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hyuckiefluff · 20 days ago

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the wicked game of love pt.2 | lee haechan

pairing: slytherin! haechan x ravenclaw! fem. reader genre: rivals to lovers, smut, angst wc: 21k+ (full fic) summary: Lee Haechan was a pure-blood heir raised to hate everything you are. You, a half-blood girl who knew better than to let your guard down around someone like him. You were never supposed to want each other—until one disastrous kiss shatters everything you’ve worked to protect. cw: explicit sexual content, jealousy themes, toxic family dynamics, blood status discrimination, public sex, use of magic during sex, oral (m. receiving), marking, unprotected sex, mean lee haechan, miscommunication, emotional hurt/comfort, mutual pining, secret/forbidden relationship. a/n: soo i did pass out from exhaustion last night hence why this is being posted later than intended lol. while writing this fic, i had the realization that magic can make the smut much more interesting and i explored that here so enjoy akskdkd pls let me know what you guys think<33

READ PART 1 HERE

"You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love." — Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

Your mother never summoned you to her office.

Conversations, when they happened, took place over tea in the sunroom, or in passing as she adjusted her hair by the mirror. But this time, a folded note slid under your bedroom door. Her unmistakable script read 'We need to talk. Office. Now.' The familiar knot in your stomach that came with anything regarding her tightened.

She was standing behind her polished desk when you walked in, every line of her posture sharp with restrained tension.

“I’ve just received the updated intern roster,” she said coolly. “Care to explain why you’re working with Lee Haechan?”

Your lips parted, caught completely off guard. “It’s not like I requested him. We were assigned.”

“I can fix that.”

“What?”

“There’s an opening in the Magical Transportation Division,” she replied, crisp as frost. “I’ll make the arrangements by tomorrow.”

“No.”

The word slipped out before you could temper it.

Her brow arched. “Excuse me?”

“You’re the one who forced me into this internship, mother. You wanted me to be useful, and now that I’m doing it, there's suddenly a problem?”

“I obviously didn’t expect them to pair you with that boy.” she scoffed.

You stepped forward. “I’ve already started the project and we’re making great progress. I’m not switching just because you don’t like that boy”

There was a second of silence. Her face didn’t change, but you felt the temperature in the room drop. It was rare for you to contradict your mother’s orders. The few times you did, she made sure you regretted it in some way.

“His father nearly cost me the election,” she said at last, her tone clipped, as if she was speaking to a political rival and not her daughter. “That family doesn’t make allies with people like us. You think working beside him is safe? Smart?”

“I don’t know,” you said, teeth clenched. “But it’s my decision.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Just be careful, Y/N. That boy was raised to play games at the highest level. Don’t think for a second you’re immune.”

You didn’t answer. You just turned and left, fists clenched so tight your nails bit into your palms. For the first time in your life, you walked away from your mother and her commands.

On the other side of the city, Haechan stood just inside the heavy oak door of his father’s study. Mr. Lee reclined in a leather armchair, firewhiskey swirling in his glass.

“You’re progressing nicely,” his father began, voice smooth and cool. “That Portkey proposal is attracting the right sort of attention.”

Haechan remained silent. Compliments from his father were never just compliments—they were lures, baited with hidden intent. Tonight, something about it set his nerves on edge.

“I hear you’ve been partnered with the Minister’s daughter.”

“Yes, father.”

“That’s convenient. Even I must admit, she’s grown into quite the pretty little distraction.”

Haechan’s jaw tightened instantly, but he held still.

“Though, I suppose one can’t expect too much refinement from a girl of her… blood status,” his father continued with a faint curl of disdain at his mouth. “Still, sometimes mixing blood has its uses… if not for lineage, then at least for entertainment.”

A flare of anger shot through Haechan’s chest and he bit the inside of his cheeks to keep him from cursing at his own father but he still couldn’t stop a reply from spilling out.

“Her blood status isn’t relevant.”

His father gave a cold chuckle, eyeing him knowingly. “Of course it’s relevant. She’s half-Muggle, raised without any real sense of tradition. It shows. Though perhaps that’s part of her charm, there’s something compelling about a girl who doesn’t fully realize her own value yet. Makes her easier to handle.”

“She’s not a prop, father,” Haechan bit out sharply, his voice harder than intended.

His father’s expression darkened instantly. Haechan exhaled slowly, trying to regain composure. “I meant she’s useful… professionally.”

Mr. Lee set his glass down with a soft click. “Spare me the schoolboy morals. Everything is leverage, even you. The sooner you accept that, son, the smoother this will go.”

Haechan always felt like cold water was being poured down his spine whenever he talked to his father. Perhaps he should be used to dealing with the man by now, after all, he’d been groomed for these games since childhood.

But tonight, his venom felt stronger than usual.

“Understood,” Haechan said finally, voice flat but vibrating with barely checked anger.

His father gave a slow, satisfied nod and reached again for his brandy. That was his way of dismissing him without a word. Haechan’s fingers curled at his sides, but he turned and left before the mask cracked.

He didn’t go to his room. He went straight to the Floo. Because if his father saw you as a pawn, Haechan needed to remind himself you weren’t—and, if he was being honest, remind himself he wasn’t either. Tonight, he needed one choice that belonged to him alone.

He apparated silently in the shadowy alley across from your home, his robes instantly dampening in the evening drizzle. He drew his wand, scanning the formidable iron gates and the darkened windows of the imposing Ministerial residence.

He knew the security enchantments protecting your house weren't a joke. They were designed to deter intruders, and specifically enemies of the Minister, so they recognized magical signatures instantly. One wrong move and alarms would blaze, calling Ministry Aurors to appear.

But Haechan hadn’t come this far to turn back.

So he approached the gate carefully. He’d studied enough ward breaking magic to know that subtlety mattered far more than power. He drew a quiet breath and raised his wand, whispering the careful countercharms he'd memorized from watching his father’s dealings.

One by one, the protective enchantments yielded reluctantly under his gentle pressure. He felt sweat trickle down his neck despite the chill night air. His pulse hammered as the wards strained, uncertain, hovering on the brink of recognition.

Then the charms faded back into place, accepting his magic as familiar enough. He stepped carefully through, heart slamming wildly against his ribs.

He moved soundlessly across the manicured lawn toward the side of the house. Climbing ivy clung stubbornly to the aged stone of the manor, it felt slick under his fingertips as he located your window. There was a light inside from a small lamp, which told him you were awake. He took a quick, anxious breath before reaching up and knocking lightly against the glass.

You flinched, wand whipping toward the window reflexively before your eyes widened in shock at the sight of Haechan standing on the narrow ledge beneath your window. You hurriedly unlatched the lock and slid the window open just enough to whisper furiously, “What the hell are you doing?”

“Let me in,” he breathed, desperate and shaking slightly from adrenaline. “Please.”

You hesitated only a fraction of a second before pulling the window fully open, helping him awkwardly inside. He tumbled through onto your bedroom floor, landing softly in a half-crouch, rainwater dripping from his robes onto your plush rug.

“Are you insane?!” You hissed, closing the window quickly. “The wards—”

“I know, I almost didn’t get through.”

“Why would you risk it?” you demanded, though your voice softened as you took in his shivering state. “My mother will have your head if she finds out you’re here.”

“I had to see you,” he admitted roughly. “I didn’t know where else to go. Everything’s so damn complicated… and the only one I trust right now is you.”

“I assume you also had a talk with your father.”

You reached toward him instinctively, fingers gently brushing the damp fabric of his robes.

“Yeah.” He sighed. The tiredness in his eyes and the tension in his jaw was enough to tell you that the conversation went as well as the one with your mother did.

“Let’s get you dry,” you said after a moment.

This wasn’t wise. It was barely safe. If your mother found out, Haechan would be in the kind of trouble you didn’t even want to imagine. But the quiet desperation in his eyes made it hard to think about any of that.

You waved your wand, murmuring a silent warming charm. Dry air spiraled from the tip making him shiver, eyes shuttering as the spell did its job.

“Thank you,” he murmurs.

“Your clothes are still a bit wet,” you scolded softly then faltered when you realized what you just implied.

He gave you a lopsided smile. “Permission to remove them?”

“Only because you’ll ruin my rug.” you looked away shyly.

He shrugged off the heavy coat and you levitated it away into the coat hanger in the corner. When he started on the pants, your fingers moved first, unfastening the buttons faster than his shaky fingers. They fell down his legs, leaving him only in his boxers and a thin shirt that clung damply to his torso.

“Arms up,” you muttered. He obeyed without comment.

You peeled the wet fabric over his head and your gaze stuck to the skin exposed—tanned, goose-pimpled, marked by a trail of tiny moles from collarbone to ribs.

“Enjoying the view?” he murmured, fond teasing curling the words.

“Just checking,” you said loftily. “There were rumors around Hogwarts that you had a nice form.”

Slowly, you pressed your mouth to a mole below his collarbone causing him to inhale sharply.

“And what was that for?” he whispered, amused.

“Experimental verification.”

You kissed the next mole, then the next, mapping them with your lips. He stood still, breath catching each time your mouth grazed his warm skin. By the time you kissed the last mole, over his throat, his hands moved to your hips.

He bowed his head, letting his forehead rest against yours. “I’m sorry for showing up out of nowhere. I just—-” He broke off, searching for something he couldn’t quite say. Whatever his father told him tonight, he locked it behind his teeth.

“You can stay the night if you want,” you whisper.

“Yes,” he breathed. “Please.”

You lead him toward the bed, shimmied out of your sweats and tugged him under the blanket. He curled behind you, one arm around your waist, fingertips tracing patterns over the slope of your ribs until your breathing slowed.

“Tomorrow’s going to be complicated,” you mumbled drowsily.

“It always is.” He brushed a kiss behind your ear.

Morning sunlight spilled across the duvet in stripes, warming your shoulders a moment before it reached the long line of Haechan’s body curled behind you. His palm rested open on your stomach, thumb stroking lazy half-circles under your night shirt.

“Good morning to you too,” you muttered.

“Good morning, princess,” he murmured, voice still rough with sleep. His lips found the shell of your ear. “Any chance Ms. Thatch will accept a late proposal?”

You smiled into the pillow. “Only if you can convincingly argue we were under hard circumstances.”

“Hard?” He noses aside your hair, pressing a soft kiss to the curve of your neck. “Well, something’s definitely hard.”

You didn’t realize what he was talking about until he shifted his hips closer and you felt it hard against the small of your back.

“Are you serious?” you said, turning your head.

“It’s not exactly something I schedule.” He exhaled a slow laugh.

“And here I thought you came over just for some emotional stimulation.”

He leaned down and kissed you slowly, morning-sweet, but at the same time his hips nudged you for more.

“I'll stimulate whatever you need, princess”

You choked on a laugh until his hand slid further under the hem of your shirt.

“Is this your idea of a morning greeting?” you asked breathlessly.

He leaned in, mouth brushing your collarbone. “This is my idea of relieving some tension.”

Your thighs parted to cradle his hips instinctively when he moved on top of you. His mouth traced the line of your collarbone, then lower, until he was kissing your perked nipples over the shirt. Your fingers slipped under the waistband of his boxers and squeezed boldly enough to make him curse softly into your chest.

He palmed your other breast in response, thumb flicking your nipple until your back arched. You bit your lip to muffle a whimper, then pushed him onto his back with delicious authority.

“My turn.”

You shimmied down, lips dragging across the constellation of moles scattered across his chest and stomach. Every kiss made him sigh softly. You pulled his boxers down fully and when your mouth closed over his cock, he choked on a breath.

Haechan speared shaky fingers through your hair, muttering every filthy compliment he could remember. You licked the underside of his cock, then took him in almost fully, resisting the urge to gag when he hit the back of your throat.

You sucked as far as you could and stroked the rest of with your hand. Haechan’s head fell back, mouth open in delight. “Fuck… ah—fuck that feels… so good—“

His hips started shaking under you but suddenly he stopped you and flipped you over. “Need to be inside you.”

Heat flared when he settled between your thighs, the hard length of his cock pressing where you were already aching. One hand cradled the back of your knee, guiding your leg around his waist and the other cupped your cheek as he kissed you again.

“Tell me how you like it,” he whispered, rocking just enough to tease. You arched, heels digging into the backs of his thighs.

“Like this,” you answered, voice gone rough. “Just—please—”

He slid in, filling you in one smooth glide that knocked the breath from your lungs. A broken sound escaped his throat. “Fuck, baby—” The rest dissolved into a soft groan as he drew back and thrusted again, deeper.

Your hands roamed his back, nails grazing lightly down muscle and spine. Each slow stroke dragging delicious friction inside you.

“Eyes on me,” he whispered, pupils blown wide. Your eyes fluttered open and the contact stole your breath more than the thrust that followed.

Pleasure starts to flow through you quickly when he slid his hand and started stroking your clit, your body tightening around him in response. He felt it and swore softly causing his pace to falter.

“Don’t stop,” you warned, looping both arms around his neck and pulling him close.

He kissed you hard, hips snapping a little faster, rhythm still controlled but hungrier now. Every glide set off sparks, every slide of his thumb over your clit pushing you closer.

“Hae…I—I’m gonna cum,” you gasped against his mouth.

“Me too, fuuck” he groaned.

He angled his hips deeper, and the change nearly sent you tumbling. Your walls clenched, pleasure hitting in a blinding rush. Your cry is muffled against his shoulder.

He followed with a hoarse groan, hips stuttering as the orgasm crashed through him. He kept moving in soft thrusts until the tremors faded and your limbs loosened.

He collapsed to his elbows, weight braced so he doesn’t crush you, brushing damp hair from your forehead with trembling fingers.

“That,” you managed breathlessly, “was incredible.”

He laughed and kissed the tip of your nose. “I live to please.”

The mantle clock in the sitting room chimed eight-thirty. And you remembered the briefing you had in thirty minutes. You groaned while he grinned, entirely unrepentant.

“We can still make it,” he said, stroking a thumb along your cheek. “Five minutes to shower, two to dress. That leaves twenty three for breakfast and another round.”

“You’re ridiculous,” you sighed, but the fondness in your voice undermined any scold. You press a final kiss to the mole on his neck, then roll out of bed, summoning clean clothes with a flick of your wand.

“Shower,” you declare.

He pushed up, stretching like a satisfied cat. “Lead the way, Ravenclaw.”

Haechan left your house first so as to not draw any suspicion in case your mother or any of her workers were around. You arrived at the Ministry with an armful of research notes, ready for the briefing. Haechan said he’d wait for you outside the lifts so you expected to see him leaning against the wall and making some sarcastic remark about your supposed “lateness”.

But he was nowhere to be seen.

Five minutes turned into ten, and frustration melted into annoyance as you glanced around. Eventually, irritation won out and you began to make your way to the briefing room.

It wasn't until you heard the soft click of footsteps behind you that you looked over your shoulder, and there was Haechan.

But he wasn’t alone.

Beside him was a girl you vaguely recognized from Ministry galas. She had impossibly long legs, hair so pale it seemed woven from moonlight, and appraising green eyes. The kind of ethereal beauty that belonged to Veela rather than witches, an almost unsettling allure that made you instinctively stand straighter.

"Sorry…" Haechan muttered as they approached. His eyes carefully avoided yours. "Lost track of time."

The girl turned smoothly toward you, offering a delicate hand adorned with expensive rings. "Cassia Selwyn. I'm an old friend of Haechan’s."

You forced your expression into neutral politeness, shaking her hand briefly. "Y/N. Nice to meet you."

Cassia tilted her head, silver-blonde hair slipping gracefully over one slender shoulder as her eyes slowly took you in. "Haechan’s told me all about you and your…little project. Sounds charming."

Your spine stiffened at her patronizing tone. "Yeah, well, it's important work."

"Oh, I’m sure," she purred indulgently, already dismissing you as she turned back toward Haechan. Her slender fingers reached out to adjust the knot of his tie, a gesture so familiar and easy it made your stomach twist. "Don't forget dinner tomorrow. My father's expecting you."

"I haven't agreed—"

Cassia leaned in, her voice dropping into a coaxing tone. "You know how disappointed he'll be if you don't show. Your father as well.”

Haechan’s jaw twitched—a subtle tell of annoyance you’d learned to read over the years—but he remained silent, clearly unwilling to argue further in front of you.

"I'll see you soon, Hae," she murmured sweetly, eyes sliding back to you briefly with faint amusement. And then she swept away, leaving a trace of expensive perfume in the air.

You stared after her for a tense second. "Cassia Selwyn," you said eventually. "That name sounds familiar."

Haechan let out a short breath, eyes glued stubbornly to your notes on the table. "Her father's head of International Magical Cooperation. He's also my father's closest political ally. She’s… uhm, she’s also interning here at a different department.”

Recognition clicked as soon as he said that. You remember reading about the Selwyns in Hogwarts' registry of notable pureblood families. Their ancient lineage was so prestigious, the closest thing you could relate it to was the British Royal family. Cassia’s effortless elegance suddenly made a lot of sense.

"Ah." Your voice felt strained, even to your own ears. "Well. Now I see why you needed to rearrange your whole schedule around her."

Haechan sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "It's complicated."

"I bet," you muttered, jealousy slipping out despite your best efforts. "Maybe next time, give me some notice before you skip out on research to handle your personal affairs."

His eyes flashed defensively but he remained silent. Somehow, the quiet felt worse than any argument. At least when you were fighting, you knew where you stood. Now you felt lost in uneasy silence.

Before you could fully descend into that bitter feeling, a flying memo fluttered overhead, dropping onto your outstretched hand. You read it aloud, quite grateful for any distraction from the tense atmosphere.

"Ms. Thatch wants to see us before the briefing," you announced stiffly, walking away without waiting for him.

"Oh, there you are!" Ms. Thatch beamed as you entered. Her eyes flickered briefly behind you. "Where's Haechan?"

"Right here," he said flatly, stepping in a second behind you.

"Good!” she chirped, either not noticing or purposely ignoring your frosty demeanors. "You’ve both heard about our summer charity event, I presume. Since your project is the most promising out of all the interns, I have volunteered you to present at the event. It’s the perfect opportunity for you to find sponsors. The Minister herself will be there, as will your father, Mr. Lee."

Your eyes darted toward Haechan, who was stubbornly silent, making no effort to voice his usual objections.

"Actually, Ms. Thatch," you said quickly, "we haven't fully finalized the proposal yet. It might be too early to—"

"We'll do it." Haechan interrupted calmly, catching you completely off-guard.

Your gaze snapped toward him, incredulous and suddenly furious. He carefully avoided meeting your eyes.

