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starlightkun · 7 months

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➠ word count: 22.0k ➠ warnings: cursing, mentions of drinking (there’s a frat party), everything i know about hockey is from internet research for this fic i’m sorry for any inaccuracies i tried ➠ genre: fluff, gets quite suggestive (a heavy makeout scene/near sex scene) but no actual smut, college au, hockey captain sungchan, chronically ill reader (chronic migraines), halloween-themed at the beginning, sungchan’s not a frat boy but he’s like... a frat boy by association ➠ extra info: the ages/relative ages of the members in here are whatever i want them to be, don’t read into it too much. this is a very usamerican take on a college au btw. also i call kunhang ‘hendery’ in here like it’s his government name for a one-line gag bc i think i’m hilarious the reader in this has chronic migraines, which i have. when the reader’s migraines and thoughts/experiences as a chronically ill person are described, that is me writing directly from my own life. i am not generalizing the lives of all people with chronic migraines and chronic illness, but i am sending all my love to any readers out there living with a chronic illness, and here’s a reminder to go take your meds ➠ author’s note: hi so this has been a wip for like a year lol. this one long predates sungchan’s deneofication (and subsequent re-debut in riize), hockey player sungchan just lives in my brain rent free ok. anyway, i hope you like ➠ series masterlist

“You agreed to go to a frat party?” Chenle’s eyes were bugging out of his head as he sat across a high top in the dining hall from you. “Do you remember what happened last time, Y/N?”

“Hard to forget,” you snorted.

“And yet it seems you did, somehow, lost in dreamboat Jung Sungchan’s eyes.”

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24

“Now shoo!” Dr. Son waved the small group of you out of his dimly lit office.

It was Phantasmagorical Phriday, a time-honored tradition going back to your freshman year of university. Dr. Son had been intrigued by the four freshmen who were somehow in his third-year class on Gothic Fiction and actually seemed to “get it.” His “Phantasma Phour” as you dubbed yourselves (a nickname that got quickly worn out, persisting only as the title of your groupchat):

Wong Hendery, who ended up in the class accidentally due to an error on his academic advisor’s part (she had gotten him mixed up with a Wong Henry, a junior Literature major who actually needed to take Dr. Son’s class) and he subsequently changed majors at least three times to your knowledge, so you were genuinely surprised he was graduating on time—he finally settled on Communications;

Jung Sungchan, at the time a promising young rookie hockey player who had now blossomed into your school’s reliable team captain—Biology major, being an athlete meant he could pre-register for classes and he picked Dr. Son’s at random to fulfill a gen ed Literature credit;

Zhong Chenle, an honorary member of both Nu Chi Tau, one of the biggest frats on campus, and the hockey team, as somehow 95% of his social circle were Nu Chi brothers and/or hockey players despite Chenle being neither himself, your best friend and also sometimes you swear a demon sent straight from hell to kill you—Literature major, who bullied you into taking the class; and

You, Chenle’s best friend who used to hate anything and everything Gothic fiction that got bullied into taking it anyway and now adored the genre more than any other—Literature major, who took the last spot in the class on registration day.

Dr. Son would invite you all to monthly extracurricular workshops in his office that built up to this: Phantasmagorical Phriday, a writing competition to see which of the four of you could write the best gothic short story. The stories were actually submitted the prior week, but it was the Friday before Halloween that was dubbed the Phriday in question. The four of you were invited to his office that night after classes (and Sungchan’s hockey practice) to review your pieces: how he thought everyone had improved from last year, discuss the writing process, and to finish off the night, Dr. Son would announce his top two stories. Those in the top two had the chance to send him a persuasive letter about why they should win. They had to be sent to him that night because the next morning, your professor would email the top two individually with the results.

Since this was your last Phantasmagorical Phriday, Dr. Son pretended not to see when Hendery brought out four celebratory White Claws for you all. You still had your warm, unopened, orange-flavored seltzer in your hand as the small group of you left the Literature, Writing, and Foreign Languages building together.

“I still can’t believe you couldn’t find anything classier for our last Phantasmagorical Phriday, Hendery.” You shook your head. “Ever heard of champagne? Literally any wine?”

“So you’re not gonna shotgun that, Y/N, is what I’m hearing?” Hendery teased as you all stopped under the light post right outside the building.

“Is that a challenge or what, Wong?” You scoffed, handing it back to him. “But no, I’m good.”

Sungchan thankfully cut in and changed the topic of conversation, “So are you going to start writing your letter of reconsideration, Y/N?”

This year’s top two were you and Sungchan, the member of the Phantasma Phour you spoke to the least. Outside of the monthly “workshops” (which at this point with your differing majors were just get-togethers of questionable academic value), you never saw him. You obviously saw Chenle all the time, and despite the fact that you considered him a bit obnoxious, you were sort of friends with Hendery, joining him for lunch if you happened to see him at the student union or at the coffee shop on campus. Sungchan was perfectly nice and all, you just found that you never really talked to him like the other two.

You looked down at your watch, taking a quick inhale when you saw the time. You’d stayed in Dr. Son’s office a lot later than you’d realized.

“Oh, no,” you casually waved off Sungchan’s question, readjusting your tote bag on your shoulder. “I’ve got something more pressing right now. Anyway, see you guys. It was a good four years, I’m glad we got to do this.”

Lifting your hand in a wave of finality to the three men, you departed.

“She’s really not going to submit a letter?” Sungchan asked, still watching after you as your figure faded away in the distance.

“Nope,” Chenle shook his head, reaching for the spare White Claw in Hendery’s hand. “Y/N never does.”

“You didn’t know that?” Hendery questioned the hockey player, holding the drink away from Chenle.

“Why not?”

“She’s not in it to win really.” Chenle lunged for the can as Hendery jerked it away at the last second. “Just wants to make stuff.”

“So she was lying about doing something?”

Hendery and Chenle were now running circles around Sungchan in their game of keep-away with the seltzer.

“No.”

“What do you—” Sungchan sighed, yanking the drink from Hendery’s grasp and holding it high above his own head, well out of either of their reaches. “Hey!”

Now with their attention, the hockey captain kept his arm straight up as he returned to his question, “What are you talking about, Chenle?”

“Y/N does have something pressing right now. If I tell you where she’s probably going will you give me the White Claw?” Chenle bargained.

“You’d exchange your best friend’s location for an orange White Claw? Not even watermelon?” Hendery asked incredulously.

“It’s Sungchan, someone we’ve known for like four years, not some creep off the street who’s going to wear her skin.”

“No, Chenle, you don’t have to tell me that,” Sungchan shook his head, offering the can out for either one to take.

The Literature major was able to snatch it first, jumping up in celebration, “Suck an egg, Hendery!”

“I wouldn’t—” Sungchan’s words were too late though, as Chenle had already popped the tab, and the overly-shaken seltzer exploded all over all three of them.

“Zhong Chenle, I’m going to strangle you, you little weasel!”

“Ah! Sungchan, save me!”

“I would, except you got fucking orange White Claw in my eyes and I’m fucking blind now! Goddamn!”

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25

Rolling over in bed the next morning, you let out a big sigh and buried your face in your pillow, fully intent on going back to sleep. Saturday morning. No school, no work. Just you, your bed, and some much-needed sleep.

Then, the obnoxious blaring of your phone came from your nightstand. You groaned, reaching blindly for the object, and barely opening one eye just enough to snooze it. Damn, you really had slept in, to be woken up by your first medication alarm. Well, you weren’t going to die if you took your morning doses fifteen minutes later than normal. You were about to stuff your phone under your pillow when you briefly caught sight of your lockscreen after the alarm disappeared.

Text notification from Jung Sungchan?

Flopping onto your back and bringing your phone with you, you squinted against the harsh light of your screen to make sure you were reading that right. Yep, Sungchan had definitely texted you a few hours ago, separate from the Phantasma Phour chat. At almost 7:00 a.m., too. What the hell?

Curiosity won out over a need to sleep for fourteen more minutes, and you opened the notification.

[jung sungchan: Congrats, Y/N!]

You stared blankly at the text, your groggy mind desperately grasping around for any sort of context as to why Jung Sungchan would be texting you that at 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday. Then it struck you like lightning, and you let out an audible “Oh, duh!” as you remembered where you both were last night. Phantasmagorical Phriday. The writing contest. You and Sungchan were the top two. Dr. Son must have sent the email out already, and apparently you had won.

Normally, you wouldn’t check your school email on the weekend until Sunday night, unless you were waiting to hear back from a specific professor—and the Sunday night check was just to see if any of your Monday classes were cancelled. Lord knows you definitely wouldn’t have checked it at seven in the morning on a Saturday. You let out a snort of disbelief as you reread the timestamp on the text. But still, it was nice of him. A good show of sportsmanship, as one would expect from the hockey captain.

You quickly checked your own student email, and did in fact see an email from Dr. Son at the very top with the subject ‘PHINAL PHANTASMAGORICAL PHRIDAY RESULTS.’

‘Y/N and Sungchan:

Thank you again for your submissions. I enjoyed working with everyone these four years.

The winner this year is Y/N. Good job.

Dr. Son.’

An amused smile crept across your face at your professor’s usual blunt email style. But this was also some of the nicest feedback he’d given your writing, even when you had won Phantasmagorical Phriday in the past, or in classes that you’d taken from him over the years. Something about it truly did feel... final.

And so with an odd bittersweetness, you drafted an equally short and blunt email back to your professor.

‘Dr. Son:

Thank you for taking us on these past four years. I will never forget the experience.

Y/L/N Y/N.’

Then finally, you went back to the original reason that you were even doing this.

[you: thanks, sungchan!]

Then, your alarm went off again, making you jump out of your skin. Well, time for your morning meds.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 27

A tall figure was nearing the corner table you had claimed in one of the campus coffee shops the following Monday afternoon, and you looked up from your laptop screen, a little surprised at who it was. Jung Sungchan was standing at the end of your table, black flannel over a graphic t-shirt and dark wash jeans, one backpack strap slung over his shoulder. He had an iced coffee in one hand.

You paused the movie playing on your laptop, taking out both your headphones as you looked up at him inquisitively, “Uh hi, Sungchan.”

“Hi, Y/N.”

“Are you here to study or something?”

“Mm.” He couldn’t seem to meet your eyes. “Not really. Just grabbing a coffee and saw you. Do you mind if I sit with you for a bit?”

“Oh, sure. I’m waiting out the storm to leave,” you gestured to the near-constant downpour that had started right after you’d arrived over two hours ago. Noticing that some of Sungchan’s hair and shoulders were damp, you added, “The storm you apparently got caught in without an umbrella.”

“Oh, yeah,” he ran a hand through his hair to push some of it away from where it had been falling into his eyes.

“I don’t mind having some company while I wait.”

To your surprise, instead of sitting across from you, Sungchan plopped himself onto the same bench that you were on, one leg slung over either side so he could face you directly.

You picked up the mug in front of you, your second cup of your drink of choice. You’d gotten a refill after it became clear that the rain wasn’t letting up any time soon. Sungchan was already a third of the way done with his iced coffee as you blew over your hot drink before taking a small sip. He glanced up at you, and you felt like you were going to choke on the uncomfortable silence. So you took a gamble. Turning in your seat to face him as well, you hiked a knee up onto the bench, bringing your mug with you.

“Do you want to ask me something, Sungchan?”

The hockey player startled, having to catch himself from nearly choking on his coffee. Seems like you were right. Sungchan finally stopped sucking down his drink, setting it down on the table and wiping his palms on the knees of his jeans. “I heard that you never sent in a letter to Dr. Son. Any year you were a top two.”

“Oh, yeah, nah.”

“Why not?”

“Didn’t seem worth it,” you shrugged.

“What?”

“Every year I participated I wanted my work to stand on its own two legs. After the death of the author, that’s all that’s left, right? The work. It has to speak for itself.”

“Oh,” Sungchan nodded, then squinted his eyes, confusion entirely overtaking his features. “Wait, what?”

“Sorry, I don’t know how much Lit Theory you’ve done. Probably not a lot as a Bio major, huh? Death of the author is both literal and metaphorical. Removing what the author meant to do or say with a text from how you actually interpret the text as the reader. It’s a lot easier when they’re actually dead, but the abstract concept is practiced when they’re alive too. It’s… seeing the text as separate from authorial intent. Mind you, it’s only one tool in a literary critic’s arsenal, but I liked it for our Gothic fiction class. All the authors we read in that class, they’d been gone for a while, we had no way to know what they really meant when they wrote all that stuff. And it didn’t really matter for our purposes. All we did have was what they wrote, and that was enough for me. So the same should be enough for whoever reads the stuff I write. Even if it’s just Dr. Son.”

“Huh.”

“Though I guess I just explained myself a little, oops,” you laughed at yourself, taking another sip from your steaming mug. “I’m getting less and less mysterious by the second, aren't I?”

“Chenle made it sound like you didn’t care about winning,” Sungchan asked, cheek in hand.

You arched an eyebrow at this. “You asked Chenle about me?”

“W-Well you left so fast after we saw Dr. Son, and you two are you know...”

“Oh he’s my best friend,” you clarified for perhaps the ten-thousandth time in your life. “And while others may use any litany of swears for him and Hendery calls him a little weasel, I prefer ‘actual demon sent from Hell to kill me.’”

“What?” Sungchan’s eyes widened.

“He pushes me out of my comfort zone. In a good way, most of the time.”

“Got it. Then what do you do for him? If he’s your yang…”

“I’m entertainment?” You snorted, taking another sip of your drink. After setting it back down, you answered more sincerely, “I’m kidding. Sometimes it feels like that but I did ask him one time a couple years ago, when he was tipsy enough that I believed the words coming out of his mouth but not so drunk that it was unintelligible. ‘A safe place.’ And since then… I can see it in us. That’s my yin to him.”

He smiled softly at you. “That’s... really nice.”

“Sorry, what were you asking me before that?”

“Oh, uh— Chenle said you really didn’t care about winning Dr. Son’s contest, you just wanted to make stuff? That’s why you didn’t submit a letter.”

“Generally, sure. Winning would’ve been great, but I didn’t write what I thought Dr. Son wanted. I took all of his feedback with a grain of salt. Took stuff that I liked from him, took stuff I liked from other profs I had. Mixed and matched to make something that was mine.” You pressed your lips together, then leaned forward like you were about to tell him a secret, “I didn’t live for Phantasmagorical Phriday, Sungchan. You do know that, right?”

“Wow,” he blinked, seeming a bit disoriented. “I’ve never really thought about… you like that.”

“Well to be fair to you, you only ever knew me there and in Dr. Son’s class. Makes it hard not to think of me only through that lens. All you know about me is that I presumably like Gothic fiction and I’m a Lit major, right?”

“Right.”

“So what do you think I was doing here before you showed up?”

“…Reading Edgar Allan Poe.”

You couldn’t help but laugh at that, turning your laptop screen to show the paused movie to him, “I was watching Pacific Rim.”

His jaw literally dropped, and you felt the need to save him at least a little. Grabbing a book from your bag, you held it up, “I did come here initially to finish reading this new mystery novel I just got, but then the storm came and I had nothing else to do after I was done with the book.”

“But still… you’re so…”

“I have interests outside the one class we took together?”

“Smart,” he finished, an absolutely adorable expression of wonder across his face.

You weren’t expecting that, surprised giggles bubbling up out of you as you felt yourself growing warm under his awestruck gaze.

“Anyway, your turn,” you tapped his knee with your book before putting it back in your bag.

“For what?”

“To expand my horizons of you. All I know about you is that you’re the hockey captain, and a Bio major who took a gothic fiction class one time like three years ago. Show me you’re a multifaceted individual, too.”

“Uhm, that’s about it.”

“Oh come on, Sungchan.”

“No really, if I’m not on the ice, I’m in class; if I’m not in class, I’m with my team; and if I’m not with my team, I’m studying.”

“You’re here, right now,” you pointed out. “Last I checked I’m not on your hockey team, and we’re not studying. You have to do one thing that’s not for school or hockey. My thing was just watching Pacific Rim this one time, remember?”

“Alright…” he paused to think, fingers tapping along his thighs. “I used to play the piano.”

“Past tense, but I’ll accept it. When did you stop?”

“High school? Around when piano lessons and hockey practice started conflicting.”

“And you chose hockey?” You asked, hoping it didn’t sound judgmental. You really were just curious, trying to understand him.

“Actually, the choice was made for me.” He held his right hand out in front of you, and it was then that you saw his pinky finger was unnaturally crooked as he pointed to the digit. “I broke it in a game without even realizing it. Bruises and stiffness sometimes are normal so me and my parents didn’t know anything was up until weeks later when I was fucking up all the notes at my piano lessons because it still hurt. By the time I finally saw a doctor and got a splint on it, it set up wrong. All dexterity for piano out the window. Hockey on the other hand… guys have done a lot more with a lot less.”

You couldn’t help but curiously run a gentle fingertip over the crook in his pinky. “Does it hurt at all? Now?”

“Not really.” He went to bend and flex the fingers of his right hand, and you saw how the fifth finger didn’t curl up as much as the others. “It’s just a lot stiffer. Doesn’t bother me all that much.”

He brought his left hand up and wiggled the fingers on that hand. “Besides, I’m a lefty anyway.”

“So—apologies if this sounds like a stupid question to you, I don’t know anything about hockey—are there like, different hockey sticks for left-handed and right-handed players?”

Sungchan immediately broke into snickers, and you set down your mug to cross your arms over your chest indignantly.

“Hey, I didn’t laugh at you for not knowing what death of the author was—”

“I wasn’t making fun of you, I’m sorry,” he covered his mouth. “That was just… too cute. Uhm yes, there are lefty and righty sticks.”

You had to bite down your bottom lip to not smile at him calling you cute, and instead keep up your ruse of being offended. “I feel patronized.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” There was still a hint of a giggle in his tone, and you felt your self-righteous façade slip away as he continued, “You should come to a game, then, if you really want to broaden your horizons. The season just started. First home game is this Thursday, actually. 7:00 p.m. and students get free admission with your student ID.”

“Thursday?”

“Fridays are for basketball, Saturdays are for football.”

“Oh. Right.”

“You don’t go to those games either, do you?”

“Oh no, did I make it obvious?” You asked sarcastically.

“A bit,” Sungchan jested back.

Outside the window visible past Sungchan, the rain had let up a few minutes ago, and you briefly glanced over at your laptop for the time. Shit, your next alarm was going to be going off soon. If you left now, you should be home at roughly the right time for your next dose.

Clicking your tongue, you started packing up your things, “Well, looks like the rain’s finally let up enough to allow me safe passage. That’s my cue.”

“Oh.” The hockey player with you looked over his shoulder at the newly sunny day outside before turning back to watch you put your things away.

“Are you heading out too?” You nodded to his empty cup.

“I’ve uh, got some homework to do.”

“Guess this is where we part ways then.”

“Um, you didn’t say if you were going. To the game.”

You tucked your chin to your chest to hide your smitten smile as you put your laptop in your bag. Typically just asking for the details would’ve been taken for a yes, but Sungchan wanted extra confirmation. This boy wasn’t good for your heart, truly.

Turning back to him, you gave him a firm and nearly business-like nod. “Yeah, I’ll be there.”

A bright grin lit up his features. “Okay! Great! Uhm, feel free to bring some friends, I know just sitting in the stands by yourself might be lonely.”

“I’ll see if I can drag somebody else out. It’ll be a tall order, though. Literature majors, you know, we prefer our Shakesperean poetry readings.”

“Oh, well—”

“I’m kidding,” you laughed and stood then, slinging your tote onto your shoulder. “Honestly, have you seen Chenle at a rager? Boy can drink twice his body weight I swear. He shouldn’t, but he can.”

Before you could reach for your cup and saucer to buss your place, the hockey captain spoke up, “I’ll take care of your mug, don’t worry.”

“Oh, thanks, Sungchan! I’ll see you Thursday then.”

“Bye…” Sungchan trailed off, watching the door long after it had closed behind you.

He didn’t actually have any homework to do, and scrolled on his phone for a few minutes to make sure you were out of the area before leaving himself. He grabbed his long-empty plastic cup and your mug. His went in the trash, and as he went to put yours up with the other dishes and trays, his eyes were caught by the iridescent glitters left behind on the rim by your lip gloss.

[you: hey what are you doing thursday at 7:00?]

[chenle: depends on what weird poetry reading you’re trying to drag me to]

[you: not this time. Sungchan’s hockey game?]

[chenle: you want to go to a sporting event?? why????]

[you: i told him i’d go please don’t make me go by myself]

[chenle: did you offer to go or did he ask you to come?]

[you: he asked me to? i guess?]

[chenle: haha yeah fuck no i’m not going with you]

[you: why not????????]

[chenle: a guy invited you to one of his games? yeah no way am i coming with you]

[you: what difference does that make? you’re seriously going to make me go to a hockey game by myself?]

[chenle: i don’t know how to tell you this gently so: he wants to fuck you]

[you: bro???]

[chenle: especially hockey? caveman brain is activated, he wants to show off how big and strong he is for you over the other males]

[you: damn can’t believe i just blinked and woke up in 200 BC]

[chenle: i’m warning you, only go if you’re ready for the consequences. i.e., that]

[you: so you’re not coming with me]

[chenle: no <3]

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30

Your chronically early self had gotten there as soon as the doors opened to spectators in order to scope out the perfect spot for yourself. Somewhere not too close to any speakers, where you could still see what was going on, hopefully somewhere Sungchan could maybe see you, but you could make a quick escape if need be. A lot of parameters, hence the need to be early. That meant that you got to watch the visiting team warm up first, and now your school’s team was warming up before the game. Finally the stands started filling up, and you had to do a double-take at the newest figure entering.

“Zhong Chenle, you lying little bitch!” You cursed out your best friend who was approaching you.

He immediately went to defend himself as he plopped down beside you, “Look, I told you I wasn’t going with you, not that I wasn’t going at all. Come on, Lit major.”

He finished off with a solid knock on your head, which didn’t hurt all that much through the beanie you were wearing, but you still slapped his arm away with a glare.

“Are you sure you want to live until graduation day? I can’t tell sometimes.”

“Half the team are Nu Chi guys,” Chenle explained his being there, then waved at one of the players skating by, 23, who gave a salute back. “Jeno.”

“Oh.” You belatedly waved too, but your friend had already turned back to warming up.

Chenle then gave you the run-down on all your friends and acquaintances’ numbers as he spotted them.

“Goalie. Sicheng, 7.” He just blocked a shot from a familiar number, 23. “Already told you, 23 is Jeno. Right wing.”

“Does he always suck?”

“Here’s Ten, number 10. Right defense. He’s never told me which came first, his nickname or his jersey number.”

Sicheng blocked Ten’s shot.

“2 is Mark, center.” His went in.

“66, Donghyuck, center alternate.” His also went in.

“24, that’s Yangyang, left wing—and a miss!”

“This doesn’t bode well that so many of our players apparently kind of suck.” You muttered to yourself, well aware that Chenle was no longer listening to you.

Finally, the tallest of the team was skating up to take a shot. “And there’s your guy, Y/N. Number 27, Jung Sungchan, left defense, captain, your dreamboat—”

“If you don’t shut up—”

“Oh! All net!”

“Isn’t that a basketball—”

“Hey, you got your earplugs, right?”

“Yep, same ones for concerts,” you confirmed, reaching into your purse for them. You hadn’t been able to take your full tote bag into the school sporting event, so you had to condense the essentials into your smaller purse.

“Good, because uh, it’ll get loud.”

“I figured.”

“Yeah, remember how half the team are Nu Chi guys?”

Your eyes widened in realization, “Oh god.”

“Here they come!”

Whipping around to face the same direction he was looking, you saw a horde of about ten to fifteen guys storming the rink, practically shaking the audience section. They were all donned in blue and orange, your university’s colors, various hockey or Nu Chi merch and paraphernalia, and you would’ve absolutely bet money that at least three of them had Nu, Chi, and Tau symbols painted across each of their chests under their shirts. Chenle leapt up to greet them all, the volume of the area immediately rising tenfold at least.

You recognized most of the Nu Chi frat brothers, they were mutual friends or acquaintances of yours through Chenle over the years, and there were even some familiar graduated faces. Lee Taeyong was the first to pick up on your presence, squeezing past Jisung—a new pledge that had glommed onto Chenle in particular—to plop down behind your seat.

“What are you doing here, Y/N?” Taeyong asked you with a tilted head. “Not exactly a good place for you, is it?”

Taeyong was frat president for your first two years of college and his last two. You had an absolute disaster at a Nu Chi party in your freshman year that he was witness to. Ever since then, when you would see him in passing at other lowkey (or as lowkey as frat functions could get) Nu Chi events that Chenle took you to during those two years, you always got the distinct impression that he was keeping an eye on you during them.

“Could be asking you the same thing, Taeyong,” you countered, fully turning around in your seat to chat with the man. “Didn’t you graduate two years ago? You don’t have anything better to do on a Thursday night? Like your taxes or something?”

“Us old-timers who peaked in college like to come back and re-live our glory days vicariously for the first home game,” he entertained your jibe, making you giggle. “And somebody’s got to be these kids’ DD. They always go at it too hard after the first game. Win or lose.”

Johnny, another graduated Nu Chi brother, spoke up then, eyes laser-focused on you, “So Chenle’s finally dragged you out to a game, Y/N?”

