodded.

“And you’re watching it again?”

You nodded your head again.

He sighed. “Why?”

You jerked your head back in confusion. “What do you mean 'why?'”

“You’ve watched this movie before. Why are you watching it again? What’s the point of watching the same movie twice?”

You rolled your eyes at his question. To you, it sounded so dumb. “Han, have you watched this movie before?”

Jeonghan shook his head.

“That’s why I chose this movie for our movie night. This movie is so good I couldn’t help but share the experience of watching this masterpiece with you. You should’ve thanked me, you know?”

Jeonghan chuckled a little. You really knew how to respond to literally anything. But he really needed to know why you were willing to watch the same movie more than once, so he questioned you again, “Yeah, but why are you willing to watch it again?”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “Oh boy. Just be quiet, yeah? You’ve watched ‘The Glory’ more than once as well, remember? And it’s a series. A goddamn series!” You laughed sarcastically.

He laughed as well. You got a point. He remembered when he had finished watching ‘The Glory’ for the first time and he couldn’t help but watch the said series again for the second time the very next day.

“You’re silent now, huh?” Your lips formed into a smirk.

“Shut up.” He brushed you off. The trace of his smile was still visible on his lips.

“Anyway, (Y/N), since you were very focused on two people kissing on the screen, let me ask you again. Did you finish all the gummy bears?” He raised his eyebrow.

“That… I did, yeah.” You admitted that it made Jeonghan groan.

“Well, you know what, I think I still have some in the cabinet. I’ll grab ‘em for you.” You quickly added when Jeonghan started to groan. He really did want some gummy bears, it seemed.

A smile quickly appeared on his face. “Wait, really? Don’t worry about it. I’ll do it myself. You keep going with your ‘Lovely Rosie.’” Jeonghan got up from the couch and made his way to your kitchen.

“It’s 'Love, Rosie' you jerk!” You yelled from the living room that made him laugh.

Jeonghan opened one of the hanging cabinets’ doors where you usually kept your snacks. He didn’t have to guess which one because he had been in your place many, many times.

Ever since you had started being best friends, which was roughly six years ago, you had this one night in a week, usually on Saturday night, where you just chilled and watched movies together. Of course it didn’t happen literally once in a week because, as responsible adults, you two sometimes were busy with something. But still, it was a tradition for you.

Jeonghan finally found two large bags of gummy bears in the cabinet. He smiled brightly as he held them with his right hand. He immediately walked himself back to the living room. He was so ready to plop himself on the couch before he took a quick look at you, who apparently were focused on your phone, rather than the TV screen, with a big smile on your face.

Jeonghan furrowed his brows. ‘Why is she ignoring the movie without even pausing it and why is she smiling so damn big now while staring at her phone?’ He wondered inwardly.

He slowly sat himself down on the couch. His best friend’s attention was still on her phone. He noticed your fingers typing something, seemingly.

He waited for a few seconds (which felt like hours) for you to turn your attention to him. Or the TV screen. Or the freaking gummy bears in his hand. Anything but your phone. He got a bad, bad feeling.

His curiosity piqued. He couldn’t help but ask you about it. “You’re texting someone?”

“Yup.” You answered with just one word. But this one word was enough to make Jeonghan’s heart sting a little.

“Oh.” That was all he said. He didn’t want to seem nosy so he didn’t push you to tell him who you were  texting. But not gonna lie, there was a slight pang of hurt in his chest. ‘Who are you texting? Why are you smiling so bright right now?’ He questioned again.

He tried to ease his own worry by forcing himself to think positively. ‘That could be her mom. But who on earth texts their mom with a smile like that??’ The attempt to clear the fog on his brain failed miserably.

“Who?” The word just slipped out of his mouth because apparently he ran out of his self control.

You didn’t answer him immediately and that almost drove him insane.

After a few seconds of you smiling and typing and him resisting the urge to just snatch your phone himself (which again, felt like fucking hours to him), you put your phone down on the couch beside your thigh.

You looked at him, still with a smile on your face. If it were under different circumstances, he would smile back at you. Why wouldn’t he? Your smile was his favorite thing ever after all.

Instead of smiling like he usually did, he raised his eyebrow as a sign that he was waiting for an explanation.

“Sorry, sorry. What was it again?” you innocently asked him to repeat his question.

Without wasting a millisecond, he uttered what was on his curious mind. “Who were you texting?”

Your facial expression turned shy. Exactly like someone who was thinking of their crush. And the pain in his chest increased.

“It’s just… someone.”

“Someone who?” He responded quickly. Demanding for a real and clear answer.

“Was it a guy?” He hoped you couldn’t notice the jealousy in his tone.

And what he hoped for was exactly what happened, but at what cost? You were completely oblivious of his jealousy. A shy smile made an appearance on your pretty face and it was enough to confirm Jeonghan’s bad feeling.

You took a deep breath before answering him. “So, his name is Minghao…”

Jeonghan swore he could feel his heart stop for a second. You mentioning the guy’s name that you had been texting with felt like a stab to his heart. No, that can’t be. He refused to believe it. He really wanted to pull his own hair in frustration but he chose to stay silent as you continued talking about this Minghao guy.

“He’s a barista in Franky n Co, the coffee shop I work in.” Your face got slightly red as you were talking about Minghao to your best friend.

Jeonghan was using all his power to keep a straight face. He even tried to smile a little as a way to make you believe that he wasn’t jealous at all. “Are you guys dating or something?”

Your eyes widened in surprise. “N-no. We’re not dating. At least not yet, I hope.” A shy smile appeared again on your face at the end of your sentence.

“So… you like him?”

“Well, yeah. Let’s just say that me and Minghao are in a… what’s it called? Talking stage? Yeah. We’re currently in a talking stage.” You smiled widely as you explained to him what this Minghao guy was to you and it made his blood fucking boiling.

“So he likes you too?” The smile on his face right now was the fakest smile in the whole damn universe. In his mind, he was clenching his fists very tightly to the point that his fingernails hurt the palm of his hands.

Your smile faltered as you were reminded of the uncertainty of Minghao’s feelings for you. “Uh, I’m not sure. I mean, we’ve gone on two dates and they went pretty well. But he hasn’t told me whether he likes me or not and vice versa.”

When he felt his heart was stabbed earlier, this time it felt like the knife had been twisted and made the pain tenfold. ‘Dates. They had gone on two dates. Two fucking dates.’ Jeonghan was on the brink of insanity.

“You two have gone on dates? Tell me about it.” He was scared for a second that you would catch up on the sarcasm that lingered on his words.

You didn’t, though. Jeonghan didn’t know he should be grateful or hateful at your unawareness. Your eyes got excited as you were going to tell him about your dates with Minghao.

“First, it was a movie date. We went to the cinema after we finished our shift. And the second one was three days ago. It was an ice cream date..? I mean, we just went to an ice cream shop after work and we talked about several topics while eating ice cream. And he held my hand all the way home.”

Your voice was so dreamy. It sounded so sweet. If only you were talking about him in that manner rather than Minghao. He didn’t need to hear all those details. He wanted to throw up. He felt sick to his stomach. ‘That coffee maker even had a chance to hold her hand? All the way home??’

Jeonghan didn’t know what this Minghao guy looked like. He didn’t know his personality as well but he really, really wanted to punch him in the face right now.

“That sounds so cute. A movie date and an ice cream date? How adorable.” His words were completely opposite of what was truly on his mind.

“Right! Do you think he likes me back?” you asked him a question that sounds so ridiculous to him. But all he did was shrug his shoulders slightly.

“He could.”

“Yeah? You think so?” you asked him again with eyes full of hope.

‘Hell fucking no.’ That was what he wanted to say. But he wasn’t stupid enough to let that happen. He didn’t want to ruin your mood like that. So he just nodded instead.

Then, the unexpected happened. Something that made Jeonghan’s heart skip a beat. Something that made his jealousy and rage calm down even though only a bit. You squealed and threw yourself at him and wrapped your arms around his shoulders.

The hug was short, he couldn't help but long for it again when you let go.

“Thank you for convincing me that there’s a possibility of Minghao liking me back. You’re the best, Han!”

Then it came back again. The jealousy and anger. Your smallest words and acts could really put him on a wild roller coaster ride.

Jeonghan swore he didn’t mean it. He just lost control over his movement. He couldn’t think straight so he let his heart take the lead this time.

As a response to you thanking him, he rolled his eyes and scoffed.

And when he heard your small gasp, he knew he fucked up.

“What was that for?” you asked in disbelief.

Jeonghan played dumb by asking you back, “What was what for?”

“Why did you roll your eyes and scoff like that, Han?” He could hear the slight sadness in your tone.

Fuck.

Fuck. Fucking hell. Should he say it? There’s no use in hiding it anymore, right?

He was fighting a battle in his own head now. He sat in silence as his brain was working really hard to decide what his response should be.

“Yoon Jeonghan.”

He quickly looked at you when you called him by his full name like that. He couldn’t take it anymore. He wanted to leave your place, got in his car and drove himself to the highway at the speed of a hundred miles an hour while ignoring the red lights.

“What did you even see in him, anyway?” His heart took full control of his mouth now. He really did say the exact thing on his mind without a filter.

“Excuse me?”

Offended. Disbelief. Bewilderment. Confusion. A hint of anger. Jeonghan could see those emotions mixed into one on your face.

“You heard me right.” He didn’t back down. No lame excuses such as “Sorry, I was possessed by an unknown spirit that’s why I was spewing bullshit.” or “Oh, I was just reciting a line from a movie.” Nothing.

“What the fuck?”

He had it coming. He knew you would respond harshly. Those three words were enough to make the pain on his chest more intense. He didn’t say anything in return. He just looked down at the carpet beneath his feet in embarrassment and jealousy. The gummy bears he had taken earlier were long forgotten, just like the movie.

“Han, explain!” you raised your voice just a little at your best friend’s silence.

You snapped. So he did too.

“I don’t like the fact that you like that guy, whatever his name is, okay?”

If he thought that his heart was taking full control of the way he acted and spoke, he was wrong. His head was also taking control. His heart and his head were equally in chaos and clouded by jealousy. So he was sure that the words he just said to you were justified.

And he lied, by the way. He knew exactly the name of that guy.

Meanwhile, you felt like a punch had landed straight on your chest. Your brain couldn’t process the words that came out of Jeonghan’s mouth just now. You didn’t even know how to feel. Of course, you were confused as hell. But other than that, you weren't even sure. Should you feel sad? Angry? What?

“B-but why?”

The way you stuttered was almost enough for his heart to soften and to make him apologize to you immediately. Right, almost. Not entirely, no. Jealousy was still consuming his heart and head.

Jeonghan got a brief and sudden flashback to when his little heart finally had gotten the courage to admit to himself that he indeed had more-than-friends feelings for you.

✧༝┉˚*❋ ❋*˚┉༝✧

It was roughly one and a half years ago. He still remembered the way he had cursed in the darkness of his room, under the warmth of his blanket. He had been in shambles. His brain had short-circuited. He was confused, sad, even angry at himself. He wanted to be angry at you too for being such an absolute flawless human being and had the audacity to effortlessly play with his heartstrings like that.

The thing is, he had never been friendzoned. Never. But he had enough information about it. A complete glossary from A to Z regarding things that were related to the said situation and none of them had a positive connotation. All thanks to his friends. Joshua drank himself to sleep for two weeks straight and Seungcheol had lost several kilos of body mass because of fucking friendzone.

And most importantly, they vented their sadness and frustration to Jeonghan.

Despite laying on his soft bed with a soft pillow under his head, he felt very uncomfortable. He wanted to rest his mind in a peaceful slumber but he just couldn’t. After a few tossing and turning, he heard his phone vibrate on the nightstand.

With a weak hand, he reached for his device and found out who texted him that late.

It was you.

thank you so much for today hannie!! im no longer sad now. in fact this gotta be the best birthday ever with my best friend ever who gave me the best present ever!! goodnite :D

“Fuck.” He cursed under his breath. Best friend. He groaned onto the pillow as his brain was recalling the recent event that happened earlier that day. Your  twenty-fourth birthday.

As someone who lived far away from family, you didn’t have the privilege to have your birthday celebrated at home with your parents, siblings and pet cat. You also didn’t have that many friends in the city you currently lived in so your birthday was less lively than the ones you had before you moved out.

You weren't exactly sulky or sour but Jeonghan could see right through his best friend. It was your birthday and he wanted you to have the time of your life. Of course he already prepared a gift for you. A Hogwarts themed lego set which you eyed on when you two were window shopping two weeks ago. But he wanted to do more. He wanted to make your  birthday as joyful as the ones you had in your hometown.

So he asked you to go to a beach. It was spontaneous, really. He didn’t plan it beforehand but he knew a small and beautiful beach just thirty minutes drive from the city called Azure Cove.

He remembered the way your whole face lit up when he brought up the idea of going to Azure Cove as a way to celebrate your birthday. He also could never forget the way you glowed when both of you arrived at the said location. That was the happiest of you he had ever witnessed and he felt some kind of pride for being the reason behind it.

As you were enjoying the rich color of sunset on the beach, Jeonghan went back to his car and took out the Lego set he had bought for you.

And it was the moment that made Jeonghan couldn’t fall asleep that night. The way you hugged him so tightly, your eyes slightly glistened with tears and a tender kiss on his cheek. The kiss. The goddamn kiss that made a switch in his brain flip. The kiss that made him realize that he, indeed, had feelings for his best friend for God knows how long.

He looked back at the text you had sent him. The words ‘best friend’ you put right there made him slightly bitter. Well, you weren't wrong, but Jeonghan wasn’t ready for the cursed ending he would receive for being in love with you. A friend-fucking-zone.

✧༝┉˚*❋ ❋*˚┉༝✧

Back to the current situation.

The flashback got Jeonghan a little bit dizzy. He knew he was going to be friendzoned the moment he’d realized he had feelings for you. But to be honest, he had a sliver of hope that one day, you would see him as more than a friend. People might ask, what made him have such a hope? Jeonghan didn’t know either. A blind optimism? Delusion? Anyway, a hope is a hope.

“I just… I don’t like the fact that you’re seeing that person, you know? A barista? Come on. You can do better than that.”

Jeonghan knew it was a dick move to say something classist like that. He was an accountant and everyone including him knew he earned way more than that Minghao guy. If Jeonghan was in his right state of mind, he would never say anything like that. But he was too angry, too jealous and even too sad. So, again, for him, it was justified.

You never once thought Jeonghan would say something with a classist undertone like he just did now. Your jaw dropped in surprise. You had no idea what to say. Your brain just stopped working because this whole situation was way too unexpected to happen. “What the hell did you just say?”

He scoffed. Oh, this was so not him. “Someone like you should be with someone who, I don’t know, better than that Minghao dude.”

Enough with the speechlessness. You felt like you were being degraded. Although Jeonghan’s degrading words weren’t really for you, still, it was your taste in men that got targeted. With rage in your voice, you talked back, “Yeah? Like who? And what do you mean by someone like Minghao?”

“Like me!”

Uh oh. That was it. His emotions got the best of him. He uttered those words with a raised voice. He often dreamed about confessing to his best friend about his undying love. But not this way. Never this way. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He silently cursed his inability to stay calm and keep things cool. He wanted to beat himself up especially after he saw the shocked look on your face.

You were speechless for the nth time tonight and all thanks to Jeonghan. The soft spoken Jeonghan would never attack you multiple times in one go. When you had been angry just a few seconds ago, you were now confused as fuck. You couldn’t wrap your head around the words he just said. What the hell was that? What did he mean by someone like him? Why would he say that?

“Han, a-are you drunk right now? Did you drink something–”

“I’m not fucking drunk, (Y/N)! I’m sober, okay?” Your words were cut short by Jeonghan’s interruption. That irritated him a lot. Assuming him to be drunk? You must be joking.

“Then why did you–”

“Because I have feelings for you, damn it!"

There. The truth was out now in the open. Lingering in the air of the safe haven in the form of your living room, which currently no longer seemed safe for Jeonghan. Despite the voices of the actors conversing in the movie on the TV screen, Jeonghan could hear his heart beat faster than normal. He could also hear the gears in your head work to process the sudden piece of information he had dropped.

Jeonghan didn’t know how long the silence lasted. It felt like an eternity. He currently had two moods now. He either wanted to bury himself deep into the ground or he wanted to burst into tears.

When you finally moved your lips to say something, Jeonghan felt the urge to throw up. He completely had no idea of what was to come. But in a situation like this, he was sure everyone’s brain was programmed to automatically think about the worst case scenario. And what was the worst case scenario in his head now? You rejecting him in cold blood, telling him that you already had your eye on that coffee maker.

“Y-You’re joking, right?” You finally said.

It pissed him off, truly. Was him having feelings for you that shocking to hear? Hadn’t you seen the signs he had tried to show for the past several months? Well, he was completely aware that he had never said it directly that he was in love with you. But hadn’t you realized he had done so many things for you that he would never do to his other friends?

“Of course I’m not. I’m dead serious, (Y/N)!” He said in frustration. Jeonghan was not backing down. The truth was out. Might as well pour his entire heart out to you after holding it in for so long.

You could feel your heart beat so fast. You had never thought that you would be in such a situation. You didn’t know what to say. Your usual talkative self was in a hibernate mode. Your brain stopped working.

“But… why?” You muttered. You needed more information about whatever the hell was happening now so that you could start to think properly.

Jeonghan, getting even more frustrated now, ran his hands through his hair roughly. Why’d you had to ask him that? Couldn’t you just… reject him right at that moment so that the storm of hurt would pass quickly?

