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onlyhuis · 1 year

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leaning on the everlasting arms

member — childhood best friend! pastor's son!joshua x f reader genre — angst, smut, some fluff, bible college au word count — 10.3k (my first fic over 10k wowie!!) synopsis — as kids growing up in the same church, you and joshua were inseperable, until you got to an age where it was considered immoral for girls and boys to be friends. when you find him again just before graduation, he's different than you remember; but so are you. content warnings — female reader, she/her, reader is implied to be smaller (i'm sorry), discussion of gender roles & religion, no religion is mentioned by name but it's heavily implied to be a form of christianity, reader & shua are both seniors in college, reader wears skirts/dresses but not really by choice, this whole thing is pretty blasphemous oops smut warnings — descriptions of female anatomy, virgin!joshua x virgin!reader, mutual masturbation, phone sex, unprotected sex, fingering, oral (reader receiving), hints of a voice kink, size kink, praise, begging, really vanilla missionary but it's hot, nicknames (sweetheart, baby, angel) notes — although i am no longer religious, this is partially based off of my own experiences with the extremely traditional christian church i was raised in. however, please keep in mind that this is fiction and does not reflect my beliefs nor joshua's beliefs so don't take the plot too seriously. this piece is not meant to discuss whether certain religions are "right" or "wrong" so please do not comment/send me asks trying to start a debate! we're all just here for a little sexy time with shua it's not that deep note #2 — for those who aren't familiar, the title is the name of a hymn and i thought it was funny bc joshua big sexy arms hehehe

as far back as you could remember, joshua was your closest friend.

his father was the pastor of the church your family went to, and as luck would have it you were both in the same grade, so it wasn’t long before you became inseparable. you saw him at minimum three times a week: sunday morning, sunday evening, wednesday evening.

you spent most of your childhood together. sitting next to each other at every service, sharing your bibles with each other whenever one of you left them at home, sneaking donuts away from the box at the table outside the sermon hall that was supposed to only be for the adults.

you did everything together, and told each other everything. that is, until you reached middle school. boys and girls weren’t allowed to sit in the same services anymore, and you had to stay in separate buildings for every church camp and conference.

the worst part was you didn’t even understand why. what did they think you were gonna do with him? kiss him? no amount of money in the world could get you to do that! joshua was your best friend. who else were you supposed to climb trees and build forts and sneak donuts with? kissing was stupid.

when you asked your mom about it, she told you the same thing everyone else did: about how men of god had a different path and needed to hear different messages in order to grow up to lead their own churches one day. you thought it was stupid. what if a woman wanted to lead a church, why are men the ones that have to do it? but she would just shake her head and tell you it's just the way things work in the church, you'll understand when you're older.

you were allowed near him less and less until the only time you were able to see him was at the after-service brunch with his family, and even then that began to happen less and less as the years went on.

and of course it was church rules, so there was no arguing with them because that would mean arguing with god, and who were you to question his authority? there would be no special exception for you, no matter how much you protested to your mom that you would never, ever think about joshua like that. in a fit of anger one day you blew up at her, shouting that she had had friends of the opposite gender when she was in high school, so why couldn’t you? it wasn’t fair. but she had just sighed and stared out the window, clearly ending the conversation. many years passed before she finally told you about her life before she came to church, recalling all the times she had been hurt by men she had loved and trusted. you understood then why she had wanted to keep you sheltered and safe, but you still didn’t agree. but then again, if you had been allowed to do what you wanted then maybe things would never have ended up the way they did. perhaps you have her to thank.

back then, all you could do was hold on to the little time you had with him until eventually you stopped seeing him altogether.

more summers passed and you started spending all of your time memorizing bible verses with your fellow “women of christ”, missing the way you used to spend your time with your best friend.

but then you went off to bible college like had always been planned for you, and everything changed. instead of continuing to follow the strict schedule that was laid out for you, you finally got a little taste of freedom, and you realized what you’d been missing all this time. everything that you’d been taught was sinful, evil, wicked, was what brought you more pleasure than you’d ever known was possible.

you still had to pretend to be a good girl for the people around you, who, for reasons you couldn’t comprehend, were still dedicated to their life of purity. or at least they acted like it. maybe everyone was secretly just like you, hiding their sins behind a friendly smile and a firm handshake every sunday morning.

you weren’t hurting anyone with the things you did in private, and the feeling of rebellion was a kind of satisfaction you didn’t know you were allowed to feel. you were an adult, making your own choices now and facing whatever consequences that came with them.

there was only one consequence. for some reason, all the impure thoughts you had always centered around joshua. no matter what dirty books you read or videos you watched, the man you always pictured giving it to you was joshua.

you hated that after all these years, everything still came back to him. you fought it, tried imagining actors or celebrities in his place instead; characters from your books and movies and shows, anyone but him. you wanted to save whatever memories you had left of him, think of him in a good light like you used to when you were younger, but the way he plagued your mind was worse than the ones in the book of exodus.

but now, in your final year of college, you thought you had finally gotten yourself under control.

that is, until you were leaving one of your bible lectures and all the control you’d convinced yourself that you had crumbled away in mere seconds when you saw a startlingly familiar face standing by the door. a face you hadn’t seen in far too long.

“joshua?”

“hey,” he says with a smile, like no time has passed at all. like it’s been hours since you’ve seen each other, not years.

there are so many things you want to say, so many things you want to ask him, but you’re frozen in place. why is he here? where has he been? how did he find you again?

“it’s been a while,” he says with an awkward laugh when you don’t say anything.

you nod, still in a daze. “yeah. quite a while.”

he smiles. “well, anyway, i’ve got a meeting to go to in a bit, but… i just wanted to see you.”

“oh,” you say. what else is there to say? what can you say to make up for the years lost that you’ll never get back?

he looks at his watch, the conversation clearly coming to an end.

“can i give you my phone number?” he says. a deep shade of pink creeps into his cheeks but he either doesn’t notice or purposely doesn’t acknowledge it. “maybe we can talk sometime, catch up.”

“i– yeah,” you manage. god, it’s so good seeing him again. “yeah, that would be really nice.”

you’ve given up on homework for the night, spending your entire afternoon in a daze since you ran into joshua.

so many years, yet you still can’t get his smile out of your head.

you close your eyes, hand dipping below the waistband of your pajama pants automatically. it’s frightening how easily you’re able to bring up a picture of him in your mind, so much clearer than before now that you’ve seen what he looks like all grown up.

and grown up, he has. you had been too stunned to get a good look at him while he was in front of you, but the way he’d changed was immediately apparent and the image in your brain now feels almost unreal.

his hair was a little longer and a little darker, and he was much taller, with broad shoulders that looked way too perfect in a suit jacket. but his face hadn’t changed a bit. maybe his jaw was a little bit sharper and his smile lines were a little bit deeper, but his eyes were the same ones you had always known.

your hand slips lower and lower until you’re gently running the tips of your fingers over the panel of your underwear covering your pussy, moaning quietly when you feel how wet you are already.

no wonder it’s been so hard for you to focus all day. you’ve been too busy pushing away thoughts of joshua burying his fingers in your tight, wet cunt, cooing about how good you’re being for him and how long he’s waited for you.

automatically you feel your other hand grabbing for your phone, desperate to hear his voice again. you hadn’t said more than a few sentences to him earlier, but you feel like you’ll go crazy if you don’t hear him while you’re in this state. so needy for him and only him, and he doesn’t even know it.

your fingers shake as you press the buttons, knowing you’re about to get yourself into a whole world of trouble but not being able to stop yourself.

“hey.” he answers on the second ring. his tone is deep and husky, and your breath catches in your throat for a second, not used to hearing him talk like that; the last time you heard his voice was long before puberty, and you’re still navigating how to talk to this older, sexier joshua.

your first thought is to wonder if his morning voice sounds equally as sexy, but you’re immediately pushing it out of your head when you hear what sounds like him stifling a yawn.

“sorry, did i wake you? it– it’s not important,” you start, ashamed of how needy you are that you’d call him in the middle of the damn night, unprovoked, like some kind of bible group booty call.

the regret is already starting to set in. he probably hasn’t changed as much as you've built him up in your mind, probably still the obedient gentleman he was before. he’s probably already well on his way to being the head of a church, so of course he wouldn’t be thinking about you like that—

“no. it’s fine,” he says, interrupting your thoughts. “always have time for you, sweetheart. what’s up?”

you shove down the butterflies that flutter up in your stomach at the name he calls you, a nickname he always called you when you were kids because he was taught it was always polite to talk sweet to a lady.

except it feels so much different now. talking sweet to a lady as kids was easy, innocent. but one wrong word now would completely change the meaning behind those pretty words of his, and you aren’t sure how to feel about it.

“i… just– it’s been so long, joshie,” you whisper, surprised at the sudden feeling of tears springing up behind your eyes. you didn’t mean for this to happen— you didn’t mean for any of it to happen. not back then, and certainly not now.

he lets the line go quiet, finally sighing into the phone after a long pause. “i missed you… so much.” he murmurs your name, and the way the rumble in his voice goes straight through you immediately reminds you why you called him in the first place.

your free hand toys with the hem of your underwear again, fighting to keep down the whimper that threatens to escape you. “missed you too,” you breathe out. god, you can’t believe you’re doing this. but for the first time in years, the man you’ve been picturing in your head is right here with you, fulfilling some of your fantasies that you never thought could ever come true.

somewhere deep in your stomach you feel guilty about it, getting off to the thought of him and he doesn’t even know it. would he want to know? would he be okay with it? would he hate you forever if he knew?

he clears his throat, snapping you back to attention and you realize you must’ve been silent for a while, thinking.

“um, so, what are you doing?” you ask, trying to seem casual, but it comes out as anything but. nobody calls anyone this late at night and asks what they’re doing without having a dirty reason for doing so.

all you can do is hope he’s either too innocent to pick up on it, or that he doesn’t believe you’re the type of person who would call for something like that. you wonder if he still thinks of you as that perfect little obedient church girl he grew up with.

“nothing, just–working on… stuff,” he replies awkwardly. clearly he doesn’t want to go into detail about what he’s doing, and you’re already afraid you’ve interrupted his sleep; you’re mentally kicking yourself for all the blunders you’ve made, and you haven’t even been on the phone for five minutes.

“what are you doing?” he asks back, and you freeze, trying to come up with some excuse, anything. fuck, think of something!

“h-homework,” you sputter out, attempting to hide your unconfident answer with a cough.

apparently it works, because he hums in response, the line falling quiet. you hear the rustling of papers on his end, and you press your fingers harder against your cunt, heartbeat racing in your ears.

your fingers brush against your clit a little rougher than you intend, and a little whine escapes your lips, catching you off guard. you slap a hand over your mouth, hoping it had been too quiet for him to hear and he hadn’t been paying attention.

“are you…?” he asks suddenly, and your cheeks flush, caught red-handed in your sinful act.

you clear your throat, praying (both metaphorically and literally) that he doesn’t notice anything off about you. “am i what?”

his silence on the other end of the phone speaks volumes.

“joshua, oh my god, no, i–”

“what did you just say?”

you freeze. “what… did i say?”

when he speaks again, his tone is even. “don’t you know it’s a sin to take the lord’s name in vain, sweetheart?”

that nickname again, and now you know he’s doing it on purpose. innocent, pretty words, completely changed in a split second.

you let out a short laugh, scrambling to find a cover. “must’ve forgot then.”

he hums. “i remember you spent a whole month trying to memorize the ten commandments. we must’ve been what, eight or nine? you wouldn’t have forgotten. i may not have seen you since we were kids, but i’ve still known you most of my life.”

“it was an accident, you know how it is. just slips out. of course i remember them all.”

he tsks, and it feels like your heart stops. “did you forget that lying is a sin, too? you’re two for two now, wanna try for a third?”

damn him! damn his good memory and damn his stupid witty comebacks and damn the way he so quickly manages to unravel you.

you scowl and don’t respond to his question, your silence enough of an answer for joshua to know he’s right.

“why did you call me tonight?” he asks calmly.

you answer truthfully this time. “just wanted to hear your voice again. i really did miss you.”

the phone goes quiet again, and for a second you’re afraid he’s hung up, but then you hear him exhale. “it’s late. what are you doing?”

“i’m in bed, josh. don’t worry, father, i’m not staying up past my bedtime.”

he chooses to ignore your remark. “in bed doing what?”

you give him a half-suppressed laugh. “in bed laying down. what else would i be doing?”

“well, with the way you were trying to hide your moans earlier, i would’ve figured you were doing something more exciting. but if you’re just laying down, then i don't want to keep you long, might as well hang up…”

“no!” you squeak out, cutting him off. you swallow, trying to collect yourself as you repeat the word. “no. fine, whatever, you caught me. but– please, stay.” you can hear the plea in your voice and you know you should be embarrassed at how pathetic you sound, but you aren't. the only thing you can think about is joshua, joshua, joshua, and how good it feels to talk to him again.

“i’m here,” he says softly, and you let your eyes close with a sigh, relieved he’s not going to chastise you. but as much as you’ve both changed as you grew up, deep down you knew he wouldn’t. you figure you could do just about anything and he wouldn’t try to tell you what to do. he’d always been like that, and it’s what you’d loved about him; he never tried to control you or shame you for not acting like the perfect little angel everybody wanted you to be.

you couldn’t say the same about others in the church. maybe that’s why you’d started to drift away from them and why joshua’s friendship coming to an end had left you so devastated. he had been the one and only person you could always count on, and they had not.

“are you still there?” he asks gently, and you realize you’ve been quiet for too long thinking.

“yeah,” you say finally.

“are you still touching yourself?”

you pause, stifling a gasp, taken aback by his forwardness. hearing him say it out loud made everything seem so real, the realization setting in about what you’re actually doing. “n– no.”

and it’s true. your hand has long since dropped away from your pajama pants, too nervous about being discovered to continue.

“well, why not?” he says. “don’t stop on my account.”

your mouth falls open. “i–”

“clearly you wanted something from me when you called. what is it, sweetheart? i can’t help you if i don’t know what it is you want.”

your brain practically short circuits at that, and it takes a very long minute for you to collect your thoughts into a coherent sentence. you want a lot of things, but you don’t know what’s okay to say or not or if he even wants to keep going. which is a silly thought, because he wouldn’t have asked if he didn’t want to know. it dawns on you that maybe… maybe he’s curious, maybe he’s thinking about you, too.

“what kind of help?” you ask, still testing the waters. you think you have an idea of what he means, but you ask anyway. you’ve never done anything like this with anyone else, only by yourself; not because you didn’t want to, but because you didn’t want it to be with someone who wasn’t joshua.

“you said you wanted to hear my voice,” he says, and you swear his tone has dropped an octave. “then let me talk to you.”

you whine a little, still holding back but not putting in as much effort to hide it. “m’kay.”

“would it make you feel better if i told you i’m hard right now?”

you suck in a breath. “yeah?”

“yeah,” he says. “just thinking about you.”

you feel a rush of emotion at his admittance. pride? satisfaction? whatever it is, it makes your cunt throb, knowing that just the thought of you can get him going.

finally you dare to slide your hand down your pants again, unsurprised when you find your underwear sticking to you with how wet you are. you’re soaking, and you haven’t even done anything yet.

“hold on,” you manage, putting the call on speaker as you set your phone on the table beside your bed, scrambling to shove your pants and ruined panties off and onto the floor.

once free, you pick up your phone and turn off the speaker, holding it to your ear with shaky hands.

“all ready now?” he asks softly, and it reminds you of what he used to say before you’d play pretend games together. always making sure you were ready. he was hot back then, too, and you mentally curse yourself for never realizing it sooner.

you hum. “mhm. comfortable.”

“good,” he says, and you can almost hear him smiling. “go ahead and do whatever you’d like. but i want you to tell me what you’re thinking about right now.”

you squirm a little on the bed as you start to circle your clit with your fingers. “thinking about you, joshua,” you sigh, finally beginning to feel relief.

“yeah?”

“yeah. you look even better than i thought you would,” you groan, picking up your pace a little as you slip your index finger inside your walls.

he chuckles. “oh, really?”

“mhm. god, i never thought i’d be doing this. especially not with you.”

“and why is that, baby?”

the name makes you shiver. you’d imagined him calling you it many times, but hearing him actually say it is completely different.

“because—” you whimper, losing your train of thought when your brain suddenly pictures his fingers inside you instead of your own. “i’m so close already, please—”

his tone is gentle but firm. “i want you to stop now.”

“but– ah, feels so good, shua,” you say, moans spilling out of you, finally letting him hear everything you’ve been holding back.

you hear him curse in that low voice through the phone, and your hand stills for a split second in shock, your eyes widening. as far as you knew, he never swore. but then again, there were a lot of things he never did that you're discovering about him now. looks like you weren’t the only one who changed over the years.

“that’s not my name.”

you sit up a little in confusion, pushing your phone closer to your ear to make sure you’re hearing him right. “huh?”

“my name is joshua. if you’re gonna moan like a sinner about how good it feels when i tell you how to touch yourself, you better use my name properly.” he sounds almost angry, but it only spurs you on even further.

you let his words sink for a second before responding. “yes, sir.”

“fuck,” he moans, he actually moans, and if you weren’t already so far gone you would’ve stopped to listen closer, to ingrain the noise in your brain so you never again forget how he sounds. “what did i just tell you?”

“what, you don’t like being called ‘sir’? thought you wanted to be a pastor, joshua,” you say with a smirk, and you know he hears the mischief in your voice, daring him to give you what you want.

it’s probably a good thing he’s not physically in the room with you, because there's no way you would have been able to muster up the courage to say something like that to his face. you wouldn’t have dared to even look him in the eyes, but being on the phone gives you a head rush. because with only his voice and not seeing his face, you can convince yourself that he still isn’t real, that this whole phone call and even your meeting earlier had just been an elaborate figment of your horny imagination, your denial being the only thing saving your last shred of dignity.

“didn’t realize you’d grow up to be even more of a brat than you were before,” he scoffs, and your cunt pulses.

“what are you doing right now?” you say, a little desperately. the change of subject isn’t very subtle but you don’t care. you won’t lie, you’ve been curious since the start of what he’s doing but he’s been so focused on you he hasn’t said anything about himself. you want to know everything about him— how he’s moving his hands, where he puts pressure, what he thinks about to get himself closer and closer.

he grunts unceremoniously. “i’m fucking my hand and pretending it’s you.”

“me too,” you whimper, closing your eyes as you focus on the movement of your fingers.

after a while he stops responding, and you can hear his heavy breaths over the line matching with your own gasps for air as you curl your fingers inside of you. you figure he must be getting close, but you ask him anyway, because you want to hear him say it.

“yeah– fuck, so close,” he chokes out, and the way his voice gets higher as he lets out a whimper is what finally makes you come undone.

with a moan of his name—his full name—you cum, clenching around your fingers as you struggle to keep your hand moving. your wrist is starting to cramp up a little from the position you’ve been in, but the pleasure coursing through you is more than worth it. it’s almost dizzying, more powerful than any orgasm you’ve had before and when you finally remove your fingers from your aching cunt your head is spinning and your heart is pounding.

you can hear a muffled string of curses through the phone and you know he’s right behind you. thoughts of him sitting on his bed run rampant in your head, imagining his stomach covered in milky cum and his pretty, pretty lips parted as he catches his breath.

the silence is heavy as you feel yourself come back down from your high. you struggle to find something to say after… whatever that just was, so you say the only thing that’s on your mind.

“i really did miss you, joshua,” you say quietly. unlike before, there’s not a hint of teasing in the way you say his name now.

and he sighs contentedly, finally hearing his name on your lips like he always wanted to. “i know. i missed you too.”

you both say your goodbyes and good nights quickly, still basking in enough of the remnants of your orgasms to not be too awkward about it. but after you’re settled in bed (for real, this time) and about to fall asleep, you can’t help but wonder if things between you and joshua will ever be anything but awkward.

a memory surfaces: you and joshua running around at the park behind the church after a sunday evening service, no older than kindergarteners, laughing and playing until you collapse on the grass. your mom called for you both to get ready to go home, and no you’re not allowed to have a sleepover because it’s a school night but maybe this weekend if his mom is okay with it. before you ran off, he thrust his pinky out towards you and you shook on it, making a pact to always be best friends, even when you can’t have sleepovers. it didn’t ever occur to either of you that there might come a day where you wouldn’t be best friends.

you don’t remember what prompted him to make the pinky promise, but you know he’s never broken it. and you can only hope that he hasn’t forgotten it.

it’s a few days later at one of your bible study groups when you see him next, and yet again you’re caught off-guard like a deer in headlights.

you’re sitting with a group of other ladies, annotating material for a test you couldn’t care less about when you hear your name called out– a familiar deep voice you can only pray doesn’t belong to who you think it belongs to.

oh, but it does belong to him, alright. it feels like you’ve gotten the wind knocked out of you when you turn around and see joshua standing behind you, a warm smile on his face that makes you doubt anything ever happened. maybe it really was all just a delirious dream, too many years of yearning built up into one intense wet dream.

he puts a hand on your shoulder lightly, turning you away from the rest of the ladies. “hey, can we talk somewhere?”

and oh shit it was definitely not a dream.

your cheeks burn as you excuse yourself from the table, packing up your bible and pens and shoving everything in your bag as quickly as you can. you can almost hear the snickering already, the gossips whispering to each other that you must have done something unspeakable if the top-student, pastor’s son, joshua hong has to speak with you privately. ah, if only they knew.

you only wish you could go back there and wipe the smirks off of all their faces and tell them about what the perfect little gentlemen they all pretend they don’t have crushes on was doing on the phone with you last night. you wouldn’t do that, not in a million years, but just the thought of it is satisfaction enough.

joshua leads you down the hall to a room that looks like an empty office. he opens the door for you, then closes it softly behind you.

“whose is this?” you ask, glancing around the room.

“it’s… mine,” he says almost shyly, gesturing idly to a little engraved nameplate on the desk. joshua hong, pastor’s assistant. because of fucking course he would be.

“oh.”

he clears his throat, and in that moment you realize he’s just as nervous as you are. “listen…” he starts, taking a pause. “about the other night–”

“are you gonna kick me out?” you interrupt.

his brows knit together in confusion. “what?”

“are you gonna expel me?”

“no?” he says, still looking at you, baffled. “why would i do that? i don’t even think i have the power to, even if i wanted. which, for the record, i don’t.”

you don’t reply, focusing your gaze on the carpet instead.

he frowns. “is that really how you think of me? that i just go around tattling to my dad? from that… conversation, i thought it was clear i’m not like that anymore.”

the tips of your ears are burning at the memory of all the things you said to each other over the phone. but it never occurred to you that maybe he was just as sinful as you had been.

you stay quiet, the silence stretching on as shame and embarrassment and a hundred other emotions swirl in your mind and you struggle to figure out what to say.

luckily for you he fills the silence himself. he exhales, looking down at a stack of papers on the desk. “god, you… you don’t know how much i missed you. i thought about you all the time.”

“so did i,” you manage to whisper. “in more ways than you know.”

he gives you a teasing smile. “oh, i have a feeling i do know.”

you hold back a cough and look away, focusing your attention on a painting of flowers on the wall. “i don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“if that’s how you wanna play this, fine.”

your curiosity piques, and you look back at him. he motions to the seat in front of the desk, wordlessly asking you to sit. hesitantly you do, and he starts to sit down at the swivel chair behind the desk, but you clear your throat and he glances up.

“can– can you not sit over there?” you ask softly. “feels like i’m being scolded.”

his expression softens a little, and he rolls the chair back into place, opting to sit next to you instead. “of course.”

except maybe you shouldn’t have asked him to do that, because now he’s sitting toe to toe with you and the closeness is overwhelming. at least on the other side of the desk there was enough distance for you to shrink and hide behind, but here, sitting like this, he can see all of you. and you don’t particularly want to be seen right now.

the tension is palpable as he takes his seat, still watching you. you take the moment to study his features: the slope of his nose and the gentle curve of his lips, the way the light catches on his long eyelashes and the way his broad shoulders look in that perfectly tailored sunday morning service suit.

“i always liked you,” he starts, and your gaze shoots up to his eyes. you open your mouth to ask something, but he shakes his head and you immediately fall silent, letting him finish. “i was almost glad when they made us go to different sunday school classes, because i wouldn’t have to sit there and pretend i didn’t have the craziest crush on you.”

“joshua, i–” you trail off, not even knowing what to say.

he pauses, as if debating his next words. “and i know it’s wrong, but i couldn’t get you out of my head when i… y’know.” his cheeks are flushed but he doesn’t look away from you, eyes searching your own for any hesitance or any sign that you don’t want this.

it’s then that you realize that the boldness you had felt hiding behind your phone, he had felt it too. saying words alone in your room at night was easy. sitting in public, in the daylight, and saying those same words to his face was so much scarier. and knowing that you’re both feeling awkward and shy and a little uncertain of how to talk about it gives you the confidence to keep going.

“when you would what?” you pry. you already know the answer but you want to hear it come out of his mouth anyway. you’ve already heard him say it, but something about sitting in his office, in a church, speaking such filth ignites a spark in you that’s completely different from the spark you felt a few nights ago.

he clears his throat and looks you in the eye, maybe gaining a little bit of that confidence, too. “when i would jerk off i would always wish it was your sweet little mouth instead of my own hand.”

you inhale sharply, and that’s when he finally breaks eye contact, his guilt-ridden gaze shifting to the wall behind you as his cheeks burn redder. “i didn’t feel good about it. felt like i was doing it without your permission, and i didn’t want that. i–”

“yes,” you say hurriedly.

he stops short at your interruption, instantly looking back at you. “yes…?”

“yes, you have my permission. whatever you want, joshua, always.”

his eyes narrow, almost imperceptibly, but you recognize it. even after all these years, after so much has changed, you still know his tells. you wonder if he still knows yours.

he murmurs your name in response, almost like a warning. “don’t say stuff like that,” he says, letting out a shaky breath.

“why not?” you ask, feigning innocence. but you know exactly what you’re doing, and you know exactly how you affect him: the same way he affects you.

he looks up at you. “you really are just as much of a brat as you were back then, aren’t you?” he says with just a hint of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“why don’t you find out?”

he groans, leaning back in his chair. “do you know how long i’ve wanted to kiss you?” he says finally.

“probably just as long as i’ve wanted to kiss you,” you counter, and he raises an eyebrow.

you both stand up at the same moment, closing the distance in less than a second.

you stare at his chest in front of you to avoid his eyes, until he brings up a hand and gently tilts your chin, forcing you to look at him.

