#I feel like I wanted to tag something else

[gojover]

WOULD THAT I.

he has spent four lifetimes repenting for his sins and searching for you. in the fifth, he finally gets it right.

pairing: jinu x fem!reader tags & warnings: romance, angst, hurt/comfort; reincarnation!au, previously established relationship!au. changes to canon. mentions of death & sins, blood, injuries, past lives, jinu remembers all his lives but learns how to love you in each one, profanity, alcohol consumption, historical inaccuracies, implied sex, etc. inspired by hozier’s would that i. word count: 8.7k

SEOUL, KOREA. EARLY WINTER, 1936.

It’s become a habit now, for Jinu to walk the alley behind Hwaryeohan Cha-jip every morning. He tells himself he’s just passing through, just out for air, but his feet always take the same turn—past the ink shop, past the frozen rice fields. The snow came early that year, dusting the rooftops of Bukchon in white. Jinu walks until he finds the teahouse, half-tucked between two aging hanoks, with its faded wooden sign and wind chimes made of porcelain spoons.

You work there. He knows this now.

You sweep the floors with your hair tied up in a red ribbon, humming songs no one else seems to know. You boil water in the back room, your sleeves rolled up past your elbows, wrists red from the heat. Sometimes you lean out the window to shake out a cloth, and Jinu watches from across the street, heart in his throat, as if looking at you might somehow unmake the curse.

It doesn’t.

Gwi-Ma’s words still echo like older thunder in his ears. One lifetime for every sin, the demon king had said. He doesn’t remember what he did to deserve this; only that it was enough for the king to curse him with memory, and longing, and you.

You, who never remembers him. You, who are always just out of reach.

Still, this life feels different. He’s not a lonely musician. He’s just Jinu. Just a man in a wool coat with frayed sleeves and too many lifetimes folded into the lines around his eyes.

Somehow, that compels him to step inside.

The bell above the teahouse door is delicate and cracked, like it’s been broken and glued back together a dozen times. It tinkles faintly as he enters, and you glance up from behind the counter. He orders ginger tea. It’s too hot, a little bitter. He drinks it anyway.

You don’t say much to him at first, just slide the cup forward with a polite nod, fingers dusted with flour, and return to kneading dough in the back. Jinu sits in the corner, watching steam curl from the rim of his cup, pretending to read a book he’s read a thousand times before.

He returns the next day. And the next.

Sometimes you smile at him now. Sometimes you ask if he wants something sweet with his tea. He always says yes, just to hear your voice again.

“Do you work nearby?” you ask one morning, wiping your hands on your apron.

“No,” he says. “I walk a lot.”

You tilt your head. “Even in the snow?”

“Especially then,” he says, and you laugh. The sound cuts through every century he’s lived without you. It makes something ancient in him ache.

You tell him your name one day. He already knows it, of course, but he pretends it’s the first time. He says it softly, rolls it on his tongue like a promise.

He brings small things sometimes: a book of poems; a silk ribbon the same colour as the one you wear; once, a tiny jade rabbit charm that he leaves near the register when you’re not looking. You find it later and keep it in your purse. You never ask if it’s from him, and he never tells you.

Some days, he helps. He carries water from the well; repairs a broken chair leg; teaches you how to fold paper cranes when the shop is slow. You sit across from him at the low table, your hands awkward at first, and he watches you fold the wings silently.

You crease the edge of the paper with your thumbnail, tongue poking out slightly in concentration. Jinu doesn’t laugh, though the sight of you furrowing your brow over something as simple as a paper crane is enough to pull a smile to his mouth. He leans forward and gently adjusts the angle of the folded wing.

“Like this,” he says quietly.

Your fingers brush, briefly, barely. It’s nothing—but to him, it’s everything.

After that, you start leaving out an extra cup when you brew tea in the morning, even before he walks in. You stop pretending not to notice the way he always sits in the same corner seat. You learn that he prefers ginger tea with honey, that he likes his bread warm and his jam unsweetened. You listen to him hum under his breath when he reads, even though his eyes don’t always move across the page.

He learns that you braid your hair when you’re nervous, and that you’re saving up for a trip to Busan, and that you talk to the teapot when you think no one’s listening.

Sometimes, when it snows harder than usual, you don’t get any customers and the city stays quiet. On those days, you sit across from each other on the heated floorboards, sipping tea and listening to the wind rattle the windows.

Once, you fall asleep like that—cheek pressed to your folded arms, exhaustion shuttering your eyelids. Jinu doesn’t wake you. He watches the snow gather on the windowsill and thinks about how peaceful your face looks in this life. 

He wonders if this is enough. If friendship is enough.

You wake, embarrassed, and he just smiles and tells you to rest more. You blink at him, still sleepy but shake your head, so he asks if you want to learn how to fold a lotus next. You do.

PARIS, FRANCE. SUMMER, 1890.

It’s your honeymoon. At least, that’s what the world thinks.

The hotel is charming in the way French hotels are supposed to be—wrought-iron balconies, velvet drapes, and wallpaper the colour of old pearls. The floorboards creak under his feet, and the hallways smell faintly of orange blossoms and candlewax.

Below, the Seine coils through the city, meandering long and slow. Gondoliers shout in lilting voices from the water. The bouquinistes have already opened their green boxes along the banks, selling secondhand poetry and crumbling maps to tourists who still believe Paris belongs to lovers.

Maybe it does. Just not to the two of you.

Jinu stands by the window, shirt half-buttoned, tie discarded somewhere near the settee. The silk catches on the carved wooden leg. The breeze lifts the edge of the curtain, letting in the sound of clattering dishes from the café downstairs.

The light falls soft on your face where you sit at the vanity, brushing your hair in long, even strokes, the red ribbon that you’d used to tie your hair back wrapped around your wrist. Your nightgown is lace-trimmed and far too sheer for the cool morning. He thinks it must be uncomfortable. But you wear it anyway, spine straight, chin lifted, always composed. You don’t look at him. You haven’t looked at him all morning.

There are two coffee cups on the table. One is untouched. You didn’t like the roast, but you won’t tell him that. You’ll let it sit there and grow cold because indifference is your sharpest weapon, and you know exactly how to wield it.

The lace shifts again as you move, bare shoulders catching the gold light. It’s almost enough to make him forget; almost enough to believe this life could be different. Maybe, if he just reached out—if he touched your shoulder, softly, just once—you’d remember something. The way your fingers once curled around the fabric of his hanbok, or the way you said his name.

It’s your honeymoon, and you can barely stand to be in the same room.

TOKYO, JAPAN. SPRING, ONE WEEK AGO.

Jinu promises to take you to see the cherry blossoms after work.

You’re half-asleep on the sofa when he tells you, legs tucked beneath you, your blouse rumpled and your slacks creased at the knees. Your fingers are curled around a mug of ginger tea you’ve forgotten to sip from, the steam long faded. The apartment glows in the evening light—low and golden, brushing everything it touches with warmth. It rests on your cheek, your collarbone, the line of your neck.

The window is cracked open just enough for the air to carry the sound of birds and distant footsteps. Someone laughs downstairs—the neighbour’s kid, maybe, or a passing couple. In the kitchen, the rice cooker clicks off with a soft chime, and the smell of jasmine rice begins to mingle with the faint perfume of laundry soap and honey.

The sakura have started blooming early this year, soft clouds of pink dusting every street, like the city’s been dipped in blush and left to dry slowly. He noticed them that morning on his walk to the train: the way petals clung to the sidewalk like confetti, the way one landed on the shoulder of your coat and you didn’t notice.

“Don’t forget,” you mumble without opening your eyes, voice warm and worn out, lips brushing the rim of the mug. Your feet are bare, and you wiggle your toes sleepily when he sits beside you.

“I won’t,” Jinu says, and he means it.

He never forgets, not in this life.

He reaches over and gently lifts the mug from your hands, careful not to spill it, and sets it on the coffee table beside your phone and a half-finished crossword. Your handwriting is in blue pen—curvy, a little impatient. He glances at it, then turns his attention back to you.

“You should change out of your work clothes,” he says.

“M’comfy,” you whisper, not moving an inch.

He laughs softly. “You say that. Then you complain about the wrinkles in the morning.”

You hum noncommittally, already slipping towards sleep. Your head tilts until it rests against his shoulder. He shifts a little to make it easier. Your hair smells like lemongrass shampoo and the rose spray you use in early spring. Jinu leans his cheek gently against the top of your head.

“Are we going tomorrow or Saturday?” you ask.

“Tomorrow,” Jinu says. “I want to go before the crowds come.”

“You hate crowds,” you agree, nodding.

“You hate them more.”

You smile. “Smart man.”

Jinu slides his arm behind your back, warm and solid and steady. He closes his eyes and listens—to your breath, to the tick of the clock on the wall.

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA. EARLY SUMMER, 1972.

Jinu slings his arm over your bare waist, and thinks that this might be the life.

Maybe Gwi-Ma took pity on him. Maybe this is a loophole, and it comes with jazz and heat and the way your lipstick smeared against his collar an hour ago. Maybe it’s not a trick. Maybe, for once, he gets to stay.

Your breath is steady now, but your skin is still flushed, slick with the last traces of sweat. The cotton sheets stick to your thigh where it’s thrown over his hip, and your fingers twitch against his ribs, still restless in sleep.

He lets his hand drift up the slope of your side, slow and gentle, the way a man touches something he knows will leave him. He watches your lashes flutter, the corner of your mouth twitch as you stir.

“Are you awake?” he asks.

You hum without opening your eyes. “Barely.”

He presses a kiss behind your ear. “Should I stop?”

“If you’re asking that, you already know the answer.”

So Jinu doesn’t stop. His hand moves, slow and familiar now, tracing the curve of your hip. You shift closer, still half-asleep, until your leg slides between his and your mouth brushes against the underside of his jaw.

It’s easy like this. Too easy.

Your bodies know each other even if your minds don’t. There’s no fumbling anymore, no pretending. Just heat and breath and the memory of your name whispered into the crook of his neck, again and again, like you’re trying to brand yourself into him. Maybe you are.

He holds you afterward, and listens to the rain starting up again outside the window—soft at first, then steadier. Jazz spills in from the bar two floors down, muffled by distance and glass, but still there. Like everything in this city, it lingers.

“You’re staring,” you say eventually, not unkindly.

“I do that,” Jinu says.

“Why?”

“Do I need a reason?”

You make a soft sound in the back of your throat, somewhere between amusement and disbelief, and burrow deeper into his chest. Your fingers trace a line over his collarbone, idle and absentminded, like you’re not really thinking about what you’re doing.

“You always act like you know something I don’t,” you mumble. “Like you’ve been waiting for me to figure it out.”

Jinu swallows. “Figure out what?”

“Whatever it is you keep hiding behind your eyes,” you say. “You always look so sad, Jinu.”

His arm tightens around you just slightly. 

You’re not wrong. You never are, not in any life. Even without memory, your intuition is as sharp as it’s always been. You’re like a compass that always swings toward the truth, even when the truth is something you have no idea about. 

Jinu considers lying, or laughing it off. But you shift again, and your thigh brushes against his. You’re close—so close, close enough that he almost lets the truth slip past his teeth. You’ve died in my arms before. You’ve looked at me with your last breath. I’ve been cursed to find you again and again and again.

Instead, he says, “Maybe I just like the way you look when you sleep.”

“Poetic.”

“I try.”

You lift your head to look at him. There’s mascara smudged beneath your eyes, and a tiny crease on your cheek where it pressed against the pillow. Your mouth is a little swollen from kissing, and your voice is hoarse in the way that drives him insane.

“You know this isn’t forever, right?” you say, softly, like you’re offering him a kindness by saying it first.

“I know,” Jinu says.

You nod, like that’s what you needed to hear. “Good.”

But you don’t move. You don’t pull away. You rest your chin on his chest and look at him like you’re memorising the shape of his nose and the colour of his eyes.

“God,” you whisper after a while. “This would be so much easier if you were an asshole.”

Jinu laughs and says, “I can be, if it helps.”

“No,” you say, shaking your head. “You’re good. That’s the problem.”

He kisses your forehead and tries not to think about the way your voice cracked.

JOSEON, KOREA. WINTER, 1798.

It is snowing the first time Jinu sees you, and your name forms on his mouth like habit.

It’s not the name you carry now—not the one assigned to you by court records and a royal appointment, or the one embroidered into the hem of your hanbok in gold thread. It is the name you’ve had in your previous lifetime. The name he’s whispered into your skin, into your dying hands.

Jinu doesn’t say it aloud. He doesn’t dare.

He watches you from the far side of the courtyard, where the snow has muffled the world and the stone paths disappear beneath white. His breath fogs in the air. A court servant speaks beside him—something about a grain levy in Jeolla—but Jinu isn’t listening. He couldn’t, even if he tried.

You walk gracefully, holding a lacquered tray to your chest, with your back straight. Your hair is pulled into a sleek bun, adorned with a single ornamental binyeo shaped like a plum blossom. It is the sign of a new concubine: favoured and untouched. The wind catches your sleeve and flutters it gently, and his chest clenches at the sight of your wrist. A thousand memories flicker through his mind like reeds in the current.

Yet, your face is unfamiliar in this first life. Younger, and softer. Your eyes don’t carry memory. You don’t look at him with recognition or contempt. You don’t look at him at all.

You pass through the courtyard, and Jinu stands frozen under the shadow of a ginkgo tree, as though time itself has collapsed.

Later, in his private study, he asks about you. He pretends it’s nothing—an idle inquiry wrapped in courtesy, spoken to the right eunuch over warm rice wine.

“The girl who came last month,” he says, carefully. “The concubine gifted by the Governor of Gangwon. What do we know of her?”

“The new Lady?” The eunuch says your new name, the one that doesn’t feel right in Jinu’s mouth. “She is quiet and well-mannered. Literate, I believe, though she comes from no family of rank. She entered the palace under the northern court’s petition—her village suffered a flood, and her people sought mercy. The Governor offered her as tribute.”

“Tribute,” Jinu repeats, tasting the word like ash.

“She was chosen for her beauty,” the eunuch adds. “Nothing more.”

PARIS, FRANCE. SUMMER, 1890.

You married him because you had to.

It was a bargain struck behind closed doors, a compromise made with fathers and fortunes and convenience. He had wealth, and you had a family in debt. It was all very civilised, very French. The papers printed your photograph beside a headline that called it a union of elegance and fortune. They didn’t print the part where you refused to meet his eyes.

At dinner, you speak to him in French, formally, like a woman who doesn’t wish to be misunderstood, and doesn’t care to be known. You order for yourself. You never ask if he’s read the books you quote. You let the silence stretch until it breaks and sip your half-finished wine instead.

Jinu lets you. He nods when appropriate, smiles when it seems polite, swirls his wine, and pretends not to watch the way you cut your food too carefully.

He thinks about how different your voice sounds in this life. How your laughter is a stranger to him. He remembers the you who laughed easily, the you who danced barefoot in the snow, the you who wrote him letters in the margins of books and left pressed flowers between the pages. That version of you isn’t here.

In this lifetime, you wear gloves to dinner and never once let your fingers brush his.

But you’re beautiful. God, you’re beautiful.

It kills him a little, every time.

You look like a painting he’s seen before and can’t quite place; one he’s spent lifetimes trying to find again. Now that you’re here—flesh and blood, name and ring and contract—you’re more unreachable than ever.

You don’t sleep in the same bed. The suite has two, and that’s something you requested specifically. He remembers the clerk glancing at him with a look that hovered between pity and apology.

The bellboy had asked, “Madame, shall I draw the curtains between the beds?”

“Yes, thank you,” you had said.

You don’t ask him questions: not about his work, not about his past. Not about the faraway look he sometimes gets when the light hits the Seine just right. He doesn’t ask you, either. The truth is, you are not his, in this life.

He wonders if you dream of him. He wonders if somewhere deep in your chest, beneath the silk and bone and flesh, something stirs when he says your name. He wonders if you ever wake in the middle of the night with a pang in your heart that you don’t understand.

Jinu hopes so, because he has woken up like that every night of this life.

SEOUL, KOREA. WINTER, 1937.

By the time Seollal passes and the paper lanterns are taken down, the people in the neighbourhood begin to notice—not with suspicion or idle gossip, but with a kind of slow, blooming fondness. They don’t whisper behind their hands or snicker when Jinu walks by. Instead, they smile.

The old woman with the parrot—Madam Kwon, who lives above the fermented soybean shop—starts referring to Jinu as your shadow. Every morning, as she feeds her bird sesame seeds and counts her prayer beads in the sun, she croaks out, “Your shadow’s early today,” when Jinu turns the corner near the tea shop. The parrot repeats her, mangled and gleeful. Sha-dow, sha-dow!

You glance up from the window, smothering a smile.

The boy from across the alley, barely thirteen, who runs errands for the ink shop, has started tipping his cap at Jinu each morning. One day, when he passes, he calls out with the overconfidence of youth, “She likes persimmons, you know. Bring her some. The kind with the wrinkly skins.”

Jinu hides his amusement behind a polite nod. The next day, a small cloth pouch of dried persimmons appears on the tea shop counter. You don’t say anything, just tuck them into the cupboard—but you save one, and when Jinu comes in at closing, you place it on a small plate beside his tea without a word.

The grocer, Mr. Baek, an older man with a permanent frown and a weak knee, lets Jinu pick through the fresh vegetables first whenever he sees him on the path to the tea shop.

“You work too hard, boy,” Mr. Baek grumbles as Jinu hoists a basket of firewood onto one shoulder.

“He’s not a boy,” Madam Kwon snorts from her usual perch. “He’s a man, Baek. Can’t you tell?”

“A man, huh?” Mr. Baek eyes Jinu’s hands, callused from helping with the heavy work around the shop. “Well, even a man needs to rest his back before it breaks.”

Jinu only smiles. “I’ll rest after I’ve swept the steps for her.”

They all approve of him, though none say it directly. The world is starting to tuck Jinu into your corner of it without him needing to ask.

One afternoon, while the snow still clings to the gutters but the breeze carries a hint of plum blossoms, an elderly couple walks in from out of town. They speak in slow dialect, asking for ginger tea and warmth for their aching bones. Jinu is seated by the window, sketching quietly in his notebook. As you prepare the tea, the woman glances at him, then at you.

“Your husband doesn’t say much,” she remarks.

You nearly spill the water. “He’s not— I mean, we’re not—”

Jinu looks up, and the couple laughs kindly. “Ah, forgive us,” the man says. “You have that look about you.”

“What look?” you ask, wary.

“The look of people whose silence with each other is comfortable.”

You don’t respond, but when you set the tray down in front of them, you notice Jinu watching you closely. After they leave, you go to clear the table. There’s an extra coin left on the tray, and the old woman has pressed a paper fortune beside it: “Love that arrives quietly stays the longest.”

You crumple it without thinking.

But later that night, after the shop has closed and the windows are shuttered, Jinu finds it smoothed out on the back counter, your handwriting scribbled in the margins: “Don’t get any ideas.”

He smiles.

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA. AUTUMN, 1971.

Jinu finds you by accident, really. 

He’s searching for a bar—any bar—on an unnaturally rainy Friday night, his collar turned up against the warm drizzle, the air thick with the smell of sweet olive trees and fried catfish. The city hums with life even in the storm. Neon flickers on puddles like oil slicks, and brass spills from half-opened windows.

He’s already passed three places too crowded, one too quiet, and a fourth that reeked of stale beer and cigarette ash, when he turns down a narrow side street he doesn’t remember the name of.

He finds a wooden door, warped with time and painted a moody red. It sits beneath a hanging sign with chipped cursive that reads: The Red Ribbon. A string of paper lanterns hangs overhead, glowing soft through the rain like a trail of fireflies.

Inside, the bar is low-lit and warm, a haven from the storm. The air smells like cinnamon smoke and lemon rinds, and something old—like velvet curtains and perfume that clings to skin. There’s a quiet hum of conversation, the clink of glass on glass, and music.

No—not music. A voice.

Low and rich, not quite singing, not quite speaking. Like honey melting in a warm cup of tea. It curls around the room before he sees you; dips into the cracks between shadows; holds him still.

You’re on stage, beneath a gold spotlight, wearing a black satin blouse tucked into high-waisted pants, one heel perched on the edge of the stool as you croon into the microphone. Your voice doesn’t beg for attention. It commands it, slow and sultry and effortless. You sing a cover of I’ll Be Seeing You, but it’s yours now, softer, smokier, as if the song’s always belonged to you.

In your hair, tied just above your ear, is a red ribbon.

Jinu stops breathing.

You’re older in this life. Sharper. Your voice curls like cigarette smoke, and your smile doesn’t reach your eyes. But it’s you. Of course it’s you. He would know you in any century.

You don’t see him. You never do, not at first.

The room fades. Jinu’s heart hammers.

Gwi-Ma’s curse, so old now it’s half-forgotten, curls tight in his ribs like a warning. This is the fourth time, he thinks.

The bartender is young, with freckles scattered across his nose. “What can I get you?”

“What’s her drink?” Jinu asks, nodding toward the stage.

“She switches it up sometimes. But mostly it’s gin and tonic. Extra lime.”

“Then one of those. And whatever you recommend.”

He carries both your drinks over when you step off the stage, undoing the ribbon in your hair deftly and shaking your head. You wrap the ribbon around your wrist and raise an eyebrow when he stops by your table. 

“That for me?” you ask.

Jinu sets the gin and tonic down. “Extra lime.”

“Let me guess,” you drawl. “First time here, heard me sing, got curious?”

“Something like that,” he says.

JOSEON, KOREA. SPRING, 1799.

It is well past curfew when you slip into the old library pavilion.

The moon is high, its light diffused through the paper lattice windows, casting soft patterns on the wooden floor. The scent of old parchment and ink wafts through the air. Outside, the plum trees stir in the breeze, petals tumbling like tiny, perfumed ghosts.

You shouldn’t be here. No one comes here anymore—not since the roof began to rot, not since the scrolls were moved to the new annex.

But you know the door that creaks just slightly less. You know which floorboards to avoid. Most importantly, you know no one will be looking for a concubine in the archive of forgotten histories.

You light a single oil lamp and walk the aisles barefoot, your skirts brushing against shelves of neglected poetry and old Confucian texts. You’re looking for something. You don’t know what; only that your chest has been heavy lately with something unnamed, and that reading makes it easier to breathe.

You’re so engrossed in a worn volume of Tang poetry that you don’t hear him until it’s too late.

“What are you doing here?”

You whip around, heart slamming in your chest, the book nearly slipping from your fingers. 

Jinu stands in the doorway—half-lit by moonlight, half-shadowed, like something conjured from the very pages you were reading. He’s shed his ceremonial robes for the evening, wearing only a dark overcoat tied loosely at the waist. His hair is unbound at the nape, a sign that he, too, thought the night would pass without interruption.

You gasp. “I—I didn’t think anyone—”

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he says, though there’s no bite to it. Just curiosity, and a hint of wariness.

You lift your chin. “Neither are you.”

He arches a brow, and you realise your mistake. Of course he’s allowed anywhere he wishes—he’s one of the King’s closest ministers. But instead of correcting you, he steps further inside, eyes never leaving yours.

“What are you reading?”

“Poetry,” you say.

“May I see it?”

You hand him the book with reluctant fingers. He takes it carefully, as though it’s precious. You watch as he scans the open page. His lips move as he reads silently. Then, softly, aloud:

“In the quiet night, the moonlight before my bed perhaps is frost upon the ground. I raise my head and see the moon, then lower it and think of home.”

You say nothing.

“You miss it,” Jinu says quietly. “Your home.”

“You can’t miss what you barely remember,” you say, shrugging.

“Still, you’re here,” he says, closing the book. “Risking punishment for poetry.”

“I thought this place was empty.”

“It is. Mostly. You’ve been here before,” he says.

“Will you report me?” you ask, finally meeting his eyes.

He watches you for a long moment, and shakes his head. “No. But if you’re going to read by lamplight, you shouldn’t sit so close to the paper screens. It casts a shadow.”

TOKYO, JAPAN. SPRING, ONE MONTH AGO.

On Jinu’s birthday, you surprise him with a picnic beneath the sakura.

It’s a Tuesday, technically a workday, but you convince his supervisor to let him off early and drag him, half-confused, half-laughing, onto the Marunouchi Line. You refuse to say where you’re going, only grin over the rim of your coffee and tap your knee against his like you’re buzzing with a secret.

He figures it out by the time you’re walking down the path at Shinjuku Gyoen, past couples and families and students with cameras, every tree dripping in soft pink petals. The wind is light, enough to lift your hair and scatter a few blossoms onto his shoulder. You swipe them off with a delicate touch, fingers brushing his collar.

“Here?” he asks, looking around.

You point to a quiet spot beneath a tall cherry tree, where the ground is dappled with sunlight and pink. “Here.”

He watches you set the blanket down and unroll the bento boxes you packed that morning, tied in checkered cloth, still warm. Tamagoyaki, onigiri, simmered daikon, the pickled things he likes. There’s even a small chocolate cake hidden in your tote, which you keep sneakily tucked behind your legs like it isn’t obvious.

“You didn’t have to do all this,” he says, sitting beside you. His voice is warm. He never quite knows what to do with being loved like this—not when it’s freely given.

“I know,” you say. “But I wanted to.”

Jinu looks at you for a long second. You’re wearing that soft blue sweater he likes, the one that slides off your shoulder when you’re not paying attention. The sunlight hits your cheekbones and catches in your lashes, and he thinks—like he always does—that you’re the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

You open a thermos, pour him tea, and he raises it in mock solemnity.

“To thirty-three,” he says.

“Thirty-two,” you correct.

“Am I?”

“You always forget,” you say. “You’ve been forgetting since we met.”

He laughs. “Feels like I’ve lived a hundred years already.”

You don’t say anything. Sometimes, when the light hits his face just right or he says something echoes in your mind, you wonder.

You’ve always had strange dreams: places you’ve never been, languages you’ve never studied, and a man who always looks like him, even when he wears a robe, or a bloodied uniform, or a wool coat in the snow. You never tell him this. You’re afraid it will break the spell.

Instead, you offer him another onigiri and press a kiss to his cheek.

“Happy birthday,” you whisper. “I’m glad you were born.”

Jinu closes his eyes and laces his fingers with yours, lets you lean your weight into his side; lets the breeze scatter petals in your hair; lets the warmth spread down his spine like he’s standing in the sun after a long, long winter.

MANCHURIA. WINTER, 1944.

It comes as no surprise, then, that when the war begins, you and Jinu get married and business at the teahouse dwindles with every passing day.

The papers are signed quietly one late afternoon, in the cramped back office of the local administration hall: two names written in black ink, side by side, binding you together not by love but by survival. There is no time for anything else. The world is already falling apart.

The Japanese occupation deepens its grip. All around you, men vanish into forced conscription, women into labour camps, into silence. The air grows tighter with fear. Propaganda posters replace the poetry on the streets. The teahouse shutters for good.

You and Jinu are sent away within the month. He becomes a soldier. You become a nurse.

You are not the only married couple split between posts, but somehow, impossibly, the army places you both near the front. You meet sometimes between camps. Once every few weeks, maybe. Sometimes longer.

Each time, your reunion is brief and practical. You sew up the tears in his uniform. He shares what little rations he’s stashed away for you. He never forgets to hand you a pair of gloves or wrap your scarf tighter, or tie your hair back with that red ribbon with shaking fingers. You always insist he sleep for at least two hours before returning to his unit.

There is no time for affection. There is barely time for sleep.

But sometimes, when you are alone—when the tents are quiet and the snow piles against the canvas—he touches your face in the dark, and you lean into him without a word. Sometimes you rest your forehead against his shoulder, and Jinu runs his hand up and down your back.

The night you die, it is snowing.

The war has reached a new fever. There are no longer clear lines, no longer rest stations or warning signals or predictable patrols. The world is burning in patches, and no one can remember what day it is.

Jinu is stationed near the ravine when the call comes—medics down, supplies hit, critical injuries. He runs before they finish speaking.

He doesn’t recognise the wreckage of the medic tent at first, just the shape of it, torn open by gunfire and winter wind, canvas flapping in the air. The snow is tinged red. Bodies are scattered everywhere.

You’re still alive when he finds you, but barely.

You’re half-buried beneath another nurse, shielding her even in unconsciousness. Your side is soaked through with blood, spreading dark and fast across your uniform. Your breathing is shallow, more rasp than breath. Jinu drops to his knees beside you.

“Hey,” he says, voice breaking. “Hey—look at me. It’s me.”

Your eyes flutter open. Focus. Unfocus. Finally, they find him. “...Jinu?” you breathe, your voice thready.

He laughs, because it’s either that or scream. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s me. You stubborn woman, what were you doing here? You were supposed to be safe.”

“I stayed.” You cough, wet and small. “One of the children… the boy with the bad leg…”

“I know,” Jinu says. He does know. He always knew you’d stay. He presses his hand to your wound. His other hand cradles the back of your head. Snowflakes melt on your cheeks.

Later, they find him still holding you, long after the snow has buried your boots and the blood has dried stiff on his uniform. He won’t speak for days, won’t eat. When he finally returns to his post, he doesn’t say what happened; he only writes your name on the inside of his sleeve in black ink, where no one else can see.

Years later, when the war ends and the country forgets the names of its dead, Jinu does not. He leaves a folded paper crane at every teahouse he passes, and he never remarries.

PARIS, FRANCE. SUMMER, 1890.

On the third day of your honeymoon, Jinu takes you dancing.

It is a Friday evening, and the city glows with the kind of gold that never quite fades, even as dusk creeps in. From the hotel balcony, the streets below shimmer with laughter, carriage wheels clattering against cobblestones, parasols twirling, violins warming up in salons beyond shuttered windows.

He waits for you in the sitting room, dressed in pressed trousers and a charcoal waistcoat, a pale lavender cravat at his throat—the one you picked, absentmindedly, on your first day in the city. The silk still smells faintly like you.

You emerge from the bedroom without a word, gloves drawn tight over your wrists, gown cinched neatly at the waist. You’re beautiful, but distant.

Always, always distant.

“Shall we?” he asks, offering his arm.

The carriage ride is quiet. The air smells like summer rain and perfume, and Jinu watches your profile in the glass—the slope of your nose, the way your eyes follow the shape of the Seine like it’s memory. You haven’t touched him since the day you arrived. Your hand rests lightly on his arm now, like you’re afraid even weight might give too much away.

He wants to ask about the letters.

The ones you receive from a different postbox. The ones you tuck away before he enters the room. He’s never opened one, but he doesn’t need to. The handwriting is always the same: slanted, and familiar only to you. He doesn’t ask. He never does.

Tonight, he only wants to pretend.

The ballroom is in Montmartre, crowded and warm, lit by chandeliers that make the dust shimmer. The band plays slow waltzes, the kind that linger in your throat even after the music fades.

Jinu places a hand on your waist. You let him.

Your fingers rest against his shoulder, delicate as frost.

He draws you closer, searching for something in your eyes. He finds nothing. Nothing but the practiced smile of a woman doing what is expected.

“You’re quiet tonight,” he says, voice low.

You look away. “I’m tired.”

“Of dancing?” Of me?

You don’t answer. Jinu guides you in a slow circle. You follow, graceful, perfect. A doll in silk and pearl. Yet, every few beats, your gaze slips towards the doors; towards the windows; towards something far away. He’s used to it now. Gwi-Ma’s curse has hardened him, but just because he is used to it, it does not make it any easier to be the consolation prize in this lifetime that never belonged to him.

“Do you love him?” he asks suddenly, before he can stop himself.

“It doesn’t matter,” you say.

You’re right. It doesn’t. Not in this life. Not in this world where your father sold your hand to erase a debt, and his name was the one on the contract. Not in a marriage made of cold sheets and polite lies.

Jinu exhales slowly. “It does to me.”

You meet his gaze, then, and something flickers in your eyes. Not love, or forgiveness—just sadness, deep and quiet, like the kind that seeps into your bones and never quite leaves.

“You’re not a bad man,” you say softly. “You just aren’t mine.”

He closes his eyes. The music swells. Couples spin around you both like falling leaves.

Jinu doesn’t say another word. He just holds you a little tighter, for as long as the song lasts. Because after tonight, you’ll drift further away. He can feel it, that tide pulling you towards a life you’ll never have and a man he will never be.

But for this dance—just this one—he lets himself imagine you’re his.

The next day, the divorce papers are finalised and the money is settled. You move to Vienna the week after.

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA. AUTUMN, 1972.

The bartender tells Jinu you moved to Chicago.

He says it like it’s nothing, like you didn’t leave a hollowed-out space where your voice used to sit on stage at The Red Ribbon, smokey and golden and soft as dusk.

“Packed up two weeks ago,” the freckled boy says, polishing a glass. “Didn’t say much, just left a note for Missy in the back. Said she got an opportunity, somethin’ better. Maybe a record label.”

Jinu doesn’t ask for details. He doesn’t need them.

He nurses his bourbon in silence for a while, and lets the saxophone on the radio spill into the half-empty room. The walls feel thinner without you—less velvet, more echo. The stage is dark now, the piano covered in a wrinkled sheet.

When he asks for your address, the bartender raises an eyebrow. “You a friend?”

“I was her lover,” Jinu says, and it’s not wrong.

The man shrugs and writes it down on the back of a bar napkin, sliding it over with two fingers. It’s smudged at the edges, ink bleeding from moisture left behind by someone else’s glass. But the words are clear.

South Side. Chicago. Apartment 2B. ℅ Langford Records.

Jinu stares at it for a long time. He folds it once and pockets it.

That night, in his apartment above the bakery on Dauphine Street, he sits at the kitchen table with a cigarette burning low and a single lamp flickering behind him. Rain taps gently against the window, steady as a metronome.

He finds a sheet of paper, ivory and heavy. He doesn’t plan to write much.

October 12th, 1972 New Orleans

You left without saying goodbye.

That’s not a complaint. Just… an observation.

The bartender said Chicago. He said you packed light, but you always did. I used to wonder how someone could carry so much in them and still leave so little behind. I guess I have my answer now.

I keep thinking about that night on the balcony. You, with your lipstick smudged and your heels kicked off, humming some Ella Fitzgerald song that only you knew all the words to. You asked me if I believed in fate. I said no. You laughed like I was missing the joke.

I think I get it now.

Maybe it wasn’t fate. Maybe it was just timing. Bad, as always.

I don’t know what you’re chasing up there—music, love, a version of yourself you can finally live with—but I hope you find it. And if you don’t, I hope it finds you anyway.

I won’t write again. This feels like enough.

But if it ever rains in Chicago, and you think of me, just know I was thinking of you too.

– J.

Jinu folds the letter carefully and slides it into an envelope but doesn’t seal it. He stares at it for a long time. Then he sets it on the counter beside his keys and goes to bed without turning out the lamp.

He never mails it, but every now and then, when the rain hits just right, he reads it again.

JOSEON, KOREA. LATE SUMMER, 1799.

They charge you with treason.

No matter how many times Jinu kneels before the King, no matter how many sleepless nights he spends rewriting every record, begging the court historian to leave your name out of the final script, no one listens.

It is easier to silence a concubine than to question a minister, easier to blame a woman for sin than to hold a man accountable for love.

So, on the last evening of your life, they dress you in white: a shade meant for funerals; for forgetting.

Your hair, once combed and oiled and pinned with mother-of-pearl, hangs unbound down your back now. The servants didn’t bother with ceremony. They gave you water, and left you in a corner of the gardens, as if you were already half-gone. You sit on the edge of the low stone wall, staring at the lotus pond, legs tucked neatly beneath you and wrists bound.

The ropes around your wrists bite into tender skin—tight, too tight—but you won’t ask them to be loosened. The guards know better than to keep an eye on you. You’re not dangerous, just inconvenient.

You know he’ll come.

You don’t look surprised when Jinu appears between the carved columns, breathless, his topknot hastily tied and robes disheveled. His boots make no sound against the wooden floor as he drops to his knees before you.

“Please,” he says, his voice shredded down to the bone. “Please tell me you’ll hate me for this.”

You blink slowly. Your lashes are damp with the humidity. “Would that make it easier?”

“No.” Jinu shakes his head. “But I want you to have something.”

There’s no moon yet, but the light from the lantern by the steps is enough to see him properly. His lips are chapped. There’s ink on his sleeves, on the soft crease where his palm meets his thumb. He hasn’t stopped writing letters, then. Petitions. Pleas.

“You should go,” you say quietly. “If they see you—”

“I don’t care.”

“They’ll strip you of your title.”

“I don’t care.”

His hands are trembling when they reach for yours. He cups your bound wrists with reverence. His touch is a contradiction—soft, but desperate. His thumbs brush over your bruises. You don’t flinch.

Between his palms, you feel something cool press against your skin, smooth and weightless. Your fingers twitch, instinctively curling around it.

A jade rabbit. 

The kind children carry for luck. The kind lovers carve when words aren’t enough.

You remember once, weeks ago, a charm just like it left behind on the counter behind the Queen Dowager’s quarters—no note, no name. You’d tucked it into the folds of your robes and told yourself it didn’t mean anything. Now, you understand. You clutch it tighter.

“You said once,” Jinu whispers, “that you didn’t believe in reincarnation.”

You manage a faint smile, remembering his stories of the demon king and the curse of love and memory because of sins past. “I still don’t.”

“Well.” His eyes close briefly, lashes dark against his cheek. “I’ll believe for both of us, then.”

The cicadas outside scream like they know how little time is left.

“It’s just a story,” you say. “No one remembers their past lives.”

“I do,” he says, and something deep in you twists, aching. “And I will. I’ll find you again.”

“I don’t want to be remembered like this,” you whisper.

“I won’t remember the ropes,” Jinu says. “I’ll remember the way you fold paper cranes, and recite poetry, and the sound of your laugh when you think no one’s listening.”

Your throat tightens. There’s a sob there, buried deep, but it won’t surface. You’re too tired for crying. “Don’t—”

“I’ll remember,” he says. “And one day, somewhere—when you are free and unafraid—I’ll press this rabbit into your palm again, and you’ll know.”

“Jinu—”

He leans forward slowly, and presses his forehead to your bound hands. The lantern’s light glows between you. The cicadas hush. Far in the distance, a temple bell rings the hour. It’s almost time.

TOKYO, JAPAN. PRESENT DAY.

These days, you find it harder to sleep. The dreams are worse now, beguiling and long and sad. They stretch like old film reels behind your eyes, full of half-familiar cities and names that slip away when you wake. They end with Jinu, always Jinu���but not Jinu at the same time. He wears different clothes, speaks in languages you don’t remember learning.

You shift in bed, sheets tangled around your legs, one arm heavy and warm across your waist.

This version of Jinu sleeps with his mouth slightly open, his breathing even, steady. His chest rises and falls against your back, his palm curled gently beneath your navel. The window’s been left ajar, and the scent of sakura drifts in on the night air. You press your hand over his absentmindedly. His fingers twitch in his sleep and close tighter around you.

You sigh. Your forehead presses into the pillow. It’s too early or too late to be awake, and you’re tired—so tired—but your body doesn’t know how to rest anymore. Not when your mind insists on wandering. Not when you wake up crying into a man’s arms and can’t tell him why.

You almost speak, but he stirs before you can.

“Mmh,” he mumbles, lips brushing the curve of your shoulder. “You okay?”

“I… had that dream again,” you tell him.

Jinu lifts his head. He’s groggy, eyes swollen with sleep, but he’s already frowning. Already reaching up to tuck your hair behind your ear.

“The one with the snow?” he asks.

You nod. “And the red ribbon. And a jazz bar.”

He doesn’t laugh, though you’d expect anyone else to. Instead, he kisses your shoulder. “Come closer.”

“I’m already close.”

“Closer,” he says again, like the space between you could ever be enough to stop the ache. Like if he holds you tight enough, he can keep the dreams at bay.

You turn to face him, legs brushing his under the blanket. He touches your cheek with the backs of his fingers.

“Do I do something wrong in the dream?” he asks.

“No,” you say. “But you’re sad. Like… you know something I don’t.”

His throat works. His thumb runs along the apple of your cheek, just once. “Maybe I’m dreaming it too.”

You stare at him. It’s too dark to read his expression clearly, but something in you catches at the thought. Maybe he’s dreaming it, too: the same ink-stained hands, the same gardens, the same unfinished goodbyes.

“You think so?” you whisper.

He nods. “Remind me,” he says. “I found this antique rabbit made out of jade yesterday at the market. It reminded me of you. Remind me to give it to you.”

“Okay,” you say, and bury your face against his chest and let him wrap both arms around you. You press your palm over his heart. 

“You talk in your sleep, too, sometimes, you know,” you murmur into the dark. “Who’s Gwi-Ma?” 

You’re teasing, mostly—half-asleep, your words loose around the edges—but there’s a small, curious lilt to your voice that makes Jinu still for a fraction of a second. Barely perceptible, just long enough for you to notice.

You continue, lightly, unaware. “Should I be worried?”

He should’ve prepared for this. He’s had five lifetimes to come up with a better answer. Five lifetimes of choices and mistakes and prayers spoken into temples and alleyways and bomb shelters. Five lifetimes of watching you slip through his fingers, of losing you just when he thought he might have a chance.

He should’ve been ready.

Jinu exhales slowly, lets his palm slide a little higher on your stomach, grounding himself in the warmth of your skin. Your breathing is calm now. You trust him.

He leans in and kisses your shoulder again, and says, “No one.”

You shift a little in his arms, not entirely convinced. “Sounds like a someone.”

He smiles against your skin, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Just a strange dream. One of those names that sticks for no reason. You know how it is.”

“We’re weird,” you mumble. “I mean… you and me.”

“I know,” Jinu says, and he means it more than you’ll ever understand.

You don’t see the way his gaze always rests on you in the dark after you drift off. You don’t feel how tight his arms become, how he pulls you closer like he’s afraid you’ll vanish in your sleep.

You don’t know that he remembers everything.

The snow in Bukchon. The teahouse. The library in the palace. The battlefield and your name on the inside of his sleeve. Paris and silence. New Orleans and the ribbon in your hair. The prison courtyard and the jade rabbit you clutched until the rope took you. All of it.

He remembers the taste of your ginger tea; the colour of your blood on his hands; the sound of your voice in French; the way you looked at him in a jazz bar in 1972 and said, “Don’t fall in love with me.”

Too late, he’d wanted to say. Too many lives too late.

Now, in this quiet Tokyo apartment, with your fingers unconsciously curled into the fabric of his shirt, he knows Gwi-Ma has finally allowed him to keep you. The king has grown tired of watching him suffer. That was the promise, that in this fifth and final life, he can keep you safe and warm, tucked into his side, where the only real concerns are whether he’s put the laundry to dry, or what to cook for dinner.

Jinu watches the sky begin to pale through the window, watches your lashes flutter in sleep. He watches your mouth part like you’re about to say his name, even here, even now. He thinks about the red ribbon he keeps tucked inside his coat pockets, and worn-out letter in his dresser, and the jade rabbit he keeps underneath his pillow, and he smiles into your hair.

a/n: hi! thank you so much for reading :) i watched kpop demon hunters on sunday and i could not stop thinking about how little we know about jinu’s past and about how rumi’s mother met and fell in love with a demon. that little thought about jinu’s past turned into a full-blown fic that i wrote imagining that jinu’s past sin was abandoning his family (except i obviously tweaked it) & that gwi-ma is more like hades in terms of punishment as opposed to like. a demon king. the poem that jinu reads out aloud is a translated version of quiet night thought by li bai. have a wonderful day!

[lucabyte]

lmao oh my god i didnt see this until i was digging in my notifs for something else hi im so late

Favorite color: Hot Pink-Red!! Like my sona and also all my branding. You'd think that would make it obvious but irl all my clothes are cooler tones because if i wear warm tones I look like a corpse lol. <- blue undertone haver

Last Song: I stopped somewhere in the middle of "Cum On Feel The Hitz: The Best Of Slade" while trying to run through and rate the songs in wmp... so it looks like it was "In for a Penny" by Slade.

Currently Reading: Does re-reading Homestuck count? That is currently my primary intake of Words. Last book I opened was "Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud

Currently Watching: Several things. Better Call Saul & Star Trek TNG for the first time, and then MLP:FiM for a rewatch.

Currently Craving: Red meat . made the mistake of watching an old brutalmoose cooking video and now i want protein

Coffee or Tea: Whenever I make tea i make some kind of evil concoction i don't allow others to witness. 2 tea bags a lot of sugar some milk and then slammed as quickly as possible. this is not how you are supposed to drink tea. i don't drink coffee at all lol

Tags: i have no idea if any of you have already been tagged so uhhh @briarbale @ricecaqes @pearl-crystals @ekiloria @gallantblade have fun

get to know your moots tag game ! ✶ answer the questions, then tag six people

favorite color ꕀ green and brown last song ꕀ tú by maye currently reading ꕀ the luminaries by susan dennard currently watching ꕀ the great british baking show currently craving ꕀ massaman curry. like always. and like. alcohol and a couple cigs HAHA. a break too :P coffee or tea ꕀ always tea! i don't like coffee

ty for the tag @saltcxrcle ! tagging: @lelapine @toadspondofwhimsy @outof-spite @h0neyst4rz @hhoneylemon @our-lady-of-venom

[pinkslipxox]

hi!! can you make a fic about paige x reader where reader is jealous because of rumor circulating online so paige gives her an assurance and hard launched their relationship. thank youu

hey, mami! Yes of course! Hope you like it 🥰🫶

——————————————————————————

You’re curled up on the couch, phone face-down on the coffee table, pretending like it didn’t just show you something that’s been sitting in your chest like a rock all day.

A rumor. Online. Some random photo of Paige with someone else—blown out of proportion, of course. You know better. But still, your heart won’t stop sinking.

You don’t even hear the front door open until you feel it: the soft thump of her sneakers hitting the floor, the rustle of her sweatshirt as she shrugs it off, and then the warmth of her presence just there, behind you.

“Baby,” Paige says softly, already crouching down so she’s eye-level with you. Her hand reaches for yours gently. “You’ve been quiet. Talk to me.”

You hesitate, and she sees it instantly. Those blue eyes of hers soften even more—like the world outside of this moment doesn’t exist. “Is it that stupid rumor?” she asks, already knowing the answer. She sighs, brushing your cheek with her thumb. “God, I hate that this got to you.”

“I just… saw it everywhere,” you whisper. “And people keep tagging me, asking questions. I know it’s probably nothing, but…”

“But it hurts. I know.” She moves in closer, slipping onto the couch and wrapping her toned arms around you, pulling you into her like you’re the most precious thing in the world—and to her, you are. “Come here, sweetie. Let me hold you.”

She cradles you against her, strong arms curled protectively around your body, her lips brushing the top of your head. Her voice is low and soft, just for you. “You’re my girl. Only you. No one else even comes close, baby.”

You feel the rumble of her voice in her chest as she holds you tighter. “I should’ve said something sooner,” she murmurs, as if she’s thinking out loud. “I didn’t wanna go public yet, but I’m not letting anyone make you feel like this ever again.”

You pull back just enough to meet her eyes. “You don’t have to—”

“I want to.” Her eyes are fierce with love now. “I want everyone to know who I’m in love with. Who I come home to. Who I call ‘sweetie’ a thousand times a day because you’re so damn cute I can’t stop.” She smiles, and it’s that soft, adoring Paige smile—the one she only ever gives you.