“Why what, huh? Why what, (Y/N)? Why am I in love with you? Jesus Christ, have you looked at you? You’re literally perfect. You have bewitched me with your perfection and I have been very willing to be bewitched by you. It’s a blessing for me to get to love someone like you. You make me happy. You make me feel things I hadn’t felt for so long. I love you, (Y/N). I love loving you.” Jeonghan confessed it all almost in one breath.

Seeing your best friend ramble about how much he loved you wasn’t on your bingo card. You had asked Jeonghan to give you a reason why he loved you and there you got it. Still, you found this entire situation confusing as hell. You still lost your ability to think. The only thing you felt right now was, somehow, guilt.

“Jeonghan…” you said his name oh-so-gently. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know…”

Your apology somehow sounded way worse than he had imagined. It was worse than being rejected in cold blood. Like, why were you sorry? Jeonghan hated it when people pitied him. Especially you.

He gave you a bitter chuckle. “Of course you didn’t. How could you? I never told you anything about it. Don’t be sorry, please. Nothing to be sorry about. I don’t want you to feel guilty. I don’t want your pity. But damn it. It hurts. It hurts a lot. I love you so much but you don’t love me. Not the way I want to be loved.”

When you didn’t say anything, Jeonghan seized the opportunity to say more. He just wanted to let it all out. Friendship gone, be damned. He had crossed a line that could never be uncrossed anyway.

“You didn’t see it, did you? When I did all those things for you. Things I have never done for my other friends because, well, I don’t really see you as my friend. At least in my imagination.” Jeonghan uttered while looking straight into your orbs.

Then, he averted his gaze downwards towards the beige carpet. “And now you went on dates with this… Minghao dude who I have no idea about at all. I don’t know what he looks like. He must be drop dead gorgeous, huh? I bet I can never hold a candle to him. What a lucky bastard. He’s able to brag about going on dates with someone like you. I don’t know who this Minghao guy is but I despise him already. I’m so sorry, (Y/N). I know you think I’m going insane right now. Hell, I probably am. I’m sure I look like a madman but I meant what I said, (Y/N). Every single goddamn word. I meant it.”

You could only look at Jeonghan as he crashed out. All the words he said started to get into your head. You allowed yourself to receive those pieces of information, no matter how absurd your mind made them to be.

You also allowed yourself to dive deep into the memories you had shared with Jeonghan. The moments. The events. All those things where Jeonghan’s actions had clearly shown that he cared for you more than you knew. When he had biked to your place during the rain because his car had broken down. You had experienced immense period pain and you hadn’t been able to stand on your own. So, Jeonghan and his bicycle had made their way to your apartment with a heat pack, chocolate bars and your other favorite snacks.

Despite the discomfort of his soaking wet clothes and the freezing temperature, he had given you the biggest smile when you opened the door. You, being an emotional person that you were, had cried on sight.

That was one of the prime examples of how loud his actions spoke. Even louder than words. You cursed yourself inwardly at how dumb, blind and stupid you had been. All along you had wished for Prince Charming to sweep you off your feet someday, not realizing that your very own best friend had done above and beyond for you under your nose. You couldn’t be more blind than this.

“Please, princess, say something.” Jeonghan pleaded in desperation. The silence was killing him in the most torturous way. He had never deemed himself as someone who couldn’t control his emotions especially when he had an audience in front of him but now was a special case. His vision blurred with tears and he didn’t even hide it from you. This was probably the most vulnerable he had ever been. He had bared his heart and soul in front of you, after all.

You inhaled shakily, readying yourself to say something after being quiet for what seemed like ages.

“Y-You’ve done so much for me…” You looked down and whispered. You couldn’t bring yourself to look at your teary-eyed best friend. “...and I was so blind, wasn’t I?”

The hint of self loathe in your voice didn’t escape Jeonghan’s attention. No. No, no, no. Despite his anger and frustration, his heart softened immediately. He could never watch you blame yourself for anything at all. Ever.

“No, please. It’s not your fault. It’s never your fault. It’s me, alright? It’s all me. I’ve had deep, deep feelings for you but I never said a single thing. I-I’m sorry for my outburst earlier. You didn’t deserve it.” Jeonghan swallowed hard. The lump in his throat almost made him unable to speak.

“W-Why? Why didn’t you say anything? I could’ve been more considerate of how I talked about… things.” Your voice was just above a whisper. Your head was a mess now. You felt guilty and confused at the same time.

Jeonghan wanted to cup your face to comfort you like he had done many times before but he wasn’t sure that you would feel disgusted or not. So, he settled by just grabbing your hand and stroking it with his thumb.

“Hey, it’s alright. Not your fault, okay? And I wouldn’t want you to be considerate of some bullshit and make you stop acting as your usual, comfortable self when you’re around me. I want you to always have your guard completely down when you’re with me.” Jeonghan comforted you while he was supposed to be the one who needed to be comforted.

Your eyes glistened with tears that threatened to fall. “But I hurt you. I’ve hurt you for so long and I didn’t even realize it. I hurt you just now because I selfishly flaunted my dates with Minghao at you like an idiot. I-I should’ve known–”

Jeonghan interrupted you quickly. He couldn’t let you blame yourself any further. He tightened his grip around your hand but it wasn’t too tight to hurt.

“It’s alright. You’re not in the wrong. Yes, I’ve been hurt but that’s just simply inevitable. You didn’t intentionally hurt me.”

Your dam broke. The tears you had tried to hold back were finally free falling now. You leaned closer to Jeonghan, seeking for more comfort and warmth in his arms like you had done a million times before whenever you felt horrible.

Jeonghan’s heart beat a thousand miles per hour. He hadn’t expected you to still want to be this close to him after his confession. Jeonghan pushed all his thoughts away and he wrapped his lean but muscular arms around your body. He stroked the silky strands on the back of your head and let you cry onto his chest. He didn’t mind your tears and snot ruining his shirt. He just wanted to be close to you as much as you wanted to be close to him.

All the overwhelming emotions that you contained were pouring out in the form of your tears. You were sniffling and sobbing on Jeonghan’s shirt, trying to get rid of all the guilt and confusion as Jeonghan kept whispering words of comfort to you.

After you felt like you finally had enough crying, you leaned your head back from Jeonghan’s chest and looked up at him. As beautiful as you were when you cried, the sight was still heartbreaking for Jeonghan because somehow he was the one who caused this. Your eyes were red and puffy and your nose was red as well. Jeonghan slowly reached for your face with his trembling, delicate fingers and started wiping the rest of your tears. You closed your eyes and leaned into his touch which caused his breath to hitch. The gesture was beyond intimate.

“I’m sorry for ruining your shirt.” That was the first thing you said after spending your time crying. A bit unexpected, it made Jeonghan chuckle lightly. “That’s alright. No need to worry. I have laundry detergent and a washing machine that works just fine. But… how are you feeling now? Better?” He asked while still looking down at you.

You sniffled again, trying to suck in the snot in your nostrils that had been bothering you. “In a way, yeah. But it’s funny, you know? You’re the one who is hurt and I’m the one who hurt you yet here you are, comforting me while I’m weeping like a loser.” A humorless laugh followed your words.

Jeonghan gave you a tender stare. For him, no matter the reason, if he ever saw you cry, the first thing he needed to do was to comfort you. Reciprocated or not, he would always put you first.

“You know that I could never see you cry, right? Never, ever. Well, unless when we’re watching sad movies.” Jeonghan said with a small smile, trying to lighten up the situation a little. You smiled back at him. Despite your puffy eyes, your smile still looked as pretty as ever.

For a moment, you spent your time like that in silence, staring into each other’s face. It was so intimate. Jeonghan was sure that they were actually the only couple of friends who had ever done this. He got lost easily in your beautiful eyes.

Jeonghan decided to break the silence after some time. Maybe it was just his deluded mind taking control but he believed that the ball was in his court now.

“I need to ask you something, okay? If you’re not comfortable answering, you’re free not to. No pressure, alright?” He said softly, trying not to scare you off. You nodded your head, signalling him to ask you what he wanted to ask.

Jeonghan took a deep breath, bracing himself to ask this dangerous question. “Have you ever… thought about us?” He asked as carefully as possible.

You tilted your head to the side. A gesture you always did whenever you were confused. “Like… romantically?” Your voice was filled with vulnerability.

Jeonghan was so grateful that you could catch up really quickly so he didn’t need to elaborate. His eyes lit up as he nodded, confirming your question. “Yeah, romantically. Have you ever thought about us in that way?” He tried to be as calm as possible but the surge of hope in his voice betrayed him.

Your face turned a bit sad at the confirmation. You bit your lower lip and chewed on the skin there. You didn’t quite know what to say. Never once in your life you had thought of having to face such a question.

Jeonghan picked up your uncertainty and trepidation immediately. Years of being friends with you had made it easy for him to recognize the slightest change in your facial expression.

He stroked your hair lovingly. “It’s alright. No need to be afraid. I’m a big guy, remember? I can handle rejection.” He put on a brave face and a small smile to convince you that he was fine while he was clearly not. Even though he had told you that it was okay if you didn’t want to answer, not gonna lie, he needed to hear what was in your mind. He knew the rejection would hurt him for years but he would rather have that than being kept in the dark for God knows how long.

He kept stroking your hair, trying to make you as relaxed and safe as possible, to show you that you had no reason to be afraid in front of him and you could always be honest whenever you were around him.

You swallowed the lump in your throat before finally speaking up. “I-I don’t know… I’ve thought about it a couple of times.” You said weakly, still with a hint of anxiety.

Jeonghan’s heart skipped a few beats after hearing your words. Like, what do you mean you had thought about them romantically a couple of times? What? HUH?

He had to fight the urge to halt any kind of movements that could ruin the moment. He almost curled his fingers into fists but he couldn’t do that, could he? Absolutely not. Unless he wanted to cause you pain by gripping your hair tightly in his fist. Nope. He wouldn’t do that. He would rather be tied down to a train track with a train approaching than hurting you.

Jeonghan had a really hard time finding his own voice. He tried to speak but no words came out. It was too overwhelming for him. He hadn’t expected this to happen. He had expected you to say “why would I think about us that way?” or something along the line. A big, massive, grand rejection. But, no. This wasn’t a rejection, was it? Nothing had prepared him for this.

Before Jeonghan could say a word, you beat him to it. “But every time I thought about it, it always left me feeling afraid.”

Well, that was another blow Jeonghan had never expected. So the idea of you two being romantically involved scared you. Why on earth? He no longer stroked your hair now. His hands were still around your body but he made no movement.

“And why is that, beautiful? What are you so afraid of? Tell me, please. It’s okay.” Jeonghan finally spoke with a strained voice. He desperately needed to know the reason.

You started to tear up again. You looked down to avoid his eyes. You didn’t want him to see you cry again. You sniffled before you tried to explain to him.

“Because, H-Han, I’m scared of losing you. You’re my safe place. My solace. My comfort. I could act like my very own self unapologetically whenever I’m around you. Y-You’re too precious to me. I don’t want to risk losing you.”

Although he didn’t know what that meant, he had one thing on his mind: he needed to put you at ease. He needed you to know that he wasn’t going anywhere at all. So, he pressed a gentle kiss on your forehead. His lips lingered there for a second too long but you didn’t mind it. You breathed shakily as you felt his lips touching your skin. You didn’t pull away a single inch and clutched his shirt in your fists before closing your eyes.

Jeonghan pulled away so that he could look at you. The sight of you having your eyes closed was heartwarming and heart wrenching at the same time.

“Sweetheart…” He called you with a lovely term of endearment and it made you open your eyes. He let his fingers stroke the side of your face with such tenderness. “Why’d you even think that you would lose me? I won’t go anywhere. I promise.”

You shook your head before burying your face onto his shirt. His shirt was still wet because of your tears earlier and you feared that you would ruin it even more now.

Jeonghan tightened his embrace around you.

“I-If we were like that a-and shit didn’t work out… like any other relationships out there, we would end up as strangers and I don’t want that. I don’t want to live in a world without you in it. I’m scared, Han…” Your voice was muffled and Jeonghan could feel your tears on his chest through the fabric of his shirt. “I’m so scared…” you whispered weakly.

The revelation hit him like a truck. So that was the reason. Jeonghan hated to admit it but you definitely got a point. No couple had eternity guaranteed for them. Many couples broke up. Many married couples got a divorce. It was a flawed world they lived in, after all.

But, still, call him delusional or whatever, he still wanted to taste the sweetness of loving and being loved by you properly. As lovers. He wasn’t ready to give that up yet. Especially knowing that the line had been crossed anyway after he confessed his feelings to you earlier.

Jeonghan loosened his embrace around you a little.

“Sweetheart, look at me, please. I need you to look at me. Can you do that? Please?” He begged with such gentleness.

You sniffled a couple times before detaching your face from his chest and looking up to him. Your eyes and nose were red again but still, you looked like an angel in his eyes.

He wiped the rest of the tears on your face with his fingers. “Thank you so much for telling me about your fears, princess. I know that wasn’t easy. Thank you.” He gave the top of your head a short loving kiss before leaning back to look at you again.

“I understand where you’re coming from, really. You’re precious to me too. I would rather die than lose you. But… don’t you think it’s worth the risk?”

You opened your mouth to protest but he interrupted you. He hated interrupting you especially in moments like this but he needed you to hear him out first.

“Please, sweetheart, listen to me first, yeah? I know that there are many couples out there that don't get their happy endings. Their relationships lead them to heartbreak. I get it. I understand. But the love that I have for you… it’s massive, sweetheart. And I’m ready to love you a lot more, if you let me. We could create something so beautiful together, don’t you think?”

His words were true and nothing but the truth. He had so much love to give for you. He was trying so hard not to break down in front of you. Slowly, he took both of your hands in his and brought them to his lips. He pressed gentle kisses on your knuckles, a sign to show you that he meant every word he had said, that he was absolutely devoted to you.

With your hands still in his, he continued. “I would do everything in my power to keep you happy. I would never hurt you, ever. I would never let us fall apart. If you let me, princess. Just say the word and I promise I will prove it to you.”

You felt your heart flutter. You should’ve known that your best friend was capable of loving this immensely. Even without the promise, you should’ve known that Jeonghan would go above and beyond for you. The things he had done for you throughout your precious friendship had proven enough. You just had been too blind and too afraid to acknowledge it all. But still, your fears were still there.

“B-But what if we fought? What if we argued and we broke up? What if I hurt you?” you argued weakly.

Jeonghan chuckled lightly. It seemed like you needed more convincing to finally let go of your fears, to be brave to take a step forward.

“Every couple has their own ups and downs, love. Arguments and fights are inevitable. But we could always communicate. We could always tolerate each other. I’m ready to tolerate all of our differences. And if you hurt me, I’m sure you’re able to apologize and learn from it, aren’t you? Same thing goes for me. Besides, we already have a pretty strong foundation, don’t we? We’ve been friends, well, best friends for six years. The only arguments we’ve made were probably when you insisted on having a night out and I preferred to stay in. Or when I forgot to buy your favorite ice cream that one time.”  Jeonghan stroked your face lovingly with a smile on his face, offering you peace and comfort. “I promise you, there’s nothing we can’t handle.”

And with that, your doubts started to go away. You thought back to the days when you had argued over small things. Nothing intolerable. you couldn’t speak any words against him because he had made a perfect point. Maybe it was time for you to finally be brave and let go of your fears. Maybe it was time for you to completely trust him and create something unimaginably beautiful together. you gave him a vulnerable smile.

Jeonghan’s smile widened. “That’s the beautiful smile that I love so much.”

You could feel your face get warmer. You moved your hands and wrapped your arms around his neck loosely.

“I wanna learn how to love you as much as you love me, Han.”

Jeonghan had never been happier. This was the start of a new story he was about to write together with you.

“And I’ll teach you how. I’ll gladly give you all the time you need. Even if it takes forever.”

He searched for any doubt in your eyes and he found none. So, he softly touched your chin. His thumb was playful enough to trace your bottom lip. “You’re so beautiful, do you know that?” He took his courage to lean his face closer to yours.

Your heart was now beating a hundred miles an hour. Were you really about to kiss your best friend? But the idea of that didn’t sound bad at all. If anything, you were anticipating it.

When you didn’t pull away, Jeonghan inched his face closer. Before his lips landed on yours, he saw you close your eyes. Jeonghan smiled at the sight and he finally got rid of the distance.

Soft was an understatement when he felt your lips against his. He rested his lips there, not moving in the slightest. He was giving you a chance to pull away.

Two seconds had passed and you didn’t show any sign of resistance. So, he saw it as an opportunity to move his lips and you immediately followed his movement. The kiss was hesitant and careful but sweet nonetheless.

Despite the tentativeness, the kiss was better than he had ever imagined before. He had fantasized kissing you on the mouth countless times for years. Never once in his wildest dreams had he ever thought he would get to this very moment.

Because it was your first kiss with each other, Jeonghan didn’t want to cross the line. So, he slowly pulled away. But oh, boy, he needed to think twice about not crossing the line because the sight of you, with your eyes still closed, chasing his lips with your slightly parted ones was more than enough to cause a surge of desire coursing through his veins. He cursed inwardly before crashing his lips on yours again. Self control be damned.

This time, the kiss was more passionate and more urgent. As if Jeonghan was in the middle of a desert and you were an oasis. He moved his lips against yours in a sensual, intimate and lustful dance. It had you surprised for a split second but you were quick to give back the same amount of passion into the kiss.

