#<— new sketchy tag smiles :]c

[kiwibirdlafayette]

hermicraft scribbles from work today :D ft. bits from some of the main POV’s im keepin up with this season :3c

[miraclewoozi]

DON'T SWEAT IT. - l.jh

Today — the first time in a small forever that he forgot to check the battery on his earphones (and subsequently had them die on him mid-workout) — Jihoon is forced to notice you.

pairing; lee jihoon x fem!reader.  content; fluff / gym crush au / strangers to lovers / kinda idiots to lovers / smut towards the end (MINORS DNI). w/c; just a breezy 18k- and some change? warnings; swearing, this is only proof read once because if i read it again i was going to lose my mind. please let me know if i've forgotten any. smut tags under the cut ( not sure that this counts as a warning but a heads up: the gym weight units, whenever mentioned, are in kilograms not lbs because i’m british and the metric system, am i right? sorry if there are any other british-isms, i try really hard to avoid them/catch them on a proofread but there are inevitably some that have slipped through the net.  )

note; gym-selfie jihoon, you will never not own my ass. ( screaming internally this is the first fic i've written since my dan + phil youtube era. i don't know what i'm doing. this has been in my wips for about two months. it's a bit all over the place. that's. literally just me. bon appetite. <3 )

smut warnings: making out, grinding, fingering (f rec), oral (f rec), blowjob started/implied (at the end), protected sex (be safe out there gang), little bit of biting, no huge power dynamics? reader & jihoon are both switches (and simps), some use of pet-names (good girl/baby).

—————

He first sees you around lunchtime on an otherwise unassuming Sunday. 

As you walk in, the gym is wonderfully quiet. A handful of regulars mill about, making full use of the rare freedom of the machinery. One of the club’s personal trainers is marching an impossibly steep incline on a treadmill. It could just be any other weekend session in this criminally over-equipped and under-used gym: the town’s worst kept secret. But when the door slams shut behind you, his head jerks up; it, in this moment, is the loudest sound in the room. It’s sort of the only one he hears at all.

Today — the first time in a small forever that he forgot to check the battery on his earphones (and subsequently had them die on him mid-workout) — Jihoon is forced to notice you as he sits with dumbbells rested against his thighs. He catches his breath as he wonders who you are, if you’ve ever been to this gym before, why he doesn’t recognise you. Are you a new potential regular, maybe? Or just visiting the area and making good use of the cheap pay-as-you-go rates? Maybe, he considers, lips turning downwards in thought… maybe you’ve been coming here for a long time and he’s somehow just always been so in his own head that he’s never noticed.

The last, he thinks, is sort of unlikely. No. He would definitely remember a face like yours.

His heart rate slows more than he usually lets it as he finds himself watching you fill up your water bottle at the fountain, taking a long sip on your way over to one of the stairmasters. His brain blanks out when he realises that he’s not just looking anymore, he’s sort of staring, and swallows the saliva on his tongue hard, looking back at the mirror. He doesn’t want to be that guy. He isn’t that guy – he just got distracted by the loud noise, and this is exactly why he checks the damn battery on his headphones before he leaves the house. 

The only problem is that now, he can’t remember how many sets he’s done. He lies back and stares straight into a slightly sketchy light-fixture, neglecting to pick up the dumbbells that he put aside for his next set of pushes. Jihoon adjusts the position of his shoulders against the bench, arches his back off it slightly, digs his heels into the spongy floor beneath them and pushes the ones still in his hands until failure. 

Today, he finishes his routine and leaves the gym without allowing himself so much as another glance your way.

He neglects to notice that your eyes are avoiding him right back. 

—————

You smile at him for the first time on a Tuesday. Not the following one – a week and a bit later.

Seungcheol is with him tonight. Jihoon prefers to train alone nine times out of ten: this is a truth widely acknowledged, accepted and respected among his friends. Gym time is his down time, his equivalent of movie marathons and comfort food, of face masks and glasses of wine. But it’s not a hard rule: occasionally, someone will ask to tag along and use one of his guest passes, and Jihoon very rarely says no. There are two reasons. One, he isn’t actually rude, contrary to approximately eighteen running jokes in the group-chat. But also, it adds a little bit of variety to his otherwise very set-in-stone regimen, and mixing it up doesn’t hurt. Like tonight, for example. Seungcheol is pulling him into the studio off the main gym floor, his own gym bag packed with boxing pads and gloves for them to play with.

Variety.

Jihoon grumbles a little at the idea, at first. He has a very love-hate relationship with cardio, favouring a simple steady-state run over everything else, and it just feels a bit against his moral code to use gym time for something like this. However, he comes to discover very quickly that smacking Seungcheol’s hands is very therapeutic; Jihoon knows he’s maybe getting a little too into it when his friend asks if they can switch around, grimacing and shaking out his wrist after a particularly beefy punch. 

He agrees, albeit reluctantly, tugging off the gloves he’s wearing and pulling on the pads instead.

This half of the activity is considerably less enjoyable for Jihoon; he starts to cool down and loses his flow almost straight away and after about thirty seconds, his breathing is back to normal and he feels ready to go again. Even so, he does what he needs to do to be a good workout partner, and goes one step further into ‘good friend’ territory as he allows Seungcheol to vent about the bad day he had at work in-between hits, offering murmurs and looks of disgust when it feels appropriate. Suddenly, the impromptu request to come to the gym tonight makes much more sense, as does the slightly bizarre choice of activity, but Jihoon tries not to ask about it in too much detail.

They swing at each other for a few more rounds apiece, working up a healthy sweat and getting out a few frustrations as the hour wears on. On the last set, Jihoon switches out Seungcheol’s hands for a punching bag, putting a lot more of his weight behind every hit and really tiring himself out. By the end, his hair sticks to his forehead and his cheeks have flushed bright red; he only stops when he gets that weird, metallic taste in the back of his mouth that says he’s probably overdone it. Again.

“Hit the shower?” Seungcheol asks breathlessly as he finishes his last set of Russian twists and lies down flat on the floor, equally sticky and flushed all over. 

Jihoon pats his face dry with his towel, shaking his head. “You go ahead. I’ll have one at home.” 

He doesn’t give Seungcheol much of a chance to respond, already cleaning down anything he’s touched or managed to sweat on and riding out the high of the endorphins flooding his veins. Secretly, he hasn’t had a cardio session this high energy or this satisfying in a long time. He isn’t going to readily admit to that though.

“Nah, I’ll do the same,” Seungcheol agrees. He starts packing the gear he brought with him into his bag and they leave together after, heading towards the exit. 

That’s when he sees you again. 

He doesn’t notice at first; you’re stowing your things into one of the higher lockers, and you have your headphones slung around your neck as he walks past. It’s the sound of a song he vaguely recognises through your speakers that makes his head snap over from the conversation he’s in the middle of. They walk past at the moment you drop down from your tiptoes, and you flash a small (but insanely pretty) smile at Jihoon.

By the time he manages to process this fact, he’s already walked past you and you’re headed over into the main gym area, so even though he turns around to try and catch your eye, all he sees is your retreating figure. He stumbles over his own feet, not looking where he’s going, and just barely catches himself on Seungcheol’s upper arm before he actually does fall over. His older friend glances down at his bicep before he adopts a look that Jihoon has seen many, many times before: just never directed at him. His cheeks heat up further and he looks away.

“What was that?” Seungcheol asks, one eyebrow so far up his forehead that it’s disappeared almost entirely under his soggy hair. He looks so smug, so incredibly entertained. Jihoon wants to smack that expression off his face, immediately.

“Nothing,” Jihoon rushes, managing not to act on the violent thought even though he wants to. He clears his throat. “No-one. I-... they’re new, I think. I don’t know.”

Seungcheol lets out a soft laugh, pushing the door open for them both to leave through. “Yeah,” he scoffs, eyes glimmering with something Jihoon doesn’t think he likes the look of. “Nothing, my ass.”

—————

Three days later, he hears you speak for the first time.

Granted, you aren’t speaking to him – at least, not at first. But that’s not really what matters.

It’s late, and it’s a Friday night. Fridays are usually Jihoon’s days rest days, but sitting around his apartment had him feeling impossibly twitchy, with far too much energy to burn and no way to do so without leaving the house. And he knows that he needs to take days off, now and again. He knows that they’re good for recovery and that it’s healthy to take time to himself that involves not lifting weights. But what he also knows is that if he doesn’t manage to shake the weird buzzing feeling in his muscles, in his joints, in his veins, he’s never going to get to sleep. So, here he finds himself at almost 10PM, walking down the street to get to the gym.

To begin with, he doesn’t know (or really care) who it is that’s coming up behind him. He can hear quite clearly that the mystery person is on the phone, and that they’re in the middle of what seems to be a rather heated argument: his brain latches onto occasional words, phrases, curses. Every now and again, their voice drops to a deep, frustrated mutter and he cringes slightly, making a point to keep his eyes forward and down so as not to draw attention to the fact that this presumably private conversation has become everything but.

He touches his entry fob to the sensor on the door as he arrives and pushes it open. Jihoon uses the opportunity to stand still, to glance back at whoever it is that’s walked behind him for the past four and a half minutes, and his eyes come to land on you. He falters, noting how your eyes are a bit glassy and your cheeks are stained with what he can safely assume are tear-tracks. In this moment, he wants to run; he doesn’t want anything to do with that, and he certainly doesn’t want to hear any more of your call. It’s none of his business, and he feels plenty weird enough already with what he has overheard. But, for some unknown reason, he stays in place.

“No – no, you don’t get to-...” you hiss into your phone. “It was our fucking anniversary, you asshole.” Jihoon’s face tightens at that, lips drawn between his teeth and his eyes blowing slightly wide. You pass through the door in front of him, flashing a small smile as you go. Another smile, he thinks to himself, but he’d be an idiot to compare them in any way; this one is so dramatically dissimilar to the first, he thinks it could almost have come from a totally different person. 

Unfortunately, there’s nothing ‘insanely pretty’ about it this time. Your smile is tight-lipped and exhausted, slightly apologetic. Maybe even forced. He does try to return a warmer one to you, but he doesn’t know if you notice. 

“Look, I’m at the gym – we’re not doing this right now. I’ll call you later.” You hang up the phone with the kind of sigh that groans in the back of your throat.

A small part of him wants to take this moment and use it to ask if you’re all right, but an even larger part of him doesn’t. It isn’t because he doesn’t care. In a weird way, considering this is only the first time he’s clearly heard your voice and he knows absolutely nothing about you, he does care. But there are a few things that stop him. Not only are you a near-complete stranger, not only would he have no idea what to say to you if the answer happened to come out as a ‘no’, not only is he already coming over a little bit clammy at the thought of having a conversation with you… Jihoon isn’t stupid. He knows from the sound of your voice and the way you’re rather aggressively typing a message into your phone that it’s a ridiculous question.

You’re walking into the gym at 10 o’clock on a Friday night, your eyes literally brimming with tears. Of course you’re not all right.

He’s still standing in the open doorway mulling all this over, but Jihoon only realises when a gust of wind slaps over his calves and sends a draught not only through the reception area, but up the length of his spine. He comes inside fully as you close the locker you’re using – he notices, but he isn’t sure why, that it’s the same one as last time – and throws his things into the one he always uses. Two below and one to the left of yours.

It’s quiet tonight: just the pair of you and one middle-aged guy. Jihoon recognises him as the friendly man who seemingly knows everyone who comes in here – including you, apparently, judging by the way he strikes up a short but energetic conversation. When the other guy walks away, you clamp your headphones back over your ears and return to what you were doing before, occasionally bobbing your head or moving your lips in time with whatever it is that you’re listening to. Jihoon steals little glances at you now and again when you’re in-between sets, watching how you breathe deeper, how your skin glows with sweat as you tap your fingertips against your thighs.

He almost drops the bar he’s holding when you catch his eyes in the long line of mirrors. He turns away, swallowing hard, completely missing how your own gaze lingers.

Jihoon becomes so obsessed with not being caught looking at you again that he doesn’t even notice when you disappear off the gym floor completely. It’s only when he pulls his headphones off at the end of his session and glances around that he registers your absence: your third companion is long gone, and he assumes you must have snuck out without him noticing too. He settles the speakers back over his ears before pulling on an old zip-up, flicking the hood over his head to shelter him a little better once he gets outside. But he’s in no rush to get home so he takes his time, resting his bag between his abdomen and the lockers, replying to a few messages and clicking his tongue at some of the nonsense being spewed into the group-chat. 

He isn’t sure exactly how long he’s standing there for, but he does know precisely what pulls him back to the world outside of the device in his hands.

To begin with, he doesn’t notice you approach, lost completely in his screen. He doesn’t hear your footsteps, or the way you politely clear your throat to announce your presence so he can move out of the way. He misses your moment of realisation that he’s listening to music and has no idea that you’re standing three feet behind him. He doesn’t even see you walk up next to him, your hair still damp from your shower and sitting loose over your shoulders.

It’s only when you try to reach over him to grab the last of your things that he snaps out of his trance. The fragrance of your body wash hits him first, and oh boy, does it hit him. Sweet, and delicate. Then, he gets something beautifully fruity: it’s not a perfume (it doesn’t smell like a perfume), but it’s you. Your shampoo, maybe? A conditioner? He can’t tell. Whatever it is, the combination of fragrances has him feeling like he’s been slammed into by a damn freight train. He drops his bag to the floor, freezing for a second, and then finally moves away just as the little door swings open. 

“I’m so sorry,” he says hurriedly, tugging his hood down and pulling his headphones off completely. “I didn’t even think you were still here.” He can’t shake the smell of you, nor the feeling of your warm frame leaning so close to his own. God, why is his heart pounding like he’s just finished a round of sprints? Why can’t he breathe?

“No – hey, no, don’t be,” you rush, shaking your head. You finally succeed in pulling your coat free and start trying to get it on; Jihoon wonders if you often struggle to find your sleeves like this, if you’re always chasing them around like a puppy after its own tail. He does it too, sometimes. He gets it. It’s cute. “It’s okay. I was trying not to disturb-... I’m sorry.”

“You’re fine,” he tells you. For the first time, he’s able to smile back at you properly. 

Why is it so hot in here, all of a sudden? Do they shut off the air conditioning after hours or something? He’s breaking out in a sweat.

“Call it even?” you suggest shyly, extending out a hand now you’ve managed to get both arms through your sleeves. He looks down at your fingers for a second before reaching to shake your hand once, a semi-firm grip securing the ‘deal’. (He feels a bit like he’s been electrocuted after, but he tries not to make that too obvious).

It goes awkwardly quiet for a moment then, and Jihoon wishes deeply that he had it in him to say something. Anything. But his brain has gone completely empty and apparently, all he knows how to do is stand completely still like a fucking statue. He shifts his gaze from you, to the wall behind you, to the carpet beneath his shoes, all the while tugging at the collar of his sweatshirt as if it might bring him a tiny breath of fresh air. The gentle sound of you clearing your throat has him looking back at your face again though; he assumes for a second that this is maybe you about to announce taking your leave. All the while, he’s cursing himself out in his own head for being totally inept, and he’s not entirely sure that it isn’t written all over his face.

“Alone, today?” you ask, idly fiddling with your zipper and succeeding in taking him by surprise. He really didn’t think you were going to continue this. And yet…

“Hm?” he questions. 

You swallow before answering. “You… the last time, you were with a friend?” you explain, and now it’s your turn to look away. He wonders if you’re a little warm too, if he’s right in what he was thinking about the air-conditioning. 

“Oh. Right.” 

He nods. An annoying train of doubt in his mind wants to know why you’re asking about Seungcheol; if maybe it was him that you smiled at the other night, even though he knows your eyes weren’t looking up at the man he brought with him. He thinks maybe he should be used to these turns in conversation by now – you certainly wouldn’t be the first person to ask if one of his friends is available, after all – but somehow, he isn’t, and he has a slightly bitter taste in the back of his mouth as he goes on.

He really didn’t have ‘you being interested in one of his best friends’ on his bingo card for tonight, that’s for sure. 

“Yeah. I think he’s with his partner, or… I don’t know. I don’t really bring other people, often. That was a one-off.”

You nod silently and Jihoon can’t quite get a read on what that means. He wonders if you’re upset at the revelation of Seungcheol’s partner, or maybe that he doesn’t tag along to every session. Or maybe, maybe, you were just being polite, and you don’t really care what his friend is up to that means he isn’t here. But whatever it is that you’re feeling, you do far too good a job at hiding it; he’s suddenly very overcome with the desire to run, again, except this time he might just bury his head in the sand too for good measure.

“How much were you deadlifting, just then?” you ask in the lull, just as he thinks he might have perfected the best way to say goodbye that doesn’t make him come across as even more of a tool than he probably already has. It throws him off kilter, but somehow, he manages to answer you in reasonable time.

“Oh, God… uh, one… 160?” He says uncertainly. “That’s not… I can do heavier-...” In his mind, he slaps his forehead. “Wait, no, that’s-... I mean, it’s true, but I didn’t mean-...”

You bite back your smile as he talks himself in a circle but Jihoon is too flustered to notice, convinced that he now sounds like every arrogant gym rat on the planet. God, he’s given himself the ick.

“I guessed you could,” you say. 

Oh boy, this freezes him. Mid-thought, mid blink, mid-breath: he’s completely stuck. What does that mean? What does that mean? He only just manages to unstick his now suddenly dry tongue from the roof of his mouth, looking at you with surprised, confused eyes and parted lips. There aren’t any words on them, though. Like a deer in headlights, he just… stares.

“I mean, okay. Come on.” Your eyes visibly drop as you look him over, gaze lingering at his shoulders, his biceps, his waist. “You can get another twenty on that at least, right?”

He doesn’t know how to explain what’s happening to him, but if he thought he was burning up before? It was nothing compared to this, now. And there’s no way you haven’t noticed how everything from the base of his neck to the tips of his ears has suddenly started staining scarlet. He bows his head and pinches his lips tight, wrestling away the train of thought that appears as you drag your bottom lip between your teeth momentarily, still eyeing his arms. God, he’s never felt so overwhelmed in his life. 

“Something like that, yeah,” he strains. He’s trying so hard to be nonchalant, even though he knows all of his personal bests by heart. Deadlift, 195kg. He hit it a few weeks ago: a couple of days before he first saw you.

“Mm. You can tell.”

Jihoon tries to shake off the compliment, but he fails. In equal measure he wishes you’d stop (he doesn’t know how much more blood can rush to his cheeks before he keels over) and never wants you to stop talking. It’s all going straight to his stomach, though, and he doesn’t remember having felt this specific brand of nervous and excited and stupidly shy since he was in high school.

He can hardly keep up. This is the danger zone.

Maybe it’s a bad idea that he says the next thing that comes into his head in a desperate attempt to change the conversation away from how much he can pull. But somehow, his voice doesn’t break when he asks, “are you parked far away?”

What? It’s dark outside, and this part of town isn’t exactly known for its upstanding citizens and pretty flowerbeds.

“Oh,” you say, eyes a little wide. “I’m-... just staying close-by. I walked here.” The space between his eyebrows must crease a little too quickly because you immediately hurry to speak again. “Really. It’s like… not even ten minutes. All main streets. It’s nothing.”

“Ten minutes longer than I’d walk around here at night on my own,” he says lightheartedly. In tone, at least. He’s actually completely serious.

You laugh at that; he lets out a chuckle, too. Now, Jihoon doesn’t believe in fairies but he thinks that if they were real, they’d giggle just like you do. 

With a smile still on your face, you say, “what? A strong guy like you? Come on, now.”

Do you have to keep doing that? Fuck, he’s absolutely done for.

He tilts his head forwards, eyes closed, trying so hard to stop the muscles in his cheeks from lifting in a grin that it becomes a workout in and of itself.

“I mean it,” he says, taking what he hopes is a subtle breath to settle the fluttering in his chest. The next thing he knows, he’s leaning one shoulder against the lockers, a little reminiscent of every douchebag in every teen movie ever made. If he doesn’t think about it too much, he won’t cringe into oblivion until he gets home and replays this interaction over and over in his head instead of going to sleep. “Maybe I’ve just lived here too long. I might be jaded, but it’s still true.”

“How long is too long?” you ask.

“All my life,” he tells you.

“No way?”

“Mm.” A beat. “What about you?”

“I’m just staying with a friend, right now.”

“Oh, right.” He falls quiet again as he remembers the first time he saw you, remembers making the list in his head of all the possible reasons he hadn’t seen you before. The second was true, then.

Why does that feel like the worst possible scenario? He decides not to unpack that here.

“Maybe-...” you start, glancing down at your hands, which have been twisting in front of you for a few seconds now. Your chest inflates, filled with the words you’re about to speak, but only a breath comes out when you shake your head instead of saying them. “No, don’t worry. Scratch that.”

“Are you sure?” he asks, because he thinks that whatever you were about to suggest, there’s not much he would have said no to. He feels like it’s only fair to give you another chance to say it.

But you don’t.

“Yeah, it’s nothing.” You pause. “I… should probably get going.” He glances over your shoulder at the clock mounted on the far wall, squinting to see the time. 11:45.

“Shit. Yeah, me too,” Jihoon agrees. He didn’t realise it had gotten so late, so fast: he’s hardly ever out at this time. Lord, he already knows it’s going to be an open inquisition when he gets back to his apartment. His neighbours, Soonyoung and Seokmin, are about to have a fucking field day. 

But it’s already long past the time he usually goes to bed, so he asks his next question anyway. He still can’t shake the thought of you walking back on your own at this hour. “Do-… you need a ride?” 

He’s not sure if you actually consider it, or just wait a moment before you answer just to be polite. Either way, you end up shaking your head.

“It’s okay. I’ve-… got a call to make, so.” Your voice is a little quieter, lips tweaking up into a regretful half-smile, and Jihoon curses in his own head. How had he forgotten about that? “Thank you, though. Really.”

“Don’t mention it,” he says. “Just… get back safe.”

You smile and nod, taking a step towards the door and Jihoon does the same. He reaches the exit first and holds it open for you; when you’re both out in the street, he suppresses a shiver and looks in the direction of where he left his car earlier. Feeling the full force of the cold, it crosses his mind to ask again if you’re sure about walking home, but you’re already pulling a beanie down over your still damp hair and tapping something into your phone, so he doesn’t say anything.

“I’ll see you around, uh-…” you start to say, only looking back up when you falter, realising that this is the first time you’re about to use his name and it occurs to you both, at the same time, that you haven’t done this part, yet.

“Jihoon,” he introduces himself, lips quirking into a side-smile. His gaze is expectant and you respond to it perfectly. 

“Y/n,” you introduce yourself. 

“See you around, y/n.”

You split off in the opposite direction to where he’s heading. Before he clamps his headphones over his ears for the short walk up to his car, the last thing he hears is the retreating sound of a dial-tone. 

—————

He doesn’t see you then for two whole weeks. 

For the first couple of days, he only idly notices; it’s not a big deal — it’s not like you’re always there when he is, and he’s sure it’s the same vice versa. But he notices your absence, nonetheless. By the end of the first week, he casually wonders if you’ve had a change in schedule. Maybe you’re on a different working pattern, something that means you can’t be there on Monday and Thursday evenings and at 11:45am on Sundays. 

It’s not weird. He only knows this because prior to that first conversation, acknowledging you as you crossed paths by the free-weights became part of his routine. It’s fine that he sort of misses those little interactions, isn’t it?

Maybe you’ve decided to start training ridiculously early in the morning instead? He tried that once. Never again. It then occurs to him, in the middle of a self-enforced rest day as he sits in the dark nursing a headache, that perhaps you’re not well. He sort of wishes he’d had the guts to ask for your number the last time he saw you, now: he thinks he’d check in, see if you were okay, ask how work was going or something. 

Deep down he knows he’d probably actually just be staring at a blank text thread with a ‘casual’ message typed, tweaked a few hundred times, and ultimately unsent. But that’s fine. It’s the thought that counts. 

The next time he sees you isn’t even in the gym, at all. It’s a Sunday afternoon — he finished his morning session, went home, showered, and headed back out into town after some lunch with a few errands to run. He finds himself spoiled with the luxury of a spare few hours to kill and dips into his favourite coffee place, thrilled beyond belief to find that it’s not obnoxiously busy and that there’s only one other person in the queue waiting to be served. 

Oh, he thinks when he looks up from his phone and sees a vaguely familiar set of headphones sitting on top of a definitely familiar mane of hair, standing right in front of him. Oh, shit. It’s you.

Jihoon goes back and forth with himself over it but ultimately decides he probably doesn’t know you well enough to just say hello out in the wild like this, so even though the urge to do so strikes, he holds himself back. It’s agonising, though. He really wants to. 

You step forward to order and he’s typing out a reply to a message in his, Seokmin and Soonyoung’s three-way group chat, in which he’s literally been fighting for his life as of late. He made the mistake of mentioning you in passing a few days ago and ever since, he’s had to vehemently deny that he has developed his first gym crush, insisting that actually, he’s just made a friend. They don’t believe him, because of course they don’t. That would be far too reasonable. Seokmin says that Jihoon wouldn’t be blushing just from saying your name if you were really ‘just a friend’. Soonyoung argues Jihoon wouldn’t have mentioned you at all.

“I’m so sorry — bear with me, just-…” your voice is quiet but Jihoon hears you apologising to the cashier in front of you, and it snaps him clean away from the tiff he’s having with the men who live in his building. He glances up and you’re elbow-deep in the bag over your shoulder, red in the face with your bottom lip pulled between your teeth. He turns his head slightly and sees the small hand-written sign that says the card machine isn’t working, and they’re cash only, today. 

He can hazard a guess at your predicament. 

After another few seconds of you trying to find whatever it is you’re looking for in your bag, he starts feeling bad for you. This, right here, is his own worst nightmare. Should the roles be reversed, he thinks he would’ve just turned around and walked out. It’s exactly why he doesn’t bother with backpacks and satchels day-to-day: if it doesn’t fit in his pockets, he doesn’t take it out with him. The system isn’t perfect but it has saved Jihoon a decent amount of public distress. 

But the roles aren’t reversed, and he has his wallet already in his hand, so… he only gives himself a few seconds to wonder if it’s appropriate before he does the stupid thing anyway.

“Don’t worry — I’ve got it,” he says, stepping around you, pulling out the cash to pay for your order. You’re dumbstruck when you look  at him, head tilted to the side. The person stood behind the counter glances at you, then at him, and back at you; you don’t see this, however, because your eyes haven’t left Jihoon’s face since he appeared — as far as you’re concerned — out of thin air.

“I can’t ask you to…” you start to protest, but your hands have stopped fishing around and he’s moving the cash further towards the barista, who hesitates just a second longer. 

“You’re not asking. I’m offering. I’ve got you.” He says this with such finality that you quite literally can’t argue with him. The lady behind the counter accepts the cash and you nod, shyly, mouthing a thank you. He orders his own drink — an Americano, nothing exciting — and you both go to stand at the other end of the counter while you wait.

“Hi,” you finally say, and Jihoon can’t help but give a small chuckle. 

He doesn’t have anything hugely witty or creative in his arsenal, though, so he comes back with a matching, “hey.”

“How… have you been?” you ask. 

“Can’t complain, really,” he says. “Are you okay? I haven’t seen you around for a few weeks.” Oh, God — the second the words are out of his mouth, he wishes he could take them back. Why did he have to add that last part? Why didn’t he just leave it at the question? 

“Yeah — about that,” you breathe, ducking your head to conceal the heat that’s spreading over your cheeks. “You know how I said I was staying with that friend?” He nods, and you continue. “I was waiting for some stuff to get sorted out with an apartment and it all finally got resolved, so… I’ve been moving my stuff over to a new place.”

Jihoon feels his heart sink for a moment, but he keeps his expression pleasant and engaged. His fingers threaten to give him away as they fiddle with the aglet on the drawstring of his sweatpants. 

“Sounds tiring,” he says lightly, and you laugh again, nodding. It’s odd, having his heart taking residence low in his stomach and somehow also in his throat, all while hammering away at a mile a minute. All the caffeine in the world couldn’t have this effect on him. “Is it going okay so far?”

“Yeah.” You nod. “It’s a process, but… it’ll be worth it.”

The barista behind the counter announces herself by clearing her throat and slides your drinks across the marble surface with a little glimmer in her eye. Jihoon picks them both up, extending yours out to you. There’s a pause (in which he swallows a large helping of self-doubt) as he glances to the door, working through several combinations of his next words in his mind before he looks back at you. 

“Do you… maybe have ten minutes to sit with these?” He asks. You light up immediately, not even checking the time on any of your devices, nor the wall clock behind your head. He doesn’t let himself think about why it makes him giddy that you’re accepting the offer, just like that.

“Yeah — yeah, sure.” You smile, walking through the lines of tables and sliding into one of the big, comfy chairs by the window. He unzips his jacket and slings it over the arm of the other chair before settling in himself, his long fingers wrapping around the to-go cup. The drink warms his perpetually cold palms and he sighs sweetly.

“You must be excited to get into the new place, then?” he asks after taking a sip, letting it heat him up from the inside. It could be argued that this job is already being taken care of, but Jihoon is not about to go there.

“Oh, God yes.” You nod, relaxing back in the seat with your own cup. Jihoon subconsciously leans a little forward in tandem. “It’s been fun staying with my friend, but…” You pause, lips slightly parted, before going on. “Okay, a warning: I’m a terrible person for this, I know. She’s done me a huge favour, letting me stay there — but I can’t deal with how untidy she is. It’s driving me nuts.”

A chuckle bubbles in Jihoon’s chest, cheeks starting to ache as his smile grows and grows. It hasn’t fallen since he sat down opposite you, and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, any time soon. “That bad?” he asks.

“You have no idea,” you groan, covering your face with one hand. He wishes you hadn’t — he thinks you look quite lovely when you’re all lit up like this. “She doesn’t clean her dishes after she eats — she piles them up in the sink for like, three days. I don’t think she’s used the vacuum the entire time I’ve been there. I keep finding wrappers and packets and mismatched socks everywhere —” 

His snort of laughter rolls off the back of his throat rather ungraciously and he settles back into his chair. You gently bump his ankle under the table with your foot, beaming at him. “I’m serious! I can’t live like this, Jihoon. I can’t!”