You immediately looked at your friend with wide eyes, knowing what the answer was, and exactly what reaction said answer would garner. Chenle, on the other hand, seemed all too thrilled to join in, turning to face you with his hands on his hips and a knowing smirk on his face.

“Oh no, I didn’t bring Y/N. She actually didn’t know I was coming at all. I found her here all on her own,” he announced to all the guys, who were hanging on to every word he said. If literally anything else were happening, you might’ve laughed at how they were all wrapped around his finger.

“No offense, but you don’t really seem like you’re interested in hockey,” Jungwoo, a junior who you’d shared a couple literature classes with, said curiously.

You sighed, giving Chenle a frank look before admitting, “Jung Sungchan invited me.”

They exploded with various hoots, hollers, whoops, and whistles.

With a shake of your head, you turned back around to look back at the players on the ice, knowing full well that there was nothing you could do alleviate—or even really participate in—the absolute chaos that was happening behind you.

Eventually, the game started. Taeyong, who had moved to sit on your other side from Chenle, quietly explained the basics of what was going on to you: positions, plays, scoring, why the referee made certain calls. Chenle was caught between cheering along with the other Nu Chi guys and rattling off hyper-specific stats on individual players to you, so you were truly grateful to have Taeyong giving you your “hockey for dummies” tips and tidbits throughout.

You kept your eyes on number 27, as Chenle had pointed him out to you earlier. The gear made it somewhat difficult for you to really recognize any distinguishing features about Sungchan himself except maybe his height, made even greater by the skates he was wearing. But as much as the intellectual side of you might’ve hated to admit it, there was definitely some part of you that very much enjoyed watching him play; that got some kind of thrill every time somebody tried to check him and he didn’t budge—or when he checked somebody and they most definitely did budge.

Before you knew it, all three periods were over, and you were jumping to your feet along with the others, cheering wildly. Your school won by a landslide.

“Oh, they’re going to get plastered,” Taeyong murmured from beside you fondly.

All of you had been in the cheering section milled around in the ice rink lobby waiting for the team to get out of the locker room.

“That was fun,” you declared to Chenle as the two of you stood off to the side from the larger group of loud Nu Chi brothers.

“Yeah, you didn’t seem like you were listening to a word I said.”

“Because you were telling me sports stats, Chenle, I’m surprised my brain didn’t start bleeding out of my ears.”

“Well I’m surprised your nose wasn’t bleeding watching your dreamboat Jung Sungchan beat up all those other guys,” Chenle teased. “200 BC called, they want their cavewoman back—”

You lunged at him, managing to get an arm around his throat in the beginnings of a questionably friendly chokehold, “I’m going to kill you, you little—”

“No murder in the rink!” Came the chastising voice of Johnny Suh from afar, and you reluctantly let him go.

The players started streaming out of the locker room soon after, and you nervously scanned the crowd for Sungchan. Chenle was easily dragged into the chaos of everyone celebrating, leaving you standing off to the side waiting.

Finally, you spotted him. Sungchan was wearing a simple pair of black sweatpants and black hoodie with your school’s name embroidered across the front, his hair a bit mussed up. He was deep in conversation with Sicheng, brow furrowed. The goalie’s features were similarly serious as they gestured to each other. You stayed put, not wanting to interrupt. Taeyong had mentioned that Sicheng was sort of like a co-captain, you guessed they might be doing something important.

Then you’d suddenly made eye contact with Sicheng, who was facing you. He gave you a casual head nod, and said something to Sungchan you couldn’t quite make out. The captain whipped around, a bright smile coming to his face as soon as his eyes landed on you. You lifted your hand to give him a small wave and smile back.

Sungchan quickly ended his conversation with Sicheng, making his way over to where you were standing by a wall.

“Hey, Y/N,” he was still smiling down at you, his eyes practically glittering even in the harsh fluorescents of the lobby. “So you really made it out.”

“I said I would.” You fidgeted with the straps of your bag.

“And…?”

You tilted your head, “And?”

“What did you think? You know, are your horizons super broad now or something?”

You couldn’t help but laugh. His phrasing was funny, but also remembering how he played and was now giving you his undivided attention admittedly made your chest flutter.

“It was good, yeah. I had fun,” you confirmed. “You uhm, you played really good. I think.”

“Thanks,” Sungchan scratched at the back of his neck, and you swore the tips of his ears were pink, but that could’ve just been the cold. “Did you drive yourself?”

“Walked, my apartment is close.”

“Uh, so, we all go out to a bar after games usually. It’s kind of a sleazy dive bar, and I know it’s a Thursday, but I’d really like for you to come. I’ll buy you a dr—”

“I’m really sorry, Sungchan, but I can’t. I’d love to, but…” You trailed off, wracking your brain for some concise way to explain why he couldn’t buy you a drink.

“Don’t worry, it’s okay,” Sungchan assured you, and you winced at the way the hopeful smile fell from his face.

An awkward silence descended over the two of you. You were chewing on your bottom lip, desperately trying to think of something to say to gloss over your rejecting his offer. You didn’t want to end the conversation on such a sour note, nor did you want to leave him just yet either. Stealing a glance at the clock above you on the wall, however, you knew that you’d need to be going soon anyway.

The hockey player was the one who ended up breaking the silence, “Can I walk you home? It’s late for you to be out by yourself.”

A relieved smile overtook your features, and you hoped he could see the sincerity in it, “Sure, thank you. Let me let Chenle know he’s relieved of his man-shaped friend duties for the night, and we can go.”

You got on your tiptoes to look around for your friend, finally spotting him in a headlock by Jeno, with Yangyang giving him a noogie. They all seemed to be laughing, so it didn’t look too much like bullying that you felt the need to intervene.

“You know, I’ll just text him, actually,” you chuckled, bringing out your phone to do just that.

“Man-shaped friend duties?” Sungchan questioned as the automatic doors parted for the two of you.

“His words, not mine,” you snorted. “But you know, making sure a woman doesn’t walk places by herself at night, that kind of stuff. Having a man just with her makes her safer, as fucked up as that is. Chenle corrected it to be man-shaped since he’s not the manly protective type.”

“I see.”

“But it looks like you’re on man-shaped friend duties for tonight, Sungchan.”

As soon as the words were out of your mouth, you wanted to stuff them back in. Friend. God, that was absolutely not what was happening here and you knew it. Chenle’s previous texts flashed across your mind. You obviously knew why Sungchan would’ve wanted to invite you to his game, and you said yes purposefully. Friend. Foot, meet mouth.

Sungchan blinked down at you, but seemed to take it in stride, “Of course, Y/N. Anytime you need a man-shaped person at your side, just call me up. I’ll bring my hockey stick.”

He patted his gear bag that was slung over his shoulder, making you giggle.

“I’ll keep you on speed dial, then.”

It was a short walk to your apartment, and you and Sungchan mostly talked about the game. You asked him a couple questions that Taeyong hadn’t covered during it— which Chenle might’ve, except you had tuned him out. And as you came to a stop at your front door, you didn’t yet fish your keys from your bag.

“How often do you have away games?” You asked.

“They’re usually about half,” Sungchan shrugged. “It’s a bit annoying missing classes, and the bus is kind of rank on the trip back.”

“Ew…” You wrinkled your nose.

“But they’re always a lot of fun.”

“So, uhm, when’s your next home game?”

His face brightened as he seemed to realize what exactly you were asking, “Next week. Same time.”

“Okay, cool.” You bit your lip.

“Cool,” he echoed.

You looked up at Sungchan, catching his eyes for a heart stopping moment. Both of you were standing on your welcome mat, he was close enough that you could catch a faint whiff of the detergent from his clothes—a college athlete with freshly washed clothes? You might already be in love—and watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed. You had the urge to grab him by the front of his hoodie and yank him—

A garish, blaring ringing going off interrupted your split-second pros and cons weighing that had been going on. Sungchan startled at the noise, reminding you very much of a baby moose in the moment. You groaned as you reached into your bag for your phone.

“Oh my god, stop it,” you hissed under your breath as you snoozed the alarm that was going off on there. Once it was quiet, you looked back up at the man with you sheepishly, “Sorry about that.”

He joked, “Curfew?”

You laughed lightly, “No, just a reminder for something I have to do after I get home. It’s fine.”

“Well, before you go do that, can I ask you something?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Nu Chi and the team are hosting a joint Halloween party this year, and I’d really like it if I could see you there.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow, people will probably start showing up after like ten, eleven. It’s at the Nu Chi house, theirs is bigger than ours.”

“Fascinating phrasing,” you snickered.

“I know this is last minute, so I get if you have other plans or something.”

“I… can probably swing by for a bit, yeah,” you nodded.

“Great!” Sungchan beamed. “Oh, it is a costume party, by the way.”

“Costume?” You arched a brow. “What’ll you being going as? And please don’t say hockey player.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, “Definitely not… that would be lame…”

“You were planning on going as a hockey player, weren’t you?”

“Me and Mark have been putting all our spare time into planning this thing, I haven’t had any time to think about a costume.”

“Well you’ve given me 24-hour notice for a costume, so this is your 24-hour notice for one too. When I find you at the Nu Chi house tomorrow, I do not want to see a hockey jersey, Jung Sungchan. Any sports player is off-limits, understand?” You poked his chest with finality.

“Yes, ma’am.” He nodded in assent.

Just then, your alarm went off again, and this time you jumped out of your skin. Apparently, another 5 minutes had elapsed. With a sigh, you reached into your bag for your keys.

“I should let you go do that thing,” Sungchan chuckled. “Goodnight, Y/N.”

“Goodnight, Sungchan,” you unlocked your front door. “See you tomorrow.”

Sitting at your kitchen table a couple minutes later, you were looking down at the vitals displayed on the screen of your blood pressure cuff.

“Jung Sungchan…” you muttered to yourself as you added the reading to your digital record, noting how the line graph jumped up with the new data.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31

“You agreed to go to a frat party?” Chenle’s eyes were bugging out of his head as he sat across a high top in the dining hall from you. You two were grabbing a quick lunch between classes, and doing an obligatory catch-up on how your short but sweet walk with Sungchan went last night. “Do you remember what happened last time, Y/N?”

“Hard to forget,” you snorted.

“And yet it seems you did, somehow, lost in dreamboat Jung Sungchan’s eyes.”

You threw a fry from his plate at him, “It wasn’t like that!”

He ducked, letting it sail by his head and hit the wall behind him.

“Then what was it like?”

“It was more like a big puppy that I couldn’t say no to and—”

You were cut off by loud gagging noises from your friend, and went to kick him under the table, but missed and hit his chair leg instead. He still got the message, quieting down to let you continue.

“I told him I’d be able to just pop in for a bit. I’ll be in and out before it’ll get too bad.”

“Famous last words...”

“Hold on, LeLe,” you grabbed your friend’s arm to stop him on the sidewalk in front of the Nu Chi Tau frat house.

Taking another look into your tote bag, you made sure once again that you had everything you could possibly need tonight. Medications, snacks, water bottle, ear plugs, the usual. After closing the snaps on the bag, you nervously fidgeted with the hem of your costume. Generic witch, it was the last thing the costume store had in your size that wasn’t garishly scary. You understood well and good how college Halloween parties worked: you had to look hot, not terrifying. Not to mention that those horror show costumes were also much pricier than your “Sexy Witch” one.

“You look cute, Y/N,” Chenle reassured you, readjusting your witch hat for you. “Jung Sungchan won’t know what hit him.”

Chenle, on the other hand, was an almost scarily realistic zombie. If you hadn’t spent an ungodly amount of time hanging out on his bathroom counter this afternoon watching him apply the SFX makeup himself, you would’ve thought he had hired a professional makeup artist to do it. He’d always gone ham on Halloween since you two were kids, ever since he figured out how to make a Transformers costume out of cardboard boxes in primary school. You usually participated in partner costumes with him, but you really didn’t want him to make you a gross-looking zombie tonight.

“Thanks.” You gave him as confident a smile as you could muster.

Resecuring your grip on your go bag, you started up the walkway to the house with your friend.

You had been able to faintly hear the thumping bass of the music from outside, but once inside, you were almost immediately hit by a wall of music. Just inside the front door you were faced with a mass of people in bright costumes, flashing lights, corny Halloween decorations of cobwebs, spiders, ghosts, and pumpkins all over the walls.

Chenle looked over at you expectantly, “Y/N?”

“I couldn’t find my concert earplugs, only my noise canceling. I won’t be able to hear anybody unless they’re shouting at me if I put those in,” you replied, having to raise your voice to make sure he heard you. “I’ll be fine.”

“Okay…” He sighed and grabbed your elbow. “Come on, let’s find a quieter spot in the house then.”

You gave him a thumbs up and bright grin, already feeling your ears acclimate to the loudness. You could totally do this. It was one night, and you were just going to see Sungchan for a bit then go. Pop in then back out, just like you said.

You didn’t have to wait long to spot Sungchan. Chenle had barely tugged you into the next room over from the small foyer when a familiar head was visible over the crowd, his bright smile focused on you.

“Hey, Y/N!” Sungchan grinned down at you. He was dressed in a suit and tie, what you were guessing was probably his only set, and his hair was parted to one side, styled off of his face. The tie had already been loosened, and the tuck of his dress shirt wasn’t so crisp.

“Hi, Sungchan,” you smiled up at him, amazed that you could hear anything over both the music and now your heart beating so loudly in your ears.

“So you did find a costume.”

“Oh, yeah,” you messed with the hem of your skirt. “Last one at the shop.”

“You look great.” He was still beaming down at you, and you could feel your skin growing warmer. “I’m really glad you could make it.”

“Thanks. Uhm, so what are you? Funeral director?”

“What? No, I’m—” His sentence stopped in its tracks as he looked down at the front of his suit jacket. He started patting his empty breast pocket, then other jacket pockets, then pants pockets, then looked around on the floor. “Fuck.”

“What?” You looked around under your feet, but weren’t able to see anything other than the usual party debris. “Did you lose something?”

Sungchan looked back up at you, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck. “Well, I was about to say that I’m Mulder from the X-Files. But I’ve apparently lost my fake FBI badge. So it looks like I’m a funeral director now.”

You giggled. “Maybe you can be Mulder when he retires and buys a funeral home.”

“Yeah, the perfect costume. Won’t take too long to explain to anybody, they’ll get it immediately,” he laughed.

“Hey, I’m just glad you didn’t wear a jersey.”

“I’m nothing if not a man of my word.”

“Oh, have you seen Chenle’s makeup by the—” But when you turned around to gesture to your friend, you found that he had disappeared, leaving you and the hockey captain all alone.

“Chenle?” Sungchan asked with a tilted head. “I didn’t even realize he was here yet.”

You shook your head fondly at your friend’s antics. Well, you’d have to thank him later.

“He must have gone to get a drink or something. Either way, it seems I’ve been abandoned.”

“Well, you can come hang out with me and some of the guys, if you want?” He offered.

“Yeah, I’d really like that,” you nodded, readjusting your bag to make sure it was pulled in tight to your body.

Sungchan led you through the frat house with a hand on the small of your back, and you snuck a glance up at him when he went to greet someone who had called his name as you passed by. He kept you tucked into his side as he slowed to give the guy a friendly slap on the shoulder. As soon as Sungchan had stopped to say hello, two more people appeared seemingly from nowhere, eagerly greeting him as well. You faintly recognized one, Jisung, a new Nu Chi pledge. He’d been at the hockey game you went to, and always found Chenle at Nu Chi events that you tagged along to. You looked up at Sungchan’s animated, handsome face again as he continued talking.

“This is Y/N.” Sungchan’s voice suddenly pulled you into the conversation. You snapped your focus down from his face to the other three that were in front of you, and realized that they all definitely knew that you’d been staring.

“Oh, hi.” You gave the three boys a nervous smile.

“Y/N, this is Jisung, Shotaro, and Renjun. Jisung and Shotaro are Nu Chi pledges, Renjun’s a sophomore brother, and he’s—you’re a Literature major, right, Renjun?”

“Yes.” One of them nodded.

“Renjun’s a Literature major too, Y/N,” Sungchan finished the introduction.

“Cool, cool,” you nodded. It had been Shotaro that called Sungchan over in the first place, you were pretty sure.

“Anyway, thanks for the offer, guys, but I already promised Hyuck I would, so we’ve got to go.”

Sungchan ushered you away to the tune of a chorus of disappointed groans from the three boys, and you wracked your brain to see if you could recall hearing any sort of proposition from them. But nope, between the loud music and your prior lack of attention to the conversation, you had nothing.

“What did they want?” You gave up and finally asked Sungchan.

“Beer pong. Hope you don’t mind that I declined. I’ve already had a couple and am not looking to get wasted quite yet.”

“Oh, no, not at all,” you shook your head. Thank god you didn’t have to deal with that yet. “Not really my thing anyway. Terrible hand-eye coordination.”

Sungchan seemed about to say something when someone walked by you with an exceptionally pungent cologne. The whiff shot directly to your head like a bullet, the sharp pain making you wince and hiss. It took everything in you not to cover your nose like Edward Cullen and instead shift to breathing through your mouth for a few moments.

“Y/N? You okay?” Sungchan’s voice was clearly concerned.

The sharp pain was gone just a couple moments after it had registered, and you opened your eyes up again, giving him a reassuring smile. “Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry, don’t know what that was.”

“Okay, good.” He squeezed your shoulder before dropping his hand back down to your back and continuing your trek through the Nu Chi house.

You and Sungchan finally made it to a room adjacent to the main living room, where there were a couple of beat-up old couches and lots of Nu Chi Tau paraphernalia. The bass of the music playing in the next room over would occasionally make the picture frames and plaques on the walls rattle, and you could hear every word of the songs crystal clear, even though the room that you were in was packed to the brim with partygoers as well. Sungchan stopped you at a group of people gathered around one of the couches, tapping the shoulders of two of them who had their backs to you. Donghyuck and Hendery turned around, immediately parting to make room for the both of you in the group upon seeing you.

Almost everyone in the group was familiar to you either as friends or acquaintances. Your social circle was big thanks to Chenle, who was friends with practically the entire hockey team and Nu Chi house, despite being a member of neither. But now you didn’t have your best friend at your side, just Sungchan and your tote bag, both of which you were keeping close to you.

“Oh shit, Y/N!” Hendery grinned, pulling you into a one-armed hug of greeting. “Damn, it really is you!”

“Yeah, I’m a witch, not a ghost, Hendery,” you retorted jokingly. He was dressed as Prince Eric, if you weren’t mistaken.

“Well, when Sungchan said you were coming, some of us were a bit... skeptical.”

Someone dressed as Venom cut in from Hendery’s other side sharply, “No, I believe you said ‘never in a million fucking years, loverboy.’”

The rest of the group erupted in tipsy snickers and ‘ooh’s, and you felt Sungchan jostle a little as someone had presumably given him a teasing shove.

“Alright, guys. You can cut it out now,” Sungchan spoke over them authoritatively. He then looked down to you, features softening. “Sorry. Anyway, this is Donghyuck, he’s on the team and in Nu Chi—”

He pointed to the boy right next to him, wearing a very classic vampire costume splattered with a little bit of fake blood or fruit punch (you couldn’t tell in the poor lighting), and you wondered if he had also gone to a Halloween store last-minute like you. You knew him both from the game, and from a couple times you’d seen him with Chenle outside of frat or hockey events.

“Mark, frat president and he’s on the hockey team—” He was next to Donghyuck, dressed as Spiderman. You were already familiar with Mark, both from the game, and a group project in a class last year. You wondered if Mark remembered that.

“Ten, hockey and Nu Chi—” Ten was reclined on the couch, a top hat that had presumably been on his head earlier now resting on his propped up knee. Between that and his eyepatch, he clearly was dressed as some character that you couldn’t identify in the moment. You knew Ten outside of hockey, the frat, or even Chenle. He was a Lit major, so you had shared classes and study groups over the years. He raised a friendly hand in greeting.

“Sicheng, my co-captain and he’s in Nu Chi, too—” He was on the couch with Ten, sequestered to one corner as his teammate was taking up most of the space with his legs. Sicheng was dressed up as an angel, fake wings, little halo, and all. And you knew Sicheng through Ten, they’d been roommates since freshman year and could often be found together around campus. He gave you a nod of familiarity.

“Dejun, Nu Chi—” Sungchan had finally reached the man who was dressed as Venom.

“And you of course, unfortunately, know Hendery, Nu Chi.”

“Oh, boo, Sungchan,” Hendery stuck his tongue out at the captain.

You smiled and nodded a little bit at everyone else, but you were finding it hard to concentrate with the music in the background. Did it really need to be that loud?

“Y/N?” The sound of your name snapped your focus up, and you looked around for the source.

A few of the guys had gone back to their own conversations. Sungchan was looking down at you, head tilted inquisitively. Presumably he had been to the one to say your name.

“Oh, sorry,” you tried to give a nonchalant chuckle, but it was getting harder and harder to even articulate yourself with all the stimulation. “The music...”

“Oh!” Sungchan perked up at this. “Do you want to go dance?”

He was offering a hand out to you, and you stared down at it, mouth opening and closing as your brain felt like it was moving through sludge. You quite literally could not process what that string of words actually meant for a good second, and then it took even longer for you to even tie together the right way for you to respond. Cognitive fatigue. Oh this was not good. You squeezed your eyes shut, then open.

You again gave him an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. I’m- I’m kind of light-headed right now. Could you get me something to drink?”

His features immediately turned concerned. “Of course. Do you need to sit down or a ride h—”

“Can you just get me a drink?” Your brain was stuck in a perpetual loop now that it had locked onto one task. It took all of your energy just to regulate your tone enough to keep your voice (hopefully) as sweet as possible, despite the fact that you had cut him off.

“Of course. I’ll be right back.” He squeezed your upper arm reassuringly before taking off.

Your eyes were fixated on the spot where he had just been, your vision seeming to continuously zoom in and past your head. Squeezing your eyes shut once more, you took a deep breath through your mouth to try to recenter yourself. But it didn’t help any. Your head felt like a balloon that someone was overinflating, and you knew exactly what was coming next. You swallowed thickly, taking a second to look through the crowd. Nope, you couldn’t wait for Sungchan. Not like you could even verbalize much of anything right now. You had to go take your medication.

So you hurried into the crowd, clutching your tote bag to your chest like your life depended on it—which it really did. Mumbling ‘excuse me’s to everyone you shouldered, bumped into, or stepped on the toes of, you finally made it to a door that you were pretty sure was a bathroom. You tried the handle first, and when it gave in, you still knocked as you opened it, just in case. It was miraculously empty. Maybe there really was a God. Then, the balloon started to deflate, the pressure in your head inverted, becoming a harsh, squeezing pain instead. Nope, nope, definitely not a God. Or at least not a benevolent one.

You locked the door behind you with clumsy fingers and shuffled over to the sink. The countertop was in good enough condition for you to toss your bag up there and start rooting around through it. Bottle after bottle after bottle, then you finally secured the right two. You shook out a pill from one, then a pill from the other. The lights above the mirror were becoming more insufferable by the second. You cracked open the fresh bottle of water you had stored in your bag too, and knocked both pills back in one big gulp.

Tossing the water back into your bag, you could fucking finally flip the switch and turn the lights in the bathroom off. After feeling your way along the wall, you eventually found the bathtub, and sat yourself down. The music was somewhat muffled in here, and you figured this was going to be the darkest room in the whole Nu Chi house. Right now, your plan was to wait in here for your medication to kick in and hopefully stop this migraine before it really got going. Then you could make your great escape, and send Sungchan some bullshit apology text later. After tossing your witch hat to the ground vaguely beside your bag, you gently rested your head against the cool tile of the shower with a sigh. Chenle was right, you shouldn’t have come. Cynically, you thought that you should have timed it. See how long you lasted before you got a migraine. You’d be surprised if that was even 15 minutes.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Sungchan returned to the group with your requested drink in hand and another for himself, frowning when he immediately noticed your absence. “Hey, where’d Y/N go?”

“Oh, shit, uh…” Mark looked around with a baffled look on his face. “No clue dude, she was just here a second ago.”

“I’m going to go find her. Here.” He shoved both drinks into Hendery’s hands.

“Sungchan, come on, take a hint, man,” Donghyuck sighed, patting the taller boy’s shoulder sympathetically.

“What?”

“She asked you to get her something to drink and then slipped away when nobody was looking.”

“Y/N’s not like that.”

“And denial’s a river in Egypt.”

“No, she hasn’t been feeling well all night. I think. I’m going to go look for her.”

“So you’re admitting that you make her physically ill.”

“Dude, you’re just asking to get your shit rocked, you know that, right?” Ten warned him.

“Hey, I’m standing up for women—”

Mark cut him off, “Hyuck, you’re on your own if Sungchan decides to fuck your shit up. I don’t care if you’re my little, I’m not—”

“Oh, wahhh, my big strong big won’t protect me.”

“Christ, I swear he’s only had like four shots and a couple…”

His friends’ voices quickly faded into the din of the party as Sungchan pushed through the crowd. He couldn’t spot you, but found maybe the next best thing.

“Hey, Chenle.” He grabbed him by the elbow, turning him away from the arm wrestling competition between Jeno and Yangyang that he was spectating. Or, he at least hoped this was Chenle, it was a bit hard to tell with the zombie makeup.

“Hey, Romeo!” Chenle greeted him jovially, punching him in the shoulder over-zealously. Okay, definitely him.

“Have you seen Y/N? In the past like, five minutes or so?”