Sensing that you actually wanted it as much as he did, he tried to deepen the kiss by licking your bottom lip, asking for an entrance. You moaned into the kiss and Jeonghan swallowed your needy sound with greed. He drank up your noises and it caused him to let out a low groan.

You parted your lips slightly, giving him access to explore your mouth. Jeonghan wasted no time sliding his tongue into the velvet walls of your mouth. Their tongues met, tasting and exploring each other. The sweetness of your wet muscles made him dizzy with need. He groaned as he deepened the kiss even more.

His hands were wandering from your waist to your hips. He let his fingers fiddle with the hem of your shirt before he boldly slid them under it, caressing your bare skin. You let out a gasp at the contact and it almost made Jeonghan growl.

He let his hands roam around freely on your torso as his kisses strayed away from your mouth to your chin and down to your neck. You couldn’t do anything besides letting him use your skin as his personal playground.

Jeonghan eventually pushed you gently to lay on the couch as he positioned himself on top of you, between your legs. You were a moaning and whimpering mess under him. Your needy noises made him want you even more. His lips kept exploring your neck, trying to find one spot that would make you go insane.

His lips weren’t the only thing that was working overtime. He also licked and nipped your throat. Enough to make you jolt with pleasure but not enough to leave a mark.

“You taste so good, sweetheart. I can do this all day.” Jeonghan whispered hoarsely against your neck. His breath was warm on your skin. You couldn’t speak properly because your brain had short-circuited the moment your lips had met.

Your fingers started tugging on his locks. The simple act made him moan. The feeling of your hands pulling his hair was making him go crazy.

“Mmh, H-Han… please– aah!” you arched your back and cried out when he nipped your collarbone.

Bingo. Jeonghan finally found that one spot that made you see stars. He paid extra attention to that one particular area by kissing, licking, nipping and lightly sucking on it.

Jeonghan chuckled at your inability to form a coherent sentence. “You like that, princess?” He gently bit your skin. “Right here, yeah? This one, sweetheart?”

You could only moan and whimper at the sensuality of his words and the way his mouth pleasured you. You weren't thinking when you bucked your hips against his. That was the moment when Jeonghan realized that he was as hard as rock.

He pulled his lips away from your collarbone and looked down on you, making you whine in protest.

“W-Why… Why’d you stop?” you asked as you were breathing heavily. Your heart was still beating so fast.

Jeonghan was panting as well. He was trying to regulate his breathing. He had to close his eyes because the sight of you so pretty under his body was downright sinful. Slowly, he sat back up on the couch and you followed suit.

“Princess… let’s stop, yeah? We can’t… We can’t keep going on. At least not yet. Not right now.” He said once his breath had started to steady.

“H-Huh? Why? Did I do bad–”

Jeonghan quickly shook his head to interrupt you because it was actually the opposite. You were too good and Jeonghan almost couldn’t resist to just take you and claim you.

He cupped your face in his palms, gently stroking your cheeks. “No, sweetheart. Of course not. You did so good. Too good. And that’s the problem.”

You tilted your head slightly to the side. “Why is it a problem?”

Jeonghan chuckled lightly. You were so adorable. “It’s a problem because I want to be a gentleman and take you out on a date first, okay? I don’t want to act purely on my urges like a wild animal. You deserve better than that, love.”

Your face lit up when the word ‘date’ reached your ears. “Yeah? You wanna take me out on a date?”

He nodded his head at your excitement. He wrapped his arms around your body in a loving embrace. “Of course I do, sweetheart. How does tomorrow sound? A nice and warm Sunday would be a good day for us to go on a date, wouldn’t it?”

You snuggled against him. “That would be so good. The sooner the better.” You were smiling from ear to ear.

“The sooner the better, indeed. So, tell me, what do you have in mind? Do you want something fancy or casual as our first date?” He asked as he tucked a strand of your hair behind your ear.

Your lips curled in a cheeky smile. “Don’t you know the answer already? Come on, we’ve been attached to the hip for years now.”

Jeonghan let out a laugh at your teasing. “You cheeky little thing. Alright. Casual, it is. How about… going to the beach, hm? We could lay on a blanket, under the sun. Maybe we could eat some pizzas as well.”

Your eyes turned starry when he mentioned the beach. That couldn’t be any better. “Which beach, Han?” you knew he would say the correct answer but you asked him anyway.

He smiled at you before bringing your hand to his lips and kissed your knuckles. He looked into your eyes and said, “Azure Cove.”

Your smile widened and you gave his lips a short but sweet kiss. Jeonghan’s heart skipped a couple of beats when you did that. He could never get used to this. Any physical contact with you might cause him a small heart attack.

“You and me at Azure Cove with a box of pizza and a bottle of vodka. Sounds like the perfect first date for me.” You gleamed as you rested your head on his shoulder.

Jeonghan stroked your hair tenderly “It’s a deal, then, yeah? I’ll pick you up tomorrow at ten o’clock. I’ll bring your favorite bottle of vodka with me and we’ll go to Azure Cove.”

“I can’t wait.” You said as you snuggled closer against his body, seeking more warmth.

Both of you spent a few minutes in a comfortable silence with ‘Love, Rosie’ still playing on the TV while cuddling each other on the couch. Then, Jeonghan decided to break the silence.

“You know… I might have something to ask from you.” He said with a hint of distaste and mischief.

You turned your head to look at his face. “What is it?”

Jeonghan’s lips formed a handsome smirk. “Ditch that Minghao guy.”

You bursted out laughing and it made him laugh as well. “Oh my God, Han, I completely forgot about his existence the moment you said you like me. Trust me, he’s the least of your concern right now. I got my eye on you and only you.”

Jeonghan had never ever been happier.

[cecilysass]

Happy Heart (-Shaped Hail) Day! Fic Recs for Rain King for Valentine's Day (or Any Time)

It's funny how in the fandom circles I tend to spend time in now, Rain King seems to be a pretty beloved episode: super shippy, romantic comedy, multiple fanfic tropes made canon.

When it aired, the online fandom's opinion of this episode was pretty mixed. There was a large contingent of fans who really hated it. (I remember this because I am 4,000 years old.) Season 6 had already been perceived as being too light in tone, and we'd already come off of a run of Triangle, Dreamland I and II, and How the Ghosts Stole Christmas. There was a lot of anxiety about the move to LA killing the show's dark and angsty feel.

Me, I always liked Rain King (and Triangle, and Dreamland I and II, and How the Ghosts Stole Christmas). And while I can identify the tone change in season 6, I don't hate it, nor do I think that the show really loses its darkness and angstiness (a lot comes back in the second half of the season). I'm also not someone who believes comedy is a de facto more stupid or less substantial genre than drama or suspense, so I think that's part of it.

Rain King has generated so, so much fanfic, and most specifically fanfic that zeroes in on this little fun fact: THEY CANONICALLY SHARE A MOTEL ROOM BECAUSE THERE'S ONLY ONE ROOM. Obviously many of the fics I'm recommending below are based on that premise. So here are my Valentine's Day recs based on Rain King. (Even though I think it's not actually set at Valentine's? Because the cold open happens months earlier? There's some kind of timeline hijinks, idk.) But anyway, it's the clearest Valentine's episode we have, so happy Valentine's Day.

Free Merlot at the Cool View Motor Court by Sarie_Fairy @sarie-fairy Scully tries a little experiment with Mulder after the reunion that gets rapidly out of hand. This is smutty fun—the kind of high end sexy times this author is really known for. Dating Kings and Queens - Baroness_Blixen @baronessblixen A pure romantic comedy style plot variation on the ending of Rain King. The agents discuss the last time they've been on a date. Turns out it HASN’T been so long for Scully. This is just so charming. 

Kroner by DM When Mulder finds out about the “flicked switch speech,” he deals with it in a flirty, somewhat less sentimental way that feels very in character to me. I like a fic with dialogue that feels like it goes a little unexpected.

No Big Deal by dreamingofscully @dreamingofscully Scully offers to help Mulder sleep in the hotel. This is UST, but deliiiiiiightfully so, and heavy on the complex feelings.

Can’t Fight This Feeling by mldrgrl  @mldrgrl A sweet and more subtle little feelings reveal after Rain King by an author who does this exact thing well. Also there is slow dancing to 80s music.

Time Enough At Last - baylorrific Absolute textbook classic one room trope, but it stands out for me because I like how it focuses on their mutual discomfort. They’re both so awkward here, even though it’s Mulder POV. I also like how the classic Twilight Zone episode Time Enough At Last is in conversation with what’s happening with the MSR.

There’s No Place Like Kroner - MonikaFileFan @monikafilefan You know what would make a “there’s only one room” Rain King fic extra fun? DIANA. Okay, okay, I admit I wrote this prompt for the exchange, lol, so of course I think it sounds fun. But Monika wrote the actual fic, and you don’t want to miss it.

Pillow Talk - Alelou This is a short piece about a chatty Mulder very carefully putting out feelers in the motel room after the reunion. Sweet and in character.

Land That I Heard Of Once in A Lullabye - leiascully @leiascully In Kroner’s tiny airport, Scully takes stock of where they’ve come from and where they’re going. I love this. It feels especially spot on character-wise for season 6.

All that Lights Upon Us - wonderland @amplifyme This is a very different kind of Rain King fic, part of a series, although it can be read alone. During the events of Rain King they share a first kiss, but this fic is about their conversations afterwards (Mulder and Scully, as well as Mulder and Maggie). Gentle affection, and the process of taking little steps towards one another.

On the Flicking of Switches - SisterSpooky1013 @sisterspooky1013 Mulder initiates an awkward conversation in the motel room after the reunion. SisterSpooky1013 always has her characterization shit together, but I think this is an especially compelling character sketch of season 6 Scully.

Break in the Weather - ATTHS_TWICE @atths--twice Mulder and Scully can’t fly out another night in Kroner, so they kill time by going to a drive-in movie. Honestly, this is just adorable.

Still Raining - Donna When Sheila sends them both a letter a few months later, she alludes to what Scully told her in the bathroom. This raises questions for Mulder.

Stop Me - Gina Rain A little seduction by Mulder in the Kroner motel room. It starts with her feet, if that’s your thing. But it’s not exclusively about feet, if that isn’t lol.

They're SOOOOO MANY great Rain King fics, so drop any I missed in the comments! And if you want to read my Valentine's Day recs last year based on Milagro, they're here.

[redheadspark]

hii!! may i request for the feb prompt session? specifically our boy eddie munson with numbers 2 & 5! like eddie pulling reader aside to confide abt their little crush to someone and reader just thinks oh ahah its nothing but as time goes on we can slide in prompt number 5 for ultimate pining from reader 🤓 perhaps even angsty,, mwhehe >:)

A/N - this is great for Eddie! Thanks for the request, I hope you like it!

Be Brave

Summary - Eddie asks you for advice.

Warnings - Fluff with a hint of Angst

“Hey!  I wanna talk about something with you,”

“If it involves Hellfire you’re on your own.  I’m not going to be getting you out of your shit hole situations anymore,” 

“No no!  I mean….that’s nice when you help with that, but no.  It’s something else,”

You poked your head out of your locker, seeing your best friend look at you with an image of nervousness on his face. His wild hair framing his face and his backpack half-hazardly over his shoulder.  You could see the look in his eyes that this was serious, and knowing Eddie Munson, he was rarely serious.

He was serious about a few things: Hellfire Club, his love for metal music, and the need to be his own different.  So what would it be?

“What’s going on, Eddie?” You asked as you grabbed a few books from your locker to put in your backpack.

“You won’t make fun of me?” He questioned, you grinning as you raised a brow at him.

“Since when do I ever, ever make fun of you?” You asked him in a teasing way.  

“I’m not going to answer that,” he replied, “Just…I wanna talk to you because you’re a girl and you probably are better equip at this than me,”

That made you pause again as you finally closed your locker and faced Eddie.  You both were close as friends, ever since you were recruited to join Hellfire club thanks to your older brother who knew Eddie.  They both were in the same grade and your brother knew you liked playing Dungeons and Dragons, he taught you the game. He figured you playing with Eddie would both get you something to do and to get you out of his hair.  Both worked, and you were a decent player at the table.  It made Eddie admire you all the more, not that he didn’t think girls could play Dungeons and Dragons, he just loved how you played.  The same vigor and bite, just like how he played. 

Which in return made him get a small crush on you.  Not that he knew that you were crushing on him back.

“I wanna tell this girl that I like her, but I don’t know how to do it,” he explained, your heart both beating a pinch faster and plummeting at the same time. You were never one to be yearning for drama that others went through, especially girls and their crushes. It seemed too time consuming and petty, which explained by you hardly had any girl friends. Just a few, but you liked it that way.  You had no time for drama and boy trouble, you had too much homework and after school activities to deal with than to figure out who liked who and who was dating

One of your friends was a cheerleader named Danielle, good friends with Christie Cunningham who was pretty much great with everyone at Hawkins High.  You and Danielle study together in the library on Tuesdays during Study Hall because you both were the top students in your science class, in all your classes really, and one afternoon she asked you about Eddie.

“What about him?” You whispered to her since the librarian was notorious for shushing those who were not whispering. Danielle grinned, chewing the back of her pencil as she was tapping her fingers on the top of her opened science book.

“He’s kind of cute, isn’t he?”  She asked you in a shrug.  You kept it cool, something you brother taught you since you were notorious for not having the best poker face. But deep down, it felt like she kicked you straight in the stomach and you were about to vomit all over the desk.  

“He’s alright,” You hummed, Danielle rolling her eyes.

“Oh come on, you don’t think he’s cute? With at will hair and how he loves his music?” She asked, keeping her voice low.  You wanted to roll your eyes, clearly knowing deep down that Danielle had no idea about the music he likes or the kind of hobbies he was into.  Maybe you were protective of Eddie since you two were close and confided in each other from time to time, and to hear that someone else liked him only as a surface crush, it was not sitting well with you.

“He’s my friend,” You could only reply, Danielle shrugging and going back to work on her notebook.  You passed for a few long seconds, thinking of the worst possibility that Danielle and Eddie would be a couple in the future.  It made you mad, sad, confused, and heartbroken at the same time. But you could only bury it down and not mention it.  That was social suicide, not even worth it.  

So it was buried, along with your own feelings for Eddie.

“The best thing to do is to tell her how you feel,” You explained as you and Eddie walked down the hall, side by side while Eddie watched you in earnest to hear your suggestion to him, “Girls like honesty, not flirting around the bush,”

“That sounds…weird,” Eddie explained with a confused look on his face.

“You know what I mean,” You reasoned as you grinned, “Look, Eddie, whoever this girl is, I bet if you tell them and you’re honest about it, it’ll work out.  You’re a great guy,”

“I think you’re forgetting that I have the nickname Eddie “the Freak” Munson around here,” He reminded you as you huffed.

“That stems from the popular kids who don’t know how to wipe their own asses,” You joked, Eddie was chuckling as you made it to your English class.  You turned to face him, seeing him watch you with warmth in his brown eyes and a small smirk on his lips.  Reach over to squeeze his arm gently within your fingers, you tilted your head up at him since he had a few inches on you.

“Be brave, Eddie.  Girls dig it,” You explained, then slipped into your class right when the bell rang. Eddie stood there for a few long seconds, drinking all you said before he jogged down the hall to get to his math class.  He could be brave, it was easier said than done but he could.  You made it sound so easy, like a normal chore to do throughout the day.  But maybe he could do it just to make you smile.

It gave him a pep in his step.

“I rolled a 20!”

“Roll for damage?”

“13?”

“Hell yeah!  How do you wanna do this?”

You leaned over the table, your D20 dice perched in front of your spot along with your papers and notepad etched out in notes as you were describing how you were killing the beast in the middle of combat.  The others around the table were cheering, egging you on as you were drinking in the victory that was in your hands.  

Eddie, in his Dungeon Master chair, was watching in amazement a massive grin on his face as you were using your hands, and your eyes lit up in joy while you were giving every single detail with precision.  He’s seen the others in Hellfire give great details when they would end or an enemy, but you were on a different level.  You loved storytelling, and the way you spoke, and played the game with creativity and enthusiasm. He wished the others would take a page out of your book.

In that moment as the others cheered, Garret clasping you on the shoulder and Dustin and Mike cheering loudly, Eddie watched with a cocked head and love in his eyes.  You were laughing, blush on your cheeks and your light brown hair dancing in the low lighting made his heart flutter.

You didn’t know that Danielle was shot down by Eddie a few days before, Danielle asked him out to study together after school and Eddie politely declined.  He knew Danielle was not the one for him, and she never held a flame for him to be entranced to.  Not like you, Eddie was a moth to your flame and he liked it that way.  He knew what he liked, and he remembered what you told him in that hallway.

You told him to be brave.  And maybe after the game, he would finally ask you on a date.

The End.

[gloomweed]

Eddie Loved Valentine's Day (eddie munson x bestfriend!reader)

a/n: I got the idea for this story last valentine's day, but I didn't finish it until today and I'm still not quite satisfied with it but I had to just get this out there already. This fic is more angsty than romantic, but it didn't feel right trying to shoehorn in some romance, so this is just how it's going to be.

summary: Eddie deals with some bad childhood memories on a valentine's day he spends with you.

w/c: 3.7k

Eddie loved Valentine’s day. Loved, as in, he used to. Specifically, when he was still in elementary school. Back then, the class would spend the whole day creating little mailboxes to hold all their cards. Decorating the recycled shoebox with stickers and markers, writing his name in big scrawling letters over the top. His mom would help him the night before, preparing the cards he was going to hand out. She would tell him how to spell each name, going one letter at a time. When she would ask if he needed help spelling his name, Eddie would hold out his little hand saying very confidently, “No, I know how.” Her voice was always gentle when reminding him ‘Eddie’ has a second ‘D’ after the first one.