“are– you gonna get in trouble?” you breathe, heartbeat pounding in your ears as you stare at his perfect, perfect lips.

he hums, and it sends a shiver down your spine at the close proximity. “are you still giving me permission?” he asks, and you quickly shake your head yes.

“always.”

he smooths his thumb across your cheek. “then i won’t be in any trouble at all."

and then his hand moves to hold the back of your neck and he's tilting his head and bringing his lips towards yours and then finally, after years of dreaming about it and even more years of denying it, you're finally kissing joshua and there's so many things happening at once that you can't seem to focus on anything because your mind is so full of everything and nothing and joshua and it all just feels so right.

you’re melting in his arms and falling into his touch and enjoying every fucking second of it. your heart speeds up when his hands slide behind your back, wrapping around your body to pull you closer to him, pressed chest to chest.

he pulls away to kiss you again, and again, and again, and you decide you’d be content to be like this forever, standing in his office in the church building making out like you’re the only two people on earth.

but finally his lips leave yours, and he takes a tiny step backwards, heaving out a shaky breath as he looks you in the eyes. “what are we gonna do now?”

your heart plummets, doubts racing through your mind. did he not like it? does he not like you? did you really just ruin everything? why did he stop? why did he ask that—

but all your questions are answered in an instant when he coughs and you look down, finally noticing the prominent bulge in his dress pants. oh. that.

when you look back up at him his cheeks are flushed bright red, and he immediately begins to apologize.

“shua,” you call out to him, repeating his name the way you know he likes. “joshua. don’t worry about it. it’s fine.”

in fact, you find it incredibly flattering, that just a few kisses and gentle touches could get him this worked up. maybe it really has been you all along.

with a surge of confidence, you step back towards him, wrapping your arms around him and leaning to kiss him. “are you busy today?” you murmur, your cheek brushing against his.

he shudders, hands automatically finding your waist and pushing your hips against his own. “no. are you?”

you sigh, kissing the corner of his mouth. “not anymore.”

“fuck,” he curses, his grip on your body tightening “you really want to…?” he asks, almost shyly, as if he’s in denial this is really happening.

“absolutely,” you say, and you’ve never meant anything more in your life.

in a second he’s got you shoved against his desk, sending papers flying to the floor as he lifts you by your ass to sit you down on top of it. your kisses turn rougher and needier, your hands grabbing at anything you can reach to ground yourself: his hair, his shoulders, his back.

finally he breaks free, dropping to his knees in front of the desk. “please, let me eat you out.”

you moan out loud, probably too loudly for the thin walls of the office. but the visual of him on his knees to do anything other than pray drives you mad, and you need more of him, desperately. “joshua, please.”

he pushes your skirt up your thighs, moving it out of his way so he can stare eye to eye with your pussy. you whimper and instinctively try to hide your face in embarrassment, but something tells you he wouldn’t like that, so you resist, keeping your hands firmly planted on the edge of the desk.

“fuck, you’re soaking,” he says, his voice broken. “you’re so perfect.”

his hands reach up to tug at the hem of your underwear, and he looks up at you, silently asking for permission to continue. you nod eagerly, lifting your hips off the desk so he can slide them off of you, revealing your glistening entrance.

he whines at the sight, pretty lips parted in shock? awe? as if he can’t wait to taste you. he pushes his face into your pussy, gently at first, but when you moan and bring your hand up to his hair he dives deeper.

the moment he attaches his mouth to your clit, you jump, gasping as you try to shut your legs around his head but his large hands keep you held open. his tongue explores every inch of you, moving back and forth, up and down, mapping out your cunt with his mouth.

“fuck, never dreamed you’d taste so good,” he sighs against your pussy, leaning away to take a breath after what feels like forever.

your legs are shaking and your cunt is throbbing as you also try to catch your breath. you’re not used to being touched like this and you’re definitely not used to being touched by joshua. so many thoughts running through your head and not a single one of them coherent enough to put into words. all you can do is weakly whine out joshua’s name and tug on his hair, pleading for him to keep going. you need release, and you don’t want it from anyone but him.

he stands up, his pants wrinkled from kneeling on the floor but still tented with a bulge so uncomfortably large you feel dizzy just thinking about it. you don’t even know if he’s going to fuck you or even if he wants to, but god you want to see his cock so bad. too many restless nights spent thinking about it, and now you might finally have the chance to see it in front of your face.

your mouth waters at the thought, and you start to slide off the desk, but joshua stops you. “what are you…?”

you look up at him, eyes blown wide with lust and you don’t even attempt to hide your eagerness. “please let me suck your dick. joshua, please.”

he whines, running a hand through his hair. “god, i want that so bad, but… i don’t think i can last if you do, and i was really hoping to fuck you.”

you close your eyes and roll your head back, moaning at his vulgar confession. but he sighs, and he sounds almost defeated, and you look back at him quickly, afraid he’s suddenly changed his mind.

“i’m not—prepared,” he admits, and you tilt your head in confusion before it sinks in what he means.

“ah. don’t suppose you would have any condoms lying around, would you, mr. pastor’s assistant?” you ask playfully, and he shoots you a glare.

“brat,” he mutters under his breath, but you hear it, and your walls clench in response. “no, i don’t have any. not interested in anybody else, so… no reason to.” he looks like he has more to say, more serious things to say, but he keeps his mouth shut, his eyes searching your face nervously.

your stomach flips at his words, feeling your cheeks heating up. you hadn’t thought you would ever get this far, and especially not with him. because of the kind of school you were at, it wasn’t like the people here were doing the kind of things you’ve been doing—at least not publicly. even if you’d wanted to hook up with somebody (which you didn’t), everyone in your vicinity would shame you for even bringing it up. you may have experience with yourself, but anything with anyone else is completely new territory for you.

you fall silent, not sure how to continue the conversation as all your newfound confidence begins to crumble. what were you thinking? caught up in the heat of the moment, saying things you weren’t sure you meant. you were in love with him: that much you were sure of. but everything that comes after that is too new, too scary, at least for right now. you can barely even comprehend that he just went down on you, but you know you enjoyed it and honestly, you’d give anything for him to do it again. but there’s too much going on inside your head for you to even begin to process that right now.

he calls your name and you blink, looking back at him anxiously. “we… don’t have to. right now, or even at all,” he says gently. the tips of his ears are burning red but his voice is calm and steady.

“joshua, i want to,” you start, clasping your hands tightly together in your lap to give you something to focus on other than the way he’s watching you so intently. “but i– don’t know how.”

“neither do i, baby,” he says. the nickname makes you shiver; even though it’s not the first time he’s called you that, especially after the other night, you’re still not used to it. but somehow it’s comforting, and it makes you relax knowing that he’s still the same person you grew up with, the same person that knows almost everything about you. you’ve both changed so much, but deep down you haven’t changed at all.

he pauses when you don’t say anything back. “we’ll wait, then,” he says and wraps his arms around you, lightly at first but then squeezing when you don’t try to pull away. “we have all the time in the world. no need to rush.”

“we… do?” your voice is laced with uncertainty.

he smiles. “of course. i let you go once already, i’m not letting it happen again. never again.”

you turn your head away from him and hide your face, flustered by how sincere he sounds. he hums, and you can hear the pout in his tone so you fight your embarrassment and turn back towards him to ask the question that’s been weighing on your mind since you first saw him days ago. “this is gonna sound so stupid, but… shua, what are we?”

first you were childhood friends, you were best friends, and then you were nothing. right place, wrong time? and then you were… doing something on the phone together, whatever you could call that. and now you were just sitting on top of his desk, sweating from having almost had sex. how do you even begin to put a label on this?

“well, i’d like to be yours,” he says shyly, and just like that all your questions are answered with six small words. you realize it doesn’t matter what label you have; as long as you have him, that’s all that matters.

“yes,” you breathe, lifting your eyes to finally meet his and you see all the love in his eyes threatening to spill over.

he reaches up to brush a piece of your hair out of your face. “i’m just glad i finally have you back,” he says with a soft smile as he watches you. “we’ll go slow, we’ll wait— whatever you want. whatever it takes not to lose you again.”

you bury your face in his chest with a whine. you’re hiding again, but even the uncomfortable scratchiness of his dress shirt can’t pull you away from him.

“besides, i don’t want our first time together to be in my stupid little office,” he chuckles and holds you tighter against him, pressing a kiss to the top of your head that makes your heart flutter. “you deserve better than that.”

you stay there for a long moment, hugging him like it's the last time you'll ever see him. but this time you know it won't be the last. it's the first, the first of hopefully many, many more.

when you feel like you've been standing there too long, you clear your throat and lean your head back to look at him. "so, um… now what?"

he pauses, those pretty lips turned up in a smile. "do you have plans for lunch?"

"no, i just had that study group you pulled me from. i'm free for the rest of the day."

his smile widens. "perfect. you still like grilled cheese, or did you grow out of that, too?"

you laugh, putting your chin on his shoulder as you hug him. "i haven't changed that much, shua."

after taking a while to collect yourselves (waiting for his erection to go back down so you can leave together without looking suspicious), you walk out of joshua’s office the happiest you've felt in years.

he'd wanted to hold your hand, too, but you were still anxious about anyone seeing you together that you'd refused him until you made it to his car. you were probably just being paranoid and no one would care about two responsible adults talking to each other, but all the time you'd spent hiding from your peers had put you on edge.

so, it wasn't until you were safely out of the church parking lot and in the driveway of his apartment complex that you let him touch you, kissing you over the cupholders with his hands gently holding your neck.

it took everything in you not to climb over the center console and sit on his lap in the driver's seat and kiss him as hard and as deeply as you really wanted, but you knew once you started you wouldn't be able to stop. and besides, he still didn't have any condoms. it didn't bother you either way, since you'd been taking birth control since high school to help with your periods, but if it was what he wanted you'd be more than fine with it.

you don't know what you'd been expecting the inside his apartment to look like; probably some tacky cross-stitch bible verses or a wooden cross hanging on the wall, but his apartment just looked like… a normal apartment. a very clean apartment, actually, though you weren't surprised. he'd always been a neat, organized kid, and it looked like that was one thing he hadn't grow out of.

you watch as he puts his keys on a hook by the door, following him into the kitchen and sitting at one of the chairs.

he grins at you as he opens his refrigerator, pulling out the ingredients for your lunch before taking out a pan.

"shua…" you interrupt him, standing up and walking towards him slowly. "you're not— really thinking about grilled cheese sandwiches right now, are you?"

he hums, eyes following your every movement as the pan sits cold and abandoned on the stove. "there are… other things on my mind, yeah."

"so why are you still trying to make grilled cheese sandwiches?"

by now you're close enough to stand toe to toe with him, and you're sure he can feel the heat radiating off your body when he wraps his hands around your waist, backing you against the kitchen counter. "because i wanna make you lunch. maybe i just wanna spoil my girl a little bit."

a shiver runs down your spine at the new name he calls you. never in a million years did you think this is where you'd end up.

"i think you have all the time in the world to spoil me later, joshua," you mumble, leaning in closer and closer until your lips touch.

in a flash he's hoisting you up and sitting you on the counter. his mouth never leaves yours as you slide your legs around his hips to drag him closer, kisses growing deeper and more desperate now that you can finally be alone together.

his hands slide down your body, tugging at the hem of your shirt and only breaking apart for a second to slide it over your head before his lips are crashing against yours again.

your hands find his hips, experimentally tugging on his belt to see his reaction. immediately he pulls away from you,

cheeks flushed and breathing heavily. "sweetheart, i still don't have any condoms. if you really want to now, then we gotta run to the store first."

“i’m on the pill,” you burst out, hoping he gets the message. maybe he has some other reason for wanting to, but you're too impatient to wait for who knows how long it'll take to go to the store, and you don't think you'll be able to keep your hands off him for that long. you don't think you'll be able to keep your hands off of him for even a few seconds.

his face goes blank as he processes your words, struggling to understand if you’re saying what he thinks you’re saying. “you’d let me…?”

you grab onto his arms, a desperate attempt to pull him closer, to feel more of him. “raw, yes, joshua. just—please, i need you,” you beg him, cunt throbbing with neglect as you wait for him to answer.

he buries his face in your shoulder with a groan, gripping his hands underneath your thighs and sliding you off the counter.

with a shriek you wrap your legs around his waist and your arms around his neck, holding on tightly as he starts to walk out of the kitchen carrying you. "joshua! what the hell are you doing?"

his face is still pressed against your shoulder, and you can feel his lips tickling your bare skin as he speaks. "i'll fuck you on my kitchen counter any day of the week, baby, but i want to have you for the first time in my bed, please?"

his voice is low and whiny, just as desperate for you as you are for him and it makes you moan with excitement.

he finds his way into his room, stumbling a little when he accidentally runs you into the wall instead of through the doorway, but you just giggle and kiss him harder until he finally drops you on his bed, immediately unbuttoning his shirt.

you run your hands along his chest as he leans over you, feeling the toned muscle that feels almost wrong to be seeing. his physical changes are much more obvious to you now that he's like this, and you know the image will fuel your fantasies for weeks.

your hands move to his belt again and this time he allows it, letting you unbuckle it and toss it away before slowly lowering the zipper. he's already hard again, and your heart races when you put a little bit of pressure on the seam and he lets out a guttural groan in response.

his arms flex as he reaches down to slide your skirt off, and you help him and kick the fabric away, leaving both of you in nothing but your underwear.

joshua pauses, letting his gaze wander your body as you look away shyly. he hums and you look back at him in confusion. "don't hide from me, sweetheart, please," he says, but it comes out more like a whine; not like he's asking, but like he's begging. it's honestly the hottest thing you've ever heard, and even with your nerves he makes it hard to resist.

"dreamt about this for fucking years. years," he moans as he leans over to kiss your chest, reaching behind your body to undo your bra and let it fall away. you whimper when he brings his hands up to cup your breasts, wrapping his mouth around one of your nipples as he starts to slowly grind against your clothed pussy. you can already feel yourself soaking through your panties, and you're sure he can feel it, too.

his hands are like nothing you've ever felt, and you roll your head back against his pillows, arching into him as he massages your breasts with his large hands. you'd noticed them before, but you hadn't realized just how big they were until they were on top of you and made your body seem almost tiny beneath his massive palms.

"shua…" you breathe, tentative hands reaching up to touch his shoulders.

he looks up at you, mouth covered in spit. "yes, angel?"

you whimper at the nickname. no angel you'd ever learned about in sunday school had acted like you are right now, begging a man to fuck you. and on top of that it was before marriage, too; surely if there was a god they would be extremely disappointed in you. but right now you didn't care if the entire universe was disappointed in you, as long as joshua hong wasn't.

it takes you a few more seconds to build up your courage, but finally you open your mouth and tell him, "joshua, please— fuck me."

he slides forward to kiss you again, before sitting back and repositioning himself between your legs. "anything you want, sweetheart."

he lines his cock up at your entrance, and just before you think he's about to push into you, he looks up at you instead.

"i love you, so much," he says, and you have to fight the urge to hide your face as you grin and giggle like a fucking schoolgirl; like the past version of you would have, if she'd had any sense and figured everything out sooner.

and, like always, he asks, "ready?", and you nod, and it's better than you could've ever imagined.

the whines that leave his mouth drive you close to the edge already as he begins to thrust into you, slowly, gently, just a little bit at a time but it still leaves you gasping from his size.

he keeps moving at a snail's pace until you reach up, fumbling to grab at his bicep as tears nearly spill out of your eyes and beg him, "joshua, more, please."

he leans over you, pressing his body flat against yours as he starts to rock his hips faster, and you cry out from so much pleasure and so much emotion hitting all at once.

"wanted you so fucking bad, for so long, and now you're finally here," he whispers, his thrusts never faltering despite how close in proximity he is to your face.

you whine as your hands claw at his back, digging in as you struggle to hold on and he curses again, pushing into you harder.

"you said i was better than you imagined," he groans, one hand coming up to caress your cheek. "but you're even better than i imagined. you're a fucking angel, so fucking beautiful."

you gasp his name, falling into your orgasm from his words alone as you clench impossibly tight around him. you always thought of him as the nice kid, the rule follower, but here he is, fucking you through the hardest orgasm of your life and saying such filthy things in between praises and compliments.

"jo-oshua, please!" is all you can manage, still struggling to recover before he crests into his own high with a whimper. his eyes scrunch up as he releases inside you, eyelashes fluttering and sweat dripping down his temples, and you think it's the most beautiful sight you've ever seen.

a constant stream of curses fall from his lips and you swallow them with yours, kissing him as if you're afraid he might disappear into thin air if you don't hold onto him tight enough.

his breaths are shallow when his mouth falls away from you, resting his forehead on your shoulder with a long exhale.

"god…" he starts, then stops and laughs, and you have to tug on his hair to make him face you again.

"what are you laughing at?" you say, cheeks growing hot when he looks at you with droopy, hooded eyes and a lopsided smile.

"nothing," he laughs. "just god. what a funny word."

"and why is that, baby?" you say as you try to hold back a smile, testing out the nickname.

he grins. "because it gave me you. or maybe it didn't. who knows?"

you finally laugh along with him, remembering what he'd said to you on the phone that feels like years ago. "don’t you know it’s a sin to take the lord’s name in vain, sweetheart?”

the church is humming with activity as you make your way to the front pew, carrying two donuts in your hand. people greet you as they mingle about the hall, talking and laughing. some wave excitedly when they see you, others simply smile and offer their hand for you to shake with a friendly “good morning and god bless!”

being a pastor’s wife isn’t something you ever imagined yourself doing, but then again, a lot of things in your life you never imagined doing. you never imagined seeing joshua again, and you never imagined marrying him, either. you certainly didn’t imagine taking over your father-in-law’s church when he retired and decided it was time for joshua to take his place as head of the church. you always knew he would someday, whether he wanted to or not, but you’d be happy to spend the rest of your life by his side no matter where he was or what job he had.

you’d been almost nervous when you decided it was finally time to tell your parents you had been seeing each other, but to your surprise they had been overjoyed at the news. both his family and yours were “just so glad when it happened to be you!”, saying things like “we’d always known it would happen, back since you were children!”, and “so when are we going to get some beautiful little grandchildren to take to sunday school!”

it had been five long and happy years since that very first phone call, and every minute you spend with joshua has been the best of your life.

you walk up the steps to the stage where your husband is waiting, flipping through his notes for the morning’s sermon. you hand him his donut with a grin, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. he smirks at you, imperceptible to everyone else but you can tell what it truly means.

everybody in the congregation always talks you’re the perfect example of a happy, god-loving couple. such nice looking people, so well put together. but behind closed doors, they’d be horrified by the things you say and do together. wolf in sheep’s clothing, as is your husband’s favorite parable to preach.

it’s not the life you imagined, but it’s perfect to you and him.

i hope you enjoyed this!! if you did, consider reblogging with tags or leaving a comment or an ask :) it shows me this is something people want to see more of, and knowing people like this makes me want to write more of it! thanks for reading!!

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#1k #kflixnet #k-labels #[📌] — june.writes #[💟] — joshua #[❤️] — smut #[💙] — angst #joshua smut #svt smut #seventeen smut #joshua hong smut #joshua imagines #joshua x reader #joshua hong #svt imagines #svt fanfic #seventeen fanfic #joshua fanfic

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quotesfrommyreading · 1 year

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The line most often quoted from Frank's diary are her famous words, “I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” These words are “inspiring,” by which we mean that they flatter us. They make us feel forgiven for those lapses of our civilization that allow for piles of murdered girls – and if those words came from a murdered girl, well, then, we must be absolved, because they must be true. The gift of grace and absolution from a murdered Jew (exactly the gift that lies at the heart of Christianity) is what millions of people are so eager to find in Frank's hiding place, in her writings, in her “legacy.” It is far more gratifying to believe that an innocent dead girl has offered us grace than to recognize the obvious: Frank wrote about people being “truly good at heart” before meeting people who weren't. Three weeks after writing those words, she met people who weren't.

— People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present (Dara Horn)

#book quotes #dara horn #people love dead jews: reports from a haunted present #history #antisemitism #holocaust #anne frank #concentration camps

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psychotrenny · 7 months

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It’s fucking insane to me how normal Yankee Liberals are about Hawaii. As in like the way they just treat it as an unremarkable fact that their nation controls the island. Like the annexation of Hawaii wasn’t just any old example of Settler-Colonialism, the subjugation of a decentralised non-urbanised people that could be just dismissed as mere “tribes” or what have you. Not to say that such forms of “typical” Settler Colonialism are any less abhorrent or disgusting, just easier to justify from a Liberal point of view. Easier to claim that they weren’t *really* using the land properly or that they were an hopelessly and eternally backwards who only really benefitted from their conquest or that they were doomed and dying anyway and their fate was a mere tragic inevitability not worth dwelling on or… Point is all these arguments are all wrong and stupid and cruel but they can serve well enough to downplay or justify such atrocities in the eyes of Imperial Core Liberals.

But like with Hawaii you don’t have that. The Kingdom of Hawai’i was a sovereign state that was internationally recognised as such by the Great Powers of Europe even at the very height of Western Imperialism. Literacy rates were high and compulsory education was introduced in 1841 (pre-dating the US by 77 years), healthcare was given to all Hawai’ian subjects free of charge, Christianity was dominant (so even the most ardent Imperialist couldn’t claim that the people were in the thrall of some “barbaric superstition” that necessitated the “civilising influence” of empire) and it had a well-developed Capitalist economy dominated by Sugar production. Like even if we take the Western model of statehood as the be all end all of what separates the civilised from the savage (to be clear hear you really fucking shouldn’t, but many people do so for a second that’s the frame of reference we’ll employ) then Hawai’i was very much unambiguously the former. But that didn’t stop the US from shamelessly interfering it’s politics Indeed those aformentioned markers of Western-Style “civilisation” and “development” came with the price of allow US missionaries and investors to settler in the islands and become very wealthy and influential. For decades the US used the threat of force to influence the policy decisions of the kingdom, going as far as to regularly send warships in a classic display of “gunboat diplomacy”. In 1887 a US settler militia called the First Honolulu Rifles staged a coup where they forced Kalākaua to accept a new Constitution that heavily favoured the interests of USamerican settlers who had grown very wealthy through their investment in sugar production on the island. It stripped the Monarchy of much of its power and introducing requirements for voting that heavily favoured US settlers; re-introducing wealth/property requirements that were now higher than even, allowing resident aliens to vote and just outright banning any Asian immigrants from voting (which at that point had as much to do with plain racial hatred as it did to any acting threat they might have posed). This wasn’t enough for the Yanks and 6 years later a group of 13 US settlers known as the “Committee of Safety” outright overthrew the newly crowned Queen Liliʻuokalani when she refused to co-operate. It existed briefly as an “Independent” USamerican dominated republic before the US government decided to official annex it in 1898 (similar to what you saw with Texas or California).

While incredibly controversial at the time due to both strategic concerns with the annexation of ultramarine territories and some level of outrage at the shameless take-over of a sovereign nation (hence the time gap between the coup and the actual annexation), nowadays Yanks enjoy their control over the island without the slightest care in the world. They even turned it into a tourist destination, a heavily romanticised one that not only receives many millions of visitors every year but is constantly mentioned in the popular culture the US then proceeds to export all over the world, literally revelling in their land that is by literally any definition (even the most nakedly pro-imperialist) stolen. The land itself is severely exploited to the point of significant ecological damage, the indigenous peoples too are exploited as many of them live in poverty while US investors grow wealthy from their land and labour. Even their very culture is stolen and monetised, the most marketable parts bastardised into cheap kitsch and the rest of it left to rot, only kept alive through over a century of continued resistance from the indigenous peoples. It’s a very common story of course, but I think it stands out with how utterly ghoulish it is even under the most Liberal of consistently applied worldviews. It would be like if in say 2007 someone set up Disneyland in Bagdad. And yet by the vast majority of the US (and by extension the vassals states whose view of the situation is filtered through the lens of US media and propaganda) it isn’t seen that way. Hawaii is just the 50th state, the only state outside North America and in the tropics (hahaha ain’t that a neat little fact. Geography is so fun J), an island paradise perfect to visit with the whole family and yet still as American as Apple Pie. Even many self-described “progressives” talk about it in this way, at most mentioning the plight of the indigenous Hawaiians with minimal though as to how this situation came about. Like while the story of Hawaii is far from unique; even in terms of the US doing colonialism to Westernised peoples you examples such as the ethnic cleansing of the Five Civilised Tribes from the Eastern USA, it still stands out to me with the sheer level of international recognition and Western-style development that the Kingdom of Hawai’i possessed. Like it’s just such an obvious example of the naked greed at the heart of the USamerican empire, and how utterly bullshit talk of a “civilising mission” and “spreading democracy” is. No matter what they may claim, no matter what excuses they may trot out, Imperialist rapacity has no limits.

#stella speaks

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taexual · 2 months

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sleepwalking ● 22 | jjk

pairing: jungkook x fem!reader

summary: due to unfortunate circumstances, you ended up managing your ex-boyfriend’s band. you thought you’ve both made peace with it, but suddenly he’s very eager to prove to you that first love never dies.

genre: rockstar!jungkook / exes to lovers

warnings: explicit language, suggestive themes, FLUFF, some angst, mentions of drugs (including descriptions of harmful use), very plot-heavy chapter, SLOW BURN

words: 18k

read from the beginning ○ masterlist

chapter 22 ► if you want an enemy, i’ll be the last one that you ever meet

Jungkook marvelled at how quickly he got used to the peace he felt with you in his hotel room. It was strong, too, this peace. Stable. It seemed to him, as you slept on the bed right by his side, that nothing could disturb the walls of his room.

Sid’s Instagram post had been nothing but a picture. Neither of you interacted with it, nor did you respond to him—although, like a true pest, he continued to message you both throughout the night.

The picture remained as it was: largely anonymous, because Sid, in his petulant haste to post it, had not tagged you. And, from the looks of it, he had not realised he hadn’t tagged you.

The people in the comments—Jungkook checked, after making sure you’d fallen asleep—tried to guess what was happening. Most of the comments, with usernames that made Jungkook chuckle, seemed to recognise him (well, a few people did, and others jumped on this bandwagon with a heedless excitement that brought another smile to his face—they were thrilled to find him in this seemingly random picture, and he was thrilled by their thrill), but no one could understand the context.

So happy for you, Sid’s caption read. But happy for what? Happy for whom?

You’ve both decided to raise this issue with the band before the concert tomorrow. There was very little you could have done this late at night anyway. All the staff had a day off, and you did not want to disturb them over a personal problem that had escalated into something bigger than you.