The more you speak, the less he can control the fits he’s descended into, and his abs start to ache after a while; there’s desperation in your voice but it’s just wrapped up so cutely in your lighthearted frustration and decoratively tied together with your sunshine smile… he can’t help it — he’s in pieces. It’s okay though, because you’re laughing too: it makes him think of fairies again, and he can picture you with dainty, intricately patterned wings under the soft lighting in the café. He wipes the corner of his eye with the heel of his hand as he starts to calm down, taking a few deep breaths all the way into his stomach.

“You’re so much stronger than I am,” he says.. “I couldn’t deal with that.”

“You know, I had a feeling you’d be a clean person, too,” you say, sipping at your coffee again. “I mean… I’ve never seen you use the gym showers, so I wasn’t sure, but…”

“Hey,” he says, mock-defensively. “I don’t trust the locks, okay? I shower at home!”

Your cup is lifted to your mouth and he can only see you from the nose upwards, but by the creases at the corners of your eyes, he knows you’re concealing a smile behind it as you nod back at him.

Ten minutes turns to twenty and then somehow becomes thirty — Jihoon starts feeling like you’re someone he’s known for years, and not just the person he accidentally ended up paying attention to in the gym just a couple of weeks ago. He bounces off you and you bounce off him. Both of you have long-since finished your drinks, too: there’s no real reason for either of you to still be here.

Except the obvious. 

“So, the apartment,” Jihoon says, leaning forwards again with his elbows resting on his knees. “Is it…?” He makes a few circular gestures with his hands with which he tries to imply something to the effect of ‘local’, or ‘nearby’, but he can’t quite bring himself to say that out loud. You seem to catch on though. Somehow.

Then again, you did say — a few subject changes ago — that Jihoon is on your wavelength. Maybe that’s it.

“About… a fifteen minute walk from here? Give or take,” you say, and his eyebrows shoot up his forehead so fast it’s like they’re on strings, being controlled by someone else. He doesn’t realise for a few seconds, by which point he isn’t even sure how to relax them. 

“No way?” he says, trying to feign nothing more than an idle interest. Obviously, he’s soaring. 

“Yeah. I’ll want to get back training soon, too, so there’s some incentive to get this done quickly. I miss it,” you tell him.

Jihoon comes out with what he says next without thinking. His mouth is moving before fully engaging his brain. It’s the coffee jitters. Apparently.

“Well, if you need any help with anything, I’ve got a car.”

“You’re too sweet,” you say. “I really couldn’t put you out like that, but…”

“You wouldn’t be,” he assures you with a shrug. “If I’m not working or in the gym… I’m never really that busy. It’s up to you, but-… I’d be happy to.”

You bite the inside of your lip for a moment, apparently mulling this over, before wiggling in your seat to pull your phone out of the front pocket of your jeans. You unlock the device and hand it over on a ‘new contact’ screen. 

Jihoon goes completely stupid: he thinks his brain stops functioning as he takes it to put his number in — for a moment, he’s staring dumbstruck, struggling to even remember the order of the digits now he’s under pressure, but it comes back to him eventually. His thumbs dart across the screen and he checks, double checks and triple checks that he’s typed it right before placing it back in your waiting palm. 

His fingertips brush against yours and it tickles, sending small shockwaves up his arms and straight into his chest. You smile down at your phone before glancing up at him.

“You need an emoji,” you tell him, and he raises an eyebrow at you.

“Huh?”

“Everyone in my contacts has one — I’ve been doing this since I was in high-school. You need to pick one, too.”

“Oh, uh-…” Jihoon swallows, and for some reason he’s completely forgotten every single little emoticon option there is. He draws a blank. “I can’t — you pick one for me. I don’t know.”

You narrow your eyes at him for a second, pouting your lips as you seem to scroll through the endless options. Now and again, you look up at him, as if trying to see what best fits him before you continue your search. He waits. And waits. And waits. He’s about to throw in an admittedly useless suggestion of some sort of boring animal when you turn your phone around to show him what you’ve chosen.

Jihoon, the contact name reads. And there’s the little angel face next to it.

“Oh, come on,” he says, blushing deeply. “You can’t be serious.”

“I totally am,” you say proudly, turning it back and pressing to save it. He hides his face in his hands. “If you won’t pick your own, you get what you’re given. You did this to yourself.”

“Wow,” he chuckles weakly, sliding his hands up into his hair and raking it back off his face. Your eyes move quickly across every inch and boy, does he notice. You shrug in response and test it, sending the same little emoticon to him. He blushes harder when it comes through and he saves your number into his own phone before placing it face-down on the table. 

More than an hour after buying your coffee, Jihoon stretches his arms above his head and checks the time on his watch. He frowns slightly, not sure how the afternoon got away from him so fast, and lets out a sigh.

“I think I need to get going,” he says reluctantly. Leaving you is absolutely the opposite of what he wants to do, actually. Alas, “I have some friends coming over tonight.”

“Yeah — yeah, of course,” you smile, leaning to one side to pick your bag up off the floor. “No worries.”

You both move to stand up and he throws his coat over his arm, leading the way out. He holds open the door for you to leave first, then follows you outside into the afternoon sun. 

“It was really nice to see you,” you say, turning to face him. 

“You too,” he agrees. “Text me if you need anything, okay? But actually do. Don’t just say you will?”

You laugh sweetly. Fairies. His ears might have actually caught fire this time. “Okay, okay. I promise. I’ll text you — thank you.” There’s a pause, but only a tiny one. “And for the coffee, too.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he insists, waving it off. You shake your head. He thinks your hands are twitching when you stuff them into your pockets but he can’t be sure. Your breath definitely stutters, though. 

“No, really. Um… next one’s on me?” 

He blinks, and blinks again. Next one? The next one? He feels like he’s malfunctioned and been forcibly rebooted. The next one? 

“I-…” he starts, his throat dry. “Yeah, okay. If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.” You nod, smiling with — what he doesn’t realise is — relief. “I’ll see you around, okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah — I’ll see you, y/n.”

—————

Jihoon has no choice but to admit defeat to the group chat that night when Seungcheol and Jeonghan come over for a takeout.

Within minutes, his oldest friend is asking about the girl from the gym — he’s been just as relentless as Seokmin and Soonyoung in quizzing Jihoon, except it’s slightly harder to deny to Seungcheol because he did witness, first-hand, the way you had his friend tripping over his own feet with a single smile. At first, Jihoon tries to shrug it off. Play it down. Change the subject. He doesn’t mention that he’s actually spoken to you since he and Cheol trained together, or that he accidentally bumped into you and paid for your coffee, or that you stayed talking with him for as long as you did. He definitely doesn’t say that you exchanged phone numbers. 

He absolutely won’t confess to being smitten. 

All Jihoon willingly admits to is that from what he’s seen of you around, you seem nice, and with a roll of his eyes he does agree that he thinks you’re attractive. He gets a bit of a glare later in the evening when  Jeonghan asks if he’s thought about where he wants to take you on your first date, and Jihoon tells him to stop asking stupid questions and eat his chicken before he eats it for him. But all in all he thinks he evades the worst of it pretty well. For now, anyway — he knows their pestering isn’t going away any time soon. 

Especially not when, on their way out, Seungcheol leans close and whispers that whatever is going on with his gym crush, it suits him. Jihoon jabs him on the arm and the two men leave, laughing brightly.

It’s about an hour after his friends have gone home, having washed the dishes and cleaned up his apartment that Jihoon is sitting on his living room floor doing a few lower body stretches before he turns in for the night. He finds himself tapping into your text thread — not for the first time this evening — and skimming over the short conversation you had earlier. You messaged him when you got back to your friend’s place to thank him for the third time, and Jihoon replied back telling you that if you didn’t stop being silly, he was never going to respond to you again. Your reply came in the form of a “:(“ and his was a simple “:)”. That was it, but he’s been thinking about the exchange ever since. 

He’s not sure why. Nor is he certain what about that has him looking down at the messages and grinning like a fool in his apartment, alone, at 10:30pm on a Sunday night. He could probably take a stab in the dark at what it means, though. He rubs at the back of his neck with one hand as he changes conversations and types out a short message with the other. 

jihoon: fine. you’re right. 

seokmin: ?

soonyoung: probs true, does need context

jihoon: about the gym girl. you’re right. 

soonyoung: OH

seokmin: Hahahahahaha

seokmin: Yeah, you’re definitely the last to know, dude

soonyoung: fr even chan and hansol know atp lmao 

jihoon: they what?

jihoon: how do they know?

jihoon: they don’t go to my gym! i haven’t seen them in weeks!

soonyoung: because we told them????? 

seokmin: So, we might have told everyone

jihoon: blocking both of your numbers immediately.

seokmin: Hey! We’re just glad you’ve accepted it

seokmin: When do we get to meet her?

jihoon: blocked.

Well, great, Jihoon thinks as he fights the urge to lay face down on the floor and let the laminate cool his searingly hot cheeks. 

At least he’s admitted it now. 

He’s vaguely confirmed in writing that maybe he has a bit of a thing for you — it’s out in the open and at minimum, two of his friends know that it’s real. Straight from the horse’s mouth. Fingers. Whatever. No doubt by morning, all of his friends will have found out. The point stands that he hasn’t confessed to something like this since he was approximately sixteen years old, so whatever you’re doing to him, whatever this… is, it matters. 

So, he asks himself, standing up off the hardwood floor and stretching his spine, arms locked behind him and pushed back as far as they can go. He turns off all the lights, checks the front door, goes through the motions to get himself ready for bed. So… what the fuck am I supposed to do now?

—————

Come Monday evening, he’s about ready to hit the roof.

As far as bad days go, Jihoon thinks he’s in the running for one of the worst ever. He slept awfully, tossing and turning through the night despite the usual winning combination of freshly washed bed sheets and his white noise machine drowning out the occasional disturbance from the street below. He wakes up two minutes before his alarm is due to go off, only to discover he fell asleep before plugging his phone in to charge overnight, and it’s sitting at a very risky 13%. The gel he uses to keep his hair off his face at work has gone weird and only does half a job, strands tumbling back in front of his eyes the second he goes to leave his apartment, very nearly forgetting his keys. Then, to really put the cherry on top, he sees that — at some point between getting home yesterday and now — someone has scraped his car while parking up next to him. There’s a large scratch right down the passenger side, with no note nor reliable CCTV in his apartment’s parking lot to confirm who it was, and of course, the space is currently empty. 

All this before he even gets to work.

He fundamentally knows that starting the week off with a bad attitude will only lead to a really shitty remainder, but when Vernon sends his routine ‘Monday Motivation’ booster message — “you’re going to have a great day, today!” — into the group chat, Jihoon responds with a crude photo of his middle finger, right in front of the massive scuff on the bodywork of his Hyundai. Jeonghan replies with an ‘oof’, Wonwoo with a ‘yikes’, and Joshua, ever the comedian, sends a picture of Garfield lying face-down captioned ‘Mondays’ that nobody replies to. All responses feel kind of appropriate. But he pockets his phone without sending anything else, sighing again; he locks the car and checks the handle just in case before he finally heads into the building.

It’s going to be a long day. He just has to get through it.

Things don’t necessarily improve. He ends up in and out of meetings all day, so when 5 o’clock rolls around and he’s on his way out the door, he’s feeling a bit like he’s done nothing of actual value. Just, for some reason, thinking about you and tapping out a catchy beat on the top of his desk as he pretends to pay attention to useless presentation after useless presentation. But it’s still somehow been exhausting on his brain and on the drive back to his apartment, Jihoon feels so drained that he contemplates skipping the gym altogether and going straight to bed. This internal argument takes up most of his journey, but it does keep him occupied during the rush-hour traffic if it does nothing else. 

Nothing has ever been fixed by ruining a perfectly good routine, however — so no sooner than he’s back in his apartment, he changes out of his button-down and trousers and into his regular gym gear. His protein shaker is ready on the counter for when he’s home again, the lights are off, his bag is on his shoulder and the door is locked. He pushes against it a few times, checking out of habit, despite the fact that his only neighbours on this floor are Soonyoung, Seokmin and an elderly couple with a cat they’re not technically supposed to have. Nobody tells, though, because Boots has become everyone’s emotional support animal. The only actual security threat is Seokmin maybe stealing something from his fridge, but he’s only ever satisfied after the third test anyway. 

A quick warmup and a few easy stretches later, Jihoon sets about his business. Mondays are for training legs (and often, as a result, incapacitating himself for the rest of the week), and these workouts are always some of his most intense.

So intense, in fact, that he’s sweating buckets and cherry red when he steps away from the squat rack, tugging up the hem of his t-shirt to dry his face, a brief flash of his toned abdomen on full view. He’s just about catching his breath when he glances in the mirror, and his knees nearly give out when he sees you walking in. You lock eyes and smile at him in the reflection as you start to walk towards him.

It’s not just any smile, but he’s way too flustered to notice.

He spins around to face you, mortally embarrassed that you definitely just saw that, but in a weird way… kind of elated? You drop your headphones to sit around the back of your neck to greet him as you get closer. He pushes his hair back off his forehead and tries to act as cool as he can, but Jihoon suddenly becomes incredibly aware of everything about himself in this moment: his posture, how his arms hang by his sides, the exact positioning of his feet. The fact that he’s breathing pretty deeply, that his pulse is so loud in his ears that he can see your lips moving but can’t quite hear what you’re saying.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit — you’re talking. Focus. He needs to focus. 

“Sorry — what was that?” he asks, eliciting a soft laugh from you.

“I like your shirt,” you repeat, a fraction clearer. Jihoon glances down at himself, at the same sweatpants and tight black workout top he wears in here several times a week, and looks back at you with a raised eyebrow. God, he lets himself think for half a second, entertaining his own stupidity with the idea that you’re finding this as hard as he is, too. Maybe I’m not alone in this. 

“Oh?” he says. “Um — thank you?”

“How’d it go with your friends last night?” you ask, hardly skipping a beat, and he’s a little thankful that you skim over his poor attempt at gratitude for a compliment he isn’t sure he deserves. Instead, his confusion wraps itself around the fact that you actually remembered what he was doing last night. Hell, even he’d forgotten in the heat of the day he’d had, but you remembered. He’s sweating over it a little and briefly wonders what the chances are of the gym floor opening up and swallowing him whole.

Slim, he decides. But not zero. 

There’s hope.

“Yeah — yeah, it was nice,” he says, internally kicking himself for overthinking this so much that he’s apparently lost his ability to speak. In the space of 24 hours, he’s gone from giggling over coffee with you to completely weak just at the sound of your voice. It should be easier here, if anything — this is home turf for him. His comfort space. He supposes the tight fit of your gym clothes accentuating your hips and thighs isn’t helping matters, and neither is the wide neckline of your own t-shirt exposing your throat and a collarbone. But still. He’s not a teenager. He should be able to handle a little bit of skin. 

He clears his throat, rolling his head side-to-side. Focus. “Sorry — I’m-… I just didn’t expect to see you back here so soon.”

“Yeah,” you chuckle. “I-… couldn’t stay away. Missed it a little too much.”

“I get that,” he concurs, willing his eyes not to drop down your frame to a newly exposed area of skin just around your waist, your t-shirt riding up as you adjust your bag on your shoulder. “It’s good to-… have you back, anyway.”

“Good to be back,” you agree. “Hey — can you leave that set up for me, when you’re done? I’m on legs today, too.”

Jihoon doesn’t want to say that he knows Mondays are your leg days, as well, so he doesn’t. Even if it is true. He wonders if you would find it odd that he’s remembered. “Sure,” he says with a small smile, which you return. Just as you’re about to walk off to drop your things into a locker, he pipes up again. “I mean — hey, if you wanted a spot, or to-… do, you know… anything…”

“Are you asking me to train with you?” you ask, eyes bright and smile wider than he thinks he’s ever seen it. This is torture. He’s not even lifting anything and his heart is about to burst out of his fucking chest — God, maybe this was a bad suggestion.

“I-…” he starts, but he lets the breath out of his lungs and shrugs his shoulders. “Yeah. I am.”

“Give me two minutes,” you agree, hurrying off to put your stuff away and fill up your bottle.

He manages to squeeze another set of squats in before you get back, which is sort of a miracle seeing as how his knees have gone completely weak ever since you arrived. He’s scrolling through his playlist as you cross the gym floor on your way back to him, but he looks up and smiles as you approach. 

“You go ahead — I’ve just finished.”

He knows he’s really fucking done for when, after the first round, you add plates onto the bar to out-lift him. All before he’s even positioned himself behind you to be a good spotter.

Jihoon doesn’t go down without a fight though, and things get a little competitive from there. Both of you throw some of your favourite (see: most agonising) exercises into the mix over the course of the hour, taking it in turns on the equipment and creating a session that just about has him able to move by the time you’re finished. You talk to each other when you’ve got the breath to do so, otherwise focussing on your workout with more intensity than either of you remember training with for a long time. 

And so what if he has to turn away from you once or twice to compose himself when breathless whines spill from between your lips on your last few reps, the sheer effort of the movements pushing your muscles to their absolute limit? So what if he feels his entire body run a thousand degrees every time you sweetly encourage him to manage just one more? So what if his palm stays tingling for fifteen seconds every time you high-five him for a set well done?

You slide out of the hamstring curl machine with a deep breath and legs like two sticks of jelly at the end of the session, and he holds a hand out to steady you as you regain your ability to weight-bear.

“You okay?” he asks, and you nod, patting what’s exposed of your chest and neck with your towel. 

“Yeah. Yeah — just… fuck.” You laugh, laying your hand over the top of his and squeezing. Only for a second — not even, only for a breath — and really just to let him know that you’re okay to stand on your own, but Jihoon feels a bit like he’s been electrocuted straight up his arm all the same. “You don’t come to play, do you?”

“Says you,” he scoffs, only now moving his hand from your upper arm. “I was wrong about you — you’re insane. Clinically insane.” 

Using the paper towels he went to gather while you were finishing up, he wipes the machine clean as you stretch out your now slightly exercise-swollen thighs. 

“I was just gonna finish up on one of the stairmasters,” you tell him, taking a long sip of your water. His eyes widen to the point of comedy, eyebrows high on his forehead. You snicker at his horror, the rim of your bottle hovering tantalisingly over your bottom lip. “What?”

“That’s-… got to be a form of masochism,” he says, exhausted just at the idea of marching up the never ending staircase even for a minute. You almost choke on your mouthful of water, only just swallowing it in time before a sudden, uncontrollable laugh erupts from your chest. 

“How?!” you ask, covering your mouth with your hand. Just like yesterday, the urge to pull your arm away, to reveal your hidden smile strikes him. He doesn’t act on it, but he wants to.

“What do you mean, how? Why would you put yourself through that after what you’ve just done?” It’s completely lighthearted, and the rush of heat on your cheeks intensifies at the cocktail of shock and awe in his gaze.

You shrug your shoulders once. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just better than you.” The way the tip of your tongue teasingly sits between your teeth as you grin at him sends bullets of adrenaline through his veins and Jihoon runs his hand over his face.

For about three seconds, he tells himself he isn’t going to take the bait. He’ll lose, he’ll admit it — he’ll put his hands up and say you’re absolutely, definitely better than he is, if it means he doesn’t have to push through a round of cardio after surpassing every single one of his physical limits. But God, he thinks you look completely irresistible standing there challenging him like this, your hands on your hips. His eyes don’t leave yours and yours don’t leave his; both of your chests stutter, just a little bit, and he can see your smile grow in his periphery.

How the fuck is he supposed to walk away?

“Ten minutes,” he concedes, matching your footsteps as you start to walk backwards towards his least favourite line of equipment in any gym, ever. “And you’re definitely getting the next coffee, now.”

——————

That Friday, you finally text him again.

His muscles have just about returned to a working state and Jihoon is quite proud to say that he has regained the ability to sit down without needing something to hold onto. He got home from work, showered the day away and has just settled down into the sofa to start on the book Wonwoo has been on his ass about reading when his phone vibrates on the side table. He reaches over for it, trying to figure out which of his friends might be trying to get hold of him early evening on a Friday, and already going over excuses in his head as to why he can’t go out to do whatever they’re inviting him to. But when your contact name flashes up on the screen, every single thought disappears from his brain.

y/n: hey :)

y/n: just out of interest, how good are you at assembling furniture?

He furrows his brows at this. There’s a very obvious answer, which is that he’s not. He doesn’t want to reply saying so, though, so he goes for what he thinks is the next best thing.

jh: well…

jh: what are you trying to put together?

y/n: a bed :(

y/n: today’s your rest day, right?

y/n: can i bribe you with dinner after? :)

Oh? His brain stalls, fingers hovering over the keypad. He can literally see your face forming a little pout before growing into a hopeful grin in his mind’s eye. He doesn’t see how he could ever say no. 

jh: apparently yes, you can.

jh: text me the address? i’ll leave in 5.

He changes out of his basketball shorts and hoodie in record time, abandoning Wonwoo’s book on his couch in favour of attempting to look at least somewhat presentable for you. He tugs on a pair of jeans that he hasn’t touched in about 6 months and one of his nicer t-shirts instead, even going as far as to spritz aftershave on the column of his throat. You’ve sent him your address and he makes to leave, doing his regular essential item pat-down on his way out the door. He puts your new apartment into his phone as he crosses the parking lot, stupidly delighted to discover it’s only 7 and a half minutes away from where he lives, and settles into his car with a series of deep exhales.

The breathing exercises don’t achieve much. His head is still spinning when he parks up in the street by your new place and lingers just outside the building. He sends you a text to say he’s arrived and you reply saying you’re on your way down. You appear in the lobby just a few minutes later.

“Hey,” you greet him warmly, crossing the space and putting your arms around him in a hug. He goes limp for a fraction of a second before his arms slide around you, too. God, he hopes you can’t feel his heartbeat right now. He thinks that the effect you have on him should be considered dangerous. But whether you can or not, you tighten your arms to squeeze him once before you unwind them from around his neck and step away. 

“Hi,” he says, feverish from the tops of his ears all the way down to his toes. His hands find his pockets as you take a few more polite steps back.

“Thank you so much for this.” Your bottom lip finds temporary home between your teeth before you’re nodding back towards the stairwell. “I’m on the third floor. Follow me.”

He does. He walks up the stairs behind you as you ask about his day at work, and he tells you that he thinks today has probably been one of the best he’s had in about 2 months. When he asks how your day went, you turn your head back to look at him and stumble on the next step, gently laughing and saying that you think you’re at your tether’s end with D.I.Y, but it’s been pretty good otherwise. By the time you reach your floor, his thighs are aching, a bit of residual fatigue from your session earlier in the week making it a little harder than it ought to be. He can’t imagine how you’ve coped every day since then; if his own building didn’t have an elevator, Jihoon thinks he’d have been sleeping in his car.

You give him a little tour of the apartment, and he stands next to you at the window as you point out where you were staying with your friend a few blocks away. He thinks the view is seriously pretty in the evening light, enchanted by how he can see the tops of the slightly lower buildings and the street below, lined with neon storefronts and currently alive with shoppers and bar-goers, but… He cringes at himself for thinking it, but the view through the glass is nothing compared to the one he has inside. 

You’ve started to put up a few decorations and knick-knacks around the place too. He doesn’t know you very well, but he still thinks it’s very you — all of it, and he likes them. Even with the room full of boxes and half-unpacked cases, there’s so much personality in it already. Charm. He brushes off your attempts to apologise for the ‘mess’, as you called it, despite everything being neatly pushed out of the way of the main space. It’s easily tidier than any other mid-move apartment he’s ever been in. 

“Did you want a drink?” you ask him, walking over to the refrigerator and resting a hand on the door. “I’ve got wine, or-… anything, really.” 

“Just some water would be great,” he says appreciatively, and a few seconds later you’re handing him a bottle, turning another one over in your hand. “I really wouldn’t be much help after a couple of glasses, trust me.”

“Does this mean you are good at it, then? Before a drink?” you ask him. Is it hope in your voice? Or do you somehow know how hopeless he is, and are you teasing? He can’t tell. Regardless, clearly his evasion earlier wasn’t quite as successful as he hoped it would be.

“About that…” He chuckles, taking a sip from the bottle and glancing sideways at you. “I’m sure between the two of us, we’ll figure it out.”

“My knight in shining armour,” you say with a laugh, closing your fingers around his wrist and leading him through the door to your bedroom. You’ve managed to separate all of the individual pieces, but you haven’t made any real progress otherwise. He settles himself down on the floor and reaches for the assembly manual, pursing his lips as he looks at the little baggies of screws and bolts and various other things he doesn’t know the names of.

“Okay.” He frowns, looking back up at you where you’ve kneeled down a couple of feet away. You’re grinning innocently back at him, but Jihoon’s lips are more aligned with a pout. “You maybe should have mentioned that the instructions are in Swedish.”

——-

Ignoring the fact that you can’t understand the directions printed on the flimsy little pieces of paper, you get to work. It’s… an interesting process, but somehow between the pair of you, you successfully manage to assemble the bed in just under two hours by mostly following the diagrams (and having to backtrack several times because Jihoon managed to miss a few steps). At three minutes to nine, you’re both finally standing up off the floor, stretching out stiff joints and tight muscles; the bed is fully assembled and made up with your sheets in the centre of the room, headboard against the back wall, the lamp you set on the dresser casting a pleasant orangey glow on every surface.

“We did it,” you say, a little in shock, a lot exhausted, and absolutely starving. At least, that’s what he assumes you’re feeling, because it’s what he is. “We actually did it.”

“I mean, you did most of it,” Jihoon says. It’s true; at a point, he was just handing you the pieces you asked him for and holding parts steady so that you could fit them together. But if you want to call it a joint effort, he isn’t going to stop you, and the roll of your eyes tells him that you do want to call it that. 

“Shh. You helped,” you scold him, bumping his upper arm with your elbow. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“If you say so,” he chuckles, taking another sip of his water. Jihoon isn’t sure he believes you, but the way you’re challenging him to argue further with your tongue pressed against the inside of your cheek scrambles his brain. Any remaining argument dies on his lips. “We make a good team.”

“We do,” you agree, expression shifting into a shy smile, bumping his arm again, your elbow lingering against him for a second longer. “Come on, I think I promised to feed you, too. What are you in the mood for?”

A movie has been playing in the background for about an hour by the time your food arrives and you’ve eaten everything. Jihoon relaxes back against the cushions of the couch and you’re settled comfortably next to him: there’s plenty of space on either side of you both, so there isn’t really any need for you to have your upper arm basically pressing against his, but Jihoon is too comfortable to say anything and you certainly aren’t making any attempts to move away. You shift your legs after about ninety minutes, bringing them up underneath you so your thigh is pressed against his now, as well, and you’re twisted slightly so you’re physically facing him but your head is still turned towards the TV.

Everywhere your clothed body touches him is scorching, and he wonders if maybe he should’ve worn a thinner t-shirt, or at the very least something a little less heavy on his legs. His jeans, slightly tighter around the thighs than perhaps would be their peak level of comfort, are clinging to him everywhere and he’s so aware of himself, so aware of you, of your sweet body wash, your fruity shampoo, every single one of your breaths… He’s cursed people out for breathing too loudly around him before, but he thinks he could replace his white noise machine with an eight hour track of just this and he would sleep like a fucking baby.

One of your elbows is propped against the top of the cushions behind you and you’re resting your head in your palm, and (not for the first time this evening) he glances sideways to look at you. They’ve been fleeting glances thus far, only stealing fractions of a moment before he turns his attention back to the TV. But this? This is the wrong moment. Entirely the wrong fucking moment because as his head turns, so does yours, and you catch him in the act. Fuck, if he thought he was burning up, before? He’s pretty sure he’s somehow just descended straight to the second circle of hell, greeting all the other lusty sinners like old friends. Several of his thoughts tonight have been considerably impure, and in this half second of blistering eye contact, they all come rushing back.

The universe is really testing him this evening, and Jihoon is stumbling. It feels like any minute now, he’s going to explode.

He straightens his spine and looks back at the TV, trying to force his eyes to focus even though he’s completely swallowed by the feeling of your arm straightening across the back of the couch, your fingertips grazing over the skin at the bottom of his hairline. He can feel your eyes still on him, your gaze burning into his cheek, no doubt following as his tongue darts out subconsciously over his lips. But he can’t quite help himself, can’t get the image of how sweet you looked out of his head; he clears his throat quietly and looks over at you again, coming over almost completely blank the second he notices the glimmer your eyes hold when they’re trained on him. 

Any. Fucking. Minute. 

“Jihoon, I-…” you start to say, and he turns himself a little bit so that he’s facing you better, completely forgetting about the movie now. That’s not a great loss: he couldn’t explain the plot even if he tried. “I don’t know if-… you can tell me if I’ve read you wrong…”

“You haven’t,” he hurries. Relief starts to ease the tension between your brows, before you scrunch them again and cock your head to the side. “I’m sure you haven’t, I mean.”

In this new position, one of his legs is bent and sitting up on the couch beneath him and you’ve adjusted your own posture to accommodate. Your knee sits just over the top of his, more of your impossible body heat radiating through his clothes, and he glances down at the site of contact before he looks back at you. 

“I just-... I don’t know, I think I knew I was interested in you from the first time I saw you, but the last few weeks especially…” You’ve been rehearsing this. He can feel it. It’s written in your eyes, holding the weight of the words you’re struggling to say, and behind them he can see cogs turning as you try to get the words in the right order. (He knows how that goes, because he’s been trying to figure out how to tell you, too.) He nods, urging you to keep going.

“I can’t get you out of my head. I really like you.”

He short-circuits, then. Even though part of him knew what you were going to say, hearing it out loud flips a switch inside him and he stops functioning. Blinking at you slowly, lips parted, heart racing – he feels as if his brain has been sucked clean out of his ears and is floating somewhere way above his head. Way outside of a contactable range, way beyond any level of rational decision-making. Jihoon knows what he wants to say, of course – he knows that he wants to say that he likes you, and that he has for a while, and that maybe you should let him take you out on a date or something, but all of that sits just behind the barrier of his teeth, so…

He leans forward and kisses you, instead.