Later that evening, she posts a picture. It’s the two of you, curled up just like this. Your face tucked into her shoulder, her arms around you, her cheek resting against your hair. No captions. Just a heart. And then the flood of comments comes, both negative and positive, but none of it matters. Because Paige is nuzzling into you, pressing gentle kisses to your temple, whispering,

“You’re mine, sweetie. Always. I’ve got you.”

And in her arms, you finally believe it.

[bucketbueckers]

RECKLESS DRIVING

CHAPTER TWO

content: language, a cam roman crash out disguised as humor, mention of a panic attack (not an actual one, literally a mention), implied mental health issues, HORSE as foreplay, author won't pretend to know anything about the dallas geography

wc: 7.2k

notes: not gonna lie, this was lowk a rly tough chapter to write but im happy with how it turned out 🙂‍↔️ i love paige and cam so bad and i can't wait until we get to the heart of their relationship once the season actually starts. also i honestly wasn't gonna post this tn but somehow the wings won so why not. do not expect future updates to be this fast. shout out li yueru tho thats my goat fr. if i missed anyone on the taglist pls lmk !!! anyways i really appreciate the love on chapter one and i love hearing from y'all 🫶 as always i hope y'all enjoy this one ❤️

tags: @cowboybueckers @indigo491 @wnba-scotland @volleyballgirlsblog @sillystarv @middyprincess @intoblonde6ftwbbplayers @user1269 @fivest4rbuecks @everyonewatchesuconnwbb @lilpaigeyherbo

Before now, Cam isn’t so sure that she’s ever thought much about retirement.

She’s 26. She easily has another ten years left in her, but she’s always dreamed of having a long career that could rival Taurasi’s. She knows for sure that she’s not turning in her resignation papers without a league MVP, a championship ring, and an Olympic medal. Whether she retired as a Dallas Wing or whether she signed elsewhere was another story entirely. Maybe she’d spend her final season in the league as a Golden State Valkyrie, giving her last year to the city that had raised her.

Either way, the end wasn’t ever something that was a topic of thought for her. Cam liked to stay focused on the present – on her workouts, her training. The seasons always passed by so quickly that dedicating your energy to anywhere but the present was wasting the already limited time you had.

But now, as Cam stares at a very naked Paige Bueckers, whose face is wrought with a sudden shock and a damning realization, whose hair is mussed and whose neck is littered with enough marks that Cam has half a mind to call the cops and report herself for assault and battery, she sees her entire career flash by her eyes.

She recalls her draft night vividly. She still has the white, floral dress she wore to it hung up in her closet. She remembers her first rookie press conference and the reporter who backhandedly called her a “decent player, given the options the Wings had in the draft.” She remembers her debut, her lackluster thirteen points and five rebounds, how the media considered her a bust only five games into the season. Cam remembers how she fought to show up every day despite the fact that all she wanted to do was curl up in her bed and cease to exist.

Cam remembers how she made a name for herself in spite of it all. She remembers their winning season, and how it all came crashing down in 2024 when they only won nine games. She remembers the embarrassment of not being selected for the 2024 Olympics and how quiet the dinner table was after Coley only brought home a silver. Romans display their gold, her father had said, hardly sparing a glance at his youngest. Anything else is as good as a coaster.

They always say that, when you die, your fondest memories replay for you in one final surge of happiness. Cam is sure that’s what she’s feeling now because clearly her career is over.

She’ll have to request a trade. The Wings organization is already being held together by a thin piece of twine and the hope that Curt Miller, Chris Koclanes, and Paige Bueckers can be the one to pull them from the depths of hell and turn them into something that the rest of the league wouldn’t laugh at. Cam doesn’t know how anyone would be able to recover if word got out that she slept with Paige Bueckers – number one draft pick, Wings rookie (Cam’s rookie), future of the franchise, in case you’d forgotten – on the very same night that she lifted her jersey.

Okay. Maybe it wasn’t the same night, considering they didn’t make it back to the hotel room until well after midnight, and Cam was sure that the clock on the wall read something like 2:49 by the time the last of their energy was depleted and Paige spooned her from behind like they’d been in a position a time or two.

Obviously, that’s not the point – not if Camille’s ensuing panic attack has anything to say about it.

The point is this entire situation is a major conflict of interest. Morally, technically, probably legally. Cam was supposed to be the responsible one, the veteran. Granted, she and Paige aren’t so far apart in age, but she’s going on her fifth year in the league. She knows better. And everything is so fragile right now. She might have just risked the health of the locker room in exchange for one night that, admittedly, was nice.

The most terrifying part of this entire situation was that Cam was supposed to take care of Paige. Not in a coddling manner – Paige could handle herself. She was grown. But adjusting to the league, to the pace, to the expectations…that wasn’t something you should do alone. She was supposed to help Paige find her footing, support her, advocate for her. She was supposed to do what any good veteran would do for their rook, but somewhere in between all of that anxiety bubbling in her gut, she feels that ever present feeling of failure creeping in.

She hadn’t even made it back to Dallas before she fucked it all up. And this feeling – this fear, the dread, the overwhelming sense that she just did something she can’t take back, it feels worse than anything she’s ever felt before. It’s worse than getting blown out in front of a home crowd that gets quieter and quieter with every turnover, every missed shot, every collapse on defense that leads to an uncontested three.

Welcome to the league, Paige Bueckers. Bet you wished it really was an Alyssa Thomas screen, huh?

“Okay,” Paige says after a while, her voice surprisingly calm given the gravity of the moment. “It’s not that bad.”

Cam throws her hands into the air, overwhelmed and exasperated. “Not that bad?” she exclaims, her heart hammering against her chest. “Paige, we just slept together.”

The blonde swallows, her eyes flickering down, and it seems like it takes a genuine effort to lift them back to Cam’s face. “Trust me,” she says, her voice cracking a little. “I ain’t forget.”

Cam glances down, taking in just how fucking naked she is, too, and with a growl that borders on equal parts panic and humiliation, she rips the comforter off the second bed in the room and wraps it around her body. It keeps Paige’s gaze off of her chest, but Cam isn’t sure what’s worse – having Paige see all of her or the fact that, despite the early morning, Paige’s eyes are impossibly blue, alert, and trained on her face. Somehow, it makes her feel more vulnerable than having stood in front of her naked.

“Are you…okay?” Paige asks tentatively.

That makes Cam’s shoulders sag, a huff of air escaping her lips. It’s hard to tell if it’s a scoff or something more like amusement, and she takes a seat at the foot of the bed as she digs through the pile of clothes on the floor for her underwear. “Yes,” she says, the word sounding stale. Paige makes a soft noise behind her that sounds like disbelief. Cam sighs. “No. I don’t know, Paige.”

“Are you hurt?”

That makes Cam pause, drawing her lip between her teeth in contemplation as she slides her bottoms over her legs. “Sore,” she admits after a while.

“Yeah?” Paige goads, and it fills Cam with the urge to turn around and smack her head. She rolls her lips so as to not smile and doesn’t give Paige the satisfaction of getting a reaction. “I’d apologize, but…you seemed pretty okay with it.”

“Paige,” Cam stresses. The reminder of last night makes her walls raise again. “Be serious.”

“Sorry,” she says for real, and it sounds genuinely apologetic. “Do you, uh, regret it? I didn’t like – force you, or anything?”

Cam sighs again, reaching for her bra, dropping the comforter to slide it over her torso. She feels Paige’s gaze leave her. The respect is touching. “I was drunk,” she admits, listening for the hitch in Paige’s breath. “We were drunk. Not helpless. Or out of control. You didn’t force me to do anything I didn’t…want. Or consent to.”

Paige exhales a relieved breath. She’s silent for a few moments, her eyes tracing Cam’s figure as she slides into her baggy cargos, then her crop top. “Then why are you freaking out? You’re okay. Mostly.” She adds the last part as an afterthought, and it makes the ghost of a smile spread across Cam’s lips. “You’re not hurt. You don’t regret it. Please tell me what’s wrong, Cam. I’ll fix it.”

Cam takes a deep breath, twisting around in bed and leaning against the headboard. Paige adjusts too, keeping the comforter pressed close to her chest, the chain around her neck glimmering. “We’re teammates,” Cam states. “Like, you know that was the whole point of the draft last night?”

Paige nods seriously, trying not to smirk at Cam’s sarcasm. “Trust me. I ain’t forget that either.” Cam rolls her eyes, the humor helping to make her relax. “Plus, we’re not technically anything until I sign that contract. And, you know…teammates sleeping together isn’t a new thing. Look at Dee and Penny. DB and AT.”

“Are you also aware that those individuals are married?” Cam emphasizes, exasperated again.

“You don’t have to be married to sleep with someone,” Paige retorts, and it makes Cam bury her head in her hands. Paige sighs. “Hey – I’m sorry, okay? I’m tryna be reassuring. Emotions were all over the place last night. You found out you really liked Shirley Temples. And…I guess we have really good chemistry.”

Cam can’t hide her smirk this time. “Hopefully that chemistry translates to the court, or we’re screwed for this season.”

“Cam,” Paige whines, pressing her face into the pillow. That draws a real laugh out of Cam now. Their eyes meet again, both gazes softening. “Look, I’m just saying that it’s okay. It happened. Can’t change it. I don’t regret it, you don’t regret it, and we can be mature adults about it. Yeah, we’re gonna be teammates. This won’t affect the locker room, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Cam exhales sharply, trying to find the right words. It’s not just the locker room. It’s everything. Cam has no idea who was at that afterparty, if anyone has any clips of her and Paige dancing on each other or leaving the party together. It’s the fact that she feels like she has so many eyes on her, even though there’s nobody but her and Paige in this room right now. Between the realization that this entire situation is a moral landmine and how guilty she feels because she let herself be free and indulge in one night, all Cam feels is overwhelmed. That emotion doesn’t mix well with the residual exhaustion. “It’s just–”

Her alarm rings again, causing both her and Paige to flinch, and she silences it quickly with a ragged sigh. She closes her eyes tightly in an attempt to regulate her breathing and her emotions.

“Hey,” Paige says softly, her hand extending to brush across Cam’s back. “You’re good. We’re good. We’ll figure this out, okay?”

Cam nods, not quite trusting herself to speak, and she sucks in a breath. She doesn’t meet Paige’s gaze when she says, “I have to catch a flight back to Dallas. When are you flying in for the rookie press conference?”

Paige sighs. “Fuck. I’on know.” She swallows thickly, nodding to the ground. “Can you…uh, grab my phone for me?”

“Yeah,” Cam says quickly, if not a little awkward, and she leans over to fumble with Paige’s clothes on the floor until she finds the blonde’s phone tucked into the pocket of her pants. She hands it over wordlessly and Paige breathes a sigh of relief when she finds that it still has some charge.

Paige scrolls through her phone for a few seconds before she clears her throat. “I’ll fly in on the morning of the 23rd.”

“That’s fine,” Cam agrees quietly. “We’ll talk after.”

Paige lifts her head ever so slightly as she watches Cam shuffle around the room, searching for wherever her shoes had ended up. She’s unlacing one just as Paige says, “What hotel are you staying at?”

“Hilton,” Cam answers. “Why?”

Paige hums, her attention back on her phone. “Getting you an Uber back.”

“Paige,” Cam sighs, standing up straight. When Paige glances back up, an amused smile is on her face – probably because Cam has only one shoe on, her clothes are rumpled, and her once neatly styled hair is out of place. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Least I could do,” she says, her tone a little softer. “I got you stressin’ for no reason on a Tuesday morning. What kind of rookie does that?”

Cam huffs out a laugh at that – a real one. She finds her other shoe and starts working on getting it on her foot. “A really annoying, yet really thoughtful one.” Paige pats her chest proudly as if to say that’s me. When Cam is finally dressed, she palms her pockets for her phone, keys, and wallet, exhaling in relief when she has them. “Hey.” Paige looks up, and Cam bounces on her heels, a sheepish expression on her face. “Sorry for freaking out on you. I just–”

“I know,” Paige interrupts gently. Cam’s shoulders sag, appreciating Paige’s understanding more than she probably knows. “You didn’t do anything wrong, you know that? It takes two to tango. It’s not like I was an unwilling partner.” Her cheeks are flushed when she admits, “Maybe a little too eager, though. That’s the last time I chase a shot with a Shirley.” Cam can’t help her laughter, shaking her head in amusement. “If there’s a blame, then we’ll share it. Or I’ll take it for you. Rookie duties or whatever. Just don’t freak out, okay? We’re good. We will be. I swear.”

“...Thanks, Paige,” Cam whispers, and Paige’s reassuring smile makes everything feel like it’ll be okay again. “See you next week?”

The reassurance falls victim to mischief, because something sparkles in Paige’s eyes when she says, “Don’t miss me too much, Cam.”

Cam rolls her eyes, pursing her lips to stifle a smile, and she and Paige exchange one last goodbye before Cam steps out. The door clicks shut behind her with a resounding noise and it takes everything in Cam to not pause and press her forehead to it dramatically. Instead, she sighs, and reminds herself of the Uber waiting for her, the flight she has to catch, and makes her way out of Paige’s hotel.

Maybe she overreacted a little. Truth be told, she still feels a little unmoored, like she’s not quite sure of her role anymore. She, the veteran, was the one freaking out in Paige’s, a rookie’s, hotel room as she reassured her and told her they didn’t fuck anything up. Cam can’t help but feel like that should have been her job.

It’s hard to understand why she’s fumbling so badly now. She didn’t have this issue last year with Jacy Sheldon – granted, Cam didn’t sleep with her, but Cam was confidently the veteran to Sheldon’s rookie. There wasn’t a single misstep. She coached the young guard, helped develop her, and did everything a veteran was supposed to do.

But Paige is something else entirely. An enigma. A challenge. Something Cam was prepared to be unprepared for because she knew that Paige was always a caliber above the rest. In her game, her mentality, her ambition. 

As Cam slides into the backseat of her Uber, smiling politely at the driver, she realizes that she has to run a tighter ship. She has to be poised, professional, the exact things she was supposed to be anyways before she let Paige Bueckers unravel her.

She’s here to play ball, and as far as she’s concerned, making her relationship with Paige more complicated than it already is will be the reason why everything crashes and burns.

Cam lands back in Dallas around 10am. She takes an Uber to her apartment, where Bobby, her characteristic orange cat, and Gatsby, a very particular tuxedo, greet her at the door. She’d managed to squeeze a few hours of rest in on the plane but she feels ready to collapse as soon as she’s back in. Before anything else, she scoops up both Bobby and Gatsby and plants a long, dramatic kiss to their foreheads and diligently portions out some wet food for them.

She makes her way into the bathroom to get ready for her presentation at UTA, then she’s back out of the house as quickly as she’d made it there in the first place. The presentation is a breeze, holding enough of her attention that she doesn’t get lost in thought about the blonde rookie who she’d left in bed at 5am, and the subsequent workout with her trainer after lunch drains her to the point that she doesn’t think about anything that’s not how sore she is the entire way back home.

Cam doesn’t even make it to bed. She curls up on the couch, curls damp from the shower she’d taken at the facility, hoodie sticking to her skin, and promptly falls asleep with Gatsby stretched out across her stomach.

That’s how the rest of her week goes. She tries – and more often than not, fails, to keep her mind on task. She throws herself into workouts, into running mindless drills, but part of her still can’t help feeling anxious. Paige had said they were fine, but Cam wonders how much of that was true, or if it was just the easiest thing Paige could think of to stop Cam from crashing out in her hotel room completely.

Or – and this is the million dollar answer right here – maybe Paige was genuine, and meant it, and Cam had no reason to be freaking out like she was childish and ten years younger.

The return to routine had helped a little. She had no reason to catastrophize, anyhow. Paige was right. They weren’t really teammates – yet – and the whole teammates having sex thing was pretty accurate, too. As long as they were able to keep it professional, cordial, and responsible on the court, Cam didn’t think the front office would particularly care, unless they were at risk of being a PR nightmare. Although…considering Paige’s celebrity, they probably are bordering on PR nightmare territory.

Either way, both of them were adults. It was consensual, Paige was incredibly chill about it, which meant Cam could probably be chill about it, which meant she didn’t ruin the locker room chemistry before it had the chance to grow.

At risk of fucking up their own chemistry, Cam knew that night wasn’t something they were going to repeat. Like, ever. If anyone asks, Cam has developed a sudden allergy for alcohol and is getting too old to be up past 9pm. If locking herself in her room like a tower-trapped damsel is what it takes to keep her relationships clean, orderly, and distraction free, then she’d gladly do it. She was committed to being responsible. She and Paige would just have to be friends. Very platonic friends who, sure, slept together one time when they were celebrating the biggest night of Paige’s life and they were both drunk on Dirty Shirleys, but that doesn’t have to define the course of their friendship.

Cam’s fine. Everything is fine. She got scared, overreacted, and maybe took it out on a poor rookie who’d only had two hours of sleep and a hangover. They could move past this and work together on the court without blurring the lines. Just friends. Just a rookie and a vet. Nothing more.

When the day of the rookie press conference arrives, Cam feels as though she has a better grasp on reality. She’s up early, goes on a morning run, showers, and is out of the door by 9am, only stopping for a chai latte before she makes her way to the facility. The first part of the morning was set aside to introduce the rookies and Cam was planning on taking advantage of the empty courts to run some drills and clear her mind.

The court smells like wood and fresh wax, a scent that makes Cam relax immediately. She’s probably spent more time between the hoops than she has anywhere else. She can see the three point line when she closes her eyes, imagine the height of the basket in her sleep. If the world had no room for her, then the one place she can confidently say she belongs is on the court.

She started playing basketball at a young age. Story of any player’s life, she’s sure, but it’s been one of the constants in her life for as long as she could remember. Despite that, it took her a long time to find genuine love in it. Basketball was an expectation. Greatness was, too. Lacing up her sneakers and working with private trainers had become routine, a way to earn pride and affection. Her mother always told her – and Coley, too – that she and her father were proud of them regardless of whatever sport they played or what they didn’t play.

People have different aspirations, Valerie told her when she was seven, in the throes of a tantrum because she’d been invited to a weekend sleepover that she would have to miss because her father had signed her up for a basketball clinic in Brooklyn. Different dreams. But you’re allowed to make space for what you love to do and what you live to do. You’re allowed to be a kid.

But Cam was sure that her father only smiled when she had a ball in her hand. She just wanted to make him proud – she looked up to him in so many different ways and wanted to boast gold medals just like he did. She wanted a career and a life to be proud of. So she’d sucked it up and went to the clinic, even if she spent every water break thinking about what her friends were up to.

It took a few years. She struggled to differentiate whether or not she played for the love of the game or for the need for approval. If she played because she saw the court not as polished wood and painted lines, but as the X’s and the O’s and as rotations and cuts, or if she played because she just wanted to be seen by the one person she always looked for.

On her own terms, she found herself falling in love with basketball in a way that was hers completely. She lived for teamwork, for the fact that playing good basketball meant knowing your teammates completely. The box score shows an assist, but doesn’t reflect how years of practice, study, and playing together prepares you to anticipate how your teammates move. She lived for the sisterhood of it all, the trust built between people who had the same goal and the same dedication to achieving it. She lived for the stillness on the court when she was at the line and the only thing between her and the hoop was fifteen feet of surety.

But Cam blinks back the memory, exhaling calmly as she laces up her sneakers on the bench. She ties them the same way every time – tight, double knotted, the ends tucked into the mouth. She doesn’t like practicing with music because it throws off her focus. There’s a rhythm to basketball that you only become privy to after years of breathing the game. The rubber echo of the ball against the court, the squeak of her sneakers, her own heartbeat – it grounds her, keeps her locked in.

When she’s satisfied with her shoes, she stretches out her legs, not doing anything too insane since she stretched before her morning run and was still feeling loose from it. It’s more to settle the residual noise in her brain.

After she picks up the ball, palming it between her hands, everything fades to a distant hum. It’s just Cam, the ball, the swish of the net. She runs a few drills just to get reacclimated with the feel of the ball in her hands, the way it bounces between her legs as she dribbles.

She moves onto shooting drills about ten minutes later, starting with a classic five spot drill. She doesn’t move on to the next spot until she makes ten in a row, but when she finds herself at the top of the key, three makes into her routine, the sound of the door pushing open causes her shot to clang off the rim.

She sighs, having found a rhythm, but steps off to pick up the rebound. Cam is only partially surprised to find Paige standing at half-court with a sheepish expression on her face and a pair of basketball shoes clutched between her fingers. The blonde has her hair up in a sleek ponytail, donning a black and white striped Nike sweatshirt (looking something like the Hamburglar, if Cam has to be honest), and a pair of matching black pants.

“Already trying to escape from the media?” Cam asks teasingly, holding the ball to her hip.

Paige shrugs, a little smile on her face. “I was tryna be good and mind my business, but I heard you dribbling. It was calling to me.”

Cam laughs. “Oh, I’m sure,” she says. “You sure you didn’t peek in, see it was me, and decide that annoying me was more worthwhile than getting to the press conference on time?”

“I still got thirty minutes,” Paige argues smugly. “I’m punctual and shit. Plenty of time to make you reconsider which rookie you actually wanted first dibs on.”

Cam hums, noting how comfortable she truly feels with Paige. She was expecting their first time seeing each other again to be a little more awkward considering how they left things, but their casual banter and teasing makes Cam feel like nothing had truly happened at all. Maybe she didn’t actually have too much to worry about. They would be fine, and she’s sure that the conversation they’ll have later would truly round it all out.

Then, she smiles, the curve of her lip indicating a challenge. She checks the ball over to Paige, who grabs it reflexively, her eyes wide in question. “How about some HORSE, then? Prove to me that you’re worthy of being the Camille Roman’s rookie.”

Paige scoffs, but she grins, setting her shoes down on the polished wood as she dribbles the ball. “What, was the natty not enough for you?” she teases. “Or going number one? Or buyin’ all your drinks?”

“I seem to remember those drinks of yours getting us into a lot of trouble,” Cam retorts, but the reminder doesn’t fill her with as much anxiety as it used to.

“You call it trouble. I call it vet and rookie bonding.”

Cam raises a brow. “Yeah? You gonna bond with Arike, too?”

Paige flushes, losing the handle on the ball as it bounces off her shoe, and Cam grabs it instinctively as she laughs. Paige, to her credit, recovers quickly, and she’s smirking when she says, “Nah. My vet says I’m off limits. I’m a one woman kind of girl.”

“Good answer,” Cam says. She checks the ball back with a loose, carefree smile. “First shot’s yours, rook. Make it count.”

Paige dribbles it once, twice, the smile never leaving her face as she inches closer to the three point line. She sets her feet shoulder width apart, crouching slightly, and she throws the ball underhanded towards the net. It sinks in gracefully, and Cam shakes her head in amusement at her over the top celebration as she tracks down the rebound.

“Don’t miss,” Paige says unhelpfully as she and Cam swap places. Cam rolls her eyes, not bothering with a response, and she steadies herself for her shot. Just before she gets it off, Paige adds, “You gonna repay me for all the concealer I had to buy last week?”

Her words startle Cam, but the shot is still money – it bounces off of the rim into the net, and the blonde sighs when her distraction effort fails. “You are such a cheater,” Cam gripes.

“What?” Paige cries, feigning innocence. “It was just a question.”

“Yeah, right,” she mutters under her breath, but her cheeks hurt from grinning. She scoops up the ball and shoves Paige out of the way with her hip. Paige huffs, moving, and Cam sits flat on the ground. Cam can feel Paige’s gaze on her as she lines up her shot and sinks the ball in with ease. “Two for two.”

Paige extends a hand to help Cam up, shaking her hand, and Paige grabs the loose ball and takes her spot on the court. The blonde readies herself to shoot, but just before she flicks her wrist, Cam steps up next to her, her calf barely brushing Paige’s shoulder.

The ball sails off course, clanging harmlessly off the rim, and Paige looks at her with a betrayed expression. “You’re cheating for real!” she declares, gazing forlornly at the hoop, and Cam laughs as she helps her up.

“That’s H,” Cam states simply, a mischievous smile on her face. Paige doesn’t respond as she tracks down the basketball and studies the court to look for her next shot. “I don’t know, P. I think Aziaha would have made that one for sure.”

“Nah, don’t piss me off,” Paige grumbles, which makes Cam giggle. She steps up behind the hoop, squares her shoulders, and Cam is peacefully silent as Paige shoots the ball over the backboard. It circles around the rim once before falling in and she exhales a breath of relief.

Cam raises an impressed brow despite herself, grabbing the ball as it bounces back towards her, and Paige pats her on the hip with a smug look when she passes. “Make this next shot if I’m your favorite rookie,” she declares.

“How old are you?” Cam asks as she lines up her shot. “Twelve?” Paige grins in a way that makes Cam regret asking, having spent enough time at youth camps to know that Paige’s retort would sound a whole lot like twelve inches deep in your mom. “Don’t answer that.” She exhales to calm her mind. Paige, thankfully, watches in silence, but it’s for naught as the ball bounces off the rim, anyways.

“How’s that H taste?” Paige is beaming as she checks the ball back to Cam, who rolls her eyes in amusement.

“Like you’re not my favorite rookie,” Cam chirps sweetly.

Paige squawks in indignation, which elicits a round of laughter from Cam. They go back and forth like that for a few more rounds, trading buckets, misses, and banter that gradually decreases the distance between them. Before a shot, Paige would pretend to massage Cam’s shoulders like she’s a fighter in a boxing ring. Cam would nudge her elbow before she shoots, attempting to throw her off her game, but she pats her hip when she makes it regardless.

Cam didn’t think it could be this nice. She thought that night at the hotel would have ruined her and Paige’s friendship and chemistry – both on and off the court – but she’s finding that, in a way, it’s brought them closer. She would never call it a mistake. She would be the first to admit that she wanted it – in the moment. Paige is good company, keeps her on her toes, and is obviously attractive, although there are some things you can’t have twice.

She’s closer to making her peace with that night. The conversation that she and Paige plan to have later would hopefully give her some more clarity and comfort in it, but she knows without a doubt that they can’t have a repeat of it. They can’t let the lines blur or push the boundaries more than they already have. That’s enough for her.

Both her and Paige have accumulated HORS twenty minutes later, and the both of them know they have to wrap it up soon so Paige can freshen up before she actually has to head out for media. The thing about Cam is that she’s not going to bend over and let Paige win just because she won’t concede the game. She and Paige both nailed the half court shot, which meant that game point relied on whether or not they could make it from full court.

“I don’t even think I have the arm strength for this,” Cam admits, standing as close as she can to the back wall so she has plenty of room to run forward. “The fact that you’re a point guard gives you an unfair advantage.”

“You tappin’ out?” Paige goads, grinning, and Cam has to bite her tongue. If there was anything Paige was good at besides basketball, it was baiting Cam.

“Rookies first,” Cam states.

“You don’t want the smoke,” Paige responds. Cam has to fight the urge to shove her, but she’s sure that would only motivate the blonde more.

Paige glances up at the hoop, nearly one hundred feet away, and she readies her shot. With a running start, she plants her feet at the baseline and grunts as she lobs the ball across the court. Cam’s eyes track its movement, the clean arc, and her jaw drops in complete and utter disbelief when it hits the backboard and swishes in without further fanfare.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” she groans, not really enjoying the taste of defeat on her tongue, but she can’t really be mad for long as Paige grabs her by the shoulders and shakes in excitement. She rolls her lips to stifle her smile.

“Just go ahead and take that E,” Paige says, passing over the second ball they brought to the baseline. Cam takes it with an eyeroll. “You don’t gotta embarrass yourself in front of me.”

Cam doesn’t dignify that with a response. She palms the ball in her hands, pushing herself closer to the wall, and takes a deep breath like she’s about to sink a free throw instead of launching a ball almost one hundred feet across the court. With a running start, she plants at the baseline and lets her right hand do most of the heavy lifting, and the ball sails out of her grip.

Both her and Paige watch with a bated breath as it arcs in the air. It flies closer, and closer, and closer, until it circles around the rim once, then twice, and falls out unceremoniously.

As Paige celebrates for the second time that afternoon, all Cam can really think about is how badly she wants to fucking retire. Paige jostles her as Cam stares at the hoop, deadpan and unblinking.

Premonition might be a curse. She just had to tell Rickea that the 2025 class was all about energy and how they’d be welcoming vets to the league. Cam just can’t believe she got welcomed by Paige during a game of HORSE that started as a joke more than anything else.

Cam just sighs, extending her hand, and Paige daps her up with unadulterated glee on her face. “Say the thing,” she requests sweetly.

Cam’s tone is flat as she states begrudgingly, “You’re my rookie.”

Paige pumps her fist in the air, looking nothing like the nonchalant final boss she claimed she was. Then, if only to add salt to the wound, Paige nudges her with her elbow and says, “Welcome to the league, Cam Roman.”

Cam can’t find it in herself to be upset. She supposes Paige did earn it, and hypothetically if she does get tagged in a few press conference clips later about Paige claiming she welcomed Cam to the league, she only reposts the clip out of integrity on her Instagram story.

When Cam told Paige that they’d talk after the press conference, she wasn’t really expecting it to be over takeout at Paige’s barren apartment, but she figures it’s a good venue as any. 

Paige welcomes her in with a sheepish expression and the smell of Chinese in the air. “I’m embracing the minimalist lifestyle,” she declares, gesturing minutely to the cardboard boxes sprawled around the room. There’s one in front of her couch, overflowing with a few trinkets like lego sets and framed photographs of Paige and her family and friends. Cam winces a little, briefly wondering who supervised Paige and her diabolical packing, but Paige’s apartment door clicks shut behind her and draws her attention back to the present.

Despite being lived in for only a few hours at most, Paige’s apartment is cozy and open. She has floor to ceiling windows in the kitchen overlooking the skyline, a cornucopia of takeout boxes littering the counter, and a few candles burning in the living room. They’re both dressed in casual clothes – Cam’s opted for a pair of comfortable, white gym shorts and a Wings t-shirt, while Paige has a loose pair of grey sweatpants hung low enough to reveal the band of her boxers and an old UConn tee.

“You’re doing better than I did when I first moved out here,” Cam admits, toeing off her slides and following Paige towards the kitchen. Paige throws a smile over her shoulder to let Cam know she’s listening as she sorts through the boxes. “I think I had takeout for a week straight because I didn’t have time to go buy pots and pans.”

“Shit,” Paige says instantly. “I knew I was forgetting something.”

Cam snorts. Paige passes a container to Cam, a simple order of lo mein and orange chicken, while she keeps the white rice and sweet and sour chicken for herself. There’s a bag of crab rangoons and eggrolls to share.

Almost absentmindedly, Paige pulls out the barstool at the counter for Cam before settling into the one next to it. Cam raises her brow but doesn’t say anything, taking a seat in the chair next to Paige, who passes a packet of plastic silverware and chopsticks like they’ve been in this position a hundred times before.

“You settling in okay?”

Paige shrugs a tired shoulder, shoveling a forkful of rice into her mouth. “Getting there,” she confesses. “Got a lot of shit to unpack, but…didn’t want it easy, right?”

Cam smiles knowingly at her. “I meant challenging as in getting your shot blocked by BG a couple of times. Not getting your ass kicked by cardboard boxes and IKEA instruction manuals.”

“I happen to be very handy,” Paige sniffs. “Don’t need no instruction manual. Or all those extra screws they pack in there.”

Cam stares at her unblinkingly. Paige stares back, something like mischief in her eyes as she spears a piece of chicken with her fork. The corner of her lips twitch ever so slightly. “Please tell me I’m not sitting on a chair that’s gonna collapse.”

“If you fell, I’d make sure you were okay before I laughed at you,” Paige offers unhelpfully.

Cam huffs. “Thanks. Just what any girl wants to hear.”

Paige smiles, and the two of them settle into a comfortable rhythm as they eat their dinner. Paige shares a couple of stories from media, telling Cam all about the embroidered cowboy hat she got and how done she is with random reporter questions about the Dallas heat and TexMex. That makes Cam laugh – it’s fitting to see that the reporters hadn’t gotten any better questions to ask besides food and the weather.

The peace lasts for a few moments until Paige’s fork hits the bottom of her takeout container and the last of her chicken is done. She clears her throat, taking a sip from her water bottle. “Elephant in the room?” she asks hesitantly.

Cam nods, pushing her leftovers away, and pauses for a moment. Finally, she settles on her words. “I think I might have overreacted a little,” she admits.

Paige offers a gentle smile. “I think it was a pretty valid crash out,” she states. “You were concerned about the locker room and making things awkward. I also get that the entire world would probably explode if word got out.”

“Yeah,” Cam agrees. She rests her chin in her palm. “I mean, I’m also…your vet,” she says carefully. The blue of Paige’s gaze is intense, but Cam forces herself to meet her eyes. “That night was out of character for me. I’m not usually so…”

“Carefree?”

“Reckless,” Cam supplies, and Paige nods, understanding. “I don’t regret it. You don’t either. That’s something we’ve got to stand on. I just wasn’t really thinking about…you know, the consequences of sleeping with my rookie.” Her words are dry, which makes Paige chuckle. “I don’t wanna deal with red tape from the front office. Definitely not the media. And I definitely didn’t want to make things weird with us.”

Paige’s smile turns a little crooked. “We’re good. I told you. We’re responsible adults.”

“Friends, if you will,” Cam adds.

Paige sounds all too smug when she pipes in with, “Best friends.”

Cam scoffs, rolling her eyes in amusement, feeling the final bits of tension leave her shoulders completely. They were good. No more issues. “Don’t push it, rook.” Paige raises her hands in surrender, a coy smile on her face as she slides out of the bar stool to start grabbing their trash. She waves off Cam when she tries to help, her expression far too adamant, so she bites her tongue and stays seated while Paige cleans up. “Paige?” she asks hesitantly.

“What’s up?” She glances at Cam briefly over her shoulder, the diamond studs in her ears glinting in the light as she turns, and Cam’s fingers drum lightly over the granite of Paige’s countertops.

Her voice is small when she says, “We can’t let it happen again.” It gives Paige pause, and she turns fully, leaning against the countertop. Her gaze is imploring – not offensive, just as though she’s trying to understand. “We’re friends. I’m your vet, you’re my rook. Nothing more. No need to make a good thing complicated, yeah?”

Paige raises a teasing brow. “You sure you can handle that, Cam?”

She narrows her eyes, which draws a laugh from Paige. “Can you?” she retorts. “You’re obsessed with me. It’s sickening.”

“I’m keeping you young,” she emphasizes. “Big difference.” Cam exhales, the noise sounding more like a breathless laugh. Paige clears her throat, fiddling with the towel in her hands. “I hear you,” she says, just so it’s absolutely clear, and the expression on her face eases when Cam meets her eyes. “I care about you and the team. We’ll keep it clean. But don’t think for one moment I’m gonna make your job any easier. You chose me on draft night – you’re stuck with me.”

Clean. Cam could work with that. There wasn’t any reason to change who they were or how they bantered, and if Cam was being honest, she didn’t want to. She liked this relationship she had with Paige, the slight push and pull and how they challenge each other. The mutualistic getting on each other’s nerves.

“Easy’s boring, right?” Cam reminds her, and a grin grows on Paige’s face, matching the sly one on Cam’s. Paige returns to the dishes, throwing jokes over her shoulder that Cam can’t help but laugh at. They’d keep it clean. Orderly. No chaos.

But entropy has to increase or remain constant. There was no circumventing that – it was a law of the universe. Ease wasn’t, though. Ease wasn’t just boring, and for Paige and Cam, they’d realize that it would be downright impossible.

[belli5]

let me love you .ᐟ ೀWS²

And if it feels right promise I don’t mind and if it feels right promise I’ll stay here all night

╰ Synopsis After dinner with Will, Will pulls over on the way home. In the quiet of the car, things heat up in the backseat.

Tags/contains Fluff, smut, Will Smith x fem!reader, creampie, p in v, car sex, public-ish(??), reconciliation sex, 18+, NSFW content below.

➺ from Sera, to you📨. Decided to actually write part 3 for “glimpse of us” and decided to go for smut because this is the right way to make up with someone after being apart too long(jokes, actually talk it out, guys😭.)

masterlist ᥫ᭡ please reblog this fic if you enjoyed it! Please do NOT rewrite/repost my work anywhere else without permission! ➜part two: So close, yet so far. ➜Part one:Hoping I’ll find a glimpse of us.

It had taken you hour and a half to decide what to wear. This was dumb. It was just dinner. Not a first date. Not a big deal, not a shiny life altering moment. It was just dinner.

With Will.

With Will, who once pulled you into a dark parking lot just to kiss you because he couldn’t wait. With Will, who once memorised your coffee order without asking. With Will, who you’d love. Who you still love.

You stood in front of your open closet, still barefoot, wrapped in a towel, hair half dry from the shower. Your bed was graveyard of discarded outfits, too casual, too cold, too desperate.

You hated how much you cared but then you wouldn’t be yourself.

In the end, you landed on skirt and a top that hugged your shoulders in a way you liked, and a delicate gold necklace. You touched it once as you looked at yourself in the mirror. It was the same one you wore the night Will first kissed you. You hadn’t done that on purpose, not really.

Your phone buzzed just as you were swiping on some mascara.

Smitty 🩷 outside when you’re ready.

Your chest tightened. Were you ready? No. Not even close. But you grabbed your coat anyway.

He was standing beside his car, dressed in a black sweater and dark jeans, hands in his pockets, shifting a little like he was nervous too. When he saw your, his face lit up in that quiet, thoughtful way he had, like the smile started in his eyes and made its way down.

“Hey,” he said, as you walked up. “You look… really nice.”

“Thanks,” you said softly. “So do you.”

It felt like old times. It felt like strangers. It felt like both, somehow.

He opened the car door for you, and you smiled despite yourself. Once he got in, you glanced at him out of the corner of your eye. His hands on the wheel. The way his hair curled just a little behind his ears.

“You made a reservation,” you teased, lightly. “So formal.”

“Well,” he shrugged, “didn’t want to screw it up. Figured you deserved an actual table and not like takeout from the back of my car this time.”

You laughed. “To be fair, that takeout was really good.”

“Yeah, but you deserve better.”

That silenced you. It hung in the air between you both, soft and awkward and sweet. You turned to look out the window, hiding the little ache in your smile.

The restaurant was beautiful.

Dim lighting, warm wood accents, candles flickering in little votives at every table. He’d clearly asked for something quieter, more private, away from the front windows, back toward a corner. You sat across from each other, and for a moment, neither of you said anything.

“You’ve been here before?” You asked finally.

He nodded. “Yeah, once. Macklin picked it for his birthday. Thought it might be too loud, but it’s not bad.”

A beat passed. “You okay?” he asked, his eyes flicking up to yours.

You nodded. “Yeah. Just… nervous, I guess.”

He leaned back slightly. “Me too.”

That surprised you. “Really?”

He gave a short laugh. “Yeah. You kidding? You’re the only girl who ever made me care if my shirt had wrinkles.”

You bit your lip to keep from smiling too big. “So you’re saying this is a high stakes evening?”

He looked at you then and something in his voice softened. “I guess it kind of is.”

Once the food came, the tension eased. It always did with Will. That was the thing about him, he made the hard things softer. The scary things manageable. He asked you about school, about your friends, about your new class schedule. He listened and he remembered details.

When he talked about hockey, it was animated but humble. He didn’t brag, he didn’t overshare, he just told you what you asked, and when you teased him for being too modest, he rolled his eyes.

“You realize I’m like, kind of good,” he joked.

“Oh, I’m aware,” you said. “Trust me, my professor made us do a current events presentation first semester and you were the headline. It was so awkward.”

He grinned. “You used me for school?”

“Only a little. I got an A.”

“Well, then you’re welcome.”

You both laughed, and for the first time that night, it didn’t feel weird. It didn’t feel like you were playing pretend. It just felt like you both.

After the plates were cleared and the server brought over two small espresso cups and a shared chocolate mousse, the conversation drifted into quieter waters.

“I’ve missed this,” you said, your voice barely above a whisper.

Will looked up. His gaze was steady, almost too much. “I’ve missed you,” he replied.

You stared at him, heart thudding. “You don’t have to say that,” you said.

“I’m not saying it for no reason.” He replied pausing.“You don’t have to say it back,” he added quickly. “I know it’s… I know it’s complicated.”

It was complicated. God, it was messy. But as you looked at him, you didn’t see someone who had hurt you. You saw the boy who used to draw hearts in the fog on your car window. The boy who always checked if your water bottle was full. The boy who, even now, was watching you like you were the only thing in the room.

You could feel your old self reaching out. The one who used to love him freely. Who never second guessed.

“I do miss you,” you said finally.

Will’s shoulders dropped just slightly, like a breath he’d been holding finally left him. You didn’t need to say more.

As you both left the restaurant, the cold night air hit your cheeks,

You both walked toward his car in silence, but it was a comfortable one this time. When he opened the passenger side door for you again, you paused, your hand on the frame. He looked up at you.

“I don’t know what this is,” you said softly. “Or what it’s supposed to be.”

“I don’t either,” he said honestly. “But… I’d like to find out.”

You studied him, the sincerity in his voice, the quiet patience in his eyes. And finally you felt brave enough to let herself hope, sliding into the seat.

The car ride after dinner was quiet, but warm.

No awkward silences, no rush to get home. Just the sound of tires on the road. He didn’t say much, and you didn’t push him to but the glances you exchanged said everything.

Every time you looked over at him, his jaw clenched just a little like he was thinking. Holding something back. You were doing the same.

You were sure he wasn’t driving you home, but it’s not that you minded. Will turned the car down a quiet road that curved out toward the edge of the city. The lights dimmed behind you both, the hum of cars and people faded. All that remained was the low rush of the highway and the sound of tires rolling over gravel.

He pulled into a narrow lookout spot, one of those hidden little places above the water, where the stars felt closer and the world felt far away. There were no other cars, no streetlamps. Just the dark, the distant shimmer of city lights, and the ocean stretching endlessly below.

Your brows lifted. “You okay?”

He looked over at you like he was trying to memorize your face. “I didn’t want to take you home yet,” he said softly.

You turned toward him, heartbeat quickening. “Why?”

He exhaled. Looked over at you like you already knew. “Because the second I do… this ends. And I—I’m not ready for that.”

Her lips parted.

He shook his head slightly. “I know we’re not together. I know this isn’t some perfect moment where everything’s fixed. But I can’t—” He stopped, voice rough. “I can’t sit this close to you, look at you, smell you wearing that perfume, and act like I’m not losing my mind.”

Your breath caught in your throat.

“I missed you so much it made me sick,” he continued. “And now you’re here. In my passenger seat. And all I can think about is how badly I want to touch you again.”

Your stomach flipped. He reached over, cupped your jaw, his thumb brushing your cheek. “You’re driving me fucking crazy.”

Then he kissed you and everything went quiet. Your hand curled into the front of his shirt. He tasted like heat and longing and something deeper than just lust. Something aching, familiar, desperate.

It wasn’t the first time you’d kissed but it was the first time in months. The first time since you stopped pretending you didn’t miss each other.

The first time it felt like this. When you kissed him back harder, he groaned softly into your mouth. “Back seat. Come here.”

You barely made it between the seats before you were climbing into his lap, knees braced on either side of him as he pulled you close. Your arms locked around his shoulders. His hands were already tugging your skirt up your thighs, lips finding your neck, kissing, then sucking just below your ear like he wanted to leave proof of this.

You gasped when he did, grinding down against the hardness in his jeans. “Will—”

“You don’t know how long I’ve wanted this,” he murmured against your skin. “How many times I’ve thought about this exact moment.”

His tongue flicked against the hollow of your throat before his teeth grazed the skin again, rougher this time. You moaned and tilted your head back, giving him more access.

He took it gladly, biting, sucking, leaving marks down your collarbone that made your thighs squeeze tighter around his waist.

Then you pulled back just enough to flip the script. You leaned in, lips brushing the shell of his ear, then you kissed down his jaw, slow and teasing, before sucking at the side of his neck, hard enough to make his hips jerk up against you.

He cursed under his breath. “You’re evil.”

You smirked against his skin. “You love it.”

And he did. Your hands slid under his shirt, pushing it up and off. You kissed down his chest, trailing your tongue along the lines of his collarbone while your hips continued to roll against him, taunting, unhurried.

He couldn’t help it. His hands gripped your ass harder, guiding your motions as you rocked against him, your thin panties rubbing over the bulge in his jeans.

You slowed down, like you wanted to torture him, like you needed to drag this out, just because you’d been apart for so long and now that you had him again, you didn’t want it to end too fast.

He felt it in the way you kissed him, the way you moaned into his mouth but held back just enough. You were savoring it, savoring him.

“Take your shirt and skirt off,” he whispered, voice wrecked. You did, slowly pulled the shirt over your head, revealing soft skin and a black lace bra that made him swear under his breath. You lifted yourself from his lap to pull down the skirt.

Then your panties followed, and then his jeans. And then he was finally free, hard and leaking, his hands trembling with restraint as you reached between you both to stroke him slowly.

“You’ve been thinking about this, huh?” You whispered against his jaw.

“I never stopped.”

You lined him up and sank down slowly, inch by inch, until you were seated fully in his lap, your thighs trembling as they adjusted to the stretch.

Both of you gasped at the same time. Your fingers gripped his shoulders, digging into his skin as you started to move—slow, dragging your hips in long, rolling grinds that made his head fall back against the seat. “Fuck, you feel like heaven,” he groaned.

Your lips curved. “You missed this?” You only said it because you wanted to hear it from him.

He looked up at you with dark eyes. “You have no idea.”

You clenched around him deliberately, making him gasp. He grabbed your hips tighter. “You’re such a brat right now.”

You smiled, breathless. “I’ve had time to think.”

He grabbed you by the back of the neck, pulling you back down for a kiss that turned messy, open mouthed and wet, all tongue and teeth. You whimpered into him, hips moving faster now, thighs flexing as you rode him with more urgency.

The car windows fogged up, the air turned thick with moans and breath and skin slapping skin. Each bounce of your hips had him groaning louder, chasing the heat curling low in his gut.

You started to fall apart, soft moans turning to breathless whimpers as his hand slid between you both and circled your clit, fast and sure.

“That’s it,” he murmured against your lips. “Come on, baby. I’ve got you.”

Your body tensed and then shattered. You came with a high, broken cry, legs shaking, nails raking down his back as he held you close through it. The tight squeeze of you around him pushed him over the edge moments later, hips bucking up as he spilled deep inside you with a strained, guttural moan.

You didn’t move right away. You lay against his chest, both of you panting, slick with sweat. His hands stroked your back slowly. Your lips pressed soft kisses to his collarbone.

Neither of you said anything for a long time. Eventually, you whispered, “That didn’t feel like just sex.”

Will tilted his head, kissed your temple. “That’s because it wasn’t.”

[loveisanimaginarydagger3000]

I Don't Hate You (1)

Wanda X Reader 18+

Summary- As you were about to knock on her door you heard what sounded like a groan. You froze at the door. Did you hurt her badly in training? Was she in pain? Steve was going to kill you. Oh god you had fucked up. “Fuck Y/n, right there please,” the witch moaned and you realised. Oh.