“You lost her?” The zombie asked angrily, cheerful mood immediately soured.

“Uh, yes? Sorry?”

“No, I’m not pissed at you,” he shook his head at Sungchan’s apology. “You go check the bathrooms, I’ll look outside. Don’t bother calling her, she’s not going to pick up.”

“What’s—”

But Chenle was already gone.

You weren’t sure how long you had been sitting in there for, but you could feel some of the overstimulation from the party beginning to slide off of you. Which could be either a good or bad thing. Cognitive fatigue was usually a prodrome and postdrome for you. Regaining some clarity could either mean that your medication was working and the migraine was going away, or you were about to enter the proper migraine phase. The fact that the pain hadn’t gone away was worrying. But at least it was dark, and relatively quiet. Oh, quiet... you could put in your earplugs now too.

Just as you had gone to grab for your bag, there was a knock at the bathroom door. You froze. Shit.

“Occupied!” You yelled out hesitantly to them, wincing at the loudness of your own voice. Okay, ow.

The person knocked again, harder.

“Seriously! Busy in here! Puking my brains out!” You yelled even louder, hoping they got the fucking idea this time. There was no way you wanted to have to actually get up and deal with a drunk partygoer that needed to piss and/or puke.

“Y/N? That you?” A familiar voice came through the door. “It’s Sungchan, can I come in?”

“Oh, sure, hold on.” You clambered out of the tub as carefully as you could in the dim lighting coming from under the door.

Against your better judgment, you turned one set of lights on in the bathroom, then cracked the bathroom door open. Sungchan was in fact on the other side, and you stepped back to let him in. He looked around the bathroom, worry on his face.

You shut the door behind him, saying sheepishly, “So, I was lying about the puking my brains out.”

“But you don’t look okay.” He peered down at your face as you were still wincing against the bright lights. “You didn’t drink anything tonight, what’s wrong?”

You went to sit on the side of the tub, feeling a pain in your eyes now. You gestured to the light switch. “Can you turn that light off?”

“Uh, okay…” He obliged, and the room was dim once again.

Your eyes adjusted quickly, and you could still see the general outline of everything in the room. Sitting back in the tub, you pulled your knees to your chest. Well, no chance for your great escape now. Sungchan climbed into the dry tub with you, facing you. He didn’t fit great in the small space, all gangly limbs, and your knees bumped into each other. But he sat there with you quietly.

“I’ve got a migraine coming on, I had to get somewhere quiet and dark and take my meds.” You told him bluntly, opting to just take the plunge. Not like you could even attempt flowery language at the moment anyway. Sure, some of your speech capabilities were coming back now that there was less sensory input, but you weren’t going to be doing any soliloquies tonight.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Sungchan said quietly. “Do you want me to leave?”

“No, no. I actually- I actually don’t want to be alone right now, if that’s okay?” You surprised yourself with your answer.

“Yeah, of course.” He said reassuringly. “Do you want me to take you home?”

“I might not have drank but you did. I’ll be okay here, for the most part. I’m the one who came knowing that I get sound-induced migraines.”

“Wait, really?”

“Mm, yeah,” you pinched the bridge of your nose to alleviate some of the tension there for a moment. “Remember when I said Chenle pushes me out of my comfort zone in a good way most of the time?”

“Right.”

“One of the times it wasn’t... good was when he got an invite to Nu Chi’s Halloween party our freshman year, dragged me with him. And he always means the best when he does stuff like that. I hadn’t made any new friends at college, meanwhile he had a bunch, including some of the pledges at Nu Chi.”

“How he got the invite.”

“Exactly.” You needed to take a pause, resting your head against the cool tile again. After a few deep breaths, you pushed on in the story. “Anyway, we’d been there for a couple hours when the loudness and the music and everything finally got to me and I got a migraine. I had my go bag on me, and went to what I thought was an empty corner of the house to take my meds. But a couple other people saw me knocking back pills and wanted some. My head was hurting like a bitch, and they were trying to grab them from me and anyway, I spilled a bunch of them all over the floor, drenched myself with my water and their beer, and elbowed a dude and gave him a bloody nose.”

“Holy shit,” Sungchan breathed out.

You opened and closed your jaw a couple times to try to relax the muscles and joints there. “I couldn’t even open my eyes because my head hurt so bad. Chenle told me later I was screaming and Taeyong wanted to call an ambulance until Chenle ran up and explained what was happening. They put me, Chenle, and Jeno—turns out that’s whose nose I broke—in Taeyong’s room in the house for the rest of the night. Neither Chenle nor I were in any shape to drive ourselves home.”

“Wait is that how you met Jeno?”

“Yeah, and it turns out he wasn’t one of the ones trying to take my pills, he was trying to break up me and the people who were. Collateral damage.” You recounted it regrettably.

“When Jeno found out I’d invited you, he told me he’d keep his room clear in case we needed it. I thought he was just being a dick.” Sungchan sounded like he was having an epiphany. “Y/N, do you think you’ll be okay to move up a floor?”

The bass was thudding through the door, and you knew that if you stayed here when you transitioned into the throes of however bad this migraine fully got, you’d regret it. Grabbing your earplugs from your bag and putting them in, you gave him a thumbs-up and attempted a smile, but you knew it came out like more of a wince.

Sungchan kept you between him and the wall as you moved through the Nu Chi house, casting as much of a shadow against the garishly flashing lights as possible. Even through your earplugs, the music was raucous, people were practically screaming at each other, and you gripped one hand around his arm and the other onto his suit jacket to keep yourself balanced and to not lose him. When you got to the stairs, he fully wrapped an arm around your shoulders to jerk you out of the way of a drunk Nu Chi member stumbling his way down, and kept it there the rest of the way up. The noise was squeezing around your head like a vice, and you shut your eyes tight at the top of the stairs for a moment in an attempt to clear your head.

Sungchan’s voice was right beside your ear, muffled through the earplugs, “We’re almost there, Y/N, I’m sorry, come on.”

You were vaguely aware of the man with you feeling around on the top of a doorway before jiggling a doorhandle, and finally you were in a blissfully dark and quiet-ish room. Your head definitely hurt more than before, and you practically collapsed onto the bed.

“He was kind enough to stuff all his dirty clothes in the closet,” Sungchan muttered.

You managed a strangled chuckle at that, dropping your go bag onto the floor beside the bed. A moment of silence passed, and you could hear Sungchan awkwardly shifting his weight between his feet at the doorway.

“Sungchan,” you said his name, then patted the empty half of the bed beside you. “You can sit. I know Jeno doesn’t have any other furniture in here besides the bed and his PlayStation.”

“He probably only has a bedframe because it came with the room.”

You snickered, but were cut off by the squeezing pain turning to a sharp, stabbing pain behind your left eye, “Oh fuck!”

“Y/N?!” Sungchan was right beside you, and you felt the bed dip as he sat down beside you.

“Sorry, sorry, it feels like I’m getting an icepick lobotomy! Jesus!” You hissed, cupping a hand over your left eye as if that were actually going to do anything. “It’s normal, I’m fine. Relatively.”

“Okay…”

Still clutching your eye, you rolled onto your side and brought your knees up towards your chest. You blindly fumbled towards the head of the bed, and felt a pillow being pressed into your hand.

“Thanks,” you muttered, tucking it under your head.

“Do you want to lay under the covers?” Sungchan whispered.

“Do they smell like Jeno’s washed them in the past week?”

He laughed breathily at that, “Miraculously they do. I think he was planning on getting laid.”

“He gave up getting his dick wet for me. Jeno’s a real one,” you mumbled, feeling the covers that you were laying on top of being pulled out from under you.

Sungchan gently brought the sheet up to your shoulder, then a blanket too. The stabbing pain behind your eye was still there, and your stomach filled with dread as you acknowledged that your acute medication wasn’t going to be working this time. This was going to be a full-blown migraine, and who knew how many hours it would last.

“Thank you.”

“Is there anything else you need? Water?”

“No. Just uh, let me know when two hours have passed, I can take another dose of my meds that aren’t fucking working then.”

“Oh. Will do.”

You opened and closed your jaw, letting out a distinct groan. Another few minutes passed. Or, you think it was a few minutes, you couldn’t really check your phone for the time.

“Sungchan.”

“Yes?”

“You don’t have to stay. I’m sure the party is a lot more fun.”

“Do you want me to go?”

“…No.”

“I want to stay. I’m not going to have any fun out there knowing that you’re in all in this pain all alone in here.”

You squinted your right eye open, and had to crane your neck to look up at where Sungchan was sitting against the headboard. He had taken his suit jacket and shoes off at some point, now just in a rumpled dress shirt, loosened tie, slacks, and socks. He held your eye contact steadily, head tilted slightly and a frown across his handsome features.

Reaching your unoccupied hand up towards him, he watched it with confusion.

“What do you need? Your bag?”

“No.” You grabbed his hand, giving it a light squeeze.

“Oh.” An adorably radiant grin was on his face now instead.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1

Sungchan knew you’d finally fallen asleep when you stopped muttering swears and curses under your breath, the pained expression fell from your face, and your hand that was holding his went limp. He could still hear the party going strong outside of Jeno’s bedroom, and a glance at his phone told him it was just after one in the morning. He had no want to rejoin his friends, to leave you.

He took his tie all the way off, thinking to himself that if you were feeling better, you might have joked that he looked like Mulder the off-duty funeral director. And he would’ve laughed and watched the cute way the corners of your mouth quirked up when you said something that you thought was funny. He set the tie down with his shoes on the floor beside the bed.

Careful to stay on top of the covers that you were sleeping under, Sungchan shifted until he was laying down too, pillow tucked under his head, facing you on his side, hand still holding yours.

Like usual, you didn’t remember falling asleep, but you did remember shutting your eyes tight and wishing really hard for your head to stop hurting so bad. Or to die. Whichever the Universe felt like granting. And judging by the fact that you were now waking up without a migraine, it seemed like the former.

The first thing you were aware of before you even opened your eyes was that you felt like shit. Sure, your head didn’t hurt anymore, but jeez the morning after wasn’t much better. Tired, achy, and your brain felt like TV static.

The second thing that you were aware of, after opening your eyes, was Jung Sungchan just a few inches from your face. He was still asleep, soft bursts of air passing from his lips and mussing up strands of hair that were falling into his eyes. You didn’t quite have enough in you to coo over his bedhead, but you could give half of a fond smile as you pushed yourself into a sitting position, running a sleepy hand over one side of your face.

Only one of your earplugs was still in your ears, and you looked around the bedsheets for the other one. After securing it, you scooted over to the edge of the bed to put the plugs back into your carrying case before rolling back over and pulling the blankets over you again. You deserved this, honestly. Sleeping in late, a comfy bed, warm blankets, a cute boy next to you, nothing to—

Your happy thoughts were ripped away by the sound of a loud alarm. You shot up, scrambling towards your tote bag to grab your phone from the depths of it and turn your goddamn alarm off before it woke Sungchan up.

“Mm?”

Too late.

Sheepishly, you looked over at him, “Sorry…”

“‘S okay,” he mumbled, flopping onto his back and rubbing a hand over his face. “How’s your head?”

“Better. A lot better, thanks.”

“Good, good.” He yawned, “Morning, by the way.”

“Good morning.”

His eyes were closed as he laid there, a hand resting on his chest, and you weren’t sure if he had fallen back asleep.

“…Sungchan?”

“Hm?”

Taking his inquisitive tone as a sign that you could keep talking, you said, “Uhm, that was the first time I’ve had anybody around for one my migraines in a while. I’m sorry if it was… well, I don’t know. What was it like for you?”

He opened his eyes, rolling onto his side to face you and tucking a hand under his cheek, “Oh, uh, I mean, I wasn’t quite worried, since you seemed like you knew exactly what was happening, you know? But still, I… I was wishing there was more I could do. It was weird knowing that you were in pain but not being able to see where it hurt.”

“I should’ve figured that might be upsetting. Sorry about all that.”

“No, Y/N, it's okay. I get it, you just wanted someone with you when you were hurting.”

“Yeah, yeah, I did,” you nodded, curling one of your hands into a fist in your lap, digging your nails into your palm in an attempt to not cry at how easily he saw right into you.

“I was more than happy to sit with you.”

“I’ve had these stupid migraines for years now. Tried every treatment in the book, been on every regiment. And my friends and family, they don’t treat me like I’m made of glass or anything, which I’m grateful for. Everyone in my life knows I’m a pro at it all: I’ve got my go bag, all my meds, my alarms, I’ve been going to doctors’ appointments, testing, everything for years. But like... they still hurt. The migraines still fucking hurt.” Your voice cracked over the word, and your nails dug in deeper. “And I just… think they forget that part sometimes? I don’t know, I guess they hear the word ‘migraine’ thousands of times over the years it sort of loses its meaning. They kind of forget what one actually is. But it hurts Sungchan, my head just hurts for hours or even days, sometimes so bad I throw up from the pain. I can’t do anything but lay in bed in the dark and cry. Last night’s wasn’t that bad but still… thank you. I needed for it to all be real to somebody.”

Sungchan pushed up into a sitting position, and through your watery vision you could see that his brows were furrowed. You followed where his gaze was locked, and watched as he gently unfurled your fingers. You used the thumb of your other hand to rub at the divots that your nails had left in your skin.

“The migraines are why I’ve been all weird, by the way.” You added, trying to ignore the strain in your voice.

“What?”

“When you wanted to buy me a drink after the game. One of my migraine medications that I take, I can’t drink alcohol on it. It just felt like a weird and long explanation to have to give in the moment. And when you asked if I wanted to dance with you last night, the music would’ve made the migraine come on quicker than it did, but explaining it to you then, again it felt like it would’ve ruined the moment even more.”

“Oh… don’t worry about it.”

There was still one big thing you hadn’t smoothed over. But it looks like you’re on man-shaped friend duties tonight, Sungchan. Stupid, stupid.

Pushing through the discomfort prickling at your skin, you asked, “Sungchan, do you want to go on a date?”

“A…” He looked you dead in the eyes for a moment, mouth parted, and blinked once, twice before he was absolutely beaming at you. “Yeah, yes, I do.”

“Okay.” You couldn’t help but giggle, nerves buzzing through you as your chest was airy and you were lightheaded for two reasons now, “Okay, good.”

“Is it bad for me to say that I’m relieved? That you have migraines? Well, not that you have them, because obviously they hurt, but like, that this is what it was? I seriously thought I was being stupid, like mixed signals or something. Like, you came to my game but then you didn’t want to go to the bar.” He ticked the instances off on the fingers of one hand.

“Medication,” you nodded.

“Right. Then you let me walk you home after, but you called me your friend.”

“That was just plain stupidity,” you admitted with a groan at having to relive that moment again.

“And you said yes to coming to the party, but then you didn’t want to dance with me,” Sungchan had now run out of fingers and dropped his hand back down to the bed.

“The music...”

“And when you disappeared, I thought you left because you didn’t like me. I just… felt like I was going crazy.”

“It’s not awful of you to be relieved about this. I’m sorry, Sungchan. Migraines aren’t conducive to romance, apparently.”

“Oh, bullshit.” He pushed back immediately. “They’re just not conducive to drinking and loud parties. That’s not romance.”

“Alright, fair. I’m wont to agree with you.”

“And you need to stop apologizing for your migraines. It’s not like you’re doing it on purpose.”

“Well, I did come to a loud ass party knowing I’d probably get a sound-induced migraine.”

“Okay, aside from that— which, I’m very flattered by and will never ever ask you to do anything like this ever again.”

“Okay.”

Suddenly the door handle rattled, then there was a banging on the door. “Hey! Are you two done in there?” Jeno yelled through the wood. “You better not be having post-headache sex on my bed!”

“Seems like he didn’t get laid last night,” Sungchan muttered.

“If he keeps up that pounding I’m going to get a rebound headache and he’s going to wake the entire house, please let him in,” you groaned.

The boy with you quickly moved to do so, unlocking the door and throwing it open to whisper aggressively, “Jeno! Shut the fuck up! People are still sleeping!”

“Oh. You’re dressed.”

You rolled your eyes at your friend, “I don’t know what you think a migraine is like, but getting my back blown out is pretty far down on my to-do list for immediately after.”

“How are you feeling?” Jeno was nice enough to ask as he rooted through his closet.

“Like shit. While you guys nurse actual hangovers today, I get to nurse a migraine hangover. Same awful morning after without the fun night before.”

“That sucks.” He secured a rumpled shirt and inside out pair of sweatpants. “I told Chenle you were crashing here last night, by the way. He didn’t just abandon you for shits and giggles.”

“Oh, thanks. He was sober enough to drive?”

“Mark had a Breathalyzer and everything.”

“Wow…”

“Now I recommend you two get the fuck out before everyone else wakes up and sees you sneaking out together.”

“Right,” Sungchan nodded, sitting on the edge of Jeno’s bed and pulling his shoes on.

You quickly gathered your shoes, phone, witch hat, and go bag before giving Jeno a short goodbye and following Sungchan out. The Nu Chi house was thankfully quiet as everyone was still asleep in their own rooms, save for the partygoers and brothers who had passed out on the couches in the living rooms. Once you were on the front porch, the two of you dared to speak again.

“I’ll drive you home, Y/N,” Sungchan offered.

“Mhm, thanks,” you squinted against the bright sunlight, reaching into your bag for the spare pair of sunglasses you kept in there.

He gestured to your bag. “So what all do you have in there?”

“Everything but the kitchen sink.” You sighed, finally securing your sunglasses and putting them on. They did help, but you knew there was no way you were going to avoid a rebound headache today. Realizing that Sungchan might actually have been genuinely asking and wasn’t just trying to be polite, you decided to give him a sincere answer as well. “Uh, my meds, my blood pressure cuff, earplugs, sunglasses, some snacks, other miscellaneous non-migraine related stuff like an umbrella.”

“Blood pressure cuff?” He stopped in front of a sedan parked on the street, and opened the passenger door for you.

Even through your unpleasant migraine hangover, you couldn’t help the giddy smile that crossed your lips at the gesture.

Once the both of you were in the car, you explained, “One of my medications affects my blood pressure. I have to check it every few hours, or whenever I feel kind of funny. That’s partially what the snacks are for too.”

“Really?” He started the car and pulled out into the street.

“Most of my meds I need to take with food, so keeping snacks on me makes it easy. The sweet ones are in case my blood sugar drops though.”

“Blood sugar too?”

“A different medication affects my appetite, secondary effect is on my blood sugar. Fun fact, it’s the same one that keeps me from drinking alcohol. Anyway, if you’re ever craving something sweet, I keep gummies and stuff on me usually.”

Sungchan let out a deep breath. “Wow…”

“Oh and water.” You perked up as you realized you’d forgotten something, and reached in for said item. “I've got my water bottle. I need water to take my meds, obviously, but I also need to drink water to make sure I don’t get kidney stones from my medication.”

The car had stopped at a stoplight, and he looked over at you in disbelief. “What the fuck.”

“Hey, it’s this or be entirely unable to participate in society.” You explained. “I used to get five or six migraines a week, with really bad or mild headaches constantly in between. I couldn’t do anything, they were disabling. Clearly, they still are now when I do get them, but I only get one or two a month.”

“I can’t imagine— I… yeah…” He trailed off as the light turned green, a deep frown etching itself on his features as he clearly was trying to imagine what a huge shift in his life that would be. And was having a hard time doing so.

“People without chronic illnesses usually can’t, until they get one,” you shrugged. “I know I couldn’t imagine it either. Then I got my first migraine. Then my second, and my third. I think the ‘chronic illness’ part really hit for me when I had to order my first sharps disposal bin for the monthly injections I take.”

“You’re…”

“Do not say that I’m so strong or any live laugh love type shit right now.”

He laughed, shaking his head, “No, no, not what I was going to say. I was just thinking… you’re really cool.”

“I just info-dumped about my migraines, medication, medication side effects, and treatment to you for ten minutes straight and that’s the conclusion you came to?” You asked in disbelief as he pulled into your apartment complex, and it dawned on you just how long you had been talking about yourself for. You couldn’t remember the last time you’d been that detailed with someone other than your neurologist or your mom about your condition and treatment.

Sungchan put his car in park to turn and look you in the eye. “I’m looking at the bigger picture here: You’re a Lit major, you like Gothic fiction, you’re good at writing, you’re smart and know things like death of the author and stuff, you like Pacific Rim, you’ve come to one of my games, you’re funny, and you just info-dumped to me about something personal for ten minutes. So yes, I think you’re cool. Actually, cool might be an understatement.”

“Jung Sungchan, you…” Your cheeks were hurting with how wide you were grinning. Whether it was the migraine hangover or truly from how warm and happy his words made you, you couldn’t formulate a proper response, “Congrats, I’m speechless.”

“I think that's good?” He laughed again. “Anyway, you told Jeno earlier that you felt like shit, so I won’t hold you up anymore. Rest well today, Y/N.”

“Thanks. You too, Sungchan.” You wrapped your hand around the door handle but stopped just short of actually opening it. “Oh, and uhm, I don’t know if this too eager or whatever, but I’m free tomorrow.”

His face lit up with recognition at what you were implying. “Me too. But are you going to be okay? Like, recovered?”

“Yeah, I’ve got all day today to sleep it off.”

“Okay.” He grinned.

“Okay.” You repeated. “Text me?”

“Yes, yes. I will.”

“Bye.”

And with that, you got out of his car, making sure to take your go bag that had been on your lap for the whole drive.

Halfway to your front door, you turned around to give Sungchan a final wave goodbye, and he waved back through the windshield. Once you’d finally disappeared into your apartment, he looked over at his now empty passenger seat. Well, not completely empty, he realized. Your witch hat was on the floor of the passenger side, you’d forgotten to grab it on your way out. He picked it up, gently setting it on the seat beside him. He’d just give it back to you when he saw you again for your date tomorrow.

“A date,” Sungchan sighed happily, feeling his chest swell and nearly burst with joy. “A date, a date, a date.”

Putting his car in reverse, he looked through the rear window as he muttered, “Suck an egg, Donghyuck. Man-shaped friend, my ass.”

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 2

Sungchan picked you up at 7:00 p.m. on the dot for your first date. You made sure to take your nighttime meds early and silence your alarms so there was nothing to bother you that night. Migraines notwithstanding, of course. You still had to bring your go bag just in case you needed anything acute, but you didn’t think twice about leaving the majority of it in the car, tucking just a couple individually packaged tablets into your pocket before accepting Sungchan’s hand that he offered to you after opening your car door for you.

Walking into the movie theater with him after he bought your tickets, you were about to start off in the direction that the usher had pointed you when your date stopped you.

“You want anything from concessions?” He nodded towards the long line of other couples, families, and groups of friends.

“I’m not big on overpriced popcorn,” you shook your head with a smile. “Thanks though, Sungchan.”

“You sure you don’t want a soda or candy? How’s your, you know, blood sugar?”

It was then that your polite smile morphed into a genuine, touched one, and you squeezed his hand that you were holding. “I’m doing good, promise. I made sure I ate before. But thank you, seriously. You’re really sweet.”

“Okay, but let me know if you need anything.”

“Sungchan, can I tell you something?” You ducked your head in towards him conspiratorially.

“Yeah, of course.”

You gently shook one side of your jacket, and a muffled rattling sound came from within it. “I snuck a bag of Skittles in,” you whispered to him.

He chuckled as you dropped your jacket back down and smoothed over the inside pocket inconspicuously. “Two steps ahead of me.”

“I just didn’t want to ruin our date if I got low.”

“It’s very thoughtful, thanks.”

“So are you!” You tried to reassure him.

The two of you entered where your movie would be showing, and picked your seats. The previews had already started, so you had to drop your voices to whispers.

“But you’re going to be good with the bright light, and the sounds?” Sungchan double-checked with you.

You nodded insistently. “You’re the one who made me compile a list of stuff that I could do, remember?”

“I know, but you also came to that party knowing that it was like 100% guaranteed to give you a migraine. So I think I’ve earned some skepticism.”

“Okay, fine. You got me there,” you sighed. “But I get nothing out of suggesting things that will give me migraines other than cutting our time together short. Which I don’t want to do.”

Sungchan shifted in his seat, and when you looked over at him, you could see a small, bashful smile on his face. “Good. Glad we got that cleared up.”

The previews finally ended, and the entire theater quieted down, including you two. You settled in to watch the movie, scooting closer to your date, looping your arm under his, and resting your head on his shoulder. He hesitantly leaned his head against the top of yours.

As you left the theater hand-in-hand with Sungchan, you two were deep in discussion about the movie, and in the back of your mind, you realized with a panic that you had far too much that you wanted to say that wouldn’t fit into the short ride back to your apartment. Not to mention that you didn’t want your night with him to be over yet.

“Hey.” You called for his attention as he opened up the passenger door for you, stopping before you got in the car.

“Hey.” He offered you a lopsided grin, still holding the door open with one hand and now caging you between him and the open car door.

If the parking lot wasn’t literally swarming with other movie theater patrons, you swore you would’ve grabbed him and kissed him stupid right there and then. But a family of five walked by at that moment, so you swallowed down the itch.

“We should go somewhere,” you suggested, trying to sound equal parts nonchalant and hopeful. Which was a weird combination, you knew, but you didn’t want to come across as too desperate. Again, a ridiculous sentiment, but it was engrained in you with social conditioning or whatever.

“We just went somewhere,” he pointed out knowingly, and you swore that was a smirk that you spotted on his face in the shadowy lighting afforded by the parking lot streetlamps.