Although there was little variety in the pack his mom bought from the store, Eddie made an effort to pick the card he thinks the recipient would like best. A Garfield card for Sindy, since she is always borrowing his orange marker. It’s her favorite color. An Odie card for Josh, since he spends recess digging with sticks and rocks. Something about wanting to find dinosaur bones. It would go like that until all the cards were signed, folded, and held together with little heart stickers.

The following day, Eddie would pass out all his cards and return to his seat to find his makeshift mailbox stuffed. In those days, he would get a card from every single classmate. He’d be filled with excitement as he opened each one. The puns and characters on the cards were fun to see, but really Eddie just enjoyed the thought that someone made him something. Some cards even came with a little candy. It was a fun day all around, and doing less school work was also a big plus.

After his mom passed, Valentine’s day kind of lost its charm. His dad said buying Valentine’s cards that kids were only gonna look at once and throw away afterwards was a waste of money and effort; however, that didn’t stop Eddie from participating anyways. He spent the night making his own cards out of notebook paper, drawing hearts and smiling faces on each one. Despite all the care he put into them, the finished product looked pretty messy. The cards weren’t all the same size, there were some misspelled words, marker ink bleeding through the paper, and since he didn’t have stickers, they were held together with regular translucent tape. Give him a break, he was nine. It wasn’t much, but Eddie put his heart and soul into it.

Once all the cards were passed out, everyone began digging into their boxes, reading cards and opening candy. “What even is this?” Eddie looked up from his pile of valentines to see one of his classmates holding up one he homemade, a disgusted look on their face. Another kid laughed. “Why does it look like that?” Eddie felt red, hot shame fill his cheeks as others began to join in the laughter. He sank further into his seat, wishing to disappear completely. Seeing Eddie’s name on the card gave the boy a target. “What’s the deal, Eddie? Couldn’t afford real valentine’s this year?” 

Eddie shot up from his seat. “No! My dad just forgot to buy them, is all,” he lied. “I just thought, you know, something is better than nothing, right?” His eyes darted between his classmates, hoping they bought it. 

“Next time, don’t even bother. It’d save us the time of throwing them away,” they laughed. It was then that the teacher made the announcement to return to their seats to resume the rest of the learning day. As Eddie sat back down he could feel the sting of tears behind his eyes. He put a lot of effort into those cards, only for his classmates to laugh at him and throw them away. His dad was right. What a waste.

That was the last time Eddie ever participated in Valentine’s day. Ever since then, he would spend the day doing anything else besides celebrating it. This year, he was at your house helping you get a head start on spring cleaning. You wanted to turn your life around, starting with a more organized living space. February 14th is as good a day as any to get started, and it wasn’t like you had any big plans. Which is totally fine and doesn’t depress you at all. 

Although he never told you exactly why, you knew Eddie didn’t particularly like the Hallmark holiday. You assumed it was because of how commercialized it had become since its inception. Of course it could be the matter of keeping up with his image. Soft petalled roses and candy hearts are pretty far from ‘metal.’ Whatever the reason may be, you hated the idea of your friend being alone on a day celebrating love, so inviting him to clean was the next best thing. While it took some convincing, eventually you coaxed him into it with the promise of beer and snacks.

You were both currently working in your bedroom. Eddie would hold something up and ask if you wanted to keep it or throw it away. Meanwhile, you sit on the hardwood floor creating piles all around you as you sift through the contents of your room. He did most of his work while sitting on your bed, a beer in his hand. 

Sometimes he would try on clothes you were feeling unsure of, saying that having someone model it would make it easier to decide its fate. Of course, this theory might have been successful if they actually fit him. The mental image of him in your too small knitted red cardigan is something that will bring a smile to your face for years to come. 

Running out of things to hold up to you, he looked in his direct vicinity and noticed a round tin by his feet, mostly under your bed. When you heard him gasp you turned to see what he had found. “Oh, that’s just my-”

“Cookies!” he shouted as he opened the blue butter cookie tin only for his face to fall in a confused frown.

You laughed. “Yeah, sorry. I reused that old cookie tin for my sentimental crap.”

Instead of delicious cookies, the tin was full of old birthday cards and handwritten messages left by people who cared about you. A letter from your now deceased grandmother, movie stubs from big releases, and Polaroid pictures of some childhood friends. Eddie smiled to himself. It was cute how you would keep stuff like this. From the outside, you didn’t look like the type of person to hold on to birthday cards from your 5th birthday. He looked at you with a playful pout, his eyebrows pulled together. “Aww. You do have a heart.”

Your offended face only made Eddie grin wider. “Shut up,” you laugh before grabbing the nearest stuffed animal and throwing it at him.

Laughing as he dodged your attack, he couldn’t stop some of the cards from jostling out. As he was gathering them back into the tin, he took a closer look at the one made of notebook paper. ‘From Eddie’ was written on the back in big messy letters.

Noticing his sudden silence, you stand to get a better look at what’s in his hands. You peek over his shoulder to see the valentine he hand made in the 4th grade. Immediately you become overwhelmed with embarrassment thinking Eddie was completely freaked out by the fact you kept the card so long, like some kind of stalker weirdo. Words vomit out of your mouth as you try to save your dignity. “Oh! That's- that's so weird! I can't believe I still have that. I thought I threw that out years ago. I’ll just take that back-”

Eddie instinctually snatches the card against his chest, his chin tucked in as he searches your eyes. When it's clear to you he isn't going to give it up, your hand falls limp at your side. Glancing at the card once more, he tries his best to keep his voice steady. “You kept this?” 

The change in demeanor feels unsettling. “Yeah, of course I did.” You look at your feet shyly. “It, uh, means a lot to me.” When you look back up, you see Eddie staring back with confusion.

You’ve gone through this scenarios hundreds of times in the late hours of the night when your brain just couldn’t stop running. How would Eddie react if he found out you kept something he made you when you were kids? The scoff that slips past his taunting lips was the last thing you expected from Eddie. He stands from the bed, looking down on you with a humorless smile. “This shitty scrap of paper means a lot to you?” The sudden scrutiny feels harsh and full of malice. You’ve never had the displeasure to be on the receiving end of Eddie’s anger, and from what little you’ve seen thus far, you hope to never face it again.

Shrugging like it was no big deal, you try your best to downplay your defensiveness. “Well, yeah. I thought it was really sweet of you.” You can’t stop yourself from squinting at him in confusion. “I’m sorry, are you mad at me for keeping it?” Why is he upset with you over this? It was given to you as a gift. You should be able to decide what you do with it without his approval. 

Despite being the one who asked the question, Eddie doesn’t really hear your answer, nor the following question. As he stares down at the messy writing on old, yellowed notebook paper, he feels his chest tighten in an overwhelming stifled rage. Having to be face to face with a reminder of his failure fills Eddie with so much self-hatred that he can’t think straight. It’s a reminder of his shitty dad. A reminder of his shitty childhood. It wasn’t fair. Every imperfect line and patch of bleeding ink stared back at him, mocking him. It all congeals to a point of no return in his gloomy head.

Eddie stares in silence for a moment too long and you can see the emotions shift in his face into something darker. “What are you-” You are cut off by the sound of a quick and quiet crunch, the paper crumpling in his first. It’s a knee jerk reaction that has you gasping at the sight, and Eddie immediately regretting. A piece of his heart shatters at the sound of yours doing the same. “Eddie!” Your high pitched squeal of anguish around the syllables of his own name has him filling with that same sinking heat of shame he felt all those years ago. 

Your hands dart at him, taking the paper from his grip as fast as it was destroyed. You do your best to smooth the paper back into some semblance of its former glory, but the creases on the old, thin paper still remain. It makes it difficult to see the handwritten words on the page, especially since your eyes are welling up with tears. You turn away from Eddie, too angry to face him. Too hurt to let him see you cry over this. Instead you kneel on the floor, slumping over the valentine you hold with the same delicacy as you would hold a baby bird with a broken wing.

Eddie feels his heart racing with anxiety. He didn’t mean to do that. He didn’t mean to make you cry. He didn’t mean to. All he wanted was to get rid of the stupid reminder, not ruin your priceless keepsake. Eddie stands there for a moment, unsure what to do with himself. He fucked up, he knows that, but he doesn’t know how to make it right. Your name falls from his lips in a stuttering mess. “I- I didn’t mean-” 

Whipping your head back to shoot him a teary eyed glare, you cut him off. “Don’t.” A sad shake of your head, “Just don’t, Eddie.” You didn’t want to hear how he was just trying to make some kind of joke. It wasn’t funny. It was just cruel. You turn back to stare at the ruined item in your cupped hands.

Eddie backs up towards the door, eyes wide and voice small. “Sorry.” You don’t say anything, but of course he doesn’t really expect you to forgive him. He leaves you be, silently making his way out of your house. 

On the drive home, he’s mentally kicking himself the entire time. Why did I do that? What is wrong with me? Why do I have to find a way to ruin everything? When he pulls into the gravel driveway of his uncle’s trailer, he cuts the engine and contemplates in silence.

He has to make this right. That valentine meant something to you. You kept that shitty scrap of paper for years while the rest of the class threw it in the trash where it belongs.  That has to mean something, right? You wouldn’t keep trash for this long unless it was important, right?

Eddie runs a hand down his face as he belatedly processed what you said about him. I thought it was really sweet of you. You thought he was sweet? The tiny compliment is enough to bring a flush to his cheeks, and it only makes him feel worse about the whole situation. It’s going to take more than an apology to make it up to you.

It’s a few hours after the incident when you hear a knock at the door. “Coming!” You yell down the hall as you race to answer it. Seeing your kind smile fall when you realize it’s him, Eddie feels like you twisted a knife in his chest. He’s holding a modest bouquet of flowers towards you, gaze struggling to meet your own. “Well, look who it is.” You lean against the door frame, crossing your arms over your chest. “You’ve got some nerve, Eddie Munson.”

Eddie huffs a sigh, his breath visible in the frosty February evening. “I know. I know I don’t deserve to see you, but you deserve an apology. I came back to explain myself. Not that I had any right to do what I did.” He looks up at you from under his lashes. “Can I come in so we can talk?”

There’s a pout on your lips as you consider. The flowers do look very pretty, and he was thoughtful enough to have your favorite color as the centerpiece. Getting flowers last minute, on Valentine’s Day no less, was likely no easy feat, making the gesture more grand than usual. You hum in thought a moment before finally taking pity on the man practically groveling on your doorstep. “Fine.” You step aside to let him in, looking reluctant to do so. 

Relief washes over him as you make room. The warmth of your home felt like a welcoming embrace upon his bone chilled body. Once the door is closed, Eddie outstretches the bouquet towards you again. “Uh, these are for you.”

Doing your best not to show how pleased you are, you take the flowers from him wordlessly. Eddie turns to walk towards your living room, and you take the moment to smell the sweetness of them while he isn’t watching. You sit on the couch, laying the bouquet on the coffee table for the time being. 

Eddie continues to stand, feeling unworthy of your comforts. It feels reminiscent of when he first visited your home. The awkwardness of being new friends was evident as he stood in the corner, waiting for permission to sit on the couch or even enter the room. Now it’s like he wouldn’t sit even if you asked him to. Eddie preferred to pace while he talked. He has too much energy to expel to be still.

You give him your attention finally, arms crossed again, waiting for the apology he owes you. He clears his throat, hands nervously wringing together. “So first of all, I’m sorry for ruining your valentine. And your Valentine's day, for that matter. I wasn’t thinking clearly.” He chuckles dryly, nervously scratching the back of his neck. “Shit, I wasn’t thinking at all. I just got caught up in my stupid bullshit. But I swear, I wasn’t trying to be an asshole. It was just-” You raise an eyebrow, not quite believing him yet. Eddie releases a breath like it was struggling to get out. “Seeing that valentine I made that everyone gave me shit for…” he sighs again, struggling to find the words. “It just brought it all back. I was a kid again being pointed and laughed at in front of everyone.” 

As he says this, your features soften when you recall what he’s talking about. You heard what some of the other kids were saying about Eddie’s valentines, but at the time you didn’t think he cared what they thought. He was always unapologetically himself to the point that the thought of Eddie being embarrassed or ashamed never even crossed your mind.

Eddie looks at you with a sad tilt of his head, wild curls bunching at his shoulder. “That doesn’t make it right, but I thought you ought to know why I did what I did.” He shakes his head dismissively. “It had nothing to do with you and I’m sorry I couldn’t control myself. I’m a fuckin’ idiot, sweetheart.” He smiles ruefully, “but you already knew that.” His eyes dim a little at his self-deprecation.

You nod in understanding, a small smile on your face. “I appreciate your apology.” You weren’t sure if you were ready to forgive him just yet, and you wanted to be sure he realized that.

Although Eddie knew it wouldn’t be easy, he can’t help but feel disappointed he hadn’t earned your forgiveness yet. Regardless, he nods with a tight lipped smile in acceptance before reaching a hand into the inner pocket of his leather jacket. “I wanted to make it up to you,” he pulls an envelope out, “with this.” 

You blink owlishly at Eddie’s outstretched hand, surprised he brought more than flowers. Standing from the couch, you gingerly take the card from him, watching him for any signs of what it might be. 

As you open the package, Eddie is already explaining his reasoning. “Now, I know it’s not the same, and it doesn’t hold the same meaning as the original, but I tried my best to remake it for you.”

Pulling the card from the envelope, you gasp at what you find. The writing is much neater, the drawings more detailed, and even the paper feels like it’s made of thicker material, but there is no doubt that this is Eddie’s reconstruction of the card he destroyed. 

The premise of the card was the same. A penguin (your favorite animal at the time) wearing sunglasses, surrounded by icebergs with bubble letters saying ‘U R COOL’ after your name. The sketches are much more sophisticated than any nine year old could make. It was clear that Eddie had honed his art skills over the years by doodling in the margins of all his school work instead of paying attention in class. But it wasn’t what the card looked like that made it special. It was the thoughtful gesture itself. 

When you look back up at Eddie, he shifts on his feet uncomfortably, scratching the back of his neck. He’s unsure what to make of your expression. “So, uh. Do you like it?” Before you can answer, he’s already speaking for you with a defeated slump of his shoulders. “You hate it, don’t you? I’m sorry, I know it’s not-”

“I love it.”

His eyes go wide, genuinely surprised. “Yeah?” He perks up when he sees your beaming face. “Really?” Eddie lets out a small ‘oof’ when you crash into him with an enthusiastic hug. His chuckling rumbles against your ear as you hold him tightly. “I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.”

Parting from the hug, you admire the valentine some more. “And I do forgive you, Eddie. I just wish you would have told me what Valentine’s Day really means to you sooner.” You search his dark chocolate eyes. “We’re friends, right? You know I would never make fun of you like that.”

And Eddie did know that, but in that moment, he couldn’t rationalize his intrusive thoughts away. It’s easier to hear that you’re loved versus actually believing it. All he can muster is a shrug, unable to put his inability to trust into words. “Yeah I know.”

With his unconvincing answer, you try a different approach to get him to understand what he means to you. Wordlessly, you leave the room leaving Eddie standing there wondering what you’re up to. You’re back before he gets the chance to overthink your departure, a picture frame in hand. As you fiddle with the tiny metal prongs holding the backing in place, you begin to explain. “From now on, I’m gonna make sure everyone sees this.” You slot the valentine into the frame before securing the backing once more. 

You hang your trophy in the center of your living room wall. Once you’re satisfied with the results, you take a step back and admire it with your hands on your hips. “There. Now, anytime someone visits me, I can brag to them about the personal valentine you made me.” Looking back over your shoulder, you see Eddie smirking bashfully.

“Oh come on. No one’s gonna want to see that.” He gestures to the hand drawn image, but you’re already shaking your head defiantly.

“Too bad. They’re gonna have to. Matter of fact, I’m gonna require they marvel at it for no less than 60 seconds before they can even enter my home.” Your arms are crossed with a playful smile on your face.

Eddie chuckles and there’s a small pause as he appreciates you. “You’re such a dork,” is his mumbled response.

You point up at the framed doodled penguin adorned in shades behind you with an astonishing amount of confidence. “Not according to my best friend.”

He huffs an exasperated sigh. “That’s it. I’m taking it back.” Eddie starts towards the wall, reaching above you. “You’re not cool anymore.” 

Instinctually, you put your hands on his chest in an attempt to stop him, but Eddie isn’t one to back down. “No! You can’t!” Giggles bubble out of you as you try your best to stand your ground. “I am cool!”

[zombaebitez]

I have an idea but if you don't like it you can discard it!

Maybe something like Ellie x reader where reader is a runner?

It's 3am and that's the only idea that came to my mind haha. Love your writing btw.

-🌮

I Love You (Too)

ellie williams x runner reader

synopsis: it went too fast, you got bit; now she’s alone again.

zom’s note: im so glad you like my writing, tysm! since there was no specifics, i wanted to branch out and write smthg angsty, bc why not. i lowkey feel bad… my shayla.

word count: abt 955

warnings: angst, death (ellie shoots reader), just pure sadness not gonna lie.

Love

noun

A deep feeling of adoration and affection. Complex and utterly fucked.

—

God- It wasn’t supposed to make this turn, literally and figuratively. It was supposed to be a simple scout… in a foreign area. Red Flag. It was quiet, Green Flag? No infected, right? Fuck no. A major fucking fuck of fuckest nos. Open street, Green Flag, Houses… Red Green Flag? It all happened way too fast. One minute you and Ellie were walking, chatting quietly, still alert, but not as sharp as you both should be.