"Wonderful!" Ms. Thatch clapped her hands enthusiastically, lipstick-stained teeth on full display. "I'm certain you'll manage beautifully! As I said, you're the strongest interns we've had this term. I’m not just saying that because of your parents."

A stiff smile was all you could muster in response, leaving the office after she finished explaining all the details.

You were hot on Haechan’s heels, ready to confront him about exactly what the hell he thought he was doing. But before you could even open your mouth, a deep, familiar voice stopped you cold.

"Son," Mr. Lee’s smooth, cold tone sliced through the air behind you.

You both turned slowly. Haechan’s expression hardened instantly, tension sharpening the lines of his face.

His father’s eyes flickered briefly over you, before settling firmly on his son again. "A word. Alone."

Haechan glanced at you for a second before nodding stiffly at his father and walking away, leaving you alone in the echoing corridor, with nothing but dread twisting tight in your stomach.

The next morning you found a fresh stack of parchment waiting on your usual table in the Archives with Haechan’s handwriting. A terse note sat on top.

Finished cross-referencing 1908–1911 tariff updates.See margin for flagged conflicts.—L.H.

When he finally appeared, he offered only a curt nod before sliding into the seat opposite you. For two hours he spoke in clipped sentences—“Need the ledger from shelf three-C,” “Double-check the French translation,” “Sign here so Thatch can log the revision.” Every time your questions strayed toward anything personal like Cassia, the meeting with his father, or even how he’d slept he deflected with a pointed glance at the parchment and a quiet, “Focus, Y/N.”

By the end of the week the chill had crystalized into routine: he arrived early, buried himself in research, left the moment your tasks ended. No playful shoulder-bumps in the corridor, no midnight trips for coffee, no sly grins when you corrected his footnotes. Only efficient partnership, as if the night he’d fallen asleep in your bed belonged to someone else’s life.

You told yourself it didn’t matter—you had a proposal to polish and sponsors to impress—but the hollowness followed you everywhere, rattling like a loose Snitch inside your chest.

The Ministry gardens glittered beneath strings of floating lanterns; orchestral music drifted over rows of donation tables. You arrived with a stack of project summaries tucked under your arm, determined to network, to prove Ms Thatch’s faith wasn’t misplaced.

You were halfway through charming a prospective backer when the crowd started murmuring., everyone’s attention sliding toward the main archway.

Haechan walked in at his father’s side, looking immaculate in midnight-green robes. Cassia Selwyn glided beside him, her hand nestled in the crook of his arm. Her pale hair swept over one shoulder, her expensive gown shimmering frost-silver under the lights. Together they looked carved from an old pure-blood portrait.

Your throat tightened. Haechan’s expression was cool, polite, but you saw the moment he spotted you. A flicker ofregret? Apology? But it vanished as Cassia leaned in to whisper, her crimson lips close to his ear. He nodded once, mask settling back into place, and let himself be steered toward the VIP tables.

“So,” your potential sponsor prompted, oblivious to the scene, “does the phased tariff model begin year one, or do you anticipate a six-month grace period?”

You swallowed, forcing your voice steady. “Six months,” you replied, though your eyes kept drifting to the far end of the lawn where Cassia laughed lightly at something Mr Lee said, her fingers still resting on Haechan’s sleeve.

For the rest of the evening you played your role but every glance across the crowd found him beside her, shoulders squared, distance in his eyes. And each time, the hollow flutter in your chest grew a little sharper.

When the orchestra launched into a waltz, sponsors swept onto the dance floor. Cassia turned, hand outstretched in silent invitation. Haechan hesitated before taking it.

They moved flawlessly together, was she all poised grace, and he the perfect partner. Applause rippled as they passed, Ministry officials nodding approval. You stood at the edge of the lawn clutching your untouched glass of elf-made wine, wondering how something that had never officially started could sting so much.

Your mother appeared suddenly at your elbow, startling you so badly you nearly spilled your drink.

“Are you romantically involved with the Lee boy?” she asked coolly.

Your gaze snapped up, shock widening your eyes. “What? No! Why—why would you even think that?”

She raised an eyebrow slowly. “You know I’m not one to entertain gossip, darling. But whispers at the Ministry tend to travel fast.”

You swallowed, heart rising to your throat. “What whispers?”

“The Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports approached me the other day about something he overheard.” She paused to sip her wine, calm and unbothered. “A rather heated conversation between Mr. Lee and his son... apparently about you.”

Your stomach tightened uncomfortably. “About me?”

“Yes. It seems that Mr. Lee explicitly instructed his son to stay away from you. I dismissed it as ridiculous at the time. How involved could you possibly be with that boy to warrant all that fuss?” Her sharp eyes turned toward the far end of the garden, landing pointedly on Haechan. “But tonight, seeing the way he’s been parading around with the Selwyn girl, smiling only for the photographs yet repeatedly throwing you those longing glances… I suspect perhaps Mr. Lee was right to worry.”

You felt your face flush deeply, skin prickling under your mother’s scrutiny. She'd always read you far too easily.

“Mother, I—”

She shook her head slightly, cutting you off. “Don’t lie to me, Y/N. It’s written all over your face.”

You lowered your eyes, lips pressed tight to avoid betraying anything further.

“Let me give you a piece of advice,” she continued impassively. “Don’t let yourself get more tangled with him than absolutely necessary. I’d hate for you to find out the hard way exactly why I'm warning you about this.”

She touched your arm briefly before walking away from your frozen form. The only sound your brain could register after that was the anxious pounding of your heart and the echo of her words.

You were still reeling when a familiar shadow fell across the refreshment table.

“There you are,” Haechan said softly. Up close, his formal robes looked stiff and constricting, as though he’d rather be wearing else.

“Got bored of your date so soon?” you muttered, trying to sound disinterested.

“She’s not—” His jaw worked. “Forget it. I actually came to review our talking points. Thatch expects us to pitch before dessert, and this” he lifted his champagne “isn’t helping me focus.”

“You’ve memorized those points twice over.”

“Just humor me, please?” His eyes flicked toward the hedge-lined maze beyond the garden. “Let’s go somewhere quieter.”

“Fine,” you sighed reluctantly after a minute of glowering.

The both of you slipped through the open arch between garden walls, careful to make sure no one was watching. Not that it mattered. Even if your intentions were innocent—and you weren’t entirely convinced they were—people would talk. They always did.

The deeper into the maze you walked, the more muffled the party became. Only the sound of your heels against cobblestone and Haechan’s steps behind you remained. You reached a quiet alcove surrounded by ivy and waited with arms crossed, pretending not to notice the way his eyes dragged across your bare shoulders.

“Okay,” you said, grabbing it from him. “What point of the presentation were you so desperate to—?”

“Your dress,” he murmured instead. “It’s distracting.”

You blinked. “That’s not a point in the presentation.”

“No,” he agreed, stepping closer, “but it’s why I couldn’t focus back there.”

“Try a little harder then, we need to present this soon”

“Mm,” he hummed, pulling out the folded parchment with your notes from his jacket pocket. “Start reading then.”

You took the parchment and started reading, brows furrowed as you scanned it. “The primary concern is the—”

Suddenly he was behind you, his hand reaching for your waist. You paused. “Haechan…”

“Keep going,” he said quietly. “I’m listening.”

You swallowed hard and stared at the words, trying to focus. “The primary concern is the inconsistency between—”

His hand slid higher.

“Are you seriously—?”

“This helps me focus,” he said, leaning in so close you could feel the heat of his breath at your neck. “Don’t stop now. You’re doing so well.”

The rasp in his voice and the way his hands kept feeling you over your clothes was making it very difficult to even breathe let alone read the stupidly messy words on the parchment. Why was his handwriting so bad?

“Keep reading,” he murmured again, lips grazing your ear.

You tried. “Um—the projected savings…and… and the reallocation of private funding—”

His thumbs skimmed small circles through the thin fabric of your gown, sliding higher to the tense line of your ribs. The parchment fluttered in your fingers.

“…and, uh, incentives for small-scale producers…” You hated the tremor in your voice, he clearly loved it. You could practically hear him smirk.

“You missed the compliance clause,” he whispered, letting one hand slide under the fall of your hair, settling against the back of your neck.

You licked your lips, found the line, forced the words out. “Clause sixteen… sets non-compliance penalties at.. at seven percent—”

His other hand traced the curve of your waist, sliding lower, drawing you back until you felt the press of his chest. The parchment crinkled. The pulse point in your neck pulsed wildly against his mouth.

“Seven percent is too lenient,” he murmured. “We should make them beg to meet the standard.”

You swallowed hard. “We should… probably get back.”

“In a minute.” He nudged your hair aside and pressed an unhurried kiss below your ear that made your knees wobble slightly.

“Is this really the time?” you gasped.

“Shh.” His hand at your neck slipped forward, guiding your chin to tilt slightly. “Eyes on the notes, princess.”

You tried, and failed, to focus on the words. Every line blurred as his lips traced slow paths from your jaw to your shoulder. The maze felt impossibly still, as though even the garden itself was holding its breath.

“Haechan, if someone finds us—”

“They won’t.” A gentle nip at your earlobe. “Read the next bullet.”

You forced your gaze down. “Improved… audit protocol… mandatory quarterly—” Your voice broke when his hands slid to your hips, drawing you back against him fully. You felt the unmistakable evidence of how little “reviewing” mattered to him just now.

“Quarterly audits,” he echoed, his tone husky. “Brilliant idea.”. Soft lips drifted to your collarbone.

“This is— spectacularly stupid,” you whispered, though your body melted under his hands.

“Stupid,” he agreed, skating calloused fingers up the slit of your gown until night air kissed your thighs. “Let’s be quick, then. Prove we’re brilliant later.”

The parchment crinkled in your grip, words dissolving into texture. Somewhere beyond the maze someone laughed too loudly, and you discovered recklessness had the flavor of champagne and something breathtakingly alive.

“This... this is too risky,” you breathed, head tilting back as his fingers ghosted over your skin.

“I’ll be quick,” he promised, mouth dragging along your jaw.

Of all the things you’d done with Haechan, this was easily the most idiotic. More reckless than letting him go down on you in the Archives. More dangerous than that kiss behind the velvet curtain at the gala. Especially after the warning from your mother—you knew better. You should have walked away.

But Haechan always knew how to get what he wanted and he knew exactly how to make you want it too.

The thought that he was here, fingers sliding past your underwear, while your mother, his father, and Cassia Selwyn were probably sipping champagne and wondering where you’d slipped off to... gave you a guilty rush that made your legs open slowly.

“Okay,” you whispered at last.

His hand slid under your panties in response, fingers cupping you firmly and spreading you open. You were already, shamefully, soaked.

“Always so eager for me,” he muttered, rubbing teasing circles over your clit. “For someone who whines so much.”

“We… don’t have time for your mouth,” you snapped breathlessly, shoving him back against the ivy-covered wall and yanking at his belt.

“I love it when you boss me around,” he groaned, eyes half-lidded as you worked his trousers down. “Makes me feel like a very bad boy.”

“You are,” you hissed. “A fucking disgrace.”

“Fuck” His boxers hit the ground, cock slapping up hard against his stomach—red, slick at the tip, and twitching.

You grinned. “Someone’s happy to see me.”

“You have no fucking idea,” he rasped, grabbing your hips and dragging you closer. His hands slid down, squeezing your ass. “Every time we’re in the same room, all I can think about is this.”

“If only you weren’t so busy playing daddy’s little puppet…” you purred, kissing along his jaw.

His breath hitched, but the smirk didn’t fade. “Don’t talk about my father while your hand’s around my cock.”

“Oh?” You tightened your grip enough to make him hiss between his teeth. “Does it kill the mood?”

“No,” he groaned, rolling his head back against the ivy. “Makes me want to fuck that little attitude out of you.”

That was all the warning he gave before grabbing your waist and hoisting you up easily. Your back hit the ivy wall as his hips jerked forward, cock grinding hard between your thighs. Not inside yet but pressed right where it hurt most, dragging against soaked lace.

“Haechan—fuck—”

“You wore this for me, didn’t you?” he whispered fingering your lacey panties, lips at your throat. “This little slit that barely covers anything. You wanted me to rip them off you tonight.”

“Shut up and do it,” you snarled, grinding against him.

He growled something unintelligible, biting down on your shoulder hard enough to leave a mark, then reached between you to yank your panties so hard they ripped easily. The head of his cock slipped through your slick folds and you both gasped.

“You’re so wet,” he rasped, voice breaking as he dragged the tip over your clit once. “Fuck, you were ready for this before I even touched you.”

He slid in with one hard thrust that knocked the air out of your lungs. You gasped, eyes fluttering shut, nails digging into his shoulders.

“Eyes on me.” He growled, snapping his hips forward again, deeper this time.

You looked at him and whatever was in your expression made him moan. “There she is,” he whispered. “Fucking beautiful when you give in.”

His thrusts turned punishing, dragging against everything inside you that made your spine arch and your thighs clamp tight around his waist.

“This—” he panted, “—this is mine. This body. These sounds. You can pretend otherwise but—” he slammed into you, hard enough to make you cry out, “—this belongs to me.”

You didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. Your breath was caught in your throat, stars flashing behind your eyes as the heat coiled lower and lower.

“You gonna cum for me?” he whispered, biting at your earlobe. “Right here where anyone could walk by? Your mother. My father. Cassia.”

“Don’t stop,” you begged, voice shaking. “Please, don’t fucking stop—”

“Say it,” he demanded, hand sliding between your bodies to rub tight circles over your clit. “Say who’s making you cum.”

“You,” you gasped. “You. Fuck, Haechan—please—”

You cried out when your orgasm hit, nails scoring red lines into his back as your walls clenched around him. He groaned low and rough, fucking you through it. Seconds later, he spilled into you with a strangled moan, forehead pressed to yours.

Only the sound of your panting, the distant music from the gala, and the rustle of ivy around you could be heard.

“That was a good review.” He whispered against your lips.

His cum was still dripping down your thighs when he kissed you again, but only for a breath. Then he pulled back, and looked down at his wrist watch.

“We still have about ten more minutes before the presentation” he said, voice wrecked.

“So…?” you asked, still trying to catch your breath.

“I wanted to try something”

Before you could ask what, he flicked his wand and your dress vanished in a puff of smoke.

You gasped. “Are you serious?”

“Very,” he murmured, tapping your sternum next. “Desino gravitatem.”

Your body lifted off the ground like a marionette cut from strings, floating weightless as the ivy trembled behind you.

“What the—”

But his hands were already back on you, guiding your hips forward in midair. You were suspended, spread and hovering high enough for him to slot between your thighs again. He flipped you with a wrist flick, your back now to him, ass lifted, legs dangling.

“Perfect,” he muttered, gripping your waist like he was trying to memorize the feel. “Jaemin once bragged about using this spell on a girl. complete bollocks, by the way—he can barely do a simple leviosa half the time. but i’ve been dying to try it ever since.”

“And it didn’t occur to you to maybe ask first?” You snapped, flailing slightly.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“… I mean, I hardly have a choice now, do i?”

he chuckled, the sound warm and low against your back. “I promise you’re gonna love it. Prefect’s honor.”

“You were never a prefect.”

“Yeah, but I’m very committed to pleasing you.”

He pushed back inside you with a groan, the new angle making you curse violently as your body trembled in midair. His hand wrapped around your throat with enough pressure to steady you as he thrust upward into you.

Every time his hips slammed into you, your body jerked forward. The lack of gravity and the angle made it feel like every thrust reached your head.

“You like this?” he growled. “Being my little floating fucktoy?”

“I hate you.” You moaned.

He smacked your ass. “Try again.”

“Fuck— s’good… don’t stop—” you whimpered.

“Better.”

Your moans were getting louder, echoing through the enchanted ivy, the charm he’d placed keeping you perfectly in place even as you writhed midair.

And then he did something insane.

He cast Gemino, the duplication charm.

Instantly, a spectral copy of himself shimmered into view in front of you. The second Haechan—transparent and golden at the edges—grabbed your hair and kissed your mouth while the real one kept fucking you from behind.

Your brain nearly short-circuited, too overwhelmed.

“This is crazy,” you moaned into the phantom’s mouth, barely coherent.

“So’s half the shit we’ve already done,” the real one panted.

And when his fingers slid between your legs again, teasing your swollen clit as the illusion bit down gently on your lower lip, you came so hard you screamed his name loud enough that it had to echo into the party.

The hovering charm flickered, and Haechan caught you against him before you could drop, still inside you, panting.

“You’re deranged,” you whispered, clinging to him.

His mouth was at your ear. “I know you loved it.”

“Please bring my dress back.” you said, shivering slightly.

He quickly made your dress appear again.

“What even were those spells?”

“Why? You wanna try them on me?” he smirked.

You shoved him and summoned a hand mirror to fix your appearance. Every bit of your makeup was smudged and your hair was a mess. You sighed and fixed it. Haechan simply brushed his hand through his hair. You reached up and wiped off some lipstick that was smudged on his lips. Also, put a glamour charm to cover the bruises that were starting to bloom where your lips had been on his neck.

“Ready to kill this presentation then?” He asked.

“Let’s go” you replied.

And kill the presentation, you most certainly did.

The Ministry atrium felt almost gentle the day after the fundraiser. Probably because you were still riding the high of a perfect presentation, the fact that many donors had signed, Ms. Thatch had all but done a cartwheel, and the Portkey Tariff proposal just needed a last polish before being sent up to the Department heads. Life, for once, was cooperating.

You arrived early, as usual, so you stopped by the breakfast nook near level five to enjoy a quiet moment before the day started. You even let yourself order the overpriced chamomile from the enchanted dispenser.

The peace lasted precisely three and a half sips, until you noticed two witches at a nearby table. One pretending to stir her tea for the tenth time, the other tilting the Prophet so conspicuously towards you it might as well have had your name printed on the cover.

You checked your face in the reflection of your spoon but nothing was off. No food in your teeth, your lipstick wasn’t smudged, no eye buggers. Nothing on your face explained the sudden interest.

A weird feeling twisted in your guts. Your first thought was, no way. Your second thought was, check anyway. So you walked to the newspaper stand and picked up a copy.

The front page was an article about the Turkish Minister’s retirement, nothing crazy. You scanned further, flipping pages of Quidditch standing, goblin policies, and other uneventful news. Until you finally found an article about the fundraiser on page six.