Jungkook was delighted by your choice to stay in his room. He interpreted your decision to wait until morning as a confirmation of your deeper desire to prolong your time together. He preferred to believe that this was the reason, rather than the circumstances, that allowed you to stay.

And since you were sleeping next to him right now, your chest rising and falling gently under the covers, it was all too easy to give in to this belief.

When Jungkook woke up a few hours later, the room was bathed in a golden glow. The sunlight filtered through a gap in the curtains that he must have overlooked last night.

You weren’t next to him.

Panic seized him almost instantly, and he realised that the peace he had felt last night with you beside him was not quite as stable as he had believed. Now you were awake, and you were not here.

He flipped on his back and pushed himself into a sitting position. He even searched under the bed in irrational desperation—as if you had decided to play hide-and-seek and give him a heart attack for breakfast. And then, as soon as he threw back the covers and scanned the room, he heard your voice—a lifeline, really, amid his suffocating thoughts.

You were still here, in the bathroom, either talking on the phone or to yourself. Honestly, that part did not really matter to him, as long as he knew you were here.

Outrageously relieved, he collapsed back onto the pillows and buried his face in his hands, a ridiculous smile spreading beneath his fingers as his heart continued to race in his chest.

He realised that he was a little out of his mind.

You were on the phone, as Jungkook would later learn, with the founder and CEO of Jett Records, Christian Jett—or simply CJ, as he insisted you call him, even though you’d only spoken to him once in your entire time at the company: right now. You figured one of the reasons he insisted on the abbreviation was that his full name could have worked incredibly well as a Christian rock band name.

If Jungkook had known who you were talking to, his panic might have resurged. Your hands were shaking, too, as you clutched your phone to your ear and took in CJ’s rapid news.

In just one breath, CJ shared his thoughts on Rated Riot’s reception in Europe and outlined his vision for the coming months. He also surprised you with some good news, and you tapped your fingers on the hotel sink, eager to tell the band.

Then, CJ, your new best friend by the sound of it, turned the subject over to you.

“Here’s what’s going to happen in the next few weeks,” he said, speaking so quickly that you barely had time to react. By the time your stomach clenched in anticipation, he had already informed you of his plans. “I’ve personally put together a team, just a couple of execs and someone from HR, to recruit support staff for you. We’re thinking two people should suffice for now.”

Your pause seemed incredibly long compared to his—which was virtually non-existent, and CJ opened his mouth to keep speaking.

“I was also thinking that—”

“I—sorry, uh,” you interjected, finally finding your words, “w-what support staff are you referring to, sir?”

“Assistant managers,” CJ replied with a chuckle. “I should’ve started with that, you’re right. You’ll have a team. Naturally, you’ll be promoted to Head of Management.”

You needed some time to process that. It was the “naturally” in particular that confused you because none of this seemed very natural.

When you woke up and saw ‘Christian Jett’ on your phone (the device even vibrated differently, almost nervously), you immediately assumed the worst: Sid had done irreparable damage to the band’s reputation by hard-launching a relationship that no one at the label knew about, and now you were going to be fired because you had not contained it.

That was the only thought you had when you took the call. But you were actually being promoted. Naturally.

Did he even know about Sid?

“That—that’s great,” you managed. You sensed CJ’s anticipation for a more effusive response and he grumbled in mild disapproval when you did not offer one. “I am very happy to hear that.”

“Yeah?” He chuckled again. He sounded like a train veering off its tracks when he laughed, which was very odd, yet somehow felt comforting. “You don’t sound much like it.”

“Oh—m-my apologies, I’m just surprised.”

“Yeah, well, you shouldn’t be,” he said. “Others are trying to scout you for their own bands—fucking Reconnaissance, of all people—so, of course, we have to promote you.”

Your fingers stilled on the cool porcelain of the sink.

He said they had to promote you: as if it was a decision forced upon them by some foreign threat, rather than your efforts and the unprecedented growth of the band.

It would have made sense to expand your team eventually—when the tour ended, for example, and everyone could see how far Rated Riot has come. But now, apparently, your career would abruptly progress just because you received an offer from another band.

“Respectfully, sir,” you said, avoiding his nickname, “may I ask how you came by that information? I was under the impression that the offer from Reconnaissance wasn’t official.”

“It’s a small industry,” CJ replied. “We consider any offer aimed at our talents official.”

He gave no further explanations. You had questions, of course, but did not know how to say What the fuck is that supposed to mean? in Corporate.

Instead, you said, “I see.”

“I’ll send one of my assistants and a couple of people from our legal team to go over the new contract with you in the next few days,” he informed you.

You wondered what time it was for him, wherever he was, because here in London, it was far too early to talk about legal teams. The magnitude of the situation made your empty stomach churn.

“Your new contract won’t be much different,” CJ continued. He sensed that the mention of lawyers had unsettled you, and his tone softened. “Bigger pay, a few extra tasks, a more defined division of labour. Your assistants will handle the routine chores, allowing you to concentrate on promoting and advancing Rated Riot. That’s the direction we’re moving in right now, and that’ll be your main priority.”

“I understand, sir,” you said, although you understood fragments.

They could have hired a marketing specialist instead of two assistants for you if they wanted to focus on the advancement of the band. Rated Riot did not even have their own publicist right now. There was one at the company, but she juggled several bands and rarely ventured beyond arranging an occasional interview for Rated Riot if someone contacted the company, and not you.

Evidently, they chose to promote you to Head Manager and Publicist instead of hiring a different person for that job.

“You’ll stay with the band and work on location,” CJ said. “That arrangement seems to bring the best results, especially regarding the band’s schedule. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes, sir,” you replied, recognising that CJ probably had the authority to teleport you out of London immediately should you disagree with anything he said.

“Excellent,” he said. “I’d like to move forward with this while the band is still on tour, so you could train your assistants as soon as you are back. From then on, you’ll focus on effective representation and the strengthening of their brand, marketing strategies, bigger shows, more advertising—well, you know the drill.”

“Right,” you said. “Of course.”

You chose not to point out how far these new duties deviated from your original job description. You were already doing all that anyway, even if you weren’t, technically, required to. And they clearly seemed to think that your extra work came without saying—of course, you’d do everything. When have you not?

“And mostly everything else on the contract will remain as it is,” CJ finished. “The legal team will go over the rest with you. It’s the same things: compensation, conflicts of interest, obligations, bonuses, the whole bunch. You know. You’ve done it before.”

You haven’t done it before, actually. When Rated Riot hired you, the company emailed you the contract, you skimmed it, understood about half, and e-signed it without any meetings with HR, let alone the legal team.

Nevertheless, you responded obediently, “I understand. When can I expect to meet with them?”

“Let me check your schedule,” he said. You heard the faint clicking of a laptop mouse and assumed he had Rated Riot’s schedule at the ready. “Alright, you’re in London for the next few days, then almost a week in Paris. How about one of the days there? My assistant will email you later with a more specific time and date.”

“Okay, that sounds perfect,” you replied. “Thank you for taking the time to personally inform me about this, CJ. I—I’m very excited to start this new chapter with the band.”

“I’m excited as well,” CJ said, glad to finally hear your use of his name, even if you wavered while saying it. “Let’s keep this discreet, though, yeah? For now. I’ll mention the changes in management and the band’s upcoming promotions at the executive team meeting next week. Namjoon will update you on how that goes. Until then, let’s keep this within our circle.”

“I—of course, sir,” you replied. CJ allowed you a moment of thought and did not interrupt your silence this time.

You worried that his strong emphasis on discretion indicated his knowledge about something else. And even if it didn’t, you thought it would reflect badly on you later if you did not mention Sid right now, when you had the perfect opportunity for it.

“I’m—I would also like to address the recent speculation online regarding the, uh—bathtub picture,” you said, trying to choose your words without sounding like a three-year-old imitating a businessman. “I want to assure you that—”

“Oh, yeah, no—Namjoon called me earlier. He filled me in,” CJ said. “I hadn’t even seen the picture before he mentioned it. That Sid’s a weird character.”

Your heart jumped over a beat, chilling the blood in your anxious veins.

“Uh—yes,” you played along, wondering all the while where Namjoon was, and what he had done on your behalf. “He is.”

“I trust you’ll ensure no one else leaks the band’s album covers in the future, though,” CJ said. His words sounded like a demand—half a step away from a threat—but you could not recognise your reflection in the mirror all of a sudden and could not reply. “Maybe reset your systems or something.”

Namjoon had called CJ. He had deflected from your relationship with Jungkook and shielded you from what could have happened if someone discovered who the people in the picture were.

Sid leaked the album cover.

You took a fractured breath and leaned against the counter, closing your eyes for a moment.

“Yes—yes, of course,” you finally managed. “We’ll take every precaution to make sure these incidents are avoided in the future. Th-thank you, CJ.”

You could no longer tell if you were still coherent or just trying to be. CJ’s unusual pause seemed to indicate that he sensed your unease, but he chose not to comment on it. He thought you just felt uncomfortable that the album cover had leaked.

“Alright, happy to hear that,” he said. “Talk to you soon. Keep up the good work.”

He ended the call before you could voice any more platitudes about looking forward to hearing from him again. You weren’t. You were looking forward to finding Namjoon and possibly offering your soul to him to repay the debt.

Namjoon had resolved the issue that Sid had caused—the issue you considered personal, because you were keenly aware of the causal relationship between Sid’s post and your relationship with Jungkook: if you hadn’t spent so much time with him on this tour, if you��d kept your professional distance, if you’d closed the damn door in that hotel bathroom, there wouldn’t have been any picture at all.

However, there was more for you to fix. Namjoon had helped you now, but Sid was still at large, wild and unpredictable.

And as you glanced at your phone, you also remembered something else that CJ had said about your contract: conflicts of interest.

In your initial contract, you had declared none, despite already knowing that Jungkook was in the band. You hoped you could carry on quietly enough—as though you had never met him, really—and no one would mind. That more or less worked out, up until this point.

Now you wondered if you could still claim no conflicts of interest without any consequences. Was that what your relationship with Jungkook was, in the eyes of the company?

You took a deep breath and decided to ponder this elsewhere because the bathroom was getting stuffy and the clothes you’d worn for a comfortable film night suddenly felt suffocating against your skin.

Stepping out of the bathroom on the tips of your toes so as not to wake Jungkook, you turned the corner and locked eyes with him right away.

“Hi,” he murmured, the edges of his morning voice hoarse and groggy as he watched you from the mess of sheets on the bed.

Despite hoping to find him still asleep so you could slip back into bed and have the morning together that had been stolen from you, you didn’t feel disappointed that he was awake. He had a lazy smile on his lips. His hair was dishevelled and he kept bringing his hand through it.

There was a glow over your face as you approached the bed. “Hi.”

“I thought you’d left,” he said, his eyes following your every movement as you settled back next to him.

“Do you want me to?” you asked, tilting your head to the side, closer to him. He wasn’t sure if you were even aware you did that, it seemed subconscious, but it prompted his hands to reach for you.

He touched your cheek, running his fingers over your jaw before leaning in to press his lips to yours—quickly, just to remind himself that he could. And to steal just one breath from you.

“No,” he said then. “Never.”

He saw your eyes soften and your smile grow. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He traced his thumb over your lower lip before pulling away to sit up on the bed. “Who, um—who was that on the phone?”

The question was expected, but you didn’t have an answer for him personally—you’d planned to explain everything to all of Rated Riot later today.

“Uh,” you leaned against the headboard of the bed, “the label.”

“Yeah?” he encouraged.

“The CEO, actually,” you added briefly. “But I should probably discuss this with the whole band.”

Startled, Jungkook gripped the sheets in his hand. He was worried—rather obviously—that this was about Sid or still about Reconnaissance, and he couldn’t decide which he dreaded more. He was absurdly quick to convince himself that the CEO had told you something so serious that you didn’t even see the point of talking to him about it.

“Did something happen?” he asked, feeling the tips of his fingers grow numb.

You recognised the concern on his face with half of a glance. “Yeah, but it’s something good.”

Relief, excitement, and curiosity replaced the previous anxiety in his eyes at an impressive speed.

He shifted on the bed with a newfound energy, crossing and uncrossing his legs. “Well, tell me!”

“We’ll have a meeting—”

“That’s fair,” he said, moving closer. “But tell me now.”

You were too excited to dwell on the fact that this was the precise conflict of interest that had unsettled your mind earlier—this perception of favouritism, this special treatment that others might assume Jungkook received because he was in a relationship with his manager.

“You’re doing festivals next summer,” you said, pausing for emphasis, “and they’re extending your tour. We’ll be going back to at least five countries in Europe for encore shows.”

You still had to confirm the dates with the venues and perform several additional bureaucratic tasks so your team could stay in Europe longer, but all of that seemed irrelevant in light of this news.

“Ah,” Jungkook replied—happy, but not nearly as exuberant as you’d hoped. “That’s cool.”

You realised quickly that he must have misunderstood.

“No, Jungkook,” you said. “In arenas this time—with a capacity at least three times larger than we have right now.”

Instantly, his eyes ignited with the flames you’d looked forward to before.

“Oh,” he said and now the tingle of adventure was finally there, glistening fervently in his burning eyes.

But he looked at you again, and he thought there was something you hadn’t told him yet. It was the way your lips curled—smiling, but not quite.

“But you look—was there something else you talked about?” he asked.

You were surprised. You had hoped—naively, you now realised—that you could continue to talk about the promising parts of all that CJ had told you, leaving the more questionable parts to wait until the rest of your thoughts had cleared.

“They’re, uh, holding interviews for assistant managers and promoting me to Head Manager,” you said. Jungkook raised his eyebrows, but you continued before he could interject, “they’ll send people to Paris for me to sign the new contract.”

“To—oh, shit. Fuck.” His shock turned to laughter. Just moments ago, he was worried you’d have to leave the band. Now you were signing a new contract to stay. “Oh, but does that—does that mean we will see less of you? Is that why you—why you don’t seem very happy about that?”

“No, it’s—I am happy,” you said. “I’ll stay on-site with you guys. But the focus is—they’re saying we’re focusing more on promoting you and ‘strengthening your brand.’ That was cool, by the way. Your brand. I liked that part. But, uh—that will be my main priority, apparently. I guess I’m not really sure how that’s going to go.”

That wasn’t the only reason for your apprehension, but you did not want to mention Reconnaissance and the unexpected impact that Nick’s offer had on your sudden promotion. You preferred to see Jungkook smiling at you from across the bed—even more so when he was smiling right next to you.

“Well, what will you have to do?” he asked. “I mean, exactly?”

“I guess I will be making phone calls the whole day,” you replied, hoping secretly that this would not turn out to be all you’d have to do. “It also means that none of us will be going home longer than it takes for you to record a new album.”

“Oh.” Jungkook attempted to control his facial expression. For him, this arrangement—album, tour, album, tour—sounded almost ideal. “Well, that’s honestly fine by me.”

You knew he would not mind. But you minded. You had not said anything about your own workload to CJ, but you were prepared to use any threats necessary to ensure that Rated Riot had enough time to breathe.

“You say that now,” you pointed out, “but it will eventually get tough, being away from home for so long.”

“I have you,” Jungkook said. “I am home.”

He said that like it was the most obvious statement in the world—the grass is green, the sky is blue—but subtle magic was laced in every letter of every word. When he closed his eyes, when he couldn’t see the unfamiliar surroundings of the hotel room, his senses recognised the warmth of your presence as home.

Unfortunately, the darkness in his thoughts was unforgiving, and he had to ask you something else—but then he lost his resolve momentarily when he met your soft gaze and realised that you’d placed your hand on his.

“I, uh—” he tried, but several more moments had to pass before he sobered, “he—did he say anything about Sid?”

You exhaled. “Yeah.”

Jungkook nodded contemplatively and took a breath, bracing himself. Although it was difficult to imagine what the label could have said about Sid, considering the abundance of good news, he knew better than to expect something positive.

Another book his grandmother had read with him when he was young suddenly returned to his mind, the dark cover with thick red lettering vivid in his memory: Something wicked this way comes.

The book had been sinister, completely unfitting for a child of his age at the time. Just like Sid.

“What was it?” Jungkook asked.

“That picture he posted,” you said, “is apparently the cover of your upcoming album.”

“It—oh.” He looked away, puzzled, suddenly, by the shade of the wallpaper behind the bedframe and the questionable events that had led the label to that conclusion. He tried to say more and managed a very successful, “ah.”

You lowered your head, tugging on the edge of the duvet. “Namjoon, uh—he took care of it before I got the call from CJ, so I don’t know much about what he said to him.”

Jungkook was not sure if he should have been relieved that Sid’s damage had been neutralised seemingly so effortlessly. He could never know with Sid; his refusal to give up rivalled only Voldemort’s immortality. Only Sid’s horcruxes were, apparently, pictures and videos he used to manipulate others.

“It’s a good photo for an album cover,” Jungkook finally said.

“It—it is,” you agreed. “And it’s also—well, you know. A good explanation.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll inform the label about us before I sign the new contract, though,” you decided. “I’ll talk to them. I thought maybe this could wait, but they’re sending over lawyers, so it’s—”

Jungkook’s breath got lodged in his throat and he had to cough several times to clear his airways, interrupting you.

“H-hold on,” he said. “You need lawyers present when you tell them we’re together?”

“They’re coming for the contract,” you explained. “And I’ll have to talk to them before I sign it because I figure you might be my conflict of interest.”

A sudden surge of very different emotions made Jungkook purse his lips. He found himself wondering if there was any term starting with “my” you could have used to describe him that he wouldn’t have liked. My boyfriend. My source of headaches. My biggest nuisance. Ultimately, all of that still meant that he was yours.

Reasonably, however, he did not like the sound of this.

“Huh,” he mused. “Doesn’t work as a pet name. Call me something else.”

“Yeah.” You chuckled. “I don’t like that one, either.”

You did not look particularly troubled. Everything was going to be fine, you were sure of it. You just weren’t sure how soon, and what this “fine” would look like.

“Come here,” Jungkook said before you could begin thinking about the possibilities and the risks.

You moved closer, happy to relish in the warmth of the room for a few more minutes as he wrapped his arms around you.

This was the morning you were looking forward to. Everything else could wait.

The second you stepped out of Jungkook’s hotel room and headed towards yours to pack for the day, Maggie startled you by calling out your name in the otherwise empty, echoing corridor. She appeared a little worried when you turned around, and that was so unbecoming on her normally laid-back face that you took an instinctive step back.

“Is—are you okay?” you asked.

She seemed surprised to see your surprise.

“I slept the whole day,” she explained. She was carrying something in her hands, but she kept it behind her back. “Feels like I was out for a week, actually.”

You smiled. That was hardly anything new.

You remembered the fright of your life that Maggie had given you the first time the two of you went out together. She had an alcohol tolerance that should have been outlawed, so she always drank more than Jungkook could ever handle (though he would argue otherwise, of course). By the time you got her back to your apartment that night, she was already barely conscious.

She had collapsed on your bed and when you brought her a glass of water about three minutes later, she was already snoring. And she’d slept—you counted—for twenty-two hours and thirty-three minutes. You had spent the last eight hours keeping watch over her, periodically checking if she was breathing, with your finger hovering over the emergency number on your phone.

To your amazement, she woke up the next morning without so much as a hint of a headache, perplexed by the concerned look on your face. She looked a bit like that now.

“Yeah,” you replied, a little jealous of her dangerous, but seemingly foolproof ability to avoid hangovers. “Maybe we should have stopped before the tequila shots.”

“Hmm.” She scratched her forehead. It was hard to tell what she was feeling; hesitation flickered in her eyes when she looked at you. “Was, uh—was Jungkook in my room yesterday?”

“He—oh, yeah,” you recalled. “I asked him to check on you.”

“Oh.” Relief washed over her face, adding some vibrancy to her cloudy features. “Okay. So I didn’t hallucinate that.”

You smiled again. “No.”

“I took your jacket,” she said, revealing the item she’d been clutching in her hands. “I don’t remember doing that.”

She seemed to remember even less from last night than you did, which was not uncommon for Maggie. She had a terrible memory in general—she took notes and then forgot she took notes—but this time, you could not help her remember, either.

“Thanks,” you said, taking your jacket from her. It still smelled faintly of your perfume and too much liquor. “Jungkook told me you had it. I still have one of your shoes.”

“Yeah, I—I have yours somewhere, too,” she said. “I assume you have my phone, too, then?”

You looked up. “Why would I have your phone?”

“Hm?” she asked as her heart began to pump blood a tad more effectively than necessary; you hadn’t even properly answered her yet. “But—you—didn’t you put it in your bag last night?”

You stilled and the surprise inside your stomach grew large, floating inside you as if it were a heavy, helium and anxiety-filled balloon.

“I… I had my bag with me?” you asked very slowly, but Maggie still did not understand the essence of your question. She looked around as though she’d just realised she was accidentally having this conversation in a language she did not speak, and she needed someone to translate it for her.

You were baffled. You knew you’d left your phone in your room before you went out with the girls, it was entangled in the sheets when you woke up the next morning. But you couldn’t remember whatever happened with your handbag; you had assumed it remained in your room as well.

“I’m pretty sure you had it with you,” Maggie said. Your heartbeat sped up, matching the frantic rhythm in your friend’s chest. “You took our orders on my phone because you didn’t have yours. And I assumed you put it in your bag after that.”

You turned around, frightened goosebumps rising on the back of your spine as your trembling fingers fumbled with the lock on your door.

“Jungkook said I didn’t have my bag with me when I got back,” you said as you entered the room, your gaze sweeping the space with an ever-mounting sense of panic. “I assumed—I thought I just didn’t take it with me. Nothing was missing. I had my keys in my jacket—I took them out at some point, before the jacket ended up with you—a-and my phone was here.”

You attacked the room, lifting suitcases and inspecting empty closets. Since you hadn’t fully unpacked, there were not a lot of places where your handbag could have been. Maggie tried to help you by holding up furniture for you to check underneath—just in case, she’d said—but it became increasingly clear, with every nook and cranny you searched, that the bag was simply not here.

“Okay, shit,” Maggie finally concluded as the two of you knelt side by side on the floor, the room in disarray around you.

Among the useless clutter, you found a lot of dust, someone’s phone charger, and a forgotten USB flash drive under your nightstand.

“Wait, so—wait, wait.” You stood up, stumbling slightly as your knees cracked. “So, you don’t have your phone?”

The question was redundant, but Maggie didn’t mind repeating herself. She was just as confused as you were. And the handbag was the least of your problems: you did not carry a lot of cash with you when you travelled, so if you didn’t find the bag, all that you’d lose would be a travel-sized container of hand sanitiser, an old tube of lipgloss, and a package of tissues. It was Maggie’s phone that you were worried about—you couldn’t even remember putting it in your bag.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. Her eyes seemed even wider than they had in the corridor. Her hair fell in chaotic curls over her face. “I couldn’t find it anywhere. I tried Find My iPhone today, but it didn’t show anything. Maybe the phone’s dead? I don’t know. I didn’t check right after we returned to the hotel, because I was sleeping. And then, this morning, I thought, well, of course the app won’t tell me where my phone is. Because you have it, and you’re right next door.”

You clenched your jaw. “Okay. Okay, I-I must have left my bag at the club. Or someone took it. We have to call them.”

“Call them?” Maggie repeated, standing up, too. She glanced around your room once more to make sure your bag had not decided to grow feet and return on its own. “What will we say?”

You did not mind the pointlessness of her question, either. Evidently, now was the precise time for stupid questions.

“That I lost it. I don’t know,” you said. “Let’s just see. Maybe I left it there.” But you hesitated as soon as you pulled your phone out. “Shit. Do you remember what the place was called?”

“Oh, yeah, I have the directions open on my pho—” She stopped tapping the pockets of her jeans, realising. “Oh, shit.”

“Fuck.”

It took you less than a second to find the solution to your new problem.

Luna and Taehyung’s room was just down the corridor, and Luna opened the door as soon as you knocked, almost as if she had been waiting for you to require her immediate assistance in this crisis.

She could not remember many details of how the three of you got home, but she readily supplied the name of the club. Then she joined you and Maggie in your room, where your friends tried to reconstruct the events of the previous night and you dialled the number of the club, your shaky hands and frazzled mind leading you to hit all the wrong keys on your phone.

Finally, the call connected, and a cheerful, young voice introduced himself as, simply, Tom, barkeeper—although your frantic mind interpreted that as Tom Barkeeper initially, which, honestly, seemed like a fitting government name for someone tending the bar.

“Hi!” you said, your nervous voice nearing a screech. Luna and Maggie stopped talking and turned to you. “My friends and I were at your club on Wednesday night, and I seem to have misplaced my handbag. Is there any chance I left it there?”

“Let me check, miss,” Tom Barkeeper replied. You heard the faint sound of his footsteps in the background. “Could you describe it for me?”

“It—well, it was black,” you said, your palm pressed against your forehead. “With a large grey metal zipper, and sort of a—a little chain on the—”

“Er, actually, no, we’ve got no handbags at the Lost and Found,” he interrupted. “Got five watches, though.”

He chuckled lightly, and you looked up at your friends. There was a frown on your face that they immediately took to mean danger, and moved closer, settling on either side of you to listen.

“Uh, right,” you said distractedly, putting the call on speaker. “Are there any phones, by chance? There was a phone in my bag.”

“We had a couple of phones left here, but both have been picked up by their owners,” Tom B. replied. “Sorry.”

You turned to your friends, silently asking them what to do next.

“Perhaps you left your bag somewhere else?” the barkeeper suggested over the phone. “A taxi?”

Maggie, who remembered glimpses of your taxi ride, shook her head.

“Hmm. Or it was stolen,” you speculated.

Tom Barkeeper seemed surprised by this and he stuttered for a second—he had a thick accent, and even his, “well, er—I’d—uhm—” sounded really quite elegant—until he finally composed himself.

“Well, it—it does get rather busy here,” he admitted, and his voice sounded even younger all of a sudden. “I—er, was it very valuable? You could try filing a report, then we’d get our security here and rewind the CCTV footage.”

You glanced at Maggie. She shook her head again. She doubted they could find her phone in time if it really was stolen; you’d be leaving for Paris soon. She was embarrassed, too. There was nothing she could tell the police if you filed a report.

When have you last seen your phone, miss?

I have no idea, officer. I was shitfaced the whole night.

“I think we—no, that, um—we’ll try to see if there are any other places where it could be first,” you told Tom, trying to come up with a logical plan on the spot. “And then I’ll—”

“Yeah,” the barkeeper cut in, sounding relieved. “You check and call us back if you haven’t found it.”

“Yes. Thank you. Sorry to bother you.”

“That’s alright, miss,” he said. “Hope you find it.”