“We should go somewhere else.”

“Like where?”

“I don’t know,” you shrugged, despite how desperate you felt on the inside to just be around him right now. “Somewhere. Are you hungry?”

“Are you?”

You pressed your lips together in a thin line. “Well—”

Finally, he smiled, nodded towards the car, and said, “I know somewhere. Get in.”

Sungchan closed the car door after you before walking around to get into the driver’s side. He didn’t offer you any information or clues as to your new destination as he left the movie theater parking lot. The hockey captain drove with one hand casually holding the bottom of the steering wheel, the other tapping out the rhythm of whatever song was playing over his speakers onto his thigh. You dragged your eyes from his fingers to the passing scenery.

Honestly, you couldn’t remember the last time you’d been on a good date. Even the last date you’d been on was a distant memory. Lunch with some CompSci major your freshman year, a blind date set up by a mutual acquaintance. He just talked over you the whole time. You didn’t deign to go on a second date with him. It wasn’t that your migraines made it impossible to date—they hadn’t even come up at the date with the CompSci major (mostly because he didn’t give you the opportunity to say much of anything)—but you knew that it was always going to be something to get out of way. Either up front or at some point down the line. And it was exhausting enough for you to have to completely restructure your life around them, how could you really ask some stranger who barely knew you—or didn’t at all—to consider doing the same? It felt like it just made your dating pool even narrower, an added standard that you didn’t even get to pick.

But with Sungchan, it had happened in the worst way possible, you disappeared on him because you were having a migraine, without even having told him anything about them. And not only was he more than chill about it, he stayed with you through your entire full-blown migraine. Listened to you explain every ailment, medication, and medication complication that you have, and just tucked all that information away to keep track of your wellbeing. Taken it all in stride and made it look easy. And that was before your first date. It almost made you angry. Not at Sungchan, but at the fact that other people had ever made you feel like an inconvenience.

The car slowing to a stop knocked you from your thoughts, and you didn’t even realize that you had been silent for the entire trip. Sungchan didn’t seem to mind, though, as he hadn’t tried to start a conversation either. He put the car in park as you looked around, trying to gauge where exactly you were.

“Are we… on campus?” You turned to him with an eyebrow raised.

He was already out of the car, though, jogging around to get your door. As he opened it for you, he tilted his head innocently, “What was that?”

You stepped out, taking in your surroundings. “Are we at a campus parking garage?”

“Specifically, the top floor of Evergreen Parking Garage,” Sungchan clarified, rolling the passenger window down.

Evergreen Parking Garage was a commuter-only parking facility, meaning that this level was empty this late at night. It was also located at the furthest reaches of the north block of campus, which bordered a nature preserve, meaning that while on one side was your university campus, the other side was entirely evergreen trees. Hence the name.

Sungchan had parked on the side that faced the nature preserve, and as you turned to question your date as to why exactly he’d taken you to campus, you were instead greeted by the sight of him hunched over to lean into the open passenger window, seemingly messing around with the audio controls of the still-running car.

You tilted your head to one side, then the other as you just watched him struggle for a moment before finally speaking up. “What uh… What are you doing, Sungchan?”

He banged his head on the frame of the window as he went to stand back up. “Fuck! Ow…”

Covering your hand to muffle your giggles, you waited patiently for him to turn around and answer you.

Still clutching his head, he said with a sheepish smile, “Just give me a sec, sorry. Technical difficulties.”

And with that, he opened the door to properly sit in the passenger seat, futzing with his phone and the car radio. Finally, there was music playing from the speakers as opposed to the radio station ads, and he turned the volume up before getting back out of the car and shutting the door. With both the driver and passenger windows rolled down, you could hear the song clearly.

“I was originally going to try to take you to this lookout, but there were other cars there, so I had to keep driving by it and oh my god why did I tell you that—” He scratched the back of his head nervously. “Anyway, since we didn’t get to dance at the party…”

Sungchan offered his hand out to you, and you set yours atop it. The upbeat song that had been playing finished just then, switching to a much slower, softer one. You stepped in closer, smiling up at him as you looped your free arm around his neck. His other hand settled on your hip, and he slowly started leading you in an uncertain sway of sorts.

You let out an airy chuckle, “Was this really the kind of dancing you had in mind for a frat party?”

“Would you believe me if I said yes?” He questioned.

“Would you believe me if I said that I believed you?”

“No.”

You snickered. “Smart man.”

“But this is good, too. Better, even.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, there’s not a bunch of other drunk, sweaty, loud people everywhere knocking into us. I don’t have to worry about somebody spilling beer on me, or other guys looking at you, or the DJ picking something bad. Or you getting a migraine.” Sungchan slotted his fingers with yours. “I just get to think about you.”

You rested your head on his chest, eyes zoning out on your linked hands. It was his right hand, so his pinky finger couldn’t quite fold down along with the others. “Yeah. I like this, too,” you agreed softly.

A cool breeze gently blew across your cheek that wasn’t resting on Sungchan’s chest, and you were glad for the warmth of him pressed against your front. Your feet awkwardly bumped into each other, making you chuckle, and he apologized with a nervous laugh.

“It’s okay,” you reassured him. “I haven’t exactly taken any ballroom dancing classes. Have you?”

“Well...”

You jerked your head back to look him in the face. “You have?”

“You know how Greek life has those formals every year?”

“You’re not in a frat...”

“No, I’m not. But freshman year, Nu Chi had pitched in for this dance teacher and— God, I can’t believe I’m telling you this,” Sungchan said regretfully, tilting his head back to look up in embarrassment.

“Sungchan, come on!” You pleaded.

“Hendery swore me to secrecy...”

“Well now you have to tell me!”

“Hendery’s date couldn’t make it to one of the lessons, so he asked me to fill in for her...”

Your jaw dropped with delight, “Was his date an Amazon? How did that work? He couldn’t have possibly dipped you! Or twirled you!”

“She was taller than him, to be fair,” he admitted. “Nothing that couldn’t be adjusted for with some thick soles, but, you know...”

“You’re such a good friend, Sungchan,” you said through a couple of giggles, imagining the two of them attempting the aforementioned twirls and dips.

He dropped his head, shaking it. “Right, thanks.”

“So I guess I should be leading then, hm?” You teased, your feet bumping his again in that moment.

“I feel like you’d lead us over the edge of this parking deck, Y/N,” he joked.

Before you could make a retort, he stepped back from you to gently twirl you around by the hand, and a cross between a surprised yelp and a laugh tumbled from your mouth. As he brought you back into his chest, you could barely think over the joyful buzzing in your head that resonated out to every square inch of your body.

“Okay, okay, I guess you can lead,” you surrendered, looping your arm back around his neck again.

After some time, the songs had picked up tempo again, but you and Sungchan were long past actually dancing to them. You were more so just holding each other, leisurely swaying, and from here you got to listen to the sounds of his breathing. He’d taken to rubbing absentminded circles into your hip with his thumb, and the fingers of your arm that was around his neck had dipped below the material of his collar, resting on his bare skin.

“Sungchan?” You murmured.

“Yes?” He responded, his voice rumbling right under your ear.

“Thank you for not making me do this in front of a bunch of other cars at the other lookout.”

He let out a couple quiet laughs, his chest shaking with each. “You’re welcome. I figured all of the teens making out in their cars also didn’t want to watch us do this either.”

You mock gasped, pretending to sound scandalized, “You were going to take me to a lover’s lookout? On the first date? Jung Sungchan…”

“Who are you, my grandma? Nobody calls it that anymore.” He pinched your side. “And only because it’s actually got a great view over the city and—”

“I’m kidding, Sungchan.” You pinched him back, lightly, on the nape of the neck. “Besides, I wouldn’t have been opposed to a trip to a lover’s lookout with you anyway…”

You heard the breath hitch in his throat, then Sungchan swallowed and inhaled through his nose, before he finally spoke, “Really?”

His grip on your hip tightened, sending a bolt of electricity along your skin out from the contact point. You brought your head out of his chest and used your arm around his neck to draw him in even closer.

“Really,” you echoed, blatantly staring at his lips now that they were centimeters away from yours. “And it looks like we’ve got our own right here.”

Then Sungchan was using his hold on your hip to push you back step by step until your back was against the side of his car. Your own arm around his neck kept him anchored to you as he stood hovering over you, blotting out any light that would’ve come from the light post above you. Your noses were almost touching, your breaths mingling in the negligible space between your mouths. You were looking at Sungchan’s eyes now, usually a warm, deep brown, now all inky blackness in the dark of night, and staring down at your own mouth. Your tongue instinctually darted out to wet your lips, and that seemed to be the final straw.

His mouth on yours was desperate, but not desperate to get laid, like your previous lover’s lookout banter might imply. Like he was just desperate for you. He stole kiss after kiss from your lips, but never forced his tongue into your mouth, nor moved his hands anywhere else. Despite leaning more and more of his weight forward onto you, utterly pinning you to the car, he kept his bruising grip on your hip and never let go of your hand.

You parted your mouth with a bedraggled gasp of his name, and he finally took this as an invite to slip his tongue into the mix. You shifted to rest the hand that was laced with his above your head, on the roof of the sedan, giving his hand a squeeze. He squeezed your hand back.

Turning your head and breaking the kiss, you hoped he’d get the idea as you continued laying there half-spread out under him. He did, thankfully, kissing from the corner of your mouth across your cheek and down your jaw and neck.

“Sung…chan…” You breathed out his name, stroking the back of his head with your free hand as his lips latched onto a spot at the base of your neck.

Trailing your hand down further, you snuck it up under the hem of his shirt, feeling over the expanse of his chest and stomach. Oh fuck yeah, hockey players. You pulled the article of clothing up towards his head insistently, and he detached from your neck for the two of you to jointly strip him of it. Oh fuck yeah, hockey players. You truly didn’t know if he looked or felt better, but you couldn’t ogle him for long, because he was back on top of you as soon as he’d thrown the shirt into the front seat via the open passenger window beside you. His lips were so warm on yours, his skin even hotter under your touch now as you unabashedly felt up every inch of it and the muscles underneath.

But soon that wasn’t enough either, and you were fumbling at his pants button. He groaned into your mouth, the sound vibrating down into your own chest, as his hand snapped around your wrist.

“Ahh…” He hissed regretfully.

“What?” You looked up at him with wide eyes.

“I can’t get my dick out in public.”

You glanced at the car behind you, with its tinted windows, then back at Sungchan. He met your eyes, then shrugged. “That’ll work.”

It was a mad scramble to get the door to the backseat open, so much so that you accidentally smacked Sungchan in the leg with said door. After lots of apologies through giggles, both of you were in the backseat with the doors closed and locked. Sungchan had the task of awkwardly reaching forward over the console to roll the windows back up first, during which you made a couple observations about his backseat, which you hadn’t seen much of before. His practice bag for hockey was back here—which was different than his gear bag, as you’d already been told. The gear bag actually had his equipment that he needed to play with like mouth guards, sticks, and all of that, while his practice bag had more personal stuff like changes of clothes or hygiene products. You figured his gear bag was either in the trunk or at the rink, as he didn’t always need to carry it back and forth with him. But other than the practice bag and a couple of reusable grocery bags on the floor, the backseat was pretty clean. You were genuinely impressed, especially because he made it sound like he tended to chauffeur a lot of his teammates/roommates around frequently.

Sungchan eventually reentered the backseat fully, focusing a content, closed-lip smile on you. You’d taken it upon yourself to lay down on the seat, your knees propped up by your feet. He settled in to kneel on the same cushion as your feet, but just rested an arm on your knees and his chin atop that forearm to gaze down at you, still smiling.

“What? What’s that smile for?” You asked, starting to feel a bit self-conscious.

“Nothing, I just—” He reached both his hands out towards you, fingers spread, and you got the idea, linking yours with them. “I hope you don’t get the wrong idea. I want this to be a real thing, Y/N. Like, I don’t just want to sleep with you. I don’t even do this kind of stuff—car sex on the first date in a campus parking garage?—literally ever. I’m just kinda crazy about you. I know for most people usually it’s the opposite; you know, they save it for later for really important people. They try to make it special, but I know it’ll be special just because it’s you.”

“Sungchan... I’ve never done something like this either,” you admitted, squeezing both of his hands tight. “I think I’m just kinda crazy about you too.”

“Okay. Cool.” He beamed at you, and you felt your insides turn to mush in that moment. You didn’t think they’d ever un-mush again.

“Now can you please take my clothes off before I spontaneously combust?”

“Fuck. Yeah.” He nodded, immediately turning serious as his brow furrowed and he leaned forward to lock his lips with yours again, propping himself up with one hand to hover above you.

You let your knees fall apart to give him room to settle in between your legs. He pulled at your jacket first, and you sat up to help yank it off, dropping it to the floor with his practice bag. With you no longer laying down, he could use two hands to get the next part, your top. His fingertips skimmed along your skin as he grabbed the hem. You broke the kiss so he could start pulling the clothing up your body—

A loud knock against the driver’s side window quite literally made you scream, and Sungchan jerked up and hit his head once again, this time on the roof of the car. You tugged your shirt back down to cover you, ducking to lay flat on the seat as Sungchan looked at you with panic in his eyes.

Another knock came at the window, this time accompanied by a man’s voice, “Campus security! Roll the window down or I’m going to ask you to turn the car off and step out!”

“Just a second!” Sungchan yelled back, a noticeable crack in his voice. He had a difficult time maneuvering his lanky body over the console fully into the driver’s seat again.

“Now!” The man called out again. “Three! Two!”

Sungchan didn’t have time to put on his shirt before ‘one,’ and he rushed to roll the window down. A flashlight was immediately shone into the car, and you didn’t doubt your own visibility to the security officer. You were remaining laying down for your own mental wellbeing at this point. You didn’t think that you could deal with looking this man in the eye right now.

You didn’t know if it was wisdom or embarrassment that kept your date from saying anything, but he thankfully didn’t speak until spoken to, not offering up any incriminating information. After five entire seconds of silence, the officer let out an audible sigh.

“No overnight parking in this garage,” he said, his tone making it very clear that he knew that was not what was going on. “I’ll be back in five minutes and if you’re still here, you’re getting a ticket.”

“Yes, sir,” Sungchan replied.

“I’m sure that the captain of our hockey team wouldn’t want to get put on probation at the beginning of the season.”

“N-No, sir.” His voice cracked again.

The security officer grunted, but said nothing more. You heard Sungchan roll the window back up, then the sound of another car driving away. Slowly, Sungchan turned around to look at you over the console with wide, horrified eyes.

“He knew who I was…” He whispered. “That was the most terrifying 45 seconds of my life.”

“You’re famous, Sungchan,” you teased, sitting up in the backseat now that the coast was clear.

“Yeah, and fame has got so many perks so far.”

“Almost got into your first scandal already.” You clicked your tongue disapprovingly. “Caught with a girl in your backseat. What will the fans say?”

“Considering my fans are all frat bros, probably something along the lines of wolf whistles and incoherent, congratulatory lewd jeering.”

You couldn’t help but laugh, able to picture that perfectly considering you’d already gotten a taste at the first home game you’d gone to. “Sounds about right.”

“Anyway, I should take you home before that guy comes back.”

“Good idea.” You slipped your jacket back on.

“Are you going to come up here or am I your chauffeur?”

“I suppose I’ll sit up there with you,” you sighed, opening the backseat to get out and into the front normally since there was no security man around.

Back in the passenger seat, you handed Sungchan’s shirt back to him, “Here, have some decency. You’re the captain of the hockey team, you know.”

“I’m sorry, who was going to spontaneously combust if we didn’t get naked in the next 0.2 seconds?” He scoffed, pulling his top back on.

“I don’t recall.”

“Sure.”

“And who’s still hard in their jeans right now?”

“Don’t remind me, I have to drive like this,” he groaned, taking the car out of park with a shake of his head.

As Sungchan drove with one hand, the other reached over to take yours, lacing his fingers together with yours.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6

Just a few days later, and you were at the rink again, eagerly watching the hockey game in front of you. Chenle was beside you, continuing his constant sports commentary on every play that happened. You still mostly tuned it out, but you were pretty sure you at least understood most of the basic rules that Taeyong had explained to you before. You kept your eyes on Sungchan, cheering him on along with the other various Nu Chi brothers around you and other fans in the stands. It wasn’t as full of a house as it had been for the first home game, but you were perfectly content to have a slightly quieter environment.

Sungchan happened to skate by your section as everyone was resetting their positions, giving you a wave through the clear barrier. You gave him a slightly bashful but nevertheless bright grin as you waved back.

“So are you two like... dating now?” Hendery asked from your other side, leaned forward with both of his elbows on his knees as he watched the game. He looked back at you over his shoulder with a shit-eating grin, though, one that made you roll your eyes.

“I don’t know. We’ve been on a date. I mean, there was the Halloween party, but I got a migraine so I don’t think that really counts, so— I don’t have to explain myself to you!” You scowled at him, shoving him away by his shoulder.

He laughed as he let himself get jostled around in his seat from the push, holding his hands up in surrender. “Just curious. Unlike your bestie over there, I think you two are adorable.”

“What?” You looked over at Chenle, who Hendery had pointed at.

Chenle had apparently been listening enough to be able to jump in to defend himself. “It’s not what it sounds like. I think you two are great, promise.”

You turned back to your other friend. “Then what the hell are you talking about, Hendery?”

“He just doesn’t want to lose,” the Nu Chi member explained. “I pegged Sungchan’s huge crush on you on day 1 of Dr. Son’s class. Once the Phanta Phour stuff started, I knew that boy had no chance. Chenle just didn’t think you’d ever... hold on, how’d he put it... be into uh, ‘Neanderthal frat-bro-in-law types.’”

“I was maybe a bit tipsy...” Chenle added in.

“So you made a bet on if Sungchan and I would get together? In four whole years?” You looked from left to right between them.

“Loser has to buy winner a 12-pack,” Hendery confirmed with that same grin. “When Phantasmagorical Phriday ended this year, I really thought I’d lost. But then you turned up at the game last week and I figured Sungchan just might score himself a buzzer beater.”

“You two need to get better hobbies,” you declared with a snort.

“This so counts as sudden-death OT, but whatever,” Chenle scoffed under his breath.

You smacked him across the chest. “And don’t call my dating life ‘sudden death’ either.”

“Hey.” He said softly, grabbing your arm, and you turned your head to meet his gaze. “I really was worried about you going to the Halloween party with your head. I swear.”

“I know, LeLe,” you nodded, giving him a reassuring smile. “You did some great wingmanning once we got there.”

The brief flash of sincerity you got from your best friend was over as quick as it had come, as you heard the crash of helmets on the ice, and both your focuses were drawn back to the game. Two players had collided into each other and the clear barrier right in front of your faces. You grimaced sympathetically as you tried to identify the player from your team. 23— Jeno, ah, he’d be alright. And you were right, he took off almost immediately as the other guy was left behind still dazed.

At the end of the game, with the buzz of another win in your veins and the anticipation of seeing Sungchan thrumming along your skin, you bounced on your heels as you waited in the lobby. You weren't paying attention to the ecstatic, dramatic recollections that Chenle and the Nu Chi brothers were giving of specific plays around you, your gaze entirely focused on the locker room exit.

The very first player to leave was Sungchan, his eyes already scanning the crowd. Without a second thought, you darted over to him, ignoring the couple of whoops and whistles you two got from your friends.

Sungchan beamed down at you as he went to pull you into a hug, and you were immediately enveloped in the smell of the freshly washed clothes that you’d caught last time. This time, though, there was the distinct, crisp smell of ice rink ice under it as well, reminding you of when you’d go ice skating with friends.

“Hey,” you smiled up at him as he let you go, but didn’t step back very far. “You played really good again. I’m pretty sure. A bit more sure than I was last time.”

He was still grinning, looking down at the floor then back up at you before he responded, “Thank you. And I don’t really expect you to become a hockey pro or anything if all that doesn’t interest you. As long as you don’t expect me to remember what death of the author is.”

“This was only my second game, have some faith in me!” You cried out indignantly. “And no, I don’t expect you to become a full-blown literary critic either.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he apologized through a couple of poorly suppressed giggles. “I do believe in you. I just didn’t want you to feel like you had to learn boring sports stuff for me.”

“I do want to be able to follow the basics of a game without Chenle or Taeyong annotating it for me, at least.”

“Oh, yeah, you can definitely do that. Might need to come to a few more games, though...”

You nodded giddily. “Just let me know when the home games are and I’m there.”

“Yo!” A voice had called from the gaggle of guys heading towards the exit. You didn’t even realize that the rest of the team had left the locker room in the time that you’d been talking to Sungchan.

While you couldn’t tell who had gotten your attention, it was Donghyuck that asked, “Are you two coming or are you just going to keep making moony eyes at each other all night?”

“Yeah, Sungchan, you’re our ride!” Yangyang yelled out from somewhere.

“DD!” Jeno cheered.

“I’ll drive you two,” Mark offered with a shake of his head.

“Shotgun!” The two of them immediately dibs-ed in unison.

“Sorry, bitches, I’m his little,” Donghyuck declared. “That means eternal dibs on shotgun in Mark’s car.”

The frat president scoffed, “You only give a shit about that when it directly benefits you.”

“You guys go ahead,” Sungchan cut into their bickering. “We’re right behind you.”

After they had all filed out, he looked back down at you, a nervous smile worming across his face. “Sorry about that...”

“It’s okay,” you said. “So... you ready to go?”

The two of you had already discussed going to the after-game celebrations with the team before this. Sungchan texted you last night to check in and make sure you’d be okay with going from the loud game to a noisy bar/pool hall with a bunch of frat guys after. You’d assured him that you’d be okay as long as you sat away from any music speakers at the bar, and he’d in turn made you promise to tell him if you needed to leave early.

However, he now halted you as you were slowly turning towards the exit. “Wait, I want to try this again.”

With a sneaking suspicion of what he was about to do, you assured him, “Sungchan, you don’t have to—”

“Let me do this. Please.” He gave you those same eyes that had convinced you to go to a frat party in the first place, and you were squaring your shoulders back to face him, giving him a firm nod.

“Okay. Go for it.”

He asked casually, “So, did you drive yourself?”

You had to hold back a laugh, covering your mouth to straighten your face before replying coyly, “Oh, me? I walked. My apartment is close.”

“So, the team all goes out to this bar after home games. It’s a pretty sleazy dive bar, and I know it’s a Thursday night, but I’d really like for you to come with me. I’ll buy you a... soda.”

“I would love to come, Sungchan,” you giggled, adjusting your purse strap.

“Awesome,” he grinned, wrapping an arm around your shoulders.

As you walked up to the passenger side of his car with him, you suddenly realized something. “Wait, did you have your car last time, too?”

“Maybe?” He rubbed the back of his neck, reaching for the door handle to open it for you.

“Then why did you walk me home?”

“To spend more time with you?”

You stole a quick kiss before ducking into the passenger seat.

Squished into one side of a booth with Sungchan’s arm around you, you chatted happily with Chenle, Ten, and Sicheng, who were sitting opposite from you. The team and cheer section were spread out between a couple booths and tables near each other, a few of them up playing pool too. You sipped on your soda between discussions about tonight’s game, upcoming games, classes, or whatever else struck you all. Currently, you were locked in a conversation with Ten about the most recent assigned reading in a class that you two shared together this semester.

“I thought that scene had a lot of great allusions back to the earlier one with her mother and the pie baking,” you gushed.

“Really?” Ten tilted his head curiously. “I was seeing it more as a continuation of the cannibalism-sex-love metaphor, since they were eating figs, you know.”

You nodded knowingly. “That’s true. Everything’s about sex—”

“Except sex.” You two finished quoting your professor in unison.

“And then with figs, there’s the Bible interpretation, of course,” you continued.

“Always the Bible.”

“We can never escape what John Milton did for Christian fanfiction, truly.”

“But I do like the pie scene connection the more that I think about it, actually.” Ten knocked back the rest of his cocktail. “And, tying her mother into the cannibalism metaphor could be a fascinating angle, too.”

Your eyes widened as you were practically vibrating your seat with excitement now. “Yeah, her earliest memory being of food, parental love, and harm...”

“Anyway, I need a refill.” Your friend shook his glass of ice with a smile. “Be back. Good chat as always, Y/N.”

Chenle and Sicheng scooted out of the booth to let Ten out, the former heading off towards the restrooms while the co-captain followed his roommate to the bar, leaving just you and Sungchan. You continued musing over the new connections you’d just made in the text as you turned your gaze back over to Sungchan beside you. He was already looking at you, a fond half-smile on his face.

“Hi.” He said quietly.

“Hi,” you replied, just as quiet.

Sungchan took a swig of his drink, then eyed yours. “You haven’t drunk any water since we get here.”

He’d been sure to not only order your promised soda of choice, but also water, and as you now looked over at your two cups, you could tell that the water had not been touched at all while the soda was practically empty.

“Oh uh, I guess I haven’t.”

“Drink some.” He pushed it towards you insistently. “Can’t have you getting kidney stones on my watch.”

“Okay, okay.” You acquiesced easily, switching your straw over to that glass and chugging a quarter of it in one go. “Better?”

“Much.” He nodded in satisfaction. “So what were you and Ten saying about pies and sex or whatever? Sex isn’t about sex?”