You scanned the article quickly. It was mostly praise for the decor, attendance from international guests, and a nod to the interns’ presentations. And then, just beneath the column, in a faint gray box labeled Social Notes & Curiosities:

"Not all moments at this year’s gala were on the official itinerary. Several sharp-eyed partygoers noted that two unnamed interns vanished into the hedge maze for “several curious minutes” during the height of the festivities, returning just before the closing presentation looking flushed and disheveled. Sources declined to identify the pair, but wondered aloud whether young ambition sometimes… overgrows the path.”

Blood drained from your face so fast you felt light-headed. No names…but anyone with half a brain could add them. You folded the paper with shaky hands, and left the nook on autopilot, hunting for Haechan.

Before rounding the corner toward the Archives hall you heard voices whispering in a heated argument.

“I just wonder if you’re serious about your future, Haechan.” you recognized Cassia Selwyn’s silk-smooth voice.

“So you planted that story?!” Haechan sounded pissed.

“Don’t look at me like I'm the villain. You and I were promised to each other before we could even read. You wandering off with her—”

“Is none of your business.” He spat.

Cassia's tone sharpened. “It is when it jeopardizes the alliances our parents built. I won’t let a half-blood charity case ruin everything just because you’re in your rebellious phase.”

You pressed flatter against the wall, pulse roaring.

Haechan’s reply was almost a growl. “If you ever bring her into this again—”

“You’re the one who brought her into this,” she cut in. “But soon enough you’ll remember why duty always wins over puppy love.”

Something, maybe his fist, hit the wall. You flinched though it was a few meters away.

“I’m warning you, Cassia. Stop your little games.”

He stormed off in the opposite direction; Cassia’s heels clicked leisurely the other way. Only then did you realize you hadn’t breathed for a full thirty seconds.

You were already seated when Haechan walked into the briefing room.

He pulled out the chair next to you like he always did. Your fingers kept moving over the edge of your parchment, smoothing the crease you'd created while standing outside that hallway, listening to Cassia carve pieces of you apart.

"You okay?" He asked under his breath.

"I'm fine." Too fast.

You didn’t need to look to know he was frowning.

"You sure? You kind of—"

“—We're starting,” you cut in, straightening as Ms. Thatch entered the room with her usual whirlwind energy.

“Brilliant work last night, everyone!” She said, stacking folders with a flick of her wand. “Now, just a few corrections and then the proposals will officially be on their way to senior review. And”—she paused, smiling brightly—“We’ve got a new addition to the team for the rest of the internship.”

The door creaked open behind you.

“This is Emil Chartier,” Ms. Thatch announced. “Our international liaison from Beauxbatons. Top of his class in Diplomatic Transmutation, fluent in six languages, and here to help polish our draft for European compatibility.”

You turned just as he stepped forward. He was tall, with a willowy frame, and wearing robes in a midnight-blue cut so precise the velvet seemed poured onto his shoulders. He had sun-touched blond curls, one errant lock deliberately tucked behind a narrow ear. High cheekbones, a mouth that hinted at a permanent half-smile even when perfectly neutral, and eyes that looked grey at first glance, but slightly amber at the edges when the light caught.

He stepped forward on soft-soled dragonhide shoes and stopped at a conversational distance from the table.

“Bonjour,” he said, voice smooth as warm honey. “I’m very excited to join you all. I’ve read your project outlines, they were brilliant.”

“I’m thrilled to be here. Your project outlines were brilliant.”

The words floated over the entire table, but his gaze never wavered from you.

Haechan scoffed next to you. It was barely a breath but you felt it. Then his quill bent as he pressed down just a shade too hard, blotting ink across his notes.

Emil continued obliviously. “I’m especially interested in the tariff-equalisation clause. The logic is elegant, I’d love to discuss it in more detail.”

His smile was soft, earnest. Yours flickered back before you could help it.

Ms. Thatch clapped her hands. “Very well! Then Y/N and Haechan can work closely with Emil for this final stage.”

“Magnifique!” Emil chirped, pulling the chair beside you. He gave Haechan a polite nod, then turned back to you. “I was especially impressed by your cross-referencing in the North Sea tariff section.”

Haechan made another annoyed sound but you didn’t look at him.

“That was all her,” he said, voice casual but tight around the edges.

“Then she deserves the praise,” Emil replied easily, eyes sliding toward you with warmth. “I admit, I was curious to see if the one behind the proposal was as impressive in person.”

You managed a quiet laugh. It was almost disorienting, being noticed in the way Cassia had said you never would be. As if your worth was obvious, not conditional.

You reached for the inkpot, intending to refill it. Emil caught the movement and reached over first. “Allow me,” he said, voice low. “Can’t have ink stains ruining those clever hands.”

Haechan’s quill snapped with a quiet crack. No one else seemed to notice—Ms Thatch was already launching into the agenda—but you caught the tiny muscle that jumped in his jaw, the way his eyes narrowed a fraction before he repaired the quill with a flick of his wand.

Emil blinked at him, then whispered to you. “Should I be worried I've offended someone?”

“Not at all,” you murmured, returning the smile, even as your heart twisted in your chest.

You didn’t wait around after the meeting ended. You gathered your notes and slipped out before the room even cleared. The air in there felt too suffocating. You needed quiet and space.

But of course, you didn’t get that.

“Y/N—wait.”

Haechan’s voice chased you halfway down the northeast spiral before you finally stopped, turning sharply just outside the records annex.

“What?” you snapped.

He blinked. “...You’re upset.”

“Wow, nothing gets past you.”

Haechan stepped closer, one hand gripping the railing. “Okay. sarcasm noted. Can you just…tell me what’s going on?”

You gave a breathy, incredulous laugh. “What’s going on is I just found out you’re playing with me while you pretend you’re not already betrothed to.”

His eyes darkened. “You heard that conversation.”

“All of it.”

“Then you know she’s full of shit.”

“Doesn’t really matter, does it? Because she still has a claim to your future.”

He moved to speak, but you weren’t finished.

“And you know what the worst part is? I already expected it. I should’ve known that someone like you would end up with someone like her”

“Is that what you think?” he said finally, voice too soft.

You crossed your arms. “I spent the morning reading about us in the prophet and then i had to sit next to you like nothing happened. while that new intern—who doesn’t even know me—managed to actually say something nice about my work the way you never have.”

Your voice broke a little on the last word, but you pushed through.

“And it just made me realize... maybe it wouldn’t be this hard with someone else. Maybe I wouldn't feel like I have to prove myself every second just to be taken seriously.”

Haechan's jaw clenched. “Why are you even bringing him into this?”

“Why not?” you snapped. “He’s not the one being yanked between his family’s expectations and his own guilty conscience.”

“You don’t think I'm trying?” he said, louder now. “I'm walking a tightrope every damn day trying to keep my father from pulling me out of this internship entirely. If he knew what happened in the maze—if he knew how far this has gone—”

“He’d what?” you challenged. “Marry you off faster?”

The silence was confirmation was enough.

You sucked in a breath. “So that's it. Cassia was right.”

“No,” he said immediately, stepping forward. “She’s not. She doesn’t know how I really feel about you. She doesn’t get to decide that. Not her, or my father, or anyone.”

His eyes were shining with rage and desperation.

You stared at him for a long second, heart racing, unsure if you wanted to slap him or kiss him or cry.

“…I can’t do this if i’m just a rebellion phase for you,” you whispered.

His expression shattered.

“You’re not.”

The words hung limp between you, nothing to cling to, nothing to soften the fall. You turned and walked away, fingers curling into fists at your sides. Not because you didn’t believe him.

Because you did.

And that made everything worse.

You found yourself in one of the small auxiliary lounges on level seven—mostly unused, with a cracked fireplace charm and mismatched armchairs that smelled dusty. You curled into one near the window, letting the sun slant across your skirt as you stared down at the proposal draft without reading a single word.

You didn’t cry. You were past that. You were just angry and hurt. And tired in a way that had nothing to do with spellwork or policy corrections.

A soft knock broke your silence.

“May I?” Emil asked gently, gesturing to the seat across from you. “I noticed you left in a hurry.”

You hesitated, then nodded.

“I wanted to apologize,” he said after sitting down.

“For what?”

“For… Perhaps inserting myself too comfortably this morning. I didn't realize things were so tense.”

You exhaled, shaking your head. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Actually, you were the only person who treated me like… just a person today.”

He offered a small smile. “Well. You are quite an impressive person.”

You gave a tired laugh, but it came from your chest this time. “You barely know me.”

“True. But I saw how your colleagues looked at you when you spoke in the meeting. Especially him.” Emil's tone stayed neutral, but his eyes were kind. “Whatever else is happening… I don't think you’re as alone as you feel.”

You looked down at your hands. “I don't know what I am to him. And I'm scared to ask.”

“Then don’t,” he said gently. “Not yet. Let him decide if he’s brave enough to make it clear.”

You sat with that for a long moment. He didn’t press just reached into his satchel, pulled out a little wrapped croissant from the café cart, and placed it on the table between you without a word.

“Is this for me?”

“Consider it strategic morale support.”

You smiled despite yourself.

Haechan stared at the shredded parchment in his hands. His third failed attempt at rewriting the trade summary. Ink had smudged from his fingers to his temple sometime during the last hour, but he hadn’t noticed. Or cared.

Your voice still echoed in his head. “Maybe it wouldn’t be this hard with someone else.”

He scrubbed a hand down his face and stood abruptly. The movement knocked over a stack of annotated notes and sent one sliding under the archive cabinet. He let it stay there.

He didn’t know why he always did this—why he always ruined the one thing that felt like it mattered the second it got real.

His father’s voice drifted in his memory: “Sentiment makes you weak. Attachments make you vulnerable.”

But you didn’t make him feel weak. You made him want to be braver.

His eyes flicked to the small framed article pinned to the wall. A piece from last year’s Ministry Gala, featuring his father’s speech about legacy and honor and discipline. Haechan wondered if anyone would ever write something about him without including the word Lee in the headline.

He couldn’t fix this with you. Not until he figured out how to stop being a coward.

So he kept quiet. Let his father go on assuming he’d ended things. Let him believe the engagement to Cassia was back on track. It bought him enough time to work out how to unravel the noose his father had spent years looping around his neck.

In reality, this wasn’t just about you. It was also about being looked at like a pawn, about being maneuvered like his only use was to cement power through maintaining the bloodline.

Cassia was the first knot he had to cut.

He knew it had to be public. Loud enough that no one—especially his father—could twist it into a temporary setback or a lover’s quarrel. It had to be permanent.

The perfect opportunity was already on the calendar.

Cassia’s father’s birthday dinner which was set to be held at The Gilded Laurel, an old wizarding restaurant perched on the Cornish cliffs. Known for its fairy- enchanted chandeliers and tables that float slightly above the floor, it was a staple for the pureblood elite. Every detail of the evening would be noted, photographed, whispered about. If he broke it off there, in front of her family, in front of his father, in front of the Prophet’s most loyal leeches… there would be no going back.

He wasn’t nervous about facing everyone. He was only terrified of what you’d think by then. Of whether you’d already decided you were done waiting.

Because every hour that passed without him telling you the truth… It was another hour you might spend believing that you didn’t matter. That he’d chosen her. That you’d just been a mistake in between his family’s expectations.

But you weren’t. And he’d prove it, even if he had to burn everything else down to do it.

The night of the dinner party came faster than expected. Haechan arrived with his father’s hand resting on his shoulder. Cassia greeted them at the entrance in a blue satin dress and a smile as perfect as porcelain.

“Try to look happy,” she murmured while the photographer adjusted his focus.

“Working on it.” Haechan replied noncommittally, eyes already scanning the room for the biggest audience.

The crystal goblets chimed and soup bowls floated down onto their table. Conversation swelled about trade numbers, Ministry gossip, Quidditch brackets. Haechan nodded in all the right places while cataloguing where the reporters were.

After the plates were cleared and dessert was served, Mr. Selwyn rose with his glass aloft.

“To family, old alliances, and future unions.” His gaze lingered on Cassia and Haechan. Polite applause followed.

Haechan stood before it died away.

“I’d like to add something,” he started.

“I know this dinner is meant to celebrate Mr. Selwyn, as well as our families and legacy.” He looked at Cassia, who was staring at him with a frozen, perfect smile. “But it would be dishonest of me to sit here and pretend like this engagement is moving forward.”

A cold silence flattened the whole room, nothing but the sound of a few utensils falling onto plates could be heard.

Mr. Lee’s smile held, but his eyes flared sharp. “Haechan, sit down.”

“No, father.” Haechan answered, louder. “I need everyone here to hear me say it clearly. I’m not marrying for Cassia Selwyn.”

Cassia’s chair scraped back. For a second she looked sixteen again—hurt, furious, the mask of perfect grace gone. “You’re being ridiculous. We’ll discuss this in private.”

“No,” Haechan said, softer. “We won’t.”

Around them, guests exchanged delighted whispers. Without waiting for permission, without offering another explanation or bowing out gracefully, he turned his back on the table and walked straight out the gilded doors.

The last thing he heard before exiting was his father yelling his full name, followed by the distinct clatter of a wine glass hitting the floor.

He didn’t look back.

He only hoped it wasn’t too late to go find you.

The Floo spat him out inside the Ministry's atrium, ash on his robes and adrenaline still curling in his throat.

He hadn’t even stopped to breathe a second. Just left the restaurant, ignored the growing swarm of reporters trying to get a quote, and apparated straight to the only place he knew you'd be this late.

Because you never missed work. Not even when you were heartbroken.

The records floor was humming with cataloguing charms, but mostly empty. He moved through the aisles, scanning each reading nook, until he saw the sliver of warm light at the far end.

And you half-asleep on a bench with a file open in your lap, hair pulled into a messy knot, as if you'd given up on keeping it tidy hours ago. Peeking out from the edge of your notes, was a crumpled copy of The Daily Prophet.

The headline was impossible to miss. “Selwyns Host Private Dinner Amidst Engagement Rumors” A charmed photo of Cassia smiling beside him at the Summer Fundraiser. The article’s subheading speculated—rather confidently—that an official announcement was imminent.

Haechan swallowed, guilt tangling hot in his chest. The paper looked crumpled, proof you’d read every word and probably re-read it.

He approached quietly.

You didn’t look up when he got close, but your spine straightened defensively.

“I thought I’d find you here.” He said softly.

You didn’t answer.

“I ended it.”

That made you turn.

He looked a little wild. Hair windswept, face flushed, pupils still blown from whatever reckless high he'd just walked out of. But his voice was calm and clear.

“What?”

“I broke it off at her father’s birthday dinner. In front of the whole Selwyn clan. My father. The press.”

“Really?” was all you managed to breathe out.

He nodded once. “I said I wouldn’t marry her. That I never planned to. And then I left.”

“Just like that.”

You stared at him.

For weeks he’d let the world believe what it wanted. Let it write another name next to his. Let you become a mistake he’d made. And now, here he was, standing in front of you after the storm finally broke.

Haechan stepped closer as if he’d been reborn in the fallout. Shoulders squared, back unbowed, silk tie loosened like he could breathe for the first time in years. The usual tension around his mouth was gone, replaced by a flicker of something almost boyish. Relief, or maybe exhilaration at finally choosing his own future.

He looked lighter, taller, as if someone had cut the invisible strings that kept him posed for family portraits. And when his gaze found yours, it wasn’t apologetic but certain.

For the first time, he was standing in front of you looking sure of what he wanted.

“I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness,” he said. “And I’m not expecting it. But I needed you to hear this from me first.”

You couldn’t find any words to reply, all your thoughts were a mess. You almost thought he was a figment of your tired mind for a second.

He continued. “You said something the other day that stuck with me. That it felt like you had to try harder to be liked around me.”

“I hated that,” he said. “Because you’re the only person I’ve ever liked without trying at all. The only person I actually wanted to be seen with, not hidden. And I’ve been an idiot… No, worse than that. I’ve been a coward.”

You looked away, eyes burning.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen with my family after tonight,” he continued, voice quiet now. “But none of it matters if I lose you.”

“You could’ve told me,” you whispered after a few seconds.

“I know.”

“You let me believe I was just…” You swallowed hard. “nothing.”

“You’re everything to me, Y/N.”

He took another step and kneeled down, your eyes finally met his.

“Tell me what to do,” he said. “And I’ll do it. I don’t care if I have to claw my way back. Just give me a place to start.”

You were quiet for a long time, heart beating so hard it would surely bruise your ribs. “Why should I?”

“Because I’m in love with you.”

The words hit you harder than that rogue Bludger had in your third year. No wind-up or grand speech. Just the truth, raw and terrifying, dropped between you like a vial of undiluted Veritaserum.

You stared at him, eyes growing shinier with unshed tears. “You waited until now to say that?”

“I waited until I could mean it with every ounce of my soul,” he said. “I was a fool. I kept thinking I could keep you close while trying to satisfy the expectations placed on me. I thought maybe if I stayed quiet long enough, I’d find a way where no one got hurt.”

“Well,” you said, laughing without humor. “That didn’t work out so well, did it?”

“No,” he admitted. “It didn’t.”

“I don’t know what to say…”

“That’s okay.”

“And I still don’t know if I’m just something you want because your father told you not to.”

“Y/N, I promise—”

You cut him off. “But I missed you.”

His mouth parted, eyes flickering with shock and relief. As if he’d been waiting to hear those words, and didn’t think he deserved them.

“May I?” he asked, voice tight, almost broken.

You nodded.

He stepped into your space, slowly, reverently, afraid you might vanish. His forehead touched yours first. Then his lips.

This kiss wasn’t like the ones before, hurried or frantic or reckless. It was slow, as if he was building a home in the shape of your mouth.

You gripped the front of his shirt and pulled him closer, kissing him back with all the ache of the weeks you’d spent apart. Your tears slipped between his lashes, and his hands shook slightly as they cupped your cheeks.

“I missed you,” you breathed, pressing your forehead to his. “You fucking idiot.”

“I missed you more,” he said, smiling softly. “You brilliant, beautiful girl.”

His arms wrapped around your waist, holding you so tightly that for the first time in weeks, your ribs didn’t feel hollow anymore.

this was going to be longer, but i felt like the scenes i cut out did not match the vibes i wanted in the end… soooo there’s a bonus scene here if you’d like to support my writing

#nct x reader #nct dream fic #nct dream x reader #nct smut #nct dream smut #nct fic #nct x y/n #haechan fic #haechan smut #haechan x reader #haechan x you #nct haechan smut #haechan x y/n

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meta-sequoia · 3 months ago

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Rose genetics and the law of unintended consequences (or, ten rose bushes, reviewed)

I have a number of longposts in the backlog, including updates on a number of garden improvement projects I undertook over the winter, but I kept putting off posting them because there kept being Horrors. However, spring is here - in California anyway - and plants wait for no one.