You ended the call with a disheartened sigh and turned to your friends.

“Well, they don’t have it,” you declared, as if they hadn’t heard everything.

“That’s great,” Luna observed. She glanced around the chaos inside your room. “And it’s definitely not here?”

“You can go ahead and look,” you said, stepping back to gesture at the piles of clothes. “I don’t know where else it could be.”

“Okay, well, Maggie and I both remember you having it with you on our way to the club,” she said. She tapped her chin and, because she had her glasses on and wore a sweater with a long white dress shirt underneath, she looked a bit like a heroine from an old Agatha Christie novel. “I remember the pins on my dress getting caught on the chain on your bag in the taxi.”

“That’s right,” you said, pointing at her, although you weren’t sure if you remembered the moment under discussion, or just the way the three of you had laughed about it later that night.

“So maybe you left it there before we even got to the club?” Luna suggested.

“No, but she still had it with her in the club!” Maggie interjected, frustrated. Her hair kept growing wilder the longer she stayed here, tousling it nervously every few seconds. “When she took our drink orders! My phone and her bag were both there.”

You and Luna both groaned, realising Maggie had already mentioned this. You were aware that the three of you had turned into a mess after just one night of drinking. Perhaps the next time you went out, you should consider bringing a chaperone, because this right now felt a lot like the blind leading the blind.

“Right,” Luna mumbled. “Sorry.”

“It’s starting to seem,” you said, “that either I left it in the taxi at the end of the night, or someone grabbed it at the club.”

Maggie nodded, agreeing with these options, even if she did not know what to do with them. You didn’t, either. Was there a Lost and Found for items accidentally abandoned in taxis? Should you have filed a report with the police, after all? Surely, they dealt with drunk people losing their belongings all the time. And maybe they could search for the phone even if you were across the strait.

Then you noticed that Luna was biting her lip, seemingly lost in a recurring thought.

“What are you thinking?” you prodded. She did not react. “Luna?”

She looked up from the floor, surprised to be addressed.

“Nothing,” she said, hesitating. “It’s sort of a conspiracy theory more than it is based on actual facts. But, um, you did mention seeing Sid and Jude at the club.”

You watched Maggie pull on her hair so hard that a few strands stayed in her grasp when she let go. Neither of you liked how plausible Luna’s not-fact-based theory was.

“You think they took my bag,” you surmised. “But why?”

“I don’t know,” Luna replied. “Why does Sid do anything?”

Your frown deepened. She had a disturbingly solid point. Sid was diabolical.

“That’s…” you faltered, thinking. “Well, he could have—although I didn’t even have anything in my bag except for Maggie’s—oh. Shit.”

Your sudden realisation—and the subsequent horror flashing across your face—surprised both girls. Maggie stepped closer to you.

“What is it?” she asked.

You pulled out your phone and opened Instagram.

“Sid posted a—he posted the picture,” you explained, scrolling down your feed, then abandoning this decision and going directly to Sid’s profile. “The one Maggie showed us at the club.”

You found the post and turned your phone towards the girls. The expressions on their faces made it very clear that Luna’s hypothesis was not far-fetched at all. Maggie looked delightfully murderous.

“Jungkook thinks Sid got it from his phone,” you said, “but what if—wh-what—”

“My phone was in your bag. He could have downloaded it from my gallery,” Maggie concluded, staring at the screen.

She wasn’t just angry about her stolen phone or the filter Sid had put over a perfectly good picture. She was also angry about him using a photograph that she was proud of to stir up trouble.

“That fucking loser,” she said. “That massive fucking piece of shit. Fucking good-for-nothing rat. Motherf—”

“Yeah, Mags,” you interjected, knowing she might not stop for a while. Last week, she had kept mumbling curses under her breath for forty minutes straight after Jimin ate the last pack of tomato ketchup crisps that she’d brought with her on tour. “We agree with you.”

Luna continued to bite her lip until it took upon an angry shade of red. She did not want to be responsible if she’d just led you in the wrong direction. Maggie already seemed prepared to crush your phone in her hand as she stared at Sid’s post.

Luna tried to reason, “we don’t know if that’s really what happened, though.”

“No, but it makes sense. You have to be right,” you insisted, glancing at the clock above the door. “Fuck. I—I have to—I have to get the band together before their soundcheck, but after that, I’m—I’ll talk to Minjun.” You brought your hand through your hair, angrier at yourself than you were at Sid right now. “We should have left the club right after I talked to Jude. It was a shitty call to stay there. But we’ll find your phone, Mags. And if Sid was really the one who took it, he’s—well, he’s not going to be taking shit from anyone anymore.”

Some of the tension in Maggie’s posture eased at your words.

“Well, we couldn’t have known they’d do something like that when we decided to stay,” Luna said, her voice comforting. “If they indeed—”

“Alright,” Maggie interrupted, taking a deep breath and returning your phone to you. “Let’s kill him.”

The room fell silent. You did not know if Maggie was aware of the undeniable resolve in her voice. She’d said that like she would have said, “let’s get lunch,” while already holding boxes of take-out in her hands.

“Or, you know,” she added in response to your and Luna’s expressions, “let’s beat him up. That’ll work, too.”

You glanced at Luna and the smile spreading on her face made you lose your calm, too.

“We’ll do that,” you promised Maggie, grinning as you wrapped an arm around her shoulders and leaned your head against hers. “If we can’t come up with anything better.”

“Hell yeah,” Luna agreed, joining you on Maggie’s other side. “He’s got a few teeth left, right? We can start counting who knocks out more. Jungkook is in the lead right now, but I don’t like losing, so—”

You and Maggie burst into laughter so loud and sudden that Luna flinched in surprise. Maggie even had to clutch your arm for support as she bent over, struggling to breathe in between wheezes. Her laughter was so infectious that Luna couldn’t keep a straight face much longer, either.

You were convinced that you would fix everything.

You’d find Minjun and ask if he had talked to Sid or Jude since Wednesday. If not, you’d get to the two of them yourself. Maggie would take care of them if they had your bag. And if, by some lucky chance, they would turn out to be innocent, you’d go to the police to find the real culprit.

You gathered the band—and Namjoon, of course—in the changing room of the venue before the soundcheck. Mindful of your limited time, you started by sharing the updates from CJ – the festivals next summer, the arena tour, and finally, the strategic shift that Jett Records was planning for Rated Riot, including your promotion and the expansion of the management team.

Once the cheers and the high-fives died down, you asked the boys to settle down for one last thing.

“The opening act,” you said, scrolling to the very bottom of the meeting agenda you’d prepared on your Notes. “Ren is still recovering from his broken foot, so we—”

“Because Ren is a whiny baby,” Jungkook chimed in helpfully. He was leaning against the wall instead of sitting around the table like the rest of his bandmates.

You gave him a look that was not particularly grateful but lacked any real threat. He grinned.

“So, Poison Tongue might be out for the rest of the tour,” you went on. “We’re talking to several other bands that might join you instead. Ivy will continue to support you on the upcoming shows in London and Paris.”

The band members nodded. They’d grown accustomed to Ivy’s presence—she used to be a tattoo artist and brought her equipment with her when she travelled, which everyone on tour appreciated. You and your girls personally found it wonderful to have another girl around.

“Alright. That was the last thing on my list, but it—there’s something else we have to discuss,” you paused, glancing around the room to keep your voice steady. Jungkook gave you a firm nod of support from the back of the room, no longer fooling around. “Uh, there was a picture posted last night. I’m sure you’ve all seen it. Namjoon took care of it; he informed the label that it’s the leaked cover of your upcoming album. But I want to emphasise that it doesn’t have to be the cover of anything. We can say it was one of the options, but we settled on something—”

“I like it,” Taehyung interjected. “The picture, I mean. I think we could use it as the cover for our next single, at least. It fits, right?”

“It does,” Yoongi agreed. You felt a tingle of unease creeping down your spine. “The lyrics match the picture very well.”

That was understandable, given the subject matter of the lyrics, but you were grateful that Yoongi did not elaborate further. You felt Jungkook watching you from across the room and your skin was burning.

“And it fits in with the rest of our album covers, too,” Hoseok joined, solidifying the consensus.

The decision had already been made, so Jungkook only shrugged when your eyes slid over to him.

“I say we use it,” he said. “It’s a great shot.”

For the first time since you joined Rated Riot, you genuinely worried that you might not keep your composure.

Every person in this room—and many people in the corridors, working on Rated Riot’s show—knew that you and Jungkook were the people in the photograph, and they all agreed to help you hide your relationship in plain sight. Aching discomfort and heartfelt gratitude fought a fierce battle inside your chest.

“Well, then, alright,” you said, your voice quivering slightly on the last syllable. You fixed your gaze on the white table. “That’s, uh, settled, then. Thank you, Namjoon, by the way. That was great quick thinking on your part.”

“No problem,” Namjoon replied. Hoseok leaned back in his chair to pat him on the shoulder and Namjoon gave him a smile before explaining, “I didn’t mean to jump the gun, but—”

“No, no,” you cut him off. “You did great. It’s—well, it’s good PR, claiming he just leaked the cover art. Thank you.”

He shrugged. “Maggie’s the one who took a great picture.”

Hums of agreement filled the room, and you nodded, too. Maggie had always been a field photographer. She felt claustrophobic in a closed photo studio, she needed the space, the action, the emotion. And she knew how to capture it all. It was a great picture. It was a shame what Sid was trying to do with it.

“She did, yeah,” you said before noticing the time on your phone. “But, uh, anyway, that—that was all. Any quick questions?”

No one spoke, and the momentary silence in the room felt a little disconcerting. These were the loudest people you’ve ever met, so you did not enjoy feeling like a teacher, asking for volunteers to solve an excruciating equation. Actually, you did not enjoy standing here at all right now; pins and needles chased each other all across your body.

“In that case,” you locked your phone and set it down on the table, “go out, and get ready for the night. It’s going to be a good one.”

Someone cried out, “fuck yes!”—it was hard to determine who, due to the immediate shouts of agreement that followed—and the boys tumbled out of the room, making as much noise as they could. Right away you felt a little better. Everyone had already been excited about the concert tonight, but the news about the extended tour and bigger venues only amplified their emotions.

You ended up watching each of the boys leap over the threshold of the door for no reason whatsoever, just to see who could jump the farthest—until Jungkook smacked his head right into the top of the door frame.

Pouting, he walked over to you after everyone else had finished laughing and left. You fixed his hair, trying to bite back your laughter, and he pulled you into a hug, groaning in disapproval when he felt you chuckle softly against his chest.

“Is your head okay?” you asked, the humour in your tone undeniable, despite your attempts to suppress it.

“No,” he said, tightening his grip on your waist until he heard your quiet gasp. “Oh, now it’s a little better.”

“Oh, it’s better,” you retorted, evidently taking up the challenge. “I see.”

The force of your grip was nowhere near as strong as his—although it was very impressive, he had to admit; he did lose his breath for a split second—but you felt his smile spread as he leaned his head against yours, and that was good enough.

He hummed against your neck, swaying with you in his arms, and you realised that you could not think about Sid’s picture or Maggie’s phone now that it was just the two of you in the room. That was good. You wouldn’t have wanted to speak to Jungkook about any of that right before his concert anyway.

“Now it’s okay,” he whispered. “Fifteen more minutes and I’ll be good as new. Maybe twenty.”

You smiled, but one of your hands had stopped drawing soothing patterns on his back.

“You have to go, though,” you reminded him reluctantly. “Jin will rip you a new one if you’re not on stage in two and a half minutes. He and Jimin got into an argument with one of the local sound engineers earlier today, so he wants to finish the soundcheck as quickly as possible.”

Jungkook groaned, releasing you, but keeping his gaze on yours.

“Can I just tell him I hurt my head,” he asked, “so I deserve special treatment?”

“Not sure,” you replied. “I think that only works with me.”

His laughter was loud and unapologetic. Before you could say anything else, he wrapped an arm around your waist and pulled you back into his chest again, resting his forehead against yours.

“What are you doing?” you whispered, concerned about his poor time management and the relatively open space that you were in. The door was closed this time, but not locked.

“Nothing,” he replied softly. His lower lip brushed against yours as he spoke. You felt dangerously light. “If you say I’m late.”

“Well, n-not yet... You have about,” your breath hitched momentarily when he pressed a gentle kiss just under your jaw, “a minute and forty-five seconds left.”

“Well, then,” he lifted his eyes to look at you again, but only for a moment, “I have to make the most of my,” his lips touched yours slowly, but firmly, “one minute and,” his quick kiss gained more force, “thirty seconds.”

You were laughing by the time he kissed you again, and he could not stop himself from smiling, too. He knew he was running late, but he kept his lips on yours, the kiss focused, lingering, and locked your taste in a separate part of his brain—a part so full of you that it was beginning to overtake other, much less important parts.

“I love you,” he whispered, pulling away.

His lips glistened slightly from your gloss. Your heart, having already finished three laps around the venue, had now taken up parkour in the crevices of your chest.

“I love you,” you replied. You ran your fingers down his cheek, forgetting yourself, almost, when he leaned into your touch. Then you pulled back and nodded at the door. “Go now. I’ll see you after the show tonight. There’s, uh—I have a plan I want to discuss with you.”

Jungkook was about to object—you couldn’t remove your hands from his skin so abruptly, there was a certain procedure you had to follow to ensure he could still breathe when you were no longer touching him, similar to replacing nicotine patches for someone trying to quit smoking—but then he realised what you were saying.

“Oh.” He raised an eyebrow and stayed still despite your utmost attempts to push his shoulder to get him to turn around. “About Sid?”

You nodded. “Yeah. But I’ll explain later.”

You expected him to question this, to try to find out what the plan was right now, but he did no such thing. He felt happy and optimistic—kissing you might have helped with that—so he did not need to know more. You could have said that you were taking all of your staff to Argentina to escape Sid, and he would have grabbed his sunglasses.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m in, either way. Operation Cobra-Rabbit.”

“Operat—” You scoffed, suddenly remembering your conversation after the film yesterday. “We’re not calling it that. It’s not a secret operation, it doesn’t need a name. You’re going to your soundcheck now, and then we’ll—”

“How about Operation: Escape from London?” he suggested, dragging his feet as you pushed him towards the door. “Since, you know, we’re in—”

“No,” you said. “Go.”

He didn’t protest this time, because Seokjin’s angry, hurried footsteps were already reverberating down the corridor, and Jungkook did not want to piss him off more. Still, he paused again by the door, giving you one last overly dramatic nod over his shoulder as if he were in a spy film. Then he left with a triumphant fist in the air after finally earning a chuckle from you.

You shook your head as he shut the door of the room behind himself, leaving you alone—not for very long, however.

Less than a minute later, as you returned to the table that Hoseok and Yoongi had dragged to the centre of the room for your meeting, you heard the door open again. You lifted your head, ready to scold Jungkook, and saw Namjoon instead, peeking inside sheepishly.

“Hey,” he greeted, hesitating in the doorway. “Didn’t want to interrupt your meeting, so I, uh, waited until it’s over. Do you have a minute?”

A knot tightened in the pit of your stomach. There were too many things that already took you by surprise today. You were not sure how many more of them you could take.

“You wouldn’t have interrupted,” you said, mustering a smile. “You’re part of the team. Come in.”

Namjoon slipped into the room without any sound at all and took a moment to close the door, his hand lingering on the engraved knob.

“Yeah, uh—I just want to have a quick word with you,” he said, turning around. “About why I called CJ in advance.”

“Oh. You don’t have to explain that,” you said. “It—that was a good decision. Thank you for thinking of it. You might have really saved—”

Namjoon started to speak in the middle of your sentence as if he hadn’t heard you.

“I was with Yoongi in his room, working on the song, when we saw Sid’s post,” he said, clearly battling his guilt about the extra attention the picture had gained because of him. He wanted you to know that he had no bad intentions. “It was about four in the morning when we—well, actually, a fan sent it to Yoongi, and asked, “oh my god, is this the cover of your new album?” Obviously, Yoongi and I thought that was impossible; we haven’t even decided when we’re releasing this new song. We could tell that Sid was just trying to mess with Jungkook, and that it had to be you in that picture with him.”

Self-conscious when he gave you a questioning glance, you brought a hand over your neck. “It is.”

“Yeah. So, I called CJ right away,” Namjoon continued. “I don’t think I even had a clear plan of what I was going to say to him or what time it was for him. But he picked up, and I just blurted out, “our album cover leaked,” because that was what that fan had assumed. And why not, you know? If the fans think that’s what happened, why not utilise that to eradicate whatever Sid was trying to do? The picture’s really good. Might as well use it for—for a good cause, instead of whatever Sid was hoping for.”

“Right. Yeah. Exactly,” you said. The more words you used to agree with him, the clearer it became that you still wished you could have escaped this situation. “And now Sid’s caption makes it seem like he’s just—”

“Congratulating them,” Namjoon finished for you. “Happy for you, he’d said. Makes sense.”

“Yeah.”

The two of you allowed for several quiet moments to pass, lost in your own thoughts. Namjoon shifted his weight to his right leg and tucked his thumb into his belt loop.

“I, um—I’m sorry if that made you uncomfortable, though,” he said, looking up. “I knew things might get… weird if I didn’t do anything. The picture itself might not have caused any harm, but given the speculation surrounding it, and your upcoming promotion… I thought that using the picture as an album cover was just safer.”

“Yeah, it—no, I—I’m glad you did that, really,” you said, a little thrown off by the mention of your promotion. “I don’t know if I would have thought of a solution like that.”

Namjoon believed you would have come up with a similar plan quite easily. The problem was that you did not want to draw even more attention to the picture.

“Y-you said—um,” you added, “did you know that CJ was going to call me?”

His pursed lips turned into a timid smile.

“I heard some things…” he admitted.

You arched a surprised eyebrow. “And you didn’t tell me?”

“I hear a lot of things you wouldn’t want to know.”

You nodded. You were fortunate to work with many amazing people, but you had heard their stories. You knew what this industry had been like to them before they reached this point. And you felt very blessed that these same people now shielded you from the negativity that they had not been able to escape themselves.

“Alright,” you said. You were glad, all of a sudden, that CJ had not elaborated on his decision to suddenly promote you. “That’s fair enough.”

You returned to your belongings, sliding your phone into your pocket, and Namjoon observed you in silence for a second, only moving to assist you when you began to push the table back to its original place by the window.

“So,” he said, once the room was restored to its former order, “how come you look so worried? Head Manager! That’s great.”

“Oh,” you said. “It is great.”

Namjoon knew there was more. The two of you hadn’t had many chances to have private conversations during this tour, but usually, you were the person he came to talk to about the problems in his job, and he expected the same from you.

He gestured towards the couch next to the table and waited until you took a seat before sitting down next to you with an expectant look on his face.

“It—well, really, this is great,” you said, clasping your hands together as you rested your elbows on your knees. This was standard, Namjoon knew. You needed a minute to admit what was bothering you. “I’m grateful. There’s just a lot of stuff going on right now. Nothing I want to trouble you with, but, uh, this promotion feels… well, it feels like my work had very little to do with it. They found out about Reconnaissance and just decided to promote me. I’m happy, of course, but I wish they had waited until after the tour, so I could say, with confidence, that this was due to everything I’ve achieved with Rated Riot. And not just because Nick Zhou called me one time.”

Namjoon appeared to be highly interested in one specific crack in the floorboards.

“But this is because of everything you’ve achieved with Rated Riot,” he said, not looking up. You wondered if he did that on purpose, to make you feel less like you were talking to a specific person, and more like you were just talking—so you would not feel bad about sharing your troubles. “You took the abstract concept of a European tour and brought it to life. And then Rated Riot got on stage, and the whole Europe fell in love with them. But you brought them here. You looked after them. And the staff. And, actually, their personal belongings. Sorry about Tilburg.”

You smiled, recalling the Lost Laptops of Tilburg.

“It’s nothing. I was just doing my job,” you said. “And everyone on this tour looks after one another. That—well, that’s the whole point, I—”

“No,” he disagreed, finally giving you a look. “You’re never just doing your job. You’re always doing more. You earned this. Accept it.”

Namjoon had used a very similar tone to defend you from bitter, middle-aged men who had a problem with your promotion after CJ’s assistant had brought it up at the last Zoom meeting with the executives at the company. Their issue was your young age. Namjoon did not think a person needed to start balding to be awarded for their great work.

“CJ actually didn’t even give me the option to refuse,” you said, your smile turning wry. “He just told me I’m getting promoted and I felt like I had to go along with it.”

Namjoon nodded knowingly. He had several similar experiences with Christian Jett before. He had even played tennis with him once and called him Chris—not CJ—by accident. Luckily, he managed to duck before a tennis ball came hurling at his head. Namjoon knew CJ did not give suggestions; he gave orders.

“Would you have refused, if he’d asked?” he asked you.

“No, but…” You spun your ring around your index finger and settled back against the couch. “Can I be honest?”

“Of course.”

“I am—honestly, I’m also worried about my relationship with Jungkook,” you said.

Namjoon noted that this was the first time you brought this up to him without encouragement. Despite his surprise, however, he did not want to let the awkward silence take over the room, so he coughed politely into his fist and tried to reply, not particularly smoothly.

“What do you—what are you worried about?” he asked, even though that was obvious.

“I talked to Jin the other day,” you said. “He said that as long as the band makes a profit, no one’s going to care—which is true enough. But with this happening, with Rated Riot growing more and more popular, with my promotion… they will have to care. Our relationship has, obviously, never been strictly professional. And now it could hinder their plans for the band.”

Namjoon mulled over this for a minute, his gaze drifting to the expanse of the empty room. He had obviously had similar thoughts as you when he made the call to CJ, but now he realised that this was only half the picture.

“If they’re promoting you,” he began, his voice steady against the subdued air in the room, “that obviously means they want to keep you in the company. So, when they learn about your relationship, they definitely won’t immediately decide to fire you. I suppose they will ask you to end the relationship, or they won’t care about it at all. Those are the only two logical possibilities, right?”

“Right,” you agreed.

“If they tell you to end it,” Namjoon continued, “I think you’re in a position to present them with a similar ultimatum. Tell them that you will leave if they won’t accept your relationship. That is risky, I’ll admit. But they need you. And, from what I hear, they know you have other options.”

There was a quality about Namjoon that you really admired. Often, when people wanted to make someone feel better, they said things that they knew would lift their spirits—you appreciated that as well, just in a different way. Namjoon, on the other hand, managed to offer comfort tempered with rationality.

You took a deep breath and stretched your legs.

“Yeah,” you said. “Negotiate, is what you’re telling me.”

“Yes. More or less,” he confirmed. “But, of course, you have to decide what, uh—what you will do if they refuse to do it your way.”

You shook your head.

“I’ve already decided,” you said. The smile on your face was as sad as smiles could be. “If they will tell me it’s one or the other, I won’t choose to stay at the company. I’ll choose him.”

Namjoon nodded and hung his head. He hoped you would think he did that in solidarity, but, really, he was trying to hide his smile. Of course, he was a little worried about the label’s reaction. But he was also happy for you and Jungkook.

Not to mention, he had been roped into joining the bet about your relationship backstage—Seokjin was very loud, and Namjoon embarrassed very easily—and now he might have been the first to find out that he’d won.

He couldn’t resist the urge to ask, “I—are you guys, um, back together, then?”

“Honestly,” you said, snickering at the absurdity of your position, “at this point, it feels like we never even broke up.”

Namjoon’s smile was too big to hide it. “So, you are, then.”

“We are. And, it’s—you know,” you said with a shrug that was not one bit nonchalant, despite your best attempts to make it seem so, “I’d love to still be able to keep working with you guys despite that, but, uh—I’ll deal with whatever happens. If they will think this is unacceptable, I’ll leave.”

“It may not come to that,” he said, his tone reassuring, yet grounded. “There’s still a good chance that the label won’t care. I mean, Taehyung is in a relationship.”

“Yeah,” you gave him a skeptical look, “but Luna isn’t working with him.”

“True,” he acknowledged before pursuing his point further, “but that relationship only has a positive impact on the band. He’s relaxed when she’s here, her presence helps him cope with the stress of the tour… on and on this list goes.”

That was a great observation, of course. Not to mention, you enjoyed having Luna around, too. But you knew that there was more to the story.

“I had to fight for that, though,” you said. “Jett Records didn’t think we should allow any girlfriends, friends, or relatives on tour. I had a different opinion.”

Namjoon did not know this, but his surprise quickly turned to pride.

“Oh,” he said, beaming. “But you won, though. They allowed our loved ones to join. You got your way.”

“Yes, but that could be because they didn’t think the tour would be this successful,” you countered. “Sure, most of the dates sold out before we came here, but it—that’s the minimum requirement. You know that. So, alright, the label already knew that Rated Riot would gather two or three thousand people every night. But they didn’t realise there’d be another thousand waiting outside the venue in every city we visited. Their attitude might change now that they know about the level of interest in the band.”

Namjoon noticed a tentative smile tugging at your lips. Despite your concerns about the future, the fact was that this tour—with all its mishaps and accidents—had already surpassed everyone’s expectations. Rated Riot were on a clear path to success and the unexpected crowds at each venue made it impossible not to feel excited, no matter what happened next.

“That’s just the thing, though,” Namjoon said, his eyes kind. “When you came to manage Rated Riot, they were still playing in bars and restaurants. All they had was potential. But with you, they’re starting to live up to it. Not to mention... there has to be a reason why Nick wanted to scout you for Reconnaissance. The label knows they need you. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be in such a rush to promote you without even asking if you agree.”

You realised you hadn’t thought of it like that. But Namjoon was right. Everything he’d said to you was true.

You loved your job, and you were good at it. It was just this one hiccup in your otherwise excellent performance as the band’s manager that made you doubt everything you’ve done for them: you were dating the lead vocalist.

But you listened to Namjoon now, and you realised your thoughts weren’t fair. Your relationship with Jungkook did not—and never would—impact your ability to do your job, and do it well. It was not an indicator of the quality of your work. It was not proof of your lack of effort or motivation.

You were learning, through agonising trial and error almost every day, that these two roles—manager and girlfriend—could co-exist. You did not need to relinquish one to succeed at the other.

Namjoon noticed that your eyes seemed brighter, your shoulders were less hunched and you no longer averted your gaze when he looked at you. The melodic strains you heard as the band finally started their soundcheck likely helped you calm down, too.

“I realise,” you admitted, “that I am nervous about big changes. About multiple big changes, concurrently.”

Namjoon had to lean in closer to be able to hear you—Hoseok pounded his drums behind the wall as if his life depended on it.

“I think that’s normal,” he noted. “Who wouldn’t be?”