First came one, round an abandoned truck. Then came another… then another… that alerted another. Then before you know it, A WHOLE DAMN LOT OF THEM. Two people against what felt like hundreds, constant moving, running, dodging, shooting, stabbing.

A means for survival, you had Ellie’s back, Ellie had yours. Well for the most part… Ellie split from you just for a second? A minute…? Three or seven. It was a frenzy, her mind was running miles. Yours also in a panic until then last infected.

—

She had an arm around you as support, holding your waist with the other. Both covered in grime and blood, that was hopefully not your own. With an effort you both managed to huddle inside a safe house, deemed that way by Ellie’s check through. Green Flag. It's okay, everything was fine.

Until it wasn’t… that’s when Ellie noticed the copious amount of blood near your calf, running down your to your ankle like a fucking river, splitting into streams. Red Flag. Ellie damn near felt her knees buckle, immediately drawing your attention to where she blankly stared. You assured her it was nothing, before turning your leg fully to reveal the ripped fabric of your jeans… a few scratches littering under the rip… then a bite. No that was fucking obvious…

“Oh…” was all you could muster out, before glancing back at Ellie. She stood there, frightened as you tried to console the situation. She was gonna puke.

—

That was almost a week ago. Maybe a week. Ellie couldn't be certain… a few days definitely. You told her you weren’t going to let her see your certain demise. You both knew what was meant to happen. That was days ago, She didn’t let you. She said… she’d do it, so you two can savor each moment left. Red Flag.

‘Ellie, pull the damn trigger’, is what she’d tell herself.

She wouldn’t… not now… not on you.

So here we are, Ellie sitting outside the house you ultimately turned in, because she couldn’t do it. Reminds her of that couple that ran from Jackson some time ago. She understood… well related.

Life was a cruel mistress. The amount of times she held the pistol to you, your cordyceps infected brain not caring, body working on instinct. She knew you were gone… but the moans and cries felt a little too human each time.

She grabbed her journal, scribbling in the worn book, scratching your face… a face that made her feel more sane… especially after Santa Barbara. Or maybe she never was. She felt the same as she did on that goddamned beach.

Broken down, lost without him, or her... Or you. Alone again. No one. Just her mind. Cruel.

Did you feel alone in that head of yours too? Was sitting prisoner in your own body as your last bits of sanity where taken from you by a fucking fungus petrifying? Did Ellie being the last thing you could grasp mentality give you peace… or sadness?

It didn’t bring her peace thinking about it. She found it hard to even think about you without the fear in your eyes, a primal fear that sinks deep into your bones. You unknowingly clawed her down with you once you turned, or maybe it was the other way round. She knew it was fucked up, keeping you here… she knew it was wrong. It was selfish. You aren’t even you anymore, yet she still holds onto the thought of you. It's twisted. It’s sick… it’s the second time this has happened. One time too many. Melancholic.

She tossed the journal down next to her; thinking was too much. She couldn’t, her hands shook, her body trembled. In, out. Inhale, exhale, she reminded herself.

Standing, Ellie looked at the house behind her. Quiet… Red Flag. She wanted to hug you, play ignorant to the fact you got bitten…

She went inside, your reaction is always immediate and hostile. Could there be guilt lying somewhere in your brain…? Maybe she was personifying you too much, you weren’t human anymore. She watched you attempt and attempt to reach her, bound by some old rope she found in the garage of this stupid house. Inhale, Exhale. She grabbed her handgun, trying to tune out your screams and snarls, struggling.

She adored you, she tried to hold on to what she had of you… she couldn’t. Red Flag. All she could grasp is your last words, before the day your mind wasn’t yours. The sobbing, and the denial.

“Ellie, you know meeting you was amazing…

She steadied her hand.

…I wish we could have had more time together, you’re so so special to me…

Ellie aimed towards… the runner? you.

… don’t worry too much, and please don’t lose yourself…

Ellie fired ???

… I Love You, Ellie.”

—

She slung her backpack on her shoulders, walking outside. Her movements— mechanical. Ellie crumpled, she sobbed. Alone, scared, tired. Her own type of infection clawed through her body. One that didn’t kill her, not physically. Dissociated… it all went too fast, yet too slow, like trudging through tar.

Ellie took a deep breath, shaken up and ragged.

“I Love You Too.”

[weirdgenetic-fuckup]

I know, that in a little part of your brain you’re thinking about Dave jerking off and crying. Make that as a fic pretty please

I’m ovulating

A/n: This is kinda short and a little angsty but we all need angst

Warnings: Smut, masturbation, fantasies (oral, handjob, titfucking), if you think I missed anything let me know otherwise enjoy!

Dave liked routine, it made everything work easier and it kept things moving. His day was a clock and he went through the clogs, switching from one thing to the next at the same time to get to the same place.

Part of that schedule included some time to relax, destress, and he definitely needed it after his day.

He'd gone to an interview, expecting it to be about the new album coming out, but all they talked about was Metallica. He knew what everyone thought of him and Metallica, he was a loser and a drunk, and he was tired of hearing about it so of course he was getting mad at people for bringing it up.

He got home and ordered takeout but it was supposed to take about an hour, so he had some time to kill.

Dave let out a heavy sigh, resting his head on his arm while his free hand moved down his body and he started palming himself through his sweats, conjuring up such sweet images in his mind.

He didn't know who this woman was, he just mashed a bunch of features together, it didn't matter much to him. He used her for his perverted fantasies for a moment, her lips around his cock, tears coming to her eyes as she choked on him.

He pulled himself out of his sweats and boxers, pushing them halfway down his thick thighs. He wondered about the woman's thighs, how they'd feel wrapped around his head as she whined and begged for more when he went down on her, how she'd tug on his hair and smother him in her thighs when she came.

He knew she wasn't real but he loved her and the way she was making him feel, but it wasn't enough to distract him from his day.

Hot strings of cum shot on from his tip onto his shirt. He didn't mind but he was getting hot and he was nowhere near being done, so he tossed it off to the side.

His hand moved faster as he tried to cover up the memories of Metallica with this woman -James and Lars standing over him before he woke up to this woman jerking him off between her tits.

He swallowed thickly, Metallica interviews he'd seen on TV crossing his mind, quickly disregarded by this woman crawling up him, her hand replacing his.

His hips bucked up into her hand, she was smaller than him and smelled so pretty, like some kind of dessert. He couldn't get enough of it.

"It's ok, Davie." She purred, her voice like honey; thick and sweet, slow as it dripped onto his ears. Tears came to his eyes, no matter how much he willed them away. "It's alright, Davie, I love you." She was behind him now, letting him use her chest as a pillow, the softest and warmest. He craved her touch.

His hand kept moving, the thought of him crying in someone's arms, as pathetic as it was, he needed to be pathetic. She jerked him off, and his eyes fluttered, his face scrunched as more strings of cum landed on his now bare chest.

Tears rolled down his cheeks but his hand continued to move, even though it was starting to hurt, his cock all flushed and leaking, using his cum as lube.

He choked out a moan that came out more as a moan, but he didn't miss the doorbell.

He was a mess, he managed to fix his pants though the bulge was very noticeable. He used his already messy shirt to wipe away the cum on his chest before he hurried downstairs and opened the door only to be met with that perfect woman from his fantasies.

Dave stared at you for a moment and you stared right back at him, taking in his disheveled state -his hair a mess and his eyes red, cheeks wet.

His lip quivered and he took a step closer to you, wrapping his arms around you and burying his face in your chest as his body trembled with more quiet sobs.

"Uh, s-sir..?" You said softly, rubbing your fingers through his hair with your free hand. "You're totals $12.65."

[spicyspiders]

do you write for squidgame?

(I am a bit too neurodivergent and I will forget this if I don’t say it immediately so ima just request here and then you just say no if you don’t actually write for it)

thanos and his ex boyfriend both get into squid game and thanos one night comes up to his bed and gags him to keep him quiet while fucking him while everyone else is asleep (dub-con, there was already A LOT of tension)

I ended up changing this kind of a lot. There isn't any dub con and it's instead more angsty. I hope you still like it.

You didn’t know what surprised you more: the fact that you managed to fall asleep, or waking up to the feel of an arm wrapping around your waist.

“It’s me,” the voice behind you whispered into your ear, their other hand covering your mouth, “it’s me,” it repeated. The arm tightened around your body, holding you down as you tried to thrash out of its grip

It took a few seconds for your brain to finally register who the voice belonged to. Though, once it caught up, you had to keep yourself from sending your elbow back into his ribs.

“Missed you,” Thanos said, his lips pressed to the back of your neck. There was a hint of something in his voice. What it was, you couldn’t pinpoint, but the irrational, tired, and terrified part of your brain thought it might be longing. “You miss me?” Thanos asked.

And yeah, there’s what it was. It being arousal. Making itself known, Thanos pressed his hips forward, grinding the bulge of his cock into the small of your back. 

It seemed that tonight would be full of surprises, notably when you felt your body respond to his. You had thought that tonight would be like the others and full of tossing and turning in your bed while trying to to focus on the sound of the other players that surrounded you, not whatever this was.

You were stupid to think this would be easy. The games, yes, but especially when you quickly noticed that Thanos was also competing in them. You had heard rumors that players would be able to earn as much as they could and then leave, giving you hope that you would be the next lucky group in this year’s games that was able to go. 

It only took moments into the first game for your fear to set in. You tried to ignore the way it started when Player 456 started yelling. You thought he was just a crazy old man, but your heart knew otherwise. You never wanted to feel the sensation of blood splattering on your face again, but you weren’t sure with how the games were going that you had a choice. 

When given the choice, you quickly followed his lead and chose to end the games. Even if they switched the rules and you weren’t going to be paid, you would wear your red badge with pride knowing that you even survived. And if you came to regret it later, so fucking be it, at least you would be alive to do so. 

The first time you sided with the players that wanted to end the game, Thanos looked disappointed, but he hid it behind a smile. He shook his head at you when you turned back around, making you roll your eyes. You spent the rest of the voting period running your fingers along the palm that pressed the button, trying to ignore Thanos’ gaze.

You looked up at him once it was his turn, already knowing what he would choose. It was stupid, but there was a smart part of you that hoped he would prove you wrong. He stared daggers into your eyes on the way back to the little group he’s made, a smirk resting on his lips. He made friends easily, something that you couldn’t help but admire about him. Though, you weren’t really sure if the people beside him were his friends. They stared at you too, something that no doubt Thanos put them up to. 

You just hoped they weren’t watching now. 

“Can’t believe you’re here,” Thanos breathed, his lips moving against the back of your neck. His hands moved to your waist to get you in a better grip, making it so that his cock rested in the cleft of your ass. “Fuckin’ missed you,” he said, grinding forward. 

“So you’ve said,” you angrily whispered. You weren’t sure who you were mad at. Thanos or your treacherous body.

You could feel Thanos’ sharp grin before he responded, “don’t be like that, baby,” he said, his teeth nipping at the side of your neck. He sucked at the skin while one of his hands went to cover your mouth again, already knowing he’d need to muffle your moans as he played with the sensitive skin. It was in the perfect spot making it easy to hide with the color of your tracksuit, you had to give Thanos props. “After all,” he panted into the new mark on your neck, “you were never a good liar,” he whispered, his hand making its way to the bulge that tented your pants. 

You wrapped a hand around his wrist to yank his hand free from your face, “you’re fucking crazy,” you whispered, biting your lip to keep from groaning with the heel of his palm pressed down into your cock.

“Crazy for you,” Thanos giggled. You wished he could see how hard it made you roll your eyes. 

You counted down in your brain, knowing that what you were about to do was rash, and probably would be loud. Here goes nothing, you thought as you rolled back, flipping Thanos over, “are you high,” you asked, straddling the man. You ignored the way the bed creaked as your knees dug into the bed on either side of Thanos’ hips, you instead focused on the way his eyes glittered mischievously, even in the darkness. 

��Nah,” Thanos said, his hand on the back of your neck. You could feel the cool metal of the rings he wore on your skin as he pulled you down into a kiss. It was softer than you expected, but that’s how it always started, “wanted to be sober for this.”

You hated how the words sent a warmth rushing through your body, especially knowing that in the long run, this probably wasn’t going to end well for one, or both of you. 

“You’re going to get us caught,” you said, Thanos’ lips chasing yours. You gasped into the kiss when his fingers went to your ass, his hands roughly kneading skin through fabric. 

“There’s no rule– ah,” Thanos’ words fell off into a moan when you rolled your hips down, “fucking in here.”

“They told you that?” You asked, nipping at Thanos’ lip.

“Just a guess,” Thanos smirked up at you. His hands snuck under the back of your pants and underwear, his warm hands now directly on you. 

“Fucking idiot,” you hissed, placing a hand over his mouth, “you never fucking think,” you say, punctuating each word with a grind of your hips. It’s been months since things ended and you remembered like it was yesterday exactly why it ended. He could be stupid, impulsive, and was never one to think things through, which was exactly why you ended it months ago. 

Maybe you were bound by some force to end up like this. After all, it was a hell of a coincidence that the same YouTuber that Thanos listened to that got him involved in what ended up being millions of dollars in debt, was also here with you. 

In fact, the first time Thanos saw that you were here was after he confronted Player 333. Even in a life or death situation, you still couldn’t get away. Maybe it was time to just give in.

Thanos let out a breathy laugh in between bitten off sounds of pleasure, “you know me,” his hands tightening to the point you knew it was going to leave a bruise. 

“Unfortunately,” you responded, rolling over onto your side. 

Moments later, Thanos joined you in a similar position, both of your pants and underwear down just enough to get your cocks together. 

“Baby,” Thanos said, his hips jerking forward. You shut him up a second later by using his shirt as a gag. The gag made it easy to ignore his voice, but did little to stop the gears in your brain from turning. 

As you felt your orgasm build, you wished things were different. Like the pressure that you could feel building at the base of your cock, you could feel a pressure behind your eyes. You slammed your eyes shut, hoping that if you closed your eyes, that would somehow quiet your thoughts. 

The pressure behind your eyes became a burn. You desperately wished things were different and that you were back home, away from all of this. You wrapped your arm around Thanos’ hips to bring your bodies closer, close enough that you could hide your face in the crook of his neck. 

Your tears fell as your orgasm hit you with a force that stole the breath from your lungs. You bit your lip hard enough that blood spilled down your chin, mixing with the tears that ran from your eyes. 

Trying to get yourself back under control, you barely seemed to register when Thanos’ body seized up as he too came undone. He stroked your cocks together in his ringed fingers, and even when it had gotten to the point of overstimulation, you didn’t dare move. You instead moved closer, hoping that somehow he was able to read your mind. 

Thanos’ breathing grew louder, but it was only because he pulled his shirt out of his mouth. He grabbed a thin corner of the sheets where it had been ruffled out of place from your movements to wipe you both down, his hands gliding over the sweaty skin on display. 

Your tears had dried once he had you both tucked away in your pants, though, the blood was still here. 

Thanos leaned forward to press his lips to yours softly, like he was literally trying to kiss your lip better. You responded to the kiss, even if it felt weird. You’d never had such a soft kiss mixed with blood and tears. 

“You should probably go back to your bed,” you murmured against his mouth, though your hands betrayed your words as you pulled him closer. 

“Kickin’ me out?” Thanos asked with a smile. He pulled away momentarily to grab the blanket, “I’m not letting you go again,” he said as he wrapped himself around you in a familiar embrace. 

[cherryeclipses]

i love you, i'm sorry ☪︎ ִ ࣪𖤐 𐦍 ☾𖤓

dean winchester x reader

angst, childhood lovers to enemies (potentially to lovers again), i love writing angsty dean I'm sorry. warning - I hardly edit any of my writing sorry

word count: 2.1K

☪︎ ִ ࣪𖤐 𐦍 ☾𖤓

cause that's just the way life goes ...

☪︎ ִ ࣪𖤐 𐦍 ☾𖤓

You were 16 when you met Dean Winchester, he and his brother Sam were new to your school. The moment you met you instantly had a crush on the boy, he was charming, funny, dangerous, and downright sexy. The only problem was every other girl in your grade felt the same thing, hell even some of the guys did. Dean had the kind of energy when he walked into a room all eyes were on him. It wasn't until a few months later when you would finally speak to him, it turns out his dad and yours were friends; hunting friends. Okay maybe friends is too much, more like acquaintances, they would help each other if they were hunting the same thing. John and your father had decided now that John was to be in your hometown for at least the next few months that the three of you kids could keep each other company.

The first time the three of you met officially it was a horrible stormy night. Something straight out of a horror movie, the rain was pelting against the windows, making them rattle, and thunder clapped so loud in the distance it sounded as though the apocalypse was beginning. John came over to your house with Sam and Dean to sit down with your father and go over the lore of whatever monster they were hunting now. "Darlin' you remember John Winchester?" Your dad said lazily, gesturing to the elder Winchester. You just nodded politely. "Well these are his sons, Dean and little Sam. " He continued. "I know, I've met them already." Both fathers looked at you confused for a moment. "I mean, they started at school last month. I think I have a couple classes with Dean." You shrugged, trying to play it off. You caught Dean's expression from the corner of your eye, he was smirking at you, one eyebrow raised in interest.