Over the winter of 2025, as a coping mechanism for the aforementioned Horrors, I got really into roses. Because of who I am as a person, deciding what roses I wanted to buy also made me feel obliged to reconstruct the history of rose breeding, just to make sense of the teeming confusion of the tens of thousands of named rose varieties. Humans have been raising roses for food, medicine, and beauty for untold centuries, and so they've really grown up with us. The history of the development of roses, it turns out, is the history of the development of humanity in miniature.

This post has it all: history, some light phylogeny discussion, material analysis of English folk ballads, a conceptual framework for understanding how different kinds of roses vary and why, a #haul breakdown of what bare-root roses I got and what I thought of them, and some philosophical musings on what it means for an organism to be subjected to a long-term selective breeding process, to be remade wholly in the image of human desire. All that, and pictures of roses, under the cut.

My general region of California is considered to have a good climate for roses, much good may it do us. It never gets too hot or too cold, so they essentially never go out of season, and even though our winters are wet, the rest of the year is fairly dry. This is absolutely critical, because the main problem that makes garden roses hard to grow is fungal disease. Modern roses are incredibly susceptible to fungal diseases, which are caused, roughly, by Damp. This has typically been combated with toxic sprays (though there are now less-toxic options) and aggressive pruning regimens.

Needless to say, this is a ridiculous fucking problem for a plant to have. California natives, by comparison, hate irrigation - they have a natural life cycle involving being dry in summer and wet in winter, like California itself, so if you grow them in a climate resembling their natural range, without too much added water, they will be mostly OK. Roses, as far as I can tell, actually hate all water, including rain and humidity, which is much worse because gardeners do not control the weather. If it rains too often after, say, noon, the rose's leaves might get wet, fail to dry off, get a fungal disease, and die. If there is too much fog, or it is humid, as it is in most of the country in the summer, the rose's leaves might get wet &c. If you have a sprinkler system - you get the idea.

Fungal disease can also weaken roses and make them more prone to insect infestations. This is bad because modern garden roses are, without any help from The Weather, already incredibly prone to infestations from aphids, mites, beetles, and a mite-borne disease undescriptively called "rose rosette disease", which produces a habitus that I can only describe as "rose bush eldritch horror".

Now, this may all have you asking one question. Probably, that question is "why are you so obsessed with a plant that wants so badly to die?" I will not be answering this question today. Instead, I will be answering a different question, which is "Why do modern garden roses suck so bad?"

Now, if roses are subject to some manner of curse, then it isn't a family curse, phylogenically speaking. Roses - genus Rosa species extremely miscellaneous - are a member of the family Rosaceae, which contains a massive number of useful and delightful plants. It is possibly the most economically important family of plants next to the brassicas. The rose family brings us not just roses, but apples, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, plums, peaches, apricots, and almonds. And the wild rose, untouched by human efforts, is a lot like a raspberry, actually.

Its flowers have only five petals, in pink or white. It’s got thorny stems that form thickets, and oval (or, technically, lanceolate) leaves with lightly serrated edges. Its flowers are fragrant, which is an adaptation to their long and necessary coexistence with pollinators and other insects - fragrance serves as a chemical signal for insects to "come here" or "go away", depending. The wild rose is hardy, like all wild plants, tolerant of various environmental problems that would kill a garden rose: shade, salt, normal levels of ambient insect and fungal disease pressure, drought, being consistently rained on in the afternoon or evening. It may reproduce asexually from suckers - strong shoots from near the base of the plant - and this makes it able to withstand browsing pressure from e.g. deer. (Put a pin in that.) It also can reproduce in the normal way, by having its flowers pollinated and forming seeds, which are borne in prominent reddish-orange fruits called "hips".

This is not a rose I bought, but here’s Rosa gymnocarpa, a California native rose. It’s a wood rose, so it’s shade-tolerant, and it’s often found in redwood forests specifically, so it tolerates relatively dry soil and very acidic soil.

Honorable mention: Rosa gymnocarpa (wood rose)

Source: Calscape

A raspberry plant in flower, for comparison. Source

The wild rose has another trait, which may be surprising to those who have only ever seen garden roses: it blooms once, usually in the summer. This is typical of flowers, which almost always have a season, for the exact same reason fresh fruit has a season. Flowering plants are on a tight schedule: they need to finish up their blooming, so they can set fruit, so they can get their seeds out before winter, in case the frost kills them off. And mostly we’re used to that: tulips are for spring, so you don't expect a tulip to make a second showing in fall, or to flower continuously throughout the summer. But roses have been bred to do this, and have done it for centuries, for so long we barely remember what it was like when "roses blooming" was a time of year, an event.

It's possible that for most of human history, roses were all the more treasured for being fleeting, which simply isn't an aspect of how we moderns understand roses. I am constantly subjected to traditional ballads at home, both in English and German, so I am very aware that multiple Child ballads mention roses as a way of placing the events of the ballad at a particular time of year. In 'Lady Isobel and the Elf-Knight', a song traditionally associated with May Day, one version of the chorus references the events as occurring 'as the rose is blown'. And at the start of 'Tam Lin', the protagonist meets her fairy lover while plucking a double rose, is "laid down among... the roses red" by him, and finishes the ballad on Halloween night heavily pregnant with his child. The course of the ballad is inextricably intertwined with the course of the seasons, and the bloom of roses is synonymous with early summer. (There's so much symbolism in 'Tam Lin', but especially around roses. Can I interest you in tam-lin.org at this time?)

European religious literature even uses "a rose e'er blooming" as a purely figurative phrase, something impossible and magical enough to be a metonym for the Virgin Mary - but in the modern era, most garden roses are ever-blooming. The perpetual-blooming rose is not the natural state of the rose plant, but a kind of technology that had to be developed. And I don't know, I just think that's neat.

So what have we learned? The wild rose is: once-blooming, tough, possibly shade-tolerant depending on species, very thorny, bearing simple pink or white five-petaled flowers, that are fragrant, pollinator-friendly, and produce fruit readily enough. In short, a practical, normal sort of plant.

The garden rose is…not that. There’s no other way to put this: the modern garden rose is the wild rose, but bimboified.

Now, in case today is your first day on the Internet - well, first of all, welcome, it’s bad here - but secondly, bimboification is a niche fetish where someone is transformed into a hypersexualized version of themselves that is also very stupid. Plant domestication is obviously analogous. I didn’t originate this joke; in fact, I reblogged a joke like this just last week.

Roses are like this but even more so. Like, wheat is clearly bimboified. Its sexual parts (seeds) have been remade, swollen to ludicrous proportions, and wheat is probably worse at being a plant than wild grasses. But we created modern wheat from wild grass because it was more useful that way, and wheat could in theory survive and spread without human cultivation. Roses are Like That purely because we wanted to make them a more perfect decorative object. Centuries of intensive selection pressure for appearance have rendered roses useless as an independent plant: they are so disease-prone they need extensive intervention to even survive, and they are often physically incapable of propagating themselves - one of the basic features of plants! - without human aid. That’s plant bimboification.

Source: Heirloom Roses. This one is called 'Oranges 'n' Lemons. Hardly seems like the same plant!

Here are just a few examples, of what we've done to roses. Humans love rose petals - eating them, distilling them into perfume, smelling them, just looking at them - so the garden rose has massive flowers that are so stuffed with petals that pollinators cannot get at their centers, rendering the rose incapable of reproducing except possibly with the help of a human equipped with a paintbrush. Humans love bright colors, so modern roses come in every color their natural pigments allow. Garden roses are often - though not always - less thorny than their wild cousins, because thorns are inconvenient to humans, and so have been somewhat bred out.

And what’s just as important is what was bred out of wild roses in the process of becoming modern roses - by accident. As mentioned above, modern roses are often useless to pollinators, and, not unrelatedly, can’t reproduce without human help. They often lose their fragrance, if not specifically bred for it. They are very susceptible to disease, because gardeners can keep alive, through sheer stubbornness, plants that natural selection would have culled. Likewise, they need full sun where many wild roses can get by even in the shade of big evergreens, and they can't tolerate nearly as much cold, heat, or salt exposure as their wild relatives.

This 'use it or lose it' thing, by the way, is a general principle of selective processes like plant breeding, or like evolution. If you have two independent traits, A and B, and you select hard for A, then B is likely to gradually drop out of the population, simply because the subset of A carriers that also have B is likely to be small. It's pure statistics. (It essentially is a human-created population bottleneck.) The more intense and ruthless the selection pressure, the stronger the effect. Evolution cares a lot about seed production and hardly at all about color, so wild roses are plain but make enormous rose hips; humans like beautiful roses the color of sunsets, and are indifferent to seed production, so modern roses don’t make hips at all. The failure to select for eventually becomes an implicit selection pressure against.

(Highly-bred organisms are thus less, I guess, well-rounded genetically even before you get to issues of inbreeding, and if you assume there is no biological link between your selected-for traits and other ridealong traits, e.g. domestication syndrome. Genetics is complicated!)

One adapted wild-type trait that - I speculate - was not bred out, due to its direct usefulness to humans, was the ability of roses to grow back vigorously from having leaves or branches removed. This is, it seems to me, an adaptation to herbivore browsing - if you are a rose with minimal regrowth ability, and a deer chews on half your canes, it’s curtains for you. But humans also fully remove half of the canes of their garden roses every winter - it’s critical to controlling the fungal disease that so plagues them. Specifically, pruning improves airflow through the plant, which evaporates the water that keeps falling on the leaves from the sky. (You know. The rain, that roses both hate and need to live.) In some sense, we are acting as caretakers here, shaping the plant in inscrutable ways for its own good. But to the plant, we are basically deer: just another in a long line of animals that want to steal its leaves. Unbelievable! It needs those! Fuck you too, buddy: here’s a faceful of thorns.

Truly, a tale as old as time.

This brings me to my first actual rose review, a kind of bridge between wild roses and the world of cultivated roses.

#1: Rosa rugosa, probably "Hansa"

Source: the author's yard.

This is a sucker - a vigorous young ground-level shoot - from an unnamed rosebush from my mother's house. I say "probably 'Hansa'" because we have no idea what this actually is, only that it is a rugosa hybrid, purchased from an unknown nursery in the Midwest sometime during the Bush administration.

'Hybrid rugosas' are crosses between garden-type roses and a wild rose species called Rosa rugosa, which is native to much of Asia. This particular rose bush has many traits carried over from its wild parent: it's violently fragrant, a glorious sweet-spicy combo that smells to me like childhood and home; it has wrinkly leaves (characteristic of Rosa rugosa in particular); its stems are practically coated in prickles; and it's quite tolerant of shade, drought, and salt (Rosa rugosa is a beach rose).

The main virtue evinced by this rose, derived from its wild parent, is the same reason that it is still here in my garden: it is extremely difficult to kill. My mother, after hearing me say I wanted this specific rose bush at my house the same way it had been at my childhood home, dug up a sucker from her instance, put it in a bag with some wet dirt, carried it by hand on a multi-hour cross-country plane flight, and handed it off to me. Once I received it, I stuck it in a pot, because I was ripping up my lawn and had nowhere to plant it, and mostly forgot about it, because I was busy ripping up my entire lawn. It lost its leaves suspiciously early in the fall. ("That's not good," my mother said, over FaceTime, brow furrowed. "Are the rest of your roses doing that?")

But as the saying doesn't go, "where there's green cambium, there's hope", and I continued to take care of it throughout the winter. I eventually even remembered to put it in the ground. It is now March, and in defiance of the mockery of certain judgemental housemates, who said things like "why do you have a stick in a pot?" and "it's giving 'dead', my guy", this "stick" has now decided to become a rosebush, and has a grand total of (approximately) twenty-five leaves.

Like I said: extremely difficult to kill. It is currently planted 10-ish feet from the base of a redwood tree, a tough environment where some hardy garden-style roses have nonetheless been known to thrive. Given that its resurrection has occurred entirely while it was planted under the redwood, it doesn't seem too mad about its environment.

Review: holy shit, it’s alive???

#2: Zéphirine Drouhin, the "old garden rose"

Source: Heirloom Roses

Rosarians have conceived of many groupings of garden roses, based on known ancestry, phenotype, genetic studies, and Vibes, but one major breakpoint is those bred before 1867, the "old garden roses", and after 1867, the "modern garden roses".

The old garden roses were derived mostly from ancient European and Middle Eastern stock, which had themselves been created from wild roses centuries prior. For example, this is Rosa x alba, an ancient European rose strain; it was used as the heraldic badge of the medieval House of York during the English conflict known as the War of the Roses.

Source: not mine

Some of these roses are perpetual-blooming, a trait introduced as late as the eighteenth century, and which is entirely due to trade contact with China: as far as I can tell, the genes for strong reblooming only come from the Chinese rose-breeding tradition, which was itself centuries old by that point. So the modern Western concept of perpetual-blooming roses as the default kind of rose - like so many other aspects of modernity - is a direct result of Europeans cribbing from everybody else.

Interestingly, France was a major center for rose development during the early modern period. You can see it in the way old garden roses are named: overwhelmingly after some eminent madame or monsieur. This is probably connected to the fact that Josephine, Napoleon Bonaparte’s empress, was a rose fiend: she had two hundred and fifty new varieties of rose to be brought to her gardens at Château de Malmaison, which was probably pretty much all the named varieties of rose that existed then, and many of which were new to European cultivation at that time. Again, this represented a massive inflow of rose genes that were previously restricted to other countries or continents entirely. Inextricably, these gardens also represent the proceeds of early modern global trade, and of empire: Napoleon, on campaign abroad, himself sent her hundreds of specimens of flowering plants, and the French navy confiscated plants and seeds from ships captured and sea and sent them to her.

Anyway, Zéphirine Drouhin, created at the end of the "old garden rose" period and named for some now-forgotten madame or mademoiselle, is highly fragrant - one of the few roses said to really perfume the air - with a vibrant but old-fashioned color palette. (Apricot and yellow roses were also characteristic of the Chinese rose gene pool, and so were significantly less common in old garden roses.) Zéphirine Drouhin is also thornless, a rare trait that we nonetheless see in some old-fashioned garden roses, and a few modern garden roses as well.

Old garden roses have a variable but generally good level of disease resistance. Zéphirine Drouhin in particular, gets something of a bad rap for poor disease resistance; English rose breeder David Austin Roses says, tactfully, that it "prefers warmer climates" (versus, one must assume, rainy England) and that "controlling disease can be a problem". By this you should understand them to mean that it is a whiny little pissbaby that constantly gets blackspot, a diva that will defoliate at the drop of a hat (or the drop of, uh, water).

However, unlike certain other newer roses I will mention later, I have found Zéphirine Drouhin to be pretty healthy so far. I received this rose, like many in this post, "bare root", basically a stick, dormant in a bag of wood shavings. Upon being planted in a part-sun area, it has leafed out with only a scattering of aphids to show in terms of disease.

Review: So far, so good. Looking forward to the fragrance.

#3 and 4: 'Mister Lincoln' and 'Fragrant Cloud', the hybrid tea brothers

Remember how I mentioned that 1868 is the breakpoint between "old garden roses" and "modern garden roses"? That year marked the invention of a new type of rose, the 'hybrid tea', that is in some sense THE rose, the ARCHETYPE of a rose. If you ask someone who knows nothing about roses to draw 'a rose' - if you look up clipart of a rose - a hybrid tea rose is what you'll get.

Source: Star Nursery

This is Mister Lincoln, and although it was developed as late as the 1960s, it has the classic hybrid tea rose form. Hybrid teas have a very distinctive shape, described as "high-pointed", with a spiral of unfurling petals that curl at the edges, and they're borne singly on long stems, making them great for cutting and putting into vases and bouquets. They are not always strongly fragrant, and they are not generally very disease-resistant. They come in a very wide variety of colors, intense and subtle. They are reblooming.

Hybrid teas were developed by another East-meets-West cross, when the Chinese tea roses, freshly imported from Guangzhou in the early 19th century, were bred with the old garden roses. Tea roses have the same iconic form as the hybrid teas; they have those unique, pastel shades that were previously quite absent from European rose stocks; they smell like a fresh cup of tea. All these traits they impart to hybrid teas. Hybrid teas have been very popular ever since, and have been subject to a great deal of selective breeding for color and form.

Hybrid teas don't generally spark joy, to me. I find the 'cartoon rose' shape kind of twee, honestly. And the reputation for lack of disease tolerance puts me off. But I heard Mister Lincoln was incredibly fragrant, and that drew me in. Likewise Fragrant Cloud (1967), which also has the charming feature of being a violent neon coral that is allegedly very difficult to photograph.

Source: Heirloom Roses

“It'll be fine," I thought. "How much fungal disease can it get? It's not like it's humid here."

Never again. My trust is destroyed; fuck hybrid teas.

please, my son, he is very sick

This is my poor Mister Lincoln, planted from bare-root in mid-December. It has three different fungal diseases, and also an aphid infestation I can't seem to get it to shake. It looks like one of those diagrams of a liver in a medical textbook that has fatty liver and cirrhosis and liver cancer all at once, just so you can see what all the diseases look like. This is a rose that has every problem! No other rose in this flower bed comes close to having every problem! 'Munstead Wood' is also a modern garden rose (though from a very different lineage - see my review below) and it has no fungal diseases and not a single aphid!

Well, maybe the other hybrid tea I bought is doing better... well, nope, it rained last week and Fragrant Cloud has powdery mildew.

Review: Come on, man.

#5 Unidentified ‘sunset’ rose

I didn’t buy these roses; they came with my house. As a consequence, I have no idea what they are, but I am now intimately familiar with their traits, and I think they are very indicative of both the high and low points of modern garden roses.

On the surface level, the fact that these rose bushes are still with us is an impressive proof of their persistence under adversity. When I bought the house, these roses were being choked to death. Lily-of-the-nile had been planted way too close to them, and then permitted to grow unchecked and undivided for many years; their roots were completely infiltrated and surrounded with lily roots. The lily roots had also damaged the irrigation lines, which were dribbling uncontrolled amounts of water into the shared root zone. So when I excavated these roses, the whole area smelled strongly of rot, with visible mold throughout; the roots were fully wet even in the heat of August. The roses were also infested with blackspot, not surprisingly. I wasn’t sure if what I was doing was too little, too late.