He hoped to remind you that it was very easy to get lost in your feelings and experiences, and convince yourself that you were going through them alone—but you weren’t. And you saw that very clearly today.

“And it’s okay,” he continued. “I can’t make decisions for you, but you’re—you have us. We’ll always have your back. We won’t sit idly if we find out the label made you resign.”

You took a breath and finally allowed the gratitude in your heart to really settle.

“Thank you,” you said. “For everything. I really liked your advice about standing my ground. I think I’ll try to follow it.”

Namjoon smiled at this and nudged your shoulder with his. Smiling in response, you nudged his right back.

You’ve found your family when you met Rated Riot. They made bets about your relationship, they teased each other at nearly every possible moment, they complained and argued, but they supported each other with unwavering loyalty. And you were prepared to fight, if it came to it, to stay with them.

You were convinced that CJ had put a hex on you, because you had to spend the rest of the day on your phone, arranging interviews, giving comments about the band’s plans for the future, and pacing in the corridors of the venue. You could not even return to the hotel to pick up your forgotten laptop, you had to do all the work on your phone.

You still had to figure out what happened to Maggie’s phone, but you resolved to track down Minjun and ask him about Sid and Jude later, after the incessant calls stopped. For some reason, everyone demanded to talk to you in Dutch or Swedish or something that sounded vaguely German, and all you could gather from their speech was ‘Rated Riot’ and a questioning tone at the end of the sentence.

You still hadn’t finished by the time Rated Riot began their set on stage, so you had to return to the dressing room for some silence, no matter how much you’d missed hearing the way the audience responded to the band. Thankfully, you only had two more calls to get through—both in Swedish, much to your enormous joy.

After you left the changing room to finally join Luna by the stage, you heard a peculiar sound—a soft, conspiratorial shushing from somewhere in the corridor backstage, like someone trying to beckon a cautious cat.

“Psst. Psst. Pss—hey!”

You did not immediately realise that this was aimed at you. Stopping, you looked around warily until you finally spotted Minjun’s head peeking out from behind the corridor wall. He was trying not to attract too much attention to himself, so he did not use your name.

“What’s going on?” you asked, approaching him. “Why—”

“Come with me.”

“Wh—” you began, but Minjun’s hand darted out from behind the wall, joining his head, and he seized your wrist.

He pulled you down the corridor with an urgency that made your heart drop to your knees and he refused to stop no matter how much you struggled to watch your steps.

“What’s going on?” you demanded, altering between genuine fear and irritation.

“Jude’s here,” Minjun said and tripped over something as soon as he did, forcing you to stumble, too.

“Jude—with Sid?” you asked, your insides stirring with newfound horror.

Jude never went anywhere alone, and you did not like this rush that Minjun was in to get to him. You tried once more to stop running, or slow down at the very least, but Minjun was a train, running late on schedule.

“No,” he said, his grip on your wrist firm, his eyes frantic. “Alone.”

“Why?” you pressed.

He did not reply until he brought you to a halt outside the door at the far end of the corridor, leading to what appeared to be either a utility closet or an unusually small dressing room.

“Come in,” he said then, without any explanation, and held the door open for you.

You pushed the door further.

Jude stood before you inside the room. He looked more transparent than he had at the club the other night, and you weren’t sure if this wasn’t just a hazy memory. He was holding your handbag in his hands.

You wished you were back on the phone with the impatient Swedish journalist from before.

“Hi. This is yours,” Jude said awkwardly, extending your bag towards you.

You stood in the doorway and did not move. “How did you get that?”

Minjun had to gently push your arm with his shoulder so he could enter the room. Jude appeared very small as he held out your bag and tried to find his words.

“I, um—after I talked to you at the club,” he said, “I told Sid that I saw you, and he—he made me hang around and wait until you weren’t paying attention. I told him I knew which table you and your friends were at, and he thought—h-he wanted your phone.”

He waved the handbag, his alarmingly thin arms growing tired, and you finally took it from him. Maggie’s phone was inside, snug among scattered receipts.

Luna had been right—not that you doubted her for a second. And it made sense now, why Jude had lingered that night: he was waiting for Maggie and Luna to pick a table.

“I ju—I just had to wait until you all went dancing,” Jude continued, his voice unsteady. “A-and I was supposed to grab your phone. Sid was—he was desperate.”

Your posture was rigid, your eyes locked on Jude in a way that stopped him from breaking eye contact, and even Minjun felt a little uncomfortable. He knew more of what happened, after all; Jude had to explain it all to him to persuade him to find you. Minjun did nothing to interfere now, however. Jude was the one who wanted to talk to you, so he should have been the one to convince you to listen.

“Why?” you asked finally, your voice cutting through the tense silence, and slicing into Jude’s fragile confidence.

He glanced at Minjun, who gave him a small nod. Encouraged, Jude rubbed his hands together and began to speak. He could taste bile at the back of his throat, but the bitter sensation had been there for a while.

“He was looking for something to use against you and Jungkook,” he explained. “He hoped to find an old picture or video of the two of you together. When you were—when you dated. He wanted t-to cause a little trouble. If he couldn’t find anything, then h-he would have called Jungkook from your phone to, um—to give him the wrong idea.”

You gritted your teeth, reminding yourself that Jude was the accessory and the messenger. Your desire to slam someone’s face into a wall was not aimed at him.

“This isn’t mine, though,” you said, nodding at the phone inside your bag.

“Well, wh—it doesn’t matter,” Jude dismissed it with a shrug that seemed to propel his whole body backwards. “There were a lot of pictures from backstage in the gallery. Sid thought that was good enough.”

You wished Luna or Maggie were here with you right now, maybe both. Granted, Maggie might have attacked Jude—and you weren’t sure if you would have tried to restrain her, given your own urges—but at least you wouldn’t be standing here alone, trying to make sense of what was happening. Minjun’s quiet presence in the corner of the room did not offer much comfort. He was poised to intervene as if he was waiting for you to throw a punch.

“And why are you here?” you asked Jude.

You noticed that he was leaning slightly to one side despite standing firmly on both feet, and you wondered if this was a sign of how accustomed he was to standing on Sid’s right. Or maybe he was just drunk or under the influence of something stronger.

“Because you—you don’t owe me anything,” Jude replied, and you felt even more confused. His eyes looked watery, the edges of his pupils blurred. “You hate me, actually. And you have that right, I haven’t—I haven’t been very nice to you over the years. But you—you’re the one who told me to be careful. And Sid—I was—he left me for dead when he got bored later that night.”

You frowned, meeting Minjun’s brooding eyes across the room. He knew about this, you could tell. But he wanted Jude to do the talking.

Jude continued, “it started with a nosebleed. Then, I couldn’t breathe all of a sudden. I don’t—I don’t know what happened. Sid tossed me another bag of ice as if I hadn’t already taken enough.”

You were slow to grasp that “ice” did not mean frozen water in this case, and you wondered how many different ways to describe meth Jude knew at this point.

Then you needed another second to stop your heart from overexerting itself. Your initial plan for Sid paled in comparison to the new one burgeoning in the dark depths of your mind.

“A-and then he left the hotel between my third and fourth wheeze,” Jude finished. “He said he didn’t have time for this shit.”

You allowed Minjun to give the appropriate reactions to the story—and he nodded empathetically every few seconds—while you were only half-listening.

This happened in their hotel room, then. And Jude had said, another bag.

How many bags of methamphetamine did Sid keep in his hotel room in a foreign country with possibly very strict drug regulations?

“I-I remembered you, sud—suddenly,” Jude stammered when you did not respond. You looked up, surprised by the weight of your presence in his memory. “You told me to drink water. I drank a lot that night, but it—it obviously wasn’t water. Water was—it’s not what we usually drink. I didn’t—but there was half a bottle in the room, so I finished that. I could see a little clearer after that. Or so I thought. I went to the sink, and—and drank as much tap water as I could bef—before I threw up.”

“You might have overdosed,” you observed, studying his appearance again. His bronze complexion had taken an unsettling, ashy pallor. His hands were shaking and he kept rubbing them together. He looked cold, but beads of perspiration glistened on his forehead. “Are you—”

“I don’t—it’s not my first time taking a bit too much,” he said, wiping the sweat from his brow after he sensed your scrutiny. You blinked and looked away. “I’ve never really—never thought I would die before, so that was new. B-but I don’t think that I—I didn’t overdose. I think I just lost track of time because I was—I was waiting to steal your bag. For Sid.” His right hand trembled so awfully that he had to clutch it with his left to steady himself. “I’m really sorry.”

“Jude, I’m—”

“He left me for dead,” he reiterated before you could suggest calling a doctor. “You were right. He doesn’t care. I-I could have—I was de—dehyder—”

“Dehydrated,” you supplied.

“Yeah. That,” he affirmed, pausing to give you a grateful smile, then looking at Minjun for approval. Minjun did not move. Jude lowered his gaze again. “A-and he thought I was being a nuisance. He thought another dose would help me, and he just left.”

“And are you sure you don’t need help?” you finally asked. Your tone was strict, but Jude was touched by the sentiment so much that he swayed slightly on his feet. “You look like you could use some.”

He cast a pleading look at Minjun, and you feared that he was teetering on the verge of tears.

“Shit—y-you see,” he said, though it was not clear if he was addressing you or Minjun. “That’s what I mean. I don—I am—I’m fine now. I’m—I’ll be fine. I’m going home. I won’t go back to the hotel.”

Your surprise was quick and obvious, prompting Jude to launch into a hurried, almost fanatical explanation. He was eager to break through the formidable barriers of his usual reticence, which felt awkward and embarrassing now that Sid wasn’t here to tell him to keep quiet.

“I don’t want shit—I don’t want to deal with his shit anymore,” he said. “I’m flying home. I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you that. Y-you don’t even—you didn’t have to say anything to me, especially after all that I’ve done, but you said that, you told me to look after myself, a-and I don’t know. You might have saved my life that night. And—and you’re—y-you want to help me now. I’m—I’ll be okay. I’m just—I’m sorry.”

You winced at his exaggeration about your conversation at the club, but Minjun was the only one who’d noticed it. Jude was oblivious in his fervent need to get the words out, to explain, to apologise, to tell you how thankful he was.

You thought his gratitude was misplaced. He would have realised what to do in that situation anyway; he’d said something similar had already happened before, even if it hadn’t been as severe. He knew he had to drink if he took substances that could lead to overheating—you just happened to repeat it to him at a convenient time.

But just as you prepared to reply, the words died on your tongue.

You realised you could use his gratitude and guilt.

“Jude,” you said, breaking the rhythm of his laboured, frantic breaths. “If you really are okay, how—how would you feel about getting even with Sid for treating you like that?”

He stopped breathing for a second, confused. “W-what do you mean?”

Your gaze shifted to Minjun, whose initial surprise quickly melted into a realisation that lit up his features. He nodded enthusiastically.

“I have this idea,” you continued, returning your attention to Jude, who remained anchored against the back wall of the room, resembling a child caught drawing on the walls with a permanent marker. “But I would need you to stay in London a bit longer. Just a day or two. Could you do that?”

“That would be fair, I think,” Minjun added hastily. Jude hadn’t even processed your request yet. “It’s the least you can do after she practically saved your life—which she really didn’t have to do. I mean, you stole her bag.”

“I—but Sid asked me to do that!” Jude protested, panicked once more. He looked at you, his brows knit in an expression of profound desperation. He genuinely felt indebted to you, and he was dying to make it right. “I wouldn’t—I didn’t want to. You’ve never done anything wrong to me.”

“Well, exactly,” Minjun continued before you could respond. He could tell that Jude’s abnormally energetic apologies troubled you. “You kind of owe her, you know?”

Jude knew. You could tell he knew because he began to rub his hands together faster, his fingers restless, agitated as they ran over his calloused skin. He looked frightened. He looked like half of a person.

You felt the first threads of remorse coil around your mind for taking advantage of him in a state like this.

“Well, I—I—o-of course, I guess,” Jude acquiesced, though his compliance seemed strained—much like the rest of his actions, really. He needed to lie in bed for a week or two. “W-what would I have to do?”

You turned back to Minjun, who appeared to be waiting for you to give Jude any command whatsoever. Jude, in turn, appeared willing to comply with any command.

It occurred to you that perhaps Jude’s obedience to Sid did not stem from a specific attachment to him. Perhaps Jude had simply chosen to surrender his free will, and now he gravitated towards anyone who could make decisions on his behalf—as long as he could justify it to himself: a decades-long friendship with Sid, or a perceived debt he owed you.

Jude—as Minjun had suggested before—just didn’t know any better. And it was so easy, so very simple for him to just let someone else take the reins. To float down the stream instead of fighting it.

“Just keep spending time with Sid like you used to, okay?” you instructed. “Act as if nothing happened between you, like everything’s alright. Yeah? And we’ll be in touch with you.”

“Yeah,” Jude replied slowly. It took him a few seconds to grasp what had been said to him. You wondered if he’d always been this way, or if this was a lingering effect of all that he had to endure in the past twenty-four hours. “Yeah, I can do that.”

“That’s great,” you said. And then, because he continued to look smaller than his shadow, you added, “I, um—I understand you’re not a fan of hospitals, but how do you feel about pharmacies? They have a great selection of supplements I think you should try.”

You handed Minjun your handbag and he watched, in bewilderment, as you led Jude out of the room. You gave Jude step-by-step instructions—in excruciating detail that Minjun thought Jude did not deserve—about what to say at the pharmacy, which vitamins to seek, what nutritional products to consider, how to drink water, what fruit to buy on the way back to the hotel, and what to tell Sid if he asked questions about any of this.

Jude wrote it all down on his phone—a process that consumed an additional twenty minutes outside the venue—before he finally thanked you, apologised another dozen times, and walked away, leaning against the side of the building for support.

When you rejoined Minjun, you felt like you had just finished teaching six kindergarten classes.

“He’s gone,” you announced, sinking into the only armchair in the cramped room. Your foot came to rest on the handle of a discarded broom. You still weren’t sure what the purpose of this room was.

“Why’d you do all that for him?” Minjun asked, handing you your bag and leaning against the wall.

“Because I don’t want Rated Riot’s opening act to be Jude dropping dead,” you retorted. “He’s severely malnourished. Does he even eat when he—anyway. I don’t know what’s going on with his nervous system, he was shaking the whole time he was here. I don’t—I’m not Sid. I can’t stand to talk to someone half-dead without trying to do something.”

“Yeah,” Minjun said, still a little amazed at your lack of hesitation when you walked Jude outside. Jude had certainly never been as terrible as Sid, but he was still Sid’s closest friend. Yet, you were eager to help him feel better, when even Minjun had given up. “You’re not Sid. That’s what got us to this point. But you, um—you still didn’t have to go to such lengths for Jude. He… he’s always had withdrawal issues. He’s going to take something as soon as he goes back to the hotel, and he’ll probably be fine again.”

You exhaled. Probably was a very heavy word to carry on your shoulders everywhere you went.

“Yeah, but at least now my conscience won’t keep me up at night,” you said, stretching your arms over your head. “Besides, we’re kind of using him, so we obviously need him alive.”

“True…” Minjun faltered, his eyes shifting to the only minuscule window in the room and squinting. He could not see anything beyond the thick glass, obscured by rain residue. “It, uh—it’s great that Jude can be our man on the inside. I’m glad he realised what a fucking bag of shit Sid is. But, honestly, I’m not sure we can trust him if we send him straight back to that hotel. He might have a change of heart.”

“I know,” you admitted. Even if Jude felt indebted to you and demonstrated that by returning Maggie’s phone, his gratitude could prove temporary. Sid had an exceptional talent for coaxing good people into bad deeds. “That’s why I’m not telling Jude anything else we’re going to do.”

Minjun turned back to look at you, intrigued. “And what is it that we’re going to do?”

“I need to do some research first,” you said, your thoughts speeding a hundred miles per minute. “Did Sid reach out to you at any point over these past few days?”

“No.”

“Alright, so it’s just Jungkook, then.” You leaned forward, considering this. “I-I don’t get it, to be honest. I mean, I get that Sid is the spawn of the devil, but really, why is he—why does he care so much? Because this isn’t some prank. He’s digging up old videos, posting pictures that could have serious consequences for us, and he’s—he made Jude hang around the club to steal my fucking bag. That’s so stupid and over-the-top that I’m not even—I mean, does he really have nothing better to do?”

Minjun did not seem to share your confusion, and your shoulders slumped in disappointment. Clearly, Minjun did not think this was out of character for Sid at all.

“Well, yeah, he doesn’t have anything else going on,” Minjun said. “He doesn’t have a job. He has money and twenty-four hours in a day. Might as well torment people. Besides, he feels wronged. He won that bet he had with Jungkook, but—”

“No, I get that,” you interrupted, your gaze drifting to the same window that Minjun had attempted to look through before. “He’s always done this. But it makes no sense to me. Fucking with people just because he thinks they’re not miserable enough. That has to be some sort of a latent inferiority complex, this need he has to prove to everyone that he’s better than them. But I don’t—he’s going to have to take his insecurities elsewhere. He’ll have to fuck off. We’ll leave him no other choice.”

When you did not succeed in seeing past the thick fog over the glass, you turned back to Minjun again. He was grinning, for some reason, his bright smile standing out against the sombre atmosphere in the room.

“What?” you asked.

“Nothing.” He chuckled, excitement twirling in his eyes. “I’m glad you and Jungkook are back together.”

You looked away, pensive.

“Come on,” he said, pushing himself off the wall. “Let’s go defeat evil. I’ll help with your research.”

Minjun ended up providing fantastic assistance, and by the time the two of you had exhausted all the keywords in your Google search, you had a rough outline of what you’d do with Sid. You and Minjun both agreed that you needed Jungkook’s input, so the three of you would need to meet sometime later to finalise your strategy and set it into motion.

In the meantime, you had to find your friends, return Maggie’s phone, and update them on everything that had happened since you’d last seen them.

When you entered Rated Riot’s dressing room, the walls were pulsating with the beat of an old Arctic Monkeys song, blaring unapologetically from Yoongi’s Bluetooth speaker. You had thought you felt completely drained from this day, but the sight of everyone celebrating as they always did—as if it were the final show of the tour, the venue filled with their laughter, the floor wet from their spilt drinks—lifted your mood and your energy levels immeasurably.

Maggie was the first to catch your eye in the crowd of people. As soon as you returned her phone, a tipsy Yoongi interjected affectionately, “you find everyone’s lost eletornicks!”—which was almost an actual word, so you figured he still had room for more alcohol. He drifted away before you could say anything else, moving his shoulders to the rhythm of “Snap Out Of It” and joining Hoseok by the drinks table.

Luna noticed the slight commotion and approached you. As soon as you finished telling the girls what happened to your handbag, she broke into a surprisingly graceful, but very, very drunken performance of flailing her limbs and singing, “I knew it! I fucking knew it!” while Taehyung watched her from the doorway with unmistakable fondness. He had genuinely never looked more in love.

Then Maggie caught you off guard by wrapping her arms around you—as if you’d crossed Middle Earth and battled Smeagol for her phone—and you realised how safe, happy, and comfortable you felt here. It was such a stark contrast to the unease you had felt in Jude’s presence that you found yourself laughing, your chest feather-light.

Someone behind you suddenly cleared their throat—with such force that it sounded like they coughed up half of a lung—and Maggie pulled back, allowing you both to turn around.

Jungkook looked like he had been waiting for you to notice him for a while. Your friend snickered and hugged you once more before taking an intentionally ostentatious step back and bowing.

“She’s all yours if she wishes,” Maggie proclaimed to Jungkook, who turned to you, his eyebrows raised.

You nodded. “She wishes.”

Chuckling, he pulled you close. He was still high from the concert and just as lively and animated as everyone else in the room. The second he wrapped his arms around your waist and buried his face in your neck, he refused to let go, finding that only fair since you had ended up missing his show tonight.

You realised, while fighting for breath in his suffocating grip, that the two of you did not look strange or inappropriate to anyone who noticed you, despite standing almost in the middle of the room, wrapped around each other. You expected to feel anxious about the public display, and were surprised to feel comforted instead.

No one cared.

Unbeknownst to you, the bet backstage had ended, and now that everyone here knew that you and Jungkook were back together, they were no longer invested. They won their money—or lost, in a few cases—and moved on to make bets about whether Taehyung, who was too prideful to sing without his bass, would start singing along to Luna’s playlist on Yoongi’s phone.

No one cared.

Surrendering to Jungkook’s touch, you abandoned your other plans and relocated with him to the far corner of the room, separated from most of the dangerous festivities—Seokjin and Hoseok had bumped foreheads while dancing just as you walked past them—by a heavy rack of clothes.

Jungkook lied down on the couch with his head on your lap, recounting how he had accidentally turned off his microphone in the middle of his break during the encore and had to yell his speech at the audience because he couldn’t turn it back on.

“I’m glad your throat is alright,” you remarked. The warmth of your touch and the lightness of your tone filled him with something that tasted like honey on his tongue. “The rest of the guys also sound like they just got off the tallest ride at the amusement park.”

Jungkook’s laughter was soft, laced with a lingering echo of the concert that still reverberated in his mind amidst the lively chatter and the music in the dressing room.

“After the show,” he said with an unusual gravity in his tone, juxtaposed against the serenity in his eyes while you ran your fingers through his hair, “someone asked Yoongi and me about our new music. They asked if the picture on Sid’s account was a leaked album cover. We said yes. So, that—that’s confirmed now.”

Your hand stilled, and Jungkook lifted his head. He did not like the emotion he saw in your eyes when he looked at you and he felt melancholy, all of a sudden, for the moment you’d just shared. He wished he hadn’t said anything.

“Oh,” you replied. “That’s good.”

But it didn’t feel good. He couldn’t shake the memory of the way you’d looked after the band had unanimously decided to use the picture as the cover art for their next single. It seemed like the fact that everyone knew about your relationship was physically weighing on you.

He hadn’t said anything to you earlier, not wanting to exacerbate your anxiety, but he couldn’t keep this to himself now.

You’d promised each other communication.

“I—uh,” he sat up properly and you felt an odd ache inside when his head was no longer resting in your lap, “I know you’re not comfortable with us using the picture for that, um—for that particular purpose. And—and I get that. I just, uh—I just wanted to ask if y—if the actual problem here is that others know about us.”

The look on his face was an echo of your conversation last night. It threw you off balance, this statement, not even an actual question, and you were all the more aware of the loud beating in your chest and in your head. The music drowned out any chance of others overhearing your conversation, but it also muffled your thoughts.

You took a deep breath, so you could explain everything.

“No,” you said. Then once more, to make sure he heard you, “no. That’s not it. I don’t want—my problem is that we barely had one day together, you know? I would have liked some time alone with you before it all exploded. But Sid posted that picture, and now—now everyone in this room knows we’re definitely together. I mean, they already suspected it, since we’re not as discreet as I liked to think. But, uh, still. I am learning to be okay with others knowing, though. And I want you despite that. Despite others. Despite everything. I want to be with you. I just wanted to reveal our relationship to the public in our own time. Not Sid’s.”

Jungkook was not sure if you said anything else after I want you, because he certainly had not heard a word.

Frankly, he didn’t care about any public pictures. He wouldn’t have cared if a hurricane swept through the place, tearing down buildings and leaving debris that spelled out your names in the shape of a heart. But he knew you cared.

And yet—I want you despite everything.

He was crazy. Positively mad. A raving lunatic, really. He wondered if there was any medicine to subdue his symptoms because he did not think this was good for his health.

“Okay,” he said, looking down to get his feelings and his thoughts together. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re good,” you said. “It was—a lot of things happened today, and I was—I feel like I’m losing my head a little bit. But you and I are not—we’re not one of the things I’m confused about.”

He gave you a concerned look as he settled back on the couch. “What happened?”

You took a breath and recounted the story about Maggie’s missing phone, Luna’s observation—manifestation, almost—and Jude’s visit, which sparked the idea to include him in your plan to retaliate against Sid.

Jungkook spent a minute nodding, rubbing his chin, and moving his eyebrows up and down and sideways.

“Okay, that—that’s a lot of—and, uh—” He leaned forward, feeling a bit like the two of you had lived through an entire decade in one day. He could not summarise it all in one word. “What’s your plan?”

You took another breath. You and Minjun had checked and double-checked everything, so you were sure you had this part of your research right. The challenge of your plan came from the parts that couldn’t be researched in advance—the parts where you needed Jungkook.

“Did you know,” you started, “that the penalty for methamphetamine possession in the UK is up to seven years in prison? Apparently, it’s a class A drug.”

Furrowing his brows, Jungkook gave a slight nod of his head. “Uh… okay.”

“Right. Well, see,” you were sitting on the very edge of the couch, restless suddenly, “Jude mentioned tripping on ecstasy and speed that night I saw him at the club. And now, while returning Maggie’s phone, he mentioned Sid casually giving him a bag of meth. Just there, in his hotel room.”

“Mmhm, he—wait.” Jungkook straightened. “W-what are you saying?”

Someone jostled the rack of clothes next to your couch, causing a few hangers to clatter to the floor. You heard an excited shriek, followed by laughter, as two pairs of hands scrambled to pick up the clothes and hang them back in place.

You lowered your voice and moved closer to Jungkook on the couch. “You know what I’m saying.”

“I’m—”

“If a penalty exceeds twelve months,” you continued, “a person may be deported. That also sounds alright.”

Jungkook paused to listen to the sounds inside the room: the clothes rack had now been pushed back, shielding you from the rest of the room again, but limiting his view. He could hear Taehyung singing along to “Do I Wanna Know?” by the drinks table while Luna and Maggie waved the flashlights on their phones dreamily for extra ambience in the dimly lit room. He could also see, most unusually, the way Hoseok and Jimin seemed to be exchanging money right behind the two girls.

Jungkook leaned in even closer to you.

“You want to deport Sid?” he asked. You could feel his warm breath on your cheek when he spoke. “A-and lock him up?”

“Actually, I want to wring his neck and use his head to scare off pigeons,” you said. “But that would result in me getting locked up, and I really don’t have time for that right now.”

You watched the corners of Jungkook’s lips twitch as he tried to suppress a smile.

“No?” he teased, unable to resist. “I might like that. Think about all the street cred I’d get with a jailbird girlfriend.”

You snorted. “Yeah? Two one-hour visits every four weeks sound hot to you?”

“Hmm.” He pursed his lips. “No. You have a point, that won’t do it. I need you with me. Should we—should we tell Minjun about this plan, then?”

“Minjun knows. We’ll talk more about it tomorrow, okay? But I—I promise we’re going to teach Sid a fucking lesson,” you said. “And then I’m going to tell the label we’re together, and all will be right in the world for fucking once.”