As the two men retreated to spend the night in the study you were left standing in the kitchen with Sam and Dean, awkwardly. "I'll show you both to the living room, we can order a pizza or something?" You turned on your heels and the boys followed you into the next room. You sat on one end of the couch, Sam on the other and Dean sat in the armchair across from you. Sam started flicking absentmindedly through the tv channels, trying to drown out the uncomfortable silence. "It must be nice to have a real home and don't have to move schools all the time." Sam spoke up. "Uh yeah, I guess it's alright. I mean it'd be even better if dad wasn't a hunter at all." You gave the young boy a sympathetic smile. You looked up to see Dean still staring at you, you couldn't tell if he was eyeing you off or judging you; but either way it looked like he was about to eat you. You felt your face heat up, your crush sitting meters across from you, in your house. It was unreal.

The rest of the night dragged on, you watched a few movies and ordered pizza, none of you talking very much. Eventually Sam fell asleep so you got up off the couch to cover him with a blanket. As you passed Dean to pick up the blanket he finally spoke up. "So what classes do we have together?" He asked innocently. "What?" You asked startled. "When your dad was introducing us you said we have a few classes together. A beautiful girl like you, I'd remember. So I'm curious." You were stunned, there's no way he just said that. "Um I think English and history maybe." You answered, sitting back down besides the sleeping boy. "No wonder I haven't seen you." He laughed. "There's no way anyone could make me sit in the most boring classes of the day." You rolled your eyes, yeah sure they were tedious but you actually wanted to graduate. "So what do you do with all your spare time then? Surely not studying?" Now it was Dean's turn to blush, you had heard a few notorious stories about Dean and a certain janitor's closet. He just shrugged and ran a hand through his hair.

☪︎ ִ ࣪𖤐 𐦍 ☾𖤓

Ever since that night Dean started showing up to his English and history classes, and not only showing up but coming in early to make sure he had the seat beside you. During breaks he would find you out by the football field and join you for lunch. You had so much in common, not just your unstable life as a hunter's kid but same taste in music and cars. It felt like you finally met your soulmate.

Eight months later it was time for the Winchester's to move on. The longest they had stayed anywhere (thanks to Dean) but John wouldn't be delayed any longer, he had a lead two states away and was determined to follow it. The night before he left, Dean snuck in through your window to say goodbye. Gifting you a dainty necklace adorned with your birthstone - you didn't even realise Dean knew what a birthstone was! "What's this for Dean? So my heart can break everytime I put it on?" You ask, looking up at the boy with tears in your eyes. He takes your left hand, running his thumb over your knuckles comfortingly. "No, this isn't goodbye forever, just for now. Just until dad ganks this son of a bitch and then I can come and see you again. I promise. Just wanted to get something for my favourite girl." He leant down to place a kiss on the top of your head. Wrapping your arms around him you pulled him in for the tightest hug you could muster. "I don't believe you, but I still love you." You chuckle against his chest. You feel his heart skip a beat, pausing before he replies "I love you too."

☪︎ ִ ࣪𖤐 𐦍 ☾𖤓

It didn't take long after graduating high school for you to fall into the hunter's life. After spending your senior year fighting with your dad about the future, you did exactly what he expected and gave in. He had taught you how to hunt from the age you could hold a shotgun.

It was the reason your mum left.

Although you were fulfilling your destiny of becoming a hunter, you refused to hunt with him. After a particularly explosive fight you called your boyfriend. Dean knew about your daily arguments but he also could feel that this one was different. This fight was bad enough, pushed you far enough to call him crying and begging to meet him wherever he was. Dean was currently hunting a vampire nest with John only a six hour drive from you. The minute your phone lit up with an address you jumped in your car and sped off. Not looking back for a second.

"She's on her way." Dean announced to John, shoving his phone back into his pocket. John sighed in response "she'll get her anger out on this hunt then she'll drive right back home. Don't expect her to stay with us. Even if she wants to, the answer's no." He said solemnly. "I don't think so, this is different. She hates this life, so it'd have to be really bad." John nodded not looking up from his paper. He tolerated yours and Dean's relationship. He had nothing against you personally, he just didn't believe you could be in a relationship and live their life. He would put up with you for as long as it took you to realise that and run off to find someone stable.

☪︎ ִ ࣪𖤐 𐦍 ☾𖤓

That was almost four years ago. Since then you had joined the Winchester family on most of their hunts, surprising John with not only how well you could research and retain lore information but also how quick you were in a fight.

You had begun to grow close to Sam, he was like your best friend and the little brother you never had. When you were left alone to research he would often confide in you his feelings and dreams for the future.

One evening Dean returned to the motel alone, John abandoned him for a dive bar down the road, to you and Sam asleep on the couch. Your head resting atop his, your hoodie covering the younger boy from the chill in the air. Dean adored how you loved Sammy, how you both got along and you took care of him. He kissed your cheek and noticed how cold you were. Removing his eather jacket and gently placing it around your shoulders before settling into bed for the night. He didn't dare wake the two of you.

Over the years, you had the privilege of watching Sam grow into a young man and live out his dream of leaving the hunting life for college. The weekend before he left he made sure to visit you to say goodbye. Hugging you goodbye and making sure you had his new number but not before making you promise you wouldn't give it to Dean or John. "Cross my heart. I'll take this phone number to my grave along with every embarrassing crush you've told me about." You giggled, making an x across your heart. "Okay, okay, thank you. I just want to start over and I can't if they're trying to track me down." He smiled sadly. You looked up at Sam (he had now grown 10 feet tall and towered over you) "I get it but I can't promise they won't try to track you down anyways." You shrugged before giving the boy one final hug goodbye. "Good luck little Sammy." You joked as he left for good.

☪︎ ִ ࣪𖤐 𐦍 ☾𖤓

Ever since Sam left things had become tense among the Winchesters. Well, more tense than they already were. John was more irritable, it seemed like he would take his sadness and frustration out on you, yelling at the smallest mistakes or refusing to give you details on their next hunt. Dean was torn, it was wearing him down, trying to deal with his brother leaving and his father and girlfriend fighting. You had had enough and had thoughts about leaving for awhile, just taking a few solo hunts away from John until things cooled down - you really wished you could steal Dean away as well but that would make things so much worse.

"-absolutely not! You go out there and do what needs to be done Dean. This has been going on for far too long and you know it." You heard John shout from inside his and Dean's motel room. "You don't know what you're talking about, she's the best damn hunter we've ever worked with." Dean responded, sounding just as furious. You hesitated going inside. You were going to tell Dean about your plan to give John some space but now, now they were fighting about you. You took a step back, you couldn't just leave without saying goodbye, so you waited. Anxiously twisting the birthstone around your neck your back against the wall, you waited for the screaming match to be over.

"She's bad news, always has been. Just like her damn father Dean. You can't keep dragging her around, it ain't fair." "I love her. " Dean growled. "You wouldn't know love if it hit you in the face." And with that the motel door flung open to reveal a furious Dean.

Tears stung your eyes, threatening to overflow. "How much of that did you hear?" Dean asked. "Enough." Dean took a deep breath and led you away from the motel door. "Look, I'm sorry. Honestly I never wanted you to hear that fight. But there's something I gotta say." Your breath caught in your throat, it felt like you were going to puke. You couldn't say anything back, so you just waited for him to go on, "I-Jesus-I can't do this anymore." He chokes out. "We need to break up." Tears pour down your cheeks silently. "We need to? Or John wants us to?" You seethe. "We need to. It's not fair, you never wanted this life. I know what you wanted, you truly want what Sam left for. An apple pie life. You could still go to College, meet someone normal. I can't, no I won't, keep bringing you down like this." His voice raises. "Seriously? After everything. You're giving in?" Nothing. Dean stands there, looking like a lost puppy. "Fine, I'll leave, I know when I'm not wanted. But before I go, I hope you're aware you sound just like John now. Congratulations." You whip around and walk as fast as your legs will take you to your car. Speeding off down the highway, making sure to stick your middle finger out the window for Dean to see.

☪︎ ִ ࣪𖤐 𐦍 ☾𖤓

currently writing a part 2

[agardenofbasil]

“you’re easy to love.” + pedri/ferran (ferran says it) thank you ❤️

A little angsty...

Ferran told them this is a bad idea. 

Somewhere out on the dance floor are their other teammates, who are finally letting loose after weeks of games and practices and media responsibilities. One weekend of rest before they have to gear up for the next La Liga matches. Hansi Flick warned them to be careful but otherwise, the world is theirs. And Ferran had every plan to be on the dancefloor with them, to think of anything until he saw Pedri at the bar. 

Ordering another drink. 

“This is a bad idea,” he warned Fermin, who ordered Pedri’s first drink and swore up and down that he’d keep an eye on him. Because Ferran remembers what happened in Berlin.

History has a way of repeating itself, Ferran thinks as he watches Pedri drain the glass.

“Everyone else has someone except me,” Pedri slurs.

“No. Half the team's single.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why don’t I have anyone?”

“I don’t know,” Ferran sighs. “Maybe because you stay  at home and play with your dog all day?”

Pedri makes a face. “Is that a euphemism?”

“That’s the truth.”

“Can I get another-”

“No,” Ferran cuts in, looking the bartender dead in the eye. “He’s had enough.”

Another face. “I can decide when I’ve had enough.”

“Pedri.” Ferran shakes his head at the bartender, who, having seen God, walks towards another patron.

Pedri folds his arms, but stumbles forward. Ferran catches him swiftly, straightening him up even though the midfielder is still mad. “You have it easy,” Pedri insists. “You can… be tall.”

Ferran tries not to laugh. “What?”

“You’re tall,” Pedri yells, eyes bright like it’s the first time he’s noticed his height. 

“That’s not-”

“You could get anyone you want! I message one girl on Instagram and I get ghosted after five messages. What gives?”

Ferran swallows the hard lump in his throat. “I can't get anyone I want,” he grits out. 

“Then it's me.”

“It's not.”

“Maybe I'm too hard to love.”

“Stop.”

“That has to be it, right?”

Here we go. Just like Berlin.

“Pedri, you’re not-”

“There has to be!”

It’s not fun anymore. Being here. It’s worse than Berlin, where Pedri was moping about his leg. This time, Ferran’s watching Pedri slide straight into the hell that is self-doubt. 

Wait. No. Pedri’s literally sliding.

The midfielder’s head thumps against Ferran’s chest.

“For fuck’s sake-”

“I’m always alone.”

Among the noise, Pedri’s words send a chill down Ferran’s spine.

“Do you really feel that way?” Ferran asks. Pedri doesn’t answer. “Can you hear me?”

Still no answer.

“Dumbass thought he could handle three drinks. Idiot. Dumbass.”

Silence.

“You’re easy to love.”

Nothing. 

“Loving you is so damn easy. I would know. Been doing it for years.”

Pedri mumbles, and his head digs heavily into Ferran’s sternum.

“What?”

“I said, can we go home?”

Ferran tightens his arm around Pedri's shoulder, the same way his chest tightens when Pedri’s phone lights up from another Instagram notification. “Yeah. Let’s go home.”

...but good news, you get a full Ao3 version. Hope you enjoy. 🍃

[synthetickitsune]

hello!! i absolutely love all of your seventeen works, your writing is so amazing 💗

i was wondering if i could request some junhui comfort where he’s home after a long time. it could be angsty, maybe leading into a little spice but you can choose the premise of where it goes! i just wanted to give the idea since we all miss him sm

thank you so much 💗 feel free to skip if it’s not okay! i just wanted to tell you that i absolutely live your writing and i come baxk to your jun works almost all the time!

Jun (SVT) | Back home fluff | 0.8k | gn!reader A/N: thank you so much, anon!! you're so sweet ♡ i hope this is okay!

He keeps bumping into furniture. He keeps having to look for snacks, little things he needs. Embarrassingly enough, he can’t remember where to put the dishes when unloading the dishwasher. 

It’s the small things that really break a man and Junhui hasn’t felt this lost and desperate in a long time. You always chuckle and reassure him it’s fine, help him figure out his way around the apartment - and he loves that. He loves that he gets to kiss you and tell you he wouldn’t survive without you and hear you laugh. Nonetheless he can’t help but feel sad that you need to do that. He doesn’t want to be a stranger in his own home. 

To be fair, it’s understandable. You made some changes - that you’ve consulted and agreed on with him - to the apartment layout, you got some new furniture, and thus stuff just had to be moved around. He remembers how long you’ve complained about getting used to it yourself, so he frankly shouldn’t be taking this as hard as he is. It’s inevitable. He must just be missing sharing the experience with you.

It piles up, though, these little frustrations, and while you’re resting on the couch one day, the television just a background noise for Jun, who’s intently listening to you talking about your day, and you mention sometimes he has no clue about - it just gets too much. You see the way his face falls and his brows furrow slightly and immediately want to make it right.

“Oh my god, I forgot to tell you about this,” you jump up and as excited as you seem to be to fill him up, he can’t match your energy.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers and gives you a sad half smile, “I’ve been gone for too long, right?”

Now it’s your time to frown. You shake your head and put your hand over his.

“Jun, you were working. It’s alright,” you try to reassure him.

“I know, but that’s not what I asked,” he insists. You sigh.

“You were gone for a while, yeah, but it can’t be helped,” you say calmly while you intertwine your fingers, “What’s going on?”

He shrugs. To be honest he didn’t plan to spill the beans, would rather figure it out on his own. You’re looking at him like that, though, and he doesn’t want you to worry. So he takes your other hand into his as well and turns to fully face you.

“I feel like I don’t belong here-”

“Jun-”

“No, please,” he squeezes your hands, “Just listen.”

He doesn’t know where it all came from, but he can’t stop the words from spilling out. He knows he’s rambling and probably doesn’t make sense, one half-finished sentence turning into another, yet he’s helpless to stop. Whenever he looks up, though, you’re listening and nodding along. Jun must be falling in love all over again.

“What I want to say is,” he licks his lips and lets his head fall forward. He hasn’t even noticed you got so close that he can rest it on your shoulder. He’s not complaining. “I missed you and everything feels too new.”

“I missed you too,” you wrap your arms around him, “You’ll settle in, just give it time. There’s nothing else to do. Remember how I kept stubbing my toe on the new dresser? You haven’t once, so you’re already doing better than me.”

He chuckles and finally hugs you back. “Or we can rearrange the place again. So we’re struggling again together.”

“Baby the whole point was that you’d come home and could just relax without worrying about this stuff,” you sigh. Honestly it’s more of a whine because just imagining going through the whole process feels overwhelming.

“Just the bedroom? I don’t want to feel like a stranger in there,” Jun pulls away to give you the best starving man begging for bread crumbs look he can muster. You gaslight yourself into thinking you won’t give in.

“It’s almost midnight,” you try to argue but you’re getting weaker.

“Please? It’ll be quick. We don’t need to do much,” he pleads with you.

And because you’re a fool in love, it’s now two a.m. and you’re shifting the bed closer to the windows. Music is playing softly in the background to keep you energetic. Your boyfriend keeps shushing the furniture as if it was its fault that it’s being moved when your neighbours are likely already asleep. The bedside tables are standing by the wall, judging you.

By four a.m. your bedroom looks familiar but not the same. Jun is beaming though, and that’s important.

[anyamaris]

Title: Requited

Summary: A series of events lead to you having the worst day, and it doesn't help that it's Valentines Day. Your ex, who also happens to be your best friend even after your breakup showing up doesn't help the emotional turmoil inside of you.

Word Count: 2271

Pairing: Ex!BFF!Seonghwa x F!Reader

Trope: Exes to lovers/Fluff/Angst

Rating- T for teen/16+

Warnings: Vulgarity, some angsty thoughts and crying, allusion to previous intimacy as well as possibly bathing together, nothing explicit.

A/N: Well since Hwa is my ex bias, this seemed like a fun idea-thank you to @sanjoongie for suffering with me in regards to Seonghwa. You really helped me bring this to life for Valentines 🤍

Much love to @pars-ley for the GORGEOUS banner and you did it last minute (I told her last night and she delivered perfection!)

As always, so much love to @cafekitsune for the dividers, always supporting us writers 💜

“Ugh, why is this all here?!” 

You yank out the box from the back of the closet, letting out a frustrated sigh as you turn to set it down on the floor.

Your sleeve catches on a hanger and the small box tumbles from your arms, spilling everything inside.

“Goddamnit…” you huff, running your palm over your forehead to push back the errant hairs sticking out everywhere.

You close your eyes for a moment, trying to calm yourself before kneeling to start picking up the mess.

It has been a long ass week and all you really wanted to do was guzzle down a bottle of wine and soak in a long, hot bath.

Ahh…a bubble bath, you think, then curse as intrusive thoughts fill your mind.

It’s been over half a year since you and your ex broke up, but it has been amicable.

The positives of dating your best friend and roommate, you think.

Well….ex boyfriend AND ex roommate.

Luckily, best friend was still ongoing.

Unfortunately, today was Valentine's day and you can’t stop yourself from the memory of last year with Seonghwa.

Today the loss of your relationship seems to be creeping in to taunt you from every angle.  

“Get out of my head, Stupid Seonghwa.” you mutter, finally stuffing the last of his random shit into the box.  

Of course it was a box he’d forgotten to take when he’d left.

Maybe he was having a great Valentine’s, not even remembering the romantic evening you’d planned for him last year.

Why am I even thinking about him?

Your break up had been mutual, yes, but you’d held back the little twinge of doubt about it.

Could you both have worked it out?

You’d both expressed the fear of losing each other completely after a series of arguments that neither of you were willing to compromise on.

Looking back, you can’t even remember what the arguments were over…

Laundry soap?

How to fold socks?

Leaving a towel on the floor?

The best brand of kimchi?

Who the hell knows. 

“Whatever.” you grumble, pushing off your knees to get up, grabbing up the box with you to take to the door.