But when they finally got some drainage, some direct sunlight, and some relief from the brutal root competition, they did start growing back, and even blooming. Come winter, I pruned hard, defoliated, and applied neem oil consistently. And they’ve made a comeback!

Source: these blooms are actually my roses.

They bloom, and they’re beautiful. They do this ombre thing, where the buds are bright yellow and as they open they go from yellow, to orange, and finally to red.

The growth is fairly vigorous, with no powdery mildew no matter how rainy it gets. But their foliage definitely suffers from blackspot, and occasional rose rust; the spores are probably ambiently present in the soil now, and they can’t quite seem to defend themselves, even with ample help from organic fungicides like neem oil.

They also have no fragrance. They smell like nothing. And that’s the standard modern garden rose in a nutshell, I think: beautiful color and form, shaky disease resistance, little fragrance. It’s a little sad, honestly.

Review: Okay, this one is really pretty, actually.

Interlude: Pesticides and the law of unintended consequences

So, yeah, you can sort of see how roses got a reputation for being picky divas. I can only imagine how bad this sort of thing must get in places that get (gasp!) rain or humidity in the summer.

Now, having created plants that are too disease-ridden to live, rose-lovers came up with practical and effective solutions to the disease problem they created. For the past century or so, the go-to fix for our increasingly disease-prone rose population has been chemicals: regular applications of synthetic insecticide and fungicide sprays, as well as plenty of fertilizer and herbicide to feed the roses and kill any competing weeds.

However, recall the theme of this post: the law of unintended consequences. In agriculture, the development of modern pesticides and fertilizers has been genuinely miraculous; the Green Revolution is estimated to have saved a billion people from starvation in the latter half of the twentieth century. Saving a billion people! Can you even begin to conceive of what it would be like to save a billion people, even grapple with the moral weight of that act? I know I can't; the number is simply too large for our moral intuitions to handle, I think. So I'm hesitant to bad-mouth pesticides and fertilizers too much.

But they do have massive downsides. Chemical fertilizers leach into the groundwater and cause algal blooms that make entire bodies of water go anoxic, rendering them uninhabitable to fish and the rest of the aquatic food chain. Insecticides are probably responsible for colony collapse, which endangers the pollinators that we rely on for our food supply.

And, well, even if you don't give a shit about the natural world - you are a part of the natural world. You are an animal, with all the frailty that implies. Our bodies use many of the same ancient metabolic pathways as insects and plants; the majority of your DNA is shared with a banana. And because you are an animal, it is very difficult indeed to create an insecticide that will poison other animals without poisoning you too, at least a little. Herbicides are somehow still worse, despite the more distant biological relationship between humans and dandelions: Roundup, for instance, is linked to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which has led to Monsanto paying out massive legal settlements to cancer patients who used their products.

So if we can't grow roses without coating them in poison, maybe we should just… not do that? Go back to growing super-hardy nearly-wild roses like rugosas, forgoing forever the elegance and sublime color of a modern rose?

Give up this? ‘Glowing Peace’, Heirloom Roses

Not so fast! Maybe this technological problem has a technological solution. If we bred roses so that they sucked, maybe we should just not do that! Make different roses! Make roses that don't suck!

#6-#8, ‘Ebb Tide', 'Eden', and 'Lavender Crush': roses that don't suck

Over the last fifty years, people have become increasingly aware of the impacts of modern lifestyles upon our health and the health of the planet and its ecosystems. So maybe this has made the public less willing to buy roses that need to be treated constantly with toxic sprays. Or maybe it's just that growing disease-prone roses is an enormous pain in the ass. Spray, prune, spray, defoliate, fertilize, spray, fertilize, spray, water - but not too much! Oops, powdery mildew. Defoliate and spray some more.

So the genetic health of the newer varieties of garden roses is greatly improved. The two hybrid teas I struggled with above were bred in the 1960s. All the named rose varieties in this section were bred since the 1990s or later: Eden in 1997, Ebb Tide in 2004, and Lavender Crush, the baby of the group, was introduced in 2016. All of them are vibrantly healthy and quite vigorous; Ebb Tide and Eden are shade-tolerant too, and Lavender Crush is allegedly very winter-hardy. After a scant two months in the ground, they've started to put out flower buds. And they keep some of the glorious color and form of older roses. Look at them!

Source: Heirloom Roses.

I don't mean to say all 20th century roses are bad and disease-ridden. I also have purchased 'New Dawn' (introduced 1930), due to it being the fifteen-dollarest rose at the Home Depot. (My toxic trait is that I am an absolute sucker for a good deal. I don't go into TJ Maxx anymore; it's too dangerous.) 'New Dawn' has all the ancestral, throwback traits I laud here: shade-tolerance, fragrance, disease resistance. It even brings in the pollinators! But it seems to me there's been a noticeable uptick in the quality of newer rose introductions, particularly when it comes to disease resistance. I'm not wired into the professional rose world to know what that is; I'm Literally Just Some Guy. But it's a good trend.

Review: I am so excited for the buds to open, you have no idea.

#9: 'Double Knockout': the 'landscape' rose

Wait, no, I take that back. These roses have too much ease of care. Put some back.

The Knockout rose has one virtue: you cannot kill it with an axe. Literally.

This rose was planted right at the foot of a redwood tree in my garden, because the previous owner of my house was an idiot. This is a terrifically bad setup for roses and redwoods: redwoods acidify the soil, and suck up water and nutrients aggressively, leaving little for surrounding plants, and of course they provide dense shade. Roses hate the acid, the dry and low-nutrient soil, and the shade; this plant never bloomed all last summer. For their part, the redwoods hate having anything planted in their inner root zone - their roots are relatively shallow for such a large tree. This is not a good situation for anyone, so I hacked this rose back to the ground, dug out as much of the root ball as I dared, and in my naivete thought that would be the end of it. Well, it has grown back. Now I am faced with the dilemma of whether to risk root injury to my redwood tree, or just let the rose be, bloomless as it is. Probably the latter is better for the redwood tree, on the whole. Maybe it’ll get choked out if I don’t water it? Anyone’s guess, really.

The category of landscape roses is a 2000s invention. The first Knockout rose was introduced in 2000 after years of intensive selective breeding for being easy-care, free-flowering, and disease-resistant; the similar Drift line was the product of an amateur rose breeder in 2006 to much the same ends. Landscape roses are so named because instead of being demanding prima donnas suited only to those who love roses enough to take on the Rose Tasks, they’re just another pretty shrub in the landscape.

And I will say this for them: in that bad, fungal spore–inundated flower bed I mentioned, my landscape roses (plus Munstead Wood, see below) are notably free of fungal disease.

Also, I think that's leaf tissue proliferating at the center of the bottom left bloom?? A rare but harmless growth disorder of flowering plants.

This comes at a cost, of course, at least if you’re a snob like me. I don’t think landscape roses are very interesting-looking - though of course they come in a wide variety of colors, the better to coordinate with the color scheme of your house! - and they are generally, tragically, without fragrance. While I can’t complain about anything that gets US gardeners to use less pesticides, they are barely roses to me. They are, in fact, the closest roses come to being an inanimate object, a decorative thing you can just plonk down in your garden wherever, like a tacky concrete statue. They’re a commodity; the enchantment is gone. I wouldn’t rip them out where they’re well-sited, but I sure wouldn’t plant more.

Now, this is incredibly mean to people who love landscape roses, but here goes. I’m reminded of a thread from r/Ceanothus, the California native gardening subreddit, that is now burned into my brain. OP asks for a native shrub recommendation, but not just any native shrub. OP wants a native shrub that will grow very tall, but also stay very narrow - 1’ wide in places. OP needs a native shrub that will grow thick and vigorous, to block out their view of the neighbors. OP needs this thing to be evergreen; OP presumably wants low water inputs. And OP needs all this, in a shrub that will grow in full shade.

In fairness, OP was polite about it, and this is a common problem for urban gardeners. The dark, untended canyon between buildings is a very common phenomenon in Californian cities. I too have a narrow, shaded side yard containing a tiny strip of crappy, gravelly dirt, that I’d love to grow something in: how do you think I found this post? Dear reader, I am very much at that devil's sacrament.

And the ceanothusheads of r/Ceanothus tried gamely. But one commenter replied with something that fully changed how I think about gardening:

Source: Reddit

Sometimes, what you need is not a living organism, with its own needs, that will change over time in ways you may not endorse, that interacts with the world around it. Sometimes what you really want is a man-made object. Sometimes what you want to grow in your tall, narrow, lightless, bone-dry side yard, for your privacy requirements, is a fence. And that’s what I think about landscape roses. In Mediterranean and desert climates, as long as there's enough sun, you can always fall back on planting a succulent. But not every location can grow succulents outdoors year-round. In temperate climates, landscape roses could probably be successfully replaced with a particularly attractive boulder. Or, if what you want is a smart-looking, easy-care hedge: consider a fence.

Review: I’d maybe rather plant a fence a succulent.

#10: 'Munstead Wood': the old English rose, reloaded

‘Munstead Wood’, my final acquisition, is a credit to another major modern rose breeding program, this time out of England: David Austin Roses. The main idea of the David Austin rose-breeding project seems to be combining the particular charms of traditional English old garden roses - their fragrance, their romantic, sophisticated forms - with the virtues of modern roses - continuous blooming, a wide range of highly Instagrammable colors - plus disease-tolerance that twenty-first century gardeners now expect. And judging by their singular impact on the contemporary rose market, they seem to have been very successful at that goal. The Reddit reviews are glowing, the forums are abuzz for their hottest new releases (Dannahue restock wen?), their most popular roses are often sold out, and other rose sellers have catalog filters for 'English shrub roses' that allegedly share the looks and fragrance of David Austin's best.

From the author's camera roll. 'I can't believe it's not Dave [sic] Austin!'

Their marketing is also very slick. Their website is very informative, with separate filters for various kinds of roses you might want to buy ('Best for fragrance', 'For a shady spot', 'Thornless or nearly so'), all the rose varieties have literary or historical names or else are named after charming British locations, and are all beautifully photographed in their idyllic show garden, and the prose is carefully engineered to incite lust in the winter-weary gardener. They even do periodic drops of new roses, like a sneaker company.

So last November, I allowed myself to buy one David Austin rose, 'Munstead Wood'.

Source: David Austin Roses

'Munstead Wood' is really gorgeous, I think, blooming in a deep burgundy color. The website claims the fragrance is "Old Rose, with fruity notes of blackberry, blueberry and damson".

An interesting fact about 'Munstead Wood' is that it is actually region-locked. David Austin Roses sells roses in both the US and UK (and maybe other places; sorry I am so American), but the climate of the UK has been changing, with more extreme weather events and even more rain. And you know how it is with roses and the rain. 'Munstead Wood' was no longer able to thrive, and has packed up its little rucksack and gone out to explore the world as a lone vagabond - specifically, America.

So how is it doing here? Great, actually. It may have been rained on every day for the past week, but at least it's not in England, I guess.

'Munstead Wood' has no fungal disease. It looks like it's never even heard of fungal disease. I'm pretty impressed! I can't actually tell you whether the roses are good, but this is a pretty good plant, which is a good start.

Review: I'm holding myself back from buying more David Austin roses right now. God help me, I have two more open full- to part-sun spots in my garden right now.

David Austin, "Lady of Shalott". Call me the Lady of Shalott the way I'm languishing in my tower, gazing only at the mere reflections of the real world (stuck inside, looking at my phone, because of the rain) and am about to throw myself in the river with longing (to be out in the garden)

#this was mostly written like a week and a half ago #delighted to report it has now stopped raining :)#gardening #plantblr #roses #botany #...kind of. not a botanist i just like reading about it #longpost #original content #(i hesitate to call this an 'effortpost': aside from spending an hour on wikipedia trying to graph out the various old garden roses #and their relationships with the species roses that spawned them - it just kind of happened.)

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dilfenthusiast-union · 9 months ago

Note

Can you please do Josh and reader watching a movie?

I absolutely can anon! Gonna do a horror movie cuz that’s on theme HAHA. I hope this satisfies your Josh craving 🫶 feel free to request something different if not 🫡

Study Session

Joshua “Josh” Washington x Reader

I ended up referencing an old German film so if anyone can figure out what it is from the very vague description I gave then here’s a sweet treat 🍰

Gonna update the gif when ppl start making gifs of the sexy delicious remake

GIF updated with cutie Josh passed out in front of the fireplace literally the exact vibes IM LIVING

“You got the snacks, princess?” Josh calls out from the living room, as he sets up the projector for your weekly “special movie” night.

As part of Josh’s psychology degree, he had the chance to pick a major, and to him and his parents, it was a no brainer— film.

However, what he didn’t anticipate was the amount of weird, silent movies from the 1920s that he had to analyse in his classes.

“It’s like watching paint dry!” He exclaims, “I get that I have to understand the rules of film before breaking them, but Dad’s been doing this since before I was even an idea!” Josh drags on.

“Josh, babe. You’re starting really to sound like every nepo baby in Hollywood. I love you!…but shut up.” you peck him on the lips before pulling back to smile at him, a kinder way of telling him to shut his trap about his first world problems. He smiles dumb from the small act of affection and touch love, unable to recall what was bothering him in the first place as you dissolve his worries.”

Upon hearing his complaints, you suggest making it into a movie night, as opposed to a traditional study session where you’re both hunched over your laptops and textbooks.

Your idea sends a colony of butterflies into Josh’s stomach— you want to watch a boring movie with him? The fact that you want to spend time doing mundane things, like studying with him, makes him envision a life of pure domesticity. How could he say no to an opportunity to cuddle and be with his partner?

Before you know it, you’re microwaving popcorn and opening packets of lollies to enjoy (and to pass the time).

“Just about done! The popcorn is extremely fresh so enjoy with caution!” You mention as you pinch the bag from the top to avoid burning yourself.

He stands back up from setting up the projector equipment, looking at you with warm eyes. He questions “Are you saying that because you nearly burnt your mouth trying to eat it?”, his tone underscored with amusement.

“Guilty.” The one word expresses your regret for attempting to snack early. You settle the bags of snacks and popcorn on the coffee table, and sink into the pullout couch, ready to be entertained.

“What is this movie about exactly? The cover looks kinda freaky, I won’t lie” you examine the starting screen projected on the wall. Josh appreciates how you’re eager to demonstrate an interest in his studies despite not knowing too much.

“In the most succinct way I can say it without spoiling things…” he trails off, “A vampire tries his hand at real estate, and rats wipe out a town of people!” Your face morphs from interested to deadpan at the lack of proper context, “I guess I just gotta watch and see, hey?”

“Precisely, princess.” Josh affirms as he sits down next to you. His pet names for you never cease to make your core temperature rise with the influx of butterflies. As he wraps an arm around your frame, he presses play on the film.

Josh adds, “Thankfully for us, there’s English subtitles… because this entire movie is in German. So you’re gonna have to focus just as much as me, and resist the urge to go on Instagram.” He kisses your head to avoid any rebuttal from you.

An hour passes by and at this point both you and Josh become extremely comfortable on the couch. Lying down whilst cuddling, you hold eachother accountable by not scrolling in your phones and actually discussing the plot of the film and the main points Josh needs to remember for his analysis. The movie finishes and you’re both still awake.

Josh breaks the comfortable silence, turning to admire your features “Thanks for watching this boring movie with me, babe. You made this way more fun for me.” he pecks your forehead, followed by the tip of your nose. He gazes at your lips longingly, before looking into your half-lidded eyes and receiving a small nod.

He leans into to kiss you passionately, receiving a mutual signal from your eagerness. He can feel the heat radiating off your cheeks and he’s sure you can hear his pulse rapidly increasing the longer you two occupy the same space.

You place your hands on his broad chest, feeling him gently and slowly. Josh wraps his arms around your waist and places you in his lap, and breaks away from the kiss. You catch your breath simultaneously, staring into eachother’s eyes, as if you’re telepathically communicating your love for each-other.

“Josh, there’s no need to thank me. I’ll do just about anything with you. Because, as long as it’s you, nothing can possibly be boring.” you cut into the hot silence.

Josh revels in your statement, his eyebrows raised “Are you saying you liked the movie?” his amusement is discernible at this point. He looks at you like you contain galaxies in your eyes.

You give him a kiss on the lips again before breaking away again and grinning widely “I actually did, and I like spending time with my boyfriend.. let’s study more often!” You suggest lightly.

Josh picks you up to carry you bridal style, walking down the hall to your shared bedroom, “I can think of a different kind of studying we can do. Don’t you have an anatomy exam soon?” he smirks before laying you down on the bed, wedging a knee between your legs and trapping you in his arms.

Maybe this studying will involve an all-nighter for the two of you.

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starmapz · 7 months ago

Text

what you know - ch3: grade a(sshole) || r. sukuna

❦ ryomen sukuna x f!reader [college au] [ongoing series]

❝ you've heard his reputation and you've seen first-hand the way he's late to class if he even bothers to show up. paired with him for the most important project of the year, you choose to give him the benefit of the doubt- but maybe that's more than he deserves when your perfect grades depend on him, or maybe there's more to the aloof and irritable sukuna than meets the eye. ❞

❦ cw ; mdni, 18+ only. contains explicit sexual themes and content. use of alcohol. use of cannabis. use of nicotine/cigarettes. angst. hurt/no comfort. hurt/comfort. implied injury. family trauma. mutual pining. smut. slow burn. anxiety. panic (attacks). mentions of difficulty eating. vomit. tags will be updated as series continues.

❦ additional tags ; college parties and themes. sukuna ooc warning as this is a realistic take on modern sukuna. reader is fairly preppy and implied to be smaller than sukuna, but he's 6"11.

❦ words ; 12.1k.

main masterlist || series masterlist || previous chapter || next chapter

The sounds of metal clanging and engines revving are somehow more grating than usual as Sukuna hangs the phone back on the wall. His head rests against the smooth surface beside the phone and he lets out a deep sigh, thankful you can’t see the frustration strewn across his face. Of fucking course Uraume’s in class right now and really, why had he ever expected his uncle to pick up? If he were good for anything, Sukuna wouldn’t be a parent to his siblings while in college.

“Ryomen! I need a hand!”

He rolls his shoulders in an effort to relieve the tension in his body from having no other choice but to call you, the source of all of his problems as of late, before pushing off the wall. He doesn’t say a word as he makes his way to his colleague, ignoring the man’s questioning. Just like everyone else in his life, his colleague doesn’t need to know anything about him.

The day drags on for Sukuna. He’s sluggish and worn out, covered in a sheen of sweat and grease and he can feel the oil he accidentally combed through his hair without thinking while speaking on the phone with you.