“Oh, it’s just something one of our professors says a lot. ‘Everything is about sex except sex.’ For lit analysis. In literature, pretty much everything is about sex. Or can be. You can turn like, anything in a piece of text into an innuendo or euphemism if you wanted to. Except for sex. Like, if a sex scene is included in a piece of literature, it’s not actually about the sex that’s being depicted. The sex is meant to represent something else. Like politics, or social structures, or whatever other themes are present in the work. Unless you’re just reading porn. But even then, there’s artistic merit to erotica, and plenty to be learned about the social structures at the time it was written, too.”

Sungchan hadn’t blinked the entire time you’d been rambling on, and upon you finally stopping, blinked in rapid succession as he seemed to come to from a daze. “Wow. Uh, interesting. Filing that away with death of the author.”

“Sungchan...” You leaned in to whisper, placing a hand on the inside of his thigh, just above his knee. His leg jumped, knocking his knee into the tabletop. Your hand had narrowly avoided being smashed too, saved only by its position curled around his leg instead of directly on top. You didn’t move it up or down now though, simply tapping your index finger against the loose material of his sweatpants as you giggled. “What are you thinking about?”

He cleared his throat a couple of times. “How you still have three-quarters of that glass of water left to drink.”

You laughed, slumping to relax into his side and pulling your hand back up to a more casual position on top of his leg. With your other hand, you grabbed your water. “Alright, fine.”

Not too long after your water had been drained, Sungchan was driving you home. Some of your other friends had taken off as well, and you didn't put up too much of a protest when he offered. As your familiar building came into view, you suddenly remembered something.

“Oh, visitor’s parking is over there. Sorry, forgot to mention before.” You pointed to a few parking spots painted with yellow lines instead of white, further away from the apartment entrances than the resident parking. “They’re a bit picky. Chenle got towed after like, five minutes one time.”

“Got it. Thanks.” Sungchan smoothly turned the wheel to pull into one of the open visitor’s spots.

Your reason for showing it to him was two-fold. One, to let him know you hoped he’d be coming over more often, so he’d need that information for future reference. And two, for perhaps less innocent ulterior motives tonight. Truly, your apartment complex only towed people after dark. Overnight visitors. Chenle’s five-minute tow had been a fluke.

“I’ll walk you to your door,” he said with no prompting, and you had to hold in a sigh of relief.

Instead, you gave him a genuine smile. “Thanks, Sungchan.”

“I don’t think I thanked you for coming tonight. To the game.” He slowly meandered up the sidewalk with you, hand holding yours.

“Thanks for inviting me again. I had a lot of fun.” You squeezed his hand.

Your front door loomed in the not-so-distant distance.

“Uh, are you busy this weekend?” He rushed to ask. “I have Saturday morning practice, at 7:30, but it’s over at 9:00, and after that I’m free.”

So that’s why he had texted you at seven in the morning to congratulate you on winning Phantasmagorical Phriday.

“No, I’m not busy. I’d love to do something, just pick from the list I sent you. Surprise me, hm?”

“Will do.”

You were finally on your front welcome mat, and watched his face fall as he seemed to be drawing a blank about how else to prolong your night. But you had an idea.

You didn’t let an alarm or anything else possibly have the chance to interrupt you, grabbing the back of his neck and pulling his mouth down to yours. He stumbled forward at you suddenly yanking him off-balance, catching himself with one hand on your front door and the other on your doorframe. Then, he dropped a hand to the small of your back, drawing you in even closer as he tilted his head to deepen the kiss.

Disconnected just enough to murmur against his lips, you asked, “Do you want to come in?”

“Please?” He replied with a nearly sheepish chuckle.

“So polite,” you quipped.

You gave him one more peck before turning around to unlock your door and drag him in by the arm.

➠ sequel | series masterlist | blog masterlist

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mecachrome · 27 days

Text

landoscar ao3 stats — 2023 overview

notes

retrieved ~sometime in march 2024

methodology: scraped metadata for every fic in the landoscar tag and...... that's it. however one important constraint is that all temporal data is date updated (not posted), so the above timeline isn't exactly a true representation of fic growth but rather how many fics were last-updated at that time. of course this is still its own reflection of fandom health in a way since dead fandoms don't update old fic but well... it's just not quite the same!

this is just info about general trends, fic content, tags etc... so nothing about kudos/comments or any authors specifically

i decided to focus solely on fics last-updated in 2023 (unless otherwise mentioned) because i wanted a tidy set that i can maybe compare & contrast in a year's time, because i expect a lot of details to look different then (tho as stated above this set isn't exactly static... 🤷‍♀️)

ngl i had to re-scrape a bunch of times because i forgot about it for like 3 weeks and then there were 100 new fics 😭 so if there are some minor discrepancies across the post it's because of that halfskh.

also i wanted to include more global comparisons (aka how 814 stack up against the f1 rpf tag in general), but this is also considerably difficult in some contexts since i can't exactly scrape 31,000+ fics can i... or i didn't even want to entertain the thought of trying to do so!!!

why did i do this? who knows.

anyway here's some viz T__T

ship growth

as evidenced in the opening graph, landoscar have been a very fast-growing ship over the past year — although interestingly enough they didn't really start growing substantially until july / the ~better half~ of the 2023 season. here are two views showing their "growth" (by date updated) alongside two other ships on the fringes of the f1 rpf top 10 (sebchal & galex):

landoscar are very much on-track to surpass them and officially enter the top 10 soon, likely before mid-april ❗️ :o

ship characteristics

onto the ship content — another thing i was mildly curious about was how landoscar differs in certain areas from other f1 ships, or the f1 rpf "global" average you could say. for example, here's a breakdown of rating popularity in their ao3 tag:

seeing as explicit is their most common rating, and that i don't necessarily expect this to be true for all ships/fandoms, i compared these percentages with the general f1 rpf tag to see whether some ratings are more commonly represented in 814 fic than average, which produced interesting results:

do lando ships simply skew more HornyTM in general? is it oscar? a secret third thing??? who knows... actually i think it would be fun to do more analysis in this direction but that can wait for another time!!!

similarly i also wanted to see which ships are the most "public" on ao3, as in have the highest share of fic that isn't user-locked... i will refrain from peppering in my feelings about the 4th wall too heavy-handedly but i was curious to see whether some sort of perhaps... er, generational gap (?) of sorts between ships that are more public vs. not could be identified. however i don't pretend to have any takeaways from this LOL i conclude absolutely nothing. (for ref landoscar is currently 72% public, vs. a global avg of 63%)

note that this graph is current stats, not filtered for 2023

looking at relationship tags, i also wanted to know whether landoscar suffer noticeably from Second-Ship Syndrome, so i tallied the first-tagged ship of every fic to find out. i know this doesn't necessarily mean that it's always the "main" ship but it's a good enough approximation. the results were quite positive!

filtered to top ships with count of >1 only

i then also calculated the number of ships tagged for each fic to discern the profile of multi-shipping in 814 ficdom; i did have to do a little bit of string standardization (all instances of implied / background / hinted collapsed to hinted for simplicity's sake + removal of other redundancies), but otherwise i left everything mostly untouched.

as you can see, landoscar also have a fairly promising amount of OTP: TRUE fic:

by the time you get to the fics with 10+ ships tagged, landoscar are less likely to be the primary ship, which makes sense just on a basic statistical level... this is also a very small sample size though

i also lazily tallied the 10 most common ships that weren't NOR/PIA or NOR & PIA to diff their shares of the 814 tag vs. of the general f1 rpf tag, to see which other pairings are more represented in the 814 tag than on average (because lestappen are the most popular by pure count but this is also true of fandom in general, so it would be a misrepresentation to say that their popularity is out of the ordinary):

maxiel's gap isn't really that surprising since i think that, generationally, in terms of when both pairings were teammates there is quite a gap; with carlando—actually let me tally this again but including all instances of "implied" and "past" as being part of the same ship, since that's how ao3 tag-wrangles as well:

Aha ! obviously as a direct ship there is competition between 814 and other lando or oscar ships, but this difference is somewhat less pronounced once we include all formats. tbh none of this really means anything but i thought i'd add it anyway... (it's also very possible that there are several errors in this, in which case my b 😔)

before we move on to additional tags, there are a few more basic characteristics of 814 fic we can calculate. i realize i never offered an overview of Super Basic Stats, so here are a few:

plus, looking at word counts, here is a distribution of those in 2023-updated fic, which shows that a majority of 814 fics were under the 5k mark:

85% of landoscar fics were under 10k & nearly 97% under 25k

i don't really have any reason to believe that landoscar's wc stats differ significantly from average ? so this is kind of just Data To Have Data, and it most likely reflects normal ao3 trends in general... but i thought i'd include it anyway because i already made it lol. similarly, here are word count distributions but stratified by rating:

& same info but heat map view:

i feel like this is also probably something you'd find across fandom in general — that gen fic is likely to have a higher share of under 1k works, since Building Up to sexual content often takes... Literal & Metaphorical Foreplay ! and the longer a fic is the more opportunities an author has to include a sex scene or other explicit content (ofc, not necessarily just porn but also graphic violence & so on). but i thought this was fun to visualize haha

additional tags & aus?

back in my old f1 rpf stats post, i made a table comparing fluff/angst "ratios" (not exactly a direct ratio because of how tag wrangling works, but an approximation) of the most popular f1 ships, and now that landoscar are somewhat popular i thought i'd first do an update:

also current data, not 2023 to make things easier

just like before, simi are one of the most fluffy ships and brocedes are by far the most angsty, but it's interesting to see 814 also extremely high up on the charts, with far and away the lowest % of angst. will be exciting 2 see how that holds or changes as the seasons progress !

finally, i also wanted to do a bit of au/additional tag analysis because you can kind of see this when you use additional filters on ao3 but the previews are limited and get bogged down by the prevalence of *checks notes* Fluff, Angst, PWP, Anal Sex and what have you. which are nice stats to have and all but what of the rest !

disclaimer that the set for these tables is a biiiit outdated because by the time i'd wrangled everything i was like I Am Not Changing It Again. unfortunately i clean my data with shoddy queries and regex functions in googsheetz...

there were 48 tags with at least 10 instances from 2023 fics, shown below, with ones that are (some ~vaguely) nsfw in red just to kind of get a rough sense of which tags get commonly used in M/E fic:

getting a bit too much into small sample size / specific fic territory so if you're an author i sincerely apologize for that... do not mean 2 put u on blast... TT__TT but i also tried to tally the most popular aus people write for 814, which is a bit dubious because people tag in really different ways and i had to accommodate for a lot of string formats but ... it's close enough ! (?)

i feel like this is very little interesting info but idk what else to add so i will stop here for now... well!!! if you made it to the end i hope u learned something or even vaguely enjoyed reading T__T and most of all thank you :')

#*m #landoscar #in a sense 😔#tfw don't have a tableau license so i live life on the edge across multiple unsaved desktop public files......#if ur interested in anything specific pls lmk before my computer inevitably Dies and deletes everything...!#this is so useless nsdflshdfh. Anyway

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save-the-villainous-cat · 7 months

Note

Request idea if you get the time.... Hero sneaking into a fancy ball at the vampires lair to try and find info on them, but gets caught when they try and sneak away (:< thanks!! Love your writing

“Leaving us so soon?”

The hero spun around, air stuck in their throat. Admittedly, they had a thing for danger. At first they hadn’t realised it. Their job was demanding physical and emotional endurance like no other but after a while, they saw beauty in the thrilling.

They couldn’t say anything. Their larynx didn’t allow it.

“It’s not even midnight, yet.” It was their first time dealing with a vampire, they realised. They had studied them for weeks, and yet seeing them in person made them uneasy.

As if they couldn’t comprehend who was standing in front of them.

“I’m sorry…” they answered and they didn’t know why exactly that came to mind.

“Oh, don’t be sorry, little dove. I’ve been watching you for a while now. These people aren’t exactly your type of people, are they?” The villain cocked their head with warm gentleness. “You should be more careful.”

A sweet warning. The vampire closed the heavy door behind them, silencing the music.

And the hall was long. The hero was sure they couldn’t outrun a vampire here on this slippery floor. Not in those shoes.

“I’m sorry, I…I’m not really familiar with these etiquettes.” The vampire smiled softly and the hero was quite sure they could see the ends of their fangs peak through their lips.

“It’s all just hypocritical pretentiousness. Don’t mind this.” The vampire took a step forward and the hero considered taking one back. But they didn’t. “I think we both know we’re not talking about high society, though.”

“Well, I was.” Again, the vampire smiled at the hero’s answer. They were very calm, very patient. The hero hadn’t read about that in any of their books.

“Cute little thing…Who are you, dear?”

“I have an invitation, actually.” The hero took out the little card, waving it in front of the vampire cheerfully. “So, you should know who I am.”

“Hm.” The vampire’s hand was around the hero’s wrist before they even realised it. The waving stopped and the hero’s breathing too. “An excellent copy. You’re getting more interesting by the second.”

“It’s not—”

“Oh, it is…” The vampire leaned in, voice lovingly low. “You’re smarter than this. Don’t think you’re the first human in my home.”

The hero tried to resist, tried to get away but the vampire’s grip was like steel.

“And don’t think I’ll let you go that easily, dove.” The tip of their nose touched the hero’s neck and for a terrible second, the hero got anxious. They didn’t know what they were feeling. This was a little more than “loving the danger.”

“I don’t want any trouble.”

“Liar,” the vampire whispered. They pulled away, hunger in their eyes and chuckled. “When you came here, you expected trouble. When you stayed here, you did too. But don’t worry. I can give you all the trouble you want.”

The hero wasn’t quite sure if they were excited or terrified.

#quick one sorry it’s not my best #what a tragic creature let me torture them #writing snippet #heroxvillain prompt #heroxvillain snippet #heroes and villains #hero #villain #hero x villain #heroxvillain #an answer for an ask #request #wait is this even heroxvillain ugh I dunno #vampire #human x vampire #humanxvampire

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sunlightmurdock · 3 months

Text

Ceasefire | 1.2 | Bradley Bradshaw x Reader (18+)

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Synopsis: Bradley Bradshaw is in San Diego, summoned to Top Gun for the first time. Commander “Hyde” Simpson is his flight instructor, and she doesn’t have time for schoolboy crushes.

Warnings: ex-husband!beausimpson, divorce, age gap (rooster is somewhere between 26-28, reader is 38), power imbalance between instructor and student aviator, swearing, slight angst at the end, smut, handjobs, teasing, riding and creampies that are never addressed again, sub!rooster, bondage, probably very inaccurate flight info

…

Eleven weeks have never felt quite so long. At the same time, the memory of seeing Bradley Bradshaw staring at you with that dopey smile still feels so fresh. In one week, classes will officially be over. Rooster will no longer be your student. It’s almost pathetic, the way you’re already miserable at the thought of not seeing his face when you walk in every morning.

Still, in this moment, he’s still here and frowning down at his flight manual. It’s a storming afternoon and the air stuff got canceled, but with Beau’s mood swings lately, class remains to be in session. You’re perched on the edge of your desk, waiting patiently for whichever one of your star pupils can answer your question first.

“Minimum total hydroplaning speed of the main landing gear tires inflated to 250 pounds per square inch is 140 knots groundspeed and, for nose gear tires inflated to 150 per square inch, is 110 knots. Ma’am.” Flipping his toothpick in his mouth and offering you a dimpled grin that proves he knows he’s correct before you tell him, Jake Seresin is a fraction faster than Natasha Trace, who sits directly behind him. It’s not the hardest question. They all should know it. It’s just the rain outside that even made you think of it.

Offering Jake a small smile and a curt nod, you open your mouth to confirm that he is once again correct. To his left, you can’t help but glance across at your favourite thing to look at in this bleak little teaching room. Only, he isn’t smiling at you.

He’s staring down at his NATOPs, brows drawn together in something between frustration and confusion. Maybe embarrassment. You can’t pretend that it isn’t your initial impulse to discredit Jake to save Bradley’s feelings — but you don’t. That’s not your job, and it’s not what you’ve worked so hard to do.

“Good work, Hangman.” You tell him calmly. Bradley doesn’t dare look up from the page. Not once. Rain pours on outside and he spends the entire afternoon glaring at the manual like he wants to rip it to shreds.

As you dismiss the class, the thought looms of this all being over soon. With just one more week to go, there are lots of decisions hanging heavy. Maybe that’s what is getting to him.

“Rooster, hang back. I need to speak to you.”

Instantly, you can tell that this was not the right move. He turns towards you, his face sullen and his eyes dark. Your brows draw together, closing the door behind the last of your students and shutting him in there with you. Alone, he remains just as closed off.

“Are you okay? — You seem kind of—“ One step forwards, you reach out for him with a gentle touch, in a way that could still be mistaken for professionalism if someone were to walk in on the two of you. But, the second your hand grazes his bicep, he shrugs it off.

“I’m fine,” He mutters, gaze turned towards the floor. His usual sunny disposition seems to have gone away with the weather. Your eyes draw into a stern squint. “Am I dismissed?”

“Dis— Okay. No, Bradshaw,” You pretend that one didn’t sting, squaring your shoulders and inhaling slowly, stepping closer so that he has no choice but to see you finally standing in front of him. “No, you’re not dismissed. If you want to start acting like this is about rank, then that’s fine by me. I want you to talk to me either way.”

A muscle in his jaw ticks. His eyes dart towards the door, and then back to you. Finally, you watch him soften. His fingertips graze the inside of your palm, choosing to look down at that exchange rather than at you.

“Could you come over tonight?”

“On official Navy business?” You tease, poking softly at his ribs through the fabric of his flight suit. All you’re offered in return is a weak smile.

He links his fingers gently through yours. Slightly more incriminating, if you were to be walked in on. Still, it tugs at your heart strings as he sighs in resignation. “Please, Hyde?”

“Of course,” You tell him, giving his palm a quick squeeze. “I’ll be over just after seven.”

He has to wait for you to finish up your work before you’re able to leave. By the time you find him, he has already worked out and showered, and he has been sitting in his room wallowing for about forty minutes.

“Talk to me,” Even with his mood, there’s nothing he can do but drape his arms around your waist and tuck his head into the soft curve of your neck as you straddle his hips. “That’s what couples do.”

There’s a moment of silence, but not the same as earlier. His hands find the small of your back, tugging you closer as he sighs against your shoulder. You know that this time he’s just finding his words. It’s almost enough, having you here in his bedroom, draped around him, ready to listen.

In the meantime, you inhale the fresh scent of his cologne and turn your face towards his temple, pressing your lips to his damp curls.

“I’m just in my head about graduation,” He settles finally, curling his fingers around your hips, pulling back to look at you. “I knew I wasn’t going to graduate at the top of the class, but — I’m starting to wonder if I even deserve to be up there with all of them. You know?”

Your fingers are soft as they card through his hair, your expression much softer than it should be as his instructor. His fingers can’t sit still, pulling you closer, fiddling with the hem of your shirt.

“Of course you do,” The answer comes instantly, without hesitation. It’s followed by a chaste kiss. He turns his head and sighs again, readying to protest. “You knew the answer today. Doesn’t matter if you can find it in the book before Hangman or not, you knew it.”

“How’re you so sure that I did?” He challenges, frowning back at you. As much as he wants to believe you’re telling him this because you really believe in him, there’s still a voice in the back of his head telling him that you’re just trying to pacify him by giving him what he wants to hear.

You squint back at him, smoothing your fingers through his freshly washed curls.

“Because I know you better than I know anyone in that class, I’ve flown with you,” You tell him softly. He hums as you kiss his cheek. “I know your instincts up there are better than anyone else. Even if the answer isn’t in your head right away, I know that when you’re up there, you would know what to do.”

With that, he sighs and leans his head back. His fingers flex nervously around your hips. With his eyes closed, you used the moment to catch him by surprise. He sucks in a sharp breath as your palm dips between the two of you and grinds against his cock through his shorts.

“I trust you. Up there, and down here.”

His mouth twitches slightly, his eyes softening as he tries to pull back from you. “Hyde… come on, I don’t need you to baby me.”

You smile back at him, giving a curt nod of your head as you brush your palm more firmly against him. The way his throat contracts when he’s trying not to give in to you prickles along your skin, a rush of excitement.

He closes his eyes as you lean in and suck softly at the freckle on the left side of his neck. Your lips trail tantalizingly slowly along his throat until finally he shivers at the feeling of your breath against his earlobe, “Okay. You want me to make you prove it?”

“Make me?” He breathes out, fingers balling into the fabric of your T-shirt, brows knitting together. Already, his cock is standing to attention through the fabric of his shorts.

“That’s right,” It’s a gentle coo, so soft and sweet that Bradley really isn’t expecting it at all when you tug hard at his hair with your other hand. He inhales sharply, catching your hips and pulling you against him. His cheeks flush red, his eyes blown wide and desperate. You’ve never seen a man beg without even opening his mouth before. “Close your eyes for me.”

Another thick swallow, his throat squeezing around nothing as he closes his eyes, his dark lashes brushing against his cheek.

He’s so pliant, giving himself up to your more than capable touch. Lulling him into calmness that he’s powerless to fight against as your mouth kisses at his chest, pushing at the hem of his t-shirt and helping him out of it.

“Contrary to what you might have heard from Hangman, or from Pete Mitchell,” Bradley bites at the inside of his cheek as you lick at his freshly exposed chest, nipping at his pectoral. Even with his eyes closed, he’s red and embarrassed by how hard his nipples are in the chilled room. “Being a good aviator isn’t about confidence.”

If you’re going to keep talking as you head further south, he’s going to struggle to keep listening. His hands follow you as you slip out of his lap and settle between his knees, your tongue trailing along his middle.

“Instinct is everything.”

Bradley balls his hands into his bedsheets, lips parting just slightly as you suck firm kisses into his taut abdomen.

“Lay down.” You order, and without question, he obeys by scooting back and laying down flat with his legs still over the edge and bracketing you.

“Lay back for me.” You say sweetly, he obeys. To your right, you find the brown leather belt that you’ve been eyeing. Still looped through his jeans, discarded onto the chair in the corner of the room. Rooster fidgets in front of you, waiting to feel your touch again. “You trust me, right, Rooster?”

“Of course.” He exhales, his answer instant.

You push yourself up and he peeks an eye open, watching you free the belt and turn back towards him. Your smile grows as you find him even more red-faced than before, staring right at you.

“Lift your hands and hold your wrists together for me.”

“Really?” He whispers, his voice thick. You nod sweetly, nodding for him to shift further up the bed. He complies wordlessly, pushing himself to the top of the bed and presenting his wrists for you. His eyes darken and his brows raise, watching you climb up the bed with his belt in your hands.

“Don’t pull too hard, you’ll be sore.” You warn him, looping the belt around his wrists and through the wooden slats in his headboard. He gasps softly as you pull the leather tight and guide it through the buckle.

“Fucking hell…” He breathes out, his voice an excited whisper.

After the soft leather is secured, his wrists fastened to his headboard, you take a minute to sit back and observe. He’s watching you with such abject trust, desperation and excitement all at once. His stomach is quivering with each breath, stretched tight by the way his arms are raised.

Your tongue dips out to wet your bottom lip as your fingers reach for him, walking along the length of his thigh. Leaning over him again, you dip forwards and press a soft kiss to his lips.

“What do you want?”

“I want you to be naked.” Rooster rushes out, shifting uncomfortably and glancing towards his tied hands. When his eyes flicker back to you, he breaks into a bashful smile. Your lips twitch, looking back at him.

“Okay,” You agree sweetly, reaching for the bottom of your t-shirt. He watches the way your eyes darken, filling with mischief as you pull it up just enough to expose the soft skin of your stomach, then hold it there. “You’re at a cruise altitude of 35,000 feet, how do you know how to calculate your descent?”

Three miles per distance per thousand feet in altitude. Your mouth twitches watching him do the math in his head while staring at the sliver of exposed skin under your shirt.

“35,000 minus the last three zeroes — uh, thirty-five. Thirty-five multiplied by three… a hundred and five.” You narrow your eyes quizzically as he stumbles through the math, knowing that it comes more easily to him than he’s able to tell you. You’ve not seen him personally land on a carrier, but you know he can. You know that he’s done it a hundred times over. “You’d start the descent 105 nautical miles from the destination, maintaining a speed of 300 Knots-Indicated air speed… and a descent rate of 1,500 to 2,000 feet per minute, with thrust set at idle.”

You smile back at him, peeling your shirt up and over your head. He exhales, eyes falling down to the black bra covering your tits. Forgetting himself for a moment, he moves to sit, the buckle of his belt knocking into the woods and reminding him of his predicament.

“Feet per minute,” You continue, reaching for your own belt, slipping the leather from the buckle and pausing. “If you land on the carrier right, how does the hornet hit the deck?”

“800 feet per minute.” He exhales. Your mouth twists into a grin as you pop open your belt buckle.

By the time that he has rid you of your clothes, his answers are especially fast and you’ve noticed that his wrists are growing red under the hold of the leather.

Standing on your knees, you crawl your way up your, now completely naked, boyfriend and turn. Straddling his abdomen, your naked core sits just out of his reach. His mouth falls open and a dismayed, needy sound slips out.

Having freed him of his own shorts and boxers just moment before, his cock is red and swollen, angry from the lack of attention. Settling yourself with a sly wiggle of your hips, you take his cock in both of your hands and cover as much as you can with your mouth.

Soaking his length with a generous amount of saliva, you hear his head fall back and hit the headboard as your hands start to stroke him. Long strides coat his shaft in spit, your hands twisting loosely left from right. From this way, the way you’re straddling him, you’ve got a front-row view to the way his thighs have started to tremble.