He almost can’t believe that he’s only wanted this for as short of a time as he has; it feels like it’s been building inside him for so much longer. Relief floods through his veins, the emotional dam finally breaching. It only lasts a few seconds, but with his lips pressed to yours and yours pressing back, the static in his brain goes quiet, the movie falls silent: everything stops, except you. He thinks you could’ve been carved from stone around each other — he thinks something just feels so inexplicably right. Your hand tightens in his hair and he gasps softly as he pulls an inch back, eyes heavily lidded and looking straight at you through his lashes. You move forward, leaning your forehead against his, and the feather-light hold he has on your chin slides up to your cheek instead. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know how to-…” he says after a long, long moment of remembering how to breathe, how to blink, how to exist in your space without combusting on the spot. He still isn’t sure he knows how to do any of those things, especially not now he can see every single line of your face this close. He’s trying, though. “But — shit, I’m crazy about you.”

You kiss him, then, harder than before, colliding in a mess of half-finished breaths and bumped, stinging noses. His other hand comes up to sit against your rib cage, yours pressing into the material of his t-shirt over his chest. He smiles and parts his lips as yours move against them, your tongue gently sweeping into his mouth, finding his own; a soft, low moan tickles the back of his throat, his fingertips curling slightly to tighten his hold. 

Jihoon isn’t sure how you end up on your knees, straddled astride his legs with one of his hands tucked between your thigh and calf, the other on the curve of your ass — he just knows that he doesn’t mind one bit. You’re warm and comfortable, the arch of your back pressing you into him deliciously. He’s kissing you like his life depends on it (he really fears that it might), and you’re doing the same back, licking against his tongue and rocking slightly with every separation and reconnection of your lips. He feels your fingers brush at the hem of his t-shirt and slip just underneath at the same moment as you pull away from him, and he’s so dazed, so fuzzy, so lost in you that he can only tilt his head back to stare up at your face. In your current position, you’re towering over him. It’s easily the best view he’s ever had.

“Can I-…?” you ask breathlessly. The new roughness to your voice goes straight to his cock and he has to restrain himself from bucking his hips upwards.

“Yeah,” he says, leaning forward slightly to try and aid you. Your hands tug at the bottom of his shirt and peel it up over his chest: he raises his arms slightly and soon, you can toss it to the unoccupied side of the couch. He shivers slightly as he relaxes back, both at the chill in your unheated apartment and upon noticing the way you’re staring down at him. It’s addictive. 

“Oh my God,” you whisper, jaw a little slack, smoothing your hands over his shoulders to feel every ridge of hard-earned muscle. You travel down his arms, over to his chest, down his stomach… Jihoon sucks in a breath, your warm hands absolutely searing against his skin, and his abdominals tighten beneath them. Tilting your head, you press a line of kisses down the side of his neck, your lips brushing against one almost unbearably sensitive spot when you continue. “Fuck, you’re so hot.”

He smiles bashfully, rolling his head to the side and giving you all the access you want. Your lips tickle euphorically against him as he tugs you flush against his chest, both his hands now tightly pressing against your ass, fingers kneading the muscle concealed by your pants. You’re sitting right over his clothed cock and he’s reasonably sure he can feel your pulse between your thighs, letting out a soft grunt when you roll your hips deliberately down into his own. Your kisses travel to the swell at the curve of his shoulder before moving back up to his lips, where he meets you with a fire that he’s never kissed anyone with, before.

“Says you,” he murmurs into your mouth, your teeth clashing, his hips pushing slightly up off the couch. Just enough to make you sit back from him, just enough for Jihoon to open his eyes and look at you. His hair, thoroughly scrunched up and pulled around by your desperately gripping fingers, fans out at all sorts of angles and his chest has taken on a rosy hue since you last looked at it. With swollen, shiny lips, glossy eyes, breathing deep, he looks completely blissed out, like a man who could unravel beneath you if you moved just right. All from a little tongue action. He’d usually feel embarrassed, but it’s hard to when you’re the person on top of him; to be honest, neither of you would mind much if he did.

You’re pushing yourself up and off him before he can really get his bearings and an audible whine of despair parts his lips at the loss of your weight against his cock. Fuck, these jeans were a bad idea: he’s straining against the denim so much that it hurts, and there’s a near perfect outline of his hard-on. He stops pouting the second you take hold of his hand and tug him upright, though, your eyes dark and determined and intense. He thinks he might faint, actually: from standing too fast and feeling as though all the blood in his body is pulsing through his aching dick, he has to take a moment to stop the edges of his vision going dark before you’re pulling him through to your bedroom.

Something flips inside him the second you have him there. Jihoon, who was more than happy to sit beneath you and let you take all the control in the living room, is pushing you back onto the mattress by your shoulder and slotting himself between your parted thighs the moment the door is closed behind him. He’s past the point of wanting you, now: he needs you, and he needs you to need him, too. 

And God, do you. You prop yourself up on one elbow, staring at where he’s now leaning over you with wide eyes and your bottom lip drawn between your teeth. He bends down and kisses along your jawline in response, nipping gently just below your ear. Your back arches up and in a flash, one of his hands is beneath you, snapping open the clasp on your bra with a few slides of his fingers.

“Wh-…” you start, giggling and panting at the same time. He smirks against your pulse point. 

He flattens his tongue against you and licks a salty bead of sweat off your skin. “What?”

“Had no idea you could-…” You’re cut off by a gasp as one of his hands slides under your sweater, slipping beneath the garment he just unfastened. His fingertips graze over your breast and a pleading sob escapes you. His smile grows even wider. “You were so…”

“So what?” he prompts, pinching your nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Another one of those beautiful sounds breaks the air above you. He does it again, massaging your breast with the palm of his hand. “Come on… talk to me.”

“So good,” you gasp, lying down flat and tilting your head back against the pillows. He rocks forwards to press his cock against you again and your thighs tighten around his hips, one leg hooking around his to keep him there. “So-… fucking good.”

You’re so impossibly irresistible to him, especially like this, and he sits up, settling on his knees to look down at you. Jihoon doesn’t even get the chance to move his hands towards the hem of your sweater to tug it off you though: you’re already grabbing it yourself, crossing your arms to pull it over the top of your head. He can see your bra now, and hell, it’s pretty even if it is just hanging off you. Baby pink and lacy. He thumbs over the material as he helps you pull it down your arms, briefly letting himself wonder if-…

“If only you’d been patient enough to see the set together.”

Oh, so you can read his mind now, too? 

You glance down to the small space between your bodies and his eyes follow, lips slightly parted, a heavy sigh on his breath. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck — he wishes he had. Even imagining it, he’s throbbing.

“You wear all this for me?” he asks, hands creeping up the insides of your thighs. You nod up at him and he smiles down at you. “Fuck. I bet you didn’t even need my help tonight at all, did you?”

You’re bucking your hips now as his thumb brushes, agonisingly slowly, over your clothed cunt. One arm has come up to cover your face: for the first time, he acts on his impulsive need to see you shy, see you needy, and leans over you to gently pull it away and pins your wrist down against the mattress. He kisses you, his fingers on the other hand pressing slightly more firmly to where he’s pretty sure your clit is.

“Y/n, you’re so pretty. Let me see you.”

“I didn’t,” you admit, voice wobbling as he works you up so much you’re actually soaking through not just your pretty underwear, but the leggings you’ve had on all night, too. He can feel it against the pad of his thumb and he raises his eyebrows for you to continue. “Just… really wanted you to come over…”

“Mhm. I know,” he soothes, bending low again and kissing down towards your chest. His lips purse over one of your nipples and he sucks it up into his mouth, flicking his tongue over the bud. He releases your wrist with the hand currently taking most of his weight and leans on his elbow, teasing your other tit with his fingers. The weight of it in his palm has him murmuring soft praises against your skin, telling you over and over how good you feel. You push up onto your elbows to try and press him closer — when his teeth tug just slightly, you’re about ready to beg.

“Jihoon, please,” you murmur. He short-circuits, again. Goes blank. His name has always sounded so much sweeter on your tongue, but this? This? Oh, he doesn’t know if he’s ever going to recover. That sound is going to stick in his head for days, months, forever, if he has anything to say about it. But even if his brain isn’t working, his body moves on autopilot: he sits up and hooks his fingers under your waistband, pulling your pants down your legs and discarding them onto the floor. 

He’s staring between your thighs with zero functioning brain cells and literal galaxies in his eyes, trying to figure out what cosmic miracle brought someone like you into his life, how on Earth he’s ended up between your thighs. The question is so overwhelming in his mind that he barely notices that you’re moving, at first. Jihoon doesn’t know what causes you to try and bring your thighs together — if it’s shyness or arousal, desperation, a search for friction? — but he stops you as soon as he realises, laying a hand on each of your legs, pinning your knees down now, instead.

“Keep your legs wide for me?” he asks, to which you punctuate a nod with an assenting hum. “Good girl.” 

You’re so wet that when he strokes two fingers over your covered pussy, pressing the fabric of your panties into your heat, they come away thinly coated in the arousal that’s seeped through them. He brings his fingers to his lips then, eyes fluttering as he licks your slick off them. You taste otherworldly and he doesn’t hesitate to tell you so with a groan.

“God,” he murmurs, tugging at the waistband of your panties with his other hand. His eyes ask if you’re ready — if you’re sure, and when you nod down at him, he pulls them off completely too. His middle finger slips between your folds, collecting the wetness dribbling out of you, and he drags it slowly upwards towards your clit. He repositions himself again, leaning down over you with his head at your neck, the heel of his hand resting against your lower abdomen. He draws small circles over the bud, laying open-mouthed kisses at your collarbone and listening to the gorgeous sounds you make, learning what you like, following each gasp and moan and chasing as many of them as he can draw out of you.   

At the same time as you start rocking your hips up to meet his hand, your nails scratching gently against his scalp again, Jihoon slips his finger down from your swollen clit to press it inside you. You gasp, high-pitched and needy, your cunt spasming around his finger and pulling it in deeper. He’s only in up to his second knuckle but the way you keen for him has him pushing further until it’s buried inside your pussy completely. 

“S’this okay?” he asks, but he knows your answer thanks to your vocal responses to him already slowly easing his finger in and out, in and out. You nod your head almost aggressively as he glances up at your face, your eyes squeezed tightly shut, jaw tense, throat bobbing as you swallow hard. 

“More — please,” you say not long after. A breath hitches in your throat when he does exactly what you ask, pressing the heel of his hand against your clit and positioning another finger at your entrance. He flexes his wrist slightly to get comfortable, pumping both fingers into you now, and he curls them upwards at just the right time to make your back arch off the bed. “Fuck — mhm, just like that—…”

He moves down your body slightly, reattaching his lips to one of your nipples as he fingers you deep and slow. He’s in no rush: Jihoon thinks he could do this all day and just deal with the RSI later on. You look so unbelievably hot with your face scrunched in pleasure, your thighs quivering as you fight to keep them apart like he asked you to, with your hips twisting down against his hand to try and get his fingers deeper and faster. When he lowers himself all the way down, settling completely between your thighs, he flicks his tongue out over your clit and your back arches up off the bed with a gasp.

“Don’t stop,” you whine, all high-pitched and rushed, both syllables merging into one hurried sound. “Fuck, fuck — please, don’t stop.”

“I’m not going to,” he murmurs, keeping pace and rhythm as he works you towards your high. God, he thinks there couldn’t possibly be anything in the world more sexy than watching you come undone from this angle. Your chest rising and falling in stuttered breaths, your hips rocking down against his hand, your pussy right on his mouth. Just the thought of it has his cock jumping in his boxers. “You gonna come for me, huh?”

“I-…” you start, releasing your death-grip on the bedsheets to bring a hand to cover your face. He clears his throat deliberately — perhaps it’s sort of closer to a growl than a cough — and he thinks maybe you really can read his mind, or maybe you’re learning that he wants to see every inch of you (especially like this), because a second later, it’s tangled up in his hair and holding him in place. “Y-yeah, fuck, I…”

“Good girl,” he coos again, and that breaks you. Your pussy tightens around his fingers and you feel yourself convulse, muscles clenching and releasing as you go over the edge with a cry. He eases you through your climax, tongue laving over your clit, fingers slowing but not stopping inside your cunt until your thighs close around his head in your oversensitivity. He takes the hint, then, and he slowly pulls away, sucking his fingers clean of your arousal while you take a few breaths to recover.

“Oh, my God,” you sigh as he moves back up and starts pressing small pecks over your chest and collarbones, your fingers lacing through his hair again to pull him up to kiss you. You groan softly at the taste of yourself on his lips, and can’t blame you. He still isn’t over it, either.

“You’re so gorgeous,” he tells you in-between kisses, one hand supporting the back of your neck to keep you close. “So pretty. So sweet. So good.”

“Shh,” you giggle, but he doesn’t. Just about every adoring adjective Jihoon has in his arsenal is murmured against your lips until you’ve gathered enough strength to get up on your knees and push him back onto the mattress, fumbling with the button of his jeans. 

He groans at the relief as you tug them down over his hips and thighs. “We don’t have to do anything else if you’re—”

“Shh.” This one’s a little more insistent, and he makes a show of clamping his lips back together. “You wore the tightest jeans on the planet, had your cock on-fucking-display for me all evening, and you think I wanna stop now?”

His jaw falls slack at the words that come out of your mouth. The incredulous way with which you say them has him involuntarily bucking up into nothing. Your expression matches his when you finally get his jeans all the way off and his thin, black boxer-briefs are the only barrier between you. The outline of his cock strains against them, tenting the fabric: Jihoon doesn’t miss the way you lick over your lips before glancing up at him through your eyelashes. It’s your turn to give him the look, now, asking that this last part is okay, with your fingertips hooked underneath the elastic waistband. He nods feverishly up at your heavy gaze.

“Please,” he groans, lifting his hips so you can pull them off. His length springs free the moment they’re pulled low enough, slapping back against his abdomen, sitting pretty against his toned muscles, thick and veiny and red-tipped. Desperate. His underwear joins the pile of clothes down the side of the bed as you throw one leg over him; sitting across his thighs, you take his cock into your hand, giving it a few gentle strokes. He fucks up into your palm when you squeeze your fingers around it.

“I need you so fucking bad,” you murmur, head spinning, and Jihoon isn’t in much of a better state himself; he’s fighting to keep his eyes open, fighting to keep his breaths coming. He sits upright, one arm behind him for support, and kisses you hard as you continue to tug at his length. 

“Need you, too,” he breathes, shifting so he has both arms around you. In a swift movement, muscles rippling, he lifts you off him and turns you over so he has you sitting on your now impossibly scrunched comforter.

He finds home back between your legs as you reach over into the drawer at your bedside and fumble around for a few seconds. He hears a little clatter and a rustling and when your hand resurfaces, you’ve pulled free a small foil square. You don’t even give him a chance to lean forward and take it; you’re ripping it open and looking up at him with the biggest doe-eyed stare he thinks he’s ever seen. He nods at the silent question, a grunt tumbling free as you roll the condom down his length. This is the most pathetic little bit of contact and he’s fighting demons.

“Okay?” he asks, shuffling back a little and giving you space to lie down flat on your back. You nod up at him, already wrapping your arms around his shoulders. 

“Mhm, just-... take it slow?” you ask him, anticipation rendering you already a little breathless. “S’been a while.” 

A grin blooms all the way from his lips to his eyes and he leans down to kiss you again, positioning his tip at your hole and pressing forward just enough to tease.

Your thighs tighten around his hips and he pushes himself further inside you with a stuttered groan, agonisingly slowly, inch by inch. He stills every few seconds, both to give you the time to adjust and so that he can take a steadying few breaths and not collapse at how good you feel wrapped around him; he stops pressing his hips forward before he’s fully sheathed inside your pussy and you let a whine slip, the stretch slowly easing. 

“You can move,” you tell him, laying a kiss to his chest. “I’m okay.” 

Jihoon gives a soft laugh. Oh, he wishes this was just to be polite, but no. He’s in real danger of losing control any second. “Yeah, this isn’t for you, baby.”

“Oh?” you ask. You clamp around him and he gasps at the tightness, hips jerking forward until he’s buried up to the hilt. Fuck, there’s a bruised cervix if you’ve ever had one; a high-pitched whine erupts out of your lips and he ducks his head down to your ear.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “You just-... fuck, you feel so good.”

“Mm, says you.” 

It’s another moment before he thrusts with intent, though. But when he does? When he pulls out halfway before sliding all the way back inside you, losing and regaining the feeling of your heat enveloping him entirely, hearing your gasps against his collarbone? The invisible reigns holding him back unravel and he settles into a slow but intensely deep rhythm, guiding your legs around his waist. You hook your ankles behind his back and somehow, you suck him in deeper still, your bodies touching everywhere they possibly can, so impossibly close.

The arm not holding his weight slides beneath your hips and raises them just a little. Now, at this angle, every time he rolls into you he grazes against your sweet-spot and you’re reduced to an incoherent mess within a few minutes. Good, he thinks, because he’s not doing much better, himself.

You hug him tighter after one particularly well-angled thrust, sinking your teeth into the muscle of his shoulder. He hisses at the sting, and your lips part as if you’re about to apologise but he doesn’t give you the chance to; he bumps your nose with his own to ask you to lift your head slightly, before he bends down and kisses you hard.

“Do that again,” he gasps, almost all of his weight against you as the hand not around your hips comes up to rest on your cheek. When your brows tighten, he swipes his thumb over your spit-covered, swollen lips. “Please. ”

So, you do.

Maybe not as harshly as the first time, but your teeth find his collarbone and you suck a bruise into his skin, drawing from him the highest pitched sound you think he could possibly make. He squares his jaw, ducking his head back down, biting on his bottom lip before he has no choice but to speak.

“I’m close, y/n,” he confesses, fucking into you slower, trying to stave it off for a few more seconds, his hips stuttering. “Can-... can you give me one more…?”

You nod, the knot in your stomach already growing tighter and tighter with every movement he makes, and when one of your hands unwinds from around his back to slide between your sweat-slicked bodies, he moves slightly away, letting you reach down.

It’s the sight of two of your fingers finding your clit and rubbing your favourite movements out on yourself that takes him past the point of no return, his cock sliding in and out of you messily, desperately, chasing the high that he’s right on the brink of. He kisses and nips just below your ear, breathy groans tickling your neck, and your high-pitched whine tells him you’ve hit your orgasm just as he starts to spill his into the condom, gushing around him, your walls fluttering and milking him for all he’s worth. 

—

You offer for him to shower first – an offer he gratefully accepts. While you’re taking your turn afterwards, Jihoon hunts down a fresh duvet cover in your room; he changes it, grabs you a glass of water for when you’re done, and sits on the edge of his bed with just the towel wrapped around his waist, scrolling through his phone. He looks up with a bright grin as the door opens and you emerge through it in your pyjamas, glowing from the light behind you, stray droplets of water clinging to your arms. 

You pause gently rubbing your hair dry with the towel, eyes brightening when you see him. “You didn’t have to do all this,” you say, and he pushes a hand through his own still damp hair with a laugh.

“It was the least I could do,” he counters. You raise your eyebrows at him, crossing the room to sit opposite him. He drops his phone down onto the mattress. “I couldn’t leave and make you change them yourself.”

“Leave?” you ask, picking up one of his hands and playing idly with his fingers. 

“I mean, it’s getting pretty late, so…” he says. “I probably need to get going at some point.”

“Or…” you say, tongue darting out over your lips. “Maybe you don’t.”

Jihoon looks down at your hands, then back up at you. Are you suggesting what he thinks you are, or has he still not quite come back to himself from earlier? It’s hard to say if the look on your face is hope, or something else.

“Are you… asking me to stay?” he asks. 

“Only if you want to,” you tell him. He lifts your hands up, pressing a kiss to one of your knuckles, then using it to tug you closer to him until he can plant one on your own lips. “I’ve probably got an old t-shirt you could sleep in.”

“Of course I want to.”

So you slip away from him to go rummaging through your drawers, trying to find the promised article of clothing. The whole time, he’s awestruck. Jihoon can’t take his eyes off you.

——————

He wakes up next to you for the first time on a Saturday morning. His sleep-fogged brain registers lying on an unfamiliar mattress, tucked beneath new bedsheets, eyes fluttering open to take in a room he doesn’t quite recognise at first. Part of him wonders if he’s still dreaming. When he rolls over onto his side, and his eyes land on the curve of your shoulders, the fall of your hair down your back, he has to ask himself the same thing again. 

All of last night must’ve been a dream, he muses, smiling shyly to himself and watching your frame rise and fall with every slow breath you take. There’s no way you really told him you liked him, too. There’s no way any of it could have really happened.

“Y/n?” He asks in the gentlest of whispers, only wanting to stir you if you’re awake already. When there’s no response, he moves a tiny bit closer to you, hesitating before he slips his arm around your waist and settles with his chest pressed against your back. A wildly insecure part of his brain tries to argue that just because you wanted what happened last night, that doesn’t mean you want all of this now. Maybe you only wanted to sleep with him, or maybe you’ll have changed your mind somehow now the sun’s come up. He considers moving away again, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling until you wake up and he can have a real conversation about where both of your heads are at with everything, but he barely gets a chance.

Those thoughts are silenced almost immediately, his brain falling quiet the second you roll over in his arms. You bury your head in the valley between his pectorals, tucked away from the world beneath his chin. His arms tighten around your sleep-warmed body.

“What time is it?” You ask. He contains a shiver at the softness of your voice, bliss running the length of his spine. Jihoon thinks that he could get used to this.

“I don’t know. Early, I think,” he murmurs, and you whine softly, burrowing deeper against his chest. “Go back to sleep.”

“Not if you’re awake,” you say. He’s not entirely convinced you can stick to that promise, though, with the way you yawn and he feels your eyelashes fluttering. 

“Don’t worry about me,” he tells you, the tips of his fingers ticking against your side. He ducks his head, pressing a kiss to your hair. A soft hum rumbles in your throat and he can’t hold back the smile that spreads over his lips. “It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

True enough, you fall back asleep curled up against him and Jihoon, to the sounds of your slowing breaths, drifts off too. A few hours later, at a far more reasonable time, you wake him up with a press of your lips to the tip of his nose.

Innocent, exploratory kisses grow heated in the warmth of the sun that streams through your blinds. Hands start to travel, sleep clothes get discarded, and you have him lying on his back, pressing kisses down his chiselled stomach when his phone starts to vibrate on the floor next to the bed.

He groans at the distraction, again as you shuffle up to sit on your knees and look at him expectantly. 

“Are you gonna answer that?” you ask, the tips of your fingers grazing his thighs. He shakes his head, no. “Come on, Jihoon. It might be important.”

“Not important enough,” he sighs. 

“At least see who it is,” you laugh. Despite a huffed protest, he props himself up on one elbow, leaning over the side of the bed and glancing down at his phone screen.

Seungcheol.

The arrangement to go for a run this morning comes rushing back to Jihoon, who slaps a hand to his forehead and reaches down to grab his phone off the floor, looking at you apologetically.

“Give me two seconds,” he says, and you grin wickedly up at him, ducking low to press a kiss to one of the lines that disappears down into his boxers. 

“Take all the time you need.”

He answers the call frowning, flopping his head back against the pillows. 

“Hey, look – I’m really sorry,” he starts to say, but Seungcheol’s voice cuts him off almost straight away.

“Jihoon, where the hell are you? I got to your apartment and your car wasn’t here, and Seokmin said he didn’t hear you come home last night. We all thought you’d died,” he hurries. Jihoon can picture the expression on the other man’s face perfectly, which is pretty unfortunate seeing as how you’ve moved to start palming his hardening cock through his briefs.

“I stayed out,” Jihoon says, a little wobbly. “I can’t make the run, someth-... shit.” You press an open-mouthed kiss to the outline of his length, the heat of your breath through the fabric sending him into overdrive. “Something came up-...”

The line goes silent for a second, and his breath stutters as you do the same thing again. Each press of your lips is euphoric agony, and he’s really not hiding this as well as he wishes he could. One look down at you tells him that you’re very proud of that.

“Dude,” Seungcheol gasps, snickering suddenly. “Tell me you’re not with a girl right now.”

“Shut up. Go away,” Jihoon grunts. “I’ll call you later.”

“Oh my God, is it gym girl? Did you finally-...”

“Bye, Cheol,” he hurries, hanging up before his friend can say anything else. He drops his phone onto the mattress, fake-glaring down at you and shaking his head. “You’re the worst, you know that?”

“Yeah?” you ask, pulling at the waistband of his briefs to tug them down his legs. “Let me make it up to you, huh?”

[sunflowerharrington]

wip whursday! (because i forgot to do wip wednesday)

thank you @medusapelagia for tagging me!

here’s how it works:

🐝 in a reblog of this post or a new thread, post up to five (5) file names of your works in progress (wips)

🐝 post a snippet of one of them. the snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. we’re posting progress here. if you haven’t made any, go make some and come back to play!

🐝 after you’ve posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. you must then write 3 sentences in that file. if the filename is one you can't share from, write 3 sentences on it anyway, and then 3 more on another to share.

here are my options:

🛁 - the act - (steddie bb)

😵‍💫 - secret fic shhhh… (secret pairing, secret everything)

tagging @oiveyzmir, @shares-a-vest and anyone else who would like to participate, only if you want to!

a snippet from ‘the act’ i wrote from a few days ago, because i really need to write more of that asap. under the cut ⬇️

Eddie enters the living room, and the usually warm-toned lights have been replaced with an icy blue hue and disco ball lights. A karaoke machine stands on a raised level beside the small television, with Jason standing next to it. The speakers boom with the opening to that new song, Umbrella, by Rihanna and Jay-Z—or Jay-C, as Jason’s been calling himself—and he takes the microphone off Maddy.

And with Steve having his girls in rotation, she’s his “plus one” for the night. Maddy, who failed magnificently at singing Lady Marmalade. Even though she sounded like shit, Eddie smiles. It’s nice to see her having fun and not clinging to Steve’s arm like India and Nancy do.

He takes a seat on the sofa next to Tommy, and they both watch as a drunk Jason makes a fool of himself in front of everyone. And he- Jesus, he’s dedicated the song to Chrissy. All eyes are on her as he skips Jay-Z’s part and begins some shitty speech about their… their love?

“Chrissy, I love you, babe,” he says, slurring through the sentence.

“We broke up, like, aeons ago. Can’t you just let it go, Jason?”

Jason looks downcast at her words, attempting to plaster a smile on his face as he turns away from her and jumps back into the chorus. Tommy turns to Eddie, and it’s a struggle to hear what he’s saying over Jason’s singing—if you can even call it that. Something about fucking, marrying and killing. He hopes it’s only a game. But with the way Tommy’s been acting so sketchy… It might not just be a game.

“Okay, I’m bored as shit,” Tommy says, swinging his legs over Eddie’s so he’s pretty much sitting in his lap. “Fuck, marry, kill… Margaret, Richard or Henry.” Oh, you have got to be kidding me.

[creativeashproductions]

Streetdogs and Chest Compressions // Evan Buckley

IN WHICH: Reader reconnected with her estranged younger brother in the cruelest of ways as the 118 is called the scene of three young men suffering after eating streetdogs. Unfortunately, this is how Buck meets the future brother in law he had no clue even existed.

Warnings: Swearing, family problems (aka estranged), withholding personal information, angst, medical emergency, and fluff

Words: 4.7k

A/N: This fic is a crossover between Julie and the Phantoms and 9-1-1 in which Luke, Reggie and Alex eat the streetdogs in modern times. Don’t worry, someone still dies. Reader’s nickname is Spitfire 

TO BE TAGGED SEND AN INBOX/ASK PLEASE!

Masterlist

It seemed Los Angeles was taking pity on the 118 with not even a single fire to be put out or medical needed. It was slow. Painfully slow, and you weren't even halfway through the twenty-four-hour shift. Hen and Chimney had taken the circular table for a card game, Bobby was reading a new cookbook. Eddie's Abuela had brought Christopher to the firehouse for his online schooling, the Diaz's wifi was malfunctioning. Buck and you had snuck off the bunk room to catch some sleep.

"Lazy movie day?" Buck asked with his arms tightly wound around your hips. Your form almost rested entirely on his front due to the narrow bunk.

"Wouldn't have it any other way." You replied to the content man underneath you. You could only hum as he shifted to kiss the top of your head, "Now shh. I want to slee-"

The bell sounded before you could even finish your sentence, "And what I didn't want to happen just had to spite me."

Buck and you hurried to quickly pull on your turnout gear before hopping into the respective seats you used. Eddie across from you, Buck driving with Bobby in the Captain seat. Hen and Chimney in the ambulance tailing you.

"We have three males in their late teens. Ate hotdogs in an alley before collapsing in the process." Bobby informed his team all the while he watched the road, "One is profusely puking, one's unconscious, and the last one is stable."

"Thinking it's food poisoning? That sudden?" Buck inquired with a swift glance from his position of driving. Bobby shrugged in response just as Buck eased the fire truck to a half near a crowded alley.

You were the first one out of the firetruck with your medical bag and halfway to the alley before the team could get out.

"Make some room!" You shouted among the heavily populated area, curious about the medical emergency.

Everything slowed down as you pushed between the last two people into something you called your worst nightmare. Three teenage individuals settled on their sides in unconscious states had been a fixture in your youth. Your eyes stayed pinned on the prone figure of your little brother.

It was like being underwater. Nothing could be heard, and it felt like you were in the process of drowning. It was the first time seeing Luke since you stormed out of your family home back when you were eighteen years old.

It was the same old unchanging story playing for months now with only the new addition of an audience. It was the middle of a blistering summer in Los Angeles, but it was the most heated in the Patterson household. You'd been at the movies with your best friends while your mother, Emily, was putting your laundry away.

Emily's hand had bumped your dresser by accident in her process of closing your socks drawer. The Patterson matriarch and her husband would never invade their children's rooms, but her keen eye had noticed the pamphlet; nothing serious like teen pregnancy but it was surprising.