And then there’s you. Why the fuck won’t you leave his head? Why the fuck did he have to loosen and re-tighten the bolts on a set of tires because the thought of you had distracted him so much he’d tightened them a few too many times? Why had he done it on multiple tires?

As the day wraps up and he leaves the shop, the cool night air is welcome on his skin. He lets out a sigh as he begins to walk home, running a hand through his tousled hair once again. The feeling of oil coating his bare hand leaves him with a scowl and he wipes it on his coveralls, but they have enough grease on them that it hardly helps. His lip curls in disgust as he shoves his hands into his pockets, staring at the sidewalk as he makes his way back to his apartment.

The walk is too short to deliberate what the hell he’s even gonna say to you when he knows for a fact he owes you. Again. Yet that’s hardly the issue, when he knows he hurt you when he saw you last and now here he is asking for a favor. Fuck, how it pisses him off.

His hand pauses over his front door before he knows it, letting out a sigh as he unlocks the door and pushes through. He’s met immediately with the sight of you, dressed in a skirt and a beige knit sweater sitting on the couch. He goes to drop his keys on the table beside the door but pauses before they can clatter on the wood as he realizes Choso is sound asleep on top of you.

He sucks in a sharp breath, meeting your gaze. The world seems to hold its breath as you both stare at one another, completely silent.

“Hey,” your voice is smaller than you intended as you decide to break the tense silence. Sukuna’s piercing gaze flickers between you and Choso before he finally shuts the door behind him, his expression unreadable.

“They fell asleep?” He grunts.

Grimacing as he blatantly ignores your greeting, you nod. “Yeah. Choso wanted one more movie, but-” you pause, casting a glance at the young boy. “He didn’t make it long.”

Sukuna takes a step forward to look at the TV, quietly playing The Iron Giant. “That’s his favorite.”

You nod slowly, but your eyes never once leave Sukuna. He looks tired as ever again, like he hasn’t had a break in a long time, but you know better than to offer help now. That, and the way he hurt you still hangs over your head even if you aren’t upset with him.

“He really likes sad movies,” you comment in an effort to cut through the tension in the air, but it hardly helps, enveloping you in its grasp once more.

A puff of air leaves Sukuna’s nose in an acknowledging laugh. “You watched The Land Before Time didn’t ya?” There’s a hint of a smile on his face that you mirror back at him despite the lingering unease.

“And Pokemon.”

Sukuna’s brow raises as he nods. “Yeah. Dunno why, he’s always liked those three.”

In an attempt to lighten the mood, you offer a teasing smirk. “Maybe he takes after you. These are all your movies, aren’t they?”

Sukuna looks between the TV and you again, wiping the back of his hand across his forehead. Staring down at his hand that he forgot was covered in oil, he huffs at the realization that it’s now on his face. “They were,” he mindlessly answers, turning back towards you. He gently sets his keys on the table, noting the fact that you have a little smirk and are very obviously staring where he just wiped his hand. Yeah, he has oil on his forehead. “D’ya mind staying while I shower? I’ll be ten minutes. I’ll carry Cho to his room after.”

“That’s fine, you could use a showe-”

“Shut- your mouth, Prom Queen,” he quietly hisses, his tone lacking the aggravation of someone truly frustrated.

You shoot him a small smile, laughing quietly as a semblance of normalcy finally returns. When he kicks off his shoes and pads quietly further into the apartment, disappearing into the washroom, you let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding.

It’s not like you weren’t expecting this to be uncomfortable, but you’d expected Sukuna to be as brash and vexing as usual, not whatever this is. The palpable tension, the somber silence and the complete and utter lack of frustration from Sukuna- it’s like you’re treading through a potential minefield, yet now you have no clue what could set him off this time. Do you even owe him that given how he snapped at you when you last saw him?

Throwing your head against the back of the couch, you sigh, deciding to give your attention back to the movie to force yourself not to get overwhelmed by your own overthinking. Choso shuffles in your arms, snoring softly as his hair falls over his face.

The sounds of doors opening and closing only a few minutes later makes your heart speed up when Sukuna emerges after a moment, dressed in a tight black tank top that hardly leaves anything to the imagination and gray sweatpants. You blink a few times as you make a conscious effort not to stare at his abs but god is it hard.

It’s almost like your mind forgets that you’re upset with him because he’s just that attractive, and that only makes your cheeks heat up because, come on. You’re better than this. Swallowing, you force yourself not to look at his bulging biceps or the veins in his forearms or the obvious six pack that the tank top doesn’t hide one bit. Why is it so tight anyway? Is he showing off?

But Sukuna hardly seems to notice your turmoil, his usual frown plastered on his face as he runs a hand through his hair, now oil-free. He closes the distance between you as he crosses the living room in two easy strides, standing tall in front of you.

“How’s Yuji?” He asks, clearing his throat.

“He’s been asleep most of the day but he didn’t throw up after I got here. He had a couple of spoonfuls of soup but he’s not hungry.”

He nods. “Good. I think.” Tense silence settles between you and you have to avert your gaze as you grow uncomfortable. “I’ll take Cho to his bed,” Sukuna mumbles, effortlessly lifting the young boy into his arms. Choso doesn’t so much as shuffle as Sukuna carries him to his and Yuji’s room. Fiddling with your neatly manicured nails, you stare in the direction Sukuna left. He’s back in only a few moments, looking relieved as ever that the day is over.

“Um, are you o-” you begin, realizing too late that both you and Sukuna have begun talking at the same time.

“You can go home.”

You stare at one another with wide eyes as you both speak over one another. Laughing uncomfortably, you chew on your lip. “You don’t want to talk about…?”

Sukuna’s brow furrows. There’s his irritation. Of course he would think the best thing to do is avoid the subject entirely.

“What do you want to talk about?” He asks in an impatient tone as he crosses his arms over his chest.

Your lips part as you search for words, treading carefully now that you have Sukuna’s attention. “You were a dick,” you offer as a starter, knowing that of all of the things you could say, this wouldn’t actually bother him that much.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Sukuna mutters with a roll of his eyes.

“You’re still being a dick.”

He pauses this time, narrowed eyes observing the way you’re fiddling with your nails and chewing on your lip. He sighs, shutting his eyes for a moment. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. I’m an asshole,” he agrees. “I-” he pauses, rubbing his fingers over his eyes in exasperation. “I’m sorry,” he mutters, somewhat muffled as he rubs his hand over his face.

Your eyes widen, blinking once, twice, three times at him. In your experience with him, he usually avoided apologies and thanks, as though they taste bitter on his tongue. Even now, he seems to be avoiding the subject as best as he can, muttering it behind his hand like the weight of the word is too much to bear.

“I didn’t get everything handed to me on a silver platter, you know.”

Sukuna stares out the window across the apartment. “Didn’t think ya did.”

“Then why did you say it?” You ask, tilting your head.

“‘Cause I was pissed, okay? I apologized already,” he grumbles, wanting to be done with this conversation. Everything about it makes his skin crawl between the way your brows are knit together and the hurt that glimmers in your eyes to the way you look so small and uncertain in front of him. God, the way his throat tightened when he saw his little brother asleep on top of you too, his hair stood on end in discomfort at the feeling.

He doesn’t know what to make of you and he hates that he pushed you away only to need you. To need your help. To embarrassingly need to call you three times and grovel for you to look after his brothers that only you know about because you just keep slithering your way into his life. He wants to blame it so badly on you being a pain in the ass, but you’re not. You’re kind. You’re kind and thoughtful and you’re only here because you’re a good person.

You’re still here even after he treated you as though you were replaceable, because you’re a better person than he could ever be.

Sukuna sighs loudly in exasperation, rubbing his temples. “Just… fuckin’ ignore me, okay? I was just taking shit out on you.”

“Like a dick.”

Sukuna lowers his hand from his face, staring at you with narrowed eyes. “Do you just really want me to say I was a dick?”

You tilt your head with a saccharine sweet smile. “Mhmm.”

“Does it really make that much of a fuckin’ difference?”

“I want to hear you say it.” Your tone has a teasing sort of charm to it that has him huffing and puffing in front of you.

“You gonna forgive me if I do?”

“I’ll think about it,” you grin back at him.

“Fuck, fine. Fine. I was a dick.”

You giggle as the burly man scowls at you, crossing his arms over his broad chest again. Once your laughter subsides, you offer a more sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry too, Sukuna. I shouldn’t have pushed you to begin with.”

His brow twitches as you apologize. He can’t in his right mind figure out why you think you would need to apologize for his outburst when really you weren’t all that pushy. The last thing he needs right now is to get stuck in this conversation that feels as though it’s physically bringing him pain for any longer than necessary, so he lets it go with a hum.

“Did the brats give you a hard time?”

You shake your head, relieved as the tension fades and Sukuna takes a seat on the opposite end of the couch, legs spread as he slumps into the cushions. “Yuji was crying when I got here, but he quieted down pretty quickly. Choso seemed a bit worried but he helped me cook and just wanted to watch movies,” you twist your body to face him as you speak.

He sighs, an elongated curse falling from his lips as he stares at the ceiling. “I owe ya. I already paid the sitter, but I’ll-”

“Don’t worry about it!”

He stares at you like you’ve grown another limb. “What? This shit took up your whole day.”

“I like spending time with them,” you insist with a shrug. “They remind me of simpler times.”

“What if you get sick?” At this point, Sukuna is reaching for something, anything, so that you’ll give in to him. But that’s just not who you are, is it? You’re selfless and kind, and you won’t accept anything he throws at you and that thought absolutely wrenches his gut. It twists in a type of discomfort that’s becoming entirely too familiar and he doesn’t know what to make of it.

“Then I get sick. Oh well,” you shrug again, shooting him that same sweet smile from earlier.

A muscle in his jaw tightens as he stares at you. “Are you always this much of a pain?”

You scoff humorously. “I don’t take your money and I’m a pain?” Your tone is teasing as you lean towards him.

“A pain,” Sukuna emphasizes the word as he stretches an arm along the sofa, his fingers draped along the back near your face. “That’s how shit like this is supposed to work. I pay you, you look after the brats.” He looks expectantly at you.

Your eyes soften as you realize just how different your views of the world are. Of course Sukuna wouldn’t expect someone to help them out of the goodness of their heart if it was just something he’d never experienced before. In his eyes, everything is transactional. You know he hates the idea of asking for help as well, so you can only assume that he would want to return the favor if it means it isn’t a plea for help. It’s an exchange of services. It makes it easier on his ego.

“Consider it a thank you for turning in the visual portion of our project on time,” you insist, trying to worm your way carefully between the thin line that separates this being help and this being an exchange.

“What?” He lifts a brow in disbelief, crimson irises narrowed as he observes you. “That doesn’t make any fucking sense. That’s my project, too.”

“Well-” you pause, staring down at your manicured nails. “I honestly just thought you hadn’t made it on time.”

His finger taps the back of the couch by your head. “What gave you the idea I just wouldn’t turn my own project in?”

“Well you didn’t show up to our second meeti-”

“Y’know what?” He flicks your forehead with a mischievous smirk, all thoughts of repaying you gone from his mind. “Forget I asked. Don’t answer that.”

You pout at him, bringing a hand up to rub your forehead although it didn’t hurt. “Dick.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whine about it,” he grumbles, but he’s smirking as he eyes you. You can’t help but giggle at his behavior, something about it comforting as Sukuna relaxes into the cushions. He mindlessly rolls his neck, leaning back as silence falls over you.

The sound of cars outside and the quiet dialogue from The Iron Giant is nothing but background noise as you bask in the comfortable air of the still apartment. Being around Sukuna feels almost nostalgic in a sense- sure you had only been apart for a week and a half, but after ‘getting over him,’ as Shoko put it, it almost feels like a warm hug.

It’s a shame it can never last as long as you’d like, as you catch a glimpse of the window and realize it’s dark. Afraid of intruding, you get to your feet and make your way to the door. “I should head out,” you tell him. His eyes follow you, though he gives no other indication of hearing your words. “Will I see you in class on Friday? We get our grade for the project.”

“Nah, not if the brat’s sick. Just email me our grade.”

Your lip twitches downward, and you can only pray Sukuna doesn’t notice. He gives no indication that he does, so you do your best to plaster a look of understanding on your face. “See you around?”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t say anything more, still spread across the couch. He’s so tall and bulky that somehow the three-person couch looks too small for him, it may as well be a feat.

“Later, Kuna!” You trill in a sing-song voice as you make your way to the door.

“Night, Prom Queen,” he huffs, a humorous sneer to his tone.

–

Although he’s stuck at home with Yuji, Sukuna sends you a couple of emails updating you on him. The first one caught you off-guard but it warms your heart that he seems to want to talk to you beyond the project. Each email causes your chest to flutter a little more but you don’t entertain the thought that it’s anything more than physical attraction. There’s no point, really, when you can’t seem to go a single day without upsetting him in some manner.

Not that Shoko seems to agree with that sentiment.

“Hey!” She calls as you wait at your usual spot to make your way to the lunch hall.

“Hey, Sho!” You reply cheerily.

“So are we not best friends anymore, or…?” She asks, narrowing her eyes.

Incredulously, you blink at her. “What are you talking about?”

“You didn’t text me to tell me how last night went.”

“Oh, with Sukuna?”

With a deadpan stare, she sighs. “Girl, don’t act stupid.”

Harsh. “Sorry, it was pretty late when I got back, I would have otherwise!” You apologize with a wry smile. “It’s not all that interesting anyway. I just looked after the kids until he got back and then I went home.”

“You’re impossible. That’s obviously not what I’m asking about,” she groans, pushing you further as you beat around the bush of the situation. “You literally haven’t seen him in like a week and a half because he was such a prick, puh-lease tell me he apologized. You better not let him step on you.”

You sigh, giving in to her nosiness. “Yes, he apologized. I think it caused him physical pain,” you giggle to yourself.

“Good,” she snorts, “he deserves it for hurting you and he’s lucky I haven’t smacked him yet for breaking your heart.”

“He didn’t break my heart,” you roll your eyes as the two of you find your way to your usual table at the lunch hall.

Shoko takes her usual seat across from you. “No of course not, you were just sulking for fun.”

“I thought you were supposed to be my best friend?” You ask in an effort to derail the conversation as Haibara and Nanami take their seats beside you.

“That’s why I’m grilling you over that asshole in the first place,” she grins.

“That’s why you shouldn’t be giving me a hard time,” you counter but she just shoots you a sweet smile as Gojo and Geto arrive. Even she won’t subject you to their form of torture when it comes to teasing.

Nanami clearly catches on to what’s going on from where he sits beside you. Leaning over, he keeps his voice down as his observant mahogany eyes take in that you seem fairly bright today in comparison to the last few days.

“He apologized, yes?”

You nod.

“Good. Don’t be afraid to ask for my help, okay?”

“I’m fine, Ken, I promise,” you insist. Satisfied, he smiles and pulls out his lunch. You do the same, pulling out a container of fruit and a panini sandwich. For the first time in just under two weeks, you don’t feel a miserable wrench in your chest as you stare at the sandwich.

–

It’s no surprise when Friday rolls around and Sukuna doesn’t show up to class. Yuji is sick, and that’s his priority, as it should be. You feel a pang of disappointment but it’s heartwarming just how much he cares for his little brothers when he comes across as cold and indifferent a majority of the time. Even if he’s a bit rough around the edges, there’s a certain charm to the quiet and docile moments you’ve shared since working with him.

You can hardly sit still through the class as you await your grade, easily the most stressful part of projects worth this much. Your entire scholarship hinges on each of these massive projects and tests and you can’t risk the consequences of failing.

Ten minutes before the end of the lecture, just as the professor is about to go over the project, the door slowly inches open, and a tall and broad-shouldered student slips in with his hood up. The professor is used to it by now and doesn’t say a word. Rather than heading to his usual seat, the student quietly slips into the seat beside you, nudging you softly. He pulls down his hood and your eyes light up at the sight of your project partner.

“You made it!” You whisper, grinning up at him. Your stomach flutters as he smirks, setting his forearm on the back of your chair as he leans closer to you. Heat radiates from his body as his breath fans your neck, warming your skin despite the shiver that runs up your spine.

“You looked like a kicked puppy when I told ya I needed to stay home, so I pulled some strings.”

You tilt your head to look at him, feeling your breath hitch when you realize just how close he is to your ear. Your cheeks undeniably heat up as you force yourself to stare at the front of the class. “I didn’t look like a kicked puppy. I was just… hoping you could make it.”

“Yeah, well, can’t have the Prom Queen thinkin’ I don’t show up now, can I?”

Your cheeks are burning so hot you think your head might be spinning and it’s only when he finally leans back into his own chair that you realize you were holding your breath. Rubbing a hand over your face in an effort to cool your cheeks down, you cast a glance at Sukuna.

He’s manspreading right into your personal space, leaning back into his chair as he listens to the professor with a look of indifference. In a rare circumstance, he looks more well-rested than usual and seems fairly at ease. His leg isn’t subtly shaking and his eyes aren’t darting down to his watch as he debates when to leave for his next shift. For once, he isn’t Sukuna with two jobs, two dependants, and the world on his shoulders, he’s just a student.

Your heart aches at the realization that he’s so drained from the weight of the world that it’s only in rare moments like this one that you see more of the real Sukuna. A man who smirks and teases, who relaxes into his seat and simply lets life go on. He’s not always cold and tense, there’s a side to him that only those lucky enough to get close to him get to see and the worst part about this realization…

… is that you want to see more of it. Not out of the goodness of your heart and a want to do something nice for someone deserving, although that is a part of it, but for selfish reasons.

Fuck. Shoko is right. Shoko is right and you’re hopelessly crushing over the notoriously hot campus asshole.

You swallow hard, pulling your gaze forward as you realize you’ve been staring. Chewing on your lip, you hardly put together that the professor is passing out project grades until he stops in front of your seats. You blink a few times to reorient yourself.

“You two surprised me immensely as a pairing,” he begins. Although you weren’t paying attention, Sukuna is well aware of the fact that the professor had been dismissing other students as he passes out grades, opting to bring yours up last. He can only assume that means one thing and he’s already smirking. “Although I would prefer you keep the in-class chatter to a minimum-” he pauses to shoot a glance at Sukuna, who’s now huffing with a glance to the side as the smirk falls from his face, “-this is by far the best iteration of this project I’ve seen in all my years of teaching.”

Your jaw hangs ajar, eyes wide as you process his words. Sukuna’s smirking again, hardly seeming shocked.