Furthering his dismay, he has a front-row seat to your soaked pussy, inches from his face, but just out of reach. Your hands are steady, just as calm and skilled as they are when you’re in the cockpit. Not too fast, just guiding him steadily closer to his orgasm. Letting your spit soak him, adding more to the mix, squeezing him firmly every now and again. Craning your neck so that you can lick and suck softly at his balls. His moans are strangled, agonizingly desperate from behind you.

When you finally decide to grace him with a firmer, faster touch, his moans are so jagged and eager that you know Hangman and Coyote must be able to hear him. The heels of his feet press into the mattress, his hips bucking eagerly into your hands.

He tugs hard at his restraints and winces behind you. With each delighted sound from your lips as they’re wrapped around him, his own voice is growing more and more strained. For the life of him, he just can’t keep still. He’s putty in your hands. This wouldn’t be the first time he has made a mess all over your hands, but today, that isn’t the plan.

“Hyde, don’t — please don’t — I’m so fucking close…”

You hum, hands already withdrawn. He writhes under you as you turn to face him.

“You can hold on a little longer for me, right baby?”

His voice is getting more strained as you squeeze your hands around his twitching cock and just as he is about to erupt you retract your hands leaving his chest huffing in frustration and near euphoria.

You shift, straddling his hips. His eyes go wide and round, lips parted as you situate yourself right over him and sink down just barely. Your soaked core just grazes him as you rock back and forth softly. His eyes follow the curve of your waist, the slight movement of your tits as you taunt him.

“Can wait a little longer for me, right?”

“Oh, fuck.” Rooster whimpers.

You lower yourself gently onto him, palms braced against his shivering chest as his tip notches into you. He gasps and turns his head towards the pillow, pulling hard at the restraint.

You lean all the way forwards, your naked tits pushing against his chest, your lips mouthing softly at his neck. “It’s okay, I’m gonna take care of you.”

Finally, he’s fully sheathed into you, and he sighs out in relief, dropping his head forwards to rest against the curve of your shoulders.

“I still wanna see you cum,” He pants out, groaning softly as you lift up and sink slowly back down on him, digging his heels into the mattress. “If I can’t do it, I still wanna see it.”

Your mouth twitches at the thought.

“Yeah, you want to watch me get off?” You grin, kissing across his cheek and finally at his mouth. He whines softly, watching you rocking your hips into his gently, grinding yourself into him.

“You have to stop talking or I’m gonna cum.” He mutters with a stiff shake of his head, his eyes flickering up to you as you giggle above him. You purse your lips and lean forwards, pressing a sweet kiss to the tip of his nose and then sit back.

He watches, every muscle in his chest and arms constricting as he watches you sit back on his thighs, all full of him, lifting your fingers and miming a zip across your lips, and then a lock at the corner of your mouth. Finally, even though all of his focus is on trying not to bust, his lips stretch into an amused grin.

You settle back into the rhythm of bouncing on him, bracing one hand back against his thigh as the other dips between your own legs.

The angle is just right, your orgasm ebbs closer but remains just out of reach as he watches helplessly, dazed by the glow of you.

From the first day he saw you, he’d never imagined he would be as lucky as to be at your mercy like this. The thought dawns him and his hips twitch, snapping up to meet yours.

“Christ— wait, slow down, wait— oh, fuck.”

You gasp sharply as he drives himself into you just once more from below before he’s spilling hot and fast into you, groaning and gasping out loud with little regard for who might hear him.

His deep groans are music to your ears as your fingers work feverishly at your clit to keep up. His mouth hangs open, still buried inside of you as he watches you come apart in front of him, your eyes closed and your chest heaving, his name on the tip of your tongue.

Finally, you collapse forwards against his chest, lifting off of him and kissing at his neck.

“Fuck…” He breathes out.

“You feel better?” You whisper, catching your breath as your nails rake along his stomach. He hums in response, kissing softly at your temple.

He sighs in relief as you pull the belt apart and free his wrists, stretching out his arms and rubbing at the reddened skin.

“I can’t stay, Taylor’s getting dropped off home at nine.” You kiss his mouth softly, already starting to push off of his chest. He just groans and rolls onto his front, disgruntled by the idea of not having you in his bed tonight. “I’ll see you tomorrow at six?”

“Right. What should I wear?”

“A little more than you’re wearing now, preferably.”

He chuckles tiredly and considers grabbing his boxers, opting to instead just press his face into his pillow as he listens to you getting dressed again.

“Should I bring them like… a gift or something?”

“It’s a little early for bribery.”

He sighs and sits up swiftly, resting his elbows on his knees, his mouth creasing into a worried frown. “What are we going to do if they don’t like me?”

Really, there’s only one answer; you’d never put him before your kids and he knows that.

Pulling your shirt down over your body, there’s only one thing to do. You lean forwards and kiss his lips tenderly. “They’ll love you.”

Once you convince him to get dressed again, Bradley walks you down to your car. Jake and Coyote say their greetings and goodbyes swiftly and politely, not making you stop for small talk.

Then, as Rooster heads back upstairs with a reddened face and even more reddened wrists, they meet him in the living room, beaming.

”Don’t start.” He groans, trying to dismiss them and head back to his room before the ridicule starts. It’s a little late for that. It’s been a little late for that since they heard Rooster practically crying your name twenty minutes earlier.

As you return home to reunite with your children, you’re greeted with an onslaught of texts about how — to quote — ‘those idiots heard everything’. It should bother you, but the thought of Bradley all red-faced and squirming at their comments just makes you chuckle.

Meeting at a neutral place always seemed like the best option, until you’re sitting in the parking lot, staring at your kids in the backseat — feeling like you’re introducing cats. Well, it has been quite some time since your children got over their interest in scratching and biting, so hopefully this will go smoother than that.

”How are you guys feeling?” You ask them, turning in your seat finally. Dylan can see the worry on your face. Your brows are raised, your eyes are round and fleeting between them each, lips pursed.

”Yeah, fine, mom.” He offers you a polite, sincere smile. It’s the best that he has to give. He knows this means something big to you. He knows that you’ve started singing in the kitchen again, and reading Taylor the stories with the voices, laughing with him until you’re doubled over and crying.

”Do you think he likes cats better or dogs?” Taylor perks up, tucking her feet up onto the seat and quirking her head at you. Your lips twitch as your son rolls his eyes at her.

“You can ask him.” You decide, and she seems to accept this as good enough of an answer. She settles back in her booster seat, crosses her arms across her little knit sweater and smiles back at you. Poor Rooster doesn’t have a clue what he’s in for with this little chatterbox — but you know he’ll be glad to not have to sit in silence.

A beat passes as you look between their faces. They both smile back at you, for different reasons entirely.

“Okay, are we ready to go inside?”

After quick agreement, Taylor watches her shoes cast purple neon shadows across the puddles, flashing bright with each step as your heels clack across the ground ahead of her. A hand lands on her shoulder, guiding her along and making sure that she keeps up.

Swiftly, she looks up at her big brother, frowning curiously at him, ”So, do we have to call him Dad too?”

”Rooster.” You breathe out, lips stretching into a smile as you spot him walking over from his truck. He looks right past you as you wrap your arms around his neck. About five paces back, your kids are trailing you, deep in conversation. About him, no doubt.

Suddenly, his attention snaps back to you, his eyes going wide as you kiss his cheek. He untangles himself from you, aggressively platonic for a man who was begging to hold you yesterday.

“Hi.”

”Don’t be weird, they’re children, not the FBI.” You whisper to him, turning quickly as you hear the two of them approaching this. “Guys, this is Bradley. Bradley, this is my daughter, Taylor, and my son, Dylan.”

”Hello.” Bradley stiffens.

“Hey.” Dylan tries.

“You’re pretty tall. Women like that.” It would seem that you’re all caught off guard by your daughter’s comment. Luckily, it’s just enough of a surprise to make Bradley’s tight-lipped smile break into a wide-stretching grin.

He sits opposite her at the table, Dylan by his side and you opposite Dylan. She spent the afternoon with your mother and it would seem, the two of them spent their time preparing questions.

”So—“ Dylan manages to interrupt, earning himself a stern glare from the little girl who was just about to get into the favourite colours segment of her interview. Bradley turns his head and looks at your son. “What team do you follow?”

Bradley shoots a glance over at you, knowing full well that your son has been raised to be a die hard 49ers fan. He looks back to the thirteen year old and inhales— he can’t pretend to like that team, he just can’t do it—

“The Eagles.” He rushes out.

“Huh.” Dylan quirks an eyebrow, turns his head and shoots you a look. He smirks softly, bringing the rim of his Pepsi glass to his mouth. “And… how’s that working out for ya, big guy?”

Bradley’s mouth falls slack, and he looks quickly across the table for support, finding nothing but you smirking back at him and Taylor giggling in response.

“Hey, buddy, I’ll have you know—“ And once again, that seems to do the trick. That’s the straw, right before the appetizers come out, that gets Bradley really talking, and after that it just doesn’t stop.

Taylor quickly gets him onto the conversation of cats versus dogs — he seems to pass her test. Bradley turns the conversation on you, and winds up grinning ear to ear with the insight of how your children perceive you to be, how they love you. You turn the conversation on Bradley, and reveal to the children that he not only enjoys rum and raisin flavoured ice-cream, but that it’s his favourite.

The betrayal on his face after that one will keep you laughing for weeks to come. It’s almost enough for the children to change their minds about him, but he quickly gets things back on track by revealing that he once met the guy who plays Captain America on a flight.

That wins him some serious brownie points.

You know that, just as easily as he had with you, he had won them over.

He grins at you as he settles the bill — despite your insistence to split it, his nerves seeming to have finally calmed.

“Mom, why do you call him Bradley when his work name is Rooster?” Taylor asks, slipping her hand into you palm as you head for the exit.

“Because we aren’t at work right now.” You answer with a shrug, checking over your shoulder to see Rooster talking with Dylan about something behind you.

“Can I call him Rooster?” She asks, peering up at you.

“If he says you can.”

“Bradley?” She cranes her neck as she calls back to him, capturing his attention instantly. “Can I call you Rooster?”

“Sure. Either works.” He shrugs, tucking his wallet back into the pocket of his jeans, walking to catch up with the two of you.

She looks quickly back up to you, approval plastered across her little face. She gives your hand a quick squeeze and smiles.

…

Tags: @cherrycola27 @mak-32 @khaylin27 @stoncms @shanimallina87 @cool-ultra-nerd @angelmavmurdock @gingerbreadandpaper @mizzzpink @whisperofsong @throwinsauce @perpetuelledaydreaming @n3ssm0nique @thedroneranger @abaker74 @marantha @ghxst-heart @diamond-3 @shawnsblue

#bradley bradshaw #bradley rooster bradshaw #miles teller #bradley bradshaw smut #rooster bradshaw imagine #rooster x you #top gun smut #bradley bradshaw x reader #bradley rooster bradshaw x reader

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 2 months

Note

WIBTA For Pushing My Boyfriend To Quit Smoking?

My (25F) boyfriend (23M) smokes and vapes tobacco/nicotine and weed everyday. He's tried to quit it all multiple times, both before and during our relationship, with no lasting success.

He knows just cutting himself off cold turkey would be a bad idea, so normally he tries to incrementally decrease the amounts he smokes/vapes in the hopes of eventually not doing it at all, but after a week or two he always goes back to the way he was before.

We talked about why he was having trouble with quitting, and he said that the withdrawals A) make him extremely irritable, and he knows that that makes him sorta unpleasant, and doesn't want other people to have to deal with his bad moods, B) worsen his IBS, which makes it nearly impossible for him to eat, and C) he liked to social aspect. Until recently, all of our friends, smoked almost, if not just as much as him (but now most of them have either cut back immensely, or quit all together). At every hang out they spent a lot of time smoking together (I've never particularly enjoyed it as much they did, but did join in occasionally), and it's still ine of the ways he makes new friends.

Despite all that, a few months ago he told me that he wanted to get really serious about it, so he went to the doctor and got some prescription patches.

He wore the patches for about 3 days (the prescription was for 15 days), said they weren't working, and gave up. Since then he started mentioning wanting to quit less and less, until now he doesn't talk about it at all.

On the one hand I'm a big believer in "adults should be allowed to do whatever as long as no one else gets hurt", and I don't want to come across as controlling. On the other, I'm extremely worried about him. He's coughing constantly, he can't seem to have fun doing anything unless he has nicotine or weed with him, he'll stop in the middle of whatever we're doing to rummage through his pockets or his bag to look for his vape or his pen or his cigarettes or weed or a cigar, etc. And when I say he'll stop in the middle of anything, I mean anything.

On top of all that, my dad had substance abuse issues in the past, and it was a major problem. He was a heavy smoker and a heavy drinker, and he almost died. So substance abuse and chemical dependency is a big deal to me. I have told my boyfriend about that, and he did make some changes for my sake (he used to be more of a drinker too, but has since successfully cut back on alcohol quite a bit), but I think maybe he doesn't realize just how big a deal it is to me.

I lie awake at night worried that he's gonna get lung cancer.

He said that he wants to quit, and I want to help, but I don't know how to do that without just nagging him about it, and I don't think he'd respond to that well.

WIBTA for getting more pushy and vocal about how much I want him to quit, or should I leave it and let him figure it out on his own?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

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mercuriians · 2 months

Note

Heyyyyyyy, I say your requests are open and I was wondering if you could write the GoM (Knb) reacting to their gf wrapping WAP?

Can be Sfw Or nsfw...or both?

Thank youuuuuuu

rap god(dess)

content info — fem! reader, suggestive gom drabbles (all separate, characters assumed to be aged up), slight crack sprinkled in. NSFW in aomine & kise's parts. MINORS BEWARE 😠 based on the song by cardi b & megan thee stallion.

word count — 2.5k words.

author’s note — thank you for the req!! this was pretty fun to write ngl. i told myself i was only going to write around three paragraphs per character, but well, things did not go according to plan lol. sorry for the delay, i hope the length makes up for it!

MIDORIMA.

quite frankly, with the vivid blush currently illuminating the boy's face, midorima looks like the perfect mascot for christmas. but really, no one can blame him. no, not when vulgar, obscene lyrics are effortlessly spilling from his girlfriend's lips like melted gold. maybe he should have predicted this in hindsight, midorima thinks to himself, brows furrowed. you did tend to have a bit of a surprisingly dirty mind hidden behind your unassuming personality.

"why are you singing such a crude song?" midorima utters, a frown etched onto his sharp features. to his chagrin, he recognizes it, having heard from takao of how popular the track was in america.

midorima makes no effort to stop you, however. he remains firmly by the doorway. it's as if he's transfixed by your confident voice and your improvised but smooth movements. he can't quite remember the last time he saw you dance, much less rap. it's a bit embarrassing to admit—for him, at least—but right now, you look undeniably attractive, with your swaying body and carefree grin.

obstinately, he conceals his growing arousal with a wince.

"now from the top, make it drop, that's some wet ass pussy!" you rap before finally looking over to where midorima stands stiffly. in a deceptively innocent manner, you wave to him. "you wanna join in on the fun, shin?" you ask, as if you don't already know what the answer will be. your fingers move to quickly smooth out your shirt.

the basketball player clicks his tongue. "i don't have time for that nonsense," he replies in his usual matter-of-fact tone, pushing his glasses up for good measure. still, it doesn't look like you're convinced, and for some reason your eyes are trailing lower and lower down his tall figure.

midorima feels himself panic.

you meet his gaze, giving the basketball player a sly smirk. unfortunately he already knows what you're going to say before the words even leave your mouth. "alright, but your body," you gesture towards the tent in his jeans, "is saying otherwise." the poor boy promptly chokes on his saliva.

KISE.

it only takes a moment for kise's silky voice to mix with your own. before he even reaches you, he's rapping, lyrics easily slipping from his lips as if he's rehearsed them a hundred times before. in all seriousness, he has. that's the reason why kasamatsu hit him square on the head last week, with a bit more force than usual.

but you don't need to know that. kise reaches for your phone on the living room table, lowering the song's volume just a little so that he can hear your combined voices better. "spit in my mouth, look at my eyes. this pussy is wet, come take a dive," you both sing in unison, turning to look at each other with the same stupid lopsided grin.

the song rolls on and along the way, you and kise formulate some dance moves to accentuate the musical experience. some are undoubtedly silly, with kise, for example, waving his arms around and making exaggerated facial expressions. it's all meant to withdraw a laugh from you, of course, and it works. but then there are the other types of dance moves.

the ones that exude a sensuous kind of aura, where hips sway and gyrate lecherously, where eyes become heavy with fervor and lust. these dances are the most dangerous, undoubtedly, because of the temptations that they entail. a person might become consumed by the reckless desire that burns within their stomach if they aren't careful. and then suddenly, the atmosphere can change with just a blink of an eye.

that's exactly what happens the moment you impulsively decide to push kise down onto a chair and give him a lap dance. the way you move your body is shockingly fluid, and you seem to know just what to do to arouse the blonde even more. there are some small pauses here and there as you decide which moves to try next, but kise hardly notices them when you're biting your lip like that. it's only inevitable for him to lose all sense of self-control, really. soon he becomes focused on getting your shirt off, no longer paying any attention to the song on loop.

"fuck, ryouta!” you moan as you unabashedly bounce on your boyfriend’s cock, arms loosely wrapped around his toned shoulders. “nngh, feels so good—” the way the chair wobbles and shakes should be concerning, but quite clearly neither of you can care less at the moment.

kise’s warm, large hands rest comfortably on your hips, occasionally squeezing your ass whenever the pleasure feels particularly intense. “just like that, babe, yeah,” he pants, rolling his hips to meet yours. “you’re doing so well for me, aren’t you, (name)-cchi?” he reaches up to cup your face in his hand, leaning forward to capture your lips in a heated kiss. his tongue swirls around yours, and kise can’t help but groan into your open mouth.

needless to say, you both are too preoccupied to notice when the song finally ends.

AOMINE.

aomine hasn’t even entered the club room yet when he hears the echo of your voice. he’s heard you rap before, so he knows that you’re actually quite skilled at it. still, this particular performance is quickly turning out to be his definite favorite so far. he briskly walks down the hallway, a little too eager to see his stunning girlfriend. you don’t disappoint, of course.

you’re flipping your hair sassily, using your half-full water bottle as your makeshift microphone while you dance around the vacant area. aomine watches you, wholly enraptured, an amused smirk pulling at his lips but with his eyes already clouded with lust. “hop on top, i want a ride. i do a kegel while it’s inside,” you rap, still blissfully unaware of the one-man audience that you now have. aomine almost doesn’t want to interrupt your singing session, just so he can continue to see you in your element. which happens to be sexy as hell.

“you want a ride, huh?” aomine chuckles lowly, making you drop your water bottle out of alarm. he walks over to where you stand, leaning down to whisper in your ear so he can mess with you. “could’ve just asked, baby.”

suddenly all your confidence seems to evaporate, terminated by that single sentence. your cheeks darken into a rosy shade. aomine grins, taking pride in how all too easy it was to make you flustered. “what?” he asks, feigning innocence. “lost your voice or something?”

“you’re a jerk,” you mutter, reaching up so you can hit the basketball player in the chest. the music is still playing in the background, unaffected by aomine’s antics, but it seems like you’re too embarrassed to continue rapping. the boy only stares down at you, smirk never once faltering. “pick up my water bottle, daiki, you made me drop it.”

aomine shrugs. “you’re closer to the ground,” he responds casually. he’s well aware that the comment is a bit out of pocket—you never did like to be teased about your height—but he really can’t control himself when he’s around you. especially in the state he’s in right now.

“oh come on,” you groan, feeling frustration well up within your chest along with your embarrassment. still, you bend down to pick up the bottle, completely oblivious to the lustful thoughts that swarm aomine’s head. a startled gasp rips past your throat when you feel his large, calloused hands grab hold of your hips. however, quicker than you would like to admit, the surprise shifts into arousal the moment the basketball player presses his bulge against your ass.

with his fingers already tugging your skirt down, aomine breathes out, “since you like that song so much, you wanna act it out?”

your eyes widen, and you try to think straight, try to be a responsible manager, but the way he grinds against you so deliciously starts to scramble any coherent thought you may have had. “wait, d-daiki— satsuki and sakurai are still cleaning up the gym,” you protest weakly, those words being your last line of defense. not that they would have worked.

“doesn’t matter,” he practically growls, tugging you up so that your back rests against his chest. “who’s the team captain here?”

“you are,” you answer, but your voice comes out as a breathless whine. the submissive sound only fuels aomine even more, and it isn’t long before all of your clothes are ripped off and forgotten on the ground. soon, his hips are furiously smacking against yours, your whimpers mixing in with the boy’s groans. “god, mmph, does this mean i should rap m-more of those—nngh— american songs?”

“fuck yeah.”

MURASAKIBARA.

rivulets of water run down the muscular expanse of murasakibara's bare skin as a soft ivory towel hangs around his neck, a lazily pleased expression sprawled across his face—all evidence of the shower he's just indulged in after a long evening of rigorous practice. there's one more thing that he still craves at the moment, however. his stomach growls audibly, and almost as if he's running on autopilot, he walks straight to the kitchen.

now the closer he gets to the area, the clearer he hears your voice. it seems like you're singing quite an explicit song. "gobble me, swallow me, drip down the side of me," you rap enthusiastically. murasakibara doesn't think too much about the sexual connotations, though, since getting his hands on some corn chips is his main priority at the moment.

right before he steps foot into the kitchen, he asks, "(name)-chin, can ya get me a bag of—" that's when his amethyst gaze lands on your dancing figure, and before he knows it, he grows quiet, somewhat interested by the sight in front of him.

"talk yo' shit, bite your lip. ask for a car while you ride that dick," you rap, moving your head along to the rhythm. your eyes meet murasakibara's, and instead of feeling embarrassed, his presence only fuels you to dance more vigorously. it's like there's a voice at the back of your head, pushing you to see just how much of a reaction you can draw out of your normally indifferent boyfriend. admittedly, the fact that he's currently shirtless is also a reason for motivation.

however, when the song ends a little while later, it doesn't seem as if murasakibara is affected much. he remains where he is, continuing to lean on the doorway. the closest indication that he even saw you perform is the slightly impressed look in his eyes, but even that is nothing more than a sliver, and it makes you question if you're hallucinating it. you huff out a small sigh of defeat, and you turn around, reaching for the drawer. "corn chips, right?"

the basketball player doesn't say anything as he approaches you, and he doesn't say anything either as his arms circle possessively around your waist. there's a shiver that runs down your spine. you turn your head so you can meet his gaze—wait, why are his eyes so dark?

"i think i'm hungry for something else now, (name)-chin."

AKASHI.

humming quietly to himself, akashi gets up from his spot on the living room sofa, beginning to walk over to your room. it's a friday evening, and although he'd usually have practice at this time, coach shirogane had called in sick—a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, really. either way, akashi was sure to take advantage of the opportunity, especially considering how both of your schedules tended to overflow with academics and extracurriculars alike.

his mind wanders a bit, and he remembers you telling him about a volleyball game that was scheduled a few days ago. he could indeed have asked you what the outcome was via text, but akashi has always preferred face-to-face communication. he supposes that he's more traditional in that sense.

however, what he isn't quite expecting is to hear you, normally dignified and proper, rapping lyrics that are particularly edged with profanities. there's a small, rare twinge of disbelief that tugs at him, prompting him to silently move closer to the door. "your honor, i'm a freak bitch, handcuffs, leashes. switch my wig, make him feel like he cheating," akashi hears you belt out. his eyes widen the tiniest bit.

still, by no means is he deaf; regardless of how explicit your music taste seems to be, he can hear the genuine talent seeping from your voice, how you swiftly enunciate each syllable clearly while also maintaining the rap's nimble pace. judging from the sound of your movements, he guesses that you're also dancing.

for a moment, akashi considers connecting you with a respected hip-hop artist that his family loosely has relations with. a bit of a far-fetched thought, maybe, but truly anything is possible in the eyes of a visionary.

when the song reaches its end, he knocks on the bedroom door. he doesn't miss the small sound of surprise that you make. "can i come in, darling?" akashi asks sweetly.

"of course, seijuro," you answer, and he opens the door to see you sitting on the bed. other than the drop of sweat rolling down your face, there's no other indication that you were dancing quite passionately just a few moments ago. you smile up at him, walking over to press a quick kiss to his cheek. "did you just get here?"

akashi knows you well enough to see the actual meaning hidden within your words: oh no, i hope you didn't hear much.

he smiles a bit too slyly. "don't worry, my love, your secret's safe with me," he hums, taking a moment to admire the blush on your face before pulling you into a kiss. slowly, he guides the two of you to your bed, his hands calculatingly tracing the hem of your shirt. he'd just have to make you realize that there isn't anything to be ashamed of.

BONUS: KUROKO.

"i want you to park that big mack truck right in this little garage," you rap shamelessly, completely lost within your own world and failing to notice your boyfriend standing just a few feet away from you. "make it cream, make me sc— ah!" you squeal, eyes widening in horror as you finally catch sight of kuroko. you immediately pause the song playing on your phone. "uhm, hey tetsu. number two and i were just.. having a singing session."

number two barks in agreement.

all kuroko does is let out a quiet hum of acknowledgment. much to your confusion, he picks up number two, securing the equally confused puppy within his arms before leaving promptly. "was my rapping that bad?" you murmur to yourself, dismayed.

however, after a minute, kuroko returns to the room. you stare at him, flabbergasted. "why did you stop the music?" he asks innocently.