Warnings/Tags: Smut 18+ MDNI- Enemies to Lovers?, Dom Reader, Top Reader, Praise, Sub Wanda, Masturbation, Dirty Talk, Fingering, Oral sex, Multiple Orgasms.

This is an old fic I found from my ao3 so the writing quality isn't that good, apologies but I don't have the time to improve it.

General Master List | Chapter 2

You hated her. She hated you. That was the only thing you and Wanda Maximoff could agree on. The rest of the team had no idea what happened to make you hate a certain witch so much but by the way you acted towards her they could tell it must have been something big. So here you were currently sitting in the kitchen of the Avengers compound with a scowl on your face as Wanda had just entered the room.

“Can’t you just try to be civil with her?” asked Natasha who was your best friend. The spy had been there when they rescued you from Hydra and helped you understand your abilities and control them so you couldn’t hurt anyone else. Natasha was the only person you willingly told about your past. The testing, the abuse, the torture and the stripping of your humanity really did a number on you but you managed to get through it. You had to. With an annoyed look, you turned to the redhead and met her eyes.

“I’m sorry Nat but I just don’t trust her,” you said for what felt like the millionth time. The whole team wanted you two to get along but that was quiet hard as you were both strong independent women who could be annoyingly stubborn. The spy dropped the conversation with a huff and continued to run by old mission files with you. During this you found yourself looking out for a certain brunette and you couldn’t help it. You thought it was just your paranoia acting up as that was a habit you couldn’t shake but you didn’t miss that other odd feeling you felt when looking for her.

“Y/n? Wanda? A word please,” spoke Captain America and you audibly groaned at the names called. You heard her mumbled something under her breath and you just help yourself from being a dick.

“What’s wrong darling?” you sarcastically retort.

“What do you think?” she spat out, her accent thick.

“I think your thinking about having to spend time all alone with me,” you started with a smirk and she just raised her eyebrow at you, “Trying your hardest to keep that little mind of yours from thinking about being under me.” Thanks to your abilities you heard her breath hitch and knew you had riled her up.

“As If I would want to be under you,” she growled but you could see the way her legs slowly squeezed together. You loved teasing her because it always worked and well if you were being honest you had definitely thought about her being under you. The woman was gorgeous! She had a stunning body from all her training, she could kill men twice the size of her and she never backed down from a challenge. How could you not fantasize about her? It would be like some amazing fanfic where the two people who hated each other would some reason have amazing hot sex and maybe fall in love.

“Keep telling yourself that darling,” you said. You were about to tease her even more but a firm grip on your shoulder stopped you.

“Go now,” ordered Natasha and you saluted at her in a mocking manner and walked down the hall to follow the captain and witch. You couldn’t stop yourself and your eyes wandered lower until they reached the brunettes behind. You quickly averted your gaze once you released what you were doing.

“So what’s this for Grandpa,” you joke as he leads you to the training room. You jump up onto the pile of mats to sit on while he just rolls his eyes at the nickname. You and Steve were close as you both shared the super soldier serum but yours was more enhanced.

“You and Wanda will be sparring partners from now on,” his tone serious and you just laughed.

“You think she could fight me?” your voice shocked. “Wow I’m officially hurt Captain,” for dramatics you placed your hand on your heart and acted as if he had shot you.

“Get down Y/n,” he grumbled but you listened as he was still your friend. “You are going to spar with each other and settle your differences otherwise you are both banned from missions.”

“What?” you and Wanda both asked in unison.

“You heard me,” his tone stern, “Now sort this out so we don’t have to listen to anymore arguing.” With that said he left the room and slammed the door making you laugh.

“What’s so funny?” she snapped while tying her hair up and getting in a fighting stance. You looked her up and down unconsciously before clearing your throat.

“Looks like you’ll have plenty of time to be under me darling,” you purred and launched yourself at her. She dodged a few of your punches but you noticed how she put way to much weight onto one of her legs meaning if you swiped at her other-

“Fuck,” she shouted as her back hit the mat and you climbed on top of her to pin her down. You moved her hands over her head while moving your hips to straddle hers. Your faces were inches apart and your smirk was predatory. You looked deeply into her ocean eyes and wondered has she always had such beautiful eyes? You watched as her breathing started to pick up as you moved to whisper in her ear.

“If you want to be under me just ask,” you purred. “I’m sure I could make you scream,” your tone was sultry and as you pulled back you saw her eyes dilate so much only slivers of the green were left. You chuckled at her reaction before getting of her and waiting for her to get back up. You let her make the first move this time and quickly avoided her incoming attacks. You read her movements and analysed her techniques before predicting her next moves. You knew Natasha had trained her mostly so she had learned the spy’s skills but they just weren’t as developed as hers. Once she lifted the weight on one foot you knew she was going to swing her foot at you so you moved back and caught it with your hand. You flipped her over as she was now off balanced but made sure to put a hand on her back before she hit the mat once again. You hated her but that didn’t mean you were going to purposely hurt her. You weren’t like that anymore.

“You really do like being on your back for me,” you teased as you pinned her once again.

“Shut up,” she said with her accent coming out strong. “I’m getting a drink.” You gazed at her as she drank from her water bottle. From where you were you could see the light showing off the sweat that was dripping down the column of her neck and slowly trickling its way to the valley of her breasts. The sight of her was intoxicating and you couldn’t help but stare. You managed to look away before you came off as creepy and she returned to you a few moments later.

“Ready to be beaten again?” you taunted and she just rolled her eyes before throwing a surprise punch. You were impressed but it didn’t work as you countered it and swiped her off her feet once again.

“Wow you really are falling for me,” you joked and she groaned in annoyance. The two of you continued to spar for another hour until Wanda finally called it quits as she was getting annoyed. She managed to land a few hits on you occasionally but would always end up underneath you. When she stormed out of the training room you assumed it was out of frustration as you had being egging her on for ages. However Wanda left in such a hurry as the wetness between her thighs was becoming too much.

Once in her room she quickly shed her self of her sweaty workout clothes and laid down on her bed in nothing but her underwear. She didn’t get why you hated her so much. The only reason she acted the way she did to you was because that’s how you treated her. Wanda pushed these thoughts to the back of her mind as she moved her hands along her sculpted body. Sparring with you had awoken something in her. Yeah sure she had thought about you multiple times while pleasuring herself but to actually be under you and be so close? It had her wet within seconds. Her nimble fingers found themselves teasing her nipples through the fabric of her bra before she moved to unclasp it and throw it somewhere into her room. She pictured you above her, your hands teasing her nipples as she moaned under you. Your name falling out of her lips like a prayer as you took her desperately in her bed. One of her hands moved from her breast to slip underneath the fabric of her underwear and start rubbing circles into her clit. She wondered if you would be dominating during sex as you had that cocky personality or if you were really just a brat who needed to be tamed like she was. She hoped you would take charge and make her scream like you promised. She found herself getting unbearably wet between her thighs as the coil in her stomach started to tighten. She slipped in two fingers and thrusted at a leisurely pace imagining they were your fingers and you were teasing her for being such a brat this morning. Her hips bucked every time her palm brushed her clit and soft whimpers left her lips. She didn’t even notice that she was moaning your name as she edged closer and closer to the edge.

“Y/n,” spoke a voice and you whipped your head around. It was Steve great. “Why did Wanda look so annoyed after training with you?”

“I don’t know maybe because all she did was get pinned to the floor by me? I’m sorry Cap I really am but she’s too easy to fight!” you exclaimed and he sighed in frustration.

“Then why don’t you try and help her improve!” he said and you looked at him confused.

“Isn’t that your job? Or Nat’s?” he pinched the bridge of his nose at you and huffed.

“It’s yours now ok?” he said in a serious voice and you just groaned. Why God, why? “Also you can go check on her and apologise for being so rough on her in training,” his voice left no room for arguing so you mumbled stuff under your breath before leaving to go see the witch.

“God Y/n,” she whimpered as her fingers hit her g-spot repeatedly. She was a wet mess by now and she didn’t care. The image of you pounding into her with a strap on was doing wonders for her and she was so close to coming for a second time.

As you were about to knock on her door you heard what sounded like a groan. You froze at the door. Did you hurt her badly in training? Was she in pain? Steve was going to kill you. Oh god you had fucked up. “Fuck Y/n, right there please,” the witch moaned and you realised. Oh.

Wanda curled the two fingers inside her and rubbed tight, fast circles into her clit with her other hand bringing herself right to the edge. With a final thrust she came with a guttural scream and trembled on the bed as her orgasm washed over her. She laid on the bed panting after having two of the best orgasms of her life. Who knew you turned the witch on that much.

You remained frozen at the door as you had just heard Wanda moaning your name and had just orgasmed at the thought of you. Every single ounce of confidence in you went flying out of the widow as Wanda just came thinking about you. You knew you had to see the witch otherwise Steve would definitely ban you from missions so you did the only thing you could think off- make dirty jokes while talking to her.

You knocked three times on the door before saying, “Hey Wanda, I’m sorry for going so hard on you in training I just thought you would have liked it hard and rough.” You could hear an embarrassed noise from through the door and quietly chuckled. “Anyway I can’t wait for you to come tomorrow.” Wanda groaned loudly into her pillow and dreaded training with you tomorrow.

The next day you and Wanda met for training you had decided to wear a tight fitting black t-shirt that showed off how defined your body was as well as slightly curvy. You certainly didn’t expect Wanda to turn up in tight leggings that hugged her ass perfectly and a small sports bra that made her chest look bigger. You had to control yourself as she swayed her hips towards you. There was a glint of mischief in her eyes and you could tell she was going to be a brat.

“Hey Y/n,” her tone sultry and accent thick.

“Hey Wanda,” your tone equally seductive. “Did you have fun last night?” You saw how she blushed and thought this was going to be easy.

“I did actually,” she murmured, her face inches from yours. “I did what you said I would.”

“And what was that darling?” the nickname slipping from your lips.

“Thinking of you,” her voice raspy. You raised an eyebrow at her boldness but let her carry on. “I thought of what it would be like to be under you,” she stepped closer to you and moved to a fight pose. She made sure that in the position she was in her breasts would be pushed up and it would give you a clear view of them. “To have your hands all over me,” she threw a punch and you easily dodged it but grabbed her arm and flung her over you. She landed on her back with you onto and her eyes dilated. You could see how flustered she was and how her thighs tried to squeeze together. You moved apart her legs with your hands, spreading her out for you before crawling above her and putting your knew in between her legs. A soft moan left her lips at the contact and you stopped advancing on her. It felt so wrong to have her here on the floor of the training room.

“Do you actually want this?” you asked in case she didn’t for some reason.

“Yes,” she gasped out. You pressed your lips against hers and heard her moan into the kiss. Fuck she was addicting. The taste of her lips, the sound of her whimpers, the smell of her perfume. You couldn’t get enough of her. You pulled away and saw how her eyes fluttered open, her lips chasing yours. A small peck on her lips was placed before you pulled away for good to stare at her.

“Not here darling,” you panted out on her lips. Her nose brushed yours and you so desperately wanted her now. “My room or yours?”

“Mine,” she whispered and you moved off her and pulled her up. You pulled her close to murmur into her ear.

“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” you nibbled on her ear lobe. “Go.” Swiftly she left the training room and you chuckled as she fumbled with the door.

Around five minutes later you knocked on her door after making sure no one would see you. As soon as the door opened a hand made its way to the collar of your shirt and she dragged you into her room. Wanda pressed you against the door and reattached your lips together in a hungry kiss. You groaned into her mouth as her body became flush with yours. In one motion, you switched the positions and trapped her body between you and the door.

“If you want to stop just say,” you panted out while resting your forehead against hers, “I won’t judge and will stop as soon as you want me to.” She smiled before lacing her hands through your hair and pulling you in for a bruising kiss. Your knee made its way back between her thighs and she took this as the chance to grind along it. Your hands moved from beside her head to massage her chest before pulling down the sports bra revealing her chest. She gasped as the cold air met her nipples while you just let out a low chuckle. Your fingers rolled and pinched her nipples as she sighed against your lips and grinded her core on your toned thigh.

“Please,” she whimpered as you moved your kisses to her neck. You sucked hard onto a spot on her neck where everyone could see as it and felt her buck her hips especially hard.

“Oh you like that darling?” you teased. “Do you want everyone to see your mine? To see this and think of me and you?” you bit down on another part of her neck and soothed it with your tongue before moving to her chest. Your name fell from her lips as you took a breast into your mouth and worshipped it. With a pop you let it go before moving onto the other.

“Y/n,” she whined, “Please I’m so close. I need you to,” she moaned out before you cut her off with your lips.

“Need me to what?”

“Touch me here,” she guided one of your hands to between her thighs and you instantly felt how wet she was.

“You’re so wet for me,” you growled out and she moaned at the tone of your voice. You rubbed her through the fabric of her leggings and felt her getting extremely close. “Do you want to come?” you felt her nod against your shoulder and you tsked her. “You’ve got to use your words if you want to be a good girl,” she moaned at the words. “Good girls get to come.”

“Please let me come,” she whimpered and you felt bad for what you were about to do but it would be worth it. “I’m so close,” as soon as she said that you picked her up, her legs instinctively wrapping around your toned abdomen. She whined as you placed her on the bed as she was so close to coming. Once she was on the bed you knelt by the end of it and reached for the waistband of her leggings. You looked at her in the eyes, asking the silent question, and waited for her to say yes. She nodded but you tsked again so she said, “Yes. Please!” You laughed at her neediness but continued to pull the remaining clothing off her skin. As you unveiled the soft, smooth skin of her legs you groaned quietly as she was breath-taking.

“You’re so beautiful,” you whispered while moving her legs over your shoulder. You peppered open mouthed kisses in between her thighs before leaving a few bites to leave as a reminder. “Is this what you wanted?” you murmured into her skin. “To be spread out and wanting for me?” your hot breath sent all sorts of pleasurable feelings throughout the witch and a low moan left her lips. “Desperate for my touch?” you finally gave in and took her clit into your mouth. Her hips jerked at pleasure so with one of your hands you held her hips down. The show of strength made Wanda feel even more aroused and a new gush of wetness pooled between her thighs. Your tongue licked between her folds while your free hand moved to circle her clit. You thrusted your tongue into her dripping core and felt her clench around you. Wanda was already extremely close from before so it only took a few thrusts of your tongue against her walls and a few rubs of her clit for her legs to wrap around your head. Her legs trembled as she came with a long string of moans, her back arching beautifully and chest heaving from the intensity of it. Once she had rode out the last of her aftershocks you switched your tongue with your fingers and easily slipped two into her.

“Oh fuck,” she moaned as her hips bucked as best they could under your grip. You started a fast pace of moving your digits within her while your mouth sucked and licked around your extremely sensitive clit. It took only a minute or so for the witch to cry out your name out as another orgasm washed over her. You waited once again for her to calm down and tested to see if she could handle another. You worked her up slowly this time and her hands unclenched the sheet in her hand and tangled in your hair. You made her come another time before deciding she had enough and it would be too much for another.

“Are you alright?” you whispered as you moved back above her body. She sighed out a yes before pressing her lips against yours. The brunette moaned as she tasted herself on your lips before pulling away.

“Do you want me to?” she asked breathlessly and you shook your head.

“Its ok,” you said after pressing your lips together once again, “You’re tired. Go and rest.” You moved to her bathroom to grab a towel so you could quickly wipe her down and clean her up. Once you were happy she was alright you went to grab her clothes and put them into a wash basket before passing her some comfortable clothes to wear. You heard her call your name so you turned around to look at her.

“Stay?” she had hope in her eyes and for some reason you felt like you couldn’t deny her. You crawled into the bed with her and felt her move close to cuddle you. This felt weird for you as you had never expected to do this with her but it didn’t feel wrong so you went with it. “Y/n?” you hummed in response, “Why do you hate me?

“I don’t hate you,” you admitted. It was true. You never hated Wanda you were just scared of what she thought of you. When she went into your mind all that time ago when she was with Ultron you were still a new member of the team. You hadn’t done much to remove the ‘red in your ledger’ as Natasha phrased it and you assumed she just thought you were evil. “I just thought you would see me as a monster. I pushed you away because you saw all of me and it just….scared me I guess.” She removed her head from your chest to look at you in the eyes.

“You’re not a monster Y/n. And I never thought that of you.” She pressed her lips onto yours and this time it felt different.

“I’m sorry for how I treated you,” you whispered against her lips, not meeting her eyes.

“I’m sorry too,” she cooed and you finally looked at her, “But to be honest I was just mad at you. I had a huge crush on you and you just wanted to push me away.”

“Well it’s a good thing I’m yours now,” you said and you saw her raise her eyebrow, “Well that’s if you still want me.” She answered you by kissing you passionately on the lips and pulling you closer.

“Of course I do.”

[cherrygirlfriend]

PROFESSOR DONALDSON

♡ pairing: married professor!art x student!reader

♡ summary: art has a thing for one of his students and when he confides to his best friend about it, he sees her at the same bar.

♡ warnings / tags: smut, age gap (30s, early 20s), thigh riding, cheating, patrick being a wingman. MDNI! wc: 1.4k

♡ author's note: this has been in my drafts since april… sorry 😔

ART MASTERLIST ♡ 5K MASTERLIST

art knew that every part of his attraction towards you was wrong— not only was he a married man with a daughter, over ten years your senior, but the worst part was that he was your professor.

but every time you walked into the room, it was as if his eyes were pulled to you by a magnetic force; the way your smile showed off the dimples that looked hand-carved to your cheeks, how it seemed that the sun always seemed to find your eyes and make specifically them brighter than anything else in the room, your hand raising to brush a strand of hair behind your ear, showing the same pair of pearl earrings you wore every day. it was like everything was slow-motion when you walked into the room, like the melodic sound of your laughter tuned out every other noise.

not only that, but you were one of his brightest students; always writing down notes, a serene smile on your face as your eyes flickered from him to your notebook - he doesn't think you've ever even yawned during one of his lessons. sometimes, after class was over, you'd walk up to his desk, art's eyes widening as you cocked your head to the side with a genuine smile on your lips, and even though his ears started buzzing the moment you said something to him, he could read your lips enough to know you were complimenting his class, art offering a shy chuckle and a shake of his head with a quiet thanks.

at this point, though, art was just ready to admit defeat; he knew that it was wrong for him to have such thoughts about you, such feelings towards you, but he couldn't help it. so as long as he didn't do anything about it, he'd be fine. he was a grown man, he had self-control.

"so." patrick clapped his hands on the hardwood counter of the bar as he settled down next to art, ordering the same thing as his blonde friend had gotten, whiskey on the rocks. "what did you call me here for? doubt it's to party." he said, taking a sip of his drink, "tell uncle patrick."

art took off his glasses, rubbing the corners of his eyes with his thumb and index finger, placing the lenses down on the counter, and downing his whiskey in one large swig, tapping the edge of the glass to signify he wanted a refill, letting out an exasperated sigh, all the while patrick looked at his friend with widened eyes.

"what do i do..." art mussed up his hair, his lips pursed, "if i'm... attracted to someone i really shouldn't be?" patrick turned to look at art with narrowed eyes, letting out a soft chuckle; he saw the guilty in art's eyes, and immediately knew. "you have a crush on one of your students, don't you?"

art's eyes nearly bulged out of his eyes as he looked around, as if someone had told his deepest, darkest, secret to patrick; but the man simply chuckled, "dude, it's fine to have crushes on your students, just as long as you don't act on them."

but art couldn't hear a single word patrick was saying; because as soon as you spotted art, you smiled, lifting your hand up, waving at the man; and before he could pretend that he didn't see you, you had started walking over. "shit." he mumbled under his breath, catching patrick's attention. "what?" "that's her." "your little cr- YEOUCH!" art kicked patrick's foot under the table, interrupting the other man's sentence just as you got to the bar.

"i didn't expect to see you here, mr. donaldson." you chuckled softly, seeing the tight smile on art's lips. you tilted your head to the side as the man scratched the back of his head, "i could say the same." "i'm patrick." the black-haired man you'd noticed was accompanying your professor, and you turned to look at him, looking the man up and down, sizing him up with narrowed eyes, before telling him your own name. "i should go, my friends are gonna join me soon."

"ye-" "no, no. you should stay and have a drink with us while you wait for your friends." patrick grinned, stopping art's attempt from getting you to leave them. "is that alright with you, mr. donaldson?" you asked with a coy smile, the man clearing his throat, trying his best not to look at your cleavage, or how your skirt had slightly ridden up. "yes, that's fine. and, uh, you can call me art, since we're not on campus."

"alright, art." your lips curled up, and the way his name rolled out of your mouth so smoothly, the way your plump lips looked as you said it caused a twitch in his trousers as you pulled back a stool, sitting down next to art.

it was like talking to an old friend, like talking to someone art had known his entire life. one drink after another, the conversation between you two just… flowed. you didn't even notice when patrick slipped away, or even when your hand moved itself to art's thigh after a joke he'd told you had made you nearly keel over in laughter.

patrick did, though; the man was watching it all go down from a slight distance away, leaning against a jukebox, swirling around the in his glass of whiskey; a priceless grin on his face as soon as your lips connected with art's, only widening when he saw you two stumble into the women's bathroom of the shitty dive bar.

'don't shit where you eat' is what you told your friends every time they told you about some coworker they had a thing for; it was never a good idea to hook up with someone you knew you wouldn't be able to avoid. but as your professor out of all people sucked your nipple into his mouth, he might as well have sucked all the common sense out of your brain. you arched into him as art's hands slid up your skirt, his large, callouses hands gripping your thighs as you straddled his thigh.

"oh, god, mr. donaldson…" the term slipping out of your mouth without you even realizing, the man letting your nipple out of his mouth with a wet pop! as he looked up at you, your cheeks starting to feel warm with embarrassment.

but when you looked down at art, he had a small grin playing on his lips as he moved you on his thigh, the friction causing electricity to run through your veins as you felt the wet patch in your panties growing.

you rubbed art through his trousers, the man letting out a whine as he continued moving you as you ground down on his muscular thigh.

even though you were both still half-dressed, the pleasure you got just from the way art moved you on his thigh was heavenly, one of his hands squeezing the fat of your ass.

the drinks you'd had made every sensation feel so much better, every pulse of pleasure… the bathroom was filled with the sound of your mingled breaths, with your lewd moans, the pleasure in your abdomen building up and building up…

until finally it all crashed down, pleasure flooding through your entire body, your pussy clenching around nothing as your orgasm crashed through your body.

that was the moment art knew that he was screwed; because as he watched you come undone on his thigh, no part of him felt guilty. only thing he could think about was how beautiful you looked in that moment, and how he was the one to make you feel that way.

taglist: @h8aaz @purpleplumpudding @cinnamoncunt @nonietosay @ariieeesworld @in-my-feels-probably @harringtonsbowgirl @lacelottie @destinedtobegigi @jessalys @lacy-doe @aliluvssyou @lexasaurs634

click here to join the taglist! 🤎

[inseobts]

Hello! I'd like to please request a little scenario for multiple characters if possible; I'm especially interested in your take on this with Law, Sanji and Ace given their backstory. If you're open to writing for the ladies as well then adding Robin into the mix would be appreciated! My idea is simple; an S/O with a child, and the aftermath of discovering that fact. I don't mind if it's an established relationship and there just wasn't an opportunity to meet the kid before or something else, I just like the idea of these characters dealing with the concept of surprise family/parenthood, the angst that may arise from dealing with the role of a stepparent if they want a relationship (and its happy ending if possible!) Good luck with all the requests, I hope you have fun with them!

Found Family (Reader with a Kid)

gn!reader

characters: law, sanji, ace, nico robin

tags: under each character + secret child

a/n: I started it with a fem!reader in mind and changed it to gender neutral only later since the post didn't mention the gender, so please if I missed some changes please tell me

words count: around 0.8k - 1.7k each

masterlist || ao3 || ko-fi

── .✦ Law:

Tags: Established Relationship, Surprise Family, Angst to Comfort, Fluff

The wind blows soft through the port town. Law steps off the ship, coat flapping behind him, hands in his pockets. He’s quieter than usual, eyes scanning the street ahead. He’s not here on a mission. He’s here for you.

You sent a letter three weeks ago.

Just one line: “I need to talk. Come if you can.”

Law doesn’t like surprises. But he comes.

He finds you standing outside a small house with peeling paint and flower pots on the windowsill. You smile when you see him, but it’s tight, like you’re scared.

He frowns “You alright?”

You nod “Yeah… I just—can we go inside? I don’t want to do this out here.”

Law follows you in. It’s warm. Smells like soup and soap. A small jacket hangs on a hook by the door. Not yours. Too small.

His sharp eyes catch it, but he doesn’t say anything yet.

You lead him to the living room and sit. He stands. Watches you.

You look down “There’s something I never told you.”

Law’s voice is low “I figured.”

You breathe in deep “I… have a kid.”

Silence.

You look up. His face is unreadable. Like ice. You hate that expression, it means he’s trying to think without feeling. To stay calm.

He speaks finally “How old?”

You blink “She’s five.”

He does the math. That means before him.

“She yours?” he asks, even though he already knows.

You nod “Yes. Mine. The... other parent's gone. Completely.”

He nods slowly. His voice is cold, but not cruel “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was scared.” You twist your hands “We met during a war. We never talked about kids, or… futures. Then we got together, and things felt good. I didn’t want to ruin it.”

“You thought this would ruin it?”

“I thought you might walk away.”

He looks away “You didn’t trust me.”

“That’s not fair,” you say, standing now too “I’ve been through things. I didn’t know how you’d react. You’re not… You don’t talk about family. You barely talk about your past.”

His jaw tenses. You hit a nerve.

You try softer “I wanted to wait for the right moment. But there never was one. Until now.”

Silence again.

Then small footsteps.

You freeze.

Law turns just as a tiny figure walks into the room, clutching a stuffed rabbit.

“Who’s this?”

Her eyes are big, curious. Law stares.

You kneel “Sweetheart, this is Law. He’s… He’s my friend.”

Law doesn’t speak. He just looks. She hides behind your leg.

You don’t blame her.

“She’s shy,” you say “But she’s smart. She reads pirates like storybooks.”

Law kneels too, finally, lowering himself to her level. His voice softens.

“I’m not here to hurt anyone,” he says “I’m just… surprised.”

Your daughter peeks out “You talk funny.”

Law blinks.

You laugh nervously “He’s from the North Blue.”

“Oh.” She tilts her head “Do you have a boat?”

Law nods “A submarine.”

Her eyes widen “Cool…”

She steps forward. He doesn’t move.

Then she offers her rabbit “You wanna hold Mr. Bun?”

You almost cry.

Law takes it. Careful. Gentle. Like it’s glass.

He looks at you over her head. Still unsure. Still quiet.

But he’s here, and he’s not walking away.

The rabbit sits on the table between you.

Law hasn’t said much since dinner. He eats quietly, politely. Your daughter sits beside him, munching rice balls like they’re treasure. She’s talking to him. A lot.

“Do submarines have beds?”

“Yes.”

“Do you sleep in them?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you dream of fish?”

“…No.”

You nearly laugh into your cup. Law sends you a look. It says help me. You shrug. You’re doing fine.

When she finishes eating, you ask her to brush her teeth. She runs off with Mr. Bun in her arms. The house falls quiet again.

Law leans back in his chair.

“You didn’t even flinch,” you say “When she offered you the rabbit.”

He shrugs “She trusted me. I didn’t want to break that.”

You nod, chewing on your lip “That means a lot, Law.”

He looks at you. Eyes sharp but not cold “I’m not angry.”

“Really?”

“I’m hurt.” His voice is honest now “You didn’t tell me. I could’ve helped. Been there. Or at least known what I was walking into.”

“I know,” you whisper “I was scared. I didn’t want to push you away.”

“I’m not made of glass, Y/N. I’ve lost family. I’ve lost everything. But I never said I didn’t want to build something new.”

You look down at your hands “She’s my whole world.”

“I can see that.”

“And now that you’ve met her… what do you want?”

He pauses.

That pause stretches long and sharp between you.

Then, softly “I don’t know.”

You nod. You expected that. You’re not mad. Just scared again.

Law stands and walks to the window “She’s a good kid. Brave. You raised her well.”

You smile a little “She’s got my temper.”

“I noticed.”

You walk over to him. You both stare outside. The moon is bright tonight.

“I’m not asking you to be her father,” you say “You don’t have to… take that role if you don’t want it.”

He turns “What if I want to?”

Your breath catches.

“I don’t know how to be that,” he continues “A father. A parent. I’m… I’m a surgeon. A pirate. I know how to fight, how to cut, how to survive. Not how to raise a child.”

You place your hand over his “She doesn’t need perfect. Just present. Just kind. Even I didn’t know how to be a good parent.”

He watches you. Something cracks in his expression.

“I want you.” he says.

“I want you too.”

“But I can’t lie to you… I’m afraid. I don’t want to mess this up.”

You squeeze his hand “We’ll learn together. She’s not looking for perfect either. She just wants someone who doesn’t leave.”

That hits hard.

He nods and then tiny footsteps again.

Your daughter peeks from the hallway “Hey... can he read me a story?”

Law blinks “Me?”

She nods “You have a cool voice.”

You laugh softly “What do you say?”

He hesitates. Then walks over.

“Alright, let’s try.” he says “But only one.”

She beams.

You stand in the hallway, listening through the door. His voice is low, slow, careful. Reading a picture book about sea creatures. She’s tucked in, eyes half-closed. The rabbit is between them on the bed.

Law finishes the page. She murmurs, “You’re not scary like someone said.”

You gasp quietly. Betrayal.

Law chuckles “Someone said that?”

“Mhm. They said you’re all sharp eyes and brooding. But you’re kinda soft.”

Law mutters, “I am never going to live that down.”

You grin and walk back to the living room.

He stays. Finishes the story. Even tucks her in.

When he comes out, he looks… changed.

“You did good.” you say.

“I didn’t even sweat.”

“Liar.”

He sighs, then smirks “Okay, maybe a little.”

You take his hand again “So…”

“So.” he echoes.

“You staying the night?”

He raises a brow “You asking?”

You smile “I have tea. And a couch. Or a bed, if you behave.”

He smirks “I’ll try my best.”

── .✦ Sanji:

Tags: Flirting Sanji, Soft Sanji, Humor, Fluff, Unexpected Bonding, Found Family

Sanji flirts with you every time he sees you.

At the market “Ah, Y/N! Did the sun rise just to see your face today?”

At the docks “Want me to carry those for you, my love? Your hands are far too lovely for heavy lifting!”

Even after the battle in your city, where the Strawhats helped “You’re even more beautiful covered in blood. Should I be worried about how much I love that?”

You never fall for it. You roll your eyes. You walk away. You don’t even blush.

It drives him insane.

“You’re difficult to get,” he says one afternoon, following you through town “but I like that.”

“I don’t fall,” you say flatly “Especially not for men with hearts in their eyes.”

“Ahhh, but my heart is sincere!”

You stop and face him “Sanji. You don’t even know me.”

“I want to.”

You pause. He’s annoying, yes. But not bad. He’s never pushed you too far. Never said anything mean. Just flirty. Charming. Too charming.

You sigh “Fine. You want to know me?”

He lights up “Yes! Of course!”

“Then come with me.”

You lead him through town, away from the market, away from the noise. Into a quiet part of the island. A garden path. A small house tucked in the trees.

He’s still smiling “So this is where the beautiful Y/N hides. A date, then?”

You don’t answer. You open the door. Inside, it’s neat. Warm. Lived-in. There are toys in the corner. A tiny pair of shoes by the door.

Sanji frowns “Is this… your house?”

“Wait here.” you say.

You go into the back room. A few seconds later, you return, holding a small child. Sleepy-eyed. Holding a stuffed whale. While another lady leaves the house as if her job there is finished.

You look Sanji in the eye.

“This is my daughter.”

Sanji freezes.

Dead silent.

You wait.

You expect a nervous laugh. A fast goodbye. A dramatic “I’m not ready for this!” speech.

But it doesn’t come.

Instead…

“Her hair’s like yours,” he says softly “She’s beautiful.”

Your daughter rubs her eyes, looks at him “Who’s that?”

You answer “Just... a friend.”

Sanji kneels slowly “Hi, sweetheart. I’m Sanji. Can I say hello?”

She shrugs. He waves. She waves back with the whale.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Whale.” Sanji says seriously.

You blink.

She giggles.

You didn’t expect this.

You make tea. Sanji helps. He insists, actually.

“She can’t have sugar this late.” you say.

“Then honey,” he says “Gentle on the stomach.”

You watch as he puts her cup in front of her like a butler. Bows. She bows back. You nearly choke on your tea.

“Do you cook?” she asks.

“Oh yes,” he says “Better than anyone.”

She claps “Make us dinner!”

Sanji glances at you. You nod. Why not?

He makes a simple meal. It smells amazing. Your daughter eats two full plates.

After, she sits in his lap and shows him a book of sea animals. He listens. Really listens.

You don’t understand what’s happening.

You were trying to scare him away.

Instead, he’s… perfect.

When she falls asleep, he carries her to her bed. Quiet. Gentle.

He tucks her in, fixes her whale beside her, and kisses her forehead.

You follow him back to the living room in silence.

“Well...” you say, still confused “That wasn’t what I expected.”

He smiles but smaller this time. Softer.

“I flirt because it’s fun,” he says “But I stayed because I wanted to see you.”

You stare at him “You weren’t scared?”

“I was shocked,” he admits “But not scared. You’re a single parent. That’s strong. She’s lucky to have you.”

You look away “I thought it would make you leave.”

“I’m not that easy to get rid of.”

You smile at that and look at him again. This time longer.

Sanji isn’t just charm. He’s heart. He’s warmth.

And… maybe you were wrong about him.

Your daughter’s asleep.

Sanji’s sitting on the couch, arms stretched over the backrest like he belongs there. His jacket is off, sleeves rolled up, and a soft smile on his lips.

He looks so… calm. Like this is normal. Like he wants this.

You sit across from him, legs tucked under you. You sip your tea. Your hands are shaking just a little, but you hide it well.

“Thanks for dinner,” you say “She loved it.”

“She’s adorable,” he says, smiling “And polite. You’ve done an amazing job.”

You stare into your cup “I didn’t do it alone. But… it’s been a long time since I shared her with someone.”

Sanji watches you quietly. No teasing now. Just listening.

You swallow. Here goes nothing.

“So,” you say “I’ve decided something.”

He leans forward “Oh?”

You lift your eyes to meet his “I’m saying yes.”

His brows lift “Yes to what?”

You smile “A date.”

He freezes “Wait. A—really?”

You nod.

“I mean, I’ve been asking for weeks, but I thought you hated me.”

“I didn’t hate you,” you say “I just didn’t believe you.”

“And now?”

“Now I do.”

He stares at you for a second. Then a slow, beautiful grin spreads across his face. Like he’s won a war. Like the clouds finally moved for the sun.

He exhales like he’s been holding his breath for days.

“You—you have no idea what this means to me, Y/N.”

You chuckle “I might have some idea.”

“Do you want flowers? Candles? Music? Should I wear a suit? I’ll cook, of course—”

You laugh softly “Just come as you are.”

He runs a hand through his hair, suddenly flustered “I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy.”

You sip your tea again. Calm on the outside.

But inside? Your heart is thundering. So loud it feels like it echoes in your chest. And he doesn't even know your heart is actually beating faster than his own.

You’ve had to be strong for so long. For your child. For yourself. Love always felt like a luxury you couldn’t afford.

But Sanji… he’s something else.

Not because he’s charming.

But because when it really mattered, he stayed.

And now, you let yourself fall a little deeper.

You stand. Walk over. And press a soft kiss to his cheek.

He goes still.

You pull back and say quietly, “Can't wait for the date.”

His eyes widen, then fill with something warm surprised, happy, maybe even a little nervous.

“You… really?” he asks, softer than you’ve ever heard him.

You nod “Don’t make me regret it.”

His laugh is breathless “Never.”

You smile, heart pounding, but you don’t let it show. He doesn’t need to know yet how much this means.

A few nights later for your first date Sanji goes all out, but not in a flashy way. It’s thoughtful. Intimate.

He sets up dinner on the ship’s deck. Small candles, soft music from a den den mushi radio, and a view of the sea under stars. He cooks something warm and comforting, not fancy, just full of love.

You talk for hours. About silly things, quiet things, your pasts and dreams. It’s easy. He listens more than he speaks, and when he does talk, it’s gentle.

No cheesy lines. Just Sanji. Real and warm.

After dessert, he walks you home in silence. Not awkward, just peaceful. The kind of quiet where you don’t need to fill space.

At your door, he looks at you with hopeful eyes but doesn’t move in. He’s waiting for your choice.

So you step closer.

You kiss him.

Soft. Sure. Just once. But it’s full of everything you’ve been holding back.

When you pull away, he blinks like he’s just been hit by a wave.

You smirk “You were taking too long.”

He laughs, dizzy and full of stars.

And for the first time in a long while, so do you.

── .✦ Ace:

Tags: Friends with Benefits, Angst, Humor, Emotional Reveal, Mutual Feelings Hidden, Teasing to Serious, Marine Conflict

The sun burns above you. You’re lying on the deck of your ship, one leg over the other, a half-empty bottle between your fingers. Ace is beside you shirtless, grinning, sweat on his brow, flame flickering off his fingers like it’s breathing with him.

“You always steal my rum.” you say, kicking him lightly.

“You always keep it warm,” he shoots back “I’m doing you a favor.”

You roll your eyes “Your idea of favors sucks.”

He leans closer, his voice lazy and smug “You didn’t say that last night.”

You groan “Get a new line, fire boy.”

He grins wider. You punch his arm. He fake-winces, like it hurt. It didn’t.

That’s the two of you: teasing, biting, half-fighting, half-kissing. No promises. No labels. Just good fun and bad timing.

Pirate life is rough. You take what joy you can.

“Hey,” you say after a long silence, watching the sky “Wanna hear a secret?”

Ace smirks, eyes still closed “If it’s about that thing you did in the galley with the honey—”

“No, dumbass. A real secret.”

That makes him open his eyes. He turns to look at you “Alright. Hit me.”

You sit up. Serious now. The bottle rests on your knee.

“I have a son.”

Ace snorts “You what?”

You nod, eyes still on the horizon “Yeah. He’s five. His name’s Ren.”

He blinks. You go on before he can interrupt.

“I had him before all this, before the piracy, before you. I got caught in something messy with the Marines. To keep him safe, I left him with my parents. Changed my name. Ran.”

Ace stares.

You keep talking “I go see him when I can. Disguised. Just for a day or two. He thinks I’m some traveling doctor or something. He doesn’t know who I really am.”

You pause. Swallow.

“It’s hell, leaving every time. But I’d rather he grow up safe than have him hunted.”

Ace starts laughing.

You blink “What the hell?”

He’s full-on laughing “Holy shit, you got me! I thought you were serious. What is this, some new kink? Roleplay? Mommy pirate stuff?”

You just look at him.

Dead quiet.

No grin. No tease.

Ace’s smile dies instantly. The flame on his fingers goes out.

“…Wait,” he says “You’re not joking?”

You don’t say anything.

His expression changes fast… shocked, confused, then something close to guilt “You really…?”

You nod once “I’m not playing around.”

He runs a hand through his hair, suddenly tense “Shit.”

“Yeah,” you say, dry “That’s usually the first response.”

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Tries again “Why are you telling me this now?”

You shrug “I don’t know. Maybe because you’re the closest thing I’ve had to a real connection in years. Or maybe I just got tired of lying all the time.”

He stares at you.

You look away “I didn’t expect you to laugh. That sucked.”

“…I’m sorry.”

“Forget it.”

“No,” he says quickly “I’m serious. That was a shitty reaction. I just… I didn’t think you were the kind of person to hide something that big.”

You exhale “Turns out, I’m full of surprises.”

The silence between you is heavy now. Not like before.

Then Ace says quietly, “What’s he like?”

You blink “Huh?”

“Your kid. Ren. What’s he like?”

You smile a little “Stubborn. Smart. Messy. Loves drawing fishes. Hates carrots. Thinks I have the coolest boots in the world.”

Ace nods, quiet. He looks down, then up at you again.

“I meant what I said,” he murmurs “I’m sorry for laughing. And I’m… kinda honored you told me.”

You raise a brow “Didn’t peg you for the emotional type.”

He shrugs, eyes soft “Didn’t peg you for someone with a child.”

Touché.

Ace doesn’t talk much for the next few days.

No flirting. No teasing. Just quiet looks when he thinks you’re not watching.

You try to act normal with some old jokes, same smug grin as always, but you feel it too. Everything changed with that one secret. The space between you now holds more than just fun.

It holds truth. Real, heavy, warm truth.

You’re standing at the helm when he walks up beside you.

“I want to come.” he says.

You glance at him “Come where?”

“When you go see your son.”

Your hands tighten on the wheel “Ace—”

“I’ll stay out of sight. I swear. I just… want to see him. I want to understand what you gave up. What you’re protecting.”

You study him for a moment. His eyes don’t waver. There’s no joke. No smirk.

Just Ace. Real. Honest.

You nod.

Months later — The island is quiet. A small village with stone houses, chickens in the streets, a little bakery that still smells like your childhood.

You pull your hood low. Ace wears a cap, sunglasses... he looks ridiculous, but no one’s looking at him. Just another traveler.

Your parents’ house is at the end of the road. Garden full of wildflowers. Paint peeling on the fence.

Your son is playing outside.

He doesn’t see you at first. He’s chasing butterflies. Laughing. Barefoot.

Ace stops walking.

“That’s him?” he asks, voice rough.

You nod “Ren.”

Ace just stares. His hands slowly curl into fists.

You call out softly, “Ren?”

The boy turns. His face lights up.

He runs to you screaming. You drop to your knees and catch him in your arms. He’s warm. Real. Solid.

Ace looks away.

Inside, your parents keep things short. They know who Ace is. You warned them. They’re not happy, but they trust you.

You all sit outside. Ren sits on Ace’s lap by accident. You try to grab him, but Ace just holds him steady.

“It’s okay,” he says “He’s light.”

Ren shows him a toy ship made of sticks “I made this!”

Ace chuckles “Really? That’s better than some ships I’ve sailed on.”

You stare.

Ren grins proudly “My parent used to tell me stories. About pirates and fire powers. Did you know there’s a pirate who can set his fists on fire?”

Ace raises a brow “Sounds dangerous.”

Ren gasps “But so cool!”

You laugh softly. Ace sends you a small look. It’s gentle. A little sad.

Later, when Ren naps, you and Ace sit on the back porch.

“He’s amazing.” Ace says.

“I know.”

“You’re amazing,” he adds “You left this. For his safety.”

You stare at the grass “I think about quitting all the time. Just staying here. Being at his side full time. But… the world’s not kind. And if they find me—”

“I get it,” he cuts in “You’re doing what you have to.”

You glance at him “I didn’t expect you to care so much.”

He shrugs “Neither did I.”

Then he adds, “But now I can’t stop.”

Your heart stumbles.

“He’s got your eyes.” Ace says softly.

“Don’t get attached.” you warn “This life… it’s dangerous.”

“So is mine,” he says “But that didn’t stop you from letting me in.”

You look at him. Really look.

“I didn’t plan for this...” you whisper.

“Neither did I.”

But here you both are.

And suddenly, fun doesn’t feel like the right word anymore.

The sound of quiet laughter wakes you.

You blink against the morning light, still groggy, still warm under the blanket. It takes a second to remember where you are... your parents’ house, back in your old bed.

And then you hear it again.

Ren’s voice.

And Ace’s.

You sit up, heart skipping.

You slip out of bed, still barefoot, and pad toward the living room. And there they are.

Ren sits cross-legged on the floor, his little wooden ship in one hand, while Ace sits across from him, mimicking an enemy pirate voice.

“Noooo! You got me again, Captain Ren! My ship is sinking!”

Ren giggles and throws a pillow at him “That’s what you get, bad guy!”

Ace dramatically falls back, hands in the air “Ughhh… defeated by the mightiest pirate on the seas…”

Your heart squeezes.

Ace looks so natural. Hair messy. Eyes full of warmth. Like he belongs here.

But then your parents come in.

They freeze when they see the scene.

Ace doesn’t notice at first, he’s laughing with Ren, his smile unguarded.

“Ren.” your mother says, sharply.

Your son turns.

“Come away from him,” your father says quickly, stepping forward “Now.”

Ace blinks, confused “I—”

“Ren,” your mother repeats “Come here.”

Ren looks at you, unsure.

You step in “What’s going on?”

Your father’s jaw tightens “We don’t want him near the child.”

You stare “Excuse me?”

“He’s a pirate,” your mother hisses “A famous one. Fire Fist. He’s dangerous.”

“He’s also sitting on the floor playing ships...” you snap.

Your parents say nothing.

“You trusted me enough to come here with him,” you continue, voice rising “Now you’re trying to pull Ren away like he’s some kind of monster?”

“We’re protecting our grandson.” your father says coldly.

“From what? A man who’s been nothing but kind to him?”

“You don’t know what kind of life he brings.”

“I do,” you shout “I live it too. If you forgot. And yes, it’s dangerous. Yes, it’s hard. But Ace has done nothing but respect my family, protect me, and treat Ren with more care than anyone ever has!”

They go silent.

You’re shaking now, fists clenched.

“And for your information, I love him.”

The words fall like a hammer in the room.

Ren blinks.

Your parents’ eyes widen.

Ace just stares at you.

You don’t move.

You didn’t mean to say it... not like this, not loud, not angry... but it’s out.

And real.

You look at Ace, heart thundering “I love you.”

A beat.

Then Ace stands slowly, eyes locked on yours. He walks to you, quiet. The room holds its breath.

He stops in front of you.

“I wasn’t sure if I should say it first,” he says, voice low “Didn’t want to scare you off. But you beat me to it.”

You blink.

“I love you too.” he says.

He reaches out, gentle, and takes your hand.

Your parents stay silent. Ren looks between the two of you, then claps once like it’s the best thing he’s ever seen.

“Can I have pancakes now?” he asks.

You and Ace laugh at the same time, breathless.

And just like that, the tension cracks.

── .✦ Nico Robin:

Tags: Established Relationship, Soft Confession, Emotional Intimacy, Bittersweet Past

It’s late.

Most of the crew has gone to bed, except you and Robin. You're both in the library room. She’s reading. You’re not. You're just holding the edge of a piece of paper... frayed, uneven, and pulsing with life.

A vivre card.

You don’t have to look at it to know it’s still there. Still pointing somewhere far away, where you can’t be.

Robin closes her book softly “Is that what’s been on your mind all day?”

You glance over.

Of course she noticed.

You nod “Yeah.”

She tilts her head slightly “Can I ask who it’s for?”

You hesitate.

You’ve never told her. Not because you didn’t trust her, but because it always felt like a story that belonged to a different version of you. The you from before the sea. Before the Straw Hats. Before her.

But she’s already part of everything now.

So you answer.

“My son.”

Robin says nothing but her gaze sharpens. Attentive. Careful.

“He’s with his other parent now,” you continue, voice quiet “I raised him alone before I joined the crew. He’s the one who said it was okay. Actually, we were always together, in another small crew. Then he wanted a different kind of life. One with… peace. So we contacted his other parent.”