Emily was holding a recruitment pamphlet for the Los Angeles Fire Department marked with your handwriting. Her heart dropped in sync with the front door slamming shut.

"I'm home!" You called out from the entrance. You didn't hear as your mother wandered into the open space. Her eyes flaring in both anger and fear; when a person is scared, they lash out.

That's what Emily did.

"What is this?"

Your eyes found the item in her hand that genuinely made your blood freeze in your veins. This was not how you'd wanted her to find out about your career decision.

"I'm applying. I graduated high school, and hopefully, I'll be train-"

"Like hell, you will! You're going to college and getting a real job! This won't take you anywhere Y/N Y/M/N Patterson!" Emily snapped just as Mitch came through the back door with your ten-year-old brother Luke.

"What's going on?" Mitch questioned as soon as he felt the tension between mother and daughter. Luke was quiet amongst the adults speaking.

"Your daughter isn't going to college. She's going to be a firefighter.

"Spitfire?"

A smooth hand startled you with the clap on your shoulder and Hen looking at you, "Are you okay?"

"I-" You shakily attempted to speak but alas had to be gently settled on the ground before you keeled over and hurt yourself. Your uniform, long sleeves this time, felt constricting as the guilt nearly swallowed you whole.

"Hey, Cap? I think I know why those three are like that." Buck called out from a sketchy grill by an even sketchier condiments table. The table being a rusted Oldsmobile manned by a greasy dude and his girl.

Even from a distance, you could smell the chemicals wafting off the unsanitary set up that would put a health inspector in a casket. 

"One's waking up!" Chimney spoke from the slump of pink and denim fabric. A curtain of blonde '90s style hair mussed on his head.

"Look, Y/N, I need you to dig deep to help these three boys. They have long lives ahead of them and need our A-game." Hen spoke with her hands, already checking one of the teens for broken bones.

Your eyes closed with a deep breath before you moved towards the boy on the other side. Eddie shifted to allow you room to check him over.

"Strong pulse. Breathing is good." You clinically informed your team, "Eddie can-"

"What happened?" The gruff voice spoke from behind you. As expected, Alex's voice had deepened in the years you'd gone without seeing Luke or his friends.

"You got this one?" You asked Eddie without waiting for a response; you were by Chim's side with a soft smile. Alex's eyes widened momentarily, "Hey Alex."

"Y/N?" Alex nearly gasped in shock. His shock seemed contagious as your entire team from the 118 caught it, "What's going on?"

"You ate some bad hotdogs and needed our help. We're gonna get you to the hospital. I'm worried you ingested battery acid." You spoke, understanding that Alex would prefer details instead of the lack thereof. Even from an early age, he'd been anxious.

"Oh. Are the guys okay?" Alex softly asked with his eye blinking as a strand of his blonde hair caught in his eyelashes. You slowly nodded in response without really knowing the status of Reggie and Luke.

"Eddie, Buck, can you get him loaded in the ambulance?" You called over your shoulder once you'd finished your thorough examination of Alex. The sound of boots on the hard ground appeared before they appeared.

Eddie and Buck swiftly loaded him on a gurney, but Alex's eyes widened, "Why are there two hot guys touching me? Oh my god. Do you see the cute guys too?"

You snickered as Alex's failed attempt at a stage whisper, "Yes. Alex."

"I've been blessed as a gay man." Alex breathed with a cute little grin plastered on his face, "Maybe I should eat more streetdogs-"

"NO!" Eddie, Buck, and you collectively shouted in response to Alex's delirious comment. He was loaded into the ambulance beside Reggie's gurney.

"I'm gonna jump in with the other guy in the ambulance." You quickly informed your boyfriend and Eddie. Each shared a look before Eddie slammed his fist on the back of this ambulance. It rolled away, and you jogged to the one Hen was driving.

Buck was there giving you a hand into the back of the ambulance with one of the other paramedics. You couldn't meet his eye when you were staring at the unconscious but thankfully alive body of your little brother. Your eyes couldn't be pulled away even as the ambulance started driving away.

Buck momentarily stared after the leaving vehicle until it turned a corner leaving him with his crew and questions. Eddie kept by Buck's side on the return to the firetruck in unusual silence. It wasn't often that Buck was quiet.

"What do you think that was about?" Eddie inquired as the truck pulled onto the street to follow the ambulances to the hospital, "Y/N knew the conscious one-"

"-and the one in the ambulance she jumped in. Kept staring at him like he'd disappear out of her sight." Buck supplied, staring out the window to the passing buildings. His blue eyes are unable to focus on the looks Bobby was sending.

Bobby attempted to bring Buck into a conversation, but each attempt was a failure. Neither Bobby nor Eddie knew how to make him feel better or why he was feeling off. 

Whereas you kept a hawk-eye on your brother's stats the entirety of the drive. The ambulance had only just entered the parking lot when his stats dropped. A long beep sounded, alerting you that Luke's heart had stopped.

"Goddamnit." You swore as you started leaning over Luke to start compressions. In order to continue compressions, you clambered into the gurney as the back doors opened.

"Hold compressions!" Eddie exclaimed once, seeing the situation, "No pulse."

You continued even as the gurney entered the hospital, and a doctor was there, "We got it."

You did as the doctor had subtly implied by climbing off the gurney, leaving the medical professionals to continue. You followed your brother's unconscious body to the surprise of the 118; you had never tried to follow the patient. It was more of Buck's issue.

"Y/N, our job ends here. You know that." Bobby spoke with Hen, Chimney, Eddie and Buck flanking his sides. Your e/c eyes shifted between the brown of your Captain's eyes and the blue of your boyfriend's eyes.

"It doesn't end when I just did compressions on my little brother." You informed him, "Write me up. Suspend me if you want, but I need to be in there."

Bobby's eyes softened, "Your shift is almost over. Just come in early on your next shift; you can make breakfast."

"Thanks, Bobby." You softly informed the man who'd become both your boss and a pseudo father. He only nodded in response with your friends beside him with different expressions, "I should get in there."

Without waiting for another response, you'd already entered the ER through the ambulance bay sliding doors. You went straight to the nursing desk with sure steps.

"Hi, I was in the ambulance that brought in a young male teenager. Shaggy brunette hair, caucasian. He was in a separate ambulance from his two friends." You spoke once the head nurse had turned his attention to you, "He was getting compressions on his way in. Name Luke Patterson."

"Are you asking as a paramedic?" Jude questioned with his fingers tapping the keys of the computer. 

"No. He's my brother." You sighed, bringing the sympathetic brown eyes of Jude to look at you. The look changed a degree when he read the sentences on the screen.

"Are you aware your brother ran away from home? There's a social worker on her way."

Your jaw dropped in surprise, "Ran away? He ran away?!"

Jude flinched at the screech of words you accidentally released to both your and Jude's horror in the quiet ER. Jude turned the screen to show a digital missing person's poster with your brother's face on it.

"He's awake." Jude supplied, having deciphered and guessed correctly you'd gone a while without seeing your brother, "I'm off shift now, but I can bring you to him. I'll let the social worker know."

The nerves grew each step closer to the room your brother was stationed in for the time being with Reggie for comfort in the neighbouring bed. Part of you wished Luke would be asleep to avoid the confrontation about to happen. Only Luke's hazel eyes turned to see him in his pause of puking.

"Hey." You softly breathed into the quiet room. Luke's breath caught in his throat, "You ran away?"

"Guess we're more alike than we thought. We both run when it gets tough." Luke's words were all snark and poison to your heart. His hazel eyes glaring into your own eyes with anger that covered up the pain, "Hope this is just a delirious episode."

Your eyes squeezed closer, "Luke-"

"What? Are you gonna apologize for abandoning me? The only reason you're reaching out is that you happened to be the medic!"

You could physically feel your heart clench, "No. I tried reaching out. Mom and dad don't answer the phone. You didn't have a phone, and like hell, they'd give me the number either. The letters and-"

"Excuse me? Ms. Patterson." Both Luke and your attention shifted the entrance. A well put together woman stood with a clipboard, "I'm Beth. A social worker and I'm afraid you aren't allowed to speak with Luke alone."

"I'm his sister."

"Barely." Luke hissed, avoiding looking at you by looking over at Reggie, "I'd like to be alone."

"I can respect that. Here's my number if you need anything, Luke. Seriously, night or day, I'll answer. I know how it was living in that house, but you have someone to run to. Me." You firmly told the stubborn teenager, "Listen to Beth. You can't live on the streets Luke, it's not fair to you or anyone else. I'll ask my friend to keep an eye on you."

Had you not noticed Luke's jaw clenching, you'd have thought he hadn't heard you, "Whatever."

"Beth, have Reggie or Alex's parents come yet?"

Beth nodded, "I'm not supposed to reveal that, but yes Mr and Mrs Peters are talking to the doctor. Alex was moved into a room. They'll all make a full recovery."

You cast one last look at your little brother curled up in the hospital bed, a stark similarity to the night you returned home, only for your things.

It wasn't an accident you chose to return to your childhood home on Thursday night with the schedule on the fridge memorized. Every second Thursday, your mom attended the PTA meetings for Luke's school. Your father would be home but most likely asleep in his recliner, but if he was awake, it wouldn't be bad.

Your father was more lenient than your mother, even if he shared the same mentality.

"I was wondering when you'd come back," Mitch spoke from his recliner with the side table holding his drink. A glass of your mom's homemade lemonade, "Your mom-"

"I'm not staying." You firmly spoke on your way to the hallways where the bedrooms were positioned. You could hear the soft steps of your father's well-worn slippers.

"What?"

"Look, Dad, you can't leave the house, but I can. I'm not staying in this place with her stifling ideas. This is my life. Just because she decided to be a stay at home, mom doesn't mean she gets to make my decisions and live through me." You informed the man while shoving clothing, items, toiletries, among other things, in the suitcase.

"Y/N, firstly, that is not how to speak about your mother. She sacrificed to take care of this family. Luke looks up at you, don't give him a bad impression of our family."

"No."

"If you walk out that door without apologizing, then you are not welcome back until you do so." Mitch's voice came out in that fatherly authoritarian tone. The no-nonsense look in his eye nailing the coffin in your decision.

"I'm not apologizing for choosing a career of helping other people. Of being a step for someone to live and not die. So what if it's not a teacher, a lawyer or some other bullshit 'acceptable' career. I love you, dad. I love mom too and Luke. But I'm not subjecting myself to a desk job with no drive in it."

"Where will you stay?"

"I have a place. I'll call to talk with Luke. I won't 'poison' his mind with ill thoughts of mom. But I won't lie to him either."

Mitch was stock still as you glanced into the bedroom next to your childhood bedroom. Luke's room was still decorated with spaceships and stuffed animals. Your eyes watched the rising of Luke's back as he breathed from his curled up position.

You couldn't help but walk to kneel at his side. Your hand brushed his soft hair from his forehead. You drank in the look of pure content and innocence on his sleeping face.

"Y/N?" Luke mumbled with his bleary eyes blinking, "You're home."

"I have to head out. I'll call you tomorrow."

"Okay," Luke spoke mere seconds before his breathing evened out once more.

That was the last night you'd been in the home. Luke sat next to the landline phone the next night, waiting for a call that never came. Your parents had unhooked the line. Luke sat on a stool beside it for weeks before his hopes soured.

If only you'd known leaving your parents would mean souring your relationship with your brother. Than maybe you would have reached out for his benefit and your self-proclaiming selfishness

"Thought you'd need a ride," Buck spoke from his position leaning against the wall still in his uniform. There was definitely a new tension in the air between you and him, "We'll grab our things from the house than go home."

"Thank you." You softly spoke to Buck. The weight of keeping your family secret dragged your shoulders down. You couldn't help but wonder if this was gonna cause a fracture in your relationship.

"No matter what. I'll always be here." Buck told you with his arms coming to wrap around your shoulders. He led you through the ER, you'd waved at the shocked parents of both Alex and Reggie, "Who-"

"Luke's friends' parents."

"Okay, so your family lives just outside of the city in Los Felix?"

"Feliz. They live in Los Feliz, from what I know. I haven't been back since I was eighteen." You chuckled, "I want to stress that my parents are abusive or neglectful. Not even bad, but my mom had this idea of what my life should be like."

Buck hummed with his right arm around your waist, and his left casually balanced on his outstretched leg. A bottle of beer loosely gripped in his left hand.

"How old is Luke?"

"He'll be eighteen in August. When I left, he was ten." You mused, leaning into Buck's side, "I think that's why Maddie and I get along so well. We're both big sisters with a significant age gap to our brother."

Buck hummed, "Why did you keep it from me?"

"It hurt. It still hurts just thinking about it. They unhooked the landline the night after I went back for my things." You recalled the agony at having an olive branch snapped off, "I promised to call Luke, and I wasn't able to; they'd disconnected the landline. Imagining the look of hurt on Luke's face was enough to keep me from physically reaching out."

"I wish you had trusted me." Buck finally admitted with the last swig of his beer in the middle of his words, "We're engaged. We're looking at houses, but you never told me about your parents. About your brother. Above your life before the 118."

"Buck. I trust you with my life." You urgently informed the firefighter. Your hands cupped his cheeks to ensure his eyes focused on yours. You wanted him to see the truth, "You are the most important piece of my life. You and the 118 made me feel at home from the moment I joined. Buck, you are my family."

That look courtesy of his parents' actions faded ever so slightly from his eyes, "You guys are my family too."

"I'd like you to meet my little brother when we can reconcile." You announced into the cool summer night. Your drink had been long gone in the process of working through seeing your brother again, "I never thought I'd see him as a patient I'd have to help. Seeing him pale and unconscious nearly destroyed me."

"But he made it."

"He texted me 'didn't die' with the rock 'n roll hand emoji." You deadpanned, recalling the emotional two days for news. You were kinda shocked that Luke had even reached out at all.

Buck couldn't have successfully hidden his laugh if you weren't currently leaning against his body.

"So Albert found an apartment. He won't be moving with us." Buck changed the subject with the same ease he'd always held at knowing you. This was just another one of the moments you were thankful for having him by your side.

"So now there's not a reason to search for a bigger house?" You questioned with a crease between your eyebrows.

In the last two years, several significant changes have been impacting all areas of your life, especially the personal aspect. Buck had proposed during a picnic hike about a year ago with the mutual agreement for a long engagement; his parents didn't believe it was for anything other than pregnancy. Additionally, working in the same firehouse made planning difficult and then your apartment lease bringing the conversation of houses.

Originally Albert would rent part of the home out, so it needed at least three bedrooms.

"I mean, we don't have to not look. We've talked about children and settling down." Buck softly offered with a hesitant smile on his face, "I wanted to talk to you about it, but do you think we could talk about a possible time to start trying-"

"Y/N?"

The two adults went on high alert as Luke wandered into the gated garden your apartment building had. Buck's arm slid off your body as soon as you climbed to your feet at the sight of Luke.

"Luke?" You softly gasped, revelling in the sight of your little brother. Physically he looked fine with the addition of bloodshot eyes, "What's wrong?"

"I-I didn't have anywhere else to go." Luke choked out, sliding the battered old backpack off his shoulder onto the duffle at his feet. Luke's hazel eyes glimmering in the setting sun, "I got into a fight with mom and dad."

"Please tell me you didn't run away again." You heavily sighed in your movement to grab his backpack from the ground. Buck was quick to grab the duffle bag from the ground.

"I'll get the air mattress. Let Albert know not to bring his date home." Buck murmured in your ear low enough only you could hear, "I'll heat up the leftover Chinese."

The Patterson siblings watched as Buck entered the opening to the back of the building's secured backyard. Luke's backpack slung over his shoulder, and the duffle in his right hand.

"How did you find where I live?" You asked the emotionally seventeen-year-old with those puppy dog eyes. The eyes with the colour you wished you had inherited instead of your e/c.

"I saw 118 on the inside of the ambulance. I found the firehouse, and after procuring 'evidence', one of the paramedics told me where to find you." Luke shrugged, "I would have gone to Bobby's garage we use as a studio, but...he bailed on us. Reggie tries to get away from his place, and Alex's are assholes."

"The Peters are still married?" You scoffed, recalling the tense moments between little Reggie's parents. A cloud followed the couple around everywhere they went together, and Reggie was always caught in the middle.

"If-if this overstepping, I can find another place-" Luke began to respond on the walk down the inside hall to your apartment door.

"And make my struggle with the cursed object redundant?" Buck joked from the kitchen with a plate filled with warmed up food. Maybe the universe had a plan when Buck accidently over-ordered food from the restaurant.

"Luke, just stay here. You can have something to eat and rest up. But we need to talk about this. Running away is never a solution to your problems." Your stern voice reminded you of your mother when you broke the rules, "You need to let mom and dad know you're crashing at my place. They don't know my address."

"We got your back." Buck cemented to the quiet teenage boy that he saw a lot of himself in. A little kid living in the shadow left by an older sibling, only Luke's still lived.

"Oh!" You exclaimed with a shake of your head, "I'm sorry. Buck, this is my little brother Luke. Luke, this is Evan, my fiance."

Luke's eyes widened at the title, "Hi."

"Everyone calls me Buck."

Buck, Luke, and you shared stories of your lives in the times you'd gone without each other while Luke ate. By the time he shovelled the last bite of chow mein in his mouth, you'd caught up enough for the time being. He used the shower and settled into the air mattress sheets on the floor a fair distance from the couch Albert slept on.

"So I guess we'll be finding that house anyway?" Buck inquired under the stream of water from the showerhead. His hands massaging the shampoo into your scalp, the action intimate without a sexual motive behind it.

"How-"

"I could see it in your eye. We can see if your parents would be willing to meet up to talk about Luke. Maybe have him stay with us temporarily, give them space without your parents not knowing where he is." Buck murmured as he caressed your sides with his calloused hands. His forehead leaning down on your own forehead.

"I haven't been home in years. I'm not sure how they'd take us stepping on their toes."

"Then we tell them how it is. Their decision drove their youngest child away, and that almost killed him. He's almost eighteen, and then he can make his own legal decisions. Be the person we both wish had been there when we were his age."

And that's what you did. Buck and you met up with your parents at your childhood home to your horror and Buck's delight. He'd never gotten to see pictures of a younger you, but Maddie had brought his baby pictures for you to see the first time you met her. While your mom had fixed some of her lemonade Buck had toured the photos hanging on the wall.

The conversation itself was tense and combative, but in the end, your parents agreed that they'd prefer Luke to be safe than missing. Life was looking up. 

"Hey," Buck murmured with his arms wrapped around your midsection. His blonde scruff scratching your cheek as he slumped over you, "Is that-?"

"Evie's babysitter?" You supplied with a raised eyebrow towards your now husband's laser focus on your brother.

After your relationship with your parents started healing, you had walked down the aisle in white to Buck. You had settled into the dream house with Luke taking one of the bedrooms. The other bedroom put to use when you got pregnant with Evelyn, Evie for short, to your shared joy.

"He likes her." Buck teased, watching the interaction between the two young adults on the main floor of the 118 fire house.

Eight-month-old Evie chewed on a rattle in the arms of her careful hold of her babysitter, but Evie's eyes watched her uncle. Luke, however, was focused on the beautiful and smart girl he knew from high school; they knew of each other but never acknowledged each other. Luke had already graduated when they first came into each other's worlds. Julie threw herself into babysitting to distract herself from both music and her mother's death.

"She's why the band doesn't practice in our garage?" 

"It's a whole thing." You mused with a shake of your hand, "She lost her mom and music. By complete chance, he walked in on her, singing a song to settle Evie. One thing led to another, and Luke formed Julie and the Phantoms with her, Reggie and Alex."

"They formed a band?" Buck beamed, hearing the recent news, "I thought they'd never find their way back to it."

Around the time of your wedding, Bobby had a family emergency involving his uncle Trevor and his cousin Carrie. You'd gone back to work shortly only to be called to the scene of a fatal accident, the victim being Bobby Wilson.

"Julie is Luke's ideal girl. Good with kids, kind, smart, shy, and shares the same passion for music. They bring out the best in each other. They brought music back to each other." You informed your husband with that lovesick grin that was resigned solely for his impulsive ass.

"Kinda like us?"

"Yeah. Like us."

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[jj-babebank]

Camp Willowdale / JJ Maybank AU / PART 4

Synopsis: Camp Willowdale is buzzing with new campers. It’s Caroline Windsor’s first year as a camp counsellor after attending the camp as a camper for ten years. Little does she know that this year Willowdale Lake is going to be a little different from what she is used to it being…

Warnings: future chapters may include curse words, mentions of drugs, mentions of alcohol, mentions of sexual activities, mentions of death.

Pairings: JJ Maybank x fem OC

Part 1 ; Part 2 ; Part 3

Masterlist

~~~~~~~~~~~

Part 4 -

“What do you mean close down the camp and call the police?” said Pricilla, almost sounding shocked, “And risk getting closed for business? Are you crazy?”

“Don’t you find it even slightly suspicious that in the same night the bonfire area gets trashed twice, a dead animal gets found in a counselor’s bag and a counselor goes missing?” said Caroline, obviously unnerved.

Pricilla, however, seemed more unnerved by the group’s presence.

“Listen, kid,” she said, “That Hague girl was no good anyway, always prancing around like she owned the place,”

“You got that right,” muttered Sarah.

“She probably snuck out to meet her boyfriend and saw a rat on the way and that’s why she screamed,” Pricilla shrugged.

“Then what about her still missing?” Caroline questioned.

“Boyfriend probably took her home.” Pricilla said nonchalantly.

“Then what about the bonfire area and the message?” Caroline asked again.

“Boyfriend was probably a tool and thought it’d be funny to pull a stunt on all of us,” the old lady mumbled, “How am I supposed to know? You ask way too many questions too, kid, you sure you’re not Maybank in a wig?”

JJ snorted at the comment while Caroline simply shook her head, “We’re supposed to be expecting children tomorrow, doesn’t any of this sound even a little sketchy to you?”

“Yes, we are,” Pricilla nodded, pulling a cigarette and lighter out of her padded bra and lighting it directly inside the Wildcat Lodge, “And none of you kids will be getting in the way of that.”

“But the bonfire area is totally ruined,” John B joined in on the conversation.

“Well then I’d be heading off to bed if I were you,” Pricilla simply said, taking a long drag of her cigarette, “Wouldn’t want to wake up not in time to sort it out again tomorrow, would you?”

The four teens sighed and left the Wildcat Lodge. Somehow they had been the last group to return to the main area and all of their other fellow counselors had given up on looking for Madison a while ago, all believing the story of how she bailed on camp with her boyfriend.

“Somehow I’m not buying any of this,” said Caroline when they reached the girls’ cabin.

“As much as I’m going to enjoy not having Hague around, I’m gonna have to agree with Carrie on this one,” Sarah said.

JJ and John B agreed too, “None of this makes sense. How is nobody phased by Madison just disappearing?” JJ said.

“It’s because it’s Madison,” muttered Sarah, “she’s a witch,”

Caroline rolled her eyes, “It’s because Pricilla’s too afraid of going out of business and she’s willing to sell and believe any story just so she can keep this place running,”

John B nodded, “Yeah, if anyone’s a witch around here, it’s her,”

“As much as I used to love this place as a kid, ever since Pricilla’s daughter bailed on her she’s become totally bananas and she’s let this place slip majorly,” said JJ.

Everyone agreed once again.

“However, I don’t believe that Madison’s imaginary psycho boyfriend did all of this, regardless how much Pricilla tries to sell that to us,” JJ continued, “And with kids coming in tomorrow and the rest of us still basically being kids ourselves, this could be dangerous, and I say if nobody else wants to take this seriously, we take it in our own hands. Who’s with me?” JJ said, placing his hand in the middle of the circle they had subconsciously formed, expecting the others’ hands to land on it.

Caroline nearly tripped on her still drunken feet after hearing JJ speak so bravely. Her hand immediately shot into the circle and on top of his, almost on command, and if she wasn’t still under the influence of the quarter bottle of whiskey she had downed not too long ago, she’d have been extremely embarrassed at how fast she agreed with the boy. He looked down at their hands then up at her and winked. If she was questioning whether she was still crushing on JJ earlier, now she was sure.

John B’s hand was the one that followed almost equally as fast. Whatever JJ did – so did John B and vice versa, it was a little unspoken rule they’d set back in the day when they were still kids. The only person who still seemed adamant was Sarah, who stood there, arms crossed against her chest, an annoyed frown littering her forehead.

“What?” she snapped when they all turned to look at her, “You want me to take care of a bunch of kids with John B and look for my arch nemesis? Y’all must be tripping.”

“Come on, Sarah, it’s not about Madison,” pleaded Caroline, “Imagine if it were to happen to you, wouldn’t you want someone to come looking for you?”

Sarah bit the inside of her cheek, processing what Caroline was saying to her. She finally rolled her eyes and gave in, slapping her hand on top of the others’, “Ugh, fine, I’ll be part of whatever this is.”

“Yes!” said JJ excitedly, “This means that we can now be sort of like the Scooby gang.”

“I call dibs on Scooby!” said John B, making everyone snort at his comment, “What?” he said defensively, “There wouldn’t be a Scooby gang without a Scooby,”

Caroline shook her head, still smirking at the odd pair of boys her and Sarah had somehow had the chance to be paired up with, “Well the Scooby and the Scooby gang wouldn’t be able to do anything without at least trying to get some rest, so I suggest we head to bed. I doubt that whoever did this will try doing something again tonight. Besides, you heard Pricilla, we’ve gotta set the bonfire area early tomorrow, again.”

Sarah groaned loudly, “Ugh, don’t remind me, let’s go,” she said, stomping up to the door of their cabin and entering the triangular wooden building.

John B also turned to walk towards the boys’ cabin, leaving JJ and Caroline behind.

“So uh,” JJ said, smiling at the girl, “Thanks for agreeing to this, C,”

“Of course,” Caroline said, again too quickly for her liking, “It would suck if something bad did happen to Madison and no one did anything about it,”

“Nah, I was talking about you being partners with me,” JJ said, “Madison might’ve actually ditched for all we know,”

Caroline’s cheeks were on fire again and she was hoping that the yellow lights guiding the pathways towards all the camp’s buildings weren’t allowing JJ to see that.

“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow then,” JJ said when Caroline took too long to say anything.

She quickly nodded, “Yeah, I’m looking forward,”

“Yeah, me too,” JJ winked at her and walked away towards his cabin, her entering hers with literal hearts in her eyes.

Missing or not, Madison’s disappearance and the rollercoaster that was their first day had somehow ensured that this summer was in fact going to be one to look forward to.

~~~~~~~

A/N: This was a short chapter and I wanted to get it out of the way because it was also the last chapter before the camp actually begins hehe

Let me know what you think so far, I'm updating this daily so that I can get to the substance of the story and set up its universe and characters x

tags: @k-k0129 ; @hayleyy-l

Part 5 here

[broqkenhearted]

𝕸𝖞 𝕭𝖑𝖔𝖔𝖉𝖞 𝕷𝖔𝖛𝖊

𝕸𝖞 𝕭𝖑𝖔𝖔𝖉𝖞 𝕷𝖔𝖛𝖊: Chapter 3

𝕸𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖙

𝕹𝖊𝖝𝖙: Chapter 4

𝕻𝖗𝖊𝖛𝖎𝖔𝖚𝖘: Chapter 2

𝕿𝖆𝖌 𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖙: Look at Bottom of Chapter (you can comment or message if you want to be in my tag list) 

𝔖𝔲𝔪𝔪𝔞𝔯𝔶: An innocent school girl is new to SOPA. She becomes friends with the President of the school and his group. Y/N sees this one group of boys and one of them intrigues her. These boys are the “badasses” of the school and act all cold. But there is more to this boy than what is seen on the outside. This boy is no other than a vampire who is in the gang named Ateez, and finds his mate, who is none other than the innocent school girl. What love will blossom between these two?

𝕲𝖊𝖓𝖗𝖊: bits of fluff, smut, angst, highschool au, vampire au

𝕻𝖆𝖎𝖗𝖎𝖓𝖌: vampire!san x reader

𝖂𝖔𝖗𝖉 𝕮𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖙: 4,515

𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌𝖘: blood, swearing, mature content (warnings beforehand)

Yunho POV

I could feel Y/N relax behind me as she snuggled herself into my back. I couldn't help but smile. She really was something else.

"Cute," I mumbled.

I hope she'll except us for who we are...

Y/N POV

The motorcycle ride ended a lot faster than I had expected. It was quite relaxing actually. I could ride all day if I could.

I hopped off the bike and took the helmet off. When I took it off, I swung my hair around in an effort to get it less tangled. I could see San staring at me as I did so. I looked over to him and it looked like his eyes just flashed purple??? I'm prolly losing my mind, so I just brushed it off. The boys invited inside their house, and may I tell you, they own a mansion. A big ass mansion to be in fact.

I was gawking at it, until I heard some of the boys chuckle.

"Holy shit, how rich are y'all?" I asked.

"A lot richer than you think," Seonghwa said cockily.

"Oh well no shit Sherlock," I responded rolling my eyes.

When we all entered the front door, the rain began to pour buckets over the city.

The house gave me an awfully sketchy vibe,  it was really dark and gloomy. "They have all this money, and they choose to live in this dark ass mansion," I thought.

"I guess I should thank y'all for making sure I don't drown in the rain," I said giggling.

"It's not a problem! In all honesty, we're surprised you walked away from Twice like that," Hongjoong responded.

"Why? They're the average obsessed bitches. Always trying to grab the popular boys' attention," I said rolling my eyes.

"Well yeah, but they won't hesitate to make your life total hell," Wooyoung sighed.

"If they seriously think I'm going to let them walk over me, they're wrong. If someone ends up dead, don't be surprised," I growled.

The guys looked at me surprised.

I sighed. "Yeah I know, I don't seem to be the person who would act like that, right? Well I'm super stiff around new people. That's why I act shy. But when people get on my nerves, shit goes down. So I'm telling y'all this now.....don't fuck with me."

"And what if we do?" Seonghwa said, smirking.

"Is that a challenge, Seonghwa?"