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fortisfilia · 23 days

Text

Promised Part 11 - Tom Riddle x reader

Info: This is a rewrite of a story I've posted on my old account years ago. If it sounds familiar, that might be why :)

Summary: In this story, Tom didn't grow up as an orphan, but with his grandfather and uncle. Reader's sister got very sick and the Gaunts offer their help. But not without asking for something in return.

Warnings: Arranged marriage, an unholy amount of fluff

Word count: 2.3k

Masterpost | Masterlist | Part 10 | Part 12

Part 11 - The Earth's Centre

Starting to brew the antidote for Mors Grano proved easier than anticipated. The potion’s base was quite similar to any other healing draught, and so was its production. You had decided to begin the tedious process, even though the Banshee tears were missing. According to the recipe, they were the last ingredient to be added, so you had plenty of time to find them, even if you didn’t know exactly how.

For the first few weeks, there was nothing to do but the Moondew cook, stirring it frequently. The cauldron stood in Tom’s room, its content simmering steadily, ready to be examined at any moment by one of you.

Professor Beery had denied you the bonus points for the N.E.W.T.s after you had told him that the Moly had unfortunately died. Those points were the least of your problems, however.

The plant had, in fact, bloomed beautifully, ready to be added to the potion.

And that was when the difficulties began. As soon as you dropped the blossoms into the cauldron, the potion started to smell. Very strongly. The mixture reacted in a way that wasn’t described in the book and started to produce yellow steam, as well as a sour, headache-inducing odour, which reached beyond the walls of Tom’s room. The fume filled up every last inch of his dorm and even seemed to creep out into the Slytherin common room. Other students had begun to mention the weird smell and even Dippet, who had paid Tom a number of unfortunate surprise visits, was beginning to grow suspicious.

You had sent your parents an owl to inform them you wouldn’t come home during your semester break. They weren’t exactly happy about it; you had never stayed at Hogwarts during the holidays after all. But you had insisted, telling them there was so much studying to do until they finally let go. That wasn’t even a lie. There was a bunch of work to do. Granted, not all of it was related to school, but you still had a lot on your plate.

Tom stayed in Hogwarts for the week as well. You weren’t sure but highly doubted that he had notified his own family about it. And to be fair, they wouldn’t really care about that, would they?

Although the school was practically empty, with only a fraction of the students staying with you, those who remained complained of the pungent smell in all the Slytherin dormitories. On Sunday evening you heard that the housekeeper had been sent to find the source, and Tom was informed that Mr Carpe would begin his search the following morning.

So there you were, worrying about what to do, stirring the cauldron for the twentieth time within the last minutes, hoping it would steam less, the more you whisked through it. No matter how hard you concentrated, how many options you took into account, there was nowhere to take the cauldron where its smell would go unnoticed.

The Potions classroom was off-limits, even though it was much better equipped for the fumes. Slughorn would spend a lot of his time there, to prepare tasks for the upcoming semester. You had even considered taking it home and telling your parents about it. But using the Floo-Network with an item this heavy wasn’t possible, and taking the train with a simmering cauldron seemed ridiculous. Besides, the antidote still took months to finish, so you would have to take it back to Hogwarts a week later anyway.

Hell, you had even thought of taking that damned kettle out onto the Quidditch pitch or into the forest, so no one would smell it anymore. But you couldn’t leave it out in the open, of course.

Just when you had given up hope and realised that you couldn’t go on brewing the potion in Tom’s room, or anywhere else, he had told you about another possibility. There was this room on the seventh floor that he had discovered in fifth year. He called it the Come and Go Room and was positive that no one but himself, not even the teachers, knew of its existence. The room must have been enchanted, according to Tom, and only appeared when one was in dire need.

So the two of you went there that same night, in a cloak and dagger operation, levitating the cauldron behind you. You had covered it with a white sheet so that if someone saw you, they at least wouldn’t know initially what you were doing. The disguise was weak and you knew if Dippet or any other teacher would spot you, you would be screwed.

Luckily none of them were around when you rushed through the halls, aside from Warren O’Connor, a Ravenclaw fifth year, who patrolled a corridor next to their tower. He was too far away to detect the poorly hidden cauldron and didn’t even seem to look at you once he recognised Tom.

When you had finally arrived, chest heaving, thoughts rushing from relief and tension, Tom instructed you how to summon the Come and Go Room. You walked past the stone wall three times and imagined, very carefully, what you needed. An airtight room that allowed you to keep on brewing your potion in peace, that no one would be able to find unless you wanted them to. Suddenly, a door appeared. You looked at Tom and he nodded before you took the handle and opened it.

The small room behind the door was, simply put, perfect. Your very own Potions laboratory. Dark and nifty, it offered enough little cabinets to store all the ingredients for the antidote, as well as a worktop to put the cauldron on. Everything looked as if it had been custom made, just for this purpose. Which it was, you had just created it all yourself.

Now that the cauldron was in a safe place Tom felt more at ease and even thought that the semester break could turn out to be enjoyable. Why did that relax him, though? A question he had asked himself more than once. He didn’t have to care, nor did he have to help his fiancée to save her sister. Then why had he done it?

He didn’t have a logical answer to that question, even though the illogical one seemed to grow stronger, slowly putting down roots and beginning to blossom. He shrugged it off. But there were so many questions of the same kind running through his mind. Why did he care? He had never cared before. For anyone. That girl wouldn’t bring him where he wanted to be just by marrying him. Sure, her family was respected. Of course, they were purebloods, which was why his Grandfather had taken notice of them. But it had never been Tom’s wish to marry her. So why didn’t he mind the thought anymore? The idea of watching her walk down the aisle had repelled him immensely when he had found out what Marvolo’s plan had been. And now it didn’t. He must have gotten used to the idea. It even bugged him to think about the fact that the marriage wouldn’t happen by chance if the antidote was finished soon enough. Then why did he help her?

There was something inside of him, something he couldn’t just pinpoint yet. Something that made him do the things he had done, even when it had gone against his own benefit. Something that made him care less and less about himself. It must have turned all of his morals upside down, because somehow, and he couldn’t explain why, the most important thing was to see her happy. He didn’t even know when his priorities had changed. When he had stopped putting himself first. But it had happened. And that irritated him beyond belief.

She had been so easy to dislike. Back then, when they were sitting in her dining room alone. When she had stared at him, eagerly waiting for him to pity her. So conceited. Desperate for his attention. But then again, she had been so easy to like. When had he started giving in? At first, he had felt nothing more than disgust, appalled by the turmoil inside his head. That nasty feeling in his chest and his weak knees. But once he had surrendered, it had begun to feel good.

All he wanted - no - all he needed now, was to make sure she was safe. Protect her. Help her. That wasn’t just an act of kindness though. He had figured out that apparently, he mirrored her emotions. When she was pleased, he was too. When she was angry, he couldn’t help but feel furious as well. When she was sad, his chest stung with her. It felt like a purpose. Like she was the earth’s centre and everyone else, even himself, merely spun around her. She had his full attention now and he didn’t plan on taking it from her anytime soon.

If someone were to ask him why, he wouldn’t even know where to begin. How does one even begin to describe such an embarrassing accumulation of emotion and weakness alike? If he had to, he’d start with her glow. That devotion she seemed to radiate anywhere she was. Her relentless spirit and how ready she was to combat anyone with it. How tender she was with people that deserved it. And how ruthless she could be with those who didn’t. The way she moved in her sleep, slowly and gently, turning over and unknowingly stealing his blanket at least twice a night. The way her chest moved up and down when she lay next to him. How her eyes seemed to light up when she awoke and looked at him. The hours he had watched her. Held her. Felt her skin brushing against his own, just like in this moment. How could anyone experience that and not have the urge to keep it? To freeze those moments in time and lock them up, safely, for nobody to see.

Tom wasn’t sure if she was aware of how nervous she made him. He knew how to hide it, but was ever so annoyed at how much he depended on being close to her. And he usually wasn’t the one to become jittery. That was the response he normally got. Freda Morris, for example, couldn’t seem to think straight when he had taken her out once, during their sixth year. Merlin’s beard, that lass was nerve-wrenching.

Quite contrary to her. No one had ever done that to him. She had crawled under his skin and into his head, drugging his mind until almost every single thought he produced revolved around her. But he knew his place. She hadn’t befuddled him just to make him her pawn. He knew, because that was what his family had done ever since he could remember. She had never done him wrong. Maybe that was why he had helped her. And why he was willing to do anything for her, even if it meant for him to suffer. He was the antagonist in their story, he knew. And if he was poison, she was the remedy. If he was the villain, she was the treasure worth saving.

Tom’s pitiful monologue was interrupted when she woke up, opened her eyes and looked at him.

“Morning,” she said quietly and smiled.

He looked at her for a moment. If only she knew.

“Morning,” he replied.

She stretched her arms in the air and yawned, then turned towards him and ran her fingers along his jawline. Bliss.

“How long have you been awake?” she asked, staring at the stubble on his chin that her thumb had just touched.

“Not long,” he lied. “Just a few minutes.”

She grinned and placed a kiss onto the left end of his lips. “I have to get up and stir the potion. Care to join me?”

“Sure.”

“Good. Oh, and I think I’m going to go to Diagon Alley in the afternoon. To buy the Foxgloves. I have to add them next week.”

“I’ll come.”

She exhaled and pulled him in, nuzzling into his neck.

“Do you think we should go to Knockturn Alley as well?” she asked, her voice muffled. “While we’re there. I want to see if any store offers Banshee tears.”

“I don’t think they do,” Tom said and she lifted her head to look at him.

“But where else then?”

“I think I know where we could get some.”

She nodded, urging him to tell her.

“Well, I’m sure Morfin owns a flask. He had to get it if he wanted to brew the antidote, didn’t he?”

“But if they never planned on curing Elsie entirely, I don’t think he would have gotten them.”

“Marvolo never planned on curing her,” Tom said. “Morfin did. He’s a Potions master. One that doesn’t care about legality. He knows every last person that deals with ingredients like that. Even if he never intended to free her, I’m sure he got them just in case he ever needed them for himself.”

Her eyes roamed his face as she pondered. “So what do we do now? Go to your house, search his chamber and steal the flask?”

Tom shook his head. “That won’t be as easy. They’re always home, Marvolo has his eyes everywhere. Even the house-elves would alarm him.”

She frowned, brows furrowed while she lightly tugged on his hair.

“They’ll be gone,” Tom went on. “In late March. The Order of Merlin gets honoured and they are both invited. We could go then and try to find it.”

There it was again. That spark in her eyes.

“Okay,” she answered. “Let’s do it then. But for now, let’s stay here for five more minutes.”

Masterpost | Masterlist | Part 12

Tags: @ariachaos @daardyrnitta

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mikrotyalm13 · 2 months

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hehe.. hehehehhe... heheheheh. some info bout xiao

hey there. 👁👁 where yo clothes at

Xiaolong/Xiao. about 200 years old/full height: 440 cm (14,4 ft), usual height: about 210 cm (6,8 ft)/naga/bisexual.

somewhat-normally-explained-background: Xiao most likely came from some respected family which he was extremely fed up with for a long time. neglectful family, strange formal events, lack of any personal life, all of that... so he stole a bunch of money from his father and ran away. he was forced to travel with humans, which is how he began to feel interest towards them. after that, he stopped in a nice, quiet little town, deciding to settle down in a local inn for a while. xiao quickly made friends with the owner of the place, an elderly woman, and soon started working there. old woman passed away, and he inherited the inn from her, which he runs to this day. basically, he wanted a quiet, calm and free life, which he achieved, even though now he's known as a seducer (this is marketing and he is just a really good host i swear).

xiao is very calm and laid-back, it's impossible to get him to argue (only in a playful or friendly way;)). even though he has employees, he still prefers to greet guests himself. but when colder times approach, he can often be seen napping behind the counter. curled up in his tail, in a chair or leaning against the counter itself. he usually wakes up to approaching footsteps faster than he is awakened. he may seem kinda lazy and unserious at first glance, but he's kind, gentle and caring.

- owns an inn with hot springs in a small town. the building itself is quite old, but he keeps it in good condition; - has a lot of piercings. to be exact: two in the bottom lip, ring in a left wing of his nose, four in his left ear, three in his right ear, and nipples. unfortunately, he can't get dick piercings bs his genitals are not out and about all the time; - takes pride in his absolutely gorgeous hair. it's not very thick, but very silky and soft. most of the time it's braided, and ends a little below his butt; - his only piece of real gold jewelry is his left, gold-plated fang; - the tail is heavy and strong, belly is yellow, the rest is black with flecks of pink and light yellow. has an almost pearly shimmering to his scales... very pretty and smooth...; - somewhat cold-blooded, does not experience brumation. but he'll never refuse some extra warmth, he loves hugs and any physical contact in general! if it's fall or winter and you're sleeping in one bed, he will wrap you in with his tail and will not let you go until afternoon; - even though he doesn't hibernate, with the onset of spring, the mating season affects him... well, quite noticeably. usually he will take a week off and lock himself in his room, but if he has a lover at the moment, he will avoid them with all his strength. because the process is long, he has two dicks, and if you'll really agree to everything, you both will be in his room for at least three days. you need to store some food and water for yourself, dear, bc you're not leaving.

#microtya's kids #art #my art #artists on tumblr #traditional art #traditional artwork #traditional drawing #traditional sketch #sketch #monsterfucker #monster fucker #monster x human #monster boyfriend #monster lover #teratophillia #naga x human

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bluetortoist · 3 months

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Showing off another Batman OC. This time, its my own Alice. I know. So original 🙄 but I can't help myself. She's a very accomplished chemist who crossed paths with Mad Hatter and later on became his lover.

(More info of her down below! History kind of dubious, be warned)

Name: Alice (real name: Eleanor Carole)

Nickname: Alias "Dear Alice"

Age: 29

Gender: Cis Female

Identifies: Demisexual

Race: Human

Ethnicity: White

Nationality: American

Birth town: Lansing, Michigan

Current Living: Gotham City

Allegiance: Chaotic Neutral-Lawful Evil

Powers/Abilites:

• Being a chemist, she has experimented and perfected two different formulas to mutate one's body to grow bigger or smaller. They can be ingested as is, or injected/mixed in with various ingredients. She uses this as both a defense (Bigger) and stealth (Smaller) strategy. However, she can't use it too much or else has negative effects on the body.

• She has a few versions of long armed, Horse's Hammer formed in the shape of a pink flamingo, one heavy, the other light; It, no doubt, causes pretty hefty damage.

• Even though she has become more physically strong since working with Tetch, she still only knows basic self defense and fist-fight combat, but has always (and always will), kept a knife on her body since moving to Gotham.

History: Eleanor was born into a family of domestic abuse but doesn't remember too much from that time other than that they were clearly unhappy together. Luckily, she didnt get to experience that environment for long because both her parents died in a car accident when she was 4. She was sent to live in an orphanage until she was 10 and was adopted to a family of doctors and physicians. It was through them she found her interest/obsession with chemistry. Even though they try, Eleanor rarely get to see both her parents at the same time since both had conflicting work schedules at the time, and spent a good chunk of her school years making and losing friends and putting more effort in her hobbies. This was about the time (10-13) her emotional detachment problems for people started to develop. Graduated top of her class with her Chemist degree, no friends, but got a boyfriend in a one-sided relationship. They started living together once they moved to Gotham. Got a job at a chemical reasearch facility that was a branch of Wayne Labs, but wasnt that well liked; was considered a "cold genius" among other coworkers. Decided to go see a therapist to help with herself as well (much to her boyfriends chagrin). Both those took all of her time that it was putting a strain on her relationship with her boyfriend. Somewhere around this time was when she was feeling at her lowest and also when she met Jervis and soon became friends (whom she already knew was the Mad Hatter). She begun seeing him a lot more after venting her personal and emotional troubles to him (quite literally saying that she wishes she was born as someone else) and he suggests his own kind of hypnosis therapy to help bring feelings up to the surface, all while conditioning her into a version of Alice. She consented to this kind of therapy, desperate to feeling anything like any sort of person at this point. (Basically: delusional man teaches girl how to manifest a new persona to actively dissociate 💀). This continues on and eventually (and quickly) start to form a relationship. The boyfriend, already pissed enough, already suspects she is seeing someone else. Confronts her one night about it, says hes kicking her out and almost turns into a fight, but she manages to beat him unconscious in self defense. In a panic, she runs right back to Jervis, and he offers to let her stay. He goes out and kills the boyfriend himself before finding out the boyfriend had made a report on her to the police. She stays in hiding for a couple of weeks afterwards. In that time, she and her Alice persona has become one in the same and doesn't even remember her old name anymore and only small bits of her early life. Alice finally felt like a person, regardless of whether those feelings were in the right place or not. They were at least real and her own now, Jervis/Hatter was real, and she can finally say, without faking, that she loves both of them for it. It wasn't until later on in the future that Hatter and her got involved in a criminal incident that she decided that she would need to protect herself and her precious Hatter (much to his dismay, not wanting her to get involved at all, but was pushed to believing its for the best). She started learning how to use weapons and self defense and creating more of her own chemical formulas inspired by Alice in Wonderland. She eventually started gaining a name for herself as Hatter's lover, right hand, and mad genius chemist, "Dear Alice"

Notes/Quirks:

• She has two snaggletooth upper-canines and a small birthmark on her upper right cheek.

• She used to have a therapist she would go to to help with her apathy and general difficulty with forming attachments with other people, due to some emotional damage back in childhood.

• She used to volunteer to read to children at her local bookstore. It was something for the community that her therapist encouraged her to do to help interact with other people. It was the one thing she missed before going to crime.

• She has never read a lot of classic children's books as a child, including Alice in Wonderland until it was suggested to her for her next book reading. Thus, how she will soon meet Jervis Tetch.

#art #dc #batman #btas #batman tas #jervis tetch #mad hatter #batman oc #btas oc

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kradogsrats · 9 months

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If Soren seems to have gotten sick when he was a toddler, do you think Lissa left shortly after Claudia was born…? Maybe that doesn’t quite line up, actually…

Okay so I saw someone ask Aaron Ehasz a similar question about the timeline of Soren's illness re: Viren's dream vs. the events presented in Puzzle House, and I cannot remember where it was but his response was something like "hm... well you should probably believe the show."

Which immediately made me go "oh my god was Soren actually dead for like three to five years and Kpp'Ar was looking for a unicorn horn to resurrect him in a manner similar to the Star magic spell that 'restores bodies to separated spirits' and then instead Viren stole Ziard's staff from him and used that??????" which is a) insane, and b) has several reasons it probably isn't the case. But it's a thought I had.

Anyway, let's look at our contrasting sources:

Puzzle House

Puzzle House establishes the following sequence of events:

Soren is ill to the point of dying

Kpp'Ar disappears

Soren gets better

Lissa leaves

It's also implied that this was all pretty recent, between King Atticus's concern for Viren and Soren's for Claudia:

So, how old are all these extremely precocious young children in Puzzle House?

Well, Sarai is... quite pregnant. She's got a pretty small frame, but I'd still put her at like 30 weeks, minimum. Ezran is pinned at 10 in the official character lineup. (In s4 he says he was "nine years old" when Harrow was killed. Given his March birthday, he is probably fudging that a bit since s1 starts mid-May so he was pretty recently 10 at the time.) Viren also puts Harrow's coronation and Sarai's death at nine years earlier, at which point I would estimate Ezran at roughly 6-8 months, given how he is portrayed.

Also given the mid-May start to s1, we also have Claudia at almost 17, and Soren at about 18 and a half. Soren is about 18 months older than Claudia. So between all of that, we can probably ballpark Puzzle House at about one year before Harrow's coronation. This puts Soren at about 8 and a half, and Claudia at almost 7. (And Callum at about to turn 5, if anyone's keeping track.)

Given the way it's spoken about, I would not put Soren's recovery at earlier than 6 months prior, and probably more like 3 or so. This roughly lines up with the estimates I had for everything before, so idk go me or whatever.

Strangers

We do also have a third source for details on Soren's illness, which is the Strangers short from Reflections. This establishes that Soren was old enough to remember details about that time:

If Soren was the age he appears in Viren's dream, then a) he probably wouldn't remember any of it, and b) Claudia would have been an infant. Now, an infant can definitely cry in their room until morning, but I do think the implication here is supposed to be that she was old enough to understand what was happening and have emotions about it.

Additionally, Soren thinks of the slow breaths practice as something he did therapeutically for a long time:

Basically, I think it's pretty clear between this and the info in Puzzle House that the Puzzle House timeline is accurate, but Soren initially developed what was actually a chronic illness much earlier.

Viren's Dream

Now, what about Viren's dream?

It's incredibly difficult to pinpoint ages of children in animation purely visually, so I'm mostly basing an estimate of 2-3 years old for Soren during Viren's dream off of his demonstrated stage of linguistic development and the fact that he's able to run. He could be delayed in one or both areas, though.

Viren dreams of Soren turning to stone, similar to how Thunder did (and how Viren does in the opening). This is interesting in that the implication is certainly death, but it also has heavy ties to dark magic and the other themes of Viren's dreaming, which I would say put it as more related to something along the lines of a "sealed fate" rather than literal death. Dreaming Viren knows what he didn't know when Soren was that age, and probably developed his first recognizable symptoms—that this illness would come close to killing him, and Viren would give up everything to save him.

There's also a possible implication there that dark magic was actually what caused Soren's illness in the first place, which could be something interesting to explore. (And I've definitely seen people explore it, before.)

Anyway, like most of Viren's dream, it's accurate but not literal.

TL;DR: Dreams are fucking weird, and Claudia was still probably between six and seven years old when Lissa left the family.

#i'm definitely going to fuck up some extremely basic math here #anyway basically the only thing i was wrong about was that kpp'ar disappears before soren gets better rather than after #the dragon prince #the dragon prince spoilers #tdp spoilers #s5 spoilers #soren #claudia #lissa #viren #puzzle house

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justmeinatree · 10 months

Text

03 - Made Of Something New : UK

Summary : you meet niall in your hotel bar. and there’s an intense connection.

previous part /// jump to pt. 1

TW : smut, choking, cheating (not on you, but none the less)

Word Count : 6.5k

Series Masterlist

GIF : @horansqueen

June 16th - London, UK

“hey ! girl, guess what !?” you hear your coworker yelling at you excitedly as she tries to catch up to you.

you were heading back to your hotel room, walking down the long hallway in some fancy, high rise in london. your coworker was at the other end of the hallway, making her way towards you, causing quite the scene with the few other guests in the hall.

“what’s up ?” you chuckle as she runs past everyone else and finally catches up to you, waving some papers around in your face.

“i had a great presentation with some ceo’s today. they gave me two tickets to a concert tonight as a reward of sorts,” she hops around excitedly as you try your best to catch any info from the papers she’s flapping around.

“that’s amazing ! who are you seeing ?,” you chuckle, happy for her. she deserved this, she’s been working hard lately, trying to make a name for herself with the company you both work at. “and more importantly, who are you taking ?” you ask suggestively, knowing she’s surely taking you. unless she wants to go to a show with one of the 70+ year olds travelling with you on this trip.

she gives you an eye roll, giggling, “think i’m gonna take charles, he needs a night out on the town.” you laugh loudly, knowing full well that charles is in no state to go to a show. he’s the oldest man on the payroll, can barely take a few steps without stopping to lean on his cane.

“you’re coming with me, of course. i hope you brought something other than work clothes, we’re going to see niall horan !” she exclaims animatedly.

hearing his name makes you stop cold, your eyes going wide. you remember that night like it was yesterday. if you close your eyes and really think about it, you can still feel the trail of fiery heat his fingertips traced over your skin.

it’s been just over 5 weeks now, since that fateful night in vancouver. waking up to your alarm that morning, was one of the hardest things you’ve ever had to do. niall’s soft sleepy breaths made your chest achingly heavy. you remember gently running your fingertips down the side of his face, making his eyes flutter open.

you will never be able to forget the content sigh that puffed out from between his sleep dry lips as his eyes made contact with yours. as they flutter shut again, the brightness of the early sun a little too harsh in his sleepy state, his tongue darts out to wet to his lips. a raspy “good morning petal,” escaping under his breath as his lips curl up into a small smile.

“are you okay ?” you hear your coworker asking, snapping you out of your thoughts. “do you hate his music or something ? if that’s the problem, please come anyway. we can get proper drunk and have a good laugh ? i just really don’t want to go alone.”

“hey, no sorry, good god stop rambling,” you laugh, giving your head a shake and taking a breath. “no, no i do like him. his music, i mean. i think you just surprised me there, sorry,” you attempt to brush off your little moment. “wouldn’t have thought that our company had niall horan tickets to giveaway.”

you firm up the details of when you’ll both meet in the lobby, still giving you plenty of time to get ready. when you finally have alone time in your room, you take a moment to gather up your thoughts. never in a million years had you thought you’d be in the same room as niall again. you had honestly figured you’d avoid going to his shows just because it might be too painful to see him there. see him and know that you can’t do anything about it. see him and have him not even know you were there, felt almost bizarre. like you were cheating him in some way.

but you couldn’t think about that too much, you honestly just wanted to see him again. torture yourself for god knows what reason. fuck it, maybe you should get drunk for this.

as you shower, fix up your hair and makeup, and get dressed, you help yourself to a few of the tiny liquor bottles from the hotel room bar. the company is paying for it anyway. you’re just tipsy enough to not have too much anxiety about tonight as you head down to the lobby, meeting up with your friend.

you both get into an uber, the car dropping you off at the arena. you follow her through the crowd as she has the tickets and knows where she’s going. you never asked where the seats were, but you start to grow a bit nervous as she’s leading you towards the floor.