Robin nods, slow “He sounds mature.”

“He was always like that. Smarter than me, I think.”

There’s a short silence.

You look at the vivre card “I haven’t seen him since I joined. We talk through letters, sometimes den den mushi. But I don’t know when I’ll be able to see him again.”

Robin’s eyes soften “Do the others know?”

You shake your head “No. Just you.”

She reaches out. Her fingers brush yours, just enough to touch the vivre card “Thank you for trusting me.”

You smile, small but real “I didn’t know how to bring it up. I didn’t want you to see me differently.”

Robin hums “I already see you. Clearly.”

You blink.

She looks at you steady and kind “You carry something heavy. And still laugh with the crew. Still help cook. Still stand beside me in battle. That’s not weakness.”

Your chest aches in the best way.

She pauses, then adds, “If one day… you want to try and see him again, I’d go with you.”

Your voice catches “Really?”

She nods “Of course. I’d like to meet him. He sounds like someone I’d admire.”

You look down at the vivre card.

Still warm. Still burning.

Maybe not as far away as it feels.

It’s just past dinner.

You’re with Robin as she asked you to stay close. A soft excuse about helping her with some documents. You're both sitting on the floor, back against the wall, a soft lamp between you.

You have the vivre card on the table. You don't always keep it out, but tonight you felt the need to hold it.

You glance at the Den Den Mushi nearby.

You hesitate.

Then pick it up and dial a number you’ve had memorized since your hands first held his.

The snail blinks sleepily… then perks up.

“Hello?”

Your chest tightens at the voice.

You smile “Hey, kiddo.”

A pause, then, “IT’S YOU!!”

You laugh, caught off guard by the pure excitement.

“Oh my god—FINALLY! You didn’t forget me, right? You didn’t sail into a storm and disappear forever, right?”

Robin lifts an amused brow, watching you with quiet interest.

“I didn’t forget you,” you say softly “You know that.”

“Just making sure. I’ve been drawing so many sea monsters lately you would not believe. I made a kraken with three hats.”

You laugh again, voice cracking slightly “Three hats? He must be important.”

“Very.” He pauses, then adds, “...I missed you.”

You shut your eyes “I missed you too.”

Robin looks away respectfully, but stays close.

Then, from the snail: “Hey, wait—who’s near you? Are you with someone?”

You glance at Robin, who blinks, caught.

“She’s... a friend.” you say carefully.

Robin speaks, her voice soft “I hope I’m more than just a friend.”

The Den Den Mushi mimics a shocked face.

“...OH MY GOD. IS THIS YOUR GIRLFRIEND??”

You bury your face in your hand.

Robin chuckles lightly, graceful even when embarrassed “Hello. I’m Robin. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

There’s a long pause.

“...You sound really cool.”

Robin smiles “Thank you. So do you.”

“Wait—how much do you know about them? Like... do you know about the time they tried to cook without instructions and set the wall on fire?”

You groan “Don’t tell her that.”

“It was a microwave! The noodles caught on fire!”

Robin’s shoulders shake with laughter.

You shoot her a glare that holds no heat “I regret this entire call.”

“No you don’t.”

And he’s right. You don’t.

Not even a little.

Later, when the call ends, you sit in silence.

Robin’s hand reaches for yours “He’s amazing.”

You nod, voice soft “Yeah. He really is.”

She squeezes your hand gently “He has your spark. And your chaos.”

You smile through the ache in your chest “He’s better than I’ll ever be.”

Robin rests her head against your shoulder.

“You’ll see him again. When the time is right. And I'll be with you... if you want me.”

"Of course I do."

And somehow, with her beside you, that feels like a promise you can believe in.

[skyracha]

500 Follower Part 1

Sex Education

[Bangchan/Maknae Line x Reader]

MDNI!!!!

Word Count: 6,554 😳

Not proofread

SYNOPSIS: Your boyfriend Bangchan decided his Maknae need a little lesson on intimacy… you say yes to helping him.

WARNINGS: Sex, unprotected P in V, F!Recieving and M!Reciving Oral, Rough Fingering, Nipple Play, Degradation AND Praising, Choking mentioned like one, Voyuerism and HEAVY Exhibitionism, Begging, Munch!Han, Male masturbation, Use of Pet names, i’m sure i forgot stuff im sorry

NO TAGS DUE TO CONTENT

My Library HERE :)

_________________________

"Hyung?”

Chan groaned, rolling his eyes as the youngest members of his group came running up to him, Seungmin, Felix, Han and Jeongin murmuring to each other with flushed faces.

"Can I help you?"

The older sighed, closing his phone as the four stopped in front of him. He was sat alone on the couch, everyone else doing their own thing and preparing for bed after a long day of practice and work. He wanted nothing more than to go up to his room, take a nice, warm shower and sleep the night away with you.

But his boys seemed to have other plans.

"We just wanted to know..." Jeongin started, looking over at Seungmin and fidgeting with his hands. "...How do you get a girl to sleep with you?"

"What."

"I mean," Seungmin piped up. "How do you get a girl to be willing to have sex with you? We're trying to figure out how to do it."

Chan blinked, unsure what to make of his bandmates words. Did they think he had some sort of secret knowledge that would give them the ability to bed any girl they wanted? That he was some sort of Casanova?

"What makes you think I have any idea?" He asked, leaning forward to place his phone on the table before them.

"Because you have a girlfriend." Jeongin huffed, clearly frustrated that the older man wasn't understanding what they wanted.

"And? You think all I do is have sex with her?"

"Well, yeah!" Han spoke up, gesturing to the door. "I walked in on you guys just last week fucking away on the couch like animals.”

Chan flushed red, recalling the time they had been caught and how quickly he had pushed you off his lap and pulled his pants back up, hiding the both of you from their curious gazes.

"You guys... You're young, okay? You don't have to worry about anything like that. Don't worry about things like sex until you're ready."

"We’re in our 20’s old man." Seungmin said, voice firm and resolute as he crossed his arms over his chest. The other maknae nodded in agreement, shifting their weight from foot to foot as they avoided the older's gaze. “We just want to know how. You’re making this harder than it needs to be.”

Chan groaned, looking at his phone with a frown before looking back up at the group before him.

He couldn’t tell them everything he knew. They were still young and inexperienced, and the last thing he needed was them trying to put their hands all over you.

But he couldn't let them keep thinking that the only way to a girl's heart was through her vagina.

"I'm not gonna give you a full list, but I can give you some tips."

A few days later, Chan approached you with the idea. “Hi Channie, how was your day babe?” Your voiced cooed as he walked into the kitchen of the dorms.

You had a towel in your hands and were busy cleaning the mess the boys had left behind after a meal, humming to yourself as you moved around.

He didn’t respond at first, instead approaching you and wrapping his arms around your waist.

"My day was fine, just thought of something interesting. Wanna help me teach the kids a lesson?"

"A lesson?" You asked, turning your head slightly to look up at him. He hummed, kissing your cheek before speaking again.

"Remember a few days ago, when the kids asked me how to get girls to have sex with them?"

"Yeah, they said you didn't give them any real answers, though."

"That's because I didn't want them trying to seduce my beautiful girlfriend." He purred, hands sliding up your shirt to feel your bare skin. You giggled, reaching back and placing your hands over his.

"I think that's a great idea." You hummed, feeling him squeeze your breasts. "I think we should have a bit of fun with it. I have this weird desire to take this entirely too far.”

"That can be arranged."

You had taken the rest of the night and the next morning to prepare yourself. You had told Chan that you were going to make the most of the situation and have a bit of fun. You all gathered in you and Chan’s bedroom that night and went over some ground rules and boundaries.

But it had taken Chan no time at all to have you pinned beneath him, both of you naked. His deep voice was purring in your ear as he hands began roaming your body. You could sense the four pairs of eyes watching you two, but the sensation of Chan’s hands was entirely pulling your focus.

He had begun slowly, fingers gently ghosting over the curve of your neck, then the top of your breasts. His hands cupped your chest, squeezing the flesh as he pressed his lips against the spot where your neck met your shoulder.

Your hands lifted and grabbed his, and he watched you as you guided him to touch the soft buds on your chest. He didn't need much direction after that, his thumbs and forefingers coming up to pinch your nipples as he spoke to the four Maknae. “The key to having sex with a woman is finding what makes her tick. She has to feel good, she is your priority.”

You let out a soft moan, squirming beneath him as he rolled your nipples between his fingers. You could hear the four men to your left breathing hard, and you wondered what kind of faces they were making. Were their cocks already tenting their pants, or were they trying their hardest to maintain composure?

Chan didn’t stop, his lips traveling across your shoulder and to the other side of your neck, pressing light kisses across your skin as his fingers continued toying with your nipples.

"When she feels good, she's more likely to want you to fuck her. It's better for the both of you if she's wet and excited. You know how to find her clit, right boys?"

They didn't respond, and Chan stopped moving. One of the little perks you and him thought up. If the Maknae didn’t behave, then he’d punish you. You both knew the guys would get off on the imagery of you coming undone over and over, so why not use it to make them behave?

"Answer me, kids."

"Yes hyung."

“Good. I’ll make you guys show me later.” All four boys audibly gulped at the realization.

Chan removed his hands from your breasts, sliding his fingers down to press against your already soaked core. Your breath hitched, and you bucked against him.

"If you wanna please a girl, make sure to find her clit. It'll make her come a lot faster and harder than if you just start putting your dick in."

His fingers pressed against you, rubbing at the bundle of nerves, sending chills up your spine. You whined, legs spreading further on instinct as your eyes fluttered shut.

"Don't forget about the rest of her body, though. Girls like to have their breasts and nipples played with."

You whimpered as he began grinding against you, his hard cock pressing against where you craved it most. You reached down between your bodies, hand gripping his hip tightly.

"And, when she's getting close, make sure to give her something to hold onto. Let her dig her nails into you, or have her grab the sheets. If you really wanna have fun, let her nails paint your back in scratches.”

He pulled away, leaving your body cold as his hands slipped under your thighs. He yanked you forward to turn you towards the four other men, causing you to fall back and brace yourself with your hands. You watched with wide eyes as he got comfortable on his knees, his hands gripping the back of your thighs tightly.

You felt a surge of embarrassment wash over you.

You were spread for the four of them, dripping wet and wanting, your boyfriend between your legs.

"Now, I want you to watch this." Chan instructed, leaning forward and latching his mouth onto your clit. You moaned loudly, throwing your head back as he swirled his tongue around the bundle of nerves.

He was always so good at this.

Chan's hands slid from the backs of your thighs, and up your sides. He didn't hesitate to grab handfuls of your ass, and squeezed hard enough for you to let out a whine.

"Fuck, babe go easy!" He did just the opposite. Something primal awoke in him, as it always does. He was gonna ruin you, and when he was done, the four men watching would do the same.

His grip tightened, and you were sure his hands would leave bruises. He sucked at your clit, swirling his tongue around the little nub. Your hands came down to grip his hair, and you couldn't help but grind your hips against his face.

The sounds of his tongue working your pussy were absolutely filthy, and the way he was groaning into you was making the coil in your stomach wind tighter.

You didn't care about the audience, or how lewd the situation was. Your sole focus was the man between your legs, and the pleasure he was giving you.

"C-Chan! I'm gonna cum!"

"Then cum, baby." He hummed against you, and the vibrations sent you over the edge. You moaned loudly, throwing your head back and curling in on yourself.

You were panting, chest heaving as you tried to regain control of your senses.

"Now, did any of you see what I did?"

"You licked her pussy." Han blurted out, his face flushed and his hands shaking.

"Yeah, no shit. Did you notice anything else? Like, how I moved my hands, or where I put them?"

There was silence, and Chan let out an irritated huff.

He turned his head and looked over at the four Maknae, noticing their flushed faces and fidgeting hands. He was sure the four of them had hard-ons, and that they were aching to touch themselves.

But the thought of any of them being between your legs and eating you out?

Chan almost wanted to call off the whole thing.

Almost.

“Han get up.”

He stood, turning around and facing the four Maknae. He took a seat on the bed beside you, grabbing your arm and pulling you close. He kissed your temple, and whispered into your ear. “You’re gonna take a turn.”

Han slowly stood, trying to shift his weight to adjust the achingly hard cock pushing against his pants. The poor guy looked like he was gonna be sick, but there was a sparkle in his eye that made you excited.

Chan was a bit nervous. You had agreed to this, but was he willing to actually share you? Was it worth seeing the four maknae come undone?

Chan decided it was.

"You're gonna do exactly what I did, okay?"

"What if I fuck up?"

"I'll show you what to do, idiot." Bad cop.

“You’re gonna do great honey, I’ll help you.” Good cop.

Just another little perk you and Chan had decided on adding. Who doesn’t like getting degraded or praised?

Han kneeled between your legs, his eyes looking down at the mess between your thighs. You could tell he was nervous, and his shaking hands did little to reassure you that he could handle himself.

"Hands." Chan barked, and Han quickly placed his hands on the backs of your thighs. Chan reached over and gripped his wrists, moving his hands closer and forcing him to squeeze the supple flesh.

"Make sure you can reach everything."

Han gulped, nodding his head.

"What if I do a bad job?"

"If it doesn't feel good, she'll tell you."

He nodded, his grip tightening and making you shiver. He leaned forward, his warm breath fanning across your exposed pussy.

"Start with little licks, work up to the big stuff.”

“Wait!” It came out breathy, but all five guys looked at you. “You four feel so covered…please, don’t make me and Chan look so exposed.”

Seungmin, Jeongin, Felix and Han all shared a panicked look. It was true, you and Chan were completely void of clothes and the four of them were still fully dressed.

“Don’t want you to get messy now do we?” You cooed as you ran a hand through Han’s hair, him still kneeling between your legs, almost frozen.

One by one, they all got undressed.

Their hard cocks all bobbed and swayed with their movements, and the sight of their naked bodies sent a pulse straight to your pussy.

This was the best decision ever.

Han took a deep breath before he leaned forward, his tongue pressing lightly against your core.

You moaned softly, encouraging him.

Han seemed to get a bit more confident, his grip on the backs of your thighs tightening as he continued to lap at your pussy.

He wasn't very good.

His licks were a little too soft, his tongue moving in slow, wide motions. You let out a fustrated groan and Chan knew exactly what that meant. He fisted the hair at the back of Han’s head and guided his head deeper into you. Han’s nose pressed against your clit and you let out a loud moan at the sensation. “Get in there, don’t be gentle.”

You could tell Han was panicking. The younger was squirming against the harsh grip Chan had on his hair. His hands slid further up your thighs and grabbed a hold of your ass, squeezing roughly.

It was almost cute.

Chan didn't loosen his grip, though. If anything, he just held Han tighter.

"Make sure you pay attention, boys. When she's squirming, you know you're doing a good job."

You whimpered and rolled your hips, feeling his nose bump against your clit again. His grip on your ass was getting tighter, and the way his tongue was moving was making you see stars.

"Han, baby, you're doing so good."

Chan growled, his free hand moving up to grip your hip.

You could sense the tension coming from the older man.

Was he getting possessive?

You couldn't deny the thrill that sent up your spine.

"She's getting close." Chan growled, his grip tightening on the both of you. "If she tells you to stop, listen. She'll need a minute."

Han's pace sped up, and Chan released his hold on the younger, his hands going back to gripping the sheets.

You whimpered, squirming under his touch. You could feel the coil in your belly winding tighter, ready to snap.

"Han! I'm so close!"

Your orgasm hit you hard, and Han was quick to pull away. His chin was glistening, and he had a smug look on his face.

Chan’s breathing was tight as Han spoke. “I wanna do that again.”

Chan didn’t waste a moment. He reached out and grabbed the younger by the neck, pulling him close. He leaned forward, growling in his ear.

"You wanna taste her again? You think you can handle it?"

Han nodded his head, swallowing thickly. Chan hummed, letting go of his neck and moving to lay on his side.

"Good. Felix, come here."

The younger was quick to stand, walking around the bed and settling between your legs.

"You're gonna learn how to do this right, okay?"

Chan leaned up and placed his hand on the back of the youngest's head. He leaned forward, forcing the maknae's head down between your legs.

Felix's lips and tongue were a bit rough, and his technique wasn't the best, but he was eager to please. He would lick and suck at your clit, only stopping every once and awhile to take a breath.

"She likes her clit played with, not sucked on." Chan hissed, moving his hands to your hips. Felix pulled back and you whined, rolling your hips.

"Sorry, hyung."

"That's okay, sweetheart. You're learning. Here, let's try something." You sat up a bit and signaled to Chan.

Chan gently pushed him back and slid between your legs.

"Watch."

He didn't waste a moment, latching his mouth onto the sensitive bundle of nerves. You let out a high pitched squeal, squirming and grabbing his hair.

"You're a fucking tease, Channie." You breathed, grinding your hips against his face.

He didn't say anything, instead sliding his tongue down and pushing it inside of you.

"Fuck!"

Your back arched, and Chan pulled his mouth away from you. He looked at Felix and the maknae nodded.

"Don't suck, play with it with your tongue. Make sure to get her dripping wet, then push your tongue inside. And move your head with her, or you'll hurt her."

Felix nodded, his hands grabbing your thighs. He was eager to start again, and leaned forward. His tongue pressed against your clit, and he started moving his head like Chan told him to.

"Felix... baby, that's so good."

His tongue was a lot gentler than Chan's. His licks were shorter, quicker, but it was making you feel good as hell.

He wasn't hesitant about it, and the fact that he was doing what Chan said was a major turn on. You had always loved a man who followed orders.

You could feel his nails digging into your skin as he continued lapping at your clit. The pressure was building in your core, and you knew that you were going to come hard.

"I'm gonna come, baby."

"Good." Felix's voice was low and muffled against you.

You let out a loud moan, your body arching off the bed. Felix's tongue kept moving, even when your body went slack.

You were panting, and you could hear the others talking.

"That was really good."

"You think?"

"Yeah! It was really hot."

You rolled over, pressing your face into Chan's chest. You wrapped your arms around his neck, nuzzling against him.

"Chan... I need a break."

"Okay. We're taking a break."

The two of you got comfortable, laying down next to each other. Your head was resting on his chest, his arm around your waist and his thumb rubbing small circles into your side.

"What about us?" Seungmin spoke up, looking at the two of you with a pout.

“C’mere.” You sat up and gestured Seungmin to stand in front of you as you laid on your stomach, his cock in your face.

Your boyfriend had a firm grip on your hips, thumbs rubbing circles into your skin. Seungmin was hesitant, his hands shaky as he placed them on your head.

You opened your mouth, looking up at the boy.

Seungmin was the biggest of the four Maknae, but his size wasn’t gonna scare you off.

"I'm gonna suck you off, okay?"

Seungmin's breath hitched, his grip on your hair tightening.

"O-Okay."

"Tell me when to stop."

You took him into your mouth, your hands grabbing the backs of his thighs.

Seungmin whimpered, his grip tightening on your head. He was careful not to push you, though, and the fact that he was letting you lead the pace was a huge turn on.

You could feel Chan's hands slide up your back, his fingers brushing against your spine.

"Keep going." He whispered, and you moaned, closing your eyes and sucking Seungmin's cock.

The taller let out a loud moan, his hand grabbing your head. His hips began bucking forward, and his cock slid deeper down your throat.

"F-fuck, you feel so good."

Chan's hands squeezed your hips, pulling you back a bit. "Slow down."

"But she feels so good."

Chan hummed, leaning forward and kissing your neck. His hands moved up and cupped your breasts, giving them a gentle squeeze.

You moaned, and Seungmin let out a loud groan.

"I-I'm close."

"Good." Chan purred, his hands sliding back down to your hips. He leaned forward and pressed his chest against your back, his cock rubbing against you.

You whimpered, rolling your hips. You could feel his cock slipping between your legs, his shaft rubbing against your pussy.

Seungmin's grip on your hair tightened, his cock pulsing in your mouth. You sucked hard, swirling your tongue around the tip.

"Gonna cum."

"Do it, baby." You purred, looking up at him through your lashes.

Seungmin's cock twitched and he let out a loud moan. His hot cum spilled into your mouth and you swallowed, moaning at the taste. "Fuck, that's so hot,” he mumbled.

You pulled back, wiping the back of your mouth with the back of your hand. "How was that?"

"That was amazing."

You smiled, sitting up and kissing his cheek.

"You guys wanna get back to it?"

They nodded eagerly, and you giggled, leaning forward and kissing Chan deeply. He hummed, his hand reaching up and cupping your cheek.

"I love you." You said against his lips.

"I love you, too." He smiled back.

You were the first to get into position, laying down on the bed and spreading your legs. Chan spoke up, “The next thing I’m gonna show you is how to fuck her with your fingers. You gotta be careful, you do it wrong and she gets hurt.”

Seungmin was the first to step forward, his face flushed as he got between your legs.

He was shaking slightly, his fingers twitching as he brought them closer to you.

Chan moved behind him, placing his hands on top of Seungmin's.

"Start with one finger. If she says it's too much, add a little bit of spit and try again. You're gonna wanna curve them upwards, and move them in and out."

Seungmin nodded, his finger pressing against your entrance. You let out a soft whine, biting your lip as his finger pushed inside.

"Now move it in and out, slowly. Like I said, if she says stop, stop."

"O-okay."

Seungmin moved his finger in and out slowly, his gaze focused on your pussy.

You whimpered, rocking your hips.

"Seungmin, that feels really good."

"Does it?"

"Yes, baby."

"That's good. You're doing a good job, Minnie." Chan hummed, moving his hand to his shoulder. "Now add another finger."

Seungmin nodded, pulling his finger out and adding another. He pushed them both inside slowly, watching your face for any signs of discomfort.

"Good. Now move them."

Seungmin's fingers began moving, the feeling of him fucking you with his fingers was making you dizzy.

"She likes it when you curl your fingers a bit. That spot is a girl's best friend."

"Curl?"

"Yeah, like this."

Chan's fingers curled up , demonstrating the motion and the younger's eyes went wide. He mimicked the motion, curling his fingers and brushing against your g-spot.

"F-Fuck! There!"

"There?"

"Yes, fuck, keep doing that."

You reached down and began rubbing your clit, moaning loudly as the pleasure was starting to overwhelm you.

Seungmin continued fucking you with his fingers, his pace speeding up. Your moans were getting louder, and your grip on the sheets was tight. You could sense the more Seungmin got comfortable, the more he got into it.

"Minnie, I'm gonna cum!"

"Go ahead. Cum."

Your orgasm hit hard, and you cried out. Your entire body was shaking, and you were gripping the sheets tightly.

"That was so good." You breathed, looking up at him.

Seungmin beamed, pulling his fingers out and then tapped your chin with his other hand. “Open up.” You obeyed and he shoved his fingers in your mouth as you sucked them clean of any trace of you.

"Fuck." Jeongin mumbled, his cock twitching.

“Where’d you learn to do that?” Han asked as Seungmin began to go back to sitting down.

“I saw it in a porno once.” He shrugged.

"Don't worry, Innie. You're next."

"Wait." Jeongin spoke up, his cheeks flushed and his eyes darting away from the scene before him. "I don't know if I can do this."

Chan and you shared a look, before Chan responded.

"Why not? Do you not want to?"

"I just, I'm scared. What if I hurt her?"

"Then she'll tell you. If she doesn't feel good, she won't be shy about letting you know."

"But what if I do something wrong?"

"I'll guide you. Come here."

Jeongin hesitated for a moment before walking towards the two of you. Chan guided him, pulling him closer and placing his hand between your legs.

"She's still a bit wet. That's a good thing."

"Really?"

"Yes. It means she's turned on. It's a good thing." Chan gently pushed two of Jeongin's fingers inside, and the younger let out a soft gasp.

"She's warm."

"It feels really good, doesn't it?"

"Yeah."

Chan began guiding his fingers, pushing them in and out slowly.

"This is how you fuck a girl. Slow, deep thrusts."

"Okay."

"And don't forget, make sure to hit her g-spot."

"G-spot?"

"Yeah. It's a super sensitive area. Curve your fingers, like this."

Chan guided his fingers, showing the youngest how to curl them. He brushed against your g-spot, and you let out a loud moan.

"Found it!” He looked to Chan, shocked and semi-proud of himself. You couldn’t help but laugh to yourself.

Jeongin's pace picked up, his thrusts becoming faster.

"She likes it when you're rough. She's not made of glass, Innie. Go as hard as you want, but make sure to give her a second to breathe."

"Yes, hyung."

His pace sped up, his thrusts getting rougher.

"I'm close, Innie." You gasped, grinding your hips against his fingers.

"Come for me." He said in a breath, his thrusts becoming harder.

Your orgasm hit you hard, and you threw your head back. Jeongin's pace didn't slow, his thrusts growing more aggressive.

"Innie, fuck." He pulled his fingers out and moaned as he licked them clean.

"You're doing so well, baby." Chan hummed, kissing the your cheek.

"Now, I wanna watch you finger her." Jeongin spoke up, shy despite what he just did.

Chan and Jeongin switched places, Chan’s fingers pressed against your entrance, pushing inside and curling immediately.

You whimpered, grinding against his fingers. Chan’s pace was fast and rough, and it was making your head spin.

"She likes it rough. She loves it when you fuck her hard."

Jeongin nodded, his hand wrapped around his cock. His hand moved up and down his length, and his breathing was ragged.

"Channie." You whined, rolling your hips against his fingers.

"Come on, baby. Come for me."

You let out a loud moan, grinding your hips against his hand as you came.

"Fuck." Chan purred, pulling his fingers out.

"You wanna taste her?" He signaled to Felix.

"Y-Yeah."

Chan brought his fingers to the younger's lips, and Felix eagerly licked them clean.

"God, she tastes so good."

"You can have more later.” Chan hummed, standing up and moving over to the youngest.

“What’s next?” Han said, his hand lazily stroking his cock, the head red and angry.

“You’re gonna fuck her.”

The two of you shared a look and you smirked, laying back down and spreading your legs.

Chan helped the boy line himself up, the head pressing against your entrance.

"Take it slow, okay?"

Han nodded, pushing his cock inside slowly. You moaned, throwing your head back as he slid inside.

"F-Fuck." He groaned, his hands gripping your hips tightly.

"Good?"

"So good."

"Don't be afraid to fuck her. She can take it."

Han didn't hesitate. His pace was quick, and he was hitting all the right spots.

"God, you're so fucking tight."

"Han...you're doing such a good job."

Chan was still beside the two of you, his eyes dark and his expression hungry. “Baby-“ You reached your hand out to him and grabbed ahold of his cock. Your hand made work of your boyfriend while Han fucked into you at a delicious pace.

"She feels so good."

Chan chuckled, his cock throbbing in your hand. "I know she does."

"Fuck, I'm close."

"Come on, baby. Cum for me."

Han's thrusts became harder, his nails digging into your hips. His cock pulsed and twitched, and his breathing was erratic.

"C-Can I come inside?"

"Yeah, baby. Come for me."

Han's cock pulsed, his hot seed shooting deep inside you.

"God, that was good." He panted, pulling his cock out.

"You think?"

"Yeah." He laughed, ”I really wanna eat her out again.”

Chan's gaze darkened and he growled, "It’s my turn to show you how it’s done first.”

Chan's hands grabbed your hips and pulled you down the bed. He stood between your legs, his cock rubbing against your entrance.

"You ready for me, baby?"

"Always, Channie."

Chan hummed, and pushed himself inside. You gasped, your hands flying to his arms.

"Fuck, Channie."

Chan began pounding into you, his pace rough and brutal.

"Look at you. Taking me so well. You're such a good girl." His chest was pressed against yours, his words of praise tickling your ear.

His hand reached up and wrapped around your throat, squeezing gently.

"You're mine."

"All yours."

"That's right. Mine."

Chan's hand squeezed tighter and his thrusts got harder. You were quickly becoming a whining mess.

"You're not gonna last long, are you?"

"N-no."

"That's okay. You can come whenever you want."

"W-What about you?"

"Don't worry about me. Just come."

You let out a loud cry, your orgasm hitting you hard. You clenched hard around his dick, and he visibly jolted at the feeling of you gripping him.

"Such a good girl. I'm almost there."

"Come for me, Channie."

"I'm so close."

"Please, baby."

Chan's cock pulsed and he let out a low groan, his hips stuttering as he came.

He stayed inside you for a few moments, his forehead resting against yours.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm great. Are you?"

"Yeah."

"Good."

You hummed, turning your head to look at the boys. They were all staring at you with wide eyes and open mouths.

"Did you guys enjoy that?"

"It was awesome." Felix looked like he was about to combust.

"You looked amazing." Seungmin cooed as he began approaching the bed.

"I didn't know you could be so dirty, hyung." Jeongin ran a hand through his hair as he ran his eyes over your body.

You chuckled, turning back to face your boyfriend. He kissed your cheek and pulled out, laying beside you.

"I'm not sure I could get hard again for a while, baby. Give the boys some attention.”

"Okay." You sat up and grabbed Jeongin's wrist. "I want you."

Jeongin didn't hesitate, climbing onto the bed and pushing himself inside.

"Oh, fuck. You feel so good, baby."

"So do you."

Jeongin's hips were sharp and quick, his pace fast.

"I'm not gonna last long."

"It's okay sweetheart, just keep going-Fuck!”

Chan's voice filled the room.

"Wait a second." Jeongin slowed his motions as Chan grabbed his wrist and placed his hand on your clit. “If you know you aren’t gonna last long enough for her to finish, help her get there faster. Play with her clit.”

Jeongin nodded and his thumb started rubbing circles into the bundle of nerves. Your eyes fluttered shut and your back arched off the bed, the feeling of both sensations beautifully overwhelming.

"I'm close. So close."

"Me too."

You felt another hand join the one between your legs. You opened your eyes and looked up, seeing Seungmin kneeling beside you. His cock was in his hand, his strokes quick and erratic.

"C-cum with me, sweetheart." You placed your hand on Jeongin’s arm. "I'm close, just keep going."

"Fuck, me too." You could feel his thrusts becoming harder, his breathing ragged. His pace was brutal, and his grip on your thigh was painful.

"Seungmin."

"Yeah, baby."

"Kiss me."

"As you wish."

Seungmin leaned forward and his lips crashed against yours. The kiss was hungry and messy, and his tongue invaded your mouth. You moaned into his mouth, your orgasm quickly getting ready to snap.

"Gonna cum." Your orgasm hit hard, and your whole body shook. Jeongin's cock pulsed, and his hot seed spilled inside you.

"Shit." He pulled out, and collapsed beside you.

Seungmin didn't stop kissing you, his grip tightening on your waist as you sat up. “I wanna ride you. Sit against the headboard.”

Seungmin nodded, sitting up and positioning himself. He gripped his cock, rubbing the head between your folds and you both groaned.

"She feels so good hyung." Seungmin looked to Chan.

"Fuck me, Seungmin." Seungmin's hands rested on your hips and he slowly pushed himself inside. Seungmin began rocking his hips, his cock sliding in and out.

"God, I've wanted to do this for so long."

"What?”

"You were with him." He gestured towards Chan.

“You were having fantasies about my girlfriend?”

Seungmin nodded, biting his lip.

"I was jealous. I wanted you."

"And now you have her, but one night only. She’s mine, don’t forget that.”

"Yes, yes I do."

His pace picked up, his hips slapping against yours. You could feel his cock hitting deep inside you, his tip brushing against your cervix.

"You're so tight. Fuck."

"You're so big."

"Yeah?"

"Yes."

"I'm gonna come."

"Do it."

"Fuck." Seungmin's thrusts got faster, and his grip tightened. His cock pulsed and twitched, and his eyes fluttered shut. He cried out, his orgasm hitting hard.

"Oh my god." You cried out, collapsing against Seungmin as he rode out his own orgasm.

“Okay, she needs a break.” Chan helped you off Seungmin’s lap, but you interrupted him.

“Han, come here, please. Want you- to eat me out again.” Your words came out in pants, but Han looked more than eager to oblige.

You laid back on the bed, and Han crawled between your legs, his tongue running over your sensitive flesh.

You whimpered, the sensation bordering on overstimulation. Chan noticed your discomfort and he reached his hand down to rub slow circles on your hip, the feeling helping ground you. “Are you sure baby? You can stop at any time.”

“I’m fine, I promise.” You let out a moan and then signaled to Felix. As he came over, you turned your head to take him into your mouth.

While you were focused on Felix, Chan spoke up.

"Han, you gotta be gentle. If she says stop, you need to listen. Do not push her."

Han nodded, his tongue continuing to explore your pussy. He was gentle, his tongue gliding over your clit.

"Oh, fuck." You moaned around Felix's cock, your hand wrapping around the base. You bobbed your head, hollowing your cheeks and sucking hard.

"She's amazing." Felix groaned.

"I know. And she's all mine."

You whimpered, feeling another orgasm building up. Your hips rocked against Han's mouth, and he seemed to notice, his movements speeding up. "Gonna cum." You moaned, grinding against his mouth.

"Come for me."

"Yes!" You cried out, your orgasm hitting hard. Your hips bucked wildly, and your back arched. Han lapped at your cunt, cleaning you up before pulling away and licking his lips.

"That was the best meal I've ever had. I could do that all day.” Han stepped away as you continued to suck Felix’s cock.

“Stop- wanna fuck you.” He groaned.

Felix pulled out and then quickly lined his cock up with your entrance, slamming into you.

"Fuck." You gasped, your hands gripping the sheets.

"Fuck, you feel so good."

Felix's thrusts were hard and fast, and his grip on your thighs was almost painful.

"Fuck, I'm not gonna last." His hand shot down to your clit to help you along as Chan said earlier. Always following instructions.

"Come for me, Felix."

Felix's cock twitched, and he cried out, his cock pulsing and his hot seed spilling inside.

You let out a soft groan, and he pulled out, falling to the side and catching his breath. Each of the Maknae looked entirely spent, dicks limp and eyes closed.

"I wanna see her get fucked by Changbin." Felix looked at Chan, and the eldest nodded.

"Changbin? Why?” Chan questioned as he moved towards you.

"He's the biggest. I wanna see her stretched around his cock." Felix was dazed on the bed next to you.

Chan's gaze shifted to you, a wicked grin forming on his face. "Oh? Is he now?”

"Mhm." Felix nodded, biting his lip.

"Is that what you want, baby? You wanna be stretched around his cock?"

"I wanna be stretched around yours baby.” You could tell Chan’s possessive side was coming out.

"Good answer.”

Chan made his way over and settled between your legs, his cock rubbing against your entrance.

Chan slowly slid inside, and you moaned, your back arching off the bed.

"You feel so fucking good, baby. I love you.” Chan’s thumbs were rubbing circles against your hips.

“You fit so good, I love you too. Fuck!”

His pace was quick and rough, his cock hitting deep.

"I love you so much." Chan leaned down and looped his arms under your back, holding you flush against him as he buried his face in your neck.

"I love you, too." Tears were lining your eyes as sheer pleasure flooded your system, the overstimulation starting to hit you.

You moaned, your nails digging into his shoulders.

"Fuck." He growled, his cock throbbing.

"Fuck, I'm close."

"Come for me, baby."

"Chan..." Your eyes were squeezed shut, and you were barely able to breathe.

"That's it. Come for me."

You let out a strangled moan, and you came, your walls clenching tightly around his cock.

"Good girl. Such a good girl."

"Come for me, Chan. Come inside, please." Chan's grip tightened, and he groaned, his hips stuttering.

"Fuck." You both stilled, your breathing ragged.

Chan slowly pulled out, his forehead resting against yours.

"How do you feel, baby?"

"Sore, but I'm good. I'm happy."

"Me too. I love you."

"I love you, too."

Chan helped you stand, and he held you tightly.

"Alright boys, we need to get cleaned up. We have practice tomorrow and a few of you have vocal lessons and a photoshoot."

You chuckled and kissed his cheek.

"Alright. Go shower, we'll clean up the room." Han offered with a lazy smile.

"We?" Felix whined, sitting up.

"Yes, we. Come on." Seungmin said, slapping Felix on the shoulder.

"Thanks, guys." Chan grabbed your clothes and carried them into the bathroom, turning on the shower.

You smiled and joined him, letting the hot water wash away the sticky evidence of your activities.

The boys did an excellent job at cleaning the bedroom. It was spotless, and it smelled clean.

You and Chan were in his room, him snuggled against you as you ran your fingers through his hair.

"I think we need to have them all over for dinner. Or a movie. Something." You said softly.

"I'll ask if they want to. Why?" Chan was running his hands through your hair gently.

“I feel like I owe them a thank you." You couldn’t help but chuckle.

"Yeah, they would probably like that. I'll talk to the manager tomorrow and see when they have open schedules."

"Thank you, baby."

"No problem, love." Chan kissed your cheek and snuggled closer.

"Hey, Chan."

"Yeah?"

"What was all that about earlier? About not touching me because I'm yours?"

"I was just playing, baby. You know I'm not really like that, right?"

"Of course. It was really hot, though."

[mrs-delaney]

Letters You Never Sent | Part One

🏈 Joe Burrow x Reader | 17.2k-ish words

request: college sweethearts since ohio state 🫶 but by 2023, fame starts to change joe. he acts single, barely mentions his girlfriend, and reader starts feeling invisible—like she doesn’t even exist in his world anymore. so she starts writing letters. not to give to him—just to survive it. just to say the things she doesn’t feel safe saying out loud. they break up in january 2024. she moves out in a rush and forgets the letters. months later, joe’s in a new (casual) relationship. and the girl finds the letters. she gives them to him. he reads them. and it wrecks him. realizing how badly he hurt someone who loved him with everything she had. and maybe… just maybe… there’s still a happy ending. 🥺❤️

📝 Author’s Note:

this one is heavy, guys. sincerely, thank you to the anon who requested it. i literally cried writing this.

i hope you feel it.

honestly i’m a little nervous because i’ve never written anything this heavy before. these requests have been such a fun challenge—some of y’all are asking for things i never would’ve thought to write, and it’s pushing me in the best way.

i feel like this goes without saying but creative liberties were taken here.

this one’s for anyone who’s ever felt left behind. Part Two is coming Friday.

alexa play if i were a boy by beyoncé 💔

✨ my masterlist ✨

💌 want to be tagged in future fics? join my taglist here 💫

🌙 ask box is open — come keep me company, i’m around tonight 💌

The photo falls out of your copy of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo like a ghost from another life.

You're sitting cross-legged on the hardwood floor of your new apartment, surrounded by boxes labeled in your neat handwriting—Books - Living Room, Kitchen - Essentials Only—building this new life piece by piece, methodically, like everything else you've learned to do alone. December afternoon light filters through windows that overlook a city that doesn't know your history, doesn't whisper his name on every street corner.

The photo is from October 2018. Ohio State tailgate. Both of you wearing Buckeye gear, his arm draped over your shoulders, caught mid-laugh at something off-camera. You remember exactly what made you both crack up—his terrible impression of Coach Meyer that had you snorting so hard you nearly choked on your beer.

You're looking up at him in the photo like he hung the moon. He's grinning down at you like you're the only person in a crowd of thousands.

God, you were so young. So sure you were different. So sure you were forever.

Your thumb traces over his face in the photo, and for a moment you can almost feel the scratch of his stubble, smell his cologne mixed with autumn air and possibility. Before the fame changed him. Before success became more important than the girl who believed in him first.

Before loving him nearly killed you.

You slip the photo back between the pages, closing the book gently. Not throwing it away - you're not that angry anymore, not that hurt. But not keeping it out either. Just... acknowledging it existed, acknowledging it mattered, before putting it back where it came from.

It wasn't always like this, you think, looking at those two kids who had no idea what was coming. It used to be perfect. It used to be the kind of love that made other people jealous, the kind that felt like finding your missing piece.

It used to be everything.

* * *

August 2017 Ohio State University

The first time you see Joe Burrow, he's late to freshman orientation and clearly doesn't want to be there.

You're sitting in what you quickly realize is the wrong breakout session—Student-Athletes: Balancing Academics and Competition—but the session has already started and you don't want to cause a disruption by leaving. You're a transfer student, sophomore standing but new to OSU, and you're already feeling like you stick out in all the wrong ways.

The door opens at 2:58 PM, and he slips in just under the wire. Still in workout gear—navy Nike shorts, gray Ohio State Athletics t-shirt, hair damp from a quick shower—backpack slung carelessly over one shoulder. He scans the room for an empty seat and his eyes land on the one next to you.

"Sorry," he murmurs, settling into the chair. "Long practice."

You glance at him sideways. He's got this boy-next-door thing going on that probably makes professors want to adopt him, but there's something in his posture that screams frustration. Like he's carrying weight that doesn't belong to him.

"No worries," you whisper back. "I'm not even supposed to be in this group anyway."

That gets a small smile. "Yeah? What group should you be in?"

"Literally any other one. I'm not an athlete."

"Lucky you," he says under his breath, and there's something bitter in it that makes you look at him more carefully.

The orientation leader—a perky senior with a clipboard and an Ohio State cheerleading background—claps her hands together. "Alright, everyone! Time for our icebreaker. Partner up with someone you don't know and share your biggest fear about college!"

You turn to look at the boy next to you. Up close, you can see he's got these blue-green eyes that look tired despite his age, and there's something in his expression that gives him just enough edge to be interesting.

"Well," you say, "looks like we're partners."

"Joe," he offers, extending his hand.

"Y/N." His handshake is firm, confident in that way that comes from being an athlete, but his palm is slightly damp with nerves.

"So," you continue, settling back in your chair, "biggest fear about college. You go first."

Joe runs a hand through his hair, making it stick up in directions that should look ridiculous but somehow just look endearing. "That I'm gonna wash out. Like, everyone here is so sure of themselves and I'm just hoping I don't completely embarrass myself."

The honesty catches you off guard. Most guys, especially athlete guys, would never admit that to a stranger. There's something refreshing about it, something real.

"Your turn," he says.

"That I'll always be the transfer kid who doesn't really belong anywhere. This is my second school already."

"Second? What happened to the first one?"

You shrug. "It was small, didn't have the program I wanted. I'm in nursing school."

His eyebrows raise. "Nursing? That's hardcore."

"Says the guy who probably gets hit by linebackers for fun."

"Quarterback, actually. Well, third-string quarterback. Behind J.T. and Haskins." He laughs, but there's no humor in it. "Living the dream."

Something in his tone makes you study his face more carefully. "How long have you been here?"

"This is my third year. Redshirted as a freshman, barely saw the field last year." He shrugs like it doesn't bother him, but you can see that it does. "Coach Meyer likes to remind me that I'd be better suited for Division III ball."

"Ouch."

"Yeah. But hey, everyone starts somewhere, right?"

"Hey," you say, surprising yourself with how much you want to make that bitter edge disappear from his voice, "some of the best players had to wait their turn."

"Easy for you to say. You're not getting called 'John Burrow' by your own teammates."

"John?"

"J.T.'s real name is Joe too. So I'm John now. Very creative." He rolls his eyes, but there's hurt underneath the sarcasm.

"That's stupid."

"Welcome to my life."

The orientation leader calls for everyone's attention, but Joe's eyes stay on yours for a beat longer than necessary.

"Well, John," you say, and his face falls slightly before you continue, "I think Joe suits you better."

His smile, when it comes, is genuine and a little surprised. Like no one's bothered to stick up for him in a while.

"Thanks," he says quietly.

After the session ends, you both stand in that awkward way people do when they're not sure if the conversation is over. The other students are filing out, heading to their next activities, but neither of you seems in a hurry to leave.

"So," Joe says, shouldering his backpack, "what's your next thing?"

"Campus tour, I think. You?"

"Same." He pauses, then: "Want to get lost together? I mean, figure out where we're going together?"

You can't help but smile. "Want some company?"

"Yeah. Is that okay?"

"It's very okay."

You walk out of the building together, into the late afternoon Ohio sun, and something about the way he holds the door for you, the way he asks about your major like he actually cares about the answer, makes you think this might be the start of something good.

You have no idea, walking across campus with this frustrated quarterback who makes you laugh, that you're falling in love with someone who will break your heart so completely you'll forget how to breathe.

You have no idea that six years from now, you'll be sitting alone in a new apartment, holding a photo from when you thought you'd made it—when he was yours and you were his and the future felt as bright as those Ohio autumn afternoons—wondering how love that felt so right could go so wrong.

All you know is that Joe Burrow has kind eyes and a crooked smile, and when he asks about nursing school, you get the feeling he's the kind of person who actually listens to the answer.

So you tell him. And he listens. And somewhere between the academic buildings and the student union, between his stories about small-town Ohio and your dreams of helping people heal, something begins that feels like coming home.

* * *

Three weeks later - September 2017

You're reorganizing your notes for the third time when Joe slides into the chair across from you at the library, twenty minutes late and looking frazzled.

"Sorry," he says, dropping his backpack with a thud that earns him dirty looks from nearby students. "Coach kept us running extra drills because apparently we 'throw like we're afraid of the ball.'"

You look up from your perfectly color-coded anatomy flashcards and can't help but smile at his air quotes. "Yikes. Sounds like a fun afternoon."

Oh, the best," he deadpans, pulling out a crumpled syllabus and what appears to be three different notebooks. "Thanks for agreeing to this, by the way. Writing papers isn't exactly my strong suit."

It's become a routine over the past few weeks—these "study sessions" that Joe desperately needs for his Communications class and that you agreed to help with because, well, you like him. More than you probably should for someone you've known less than a month.

"What's the assignment this week?" you ask, even though you already know. You may have looked up his class schedule. Not in a creepy way. In a helpful way.

Joe squints at his syllabus. "Something about... 'analyzing the impact of digital media on interpersonal relationships in the modern age.'" He looks up at you with those blue-green eyes that have been showing up in your dreams lately. "I get the concept, I just hate writing papers."

You lean back in your chair, studying him. He's wearing a gray Ohio State hoodie that's probably two sizes too big, his hair is still damp from the shower, and he's got that slightly frustrated expression he gets when he has to translate his thoughts into academic essay format.

"You know what you want to say, right? You're just stuck on how to say it?"

"Exactly." Joe pulls out his notebook, and you can see he's already outlined his main points. His handwriting is messy, but his ideas are solid. "I've got all these thoughts about how social media makes people perform fake versions of themselves, but every time I try to write it down, it sounds like garbage."

You scan his notes. They're actually insightful—observations about authenticity, external validation, the psychology behind curated online personas. "These are really good points, Joe. You're just overthinking the academic voice."

For the next hour, you help him organize his thoughts into essay format. Joe doesn't need help understanding the concepts—he grasps them intuitively, makes connections you hadn't even considered. He just needs someone to help him translate his natural intelligence into the formal structure professors expect.

"You know," you say, reading over his revised introduction, "you should consider taking more psychology classes. You have good instincts about human behavior."

Joe shakes his head with a small laugh. "Nah. I mean, it's interesting, but I'm pretty single-minded about what I want to do with my life."

"Which is?"

"Make it as a quarterback. That's it. That's the plan."

There's something in his voice—not doubt, but determination so fierce it's almost startling. This isn't some childhood dream he's holding onto. This is his life's purpose, and he knows it.

"Must be nice," you say, "being that sure about what you want."

"What about you? You seem pretty sure about nursing."