"Maybe...."

Immediately, I shot a serious stare at him. At first, I decided to play a stare off with him at first. I slowly walked towards him, then pounced. I tackled him to the ground and and put him in a headlock. I was in a position where I could pin his arms and legs down so he couldn't fight back.

"I told you, don't fuck with me."

At that moment, Seonghwa's eyes turned red like how San's changed earlier. I pushed him off of me and got up. I looked from Seonghwa to San in confusion.

My confused face made everyone else just as confused.

"What's wrong?" Mingi asked.

"Your eyes," I responded blandly.

At that moment all the guys except San showed faces of panic.

"Why did they turn red?"

"I think you're seeing things, Y/N."

"How could I be seeing things when it happened to San and Seonghwa?"

Yunho glared at San. San shrugged.

"Explain. I'm not stupid. You know your eyes did that. And, why the hell are you wearing clothes like that?"

"Before we say anything, please don't be scared and run off," Wooyoung sighed.

"Talk," was all I said.

The guys looked at each other as if they were trying to decide who would speak.

"Fine, I'll say it because y'all are being to big of pussies to talk," San growled. "We're vampires."

I began to laugh my ass off.

"V-Vampires?" I said between laughs. "Great joke guys."

I was suddenly pinned against a wall.

"This isn't a damn joke," San said.

His eyes were turning a dark crimson this time. I could see his fangs start to come out.

I was trying to process what was happening when San let me go.

"And before you ask, no, we aren't going to drink your blood and kill you," Jongho said.

"I should go home," I mumbled.

"You aren't going anywhere," San retorted.

"And why the hell do YOU care?" I spat.

"Are you ok?" Yunho asked.

"No, I'm not ok!" I yelled. "I fucking knew you guys were familiar. I should've known better than this."

"What do you mean?" Wooyoung replied sadly.

"What do I mean? WHAT DO I MEAN!? YOU ASSHOLES KILLED HER!" I was crying at this point.

I looked back at the guys to see their eyes change to blue. I walked over to San and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt.

"You fucking murdered my best friend," I said as I threw San to the ground.

The guys were shocked. No one has ever treated San like that. San's eyes turned black. I was a bit startled to see his eyes change to that color, but I shook the feeling off.

"You asked for it bitch!" San screamed.

The guys rushed to hold him back but I stopped them.

"Don't. I'm not scared of him or what he can do. If he's going to kill me, let him. At least she won't be alone up there anymore."

Third Person POV

Y/N collapsed on the ground in tears. The boys were heartbroken. San even felt his heart hurt a little bit. The guys looked at the poor girl unsure of what to do.

"Where's the bathroom?" Y/N asked quietly.

"Down the hallway, first door to the right," Hongjoong responded.

WARNING: ATTEMPTED SUICIDE AFTER THIS POINT YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Y/N got up and followed his directions to be lead to a large bathroom. Y/N locked the door and slid down against it sobbing. Little did Y/N know, the guys could hear and see her thoughts. Soon they could smell her blood.

"Guys, is that her blood!?" Yeosang asked frantically.

Yeosang decided that he wouldn't wait for their answer and just booked it to the bathroom.

"Y/N, please open the door!"

There was no response. Not even the sound of her crying could be heard. Yeosang teleported into the bathroom to see a horrific sight. Yeosang called for the guys to come, and they all teleported in to see an unconscious Y/N in Yeosangs's arms with blood pooling out of her wrists and neck. Seonghwa, being the healer of the group dashed towards a crying Yeosang. He lifted Y/N into his arms and booked it into his room to help her. The guys turned back towards Yeosang. They have rarely seen him cry before, and the fact that he was crying over a girl he met in one day was shocking.

"I-I can't believe I'm s-saying t-this, but W-Wooyoung's right. She's d-different," Yeosang barely spoke. "She c-can't die!"

The rest of Ateez felt the same way. She was different, special even. All they knew was that they were going to protect her.

Meanwhile, Seonghwa was frantically working to stop the bleeding and stitch her up. He managed to successfully do so, and he soon found himself looking at the poor girl. He walked out of his room to meet with the very worried guys.

"I think she'll be ok," Seonghwa said.

"I can't believe she actually tried to kill herself," Wooyoung said. "How are we even going to talk to her? She said we killed her best friend, she hates us!"

The guys groaned and sighed in agreement with Wooyoung.

2 Hours Later

"Urrggh," Y/N said as she woke up.

She looked around to realize that her wrists and neck are bandaged up and that she's in an unfamiliar room. Y/N arose from the bed she was laying in and proceeded to walk out. The room was attached to the hallway, so Y/N easily found her way to the living room. She could hear the sound of male voices, so Y/N assumed it was the guys. Y/N had to use the assistance of the walls to walk, so when Y/N got to the end of the hallway, she stood there leaning against the cool wall. The boys could hear movement behind them, and when they turned around they saw you there leaning against the door frame with glossy eyes. Y/N resumed her efforts of walking but San was the first person to teleport to her. He could see the pure emptiness and sadness in her eyes and it broke him apart. Before she could reject, San picked Y/N up and carried her over to the couch. She was placed between San and Seonghwa.

"How are you feeling?" Seonghwa asked.

"I've been a lot better," Y/N said with a small smile.

The guys realized that no matter what the situation is, Y/N manages to make the situation a lot lighter and brighter.

"Y/N, we are so sorry," Hongjoong started.

Y/N sighed, "I appreciate your apology, but you should know that I probably won't forgive you for it. She was the only person who made my life have light, so not having her here is really difficult."

"You look really tired, Y/N," Yeosang said.

"I just have to move around to get my blood flow back up that's all," She said.

Y/N looked back at Yeosang to his the fear in his eyes.

"You were the person who walked in, weren't you?" Y/N asked Yeosang.

Yeosang couldn't answer her. He could only let out a quiet tear.

"Come here," she said.

Yeosang hesitantly went in her direction, and stood before her. Y/N signaled for San to get up, and San followed. She patted the now open seat next to her, and Yeosang took the spot. What Y/N did next shocked everyone in the room. She hugged Yeosang and snuggled into him.

"I'm so sorry you had to walk in to find me like that," was all she said.

Yeosang couldn't help but hug her back and cuddle with her. San was looking at the two people feeling anger and jealousy boil through his veins.

"Just because I'm not a vampire doesn't mean I can't sense your guys's jealousy. So if you want a hug you gotta fight for a spot next to me," Y/N smiled.

Y/N let go of Yeosang and sat up. Seonghwa engulfed her into a large hug. She returned the hug and rubbed his back. Soon, the rest of the boys hugged her and inhaled her addictive scent. San was the only member left. This time, Seonghwa got up and let San fill his spot. He looked at her with grey eyes and then gently hugged the girl. To San, Y/N felt so small and fragile. She fit into his arms perfectly. He never wanted to let her go. She snuggled into him closer and San looked up to the guys. He gave them a look that showed how much he cared for her. There was a peaceful silence until Yunho broke it.

"Has anyone ever told you how good you smell?"

"No, what do I smell like?"

"You smell like vanilla and roses!" Yunho exclaimed happily.

"I don't use anything that has that smell though?" Y/N announced.

"Wait that means that's your natural scent! I have never met a human that smells as good as you do," Wooyoung stated.

Y/N giggled at the compliment and her laugh made the guys' hearts melt.

"I take it you wore those outfits to hide from the sun?" Y/N asked referring to the dark outfits the guys were wearing.

"Sorta. They also hide our identities from other people. There are some people who know us for what we are we hide ourselves using these clothes," San responded.

Y/N looked at her phone to check the time, and she saw that it was about 7:30 at night. The rain has stopped awhile ago, so Y/N could go home now.

"I guess I should head out so I'm not a bigger burden than I already am," Y/N said looking at the guys.

"In the condition you're in, you're not going anywhere. If you run into other vampires, they will not hesitate to drain you," Jongho said.

Y/N nodded her head in understanding what Jongho said.

"You can sleep in my room tonight, I'll sleep on the couch," San told Y/N.

"I'm not about to let you sleep on the couch in your own home," Y/N fought back.

"Y/N you need to sleep on a bed. Especially with your injuries," Seonghwa said.

"But I feel bad!"

"It's either you sleep in his bed, or he sleeps in it with you," Mingi said.

Y/N displayed a light blush on her face and looked down.

"Where is the bedroom?" Y/N asked nervously.

"It's down the hallway, last door on the left," San chuckled.

"Oh! Before you go, here are some clothes!" Wooyoung said handing her a hoodie and boxers. "If you want to take a shower, you may."

"Thanks Wooyoung!" Y/N said giving him a hug. "I'm going to take a shower then go to bed. Night guys!"

"Night Y/N!" all the guys said together.

Y/N headed towards the bathroom she was in earlier to see a light red stain on the tile floor.

"Yikes! How could I be stupid enough to think that BLOOD wouldn't stain the tile?" Y/N said to herself aloud.

Y/N undressed herself and took the bandages Seonghwa wrapped around her off. She examined the wounds on her body then felt warm liquid run down her neck. In a split second, Y/N could hear a fist banging on the door and San's voice.

"Y/N?!? ARE YOU OK?!? WHY CAN I SMELL YOUR BLOOD-"

"Hey! It's ok! I just took my bandages off, and my stitches started to bleed a little bit. I'm fine!"

"Can I see them?" San asked.

"Hold on! I don't have any clothes on at the moment!"

When San heard those words leave Y/N's mouth, his heart rate involuntarily increased. He shook off the images running through his mind when Y/N opened the bathroom door. San walked in and shut the door behind him so the smell of her blood doesn't radiate through the house. San hurried into the bathroom so he couldn't see what Y/N was wearing. When he turned around he saw Y/N only wearing her undergarments. Without realizing, San was staring at the girl in front of him admiring her figure.

"I'm sorry about what I'm wearing. It was the only thing I could wear for you to be able to see them clearly," Y/N said with a blush.

"It's ok! I was just surprised you let me see you like this," San said.

"For some reason, my heart trusts you. Even though my head doesn't because of what happened. But I trust my heart more than my mind. The only reason why I did what I did was because my head got the best of me," Y/N confessed.

A genuine smile crept up to San's face, and his eyes turned yellow.

"Do they hurt?" San asked referring to the stitches.

"It just feels like a bruised sort of pain, but it's nothing too bad," Y/N said looking at her sliced wrists.

Blood began to run down her right wrist after she touched it.

"Ouch! That hurt a bit!" Y/N said looking at her bleeding wrist laughing.

Y/N could hear small grunts and growls coming from San and that's when she remembered he's a vampire. "Well shit. How could I possibly forget that he drinks blood?" Y/N thought to herself, giving a herself a mental facepalm as well. She headed towards the sink to wash it off, but San stopped her.

"Please don't wash it off yet," he grunted.

"Why? You can barely contain yourself at the moment."

"It smells really good and I want it to last longer," San said as he stared at the burgundy liquid.

"You want some of it, don't you?" Y/N sighed.

"Of course I do, but I couldn't do that to you."

"I appreciate that, but what would happen if I let you?"

San glanced up at Y/N's face, slightly taken aback with what she just said.

"Are you trying to hint something, Y/N?"

"I mean, it's not like you're going to bite me. It came out naturally! Besides, you look the same way as you did when you did you know what. That can only lead me to believe you haven't had any in quite awhile."

"How are you so damn smart?"

"You might be good at lying San, but you can't hide everything," Y/N said with a giggle.

"I swear to god, you're too cute. But would you actually let me have some?" San looked at Y/N seriously.

"I told you, I trust my heart more than my head."

Y/N raised her wrist once she saw the blood was about to drop onto the tile again.

"There is no way in hell I'm about to stain the tile AGAIN. So, the only way to clean it is to wash it off or you have it," Y/N said looking at her bloody wrist then to the blood thirsty vampire in front of her. "No biting, ok?"

San looked at Y/N with excitement.

"I bet you taste better than you smell!"

Y/N laughed at his statement and headed over to the sink where she could sit and make sure none of her blood can stain the dAMN TILE-

Once she was situated, Y/N signaled San to get closer to her and he followed her commands. He was now standing between her thighs looking at her eyes with his golden ones.

"Ok, your eyes keep changing color, and I have no idea what it means. Could you explain the colors to me before you start?" Y/N questioned.

"Well, my eyes should be gold at the moment which means I'm seriously holding back from getting your blood. Typically when I get a serious blood lust they turn gold. Red is anger, blue is sadness, grey is regret, purple is sexual lust, green is ecstasy, and orange is possessiveness or the feeling of wanting to protect something," San explained.

"I don't think I'll remember all of that, but I'll try my best!"

The two people laughed until Y/N realized her hand was starting to pool with blood.

"Bruh, why the hell am I bleeding so much? You stitches are seriously doing a shitty job."

Y/N raised the hand filled with blood and moved it in front of San. San looked at Y/N one last time searching for a final look of assurance, and Y/N responded with a nod.

San began by drinking what was in Y/N's hand. Her hand became a cup to encapsulate it all. The first taste for San sent him into space. The fact that he hasn't fed in awhile adds to the pleasure, but her taste was the best he's ever had. As he finished what was in her hand, he looked up at her. Y/N could see his fangs and her blood all over his chin. His eyes were a vibrant gold.

"Looks like I was right. You're the best I've ever had."

"Yeah ok," Y/N said.

"Y/N if you were to leave in this state you would be dead by now. Or you would be kidnapped and used as a living blood bag. You're blood is unique. It is so much sweeter than what most humans have."

"Well lucky for you, San, my hand, neck, and wrist is covered in it. Now you can't complain from withdraws."

"I'm not complaining about it either!" San exclaimed.

"Remember San, I need to take a shower. We have classes tomorrow."

San growled.

"Can't we just skip tomorrow?" San whined.

"And do what?"

"Let you heal, Ateez aren't the only vampires at school, and I sure as hell ain't letting anyone else have you if you bleed."

San's eyes flashed orange in a sign of possessiveness.

"Fine, I'll skip. You are acting like a over protective human boyfriend," Y/N chuckled.

"Well the fact that I am drinking your blood connects me to you. I can sense your change in emotions now. The guys can because of what we are, but me doing that makes me the closest out of all of them."

San returned to cleaning you up, and now he moved onto her neck.

She tilted her head to give him more access. He leaned towards her and could see her vein protrude slightly.

"Tell me if this hurts ok? I'm going to go over the stitches."

Y/N nodded her head and he began to lick the blood running down her throat. She couldn't help but let out a soft moan.

"San," she whispered.

San stopped what he was doing and looked at the girl in front of him. His eyes changed to a beautiful shade of purple.

"What are you doing to me, Y/N?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know how I am. I'm really cold to people. But when you came along both me and the guys couldn't help but feel attracted to you. And now here I am. Drinking the best blood I've ever had, from the girl I'm interested in."

Y/N jumped off of the counter and looked in the mirror to see no blood left.

"Damn could you enjoy it any more?" Y/N said with sarcasm.

"I definitely could, babe."

Y/N blushed at the nickname. She's never been called that before. She could easily get used to it though.

"I need to take a shower now, San."

"Can I take it with you?"

"W-What?"

"You heard me. I want to take a shower with you."

"Why?"

"I don't know. This whole blood drinking thing just makes me want to be around you 24/7."

"Ok."

"Wait really?"

"Yeah sure. But...if this leads to you wanting to get closer to me just to use me for sex I will not hesitate to beat the living shit out of you."

"Oh believe me, if I wanted to play you you'd be out of my house right now."

The two chuckled and Y/N walked to turn the shower on. Once it was warm enough for her liking, she looked back at San.

"Is this too hot, San?"

San walked over to feel the water.

"Nope. It's almost as perfect as you."

"I did not expect you to be such a flirt."

"People aren't always who they seem they are Y/N."

"Yeah, I'm quite aware of that."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"I mean, it's not like I'm going to be able to hide it from you forever, so I might as well get it over with."

San looked at her with a hint of worry in his eyes.

"It's my birth parents."

San looked at Y/N with interest.

"How about I tell you once we're in the shower, ok?"

San agreed and Y/N took her undergarments off. San couldn't take his eyes off of her. She was absolutely stunning to him.

"Hey! I can't be the only person naked! That's not fair!"

In the blink of an eye, San was undressed and standing in front of Y/N. He took her hand and pulled her into the shower with him. San watched as the water droplets ran down her delicate body. The way her long hair covered her exposed breasts.

"Ok, we're in the shower. Continue please," San said impatiently.

"Oh right. THEM." Y/N said with disgust in her voice. "I was not planed to be here. I'm only alive because my birth parents were retarded enough to not use protection. So when I was born, they decided they weren't ready to raise a child so they gave me to my aunt. I was a much different person back then than I am now. I used to be so caring of others and so welcoming. Now I've become more broken off and closed off. One day, they decided to show up to my house in America. They had the audacity to ask me to go back to them. They even thought that I would be willing to go with them. Ever since then, I have hated people. The fact that my best friend was murdered made it worse," San looked at Y/N with his grey eyes, "I know, vampires depend on blood to stay alive, but I was just so upset that it had to be her. I was pissed at myself for not stopping you guys. But as I thought about it, I realized neither of us would of made it out alive if I was to try and stop you. I lost trust in all people after that. I haven't made any friends for I live with the fear that they will leave me just as she did. I was still new here when she died so I had to take a lot of time to get used to my surroundings here. So here I am, a girl who lives alone and in a country that she still isn't that familiar to her yet."

Y/N was crying at this point from remembering the trauma she suffered. Without a second thought, San pinned Y/N against the shower wall and lifting her chin up with his index finger. Without a second thought he leaned in and kissed her. It was a kiss that expressed how bad he felt for doing what he did to her best friend. Y/N kissed back, enjoying the sensation of his lips against hers.

They both parted from the kiss to regain their breath when San spoke...

"I'm so sorry, Y/N. If I knew my actions would lead to me hurting you like this, I would have never done that. I was just so desperate that if I didn't feed, I would go on a murder spree. But now I promise to never hurt you like that. I promise to protect you from everything you fear the most. I understand if you don't feel the same way, but I love you so much. I never want to let you go.

𝕿𝖆𝖌 𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖙: @soyeonrai 

[nightfuryobsessed]

Not Him

Tag list: @ixeliema @benzeno @therainofsweetmelody @squipy-squip @be-still-my-foolish-heart @celerysticknick @murdercatt @endergirl47 @spirituallycanada @deeanony @archetypeofanarchy @scarletender @a-rebloging-sketchy-disaster @biggs-draws @eva-ticket @thefangirl-and-stuffs0110 @clingy-as-hell @lildevyl @paperface0p @hunornotfound  

SCP Dream Masterlist | Previous | Next

“So, where are you from Sapnap,” Dream asks as he made several pieces of bread for himself and his new friend. It had been a while since anyone was around and Dream was already attached.

“Uh...I can’t really say, it’s the whole point of my job. I just keep an eye on things and make sure that if things go wrong, everyone else is safe. Honestly, that’s kinda why I’m here.”

Dream waited for the other to elaborate but he never did. The masked man hummed before turning back to his work.

“Wait, if you help others, what happens to you?”

There was no answer, making the golden-brown haired male look towards his new friend. He could read the other’s body language and knew that something was wrong.

“You’re not telling me something, I can tell. I know when people aren’t telling me something. Give me the real story.”

Sapnap was quiet before sighing and sat on the cobblestone that made up the blacksmith house he was smelting at.

“Alright...I’m a scientist at the SCP foundation. We secure, contain, and protect the general public from entities, SCP’s, that are anomalies. These anomalies come in all kinds of sizes and classes, from safe classes such as 999, the Tickle Monster, all the way up to a creature that can destroy the entire universe if it wanted to.

“That’s why I’m here...you’re a part of an SCP. We call yours SCP-0643, the masked man. We don’t know where it came from or why, but we found it and took it in. It’s extremely dangerous and all its victims have some kind of box on their face with headphones-”

“Boxes with headphones? Wait, VR? Why would it make them go into VR? Is that why others show up here,” Dream interrupts with fear in his voice. Sapnap paused and looked up at the other male, noticing black creeping up his mask.

“Uh...Dream? Are you okay?”

“I-it didn’t hurt them right? I-it said it would only protect me...no one should have known about us...t-they said it’d just be until I got more help...”

Sapnap jumped to stand up, drawing his sword and held it in both hands, trembling as Dream’s mask turned completely black with oddly mixed green and yellow eyes and a red smile.

“D-Dream?”

“I’m not Dream! I am Clay, I’m not him, I’m not that monster,” the blond haired male shouted, holding his head in his hands and trembling, his hands changing into long claws, black and purple wings sprouting from his back as his clothes turned to a dark gray.

“W-what the hell?!”

“Oh SaPnAp~”

That term. How it was said. The raven haired male froze, terror running through his body.

Suddenly, Clay jumped forward, a blade in hand and quickly swinging at the other, attacking so fast that Sapnap couldn’t help but shout in pain as he was hit. He blocked with his sword before jumping up and ran, shouting, hoping that help would come or that Clay came back to his senses.

“No,” Sapnap exclaimed, skidding to a halt just a few feet away from the top of a several mile high drop. There wasn’t any hope of surviving the fall, regardless of this world’s odd logic.

“No WhErE tO rUn SaPnAp~” Clay purred, his mask moved to show his green and deep jungle green eye and his scarf had fallen off at some point of their chase. He looked truly deranged and mad.

There was no way out of this.

“Come on Clay, you know me, it’ll be okay,” he tried to reason. He gasped and raised his arms to defend himself, only to be rewarded with the other male’s cry of pain.

Sapnap looked up and was shocked to find George with an axe and shield.

“George!”

“Get out of here Sapnap, I can take him!”

Sapnap ran to the side, watching his friend and SCP fight. He could tell that George was in trouble when he held his shield up and slowly knelt to the floor.

“That’s it George~ Kneel for your king~ StOp FiGhTiNg Me,” Clay screamed, his fangs gleaming and dangerous as he continuously scratched and hit the goggle wearing male’s shield.

“Clay stop it,” Sapnap shouted, running and jumping, his sword drawn and taking the SCP off guard.

Clay roared in pain as Sapnap sliced his face, from above his eyebrow down to his cheek. He moved away from the two men and held his face in hand, his wings rising above him as black and purple scales covered more and more of his body.

In the snap of an eye, Dream had made Sapnap kneel, having cut at his knee and leg, then did the same to George. He stood in front of the two men with a smirk, obviously deranged and mad, twitching and clicking to himself.

“I’m the ruler of this game~ He protects me~ Gives me subjects to rule over~ It’s not your fault you were chosen~ It’s just your fault that you went against me~ Now I have to make sure you follow the rules next time~”

Clay raised his claw to his back, pulling a double edged sword from his back sheathe. He smirked as he pulled it to George’s neck.

“Clay stop, I’m the one who brought this up, leave George out of this,” Sapnap shouted, moving forward a bit and bared his neck, showing that he was willing to take George’s punishment instead.

The corrupted man looked down at the raven haired male, confused for a moment before something snapped inside him and his eyes changed color again, back to their normal brown and green color. He panted as the scales on his body faded away, quickly reaching for his mask to cover his face again and ran off before the other two could say or do anything.

Sapnap watched the other male run off, trying to stand only to fall back to a knee, his leg still healing from his injury.

“Sapnap, who was that,” George asks, worried about meeting the blond haired man again.

“That’s Clay, SCP-0643-C...he’s the original version of the SCP.”

“Wait, so he’s-”“-patient zero. In all sense of the word,” Sapnap interjects, carefully moving to sit down, one leg crossed and the other out to try and help the healing process.

“How long will healing take here? It’s different than normal but I don’t know how much exactly.”

“Not too much longer. We’ll have to get some gear before facing Clay again. And when we find him, try not to call him Dream. I think it sets something off for him.”

“Right...guess it’s hide and seek for a bit.”

Sapnap was quiet for a moment before carefully standing up and nodded. His leg felt like it was just asleep, the odd prickling feeling odd yet bearable for now.

“Come on, let’s go. We’ll help you Clay, I swear,” he says, mumbling the last part more to himself than anything else.

[spaceskam]

14 maria deluca

i’m sorry this took so long, I am indeed a distaster

tags: friends with benefits, fluff (mostly), pre-relationship, POV Maria DeLuca

14. Casual [ao3]

It started out as a good idea.

Maria needed an outlet and Kyle needed a distraction. It was fitting, honestly, because they both worked weird schedules. It wasn’t anything serious, just something they did when they needed to blow off some steam. One of them would go to the other’s after a long shift at work, they’d hook up at three or so in the morning, and then they’d make a respectable walk of shame at around six.

It was only when it became rather recurring and they started running into issues of keeping it a secret between them that the good idea part seemed to fade.

“Okay, so, maybe we should talk,” Kyle said one morning as they both laid in his bed, his questionably expensive sheets draped over them. They’d caught their breath already and the sweat on their skin was drying. Maria, personally, felt nice and floaty still.

“About what?” she asked.

Kyle shifted onto his side and looked down at her, gaze warm and welcoming in a way that made her heart beat a little faster. That was all new. She still wasn’t quite sure how to handle that feeling. That or the fluttery feeling she got whenever she showed up at his door smelling like alcohol and sweat and he looked at her like he’d be willing to lick the ground she walked on.

“Rosa is coming home soon,” Kyle said, “And she’s gonna be staying with me. New environment, a non-alien environment. No offense.”

“None taken,” Maria said as she moved to prop herself up on her elbows.

She’d gone to see Rosa a few times in rehab, but things between them were still a little off and none of it was made better by Isobel monopolizing Rosa’s visiting hours. Maria was hoping to fix that after she came back home. They were best friends at one point and she knew they could figure out a way to get that back, even if times had changed and they now had nearly a decade of age difference. The alien thing was just a fork in the already bumpy road.

But Maria was looking forward to putting in the extra effort.

“I’m not exactly sure how to navigate this with her in the house,” Kyle said.

“I mean, I don’t mind coming over when she’s here. I want to start hanging out with her more, two birds, one stone,” Maria said. Kyle made a face. A small one, but a face nonetheless. “Okay, then you can come to mine.”

“Then she’s going to ask where I was.”

Maria searched his face, trying to find anything that would give away whatever he was thinking. Kyle was usually pretty good at saying what was on his mind all the way up until he was sure it was going to get a negative response.

“Oh. So… you want to stop.”

“I don’t want to,” Kyle insisted, sitting up a bit more, “I just don’t know how else we can keep going without her noticing something is up.”

“I mean, we’re all adults here, it’s fine if she knows.”

“Yeah, but she’s my little-big sister and your friend and I’m her sister’s ex, that’s weird, right? If she knows about our sex life? Like, honestly, I don’t want to stop, I have a lot of fun with you, but you don’t think she’d think it’s gross or awkward or something?” Kyle said. Maria huffed a laugh, tilting her head as she sat up completely alongside him.

“Do you really think she’s going to care? After seeing her big-little sister dating one of the guys that literally covered up her murder, I don’t think me and you are going to be that big of an issue,” Maria said. Her tone was colder than intended, but she couldn’t help it when bringing up the topic of Rosa’s murder. 

God, that still pissed her off to an unmatched degree.

“I just don’t want to make her feel uncomfortable around me or in her own house,” Kyle said, a little pout on his ridiculously handsome features.

Sometimes, when she let herself think too much, Maria couldn’t fathom why Kyle was interested in her of all people. He had a good, stable job and had the face of a fucking god. It wasn’t even that she thought low of herself, it just didn’t make sense that he would settle for anyone in this town. And yet, here he was, trying to think of a way to make his sister feel welcome in his home.

How perfect could he get?

“I know her pretty well, I think,” Maria said. And she did. She felt like she knew Rosa better than she knew most people. Granted, there was a possibility some of it wasn’t as accurate as she would like it to be, but time causes a lot of fuck ups. “And I don’t think she’d be uncomfortable. I mean, she might make fun of us and make it awkward for us, but for the most part, I’d think she’d be fine.”

Kyle bit down on his lip hesitantly.

“Are you positive?” he wondered.

“If it would make it easier, I can talk to her about it,” Maria offered. That didn’t seem to bring him any kind of solace. “Or we can not tell her anything and just act normal? Like this is totally casual and not worthy of a discussion?”

“Casual,” Kyle repeated, nodding his head. Maria didn’t know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing to hear. “Right. Um. Okay. What if we go somewhere in between?”

“What the hell is in between?”

“Okay,” Kyle said, shifting towards her with so much enthusiasm that the sheets shifted and she got a very distracting glimpse of the length of his torso down to his upper thigh, “What if we just tell her that we’ve been hanging out more? Like, as friends. No details necessary.”

Maria searched his face, feeling almost guilty at the way he seemed so convinced that was a great idea. Rosa was going to see right through it and she was going to call them out immediately. But, if that’s what he wanted, she would do it.

“Okay. I’ll tell her that we’re just hanging out.”

“Okay, cool,” Kyle said, shoulders dropping with relief. He then blinked at her twice before throwing himself back onto her, pushing them both back into the mattress.

Maria laughed as he did so, smiled as he kissed her again, enjoyed every second as he fit himself on top of her effortlessly.

It was definitely worth trying to come up with something to tell Rosa.

-

Or. That was going to work well in theory.

It’d been two weeks since Rosa had started staying with Kyle, two weeks since Maria was hanging out with her more whenever she could. She and Kyle decided not to risk anything sketchy, but they’d both been getting a little antsy and, truthfully, phone sex just wasn’t cutting it when the real thing was right there. 

So, Maria found herself at 3:30 AM standing on Kyle’s porch and tapping her foot against the ground. The plan was she was going to be quiet, slip into his bedroom, get their fix, and slip out before Rosa woke up.

But, when Kyle opened the door with wide eyes and a tilted head, she knew something was up.

“She’s still awake,” Kyle whispered. Maria couldn’t even find it in herself to be shocked. She was more annoyed that she had been so blindsided by horny brain that she forgot Rosa was borderline nocturnal.

“Do you want me to leave?” Maria whispered back.

“Well, I already opened the door, so‒”

“You’re going to let bugs in and I’m not killing any of them, I’m just going to push them into your bedroom!” Rosa called, “Just tell Maria to come in!”