He can come get it when-

A sharp, stinging pain rips through the arch of your foot and right through the rest of your body, causing you to let out the most offensive curse words your exhausted brain can conjure up.

The box you’ve just picked up drops, and luckily it doesn’t spill its insides this time.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” you hiss out, moving your foot to look down at the villainous object that lit up all of your pain receptors like a christmas tree.

You freeze momentarily, then lean over to pick up the object that just destroyed your mood completely.

Of course it’s a fucking LEGO.

Park mother fucking Seonghwa-

Right at that moment, your doorbell rings and you just bite back even more expletives as you snatch up the horrid little plastic piece before making your way to the door.

“Coming!” You call out as someone begins to knock.

As if he was summoned, Seonghwa stands before you with a bright smile.

Instead of putting you into a good mood, his presence only makes you more irritated.

“Ugh…” you grunt at him, turning and walking away without another word.

“Nice to see you too,” he quips, coming inside even though he wasn’t invited.

“I’m trying to clean, Hwa, why are you here?”  

“Can’t I come by and say hello?” he asks, and you let out a slow breath.

You turn to look at him, as he sets down a small plant on your counter.

“What’s that?” You ask, narrowing your eyes at what appears to be a flower.

He looks at it, then turns a sheepish smile on you. 

Fucking hate how gorgeous he is, you grumble inwardly.

“I saw it and thought of you...why are you so grumpy today?” he asks, leaving the gift to walk over to you.

You run your hand over your face, shaking your head at him.

“I don’t know, just a long ass week, and I haven’t slept much, and….” you clench your other hand, the edges of the plastic Lego piece biting into your skin.

“-and then I stepped on your stupid Lego!” you thrust your hand out at him, palm up to present the disrespectful object.

“Ouch…sorry…” he says, walking over to take it from your hand.

He lights up, turning it over in his fingers, “It’s the missing piece I’ve been looking for!”

His brilliant grin has your insides crumbling and you hate that you’re feeling so emotional right now.

Why did he have to come by today of all-

“Are you crying? Did it hurt that badly? Let me see your foot-” he is suddenly ushering you to sit on the couch as you try to process his words.

Crying? You’re not-

You swipe at your face and let out a frustrated sigh at the moisture running down your cheeks.

Before you can protest, he’s kneeling before you, lifting first your right, then left foot to survey any damage done.

“I’m fine, Seonghwa-” you complain, but he just gives you a stern look before returning to his inspection.  

“Just a few little red marks…” he hums, rubbing his thumb gently over the spot where you’d stepped down on it.

You cross your arms over your chest, swallowing back the urge to kick him in his pretty face.

God, what’s wrong with me today?

“I didn’t think you’d be home, honestly.  Glad I took the chance.” He hums, looking up at you with those big brown doe eyes.

“Why? Cause now you have your Lego back?”  you snap at him, then regret it as a momentary look of hurt crosses his face.

He lets out a patient sigh, standing only to settle himself down next to you on the couch.  

“No...I just…” he shrugs, suddenly looking around at anything but you as he chews his bottom lip.

You glance at him from the corner of your eyes, noting how the long strands of his dark hair tease at his cheeks.

Before you can stop yourself, you unfold your arms and reach out to brush them back, startling him enough to stare at you in shock.

“Sorry…it’s gotten long.” you mumble, retracting your hand before you give in to the urge to trace your fingertips over his skin.

He holds your gaze, tugging on a strand and nodding in agreement.

“Do you…like it?” he asks softly, his eyes studying you.

“It’s…nice…” 

“Just nice?” He asks, a little teasing smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“What is it you came for, Hwa?” you ask, redirecting the conversation.

He takes in a deep breath, then lets it out slowly before answering.

“Just...I thought because it’s Valentine’s and maybe you …” he looks down at his fingers, suddenly interested in the state of his nails.

“Maybe I what? Am a pathetic mess because I’m single?” You bite out, hating how your voice wavers.

His head snaps up, brows drawing together.

“No. Why would I ever think that? Seriously?” he retorts and then he’s turning towards you, reaching out to grasp your hands in his.

“We’re friends, best friends…I’ve never once thought you were pathetic. What the hell even makes you think such a thing?”  

Friends.

For some reason, that cuts deep.

It’s been months since you’d both agreed to not be together.

To preserve the friendship.

He’d even moved out to make it easier on both of you; you’d both given in to the physical aspect far too much even after things ended.

Yet here you are, ready to hiss and spit at that term.

“I don’t want to be friends.” 

You freeze as you realize the words have slipped out unintentionally.

“What?” he asks, looking crestfallen.

“Hwa…no…I mean…fuck-” you stutter, angry at how your eyes sting from fresh tears welling up.

He lets go of your hands, cupping your cheeks to brush away the errant tears starting to spill down your face.  

“Don’t-” you try to swat him away, but he slaps at your hands, slipping an arm around you to pull you into a tight hug.

“What’s wrong?” he asks softly, tucking your face into his neck as he pets your hair.  

All of the internal struggles, the pressures of work, the sleepless nights…everything just seems to bubble up and you finally just feel the dam break.

Your hands fist into his soft sweater as you open your mouth and your heart just spills out.

“I feel so lonely, and sometimes it’s too much.  I miss you, I miss the stupid shit you do, I miss the way you get angry over how I leave my shoes or how I don’t dry things before putting them away.  It’s stupid Valentine’s and I was thinking about last year and all I want to do is just drown myself in wine and a bubble bath but I thought about you-” 

His body tenses in your arm, his hand halts, resting on the crown of your head before he’s slowly pulling you back to look at you.

“Shut up, I know it’s stupid, I know we agreed to be friends and I fucking thought I was fine-” 

The rush of words are cut off as his lips find yours.

Stunned, you freeze as the familiar sensation of his tongue prods at the seam of your lips, then you melt into his arms, opening up to allow him access.

His scent surrounds you, a small gasp escaping your parted lips before he’s planting kisses over and over on your mouth.

“I was going to tell you-” he says, breaking away for a moment before he closes the distance again.

“That I missed you too-”

“That I was stupid, I was wrong-” 

“I don’t even remember why we-”

You grasp his face, halting him before he can go on.

“I don’t either, why did we stop?” 

His eyes flick back and forth between yours, and he shakes his head.

That dark silky hair teases at his face and you feel the entire world fall into place.

Your lips quiver as your eyes fill once more, but this time it’s not painful.

It’s not in agony.

He blinks rapidly as he smiles as you, yanking you back to return his mouth to yours.

Time seems to stop, and bleed away as you cling to one another, basking in one anothers embrace before he’s breaking away from you.

“Hey…shhh…” he hums, pulling you into a gentle hug.

You nuzzle at his neck but he shakes his head as you brush your lips over that one place you know gets him going.

“Wait..” he protests, and you pull back to give him a pout.

“Don’t do that…you’re killing me here.” he chastises you, and your stomach flips as he gets a stern look on his face.

Fuck you’ve missed this.

He halts you once more as you go in for another kiss, taking your hands in his.

Confused, you tilt your head at him, about to ask him what’s wrong.

Before you can, he leans in to brush his plush lips over your forehead.

“Shh…I know how quickly things can escalate between us.  While I want that…I want you…I think rushing back into sex isn’t the way I want to begin again.” 

Your heart stutters in your chest, and while the ache between your legs argues against his logic, your mind and heart are in complete harmony about that sentiment.

Still, you give him yet another overdramatic pout.

He lets out a soft laugh, reaching up to flick his fingertip over your lip.

“Temptress.” he teases, and you can only grin as he tugs you back in to cuddle you.

Your entire body liquifies in his arms, and you run your hands over his shoulders, his back, his arms.

“Have you been working out?” you ask him, your voice muffled by his shirt as you rub your face into his chest.

He chuckles, his chin rubbing against your cheek.

“If you still feel the same way tomorrow, maybe I’ll show you.” he offers.

“Mmm…promise?” 

“I promise.” he answers, pulling away a little to look at you.

You hold one another’s gaze for a moment, then he stands and turns towards your kitchen.

“What are you doing?” you ask, watching as he rummages around, pulling out a stemmed glass, then finding a familiar cupboard.

“You said you wanted wine and a bath.  I’m going to give you exactly what you want, angel.” he hums.

Your heart thumps in your chest; firstly because he’s always been so caring and sweet, but also because of the use of his pet name for you.

“I love you, Seonghwa.” you blurt out, knowing you should feel embarrassed but the sudden admission but unable to find it in you to feel anything but relief at the confession.

He smiles softly as he pours the glass, walking back over to hand it to you before placing a kiss on your head.

“I know, angel…I never stopped loving you.”

His words linger in the air as he wanders off, tossing you a peeking glance before he disappears into the bathroom to start running your bath.

The familiar scent of your bubble bath fills the air as you take a sip of the velvety wine.

There’s still a lot to talk about, alot to discuss but tonight…

You stand, glass in hand and try to figure out how you’re going to get him to join you in your tub.

[mikibwrites]

Fuck it Friday

It's 4:13AM and I just wrote a scene in a wip I haven't touched in over a year, so that's something! Here's a gift for those who continuously tag me every week in wip games, you don't know how much I appreciate you, even when I'm having such horrible writer's block. This is from my TrueBlood AU, in which I am attempting to rewrite each episode of LS, except it takes place in the TB universe. It's slow going bc of the changes I have to make BUT it still lives in my head all the time. So here's something a little sad and angsty, but maybe hopeful? This is from 1x08, so you have context, but obviously things are different ;) It's a long one, too. An entire scene, 1k! So there's more under the cut :)

Hours later, his father had gone home exasperated and TK couldn’t find it in himself to care. The sweet nurse was back. This time, for some reason, he clocked her name badge: Traci. 

Traci didn’t pay him any mind as she grabbed the chart off the end of Carlos’ bed, checked his heart rate, oxygen saturation, all the monitors and lines connected to his body. She pulled out a penlight and carefully, so very gently, raised his eyelids to shine the beam into his pupils. TK knew she’d find no reaction, but he also knew it was another thing to check off a list, just in case. 

Traci went through the entire checklist in silence, not acknowledging TK at all, which was odd. She usually had a kind smile for him, even if it reminded him of his father’s—a little exasperated. But this time she ignored him entirely as she went about her duties. He wondered if he’d annoyed her enough that her kind demeanor—her customer service face, he almost snorted to himself—had fallen by the wayside when he was the only one present in the room. He’d become furniture, which was fitting, since he felt like he’d solidified in place. He hadn’t moved a single muscle in hours, not even needing to breathe to put on a good show for anyone. 

Finally, Traci hooked the chart back on the end of the bed, but instead of leaving the room without a word as TK expected her to do, she turned and looked right at him.

For a moment, her eyes were hard, determined, but it seemed like this sweet woman was incapable of harshness because they softened after only a moment, looking at him with something like pity. It didn’t even raise his hackles like it normally would. He had no strength left to care what she thought of him.

“Listen,” she began softly, still standing a few feet away from. “I don’t know much about vampire health, but I do know about the bleeds. You need to sleep soon, or feed, or you’ll die.”

“I’m already dead,” was TK’s rote answer. She sighed, and he could tell she was slightly annoyed at him but didn’t want to show it. 

“I can bring you a bag from the—”

“No.” He almost winced at his harsh tone, his nature creeping out of him a bit, snarling. 

She didn’t question why he wouldn’t take a blood bag from their supply, just moved on. He was oddly thankful amidst his melancholy. 

“Then let me find you a light-tight room for a couple of hours. Please, you need to rest. Do you think, when he wakes up, he’ll want to see you like this? Not taking care of yourself?” TK could applaud her tactic, appealing to his very obvious care for the man in the hospital bed, but he had an answer for that too. 

“To be honest, he probably won’t want to see me anyway. It’s not like we’re anything serious.”

She raised a very skeptical eyebrow at him. He couldn’t blame her. He was purposefully slowly killing himself holding vigil for a man he’d pushed away at every slight show of something deeper between them. He probably should have taken this as a sign from the universe that he should cut ties with Carlos for good, that being around TK wasn’t safe for him. The worst part was, what happened had nothing to do with the supernatural at all; it was just Carlos’ job and it’s random, merciless dangers that landed them here. But TK couldn’t help wondering if it wasn’t a sign from the universe anyway. 

“Forgive me if I don’t take your word on that. Please, let me find you somewhere to rest, and you can come back in a couple of hours.” Her face was all sympathy, almost pleading.

“Why do you care what happens to me, anyway?” I’m a monster from your nightmares, he doesn’t say out loud, a qualifier that isn’t needed but true all the same. 

“I’m a nurse. Caring about people is in the job description,” she says with a casual shrug. 

“I’m not people.” It’s a true statement, full stop.

“See, I don’t believe that. I think everyone, good or bad, living or dead, has a right to health and happiness. And right now, I care about his health and your health and also my own sanity, so I can’t watch this anymore without doing something about it. Also, I’m pretty sure I could take you right now, in the state you’re in, so don’t try me again. I’ll be back in a moment.”

With that, she breezed out of the room and TK was left floundering. She was right, though; she could probably bully him into any position she chose right now, given how much his body had deteriorated without rest or blood. He felt like he’d melt into the floor soon. 

When she returned less than ten minutes later, she practically did just that. She threw a heavy blanket over him and grabbed his wrists in a surprisingly strong grip. “Can you stand?”

“Maybe,” he said honestly. 

He let her help him from the chair, unsteady on his feet and leaning on her more than he would like to admit. 

“There’s no windows between here and where we’re going, but I brought the blanket just in case. Come on, we’re even staying on this floor. But if you sass me one more time, I’m putting you down in the morgue.”

That almost startled a laugh out of him, more an exhalation of air than anything else. 

The room she brought him to had two small cots and a row of five lockers. A break room of sorts. What he really needed was to go to ground, an enclosed space near the surface of the earth would rest him properly, but if this was the best he was getting it was more than he deserved. She didn’t turn the light on when they entered, which he was grateful for. The harsh lights of the hospital were already getting to him, another thing he didn’t want to admit, but she seemed to instinctively know how to handle his needs in the moment. 

She guided him over to a cot and helped him sit. He was nearly instantly horizontal, like a felled tree, but he was grateful when his head hit a pillow and not something hard like the cot’s frame. He lost track of the passage of time while she tucked him in like a sweet mother, taking care with him like he was someone worth caring about. Like he was human. 

“Sleep, and I promise I’ll come wake you myself if there are any changes, okay?”

He looked at her wryly with all the strength he had left, his body already drifting into a state of altered consciousness. “You’d wake a sleeping vampire? You have a death wish?”

She scoffed at him with a smirk. “Did we not just establish that I could totally take you?”

He wanted to laugh at her, wanted to come back with something snarky but also menacing, but he was already out.

Tagging some Tarlos mutuals @herefortarlos @guardian-angle22 @bonheur-cafe @carlos-tk @paperstorm @basilsunrise @rmd-writes @lemonlyman-dotcom @cold-blooded-jelly-doughnut @firstprince-history-huh and also specifically thanking @alrightbuckaroo @carlos-in-glasses and @strandnreyes for tagging me in other wip games :)

[ambiguous-avery]

Heyy Avery, so here's my first request ever hehe! Hope it works for you <3 I was thinking of the time after Dean's back from Hell and he and Sam part ways because they think it's better this way. So, heavy angst! Dean goes on solo hunts and even though things go well for a while, he one night almost gets himself killed. Bruised, bloodied and desperate without his little brother's usual backup, he finds himself knocking at some random stranger's door moments before collapsing, which happens to be readers house!

You can ofc just tweak and change everything if this idea doesn't resonate with you! I'm curious what you're gonna cook up 'cuz I know you get Dean's angsty side 😭

Nowhere Else to Go

Dean Winchester x fem!Reader/You | WC: 1757

Summary: Fresh outta hell, Dean finds comfort in throwing himself back into hunts. But he’s not the only one who’s changed. Sam’s different. Too different. Not the Sam he sold his soul for. They just need some time apart. A few solo hunts. Then things will go back to normal. He’s capable of that. But it doesn’t change the fact that Dean’s grown used to having his little brother around.

Tags/Warnings: No use of Y/N, angst, s4!Dean, detailed talk of cleaning and stitching wounds

A/N: Ahhh first request! I’m so excited, and I hope I did your idea justice!

Everything hurt.

God, he felt like h–no. Guess he couldn’t use that phrase anymore. Not now that he knew what hell was really like. He might have laughed at the absurdity of that revelation if he didn’t think it would make him pass out behind the wheel. He needed to get back to the motel room. Needed to get patched up.

“Hey, we got–” The passenger side of the bench was empty.

Right.

No Sam.

How had he forgotten?

He might’ve hit the curb. He hadn’t hit the curb since he was a teen. He blamed the blood in his eyes. Or the metallic taste in his mouth. Or the sound of his own heart pounding in his ears. He tried to bring his focus back to the moment, but everything seemed to blur together in a dizzying swirl of colors and lights. His hands tightened on the steering wheel, knuckles turning white as he fought for control. This wasn’t the motel’s parking lot. Dean couldn’t remember where exactly he was. Or how he got there.

He stumbled out of the Impala, barely catching himself from falling flat on his face. His boots dragged on the sidewalk of the quiet neighborhood. How late was it? Too late. Houses were dark. Except one. One still had lights. He needed it. He knew he did.

His knuckles were too raw to knock, so he pounded on the door with the butt of his fist instead. It was harsh. Too harsh. If anyone answered the door, they would likely shoot him on the spot. Oh well. Wasn’t like he hadn’t died before. The door opened. A pretty girl stood in the doorway. He tried to smile.

“Don’t suppose you could spare a bandaid?” 