"I am. I want to help people, you know? There's something about being there when someone's at their most vulnerable, being the person who helps them heal..." You trail off, realizing you've probably said too much.

But Joe's nodding like he gets it. "That's exactly how I feel about football. Like, I know it sounds dramatic, but when I'm on the field, everything makes sense. Even when I'm riding the bench, just being part of it feels right."

"Do you ever feel like you're trying to live up to someone else's expectations?" you ask.

Joe considers this, absently tapping his pen. "Not really. I mean, my dad played football, so people assume I'm trying to follow in his footsteps, but this has always been my choice. I was actually really good at basketball - could've probably played in college - but football just felt right, you know? Dad never pushed it on me. If anything, he tried to make sure I wanted it for the right reasons."

"And do you?"

"Want it for the right reasons?" Joe's smile is small but certain. "Yeah. I love everything about it. The strategy, the pressure, the way a perfect pass feels coming off your hand. Even the parts that suck, like sitting behind three other guys on the depth chart."

There's no bitterness in his voice when he mentions the depth chart, just the  confidence of someone who knows his time will come. It's attractive in a way that has nothing to do with his looks and everything to do with his certainty about who he is and what he wants.

The library is starting to empty out around you, the late afternoon crowd heading to dinner or evening activities. You should probably pack up, get back to your own studying, but neither of you seems in a hurry to leave.

"Can I ask you something?" Joe says, leaning forward in his chair.

"Shoot."

"Why are you helping me? Most people would just go through the motions."

The question catches you off guard with its directness. You set down your pen and consider how to answer honestly without revealing that you've developed feelings for the frustrated quarterback who brings you Red Bull during these sessions and remembers the chocolate covered espresso beans you like.

"Because I like how your mind works," you say finally. "You see things differently than other people. And because..." You pause, feeling heat creep up your neck. "Because I like you. As a person."

Joe's smile is soft and genuine, the kind that transforms his whole face. "I like you too. As a person."

"Good," you say, fighting your own smile. "Now, do you want to actually work on this paper, or should we keep having this very important philosophical discussion about why we like each other?"

"Can we do both?"

"We can do both."

You do work on the paper, eventually. But you also talk about everything else—his frustration with being redshirted, your adjustment to OSU, his family back home, your plans for nursing school. The conversation flows easily, naturally, like you've known each other for years instead of weeks.

"Do you ever worry you won't make it?" you ask.

Joe's quiet for a moment, then shakes his head. "Not really. I mean, I know it's going to be hard, and I know there are no guarantees, but..." He shrugs. "I can't imagine doing anything else. This is what I'm supposed to do."

That certainty, the way he talks about football like it's not just a career but a calling—it's one of the things that draws you to him. Joe Burrow knows exactly who he is and what he wants, even at nineteen.

"See? You're not the only one with good ideas."

The library lights start dimming—the universal signal that it's time to leave. You both pack up slowly, neither wanting to break the bubble you've created in this corner table surrounded by anatomy textbooks and his chicken-scratch notes.

"Same time next week?" Joe asks as you walk toward the exit together.

"Of course. But Joe?"

"Yeah?"

"You're going to nail this paper. You've got good instincts."

His smile is the last thing you see before you part ways in the parking lot, and you drive home with a dangerous fluttering in your chest and the absolute certainty that you're in trouble.

The good kind of trouble. The kind that makes you want to write his name in the margins of your notebooks and find excuses to bring up Ohio State quarterbacks in casual conversation.

You have no idea yet that you're falling in love. But somewhere between helping him find the words for his thoughts and watching him light up when he understands a concept, something has shifted.

* * *

Two weeks later - October 15th, 2017

You're sitting cross-legged on your narrow dorm bed at 11:47 PM, staring at a blank piece of notebook paper, trying to figure out why you can't get tonight out of your head.

Your roommate Allison is already asleep, her gentle snoring mixing with the sounds of the dorm settling around you. You should be sleeping too—you have Clinical Skills at eight AM and Anatomy & Physiology right after—but your mind won't stop replaying the last four hours.

Joe had texted around seven: Library still open? Could use help with that comm paper

What was supposed to be an hour of editing had turned into... something else entirely. You'd finished his revisions in forty-five minutes—his writing was getting better, more confident—but then he'd just stayed. Stayed and talked about everything and nothing until the library staff started pointedly stacking chairs around you.

"You know what's weird?" he'd said, leaning back in his chair and stretching his arms overhead. "I've been here two months and you're the first person who's asked me what I actually think about stuff. Not football stuff. Just... stuff."

"What do you mean?"

"Everyone either wants to talk about football or they act like I'm too dumb to have opinions about anything else." He'd run his hand through his hair, making it stick up in six different directions. "You asked me about that social media thing like you actually wanted to know what I thought."

"I did want to know what you thought."

"Why?"

The question had caught you off guard. "Because you're smart. Because you see things differently than other people do."

The way his face had changed when you said that—like no one had ever called him smart before, like it was the best compliment he'd ever received—had done something dangerous to your chest.

Then he'd told you about watching Tom Brady win his first Super Bowl when he was eight years old. About the exact moment he'd decided he wanted to be a quarterback, sitting in his family's living room in Ames, pointing at the TV and announcing to his parents that someday that would be him.

"Everyone thinks I'm crazy for being so sure about it," he'd said. "Like, what if I'm wrong? What if I'm not good enough? But I can't explain it—when I'm throwing, when I'm reading a defense, when I'm in the pocket... it's like everything else goes quiet. Like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be."

The way his whole face had lit up when he talked about football, like he was describing falling in love—God, you'd never seen someone that passionate about anything. And when he'd looked at you after, like he was checking to see if you thought he was ridiculous, you'd felt something shift in your chest.

Something that felt a lot like falling.

Now you're sitting here at midnight, pen hovering over paper, trying to figure out how to capture what you're feeling. Because this isn't just a crush anymore. This is something bigger, something that scares you and thrills you at the same time.

You start writing before you can talk yourself out of it.

October 15, 2017

Dear Future Famous Football Player,

Okay, this is probably the most ridiculous thing I've ever done. I'm sitting here in my tiny dorm room at almost midnight, writing a letter to someone who will never read it, but I can't get tonight out of my head and I need to put this somewhere.

We stayed until the library closed again. We finished your paper revision in less than an hour (and it's really good, by the way—you have this way of cutting through academic BS that's actually kind of brilliant), but then we just... stayed. We talked about everything and nothing. About how Coach Meyer still calls you "the kid from Iowa" even though you've been here for years. About how you miss your mom's cooking but pretend the dining hall food is fine because complaining feels ungrateful. About how you've known exactly what you wanted to be since you were eight years old.

And then you told me about that Tom Brady Super Bowl. The way your whole face changed when you talked about that moment—when you decided you wanted to be a quarterback. God, Joe. I've never seen someone love something that much. It was like watching someone talk about religion.

Here's the thing though, and this is going to sound crazy: I've been sort of accidentally watching practice from my dorm window (yes, I'm a creeper, sue me), and I see how hard you work. I see you staying late, running routes with receivers who barely acknowledge you exist. I see you studying playbooks in the dining hall while other guys are talking about parties. I see the way you watch film on your laptop between classes.

So I'm starting this collection. Because someday—and I mean SOMEDAY soon—you're going to be exactly what you dreamed of being when you were eight years old. You're going to be the quarterback everyone talks about. You're going to make all those people who overlook you now remember your name.

And when that happens, I want to be able to show you this box full of letters and say "I told you so."

Maybe that makes me presumptuous. Maybe I'm just some nursing student who has no business believing in your future. But I do believe in it. I believe in YOU, even when you're frustrated on the bench, even when Coach Meyer looks right through you like you're not there, even when you doubt yourself.

You're going to be something special, Joe Burrow. I can feel it in my bones.

And honestly? I really hope I get to be there to see it happen.

Love (yes, I said it, fight me), Your biggest believer

P.S. - Your Communications paper is going to get an A. I'm calling it now.

You set the pen down and read over what you've written, heat creeping up your neck. It's sappy and presumptuous and completely insane, but it's also true. Every word of it.

You fold the letter carefully and slip it into the small wooden box your grandmother gave you before she died—the one that's supposed to hold "treasures." This feels like the start of something worth treasuring, even if Joe never knows it exists.

Especially because Joe will never know it exists.

You turn off your desk lamp and slip under your covers, but sleep doesn't come easily. Instead, you lie awake thinking about blue-green eyes and crooked smiles, about the way Joe's voice changes when he talks about football, about the impossible certainty that you're watching someone destined for greatness.

You don't know yet that you're falling in love. But somewhere between helping him find his voice and listening to him share his dreams, something has taken root in your chest.

Something that feels like forever.

Outside your window, the campus is quiet except for the distant sound of late-night traffic and someone's music playing softly down the hall. You drift off to sleep thinking about eight-year-old Joe Burrow pointing at a TV screen, declaring his future to the world.

You have no idea that six years from now, you'll remember this moment—the purity of believing in someone completely—as both the best and worst thing you ever did.

All you know is that you've never felt anything like this before. And you never want it to end.

* * *

December 16th, 2017

You're stress-eating pretzels in the library when Joe slides into the chair across from you, looking like he's been psyching himself up for something.

"Hey," he says, drumming his fingers on the table. "So, my birthday was last week."

"I know. You mentioned it like twelve times." You look up from your nursing textbook. "How was it? Very exciting twenty-first birthday celebrations?"

"Went to dinner with some of the guys. Nothing crazy." He's still drumming his fingers, which means he's nervous about something. "But, um, I was thinking. Since we don't have any more tutoring sessions before break..."

"Yeah?"

"Do you want to grab dinner? Like, not a study thing. Just dinner."

You set down your highlighter and really look at him. Joe's wearing his usual Ohio State hoodie and jeans, hair messy from practice, but there's something different about the way he's looking at you. Less casual. More intentional.

"Like a date?"

His ears turn red, which is honestly kind of endearing. "Maybe. Is that... would you want to do that?"

You've been waiting for this question for weeks, but now that it's happening, you feel oddly nervous. "Yeah. I'd like that."

"Cool. Okay. Good." He grins, and some of the tension leaves his shoulders. "Friday work? There's this place off-campus that's supposed to be decent."

"Friday works."

"Awesome. I'll pick you up around seven?"

"Sounds good."

After he leaves, you sit there for a solid ten minutes staring at your textbook without reading a single word, trying to process the fact that you're going on an actual date with Joe Burrow.

* * *

Friday comes faster than you expected. You change your shirt twice before settling on something that looks nice but not like you tried too hard—dark jeans and a sweater that Allison insists "brings out your eyes," whatever that means.

Joe picks you up right on time, looking nervous and freshly showered. He's wearing a button-down shirt instead of his usual hoodie, and the effort doesn't go unnoticed.

"You look nice," he says as you walk to his car.

"Thanks. You too."

The restaurant he picked is a small Italian place near campus, the kind with mismatched chairs and good garlic bread. Busy enough that you don't feel like you're on display, quiet enough that you can actually talk.

"I've never been here before," you admit as you look over the menu.

"Neither have I, actually. My roommate recommended it. Said the pasta's good and it won't bankrupt me."

"Solid criteria."

At first you're both a little awkward - this is officially a date, after all - but once the food comes, you fall back into your usual rhythm. Joe complains about winter conditioning, you vent about your anatomy professor, and somehow you end up arguing about whether cereal is soup.

"It absolutely does not," you insist, laughing at his mock-serious expression.

"Milk is a liquid. Cereal pieces are solid ingredients floating in that liquid. That's soup."

"By that logic, ice cream with toppings is soup."

"Maybe it is."

"You're insane."

"You're the one dating someone insane, so what does that say about you?"

The word 'dating' hangs in the air between you for a second. It's the first time either of you has acknowledged what this is, and you feel your cheeks warm.

"I guess I have questionable judgment," you say finally.

"Clearly."

The drive back to your dorm is comfortable, filled with easy conversation and Joe's terrible taste in music. When he parks outside your building, neither of you seems in a hurry to end the night.

"This was fun," you say, turning to face him.

"Yeah, it was. Better than I expected, honestly."

"Wow, don't overwhelm me with enthusiasm."

Joe laughs. "You know what I mean. I was nervous I'd be weird about it. The whole date thing."

"Were you weird about it?"

"Was I?"

You consider this. "Maybe a little. But in a cute way."

"Ouch."

You're both smiling, and there's this moment where the air seems to shift between you. Joe's eyes drop to your mouth for just a second before meeting your eyes again.

"Y/N," he says quietly.

"Yeah?"

"Can I kiss you?"

Your heart does something acrobatic in your chest. "Yeah. You can."

He leans across the center console, and you meet him halfway. The kiss is soft, tentative, nothing like the dramatic first kisses you've seen in movies. It's better because it's real—a little awkward because of the car's interior, but sweet and genuine and completely them.

When you break apart, you're both smiling.

"That was..." Joe starts.

"Yeah."

"I've been wanting to do that for a while."

"How long is a while?"

"Since that first day when you made fun of my terrible introduction in orientation."

You laugh. "I did not make fun of you."

"You absolutely did. It was very attractive."

"Good thing, because I plan to keep making fun of you."

"I'm counting on it."

You kiss him again, just because you can, and this time it's less nervous, more sure. When you finally pull away, Joe's smiling at you like you've just made his entire week.

"I should go," you say reluctantly. "Allison's probably watching from the window like a creep."

"Probably?"

You glance up at your dorm room window and see the curtain drop quickly. "Definitely."

"Tell Allie I said hi."

"I'll tell her you're a good kisser. She'll want details."

Joe's ears turn red again. "Please don't."

"Too late. I'm telling her everything."

"Everything?"

"Well, not everything. But definitely the cereal soup debate. She'll think you're insane too."

"Great."

You lean over and kiss his cheek before getting out of the car. "Text me when you get back to your place?"

"Yeah. I will."

You watch him drive away before heading inside, where Allie is waiting with an expression that suggests she's been pressed against the window for the past twenty minutes.

"So?" she demands.

"So what?"

"Don't you dare. How was it?"

You collapse onto your bed, touching your lips where you can still feel the ghost of Joe's kiss. "It was really good, Allie."

"Good enough for a second date?"

"Definitely good enough for a second date."

Your phone buzzes: Made it back. Thanks for tonight. Sweet dreams.

You fall asleep thinking about the way Joe looked at you across the dinner table, like he was seeing you

* * *

April 14th, 2018

You're sitting in the stands with Joe's parents, wearing his number on a t-shirt you got specifically for today, and your stomach is in knots.

"He's been so nervous about this," Robin Burrow says, adjusting her Ohio State visor. "Barely slept last night."

"He'll be fine," Jimmy adds, but you can hear the tension in his voice too. "Joe's been working his ass off for this opportunity."

The spring game is supposed to be a glorified scrimmage, but everyone knows what it really is: Joe's last real chance to prove he belongs ahead of Haskins on the depth chart. Coach Meyer has been non-committal about the backup quarterback situation all spring, but the writing's been on the wall since Haskins' performance at Michigan last season.

Your phone buzzes with a text from Joe: See you after. Wish me luck.

You text back: You don't need luck. You've got this.

But watching him during warm-ups, you can see the pressure weighing on him. His jaw is set in that way it gets when he's trying not to let anyone see how much something matters to him. Three years of waiting, three years of getting told he's not good enough, all leading to this moment.

"There he is," Robin says, pointing as Joe trots onto the field with the second-string offense.

He looks good in the scarlet and gray, confident despite the nerves you know he's feeling. You watch him go through his pre-snap reads, the way he surveys the defense with the kind of calm intelligence that should be obvious to anyone paying attention.

The first quarter is mostly vanilla plays, nothing too exciting. Joe gets a few snaps, completes his passes, hands the ball off cleanly. Solid but unremarkable. You can see him settling in, finding his rhythm.

Then, in the second quarter, something clicks.

Joe drops back on a play-action fake, and the defense bites hard. He steps up in the pocket, eyes downfield, and launches a perfect spiral to K.J. Hill for a 35-yard touchdown. The crowd erupts, and you're on your feet screaming before you even realize it.

"That's my boy!" Jimmy yells, and Robin is clutching your arm so hard you'll probably have bruises.

Joe doesn't celebrate much—just a small fist pump before jogging to the sideline—but when he looks up at the stands, his eyes find yours immediately. He points right at you, that crooked smile breaking across his face, and your heart does something acrobatic in your chest.

"Did he just—" you start.

"He pointed at you," Robin finishes with a smile. "I've never seen him do that before."

The rest of the game is a blur of completions and smart decisions. Joe finishes 18 of 23 for 279 yards and two touchdowns, no interceptions. It's the kind of performance that should settle any debate about who the backup quarterback should be.

When the final whistle blows, you practically sprint down to the field level, Robin and Jimmy close behind. The crowd is filing out, but you're pushing against the current, desperate to find Joe in the chaos of players and families and media.

You spot him near midfield, still in his uniform, talking to a reporter. His hair is sweaty and sticking up in six different directions, and there's a grass stain on his jersey, but he's glowing. Actually glowing with the kind of satisfaction that comes from proving everyone wrong.

When he sees you approaching, his face breaks into that smile—the real one, not the media-trained version—and he excuses himself from the interview.

"Did you see that?" he says, jogging over to you, still breathless from the game. "Did you see that pass to Hill?"

"I saw everything," you say, and before you can think about it, you're in his arms and he's spinning you around right there on the 50-yard line. "You were incredible."

When he sets you down, his hands stay on your waist, and there's something different in his eyes. Something that makes your breath catch.

"I love you," he says, the words tumbling out like he can't hold them back another second.

Time seems to stop. The noise of the stadium fades into background static. It's just you and Joe and this moment that feels like everything you've been building toward since that first day in orientation.

"I love you too," you say, and his smile is so bright it could power the entire stadium.

He kisses you right there on the field, in front of his parents and the remaining fans and anyone else who happens to be watching. It's not perfect—his lips taste like Gatorade and sweat, and someone's taking pictures with their phone—but it's real and it's yours and it's everything.

"I've been wanting to say that for months," he admits when you break apart, his forehead resting against yours.

"Only months?" you tease. "I've been thinking it since December."

"Since our first date?"

"Since our first date."

Joe laughs, the sound mixing with the distant noise of the crowd still filing out. "God, I was so nervous that night. I thought I was going to mess it up somehow."

"You didn't mess anything up. You were perfect."

"Not perfect. But maybe perfect for you?"

"Definitely perfect for me."

You're both grinning like idiots, caught up in the euphoria of the moment—his performance, the "I love you," the feeling that everything is finally falling into place.

"Joe!" Jimmy calls out, approaching with Robin and a huge smile. "Hell of a game, son."

"Thanks, Dad." Joe's arm stays around your waist, like he can't bear to let you go. "Did you see that scramble in the third quarter?"

"Saw all of it. You looked like a quarterback out there."

"He looked like the quarterback," Robin adds, hugging both of you at once. "I'm so proud of you."

The next hour passes in a blur of congratulations and photos and people telling Joe how well he played. You stay close to his side, basking in his happiness, in the way he keeps glancing at you like he still can't believe you're there.

It's not until you're walking back to the parking lot, just the two of you, that reality starts to creep back in.

"Think this changes anything?" you ask, swinging your joined hands between you.

"It has to, right?" Joe says, but there's uncertainty underneath the confidence. "I mean, I couldn't have played much better than that."

"You were amazing."

"Coach Meyer actually smiled at me. Like, a real smile, not one of those scary ones."

You laugh. "High praise."

"The highest."

But even as you laugh and celebrate and replay every throw from the game, there's a part of you that's worried. Because you know how these things work. You know that one good game doesn't necessarily change everything, especially when the coaches have already made up their minds.

You don't say any of this to Joe, though. Not today. Today is for celebrating, for savoring this moment when everything feels possible.

"I love you," he says again as you reach his car, like he's testing out how the words sound.

"I love you too," you reply, and you mean it with every fiber of your being.

You drive back to campus with the windows down and the music loud, Joe's hand in yours, both of you high on love and possibility. The future feels bright and wide open, full of promise.

You have no idea that this will be one of the last purely happy moments you'll have for a long time. That the coaches have already made their decision about the depth chart, that Joe's transfer will be announced in just a few weeks, that loving someone with dreams as big as his means learning to love them through disappointment too.

All you know is that Joe Burrow just told you he loves you after the best game of his college career, and right now, that feels like everything.

Later that night, in your dorm room

April 14, 2018

My love,

You pointed at me. In front of 70,000 people, in front of all the coaches, in front of your teammates - after that beautiful touchdown pass, you found me in the stands and pointed right at me.

You pointed at me after that touchdown pass. In front of all those people, after the best play of the game, you found me in the stands first. I've never felt anything like that.

Coach Meyer actually smiled at you today. I saw it from the stands. And when you told that reporter after the game that your girlfriend was your inspiration? I thought I might spontaneously combust from pride.

But mostly, I can't stop thinking about what you said on the field. "I love you." Just like that, no hesitation, no fear. Like it was the most natural thing in the world.

I love you too, Joe Burrow. I love your terrible jokes and your competitive streak over everything and the way you actually listen when I complain about my anatomy professor. I love how hard you work and how much you care and the way you make me feel like I'm the most important person in your world.

You're not the backup anymore. After today, you can't be. You're the future.

And I get to love you through all of it.

Forever yours, Y/N

* * *

May 18th, 2019

You find Joe sitting on the couch in his apartment, staring at his laptop screen like it holds the answers to the universe. There are papers scattered across the coffee table—transfer portal documents, LSU recruiting materials, statistics sheets—and he looks like he hasn't slept in days.

"Hey," you say softly, setting down the coffee you brought him. "How are you feeling?"

He doesn't answer immediately, just keeps staring at the screen. You can see the LSU Tigers logo reflected in his eyes.

"Joe?"

"I'm scared," he admits finally, his voice barely above a whisper. "What if I'm making a huge mistake? What if I go down there and just prove everyone right—that I really am Division III material?"

You sit down next to him, close enough to see the stress lines around his eyes. It's been a month since spring practice ended, a month since it became clear that despite his spring game performance, Haskins was still ahead of him on the depth chart. A month of Joe weighing his options while you watched him slowly break apart.

"Tell me what you're thinking," you say.

Joe closes the laptop and runs both hands through his hair. "Coach O called again yesterday. Says they want me, says I can compete for the starting job immediately. But..."

"But?"

"But what if I can't? What if I transfer and sit on another bench for another year? What if I'm just not good enough, and I'm too stubborn to see it?"

You've never seen Joe like this—so uncertain, so vulnerable. The confident quarterback who pointed at you in the stands after throwing touchdown passes has been replaced by someone who's questioning everything he thought he knew about himself.

"What does your gut tell you?" you ask.

"That I need to go. That staying here means accepting being a backup forever." He looks at you then, and there's something desperate in his expression. "But it also means leaving you. Leaving us. And we just figured this out."

Your heart clenches. You've been dreading this conversation, knowing it was coming but hoping somehow you could avoid it.

"Joe," you say carefully, "what are you asking me?"

"I'm asking if you think this is crazy. If you think I should just accept my place here and stay."

The question hangs between you like a test. You know what the easy answer is, what the selfish answer is. Ask him to stay. Tell him you need him here. Make this choice about you instead of about his dreams.

But you also know Joe. You know that if he stays at Ohio State just for you, he'll spend the rest of his life wondering what could have been. And eventually, he'll resent you for it.

"I think," you say slowly, "that you've been preparing for this opportunity your whole life. And I think you'll never forgive yourself if you don't take it."

Joe's shoulders slump slightly. "What about us?"

"What about us?"

"Long distance is hard. Really hard. And if I go to LSU..." He trails off, but you can hear the unspoken concern. If he goes to LSU and succeeds, if he becomes the quarterback he's always believed he could be, will there still be room for a girl from Ohio?

"Joe," you say, taking his hands in yours, "do you love me?"

"Of course I love you. That's why this is so hard."

"And do you trust me?"

"Yes."

"Then trust me when I say that if we're really meant to be together, we'll figure it out. Distance is just geography."

"It's not just geography. It's everything else. The pressure, the spotlight, the way everything changes when you're actually playing at that level."

You can hear the fear in his voice, and it breaks your heart. Not fear of failure—fear of success. Fear that becoming the quarterback he's always dreamed of being will cost him the life he's built with you.

"Hey," you say, moving closer to him on the couch. "Look at me."

He does, those blue-green eyes full of uncertainty.

"I fell in love with someone who dreams big. Who works harder than anyone I know. Who refuses to settle for less than what he's capable of." You brush a strand of hair off his forehead. "If you stay here just for me, you won't be that person anymore. And then what are we really holding onto?"

Joe is quiet for a long moment, processing what you've said. When he speaks again, his voice is steadier.

"What if everything changes? What if I go down there and become someone different?"

"Then I'll learn to love that person too. As long as he's still fundamentally you."

"And if the distance is too hard?"

"Then we'll deal with it when it happens. But Joe, you can't make decisions based on fear. You taught me that."

"When did I teach you that?"

You smile. "Every day. Every time you get back up after Coach Meyer tells you you're not good enough. Every time you choose to keep fighting instead of giving up. You've been teaching me how to be brave since the day I met you."

Something shifts in Joe's expression. The uncertainty is still there, but underneath it, you can see the determination that's always driven him starting to resurface.

"You really think I should go?"

"I think you should do what your heart tells you to do. And I think your heart has been telling you to go since the day Coach O first called."

Joe nods slowly, then reaches for his phone. "Okay. I'm going to call him back."

"Now?"

"Now. Before I lose my nerve."

You watch as Joe dials the number, your own heart racing. This is it. The moment that changes everything.

"Coach O? It's Joe Burrow... Yes, sir, I've made my decision."

You can't hear the other side of the conversation, but you can see Joe's posture straightening, his confidence returning with each word.

"I want to be a Tiger... Yes, sir, I'm ready to compete... Thank you, Coach. I won't let you down."

When he hangs up, Joe just sits there for a moment, staring at his phone like he can't believe what just happened.

"I did it," he says finally. "I'm really doing this."

"You're really doing this."

"Holy shit." He looks at you, and now there's excitement mixing with the fear. "I'm going to LSU."

"You're going to LSU."

He pulls you into his arms then, holding you tight against his chest. You can feel his heart racing, matching your own.

"I'm terrified," he whispers into your hair.

"That's how you know it's the right choice."

"What if I miss you too much?"

"Then you'll call me every day. And I'll visit as much as I can. And we'll make it work because we have to."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

That night, you lie awake long after Joe falls asleep beside you, staring at the ceiling and trying to process what just happened. Tomorrow, he'll start the transfer process. In a few months, he'll be in Louisiana, chasing the dream he's carried since he was eight years old.

And you'll be here, supporting him from 900 miles away, hoping that love is enough to bridge the distance.

You think about that first letter you wrote, about believing in someone's potential before anyone else could see it. You just never imagined that believing in someone could require letting them go.

But that's what love is, isn't it? Wanting someone to become the best version of themselves, even when it's hard for you. Even when it means sacrifice.

Joe stirs beside you, and you turn to watch him sleep. In the morning, everything will change. But right now, he's still yours, still the frustrated quarterback from Ohio who pointed at you in the stands and told you he loved you.

Tomorrow, you'll help him pack. You'll drive him to the airport when it's time to visit LSU. You'll smile and be supportive and pretend your heart isn't breaking a little bit.

Because that's what love looks like sometimes. It looks like letting go so the person you care about can fly.

May 19, 2019

My love,

You did it. You made the call. You chose the scary, uncertain path because it's the one that leads to your dreams.

I watched you dial Coach O's number last night, and I have never been more proud of anyone in my entire life. Not because you chose LSU, but because you chose yourself. You chose to bet on your own potential instead of accepting what other people think you're worth.

I know you're scared. I know this means leaving everything familiar behind. But Joe, this is what you've been working toward your entire life. This is your shot.

I also know you're worried about us. About what distance will do to what we've built. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't scared too. But I meant what I said—if we're really meant to be together, we'll figure it out.

You're going to LSU to play in big games, to compete for championships, to become the quarterback you've always known you could be. I'm so excited to watch you do it.

And when you're standing on that field in Death Valley, throwing touchdown passes and proving everyone wrong, just remember that there's a girl in Ohio who believed in you first.

I love you. Go be great.

Forever yours, Your biggest believer

* * *

Chapter 7

December 14th, 2019 - New York City

You're sitting in the Heisman Trophy ceremony audience, wearing a navy blue dress you bought specifically for this moment and trying not to cry before Joe even wins.

To your left, Robin Burrow is clutching a tissue and whispering prayers under her breath. To your right, Jimmy keeps checking his watch like he can speed up time through sheer willpower. The whole family section is buzzing with nervous energy, but you feel strangely calm.

Joe's going to win. You've known it for weeks, maybe months. The stats don't lie—78% completion percentage, 48 touchdowns, 6 interceptions, leading LSU to an undefeated season. He's not just the best player in college football this year; he's having one of the greatest seasons in the history of the sport.

But sitting here, watching them announce the finalists, you're not thinking about statistics. You're thinking about that scared boy in his apartment seven months ago, terrified he was making the biggest mistake of his life.

"The 2019 Heisman Trophy winner," the presenter says, and your heart stops beating for a moment, "quarterback Joe Burrow, Louisiana State University."

The room goes quiet for a beat, then fills with soft sounds of joy. Robin's eyes fill with tears that she wipes away quickly. Jimmy nods once, proud but not surprised. And you—you just sit there for a second, overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all.

Joe Burrow. Heisman Trophy winner.

The boy who was told he belonged at Division III Mount Union just won the most prestigious individual award in college football.

When you finally manage to focus on the stage, Joe is walking up to accept the trophy, and he looks... composed. Confident. Like he belongs there, like this is exactly where his journey was always meant to lead.

But you know him well enough to see the emotion underneath the composure. The slight tremor in his hands as he accepts the trophy. The way his voice catches just barely when he starts his speech.

"First, I'd like to thank God," he begins, and you feel yourself leaning forward like you can somehow get closer to this moment. "My family, who's always been there for me through everything..."

He thanks his coaches, his teammates, the LSU community. You're filming it on your phone like every other proud girlfriend in the audience, but you're not really watching the screen. You're watching Joe—really watching him—and marveling at how far he's come.

"And to all the kids in Athens and Athens County that go home to not a lot of food on the table, hungry after school—you guys can be up here too," Joe says, his voice steady but emotional.

You're crying now, not because he mentioned you—he didn't, and that's okay—but because this is who he is. Someone who uses his biggest moment to think about hungry kids back home.

The rest of the ceremony passes in a blur. Photos with the trophy, interviews with reporters, a receiving line of congratulations that seems to last forever. You hang back with his family, not wanting to intrude on his moment, but Joe keeps looking for you in the crowd.

When he finally breaks away from the media obligations, he comes straight to you.

"Did you hear that?" he asks, still slightly breathless from everything. The trophy is in his hands, heavier and more beautiful than you imagined.

"I heard every word," you say, reaching up to straighten his tie that got crooked during all the photos. "That speech was incredible. Southeast Ohio, LSU, everything."

"I meant what I said about those kids back home. About them being able to make it up here too."

"I know you did. That's why I love you."

Joe's expression softens. "I should have mentioned you specifically. I had so many people to thank, and I ran out of time, but—"

"Joe, stop." You place your hand on his chest. "That speech was perfect. You thanked the people who got you here, who believed in you. You don't need to mention me for the whole world to know how I feel about you."

"But I want them to know. I want everyone to know that you're the reason I'm standing here."

"No," you say firmly. "You're standing here because you worked harder than anyone. Because you took a chance on yourself. Because you refused to give up when everyone told you that you weren't good enough."

Joe sets the trophy down carefully on a nearby table and pulls you into his arms. Right there in the middle of the Heisman ceremony reception, with his family and reporters and important people everywhere, he holds you like you're the most precious thing in the room.

"I love you," he says into your hair. "I love you so much it scares me sometimes."

"I love you too."

"After the championship game, after all this craziness dies down, we need to talk about the future. About what comes next."

"The NFL?"

"All of it. The draft, where we'll live, how we want to build our life together." His voice drops lower. "I want to marry you, Y/N. Not now, not tomorrow, but someday. I want you to know that's where my head is."

Your heart does something acrobatic in your chest. It's not a proposal, but it's a promise. A commitment to a future that includes both of you.

"I want that too," you whisper.

"Good," he says, pulling back to look at you. "Because I'm pretty sure I can't do any of this without you."

Later that night, back in your hotel room, you finally have a moment to process everything that happened. Joe is in the shower, and you're sitting on the bed with your laptop, looking at the photos that are already popping up online.

There's one of Joe holding the trophy, beaming with pure joy. Another of him hugging his parents. And then there's one of him during his speech, talking about the kids back home in Athens County.

The caption reads: "LSU QB Joe Burrow wins Heisman, dedicates moment to hungry kids."

You're not mentioned in the articles, and that's okay. His speech wasn't about personal thanks—it was about using his platform for something bigger. That's who Joe is, even in his biggest moment.

You've loved him since he was a frustrated third-string quarterback that nobody believed in. You supported him through the scariest decision of his college career. You've been there for every step of this incredible journey.

And now he's the best player in college football, and you get to be proud of both his talent and his character. It feels like the beginning of everything.

December 14, 2019

My Heisman winner,

I'm sitting in our hotel room writing this while you're in the shower, and I can hear you humming. Actually humming. Like you're so happy you can't contain it.

When they called your name tonight, I felt like my heart might literally explode. Not just because you won, but because you looked for me in the crowd first. Before the cameras, before the handshakes, before the trophy—you found my eyes.

You didn't mention me in your speech, and that's okay. You talked about the kids back home, about Athens County, about giving hope to people who don't have much. That's who you are - even in your biggest moment, you were thinking about others. I was so proud watching you up there, using your platform for something bigger than yourself.

Do you remember orientation day? When we were both convinced we didn't belong anywhere? Look at us now. You're holding the Heisman Trophy and talking about our future together like it's the most natural thing in the world.

I'm adding tonight's program to this collection, right next to that first letter I wrote when you were worried about embarrassing yourself. The boy who was afraid he wasn't good enough just won the most prestigious award in college football.

I told you so, didn't I? I told you from the very beginning.

You're everything I always knew you were. And somehow, impossibly, you're mine.

Forever yours, The girl who knew first

P.S. - Your speech made me cry. Happy tears. The best kind.

* * *

April 23rd, 2020

The Burrow family living room has been transformed into draft day headquarters. There are laptops everywhere, multiple TV screens showing different networks, and enough snacks to feed a small army. You're sitting on the couch next to Joe, your legs curled underneath you, trying to pretend like your heart isn't beating out of your chest.

Everyone knows Joe's going first overall to Cincinnati. It's been a foregone conclusion for months. But sitting here, waiting for it to become official, the nerves are real.

"Stop bouncing your leg," you whisper to Joe, placing your hand on his thigh.

"I'm not bouncing my leg."

"You're absolutely bouncing your leg."

Joe looks down and realizes you're right. He stills his leg but immediately starts drumming his fingers on the arm of the couch instead.

"Joe," Robin says from across the room, "you're going to wear a hole in that fabric."

"Sorry." He stops drumming his fingers and instead reaches for your hand, interlacing your fingers with his. "I know it's Cincinnati. I know it's basically guaranteed. But until I hear my name called..."

"Hey," you say softly, squeezing his hand. "Breathe. This is your moment. Enjoy it."

The living room is full of both your families - his parents, your parents who drove down from Ohio, his brothers, and a few close family friends. It should feel overwhelming, but instead it feels perfect. Like everyone who matters is here to witness this moment.

When Roger Goodell appears on screen in his home office (because of course the 2020 draft is virtual), the room goes quiet.

"With the first pick in the 2020 NFL Draft, the Cincinnati Bengals select... Joe Burrow, quarterback, LSU."

The room explodes in celebration. Everyone's on their feet at once - hugging, cheering, shouting congratulations over each other. Someone's taking pictures, someone else is already on the phone spreading the news. It's chaos, but the good kind.

And Joe? Joe just sits there for a second, staring at the TV like he can't quite believe it's real.

"You did it," you whisper, and that seems to snap him out of it.

He turns to you with the biggest smile you've ever seen and pulls you into his arms, spinning you around right there in the living room while everyone cheers.

"I did it," he says into your ear. "Holy shit, I actually did it."

"Language, Joseph," Robin calls out, but she's laughing through her tears.

"Sorry, Mom. Holy crap, I actually did it."

The next few hours are a blur of phone calls and interviews and congratulations. You mostly stay in the background, letting Joe have his moment, but he keeps pulling you back to his side. When ESPN calls for a quick interview, his first words are about the journey, about LSU, about all the people who believed in him.

Later that night, after everyone has gone home and it's just you and Joe sitting on his back porch, you finally have a moment to process what happened.

"Number one overall," you say, still somewhat in disbelief.

"Number one overall," he repeats. "To Cincinnati, of all places."

"You excited about that?"

Joe considers this. "Yeah, actually. I am. It's close to home, close to you. And they need a quarterback badly enough that I'll probably get to play right away."

"No more sitting on the bench."

"No more sitting on the bench."

You're quiet for a moment, both of you looking out at the backyard where you've spent so many evenings over the past year whenever you visited from Ohio.

"So," you say finally. "Cincinnati."

"Cincinnati," Joe agrees. "You know, if you wanted to... I mean, if you're interested..."

"You're asking me to move with you?"

He turns to look at you, and there's something vulnerable in his expression. "Yeah. I am. I know it's a big ask, and I know you have your life in here, but—"

"Yes."

"Yes?"

"Yes, I'll move to Cincinnati with you. Of course I will."

Joe's smile is so bright it could power the entire neighborhood. "Really?"

"Really. Though I'll need to find a job, and we'll need to figure out living arrangements, and—"

Joe cuts you off by kissing you, soft and sweet and full of promise.

"We'll figure it out," he says when you break apart. "All of it. Together."

* * *

July 25th, 2020

Moving day is chaos.

You're standing in what will be your new apartment in Cincinnati, surrounded by boxes and furniture and the general disaster that comes with combining two people's lives into one space. Joe is attempting to assemble what the instructions claim is a coffee table but looks more like abstract art.

"I think you're missing a screw," you say, looking over his shoulder.

"I'm not missing a screw. The instructions are wrong."

"The instructions are not wrong, Joe. You probably have it upside down."

"I do not have it— Oh." He flips the piece he's been struggling with, and suddenly everything makes sense. "Okay, maybe I had it upside down."

You laugh and kiss the top of his head. "Good thing you're pretty."

"Hey!"

The apartment is perfect for you both—modern but not cold, spacious but not overwhelming, close to the facility but still in a neighborhood that feels like home. You found it together, both of your names on the lease, both of your input on the furniture. It feels like a real partnership.

"I still can't believe we did this," you say, looking around at boxes labeled with both your handwriting.

"What, moved in together?"

"All of it. You getting drafted, me finding a job at Cincinnati Children's, us actually doing this crazy thing."

Joe stands up from his coffee table project and walks over to you, wrapping his arms around your waist from behind.

"Not crazy," he says. "Right. This feels right."

You lean back into his chest, fitting perfectly against him like you always have. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, you can see the Cincinnati skyline in the distance, but it's the reflection of you two together that catches your attention—Joe's chin resting on your shoulder, your hands covering his where they're clasped around your waist.

"It does feel right," you agree. "Scary, but right."

"What's scary about it?"

You turn in his arms to face him. "Everything's changing so fast. Six months ago you were in college, I was finishing my degree in Ohio, and now we're here. You're about to be an NFL quarterback, I'm starting at the hospital next week..." You gesture around at the boxes. "We're adults. Like, with a lease and everything."

"We've been adults, babe."

"Have we? Because I still feel like I'm playing house sometimes."

Joe's expression grows more serious. "Hey, look at me." When you do, his blue-green eyes are steady, certain. "This isn't playing house. This is us building something real. Something that's ours."

Before you can respond, there's a loud crash from the kitchen, followed by a string of colorful language.

"Everything okay in there?" Joe calls out.

"Define okay," comes Jimmy's voice. "I may have just christened your new kitchen floor with a box of your fancy plates."

You and Joe exchange a look and burst out laughing.

"I'll get the broom," you say.

"I'll survey the damage," Joe says.

In the kitchen, Jimmy is standing amid a sea of ceramic shards and packing paper, looking like a kid who just broke his mom's favorite vase.

"I'm sorry," he says immediately. "I was trying to put the box on the counter and it just slipped and—"

"Dad, it's fine," Joe says, already grabbing the dustpan from where you'd unpacked it an hour ago. "They were just plates."

"They were the good plates," you point out, crouching down to pick up the larger pieces. "The ones we spent forty-five minutes debating at Pottery Barn."

"We can get new good plates," Joe says. "Better good plates."

"I'll replace them," Jimmy insists. "I'll buy you the best plates money can buy."

Robin appears in the doorway, takes one look at the situation, and shakes her head. "Jimmy Burrow, what did you do?"

"It was an accident!"

"It's always an accident with you."

You watch Joe's parents bicker good-naturedly while you both clean up the mess, and something warm settles in your chest. This is what you'd imagined when you decided to move in together—not just the two of you, but the life that comes with being together. Family helping you move, broken plates on the first day, the comfortable chaos of people who love each other.

"You know," you say quietly to Joe as you dump ceramic shards into the trash, "maybe the broken plates are good luck. Like, we got the disaster out of the way early."

"Is that a thing?"

"I'm making it a thing."

Joe grins. "I like it. New tradition: break something expensive on moving day for good luck."

"Let's not make it a tradition. These plates were thirty dollars each."

"Thirty dollars each?" Jimmy's voice rises an octave. "For plates?"

"They were really nice plates, Dad."

"They were highway robbery is what they were."

An hour later, the kitchen is cleaned up and Jimmy has been banned from touching anything fragile. You've moved on to unpacking books in what will be Joe's office—though you've already claimed half the shelves for your nursing textbooks and novels.

"We need a system," you say, holding up a copy of his quarterback camp playbook. "Your football stuff, my medical stuff, shared stuff?"

"Or," Joe says, unpacking his LSU championship trophy and setting it carefully on the bookshelf, "we could just mix it all together. Show the world that a football playbook and Gray's Anatomy can coexist peacefully."

You laugh. "That's very philosophical of you."

"I have my moments."

You're about to respond when Robin appears in the doorway holding your jewelry box—the small wooden one your grandmother left you.

"Sweetie, where do you want this?" she asks. "I wasn't sure if it should go in the bedroom or..."

"The bedroom's fine," you say, taking it from her. "Thank you."

Joe glances at the box. "What's in there?"

"Just some personal stuff from college," you say, taking it from Robin. "I'll put it away."

He nods and goes back to unpacking, not thinking much of it. You make a mental note to find a good hiding spot for your collection of letters he'll never read.

Joe doesn't press, just goes back to unpacking his books, and you clutch the jewelry box a little tighter. Later, when you're alone, you'll find a good hiding spot for it. Somewhere safe where you can keep adding to your collection of letters he'll never read.

By evening, the apartment is starting to look like a home. The furniture is assembled (correctly, after Joe swallowed his pride and actually read the instructions), the kitchen is functional, and you've managed to find places for most of your belongings.

Joe's parents left an hour ago after Robin made you promise to call if you need anything and Jimmy apologized one more time about the plates. Now it's just you and Joe, sitting on your new couch, takeout containers scattered on the coffee table he finally assembled properly, looking around at what you've built together.

"We did good," Joe says, his arm around your shoulders.

"We did," you agree. "Though I think your dad's banned from helping us move ever again."

"Definitely banned."

You curl closer to him, your head on his shoulder. "Joe?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm proud of us. For taking this leap."

"Even if it's scary?"

"Especially because it's scary."

Joe presses a kiss to the top of your head. "You know what I love about this place?"

"What?"

"It's ours. Not my apartment that you stay at sometimes, not your place that I visit. Ours. Both our names on the lease, both our books on the shelves, both our terrible cooking in the kitchen."

"Hey, my cooking isn't terrible."

"Remember the smoke alarm incident last week?"

"That was an accident!"

You laugh and burrow deeper into his side. "Fine, but you're not much better."

"Which is why we're going to learn together. Just like everything else."

Outside, Cincinnati is settling into evening—traffic sounds, distant music, the urban symphony you're both still getting used to after years of college towns. But inside your apartment, everything is quiet and warm and exactly right.

"I love you," you say into the comfortable silence.

"I love you too," Joe replies, pulling you closer. "This feels right, doesn't it? Being here together."

"It does," you agree, settling against his side. "Even with your dad breaking our plates on day one."

"Hey, that's a family tradition now. Good luck plates."

You're both laughing when Joe's phone buzzes with a text. He glances at it and his expression shifts slightly.

"What is it?"

"Coach Taylor. Team meeting tomorrow morning. Looks like the real work starts now."

There's something in his voice—excitement mixed with nerves, anticipation tempered by the weight of what's coming. Tomorrow, he stops being Joe Burrow the draft pick and becomes Joe Burrow the Cincinnati Bengals starting quarterback. Tomorrow, everything changes again.

"You ready?" you ask.

Joe considers this, looking around at the apartment you've built together, at the life you're starting to create. When he looks back at you, his smile is confident and sure.

"Yeah," he says. "I'm ready."

And sitting there on your new couch in your shared apartment, surrounded by boxes and the promise of everything ahead, you believe him completely.

You have no idea that this moment—this perfect, ordinary evening of takeout and broken plates and dreams coming true—will become a memory you'll cling to years later when everything falls apart.

All you know is that you love Joe Burrow, and he loves you, and you're building something beautiful together.

It feels like forever.

Later that night, after Joe falls asleep

July 25, 2020

My love,

We moved in together today. Officially, permanently, with both our names on a lease and everything. Your dad broke our good plates (the ones we spent forever picking out at Pottery Barn), and you spent two hours assembling a coffee table upside down, and it was perfect.

Perfect because it was real. Because we're not playing house or pretending anymore—we're actually doing this. Building a life together. Making a home.

I keep looking around this apartment and thinking about how it's ours. Our books mixed together on the shelves, our pictures on the walls, our terrible cooking experiments in the kitchen. Everything we've worked toward, everything we've dreamed about, starting right here.

You asked about my letters earlier, and I almost told you. Almost handed you this entire box and said "here, read about how much I love you." But these are mine. My way of loving you, my way of documenting this incredible journey we're on.

Someday, maybe I'll show them to you. When we're old and gray and you want to remember how we got here. But for now, they're my secret way of telling you everything I feel.

Tomorrow you start training camp. Tomorrow you become an NFL quarterback for real. But tonight, you're just my Joe, sleeping next to me in our bed in our apartment, and everything is exactly as it should be.

I love our life, Joe Burrow. I love the life we're building.

Forever yours, Y/N

* * *

April 15th, 2022 - Cincinnati Children's Hospital

You're adjusting the IV drip for seven-year-old Dylan when you hear the commotion in the hallway. Excited voices, the sound of sneakers squeaking on linoleum, someone saying "Oh my God, is that really him?"

Dylan looks up at you with wide eyes. "Miss Y/N, what's all that noise?"

You smile, checking his chart one more time. "I think some very special visitors just arrived."

"Special visitors?"

Before you can answer, Joe appears in the doorway wearing his Bengals polo and that easy smile that makes patients feel instantly comfortable. Behind him are Ja'Marr, Tyler Boyd, and a few other teammates, but Dylan only has eyes for Joe.