Jungkook didn’t think he’d ever wanted to kiss you more than he did right then. The air around you felt static, and the bodies behind the clothes rack did not feel particularly corporeal. The side of his chest was pressed against yours and he could feel your heartbeat speed up when his gaze flickered to your lips.

“You know, you can be really evil sometimes,” he remarked, chuckling when you raised your eyebrows. “I love it. Count me in. Sid won’t know what fucking hit him, and I want to be there to see it. Not going to lie, though, it does sound like Operation: Escape from Londo—”

“No.”

You thought you could feel his laughter resonating in your chest.

“Can we do that, though?” he whispered after a moment. “Can we—you know? Deal with Sid? In-between dealing with the label?”

You nodded. You were determined to find your happy ending and, watching the faint lights reflected in Jungkook’s eyes, you thought you could already see it, waiting for you in the distance.

“If we handle Sid,” you said quietly, “we can handle anything.”

Jungkook liked the sound of that very much—almost as much as he liked the song playing in the background while he breathed in your scent, while he allowed it to engulf him, to drown his senses, to annihilate any sanity he had left.

However, he was aware that for a long time before this moment, he had been making all the wrong choices while dreaming of the right outcomes. It would take some time for him to adjust to the fact that he lived a different life now—a life where you were by his side, and his reality was suddenly significantly better than his dreams. He would need to hear you tell him that it was going to be okay just a few more times.

“And if the label says that no, we can’t, actually?” he asked, his tone hushed.

He was very close and you could no longer look at him without your vision clouding. Your head spun so much that your thoughts felt tipsy. You lowered your gaze to his chest, avoiding the sight of him biting his lip.

“I’ll just leave, then,” you replied.

Jungkook pulled back suddenly. “You—but—no.”

You were breathless and slightly disoriented when you raised your head. The room was very dark, and he was very far away.

“We—we’re staying together regardless,” you said, distracted.

He still looked wounded.

“But that’s not fair to you,” he argued.

You shook your head and sighed. The Arctic Monkeys song on the speakers faded, changing to Rated Riot’s “Cursed,” and the room erupted into cheers as if the band members themselves had stood up to perform the song. You shivered under Jungkook’s gaze.

“That—it doesn’t matter,” you said. “I already told you before. If that’s the only way we can work, I don’t mind leaving the company. I’ll miss everyone, but I’m—we’d stay in touch anyway, I’m sure.”

Jungkook was torn. He wanted to tell you not to go—cast a spell or a curse, whichever worked—but his song played in the background, and you were trying very hard to keep a straight face on the couch next to him. It felt like a spell had already been cast.

He didn’t want you to leave, and in this moment, he felt convinced that you never would. You were not meant to.

“At least fight back,” he said, “if these fucking lawyers have a problem with us being together.”

A smile finally broke through your restraints.

“I will,” you promised. “You want me to punch someone? Knock out their teeth for good measure?”

He grinned, too. His black eye had already healed, save for a few stubborn cuts around his cheekbone. The altercation he’d had with Sid seemed a lifetime away—a lifetime that he was not sure belonged to him anymore.

“Please,” he said.

“Hmm.” You leaned in closer, brushing your fingers over the side of his neck. “I’ll see what I can do without joining Sid in prison.”

He felt the way his skin came to life, the way all of his cells leapt up and screeched, as soon as you touched him. He thought that perhaps he had contracted some sort of eye disease on top of his blatant insanity, too, because the dark room had brightened all of a sudden.

He knew he had gone right out of his mind, and he’d never felt better.

“I love you,” he whispered, and his nose touched yours when he said it.

“I love you,” you whispered back, and the happy ending that you had seen in his eyes felt no more than a breath away.

It approached you in silence, dimming the lights in the room, and in the building, and on this side of the world, so it could light the ones in your eyes and your chests.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Jungkook whispered, the tips of his fingers tracing tenderly over your cheek. He felt it coming, too. “And I hope you stay.”

You closed your eyes. “I promise I’ll do everything to stay.”

Your lips finally touched his, and he discovered that you tasted exactly like the medicine he needed to halt his descent into madness, to calm the anxious beating of his heart, to clear his uncertain mind, and to dry the ink he’d used to engrave your name onto his soul.

chapter title credits: bad omens, “exit wounds”

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abbyromanoff · 10 months

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ALL GOOD GIRLS GO TO HEAVEN

PAIRINGS: Natasha Romanoff x reader

WORD COUNT: 3,354

WARNINGS: smut, sex in a church, “bad boy” Nat, use of pet names, fingering, really badly written smut, talks of religion, Christianity, insults of God/the religion, ‘good girl’ R, friends with benefits kinda, sinning, mentions of masturbation, mentions of cunnilingus, innocent!R, think that’s all :)

NO ONE IS PERMITTED TO STEAL, COPY, OR REBLOG MY WORK AS THEIR OWN!!

Everyone knew the family that lived across from you. Their father, Alexei, somehow made the most in the family with a job he wasn’t allowed to disclose. Some assumed he sold drugs, others thought he ran a prostitution business.

Their mother who you found out was named Melina didn’t acquire a job, she was the more mysterious type. She didn’t talk often, but the other mothers stopped inviting her to their book club when she had mentioned her awards from the gun range; you didn’t even know there was such a thing.

Their youngest, Yelena, somehow always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Everyone knew she was the cause of whatever juvenile act was caused but her father seemed to ease any tension with cops due to a hefty pay way. That’s what everyone thought, at least, since most cops didn’t seem to enjoy the family.

And then there was their oldest, Natasha. She was mostly called Nat by her friends, but a skank from anyone else. She was often seen with red bloodshot eyes that were presumed to be the result of weed. She drank like there was no tomorrow and always ended up in the same place as Yelena, an overnight jail cell. If it wasn’t her sister causing problems then it was her, always.

You really didn’t understand the gossip around the four, sure they were a bit of an odd family, but what was the point of judging if they were happy? You guessed it was because of their religious beliefs, when they first moved to the town and your father invited them over for dinner, he was appalled when hearing their lack of faith. The mother believed in a higher power, but her conspiracy theories about such a thing were what set your father off. The rest of them were atheists, that’s when you knew they’d never be allowed in your sight.

Even with your age standing at 19 years old, your parents had all control over you. It was exhausting, you just wanted an escape from their extreme rules. And that’s when you truly met her, Natasha Romanoff.

You later learned that both she and her sister were adopted when she was only six and kept their last names. They weren’t biologically related, but they loved one another as if there were.

You kept your odd friendship hidden from others’ eyes in fear that your parents would find out. Your dad was the priest and very well-known among the town, he’d be beyond disappointed if he heard of such rebelish acts.

But Nat treated you better than anyone ever had, and you were happy when she was near, you couldn’t risk losing that. Your only other friends were the ones your parents had introduced you to because of their acquaintance with the guardians of them, and they were more boring than watching clothes dry.

Nat was fun, she brought excitement and rush. There was one time when she snuck you out of the house to go to a party her friend was holding, you came home feeling more guilty than ever with only two sips of alcohol in your system. And her parents liked you, and so did her sister. They were more laid back, and you found yourself wishing you had the same treatment back at home.

Your parents had wondered what friend you had been spending so much time with, even coming up with the thought of a possible boyfriend. You quickly shut that down with the excuse that you were just so busy with studying for college, it felt sickening to lie.

“Don’t worry about it, we’ve all sinned at least once in our lives,” Nat told you when you expressed your fears to her, it only made the guilt rise. You didn’t even go to the confession box to report your acts in case your father was on the other side and recognized who you were.

“Have you ever tried going to church?” You asked while standing in front of the full-body mirror. You were in your pink and white dress as you placed your earrings on, your hair being done up nicely with a headband to keep it out of your face. You had a light amount of makeup on in order to seem clean but not too clean, you already had to deal with enough catcalls daily. You were very well-known in your area and the boys used that to their advantage, it was honestly tiring. But you had to deal with it, that was presumably the role of a woman.

“Are you kidding? They’d probably hang me if they saw me there. Besides, it seems boring.” You rolled your eyes playfully and walked over to her bed where she laid comfortably. You begged your parents to let you stay at a friend's house and were lucky enough that they didn’t question it when you said the name of their friend’s daughter.

You held her hands in your own, wrapping yours around her fingertips and smiling down at her. You leaned down, kissing her on the cheek and giggling at the blush that covered her cheeks soon after.

“Aww, I thought someone as tough and cool as you didn’t blush?” You cooed in a mocking tone, receiving a soft shake of her head.

“I only blush for you, Cherry.” She loved calling you that after she had kissed you for the first time and tasted your cherry lipstick. Of course, she didn’t put a label on you two and told you it was a friendly act, that everything you did together was saved for only the most important friendships. That meant you weren’t allowed to do such things with anyone else, not even your other friends. But she didn’t break that rule either, so it was only fair.

“Stop calling me that.” You whined, causing a dark laugh to erupt from her.

“But you’re my little cherry, so sweet and tasty.” It was a reminder of your first time shared together when her mouth found place in your most sacred region. She told you it didn’t count as committing adultery unless she was inside of you, so she was allowed to please you all she wanted.

You broke yet another rule when you first masturbated after a phone call with her late in the night. You felt so ashamed, you called her back while sobbing into the phone, little did you know she wasn’t grossed out, she was only smirking. She asked you to tell her exactly what you did, and when you made sure to add that you denied yourself release, she begged you to continue in hopes of hearing you cum for her. You did, just like you followed everything she said. It was almost as if you were her puppet, her toy, but you had never been happier being such.

“I think I should be the one calling you cherry with how red your hair is.” You muttered, running your fingertips through her soft locks and suddenly being reminded of the time you followed this exact routine while you were being thrown over the edge due to her tongue.

“Mm, that feels good.” She moaned, causing your breathing to quicken. “But don’t you have to get to Church before your daddy notices you’re gone, Cherry?” A small pout adored your lips as you had to say your goodbyes, promising to visit her later when you were to sneak out late into the night. You had started becoming an expert at such, but it didn’t rid you of the guilt and shame you held in your heart afterward.

“Sorry I’m late, Daddy, I hope I didn’t miss too much.” You said to the man, kissing his cheek as he gave you a small side hug. His lips landed on your head before pulling away with a smile.

“Nonsense, we were just about to start, angel.” Nat often made fun of you jokingly for your close relationship with your father, but you had just gotten used to the nicknames for each other. You didn’t seem to understand her teasing over what you called him, and whenever you asked she chuckled and told you not to worry, but you wanted to worry. You wanted to understand her and her remarks, all of her friends did, why couldn’t you?

You sat next to your mother and in front of a few people you had grown familiar with. You gave a small wave before turning your attention back to the stand where your Dad stood. He gave you a tight-lipped smile and thanked everyone for coming as you all started your prayers.

There was a creak suddenly heard as the doors to the Church failed to be opened quietly. It was a natural response for multiple heads to be turned, the priest faltering on his words as he tried to remain calm. It was Nat, why was she here?

She was known for causing trouble so it was expected when whispers could be heard amongst the room. She sat behind you and noticed your head not facing her, but you knew she was there. The people next to her scooted over as best they could without creating attraction or seeming as rude. Mark 12:31 ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ it was impossible to do such a thing when a delinquent like herself was right there.

You suddenly felt a small vibration against your thigh where your phone rested and quickly checked it in order to not get a stern talking to from your mother. It was from Nat, telling you to meet her in the bathroom in five minutes. You looked behind you discreetly, seeing the alluring smirk that covered her face.

Five minutes had passed by slowly, and Nat had already left halfway through the wait. She didn’t want it to look suspicious, nobody would notice if she was gone but it would cause a few glances if you were.

You told your mother your planned destination and walked over, making sure to remain silent as to not disturb others.

“What are you doing here?” You whispered out angrily, but you weren’t exactly mad to see her. You worried that someone may have picked up notice on the two of you, surely they wouldn’t have, right?

“Shh, I just wanted to see you, принцесса (princess).” She chuckled and grabbed hold of your waist, pulling you into her as she tried to sneak kisses over your neck. Her Russian always affected you, she was able to pick up on that quickly.

“Is it so bad to visit my angel while they’re at Church?” You sighed as her lips continued their assault, you were praying no marks would be made. How would you be able to look your family and friends in the eyes after that?

“You know, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since this morning.” Her hands tugged on the top of your dress which showed a very little amount of cleavage. She wished she could see more, but knowing that they were for her eyes only was what got her going.

“Really?”

“Mhm, was thinkin’ about how pretty you look in this dress, and how pretty you’d look without it.” Your eyes fluttered shut as her palm ran up and down your thigh, getting closer to the restricted area. She guided you to the sink where you sat on the counter, your legs subconsciously parting while she moved to stand between them.

“W-we’re in Church, Natty, everyone is right outside.” She lifted the end of your dress further up until it rested on your upper thighs. Your panties made their way to her eyesight as she gasped when seeing them, a smirk coming to place on her face.

“Oh, baby…is this all for me?” You shyly nodded with a blush adorning your cheeks. You felt so exposed, so open. But she loved you like this, it was her favorite sight to see.

“Yeah? You got all dolled up for me?” She removed her leather jacket along with her shirt, leaving her in a black bra and jeans. Her abs were on display along with her biceps, you couldn’t stop yourself from reaching out and touching them, shuddering at the feel.

“Like what you see, huh?” She didn’t stop her teasing of your soft skin, forming a sort of obsession with how it felt in her hands. Your chubby thighs looked so cute, she just wanted you to wrap them around her head while she ate you out.

“You keep getting bruises and cuts, I don’t like you hurting yourself.” She grasped your chin in her fingertips, causing you to look back up at her. You bit your lips while staring at her own.

“I’m okay, I promise.” She kissed you with such passion, yet so softly. How she could do such a thing you didn’t know, but you knew you loved every second of it.

“You need to be more careful-”

“Hey, hey, there’s no need to worry your pretty little head off. I’ll try and be more careful, okay? For you.” Her answer satisfied you enough to let the topic drop and allow her to continue her pecks to your hungry lips.

“We don’t have a lot of time now, angel, we need to make this quick before someone notices you’ve been gone so long.” Her fingers toyed with the waistband of your undergarments while you spoke, dragging them back only to release them so it could slap against your skin.

Her digits were cold on your warm skin, sending goosebumps through your entire body. You clung to her body for support, just like you found yourself doing on multiple occasions.

“Please touch me, I-I want you to touch me.” She groaned in response to your worded confession. It was so tempting to just give in, but she wanted to hear it, she wanted to hear how badly you needed it.

“I’m already touching you, am I not?” You whined in hopes she’d understand your high demand. You could feel yourself soaking your panties the more she teased you through them, rubbing your clit in gentle circles before finally pushing the fabric to the side.

“Oh, you’ve made such a mess, baby! You want me to take care of it for you, hm?” You nodded as your hips shuffled closer to her. They were moving on their own at this point as you practically grinded into her.

“Be gentle, please?” She kissed your forehead after agreeing, trying to distract you and make you focus on anything other than the burning pain of her fingers stretching you out. It was only two, but it was enough to cause you to hiss out.

“It’s okay, it’ll feel so much better soon.” She reassured you, smiling when she started to hear low moans coming from your mouth. She started off slow, letting you adjust before increasing her pace.

“Nat- ah!” You let out a particularly louder whimper before she placed her hand over your mouth.

“As much as I admire your pretty noises, I don’t want anyone hearing them but me.” There was slight jealousy in her tone, but you were too enthralled in pleasure to care. If anything, it brought a sense of joy to know the hold you had over her. She was so enticed by your beauty that she didn’t want anyone else to have the pleasure of worshipping it.

“Fuck, you’re so gorgeous like this.” The sound of your juices sloshing against her fingers could be heard across the small room. She looked down at her watch and noticed five minutes had passed since you left for the bathroom, people had to be curious by now.

You could still hear the distant sound of your father’s booming voice leading the large group of Christians, it only brought a feeling of ignominy and arousal. It was so overwhelming to think that Natasha’s fingers were deep inside of you while your Dad, who held a deep hatred for the woman, was right next door. It was wrong, so deeply wrong, but it felt so right.

“Oh, God!” Her hand had removed itself from your mouth after a small warning, making your pleads now, once again, audible.

“That’s right, I’m your God, baby.” You grasped onto her shoulders as your legs wrapped around her waist, bringing you even closer and causing her to deepen further inside of your tight hole. She didn’t seem to care for the pain your nails caused to her skin, only welcoming it with a delighted hum.

“So tight and warm, you’re so fucking perfect, angel.” She watched her digits disappear before returning to her vision, causing you to follow her line of sight.

“You see that? See how well you’re taking me?” Words seemed to fail from escaping your mouth as a hard thrust from her fingers seemed to have found your spot, the coil in your stomach only tightening further at the newfound feeling.

“Natty, I’m gonna-” You forced yourself into silence when hearing a knock on the door, both of your heads snapping in the direction of the sound.

“Y/N? Are you okay in there?” You bit your lip when hearing your Mother’s gentle voice full of worry, turning back to look at Natasha who only grinned.

“If you want to cum, I suppose you should answer her.” You mustered up the courage to speak, but it ended up resulting in a high-pitched tone that only made the woman more confused.

“Yeah- fine! I’ll be out in a m-minute!” You listened for the approval that she had walked off and let you be, finally allowing yourself to set free the moans you had held back.

“Please…please let me cum, I’ve been so good.”

“If you ask me, I think I would have to say you’ve been everything but, cherry. I mean, letting me fuck you in a Church, the House of God, don’t you feel dirty? Or are you too drunk on my fingers to care?” The realization settled in, you truly were too hungry for her bliss, you were starving. You were a sinner, yet no one ever told you it felt so stimulating to do so. Maybe if you had known how good it felt you wouldn’t have been so pristine, you would’ve been able to remember an enjoyable time that wasn’t just spent with Nat. You’d be free.

“I like being your dirty girl..” It was near impossible to hear, but Nat was able to scoop it out. It made her falter for just a moment, only for you to then feel her grip on your waist tighten.

“You drive me fucking crazy, baby girl.” The room was filled with the stench of sex, easy to sniff out. Her palm was repeatedly brushing against your clit, only causing you to pulse more. You were throbbing, her touches weren’t enough.

“C’mon, make a mess for me, you dirty fucking slut.” The degrading name was what sent you over the edge, never had you thought you’d get off to such disrespect but here you were, coating another woman’s fingers while she spewed words of venom.

“Good girl.” She dragged out, letting you ride your high as your head hid in her shoulder. Your legs shook uncontrollably, the waves of pleasure crashing over you and forcing silent screams out of you.

“I want more.” She mustered out a small laugh that was painted over with her ragged breaths, it sent you a rush of excitement and fear.

“I’ll give you more later. But for now, why don’t you go back out there and try not to think about me too much, alright?” You nodded, stepping out of the bathroom and returning to your seat where you then realized the lack of panties covering your exposed body. She kept them for herself without a plan of returning them, you practically stalled in your spot at the recognition. You still had another hour until you were permitted to leave, you were so screwed, and she loved knowing it.

#natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff au #natasha romanoff smut #natasha romanoff fanfiction #mcu natasha romanoff #natasha romanoff fanfic #natasha romanoff fanart #natasha romanoff #natasha romanoff mcu #natasha romanoff angst #natasha romanoff x fem!reader #natasha romanoff x female reader #natasha romanoff x reader angst #natasha romanoff x reader smut #natasha romanoff x reader fluff #natasha romanoff x gender neutral reader #natasha romanoff x female #natasha romanoff x you

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ferrstappen · 11 months

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Max the wag (again)| Max Verstappen blurb

love note: I’ve loved the response to gossipy Max and (y/n) that I came up with this little piece 💘

YOU CAN FIND THE REST OF MAX THE WAG SERIES HERE

summary: a new break up hits the paddock and Max and you are the best investigators.

Canada GP, 2023

Max didn’t mean to overhear whatever was going on inside the four walls of Ferrari’s place on the track.

But if the information came his way, who was he to deny it?

He was mildly bored in between interviews and before FP1, not caring about interacting with people because you weren’t there, too many things to take care of, studying and being an intern didn’t allow you to be there with him. Still, he sent you silly pictures of him walking by himself (metaphorically since fans and workers were all over), he smiled at the WhatsApp sticker you sent him along with a picture of you, papers scattered all over your desk, iPad showing the F1 app.

While walking by Ferrari, he really really couldn’t help walking a bit slower as three engineers were enjoying a cigarette while loudly speaking to each other, motor and tool noises were ambient noise.

I heard she’d forgiven him once, after São Paulo last year.

What happened there? I keep hearing about it but i left to Abu Dhabi right after the podium.

Carlos and Norris contacted some girls and left with them or something along the way, kept it under wraps though but now? I think it was too much for her.

Shame, she was always polite and nice to everybody. She even knew our names!

And Carlos’ sister is getting married soon, he ducked it big time. I heard someone in the garage she decided to not go and his family is pissed.

It caught Max’s attention… he instantly recalled the conversation with you, trying to figure out if Carlos and Isa were still together. Clearly, they weren’t and the entire paddock was aware of it.

Maybe Christian could have more information about it.

But the first thing he did was to text you, announcing he had more information.

Info about what? Was your response, making Max’s eyes roll…

Sainz and girlfriend!

Max didn’t hear it, but you gasped at the simple text message. Max was very selective with the information he actually took seriously, and for him to tell you he heard something meant it was probably real.

Shut up! What did you hear? Who told you?!?!?

Max smiled, a smug grin knowing you were dying for the information, but he’d keep it for later, when he was laying on the hotel bed, fresh out of the shower, white t-shirt and shorts and ready to fall sleep. That’s when he was sharing the information.

He was surprised when you called him out of the blue and he chuckled, his gorgeous blue eyes getting smaller, little wrinkles forming, dimples showing.

“Hello schat, to what do I owe this pleasure?” Max teased, instantly taking in your neat hair, neutral make up and deep red lipstick… oh, what would he give to bite your lower lip and have his face and chest covered in faint red lipstick.

”don’t be coy! What did you hear? I heard the snippet of an interview and she sounded so broken it was so sad, but what did you hear?!” You rambled, making Max’s smile even bigger.

“I told you I’m sharing my discovery later, i’ll have to be in the car in thirty minutes or so,”

“I hate you so much, you can’t leave me hanging! I don’t want to ask her directly!” You complained like a toddler, noticing Max was just staring at you through the screen.

“I love you, I have to go,” Max said after he noticed part of the Red Bull PR team approach him. He was waiting for you to tell him you love him too, but your words weren’t exactly what he was expecting.

“Max babe, try to get info on Shakira and Hamilton!”

Honestly, you and Max were a match made in heaven.

#max verstappen x reader #max verstappen blurb #max verstappen fanfic #max verstappen imagine #max verstappen au #max verstappen x you #max verstappen fluff #max verstappen one shot #f1 x you #f1 fic #f1 x reader #max the wag

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thatsdemko · 10 months

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the story of us - m.verstappen

part two (good riddance)

Taylor swift inspired works masterlist

masterlist

requested: n

pairings: max verstappen x driver!reader

warnings: angst??? idk

a/n: HAPPY SPEAK NOW TV!!

And we're not speaking and I'm dying to know

Is it killing you like it's killing me yeah

I don't know what to say since the twist of fate

When it all broke down and the story of us

Looks a lot like a tragedy now

the crash. it was a simple overtake, one Christian warned him about. you were on your way to p1, your first pole position in formula 1 and max verstappen—your boyfriend and teammate— just so happened to have the nerve to take it away from you and leave you into the barriers.

“what the fuck is your problem?!” you wip your helmet and balaclava off in an instant. the second the Marshalls take him and you back to the garage you’re fighting. this is why Christian warned you two of mixing your pens in the company ink.

“my problem?!” he whips around at the sound of your voice crashing into his ears. he hates when you yell.

“you saw me coming! christian told you!”

max starts to rebuttal, but Christian puts his hand up to stop him. max knows Christian and you are right. he was warned you had DRS and were flying right into pole position— his position.

“leave her alone.”

“you don’t tell me what to do with my girlfriend.”

— next chapter —

it’s been two weeks since the incident. two weeks since he sent your car flying into the barriers, and you haven’t spoke since.

he hasn’t called to apology and you haven’t made any efforts to show him you’re over the fight. you just want your damn boyfriend back.

you’re situated on the end of the couch, he’s in the middle between Charles and lando, happily engaging in gossip and conversation while the interviewer starts to ask you questions. typically, max would pay attention, he’d smile and nod along like a proud significant other, but he could care less in this moment.

“have you two made amends since the attempted overtake?” the interviewer looks up from his cards in his lap. his eyes scan max, who’s busy in conversation with Charles, and then back to you. it’s quite obvious no attempt of amends have been made.

you’re nervously playing with the ends of your hair. you’re nodding along to the questions and trying to keep track of what needs to be answered, but of course he goes off on a tangent, and asks the question you didn’t want to answer. were you two going to be okay? was formula 1’s it couple going to survive this fight? the answer was quite simply, no.

“umm,” you pause for a moment and look over at the other Red Bull driver. that’s what he was to you now, you weren’t even sure if he was your boyfriend anymore.

“we’ll get there.” you fake a smile and set the microphone into your lap allowing the questions to flow to the three boys.

Oh, I'm scared to see the ending

Why are we pretending this is nothing?

—

“and that’s pole position for y/n y/l/n! her first win in formula one!”

the crowd is erupting in cheers. the radio hasn’t stopped buzzing with excitement, and while you’re excited, and happy, there’s someone who’s voice you’d want to hear on the other end. there’s someone you want desperately congratulating you.

in the winners room, he doesn’t even bat an eye in your direction. Charles is playing middle man trying to please everyone with his jokes and lighthearted humor, but it’s no use. the tension is bubbling between you two.

“congrats, by the way.” max says rather briefly. he’s looking at the television in the room that’s replaying your overtake on him. the one that didn’t fail and alter your relationship. he wonders what would be different if he didn’t push you off the track. would you be kissing right now? would you cry in each others arms?

you don’t even get the chance to say ‘thank you’ or ‘I miss you’, because by then you’re being called up for podium and the distance between you two is so very obvious. the love and happiness Red Bull used to have, was a flame that was dying.