“Your thesis is worded eloquently and explores the depths of the meanings of each painting, while your visual portion is stunning and displays an understanding of the importance behind each piece to the artist,” he explains. The cocky grin on Sukuna’s face doesn’t leave as he outstretches his arm onto your chair. “This is the first time I’ve ever given out a perfect score, and for that reason I’d like to have you both present your work in front of the class.”

You pale, shooting a fearful glance at Sukuna. He seems mildly irritated by the thought, but shrugs, returning your glance. “Whattaya say?” He asks, his calm facade faltering as he takes in your expression. Crimson irises flit between your eyes as you slowly shake your head.

“I don’t know,” you hesitate meekly, not loving the idea of standing before a lecture hall of students, under far too many pairs of watchful and judgmental eyes.

His gaze drops to the way you’re fidgeting with your fingers, just as you had when you were nervous a couple of nights ago as he puts together that this isn’t something you’re comfortable with. It’s not like that isn’t written across your face right now, but it’s abundantly clear to him through your actions that this isn’t just discomfort, you’re genuinely nervous.

“We’ll do it,” Sukuna says. Your head flips towards him, eyes wide in disbelief as he makes the decision for you.

Before you have a chance to protest, the professor claps his hands together. “Great. I’ll have you present at the end of class next Friday. You don’t have to prepare anything fancy but I will make sure you get extra credit for this.”

You have half a mind to wish he started by mentioning the extra credit portion, you certainly would have hesitated less, but it doesn’t change just how badly you don’t want to do this.

As the professor walks away, you whirl around to face Sukuna. “What the hell, Sukuna?” You whisper-yell, though there isn’t anyone in your vicinity.

He chuckles. “Pick your jaw up off the ground, you’ll be fine. I’ll be there the whole time with you, yeah? I can do as much of the talkin’ as you want.” He leans towards you, setting a hand on the table in front of you both. “‘Sides, you weren’t gonna say no to extra credit. We both know that.”

You chew on your lip, brows knit together as you stare down at your hands, mindlessly fiddling with your nails again. “I guess you’re right.”

The tattooed man lets the silence hang for a moment as he contemplates how shy you’ve suddenly become. You’re meek at times, but this is almost perplexing to him given how bold and saccharine you are towards him when he isn’t purposely pushing your buttons. “So let me get this straight, you were Prom Queen but you don’t like talkin’ in front of people?” Sukuna tilts his head in thought as he shifts to lean on his forearm, edging closer to you.

“That- That felt different,” you insist, leaning forward on your palm as if mirroring his actions. Your eyes trail away from him and Sukuna narrows his eyes.

“I don’t get how that shit’s any different. Aren’t there less people in this class?” He asks, bringing a hand up to scratch his chest. Your eyes flicker over to watch the movement, as though anything is more interesting than actually looking up at him.

“Well, yeah- but-” you pause, your leg now beginning to bounce. Clearly you’re bothered now, but Sukuna can’t wrap his head around what’s made you so shy suddenly- you who so boldly walked your way into his life. He knows people perceive him as scary at a glance, yet that never stopped you. Hell, you hang around Satoru Gojo of all people and Sukuna doesn’t get that either, finding his boisterous presence loud and irritating, but he’s fairly sure that makes you part of a group that would normally be considered popular.

So what in the hell are you so scared of? He doesn’t understand.

“But what?” He pushes, leaning closer to you.

You can feel his breath fanning your face again now that he’s leaning closer to you. It only serves as another distraction and you already can’t seem to find your words. “I- I don’t know, Sukuna!” You huff, pulling back a bit to cross your arms over your chest and put some distance between you.

Sukuna's face twists in confusion, frustration etching itself into his features. “C’mon, it’s easy extra credit. What’s got you so worked up?” He asks with a hint of a sneer as he grows impatient with your avoidance of the subject.

“You wouldn’t get it.” Your voice is firm and there’s a hint of ice forming at the edges of your words that surprises your project partner.

“Try me,” he grunts, leaning as far forward as he can without his chair tipping over.

Your hands move gradually from their position crossed over your chest to hug your frame as your expression turns from one of frustration to a more solemn one. “It’s because I was Prom Queen that I don’t like talking in front of people.”

“Hm?”

“It was a pretty big thing at my school, so some people were jealous, and others were pushy, it’s not like in the movies,” you shrug, as if that’s any sort of explanation in Sukuna’s eyes. Confusion dances across his narrowed red irises and you sigh, letting your guard down. “I don’t know, some girls got pretty jealous, and some people were a bit pushy trying to get my attention and it just ended up being an embarrassment. It was just a lot and I don’t love being in front of groups anymore,” you shrug.

Sukuna sits up straight, staring down at you with a scowl. “Aren’t they supposed to wanna be you or somethin’?” He asks with a frown.

“I mean, they did.”

He supposes you have a point, his observant stare taking in the way you shrink into yourself. “Well this ain’t high school and those assholes aren’t here. Don’t worry about it,” he shrugs in an attempt to reassure you. You finally meet his gaze again, a look of uncertainty painting your wide eyes. “No one is stupid enough to talk about ya like that with me beside you.”

A small smile pulls at your lips and Sukuna’s heart stumbles. He blinks a few times at the feeling in an effort to push it away, focusing instead on the way your eyes brighten. Fuck, that’s not helping him either. He coughs lightly into his elbow, rubbing a hand over his face as you smile shyly at him.

“Thanks, Sukuna. You’re kinda sweet sometimes, in your own way.”

He scowls. “The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

You can’t help the laugh that bubbles from deep within your chest at his scrunched nose and frown, but you don’t give him an answer, beginning to pack up your bags. Sukuna huffs when you begin to pack up, facing forward with his chin leaning on his palm.

“Hey, thanks for coming in to get our grade.”

He raises a brow. “I didn’t do it for you.”

You pause, gripping your textbook in your bag as you cast a glance at Sukuna. His usual aloof expression has returned, no indication of your prior teasing found on his face.

“What happened to emailing you our grade then?”

Sukuna’s eye twitches as he watches you, returning your stare. “It was a joke.”

Your lips quirk upwards. “Right, how could I forget? It was so funny,” you mock him, reveling in the way he’s on his feet the next moment, the chair scraping across the floor as he glares at you with all the irritation he can muster, that doesn’t quite meet his eyes.

“You think you’re funny, don’t you?” He sneers, taking a step towards you. He towers over you, shoving his hands into his pockets as your cocky demeanor shifts, your eyes widening when he leans down until his face is mere inches from yours. Your breath hitches as he chuckles darkly when he gets the exact reaction he wants from you. “You were all talk two seconds ago, what happened?”

“I- um-” Getting your bearings, you shove his chest playfully. “You’re a dick,” you mumble.

Sukuna doesn’t move an inch when you shove him, a grin plastered across his face. “Thought we were done with callin’ me a dick,” he teases.

Rolling your eyes, you scoff. “Yeah, until you decided to be one again.”

Sukuna’s sharp pupils flicker between your eyes for a moment before he stands up straight. Your heart beats in your ears as you’re freed from the close proximity. “Yeah, whatever you say,” he chuckles, calmly smirking at you. He glances down at the watch on his wrist, letting out a breath of air. “I gotta get back home. Uraume only had an hour to watch the brats.”

Tilting your head, you blink up at him, a hand over your chest to slow your thundering heart. “How’s Yuji?”

Sukuna shrugs. “Better than Wednesday. He’s still got a fever, though.”

“I hope he feels better soon,” you say, hesitating as you take a chance. “Let me know if you need me to watch them.”

Sukuna’s expression is unreadable as he examines you, gears visibly turning in his mind. Without another word, he slings his backpack over his shoulder and throws his hood back up, pausing to look at you before he leaves.

Sighing, he pushes his hair from his forehead beneath his hood. “I swear this’ll be the last time. I got offered a shift Sunday.”

He doesn’t voice his question to watch the kids, it’s an unspoken question because he doesn’t want to ask. The question puts him in a position where he’s asking for help and he so badly wants that not to be what this is.

You smile softly. “I’m free on Sunday.”

Pulling his airpods from a case in his pocket and putting them in his ears, he grunts. “Come by mine Sunday at 8:30.”

You purse your lips. “At night, right?” You ask, your gaze following after the man as he casually descends the lecture hall to the door. “At night, right?” You ask, this time louder to get his attention over his music.

Sukuna heard you the first time, shooting you a sly smirk just before he leaves.

Well, fuck that.

–

With a backpack slung over your shoulder filled with textbooks and study materials, as well as your GameCube, you sigh as you click the buzzer button for Sukuna’s apartment. As you wait for one of the three siblings to let you in, you shiver at the chill air. It’s far too early for you to be awake on a Sunday and your body agrees as you find yourself yawning every few seconds.

Between the cool fall air and the early morning, you couldn’t be bothered to dress in your usual preppy style, opting for a cute deep red hoodie with hello kitty on it and a pair of leggings. It’s still cute, but it’s a contrast to your blouses, skirts and heels.

When the door loudly buzzes, you make your way inside with your hood up over your hair, yawning as you rub your tired eyes. Before you can even knock on the door, Sukuna opens it, leaving your fist stagnant in the air. You drop it by your side, staring up at him through your lashes.

Sukuna’s in his polo shirt that seems so out of place on him you would almost assume he was someone else. “Blue’s not your color,” you comment with a yawn. His amused smile at your tired expression twists in offense at your comment.

“Morning to you too, dick.”

You giggle at his teasing. “You got me up early, I’m allowed to be one.”

“Oh, my bad, you fuckin’ princess,” Sukuna scoffs, an air of playfulness surrounding his words that makes you giggle more. He opens the door to let you into the apartment, his gaze trailing your outfit. It’s not your usual attire but something about how different it is on you while still suiting you stirs something within him. The bigger hoodie draping over your body makes him wonder what his own clothes would-

What the fuck is he thinking? He shakes his head, shutting the door and glancing over to the hall where the pitter patter of small feet sounds. Yuji goes running up to Sukuna, a bundle of blankets wrapped around his tiny form. “Don’t go, big brother.” His voice is lower than usual, clearly still sick as he clings onto his brother’s leg.

Crimson eyes flicker down to the little bundle of blankets. “I’ll be back soon, Yu. Play some MarioKart or whatever.”

Yuji’s curious eyes search the room at the sound of MarioKart. You pull down your hood and wave as he spots you. His eyes widen and he gasps, running up and hugging your legs now. You grin down at him, ruffling his unkempt hair.

Sukuna scoffs. “See? You won’t even know I’m gone.”

“Come play with us!” Yuji insists at the sound of his brother’s comment, still clutching your knee as he turns to plead with his brother.

Sukuna’s hardened indifference cracks, something akin to guilt or sadness flickering in his eyes for a split-second. It’s such a short moment that you wonder if you imagined it. He sighs, crouching down in front of Yuji. Even crouching, he’s still monstrously tall and dwarfs his little brother. You suppose that’s what happens when you’re almost seven feet tall and made of solid muscle.

“Maybe later, kid.” He ruffles his hair just as you did moments ago and gets back to his feet. “I owe ya one,” he sighs, brow furrowed as he stares off to the side with a tight jaw.

“Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask-” you pause, a mix of emotions flooding you as you contemplate dropping the question, but ultimately decide it’s worth it. “I could use a hand studying for history.” You chew on your lip. “You know, just if you have time, no big deal if you don’t!” You smile sheepishly.

Sukuna’s eyes flicker between yours, his expression unreadable. “Yeah, sure.” He turns away, trudging to the door. “Be back at 5:30,” he mumbles before he’s gone. You sigh at the sight of the shut and locked door, turning your groggy attention to Yuji, who coughs into his bundle of blankets at your feet.

It’s a miracle you aren’t sick already, and you hope that miracle stays with you again today.

You’re able to study while the boys play games throughout most of the day once Choso wakes up. They’re easy to look after and they add a certain brightness to your day that only they can, reminding you of just how simple life is when you don’t have three projects due and finals on the horizon.

There’s a weight in your chest at the thought of managing that workload alongside two jobs and two kids, something you find yourself pondering often, but if Sukuna won’t accept your help, then what more can you do? Sure, you’re helping him now, but you know he won’t let this go without repayment, which you would happily take in the form of a study buddy. While that’s likely less stressful for him than cash, it’s still another sliver of his already limited time taken up.

“I’m hungry,” Choso mumbles, looking at you as if he didn’t scarf down the lunch you made only a couple of hours ago.

A lopsided smile dons your face as you contemplate making dinner or letting him know to wait for Sukuna, but if he’s hungry, who are you to say no?

“What would you like?”

“Cereal!” Yuji excitedly calls from where he sits on the floor, stifling a cough when his voice cracks.

“That’s not dinner…” Choso mumbles, brow furrowing in thought as he looks at his younger brother, who’s been so picky while he’s been sick that most of their meals have been the same few things that he can stomach. “What about mac and cheese?”

Yuji takes a moment to think, before he decides this is acceptable and nods excitedly.

“I’m sure I can make that happen,” you agree, getting to your feet to peruse the kitchen that you’re growing more accustomed to. Yuji stays in the living room, the sounds of a terrified Luigi echoing throughout the apartment as Choso follows closely behind you. You’ve noticed over your time with Sukuna and his brothers that Choso seems to have a penchant for cooking and loves to help. It’s too cute and your heart swells each time he finds a way to lend a hand while you cook.

Plus, you get a helper, which means less work. It’s a win-win situation, really.

As you work your way through the kitchen, boiling water and letting Choso salt and stir the noodles before pouring them into a casserole dish, you sprinkle cheese between and over the noodles as you wait for the oven to eat up, explaining each step along the way for Sukuna’s brother. Stirring the cheese into the noodles along with some herbs and spices, you tilt your head at the dish.

It’s almost ready for the oven, but not quite.

“Do you have breadcrumbs?”

Choso stares up at the pantry shelves. “Uhh…” He pushes around a few boxes before shaking his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Do you have bread?”

“Yeah, but it’s old.”

“Old like mouldy or old like stale?” You ask with a thoughtful expression.

“Stale.”

“Perfect!”

Choso wrinkles his nose as he hands the loaf of bread to you. It’s in moments like these that his resemblance to his older brother really becomes apparent.

“I’ll show you how to make breadcrumbs,” you grin. Choso doesn’t seem to have a grasp on what you need breadcrumbs for when mac and cheese’s ingredients are literally listed in the name, but he still watches with intrigue anyway. You cut up the slices of bread into tiny pieces, throwing them in the oven until they’ve dried out, and then tossing them over the mac and cheese and placing the extra crumbs aside.

“Trust the process, Cho.”

He tilts his head curiously as you place the mac and cheese on a rack in the oven. “Trust the process?”

“It means… it may not make sense to you in the moment, maybe it’s messy or confusing, but the end result will be more than worth it.”

“Oh. Okay. Trust the process,” he parrots, before making his way back to the living room just as his brother is sucking up a ghost with a vacuum in Luigi’s Mansion.

While the meal bakes, you grab your history textbook again and get some more studying in. It doesn’t take long for the timer to go off and Choso comes running up with wide eyes to stare at the prepared meal. Yuji follows slowly in his bundle of blankets, happily taking a bowl as you warn them both it’s hot.

“So?”

With a mouth full of macaroni, Choso smiles. “Trust the process,” comes his muffled happiness. The boys chow down on what you assume will be their dinner given that Sukuna should be home soon, and Choso returns to help you clean up.

He grabs a ziploc bag to place the extra breadcrumbs in, holding it open for you. Just as you’re pouring the food into the bag, the front door swings open and you jolt in surprise, causing bread crumbs to go flying.

Sukuna drops his keys on the table by the door, his eyes scanning the room as he spots Yuji before his aloof expression crumbles when he arches a brow at the absolute mess that his kitchen is. Your cheeks heat up as you and Choso stare at him with guilty expressions.

Really, you should be blaming Sukuna for scaring you.

“I’m not fuckin’ cleaning that,” he grumbles, walking slowly over the mess of cables in the living room as he pulls his shirt up over his head in the most ungodly slutty way you could possibly imagine and you can’t bring yourself to tear your eyes from the sight of his toned back.

Of course, you always knew Sukuna was muscular, but seeing it first hand makes it hard to shake the image from your mind. He could be hung on the wall of a museum, his muscles are so sculpted, rippling with every movement and decorated in tattoos that suit him so well he could be an actual god and you wouldn’t even bat an eye.

Choso pulls you from your thoughts as they border on inappropriate, by tugging at your sleeve.

“We should clean.”

“Right!” You squeak, shaking the image of shirtless Sukuna as best as you can from your mind as you stare at the scattered mess.

“Okay let’s… start with the counter.”

It doesn’t take too long to clean up the mess and there’s still enough bread crumbs left over for Sukuna to make something if he wanted, so it could have gone over worse.

Speak of the devil, he rounds the corner wearing a black muscle shirt with a metal band logo you don’t recognize scrawled across the front and sleeves cut so deep it hardly counts as a shirt, like he’s showing off or something. You don’t even want to begin to think about the fact that he’s wearing grey sweatpants as well like some sort of tease who probably just threw on the first thing he saw and it didn’t even cross his mind how stupidly hot he is.

You avert your eyes, attempting to keep your cheeks from heating up any more than they already have. Sukuna crosses the living room to the kitchen in a few long strides, peering at the floor in search of crumbs.

“The fuck even happened over here?”

“You scared me when you opened the door,” you mumble, leaning back against the kitchen counter where your textbook is resting.

“So you threw shit everywhere?”

Your brow furrows at his accusation. “I just fumbled a bit and spilled what was on the pan.”

“Mm.” Sukuna’s gaze scans the kitchen until he finds the macaroni and cheese casserole sitting just behind your textbook. With a hint of a smirk, he takes a step forward, so close to you that his body heat warms your skin, his abs and chest just barely brushing against the plush of your breasts as he dips his finger into the dish.

Pulling his arm back, he slyly locks eyes with you, not bothering to take a step back even as you press your spine into the counter. He slips his finger between his lips, sucking the cheese from it with a pop!

Your eyes are wide as you look up at him, caught between him and the hard countertop behind you like a deer in the headlights, frozen. If you move even an inch, he’ll be pressed up against you, and- don’t let your thoughts spiral again.

Sukuna smirks, lidded eyes smug as though he’s got you just where he wants you, amused to pull such a reaction from you. He’s become increasingly aware of the effect he has on you and everything he’s been doing has absolutely been on purpose, even if you don’t know it. He’s making a show out of his muscles, getting close to you, sucking on his finger, all to get a rise out of you.