"No way," Dylan breathes. "No freaking way."

"Dylan Rodriguez," you say in your best stern nurse voice, "what did we say about language?"

"Sorry, Miss Y/N. But that's Joe Burrow!"

Joe steps into the room, and you feel that familiar flutter in your chest watching him with kids. He's a natural—crouching down to Dylan's eye level, asking about his favorite plays, listening to Dylan explain his treatment like Joe's genuinely interested in the medical details.

"So Dylan," Joe says, pulling up a chair beside the bed, "Miss Y/N here tells me you're the bravest kid on this whole floor."

Dylan beams. "She takes really good care of me. She's the best nurse ever."

Joe glances at you, and there's something in his expression that makes your heart skip. Pride, love, admiration—like he's seeing you through Dylan's eyes and falling for you all over again.

"She really is," Joe agrees. "I'm pretty lucky she takes care of me too."

"She takes care of you?" Dylan asks, confused.

"Well," Joe says, winking at you, "she's my girlfriend. So when I get hurt playing football, she patches me up just like she patches you up."

Dylan's eyes go wide. "Miss Y/N is your girlfriend? That's so cool!"

"I think so too," Joe says, and the way he's looking at you makes you forget there are other people in the room.

The next two hours pass in a blur of room visits, autographs, and photos. You work alongside Joe and his teammates, but it doesn't feel like work. It feels like showing off your two favorite worlds—Joe getting to see you in your element, your patients getting to meet their hero.

In eight-year-old Sophie's room, you're checking her post-surgical dressings when she whispers conspiratorially to Joe, "Miss Y/N sang to me when I was scared before my operation."

"She did?" Joe looks over at you. "What did she sing?"

"Taylor Swift," Sophie giggles. "She knows all the words."

"She's very talented," Joe says seriously. "Though I have to warn you, her singing voice is... questionable."

"Hey!" you protest, laughing. "Sophie, don't listen to him. He thinks he can sing better than me."

"Can you?" Sophie asks Joe.

"Absolutely not. But don't tell her I said that."

In the NICU, you're explaining ventilator settings to Tyler Boyd's wife Kierra when Joe comes up behind you, his hand settling naturally on your lower back.

"You're really good at this," he murmurs in your ear.

"It's my job."

"No, I mean... you're really good with them. The kids, the families. They all love you."

You turn to look at him. "You sound surprised."

"Not surprised. Just... proud. Really fucking proud."

"Language, Burrow," you tease, glancing around at the tiny patients. "There are babies present."

"Sorry," he grins. "Really freaking proud."

The local news crew arrives halfway through the visit, and you try to fade into the background like you usually do during Joe's media obligations. But this time, Joe won't let you.

"Actually," he says to the reporter, his arm sliding around your waist, "I want to make sure you get the real story here. This is Y/N, my girlfriend, and she's a nurse here at Children's. These kids aren't just patients to her—they're her kids. She takes care of them every single day, not just when the cameras are here."

The reporter's eyes light up. "Oh, that's a wonderful angle. How long have you been working here, Y/N?"

You glance at Joe, suddenly nervous to be on camera, but he squeezes your hand encouragingly.

"Almost two years now," you say. "Since Joe and I moved to Cincinnati."

"And what's it like having your boyfriend surprise your patients?"

"It's pretty special," you admit. "These kids fight so hard every day. Seeing them light up like this... it's everything."

Joe's thumb traces circles on your hip, and when you look at him, he's watching you with an expression so soft it takes your breath away.

"She's amazing," he tells the camera, but his eyes never leave yours. "These families are lucky to have her."

Later, after the team has left and you're finishing your shift, you find a note tucked into your locker:

Thank you for letting us see what you do. Watching you with those kids today... I've never been more proud to be with someone. You're incredible at this, babe. Really incredible. - J

P.S. - Dylan asked me if I was going to marry you. I told him that was the plan. Hope that's okay.

You read the note three times, your heart doing acrobatic flips in your chest. The plan. Like it's not a question of if, but when.

That night, curled up next to Joe on the couch, you're both scrolling through the news coverage on your phones.

"Look at this," Joe says, showing you his screen. "Channel 12 posted a whole segment about you. 'Bengals QB's girlfriend is local children's nurse.'"

You peer at his phone. The photo they used is from today—you and Joe with Dylan, all three of you laughing at something off-camera. You look happy. More than happy. You look like you belong.

"They called me 'local children's nurse,'" you point out. "Not just 'Bengals QB's girlfriend.'"

"Good. That's what you are. That's who you are."

You curl closer to him, your head on his shoulder. "Thank you for today. For including me, for making it about the kids."

"Thank you for being amazing. Seriously, watching you work today..." He trails off, pressing a kiss to the top of your head. "I love seeing you in your element. You're so good at what you do."

"I love what I do."

"I know. It shows."

You're quiet for a moment, both of you scrolling through comments on the hospital's Facebook post about the visit. Most of them are about Joe, but there are plenty about you too:

"Y/N is the sweetest nurse! She took such good care of my daughter last year."

"Love that Joe's girlfriend actually works at the hospital. She's not just there for the cameras."

"You can tell she really cares about those kids. What a sweet couple."

"See?" Joe says, reading over your shoulder. "They love you."

"They love us," you correct.

"They love us," he agrees.

Later that night, after Joe falls asleep, you slip out of bed and retrieve your wooden box from its hiding place in the closet. You've been writing letters less frequently lately—life has been so good, so stable, that the urgent need to document everything has faded into simple contentment.

But today deserves to be remembered.

April 15, 2022

My love,

Today you came to my hospital. MY hospital, with MY kids, and you were so perfect I could hardly breathe.

Watching you with Dylan, listening to you tease me about my "questionable" singing voice when Sophie brought up your Taylor Swift performances, seeing you crouch down to every child's eye level like they're the most important people in the world... God, Joe. My heart was so full I thought it might burst.

But the best part wasn't watching you with the kids. It was watching you watch me. The way you looked at me when Dylan called me the best nurse ever. The way you insisted the reporter interview me too, like you were proud to claim me. The way you told that little girl at the end that you were planning to marry me someday.

THE PLAN, you wrote in your note. Like it's not even a question anymore.

I've never felt more seen, more valued, more loved than I did today. You didn't just bring the team to visit kids. You brought them to see what I do, who I am when I'm not just "Joe Burrow's girlfriend." You made sure everyone knew I matter.

This is us at our best, Joe. This is the team we make, the life we're building. You supporting my dreams while I support yours. You being proud of me while I'm proud of you.

I love our life. I love the way we fit together. I love that your dreams and my dreams somehow make perfect sense side by side.

Forever yours, Your very proud girlfriend 

P.S. - I do NOT have a questionable singing voice. Sophie clearly has excellent taste.

* * *

January 30, 2022 - Arrowhead Stadium, Kansas City

The silence in the family section is deafening.

You're sitting between Robin and Jimmy, all three of you staring at the field in stunned disbelief. Overtime. They lost in overtime. Three points away from the Super Bowl, and it's over.

Your hands are shaking as you watch Joe on the field, still in his uniform, helmet off, talking to Patrick Mahomes at midfield. Even from here, you can see the devastation in his posture—shoulders slumped, head down, the weight of this loss written in every line of his body.

"He played his heart out," Robin whispers, tears streaming down her face. "He gave everything he had."

"It wasn't enough," Jimmy says quietly, and the defeat in his voice breaks your heart almost as much as watching Joe does.

You want to run onto the field, want to wrap Joe in your arms and tell him it's okay, that there will be other chances, other seasons. But you know better. You know how much this meant to him, how hard he worked to get here, how close they came to something extraordinary.

The family section starts to empty slowly, other wives and girlfriends gathering their things, preparing for the long, quiet flights home. But you don't move. You can't move. You just keep watching Joe, waiting.

"Come on, honey," Robin says gently, touching your arm. "We should head down."

You nod but don't get up immediately. You're memorizing this moment—not because you want to, but because you know it's important. This is Joe at his lowest point, and you're about to find out if you're still the person he turns to when his world falls apart.

The walk down to the field level feels endless. Security guards guide the families through corridors that smell like concrete and disappointment. You can hear muffled crying, quiet conversations, the sound of dreams being packed away for another year.

When you finally make it to the designated family area outside the locker room, most of the other players have already come and gone. You wait with Joe's parents, all of you checking your phones obsessively, none of you sure what to say.

Then you see him.

Joe emerges from the tunnel still in his uniform, his face a mask of controlled devastation. His eyes scan the small crowd of remaining family members, and when they land on you, something in his expression cracks.

He doesn't say anything, just walks straight to you and pulls you into his arms so tightly you can barely breathe. You feel his body shaking against yours, feel the way he buries his face in your neck like he's trying to disappear.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, his voice broken. "I'm so fucking sorry."

"No," you say fiercely, pulling back to look at him. "Don't you dare apologize. Do you hear me? Don't you dare."

Joe's eyes are red-rimmed, whether from tears or exhaustion or pure emotion, you can't tell. "We were so close. We were right there."

"I know, baby. I know."

"I let everyone down. The team, the city, you—"

"Stop." You cup his face in your hands, forcing him to look at you. "You didn't let anyone down. You were incredible. You ARE incredible."

Joe shakes his head, but you don't let him argue.

"Joe Burrow, you took this team to the AFC Championship in your second season. You came back from a knee injury that could have ended your career and you made it to one game away from the Super Bowl. That's not failure. That's extraordinary."

"It doesn't feel extraordinary."

"I know it doesn't. Not right now. But baby, this is just the beginning. This isn't the end of your story—it's the chapter that makes the next one even better."

Joe pulls you close again, and you feel some of the tension leave his body. Around you, his parents are talking quietly to Ja'Marr's family, giving you both space to process this moment.

"I love you," Joe says into your hair. "I need you to know that. I couldn't have gotten here without you."

"I love you too. And I'm so proud of you I can barely stand it."

"Even after that interception in overtime?"

"Especially after that interception in overtime. Because you got back up. You always get back up."

Joe pulls back to look at you again, and there's something in his eyes—gratitude, love, but also a kind of desperation. Like he needs you to anchor him to something real when everything else feels like it's falling apart.

"Come on," he says, his arm around your waist. "Let's get out of here."

The flight back to Cincinnati is quiet. Joe stares out the window for most of it, your hand in his, occasionally squeezing your fingers like he's making sure you're still there. You don't try to fill the silence with empty platitudes. You just stay close, let him know through your presence that he doesn't have to carry this alone.

Back in your apartment, Joe goes straight to the shower while you order food from his favorite Sushi place. When he emerges twenty minutes later, hair damp and wearing sweatpants and an old Ohio State t-shirt, he looks younger. Less like an NFL quarterback and more like the boy you fell in love with in college.

"Not hungry," he says when he sees the takeout containers.

"I know. But you should eat something anyway."

"Y/N—"

"Please. For me."

Joe sighs but sits down next to you on the couch, mechanically eating pad thai while you curl up against his side. The TV is on, but neither of you is really watching. There will be analysis tomorrow, articles about what went wrong, speculation about next season. Tonight is just for grieving.

"Do you want to talk about it?" you ask after a while.

"Not really."

"Okay."

"Maybe later. Just... not tonight."

You press a kiss to his shoulder. "Whatever you need."

Joe sets down his barely touched food and turns to face you. "I need this. Just you. And me."

"You have me. You'll always have me."

"Promise?"

There's something vulnerable in the way he asks it, like he's not just talking about tonight or this loss, but about everything that's coming. The pressure, the expectations, the spotlight that's only going to get brighter.

"I promise," you say, and you mean it with every fiber of your being.

Joe kisses you then, soft and desperate and full of everything he can't say out loud. When you break apart, you're both breathing hard.

"I love you," he says again, like he needs to keep saying it to make sure it's real.

"I love you too. Win or lose, good games or bad games, I love you."

That night, Joe falls asleep with his head on your chest, your fingers running through his hair. You stay awake for a long time, listening to his breathing even out, feeling the weight of his trust in the way he sleeps so completely in your arms.

You think about what you said on the field—that this is just the beginning of his story. You believe that with everything in you. Joe Burrow will get back to this moment, and next time, he'll be ready.

What you don't know is that when he gets there, when he reaches the heights you're both dreaming of, you won't be standing next to him anymore.

All you know is that tonight, in this moment, you're exactly where you belong. You're the person he turns to when the world falls apart, the one who picks up the pieces and helps him remember who he is.

You're his home. His safe place. His forever.

At least, that's what you think.

Later that night, while Joe sleeps

January 30, 2022

My heartbroken love,

I'm writing this after you finally fell asleep. It took hours for your breathing to even out, for your body to stop carrying all that tension from tonight. You're curled up next to me now, finally peaceful after the worst night of your football career so far.

Watching you walk off that field tonight was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. Seeing you so close to your dreams and watching them slip away... God, Joe. My heart broke for you.

But then you found me. In all that chaos, all that devastation, you found me first. Not the media, not your teammates, not the coaches. Me. You walked straight to me like I was the only thing that could make any of this bearable.

That's when I knew. Not that I love you—I've known that for years—but that I'm the person you trust with your broken pieces. I'm who you turn to when everything falls apart.

You apologized tonight. You actually apologized to ME, like losing that game was something you did to me personally. Baby, you could never disappoint me. You could lose every game for the rest of your career and I would still be proud to love you.

But you won't lose every game. You won't even lose most games. Tonight was heartbreaking, but it wasn't an ending. It was education. It was motivation. It was the foundation for everything that's coming next.

You're going to get back there, Joe. And when you do, when you're holding that Lombardi Trophy, I want you to remember this night. Remember how it felt to fall short, so you never take success for granted.

I'll be there for all of it. The comeback, the victories, the championship we both know is coming. Just like I was there tonight.

Forever yours, Y/N

P.S. - You said you couldn't have gotten here without me. The truth is, I couldn't imagine being anywhere else.

* * *

March 15th, 2023

You're having lunch with your friend Emma at a trendy spot downtown, catching up on everything you've missed since she moved to Cincinnati for her marketing job. It feels good to have your college friend nearby again, someone who knew you before you became "Joe Burrow's girlfriend."

"So," Emma says, stabbing her salad with more force than necessary, "how are things with Mr. Quarterback? I barely see you guys together on social media anymore."

"We're good," you say automatically, the response you've perfected over the past few months. "Just busy. His schedule is crazy during the season, and now with all the off-season training..."

Emma nods, but there's something in her expression that makes you pause.

"Actually," she says, setting down her fork, "that's kind of why I wanted to talk to you. I saw something last night and I wasn't sure if I should mention it..."

Your stomach drops. "What kind of something?"

Emma pulls out her phone, and you watch her scroll through Instagram with the kind of purposeful navigation that means she's looking for something specific.

"Because," she says, turning her phone toward you, "when I was scrolling last night, I noticed Joe's been... active."

The screen shows Joe's Instagram activity. Your heart starts beating faster as you see a long list of likes on photos from accounts you don't recognize. @KelseyAnderson @DanielleFitness. @MiaMartinii.

"Sarah, what—"

"Keep scrolling," she says gently.

You scroll down with trembling fingers. Photo after photo of beautiful women—models, influencers, actresses. All liked by @Joeyb_9 All within the last few weeks.

Your mouth goes dry. "This... this doesn't mean anything. It's just social media."

But even as you say it, you're thinking about the photos. Bikini shots. Workout videos. Professional modeling photos where the women are wearing next to nothing.

"Honey," Sarah says softly, "there are like fifty of them. Just in the past month."

You hand her phone back, your hands shaking slightly. "He probably doesn't even realize he's doing it. You know how guys are with social media. They just scroll and like without thinking."

"Maybe," Emma says, but she doesn't sound convinced. "But Y/N, some of these are really... explicit. And it's not just random scrolling. Look."

She shows you her phone again, this time on @KelseyAnderson's profile. "He's been liking her photos for weeks. Consistently. And she's been liking his back."

The room feels like it's spinning. You stare at the phone, at the evidence of Joe's digital attention being given to women who look nothing like you. Women with perfect bodies and professional photographers and hundreds of thousands of followers.

"I probably shouldn't have shown you," Emma says, watching your face carefully. "I just... if it were my boyfriend, I'd want to know."

"No," you say quickly, "you did the right thing. I just... I need a minute to process this."

The rest of lunch passes in a blur. You go through the motions of eating, of responding to Emma's conversation, but your mind is spinning. Every interaction you've had with Joe over the past few weeks is suddenly cast in a different light.

The way he's been more distant lately. How he's always on his phone but angles it away from you. The fact that he hasn't posted a photo of you together since... when? You can't even remember.

"I should probably go," you say, checking the time even though you have nowhere urgent to be.

"Y/N," Emma says gently, "are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. It's just... a lot to think about."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not yet. But thank you for telling me. Really."

Emma nods, but she looks worried as you both stand to leave. "Call me later? Promise?"

"Promise."

But you don't go home. Instead, you drive aimlessly around Cincinnati, Emma's words echoing in your head. Fifty of them. Just in the past month.

When you finally make it back to your apartment, Joe is in the kitchen making a protein shake, still in his workout clothes from training.

"Hey babe," he says without looking up from his blender. "How was lunch with Emma?"

"Good," you say, trying to keep your voice normal. "How was training?"

"Brutal. Coach has us doing these new conditioning drills that are basically torture."

You watch him pour his shake into a tumbler, notice how he immediately reaches for his phone. The same phone he's been using to like photos of other women.

"Joe," you say before you can lose your nerve.

"Yeah?" He's scrolling already, not really looking at you.

"Can we talk?"

"Sure, what's up?" But he's still looking at his phone, and something inside you snaps.

"Can you put that down? Please?"

Joe looks up, surprised by your tone. "Everything okay?"

"That's what I want to ask you."

He sets his phone face-down on the counter and gives you his attention. "What's going on?"

You take a breath, trying to figure out how to bring this up without sounding like a crazy, jealous girlfriend. "Emma showed me your Instagram likes today."

Joe's expression doesn't change, but you catch the tiny flicker in his eyes. "My Instagram likes?"

"The photos you've been liking. Of other women."

"Y/N—"

"Models, influencers. A lot of them, Joe. Like, a really concerning amount of them."

Joe runs his hand through his hair, a tell you recognize from years of watching him when he's uncomfortable. "It's just social media. It doesn't mean anything."

"Doesn't it?"

"No, it doesn't. I scroll through my feed, I see photos, I like them. It's literally meaningless."

"But these aren't just random photos, Joe. These are specific accounts. Some of them you've been consistently liking for weeks."

"I don't monitor my likes, Y/N. I just double-tap and keep scrolling."

There's something in his tone—dismissive, almost annoyed—that makes your chest tighten. This isn't the Joe who used to listen to your concerns, who used to care when something upset you.

"So you're saying it means nothing? The fact that you're giving attention to dozens of half-naked women online?"

"Jesus, when you put it like that, you make it sound like I'm cheating or something."

"Aren't you? Kind of?"

Joe stares at you like you've lost your mind. "No, I'm not cheating. Not even kind of. I'm double-tapping photos on an app. That's it."

"It doesn't feel like 'that's it' to me."

"Well, that's your problem, isn't it?"

The words hit you like a slap. Your problem. Like your feelings about this are irrational, unreasonable, something for you to deal with alone.

"My problem?"

Joe seems to realize how that sounded and softens slightly. "I didn't mean it like that. I just meant... this isn't as big a deal as you're making it."

"How would you feel if I was constantly liking photos of shirtless male models?"

"I wouldn't care."

"You wouldn't?"

"No, because I'd know it didn't mean anything."

But there's something in the way he says it, too quick, too defensive, that makes you wonder if he's lying. To you or to himself.

"When was the last time you posted a photo of us together?" you ask.

The question catches him off guard. "What?"

"When was the last time you posted a photo of us? Together?"

Joe is quiet for a moment, clearly thinking. "I don't know. Recently?"

"Try again."

"Y/N, I don't keep track of that stuff."

"Well, I do. It's been four months, Joe. Four months since you posted anything that shows we're together."

"So?"

"So people are starting to wonder if we're still dating."

"People need to mind their own business."

"These people include my friends. And your teammates' wives. People who actually know us."

Joe picks up his phone again, a clear signal that he's done with this conversation. "I'm not going to change how I use social media because of gossip."

"I'm not asking you to change how you use social media. I'm asking you to understand why this hurts me."

"It hurts you that I like photos on Instagram?"

"It hurts me that you're giving other women attention that you don't give me. It hurts me that strangers have to ask if we're still together because I've disappeared from your online presence. It hurts me that when I try to talk to you about it, you dismiss my feelings like they don't matter."

Joe is quiet for a long moment, staring at his phone screen. When he looks up, his expression is tired.

"I don't know what you want me to say, Y/N."

"I want you to say that you understand why this bothers me. I want you to say that you'll be more mindful about it."

"Fine. I'll be more mindful."

But he says it like he's humoring you, like he's agreeing just to end the conversation. There's no understanding in his voice, no recognition that your feelings are valid.

"Joe—"

"I said I'll be more mindful. What else do you want?"

What you want is for him to apologize. What you want is for him to seem like he cares that he hurt you. What you want is for him to put his arms around you and promise that you're the only woman who matters to him.

What you get is dismissal and irritation and the growing certainty that something fundamental has shifted in your relationship.

"Nothing," you say quietly. "Forget I said anything."

"Good," Joe says, already looking back at his phone. "Because I have a conference call with my agent in ten minutes."

You watch him walk away, disappearing into his office and closing the door behind him. You're left standing in the kitchen, holding the pieces of a conversation that solved nothing and somehow made everything worse.

That night, you lie awake staring at the ceiling while Joe sleeps peacefully beside you. You think about Emma's concerned face across the lunch table. You think about the photos you scrolled through—beautiful women getting attention from your boyfriend that you haven't received in months.

But mostly, you think about Joe's reaction. The dismissiveness. The casual way he made your feelings seem unreasonable. The Joe you fell in love with would never have done that.

For the first time since you've been together, you wonder if you're fighting for something that's already over.

March 15, 2023

Joe,

Today Emma showed me your Instagram activity. Fifty likes on other women's photos in just the past month. Models, influencers, women who look nothing like me.

When I tried to talk to you about it, you called it "my problem." You acted like my feelings were irrational, like caring about this made me crazy and jealous.

Maybe it does make me crazy. Maybe I am being unreasonable. But I don't think I am.

I think I'm watching the man I love slowly erase me from his life, one Instagram like at a time. I think I'm watching you explore options while keeping me as a safety net.

The worst part wasn't discovering the photos. The worst part was your reaction when I brought it up. You didn't apologize. You didn't seem to care that it hurt me. You just wanted me to stop talking about it.

When did I become so unimportant to you that my feelings don't even register?

When did you stop loving me enough to care when you hurt me?

I keep telling myself this is just a rough patch, that we'll get through it like we've gotten through everything else. But I'm starting to wonder if you want to get through it, or if you're hoping I'll just stop fighting and let you slip away.

I love you. But I'm starting to think that's not enough anymore.

Y/N

[whisperedmeg]

DARK MATTER ―.✦ s.r. soft animal series ∘ part xi

pairing: spencer reid x fem!nurse!reader

summary: spencer belongs to this history, she’s still finding her place — but love, like dark matter, doesn’t need to be seen to hold everything together.

genre: hurt/comfort, fluff | w/c: 3.3k

tags/warnings: post-prison spencer, reader meets more members of the BAU (past & present!), rossi doing rich old man shit, reader feels like an outsider looking in, big relationship milestone, suggestive makeout at the beginning and implied/fade to black intimacy at the end but nothing super explicit, still 18+ MDNI

a/n: this one has some fun guest appearances from our fave BAU team members 🥳 and something big happens towards the end hehehe. also icymi, I shared some headcanons about soft animal reader & spencer last week. part 12 (the penultimate chapter AHHH) is coming next week. im a lil scared to post that one ngl…prepare yourselves for angst in advance lol

series masterlist

The invitation arrived on a Monday, tucked inside a cream-colored envelope with the kind of dramatic embossing only someone like David Rossi would consider necessary. Both of our names graced the front and Spencer’s eyes lit up like Christmas morning when he opened it.

“‘You’re invited to a celebration of friendship, food, and fine wine at Chateau Rossi.’” He grinned as he read it, shaking his head. “He named his house. Of course he named his house.”

I laughed from the couch, legs tucked beneath me and a half-completed crossword puzzle in my lap. “What’s the party for?”

“I’m sure he has his reasons,” Spencer said, turning the card over like it might reveal more secrets. “It’s not a birthday or an anniversary or a retirement or anything. I think he’s just bored and rich.”

“Sounds about right.”

Spencer looked at me with a kind of boyish hope, a spark I didn’t see often but always loved when it surfaced. “Rossi said a bunch of old team members are all coming into town for it. Morgan, Hotch, Blake... everyone. It’ll be amazing.”

Something fluttered in my chest — mostly joy, but tinged with a touch of nerves. I kept my tone light. “You sure I won’t be crashing a BAU greatest hits reunion?”

He crossed the room in two steps and stood in front of me, hands warm on my shoulders. “I want you there. That’s the whole point. And I’m sure everyone else will be bringing their partners, too.”

I looked at him for a long moment, my lips curling into a soft smile. “Then we’ll go.”

—

Five days later, I stood in front of the mirror with the front of my deep green midi dress clutched in place. Spencer stood behind me, eyes focused. His knuckles grazed my lower back, feather-light, teasing the sensitive skin along my spine before catching the zipper between his thumb and forefinger. He leaned forward, pressing a soft, lingering kiss between my shoulder blades, and my breath caught in my throat.

“You’re moving awfully slow for someone who’s supposed to be zipping me up,” I murmured, eyes half-closed as I watched his reflection through heavy lashes.

He raised his gaze to meet to mine in the mirror, dark and playful, a slow smile spreading across his lips. “I’m just admiring you. Thoroughly.”

Turning slowly in his arms with my dress only half-zipped, I slid my hands up his chest, feeling the warmth of his body through his crisp shirt. “Flattering me into social functions? That’s low, Dr. Reid.”

“Effective, though, right?” His voice was a husky murmur, his mouth hovering close enough to mine that I could taste the faint sweetness of his breath.

I answered by pulling him into a deep, slow kiss, one that unraveled my resolve with every brush of his lips, every gentle sweep of his tongue. Spencer’s hands tightened around my waist, fingers gripping me possessively as he pressed his hips into mine, drawing a soft gasp from my throat. My hands found their way beneath his jacket, gripping the smooth fabric of his shirt, tugging him even closer.

When we finally pulled apart, our breathing was uneven as I rested my forehead against his, our eyes closed as we steadied ourselves.

“We can’t. We’re already late,” I whispered softly.

He exhaled slowly, nodding with reluctant agreement as he reached around to pull my zipper up the rest of the way. “Then let’s go before we don’t.”

—

David Rossi’s mansion was every bit the chateau he claimed it to be — glowing lanterns in the trees, jazz filtering through the air, tables draped in white linens, fountains twinkling beside flower beds that probably each had their own landscaping teams. The whole thing looked like the opening scene of a very expensive movie.

Spencer held my hand tightly as we crossed the lawn.

“They’re all going to love you,” he said. “Just wait.”

He believed it. I tried to believe it too. The anxious knot in my stomach said otherwise, but I smiled and nodded. This meant something to him — returning to this circle, showing me off like a part of his present that could stand beside his past. I’d met some of them before, but never all at once — and never like this.

I wanted, desperately, to belong to all of it.

Garcia greeted me with a flourish and a kiss on both cheeks. “You made it! I was starting to worry you two were going to skip out and stay in bed all night.”

“Tempting,” Spencer murmured under his breath for only me to hear, squeezing my hand.

“Hi, Penelope,” I said, smiling. “This place is incredible.”

“Oh, Rossi doesn’t know how to do anything halfway,” she said, eyes twinkling as she began to pull me along with her. “Come on, there’s champagne and stuffed mushrooms and something with truffle oil I can’t pronounce.”

—

One of the former members of Spencer’s team, Alex Blake, approached me at the bar and introduced herself. “Spencer told me you’re a nurse at Millburn. That’s vital work — thank you for doing it. Correctional healthcare doesn’t get nearly the attention it deserves.”

I blinked at her, surprised and touched by the comment. “Thank you,” I said. “That… really means a lot.”

For the first hour, it was easy. We sipped champagne under the lights. Penelope made me laugh. Alex asked smart questions. Luke and Tara and Matt were nice, too. Spencer stayed close, his hand constantly brushing mine or curling lightly around my waist. He was so clearly happy to be here and to have me here with him that it made something in my chest ache in the best way.

But then the night deepened. Conversations shifted. Circles formed.

I watched Spencer drift naturally between pockets of conversation. He looked like a younger, happier version of the man I knew, catching up with Derek Morgan and Aaron Hotchner, laughing loudly at something Tara said, hugging Emily with a kind of familiarity that came from war zones and grief and saving lives together. He slid so easily into that past — like muscle memory, the kind built from years of trust and friendship. Still, it kind of sucked that I couldn’t totally slide in alongside him.

I didn’t mind — not at first. I picked at a small plate of food, wandered the edge of the garden, refilled my drink. But slowly, invisibly, the distance started to hum.

The first pang hit when someone I’d already met — an agent named Anderson — introduced himself again. A small thing. Forgivable. But it knocked me slightly off balance. I smiled through it. Laughed politely. Told myself it didn’t matter.

Then came the question: “So, how did you and Spencer meet?”

I answered carefully. “At Millburn. I’m a nurse in the infirmary there.”

The air shifted. A tight smile. A polite nod. And then the conversation wandered away without me. It wasn’t rude. It wasn’t intentional. But I still felt it like a bruise forming.

—

Candles flickered down the center of a long table set for twenty, silver gleaming beside fine china. Spencer sat across from me, deep in conversation with Luke and Hotch. I ended up beside JJ’s husband Will, who passed me a basket of bread and offered a sympathetic smile.

“You surviving?” he asked.

I gave him a wry look. “Trying to.”

He chuckled. “Took me years to get used to how tight this group is. Even now, I still mostly just nod and smile and try to act like all the inside jokes don’t go right over my head.”

I laughed softly. “Sounds like a solid strategy.”

“Seriously though, don’t worry too much about all of this. You’re doing great. Getting integrated with the BAU crew just takes some time.”

I nodded gratefully, feeling slightly less alone.

Across the table, conversation flowed around me, punctuated by laughter and anecdotes that stretched back years. Hotch shared updates about his son Jack’s travel soccer team. Derek proudly displayed photos of his little boy, Hank Spencer Morgan. Laughter broke out recalling a time Derek and Spencer got trapped in an elevator, anxiously calling out for Hotch as if he might magically appear to rescue them. There were more tales of prank wars and Halloween costumes and magic tricks in the bullpen.

Spencer’s laughter was bright, his eyes shining. I loved hearing the stories, loved watching him come alive in the telling of them, even the ones I’d heard before. I laughed along softly, but inside, I wondered if this part of him would always feel slightly out of my reach.

Spencer looked at me a few times. Smiled across the candles. But he didn’t see it. Not yet.

Later, while he talked with Emily and Tara about a recent case in Miami, I wandered back toward the garden. The string lights overhead seemed to blur slightly. I stood in the corner of the patio and tried to breathe.

Someone offered me dessert. I declined. Anderson brushed past me with a joke I didn’t quite catch. I nodded along, still smiling. But my chest was tight.

And then I slipped away.

Upstairs, I found a quiet balcony and stepped out into the night.

The air was cool, the stars clear and sharp above me. I wrapped my arms around myself and breathed.

I heard him before I saw him — the soft creak of the door, the familiar cadence of his footsteps. I leaned into the railing, hoping the dark might soften the vulnerability on my face.

He didn’t speak right away. Just stood beside me, close but not crowding.

“Hey,” he said finally, voice low.

“Hey,” I echoed, trying to smile. It didn’t quite reach my eyes. I turned my gaze back up to the stars.

“You okay?”

I hesitated. “Yeah. Just needed a minute.”

He didn’t push. Just let the quiet stretch, open and kind.

Eventually, I exhaled. “Rossi sure knows how to throw a party. And I’ve really loved meeting everyone tonight,” I said with a small smile. “I still need to corner Derek before we leave and get some more dirt on you.”

He chuckled at that, but then the rest of the words tumbled out of me before I could stop them.

“They all know a version of you I’ll never get to meet,” I said quietly. “And I don’t think anyone meant to make me feel out of place, but I still did. Like I was standing just outside the frame all night.”

Spencer’s expression softened, guilt flickering in his eyes. “I’m sorry. I should’ve seen it sooner.”

I shook my head. “You didn’t do anything wrong. No one did. I just…” My voice dipped. “I wish I could belong to this part of your life, too.”

“You do,” he said, without hesitation. “You already do.” He looked down for a moment, then back up at the sky. “Most of the people here tonight have seen the worst of me,” he said slowly. “Watched me fall apart more than once and helped put me back together. But you… you met me in a totally different kind of wreckage. And you chose to stay anyway.”

He turned to face me more fully.

“I want them to know you — not just meet you, but know you. Because you’re the person who pulled me out of something I didn’t think I’d survive. I didn’t even know there was a future out there left for me to want until you reminded me what it felt like to hope.”

My breath caught.

He reached for my hand, his voice low. “I know this part of my world feels like a closed room sometimes. But it’s not. You’re already inside it — just by being here. I’ll keep making space, because I want you in all of it — the past, the present, whatever’s next. And if it ever feels like you’re outside the door, I’ll open it. Every single time.”

The words settled in my chest like warmth after a long cold, and I leaned into him. We stood in comfortable silence, looking up at the stars.

“You ever think about how much of the universe is invisible?” I asked softly after a minute.

“Only all the time,” he chuckled. “Dark matter holds galaxies together. You don’t always see it, but it’s there. Holding the shape. The structure.”

He paused for a moment before his gaze shifted from the sky down to me, eyes full of something I could barely hold. “You’re that for me. You hold me together. You’re part of this, even when it doesn’t feel like it. You’ve changed my center of gravity. And they’ll see that, too.”

He threaded his fingers through mine, and I felt my breath steady at last.

—

Two weeks later, I walked into Spencer’s apartment and took stock of what had changed.

One of Rossi’s books sat on my side of the bed, the page I’d left off on marked with a receipt from our favorite diner — the one with the pie. A framed photo of me and Spencer, mid-laugh on Rossi’s lawn at the party, had taken up residence on his bookshelf, perched next to a faded copy of Cosmos by Carl Sagan. My favorite mug now lived in his cabinet, nestled between his like it had always belonged there.

And on the couch, quietly waiting, was a soft leather-bound journal.

Spencer picked it up and handed it to me once I sat down. “I’ve been, um, writing things down,” he said, voice low. “Things I want you to know. Memories. Anecdotes. Cases that still live somewhere in my head. I realized I never told you half of what made me, me, but I want to start.”

I opened it slowly, fingers tracing his familiar handwriting across the pages. Scribbled thoughts. Stories. Annotations in the margins. I felt the weight of it hit me all at once — not just the pages or the words, but what it meant. That he trusted me with this. That he wanted me to know him, fully and without omission.

I glanced up at him, eyes warm. “You really want me to know it all?”

“All of it.” He leaned in gently, thumb brushing my cheek. “If it ever felt like I was closing doors, this is me opening them. You’re not on the outside.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat and leaned in to kiss him softly. “Thank you,” I whispered against his lips.

We curled up together, my head resting gently on his shoulder, the journal open on my lap. Through the window, stars shimmered in the quiet, scattered like secrets we hadn’t told yet. The room felt hushed in that way only night can manage — like the whole world had paused just long enough to let us breathe.

—

After an hour or so of flipping through the journal, Spencer shifted beside me, almost imperceptibly — just enough that I could feel the nerves radiating off of him.

“Turn to the last page,” he said softly, his voice low and careful.

I glanced up at him. His expression was unreadable — serious, but not heavy. Just… open. So I turned the page with one hand, the other laced with his.

There, in his messy, scribbled handwriting, were seven words:

Move in with me. Please say yes.

My breath caught in my throat.

He didn’t speak, just waited, his hand still warm beneath mine. I stared at the words and felt the weight of them settle in my chest.

We weren’t kids. This wasn’t a fantasy, or a giddy impulse, or something he hadn’t thought through. We were two people who had seen some of the worst in life and in each other. We knew what hurt looked like, and we knew what it meant to carry grief and still try to build something anyway.

My mind immediately spun into motion — not just the logistics, but the stakes. What if we made a home together and something still cracked open? What if the walls closed in and started to suffocate us? What if the things he loved about me eventually hardened into something he didn’t recognize?

What if we messed it all up?

I looked at him.

“I know it’s a big step,” he said quietly, as if he could hear every thought I hadn’t spoken. “And I don’t want us to rush anything. But I want a life with you. This — us — is the only thing that’s ever made complete sense to me, even when everything else didn’t. And I’d rather do all the hard parts with you than the easy ones without you.” He studied me a moment. “Plus, I mean, we already spend almost every night together. Your lease is up in a couple months. Half of your clothes live in my drawers. It’s practical, really,” he rambled in typical Spencer fashion. Then he paused, took a breath, and said, “But… that’s not why I’m suggesting it. I’d want this even if it made no practical sense at all.”

I took a breath, and then another, trying to quiet the pulse in my ears. Then I brushed my fingertips against the page, tracing the words he’d written for me with so much hope for the future. I let myself feel that same hope, too.

“Okay,” I whispered. “Yes. Let’s do it.”

His breath stuttered like he hadn’t let himself dream of that answer. And then he smiled, wide and a little dazed.

I leaned in and kissed him, gentle and sure.

It wasn’t a fairytale, and I didn’t need it to be. It was real. Big and messy and soft.

“You know you’re going to have to clear out some shelf space, right? I have at least three milk crates-worth of books, and I refuse to make sacrifices,” I teased.

He laughed, eyes crinkling. “I’ll make room. I’ll even ask Luke for help putting up more shelves if we need them.”

I grinned. “We’re going to have, like, furniture store arguments, aren’t we?”

“Probably,” he said. “But in a deeply intellectual way. Like over the ethics of couches.”

I giggled. “And we’ll decorate for every holiday and accidentally buy the same coffee beans twice and probably fight over whose turn it is to clean the shower.”

“And I’ll lose, every time,” he said, entirely unbothered. “But you’ll still let me sleep in your arms.”

“Yeah,” I replied simply, because I suddenly didn’t know how to say all the things I felt — about home, and us, and what it meant to be chosen like this.

He leaned over and pressed his forehead to mine. “I want all of it,” he murmured. “The books and the arguments and the coffee and the shower. A full life. With you.”

—

Later, as we lay in bed, the journal still open between us and the stars humming quietly beyond the window, I turned toward him, heart full and aching in the best way.

“Spencer,” I whispered, not really sure what I intended to say next. I think I just needed the shape of his name in my mouth.

He looked over at me — soft, steady — and reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “Come here,” he murmured, voice low.

I did.

The journal slid to the floor with a quiet thud as I moved to straddle his lap, his hands finding my waist as mine curled against the back of his neck. There was no rush, no urgency — just the slow, reverent unfolding of clothes coming off, of skin against skin. Kisses that felt like punctuation. Touches like promises.

And as we moved together — quiet and close and sure — I felt it again: that invisible tether between us. The way he anchored me without even trying. A kind of gravity you don’t always see, but feel all the same.

Like dark matter. Invisible but everywhere, holding us quietly in place.

ᝰ.ᐟ

[juliettejwnewinesa]

I really don't understand what I'm happening with the whole situation (just something about ai), and I've been reading you fanfics for a while now (and I've been eating them up, theyre scrumptious and yummy), and never once have I thought they were ai. You can see it in writing structure(?) And the way you write, it feels human. And there is nothing wrong with using grammarly cause we all do.

Anyway, I'm so sorry for your hate, but if it's not much trouble, can you make a fanfic about childhood best friend!reader x Han Su-gang who is older than her by 2 years. She left town, sugang was devastated, and she came back and transferred for her last year.

He makes himself known by lingering around her for a long while (in the halls, brief touching, just tormenting her), wondering if she remembered him. things have been quiet, and no one tells her the incidents. She simps over Han su-gang about how handsome he is to her friends (she's a bunble Ray of sunshine and naive so they tell her nothing) and how adorable their children will be and all that like a middle schooler. It's like pure and adorable saying they'll have 3 kids, 2 boys and 1 girl, and have 5 cats (being dululu), and he hears about this and decided to give her a good time!(smut)

Anyway, please and thank you and take care of yourself (so sorry that this is long💔)

hey babeee thx for the request sorry for the delay btw 😘

Title: Guess You Grew Up Pairing: Han Su-gang x naive!sunshine!childhoodbestfriend!Fem!Reader Rating: 🔞 MDNI Tags: childhood best friends to something else, naive reader, light corruption, possessive Su-gang, unaware reader, fluffy smut, oral (f receiving), size kink, breeding talk (delulu style), soft and dark tension

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Han Su-gang never forgot you.

You were the only bright thing in his life back then. Messy pigtails, scraped knees, and that ridiculous laugh. You were the first person who held his hand without flinching. Who told him he was your “favorite person in the world.”

Then one day, you were just… gone. Moved away. No goodbye.

It haunted him. For years.

And then—just like that—you were back.

You transferred in mid-term, your backpack bouncing, your voice still sweet and chirpy as you introduced yourself with a wide smile to a classroom full of half-dead teenagers. “I used to live here when I was little! It’s so good to be back!”

Su-gang leaned back in his chair, staring at you from the back row, jaw tight.

You’d grown. Legs longer. Hair shinier. Same fucking smile.

But you didn’t even look at him.

Did you forget him?

He watched. Waited.

And when the bell rang, you skipped right past him like you didn’t even notice the boy who used to protect you from bullies.

He almost laughed.

You started following him with your eyes first.

He could feel it when he walked down the hallway, his hands in his pockets, and you’d pause mid-conversation, glancing up at him like a little lost puppy.

Then came the whispers. The blushing.

“He’s so pretty, right?” you said to your friends one day in the bathroom, unaware he was around the corner. “Like, dangerously hot. Oh my god. I want him to kiss me and then ignore me for a week so I can cry about it like in a drama.”

Your friends stared at you in horror.

You just kept going. “If I married him, our kids would be gorgeous. We’d have, like… three. Two boys, one girl. And five cats! Or maybe seven. He looks like a cat dad, don’t you think?”

Su-gang bit his lip to keep from laughing.

You really hadn’t changed at all.

He started showing up more.

Behind you in the hallway. Lurking near your locker. Sitting near you in the cafeteria. His knuckles would brush yours when you passed. His shoulder would graze yours in class.

It drove you crazy.

You kept stealing glances, your brain turning into fluff every time he licked his lips or leaned against the wall like a walking daydream.

One day, after your “dream wedding fantasy” rant, Su-gang finally snapped.

He cornered you after school, pulling you into a supply room and shutting the door with a soft click.

You gasped, back hitting the shelf.

“Han—Han Su-gang?!”

He stared down at you, silent.

Your heart thumped. “Are you—um, are you lost?”

He stepped closer. "You really don’t remember me?"

You blinked up at him. “Huh?”

“I used to walk you home. You made me hold your stupid Hello Kitty umbrella.”

Your mouth fell open. “…Sooie?”

He groaned. “Don’t call me that.”

“Oh my god—Han Sooie!” You laughed, teary-eyed, and then threw your arms around him. “I missed you! Why didn’t you tell me sooner?!”

“I was waiting,” he muttered into your hair, his arms tightening. “Wanted to see if you remembered. You didn’t.”

“I do now!” you pouted. “You got hot. That threw me off.”

He pulled back and looked down at you, his gaze dark. “You really think I’m hot?”

You nodded without thinking. “Like… really hot. In a ‘ruin me’ kind of way.”

“…You shouldn’t say that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I will.”

He kissed you hard, like he’d been holding it in for years.

Your lips parted in surprise, and Su-gang took full advantage, sliding his tongue into your mouth, one hand cupping your cheek while the other settled low on your waist.

You melted into him instantly.

“I should make you pay for forgetting me,” he murmured against your lips.

“S-Su-gang…”

“You say I’m hot? Say you want kids? Say stupid little things about marrying me?” He kissed down your neck, biting gently. “You think I wouldn’t hear that?”

You whimpered. “You heard that?!”

He chuckled darkly. “You’re not subtle.”

His hand slipped under your skirt. Fingers finding you embarrassingly wet already.

“Oh my god—”

“You this wet just from seeing me around, sunshine?”

You nodded, dazed. “You always look so good. I—I just thought about it a lot.”

“You want me to give you a good time, yeah?” he whispered, fingers stroking your clit slowly. “Since you dream about it so much.”

You whined and nodded again.

He kissed you breathless as he slid two fingers inside you, curling them slow and deep. His other hand moved to your chest, pulling down your top just enough to mouth at your nipple, sucking lightly.

Your legs shook.

“Please—please, Su-gang…”

“Shh. Let me take care of you, sunshine.” He dropped to his knees, pushing your skirt up.

“Wait—w-we’re still at school—”

“Then be quiet,” he smirked, before licking a thick stripe up your pussy, making your knees nearly buckle.

He ate you like he was starved. Like he owned you.

You were already close—years of fantasy finally crashing into reality.

“S-Su-gang, I’m—”

“Go ahead,” he murmured, fingers tightening on your thighs. “Cum for me. Then maybe I’ll fuck you for real and give you those kids you keep talking about.”

You cried out, biting your fist as you came hard, hips grinding against his mouth.

When he stood again, your legs were trembling, and he kissed you soft this time.

“You’re mine now,” he whispered. “Got it?”

You nodded, dizzy, breathless, ruined.

“Good girl.”

[yukkiji]

angel

when the boy who always calls you "angel" refuses to admit his feelings, you're left with no choice but to say yes to someone else—forcing him to realize too late that losing you was never part of the game.

blue lock masterlist. leave a little stardust on my ko-fi

starring. nagi seishiro x fem!reader ft. mikage reo

genre: fluff, romance, mild angst, cupid!reo, reo is stressed, nagi's so dense

wc: 10.3k

author's note: this was actually supposed to be written in full on angst but i decided to change the plot and might still post the full on nagi angst hehe

you first met nagi seishiro through your best friend, mikage reo — hakuho high school’s golden boy.

if there was anyone who could juggle soccer captaincy, straight a’s, an overflowing social life, and still find time to tease you before homeroom, it was reo. he had the kind of smile that made people trust him too easily and the kind of confidence that made teachers both adore and resent him.

everyone adored him.

but you never did — not like that.

you and reo had known each other since you were five, since he’d tried to share his pudding at daycare and got it smeared across his designer uniform when you slapped it away. from then on, it was chaos and camaraderie, late-night calls for math homework, popcorn fights during cram sessions, and long car rides in the mikage family limo with your knees knocking under shared blankets.

you were like siblings — something even reo’s fangirls at school refused to believe.

“why would i date reo?” you’d asked once, horrified. “that’s like dating my cousin.”

reo, overhearing it from across the hall, only shrugged. “that’s her way of saying i’m the more attractive one.”

it was all harmless teasing — always had been.

but then came him.

the day reo introduced you to nagi, you had no expectations. you were just tagging along to another of his after-practice hangouts, this time near the gym’s side benches, where he said a “new recruit” was waiting.

you weren’t prepared for the tall, white-haired boy who barely spared you a glance when you arrived.