I don't know what to say since the twist of fate cause we’re going down

and the story of us looks a lot like a tragedy now,

the end

read part two here

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percervall · 3 months

Text

I'm not a woman (I'm a god)

Pairing: Toto Wolff x Horner!reader Words: 3194 Warnings: Greek Mythology AU, descriptions of misogyny and sexism, Christian Horner is painted the villain, implied age gap (both are legal adults), smut, masturbation, p in v, loss of virginity, no beta we die like my sanity during f1 silly season

In which you claim what's rightfully yours

---

As the meeting progresses, you can’t fight the urge to speak up any longer. Had you still been at RedBull, you would’ve; you would have bitten your tongue until it bled because your father didn’t much care for your opinions, as he called it, despite the fact you had spent years on getting your Masters and then spent another three years on studying all the strategy calls the team had ever made to see where things could improve. No, your father allowed you to sit in those meetings just so he could keep an eye on you. But you are no longer under his watchful eye and scrutiny; Toto Wolff made sure of that. Oh, people like to say that you were stolen from the RedBull garage, your father playing the role of victim like he was born to do so, but nothing could be farther from the truth. You weren’t stolen like the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix; no, you chose to be claimed by Mercedes and their team principal. Thus, here you are, part of Lewis’ team as a strategy engineer, about to do the one thing your father always reprimanded you for: speaking out against a figure of authority.

“Are you going to say what’s on your mind or do I have to make do with your facial expressions?” Toto drawls, making your decision for you. You can feel your heart beating against your ribs as nerves flutter in the hollow of your chest.

“With all due respect, sir,” you start, the room breaking out in a mocking chuckle but you will not let that deter you, “With all due respect, but this strategy will cost you points. You are all so sure that this race will lead to a safety car while experience tells us that the chances of that happening this weekend are 2% at most, and all safety cars deployed in the last six years have been due to car malfunctions. If you want to end up in the points, I would propose a two stop strategy, allocating at least two sets of mediums for the race on Sunday and forgoing softs all together seeing as how much they suffer from tyre deg at this circuit.” The room is dead silent when you finish. Toto’s eyes remain on you, his face a stoic mask.

“Check my numbers if you want,” you add, growing in your confidence the longer this staring contest continues. Toto looks at one of the other engineers, eyebrow raised with a silent command. You hear someone frantically typing as they run the numbers. Leaning back in your chair you take a sip of your coffee, willing your hands not to tremble despite how nervous you feel. Whispers of she’s right flitter around the room as more people join in with re-running your calculations. You bite the inside of your cheek to stop yourself from smiling smugly at being proven right four times over.

“Very well, Ms Halliwell,” Toto says, silencing the room once more. “We’ll try your set up with Lewis’ car and stick to what was already decided on by the senior members for George.” This is as much of a win as you are going to get right now, and you will gladly take it, but there’s a twinkle in Toto’s eyes that has your stomach in knots. You’re not sure whether it’s pride or awe; either way, it fills you with a feeling you can’t quite place yet you know you will crave it for weeks to come.

When Sunday rolls around, you pray to whoever will listen that your numbers check out. You have gone over the statistics of this grand prix so often that you could probably recite them in your sleep at this point. Had it been any other race, you would have accepted whatever outcome, but this one means more. You need Mercedes to do well here in Austria, but more than anything you need your father’s team to suffer the consequences of their misogyny and ignorance. As you walk into the garage ahead of the race, your heels clicking against the cement, your eyes lock with Toto who gives you a slow smile as his eyes rake over you, taking in the way the stark white fabric of your team issued blouse and your tapered black trousers show off all your assets; you know you look delectable, and you know he knows it too. From the moment you met him for your job interview (which you landed under false pretences, using your mother’s name), there’s been an undercurrent of tension. It should’ve made you cautious, fearful even, of powerful men in powerful places, but Toto has been nothing but gracious, always indulging your retorts and meeting you tit for tat, a flirtatious game of cat and mouse that you’re enjoying immensely.

“I want you next to Bono during the race. You decided on the strategy, it’s only fair you get the recognition –whether it works or not,” Toto tells you. Nodding your head, you put on your headphones and take your place at the centre console. No more hiding in plain view, your father will see exactly what you are capable of –what you could have given him. Fighting the urge to chew the skin around your thumb, you keep your back straight and shoulders back as the race starts. You keep an eye on the weather satellite, scanning for any changes that could mess with the chosen strategy while listening to Lewis’ feedback for Bono, making suggestions for minute corrections to the set up of the car. Bono graciously forwards your ideas to the driver who slowly but surely climbs his way through the field. The RedBulls are still leading the pack, but you’re certain that your father’s confidence will be his downfall. As you had predicted, there is no need for a safety car during the race and, judging by the call to pit by your father’s golden child, they had been betting on one by using the softs at the start of the race.

“You were spot on with the tyre deg stats,” Bono tells you and you can’t help but smile wickedly back at him. There’s five laps left, and both RedBulls are on the hard tyre, which will never warm up in time to benefit from their longevity. George seems to be suffering a similar fate while Lewis is fighting with one of the McLarens for P2. Your eyes remain glued to the feed of Lewis’ on board camera as he begins the final lap. He is quickly gaining on the McLaren and in what can only be described as a masterclass, overtakes it to secure a P2 finish. Lewis’ radio message doesn’t even register; all you can hear is white noise as it dawns on you that you have shown everyone just what you’re capable of. It has whetted your appetite for more –for destruction.

The team is celebrating a podium finish as if it’s a win, and you suppose to them it most definitely feels like one. You’re standing on the edge where the garage meets pit lane, watching them with a smile on your face when Toto comes to stand behind you.

“I want you front and centre when Lewis climbs that podium. You have earned this accolade and should be rewarded as such. Let your father see what he’s done,” he murmurs, voice low. It sends a shiver down your spine but you manage to nod in agreement.

“Good. Oh, and as part of your reward, I think we should celebrate accordingly in private, wouldn’t you agree? The choice is yours, take it or don’t. No hard feelings either way,” he adds, chest brushing against your back as he leans closer. Swallowing thickly, you nod once more, not trusting your voice as heat pools low in your belly at the insinuation. You can feel him slide something into your back pocket and you don’t have to check to know it’s the keycard to his hotel room.

During the podium celebrations you stood front row, eyes steadfast on the podium with a smile so wide, your cheeks ached. You can only imagine the tales Crofty and Martin are spinning about you; no doubt making inferences about how distraught your father was to have his only daughter working for the rival. Let them spin their fairy tales, you had better things to get on with –or, more accurately, a better man. Sliding the key card into the lock, you enter the hotel room of your boss. Once you take this step, there’s no turning back, but you are willing to eat the proverbial pomegranate seeds.

Toto turns around when he hears the lock click and you lean against the door. He looks incredible; sleeves of his shirt rolled up and a few of the top buttons are undone.

“Wine?” he asks, picking up the bottle from the desk.

“Yes, please,” you respond, accepting the glass he hands you. Toto smiles, and it’s so sly, bordering on debauched, that it has you squeezing your thighs together.

“Still some manners left in you. I wonder how long that will last,” he muses, raising his glass at you as he sits down on the edge of the bed.

“They claim you have stolen me from RedBull, much like they claim Hades stole Persephone,” you say, straddling him before taking a sip of your wine. He can’t help but laugh when he sees the twinkle in your eyes, one of his large hands coming to rest on your hip.

“Oh, Meine Liebe, we both know you were not some prize that could be stolen. You saw the hell they created for you and thus you fled so you could set the world ablaze.” His use of a term of endearment is not lost on you, and you crave to hear more of it.

“Stolen or not, I am here. What are you planning on doing to me?” you ask him, holding his gaze.

“Oh, I plan on doing everything, darling. Every depraved fantasy you could think of and more,” Toto says as he puts his glass on the nightstand. You grow hot all over at his words. Despite your sharp wit –and even sharper tongue, if your father’s word is anything to go on–, you are about to enter previously uncharted waters. Of course you heard stories from your female friends while at University, devoured smutty book after smutty book, but actually doing any of it? Your father would dig himself a grave so he could roll in it if he ever knew what his little girl was about to do. The nervousness you felt earlier today is back in full swing as you try to find the words to tell him your biggest secret.

“I-.. I’ve never done this before. I attended Oxford so I could live at home, remain under his watch,” you confess, not even able to say the words out loud. Toto studies your face, filling in the blanks with how your cheeks heat up in embarrassment.

“No man has ever touched you?” You shake your head as you bite your lip.

“Have you touched yourself, darling?” Toto asks and while he says nothing that could be construed as dirty, you gasp as if he has. Nodding your head, you can’t help but roll your hips against him, inadvertently grinding your pussy against the hardened bulge in his trousers. Toto swears under his breath, gaze darkening as he tightens his grip on you.

“Will you show me, Liebling? Will you show me how you make yourself feel good?”

Even if you wanted to, you’re not sure you could ever deny this man any request; not when he asks so caringly, as if your pleasure is the sole purpose of all of this. Breathlessly, you nod, letting Toto take your wine glass from you while you strip out of your work clothes. As you slide your blouse down your arms, you hear Toto groan as he takes in your figure clad in nothing more than your pale lilac bra and panties. It’s not the sexiest set you own, but it’s one of the few that doesn’t show through the white fabric. Before you lose your nerve, you climb back on the bed, eyes locked on Toto who leans against the footboard of the bed. He gives you a look, so openly full of desire that it makes your head spin and your pussy throb at being the object of his lust. Closing your eyes, you lean back into the pillows while your hand wanders. You can almost pretend you’re alone, your brain quickly supplying all the sordid fantasies you would never dare to say out loud. As your fingers inch under the elastic of your underwear, you can’t help but bite your lip as your hips writhe on the sheets. The tip of your pointer finger rubs against your clit and you gasp at the sensation, head thrown back. You’re already so sensitive, it won’t take much to send you over the edge. Applying the slightest bit more pressure, you begin to rub tight little circles, letting out the neediest whining noise.

“Fuck, you look so good like this,” Toto groans.

“Please,” you whisper, lifting your head so you can look at him. His legs are spread and he palms his bulge while he watches you pleasure yourself, and that sight alone sends your head spinning.

“Let go for me, darling,” Toto orders gently, and who are you to disobey him? Your body arches, head thrown back as you come undone under his watchful eye.

When you open your eyes, you can see movement to your right. Sitting up on your elbows, you watch how Toto strips down to his underwear, and walks into the ensuite. You can feel your cheeks heat up when you spot the foil packets and the bottle of lube in his hands. Toto drops them on the bed before climbing on. Hovering over you, he brushes a strand of your hair back behind your ears.

“I want this to be enjoyable for you. Please tell me when you feel uncomfortable, tell me when something makes you feel good.” You nod, breath caught in your lungs. Toto smiles so tenderly at you that it makes you forget about everything else. He moves his hand from your cheek, down your neck to your bra strap.

“Can I take this off, Liebling?” he asks quietly. You can only nod, too enthralled by him to form words.

“Need to hear you say it, darling. I will always need to hear you,” Toto murmurs.

“Yes,” you whisper, swallowing down your nerves about him seeing you naked. He gently unclasps your bra, moving the straps down your arms before pulling it away completely.

“Beautiful,” he says softly, his eyes taking you in and you fight the urge to cover yourself up. Toto’s hands caress your skin, as if he is trying to commit every line and curve to memory. You arch up into his touch as he cups your breast, his thumb rubbing over your nipple and it sets something alight in your core. Toto’s hands move lower, fingers curling around the elastic of your panties.

“What about these?”

“Yes,” you reply quietly, lifting your hips to help him. He sits back on his knees, hands sliding down your thighs and his fingers are so close to where you’re aching for him, it makes you whine. Toto chuckles, moving his body over yours once more.

“You want it so bad, don’t you Liebling?” he murmurs in your ear, and the only reply you can form is a quiet uhu. He smiles against your skin, pressing a chaste kiss to your jaw before moving away to fully strip. Biting your lip, you watch him tear open one of the foil packets and roll it down his hard cock. Anticipation and nerves flitter low in your stomach; he’s definitely bigger than the vibrator you have hidden away in the back of your closet.

“We’ll take it slow, okay? You decide how far we go, you’re in control,” Toto reassures you, moving closer so he can lean down to kiss you.

“Okay,” you whisper before his lips are on yours. Your fingers tangle in his hair while he drags his cock through your folds and over your clit. Toto moves his lips down your neck, kissing and sucking gently, sure to leave marks. Your body seems to have a mind of its own as your hips grind against him and you feel a desperation taking hold of you.

“Please,” you sigh.

“Tell me Liebling, what do you want?” Toto murmurs.

“Please.. Need you- need you in me,” you all but whimper, “Fill me Toto, please..” He groans against the skin of your neck at your request. Toto fumbles blindly for the lube and applies a generous amount to his cock and your pussy. Biting your lip, you lean up and watch as he slowly, so very slowly, sinks himself inside of you. The stretch has you panting and you feel how you clench around him. He holds you close, letting you adjust to the sensation of being filled completely.

“Need you to move, Toto,” you moan, fingers clawing at his back.

“Doing so good for me, darling. Taking me so well, fuck..” he groans against your skin as he sets a languid pace, and while it’s slow, his thrusts are so deep.

“Ha-harder.. I can take it.. Please..” you whine, Toto eagerly complying with your demand. The only thing you’re able to do is cling to him as he keeps fucking you, whimpering every time he hits a spot inside of you that brings you just that teeny bit closer to the edge.

“Need you to cum, darling. Can you do that for me?” he asks as rubs his thumb over your clit.

“Uhu,” you whisper meekly, unable to form a single coherent thought as you feel your orgasm approaching.

“Close.. Toto… Please.. Need.. Need to-..”

“That’s it. God, you look so beautiful, just taking my cock like this. Come for me, darling.” And with that something snaps, your body arching as you feel your pussy clenching around him in waves. Toto keeps fucking you through it, chasing his own release, but you’re too far gone to pay attention. He keeps pressing kisses to your temple and hairline as he carefully pulls out, making sure the condom stays on. The loss has you whimpering.

“I know, I know,” Toto coos, “I’ll be right back. Did so good for me, so proud of you.” He gives you one last kiss before getting up to dispose of the condom and returns with a flannel to clean you up best he can. He throws it down by the side of the bed, and takes you in his arms. Your body feels completely boneless and you try to stifle a yawn.

“Take a nap, Liebling. We’ll get properly cleaned up in a bit.” Nodding you allow sleep to pull you under as Toto whispers sweet nothings against your hair.

written as part of @footballffbarbiex’s kink bingo challenge

It's not the 10k fic I joked about, but I finally managed to write the Greek Mythology AU I've been thinking about since early last year. Wanted to get this done and up before more information comes out during this delayed silly season, so if things feel rushed, it's because they are. This fic was heavily influenced by Bea Fitzgerald's Girl, Goddess, Queen; if you love retellings of Greek mythology, please check it out

Please let me know what you think; you comments, tags and likes mean the absolute world to me! 💜

#f1 fanfic #toto wolff smut #toto wolff fanfic #toto wolff x reader #toto wolff x you #kink bingo challenge

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crazyoffher · 10 months

Text

WATCHTOWER. - 3

jenna ortega x fem!reader

summary: the continuously reappearing late-night visitor carries out her goal, taking you where she knew you wanted to be.

warnings: unedited

word amount: 4,000+

a/n: i personally think this is kind of boring, so i hope you guys don’t think it is. enjoy this long chapter :) (edit: why did none of y’all tell me i forgot to add the summary 😭)

part one part two part four

“You know, when you said you wanted to ‘hang out’, I figured something like the mall. Not this!” You gawked at the building in front of you, jaw slack, and Jenna couldn’t help but laugh at your expression.

“What? You don’t like it?”

“I fucking love it, Jenna. Are you kidding? I’ve wanted to go here since I was a kid.” The two of you stood outside the Bradbury Building, an architectural landmark that you were more than interested in.

“Really? I was kind of seeing it as a hit or miss location because I didn’t know what you were into.” That was a lie.

The night you gave Jenna your number, you guys talked from when you got home at midnight until 3 AM. It was enjoyable, to say the least, because you felt a connection with her. With an eased mind, you let her know things about yourself—nothing deep, just who you are and who you’re surrounded with, mainly.

You had a dog, Aries, that lived at your parents house because your apartment doesn’t allow pets.

You had siblings—one sister and five brothers—though two of those brothers lived out of state for college and career purposes. You were the second oldest out of all of them; your eldest brother was Christian, who was 25, and you were 23.

But then came the piece of information that was morally important to Jenna. Your last name.

Immediately after texting Jenna goodnight, she searched your name on Instagram, clicking through dozens of accounts until landing on yours. You and an unknown man together were your profile picture, whom she assumed was your brother.

It was a public account with three thousand followers and five posts on it. Your most recent post, dated back five months, showed you in your graduation gown and cap holding up your diploma.

The caption is what caught her attention, though, reading ‘Certified Architect’.

It didn’t lie, either. You did have a bachelor's degree in architecture, and not long after graduating, you applied for a job at a big-name company, and you were hired, but not for another eight months at the time because all positions were filled. That’s why you picked up the high-paying job you have now, dealing with assholes day and night, but the money was worth it.

You wouldn’t be making as much as you currently did at the restaurant as an architect, but you didn’t care. You didn’t enjoy the waitress job, and the position you applied for at the company paid well.

That’s all that led Jenna to the bright idea of bringing you to the Bradbury Building, skimming reviews for over an hour on architectural landmarks before settling on the building in front of you.

She had no idea about your lifelong interest in visiting the building, though, so she guessed it really was a hit or miss on that part. “You ready?”

“What—oh, yeah, definitely. Come on.” You held out your hand, too immersed in the building to realize your action.

You weren’t a physical person, and you disliked when the hugs friends would give you lasted longer than needed. When you came to reality and saw your hand outstretched, patiently waiting, you were startled. Your dislike for touch came in the form of consent, and you threw all of that out of the window after not taking into consideration that she might not be up for physicality with you.

Before you could retract your hand and mutter an apology, you felt her hand grasp yours.

Your arm fell to your side as Jenna started walking, pulling you along. While you walked alongside her, your face contorted into a nervous expression, and you blew out a large breath you hadn't realized you had been holding.

“Welcome to the Bradbury! Would you guys be interested in scheduling a time for a tour guide, or would you like to explore the architecture yourselves?” You hadn’t taken more than three steps inside the building before a man stopped you, tall and formally dressed. He held out two brochures, which you and Jenna took with your free arms, thanking the man before Jenna spoke up. “By ourselves is fine, thank you.”

The man smiled and walked behind the four of you, with Eddie and Bennett walking at a distance from you and Jenna. She didn’t want them there, but because they were hired for day-to-day protection, all she could do was ask them to keep their distance. They agreed.

“What do we do here?” Jenna was a bit stumped, looking around the building to see railings, walkways, and even an elevator or two. You were more than happy to explain to her the extent of the architectural landmarks.

“You just kind of walk around. You’re meant to take in the design, the art, and there should be informative boards on when and how the building was built as well.” You looked down at Jenna, only to see her already looking at you. You shot her a lopsided smile to acknowledge your appreciation of her thorough listening. “It’s why these places aren’t always filled, because a lot of people would find it all boring.”

She nodded profusely, signing to you that she understood, or tried to understand, all of what you were saying. “Alright, architect, tell me all you know about this place then.”

You pursed your lips, contorting them into a smile. “Gladly.”

You and Jenna walked further, and you were right; there weren’t too many people there compared to art museums or other attractions. There was a passageway boarded off, possibly for renovations, so the two of you traveled down a hall with about three other people standing around.

“Well, for it’s history, the Bradbury started being planned in 1892 by it’s owner, Lewis Bradbury, and he hired an architect, Sumner Hunt, to design the building. The original design was supposedly scrapped because Bradbury didn’t like the imagery it gave, so he hired a draftsman by the name of George Wyman. He had no education as an architect, which led people to wonder if he even changed Hunt’s designs at all and who should be credited as the building's architect.”

“So Hunt got screwed over, basically.”

You nodded. “In credentials and work, yes. Wyman actually worked for Hunt, but I can assume that didn’t last long, you know?” You laughed, and so did she.

Jenna observed how each of your cheeks was marked with dimples and how your eyes narrowed. She was well aware of her own smitten ways toward you, but all she could do was try her hardest to brush them off. As far as she was aware, you were not interested in anything more than friendship.

“Bradbury died the same year, and the building opened a year later. As of now, it serves as the headquarters for the LAPD’s Internal Affairs Division. It’s why you can’t go up past the third stairway.”

“You seem to know a lot about it’s history.” Jenna quirked. Usually, she hated when people constantly talked; it was a major irk for her. She didn’t mind you at all. She blamed it on your smooth, slightly low voice—just a tad—and how calm you seemed when talking.

“Whenever I have an interest in something, I like to do a lot of research on it. I enjoy figuring out the history behind it, whether it’s a landmark or even a cup,” you laughed lightly. “It’s definitely a factor in why I minored in history.”

“Minored?”

“University. I minored in history and majored in architecture. Did I never mention that?” You swore you had, but you didn’t blame yourself. It was the middle of the night when the two of you texted, letting each other know more about yourselves, and you’d be lying if you said you were fighting sleep just to talk to Jenna.

“You didn’t, but it’s really cool. I hated school a lot, but for some reason, the idea of going to university always interested me. I never had the time for it, though, especially when the opportunity came.”

“When, after graduating high school?” Jenna nodded. “I started to garner more roles around that time, and it was clear to me that I couldn’t do it even online. I don’t think I would’ve made it through four years anyway, but I just kind of wanted to know what it was like to live that sort of life, you know?”

“Definitely.” You guys reached the beginning of the staircase, with Eddie moving from behind the two of you to open a low door that was blocking the entrance. The stairs were open, and Jenna’s foot went under a stair. It would’ve left her to fall if it weren’t for her grappling onto your shirt for support.

Your hands flew to her back, reflexes a lot quicker than her bodyguards, who didn’t comprehend that she almost fell until you had already stabilized her. “Are you alright?”

You bent down slightly, pushing the ankle of her leg and sliding her foot out from under the staircase while Bennett’s hands replaced yours on her back. You could feel Jenna let out a huge breath. “Yeah, I’m fine. Maybe a little embarrassed now.” Her cheeks were tinted pink, and her hands were fighting the urge to fly up to her face to cover herself.

“Don’t be. Stuff like that happens all the time, especially to me. It’s like I’m cursed.” You reassured her, and Jenna smiled at the idea of you falling. “Yeah, I can imagine that, and It’s kind of funny.”

“Oh, wow.” You dragged out your words, moving up the staircase with a falsely hurt and sarcastic expression on your face. Jenna followed, her hand resting on your shoulder in fear that she’d slip again. “That was pretty rude of y—oh my god.”

You walked up the last step, turning toward the wall where an engraving sat, reading something rather long and in small writing.

Jenna eyed how you darted your gaze everywhere, taking in the sight of whatever was on the wall as if it were the most precious thing you had seen in your life. “I think it’s time for another history lesson.”

“This absolute beauty,” your hands gestured to the wall, finger pads feeling over the engraved tiny-fonted words, “is the LB Treaty. It’s not actually a treaty, but people like to paint it as if it were. This is the artifact of peace that has been number one for me to see, but I never knew it was inside the Bradbury building itself.”

Still perplexed, Jenna cocked her head to the side to get a better view of it. The engravings sat in the middle of the wall, with scratches and symbols painted all over the wood. She looked at you, your brows furrowed and mouth agape in intense concentration, as if you were not sure if you were hallucinating or not. “What’s the point of it?”

You tore your fingers away from the wall, skimming over the title that read, “Lewis Bradbury Treaty of 1893,” in all capitals. "In 1892, it was discussed whether or not the Bradbury should be put up as a building of visitation, as in if people could visit the place. Bradbury argued no, but Hunt and Wyman both said yes.”

“Shouldn’t Bradbury have the upper hand since he was the owner, though?”

“Not necessarily, because Hunt and Wyman were both equally involved in the construction of the building. Even before Hunt was fired, he contributed to the location of the building as well as getting the official papers, and Wyman was important for the architecture, supposedly.” You shamelessly took a picture of the artifact, shoving your phone in your pocket and stepping back.

“They decided to solve their problem in the form of the law. They made a treaty, but before anyone could sign, Bradbury died, so Hunt forged his signature on the treaty and changed it up so the building could be accessible to all, instead of Bradbury’s plan to only make it accessible to the wealthy.”

“That’s kind of fucked.” Jenna snickered, moving along the stairwell. You took one last look at the treaty before following her, explaining to her more history on the way around as well as pointing out designs and the entire building's structure.

“Would it be too much to ask you to dinner?”

“I’m sorry?” Your ears perked, and you leant slightly closer to Jenna, unsure of what she said in her lowered voice.

She coughed, shoving her hands into her jacket pocket as the cool breeze hit the two of you while you exited the landmarks. The car rounded to the front with Bennett behind the wheel. “I was wondering if you wanted to get something to eat, as well, if you’re not busy for the rest of the night.”

Her tone was shy, almost unsure of herself, but she based it on a slight fear of rejection from you. All of it washed away when you gave her a lipped smile, opening the backseat door for her. “I’d love nothing more.”

As you entered the restaurant, you were visibly shocked at Jenna’s choice of dining. “This is, uhm,” you stumbled over your words, turning back to see Bennett arguing with the valet over car control. “I'm going to go out on a limb right now and say that this place is very expensive.”

“You’ve guessed correctly,” Jenna said as she walked away from the hostess, meeting your side on the waiting chairs and noticing your struck expression. “Sorry, I figured you’d be accustomed to places like this because you work in a Michelin-starred restaurant, but we can go somewhere else if you feel uncomfortable in-”

“It’s all good, Jenna.” You cut her off, pointing the palms of your hands in her direction to let her know that you’re fine. “I just feel a little underdressed, is all.”

You eyed your clothes from where you sat: a beige-brown shirt and black baggy jeans with black adidas as your choice of outfit. Meanwhile, all the staff and guests were all dressed in formals, button-ups, and dresses in every direction her eyes scanned.

“It’s alright.” Her hand rested on your shoulder in an attempt to ease your nerves, and your heart skipped a beat at the simple interaction. “I’ve been here a couple of times. Dressing up is just a shnack; the owners and workers could care less about how you look.”

You only nodded, standing when the hostess called Jenna’s name. Her hand still rested on your shoulder as the two of you ventured into the dining room, Eddie and Bennett resting in the car but still within eyesight of the two of you when the hostess guided you to a round table, chairs already outstretched.

You both muttered your thanks before moving to sit down, scanning the menus before giving your orders to the well-groomed man with slicked-back hair. You tried to ignore how he eyed Jenna, his gaze lingering on her, and, to top it off, a not-so-sly wink he sent her when he closed his notebook before walking away.