He’s not sure he understands it himself, but he loves your little reactions. He loves the way your eyes widen, your breath hitches, and your muscles tense as though you’ve been caught doing something you shouldn’t. He’s sure it all boils down to lust, but he’ll make the most of it while he has you here.

He clicks his tongue after a thoughtful moment. “Not bad. The breadcrumbs are a nice touch.”

“T-Thanks,” you stammer quietly. Sukuna chuckles lowly as he finally gives you space, turning to open the fridge and grab a protein drink. You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding, bringing a hand up to slow your pounding heart.

“You stickin’ around to study?”

“I- um-” you pause, clearing your throat in an effort to calm your flustered state. “If you have time, that would be great. I mean, I’d appreciate it.”

“Sure. The brats are quiet while you’re around.” He brings the protein drink up to his lips, downing it in one go and tossing the bottle into a bucket in the corner of the room as though he’s done it a thousand times.

With the boys distracted by the GameCube, Sukuna sits down at the table in the back of his apartment with you and a bowl of macaroni and cheese. Scooting his chair closer to you, his eyes scan the page you’re on.

“Is this for History 209?” He asks, briefly flipping to the textbook cover.

You nod.

“Mm.”

Sukuna briefly scans the upcoming pages before diving into explanations of the textbook, from memory. He clearly has a fondness for history that seems to come naturally to him as he explains anything you ask questions on without needing to even glance at the textbook. It’s like second nature to him.

“What years did the cold war take place?” He quizzes without so much as glancing up at you as he flips through the textbook pages without reading at all as though it’s a picture book.

“Uh-” You stare up at the ceiling. “1952 to 89?”

“47 to 89. Tell me about the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

“Um- Cuba felt like the US was about to invade, so they asked the Soviet Union to install missiles in-”

“Who asked?”

“Cuba?”

Sukuna glances up at you, his expression unimpressed. “No shit. What leader?”

“Oh. Castro.”

Hours pass by and you hardly even notice until your eyes begin to grow heavy and your yawning sets in. Sukuna gradually begins leaning further on his knuckles over the table, launching question after question at you without even a lick of help from the textbook. It would almost be impressive, if you didn’t already know how smart Sukuna is.

“How did the modern revolution affect the environment?”

You chew on your lip, the last bit of energy you were working with fizzling out suddenly as you’re left staring blankly at the table, completely burnt out.

Sukuna’s been only half paying attention for the past few minutes, growing equally as worn out and unable to focus as you are, though he hasn’t noticed just how spent you are given his inattention. It’s not until you don’t respond that his attention snaps to you, staring off into space.

He glances over your features, eyes dropping to your oversized hoodie. His thoughts stray to places they shouldn’t be again, so he wills himself to look back at your eyes, but the way you’re chewing on your lip-

It’s then that he realizes how close you are. Over the course of the past couple of hours, Sukuna has leaned further forward in his chair and you’ve scooted closer in an effort to look at the pages of your textbook while he explains. It’s weird, the way the close proximity seems to draw him in, as though he belongs in your space, but he knows better. He knows you exist in different worlds.

Still, as you space out further, a piece of your hair falls out of place, blocking the blank and tired expression on your face, and Sukuna doesn’t even have a moment to process his actions before he moves. It’s almost delicate, the way he slowly moves the hand he isn’t leaning on to tenderly brush the strand of hair behind your ear.

His action draws your attention, and along with it a steady heat that rises to your cheeks, reaching your ears and down to your neck. Sukuna doesn’t even seem phased by what he’s done, as if it’s completely natural and something the two of you just do. As though he isn’t pushing the balance of your strange friendship, if it could even be called that.

You lick your lip as you will your thoughts to stop bouncing all over the place, trying not to read too much into his actions, but it’s hard not to when his pupils dart down to follow your tongue as it swipes your lower lip. His pupils grow suddenly, and you don’t know how not to read into that, and now your thoughts are spiraling, and you’re wondering if all of Sukuna’s actions today are premeditated or-

As if Sukuna’s only just become aware of what he’s doing, he clears his throat and sits back. His pupils shrink and he crosses his arms over his chest, placing distance between you.

“You should head home before it’s too dark.”

In the endless sea of your thoughts, all you can do is nod. Snapping yourself back to reality, you begin packing your bag and make your way out to the living room where the two boys are excitedly playing an old copy of the board game Operation after Sukuna had told them no more video games, much to their dismay.

You smile at the sight of poor bundled up little Yuji and his older brother, who clearly cares a great deal for the little salmon-haired boy. The three of them are a sweet little family. Sukuna has a funny way of showing it sometimes but he clearly adores the two boys, or he wouldn’t be doing everything that he is.

At the end of the day, he could have left them to their own devices, thrown them into the fostering system. He could have used legal means to shove them into a relative’s care. He could have done a lot of things, but you can see the way he adores them. The way he loves them so deeply and genuinely that he can’t bear the thought of seeing them thrown to the wolves like that. He’s put a great deal of his life on hold and put his health, both mental and physical, on the line to see the two boys thrive, and it fills your heart with joy.

“You know, I could just leave the GameCu-”

“No.” Sukuna gets to his feet, standing a few feet away.

Yuji and Choso’s heads simultaneously whip around as though they’ve heard the biggest betrayal of their entire lives.

At five and twelve, they very well may have.

“Awwww!”

“Pleaaase, Kuna!”

“No, that’s final.”

You shoot Sukuna an easy smile, giggling to yourself at the sight of his scowl and frustrated huff.

“Don’t get ideas into their heads,” he grumbles at you, brushing past you as you clean up the GameCube and stuff the games into your bag. He grabs some more medication for Yuji, who doesn’t complain as he swallows it with a miserable frown at the bitter taste.

You wait at the door with your bag packed as Sukuna moves around the apartment, putting the medication away before he joins you at the door.

“Thank you so much for your help with studying, Kuna,” you say as you twist the handle and make your way out the door, turning to face him just outside his apartment. He leans on the doorframe, shutting the door slightly behind him and blocking the boys’ vision of you to give you both some privacy. He’s grimacing at the nickname, but he doesn’t complain.

“It’s whatever. Just paying you back for lookin’ after the brats.”

Your lips quirk up into a smile. Of course that’s all it is. “Email me if you need me to look after them while Yuji’s still sick.”

A puff of air escapes Sukuna’s nose in a makeshift laugh. “This your excuse to have more time to study?”

You have to resist the urge to roll your eyes at the way he so obviously is denying that he’s getting help from you. “Yeah. Yeah, it is,” you agree.

He smirks, nodding. “Tuesday at three.”

“Better be in the afternoon this time,” you tease.

“God forbid I take a night shift,” he scoffs, turning to shut the door. He pauses for a split second, turning back to you. You almost think he’s about to thank you, but either you read the situation wrong or he second-guesses himself because- “You better remember who Allen Dulles is on Tuesday.”

Your face contorts as he references the cold war and chuckles at your expression before closing the door.

Dick.

–

Friday comes sooner than you can possibly imagine as you find yourself spending late nights studying with Sukuna after looking after Yuji and Choso. Yuji returned to school on Thursday and Choso on Monday, so you’d gotten into the habit of picking up Choso from school and going back to watch them play games while you studied or worked on projects.

You couldn’t know whether Sukuna would still need help now that Yuji was feeling better, but that was the least of your concerns, because it’s Friday.

And you’ve been dreading this Friday in particular. Worse still, it felt like the world was against you all day too.

You woke up to the first snow of the season, opting to dress in a cute, white knit sweater that was fairly warm, as well as some beige leggings- not to mention all your winter gear.

And that was only the tip of the iceberg, you had to redo your eyeliner after somehow messing it up not once but twice, and then you managed to step in a puddle of mud and get your usual winter boots completely covered in dirt.

With your clean high heeled boots adorning your feet, you make your way to the school and quickly fall into step with Nanami who shares your first class of the day. He’s bundled up warmly in a long coat, a grey scarf accenting his coat. His sharp eyes turn to you as you join him, softening at the sight of you.

“Good morning,” he greets you, a kind smile pulling at his features.

You return his smile half-heartedly, giving him a brief wave. “Hey, Kento. How’re you feeling about finals?”

He hums thoughtfully. “Prepared,” he decides after a moment. “Though I don’t believe there’s such a thing as too much studying.”

“Yeah… I get that,” you agree, watching the snow condense beneath your feet with each step. Comfortable silence falls over you as the crunching of snow and the sounds of passing students fills the air. The warmth of your breath surrounds you as you mindlessly stare at the sparkling coat of flakes across the ground.

After a few moments, Nanami hums again, interrupting the silence and pulling your attention back to him. His gaze flickers between your face and your hands.

“Are you alright?”

“Hm? Yeah, why?”

Again, his watchful eyes flicker down to your hands. “You’ve been zipping up and unzipping your jacket since we began walking.”

You purse your lips, finally following his gaze down to your jacket which must have been making a grating zipping noise the whole time that you hadn’t even noticed with how caught up in your thoughts you were.

“Sorry Kento,” you sigh, shaking your head. “Just a bit nervous.”

His head tilts. “What are you nervous about?”

“I have to make a presentation in Art History at the end of the day. No one else in class is presenting.” With a sheepish smile, you proceed to subconsciously begin playing with your zipper again, too caught up in your thoughts to realize you’re doing it.

“I see. Is that what Sukuna was working on this morning?”

“You have a class with him?”

“Yes. He’s in my Accounting class early on Tuesdays and Fridays,” Nanami explains, subtly watching the way you’re messing with your zipper again, though he keeps his mouth shut.

“Oh. He was working on things this morning?”

“I believe so. It didn’t seem like he was paying attention,” Nanami shrugs. “I assumed he was working on something else.”

You let out a breath. “That’s kind of a relief, honestly.”

Arching a brow, Nanami hums questioningly.

“I still don’t like public speaking,” you quietly mumble, zipping your jacket up fully and burying your face into the fabric as your cheeks heat up with embarrassment.

“Hm. I see,” the blonde hums, having been there during your Prom alongside Haibara. He’s well aware of the fallout that came with being named Prom Queen. “Well, you’ll have Sukuna with you, and I highly doubt anyone would comment with Sukuna at your side.”

“Scary dog privilege,” you agree.

“Sorry?” Kento’s brow furrows in confusion, leaving you giggling.

“Don’t worry about it.”

With a shake of his head, Kento opens the door to your next lecture and puts his focus into his notes as usual. You do your best to follow suit, but if your bouncing leg is any indicator, your focus isn’t long for this world and Nanami knows he’s in for a long study session in the coming week.

–

You did debate just not showing up, but if Sukuna was working on the presentation at an early morning class, you don’t have the heart to not show up at least for him. Still, your nerves are frayed at the seams in downright unease at the thought of being the only group to present your project.

The concept of being one of the only two people at the center of everyone’s attention all for being named the ‘best’ at something brings back too many memories for you to care to admit. Taking a deep breath, you do your best to keep your eyes on the prize: the extra credit.

Sukuna was right when he said you wouldn’t turn down extra credit. You would definitely think about turning it down when it came at the cost of your dignity and sanity, but with Sukuna at your side, you think you just might be alright.

At the end of the day, you know you need to keep your grades up if you want to keep your scholarship, and more importantly your parents happy, so with a deep breath, you focus on the class to the best of your ability, pushing aside your mess of anxiety and worries.

That is, until you glance back at Sukuna’s usual seat, only to find it empty and your heart damn near stops. Your eyes widen and in the least subtle way possible, you whip your head around the class in search of him. He has to be here. He promised to handle all the talking, you aren’t prepared, you… You can’t do this alone. Surely the professor will understand that too, right?

“Before I dismiss you all, I’d like to have a couple of exemplary students come up to present the Meaning in Art project I had you all submit a couple of weeks back.”

Your heart is thundering, your breathing growing shallow as panic sets in.

“These students displayed an impeccable understanding of the art and artists they chose to study, demonstrating this understanding through both their written and visual pieces.”

Your mouth is dry, your throat tight. Where the fuck is he? He wouldn’t throw you to the wolves like this, would he? You didn’t prepare anything, you were relying on him.

“With that being said, I’d like to invite these students up to the front of the class to give a short breakdown of their project.” Your name follows this statement, along with Sukuna’s, and the class goes silent.

Your hands are trembling as you stare in dismay at the desk sitting at the front of the room where Sukuna’s art is sitting, alongside your written thesis. You swallow hard, forcing down your nerves as all eyes fall to you.

On shaky legs, you slowly make your way down to the front of the class, quietly making your way up to the professor. “I- um-” you take a breath in an effort to calm your nerves. “Can we present next week instead? Sukuna- um- isn’t here,” you quietly whisper.

“Finals are in two weeks. This is the last class for this semester.”

Fuck.

“Right. Sorry, yeah. That’s fine,” you whisper, chewing on your lip as you turn to face the class. Dozens of pairs of judgmental eyes stare back at you and if the ground opened up and swallowed you whole, never to be seen again, it would be a better fate than what you were about to do. Alone.

“Um-” You mumble, clearing your throat as you pick up the printed thesis you wrote together with Sukuna. Surely he would walk through the door in just a few seconds, right? He would show up for you just like you did for him when Yuji was sick, right? This has to be a cruel prank.

“Speak up, please.” Your professor’s voice pulls you from the delusion that Sukuna was ever going to show up. The delusion that Sukuna ever cared.

Fuck, you just admitted to yourself that you like Sukuna.

You just came to terms with the fact that your attraction to him is more than just physical.

You’ve spent weeks defending him, even when he was a dick, but this really takes the cake.

Your chest tightens as you realize just how much he’s let you down. You want to cry, it’s a fight against your own body not to show just how nervous you are.

“For our-” You pause, staring down at the page with your name scrawled alongside Sukuna’s and a perfect score circled in red. “For my project,” you begin, taking a deep breath in an effort to push down the swirling anger, disappointment, and anxiety all threatening to suffocate you.

You launch into an explanation on the three pieces you and Sukuna had chosen, summarizing your thesis while fighting the tremble in your voice, putting every last ounce of effort you can into masking how nervous you are and avoiding the stares of your classmates.

Picking up the art Sukuna drew is when the last shreds of your dignity fall apart and tears prick in your eyes. Your voice wavers and you know everyone can tell. You can hear the whispers, the quiet giggles. You don’t know whether it’s directed at you or if they’re even paying attention to you at all, but each and every noise seems to drag you one inch closer to your own personal hell and you shrink into yourself as you attempt to explain Sukuna’s art.

Alone.

You can’t even say for sure if your words made sense towards the end of your presentation, the whole thing a blur behind tear-filled eyes and the ringing of anxiety in your ears. The only thing you do hear is your professor dismissing you. You don’t even grab your bag and you leave your project on the table, you just need out. You need air.

Your feet carry you out the door, your eyes trained on the ground as you do your best not to collide with anyone as you run for the doors. You don’t hear someone call your name in confusion and you don’t see them chase after you. So focused on fresh air, you forget how cold it is as the freezing air shocks your skin and chills your lungs.

Finding a spot beside the door outside, away from prying eyes and out of the way, you wrap your arms around yourself and wipe your tears, taking deep breaths to slow your racing heart.

“There you are. What happened?”

You blink a couple of times, trying to wipe any evidence of your tears as you lock eyes with familiar mahogany ones.

“Ken?” You barely manage to whisper his name, your breath stolen from your lungs by the anxiety rocking your body.

“What happened?” He pushes again, eyes traveling down to your trembling hands. He can’t tell whether that’s from the cold or your nerves, but like the gentleman he is, he pulls his coat off and throws it over your shoulders, zipping it up over your arms in an effort to keep you from freezing.

“He didn’t show up.”

Nanami’s lips press into a thin line, taking in your expression. You’re barely keeping it together, though the freezing air flooding your lungs is keeping your mind distracted.

With a sigh, Kento sets a hand on your shoulder. “Come back inside. Let’s get your coat.”

Slowly coming back down from your panicked state as his hand on your shoulder grounds you, you pause for a moment to take in the blonde in front of you. He’s in just a knit sweater and slacks, visibly shaking from the cold air now that you’re wrapped in his jacket.

“Shit, sorry Kento,” you mumble, letting him guide you back inside and to your lecture hall, where he takes his coat back and grabs your bags for you to avoid any prying eyes. Handing you your coat, followed by the bag he’s packed up for you, he sighs and leads the way to a secluded area of the History and Science building of the college. You don’t say a word as he sits you down on a bench.

“Are you alright?”

You nod.

“Are you lying?”

Your mouth opens to say no, but one glance at his sharp gaze tells you he sees right through you. “Were you outside my class?”

“Mhm. I wanted to make sure things went well.”

“That’s… Really kind, Nanamin. Thank you.”

He hums quietly, leaning back against the wall behind the bench. Someone walks past mumbling something to themself about failing a test, but it’s otherwise silent in the halls.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’ve been better. People were laughing.” You chew on your lip, rubbing your hands over your face.

“I’m certain they weren’t. Students laugh throughout class constantly, they likely weren’t paying attention,” he points out.

You know he has a point, but it doesn’t make the situation any less frustrating and disappointing.

“I don’t know what hurts more,” you say quietly, more to yourself than to Kento, “that he promised he’d be there with me and wasn’t, or having to relive that stupid moment in high school all over again.”

Your friend grimaces. “Yes, I can imagine that wasn’t pleasant. I’m sorry.” It’s about all he can offer in the moment, but mentally he’s thinking of mentioning what happened to Gojo and Geto and watching the drama that unfolds. The white haired frat boy would relish in the idea of having an actual reason to have beef with Sukuna.

“Why don’t we go grab something to eat?” Nanami suggests in an effort to get your mind off of your horrifying presentation and, more importantly, the man that’s managed to break your heart twice now.

“I’m okay. I think I just want to go home.”

“I would prefer if you weren’t alone,” Nanami protests.

“We just ate, though.”

“We can grab dessert, then. My treat,” he insists.

Silence follows as you look up at Nanami, finding comfort in the concern swirling in those deep mahogany irises. “Fine,” you sigh, relenting finally.

With a sympathetic smile, he gets to his feet and offers you his hand, helping you get to your feet as he leads the way back out into the cold with one goal in mind.

Keep your mind off of Sukuna.

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❦ a/n ; sorry for the delay on this one!! i had a work conference all last week but had a ton of fun writing this when i got back, so i hope you all enjoyed it <3 as always, likes, reblogs, and comments are super appreciated <3

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