“I guess you’re coming in,” Kyle said. 

Maria took a deep breath and tried not to feel weird about it as she stepped inside. Kyle, however, had apparently never learned to hide any of his facial expressions and his disappointment was written clear across his face. Maria carefully swatted his stomach and headed into the living room.

“Hey!” Maria said, reaching out to give Rosa a hug where she was sitting on the couch. She had a bowl of popcorn in her lap and her eyes were trained on the gory scene in front of her, but she still managed to give Maria a hug.

“Hey, how was work?” Rosa asked, glancing over at her just to show she was paying attention before looking back to the TV.

“Fine. Didn’t have to throw anyone out and I got tipped pretty well, so I can’t complain,” Maria said, her eyes following Kyle as he went to sit on the other side of Rosa.

“That’s good. Kyle over here didn’t even save a life this evening, so I’m glad one of you did something productive,” she said. Kyle glared at her like he was personally offended.

“The fact that we didn’t have any extremely pressing surgeries tonight is a good thing,” Kyle said. Rosa shrugged.

Maria found herself laughing quietly at their casual bickering. It was a weird, yet welcome change. She had gotten so used to hearing it from Liz and Rosa that it was strange hearing it from someone else, but it was also a new way to see Kyle. Maria quite liked each new version of him she saw.

Still, they lapsed into silence as they watched the movie. Maria had no idea what the plot was or what was even happening, she just knew there was a lot of screaming and a lot of blood splatter, and Rosa seemed invested. So Maria tried to get equally invested, but she produced a less than stellar performance.

Instead, she found herself glancing behind Rosa’s head to look at Kyle. Half the time he was already looking at her. The idea that he couldn’t stop looking at her had her shifting in her seat and feeling a bit warm. She wanted him more than her logical brain could even make sense of and she didn’t know how to feel that not even Rosa’s presence and her movie of choice could turn her off.

What the hell was Kyle doing to her?

“Oh my God,” Rosa said suddenly, groaning and grumbling in Spanish as she leaned forward to grab the remote. Maria jumped, eyes wide as if she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t. But she hadn’t. All she did was look at Kyle. That wasn’t illegal. Still, Rosa shut the movie off. “Can you guys stop eye-fucking over my head? I’m going to vomit.”

“What are you talking about?” Kyle asked, but his face gave it away. He was the worst liar Maria had ever seen. 

That made him all the more endearing.

“I know y’all are seeing each other or whatever the fuck,” Rosa said, pushing off the couch and putting the bowl on the table, “I don’t care, by the way, but I’d rather you never make me sit through that ever again. That was disgusting.”

“We didn’t even do anything,” Maria defended. Rosa rolled her eyes.

“I know you well enough to know what you do when you’re flirting and you’re totally flirting with my brother right in front of my eyes,” Rosa said. Kyle took a sharp breath in. “So gross. I’m going to my room and playing my music loudly. Call me when you’re not waiting for me to go to sleep so you can bang like I’m a child.”

Rosa saluted and walked to the guest bedroom. Sure enough, loud music started coming from her room and Maria let out a disbelieving laugh. She didn’t have enough time to turn to Kyle before her phone alerted her of a message.

Rosa<3: It’d be a lot less gross if I wasn’t related to him, but at least he isn’t ugly and he’s also a doctor. So gross but also good job, proud of you, make him buy us a yacht once he pays of his student loans

Maria laughed, a bit of weight lifted off her chest. She didn’t really think Rosa would mind, but Kyle’s nerves about it had rubbed off on her. She looked up to let him know that she was all for it and saw Kyle still staring straight forward, lips parted in shock.

“Hey,” Maria said, eyebrows pulling together as she slid closer. She put her hand on his shoulder. “You okay? She doesn’t mind, like, she’s not mad or anything.”

“That’s the first time she’s called me her brother to my face,” Kyle said, turning his head, “She’s never said I was her brother.”

Maria smiled softly, “Well, you are.”

“Yeah, but… she never says it. I don’t know, I feel like that was some kind of milestone or something. Like I should celebrate,” Kyle said, huffing a laugh. Maria shook her head fondly and slid her hand across his shoulder blades.

“I know a couple of ways we can celebrate.”

“I was kinda thinking of grabbing a beer with Alex, but that’s good too,” Kyle said honestly. Maria laughed and tugged him closer. She felt his breath on her lips and wondered how the hell she went two whole weeks without it.

“You can do both.”

“I like your thinking,” Kyle murmured, and then he was on her, leaning in and kissing her as it’d been forever. And it sort of had been.

Kyle didn’t break the kiss as he shifted around and grabbed her thighs, lifting her off the couch. Maria gasped softly in response, but she held onto him and let him take her to his bedroom. Rosa’s music was still clear despite it being muted by his bedroom door closing.

They fell back onto his bed, pulling each other closer and closer and it seemed impossible to get enough. Even as they started stripping and touching and things heated, none of it seemed like it would be satisfying enough. She wanted to do this for hours. Days. Weeks.

And suddenly it didn’t feel so casual anymore.

And, for some reason, Maria didn’t even mind.

[2seokfan]

Scarlet & Hazel | Ch. 3

pairings: hoseok x reader x yoongi

genre: fluff, very light angst, smut (future)

word count: 6k

chapters: ch.1, ch.2, ch.3. ch.4

summary: 

Just cause you’re living paycheck to paycheck in a tiny apartment even after graduating college doesn’t mean you’re not happy. So what if your best friend is working her dream job making close to six figures every year?  So what if she’s in a loving, committed relationship with her perfect boyfriend that you’re 99% sure is going to propose to her sometime next year? It doesn’t matter that your idea of a perfect relationship is a $9.99 bottle of wine on Friday nights while you binge watch Netflix specials.

Ok so maybe you’re a teensy bit miserable. Maybe you have no idea what you’re doing with your life. Maybe all you need to do is accidentally cross paths with two hybrids who will drastically change that.

Meet “Scarlet” and “Hazel”, two of the most gorgeous hybrid men you have ever laid eyes on. With their help, you learn that life is an adventure, a roller-coaster with ups and downs, and you were too preoccupied with yourself to climb out of your own predicament. And hey, you’re not much of a romantic, but with these two, you just might change your mind.

a/n: Hello, Jun here! Whew this took a while to write but thank you for your patience!! (poor Y/N still doesn’t know their real names but maybe she’ll find out soon?) Any feedback is appreciated <3 

tag list: @wilhelminalucinda​ @ghostkat23​ @ayoo-bangtan​ @sadgurllayha

2 months later.

August is relentless. You’re sweaty all the time and you have no choice but the crank up the a/c every single day. This heat wave is incredibly brutal because all you want to do is stay at home eating ice cream in your underwear but instead you’re stuck working overtime to pay for what you assume will be a record-high electricity bill. Fuck you global warming. 

It’s currently Tuesday. You’re on lunch break at work, chowing down on a falafel wrap and scrolling through your phone, when a text pops up from Karli.

Karli: Don’t forget!

You: ???

Karli: This friday?

You scratch your head. Wtf?

You: What’s on friday?

Karli: Umm the date? Remember?

No you didn’t. Your dumbass actually forgot about a whole date. You can’t believe yourself. Karli finally set you up with that accountant guy from her job. What’s his name again? Brad? Brandon?

You: oh yeah! my bad haha

Karli: You forgot his name didn’t you?

You: …maybe

Karli: Lol it’s Bryce sweetie

Karli: He’s really sweet! Just give it a shot

You: of course i will

You: i’ll turn up my maximum charm

Karli: Dats my girlllll

Karli: Ugh gtg it’s my boss

Karli: Bye!

You: bye babe

You set your phone down, trying to envision this upcoming Friday. Karli mentioned she gave Bryce your phone number, and he’ll text you sometime this week about your date, so at least you don’t have to make any moves first. She did show you his picture though, being the wingman that she is by stalking all his social media just for you. You’ve gotta admit he is cute, the profile picture showed him sporting a casual smile, with blonde hair and blue eyes. The classic boy-next-door look.

“And he’s most likely not a serial killer!” You remember her declaring a few weeks ago, after scrolling through all his tweets. And when you say all his tweets you mean EVERY Single tweet from when he created his account in high school till now. Your best friend does not fuck around. 

“Thanks I appreciate that. Glad he’ll ‘most likely’ not kill me.” You rolled your eyes and grinned at her.

While you munch away the rest of your lunch, you think about how you just aren’t acting like yourself lately. In any other circumstance, you would’ve found yourself more excited for the date. Hell, in any other circumstance you would’ve at LEAst remembered his name, or thought about what to wear by now, or even stalked his social media along with Karli. There’s just a teensy problem though. See, in the past few months you happen to have met two boys who completely changed your standards in men. And you may have maybe developed the tiniest crush on both of them, at the same time. Like how?? You didn’t think you were physically capable of doing that?

You sigh, staring at the rest of your falafel wrap, and force yourself to accept reality. As much as you adore them, you know that your little crush will be completely unreciprocated. This you found out through your group chat, now named ‘Hazel’s Nuts’ (courtesy of Scarlet). It’s not that you confessed to them or anything, they just happened to let slip to you one day that they’re a mated pair. And hybrids mate for life, so they take that shit very seriously. Although this news stung a little, it didn’t cause you to be envious in any way. At the end of the day, crush or not, you’re just glad you have two more people in your life you can confidently call your close friends.

For the past two months you’ve actively kept up with them. Sometimes you’ll send memes back and forth all night, sometimes you’ll group call each other after work. Every once in a while, when they’re not busy doing whatever it is they’re doing, they facetime you. These are your favorite moments because you get to see them in all their attractive glory. Just because they don’t like you that way doesn’t mean a girl can’t deny herself some eye candy. 

You guys never run out of things to talk about. Each day you check the group chat and it’ll be popping. Your topics range from the movie that just came out, restaurants they discovered, to even discussing new criminal cases (you got Hazel into watching true crime Youtube videos and now he’s entirely hooked). Sometimes you just sit back and watch the two boys bicker back and forth. It’s hysterical how they decide to argue through text since you’re sure both of them are probably in the same room together, but you appreciate them keeping you in the loop. 

At this point they’ve already virtually met Karli. She’s been in the background of one or two of your facetimes. You’re glad she approves of them instantly and you wonder if it has a little something to do with their, especially Scarlet’s, boyish charms. She does keep you grounded though, never failing to mention how it’s suspicious that you don’t know their real names yet.

“I don’t think they mean any harm and they seem genuinely nice,” she had reassured, “But you gotta admit not telling you their names is a little sketch.”

You just shrugged. “They have their reasons.”

Internally you do believe she has a point. Even though you don’t want to force information out of the boys, you’re a naturally curious person. Your mind has already compiled a list of all the unusual facts you’ve discovered about them. 

A couple of things have become clear to you over the span of the last few months. The most important fact is that although they share tons of content with you, you still have no idea what they do for a living. You’re also 90% sure they don’t have an owner since there’s never anyone else around them. Another, more interesting fact is that you suspect they’re actually pretty wealthy. Every time you facetime, they’re in some sort of lavish looking hotel penthouse, with fancy furniture and artwork hanging in the background. They also dress designer, occasionally flashing their Balenciaga hats, or little Gucci necklaces, or other fancy logos your peasant-ass is unfamiliar with. You actually googled one of Hazel’s t-shirts from your most recent facetime, having no idea what the FG logo stood for. You remember your eyes bulging out of your head after discovering his plain white shirt with two black letters cost more than $200. TWO HUNDred dollars?!!! Do you know how much food and gas you could buy with $200? Why in the fuck would he spend that much on a shirt??

If only you knew how much their watches cost.

Friday rolls around faster than you can blink and before you know it, you’re rushing home from work to get ready. Bryce texted you for the first time on Wednesday to see if you wanted sushi (hell yeah you did) and you were fortunate enough to notify your boss so you could be let out early. You’ve been such a work horse the last few months that they had no choice but to let you leave in advance. 

So far Bryce seems nice enough but you can’t get a proper gauge of his character through text. Oh well, guess you’ll find out tonight.

The sushi place you’re meeting at is on the fancier side, and includes a bar. Knowing yourself, if there’s a bar, there’s no car, which means you won’t be driving. The last thing you want is to leave your car parked somewhere sketchy overnight cause you accidentally got too tipsy to drive. You like to think you have some semblance of control but it’s always better to be safe than sorry.

You were let out at 4, which means you have only 2 hours to get ready. As soon as you get home you sprint to your closet at lightning speed. You rummage through your drawers, hoping to find something, ANYthing, that’s appropriate for this occasion. For one quick second, your eyes dart to your forbidden drawer, aka the ho drawer. It contains the remains of your slutty party dresses and tops from college. Being the hoarder that you are, you never like throwing away things, even if you have no need for them anymore. Wait, what the hell am I thinking? You snap your eyes back to the rest of your closet. You’re going for sushi, not to dance at some club. Besides, you have no intention of sleeping with anyone tonight.

After an hour of deciding on a suitable outfit you finally start on your makeup. Your work makeup has dried up, and now feels gross and cakey on your face, so you remove it all and start anew. At least you had the decency to shower this morning so your hair isn’t too gross.

The place is around a 10 minute Uber ride away but you took your sweet ass time getting ready so now you’re in a frenzy. When your phone buzzes, signaling your driver is here, you swipe on some lipstick last minute, grab some chunky heels, and practically fly out the door. 

You stare out the window of your ride, wondering why you’re lowkey wishing you could spend Friday night at home watching tv instead, or even just spending the evening facetiming two hot hybrids. This all feels a little too rushed. But no, you shake your head and attempt to hype yourself up. C’mon Y/N this is the first real date you’ve been on in ages. At least TRy and be a little more motivated. 

The car pulls up and you thank the driver, stepping out into the warm night air. August is still hot, even in the evenings, and you’re glad you didn’t bring a cardigan. Bryce has already texted you, letting you know he was inside, sitting at your reserved spot. You take a deep breath. Ok, time to put on your game face. You strut in, trying your very best to push the faces of two very good-looking friends out of your mind.

You spot Bryce in a corner, head buried in his phone, his wavy blonde hair not easy to miss. You slide in the seat across from him, prompting him to quickly look up and flash you an easygoing smile.

“Hello there!”

“Hi!” You chuckle nervously. “I hope I’m not too late.”

“Not all all!” He slides his phone back in his pocket, smile still on his face. “You’re just in time.”

A waiter comes by and you both take your orders. You make sure to order a drink because you have a feeling you’ll need the liquid courage to strike up more conversation. Maybe some sake will help ease you.

The first couple minutes are kinda awkward, not gonna lie. Bryce tries to get you to talk about work and you do answer him, but honestly work is the last thing you want to discuss right now. You try to shift the conversation to his job, but that only ends up being worse as he quickly launches into the ins and outs of life as an accountant. Maybe your two hybrids friends have spoiled you because you barely remember the last time you had to fill empty space with small talk.

When the food comes you quietly sigh a breath of relief, hoping the sushi in front of you will help you both get settled and give you time to think of more interesting topics to talk about.

“So,” you wrack your brain, “let’s get to know each other more! Like, what’s your favorite ice cream flavor?” That’s got to be a safe enough question.

“Hm, I’m actually more of a yogurt kinda guy, ice cream’s not really my thing.”

You freeze, California roll halfway to your mouth. Ok, ok, cool, cool. So he doesn’t like ice cream, that’s fine. You sweat a little. Hurry Y/N think of something else to ask.

“Yeah, I guess that’s not everybody’s thing.” You grimace. “Then what about, i don’t know, cookies? What’s your favorite kinda cookie?”

“Actually I prefer crackers, you know, like the saltine ones? Cookies can be too sweet sometimes.” He’s devouring his dragon roll, not noticing the panic in your eyes. He’s caught you off guard twice today.

This isn’t going well and you’re genuinely surprised because you know Karli has done her research, certain that you two would get along. Guess life really likes to throw you some curveballs. 

Who the fuck prefers crackers over cookies anyway?? Ok. Code red! Change the fucking subject before the silence becomes unbearable. Your dessert-related ice breakers had never failed you before but there’s always a first for everything, you guess.

You take a generous swig of sake. “Right, crackers are... good.” You’re mumbling at this point. “Ok, um, what about hobbies? Got any?” Please throw me a fucking bone here! Your mind is reeling but externally you try to act calm and composed, dabbing at the corner or you mouth delicately with a napkin.

“Oh yeah!” His face lights up. Oh thank god. “Do you like football? Me and my buddies at the office sorta formed this team, and we play against other departments. It’s really fun! You should come by and watch sometime!”

“Uh, sure!” Football. Huh. The last time you were anywhere near a football was when you met someone from your college team at a bar. Well he wasn’t holding a football per se, but that counts right? You only remember how much of a douche he was, trying to hit on one of the girls from your group after getting entirely too wasted.

“Awesome! I’ll hit you up when the next game is set!” It’s almost impressive how he doesn’t notice all the tension emitting from your body. In fact, you have a feeling he’s actually enjoying himself and your company.

The rest of the dinner goes by in the same manner. With him happily answering all your questions and you slowly discovering just how little you both have in common.

He is a gentleman though, that you can’t deny. When all the food has been cleared away he immediately swoops in to pay the bill, ignoring your insistence at paying for your half at least. He really isn’t a bad person, just the opposite. Besides your difference in interests, he is a sweet guy overall, and you do find him to be physically attractive. There’s just no spark, no silver lining that keeps you wanting more. When you both get out of your seats he offers to drive you back to your place but you politely decline. You say it’s because you don’t want to trouble him but in reality you need space for yourself to think.

As soon as you arrive home you take off your shoes and plop yourself down on the couch, running your hands through your hair. You check your phone, a few notifications from ‘Hazel’s Nuts’ popping up.

Scarlet: Do you think she’s done with her date yet??

Hazel: Hey Y/N how was it?

You had told them about this date beforehand and they were excited to root for you, which did bruise your ego a bit since it reaffirmed your unreturned attraction to them, but also prompted you to go through with it. This last notification was from 45 minutes ago but you couldn’t reply since you were still at dinner.

You: hi I just got back!

You don’t expect them to respond right away but to your surprise:

Scarlet: And???

You: it was meh

Hazel: That bad huh?

You: no nothing like that!

You: he’s really cute and all, it’s just we basically have nothing in common

Scarlet: Aww poor Y/N (sad emojis)

Hazel: Hey happens to the best of us

Hazel: Actually I wouldn’t know cause I’ve only been with fox boy

You: thanks anyway, i appreciate it Hazel

Maybe it’s cause you’re a little tipsy, or maybe you just feel so open and vulnerable around them tonight, but the next text you send is especially honest.

You: ughhh idk guys i’m just so lonely!!! why can’t things just work out for me for once! Like the first real date I go on in years and this happens :(

They don’t respond for a long time. So long in fact you start to get worried that you exposed too much about yourself.

15 minutes pass by but to you it feels like hours. You’ve already removed all your makeup and changed into your pajama shirt. You relocate to your bed, checking your phone again, thinking of a way to play off your last text as a joke when:

Hazel: If you’re so lonely maybe you could adopt?

You grin to yourself, glad that they’re not being judgmental. Their concern for you resets your mood.

You: ha ha you know my apartment doesn’t allow pets

You: but honestly if i could i would, cause i’d definitely get a little kitty

Hazel: I’m flattered

You: thanks but i meant a real cat

Hazel: Either way i’m flattered

Scarlet: HEY what about foxes??

You: pretty sure owning a pet fox is illegal here Scar

Scarlet: (angry emojis)

Hazel: You heard what the lady said

You: anyways i’m going to bed

You: thanks for making me feel better guys <3

Hazel: Anytime

Scarlet: But hypothetically if foxes weren’t illegal you’d get a pet fox right??

You: of course i would sweetie

Scarlet: (happy emojis)

Scarlet: Yay!!! Goodnight Y/N!

Hazel: Night Y/N

You: night boys

You wake up next morning on your own time, checking your phone to see that you slept in till 11am. Wow, you haven’t slept that well in a while. Maybe it’s the stress from the previous weeks of non stop working, or the pressure to maintain your composure last night, but either way you knocked out like a rock. You sit up, lean back, and stretch your arms as far as they can go.

Today you’re meeting Karli at her place up north. She couldn’t ask you about last night since she was occupied, her seven year anniversary with her boyfriend Sunny coinciding with your date. But she assured you a couple days ago over facetime that today was going to be a girl’s day, no boyfriend included.

“Hey!” Sunny had popped out of nowhere in the video when he heard the news, a look of mock shock on his face. “I live here too! So what, you're just gonna kick me out of the house and leave me on the streets to starve?”

“My god stop being dramatic!” Karli had shoved him playfully off the screen. “I need girl time with Y/N and it’s not girl time if you’re in the house.”

“I can be one of the girls! Right Y/N?” He sounded betrayed.

“I know you can but I’m not the one who makes the rules.” You pointed out.

He sighed. “You got me there.”

Since you’re just spending time at Karli’s and getting takeout, you felt zero need to dress up. You washed your face, threw on an oversized t-shirt some old hookup left at your place (hey it was cute) and some tights, and tied your hair out of your face. This entire process took less than 30 minutes and next thing you know you’re ready to head out.

You sent Karli a quick text, letting her know you’re on the way. You grab a bottle of prosecco, your purse, and keys, saying a quick goodbye to your roommate Ayah on your way out. She gives you a small wave, reminding you that she, yet again, has to leave today for a whole week. You backtrack to give her a quick goodbye hug, telling her to drive safe, before you take off.

Karli’s place isn’t as far as the beach coffeehouse you frequent, but it’s still located in the wealthier side of town. The drive lasts a good 20 minutes but it feels a lot faster since you spend the whole time singing along to your favorite songs.

You pull up to Karli’s apartment complex, driving yourself to the guest parking space. Her apartment building is pretty tall, with a distant, but gorgeous view of the beach. 

Karli squeals when she opens the door, immediately giving you a big hug. When you break apart you hold up the bottle of prosecco in your hand, waving it in front of her face.

“I know you have the ingredients here so let’s make some spritz!”

“Yay!”

Aperol spritz is your favorite at-home drink to make with Karli. She had gone on a short trip to Italy in the summer between her two years at grad school and tried the drink there, completely falling in love. She googled the recipe, made it for you one day, you had said “Oh FUck that’s good!”, and the rest is history.

She grabs the bottle and quickly relocates it to her kitchen. Her energy levels are sky high today and you wonder what’s got her so elated. She’s skipping everywhere she goes, there’s a permanent smile etched on her face, and she’s humming non stop as she pulls you away from the front entrance.

Sunny emerges from the hallway, two hands in the air in surrender.

“I’m heading out, I swear!”

Sunny is a big teddy bear of a man, with tattoos splayed across his arms and a well-kept beard. There’s a term you learned online called ‘lumbersexual’ and that’s exactly the word to describe Sunny. He almost reminds you of Jason Momoa, the actor who played Aquaman. Those who just meet him think he looks intimidating at first but once you get past his height and size, you see just how much of a softie he is. He’s also extremely intelligent, working somewhere in the computer industry developing software.

Karli bounds over to him and gives him a big snuggly hug and tiptoes all the way up to give a quick kiss to his lips.

“Have fun babe! Love you!”

“Love you too! Also bye Y/N!”

“Bye Sunny have fun!” You smile as he treads out the door.

You both head to the kitchen and start making your drinks.

“Aren’t you extra chipper today!” You mention as you pour a splash of club soda into your glass.

“Am I?” She doesn’t look at you, wearing a mysterious grin, stirring her mixture with a straw.

After you both finish making your drinks, you head to her living room and settle onto her plush sofa.

Karli yawns, almost too dramatically, covering her left hand over her mouth. You quirk your eyebrow at her, wondering why she’s acting so weird until you spot it. There’s something large, something shiny, on her left ring finger.

“Oh my god….” Your entire mouth hangs open. “Oh my GOD!!! Is THAT…?”

“Yep!”

“Did HE -?”

“Yep!!”

“AND YOU - ?

“YEP I DID!!”

“YOU’RE ENGAGED?!?!?!”

“I KNOW!!!!”

What happens after is a shriek rivaling that of a pterodactyl taking flight after spotting prey, except the sound is just the two of you screaming and jumping up and down in Karli’s living room.

You bring her into a tight hug, so emotional that you’re about to tear up. And you’re not one to cry that easily.

“I’m so happy for you!” You pull apart and wipe a stray tear from your cheek.

“Thank you! I’m so happy too!” Her smile is also a little watery. “Like I knew he was gonna do it soon since we’ve been together so long but I’m still shocked you know?”

“I know!” 

“And I’m sorry. Today was supposed to be me asking about your date last night.” She dabs at her eyes. “Bryce really likes you too. He even texted me thanking me for introducing you!!”

“Oh shit...” You take this chance to drink your Aperol spritz. “I’m gonna be completely honest with you. It’s true he’s cute but there was no spark.” You give her an apologetic grin, knowing she really wanted this to work out for you. “Like don’t get me wrong he’s super nice and stuff but I just couldn’t find anything we have in common. I can’t believe he’s still into me?!” 

“Aw I’m sorry babe.” She pouts. “I really did think you would be a good match.”

“It’s ok. Anyways,” you wave her off, bringing up the more important subject at hand. “I’d much rather talk about your engagement! Like, hello?? You’re getting married, girl!!

Another squeal. You really hope her neighbors don’t complain.

“I know!! I literally don’t know what to think!” She smiles wistfully, like she’s on cloud nine, then brings her attention back to you. “Also you’re the maid of honor and you can’t back out of that.”

“I would never!” You gasp dramatically, one hand clutching your chest.

“But don’t worry!” She sets her drink down. “The wedding’s not happening till next year at least. We don’t have to start planning till way later.”

The rest of the day you spend chatting to Karli, prompting her to spill every single detail about the proposal. Even though you have no need to help her plan a wedding just yet, you can’t hold back from offering some ideas that spring to mind.

“I got it!!” You shout.

“You got what?”

“Hear me out,” you may or may not be a little tipsy at this point. “Goth wedding!” You say with jazz hands. Then you reach down to take another sip of your drink.

“Hmm…” She pretends to think about the idea, then giggles. “And that’s enough prosecco for you.” Plucking the glass out of your hand, she transfers it to her kitchen sink.

A couple more hours roll by. You both decide to watch a cheesy Netflix horror movie to sober up, paired with the Mexican takeout you ordered. By the time the credits roll, the sun has long since set, along with your alcohol buzz. You check the time on your phone, deciding it’s best to head home since poor Sunny has been respectfully out and about all day, giving you your girl time.

You give Karli one last big hug, murmuring into her hair how happy you are for her situation. She walks you to the apartment elevator, where you proceed to blow her a swift kiss right before the doors close in your face.

Reality sets in the moment you’re alone. Your head swims with thoughts as you drive back. Most of them are happy about your best friend’s engagement but you can’t discount the little ugly bubble of jealousy that wells down deep in your gut, reminding you of your own current situation. It’s not until you reach home that you realize you didn’t even play music in the car.

Ayah has long since gone on her business trip by the time you arrive at your apartment. The whole place looks dark and unwelcome, only highlighting the emptiness you feel inside. You trudge to your room and slump onto your bed. You try to scroll through social media as a way to distract yourself but you’re met, instead, by all the pictures and posts of happy people, showing off their achievements or bragging about their seemingly perfect lives.

You immediately lock your phone and throw it onto the blanket, the stress and anxiety from the last few months building to a boiling point in your mind. Your biggest concern is you still haven’t figured out your lease situation, and you only have two more months to move out or find someone new. Ayah has tried her best to help you but she’s bombarded by business trips so no luck so far. You let out a small groan and bury your head in the pillow, deciding to sleep it off and worry about your problems tomorrow, even though it’s not even that late.

Right as you’re about to drift off into dreamland, your phone rings. You fumble around the covers until it’s in your hands and check that you have a facetime call from your two favorite boys.

Immediately your body jerks awake and you sit up, swiping the answer button.

“Hey guys!”

“Hi Y/N!!” Scarlet’s heart-shaped smile is taking up most of the screen but you can see a sliver of white and grey hair behind him.

Hazel elbows him out of the way. “Sorry were you sleeping?” He tilts his head, ears twitching. “Wait, it’s only 10 pm where you’re at. You never sleep this early.”

“No I wasn’t... I mean, yeah I was trying to sleep but…”

You sigh. It’s their faces. Just seeing them through a screen, their wide, innocent eyes blinking up at you, makes you want to spill everything.

You nibble on your bottom lip for a moment. “I was just kinda having an existential crisis so I decided to sleep it off. No biggie.”

Scarlet’s eyebrows furrow in concern. After only two months, he can already tell when something is off with your tone of voice.

“Y/N what’s wrong?” He looks up for a bit, pausing to think. “Was it the date last night?”

“The date?” Oh yeah the date. Yet another thing that didn’t go well. You totally forgot about that can of worms. “Not really… or actually kinda?”

You try to reorganize your jumbled mess of a brain and put your thoughts into words.

“So you know how I said I was going to Karli’s today?”

“Mhm,” they nod at you to continue.

“Well turns out she got engaged last night.”

“That’s awesome! I’m so happy for her!” Scarlet bounces a little, then quickly returns to a more serious tone. “But that doesn’t really answer my question.”

“Yeah I’m happy for her too.” And you genuinely are.

You pause for another moment, teetering on the edge of playing your emotions off like it’s no big deal or exposing all of your concerns yet again. Your need for an outlet to vent to wins in the end. For the first time you find yourself unable to confide in Karli because you want her to be happy and focus on the engagement rather than to be preoccupied with you. Before you know it, the words flow from your mouth like running water.

“It’s just that her announcement really brought me back to earth, and I started thinking a little too much about my own life.” You purse your lips. “I don’t know… I feel pretty selfish right now because she’s doing so well and I just can’t help comparing my life to hers. I’m so proud of her but it’s like everything in her life is coming together and I just want that for me also.” You throw your hands up in frustration, almost knocking the phone off from where it leans on your pillow. “I mean we’re the same age for god's sake! Why can’t I get my shit together??”