A busser came by soon after the waiter vanished, filling up both your cups with water before handing out complimentary champagne, ghosting over the fact Jenna wasn’t of drinking age. You watched as she examined the alcohol, her eyebrows raising at you as if she were telling you to test it first.

“Might as well take your opportunity of underage drinking while you can, yeah?” You joked before your lips met the glass, taking a light sip of the champagne, a 1959 Dom Perignon worth well over one thousand dollars.

Jenna took a sip of hers as well, humming at the caramel hints in the champagne. “To be honest with you, I’m not really hungry, but I could eat something to pass the time.” She admitted it, setting the glass down before meeting your addled eyes.

“Why did you ask me here, then?”

“Because I figured maybe you were hungry, and more-so taking this as the opportunity to get to know you more, if you’re willing to share more with me.” You nodded, setting your glass down as well. You took a sharp glance at your waiter serving another table, watching as his eyes darted to Jenna every few seconds.

“With my pleasure,” you said as you scooted your chair closer to the table, “ask me anything.”

Jenna was left in her own thoughts, thinking back to your guys’ earlier conversation about education and before that, when the two of you were texting. “How was university? High school, any form of social experience you’ve had.” She laughed at the overlapping of her own words. “I seriously can’t tell if you’re anti-social or not.”

“University had me close to ripping all of my hair out; that’s how I’ll summarize the experience.” Jenna giggled at your honesty, slowly succumbing to the fact that you had no filter when it came to your words. “It was a breeze at times. You just kind of went to the classes, did homework, and lived your life for the rest of the day until you had to repeat it. But then there are midterms and finals that have you hunched over your desk, nose in multiple textbooks, trying your absolute hardest just to get a 75% on the essay portions.”

“A 75% is passing!” Jenna argued, but you shook your head vigorously. “Not when you go to a student-competitive school with your classmates averaging 85% and higher on each test. It’s really tempting to quit at times when you see other people achieving what you worked hard for and didn’t get.”

Your voice sounded the same as earlier when you were explaining architectural history to Jenna not long ago: smooth and slightly low, intoxicating to anybody’s ears. “Yet you still hung on and got your degree.”

“Because I never fully deterred myself.” You took another sip of the champagne, maybe two, before continuing. “Whenever I felt like walking to the counselor's office and telling them that I wanted to leave, I thought about how hard I worked to get where I was and how much of my time and effort I would be wasting by just giving up because I was comparing myself to others. As long as I really keep my mindset, I think I can handle another two years, maybe even four.”

Jenna’s ears perked at the last sentence; she was not sure if she mistook your words. “What do you mean by more years?”

Before you could answer her, your rather flirtatious waiter came back around, two plates in his hands and a smaller third plate balanced off his arm. He handed the two of you your food before setting down the small plate next to Jenna’s main plate, “and a dessert, on the house, for somebody who looks so sweet.”

You grabbed a cloth that was set to the side, throwing it over your mouth and pretending to wipe something from it, but truthfully biting back the urge to laugh. The waiter winked at her once more before walking away, and it was then that you removed the cloth from your mouth, ducking your head down and trying your hardest to not laugh loudly.

“Stop it.” You felt another cloth hit your head, and you raised yourself up with your hand covering your mouth. “I’m sorry, but I had to! It was so corny.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She pushed the dessert away, taking a couple bites of her food before focusing her attention back on you, your demeanor returning to calm. “Now answer my question.”

“What—oh yeah. Um, I actually plan on going back to university soon.” Jenna’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion, and you presumed it was because of her food, but her words said otherwise. “You have your degree, though.”

“It’s a bachelor's, and I don’t feel like I’m truly going to get anywhere with a bachelor’s. I was thinking a master's or doctorate would get me even higher-paying and higher-role jobs, so I could try and make a name for myself. A master’s takes an extra two years; a doctorate takes an extra four.” You took a bite out of your food, giving a low hum of satisfaction while Jenna gathered your words together in her head.

“I guess that’s fair enough, coming from me, where I’d die if I had to take more acting classes.” You almost snorted at that, your cloth flying up from your hand to wipe the grime off your mouth before swallowing your food and giving a proper laugh.

The night slowly came to an end as you finished your food, fighting Jenna for the check before ultimately deciding to go 50/50, each paying three hundred dollars for rather pricy, though well-cooked, food. She warily took a note that your waiter gave her when returning both your cards, his phone number written on it, and deciding to throw it in a trashcan outside the restaurant when the two of you headed for the car.

“Poor waiter. He’s not getting a call tonight, is he?”

“Nope.”

The drive to your place took about twenty minutes, the restaurant being on the edge of Los Angeles and therefore far from your apartment. You let out a content sigh when the car came to a halt outside the building, not ready to end your day with Jenna despite the clock nearing 10 p.m.

You asked, “So how long is it going to take me until I can hang out with you again?” On the ride home, she told you about how she had to go out of state for a while to reshoot a couple of scenes for her upcoming movie and wouldn’t be in the country for a month or so.

“When I come back, I’m going to be busier than ever because of pushed-back meetings that I’ll need to take care of, but I think I can see you one day. I might or might not stop by your work looking for a well-dressed waitress in a mentally stressed state.”

You smiled a genuine one at her, rubbing your face, which was slowly deteriorating into tiredness. “You shouldn’t have told me that, because now I can’t wait for it.”

You exited the car from the left door, Jenna from the right, and rounded the car before embracing her in a hug that she reciprocated just as heartfully as you. Her hands were around your stomach area, and your arms were resting around her shoulders.

It was already cold out, goosebumps littering your skin because you had no jacket, and the feel of Jenna’s nose brushed up against your neck, her breath hitting your skin sent shivers down your spine.

“Goodnight, Jenna.”

“Goodnight, (Y/N).” And with that, Jenna got into the car that retreated out of the street, and you waltzed into your apartment lounge with nothing but post-excitement running through your blood, ready to knock out as soon as you laid on your bed.

“Welcome home, buddy.” You jumped at the voice, soon recognizing it to be Jack's, who sat on your couch with Scream 5 playing on the TV. “How was your date?”

“Hang out,” you corrected him, “and fucking awesome. I got to rant my heart out about architecture and my life. Why? Because Jenna wanted to hear about it, so suck it, you asshole.” Jack grabbed the remote, throwing it at your hip. He was the last person who ever wanted to hear you rant, plugging his ears with the tips of his fingers if you went a little overboard on explaining something.

“Alright, well, I’m going to sleep-”

“But I want to hear about your date!” He yelled out, watching you retreat into the hallway and into your room. “I’ll tell you about it tomorrow!”

Undressing into your usual nightwear, a white t-shirt and plaid shorts, it didn’t take you long to surrender yourself to sleep, only feeling the weight of your restlessness after you were away from Jenna.

A ringtone, a really annoying ringtone, was soon shut off by a hand clawing at their phone, grumbling at their sudden awakening but then it started again, and it took opening their eyes to see that it wasn’t an alarm but somebody calling them.

“Hello?”

“Jenna, why the hell are people saying that you’re now in a lesbian relationship?”

☟ ☟ ☟

hey guys 💁🏻‍♀️hope you enjoyed that and if you thought it was boring pls comment something so i can rewrite it to make it more interesting :) don’t ask me about the architecture part because i don’t know where i got it from either…

(ted mosby)

#jenna ortega #jenna ortega x reader #jenna ortega x fem!reader #jenna marie ortega #actress #crazyoffher #wednesday addams #celebrity x reader #wattpad #jenna ortega x y/n #jenna ortega x you #jennaortega #fluff #lesbian

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melancholicbutterflies · 11 months

Text

You Don’t Own Me

Summary: You’re tired of Elvis always telling you what you can and cannot do as his wife. You decide to pushback. He puts you in your place.

Warnings: underage, smut, dubious consent, bdsm themes (dd/lg), cursing, yandere!Elvis themes, breeding kink, 18+ (cannot stress this enough!)

Word Count: 4,046

It was a decision you would come to regret, but you were young and naive, and dreaming of a better life.

You met him at your high school. Elvis, up and coming rock ‘n roll sensation, had just returned from two years in the service and had successfully reformed his bad boy image in the eyes of parents everywhere. As such, he was permitted in venues since objected to (and the ones of teenage girls’ wet dreams).

Elvis the Pelvis was coming to your school, and students and teachers alike were all abuzz. Growing up in a very Christian family, you weren’t allowed to watch his performances, and knew only what you heard from friends of less strict upbringings, and the odd radio programming when you snuck into the teacher’s lounge.

Nothing could prepare you for what he looked like up close. Thick, dark hair that was somewhat cartoonish framed a devilishly handsome, tanned face with high cheekbones, sultry eyes, and a snarling smile that beckoned you. And he was tall, taller than any of the boys in class (although they were much younger, you had to concede). Still, he looked dapper in his suit, his well-loved acoustic guitar slung over his shoulder, devil hips cocked to one side.

He was a stunner, all right, and you were as good as gone.

You watched as he gave each and every person his undivided attention, all smiles and bashful head ducks. You wouldn’t have pegged him for humble, couldn’t imagine him being so with the amount of talent and charm and good looks he’d been endowed with, but he surpassed your every expectation. He was here to teach some scripture, and at some point he wove in some music, too. His voice was like a siren’s, no business singing such innocently devout lyrics.

At the end everyone clapped, and he went to signing autographs; the line took up the whole classroom and wrapped around the hallway as other students from classes that broke out joined in.

When it was your turn, he started, “who should I make it out to?” Pen poised, eyes tired as he lifted them to look at you with a waning smile, and he stopped. Nearly dropped the pad of paper then and there as he stared at you. You stared back, entranced, and found you were the first to break eye contact. “Well, it’s Y/N.”

“Y/N, huh” he snapped out of his reverie, eyes alight with... something, as he licked his lips. “What a pretty name for a pretty gal,” he scribbled something on the pad of paper, barely legible, but finished with a heart. His next words you couldn’t predict in your most wondrous of fantasies:

“Say, you wouldn’t wanna grab a burger and shake with me one o’ these days, would ya? Or am I gettin’ ahead of myself?”

Your mouth opened and closed like a fish, in shock. He laughed, hair flopping as his head tossed back. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

You nodded vigorously, finally finding your words, albeit breathily. “Yes!”

“It’s a date,” he said lowly, gaze now stuck on your lips.

It was nothing short of sweet. You avoided your coworkers interested looks as you sat down with Elvis, who’d held your purse as you slid in the booth opposite. You were hungry and he vocalized he liked a girl who ate and set down a tip that was more than you made in a shift. Ice cream followed, a nice walk in the park, and he drove you home, politely not commenting on the sort of neighborhood you lived in. “I had a nice time,” he said in the low light of the fading sun, leaning in real close. “I did, too.” You said it as you looked down in your lap until he picked your chin up, forcing your gaze to his. You thought he looked sinful for someone so religious.

“Good, because I really wanna kiss you, Y/N.”

You stopped him with a hand at his clavicle. “I can’t.” Looking backward, he saw a figure by the window, felt your sudden nervousness. It was about more than just want, and thankfully he understood. “Sure, baby, I get it. You’re unspoiled, aren’t you?” His eyes implored you.

Reticently, you nodded, not fully understanding his meaning but knowing enough.

It should have concerned you how happy he looked at that.

Pretty soon he showed up everywhere. At the local diner, your ballet lessons, even one late night you were out walking your dog, Marnie. You could have sworn you saw a car at the end of the street, eyes watching under darkness. It was unnerving, it was exciting; you hadn’t experienced the weight of someone’s entire attention on you before now.

If you were less naive, you might have questioned why a grown man who had plenty else to do was expending so much effort getting to know you. It all became clear one day when he took you out to dinner, not just at any restaurant, but the fanciest one in town, followed by a romantic moon-lit walk at the beach and kneeled before you in the sand asking you to marry him.

You said yes, of course, and he looked like the happiest man alive as he wrapped you up in a breathtaking kiss. You two couldn’t wait to get to his hotel, and made love right then and there, the sounds of the ocean waves lapping in the distance.

He wanted to marry at once, and only a few days later you were at the courthouse exchanging vows. None of your friends could come (they were all in school), and only a few of his came, including his father, who hadn’t exactly looked favorably on you, but knew his son couldn’t be reasoned with once he set his mind to something. The colonel scowled in the corner, smoking his pipe up a storm. Your mom and dad wanted nothing to do with the whole affair and had all too happily washed their hands of you, signing paperwork to allow you to wed before your eighteenth birthday.

When it was time to say, ‘I do’, you did so enthusiastically, and a beautiful smile broke out on his handsome face. He pulled you in, thumbing your bridal veil, and kissed you like a man possessed. You were forever changed in that moment.

Mrs. Elvis Presley. It was like a dream come true.

And for a while, it was.

Elvis was attentive, doting, a true joy to be around. He took care of everything for you. You wanted for nothing. You were happy, happier than you ever thought possible in your short and, up till now, wretched life. Elvis changed everything for you, and you were eternally grateful.

But, like all dreams, there came a time when reality set in. The bubble burst. Oh, boy, did it ever.

It started with little things, at first.

Before he’d met you, you worked at a diner waiting tables. Now that you were married, he claimed there was no reason to keep waitressing. “Waste of time,” he remarked, “’sides, who’d wanna keep on their feet like that all day long when you don’t have’ta? Nuh-uh, didn’t think so. You’ll put in your notice tomorrah’.”

You thought to object, but he had a point. It was enjoyable enough to you, sure, passed the time all right, and gave you some pocket change to buy things for yourself that your parents never would. But now with Elvis occupying your days, and making just about a hundred times what you ever did after a full day’s work just sitting around, what was the point? Your coworkers, as nice as they were, were hardly reason enough.

So you promptly shut your mouth and smiled, giving him a big hug, and that was that.

Then it was your hair:

“Oh, doll,” he crooned one night after a heavy bout of lovemaking, running his meaty paw through your thick, wavy hair. “Wouldn’t you look good with straightened hair?”

You turned to him in mild surprise, still blissed out. “You never said a thing about my hair before. Don’t you like it?”

“Oh, ‘course I do, baby. I just thought you might like to keep up with the fashion is all. All them girls have their hair straight these days.”

“I guess that’s true.” You admitted. “And, say, maybe you ‘oughta darken it while you’re at it. Might be nice to have us match, you know.” You touched a hand to your hair, furrowing your brows as he leaned in to nuzzle your neck, applying light, sweet kisses there. It was awfully distracting, your hand falling limp on the bed as you gasped.

“Promise me you’ll think ‘bout it, at least...” He murmured low between kisses that went ever lower. “Oh, sure.”

“Good girl,” he growled, and he said something about “...have Jer make an appointment at that salon o’ Sandy’s.” And he proceeded to eat you out.

As time went on, that charming, subtle needling to shift your behaviors in his favor turned meaner:

Once before a press conference, he stopped you in the hallway, seizing your arm. “Hey, what’s wrong—” you winced as he twisted it around harshly in an effort to inspect your hand. “Quit it, E, that hurts.”

“What is this?” He looked at you angrily, disappointed, even.

“What is what?” You didn’t see anything other than your ring, which was where it should be, on your ring finger without anything out of the ordinary. When you saw where his eyes were directed, you realized he meant your nail polish.

“So it’s a little chipped. Who cares?”

“Who cares?” He seethed. “I care, and if you had any sense in ya you would too! Everything you do reflects on me, little girl, so when you look like a cheap hussy, you make me look bad. Make ‘em think I can’t take care of my baby. Get it?”

He wasn’t shouting, he wasn’t even raising his voice, but the venom dripping from his quiet wrath was so much worse.

Tears built at the corner of your eyes and you ducked your head, turning on your heel to run back toward the bedroom before he caught you by the arm again. You thought he’d apologize, say he overreacted. He didn’t. Instead he said: “Dry those eyes, girl, and put on a smile. I don’t care if it ain’t real, but I won’t have ya embarrassin’ me.”

It only snowballed from there.

Your whole wardrobe was thrown out, and a new one replaced to match with Elvis’. You didn’t finish school, didn’t do ballet anymore. You still cooked and baked now and then, but only on special occasions. Mary did all the real cooking in the house, and she already knew what Elvis liked and she did it well. Drinking, although technically not even legal, was forbidden (“a lady shouldn’t drink, you’ll get sloppy and less chivalrous men than myself’ll take advantage. Don’t want that, do ya?”)

Want to go to the movie with some friends? Think again. Boys weren’t allowed anywhere in your vicinity: he barely let Red, trusted bodyguard of the Memphis Mafia, guard you. He said he didn’t like his wandering eye one time. Personally, you thought he was delusional, but didn’t bother arguing since you hadn’t exactly taken a liking to the man.

Your friends were more acquaintances now, and when you saw them, you didn’t know what to say. They’d moved on, had new friends or new boyfriends. They felt you abandoned them (you did, although not intentionally). You never felt more alone in your life, and yet you were never alone; Elvis made sure of that, always having someone stay behind to watch you when he couldn’t.

Eventually it was the summer, your first summer as a married couple in fact, and you were invited to your cousin’s wedding. It was her high school sweetheart; they got the bug from you and wanted to get hitched as soon as they graduated high school. You were hellbent on making it to that wedding, come hell or high water. Elvis, as your husband, was of course also invited and expected as your plus one. They were renting out a small venue in Nashville, and the bride-to-be wanted you as her bridesmaid if not the maid-of-honor (a role you suspected in the back of your mind would have easily been yours pre-Elvis, but post-Elvis you was less reliable, and you couldn’t fault her for making that decision).

Elvis’ first reaction to it surprised you. After all, he’d hardly wanted you to leave his side and had grown increasingly controlling. So when he said, “Sure, hunny,” you almost questioned if you’d imagined it.

You were ecstatic. “Oh, thank you, Elvis. Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Each word of gratitude was punctured by a kiss all over his face and any other bare patch of skin you could reach. He laughed that booming laugh of his and pulled you in to give you a proper one. “Well, if that’s the way you were gonna thank me I ‘oughta have more o’ your friends get married!”

This was Fall. Now that it was summertime, and the wedding weekend was upon you, he put his foot down.

“No,” he said simply, not even sparing you a glance as he casually strummed his acoustic guitar, legs spread apart on the couch. Your mouth nearly fell to the floor, and you felt a distinct ringing in your ears, your heartbeat speeding up. Blinking, you saw a few of his Mafia crew milling about, pretending they’d gone deaf and blind as your temper rose.

“What?” You screeched.

You did.

You almost forgot what it sounded like, your defiance. It was spectacular, and you thought you had never felt so angry in your life.

And you had a right to, damn it. You did everything this man said and more. You dyed your hair black, you straightened it to his liking, you always had a fresh paint of nails, you wore the dresses he picked out for you, even the ones with the ruffles that you couldn’t stand, and wanted to make you tear your eyes out of your sockets. You stopped working because he said so (although that was not entirely something worth fighting). But you left school, and you stopped talking to your friends for months until they stopped trying so hard and all you had was him and his damn Mafia. The girlfriends and wives didn’t even hardly talk to you. You were too young and there was very little in common.

You think you spewed all this out to him in your rage, not thinking it even made sense, but you wanted him to feel what he put you through, and being his wasn’t enough if you didn’t have a life outside of his wants and desires.

Finally, chest heaving, out of words to say in your tirade, you saw him through blurry, teary eyes. He’d frozen, shoulders hunched, body tensed for a fight. He looked around the room, but he needn’t — his Mafia was nowhere to be seen now. His eyes cut to you, dark and stormy, as he rose to his full height and strode towards your panting figure.

It was a sight to behold, your husband so angry. He’d been cross with you — lord knew he’d been annoyed on many an occasion — but enraged was new. It felt like the point of no return. Like he’d really hurt you this time, all those words about never laying a hand on a woman falling by the wayside.

“Now, Elvis, hold on now—”

“Long past time for that, baby. You been backsassin’ me and I won’t stand for it.”

Your eyes cut to the side, seeing a crack in the doorway.

“Don’t you even think about it, lil’ girl.” Elvis growled. You yelped as he took you in his arms, forcefully tugging you to the couch where he fell back against it, the momentum leaving you to fall across his lap in a rather unlady-like manner.

“Elvis, please, I’m sorry,” you began, attempting in vain to rise from the precarious position he had you in. His arm only tightened its hold around your waist much like a boa constrictor around its prey. “Should’a thought ‘a that before you went off like that. Now, sit tight and take your punishment.”

He hit you, then. He actually did it. But it wasn’t across your face or strangling your neck like you’d heard some women claiming of their husbands. He’d pulled up your dress so that it hung your belly and pulled down your lace underwear so that you were bare-bottomed and smacked your butt with his open palm, rings and all.

You gasped first, shocked that it had happened, and that it felt like it did; the contrast of his warm skin and the cold metal rings was a contrast you hadn’t known you needed. Then as one became two, and two became three, and four and five, and so on... you’d lost track, a strange feeling built up in your lower abdomen that felt familiar yet also foreign.

Were you... enjoying this absurd, perverted version of punishment? Surely you weren’t getting turned on by your husband beating you like an errant child?

And yet... you couldn’t deny the flare of hot want flowing through you, and you certainly couldn’t deny the wet stickiness that started collecting in your bared cunt. You had to bite your lip from making your desire audible; you were angry, aghast that your husband would go to such lengths for simply voicing your very legitimate frustrations to him.

When a slap fell slightly lower, just catching the bottom of your pussy lips, you couldn’t contain your excitement. A moan slipped past your lips.

Elvis froze, cock hardening in his pants some.

Your eyes widened, cursing yourself internally. The last thing you wanted was for the bastard to know some part of you was enjoying yourself. You wouldn’t look at him, burying your head in the side of his thigh, even as you felt that hot and searing gaze of his on you. You were humiliated, something you hadn’t thought possible after what he’d already done.

“Well, well,” he drawled, voice deeper, thick with lust. “Seems my baby likes this more than she should.”

“Please, Elvis, let me go,” you begged.” You’ve had your fun, being humiliated like this is punishment enough.”

He laughed, barrel chest vibrating against you. “Oh, hunny, I ain’t nearly done with you. In fact,” he circled your ass with his palm, your slick wetting his fingers now. “The fun’s just begun.”

“What—” You interjected, only to cry out loudly (or perhaps moan, it was some contrived version of the two), as he promptly pushed his fingers deep into your crevice, the warm, wet walls hugging his long digits with gusto.

He hissed, “oh, baby girl, that vice of yours just about does my head in. I need to be inside you now.” He started fumbling with his slacks, the belt coming undone in record time as he pulled his rock-hard cock out of his boxers. He gave it a good tug, grimacing at the action. The tip was red and weeping, practically twitching with need.

“C’mere,” he said, positioning you where he wanted you like a doll. “On all fours, that’s right, just like that hunny.” Your knees met the carpeted floor, hair falling around you like a curtain as your head bent. You know he could go deep like this, but usually you had sex facing one another. He could piss you off to no end, but sex was always a sacred thing between you two. This felt cold, unfeeling. Fucking was what it was; he could care less to see you, he only wanted to possess you. You felt cheap, a plaything — and yet your cunt continued to thud with need.

“Jesus, you’re a pretty sight,” he rubbed his cock over your pussy lips, grab at your ass, take another smack of it and delighting in the jiggle of it. “Please, Elvis, just...” You pleaded, and he cut a look at you. “Don’t think you’re much in the position to be makin’ any sorta demands, doll.”

You hung your head, sighing, waiting for him to get his fill. “Oh, hell,” he said, “you’re lucky I can’t hardly wait anymore either.” And with that he pushed into you, causing a surprised yelp to leave your throat. Pulling on your hair, causing your back to arch towards him, he set a punishing, brutal pace, one that hard you seeing stars. In this position, he could hit your g-spot dead on, and hit it he did.

“Oh, godddd,” you groaned, scraping a hand back to hold onto his arm holding onto you. He huffed a laugh that turned strangled toward the end. “Not God, darlin’, but close.”

You would have snorted at the cheesy line if you weren’t full of his cock.

“Nothin’ to say?” He taunted. “That’s a real shame. To think you just needed some good dick to quiet down. Bet you ain’t never had one good as me.”

It wasn’t a statement, he expected an answer, but you were too far gone in the blissed-out feeling to recognize it.

Smacking your sore ass harshly, he repeated his words. “Ain’t you? Say it, or I swear to God I’ll stop right now and won’t let you come.”

“Yes, E, yes! You’re the best I’ve had,” you cried as the building sensation waned. “That ain’t my name, try again.”

“Daddy,” you whispered, feeling some shame about it. You always felt weird about calling him that even though your relationship with you father had never been close, but he demanded you refer to him in that way.

“Daddy what?”

“Daddy you’re the best I’ve ever had,” you admitted. He smiled; really, you would have said anything to have him keep fucking you the way he was.

“That’s right,” he pet your head, slipping his cock back into your tight hole as your eyes rolled back in your head. “You’re my good girl when you’re like this, almost forgotten you was bad earlier. Throwin’ a temper tantrum back there after all I done for you. Ungrateful. And for what? Some weddin’ you felt you needed to go to?” He tutted you, each word punctured by a punishing stab at your cervix; the pain intermingled with pleasure to create a heady concoction leaving you at a loss of words. Intelligible ones, anyhow.

“Ye-ah...” you moaned.

“What was that?” Elvis goaded, pinching your swinging titties between his hands.

“A-agree, I w-was bein’ bad.”

“Right. ‘Cause the only person you should be worryin’ about is me. Your husband.”

“Mhm.”

“Hmm,” he hummed deeply. “Need you just as much, more than ‘em. Can’t have you halfway ‘cross the state if somethin’ came up.”

He soothed your head, running his fingers through your dampening hair. “Need my yittle baby by my side, and she needs her daddy,” he cooed in the baby-talk language he loved so much.

You nodded, more so due to the buildup in your pelvic region. He groaned, feeling the tighening in his balls as your walls started fluttering around him.

“Shit, hunny, you got me ready to burst. You gon’ take it? Take all my lovin’?”

“Yes, Daddy! I’ll take it all.”

“Gonna fill you up,” he mumbled, hips moving erratically now. “Fill you up with my babies ‘till your big and swollen with my seed. Shi-itt—!”

You cried out at the sensation of his warmth shooting into you, triggering your orgasm.

“Agh!” He yelled, falling over you, hips slowly still moving as if to fuck more into you. You collapsed on the floor, and he was right behind you. You two laid on the floor in the fading light that spilled through the French windows.

Turning so that he was looking at you, he pulled your face to his in a deep, slow kiss. “You gonna let Daddy take care of you?”

You hesitated, knowing what he wanted of you. “Yes, Daddy. I’ll make the call tonight.”

He grinned, looking every bit the angel and devil as he hovered over you. “Good girl.”

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