“hey, i never asked where we’re sitting,” you hum knowing full well you should have asked earlier. you did not mentally prepare for this. why on earth does your company have such great seats to niall horan ?

“fifth row, right by the centre,” she smiles excitedly, leading you right up front as your heart beats right out of your chest. there is absolutely no way he won’t see you now.

what is he going to think ? that i’m stalking him now ? we agreed, just one night in the hotel in vancouver. that was it. just a little taste of what could never be. and although we never stated that we’d try to avoid each other, you just kind of assumed that was a given.

it was so intense with niall, there were so many feelings involved, for both of you. you knew avoiding him was the best solution. neither of you could handle seeing each other again. could hide out in the bathroom all night, you think to yourself.

just as that thought seemed to grow more and more tempting, the lights drop, the crowd starts screaming and the first strums of a guitar can be heard blaring through the room. and that’s when the stage lights up, niall walking right out, front and centre, to the mic stand, screaming out a “hello london.”

he’s there. he’s right there. and he’s just as beautiful. and oh my did you ever miss his voice. listening to him sing the first verse has you in a trance. you watch his skin glowing under the lights of the stage and your fingertips are itching to feel him.

as you hear his voice bellowing through the speakers, you feel shivers down your neck as you can picture his lips ghosting your skin, whispering in your ear.

with time though, you start to vibe with the crowd and as more and more songs go by, the more you relax. maybe you can get away with not being spotted ? it would make this so much easier on both of you.

but as luck would have it, on the 7th song of the set, his eyes scan the crowd and fall right on yours. he doesn’t think twice at first, eyes scanning right by. but you see the double take, you notice the moment it clicked and there he is, staring right at you.

niall can’t believe what he’s seeing. it’s you. really you. how hasn’t he noticed you yet ? what are you doing here ? who the hell cares, you’re right there. he’s trying to focus on the song, and it’s almost over, but christ, you are right there.

he grabs his guitar for the next song, and as he grips the neck, his fingers curled up on the strings, he’s taken back to that night. as his eyes keep flicking back to you, almost as if to make sure this isn’t a hallucination, he can feel your skin under his hands. remembers how much you loved his fingers wrapped around your neck. how tight your pussy squeezed down on his cock when he did. thank god he’s keeping the guitar for another couple songs, it can hide the situation happening in his pants.

not a day has gone by that he hasn’t thought about you. thought about how much he misses you. thought about how much of an idiot he was to not at least ask for your number. he knows he shouldn’t have a way of contacting you, you’d be too hard to resist. but still, having the option would be nice sometimes. especially on the days he needs to escape from it all.

and what the fuck is he supposed to do today ? this is the O2, he’s got some friends here, christ even his girlfriend is here. and even if they weren’t, there is absolutely no way for him to talk to you. pause the show to say hi, meet me backstage ? no that’s not possible. so what’s he supposed to do ? pretend this isn’t happening ? pretend you’re not less than 30 feet away from him ?

as the show nears the end, his heart grows heavy, knowing that yes, he does have to pretend he didn’t just see you and he has to go back to his friends and girlfriend as if nothing out of the ordinary happened tonight. and he absolutely hates himself for hating that. this is supposed to be a great night to share with his favourite people. a celebration because he’s playing the O2, all by himself. it’s his name in lights and it’s fucking epic.

but all he can think about is how badly he wants to celebrate with you. he wishes that you were the one about to head off backstage to greet him with open arms when this song finishes. but it’s not you, it’s his girlfriend and his friends, he can see them from the corner of his eye.

and for a split moment, he wishes he was strong enough to send it all to hell and make a huge public display of love to you. but his management would kill him, his girlfriend would be super embarrassed, and you both would probably piss yourselves. and just like that the lights are out. the show is over and even if he actually really wanted to, the chance has slipped away.

he’s being rushed off stage, tons of people patting his back and high-fiving him and then the arms of his girlfriend catch him in a big sweaty hug. they sway back and forth from left to right as she excitedly squeezes him. and for a split second, he hates her ocean breeze shampoo and wishes he was smelling your sweet strawberry scented hair. this is gonna be a long night, he thinks to himself.

“fuck this is gonna be a very long night,” you mumble to yourself as you’re now back in your hotel room. the show was great, niall was great, of course, of course. but you saw him so so close and his voice was ringing in your ears for over an hour and a half. and now you’re supposed to just sit here.

and so that’s what you did. just sat on the bed, still in the outfit you wore to the show. just dangling your feet off the side of the mattress as you’re a bit too short to reach the floor. your mind is in an absolute fog, just whirling every imaginable thought of niall. churning up every memory you have of that night. it’s all you have to hold onto.

the raspiness of his voice, the thickness of his accent, the fluffiness of his hair, fiery heat of his touch, soft drag of his lips, needy nibbles of his teeth, roughness of his calloused fingers, tightness of his hand around your throat. he’s all you can think of, your body is consumed by him. so fuck, maybe it was a bad idea to go to his show.

your phone buzzes next to you, an instagram notification catches your attention as you notice that it’s been almost 2 hours since you sat down on the bed. you shake your head, a bit embarrassed that so much time has gone by, grabbing your phone and flicking over to instagram.

you have a message request from an account you don’t recognize. curiosity getting the best of you, you open the message : “hello petal. can’t believe you were there tonight. i couldn’t forgive myself if i didn’t try to reach out to you. miss you. -nh”

could it really be him ? you ask yourself. although, really, no one else knew you were at the show. no one else calls you petal. and even less people knew that there was any type of history between you and niall.

you write back : “fuck, it’s really you, isn’t it ? i didn’t mean to ambush you tonight by being there. it was a fluke really. but i’m so glad you reached out, miss you more than i can explain. -xx”

your smile could rip your face in half, it’s so big. niall’s writing back, the three little dots floating up and down at the bottom of your phone screen. “it’s really me love, promise. where are you ? i can try to sneak away from this party. maybe what happens in canada doesn’t have to stay in canada ? -nh”

niall had to try. in the last few hours since the show’s been over, he’s plastered a smile on his face, shared beers with his friends, cuddled up with his girlfriend and partied away. but the longer it goes by, the harder it is to pretend anymore.

knowing that you’re in the same city, it’s enough to make him sick with want for you. so he does the only thing he can think of. he excuses himself to the bathroom, locks the door behind him, and opens his instagram. he switches over to his private account and does a general search for your name. after looking through a dozen accounts, there you are. it’s so obviously you. and although niall’s only spent a matter of hours with you, he can feel you radiating off the random photos he’s looking at.

so he chances writing you a message. the odds are horrible that you’ll see the message tonight, it’s somewhere between 2 & 3am, but he needs to try. he’ll forever regret not trying. so when he gets the message with your hotel and room number, he splashes water on his face, and walks right out of the bathroom.

ignoring everyone at the party, he heads straight for the door, making a quick escape without anyone noticing. he quickly whistles down a cab, jumps in and he’s off to your hotel. or more importantly, he’s off to you.

as niall’s sitting in the taxi, he can’t believe he’s just left everyone, his girlfriend, his best mates for a chance at a quick encounter with you. he’s panicking. this feels like crossing the line. a hell of a lot more than last time. this is actively seeking you, and leaving his life behind tonight, without so much as a goodbye. people will probably worry, especially his girlfriend. and yet, he cant quite bring himself to care. he’s just much too excited to see you.

the moment you send niall your location, you quickly got up off the bed, go to the bathroom and look at yourself in the mirror. what did he mean when he said it doesn’t have to be a one off ? your mind can’t stop whirling around that message. what does he want ? what’s going to happen ? you’re so excited to see him, for real, touch him, feel him close again. but you’re a little nervous this time. you know a talk is coming up and you’re not sure how it’s going to go. not sure how you want it go honestly.

you brush your teeth for good measure, take a big gulp of water and that’s when you hear the knocking at your door. you straighten out, taking one big breath before padding over to the door and opening it, revealing niall with his hair mussed up, his eyes sparkling back at you as his smile grows more and more the longer he’s looking at you. “beautiful girl,” he mumbles under his breath, a content sigh leaving his mouth as he wonders why the hell he felt any nerves about meeting you. your presence just makes everything okay, he should know that by now. and as scary as it is, he revels in it.

“gonna let me in,” he chuckles lightly, making you blush. you were so busy admiring him, all of your previous nervousness washing away as you feel his energy right in front of you.

“fuck, sorry sorry, c’mon in,” you giggle, stepping aside, niall making his way past you, as you close the door behind him with a gentle click. turning to face him, you aren’t sure how you should react, what it is you’re allowed to do. this time feels so different.

but all he does is smile with a light chuckle, his arms opening up wide, as a sort of beckoning call. you scurry into him, your arms wrapping around his waist as he engulfs you into a tight hug, burying his face into your hair, taking a good steady inhale. and he’s absolutely ecstatic to find that you haven’t changed shampoo in the last month. so much better than ocean breeze, he thinks to himself.

your face is buried into his chest, feeling any stress just melt away. it’s the first moment you notice how unnerving this day has been. all the stress of going to the show, coming back alone, your whirring thoughts, it’s been a lot and you hadn’t quite realized how much it was affecting you until it’s all whooshed away.

as you both finally pull away from the hug, one of niall’s hands comes up to cup your jaw, thumb gently stroking your cheek bone, quietly asking the question he’s had on his mind all this time. “did ya really miss me as much as you said ?”

and as soon as the words leave his mouth he feels like an idiot, especially hearing your soft giggle. but the embarrassment vanishes as quickly as it appeared when you grip the collar of his shirt, pulling him in slowly, until your noses are pressed together and your lips are just ghosting his. you mumble against his mouth a quick, “m’i allowed to kiss you ?”

before the full sentence is even out of your mouth, niall’s lips are pressed firmly against yours. his one hand slides over from your jaw, cupping the back of your neck, fingers tangled into your hair, tugging slightly. his other hand grips into your hip, having lifted your shirt just enough to for his palm to collide with your flesh. fuck, you’re so soft, so warm, sending an electrifying buzz through his hand from the contact he’s so desperately missed.

“you’ve no idea how bad i missed you,” you murmur against his lips, niall taking the opportunity to dart his tongue out into your mouth.

niall drags his fingertips lightly from your neck, down between the valley of your breasts, over your stomach, settling on your other hip. he can’t stop kissing you, can’t get enough. the drag of your lips against his, the little bit of suction, it’s so much you and it’s overwhelming. his brain feels foggy. in this moment, nothing else matters, nothing else exists. he’s not sure whether to love that or be completely scared of it.

his thumbs give your skin a soft little rub before his hands travel over the swell of your ass, gripping the back of your thighs as he picks you up, walking you backwards towards the bed.

you groan softly as he bites on your lip, letting you down gently on the bed. he wastes no time crawling up to you, his lips attaching to your neck. he takes his time, pecking, sucking, nibbling, indulging in all the pretty sounds you’re making.

“can we catch up later ?” you hear niall mumbling against your ear. “need to do this now, need to feel you again petal, please.”

a deep groan works its way up your throat as your hips roll into him, silently giving him your answer. the weight of him on top of you is so comforting, it’s what your body’s been craving.

you’ve naturally gotten yourself off quite a bit in the 5 weeks since the last time you saw niall. always with the thought of him sneaking into your brain. but it was nothing compared to actually feeling him. and that’s when you realize you’re both wearing way too much clothes.

you tug on his shirt, murmuring a quick “off, now, please.”

niall gives you another peck on the lips, lifting his body just enough to grip the back of his shirt and lifting it over his head in a quick swoop, shimmying out of his pants at the same time.

“same goes for you beautiful girl, wanna feel that soft skin of yours,” he hums, his hands gliding from your hips up to your breasts, lifting your shirt in the process.

you raise your arms, allowing niall to take your shirt off completely. he leans back, his bum settled on his calves, between your legs as he admires you. his fingertips graze over your bra covered chest and down your stomach. he watches the goosebumps arise on your skin, taking in every dip and curve in your body.

“you’re fucking intoxicating petal,” he murmurs, making you blush. niall notices the shade of red tinting your cheeks, left hand coming up to cup your face.

you lean into his hand, turning your face just enough to leave a series of small pecks into his palm, mumbling quietly, “you make me feel so fuckin good.” and it was true. you dont remember a time where someone’s made you feel quite as special and wanted as niall makes you feel.

“hmm, m’about to make you feel even better,” he smiles, leaning down to kiss you again and again. he really can’t get enough of kissing you.

niall gets your pants off, with a bit of a struggle, refusing to stop kissing you even for a second. “finally,” he grumbles into the kiss once your pants are off all the way.

you giggle, biting his lip playfully as niall rolls his hips into yours. you feel the outline his cock so well with just your underwear on. can feel the head of cock bumping against your clit.

“already so fuckin wet for me, can feel it through my briefs,” niall hums, the wet patch on your panties soaking right through his last piece of clothing.

“please niall,” you moan against his lips, one hand reaching down to grab a hold of his cock. “please, can i taste you ? been dying to have you in my mouth. didn’t get to last time. please,” you mumble, absolutely not letting that opportunity pass up again. you needed the weight of him on your tongue. needed to hear all the sounds you could pull from him with your mouth.

“fuckin christ pup, want it that bad ?” he asks completely besides himself. never has he had someone literally beg to have his cock in their mouth. without a second thought, niall rolls you both over, his back colliding with the mattress, leaving you on top of him.

“m’all yours pretty girl,” niall hums, smiling and relaxing back into the bed. he notices the darkness taking over your eyes, noting that although you seem to be on the more submissive side, you also like little opportunities of control.

you settle yourself between niall’s thighs, taking your time kissing over his body. your tongue flicking out to wet his nipples whenever you’re close to them, blowing some cold air to watch them harden. you love the deep chesty groan he lets out whenever the coolness hits his spit wet skin.

you kiss over his chest and tummy, fingertips tickling his skin lightly, watching his stomach twitch under your touch. making your way down to his briefs, your fingers grip into the waistband, pulling them down his thighs. his cock springs free, looking achingly hard as he wiggles his legs to help you pull his underwear off completely.

on your way back up his body, you lick a long stripe over his balls, up his shaft and to the tip, opening up your mouth and taking him all the way down your throat.

niall’s hand goes flying down to your head, gripping onto your hair as he moans out, “oh fucking -. shit. you’re so good for me.”

you pull up to the head of his cock, taking a deep breath through your nose, your tongue working on the underside of his shaft as you slowly bob your head.

you moan around his dick, loving every moment of it. you knew you were good at sucking guys off, it’s one of your many talents. you enjoy it too, love hearing their moans for you.

but finally getting a chance at niall. a chance you were sure was never ever going to happen. it was better than anything you could have imagined. he sounds so fucked for you. plus, he’s heavier on your tongue than you imagined, you’re head is spinning with it. his tight grip in your hair, reminding you that even if you’re having your fun right now, he’s still in charge here.

he lets out a particularly loud moan as your tongue ring collides with the underside of his tip, the sound making your pussy clench. and as much as you loved having your mouth on him, you needed him. needed him now. you tug your panties off, your mouth sliding off his cock in one quick motion.

niall looks down in shock, eyebrows furrowed, “what the, why did ya -“ words getting caught around a moan as you reposition yourself and sink down on him. his cock stretching you so deliciously, you’re left trembling as you sit on him fully.

his hands reach out, gripping onto your thighs, “shit pup, warn a guy next time yeah ?” he hums, eyes raking over your body, hands roaming your legs and hips.

you nod, smiling, knowing that’s just an expression. but your tummy still flips at the thought of next time. “promise,” you murmur, taking your time with him. your hips move over him slowly, feeling the drag of him against your inner walls. your moans coming out in small puffs, one hand gripping into your breast, just needing something to latch onto.

niall watches you, small moans leaving his parted lips. his nails are lightly raking over your thighs, taking you in. the moment is so sensual, the air in the room thick with emotion. there’s something about a second time. there’s less guessing involved, less nerves.

he notices the furrow in your brow as his cock hits a particular spot inside you, your tummy twitching, head rolling back. his hands travel up your hips to your waist, one hand splaying across your stomach, feeling the muscles twitch when his cock slowly grinds against your sweet spot.

“feeling good petal ?” he asks quietly as to not startle you, the moment so deep and slow and full of breathy moans and whimpers.

your head lolls back over your left shoulder, slumping forward a bit, eyes opening and locking with his. niall feels your stomach muscles twitching as your eyes make contact with his, and he needs to kiss you. he’s feeling so many emotions, unsure how to handle the jumble in his head. especially considering all of his blood is rushing to his cock, leaving his brain a bit fuzzy.

you nod and whimper a breathy “fuck yes” to answer his question, as his hands leave your body momentarily to press against the mattress. niall leans up into a sitting position, his hands gliding up your thighs and wrapping around your waist.

you smile at him, arms reaching out to wrap around his neck, resting your forehead against his. the new position has added tons of pressure to your clit as you grind on him, feeling that familiar warmth building in your lower tummy.

niall rubs his nose against yours, kissing you with as much emotion as he can muster. he can feel your walls start to tighten around him, knows your orgasm is starting to build. your kiss is getting sloppy, jaw going slack as niall pecks and nibbles on your lips.

he can feel your pussy fluttering around his cock, your thighs trembling, as your grip on his hair tugs achingly harder. without a second thought, one of niall’s hands glides up your body and finds a familiar spot around your neck, silently asking you for permission.

you whimper out a yes, niall biting your bottom lip, groaning against your mouth, “with all this whimpering, you really are acting like a puppy.” as the words leave his mouth, his hand tightens around your neck, a breathy moan leaving your mouth. your eyes roll back as your orgasm crashes over you.

his words has your mind racing, plus the feel of his hand restricting your airflow, the burning coil in your stomach snapped. it didn’t stand a chance. you’re sure you blacked out for a moment, the orgasm hitting like a strong ocean wave that takes you under and hurtles you out into the sea.

you blink your eyes open, niall’s lips pecking over the side of your neck, his hand cupping the other side, thumb stroking the column of your throat. “should see how amazing you look when you cum like that,” niall murmurs against your ear, adding to his mental note to include mirrors sometime, if at all possible.

“don’t think i’ve ever cum like that,” you hum, giggling quietly. you were being honest, that was the most intense thing you’ve ever felt. and thank fuck you’re too blissed out to care, or else you’d be pissing your pants at the sheer thought of how intense this man makes you feel after only 2 nights together.

niall chuckles breathily, sucking wet kisses over your neck, to your jaw and chin. “had your fun sweet girl ? s’it my turn now ?” he asks, tongue flicking out against the fullness of your bottom lip.

“mhmm, please,” you hum, rocking your hips, still sitting on his cock. the movement pulls a groan out of niall, his left hand colliding with your ass cheek in a stinging smack.

“f-fuck,” you stutter out, caught completely off guard, nails digging into niall’s biceps for support.

his hand smoothes over the swell of your bum, soothing the stinging in your heated skin. he swallows down your moans, kissing you through it, as he wraps his arms around you, rolling you onto the bed.

niall pins your hands to the mattress, on either side of your head, his hips slowly rolling into yours. the slow drag of his cock against your dripping walls, making your head go fuzzy.

he keeps his pace slow, feeling your walls split open to accommodate his size, sucking him back in every time he thrusts. niall feels absolutely delirious for you. he really means it when he says you’re intoxicating. your sweet smell, silky smooth skin. the feeling of your pussy fluttering around his cock. the way his entire being seems to melt in your presence.

you can feel your second orgasm coming on, the torturously slow drag of his cock making you feel every bump, every ridge, every vein. the tip of his dick steadily grinding into your sweet spot, bringing you closer and closer to the edge with every thrust.

“gonna cum again for me sweet girl ?” niall mumbles against your lips, feeling your walls start to clench on his length. “feels good like this yeah ?” he asks, thumbs gently rubbing over your palms, hands still pinned to the mattress.

“s’so good ni, fuck -“ your words cut off by your second orgasm crashing over you, a whimpery moan leaving you as your back curls.

niall buries his face in your chest, groaning as your pussy clamps down on his length, but he doesn’t stop. keeps fucking into you just as deliriously slow as he has been. the head of his cock rolling into your sweet spot over and over.

and you can’t stop cumming. your next orgasm starts before the last one can even end. your hands are gripped into his tightly, thighs shaking, your moans getting louder.

“fuck, fuck, fuck, oh my god,” you whimper, your third orgasm rolling into your fourth, gasping for breath as niall bites into your neck. “fucking can’t - can’t stop. can’t stop cumming, fuck,” you cry out as your fifth orgasm rolls on.

niall lets go of your hands, needing to anchor himself to you. he rests on his elbows, forearms on the mattress, boxing you in. his fingers wrap over your shoulders, thumbs stroking your skin.

your hands immediately fly to grip into his hair, arms wrapped around him for dear life. you’re feeling so overstimulated, but it’s the best you’ve ever felt in a long time. you can feel niall’s cock twitching, as he struggles to hold on through your sixth ? seventh ? orgasm.

“christ petal, m’the luckiest lad on the fuckin planet,” he groans out against your neck as his hips finally still, cock buried deep inside you, tip seethed into your sweet spot, as he spurts ribbon after ribbon of hot cum.

your body is an absolute trembling mess as you gasp for air. one of your hands carding through your hair before falling limply on the bed. your other hand in niall’s hair, raking through his locks.

niall’s breathing heavily, catching his breath, laying flat against you. a moment passes before he lifts his chest up from yours, looking over your face, “doing okay pet ?”

“mhmm,” you hum, nodding lightly, smiling at him. “that was, honestly, the best. ever,” you giggle, high on whatever endorphins are coursing through your body, in a post sex haze.

“couldn’t agree more,” he murmurs, reaching up to kiss you, as he slowly drags his cock out of you.

you whine against niall’s lips, the sudden emptiness making your overstimulated pussy flutter over nothing. “sorry, let me get something to clean you up,” niall whispers, slowly standing up and heading into the washroom to find a washcloth.

he makes his way back to the bed, smiling at your fucked out expression, “christ, you’re so beautiful petal. wish i could see you like this every day.” he crawls up the bed, gently resting his hands on your inner thighs to pry your legs open. he softly swipes the washcloth over your cunt, apologizing at every twitch and whimper.

once he’s done cleaning you off, niall lays back down on the bed, partly on top of you, his head resting on your chest, leg thrown over yours, his fingertips lightly rubbing up and down your bicep. you card your fingers through his hair, gently scratching at his scalp and pulling on his hair. you’re not sure how long you both lay there in silence, enjoying each other as much as you can until the cozy bubble you’ve created inevitably pops again. especially when you start to take notice of the early hour, the first peaks of sunlight starting to stream through the sheer white curtains.

“we’re gonna have to talk about this,” niall breathes out against your chest, breaking the silence first, as he watches the trail of goosebumps that follow the path of his fingertips. he hears you hum an affirmative response, your face burying into the top of his head, taking a calming breath, the smell of his shampoo still lingering.

“mind if we order some room service first ?” you mumble. “could really go for a coffee,” the lack of sleep and scratchiness to your throat is made obvious the more you speak.

niall looks up at you, a bright smile on his face, kissing the underside of your jaw, “you’re really fuckin cute when you’re tired.” he keeps trailing his kisses up to your chin, finishing off with a deep kiss, right on your lips, before reaching over to the nightstand for the room service info.

niall calls in for some coffees and a large array of breakfast foods, pecking over your skin as you both wait.

once you’ve got coffees in hand, some food spread out over the bed, both of you comfortably sitting, niall breaks the ice, “i’d be fooling myself if i said i’d be able to walk out of here like i did last time.”

your eyes make contact with his, listening attentively as he goes on, “i dont know how we’re supposed to go about this, but it killed me to know we were in the same city and we weren’t together. i’m so fucking pulled to you, i cant explain it.”

you nod along, completely understanding. the moment you saw him walk out on stage last night, everything came crashing around you.

“i know,” you hum. “i feel it too. it’s so hard to say goodbye to you. but what do you suggest ?” you ask. truthfully, you barely know each other.

“i just-“ niall sighs. he knows this is crazy, he wants to throw everything away for someone he doesn’t really know at all. just based on a feeling. no, fuck, he can’t do that. can’t do that at all.

“i just want to see you,” he sighs again, knowing that’s really the only way he can describe it. the only way he can really get away with this. “you make me feel so good. so safe. so, i dont know, it’s like relief ?” he tries to explain. “like everything else can just wash away. is it totally selfish of me to want to hold onto that ?” he adds quietly. “you’re the only bit of peace i have. the only thing that’s truly just mine.”

you think you just felt your heart get ripped to shreds. how can you deny him the comfort he’s been so desperately craving ? it’s not like you’re getting nothing out of this agreement. and maybe if you weren’t exhausted, running on no sleep and an absurd amount of orgasms, maybe if you weren’t so fucking gone for this man, you would have thought about this.

but your heart aches for him, you want to help him, you want to do this with him. so you find yourself nodding, smiling reassuringly as you lock eyes with niall, “sounds like we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other then.”

Part 4

……

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