“Well you should be proud of yourself though,” Hazel cuts in. “Cause we are.” He gestures to Scarlet and himself.

“Yeah!” Scarlet chimes. “I mean you’ve got a full time job and a place to stay. I know you don’t feel like it’s the most ideal situation right now but please don’t discredit yourself.”

“Thanks guys.” You calm down a bit, but then you remember the whole issue with your apartment. Scratching the back of your neck, a habit you’ve picked up whenever you’re nervous, you say in a much smaller voice, “although my ‘place to stay’ might not last much longer.”

“What do you mean?” Both boys’ eyebrows are raised in confusion.

You realize you never mentioned your living situation to them, the topic always pushed to the back of your mind whenever they initiated conversation.

“Yeah.” A dry chuckle leaves your lips. “My lease ends soon and Ayah wants to move to a place of her own. And I have two months to figure out where to live or find another roommate.” You let out a frustrated huff. “She’s been so helpful but still no luck I guess.” You shrug in defeat.

You feel like a balloon that’s lost all its air, brain exhausted from running through all the problems in your life.

“Actually that’s pretty convenient for- ” Scarlet starts, but is elbowed again in the ribs by Hazel. “Ow!”

“Not yet!” The cat hisses quietly to him.

“Huh?” Now you’re confused. What in the world are they talking about?

Hazel turns back to you. “I’m really sorry about everything Y/N. If there’s anything we can do to help please let us know.” 

“Thanks buddy.” You offer him a small smile, choosing to ignore what just happened since they clearly don’t want to reveal anything just yet. 

Hazel then shifts to a more nervous stance, ears slightly flattening and both hands grabbing his floofy grey tail for comfort. It’s the cutest goddamn thing you’ve ever seen in your life.

“So Y/N, um, there’s a reason we called you tonight.”

You’re glad for a change in subject, a much needed distraction away from your downward spiraling thoughts.

“Oh right! Yeah. What’s up guys?”

Scarlet steps in front of him again, blocking most of the screen.

“We have a surprise for you!” He’s so close to the camera that you can only see half of his unblemished face but from the way his eyes crinkle, you can tell he’s giddy with anticipation.

“A surprise- ?”

“Yeah!!”

Hazel nudges himself into view again. “Quit hogging the whole screen fox! I swear to god next time we’re using the tv. I can’t see anything! Anyways,” he turns to you and smooths his shirt, expression back to stoic, “are you free next weekend?”

“I should be. Why?” You’re still a little lost on what the surprise is.

“Cause we’re coming back to town!” Scarlet blurts out.

“You are?!” Suddenly all your negativity melts away, replaced by excitement. Hard to believe just five simple words can shift your mood a complete 180°.

“But wait, there’s more!” You snort at how much Scarlet sounded like an infomercial just now.

“We’d like to invite you to dinner next Saturday night. If that’s ok with you?” Hazel isn’t as physically expressive as Scarlet but the hopeful shine in his eyes gives himself away.

You melt at his expression, heart rate speeding up. “Of course that’s ok! I’d love to!”

“Great!” He flashes one of his rare gummy smiles. “Saturday night. 7 pm. We’ll text you the details.”

“Yep!” Scarlet pipes in. “There’s something important we gotta ask- !” He lets out a small gasp, tail bristling, and clamps a hand over his mouth as if he just said something he shouldn’t have.

“What’s important?” You’ve gotta admit, your curiosity is at its peak right now, and it doesn’t help that they’re acting a little weird today.

Hazel rubs his temples in exasperation, groaning at Scarlet. “What part of ‘not yet’ did you not understand?” He then addresses you. “Sorry Y/N I promise we’ll tell you when we see you in person.” 

“Ok.” Cool. That’s fine. You’re a little nervous about what they have to say and it’ll be torture to wait but you’re a big girl and you can handle not knowing for a week. “I can’t wait to see you guys!!” you added.

“Me too!” Scarlet’s personality is so bubbly and contagious that you can’t help but smile back at him.

“Same.” Hazel lets out a small yawn. “Well we’re in a different time zone than you and it’s really late here so I gotta hit the hay.”

“Mk, go get your beauty sleep.” You give them a little wave. “And thanks for everything. I mean it.”

“No problem Y/N.” Scarlet also gives off a yawn, stretching his tired limbs. “Goodnight.”

“Night.”

After ending the facetime call, you lie on your back, staring at the ceiling. Your mind is active once again, but this time it’s not clouded with self-deprecating thoughts. Instead, you spend the remainder of the evening theorizing about the ‘important’ things the boys have to tell you. Maybe you’ll finally find out their real names. Or maybe they’ll reveal something else about themselves, like why they’re constantly travelling, or what they actually do for a living. Either way you can’t wait for next Saturday to come around.

Previous | Next

[artistrashofmine]

If you’re into pain, specifically Bakugou going through pain, I got a new fic for you. 

Pairing: TodoBaku

Rating: Mature      c/w: child abuse

AO3Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25518559/chapters/61912828

Chapter 1

At the age of four, Bakugou Katsuki got his quirk, he also got his soulmark. They came together as they did with most four-year-olds, or hell, younger if they were lucky. He was worried, mostly because his parents were. Since he didn’t get it early, they were worried he wasn’t going to get one at all. Katsuki was first at everything, or so he was told, first to walk, first to talk. Therefore, he should have been first with this too, that was their reasoning.  When he turned four they took him to a quirk specialist for peace of mind, colleges at work had suggested it too. The doctor took an x-ray of his foot and happily exclaimed that it’s very likely he’ll be getting a quirk within the year, if not, then to bring him back for another appointment. Katuski had trouble believing the doctor's bizarre reasoning, how was a picture of his foot suppose to determine that? She tried to explain it to him, he still didn't understand, there were so many different kinds of people out there, some that didn't even have feet, so why would a difference in his toes determine anything? His parents seemed to understand though, and that's what mattered. He didn't want to annoy them with his own confused state, so he decided to keep his mouth shut after the less-than-helpful explanation.

The doctor appeared happy with it too, happy to go on and explain that it was a sign his soulmate was younger than him, that soulmates’ quirks liked to manifest together when possible. That’s why babies sometimes would get their quirks before they could walk, or born with them, depending on the age difference. That’s why Katsuki had to wait until the very last minute to get his quirk… unless he didn’t have one or had a shitty one that did nothing. He didn’t know which would be worse, he’d imagine his mother would be disappointed at both. Though the doctor assured them that they would know if he got a quirk or if he didn’t, to return for another appointment later in the year if nothing happened, when his fifth birthday would near. Then they could conduct further quirk tests.

He thought his parents would be happy to hear that. To hear that he had a good chance of getting a quirk later, yet they had forced smiles. They were disappointed with the wait. That Katsuki would be one of the last kids in his year to get a quirk. He heard them arguing about it when he got home. How his father worried the other kids would pick on him if it didn’t appear soon, that the small blond’s future would be meaningless. His mom ranting about how embarrassing it was, that she was forced to listen to colleges at work gush about their kid’s quirk while she had to keep her mouth shut or admit to a currently quirkless kid.

It was the first time the blond remembered getting angry at his parents. They had no right to be upset, this was Katsuki’s quirk and he wasn’t upset with having to wait a little longer. Maybe he should be, but he didn’t see why. It was proof he had a soulmate right? And if his soulmate wanted to take their time, he didn’t mind. A younger soulmate, his mom was younger then his dad, that must have meant he had a late quirk so what was wrong if Katsuki did too? He didn’t see their logic.

Besides, Izuku didn’t have one yet either. He wasn’t the only one. A few others in his pre-school hadn’t, while others had just got them. Most of their quirks sucked too. Though, as months went by, as his parents' frowns deepened, as everyone got their marks and quirks, Katusuki didn’t. Soon it was December, the beginning of December, they were playing tag when it happened, Izuku stopped and started crying, falling back onto his butt.

Izuku was a crybaby so it wasn’t surprising, but what reason did he have to cry now? As far as Katsuki knew, he wasn’t hurt. He didn’t even trip and fall, he just decided to drop. The other kids had started questioning him, some mocked him when he only cried harder. Then Katsuki saw it, the reason he was crying, the greenish-pink design that bloomed around his right wrist that was covered in mud. He couldn’t make out the exact design, some stupid flower was his guess. Flowers weren’t uncommon for soulmarks, and Izuku was getting his soulmark.

In early December flowers bloomed along the inside of the crying boy’s wrist as Katsuki took it upon himself to solemnly drag the freckled kid home to kind, green eyes that filled with matching tears as she took in the mark, happy tears as she told Izuku that it was his soulmark, with such love that it took Katsuki’s breath away, something he shouldn’t be there to experience. So he left without a word.

Would his parents act like that when his mark and quirk appear? He had a hard time visualizing that expression on his mom’s face. Maybe his dad would cry, he could see the man with tears of relief, that finally, the small blond was like every other child. Every other child who now had their quirk and mark, either then him, Izuku was the last. Someone the blond could sympathize with, even if he was a crybaby. Even if the blond didn't care all that much for him as a person, it was nice to have someone who could understand. Someone to look at and remind yourself that it was okay because they were in the same situation. But now Izuku had his mark and his quirk.

He forgot to ask Izuku about his quirk. He could do that tomorrow. He wondered if it was like his moms, that would be a cool enough quirk. Katsuki hoped he wasn't like his mom's, hers was lame, he'd rather have his fathers.

Only, as it turns out, Izuku's quirk didn’t appear. The greenet said his mom called the doctor, who said to hang tight it may take a couple of weeks. Still, he said they had an appointment in two months. And two weeks later, when it still didn’t show, the other kids already started making fun of him, Izuku was half a man, a freak with a mark but no quirk. Some went as far as to say the mark was fake.

His mom had heard from Aunty Inko, listened to her concerns, they were friends after all, just like Izuku and him. She didn’t make fun of it, only frowned, though his dad quietly told him to stay away from Izuku, just until he got his quirk. Katsuki wondered why, it wasn’t like quirklessness was contagious, and Izuku would get his quirk soon anyway, just like Katsuki would. Afterall, Katsuki’s fifth birthday was in a few months, he had to get his quirk and mark soon, so he could become a hero like All Might, even better then All Might. And so he could make his parents happy and proud of him.

Even if his dad wouldn’t let him go to Izuku’s anymore, he still tried to play tag, play heroes with him at daycare, but the other kids didn’t want to. And they said if Katuski played with Izuku then they wouldn’t be friends anymore. Maybe his dad was right then, that he should stay away from the greenet, just for now. Just until he got his quirk. After all, you needed to be popular to be the number one hero. And his mom always told him to look good, to mind your surroundings, that one mistake could make you an outlier for the rest of your life. Katsuki didn’t want that.

He stayed away from Izuku, just for a few months he told himself.

At the end of January, he got his quirk, his quirk and his soulmark. It came during pre-school. He had been really sweaty recently, which was strange because it was winter and cold, but his hands were always sweaty, and warm, he had to go to the washroom a lot to rinse them under cool water, it makes the adults concerned enough to pull him over and ask why he went to the washroom so often.

Which made Katsuki bashful, so he kept his mouth shut. Then one day, small sparks danced in his palm. He thought someone threw a match at him, that he caught it, that it was going to set fire to him. But they were explosions, and they hardly hurt, they were bright and loud and drew the attention of the whole room. Everyone woahed at him as they grew, and Katsuki grinned.

 He had gotten his quirk, a dangerous, flashy quirk. It had made everyone praise him. Perfect for being a hero, worth the wait. It didn’t matter how dangerous it was, that a four-year-old could kill you at any given moment, that didn’t matter here. His parents always told him to be careful. Since they lived near the sketchy area, flashy quirks weren’t common but danger was. Everyone was used to the thrill of a little danger, that paired with the beautiful orange, yellow and red hues that emitted from the palm of his overly sweaty hands made everyone so much more in awe. The adults praised him for it, excitedly calling his parents to tell them of the development, to come to get Katsuki. To come see.

His parents didn’t praise him, they had the same stressed smiles as when they went to visit the doctor all those months ago. He wondered why this time, his quirk appeared, and he could feel the fresh mark seared across his abdomen, under his navel, he wondered what it was. He wanted to get home soon to check. His parents didn’t care. His mom had asked why his timing was so bad, had said that they were busy today. His father explained that they didn’t have time to deal with a destructive quirk, that he was going to take classes to learn to control it. His mom told him no using it inside, and certainly no destroying anything with it, better if he didn’t use it at all. He didn’t expect to get lectured about his new power, it made him frown.

His parents shouldn’t be lecturing about it as if he broke a plate, they should be happy like when Aunty saw Izuku’s soulmark. Katsuki didn’t do anything wrong, why were they acting like this? What made that quirkless loser so special? Maybe… they hadn’t seen the quirk yet, maybe if he showed them… the blond set off pops, they were difficult to control and came out in a bright burst. It made his father swerve the vehicle. His mother turned in her seat and started yelling, at the top of her lungs, it made the small blond sink back into the leather, eyes widened and heart-pumping loudly. She was angry, she yelled about how they could have crashed and died, that Katuski could’ve killed them. She asked if he wanted them dead that much, if he wanted to be a homeless bum living among the trash, starving to death. She yelled until they were home, she yelled as they went into the house, Katsuki didn’t dare speak up against her.

He kicked off his shoes quietly with tearful eyes, unzipping the coat to hang up, and then he felt the hand to his cheek, a crack echoing through the house. And his mother spoke through clenched teeth and fury, “clean up your damned shoes.”

He didn’t waste a second, moving to place them properly on the rack with a tucked head. His dad explained that they were stressed out from work and having to end early to pick him up, that he should know better to clean up after himself now, or else what would his soulmate think? It was the first time his soulmate was brought up, they didn’t bother asking about the mark, they didn’t want to see it. They were stressed out. They were just making sure he would be good for his soulmate. Still, the small child couldn’t prevent the tears and from cascading down his face, over the warn, raw, handprint across his cheek, accompanied with poorly silenced sobs and hiccups.

It was the first piece of pain his soulmate would feel from him. Only an hour or so after they retrieved the mark. Katsuki promised that he’d try his best not to let it happen again, if he let it happen, the other would feel it and that would make Katsuki a bad soulmate.

Months later, Izuku still didn’t get his quirk. A quirkless loser everyone called him, and Katsuki had turned five, he was learning to read, and he could read Izuku’s name. It said Deku and Deku meant useless. Izuku couldn’t read yet, so he made sure to inform the greenet of his new name. Katsuki was proud to say that it was more creative than ‘quirkless loser’. And the rest of the students latched onto it, they’d latch onto anything the blond said, because the blond was awesome and everyone looked up to him, followed him.

Everyone except Izuku. Izuku sought him out as if they were still friends. And Katsuki hadn’t told him otherwise, because he wanted to be friends again, but they couldn’t. Because Izuku was still quirkless and Katsuki had a quirk now. He needed to be popular so he could be a hero, and all the kids would pick on him too if he were friends with Izuku. The older kids already started to, just because the blond had a strong quirk and they wanted to fight. It left him bruised and dirty, but the kids who watched praised him for his abilities. He felt bad for hurting his soulmate like this. Katsuki could keep the tears at bay until he was alone.

Though Izuku noticed, he was always concerned, as if the blond wasn’t strong enough to handle it. Katsuki pushed him away every time, it was for the best. He didn’t want to risk hurting his soulmate anymore then he already has. Therefore, he needed to be the best and he needed everyone to know so. He’d push people away, push them to the ground, push Deku to the ground to show everyone. Show that he was the strongest.

His parents didn’t think so, when they saw the grin on his face, the dirt and bruises. They asked if he got in a fight, of course, he said so, he said he won because he did. It didn’t feel like it, not when his mom’s hand came down against his cheek for the second time, the bruise that was already on his jaw, from the fight, screaming out its complaint in the form of a flinch worthy pain. The tears managed to return in seconds as his mother’s yelling echoed through the room. Katsuki hadn’t won.

It worsened throughout elementary school. He got into more fights, but those got easier, beating them up got easier, he welcomed the soreness in his fists. But the more fights he got into, the more powerful he got, the more his parents seemed to hate him, the more violent they got. And that wasn’t it. His soulmate. He could feel how tired the other got, the strain in their own muscles, the nausea in their stomach. Was it payback for how Katsuki treated them? Were they going through something similar? The blond wouldn’t be able to tell if the other got bruises, he had a hard enough time keeping track of his own bruises, at least they were visible.

Then one night he felt it, the worst pain he has yet to experience, he thought he was going to die. He wasn’t silently crying as he collapsed on the floor, the left side of his face cradled in his explosive palms. He was yelling, screaming from someone, anyone to help. For once he needed, wanted, his parents to help him. It hurt, hurt so much. He needed their help, their comfort.

His father looked down at him, his mother yelled a frantic “what did you do Katsuki?!”. He clenched his teeth, sobbing through them until it subsided, and looked up to see the worry on his parent’s faces, proof that they cared. But it didn’t last, Katsuki had no injuries, they came to the same conclusion that it must have been his soulmate and his mom looked at him with pity, his dad sighed. With that, they parted from him, back to their previous activities.

For the following weeks, he clung onto the throbbing injury on the left side of his face, the only proof that his soulmate was alive. He clung to it and hoped maybe the heat of his palms, his dangerous palms, would provide some sort of comfort against the chill that threatened to freeze his heart.

Middle school was shit. He was old enough to realize how fucking shitty the neighbourhood was, how underfunded the school was. How no one cared enough to maintain it, how no teachers cared to teach the students. There were cracks in the brick, old graffiti half-heartedly painted over. Weeds grew through old cement, paint chipped off the walls. The washrooms, which he didn’t dare to fucking use, always smelled of cigarettes and weed. You could find a collection of old stale gum under every single shitty, marked up desk, or hell, inside them if you were lucky. He bet that toxic shit was the only reason the school didn’t have rats. You could find old sandwiches from last fucking year in the corner of some poor losers locker, and you didn’t eat from the cafeteria unless you want food poisoning.

So physically, his middle school was shit. Just like the rest of the shitty neighbourhood and all the shitty people in it. You weren’t walking down the street at night unless you were looking for drugs or on them, that’s the kind of shitty place they were located. Katsuki was, as many people would say, lucky enough to live in the suburbs but fuck, the place was hell. His neighbour hated him, he’s pretty sure the whole area hated him, just cause he didn’t look like a fucking Ivey-league little prince and spoke his mind. Everyone hid behind that shitty smile and acted all friendly and reserved but would turn their backs and gossip about you for the rest of the night. You had to appear like the perfect family on the outside, with the perfect little house, it was some stupid unspoken competition. Perfect job, perfect house, perfect marriage, perfect family. That’s how it appeared, but it was total shit, and everybody knew it.

And Katsuki wasn’t about to turn into one of those kinds of fuckers like his parents would want, sure, he paid the price for it, but hell, at least he got to be himself. And like hell he’d show up all prim and proper in a school like his, no fucking way, he’d be target number one, worse then Deku. He’d be back to square one, it took years to climb to the top. If his parents didn’t want that they shouldn’t have sent him to the cheapest school they could fucking find, like what the hell? He’d have better luck in whatever hellish boarding school most parents in this fucking area sent their children to.

It pissed him off, but whatever, his parents always pissed him off. That was normal. They didn’t have the best relationship, obviously. But his parents were only making him tougher, he could deal. That’s what they were there for, to make him stronger. And it worked, he knew how to protect himself. How to hurt people so they couldn’t, wouldn’t, hurt him. He knew the limits he could go without getting in trouble while remaining in good grace with his followers. He knew just who to pick on. Most of the time that being Deku, Deku could take it. And it was his own damn fault for getting in Katsuki’s way.

The blond had a good system; it kept him on top, at least with his peers. There was always the price to pay at home. It traded the safety of home for good school life. He saw the bruises on Deku’s skin and compared to the ones on his own, it was worth it. Even if the bruises came from his parents, even if he ignored half of them, and he couldn’t see the ones on his back, he didn’t count the cuts from flying glass on partially back nights, it didn’t happen that often. He’d always sent out a silent apology to his soulmate.

He expected tonight to be one of those nights by the look on the hag’s face, the way his father left the room. She looked at him, his red eyes mirrored her hardened ones, “the principal called,”

That was how it always started, “you destroyed another desk. The kid who used the desk was sent to the nurse for burns. They didn’t admit it was you.”

No, they wouldn’t, no one would dare. They’d say it was an accident at most. No one would cross the blond.

“You fuking brat,” no one but his parents,” you fucking brat, you want to be a villain that bad, HAH?”

He flinched at that, gritting his teeth as her arms flailed around. He didn’t want to be a villain, he wasn’t trying to become a villain, she just didn’t understand. That was the way things worked there, that was how he was going to become number one. It was the only way. Fear drove people, she taught him that. It was the perfect way to keep them under you, to ensure your spot as number one.

“Your fucking quirk and shitty ass personality are going to get someone killed,” she was one to talk, “fuck, you’re better off killing yourself with it before you cause us any more trouble!”

Killing himself . He blinked. Her tongue was like a viper, ready to strike, to kill with her words. Still, it was the first time she said something like that. And that’s how she left, stomping down the hallway, leaving him alone in the kitchen. His thoughts drowned out the quiet room.

At least she didn’t hit him... his soulmate couldn’t feel words.

But Katsuki could, and Katsuki could learn from words, could use them.

That was the kind of thing he learned from his parents, how to use words to hurt others. It works. He explodes and throws Deku’s notebook out of the classroom window for good measure. It lands in the pond. Karma must have decided he went too far, he gets attacked by slime of all things. A shitty villain for a shitty neighbourhood. Still, he couldn’t do much to fight it, to protect his body from the onslaught of gross gunk that filled his lungs, swarmed down his throat, and in his nose, plugged it up real well so he couldn’t breathe. How it covered his ears, his body. Made sure to restrain him tightly, squeezing his center, holding his legs, his arms, his hands. Controlling them, trying to control them as Katsuki struggled to take the power back.

As shitty heroes and shitty civilians watched from the sidelines. No one did anything as he died, as he suffocated. It tasted gross like you could imagine this town tasting, vile and disgusting. Like the gum from the school desks or the year-old sandwich in the back of some uncaring extra’s locker. He was going to die like this, die a victim like this.

And his soulmate… god, his soulmate. He had to put his soulmate through this - his dad would remind him of that later. They’d hate him for this, hate him for sure. Katsuki would die never knowing his soulmate, only knowing how much they would hate him. Hate him for putting them through this, for causing so much pain, for dying on them.

And Deku, quirkless Deku who he told to die earlier, tried to save him. Was the only shitty person in the shitty crowd who came running over. Always Deku who came running after the blond. Not a hero, not someone with a quirk, not an adult, not his followers, just Deku. The one Katsuki relentlessly bullies was the only one who came to his aid. The only one either than his soulmate who recognized Katsuki’s pain. The only one who recognized his internal struggles.

No one else. Not when All Might pulled him from the sludge. He was praised, his flashy quirk praised by the shitty heroes even though he destroyed half the block. Technically it was the shitty sludge villain, but Katsuki did play a part. At least he was doing something, unlike those d-list heroes who praised him, who stood by and watched the whole thing happen. It was all the same, everyone was the same. His parents when he got home. They were the same, they were upset, they didn’t praise him as the others would. He only causes them trouble, that’s all he did.

No one asked if Katsuki was okay.

He couldn’t eat anything for supper, his throat was still raw. He brushed his teeth for an hour, he couldn’t get the taste out. The gross, ghost of a stench that had him dry heaving every so often if he thought too hard on it. He couldn’t sleep, still, he went to bed… and simply laid there.

Only Deku recognized he wasn’t okay. Only him.

But his body wasn’t in pain, so it was fine.

His soulmate didn’t know how fucked his mind was.

[klainetrashnumberone]

(i was tagged by @justgleekout , thank you ms. president <3)

rules : spell your url with song titles and tag 10 people.

oh boy i regret having a username this long,,, i don’t think i know enough songs

K arma Police

L ove Is All Around

A nother Day of Sun

I n the Mourning

N o Good Deed

E verybody Talks

T he Longest Time

R eise Reise

A nd I’m Telling You

S helter

H eart And Soul

N ine In The Afternoon

U nder the Sea

M ambo no 5

B ulletproof Heart

E nd Of The World

R osenrot

O ne Less Bell To Answer

N orthern Downpour

E ndless Love

(i had to move onto music i last listened to in 6th grade, there are literally no songs starting with R)

quarantine asks :

•where are you isolated ??

- In my flat with rats and silverfish! (the rats are pets don’t worry)(the silverfish aren’t pets though :/)

•what are you currently reading or watching ??

- reading: ATOG, also I’ve had Oscar Wilde's “Teleny“ sitting on my bedside table since March, watching me accusingly every time I open another fanfic

- watching: Glee, I’m also slowly going through my multiple page film-and-musical list. This month I’ve watched: Phantom Of the Opera, West Side Story, When Harry Met Sally, The Sound Of Music, Funny Girl, Moulin Rouge, La La Land, probably something else that I forgot. I would definitely recommend Moulin Rouge to everyone. It’s so amazing!!

•if you can go outside, what do you like to do during this time ??

- I can but I choose not to, I live in a sketchy neighborhood And hate the sun so. No going out during the day and no going out after dark, us vampires have a hard life ;(

•any fascinating concept you’re studying ??

- I accidentally got really into winemaking, it’s so interesting and there is so much to learn!! Then I read Sotto Voce too, now I’m even considering buying a book on the subject. Also now that I’m 18 I’m actually buying wine but only for research purposes, i swear

•what kind of acts of creativity / forms of art are you currently doing ??

- I’m building a cardboard fort for my rats

- I sing

- I like to read fanfics and then recreate the apartments and stuff in sims based on the description in fic, my current project is the bakery/apartment from Honey and Syrup!

- I’ve been exploring audio/video editing

•a song that resonates with your state of mind at the moment ??

- Grand Machine no. 12 by Electric President

•favourite impulsive / “bad” coping techniques ??

•favourite healthy / “good” coping techniques ??

- Stress cooking, I chop those onions until my mind is at peace!

- I started learning the single ladies dance for the meme but turns out I still have some muscle memory from my childhood so it’s fun and stuff! So exercise I guess :0

- And most important of all: playing with my rat babies! They are so cute and wholesome, I can’t help but to coo over them and forget everything else

rules: bold everything that applies to you & tag 10 people you’d like to get to know better.

A P P E A R A N C E

I’m over 5′5″. I wear glasses / contacts. I have blonde hair. I prefer loose clothing to tight clothing. I have one or more piercings I have at least one tattoo. I have blue / green eyes. I have dyed or highlighted my hair. I have gotten plastic surgery. I have or had braces. I sunburn easily. I have freckles. I paint my nails. I typically wear makeup. I don’t often smile(not in public places). I am pleased with how I look. I prefer nike to adidas. I wear baseball hats backwards.

H O B B I E S A N D T A L E N T S

I play a sport. I can play an instrument. I am artistic. I know more than one language. I have won a trophy in some sort of competition. I can cook or bake without a recipe. I know how to swim. I enjoy writing. I can do origami. I prefer movies to tv shows. I can execute a perfect somersault. I enjoy singing. I could survive in the wild on my own. I have read a new book series this year. I enjoy spending time with friends. I travel during school or work breaks. I can do a handstand.

R E L A T I O N S H I P S

I am in a relationship. I have been single for over a year. I have a crush. I have a best friend I have known for ten years. my parents are together. I have dated my best friend. I am adopted. my crush has confessed to me. I have a long distance relationship. I am an only child. I give advice to my friends. I have made an online friend. I met up with someone I have met online

A E S T H E T I C S

I have heard the ocean in a conch shell. I have watched the sunrise. I enjoy rainy days. I have slept under the stars. I meditate outside. the sound of chirping calms me. I enjoy the smell of the beach. I know what snow tastes like. I listen to music to fall asleep. I enjoy thunderstorms. I enjoy cloud watching. I have attended a bonfire. I pay close attention to colors. I find mystery in the ocean. I enjoy hiking on nature paths. autumn is my favorite season.

M I S C E L L A N E O U S

I can fall asleep in a moving vehicle. I am the mom friend. I live by a certain quote. I like the smell of sharpies. I am involved in extracurricular activities. I enjoy mexican food. I can drive a stick-shift. I believe in true love. I make up scenarios to fall asleep. I sing in the shower. I wish I lived in a video game. I have a canopy above my bed. I am multiracial. I am a redhead. I own at least three dogs.

Pardon me if you’re already done this! I’ll tag @kuhlaine @esperantoauthor @sassynosubete @blaineskurt @kurtstinypurse @books-and-violets @theyaskedmeto @anyone else who wants to do this! <3

[iamvegorott]

Silent Date

This is a late birthday present for @rainymae523 ! Happy Birth!

Summary: Wilford finally managed to ask JJ on a date and all goes well except for when JJ is given a braille menu and the waitress starts yelling. 

Silent Date

“Should I wear the blue one or the red one? Maybe the green one to match his hair. But then I’d look like Christmas on bleach because of my hair. Would orange stick out too much? I don’t even know what shirt I’m wearing, why am I fussing over bow-ties? What do you think, Dark? Dark? Dark!”

“I’m listening.” Dark mumbled as he typed on his phone, sitting on Wilford’s desk.

“Listening my ass.” Wilford huffed, taking Dark’s phone out of his hands.

“I was using that.” Dark said, holding his hand out.

“I need your help!” Wilford whined, placing the phone back in Dark’s hand. “And you texting Anti isn’t doing that.”

“How do you know that? I could be asking for his opinion.” Dark went back to his typing.

“Anti has literally zero sense of fashion. He thinks he can wear sneakers to a business casual affair. Sneakers? For business casual?” Dark finally lowered his phone.

“You’re going to a casual restaurant.” Dark said in a flat voice.

“With Jamesy!” Wilford corrected. “As a date!”

“You’ve been on dates before, why are you so worried about this one?” Dark asked, phone buzzing in hand as Wilford went over to his closet.

“Because it’s with James.” Wilford pulled out one of his shirts.

“We’ve known him for years, again, why are you so worried?” Dark looked at his new message and chuckled a little.