He wasn’t sure how he managed to talk you out of calling the police or even letting him into your home. But he wasn’t complaining. In the moment, his survival depended on your kindness, and he wasn’t about to question the lifeline. Your couch was soft and plush, and he should’ve felt guilty about bleeding out on it. He couldn’t muster up the energy to care. Exhaustion sank its claws deeper into him with each passing moment.

Pills rattled nearby, and next thing he knew, you were pressing tablets into one hand and a cool glass into the other.

“Come on. Advil and Tylenol. Both of them together are basically Vicodin without the high,” you said softly. He swayed slightly, and you placed a hand on his shoulder to steady him.

“I could use a high right about now.” Words felt heavy on his tongue. Maybe you’d let him sleep here. Just for the night. Even if it was only on the couch. It would be nice to sleep somewhere without a shitty mattress. You laughed, the sound light and tinkling.

“Couldn’t we all?”

You helped him down the pills and water. It was cold and went down like a balm that could soothe his very soul. He looked at you. Even with one eye swollen shut and the other one with blood crusted around it, Dean could clearly see that you were out of his league. Too good for a stray dog like him. Who was he to steal a night from someone so pretty?

“Y’know how to stitch someone up?” he asked as you pushed something cold into his hand. You helped guide it to his face, and he realized that it was a cold press wrapped in a towel. It felt good against his heated skin.

“Not well. But since you insist on not going to a hospital, I’m sure it’ll be better than nothing. I’ll be right back.” Your touch left him, and he found himself missing it immediately. He wished you would touch him more, just so he could remember what another person felt like. He closed his eyes. If it weren’t for the gash across his back, Dean was sure he could pass out right then and there on the couch.

Footsteps padded back into the room and all at once, Sam was at his side, gently wiping away the blood from his face with a warm washcloth. He didn’t remember Sam’s hands being this soft. Or soft in general. Or maybe he had just forgotten how hands that didn’t want to hurt him felt on his skin. He leaned into the warmth and felt the tension slip away from his shoulders. He wasn’t sure where you found Sam or how you knew that he was who Dean needed at the moment. But he didn’t need to know the details. Sam was here, and everything would be okay.

“Could’ve used your help on this hunt,” he mumbled as Sam pressed a piece of alcohol-soaked cotton against his cheek. He hissed in pain and flinched despite himself. It was fine, though. Sam had seen him in much worse states, and at the moment, Dean could go for some brotherly ribbing. It was normal. He liked normal. Normal was good. Sam’s usual tough love never came, though. No “you’ll be fine”s or “quit whining”s came. Instead, it was just a quiet,

“Hm?”

“Son of a bitch had backup when I ganked him. Never realized that a goddamn camel could have a ghost too.” Sam paused in what he was doing, but Dean didn’t need to look at him to know that Sam was looking at him confused. He continued. “Yeah. A camel. Damn thing trampled me.” He adjusted the ice pack in his hand to more firmly press it against his swollen eye once Sam had finished cleaning the blood from his face. Sam gave a quiet noise of acknowledgement. 

Alright maybe Sam was still pissed about Dean calling him a freak. That was a low blow on his part. But was it really if it was true? Making a deal with a crossroads demon was very different than utilizing a demon’s psychic powers. They were supposed to be a force of good in the world. They were no better than the creatures they hunted if they resorted to the same sort of dark shit their enemies used. He could forgive Sam for it. He always did. He just needed Sam to stop using that weird demon mojo.

With most of his face cleaned up, Dean set the cold press down for a moment before grabbing the back of his shirt and tugging it up and over his head, groaning slightly as it dragged uncomfortably along the dried blood.

“What’re you doing?” Sam sounded appalled. His voice sounded strangled, higher pitched than usual, and Dean could’ve rolled his eyes at him if he had the energy to look at him.

“Need you to stitch me up. Guy had a damn bayonet.” Dean turned and laid down on the couch. He probably should’ve put a towel down so he didn’t bleed on it. Oh well. The motel took a deposit for a reason. They could keep it.

Wordlessly, Sam set about cleaning the long gash across his back, and Dean grit his teeth, readying himself for the familiar sting of a needle through flesh. The scent of disinfectant registered in his brain, and he realized that he had barely felt Sam cleaning the wound. It stung, but he needed it. Needed the pain. It reminded him that he was alive. That he was here. With Sam. With family. All he needed was family.

He never thought he would find comfort in the pain. It cleaved his flesh. It ached in his bones. But that’s as far as it went. It wasn’t deep enough that it scarred his soul and left marks where only he could see them. It didn’t leave anything behind that time couldn’t heal. He was sure that time couldn’t heal a soul. The years there had rended his soul, leaving it in tatters he didn’t even know was possible. But better him than anyone else. Better him than Sam. 

The first pinch of the needle through skin pulled him out of his thoughts. The world came back into focus. He wasn’t used to being treated so gently. It was a nice change. He’d never say it out loud, but it was nice to be the one being taken care of for once. Sam’s touch stayed soft, even going so far as to gently pull the skin taut so the needle didn’t needlessly pull. At this rate, the tenderness was enough to lull him to sleep. The cold compress against his cheek as he rested his face against it was a better pillow than nothing. He had had worse.

Sam was quicker than usual, or maybe the pain meds had kicked in enough that he hadn’t noticed every pinch. That was a nice tidbit of information. Where had Sam learned it? Probably Stanford. Would’ve been nice of him to impart that information earlier on in their hunts, though. He could’ve used some Vicodin-level pain management much sooner in life. But hey, better late than never. The presence at his side moved.

“Sammy,” he called out, hand reaching and grabbing. Sam’s wrist was so thin. What had happened to him in Dean’s absence? Sam must’ve not taken care of himself. He hadn’t been around to take care of Sam. He cursed. Stupid. He was so stupid. Even sacrificing himself for Sam didn’t feel like enough. He needed to be the responsible one. Against his body’s protests, Dean tried to push himself up from the plush of the couch. A hand pressed to his shoulder stopped him. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all of it. Please. Don’t leave again, Sammy. I just can’t see you go down that path. I lost you once. I can’t lose you again.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not Sammy. But I won’t go anywhere.”

And suddenly, the illusion shattered. 

Sam wasn’t there. 

Sam had never been there.

You were.

He blinked, looking over at you. Your eyes were so kind. Had anyone ever looked at him so sweetly before? You were worried. He could see it. No one worried about him. He was supposed to worry about others. His hold on your wrist loosened. He wet his lips, tongue ghosting over the dried blood there, and Dean suddenly felt more exposed than he cared to be. He sat up despite your insistence and reached for his bloodied, discarded shirt. He needed to leave. Get back to the motel room. Your gaze was too curious. Too probing. Too innocent. It would be a tragedy if you cared for him.

---

Likes, reblogs, and comments are greatly appreciated!

Dean Taglist: @aylacavebear @globetrotter28 @jollyhunter @bettystonewell

Want to join the taglist? Comment or Ask away!

[vampire-matcha]

Everyone always talks about John "share my wife" Price but what about Kyle "our girlfriend" Garrick???

18+

It starts with you and him on the couch together. You've got your hand in his pants and he's got his tongue down your throat. You're pumping his cock while he pants into your mouth when his phone rings- someone is video calling him. You glance at his phone sitting beside him, discarded on the couch cushion when you first crawled over to him to kiss his neck. The icon on the screen is a familiar one: a mischievous grin with a mohawk on top.

"Answer it," you say as you slide down the couch and onto your knees in front of him.

"What?" He asks, his eyes wide as saucers as you hand him the phone.

"Answer it," you say again with a devilish grin, still stroking him slowly. With a shaky breath to school his expression, he answers it.

Gaz tries his best to stay nonchalant, not even listening to Soap's chatter through the phone, but you have other plans. Gaz let's out a surprised grunt and jerks when you take his cockhead into your mouth.

"You alright mate?" Soap asks after a momentary pause.

"Yeah-yeah," Gaz answers too quickly. "Muscle spasm. Got a- ah- knot in my shoulder." You can't help but smile around his dick as you bob your head up and down his shaft. He glances down at you with a frustrated huff. Soap makes a noise on the phone.

"That's rough, mate. You should ask your girl to help you rub it out." You nearly choke at the unintended double entendre. "Where is she anyway? Wanna say hi."

"Uh... she's-" whatever half-baked excuse Gaz was about to spout off is cut off by the sudden sucking noise your lips made on "accident". Gaz freezes, looking past the phone at you, and Soap is silent on the other line. You continue to swirl your tongue around Gaz's tip.

"...Gaz?" Soap asks slowly. Gaz doesn't answer, his chest heaving in an effort to maintain his composure. "What's going on?" Gaz's eyes darted back and forth between you and the phone, silently willing you to stop so he wont get caught. Instead, you make yourself gag on his length, causing him to grunt involuntarily.

"Holy shite, Gaz... are you...?" Soap sounds suddenly breathless at the sounds he hears on his phone. They aren't unfamiliar to him, but usually they're accompanied by a little orange logo, not by his best mate on FaceTime. "Turn the camera around."

Gaz's jaw drops with a pant. Oh, he's so caught. He stares down at you, and you nod your head before sucking hard. With a shaky hand, he taps the screen, and you hear Soap groan over the speaker. You suck off Gaz's tip with a wet pop and smile.

"Hi Soap," you say conversationally, as if Gaz's cock wasn't there right in your face, as if you didn't have drool and precum dripping down your chin. You stare up into the camera phone as you stick your tongue out and lick up and down the shaft.

"Steamin' Jesus," Soap says, and there's a rustling over the speaker. "Garrick, you dog," he growls. You put on a show for him, pumping Gaz in your hand while you mouth at his balls, making him moan out loud. He's already been caught, no use hiding it anymore.

Soap gets himself off to it. You can hear his groans of pleasure over the phone mixing with Gaz's, can hear the wet sounds of him stroking himself. When you finally get Gaz to cum on your face, you smile at the pleasured moan Soap let's out. Gaz smears his cum over your lips with his thumb and with a smirk he says,

"What are you doing tonight, Tav?"

"I'll be over in an hour," Soap replies.

The three of you go at it for hours, round after round, multiple positions, every combination. And while you were the center of their attention for most of it, it was also incredible hot to watch them together, making out above you, jerking each other's cocks. By the end of the night, when everyone's needs had been met and you all were exhausted, you all agree it was the best sex of any of your lives. And you all three agree: there's no going back after this.

Soap comes over more and more often for threesomes, but a couple times it was just you and him, or him and Gaz. The three of you find a rhythm and balance together, happy and very well satisfied.

Gaz is out of the country when Ghost finds out. And. He. Is. Livid.

He'd borrowed Soap's phone for something, he doesn't remember what he needed, because once he saw the video of you and Soap on his phone he swears he saw red.

Soap had never seen his LT so angry, especially not toward him. Ghost has him backed into the wall, face in his face, barking at him like a mad dog.

"Have you gone fucking mad? You've got a lot of fucking nerve, Sergeant! Showin' your face to Gaz while you're giving him the runaround! Fucking his girl behind his back! You should be ashamed! He's our teammate, he's our BROTHER!" And in a blind panic, Soap shouts out:

"He knows!" It's enough to make Ghost pause his tirade for a moment, giving the shorter man an incredulous look.

"Bullshit."

"He does! He knows, I can prove it!" Soap pleads, and slowly holds out his hand. Ghost pins him with a glare but hands him the phone anyway.

Soap opens up the group chat the three of you share and turns the phone to show to Ghost. There's a variety of messages, some casual, some flirtatious, but what really catches Ghost's eye are the videos.

The first is the one that sent him into a fit in the first place: you're bent over in front of a mirror while Soap rams into you from behind. The video is sent with a message reading "taking care of our girl while you're gone x" The next video is sent from your POV as you bounce on Gaz’s cock. Then a video sent from Gaz's number that seems to be in the barracks shower of all places, the phone propped up somehow capturing the two Sergeants wet and naked. Gaz steps back from the camera and embraces Soap with a heated kiss. They each wrap a hand around both their cocks together and jerk themselves off to a simultaneous finish.

As Ghost scrolls through the chat, Soap, still pinned to the wall, takes notice of the way Ghost's breathing steadily gets heavier and heavier. And he DEFINITELY notices the growing weight pressed against his stomach. He gives an experimental grind of his hips. Ghost's eyes snap back up to him. They're still full of fire, but for a completely different reason.

"You got me stuck between a rock and a hard place, here, LT." He jokes with a gravelly voice. "But you know what they say... the more the merrier." In a matter of minutes, Ghost had Soap turned around, and both their pants are down by their ankles.

Gaz gets a new message in the chat later that night. The video starts focused on your face, your mouth deepthroating Soap and your eyes rolled back in your head as your body gets jostled roughly by... someone else. The camera pans down your body, showing you on your hands and knees, and a thick, wide body fucking into you from behind. A familiar tattoo sleeve catches Gaz's eye, and finally the camera pans up to show that infamous skull mask that he knows so well. The video is captioned: "found a new playmate for us... don't tell the captain ;)"

The captain, of course, does find out sooner rather than later. The team is gathered at you and Gaz’s home to watch a football game. Most of the sports terminology goes over your head, but you're glad to have all your boys together... plus their captain.

You think you're being subtle about everything, but Price notices. His job is noticing things. Countless life-or-death situations have counted on Price noticing little things. So of course he notices your heated glances at Soap, the way you leave lingering touches on Ghost when you pass by him. You, nestled into your boyfriend's side with his arm around you while you make eyes at his teammates. It makes his blood boil.

He confronts you in the kitchen. You got up to fetch yourself a drink and he waits a moment before he follows you in. You turn around from the fridge to see him standing behind you. His face is impassive and unreadable. You linger there a moment in confusion. He's usually so friendly toward you. Finally he breaks the silence first.

"You know, Kyle really cares about you. Talks about you all the time, talks about how much he loves you. You've got that poor boy wrapped around your little finger, you know that?"

"Th-thank you...?" You stutter, completely caught off-guard. The cold tone of his voice doesn't match his kind words. There's an edge to it, a dangerous one. He shakes his head at you.

"He doesn't deserve this. He's a good man."

"Doesn't deserve what?" You ask, glancing down at the extra beer in your hand that you'd gotten for Gaz. He doesn't deserve beer?

"You think I don't know what's going on?" He accuses with a step forward. "You think I don't see it?"

"See what?" You ask, growing more and more worried with every passing second. Price scoffs.

"You know, I've seen this a lot. Men in the service go out and risk their lives, all the while back home their girl is running circles around them." He huffs, giving you a look you'd never seen before. It makes you feel... gross. "Thought you were different, though. Thought you could be trusted. And to do it with his teammates?" His eyes narrow and his nose wrinkles in disgust. You gasp in realization. He thinks you're cheating!

"John, you don't understand-"

"You think I'm stupid?"

"No!"

"What's going on?" Gaz asks from the doorway. He was wondering what was taking you both so long, but he didn't expect to find you close to tears cornered by his captain. Price turns his body toward him, but keeps his eyes on you.

"Do you want to tell him, or should I?" He asks. You open and close your mouth but nothing comes out. Your brain is overworking trying to figure out an answer. You can't tell him the truth, you'd get your boys in trouble! Should you just admit to it? Take the blame to protect them? Before you can come up with the words, Soap and Ghost enter the room behind Gaz. Price turns his attention to them, and you breathe out in relief to have his glare off you.

"Or maybe you two would like to tell him?" He proposes, voice slightly raised. The tension in the room is suffocating. Price stares the other two down as Gaz looks from one person to the other, putting the pieces together.

"Price it's not what you think," he says with his hands out in a placating gesture. Price tilts his head.

"Kyle, I'm sorry to have to tell you-"

"They're not going round my back, Price. I know." Price shuffles his feet a bit.

"You... know?"

"The four of us have... an arrangement." Gaz walks over to you and wraps an arm around you. "She's done nothing wrong, don't be cross with her. Neither have Ghost or Soap. She's not just my girlfriend, she's our girlfriend." Gaz holds Price's eyes.

"And the four of you are..."

"Together. Is that a problem, Captain?" Price quirks an eyebrow at his sergeant's challenge, but after a moment shakes his head.

"No. No, not a problem. Just keep it tactical on the field. Copy?"

"Yes sir." Price turns to Soap and Ghost.

"Copy?"

"Yes sir," they answer in unison. Price looks at you again and his expression softens, dropping his Captain persona for your sake.

"I owe you an apology," he starts.

"It's alright," you interrupt, giving him a shy smile. "You were just looking out for Kyle."

"You should've seen Ghost when he found out. Nearly bit my head off," Soap says, lightening the mood. But Price's eyes still linger.

"Game's still on," Ghost says, "if you all are done being dramatic." The five of you file back into the living room to finish out the game with you still nestled into Gaz's side, this time openly joined by Soap on your other side. Throughout the game, as the men banter about whose team is better, Price kept glancing over at you.

The game ends and as everybody winds down, Price watches the affection you gave the other three.

"I have to wonder, though," he starts, "what it is that's got all three of my men so wrapped up in you..." Your eyes dart from one man to the other as each of them catch onto Price's meaning.

"Well... it'd be a shame not to include that captain, right boys?" Gaz teases.

"The more the merrier-"

"Shut up MacTavish, fucks sake," Ghost huffs, still with a smirk.

"I still owe you a proper apology, sweetheart," Price says, beckoning you to sit on his lap.

And apologize, he does, in the form of his face between your thighs, pulling orgasm after orgasm from you. Eventually, the five of you wind up in the bedroom, tasting and teasing and fucking one another.

"We're going to need a bigger bed..."