“this is nagi seishiro,” reo had said with a proud grin, clapping a hand on the stranger’s shoulder. “monster on the field. zero social skills. doesn’t care about anything except games.”

nagi looked up from his phone — not because he wanted to, but because reo had nudged him. his eyes were dull, like nothing around him sparked much interest. the only life in him came from the game lighting up his screen.

reo gestured to you. “this is angel.”

you blinked. “excuse me—”

“it’s what i call her. don’t question it.”

nagi’s gaze lingered for a second. “angel, huh.”

his voice was flat, disinterested. but oddly enough… he repeated the name like it mattered.

that was all he said before looking back down at his phone.

you’d never met someone so unimpressed with the world.

and yet—somehow—you found yourself drawn to him anyway.

maybe it was the way he moved like everything was too much trouble, yet still found his way next to you. or maybe it was the quiet comfort of his presence, how even in silence, he never made you feel alone. there was something hypnotic about his stillness. as if chaos couldn’t touch him—and when you were around him, it couldn’t touch you either.

it started subtly.

nagi never called you by your name. just angel.

not once had he asked if it was okay. he just picked it up the way someone picks up a new favorite song—without effort, without question. it was like a default setting in his brain. automatic. natural. like he couldn’t imagine calling you anything else.

it didn’t help, though. not when he kept giving you mixed signals.

nagi might’ve looked distracted all the time, his gaze often glued to his phone or drifting to the clouds during class—but he always paid attention to you. he remembered the details you told him: your favorite snack during exam season, the exact way you liked your tea, the movie you wanted to watch next. once, you’d casually mentioned how your feet always got cold in the library, and the next time you studied together, he brought an extra pair of fuzzy socks like it was no big deal.

he didn’t say much. never did. but he showed up in ways that made your heart ache.

like the way he’d always wander over to you after hours of football practice, the sky fading pink above hakuho high’s rooftop or the sun casting long shadows on the back field. sweaty and slow-moving, he’d drop his duffle bag beside you with a grunt, flopping onto the grass like gravity had finally won.

sometimes he’d tug at your sleeve in that lazy, silent way of asking for attention—head resting on your thigh as if it were the most obvious pillow in the world. no warning. no asking. just trust.

and you always let him.

you’d card your fingers through his soft white hair, and he’d hum, quiet and content, almost like a cat purring. the world seemed to dull when he was like that—when his breathing evened out and his body melted into yours like he belonged there.

sometimes, he’d shift closer, burying his face into the crook of your neck, voice barely a whisper.

“sleepy, angel.”

just two words. but you’d feel them for hours after.

you’d sit there frozen, breath caught in your throat, heart thundering like it was trying to break out of your ribs. and he—unbothered, eyes half-lidded and heavy—would fall asleep to the sound of your racing pulse.

he didn’t realize what he was doing to you. or maybe he did. you could never really tell.

because when the sun dipped low enough, and the rest of the team started filing out, nagi would lift his head, yawn, and walk off like nothing happened. like he hadn’t just cracked your heart open with one word, one look, one casual lean into your shoulder.

it wasn’t fair—how someone so unattached could still have that kind of power over you.

it wasn’t fair that you started hoping he’d do it again.

because every time he touched you like that—every time he called you angel in that soft, half-asleep tone—it felt like a dream you weren’t allowed to wake up from.

and yet, you never stopped waiting for the next time.

oh, but it didn’t stop with lazy afternoons and fleeting moments of closeness. not even close.

there were other moments—quieter ones, tucked between school and soccer practice, when it was just you, reo, and nagi heading off-campus for food. reo would always act like he was treating royalty, leading you both with swagger and flair, his platinum card practically flashing in the sunlight.

he’d announce, “my treat, obviously,” before you even stepped into the restaurant. mikage reo: hakuho high’s golden boy, heir to the building you were sitting in, and yet still the same loud, dramatic idiot you grew up with.

but your focus was never on him.

because nagi, without fail, would always slide into the seat beside you. even if reo sat next to you first, nagi would stand there, towering, blinking once before saying, “move.” and reo—used to his antics—would just sigh and scoot without complaint.

he didn’t even try to hide it anymore.

and every time nagi settled beside you, your heart did that stupid thing again—tripped over itself, stumbled into your ribs, and reminded you that you were already too far gone.

it always happened the same way.

you’d be mid-bite or mid-conversation when suddenly, his fingers would find yours beneath the table. not a brush. not an accidental touch. a full-on interlock. as if your hand was made to fit into his.

sometimes, his grip was light, absent-minded—his thumb rubbing lazy circles against your palm while he focused on his rice bowl. sometimes, it was firmer, grounding. like he needed to hold on to something, and for some reason, that something was always you.

one time, he caught your hand before you could even sit down, pulling it into his lap casually.

“your hand’s warm,” he murmured, eyes half-lidded with that usual drowsy calm. “and soft.”

like it was the most obvious observation in the world. like it meant nothing.

but it didn’t mean nothing to you.

it never did.

because every time he said something like that—quiet and thoughtless, like a dream slipping through your fingers—it burrowed deeper into your heart. and left you wondering: does he even know what he’s doing to me?

across the table, reo would catch your eye with a smirk.

he’d rest his chin in his hand, grinning like a fox. “you two should just date already,” he’d say one afternoon, loud enough for nagi to hear.

you choked on your drink.

nagi didn’t even flinch. “too much work,” he replied without missing a beat—but his grip on your hand didn’t loosen.

your stomach twisted. and reo? he looked at you knowingly, as if he could see the spiral in your mind before you even admitted it to yourself.

you wanted to believe there was something there. that the touches meant something. that the nickname wasn’t just a habit. that the way he leaned into your shoulder and closed his eyes wasn’t just comfort—it was you.

but nagi never said anything.

and you were too scared to ask.

because what if it really was just who he was? what if the closeness you treasured so deeply… wasn’t special to him at all?

you hated how much the uncertainty hurt. hated how you still looked for his name on your phone screen. hated how your heart reacted to every small thing he did—like it hadn’t learned how to protect itself.

because no matter how casual he made it seem… holding nagi’s hand always felt like the closest thing to home.

and maybe that was the most dangerous part.

because when something starts to feel like home, you forget it was never promised to you. you start expecting it—counting on it—imagining things that were never said out loud. you start building a future in the quiet spaces between words he never meant for you to read into.

you told yourself you were fine with the silence. that you could live in the in-between. but your heart knew better. it ached louder every time nagi pulled you a little closer… and said nothing at all.

so now—suffocating in feelings you never meant to have—you were sprawled like a corpse on the oversized couch in reo’s ridiculous penthouse living room.

hakuho high’s golden boy, born with a silver spoon and a rooftop garden, was currently snacking on something that cost more than your weekly lunch allowance and watching you fall apart with the patience of someone used to your drama.

“fuck it!” you screamed into one of his designer pillows, muffled but heartfelt. “i hate him. i hate his stupid hair, and his lazy slouch, and the way he breathes like the world is boring and calls me angel like he didn’t just short-circuit my entire central nervous system.”

reo didn’t even flinch. “so,” he said casually, tossing another popcorn kernel into his mouth, “you’re saying you’re fine.”

you let out a long, wounded groan into the cushions. “you ruined my life, mikage.”

“oh, is that what i did?” he said, utterly unfazed. “you were so normal before nagi, huh? always emotionally stable, never crying over how ‘his voice sounds like fresh snow falling on a winter night.’”

your head snapped up. “i never said that.”

he smirked. “you did. last week. when he called you at midnight to ask what time practice was and you replayed the voicemail six times.”

your cheeks burned. “that’s… not the point!”

“no, you’re right. the point is, i introduced you two. i should get matchmaking royalties.”

you sat up, dramatically throwing off his fancy blanket. “you should’ve never introduced him to me, reo!”

reo gave you a shit-eating grin. “why? because he’s hot, mysterious, emotionally unavailable, and clearly soft for you? yeah, sorry. that’s on me.”

you groaned and flopped back onto the couch. “he’s not soft for me.”

“oh, right. my bad,” he said, mock-serious. “he just randomly holds your hand during lunch, naps with his head in your lap, and only calls you angel. totally meaningless.”

“it feels meaningless when he never says anything about it!”

reo got up, made his way to the mini fridge, and tossed you a can of something carbonated and unnecessarily expensive. “sei’s weird,” he said, plopping back into his seat. “he doesn’t talk much, but he doesn’t exactly do all that with everyone.”

you cracked open the drink and took a long sip, sighing. “i feel like i’m going insane.”

“no, this is just karma for every time you made fun of me in middle school when i had a crush.”

you threw a cushion at him.

he caught it easily. “look. you and nagi? it’s a slow burn. like, glacial. like, two rocks eroding in a riverbed over several centuries.”

you gave him a look. “you’re not helping.”

“i am helping,” he said smugly. “i’m listening to your crisis, offering top-tier beverages, and reminding you that he called you angel during conditioning drills, which means even when he’s sweating to death, you’re still on his mind.”

you paused. “you think?”

reo leaned back, his expression softer now. “i know.”

you stared at the ceiling. “then why hasn’t he said anything? why hasn’t he… done anything?”

reo hesitated for a beat, then shrugged. “he probably doesn’t know what he’s feeling yet.”

you blinked. “how do you not know you like someone?”

reo looked at you knowingly. “have you met nagi?”

“…fair.”

the two of you sat in silence for a bit, the city lights from the floor-to-ceiling windows spilling across the marble floors. the penthouse was too fancy, too big—but in this moment, it felt oddly safe.

then, quietly, you said, “i think i like him.”

reo didn’t tease you that night. he just smiled—crooked and quiet—and let the weight of your words settle in the silence between you.

“yeah,” he said. “i know.”

and for one brief moment, you felt lighter. like something in your chest had finally been named, and now you could breathe around it.

but that peace didn’t last.

because after that night at his penthouse, reo didn’t just return to being your best friend.

he became your personal tormentor.

not in the mean-spirited way—not really. but in that classic mikage reo fashion, he took your emotional meltdown, filed it under “important best friend information,” and proceeded to use it for sport.

subtle at first.

a comment here. a smirk there.

“your boyfriend’s under the tree again,” he’d say casually during soccer practice, flinging his towel over his shoulder and pointing across the field with his chin. “probably waiting for you to come fan him or something.”

you didn’t even bother responding the first few times. but reo? he thrived on reactions. so the quieter you were, the more relentless he became.

“he’s literally using your hoodie as a pillow right now,” he snorted during one break. “what is he, a stray cat? did you feed him once and now he won’t leave?”

you tried to ignore him, really, you did.

but it was hard to play it cool when nagi seishiro—cool, aloof, half-asleep nagi—kept gravitating toward you like you were the only person on the planet worth orbiting.

when he’d wander over during water breaks, barely say anything, and drop to the grass beside you with a heavy sigh.

when he’d tug at the hem of your sleeve like a child, muttering, “move a little, angel,” so he could comfortably lay his head on your lap.

the first time he did it, you froze.

you had no idea what to do with your hands, with your face, with the ridiculous tempo your heart had launched into.

and when he nuzzled into the crook of your neck and whispered, “warm. ‘m comfy here,” you were sure you’d ascended into another dimension.

reo, from several feet away, didn’t miss a beat.

“are you serious right now?” he called out, deadpan. “you’re using her as a human mattress? sei, we’re in the middle of practice.”

nagi, eyes still closed, responded with a half-lidded shrug. “we’re on break.”

reo turned to you, hands on hips like a disappointed parent. “why do you let him do that?”

you glared at him. “do i look like i can stop him?”

reo opened his mouth, then paused, expression flickering to something amused and oddly fond. “you don’t, actually. which is kinda impressive.”

from then on, he only got worse.

during lunch, he made a habit of sliding nagi’s bento closer to you before anyone sat down.

“feed him,” reo would say, like a waiter taking your order. “or he won’t eat. apparently your hands make everything taste better.”

nagi, seated beside you like it was law, didn’t even look up from his game.

“true,” he said flatly, holding out his chopsticks expectantly. “angel feeds me better.”

your face combusted.

reo nearly fell off his seat from laughing.

and somehow—somehow—this became routine.

if nagi didn’t get to sit next to you, he’d just drag his chair over. if you were holding your phone, he’d take it and lean against your shoulder while scrolling aimlessly. if you were quiet, he’d lean into you, cheek against your hair, and murmur, “tell me something. i like hearing your voice.”

every small thing turned sacred. every tiny touch set you on fire.

and reo? he stoked the flames.

it was like living in a dream you weren’t allowed to name. a day-by-day slow-burn that left you suspended in something warm and fragile. you didn’t know if nagi meant any of it the way you hoped he did. he never said anything. never changed his expression. just kept calling you angel and reaching for you like you belonged to him.

and the worst part?

you kept letting him.

you wanted to believe it meant something.

you needed to believe it did.

but the not-knowing—it festered. the what-ifs, the maybe-he-does, maybe-he-doesn’t… they turned every smile into a battlefield, every silence into a storm.

you didn’t realize how exhausted you were from hoping until it all came to a head on a regular, sleepy afternoon at hakuho high.

the sky was bluer than usual. the breeze was soft. you had a bottle of your favorite drink in hand after a long lecture, your thoughts drifting—mostly about how quiet nagi had been lately. distant, even.

you were behind the gym, just starting to unscrew the cap of your drink, when someone approached you.

“hey.”

you blinked up, surprised. he was a third-year—tall, broad-shouldered, sharp features softened by the slight smile he wore. you recognized him vaguely. vice-captain of the basketball team. the type girls whispered about in the corridors.

“i know this is sudden,” he started, scratching the back of his neck, “but… are you dating nagi seishiro?”

your grip tightened around your drink. the question hit harder than it should have.

you blinked. “huh?”

“you guys are always together,” he said, shrugging. “it kinda looks like it. i didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes, so i figured i’d ask first.”

you didn’t know how to answer.

because no—he never asked you out. but yes—he held your hand like it meant something. he napped on your lap. called you angel. looked for you in crowds.

but that wasn’t love, was it? at least… not the kind that gets voiced.

so you shook your head.

“no,” you said softly. “we’re not.”

the word sat heavy on your tongue, like something bitter you were finally forced to swallow. even saying it aloud—confirming that there was nothing between you and nagi—hurt more than you thought it would.

the boy blinked, surprised. “oh. then… reo?”

you blinked back, caught off guard. “what?”

he laughed nervously, raising both hands in surrender. “sorry—just, the way you and mikage always bicker. i figured maybe you two were, you know… childhood friends-to-lovers or whatever.”

you stared at him like he’d just grown a second head.

then came the deadpan: “heck no.”

it was more disgust than denial, and it left your mouth before you could filter it.

the guy laughed again—this time, genuinely. “alright, alright. just checking.”

you rolled your eyes, cheeks flushing. “reo’s like… my brother. that would be disgusting.”

“that clears things up.” he smiled, easing a little. “then… maybe we could go for coffee this weekend?”

there was a pause.

and then, before you could give yourself a reason not to, you nodded.

“sure,” you said. “why not?”

it wasn’t a confession.

it wasn’t a first kiss.

but it was the first time you admitted—if only to yourself—that maybe you couldn’t wait around for nagi forever.

what you didn’t know, standing there in the soft shadow of the school gym, was that someone had seen the entire thing. from the moment the boy asked if you were dating nagi, down to the way you wrinkled your nose at the mention of reo.

and that someone’s stomach dropped like a stone.

because while you were saying no…

nagi was across the path—hearing every word like it was a slap to the face.

he didn’t stick around to hear your answer to the guy’s next question. he didn’t want to. couldn’t. something in him recoiled the moment he saw you standing there—with him—smiling the way you usually smiled at him.

he walked away, fast and quiet.

the weight of his limbs was heavier than usual. his hoodie felt too warm against his skin, and his hands stayed shoved deep into the pockets like he was trying to bury the strange, twisting ache crawling up his chest.

he went back to the soccer field, eyes blank, lips pressed into a line.

he didn’t speak.

didn’t even look at reo when the other boy offered him a water bottle.

he just stood in the grass, shoulders stiff, waiting for the whistle to blow.

why would he feel like this?

you can date who you want. you’re your own person. you always were.

and besides—you were right.

you two weren’t together.

you weren’t his girlfriend.

you were just… his angel.

his nap partner. his hand to hold. his favorite seat under the sakura tree after a long day of classes. the one who laughed at his flat jokes. the one who listened even when he didn’t respond. the one he could always find in the stands, no matter how far away.

his… friend.

that’s all it was, right?

just a friend.

so why did the idea of someone else having your attention—the thought of you laughing at someone else’s bad jokes, someone else’s hand holding yours—make his throat tighten like this?

why did he feel like his chest was full of static?

why did practice suddenly feel impossible to focus on?

why did everything burn?

he was nagi seishiro—apathetic, unbothered, uninterested in everything except convenience and quiet. he didn’t do emotions. didn’t care about people.

and yet…

why?

why did it feel like he was about to lose something he didn’t even realize he was holding?

the thought wouldn’t leave him alone.

it echoed in his head, over and over, louder than the screech of cleats against the turf, louder than the whistle, louder than reo yelling plays from the opposite end of the field.

you’d said it so clearly. so easily.

“no, we’re not.”

you weren’t lying. but something in your voice—he couldn't forget it. it didn’t sound like relief. it sounded like… surrender.

why did that hurt so damn much?

he pressed forward in the scrimmage, a pass skimming just past his foot because he moved a second too late. his reflexes were off. his instincts dulled. the field felt too narrow. his jersey clung to his back. the usual lightness in his body was gone, replaced by a heavy, dragging weight he couldn’t shake.

he missed another pass.

and another.

he shoved his hands into his hair in frustration, growling quietly, “tch.”

a few teammates stared. they didn’t say anything, but the tension rippled.

nagi didn’t care.

no, that was a lie.

he did care.

that was the worst part.

for the first time in a long time, he cared too much and didn’t know how to handle it.

across the field, reo watched carefully.

he had known nagi since first year. knew the way his best friend moved, the tempo of his rhythm on the field, the lazy but calculated precision of his mind. he’d watched nagi play sick, play exhausted, even play pissed off—and still look good doing it.

but this?

this wasn’t the usual indifference.

this wasn’t fatigue.

this was nagi unraveling.

quietly. subtly. but painfully.

he could see it in the way nagi’s shoulders stiffened with every misstep. the way his hands balled into fists whenever the ball rolled too far. the way he didn’t even look toward the bleachers—where you usually sat watching, sometimes waving, always smiling.

you weren’t there today.

and reo had a feeling nagi knew exactly why.

but the worst part? he didn’t do anything about it.

not the next day.

not the day after that.

not even when your eyes lingered on him longer than necessary—waiting, hoping, hurting.

instead, nagi distanced himself.

no explanation. no text. no lazy “angel” in the hallway, no sudden weight of his head on your shoulder like he used to do after class. he didn’t take the seat next to you during lunch anymore, even when reo subtly saved it. he didn’t offer you sips of his convenience store soda, or absentmindedly thread your fingers with his under the cafeteria table.

it was as if someone had pressed pause on everything that felt safe and familiar.

and you noticed. of course you noticed.

how could you not?

the boy who once made you feel like the center of his world was now acting like you barely existed in it.

you tried to brush it off at first—told yourself he was just tired from soccer, or spacing out like he always did, or maybe he just needed time. you knew nagi could be… detached. aloof. he was never the type to chase or cling. that was just how he was.

but this? this was different.

he wasn’t just distracted.

he was avoiding you.

the realization settled in your chest like a weight you couldn’t shake off, especially when reo—your oldest friend, your partner in chaos since grade school—confirmed the one thing you dreaded to hear.

it was late in the afternoon when it happened. you were at the mikage penthouse again, your designated post-school escape on days that felt too heavy. you were lying on your back, legs tossed over the armrest of reo’s imported italian couch, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.

reo was scrolling through his phone beside you, one socked foot pressed against your shin lazily. the room was quiet except for the faint hum of the central air and the occasional clink of ice in your untouched drinks.

“he knows the vice captain asked you out.”

your stomach dropped.

you turned your head slowly toward reo, your voice barely above a whisper. “nagi?”

reo nodded, still scrolling. “he was nearby when it happened. didn’t say anything, but i saw his face after. he walked back to the field like he was ready to murder someone.”

you sat up fully now, heart pounding. “is that why he’s been avoiding me?”

reo sighed like it physically pained him to deal with the emotional incompetence of his best friend. “most likely. i mean, it’s either that or he suddenly forgot how to function around people—which, okay, is also a possibility with him.”

you swallowed, the pieces falling into place too fast for comfort. “but… why would he avoid me?”

reo finally looked at you, his expression unreadable for once.

the teasing had fallen from his features like snow off a rooftop—quiet, unexpected. his voice, when he finally spoke, came soft but firm.

“because he’s a dumbass.”

you blinked. “i—what?”

he raised an eyebrow at you, like he couldn’t believe he had to spell it out.

“he likes you, idiot.”

the words hit you harder than they should have.

they knocked the air out of your lungs and left you staring at reo like he’d just casually told you gravity stopped working.

“i—” your mouth opened, then shut again. you shook your head. “no. no, he doesn’t.”

reo let out a slow breath, dragging a hand through his perfectly styled hair. “yes, he does. he just doesn’t realize it the way you want him to yet. that doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

you frowned, your voice quieter now. “then why is he avoiding me?”

reo studied you carefully. “because he’s never felt this kind of thing before. he’s confused. freaked out, probably. and when sei gets overwhelmed, he doesn’t push forward—he hides. retreats.”

you looked away, your fingers curling into the hem of your sweater. “it hurts.”

reo’s gaze softened. “i know. and it’s killing me watching both of you act like this when it’s so obvious you mean the world to each other.”

you sighed, slumping back against the couch cushions. your heart felt heavy, bruised in a way that wasn’t physical. like something was wilting inside your chest—soft and unseen, but so achingly present. “what do i do, reo?”

he didn’t answer right away. for once, he wasn’t being theatrical or smug. no exaggerated hand gestures or sarcastic comments. just silence, and a look in his eyes that said he was weighing his words carefully.

finally, reo spoke. his voice was gentler than you expected.

“i’m not playing favorites here, but… you already did your part.”

you blinked. “what?”

“i mean, come on,” he said, shrugging one shoulder. “you like him. you know it. i know it. hell, half of hakuho probably knows it. you’ve shown him in every way that counts. it’s not your responsibility to make him see that he likes you back.”

your lips parted slightly, but no sound came out.

reo leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, gaze fixed on yours. “sei’s not good with emotions. he feels things, yeah—but he doesn’t always know what he’s feeling. he zones out, pulls away, avoids it like it’s a hard level in a game he doesn’t want to clear.”

your heart stung. “then what if he never clears it?”

“then that’s on him,” reo said, and there was no hesitation in his voice this time. “not you. you’ve been patient. you’ve been honest, even if you haven’t said the exact words. if he lets you walk away without realizing what you mean to him… that’s his loss.”

the words echoed in your chest, louder than you wanted them to.

because deep down, you didn’t want to walk away. not even a little. not even when he made you feel invisible. but reo was right—loving someone didn’t mean setting yourself on fire to light their path. and maybe… maybe it was time nagi realized that.

you closed your eyes, trying to blink away the sting behind your lashes. “i hate this.”

reo offered a soft laugh and nudged your knee with his. “i know. love sucks sometimes. especially when it comes with a six-foot-tall emotional brick wall.”

you cracked a smile, just barely. “thanks for the reminder.”

he grinned. “anytime, angel.”

and despite the ache still lodged somewhere in your ribs, his words settled into your heart like a gentle promise.

that no matter how messy this all became, you weren’t completely alone in it.

reo was there—annoying, overconfident, occasionally too invested—but always in your corner. he never let you spiral too far without yanking you back with a half-serious joke or a reality check disguised as sarcasm. and knowing that… made breathing a little easier.

you stayed in his penthouse longer than you meant to that night. he made you tea without asking, switched the mood lighting to a calmer tone, and played some playlist he called “healing for the emotionally exhausted.” you didn’t even have the energy to roll your eyes.

you stared out the window while the city lights blinked back at you like stars—distant and quiet. your thoughts drifted again to nagi. to the way his hair fell into his eyes when he leaned over his phone. the weight of his head when he laid it in your lap after practice. the warmth in his voice when he murmured, “sleepy, angel.”

you clutched a pillow to your chest and sank deeper into reo’s velvet couch.

had it always been this one-sided?

or was nagi really just scared?

you didn’t know.

but tomorrow… you were going to try. even if it wasn’t with him.

then the day of the date came.

you didn’t wear anything flashy—just your usual clothes with a touch more care. hair brushed out, light gloss on your lips, perfume you knew reo teased you about for being too sweet. you stared at yourself in the mirror longer than usual before heading out, trying to convince yourself this was fine. normal. just a simple afternoon. just… something new.

the vice captain was already waiting near the front gates of hakuho, dressed neatly in the school’s after-hours uniform with a pleasant, easy smile. he wasn’t nagi. his energy was steadier, more grounded. not sleepy or unpredictable—but warm in his own right.

he greeted you with a polite, “you look nice,” and offered to carry your bag.

you smiled. tried to mean it.

but something in your chest tugged.

you walked to the nearby café together, talked about classes, mutual friends, upcoming tournaments. he was kind. charming, even. you knew girls at school talked about him a lot—and it wasn’t hard to see why. he was attentive without being overbearing, curious about your thoughts, laughing easily at your jokes.

but it wasn’t nagi’s laugh. it wasn’t nagi’s quiet stare. it wasn’t nagi at all.

and the vice captain could see it.

maybe not immediately—but somewhere between you pushing food around your plate and your gaze flickering toward the glass windows every time a white-haired figure passed, he figured it out.

he set his drink down gently and leaned back.

“you still like him, don’t you?”

you froze. the words landed softly, not like a confrontation, but like an observation. a truth laid bare.

you looked at your half-eaten dessert, then slowly nodded. “yeah,” you whispered. “i think i always have.”

he chuckled—low and not bitter. just amused in a tired sort of way.

“well,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, “i kinda figured when you spent the first ten minutes watching the sidewalk instead of me.”

your cheeks flushed. “i’m sorry—”

“don’t be.” he held up a hand, waving it off with a smile. “seriously. i knew what i was walking into. guess i hoped maybe you’d give me a chance to make you forget him.”

you looked at him—really looked at him—and saw no resentment in his expression. just understanding.

“i really appreciate that you still came,” he added. “even knowing your heart’s kind of… already somewhere else.”

you swallowed around the lump in your throat and nodded. “thank you. for being kind.”

he smiled. “he better realize what he has before someone else does.”

and somewhere across the city, under the molten streaks of the setting sun, nagi seishiro was pacing the length of hakuho high’s empty soccer field. the sky above him glowed in soft orange and deep violet, but he didn’t look up once. his feet dragged across the turf like his body was moving on its own—slow, heavy, as if weighed down by something he couldn’t shake off.

reo’s voice still echoed in his mind, sharp and impossible to ignore.

"you feel something, don’t you?"

nagi hadn’t answered. he didn’t know how. because how do you name a feeling you’ve never bothered to understand?

he wasn’t built for messy emotions. he preferred ease—predictable gameplay, soft pillows, long naps. but you? you weren’t easy. you were the one variable he hadn’t figured out. the one thing that made his chest ache when you smiled and made his head go silent when you laughed. he didn’t understand it. didn’t try to.

not until he saw it.

that day.

you were standing behind the gym, light bouncing off your hair as you spoke to the vice captain. nagi hadn’t meant to linger. he was just walking by—heading to grab a juice box or waste a few more minutes before practice.

but then the vice captain asked you something. and nagi stopped.

“are you dating nagi seishiro?”

it was a simple question, harmless to anyone else. but to nagi, it sounded like a pin being pulled from a grenade. his steps faltered. he didn’t turn around, didn’t breathe too loudly, just stood half-hidden behind the wall’s edge, frozen like a bug caught in amber.

you hesitated. just for a beat.

then your answer came, soft and unsteady. “no. we’re not.”

and nagi couldn’t explain why that answer—the very truth he’d never had the guts to change—felt like a sucker punch to the chest.

he left before he could hear what came next. because in his chest, a feeling he’d spent months ignoring had finally started screaming. and it didn’t sound like indifference. it sounded like jealousy. like regret.

and maybe—just maybe—like heartbreak.

he never knew your answer.

not from you.

but by the time lunch ended and the hallways quieted, he didn’t have to.

whispers chased him like ghosts—fragments of your name laced with quiet gasps and knowing smirks.

“she said yes.” “to the vice captain, right?” “she finally gave up on nagi, huh?”

each word chipped at something inside him. something he'd never named, never dared to look at too closely.

and now it was bleeding through the cracks.

practice came like muscle memory. but there was no rhythm. no focus. his passes were too hard. his touches too sharp. a snap in his movements that wasn’t like him. he missed a shot he’d normally sink with his eyes closed.

reo said his name—twice, maybe three times—but nagi didn’t answer.

eventually, they left him there. even reo.

the sun dipped lower, dragging shadows across the field, and still, nagi didn’t move. his limbs sprawled carelessly across the grass, as if exhaustion had pinned him down and frustration had tied the knot. he stared at the sky, expression unreadable, fingers tangled in blades of green.

everything felt wrong. off.

his chest was tight again, like it had been all day. like he’d swallowed something too big, and now it wouldn’t leave.

she said yes. to someone else.

the thought circled like a vulture.

you found him alone on the soccer field, long after the others had packed up and left.

the lights from the school building flickered faintly in the distance, casting long shadows across the grass where nagi lay stretched out like a boy made of bone-deep exhaustion. his jersey clung to his skin, a streak of sweat running down his temple. his eyes, however, were still wide open—staring up at the sky like it could answer the ache twisting in his chest.

he didn’t look at you when you approached. but you saw the way his hand twitched in the grass. like he knew you were coming.

“nagi.”

your voice didn’t tremble, but it came out quieter than you’d expected. you stood above him for a moment, waiting, hoping—but he didn’t respond.

you slowly sat beside him, knees drawn up to your chest, fingers fidgeting with the hem of your sleeve.

“i said yes,” you said after a long silence, eyes on the horizon. “to someone else.”

he didn’t move. but his jaw shifted, the tiniest tick beneath his cheekbone.

“i said yes to a date because i was tired of wondering what this was,” you continued, voice starting to shake despite your best efforts. “tired of waiting for you to say something. anything.”

still nothing. only the sound of distant cicadas and the dull thud of your heartbeat in your ears.

“do you even remember what you said the day we met?” you asked quietly. “you didn’t say my name once. just called me angel. like it was automatic. like it didn’t matter who i was, just that i was there.”

you laughed bitterly under your breath, your fingers clenching. “i tried not to let it mean anything. i tried not to hope. but then you’d rest your head on my shoulder and whisper like i was your safe place. you’d hold my hand and tell me it was soft, warm. you made me feel like i was… something.”

your breath hitched. you turned to face him fully, and finally—finally—nagi turned his head to look at you.

his expression was unreadable. but you could see it—the fear just beneath the surface. the conflict. the guilt.

your voice cracked when you spoke again. “do you like me, nagi?”

the question hung between you like smoke.

he blinked. once. then again. and slowly, he sat up, arms bracing behind him.

“i don’t know,” he said.

your chest caved in.

it wasn’t anger that flared in you. it was heartbreak. the slow, sinking realization that the boy you wanted so badly didn’t even know if he wanted you back.

“you don’t know,” you repeated, breathless, eyes burning.

he looked away, fingers digging into the grass. “it’s not that simple.”

“it is,” you said, voice shaking harder now. “it is that simple. you either feel something for me or you don’t. and if you don’t, that’s okay—” your voice broke. “—but you can’t keep treating me like i’m your world if you can’t even figure out your own heart.”

nagi’s head snapped back toward you, eyes wide, as if your words had physically struck him.

“you can’t nuzzle into my neck and fall asleep on my lap and whisper ‘angel’ like i’m the only one who matters—and then say you don’t know. that’s not fair.”

he opened his mouth, but no words came out.

you took a shaky step back. “i let myself believe you did. i let myself fall for you—slowly, painfully. every time you remembered the little things i said, every time you showed up even in your quiet way, i thought maybe…”

you trailed off, swallowing hard. “but you never said it. you never gave me anything real to hold on to. and now i’m the idiot who said yes to someone else, but all i can think about is you.”

he was silent. still. his silver hair caught in the breeze, eyes locked on yours like he wanted to say something—needed to—but couldn’t bring himself to cross that threshold.

you shook your head, blinking fast. “i can’t do this anymore. i can’t keep waiting for someone who doesn’t even know if he wants me.”

you turned.

and this time, nagi didn’t stop you.

but as your figure disappeared across the field—shoulders trembling, arms wrapped tightly around yourself—something inside him cracked like ice splitting under too much weight.

and for the first time, nagi seishiro wasn’t sure if he was tired… or if this was the first time he was finally awake.

because something in your voice had snapped him out of the haze he’d been living in—the gentle fog of comfort he’d built around himself like a second skin. you were gone now, walking away from him, and yet your words still echoed in his ears louder than any stadium ever had.

you can’t treat me like i’m your world if you don’t even know your own heart.

it rang like a siren in his skull.

the soccer field felt too open after that. too wide. too cold. his limbs buzzed with restless energy he didn’t know what to do with. so he moved on instinct, feet dragging him away from the grass and the guilt and the silence you left behind.

the next time he blinked, he was standing in front of reo’s building.

the mikage tower—an architectural flex of polished glass and inherited legacy—loomed above him like a monolith. nagi hadn’t even realized where he was heading until the security at the front recognized him and let him through wordlessly, like he belonged there. maybe he did. he came here often enough. but today, the elevator ride felt different. the music sounded too sharp. the walls too reflective. he could see himself in them—eyes unfocused, jaw clenched tight.

by the time he reached the penthouse, the door was already swinging open.

reo looked like he’d been expecting him.

“figured you’d show up eventually,” reo said, arms crossed loosely over his chest, eyes sweeping over nagi with a familiar, no-bullshit expression. “you looked like you were about to combust during practice.”

nagi walked past him in silence, dropping onto the nearest couch like a sack of limbs. he stared at the ceiling as if the answers might be etched into the marble tiles.

reo shut the door and followed, sitting across from him. “so… you wanna talk?”

“no,” nagi muttered.

reo leaned back, exhaling through his nose. “alright. you wanna sulk here until you rot into the cushions, then?”

“maybe.”

silence stretched between them, thick and electric.

then nagi spoke again, voice low, like he hated even admitting it. “she went on the date.”

reo blinked. “you mean you let her go on the date.”

nagi’s eyes narrowed. “i didn’t let her do anything. she can do what she wants.”

“she wanted you, dumbass,” reo snapped, sitting forward now, arms braced on his knees. “she waited—waited—for you to pull your head out of your ass. you were the one who kept acting like she mattered and then saying nothing.”

nagi ran a hand down his face, dragging his palm over his eyes like he could rub the thoughts away. “i didn’t know i liked her.”

reo scoffed. “you knew. you just didn’t realize that’s what it was. you’ve never cared about anyone like that before, so you didn’t recognize it.”

“i felt…” nagi trailed off, words catching in his throat. “like something was ripping out of me when i saw him ask her. i wanted to hit something. or sleep forever. i didn’t like it.”

“that’s what jealousy feels like, sei,” reo said quietly. “that’s what heartbreak feels like when you’re too late.”

nagi let his head fall back, a low groan rumbling from his chest. “she said she liked me. and i told her… i told her i don’t know.”

reo stared at him like he’d just confessed to committing a felony.

“the fuck?” he hissed, dragging a hand through his already-mussed hair. “why did you say i don’t know, idiot?”

“i panicked,” nagi muttered, his voice flat and low, like he hated himself for it. “she was standing there, looking at me like—like i meant something, and i just… froze.”

reo scoffed, launching himself off the couch to pace across the penthouse. “unbelievable. you—you lay in her lap. you call her angel. you hold her hand like it’s the only thing grounding you to this planet and then when she finally tells you she likes you, you give her i don’t know?”

“i didn’t mean to,” nagi said, scrubbing a palm over his face again. “i didn’t think she liked me like that. i didn’t know i felt that way—until she walked away.”

“bullshit,” reo snapped, rounding back to face him. “you knew. you’ve always known. you just didn’t want to know because then you’d actually have to do something about it.”

nagi flinched at that.

reo’s voice softened just a little. “you think i didn’t notice? the way you’d act around her? you’re not subtle, man. you’d go quiet when she laughed with someone else. you’d light up when she brought you those caramel milk drinks from the vending machine. you’d look at her like she was the only goddamn person in a world full of people you couldn’t be bothered to care about.”

nagi’s throat worked around something thick. he stared down at his hands like they were foreign to him. “i didn’t know i could feel like that,” he murmured. “i didn’t think i was built for it.”

reo sighed again, slower this time, and sat back down beside him. “no one is. not really. but when it’s her… when it’s someone like her… you figure it out. or you lose her.”

and that—that—was what scared nagi the most.

he could sleep through classes. he could ignore most people. he could drift through life half-awake.

but the idea of you walking away for good? that terrified him more than he knew how to admit.

because it wasn’t indifference he felt.

it wasn’t confusion.

it was love.

and now—he might’ve already been too late.

you hadn’t spoken to him since the last time he left you with nothing but silence. three days had passed, and the distance between you and nagi had grown so vast, it may as well have been oceans. not a glance. not a breath shared. not even the subtle magnetic pull that used to hum beneath your skin whenever he was near.

it was like he had vanished.

or worse—you had learned how to exist without him.

you didn’t yell. you didn’t pout. you didn’t cry. but you also didn’t smile when he passed by. you didn’t look up when he walked into the room. and if you were forced to stand within arm’s reach, like during practice or at lunch, you kept yourself composed with a sort of numb grace that cut him deeper than any outburst ever could.

he had never known how much he craved your attention until it was gone.

and now, here he was—locked inside the clubroom with you because reo, fed up with watching you both suffer in silence, decided to take matters into his own hands.

the door slammed shut behind you. a soft metallic click confirmed it was locked.

“reo?” you said sharply, turning back.

“i’m not opening it,” came reo’s smug reply from the other side. “not until you idiots talk. or make out. either one.”

“reo!” you growled, rushing to the handle. it didn’t budge. “this isn’t funny!”

“not meant to be,” he said. “consider this an intervention. figure it out. i’ll be back… eventually.”

and then his footsteps faded.

you stood frozen for a moment, facing the door, before you slowly turned to face the boy across the room.

nagi stood by the windows, bathed in fading sunlight, his white hair catching every bit of golden glow like a halo. but he didn’t look like an angel. not now. he looked exhausted. haunted. like someone still trying to understand why the hell his chest wouldn’t stop aching.

he didn’t look at you.

so you stayed by the door, arms crossed. a wall of silence stretched between you, heavy and brittle, ready to snap.

“say something,” you finally muttered, your voice tired, your throat sore from swallowing your feelings for days.

he flinched. you didn’t miss it.

“i didn’t ask him to do this,” he said quietly.

“but you’re not stopping it either.”

another silence.

you took a deep breath, steadying yourself. “then let’s get it over with.”

he finally turned. his eyes met yours.

“i didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said.

you laughed—but it wasn’t amused. it was hollow. “but you did.”

he stepped forward, cautious. “when i said i didn’t know… it wasn’t because i don’t feel anything.”

you narrowed your eyes, but said nothing.

“it was because i felt too much,” he admitted, voice quieter now, almost like he was afraid it would break if he raised it any higher. “i didn’t know what to do with it.”

“and what, you thought silence would make it better?”

“no,” he whispered. “i thought if i said it out loud, it’d ruin everything. i was scared.”

you blinked at him, your heart aching all over again. “scared of what? that i’d say it back?”

he opened his mouth, then closed it. his jaw clenched.

“i liked it,” you said, voice cracking. “the attention. the nicknames. you holding my hand. laying on my lap. acting like i was the only person who mattered. i liked it—because i liked you. but you don’t get to do all that and then tell me you don’t know.”

you weren’t yelling. you weren’t crying. but your pain filled every word.

“you don’t get to act like i’m your whole world, nagi, if you don’t even know what i am to you.”

that landed like a punch to the gut.

he exhaled sharply, running a hand through his hair. his voice was low, almost hoarse. “i do know now.”

you didn’t move.

he took another step. “i know i’m stupid. that i missed the moment i should’ve told you. that i let you walk away.”

still, you didn’t say a word.

“i thought i was okay with being your friend,” he whispered, gaze dropping to the floor. “until i saw someone else try to be more.”

he looked up then, and his eyes held the kind of desperation that only comes when you realize something too late.

“i heard people talking. saying you said yes. that you were going out with him. and i swear—my chest hurt so bad i couldn’t even breathe.”

you finally moved. just barely. your fingers curled into the hem of your shirt, grounding yourself.

“i don’t want to be just your almost,” you said.

he froze.

“i don’t want to keep waiting for maybes. i confessed, and you froze. and that told me everything i needed to know.”

“i was wrong,” he said. “i was scared. but i’m not anymore.”

you looked at him, eyes searching. “then prove it.”

the silence that followed wasn’t awkward.

it was thick—full of history, full of missed chances, full of every time he called you angel like it meant everything and nothing all at once. nagi stood there like he’d been thrown into the eye of a storm he created, a thousand unsaid words flashing behind those pale lashes and sleepy eyes.

but there was nothing sleepy about the way he looked at you now.

slowly, like the weight of your words had finally dragged him back to earth, he took a step toward you. his gaze dropped briefly to your lips, then back to your eyes, checking—once, twice, maybe even a third time—for hesitation.

there was none.

so when he reached out, his fingers brushing the side of your face, it felt like the world tilted. his touch was tentative at first, like you were made of something he wasn’t sure he deserved to hold. and then—he kissed you.

it wasn’t rushed. it wasn’t perfect either. his lips were warm, unsure at first, like he was still learning what it meant to feel everything he’d avoided. but the moment you leaned into him, he melted.

his other hand found your waist, sliding around to hold you steady as if he needed the anchor. your fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt, grounding yourself in the heat of him.

“i’m sorry,” he breathed against your mouth. “i should’ve said something sooner.”

you kissed him back, just as soft. just as broken.

“you didn’t,” you whispered. “you never do.”

nagi pulled back just enough to look at you. his eyes were clearer than you’d ever seen them—open, raw, like the wall between you was finally cracking. “i didn’t know how,” he admitted, voice hoarse. “it was easier to pretend. that if i didn’t say anything, i couldn’t lose you.”

you blinked at him, chest tightening. “but you did.”

that broke something in him.

he kissed you again, harder this time—but not in a way that hurt. it was desperation, barely concealed by the tremble in his hands as they held you close. his lips moved with a kind of apology his voice couldn’t carry.

“i’ll make it up to you,” he muttered between kisses. “i swear, angel… i’ll make it up to you.”

his forehead fell against yours, breaths mingling as his arms slid around your waist tighter, like you might disappear again if he loosened his grip.

“i didn’t mean to hurt you,” he whispered. “i just—every time i saw you with someone else, i felt like i was choking on my own heartbeat.”

your eyes watered. “then why didn’t you say anything?”

“because i thought i could live with just being your friend,” he confessed, voice cracking. “but i can’t. not anymore. not after hearing you say yes to someone else. not after realizing that someone else might get to hold your hand. kiss you. call you theirs.”

you closed your eyes, tears clinging to your lashes.

“do you still want me?” he asked, his voice suddenly small. uncertain. like a boy rather than the prodigy the school worshipped. like someone afraid he’d ruined the one thing he wanted most.

you nodded.

and he kissed you again.

this time it was slower. not desperate—but deliberate. tender. like he was tracing every inch of what he could’ve lost. his hand cupped the back of your neck, pulling you closer, his lips moving with careful reverence.

“you feel like home,” he whispered against your skin, voice breaking. “i didn’t realize it until i walked away from the one place i ever felt safe.”

you held him back just as tightly.

then—

click.

the door creaked open behind you, light spilling into the dimly lit clubroom. you both turned your heads slightly—breathless, lips pink, tangled in each other—only to find reo leaning against the doorframe with a smug smirk plastered across his face.

“well, shit,” he drawled, arms crossed. “i was joking when i said you two better kiss.”

your face burned, and you turned toward the wall, hiding your expression in nagi’s shoulder. nagi didn’t even flinch. he simply pulled you closer, wrapping both arms around your waist and resting his chin on your head like he’d claimed you completely now—and didn’t care who saw.

reo raised an eyebrow and backed out of the room with both hands lifted. “you’re welcome, by the way. that’s the last time i play matchmaker for emotionally repressed athletes.”

the door shut behind him with a soft click.

silence settled again—but this time it was warm. safe.

nagi didn’t let go.

he just held you like he’d waited his whole life to.

and in the quiet that followed, with your heartbeat finally slowing, you whispered into the space between his collarbone and jaw, “then don’t let me go again.”

his answer came in the form of another kiss—slow, aching, sure.

this time, it didn’t feel like the end of anything.

it felt like the very beginning.

bonus scene.

reo sauntered out of the kitchen with a plate of fruit and two croissants balanced in one hand, his expression so smug it bordered on criminal.

“wow,” he said dramatically, flopping onto the couch like it was a throne. “so you finally confessed. in my club room. after months of the most agonizing, tension-filled friendship i’ve ever had the misfortune to witness. honestly? about damn time.”

you sat curled up on the other end of the plush couch, mug of cocoa nestled in your hands, half-tucked into a throw blanket that definitely wasn’t yours. your face flushed at the memory, and you ducked your head, hiding behind the steam. nagi was sprawled across the floor with his head resting in your lap, white hair messy, fingers lazily interlaced with yours as if he refused to let you go even in sleep.

“reo…” you muttered. “you’re never going to let us live it down, are you?”

he grinned over the rim of his juice glass. “absolutely not. this is what i live for. i carried this friends-to-lovers campaign on my back like atlas holding up the sky.”

nagi grunted softly, shifting closer to your stomach and nuzzling in. “too loud…”

reo rolled his eyes, but fondness softened the motion. “still a baby,” he said under his breath, before turning back to you. “anyway. you’re welcome.”

“for what?” you asked warily.

reo gestured with both hands like he was presenting fine art. “for being the only reason you two aren’t still stuck in the ‘will-they-won’t-they’ stage while making everyone else around you suffer.”

your cheeks burned hotter.

nagi, still barely awake, mumbled against the hem of your hoodie, “didn’t wanna suffer anymore.”

reo raised a brow. “oh, so now you talk about your feelings?”

another grunt. nagi tugged on your hand and pulled it close to his chest. “told her everything last night.”

reo looked at you with mock horror. “everything-everything?”

you laughed into your mug. “reo.”

“i mean, i did say make out as a joke,” he continued, dramatically reclining back into the couch, “but you two took it as a challenge.”

nagi tugged the blanket you were using, covering part of himself with it like a turtle burrowing deeper. “didn’t hear you complaining when you left.”