“Because I’ve been wanting this date for years.” Wilford admitted, throwing the shirt on his bed. He looked at Dark and saw a large smirk and a raised brow on the other man’s face. “Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t need to.” Wilford grumbled and went over to his dresser.

“Oh, the lucky red, you really want this date to go well.” Dark teased when Wilford pulled out some underwear.

“Again, shut up.” Wilford tossed the underwear on the bed as well and started going through a different drawer for pants.

“When you get back, you have to dish.” Dark said in a silly voice, laughing a little when Wilford just looked at him. “You did the same thing to me and Anti. I can have some fun too.”

“Well, if I do end up like you and Anti. I’ll be sure not to be texting James instead of paying attention to my friend.” Wilford huffed, going back over to the bed with a pair of slacks.

“I’m paying attention.” Dark protested. “I can tell that you really want this date to go well since you’re wearing your, and I quote, ‘pants that make your ass look like two perfect apples’.”

“They do…” Wilford mumbled.

“Alright. I’ll be the supportive friend.” Dark pocketed his phone and got off of the desk. He went over to Wilford and patted his back. “You’re going to be just fine. Everything is going to be okay and if it doesn’t work out, you two will still be great friends. He already said yes to a date, he obviously doesn’t hate you.”

“Thanks, Dark.” Wilford said with a smile.

“Don’t tell anyone I was nice.” Dark jokingly threatened.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Wilford chuckled.

x~x~x

“Hi, Wilford.” JJ greeted, using Wilford’s sign name by holding up three fingers to make a ‘w’ and tapping it to his chest two times.

“Hey, Jamesy.” Wilford greeted back, resisting the urge to run his hand through his hair, he spent too much time getting it perfect and by him, he meant Dark. “You haven’t been waiting long, have you?” JJ shook his head in response and looped his arm through Wilford’s, chuckling silently when Wilford’s cheeks turned the same shade of pink as his hair.

“Hello, gentlemen, is it just you two?” The woman behind a little podium asked.

“Yep.” Wilford answered while JJ got distracted by a picture on the wall, trying to read all of the phrases on it.

“Table or booth?” The woman asked.

“I don’t care.” Wilford said, giving JJ a light tug on the arm to get his attention.

“Table. Please.” JJ signed.

“Table, please.” Wilford translated, raising a brow when the woman went ‘oh’ and sat one of the menus down to get a different one.

“Right this way.” The woman said before leading Wilford and JJ into the dining area. “Let me know if you need anything, your waitress should be right with you.”

“Thank you.” Wilford said as he and JJ sat down at the table. “So, Dark looked into this place and said that they have amazing bean burgers.” Wilford said, flipping open his menu and JJ did the same. “Is something wrong?” He asked when he noticed the look on JJ’s face.

“Read. Can’t.” JJ said before holding up his menu to show Wilford that it was blank with bumps all over it.

“Is that braille?” Wilford ran his hand over the menu, the texture familiar to the books Host read when he didn’t want to use his narrating. “She must have grabbed the wrong menu.” Wilford said. “You can read off mine” He added and turned his menu around.

“Thank you.” JJ smiled.

“Anyways, they do this really cool thing where you can replace the meat of any burger with a bean patty.” Wilford pointed at the burger section.

“F-R-E-N-C-H S-O-U-P burger?” JJ pointed at the menu as well.

“That actually sounds really good.” Wilford said after reading the description. “I might get it.”

“Same-as-me.” JJ agreed.

“Hello! What can I get you to drink!?” A waitress asked in a loud and slow voice after walking up to the table, looking at JJ as she spoke.

“Excuse me, ma’am, you don’t need to-” Wilford stopped when JJ waved a hand at him. JJ smiled at the waitress and pointed to a picture of the Sprite logo.

“I’ll take a Cherry Coke.” Wilford said, irritation clear in his voice.

“Alright. Are you ready to order or do you need a few minutes?” The waitress asked in a normal tone to Wilford. Wilford looked at JJ and JJ gestured for Wilford to go ahead.

“We’ll each take a French Soup Burger, but can we get his with a bean burger?” Wilford said.

“No problem? Anything else?”

“Nope.” Wilford forced a smile and it went away the moment the waitress was gone. “I should complain to the manager.” He grumbled.

“No. No. Fine.” JJ signed, letting Wilford know that it was okay.

“But-”

“How are you?” JJ asked, cutting Wilford off again. Wilford sighed before smiling and answering JJ’s question.

After dinner, JJ and Wilford were walking out of the restaurant, JJ holding Wilford’s arm again. Wilford saw Anti standing at the end of the parking lot, leaning against a tree and scrolling through his phone. He must be JJ’s ‘ride’ home.

“I still don’t get why the waitress was yelling at you or why they gave you a braille menu.” Wilford huffed when they stopped walking.

“Understand. Talk. Can’t.” JJ shook his head as he signed, saying that they didn’t understand people who couldn’t talk. “She. Thought. I. Deaf.” He explained.

“Even then, you don’t need a braille menu and there was no need to yell. Yelling wouldn’t magically-” Wilford was stopped once again, but this time by JJ grabbing his face and pulling him in for a kiss.

“Thank you.” JJ said. “Fine. Promise.”

“I…” Wilford held out the word, face flushing.

“Kiss him back, you dolt!” Anti shouted. Wilford stiffened for a moment before shooting Anti a quick glare. JJ just raised a brow and smirked, asking if Wilford was actually going to do it. Wilford laughed and cupped JJ’s cheek with a hand, leaning in to press their lips together again. He couldn’t help himself from laughing a little again when he saw that JJ was blushing this time. “If you’re gonna fuck, let me know so I can go home!” Anti shouted again, getting Wilford and JJ to both have flushed faces.

“See you. Later.” JJ said before going over to Anti, slapping at his arm as soon as he reached him. Anti just laughed before glitching the two away. Wilford happily smiled at the spot, snapping out of his daze when his phone started buzzing.

“Hey, Darky!” Wilford greeted after answering the phone, walking further away from the restaurant. “Yep, all went well...If you say ‘dish’ one more time I’m friend breaking-up with you.” Wilford warned with a chuckle, disappearing in a cloud of pink smoke.

|Buy Me A Ko-Fi|  |Commissions| |Master Post|

Tag List:  @readeatfightlove13 @sketchy-scribs-n-doods @blueyeswhitedragon16 @estraevelyn @virge-of-death @superdltpurplerage @xhuxk37 @i-am-not-anon

Let me know if you want to be tagged in anything! ^__^

[mamfaplier]

Nerve — Chapter One

Are you a Watcher or Player?

Prompt: Roll Up by Fitz and the Tantrums

1940s Bucky x Reader

Word Count: 1,811

AN: This is my personal adaptation of the film Nerve (2016) that I’m submitting for @green-eyeddragonfanfiction‘s 3K Creative Content Challenge. I’m so happy to have been allowed to participate in this. So obviously my prompt is that song above but I’ll be using it later in the story so sorry if that throws you off! At first, I thought this was going to be a one shot but I watched the movie again and decided I’m going to make a series out of this!!! Our boy Bucky probably won’t come in right away but don’t worry ;) Also the film is based on seniors in high school (I think) so just imagine all the characters used in this as younger versions of themselves. Like for example, Bucky as young 1940s Bucky instead of a grown adult man who failed more than a few times and is still in high school with a metal arm :P Anyways, congrats on 3K Dragon! <33

Warnings: Mentions of death

(Y/F/N) = your first name   (Y/L/N) = your last name   (Y/C) = your city

Next Chapter

Welcome to Nerve. A game like Truth or Dare….minus the Truth. Watchers pay to watch. Players play to win cash and glory.

Are you a Watcher or Player?

Are you a Watcher or Player?

ARE YOU A WATCHER OR PLAYER?

As you sit down at your desk in your room, you get comfortable and open up your computer. The oh so familiar startup tune softly rings out welcoming you back. (Y/F/N Y/L/N) appears on the screen as well as your favorite selfie from the summer in a small box, swiftly prompting you to enter your password for login. You’ve had to have entered it in a million times by now but still, every once in a while, you still seem to forget.

After the second attempt, your computer finally lets you in bringing you to your desktop. The smiling faces of you, your brother, and your mom together are plastered in a puzzle like collage on the background. As everything slowly loads up, the corner of your mouth smirks up into a small smile like it does every time you remember the moment you took that picture. You press on the Spotify app and begin scroll through your suggestions. To your surprise (or discomfort), a playlist called ‘Only Single Friend Left’ appears with a small, sad kitten as the playlist cover art. With a shrug and a slight roll of your eyes, you click the play button. Can’t Get Enough by Basenji starts playing through your computer's speakers.

You open up your internet browser and almost too quickly open up your email. Among the top of the hundreds of read emails sit two unread emails. One from DAILY CAT PICS and the other from the college of your dreams, subject reading URGENT: Admissions Reminder. Never in your wildest dreams did you think you would ACTUALLY get accepted but here you are. Hesitantly, you open up the email.

It reads:

Dear (Y/N),

Congratulations again! This is a reminder that your reply is due tomorrow. This could be the first day of the rest of your life. Click accept and join the class of 20**!

You sigh as you bring your mouse over the bright red CLICK HERE TO ACCEPT button in the email. This has been one of the hardest decisions in your life, but you scroll to the bottom of the email and press reply.

To whom it may concern,

I regret to inform the admissions board that I must decline…

You pause and yet again let out another sigh as you glance over at your brother’s and mom’s faces on your desktop background. You continue.

…because I’m a spineless loser and I’m too scared to tell my mom the truth which is that I want to move out and leave (Y/C) foreverlasjdhflajhsdljfaljdshflhadsjafhlf

In your distraught state, a Facebook notification brings a welcome distraction.

Chris “Thor” Odinson tagged you in a post.

Your heart skips a beat and you quickly click on it and with a soft giggle see that he’s posted the picture you took of him reminding everyone of the pep rally today. As you go to press the like button, your best friend Natasha Romanoff rings you on Skype. You roll your eyes and accept her call.

“Good morning. Whatcha doing? Besides stalking Thor, of course.” She greets you in her common teasing tone.

“I’m reading the news, thank you very much.” You gently respond to her jab as you scroll over to the Huntington Post quick link you have on your browser’s bookmark bar.

“Oh? You’re reading the news? You’re such a good liar!” Natasha jabs back again seeing right through you. She is your best friend of course.

With a chuckle you glance back at her through your computer screen, “Seriously, how do you know I’m stalking Thor?”

“Because I know you very very well.” She tussles around in her beside table placing things on her bed, a big bright N glowing right above it. “Oh wait! Did you tell your mom about your dream school yet?”

“Yea! I told her! She’s super excited for me to move across the country and go to a really expensive school.” Sarcasm very evident in your tone, yet completely goes over Natasha’s head.

“Really?”

You laugh. “No, I just haven’t found the right time to tell her and…”

Natasha abruptly interrupts you. “OH! Nerve is starting. Sorry, this is really important.”

“What’s Nerve?”

“It’s a game. Here, just click on the video.”

You open up your Facebook messenger and click on the link Natasha sent you.  After you finish watching the short clip, you click back to Skype. “This looks very sketchy. Is this legal?” You ask and laugh nervously.

“Well, no. Probably not but who cares. Sign up and watch. Times a-tickin'!”

You playful pretend to sign up typing your fingers on your imaginary keyboard in the air. “Ok signing up. Look this is me signing up to watch you.” You say dryly.

“(Y/N/N)!” Natasha exclaims. “You have to sign up and watch me! It’s very important that I have watchers!”

“I gotta go. My mom’s home. I’ll sign up after breakfast!”

“Thank you! I love you. I’ll see you in a little bit!” You both bid each other goodbye with your signature flick of the nose and click off of Skype.

You run downstairs from your room to the kitchen, greeted with the delicious smell of pancakes and bacon as well as your mom’s smiling face. You both begin talking about how Natasha still hasn’t gotten into any schools yet and seems to be carefree. Your mother disagrees and reminds you that Natasha will always have a trust fund to fall back on. A hard jab to your best friend but nonetheless, still the truth. You, on the other hand, do not have a trust fund. You have drive and knowledge and a scholarship to a local college. Definitely not as exciting. But to your mom, it sounds like the perfect plan. You can’t afford to stay on campus but you get to have your mom as your cool college roommate. That’s awesome, right? Wrong. But you can’t tell her that. Instead, you offer to help her fix up your late brother’s room and post in on Airbnb. Maybe it would be a good time to go through his stuff and give some of it to goodwill? Maybe you could give her some space? She would like that, right? Wrong….again.

“I just want you here, (Y/N/N).” You mom responds sadly. To say it’s been hard since you lost your brother Peter is an understatement. You love your mom to bits but you’re getting older and just want to branch out. But now, more than ever, all your mom wants is to stay connected to you and you don’t have the heart to deny her of that.

“Ok, yea. I’m totally down for commuting. I can do my reading on the train.” Disappointed, you look over to your mom who makes her way to the table and press your lips together.

“That’ll work, right?”

“Yea.” You state simply, resting your cheek on your hand as you take a bite of your pancakes.

After breakfast, you run back up to your room. You grab your 2 most important things: your camera and your phone. Tossing on a light jacket that matches with your striped tee and jeans, you lug your backpack over your shoulder. You press shuffle on Spotify, starting Kamikaze by MØ before you hop on your bike and head on your way to school.

As you get to school, you immediately meet up with Steve Rogers, your yearbook partner in crime. Your school’s football team has a game today and it’s your mission to try to get as many pictures for the yearbook as you can. You both walk to the locker room, handing Steve your extra lenses. The team is gathered together, getting a pump up speech by Coach Wilson before the pep rally. You sneak behind some of the players to get some more up close shots of them but you may or may not have taken one too many of the captain of the football team and your crush, Chris Odinson. Everyone calls him Thor because he plays like he’s an almighty god and of course, he has definitely taken to the name. He looks at you as you’re snapping away and gives you the cutest smirk you’ve ever seen, making you want to melt to the floor.

You quickly walk over to Steve to grab a different lens for your camera and he chuckles. “Wouldn’t it feel a little unbalanced if every single yearbook photo is of Thor Odinson?”

“It’s not MY fault he’s on the team.” You snap back nervously. Are you really making it THAT obvious? Steve shrugs his shoulders before briskly grabbing your hand to pull you out of the way of the 30+ football players barreling your way. You gently pull away as you get in between the players running out onto the field to get the best shots you can. Nothing ever stops a good photographer from getting good shots, even if your minutes away from being trampled to the ground. All the while Steve is right behind you, guiding you through the crowd as you run backward taking your shots.

You take a couple more shots before all the players run out onto the field through the cheerleaders. Students fill the bleachers all the way to the top, shouting and cheering for their beloved football team and dressed in your school colors. The band is playing and the cheerleaders are in formation, Natasha the captain of the cheer squad, leading the way.

You and Steve stand off to the side as you see Natasha run over to her friend Sharon in the bleachers. You see Natasha hand her phone to Sharon and much to your surprise, Sharon starts to record her. You can’t hear what Natasha is saying to her phone, but she looks over to you and flicks her nose. Smiling as she runs back onto the field, you flick your nose back and watch in confusion. Sharon stands from her seat to get a better view, still seemingly recording. You look to Sharon and back to Natasha and shake your head, picking up your camera to take shots as the cheer squad goes through their routine. As they finish up, Natasha decides to pull one last stunt. She turns her back to the crowd and lifts her cheer skirt up, revealing her bare ass. The crowd gasps unanimously and Sharon bursts out in laughter, all the while recording the whole thing. You turn to Steve to show him the shot you took and you both laugh at the image of Nat’s ass front and center of the cheer squad.

Next Chapter coming soon!

[becckali-blog]

abc tag :)

Rules: answer the questions in a new post and tag blogs you would like to get to know better

a- age: 16

b- birth place: gross nj city but moved to boring nj town

c- current time: 6:10pm

d- drink you last had: huge ice coffee

e- easiest person to talk to: my best friends and my boyfriend

f- favorite song: either Baba O’Riley by The Who or In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel

g- grossest memory: okay so lemme set this up for you; teeth make me nauseous, i get really bad motion sickness especially when i’m put on that laughing gas shit, and i also get very nauseous over gross situations very easily. so i was getting a molar removed and i was on laughing gas which is already really bad on its own. i ended up swallowing a shit ton of blood during the process and got really sick to the point where i was gagging so when the tooth was out i literally jumped up and ran out to the bathroom so i could vomit. buuuutttt bc of the gas i was all dizzy which made me even more nauseous and my vision blurred so i ended up falling down in the hallway and crawling into the bathroom and into a stall where i threw up a mix of blood and mucus and lunch. then some lady in the other stall had to call my mom bc she was worried abt me and i went home:)

h- horror yes or horror no: horror YES i love horror movies, horror stories, i love those stupid haunted house walk-throughs, i love getting scared. halloween is the Best holiday and no one can convince me otherwise

i- in love: yep;)

j- jealous: i don’t think so lmao. someone hugs my bf? cool. a friendly kiss on the cheek? no problemo. i draw the line at like openly flirting and trying to get in his pants, ya know?

k- kiss or be kissed: both!! they’re both great!!

l- love at first sight or should i walk by again: walk by again, man. love at first sight is sketchy as heck you gotta get to know someone!

m- middle name: bernice

n- number of siblings: 3 sisters, 2 brother in laws so i guess 5 in total

o- one wish: to become a zoologist!

p- last person you called: my boyfriend

q- question you are always asked: why would you keep that in your room? (talking abt my pets)

r- reason to smile: friends! nature! pets!

s- song you last sang: oof it was Misery Business by Paramore but like,, ironically

t- time you woke up: well i woke up naturally at 6:45 but ew so i went back to sleep and woke up at noon

u- underwhelming experience: i can’t really think of a specific one right now, so i’m just gonna say most school field trips i’ve been on

v- vacation destination: definitely LA! i miss Venice Beach sososo much i loved it

w- worst habit: cancelling plans!! i cancel bc i don’t feel like doing anything but then like 15 minutes later i regret it

x- x-rays: both my wrists, my right ankle, both my hands, and my right foot. never broken a bone tho¯\_(ツ)_/¯

y- your favorite food: i could eat soup for the rest of my life

z- zodiac sign: pisces

i’m gonna tag my bud @alienslovetea

[sithlordintraining]

Knight of the Night (Modern Superhero/Vigilante Au!Matt)

A/N: I’m trying to keep this on a schedule of “Superhero Sundays” and I finished this Monday and it took everything in me to hold it. I hope you like it and it’s not bad. I’ve recently been obsessed with the song Mine by Bazzi and then legit I met this guy at school and omg he’s so cute, his smile is adorable and I can’t wait to see him again!!

Summary: Matt Organa-Solo, a 21-year old psychology student at Academia: University of First Order. He was the only child of Senator Leia Organa-Solo and Retired Chief of Police Han Organa-Solo. It was a problematic community, but not as terrible as some other towns and colleges. But somehow, he always found himself always somehow saving someone, literally. After a crazy night, will Matt dare venture to become the hero this place needs?

Knight of the Night Collection

Vol. #6- The Rule of Two

Matt’s finger swiped across the screen to finish the transaction on his apple watch. Being Kylo Ren was hard work, especially traveling around, so when your drunk self-mentioned a Batmobile, he had to admit it would be helpful. His mind wandered to you; he hadn’t seen you since that night and scolded himself how he had been so preoccupied being a superhero than being with you. Well, as a friend, he reminded himself. After he had blown you off, there was no way in hell you would want to continue to pursue him. He wasn’t paying attention to where he was walking even though his head was straight ahead of him. But he felt his body collide with something or someone. “Matt?” Your voice pulled him out of his thoughts that was coincidentally filled with you. “Y/N?” His brows furrowed as his hands found their way to your exposed arms. Goosebumps started to form and you looked down because you couldn’t find the confidence to look into his eyes.

“Hi Matt, how’ve you been?” You asked as he began to remove his hands from you. “Um...I’ve been good, just school.” He shrugged. You nodded. “School, yeah, I understand. I had to take a break. It was a beautiful day so I thought I’d treat myself.” You shook the iced fruit drink in your hand. Matt nodded. His eyes soon went to your (y/h/c) curls that waved back into a curly puff, then to your black choker and black satin slip dress and he began to laugh. Your glossed lips twisted to the side. “What?” You asked. “Your outfit, you like North West.” He joked. Your eyes rolled behind your black sunglasses. “Shut up, dork.” You lightly shoved his shoulder. “It’s true! But all jokes aside, you look beautiful.” He sighed and you could feel your heart beating faster. “Thanks, Matty.” You said softly. “Are you doing anything, right now?” Matt scratched the back of his neck. You shook your head no with a smile. “Do you, maybe want to go to the park?” The blush started to rise contrasting against his skin and yellow shirt. “I’d like that.”

That goofy smile that he hated so much was present throughout your whole outing. His attention was fully focused on you and every little thing you did. From looking over your sunglasses to see the color difference of the sky to how your fingers always checked to see if your choker had shifted, but his favorite was how you would bite your lips and ears would move back before you laughed. You always wore your hair out and he never noticed how cute they were, just like everything else about you. With the sound of the children playing, music from the court, and other sounds that you would hear in a park, Matt strangely could hear someone yelling stop all the way down the trail. At first, he thought it was just a mother scolding her child, but then he saw a sketchy man running with what seemed to be a hot pink purse. Behind him was a large dark man in a navy suit hot on his trail only to be stopped by a jogger in his way. You were so busy telling him a story, you missed all the commotion as the scene grew closer. Slyly, Matt extended his foot causing the man to tumble forward. You gasped as Matt wrapped his arms around you as the suited man retrieved the purse handing it to the distraught woman. The man looked at Matt and gave him a nod. “You know him?” You turned to Matt. “No...I just saw him chasing the guy.” Matt told you. “Wow, that was...crazy.” You said. Of course, something like this would happen while he was with you. Matt couldn’t just get a day with just giving you his undivided attention.

Matt bit his fingernails pacing back and forth staring at his bike. It was beautiful! Absolutely sick design of obsidian black matte and metal SILENTHAWK that he had bought off the black market, hopefully without a trace, if he remembered the instructions Hux had did to buy kinder eggs. As bad as it sounded, Matt was hoping someone needed his help because he wanted to try it out. Not to mention he had bought a pilot helmet that allowed him to speak with it on, even if it distorted it a little. Realising that wishing harm to someone was bad, he turned off the light to the garage and made his way to the den. The tv was on a low volume but allowed him to hear his push notification from Instagram. Matt scoffed as he hated that he had made a fake Instagram to basically stalk your page. But Instagram just wasn’t his thing, and you had thousands of followers, you wouldn’t notice. Opening it up, he saw you with a rose in your mouth and skin glowing, as usual, he couldn’t help but smile. He clicked the tagged locations ‘Carmen’ a Spanish restaurant and club located on the edge of the city. You were probably with your other friends and it was confirmed when he saw you in more pictures with the same location. Pressing one of the photos, he realized it must’ve been your former dance members as the account name was @dinoballerino. Matt sighed, all he wanted to do was spend time with you like these people were. His apple watch alerted him that someone needed Kylo and he was rushing to the garage.

The whole university was buzzing about the mysterious vigilante and his new ride. The masked figure whose ride which was carried by the wind and snuck up on the bad guys, it had earned the name ‘Silencer’. Matt smiled as he passed a group of guys who were talking about his motorcycle. He strode with an air of confidence that easily deflated when he saw you with Joe Clarkson. You were waiting for Matt in the lecture hall apart from a mandated meeting. Your bag held an empty seat for him, but Joe and his crew had basically surrounded you. “Matt!” You grabbed your bag and he made his way over to you. “Hey, Y/N!” A blush began to hit his cheeks as his brown orbs fell on Joe who was grilling him. You pulled Matt to sit down and turned all your attention on him. Behind your curls, he could see Joe brush you off and talk to someone else. The meeting was long and boring, Matt sat tensed as your head threatened to fall from your propped arm onto his shoulder. You groaned in frustration and turned to Matt. “Let’s leave.” You whispered. His eyes bulged out. “Y/N, we can’t. There are professors guarding the door.” He told you. Before you could speak, a professor was looking at the two because they were talking, you covered your mouth and started to dry heave. Matt froze unsure what had caused the change. “Miss, are you alright?” the professor whispered. You looked up at him with watery eyes. “I-I think she needs to go to the nurse.” Matt stuttered. “Yes, you’re right.” Matt was pulling you up and grabbing your bag and leading your staggering self out of the auditorium before the professor could object.

As soon as the pair got far enough, you pulled yourself up and fixed yourself. “Y/N,” Matt said shakily. “I can’t believe I just did that, my heart is beating so fast feel it.” Your laughter was so melodic he missed that you had pressed his large hand to your chest. He didn’t put it together until his heart rate surpassed yours. “Um, so what do you want to do now?” He pushed his glasses up his nose. You shrugged with a smile and he swore he was going to have a heart attack. “I didn’t think that far. My plan was just getting out, so now it’s your turn.” She turned it on him. “Maybe something indoor because we are wanted, men.” You giggled at his answer. “What were you doing before the meeting?” You asked. “Honestly, I was binging Bob’s Burgers.” Your eyes lit up in a mischievous way. “Netflix and chill it is.” Matt’s face was a bright red at your words as you began to push him towards the dorm. Matt was nervous about taking you back to the dorm, the only girl that had been in there was Phasma. He wasn’t worried about the cleanliness, a lot of people were surprised how well kept the room was.  You opened the door to see a nicely furnished living room. “Oh, this is nice!” You said taking everything in. “Thanks, it’s all Hux,” Matt replied. A chuckle escaped your lips. “Figures, he always reminded me of Schmidt from the New Girl.” You told him. “Don’t tell him that,” Matt said. “Don’t ever tell him that unless you want to hear an endless rant.” Another chuckle fell from your lips. You plopped down on the couch and Matt stood in the kitchen. “Do you want something to drink?” He asked. “Water is fine.” You smiled and he thought you looked so precious. He was soon sitting down beside you with two water bottles. He turned the TV on and pressed play to resume the episode. Your head fell on his shoulder as you pulled yourself toward him cuddling with him. His arms snaked around your waist, smiling softly.

Even though it was something small as hanging in his room was, it reassured him that you still wanted to be around him despite the numerous times he had blown you off to save the day. That’s why now he was looking for someone who could possibly help him. Not just so he can spend time with Y/N, but he felt bad for dismissing others who were reaching out to him. So now he was hidden in the shadows waiting for the right time to come forward. The guy at the park had been perfect, Sherman Richards was his name. He was a graduate student, ex-marine and worked as an analyst for some start-up company. He was really big in the military affiliations on camp and did a lot of volunteer work for poor communities. Behind his helmet, he watched as all his coworkers left leaving Sherman to be the last one. When he was sure that no one else was there he approached the man. “I’ve seen you found my invitation.” The distorted voice filtered through the mask. “Yes, and I have taken some time to think of my answer.” The mask tilted waiting for his answer. “I swore that I would support and defend the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Just because I don’t have a uniform doesn’t mean I’m going to stop.” The man nodded. “Good, training starts tomorrow.” The mask said.

Matt was very surprised when Sherman had shown up to the hidden passage of the mansion and surprised that he wasn’t offended when he kept his helmet on. It wasn’t a lot of training, seeing how Sherman was in such great shape and very attuned to everything around him, it was more of seeing where his strengths and weaknesses lie. Well, it was for the both of them as the two sparred. Sherman had respect for what the man was doing and would help in whatever way he could. It was soon that he was gifted with his own apple watch, helmet, gear and the moniker ‘Nassar Ren’. People were absolutely roaring at the badass duo who went fighting in the night. ‘Knights of the Night’ was the nickname that followed them. It was amazing how no one even knew who any of them were, Sherman didn’t even know that the blond from the park was really Kylo. But having someone else was really good because he knew that his partner was responsible and dedicated and he trusted him to do it alone. Especially at times like these, when he was with you; the two were in your kitchen making macaroni and cheese for the potluck that Phasma had invited you all two. Matt was trying to steal some of the cheese you had cubed but your arms were well-versed in the art of blocking. A smile on both of your faces, Matt continued to playfully bother her as Bazzi played in the background. A message popped up on his watch alerting him that Kylo was needed. He hesitated to swipe as he looked up to see you so happy, he couldn’t leave you. At the moment, he got a message from Nassar: “I got it, boss.” Matt smiled and continued to bother you. Maybe he should get more Knights so he could stay with you all the time.

tagged: @btw-imalex , @kylo-renne, @bluelightsaberjedi, @hoe-for-kylo 

P.S.: Hope you liked it, it’s a filler if you haven’t guessed. 

[c-rowlesdraws]

1 3 and 6 please :o

1 (favorite color to work with) -

3 (music I listen to when I do art) - yess, I was hoping someone would ask this one! I listen to so much music that I actually have playlists on Spotify separated into different months, so that I can find all my faves easily. Sometimes I need to concentrate and I’ll put on exclusively instrumental music, but usually I listen to music with words and without.

Sometimes, instead of listening to a playlist while I’m working, I’ll put one song on loop, and my brain will just smear it out into one very long and very good song until I’m ready to move on. That’s always fun.

Here are a few songs from my February playlist:

https://youtu.be/C-4w4d5CBr4 - ROZES - Hangin’ On

https://youtu.be/KH4crdXyCUA - Dolgormaa B. - Zayaniih L Baij Chadah Uu

https://youtu.be/xD4DADd07QI - Bearstronaut - Shadow

6 (tag some favorite artists) - here are some more artists on tumblr that I love:

@cliobablio - Clio Chiang is an artist who’s done work for clients like Dreamworks and Disney; her illustrations are really sweet and lively, and her use of color is lovely. I’m amazed by how she uses lighting to set the atmosphere in a picture.

@anthonyholden - Anthony Holden draws a lot of really cute comics about his life as a dad, and his character illustrations are really stylish and cute and full of energy. Every new piece of art by him makes me smile.

@mirandaharmony - Miranda Harmon draws really really great and relatable comics about her life. I love the sketchy black-and-white style she uses most often, and when she uses color, it’s gorgeous.