“oh, i was mentally high-fiving myself all the way to the vending machine,” reo said smugly. “finally. emotional constipation, cured. you’re welcome.”

you gave him a dry look. “should i get you a medal or something?”

he beamed. “please do. make it engraved. cupid mikage, or something with sparkles.”

despite your embarrassment, you smiled. it was easy now. so much lighter than yesterday. your shoulders didn’t feel weighed down by the ‘what-ifs’ anymore. just quiet, humming contentment.

nagi stirred again, his hand slowly brushing circles against your palm. “don’t leave today.”

reo snorted from the other end. “bro. she’s wearing my hoodie and holding your soul. she’s not going anywhere.”

you playfully kicked reo’s foot. “you’re such a menace.”

“hey,” he said, mock-wounded. “i locked you two in a room so you’d stop emotionally blue-balling yourselves. that’s love.”

nagi pulled your hand to his chest again and mumbled, barely audible, “you’re mine.”

you blinked, glancing down at him.

“hmm?” you murmured, brushing his bangs out of his face.

“mine,” he said again, slower. “you’re… mine.”

reo gagged from across the room. “i’m right here, guys. show some mercy to the lonely rich kid who third-wheeled your entire relationship into existence.”

you laughed—fully this time. a soft, real, bright sound that filled the room and made nagi shift to look up at you like it was his favorite melody. he pressed his face against your thigh and closed his eyes again, satisfied.

and for once, with reo’s chaos and nagi’s sleepy weight grounding you, everything just… clicked.

the tension was gone.

the fear, the doubt, the silence—it had all broken the night before.

now, there was only this: morning light, your favorite people, a stupidly expensive penthouse, and a love that had finally found its way home.

[hellowoolf]

something, somehow, someday

chapter 4: close to you | prev | next | series masterlist

series summary: you know you will love satoru for the rest of your life, but when you wake with his cursed energy in your navel there is no option but to flee. what future is there for a child of a god? at 18 satoru is without you, and you make off with a piece of him you hoped he'd never meet.

pairing: secret baby daddy!gojo x reader

tags: secret child trope, angst (lots), eventual fluff, eventual smut, hurt/comfort, a lot of yearning :P, chapter specific: SMUT, unprotected piv, creampie (sorry), fingering,

a/n: thank you guys for your responses on the poll! this one is more than double the average length of the other chapters (~8k) and i plan to keep that convention from here on out. i hope you enjoy this one >:)

18+! minors dni <3

~~~~~~~

it is a funny feeling, YOU find, making your life new with a thing so familiar. to open your door so often and find satoru standing there, letting him bring food and splaying himself on your couch, walking with him in the heavy mist at dusk, it fills your lungs like smoke, the nostalgia thick and cloying. you remember all of it, it comes back to you embalmed.  

but the differences between now and your time together in high school demand your attention in equal measure. your son, for one: though it’s impossible to find the sight of him with his father unnatural given how obvious their relation is. with their backs turned they move the same, too, something between them irrevocably tied. you had forgotten the way satoru wrought blades of grass between his fingers when he laid in it until you had to clean both their palms of chlorophyll.

nonetheless your affection for satoru is much more hulking a thing than it ever was, supplanted by the tangible aftermath of the ways you used to love him. when takara lets him pick him up, grips to his collar as satoru balances him on his hip, you are defenseless. the softest parts of you win out. 

still, neither you nor satoru make any attempt to name the arrangement you’ve come upon. he is resolutely your child’s father and has stepped into that role with grace, and there are artifacts of your intimacy—his hand on your lower back, brushing your hair from your shoulder blades, an almost kiss, once—but mostly you let the joy of your child consume your time. 

and it shouldn’t bother you. you remember feeling so certain in high school that letting him fuck you was enough, that to love him quietly was a privilege. you suppose you still mostly believe that. but there are moments when takara is asleep and satoru lingers in your kitchen, and the want flares bright then. you are at a loss watching him leave with that look on his face, like he’s afraid you’ll ask him to stay and terrified you’ll let him leave. you sometimes wait a moment before locking the door behind him.

jujutsu tech stands like a graveyard around you, so full of memory the buildings almost sag. you haven’t been back here since the night takara came to you.

“oi!” satoru bellows from across the courtyard, hand high and wagging. 

takara holds a grip on your pant leg, one blue eye peeking out. you feel him loosen a little when he sees his dad, and then refasten when megumi and tsumiki emerge behind him. 

when satoru first suggested you both come to meet them you had hesitated. you were honest; there was something final about this last introduction. there would be nothing else left for each of you to keep separate from the other, your lives entirely reconnected. satoru had laughed at you in that way that makes your heart turn, and that sound was all it took for you—weak to him—to agree.

satoru comes rushing to takara, scooping him from behind you and holding him to his side. takara screeches, half afraid and half delighted. tsumiki walks to you without hesitation, little hand held out for you to shake. 

“it’s nice to meet you,” she says. her smile is soft, a little secret, but you can tell she is pleased with herself for her manners. you smile back.

“it’s nice to meet you, too.” 

she looks up at takara in satoru’s arms and waves. takara is frozen, too shy to move, so satoru takes his chubby wrist and waves it a little. tsumiki giggles. “they’re like twins.”

you lean in a little conspiratorially. “i know. i carried him for nine months and have nothing to show for it.”

she giggles behind her hand before turning to her brother. “don’t be rude,” she admonishes.

megumi cannot hear her, it seems. he’s watching takara paw at satoru’s shirt, turning in his hold as gojo points to the various buildings to explain what they are. to himself, or maybe to you, megumi whispers: “it’s so freaky.”

tsumiki scoffs lightly and goes to elbow him but you can only laugh again, louder this time. he may not be related to satoru but he was certainly raised by him. “you are exactly as satoru described,” you admit.

megumi furrows his brows and crosses his arms. yes, so furious, satoru had said once. “how exactly did he describe me?”

“as a little shit,” satoru offers, one palm now cupped over takara’s ear. megumi’s mouth falls open a moment before making a fist with each hand and bringing them in front of him. satoru only rolls his eyes and uses his knee to knock his arms out of place. megumi practically growls something about i’m really gonna do it someday and tsumiki taunts back at him: you’re such a liar!

oh, but that look on satoru’s face, he is so pleased. his eyes squint with it, you can almost see the satisfied breathing of his cursed energy, satoru is happy. it makes you beam at him and his breath catches when he sees it. 

takara wriggles out of his grip and stations himself at your legs again, but doesn’t hide this time. tsumiki is completely enamored, cooing again, “hi, takara!”

takara sucks in a little breath. “hello.”

tsumiki claps her hands together and looks up at you and gojo. “can we show him around? please?”

“what is there to show?” satoru asks.

“the training room, our old bedrooms, the koi fish—”

your eyes widen. satoru’s gaze flits to you, frantic, and you smirk, the tiniest thing. the koi fish? you mouth. satoru’s cheeks flush pink as he shakes his head slightly, but the damage is done, he knows. tsumiki is still listing menial places across campus.

you squeeze takara’s shoulder. “what do you think, bubba?” he looks at you, owlish, and then at tsumiki, before nodding. she takes his hand with a pleased squeal and the three putter off together.

satoru stands boyish before you as you straighten again. he tends to keep his blindfold off around takara—whether to keep from frightening him or for a more profound reason you don’t know—but he is bared to you without it. he knows exactly what you’ll say, lifting a hand as he turns and starts towards his office: “don’t.”

you skip to catch up with him. “oh, no, i think i have to.”

“i’m just a friend to nature.”

you howl. “you’re just as dishonest as you always were.”

he doesn’t dignify that with a response, pushing into his office and letting you inside. the walls are a dark wood, mostly bare save for the few bookshelves bloated with old novels and records and manila folders. a handful of pens scatter across the desk, like he’d needed to finish a sentence urgently before standing. there’s a record player on the windowsill, fuzzy with dust but clean in places around the arm. it looks like he’d used it recently for the first time in years. most of all it smells like him, mint and cedar and sugar, and you almost double over sick with it. 

satoru settles into his chair as you trace a finger along the spines of his books, his eyes igniting your back but you refuse to turn, you want him to watch. “you’ve done a great job with them,” you admit.

“you think so?”

you just barely twist your head over your shoulder to show him the sincerity on your face. “of course i do.”

he runs a hand through his hair. “they seem to like takara.”

you turn fully now to lean your back on the shelf. “everyone likes takara.”

he chuckles, fond. “yeah, i guess so.”

the sounds of this place are so startlingly the same, you think. the serenity is strange and charged, but nonetheless campus was always quiet enough to hear the wind through the leaves. you hear it now as you flip through mission files and reports: special grade, special grade, grade one, special grade, suguru geto. you put them down.

“is it weird to be back?”

you nod, gesturing around the room. “i’ll admit i was hoping for more of a welcome. is nobody else here?”

“yeah, i asked them to give us the afternoon so takara wouldn’t be overwhelmed for his first time.”

you pout, mainly to bare your lip to him but there is truth in it, too. “nobody wanted to see me?”

satoru shakes his head. “i wanted you all to myself,” he admits. and it’s teasing, easy, he says it like it doesn’t cost him anything, but you know he is like you: he almost never says something he doesn’t mean.

“how did they react when you told them?”

“that i have a son? kept a secret by his villainous mother?”

your eyes narrow but you’re grinning as you respond: “yeah.”

he cocks his head and kisses his teeth. “yaga said he was disappointed in you.”

“for leaving?”

“no, for letting me…” he smiles, wolfish for a second before it fades into something friendlier, “for giving me the opportunity.” you laugh, a bark of a sound, halfway humiliated. you nod him on. “and shoko was the one who found you, so, there wasn’t anyone else to tell.”

your hand finds your arm and you squeeze your bicep once, twice, swallowing around the tragedy in his confession: that all the people you used to know here are gone somehow. you hadn’t visited haibara’s grave since you left; nanami helped you lug a stone out by the stream and you grew flowers around the base, yellow pansies and red carnations. you remember kento pointing to them in a flower language book so you could conjure them properly, remember the promise you made not to tell a soul what they meant. 

the memory must show on your face, because satoru says then, “i still water those flowers you made by haibara’s grave.”

you smile at him, watery and real. you add on, “and feed my fish,” and he laughs like a surrender. 

you move to the record player just behind him and he swivels his chair to follow you. something seizes in your belly at the feeling of him scrutinizing you, the weight of his looking a leaden thing against your skin. you thumb through the few vinyls resting in the window before stopping on one. the words stick to your teeth like honey but you spit them as best you can: “this is mine.”

you hear satoru stand and look over your shoulder. frank sinatra’s close to you: the sleeve is long stained and yellowed, waterlogged in one corner, but the record inside is pristine. 

you remember the first time your grandmother taught you how to play her gramophone. her hands guided your smaller ones across the pavilion, down to the plateau; it was old and rusted, even then, something she’d bought second hand as a girl. but she had collected hundreds of records, they made piles throughout her home, and every afternoon you selected one to play. close to you was her gift to you when you entered jujutsu tech.

of course, you never had a record player. all three years it sat unused on your desk, a remembrance, still smelling like the tatami from her living room. she had told you once that sinatra taught her how to speak english, which you mostly believed; her english vowels opened with the syrup of the american east-coast, and she held each word a moment too long, like it took a great deal of effort not to sing them. 

you run your knuckles along the sleeve, feeling the still-familiar places where the gloss has faded and the paper catches. you hardly notice how close to your back satoru has drifted until he reaches around you to remove the record and situate it on the player. you freeze, his looming figure warm around you, his arms brushing your shoulders as he fiddles with the tone arm. you hope he can’t feel your heartbeat through your spine, but it rushes so deafening in your ears you cannot discern either way.

it could happen to you crackles to life from the speaker and you feel like you’ve been swallowed by space, on the cusp of a wrinkle. you wonder whether time has really suspended around you or if it’s only this, this song and this man at your back. your breathing is uneven and satoru does not step back, head craned a little to bring his chin closer to your shoulder. 

slowly, almost self-consciously, he braces each hand on the sides of the windowsill, keeping you surrounded. 

“it’s been so long since i’ve heard this song,” you whisper. the melody chimes and swings around the violin and you cannot help but tilt your head back a little into satoru’s chest, overcome with the ghost of the music as it hangs above you. satoru lets your weight lean slightly into him, unmoving.

“i hope it’s okay that i took it.” his voice rumbles through your bones before you hear it. you nod and it scrapes against his sternum. the friction stirs something in him, you think, because then he’s bringing a hand to your stomach, fingers long and splayed across your entire torso, and he rests his cheek fully on the back of your head. it would almost look like you were dancing if you began to move, but neither of you seem willing to risk it.

“do you ever wonder what it would have been like?”

you don’t need him to clarify. “all the time,” you confess. the sun moves behind the clouds outside, and you catch a moment of the both of you in the reflection. 

his hand tightens around your middle, holding you against him. the song threatens to end but he keeps his arm banded around you. “are we friends now?”

you laugh softly. “i honestly don’t know.”

he nods before bringing his other hand to your chin. he spreads the pads of his fingers, feeling the shape of your jaw, looking for something, for you. “would you let me kiss you, if i asked?”

“yes,” you say, but it comes out more breathless than you intend. your thighs press together and you’re sure he notices with how his hips cage you in, but he only hums, removing the hand around your chin. 

“it’s a bad idea,” he breathes, but still his nose brushes at the juncture of your neck and your shoulder. you shudder and nod. it is. 

and despite how badly you want him, you do not turn and demand it. it’s so precarious now, and with satoru in takara’s orbit you cannot run again, a chain fastened from your rib to his. you know fucking him would be a reckless idea now, but god, he presses one, slow kiss to the bared skin of your shoulder and your body remembers him. his hips press just slightly further into your ass as he sighs onto the same spot, his breath cooling the heat of his lips where they branded you, his cock alive and right there. but the both of you know it: you are cowards. he untangles himself, and you let him sit back in his chair before moving.

~~~~~~~

SATORU is certain now; you are going to kill him. his grave will be beautiful, he thinks, flowery and green and alive with your energy, but his autopsy will have your name all over it, your lipstick.

he supposes, for his part, that much of your proximity is his fault. a stronger man wouldn’t have stayed in your apartment past takara’s waking hours, used his hands to guide you on the sidewalk, held your hips to his cock in his office windowsill earlier today. and satoru has lived a life of self restraint, has been a shackled man to his own whipping post, but he has found himself helpless to the feeling of your body on his skin.

he had been so irreparably hurt when he saw you in the park that day, or at least it had felt that way at the time. something grew in him then, a tumor with teeth, and he was certain it could never feel the same with you as it once had, that he would withhold something precious from you forever in some lasting spiteful act of defiance. and nevermind the fact that even hours later he moved to hold you, could barely restrain the instinct to kiss you again, was never even angry: for about 24 hours, satoru was sure that he would never be in love with you again.

but even the sharp canines of that wound have dulled with weeks of your presence. the smell of you on your couch when he lays on it, the afternoon scenery of you playing with takara in the park curtained by your vines, your laugh in his office, by your door, in his head. you are an apparition haunting him, one he can touch, and it’s killing him. 

and he knows he should not pursue anything with you. he knows you know this, too. your nebulous reconnection is unsteady at best—a strange amalgam of your old intimacy and the people you’ve become—and access to takara is too important to him to risk. and neither of you would say this, but the fact of your leaving in high school remains a reminder that at any moment you are capable of disappearing again. it’s something satoru always loved about you, actually. you make your own life wherever you step. what a beautiful thing you are. 

he feels ridiculous for thinking of you as often as he does. but how could he not? he visits at least daily to spend time with his son and you are always there, a vision. he sees you in takara, too, his little love. when he tries to explain how to use limitless, takara bears down into himself, thinking to the point of exhaustion. he has gotten that from you, satoru knows.

but it wasn’t a conscious thought that satoru has begun falling back into love with you—or, really, that he has plummeted into the well of it—until today, seeing you laugh with megumi . tsumiki had pointed at you from behind your back: she’s so pretty! and he had nodded without thought, proud as if you were his to boast for. and then, your teasing voice nipping at his heels as he brought you to his office, he realized that he was yours. he should have known some time in the thousand minutes he’s spent feeding your koi.

the smell of your cooking wafts into your living room as he reads to takara on his lap. you’re humming that song from earlier, it could happen to you, and the domesticity makes him beam like an idiot. yes, he thinks, that’s about the most succinct way to put it; he is an idiot for you. takara points to the page and reads a sentence himself.

“yes!” satoru encourages.

“don’t yell,” takara says, patting satoru’s leg as though he’d worked himself up.

“yessir.”

“come in to eat!” you call from the kitchen. takara scrambles to the sound of your voice and satoru is no better. the three of you settle to the table, takara’s legs dangling in his chair, and satoru knows he shouldn’t but he presses his foot to yours under the table. you give him a look, fleeting and knowing, but you don’t move. takara eats exactly the way you do, and satoru wonders whether you’ve noticed.

“what time do you go into work tomorrow?”

“i’m opening, actually, so i’ll head to the cafe early,” you grumble. “i’ll take my lunch break at 8 to take takara to preschool.” 

satoru shakes his head. “i don’t have any missions until the afternoon. why don’t i take him?”

“i don’t have an extra key for you.”

“he could sleep over,” takara offers, barely looking up from his food. you look startled by the suggestion, at first, and satoru is sure he looks much the same, but when the shock subsides he cannot help the little grin that tugs his lips up. you cock your head minutely, but he’s known you long enough to know you mean: don’t push it. 

“bubba, there isn’t enough space,” you explain. 

you had told satoru early on that you started in a one bedroom, fixed a nursery in most of it and fit yourself on a twin bed in the corner. when the owner of the cafe retired, though, she had let you have the place. you made enough now to scrape by with two bedrooms; satoru remembers how dignified you were to recount the whole thing, how hard it was not to kiss you when you smiled in your own self-satisfaction. 

“why can’t he sleep in your room?” takara asks. satoru smiles bigger, nudges your foot under the table. 

“because he…can’t.” you’re becoming flustered now and it only thrills him more.

“i really would like to take him,” he offers, though the sincerity is cut with the sound of his smirk.

you run your hands over your face, mumble out a little groan that softens into a hum at the end, but still your foot doesn’t move away from the press of satoru’s under the shadow of the kitchen table. 

“don’t you need to get home to megumi and tsumiki?”

satoru is beaming like he’s already won. he has. “they have a sitter.”

your head tips back as you say, mostly to the ceiling, “fine. but you’re sleeping on the couch.”

and truthfully he doesn’t mind much at all. he is voracious for more time with takara, for more time in your space, for benign moments you might take for granted. he wants to brush his son’s teeth at night and fix his hair in the morning. he taps your foot one more time: thank you. and you nod, almost imperceptibly: you’re welcome. 

~~~~~~~

as much as YOU might have resisted it, there really was about an hour or so when letting satoru sleep on your couch seemed like a good idea. it felt, if you can admit it, easy, the both of you moving around one another as the evening twilight overtook the windows. and it was so plain to see on takara’s face that he was pleased, too, to have you both here. sitting on the edge of his bed together as you tucked him in, watching his first few moments of sleep, made space for a new sort of intimacy. when satoru reached for your hand in the dark you did not pull away.

of course, you regret it now. maybe you’ll regret it forever. by the time you’re brushing your teeth you know you have made an error of cosmic proportions. some time between settling blankets on the couch and joining you in the bathroom satoru had unbuttoned most of his shirt and removed his belt, sidling next to you at the sink with the spare toothbrush you gave him like you weren’t a moment from dropping dead on the counter. you’re too afraid to look at yourself in the mirror; you already know your cheeks are red, that he can feel the rush of your blood in your jugular from inches away. 

“you seem uptight,” he says, though it comes out foamy around the toothpaste in his mouth.

“i’m not used to having people over.” you can’t look anywhere but the porcelain of the sink, too petrified of what you’d say if you looked at him in full. you remember this afternoon in his office and shift on your weight a little.

“you don’t have a lot of sleepovers?” he asks through a grin.

you’re so focused on not making eye contact with him in the mirror that you answer him honestly. “i don’t have any.”

you hear his toothbrush stop. he spits in the sink before leaning on it to face you. “what do you mean you don’t have any?”

you take a deep breath before turning. god he’s so pretty, even more stunning like this, a little unspooled. “what do you want me to say? i’ve never had anyone else to take care of takara. it’s not like i can…” you don’t even know how to end that sentence.

the teasing look leaks from satoru’s face slowly. he asks you with more earnestness than you think you can stand: “have you not had sex since high school?”

it’s not even fully out of his mouth before you’re pushing past him and out of the bathroom but he is relentless behind you—he always was—and you feel him an inch from your back as you walk towards your bedroom door.

“wait a second—”

“satoru, i’m not talking about this with you.”

“no, but i’m being serious.”

“so am i!” you turn at your door and try not to shudder at how close he is. his eyes glow in the low light, a man made of comets.

“i just,” he huffs a little, “i feel bad, i guess.”

“what?”

“well you—you’ve been taking care of takara alone all this time and you haven’t gotten…you haven’t gotten to do—”

“satoru, i don’t need your pity about my sex life, okay?”

“but that’s my point! it’s not just about your sex life, it’s—it’s everything.” he ruffles the back of his head, almost embarrassed, you think. “i feel bad that you’ve been alone all this time.”

you kick your heel against the door behind you to ground yourself. “it’s my fault, isn’t it?” and it comes out a little small, more pathetic than you’ve ever heard yourself. satoru buckles with it.

“baby,” he starts, and you think his hand flexes to reach for you, but you put your palm on his chest to keep him in place. he hasn’t meant to call you that, you know, the endearment from years ago clawing back, finding purchase on his tongue. his heart murmurs like a bird behind his shirt.

“listen, i—i don’t need you to pity me for a decision i made. especially because i don’t regret any of it.”

he breathes out quick, almost angry, but you know not at you. before either of you can stop him, he holds your wrist to keep your hand on him, thumbs your pulse on one side. he does this a lot, you think. you wonder if he knows that you can feel his heartbeat, too, through the pads of his fingers. and there’s a moment, among the sounds of your breathing and the creak of the floorboards under his feet, when you think it is all over, that you’ll let him kiss you against your door. earlier today you felt like a coward for denying him, but that self-flagellation has waned. no, it takes a great deal of courage now to press your hand more firmly into him, to not rise onto your toes and suck at the skin under his jaw.

“goodnight, satoru,” you whisper, and shut yourself into your bedroom before you lose your resolve.

the night is cruel to you. it feels very much like sleeping with a black hole in your living room; you cannot ignore the thought of him draped over your sofa, body too long to fit comfortably. even with your eyes closed you can feel him from a room away. 

you toss under the covers, try to at least become entangled enough in your sheets that you cannot rise from your bed to check on him. you hope he’s fallen asleep by now, that you’re the only one left in this apartment awake.

being alone in the dark gives you more time to think, more time to resolve a decision you cannot yet name. you have been so insistent that to become ensnared again by satoru’s pull would be a mistake, let him leave you at the windowsill, stiff armed him at your door. you wonder whether any of it matters in light of the fact that you are utterly in love with him. of how much consequence could the physical distinction be now? in truth, you can’t tell whether you are freeing yourself from an obsolete stipulation or looking for any reason to abandon it.

in the blue midnight streaking through your curtains you can admit to yourself that a part of you, the fleshy part that wants for things, is simply too afraid that you need satoru more than he needs you, and to reconcile that is a task too treacherous to ask of yourself. what of the moment when, slick with sweat and the smell of sex, you move to kiss him again and he turns away? it’s all hypothetical, of course, but still it plagues you like a memory. and you suppose you have no reason to fear it at all; he has made clear enough that he wants you. 

it almost feels ridiculous to pine so excruciatingly over the father of your child. you’ve already done all of this before, no less as a teenager, and somehow now, a self-actualized adult, you hesitate and turn your knees in. you flip onto your other side with a huff. you’re only in a tanktop and shorts but you feel like you’re suffocating, or worse: something from inside of you is threatening to come loose.

you wonder whether he’s waiting for you in your living room. what a horrific thing to wonder. 

you creak open your door slowly and pad out.

it looks like satoru has given up on sleeping already. he’s sat upright, head tipped over the back of the couch and legs spread, an arm hanging over his eyes. you know he can hear you—you think he might have heard the moment you decided to come out—but he waits for you to address him.

“satoru,” you whisper. at last, he lifts his head, eyes sleepy but undeniably pleased to see you. he pats the spot next to him on the couch as he assesses your mild state of undress and you settle there, facing him. “i can’t sleep.”

he shakes his head. “i can’t either.” though he doesn’t look all that displeased, certainly not as he bends over to collect your legs and drape them over his lap. you let him. you let him drag one enormous hand up your bare leg, too, and he stops just below the knee but still you watch as goosebumps follow his fingers. your body is traitorous but you can’t find it in you to mind.

“when did we get so weird, huh?” he asks you.

“how do you mean?” “sometimes it feels like it used to feel,” he thinks about how you may take that a moment longer, “when we used to be friends.” you nod slowly. “sometimes it feels like i don’t know you at all.” 

honesty looks so pretty on his face. his eyes are slightly narrowed but they’re no less auroral, his lips slightly swollen on the bottom as he bites them between breaths. he points at your nose. “and sometimes, you make that face at me, and i—fuck i mean what am i supposed to do with that?”

you scrunch your nose. “what face am i making?”

“i mean you look—jesus, i don’t know.” he runs a hand through his hair, mussing it further, before continuing, “i just wish you wouldn’t keep thinking in your head.”

you can’t help but laugh softly, bumping your foot into his stomach. “where else am i supposed to think?”

he flails at the sound of your giggle but his lips turn up. “i don’t know! i just spend so much more time now wondering what’s going on in your head. i want to know.” and then, to devastate you further, you imagine, he adds: “you used to tell me.”

you slide a little further into the couch, lay more of your legs’ weight on his lap. he lets his hands drift up to your kneecaps now. “okay, satoru,” you relent. “what do you want to know?”

“you’ll tell me anything?”

“i suppose that’s what i’m offering, yeah.”

he grins. “okay…” he taps his finger on his chin and you snort. “are you still afraid of me being in takara’s life?”

“a little. i’m afraid for both of you. but he…he loves you now, i think. ultimately i’m glad he can know you.”

“what about in your life?”

“what about it?”

“are you glad i’m in your life again?”

you smile, wry. “i think so. even though you torment me and make me spill my secrets.”

he puffs his chest and tugs your legs further into him. you’re almost in his lap, a few inches from it, but whether you notice is a question he decides not to ask. “do you still trust me the way you used to?”

“yes.” you do.

“do you still like me as much?”

“in what way?”

“all of them.”

“you’re greedy,” you whisper.

something punches from satoru’s lungs but you cannot discern what comes out. he says only: “yes, i am. answer me.” 

with a defeated breath you shrug. “yes.” 

his hands have both stalled on your knees, each thumb an omen breaching the threshold of your thigh. your skin twitches, you think, but you can’t look away from his face. he looks like he’s released one foot over the edge of some decision, you can see one teetering moment in the air, and then the resolve sets in.

“do you know how much i still want you?”

your heart kicks. “no,” you confess.

his hands remember themselves again, gripping up your legs higher, higher, now with purpose as they swing around his hips and move you to his lap. straddling him you can feel how hard he is already and you’re certain he can feel your wetness through your shorts, the slick is humiliating and so much. you whine a little and it comes out through your nose. his cock twitches.

“not today in my office?” his right hand cups the back of your neck. “not an hour ago?” your chest rises and falls, stumbling over itself. “you don’t know?”

and you have no faith in your voice now so you only shake your head as much as his hold will allow. he presses his hips into you just once, a fleeting indulgence you’re unsure if he even intended, but you whine again and it looks like it hurts him. 

“let me show you, baby,” he coos, but it’s desperate, too, a prayer into your lips as he brushes his nose against yours. “just one more time.”

you haven’t even finished nodding before you’re kissing him, both of you groaning into the other at the sheer relief of the feeling, his hands grabbing for anything he can reach: around your back, your tit, the globes of your ass to grind you down against him. the fabric of your shorts catches on your clit as it swells and you moan something awful in the back of your throat.

he kisses you like all six years apart demand it, like he can feel how long it’s been in the truest sense, like all at once the wanting has frayed his nerves and your lips cauterize the veins. he bites your lip to make you gasp, taking the opportunity to lick into your mouth as it opens.

you grind your clit onto him again, rubbing little circles on his tip through your clothes and he pants with the pressure. 

“satoru,” you whine, and he ruts up, harder.

“oh, say my name like that again,” he pleads, lips trailing down from your lips to your neck. his tongue streaks hot against your skin, sucking and biting and grinding you onto him like his cock is inside you already.

“satoru,” you repeat, and it comes out clearer without his tongue on yours but just barely. 

“fuck.” he rips your tank top off before attaching to you again, leaving hickies in the hollow of your throat, down over each breast, before taking a nipple into his mouth and laving his tongue there.

your moans almost come out like hums, all strung together, and he preens at the sound of them. you can feel the damp spot on his pants growing as you spread your slick, each wet kiss on your chest demanding a new wave from you. 

“i don’t even need to prep you, do i? you’re already so f–fucking wet,” and he punctuates it with a gyration of his hips that would have made you scream had he not clamped a palm over your mouth. 

you’re almost deaf with the rushing sound of blood in your ears but still you crane to hear him, each filthy utterance a precious thing you covet as he ruts up into you. if you were in your right mind you might find it funny that the experience of dry humping him feels so profound but as it is you can think only of the feeling of his veins through two layers of fabric.

despite how he may have goaded at you he brings one hand down your navel and under your shorts, feeling through your folds and spreading the honey of you further. your mouth is fully dropped open but his hand is large enough to cover it.

“oh, baby—yeah, that’s it, grind on it—you’re dripping for me.” he says it in that pleased way that makes him sound like an animal. you roll your hips onto the pads of his fingers and pleasure shoots up your spine at the rub of them on your clit, around your entrance. he circles his middle finger once before sinking it in and you keen. he holds you still with his other arm, nose pressed to your ear now as he whispers in it.

“f—fuck this pussy is so fucking tight.”

your hole flutters and sucks his digit in and he revels in the grip as he fucks you on it slowly. you try to bounce yourself faster but he squeezes your middle again, bites your pulse as it bumps in your neck. he murmurs there: “let it last,” using his hold to swivel your hips on his hand. your nails grip to his shoulders, surely making marks through his shirt but he lets you, frenetic and buzzing like he gains as much from touching you as you do.

the heel of his palm presses up onto your nub and you bow into him further, and he takes the movement to press another finger alongside the first. something searing and hungry licks up your spine, you’re close already, but there’s no indignity in it. you tug on his hair to bring his face to yours again, pulling back from the hand clamped over your mouth to lick behind his teeth, moaning into his mouth. “cum for me baby, come on,” he encourages.

your eyes squeeze shut as you come undone, heat spasming around his fingers as you soak him to the wrist. “fuck, f–fuck, that’s it,” he curses, mainly to himself, you think. you’re only half-lucid as you come down but you feel him pull his fingers from you and lick them clean, groaning softly around them.

“fuck me, satoru, please.”

his hair doesn’t move as he nods, stuck now to his forehead damp with sweat. neither of you have the patience to remove anything else, simply tugging your shorts to the side and his cock from his pants before you’re dripping right over it. his tip catches on your entrance and you both go half-boneless with the feeling.

when you sink onto him you feel a little like you did in his office earlier in the day. like time has stopped, or maybe like it has all arrived at your fingertips, like you’re everywhere. you remember this feeling, a little bit, but it’s also undeniably new. the stretch burns but you hardly feel it, taking no time before sitting on him to the hilt. your head drops to his shoulder, little pants into his neck, and he lets out a shaky breath.

“fuck you’re so fucking tight, baby, this pussy was made for me,” he chokes into your ear. you each have a handful of the other between your fingers, the lines of your palms tattooing him even through his uniform he still has mostly on. you hope his brand you the same.

all it takes is one, slow pull of your hips before he’s rutting up into you again, not so much ruthless as intense, deep and pregnant with meaning and so precise you wonder whether he’s using his six eyes to assess the inside of you. with one hand he holds your face to his ear to consume your moaning that way. you whine and when he shudders, bucking harder, you whine again.

“o–oh, these sounds are mine, this pussy is mine,” he stutters. the squelch of your cunt sucking him in seems to only encourage him, and you make yourself wetter just hearing it.

“it’s so good, satoru,” you whine.

he laughs softly, manic, “yeah?”

and you only wail quietly again. with each snap of his hips you thrust yourself down, clit throbbing and catching on the little white scratch of his pubic hair, and his other hand, still handled on the plush of your ass, rubs you harder as you move. you vaguely hear your little ah! ah! ah! but mostly you can feel the pleasure building again, can feel the vein down the underside of his cock as you wring him harder.

“hah–i won’t–fuck–i won’t last if you keep squeezing me, baby.”

you only feel encouraged, sliding deeper, revelling more in the slip of your slick as it floods out of you.

“ah–-i’m close, i’m close,” you breathe.

“fuck yeah, i wanna feel you cum on my cock, let go for me.”

and you do. have you ever really denied him? your mouth drops open in a silent scream as your hips buck wildly, the pleasure seizing you from the inside out. satoru moans feeling you ride your high, panting into your ear, “tell me to pull out.”

you shake your head, little smile creeping over your face as he fucks you through your high. “isn’t the damage already done?” you ask breathlessly.

and he can only laugh for a second before his hips stutter and still, pulling you into him like he wants to crawl inside of you and live in your stomach

“fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.”

his cum is so hot as it fills you, and so much, your own orgasm jolting you again, exulting in the feeling. 

he drops his forehead to your shoulder now, sweat of your collarbone meeting the beads on his hairline. the sounds of your breathing mix, too; your cum and your hands and your warmth, all of it intertwined with his, maybe forever. he kisses you one more time, sated now, along a hickey he’d left on your neck before. you return one to the corner of his mouth.

he doesn’t say anything when he sits up straight again, supporting the wings of your shoulders with his hands. there is only that look on his face, a cousin to the one you saw the first day he found you and takara, but so recognizably relieved this time: everything is different now.

~~~~~~~

sss taglist:

@emochosoluvr @por0u @vraiao @voidfulcrumdilemma @vaniyeiszero @missingnozw @crowroakchi @seikamuzu @anonymous-3846 @asahinasstuff @kunisnaomi @bl6o6dy @meanderingwistera @lilac-heartz @acowboykisser @miiikooooooo @missingnozw @heiranni @sadmonke @alicebleu @sanchann @splinx04real @lolllllllllllllliiiiiii @eggrollforyou @updated-version @yaurss @khaleesihavilliard @mizzowizzo @mierins @eolivy @spencerreidisagorgman @dahliadaenerys @cantchooseanctbias @fallenfromgrxce @theclassbookworm @liestel @jiasdream @maddy24207 @valoriya @19catspiledontopofeachother @hbhbhbhbhby @bijuu-naginata @jv5t4g1rl @bobagang @thraxpatty @muscovitechick

[angel06babysworld]

Almost a Family

babydaddy!rafe x blackcat!reader

Chapter Four

❀⋆｡˚⋆ฺ｡⋆｡˚☽˚｡⋆｡ฺ⋆˚｡⋆❀

didn’t owe him an explanation. But she gave him one anyway.

“I have plans tonight.”

Rafe looked up from the spot where he was crouched beside Vivi, trying to detangle a Barbie’s hair with half the patience in the world.

He blinked once. “Plans?”

“Dinner.”

“With…?”

She raised a brow. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.”

He didn’t say anything. Just nodded, eyes lowering back to the doll like it suddenly needed urgent attention.

“I need you to stay with her,” she said after a pause. “Just for a few hours. She’s already eaten. You just need to get her down by eight.”

“Okay,” he said, too fast. “Of course.”

She didn’t look relieved. Just… tired. Like the weight of asking him for anything still pressed heavy on her chest. Like no matter how many times he showed up lately, she still held her breath waiting for the moment he didn’t.

“She’s been clingy this week,” she added. “If she wakes up, don’t just put a movie on. Talk to her.”

“I always do.”

“I know.”

She lingered near the door. A coat draped over her arm. Lip gloss soft and barely there. Nothing loud. Nothing flashy. Still, she looked different—like someone who remembered she was more than just a mother.

Vivi ran up and hugged her legs. “Where you going?”

“Out,” she said, brushing a hand over her daughter’s curls. “I’ll be back before you wake up.”

“Can Daddy stay ‘til morning?”

Rafe answered before she could. “If you want me to, yeah.”

She didn’t object.

She didn’t say anything else, really—just kissed Vivi’s cheek, grabbed her keys, and left.

The door clicked shut.

And Rafe sat there for a long time after, staring at it like it might open again.

It wasn’t like he didn’t know this would happen.

They weren’t together. She didn’t wear his name. Didn’t ask what he did on nights he wasn’t at the apartment. Didn’t offer up her own answers either.

Still. It felt different now that it was real.

Vivi climbed into his lap with her favorite book, curling up like a cat against his chest. Her voice was sleepy when she said, “You smell like the ocean.”

“Is that good?”

She nodded. “You smell like when I’m not sad.”

Rafe blinked hard, arms wrapping tighter around her.

“Do you think Mommy smells like that too?” she asked.

He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Yeah, bug. I do.”

They read the book. Brushed teeth. She argued about pajamas and won. He tucked her in, lights off, door cracked.

And then it was just him.

Alone in her space.

He paced once. Sat on the couch. Looked around at the little things—artwork on the fridge, the same mug she used every morning, the basket of folded laundry she never got around to putting away.

His phone buzzed once. A text from Kelce:

“Yo, beer?”

Rafe stared at it. Then typed:

“Can’t. Babysitting.”

“Lame.”

He didn’t answer.

Instead, he opened the camera app. Snapped a photo of Vivi asleep. Then stared at it like it might answer something for him.

The front door didn’t open for a long time.

When it did, she stepped in quietly, coat over her arm again, hair pinned back like she’d been picking at it the whole car ride home.

Rafe was still sitting on the couch.

She didn’t look surprised.

“You stayed.”

“You asked me to.”

She nodded. Toed off her shoes. Didn’t speak right away.

Then: “He was nice.”

Rafe didn’t look up. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“No,” she said honestly. “It’s not for you to feel anything about.”

He exhaled through his nose. “Was it serious?”

“It was a first date. I left halfway through dessert.”

His head turned now. “Why?”

She shrugged. “He didn’t ask about her.”

Rafe didn’t move, but something in his chest loosened.

“I’ll let myself out,” he said after a beat, standing.

But before he could reach the door, she spoke again.

“Next time, I might not come back early.”

He paused.

“I know,” he said, without turning around.

And then he left—quietly, like always—carrying something heavier than just his keys.

tags: @amelialovesrafe @alyisdead @illumoria @blissfulbutterfliess @sydneysslove @sc04 @matthewswifeyy @meetmeintheemeraldpool @icversvoid @honeyinthesummer @dolli333 @lolabunnyworldss @sabrina-carpenter-stan-account @rafessbaby

[belli5]

Miss Cougar .ᐟ ೀWS²

╰ Synopsis An older reader falls for golden boy Will Smith, the younger hockey player who’s utterly devoted to her, soft, loyal, and eager to please. She didn’t mean to fall..but did.

Tags/contains Fluff, Will Smith x Older!fem!reader. Age gap(in my mind it’s two years), older reader, mutual pining, soft possessiveness.

➺ from Sera, to you 📨. Had too much fun with this lol😭

masterlist ᥫ᭡ please reblog this fic if you enjoyed it! Please do NOT rewrite/repost my work anywhere else without permission!

You were just doing your job, working PR, helping set up the media day table for the rookies, sipping lukewarm coffee and flipping through player bios like it wasn’t your fifth time memorizing their junior league stats.

But then Will Smith walked in, blonde hair a little messy like he didn’t even try, baby blue eyes scanning the room like he didn’t quite belong yet. His jersey hung a little loose on his shoulders, but there was an easy confidence to his posture that told you he knew exactly who he was.

Nineteen. Maybe twenty now, barely an adult. Way too young for you, and younger guys weren’t even your type.

You were twenty-two, barely older, sure, but the kind of older that makes you feel like a grown up next to a college freshman. He shouldn’t have even registered as a blip on your radar.

Except he did.

You were halfway through explaining to another staffer where to place the Sharks backdrop when he stopped in front of your table, holding a clipboard and grinning like he’d just won something. “You’re the PR person, right?”

You blinked. “I am.”

“I’m Will,” he said, like you didn’t already know. “Will Smith.”

The corner of your mouth tugged upward. “Yeah, figured that much. It’s on your name tag.”

He glanced down, laughed, boyish and unbothered. “Right, forgot I had that on.”

And just like that, you were sunk. Not all the way, just enough to start paying more attention to the way he said thank you, how he called you ma’am, how he kept stealing glances at you during the photoshoot like you wouldn’t notice.

You told yourself it was harmless. Just a crush—his crush.

He hovered near your table more than he needed to, always needing a new pen, or another form, or an excuse to talk to you about something completely irrelevant.

“Is it weird if I ask what coffee you’re drinking?” he asked once, resting his forearms on your desk like he belonged there.

“It’s not weird if you ask to get me one.”

He smiled. “Noted. I’ll bring you one next time.” And he did, for weeks.

Every morning of training camp, there was a new coffee sitting on your desk with a note scribbled in messy handwriting: “Hope this is the right kind.”,“You looked tired yesterday. (Not in a bad way.)”, “You smile more when you’re caffeinated.”

You kept the notes. That was the first sign you were slipping.

The second sign? You stopped saying “he’s too young” in your head.

You kept reminding yourself that he was younger, that he still said things that he saw on instagram reels or on tiktok unironically. That he didn’t even have a full grasp on how taxes worked, but then he’d smile at you like you were the only person in the room, or he’d ask how your day was going and actually listen and suddenly his age didn’t seem like such a big deal.

The first time he asked you out, you laughed.

Not because it was funny, but because it felt ridiculous. Like this golden retriever of a man thought he had a shot with someone who read financial reports for fun and had a skincare routine that cost more than any man would understand.

“You don’t actually want to date someone older,” you told him flatly.

He tilted his head. “Why not?”

“Because you’re still figuring yourself out. You’ve got.. things to do, a whole NHL career to build.”

He shrugged. “Can’t I do all that and like you at the same time?”

The worst part? He meant it. His voice was quiet, no smugness, no joking, just him looking at you with those wide blue eyes like you’d hung the moon.

You told him no. But you also told him, “Ask me again when you’ve made the roster.” It was a joke, you didn’t expect him to remember, but he did.

Two months later, after a Sharks home opener, you found him waiting in the hallway with two redbulls in hand and that same grin he always wore when he saw you. “So…” he said, holding one out. “I made the roster.”

Your stomach did a funny little flip. “That doesn’t mean anything,” you said, but your voice was softer than it should’ve been.

“Doesn’t it?”

You took the redbull, your fingers brushing his, and that was the third sign. The one that felt different than the rest.

Because you started to imagine it, what dating him might be like, what it’d feel like to kiss him, to pull him down by the collar of his jersey and have him say things in that voice that got a little raspier every time he was nervous.

You hated yourself for thinking about it. You hated even more that you started to hope he’d ask again, but he didn’t, not right away and that made you feel.. weird.

He gave you space, even when you caught him looking at you during team events, or cracking jokes that made you smile when you were trying to be serious. He never pushed, never got impatient.

That’s what got you, in the end. Not the hair, not the eyes, not the way he fit into his game day suit just a little too well, I mean that too but It was the way he respected your no, but made it clear he wasn’t going anywhere.

It was when the new season just had started, two months ago.

You were organizing interview slots at the practice rink, annoyed at everything and running on four hours of sleep. Will had just finished morning skate and walked over, towel around his neck, cheeks flushed from the cold. “You okay?” he asked, nudging your elbow gently.

You sighed, rubbing your forehead. “Just tired.”

He didn’t say anything just grabbed the clipboard from your hand, squinting at the slots like he could actually help. “You forgot to schedule yourself a break,” he said.

“I don’t get breaks,” you muttered.

“You do now.” And then, God help you, he pulled out some candy he had from his jacket pocket and handed it to you without fanfare.

Like he knew you hadn’t eaten, like he’d planned for this exact moment, it wasn’t a lot, but it’s the little things that make you happy. “You’re ridiculous,” you mumbled, trying not to smile.

He bumped your shoulder lightly. “You’re welcome, ma’am.”

That was the fourth sign, which you didn’t even pretend to hate it.

It didn’t start with fireworks.

There was no dramatic kiss in the rain, no impulsive declarations. Just a quiet evening, two texts exchanged, and the simple moment when you looked at his name on your screen and realized, yeah. You wanted to see where this could go.

He picked you up two days later.

He was wearing a navy sweater that clung to his arms just enough, jeans that still had a fold line like they were fresh out of the dryer, and that nervous little smile that tugged at his mouth whenever you looked at him too long. “I wasn’t sure if you’d actually say yes,” he admitted, holding the car door open for you.

You’d smiled back, the corner of your lip quirking. “I wasn’t sure either.” But you went and then you went again and before long, it became something regular, easy and surprisingly solid.

No one said “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” for a while, but he started showing up with your favorite drinks, started memorizing every single detail, started pulling you gently into his lap during movie nights like he couldn’t help it.

You didn’t mean to fall for him, but he made it impossible not to.

Now, a few weeks in, you were curled on your couch, legs draped over his lap, flipping through a book while he scrolled through his phone like he didn’t have a single worry in the world.

Will’s hand rested on your thigh absentmindedly, tracing slow circles with his thumb over the fabric of your shorts. His eyes were on his screen, but he’d tilt his head every few minutes like he was waiting for you to tell him to do something, like he wanted you to.

You weren’t used to that, someone listening without being told twice. Someone who liked being told what to do, in a way that wasn’t needy, just.. eager.

“Can you get me a water?” you asked, without looking up from the page.

Will was already halfway to the kitchen before you finished the sentence. He came back, twisted the cap off, and handed it to you like it was nothing, like it was normal to treat you like this.

You took a sip and raised an eyebrow. “It’s cold. You picked from the back of the fridge.”

He gave a crooked smile, scratching the back of his neck. “Didn’t think you’d want a warm one.”

“Thank you, baby.” you said, letting your fingers brush across his jaw before going back to your book.

He flushed just a little and you saw it. The power you had over him was almost criminal. Not because you tried, God, no. But because he gave it so freely, because something in him liked it.

You kept reading for another minute, pretending not to notice how quiet he’d gone. Then, without warning, you shifted your legs, straddling one of his thighs and settling in like it was your seat.

Will froze under you for a second. Then relaxed, like he always relaxed under you. Your hands found the collar of his hoodie, playing with the soft hem near his collarbone. “You’re not going out with the guys tonight?” you murmured, feigning casual.

“Don’t want to,” he said simply. “Want to stay here, with you.”

You bit your lip. “You always listen this well?”

His hands landed on your hips, light and respectful even though he clearly could’ve pulled you in harder if he wanted. “Only for you, ma’am.” he said, barely above a whisper.

You didn’t react right away, just let it hang in the air, warm and heavy between you both. You weren’t even sure he realized he’d said it, sometimes it just slipped out of him, like instinct.

You trailed your fingers down his chest and sat back just slightly. “You know you don’t have to call me that,” you said softly, not mocking, just observing.

“I know,” he replied, eyes dropping to your mouth. “But I like it.”